Dakota Fanning's Flower Penis and 8 Other Dumb Fashion Ads

If I've learned one thing from the cumulative 150+ hours of ANTM I've watched/drunkenly shouted at over the years, it's that fashion shoots are meant to tell a story (well, and that it really hurts to put in a weave). True, in Tyra's case that "story" is often limited to "emotionally unstable young women are thrown into anti-gravity chambers dressed as racial stereotypes," but still. Stories are important. Otherwise it would just be models... modeling clothes. And what purpose would that serve?

So as I was flipping through InStyle while waiting out the hurricane in my underpants and came across this perfume ad, I couldn't help but wonder, Carrie Bradshaw-style: What is this image trying to tell me?

If it's that Dakota Fanning has a vagina, thank you, Marc Jacobs, I always assumed that was true, although to be honest I don't think about it often because I'm pretty sure that would get me arrested in some states. If it's that Dakota Fanning has a penis, I did not know that, but it's her choice, and effeminate boys are really hot right now anyway. And if it's that your new perfume bottle is comically large and looks like a collectible vase from the never-before-seen Lisa Frank Home collection, then job well done, sir.

But that wasn't the only inspiring tale among the magazine's fall fashion ads...

Tamzen searched in vain for a Starbucks bathroom, even though she was reasonably certain she would be unable to remove her pants.

Yes, she was drunk. Yes, she was colorblind. And yes, Honey had gotten dressed in a Port Authority bathroom. But at least she was ready for the PTA meeting.

Only after coating herself in Crisco did Esme realize that it might be hard to hold on to her bag.

Tallulah though the doorman looked different, but she really didn't have time to inquire, as she was already late for her Fashion Institute seminar, "Head to Taupe."

Though she found Frodo unbearable, Galadriel really connected with Mondrian.

Humiliated that she had arrived at the equestrian vampire banquet wearing almost exactly the same gown as two other women, Oksana could do nothing but clutch her muff in fury.

While she sometimes missed her feet, Chamomile was thankful that she no longer had to save her tips for that bunionectomy.

And! I even spotted a Cole Haan model doing my favorite modern fashion pose, the third world toilet!

I might have to renew my vows with ladymags, you guys. I forgot how much they have to teach us.

Dakota Fanning's Flower Penis and 8 Other Dumb Fashion Ads

35 Weeks And Stayin' Classy

As you may have heard, New York City got hit with a massive earthquake on Tuesday that caused great devastation across the region, knocking over yogurt cups and causing ceiling lamps to swing gently from Battery Park all the way up to the Bronx. Baby and I survived, only to learn that there is a hurricane headed our way this weekend. Should I start stocking up on Off! for the coming plague of locusts?

Just kidding, what I'm really focused on is balling up very small socks. Duh. Priorities.

Is it sad that this took me an entire day?

Yes, yes, y'all, we are DEEP into the nesting, and have actually accomplished a lot in the past few weeks when we weren't busy watching old 30 Rock episodes while eating too much Popeye's, or trying to figure out why our baby seems to be shaped like a donut (he can't have two butts, can he?). We  painted, we built the crib, we got a rug, Jeff lugged a loveseat out of the apartment, my sister and I washed and folded enough baby clothes to tide the Duggars over for at least a few months.

Of course, when it comes to my clothes, I stubbornly insist on continuing to wear my normal wardrobe (excepting, of course, anything made of pleather, or that has a waist... or legs). Anyway, as a result, I am looking extra classy these days:

You are welcome, son. I promise I will pay for your therapy someday. As soon as you finish organizing your sock drawer.

35 Weeks And Stayin' Classy

Nobody Puts Baby in the Remake

Two years ago, I came back from vacation to news that John Hughes had died. That should have taught me to read a newspaper while at the beach, but no—instead I had to spend six days trying to beat the world record in cheese consumption and posing as a cover model for an imaginary pregnancy issue of Garden & Gun.

That’s why I was shocked to discover, upon my return, that another 80s icon is about to die a slow and painful death.

Yes, folks, they are remaking Dirty Dancing.

I know. I’ll wait for you to apologize to whomever you just slapped.

Anyway, apparently Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights was not enough of an assault on my childhood memories (I was indoctrinated early, by my aunt, at age 8, and had choreographed an interpretive dance to the entire soundtrack by the following year). No, now DD has to get the Footloose treatment, i.e. a remake with no colon and shitty subtitle to distinguish it from the original.

I realize that director Kenny Ortega doesn't need or want my input, but I've decided to drag out my casting couch anyway, to assemble what I think is an ensemble that will both please the young'uns (who weren't even born when The Lift That Launched A Thousand Amateur Copycat Injuries unspooled on movie screens) and placate the aging die-hards.

So, first things first: Frances “Baby” Houseman. I’m going on record here to say that if Lea Michele gets this part I will carry a watermelon all the way to her house, set it on fire, and lob it over the electrified fence. Ditto Kristen Stewart. The only acceptable Baby is someone who has more expressions in her arsenal than “facial jazz hands” or “sullen nostril-flaring.” A non-traditional beauty like Jennifer Grey would be nice, but we all know that if Jennifer Grey started her career today with her original nose, the best she could hope for is a walk-on as one of Blair Waldorf’s minions in Gossip Girl. So I’ll be realistic and accept that they’re going to want someone sexier. The most obvious Jews are Natalie Portman, Mila Kunis and Rachel Bilson (P.S. I had to Google “young hot Jewish actress” for research, which I’m sure puts me on some government watch list), but they’re all too cutesy. Baby needs to be convincingly awkward. Which is why I nominate…

Kat Dennings.

"I'm scared of walking out of this room and never feeling the rest of my whole life the way I feel when I'm with you!"

She’s smoking hot, and a little on the old side for the role (she’s 25), but she’s got a nerdy, mature vibe that jibes with Baby's feminist intellectual leanings

The next most important casting choice, obvi, is Johnny “Nobody puts Baby in the corner” Castle. I know that Hollywood is going to be knocking on the doors of all of those shrimpy, testoster-phony tweeners like Zac Efron and Taylor Lautner and those beefy Australian Hemsworth brothers who look like Children of the Corn raised on L.L. Bean and steroids. But Johnny Castle is supposed to be man (I’m guessing 25-ish to Baby’s 17, although the late, great Swayze was 35 when he made the movie), so I think we can do better, and at least find someone whose pubes have come in. (And someone besides Channing Tatum, please. There have got to be other actors who can both dance and lift weights.)

I’m kind of feeling Ryan Gosling for this. I know he’s not super muscular and I’ve never seen him merengue, but I think he could really pull off that sexy bad boy from the wrong side of the Catskills thing, no? And look, I picked the most flattering photo to argue my point:

"You just put your pickle on everybody's plate, college boy, and leave the hard stuff to me."

As for the supporting cast:

• Bryan Cranston as Dr. JakeHouseman...

"When I'm wrong, I say I'm wrong." (Except when I'm cooking crystal to pay for my secret cancer treatments.)

Jerry Orbach was hard fucking core, and so is Walter White. He will go all Heisenberg on your ass if you step to his daughter, Gosling, so respect.

• Blake Lively as Penny, the knocked-up dance teacher who spends most of the movie being an asshat...

"God wouldn't have given you maracas if He didn't want you to shaaaaaake 'em!" 

This casting choice will appeal to the teenage set, and there's nothing Lively does better than look vaguely slutty and distressed.

• Lea Michele can be Lisa Houseman, because the whole point of Lisa is that she's annoying as fuck

"Oh, my God. Look at that! Ma, I should have brought those coral shoes!"

• Donald Glover as Billy Kostecki...

"She's knocked up, Baby." (Okay, so Billy maybe doesn't have the best lines.)

• Betty White and Alan Arkin as the kleptomaniac Schumachers...

"..."

They deserve bigger parts, anyway.

• Jessie Eisenberg as Neil Kellerman...

"I have to say it. I'm known as the catch of the county."

• Justin Timberlake as Robbie the creep...

"I didn't blow a summer hauling toasted bagels just to bail out some little chick who probably balled every guy in the place."

• ...and Susan Lucci as that insatiable cougar who sleeps with Robbie.

Ta-da! You are totally welcome, universe. What do you think? Am I onto something? Or should I just bite my tongue and face the inevitable: Miley Cyrus, Zac Efron, and his man-bangs singing "This Overload" while popping and locking?

Nobody Puts Baby in the Remake

Beached

I'm ba-aaack!

Begrudgingly, but still. I had to be physically removed from an Adirondack chair, and not only because I didn't want vacation to end, but also because I seriously could not get up by myself. I waddled around for days thinking that the baby had dropped, but actually I'm an asshole and it turns out you probably shouldn't balance one-legged on a piece of driftwood while eight months pregnant.

In 2007, Jeff took this photo of me:

That's still how I picture myself, but it turns out this is what I actually look like:

(I had to approximate, since Jeff used a film camera. I was so confused, and kept looking for the photos in the viewfinder, like the time my friend's daughter couldn't understand why it was impossible to fast-forward through live television.)

Luckily, large amounts of cheese seemed to assuage my poor pulled pelvis. And Jeff gave me loads of butt massages, regardless of where the pain actually was.

This man kneads a mean glute.

Oh, and of course I debuted my patriotic bikini, a day I like to call The Unbearable Whiteness of Being, Part Deux.

What's more frightening: my deathly pallor, my freakishly short legs, or the fact that Old Navy cannot be bothered to line up its seams correctly?

Yeah, it's not exactly on a par with slurping wine from between my breasts, but what can I say? These days, just standing up unassisted feels daring.

Also: While I was away I had two new posts at Aiming Low, one on how to (possibly illegally) watch TV on your computer and one about the glory of the adolescent awkward phase (I'll take any excuse to post unibrow photos in a public forum.) And I've been posting Onion-esque satire at Insert Eyeroll; you can find my first few posts here, here, and here.

Beached

Belly Up

I'm off to the beach for a week. This is exciting, not only for me but for all of my fellow beach-goers, because unbeknownst to them, they are about to see me rock a bikini at eight months pregnant.

It's coming for YOU!!!

For some reason as the weeks leading up to vacation ticked by, I found myself increasingly opposed to buying a special maternity bathing suit. Every single piece of clothing I've bought so far is made of jersey and should be able to stay in my wardrobe after I give birth, assuming I don't mind wearing T-shirts that reach my mid-thighs. But a maternity bathing suit is something you can't wear when you're not pregnant, and the cute ones usually cost at least $50. So I put my swollen foot down. I took Nancy Reagan's advice and just said no.

Now, though, I'm kind of regretting it. Don't get me wrong, I love my belly, and in private there's no state I'd rather be in than semi-nude (I say semi only because I feel that underpants are necessary for sitting on the couch, especially when we have company over--call me old-fashioned). But there's something that feels a little wrong about baring a pregnant belly in public. It feels... extra naked. Almost pornographic. Maybe because of the tumescence and all the blue veins?

Also, it might have something to do with the fact that I purchased the aforementioned bikini while in a Baby K-Hole, and as a result it is red and white striped with blue trim.

I am going to look like an egg-shaped American flag, and I won't even have my Wine Rack for solace.

But on the plus side I bet I could make a great fetish calendar. I smell a nesting project!

Belly Up

What's The Opposite of Breaking News?

So I'm sitting here in my underwear amid a pile of Tootsie Roll wrappers trying to think of a blog post that doesn't have to do with being knocked up, and all I can come up with is, Sometimes, I like to pick my nose using Q-Tips.

Just to clarify.

This is what I've been reduced to: Bizarre, pantsless confessions before 10 p.m. with no red wine in sight.

Once when I was a kid I made a fake newspaper for our family. It was called The Dean Street Gazette or something like that, with headlines like, "Fifi Wanders Off For Hours, Finally Discovered Under Guest Room Duvet." (Fifi was our cat--the one I accidentally exhumed from the grave while writing a stoned letter to my mom, remember?)

If I did that now, the front page news might be, "Air Conditioner Smells Faintly of Wet Garbage; Would Buy New One But Meh--Target Is Far," or "Monday Night Madness!! Jeff Breaks Down Boxes From Amazon; Una Writes Thank-You Notes While Half-Heartedly Watching The Tudors."

Not that my life is not awesome, because clearly it is--Jeff just walked by on his way to the kitchen and was all, "Do you need more Tootsie Rolls?" And I was like, "Um, YES, how did you know?" And he was all, "Because there are only two wrappers next to you, that's how." And I blushed and winked and decided not to tell him that there might be one or two more stuck to the underside of my thigh (I blame the leather couch)--but I just don't do very much anymore that doesn't fall under the category of eating, sleeping, or sitting in front of the fan palpating my stomach and wondering if Tums have an expiration date, or last forever like astronaut food or Twinkies.

So I guess this is just a long-winded way of saying that I don't write about anything but being pregnant these days because... well, see above.

But seriously, I do recommend the Q-Tip thing. Sanitary and satisfying. It's totally going in the op-eds this week.
____

Also: I wrote an article for The Observer this week about My Little Pony and the grown men who love them!

What's The Opposite of Breaking News?