The NYTimes had an interesting story about the changing face of Marie Claire, which has come to embody the recent decadence of women’s magazines:

Ashlee Simpson appeared on the July cover of Marie Claire magazine extolling the virtues of appreciating one’s body as it is — then she had a nose job.

Well Marie Claire has taken a different tact then its competition, it has stuck it to Simpson:

In the first issue (due Aug. 15) over which she exercises full editorial control, Ms. Coles gives expanded space in the letters column to readers to vent against Ms. Simpson. Ms. Coles adds in a note: “We’re dazed and confused — and disappointed — by her choice, too!”Rare is the day when the editor of a women’s magazine will openly criticize a celebrity. But Ms. Coles is planting a flag: A new Marie Claire is in town and it is making a clean break with its past. No girly goo, no teeny-bopper covers, no blind obedience to the traditional rules of the road.“It has always been the smart girls’ book,” Ms. Coles said last week in an interview in her airy perch in the new Hearst building in Midtown Manhattan. “But it drifted off-brand, partly due to the assault on the newsstand from celebrity weeklies. It happened to everyone, not just Marie Claire.”