Jezebel: clueless

"Rolling With My Homies"

Dodai — Fri, 06 Nov 2009 14:50:00 EST

[Los Angeles, November 5. Image via INFDaily.]

Cosmo Thinks Women With Integrity Are Total Failures

Jessica — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Cathy Alter might claim that women's magazines saved her life, but we're a little more skeptical. To crib a line from Cher Horowitz, looking for advice in a Cosmo quiz is as useless as searching for meaning in a Pauly Shore movie, and yet, something about the title of this quiz enticed me: Are You Destined For Success? Feeling reasonably content with my career trajectory, I thought to myself, I am totally going to ace this idiot quiz. How wrong I was! My lack of ruthlessness or duplicity caused Cosmo to term me an "Undetermined Dawdler." (BURN!!!) Here's the first question: "While shopping, you and a pal spot a top that you both love, but there's only one left. Do you let her have it?" The options are: A) Yeah, it's not worth fighting over. B) Hell no, you'll tear it out of her hands if you have to. C) You try to steer her toward another shirt that would look much hotter on her, hoping she'll take the bait. I chose A, because, you know, she's my friend and it's just a shirt. Wrong answer!

I did the quiz again and chose B), and that got me labeled "Blindly Ambitious," which, in Cosmo world, is a no no. Because showing your ambition makes you seem like an undainty "bulldozer," and nobody likes that in a lady. Just for the good of womanity, I took the quiz a third time, and chose C) and other answers that were similarly manipulative. Like for the question, what do you do when you hear that your crush is dating another girl, you're supposed to "Snoop around to find out how serious they are. If it's just a casual thing, you can still make a play for him." When I choose those sorts of passive aggressive responses, Cosmo was delighted, and called me a "savvy goal-getter" who could manage to be simultaneously "likely to succeed…and likable." Sigh. The takeaway: stabbing your coworkers and friends in the back with your fuck-me heels is a-ok by Cosmo standards as long as you have a shit-eating grin on your perfectly glossed lips.

Are You Destined For Success? [Cosmopolitan]

Reader Roundup

Jessica — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 16:30:00 EST

Best Comment of the Day, in response to The Bad Girls Are Just Mean Girls: "Until mankind is peaceful enough not to have violence on the news, there's no point in taking it out of shows that need it for entertainment value." We say: We hope there's still time to party with the Haitians even while we're hoping for world peace. • Worst, in response to This Week In Tabloids: "That girl can exercise all day if she wants to, but she is still fugly as hell. Her face is wonked up but good - big black caterpillar eyebrows, no eyes to speak of, potato nose, no apparent cheekbones or facial bone structure, big drooly overbite - and this is after she got her Chiclet teeth fixed...she's a dog." We say: uh, what was our new rule about Girl-on-Girl crime? Can it with the Mean Girls shit, mkay? [Image via Oh! My God! I Miss You. ]

When Teens Go To Broadway Shows, Broadway Shows Start To Suck

Jennifer — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 18:30:00 EDT

Move over Noel Coward. And Stephen Sondheim. And Clive James. The most influential Broadway tastemakers today? Tween girls. Yes, the same demographic that drives the success of High School Musical and Hannah Montana is now the directional force in American theatre. With the runaway success of Wicked, which was adopted by adolescent girls as a favorite (despite the fact that it was never marketed to them to begin with), theatre producers are now trying to sell — and re-sell — the oldest, hackneyed, already-seen stories wrapped in some pretty, sparkly (and deceptive) packaging. See: Legally Blonde: The Musical, the number of "American Idol" losers currently having runs on The Great White Way, and the current workshopping of Clueless: The Musical.

The problem with making the art for the audience, especially when the audience still decorates binders with stickers and glitter pens? They don't exactly have money of their own. So unless 13-year olds can convince parents, friends, and entire families to attend, well, they're not exactly gonna sell out the house each night.

Meanwhile, we cringe at the thought of a tween-friendly Sweeny Todd. Zac Efron as the blood-soaked Demon Barber of Fleet Street? God save our musical-loving souls. And yeah, we're totally singing "Send in the Clowns" right now.

Tweens Love Broadway, but Can't Save It Alone [NYT]