TOMBOY PANIC
At what point does media panic regarding Shiloh’s Radical Androgynous Haircut cross over into Officially Offensive Territory? Do we care that Life & Style’s magazine cover, which screams WHY IS ANGELINA TURNING SHILOH INTO A BOY? (our number one feeling on this topic is “we want her sneakers, we wish our parents had given us such a rad tomboy wardrobe”) is… something-phobic? Is it transphobic? Peter-Panaphobic? Homophobic? Awesomephobic? We couldn’t really care less that it’s the child of our Lady Angelina Jolie, this is inappropriate language to use when talking about anyone’s child!
Admittedly we don’t read or buy these magazines typically so perhaps this is typical fare and were GLAAD or its kin to attack Life & Style on the reg, they’d need a whole new department.
However, our little Google Image Search suggests 80% of Life & Style magazine covers are about someone losing 10-200 pounds, Jennifer Aniston vs. Angelina Jolie, The Kardashians getting married/having a baby, John & Kate Plus 8, Kristen Stewart’s hypothetical relationship with Robert Pattison, someone maybe being pregnant or The Kardashians losing 20 pounds after having a baby. Though all those topics are a waste of trees and brainspace (and reinforce similarly archaic ideas of gender and the female body, though more insidiously so) none of them rub us the wrong way quite like this:
Here’s the rub: Although the print magazine industry is hemmoraging at present, Life & Style isn’t. In 2006, Life & Style was the fastest growing magazine in the country and currently boasts well over a million copies circulated per week. These are the magazines you see at the dentist, hair salon, and on the floor in your shared dorm bathroom under someone’s Caboodles. These headlines scream at you from every grocery store checkout counter.
“Shiloh is pushing the boundaries of a tomboy look and crossing over to cross-dresser territory,” Alana Kelen, senior fashion stylist at VH1, tells Life & Style. Celebrity stylist Gili Rashal-Niv agrees. “I get that times are tough but does Angie really need to have Shiloh sharing clothes with her brothers? Hopefully we won’t be seeing Maddox in one of Shiloh’s dresses any time soon.”
AN ACTUAL QUOTE FROM FOCUS ON THE F*CKING FAMILY: “Little girls have never been women before,” Glenn Stanton, director of Family Formation Studies at the conservative organization Focus on the Family, tells Life & Style. “They need help, they need guidance of what that looks like. It’s important to teach our children that gender distinction is very healthy.”
In C.Lynn Carr’s 2007 study “Tomboyism or Lesbianism? Beyond Sex/Gender/Sexual Conflation,” Carr found that the fact that “a large majority of women recalled wanting to be boys (sex) in order to do things that boys got to do (gender) may be testament to the relative powerlessness of children, who are often told how to act and what they can and cannot do by peers, parents, and educators.” In other words — girls “dressing like boys” is less about “adopting another gender” than it is about desiring the power enabled by the other gender.
This is in line with studies which show that although recalled childhood tomboy behaviors are relatively high amongst adult women (between 51% to 67%), less than five percent of adult women identify as tomboys and even fewer as lesbians or transgender.
Regardless, who cares what Shiloh turns out to be — trans, straight, gay, robot — what irks us about this cover is its frightening reinforcement of some of the gender binary’s most damaging assumptions.
The magazine goes on to question why Shiloh & Suri have “such different styles” — I don’t know, because they are different people? Because Suri’s Dad is gay? (JK!) Apparently Joey Potter is not a radical bisexual monster like Angelina, although Joey was quite the tomboy when she still lived on Dawson’s Creek.
What do you think? Problematic, or not worth the time? If you’d like to complain, the PR people for Life & Style are Lindsay Ferraro (LFerraro@bauer-usa.com) and Sarah Drabick (sdrabick@bauer-usa.com) and the editor of Life & Style is Dan Wakeford (DWakeford@bauer-usa.com).
THE NEWS TODAY:
The editor of Pink News UK is totally straight you guys:
I’m straight. There, I said it. I’ve been editing the gay news website Pink News for a year, and people are still shocked to discovered that I’m not actually a lesbian, despite the fact that only one of the website’s last three editors have been gay. Reactions to the discovery of my heterosexuality have ranged from gentle ribbing to disbelief and even occasional anger.
What’s your reaction, kiddos?
PRESIDENTIAL REUNION: Funny Or Die presents “Presidential Reunion,” starring Darrell Hammond as Bill Clinton, Jim Carrey as Ronald Regan, Chevy Chase as President Ford, Dana Carvey as George H.W. Bush, Dan Akroyd as Jimmy Carter, Will Ferrell as George W Bush, Fred Armisen as Barack Obama and Maya Rudolph as Michelle.
OLYMPICS:
They say that imitation is the most sincere form of flattery, but some ice dancing routines might be verging on the territory of offensive (@racialicious)
SO GAY:
In the words of the revered Better Porter, “An honest homophobe, how nice.” – “Just because you didn’t intend a slur to make someone feel vulnerable and unsafe, doesn’t mean it didn’t. Just because your careless, prejudiced language use didn’t intend to offend, trigger or annoy people doesn’t mean it didn’t.” (@womanist musings)
FRAPPES AND FIREARMS:
Apparently peoples have been testing their right to carry guns by wearing their guns into Starbucks across the country – “No longer will Starbucks be seen as a safe haven for liberal pussies!” (@gawker)
ABORTION:
Anti-Abortion Groups’ New Tactic: Paint Abortion as Ethnic Cleansing – “Latinas and other women of color don’t need to be protected by paternalistic ideologues motivated by a political agenda that disregards the needs of women of color and their families. So thanks for your concern, anti-choicers, but I think the women of color advocates working within the reproductive justice movement have got it covered. We’re working in those clinics you attack, we’re helping to shape policies and provide services in our communities, services that allow us to decide what our needs are.” (@jezebel)
ADVERTISING:
Smoking rates among LGBT people are 200 percent higher than straights and now We’re being targeted by tobacco companies. (@medill)
OUR HOME AND NATIVE LAND:
Gay history and gay rights have been written out of the new study guide for Canada’s citizenship study guide and the Minister of Citizenship and Immigration is getting called out. – “We have fought hard to have our rights recognized, and we will not be censored out of our country’s history.” (@theglobeandmail)
What freaks me out is Suri Cruise in high heels. No 3 year old should have heels, why do they even exist in her size?!
thank you! suri is a cute child but they dress her like shes in a teen beauty pagent. scares the shite outta me!
shiloh has style. when i was a child i chose green trousers with pink lobsters on. i was always a tomboy but that didnt make me gay. also, my lobster trousers did’nt make mw want to be a fisherwoman
What creeps me out about Suri is she looks more like a miniature adult rather than a toddler, if that makes sense.
The heels certainly don’t help that.
I find the tiny high heels for children thing really weird. It’s gotta be bad for your feet/legs/whatever for a small kid.
There’s nothing wrong with being a tomboy, so go have a word with yourself lifestyle magazine. I hope no one buys this magazine and continues to fund their overwhelming ignorance.
OMG. Stop smoking so we can make out. Please? All of you?
iv’e stopped but i feel making out would compromise our friendship. lets link arms and skip around singing lady gaga and go for a curry and turn folks gay though.
sidenote – i totally just typo’d and wrote lady gay. ahhh lady gay
Fair enough, you can’t go wrong with curry and lady gayga! AS London meetup/skipping fest in June?
only if i can wear lobster pants. and by pants i mean knickers not trousers
also YAY FOR STOPPING! :D I know it isn’t easy.
nicoteen gum = instant insanity. honestly, it sent me mad.
Quit smoking chemicals worry me. A family friend had a heart attack from smoking on the patch, which admittedly it warns you not to do.
SO let me rephrase: OMG. Stop smoking so we can make out (but do it carefully!). Please? All of you?
There, that’s better. :)
I can’t even deal with this Shiloh nonsense! …jkadykuyrejtysktflgfjk;hfuuuccckkkyouguyssssskaykjklg;LOUWP EY… that’s how I feel.
this whole panic around shiloh’s clothing is so irritating. any of these gender-policers care that maybe these are the clothes shiloh wants to wear, and her parents are letting her be who she wants to be? sounds like good parenting to me. that sword she was wearing was badass.
–
and this whole “tons of girls act like tomboys as children but then turn into the RIGHT kind of women” thing pisses me off too because it’s just reinforcing this idea that little girls doing things that adults say are for little boys is some kind of transgression. AND WHO SAYS WHAT’S FOR “BOYS” why do we even do this to kids anyway. there’s no reason that playing baseball as a child should mean shit-all about a person’s fucking gender, and SO WHAT if some girls who liked baseball as children grow up to be gay or not. kids wouldn’t even know OR care about this shit if we didn’t teach them to.
Word. I’m so incredibly grateful that my parents raised me to understand that my gender had nothing to do with what I could accomplish or how I could express myself. They let me explore my own interests without trying to force me into a binary or any stereotypes. I think that because of this, I’ve had fewer struggles with gender and identity than many other queer women. And now, I’m a total tomboy femme who enjoys climbing trees and shopping and working with power tools and making my hair pretty. Life is great.
ALSO that dude’s quote about maddox wearing a dress is SO offensive, and also suggests how much WORSE it is, in the world’s eyes, if a little boy acts like a little girl, which is so sexist and gross. because everyone should want to be boys, that’s totally normal and understandable duh. but a little boy wearing a dress? get that kid into child protective services.
This got to me, too! So WHAT if he DID want to wear a dress? Or wear makeup or express himself in some other fashion not typical to the male gender? While the girls have the more socially acceptable tomboy stage, the boys don’t really have an equivalent.
On a personal level, I find Suri’s get-up much more distasteful than Shiloh’s, but nothing about those two could ever be as distasteful as the constantly disapproving tones of all magazines of Life & Style’s ilk.
I really don’t want to have any opinion about either of those kids, because I should not know anything at all about them in the first place; they should not feature on these covers at all because the mags should pick on someone their own size.
A couple of years ago, the son of professional British tabloid fodder Katie Price was being featured on a multitude of gossip magazine covers, with headlines about his bad behaviour and yoyo-ing weight. This kid, Harvey, suffers from a plethora of quite nasty congenital medical conditions, causing among other things blindness and a growth hormone problem. This didn’t put the mags off, and eventually things reached a head when Heat magazine printed a sticker of Harvey with the words “Harvey wants to eat me.”
I have to admit, owing to me being a bit of a sick bastard my first reaction was to laugh, but it only took a moment’s reflection to realise how awful it really was. Fortunately, the rest of the country thought so too, and Price uttered some of her most (only?) respectable words when she fought back, citing not only that it was prejudice based on disability, but that despite her putting herself in the limelight, her kids had never volunteered themselves for the same.
People will readily reconcile themselves with their curiosity about celebrities because the celebs openly court the media; the more rabidly they do so, the more people feel happy to follow/judge them. But the same can’t be said about the kids of celebrities, who don’t really get much say in the matter.
I know that there have been child stars in the media spotlight for generations, but precedent is no reason to carry on with a culture that veers so closely to privacy breeches and children’s rights abuses.
I feel like the strongest comment anyone can make is to refuse to comment at all, in the vain hope that a lack of interest makes the tabloid masses rest their gaze elsewhere, because their own scruples certainly won’t.
So yeah, let’s all eat curry instead – there’s pretty much nothing that can’t be remedied by curry.
I hate the way we are focused on celebrities’ kids, and I think you’re right – it’s almost child abuse.
Even aside from dressing your kids, no parent makes perfect choices all the time. I fell off the roof of my house one time because Dad was fixing a window and I wanted to hang with him. He didn’t watch me close enough, and I fell and slipped over the side. GOD SOMEONE CALL CPS.
I feel bad for these parents under constant scrutiny, because I feel like no matter what they do, it’s wrong.
aren’t there LAWS about taking pictures of children? i know in canada they have to blur kids’ faces out on the NEWS.
You would think, wouldn’t you? I mean, I know they are celebrities and so they can’t really baaawww about not having privacy, but jfc, there should be some kind of line, people.
Unless the child is an actor or is intentionally seeking the spotlight, with appropriate guidance…they’re off limits, in my opinion.
Someone else said it already…the magazine should “pick on someone their own size.” I hate bullies – I don’t care if they’re pretending to be the f*cking fashion police.
Me too. Though, I admit, I care less if it’s just like: Suri is totally adorable! Shiloh has great fashion sense! Holy fuck, Zahara looks awesome!
Talking about kids being cute is fine, but I HATE the way fucking 3 YEAR OLDS are up for scrutiny.
Positive, fluffy publicity is one thing – human interest pieces, yes, sure, fine. I love those, too. I’m a sucker for munchkins.
This, however, is a hit piece.
does this mean we’re allowed to write emails to them and complain
Please, yes, please do. The more emails the merrier, I think, especially from erudite, well-spoken people with reasoned, measured arguments tempered with righteous anger and indignation on behalf of those who cannot defend themselves.
That’s what you get for showing off how well you can write about topics in popular culture (RE: your Swift soliloquy) while at the same time finding common ground and acknowledging differing POVs.
Bomb the f*ckers. Politely. You know, if you wanna.
*sigh* Now, see, this is why I have trouble at times.
So many FEELINGS!
I tend to get hyperbolic and start tossing around ten-dollar words and then I go and type something dramatic and all kinds of regret-inducing.
Those with a better hold on their tempers…
…FLOOD the f*ckers inboxes with emails.
All apologies. Goodnight Gracie.
I want to scream and scream and scream and throw some sort of temper tantrum. What’s wrong with these people?! Seriously. I’m offended on so many different levels that I honestly don’t even know where to start.
I let my mother put me in dresses when I was Shiloh’s age, and I think I remember liking them. It didn’t last, of course, and I’m sure if she had protested my eventual progression into more gender neutral clothing, I wouldn’t have turned into a homo. THANKS, MOM.
1. bcw is back bitches.
2. Sally said pretty much everything I wanted to say. The only thing I could add is that without disrespecting them, WE NEED TO STOP LOOKING AT KIDS AS IF THEY WERE GROWNUPS.
We as adults are the ones that add non-existent meanings to every little thing based on our previous experiences. These kids, they don’t care. UGH. THIS IS STUPID. It’s official: there’s gossip about a 3-year-old and even worse, I’m discussing it.
hello! i’m so glad nothing happened while i was gone. who is taylor swift.
taylor swift is a very popular poet, like jewel
WAIT WAIT WAIT now…don’t start on Jewel. She can yodel, at least.
True story: I dressed much more like Suri than like Shiloh as a little girl, because that is what I liked. I don’t know who these people are that think putting on a skirt and having long hair makes you straight, but if that had been the case, I would probably be living with my husband and raising 2.5 kids about now.
ME TOO!!!
I ONLY wore dresses and bows and lace from age 0 to 10. (and I liked it)
AND I stilled turned out to be a big ol’ gay.
so there.
But to be fair, I don’t get how even now people think femmes aren’t just as much big ol queermos as the alternative lifestyle haircuts and skinny jeans crowd. SO.
I know! LOL!!
THAT is my biggest pet peeve! (more so than when my friends burp in my face or when people say “conversate” instead of “converse” )
Straight person to me: “Wait, what? You’re a lesbian? OH!! I thought you meant, like, your friend when you said GIRLfriend! Sorry, it’s just that you don’t look… you know… gay.”
Me: “Damn! And I tried so hard to look as gay as possible this morning! Shoot! What threw you off? The heels? ”
btw… that’s another pet peeve: when straight girls say “girlfriend”… you don’t have a girlfriend, you have a FRIEND. I don’t have boyfriends…
For real, girl! If I say girlfriend, I don’t mean Sex in the City girlfriend, I mean my girlfriend that I am having sex with…perhaps in the city.
well put damnnit! lol
this may be my policy wonk nerd self speaking, but you jumbled the presidents on the funny or die video.
Dana Carvey is playing Herbert Walker, and Will Ferrell is playing Dubya.
Thanks, and I’ll put away my nerd now.
I am so glad I was not the only one scratching my head and making the confused face at that video.
nerds unite! And Dana Carvey did a pretty awesome HW, y/y?
I just can’t get over how much Glen Stanton sounds like a perp on Law and Order SVU. Creeeeepy.
And Shiloh is all of three? I think when I was three I wanted to wear Spaghetti O’s or something like that. And my family made me wear dresses. And now I’m a cross-dresser. Snap!
PEOPLE OF AUTOSTRADDLE. you can’t bitch about them bitching about Shiloh’s haircut WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY bitching about Suri’s high heels.
here’s the deal: kids are a fuck ton easier to handle when they’re happy. and happy kids are usually dressed the way they want to be dressed. [and properly fed / allowed outdoors / etc.] and no matter what they look like, kids should be allowed to wear whatever the fuck they want to — HEELS OR SNEAKERS.
don’t be self-righteous hypocrites. <3
sorry i’m in a terrrrbs mood. i love you all. xoxox
omg i just fell in <3 with green.
wow! good point! LOL
(I secretly was sad that everybody was/is hating on Suri’s heels… I would have killed to have those when I was 4)
Love. I have it for you.
I didn’t say anything about Suri’s heels, but um, aren’t they bad for her feet and back? I don’t know if everyone’s concern comes from gender presentation so much as it does from the fact that girls shouldn’t sacrifice their health for pretty shoes.
I could be totally wrong, not being a doctor, but they look pretty tiny and chunky. I’m pretty sure I had a pair of horrific pink glitter shoes like that, and I loved them. I think ‘heels’ is actually a pretty liberal way to describe them.
yeah i totally had some purple plastic ‘heels’.
totally unsarcastic: know what i always wanted but never had? STILTS. i think if i’d had stilts, i could’ve been truly happy.
Oooh! I had stilts! Made ’em for a 4-H project. :) They were only like 5 inches off the ground, but I walked on those things for years.
i had stilts made from paint cans and rope. i was a nervous child and scared of proper stilts. and pogo sticks (shudder)
I had stilts too! My dad made them for some Cub Scout thing, I think (he was the most creative Cubmaster of all time).
For me it was a pogo stick. Oh, childhood desire.
im sure theres adult pogo sticks. i was obsessed with mr frosty. id like a new one, id make vodka slushies. maybe thats why i want an ice cream maker so much
Wait a sec…are we back to breaking hymens again?
we shouldn’t? =)
I want you to all know that directly after publishing this, I went to the doctor, and in the waiting room a 7-year-old boy was reading the issue of Life & Style with Shiloh Panic on the cover, I literally had to rub my eyes I thought I had to be nightmaring. Actually seeing it physically out there in the world (on NYC there are mag stands on every corner) made me borderline legit upset
i’m adding Shiloh Panic to my list of potential band names.
thank goodness for Rock Band / Guitar Hero. living the dream, etc.
HELLO PAINT-COVERED WEIRDO BLONDE GIRL IN A CHAIR. YOU WERE MISSED.
hello disembodied voices of the internet! i had to brave a TSUNAMI while i was gone and the only thing that got me through it was knowing that somewhere, something gay was happening and autostraddle was writing about it and i had to live in order to find out what that thing was.
i missed bcw because she makes me supa dupa proud of montreal. represent!
je me souviens
Precious.
i wanna play keytar in shiloh panic
Can I play triangle/sessions castanets?
yes to all. our first single could be called “keep your laws off my body (people magazine blues)”
can the castanets be bedazzled?
i havent played with castanets in such a long time.
sidenote jen. i wanted to respond in more detail to the thread you started on AE but my keyboard was foofed so i could only copy/paste what someone else said. due to tonight recieving new keyboard im getting rather excited that i can post again online. sorry for my overexcitement folks
I forgot all about that AE thread. I need to hang around there more.
im finding autostraddle much more fun at the mo. theres only so many threads about “falling in love” with straight girls you can take on ae.
the writing and comments here are golden. i still heart ae but the comments here are so funny and i love that the AS team comment too.
Ahahah, it’s so fucking true. I can only deal with “This girl is straight but she looked at me once and smiled, and she didn’t spit on me when I told her I was gay, she is in love, y/y?” So often.
And it’s like every other day there.
MORE COWBELL!
Are you sure it was a 7 year old boy and not a girl with an awful mother who is trying to make her GAY AND CONFUSED? Maybe she was reading about Shiloh and thinking “OMG I’m not the only one!”
Don’t worry, with the failures of our education system (if only that caused as much of a panic as Shiloh), there’s a fair chance kid can’t read yet anyway.
As a smoker I take pride in the tobacco companies interest.
I like you
Me too.
Heyyy Autostraddle,can you work your magic and fix the link for the canadian citizenship study guide?? please?
I hope the AS folks forgive the reference librarian in me. I couldn’t leave you hanging, Ami.
You can download the new guide here as well as take a look at the old guide: http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/resources/publications/discover/index.asp
fixed!
and thanks, missy! that was some seriously proactive librarian hotness I MEAN SMARTNESS / GOODNESS.
xox
Welcome :)
thanks!
Well this is a mess. Criticizing a toddler for clothing. I guess the world will go up in flames if the Child of the gods ( Angie and brad) turns out to be a les. NEWSFLASH you people won’t find out what the hell she is for another 15 to twenty years. The world is collapsing because the angel child wants to wear comfy clothing and not prance around in heels. These tabloids..go back to cover john and kate.. they have 8 kids you can figure out the rest.
As a parent the mag, totally pisses me off. Fucking gender role pricks! (Sorry, thats the soccer/dance mom in me) I try to raise my kids, to be civil humans beings, teaching them what is right and wrong. Laneia said it best, you try to keep your kids happy, it def makes life easier. Its a win, win situation.
p.s. on another note, way off topic… i will always <3 slogreenx a/k/a role models that have given me uncanny inspiration in life ;) thx u 2!!!
<3
I honestly think that both Shiloh and Suri are cases of parents allowing their small children to express themselves how they want, and that’s a good thing. If Suri wants to wear fancy dresses every day, great (I read somewhere that the shoes are made for children’s dance or something, but I can’t confirm that). If Shiloh wants to wear polos and sweaters and doesn’t like having long hair, great.
On a slightly more ridiculous note, I really hope that Shiloh turns out to be queer, just to fuck with the tabloids.
Me too. The only thing that would make it better is if Suri grows up queer too, and becomes Shiloh’s high femme girlfriend.
LOL – that would be great!
I can totally see that. Look at their pictures side by side: they’d be a perfect couple. I can see them doing adorable lesbian canoodling, Shiloh holding Suri’s purse while she tries on dresses, going to release parties together in a sharp pantsuit and gorgeous gown. They could become the new lesbian power couple and I would LOVE EVER MINUTE.
>>On a slightly more ridiculous note, I really hope that Shiloh turns out to be queer, just to fuck with the tabloids.>>
I had that exact same thought.
I think people look to much into it what she is 3 right so that my daughter dressed in boys cloths til she was 14 and only really start wearing a skirt cause i sent her to private school and shes seems fine. And i know that shilohs parents are rich but just to say boys cloths are far cheaper than girls cloths
In response to that anti-abortion group’s campaign: what they’re doing with the billboards may be a new tactic but it’s a rehashing of an old conspiracy theory (“The Negro Project”) and a blatant attack on Planned Parenthood/Margaret Sanger. I perused the website a bit and it’s all drivel. At the top of the Contact Us page, it literally had a graphic of a megaphone with the text “Just Holla!” next to it.
This brings to mind something I saw recently about Utah criminalizing miscarriages: http://tinyurl.com/yh9x6xk
I’m struggling to string anything coherent together about that Utah bill because I am genuinely shocked for the first time in longer than I can remember.
Pingback: Top Style Blog :) » Autostraddle — Life & Style's Shiloh Jolie-Pitt Tomboy-Panic Cover …
As kids, my sister and I would wear matching clothes whenever we went somewhere as a family. She in skirts and me in shirts. I played on the boy’s soccer team, and wanted to become a ninja or a robot. I loved to dress up in a beautiful dress, though. Still do.
Kids that age will choose what to wear themselves, within the limits set by their parents. Less limits, more diversity.
Thank you for posting the email address for the PR people of Life & Style. As I saw this cover story on the internet yesterday I found myself really getting upset.
It’s one thing to target and put on your cover trash about celebrities every week, it’s a completely different story when you start targeting children. Shiloh is a 3 year old child for God’s sake and to use her to sell magazines and with such a vile headline to boot just completely rankled me.
Shame on Life & Style for sinking to the lowest depths yet.
The media is very good at pitting women against each other and, now, they’re pitting little girls against each other too. Impressively horrifying! I have two kids and it’s an effin’ miracle to get them out of the house every morning in an ensemble that even closely resembles appropriate clothing. My daughter likes to wear Target bags as jumpers. Yeah. So, let’s focus on the magazine and the media response rather than picking apart the girls and their parents.
When I grow up, I wanna be Shiloh.
There are two things I wanted to say –
.
1. The circulation of Life & Style magazine is NOT “well over a million copies per week.” That stat you quoted is from 2006. That was four years ago. The last stats from the Audit Bureau of Circulation in February 2010 put L&S at just under 400,000 copies per week. Yes, that’s right, they have lost over 60% of their readers in the last 4 years. With covers and cover stories like this one you can see why. It’s not just the failing economy. It’s the fact that the morons at L&S routinely pull stories out of their collective asses. And not just L&S but their sister publication In Touch Weekly and the other tabloids (US Weekly, Star magazine, OK Weekly, National Enquirer, Globe, etc.) are all struggling for sales. Only People magazine has seen an increase in sales over the last 2 years. The rest of those magazines are floundering big time and American Media, which publishes Star, National Enquirer and The Globe, is constantly two steps away from a Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Life & Style and OK! have both been close to folding on at least 4 occasions each in the last 12 months.
2. Sad to say, yes, stories like this ARE the norm for L&S and all the tabs. Angelina Jolie has been on the cover of these magazines just under 50% of the time over the course of the last 5 years. Every since she hooked up with Brad Pitt it’s been a steady diet of lies about Angelina Jolie. I’ve lost track of the number of times she’s been pregnant, dumped Brad, they’re getting married, he’s going back to Jennifer Aniston, they’re fighting, his parents hate her, Brad hates her brother, she’s anorexic, Brad’s a drunkard, etc., etc., etc.
But getting back to poor Shiloh – the child is a favorite target of L&S. In the past they’ve put her on the cover with claims that Jolie hates her, ignores her needs in favor of the adopted children and claims the child is primarily raised by nannies. After Shiloh’s baby picture appeared on the cover of People there was a period when she wasn’t seen in public with the older children. So L&S claimes Jolie was favoring the older kids instead of using common sense and saying that at 6 months Shiloh was a bit too young to sit through a 90 minute animated movie. So what did L&S do? They had a cover proclaiming, “WHY IS ANGELINA HIDING SHILOH?” The story claimed that Shiloh hadn’t been seen in public in X number of days and then speculated that there was something wrong with Shiloh – this in addition to Jolie hating her biological child and favoring the adopted children. They even went so far as to speculate as to what could be wrong with Shiloh to prevent Jolie taking her out in public. The reality was that Jolie and Pitt were simply protecting Shiloh from the paparazzi snapping pictures right in her face like they did with the older children. Whenever the children aren’t seen in public for long periods of time (this 2 weeks in tabloidland, not 2 or 3 months) then the tabloid start speculating that Pitt and Jolie are breaking up and the children are caught between them. Just recently when Jolie & Pitt’s hadn’t been seen in public for a few months L&S (and other tabloids) started claiming the children were sick with the croup and allergies and were frail and overall ill health. It was downright sickening.
Overall it’s been 5 very long years of insane tabloid bullshit. This lastest L&S cover is just another link in their ch-ch-chain of fools.
Do these people have no conscience? What gets me about this, is that while this child may be three years old and oblivious, at some point she’ll be old enough to google herself, and reading all those ‘panic’ headlines is going to suck. So Future Shiloh if you’re reading this: Hi! What’s the future like? Does Lady Gaga rule the world yet? Just wanted you to know that i think you’re three year old self was rockin’ that look. Way to go!
One time I tried to leave my house in tights and a giant t-shirt because I was too tall & skinny to find leggings that fit me like leggings are supposed to and all the other girls were wearing leggings and I wanted to wear leggings so I wore my red wool tights and I got like one step out the door before my Mom got mad at me and made me come back inside and put on shoes.
I think that’s the only time she ever told me what to wear, but she also dressed me and my brother identically in unisex duds so she wouldn’t lose us in a crowd. Of course my grandparents & etc were horrified that I looked like a boy, but I liked it because passing for male meant i could do stuff girls couldn’t do.
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Liberal pussies are my favorite. I usally end up choking on the dust with conservative ones.
LOL come on!! I was the same as shiloh at her age. Didn’t like walt-disney princess movies and I cried every time my mom tried to make me wear a dress… the reason: I have 2 older brothers, so I had 2 options, play dolls alone or play boy stuff with them.
With the time, I started being girly! and I’m really girly. But still don’t like to wear dresses.
FUCK OFF LIBSHIT
You mean libshite.
Pelosi smells worse than the dike Napolitano
It’s actually spelled “dyke.”