"She thinks she has accomplished goals she has set forward," a source tells CNN, "She sees what a positive influence she has had on people's lives from traveling the country in the last year." Tina Fey, get your costume ready, because I think the "Also, You Betcha! Tour: 2009-2012" is about to begin.

Palin Will Not Run For Re-Election [CNN]
Palin Won't Run For Re-Election [WDSU]
Report: Palin Resigning As Alaska Gov [MSNBC]
Transcript Of Palin's Resignation [Alaska.Gov]

While Bess Rattray's essay feels like part of Vogue's conspicuous recent push to run more "serious" content - albeit safely online - it's a piece worth reading. Rattray, like Madonna, has adopted a little girl from Africa. And while this might imply a certain solidarity, Rattray's feelings are ambivalent.

I would like to think that Madonna had pretty much the same motivation I did when I adopted an eleven-month-old girl named Nettie Tesfanesh from Ethiopia a year ago: She wanted a child, and if that child could come from a place where millions of kids live without safe homes and loving arms, well, all the better. Yes, OK, it's always to the greater good when a celebrity adoption gets us talking about Africa's children-so why could the sound of smacked foreheads be heard in multiracial families across America? Because the talk that results when a white Western superstar-sporting an $800 haircut and Parisian safari gear-"rescues" a black child is not usually an enlightening dialogue on AIDS orphans, or how money can best be spent to address poverty. In the hands of the tabloids, it's more like an outtake from Brüno.

In other words, whatever the motivation, these celebrity adoptions run the risk of reducing the act to a fad - or worse, to politicizing the dynamic in ugly ways. And of course, with Madonna, everything's different. It's like, is Madonna a role model for single moms? Is she showing how strong and independent a woman can be, that she's perfectly capable of taking on the challenges of parenting alone? Not really; Madonna has nothing to do with the challenges of the average single mother. Maybe in some contexts, a newly-single woman adopting a child could serve as an empowering example, in Madonna's it's... not. Simply put, no one would think to compare Madonna to other single moms. They will, however, compare her to other white women adopting African children, and while in one sense this is equally unreasonable, in others it's inevitable.

Madonna, Rattray notes, has further muddied the waters by, in both her adoptions of children from Africa, engaging in custody battles with the children's families, further increasing the impression of colonial entitlement that already, inevitably, hangs over the business. Says Rattray,

What is so irksome to workaday adoptive parents like me, is ...why Madonna, who adopted a boy named David to much criticism in 2006, decided to adopt another child from a country that doesn't have an established, transparent adoption system. In reputable adoption countries-which include China, Russia, and South Korea-there are elaborate checks and balances in place to guard against baby-trading and to protect the rights of a child's birth parents.

In contrast, Rattray says her adoption of her daughter, Nettie, was carefully supervised, and requires periodic updates and contact with Nettie's family. The writer finds it frustrating that Madonna's cavalier approach, the seeming ease with which she and Angelina acquire children, serves to trivialize both the seriousness of the process for most parents, and their motivations.

It was important to me to adopt a baby who might otherwise languish in an institution, scramble to stay alive on the streets-or die. People often ask why I didn't adopt in the United States, and, boiled down, my answer is that I wanted an infant, I wanted to go where the need was greatest, and I was open to a child born to a mother infected with HIV. In the States, there are families waiting around the block to adopt healthy infants, while in East Africa, formal foster-care and domestic-adoption systems are more or less unheard of. It's never easy to leap through the flaming hoops of paperwork and bureaucracy, especially as a single parent, but my year-and-a-half journey to motherhood via a remote, coffee-growing hill town called Mudula was relatively smooth, even speedy, in relation to most international adoptions.

Rattray acknowledges, however, that this dynamic will always, to a degree, be fraught. Given the burden of context, it simply is - hence the frustration when a star seems to reduce it even further to cliche. Take last year's controversy surrounding Italian-Brit artist Vanessa Beecroft's work. She says it's art that plays with ideas of colonialism. Critics say it can do this and still be racist. Beecroft says her images of African men in blackface devouring fried chicken, or of herself as a Madonna nursing Sudanese twins, are about reclamation. But there's the inevitable question: can it be "reverse colonialism" when it's still, well, colonialism? Can we get away from the fact that this is a white woman rescuing African babies - and, at the end of the day, does she want us to? Beecroft, who attempted to adopt the little boys, said the process - captured in a documentary film - was (according to the artist's press releases) "not just fetishization of the blacks. It will be a beginning of a relationship with that country." But her high-handed attitude, her patronizing references to "these people" and "these poor creatures" render her easy to dismiss. Said New York in its review of the documentary,

In the film's most disturbing scene, sisters from the orphanage try to stop her from stripping the children nude inside their abbey for an elaborate photo shoot. Beecroft refuses, complains, starts shooting again, and eventually loses a physical confrontation with one of the sisters, who takes the children away from her, furious that Beecroft is stripping children naked inside a church.

As Racialicious's Latoya Peterson sagely puts it, "Her penchant for darkening the features of the models used in her work, the casual disregard for the environment she is in, and even her positioning as a white woman who wants to make the world aware of these issues plays into longstanding issues with neo-colonialism and racism" and that the viewer can see two things:

"1. That she is an artist, interpreting the world as she sees it.

AND

2. That artists can be influenced by racism and colonialism, even as they are trying to make a statement about one of these topics."

And there's the rub. Because anyone is influenced by these things, making a statement or no. And take someone like Bess Rattray. She may not be making the same kind of self-glorifying statement Beecroft is, but by definition, her act is still a statement in itself. What I was struck by, looking at Beecroft's lightning-rod image from The Art Star and The Sudanese Twins was the sheer vulnerability of the babies: they don't know whose breast they're suckling, just that they want nourishment. They don't know that their skin is being used as a contrast to the artist's angelic robes, or that the image is burdened with centuries of context and meaning. And it's this at the end of the day simplifies and complicates everything. And it's pretending that it doesn't, as Rattray knows, that's the problem.

Madonna And Child [Vogue]

Related: The Thin Line Between Art and Explotation [Racialicious]
‘Art Star' Vanessa Beecroft: Slammed at Sundance [New York]

We can't rate all the advice columns on the internet (and we had to eliminate some for reasons of bias), but the following is a representative sampling. The grades, like advice, are totally subjective.

Dear Prudence, by Emily Yoffe
Unlike, say, Prudence Farrow, Emily Yoffe does not put up with any nonsense. Nonsense includes: masturbating too much, "using up [a woman's] most fertile years," and having doubts about a generally decent boyfriend/girlfriend/spouse. Though she sometimes provides a refreshing kick in the pants, or gets mad on behalf of people who aren't mad enough ("You're a generous and forgiving person. I'm less generous and forgiving"), but she also name-checks Emily Post a lot and seems creepily in favor of settling. She's not quite Dr. Laura, but she might be a little bit Lori Gottlieb.
Favorite topics: bad manners, terrible family secrets, silly relationship problems (his toupee!)
Words of wisdom: On masturbation — "Get a grip and give it a rest. Maybe if you make the decision to do something else with your hands (whittling? knitting? flossing?), you'll find you aren't so obsessed with your urges. Then masturbation will become a pleasurable thing you do sometimes instead of a twice-daily necessity."
Grade: B-

Friend or Foe, by Lucinda Rosenfeld
Friend or Foe focuses on friend drama, mostly of the female persuasion. Since Rosenfeld has only written three columns, it's hard to tell how she'll turn out, but as we've mentioned before, her column is predicated on a pretty competitive view of female closeness. Then again, her advice-seekers aren't doing anything to dispel this view. One writes that her so-called friend "swiped a significant amount of my Crème de la Mer" even though said friend "is beautiful, wrinkle-free, and rich-and I'm so not any of the above."
Favorite topics: back-stabbing, moisturizer thievery, and the baby as status symbol
Words of wisdom: "Clearly, your friend Haley was jealous and didn't know how to deal with your expanding belly. Similarly, the appearance of her own potential sperm donor has made her less threatened by the sight of all those Build-A-Bears strewn across your living room floor."
Grade: C

Savage Love, by Dan Savage
Dan Savage has been hugely influential, and we bet lots of college kids have traveled the trajectory from reading his columns aloud and laughing at the "freaks" to realizing that kinks don't make you bad or crazy, and accepting said kinks in themselves and others. Savage has added several important terms to the American sexicon — concerned yet time-strapped friends can now tell their deluded buddies to DTMFA. And he was using his column to raise awareness about gay marriage and gay rights long before Prop. H8 came on the scene. But he also subscribes to some troubling stereotypes — that only girls can be bi, for instance, or that black people are more homophobic than whites. He's also not particularly sympathetic to people who gain weight while in relationships. So while Dan Savage is a pretty good guy to have on your side if you're a superhero fetishist, he's not so good if you are, say, a bi black dude with body image issues — or if you believe, like Megan, that "a columnist who is all about letting people know the safest way to drink other people's urine" should be a little more open-minded about things like male sexual fluidity.
Favorite topics: open relationships (for), coprophilia (against), sexual word coinages ("santorum"), dumping-the-motherfucker-already
Words of wisdom: "Look, SAD, this isn't a relationship. It's a hostage situation. Your boyfriend is an asshole. Wait, maybe I'm not being fair-to assholes, which are as delightful as they are functional. Your boyfriend is a piece of shit, a loose stool, a santorum slick. And you, my dear, have the worst case of lousy-relationship-induced Stockholm syndrome that I've ever encountered."
Grade: B

Since You Asked, by Cary Tennis
I have to admit that Cary Tennis, with his long, loopy, and sometimes frankly unhelpful answers to equally long and loopy queries, has a special place in my heart. Maybe it's his acknowledgment that advice usually says more about the advice-giver than the problem at hand, or his unwillingness to come down hard on one side of any issue — until, when you least expect it, he does. Cary is kind of like a dithering, slightly dotty grandma — she goes off on tangents a lot, and sometimes she doesn't even answer your question, but she knows that life is complicated, being a good person is tough, and ultimately the only advice she can give is her own totally fallible opinion.
Favorite topics: writing, alcoholism, vague dissatisfaction, ennui
Words of wisdom:On the creative life — "But the work, that is another thing. The real work is staggering; the real work is work. It is not dream. It is pushing against the wall; it is hearing what we do not want to hear; it is doing the numbers; it is learning the new terms as they come along; it is sitting through evaluations and self-evaluations. It is an eternal object lesson in our powerlessness and our smallness. The real work is grinding and slow. "
Grade: A-

Obviously the primary point of any advice column isn't really to help advice-seekers — it's to entertain and soothe the readers, who, while we may not share the exact problems discussed, still have various shitty things in our lives that we want to feel better about. The guy who slept with his stepmom and the woman who likes oral sex from her dog make our own dilemmas seem smaller, but what really separates the great advice column from the so-so is its ability to make us feel that life is livable, that we are going to be okay. And sometimes the best way to do this is not to tell people what to do, but to acknowledge that we live in an uncertain universe, and that we all need to learn, in our own way, how to cope with that uncertainty.

Since You Asked [Salon]
Friend Or Foe [Double X]
Savage Love [The Stranger]
Dear Prudence [Slate]

Earlier: Dan Savage: Cool With Drinking Piss, Weird About Bisexuality
Dan Savage Has Stopped Blaming Black Voters For Prop 8

Ruth La Ferla references True Blood and Let The Right One In and writes:

What began with the Twilight Saga, the luridly romantic young-adult series by Stephenie Meyer, followed by Twilight, the movie, has become a pandemic of unholy proportions.

For Spike's sake: Vampire lust did not "begin" with Twilight. While La Ferla acknowledges the 1983 film The Hunger, the Sookie Stackhouse books penned by Charlaine Harris, and upcoming "supernatural action film" Blood: The Last Vampire (which looks awesome) — her underlying question is: Why? Why the pop culture obsession with vampires? La Ferla gets this:

The vampire's attraction is "all about the titillation of imagining the monsters we could be if we just let ourselves go," suggested Rick Owens, a fashion bellwether whose goth-tinged collections sometimes evoke the undead. "We're all fascinated with corruption, the more glamorous the better" and, he added, with the idea of "devouring, consuming, possessing someone we desire."

But in a new interview with True Blood series creator Alan Ball, he says: "Vampires are sex. Vampires basically arose in our time as a metaphor for sex. I mean, vampires are sort of the ultimate Romantic rock star, bad boy or girl fantasy." And: "I can't really talk that much about Twilight because I haven't read any of the books and I didn't see the movie. I personally don't really understand why you would have vampires in a something that is basically about abstinence."

Okay, sure, vampires are about unleashing your inner monster, sex and desire. But most famous vampire stories involve bloodsucking males preying on females. In this chart illustrating the "basics" of being a vampire, there's Bill from True Blood; Edward from Twilight and Angel from Buffy. Bloodsucking is a boy's world. Maybe that's why that the epic clip of Buffy prevailing over Edward Cullen is such refreshing turn of events. Jonathan McIntosh, who created the clip, says:

More than just a showdown between The Slayer and the Sparkly Vampire, it's also a humorous visualization of the metaphorical battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century […] In the end the only reasonable response was to have Buffy stake Edward – not because she didn't find him sexy, not because he was too sensitive or too eager to share his feelings – but simply because he was possessive, manipulative, and stalkery.

Although there are many vampire books written by women, and a few fierce female vamps — Buffy's Drusilla, Underworld's Selene, Let The Right One In's Eli, Queen Of The Damned's Akasha. But none of these women have achieved the fame and notoriety male vampires enjoy. A woman's role in vampire mythology is to get bitten, become enthralled, or both; the undead dudes are the ones with all the power.

A Trend With Teeth [NY Times]
In Vampire World, The Rules Keep Changing [USA Today]
From Dusk Til Dawn: Talking With Alan Ball About "True Blood" Season Two [Televisionary]
What Would Buffy Do? Notes On Dusting Edward Cullen [Women In Media & News]

Earlier: Buffy Shuts Down Edward Cullen In The Best Clip Ever

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

OK!
"Tragic Death." The mag chose a cover image that some are calling "ghoulish" and a "disgrace," especially since Michael Jackson may already be dead in the photo. Some advertisers may be pissed and there's talk of a boycott. Inside you'll find a standard collage of old and new Michael Jackson photographs. Also inside: Kristen Stewart has dumped her boyfriend Michael Angarano, according to a source, which means she COULD date Robert Pattinson, but she doesn't want to rush into another relationship. YAWN. One spread in the "news" section is called "The Many Faces Of Johnny Depp" and is just pictures of characters he has played. News? Really?
Grade: F (pulled away by rip tide)

Life & Style
"Who Killed Michael." The headline inside is "Drugs, Anorexia and Missing Millions," and you'll find a typical sensationalist story: the family thinks drugs were being used to manipulate Michael; there might have been millions stolen from him; he kept saying that he owed people money and people would kill him if he didn't do the London concerts. On and on, bullshit. Moving on: Bradley Cooper and Gerard Butler are "competing" for Jennifer Aniston. During a late night shoot on Bounty Hunter, Jen was getting really "chatty" with Gerard, and a source says "Gerard was getting really close to her on the escalator." Um, it's an escalator. How far apart can two people be? Also, Gerard is "just like" Brad Pitt because they "wear similar hats," "they love their bikes," they've got great bodies," and they both wear aviator sunglasses. In a story about how Kate Gosselin might raise her kids alone, there's a sidebar on Jon Gosselin, in which the magazine spells his name with an H (we circled it in yellow for you) and prints the headline, "John Trades The Kids For Booze, Money And Women." (Fig. 1). Kendra Wilkinson had "wedding dress drama" when days before the ceremony, she discovered that her dress didn't fit! Her boobs were too big, because she is three months pregnant, "I had to get my whole dress redone," she explains. Britney Spears would like her agent/boyfriend Jason Trawick to move in with her at the end of her tour. Jacqueline of RHONJ clears up what Caroline was accusing Danielle of doing to Dina in the reunion special, saying: "Danielle was trying to harm Dina by giving her ex-husband a phone number that might give him leverage in the custody of their daughter Lexi." Justin Timberlake and Jessica Biel might be "taking a break" since they have not been photographed together since May 31 and a source says, "I think they might be over." Robert Pattinson's aunt speaks to the magazine and says: "I don't think it would be a good idea for Robert to be in a serious relationship with Kristen. How can he live his life with a fellow star with their every move being watched, just like Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes?"
Grade: D- (jellyfish sting)

Star
"52 Best & Worst Beach Bodies!"
Some of the "best" include 15-year-old Ali Lohan, perennial fave Kim Kardashian, and Julia Roberts. Worsts? Kate Gosselin, Stephanie Seymour and Helena Christensen — the latter two have cellulite. Moving on: According to this magazine, Janet Jackson should get the kids because Katherine Jackson is too old and "it's what Michael would have wanted." Although the cover says "Janet Fights For Michael's Kids," it appears to be a lie — there is no information ANYWHERE indicating that Janet has gotten involved or wants the kids. Next: Justin Ross Lee, "an up and coming Facebook celebrity," sat next to Ashley Olsen on an airplane, took pictures of her sleeping and apparently sold the story to Star. It's a Star "exclusive." Disney Star Selena Gomez has a mole on her chest and if the 16-year-old star tries on a dress with a neckline low enough that the beauty mark can be seen, her mom nixes it. Says the mom: "I'm on constant mole patrol." James Haven — brother of Angelina Jolie — has a license plate which reads "Shilloh," because that was his nickname as a kid. Angie named her daughter after him, in a way. Lindsay Lohan went to get a manicure and had no cash on her, and no credit cards; she let another customer pay the bill for her. Blind item! "Which funnylady is a fan of those funny-smelling cigarettes? Tongues were wagging when she showed up half-baked at an industry dinner in L.A. on June 19th." In an interview with Robert Pattinson's exes, we learn that he was "amazing" in bed and that his first girlfriend now works in a slaughterhouse in New Zealand. Kevin, the ex-husband of RHONJ's Danielle Staub, claims that Danielle brought up "the book" to producers before the show. After she made the plea deal so she wouldn't go to prison, she started receiving anonymous threatening phone calls — possibly from the drug dealers she'd ratted out — and was talking about maybe going into the witness protection program.
Grade: D (mangled and tumbled by six foot waves)

In Touch
"Gone Too Soon."
To accompany this classic, retro cover straight out of 1984, there are two long stories about Michael Jackson and Farrah Fawcett, PLUS A PULL-OUT POSTER with Michael on one side and Farrah on the other. Margaret is totally hanging it in her locker. (Fig. 2a, 2b) Also inside: Lindsay Lohan wears $2,165 ripped jeans. (Fig. 3). Madonna and Mercy look cute together! (Fig. 4). Did Stephanie Pratt have a nose job (Fig. 5)? Is Britney "unraveling" again? Recently she went shopping and changed her outfit in every store. Then, in London, she "tearfully shut herself into a closet" and "her assistant had to coax her out by promising to buy her tacos." Kate Gosselin is "flabby" now that the divorce is getting to her. Or wearing a different cut of bathing suit? Bradley Cooper is "going to break Jen's heart" because the night before their date, we was out with Lake Bell and "had his hands all over her legs." Check out Style Network star Ruby's "first fashion shoot" ever, on page 85 (Fig. 6). Lastly, a spider monkey named Coco announces that she likes bananas, grapes and swings, and is the 4th of the Girls Next Door (Fig.7).
Grade: C (sunburn)

Us
"His Final Days."
Margaret says this is the best Michael Jackson story she has read all week. Instead of the recapped/CNN stuff the other magazines are printing. The mag talks to Michael's former bodyguard, who says that MJ was often over-medicated and "I would have to literally lift him up and carry him back to the car or back to his room." Michael had a fall-out with his former best friend, illusionist Uri Geller, because Geller tried to tell him he was taking too many painkillers and anti-depressants — Michael couldn't accept someone confronting him, because he's used to getting his way. A family source says that Michael's usual schedule was to sleep until late in the afternoon and stay up all night, but when he started rehearsals for the tour, it "totally screwed up his system." He started using stimulants in order to get up early for the rehearsals. There's another story in the mag about Michael's "Life As A Dad" with tons of previously unseen pictures of his kids. Plus, there's deep insight as to what the kids' lives were like. Sources say the kids were very intelligent and fairly normal. Michael would get down on his knees on the floor and change Blanket's diaper. Michael made a big deal out of Christmas, because growing up as a Jehovah's Witness, he wasn't allowed to celebrate. But a photographer says that his wacky behavior did affect the kids: He was paranoid that someone was trying to poison the kids, and at hotels, there would be a long list of stuff they couldn't eat. When they stayed in fancy hotels, Michael would go in and baby-proof everything — like go in and put cardboard and tape on all sharp edges of the furniture. The kids were home-schooled in a classroom at Neverland that had blackboards, textbooks and desks, and the children had to wear matching uniforms to school. They had instructors, but Michael also handled some of the lessons: He taught them African-American history, music and art. There's also information on the biological father of the kids, dermatologist Arnold Klein. Plus: Did you know that Katherine Jackson and Joe Jackson don't live together? She lives in L.A. and he lives in Vegas. Also inside: Kanye West has been interning at the GAP's offices in NYC. "He works all the time, and one Friday night recently, he stayed until 12 am. He's learning the fashion business from the inside and trying to do it quietly." Jennifer Garner hates Ben Affleck's ex, Gwyneth Paltrow! She's annoyed that Gwyneth sends her kids to Violet's school… but only for a few weeks a year, which "messes up the dynamics of the class." Lastly, there are six pages of "official photos" from Kendra Wilkinson's wedding — she was bumped off the cover by the death of MJ. Margaret found the wedding, which took place at the Playboy Mansion, to be a "shockingly classy affair." Holly Madison and Bridget Marquardt were among the bridesmaids, and Hef and his three new girlfriends were in attendance. Hef danced with Kendra to "As Time Goes By." Fatherly!
Grade: B- (sand in crotch of swimsuit)

Fig. 1

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Fig. 2b

Fig. 3

Fig. 4

Fig. 5

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Freeman specifically mentions Christa D'Souza's Daily Mail article about her increasingly harrowing experiences with breast implants, and of course Liz Jones's truly upsetting story (also, predictably, in the Daily Mail) of trying to treat lifelong anorexia with three weeks of scones and brie and — shocker — still feeling bad about her body afterwards. But she has a larger point: a genre has sprung up in contemporary lifestyle journalism, in which "a female journalist describes her obsession with her weight/breasts/ageing face/food or alcohol problems/inability to have a happy relationship" and usually ends up "sufficiently unhappy to be commissionable for another very similar piece."

As Sadie pointed out in her coverage of Jones's piece, this kind of writing is bad for everybody. It's bad for the writers, who — if they're not totally manufacturing their distress for the reader's benefit — probably need therapy. But Freeman argues that it's actually worse for readers. For them, she writes, articles like Jones's "are surely just as dangerous and potentially influential as the photos of the skinny models the journalist professes to abhor."

Liz Jones is certainly troubling as thinspo, but Christa D'Souza is more complicated. Her experience with scar tissue, lopsided breasts, cancer, pain, and the total absence of any self-esteem boost from her new breasts isn't going to convince anybody to get implants. But it might convince some readers — male and female — that women are "self-hating, self-obsessed," and that it's normal to be like this.

One of the best pieces of feminist advice I've ever gotten is not to insult my own body in front of others. It perpetuates the idea that women should hate our bodies — that our inevitable physical flaws are worth valuable brain-space and conversational time. But pieces like Jones's and D'Souza's aren't just body-snark, they're self-snark: public expressions of low self-esteem so intractable that it lingers for years, harms relationships, and even endangers physical health. Freeman says editors assign these pieces because they have a "misogynistic image of what women are like," and that may well be true, but it's a vicious cycle. The more "boom and bust boob" stories we read, the more it seems that women are like D'Souza or Jones — irrevocably fucked up by aesthetic or social strictures they recognize are unhealthy but can't seem to escape. And the easier it is to assume that we, the female readers, can't escape them either.

These strictures aren't just about beauty — Zoe Lewis's I-chose-a-career-and-now-I'm-miserable screed and Lori Gottlieb's cautionary tale about how failing to "settle" caused her lifelong loneliness are basically cut from the same cloth, maybe just a little more highbrow. All these sob stories basically promulgate the notion that women can't have it all, or even much of anything, because even smart ladies who write for newspapers and magazines are basically unfulfilled and miserable.

The truth, of course, is much more complicated than that — even the disturbing Liz Jones is probably happier, at least at times, than she seems in her anorexia piece. Freeman is correct that most confessional journalism of the Jones/D'Souza variety is likely conceived with the goal of "getting a reaction from readers," and female misery seems to get hits. But editors who rely on self-loathing for numbers (and we're looking at ladymags too here) need to recognize that they're exploiting their female writers and giving their readers a twisted view of what it means to be a woman.

The New Confessional Journalism Turns Female Writers Into Tedious, Self-Hating Semi-Celebrities [Guardian]

Related: My Boom And Bust Boobs: What It's Like To Suffer The Agony Of Enlargement Surgery - Only To Realise You've Made A Terrible Mistake [Daily Mail]

Earlier: Lifelong Anorexic "Forced" To Eat Normally For 3 Weeks
Settle For Mr. "Just OK" - While Your "Marital Value Is Still At Its Peak!"
Feminism Is The Supposed Key To Women's Unhappiness
The Self-Flagellation Of The First-Person Beauty Piece

The Plot: Now, pay close attention, because the plot is very complicated and very stupid. This is all background: Lallie has been Owen's stepsister since she was four. When their parents died, Owen raised her and her younger siblings. They had a contentious relationship. When Lallie was a young woman, she was framed as having an affair with an older married man, in fact a publicity stunt that the tabloids went wild with. Owen believed the lies, and banished her from the family home. He also forced her to live with some horrible couple in lock-down. She escaped, and hasn't spoken to him in six years. Got it?

Now, Lallie comes home from work one day to find Owen waiting for her. He informs her that the family housekeeper has suffered a heart attack and wants Lallie to come home and care for her. He's already informed her boss. Oh, and by the way, it's necessary to the housekeeper's recovery that the step-siblings pretend to be engaged. And also because Owen's assistant is trying to trick him into marrying her. They return to the family home, where they fight all the time, Owen constantly brings up the fact that she's a woman with a past, and whenever they need to "fool" someone, he manhandles her against her will. Obviously, she realizes that she's always been in love with him. So then, it turns out Owen's younger brother is living in sin with some woman. Because he was also always in love with Lallie and because they have to set a good example for the unmarried couple, Lallie and Owen have to go through with their marriage. They do, he realizes she's a virgin, and confesses he's always loved her and just ostracized her and sent her away so his brother wouldn't marry her instead. Yay!

The Evidence:
When she wakes up to find Owen lying on the couch with her: "Don't look so offended, I was too tired to make a pass at you, and if I had, what are you complaining about? This won't be the first time you've been in bed with a man."

When she sprains her ankle: "Shut up!" he warned her, "or I'll slap your backside, you aggravating little madam."

When she tells him she's not hungry: "You aren't getting anything to eat," came his brutal reply. "I don't want you throwing up in my car."

When he kisses her to fool someone: "You'll be used any way I choose. And don't look so outraged - you liked it!"

When she tries to shop within her means: "Trying to impress me with your sense of economy? Don't waste your time and mine, I know you too well."

When they're engaged: "I've the right now and I'll have you down on that couch and carry out my own inspection. Taste and try before you buy, that's my motto. Even if the goods are a bit shopsoiled."

During a detante: "She had marvelled at his good temper; he hardly ever called her a vicious little bitch now, just sometimes it was there in his eyes, that suppressed anger, but she ignored it."

On their wedding night, when he sees her nightgown: "Not glamorous, or very seductive. Is this the best you can do, or don't you think I'm worth any better?"

How We Know He's A Good Guy: We don't.

The End: "[I've loved you] ever since you were a kid, and I wanted you when you were sixteen, even before that, but you were too young. [The housekeeper] knew about it and she warned me off. You had to be given time, she said, so I backed off and cracked down hard on you. You needed it, you tempestuous little witch...other women were just something to keep my mind off a black-haired little terror who ripped up my peace and had me walking the floor at night wondering if she'd scream blue murder if I went into her room and made love to her."

Advantages: What, besides the lust for the underage stepsister, the misogynistic abuse, the casting her out of her home, and the sexual harassment? Let me think...

Handicaps: Does not appear to be a self-made mogul.

Earlier: Worst 80's Romance Hero Contestant #2: Dr. Ralph Culver, Stormy Springtime.

Worst 80's Romance Hero, Contestant #1: Jay Courtland, Rules Of The Game

Having never viewed an episode of this show until last week, and now having watched about a half dozen of them, I'm starting to really like how boring and tense the show always is, because that actually seems to be the Gosselins' reality...which is rare for a reality show.

Even worse, a few summers ago, when I discovered Booksfree, I was able to quietly indulge my obsession with comparing and contrasting books like never before. As such, I've read books aimed at men and books aimed at women, and while most books aimed at men seek to boost male self-esteem, books aim at women tend to tear it down. I began to wonder - is there a life hack for dating? Is there one common equation that would stand up across all dating books which would led to true love? While I did find a formula, it wasn't about dating - it was how to sell dating books using gender stereotypes: generally speaking, most of them convey three things:



You Don't Have a Man Because You're Fat and Ugly

The terms fat and ugly seem to be used as synonyms in these books, reinforcing the idea that big cannot be beautiful. With the exception of He's Just Not That Into You (which should have been subtitled: We're Going to Repeat This Until You're Hypnotized), most of these books begin by informing us that we aren't good enough as we are. But don't worry! They have a cure.

Ellen Fein and Sherrie Schneider of the All the Rules are the first up to bat. They let you know from the jump that before you find a man, you need to work on you. While the idea of self-improvement sounds good in theory, it becomes clear that they really mean they want us to get a makeover. Asking questions like "Men like women who wear fashionable, sexy clothes in bright colors. Why not please them?" presents the theme for many a guide - men like shiny and pretty. So if we can't catch a man, it's because we aren't fashionable/sexy/cute enough. Other ways to make sure you look your best? They recommend wearing lipstick while jogging.

Patti Stanger of Bravo's Millionaire Matchmaker gets in on the action in her book Becoming Your Own Matchmaker: Eight Steps to Attracting Your Perfect Mate. She takes the cease and desist fatness edict farther, running with:

"Jenna is a perfect example of a woman mired in bitterness. She's about twenty pounds overweight and refuses to change her eating habits. "Most men are pigs, because they only focus on the physical. I'm looking for an enlightened guy who will love me for me and doesn't care about what kind of shape I'm in. Until I find him, the rest can go to hell," she says. Guess what? She's never going to find him. He doesn't exist. And even if he did, he would be thrown off by her me-against-the-world attitude."

Stanger continues:

"With men, it's all about the packaging – one look is all it takes for them to decide if you're a keeper or if you should be tossed back. This might be crude, but they're measuring your "fuckability factor." […] No matter how beautiful you are on the inside, if the outside doesn't reflect it, you're going to spend the rest of your days alone." (p. 51)

Men are shallow fuckers. Deal with it ladies! The right answer here is NOT to find a guy that loves you for who you are, but to raise your "fuckability factor" to attract the ones who will dump you if you gain five pounds. Nice!

However, unlike the women of the Rules, Stanger suggests there is hope for us poor fatties (which, in dating guide parlance means anyone with any visible fat whatsoever):

"I'd suggest moving to another city where the numbers are still in your favor, and where they're more forgiving of physical imperfection.. A woman who is fifteen pounds overweight can throw on the sweats, put on some blush, and she'll be considered ravishing in Chicago. She'll have a date every night in Minneapolis or Seattle, but she'll sit home alone for months in LA."

Fat girls, flee to other locales, where the men are less picky. I'm surprised they didn't bring up Alaska as a sure thing. She also spends a few moments on the virtures of shapewear, implying that if you can't make it, fake it. Ladies, this is a war, and Spanx is our camo. Use it until those lipglossed jogging sessions pay off.

You Don't Have a Man Because You Want a Career

Many books also admonish us for daring to go to work - we have the nerve to be confident and accomplished, and men are not going for that, not one little bit. Did we really think men would like a woman who can pay for her own things? Pssh...ournaïveté is showing . Rachel Greenwald, author of Why He Didn't Call You Back: 1,000 Guys Reveal What They Really Thought About You After Your Date sums up the issue in one line:

"I call these Boss Ladies part of 'The Cinderella Generation': they broke the glass ceiling but broke their glass slipper along with it."

Damn. That will teach us to wear glass shoes instead of splurging on the Jimmy Choos, like any good chick-lit novel will instruct. Greenwald continues:

"As women have risen up the corporate ladder, they have adopted many traditionally male characteristics to succeed [...]One man told me that most women he meets today would rather he 'admire their accomplishments rather than their butts.' Welcome to Dating 101. If you'd take the professional respect over lust, you might have just lost that second date."

The men she highlights have such ridiculous preferences it almost appears to be comedy:

"Owen, a thirty-two-year-old management consultant from Charlotte, NC, recalled asking a woman for her number and she handed him a business card. He assumed it meant she wasn't interested in anything personal, so he later tossed the card in his desk drawer and didn't ask her out. Though he did say one day he might call to use her services (she's a Realtor). He said it seemed "more feminine" when a woman wrote her number on a napkin or a piece of scrap paper in "girly handwriting" and even cuter when she reached for his cell phone and typed it in. That's when he knew the connection was personal, not professional."

A business card isn't good enough anymore – we need to take it back to middle school and hit 'em with our best cursive.

Greenwald concludes the chapter with this gem:

"Andy, a thirty-six-year-old stockbroker from Dallas, TX, told me about one woman he dated: "She was a career woman, but I'm looking for a woman who just happens to have a career."

Interestingly enough, all the books I read aimed at men never asked them to choose between a woman and a thriving career. It was assumed they would have both.

You Don't Have a Man Because You Look/Act Like a Man

Another truism peddled by these books is that the men you want are looking for a certain type of woman, someone that you become after learning to suppress your other instincts. Greenwald divides her book into (stereo)types of women that men can't stand, and number one on the list is "The Boss Lady:"

"The term "boss" here reflects men's attitudes that certain women seem argumentative, competitive, controlling, not feminine, too independent, not nurturing, or some combination of the above. In other words, some women give off a masculine vibe."

The too independent part is a bit galling, but makes sense. According to most of these guys, women who appear to together and too competent (not bitchy, though most of these guides deal with that topic as well) activate some kind of ball-shrinking reaction in the average man. With this being the case, the way to mitigate men's insecurity is to act as stereotypically feminine as possible. Greenwald notes:

"Perhaps, not surprisingly, most men are still old-fashioned in feeling a positive initial response to feminine clothing. I'm not suggesting that women wear a hoop skirt and carry a parasol, but the reality is that we're dealing with quick, instinctual reactions – think cavemen!"

There's no provision for women who don't want to date a caveman. Trust me, I checked. However, there is advice on how to win this caveman:

"Pull a June Cleaver" - "Play the part with flair: wear a cute apron, select a girly cocktail to serve (think Cosmopolitan versus whiskey on the rocks), maybe bake a pie. If you don't know how to do any of this (like me), enlist a friend to help you (your date doesn't have to see your accomplice in this caper)."

So what happens when he realizes you don't/can't/won't cook and you haven't used that apron since the second date? Isn't that what people complain about in relationships, that their partner behaves differently from when they met?

The Rules is a bit more direct with what we need to do to make a man happy:

"When you're with a man you like, be quiet and mysterious, act ladylike, cross your legs and smile. Don't talk so much."

Shh....women are to be seen and not heard.

Patti Stanger provides this jewel of advice for us future little women:

She who touches money gives off masculine energy, so you can't physically touch cash before his eyes or whip out the plastic to pay the check.

Avoiding anything with a whiff of masculinity appears to be part of the game, and nothing marks us as masculine more than hair. Hair seemed to be of particular interest, because it is apparently a FACT (in caps) that women are not cute with short hair. To hear them tell it, no man in the history of humankind has ever found a woman with short hair attractive.

The Rules tuts:

"Don't aspire to the unisex look. Buy feminine looking clothes to wear on the weekends as well as the work week. Remember, you're dressing for men, not other women, so always strive to look feminine." [...] "Men prefer long hair […] The point is we're girls! We don't want to look like boys."

Because, ewww! Boys are icky and boys like girls. Patti Stanger is also abnormally concerned with our tresses:

"If you think you're going to get away with short hair, you're not. Men like long, flowing locks. They just do. […] Short pixie cuts are either considered mannish or over the hill."

Everyone needs a weave, stat! Someone get Tyra Banks on the phone!

No one seems to mention a contingency plan if you don't have long flowing hair. They seem to assume your hair grows a certain way – and that way does not apparently does not include a 'fro or short curls or anything that is not long flowing hair. I'm surprised no one quoted any caveman science to back up the long hair imperative.

So, as we've explained ladies, if you don't have a guy, it's one of the three reasons we listed above. Now, if a man doesn't have a woman? It's probably because he hasn't gamed her properly.

Next time - Dating Guides Are Hell: It's All About the Menz!

1. First there's the rampant Photoshoppery. Not just on the ladies — take a look at the diamonds under the word "dimepiece" on the cover.


2. The models. Though the publication delivers a mix of interviews with rappers and half-clothed ladies, the models are actually the stars, and there's an interview with each one. After spending so much time looking at the lean, curveless cookie-cutter jumping mannequins that women's magazines offer, it's oddly refreshing to see a completely different body type on display. Not just on display — fetishized, sexualized, celebrated. These women — who would never be seen in Vogue — are superstars on these pages. And as sexy as these poses are — as butt-focused as the magazine is — there's actually very little nudity. Nipples are covered; thongs and underwear are worn.

Although: To be clear: This is a magazine featuring women with big butts. That is why it exists. It's not high-brow, it's not intended to be social commentary. It's what you call spank bank material. It reduces women to parts. Still: It's fascinating to see these women posing with confidence, since most of the world tells them that they are not the right height, size or shape to model.

3. Ethnic diversity. More than you might think.

4. "My Girlfriend Got A Girlfriend." While crudely illustrated with one woman holding a fork while between the other woman's legs, this interview deals with lesbian misconceptions and stereotypes. In addition, this magazine also has a story called "Why Gay Hip-Hop/Rap?" which argues that rappers have stolen style cues from Liberace and Elton John and a gay rapper would be "hip-hop's chance to live out its true meaning — that is; a voice to the voiceless, an all-inclusive genre which transcends…"

5. The cupcake diet, recommended by a model named "Seven."

6. A model with what seems to be a visible Cesarean scar.

7. "The 10 Model Commandments," which reads like a Crap Magazine Essay From A Dude. While some of these assertions - "nobody likes a liar," "nobody likes a thief" — are valid; the author loses me on number 6, with its Biblical "unsanitary female" whining.

Having read both profiles, I think it's possible that Todd Purdum is just a jerk obsessed with politicians' reproductive organs, an itchy finger on the "narcissist" trigger (project much?), and a love of wallowing in anonymous sources. Not convinced? Let's look at the evidence.

Their sex lives

One would think, based on reputation alone, that there wouldn't be much to dissect about Sarah Palin's sex life... and, yet, Purdum's fascination with Bill Clinton's cock carries over to the Alaska Governor's reproductive tract.

Even though Purdum conceded that there is no evidence that Clinton has been anything less than faithful to his wife lately, he couldn't resist speculating about it with absolutely no evidence.

But among the not-so-small cadre of Clinton friends and former aides, concern about the company the boss keeps is persistent, palpable, and pained. No former president of the United States has ever traveled with such a fast crowd, and most 61-year-old American men of Clinton's generation don't, either. "I just think those guys are radioactive," one former aide to Clinton who is still in occasional affectionate touch with him told me recently, referring to Burkle and (to a lesser extent) Bing. "I stay far away from them."

Another former aide, trusted by Clinton for his good judgment, said, "On the sort of money, women, all that stuff … I'm the bad guy. All this stuff is kept away from me. Whatever they're doing, they definitely view me as somebody you cannot confide in."

A longtime Clinton-watcher, who has had ties to the former president since his first campaign for governor of Arkansas, said of Clinton's sometimes questionable associations, "I don't know what to make of any of that, if it's a voyeuristic experience, or if he's participating in it."

See? Aides who are so close to Clinton they know (or think they know) what he does with his dick are concerned that he might be doing something with his dick, so he must be doing something with his dick!

On Palin, Purdum professes himself amazed that a pre-menopausal — and attractive — woman could ascend to political heights.

The clouds of tabloid conflict and controversy that swirl around her and her extended clan-the surprise pregnancies, the two-bit blood feuds, the tawdry in-laws and common-law kin caught selling drugs or poaching game-give her family a singular status in the rogues' gallery of political relatives. By comparison, Billy Carter, Donald Nixon, and Roger Clinton seem like avatars of circumspection. Palin's life has sometimes played out like an unholy amalgam of Desperate Housewives and Northern Exposure.

Another aspect of the Palin phenomenon bears examination, even if the mere act of raising it invites intimations of sexism: she is by far the best-looking woman ever to rise to such heights in national politics, the first indisputably fertile female to dare to dance with the big dogs.

Hmm, well, off the top of my head, I would guess that former beauty queen and Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm and New York Senator Kirsten Gillibrand might object to Palin being called the best looking (or only fecund) women elected to high political office, if Congresswoman Stephanie Herseth Sandlin didn't qualify as only one of 435.

But Purdum likes to dispense with sexytime early in his pieces, so he can get straight to the projection psychoanalysis.

Narcissism

One might think that a reporter who has spent much of his or her career covering politics and political figures would be less quick to diagnose abnormal narcissism in politicians, but Pardum is practically making a career of it. Surprise! People that seek elected office and/or believe they can make a difference in the world hold themselves in high regard!

First up, Bill Clinton, who's a narcissist for thinking (like nearly everyone who's ever cheated or committed a crime) that he could cheat and not get caught — or, like every President before him, not get outed to the American people. Purdum says:

It is also possible that all these influences have combined to make the cavernous narcissism that has always driven Clinton, for better and worse, at last consume the man almost completely. It was Clinton's political genius to position the Democratic Party, for the first time in a generation, as the champion of those who "work hard and play by the rules." In his own life, he has always followed only the first half of that dictum, and has never been fastidious about appearances, in ways charming and not.

So, Clinton's a "genius" (in Purdum's judgment) with too high regard for himself? Maybe because everyone keeps calling him a genius?

Sarah Palin, too, is an apparent narcissist for seeking to obtain higher public office and screwing people over to get there, just like almost every politician has done since time immemorial.

More than once in my travels in Alaska, people brought up, without prompting, the question of Palin's extravagant self-regard. Several told me, independently of one another, that they had consulted the definition of "narcissistic personality disorder" in the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders-"a pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy"-and thought it fit her perfectly. When Trig was born, Palin wrote an e-mail letter to friends and relatives, describing the belated news of her pregnancy and detailing Trig's condition; she wrote the e-mail not in her own name but in God's, and signed it "Trig's Creator, Your Heavenly Father."

Right, I'm sure a bunch of politicians in Alaska keep psych texts in their offices. And goodness knows no mother or father has ever written an overly cutesy email about their child to friends and family — she obviously thinks she's God Herself.

Anonymous Sources

If I cited every anonymous source used by Purdum to allow him to publish rumors and gossip about Clinton and Palin, I'd have to go on for days. Suffice it to say, Purdum is a lot less interested in what people will say off the record when they've no fear of reprisal — like the postpardum depression comment about Palin that Kristol links to senior McCain adviser Steve Schmidt or the many "close" Clinton associates who suspect him of still fucking around — than finding people to say too many interesting or enlightening things on the record. When the only "news" a long profile like this makes is that McCain adviser Mark McKinnon — who famously dropped out of the McCain campaign because he said he wouldn't work against Obama — helped with debate prep, either one is rehashing really old stories (which Purdum does in both pieces — does anyone care that Clinton went jogging with Mondale's hot daughter once in the nineties?) or indulging in sensationalistic rumor-mongering.

Although Palin-haters will no doubt cheer the piece and Palin-fans will decry it as a piece of left-wing journalism, I hope that no one ignores the fact that Purdum took the template he used for his Clinton hatchet-job, filled it in as though it was an Alaskan-themed Mad Libs, and published it. That might make him a hack, but it doesn't make him a partisan one.

It Came from Wasilla [Vanity Fair]
The Comeback Id [Vanity Fair]

Related: Kristol: Liberal Media and GOP Hacks vs. Palin [Weekly Standard]

Earlier: Sarah Palin: Just Call Her "Little Shop Of Horrors"

The "Out And About" section is what we imagine Vogue would look like if it were written for three-year-olds. Apparently Corolle Dolls are a major status symbol among filthy rich preschoolers.


Little girls love it when their dolls look like them, but what if you're one of the magazine's older readers? Doll Reader has you covered.


We missed the episode of Entertainment Tonight in which Mary Hart was presented with a doll modeled after a childhood picture of herself by Marie Osmond. Though Mary and Marie "giggled over the doll like two schoolgirls," Mary immediately suggesting that they give the doll away to charity makes us think she wishes she missed that episode too.


In the feature "Heaven's Light Nursery" we learn about doll maker Vikki Ebbeling. "My babies reflect who I am and what I am thinking at the time," says Ebbeling. "As I work closely with my own Creator, I feel the culmination of his divine plan. I am making a statement as it is revealed to me in a very profound way: that life is considered to be a gift to us, and that a child is given to us as a perfect statement from the "Universal Creator" himself, to be of the purest for of love."


"A face comes to me sometimes while I'm sleeping. I awaken with a face in mind, and that is how I begin sculpting a lot of times," says Ebbeling. "At first, I found this to be odd, [and] I have asked my husband if he could see the face too! When he looked at me with a questioning look on his face I realized I must be projecting the face into the clay with my mind's eye. I feel a divine connection as the face unfolds in the clay. It is not always a cute baby face, but nonetheless the image of a real child."


In fact, some of the baby dolls are so realistic they come with the remnants of their umbilical cords intact.


In "A Reborning Rookie" a new editor tries to learn more about the trend in which, "artists remove the paint and hair from finished baby dolls and remake them to resemble realistic newborns." The subtitle on this piece is "Looking to learn a little more about reborning, I turned on the oven and prepared to bake a baby."
This "reborn" was sculpted to look like the artist when she was a preemie in the hospital.


Here's a taste of Doll Reader's advertising. With the lollipop, poncho, and that face, this is what we imagine Jerri Blank would have looked like as a child. However, if this isn't an homage to Strangers With Candy there is no reason for this doll to exist.


One of these things is not like the other! That's right, if you can't decide whether you want to channel your baby lust into an extremely lifelike doll or an actual monkey, a baby monkey doll is the perfect compromise.

Earlier: Primetime Exposes The Dangers Of Satisfying Baby Lust With Monkeys
Women Living With Fake Baby Dolls Treat Them Like Real Children
Creepy Fake Baby Trend Arrives On American Shores
Lifelike Baby Dolls The New Trend For Childless British Women

According to Paris, her mother, Kathy Hilton, is the one who bestowed upon Paris this gem of wisdom. Paris claims that she doesn't give head, even though there is plenty of video evidence to the contrary.

At the start of the show, contestants entered a house where filming took place and found two cabinets: One called "EAT" — filled with nuts, fruits and vegetables — and one called "CHEAT," filled with cookies and doughnuts. Most went right for the cookies, immediately.

While there will be a doctor, nutritionist and trainer on hand while the contestants are participating, the producers made sure to air plenty of footage of the contestants snacking, and even included home video of them eating.

But even weirder was the actual dancing. With strange cover versions of popular songs playing, the contestants were made to wear unflattering, skin exposing ensembles — not that they should wear muumuus! — but every dancer's outfit had cut-outs through the body; and one man's shirt was sheer. They were hideous. And a few of the routines were cringe-inducing in their cheesiness.

Though some of the contestants were energetic and enthusiastic (see: Trice, above), the overall experience of watching them have "forced fun" — being trussed up and made to dance in a spotlight in front of an audience and judges — left this viewer with a bad taste in her mouth. (And don't miss the part where a judge subtly tells this woman she'd make a good pole dancer.)

Dance Your Ass Off [Oxygen]

The John Edwards sex tape, or Tina Brown calling his dying fucking wife a crazy media whore?

Beholding the gross emails your husband sent to one woman, or to fucking five? The fact of the cheating, or the fact of him being an entirely different person in his emails to some woman sitting on the fucking beach reading fucking Alan Greenspan as the late capitalism he created implodes on itself who then has the audacity to call the hacking of her Hotmail account an "evil act" like, yeah, the invasion of your privacy is up there with North Korean labor prison! Or wait, the part where he blames it all on the fact that his wife had actually achieved shit in her life in contrast to his unemployed Stepford mother and her full fucking tank of light sweet crude "unconditional love," or how he used to work for Goldman Sachs, or the part where some cheesy ditz whose idea of banter is "You are so hot" also was not only the actual girlfriend but fucking muse of a celebrated American writer, and speaking of celebrated writers, what about how Dexter Filkins' ex-wife thanks him profusely and generously in the acknowledgements of her book when he was probably lying about not cheating on her because that is what men do but also there are about 976 names that come before hers in the acknowledgments of The Forever War?

Which is all by way of saying: look, if it is true that "the person who is brutally honest enjoys the brutality quite as much as the honesty, possibly more," as I read some witty dead person quoted by someone in my Facebook newsfeed the other day, then maybe it's just because we've had to learn to love the brutality. At least it is a little less insulting to our intelligence, right? And if a loved one's petty brutality gets your email posted to this blog, a Pyrrhic victory is the only kind you can really hope for with most dudes, right?

Which brings me finally to William* and Stephanie (also a pseudonym) who met in a class called "Shakespeare and Plutarch" - so she knew what she was getting into (and she never meant to get into it) - and one night about four years later got really drunk and woke up dating. They made big plans to move to New York and work in publishing (good thing it is so hard to be a pompous delusional alcohol-abusing permadolescent in this town!) but he fucked that up when he came in one night about four months in and refused to discuss what he'd been doing, which was Stephanie's "friend." William is still in Minneapolis according to MySpace, where she found the below a few afternoons later:

—-—-—-—-—-— Original Message —-—-—-—-—--
From: Myles na gCopaleen [Seriously dude? -Ed.]
Date: Apr 16, 2007 5:17 PM

Stephanie,

I haven't known what to say for too long already. But I did want to give you some air, some space from the bullshit. But let me say I'm not an insincere person. Despite the baldest lies, my feelings for you aren't phony, and so I'm sorry that I've shattered your trust. It was always good to be your companion and your lover and I care about you a lot. I'm sorry I wasn't honest about my need for non-monogamy, not to mention the times I flirted with it in your presence. I wanted things to stay as they were between us while I dated casually, which is naïve at best. That is, I wanted to date without anyone coming between us. Not being naïve, I was trying to keep what we had (which was almost all lovely) separate from ‘complicating' people. I didn't want to compete for you with others, and I didn't want you to feel like you had to compete for me. So I became a hider and a liar by degrees.

This isn't foreign to me, obviously. I've never completely broken from the cycle of behavior that formed in my teenage years with my parents, which consisted of intermittent rebellions in secret, justified as the only means to get what I wanted (and felt I deserved, more or less). Certainly, you're not controlling or smothering like my parents were, yet I still carry a self-justified ‘will to autonomy' that persuades me, ad hoc, to make compromises with honesty. Obviously, the means I use toward my ends nixes any real justification. It's a whole lot of barely-veiled denial.

You have always been generous and I regret that I returned your kindness more in words than actions. And my crankiness compounded by the lack of back massages in your direction. And all the gnarly outgrowths of my failed relationship with elizabeth that I refused to prune.

I miss your wake-up faces and your cheshire smile, sensibility, and rare abilities, if you catch that meaning. and I never felt like I was spending time with you, but sharing it. You've gone through a lot of hell lately and have a lot going for you simultaneously. I may have made it easier before I certainly made it worse; I think we have spark and potential yet, so I hope something can be salvaged. After all, it's springtime and there are walks to be had and picnics to attend to. Water and dappled spots to be found. The cinema, the stage, and this little city we live in. pictures I haven't seen yet. Stories I've already told you. Food to eat and philosophies to bleed. Biking, if I ever get one. I don't expect anything of you, because you obviously have every right to hate my guts and I don't want to fuck up your life. But remember, you were once a cheater too, and more importantly, I really could be part of your life without fucking it up. It's been made manifest that you needn't put up with anything from me so I'm at your mercy. Maybe distinct compromises need to be enunciated. when the time comes, Stephanie, things will be different by necessity and by will and from experience.

Call me, write me anytime, and anything I can do for you, I owe it to you. Not for any obligation, but for you,

-Wm.

*I named him after this guy, obviously.

Also, be sure to add Crap The Blog to your RSS reader because one of the days Georgia and I are going to start updating it regularly, and plus if you have any submissions we have a new email account, crap@jezebel.com for that.

Related: ‘Moveable Feast' Is Recast By Hemingway Grandson [NY Times]

Images of suffragettes are juxtaposed with images of "modern" women, yet the language is still sexist — the cigarette flavor is "mild," for women only; the cigarettes are "tailored for the feminine hand." As blogger Lisa of Sociological Images points out, the last commercial insists that the cigarette is "beautiful."

What's interesting is that this idea of the smoking woman as being both "beautiful" and "liberated" has stuck with us, to some extent. In the late '70s, women were being encouraged to smoke pretty. Some recent fashion layouts have featured smoking models, gorgeous in their utter lack of feeling "motherly." In 2007, a direct mail campaign marketed Camel cigarettes as a "designer" "must-have." And when thinking of contemporary iconic women who smoke, three images sprang to mind:

Carrie Bradshaw

Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction

Sharon Stone in Basic Instinct

All beautiful, all "liberated," not the kind of women who ask permission. Do we as viewers see them as sexy and confident? Or as damaging their lungs and hearts?

"You've Got Your Own Cigarette Now, Baby!" [Sociological Images]
Virginia Slims Commercials (1969) [Internet Archive]
Earlier: How To Market Death To Women: Make It Sexy, Make It Pink
Oldies But Goodies

From sleep to sunscreen application*, this month's Allure makes looking even halfway decent this summer seem insanely difficult. Though one article concludes that feeling attractive is the key to being attractive since, "what's finally sexier than a Rubens nude showing her cellulite with romping confidence?" the mag's 12-page feature on how to look sexy says, "sexy is a state of mind, yes. But it's just as much about the state of your hair and makeup." Readers are advised to model themselves after four sexy archetypes: "good girl," "rocker girl," "femme fatale," and "sex kitten" but to also borrow from each, lest you seem like a "caricature rather than an homage." At least the point of the cover story on Fergie is fairly straightforward. Along with yet another interview that explains she only gained a bit of weight to appear in the film Nine, she is pictured from several different angles with her now-toned belly coated in oil. Below, we break down the cover lies in the July issue of Allure.

* In case you're confused about how to rub sunscreen on your body, Allure provides this handy chart:

Shades of "How To Take A Shower"!

Maybe to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the bikini, this woman is demonstrating its versatility: not just for sun and surf, you can also wear it in chilly, muddy weather and be miserable!


Speaking of versatile: classic Hunter wellies can even civilize adult men in psychedelic footie pajamas.


Okay, I didn't say their power was unlimited.


Lily Allen, like Brits generally, seems way more comfortable roughing it in the mud than her U.S. equivalent would be.


Even the Power Rangers are, apparently, not above the effects of mud. Whatever, they're all about the environment in all its guises.


Sometimes peoples' wellies mirror their style. Accordingly, this pair is on a bad trip.


The fun just doesn't stop!


These women were at Glastonbury when Michael Jackson died. In case you were wondering. I wasn't.


Franz Ferdinand's Alex Kapranos: indie cuteness conquers all.


Cause...


Effect.


Images via Getty, WENN, AP

England, who served about half of a 3 year sentence for her relatively minor role in the Abu Ghraib scandal — she was only convicted of posing for the pictures of abuse committed by her boyfriend (and the father of her child) — returned to her hometown (and her parents' house) after she was paroled. It wasn't an easy homecoming, according to a new story by the AP.

Former Army reservist Lynndie England hasn't landed a job in numerous tries: When one restaurant manager considered hiring her, other employees threatened to quit.

She doesn't like to travel: Strangers point and whisper, "That's her!"

Her family received hate mail from all over the world because of the publicity surrounding the photographs and trial and, 5 years after the abuses were discovered, letters just keep coming. This, despite the fact that England wasn't actually accused (or convicted) of physical abuse of prisoners — and despite the fact that the Senate Armed Services Committee concluded that the abuses at Abu Ghraib were the direct result of Administration policies that "conveyed the message that physical pressures and degradation were appropriate treatment for detainees."

What England does have is the son, Carter, with whom she was pregnant when she began serving her sentence — but even motherhood is difficult for her.

She worries about whether she's a good mother to her 4-year-old son Carter.

"Normal moms have jobs. They get up, they take their kids to school, they go to work, they come home, they cook, they clean, they do all that," she says. "I'm home all day."

She says she submitted hundreds of resumes for all kinds of jobs, but no one would give her a chance. She stopped trying months ago and depends on welfare and her parents to get by.

Lynndie England, however, isn't really alone in this. An earlier article in the Guardian about her post-incarceration struggles points out that fast food places won't hire felons. It's true, too, that many landlords won't accept convicted felons as tenants. Having spent a sum total of 18 months in prison (and another 18 on parole), with a dishonorable discharge on her résumé — let alone with her now infamous face — England may well be destined to spend a good chunk of her life relying on the state to support her.

According to the Department of Justice, in the U.S., the overall recidivism rate — the rate of those released from prison who are re-arrested — is nearly two-thirds. The recidivism rate for women offenders is lower — 52 percent — but that still means that more than half of all women who do time end up arrested again. Women like England, who was only convicted and imprisoned once, the recidivism rate is 21 percent, which still means one out of every 5 women incarcerated is arrested again. In no small part, the recidivism rate is a reflection of the doors this society closes for most people convicted of crimes — and anyone that thinks that the money one can (or cannot) afford to spend on a lawyer is often a factor in the kind of justice one receives is fooling themselves. Those people convicted of crimes and sentenced to prison are by and large people without much (if anything) in the way of financial resources; when they are released, they are then subject to what amounts to extra-judicial punishment in terms of employment and housing discrimination. No one expects that prison does much, if anything, to rehabilitate its inhabitants so, when they're released, they are treated as though prison has made them worse people.

Should Lynndie England really be prevented from answering the phone in an office or flipping burgers at McDonald's? And, maybe more importantly, is it in our benefit that she is prevented from doing so? The statistics on recidivism and anecdotal evidence of those that did their time yet can't reintegrate into society say no — but, day in and out, they're told that there's no place for them back in our world... and then we wonder why we keep sending the same people to jail.

Abu Ghraib Scandal Haunts W.Va. Reservist [Associated Press]
'What Happens In War Happens' [The Guardian]

Related: Criminal Offenders Statistics [Bureau of Justice Statistics]
Women Offenders [Bureau of Justice Statistics]

His song "Every Girl" was an odd choice to close the show that was more of a tribute to Michael Jackson than an awards ceremony. Everyone had MJ on the brain, whether it was in their acceptance speeches or conveyed in their outfits. (Host Jamie Foxx wore a succession of Michael's most famous costumes.) Artists like Ne-Yo and Ciara sang Michael's songs, and Beyoncé performed "Ave Maria" and Sarah McLachlan's "Angel" in memory of the King of Pop.

So it was weird that Lil Wayne—along with Drake and Young Money—didn't go the same route. However, it was more of an, "It's not right, but it's OK" kind of thing. Well, at least, it would've been, if he hadn't had a group of pre-teen girls dancing on stage. Take a look at the lyrics:

I like a long haired thick red bone
Open up her legs then filet Mignon that pussy
Ima get in and on that pussy
If she let me in Ima own that pussy
Gon' throw it back and bust it open like you posed' to
Girl I got that dope dick
Now come here let me dope you
You gon' be a dope fiend
Your friends should call you dopey
Tell em' keep my name out they mouth if they don't know me
Huh
But you can't call me tunecha
I'll fuck the whole group
Baby I'm a groupie
My sex game is stupid
My head is the dumbest
I promise
I should be hooked on phonics
haha

But anyway I think you're bionic
And I don't think you're beautiful
I think you're beyond it
And I just wanna get behind it
and watch you

(back it up and dump it back-
back it up and dump it back)

[CHORUS:]
Cause' we like her
And we like her too
And we like her
And we like her too
And we like her
And we like her too
And we like her
And she like us too

I wish I could fuck every girl in the world
I wish I could fuck every girl in the world
I wish I could fuck every girl in the world

[Drake:]
yea
alright
(ohh ohhh)
She be jumpin up and down
Tryna fit that ass in
Took her half an hour
Just to get that belt to fasten
All they want to talk about is partyin' and fashion
Every single night I have a dream that I am smashin
Them all
Young Money man this shit so timeless
And I'm in the mood to get faded so please bring your finest
And what are all your names again we drunk remind us
Are any y'all into girls like I am (lesbian)honest

She wants me she wants me
Cause' I got it all shawty tell me what you don't see
I will fuck with all y'all
All y'all are beautiful
I just cant pick one so you can never say I'm choosing hoes
And Wayne say pussy pussy pussy
And weed and alcohol seem to satisfy us all
Damn
And every time I think of staying with her
She bring that friend around that make a nigga reconsider man

CHORUS

[Jae Millz:]
I aint being disrespectful baby I'm just being Millz
And I don't know how fake feels so I gotta keep it real
I just wanna fuck every girl in the world
Every model every singer every actress every diva
Every high saddity chick every college girl every skeezer
Stripper and every desperate housewife that resemble eva
My role model was wilt
So married woman or milf
It don't matter who you is miss
You can get the business
Haaaa

[Gudda Gudda:]
These hoes is gods gift like Christmas
I like em caramel skin long hair thick ass
And I swear I'm feelin all y'all
I'm scrollin down my call log
And Ima call all y'all
My butter pecan Puerto Rican
She screamin out papi every time a nigga deep in
And I'm about to get my Bill Clinton on
And Hilary can Ride em' too boy I gets my pimpin on

[Mack Maine:]
And bitch Im Mack Maine -aine -aine -aine
Sanaa Lathan
Meagan Good
Angelina Jolie
Hah
D Woods
For free suites Id give Paris Hilton all-nighters
In about 3 years, holla at me Miley Cyrus
I don't discriminate, no not at all

The girls may have been family friends, or huge fans of his that he allowed on stage. I'm sure there was some kind of cognitive dissonance going on with that (there had to be!), but it was not exactly the best way to "celebrate" a man so closely associated with inappropriate relationships with children during the last two decades of his life.

But maybe Weezy was just robo tripping. That's his thing. It certainly seemed like that was the case at the opening of the show.

Oh, and what's up with Jamie Foxx hating Tyra? His looked like he wanted to puke when she hugged him.

More baffling was Tyra's weave/wig. It was waxy and weird and totally uncharacteristic of her. I think somebody needs a MAKEOVERRRRRRRRR!!!!

Beyoncé was working some different looks. She had Dynasty-sized shoulder pads:

And, mid-performance, changed into a bridal outfit:

It looked like one of those food protection tents:

While her performance was a tribute to MJ, her shoes were a tribute to Stevie Wonder's hair.

Best jewelry of the night goes to T-Pain.

Worst comeback of the night goes to all of New Edition, but specifically, Bah-bay:

"Last spring, standing in the Mayfair atelier of designer Matthew Williamson..." begins the odyssey. Our heroine, you see, is being fitted for a custom gown for the Met Costume Institute Ball. But there's trouble: "Matthew declared that I had a great body and could show it. I said I was 38 and even if my body was passable, my face was far too old to be seen attached to it half naked in public." They compromise on a seemingly demure jersey gown with a daringly open back, which happens to be totally on-trend, even though "wearing a backless dress is demanding. It requires the right back - neither too fleshy nor too bony." A chemical peel is apparently a good idea, too.

Plum has such a back, which leads to (shocker!) her feeling "smug." You see, Plum's back is the product of much sturm, drang, and money. It's only become "bareable" after years of intense pain. The pain, she explains, came on when she was penning Bergdorf Blondes, and a novel and a baby later, was only more excrutiating. Hypnosis, acupuncture, massage, reflexology, chiropractors, osteopaths, healers and cortisone injections provide only temporary relief, and finally a physical therapist tells her that she's simply going to have to strengthen her back muscles, which are too thin to support her height. She relates something most of us know all too well:

He told me that the biggest danger for me was writing at a computer. Over time, sitting for long stretches weakens your core - the muscles that should hold you upright - and leads to far too much pressure on your back muscles.

Given that I'm sitting as I write, and most of you are probably currently sitting in the service of some sitting-centric occupation as you read, this is an issue we can all stand to consider. So, not surprisingly, I sat up a little straighter - putting pressure on my atrophied muscles, of course - to read the next bit. Well, here is how Plum saved her back:

With my life split between New York and London, I went to private (Pilates) lessons at re:AB in NoHo. I had one-on-one lessons with Madonna's Pilates instructor in London...I do Pilates sessions twice a week and ride my horse twice a week (horse riding is excellent for strengthening the core, legs, and arms.) I never sit at the computer for more than 30 minutes without standing up and stretching. I have hired an assistant who types while I dictate. It all costs a fortune, but it's still cheaper (slightly) to be well than sick.

Well, the stretching thing I can do. Thanks, Plum!

The Flip Side [Vogue]

Props to Jessica for bringing the guy home and making the first move and just generally being more entertaining than anyone else in this otherwise very lame episode. Although seeing Jason Stackhouse have homoerotic nightmares about a naked vamp in his bed and hearing the Reverend say, "Sarah doesn't whip out her pudding for just anybody" were also highlights. Still: Lafayette is not a vamp. Foaming-at-the-mouth Sookie is as annoying as naggy Sookie. And Maryann's Bacchanalia complete with pig, booze and gratuitous nudity was, in fact, boring. The only intrigue? The bullheaded-thing that scratched Sookie, and Jessica and Hoyt's budding romance (clip above).

Bangalore, June 28.


Bangalore, June 28.


Berlin, June 27.


Jerusalem, June 25.


Barcelona, June 28.


Bangalore, June 28.


Istanbul, June 28.


Bangalore, June 28.


Jerusalem, June 25.


New Delhi, June 28.


Paris, June 27.


New Delhi, June 28.


Paris, June 27.


New Delhi, June 28.


San Salvador, June 27.


San Salvador, June 27.


Paris, June 27.


San Salvador, June 27.


San Salvador, June 27.


Istanbul, June 28.


Bangalore, June 28.


Paris, June 27.


San Salvador, June 27.


San Salvador, June 27.


Istanbul, June 28.


New York City, June 28.


New York, June 28.


New York, June 28.

[All Images Via Getty.]

1.) Moms and Their Boxed Wine
After staging an intervention for her son, this woman's family then staged one for her over her Xanax addiction. She didn't want to go to rehab because of the its strict no-alcohol policy.

2.) Does Joan Rivers realize that perhaps she's gone too far with the cosmetic procedures?

3.) Did you like the Real Housewives of New Jersey reunion shows?

But it sucks that they never revealed what exactly Danielle "tried" to do to Dina that Caroline was freaking out about. From the way Caroline told it, Danielle took a hit out on her. But that doesn't seem realistic. Danielle sort of hinted at what it might on her blog:

I had no idea at the time what "disgraceful" acts she was referring to. I only found out later what she was talking about, from someone in her own family. I simply gave a phone number to her ex brother-in-law to contact proper people with questions that he had concerning something that was absolutely none of my business. I was asked to give this information to him.

4.) Cop Without a Badge Guy Talks
Danielle's ex-husband, Kevin Maher, who gave up all the dirt on her in "The Book" was on The Insider talking about how Danielle is "a bisexual." She didn't really deny it though.

5.) Promise Piercings
Kids are expressing their love for each other in new and different ways, like piercings…

…And emails.

6.) More Kid Stuff
NYC Prep was alright, but not great, IMO. But I did really like this girl, who is friends with one of the cast members, but not part of the cast herself. She's down town/to earth.

She seems tipsy.

And I love the way she communicates.

7.) Snoop's Statement On Michael Jackson

8.) Snoop Getting Off The Phone




9.) Larry King And "My daddy, P. Daddy"

10.) Reading: With Kathie Lee & Hoda

Welcome to 'Fine Lines', the feature in which we give a wrinkled look at the books we loved in our youth. This week, Lizzie Skurnick rereads 'Little Women', Louisa May Alcott's 1868 uber-girl guide to solace through sacrifice and scrubbing.

• • • • •

"Christmas won't be Christmas without any presents," grumbled Jo, lying on the rug.

I first read Little Women in college. Of course, I had read Little Women before college. Numerous times, in fact, throughout my childhood, in a vaguely seasonal rotation with the Little House books, An Old-Fashioned Girl, The Secret Garden, and Terms of Endearment. (The paperback of the latter was mis-shelved with YA books in my local bookstore. It is epic; you should read it.) Little Women was the first assignment in a popular cultural survey course of 19th-century literature, and that day, I looked scornfully about the room, confident that the yawning rows of fellow freshman in Tevas and baggy soccer shorts were unlikely to appreciate the narrative transcendence of Amy's turbulent sweeping-away of her accomplished trinkets from the Arts table or Meg's inability to make currants jell. (The violent, inappropriate wave of possessiveness that sweeps over whenever a work I treasure is up for public discussion is one of the many reasons I am unfit for book clubs.)

But, like many a March girl before me, I was about to be skewered on my own sharpened pride. The Dean immediately launched into a chuckling assessment of the March girls' first acts of Christmas celebration—namely, giving over all their pocket money for an improved set of gifts for Marmee, then donating their sumptuous breakfast feast to the far poorer family down the street—convulsing the lecture hall of 500 people for the entire 50 minutes. I, wondering what book they had read, was shaken to my very core. What was everyone laughing about? That's what you did with Christmas breakfast. Give it away! To the Hummels! How else could you become one of the four merriest girls in the city?

Thus must the early reader of Little Women immediately choose a side. One (WEARING TEVAS) finds not only the author's persistence in forcing the March girls to give up what they delight in but finding delight in such sacrifice completely inane. But another breed of reader unconsciously finds in the novel's cycle of desire and self-denial something as rare and delicious as pickled limes. For in the world of Little Women, there is no emotion so deeply felt it should not be vanquished, nor desire so great that it cannot be smacked down—and no end to the brilliant varietals of smackdown Alcott can concoct.

Take Amy. God forbid the poor girl should want to pay back her gross debt of pickled lime to her schoolfriends. For this act, she is beaten. (Beaten!) Likewise her ladies' lunch, which results in two days of tough chicken salad for the March family and only one quizzical guest. Pretty Meg wants to look prettier at dances. Dommage! There go her bangs in a burning frizzle—while another evening spent in borrowed finery earns her the scorn of family friend Laurie as well as this crushing condemnation by the host: "They are making a fool of that little girl: I wanted you to see her, but they have spoilt her entirely." When Amy burns Jo's manuscript in an extraordinary act of pique, it's not bad enough that Jo has lost years of work—she's not even allowed to be mad at Amy, for no sooner has she decided to never speak to her sister again than said sister crashes through thin ice into a freezing river.

I have always found the last instance the most profoundly unjust of the lot (especially since, in a kind of family-style Freudian PTSD, the entire family insists on making the joke, "Does genius burn, Jo?" every time she puts on her scribble cap to write), but I became especially interested in it when one of Shelf Discovery's Facebook friends reminded me of the following passage, in which Marmee encourages Jo to exercise still more control over her anger:

"Jo, dear, we all have our temptations, some far greater than yours, and it often takes us all our lives to conquer them. You think your temper is the worst in the world, but mine used to be just like it."

"Yours, mother? Why, you are never angry!" and, for the moment, Jo forgot remorse in surprise.

"I've been trying to cure it for forty years, and have only succeeded in controlling it. I am angry nearly every day of my life, Jo; but I have learned not to show it; and I still hope to learn not to feel it, though it may take me another forty years to do so."

That's exactly the kind of passage you skip over as a girl to race ahead to Amy's putting a clothespin on her nose to make it more Grecian, but stop dead on as a woman, having earlier completely failed to grasp that Marmee is more than a gracious creature in a gray bonnet sweeping in and out of the house on her way to do good works. Because: Why is she angry, exactly? Why, could it have anything to do with the following two asides about Mr. March?

"Don't you wish we had the money Papa lost when we were little, though?"
and
"I think it was so splendid for Papa to go as a chaplain when he was too old to be drafted, and not strong enough to be a soldier!"

Having your husband lose all your money, then head off to join an army that does not particularly want him, leaving you alone to do all you can to keep your four daughters from becoming the even poorer Hummels down the street, might conceivably inspire some rage—as well as a slightly outsized insistence on pointing out the sunny side of every type of deprivation. (Meg and Amy aren't smacked down simply for wanting nice things—they're smacked down because many nice things are above the March's means.) For Marmee, knowing there's nothing she can do personally to improve their financial situation, has two choices: let the girls wallow in misery, or encourage a kind of demented cozifying of all that is unfortunate. (Oh, Alcott: Find me even the most intrepid lady today who will thrill to the happy rat who keeps her company in her office.)

Because while that chuckling professor (can you believe I'm STILL this enraged about it?) seemed to grasp what was ludicrous in Marmee and the March girls' cheery grate-scrubbing, I don't think he saw that Marmee was ludicrous....like a fox. Because while Marmee asked the girls to deprive themselves of almost everything, there was one gift she allowed them: work. Witness:

"Work is wholesome, and there is plenty for everyone; it keeps us from ennui and mischief, is good for health and spirits, and gives us a sense of independence better than money or fashion."

And when did Marmee conceive of the great powers of work? Why, pretty much around the time when her husband lost all of their money!

"When I was first married, I used to long for my new clothes to wear out or get torn, so that I might have the pleasure of mending them; for I got heartily sick of doing fancywork and tending my pocket handkerchief....it was play then, but there came I time when I was truly grateful that I possessed not only the will but the power to cook wholesome food for my little girls, and help myself when I could not afford to hire help."

When there is no other option, work means independence. And, by and by (oh, can we bring back "by and by"!), it is not through the girls' marrying well or depriving themselves that the March family thrives, but because of Jo's own work—her writing career. Alcott, in one of her happy meta-moments, waxes blobbily on the great virtues thereof ("one of the sweet uses of adversity is the genuine satisfaction which comes from hearty work of head or hand; and to the inspiration of necessity we owe half the wise, beautiful and useful blessings of the world") until she finally gets to a salient point: "Jo enjoyed a taste of this satisfaction, and ceased to envy richer girls, taking great comfort in the knowledge that she could supply her own wants..." (italics mine)

Put Alcott's moralizing aside, and you see that the sisters who use their own work to become independent are rewarded, and the sisters who self-abnegate are not. Modest Meg fades into domestic obscurity and Beth is summarily killed off, while Jo is not only allowed to continue in her writing career but arranges things so that she can preside over an entire troop of rough-and-tumble boys with her doting, learned husband. (I know Friedrich is often regarded as something of a punishment. It is rather a shock to your average eight-year-old to have Laurie usurped by some ursine old expatriot, but I always liked him.) Amy's vanity is not tamped down but allowed to bloom: she is given not only true love but made mistress of a house where she can become a great benefactress of the arts. And thus, Christmas breakfasts notwithstanding, the two creative, independent March girls thrive through pursuing their desires, not setting them aside.

When Jo first sets out in the world to sell her stories, an editor rejects them, telling her, "'People want to be amused, not preached at, you know. Morals don't sell nowadays.'" Alcott appends this wisdom with: "....which was not quite a correct statement, by the way." Yes. Oh Professor (still bitter! Still annoyed!), it's not that Alcott's morals were silly. It's that you were looking at the wrong morals.

• • • • •

Hello, beauties! Speaking of not setting aside our desires and pursuing creativity etc., here are some demands:

Follow me on TWITTER
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I was on NPR's All Things Considered talking about great girl heroines. LISTEN

I know, I know, what have I done for you lately? But even though I am not doing a lot at many of these places yet—being this 2.0 is taxing even my enormous ability to overshare, to say nothing of the fact that I feel that Marmee somehow would disapprove—I can assure you that a big portion of what will be going on involves GIVEAWAYS and FUN QUIZZES and EVENTS and PLOTFINDER CONTESTS and possibly a Jacob Have I Loved mug!

Speaking of Plotfinders, first, last week's winner. I am going to go out on a limb and say it is Michelle S. for "Watcher in the Woods," but commenter AFever can also have a galley for guessing Sarah Armstrong's "Blood Red Roses," because I really don't know which one it is. Amy G., do these ring a bell? Winners, write me at jezziefinelines@gmail.com with your addresses for your GALLEYS!

THIS week's Plotfinder comes from Esi H., because Hayseed and Armpit, you can't make this stuff up:

Here's the plot (I think): There's this young girl, who may be new to the town. She makes friends with another girl, and I think they hang out in an orchard/ field with a tower? And there's this wise old man who may be the caretaker or gardener or something along those lines. Anyway, the girl's friend finds other people to hang out with, and I think our protagonist finds herself all alone. Maybe she gets another friend over time too, I can't recall. I do remember some sort of scene where our protagonist bumps into Ex-Friend and Ex-Friend's new friends and somebody is all teary (protagonist?) and excuses it by saying it's her allergies to hayseed. And then the friend she got replaced by is now being replaced as well? There might also be some sort of sister who goes out with a guy who has a bad muffler on his car and they drive around with her face in his armpit. But that might be another book entirely. Sorry this is all so vague! Hope someone can help me out!

Send your answers to jezziefinelines@gmail.com or put them in the comments! First one to answer correctly gets free copy of Shelf Discovery galley or finished book, whichever arrives first.

AND ONE LAST THING...

We are working up some delicious quizzes for your delectation. HOWEVER. I do not want to write them all, mainly because I will leave out lots of good stuff. So if you would like a chance to win a copy of Shelf Discovery, send me your sample quiz questions about your favorite books to jezziefinelines@gmail.com with QUIZ in the subject line, along with your mailing address! We will be randomly picking entrants to win copies of the book.

What do I mean by questions? Here is an example:

"When Cal returns from the war to Rass in 'Jacob Have I Loved,' Louise smears what on her hands?"

a) Cheap lotion
b) Saltwater
c) Her sister's left-behind perfume

ANSWER: A

OR

"In what Paula Danziger book does a girl trade her lunch for a peanut-butter-and-bean-sprout sandwich?"

ANSWER: The Divorce Express

You can also make a Facebook quiz, like, "What classic child heroine are you?" I am supposed to do this, I know, but YOU WILL DO IT BETTER. Any Facebook quizzers AUTOMATICALLY win copies of Shelf Discovery.

Congrats and good luck!

While you might not think that any publisher would gravitate towards a title that manages to evoke both narcissism and the cardiovascular system, in fact there are two: the quarterly "that combines the innocence of art with the modernity of the world," and this one.

The ladymag Vain is aimed at women ages 18 to 38, seeks to provide smart and socially-conscious content, and will launch in print this fall. It also seems to have been conceived by a team of White House press secretaries skilled in saying a lot while revealing nothing. Can it succeed where Jane and Missbehave foundered and in a time when established print mags go deeper into the red every day? Well, it's hard to say. Clearly, they're hoping to capture the ethos in a different way - not by being the cool girls on the block, but by mixing traditional content with a more empowering (and certainly more earnest) bent...and by baffling its readers. Its description is infuriatingly vague - "VAIN Magazine debuts as the premiere source for the everyday woman" - but even having said this, a few things confused us even more. Take, for instance, this sentence: "Catering to issues all about you, this magazine for ages 18-38 is the place for empowerment, inspiration, venting and tips that will guide you on your path toward perfection." Wait, what? What happened to "flawed?" I guess it's about fixing rather than celebrating? Maybe the next sentence will clear things up! Oh, wait. "The magazine highlights celebrities, career professionals, the latest trends in beauty, fashion, lifestyle, and delivers expert advice on everything the VAIN woman desires to know."

Founder Rachelle Gauthier has an extensive publishing and fashion background. Here's what she told MediaBistro: "VAIN, the women's magazine all about you, takes pride in versatility of our readers...She may be an artist, a sports enthusiast, an educator, a philanthropist, an entrepreneur, or even an emerging designer. And despite her desires or struggles, VAIN will fill her with images and words that will keep her striving for more." Said images and words, according to their website, include interviews with M.I.A. and Lindsay Robinson, videos, liquor talk, and, technology reviews. There's an emphasis on woman-centric activism, but no shortage of beauty-and-fashion - although as yet, "your man" has not made an appearance. For their launch, the mag is rolling out a bunch of events designed, as their publicist explained it to MediaBistro, "to encourage individuals to start taking pride not only in their appearance, but also their community...Partnering with foundations is a way for the VAIN reader to find balance and invest time and money in things/projects outside herself." All this is very well - but still pretty vague. "Explains" the publisher in the press release, "I wanted to create a publication that celebrated uncelebrated women and provide a platform for young females to find inspiration...We're all VAIN in some capacity. We take pride in our appearance, profession, education, health, community and environment, and we invest time and money."

Is there a place for a smart fashion magazine today? Definitely. And could it be Vain? Depending on what the hell they're talking about, we shall see.

Indulge Yourself With The Launch Of Vain -A New Chic Magazine All About You [FPR]
Vain (The Women's Magazine)
Vain (The Arts Quarterly)
VAIN, A Magazine For Women, Launches [MediaBistro]

The Guardian's Julie Bindel (no stranger to Jezebel) writes that while British men who kill their wives often use the defense of "provocation" to reduce their sentences to manslaughter, women who kill abusive husbands or boyfriend are often convicted of murder. She contrasts the case of Sara Thornton, who killed her husband after he repeatedly beat her, with that of Joseph McGrail, who kicked his common-law wife to death. A judge in Thornton's case said she should have "walked out or gone upstairs" instead of killing her husband; she was sentenced to life in prison. The judge in McGrail case, meanwhile, expressed "every sympathy" for him, and said his wife "would have tried the patience of a saint." He got a two-year suspended sentence.

Bindel writes,

For men who kill their partners, the defence of provocation is tailor-made. Provocation will reduce a charge of murder to manslaughter if the defendant can show that things were said or done to provoke them, causing them to experience a sudden loss of control. In such cases they will often justify their actions by claiming that they "just snapped" or "saw red". Judges have been known to express sympathy for men who claim they were nagged or cheated on by female partners, but often appear to have little for women who kill after being raped by their partners or experiencing domestic violence. This tends to be because when women who are being regularly beaten by their partners kill, their dominant emotions are usually fear or despair - not exactly a sudden, explosive "loss of self-control".

Judges may be more sympathetic to male killers because they see their anger at more justified, or because violent outbursts are more accepted from men than for women. But Bindel implicitly buys into double standard by writing that women's "dominant emotions are usually fear or despair." Society may expect the dominant emotions of abused women to be fear or despair, but that's a stereotype — one that may cause judges and juries to treat women more harshly when they do turn angry or violent. Killing an abuser obviously isn't a good solution for anyone, but the idea that it's somehow more natural for men is deeply damaging.

The view that men are provoked and somehow forced to kill, while women should know better, jibes with recent research on perceptions of male and female responses. Women who get angry are seen as emotional, while men are assumed to be reacting to some outside stimulus. Bindel illustrates this upsetting dichotomy in her analysis of Thornton's case: "as the judge's comments made clear, little was known about what drives a battered woman to kill her abuser." Wouldn't that be abuse? If McGrail's wife's actions drove him to kill her, why couldn't the beatings Thornton received drive her? Again, murder is never justified, but why can the British courts explain it away for men but not for women?

The research on emotion implies that people see women as flighty and fragile, but the cases Bindel discusses bring up another stereotype: that women have a greater obligation to control their tempers than men do. Bindel mentions Alicia Crown, who killed her boyfriend in what she says was self-defense. Her lawyers argued that she suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder from her boyfriend's abuse and from a difficult upbringing in Jamaica, but the jury rejected this defense, seeing her as "remarkably resilient." Domestic violence expert Marai Larasi comments, "In my experience black women are particularly susceptible to being viewed as 'strong', able to cope and somehow not vulnerable." In this case it wasn't Crown's fragility that got her in trouble, it was the assumption that she, a black woman, should be "strong enough" to take abuse and not fight back.

Kirsty Scamp was sentenced to 12 years in prison for killing her abusive boyfriend Jason Bull. Scamp worked in a home for adults with behavioral problems, and Bindel writes that "the judge commented to the jury that Scamp should have been able to tolerate Bull's erratic outbursts because of her experience at work." Again, the assumption is that women have the responsibility to "tolerate" abuse.

The cases of Thornton, McGrail, Crown, and Scamp show that the way we perceive men's and women's emotions can have a terrifying impact on people's lives. We see men's feelings as determined by outside factors — if someone "provokes" them, it's natural for them to respond with violence. Yet for some reason we don't think of women's anger as being triggered in this way. The assumption that women's emotions come from within — that women are simply "emotional" creatures — delegitimizes these emotions. When a woman gets angry, or when she turns violent, it's not because of something someone else did — it's because she didn't sufficiently control herself. This leads not only to unfair gender disparities in sentencing, but also to victim-blaming and indifference to domestic violence. Certainly murderers deserve justice, but so do abuse victims, and no one is going to get this justice until we stamp out the view that a man's anger is justified, while a woman's is somehow her own fault.

Driven To Kill [Guardian]

Earlier: Study: Women Are "Emotional," Men Are "Having A Bad Day"

As previously mentioned, for the first time, Elle has overtaken Vogue in ad pages. Today, the NY Post reports that Vogue, "the perennial category leader" may have a hard time producing a 500-page edition this September.

Considered the jewel in Condé Nast's crown, Vogue's September issue is usually the thickest. And heaviest! (Gawker used to weigh it.) According to the Post, "Vogue's biggest September issue ever was in 2007, when it ran an 840-page total issue with 727 ad pages. Last year, it slipped to 607 ad pages in September." This year? All publisher Tom Florio will say is, "We'll have over 400 pages of advertising." Quite a drop.

So why is Vogue having problems? Some speculation:

1. The recession? Though Elle is in the lead — and In Style is doing well — ad pages at those publications are likewise down. Companies aren't spending money like they used to.

2. The zeitgeist? While people are still interested in fashion, it's no longer cool to be all bling-bling and logo-covered. Perhaps attitudes have changed? Accessible clothes — Project Runway, guest designers at H&M — still pique people's interests, but what Vogue calls "aspirational" can often feel like a cruel fantasy.

3. It's stale? Vogue will never die. But maybe it needs resuscitating? A fresh polish on a brand losing luster? Is there a way to restore the enchantment, the magic that Vogue was capable of? Hint: This is not the way.

4. Anna Wintour? The high-profile EIC of Vogue stars in a documentary that may be less than flattering, and recently called fat people in Minnesota little houses. And despite recent covers with Michelle Obama and Beyoncé, there was a time when, for issue after issue, there were no black models on the magazine's pages. Zero. When does your asset become a liability?

5. The Internet? With sites like The Cut, The Sartorialist, Style.com, Fatshionista, StreetPeeper, Refinery29 and so on, it's possible to be interested in fashion and find out about all kinds of runway shows, trends and designers without the narrow point-of-view Vogue offers. In a lightning-fast, interactive way. Like we always say, when in doubt, blame this Web 2.0 thing people are always talking about.

Fashion Feels Frumpy [NY Post]
Earlier: This Recession Will Change Everything (About The Way We Dress)
Vogue's Anna Wintour: High School Dropout & Fat-Shamer
Where Are All The Black Models? Let's Start By Asking Anna Wintour
5 Possible Reasons Why Women's Magazine Sales Are Plummeting
Stylish Doesn't Mean Skinny: Meet The Fatshionistas

"Common" isn't a word that tends to be associated with, well, any part of Michael Jackson's life. His troubled childhood was plagued with emotional cruelty and violence at the hands of his father, and his meteoric rise to fame put a kind of spotlight on him that he was unequipped to deal with.

At a press conference yesterday, Michael's brother Jermaine explained that Michael's personal physician was with him the time of his death, and that the doctor attempted to resuscitate him. TMZ is reporting that the doctor was actually living at Jackson's home, and is now missing. There are also allegations that this doctor was administering Demerol, intravenously, to Jackson on a daily basis. In hindsight, this abuse of medication seems obvious, given some of his conduct.

Jackson was a pioneer—he was one of the first to become a target of the constant chasing and intrusion of the paparazzi, which, at the height of his professional success, wasn't something that automatically came with the territory of celebrity. There was no real precedent for invasion of privacy at this level, so he had to pave a way out of out-of-control media relations that stars like Britney Spears would later encounter.

In 1997, shortly after the birth of his first child, he sat down for an interview with Barbara Walters. He discussed, at length, the pain he felt from media scrutiny. Babs asked him why — if he had such a problem with tabloids and paparazzi — he would sell official pictures of his newborn to a magazine. Jackson explained that it was his way of getting photographers - and helicopters they rode in - off his back and over his house. (He donated the profits from the shoot to charity.) Today, this is a common practice among celebrities.

Due to the obvious and drastic changes in his physical appearance over the years — coupled with bizarre reports of a hyperbaric oxygen chamber, pet monkey, and obsession with the Elephant Man — people thought Michael Jackson was a total weirdo. And in a sense, he was. But how could anyone expect that his experiences of an abusive childhood and exploited adulthood could ever breed stability?

People were attentive — yet not necessarily all that shocked — when, in 1993, he was accused of sexually abusing a 13-year-old boy. Dealing with the stress of the allegations led to Jackson's use of painkillers, Valium, Xanax, and Ativan. He became addicted, canceled his tour, checked into rehab, and settled the case out of court.

In 1995, Jackson and then-wife, Lisa Marie Presley, sat down for an interview with Diane Sawyer.

Looking back now, it was probably the most lucid we've seen him in the past 15 years, particularly when compared to his catastrophic interview sessions with Martin Bashir in 2002, for the special Living with Michael Jackson.

Soon after Bashir's special aired, Jackson was again accused of molesting another young boy. The trial, to put it mildly, was a circus, and his behavior went beyond the eccentricities that the public had grown accustomed to: He showed up late to court, even wore pajamas on one occasion, and danced on the roof of his car for fans outside the courthouse.

It should have been obvious to everyone that he was on drugs. But his public persona had become "the creepy freak," and an alternately adoring and disparaging public wanted to believe that he was insane, or delusional, or simply put, a "wacko." Perhaps he wasn't such a weirdo; maybe he was just really fucking high.

The irony, of course, is that the applause he received from his performances turned into jeers and heckles on the public stage. Even if his recent drug use is purely speculation at this point, it's undeniable that Jackson was always chasing the high of fame. His death, like much of his life, is tragic. And, unfortunately, for superstar celebrities, that's par for the course.

Michael Jackson Doctor — MIA [TMZ]
Jackson Family Feared Morphine OD [TMZ]
Earlier: Jackson Family Spokesman: "This Is A Case Of Abuse Of Medications"

Earlier: Jacksons' Attorney Describes Scene At Hospital, Michael's Drug Abuse

Charlotte Sanders's Telegraph profile, like much media coverage of Anderson, doesn't mention any allegations of financial wrongdoing. It does, however, spend a lot of time describing Anderson's get-up, which sounds upsetting:

She is wrapped in a black trench coat, her bleached-blonde hair padded out with extensions, her tan a deep caramel; lip-gloss and huge false eyelashes adorn her girlish face. She chews gum constantly and talks quickly and breathily. When she removes the trench coat for the photo-shoot, all that is underneath is a pair of skin-tight shorts, knee-length stockings and a denim waistcoat that a six-year-old might struggle to squeeze into. It's quite a look.

She sounds kind of like Janice the Muppet, but she's a lot less fun. Here's her mission statement:

My mission is to give every woman the tools to look and feel their best and be able to do everything 100 per cent. To love their bodies, to absolutely not have cellulite, to not spend their money on gimmicks, to not have their emotions messed with. To not think they can't lose the baby weight – no way! Don't even go down that miserable road! My method is the best girlfriend you could ever have!

Anderson may be teeny-tiny, but she contains multitudes. She wants women to love their bodies, but not if they have cellulite. She wants them "to not have their emotions messed with," but implies that if they accept a little baby weight they will be miserable. And she wants them "to not spend the money on gimmicks," but the centerpiece of her workout is "the Hybrid Body Reformer, a machine that exercises every single accessory muscle." Maybe it works ( if by "works," you mean "gives you the only type of body Anderson thinks is attractive"), but Anderson's claims that all other workouts are worthless, that "running gives you an ugly butt," and that "lots of dancers have horrible bodies" all smell of snake oil.

Anderson says she can "take any woman from any genetic background and turn her into this teeny-tiny dancer type," which makes it sound like she's building a fearsome army of tiny, identical fembots to take over the world. And maybe she is. The allegiance of Madonna and Gwyneth Paltrow seems to have shielded her from much public criticism of her shady money dealings, and she's started a new gym in New York that charges $900 a month. It will be truly sad — but maybe not surprising — if Anderson is able to achieve lasting success by convincing women that they need to be just like her.

Tracy Anderson: Guru By Appointment To Her Madge, Madonna [Telegraph]

Earlier: Gwyneth Paltrow's Celeb Trainer: Financial Charlatan

• According to reports from law enforcement sources, Michael Jackson was pronounced dead this afternoon after arriving at the hospital in a coma. He suffered a cardiac arrest in his home, but paramedics were unable to revive him. [L.A. Times]

• On Barbara Walters 20/20 special on Farrah Fawcett tonight Jaclyn Smith will pay tribute to fellow Charlie's Angels star saying, "Kate experienced breast cancer, I experienced breast cancer, and then Farrah, you know, anal cancer. So, Farrah in her humor said, what was it, the water we were drinking?...And we you ... I mean, she, she maintained her humor, which is hard to do in the face of cancer." [ABC News]
• Ryan O'Neal's lawyer sent a cease and desist letter to Greg Lott, who is pretending that his Farrah Fawcett website is her official site. He's been writing that Ryan is cheating on Farrah and using drugs and claims to be Farrah's high school sweetheart. Lott took his site down after receiving the letter. [TMZ]
• Kate Walsh's estranged husband Alex Young has filed court papers asking that the President of ABC testify in their divorce about Kate's salary and earning potential. ABC says Young is harassing the network. [TMZ]
• Adam Lambert said of the album he recorded pre-American Idol, "I was hired as a studio singer to lend my vocals to tracks written by someone else ... I was broke at the time and this was my chance to make a few bucks." However, documents from his old record label list him as the co-writer on 9 out of 11 tracks. [TMZ]
• Leighton Meester will be performing on Saturday at the Santos Party House in New York. [Fashionista]
• Is People's "Hottest Bachelor" Chace Crawford having such a hard time finding a significant other that he needs to speed date? He said, "I want to so bad - I've heard these wonderful things about them, it'd be kind of interesting. I mean, 10 people and you get two minutes? It's like, what's going on? Let's do this." [The Mirror]
• Kelis' lawyer asked a judge to move up the hearing over getting child support from Nas because she may be in labor already on the day its currently scheduled and she needs money badly. [TMZ]
• Daryl McCauley is facing charges for embezzling money from his brother Dane Cook, and now McCauley's wife has been charged as well. Erika McCauley was arraigned today on charges of larceny by scheme and receiving/concealing stolen property. [TMZ]
• You can watch a video of Edie Falco's statements at today's health care rally on Capitol Hill here: [Politico]
• Nicole Scherzinger of the Pussycat Dolls says she did not see Britney Spears once while they were on tour together. "We have busy schedules and she does too and we go on stage at different times in different cities at different times so it's understandable," she said. [Take 40]
• Has Leonardo DiCaprio broken up with Bar Refaeli? He was seen at a club in Hollywood flirting with several women. [E!]
• The small town of Hamburg, New York has proclaimed Friday Def Leppard Day. The band will perform in town tomorrow night. [The Daily Express]
• Land of the Lost is the film people complained about most to the Classification Board of Australia. Parents thought the film was too raunchy for a PG rating. [News.com.au]
• An attorney who doesn't work for the Gosselins says even if they reach a custody agreement, the kids could still be taken off Jon And Kate Plus 8 because, "the long arm of the law will reach in and say, 'I think these kids need a child advocate because people have not been looking out for their best interests." [USA Today]
• Ed Hardy sent a box of clothing to the Gosselins, but so far Jon Gosselin is the only family member seen wearing the shirts. [TMZ]
• Here's an interview with chef Sam Talbot of Top Chef. He says he really is friends with Kelly Killoren Bensimon, his appearance on The Real Housewives of New York wasn't just a gimmick Bravo came up with. [W]
• Liam Gallagher insists that rumors that he's going to be in a movie about a rock band's struggle with sex and drugs are "simply not true." [The Daily Mail]
• Patti Blagojevich said her time in the Costa Rican jungle on I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here was a great diversion from her problems at home. "It was a really welcome break that I didn't know that I needed, but it turned out to be the right thing at the right time for me," she said. [Yahoo]
• Daniel Radcliffe says in many ways he and Harry Potter are similar. "When I started out at the age of 10 or 11," he says, "I was essentially saying the lines as I myself would say them. When I became aware that that's what I was doing, at 13 or 14, it didn't make sense to change, because it would suddenly be a dramatic shift in the character." He adds that when his mother read the sixth Harry Potter book, she noticed that "Harry argues in the kind of irritating, pedantic way that I argue. She thought Harry and I were getting closer and closer together at that point." [Parade]

Fox News Set For Best Year Yet [The Hollywood Reporter]

[Images via Getty.]

The film, which was written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, was released last summer in Japan as Gake No Ue No Ponyo (Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea) and earned $165 million, making it Japan's highest grossing film of 2008, according to Jim Hill Media. Miyazaki is best known in the United States for his films Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film in 2003. Ponyo has already won the Japanese Academy's award for Best Animation Film and Best Score.

The English-language version of the film will open this summer on 800 screens in the U.S., making it the biggest opening for a Miyazaki film in North America. Though in the past the director's films have received critical acclaim but not huge numbers at the box office, Disney has put a considerable amount of effort into making Ponyo a hit in America. The English-language vocal cast includes Cate Blanchett, Matt Damon, Tina Fey, Liam Neeson, and Betty White, and to lure in American children Noah Cyrus (Miley's younger sister) and Frankie Jonas (the Jonas Brothers' younger brother), were hired to voice the two main characters. Plus, though Myazaki rarely does press, he is scheduled to do several interviews in the U.S. next month.

Ponyo tells the story of a baby goldfish who wants to be a human girl. According to Time she runs away from her home in the sea by hanging on to a jellyfish and gets caught in a glass bottle. A five-year-old boy named Sosuke finds her on the shore and frees her, but cuts himself on the glass. Ponyo uses her magical powers to heal him, but when she tastes his blood she starts becoming human. She and Sosuke become friends and she goes to live with him, but this upsets the balance in nature and her father, the king of the sea, tries to bring her back home.

The plot is loosely based on The Little Mermaid, but Ponyo looks nothing like the Disney version. Most of Miyazaki's films feature female protagonists, but romance is usually not the main focus in his films. In her essay on the director's heroines, Freda Freiberg writes that they are:

"endowed with the characteristics of the conventional masculine hero: they are active, assertive, adventurous and courageous. Some... are crusading heroines, fighting the evils of environmental destruction, capitalism and militarism, supporting the victims of aggression and confronting the perpetrators."

Miyazaki once said in an interview that while his films are known for featuring strong female characters,

I don't logically plan it that way. When we compare a man in action and a girl in action, I feel girls are more gallant. If a boy is walking with a long stride, I don't think anything particular, but if a girl is walking gallantly, I feel "that's cool." Maybe that's because I'm a man, and women may think it's cool when they see a young man striding. At first, I thought "this is no longer the era of men..." But after ten years, I grew tired of saying that. I just say "cause I like women." That has more reality.

Ponyo is geared toward a younger audience than many of Miyazaki's previous films, and according to a The Japan Times review and a The London Times review, the relationship that develops between Ponyo and Sosuke is more of a sibling relationship than the love story of Ariel and Eric that fuels Disney's The Little Mermaid. Rather than romance, the film deals with the relationship between parents and children, such as between Sosuke and his essentially-single mother and Ponyo's sea-goddess mother.

While American Miyazaki fans are already eagerly awaiting the film's release, hopefully this summer more kids will get to see an animated film that doesn't follow the typical formula.

Below, check out the trailer for the English-language version of Ponyo:



Tickets for Lasseter / Miyazaki Event Go On Sale Today [Jim Hill Media]
Ponyo: More Ani-Magic From Miyazaki [Time]
Miyazaki's Heroines [Senses Of Cinema]
Why Heroines In Miyazaki Works [The Hayao Miyazaki Web]
It's Kids' Play For Anime King [The Japan Times]
Ponyo On The Cliff By The Sea [The London Times]

A study of nearsighted kids aged eight to 11 (partly funded, we should note, by Johnson & Johnson, makers of contact lenses) found that girls felt better about their appearance, friends, performance in sports, and academic ability when they switched from glasses to contacts. But the results were only significant if the girls had disliked glasses to begin with. We asked contact-wearers on the Jezebel staff if the switch improved their self-esteem. Hortense says,

Yes, because my vision is so bad that I always had to wear glasses that were pretty unflattering, and with contacts I just felt lighter and happier due to not having 90 pound frames strapped to my face. My skin cleared up, too, because I used to break out where my nose pads from my glasses would touch my skin, so that was nice. I also was able to do simple things, like wear regular sunglasses, which I thought was pretty neat when I was 13.

No, because I was 13 at the time, and it's just not a great time for self esteem in general. It was also harder to hide from people without my glasses, which I realized, once they were gone, were a pretty nice security blanket.

Margaret says, "I felt much more attractive, but there were still plenty of other factors holding me down in high school." Megan just walked around without her glasses all the time, so getting contacts helped her see better. And Sadie can't wear contacts, so it's "Coke-bottles and low self-esteem for me." The switch from glasses to contacts doesn't involve much physical risk, and if it boosts a kid's self-esteem — or allows her to actually see — it seems worthwhile. But what about more invasive modifications?

USA Today's Mary Marcus talked with Kate Deleveileuse, who had 7 lbs. of fat removed from her calves via liposuction when she was 16. Deleveileuse was of normal weight, but "didn't feel confident wearing shorts and Capri pants and knee-high boots." Now 21, she says, "I by no means think I have a perfect figure, but I am proportionate. It helped my self-esteem."

Would Deleveileuse have gotten to this place without the surgery? As Hortense and Margaret point out, the teen years aren't known for high self-esteem, and almost every teenager has a part of their body that they hate. Marcus also mentions children with cleft palates, and a boy born without an outer ear, and for these kids, surgery seems like a more sensible option. But at a certain point, the likelihood that a kid will just grow out of his or her discomfort with a certain body part outweighs the risks of surgery. And don't we want to encourage acceptance of a variety of different appearances, rather than one idea of normalcy that teenagers need surgery in order to achieve?

Megan points out that, while your teenage self may stay with you your whole life, you also develop other selves you can choose to identify with. Hortense refers to Never Been Kissed, in which Drew Barrymore's character "yells, 'I'm not Josie Grossie anymore!' but in reality, she never really was 'Josie Grossie,' — other people but that label on her." My Josie Grossie period basically lasted from age 9 to age 18, during which time I had to wear a palate expander, braces, a contraption that pushed my lower lip out like a Neanderthal's, another palate expander, a retainer, and then braces again. Actually, I don't really remember anyone being mean to me about any of this, but I felt incredibly self-conscious, and the fact that I got my first boyfriend about a month after the braces finally came off seems a testament, not to my sudden hotness, but to the fact that I didn't have the confidence to flirt with anyone before then.

Would I have been better off with invisible braces, or some kind of oral surgery that fixed my teeth fast? It's hard to say. I think I got some good things out of not dating until I was 18 (a fuller sense of myself independent of guys, a first boyfriend who was old enough to be kind and respectful and interesting to talk to). On the other hand, the girl with the weird shit in her mouth is still inside me somewhere (as Sadie points out, our physical self-concepts are often formed early on), and sometimes it's harder for me to feel attractive because of that. But as Megan and Hortense say, that girl may be inside me, but she isn't me, and as a grown-up I have the confidence to know that. Gaining that confidence probably does more for most girls than plastic surgery ever will.

Cosmetic Surgeries: What Children Will Do To Look 'Normal' [USA Today]
Girls' Overall Self-Worth Improves With Contact Lens Wear, Study Shows [Breitbart]

"Reality Check" tells the sordid tale of Maggie McGuane, a divorcée forced to live frugally. She chronicles her plight — taking her kids out of private school, riding her bike to the grocery store, turning down her thermostat so low that it induced coat-wearing — with less pretension than most articles of the "I was rich and am now poor" genre. We actually had to check twice to make sure we were reading Vogue! But then we took a closer look at the accompanying images and then realized, ah yes, the lithe beauty with crimson hair reclining in suburban squalor is the reason this article didn't hit the cutting room floor. But, that's not the only story about a suffering but picturesque, thin, white women in the July issue. There's a profile of ivy-league-educated, socialite-descendant, Washington Post publisher Katharine Weymouth. Her profile explores how she's coping with the decline of the newspaper industry while living in a "modest" house in a wealthy D.C. suburb... with toys on the floor! And of course, as we mentioned before, we are delighted to see Sienna on the cover of Vogue again. After all, she too is a survivor of um... Jude Law and Balthazar Getty? Below find out what else survives in this issue:

Heroine Wendy Murman is an editor at a leftist magazine, living with her husband in Brooklyn and struggling to conceive. Her best friend Daphne is a flighty, self-absorbed, semi-employed beauty who shocks Wendy when she ditches her unreliable married boyfriend for a hot, successful arch-conservative named Jonathan. Soon Daphne is married, pregnant, and installed in a beautiful house, and Wendy is beside herself with envy.

A little jealousy is certainly normal, but Rosenfeld paints the relationship between Wendy and Daphne — and indeed, between Wendy and all of her girlfriends — as so negative and competitive that you wonder why any of these people spend time together. Her e-mail exchanges with frenemy Paige are unrealistically bitchy, as when Paige writes,

Meanwhile — f.y.i. — I just read a very interesting article about infertility among women in our age group. It turns out that most of the issues (tube blockage, lack of cervical fluid, etc.) have their origin in STDs. Which is not to say you have one. Still, it might be worth checking.

Wendy begins the novel by wearily disregarding Daphne's threat of suicide, seems to find her conversation annoying, takes every interaction they have as a chance to compare herself to Daphne and find herself wanting, and remembers countless times throughout their friendship when Daphne has let her down. She recalls, for instance, the night her first boyfriend dumped her, when Daphne promised that they could "go to the movies 'and forget about all [their] guy problems." Instead,

An hour later, Daphne was putting on her coat and saying, "I totally forgot I said I'd meet Josh. Are you going to be okay if I go out for a few hours? I promise I'll be back soon." (Face squinched up.)

Face squinched up? Given this and basically every other scene between Wendy and Daphne, it's hard to see why Wendy doesn't just find better friends — or at least friends who make her feel better.

Unless Rosenfeld's point is that female friendship is inherently toxic. She says on her website, "every woman has a Daphne in her life — a so-called "best friend" whose seemingly effortless successes never fail to make her feel like a Huge Loser." Really? Everyone has a best friend so fake she deserves quotes? And for whom her jealousy outweighs her joy? Sadly, reviewers seem to concur. Publishers' Weekly calls I'm So Happy For You "a dark, hilarious and painfully accurate view of the less-than-pure reasons why women stay friends." And Zoe Heller calls it "a finely observed and witty account of the jealousies that lurk within even the kindest female hearts."

Rosenfeld's Double X advice column, Friend or Foe (tagline: "Boys are easy. Friendships are hard.") adds fuel to the girlfriends-totally-suck fire. Her most recent column implies that a friend's disappearance after the birth of a child must be the result of envy. She also writes about dangerous friend archetypes like the "Instant Best Friend" who dumps you at the slightest provocation (and who quite easily recognizes herself and lashes back in the comments!), or the "Time Energy Suck [...] who dins and sniffles in your ear for hours at a time about first dates who never called again and ex-lovers with whom she broke up eight years ago-'it's just still so hard.'" Friendships can be hard, but are they really so hard that we need names for different bad ones? Doesn't this just perpetuate a sad stereotype of women as catty bitches who undermine each other?

There is, however, a slightly more hopeful way to interpret all this. As Wendy descends further and further into insane jealousy of Daphne, her husband Adam offers this explanation of her behavior:

You're never satisfied. That's just who you are. You felt deprived as a child, and there's nothing anyone can do to make it up to you. You could marry Bill Gates and still think you were getting fucked over.

It's harsh, but also feels true — a lot of Wendy's problems seem to come from her constant sense of being worse off than others, and her inability to appreciate what she has. Only when she stops comparing herself to Daphne can she finally be happy. It is possible to read I'm So Happy For You as a cautionary tale against the kind of jealousy that makes every baby, every relationship, every apartment, every job into a mere data point in a constant status accounting. If it's Rosenfeld's point that this is no way to live your life, more power to her. But why does she have to make it sound like every woman lives this way?
I'm So Happy For You [Amazon]
I'm So Happy For You [Official Site]
Friend Or Foe [Double X]

Born in Corpus Christi, Farrah Fawcett had a thriving career in commercials before shooting to stardom in 1976 as PI Jill Munroe in Charlie's Angels. Although she's associated in the public mind with this role and with her influence as a 70's style icon, Fawcett went on to have an enduring acting career, appearing off-Broadway and in a number of television movies, as well as in several highly-regarded television appearances. Especially noteworthy was her role as a battered wife in the 1984 TV movie The Burning Bed , for which she was nominated for an Emmy. The film was regarded as crucial in destimgatizing the victims of and drawing attention to issues of domestic abuse - as well as providing actual support information to viewers.

In the years since her diagnosis with anal cancer, Fawcett has come to be regarded, not merely as an iconic sex symbol or someone whose high-profile relationship we gawk at in the tabloids, but as a woman dealing bravely with her disease and talking openly about a form of cancer that doesn't get much press. Last month, she presented the documentary Farrah's Story, of which friend Kate Jackson said, Fawcett "didn't do this to show that she is unique, she did it to show that we are all unique... (T)his was...meant to be a gift to others to help and inspire them." As a culture, we tend to want to keep our "sex symbols" just that, and don't like to be confused with nuances. Farrah Fawcett's illness has forced us to regard someone with all the complexity due her, and maybe to think about the value of those "pop culture icons" we take so much for granted. Fawcett's legacy shouldn't be whitewashed of her pop-cultural influence - this was important to defining an era, not to mention fun - but she also forced us to look beyond that, and this was important. It has to be said: may flights of angels sing you, Farrah.

Farrah Fawcett, Sex Symbol And Actress, Dies [CNN]

Farrah Still Has Her Sense Of Humor, Costar Says [NBC]
9 Million Tune In For NBC Special On Fawcett's Cancer fight, 'Farrah's Story' [NYDN]