Amanda Bynes

OH MY GOD, you guys! You're not going to believe this! Amanda Bynes is wearing a tiny mini-dress and a fake tan!



Up is down and down is up! Next you're going to tell me that bacon grows on trees and Brett Favre is retiring for good and Audrina Patridge made eye contact with something! WE'RE THROUGH THE LOOKING GLASS HERE, PEOPLE.

"Hey guys!



Guess what? I'm totally predictable now!"

If Amanda Bynes is proud of her legs, then hooray for her -- seriously, enjoy the lack of cellulite while it lasts, kid, because Mother Nature is mean and cranky and someday she will spank you with her dimpled paddle.

Evidently she is equally proud of her crotch, given that she seems hell-bent on trying to show it to everyone (don't worry, this is safe for work):


[Photo: Splash News]

HONEY. We live in a society. You have to be careful how you stretch when you're in a tiny micro-mini, and you have to be doubly mindful when you are standing on a staircase and anyone down below can look up and immediately write a 100,000-word thesis on your waxing habits. Does NO ONE in Hollywood offer up a seminar to young actresses on how to keep their vaginas under wraps? She got lucky here, but it's only a matter of time.

You know, her birthday is coming up -- can someone at least make sure she receives lots of underwear?

Fall Fashion Week always begins with the unabashedly cheesy -- and thus delightful and star-studded -- Heart Truth Red Dress Show, in which famous folks don clothes designed by bigwigs and do their best runway saunters. It's a relaxing way to kick off a hellish week, which is why we're crushed we couldn't make it this season thanks to a 14-hour travel odyssey and some high winds in New York that kept us trapped in LAX for too many hours. We missed Lynda Carter -- Wonder Woman, for all you fetuses out there -- and Jennie Garth! AND Tori Spelling! And Cicely Tyson wearing some serious sleeves!

We also missed this:

We had a LOT of e-mails about this dress waiting for us when our day ended, and we agree it's deeply problematic. Not that she is unaccustomed to wearing tiny Mariah-like -- or Mariah-lite, if you will -- skirts, but this one is particularly microscopic. If you stapled it at the crotch, it's instant Betty Boop. In some circles it might even count as underwear.

To be fair to Amanda, though, she's not necessarily wearing this by choice -- Swarovski designed the dress specifically for the Heart Truth show, and although I am sure the companies know in advance what celebrity they're getting (so that, say, Liza Minnelli doesn't show up on the day-of and find out she's wearing a loincloth while Hilary Duff is in a caftan, or something), it's hard to say whether Amanda would've had any input at all in the final product. Clearly whoever did failed to consider that she might be strutting down a slightly raised runway, thereby giving the entire first row, and maybe more, a rather stark Vision of Love.

That same person ALSO probably didn't count on the belt looking like a giant bejewelled pretzel. Then again, maybe the person was hungry, and at the same time assumed nobody who attends Fashion Week would even know what a pretzel LOOKS like to make the comparison.

** Oh, Amanda. Since we wrote this, E! News reported that she did indeed have a hand in creating the dress. Well, Amanda, we tried. We really tried. You're on your own now, kid.

Here's a look at the shows we DID get to catch on Friday:

• It was a starletpalooza at BCBG, and -- SURPRISE -- Solange did not look insane.
• The unexpected belle of the ball at Rag & Bone? Why, Jimmy Fallon, natch.

We'll be posting updates all week, plus regular fuggings -- and rest assured, we'll catch up on what we missed in the last two days, plus whatever comes down the pike this week. But if we're slower than usual, please bear with us -- it's just because we're stuck somewhere trying to flag down a cab and having the worst taxi karma imaginable. We aren't sure what we did to a cab driver in a past life, but it must have been hellacious. Maybe one of them designed Amanda Bynes' dress while he moonlighted at Swarovski, and Friday we simply paid the cosmic price in advance.

I'm not sure who should be feeling what in light of the fact that, when I saw this picture in thumbnail, I thought Amanda Bynes was Mariah Carey:

So, riddle me this, Seventeen: Is one of the "amazing style secrets" of Amanda Bynes that you're suggesting we steal, "Put on more makeup than the inaugural victim of an unskilled, blind-ish Avon lady, and then ADD SOME MORE"?

Yeah, that's what I figured.

So, Amanda Bynes is still on her Dear horror tour, making it yet ever more clear that she needs to stick to acting, as there's really not a huge hole in the Boring and Cheap Looking Casual Wear That I Could Pick Up at the Student Union Between Psych and Poli Sci When I Get Cold arena:

I mean, other than the fact that she suddenly looks about ten years older than she actually is, she looks....you know, okay. Fine. Not naked. But it's kind of unbelievable to me that we're all supposed to pretend that this stuff is at all special, or interesting, the way clothing ought to be if it's marketed as being specially designed by someone special. Let's be honest. Essentially, this is just random crap that you wear for three months before burying it at the very bottom of your laundry basket and then find when you're looking for the other sock with the pumpkins on it around Halloween, and you go, "dude, I totally forgot I owned this!"  And then you throw it back in with the rest of the dirty laundry and forget about it again.

There's absolutely nothing wrong with basic generic hoodies and tees -- hello, what else are we supposed to work out in? -- and I find actor- or model-designed clothing lines to be theoretically kind of hilarious and entertaining, but DAMN this stuff is BORING. Whoever designed this stuff for Amanda Bynes could not have been less invested in making her look like she knows what she's doing, and, frankly, she herself doesn't even look that stoked. I mean, this is the epitome of what Tyra's talking about when she tells a model she's got Dead Eyes. So either Amanda is irked by the way this whole thing is unraveling (as, clearly, I seem to be. I never would have thought I'd get so agitated about Amanda Bynes's boring sportswear. God, I want to tell me to go outside.) or she's actually gone and got herself some baby Botox. Let's all pray to God it's the former.

Dear Amanda Bynes:

Listen, I watched She's The Man. Sure, it was on a plane, but unlike Employee of the Month, it never once tempted me to unlatch the emergency door mid-flight to escape. In fact, I may have recommended it to others, with the old tried and true "hey, it won't make you want to hurtle yourself into space. Plus, Channing Tatum!" You are a cute girl, albeit in an increasing generic Blonde Tan sort of way. And I am not one to find fault with a black minidress.

But your companion here -- let's call her Nearly Headless Nicole -- is wearing what appears to be EVERY SINGLE ITEM from your new clothing line, Bitten. Er, wait. That's SJP's clothing line. From your new clothing line, Dear. Whatever.

NHN also looks like this might be her first month in college and she's had a bit of a run-in with the concept of separating her laundry, thus turning everything this dingy, tragic shade of gray. Girl, that's what happens when the dude you've been hooking up with tosses his black socks into your whites.  You need constant vigilance with those guys. You'll also get back to your dorm room and he'll be smearing your toothpaste on a zit and sniffing your underwear. Just so you know.

At the MTV Movie Awards this weekend, we saw a few egregious changes that we would do well to investigate. To that end, let's play a fun game called BEFORE AND AFTER, the rules of which I would happily explain, except I think they're pretty obvious.

We'll begin with Heidi Montag of The Hills. My disdain for Heidi's douchey boyfriend Spencer has been well-illustrated, and you can imagine what a great idea I think their "engagement" is. But, hey, who DOESN'T have an ill-advised first marriage in her past? Just get it out of the way, Heidi. Then you can arrange for MTV to create a reality show called Getting Over Spencer Pratt, a Bachelorette meets Flava of Love type show in which other Hollywood scensters compete to be your next husband. It will be hilarious!

Anyhoodle, in case you don't watch as much of The Hills as I do, this is what Heidi used to look like:

And this is what she looks now, a year later:

New fiance, new nose, new boobs, new lingerie-inspired wardrobe. Now, while I get that the girl wants to show off her investment -- and her new breasts ARE sort of mesmerizing -- I am pretty sure that she's ACTUALLY wearing lingerie. Like, not lingerie-inspired. Lingerie-lingerie. Wow:  the more you type the word "lingerie," the weirder it looks.

Anyway, I just hate the idea that, in one short year, the kid went from being sort of fresh-faced and natural looking to...you know, wearing lingerie as a dress. I blame Spencer.

I also blame Spencer for Amanda Bynes's new look.  I doubt the two of them have actually met, but I am sure he is somehow to blame. Behold, the new Amanda:

Summer is here, and that can only mean one thing: Young ladies spray themselves various shades of orange-brown in an attempt to look sun-kissed, when in reality it's more like "pelted with overripe kumquats."

Exhibit A: Amanda Bynes.

Pretty girl, lovely figure, ridiculous fake tan.

Exhibit B: Jamie-Lynn Sigler.

Pretty girl, lovely figure, ridiculous fake tan. I sense a pattern here. And while I appreciate and advocate not lying in the sun for hours frying skin to a crisp, thus practically issuing a double-dog-dare to skin cancer, I will never understand the temptation to douse oneself in Crayola-false colors like a piece of bare wall getting tagged with graffiti.

Although in Jamie-Lynn's case, some of her atrocious artificial brownness might come from having been doused in syrup by a confused, hungry passer-by who -- thanks to the cut of that dress -- mistook her breasts for pancakes.