(4) KE$HA vs. (5) JESSICA CHASTAIN

In many ways, I’ve come to expect Cracked-Out May Queen Doing The Walk Of Shame from Ke$ha.

But I did not expect — and hope never to see again — this from Jessica Chastain:

Miguided her tastes may be, or ill-fitting or just off, they’re rarely desperate for attention. This was an uncharacteristically naked ploy in more ways than one. AND IT IS SO HIDEOUS. I think everyone watching the Tony’s that night, both inside the theater and on TV, thought they were having a stroke when she walked out in this.

Ke$ha also had a year full of loud pantsuits and bright florals, which aren’t always awful, but they’re sure an awful lot.

This IS always awful. I owned that bra in 1994, and it was called Second Skin Satin, and I thnk even Victoria’s Secret has abandoned it. It figures that the one time Chastain chooses shoes that are worthy of her, she pairs it with a totally dopey Fairy Godmother bodice.

Maybe Chastain is Ke$ha’s fairy godmother. It would explain why this pantsuit evokes that famous Alexander McQueen Oscars gown that Jessica wore. It worked better as a dress, and without a putrescent ascot.

“Barkeep, slide down one jug of XXX Home Brew, extra bitter. We’re celebrating tomorrow’s invention of the iron.”

Part of me appreciates a Formal Poncho — a very abstract part of me; the part that assumes Jessica and I will end up living in a house full of cheesecake and support hose while our mustachioed ex-husbands drift in and our of our lives — but most of me is too distracted by the fishing line on her head to think much harder about it.

Chastain similarly struggles with what to do to her head:

That hair and makeup on her is AN AMERICAN TRAGEDY.

Sometimes Ke$ha tries to look scrubbed-up and clean, but she STILL somehow manages to look like the ice-skater from the wrong side of the tracks. Both of the railroad and weave variety.

But this was ostensibly SUPPOSED to be awesome and showstopper-y and all that, and yet somehow everyone on her team missed that it is a horrible fit. She looked light years better at both the BAFTAs and the Oscars, so it makes you wonder how this was allowed to happen; then again, she has also been encouraged to wear things like this in public. And this:

A girl should never have to win her first Golden Globe in a dress that sketchy. Clearly the ChasTeam is totally jacked up right now.

Don’t mind Ke$ha; she just wanted to make one last naked, ripped bid for your support.

Archives: Ke$ha, Jessica Chastain

(1) KRISTEN STEWART vs. (9) CHRISTA B. ALLEN 

I feel a little bad for Christa B. Allen. Her character on Revenge is one of the most maligned, and it is not entirely her fault — yes, her affect is flat, but half the time she’s acting opposite Madeleine Stowe, who only has one register. And that register works for Victoria Grayson, but if you have a young poppet in a scene with you and she’s following your lead and it becomes a Flat-a-Thon, it’s too much. But also, they give her little to do except utter lines about the ballet like, “I pray for Balanchine,” and I promise you nobody whose only function is to say BORINGLY hoity-toity stuff like that could possibly resist Flat Affect Town. At least give her TANTALIZING hoity-toity lines, Revenge Writers. Unless you are trying to trap her somehow, in which case… it’s working.

This dress was also a trap, methinks, and she fell right into it. I bet it looked okay on the hanger, but on her body, it’s eating her alive. It’s a cocoon of inexpensive-looking stuff. But a potentone: Applause to Christa B. here, for surprising me with her staying power. I really thought Eva Longoria’s see-through rear-end would knock her out — so it’s only apt that she’s now going up against someone who had TWO of them. 

This looks like she sat in a tar pit.

Overwrought ornate swaddling again from Christa…

… naked again from Kristen. Lots of people tried to applaud her for wearing this gown after her whole cheating scandal — as a way of thumbing her nose at the bad press — but what they’re forgetting is, K.Stew had already DONE that. At the Toronto Film Festival for On The Road, which was her actual first public appearance after the Rupert Sanders debacle, she wore this:

And at the time, I gave it a thumbs-up, because I thought the context was amusing: People in the media were treating her like a modern Hester Prynne, as if she were the only party who screwed up, and this outfit seemed to say, “I am not going quietly into the night just because you jerkwads are acting like I am a rotten temptress who lured an innocent man into sin.” But when I look at it now and try to divorce myself from WHEN and maybe WHY she wore it, I’m not sure I’d have embraced it as much. I can’t decide. It’s interesting, and a lot to look at, and aspects of it are beautiful and at least her hair is done. But if, say, Rachel McAdams wore it on a random Tuesday, or January Jones put it on, or even Christa B. Allen here, would we have rolled our eyes and fugged without mercy? Hard to say.

I will happily roll my eyes at this without context. It’s absurd. Among other things — I think Kristen would probably borrow that shirt quite willingly, actually — Christa is  wearing a velveteen beanbag chair.

Who decided Playtex Cross Your Heart bras needed to be back, and bigger than ever?

That is a glorified Playtex Cross-Your-Neck bra.

Are those Playtex Cross-Your-Foot Shoes?

Now I’m just crossing myself, praying fervently that whatever gift-wrap factory is chewing up teen girls and spitting them out at InStyle parties will be closed down for cruelty.

Also cruel: Whoever told Kristen that this dress fit. If I were her, I’d have slipped and cut my foot on purpose JUST so that the crutches would have a shot at overshadowing the problems with the garment.

Yikes, child.

Why is she wearing soccer shorts at the Hurricane Sandy telethon? If you lost all your belongings, would you want to see someone who has all her belongings wearing this in your name?

Nobody should be wearing this at all, in anyone’s name, ever.

Double ditto for this:

I’ll give this to K.Stew: Any event she’s supposed to be at, I look forward to, for this exact reason. WHO WEARS THIS? A brave person, if also a totally mad one. She is not afraid of ANYTHING. And she probably should be, but let’s hope her imperviousness to terror lasts a few years longer because I’m not ready to let go of the hope that she will drop my jaw anew.

Archives: Christa B. Allen, Kristen Stewart