Glossed Over

Lindsay Lohan in Bazaar: Still Not Over Fall's Really Big Brows

You know those websites where you can upload a photo of yourself and then try on different hairstyles, and none of the new ‘dos fit your head quite right, and they’re all too big and at the wrong angle and you look horrible in each of the styles you try, and every single image ends up looking like you’re the victim of the world’s most malicious Photoshop job?

Yeah. Thanks to those dark roots peeking out above her ear, that’s all we see when we look at Lindsay Lohan on this upcoming issue of Bazaar. It’s like they just needed a face to fill in the hair that was already in place on the cover.

From E! Online via ONTD

More from the annals of Bazaar's covers: Bazaar Triumphs in Contest for Least Appealing Cover Ever; Bazaar's Tradition of Off-Putting Covers Continues

We Read It So You Don't Have To: The Entire February Issue of Cosmopolitan

Okay, we’ve been away from the blog for a while. Now that we’re back, we feel a little penance is necessary—after all, you’re still here, aren’t you? So we read the ENTIRE ISSUE of Cosmopolitan this evening. Here are the highs, the lows, the points where we just couldn’t resist a smartass remark. Enjoy while we take a lengthy shower to decontaminate.

•    First, the cover, on which Katherine Heigl is wearing a truly appalling dusty pink Herve Leger bandage dress. Does anyone actually need horizontal lines encasing their entire body? Does this look good on anyone who doesn't weigh 110 pounds? Hell, it barely looks good on Heigl.  Anyway, our favorite cover lines:

10 Subliminal Tricks That Make People Adore You

Guess what? Reading Cosmo in public isn’t one of them!

John Mayer Shares Why All Guys Aren’t A**holes

Well, there’s an unlikely source for that story.

•    Best letter to the editor ever.

I want to give you a high five for featuring Beyonce on the cover of your December issue. Thank you so much for showing more diversity in your magazine and featuring our country as a whole!

Because, you know, Beyonce is really representative of “our country as a whole.”

•    Oh! What an honor! Katherine Heigl is Cosmo’s “Fun Fearless Female of the Year.” Apparently, she earned the title by going head-to-head with former costar Isaiah Washington:

Last year, after costar Isaiah Washington allegedly used an offensive word (faggot) to refer to T.R. Knight…Katherine spoke up against Isaiah at the Golden Globes. “You can’t give me too much credit for being brave,” she says now. “I was just a girl who had had a couple of drinks and was angry and got mouthy.”

But then she says this…

“As I was opening my mouth, I kept thinking, Shut up. But it’s an issue that I felt really passionately about.”

Well, which is it? Was she loose-lipped after drinking,l or did she feel strongly about defending Knight? Also, we LOVE how Cosmo put the f-word in italics, like it’s a foreign language or something.

Two other reasons Katherine’s so fun and fearless: She last cried watching an episode of Grey’s spin-off Private Practice, and she has her own line of hospital scrubs. Is that what passes for awesome at Cosmo HQ?

•    We’re skipping the confessions, because they make us feel old. Also because they’re completely fabricated. In any case, we can’t exactly relate to tales of women accidentally exposing themselves during a dormitory fire drill or puking in the boss’ potted plants, possibly because we’re at the advanced age of 31, or because the last time we were senselessly drunk, we cried about college football in the diner at the Palms hotel in Vegas at 4 in the morning. Hey, Cosmo, we’d be happy to write that up and submit it for an upcoming issue!

•    In “Man Manual,” Cosmo calls out mensfitness.com for proffering dumb advice that a woman wearing flats to a bar “certainly isn’t there to lure a mate.” And Cosmo certainly has the moral high ground here, since all of its advice is spot-on!

•    Here’s some ludicrous Hollywood trivia that’s supposed to be surprising insider information, from “Informer”:

In the movie Catch Me If You Can, Grey’s Anatomy star Ellen Pompeo plays the hot stewardess who hooks up with Leo DiCaprio’s character. Jennifer Garner also appears in the flick as—get this—a high-class hooker!

Get this! It’s called acting! Also, her IMDB entry!

•    We are deeply amused by the anatomical euphemisms used in the lingerie feature “Pour Some Sugar on Me.” Resolved: to start referring to our breasts as our “powerful pair,” just like Cosmo does.

•    John Mayer’s letter to us readers on page 101 gave us the creeps.

A guy who has to say he’s nothing like those other guys is usually exactly like those other guys. Also, “passion-filled endeavors”? Signing the note “I love you”? Think we’ll pass on that drink, John.

Here are Cosmo’s other “Fun Fearless Male” honorees:

Chris Brown, who has eight tattoos! Fun!

Dave Annable, who has “always been scared of sharks in a little-girl way.” Fearless!

Dane Cook, who tells a scintillating tale of eating bad shellfish on a date. “I went to the bathroom and knew it was going to be an all-night situation, so I told her we had to drive home…and that I’d have to stop a couple times on the way.” Suave!

James McAvoy, who…well…we have nothing bad to say about him.

Tony Romo, who says football is “not as glamorous as everyone thinks.” Revealing!

John Krasinski, who should have combed his hair and worn something other than an undershirt for the photo, but we lurve him anyway.

Dave Salmoni, who is apparently some kind of wild-animal daredevil. Uh, reckless?

Common, who enjoyed playing a police officer in the upcoming movie The Night Watchman because he “got to learn about the ghetto part of Los Angeles.” Seriously.

Peter Krause, who likes to speak in clichés! “There’s something very romantic about doing things that make you feel incredibly alive.” Original!

Tom Anderson, who we deleted from our Myspace friends.

And Zac Efron, who…God. Do we really have to explain why no grown woman should be interested in him?

•    Wait. Why are there twelve fun fearless males, but only one female?

•    “9 Big Secrets of Male Arousal”: One of those secrets is that a man’s nose is an erogenous zone. Well, they get credit for trotting out a sex tip we are absolutely certain we’ve never seen before.

•    “Get Him to Go There”: You know how Cosmo won’t use the word “hair” twice in the same article, instead subbing “tresses,” “locks,” “strands,” and “sun-catching silk”? Well, they do the same with female genitalia! In the one-page story “Get Him to Go There,” writer Elise Nersesian uses the following terms:

Ahem, bush

Down below

Between your legs

Privates

Southern regions

Below the belt

Your goods

•    Aah! There’s more! In “The Most Satisfying Sex Position,” Bethany Heitman uses the expression “hot button.” TWICE.

•    There may be only one fun fearless female, but there are stories of five women who were “Young and Murdered.” Ah, so that’s the other way young women can get media coverage!

•    Then there’s “I Suddenly Had Baby Panic,” which sums up the decision to be a single mother like this:

I’m a romantic. I wanted the partner, then the baby…before long, I was considering single motherhood. A baby was my priority, so I decided to make it happen despite the obstacles.

Single motherhood isn’t exactly a fresh topic for a women’s magazine, but they could have printed something slightly more thoughtful than this. Writer Louise Sloan talks about searching for a sperm donor and “shopping for eye color the way you select pumps in red or navy.” Oh, excellent comparison. We never would have understood otherwise. Either Cosmo thinks its readers are sexually precocious twelve-year-olds, or they think we’re stupid. We can’t decide which is a worse editorial philosophy.

•    “It’s A Wild, Wild Life,” a fashion spread with way too much khaki, uses the following caption:

She always wanted to use that line “I am woman, hear me roar.”

Using a feminist anthem to sell clothes? And we thought we were cynical.

•     “The Secrets of Being an ‘It Girl’”: Apparently it has something to do with being named Jessica, as both Alba and Biel are pictured in the opening spread. No need to read this one!

•    Oh no! Another way we could die! “Beware of This Scary Infection” tells us all about MRSA, which is one more disease whose transmission can be prevented by thorough hand-washing, but which we’re going to fret about anyway!

•    This is why we don’t normally spend any time on the “Red-Hot Read.”

He really does want to make me his own personal ice-cream sundae, she thought and gasped as the ice cream dripped from the spoon onto her belly, her hips, her thighs…

This “erotic” story really does want to trot out every tired cliché, she thought, and rolled her eyes as she realized it was possible to write graphically about sex and still be totally dull...

•    Ooh, our horoscope! “Uninhibited booty awaits!”

•    Finally, the last page of this issue, the “Cosmo Quiz.” Turns out we’re “flirt averse,” but we think that just translates to Cosmo-averse. Good night!

Lowest Common Denominator: Vogue, January

75: Number of “hot tips for 2008” promised on the cover

13: Number of photos of “plus-size” models appearing on a pull-out calendar inside the issue

Bucketloads: Amount GlaxoSmithKline must have paid for the calendar, which is an advertisement for weight-loss supplement Alli

Infinite: The disappointment that, other than the Shape Issue, this is the only time we’ll ever see models who even approximate average sizes in Vogue (And let’s be honest—it’s not as if the token appearance of two plus-size models in last year’s issue constitutes a valid attempt to portray a more diverse range of body types.)

$200,000: Amount given to the first-place winner for the CFDA/Vogue Fashion Fund, as explained by Anna Wintour

Endless: Measure of our wonder at the workings of  André Leon Talley’s mind, hence our decision to post his quote from the “Contributors” page despite the fact that no actual numbers are involved.  (Except, you know, dollars.)

What is your New Year’s fashion resolution?

“To order custom Charvet pique tennis shorts and silk kneesocks the color of clotted cream and Manolo Blahnik white suede brogues, for spectator sports at the U.S. Open.”

1: First-person essay about abortion, Lori Campbell’s “Private Lives”

1: Irksome photo accompanying the piece.  In it, the author poses with her daughter in the street, while wearing high-end clothes and towering heels.  Predictably, she is thin, white, and attractive.  Would Vogue have published this essay if its author weren’t so camera-ready? (Remind us some time to talk about this more.  The trend of photographing authors and magazine staffers—ahem, Lucky—only lends credence to the idea that you have to be conventionally beautiful to partake of fashion and/or work at a magazine.)

77 and 78: Pages on which this perception is furthered. Matilde Borromeo, the youngest daughter of an aristrocratic Italian family, is described by William Norwich as

...so chicly comported that you just assumed their first baby steps had to have been taken on the deck of some great yacht...Someone asked if she might linger in New York; surely a fashion house or magazine would be happy to employ her.

$250: Price of a pair of Stuart Weitzman heels that Ivanka Trump deems “not wildly expensive”

3: Number of weeks elapsed between model Natalia Vodianova giving birth and appearing in seven runway shows

0: Relevance this fact has to the story in which it appears, “Peerless”

10: Number of women on Vogue’s best-dressed list

5: Number of women on the list who are current or former models (Kathryn Neale, Astrid Munoz, Georgina Chapman, Kelly Wearstler, and Agyness Deyn)

$165: Price of a fedora worn by Kate Hudson’s four-year-old son, Ryder, in “Sunny Side Up!”

W: Inside the "Fantasy" World of Hilary Swank

The January issue of W weighs in at a slim 112 pages, and 18 of those pages are devoted to “Wait Until Dark,” a so-called “erotic fashion fantasy” starring Hilary Swank and a male model whose slender build and bleached hair make him appear to be about 15 years old.  Is there anything sexy about these pictures?  Well, Swank’s bra is visible in two of the shots!  And the boy is bare-chested!   Scandalous!  Unless you’re fond of doves, blindfolds, and dudes with a tiny metal spike protruding from the lower lip, there isn’t a single interesting thing about this spread, with the possible exception of a “wool and coq feather vest” by Ann Demeulemeester as worn by aforementioned model, seen here with, oh yes, the aforementioned dove.

What the hell is that all about? 

We just don’t understand.  Why is he wearing a shirt collar with his necklaces?

What with the positively ludicrous, poorly lit “erotic fantasy” preceding it, we hoped for an equally dark interview.  And we got it!   Sort of.

Don’t expect to see Hilary Swank checking herself in at Promises any time soon.  But the actress does seem to have a bit of a pill problem.

Amphetamines?  Diet pills?  If only!  No, Swank takes a lot of vitamins, “nearly 45” every day, and gets in a nice plug for her nutritionist in explaining her daily intake.

A devotee of celebrity nutritionist Oz Garcia for the past seven years, Swank sees her regimen as one of the secrets to her success.  “Oz has changed my life.  The Longevity Pak is so awesome,” she says, eyes shining.

Only two paragraphs in, and our eyes are shining, too.  With tears of boredom.  The article segues into the usual: She has a high metabolism!  She’s on her second pastry of the day!  She was just on Oprah!  She’s really, really enthusiastic about everything! 

But here’s where it gets interesting.  After a boilerplate synopsis of P.S. I Love You, writer Catherine Hong spends three paragraphs taking Swank and her “mile-wide maw” (really!) down a notch.  There’s a thorough catalog of the actress’ box office flops and a discussion of Warner Bros. honcho Jeff Robinov announcing that the studio would no longer release films with female leads.  (Swank, for her part, claims it’s not clear whether he made that statement.)

And then the swipes continue:

…[Swank’s boyfriend] tagged along at events as run-of-the-mill (for A-listers, anyway) as an Escada store opening, a press event for Pantene and a lunch at the Hotel Bel-Air she hosted for Guerlain.

Two weird things there: the vaguely passive-aggressive “for A-listers, anyway” comment, and the failure to mention that Swank is actually the face of Guerlain fragrance Insolence.  Perhaps the latter can be explained by Guerlain’s lack of advertising is this issue?  (No hard feelings, W:  Swank is on the cover of BlackBook, which gives her a relentlessly cheerful profile, and Guerlain didn’t place an ad with them, either, though we did spot a full-page ad in the current issue of French Glamour.)

Next, Hong takes on the actress’ recent move to L.A.:

…the reasons she gives for abandoning the Big Apple are far from convincing.  “I looked and looked and looked for a place in New York.  I just didn’t find anything,” she insists.  “Prices have just skyrocketed!”  (For the record, she and [ex-husband] Lowe sold their four-floor town house on Charles Street for $7.5 million last January.)

Zing!

And this sort of awesome, though perhaps petulant, question when the topic turns to Swank’s boyfriend:

So, is she in love?  “Of course I’m in love,” she says somewhat curtly.  “Or I wouldn’t be in this relationship for as long as I’ve been…”

Ooh, surly!  Before the interview gets too out of hand, however, Hong wraps up with the typically effusive quotes from pals.  And then Swank trots out this statement, which is so frequently recited by celebrities that it must be handed to them on a laminated wallet-size card when they step off the plane at LAX.

“...You know, it’s tiring, but I can’t complain, because I’m getting to do what I love.”

Aww!  Picking apart your interview lets us do what we love, too!

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.

Lowest Common Denominator: InStyle, January

2: Number of pages devoted to Kate Hudson (“Her 10 best, ever!”)

4: Additional photos of Kate Hudson throughout the issue (pages 78, 112, 115, 149)

7, not counting writer Johanna Schneller: People who gush over Katie Holmes in “What Katie Wants” (The illustrious Kate Cruise Fan Club counts the following luminaries as members: Sherry Lansing, Giambattista Valli,  Diane Keaton, Giorgio Armani, Victoria Beckham, Callie Khouri, and Christopher Bailey of Burberry.)

29: Percentage of paragraphs in “What Katie Wants” in which Katie gushes about Tom Cruise or “being a wife”

Way, way too much: Amount Katie is trying to make her marriage appear sound

1: Ludicrous statement about femininity in “Figure Flattery.”  The collarbone is, according to InStyle, “arguably one of the most feminine parts of a woman’s body.” Wait, are they really claiming certain parts of a woman’s body are more feminine than others?  No word on which parts are, like, unacceptably gender-neutral.

1: Animal whose fur is suggested as a “problem solver” for upper arms in the same article (That’d be the rabbit, and there’s a shrug and a capelet crafted of its pelt.)

$54.80: Average price of the “positively affordable” items in “Deals & Steals,” which is—surprise!—actually affordable

3: Photos of Jennifer Garner in the same magenta Zac Posen dress (pages 75, 76, and 110). We love us some Sydney Bristow, and it’s a gorgeous dress, but three times?

1: Number of animate objects listed in “Designer Lust List” (Jenni Kayne says a French bulldog is a must-have.  Dogs, yes!  But pups as fashion accessories?   God, no.)

10: Steps involved in a “simple…approach to getting it right in the new year and beyond,” per “Beauty 2008: Your Master Plan”

Absolutely none: Amount of interest we have in developing a “master plan” involving a “signature scent”  and hair accessories.  Like we have nothing better to do?

42: Percent of ad pages in this issue which tout cosmetics, skincare, and haircare products

26: Words we read in the Vanessa Williams story.  They were: “Can a native New Yorker like Vanessa Williams find true bliss—and a really good soy chai latte—way out West?  You bet your sweet Buddha.”

Approximately a billion: Number of times we’ve seen the story about a New Yorker moving to L.A.  Doesn’t anyone east of the Mississippi realize that we do, in fact, have bagels on the West Coast?

Infinitely: Degree to which we were bored with this issue

Marie Claire: Christina Aguilera is Very Thorough with the Self-Tanner

Quoted on the cover:

When I found out, I started shaking.

Which is funny, because that’s pretty much what happened to us when we saw this.

Other unintentionally hilarious cover lines:

1.  “How I learned to love the mother I hated”

2.  Sexy winter skin

3.  Tanning, bleaching, botoxing:  Are you obsessed?  (Already done.)

Carrie Underwood In Need of a Self-Esteem Boost

We read once that you should never, ever ask your significant other if you look fat.  Which makes sense, right?  Because it’s rude to fish for compliments and it puts your partner in an awkward spot?  Nope!   Because people are apparently so susceptible to suggestion that pointing out your shortcomings to others might lead to them actually perceive those flaws.

We dismissed the idea at the time, but when we read “Carrie Takes the Wheel” in the November issue of Self, we suddenly had a more thorough understanding of the logic.  This is the singer’s second Self cover in less than two years, and yet, she keeps staring at her ass in the mirror and wondering whether she’s gained weight since lunch.  (Metaphorically, that is.)  Sure, being famous for an actual reason is increasingly rare, but it does happen!  Reading Underwood’s comments, we can’t decide if she’s genuinely modest or engaging in the celebrity equivalent of “Do I look fat in this?”   If, as she attests, she’s so ordinary, why is she on the cover of Self at all?

Decide for yourself!  Her modest and/or self-deprecating quotes are after the jump.

Well, that’s one way to sell stuff… • By insulting potential customers and reinforcing stereotypes at the same time!  Who knew such a feat was possible?  Here’s our least favorite celeb turned brand name Sarah Jessica Parker discussing her signature fragrances, as quoted in “The Fragrance Diaries” in the December issue of InStyle.  “Lovely is very polite.  It’s the girl you marry, and Covet is the girl you date, you know?  Covet is fun, slightly wanton, desperate. [emphasis ours]  It’s for a stop-at-nothing-to-get-what-you-want kind of a girl.”

Brad and Jen Reunited at the Newsstand

…thanks to some clever merchandising at our local mega-chain bookstore.

Related: There are nine different covers for the current issue of W, but the only ones we’ve seen at the newsstands and stores in our little corner of L.A. are Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie (and Angelina landed in our mailbox a couple of days back).  Is this a coincidence, or are the covers specific to particular regions?  Where are you, and what covers are available in your area?

Lowest Common Denominator: Glamour, November

1: Celebrity slam on the cover (“Mariah’s new attitude: she’s smarter and saner—Britney, take notes!”  Oooh, burn.)

5: Musicians whose onstage facial expressions are analyzed as their “sex faces”

One million:  Approximate number of other magazines and websites where we’ve seen this exact same discussion (Related:  why is it always John Mayer in these stories?)

116: Page which contains the sentence “The pleats flatter too.”  What?   

118: Page on which Glamour advises, “Pleats add volume to your hip and belly area.  Our advice?  Just skip ‘em.”

6: Traits that “make a guy ask you out,” according to dating columnist Jake

10: Anecdotes about women being dumped in “You think you got dumped?”

$456: Average cost of rent, in dollars, for a young single woman (page 204)

1995: Last time our rent was anywhere near that low (No, really, where are these $456 rents?)

1: Pages devoted to an interview with former Pakistan prime minister Benazir Bhutto

7: Pages devoted to Mariah Carey’s home (including a full-page photo of Mariah with her mind-bogglingly vast collection of Hello Kitty paraphernalia)

21: Number of ads for fragrance in this issue

4: pages allotted to “One Spritz and You’re Sexy,” which is about—you guessed it—perfume

Bazaar: Aniston Says She's "Ba-ack," We Say She's Boring

Is it just us, or is every interview with Jennifer Aniston the same?  Bazaar’s November issue features her in an article called “The Joy of Independence,” in which she talks about the same things she’s been talking about, like, forever.  (Or, to be fair, she talks about the same things she’s been asked about forever.)  Also, there’s the small—but crucial—matter of Aniston just not coming across as terribly interesting.

Let’s take a gander at what she has to say, shall we?

“I don’t think anybody thought Friends would become what it did,” she remembers.  “It’s all good, though.  It’s nothing but blessings.”

The article cites her salary of $1 million an episode for the show’s final two seasons.  Yeah, we’d call that a blessing.

She starts to laugh.  “But seriously, who actually dances in a fountain?”

Actors being paid exorbitant sums?  Fortunately, everything else on Friends was utterly realistic!

There’s the now-standard breezy avowal that she still believes in love. 

“My character is in a relationship with someone who doesn’t believe in marriage.  It just doesn’t make any sense to me!”

Plus a nice plug for Smartwater, which Aniston endorses. 

“I like these roles,” she explains, crossing her Alaia’d feet and sipping a Smartwater.

Let’s not omit the obligatory response to the tabloid interest in her life.

“I used to care a hell of a lot more what people said or thought,” she says of the time after her split from Pitt.  “But that had to change when my life was under a microscope being scrutinized and my personal life was being talked about.  You have to go, ‘This is not acceptable in any way,’  whether it’s about me personally or in business, success versus failure.  It’s so negative.  It’s such bizarre negativity.”

Oh, smart.  In fact, writer Laura Brown goes so far as to call Aniston “sagelike” when she offers advice to “young stars.”

“Everything is just so dramatic,” she says, sagelike, “but you have to remember that we’re the luckiest people in the world to do what we get to do and get paid for it.”

We’re conflicted here.  On the one hand, we’re glad Aniston makes such a down-to-earth acknowledgment; on the other hand, we’re quite sure we’ve read the same statement from every other celebrity on the planet, or at least the ones who haven’t been photographed puking on the sidewalk outside Les Deux at 3 a.m.

Other utterly pedestrian revelations:

1. Aniston dyed her hair black in high school.  Ooh, edgy!

2. She would love to be Oprah for a day. You know, just to see what it’s like to be really wealthy!

3. Her “fantasy dinner-party guest” is Princess Diana.  We should have seen that one coming.

And speaking of pedestrian, Aniston is pondering a move to New York, where, we presume, she will not dance in fountains.

She can barely get over the ecstatic thrill of “walking 40 blocks” when she was in New York the other week, with nobody noticing her.

Which, thanks to articles like this one, will probably never happen again. 

W Hopes Someone's Still Taking Sides in Celebrity Feud

The second annual Art Issue of W is out…and with dueling covers!  Such classy, current covers they are, too!  And economical, too, using paparazzi photos of Jennifer Aniston and Angelina Jolie for the cover instead of, you know, staging an actual photo shoot.  Or do they have to pay a residual to Brad Pitt for referring to his marital troubles?

Last year’s first-ever Art Issue is nominated for ASME’s 2007 Best Cover Award.  Somehow, we doubt these covers are going to be nominated for anything, unless some organization offers awards for Most Likely to Resemble the Cover of US Weekly and Trying Hardest to Cash In On an Outdated Celebrity Scandal. 

So which one will you buy?  We’re leaning toward Aniston.  Or maybe we’ll just pick up the latest issue of Star instead.

Edit:  There are actually nine covers: Nicole Kidman, Lindsay Lohan, Cameron Diaz, Katie Holmes, Jennifer Aniston, Julia Roberts, Jessica Simpson, Angelina Jolie, and Britney Spears.  Apparently, this is what W considers art.

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.

France's Cosmopolitan: Inexplicably Tackling the Unexplained

So!  We’re back!  It’s been a life-changing and thoroughly wonderful couple of weeks.  We got married.  We went to Paris for ten days.  And we learned some very important lessons:  always have safety pins on hand when wearing a strapless dress; real butter is pretty much the best thing ever; and never, ever take it for granted that your suitcases will arrive at the airport when you do!

Also?  We picked up a huge stack of French magazines and learned that—surprise!—in many ways, they’re as mindless as their stateside counterparts.  Reading the November issue of French Cosmopolitan was a struggle.  Sure, we haven’t had a French class in a decade, but the U.S. edition is written at about a ninth-grade level (both in language and maturity), so we hoped we’d manage despite our years of forgotten verb tenses.  (Not like we ever mastered le subjonctif anyway.)  Nope!  Worse, what we did understand still didn’t make any sense.

For instance:  the supplement bundled with the November issue.  Titled “La magie est en moi,” (“The Magic Is In Me”), we figured it would be some sort of boosterish self-confidence tract.  You know, believe in yourself!  Embrace your curves!  You don’t need that scoundrel of a man!  Etc.

Mais non!  Instead, there were articles that were...well...actually about magic.  It was a little beyond for us, frankly.  There was a piece about contacting guardian angels, because, the article claims, we all have one!  They even managed to photograph one in the wild!  Good thing they identified her as an angel, too, or we’d have just thought she was a teenager in a see-through dress who got lost on her way to a rave.  The article also features a chart of what angels govern which days and what color to wear to please them.  We guess that qualifies as a fashion suggestion?

Elsewhere in the supplement, there are confessions of “magical” rites conducted by Cosmo readers (almost as compelling as the sex confessions in the American edition, which is to say, not at all); and a profile of several young Wiccans, accompanied by a photo of young women with smoky eye makeup dressed in gauzy black dresses.  See, it ’s not just American magazines that illustrate their stories with unimaginative photos!

Most mind-boggingly, the supplement contains a perforated set of tarot cards featuring such, uh, non-traditional icons as “Madonna, La Superstar” and “Bjork, La Visionnaire.”  Apparently, Paris Hilton and Victoria Beckham can predict our future, which is pretty much the most appalling idea we’ve ever read in Cosmo.  Scarlett Johansson and Bill Gates augur positive events!  Better hope you don’t turn over the Jennifer Aniston card, though.  (See the complete set behind the jump.)

The whole thing closes with Cosmo’s list of recommended psychics, complete with phone numbers.  But we didn’t call.  After reading this supplement, it was patently clear what our next step should be.

We Read It So You Don't Have To: Reese Witherspoon Won't Discuss Her Shoes With Elle

This is how “Wild at Heart,” Elle’s interview with Reese Witherspoon (October), begins: 

She has class, sass, and a gorgeous…laugh.  Reese Witherspoon is living proof that the South always rises again.

And this is the first paragraph in the story:

“The fact that you’re drinking is making me very, very happy,” Reese Witherspoon says, eyeing the glass of white wine on the table.  “I think it’s great to drink in the middle of the day.  I would join you, but I gotta drive to pick up the kids.  You’re taking taxis everywhere.  You could get drunk!”  This cracks her up.  “You could go from appointment to appointment highly, highly smashed!”

Uh, yeah, that’s hilarious. Where’s the class and sass?  Not on display in this article!  Instead, she comes off like...well, like writer Holly Millea had trouble getting her to discuss anything at all.

For instance:

“I am.  I’m fun.  I can be really fun.  I can tell we’d have a lot of fun if the tape was off.”

But, apparently, the recorder was on for an agonizingly long time.  We just can’t find the fun in this joke, which is oh-so-helpfully presented entirely without context:

“Why do Southern women make bad prostitutes?” she asks, answering: “’Cuz we have to write so many thank-you notes!”  This sends her into stitches.  It’s her mother’s favorite joke.  “And so true!”

We aren’t sure if we’re more confused by the punch line or by the appearance of “cuz” in print.

“I was excited for the red shoes [she wore to the Golden Globes],” admits Witherspoon, whose idea it was to wear them.  Asked why, she smiles like a cat and blinks.  “I don’t have a good answer for that.”

Why doesn’t she have an answer?  Probably because no one in the history of the celebrity profile has bothered to ask an Oscar-winning actress why she wanted to wear red shoes.   They were red!   Her dress was yellow!  The shoes and dress were color-coordinated, and the pairing was smashing.  That should be reason enough, and if it isn’t, we simply can’t muster up the energy to care why she chose those shoes.  Or is there some interviewer-interviewee subtext we’re missing?

Speaking of that Oscar…

“It’s real purty on my bookcase…”

“Purty”?

Want to know about Witherspoon’s childhood?  Here’s a charming story:

“My dad has pulled so many gross things out of ear canals,” she says, thrilling to the ickiness.  “You don’t want to know.  You wouldn’t want to sleep tonight.  Bugs!  Bugs!  They scrape on your eardums!”  With a crazed look she uses an index finger to illustrate.  “Can you imagine how excruciating that must be?”

Well, if reading about it is anywhere as excruciating as experiencing it…

And then there’s the closing quote.  Witherspoon is talking about Splendor in the Grass.  She’s quoted for several sentences in which she describes the end of the film, because, you know, revelations about a movie from 1961 will have to suffice in lieu of actual revelations about the subject of the profile.  Then she says this:

“You know when you realize that movies don’t always have happy endings and maybe that is a happy ending?”

And that’s the abrupt conclusion of the article, which was definitely a happy ending for us.

Fashion Mini Celebrates Ten-Year-Old Taste

You know, it’s pretty much par for the course that a magazine has the power to make us feel bad about ourselves.  Between the impossibly skinny models, their never-seen-the-sun skin, and our apparently inadequate earning power, reading a magazine can sometimes turn into a real battle with our self-esteem.  Last night, we were reading the October issue of Marie Claire, feeling pretty good about our bank balance—until we saw that a $295 Tory Burch dress listed as a “steal.”  Suddenly, our mood darkened.  A dress that costs a good deal more than our car payment?  Oh, sure, what a fantastic way to spend our hard-earned dollars!   But was the magazine’s perspective skewed, or are we simply not bringing home enough cash to finance a fashionable life?

Fortunately for our sense of self-worth, the page also suggested a $34.95 H&M dress.  (And we aren’t really in the midst of a magazine-induced personal crisis…yet.)  Still, we have to wonder who Marie Claire thinks is reading their magazine when such disparate price points are both considered bargains, but we’re digressing.

We’ve been reading fashion mags for the better part of our life (really!), which means we’ve absorbed plenty of stories about men, clothes, and money that don’t even approach our reality.  Still, we hadn’t yet read anything that made us feel like we were inadequate in our youth.  Until tonight, that is!  Who even knew that poor self-esteem could be retroactive?  Well, it’s totally possible!  How?  Well, the September Fashion Mini crowns actress Camilla Belle one of their fifty most stylish luminaries.  Then, horrifyingly, the issue confronts us with a detailed account of actress Camilla Belle’s preferences as a ten-year-old—taking us all the way back to 1997. 

Although that was the year we turned twenty-one, Belle’s means—not to mention her taste—were already well beyond our reach.  Reading her style picks, it becomes rather clear that some of us (and we do mean us) will never quite catch up with the magazine world’s favorite tastemakers.  Behind the jump, we compare our picks with Camilla’s, circa 1997.  Looks like we can blame our lack of Louboutins on our childhood!

Scoping Out September Issues (Still): W

We know, we know.   This issue came out weeks ago, and we’re just now getting to it?   In our defense, it only showed up in the mail on Thursday.  This issue took ages to arrive, but at least our J. Crew catalogs arrive three times a week.  Sheesh.

All right…we might as well open the magazine.   After all, the October issue is probably going to show up any minute!

The issue weighs: 4.2 pounds

Issue thickness:  just over an inch

Who’s on the cover: Gwyneth Paltrow, looking how we imagine Donatella Versace looked thirty years ago—too much brow, too much blonde, too much bronzer.  Did Gwyn even look in the mirror before she stepped in front of the camera?

Who bought the back cover: Giorgio Armani.  The model’s wearing a shirt of paillettes and strange sleeves reminiscent of chain mail that aren’t even attached to the top.  We’ll cave to leggings long before we drop cash on woven metal sleeves.

Number of ad pages between the cover and the table of contents: The table of contents starts on page 112 and continues on 205—like the rest of the September issues, this tome is absurdly ad-heavy.

Total number of pages: 640!  It’s W’s biggest issue ever! Why, according to the cover, it’s

A Fall Fashion Bonanza

A bonanza of advertising, that is!  See below. 

How many of those pages are ads: 477, about 75 percent (source: MIN Online)

Subscription cards: Three bound.   We can deal.

Cosmetic samples: Daisy by Marc Jacobs.  Eh.  The ubiquitous Fendi Palazzo, about which we still aren’t convinced.  Viktor & Rolf Flowerbomb, which, yeah, lives up to its name.   That’s not a compliment.

Is it portable? We’ll just say that it felt more than a tad weird using our canvas Target tote to schlep a magazine that features a $22,650 crocodile bag.

Number of articles concerning the obscenely wealthy:  Oh, virtually all of them.   Our favorite (of the ones we bothered to read, because why torture ourselves?) was “Just Like Mom,” wherein young, super-rich women borrow clothes from their young-looking, super-rich moms.   Oh, fun!  It’s, like, recycling!

For one bash, Samantha pulled out a black and gold minidress that Jamee had donned for a New Year’s fete in Lyford Cay some thirty years ago.

Yep, totally quotidian.  Ready for the quote?

“Everyone was asking me, ‘Is that Prada?  Miu Miu?’  And it’s like, a $275 dress from Alexander’s, but it was just so incredibly chic.”

See, it’s nothing!   It’s just a dress that was crazy expensive when it was new a whole generation ago!  And that is why we eventually stopped reading the articles in this issue.

Not as annoying as we expected:  Gwyneth Paltrow’s interview.  That’s because it is actually, totally, definitively impossible to be more annoyed by her personality than we were by the photo of her feeding a rat with a sippy cup.  What the hell?

Exactly as annoying as expected: “Wild Roses,” shot by Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott.  Because, you know, we don’t expect much from photo editorials that involve live poultry.

More annoying than we expected:  It’s a tie between the aforementioned crocodile bag and the $3,300 crocodile gloves.  For the woman who wants to spend exactly the same amount of her gloves as she did on her most recent lunchtime mini-lift.

Best pseudonym ever: Jinx Titanic, who suggested a Posh-Becks-Brad-Angelina foursome in a letter to the editor (page 304). Jinx may well be the most awesome person alive.  Update: Kate at Fishbowl LA writes that Jinx Titanic is a punk legend.  Which, yes, makes the letter even better.

America Ferrera on Glamour Cover: Digitally Created Déjà Vu

Here’s Ugly Betty star America Ferrera, painstakingly Photoshopped and sporting Versace on the cover of the October issue of Glamour.  That’s quite a juxtaposition of Ferrera's computer-slimmed figure with the headline “1st Annual Figure Flattery Issue!”  Well, whose figure wouldn’t be flattered by a digital diet? 

Also, we could swear we’ve seen that dress before.

Oh, that’s because we have!  Here’s Jessica Simpson wearing the same dress in a different hue (and with slightly different straps) from the August cover of Bazaar.

Our verdict?  We prefer the purple.  Also, we prefer that if a magazine is going to tell us how to “dress [our] body better,” that magazine might want to demonstrate by dressing an actual body for the cover.  Just a thought!

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. 

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.

8:04 p.m.: Sienna’€™s eyebrows are the exact same thickness as Gwyneth’€™s are on the cover of W.  Guess we’€™re all supposed to break out the eyebrow pencil this fall.

8:05 p.m.: The cover says the issue is

Extra-extra large!  Our biggest issue ever

Which really means more ads than ever before.  Less to read, more for Vogue to tout!  Great!  Okay, enough with the cover...now we’re actually going to open the magazine.

8:08 p.m.: Serious lust for the Gucci jacket and gloves in the ad about a dozen pages in.

8:10 p.m.: Next ad spread is Hilary Rhoda for Estee Lauder.  Is she the one who kicked off the thick brow craze?  Confidential to Sienna:  Hilary’s look good because they’€™re natural.  And next, more of the Yves Saint Laurent ads with Gisele.  Love the right-hand page shot of Gisele from the waist down...we would hang that on the wall, poster-size.

8:12 p.m.: Cavalcade of celebs!  Kate Winslet for Tresor, six pages of Angelina Jolie for St. John, Halle Berry for Revlon.

8:13 p.m.: Four Prada pages with strange black plastic-looking...things.  We don’€™t get it.  Someone explain?

8:15 p.m.: We’€™ve arrived at the table of contents, page 54.

8:19 p.m.: So if Kate Moss looks like Grover from Sesame Street in that fluffy electric blue Versace coat, how will any mere mortals wear the thing?  We like the strapless dress with the opaque black tights, though.  Yes, we’™re in the middle of another 50 pages of ads and still haven’t hit the rest of the table of contents.

8:22 p.m.: Jordache is advertising?  Really?  Also, after three kids in short succession, if Heidi Klum’s actual body looks remotely like it does in this ad (besides the Barbie-like lack of nipple), we were gypped in the genetic lottery.  Sigh.  When does Project Runway come back?

8:26 p.m.: Look!  More contents!  Page 96.  Do you read the table of contents except to find a specific  article?  We usually don’€™t bother lest the descriptions actually convince us not to read something.  Like the article by Plum Sykes in this issue, which we’€™ll totally read because we hate her, but listen to the way it’€™s listed here:

Plum Sykes tackles brooches big and small in search of one that sticks

See?  We’re turned off for reasons that have nothing to do with our rampant dislike of Plum.  (Note to self:  Find out if that is, in fact, her real first name.)

8:31 p.m.: The power in our apartment just went out for no apparent reason.  We had to stop blogging to play with circuit breakers!  At least something happened...we were starting to get bored by the endless ads--Calvin Klein, Michael Kors, Bulova.  Blah.

8:38 p.m.: Soooo many ads.  Still.  The same Molly Sims Cover Girl ad we’ve been seeing for months.  Valentino’s Rock ’€™n Rose--a model covering her breasts with flower petals!  How very cutting-edge.  We’re just flipping through now in an apparently vain search for content.

8:41 p.m.:  Hey, look!  More contents on page 146!  According to "Cover Look," Sienna is wearing a cream ostrich-plume dress by Marchesa.  Would you believe we were so captivated by her brows that we didn’t even notice the feathers?  Clearly, our powers of observation need some work.

8:44 p.m.: Dillard’€™s bought eight pages of ads and the only notable thing about them is the dog.  Cute pup!

8:46 p.m.: Okay, this Taryn Rose ad?  New heights of ridiculousness.  The model is wearing a short, low-cut dress with a fur stole and leopard-print heels.  Not so weird...except that she’€™s apparently standing outside a medieval cottage with a wooden door pruning her garden.  (No, that’s not a metaphor--she’s holding a pair of clippers in one pink rubber glove-clad hand and a long-stemmed bud in the other.)  Also?  Not a single flower on any of the plants in the photo.  Ads that make no sense make us wince.  We’€™re idealists.

8:50 p.m.: Guess what?  More ads for crap we can’€™t afford!

8:51 p.m.: Teri Hatcher in lingerie for Badgley Mischka.  The good: There’s actually a tiny crease in the flesh of her bare stomach, as if she’€™s at a normal body weight.  (Ha!)  The bad:  Her face looks more youthful than when she was on Lois and Clark.

8:55 p.m.: Another page of contents, though we’re pretty sure by now this issue contains nothing but more tables of contents and ads.  Lots and lots of ads.

8:57 p.m.: An ad for Sarah Jessica Parker’s Covet.  Just go away already.  We are not interested in a perfume that will supposedly compel us to COMMIT A CRIME and break a window in order to snatch the basketball-sized bottle of chartreuse liquid.  Still better than the TV commercials for the stuff, though.

9:01 p.m.: Christy Turlington!  A supermodel!  How very novel.

9:02 p.m.: Hey, Gap, we see Selma Blair and Lucy Liu featured in your current campaign.  They’€™re lovely people, we’€™re sure, but is that the best you can do?  If you were trying to land hip and relevant actresses for your ads, you’re a few years behind with those two.  Also, why did you destroy any charm Sarah Silverman might have had?  She looks like a malformed emo Annie Hall in this picture!

9:05 p.m.: Editor’s letter, page 208...interrupted by fifteen more pages of ads.  Sorry, Anna, what were you saying?  Making the September issue is like making a movie?

9:08 p.m.: We spoke too soon--twenty more pages of ads, including a repeat of an ad for ShopVogue.com.  How many times will that one pop up, we wonder?

9:13 p.m.: Anna Wintour says that Jack McCollough and Lazaro Hernandez, the designers behind Proenza Schouler, “live a very downtown and bohemian life.” So $375 tanks are what pass for “bohemian” in Wintour’s world.  Yikes.   

9:13 p.m.: Sienna Miller looks far better in the ads for Tod's than she does on the cover.  Dare we say, with these photos, we almost understand the hype.

9:15 p.m.: Tony Blair is on the cover of Men’s Vogue.  So if you want to appear on a magazine cover, you only have to be young and good-looking if you’re a woman!  Sure, Blair’€™s got plenty to talk about...but so does, say, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and we don’€™t expect to see her on a fashion mag any time soon.  Or ever, really.

9:22 p.m.: Ad for Ports 1961. “€œOtherworldly”€ is the kindest way we can describe this look.  A sad contrast to the Lily Cole for Bloomingdale’€™s spread immediately preceding this.

9:25 p.m.: Stretch!

9:25 p.m.: Ad for Le Mystere No. 9, the bra for women with breast implants.  No, really.

9:27 p.m.: Six pages promoting fur!  Hope Anna Wintour’s prepared to get another cream pie in the face at the Paris shows this fall.  The ad calls fur “the natural, responsible choice”--natural, sure, but responsible?  How’s that?  Is the use of fur somehow keeping the tragic overpopulation of minks in check?

9:39 p.m.: Time for “Life with Andre”!

9:44 p.m.: We aren’t