praying for sunrise

E-FUCKING-NOUGH, Twilight nerds! Ok, Twilight, the book cum movie that is spreading throughout teen-dom like the plague has now spawned even more nonsense-ry; most recently a fan crafting, from felt, the teen heroine, Bella's uterus WITH THE FUCKING MUTANT BABY INSIDE. Target women's Sarah Haskins went to the Twilight poster signing and asked the googly eyed girls and their mothers how they would feel if their daughters came home with a drug dealer, murderer, or vampire boyfriend. They all said they'd be totes cool with it, one mother even offering up that she wants 'illegal and immoral' in a relationship. NO NO NO. I am all for fantasy and escapism, but even on my most liberal of days do I take issue with the fairy tale-izing of teen pregnancy and the glorifying of the notion that, with enough love and hard work, you can change the 'bad boy' and make him love you back. Please, raise your hand if this has EVER worked for you. No? Anyone? Bueller? This is the fantasy equivalent of saying, "hey, if I love Kevin Federline hard enough he will clean up his act and be epicly faithful and subservient husband for life!" Lofty hopes, goals, and relationship desires are not bad things for young women to have; they wholly shape how a young woman can take charge of her life and autonomy to become a healthy, happy adult. However, I feel that in a present age where sex-ed consists of 'don't do it' and ABC Family has the series Life of an American Teenager, where the main charachter, pregnant at 15, is able to continue going to school, go home to a loving family, and is not at all having to worry about the financial and social struggles of actual pregnant american girls; there needs to be more reality grounded media for teens to help balance what is becoming a very one-sided fantasy existance.

on the shoe horn

Recently, economic experts have been trying to determine what consumer product category is "recession proof". Firstly, I am so glad they are doing this and not something that might actually be productive outside of newsprint fodder. Secondly, no doye. Yeah, people need to cover their feet and especially since people tend to use shoes frequently and are perhaps, due to monetary restraint, using their cars less, shoes would appear to be a practical purchase. Though, the always loveable NYmag informs that the sub sector of shoes to have bogglingly positive growth is, dun dun dunnnnn, UGGS. Like 57% sales growth from last year. For the love of all that is (design) holy, will people please, PLEASE stop wearing/purchasing these monstrocities. Their trend cycle, by all reasonable accounts, should have crested and faded into oblivion YEARS AGO. But instead now our millenial time period will be remembered on 'blast-from-the-past' compilation shows as the generation whose brain was eaten by an australian SLIPPER company. THEY ARE SLIPPERS. NOT FOR OUTDOOR USE. My only consolation is the news that Victoria's Secret stock is falling, making for less PINK sweatpants to be stuffed inside the sheepskin socks that are masquerading as footwear and giving me recurring sartorial nightmares.

conglomerate cop-out

Looks like with Conde Nast folding some of its papers and consolidating others, W -the magazine I formerly loved in the flush of youth, now I'm getting annoyed with it's bad habits in old age- is fast becoming a catchall for all the offal the other doomed diaries leave behind. To back track to the upsets at the Conde Bldg. here is a run down of their current troubles: Portfolio has less issues a year, Men's Vogue is being folded into Reg. Vogue (take that Sean Avery!), Rumors of Anna Wintour leaving as EIC of Vogue only to be succeeded by none other than CARINE ROITFELD (I fucking hope!) AND! NO HOLIDAY PARTY!
Back to W, seriously, it's getting old. It's no better than American Vogue anymore. Celebrities on every cover for at least the past 6 months, my hands down favorite being Angelina Jolie on the cover of the ART ISSUE. Even my brainy, art imbibed, sig other-who is usually impervious to women's magazines-scoffed and sighed when he saw the nonsense they were peddling in that particular issue.
This issue, December, which I have yet to even get all the way through because, at my age, I am NOT interested in some tv-drama character-ess pouting through the pages because she, apparently, with being conventionally pretty and fairly tall, is a model now, but you know, she has a career too, like, doing stuff.
Not to be out-shone by the clever cover lines and cover choice, you also get what seems like A MILLION FUCKING PAGES OF WATCHES. Ranging from a modest $84,000 (Chanel) to an aspirational-or asphyxiational depending on who you ask- $800,000 (De Beers). Seriously, watches, as an item, are for the poor; for people who need to know what time it is. To have a watch that costs more than a NYC condo is ludicrous. If you are that rich you have no use for the construct of time; you can pay someone to wear your bedazzled time piece(as fancy watches are called) and tell you the time in the native tongue of whichever far flung locale you are currently detoxing in. To top it off, the watches themselves aren't even all that great to look at! They are so adorned that even a rapping guest on Cribs would find the piece a little outre.
Oh, but it's not over, you then are treated to a food article that I can sum up in 10 words: Who is a thin, pretentious, glutton? So sorry, not you.
A stimulating two pages of "Celebrities are rich, thin, eat astronomically expensive and rare food, but not pedestrian items like spinach-artichoke dip. I would rather die, or give up the treat that is cold bone marrow, than eat that slop. Though, ramen noodles are cool because they are kitschy. Oh, exercise 2 hour a day and maybe you wouldn't be such a poor, fat-ass, dear reader. P.s. you're POOOORRRRRRRRRR and uncultured! lol"
W is becoming that girl in middle school that thinks she is so cool because she has her mom's hand-me-down Coach bag and is totally getting a Beemer for her 15th birthday even though she doesn't get her license for another year (yeah, she failed 1st grade, but that's because the teacher didn't see her true genius). She is the leader of the popular girls despite the fact she has a dog-face and frizzy hair; the other kids probably only like her because she has a trampoline and her parent's let her read Cosmo and watch Cinemax.
In a nutshell, or a $3000 Tumi hat box, W, you've got to go. We really can't do this anymore, pack your monogrammed luggage, take those Cheetos you are hiding behind the water heater and get out of my house. I don't want to see you anymore, you need an intervention, you're out of control, and I just don't love you enough anymore to call and get you on the show. Sorry, it's not me, it's you.

W-tf

W, wtf. This month's issue is about some shit: blah blah blah..anne hathaway..blah blah blah..dakota fanning..blah blah blah...ralph rucci. Which is well and good for a fashion/culture magazine. It is only natural that they would profile a few iconic, emerging, notable figures that would hold some relevance to their audience. However, what is puzzling and vaguely offensive is the way their writer's handle the diction of their interviews. In the editor's forward regarding Anne Hathaway, there is not only gratuitous mention of Mlle. Hathaway's disastrous love life (she essentially was conned by some guido who was also conning everyone else), but in the same breath of prose they paint her as a bratty naif AND manage to highlight the erratic nature of male actors that have little to nothing to do with Hathaway, but are featured with interview later in the issue. Then, close their run-down of 'emotional disorders of the rich and famous' with "a note to Hathaway: he's single".
In the Ralph Rucci article, they manage to make the designer seem at times anti-current, neurotic, self-effacing, and subversively ego maniacal. Also, they take a stab at Margiela (oh NO you didddnnttttttt chica) who is very anti-publicity -ex: corresponds in to his rare interviews via fax and is never photographed- by calling his activities 'schtick' while using his product a few pages later in an accessories report.
Despite my general, neutrality or minor-distaste for the featured figures in this month's W, I cannot get over how thickly smarmy their coverage of these individuals comes across to the reader. It is as though there is a recurring subtext of, 'these people are totally NOT cool but we felt like doing a good deed and deigning to let them into our aspirational pages, but fyi we still think they are L-O-S-ERS'. Even though W, is more of an industry magazine than Cosmo, and often is elitist they really shouldn't make reading through the lines so easy that, even hung-over at 8am on a Sunday, I can be creeped out by their actions.

daily ricidulous

Daily Candy LA sent out a news letter this morning about FACERCISE exercises for idiot women who are internally paralyzed with fear of aging and wish their tan mug would catch up. The facercise website has such classic images as the ones above, but really, why are you paying any money or even time to this pipe dream? The new age-iness of the whole thing is belied by the portrait of Carole who looks like she has had more botox than the dented can of chickpeas in my cupboard circa my kindergarten ballet recital. Oh, if the instructional video and audio tracks aren't enough to whip your face-flesh into shape you can pay for a one on one session with Mme. C herself. Aging is a part of being ALIVEEEEEEEE. The only way to stop wrinkles is to die. You wrinkle because of loss of collagen that supports your epidermis on your skin and the natural degradation of muscle fibers. Not because your face watched too many episodes of Oprah and sat on it's face-ass instead of exercising. Even Dr.90210 gives better misguided medical advice than this nonsense.
UPDATE: nymag makes great assertions on this young face-stick body phenomena of middle age women. the types that would yoga-lates kick flip onto this band wagon of facercises.

up-fucking-date re: the hellish mess that is proj runway

ARE YOU KIDDING ME! ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?! I am watching this shit-show right now. main take aways:

Table linen = table cloth, Jerry; don't try and put a pig in a prom dress with your phrasing. Not even the most eloquent of prose will make your god awful raincoat-and-latex-glove american-psycho-morton-salt-girl-get-up tolerable. Oh wait, you got eliminated. There is a god.

Stella, you took cheap garbage bags and made something closer to your personal aesthetic, which happens to look exactly like cheap garbage bags. You got saved, you better watch your Jersey cawing possibly black tar heroin addled self.

Girls with dyed black hair and nerd-girl-prob-clear-frame-glasses' numbers 1,2,3,4,... you are neither interesting nor forward thinking. I don't even want to shame Flavor of Love alum's 'Thing 1 & Thing 2" by giving you that nondescript, patronizing moniker. Though, I may at a later date.

Blayne, girlicious spewing long lost triplet to the Chip & Pepper twins, your romper looks like the Abdominal snowman got stuck in the front crotch region. M Kors says 'It's not cute'

Kelli ends up winning with a still yawn-worthy ensemble. If you put that much time into dyeing vacuum cleaner bags and burning coffee filters please try and make something not so played out. Burberry Prorsum meets Karen Walker painterly acid wash much?

I want to vomit//read soon on the news that all of these people were shipped off to Easter Island to 'Lord of the Flies' all over each other.

Phrases to look forward to from future episodes, none from contestants, all from judges/Tim:
"hey slutty slutty" M.Kors
"it looks like a gay pterodactyl from jurrasic park" Tim
"this looks like a school project" Heidi

Summary of this entire season best stated by M Kors and Heidi during judging: "It's a yawn", "I am not impressed" for fucking real