This Week In Tabloids: The Hideously Cruel 'Worst Beach Bodies' Issue

By Dodai Stewart | July 2, 2014 | 7:15pm

Celebrities

Welcome back to Midweek Madness, in which Callie Beusman assists as we quaff goblets of gossip. This week: There’s beef between K. Middy and HRH Liz; George Clooney is one step closer to an “I’ll Raise This Baby Alone” cover; and the dreaded “Best and Worst Beach Bodies” issue is fucking awful.

Most Popular

RISKING IT ALL FOR LOVE

Just 26 days after getting engaged, Bachelorette Andi Dorfman quit her dream job as an assistant district attorney. Five pages here about how Andi chose “the one,” and even though the internet already knows which dude she chose, the mag tries not to print any spoilers. However: You will find a couple of old pictures of Andi, before she had her nose job (Fig. 1). Also inside: John Mayer has been telling friends he wants to pitch a reality show called My Funny Friend, in which people nominate their friends who are funny? Kim Kardashian and Kanye West are selling their $11 million mansion that is not finished and in which they have never lived, because they are over it. There’s also a two-page story about Kendra Wilkinson’s marriage imploding, but in a word: Zzzz.

GRADE: D (drinking a glass of orange juice mixed with chocolate milk)

Star

BEST AND WORST BEACH BODIES

Like clockwork, a long summer weekend means flipping through pages and pages of cruel statements about famous people’s bodies. While Lupita Nyong’o, Kate Upton, Kim Kardashian, Maria Menounos, Charlize Theron and more are labeled “best bods,” there’s a section titled “Biggest Body Blunders.” While it’s no surprise that the mag picks on Here Comes Honey Boo Boo’s Mama June, it is really weird that Britney Spears, Lea Michele and Katie Holmes are included — for daring to have rippled bellies when they bend over. Why call this out? That’s how the human body works. Unnecessary. Mean. Pointless. The worst copy is reserved for a man: Chumlee, from Pawn Stars, who has lost more than 100 pounds — not an easy feat — yet is criticized as having “the physique of a deflated beach ball.” (Fig. 2) Infuriating. Also inside: Jada Pinkett-Smith and banned Kendall Jenner from her home; even though Kendall is friends with Jaden Smith, sources say Kendall is rude to the housekeeper, and Jada doesn’t tolerate that shit. Something weird is going on with Jason Segel; he hasn’t been returning calls or texts and friends are worried he might be drinking again — he was in AA last year. Lindsay Lohan tried to get Rafferty Law — son of Jude Law and a model — to give her his digits, but he was all, no thanks, I’m good. Jennifer Lopez is looking for a new dude, since she “can’t stay single for long” and “has jumped from one relationship to another since she was 15.” Eliza Dushku and Rick Fox have broken up after five years of dating, which is news because you probably forgot they were together. Khloe Kardashian has been betrayed by French Montana (again? for the third time? hard to keep track) and the mag calls the woman he hit on “French’s Folly.” Snicker. Finally, the editors dug up arrest records for two of the dudes on The Bachelorette: sports medicine dude Marcus was busted for possession of controlled substances (a tranquilizer and hydrocodone) and farmer Chris has three citations of underage drinking and one OWI (operating a vehicle while under the influence). The vehicle was not a tractor.

GRADE: F (drinking a gallon of sewage-contaminated seawater)

Life & Style

TORMENTED BY THE QUEEN

Kate Middleton is apparently being tormented by Queen Elizabeth, a very formidable tormenter indeed. Here are the subjects of their beef, which has turned into “an all-out war”: Kate moved to the countryside with Prince George; the Queen thinks Kate is overspending on her mansion but also “acts like a commoner”; Kate is made to bow to other royals who, like, didn’t even give birth to the heir to the throne; Queen Elizabeth thinks Kate dresses in skimpy clothing. I think this article is a Downton Abbey fanfic with the names changed. In other news, Beyoncé and Jay Z’s tour is doubling as a six-week relationship boot camp; it’s pretty ambitious to multi-task a stadium tour, but if anyone can do it, Bey can. A source says she is “hoping to recapture the magic” by taking Jay to “the best restaurants and hotels” as well as “parks and zoos with Blue.” No place is as magical as a zoo. Moving on, Justin Bieber proposed to Selena Gomez, which we know for sure because a source said they were “pretty affectionate” on a date at the movies and they held hands at the zoo. Zoos: where love comes to blossom, apparently. Next: Kim and Kanye spent $2 million on Baby Nori this year. She has $45,000 earrings, and her birthday party was a recreation of Coachella. Meanwhile, she probably just wants to play with the vacuum cleaner. Elsewhere in the mag, Life & Style has managed to write the most transphobic article we’ve seen so far, about Kendra Williams’ husband cheating on her with a transgender escort. Some particularly horrifying snippets: “The former NFL star allegedly paid $500 for a tryst with Ava Sabrina London, a 27-year-old with centerfold-grade implants [and] male genitalia,” and a source says, “She doesn’t doubt that there are other women, trannies, even men.” Yep. The magazine casually printed a transphobic slur. Gross gross gross.

GRADE: F- (sipping hemlock tea from a lovely old arsenic-laced cup)

OK!

WEDDING & A BABY!

George Clooney and Amal Alamuddin have been engaged for a bit now, so it’s high time tabloids get around to making up that she’s pregnant. And made up that she’s pregnant they have: their evidence of her pregnancy is that her family and George’s family met and that she allegedly blushed after a friend asked her about “a little bump around her stomach.” Uh, you don’t have to be pregnant to blush when your friend goes, “WHY IS YOUR STOMACH PROTRUDING LIKE THAT?” Anyway, the most newsworthy part of this little story is that Amal was referred to as “the ravishing Lebanon-born brunette who finally slayed the bachelor dragon.” In other news, Taylor Swift is suffering from writer’s block because she is too contented making cookies, knitting and playing with her cats. Her friends joke that she needs “some new boy drama to get her back on track.” Her rep says, “There is no block.” Hopefully this means she’s writing songs about kittens? Elsewhere in the mag, J. Lo is ready for love following her breakup with Casper Smart. So far, she has been spotted “getting cozy” (to put it in tabloid parlance) with Maksim Chmerkovskiy from Dancing With the Stars and T.I. As evidence of her ready-for-love-ness, OK! has helpfully made a diagram showing us that this J. Lo is the “HOTTEST J. LO EVER” (Fig. 3). Ooooookay.

GRADE: D- (chugging a pint of toilet water)

In Touch

FORCED INTO REHAB

Portia de Rossi secretly checked into rehab in May, says a totally unverified report. The editors then go on to trot out their fav Ellen-Portia rumors — Ellen is domineering, Portia feels “like a prisoner in her own home,” etc. etc. — as explanation for Portia “hitting rock bottom.” There’s happy ending to this probably fabricated story, though: insiders say that they’ve begun to find happiness again and that their marriage is on the mend. Hooray. Moving on: Tori Spelling changed her Twitter handle from @torianddean to @tori_spelling, which is more legally binding than divorcing someone several times over. In other news, Scott Disick cheated on Kourtney, who is pregnant, with 3 women in 3 weeks, say Hamptons-dwellers. In one case, he offered his waitress money to suck her toes and then sucked her toes but did not pay. In another, he made out with a “pretty 21-year-old” at da club. Bad news. A sidebar reveals that Khloe Kardashian’s boyfriend French Montana made her “look like a fool” by trying to have sex with another woman in his tour bus. They glaze over the fact that the woman says, “He climbed on top of me and wouldn’t get off. I had to say ‘stop’ a few times. He tried to force himself on me.” (She says she exited the bus safely, fortunately.) UM. That sounds like an attempted sexual assault if it’s true? Not just “FRENCH: CAUGHT ON HIS TOUR BUS” cheating. Wow. Elsewhere in the magazine, Justin Theroux and Jennifer Aniston had a “bizarre” reunion in New York City because they weren’t beaming ecstatically for the entire duration of their time together. The best part of this article is that, in passing, it casually mentions Jennifer as “his pregnant fiancee.” InTouch, you sly dogs.

GRADE: F (guzzling a tubful of post-pedicure water)

Addendum

Fig. 1, from Us

Fig. 2, from Star

Fig. 3, from Ok!