Jezebel: atoosa rubenstein

America The Beautiful Reveals Ugly Truths

Dodai — Fri, 01 Aug 2008 15:00:00 EDT

Last night I went to a screening of America The Beautiful, Darryl Roberts's documentary about modeling, magazines, plastic surgery, eating disorders, cosmetics, phthalates, and self-image. (There's a trailer, at left.) The film also follows the career of Gerren, a model who walked runways for Tommy Hilfiger, Marc Jacobs and Richard Tyler when she was 13 but was told she needed to be "more skinny" by Parisian casting agents and had a meltdown before she was 15. While some women — and readers of this site in particular — may not find much of the film ground-breaking, seeing the impact popular culture has on the minds and self-esteem of people young and old was incredibly riveting.

Roberts packed a lot of material into the film (he says he had 900 hours of footage). Some memorable moments: Seeing Seventeen, ElleGirl and CosmoGirl editors explain why they only use thin, pretty models. Grade-schoolers looking at images from magazines, music videos and skin cleanser commercials and proclaiming that the "perfect" women make them feel "ugly." The sequence about dogs getting face lifts. An interview with a perfume producer claiming that phthalates — known carcinogens — do not get absorbed into your body when you spray yourself with fragrance was intercut with a scientist proclaiming, "Bullshit." Eve Ensler saying something about how a woman shouldn't get plastic surgery to "tighten" her vagina (Eve: "Get a bigger dick!"). The news that there are about 600 substances found in cosmetics that are banned in Europe but allowed in U.S. products. Oh, and then there was the part where the filmmaker called the American Board of Plastic Surgery and found out that all three of the doctors from Dr. 90210 were not board-certified, but had been performing cosmetic procedures anyway.

And then poor Gerren, such a bright beam of light in the beginning of the film, becomes convinced that she is obese and needs breast implants. Part of that was on the Today show this morning:

In any case, the reviews are mixed — some of the complaints seem to be that "there's nothing new" in the film. But when you compile all of the evidence together in one 105 minute oeuvre, you see that our society is literally sick. Roger Ebert says the film carries "a persuasive message" and is "filled with astonishments." I only wish that it didn't have an R rating; every teenage girl in America should see it. Roberts says he'll make an "educational" PG version for schools when it comes out on DVD; until then, if there's an under-17-year-old in your life, take her (or him!) to watch it. And start a discussion.

America The Beautiful opens today in New York.

America the Beautiful [Time Out New York]
America the Beautiful [Variety]
America the Beautiful: A Well-Intentioned, Scattershot Look at the Image Conscious [Village Voice]
America the Beautiful [RogerEbert.com]
Gorgeous, Tall And Age 12 [NY Post]
America The Beautiful [Official Site]

Atoosa Rubenstein's Foolish Fashion Alpha Kitties

Slut Machine — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 14:20:00 EST

For the past year, former Seventeen editor in chief Atoosa Rubenstein has been developing some sort of market research company that looks into the minds of teenage girls in order to sell the resulting demographics to other companies. The 'Toos has been doing this via a project she calls "Alpha Kitty," a series of overly-produced YouTube videos in which she talks a bunch of nonsense and then asks girls to submit videos all about themselves. She wasn't really getting any responses, so she decided to start putting other people in the videos. We have to admit, we were way excited to see French Vogue cover girl/boy Andre J, but then we were also sort of delighted to hear the retarded things the other people — like fashion assistant Jen Steele, Fasionista editor Faran Krentcil, and model/actress Taylor Warren — had to say. Above, a mash-up of some of Atoosa's clips.

Alpha Kitty [YouTube]

Fashion Mags: Big Girls Gain, Tween Titles Flounder

Jessica — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 14:30:00 EST

Thanks in part to the mostly useless advertorial Conde Nast supplement Fashion Rocks, Vogue regains its spot as head bitch in charge of all lady mags: Anna Wintour's brainchild had the most pages this year, with 3,222, barely edging out #2, In Style, which had 3,197 pages, says Women's Wear Daily.. The other fashion mags also gained this year. Glamourhad the most ad pages in its nearly 70-year history with 2,089 and despite budget cuts and a slew of staff departures at Elle, Roberta Myers' mag gained 6.2% in ad pages since 2006.

The only losers this year were teen titles, which almost universally lost ad revenue. The number of pages in Cosmogirl declined by 6.8%, while an Alpha Kitty-less Seventeen lost over 4%. Teen Vogue barely gained, posting a 0.9% increase from last year. Come on, Lauren and Heidi of The Hills, one of you clearly needs to get a D.U.I to give Teen Vogue a boost. Take one for the team!

Bigger And Bigger [WWD, sub. required]

Atoosa Rubenstein Has Herpes, But Only Up Top

Tracie — Fri, 12 Oct 2007 16:30:00 EDT

Former Seventeen magazine editor in chief Atoosa Rubenstein has this new project called "Alpha Kitty," a series of YouTube videos that give us second-hand embarrassment. She discusses beauty and being a girl and self-expression or something (sometimes in a fake "playful" accent), and it all is related to Andy Warhol for some reason. We're confused about it. Apparently it's all a bid to get investors to give her money for that goth Lisa Frank secret society market research thing, but all we could concentrate on when watching the above video was when she confessed to having HSV 1 (oral herpes) and assured us that the "cold sores" are not on her vagina.

Atoosa Rubenstein: Don't You Just Hang On Her Every Word?

Moe — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 09:30:17 EDT

Atoosa Rubenstein. Have you been DYING to know what's going on with everyone's fave "Alpha Kitty" her since she broke free from the confines of her job editing Seventeen and went feral?? Well, surely you know some disenfranchised teen with a big dream who has been DYING to know what she's got up her poufy sleeve. Right? She's big with the teens! Right? She had that whole MTV show , yes? "I left [Seventeen] because I realized that I was stepping farther and farther away from the journey that was meaningful to me," she says. Well, um, the New York Times exposes her New Media plan for conquering the girliverse and it... involves drag queens! Drag queens are hot right now, right?

So: Atoosa is shopping around one of those "how everyone should be like me and have everything that I don't even care about anymore because it is not meaningful" book proposals — shopping! — and she has more than 30,000 MySpace friends, which, let's see, puts her celebrity and influence just shy of Spankrock's. (Or like, yours, if you accepted every friend request.) And she is also reaching her massive fanbase with a series of YouTube videos "inspired" by Andy Warhol. Haha, get it? Maggie Erickson has taken your place, girl! Get a real job!!

Calling All Alpha Kitties [New York Times]

Just Call Us Alpha Guttermouths

Moe — Mon, 02 Jul 2007 18:41:15 EDT

Mingle² - Online Dating

It was somewhat unsettling to find out, thanks to a new creation of the great minds that run the Internet, that if blogs were movies, we wouldn't have been allowed into ours as a fifth grader. Because as terribly hard as we try to watch our language, we, uh, apparently used some variation on the word "fuck" a lot, which is a habit we should probably start thinking about cooling off on. The English language is, after all, a rich trove of words that can convey and depict and evoke with a glorious precision that we cheapen — spit on, even — when we resort too often to our four-lettered friends, right? And speaking of language, then we got momentarily distracted by another of those stories hailing the dawn of a new word being bandied about to describe an important new lifestyle trend.

Girly at home, gutsy at work. Clark fits the description of an "alpha kitty" — a catchphrase making the rounds on the Internet for highly successful women who feel that they can be serious as well as frilly, even in worlds still ruled by alpha males."The alpha kitty movement is all about standing out," says Atoosa Rubenstein, a former magazine editor who promotes the alpha kitty ideal through her MySpace page (www.myspace.com/atoosaspage). "An alpha kitty is starring in her own movie and she wants the set to be glamorous."

Oh well you know what? Fuck that.

Fierce By Day And All Frills At Night [LA Times]