Glossed Over

Lowest Common Denominator: Self, January

250: Number of “ways to make your life better” promised on the cover

11: Number of babies born to Self staffers in 2006

$25: Price of a hand scrub containing Himalayan sea salts

$23: Monthly per capita income in Nepal (source)

47: Percent of men who prefer natural lips to lipstick, as reported in “Beauty Flash”

1: Number of lipsticks or glosses featured in this issue

0: Number of lipsticks or glosses advertised in this issue

1: Number of utterly appalling ads for jewelry (Silpada Jewelry’s “I found it’s nice being noticed for something other than my intelligence.”  Good, we guess, because that statement certainly doesn’t display any intelligence.)

31: Number of days required to achieve “your best body” when you follow Self’s “The Easiest Diet Ever”

12: Number of weeks to fit into your favorite jeans when you follow the Slim-Fast plan, advertised right next to “The Easiest Diet Ever”

7: Number of celebrities under 30 whose photographs appear in this issue (Natasha Bedingfield, 25; Selita Ebanks, 23; Olivia Wilde, 22; Sarah Michelle Gellar, 29; Marla Sokoloff, 26; Shakira, 29; Jessica Biel, 24)

4: Number of celebrities over 30 whose photographs appear in this issue (Mariska Hargitay, 43; Diane Lane, 41; Gwen Stefani, 37; Elle Macpherson, 42)

7: Number of Self staffers whose photographs appear in this issue

A Glossed Over Guide: Parlaying Your Pregnancy Into Press

Hey, famous women!  Don’t have an upcoming project but still want to appear on the cover of a national magazine? Turns out there’s a surefire way to do that: have a child! Just follow the lead of Law & Order: SVU star Mariska Hargitay, who appears on the cover of January’s Self. It’s easy but subtle self-promotion—see, there are two whole pages devoted to Mariska and her baby, and only one mention of her long-running TV show!

And what makes it even easier? The fact that pretty much every celeb’s after-baby story is the same.  Just follow Mariska’s example and use these five simple steps in your interview for maximum sympathetic coverage:

1. Carefully let slip how toned and slender you were before your pregnancy.

“Nobody wanted to be pregnant more than me,” says Hargitay, 43.  “From the minute I found out, I was wearing full-on maternity pants. My stomach was totally flat, mind you, but I was just so excited.”

2. Describe how you’re normally strict with your diet and exercise regimen, but—oops!—you threw yourself headlong into your pregnancy and gained a lot of weight during those nine months. Explain that you gained so much that, if you weren’t about to spawn another human being, the extra pounds would otherwise prevent you from ever working in Hollywood.

“It was weird getting bigger, but that just meant that I was going to be a mom,” she says…“To me, the weight gain was a badge of honor.”

3. Launch into a gut-wrenchingly detailed discussion of the post-birth workout plan. Be sure to include several name-checks of your trainer, who is now or soon will be famous in his or her own right.

The 55-minute plan [trainer Jay] Wright devised begins with stretching and a core warm-up of stretches and lunges…she lifts, swings, and squats with Russian kettlebells, then pushes or pulls a weighted sled across the gym floor and ends with five minutes of ab moves.

4. Disclose how very, very inspired you are by your baby. Tear up a bit if you can. Oh, yes, that child is the ultimate inspiration for you to live a healthy lifestyle…forever.

“Next time, I want to keep myself as strong as possible, so everything will go easier for me.”…While her father’s memory inspires her in the gym, her son’s growing body inspires at home.

5. Finally, launch into a self-affirming proclamation about how you love your body and the way its changed. Mention how powerful motherhood makes you feel. Oh, and you think you’re even sexier now that you’ve given birth? Say that, too.

“I’m a mom now, people.  I don’t have to look hot.  I am hot.  I feel like a superhero.”

Now sit back and wait for the offers to flood in! Making fodder of your personal life is, by far, the easiest way to manipulate the media.  If this fails, fear not; you can always discuss your marital problems.

Cameron Diaz Reveals Her True Self

We just don’t get the appeal of certain actresses. Like Cameron Diaz—what makes her so worthy of two covers (Self and W) this month?  Other than the fact that she’s relentlessly flogging her new movie The Holiday, that is.  She’s pretty, but there are more beautiful actresses. She’s funny, but there are more talented women. 

And then we read Self’s “Will the Real Cameron Diaz Please Stand Up?,” December, which rendered us slightly less confused by her popularity. We now understand how she’s connected with a certain segment of the general public—see, Cameron Diaz is actually a teenage boy.

Exhibit A:

“I’m not good at telling jokes, but I will talk about flatulence at any point, and it always makes me laugh.” Diaz has owned not one but a few remote control fart machines over the years…

…which means she has both too much free time and too much spending money.

Exhibit B:

“Sex is best for everything…It’s the best exercise. It’s the best way to pass the time. It’s the best way to spend an afternoon.”

So whatever spare time isn’t filled with fart machines gets filled with sex. No wonder celebs need personal assistants!

Exhibit C:

And she doesn’t flush the toilet every time she goes. “‘If it’s yellow, let it mellow. If it’s brown, flush it down.’ It’s just my pee!” she says.

And she just couldn’t resist telling the world about her excrement! 

We rest our case. Now why anyone other than fellow teenage boys (and, we guess, Justin Timberlake—the joke writes itself) would find Cameron Diaz fascinating, we can’t say, but then, we can’t solve all the world’s mysteries in a day.

Self: Gratuitous Use of Exclamation Points, Sex

From Self’s “Sex Advice Tested,” November:

The world is full of hackneyed romantic advice. Everywhere you turn…even occasionally magazines such as this one—you’re confronted with tips on how to “spice up your love life!” or “heat up your sexual satisfaction!!” or “keep your relationship sizzling, not fizzling!!!” or otherwise drastically elevate your body temperature between the sheets. And you know enough to take it all with a gigantic boulder of salt.

So we’re supposed to take sex advice with a grain of salt…and we’re also supposed to keep reading this article which, ostensibly, will dish out a great deal of advice. Sorry, Self, but you can’t have it both ways. 

WRISYDHT: Someone's A Little Too Excited About Breast Cancer

For this installment of We Read It So You Don’t Have To, we sat down with Self’s “A Legacy of Strength,” October, wherein Brittany Murphy, Christina Applegate, and Mya dicuss their family histories of breast cancer. In doing so, they spout every cliché that has even a slight bearing on the situation: take each day as it comes, take care of yourself, don’t be afraid—the same tripe that makes it into every article about breast cancer except perhaps those printed in the New England Journal of Medicine.

However, there was one bit of dialogue that made our drudgery worthwhile. Because we cannot possibly paraphrase the brilliance of this moment, we’ll reproduce this heartwarming exchange between Murphy and Applegate in its entirety.

Christina: Thank God we have good-looking boobs in my family.

Brittany: Oh, I can attest to that! We did wardrobe for the shoot today. Your boobies are gorgeous.

Well, that was, um, sweet of Brittany to immediately interject her appraisal of Applegate’s physique—because, you know, no one would ever believe that Applegate was telling the truth without Murphy’s eyewitness testimony—especially since she chose to use the word “boobies,” which, last we checked, was the exclusive domain of fourth-graders.

Naïve fourth-graders, even.

Still, whatever her motives, Murphy’s completely off-the-wall statement was the only thing that kept us awake as we read this hackneyed conversation piece.

Cancer isn’t amusing, but neither are these yearly rehashes of the same trite platitudes about taking care of yourself and loving your body. We say: next year, Self, let Brittany Murphy write an essay about “boobies.”  Hey, let her draw pictures of them in crayon. Not only would that would be more engaging, it might even prove more useful.

September Self Confused, Thinks It's TV Guide

From Self’s “15 Minutes to Your Best Self,” September:

Got 9 minutes? Prep for the new season of Lost

How entirely unhelpful—an entire season of TV’s most convoluted drama boiled down to three-quarters of a page of pretty pictures.  Reading this glorified listicle will do nothing to clarify the mysteries of the island, like who’s behind the Hanso Foundation and why the hatch has a modern washer and dryer, though the piece does provide some eye candy.  Mmm, Boone.  (Remember when he was alive?)  But who exactly are the Others?  Who knows?  We’ve watched every episode—albeit only once—and we’re still completely, er, lost.

But Self doesn’t offer any insight either.  Time saved with this feature: zip. 

Even if the piece did contain enough information to actually be informative, we refuse to believe that knowing “the beach is home base”—no, really, they said that—will lead us on the path to enlightenment.   If we’re looking for self-improvement, we’re not going to find it watching network television programming, and it’s utterly ludicrous to even suggest that studying a TV show summary constitutes any kind of advance. 

On the other hand, if Self continues to publish useless show wrap-ups, we could save a lot of time…by not reading the magazine and just watching TV instead.  That’s something we’d consider an improvement.

Self Offers Unbiased Beauty Tips, Hope to Easily Duped Readers

From Self’s “Notes to Self,” August:

I wish I looked as good as Rebecca Romijn after a dip. Can you suggest a mascara that will stay put?

This letter, from reader Nancy Lee of Huntingdon Valley, Pennsylvania, is accompanied by a photo of Rebecca Romijn in full diving regalia—is that a knife strapped to her thigh?—tugging an inflatable boat out of the waves.

Hey, Nancy?  We hate to shatter your illusions, but Rebecca Romijn didn’t actually dive into the ocean in full makeup for this photo shoot. What you see in Self is not an accurate representation of any kind of acquatic activity, unless you consider standing knee-deep in the waves with a photographer, makeup artist, stylist, and a dozen other people nearby to count as an athletic endeavor.

Besides, if you’re going to covet something about the model/actress’s appearance, is it really something as easily attainable as her eyelashes?  Apparently, Romijn’s glossy lashes can be had with just a simple swipe of the $7 Revlon mascara Self recommends. And never mind the specious placement of a Revlon ad on the facing page. Really. We’re sure it’s just a coincidence—you know, the same way Self just happened to capture Rebecca Romijn’s return from a deep-sea diving expedition on film.

Self: Everything You Never Wanted to Know About Everyone Else

Do you feel compelled to share personal information with a national magazine?  Please stop. Just cease blabbing the details of your life. Don’t fill in that online survey for a chance to win a $1,000 shopping spree.

You probably won’t win anyway.

We know your intentions are decent.  We know you’re thinking someone out there can benefit from your foibles, so you fill out those forms in excrutiating detail.  But then someone in New York decides that all those terrible things you’ve never even admitted to your best friend will make for fantastic copy,  and we end up reading things like these stomach-turning bits of over-sharing in Self’s “Special Report: Sex and Love,” August:

Here are some of the other secret, ultra-personal names for sex you were willing to share with us:

“Doing laundry”

“Back rub”

“Boom boom”

“Doin’ the dirty”

“Hide the hot dog”

“Humping”

“Mailing a letter”

“Snuggies and pumpies”

“The beautiful”

“Getting connected”

“Doin’ the dirty”? “Hide the hot dog”? “Snuggies and pumpies”?  Those are jokes, right?   How can you even say that with a straight face—we couldn’t even type those phrases without an eye roll—let alone proposition a partner with such a phrase? “Hey, baby, do you want to play snuggies and pumpies tonight?  Or would you prefer to hide the hot dog?  Maybe you’d enjoy a rousing round of getting connected?”

Either Self’s respondents to this particular survey consisted largely of prank-playing college freshmen who submitted these answers as a form of fraternity initiation, or they were a bunch of completely serious adults who actually refer to their sexual activity by such ludicrous names and, even more galling, admit to it.

We’re not sure which is worse.  We just ask you, the benevolent magazine reader, to pause before you fill out a magazine’s questionnaire.  If your potential response to a personal question makes you cringe, then keep the answer to yourself.  It’s better for all of us that way.

Our previous pleas to keep your private lives to yourselves (unless, of course, you’re famous, in which case we might want to know every salacious detail): Marie Claire Diaries Provide Little Insight, Lots of Dirt; Dauntless Glamour Reveals Secrets, Full Names

Interviews Expose Duff's True Talent: Talking Trash

From Self’s “The Right Duff,” July:

[Hilary Duff] recently got a glimpse…after playing a hometown concert in Houston, where she reconnected with old acquaintances. “It’s scary to see some of them now. They work so hard to be the same as one another. They all do the same things and get into trouble because they’re bored,” she says. “I’m so much more my own person now.”

One more way all of Hilary’s old friends are the same? They’ve been dissed in print by Little Miss Individualist. Guess being your own person means it’s totally fine to announce to a reporter how much better you are than all your old friends.

But it’s not like Self had the exclusive on Hilary’s trash-talking. The teen sensation had some harsh words for those same erstwhile pals in Elle’s “Triple Platinum Blond,” July:

“It’s hard having a boyfriend who’s older because people just assume,” Hilary says. “But [virginity] is definitely something I like about myself.”

Oh, yeah, she dropped that bombshell. Anyway:

“…It doesn’t mean I haven’t thought about sex, because everybody I know has had it and you want to fit in. But when they talk about it, it doesn’t sound special, like you would imagine it to be. It just seems like everybody has slept with each other—you know what I mean.”

She’s talking about old friends in Texas…

Well, what did she expect? Didn’t she just say that her friends were all alike?

We hate to encourage a starlet’s newly minted bad attitude—Lindsay Lohan, we’re talking about you—but in this case, it’s pretty much the only thing we find at all interesting about Hilary Duff. 

So, Self, Elle, and any other publication with an inkling to interview the young and famous: If you have to put teenagers on the cover, make sure they’re insanely catty. Otherwise, we just don’t care. Duff’s movies?  We’ve never seen a single one.   Duff’s music? It makes us want to stab freshly sharpened pencils into our eardrums. But Duff’s bitchy comments? We could read those all day.

The Best Advice You Absolutely Don't Need

From Self’s “Fitness Flash,” June:

A tip for your next office softball game: The larger you perceive the ball to be, the more likely you are to hit it...Imagine swinging at a cantaloupe.

Why stop there?  Why not imagine something even bigger, like a watermelon?  Or, since it’s an office softball game, imagine swinging at your supervisor’s head.  After all, that too is more substantial than a cantaloupe.

Oh, wait, you already knew that little trick? 

Wait until next month, when Self offers even more advice that is both obvious and extraneous.  Did you know you can avoid dropping any object simply by holding on to it?  Amazing!  Thanks, Self!