Blog Posts by Jennifer Romolini, Shine editor in chief

Remember a few years ago, before the freaky face and the hyper-sinewy bod and the 22-year-old boyfriends, when Madonna actually seemed kind of soft and pretty and NOT robotic and scary and like she wanted to eat your face off and harvest your organs in the name of Kabbalah? We do. And we miss soft Madonna.

We say this not because we usually wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares starring the Material Girl, but because we might start now. There's a photo of Madonna today in the UK paper the Daily Mail that is so absolutely terrifying in its muscle-y skeletal-ness we want to cry, or become sick, or just feel afraid forever and ever. How could it come to this, Madonna? Honestly, we're not trying to be jerks...we really just want to know, HOW DID THIS HAPPEN? Who is interested in this as a look? Doesn't Madge have one person in her life who might say, "Hey, I love you, and because I love you I can see it's time to put down the barbells. Let's go get some ice cream."? To borrow

A preview of Nordstrom's new The Twilight Saga: New Moon Collection was released late last week to, like everything surrounding the Twilight empire, much fanfare and buzz. The vampire-themed clothes and accessories, which will be available starting October 1st, include everything from t-shirts and mini dresses to jewelry, keychains, and coats. As you'd imagine with a sartorial gimmick like this, many of the designs are kind of cheesy, but there are a few pieces that are actually great, whether you're a Twi-hard or not. To honor this new fashion collaboration, we rounded up the best and worst Twilight-derived merchandise we could find. Some of it is surprisingly stylish and cool, while other items have the clammy stench of stalkerdom we recognize from our own tween days following Anthony Michael Hall.

Source: InStyle

Getty ImagesLast month, Shine conducted its second annual survey with AskMen.com--it's an online quiz where real women and men weigh in on such varied topics as online dating, money, careers, soul mates, marriage, romance, cheating, and how they would feel if a partner got fat.

The results are in, and just like last year, many of them are quite surprising:

Men revealed themselves to be more traditional than the women
They believe in soul mates more than we do (by just 3 percent, but still) and they more strongly believe in preserving the sanctity of marriage (75 percent for men, 63 percent women). The majority of men share our desire for a loyal partner, they want a new girlfriend to have wife potential, and they aren't likely to cheat even if their partner would never find out.

But when it comes to looks, a double chin equals a double standard
Women were nearly 20 percent more likely to stay with a partner who gained weight, whereas 48 percent of men say they wouldn't put up with it.

What

Photo by X17online.comIn the upcoming issue of People magazine, Jon Gosselin's new girlfriend, Hailey Glassman, spills the romantic details of their relationship, including how the couple got together, why she thinks the married father of 8 fell in love with her, and what they do for fun. She also tells the mag that she thought Jon was "so strong" for leaving Kate and she "admired him."

Of the couple's time alone, the 22-year-old explains how they're always "laughing and joking" and how they "...watch movies, play pool and ping pong. We laugh a lot because I beat him at everything."
Perhaps the deepest cut in the People interview comes when Glassman says what can only be interpreted as direct insult to Jon's wife: "I'm a huge believer in not controlling someone...I'll give my opinion but tell him to do what he wants to do. He said, 'I'm just not used to having an option.' I told him life is about options."

Who knows what Glassman's motives in this relationship really are--she's young, impetuous, and

A few weeks ago, Jon Gosselin was seen frolicking in St. Tropez with his new girlfriend, a 22-year-old woman who is the daughter of his wife's plastic surgeon. The TLC star and famous dad of eight was in St. Tropez courtesy of Christian Audigier, the man behind the clothing line Ed Hardy. Are you familiar with Ed Hardy? It's an L.A.-based fashion company, owned by Audigier, an extra-tan French-born man who has lots of celebrity friends. Audigier's vision for how Americans should dress includes clothes adorned with lots and lots of rhinestones, rivets, gold sparkles, tigers, dragons, skulls, flames, and flaming tigers, dragons, and skulls. The look is known as "tattoo-inspired," but it's more "I want my whole body covered in tattoos but I'm too wimpy to get actual tattoos, and, oh, dude, could you affix some fake diamonds to me too?" It's glitzed-up tough-guy clothes for people who are not tough; it's edgy clothing for people who sleep in their mom's basement.

I first became aware of

At this point Lindsay Lohan is beginning to feel like a band that had one really big hit, but never did anything else, but played that one song over and over and over again until you hated that song and then one day in the future you went back and listened to the song and realized it was never good, it just snagged on to a cultural moment somehow but should never be heard from again.

This is to say: I am so over Lindsay Lohan I could barf a little bit. In fact, I think I'd rather see Gerardo on the cover of Spanish Vogue and be forced to listen to "Rico Suave" on loop the entire time I read it than ANOTHER COVER OF LILO POSING AS MARILYN MONROE. I mean, it's getting ridiculous: Just like Dan Quayle was no JFK, Lindsay Lohan is no Marilyn Monroe. I just wish someone would explain this to her.

I know, I know. Poor Lindsay has awful, money-hungry, asshat parents who exploited her young freckled talent for their own gain, who reportedly partied with their kids, and allowed their daughter

Man, that's one ugly shoe. (Getty Images)There are things that I've lived through that I know, for one reason or another, I will have a hard time explaining to my kids. Things like Michael Jackson (RIP), the Iraq war, bubble tea, the world before the Internet, harem pants, my mom, and of course, Crocs. Really, how did they happen? Who looked at Crocs and thought, "Aerated, bulbous, and bright plastic? That's the footwear for me!"

Answer: About a zillion people. In the seven years since their inception, customers bought 100 million pairs of the spongy, sling-back, clown-like shoes, the sales of which brought in $168.2 million in profit in just 2007 alone. However, the Crocs magic was not to last. According to The Washington Post, in 2008, just a year later, the company was deep in debt--losing $185.1 million and cutting 2,000 jobs while the Crocs stock price fell 76 percent. Auditors hired to assess the company's financial viability suggested conditions "that raise substantial doubt about the ability to continue." The Post

I was with a group of friends last weekend and we were playing a board game. It's called Apples to Apples and, like most every board game I've ever attempted, it's one million times easier to play than to explain, but bear with me. Essentially: A card with an adjective on it is thrown on the table, each player has to come up with topics that epitomize this adjective and the person whose turn it is gets to pick his or her own definition from the choices at hand. When it was my turn, the adjective was "depressing." My choices were:

AIDS
Germany in 1945
A bad haircut

Now, obviously AIDS and Germany in 1945 are some of the most depressing, abject, downright awful things the world has ever known, but I haven't lived (thanks, Jesus) through either. What I have lived through is a really terrible haircut. And, man, that is very depressing. Depending on the severity, a crummy haircut can affect everything in your life--from the way you talk to other people to how often you want to leave the