Jezebel: Walter Kirn

Justin's Mom Says Jess Is Like Family; Lindsay's Dad Says She Needs Rehab

Dodai Stewart — Thu, 18 Feb 2010 09:00:00 EST

Justin Timberlake's mom Lynn Harless calls Jessica Biel "one of us." She says:

SATs, College, And "Books That Make You Dumb": The Politics Of Academic Merit

Anna North — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 17:40:00 EDT

Sonia Sotomayor didn't do very well on the SATs, but she did really well at Princeton. Walter Kirn, whose experience was the opposite, wonders what this says about the way we measure "merit." More »

When Dudes Read Elle…

Moe — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 14:30:00 EDT

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That crooked nose. That untamed hair. The enormous appetite. The hottest girl in the room isn’t who you think. Why pretty isn’t (always) sexy. Yeah, it's another Elle story about obsessive-compulsive appearance evaluation syndrome betraying just enough honesty to touch off a flurry of those "must flee this fucking town" synapses that generally prevent me from finishing magazine stories these days. (Also: it's by Walter Kirn.) Luckily, there are men in other cities, like reader Bryce of Knoxville, Tennessee, who read the story on the internet late at night with an anonymous buddy and felt compelled to send us the transcript of their IM conversation. Click the pic to read the mystified musings of two innocent dudes when confronted with the heretical insecurity porn peddled by our nation's women's magazines. [Elle] More »

That 'Vogue' Writer With The "Son" In The Army? It's Actually Her Boyfriend's Son, Explains Actual Mom

Moe — Fri, 28 Sep 2007 15:30:55 EDT

Remember "Solider In The Family: Confronting A Son's Decision To Enlist"? The Vogue cover piece by that lady who learns the hard way that some people are in Iraq not because they are aggro rednecks but because it turns out making a living writing masturbatory pieces about your life isn't actually the inalienable right of all Americans, when — horrors! — her own SON ZACH enlists in the army? That is, actually um, her "stepson." Which is to say, ahem, the son of her boyfriend to whom she is not only not married but who lives in a totally separate house. We know this because we just talked to Zach's actual mom. Who was not exactly stoked about the eight "step-" words sprinkled throughout Maggie McGuane's piece on their happy "family of six"! Or anything else about the piece. "She cooks them dinner, she's involved in their lives," Zach's mom Robin conceded to us. "But the story..." also admits Maggie never wrote him one letter when he was away at training camp! So Robin wrote us a letter on the stuff Maggie left out. More »

Obsessing About The 'Elle' Body Obsession Issue

Moe — Thu, 24 May 2007 13:57:23 EDT

We actually empathize - to the extent that we are capable of empathy - with fashion magazines' obsessions with body obsession. [You mean now that we have experienced firsthand the sick thrill of the pageview climb we get from POSTING WHAT YOU FUCKING ATE TODAY? -Ed.] For one thing, they sell! For another thing, they provide the only sort of content in women's magazines that actually make us feel really really viscerally deeply. Like those stories about Walter Reed or the Virginia Tech massacre, only actually so much worse:

"She'd let herself go, this girlfriend. She truly had. By our six-month anniversary, she cast a perfectly oval shadow and was aware enough of her condition to choose theater seats beside the aisle. This allowed our fellow moviegoers not to have to climb onto their seats when she went to refill her jumbo Cokes and empty what was, by then, her jumbo bladder."

Ugh. After the jump, more textual equivalents to clutching our love handles in our fists and eating a whole can of wintergreen Skoal because it's the only thing that will make us throw up. More »