Glossed Over

Business as Usual: Blonde Celebs Land September Covers

Glossed Over — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 14:15:09 -0700

We’re just a few weeks away from the massive September magazines! That means it’s almost time for the same crop of overexposed celebrities who appear on all the covers to snag yet another one. (Vanity Fair, while not strictly a fashion mag, will feature a handful of models.) Here’s who’ll be gracing, er, appearing:

Vogue: Keira Knightley (and just like last year, I’ll be liveblogging as I read the issue)

Allure: Carrie Underwood

Cosmopolitan: Blake Lively

Elle: Jessica Simpson (who, apparently, was on the cover of Elle’s best-selling issue ever. Ever. How is that even possible?)

Glamour: Penelope Cruz

InStyle: Uma Thurman

W: Kate Hudson

No word yet on which flaxen-haired tabloid fixture will land Marie Claire, Lucky, or Bazaar.

BlogHer Bound

Glossed Over — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 12:17:00 -0700

Okay, not bound—I’m already there! Are you at Blogher, too? Say hi! Posting here will resume on Tuesday, but I’ll be Twittering until then.

Elle Redefines Street Harassment

Glossed Over — Thu, 17 Jul 2008 00:57:03 -0700

In the August issue of Elle, the magazine’s creative director, Joe Zee, decides it’s time men had a forum to air their perspectives on women’s appearances. As one of the few guys on staff at a women’s magazine, civilians are always asking him what he thinks about their outfits.

Whenever I meet people at nonindustry social gatherings, they’re naturally inquisitive about my job and often wind up asking me, “So what do you think of what I’m wearing now?” I’m like that lone doctor trapped at a cocktail party doling out advice for nonexistent ailments.

Zee is the only man who makes a living in women’s fashion, so he’s determined to share his wisdom with the masses. The best way to do this? By accosting random pedestrians on the street! You know, the street. The place where men never offer unsolicited opinions about the way women look?

Yeah, this plan was obviously hatched by a man.

The creative director set up shop on New York’s Wall Street—which, according to him, is “man’s territory.” Of course!

Considering this feature is a fairly blatant ripoff of Glamour’s “Dos and Don’ts” (although these women are posing, and so are at least aware they were being photographed), Zee had to set himself apart somehow. His solution? Green x’s across their faces. Oh, and he’s even worse to his targets than Glamour is.

To a woman in shorts, he writes:

Working girl? You bet, if your profession is the oldest one in the world.

Here’s his take on a woman in a pink trench coat:

Elle Woods may have gotten office cred for her ensembles, but this it’s-my-first-day-at-work-in-a-funky-office Barbie look is a real clunker.

Um, didn’t he watch Legally Blonde all the way through and catch the elegant non-pink outfits Elle wore to work in that cad Callahan’s office? At least this victim can take solace in the fact that Zee referred to another woman as a

bargain-bin Carrie Bradshaw who got dressed in the dark

and compared a third to Melanie Griffith’s character in Working Girl.

Perhaps worst of all, he says this about a woman in a suit and (okay, okay) truly hideous heeled clogs:

At work, I want to take you seriously, not dance with you.

Ah, so it’s her fault you don’t take her seriously. Thanks for filling us in that wardrobe determines our worth in the workplace!

Sure, Zee is trying to be helpfu with his advice, but if I encountered a guy on the street who wanted to appraise my clothes, I’d be terrified. Next time I hear a whistle or a catcall, I might just consider myself lucky if it isn’t accompanied by a zinger about my outfit.

Working Girl Wednesdays: “Sex at High Noon!”

Glossed Over — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 01:08:13 -0700

Welcome to Working Girl Wednesdays! Need advice on handling the complexities of the modern workplace? Well, fret no more! Whether it’s a senior partner making a move or a catty co-worker plotting for your plum position, Helen Gurley Brown’s 1964 book Sex and the Office has a solution. Every Wednesday on Glossed Over, I’ll present a new tip from the legendary editor of Cosmopolitan. Is her advice utterly ridiculous or startlingly prescient? You decide!

In the second of three consecutive chapters about the midday meal, “Lunchland II: Boys and Girls Together,” HGB explains the allure of dining with the opposite sex.

What about the lunches girls have with boys? They’re the greatest! Think about it. Lunching with men is a chance to have dates in the daytime on the pretext of business…and to have a whack at men who might not think of asking you—or be able to ask you—to dinner. Looking at it realistically, business lunch dates with men are sex at high noon!

One little girl can have lunch with six big men and keep them all to herself for two full hours. Just try taking that many to a cocktail party—if you could find them. They’d be sniped at and made off with within seconds.

Once at the luncheon I’d plan just to be pretty and sweet and happy and content but not scintillating. To scintillate isn’t necessary. They’d rather have you be a girl than try to come on like Jacques Barzun.

Right! Because it’s all about what the man wants. No, really. HGB explains:

My friend Ruth, who didn’t invent the system but is awfully good at it, says you must listen with all your pores open during those first few minutes to see if you can glean what shape he’s in. He may not actually tell you what’s happened to him the first instant, but you must be prepared to go along with his mood. Any wife can detect a husband-mood practically from the way he opens the door. She learns not to be happy if he’s miserable and to break out the champagne if he closed a deal even if she’s just picked herself up from falling down a flight of stairs.

Next week: she’s still talking about lunch. But this time, she’s talking about a “very special” kind of lunch break, if you know what I mean. Wink. Nudge.

Infomania's "We've Got You Covered" May Render Reading Obsolete

Glossed Over — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 13:07:00 -0700

Wish you had the time and money to read everything at the newsstand, but worried about your blood pressure? Me too! That’s just one of the reasons I love the Current network’s show Infomania and the segment “We’ve Got You Covered,” which provides a snappy summary of the latest in periodicals. This week’s edition features Glamour, Vogue, Lucky, some other magazines I often buy but rarely read, and, um, a slime mold.

Head to Current’s site to watch Infomania in its entirety.

Lowest Common Denominator: Glamour, August

Glossed Over — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 01:04:22 -0700

47: Number of items promised on the front cover by number

Not much: What Glamour thinks of its readers, considering the cover lines’ emphasis on “cheap,” “easy,” “lazy,” and “shortcuts”

8: Percent of women surveyed by Glamour who say going to work bra-less is a “do”

$1,000,000: Money Drew Barrymore donated for relief in Africa, as cited in “Drew’s Million-Dollar Miracle”

20,000: Children that money will feed for a year, based on the article’s statement that $50 feeds one child for twelve months

$1,267: Total retail value of the featured cosmetics in the Beauty section immediately following the piece about Barrymore

18: Number of “real women” depicted in the “Jeans Special” section

8: Of 10, the number of real women considered “don’ts” in “The Official Dos and Don’ts of Denim”

1: Page devoted to “I Could Be Killed for Helping This Woman,” about a volunteer who works illegally in Myanmar providing aid to cyclone victims

3: Pages devoted to Christina Aguilera, not including the cover

975,301: Approximate number of times I’ve read how a celebrity got back into shape after childbirth in a women’s magazine, now that I’ve read the Xtina interview

975, 301: Approximate number of those articles containing clichés about motherhood (“My little boy breathes new life into me…Of course you have compassion for children, but when you have your own, you feel it on a much deeper level…Our child comes first, obviously…”)

10: Pages of “Fall Clothes You Can Wear Now,” including a full-length coat, a long-sleeved black lace dress, and several pairs of opaque tights

82: Forecasted high temperature, in degrees, for my city on Monday, July 14

11: Number of Olympic athletes featured in “The 11 Greatest Bodies on Earth”

Not a one: Models in this issue whose shapes look remotely like these “greatest bodies”

Minuscule: Amount of belief I have that Glamour’s praise for the Olympians’ bodies will eventually translate into a wider range of models in the fashion spreads (Don’t get me wrong. I want it to happen very much; I’m just a cynic.)

100: Percent of clothes in “The New Rules of Casual Chic” that come from the Gap

Nada: Gap items featured elsewhere in the issue

Glossed Over — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 16:34:23 -0700

Sex, Soda, and Showers • Things take a turn toward the steamy in this month’s rundown of magazine relationship advice. Learn why Self suggests you kick the diet soda habit, what it’s like to be married to a sex expert, and why he hates showering at your place, in my July column on The Frisky.

Glossed Over — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 03:13:14 -0700

Fashion-Related Food Insanity, Part 328,543 • “Summer Fitness-ology,” the Daily Mini’s ode to insane diets in the Summer issue, provides a shockingly comprehensive list of ill-conceived ways to lose weight: starvation, “reducing soap,” amphetamines. The worst? Well, there’s the “Whizz Diet,” which allows weight watchers to feast on 750 calories a day of milk mixed with lemon juice. And then there’s designer Hedi Slimane’s bizarre baby-food regimen. Weird though it may be, there’s no denying that a diet consisting of tiny jars of pureed carrots has kept his figure boyishly slim. (Literally.) So women aren’t the only ones starving themselves to slip into skinny jeans, but is this progress?