Miss Dakota Fanning’s Cosmo cover caused a bit of a stir because she’s not quite 18, but I really didn’t see the issue, considering they made this gorgeous, youthful, vibrant girl look like an overworked 45 year old soccer mom who got dragged to this photo shoot after staying up all night with her vomiting toddler. Definitely one of the least flattering covers I’ve seen as of late.

I haven’t picked up an issue of Cosmo since, like, 2007, but I still felt an intense sense of deja vu while flipping through it. I am amazed at the way they can regurgitate the same sex tips over and over and over again.  Did you know that guys like when you stroke them and suck them at the same time? That they love both girl-on-top and doggy style for their respective views? Unreal, right? And their “too naughty to print on the cover” tip? Is an acrobatic version of 69. Thrilling. (Although maybe I should be grateful that it wasn’t anal. *yawn*)

My favorite article was definitely the one that highlights the questions men really want to ask on a first date. Oh, how I love getting insight into total sleazeballs.

Cosmo says: How many dates do we have to go on before we agree to split the bill?
Jasmine says: I really don’t understand why this issue is so contentious. The person who did the inviting should make an offer to pay. If you make it to a second date, you should be able to casually be like “Hey, how do you want to split this?” Because, you know, assuming you’re an adult, it shouldn’t be a big deal.

Cosmo says: Do you like performing oral sex?
Jasmine says: Snooze. How about wondering how she likes receiving it?

Cosmo says: How high-maintenance are you from a scale from 1-10?
Jasmine says: Because all women are intrinsically high-maintenance and impossible to please, am I right?

Cosmo says: Are you on birth control?
Jasmine says: The fact that there are men out there who refuse to acknowledge that condoms exist, and that they can be used by them never fails to disgust me.

Cosmo says: Do you talk to your ex?
Jasmine says: Isn’t the more relevant question “Do you still want to be with your ex?”

Cosmo says: Are we going to have sex tonight?
Jasmine says: You know what, I wish people would talk openly and honestly about sex upfront. It would be nice to know ahead of time if you’re going to be boning a hitter-and-quitter, stage-5 clinger, or a waiting-for-marriage outlier.

Of all things corrupting the youth of America, the very worst is Cosmopolitan magazine. Sure, it’s the best-selling lifestyle bible of the female demographic, but now that the publication is putting actresses like Dakota Fanning and Selena Gomez on the cover, the printed pamphlet for blended orgasms and all-star blowjobs seems to be catering to a new generation of sexually active females—you know, middle school girls around twelve or thirteen years old, right?

Exactly. And over ten thousand women have had absolutely enough of the smut and are fighting to ensure that no girl under eighteen years of age ever lays eyes on a Cosmopolitan cover ever again.

This past August, a woman named Nicole Weider started a petition on Change.org to have Cosmopolitan be sold in an opaque wrapper at magazine stands and grocery stores so that its risque headlines stay hidden from the impressionable eyes of young girls.

“I happened to pick up an issue and was reading it and was completely shocked at how pornographic and explicit the content had become. I immediately thought of my young teenage brothers and it horrified me to think that they and their friends could be reading this material, and the damage it would do to them if they did,” Weider said. “So I decided to do something about it.”

But Weider doesn’t want to just stop minors from glancing at the cover while grocery shopping with their parents; she also wants to make sure that they don’t come back on their own and purchase the magazine to read later on. That’s right; she hopes that coming of age at eighteen years old means that a girl can legally buy cigarettes, lottery tickets and the latest issue of Cosmopolitan.

“I have contacted the Chairman of the FTC, John Leibowitz and received a letter from his office stating they will look into the issue and start an investigation only when they feel it’s a ‘threat’ to society,” she said. “This means they need more complaints—that is, signers of this petition.”

Weider asserts that her argument is valid because ever since she started the petition, she’s received hundreds of comments and emails—testimonies from girls as young as eleven years old.

“They write me letters detailing how they’ve tried the sexual tips written about in Cosmo, only to get their hearts broken, or worse — getting pregnant or catching an STD,” she said. “The obvious damage it could be doing is the girls getting STD’s at a young age, pregnancy and bullying.”

And why are girls so young buying Cosmopolitan anyway? According to Weider, it’s because child stars like Hayden Panettiere and Hilary Duff are constantly on the cover! 17-year-old Dakota Fanning is featured on the February issue with the headlines “His Best Sex Ever” and “3 Clues He’s Secretly Into You” plastered next to her face! And Disney Channel actress and goddess of all things tween, Selena Gomez, is slated to appear later this year—of course the eleven year olds of America are going to buy the issue, memorize it from cover to cover and have as much sex as possible with absolutely every guy in middle school!!!

On some level, I do have to agree with her. It is a little weird to see child stars on the cover of such a provocative magazine that usually offers pages and pages of sex advice to newlywed women and women who wish they were newlyweds. To me, it’s not about how old their covergirls are; no one protested when Keira Knightley and Kirsten Dunst appeared on the cover at age 19. It’s about these actresses’ target demographic: who made them famous in the first place, who watches their every move and who idolizes them. And yes, it is these impressionable eleven-year-old girls in middle school who look up to these celebrities a little too much.

Even more so, the dating advice offered inside Cosmo covers often crosses the border into completely ridiculous suggestions: sexting is sexy, cheating is normal, and making love in the club is romance defined! Little girls who don’t know better could seriously eat it all up, especially if spoonfed from something with Selena Gomez on the cover.

But honestly, Nicole Weider, tweens aren’t that easily persuaded. They’re not suddenly discovering the concept of sex when speed reading Cosmo covers while in line at the market. They’re learning about sexual tension from Twilight books and wondering how Kim Kardashian got famous in the first place, they already know what has to happen for Justin Bieber to become the father of any child. Maybe they even hear their parents’ mattresses squeak every once in a while. They’re learning about sex from everywhere else but Cosmopolitan magazine, and if they buy it, it’s because they’re already plenty curious about it. That seed was planted long ago, and the magazine just happens to be the most effective fertilizer toward cultivating great sex.

Sorry, but this ban won’t pass. The FCC will never take this seriously. Such a lucrative magazine in a struggling industry is not a threat to society. And Cosmopolitan will continue to “corrupt” tweens with saucy headlines and sexualized child stars, and there’s nothing that can be done that will actually make any kind of difference. Want tweens to stop having sex, parents? Educate your kids about STI’s and teen pregnancy (no, it does not happen as fast as Bella’s pregnancy in Twilight). Help them build self confidence outside receiving male attention and encourage some kind of moral code in the house. Oh, and make sure they aren’t so easily influenced that they’ll try out an idea that they read in passing on random magazine cover. Whose fault is it really?

Do you agree with Weider about Cosmopolitan’s persuasive effect on tween readers? Or do you also think it’s a little bit ridiculous to buy issues wrapped in cardboard paper whenever you want to thumb through a Cosmo?

Ashley is a UC San Diego grad who is holding on way too tightly to a potential career in magazines and goes to Vegas all too often. She’s fascinated with celebrities and strawberry beer and doubles as a pathological texter/emailer/blogger. Feed the addiction with tweets @cashleelee. Thanks in advance.

Remember when you were a freshman and lived in a dorm that smelled like mildew? Well check out Dakota Fanning’s freshman crib. She has a two-bedroom apartment all to herself. At many colleges, all freshman are required to live on campus, but I guess that doesn’t apply when you’ve been in The Cat in the Hat. It’s probably going to be amazing living in that apartment her freshman year, but she’s also going to miss a lot of things many freshman get to experience, so there’s a lot of pros and cons about having that apartment (although I would have totally taken that place if someone offered it to me freshman year).

initiating the gallery...

Dakota Fanning’s little sister, Elle, is making her big blockbuster debut this weekend in Steven Spielberg’s  sci-fi Super 8. And it got us to thinking, not only must celebrity siblings have much better closets to steal clothes from (Elle, did you wear my Twilight premiere dress again without asking!?!), but also much more intense sibling rivalry. Suddenly you trying to one-up your sibling by getting straight A’s is looking pretty low key.

But we’re all about peace and love here at CollegeCandy and wanted to focus on the positive. Like how cool it must be to be in  a famous family. So with no further ado, may we present our favorite celebrity siblings. Some of them we know and love, some of them we know and hate, some of them we didn’t even know were siblings.

[Ladies, meet Meredith, the newest addition to the CollegeCandy team. She's a BU student, a movie buff, and an all around fantastic chicadee. She'll be our resident movie gal, givings us the ins and outs of the new releases and now-on-DVDs and telling us whether or not its worth it to add 'em to our NetFlix queue.]

The Runaways (available today, July 20th, on DVD) follows the path of the band, The Runaways, also known as the first all-girl rock band. The one that wanted to rock like the boys. We watch it all happen. At the beginning, Cherie Currie is some random semi-rebellious tenth grade student in the ’70s, lip-syncing to David Bowie and chopping her hair off. At the same time, Joan Jett is being patronized at guitar lessons; she wants to learn rock songs, but apparently girls don’t play electric guitar. All of a sudden, Joan walks up to one of the most important men in the music industry, Kim Fowley, and tells him that she plays guitar. He hooks her up with a girl drummer and sends them on their way. While watching them practice, though, Fowley decides that the group needs some sex appeal. This is where Currie comes in. She’s sitting in a club when he comes up to her and says, “I like you’re look.” He walks away mouthing, “Jail. F**king. Bait.” Just the sex appeal that his band needed.

Crazy right? Tenth graders are 16.
But, uh, Miley Cyrus is 17.

Have you ever seen a movie about a songwriter or a filmmaker where the things around them inspire their art, like Walk the Line about Johnny Cash? The Runaways is not that movie. Fowley inspires the band’s songs. Fowley tells the band to think like guys, to only care about orgasms, to give themselves to the crowd then take themselves away at the last second. He tells them to sell themselves, and they do. Currie goes from wearing blue jeans and boots to wearing underwear on stage. Jett goes from leather pants and t-shirts to red skin-tight leather suits.

And these girls are YOUNG.

The casting is perfect because the audience gets to watch two actresses that they have seen grow up. Kristen Stewart played Jodie Foster’s daughter when she was eleven in Panic Room. Dakota Fanning has grown up on camera; she was ten when starred in War of the Worlds as Tom Cruise’s daughter. When audiences watch Fanning and Stewart on screen, they are reminded of those huge movies where these girls played daughters. That’s why the transformation that Joan and Cherie have throughout the movie is so effective. They’re doing drugs, they’re making out, they’re taking off their clothes. I got uncomfortable watching the little girl from Uptown Girls and The Cat in the Hat stripping down to her underwear for the cameras and on stage. And I think that’s important.

Flash forward thirty years from now. Are we going to be watching a biopic about Miley Cyrus? Of course, we’ll be rocking out to the new renditions of “Party in the USA” and “Can’t Be Tamed,” but how will we react to their re-creation of her lap dance video, her naughty leaked pictures, and her stripping down to her underwear on stage? The Runaways taught me that jailbait sells. Is someone whispering that sentiment into Miley’s ear? The music is important, but is there a Kim Fowley telling her to be a cherry bomb?

I would recommend the movie. The questions that it asks about fame, especially at such a young age, are very important. In a world that has Perez Hilton calling Miley “Slutty Cyrus,” we need a movie like this.

If you’re not a huge gossiper/have a subscription to every tabloid/read the gossip blogs religiously/understand the issue that is Suri Cruise’s choice in footwear, it’s hard to understand what all your crazy, celebrity-obsessed friends are talking about. I mean, it’s hard enough to tell the Jonas Brothers apart – how does anyone keep up with Britney Spears’ relationship status (are they on? off? on? is she shaving her head again?!)?

It’s exhausting and you’ve got more important things to do than look at who Perez Hilton is drawing penises on this week. So let me help and be your Cliff’s Notes of gossip. I’ll bring you the 5 biggest Hollywood happenings of the week so you know what’s going on to the most important people on earth. (That was sarcasm, in case you didn’t get it.)

1. Obviously, the top news in La La Land is the alleged infidelities of Jesse James against his wife, Oscar-winner Sandra Bullock. According to sources, James had an 11-month affair with tattoo model, Michelle “Bombshell” McGee. Although there are conflicting stories, Jesse James issued an apology this week saying, “The vast majority of the allegations reported are untrue and unfounded. Beyond that, I will not dignify these private matters with any further public comment.” He continued, apologizing to his wife and children. Sandra Bullock moved out of their home on Monday and pulled out of the UK premiere of The Blind Side due to “unforeseen personal circumstances.” There’s a lot left to come out of this story, so let’s hope it’s not another Tiger Woods saga.

2. Speaking of which, one of Tiger’s 4,587 big boobed mistresses launched a website today called Sexting Joslyn James where you can read all the naughty (and I mean naughty!) things Tiger sent to the lovely porn star. Seriously, this guy likes it freaky.

3. In still more relationship news, Kate Winslet and Sam Mendes officially split this week after going through a trial separation when things hit a rough patch while filming together on Revolutionary Road. Rumors have been circulating that Mendes may have cheated with actress Rebecca Hall, but his rep quickly denied those allegations. The pair split amicably and want to remain friends for the sake of their kids. Kate is supposedly relying on her good friend, Leonardo DeCaprio for support during this difficult time. Perhaps he’ll ditch Bar Rafaeli and give us all the happy ending we’ve been waiting for!?

4. The Runaways, and that “steamy” kiss shared by Dakota Fanning and Kristen Stewart we’ve all been hearing about, opens today. Will it be more than just a girl on girl kiss between everyone’s favorite child actress and that Twilight girl who never smiles? We’ll have to wait and see.

5. Shiloh Jolie Pitt is still being criticized for wearing pants and having a short haircut. The tabloids are tearing her (a very small child) apart and wonder WTF is happening in the Jolie-Pitt chalet that could lead to such a travesty. It is so serious, in fact, that this story was in 2 magazines this week. TWO!

In Other News…
1. Sarah McLachlan just announced she’ll be releasing a new album on June 15! She hasn’t done new material for 7 years except those depressing animal commercials, so this is something to look forward to!

2. Heidi Montag fired her creepy, pyschic manager after only a few days. She’s been filming her cameo (alongside her boobs) on the set of Adam Sandler’s new movie Just Go With It. Also her and Spencer no longer want to be referred to as Speidi since he isn’t her manager anymore. Right.

3. Betty White said this week that the producers of Dancing With The Stars have been after her for the next season! She declined the offer because well she’s old! Waaahhhh (Snooki voice). But you can catch Betty White on Saturday Night Live May 8!

4. Chelsea Handler’s new book Chelsea Chelsea Bang Bang was released this week. Go out and grab it!

5. Robert Pattinson is still hot.

"This microphone makes me look more legit, y'all."

Britney’s pissed off the wrong people!

Cutest (and oldest) newlyweds EVER.

Dakota Fanning‘s growin’ up.

Do you have metabolism problems?

Bradley Cooper replaces Shia LePoop.

Lady Gaga is everywhere.

Adam Lambert is single! (But still not into us ladies…)

Dakota Fanning wins the big prize.

What’s wrong with Elton John!?

Is fear preventing you from finding love?

Mel Gibson’s got another baby.

Robert Pattinson opens up to Vanity Fair (and looks really hot doin’ it).

We want berry lips like Megan Fox.

Green jobs are best for recent grads.

Is Miley Cyrus single?

14 tips to look better in the buff.

Oh no. Kristen Stewart is so gonna ruin Dakota Fanning.

So, in an attempt to avoid an ulcer or an unfortunate road rage incident, I vent to you, dear reader. Please feel free to join in and comment about anything–really, anything–that pissed. you. off. this week. Let it all hang out. I feel you.]

Landscapers: Ok guys, I understand that you’ve got a lot of ground to cover (no pun intended) and that requires you to start the day extra early to please all of your clients, one of whom happens to be the landlord of my apartment. I have no problem with you guys manicuring the lawn (because the thought of operating any type of lawnmower scares the living crap out of me–wierd childhood fear), but I do have trouble justifying the fact that you come at 7 am every. single. Monday. Coincidentally, 7 is four hours earlier than I ever plan on waking up on a Monday. I’m sure you can understand why it could be difficult to sleep through someone weedwhacking right under my window. On the bright side, you do wake me up early enough to possibly be a productive citizen, so I actually didn’t mind my chainsaw alarm last Monday when it got me to go to the library earlier–until I walked outside and got dirt in my eyes from the huge clouds you stirred up with the leafblowers. Will you never let me have my peace!?

Tricky Ass Midterm Questions: You know when you get the breakdown for an exam ahead of time and you see that there’s a 30 question True/ False section? You know how AWESOME that is? Ok, then you also know the confusion and frustration that come along with realizing how freaking tricky your professor is. Yes, you memorized specific dates, names and details, but when you memorized the Byzantine Empire’s obsession with the color purple and your teacher throws the word “puce” into her question, what the hell are you supposed to do?! All of a sudden you’re questioning the double meaning behind all of her questions. Then you panic and rush through the section carelessly T and F-ing your way to a C-… Why can’t we all just rely on multiple choice?

Perfect Beach Days When You’re Landlocked: So I know that complaining about sunshine and blue skies probably earns me a lot of enemies still shoveling snow after this week’s Nor’Easter, but let me just tell you that living in the Sunshine State is pointless if you’re hours from any kind of beach and locked in a library. Looking out the window and imagining the countdown to Spring Break is pure torture when the closest thing to the Sea is your Marine Bio exam. You keep trying to push through your midterm studying to inch closer to Margaritaville, but that feat is incredibly difficult when the entire climate is mocking you.

Dakota Fanning: I’ve always felt that the best way to sum up my feelings towards Dakota Fanning is through Amy Poehler’s SNL skit about her. She was pretty cute in Uptown Girls. She’s a talented kid, but that still doesn’t explain the weird vibe I get from her. Like she knows something I don’t. Like after completing a Scooby Doo sequel she’ll enroll in Yale and later become head of the C.I.A. Anyway, her portrayal of the little girl who was molested creeped the hell out of me, and her new role in that superhero movie was as annoying as her superior sounding tone. And Coraline? Awesome…but creepy. And now my good friend Perez has informed me that she’ll be expanding her realm of sketchiness with a role in the latest Twilight movie. She will be playing a vampire though, so I can’t decide if her creepiness may just be completely appropriate. Thoughts?