I'm finally making good on my threat to poke some fun at the cultural directives in InStyle magazine (thanks for the nudge, Wendy...). I've still got the November and December issues on hand, and am currently reading January's. Wheeee!

For this first post, I'm lazily choosing the most obvious idiocy that can be found in nearly every issue. Some background may be helpful. Every month, InStyle features a female celebrity, usually an actress, on the cover. The overall tone, especially when it comes to celebrities, is very upbeat. You'll never see InStyle speculating about whether an actress is pregnant or anorexic, showing her looking slovenly, or tsk-tsking over her behavior.

The cover articles are uncritical puff pieces. Furthermore, the cover interview nearly always seeks to reassure the reader that female celebrities are down-to-earth and don't truly desire the success they've earned - in their hearts they belong to the traditional feminine realm. These are not uppity b!tches who use their status to threaten the status quo. These are women with conventional, socially-approved desires*.  These desires are probably ones that the reader can share with the celebrity. I am often left with the impression that famous women don't really want to be famous and successful and respected profesionnally and well-paid, not really. Not deep down.

Lindsay and InStyle want to assure us of the following humanizing feminizing information. Any of it may be true - but we'll see that the formula for the cover articles recycles many themes. This month's narrative:

• Lindsay Lohan "love[s] to cook" and is "a very domestic person"
• Linsday Lohan's co-stars and directors agree -- she is a great actress
• Lindsay Lohan is mystified by the attention the public pays to her [implication: Lindsay Lohan is humble and self-effacing]

and of course

• Lindsay Lohan strongly desires to marry and settle down: "I want to get married before I'm 30. And have my own house"

Lindsay is only 20 years old, which might explain the absense of one of the cover article's usual talking points. She did not state a burning desire to procreate. I assume that we'll hear that from her when she's on the InStyle cover again.

"So much for British reserve: At 31 the sublime Kate Winslet may have scored four Oscar nominations, but she prefers life unscripted -- making a pot of soup for the kids, watching Antiques Roadshow, or sharing a bit of a giggle with husband Sam"

In the article we also learn that

• Kate Winslet loves to cook -- something she and Lindsay Lohan have in common! -- "Winslet uses cooking as therapy... She devours recipe books and actually looks forward to shopping for ingredients" [this actually kind of describes me!]
• Kate Winslet shuns materialism -- "At Christmas time she puts a cap on gifts from friends and family"
• Kate Winslet is a supermom -- "Juggling work, motherhood and stardom is, it turns out, something Winslet excels at"
• Kate Winslet is "hoping to have more kids. I don't know whether one or two. Oh, God, I would love to have more"

*footnote: I don't mean to sound sneering about conventional desires. Heck, I got married and we bought a house and whatever. My point is that month after month, the formula for the cover article never changes. I am suspicious. Female celebrities seem to be under pressure to publicly affirm their gender roles at every turn.