• Eva Longoria's perfume ad is a total Photoshop of Horrors. "I have always been somewhat allergic to all perfumes," admitted the actress. The scent was produced with the Falic Group, the company that recently shuttered Christian Lacroix. Priorities. [WWD]

• Phi, the edgy, six-year-old New York-based label, is closing its doors due to the recession. The spring collection shown at fashion week in September will not go into production; the pre-spring collection that just shipped will be Phi's last. Founder Susan Dell is the wife of tech billionaire Michael Dell; it's perhaps a little odd that she didn't want to reinvest to keep the widely acclaimed company afloat. Thirty-five employees learned they were losing their jobs yesterday; the C.E.O. says there will be a warehouse sale in January. [WWD]
• P. Diddy even gave Madame Tussaud's a bottle of his "I Am King" cologne with which to douse his new wax figure, for verisimilitude. [Spoiled Pretty]
• The four stars of Sex And The City will each get their own cover of Marie Claire, but that's absolutely not because they can't stand to be in one room together. [NYDN]
• A New Zealand fashion blogger who was invited to the America's Next Top Model Cycle 14 finale runway show — which took place last week in Auckland — but didn't go posted a shot of the invitation. Turns out Anna Sui is the featured designer. [IsaacLikes]
• "She already has a great handbag collection. She has a mirrored Fendi bag. And she'll say things like, 'I'm not going to wear that any more.' She has really good style as well. She knows what she likes and I can't force her to wear anything she doesn't, which is annoying sometimes. But now I rarely go shopping without her. She tells me what she doesn't like or she'll say: 'Mummy, you look nice' or 'that dress is amazing!' She's got it." Kate Moss, on daughter Lila Grace, 7. [Company via Daily Express]
• Agyness Deyn maybe made out with a dude at a club during Saturday night's snowstorm. Hot. [P6]
• "Giving back" is one way to characterize guest judging Project Runway, Catherine Malandrino. "I can give good advice and be an inspiration for the next generation. I think everyone in life needs direction and models." [HoustonChronicle]
• Thakoon Panichgul unveiled his first jewelry collection for the Japanese pearl brand Tasaki. It features lots of big pearls on rods. Prices range from about $6,000 to just under $40,000. [WWD]
• CFDA Award winner Sophie Théallet — whose dresses Michelle Obama has worn on more than one occasion — followed a traditional route into the industry, working for well over a decade in Paris and New York for established designers before founding her own label. (It became faddish during the 2000s to proclaim your design vision to the world immediately upon graduation from fashion school, à la Proenza Schouler, or even after dropping out, à la Alex Wang.) Jean-Paul Gaultier and Azzedine Alaïa were among her employers. "Gaultier taught me to stop at nothing and Alaia gave a taste for rigor," says Théallet, now based in Brooklyn. [Telegraph]
• Vivienne Westwood's wallpaper collection features her signature loud prints. [Vogue UK]
• A Racked tipster thinks this "Italian Appeal" store has a logo that looks too similar to the American Apparel trademark. We don't quite see it. [Racked]
• Karl Lagerfeld designed a doll with a spectacularly ugly dress, and a life-sized matching dress for little girls. They cost $315 and $1,190, respectively. Part of the proceeds will go to Carla Bruni-Sarkozy's charity. [WWD]
• In ten years of operation, online discounter Bluefly.com has never turned a profit. For the quarter ended September 30, its sales fell 14% on the same period last year, despite overall rising online sales this year. It is receiving a $15 million investment from Rho Ventures, and is reducing its inventory. [WWD]

Will the choice of cover subjects on fashion magazines matter as much in the next decade? Probably not, not with every other medium, new and yet-to-be-invented, competing to give readers fresh images of the stars, and with all magazines struggling to survive the death of their business model. But in a decade that arguably saw the peak of their power (at least if you measure by circulation), the covers of Vogue, Elle, InStyle, Marie Claire, Harper's Bazaar, Lucky, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, and, until 2007, Jane were benchmarks of what was considered beautiful, relatable, and most of all, saleable. With the exception of top 15 runners-up Gisele Bundchen and Kate Moss, models were replaced by actresses. The key to winning this particular contest: longevity and versatility, with long-running romantic woes providing a possible alternative. Unless, of course, you're Gwyneth Paltrow or Nicole Kidman. Then your total is skewed by four to five Vogue covers.


15. Keira Knightley (12) (tied with Britney Spears)
Sexyface and exquisite bone-structure make a potent combination. But with the exception of Knightley's three Vogue covers in four years, women's magazines seemed to be constantly trying to find the cozier side of Knightley's clavicles.


14. Britney Spears (12) (tied with Keira Knightley)
Spears wasn't always a women's magazine mainstay, and even less so a fashion one, but the end of the decade saw her graduating from Rolling Stone peek-a-boo to relatable features about being a mom, including two covers of her pregnant. That, plus standing up her interviewer.


13. Sandra Bullock (13) (tied with Scarlett Johansson)
The endlessly likable Bullock isn't flashy. She transitioned better from a tomboy rep to a ballgown than to Cosmo's enforced sultriness. This was another turtle-and-hare-style, consistent player.


12. Scarlett Johansson (13) (tied with Sandra Bullock)
Although her men's magazine covers were unfailingly titillating, women's magazines vacillated between presenting Scarlett Johansson as the girl next door or showing off her curves.


11. Halle Berry (14)
Let us consider it some type of progress that the era of "Halle Berry, jungle girl," has apparently come to an end with the actress growing older. (Or maybe editors getting a clue?) That said, who knew it was possible to find an unflattering photo of her? Harper's Bazaar did.


10. Jennifer Lopez (15) (tied with Cameron Diaz and Gwyneth Paltrow)
Reportedly deemed too "trashy" for Vogue at the turn of the century, Lopez finally got her shot in 2005, but had to settle for spinoffs Vogue Living and Fashion Rocks for the rest of the decade. Harper's Bazaar and InStyle were only too happy to have their chance, putting Lopez on the cover three times each this past decade.


9. Cameron Diaz (15) (tied with Jennifer Lopez and Gwyneth Paltrow)
Diaz's ability to comfortably cover both W and Cosmopolitan three times each shows that playing both to the mass crowd and the fashion elite equals, well, lots of play.


8. Gwyneth Paltrow (15) (tied with Jennifer Lopez and Cameron Diaz)
Coronated by Anna Wintour and a fashion darling from the start, Paltrow was rarely found on the cover of the one of the service-y women's magazines, where the emphasis is on down-to-earth relatability. That unaddressed yearning, we can posit, is what brought us Goop.


7. Sarah Jessica Parker (18)
SJP is the classic example of an actress that women like but that will never be found on the cover of a men's magazine, unlike almost every other woman on this list.


6. Jessica Simpson (19) (tied with Renee Zellweger)
Jessica Simpson's prominence here can apparently be attributed to her inability to turn down an offer to be on a cover. Her range would be the widest — Elle several times, Jane, Lucky — except that sadly, Vogue has never come a-calling. And probably never will.


5. Renee Zellweger (19) (tied with Jessica Simpson)
A favorite of InStyle (four times), Vogue, W, and Harper's Bazaar (three times each), the star of the two Bridget Jones movies remained a fashionable choice despite her films' largely mass appeal.


4. Jennifer Aniston (22) (tied with Nicole Kidman)
It may seem like Jennifer Aniston has been on every magazine printed this decade, but when you subtract out the tabloids close-reading her every movement, it's impressive yet not game-changing. Known to be a reliable seller in magazine circles (if not necessarily at the box office), the key for Aniston was ponying up quotables about her love life. (The out-of-context "What Angelina Did Was Very Uncool" ending up on the cover of Vogue was a low point for everyone involved.)


3. Nicole Kidman (22) (tied with Jennifer Aniston)
Nicole Kidman never really went away, at least in the ladymag world. Her porcelain features may have lost some of their mobility, but there she was year after year, setting a record for the decade with five Vogue covers, yet pouring her heart out to Marie Claire about Keith Urban's alcoholism.


2. Angelina Jolie (24)
The evolution of Angelina Jolie's magazine covers neatly mirrors her own transformation: from revelations about blood and bisexuality to imperious queen of Hollywood. The Internet is rife with catfight-esque comparisons between Aniston and Jolie covers, and maybe Vogue was being impish photographing both of them in red dresses on the beach. In any case, in our minds, nothing has quite equaled the Vogue cover above.


1.Drew Barrymore (26)
The surprise queen of the decade has survived a lot more than magazine editors' fickleness. Having spent her entire life in the public eye and overcome early addiction, she emerged as both a likable actress and, increasingly, a Hollywood power to be reckoned with. Quirky, girlish appeal as well as the ability to pull off couture equals ladymag gold.

In the cover story, Portman addresses the recent tabloid stories that claim she made out with Penn behind a curtain at a party in L.A.:

He's obviously someone I'm friends with," she says. "I mean, not 'hey, wassup?' friends, but we were all on the [Cannes 2008] jury together — Alfonso [Cuaron] and Marjane [Satrapi] — and we had a really great time, and then ... It was one of those things where you're like 'Oh my God! I'm that person who's caught in this shitty rumor brigade.' You can't win. You don't say anything and everyone's like, 'It's true.' You say something and you're keeping the story alive. It's bad, bad news."

That sounds like a no, but who knows what secrets are hidden in those ellipses?

The rest of the profile emphasizes that Portman's a "good girl": she didn't go to high school parties, got drunk for the first time in college, and only tried pot when she was in her 20s. Those looking for something scandalous will have to settle for her comments on how she avoided becoming some director's muse even while working with Woody Allen, which could be interpreted as a dig at Scarlett Johansson:

"I have a problem with muse-ship," Portman says, curving into herself as if a little embarrassed. "I feel like througout history, it's been men vampiring on women's specialness. And why do that for someone?" Then she laughs, before adding: "Maybe it's fear of intimacy or something."

She's nobody's muse, but she is willing to dress up as Peter Pan if you ask nicely. (Fig. 1)

Elsewhere in the issue, Marie Claire "explores the darker side of having an affair with the guy in the corner office." The writer (who is married to her former boss) points out that several famous couples, including Barack and Michelle Obama, started out in office romances. There are several titillating (read: corny) stories about workplace hookups, like the lawyer dating her boss who would "slip into his office, sit on his lap, unbutton her shirt, and put his face between her breasts." However, the biggest consequences the women in the article face are being taken less seriously and choosing to find a new job when their office relationship got uncomfortable. None of the women experience the real "dark side," which ranges from getting fired by your ex-lover to causing a Lewinsky-esque national scandal.

Click to enlarge.

Fig. 1

Natalie Portman on Marie Claire

Representative Quote:

She got to spend three months in France when she was 11, shooting The Professional, and on her days off her mother would take her to Monet's house in Giverny and encourage her to come home and paint a version of what she'd seen. When she traveled to Japan for the premiere of The Professional, her parents insisted on a week off to explore the country. Portman shrugs: "OK, so I didn't really go to high school parties," she says, "and yeah, I didn't touch pot till I was in my 20s. I didn't get flat-out drunk until I went to college. But I think that's a good thing in many ways."

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

"Diet Or Exercise: Which Sheds The Pounds Faster?"

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

275. Which is either the number of brain cells you will shed reading "WHAT'S SO BAD ABOUT BONKING THE BOSS?", or the number of Fabulous Finds To Start The New Year you, mere female, will need to get him in a bonking mood.

Britney Spears on Elle

Elle's Lady Gaga cover might be getting all the attention — but the January issue is actually hitting newsstands with a second cover, featuring Spears and her sons. Golf claps for Britney, everyone! Last time she tried to do an Elle shoot, something terrible happened.

Representative Quote:

Elle's Spears profile is not yet online, so let's nab another quote from Marie Claire.

A little-known fact about Portman is that for her very first acting job — as an off-Broadway understudy — she replaced Britney Spears. Needless to say, their paths have diverged wildly since then

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

"DO YOU EXERCISE TO EAT? HERE'S A BETTER WAY."

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

175. The speed, in miles per hour, which this magazine might reach if you dropped it off a very tall building. Which would be more educational than reading about the BEST NEW SHOES, JACKETS, AND BAGS.

Lady Gaga on Elle

Representative Quote:

"I get all the symptoms of a pregnant woman. I get headaches, I get tired, I get blurred vision sometimes during a really intense session with [her creative team] the Haus."

WHEN WILL YOU PEOPLE UNDERSTAND THAT THIS WOMAN IS JUST PREGNANT WITH CREATIVITY?!

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

See above.

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

See above.

Sarah Jessica Parker on Glamour

Representative Quote:

SJP: I still will not wear turtlenecks.

GLAMOUR: Why not?

SJP: I feel like I'm having a panic attack in them. I'm so short that the little bit of height I have is taken and consumed by the turtleneck. My son won't wear them, either!

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

"SO TRUE! Why The Happiest Women Aren't Perfect."

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

50. Could that be the number of Your Most Private Questions that you could Answer, right now, by reading Wikipedia.

Scarlett Johanson on UK Harper's Bazaar

Representative Quote:

This comes from the mouth of Bono, who is interviewed alongside Johanson, because she wears (PRODUCT) RED clothing in the accompanying fashion shoot:

"I don't give a shit how things look anymore. I just want to get the results, get the cheque signed. If it takes me looking like a totally unhip white messiah, I don't care. You do whatever it takes to get people what they need to survive. For me, it was coming home that was the hardest. Coming back to my privileged life. I used to find that really difficult. It's hard when you find yourself in such a harsh juxtaposition with somebody who's fighting for their life. It used to make me feel more awkward than it does now, being this rich rock star next to a starving African."

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

Strangely, none. (The standard beauty and fashion stories look exceptionally inoffensive, or unexceptionally offensive.) Although as hard as it is to take a half dozen pages of Johanson nursing a bad case of sexyface in leopard print clothing, it's pretty odd that the cover implies she and Bono would bond over a serious consideration of music.

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

2010, which is the year you might finally itemize your charitable donations for tax purposes, and briefly consider writing off the cost of Johanson's Tom Waits album. Since listening to it was clearly an act of charity on your part.

Kate Hudson on US Harper's Bazaar

Representative Quote:

"With a hot new movie and major-league man, Kate Hudson seems anything but normal. But the bubbly blonde is just like the rest of us (with fancier clothes, of course)."

Major League! Get it? Get it? No, she really doesn't say anything about A-Rod:

Isn't she moving fast? "People don't know where I'm moving," she counters good-naturedly. "They're just reading psychobabble in these [tabloid] magazines." Even when confronted with the evidence — a picture of her kissing A-Rod — she gamely holds her ground. "There's a guy that's shooting probably 60 frames a minute. That was a sideswipe on the cheek. That wasn't even a kiss." So she's not in love with this guy? "I quickly kissed the cheek," she maintains. "And I remember one of the headlines the next day said, MAKEOUT SESSION. What is wrong with people?

Hahaha, she didn't actually specify "tabloid" magazines.

Most Immediately Annoying Cover Line:

Harper's Bazaar on this side of the pond is totally deficient in this category, too. "Get Gorgeous Hair" — much as our credulity doesn't stretch to believing such a thing could ever result from the use of ridiculously priced products — just doesn't raise my hackles.

Largest Number On The Cover, And What It Refers To:

562. Either New Ideas to Update Your Look (again!), or Things You Might Make If You Treated This Issue Like An Origami Project.

• Alicia Keys has a jewelry line; her bangles and rings come engraved with the words of the Japanese pseudoscientist Masaru Emoto. You can't make this up. [WWD]
• Marie Claire has published some clear pictures of Rodarte's line for Target. [Nitrolicious]

• John Galliano's Christmas tree design for Claridge's is extraordinary and very weird. [Vogue UK]
• Madonna has rebounded from Louis Vuitton's decision not to re-hire her for a third season of ad campaigns rather well: she shot the spring Dolce & Gabbana campaign with Steven Klein in a Brooklyn studio on Friday. [WWD]
• Zac Posen has eliminated his public relations officer because of budget constraints. [WWD]
• Jamba Juice is getting into the rag trade. The maker of delicious smoothies thinks it can whip up "Jamba-inspired" t-shirts, sweatshirts, and headwear that everyone will want. No delivery date for the first collection was given. [BrandWeek]
• Express is suing Forever 21 for copyright violations concerning several plaid patterns, in what has to be the endgame for fashion originality. [WWD]
• Scarlett Johanson is apparently still doing ad campaigns for Mango. [FWD]
• Diane Von Furstenberg dropped a few dresses off with Ikram Goldman during a recent trip to Chicago. We all know what that means! [WWD]
• Thakoon Panichgul is now the creative director of the Japanese jewelry brand Tasaki. [Style.com]
• Tom Ford's profile in the Advocate is alternately touching, perhaps too revealing, and kind of crass — kind of like the man's designs. He opens up about his depression, his struggles with alcohol dependency, admits to chasing youth with Botox and Restylane, and how he once shaved his eyebrow off when he was on mescaline, but most fascinatingly of all, to our ears, is the revelation that in his adaptation of Christopher Isherwood's A Single Man, he gave the main character a last name after his first boyfriend, Ian Falconer. Oh! Also there's this: "Yves and his partner, Pierre Bergé, were so difficult and so evil and made my life such misery. I'd lived in France off and on and had always loved it. I went to college in France. It wasn't until I started working in France that I began to dislike it. They would call the fiscal police, and they would show up at our offices…They'd come marching in, and you had to let them in and they'd interview my secretary. And they can fine you and shut you down. Pierre was the one calling them. I've never talked about this on the record before, but it was an awful time for me. Pierre and Yves were just evil. So Yves Saint Laurent doesn't exist for me…I have letters from Yves Saint Laurent that are so mean you cannot even believe such vitriol is possible." [Advocate]
• Says Vogue/CDFA Fashion Fund finalist Flora Gill, of Ohne Titel: "My parents were always very supportive. They actually bought me books about Comme des Garçons when I was 8 years old, which I think is not…usual." Meet the other nine finalists in this video. [Style.com]
• Simon Fuller, who already holds a 51% stake in London's Storm Models, is rumored to be investigating setting up a New York agency. Posh is supposedly involved. This sounds awfully similar to the Simon-Fuller-and-Kate-Moss-are-going-to-found-an-agency rumor of a few months back. [Daily Mail]
• The woman who runs British lingerie brand Ultimo (current face: Peaches Geldof) noticed her 10-year-old daughter talking about going on a diet. So she has decided to ban excessive Photoshopping in Ultimo's advertising images. (Whether she'll ban the company from employing women like Peaches Geldof as role models is unanswered.) [Sun]
• Friday, Lady Gaga tweeted that she was visiting Nick Knight's Showstudio. The singer is apparently working with the fashion photographer/videographer on a video for her upcoming tour. The concept apparently involves "a veritable menagerie of animals." [Showstudio]
• Style.com ranked 2009's top fashion partiers; all the usual suspects — Olivier Zahm, Alex Wang, Lauren Santo-Domingo, Vladimir Restoin-Roitfeld, Leigh Lezark, Derek Blasberg, and Karl Lagerfeld — make the cut. But more importantly: can we never, ever refer to the Meatpacking District as "MePa" again? [Style.com]
• Cacharel, relaunched this October under Belgian designer Cedric Charlier, is returning to worldwide distribution in the spring. [WWD]
• And, just like that, it's over: Versace face, British Vogue cover model, Rimmel campaign-nabber Georgia May Jagger says she's quitting the biz. At least for the rest of the year: she's 17, so she has school, you know. [Vogue UK]
• Luella is closing. [Vogue UK]
• Former Gucci creative director Dawn Mello was allegedly run down by a bicycle messenger outside Bergdorf's. She has a shattered femur. [P6]

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.

Making her debut with a full-length picture looking all kinds of fierce, Falcon's column immediately earned points with me for daring to call out designers for equating larger sizes to shapeless, non flattering cuts and for embracing "ass-hugging" as necessary quality for the perfect jeans.

As much as I love, love, love Falcon's column (I'm already rethinking my stance on my now-canceled subscription) there were a couple of lines in the article that immediately jumped out at me.

Now, maybe I'm a little too accustomed to the fashion blogs I read which cater to a variety of sizes without apology (Clutch, The Fashion Bomb, Fatshionista/LJ holla!) But I couldn't decide if Falcon was keeping it real about her experiences or starting to pander a bit to a smaller audience who expects a more self-depreciating big girl:

Of course, it surprised no one that I decided to pursue a career as a fashion stylist-though at 5'2" and 220 pounds, I'd need an elaborate pulley system and a can of Crisco to shimmy into the clothes I dress models in.

Big girls love accessories-they always fit, no size tags required.

Let's face it, it's a maddening task for girls even half my size, but I go through at least a few pairs of jeans every year, routinely wearing holes in the area where my thighs rub together.

Again, I'm not sure where to fall on these. After all, that last bit about wearing holes in jeans is something that happens to me as well, all the time. And the jeans she recommends are cute. But some of the big girl platitudes don't jive with my experiences . For one, accessories don't always fit which is why I have to trek to Torrid for bangles, and live in slouch styles since most other boots never make it up my calves. Purses too - large arms means I always need to check the strap. In addition, glamming up a basic outfit with luxury accessories is a bit beyond my reach - but I'll chalk that up to the priorities of the fashionable. It's clear that Falcon has made piece with her body (after all, she dresses beautifully) but her column seems more practical than celebratory when it comes to the transformative power of fashion.

But that's a minor quibble - I'm excited to see a size eighteen woman like myself seen as an expert on fashion and selecting clothes and outfits that would actually work for women my size. I'm excited that she's bringing more than size diversity to the fashion glossies.

And most of all, I'm excited to see next month's recommendations on cocktail chic.

(Image Credit: Marie Claire)

Big Girl In A Skinny World [Marie Claire]
Official Site [Clutch Magazine]
Official Site [The Fashion Bomb]
Official Site [Fatshionista]
Live Journal Community [Fatshionista]

• Lindsay Lohan, finally addressing her disastrously received first Ungaro collection, says, "I am learning." But she will be back in Paris for the next show! "It's already in January. I thought it was in March." January? January means couture.

Could Mounir Moufarrige seriously be reviving Ungaro's couture division — which was shuttered in 2004 — with Lohan at the helm? God help us. Lohan also denies any responsibility for, or foreknowledge of, those ridiculous sparkly heart pasties that the Ungaro models purposefully flashed during the show that just walked in Paris. [People]

• Selena Gomez is launching a fashion line, called Selena Gomez Dream Out Loud. Something called Cynosure Holdings is responsible for the collection, which seems appropriate, somehow. It's not coming out till fall 2010, so if the economy gets worse, there's still time for it the whole idea to slink quietly away, like Pastelle. [WWD]
• Here are some first looks from Rodarte's Target collection, due out on December 20. It includes a lot of leopard print, lace, sequins, and tulle. [Seventeen and A Tiny Machine]
• Carmen Marc Valvo focuses on the positive: "I've survived in this business for over 20 years. And I've survived colon cancer; so a little dip in the world economy isn't enough to keep me down." [Houston Chronicle]
• Badgley Mischka are doing a lower-priced line, called Mark & James. [WWD]
• Ordinary New Yorkers speak out on Filippa Hamilton, the Ralph Lauren face who was fired for being too fat, at size 4: "It makes me angry," says Alexandria Blackwell, 15, of the Bronx. "They always want skinnier." Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child and teen development expert, says, "If a stunning size 4 model is too overweight to look good in their clothes, then they need to change their clothes, not the model." Revolutionary! [NYDN]
• Delia Ephron, on clothes and life: "Clothes have special power. I'll always remember the raspberry colored v-necked silk sweater I was wearing on my husband and my first date. If I hadn't been wearing that sweater that night, would any of it have happened?" Nora says dressing well becomes more important as women age. "Of course it does, because looking good is so easy when you're young. For openers, you're young, and that looks good." [Glamour]
• Linda Evangelista, on doing a shoot for W with chickens: "I grew up in Canada, in an area where everyone had chickens. I mean, we weren't supposed to have chickens — it was a residential area, but we did. Also, when I went back to Italy with my parents where they grew up, there were chickens. So you can say I know a lot about chickens." [W]
• Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles' limited vocabulary drew the attention of Fashion Week Daily, which provided a handy summary of Coles' questions for Hilary Swank, with every repetition of the word "assume" highlighted. [FWD]
• Crocs is opening a flagship store in Boulder, Colorado. [UPI]
• Someone, somewhere, "officially" named Ines de la Fressange the most chic woman in Paris. Carla Bruni, eat your heart out! [Telegraph]
• "I'm excited to go to Olympics in Vancouver," says former figure skater Vera Wang. "I'm definitely going. I always try to go anytime the Olympics come close to our continent!" She still thinks about her former sport. "Skating became a different sport with the magnification of television. And certainly a few exciting things happened in between, like knee clubbing and scandals to raise the sport's profile. But in the end, it's one of the most beautiful spectator sports that you can watch. It's not just about being insanely athletic; it's all being expressive and artistic. There's no other sport that combines spinning, jumping, choreography, costumes, music all in one- it's a full on press." [FWD]
• When she moved on to being an editor at Vogue, Wang had a few hairy moments. "There was a time where I put all of the furs on a Vogue shoot with Deborah Turbeville into the water, and the entire fur industry wanted to sue me," the designer recalled. "Another time we ruined a Frank Stella painting…we were shooting at night and I remember watching a model jumping up and down in front of a work of art that fell apart. It's hard to put a number on it, but that work of art was worth a quarter of a million 35 years ago. That's probably $3 billion now." [WWD]
• Vera Wang popped in to Karolina Kurkova's baby shower, which was also attended by Adriana Lima, Michelle Monaghan, Rachel Roy. Lima, who is also pregnant, compared bellies with Kurkova. [P6]
• Heidi Klum says she's not going to try and lose the baby weight just to be in this year's Victoria's Secret show. [People]
• Jason Wu is greeting his adoring public in Taiwan this week. [WWD]
• Zac Posen is dipping his toe in the churning waters of advertising. Coco Rocha stars and Ellen von Unwerth shot. [Fashionista]
• "Being fierce is a state of being, not something you can become. It's a high point of being a certain persona. Ferosh is a downgraded version of being fierce." — Leading ferocity expert Christian Siriano. [Star-Trib]
• The Gap is bringing back television advertising, after two years without. The chain will also open a flagship in China next year, but overall the company plans to reduce its retail space by 10% over the next five years. Its September same-store sales were down a relatively modest 1%. [TS]
• H&M's same-store sales slid 8% in September. [WSJ]

While it feels uncharitable to criticize them for bringing attention to abused women, magazines like Marie Claire (and Glamour, which used to publish Mariane Pearl's sex slavery pieces) do seem to look to sex trafficking as the way to inject some Seriousness in between all the makeup tips and dress-for-your-shape ideas. Like stories about breast cancer or other diseases, they seem designed to give the magazine a certain kind of cred — but unlike disease stories, they're often played for shock rather than pathos. In Marie Claire, Abigail Pesta's "Diary of an Escaped Sex Slave" doesn't stint on descriptions of torture — pimps gouge young sex slaves' eyes out, cover them with insects, and shove hot chilies into their vaginas. There's an argument to be made for showing us all that — disgust can turn to outrage can turn to action — but what about a totally extraneous scene in which Pesta's car runs over a puppy on a Cambodian road? Sometimes the piece seems less about stirring up rage against sex slavery, and more about offering a prefab image of Death and Destruction in a Foreign Land.

Said prefab image, of course, must come with a dash of Hope, which in this case wears nice outfits. Of Sreypov Chan, an escaped sex slave turned aid worker who does seem totally heroic, Pesta writes, "In her shiny pink raw-silk dress, she looked as if she'd discovered she had the right to exist." Later, she says,

Sreypov, in a crisp white cotton button-down blouse, black pants, and white heels with sparkling silver trim, kneels on the floor as the women circle round. Sitting there, with her perfect posture, she looks like hope personified.

In fine ladymag fashion, the symbols of liberation and a renewed sense of self-worth are ... clothes. Pesta's essay comes off as just the flipside of Marie Claire's fashion and lifestyle coverage — being a sex slave is apparently the opposite of dressing pretty. And while the story of Sreypov is moving, and the online version includes a link to an anti-sex-trafficking charity, the piece still feels like it was intended to make editors feel good for having run it, and readers feel good for having read it. Does sex trafficking need to be stopped? Absolutely it does. Will alerting individual magazine readers to the problem make that more likely? Maybe. But Pesta's article (which, we should mention, was no doubt heavily edited by Marie Claire brass) reads less like a call to action than like a quick stop in Realityland on the way from Dresses to Shoes. And women like Sreypov deserve more than a quick stop.

Diary Of An Escaped Sex Slave [Marie Claire]

According to Marie Claire, Drew Barrymore and Ellen Page "can't keep their hands off each other"; there's even a pullquote from Barrymore calling Page "sexy as a mother". And that's about it. This portrayal of "besties as lezzies" seems a little more fit for Maxim, no? The rest of the magazine is full of the usual items you'd expect: angry women after discount plastic surgery, ankle boots, eyeshadow, mohair, and the obligatory feature on women abroad and how hard it is to be them. Below, the usual cliches and coverline lies.

In a absurdly-titled article titled "Stiletto Stoners" in the October issue of Marie Claire, writer Yael Kohen reports some shocking news: Successful, educated women in their late 20s/early 30s, with demanding careers are smoking pot!

I know, right? But wait, not only that, they're also not fat! (Or poor!) According to the piece, one in five female pot smokers lives in a household earning more than $75,000 a year. Or as Marie Claire refers to it: "The Pottery Barn set." This type of woman likes to "kick off her Marc Jacobs pumps" at the end of a long, hard workday, and unwind by smoking a joint as her "3-carat cushion-cut engagement ring catches the light." Also, did I mention that she's not fat? Because the article reminds the reader several times.

These woman are (thin) professionals: "lawyers, editors, insurance agents, TV producers, and financial biggies…nothing like the unemployed out-of-shape schlubsters who are a staple of the Judd Apatow canon." Also, "sugary cocktails" are super high (no pun intended) in calories, so weed is somewhat of a Weight Watchers alternative for getting one's buzz on.

One 28-year-old woman profiled in the piece said she'd been warned of the risks of marijuana—"My mom told me that I'd get hooked and get the munchies and get fat"—but she learned this was "baloney" when she lost 25 pounds despite the fact that she smokes weed regularly.

Her secret: She eats a healthy meal right before she smokes, which seems to curb her appetite. 'The munchies are absolutely something you don't have to get into,' Schwartz maintains. 'Of course, the desire to eat is always there.'

Ummmkay… She also added, "I'll go to the gym for an hour, then come back home and smoke a joint while I listen to jazz and read books—I just finished The Fountainhead."

This morning, Today reported on the magazine's 411 on 420. (They also had a great graphic.)

Wow. Who would've thought that an expensive habit that lends itself well to introspective—albeit retarded—thoughts would popular amongst women with a little spending money and a lot on their minds?

Stiletto Stoners [Marie Claire]

Goldman, who admits that she wasn't raised in a "naked home," and that she still finds "the bare female form pretty foreign," just wants everyone in the dressing room to cover themselves up, as the sight of her fellow gym patrons in the nip offends her sensibilities:

As I scampered from the shower to my locker, clutching a threadbare gym-issued towel barely wide enough to cover me, I caught sight of a doughy naked woman, her nipples the size of salami slices, holding aloft a compact as she carefully plucked her eyebrows. I was so distracted by her brazen nudity - by the boobs, folds, moles, and thatch - that I walked right into an open locker door, prompting the kind of woozy spell that, had I been a cartoon character, would have been accompanied by chirping birds.

Ah yes, the "doughy naked woman" with large nipples. God forbid she dare to pluck her eyebrows (a beauty standard pushed by magazines like...Marie Claire) naked. Who the hell does she think she is, not having a body like Angelina Jolie and being comfortable enough with herself and her naked body to take care of her damn unibrow with her apparently not-Lea-Goldman-approved boobs hanging out? The nerve of some people!

Goldman goes on to describe the other horrors she's witnessed in the locker room: women clipping their toenails (quelle horreur!), brushing their teeth (dental hygiene! Disgusting!), and watching women "slather lotion on their haunches like they were being filmed for the Spice Channel." What Goldman fails to realize is that the women in the locker room are merely lotioning their legs: the seedy Spice Channel aspect of it is a product of her own imagination, which apparently goes into overdrive the second she steps into the ladies room. "The locker room is no place for that kind of preening," Goldman argues. Then what the hell is the locker room for?

I will admit that I've always been shy in public changing rooms: I am the kind of person who mastered the ol' bra-switcheroo-through-the-shirt-arm-hole as soon as I was old enough to wear a bra, and who often changed for swim meets or softball games in the privacy of the bathroom stall, instead of changing in front of my teammates. But my shyness was the product of my own body image insecurities: I was always afraid I didn't match up to my teammates (and that they would mock me, like Goldman does to her fellow patrons).

However, as I got older and left the high school locker rooms for swankier gyms, I was forced to face my fears and share locker room space with women of all ages, shapes, and sizes. Seeing other people walk around naked is weird, yes, but over time I began to view the women who walked around naked as confident and secure: they didn't really give a shit what I thought about them, and I admired that. After a while, I didn't think about them at all; they were just other patrons, going about their business, and I suspected that they felt the same about me. I still do the bra switcheroo at times, but I'm working on it.

Goldman claims she hasn't made peace with her body yet, and that, I think, is why she feels the need to tear down the bodies of others (and why she assigns such disgust to everyday tasks like brushing one's teeth or putting lotion on one's legs). I suspect that Goldman's disgust, in the end, is really a misplaced jealousy: she cuts these women down so brutally because she envies the fact that they aren't as horrified by their bodies or the less glamorous aspects of personal grooming as she is. Goldman wants everyone else to cover themselves up for her own benefit, but it would be much more beneficial if she got over herself and realized that her attitude toward fellow women was more "horrifying" than anything she could possibly see in a locker room.

Bare Naked Ladies [Marie Claire]

Now, my criticism isn't with the Marie Claire piece itself. The ideas presented in the Guide are sound ones, some rehashing familiar territory if you have been paying attention to the food debates:

No need to ditch your favorite grocery store. About 75 percent of American supermarkets carry some organic food, and many of the big chains boast their own affordable organic brands (e.g., Safeway's O Organics, Stop & Shop's Nature's Promise). Stick to the periphery of the store-the most heavily processed foods are shelved in the middle. Imagine you're trolling the aisles with your great-grandma in tow, suggests sustainable-eating guru Michael Pollan in his book In Defense of Food (required reading for the au naturel set). If she wouldn't recognize something as food-read: Gummi Bears or Cap'n Crunch-think twice before picking it up.

And there were some tips that bear repeating over and over again, particularly if you are trying to figure out how to green your eating on a budget:

Organic produce, starting with whatever you eat most often. Keep in mind the Environmental Working Group's "dirty dozen"-fruits and veggies found to have the most pesticide residue, even after washing: peaches, apples, sweet bell peppers, celery, nectarines, strawberries, cherries, kale, lettuce, imported grapes, carrots, and pears. It's fine to buy nonorganic, thick-skinned fruits like avocados, bananas, and pineapples.

However, the discussion around eating normally stagnates here, where most of our dialogue about food becomes what to eat, and what not to eat, and not about the changes to our culture that changed the way we think about food. Our attitudes toward consumption, family, and gender roles also influence what and how we eat, but rarely do we venture into exploring those aspects of food.

What about discussing the return of a social food culture as opposed to a convenience food culture? Micheal Pollan advocates for these things, but many of these ideas cannot be divorced from the social changes that accompanied our initial change in food culture. As Kate Harding wrote, in a critique of Michael Pollan's NYT Magazine piece:

Pollan takes pains to assure us that the large number of women now working outside the home is only partially responsible for this trend, and that he's not calling for women to get back into the kitchen or anything. He's calling for everybody to get back into the kitchen — or at least one cook in every household, and if that happens to be the woman, well, he didn't make the rules! To be fair, Pollan would probably not be such a fierce advocate for home cooking if he didn't enjoy it himself, but I still can't help thinking his penis is showing when he describes Betty Friedan's "The Feminine Mystique" — which also debuted in 1963 — as "the book that taught millions of American women to regard housework, cooking included, as drudgery, indeed as a form of oppression." Funny, I always thought Friedan became a feminist icon because she articulated what millions of women already felt, not because she brainwashed them into believing that repetitive, menial, unpaid labor might not be the best use of their talents.

Kate makes some salient points here, particularly later in the piece when she discusses the work of Peg Bracken, whose "I Hate To Cook Book" was popular back in the day. Often, it is difficult to divorce the politics of cooking from the act of cooking. Even in my tiny little household, with two people who both enjoy cooking, it is easy to begin to feel like your kitchen has somehow become a battle ground over gender roles, starting with the seemingly innocuous question, "Are you making dinner?"

In addition, our cultural attitudes toward food has changed significantly along with the increased focus on work. Jan Chipchase - whose blog, Future Perfect, is dedicated to exploring cultural norms and interesting applications for everyday things - provides a succinct illustration of how our food culture can change over time. He posts this picture, and writes:

It might look innocuous to you, and yes it's in keeping with the blurring of what we consider to be 'normal' to do in home and work spaces - but this 'express' cereal is a home breaker. Simply put, it supports the practice of eating at your desk away from the family. And in many ways its a continuation of the decades-long term trend (in the UK at least) of shifting from a cooked breakfast - where the family gathered to eat, to cereals - which supported independent eating times.

For everything that enables time shifting, consequences.

Now, having instant breakfast cereal or microwaveable meals is not the end of the world. However, the rise of convenience food and drive-throughs did spark a major change in how we viewed food and meal times. Slowly, our culture transitioned away from the idea of communal meals and toward more individualized meals, eaten on the go, in cars, or alone.

I interviewed Bryant Terry, author of Vegan Soul Kitchen, and he explained that a large part of his influences creating his cookbooks and his menus (which often come with soundtracks) is trying to re-create the food heritage that we are losing:

When you talked about diets changing and adapting, it made me think about the way in which African-Americans, like most Americans, saw the globalization of agriculture, the mechanization of agriculture and the industrialization of food over the past three or four decades as a good thing. It's cheap, it's fast, it's convenient - hey, what's wrong with this? We're modern and we want to be with the times. And we wholeheartedly embraced this in many ways - not everyone, but we really embraced it. And it's not just African-Americans. It's so many people of different backgrounds. When I have been giving talks lately about this issues, it resonates with people from Appalachia, it resonates with immigrants from Latin America, it's something that is of concern in so many different cultures and communities that in all cases, we need to figure out how can we re-embrace those old ways. How can we get back to the ways that sustained our parents, and our grandparents?

And I think, most importantly, what we've lost is our sense of community and sharing and connecting, because that was so embedded and ingrained in all the other things around our food systems and those are things we have to be re-embracing in these next moments, in this period of economic strife and people tightening belts. If we're going to get through it, I think we really have to think how can we be in relationship with our neighbors and all of these formal and informal kinship networks to help each other?

Much of the existing discussion of food focuses on the individual, what each person needs to be putting in their own personal refrigerator. But by shifting the conversation to a larger dynamic, we can start engaging with food on a much deeper level. There needs to be the acknowledgment that some people just flat out do not like to cook. And that's fine! Not liking cooking is being framed as an individual failing, but really it is a missed opportunity. People who don't cook can still advocate for better prepared foods, a wider variety of affordable food in their neighborhoods, and still contribute to neighborhood initiatives like a community garden. (My own personal friends circle can be divided into those who cook, those who bake, and those who purchase and prepare the drinks. All vital roles.)

We've done quite a bit of talking about food and the environment - let's start trying to mature the conversation.

The Girl's Guide to Eating Green [Marie Claire]
Michael Pollan wants you back in the kitchen [Broadsheet]
Out of the Kitchen, Onto the Couch [New York Times]
Breakfast: Home Breaker [Future Perfect]
An Interview with Bryant Terry on Race, Class, Food, and Culture - Part 1 [Racialicious]

• The details of Fashion's Night Out — aka Anna Wintour's Plan To Save Retail — have been announced. Over 700 stores in all five boroughs will be participating in events that range from sewing circles to cook-ins to rock shows:

• Celebs and designers who will be in attendance at the various festivities include Ashley and Mary-Kate Olsen, Francisco Costa, Manolo Blahnik, Isaac Mizrahi, Kate Mulleavy, Diane von Furstenberg, Liev Schreiber, Stephanie Seymour, and Anna Wintour herself. Although all the tee shirt customization and free music will be enough to drag us around to at least a few stores come September 10, we're also tremendously excited by the idea of taking salsa lessons taught by Juan Carlos Obando. [WWD]
• As is to be expected, Vogue is apparently attracting a lot of attention from cost-cutting consultants McKinsey. Dare we hope that McKinsey will shake things up at the tired mag, and shake them hard? In other Condé Nast news, Teen Vogue's very stylish accessories editor, Taylor Tomasi Hill, is leaving to take a position at Marie Claire. There are no plans to replace her. [Fashionista]
• Agent Provocateur is launching a new line of super-expensive lingerie it's calling couture. Agent Provocateur Soirée will launch with an in-season show at New York Fashion Week on September 9, and hit stores in November. Prices top £2450. [Elle UK]
• The second issue of Love is out, and it turns out the preview image that surfaced online last month actually is one of the covers — editor Katie Grand chose Alex Hartley, and 18-year-old bass player she found on the Internet, for one cover, and Sting spawn Coco Summer for the other. [Fashionologie]
• Katie Grand had 35 guests at her recent wedding. Thirty-five guests who finished 28 bottles of vodka. Our kid of woman. [ToL]
• Dasha Zhukova, the 28-year-old heiress, art gallerist, and Grand's replacement editor at Pop, is rumored to be pregnant by her 42-year-old boyfriend, Roman Abramovich. [P6]
• An image of Scarlett Johansson which might be part of the ad campaign for a Dolce & Gabbana perfume launching later this year has leaked. The perfume is called Rose The One, and the picture is very soft and rosy looking, plus Johansson is already confirmed to be the face of the scent, both of which are signs that point to yes. [SassyBella]
• Tori Spelling has launched a children's clothing range. Little Maven will cost $26-$88, and is designed for kids up to 4 years of age. [Daily Mail]
• Naomi Campbell and Queen Rania of Jordan were introduced while holidaying in the south of France. There's no word on what they discussed upon meeting. [Daily Mail]
• The mayor of Kennesaw, Georgia, which is male model Sean O'Pry's hometown, is today giving the 20-year-old an official proclamation, because O'Pry speaks highly of Kennesaw in the interviews he does between gigs for Armani and Calvin Klein. [P6]
• Comme des Garçons and Converse are giving their collaboration wider distribution this fall. Four styles of the Comme des Garçons-designed sneakers will go on sale in select cities at the end of this month, and worldwide in October, for $100 a pop. [WWD]
• When asked about the person who irrevocably changed the way she looked at fashion, Heidi Klum generously named Karl Lagerfeld, despite the designer's stated dislike of her. [Newsweek]
• Everybody is wearing Lolita glasses. And by everybody, we mean Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Katy Perry, Nicole Richie, Kelly Osbourne, and Kim Kardashian. Clearly we ought to be wearing them, too. Or something. [NYDN]
• If you are a man who wants to buy Levi's jeans that are "re-created using the original techniques from 1873" for $395, you can do so, at J. Crew's downtown men's stores. [WWD]
• Riam Dean, the young woman who was asked to work in the stockroom by Abercrombie & Fitch because of her prosthetic arm, has sold the full, terrible story of her experience of discrimination to the Daily Mail. Dean says the £9,000 she won from the company in damages hasn't covered her legal fees. [Daily Mail]
• Hats are back, again. This story gets re-written every six months. [WSJ]
• The alligator "harvest" begins later on this month in Florida, but wildlife experts expect the number of the creatures that will end up as purses this year to be drastically reduced: while revenue from alligator skins topped $71 million in Florida in 2007, a mere $10 million is this year's industry estimate. What doesn't make sense about all these stories about exotic skins, whether alligator, crocodile, or python, losing their marketplace appeal, is the fact that among luxury categories, the bridge products — wallets, keychains, and other "aspirational" branded baubles — are the ones that are experiencing the steepest decline in sales. Brands from Hermès to Louis Vuitton have reported that their most expensive offerings, like exotic skinned bags, are still experiencing strong sales — if not actually leading sales across the whole brand. So what gives? Are the pythons and gators going to be left to their own devices in the Everglades this season, or not? [MSNBC]
• H&M's same-store sales fell 3% on last year during the month of July; analysts had expected a more modest 1% drop, since the fast fashion chain has been performing relatively well in the recession so far. [Reuters]
• Following another disastrous quarterly result, Abercrombie has announced it plans to further cut its prices. [WSJ]
• Escada USA filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in New York, one day after the German parent company opened bankruptcy proceedings there. [WWD]

Rupert Murdoch has one. So do financiers Vivi Nevo and Bruce Wasserstein. Why are the West's most powerful men coupling up with younger Asian women?

I'll cosign with the Frisky here:

Asian woman as commodity? Asian woman as status symbol? Offensive much?

But I'll need to fully disclose something: I hold a deep personal hatred for racial trend pieces. While I think that discussing shifts in demographics can be quite useful information, the this-minority-is-the-new-hottness pieces only serve to reinforce stereotypes and dominant paradigms. Kind of like that term "blipster", the idea of an Asian trophy wife is only remarkable if one concludes minorities don't have the same types of motivations, thoughts, likes, dislikes, and feelings as everyone else.

There's nothing really new about this "trend." So what's makes this so special? That it's now socially acceptable to be seen marrying or dating someone nonwhite, instead of just having sexual relations? After all, the Marie Claire piece quotes from the author of The East, The West, and Sex who notes that this fascination with exotic others has been going on as long as humans have had the capacity to travel to other lands:

In researching his new book, The East, the West, and Sex, author Richard Bernstein found that the Orientalist illusion continues to influence. "Historically, Asia provided certain sexual opportunities that would be much more difficult for Western men to have at home. But it remains a happy hunting ground for them today," he says, citing one phenomenon in the northeastern region of Thailand called Issan, where 15 percent of marriages are between young Thai women and Western men well into their 60s.

Reading the piece, I was also struck by how the focus returns to the people-as-status-symbol theme again and again:

It's as though these Western men are hungry for a piece of that mystical Eastern formula. As such, Asians (in addition to African orphans) are hot commodities right about now-status symbols as prized as a private Gulfstream jet or a museum wing bearing your name (neither of which goes so well with a frumpy, aging first wife).

Though, I wonder how much I can fault Chu for perpetuating this kind of treatment. After all, while researching this piece, I read article after article looking for information on Rupert Murdoch's wife, Wendi Deng. Ultimately, the only information I could find was on her marriage history. I never got the answers to my two main questions: essentially, who is Wendi Deng outside of Murdoch and why people seem to think that her pussy comes with a side of the Chinese market?

But Chu plays into this, writing:

Skepticism aside, the new trophy trend does have its benefits. We're already seeing a positive impact on global politics, economics, and the arts: The Chinese became privy to online social networking in 2007 with the launch of MySpace China under the News Corp. umbrella; contemporary Chinese painters-including Xiaogang Zhang and Minjun Yue-have rung up nearly $400 million in sales on international art circuits since 2006, thanks to well-connected supporters like Ziyi Zhang; and almost 43 percent of international adoptions, which have more than tripled since 1990, now come out of Asian countries (more playdates for Pax and Maddox).

In addition, while the article appears to try to have a reasonable discussion about fetish and relationships, it seems to embrace other stereotypes whole-heartedly:

What's more, perhaps a proliferation of gorgeous, mixed-race, multilingual offspring (assuming a classical Mandarin tutor is on the Chen-Moonves registry) is just good for our landscape.

Hybrid vigor, again? That's a lot of pressure to put on generation swirl.

And there are all kinds of essentializing stereotypes put forward in the piece (emphasis mine):

While I'm sure that real love and affection is sometimes the bond in these culture-crossing May-December romances, could it be that power divorcés of a certain ilk make the perfect renegade suitors for these overachieving Asian good girls-an ultimate (yet lame) attempt at rebellion? Maybe these outsized, world-class moguls are stand-ins for emotionally repressed Asian dads (one cliché that is predominantly true). Or... are these women just glorified opportunists? What's so perverse is that while Asians have always revered their elders, sleeping with a guy old enough to be your grandfather is just creepy-in any culture.

Yet, earlier in the piece, Chu talks about "excruciating colonial stereotypes-Asian women as submissive, domestic, hypersexual." So I guess those ones are bad, but the others are okay?

Ultimately, I can't help but feel that the article is a scattershot bunch of ideas, culminating in nothing.

It doesn't really put forth any information about the women who seem to be the subjects of the article. It speculates about their motivations and agency, but doesn't provide any evidence. It broaches a discussions fetishization but does not seem to take into account that people enter into relationships for all kinds of reasons. And while I do not agree that these types of relationships are above questioning, I believe that any questioning about racial motivation should be done with a healthy understanding that relationships are ultimately individual choices, and individual motivations are complex things.

This is better articulated by Vickie Chang, writing in 2006 on "Yellow Fever" in the Village Voice In the article, Chang talks about Asiaphilia (focusing mainly on male practitioners and women recipients) but makes one very interesting observation:

I was the 10-year-old girl swooning and singing along with Rivers Cuomo over the three-chord riffs of Weezer's "El Scorcho," that song about half-Japanese girls that do it to him every time. Oblivious to its implications, I was pleased that the man in the Buddy Holly glasses had a penchant for Asian girls because, you know, that way I actually had a chance. It was better than being invisible. After all, how many times did I come across references to Asians on television or radio? Let's see, there was professional tennis player Michael Chang, who provoked squeals of delighted pride from my parents, the unsportiest people you'll ever meet, whenever his matches were on television. And there was Margaret Cho and her hopelessly unfunny, short-lived ABC comedy series, American Girl. And that just about wraps it up.

I was a year into college, still listening to Cuomo as he referenced Madama Butterfly, when a friend pointed out that Cuomo was merely exoticizing and objectifying Asian women, the social phenomenon that is Asiaphilia.

And just like that, my favorite Weezer album, Pinkerton, suggested a disturbing question: Was Cuomo, the god of cutesy, simple-but-not rock-the guy I'd been so thrilled at merely standing near at the Roxy a few years before-was he actually a quasi-racist, ignorant Asiaphile?

And even if he was, would he ever call?

Is a white man dating Asian woman acting out a fetish?

Is an Asian woman dating a white man acting out a fetish?

If two people mutually fetishize each other, does that make it okay?

I've been trying to untangle how to have a productive conversation on racial fetishes and racial preferences for the greater part of two years now. The only think I can do - which doesn't always work - is to tread very lightly. After all, people internalize the political as it reflects their personal, and what begins as an intellectual exercise can quickly become a witchhunt, looking for people who don't have the proper justification for one of their personal relationships.

However, articles like this one published in Marie Claire continue to baffle me. Even after giving it a third read through, I still can't discern a purpose for why this was published. What was this supposed to prove or accomplish?

Chu ends the piece by saying "Asian women dating white men may never really know if it's a fetish thing." I'd add that racial trend pieces, seeking to profit from some idea of new minority cool, can never do anything but scratch the surface of our ultimate humanity.

The New Trophy Wives: Asian Women [Maire Claire]
Asian Trophy Wives: A Label We Can Do Without [The Frisky]
Buppies, Blipsters and other black unicorns [What Tami Said]
Hybrid Vigor Alert: Halle's Pregnant [Racialicious]
Official Site [Swirl, Inc.]
Yellow Fever [The Village Voice]

Kelly argues that men should always tell these three lies to women, as a means to make them feel comfortable during early flirting sessions. In coming across a "new friend," Kelly insists that the relationship begin with a bucketful of lies; namely, that the man tell her she's super thin, super young looking, and worth sleeping with. Charming! Let's break it down, shall we?

1. I always want a guy to tell me I look skinny.
Now, yes, I know I sound like a real anti-feminist, saying this. But it pleases me to no end when people - male and female - say things like, "My god, you're tiny!" Or, "Wow, what are you these days, a size two?" I know societal pressures have done some bad things to my body image (and to our collective body image); I won't deny that. But I do love to feel petite.

Kelly lays this rule down after being completely horrified that a "new friend" described her body as "athletic." "Athletic!?!? He consciously chose NOT to say thin," she writes, "Instead, he said athletic. Which means muscular. Which means thick. Which is as good as saying fat!" Uh, no. That's not what it means. That's what you're perceiving it to mean, and pushing a rule like, "tell me I'm skinny" only serves to push the notion that women should be skinny, as opposed to say, athletic (and shock! You can be both!), and that there's something inherently bad about having a body type that doesn't rival Kate Moss'. Also, if you need some dude to validate your existence by telling you he thinks you're skinny, there's probably better things you could be working on than pushing men to lie on your behalf, like, say, not basing your self-worth on a clothing size?

2. I always want to hear I look shockingly young.
New Friend just made things worse after the "athletic body" debacle by trying to guess my age - and he got it right on the nose. Fishing for a compliment, I said, "Ah, too bad, I actually look as old as I am, huh?" He replied, "You're incredibly well-preserved for someone your age." Oh, dear. Well-preserved?! I felt like a canned sardine. Couldn't he - just to be nice - have told me I looked like I'd just gotten back from shopping for my prom dress? Couldn't he have told me my skin looked as soft and smooth as a baby's bottom? Couldn't he, at the very least, have said, "Wow, you must be getting Botox, because you look terrific!"?

Oh no! He guessed your actual biological age and didn't think you were a high school junior who snuck into the bar with a fake ID! Shakira, shakira! What has the world come to?! Maybe instead of being horrified with the guy for not complimenting you by insinuating that you've shot botulism into your forehead, you should be comfortable enough in your own skin to say, "Yes! I am 28! Good guess, Miss Cleo! Let's get another drink." Pushing the idea that we all have to look 16 isn't just a "little white lie"—it's a big, nasty, horrible lie that women have to deal with on a daily basis. You're not helping the problem by trying to convince men to act stunned that you're actually old enough to drive.

3. I also don't mind it when guys say, "Now you - you I'd sleep with!"
Luckily, New Friend turned things around a few minutes later. He was describing some woman in his office who drove him nuts because she thought she was the cat's meow; she'd dissed one of New Friend's male coworkers who'd asked her out. "And this woman, she's empirically attractive, I guess," New Friend said. "But she totally lacks charisma! I'd never sleep with her - and I can't imagine too many men who would." Then, gratuitously, he turned to me, and almost out of the corner of his mouth, he said, "But you? You I'd sleep with in a second. You've got the je ne c'est quoi." Now, sure, it's a little embarrassing, a little crude, when a guy says something like this. But I like to think it's also his awkward, dorky way of flirting. Of trying to say, as directly as he can without downright asking for it, that he thinks you're hot. Call me crazy, but I find it kind of endearing.

Right? Objectification is so cute, ladies. Isn't it just adorable when a man you barely know insults another woman and then turns around to tell you that he thinks you're worthy of his penis? I know it makes me feel really good inside. Let's all hope that the douchebags of the world will see this article and know that it makes us "feel good" when they determine our worth based on our "fuckability factor." Who knew that the women of the world were all waiting for Tucker Max to sweep them off their feet?

The irony of Kelly's article is that she wants men to tell these "little white lies" so that she, in turn, can lie to herself. She seems to be stuck on the idea that a woman is only good enough if a man tells her so; his "lies" of telling her that she's thin enough, young enough, and worthy of sex, she argues, should be held up as gifts from one gender to the other. But all these "little white lies" really do is perpetuate the same stupid beauty mag rules that have been thrown at us for ages: get thinner, look younger, and make a man want you, and happiness will be yours. Kelly may be pushing men to join into this lie festival, but the truth is, she's really just going along with the same lies women have been told for years.

3 Little White Lies Men Should Always Tell [MSN]

• Paula Abdul will not return to American Idol. This announcement comes via her Twitter. She wrote:

"With sadness in my heart, I've decided not to return to #IDOL. I'll miss nurturing all the new talent, but most of all I'll miss being a part of a show that I helped from day1 become an international phenomenon. What I want to say most, is how much I appreciate the undying support and enormous love that you have showered upon me… It truly has been breathtaking, especially over the past month… I do without any doubt have the BEST fans in the entire world and I love you all." She was reportedly looking for as much as $20 million to continue with the show, but producers were recently heard talking up new host Kara DioGuardi (who has already signed on for another season, along with Randy Jackson, Simon Cowell and Ryan Seacrest). [Variety]

• First we heard that Penelope Cruz might be knocked up, then we heard she quit smoking, and now a source says: "Penelope is about four months pregnant." Congrats to Penny and lover Javier Bardem! [Just Jared]
• Thank Zeus: Jennifer Aniston has signed on for a movie we can actually get behind: Goree Girls is about an all-female country band in a Texas prison in the 1940s. [Variety]
• Presented without comment: "A park bench featuring a sculpture of a nude Angelina Jolie with her infant twins is to be unveiled in Oklahoma to promote World Breastfeeding Week." [UPI]
• Madonna's old love letters "borrowed heavily" from Anne Sexton poems. [Page Six]
• Childhood stardom can be tough. Ashley Olsen tells Marie Claire: "[Growing up,] it was almost like I was in the Army. School, work, homework, fly to New York, get in at 2 in the morning, do a morning show at 5 a.m., then another one at 7, then a radio interview at 10." She adds: "I look at Britney, and I'm surprised I didn't end up like her." [Gatecrasher]
• When Jon and Kate Gosselin announced their split, they got great ratings; the new episode's ratings? Crappy. Hence the headline, "Viewers Break Up With 'Jon and Kate.'" [AdAdge]
• More on this in Midweek Madness, but Jon Gosselin is on the cover of In Touch, saying "I'm tired of being blamed." He says his marriage fell apart in October 2008. "Many people think that everything moved too fast, that I was out partying too quickly. But Kate gave up on the marriage last October, and the divorce will be finalized by Sept. 30." [MSNBC Scoop]
• Robert Pattinson has been voted the sexiest man in the world in a Glamour mag poll in which many of the women were obviously Twihards. [The Star]
• Spotted: Kelly Bensimon and Damages actress Rose Byrne vying for Gerard Butler's attention. "Kelly blocked Gerard from speaking to Rose and was flirting up a storm - but he couldn't have seemed less interested." Gerard found Rose later and took her to a "private corner" to talk. [Gatecrasher]
• Gerard Butler says he got involved in his new romcom because he was always cracking jokes: "I was doing an action movie with the guys who made this and at night we would go to dinner and I would be like 'did you hear the one about this?' and they were like The Ugly Truth." [Mirror]
• Chris Brown will be sentenced for assault today. [AP]
• Elisabeth Moss says she and Mad Men costar Christina Hendricks — who are both getting married soon — are having their cakes made by the same people.
  "We've been exchanging flower information a little bit," she says. "Our weddings are sort of different, but we love talking about it." [People]
• CW programming chief Dawn Ostroff says Mischa Barton is at work on her new show The Beautiful Life and has been "great" and there have been "no issues." Everything is FINE okay? [USA Today]
• According to this report, it's not Mischa the CW producers are worried about, it's Elle Macpherson, her TBL costar, who has a large role, but can't act. [Gatecrasher]
• Jamie-Lynn Sigler gets kinda Sopranos-esque in this video, "The Real Housewives of New Jersey with Jamie-Lynn Sigler." Bonus points for "buh-bies." [Funny Or Die]
• The Michael Jackson concert rehearsal footage will be a full-length motion picture… if a probate judge approves the deal by Monday. [AP]
• Joe Jackson, thank you for saying the following: "I do visit the family residence from time to time and will continue to do so, however I will not be involved in raising the children." [AP]
• Administrators of Michael Jackson's estate expect to earn cash from merchandising Jackson-related stuff, which would be good for the kids. [TMZ]
• David and Victoria Beckham MIGHT be moving to a £10million home in Chelsea, London, and here are pictures of the house they COULD live in someday. [Daily Mail]
• Check out Joseph Gordon-Levitt and Zooey Deschanel in this music video shot to promote (500) Days Of Summer. It's got a '60s look and DANCING! [USA Today, USA Today]
• John Slattery, aka Mad Men's Roger Sterling, may direct an upcoming episode of the AMC show. [LA Times]
• Candy Spelling is still using the media to talk to daughter Tori Spelling. Last week she accused Tori of using her kids as "reality show props"; today she's telling Tori: "I love you, and I always will." [USA Today]
• Daniel Baldwin says of the woman who claims he left her a "hostile" message: "Either she's delusional, can't remember what's going on, or she's psychotic." The woman fired his niece, who is a nanny, and allegedly threatened the niece, saying she would never work in Malibu again. Baldwin says he texted back: "Please don't threaten my niece" and that's it. [E!]
• Former U.S. President Bill Clinton will present filmmaker Steven Spielberg with the 2009 Liberty Medal at a ceremony in Philadelphia. [UPI]
• Jay Leno's new show will have "correspondents" — Brian Williams, Mikey Day, Rachael Harris, D.L. Hughley and Jim Norton. [Page Six]
• Josh Duhamel is in talks to star with Katherine Heigl in Life As We Know It, a romance about two people "whose worlds are turned upside down when their mutual best friends die in an accident and name them as caregivers of their orphaned daughter." Cue parenting goofs, falling in love. [Variety]
• Bam Margera is working it out with his wife, with the help of marriage counseling and meds. [TMZ]
• Johnny Hallyday, the "French Elvis," fell while boarding a yacht on the Riviera last month and dislocated his hip. [Page Six]
• This picture of Whatshername face down getting her ass squeezed while getting a massage is one of the reasons I can't bear to be interested in her. In any case, Whatshisname is hoping for a quickie divorce. [The Sun]
• Blind item! "Which wacky celeb is certainly no angel when it comes to her hobbies? This hostess holds drawing parties for her gal pals - complete with a nude model and lots of alcohol." [Gatecrasher]
• "Silence is a powerful weapon in drama, "What you don't say and what you don't reveal can be as powerful as what you do say. My intention is to make [the performance] as real as possible but never forgetting that it's actually drama." — Gabriel Byrne, on In Treatment. [LA Times]
• "She comes to L.A. from the Midwest to find her mother [who turns out to be one of the original show's characters, Sydney Andrews, played by Laura Leighton], and all of a sudden she's thrown in with the sharks." — Ashlee Simpson-Wentz, on her Melrose Place character. [WWD]
• "In the music business in the Seventies, girls were beautiful. You were a performer, or you could be a girlfriend or groupie, but you still had to look good. I didn't have the face or the body that opens doors... Not being beautiful was an education. My achievements are down to my looks, or lack of them... I'm not putting myself down, that's the truth." — Sharon Osbourne, who says being "short, fat and hairy" meant she had to "develop a brain and personality and be fun and smart and learn to get on with people and make deals." [Daily Mail]
• "I'm not going to confirm or deny that. It might jump forward, it might not." -Jon Hamm, on whether the third season of Mad Men takes place two years after the last season ended. [NY Mag, via ESPN podcast]
• "A lot of his chickens came home to roost, so to speak. He had a lot of balls in the air, and they all kinda came crashing down as the season progressed. A lot more happens in season three, and there's a lot of change coming his way. Not only in his life, but a lot happens in the culture as well. So far, it's been an amazing season and I can't wait for people to see it." -Jon Hamm, on Don Draper's meltdown last season and how Don recovers (or doesn't). [NY Mag, via ESPN podcast]
• "They're fucking nuts. You have to either accept that or you do like me: You get married four times."— James Caan, on women. [Page Six via Men's Journal]
• "My music is a little more edgy so that inspired me to be adventurous. I've never dyed my hair before so this was a pretty drastic change. I've always been known as a brunette but I've been thinking about it for a long time and it kind of just fit with all of the searching with the music and experimenting that I would do the same thing with my look. The look has affected the way I dress, it's inspired me to be more adventurous with what I decide to wear. It's silly that something so simple as changing your hair could have such a big effect. I'm just having fun with it." — Katharine McPhee, on dying her hair blonde. [People]
• "I'm not great [at romance in real life] actually — my husband [musician Josh Kelley] and I have had this argument, I can be but generally I am a little, like, squeamish about being too romantic. I do love a good snuggle, but I don't want to, have to, get all verbally gooey." — Katherine Heigl. [Mirror]
• "I probably seem like not a particularly nice person, not a girl's girl. I think if you put a camera in anyone's life and document it daily for six years, from the age of 21 to 27, there are going to be things that aren't always pretty. Those are the rebellious years, the years of self discovery. I've never been someone who has conformed, and I think my response to that level of attention was to pretend it didn't exist." — Sienna Miller. [Daily Mail]
• "I'm disgusted by him. Here's a guy with eight kids who runs off to 'find himself' — well, he should have found himself a condom." — Joan Rivers on Jon Gosselin. [Page Six]

• This is what Gisele Bundchen looks like, pregnant — only not, because London Fog retouched her stomach flat again. Is this the world's first prenatal airbrushing? [WWD]

• Oh man, how weird must it be to have your boyfriend of years dump you the day before your birthday, and then still have to go through with the launch of a perfume called "Fancy Love." Which you have to make public appearances for, and see your own face on the ads of. Jessica Simpson, this is just not your week. [People]
• Marc Jacobs Homewares. It's happening. (And it's already 50% off.) [FWD]
• Matryoshkas may be getting rarer in real life, but they're popping up increasingly on the runway. [Telegraph]
• Christian Lacroix met with the French minister of culture yesterday. [WWD]
• Our favorite Obama volunteer, British top model Jacquetta Wheeler, has been more than keeping up her blog entries for British Vogue. Sometimes she posts two entries a day — overachiever. Wheeler writes about backing her car into a pillar, getting downgraded to economy on a paid business-class ticket and then sitting on the tarmac for two hours, and experiencing the scene at the Jane Hotel Bar. That last stop prompted Wheeler to reflect, "I realized that, although great to visit, I have left that life behind me, and am quite ok about it! Bring me a pint and some oysters and my Notting Hill pals at the Cow any day of the week." [Vogue UK]
• The DKNY jeans campaign that Scott Schuman was shooting during the Topshop SoHo opening day madness is out. It stars Gracie Carvalho, Sophie Srej, and, uh, this Hilary Duff girl, you may know her? [WWD]
• Alexa Chung was also in one ad, but apparently only the British publications noticed that. We think she looks great. [Elle UK]
• And there are also some more fall campaign shots from Lindsay Lohan's new Fornarina campaign. [GlamChic]
• Lagardère, the French media company that owns, among many others, the Elle and Marie Claire titles — though in the U.S., Marie Claire is published by Hearst, under a long-term licensing agreement with Lagardère — is said to be in talks with Hearst about selling off American Elle as well. Elle, which earlier this year surpassed longtime rival Vogue in advertising pages, has an estimated worth of $200 million. Hearst's entire profits for last year were only $225 million. [NYPost]
• Guess? co-founder Georges Marciano, who is planning a bid for the governorship of California, has just been ordered to pay $370 million in damages to five former employees whom he defamed. Marciano was excluded from the week-long trial by the judge because he persistently skipped pre-trial deposition hearings. His former employees testified their reputations were ruined after Marciano publicly accused them of stealing his e-mails and plotting to sell pieces of his art collection. [LATimes]
• Massimiliano Giornetti, the menswear designer for Ferragamo, will now design the Italian house's womenswear as well. Giornetti is replacing Christina Ortiz, who seems to have been fired after just two years for making clothes that were a little too sex-ay. [WWD]
• The Telegraph has been running an unusual number of wholly uncritical Chanel advertisementsarticles lately. To whit: "Why I Love My Chanel — Four Fashionistas Reveal The Moment They Fell In Love With Chanel." Barf. [Telegraph]
• Allegra Hicks, who had to shutter her business last fall, is back in the saddle with a new investor. [WWD]
• Moises de la Renta, on his new fashion label, MDLR: "My aspiration is to show people almost a beautiful and glorious gloom-that it's OK to be melancholy. I want to speak for the lady in the corner of the club, you know what I mean?" Which club, exactly? "You've ever been to the Roxy in 1985?" No, Moises, but something tells us neither have you, since you were born in 1984. [Blackbook]
• Michael Fink, the former vice-president and women's wear director of Saks, has a new position: Dean of the Savannah College of Art and Design's Fashion School. May all of the 1,100 people Saks laid off in January bounce back so well. [WWD]