Magwatch
Sometimes it’s the little things that make reading the gossip magazines a tolerable experience.
Every week, gluttons for punishment that we are, the seemingly perfect lives of apparently flawless men and women are hotly perused for diversion.
The pictures painted, of course, are about as real as the late Anna Nicole Smith’s inflated chest orbs.
What keeps us going back is the possibility of shortcomings. Of cracks and flaws in the polished faces and cash-buffed lives of celebrity types.
Superficially, this means relationship break-ups or once-lithe bodies swelling hideously to normal proportions. But there are other, more subtle crimes against so-called perfection that give tattle-rag readers cause for brief solace.
This week it is Mischa Barton in Grazia. The actress and fashion plate wears a pair of cropped and belted paisley-patterned fisherman’s pants, an oversize flannelette plaid shirt and a pair of shoes that resemble a telephone’s innards reworked by a sugar-fuelled toddler with scissors.
If this is high fashion, we can all heave a huge sigh of relief. Nothing we concoct will ever look worse than this.
Happy news also comes from the likes of Beyonce, Fergie (the singer not the royal), Sienna Miller, Gwyneth Paltrow and Victoria Beckham (though when does Posh’s life not provide some form of enjoyable astonishment?) Grazia has pounced on what it calls a “Mini Trend” but what many sane and seasoned readers may designate an utter horror. Shoulder pads. Not that Grazia uses the word. The abominations hovering above these style mavens’ slender arms are simply labelled “shoulders”. Pad is right out. As is style, when each outfit’s coathanger-still-caught-inside-the-garment effect is considered. Beckham, in a black leather jacket by French design house Balmain, has shoulder swellings that inspire thoughts of unnatural water retention, or illegal tennis-ball smuggling. While Gwyneth Paltrow, fresh-faced in a short dress, remains unaware her arms are pushing heavenward to escape their owner’s desperate fashion blindness.