I love when a magazine gives me a reason to love it, and Glamour’s “American Icons” photo portfolio of totally awesome women portrayed by today’s young talents, is often inspiring enough to bring tears of pride. For real. There’s Hayden Panettiere as Amelia Earhart, Chanel Iman as Althea Gibson and America Ferrera looking gamely dumpy as United Farm Workers Activist Dolores Huerta. Not surprisingly, white women outnumber women of color by two to one — which is less a comment on Glamour than on society. But what’s really interesting is that white women can achieve iconicity with frivolity — the anachronistic Carrie Bradshaw; the women of Woodstock; Audrey Hepburn, who is noted for her style rather than her charity work — while women of color need substance, for they aren’t only breaking gender barriers but more pernicious racial ones as well.

Who else is feeling slightly cheated by Cookie and its cover promise of revealing Helena Christensen’s three-minute beauty tricks? I mean, yeah, there’s copy about her variety of makeup-apps — as if a supermodel’s vanity routine has anything to do with even the MILFiest of mortals — but what about Helena’s three-minute beauty tricks for the kid? That’s the knowledge I want. Because she has clearly mastered the “nude face” for Mingus — not to mention gorgeously highlighted, piecey locks — waaay better than for herself.

What could be more perfect for Teen Vogue’s Prom Issue than a stripped-down, druggy-eyed, about-to-black-out-in-a-random-hotel-room Daisy Lowe?! While the editorial content naturally needs to promote a clean-cut, DIY version of the troublingly tenacious high-school tradition, the Marc Jacobs advertisement featuring Lowe — along with a story about decreasing the drinking age to 18 — sneakily alerts readers to the magazine’s party-girl savvy in a wink-wink, we-get-it kind of way that’s easily disguised from distracted parents. Next up? The College Issue: Marc Ronson Leads the Way In.

Magazines are the new blogs! If you are a print believer like me, then a super-exciting story in today’s New York Times will give you great ammo when defending your territory against the online apostles. Hewlett Packard, of all companies, has come up with a revolutionary web service called MagCloud, which allows anybody to make their own glossy magazines for a fraction of what it costs to run photocopies at the local printshop. Let the Magazine MILF empire commence!

Apparently the pre-Obama inaugural gun run has found new life on female celebrity skin — and you’ll be surprised by who does it best. There’s Rihanna’s none-too-subtle, post-Chris Brown rebound piece, which was inexplicably inked into her armpit by the appropriately named Bang Bang. And then there’s — hold on for it — Margaret Cho, who has achieved a major first by seriously out-fabulousing Ri-Ri, with her wildly original and sexy thigh-garter holding a derringer pistol, which was revealed in The New York Times Sunday Magazine this week. Which just goes to show that tats for style will always outshine tats for statement-making.