Fug The Cover

Do not get me wrong. Angelina Jolie could appear on the cover of a magazine wearing a barrel and picking her teeth with a pocket knife and she would look gorgeous. I find her to be inhumanely fabulous. Ergo, it's shocking to me that Vanity Fair seemed to feel that she would benefit from the kind of help that the rest of us ladies occasionally resort to in order to fabulous ourselves up, namely the tried-and-true trio of cleavage, big sexy bedhead, and major lips. Those are classics because they tend to work and I support them daily, but I think on someone like Angelina, who is already extra sexy-looking thanks to the miracle of genetics, they combine to be...a bit much. I mean, her boobs are clearly mesmerizing, but I read a comment about this cover which opined that she looks a bit more like a blow-up doll than she probably wants to, and I have to agree. Especially since they pulled a quote from her that uses the word "sexy" twice in one sentence and also slapped the word "oral" right next to her face. Like, we get it: Angelina Jolie is sexy. The earth is round. Marc Jacobs makes cute accessories. These are truths so well-known that some people are actually kind of sick of hearing them. Angelina's smart, and her life is interesting, so I find it hard to believe that she, of all people, needs the Sexed-Up Treatment to move magazines, especially Vanity Fair which purports to be rather brainier than your average rag. Frankly, I'd be more interested in buying the one where she's wearing the barrel.

This is just sad, I'm sorry. I mean, I guess I'm kind of glad to see her trussed up in something new -- even if it is pleather leggings and a vest and hideous lipstick and a painfully fake-ass pouty expression -- but COME ON. ScarJo. You are not a rock star. We all know that this album of yours is nothing but a vanity project.  Period. If it isn't, then why does the video to your first single basically seem to be about how depressed and truly pensive you are while people are putting eye make-up on you? Ooooh, poor  sad angel clown. Life is so hard when you're the center of attention. NO ONE UNDERSTANDS YOUR PAIN. There, there -- dry your professionally made-up eyes with a hundred dollar bill. It IS hard to be a beautiful, successful millionaire. You feel all ALONE, despite being newly engaged to someone totally dreamy.  You just sit alone and stare at your reflection in your black AmEx card and you cry cry cry in your lonely heart, I get it. But can't you just make these little videos and dress up like an erstwhile emo frontwoman and prance around with instruments in the privacy of your own backyard and leave the rest of us free to live in peace without having to likewise pretend you can sing?

We have gotten A LOT of email about this one:

I don't full-on hate it. Other than the fact that her expression is totally blank and she's kind of working the Dead Eyes and she appears to be mid-sentence, I have to appreciate the fact that Vogue's Photoshop henchmen didn't completely erase all of SJP's wrinkles the way every other magazine covering the Sex and the City movie has. Just, you know, a vast majority of them. Look, SJP is hardly a wrinkly old hag. But she's got a line here or there -- because of something we call aging -- and you'd never know it from all the covers she's landed on lately, in which she looks as smooth of forehead and supple of cheek as a wee baby.  I think my main issue with this cover, actually, is that it's sort of unflattering and boring and if ever there were an occasion to stick Sarah Jessica Parker in a giant hot pink tutu, a gold-plated bodice, knee-high lace-up moonboots covered in fur, and a giant, peacock-feather headdress, THIS IS IT. Why'd you let me down like that, A Dubs?

Riddle me this: if you didn't know it was Jessica Alba on the cover of Allure, would you waltz past it in the supermarket and think, "Hey, there's Jessica Alba!" or would you think, "is Allure using random models now? Hey -- is that the last bag of Spicy Sweet Chili Doritos? UNHAND THEM, YOU FOOL!" She looks pretty, but she doesn't look like herself. She actually looks sort of like Leighton Meester to me, crossed with someone who blinks really, really slowly and is excessively Photoshopped. In fact, she looks so sleepy here, I wouldn't be surprised if her eyes were closed in the next few snaps.  Which I understand -- she's pregnant! of course she's knackered! go take a nap, Jessica! -- but it maybe isn't the MOST awesome choice for a magazine cover.

On the other hand, I freely admit that I'm sort of looking forward to reading Where the Hair and Makeup Pros Shop. I hope it's, like, True Value Hardware and the medical supply stores, because otherwise I think I can guess.

I guess none of ScarJo's "Five Dads" taught her to avoid looking like a bizarrely coiffed alien on the cover of magazines? Huh. You'd think one of them would have covered that.

I have had many a conversation over the past week or so about this cover, and they all go something like this: "She looks hot! But the whole thing is sort of unseemly. But it's FRENCH! But it's just TOO MUCH. But maybe it's SEXY. But it's also sort of creepy. But that color is great. But I don't need to see her in this S&M panties-coordinated-with-belt thing. But at least it's interesting! But it makes me feel sort of uncomfortable. But maybe that's the point! But I hate it. No, I love it. No, it's terrible. No, it's AWESOME. No. Yes. No. I don't know. GOD, WON'T SOMEONE PUT IT TO A VOTE?!"

Your wish is my command, dear reader:

This is the day of the week where I admit something embarrassing, and today, it's that I am that person in America who loves Gwyneth. I know, I know: She's got a rep for being snotty and snobby and icy and whatnot, but I can not help it. I love her. Even when her head is apparently floating a full foot in front of her neck:

I know. She has a floating head, and I suspect she's able to "simplify everything," as she says on the cover, because....oh, I don't know....maybe because SHE'S LOADED? Money can't buy everything,  but it CAN pay for someone to water your lawn and buy your Mini Wheats and fold your underpants and I bet we'd all be able to more easily juggle our families and our jobs if we didn't have to run to the laundromat and the corner store all the damn time.  Ergo, I can understand why some people out there in the wide world might read this and kind of want to kick old GP in the shins. But I can't help it.  I just look at her and WANT TO BUY THE MAGAZINE. I don't even know WHY.  It's like that weird thing I have with Lohan, except for how Paltrow is like THE EXACT opposite of Lohan. On the other hand, I do wish there was an article in here explaining how I, too, can have that floating head.

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.

We've been so mean to LC lately and I totally don't even mean it. Sure, I thought her fashion line sort of sucked, but she seems like a nice girl, and I look forward to seeing her in one of our Blame Spencer tees. (Buy early, buy oftblah blah blah blah).  But she's got some problems, you guys: Her taste in men is questionable at best, for one thing. For another, Mark -- that teen/tween magalogue from Avon -- is out to get her:

She doesn't look bad there, per se. But she also totally doesn't look like herself. To the extent that I recently spent like twenty minutes trying to figure out if that WAS LC, or just some rando model.  I kept putting this thing down and then picking it up again. I really went back and forth like nine times. And you know how, if you write the word "turnip" or whatever multiple times, it eventually loses ALL MEANING? Ten minutes into my existential Is This Lauren Or What? crisis, her face lost all meaning and context to me. It could have been Engelbert Humperdinck up on there.  Though I don't know how well he sells perfumes to teenagers.