Glossed Over

Allure's Inadvertent Image Rehab for Britney Spears

A shocker!  Allure breaks from its tradition of super-extra-close-up cover shots—finally—for September’s photo of a bewigged Britney Spears.  Despite the arresting cover photo, the issue contains no actual Britney interview.   Since the tabloid fixture failed to appear for scheduled chats with writer Judith Newman, we didn’t have to brace ourselves for any of Brit’s confessions about her life. Not that we were expecting much in the vein of disarming announcements, anyway:  even the photos here are obviously fake.  Let’s be honest:  the photos in Allure are either the result of significant artifice (her wig) or the result of using photos from 1998 (her waistline).  Seriously, we haven’t seen Brit that slender since…well…earlier this week, when we saw the campaign for her new fragrance.

Anyway, we were truly eager to read Newman’s ruminations on the nature of celebrity, which unfortunately also contained this tidbit that unmasks her secret desires.  Honestly, we think her fantasy life suffers from a serious shortage of imagination if this the best she can do.  She says:

What would I do if I were 25, world famous, unimaginably wealthy, and no one could say no to me?

What?  Do tell!

Well, first, I’d sleep with Dick Cheney.  (It’s my world.  Welcome to it.)

Okay, not everyone drools over Brad Pitt or Matt Damon or whoever the kids are into these days (Zac Efron? meh).  But the Vice President? Even disregarding his politics, we cannot quite visualize the planet Newman apparently inhabits where Dick Cheney even remotely resembles a dreamboat. At least she goes on to justify her crush on the V.P.

I don’t know what it is: the commanding voice, the crooked smile, the possibility that at any moment he might have a heart attack and I would save the lives of thousands…

Wait, she’s turned on by the guy’s heart problems?  Turns out the article helped us gain some perspective about Ms. Spears after all:  before reading this piece, we thought Britney had lousy taste in men. 

Reading on the Road • Along with billions of other fashion types, we jetted off to Vegas today to attend a whole slate of trade shows.  (Although we aren’t one of those trend-slave fashion obsessives:  we refuse to get that bangs/pageboy hybrid haircut and we have yet to buy a single pair of leggings, though we do have a hankering for navy nail polish.)  Anyway, since our flight was delayed nearly two hours and our attention was only halfway held by BlackBook (every article in the issue is only, like, one page long!), we took a look at what fashion magazines everyone else was reading.  At our gate, we spotted four Lucky readers, a lone Cosmopolitan devotee, and one collagen-lipped fedora-wearing brave soul toting the mammoth issue of Vogue.  And even that slave to fashion gave up on Ms. Wintour:  she left the issue on the plane. 

What magazine will you be taking on your late-summer travels?  Do you opt for books instead?  Or do you leave the reading material at home?  After hours of delays and lugging our tote through a lengthy taxi line, we almost wish we’d left all the paper on our desk.

Live Blog: Reading September's Vogue

Here goes nothing something, we hope. We’ve never live blogged before, and to our knowledge, no one else has live blogged a magazine before. There may be a reason for that. Guess we’ll find out! We should mention that we have not even opened the September issue of Vogue until now, nor have we read other blogs’ takes on the issue. We have no idea what to expect and only the most optimistic of hopes that we’ll be done before Conan O’Brien starts.

Countdown • Only two hours to go until we peel back the cover of September’s Vogue and commence live blogging.  Join us at 8:00 p.m. Pacific, won’t you?  We’ll be going non-stop until we hit the back cover, except for coffee breaks and the half-hour when The Hills is on.  Team Lauren!

Scoping Out September Issues: InStyle

The issue weighs: 3 full pounds

Issue thickness:  Nearly an inch

Who’s on the cover: Gwen Stefani looking somehow different than usual. We can’t decide if she’s the victim of extreme Photoshopping or if this is what she actually looks like. 

Who bought the back cover: Yves Saint Laurent, with a gorgeous, moody ad featuring Gisele Bundchen

Most misleading cover line:

Most Revealing Star Photos Ever

Revealing?  Bah!  These photos are about as racy as pics of your grandmother in a skirted bathing suit.  Rachel Bilson wears a bra, but is covered from her rib cage to her knees.  Ooh, daring!  Denis Leary is shirtless!  Eh.  Joy Bryant’s entire leg is on display!  Ben Stiller displays a whopping five inches of sternum.  We aren’t saying that celebs should doff their clothes for a camera (or that we actually have the desire to see Stiller without his shirt), but these pics reveal nothing. They’re decently composed photos, but ultimately?  Nothing to see here except the black-and-white photo of legendary jerk Terence Howard stretched across two patio chairs in his underwear, if only because it has to be the most awkward, uncomfortable pose ever and we like to think of it as a form of cosmic retribution.

Number of ad pages between the cover and the table of contents: 50

Total number of pages: 618

How many of those pages are ads: 284, about 46 percent (source: MIN Online)

Subscription cards: Two bound, no blow-ins. Less mess!

Cosmetic samples: We can actually smell our copy from across the room now that we’ve peeled open the samples inside. It is pure perfume overload in this issue: Dolce & Gabbana Light Blue, Dior J’adore, Guerlain My Insolence, Usher The Scent for Women, L.A.M.B. by Gwen Stefani (natch), and Fendi Palazzo. The worst by far is Usher’s, which is foul—it’s reminiscent of fruity air freshener blended with turpentine. And the essence of Usher as a fragrance? Gag-inducing.

Is it portable? Not unless you’re a lumberjack and therefore accustomed to lugging around this much dead tree. Leave it at home.

“You look like a Barbie” •  It’s sick, we know, but we woke up thinking about last night’s episode of The Fashionista Diaries. Four issues remain unsolved for us: Are we terrible for cackling in glee each time Stephanie and Brandon told the Jane interns their articles would appear in the September issue? When Rachel and Annemarie visited the crash site, was the slow-mo footage of the eighteen-wheeler supposed to be funny? (Because it was.) Why didn’t we get to see Rachel tutor Andrew on Jane?  And why does Bridget talk like a drunk four-year-old?

Glossed Over Goes Live: We Live Blog Vogue Monday Night

Yesterday, we picked up a copy of the new Vogue at the newsstand.  Though the issue has now been in our possession for more than 24 hours, we have yet to crack the thing open.  The anticipation is killing us.  Sienna Miller’s new eyebrows are explained inside, right?

Still, we’ve decided to wait…until Monday night at 8:00 p.m. Pacific, that is, when we will live blog as we read the massive September issue.  We’ve never read any September edition in just one sitting, and we have no idea how long it’ll take.  (Actually, we’re rather afraid this experiment of ours may run all night.  Yikes.  We get even crankier than normal when we’re sleep-deprived.)  But we’re gluttons for punishment…and for Vogue!  Check in with us Monday evening as we discover the “magician of makeup,” “fearless fashion,” and the exact amount of caffeine we’re capable of consuming in the course of an evening.   

Lucky's Jean Godfrey-June Goes Against "Type"

Ever modest, Lucky suggests we organize our accessories just like they do at the magazine’s HQ.  From “Lucky How-To,” September:

Store your jewelry…just like we do at magazines

Because, you know, the Lucky way is the best way!  Their tip about jewelry trays is valid…so in what other ways would we want to emulate Lucky?  If we ever wanted to make up words, amass a collection of expensive rubber pants, and sport the occasional heinous outfit (hello, Vanessa Minillo on the July cover), we’d definitely turn to Lucky for advice. 

Plus, Lucky beauty editor Jean Godfrey-June is extremely skilled at using the most inconsequential of personal anecdotes and stretching them into impassioned endorsements for overpriced beauty products, like the $48 hand cream she touts in September’s “The Beauty Closet.”  Hand cream!  $48!  The only thing more unbelievable than the price of the Peter Thomas Roth lotion is the story she tells to promote it.

My small town teems with Hollywood “types,” some legitimate, many wannabe or has-been.  They’re easy to identify:

Do tell us about “types”!  Is a “type” a man in sandals?  A woman who wears her sunglasses in a restaurant?

When they get ready to do something rude—say, shushing fellow adults as if they were toddlers, or elbowing past the crowd to grab the last tomato at the farmers’ markets—they press their hands together, as if in prayer.  Whether or not the “prayer” is accompanied by a bowing of the head, the gesture is the single most obnoxious of our time.

Well, yeah, that does sound annoying.  But those Hollywood “types” doing this sort of thing?  We live in L.A. and we’ve never once seen such a gesture.  Also, her description doesn’t make sense.  How do you press your palms together while plowing through a throng of people?  That isn’t to say this behavior doesn’t exist in Jean’s town—but maybe it has nothing to do with being a Hollywood “type” and everything to do with being an inconsiderate ass.

The practitioner may well be thinking, “I come in peace,” or more Hollywood, “I bow to what is holy in you.”  But the true message is unequivocal: “I am holier than thou!”

Also holier than thou?  People on the East Coast making broad generalizations about the way people on the other side of the country think and behave.  Yeesh.

Anyway, she goes on for a few more sentences about this alleged behavior and how returning the gesture is the sole defense against it.  (Don’t ask us to explain.  We read the whole thing three times and we’re still confused.)   Somewhere in the course of this fruitless exercise, we began to wonder what any of this had to do with the potion she’s tasked with hawking.  And what would Jean consider a “Hollywood type” beauty product, anyway?  A face lift?  Botox injections?  The blood of pious virgins?

Nope, it’s a $48 hand cream that magically trumps the lousy behavior of showbiz scoundrels.  We’ll let her describe it, since we found her segue to be a bit of a stretch:   

A smooth and youthful hand—naturally featured in this exchange—further irritates most Hollywood types, as age grates upon them more than most…

Good to know—having more youthful-looking hands is a surefire defense against annoying people!  Sounds like that cream would come in handy in places other than Hollywood…like, say, Jean Godfrey-June’s office.

Scoping Out September Issues: Marie Claire

The issue weighs: 1.4 pounds

Issue thickness: an eminently manageable three-eighths of an inch

Who’s on the cover: A surprisingly attractive Ashley Olsen, sporting an indigo Vuitton gown and heavy eyeliner

Why she’s on the cover:  Because she and her sister are launching yet another clothing line, this one called Elizabeth and James, as well as a second collection from The Row.  Which means people are actually buying pricey clothes designed by Mary-Kate and Ashley, which means their Wal-Mart collections were just a launching pad, which means these two are almost certainly going to take over the world.  Brace yourselves.

Who bought the back cover: Emporio Armani Diamonds, with an ad featuring Beyonce.  We have no idea what this stuff smells like, but this ranks as one of the most uninspired ads ever.

Cover line that made us cringe:

Shocking!  Female suicide bombers

Way to make a serious topic sound like tabloid fluff.

Number of ad pages between the cover and the table of contents: a mere 17

Total number of pages: 284

How many of those pages are ads: 168, almost 60 percent

Subscription cards: Our issue had only one, and it was bound.  No pesky flyaways?  Nice.

Cosmetic samples: 3 scent strips—Ralph Lauren Romance, Donna Karan Cashmere Mist, and Sarah Jessica Parker Covet.  Enough!  Our nostrils are on fire.

Is it portable?  Oh, yeah.  This edition is no larger than the average issue of Vogue or InStyle.  We’re ripping out the fragrance strips, though—this thing reeks enough to attract bees.

Reduce, Reread, Reorganize • We’re moving this weekend.  In the process of cleaning and packing, we’ve amassed a veritable mountain of magazines.  (Not just the fashion mags—we have a few months worth of Wired and BlackBook and Bitch and copies of our college’s alumni magazine.)  Although we have neither the need nor the space for six-month-old copies of Self, we hate the idea of throwing away these outdated issues.  Score one for irrationality and impracticality! 

So, we ask: What do you do with your magazines once you’ve read them?  We’ve tried donating them to a local hospital, but they only accept magazines occasionally.  If you hang on to all your glossies, how do you keep them organized?  We don't want to end up like these guys.