Fug The Cover: Kristen Bell

So, between Forgetting Sarah Marshall and her recent Q&A thing with Entertainment Weekly, I have decided I totally like Kristen Bell. I mean, the girl admitted to watching Tool Academy. Anyone who shares my obsession with that show — which yielded a contestant who called himself Matsuflex; the quote, “You may be dead but what’s in my pants is very much alive”; eliminates people by saying, “I’m sorry, you’re just a tool”; inspires the contestants to get rabid about protecting the integrity of the academy (seriously); and features them coping with anger by tearing off their shirts — rates highly in my book.

As does this dress:

I know it’s kind of busy, and I know that I can’t completely tell what the pattern is because I’m squinting at my laptop screen due to the fact that I’m forced to work at a Coffee Bean that appears to be located on the surface of the sun. The skirt, through my near-closed eyes, reminds me a bit of very cold bumblebees being squashed, although maybe that’s just me projecting my dislike of bees. Yes, I’ve heard they have secret lives, but they also want to violate my flesh, which is NOT OKAY.

Anyway: Regardless of all that, I think this is cute on her. Much more befitting of a girl who seemed, in that EW questionnaire, like she might be fun to hang out with, or whose DVR list at least might resemble mine. Which means that if she walks in here to order a pumpkin ice-blended in five minutes, I can walk up to her and be all, “Dude, what is UP with Hillbilly Tool wanting to use his prize money to buy 200 trailers?!?” and she’ll go, “I KNOW, and I totally miss Matsuflex and that other tool whose girlfriend that brought him to the academy got ousted in favor of his ACTUAL girlfriend of six years that she didn’t know existed, and who at the reunion show had a THIRD girlfriend who was pregnant!” Sigh. Good times.

Unlike this cover:

THIS does NOT look like the face of a girl who watches Tool Academy (unless we are talking about the mother of one of the contestants, all of whom, let’s face it, should have broken up a long time ago). She looks kind of irritated and tense. Maybe she hates the detail on the top, which has a whiff of Ren Faire about it. Maybe she has a stomachache, which is why she seems to be clutching her navel. Maybe she needed 680 ways to make her wardrobe work and felt cheated by the mere 679 provided in this issue. Who can say. But I do think that in this economy, having a girl on the cover of a shopping magazine wear a faintly mocking and cranky expression is maybe not the best way to get us all excited about spending money. No matter HOW well-priced those major looks are.