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Daniel Edwards—the celebrity-obsessed sculptor who has already blessed the world with Britney Spears giving birth on a bearskin rug and Suri Cruise’s bronzed poop—has just announced his latest work: A statue of Angelina Jolie,
enthroned, majestically nude, and suckling a baby at each breast like
it ain’t no thang. Weird? Sick? Magnificent? I can’t really tell ... (Read more in Double X.)
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For the sixth consecutive week, Kate Gosselin’s on the cover of Us Weekly. “Mommy You Are Mean” screams the headline, while her husband Jon declares, “Enough is Enough” on the cover of People. In Touch and Star are selling the Gosselins as well. Only the Enquirer has chosen an old standard for its cover, Brangelina, and even the most famous couple in the world had to share the front page, with, you guessed it, Jon Gosselin.
Up until a few months ago, chances were good-to-great that if you picked up a tabloid one of the following subjects would appear on the cover: Brangelina, Jennifer Aniston, TomKat or Britney Spears. But recently, the attractive, famous folk who have dominated gossip for years and years (even when, as with Aniston, the relevant story happened eons ago), have suddenly, ignominiously been shoved to the side by a rag-tag crew whose members include the Gosselins, Octomom, Susan Boyle and, to a certain extent, Michelle Obama... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)
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To me Susan Boyle seems like the anti-Octomom. Her homespun Scottish village upbringing, in her mother's sweet cottage, produced a 47-year-old single lady comfortable in her own stolid skin. I hope Emily's prediction about Boyle inevitably being seduced by a well-tweezed reflection is wrong. That she will not succumb to hair and make-up upgrades nor agree to strappy shoes and blingy accessories to enhance her image. I am rooting for the guileless churchwoman, seemingly without pretense or affectation, who told CBS Morning News, "you have to take yourself seriously." She strikes me as confident that her clear strong voice is all she needs to "rock the house."
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TMZ reports the San Fernando Valley-based adult production company Vivid Entertainment has offered Nadya Suleman $1 million to star in an adult movie. Taken at face value, this story is all kinds of wrong. How the story of a freak-mother has twisted itself into a tale of a would-be MILF? OctoMILF? is beyond the scope of my limited brain capacity. Whatever those parties involved or not involved have in mind, I know I do not want to see it. What the story does testify to truly is that the adult movie industry is suffering mightily during this recession if these are the lengths it has to go to to get attention these days. Once upon a time, XXX was outre. After a while, it went mainstream. Now, I guess it's just passe. For some reason, the conflation of OctoMom and pornography brings to my mind the ancient Japanese tradition of tentacle erotica and The Dream of the Fisherman's Wife, in which a woman finds herself in the erotic embrace of an octopus. I suppose these United States really have been pornified, when starring in an adult movie is the punch line to the new American Dream.
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Bonnie, your continued fascination with octomom Nadya Suleman reminds me of the most recent headline-grabbing baby story: England is all atwitter with news of Alfie Patten, the 13-year-old father of newborn Maisie. Impregnating a fellow teen (the mother is 15-year-old Chantelle Steadman) in middle school isn't necessarily tabloid-ready news, but Alfie clocks in at around 4 feet tall and looks like he's about 8 years old. Alfie's notoriety might have just been another flash in the sordid tabloid pan, but according to the AP, his tween parenthood has reignited the teen pregnancy debate in the United Kingdom. Britain's teen pregnancy rate is among the highest in Europe, though it's still far lower than the United States'.
Alfie's story broke last week, and today the Daily Mail is reporting that the wee teen is demanding a paternity test on the advice of his father. In addition, two other minors have stepped up to claim paternity of Chantelle Steadman's baby girl. One could dismiss both Suleman's and Patten's stories as tabloid trash, but both tales have gained traction in the mainstream media. Richard Lawson at Gawker posits that celebrity baby mania has created a greedy gaping public maw that yearns to be filled with any and all baby news. I guess people need something to distract them from the economy until Brangelina decide to adopt a South American to round out their brood.
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Although it seems to be having a few technical problems, Nadya Suleman, ad hoc CEO of the octuplets+6 media corporation, recently set up a tasteful portal to capture a revenue stream (accepts credit cards!) during the launch of her new family business. As Dahlia mentioned last week, the newly delivered mother of eight slightly resembles Angelina Jolie. In addition to their age and some physical similarities, both women also seem very comfortable with far more notoriety than a truly rational individual would ever want. (Is it a coincidence that Jolie's 1999 breakthrough performance as a mental institution patient in Girl, Interrupted was the same year as Suleman's injury at her California mental hospital job? The worker compensation settlements provided development capital for her new venture.) Giving a whole new meaning to the notion of sweat equity, to provide manpower for the company, the fecund executive also ovulated enough viable IVF embryos to incubate 14 of them to delivery from six pregnancies.
Speaking of compensation, NBC insists it paid "not a dime" to air the first post-birth Ann Curry interview with "Octomom," nor for any of the access and personal materials used in the network's "special Dateline" featuring her other six children. Nevertheless, I'd love to read the contract between NBC's legal department and Ms. Suleman's business managers, spelling out what everyone did agree to.
Anyway, I applaud the fledgling media dynamo's entrepreneurship and resourcefulness and hope for Suleman that she gets that cable reality show. Who knows? Maybe it will even get network interest from, say, NBC. As for Suleman's 14 fatherless offspring, they will, it seems, be joining the growing ranks of working realty actors that includes ratings magnet and 3-year-old son of the current Bachelor star Jason Mesnick. While the Pitt children, though perhaps too often pressed into service as accessories, are so far still unemployed.
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Susannah, reading your post about plastic surgery I couldn't help but think of Octomom, who, with each passing revelation, seems to be even more deeply troubled than she first appeared. Though Nadya Suleman has denied adoring Angelina Jolie or having had plastic surgery, rumors contradicting both those statements persist. Most recently, the Daily Mail claimed Suleman sent Jolie some adoring fan letters; various acquaintances keep insisting she had her lips and nose done in order to resemble the world's hottest mama. It's creepy information to add to an already creeptastic situation: Is this a case of childbirth as plastic surgery, i.e., were the babies another medically driven way for Suleman to resmeble her hero? And is Suleman (or, say, the twins who underwent multiple surgeries to look like Brad Pitt on MTV's incredibly upsetting series I Want a Famous Face) inhabiting a triple consciousness, stuck between who she appears to be, who she wants to be, and who she really is?
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