Blog Posts by Jennifer Romolini, Shine editor in chief

Tonight's season finale of America's Next Top Model will also be the last episode for Paulina Porizkova, the former supermodel and ANTM judge revealed last night on The Late Late Show with Craig Ferguson .

Porizkova says she was fired from the popular reality show, and the bad news was broken to her over the phone on April 9, which was her 44th birthday. (Yikes!)

She told Ferguson: "The reason I was told I was fired was because, it seemed that America's Next Top Model has gotten too fat and they needed to cut some fat and the fat was me....So I figured it was either that or my gigantic huge ego. Which I wasn't aware of until I was told by the producers that I have an ego problem."

The CW confirms that she is no longer with the show, but wouldn't comment further.

As an avid, zillion-cycle-long viewer of ANTM, I honestly can't believe Paulina was terminated. She always seemed warm, knowledgeable, helpful, and opinionated, but not so much that she came across as obnoxious or upstaged

AP PhotoMiss California Carrie Prejean and Donald Trump held a press conference today where they revealed that Prejean will not lose her pageant crown over nude photos (new, racier images were revealed today) nor over her appearances with several anti-gay marriage groups (which some considered a conflict with the neutrality required in her Miss California contract).

During the live, 10-minute-plus broadcast, Trump explained that Prejean is a "model, a very successful [Ed: Really???] model" and that "a determination has been made that the pictures are acceptable...in some cases very beautiful." He summarized the entire situation as a "communication problem that has been solved."
In her portion of the press conference, Prejean read a statement quite obviously written for her by a very skilled, probably very expensive public relations professional. Among the gems Prejean smiled and cried her way through:

• "I was punished for exercising my freedom of speech."
• "I am not an activist...I was

We recently celebrated a birthday here at Shine (our first!) and, for the rest of the month, we'll be virtually partying down by highlighting some of our favorite site moments of the past year--the stories, comments, and readers who we think make our little place on the Interwebs vibrant, funny, thoughtful, sometimes bawdy, and, nearly always, fiercely honest. We're grateful to be here and so, so happy to have so many great women around.

On Fashion + Beauty, I've been lucky enough to have a community of magazine writers, professional bloggers, and first-time internet scribes all contributing to the section. The result, for me at least, has been a space to talk about all things clothes and makeup in a way that's approachable, accepting, and completely pretense-free. This is something I always wanted to achieve when I worked in fashion magazines, and it feels awesome to experience it here.

OK. So on to some standout reader-bloggers:

Have you met Apple? If not, you really really

Summer is coming, like, mighty, mighty fast, and you know what that means: Gorgeous weather, yes, but also, for us ladies, petty annoyances like exposed feet, exposed pasty legs, sweat in places we don't like to think about, and...bathing suits.

No matter how many magazine articles we read or research we do on our "perfect style", for many of us, the idea of a swimsuit remains terrifying. I used to hate this purchase so much that I wore my busted, unflattering bikini from high school until I was about 26-years-old. By the end, its top was held together with safety pins and its elastic had given out to a point that it fell down at even the hint of a wave. (I solved both problems by wearing a tank top over it--sexy!)

In subsequent years, I made it my mission to crack the code, to learn exactly how to purchase a bathing suit that wouldn't make me feel anxious or insecure or just irrationally bad about my body. Though I still make the occasional (very bad) mistake, through trial and

Just days after the whole world found out that her boobs were paid for by pageant officials, now topless photos of Miss California Carrie Prejean have surfaced. And, this morning, the 21-year-old beauty queen responded to the new scandal: Prejean believes the naked pictures were released as an attempt to belittle her Christianity.

I mean, really? Seems to me that Prejean and her Christianity posed for the pics, she says when she was 17. And, while the images circulating right now (reportedly, more revealing shots have yet to be released) are not of the naughty Vanessa-Williams-in-Playboy variety, they're not Sunday-school appropriate either.

But are they inappropriate enough that Prejean should lose her crown? According to pageant officials,Young Miss California, baring it all, almost yes, possibly. In a statement given to the Associated Press, pageant spokesman Roger Neal explained that, "Prejean has run afoul of several sections of the 12-page contract that prospective contestants were required to sign before competing...The

It's always confusing times 1,000 when celebrities who have as much hair, makeup, and style support as they could possibly want show up to events looking like hookers or a circus freaks or wearing the kinds of outfits that make me want to cry.

And yet...it happens. All. Of. The. Time. And it always makes us confused and downright sad (darn you, Leighton Meester!). Check out all the gory details above.

Last night was the Met's Costume Institute Gala, the fancy annual event where models, celebrities and fashion people all pay a zillion dollars to attend, have their pictures taken and try to out-dress each other. This year, the party was co-hosted by Kate Moss and the theme was The Model as Muse.

On May 5,1862, 4,000 poorly-armed Mexican soldiers defeated an army of 8,000 French forces near the town of Puebla (which is about 100 miles east of Mexico City). Since then, Cinco de Mayo has been observed the world over as a celebration of Mexican heritage, pride, and general awesomeness. It's also an amazing excuse to eat authentic enchiladas, guacamole, and burritos and to wash them all down with a few cervezas.

Sure, you could mark the occasion at your local Chevys, get trashed while wearing one of those oversized sombreros, and view all of the unflattering, red-faced photos on Facebook first thing on Seis de Mayo. However, we have another kind of fiesta in mind: Stay home, invite some friends over, throw on a Mexican-inspired top, make a big batch of margaritas, create a south-of-the-border feast together, and then, when you are fully immersed in a corn-and-cheese induced food coma, sit around watching sexy Gael Garcia Bernal in "Y Tu Mama Tambien."

But that's just how we'd