[via Adrants]

Jeff Woodward, who publishes another gay mag called Next, wrote in to gay site Queerty:

Ben's a friend of mine… and straight… but as far as you can get from homophobic. I met him a few years ago. He is a Florida friend of Next's owner's boyfriend who is also from Florida. He would always hang around the Next offices when he was up in NYC doing shoots and auditions and all the boys here loved him.

I haven't spoken to him in a while, but can assure you he's not the idiotic homophobe he's being portrayed as. He's a sweet funny kid who is going to go far. He knows the gay boys like to look at him and could care less about how that is perceived.

Which, OK, fine. But why then did Massing freak out so much? What kind of model doesn't want to appear in a magazine? I mean, he's already done Abercrombie & Fitch ads, which couldn't really get any more scantily clad or homoerotic. Except, heh, maybe he didn't realize that. So now that it's right out there, a blatant acknowledgment that, yes, the gays are looking, how can his negative reaction be seen as anything but a knee-jerk homophobic moment? I don't think the kid should be tarred and feathered, and Woodward is probably right to come to his defense, but the guy does need to learn a lesson. The gays are everywhere, and they will find you and look at you if they want to, whether you're in Genre or in a Dior ad in Vogue. You see what I'm saying Ben? In the end, it's all kind of the same thing.

One world!

Update: Massing says it was the sexually suggestive nature of the photos that prompted the lawsuit, not the gayness. So, problem solved!

In the Daily News' Rush & Molloy gossip column today, there was this about Dicaprio:

Leo? The good times find him. The other night, at a Chelsea club, an exquisite brunette glommed onto him. (Isn't that disgusting, guys?) But we're assured they did not exchange phone numbers.

Ha, but guess who was hanging on the other arm of that brunette? Ron Burkle, of course! An eyewitness tipster tells us that the 55-year-old rich white guy was on the other side of the girl with his hand on her leg, while she was simultaneously caressing Leo's head. Uh, kinky, I guess.

This behavior will do nothing to keep Burkle out of the gossip spotlight. Neither will his insatiable thirst for models. We also hear that not long after the Leo-brunette outing, Burkle scored a front row seat at the William Rast show at Fashion Week. After the show, "he hung around the "VIP area"
and mercilessly hit on May [Andersen]"—to the point that the model started calling people on her cell phone while Burkle stood there, just so she didn't have to talk to him.

Ron Burkle seems to lack a bit of grace. And good sense. Money can buy many things, but it will never buy him a face and body that can compete with Leonardo DiCaprio's. Nor will it buy a complete press blackout of all his high-flying partying. Although it's obvious that Burkle (along with some Jesse Jackson relatives) is interested in establishing a friendly media beachhead with Radar—we hear he went in for a meeting with those folks just last week.

It's not enough, Ron! You're uncontrollably drawn to models and parties. Either embrace that lifestyle publicly and accept the ridicule you'll get for it, or give it up. It's just like that unreachable fantasy featuring you, Leo, and that girl: you can't have it both ways.

She says she was protected by "a wooden fence approximately five feet tall" in her yard, but the defendants nevertheless trespassed to photograph and expose her unclothed body to the wilds of the internet. For shame!

We couldn't find any definitive candidates while digging around Egotastic. The closest Miami shots appear to be Helena Christensen (but she was at the beach with her boyfriend) or Brooke Hogan (but she's not nude, or a supermodel). So who is it? Guesses about this matter of legal import in the comments.

UPDATE: Elsa Benitez?

[Courthouse News]

[via Stereohyped]

[via Copyranter]

The actual, scientific study found that "ads featuring thin models made women feel worse about themselves but better about the brands featured." They make you despise your own "normal" body, and subconsciously try to correct the situation with therapy consisting of shopping. Oh, the pretty girls have all the pretty brands!

A Villanova professor who ran the study ferreted out just what advertisers bank on: masochism. ""The really interesting result we're seeing across multiple studies is that these thin models make women feel bad, but they like it," he said.

The advertising industry always knew you were a bad, bad girl.

And in the most entertaining twist to this whole thing, the study also found that images of skinny models make women stop eating. Surprise!:

Seeing thin models also made college-age women far more likely to turn down a snack pack of Oreo cookies offered as thanks for their participation in the study, or to opt for a reduced-fat version. Women who had just seen thin models were nearly four times more likely to say no to Oreos than women who hadn't, and 42% more likely to opt for reduced-fat cookies if they did indulge.

No telling what this means for Spanx.

[Ad Age]

[via Copyranter]

V Magazine got veteran fashion photographer Mario Testino to convince Gisele to pose for these pictures, which she said "only Mario could make me take." Boy, let's hope so. What makes you think everyone wants to see your body, you tart?

[via Fashion Week Daily]

Jeff Bercovici points out that the April cover of Vogue with Lebron James (a black man) was the magazine's worst-selling April cover since 2001. They tried! Scrap the experiment! The world isn't ready for black people in fashion!

Of course, the best solution to all of this would be to let black people be models in high fashion magazines as a matter of course, just like everybody else. No need for a special occasion to run topless Naomi Campbell photos. And as pointing-out machine Bercovici also points out, Vogue's worst-selling issue of the year so far had Gwyneth Paltrow on the cover. Failure brings us all together!

[Faded Youth, Mixed Media]

[Copyranter at Animal NY]

[Made in Brazil via Queerty]

Most Paris Review interns are still Ivy League grads (or grad students) looking to break into whatever semblance of a literary career they may still be afforded in this debased age. Their resumes are carefully hand-crafted from the finest of intellectual extracarricular endeavors. Perrin Drumm, though, had just finished the College of Santa Fe's New York Arts program, and applied through the Paris Review website because she wasn't interested in a job at "a low-grade women's fashion and health magazine." She explains, in an interview with CSF's alum mag: (Scroll down—it's a pdf link toward the bottom.)

I applied with what the Review staff calls "The weirdest cover letter in Paris Review history." I looked at the other cover letters and they were like, "This job will really prepare me for the tasks at hand..." and mine said, "I can MacGuyver a terrarium out of a Frisbee and some gum" or whatever.

Quirky!

Oh, but here's the thing! Perrin's experience didn't include much contemporary literature, but it did include modeling for pervy hipster clothing chain American Apparel! A fact that reportedly "fascinated" a senior editor who interviewed her. The fascination goes unmentioned in the interview, but Drumm does point out that she was hand-selected to model The Paris Review's brand-new t-shirt line! The products are, of course, printed on American Apparel t-shirts.

All Drumm says is, "I modeled tee shirts and bags for their website. That got the other girl interns really mad."

So—what does a Paris Review intern do? Besides drink scotch and play pool and harass writers at parties? They go through the slush pile, mostly, they fact-check (unaltered quote: "Facts are really hard to find out.") and also empty Philip Gourevitch's trash.

A couple more selections from the interview, which will presumably upset you, unless you happen to be the guy whose Nerve.com personal ad netted you the famed Harper's internship:

"The 42-year-old presenter was in a 'vulnerable' state following the drug death of his fiancee, Natasha Collins, in January. A spokesman for British Transport Police said: 'At this stage the death is being treated as unexplained. The body has been removed from the scene and CCTV from the station has been seized as part of the ongoing investigation.' Sky's Kitty Logan, in Paddington, said: 'We don't know how long the body lay there, or who found him.'"

Speight (left) "was initially arrested on suspicion of murder and supplying Class A drugs, but last month Scotland Yard said he would not face any charges over the death[...] He had been planning a tribute concert in memory of Miss Collins, his best friend said." [SkyNews]

[via Ugly.org]

Photo: Details, April 2006

• Just FYI, Beowulf was the hero, the good guy, the guy who saved the king, not the one who brought him down. Read the book. Grendel is the monster.

• Oh my god! I just lost 3 minutes of my life. I’m such an idiot.

• Really!? In the Times? You’re an idiot.

• Does Veronica Webb have any level of formal education??? Did anyone edit her article? God.

• This complete and utter tripe, served with a delicious topping of ignorance, was absolutely fabulous!

  [NYT]

Sitting in NYU Wasserman Career Center. In the next room, uber-model Iman is going BILISTIC on two staff members because she was asked to speak for "too long" at a career event. Total diva. "An hour is too long. An hour is WAY too long ... Fifteen minutes is long enough ..." She keeps repeating herself and getting louder. Such a bi-otch. Totally just lost all respect for her, and I can smell her perfume out here.

Send sightings to stalker@gawker.com and we'll post them to our famous map.

MUXO:

j.k. livin:

Daniela Pestova, 2000, on the left; Marisa Miller, 2008, on the right.

Fashion cycles often reflect changing economic and political climes, so maybe these skinny and uncertain boys, with their adorable, birdlike necks, mirror the uncertain state of the World Today. If that's true, the Calvin Klein hotties of the 1990s, like Marcus Schenkenberg and Tyson Beckford, represented happier economic times.

But maybe it's simpler than that, as fashion people scramble for suggestions: "It looks good in the clothes and that's the main thing. That's just the way it is now." "That's just the size that blue-chip designers and high-end editorials want." "No one wants a beautiful woman or a beautiful man anymore."

Whatever. Fashion is random as hell.

[Photo: Eric Johnson for the NYT]

Lycra's "all shapes and sizes" group at Miami Fashion Week (via Getty Images); photo-blogger Merlin Bronques' shots for Ben Sherman (via Ben Sherman on MySpace); and some random "new faces" on Ugly NY Talent, which tells Newsweek it has had inquiries for fashion week but no bookings yet (via Ugly NY):

The D.A. has rejected the case against me. I am free. I wish the same outcome for Marty and have no intention of pursuing any further legal action. I would not wish entanglement in the widening gyre of the American legal system upon my worst enemy.

It was incredibly naive of me not to realize that my blog entry about this incident would become tabloid fodder. That was not my intention. I consider the small circle of people who frequent this LJ to be a support group; the much larger world of tabloid readers is certainly not. I will never speak of this again, nor malign Marty in this space. And tomorrow this'll be fishwrap.

Expect few updates to this journal in the next couple of weeks as I will be untangling the web of seven years of cohabitation with my ex-boyfriend, packing up my shit, and thickening up a plot to travel and work in more temperate climes.

As the warden took pics of my bloody knuckles for evidence (!!!! evidence!), he quipped, "So there goes that hand modeling job, huh? What's Tyra going to say about this?" And here is how I was summoned from the holding cell for a strip-search, complete with a thorough plumbing of the boodissy: "Hey, Supermodel! Git over here! ...On the flip side, I'm single and um, ready to mingle. Blind date, anyone?"

Marty is a fucking piece of stupid ugly smelly shitty shit. What the hell was he thinking? I work at an abortion clinic full of hipster girls who are all going to boycott his assy hipster band now. I hope you are okay. (You must be in shock (?)

Real-world models "get paid anywhere from a third to half what a professional model would" and must fork over $75 for a "comp" card to leave with potential clients. So what's in it for Ammo, Machine, Kutcha and dragonfly? Status! Unlike Google co-founder Larry Page, who was recently turned away from the Beatrice Inn, these tattooed, threadbare souls can sunnily say, "Hey, let me in. I'm a model!" and breeze right through.

Also they could be the homeless guy in the MTA ad. Priceless.

The 25-year-old model was at Cipriani Downtown when, according to a young lady:

"He touched my genitalia and I immediately moved away," she said. "Then I looked over, and he looked really upset.... I went up to him. And he was standing there with his head down. He said something along the lines of 'no.'

"He then grabbed my boob."

Reality Hunk In Sex Bust [NYP]

An article last Sunday about the fashion industry's reticence to use black models referred incorrectly to a black woman in a maid's outfit pictured in the September issue of Italian Vogue. She was, in fact, a maid at the hotel where the pictures were taken, and was included, the Vogue photographer said, because of her attractiveness and her ability to underscore the pictures' theme of a stereotypical rich white woman who hires ethnic servants; the black woman was not a model dressed as a maid.

The Daily News gives the context to Saturday's psycho-slashing by ex-model Lee Coleman at the Texas Smokehouse on 2nd Avenue and 35th Street. "With the attack, Coleman joined a laundry list of violent, mentally ill men who have terrorized New Yorkers. Usually, the ill serve as a minor discomfort to the public. Now and then, the dangerous among them snap, leaving a trail of blood and fear in their paths, one expert said." Good job, expert. The paper goes the extra mile, with a stirring editorial that begs the city to stop the (literal) insanity.

True though: Historically, it has been the models who are the ones getting slashed! What a brave new era of opportunity.

Fury as 12-year-old 'model' fronts world fashion show [Daily Mail (U.K)]

Model Agyness Deyn Is No Longer Weirded Out by Pancakes With Scrambled Eggs [Grub Street]