Demi on how hot she’s not: “I don’t like drinking water, so this is great,” she says. Ask her the secret to her age-defying hotness (obviously not traditional hydration) and she replies, “Hotness? Well, if you want to look at how dorky I am.”
Does Demi consider herself a cougar? [She wears] two diamond Cartier Panthère rings. Panthères as in panthers, which some people call pumas. Demi likes pumas; she infinitely prefers them to cougars. “Cougar has become so distasteful,” she says, nose wrinkling. “I really hate that expression.” She said recently that when it comes to her relationship, she’d prefer to be called a puma. “It has a sweeter quality, more elegant. And then somebody said to me, ‘Pumas are only for people in their 30s.’ Somebody really offended me on Twitter by saying, ‘How is that better, switching from one predator to another?’ I wrote back, saying it’s important to keep your sense of humor.”
On using Twitter for good: Demi uses Twitter as a forum for her calls for awareness of sexual trafficking and slavery. The couple recently established the DNA Foundation, which has been working with the State Department. “It is something that we are committed to, particularly as it relates to underage girls,” she says. “We want to have some effects on legislation in the U.S.” She is practicing what she preaches: More than half of her posts are on the subject, directing followers where to get involved.
So, do the Kutchers have a stake in Twitter or what? “Do not. We should, but no, to be very clear, we have no side financial relationship whatsoever.” So basically — for now anyway — they just dig it. “I like to connect to people in the virtual world,” she explains, “exchanging thoughts and ideas, when in the physical world we might never have the opportunity to cross paths.”
She‘s still in denial about that re-touched W Magazine cover: “Okay, that is literally my shape,” Demi says, sticking her leg out for effect. What bothered her, she says, “wasn’t that people were saying it was retouched, it was that they were saying my hip was so badly botched because a hunk of it was taken out. I called the photographers, and they said, ‘We did not touch anything on your hip, your thigh, or your waist. It was the position.’ Actually, somebody sent me an image I retweeted on Twitter. It was this beautiful marble statue, and the body position was exactly the same as what I was doing. This person had outlined how the hip goes in and the leg goes out.” So silence thee, hip haters.
Demi is a size two, but hates how small models are: “Models, even male models — how small they’ve gotten! It looks great for the clothes, but it’s not what you want in real life. Why do we have to keep looking at ourselves and measuring?”
On fashion: Demi has long supported young American designers (she was one of the first to wear Proenza Schouler and is a big fan of rising star Prabal Gurung), as much as she loves her Lanvin. She has “two modes: baggy boyfriend jeans and a T-shirt with a little cardigan and ballet flats. And then I have the other part of my life that’s dress-up.” That translates into slinky cocktail numbers that are as glossy as her famous mane of hair. In this session, Demi wears an abstract print dress from the late Alexander McQueen. “McQueen was a genius,” she says. “I was always thrilled to wear his clothes because they were more than fashion; they were truly works of art.” She sees more in fashion than just clothes. “I met Roland Mouret the other night, and he said, ‘Fashion is a language without words.’ That’s why I love it.”
On meeting Ashton: When Demi met Kutcher at a play in New York in 2003, she was doing “dress-up” — to be specific, wearing a strappy blue Proenza Schouler cocktail dress. In short, she winks, it was “the dress that gets results.” Common lore has it that the pair were introduced by that erstwhile cupid, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, but no. “It was another friend,” Demi says with a smile, stirring the vegetable concoction brought in by her smiling lady chef. “It was an effective evening. It was a life-changing evening.”
On Ashton in general: “I knew it had the potential to be something special right away,” she says. “It was like meeting somebody that I’ve just known where you just recognize one another. It was so disproportionate, the level of emotion we were experiencing to the time we had spent together. But when you don’t know someone, you can’t just jump and say ‘I love you.’” Nice to meet you, I love you! “Yeah. No. We used to end our calls or e-mails with ‘And everything we don’t say.’ It just seemed too much, too soon.”
On staying relevant: In her own way, Demi has been a face of every decade. She grabs the zeitgeist and runs with it, from ’80s Brat Packer to ’90s box-office empress to this new decade’s queen of celebrity cyberspace. “I have three kids, so I’m surrounded by teenagers,” she explains, “and I’m married to a younger man. But I think it’s generally being interested in where the world is going.”
On aging: “I feel better in my skin, 100 percent,” she says. “That’s the tradeoff. You have greater effects of gravity, but the better sense of yourself you have is something I wouldn’t trade. Women who lie about their age — why?” She’ll try a new skin cream (her latest, Stemulation, along with the Clarisonic Opal, a sonic skin-care machine), “but I’m not an extremist. I mean, I’m not risky with haircuts. Someone did just bring me the latest fad from Russia, though,” she laughs. “Horse shampoo and conditioner.”
Yeah, I still think Demi is a delusional bitch. But have you noticed something? Every year, Demi’s face gets tighter, yet she looks just a tad older. At some point, something’s got to give, and when it does, I hope to God Demi won’t still be playing around with these “Women who lie about their age — why? I’m not an extremist” non-denial denials. But, as angry as I get with Demi for all of the surgery and denials, I start to like her when she talks about Ashton. I have to admit, I buy that sh-t. I think they adore each other. And that’s really cool.
