Congratulations to the 25 winners of the Nivea Good-bye Cellulite Gel Cream!  You’ll be receiving your tubes soon, and I expect reports back on your progress!  In honor of its “Good-bye Cellulite, Hello Bikini” challenge, I asked Nivea for their best tips on getting a bikini-ready body. 

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My darlings!  You know how I feel about cellulite creams: mucho suspicious, of course.  (Yes, they can make a difference in the appearance of skin temporarily, but we’re not talking liposuction results.  When dealing with anything that promises to banish wrinkles or fat for-evah!, realistic expectations are key.)  So, how about the chance to test one of your own, for free?  That’s right, no blowing your hard earned money…and, just maybe, slightly sleeker thighs, too.  Not that anything is wrong with your gorgeous thighs just the way they are.  I know that.  You know that.  (Right?) But, hey, we’re human and we all want to look our best, so no judging!

Nivea has partnered with me to give away 25 tubes of their Good-bye Cellulite Gel Cream, which retails for $12.99 and includes L-Carnitine, which helps convert fat into energy.  The first 25 gals who reply in the comments below with their email address and all-time favorite body product (moisturizing cream!  bath gel!  No!No! hair remover!  Whatever!) will win.  Good luck…

Jeez, I’m away from my computer for 36 hours and I miss absolutely everything.  Didja know Christie Brinkley settled her divorce?  Or that Matthew McConaughey had a baby?  And Nicole Kidman popped one out, too?  Plus, Drew Barrymore and her adorable (not to mention oh-so-polite and friendly!) Justin Long split?  And Madonna has eaten A-Rod?  Oh.  You heard?  Damn, I’m behind.

I especially was behind on this, Elle’s August cover featuring Mariah Carey’s “new” body, some insane photoshopping, and—about three inches to the right of where it should actually be—Mariah Carey’s head.  Good times.

Image from Jezebel.com

She emerges!  Well, sure, Mandy Moore has been spotted out and about recently, but usually on the arm of her rocker boy Ryan Adams (is it just me, or do they seem like such an odd couple?).  This is a Mandy I can get behind: glowy, peachy cheeks, gleaming smile, and that awesome hair.  People are sometimes all, “Jolie, what up with the Mandy Moore love?  No comprendo.”  I can’t really explain it (well, other than the fact that she’s hardworking, cheerful, talented and oh-so-experimental with her tresses, plus actually has a real woman’s body, not a Hollywood starlet’s); either you get her, or you don’t!  So much love.

Picture from People.com

Billie Piper has been a huge star in the UK for years, as much for her personal life (at 18 years old, she proposed to and married then 35-year-old English millionaire Chris Evans, who she divorced six years later…without taking a penny…then invited to her second wedding) as for her acting career (not only did she star with David Tennant on Doctor Who, but she released a chart topping pop single called “Because We Want To”, becoming the youngest person ever to have a number one UK hit.)  Her new Showtime series Secret Diary of a Call Girl—based on the popular Belle de Jour blog about a secretary named Hannah who secretly moonlights as a prostitute—all but guarantees she’ll hit household name status over here soon, too.  I’ve always found Billie interesting because, while doubtlessly gorgeous, she’s not a conventional Hollywood-standard beauty: she has thick brows, strong features, a generous mouth, isn’t a size 0 and often is photographed in nerdy Buddy Holly-style glasses.  (Plus, she lives in Midhurst, England, my old stomping grounds.)  The more I’ve learned about her over the years, the more I like her. 

The raunchy, sexy UK ad..

And the cheerful American one for Showtime, which seems to say: “Yay, prostitution!  Isn’t it fun?”

Ashlee Simpson-Wentz confirmed her pregnancy with Pete Wentz last week, rightfully waiting until after the first trimester had passed to deliver the news to all the rubberneckers out here in blogland.  While queueing for my lunch today, I did the unthinkable and flipped through a nearby Star magazine, noticing a piece about Ashlee’s supposed worry over passing her (still ridiculously good) genes to her baby.  It was a fluff little piece, unless most of the very serious journalism in Star, but it did get me thinking…if you’re vain enough to drastically alter your appearance in the first place (we can call a spade a spade, right?), it stands to reason that you must indeed have a mini freak-out worrying about your baby getting your “bad” old nose, or weak chin, or protruding ears, or generous thighs, whatever.  (Insert celebrity name and plastic procedure here!)  After all, with a little pain tolerance and a lot of money, you can easily create a magazine cover-ready face and body, and most patients re-adjust their self-image to fit their new looks after surgery, conveniently “forgetting” what they were born with.  So having a kid pop out with features from the old you must be quite an unpleasant reminder, no?

Out with the old…

In with the new…

Photo from People.com

In other news, Jessica Simpson has never looked better recently: healthy, freshly blond, and just all around pretty.  The bronzed goddess glow suits her!

Please don’t yell at me, but there is something about Victoria Beckham that, inexplicably, I love.  So much of what she represents is kind of icky and sad…and yet she actually seems like a really cool, family-oriented, savvy, fierce chick.  (At the end of the day, it doesn’t really matter what I think about Posh, since she’s laughing all the way to the bank and I’m just sitting here dumbly pondering whether she’s genius or ridiculous.)  This Juergen Teller-shot Marc Jacobs ad campaign makes me feel similarly meh?  On the one hand, what in God’s name is going on here?  And why?  And, just, ew.  Yet, on the other, these are the most interesting, unsettling advertising images I’ve seen since the Mary-Kate and Ashley Olsen Badgley Mischka-meets-The Shining campaign from two years ago.

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Seeing as she’s the beauty director of Vogue UK, you might assume Alexandra Shulman to be an enthusiastic champion of various cosmetic procedures, but in this fascinating editorial in today’s Daily Mail, she claims to have never had a single bit of “work” done.  Women are getting Botox and facelifts and Restylane injections, she says, because we want to look younger…but the fact that we’re emphatically not getting any younger makes every tweak a more insistent form of denial.  It’s a wonderfully valid point…but can’t you take it even further and then cast the net of derision over the entire anti-aging products industry?  When you boil it to the core—which is ultimately a terror of aging—what’s the difference between Botox, eyelifts and the bimonthly purchase of peptide and antioxidant creams?

My favorite quote comes at the very end of the article: ‘We broke through the glass ceiling, and we broke the gender barrier, with a tremendous amount of effort, and now we all want to look like Atomic Kittens (a UK pop band),’ she said. ‘Where is the emancipation in that?‘