15. Russian Glamour, June 2009
Beyoncé's skin looked digitally darkened on the cover of Russian Glamour — and the editors had a guide! A magazine called Joy used the same shot in December 2007. Was something lost in translation? Save your "black Russian" jokes until the end.

14. L'Oreal, August 2008
Beyoncé's skin seemed very light in ads for Feria haircolor. One theory: she was washed out by the strong lighting usually used in shooting hair.

13. Vogue, November 2009
The cast of Nine is chock-full of gorgeous women, but this shot is a mindscramble of random rays of sunlight in hair and dresses with edges so sharp they look like they're for paper dolls. As I wrote in October: "I'm guessing [Annie] Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire." Poor Kate Hudson looks like she was slapped on as an afterthought.

12. Complex, April/May 2009
Kim Kardashian's waist was cinched, her thighs were slimmed, her skin skin smoothed out and her hairline was cleaned up. Plus, her head appears to be a different shape in the "after" image. Who would have thought a skull could be made "sexier"?

11. Self, September 2009
Kelly Clarkson's "Total Body Confidence" came from digitally slimming her waist and behind. Two Self editors explained that the cover: "is not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best."

10. King Arthur poster, 2004
Movie marketers felt they must, they must, they must increase the bust. Ironically, Keira Knightley told the Guardian that she lost her chest, doing archery and preparing for the role:

To fight, convincingly, shoulder to shoulder, she had to do that thing that is so de rigueur, which is totally to change your body shape. "I was about three times the size I am now. It worried me, but it was cool, it was a body that was doing what it should do. I haven't got a clue because I don't weigh myself, but it was all muscle and I was big. My neck disappeared. My chest flattened even more. It wasn't the most feminine thing in the world, but it worked for the part, because there was strength there, and it was needed."

Of course, Hollywood can't imagine a world in which people would see a movie starring an athletic, flat-chested woman. So a digital boob job followed.

9. Redbook, July 2007
The crazy thing about the Faith Hill Redbook cover is not that it was Photoshopped — it's that this is the standard amount of digital altering that goes into a cover. Unlike some true Photoshop disasters, there are no alarming mistakes here to tip you off. That makes it easy to accept the retouched image without even blinking. Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. But she needed 11 different kinds of alterations before she could be on the cover of Redbook. What a world.

8. Campari calendar, 2008
Jessica Alba: Just another woman whose real body wasn't good enough. In this case, her waist needed to be nipped in so she could shill liquor.

7. Vogue, May 2008
RoboGwyneth looks like a robot, or an alien, depending on whom you ask. One thing is for sure: Her head and neck are not in the same space-time continuum.

6. Redbook, June 2003
Jennifer Aniston's head was placed on to Jennifer Aniston's body — from another photo shoot. At the time, her publicist, Steven Huvane, said: "It's a combination of three pictures. If you're going to do it, then at least match her head up to her body, and make the neck look like it belongs to her. I still can't figure out which exact picture the face came from." A Redbook spokeswoman downplayed the changes: "The only things that were altered in the cover photo were the color of her shirt and the length of her hair, very slightly, in order to reflect her current length."

The neck does look alarmingly unreal, and her head and waist are out of sync somehow. Angelina is surely to blame.

5.Redbook, July 2003
The month after the Aniston debacle, Redbook was at it again: According to USA Today, "[Julia's] head comes from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice awards. Her body, meanwhile, is from the Notting Hill movie premiere [in 1999]." Julia's publicist, Marcy Engelman, said, at the time: "It's a shame they didn't use the body that went with the head, because it was a great Giorgio Armani pantsuit (that she wore to the People's Choice awards)."

4. Newsweek, March 2005
The editors used Martha's head and a model's body, because Ms. Stewart was still in jail when the issue was being put together. It wasn't supposed to be a photograph, anyway, it was art: "The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,'' Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, told The New York Times. Staley acknowledged that the cover carried a disclaimer: ''In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration." As Martha would say, it's a "good thing" you did.

3. Seventeen, May 2003
Think about all the Buffy plots which could have been orchestrated around Sarah Michelle Gellar's weird wrist appendage over there on the left, if her arm actually looked like that.

2. GQ, February 2003.
Some people saw Titanic over and over again — but they never saw those legs, on the left. Kate Winslet was pissed about being trimmed down on this cover, saying:

"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

1. Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, October 2009
In which model Filippa Hamilton was turned into a string of spaghetti.

The great celebrity profilers of today never stop striving for greatness. And depth. When Esquire's Mike Sager sat with his Muse of the Month, Australian actress Abbie Cornish, suddenly everything he learned in creative writing seminar came rushing back.

At the sight of Cornish sipping boba, the inner Keats that lives in every great journalist, wrested the keyboard from Sager's hand and composed the following ditty (poetical spacing ours):

She drinks Asian "bubble tea"
from a plastic cup,
compliments
of her publicist.

There are tapioca pearls at
the bottom;
they rise
in single file
through an overlarge straw,

her lips the naked pink
of an ingenue.

The new GQ has a story about Bruno, of course, cause what other stuff is happening this month? So they did a photo shoot of the gay-like character with an LA high school football team, and even paid the school a cool $500 for the privilege of handling their young men. Now the principal's in trouble!

"Rules were broken. The principal is ultimately responsible, but I also hold accountable the athletic director, who is also the school's filming coordinator and was present when the pictures were taken," [the head of the school district] said.

"I also want parents to know that this district will allow no one to take advantage of our students."

You know those boys liked it, heh, [MACHO]. Pretty dumb controversy considering the kids got permission slips and everything. GQ declined to give us a comment, although they did make sure we had a copy of the picture, so they must be pretty upset about the whole thing! Thanks, GQ!

Told about the Fox story and asked if he knew a Nikita, the man who answered the phone replied in brusque, Slavic-accented tones. "No," he said."No Nikita."

This would have been back around 2004, maybe 2005. We know it was a long time ago, but —

"No, we haven't had Nikita. But lots of girls come and go." He said he'd been there 13 years, but responded with silence when asked his name and position. "Everybody's coming and going. They work one day, two days, one week. It's like this."

But no Nikita? "No." Click.

We were worried about this, particularly after Fox doth protested too much to her interviewer about her high-octane acknowledgment projecting "a Lindsay Lohan vibe" and asking, "Are you going to push an ‘Is she a lesbian’ angle?" Well, kind of, though we'd technically need another girl before buying into all the Aerosmith ballad-dancing and Fox's lovelorn urgings to Nikita to leave the lifestyle.

Still — we want to believe! If "yes Nikita," there surely must be some Body Shop regular or former patron who can put a name to the date or — better yet — a face to the name. Operators are standing by!

[Photo Credit: GQ]

• MEGAN FOX WAS A TEENAGE LESBIAN! [GQ]

“Well, that year my boyfriend broke up with me, and I decided—oh man; sorry, Mommy!—that I was in love with this girl that worked at the Body Shop [a strip club on Sunset Boulevard]. I decided that I was going to get her to love me back, and I went out of my way to create a relationship with this girl, a stripper named Nikita. I was there all the time—I would go there by myself. I bought her things—perfume, body spray, girlie stuff. I turned into a weird middle-aged married man. I felt like I had this need to save Nikita. I’d get lap dances so I could get to know her, and I’d give her what I thought were great little sound bites of inspiration—like You can do it, you’re better than this! I didn’t want her to be there.”

...It’s at this point that Fox becomes self-conscious—she seems, for the first time, to have recalled that she’s supposed to be on guard about her personal life—and she starts talking less about Nikita and more about how people are going to judge her for saying she had a relationship with a Russian stripper. “I don’t want it to come off as a Lindsay Lohan vibe. You know?” she says. Then, with greater concern: “Are you going to push an ‘Is she a lesbian’ angle? Oh man, you are going to do that to me.…”

Why, how could Fox imagine that GQ (which titled its article "Megan Fox Was a Teenage Lesbian") would do such a thing? Have a little faith, Megan — and next time, try Jumbo's Clown Room. The drinks are cheaper, and trust us: the strippers are way easier to save (or at least to coerce into a 3am meal of Fred 62's "Mac Daddy & Cheese Balls").

• MEGAN FOX WAS A TEENAGE LESBIAN! [GQ]

As the supe tells the magazine's July issue, "We met through a friend who knew us both for a long time. Believe me, I didn't even remember [his picture]. Our friend knew that we would like each other. And we did. So I guess he was right." As if the fact that she couldn't remember who the guy was wasn't insulting enough, her list of Brady's charming attributes is just plain sad: "We have a lot of things in common...he is a really great person. He doesn't have a bad bone in his body...He is a very positive person." Those things in common? Well, Bundchen played volleyball once or twice as a gawky Brazilian teen, and Brady has apparently taught her why "all those guys keep hitting each other" on the football field. If that isn't chemistry, we don't know what it is. But quite frankly? From the sound of it, Gisele would really get a kick out of our Uncle Irving. Sure he's pushing 70, but man is he ever positive and great. Plus? No pregnant fiancee in the closet. We're calling our "guy" and Bundchen's "guy" stat to set those two sure-thing lovebirds up.

[Photo credits: GQ via Egotastic]

• GISELE BUNDCHEN DISHES ON LOVE AND TOM BRADY [People]
• GISELE BUNDCHEN IS TOPLESS, AND BOTTOMLESS IN 'GQ' [Egotastic]

Paltrow states she isn't trying to court controversy with the new photo, insisting it's just an innocent shot. The mother-of-two says, "I'm not going out without my knickers, and I'm not getting drunk and I'm not on my eighth husband."

While Gwyneth does admittedly look far sexier than we've ever seen her, and sure, a thirtysomething actress posing nude is not as big of a deal as it is when her much younger counterparts like Lindsay Lohan and Miley Cyrus do it, we're still a bit confused by her repeated public attacks on those of us who tend to enjoy a bit of drink now and then: "I think it's gross. I really don't like drunk women...I think they're the idiot people and I'm the normal person." But Gwyneth, aren't we forgetting those two separate occasions when you were not only spotted sipping Grandpa's lemonade, but drinking it while pregnant? You know, glass houses and all.

[Photo credits: GQ, Vanity Fair]

• PALTROW: 'DON'T MAKE NUDE MAGAZINE SHOT MORE THAN IT IS' [ContactMusic]

Post-pregnancy depression isn't to blame for her suddenly slutty new image, nor are rifts in her marriage to Chris Martin. Not even regret over naming her kids after fruits and religious leaders led her to this female version of a mid-life crisis. The reason? Paltrow only recently realized something the rest of the world has known for quite some time: "People came over to watch me in the film Emma and I was like, 'Oh. My. God. I'm the worst actress ever.'" But Gwyneth really shouldn't be that hard on herself. Sure, she won an Oscar for weeping in a rowboat, and can certainly provoke emotion from us in varied performances (mainly discomfort and the need to squirm in our seats whenever she begins to fake-cry), but she should at least treat herself to a viewing of that stripper movie Lindsay Lohan won a Razzie for. That way she can safely remove that "ever" from her pity-me quotes in the future.

[Photo credit: Faded Youth]

• GWYNETH PALTROW DOES 'GQ' [Faded Youth]