Julia Allison, the Star talking head and minicelebrity, has toned it down lately. Well, sort of: she stopped blogging her relationships and the "minutiae" of her daily life once her overshares nearly ruined it. But she's still paying for her sins, thanks to the long lead time of print media: last fall, writer Stephen Rodrick trailed Allison for a New York magazine profile. The story never ran; we hear that editor Adam Moss deemed her "overexposed." Now, the 6,000-word piece has been published on MediaBistro. Rodrick catches it all in a thoughtful and surprisingly engaging profile, from an accidental glimpse of her underwear ("a little frilly and matronly for a sex columnist") to the childhood years of a young Julia Baugher. The juicy bits? Car-stealing, apartment-squatting, and what happens when you date rich, powerful men who fly you around the world (and then get pissy when you don't put out.)

1.) Notable is Allison's blase recounting of the men — and those men's brothers — who date her and shuttle her around the world:

..."Where was I? Ok, but then Stephen flew me down to St. Barts for Valentine's Day," says Allison... "But when I wouldn't sleep with him, he got really pissed and wanted to throw me out of the villa. But his brother is sweet and tried to get me to stay. But it was Valentine's Day and I called [Men's Health editor-in-chief] David [Zinczenko] and said 'I'm coming back to New York and you're taking me out for dinner. We ended up having the nicest dinner at Elaine's with [New York Post editor-in-chief] Col Allan and his wife."


...Allison picks the thread back up after a few minutes of concentration. "Ok, then a couple days I later, I flew out to spend some time with Milo, and that was fun, but two days later after I leave I see him on television canoodling with Emmy Rossum. I was like, 'whatever.'"

For a moment, she looks sad, and hugs herself, but it quickly passes. "Then Stephen's brother flew in from London to see me, but I blew him off. But I didn't know he was flying in just to see me until he took me to Milan in March. Well, it was actually Lake Como. Hmm, I don't know if his brother knows that."

2.) She is a blithe spirit who steals cars! "Allison's apartment belongs to her ex-boyfriend who let Allison stay for a year with the promise she would move out by October 1. Their parting was amicable, but the ex-boyfriend's patience was tested when he saw that Allison posted on her blog video of herself rapping along with the radio while she drove his $75,000 Mercedes convertible in the Hamptons. She had sweet-talked the car out of his garage without his permission."

3.) Friend or foe, she'll take center stage for photos, thanks:

A couple of hours later, it is time for Betsey Johnson's show. Allison's friend Mary Rambin has now joined her. As with all of Julia's friends, Rambin views Allison with equal parts affection, amusement, and a desire to blow dart her with a lethal potion. A photographer asks the statuesque Rambin to pose with a copy of Fashion Week Daily. The first camera click triggers Allison's Pavlovian setting. Her face animates and she insists on posing too. Julia then hipchecks Rambin out of the frame's sweet spot.

4.) She sometimes exasperates her big-deal boss, Star editor-in-chief Bonnie Fuller: "At that precise moment, Bonnie Fuller, editor-in-chief of Star, walks into the room. She looks baffled and asks, Allison, uh, why the hell are you posing with a rival publication's newspaper? Julia sweet-talks her way out of the sticky wicket leaving the boss smiling." Bonnie had to scold her once for being "unprofessional," something about a lip-synching video.



5.) She knows her tragic flaw: "As the elevator draws her back down to earth, she is lost in thought for about a tenth of a second. "I'm not sure why I told you all that. Sometimes, I can't help myself."

The rest of the profile, likening Allison to a character actress with fuzzy boundaries, is a far more sophisticated take than the "Julia is the next Carrie Bradshaw" angle that the Times went with last week.

Becoming Julia Allison [MediaBistro]