26 October, 2005 | Leave a Comment
I moved across the Atlantic but apparently it wasn’t far enough to escape news of Atoosa (rhymes-with-Medusa) Rubenstein. My friend W e-mailed me this article from yesterday’s New York Observer. Um, thanks. I worked for Atoosa about six years ago. I’m over it now, but only because of some therapy and a hefty dose of psychotropic drugs.
The New York media gives Atoosa a lot of ink because, well, if they don’t cover stories that are completely irrelevant, how will we ever find out about them? It seems that Atoosa, editor of Seventeen and founding editor of CosmoGIRL!, now has her own reality show on MTV wherein the contestants vie to be on the magazine’s cover or some such crap.
The interesting part of the story is that Atoosa, the wild-haired Iranian-American Republican from Long Island, the human wrecking ball of teenage self-esteem, has finally gone over a cliff of megalomania and delusion from which there may be no return. Next stop, Bellevue?
From the Observer:
At age 19, she visited a psychic, who predicted that young Atoosa would have a big media career. “I do feel like it’s my destiny,” Ms. Rubenstein said.
(Was this the same psychic who told George Bush to invade Iraq? Oh wait, that was God. Nevermind.)
In the article, a former colleague muses:
“The magazine is really a cause for her,” said a former employee. “If you are not completely committed and enveloped in the same cause, it’s very difficult to survive.”
In the same queen-of-the-world vein, Atoosa started a campaign when she was at CosmoGIRL! to put one of her readers in the White House by 2024. I guess if that happens, it’ll be the president wearing thong underwear, not just the interns.
To be fair, Atoosa’s new show, Miss Seventeen, does have feminist overtones. The Observer describes it thus:
A trailer showed 17 nymphs comically squealing and brawling in a Manhattan loft apartment. “I hate girls who dress like sluts,” declared one. “You’re the fakest person here!” screamed another.
Though the show centers on a group of whippet-thin bimbettes fighting to be on the cover of a fashion magazine, it’s about soooo much more than that:
Ms. Rubenstein wanted to make clear that Miss Seventeen is not all fun and froth, that increasing the awareness of social causes among her readers is a major priority of hers. “My process, no matter what I work on, has the same end result and vision,” she said. “And that end result and vision is to bring truth to young women in their lives.”
You know, this would be hilarious if Atoosa wasn’t dead serious. Instead it’s just frightening. And sad. And did I mention frightening?
Atoosa, my sista, I know you were ordained by God to lead teenage girls into a zit-free Promised Land, where no one has body hair and Jessica Simpson is on the currency. I’m totally convinced of it, I swear. But you know, I think you need to get some help pdq. Soon it will be too late. Not too long from now you could find yourself the leader of a tiny rogue nation, surrounded by a chic Cosmogirl army aiming their pastel-colored nuclear warheads at the non-believers. Then you’d have the U.N. breathing down your neck, not just evil feminists like me. Is this the kind of future your psychic predicted? No, I don’t think so.
