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LYNN PHILLIPS is a media tramp who writes and edits for film, television, print, and interactive media. She has written for a wide array of publications, including Glamour, The National Lampoon, The Realist, The Nation, Nerve, and Newsweek International, sometimes under the name, Maggie Cutler.

She is also the author of the book described below in Alex Hargood’s mini profile of Phillips from the contributors’ page of “T Beauty,” the NY Times’s fashion supplement, April 13th 2008:

The New York-based writer Lynn Phillips is a self-loather and proud of it. “I have an allergy to people telling me to cheer up,” she says. Phillips, who was once a writer on the cult 70?s television show “Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman,” has even written a book called “Self-Loathing for Beginners” (Santa Monica Press) that covers the basics for thoughtful cynics and all those who “respond better to gloomier encouragement.” (Chapter 1 has a section called “Self-Love—Friend or Foe?”) Phillips was kind enough to present the first annual self-loathing awards for this issue (And the Winner Is…” Page 26*); naturally, she turned her weary wit to some of the fashion industry’s worst culprits. She cites a history of people saying good things about dark moods, such as the psychologist William James and the astronomer Nicolaus Copernicus (center), whom she calls a master of the genre: “He even relocated humanity in the universe so we realized how pathetic and small we are.”

*NOTE: The article to which this squib refers was actually on p. 28, not p 26.