On Tuesday, I went to an Accompanied Literary Society screening for Selling the Sixties,, a BBC documentary that, unfortunately, isn't scheduled to be aired in the U.S. anytime soon. But the account of how research became a tool for advertising to efficiently exploit desire, sexualizing even the most basic transactions, was so strikingly related to the conversations we have here that I begged for a DVD in order to share a relevant clip.

Whereas in the first episode of Mad Men Don throws a dour Freudian psychoanalyst's report into the garbage, it's clear from this clip that his real-life contemporaries weren't quite so dismissive. Early 60s consumers were becoming jaded and unmoved by the simple pitch. Enter Ernest Dichter, the Viennese psychoanalyst who created "motivational research," tapping into what he saw as the deepest desires of consumers.

He was also a pioneer of the focus group, including the one seen here, where a woman straightfacedly says of a salad dressing, "I think that it has a place in our American way of life."

Selling The Sixties [BBC]

Britain's Missing Top Model, which premiered in the UK in the summer of 2008, began airing on BBC America last night. All of the 8 contestants are white. All of the 8 contestants are thin. All of the 8 contestants are conventionally pretty. Each one of them says, at some point in the first episode, that they think they're attractive. These are not women with confidence issues. (Debbie, who lost most of her arm in a bus crash, has posed for Playboy.) The judges make some good points — one says, being disabled is part of the world, "Why shouldn't it be part of fashion?" But while watching these women — all pleasing to the human eye — I thought, well, it's not much of a stretch to find beautiful people beautiful. Wouldn't an eye-opening show feature women with cleft palates or port-wine stains — visible differences which tend to make people uncomfortable?

Then again, maybe the fact that they're all pretty is the point? These are not your "average" disabled people, just as models are not "average" people. The contestants want a shot in an industry in which aesthetics is everything, so, naturally, they're going to be aesthetically pleasing. Maybe the point is: "I'm pretty, I just happen to have one arm, but don't let that stop you from hiring me to model designer shoes." The problem is, that doesn't make for very dramatic television.

Take Debbie, for instance. when asked if she'd show off her disability, she was totally fine with it. So her photo shoot was pretty boring.

And Sophie, who survived a what she describes as a "violent" car accident and is paralyzed, also had a boring (gorgeous, but anti-climatic) photo shoot.

At the critique, the judges said one nice thing and one critical thing about every model's picture, which Jenny from Seattle found frustrating. "Don't patronize me," she spat.

The judges couldn't even agree on what the show is really about. Two deaf women are in the final 8, but the judges wondered: Shouldn't the winner be visibly disabled? Or isn't that part of the point: Not all disabilities are visible? In the argument, the disabled judged fought for a girl with a visible disability, but was outvoted by the other able-bodied judges, and the contestant the disabled judge liked was sent home, and the judges had to watch her limp out the door. Why not listen to the one disabled judge? Dumb.

Frankly, the show would be more successful, more interesting if it followed one disabled model and her trials and triumphs in trying to get work — as well as how she was encountered in the fashion industry. Because watching the judges niggle and nit-pick over eight beautiful women is tiresome.

In July 2008 a reader spotted a Nordstrom catalog featuring a model in a wheelchair. I'd much rather watch a series about how this came to be and follow as someone, Michael-Moore style, asks execs why we haven't seen other catalogs/ad campaigns do the same. Maybe the world is "missing" a "top" model to tell that story.

Earlier: On BBC Show, Disabled Models Learn Same Lessons As Any Other Models

Recently, the BBC replaced Arlene Philips, the 66-year-old judge on Strictly Come Dancing, with Alesha Dixon, 30, reports the BBC. In 2007, the BBC denied reports that Moira Stuart was forced out because of her age. And in 2006, Anna Ford, then 62, left the BBC after 30 years, saying that she felt she was going to be pushed out due to her age. "I might have been shovelled off into News 24 to the sort of graveyard shift, and I wouldn't have wanted to do that because it wouldn't have interested me," she said. She adds that the BBC was still hiring new staff, "because they are younger." "I think that's specifically one of the reasons why they're being employed," she said.

Broadcaster and government adviser Dame Joan Bakewell says she is "really gratified" with the BBC's decision to reach out to their older viewers. "We get lots of jowly white-haired men - that's no inhibitor of employment for them - but it seems to have been eliminator for women until now," she said. "I'm glad it's changing."

BBC Seeks Older Female Newscaster [BBC]

Image via Telegraph

Each show follows the same format. The host, Gillian McKeith struts her blonde, slim, fashionable self into the homes of people who exhibit out of control eating habits. The video clip above is the standard show intro. Each person who participates provides a weekly food journal of what they eat for a week, which is read out by an announcer and then recreated on their dining room table.

Gillian tut-tuts her clients' poor eating habits, examines their physical health, obtains stool and blood samples, and then puts them on a diet to cure their various ailments. They are supposed to stick to the regimen for eight weeks, and then Gillian comes back to check the results. Gillian is hard core - after she gets rid of the table of shame (or at least, that's what I call it), she brings out a stunning array of fruits and veggies that will replace her clients' regular diets. Here, a client named Susan and her husband get a quick taste of Gillian's table:

After all is said and done, there's a recap of the old eating habits compared with the new ones, a discussion of old ailments (normally improving or cured by the time Gillian comes back around), and happy shots of the newly made over person, couple, or family showing off their new healthy habits.

I do have some issues with the program, for as healthy as some of its focuses are, it has a hefty dose of fat-shaming along with its nutritional messages. All the people are described initially as overweight and heading toward obesity, with an intense focus on their bodily functions. Gillian openly ridicules them for having bad breath and smelly feet (among other things - the poo segment is always painful to watch) which plays into existing stereotypes about people with a larger build.

Kate Harding wrote what I consider to be a cornerstone post for the fat acceptance movement. The piece, called "Don't You Realize Fat is Unhealthy" may as well be an FAQ for every person who has come through her site concern-trolling about excess weight being really, really bad.

In her post, she touches on a few key items that tend to come up every time weight, body image, and health are discussed (Kate has tons of links to back up her assertions, which can be found at the source post):

Even in some progressive circles - which are usually known for not hating entire groups of people because of their appearances, not thinking what other people do with their bodies is anybody's beeswax, and not uncritically accepting whatever moral panic the media tries to whip up, but wev. Fat is different! Don't you know there's an obesity epidemic? Don't you know that fat kills? Haven't you ever heard of Type 2 diabetes? Don't you realize how much money this is going to cost society down the line? Won't someone please think of the children?

So, before I start getting comments like that, I want to lay out ten principles that underlie pretty much everything I write about fat and health.

1. Weight itself is not a health problem, except in the most extreme cases (i.e., being underweight or so fat you're immobilized). In fact, fat people live longer than thin people and are more likely to survive cardiac events, and some studies have shown that fat can protect against "infections, cancer, lung disease, heart disease, osteoporosis, anemia, high blood pressure, rheumatoid arthritis and type 2 diabetes." Yeah, you read that right: even the goddamned diabetes. Now, I'm not saying we should all go out and get fat for our health (which we wouldn't be able to do anyway, because no one knows how to make a naturally thin person fat any more than they know how to make a naturally fat person thin; see point 4), but I'm definitely saying obesity research is turning up surprising information all the time - much of which goes ignored by the media - and people who give a damn about critical thinking would be foolish to accept the party line on fat. Just because you've heard over and over and over that fat! kills! doesn't mean it's true. It just means that people in this culture really love saying it. [...]

2. Poor nutrition and a sedentary lifestyle do cause health problems, in people of all sizes. This is why it's so fucking crucial to separate the concept of "obesity" from "eating crap and not exercising." The two are simply not synonymous - not even close - and it's not only incredibly offensive but dangerous for thin people to keep pretending that they are. There are thin people who eat crap and don't exercise - and are thus putting their health at risk - and there are fat people who treat their bodies very well but remain fat. Really truly.

3. What's more, those groups do not represent anomalies; no one has proven that fat people generally eat more or exercise less than thin people. Period. And believe me, they've tried. (Gina Kolata's new book, Rethinking Thin, is an outstanding source for more on that point.)

So McKeith's fat shaming can be a bit grating. The woman above, Susan? Gillian angrily smelled her feet.

However, this is still a series I recommend. Outside of the poking and prodding (sometimes literally, by Gillian) about excess fat, most of her claims are solidly pro-nutrition.

And do some of us ever need it.

Take Nick, one of You Are What You Eat's biggest success stories:

Nick's first words when confronted with his eating habits: "You're joking." But Nick isn't the only one who is confused about portion sizes and general nutritional value of what we eat. He is actually shocked when Gillian points out that he - at his size - is malnourished as most of the food he is consuming provides his body with nothing of value.

In addition, Gillian McKeith debunks a lot of myths about food, and talks about the outward signs of a poor diet. She's been able to correctly call when people are suffering from yeast infections, thrush, and other physical issues, just by looking at their cupboards. Remember Gillian's feet smelling from earlier? She also pointed out that Susan was consuming so much yeast, it was showing through her skin and on her toes and feet.

That poo testing? She does it to prove a point about fiber and how the body's systems actually work:

She also focuses on the healing aspects of food consumption, something most of us have forgotten in the crush of information about things like nutraceuticals.

Here she is explaining to Nick how everything she selected will help him cure one or more of his ailments:

The idea that food can influence health seems like a no-brainer, until we pause to consider how little we actually know about food in its most natural state. As Michael Pollan writes in The Omnivore's Dilemma:

So violent a change in a culture's eating habits is surely the sign of a national eating disorder. Certainly it would never have happened in a culture in possession of deeply rooted traditions surrounding food and eating. But then, such a culture would not feel the need for its most august legislative body to ever deliberate the nation's "dietary goals" - or, for that matter, to wage political battle every few years over the precise design of an official government graphic called the food "pyramid." A country with a stable culture of food would not shell out millions for the quackery (or common sense) of a new diet book every January. It would not be susceptible to the pendulum swings of food scares or fads, to the apotheosis every few years of one newly discovered nutrient and the demonization of another. It would not be apt to confuse protein bars and food supplements with meals or breakfast cereals with medicines. It probably would not eat a fifth of its meals in cars or feed fully a third of its children at a fast food outlet every day. And it surely would not be nearly so fat.

How would adopting a different idea about food and health impact us? Just take a look at Nick:

While many times, our conversations around food and health always center weight, we would be far better served if we shifted to the idea of healthier habits and more conscious eating.

So, invasive questions, poo testing, and feet-sniffing aside, here's to hoping Gillian and crew head to US shores soon.

You Are What You Eat [BBC America]
Don't You Realize Fat is Unhealthy? [Shapely Prose]
Nutraceuticals [Wikipedia]
The Omnivore's Dilemma [Amazon]

If you've seen Toddlers & Tiaras, you already know the deal: Makeup, fake tans, elaborate coifs.

According to Eleanor:

The programme itself follows three contestants, Madison, Sasha and Tyla. Each is desperate, (or rather, they are told they are desperate) to win the title.

Tyla, however, blew Madison right out of the water. Also nine, she is the youngest girl in Britain to wear contact lenses (glasses are, of course, ugly), she has highlights in her hair, and, aged seven, had plastic surgery.

Yes, apparently Tyla's ears stuck out, and had to be changed. In the clip below, you can witness the tone of the documentary, which certainly does its best to paint the contestants — and the mothers, for no fathers are pictured — in a negative light. There's more where this came from on YouTube.

As the little girls prepare for the pageant, there's no joy, no laugther, no "child"-like giddiness. Just tons of makeup. One contestant's mother says, "They remind me of little drag queens, really."

In addition to this new documentary, there's a new book from PowerHouse called High Glitz, featuring portraits of child pageant contestants. The photographs debuted earlier this year at a gallery in The Netherlands.

While the pageant culture is looked upon with a mix of fascination and disdain, blogger Eleanor (who is a "is a 17-year-old feminist from Edinburgh") is also worried. She writes:

It broke my heart to think of these children (none of whom won) as they left the venue. At an age where my biggest body hang up was wondering when my next tooth would come out, what would these girls now think of themselves? That they were ugly? Or indeed, that it mattered? That they were worthless, because their only ‘talent' had been beauty, and they had failed at it? Which would grow up to suffer from eating disorders, (which are affecting younger and younger children), or to believe that fake tans and plastered-on smiles are more important than intelligence, wit, compassion and love?

Well, we can only hope that these baby beauty queens will turn out okay — and that just like other American stuff which washes up on on distant shores — McDonald's; Coca-Cola; Madonna — pageants won't be taken too seriously by too many.

Baby Beauty Queens [The F Word]
Baby Beauty Queens [YouTube]
High Glitz [PowerHouse books]

Karen Mulder was a blonde 5'10" Dutch teenager who shot to fame after a friend sent in pictures of her to the Elite agency's famous Elite Model Look competition. Within two years, Mulder had given up high school to work full-time for clients like Valentino, Giorgio Armani, Calvin Klein, Yves Saint Laurent, and Versace. She made the covers of British Vogue, Italian Vogue, and various international editions of Elle, among many other magazines. At 21, she bagged a multimillion-dollar multiyear contract with Guess? She was picked as one of Peter Lindbergh's iconic gaggle of leather-clad biker supermodels in American Vogue in 1991, when DUMBO was still thought of as a little dangerous.

That's Mulder second from the right, between Stephanie Seymour and Naomi Campbell. Her career, still managed by Elite, flourished through the 1990s. Mulder capitalized on her wholesome look with commercial gigs, like her two appearances in Sports Illustrated's Swimsuit Edition, and she became a Victoria's Secret model. There was a Karen Mulder doll, made by Hasbro. Mulder dated a racecar driver, she dated Prince Albert II of Monaco, she dated a real-estate developer named Jean-Yves Le Fur. They broke up, but it was still Le Fur who picked her up off the floor of her Paris apartment and called the ambulance in the winter of 2002, after Mulder attempted suicide by overdosing on pain pills.

The suicide attempt and the coma she would lie in for two days following it came after Mulder had told the press, "From the beginning, I hated being photographed. For me, it was just an assumed role, and in the end, I didn't know who I really was as a person. Everybody was saying to me, 'Hi, you're fantastic.' But inside, I felt worse from day to day." It came after she laid a formal rape complaint in France against Prince Albert. It came after she said, "My job distracted me from my worries. It enabled me not to be myself, to pretend I was someone else." It came after a notorious appearance on French television where her various claims — that men at Elite had raped her, that she had been coerced into having sex to garner better contracts, that Elite had used her and other models as sex slaves in a ring that extended through the top echelons of French society, implicating politicians, members of the police, and other top officials, that her own father had raped her, that she had been sexually abused by a family friend from the age of 2, that she had been hypnotized and raped, kidnapped and raped, and raped some more — were regarded as so potentially libelous that France 2 not only never aired the segment, but destroyed the master tape. No matter: In a series of more-or-less coherent magazine interviews, Mulder repeated most of her accusations, and added that her agency had encouraged her to use cocaine and heroin. She told the Daily Mail, "They tried to turn me into a prostitute because they thought it would be so easy. I was raped by two bookers. I reported them and they were fired. Another time I was shut in the office of [a high-profile man from the modeling world] for a whole day. All these people who betrayed me I used to love very much. Then I realized how big the conspiracy was. It brought in the government and police, who both used Elite girls. People have tried to kidnap and poison me."

Her suicide attempt came after she was packed off to Montsouris hospital and heavily sedated for five months of treatment for depression and anxiety. (Gerald Marie, the head of Elite Paris and one of the men Mulder had accused of raping her, paid.) It came after Marie was filmed on hidden camera by the BBC trying to give a 15-year-old model £300 for sex, and bragging of how many entrants to the Elite Model Look competition — average age 15 — he was going to sleep with that year. It came after Mulder's attempt at a crossover music career resulted in the release of a cover of "I Am What I Am", which peaked at number 13 on the French pop charts in the summer of 2002. It was after recanting all her rape accusations, and explaining that she was in fact dealing with the aftermath of childhood sexual abuse and had "gone overboard," that the former supermodel tried to kill herself. Since emerging from hospital, and until her arrest yesterday, Mulder has kept a low profile.

How a woman like Mulder, one of those people who journalists are always quick to say "has it all," could fall so far, so fast is not really the question that commands interest here. We all know this story: it's got drugs in it, and predatory older men, and very young women, and the abject self-consciousness of the individual whose worth is in her pictures. It's always more or less the same story, even if Mulder, with her recantations and paranoid stories of kidnapping and poison at the hands of a shadowy "they," isn't always its most credible narrator. It's the story of Wallis Franken, of Ruslana Korshunova, of Katoucha Niane.

It's the story presented in a 60 Minutes segment from 1988 that reported, according to author Ian Halperin, "about the many models who had been drugged, raped, and sexually harassed by the world's top agency owners." (Halperin characterized the segment as "shocking.") It's the story of the BBC's undercover documentary of Elite executives offering to pimp out their models for drugs. (This was seen as "alarming" and "surprising.") It's the story models like Sena Cech are telling when they talk about being coerced into sex by photographers and clients at castings and on the job. (These accounts, and model Sara Ziff's documentary that provides one vehicle for them, were described in the Observer by writer Louise France as both "shocking" and "surprising.")

What amazes even more than how little the story actually differs from telling to telling, how fundamentally the same its elements remain, is our capacity for disbelief. It takes a certain dedication to one's own credulity to insist on being "surprised," "alarmed" and "shocked" by a situation that has been the subject of interest from such under-the-radar media venues as 60 Minutes going back a generation. As a culture, we have so far managed, through every news story and blog post and exposé, to maintain an innocence of the realities of the modeling industry that is almost touching. Or nearly culpable.

Our persistent willingness to be taken aback by the notion that wealthy, powerful, older men, when left in charge of a younger, poorer, female workforce, might generally act as something less than gentlemen, is testament to the power the multibillion-dollar fashion industry wields as an expert creator of narratives. It's this attitude of disbelief that allows agency directors to claim they had no idea some of their models were using cocaine and that some of their bookers were dealing it to them, or that some photographers like to sleep with models and some bookers encourage models to go along with it. Our endless capacity for shock is what gets Karen Mulder sedated and lets Gerald Marie retain, to this day, his position as head of Elite Paris.

The longer we keep up our charade of disbelief, the less the industry will change. One of the most chilling scenes in Sara Ziff's documentary, Picture Me, didn't make the final cut. A model was talking about a photo shoot that took place she was 16, with what Ziff has described as "a very, very famous photographer, probably one of the world's top names." When the girl left the studio to go to the bathroom between shots, the photographer cornered her in the hall. Then he started touching her dress. "But you're used to this," Ziff reported he said. "People touch you all the time. Your collar, or your breasts. It's not strange to be handled like that." Then the world-famous photographer put his hand to her crotch and forced his fingers into her vagina. The teenager, who had never even kissed anyone before, just froze and waited for the man to walk away. They finished the shoot, and she never told anyone. The day before the New York premiere, she begged for the scene to be cut.

But more and more models are speaking out. (I have.) If only we can dispense with our "shock" at what they have to say, perhaps this is an industry where some realistic chance for improvement remains.

Supermodel Karen Mulder Arrested For Threatening To Attack Plastic Surgeon
"We Need To See You Without Your Bra, He Told Me. I Was 14. I Didn't Even Have Breasts Yet."

Earlier: The Not-Rape Epidemic: The Modeling Industry Is Anything But Immune
Suicide And Abuse In Fashion's Top Echelon
Ruslana Korshynova, No Longer Anonymous

Inglourious Basterds, like many of Tarantino's other films, is an elaborate revenge fantasy, which follows a group of Jewish-American soldiers as they seek out Nazis to murder and mutilate in German-occupied France. With the name lifted from an old, little known Italian film, and inspiration drawn from spaghetti westerns, Tarantino crafts Inglourious Basterds from an interesting hodgepodge of influences, which sometimes works and sometimes doesn't. Brad Pitt plays the lead as a Tennessee-born hillbilly-turned-soldier who enjoys carving swastikas into every Nazi he encounters. While Pitt is ostensibly the star of the film, Austrian actor Christoph Waltz steals the show with his portrayal of a SS officer nicknamed the "Jew Hunter." Other big names include Dianne Kruger, Mike Myers, Rod Taylor, and Tarantino's personal friend and director of Hostel, Eli Roth. Clocking in at almost three hours, Inglourious Basterds outlives its welcome with most every critic, but some more so than others.

Let's start with the really bad before moving into "just OK" territory. The Guardian compares the film to "some colossal armour-plated turkey from hell":

Quentin Tarantino's cod-WW2 shlocker about a Jewish-American revenge squad intent on killing Nazis in German-occupied France is awful. It is achtung-achtung-ach-mein-Gott atrocious. It isn't funny; it isn't exciting; it isn't a realistic war movie, yet neither is it an entertaining genre spoof or a clever counterfactual wartime yarn. It isn't emotionally involving or deliciously ironic or a brilliant tissue of trash-pop references. Nothing like that. Brad Pitt gives the worst performance of his life, with a permanent smirk as if he's had the left side of his jaw injected with cement, and which he must uncomfortably maintain for long scenes on camera without dialogue.

And those all-important movie allusions are entirely without zing, being to stately stuff such as the wartime German UFA studio, GW Pabst etc, for which Tarantino has no feeling, displaying just a solemn Euro-cinephilia that his heart isn't in. The expression on my face in the auditorium as the lights finally went up was like that of the first-night's audience at Springtime for Hitler. Except that there is no one from Dusseldorf called Rolf to cheer us up.

Telegraph misses the blood-soaked finesse of Tarantino's earlier work:

The problem is that there's not enough roaring or headhunting. Tarantino, one of the most exceptional choreographers of blood-ballet working today, should have wielded a cleaver to whole sections of this 154-minute non-epic. There is far too much yakking, some of it thickly accented and hard to follow, most of it without the rhythmic zing of his best work. The violence – Brad Pitt as one of the Basterds wiggling his finger inside Diana Kruger's wounded leg – comes as a relief. A second plot, in which a Jewish woman whose family was butchered by Nazis organizes a film screening to assassinate Hitler and Goebbels – is more succinctly and powerfully handled.

Variety has a slightly more positive take, but still, not exactly glowing review:

While World War II has probably inspired as much fiction as any other single topic in film history, "Inglourious Basterds" is one of the few to have brazenly altered history to such an extent. Because he carefully sets up the approach at the outset, as well as through his sense of style, Tarantino gets away with it, and is in a position to fine-tune the picture before locking a final cut. Other scenes ripe for pruning are all those featuring Hitler prior to the grand finale, interludes that come off as cartoony, unconvincing and unnecessary.

In a true ensemble picture, Waltz stands head and shoulders above the rest with a lusty performance in the juiciest role. Laurent is appealingly thoughtful and observant as the young lady awaiting her chance, Fassbender cuts a dashing figure, speaks with a wonderfully clipped accent and rather resembles Daniel Day-Lewis here, and Kruger is far more engaging and animated than she's heretofore been in her big international pictures. Pitt clearly enjoys rolling his former moonshine runner's accent around in his mouth, although his performance is overly defined by constantly jutting jaw and furrowed brow. Inferring a measure of self-evaluation by Tarantino, some viewers will take exception to the film's final line, in which Aldo admires his climactic bit of brutal handiwork: "I think this just might be my masterpiece."

The Daily Beast criticizes Tarantino for being too "talky":

Inglourious Basterds fails to be a masterpiece because if you make an epic about a little topic like avenging the Jews, you need some emotion. You need a little bit of soul stuck in with the wit and the cool and the trademark film geek insider references. I don't mean you have to get verklempt. But you want someone to hate a little bit-and someone to root for. You felt something when Thurman, as the pregnant bride in Kill Bill, was shot on her wedding day and her child taken away from her. By the time she killed Bill, you wanted him dead as much as she did.

Masterpieces also need a protagonist to carry the story, or at least one who's visible. The star of this film is really Tarantino, telegraphing us in interviews prior to the film and while we watch it what a masterpiece it is while we search for someone to lead us onscreen. Pitt's energy and hilarious character helps. Waltz is a revelation. Kruger, playing a German actress and double agent named Bridget von Hammersmark gets to hold a cigarette like Marlene Dietrich and speak her native German. But there's no hero, or anti-hero, to give the film traction beyond its series of gorgeously shot, imaginatively written and acted scenes.

And finally, the most positive review, from the BBC, still isn't great:

In the words of Tarantino, it's "the power of cinema bringing down the Third Reich".

Once again, the US director has blurred film genres. Essentially it's western meets war movie, with David Bowie on the soundtrack.

And it becomes positively camp-operatic in parts - particularly in its portrayal of a shrill, semi-hysterical Adolf Hitler and British generals who could have been lifted from 'Allo, 'Allo.

Pitt may get top billing, but he's not the star of the show.

That honour goes to Christoph Waltz, a German TV star who plays SS officer Colonel Hans Landa.

Inglourious Basterds opens August 21st.

• Madonna's adoption of a second Malawian child: Denied.

A spokesperson says the judge's decision had to do with "residency requirements" and the fact that the girl was being well taken care of in the orphanage. Will Her Madgesty appeal? She's actually wanted to adopt this child, Mercy, since she met her in 2006. [CNN, Telegraph, ABC News, People]

• Sacha Baron Cohen totally has a random black baby in Bruno, to mock Madonna, perhaps? [Daily Mail]
• While it is indeed good news that Britney's ex, Adnan Ghalib, has turned in his gun — for which he had a license — the question must be asked: Why did a paparazzo have a fucking gun? [E!]
• Two things about Jessica Simpson maybe being on Dancing With The Stars: She is an actual star, but we all know she can't dance. [MSNBC]
• Jennifer Lopez wants more kids but loves the attention of the spotlight and doesn't want to be a stay-at-home mom, says a random source. Dilemmas! [Gatecrasher]
• Amy Winehouse is back in St. Lucia, and who could blame her? [Mirror]
• Gymnast Shawn Johnson is trying to put the stalker stuff behind her and says, "I'm doing really good. Keeping my mind set on the dancing, that's the most important thing for me right now." [ET]
• Pencil this in if you must: Sex And The City 2 hits theaters may 28, 2010. [E!]
• If you want to see the show tunes that were on the iPod President Obama gave the Queen, click the link. "Shall We Dance" seems like an obvious choice, but it's kind of amusing to see a song from Rent on there. [CBS News]
• Oh lord, Barack Obama may have broken copyright laws by buying music and then giving it away. [Wired]
• Check out shots of Brad Pitt from Vanity Fair; he's in character as a Nazi-killer from Inglorious Basterds. [Socialite Life]
• The guy who tried to break into Jamie Foxx's hotel room — and who has been hanging around the set of Foxx's latest flick — has been arrested. It's crazy that Foxx had to force the guy out of his room and slam the door in his face! [E!]
• Johnny Depp is in Puerto Rico shooting a flick called The Rum Diary and looks adorbs. That is all. [Socialite Life]
• Miley Cyrus and the Jonas Brothers will be part of an "all-star" recording that a source is calling "Disney's version of 'We Are the World.' It's about kindness and passing it on." If there is anything about purity rings or virginity I am suing God. [E!]
• You know Miley Cyrus' little sister Noah is an actor, right? She says: "I think it's amazing to have Miley as a sister because I look up to here and she's like my role model because she tells me everything to do that's right and I really learn everything from her." [The Star]
• Kelly Killoren Bensimon: No longer modeling for Saks Fifth Avenue. [Page Six]
• Five words: Hugh Jackman naked in Wolverine. [Socialite Life]
• Rising Sun Pictures, the Australian visual effects company that worked on Wolverine, swears it is not responsible for leaking the flick online. [The Star]
• James Franco is going to star in another stoner comedy called Your Highness. [Pop Sugar]
• LeAnn Rimes had dinner with an "unidentified male friend" and OMGISSHECHEATINGOMG. [Just Jared]
• Maybe you heard about this? Some show called ER had its finale last night, after fifteen seasons on the air. [E!]
• If you live in Boston, you won't see Jay Leno's 10pm show at 10pm — you'll see the news instead. [E!]
• The BBC has been fined for the lewd phone calls made by TV personality Jonathan Ross and comedian Russell Brand. [Yahoo News via AP]
• Charlie Sheen's infant son remains in the hospital. [People]
• Why in the name of Zeus can this woman not rest in peace? Anna Nicole Smith's dad is planning on suing her former lawyer/boyfriend/pill supplier, Howard K. Stern. [MSNBC]
• Pilot Chesley Sullenberger already has a two-book deal; now there's a TV documentary about the hero coming to TLC later this year. [NY Daily News]
• Chef Jamie Oliver has a brand new daughter, Petal Blossom Rainbow. She joins sisters Poppy Honey, 7; and Daisy Boo, 5. Brain explodes from cutesy twee names in 3…2 … [People]
• Got sunshine on a cloudy day? The Temptations will perform at the NCAA Final Four! [Yahoo News via AP]
• Woody Allen's latest flick is shot in New York — this after the last four were shot in Europe. Welcome back! [Yahoo News via Reuters]
• The Rolling Stones will reissue several albums, remastered, but with the original track listings and sleeves. [Mirror]
• First it was one station in Florida; now 16 TV stations are refusing to air the Osbournes' new show. [Daily Mail]
• Blind item! "Which wholesome TV host shocked partygoers when he pulled out a baggie of Colombia's finest?" [Gatecrasher]
• "I was driving once with my best friend - this was when I was in my 20s — I remember ripping my faux eyelashes off because they were driving me crazy, and sticking them under her dashboard. [A week later my friend called]. She said, 'Um, Brooke? I found your fake eyelashes stuck under my dashboard - why the hell did you put them there?' I was so embarrassed! But then she goes, 'And then I decided to put them on, so I'm wearing them today!' I was hysterical. How gross, right?" — Brooke Shields. [Gatecrasher]
• "With a black president, we've got to come up with a new excuse. Can't blame the Man, when you are the Man." — Wanda Sykes. [WSJ]

It shocked me that the PGD testing is legal in the U.S., because there is so much debate when it comes to extensive prenatal testing. But then I realized that PGD tests the eggs before they're implanted, rather than after, so this testing doesn't ever lead to abortion — only to more babies. And who can get mad or moral about more babies?

But back to Britain, where PGD is still only allowed to determine fetal abnormalities. McBeth went undercover to investigate a Turkish clinic, the Jinemed Center, that promised her PGD…except that PGD is illegal in Turkey, as well. "Many patients who were planning to go abroad were completely confused as to where it was legal and where it wasn't," McBeth says. In addition, the Jinemed Center "said they normally put in three embryos. That rang alarm bells. The maximum in the UK is two and most doctors would like to see that reduced to one because multiple pregnancy is the single greatest risk with IVF."

The Jinemed Center is now under investigation by the Turkish government, thanks to the undercover camera McBeth brought into a consultation with Jinemed representatives. "Proof if needed that the desire to complete a family with a son or a daughter by going down the 'high tech' route could turn into a legal nightmare," she notes.

Parents Queue To Select Baby Gender [BBC]
Pre-Birth Defects [Slate]

Earlier: Advances In Prenatal Testing Create New Twist In Abortion Debate

Related: Many Clinics Use Genetic Diagnosis To Choose Sex [NPR]

• A 12-year-old girl who was lost in the Blue Mountains while hiking with her family stayed warm with a flag she found in a vacant cabin. • Female artists in China find it hard to succeed in the male-dominated art world but they have "some of the most innovative work around." • New bills have been introduced to the House and Senate to help combat domestic violence against Native American women. • A nightclub that banned fat women (in their words, "morbidly obese") because they wanted to "protect" their failing business overturned the ban when they realized not letting people into your business is really bad for business. • Meanwhile Fabulous magazine finds that most men are content (link mildly NSFW) with their size 12 significant others (although most women still want to lose weight). • Why are people quick to call a man gay for experimenting with another man while maintaining their hetero status but shrug of straight women's lesbian kisses? • A graphic novel by Katherine Arnoldi called The Amazing True Story of A Teenage Single Mom supports rather than mocks teenage mothers. • With Barbie failing Mattel releases "My Meebas" a plush toy...in a tube...with a LCD screen, or something? You know you are getting old when new toys confuse you.

However, the BBC interviews a recovering anorexic named Shannon Bonnette, who says reading web pages about anorexia actually helped her. "What I found through visiting those sites was that there was a common theme — everybody stays miserable," she says. Do social networking sites have a duty to protect members from "dangerous" eating disorder information? If you're looking for that kind of stuff, can't you just find it anywhere? Or is it important for sites to take a stand, make a point of shutting down eating disorder-related groups, out of principle? And who does the banning? Who decides what is "dangerous" and what is just a support group? In any case, it doesn't seem as though the big sites are interested: "Many Facebook groups relate to controversial topics; this alone is not a reason to disable a group," says a rep.

Pro-Anorexia Site Clampdown Urged [BBC News]
Pro-Anorexia Website Warning [ITN]

Related: It's National Eating Disorders Awareness Week [5 Resolutions]