Parade has always felt as though it were one of the more benign of the women’s magazines. It appears to avoid some of the sleazier bylines of the younger magazines like Cosmopolitan and Glamour.

Gone are sub-headings about nifty ways to snare a mate without being slapped with a restraining order. Gone are articles about how to put out on the first date like a good little alpha-female whose moral compass has been carefully whittled over the years thanks to dozens of Sex and the City re-runs.

Seems all of those years of playing sexual second-fiddle to the more overt magazines is taking its toll on Parade. The magazine is biting back and calling a slightly odd selection of celebrities promiscuous, in an attempt to get its sexy back.

On the cover of the new issue of Parade is Barbra Streisand. Yes, Barbra Streisand. Not an easy target, or someone who will lure money right out of a consumer’s wallet using their sexy-face (yes, we’re talking to you Megan Fox). In the publication, Parade released the results of its Summer 2009 Pop Culture Poll. For the most part the poll just has some delightful titbits you may otherwise struggle to get through your day without; for example, Michelle Obama is the biggest trendsetter, and Brad and Angelina are the sexiest couple.

The questions in the poll manage to be inoffensive, save for one oddity.

Can someone please explain to us and the equally bemused beauties over at Jezebel what on earth a poll in Parade is doing with a ‘Who do you think is the most promiscuous celebrity?’ category? What on earth is any magazine doing asking its readers who the biggest celebrity skank is? We’re all for calling celebrities out on their shortcomings, but what the hell Parade? What the hell!

The question is bizarre. As are the options one has to choose from. The celebrities the magazine ask you to rank in order of skankiness are Paris Hilton, Kate Hudson, John Mayer, Lindsay Lohan, Pamela Anderson and A-Rod.

The only one of these people not in a relationship to mind is John Mayer. However, they have all been in fairly long-term relationships at one point or another. For example, Kate Hudson and A-Rod (Alex Rodriguez) are currently dating each other, which you would think would be enough to get them both off the list.

Paris Hilton has done a lot to earn the nickname Parasite, but in all fairness, she is usually in a relationship and is currently demonstrating her non-hoeness by dating the same guy she ditched earlier in the year. Lindsay Lohan is in an on-again-off-again jaunt into lesbianism, but she is in something of a monogamous relationship. Lastly, Pamela Anderson has been living in white-trash bliss with some dude (who we cannot bring ourselves to care about as he is not famous) for quite some time now.

Rather than scrape the barrel and resort to name-calling that is better left to websites called snappy things like hecklerspray, perhaps Parade should stick to knitting patterns and summer polls that don’t call out obvious targets like celebrities for their questionable moral standing. Poor form Parade. Poor form.

This was a guest blog by the supreme almighty Amy Grindhouse.

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Director Guido Contini lives a life defined by glamour, excess and the attention of a thousand beautiful women…

Nine is about reaching your peak, falling off the top and finding yourself in the brothel of life. Music, Romance and decadence are abundant in this tri-coloured Italian extravaganza, get ready for a mouth-watering sing-song from the city of masks.

Imagine going on a date with someone who seems perfectly normal. Throughout the course of the evening, you notice that they have a little vial around their neck.

“Oh, that, that’s just my ex husband’s blood.” says your date as she pours you another glass of wine. “When I’m not looking after my fifty six billion children, I’m busy learning how to knife throw and kissing my brother in a way that could only be described as really really creepy. What do you do in your spare time?”

I reckon it’d take you about ten seconds to make your ’something bad happened’ excuse and get the  hell out of there. Leaving your wallet, phone and passport behind if you had to. Run! Run away!

Unless you’re on a date with Angelina Jolie.

Despite this woman being as mad as a box of frogs, we take one look at her (frankly fantastic) rack and forget all about her crazy blood carrying incestuous ways. You can be as mad as you like in Hollywood, as long as you’re pretty enough to distract people. We don’t really like the crazy, we’re just willing for forget about it.

Once upon a time, Britney Spears was every man’s school uniform wanking fantasy. And she always was a bit crazy (years of Disney will do that to you). But until she decided to shave off her pretty blonde mane, no one noticed. Once she looked a bit trailer trash, everyone thought she’d gone nutty. The fact is, she’d always been a bit nutty, we just didn’t have anything pretty to detract from this. She was just all crazy and no hair extensions.

If you’re pretty in Hollywood, you can get away with anything. I’m not saying every pretty girl is mad as a tree (Kate Hudson is just lovely, isn’t she?), but they could be if they wanted. The prettier you are, the more crazy you can get away with.

If Tom Cruise had gone a bit mad in his gay icon Top Gun phase we’d have forgiven him and he’d have been topless on the cover of Vanity Fair. Instead we (and every movie maker every to snort a line of coke) cross the street to avoid him and his Scientologist buddies. He’s not that pretty anymore, is he?

If you’re not convinced by my prettiness Vs crazy equation (PX10 = C), take a look at Maggie Gyllenhaal. She’s sometimes really really pretty. And sometimes really really ugly. She’s also a little bit weird. But she’s not totally crazy. Because she’s not always pretty enough to carry it off. She’s treading a fine line that Gylenhaal woman. One step too far and she’ll be shaving her head and kissing her brother and we won’t forgive her for it. Instead we’ll point and laugh at her crazy ways until she sorts herself out with a bit of slap and nice dress.

Then we’ll forget aaaaaall about it.

This was a guest blog by the wonderful Sian Meades from the wonderful Domesticsluttery.com, which you should probably all visit now.

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But the pressure of having hair the same colour as Worzel Gummidge and not looking like you eat much is sometimes too much to bear, which is why Kate Hudson has decided to go and whine to Fox about how being beautiful is “weird.”

Fair play to Kate Hudson for being brave enough to admit that being nice to look at has such devastating drawbacks. In fact, more people should be told how weird it is to be beautiful, which is why Kate Hudson is planning a tour of poverty-stricken African nations and all the burns units in America to make sure that everyone knows just how unsettling it can be to wake up in the morning with flawless skin and incredible hair.

There’s no doubting that Kate Hudson is beautiful. She’s so beautiful that world champions of stuff fall for her. She’s so beautiful that people try to kill themselves when she splits up with them.

Kate Hudson is even so beautiful that people still let her be famous even though all she does in star in a succession of identical romantic comedies so completely vapid that they make us want to tear our own eyes out, stamp on the eyeballs and shove the remains in our ears like a kind of mushy, psychologically-disturbed muff.

But the problem is that people think that Kate Hudson has it easy just because she’s beautiful and has moviestar parents and has generally never wanted for anything in her entire life. And those people are so, so wrong. In actual fact looking pretty is literally the exact same thing as working down the mines all your life. Literally. Literally.

In fact, so perturbed is Kate Hudson about being beautiful that she seems to have chosen ‘whining about how pretty I am’ as the promotional angle for her new movie How To Date You, Me And My Best Friend’s Gold or whatever it’s called. It doesn’t matter. Dane Cook’s in it. Don’t pretend you’re going to watch it. Anyway, Fox News reports:

After topping People magazine’s 25 Most Beautiful List this year, Hollywood’s golden girl is starting to feel a little uncomfortable with her knockout status. “It’s totally weird and yet it’s an honor at the same time,” Hudson told Pop Tarts at Monday’s Hollywood premiere of “My Best Friend’s Girl.” “At first you think it’s really cool, and then you’re like, what is this, that’s so weird … it’s really weird.”

Yeah, we totally understand. Being beautiful ourselves, we know that being beautiful is, like, so weird. Sometimes we just pass a shop window and catch a glimpse of our own reflection, and the next thing you know it’s 20 minutes later, our trousers are round our ankles, we can’t stop massaging our own face and there’s a crowd of policemen waiting to arrest us. It’s so weird. Beauty is complicated.

But, you know what, we have absolutely no sympathy for Kate Hudson. If she has such a problem with being beautiful, then maybe she should stop trying so hard. After all, why else would she agree to appear in a Dane Cook film unless she wanted to look beautiful. You could stick a wheelbarrow of roadkill offal next to Dane Cook and it’d look beautiful, for crying out loud.

Does anybody else remember when Kate Hudson’s hair was nominated for an Oscar back in 2001.

There’s reason for that you know. It’s been enrolled in acting classes since the age of four. It’s done stage work since the age of 12, and sometime in the sixties it got its big break playing the part of Charlton Heston’s beard in that Moses movie. We believe that the hair is actually what the Israelites volunteered to follow – it emoted smoke by day and fire by night.

We know this because we’ve seen the original script. It’s quite tattered.

Normally Kate Hudson’s hair earns her nothing but accolades and free head-strokings everywhere she goes. Now though – it’s kind of gotten her into a pretty big lawsuit.

The secret, apparently, to a terrific shampoo is volcanic ash. Think about it – why do you think everyone in southern Washington had such full-bodied heads right after Mt. St. Helens erupted way back when.

It’s a secret everyone in the hair-care industry knows – but they’re not supposed to tell anyone. Kate Hudson did though. She’s allegedly been saturating the media in sudsy shampoo secrets. Or something. Fox News has details:

“In June [Hudson] created and launched her own line of hair-care products alongside her longtime celeb stylist David Babaii, entitled David Babaii for WildAid. The eco-friendly collection of shampoos and other styling aids boasts a unique key ingredient, volcanic ash — but perhaps this isn’t so unique after all.

“The company 220 Laboratories Inc. filed a lawsuit in Los Angeles Superior Court on Monday against Hudson, Babaii and their manufacturer, Universal, for 17 offenses, including the misappropriation of trade secrets, fraud and breach of contract and confidence.”

What most of us don’t know is that the shampoo industry is absolutely cut-throat. An example of this could possibly be seen in the 2006 incident in which a Pert-Plus strike force hijacked a tanker filled with Head & Shoulders, and then dumped it into a lake where seagulls weren’t found with a single flake of dandruff for more than six months afterwards. Sure, it sounds like a win-win, but stocks really spiraled down.

You guys have really got to start thinking more about Wall Street.

The Hudson-related shampoo company defended themselves in an email, and here’s an excerpt:

“We stand by our actions during the research and development process of the David Babaii for WildAid hair care line and believe that 220 Laboratories’ allegations are baseless and without any merit. If we are formally served with the complaint, we will vigorously defend this claim.”

Well however this all goes, we just hope Hudson’s shampoo supply isn’t affected – the 2010 summer movie season pretty much depends on it.

Would you pay to see a predictable romantic comedy where her hair is totally flat? Neither would we. Owen Wilson would though. He says he’s got to feed his collection of her ticket stubs.

It’s not creepy, They’re meant to be.

You ARE? Well what are you waiting around here for? You’re exactly Lance Armstrong’s cup of tea. And he’s single too, now, so form an orderly queue and before long you – yes you! – could be feeling Lance’s solitary testicle smacking repeatedly against your inner thigh during one of several sordid bunk-ups!

Lance Armstrong is single, by the way, because he’s split up with Kate Hudson. They were going out. They were. What do you mean you didn’t know? Don’t you understand how important any of this is? Cuh.

Celebrity interbreeding isn’t an especially common occurence, but there’s one tightly-knit little group of pan-directional celebrity shagging that’s impossible to untangle. It’s best to just describe it to you.

There’s Sheryl Crow. Sheryl used to be romantically linked with Owen Wilson, then they split up and she got together with Lance Armstrong before Lance Armstrong broke her heart and gave her cancer or something. Meanwhile Owen Wilson got over his split with Sheryl Crowe by getting all kissy kissy with Kate Hudson, who’d recently divorced rocker Chris Robinson. Then Kate Hudson left Owen and Owen tried to kill himself so they got back together and then she left him for Lance Armstrong, who’d previously been shagging an Olsen twin.

Are you keeping up? Good, because Matthew McConaughey – Kate Hudson’s regular co-star and Lance Armstrong’s nonsexual best friend – is also involved in this mess somewhere. We think he just stood on the sidelines and played the bongos.

Got all that locked down? Good. Now forget it all, because Kate Husdon and Lance Armstrong have split up. Access Hollywood reports:

Just three months after Kate Hudson and Lance Armstrong began dating, they have split. The actress and cyclist ended their short-lived relationship over the weekend. “There was no drama or ugliness – They just decided to end things,” a source close to the couple told the mag. “There is no hatred, just sadness.”

It is sad, isn’t it? Wait, no. Sadness doesn’t really cover what you’re probably feeling at the moment, does it? You’re probably feeling – oh, what’s the word? – total screaming titting ambivalence. Yes, that’s it.

But now that Lance Armstrong and Kate Hudson have split up, what happens now? We’ve whittled the options down to the following:

1) Kate Hudson gets back with Owen Wilson,

2) Lance Armstrong gets back with Sheryl Crow,

3) Kate Hudson gets together with Sheryl Crow while Lance Armstrong and Owen Wilson watch,

4) Matthew McConaghey plays the bongos to cheer everyone up, so everyone stays for a little while just to be polite but then they badmouth him bitterly behind his back as soon as they leave.

Or, of course, what could happen is somehow – between Lance Armstrong, Kate Hudson, Sheryl Crow, the Olsen woman, Owen Wilson and Matthew McConaughey – one of them manages to break free of their weird little incestuous social gnarl and meet someone who hasn’t shagged every single other person they know.

Maybe that’s too much to ask. Babysteps, hecklerspray, babysteps.

Yeah, that’s a good saying.

On a completely unrelated subject, fresh off her split from Owen Wilson (again) Kate Hudson and bazillion time Tour de France winner Lance Armstrong are apparently dating. They were seen out together. Eating food. Twice.

Kate Hudson. You may know her as Goldie Hawn’s daughter, or ex-wife of Black Crowes lead singer mangy hippie Chris Robinson, or the girl that dated Owen Wilson just prior to his unfortunate attempted life-ending mishap, or that girl that makes those movies with Matthew McConaughey that make you die a little inside and ruin the flavour of your Milk Duds because you can’t stop vomiting a bit in your mouth watching them, but now you can know her as Lance Armstrong’s gal.

It’s hard to keep up with those famous kids these days. Reports were just recently buzzing that Kate Hudson was back together with former smoochy love Owen Wilson, but reports of their breakup were out about as fast as their hookup.

Then on the other icky hand, you have Lance Armstrong who was engaged to Sheryl Crow, and his last conquest was reportedly Ashley Olsen (the probably not so bulimic-y Olsen twin).

Anyway, the pair were spotted in Texas over the weekend at a couple of Austin eateries. First, they dined at Eddie V’s, a high-end restaurant. This is all true, you know. An insider says so:

“They came in [Friday] and had dinner together, it’s true,” an insider tells PEOPLE

See? Told you so. The next night they ate with Lance’s three kids, so it must be getting serious. Either that or they all magically happened to be hungry at the same time.

Regardless, it’s great to see that since retiring from professional cycling, Lance has taken up a hobby, like dating girls that he can share t-shirts with. Not only is cost effective, but it doubles the wardrobe, really.

Read more:

Kate Hudson and Lance Armstrong’s Weekend in Austin – People

We’re not being cruel here, we’re just stating a fact. People magazine has named its most beautiful people of the year and Kate Hudson has won. You weren’t even in the top ten, you massive uggo.

Don’t get sad, it’s the truth. And you can’t dispute that a massive magazine like People doesn’t know what it’s talking about, because look at the runners-up who came after Kate Hudson – Mary J Blige, Bruce Willis‘ daughter, a woman we’ve never heard of whose name is Beard, the ginger woman who got her minge out in Short Cuts. That’s beauty you just can’t argue with, girls.

In the past people have said that the secret of beauty is a sense of inner calm or clear skin or a complex million-to-one genetic fluke that happens to fit society’s faddishly ephemeral ideals at any given time, but all these people are idiots.

Because People magazine has spoken, and it seems that the real secret of beauty is making a lot of rubbish romantic comedies that are all basically identical and about as funny as spinal injuries. It’s true – last year People magazine named Drew Barrymore as its most beautiful person and this year it’s picked Kate Hudson, who’s basically just Drew Barrymore with slightly curlier hair.

Although there’s no doubting Kate Hudson’s beauty – she is, remember, so beautiful that Owen Wilson tried to kill himself when they split up – it seems like an odd choice to us. After all, Kate Hudson only came 54th in the recent FHM sexiest woman in the world poll, and you can’t tell us that horny 14-year-old boys judge beauty differently to 37-year-old women. That’s just frankly ludicrous.

Anyway, as ever, the best part of People’s most beautiful list is reading what each beautiful person has to say about when they feel at their most beautiful. And this is what Kate Hudson said:

“I feel at my most beautiful when I see myself on the cover of a magazine and I’ve clearly been airbrushed. I mean really airbrushed. I love it when they airbrush the shit out of my face until I barely even look human any more, because that way I know I’ve made millions of women around the world feel ugly and insecure. And we all know that nobody’s more receptive to cosmetic adverts than ugly insecure women, right girls?”

Ah, not really. Instead, Kate Hudson actually said this:

“I don’t even remember the last time I got a manicure. I even got to the point where I started waxing my own legs because I don’t have the time. I’d rather be home with Ryder sitting there waxing my legs. I haven’t gotten a facial in a million years. I don’t do those kinds of things. And when I do, I always think, ‘I should do this more often’.”

So that’s that. But don’t worry if you think that, by parading Kate Hudson round and giving her a title based on a notion that every person finds individually subjective, People magazine is setting dangerously unobtainable standards for millions of young girls who’ll potentially develop eating disorders in a fruitless quest to appear on the most beautiful list in the future.

Because Vanessa Hudgens is also on the list, so the message is that girls can just as easily make the list if they get their vaginas out on the internet instead.

Read more:

Kate Hudson Is PEOPLE’s Most Beautiful Cover Girl – People

So, genuinely, it’s charming to see Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson back together again. According to reports, Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson were being all romantic together in Miami on Saturday for Kate’s birthday. Let’s hope that this time Owen and Kate’s relationship doesn’t end in the same tragic circumstances as it did before.

By which we clearly mean Fool’s Gold. Nobody should have to suffer through something as awful as that more than once. Ugh, it’s bringing us out in hives just thinking about it.

Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson have always enjoyed something of an unconventional relationship. Owen Wilson was Kate Hudson’s first big fling after her marriage to Chris Robinson crumbled but – despite starring in a not very good film together – they were both reluctant to officially confirm their love for one another. They never responded to the rumours, and every time Owen and Kate were seen in public they acted all cagey and stuff.

Sadly, just when it looked like they might be ready so shack up and create the world’s most alarmingly blonde children, Owen Wilson and Kate Hudson split up and Owen Wilson tried to kill himself. Whether or not the suicide attempt was due to the break-up with Hudson or because of some deeper underlying psychological trauma that Owen Wilson has grappled with has never been made clear.

But, hey, it doesn’t really matter because it worked – it looks very much like Hate Hudson and Owen Wilson are a couple again! Yay! People reports:

Hudson joined Wilson, 39, and his parents for a lunch at Lario’s on South Beach Saturday afternoon. “The four of them sat away from the crowds and had a blast,” says a source at the restaurant… The lovebirds then walked hand-in-hand to Skybar at the Shore Club, where they lounged and partied poolside on a bed. The pair chatted with each other, shared kisses and “were very sweet looking, it was super lovey-dovey,” according to one onlooker.

It’s actually quite heartwarming, isn’t it? Owen Wilson has pulled himself back from the brink of personal ruin and he’s stronger than ever. Back in the old days, the mixture of a relationship with Kate Hudson and the filming of a romantic comedy about a lovely dog with Jennifer Aniston would have sent Owen Wilson’s friends and family scurrying off to remove all the sharp objects from his house. But not any more.

However, we just hope that Owen Wilson doesn’t enter into anything too quickly. For instance, if he suddenly decides that he’s so in love with Kate Hudson that he wants to make a sequel to You, Me And Dupree, then we’ll have him booked into the nearest lobotomy clinic in a jiffy regardless of the consequences.

Read more:

Owen & Kate’s Romantic Birthday Date in Miami – People