Here are our picks for the very most of this month’s Elle, Lucky, Glamour, InStyle, Harper’s Bazaar and Marie Claire. (Vogue, as usual, will arrive fashionably late.)

Best Cover: A purple-hair-era Katy Perry on Elle takes the prize, if only for the very au courant nail art. (She still manages to squeeze her “Jesus” tattoo into the shot, though.) Given that the culture at large spends September shaking sand out of its beach tote, very few of this month’s cover stars—Jennifer Lopez, InStyle? Still?—have an imminent project to promote. (And Victoria Beckham, in a bubble bath on Glamour, isn’t even wearing clothes.)

Most Nostalgic: Harper’s Bazaar, in a cover line, advises readers to “Think Pink!”—a line from Funny Face, the movie based on Diana Vreeland and Richard Avedon’s time at Bazaar. (Cover girl Gwen Stefani, you’re great, but you’re no Audrey Hepburn.) Ms. Vreeland’s time at the magazine is elucidated in a piece that uses the word “Vogue” zero times. (Some anti-Vogue rancor is discernible at Glenda Bailey’s magazine: Another former Voguette, ousted French editrix Carine Roitfeld, gets a glowing profile in Bazaar.)

Best Editor’s Letter, Lede Division: “Naomi Wolf wants you to feel good. Really good,” writes Roberta Myers in Elle. (The feminist firebrand is profiled there and has a piece in Bazaar on dating.)

Best Editor’s Letter, Unintentional Revelations Division: Joanna Coles describes regretfully turning down her dream job as a journalist covering Parliament in the Marie Claire supplement @Work, which features Chelsea Handler on the cover.

Most Unlikely Suggestion: In her capacity as Glamour guest editor, Ms. Beckham writes that she suggested some future cover subjects from the indie-film universe: “Chloe Moretz, Clémence Poésy, Bella Heathcote ...” Maybe if Jessica Simpson falls ill!

Least Fortuitous Timing, Celebrity Division: Kristen Stewart, interviewed pre-cheating-scandal by InStyle. On Cartier’s Juste un Clou bracelet: “It reminds me of the person who gave it to me.” She wanted, and likely still wants, to go on a “very secluded” Mexican vacation.

Least Fortuitous Timing, Cinema Division: Both Elle and InStyle feature sneak peeks at what would have been this winter’s biggest movie, The Great Gatsby. After the magazines went to press, Gatsby was delayed until summer 2013.

Best Logroll: Marie Claire’s nine-page package on Project Runway, a show that features the magazine’s fashion director Nina Garcia. Before suggesting Runway-inflected trips to Parsons and Burger Joint, the author notes, “Sex and the City isn’t the only show that boasts the Big Apple as a main character.” Sure isn’t!

Best Advertising Opportunity: Justin Bieber’s perfume sponsored some of Lucky’s stickers (used to point out must-buy items—like Pinterest, but monthly!), as did uplifting toiletry brand Dove. Thanks to the good folks at Unilever, you can label Eva Longoria’s shorts “brave,” “graceful” or “STRENGTH.” [sic.]

Best Homage to Something Else Popular: Glamour informs us: “Hey, it’s okay ... to own 50 shades of gray ... cashmere sweaters.” Meanwhile, Elle titles its Katy Perry profile “Girl on Fire,” a reference to The Hunger Games, while Miley Cyrus is now getting magazine cover profiles solely in her capacity as Liam Hemsworth’s fiancée, also a nod to The Hunger Games. (Jennifer Lawrence clearly wasn’t available.)

Most Ubiquitous: Who knew Lana Del Rey was such a trendsetter? She gets a full-page spread, “Let’s All Look Like Lana!,” in Glamour (looking like Lana means having long hair) and is cited as a nail-care icon in Elle. Meanwhile, Solange Knowles, noted sister of Beyoncé, gets a photo shoot of her house in Elle and a two-page spread on her style evolution in Glamour.

Biggest Vitamin-Related Exclusive: “I wake up at 7 a.m., I shower, shave, eat breakfast, and have a double espresso, a cigarette, vitamins,” Marc Jacobs tells Marie Claire. “I wake up, have a double espresso and a cigarette, then I shower,” Mr. Jacobs tells Glamour.

Biggest Web-to-Print Leap: Fashion blogger Bryanboy, citing Carly Rae Jepsen in Glamour, a magazine that elsewhere features the “Shit Girls Say” video stars and the “Man Repeller” blogger.

Biggest Print-to-Web Synergy: InStyle has enlisted Katie Couric and Tommy Hilfiger as celebrity “Pinners” for their Pinterest pages; Mr. Hilfiger notes he is inspired by “classic autumnal colors.”

Biggest Print-to-Book-to-Print Leap: Elizabeth Wurtzel, for Harper’s Bazaar: “I want everyone to try as hard as I do to please be gorgeous, because it’s not that hard, girls. Looking great is a matter of feminism.”

Most Horrifying, Unsurprising Revelation: Lucky’s oral history of Guess reveals that Paris Hilton keeps a blow-up of her early-2000s jeans ad next to her bed.

Most Compelling Subhed: “Guest editor Victoria Beckham’s dear friend and go-to hair guy, Ken Paves, is on a mission to help at-risk women. Love that.”

Best Use of Profile-Speak: Miley Cyrus, per Marie Claire, is “a 19-year-old firecracker with washboard abs, a smoky laugh, and a filthy mouth.” Elsewhere her voice is described as “tangy and redolent of her native Nashville.”

Most Disconnected From Readers’ Reality: “Everyone I know with taste gets plates from Heath Ceramics,” says Jessica de Ruiter, stylist, in Lucky. “They use them at Axe.” (It’s pronounced “a-shay.”)

Biggest Indications Fashion Magazine Readers Aren’t In It For the Fashion: When asked, an Elle reader notes her biggest wish is not the Bottega Veneta dress Ms. Perry wears on the cover but “my mother’s love and my father’s approval”; a Glamour reader poll yields favorite designers including “anything Jennifer Aniston wears” and Old Navy.

Meryl Streep, Oscar presenter (Getty Images)

The Academy has released an incomplete list of this weekend's Oscar presenters. Based on past experience, what categories shall they present. Here are our best guesses!

Christian Bale will present Best Supporting Actress; Melissa Leo will present Best Supporting Actor; Colin Firth will present Best Actress; Natalie Portman will present Best Actor. This gender-swapping return of last year's winners is a predictable tradition; the only thing surprising about it is that Melissa Leo won an Oscar one year ago instead of eight, which is how long ago it feels.

Halle Berry will present Best Documentary Feature and Short. This seems like her level of fame right now.

The cast of Bridesmaids will present Best Costume Design. Because women can make jokes about dresses!

Bradley Cooper and Emma Stone will present Best Sound Editing and Mixing. Only two charming young(ish, in Mr. Cooper's case) stars can get us excited about two seemingly indistinguishable categories.

Tom Cruise will present Best Picture. Doesn't it seem sort of weird that he never has? And doesn't it seem as though he's been fully rehabilitated?

Penélope Cruz will present Best Cinematography. Sure!

Cameron Diaz will present Best Art Direction. This is the sort of early-in-the-ceremony category for which it's perfect to have on hand an early-2000s star whose rep couldn't arrange something later in the ceremony.

Michael Douglas will present Best Director. He's already presented Best Picture twice but he's still a pretty prestigious guy. Practice saying "Hazanavicius," Gekko!

Will Ferrell and Zach Galifianakis will present Best Visual Effects. And do some sort of Rise of the Planet of the Apes-themed skit in the process.

Tina Fey will present Best Makeup. And tell a joke about how much makeup it takes to keep her from looking like either a wrinkled old man or an acne-scarred teenager in the process.

Tom Hanks will present the "In Memoriam" montage. He can't present Best Picture because one of his own films is nominated (the Academy's actually done this before when Jack Nicholson presented the prize to The Departed, but let's hope they learned from how gauche that looked) and his presenting Best Director would only call attention to the fact that he directed Larry Crowne last year. The only other thing someone with all Mr. Hanks's gravitas can do is present this segment.

Angelina Jolie will present Best Foreign Language Film. What a wonderful way for her to seem benevolent in defeat after not having been nominated for her own foreign film (which was not eligible in this category).

Jennifer Lopez will present Best Original Song. A theoretical actress and theoretical singer, Jennifer Lopez is the perfect simulacrum of a presenter of a music category at the Oscars.

Meryl Streep will present Best Adapted and Best Original Screenplay. "For actors [giggle, stern look over glasses], it all begins with a script," the star of The Iron Lady will inaccurately say.

New York fashion week has finally come to a close. Amen! For those less-fortunate editors and fashion authorities (or perhaps we are the lucky ones) that have not jetted off to London or Milan, we finally get a moment to recover.

In retrospect, we relished the young talents of Prabal Gurung and Jason Wu. The Observer will never forget the spectacle and grandeur of Alexander Wang—or the impeccable quality of Simon Spurr’s suiting. With such a busy social schedule and so many shows, it’s hard to remember all the garments we evaluated with a careful eye.

We’re still a smidgen bitter about a few mishaps with Oscar de la Renta and PR Consulting… but we forgive easily… Oscar might possibly have been the best women’s collection in town! Best of luck obtaining the financial means to swing the $15,000 price tag...

One thing we do recall in our hazy fatigue, is the undeniable fact that fur is back. Yes, yes it never really left! But honestly!

"It's so glamorous and luxe!" proclaimed Joan Rivers about fur, backstage at Dennis Basso.

Perhaps Ms. Rivers is in the right. Has there ever been so much mink, chinchilla, fox, raccoon, coyote, goat, rabbit, astrakhan, Mongolian lamb, ermine and sable shown in New York? Probably… but let’s peruse The Oberserver’s favorites— shall we?

Images: GETTY and Patrick McMullan.

"Idol" producer Nigel Lythgoe (right) with Lady Gaga and Bruce Paisner (Getty Images)

But the 62-year-old British personality isn't all smiles and free money; The Christian Science Monitor noted today that the last episode saw judge Jennifer Lopez repeatedly looking off camera for validation and occasionally making comments to an unseen individual.

Wednesday night's show made viewers aware that producer Nigel Lythgoe himself was sitting off-stage monitoring the performances. While it could be intimidating having your boss watch as you try and justify a salary that no mere mortal should ever earn, JLo's constant offstage glances and comments are distracting. Besides, no one wants to be reminded that this little audition room is just a small part of a huge set.

Mr. Lythgoe is certainly a force to be reckoned with, and knowing that he's just off screen during the episodes lends a big brother (not the show) air to the proceedings. After all, the producer's most famous communiqué to the press was in response to Adam Levine's claim in Out magazine that AI keeps its gay contestants in the closet: specifically season 8's runner-up Adam Lambert, who came out right after the show ended. (Let the military allusions begin!)

The Mr. Lythgoe's response to these charges?

"When does privacy stop in this country? ... I don't go into my dentist and say, 'Are you gay?' I don't say to contestants on 'So You Think You Can Dance,' 'Are you gay?' What does it got to do with me? What does it got to do with anybody?"

"He must have come out before being on Idol, he just didn't talk about it on 'Idol.' And why should he? Is every actor going on television going to say, 'I'm only playing the part of a straight man, I'm really gay'? There's no reason that I would see why anybody that goes on television should start coming out with who they are, what they are, what they're sexuality is, who they're going to vote for or what their religion is."

Of course, forcing a contestant to keep mum about their sexuality on live TV is a little different than an individual's choice to tell their dentist if they're gay, but this might explain why Mr. Seacrest would keep up the illusion for so long...if that is in fact what he's doing.

Jennifer Lopez.

We’re here to tell you just how to set your DVR before heading out for drinks or dinner–or just watching something better on TV!

Say what you will of 1990s female stars--and we'll say they were a lot more fun than your Emma Stones!--but they've proven quite adept at holding onto the spotlight. Gwyneth Paltrow made email-lifestyle-guru the role in which we didn't know we'd always envisioned her; Winona Ryder resurfaced to steal away Black Swan from younger pretenders; Madeleine Stowe, ill-served by the movie biz, dipped her face in a bowl of fillers and got herself a terrific nighttime soap (Revenge, on ABC tonight at 10pm). But the nineties' master of the comeback is, was, and shall be Jennifer Lopez, whose second season as nice-lady judge on American Idol begins tonight.

After catalyzing the modern tabloid era with her greatest role as the "ennifer" in "Bennifer," Ms. Lopez took some time very much away from the spotlight, and her splashy attempt at a comeback in 2010 with a simultaneous album and movie release (remember The Back-Up Plan?) got her an SNL hosting gig but little of the adulation she'd been surely craving, holed up in that weird Gatsby mansion in Long Island. Lesser stars would have returned to their hideaways after such a resounding pair of flops (consider the case of Meg Ryan). But Jennifer Lopez, a career actress who'd recorded a series of albums as an ancillary income stream, finagled her way onto television's top show as a judge of others' musical talents, and simultaneously changed her image (she's so nice!) and reminded America of the good clean tabloidy mania that'd always been there. The predatory manipulation of the media Ms. Lopez exerts, now through Idol, exists without any of the Kardashianian ick of the present-day gossip trade; despite yourself, you root for her more than for any 17-year-old chanteuse out of West Texas.

Ms. Lopez's second season begins tonight--we're setting a countdown clock to see how long it takes before she cries over a competitor's God-given talent, and another one to see how long it takes before she's spotted in Paris with Ryan Gosling.

Set your DVR for Fox at 8pm to catch American Idol.

Hollywood Life has an image of the upcoming Taylor Swift cover of Vogue. (Cruelly, a cover line invites us to get "Smooth, Young Skin Fast," a mission we might achieve were we a wealthy 22-year-old singer.) Ms. Swift is following in the footsteps of past musical cover models Rihanna (April 2011), Lady Gaga (March 2011), Beyoncé (April 2009), Jennifer Hudson (March 2007), Jennifer Lopez (January 2005), Gwen Stefani (April 2004), Jewel (January 1999), and the Spice Girls (January 1998). Is the spring such a terrifically fallow season in the movie industry as to force an army of pop stars across the covers of our favorite clothes rag?

Rumor has it that Adele will be on the March 2012 cover, and we anticipate either Katy Perry or Lana Del Rey (heh, probably Perry's more likely) on the April cover--and then, blessedly, it will be summer and movie stars will be back in vogue.

ddaddario@observer.com :: @DPD_

Diane von Furstenberg left last night's fundraiser with Michelle Obama at Donna Karan's home early to attend another fundraiser for U.S. Senate candidate Richard Blumenthal. Russell Simmons left early to go to yoga. [WWD]

Here is a preview of the new Lanvin for H&M collection. [The Cut]

Jennifer Lopez and her twins will be featured in a new Gucci campaign. [WWD]

PETA thretened to throw lizard blood on Victoria Beckham. [Vogue UK]

Despite all these worthy contenders, though, The Observer's award for best seat pairing at the Tommy Hilfiger show goes to Anna Wintour and Amare Stoudemire, who chatted like old pals. Even though he hunched over, The Observer estimates that Mr. Stoudemire is roughly three times Ms. Wintour's size.

“When I read that article, I thought, ‘Am I not a feminist because I chose to have children early?’” said Morgan, whose belly poked through her sweatshirt as she sat down. She is five months pregnant. “Honestly, being on the pill didn’t make me feel like a feminist. It made me feel sick. Like a wreck.”

Morgan has long dark hair parted in the middle, kind eyes and a lanky stance. She was in grad school when she learned that she was pregnant. She made several trips to the abortion clinic—mostly directed there by her mother—but ultimately decided against it. Morgan asked that her name and her daughter’s be changed for this article because, though her mother adores Kaitlin now, Morgan hasn’t yet told her about the recent pregnancy. Morgan described her mother as a “total feminist” who came from a large Irish Catholic family; seeing her own mother perpetually pregnant, she put off having Morgan until she was in her 40s. “She traveled and worked and she wanted me to be able to do the same,” said Morgan, who plans to return to school after her second child is old enough. “I feel like for a long time women thought being liberated meant having a career, but now you can do whatever you want,” she continued. “And it’s really fun having her in a place like Williamsburg because it’s not like I’m a suburban mom.”

Hearing Morgan talk about the pill, abortion and women’s lib is a bit like talking to a Park Slope mom about canned peas: She has been raised on the stuff and fully understands its cultural significance, but she prefers sugar snaps from the greenmarket. The feminist battleground, with its slogans, marches, and campaigns for reproductive rights, has given way to the playground and the fight for lactation rights, stroller rights, school-system rights, unpasteurized milk rights, charter schools, birthing techniques, nutritional value of bagged lunches and water quality. It is not so much about the Fem as it is about the Fam.

“Women are defining themselves more by their families than they are by themselves,” said Pamela Paul, a 39-year-old mother of three in Harlem and author of Parenting Inc. “It’s no longer about something as selfish and self-advancing as abortion or the pill.”

The recent stories in Time (“The Pill”) and Newsweek (“Remember Roe!”), themselves artifacts of another era, feel distant from the mainstream discourse of what we have started to think of as Faminism. “They were sort of like baby boomer stories!” said Ms. Paul. “Most of the stories you read these days about ‘women’ have to deal with them as mothers. Even the celebrity causes—could you imagine Julia Roberts stomping in Washington for abortion rights? But you can totally see her being there for green schools or something.”

Indeed, you can’t swing a dead cat in Hollywood these days without hitting a famous Faminist: Julia was reportedly bumped recently from a People cover by Sandra Bulllock and her secretly adopted son; Iron Man star Gwyneth Paltrow, all about proper meals for Apple and Moses, is mulling a third child; and Sarah Jessica Parker—whose upcoming Sex and the City 2 movie seems like a sad relic of the late-’90s credos of do-me and lipstick feminism—is toting around twins she had through a surrogate. And what is that adorable movie we keep seeing previews for? Oh, right … Babies!

SLIDESHOW: 9 Women Who Prefer Prams to Politics >

‘NOT A HOT-BUTTON ISSUE’
Since March, there have been ads on the New York City subways, placed by something called the Vitae Caring Foundation, featuring “edgy” people—including an attractive, unshaven man resembling the artist Matthew Barney and a young girl with a bleached pixie haircut—and the subtle slogan: “Abortion Changes You.” On April 17, a pro-choice rally against the ads was held in Union Square; eight people showed up. Oh, what, you didn’t hear about it? 

“In my 20s, a woman who did not get an abortion was extremely rare, and for women to talk about it was almost like a rite of passage or badge of honor,” Ms. Paul said. “It was almost like, ‘My political is so personal and let me tell you why.’ Nowadays, you don’t hear anyone say they’ve had an abortion.”

Ms. Paul told the story of a friend, a mother of two in Park Slope, who had an unplanned pregnancy and decided to terminate it. She wrote an essay about the experience, but had a hard time selling it to a woman’s magazine. “People did not want to hear about someone with children choosing to have an abortion,” said Ms. Paul. “Abortion is very much démodé.”

(National abortion numbers have been falling steadily since the ’90s, down from 1.6 million in 1990 to 1.2 million in 2005, the most recent data available from the Guttmacher Institute.)

“It’s good news when abortion numbers drop and it has positive feminist implications, which have to do with better birth control and fewer unplanned pregnancies,” said Jennifer Baumgardner, 39, a former editor at Ms. magazine, an author of many books, including Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and the Future, and the creator of the “I Had an Abortion” T-shirt. “On the whole, we’re in a good place: Abortion numbers are dropping, women are aware of their options and you can have a baby out of wedlock.”

Annie Horcasitas, 29, who worked at a women’s health clinic that performed abortions when she was in college, agreed. “You never really hear women talking about abortion until it comes up in the health care bill. It’s not really a hot-button issue,” said Ms. Horcasitas, a teacher who now lives in Central Harlem with her husband and two sons (a two-and-a-half-year-old and a 2-week-old) and runs a blog called RealMommyChronicles.com. “I think that means we’ve made it if we don’t need to talk about it all anymore.”

A’yen Tran, 29, used to wear her “I Had an Abortion” T-shirt (she had two in her early 20s) as an undergraduate at Barnard. She offered an explanation for the current lack of discourse on women’s rights: “Gloria Steinem says in some ways ambivalence is a function of legality, which I think is right. Young women can ignore that they have access to abortion and not realize how much those rights are threatened all the time. I don’t know if women are putting themselves second so much as they are just less vocally fighting for the right to have abortions.”

Currently a project manager at a media design firm, Ms. Tran, who lives in Fort Greene, said she doesn’t wear her T-shirt anymore. “I think I would be less ready for the fight or less interested in the fight,” she said. “I guess I’m just more focused on other things.”

Of course, the Faminist tribe tends to congregate in cities, like this one, where reproductive rights are a given. An op-ed in The Times this past weekend revealed that Nebraska, Mississippi, Oklahoma and Florida have quietly moved to restrict access to abortion.

“What flies in Park Slope and the Upper East Side is very different from most Americans,” Ms. Paul said. “So the idea that woman as an individual is not a political issue is willful ignorance.”

‘BABIES, BABIES, BABIES’
“Motherhood is in the saddle,” said Fear of Flying author Erica Jong when The Observer reached her by phone last week. “There is a whole pop-culture trend towards maternity. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt having six, seven, whatever. Jennifer Lopez having twins, Nadya Suleman having a whole bunch and then eight more. Babies, babies, babies. You can always make the cover of a magazine if you have a baby. Even I, who got these hideous attacks for leading women down the garden path to embrace their sexuality, when I had a baby in my arms, my press changed. First I was the happy hooker of literature—then I turned into Mother Theresa. You don’t get bad press when you’re holding a baby.”

SLIDESHOW: 9 Women Who Prefer Prams to Politics >

Before the time when magazines put babies on the cover, they used to—sometimes seriously, sometimes humorously—cover women’s rights issues. Think of Glamour under the esteemed Ruth Whitney; the now little-noticed Ms.; and the defunct Jane and Sassy and YM, which used to have a section called “Why Me?” in which young women sent in embarrassing stories of skirts getting stuck in their pantyhose, tampons falling out of their bags and other silly tales (usually in the presence of “crushes”) that defined young womanhood.

“As far as I can tell, women’s magazines have pretty much said October is breast-cancer-awareness month and there is no other advocacy beyond that,” said Ms. Paul. “It’s like, ‘Let’s hide behind the pink ribbon of the safest cause you could imagine.’” (That abortion essay that Ms. Paul’s friend had trouble selling ultimately ran in Brain, Child.)

Abortion and the pill have never exactly been ratings-friendly material in the movies or on network television—the last time a network TV character had an abortion was Bea Arthur’s Maude in 1972; the next time will be on the next season of Friday Night Lights, premiering this Friday—but never before has the promotion of family been so prominent in prime time. The shows of careless singles (Friends, Sex and the City) are out—because putting off children is out. In are this season’s network shows of quirky, dysfunctional families: Modern Family, The Middle, Parenthood, Life Unexpected. Drawing comparisons to Gilmore Girls, Life Unexpected, also on the CW, tells the story of 15-year-old Lux—the product of the night her mother, Cate, lost her virginity to the quarterback who never spoke to her again—who was given up for adoption. She returns to find her parents, and (a few hiccups aside) they all become pals.

“Obviously, I’m very pro-choice, and the show was never meant to be a message about what Cate did or didn’t do in high school,” said the show’s 34-year-old creator, Liz Tigelaar, by phone from Los Angeles. “I know it can be perceived as, ‘Hey, don’t get an abortion. If you don’t, you can be best friends with your kid!’ But that’s not where I’m coming from.”

Ms. Tigelaar agreed that there has been a kind of pro-family shift on network television. “I remember just talking about this pilot and being told audiences don’t like women who don’t want to get married and have babies,” she said. “It started with the typical family show; to the family you make, which was Friends; and now it’s back to family, but not in a conventional sense—two men adopting a child or two unmarried people with a kid between them.”

At the end of our conversation, Ms. Tigelaar, who was herself adopted, admitted that she would be “thrilled” to get a 15-year-old dropped on her doorstep. “It’s less that I want to have kids right this second and more that I am compelled by the fear of not being able to have them later on,” she said.

In the Faminist world, the right to have children—by any means necessary—seems ascendant over any other project.

“There might be this idea among young women that they’re not going to screw it up the way the Sex and the City women did,” Ms. Paul suggested.

Ms. Baumgardner’s mother, she said, encouraged her and her sister, who started having kids at 41, to have their careers first. “There is a recalibration from that because there were some problems,” said Ms. Baumgardner, who is 39, with a 5-year-old and a 9-month-old. “So now this generation thinks ‘Oh, O.K., we’re going to start earlier and then get back to the careers.’ And eventually there’ll be something else resolving that conflict even more. It’s not necessarily feminist to say, ‘Oh yeah, you can freeze your eggs! You can have a baby when you’re 80!’”

And so young Faminist Morgan is on to her second at the age of 26, performing a sort of ideological matricide. Ms. Horcasitas has two and said she plans to have a third and then maybe adopt another.

In Ms. Jong’s time, women were protesting compulsory motherhood; now, it seems, they are not protesting anything at all—they are too busy mopping up crumbs.
“You have to think through having a baby, and maybe we thought it through too long,” said Ms. Jong, whose daughter Molly had her first child at 25 and more recently gave birth to twins. “I think feminism is a cyclical movement. Mothers do one thing, daughters do the opposite.”

ialeksander@observer.com

SLIDESHOW: 9 Women Who Prefer Prams to Politics >

It seems that Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony's Valentine's Day gift to each other will be a divorce. [Gatecrasher]

A currently "really out of it" Bernard Madoff may be planning an insanity defense. [R&M]

Former ImClone CEO Sam Waksal, who was supposed to spend seven years in prison for his role in Martha Stewart's insider trading scandal, faked a drinking problem to shave time of his sentence. [P6]

Tom Brady's father is denying reports that his son is engaged to Gisele Bundchen. [People]