Pardon the 'Vanity Fair"

The Frist campus center is littered with signs of a midterm period in full swing: a dwindling supply of Red Bull and other caffeinated beverages, omnipresent outfits of Princeton sweatpants and eating club sweatshirts, bleary-eyed students on the third floor (commonly known as the 'factory') poring over text books and feverishly typing on laptops.

If columnist David Brooks ever needed photographic evidence for his 2001 "Organization Kid" column on over-scheduled and career-conscious Princeton students, Frist center would provide it. But that would be only half the story.

Though many students trudge home after a long day of studying and promptly pass out on their flimsy mattresses, some need a more active, cathartic experience. No, not Nabokov or Tolstoy; I'm talking about the E! Channel, US Weekly or socialitelife.com. Or maybe all three.

On a recent evening, a friend and I were browsing the Wa for snacks when we stumbled across the magazine racks by the fruit stands and ice coolers. Even as my friend complained that she would be up until 5 a.m. doing work, her hand casually reached toward the magazine rack and selected a copy of the latest US Weekly.

Though most Princeton students will never bring up Jude Law and Sienna Miller's turbulent relationship in precept to illustrate Shakespearean lust and love entanglements, celeb gossip still has a place in many students' lives.

Perhaps these celebrity news outlets cannot be considered rigorous academic material, but for many students and other Americans they're a necessary fix — a saccharine break from the world of midterms, natural disasters and war campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan.

As the sales figures of traditional news agencies slip — Newsweek reported a 14 percent drop this year, and The New York Times recently laid off some 500 staff members to cut costs — the circulation figures of the top gossip glossies have realized amazing growth.

According to the Audit Bureau of Circulation, in the first six months of this year, the circulation of People magazine (long considered the standard in the celebrity weeklies business) jumped from 1.3 million to 3.8 million readers. In Touch's readership grew by almost 50 percent, and US Weekly's circulation rose almost 24 percent. This trend may have even influenced more straight-laced publications to slacken their conservative styles.

This summer, The New York Times ran a long feature on Tom Cruise's much-publicized antics on the Oprah Winfrey show, including multiple stills on their website of the "Top Gun" legend jumping up on Ms. Winfrey's couch for the Times' increasingly computer literate readership.

What with newspapers, carbon-copy gossip publications, the ubiquitous celebrity gossip blogs and the E! channel, celebrity news has become instantaneously available — anywhere, anytime.

While this increase in gossip media is undeniable, there has also been an increase in other topic-specific publications. Gendered magazines used to cover all women's or men's "interests" — Ladies' Home Journal ran stories about fashion, recipes, celebrities, etc., and Esquire discussed women and sex, men's health and fitness, style, cars and other topics for gentlemen. Recently, however, there has been a rise in the number of subjectand gender-specific glossies.

For example, instead of a general women's magazine with gossip, fashion, recipes and more, a girl can now buy Lucky magazine for shopping, Gourmet for cooking, Parenting for family issues, People for celebrity gossip, Self or Prevention for fitness and event-specific magazines like Modern Bride, Teen Prom or Fit Pregnancy.

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Even more surprisingly, men have a similar array at the newstand. There are now men's shopping magazines like Cargo (from the creators of Lucky), health magazines, "gear" magazines covering cars and technology and style and travel magazines.

This trend helps to explain some of the statistics of a rise in gossip mags — if all subject-specific magazines are increasing in readership, then the celebrity publications would increase as well. However, a general trend still doesn't explain this American love affair with the artificial world of pop culture.

As the world news continues to relay bleak stories of natural disasters, plane crashes and the rising death toll in Iraq, celeb weeklies make perfect escapist capsules. Perhaps watching the antics of TomKat, Brangelina, Vaughniston and LaLohan is our way of reverting to the world of high school drama.

The proliferation of celebrity glossies on dorm coffee tables and nightstands does not mean the death of intellectualism on campus. Sometimes, after living so long in the realm of academia, one needs to disengage for a second in order to reengage.

"It's a nice break from work. It's something relaxing where you don't have to think," said Kristen Scott '09. "It's something a little less serious than everything else you're reading," Marina Willis '09 agreed.

Even the 'organization kid' needs a break sometimes. Reporting contributed by Anna Bialek