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SHARON STEEL

Latest Articles

Yo, Jonny! The Love Song of Jonny Valentine

Sometime after becoming a YouTube megastar and crashing into the cult of personality that has metastasized in contemporary society, Teddy Wayne's 11-year-old bubblegum idol Jonny Valentine is hanging out in his dressing room getting a blow job from a girl who doesn't even like his music.

By: SHARON STEEL | February 05, 2013

Lena Dunham and HBO get it right

Girls, girls, girls
When a new television show chronicling the lives of young women arrives, it tends to come packaged with the promise that it will expertly define them, both as a generation and a gender.

By: SHARON STEEL | April 13, 2012

Eugenides's updated Austen

Jeffrey does Jane
For his long-awaited third novel, Jeffrey Eugenides goes back to look at love in the '80s — and apparently decides that it's a lot like love in the early 19th century.

By: SHARON STEEL | October 12, 2011

Review: Ringer

Sarah Michelle Gellar is her own vehicle
Sixty seconds into the CW's new psychological thriller Ringer, star Sarah Michelle Gellar is seen running from a masked attacker in the darkness.

By: SHARON STEEL | September 08, 2011

Love's lexicographer

David Levithan defines affection
As the editorial director at Scholastic, David Levithan is surrounded by emotional stories about adolescents. Being overexposed to such hyperbolic feelings about feelings could easily turn a writer off pursuing such ventures himself — despite the secrets he may have picked up along the way.

By: SHARON STEEL | February 10, 2011

Review: MTV's ''Skins''

MTV attempts an American do-over
MTV has rated its new Skins TV-MA LDS - which in plain English means teenagers smoking weed, popping pills, fucking each other, and having emotional breakdowns in a scripted show that MTV would like us to think is designed to be viewed by adults.

By: SHARON STEEL | January 26, 2011

Girls talk

Sloane Crosley and Emily Gould tell all
There's only one thing more dangerous than being an ambitious, attractive twentysomething female stumbling through the publishing industry, attempting to secure quantifiable career success and, also, a fantastic boyfriend: the impulse to write about it.

By: SHARON STEEL | June 20, 2010

Hearts of glass

Ali Shaw’s modern fairy tale
In Ali Shaw’s debut novel, death by glass becomes a star-crossed love story in the vein of a Hans Christian Andersen fairy tale — a tragedy that strips away its isolated characters’ fears and defenses and reveals their bravery.

By: SHARON STEEL | April 06, 2010

Interview: Leanne Shapton

Object lessons
There are many end-of-relationship rituals.

By: SHARON STEEL | March 24, 2009

Interview: Joss Whedon

Cult of personality
When I first reach Joss Whedon — the director, writer, and producer who is perhaps best known as the creator of Buffy the Vampire Slayer — at his office at Fox Studios in Los Angeles, it's about 9 am his time, and it sounds as if I'd caught him before his coffee had kicked in.

By: SHARON STEEL | February 09, 2009

Review: Dollhouse

Joss Whedon continues to fight the darkness
Joss Whedon continues to fight the darkness

By: SHARON STEEL | February 09, 2009

Faking it

MTV's The City never gets real
if you were Whitney Port, the colt-legged, honey-haired, cow-eyed star of The City , you might not think that what Herman Rosenblat did was so terrible.

By: SHARON STEEL | January 06, 2009

Bad girls

Fashion deathmatches on Stylista and The Rachel Zoe Project
One of the accepted truths of the fashion world is that it’s utterly bizarre.

By: SHARON STEEL | October 29, 2008

Cry babies

Teen talent wails on High School Musical: Get in the Picture
The top brass at Disney knew full well what they were about to unleash when the original High School Musical premiered on the Disney Channel two years ago.

By: SHARON STEEL | August 19, 2008

High-school confidential

American Teen is no wasteland
For many, senior year is your last chance to do what you really want without worrying about snap judgments or lasting repercussions.

By: SHARON STEEL | July 29, 2008

The way it is

Interview: Talking about American Teen
Nanette Burstein admits that “through the pain and torture” of high school, she was able to come to terms with who she was.

By: SHARON STEEL | July 29, 2008

Facebook phobia

Thought high school was bad? Social-networking sites jack up Web-era insecurities
It’s safe to say that Facebook is now an omniscient, all-powerful tool that, in some way, traffics in dirt on nearly everyone you know.

By: SHARON STEEL | July 16, 2008

Sigur Rós

Með Suð Í Eyrum Við Spilum Endalaust| EMI
Here, as on 2005’s Takk, Sigur Rós have chosen to distill their rapture epics into shorter, more accessible bursts of swelling beauty.

By: SHARON STEEL | July 01, 2008

License this!

There’s some Feist album left if anyone wants it
The living, breathing Holy Grail of contemporary music success stories has impeccably styled Birkin bangs and a floaty angel voice.

By: SHARON STEEL | July 01, 2008

Where’s Lindsay?

Dina and Ali work the Lohan brand
Dina Lohan and her 14-year-old daughter, Ali, made the rounds on the talk-show circuit last week to promote their new reality series, Living Lohan .

By: SHARON STEEL | June 02, 2008

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