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Heidi Montag seems to be taking the theme of her recently released debut album, The Superficial, very, very literally. Sources, including People magazine, report that the 23-year-old fame-succubus underwent a second round of plastic surgery in November, having 10 procedures done in one day. Among the things reportedly done or redone: new breasts (inspired by Playboy), a chin reduction, and a nose redesign. At the end of the laundry list People hilariously asks: “But has she gone too far?”

I’m not going to pass judgment on the act of cosmetic enhancement in and of itself, but signing up for 10 procedures in one day reads to me like a clear indication Montag lacks a definitive sense of self. Which follows, I suppose, from the way her life has unfolded—she essentially lived out her teenhood on TV, came into her body in front of cameras, had a scripted romance followed by a televised marriage, and is currently one-half of the most tabloid-hungry couple in Hollywood. Now Montag is morphing herself into the real life equivalent of a latex doll and even happily publicizing her transformation. Not that surprising.

Perhaps related: Montag's vomitous new single "I'll Do it" begins thusly: ""Pick me, take me, off up into ya dungin. I brought some treats. I know that you gon love em. Come eat my panties off of me. Do whatever comes naturally." I guess if you're a person who considers physically eating underpants as simply "doing what comes naturally," then 10 plastic surgeries in 12 hours is as natural as a morning poop or something.

Tags: heidi montag, People, plastic surgery

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Harold Ford, Jr., has Senate ambitions, and Kirsten Gillibrand, New York’s junior senator, stands in his way. All standard fare. Except now that the sexist taunts of the 2008 campaign are being revived in columns and a couple of new books, I have to ask: Is Ford talking about Gillibrand this way because she’s a woman?

Ford’s line on Gillibrand is that she is a patsy to the older gentleman in her party, especially Harry Reid and New York’s senior senator, Chuck Schumer: “Harry Reid will not instruct me how to vote,” he said, adding, "We have a fundamental difference on independence. We have a difference on the level, the kind and the stature of advocacy New Yorkers deserve."

What kind of stature does Harold Ford have, exactly? Last I checked, he lost a Senate race and she won. Also, it seems perfectly routine for a first-term junior senator to defer to the long-serving senior senator of her state.

Is this woman-baiting? Ford’s criticism tracks exactly the twin tropes the media uses for women: bitch or ditz, established by Amanda Fortini in New York magazine in 2008 and echoed by Anne Kornblut in her new book, Notes From the Cracked Ceiling.

Ford’s new slogan tips in that direction: “Harold Ford: nobody’s man but ours.” If the writer of the Times story had the same suspicions, he got his revenge on Ford by mentioning that he gets regular pedicures.

Photograph of Harold Ford by Brendan Smialowski.

Tags: Harold Ford, Harold Ford sexist, Kristen Gillibrand

I think attacking childhood obesity is a fine goal for Michelle Obama, Jess—but unlike Givhan, I also think there’s something to be said for the First Lady being many things to many people. Today, for instance, she’s reportedly cutting a public-service announcement asking Americans to donate to earthquake-devastated Haiti. Raising awareness about international issues and tragedies in particular is certainly something the First Lady ought to consider well within her bailiwick (think of Hillary Clinton’s tenure) and sometimes, in these instances, publicity can be almost as useful as policy, or at least help to drive it. But is a PSA enough? Should the First Lady stand up alongside her husband’s pledges for aid and board a plane to Haiti?

Tags: haiti earthquake, Michelle Obama

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As I noted a week ago, the Washington Post's Robin Givhan has criticized Michelle Obama for not focusing on a single cause. On the one-year anniversary of Michelle's move to the White House, she has finally chosen her pet issue: childhood obesity. This news comes at the same time as a CDC report that says childhood obesity has plateaued. 17 percent of children are obese—that's about the same as it has been for the past five years. However, the number of extremely obese children is on the rise, and Michelle seeks to reduce these rates through changes to the school lunch program and continuing to maintain the White House vegetable garden. Considering all of our discussion about schools and gardening this week, I wonder what Caitlin Flanagan thinks about Michelle's decision. I'm also wondering what everyone else thinks: Can Michelle actually help reduce childhood obesity through these sorts of initiatives?

Photograph of Michelle Obama by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images.

Tags: childhood obesity, gardens, Michelle Obama, Robin Givhan

I'm so glad Feministing put this old Lego ad up. They're absolutely right—advertising and toys for girls have become a "pink explosion," and gender stereotyping in the toy store is pretty nearly as bad as it's ever been, with whole aisles and sections clearly created to draw in only one sex or the other.

But Lego hasn't just fallen down on its advertising. Worse, they've fallen down on the building-toy job completely. The Lego section of any toy store is packed with kits to build one thing and one thing only—a Millenium Falcon, perhaps, or more neutrally, a train—and then you're done. There's no suggestion on most of their products that a kid might ever want to deconstruct the Power Miners Titanium Command Rig and build, say, a car. Or a house. Or anything, as that ad suggests, "beautiful."

One result is either a shelf full of Lego creations too delicate to play with or a big pile of pieces with specialized purposes that clearly aren't intended to "build" anything creative at all, and that's not much fun. Another, for both boys and girls, is an expensive toy that only comes out of the box once. You can get a box of ordinary Lego bricks, but you may have to check a few stores first, and you'll find there's not much in the box any more. It's pretty clear where the collective corporate energies have gone. Looking at this ad makes me nostalgic not just for those halcyon days of the '80s (ahem), when little girls in braids and overalls were a commercial ideal, but for the days when Legos came without a 40-page instruction manual that would make Ikea proud.