Fug The Cover

It is well and truly established that I am quite fond of Miss Mandy Moore. She seems like someone you could be friends with -- actual Go Out For Beers With, Complain About Work To, Talk About Boys With, Borrow Going-Out Tops From Friends, as opposed to being someone who has solely Snort Coke With, Steal Parts From, Cheat On Boyfriends With, "Accidentally" Spill Wine on Your Favorite Top Hollywood-Style Friends.  And, apparently -- at least according to Elle -- she is both a lover AND a fighter, and who doesn't appreciate that in a girl? 

And, sure, maybe she's a lover and a fight with sort of unusually straw-like hair, according to his cover, but she looks cute and beachy in that dress, no? Imagine that with slightly healthier-looking hair. It works -- right? Sure. It works. Everything is working out fine for Mands. Let's take a gander at her on the inside, shall we?

Oh, W magazine. It's been a long time since Kirsten Dunst played a vampire; it seems unfair to style her for this cover to optimize the illusion that she's spent all her time since then sleeping in a coffin. You've also managed to give her a wonky eye and a wig that looks like something Ken Paves scraped out of a gutter and then rejected for looking "too cheap." Well done! Here's hoping the article within does not reveal that she found herself at your photo shoot.

We recently took a trip to our nation's fair capital for a wedding. It was mighty cold in DC, but the city greeted us warmly, and when we took our leave, it was with the satisfaction of a weekend well spent.  When waiting in line for security at Dulles, I spotted one of those freebie magazines you find at places like airports. I am, if you must know, a huge fan of the SkyMall. Where else can you find the Pop-Up Hot Dog Cooker [awesome], the Basho The Sumo Wrestler Table [classy!] AND the extremely unsettling Poison Oak Tree Sculptures, as well, of course, as an assortment of change counters and accessories for your dog? And so I expect this particular magazine to perhaps be trying to sell me a new robotic can opener. But what it is REALLY trying to sell me on is the possibility that the cover model is actually Alec Baldwin:

At first, I thought this publication was called Washington Fever (a rather catchy name for a magazine, I think), and that Alex Baldwin HAD one, which is why he looks so very orange. Frankly, he doesn't look like himself at all. Let me refresh your memory:

See? That's Alec Baldwin. Crinkly, amusing, ready to attempt to sell us some Schwetty Balls, and probably willing to show us his actual ones. We like it. Washington Flyer Alec, on the other hand, appears to coming directly from a Men's Warehouse print ad shoot. In fact, I'm not convinced that that's all Alec at all. I think maybe his eyes, nose, and mouth may all have been placed on the face of another oranger, less eye-bagged, even smarmier model in the hopes that exhausted travelers wouldn't notice that El Baldwin looks -- well, weird. But not us. We know the real Baldwin when we see him, and he's generally not the color of a mango margarita.

Which reminds us: we need to order that Margarator.

We've been fugging a lot of covers lately, begging the question: What is up with January magazine covers? Traditionally, January issues are thin and flat -- like a bad hair day -- presumably because mag staffers are exhausted from putting together the December issues, which generally could be used to weight down a body. You know, if you were that kind of a girl. So I guess it's not too surprising that a lot of January covers are kind of lackluster. And yet I could not let Janet Jackson's appearance on Singapore's Harper's Bazaar pass without comment:

To be blunt about it: Is there some law that Janet Jackson can not appear on the cover of any major magazine in pants? Remember her W cover? This is almost exactly the same concept. I mean, it's more Wholesome 80s Super Model Going For a Dip in the Pool After Some Refreshing Tab, while that one was more...freaky.  But, seriously: We know, you lost a whole lot of weight. Your body looks nice. Excuse me, according to the cover, it is "killer." (And I don't think the use of the phrase "the skinny" on the cover is a coincidence, either.) But would it kill you to CONSIDER PANTS on occasion? EVEN THIN PEOPLE WEAR PANTS. We'll still KNOW that your ass is smaller than it used to be. You can PUT IT AWAY NOW.

Did Billie Piper burn down the Glamour UK offices?

Because from everything I've seen her in -- admittedly, we're talking mostly British tabloids and chat shows, since I don't watch Doctor Who -- she seems bubbly and fun, and while she is wearing something that you need to be bubbly and fun to pull off (hey, sequins on a January cover? Works for me, since gold sequins are basically what champagne would look like if it were fabric), her face looks like she's just received a Botox facial and a death kiss from Vlad the Impaler.  Get this girl some lippie!

In fact, I noticed when I was London over the summer that many British women's mags actually give away REAL ITEMS with each purchase (one of them actually included an actual bikini, which I think is brilliant. Why don't they do this in the United States?). Maybe the Gift With Purchase with this issue is a tube of a gloss that includes actual color, thus allowing readers to avoid the cover look, in some kind of nifty reverse psychological trick. Nude lips are well and good, you know, but they sure are hard to pull off without looking like you just stumbled from your cold, dark grave in search of warm virgin flesh upon which to feast.

So basically,  I'm just saying, that if you are a British Glamour staffer, and you run into Billie Piper in a dark alley or a wine cellar, or near any kind of crypt-like thing, just get out your garlic, okay?

So, I have a long and tortured history with Nicole Kidman.  Or, more accurately, with her hair. See, I love her red Moulin Rouge hair. I spent a goodly portion of that movie thinking, "Man,  Ewan McGregor is cute. Her hair is FANTASTIC.  Ooh, he can sing, too! No, seriously, I want that hair to be coming out of my head." And so on. I mean, come on:

She's the prettiest consumptive ever! I would kill you to have that hair. I'm sorry,  I'm sure you're perfectly lovely and I do appreciate your readership, but I need to have long, shiny, wavy red hair.  When I have that hair, finally I will be happy.

And when Nicole stuck to that hair color (or an approximation thereof)  in real life? Oh, it was a delight!

Pretty!

Pretty! (Hi, George.)

Pretty!

Then, of course, we went through that long, painful blonde period. God, that was hard. Why, I asked myself, would someone with pretty, pretty red hair decide to wash herself out like that? Why? For one thing, what kind of example are we setting for Lindsay Lohan? (Remember when our biggest concern about Lindsay Lohan was her hair color, and not the fact that she NEVER WEARS PANTIES ANYMORE? I wish I'd known how lucky we were.)

So, when I got December's Vogue, my first thought was, "THANK GOD, WE'RE BACK TO THE RED!"

We weren't going to say anything about this, because Kylie Minogue has been through a lot and we are surprisingly soft-hearted when we forget to take our meds. But then we slowly realized that what has happened to her on the cover of Australian Vogue is not Kylie's fault. Therefore, we can show you the monstrosity without guilt.

Without further ado, except for the ado of adding another preceding sentence rather than just tossing it up:

What have those wizards of Oz done with the nation's favorite pert-bummed princess? Her skin isn't pale, it's pasty; her eyes are all askew, she's dressed like a warrior princess of yore who just discovered Like A Virgin, and they have gone to great lengths to enhance whatever innately rabbity qualities her teeth may have. In fact, overall, she looks completely hammered. Off-her-tree plastered. And I think a woman who just survived breast cancer deserves a little better, wouldn't you say? Something classy, something sexy, something that proves she's still every bit the bombshell she was before she grappled with the disease. Instead she got an audition photo for Terminator 4. And as much as I'd like to see her out there working, that's not exactly what I had in mind.

There is no doubt that Jessica Alba is a pretty, pretty girl.  (We've also heard that she's a crazy bitch, but who are we to judge her for that? In fact, it sort of makes us want to get a beer with her.)  So why does she look like this on the cover of Elle?

There are several possible explanations:

a) She's a huge Janet Jackson fan, and instead of, say, getting a nice military-inspired jacket, or randomly flashing her left boob at nationally televised events, she decided to pay homage to Janet's disastrous W cover.

b) Nina Garcia hates her, and this is her revenge. (Okay, okay, we know that Nina Garcia probably doesn't have the final say on Elle's cover, but don't you love the idea of her sitting in her office -- twirling her highlighted locks like a more feminine version of a handlebar mustache -- and saying, "AT LAST, Alba! Your neck is MINE. MWHAHAHAHAH!" ? And while we're on the subject of Nina Garcia, now that she's pregnant -- contrary to popular belief, we are not entirely cold-hearted and actually love babies, especially fashionable ones, so we're totally pleased for her -- we're worried that she might not have the energy to get around to sneering at everything she'd like to sneer at.  In which case, we're here to offer our sneering services: Call us, Nina.)

c) She got some incredibly bad beauty advice from a hack plastic surgeon, who advised her to get a neck-ectomy, because "shoulders are HOT for fall."

d) She's in full-on Method acting mode for the lead role in a gender-bending version of The Hunchback of Notre Dame, called Hottie Hunchback.

e) Tragically, all of the above.

When you think Paris Vogue, what do you think? Class? Elegance? Cutting-edge fashion? Quintessential French chic?

Or underboob?

Sure, maybe the underboob of a chic French model smoking a Gauloise in her underpants and, like, really expensive and avant-garde, de-constructed heels.  Or Vanessa Paradis's underboob, as shot by Johnny Depp with a Polaroid or something. But Paris Hilton's underboob? Honey, show us something we haven't seen before.

Oh, Miss Jackson. (I guess we better call her Miss Jackson, since I'm about to get nasty:)

Actually, I guess I can call you "Janet," since I don't really blame you for this monstrosity. I mean, you didn't style the shoot. And I'm sure you didn't arrive on set, all, "I KNOW! I've lost a lot of weight in the last nine months. Let's do it AEROBICS STYLE, like an homage to Olivia Newton John's 'Let's Get Physical' video! Except with a BIG OLD BELT! And fingerless gloves, like the kind I wore in Fame! Come on! Put away those gowns! We're going to listen to my body talk!"

I do feel, however, that you need to be paying more attention to the wisdom of one Miss Tyra Banks, who would be screaming her balls off about the fact that you have no neck in this shot (seriously. Almost every episode of America's Next Top Model features a girl getting dressed down for having no neck). It looks like your head just popped right out of your sternum and onto your shoulder.  Honey, if your body COULD talk, it would be telling you to ELONGATE YOUR NECK.

Also, to maybe to have a talk with W about their air-brushing team, because they made you look a bit too much like your brother here for any of us to be entirely comfortable.