• Lindsay Lohan's first collection for Ungaro has been derided by yet another industry heavyweight: Emanuel Ungaro himself. The designer, who sold the business that bears his name in 2005, says Lohan's work was "a disaster" that left him "furious." [Independent]

• Glamour editor Cindi Leive says the magazine has booked plus-size models for stories for every issue through February, including (relatively more prestigious) fashion and beauty spreads. "One of the plus-size models who was featured in our original story is in one of our two major fashion features in December, and looks amazing," added Leive. Could that be Crystal Renn? Or one of the other gaggle of naked lovelies the ladymag featured in November? [The Cut]
• Christopher Bailey is no longer the Burberry creative director. He is Burberry's chief creative officer, and don't you forget it. [WWD]
• Further layoffs at Zac Posen are rumored to be imminent. Since he eliminated his PR director on Monday, the task of handling publicity has been taken up by Posen's mom. Gucci is also said to be mulling serious layoffs. [NYDN]
• Marc Jacobs, maker of Louis Vuitton Everything: "The kennel was a bit of a joke, really." [ToL]
• Jason Wu loves to cook and bake, but macaroons had so far eluded his range of expertise. No more! Food & Wine arranged a special lesson for the designer with François Payard. It'll be the subject of an upcoming feature in the magazine. [Grub St]
• Not only did positive results for the last quarter not boost Crocs' share price — because investors took note that the surplus was largely the result of some kind of one-time tax bonus — but the maker of hideous shoes has trouble on the legal front, too. Porsche is suing Crocs over its use of the brand Cayman, which Porsche holds as a trademark in Germany. Apparently Porsche thinks there might be some confusion over the $29.99 Cayman sandal, and a $51,000 Porsche Cayman. [Footnoted]
• Prabal Gurung designed a festive red dress with poufy asymmetrical shoulders for Oprah to wear on the cover of the December issue of her magazine. Ellen, in a white suit, strikes a pose next to her fellow talkshow host. Gurung calls Oprah "a role model, a mentor, a leader and a constant source of inspiration." [People]
• Jean-Paul Gaultier's collection for Target will, he says, "shock parents, shock teachers." Perhaps not as much as his unwitting floor show at the Standard hotel, which has windows overlooking the High Line and Chelsea. "So, I am in the bedroom where it is an exhibitionist event!" says Gaultier. "I did not know that, so I did exhibition without knowing what I was doing. I did not know people could see. But, nobody was looking. It's quite hilarious, it's excellent." [The Cut]
• Heidi Klum will be the face of Ann Taylor's holiday collection. The company is struggling to reinvent itself after season upon season of declining sales and clothes that even the CEO has admitted were lacking in the design department. Photographer Peter Lindbergh and supermodel Klum are, apparently, part of the rejuvenation plan. [People]
• Someone is licensing John Lennon's artwork for a clothing collection. Imagine that! [UPI]
• Weirdest fashion story ever? German Vogue has an editorial featuring Lost's Jorge Garcia and Christie Brinkley. Bruce Weber shot it in Montauk. [Fashionista]
• Wow. Brazilian Vogue might just be worse than American Vogue. [MadeinBrazil]
• Adam Lippes has foot-in-mouth disease. After previously telling reporters that "it's rare to find an intern — especially one from a fashion school — that has good style," two of his workers came to him to suggest that he might, you know, apologize. He pooh-poohed them ("I was like, 'I don't mean THESE interns!'"), then reconsidered. He assembled the intern crowd, and told them "I just meant, like, fashion students." They seemed skeptical. "Meanwhile, one of them is wearing silver boots up to here and is a guy. 'Not you! Those boots are great.' But it was fine." Sure it was. The cherry on top: "Some of my interns dress fantastically." [The Cut]
• Diesel, which stopped selling its jeans in Macy's in 2005 to up its brand value, is reportedly in negotiations to sell a lower-priced line exclusively through the mega-retailer. "If they keep going this route, they'll end up like Levi's," says one person inside the company. [NYPost]
• Meanwhile, Macy's forecasts its same-store sales to fall 1-2% for the fourth quarter. Shares fell 3.4% in the day's trading. [Reuters]
• If you've ever wanted to experience the world of malodorous anguish and foot pain that is fashion blogging, here's your chance to submit to a humiliating public competition and vote! [Grazia]
• The Shophound thinks the clerks at New York's new Banana Republic are way too friendly. [Shophound]
• American Apparel's quarterly profits rose 83%, to $4.2 million, but investors aren't buying it. The stock price sank 4.6%, to $2.49. [NYPost]
• Italian cashmere producer Brunello Cucinelli runs a factory with long lunch breaks, no timeclocks, and posted "rules" are quotes from philosophers and writers. He thinks he can afford to be both a great boss and a good businessman, and his company's revenues for this year are forecast to reach 154 million Euros, which is some 7% greater than last year, even with the recession. [Reuters]
• Talbots has reportedly hired outside consultants to help the company, which has weathered five quarters of successive losses, refinance $225 million in debt. [NYPost]

The Naked Fat Girl Extravaganza Glamour promised after the huge response to showing plus-size model Lizzie Miller's belly in the September issue is finally here, and it's nothing short of a "revolution" (according to Glamour).

(Click images to make them larger.)


In her Editor's Note, Cindi Leive repeats the declaration she made when the photo was unveiled on The Ellen DeGeneres Show.

As Kate Harding wrote earlier, "it's a good effort... But let's not kid ourselves - this isn't a revolution. Yet." Seeing seven models with average-sized bodies (deemed "plus-size" by the industry) along with an article on why that's such a rarity and Glamour's promise to change that is great. However, using the hyperbolic term "revolution" only draws attention to what hasn't changed. Rather than a full length fashion spread, all the models are crammed together into one shot. They're also naked, which solves the problem of finding 7 designer ensembles bigger than a size 4.


Though Glamour has used plus-size models without comment in the past, the "revolution" hasn't really spread to the rest of the magazine. The only larger lady not on pages 198-199 is a non-model learning to make her "hot self look sleeker, curvier, whatever-er" in a Spanx body suit. (Thankfully no one had to model the shapewear thong.)



As Ms. Leive mentions, the model featured in the issue's one fashion spread that ran immediately before the plus-size model article is quite Twiggy-esque.


Of course, no one is angling to have thin models banned from magazines in lieu of larger ones, but aside from the liberal use of inflatable monkeys, the story didn't scream "revolution."


The rest of the magazine features the usual articles on the products every woman must buy to ward off wrinkles, in addition to answers to readers' questions on acceptable sexual behaviors ( "Should you pee with the door open when he's home?" and "Is it ever OK to sleep with your ex?"). Larger models are not featured in any of the posed pictures accompanying the beauty, health, and sex articles, because apparently Glamour can't find the requisite plus-size long johns, bras, and pink boxing gloves.


Let's face it. At any size, we ladies need magazines to guide us through the day-to-day problems we face. Like whether or not to date vampires.


And as always, the cover was chock full of lies.

Earlier: Coming This Fall: More Naked Fat Ladies In Glamour
Glamour's Plus-Size MOdel Photo Unveiled on Ellen
Naked Fat Girls On Ellen! Sort Of!

Yikes! She's totally talking about us! Anyway, here is a best-of reel from her first episode.





What Would Joan Collins Say? [Dlisted]

Ellen chats with Crystal Renn, who modeled swimsuits in Glamour's May issue and Lizzie Miller, whose belly-bearing photo in the September issue inspired this "naked fat girl extravaganza," as Kate Harding put it, as well as two other "plus-size" models who aren't identified in the clip.

We haven't gotten our hands on a copy of the November issue yet, but it appear that the "extravaganza" actually boiled down to a single naked model huddle, not pages and pages of well-rounded hips, breasts, and thighs. It may not be what we were hoping for, but the shot still looks beautiful and (unfortunately) for a women's magazine, even two pages of average-sized models is a big step.

After the reveal, Leive says the magazine commissioned the photo to not only celebrate the models' beauty but,

To send the message to young women especially who are reading the magazine that there are a million different ways to be beautiful. You don't have to be born pin thin. Whether you're voluptuous or lean, however you're made is the right way for you.

She even goes on to pledge that Glamour is:

"Committing to picturing a wide range of body types [and ethnicities] in our pages... Diversity of every type. We just want to say there are a million ways to be beautiful and you don't have to fit that cookie cutter standard. And we're going to celebrate the designers who help us do that.

Hopefully Leive means it, because that's definitely something we could get accustomed to.

Glamour Magazine's Normal-Sized Models [The Ellen DeGeneres Show]

Earlier: Coming This Fall: More Naked Fat Ladies In Glamour
Glamour Shocks Readers By Featuring Plus-Size Model's Belly

Following Conan O'Brien's on-set accident on Friday (in which he sustained a concussion) Stephen made fun of his fellow comedian for hitting his head, suggesting that it was because of a recent Glamour Magazine poll called "Do, Dump, or Marry?" (the milquetoast Glamour version of the classic marry/fuck/kill), in which Jimmy Fallon was the "do," Conan was the "dump," and Stephen was the "marry." First, Stephen was giddy over his Conan victory, until he realized Glamour readers were planning to cheat on him with "do" Jimmy Fallon ("you whores!"), and he had to cry, take "some antidepressant" (Ben & Jerry's), and declare himself to be fat. It was pretty hilarious, though one wonders who on Colbert's staff actually reads Glamour. (Oh, and also? Stephen is totally the "do" of those three. Duh!)

The "secret signs" turn out to be mostly cute anecdotes from women in committed relationships. Anecdotes like, "my husband walks two blocks to Starbucks for my coffee every morning." Number one sign "he's into you:" you're married. And I'm not sure if they count as part of the "73 must-know man-facts," but the "15 Guys We Love to Look At" constitute their very own Photoshop of Horrors, given that their arms have been bizarrely manipulated to look like they're holding hands with each other (Terrell Owens, p. 302, looks especially upsetting). Also, my issue did not contain a $500 sticker. Or a kitten, which seems about equally likely.

Lopping a quarter off October Glamour is easy — and fun. Here's what we'd do:

— Who needs "8 Little Things That Mess Up Your Skin?" Let's cut two — "Not Having Enough Fun," because good skin is a stupid reason to have fun, and "Going to Bed with Your Makeup On," because, duh.
— Similarly, do we really need "8 Ways To Be a Smarter (Chicer!) Shopper?" We'd get rid of "I'll spend within my means" — because an expectation to shop wisely is the recession's No. 1 Sign of Impending Advertorial Content. And "I'll be more likely to buy when it's for a cause" — because any mention of charity is Sign No. 2.
— On the "Health Help" page, cut the item about how your pillow is the dirtiest thing in your bedroom. It just makes us think of Carrie.
— From "How to Do Your Makeup Exactly Like a Pro," remove either primer, foundation, or concealer. If Glamour needs to make deeper cuts later, they can jettison the makeup tips entirely and just print a handy pullout mask.
— We're not totally sure what percent of the magazine this is, but just get rid of the whole "Hey, it's okay!" page. Replace it with small text someplace in the front that reads "Despite everything this magazine tells you, you are allowed to eat food, have sex, and think thoughts." Should have about the same effect.
— Eliminate the products in "Gwen's faves for $40 and under" that come from Gwen Stefani's own line. This is actually more than 25%, so Glamour would have room to add more groundbreaking beauty tips from "Gwen," like using Pantene Pro-V on your hair!
— In "One Idea/Seven Outfits," cut this one:


Because seriously.


McKinsey Proffers Pie Graphs: Several Condé Mags To Cut "25-ish Percent" [NY Observer]
Glamour [Official Site]

Though Couric hasn't been able to pull her newscast out of third place, the reports of her upcoming departure from CBS may have been, as she jokes, "greatly exaggerated." Back in April 2007, The Philadelphia Inquirer's Gail Shister wrote, "CBS executives deny it, but there's a growing feeling within the network that Katie Couric is an expensive, unfixable mistake." She also said Couric would probably leave her anchor chair early, perhaps after the 2008 elections. But Couric's still around, and although ratings are disappointing, she says she's staying until her contract runs out in 2011.

Brian Stelter of the Times says Couric is pulling down "some of the lowest ratings in the newscast's history" — 5-6 million viewers a night, compared to NBC's 8 million. But rather than a "mistake," CBS may now view Couric as a star who has hit her stride. Her election coverage, including her famous interviews of Sarah Palin, helped make up for a rocky start, and journalism professor Paul Janensch says, "The program seems settled and Couric seems confident. As a result, the questions have subsided, and reviews of her performance are far more positive." Her executive producer Rick Kaplan concurs, saying, "There's a growing admiration for our anchor and respect for our broadcast, and that is worth a lot. Until the ratings catch up with our expectations, that really goes a long way toward making it O.K."

But what Couric really wants to do is interview. She said she originally signed on for a more interview-focused newscast at CBS. When viewers didn't like the new format, she was forced to look for other avenues. One of these is apparently Glamour, where she'll be doing a monthly interview column starting in December. Her first subject is Michelle Obama. As fun as it is to hear more about Michelle, we're betting the Glamour column will be pretty soft. Couric has been affiliated with magazine's Women of the Year program, and it seems probable that her column will focus more on the achievements of prominent women than on particularly critical journalism.

Her new web series, @katiecouric, may be a different story. According to CBS, "The webcasts will feature Katie's candid and incisive one-on-one interviews with high-profile guests ranging from politicians and celebrities to business titans and other top newsmakers." Coming up Tuesday night: Glenn Beck. Maybe Couric will give him the Palin treatment.

Couric says she doesn't know what she'll do when her CBS Evening News contract expires, but these new ventures may offer a clue. The failure of her efforts to revamp her newscast (the Times mentions her unpopular "Hi everyone" greeting) may say less about her and more about evening news viewers — they like what they know. But the days when lots of people want, as Joshua Alston wrote, "to have the day's stories read to them in a grave voice," are probably numbered. The big get, a celebrity interviewer sparring with a celebrity interviewee, may be changing form — I'm sure I'm not the only one who first saw Couric's Palin interviews on YouTube. But Couric, in producing her new interview show for the Web, seems to understand this. She understands, too, that one of her greatest strengths is talking directly to people — and she'll likely continue to do this regardless of the medium.

Doubts Fade And Couric Is Energized [NYT]
Memo Pad: Duty Calls... Michelle Obama In Glamour... Across The Twitter-Verse [Women's Wear Daily]
Katie Couric Debuts New Web Show [CBS]

The New York Times reports that though the magazine's circulation numbers are up slightly over the year, its single-copy sales are declining and ad pages were down 20 percent. To draw in new readers and particularly advertisers, the new "Live for Glamour" ads, which feature cupcakes, balloons, yo-yos, American flags, lollipops and margaritas, will be featured on taxis, billboards, and projected onto New York City stores tomorrow to coincide with the start of Fashion Week. Though ads will run in mainstream magazines, the campaign is more focused on refreshing advertisers' idea of the type of woman who reads Glamour, so print ads will run in industry publications like Women's Wear Daily, Drug Store News and Cosmetic World. The magazine will also ship actual cupcakes that say "Live for Glamour" to the offices of advertising clients and hand out cupcakes under the tents during fashion week.

Glamour's image of its readers is surprising, as the cupcake-baking, All-American imagery seem like something Sterling Cooper executives would have come up with during a product-placement heavy scene on Mad Men. Other ads in the campaign include cliche phrases like "she'll steal your shoes, but never your boyfriend," and, "she commits to her political party, but never just one lipstick." Considering Glamour is aimed at adult women, the pink, perky ads are surprisingly infantilizing. They emphasize that while the magazine's readers aren't particularly mature, like teenagers, they have a disposable income they're ready to spend on shoes, makeup, or anything else fashion and beauty brands may want to push.

"Clearly it's exuberantly cheerful, aggressively cheerful," says Cindi Leive, editor-in-chief of Glamour. "This says very clearly that this is not a magazine that's trying to be Vogue." In other words, rather than competing with more upscale fashion magazines for the high-end brands aimed at more sophisticated readers, Glamour readers are just "nice girls" who will buy more middle of the road products. "We're Jennifer Aniston, but we may never be Angelina," adds Bill Wackermann, the magazine's senior vice president and publishing director.

In conjunction with the new ads, the magazine will be running a "Search for America's Sweetheart" contest, with the winner appearing on the cover of Glamour in 2010. According to Leive, the contest is "not about being the blonde, blue-eyed, superdeluxe picture of perfection," but a "real woman". We understand that Leive means the winner won't necessarily fit the traditional image of "America's sweetheart," as we discussed earlier today, but then why use the outdated word "sweetheart" at all?

It's also unclear why Glamour needs to create a competition to find a cover model in the first place, since the magazine already has several competitions that recognize "real women." The annual Top 10 College Women competition, for one, evaluates contestants based on "leadership experience, personal involvement in community and campus affairs, and academic excellence," according to the entry form. And last year's "Women of the Year" honorees included many "real women" making a difference, including Kara Walker, Jane Goodall, and Condoleeza Rice; perhaps they don't really fit the "sweetheart" stereotype?

Not surprisingly, Glamour is in talks to turn the contest into a reality show, as it is one of the few women's fashion magazines without one. But Leive says her show will be different because, "This isn't taking place in our offices, it's not about who can push the fashion rack the fastest." Instead "America's sweetheart" will be determined by how well the contestants offer strangers compliments or confront a guy who broke up with them in high school. Despite what Leive says, competitions based on being nice to others and being obsessed with who you were in high school don't exactly shatter our image of what makes a "sweetheart."

Such characteristics do however fit the persona the tabloid media has created for Jennifer Aniston; in fact, it makes sense that Glamour execs want advertisers to think of their readers as Aniston rather than an Angelina-types; after all, a woman regularly described as lonely, unlucky in love, and obsessed with her looks is far more likely to splurge on beauty and fashion products.

Glamour Puts On A Happy Face To Attract Ads [N.Y. Times]
Enter Glamour's Top 10 College Women Competition [Glamour]
Glamour Women Of The Year 2008 [Glamour]

Earlier: What Does "America's Sweetheart" Really Mean?

Didn't it remind you of Mr. T's fashion video?

Earlier: Glamour Shocks Readers By Featuring Plus-Size Model's Belly

Cindi Leive, editor of the magazine, wrote a post on the magazine's website saying that since the day the September issue hit newsstands, letters have been pouring in about one unknown model featured in the body-confidence article "What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body." Leive writes:

The letters blew me away: "the most amazing photograph I've ever seen in any women's magazine," wrote one reader in Pavo, Georgia. From another in Somerset, Massachusetts: "This beautiful woman has a real stomach and did I even see a few stretch marks? This is how my belly looks after giving birth to my two amazing kids! This photo made me want to shout from the rooftops."
The emails were filled with such joy—joy at seeing a woman's body with all the curves and quirks and rolls found in nature. (Raising a question: With all the six-packs out there, do you even know what a normal belly looks like anymore—other than the one you see in the mirror?)

On its own, the picture may not seem that incredible, but after flipping through 193 pages of uniform sample-size models, the image is striking. Rather than thinning her via Photoshop or having her sit in an unnatural pose, the model is shown with a bit of belly hanging over her underwear and slightly-bulging thighs, looking happy and genuinely confident. As Leive says, we've gotten to the point where showing a woman with folds in her skin or a belly that sticks out (who isn't in a "before and after" feature) is a radical move for a women's magazine, even though that's what every woman actually sees in the mirror every day.

Leive identifies the model as 20-year-old Lizzi Miller, who is "size 12-14 and avid softball player/belly dancer." Miller says of the fan mail she's receiving:

"When I read them I got teary-eyed!" she says. "I've been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn't find it I would start to think there's something wrong with the way that I looked. When J. Lo and Beyoncé came out and were making curves sexy, I started to accept myself more. It's funny, but just seeing them look and feel sexy enabled me to do the same."

This is Miller's second appearance in Glamour according to Leive, and we found this photo of her from an article that ran in March. She's posing in her underwear in this picture too, but this time she's showing off her thighs.


Glamour has a better track record than other women's magazines when it comes to showing women of all shapes and sizes. As mentioned earlier, we liked that the magazine's May issue used a plus-size model in their swimsuit fashion spread but didn't mention her size or pat themselves on the back for featuring a "normal-sized" woman.

But still, being the ladymag with the most body diversity isn't that hard when your competition is Vogue. Both pictures of Miller were included in articles about body acceptance and May's plus-size swimsuit spread was a rarity. Every other model featured in this month's Glamour was very thin. Even "What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body" starts out with the standard photo of a perfectly-proportioned model staring at herself in the mirror with a slight frown, which doesn't exactly depict the average reader's issues with her body. Any shot of body confidence readers got from seeing a woman with an average-sized body presented as sexy is quickly neutralized by the magazine's other 295 pages of diet tips, workout recommendations, and images of women with all their natural bumps and rolls airbrushed away.

Leive concludes by asking readers what kind of images they'd like to see in the magazine, adding, "Trust me, Glamour's listening, and this only strengthens our commitment to celebrating all kinds of beauty." Hopefully she means it, because it's already obvious from the response to one three by three inch photo that women are interested in seeing beautiful pictures of women of all shapes and sizes that look like them, rather than what the magazine says they should aspire to look like. But, we're still skeptical. If magazines run more images like the one on page 194, women may internalize the idea that you can look sexy with messy hair, no clothes or accessories, and a layer of body fat and stop buying products to fix their natural yet somehow "flawed" figures.

The Picture You Can't Stop Talking About: Meet "The Woman On P. 194" [Glamour]
Exclusive Body-Image Survey: 16,000 Women Tell Their Body Confidence Secrets [Glamour.com]

Earlier: Glamour Tries Not To Make A Big Deal Of Its Plus-Size Model

"You could kind of feel it in the air during the shoot. I knew it was going to be a good picture."

What's interesting, notes Ryder, is that Vogue was actually a little behind the times; Johnson had already made a name for herself at Glamour, which had been featuring black cover models since 1968.

Still, Vogue, as it does now, had a reputation, a cachet: "When the magazine came out I had no idea at all that I was the first black woman to be on the cover of Vogue," Johnson says. "I was just overjoyed to be on the cover because that's what you strive for as a model. That's when you know you have arrived."

But Johnson's career was not without its rough patches:

On shoots Johnson often felt like "the token black," she says. Hairstylists often "didn't have a clue about black hair — I was always teaching the white hairdressers and makeup artists how to do me. There were no black hairdressers and makeup artists." On catalog shoots, her white counterparts would earn more, even though Johnson's photos often would be the ones that sold the most product.

Still, Johnson is a pioneer. After her, many black models had the chance to appear on the cover of Vogue (some examples here). And despite recent cover appearances by Jennifer Hudson and Michelle Obama, considering that in 2007, the October, November and December issues of Vogue had zero black models; it's clear that there is still work to be done.

Beverly Johnson Recalls Her Vogue Cover [LA Times]
Black on Vogue [Clay Cane]

Earlier: Vogue's Not Racist; Three Black Models Prove It!
Related: Naomi Sims, 1948-2009: From Foster Care To Fashion Mags

There were the sudden job changes, the crazy stories about the famous people he'd met, his total estrangement from his family. But it wasn't until she was in college and discovered that he'd opened several credit cards in her name, running up thousands of dollars in debt and ruining her credit, that she realized that her father's deceptions might run deeper than a few tall tales.

(Images from 'The Impostor's Daughter'; click any image to enlarge.)

The story of how Laurie unraveled her father's lifetime of lies is the basis of her new, amazing graphic novel, The Impostor's Daughter, in which she weaves together the story of her childhood, the discovery of her father's lies, her journalism career and her issues with men, which culminated in a stay at a rehab center recommended to her by one of her interview subjects, Ashley Judd. I couldn't put down her book, so when I met up with Laurie at a cafe in Brooklyn (we coincidentally live in the same neighborhood), I had lots of questions-about her book, about her dad, and about her career interviewing celebrities.

[Doree will be interviewing interesting women every week for us. If you have a suggestion, email her.]

Why did you want to do it as a graphic novel?
I did it first as a memoir. I wrote a 350-page memoir. And that was my original intention-it started originally as an essay for Esquire, which I published anonymously in 2003. But that essay ended on all of these questions. I ended it saying, I don't know who he is or what he does, is it this, is it this, is it this? I felt that as much as a writer, I felt as a daughter that I had to get to the truth, to the bottom of things. I wrote and wrote and wrote, and I went to writers' colonies, and I think the story was unfolding as I wrote. It made it difficult to have the proper perspective. It made it difficult to have the emotional truths and that was why I turned back to cartooning, because I'd always cartooned about my dad, and I discovered this box of childhood cartoons.

I'm going to put more of them up on my website. I have hundreds. I looked at those cartoons and realized how fearless they were. I realized I wasn't being that fearless in the memoir, and so I decided to try it as a graphic novel. And it was almost easy for me emotionally to talk about him that way.

I know it's hard to think about this in retrospect, but do you think even at that time you felt like there was something off about your dad?
Oh, yeah. My childhood cartoons were so observant. I knew every single thing that was going on in my house, and my father knew I knew every single thing that was going on in my house because I gave them to him as gifts, and he loved them. In a way he loved that I knew.

It fed his ego in some way.
Yeah. It fed his ego, exactly. I think it was very exciting for him that I sort of saw what he was doing.

In some ways your book reminded me of David Carr's memoir Night of the Gun-
I haven't read it but I really want to.

Because he uses his training as a journalist to go back and recreate these years he basically lost because he was a drug addict, but he's using his tools as a journalist to do it. I thought that was really interesting how you kind of interplay what you're doing as a journalist with your discovery of what your dad was doing. It did seem like it was all related.
Absolutely. My mother constantly bemoans, like, why did I have to have a daughter who's a writer? My mother just very much wanted to keep the family intact and the story a secret, even to herself. I became a writer for this very reason. I didn't set out to become a writer. My father created a writer. He created a digger.

You have that bit in the book where you find out about the credit cards and you write what you wanted to say to him, and you wonder, if you had confronted him at that time, what would have happened.

It was the first real piece of physical evidence really. There were little bits and pieces, little hints. It was the first, direct-not affront, but direct betrayal. And I tell you, even now, 38 years old, I've written a published a book about this, and I still am afraid of my father, I'm afraid of him hurting me, I'm afraid of him hurting himself, and I'm still afraid of losing his love even though I've already lost it. And that stuff is so potent, as a daughter.

He seems really lonely.
He is. He's a total lone wolf. And always has been. No connection to his family at all. Very, very few friends. But the thing is, I feel like if my father were to say something like, I made some mistakes, I own it.

It seemed like he always had some excuse or some rationalization. It was always the other person that was crazy, or he was misunderstood.
Exactly. In a way I wonder if this period of time, to some extent, I wonder if he's enjoying it. He's getting a lot of attention. My sisters and my mother are really sort of rallying around him. So that would be in keeping with his, I hate to say it, with his narcissistic makeup.

You write that this whole experience with your father made you a better interviewer-somehow more empathic with people. How did you discover that?
I think it was my very first in-person cover interview. My very first interview was a telephone interview with Penelope Cruz. That was my first cover story. My first in-person interview was Ashley Judd. And I was really floundering and I didn't know what I was doing, and I was a little bit starstruck at the time. It was a fashion story, and I could tell immediately she had no interest in fashion. She kept trying to flip the interview back to her charity work. I wasn't, at the time, a seasoned interviewer and I didn't know what to do. I had 40 questions about fashion and I just kind of threw away my questions and I just started to talk about my dad, and she was just so drawn in by the story, and I just started a correspondence with her after that. It wasn't like I deliberately said, aha, I'm going to use this, but it became very quickly clear to me that I had always kind of in a way bonded with people over this story. So it was no different in a way than what I had been doing all along, except it was with celebrities.

You come into a celebrity interview with a preconceived concept of who this person is, that's been put together by the press. There's no way to get around that. And there's this whole thing of projection going on with celebrities. And that goes on with my father. I definitely say he was my first celebrity. He was this larger-than-life, shape-shifting, identity-shifting person, and that's what celebrities are. So as much as I got starstruck by them as much as I got starstruck by my father, I also felt at ease in their company. I can do this, that was sort of the feeling.

It was almost like, no one could intimidate you as much as your father could intimidate you.
Exactly. No one could intimidate me as much as my father had intimidated me. I'll repeat that so you can use it in my words. That's really good.

Do you ever feel like you have to tell a certain story at Glamour?
Well, they have certain themes that they're interested in. It's very different doing a Q&A format from a running text story. If I were doing a running text celebrity interview, I would have lots of observations that I would make that I don't have the chance to make in a Glamour interview. On the other hand, you get to hear their voice and it's their voice. Yeah, the Glamour audience has certain interests so I try to stick to those interests, but obviously Glamour's also interested in breaking news and scoops and so I try to do that too.

It's hard with a monthly.
Yeah. It's very hard with a monthly to do that kind of thing. But what I've learned is that celebrities are so media savvy. They're more media savvy than anyone you can imagine. So if there's going to be breaking news, it's breaking news they're going to give you, essentially. The Ashley Judd thing-the rehab story, which was one of our biggest selling issues ever-she decided to tell me.

Because she felt like she had this relationship with you?
I think it was because she felt like she had a relationship with me, and because she decided that she wanted that story in Glamour. A lot of celebrities will decide, I want this story in Vanity Fair. They're very media savvy. It's not like I'm going to crack them. Once in awhile I guess it can happen.

I feel like especially with actors-I feel like when people claim they're getting the "real" Reese Witherspoon-it's like, she's an actress.
And she's a very good actress, on top of that.

Yeah.
I actually try very hard in my celebrity interviews to in a way throw out my questions. The skill that I learned from my father literally is the only time I've ever gotten anything new or interesting from a celebrity-when I just talk to them and they like me as a person. If they like me as a person, and I'm not saying they're going to tell me about how their heart was broken that you don't know about-it's not that. It's just that what they talk about is going to be more authentic and interesting and you'll hear something new. If you just sort of stick to the typical celebrity interview format, you're going to get a pat and boring celebrity interview.

Why are people so fascinated with who celebrities are dating?
Every celebrity I interview asks me the same question.

On a fundamental level, it's gossip. In high school, you gossip about, Oh, Laurie broke up with Dan, oh my God.
I think it's because we mistakenly believe that we know them and we mistakenly believe they're one of our friends. I think we really do believe they're part of our circle in our minds. So they're part of our circle to discuss and pick apart and to bring them down and to have them be human like us.

Or we think, like, we could be friends. Like if it just so happened that I met Taylor Swift at the mall, she'd probably like me and we'd be friends.
Exactly. It's totally true. And even I've had that starstruck moment with certain celebrities. I wouldn't say I'm starstruck, like nervous, to meet any of them, but there are certain celebrities that for whatever reason-like Sarah Jessica Parker-who I just have a girlcrush on. So when I interviewed her, I thought that we were going to get along, and maybe we'll be friends. And I met her and she was completely unlike anything that I had imagined. Very reserved and not like her persona.

You expect her to be Carrie Bradshaw.
I did. I kind of did. Which is ridiculous. I mean, I should know better after all these years of doing these interviews.

But also, because she always plays that character.
She always plays that. She projects that in every film, in every character. So I was like, I'm going to like this woman, I know who she is. And she was very kind of reserved, and sort of serious, and so I walked away feeling like I really admired her, really respected her, really liked her, but there was no pretension that we were going to be friends. And really it would be part of my job to not be friends with the people I interview.

You do have this sort of bond with Ashley Judd.
Yeah. It went above and beyond the interview. She recommended the rehab center.

She saved your life.
Yes, you could say that, absolutely.

Has she seen the book?
To be honest, I didn't want to just use her name if I didn't have her permission for the book. So I sent her the text. She hasn't seen the drawings yet. She read the text and she approved it. I was actually surprised-she didn't make any changes, she was fine with it.

Ben. Or "Ben." [Laurie's ex-boyfriend, whose name is changed in her book.] Has he seen the book?
I actually sent him the entire manuscript. Like Ashley Judd, I sent him the entire manuscript and gave him the option to change his name. Because originally I didn't change his name. And I also changed a couple of details about him to make him less recognizable and he said yes, please change my name.

Is he a well-known person?
Yes. He is not famous, but he's known. He's a director, which I say in the book. I asked if he wanted me to change that detail, but he said no.

Is he with anyone now?
I have no idea. He didn't want to be friends. I would have been friends but he didn't want to. He wrote a film about me and I don't know what's going on with that. I have nothing bad to say about him, but for whatever reason I wasn't in love with him.

Do you think you can be in love?
With anyone? No. I was in love, but with the worst people. So can I be in love? No. I mean I'd like to say that's not true because I've done lots of therapy and I'm very much at a point in my life where I very much want the real thing. I'd like to find a stable relationship. But I so far have not been capable of being in love. I was thinking about my next book potentially being called Commitmentphobe, about female commitmentphobia. It's amazing to me because just like the next person, I want it as much as the next person does, but once I'm in it, I feel like I'm in a claustrophobic elevator and can't breathe. Look at the father I had. It's very hard to overcome that. It kind of sucks. I got at least a great career out of my dad, out of growing up that way, but it's completely been a problem in my love life.

And how are you doing with all the stuff you went to rehab for?

Sober for three years. So that stuff has been great. I'd kind of like to be able to have a glass of wine. I didn't go there for alcohol but there's this concept of cross-addiction and when you're an addict, you're an addict. Plus I think to get through all this stuff about my dad and have a healthy relationship at some point I think it would be good for me not to turn to the chemicals.

What about the religion stuff you talk about in the book?
It's funny-a couple people have said, oh, you became religious. No, I did not become religious. I am not religious. I opened myself to the possibility of spirituality and God. I've been a lifelong atheist. So I'm sort of saying, I would like to believe in God, but inside I'm sort of like, come on. It's very hard for me to accept that concept. The thing that I mentioned in my book that I think is true is that my father was really God to me. And once I sort of removed him from the equation, at the very least I'm able to open my mind and say, you know what, maybe I'm more agnostic than atheist, and I'm able to maybe say I don't know what's out there, and maybe there is and maybe there isn't. So not religious and would marry a non-Jewish guy and all of that, but I'm definitely into the idea of spirituality with a pinch of God.

The Impostor's Daughter [Amazon]

One reason is simple: The editors of these publications hammer out every detail of the stories they're going to print before they've even assigned writers to the pitches. A tipster passed on this e-mail, which she received from a Glamour freelancer foraging for quotes:

Hey Ladies,

For the October issue of Glamour magazine, my editors are working on a story called "Guilty Man Pleasures." The editors are looking for quotes about things good women do with men that are so bad.

Two examples are:

"I am currently seeing a guy who is way, way too young for me, but after ending a serious three-year relationship, he is just what the doctor ordered. The sex is so good I keep thinking he must be a professional and that my invoice is going to arrive any day now." -Elizabeth Hogan, 31, Winter Park, FL

"My most recent naughtiness: ‘accidentally' finding my boyfriend's checkbook and looking through it to see if he'd purchased an engagement ring. He had!"-Jaime Hobson, 27, Boston

Other examples are the woman who has webcam sex with her long-distance boyfriend, the girl who lets the guy she's dating read text messages from other guys just to make sure he knows there are others interested, the woman who's trying to save money but still gets her monthly Brazilian bikini wax just because she and her man love the feeling...

You've read this story before. It was called "The Best Sex Secret I've Never Told Anyone" in Glamour's June issue. In Cosmo, the story's called "Confessions," and they run it every month. These aren't real journalistic sources speaking — these are archetypes. This writer isn't looking for news — she just needs photogenic ladies to slot into a pre-written narrative. Glamour already knows exactly who it's looking for: "The girl who lets the guy she's dating read text messages from other guys just to make sure he knows there are others interested, the woman who's trying to save money but still gets her monthly Brazilian bikini wax just because she and her man love the feeling." No wonder we never read anything interesting in the pages of these magazines.

Anna, who used to work at Glamour, says then-editor Bonnie Fuller was notorious for dispatching writers to find sources who exemplified predetermined characteristics and narratives. "It was like the Bush Administration in the run-up to the Iraq war: first they decided what the 'story' was, then we found ways to make the 'facts' suit that agenda," she says. But it's not a problem unique to any one ladymag: Alison Stein Wellner, a women's magazine freelance writer who'd apparently reached the end of her tether, wrote in January of her exasperation at having to do story after story where the reporting was shoehorned around an inelastic narrative sent down from on high. Of one magazine, which she does not name, Wellner writes:

They wanted a story about how women with certain Bad Disease found their lives changed by the illness. Sounds reasonable enough. The process is this: I am to go out and find a number of women with this Bad Disease and talk to them about how their lives have changed. I am given various storylines by the editors: my distant marriage has been made closer. Bad Disease made her fearless in the face of a relationship that used to terrify her. She embraced alternative treatments, but not too much, so she doesn't seem like a wacko. Etc.

These are storylines dreamed up in an editorial meeting. They are invented. They are fiction.

My job is to then talk to as many women — real breathing women — as possible to find someone that conforms to these storylines. I am asked to provide photos. If the woman has an undesirable quality — like, say, she's a lesbian — she's disqualified.

Just a few weeks ago I happened to get into conversation with a junior editor at Vogue — which, for all its faults, is still one of the only American women's magazines to actually include any long-form feature writing that goes much beyond Area Woman Brought Closer To Husband By Bad Disease. This editor told me that she was itching to cover the financial crisis. (Vogue has apparently noticed that there has been a financial crisis.) The only problem, said this editor, was that her magazine's coverage would have to take the form of a profile, and because of Vogue's female audience, the profile would have to be of a woman. What's more, any appropriate profile candidate would need to be attractive. "I pitched Sheila Bair to the photo department," said this editor, "and they said, 'Are you kidding? We can't shoot her.'"

That next week, the New Yorker published an excellent profile of Bair, the chairman of the FDIC, a profile that explored her Republican background and how her pro-choice leanings probably scuttled her own political ambitions within her party, and explained how Bair had tried to address the subprime mortgage crisis before it actually came to threaten the rest of the economy. Vogue's latest issue, in case you're curious, has a story about Vanessa Traina (rich, likes clothes) and devotes two pages to a mother-daughter duo from Austin who sometimes like to share dresses and shoes. I did not notice any stories about the financial crisis.

But at least you'll be able to read all about Guilty Man Pleasures come October in the pages of Glamour.

The Best Sex Secret I've Never Told Anyone [Glamour]
Confessions [Cosmopolitan]
Why Magazines Suck [TDB]
The Contrarian: Sheila Bair And The White House Financial Debate [New Yorker]