(Pinterest)

Toddler fashion has a new face, and her name is Quinoa.

Quinoa is basically just your typical preteen–a hip firecracker with flawless style, razor-sharp wit and private school credentials.

Her playmates are named Elias, Hawkeye, Jasper and Chevron. Her look has been emulated by the likes of Heidi Klum and Rachel Zoe, and she reads Keats along with her Kipling. She even has a book deal. Also, she doesn’t really exist.

"Quinoa always keeps a spare 'urban outfit' in my purse in the event we're going to be around a lot of chain link fencing," her imaginary mother writes on the fabulously addictive Pinterest board My Imaginary Well-Dressed Toddler Daughter.

"Quinoa absolutely loves a juxtaposition. And irony. And gummi bears."

Commenters seem to love her just as much as her would-be mommy does. Most comments are of the “LOL” variety, but some are getting in on the fun.

One jokes, “Quinoa is everything I want my daughters to be. Where have I gone wrong?”

At least we hope she’s joking.

Though Quinoa was created by Philadelphia mother and freelance writer Tiffany Beveridge, Quinoa seems to resonate with mommies worldwide.

Her avant-garde attire has been analyzed in parenting blogs like The Stir, Rage Against the Minivan and Mommyish.

But, like Fucked In Park Slope, we can’t help but picture her as a purebred New Yorker, mostly because we’re certain there’s a gaggle of Manhattan mommies out there would love nothing more than to have a Quinoa of their very own (and who are we kidding, there are a few real-life Quinoas in NYC already–ahem, Suri Cruise).

(Wikimedia)

Trouble is afoot in the land of Internet domains. Specifically, in the land of "generic top-level-domains"—or as they are known by non-geeks, the letters that come after the dot.

Retail giant Amazon has launched a bid to buy 76 new domains, including “.like” “.shop” “.author.” and the particularly contentious, “.pin.” These domains will not be made available to the wider public but will be specifically tied to Amazon, whose insatiable thirst for world domination has not been satisfied by Tom Hanks-ing the shit out of the independent book sales business (yeah, that was a You’ve Got Mail reference. You're welcome).

Meanwhile, Pinterest, the little start-up that could, is fighting back to defend its honor—and its exclusive right to trademark commonplace office supplies.

In a complaint to the World Intellectual Property Organization, Pinterest alleges that Amazon’s claim would violate the trademark they holds on the word "pin," which includes “the standalone PIN trademark and a family of PIN-formative marks, including Pinterest, PIN It, P, and others."

Did Pinterest just try to copyright the letter P? And how can anyone really own the word "pin?" Why are we even arguing about this?

Frankly, it all makes us long for a simpler, pre-Internet age, when pins were for everyone and book stores weren't virtual and Meg Ryan was America's sweetheart ... So, yeah, basically we wish it was 1998.

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.

“It’s my manifestation board,” Shoshanna explains, “I use it for inspiration. Like when I’m not feeling inspired I just look at it.”

A riff on “vision boards,” an Oprah-endorsed self-help method from The Secret, the pastime signaled her character’s naïveté, of a kind with her pink velour sweatsuit and Sex and the City worship. A scrapbook for the life one wishes one had, the “vision board” has been mocked by everyone from Barbara Ehrenreich to It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia. But aspirational scrapbooking lives on, nowhere more so than on Pinterest, the image-sharing site that exploded early this year to reach more than 10 million users.

Since then, much has been made of Pinterest’s girliness. Its most active users are overwhelmingly female, and the content they share suggests that, although women now get more bachelor’s degrees than men, the female hive mind is still preoccupied with the prerequisites for the MRS degree. It’s all wedding invitation stationery, clever uses for old wine corks and gluten-free versions of your comfort-food favorites.

It seems like femininity for the pre-Bridesmaids era, but then, not even Girls has totally outgrown it. (“Can I make one?” Jessa asks, puffing on a joint.) Or think of Zooey Deschanel’s Jess, in the New Girl. “I have touched glitter in the past 24 hours,” she triumphantly declares. “that doesn’t mean I’m not tough or smart or strong.”

If she doesn’t have a Pinterest she should.

Kelly Alfieri, Martha Stewart Living digital editorial director, thinks there’s something in the air. Between locavore dining and Etsyism, the Martha Way has filtered throughout the culture. “Pinterest is a way to reach that audience digitally.”

Pinterest’s domestic mania makes it an easy target for the blogger class (BuzzFeed offers “21 Signs Pinterest Has Made Your Girlfriend Crazy and Unstable”). It also makes it the most important front in women’s lifestyle magazines’ ongoing fight to stay influential and relevant across new media.

But as with most digital media experiments, it’s hard to say whether there’s any money in Pinterest. Several magazines told The Observer they met with representatives of the company, suddenly Silicon Valley’s $200 million sweetheart, and discussed ways to work together down the line, including sponsored content and affiliate marketing. (Pinterest itself briefly experimented with affiliate marketing, using Skimlinks, but stopped around the time reporters caught on.) The magazines said that the 21-person start-up, still reeling from its sudden boom, was focusing on improving user experience first.

Still, Pinterest has quickly toppled Facebook and Twitter as the top social media referrer to magazines like Cooking Light and Martha Stewart Living. For Real Simple, it’s second only to Google. So for now, magazine editors are eagerly following Pinterest’s lead.

“I know our reader spends 23 hours a week online, looking at images,” said Anne Fulenwider, editor in chief of Brides. “The more we can make Brides.com a part of that conversation the better.”

Across Pinterest’s horizontal layout, the already faint lines between magazine stories, user-generated content and advertisements all but disappear. The mosaic has a democratizing effect, pitting lifestyle magazines like Real Simple against retailers like West Elm and personalities like fitness guru Jillian Michaels in a daily contest for the most pinnable image.

“We’re enabling people to create a customized experience of our content,” said Alanna Stang, editor in chief of Whole Living.

Of course, no one got into the magazine business to offer personalized newsletters to Great Plains housewives. Flipping through a glossy is a little like taking a professionally guided lifestyle tour, whereas a visit to Pinterest is more of a zigzagging odyssey into the mind of a woman who wants a Hunger Games-themed manicure and a Marie Antoinette-themed wedding. And vice versa!

But with a user base heavily situated in the flyover states (founder and CEO Ben Silbermann hails from Des Moines), Pinterest gives editors a window outside the Manhattan media bubble, like it or not.

“Pink weddings are having a moment,” said Martha Stewart Weddings editor Elizabeth Graves. “Weird, right?”

But once they know, it’s hard to forget. Even if editors and photographers are sick to death of, say, rustic receptions, they may want to try and eke out a few more cute details to please the pinners.

“They want that mason jar,” Ms. Graves explained. “We just need to show them a fresh way to use it.”

Weddings have quickly emerged as a perfect storm of pinning, the Venn center where some of Pinterest’s top drivers—food, fashion, craft and sentimentality—tend to converge in an orgy of aspiration and consumerism. The top Pinterest user is Chrissy Ott’s bridal blog, the Perfect Palette, which seems to have piqued the interest of readers who might be years away from a trip down the aisle. There’s no harm in pinning for later.

“I know one person, she’s planning her daughter’s wedding,” Ms. Graves said. “Her daughter’s 4 years old. The Pinboard is called, ‘Is it too soon?’”

Brides have long used digital inspiration boards, Ms. Fulenwider said, but she hopes Pinterest’s ubiquity will be a powerful marketing tool for the brand update and magazine redesign launching next week.

“Even the people on my staff find it addictive,” she said.

Indeed, a user might set out looking for tips on dyeing Easter eggs, only to enter a rabbit hole of image referrals and find herself, 45 minutes later, reading inspirational quotes from Mormon leader Dieter F. Uchdorf’s address at the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints’ annual conference.

“Don’t judge me because I sin differently than you.”

Amen and repin!

Without any Pinterest analytics in place, magazine editors are left to play it by ear. At times, the pinners’ appetites are a bit baffling.

Real Simple’s Pinterest calling card is “New Uses for Old Things” photos, said Kristin Appenbrink, of RealSimple.com. Ideas for empty toilet paper rolls perform well; an old ketchup bottle squeezing pancake batter into a skillet was repinned 2,000 times.

“I would have expected show-stopping desserts and adorable crafts to be really popular, but sometimes there are surprises,” said Martha Stewart’s Ms. Alfieri. “Like we had this one, roasted Napa cabbage, that did really well.” Experimenting with more Napa cabbage stories showed the crucifer to be a reliable winner.

“I feel like it might be the next kale,” she said.

Whole Living’s Alanna Stang had a similar experience recently, watching a whole wheat orzo, broccoli and pine nut salad take off.

“It wasn’t our most gorgeous healthy salad,” she confessed.

Maybe the pinners were just hungry. Ms. Appenbrink, of Real Simple, said she sees more interaction when she times posts before lunch and during the mid-afternoon lull, when one might begin to plan dinner.

For now, the biggest obstacle Pinterest faces is copyright. In its early days, Pinterest’s published user guidelines, the ladylike “Pin Etiquette,” aimed to keep Pinterest’s focus on people, not corporations, warning members to “avoid self promotion.” But once Pinterest came under fire from photographers for its users’ rampant, alleged copyright violations, a catch-22 emerged.

Kirsten Kowalski, a photographer who happens to also be a lawyer, illustrated the conundrum in a blog post called “Why I Tearfully Deleted My Pinterest Inspiration Boards.” If one couldn’t use Pinterest to pin one’s own photographs, which would be self-promotion, she explained, and one couldn’t use it to promote another person’s photographs, which would be a copyright violation, what was there left to pin?

Well, magazine content, if they’ll give it to us! And why wouldn’t they? On Pinterest, the gorgeous photography that magazines specialize in gets a second life. Magazine editors can cull their archives for evergreen stories in the name of brand awareness and enjoy any click-through traffic that flows from it. On their own sites, increasingly ubiquitous and convenient “Pin it” buttons make it easier to properly share than to steal.

“We’ve cultivated a community of food stylists, photographers, and recipe developers,” said Bon Appetit assistant editor Hannah Sullivan, who runs the magazine’s Pinterest account. “It’s nice just to have that talent being recognized.”

Outside the worlds of shelter, style, food and weddings, Pinterest’s utility for media companies remains cloudy. For instance, a quick glance at the Huffington Post Style’s Pinterest shows that what’s clickable isn’t necessarily pinnable. On Twitter, The Observer couldn’t resist clicking over to “Invisible Nipples!”—a slideshow of busty magazine covers from which nipples are conspicuously absent—but we can easily resist pinning them up alongside our dream kitchen and fave formal hairstyles. The news, a noble photographic parade of ickiness and bummers, doesn’t pin well, but history does, Newsweek’s archive board suggests.

Even magazines that deal exclusively in the dream life that we desperately strive to pin together for ourselves must be careful to spare us the gory details of domestic self-improvement.

“We have to be very careful with what content we put where,” explained Ms. Appenbrink. “Like cleaning your toilet. On Twitter you can just have a tip and a link. But we don’t want to see a photo of that on Pinterest.”

kstoeffel@observer.com

Patriotic decor ideas (Ann Romney's Pinterest site)

After Think Progress posted a Pinterest pinboard of fancyish hotels in which Mitt Romney had stayed during his Presidential campaign, Mitt Romney Tweeted out a link to his wife's own pinboard, noting "Ann's way ahead of me on this one."

The things Ann Romney likes, and has pinned, strictly disinclude fancy hotels but do include photos of her family; recipes for butternut squash soup, "low-fat turkey burgers," and "granola cups"; and Anna Karenina. Her one picture under "Inspiration" is of her husband at the 2002 Olympics he helped organize. And, yes, she has a "Patriotic" category--comprised of photos of home decor and red-white-and-blue foods that convey both home pride and national pride.