What Matters to Us
By Peter Carlson, Washington Post Staff Writer
You can't judge a magazine by its cover. With its neon-bright pink, purple and fuchsia colors and its goofy comic book cover lines -- "Yowza! Are Bruce and Demi Back Together?" -- Us magazine looks like a cheesy gossip rag. And it is a cheesy gossip rag, of course, but it's also a brilliant anthropological study of the folkways, the mores, and the bizarre mating habits of that exotic tribe known as celebrities.
In this week's issue, for instance, Us tackles one of the great mysteries of contemporary celebrity studies: "Why Are Stars Wearing Their Undershirts Out?" First, Us provides nine photos to prove that female stars ranging from Gwyneth to Britney to Madonna are indeed sporting sleeveless "wife-beater" undershirts -- sometimes ripped wife-beater undershirts. Then Us summons designer Tommy Hilfiger to explain why. Wife-beaters, he says, are a "symbol of rebellious youth."
Us magazine wasn't always in the forefront of anthropological celebritology. For years after its founding in 1977, Us was the poor man's People magazine -- a People for people who move their lips when they read.
Six months ago, however, Us owner Jann Wenner hired Bonnie Fuller to give the magazine some heft. Fuller, the former editor of such highbrow magazines as YM, Marie Claire, Cosmopolitan and Glamour, immediately jettisoned most of Us's pathetic celebrity puff pieces. In fact, she jettisoned almost all articles, replacing them with lots of colorful photos, charts and graphs. And she began covering the bizarre lifestyles of celebrities the way anthropologists study the rituals of the Hottentots or the Yanomamo.
Fuller signaled her intellectual seriousness in the double issue dated Aug. 19-26, which will no doubt go down in the history of anthropological literature, along with Margaret Mead's classic "Coming of Age in Samoa."
This soon-to-be-famous issue included two tours de force. The first, titled "Who's Dated Whom?," explained the previously inexplicable mating habits of the contemporary celebrity in a simple two-page photographic chart. At the top of the chart were the pictures of six starlets -- Gwyneth Paltrow, Drew Barrymore, Madonna, Penelope Cruz, Winona Ryder and Julia Roberts. Below it, connected by arrows of various colors, were smaller pictures of more than 100 other Hollywood stars who had dated, married or divorced the six starlets and/or the people who had dated, married or divorced them.
Us is the celebrity magazine that dares to ask the tough questions: "Did Demi downsize her breasts?" "Is Tom Hanks Really as Nice as He Seems?" "Is Jacko Going Totally Wacko?" And "Can Gwyneth Get Back Her Fashion Mojo?"
Us is also the magazine that dares to answer those questions. The answers are: "It appears so." Yes. Yes. And maybe.