My wife reads "People" so you don't have to

I apologize for not keeping up with "People" magazine lately, but what can I say? What with work commitments, family commitments, and being-lazy commitments, I've been busy, and sometimes it's just hard to find the 3 1/2 minutes needed to read a whole issue.

That said, I did look at the September 17 issue--not that I read it, you know, my wife just had it laying around--and I discovered that Nick Hornby had a new novel coming out soon. This is a big revelation to me. Hornby is one of my favorite authors, and this is news to me. So I should really be thankful for "People" magazine and not even mention any of the, shall we say, less useful bits in the issue.

BUT I feel I owe my faithful readers, so let me mention the "Body Watch" column on page 136. Tyra Banks, it seems, has lost 30 pounds, and we see a pic of her "new bod" alongside "her famous 'fat' photo" of 2006.

"People's" obssessive coverage of celebrities' weight always amuses me, but then, so does the spin celebrities themselves put on their own weight gains and losses. In this article, a close source claims that this was just Banks "wanting to get healthier."

"She didn't do it to lose weight. Tyra loves her body no matter what size she is--and thinks every woman should feel that way."

So in other words, Banks didn't lose weight to lose weight. Ahhhh, yeah, that makes sense.

News flash: If you're overweight, losing weight makes you healthier. Why parse words like this? I guess it's because Tyra Banks, as the article mentions, told everyone in 2007 to kiss her fat ass, and she doesn't want to be seen as admitting she wanted/needed to lose weight. Even though she clearly did. And even though she wants to be healthier.

I guess you can argue that the idea here is that Tyra went on a mad exercising spree just for her cardio health or whatever and just happened to lose 30 pounds as a result, but it all goes together. Why be so particular about it?

More importantly, why spend several paragraphs on a blog talking about it? Hey, did I mention that Nick Hornby has a new novel coming out?