Demi’s Uncovered On Another Cover

Dear me. It’s Demi again, posing naked on the cover of a magazine. This time, the star of “Disclosure” has dissed clothes for the Feb. 9 Rolling Stone. Twice already, the aging 1980s-styled Brat Packer has won eyes and ayes and oys for streaking across Vanity Fair’s front window. Anyhow, the dull Q&A has the actress responding to writer Mim Udovitch’s stale comments on Paula Jones and Anita Hill, as well as this question: “Who has the superior butt, David Letterman or Michael Douglas?” If you want the answer, you deserve to read the article.

Are magazines having a group identity crisis? Have the boundaries completely dissolved? These days, slickly designed celebrity profiles are interchangeable. With its Vanity Fair-esque cover, its US magazine superficiality and its Detailsoriented writer, the Demi package could have landed in many slicks other than Rolling Stone. And the boundaries are especially permeable now, with young, scruffed-up movie stars and rock stars both cultivating the same fame. Have you noticed the bleached-out Brad Pitt looking more like Kurt Cobain with each passing magazine spread?

The February Spin has a cover face that could easily take the front of Rolling Stone - and did, in December 1994. Ah, but then Spin had its first cover of Courtney Love back in May 1994. Well, there’s always an abundance of good copy when rock’s premier drama queen opens her “sad tomato” lips, and the Spin piece is no exception.

The New Republic for Feb. 6 has a surprisingly engaging essay simply about smell. The impetus for the piece, eloquently written by Richard Klein, is a growing American revolution of chemical correctness, as seen in examples like the University of Minnesota’s ban on perfume in certain locations. Klein asks good questions about our fear of odor and its psychologicaleconomic-political implications: “To smell bad is to be permanently disqualified from being fully human, too close to being an animal. In America, the sweet smell of success has no smell; as a nation we dream of being odor-free.”