In "The New Male Midlife Crisis," Lauren Ianotti describes several women who are dating what are often nauseatingly referred to as "kidults." These are the John Mayer-types who keep secret bachelor pads and refuse to marry, have kids, and become normal adults. Ianotti theorizes that behind every kidult is a successful woman—- men are no longer pressured into becoming providers because, these days, more women can take on that role. How do those women deal? Dana, the head of a major global cosmetics brand, thinks she is "just lucky" that her "type B" boyfriend sticks around and "puts up with [her] shit." (Because thanking your lucky stars will totally help your man's commitment issues!)

In "The Honeymoon from Hell," Liz Fischer describes how her four-month honeymoon with her new husband, David, went sour. The newlyweds started despising each other while backpacking across South America and hanging out with vagabonds who dislike the institution of marriage. David would do things like "condescendingly commend her vocabulary" and try to visit multiple sites in one day. (Um, what an asshole?) The couple took a break for weeks and finally rekindled their love in the absence of others. So, how does Fischer deal with the inevitable tension in her marriage these days? She looks to her honeymoon for answers, avoiding exposure to her husband for extended periods of time.

Below, a summary of other tips from this month's issue.

In the December issue, we learn all about what men are really thinking. Or rather, what Cosmo editors pretending to be guys think men are really thinking. The article "Guy Love Diaries" ostensibly features relationship journals from two real men, but we have a hard time believing "Paul, 29" used the term "BFF." Also, he writes:

"When girls get together at showers and bachelorette parties, they usually talk about boys and swap sex techniques. Sara always comes back with new sex tricks and great fellatio.

How could a man know that "wedding shower" is really code for "getting sex tips from Grandma and Aunt Janet?"

In both guys' diaries, they mention that they like it when women pig out in front of them, but stay skinny. Cosmo explains:

"Men fear they will marry a gorgeous girl, and then a couple of years later, she'll let herself go and put on 100 pounds. If you're not eating in front of him, he's nervous about what might happen when you let your guard down later on.

Josh Duhamel must have been terrified when Fergie had to gain 17 pounds for her role in Nine. Yet curiously, he didn't stop loving her! Fergie's secret?: "In Italy, Catholic boys are raised to believe that there are two types of women: the Madonna and the whore. And me? I'm both."

That may work for pop stars, but Cosmo advises you drop the whole "Madonna" thing in the bedroom. There's one dirty move guys "crave" and "you're gonna want to drop the magazine and do it on the spot." Thing is, it isn't actually a "move"; guys just "want to be wanted." Tips? Try sneaking up behind your boyfriend while he's on the phone and grabbing his penis, putting lotion on your nipples and dragging them across his chest, or taking his dick to "massage his tip all over your upper body — lips, cheeks, breasts — all while maintaining eye contact." That should give him a hint.

(Click to enlarge.)

It's interesting how he was homeless for a long time, how his catchphrase is, "daddy's leaving and he's taking the money," how, at 44, he still sorta feels like a latch-key kid afraid of losing it all. It's cool how now he actually has cash — a Bentley, a Rolex, a gorgeous house with a square toilet — after losing it after drugs and prison and so on. And he's thinking about having a baby: "The ultimate artifact of our love. In a onesie."

But some of these quotes!

The guy from Esquire, Scott Raab, says something about how he's glad to see RDJ and how far he's come. RDJ replies:

"This morning I was feeling this overwhelming sense of gratitude. I was having an argument with myself, and the thing that came into my head was, If two plus three is five, then five minus three is two - do you fucking get it?"

Um, what?

Then they talk about Iron Man 2, Sherlock Holmes and a possible Sherlock 2, plus a comedy, Due Date, from the guy who did The Hangover. Here's how RDJ explains his pacing:

"The whole pacing thing has come up in front of the review board - and I'm the one who said that if I don't take a break after Iron Man 2, there is something desperately wrong here. I'm not a guy who in order to be well I need to have one or another carrot in front of me the whole time. I can't keep going at this stride and be okay - but I can keep checking all the dials. This is a big, glorious impasse - but Mama needs a new pair of shoes, dude."

(Apparently "Mama," chair of the review board, is producer Susan Levin Downey, his wife. But without that information, it just sounds like there are imaginary people inside the man's head.)

Here's RDJ on his career:

"I hit my stride later than most folks. A couple years ago, it really was a big old hip-hip-hooray and let's get somethin' shakin' here. Then pfffffff - it reorganized at this higher level…"

Here: A restaurant analogy, followed by a sports analogy:

"I hand it to any and everyone who has made it past their late thirties and has any sense of contentment, because you know so much, and the anxiety can be so overwhelming - and managing the anxiety is a skill set that seems like a menu that changes every day. My insanity is thinking that somehow or another I was responsible - personally, directly responsible - for altering the course of things that have us sitting here on this deck. There's so many other factors in this - so many other people and past relationships, my kid and my folks, and the centerpiece of it all, Susan. It's like I know what happened, and I know that I got the ball and ran with it, and hip-hip-hip, and then like they're saying, 'Look - before you blow out a knee, we'd like to give you a bunch of endorsements,' and I go, 'Great.'

The truth of the matter is, it's always been like this. It hasn't gone up from down; it's just that it's finally got wide enough that I can be contained."

A surfing analogy followed by a car racing analogy:

"I'm not paranoid anymore. I'm not fearful. It's interesting to be surfing this tremendous crisis of capitalism - and I know there's a coral reef under me and I don't want to hang ten, but I do think that when you're in the pole position, that's when you try to beat your best personal time. So I really wanted to be aggressive about an artifact."

To sum up:

"My whole story - there's such immense satisfaction to see past that. I found my way out of the woods by a subtler and subtler trail of bread crumbs - now I'm just in the business of the business, and the business of my life, and the mind-blowing opportunities - and if nothing else, dude, I really love the way these ceilings look."

Robert Downey Jr.: The Second Greatest Actor in the World, Downey on Downey: 18 New Quotes from Robert Downey Jr. [Esquire]

It's no surprise that Self put Clarkson on its key September issue – her August 2007 cover was a top seller that year, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations. But according to WWD Memo Pad's Stephanie D. Smith (a former colleague), "The issue was the magazine's worst seller through September on newsstands, pulling in 220,000 copies and causing the magazine to miss its rate base that month." What went wrong? It's tempting to believe that widespread disdain at a grotesque Photoshop job was to blame, but that's not the whole story.

Once upon a time, women's magazines had a list of rules of what worked on covers –- which teases, colors, numbers postures, type of celebrity. The media world is a lot more crowded now, the rules are continually broken and disproved, and any ladymag editor will readily admit that predicting what will sell on a cover is by no means a science. Would you have guessed, for example, that Zooey Deschanel would be Self's best selling cover so far this year, outselling even number two contender Beyonce? (That's according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations' publisher reports).

Something that fanned the popular outrage against the Self cover was the fact that anyone who cares could find out exactly what Clarkson really looks like online – and did. Everyone knows there's an element of fantasy in magazines, but when the reality (seen in hourly paparazzi and red carpet shots on blogs) and the polished image are so glaringly far apart, you can't blame readers for feeling like they're being taken for fools and walking on by.

Aggressive Photoshopping also serves to make all celebrities look exactly the same — who hasn't stood at a newsstand and wondered which indistinguishable blondish and lean cover star is which? A casual glance might easily miss the fact that that's the ever-popular Clarkson, thoroughly transformed. (Incidentally, Clarkson also got the shrink treatment from the photo department at Elle in 2007, but fewer people seem to expect body-positivity - or reality - from a high fashion magazine.)

Yeah, Deschanel hasn't moved as many units as Clarkson or Beyonce. But take a look at that cover photo again. It's sunny and appealing – and it looks like her.

A Better Self In 2010 [WWD]

Earlier: Kelly Clarkson Slimmed Down On Self Via Photoshop

The thing about models is that they are rarely the subjects of long, investigative, detailed magazine profiles, leavened with biographical information about their parents' backgrounds and whatever psychological tells the writer can seize upon during his or her reporting. Models are mostly seen in pictures. They're there to entertain our projections, and that's easiest done mute. It's celebrities who are endlessly, redundantly storied, profiled over and over again until such mundanities as what Leighton likes to eat for lunch and the fact that Angelina has a pilot's license have been entirely too thoroughly plumbed for metaphoric depth. The glimpse-of-fame profile is an essential part of the celebrity-sartorial complex, but the problems with it are manifold. As the celebrity profiles proliferate, the pool of unreported information that might actually be interesting or affecting to a wide audience shrinks. The pool of under-covered celebrities — who are (of course) pretty and (nearly always) white and (duh) thin enough to fit sample sizes in the standard lavish photo shoot — dwindles, too, until we're stuck reading about the Deep Thoughts of reality TV stars and teenagers ad nauseam. And as women's magazines' reliance on Big Cover Stars to anchor their issues grows, the conditions imposed by the army of protective flacks — writer approval, preset no-go topics, limitations on access — become more byzantine. (Hence why Elle spiked even this pretty tame profile of Jennifer Lopez at the request of her reps. Hence why you'll never read about the night Charlize Theron's mom shot and killed her dad while 15-year-old Charlize watched in a women's magazine. You will instead be told that she's really pretty, and much too polite to be thought of as having opinions, or as Vogue puts it, "far be it from her to ruin a perfectly nice luncheon trying to prove that she's a serious person.") Models get talked about as images but don't tend to get covered as people. Celebrities talk all too much, but far be it from them to say anything interesting.

So into this morass of diminishing returns steps Lara Stone, and it is just so weird to read a story that starts off in the standard mawkish key of celebrity profile writing — obligatory meaningless quote from Mario Testino; repetitive physical description along the lines of "naked Venus...austere, Flemish face...Her breasts are so perfect even I found it hard not to stare at them"; entirely too much attention paid to what she is wearing — before switching codes entirely.

What's the longest she has stayed in one place in the past two years, asks Vogue's Vassi Chamberlain, after Stone confesses she has spent seven days at a stretch, max, in her London apartment since moving to the city six months ago.

She answers without hesitating: "Four weeks." Was that on holiday? "No. That was to rehab." ... "I am a complete alcoholic," she says. "It used to be so easy to tell someone, 'Get me a bottle of vodka,' and they'd run and get it."

Okay then! Consider our expectations raised.

In the story — which you cannot read at British Vogue's website, but which people have taken the time to scan here and here — Stone goes on to make various statements which aren't "bold" or "interesting," with all the self-consciousness those imply, so much as they are just affectingly real. She doesn't sound like she's talking from a well-rehearsed script when pressed about controversial industry practices, as can the otherwise clever Lily Cole. Cole recently claimed in the Times of London, "I saw eating problems more at my school than in that industry. I do get that there is an aesthetic — it changes generation by generation. There's always been an ideal, from the Fifties or the Eighties," which is an ingenious dodge of the size-zero question and a very disingenuous thing to say. Stone, who despite her 34"-24"-35" measurements is sometimes considered one of the larger straight-size models, calls herself "fat" and says, "If I could have the discipline to be super-skinny, I would be. I think of dieting, then I eat pizza. I'm a woman, and every woman wants to be skinnier. Unfortunately." Cole, testy: "I think drugs are taken all over the world. And I've never really experienced it." Stone, realistic: "I never really wanted to be that model on drugs, the sort who gives head for a line of coke."

Stone isn't interested in running interference for an industry that treated her with standard disinterest for the better part of a decade before she, at the improbable age of 23, started to enjoy breakout success. As a teenager in Paris, she lived in an Elite model apartment with up to seven other girls. She was not a sensation. "We did 15 castings a day, visiting the same people over and over again. They'd make bitchy comments about us in French, thinking we didn't understand." (Sounds...familiar.) Stone also worked in Japan, where her agency measured her weekly, instructed her never to smile, and contracted her to do up to three shoots a day. Models who got pimples were sent back. Not that Stone is dewy-eyed about model solidarity: she pushed a girl who wouldn't get out of her way at the Jaeger show this season. "I kept saying, 'Excuse me, excuse me, excuse me,' because I had to get to the catwalk, but she just kept posing. So I pushed her. It was only a few stairs." It's not easy to imagine Kate Bosworth confessing to something so human.

"Men don't like me," reports Stone. For all her much-vaunted "curves", she says, "I haven't been on a date in six months." She last dated an investment banker in New York; the end of the relationship coincided with her stint in rehab and her move to London. "I've just started a club with a girlfriend," she reports, "called the We Hate Men But We Can't Be Gay Club."

I Hate Women's Magazine Profiles But Can't Stop Reading Them.

Ones like this are pretty all right, though.

British Vogue [Official Site]
Stone Age [The Fashion Spot]
Charlize Theron At Home On The Range [Vogue]
Time Out: Lily Cole [Times of London]
Behind The Glow [Daily Beast]

Earlier:French Vogue All Lara Stone, All The Time
The 5 Great Lies of Women's Magazines

Sure, she's playing a vampire in New Moon, but just like any other 15-year-old, she says:

"I read all four Twilight books in one week. It's such a phenomenon, and I wanted to be able to say that I was a part of it."

Unlike some other Hollywood kids, Dakota isn't home schooled or tutored. She goes to high school, where she's a varsity cheerleader:

"I started there in the ninth grade, and they were pretty receptive to me right away. I really wanted a home base, because I feel like no matter how old people are, they remember homecoming. They remember their senior prom. And I really wanted that."

Plus, even though she plays wild child Cherie Currie in The Runaways — and sings a few tracks — she doesn't feel the need to act out:

"I get my rebellion out through my movies. I'm boring in that way. I enjoy having a normal life."

Sure, the onetime Marc Jacobs model first posed for Teen Vogue when she was 12. And after the photo shoot, she took a pair of custom-made kid-size Marc Jacobs combat boots:

"I still have them! I've had to have them stretched, but I will do anything it takes to squeeze into those shoes."

But even that is totally normal (boring!) teenage behavior.

Dakota Fanning: New Moon's New Vamp, Dakota Fanning Teen Vogue Cover Shoot Photos, Dakota Fanning's Fashion Timeline [Teen Vogue]

According to Klein, Clinton is a bundle of contradictions. She messed up an opportunity to advance fruitful peace talks between the Israelis and the Palestinians, except such talks are almost never fruitful. ("For the past 40 years, the awkward Middle East press conference has helped define the job of Secretary of State. You go to Jerusalem or Ramallah; you stand there 'guardedly optimistic' in public; in private, you try to move a comma, but the Israelis or Palestinians move a semicolon to block your comma. The result is almost always the same: gridlock.") Clinton's big mouth made the administration look bad — by reinforcing things Obama had already said. "The conventional wisdom," is that by installing Clinton as Secretary of State, Obama "succeeded in neutering her" (nice), but then, he also gave her the power to "become a torpedo aimed at the Oval Office." She's bungled diplomacy yet made enormous strides in improving America's image abroad. Her edgier tone has been evident from the start of the Administration" — in some cases irritating the White House — yet "her reticence during her first nine months on the job," did indeed bolster the impression that she was "neutered." (Dear Joe Klein and rest of world, Can we please find a better metaphor for being rendered ineffectual?) By all on-the-record accounts, her "relationship with Obama really - really - is strong," but anonymous "emanations," "burblings" and "Foggy Bottom body language" (say that 5 times fast) indicate otherwise, maybe, sort of.

"These tensions are well within the boundaries of normal, creative policymaking," writes Klein, but he seems determined to make something more of them nonetheless. An "essential rule of diplomacy," he says, is "boring is almost always better" — but obviously, an essential rule of journalism is the opposite. So I can sympathize with the need to jazz up a story that amounts to, "She seems to be doing a pretty OK job — not perfect, but whatever." But the way he does it is sort of dizzying. Is she fucking up or doing smart, new things? Is she too blunt or too retiring? Too powerful, or too [new metaphor]? Is she putting words in Obama's mouth or vice versa? Do they lurve each other or secretly plot against each other? The contradictory questions don't balance the portrait of a complex woman so much as they obscure it.

By far the most interesting and enlightening parts come in the middle, when Klein sits down and talks to Clinton, whom he's known for a bazillion years. They talk about her first trip to Pakistan in 1995 — he was there — and she gushes about the experience and admits what a Benazir Bhutto fangirl she was. In this section, Klein points out that "Ironically, the rise of Sunni extremist groups like al-Qaeda has brought Clinton's interests - microfinance, education and health care - to the center of national-security policy for the first time" — oh hey, she has interests! — and says Clinton's excellent relationship with military leaders at home has "helped make the relationship between State and the Pentagon less fraught than usual." She has "a palpable toughness" to her, and unlike a lot of journalists, Klein seems to mean that as a real compliment. He mentions repeatedly that she is intensely guarded and private, which undoubtedly explains a lot of his (and everyone's) difficulty in pinning her down, but still, this middle part is where we get a sense that he's talking about a real person with identifiable strengths, weaknesses, goals and accomplishments. That angle just couldn't sustain a whole feature, I guess.

Perhaps the big lesson to take from this profile, then, is that Hillary Clinton is nowhere near as predictable as we'd like her to be. For as long as she's been in the public eye (and under insane scrutiny to boot), it really seems like we ought to know her well enough to anticipate her next move — and fully understand her last. But it turns out we might not. Which makes it hard to analyze her but really interesting to watch her.

Hillary's Moment: Clinton Faces The World [Time]

First, the gentle flirting/teasing that the two share? So tell-tale! Kristen gives Rob a hard time, saying:

"Rob can barely jump rope," she tells the magazine. It's even inspired a nickname! "I call him Flippy because when he does his stunt rehearsals, he flips around," she says, imitating a penguin's walk. "And God, when he tries to run..."

RPatz counters with an accusation of his own, accusing KStew of Googling herself all the time:

"She just looks at herself," he says. "I look up my competition more than she does. I'm incredibly shallow."

What about real romance? Well, Us reports that the twosome spent the night together at Chateau Marmont on Oct. 29; and shared bagels the next morning. And Bazaar asked them, who's the more romantic of the two?

"I'd have to say Rob is," Stewart says. "I think romance is anything honest. As long as it's honest, it's so disarming." She calls his singing "heartbreaking."

And Rob has nice things to say about his costar:

Stewart, Pattinson says, is "a unique girl. You really don't meet many people like Kristen."

Plus, Rob is clearly in awe of Kristen:

"Kristen doesn't take any slack," Rob says. "She sticks to her guns — and that's difficult to do." He also thinks she's a better actor than he is. "I don't really know how to act. I'm kind of guessing everything. ... Even though I can conceptualize stuff, she can actually do it. I can make something so complex and then be like, That was pout 27." He reckons she's a better judge of character too. "She'll decide on someone a lot quicker. She has a lot more self-esteem than I do, so she's like, 'You're an idiot and I don't want to talk to you,' and I'm like, 'I'm an idiot too!' So I'll talk to an idiot for like three days before deciding."

Basically, you get the feeling that they like each other… but are exhausted by the hype, and what fame has done to their lives.

"There are like 15 different exits in this place," observes Kristen of the tactics she and the rest of the Twilight cast use to avoid the paparazzi. She adds, "Rob is more frustrated with it, but he's 23 and I'm 19. He had a couple more years to be an adult and to be independent, whereas just as I was getting to the age when it's normal to go out by yourself ..." She pauses. "But it's boring because this is all I fucking talk about."

Of course, none of this proves that they're dating… But they're obviously close. It probably sucks to try so hard to be Kristen and Rob in a relationship, when everyone wants to see Bella and Edward together, which would mean OMGTWILIGHTISREAL. Kristen's somewhat of a rebel, who prefers mens' suits to dresses and once wore a skirt with bullets on it. According to Bazaar, if she ould be an animal, she'd be a cat. "With cats, you're like, 'Come here!' And they're standing there being like, 'Fuck you!'" You sense that she doesn't want to be predictable; yet that's just what dating Rob would be. On the other hand, they're drawn to each other, and working closely together, and so on. Plus, as Us reports:

Later, during a New Moon screening, "Rob wanted a cigarette so he went outside with Kristen for about 15 minutes," a source tells Us. "They were hugging, as Rob was smoking his cigarette and then he leaned down and kissed her on the lips. He had his arm around her almost the whole time."

And if that doesn't break Twihards' brains — and hearts — this shot from Bazaar will:

Robert Pattinson & Kristen Stewart: Pictures From the Cover Shoot, Cover Story [Bazaar]
Harper's Bazaar Interview [ONTD]
Kristen Stewart's Nickname for Robert Pattinson: "Flippy" [Us]

After flipping to the "On The Cover" section of the table of contents, we encountered a cover line that seems to have lost its way: "Why you love guys who are bad for you...p 266." (It refers to an E. Jean column telling women to put on their stilettos and run—-not walk—-away from the losers they are dating). So, why didn't this make it? Was it an art-department coup resisting orders to make more room by Photoshopping more of Katie Holmes arms? Was Editor-in-Chief Roberta Myers all like, "We're not Cosmo, bitches," while angrily scrawling all over the mockup? Did Bigfoot abscond with it? Below, our honest take on the lines that actually made this month's cover.

While Ryder "personified the knowing malaise of the late '80s and early '90s," according to interviewer Nick Haramis, she's recently been on a "nine-year retreat from the spotlight." (It's true that we haven't heard much from her, but she has made several movies in the past decade.) Haramis writes:

Ryder rarely gives interviews, as if rebelling against-or atoning for-her effusive past. "It's weird," she says, "the whole concept of an interview. To hold someone accountable for what they've said or done when they were younger is bizarre. We evolve, we change-at least I hope we do."

While Ryder says she's learned to be wary of revealing too much to the press, it doesn't stop her from sharing this bit of personal information:

"I've just been told that news will break next week that I'm pregnant," she says laughing, "which is impossible." And just to make sure she has been understood, Ryder adds, "Because, you know, I'm on my… " Her left hand circles the air just south of her phantom baby bump.

Ryder reveals that she once had a short story published under a pseudonym because:

"I wanted to know what it felt like to have people enjoy something and not know it had anything to do with me." But wouldn't the recognition validate the work? "Well, I can't listen to Wagner because he hated Jews. I can't read Émile Zola-I mean, I love Émile Zola, but he had some scandals that were kind of scary-and I worship Woody Allen, but he had his thing, too. I struggle with the age-old question of how to separate the art from the artist."

She says her four year relationship with Johnny Depp, which started when she was 17, put her at the center of a media frenzy early in her career.

"Things changed for me when I met Johnny," she says. "This weird thing happens when you're written about in magazines, where you start to think, This is who I am. This is how I have to be. I felt restricted and pressured into being the way people perceived me. It was hard for me to find my footing. The Johnny thing made me really afraid of the press because, even though it was about him, I was beside him the entire time."

While she's on good terms with Depp and another celebrity ex, Matt Damon, the fact that her entire dating history is public makes starting a new relationship difficult.

"Matt couldn't be a greater, nicer guy. I'm really lucky that I'm on good terms with him," she says. "With Johnny, it's like we're good, but we lead very different lives." Ryder adds, "I was out at a bar with a friend who said, ‘Do you realize that in America you're never going to be able to meet a guy who knows nothing about you? Everyone will have preconceived ideas about who you are.' I got so bummed out. I'd never really thought about it that way."

Ryder says the media scrutiny caught up to her in 1990, so at 19-years-old she decided to seek psychological treatment.

"I remember waking up one morning," she says of her breaking point. "I looked in the mirror and thought, Am I going crazy? So I checked myself into a hospital where I stayed for a few days. I was surrounded by people who had been molested and abused. I felt like they hated me, didn't know what the fuck I was doing there and wanted me to get the hell out because what the fuck did I have to complain about?" A smile builds across her face when she adds, "When it was my turn to talk in group therapy sessions, I was like, I'm just really tired because it's hard to be famous."

She drew on her experience in the hospital while filming Girl, Interrupted years later. Angelina Jolie won an Oscar for her role in the film, and in some ways Ryder is responsible for jump-starting her career.

"I fought very hard for her to have that part, and I never really felt like I got the chance to know her." Did Jolie ever personally thank her? "I feel like it won't read in print very nicely if I say that wasn't really her style," she says. "But she seems to be a completely different person now."

Ryder is back on the interview circuit to promote Pippa Lee, in which she plays Sandra Dulles, "an adulterous mess of insecurity and self-interest," but she still refuses to discuss some of her own issues. She won't answer Haramis' questions about her December 2001 arrest for shoplifting at Saks Fifth Avenue in Beverly Hills.

We move on, but before doing so, she touches my arm and, as though forgiving me for asking, says, "I understand. I'm curious about other people, so I have to understand when people are curious about me."

Read the rest of the interview here at BlackBookMag.com.

Winona Ryder Bites Back [BlackBook Magazine]

As everyone knows, when magazines do these "New James Dean"-type profiles, the dude is supposed to be mysterious, introspective and confident. Yet though Peretz describes Pattinson as "an exquisite beauty - with perfectly formed red, red lips and a face that might have been dreamed by the Romantic poets," he says he thinks he looks like "a cartoon character." Oh, and one of his legs is longer than the other, which makes him look "like an idiot."

When Peretz visits his hotel room in San Diego, she finds it littered "with beer bottles, old scrambled eggs, a half-eaten Twix bar, and a dirty pair of jeans on the living-room floor." Instead of embracing his rock-star persona, ignoring the mess and feeling no shame, Pattinson notices that he hasn't made his bed and says: "Oh, God. Sorry about that." Dude! A rebel without a cause never apologizes!

The magic words usually uttered by a "New James Dean"? "I really want to direct." Pattinson just talks about how when paparazzi follow him, he's terrified that his "ass crack is showing." Instead of being psyched about attention from millions of women since the Twilight frenzy is so heated, Pattinson says: "I guess I'm not the type of guy cut out to do a franchise… I'm not much of a crowd person."

As for the rumors that he's shagging Kristen Stewart, Pattinson doesn't give a sly Hollywood answer. Instead he says: "It doesn't make any difference what you say [to the tabloids]. I've literally been across the country [from Kristen], and it's like ‘Oh, they were on secret dates!' It's like ‘Where? I can't get out of my hotel room!'"

Painting the star as a normal guy a bit flustered by fame means reactions to this interview are mixed. VF commenter girlEgirl6 writes:

Its impossible for me to LOVE Robert and SWOON over him anymore than I already do but after reading this interview Oh Lawd! I LOVE HIM EVEN MORE. lol He's soooo scrumptious.

JacyB is not as enthusiastic:

I have looked forward to buying this issue for months BUT now that I've read your article about Rob I WON'T be buying it. You've seemingly gone out of your way to put Rob in a bad light. A drunk, dirty, paranoid, weirdo? Why would you focus on such negative things when there are so interesting things to ask him? I am also surprised you deny that he and Kristen are in a relationship but they don't support it with their quotes. Plus, the quote you have for Kristen is from an interview she did last year with another mag. You've just lost your credibility. I thought VF was a classy mag but apparently you're no better than the national inquirer. I'm sure you will sell a record number of copies because of the pics so you really don't care. However, if I were Rob, I'd never do another interview with you again. Shame on you because he doesn't deserve to be treated so unprofessionally!

Evgenia Peretz on Robert Pattinson: "Twilight's Hot Gleaming", Robert Pattinson: The Bruce Weber Portraits (Part One) [Vanity Fair]

Some choice quotes from the issue, out Wednesday:

Losing weight to play a terminally ill woman who falls for her doctor has been rough, because Kate can't have cocktails: "And I love my glass of wine. I love tequila. To be in New York for two weeks and not have one beverage! I'm not sure I've ever done that."

The interviewer asks her what she weighs, which is kind of rude, but Kate says: "I'm pretty solid, actually. I'm not, like, 110lbs. But I'm probably heading towards that." (The Elle writer notes that her arms are very toned and "Her jeans are tight and she looks amazing from behind.")

Moving from the body to her skin: It's her face and she'll freeze it if she wants to:

"I was in a press conference once, and someone says, 'So, I can tell you've never had Botox!' Is that a compliment? Or are you trying to say I'm starting to get wrinkles? I literally was like, 'What?' Everyone's so obsessed with who gets Botox, but it's great! Are you kidding? The fact that women can avoid going under the knife, and get a little Botox treat and not have to worry about it? I'm glad it's there for when it's time."

On boys:

"I sometimes feel like when you're talking to boys, they just hear certain keywords… But if you had a bubble above their head, they'd be thinking about game scores, masturbation and food."

And:

"I love boys… but I believe they're really simple. Every guy likes to say that they're complicated, but they're so easy to figure out. What did that Dr Laura say? Something like, 'All men want is sex and for you to make them a sandwich.' I thought that was really funny – and not entirely untrue."

On being a female:

"I love being a girl. I love clothes and I love the rituals of facials and body treatments, all the stuff girls get, make-up, scarves, hats. And we're like a tribe. That's just our nature. You get a group of women together and, somehow, we keep it together. I love that we can be that powerful, as a group. Men, you know, it's survival of the fittest."

Lastly, she says of bloggers talking shit:

"It's like having a girl talk badly about you in high school. It's so juvenile and base. Not liking an outfit, OK, I get that. OK, let's all laugh at somebody's outfit. OK, you don't like it; you can make a funny joke about it. And if you have a good sense of humor, you can take it. It's happened to me; I got panned at the Oscars one year. But a lot of my [Hollywood] peers are really beautiful people. Really, really nice. And everyone's doing the best they can. It's not a negative world; it's quite positive. And for people to want to switch it and make it negative, because it makes them feel better, that's really bizarre."

Elle UK [Official Site]

[Images by David Slijper courtesy of Elle Magazine.]

"I wanted to look at those pictures in 20 years' time and say, 'Wow, look – after three kids – I didn't look bad.'"

Mission accomplished.

It's sort of sad it's not really about her health, or living longer for her kids. But it's not surprising. Posh works out so she looks good on magazine covers; magazine editors wouldn't shoot her unless she looked good. Shoppers buying the magazines expect perfection; the circle is unbroken.

Even though we're always complaining about Photoshop, do stars event want to be more "real"? Seems like the goal is to look as good as the false, digitally altered version of yourself. (And never mind that the camera adds ten pounds, so you'd better be 10 pounds under what you want to look like.) But is it emotionally, spiritually, intellectually healthy to rely on a glossy periodical for your self-worth?

A commenter on the Daily Fail site writes:

Well, it's a good thing that she has sons and not daughters. What a disturbing message that would be to pass on to them. Hopefully her sons look towards their father should they have any insecurities with themselves.
She seems like a nice person in her interviews, goofy and sweet. It's sad that forcing her body to be so thin is how she thinks she has to be.

Yet someone else comments:

I look back at my mom, who always exercised, and am proud that she instilled that discipline in all 7 of her children. It was a different generation then, and so she didn't have the perfectly tone body we see on some women these days (plus, after 7 kids, how could she?). BUT, I certainly don't want my children looking back at me as their mum and remembering a lazy, out-of-shape sloth. How is that a good role model????? Aesthetics aside, it's UNHEALTHY...

Yes, this is the message, this is what we've learned, people: If you don't work out seven days a week, you're a sloth.

'I Don't Want To Rely On Airbrushing': Victoria Beckham On Why She Now Exercises Seven Days A Week [Harper's Bazaar via Daily Mail]

From its bizarre combination of resort-wear and guerrilla gardening (hoeing in Donna Karan wedges seems like a great way to twist an ankle) to its gushy coverage of "wwoofing" (working without pay on an organic farm), November Vogue does a great job of portraying environmentalism as a fun hobby for rich people with time on their hands. Perhaps most egregious is Sally Singer's piece on hiring consultants to help make her apartment in the Chelsea Hotel more environmentally friendly. She laments that it's hard for her to save energy because "I receive no water, gas, or electricity bills." And her cleaning lady "cannot understand why her beloved long-handled dust mop must make way for a cut-up organic T-shirt on a bamboo stick." But somehow, Singer pushes through. After all, she says, "at yoga class, they tell you that if you breathe correctly, your virtue will be contagious and the world will begin to change" — and surely, if you write about your virtue in Vogue, other rich people will make their cleaning ladies scrub the floors with T-shirts too. Be the change you want to see!

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!

Allure editors helpfully provide a breakdown of some of the crazier food (or non-food) regimens to hit Hollywood. The mild disclaimer in the introduction reads, "these weird restrictions can work, though some may not be that healthful," and those concerned with balanced meals or, like, chewing, might want to avoid the Baby Food Diet and the Apple-Cider Vinegar diet. But most upsetting is the Air Diet, which involves eating food with high quantities of air "injected" into it (Cheetos, Rice Crispies Treats). Either the editors just made this one up, or they're extremely gullible — perhaps some air got "injected" into their heads.

Inside, Swank is forced to cavort awkwardly in a pond (ruining some very nice $407 boots) in order to show she "knows how to have fun." Then Coles asks her to bust some "myths" about herself, including the somewhat contradictory assumptions that she "sits around in designer gowns all day" and doesn't have "a girly-girl bone" in her body. I'm not sure where my girly-girl bone is located, but Swank's is apparently in the foot area, because her response to this particular ridiculousness is "I'm a big foot-soaker." If all this wasn't enough to put a grimace on Swank's face, Coles also asks her if it's true she has no friends. But at least she doesn't have to wear any sequins, which appear in the magazine on a pair of ridiculous silver harem pants — and lots of other places they shouldn't.