GWAS Playlist

This week's pick of pop culture, magazines & pretty things...
1. The Confessions of a Shopaholic publicity machine is in full drive with Isla Fisher battling it out with the babes of Bride Wars (Kate Hudson for Australian InStyle and US ELLE), He's Just Not That Into You (Scarlett Johansson for US Harper's Bazaar) and Gossip Girl (Blake Lively for US Vogue and CLEO; Leighton Meester for Teen Vogue; both for Dolly), as well as GG golden girl Kate Winslet (UK ELLE; US InStyle), for February cover supremacy.

Fisher, 32, has made the February cover of beauty magazine Allure (and also UK InStyle). She's currently planning her wedding to Sacha Baron Cohen, while also penning a film script (working title, Groupies) with fellow comic actress and mum Amy Poehler. It's fabulous to see this Aussie, a one-time Home and Away cast member like fellow success story Melissa George, glowing amongst the ranks of the international glossy bunch.

2. Kate Winslet, who fronts the February edition of US InStyle, has had her boobs praised by Oprah Winfrey: "I love that you have real breasts, because in all the breast scenes [in Revolutionary Road], your breasts do what real breasts do. There's that wonderful thing, you know, if you are a woman, you're lying on your back, your breasts they part, but if you look at a woman who hasn't got real breasts, their breasts are sticking straight up. That's how you know. God bless your real breasts!" Watch the clip!

3. While Blake Lively is questionably in Vogue, Gossip Girl's aspiring, precocious fashionista, Taylor Momsen, is Page Six Magazine's latest cover subject. The self-conscious 15-year-old says, "I don't leave the house without thinking of how to represent myself. But I’m not a little kid playing dress up. It's all very real." As if to prove her point, Momsen says she prefers her fashion high-end, naming the likes of Alexander Wang, Balmain, YSL, Dior and Dolce & Gabanna as just a few of her favourites. Page Six also weighs in on Anna Wintour's rumoured retirement.

4. Josephine Tovey (not to be confused with Jessica Tovey of Home and Away - back on screens this coming Monday... um, not that I watch it or anything!) writes on the influence of teen magazines for the SMH. While it's accepted that teen mags need to adopt a level of social responsibility, Professor Catharine Lumby, who is in the midst of a study involving teen girls, dismisses the notion that they are the sole cause of eating disorders in young women: "There's no question that girls were very aware of pressures on them about appearance but they felt this didn't just come from the media, it also came from things like behaviour modelled by their mothers … To isolate magazines is really to miss the broader social context: that we still live a very gendered society that puts pressure on women of all ages."

5. Perennial single gal Renee Zellweger graces the cover of US Marie Claire, resplendent in a hot pink power dress, alongside the cover line: "Angelina, Jen, Gwyneth, J.Lo: The Men They'd Rather Forget". On being single, she says: "The thing is, I’m away all the time. I suppose if I sat still long enough to get to know somebody beyond a dinner date, maybe. But I don’t feel like my life is empty or that I have to make something happen. I have projects to develop. I want to study American history and political science, live in an apartment in France, and fix my bad French. And is there really time for all of it? Last summer, when I said it wasn’t the right time for something I wanted to do, a friend asked, ‘How long are you going to live?’... I’m not single, I’m busy. That’s my line.”

6. "Empathy chic" and "recession-apropos silhouettes" at the Golden Globes, "dumpster chic" at the Green Inaugural Ball (coat made from campaign flyers, anyone?) – on top of "recessionista chic", "credit crunch chic", "eco chic", "geek chic", "cheap chic", "rock chic", "heroin chic", "bogan chic" and "shabby chic", what will they think of next (says she of the 'Cute & Chic' posts)?

7. Habitual desk snacker? Me too! So you'll appreciate this genius idea care of Daily Candy London. Graze is a delivery service for healthy snack boxes (just like the 'brown lunch bag' canteen/tuckshop service of your primary school days). There are 128 (!!) things to choose from, including nuts, rice crackers, dried and fresh fruit, veggies, seeds and olives. Nutritional boxes include Graze Energy (to help keep blood sugar levels stable), Graze Wellbeing (boost your immune system), Graze PreWorkout (high in carbs for glucose and Graze PostWorkout (for replacing key nutrients), while you can opt for small (a day's snacks sorted), medium (for the daily grazer) or large (a fest for the day) box sizes. Unfortunately, Graze only operates in the UK, but there's no reason why you can't use the inspiration (see 'Browse our food') to fill your own lunchbox. Snack, anyone? Meanwhile, Gwyneth has been GOOPing about her butt-lifting Tracy Anderson workout (it's also rumoured she and Tracy will be opening a chain of gyms).

8. SMH writer Lenny Ann Low has penned a very funny "guide to the ridiculous global phenomenon that is the celebrity." SMH journalist Charles Purcell writes about how to not score a celebrity interview (it's hilarious). Trespass magazine has compiled a list of 200+9 Things To Do in 2009. The Sartorialist's (aka Scott Schuman) debut book will be published by Penguin Books in the US this September, in hard cover and paperback format. British celebrity blog PopBitch also has a book out via Random House, PopBitch: Celebrity Excess and Other Monkey Business.

9. Hello, cuteness! Conceptual beauty lines are the cosmetic marketing gimmick dujour, with M.A.C taking the lead with its celebrity-endorsed lines (most recently collaborating with Dame Edna Everage but also artist Fafi and designers Heatherette) and now Too Faced Cosmetics has caught on with the Smurfette Collection. (Source: Adore Beauty)

10. Swapping her MacBook for a microphone, gregarious go-getter and former Cosmopolitan Australian editor Sarah Wilson is the new host of Channel 10's Masterchef series. She started shooting this week in Perth.

Me, me, me! Tomorrow Girl With a Satchel celebrates its second bloggy birthday!

Thank you to everyone who's sent an email of encouragement, commented on a post (unless you were particularly nasty), and also to my wonderful sponsors and contributing writers (you rock!).

Props also to the glossy mag teams, without whom GWAS would be really boring. And, in true Oscars speech style, thanks be to God, who has kept the blog bubbling along even when I wasn't feeling bubbly myself.

The cupcakes are on me!

The Word for the Weekend: "The Lord is my strength and my song: he has become my salvation. The voice of rejoicing and salvation is in the tents and private dwellings of the righteous: the right hand of the Lord does valiantly and achieves strength!" Psalm 118: 14-15

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Yours truly,
Girl With a Satchel