Glossed Over

Allure Explores The Important Topic of Celeb Tattoos

You know how Star magazine prints paparazzi photos of actors and then brands their activities “normal” or “not normal”?  We often have a similar reaction to the famous faces we see in magazines, mentally labeling them as reasonable or, more often, adjectives that aren’t nearly as positive.  A quote from Jenna Jameson in Allure’s “Private Eye,” January, provoked the latter type of reaction.  Take a gander at her response to Jeffrey Slonim’s query, “Any tattoos you’re glad you didn’t get?”

Well, it’s not like there’s anything else about her the grandkids would question! 

See the full feature after the jump.

Allure's Interpretation of Dressing Cheaply Varies from Ours

Know what’s even better than arbitrary fashion rules? Appending heavy-handed assumptions about sexuality to the clothing in question!  Why just scrutinize an outfit when you can cast aspersion on someone’s character, too?  Allure’s “Life of the Party,” December, covers all those bases in the guise of helping us discern what, exactly, we’re supposed to wear to holiday parties with nebulous dress codes.  (Festive casual?  What the hell?) 

Here’s some priceless guidance from stylist Kate Young:

And I love dresses by Kate Moss for TopShop.  They’re really fancy but still fun and slutty—in a good way.

Oh.  Whew.  Well, as long as they’re slutty in a good way… We really, really wish Allure had pestered Young to expound on this point.  The word “slut” has such negative connotations, but Young is saying to be “slutty in a good way.”  Is she telling us to eschew society’s standards?  Is she urging us to embrace our sexuality?  Does she want to jettison such labels altogether?

Who knows?  There’s no evidence Young herself has any clue, as she elucidates her slutty-in-a-good-way aesthetic:

Deep, plunging necklines are OK, as long as the amount of cleavage you’re showing is tasteful.

So a plunge neck is fine if it doesn’t show too much décolletage...which is kind of the point of a low-cut top. And where does the “slutty” part come in again?   We couldn’t tell you, but we could point you to part where it becomes clear that using the term “slutty” was just for shock value.

I don’t like backless for cocktail parties, though.  There’s something too risque about it...

And the appalling part:

...—in a way that low-cut in the front isn’t.  It shows you’re definitely not wearing a bra, and it invites men to walk up and touch you.

Right, because not covering our bodies from head to toe is a direct invitation for men to approach us and touch us!  It’s totally our fault for dressing that way if a man we don’t know feels ENTITLED to paw at us!

Here’s the unspeakably ludicrous part:

You know how a woman in lingerie is sexier than a naked woman?  It's the same sort of thing with this.  A backless dress just means business.

Business, eh?  We’re guessing she doesn’t mean the kind that takes place in boardrooms.  How lovely to imply that women with bare backs sell their bodies for cash!

You know, there’s a lot of talk about reclaiming negative words and repurposing them as emblems of strength.  If Kate Young was trying to do that with the term in question, we’d applaud her efforts.  But throwing out the word “slutty,” stripping it of meaning with the “in a good way” disclaimer, and then using it to propagate outrageously judgmental, outmoded, and flat-out incorrect standards doesn’t do anyone any favors. 

Least of all us—we have a holiday party coming up, and we still have no idea what to wear.

Advertising in Allure: Shirtless Shilling

Spotted in the October issue of Allure: four fragrance ads featuring nearly naked women.  Because everyone knows that wearing perfume means you don’t have to wear a shirt!  (But just in case, better cover up those breasts with whatever object is lying around!  Like that pile of flower petals!)

    

As repugnant (and lazy!) as we find the extraneous use of nudity to sell things, we dislike the Marc Jacobs and Mariah Carey ads even more.  Is the model in the Daisy ad unconscious?  Dead?  Or, you know, just asleep in the grass in her underwear?  Totally normal!  And the Mariah Carey ad—she’s mostly underwater, and her perfume promises an “ethereal presence.”  Thanks, but we’d rather be corporeal than ephemeral.

    

We just read the truly thought-provoking book Can't Buy My Love by Jean Kilbourne, which explores advertising and its insidious effects on women, and we can't stop thinking about it (and, yes, questioning everything we see).  However, there was one ad featuring a topless woman that we wholeheartedly endorse.

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. 

Allure: Catherine Zeta-Jones Has More Money Than You Do

Is Allure trying to make us hate Catherine Zeta-Jones? Reading “The Last Showgirl,” August, took our inchoate suspicions about the actress—she comes across as exceptionally high-maintenance, yes?—and magnified them. Naturally, there’s nothing outright derogatory in the profile other than the detail that the Zeta-Jones/Douglas décor includes a bronze statue of Atlas. (Just imagine the kind of apartment that must be.  Yikes!) But there are enough ambiguous moments in the interview that we have to wonder whether writer Brooke Hauser is trying to tell us something. Ah, subtext!

Catherine Zeta-Jones just happens to be good at being a movie star. It’s evident in the langourous way that she moves through a room, as if there were a trail of servants behind her, eager to peel her a grape.

Perhaps it’s because we don’t employ any domestic help, but we aren’t even sure what this means. How does a person behave as if a squadron of servants were tagging along? By barking out random orders? Leaving a trail of clothes on the floor? Even if you did have an actual team of assistants standing by (as CZJ surely does), it would be obnoxious to act as if you expected other people to do your bidding.

There’s a lot to glean from the bottles of Pellegrino, the housekeeper padding silently through the apartment, the shelves dedicated to heavy, leather-bound volumes of the couple’s past scripts, not to mention Michael’s two little gold men. “My Oscar’s in Bermuda”—the Douglases’ main residence—because “Bermuda’s never had one,” she quips.

A lot to glean, indeed! Gracious, those Bermudans must be so grateful that someone so magnificent deigns to keep a gold statuette within their borders! Do they give awards for condescension and self-aggrandizement? Because maybe she could keep those in Bermuda too!

Also, leather-bound scripts? Please. Like the repartee in Ocean’s Twelve was worth immortalizing.

Click-clack past the laundry closet, where she stops to roll her eyes and joke, “I’m constantly in there.”

Oh, another hilarious riposte! We know it’s a joke because ultra-glam movie stars would never stoop to doing their own laundry! How preposterous! They have servants for that! Ha! Hey, Catherine? We aren’t comedy experts or anything, but that remark is only funny to you because—wait for it—you don’t actually have to do your own wash. Outrageous privilege is, like, riotously funny!

And finally:

“I didn’t want to be another girlfriend of Michael Douglas,” she admits. “I remember feeling this immediate attraction and going, What are you going to do: Invest, like, a night or something? I didn’t want to put myself in that situation.” So, she did what any self-respecting woman in her situation would do: She tortured him. “Nine months without a touch or a kiss,” she says, with a light snort. “I’m sure he thought, Something’s not right with this chick. It usually doesn’t take me this long.”

At last, clear instructions for self-respecting women—simply string men along for months on end to make them appreciate you. Playing hard-to-get is the only way to make guys respect you, since you don’t have anything else to offer. Men do love a chase (and, apparently, being chaste)!

Presumably, this article is meant to be positive press (take note, Britney), and maybe CZJ is the kindest, most generous person in the world. We’ll never know her true nature for sure, but this article didn’t exactly have us signing up for membership in the Catherine Zeta-Jones fan club. But what do we know? We eat the peel on our grapes.

Allure Defends Nicole Richie With a Drug Reference

We found this amusing bit in Allure’s “Bottoms Up!” by Rory Evans, July.  Evans mentions gossip blogs, but we are quite sure we’re not reading the same ones.  These two sentences of hers actually made us laugh out loud.

If an actress gets too bony-assed, the paparazzi turn on her and so does public opinion.  (Could anyone imagine blogging smack about Audrey Hepburn the way they do about Nicole Richie?)

Because, you know, there isn’t a single gossip-worthy detail about Nicole Richie other than her weight.  But that surely unintentional reference to “smack”?  Genius!

Shocking Allure Investigation Reveals That Stars Take Drugs

So, maybe we’re more sensitive to it living on the West Coast, but we’ve noticed a string of articles painting California as a strange land.  Continuing the neverending series of stories whose existence seems predicated on the idea  that Los Angeles is indeed very different from New York, Allure’s June issue includes “Hollywood High,” an investigation of the “star party scene.”  Wait, celebrities take drugs? We had no idea!  (And good thing they came west to look into this matter:  famous people in NYC never, ever use!)

Predictably, this barely restrained piece by writer Mary A. Fischer isn’t quite Pulitzer-worthy.  Rather, it’s downright lazy.  The article fails to break any ground whatsoever, attempting to stun us with the following facts that should be patently obvious to anyone over the age of 16 who’s ever watched one measly episode of Access Hollywood:

1. Famous people take drugs!  In nightclubs!  OMG!

2. Celebrities get their drugs gratis in exchange for passing along their dealer’s number to wealthy pals.  You know, like how they get designer clothes.

3. Clubs are catering to drug users, offering more bottled water and energy drinks to prevent the downer effect caused by mixing certain drugs with alcohol.  (Okay, so we learned something new about chemistry, but we aren’t surprised to learn that clubs cater to their clientele’s base desires.  That’s how they make money, after all.)

4. Well-known drug dealers have no trouble getting into nightclubs.

5. Other than the dealers, only invited guests, celebs, and “really hot-looking” people are granted admission to nightspots.

Apparently, they don’t want to distinguish this article too much from the serious journalism that appears in Us Weekly (or, we suppose, potentially invite litigation), so no names are mentioned. Fair enough. But with nary a thinly disguised clue, how are we supposed to discern the true identities of the following individuals mentioned?  Other than assuming these descriptions all refer to Lindsay Lohan and/or Nicole Richie, that is, because we definitely are. 

a young fashion publicist

a beautiful young starlet

a model who, before she cleaned up her act, ran in these circles

one celebrity party girl

a film editor  (We say: no one cares.)

a high-profile celebrity

a well-known celebrity and two of her friends

“Celebrity party girl”?  Come on, Allure, you’re not even trying!

Other than the identity of the people featured in this article, one particular anecdote also captured our imagination:

…on a quiet residential street three blocks from the Sunset Strip, the dealer pulled up in a nondescript car, turned off the lights, and waited.  A black SUV with four people inside parked behind him.

Two adjacent parking spots near Sunset on a Friday night? If only!  Sadly, that’s the most shocking part of this article, except maybe that we read every single word of it.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: Lindsay Lohan Gets Melodramatic in Allure

Some of the utter lunacy in Allure’s Lindsay Lohan profile, May, has already been making its way across the internet, but we only received our subscription copy on Saturday.  And it was totally worth the wait, too, since we received the added bonus of a booklet introducing us to the vendors behind every single one of the beauty lines QVC carries.  Oh, the joys of being a subscriber!

Still, we had no idea how much of a treat we were in for when we arrived at page 280 and saw this:

Coming of Age

From the beginning of her successful career, Lindsay Lohan has aspired to be a modern-day Marilyn Monroe.  Is she starting to resemble her tragic idol?

Sounds like someone’s taking Lindsay just a wee bit too seriously.  Don’t have the stomach to endure the entire wretchedly earnest thing?  Here’s the gist of it:

“I feel like a second parent in the sense that I helped raise my family,” she says of her younger three siblings.  “And I was put between my mother and father a lot.  Well, I would put myself between them to try and keep the peace, and I felt good doing that.  For what it’s worth.”  A rueful shrug.  “Now they’re divorced.”

Despite the overwhelming evidence to the contrary (like, say, her parents’ divorce), Lindsay nonetheless believes she has the power to keep people secure.

“When my friends have left me—I’ve just seen everything collapse,” she says.  “They’re not safe without me.”

Which we think explains why her father’s in prison!  Either she really is incredibly powerful, or she’s dumb enough to make threats to her pals via a reporter.

On to the topic du jour:

“It’s so weird that I went to rehab,” she says.  “I always said I would die before I went to rehab.”

Well, yes, that’s typically how these things work.  And we thought her mother had no sense of irony!

“I say [I idolize] Marilyn Monroe, because if I were blonde, that’s who I’d want to be like,” she demurs…“I use everything she’s gone through when I’m upset.  That’s what I take from her.”

Because, you know, it all worked out so well for Marilyn. 

“I never passed out in my life!  I never vomited from having drinks.  Like in public.  I would never do that.  Well—” she amends, “a few times.  Well, everyone does in high school.  I’m not saying everyone.”

Whoa, Lindsay is so out of touch, so used to life in the spotlight, that the distinction between vomiting in public from drinking too much and vomiting in private from the same cause is actually meaningful.  Why would she even bother to deny drinking to excess when, hello, she discusses going to rehab in this same interview?  (And, if we can be sincere for a microsecond, how sad is this?)

But writer Judy Bachrach saved the best for almost last, creating a chilling culmination of this entire overwrought article.

“It’s like when you’re doing a movie, and it ends.  Then you don’t see the other people for so long.”  Lohan says that she weeps when the filming stops, every time.  For her, it’s like losing family members.  Yet again.

And for us, this straining-for-drama story is another sliver of our lives lost to Allure.  Yet again.

Next Month's Allure To Feature Ford Vehicles, Keds, and Amazing Weight Loss Miracle Pills

Generally speaking, Linda Wells’ installments of “Letter from the Editor” in Allure don’t interest us much. That’s because they’re dull. Sure, they’re not aggressively boring like, say, Bazaar’s cover lines—does Glenda Bailey take some sort of twisted pride in repeating infinitesimal variations on the same phrases month after freaking month?—but they’re just unremarkable enough that we’re indifferent.

Until now.  In the April issue,  Wells discusses her involvement with a show called Shear Genius, wherein she is called upon to perform the apparently arduous task of evaluating tyro hairdressers. How taxing! (Oh, and we’re now eagerly awaiting the launch of competitions featuring manicurists, facialists, and waxers, as apparently no skill in the beauty industry is too insignificant to go unrecognized by a reality show.)

I went to Los Angeles last month to be a guest judge on Shear Genius, Bravo’s new reality TV series, a kind of Project Runway for hair…Luckily for me, the good hairstyles on Shear Genius soared far above the bad, and the bad were truly, obviously, dismal—failures of technique, taste, and execution.

While this concept for a TV show seems tired by now, it might be interesting to hear about from Wells’ perspective, except that she offers no insight into the program, and we already know about the show from the two-page advertising  spread just a few pages earlier in this same issue. 

But in case the dear reader still hasn’t succumbed to the gospel of Shear Genius (on Bravo!), “Beauty Reporter” chimes in with a helpful reminder.

In Bravo’s new reality series Shear Genius, 12 contestants wielding scissors and blow-dryers get the chance to be named head of the class by hairstylist Sally Hershberger. From basic cuts to over-the-top bouffants, they’re evaluated by a panel of judges (including Allure’s fashion director Michael Carl) on their technical skill, artistry—and ability to handle some very candid criticism. Tune in on April 11 at 11 P.M. and watch the bobby pins fly.

All right, Allure, you can stop with the browbeating.  We get it.  A two-page ad and two editorial mentions by page 80?  Enough.  Is Elle this relentless with its promotion of Project Runway and America’s Next Top Model?  We aren’t so naïve to believe that there’s an impenetrable barrier between editorial content and advertising, but we like to think a magazine would at least attempt to finesse that line instead of gracelessly stomping all over it. 

The Week: At Last, Cringe-Free Cover Photos

• April issues are coming over the transom: Reese Witherspoon looks fierce in Bazaar, Scarlett Johansson wears dark lips and short shorts in Vogue, and both constitute massive improvements over last month’s horrifying cover shots of Katie Holmes and Jennifer Hudson, respectively.

• Still more changes at Elle: While a new design director comes on board, other staffers make a blatant attempt to guest-star on The Hills by defecting to jobs at Teen Vogue.

• The New York Times’ Cathy Horyn asks why anyone except “daughters with lucky DNA in New York and L.A.” should care about Vogue.  We agree.

• And Conde Nast plans to launch a new web network, featuring content from Jane, Self, Allure, and Glamour. Like reading the magazines once on paper isn’t punishing enough.

Allure: No, We Still Don't Feel Sorry for You

We were paralyzed by indecision when faced with the March issue of Allure.  Which pressing problem deserved our attention first?  Should we brace ourselves for the no-doubt serious investigation into the mysterious disappearance of “Hollywood’s underpants,” or should we skip to the sure-to-be-obnoxious
Michelle Pfeiffer story?

No contest, really.

We know we come off a bit shrill every time we complain about this, but what is up with the recent spate of beautiful women lamenting how difficult it is to be gorgeous?  Sure, it may be rough to be so good-looking that no one takes you seriously, but it’s totally disingenuous to complain about that and then turn around and make your living off your looks.  (Small but important distinction: We’re not saying that maybe these women aren’t treated unfairly.  We’re saying we don’t want to hear about it while they’re posing for magazines.)  Sorry, but we just can’t bring ourselves to get worked up over stuff like the cover line:

“Beautiful Women Tend to Get Used”

As if being used only happens to beautiful women.

In fact, Pfeiffer explains in considerable detail, beauty was, at times, the very element that thwarted both her career and her personal life.  “When I was coming up in the business, beautiful actresses weren’t really ‘in,’” Pfeiffer recalls…“So I felt then like a lot of women these days feel in a man’s business world: I felt I had to be better than the competition,” Pfeiffer explains.

So let’s get this straight.  She doesn’t want to be evaluated solely on the basis of her looks, but then complains when she can’t use her appearance to land roles?

“When I was doing Frankie and Johnny, that was one of the biggest criticisms: that you couldn’t believe me in the part,” she says resignedly.  “And my argument is always, ‘You know everyone can be damaged.  And pretty people can be just as damaged as ugly people or fat people.’”

We love that she lumps “fat people” in a whole separate category, because apparently someone can’t be both overweight and pretty.  She continues:

“And in some ways, more,” she adds, her face earnest.  “Because beautiful women tend to get used.  And sometimes, their self-esteem is so wrapped up in the way they look that they allow themselves to be victimized much more than somebody whose self-worth isn’t all wrapped up in the face or their body.”

Well, there’s something we agree with.  Life probably is easier for women who bother to develop a personality.

Now that three different celebrities have complained about this in print, we wonder if there may be some validity to their gripes.  But we also wonder how Hollywood’s underwear is faring, because we wish we’d read that story instead.

Previously: Marie Claire: A Model Carps, We Cringe; Vogue's Sob Story: It's Not Easy Being Pretty

Keeping Weight--and Standards--Low in Allure

Actress Haley Bennett’s evaluation of the diet she went on for her role in the upcoming movie Music and Lyrics in Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” February, left us confused:

I had to lose weight for the role.  There was a point that I was passing out at the gym.  I had to rework my diet to get enough carbs.  But I did it healthy…

So passing out at the gym is considered a “healthy” weight-loss program?  Because, you know, we think a sound diet generally doesn’t cause the loss of consciousness. We were all set to go on a tirade about Hollywood’s impossible beauty standards for women when Haley clarified:

…It wasn’t the Nicole Richie diet.

Okay. She has a point.

Lowest Common Denominator: Allure, January

In our continuing quest to keep ourselves amused (because fashion magazines aren’t always compelling when you read a dozen iterations of the same theme every single month) we introduce Lowest Common Denominator, wherein we count, do math, and determine what does—and doesn’t—add up.  (Ha!)  The first recipient of our numerical treatment?  January’s Allure.

1: Number of activists/erstwhile presidential candidates whose name is misspelled in this issue (Ralph Nader)

3: Number of mentions of Naomi Watts doffing her clothes for the magazine’s photo shoot 

0: Inches of R-rated skin actually shown in the much-ballyhooed photos

2: Number of “Lust/Must” pairs made totally useless because their price difference was a mere $20

6: Pairs of shoes with Lucite heels declared “no longer just for strippers”

$792: Average price of a pair of shoes “no longer just for strippers”

$127: Average price of a cut from a stylist featured in “Directory: Running With Scissors”

$120: Average price of services received by Allure staffers in “Makeover Challenge”

1: Number of former American Idol contestants appearing in the magazine

1: Number of articles mentioning Raquel Welch’s new M.A.C. cosmetics collection

1: Number of articles in 2006 featuring another legendary star’s M.A.C. collection (Catherine Deneuve’s “French Lessons,” February 2006), leading us to believe this feature will be an annual collusion with M.A.C.

18: Number of celebs interviewed by Jeffrey Slonim (some at a M.A.C. event, interestingly enough) for “Private Eye”

2: Number of famous people who couldn’t be bothered to remove their sunglasses for their “Private Eye” photos (Michael Kors and Kanye West)

The Week: Special Almost-All-Vogue Edition

•    A documentary crew will go behind the scenes at Vogue as Anna Wintour and her minions put together the massive September issue over the next eight months. 

•    In a series of apparently unrelated observations, James Brady queries Glamour’s Cindi Leive about her rumored rivalry with Cosmopolitan editor-in-chief Kate White, compares her clothing to Lord Byron’s, and describes her as “tallish.”  Thanks for the insight, Jim.

•    PETA activists picketed Vogue’s holiday party, while straight men boycotted Allure’s event.

•    And Angelina Jolie reportedly clashed with Vogue over the writer hired to profile her for the January issue.  Angelina vs. Anna?  We hope they got that on film.

Personality Not Necessary for Holiday Fun, Says Allure

From Allure’s “The Bewitching Hour,” December, comes some helpful advice for holiday parties:

“I put on a really fun disco-y Dolce & Gabbana dress.  It makes me feel as if I’m someone else,” [“nightlife empress” and Bungalow 8 owner Amy] Sacco says.

Because, you know, being yourself simply isn’t enough. 

But in the unlikely event your outfit isn’t quite capable of transforming you into someone more fascinating, there’s still hope.  Sacco continues:

“And don’t forget the jewelry.  Add a little sparkle, especially if you don’t feel as of you have a sparkling personality that evening.”

Oh, okay.  Good to know that if our personality (and wardrobe) is lacking, we can still make up for it with our accessories.  Cheers!

The Week: Anna Wintour More Fascinating to Herself Than to Anyone Else

•    Anna Wintour is named one of Barbara Walters’ “Ten Most Fascinating People.”  Clearly, Wintour agrees with the “fascinating” verdict—she has three portraits of herself hanging in her office.

•    Brandon Holley tries too hard to stay in touch with her 20-something audience by throwing herself a 40th birthday party complete with a street fight and police presence. 

•    Feel like crashing holiday parties?  Gawker and WWD have dates and locations. 

•    Lucky’s hired a stylist.  We really were concerned about Kim France’s ability to dress herself.

•    And this week’s cautionary tale comes from former Allure staffer Molly Friedman, who, after soliciting beauty products for the magazine and then selling them on eBay, is “pretty much banned from Condé Nast for life.”  Which we think is supposed to be an even worse fate than actually having to work at Condé Nast.

Photo of Anna Wintour from the New York Post

We Read It So You Don't Have To: Allure's Guide to a Merry Mercenary Christmas

It’s that time of the year when caution (and credit card debt) is thrown to the wind. As if Christmas-themed luxury-car ads weren’t maddening enough, Allure’s “Getting the Goods,” December, chimes in with some truly depressing tales of women “who know how to work the system.”

What system is that? Oh, you innocent! It’s that time-honored tradition of shaming your significant other into giving an expensive gift, of course.

Since the article already reads like a manual for aspiring gold diggers, we’ll boil it down to its most important (and most vomit-inducing) points:

1. Men cannot be trusted to purchase appropriately pricy jewelry.

“Never let a man buy you jewelry, never! Like, the stone on the ring is minuscule, and you end up with a chip on your finger! You have to pick it out.”

2. Your friends don’t want crappy presents either. Don’t even think about re-gifting.

“I can tell you what subtlety gets you: a nylon Prada bag…I can’t carry this! This is like everyone’s first Prada bag…I was so pissed, I tried giving it to friends. They didn’t even want it.”

3. Salespeople will happily collude in your money-grubbing schemes—they’re on commission, after all.

“I get a lot of jewelry pieces I would never dream of asking for…including this incredible large aquamarine ring from Verdura, which is so fabulous I can’t tell you what it cost. Well, OK, it cost $30,000. It was the salesman who suggested it to my boyfriend.”

4. If you subsist solely on gifts, you’re absolutely not a whore. You’re just a “successful recipient.”

…the most successful recipient I know…does nothing much for a living except get showered with love—and lovely things: a diamond ring from Van Cleef, Hermes scarves, Bulgari necklaces.

5. Don’t kid yourself by thinking you’re above this sort of behavior.

“Because, I mean, like, I don’t want to sound superficial or anything, but you’re giving me a book! For my birthday?”

6. There’s never an occasion too solemn to practice your exacting gift-receiving strategies. To wit:

“…when he proposed, we were on a beach at night—and I didn’t want to say yes until I took the diamond ring into the light to check it out…Probably I would have married him. But I wanted to know exactly what I was accepting.”

Just follow these six easy steps, and you’re well on your way to a lifetime of expensive gifts and  insatiable rapaciousness.  Now the only question is whether there’s time enough to put these strategies into action now, or whether the truly greedy should resolve to undertake this endeavor in 2007.  Everyone needs New Year’s resolutions, right?

Allure: Rewriting History, One Sloppy Sentence at a Time

From Allure’s “The Simple Life,” November, comes a passage that’s made us question everything we thought we knew about American history:

Ever since Benjamin Franklin said “Time is money” and White Castle came up with fast food in 1921, Americans have embraced efficiency.

Although we studied history in college, we’re perfectly willing to admit that we don’ t know everything about the subject, and we’re always happy to learn new things. But we had absolutely zero idea that Benjamin Franklin and White Castle co-existed. You’d think that, in four years of study, we might once have heard about such a thing. And maybe it’s because we studied history and not business, but we’re flabbergasted to learn that Franklin’s comment inspired the establishment of a fast-food restaurant. And who even knew Ben Franklin was still alive in 1921? Thanks, Allure, for shedding some light on a heretofore unknown—but undeniably important—segment of our nation’s heritage.

When You're Famous, You Fight in the Pages of Allure

In Allure’s “Insiders’ Guide,” October, teen starlet Hilary Duff shares how she tested samples of her new fragrance, obnoxiously called With Love…Hilary Duff.

I would wear them, and I asked my sister and people on tour with me to wear them.  Actually, my sister’s boyfriend really liked the final scent.  And he’s a regular guy from Arizona.

“A regular guy”?  Ouch.  Hilary just used Allure to lob a not-so-veiled slam at her sister.  We’re thinking the actual quote, prior to the magazine’s occasionally judicious editing process, went something like this:  “I’m dating the crazy punk tattooed guy from Good Charlotte—he’s a twin, so I can’t remember his name, because there’s this other dude that look just like him!  Oh my god, it’s, like, soooo confusing!  But my sister, who’s mostly famous for being related to me, is just dating some normal guy.  Like, he doesn’t even have a piercing or a record deal or anything!  Which is okay, because otherwise he’d totally overshadow Haylie, because she’s not even half as pretty as I am.”

Sibling rivalry aside, looks like Duff has finally revealed what we’ve suspected all along:  celebrities have different olfactory glands than those of us who toil in obscurity.  By testing her perfume on a “regular guy,” Duff was assured that the general, non-movie-star population would like the scent—essential considering that no one who is either famous or over the age of fourteen is going to buy the stuff.  And even if someone of legal age deigns to purchase With Love, it’s not as if they’re going to admit it.  All of which forces us to question why this is in Allure at all.

Photo of sisters/rivals Hilary and Haylie Duff courtesy of DailyCeleb

Allure: With Looks Like This, Who Needs a Brain?

Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” September, gets caught up in the back-to-school spirit of autumn and confirms our suspicions that, were this magazine an actual person, we would never be friends. For instance:

In high school, we called the kid with all the answers a brownnoser. In beauty, we call that person a freakin’ genius.

And:

We hadn’t contemplated Newton’s law of gravity since high school—until we started to notice its effect on our face.

Despite what we were told during the dark days of ninth grade, some things never change.

Makeup More Valuable Than College Education, Says Allure

From Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” August:

There’s something about a mechanical pencil that makes us feel like an MIT graduate—even if we are just using it to apply eyeliner.

Also, successfully using an eyelash curler makes them feel like they’ve graduated summa cum laude in mechanical engineering from Caltech. Those contraptions are awfully complex, you know.

Allure: Trading Stilettos for Square Pegs

From Allure’s “Private Eye,” July, here’s what Sarah Jessica Parker told reporter Jeffrey Slonim about her look:

I feel a little bit like I’m stuck in the ‘80s. I’m not sure if that’s a good thing or a bad thing.

The ‘80s, huh? That would be the decade before SJP was a trendsetting, Manolo-wearing fashion plate.  Remember?

Photographic evidence like that is floating around the internet, and she’s questioning whether being stuck in the 1980s is a good thing.  Quickly, we need to stage an intervention before she shows up in legwarmers at—well, any event, really.  Are those things ever appropriate?

Anyway, the verdict is in, Ms. Parker: The ‘80s were not, in any way, a flattering decade for you.  We suggest running as fast as your stilettos allow until your fashion sense collides with 1991 and L.A. Story.  And don’t be intimidated by the specter of Carrie Bradshaw. We’re going to take this one step at a time.

More appreciation for “Private Eye”:  They All Left Their Publicists in the Car, Too

Allure: Beauty Fades and Brains Last, But Who Cares?

In the July issue of Allure, “Cute, Pretty, Or Sexy?” attempts to settle that raging debate once and for all. Carmen Electra is their visual aid of choice, gamely posing as each of the three—though her “cute” pose doesn’t make her look cute so much as it makes her look six years old—and the rest of Hollywood’s starlets are slotted into one of the three categories.

Kate Hudson? Cute. Sienna Miller? Pretty. Scarlett Johansson? Sexy. No surprises there.

We were fascinated by a paragraph at the end of the piece detailing the origins of the words “cute” and “pretty,” including the revelation that neither word initially related to appearance.

[“Cute”] was as an abbreviation of “acute” and meant sharp, cunning, or clever…“Pretty,” a much older part of the language, derives from an Old English word meaning crafty, artful, or astute.

But even this sweet etymology lesson doesn’t take the sting from the article’s inevitable conclusion:

“Pretty”…had, in other words, no relevance to pearly teeth, glossy hair, and apple cheeks, and everything to do with a woman’s wit. That’s a form of beauty upon which even the plainest of women can pride herself.

Oh, how generous of Allure to allow that even the “plainest” woman can pride herself on something! And how incredibly abhorrent to promote the idea that intelligence is merely a consolation prize for those not fortunate enough to fall into one of the three all-important forms of female attractiveness.

And we’re not just saying that because, according to the magazine’s formula, we’re “cute.” We’re not bitter.  Well, not bitter about being cute, anyway. Bitter in general? Well, yeah.  Have you read this site before?

Previously, Elle chose looks over logic: Business As Usual at Elle: Skinny Trumps Smart

Allure: Not Everyone Hates the French

The June issue of Allure features two scathing letters to the editor complaining about the magazine’s recent emphasis on the style secrets of the French.  Some readers (well, at least two) considered Allure’s relentless promotion of les françaises an affront to American women:

I’m tired of reading about the greatness of Frenchwomen every couple of issues. You make it sound like they’re farting flower petals and blowing perfect beauty truths out of their noses…

…I am tired of American-woman bashing…The next time you want to worship Frenchwomen, please think of how bad it makes American women feel.

Sadly, Allure failed to notice the terrible irony of printing these letters in an issue with French actress Audrey Tautou on the cover.

Careers for the Smooth-Skinned, Courtesy of Allure

From Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” June:

“No rough stuff”—dermatologists use the phrase almost as often as hookers do.

Oh, sure—when discussing the merits of exfoliating treatments, the connection between hookers and dermatologists is incredibly obvious. We totally made that connection too, because the two professions have just so much in common. In fact, they do practically the same thing, except dermatologists don’t make house calls.

Anyway, dare we even ask how the Allure staff came to be so well-acquainted with hookers and their job-related expressions? Because we’ve seen Pretty Woman at least five times, but that doesn’t make us experts on ladies of the night and their professional jargon.

Nuclear Holocaust Not All Bad, Says Allure

From Allure’s “The Art of Chaos,” May:

…we are surrounded by models from the Ukraine.  “They are all born post-1986, after Chernobyl,” [M.A.C. makeup artist Gregory] Arlt says.  “They are all six-foot, stick-thin blondes who look 12 and have eyes on either side of their heads—stunning!”

At least the worst accident in nuclear history worked out well for a lucky few.  If widespread radioactive fallout can create such aesthetically pleasing models, then the acute radiation syndrome, environmental contamination, and the increased risk of cancer were clearly worth the trouble.

You see, these girls with their pre-teen looks and fish-like eyes are defining a whole new standard of beauty.  Maybe Mother Nature can’t always be trusted to reliably create women who are modeling material—sometimes, she needs a little help from a major meltdown. 

Allure Angling for the In Crowd

From Allure’s “Beauty Reporter,” April:

The marching band and silver confetti at the Marc Jacobs spring show resembled a pep rally at fashion’s high school gym…inspired by the “bad girl at the prom”…

Great, because we just didn’t get our fill of those cliques and clichés while we were actually enrolled in high school.  Can we infer from this fetishizing of those four years that Marc Jacobs wasn’t one of the cool kids and is now exacting his revenge?  High fashion (with its accompanying high price tags) is nearly as exclusionary as high school.

Memo to Allure: Celebrities Not Always Trendsetters

Dear Allure,

We’ve just finished reading “15 Years of Beauty” in your March issue, an article that promised to explore “the icons, the innovations, and the inspirations” in fashion and beauty over the last decade and a half.

Admittedly, we weren’t sure what to expect.  But we were pleasantly surprised by the reasonably insightful inclusion of influential events like Hillary Clinton’s makeover and the publication of Naomi Wolf’s book The Beauty Myth.  Of course, you also had to go for the obvious:  the “Rachel” haircut (which we’ve now seen so many millions of times we could cut that style), Sex and the City, and thong underwear.

But there are two things on your list that we’re quite certain don’t belong, both from 2003—was that a slow year?  Anyway, let’s be clear: Newlyweds was not a watershed moment for anyone but Jessica Simpson and fellow dumb-on-camera starlets.  And the Madonna-Britney Spears-Christina Aguilera makeout session at the MTV Video Music Awards? 

We’re guessing that sordid incident inspired no one but teenage boys, if you know what we mean.  And we think you do.

Anyway, surely one or two things more relevant, less calculated, and not quite so icky took place in 2003.  We eagerly await your revisions. 

Love,

Glossed Over

Photo courtesy of MTV