Making viral-marketing movie history is the indie film Paranormal Activity. Shot for $11,000 in director Oren Peli’s house three years ago, Paramount Pictures began playing the horror flick at midnight in 16 college towns, selling out many of the showings. Then the studio urged fans to go online and "demand" the movie’s wider release. It received more than a million requests, enabling the distributor to claim that the movie is "the first-ever major film release decided by You." Now Paranormal Activity has expanded to daylong runs in 760 theaters and grossed $34 million. An executive from a rival studio told Deadline Hollywood, "Look out, cuz there’s a freight train coming, and Paramount is going to make a TON of cash on this pickup. Cuz they ain’t spending anything on it, and who knows where the ceiling is!"

QUOTE: "I can’t ever imagine myself doing nudity in a film. It lives forever, especially now, with the Internet. … People take everything from you when you’re in this business. Your anonymity is stripped from you. They invade every part of your personal life, your relationships. Everything you say gets judged, everything you do gets judged. Literally all I have left are my private parts, and I don’t want to share them with the world. I’d like to keep them private. That’s why they’re called that."

—actress Megan Fox (Jennifer's Body, Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen, Transformers), on why she won’t do full nudity onscreen

QUOTE: "Whenever anybody asks me, would I do nudity in a film, if I say that it’s something I’m not comfortable with, they’re like, ’Bulls‑‑‑, you’ve already done it.’ If anything, it makes it more embarrassing, because that was a private thing. It’s screwed up that someone screwed me over like that. At least some people are learning from my mistakes."

—actress Vanessa Hudgens (Bandslam, High School Musical 3, 2 and 1), on how nude photo scandals have influenced her and other people’s perceptions of her

Lots of celebrities have appeared on the cover of Playboy magazine through the years. But never a cartoon character. Until now. The November issue features Marge Simpson on the cover and in what the magazine’s editorial director, James Jellinek, describes as a "very, very racy" centerfold. "She is a stunning example of the cartoon form," Jellinek adds. Another Playboy representative said that putting one of the stars of The Simpsons on the cover was an attempt to get the attention of a younger generation. "We knew that this would really appeal to the 20-something crowd," said Theresa Hennessey. Since 2006, Playboy’s circulation has slipped from 3.15 million to 2.6 million. The median age of its readers is 35.

A size-4 model’s eight-year career with Ralph Lauren ended in April when the fashion house allegedly deemed her too heavy. Filippa Hamilton, 23, never intended to go public with the firing, but when a drastically Photoshopped image of her looking unnaturally thin surfaced, she spoke out. "Every young woman is going to look at [that photo] and think that is normal to look like that," says Hamilton. "It’s not. I saw my face on this super-extremely skinny girl, which is not me. It makes me sad. It makes me think that Ralph Lauren wants to have this kind of image. It’s an American brand … and it’s not healthy, and it’s not right." Ralph Lauren claims that Hamilton failed "to meet the obligations under her contract." One of the company’s spokesmen did, however, apologize for the altered image, stating, "After further investigation, we have learned that we are responsible for the poor imaging and retouching that resulted in a very distorted image of a woman’s body."

Germany’s most popular women’s magazine, Brigitte, has decided to ban professional models from its pages. In fact, the bi-monthly mag determined that it will only use a mix of prominent women and regular readers in its beauty and fashion photo spreads. Editor in chief Andreas Lebert said the move was in response to readers’ complaints about "protruding bones" from models who weigh far less than an average person.

QUOTE: "We found in children as young as 10 and 11—all fifth-graders—they’re experiencing these very negative feelings about their bodies related to their weight. It was true in both boys and girls, but it was more pronounced in girls. In the boys, being very thin was also related to feeling bad about their body, but the thinner for girls, the better they felt about their bodies."

—S. Bryn Austin, assistant professor of pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston, on a body-image study involving 4,245 schoolchildren in Nova Scotia, Canada, conducted by researchers from Harvard University and the University of Alberta

QUOTE: "This year, in a growing trend that is truly scary, fifth-graders are encouraged to dress like cheap hookers. Mainstream companies such as brandsonsale.com, Costume Super Center and Costume Kingdom are peddling pint-size versions of outfits even Madonna might find trashy."

—Jane Ridley, columnist for the New York Daily News, on the proliferation of skimpy, mass-marketed Halloween costumes for preteen and tween girls. She adds, "It’s going to be one happy Halloween for the Roman Polanskis of this world."

QUOTE: "What makes Cougar Town—and to a lesser extent, Accidentally on Purpose and Eastwick—so bad is that we’re supposed to find these mincing, wincing, mediocre women so charming. Even though most of them appear to have been injected and spot-toned to the point of being exact replicas of their 20-something selves, we’re still supposed to believe them when they whine about how ugly and old and hideous they feel."

—Salon television critic Heather Havrilesky

On Thursday, Oct. 15, many Americans tuned in to watch the dramatic story of a 6-year-old boy from Fort Collins, Colo., who supposedly got carried away in a homemade helium balloon. When the balloon came down, little Falcon Heene was nowhere to be found. The first story the family proffered was that they subsequently discovered him hiding in the family’s garage. But when Falcon said on CNN’s Larry King Live, "We did this for a show," many began to suspect that the bizarre story was a sham. Since then, Larimer County Sheriff Jim Alderden has said, "There is absolutely no doubt in our minds that this was a hoax." And many in the media have speculated that the whole thing was motivated by the Heene family’s desire to land a reality TV show. The Heenes (who have already appeared on ABC’s Wife Swap) had pitched a reality show idea to TLC earlier this year, but it was rejected. Falcon’s parents, Richard and Mayumi Heene, will likely face several felony charges related to perpetrating the hoax.

QUOTE: "When 6-year-old Falcon Heene threw up twice while being interviewed about his role in last week’s balloon ordeal, he summed things up for millions of onlookers. Sickening. … But somehow inevitable. It’s endemic of the more and more seductive urge to dismiss truth, responsibility and other traditional values in favor of hustling for fame on the genre that continues to be labeled, with less and less cause, ’reality TV.’"

—AP writer Frazier Moore