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The smile echoes a girlish grin found in New Trier High School yearbook photos for a student named Julia Baugher. But they are not the same. This one trades under a more pronounceable last name and has been homogenized by face paint and a possibly tapered nose.

The alterations have clearly worked. Wearing a red Diane Von Furstenberg dress, Julia Allison is one of the beautiful people. Then the door opens. Allison's pedicured crimson toes are housed in faux Yves St. Laurent heels and her first step turns her left ankle near sideways. She skitters across wet pavement like a toddler on skates, barely avoiding a face plant. She recovers and offers an endearingly dorky look. "Jesus, like I have time to go home and change." Julia Allison then shoots a mock glare. "I can't believe you didn't come to Fox. We were talking about whether or not it's cool for your girlfriends to date your exes." There is a thoughtful pause. "It is so not cool."

Agreed, but does a soundbite exist if it was preempted locally by 9/11 commemoration ceremonies? When informed her romantic musings didn't air in New York, Allison corkscrews her face into a cartoony pout. "Are you fucking kidding me? That was a kick ass segment."

No matter. Julia Allison's operating principle is victory through momentum. The heels click up concrete steps. She has already moved on. "C'mon, we have to get backstage and interview Monique Lhuillier."

Allison spends her waking hours playing the role of a lifetime: Julia Allison. It's acutely multiplatformed: A dating column for Time Out New York, video diaries chronicling Allison mantrap minutiae for her blog, and globetrotting to Milan, St. Barts, and the Super Bowl, paid for by men she is not dating. Suitors have included Prince Lorenzo from The Bachelor, former Congressman Harold Ford, and the guy from Heroes who used to be the guy from Gilmore Girls.

Being Julia Allison is a profitable enterprise. She has a six-figure gig as editor-at-large for Star. It's a 21st century assignment. Allison doesn't write for the tabloid, but goes on television as the magazine's face to discuss a heady array of weight subjects ranging from Britney's kids to how Halloween has morphed into Slutoween. For Fashion Week, Allison is taping video interviews for Star's Web site. It's been going smoothly: except for the moment she grabbed an actor from the television series Lost and asked 'Can you give us any hints what's going to happen next season?' The actor grimaced and answered, "I was killed off last year."

Backstage, no one has the proper passes, but Allison blows by security with a bat of her fake eyelashes and a well-placed, 'Jesus, I've been here all week." Behind the curtain, $10,000 dresses tower above underfed waifs eating micro grapes out of a Tupperware bowl. Allison notices a peach colored taffeta concoction and mouths, "That is beautiful."

She slips into a Cinderella like reverie until the press agent tells her she only has three minutes with Monique, a fashion designer. Allison snaps out of it and does the interview. She uses the word fabulous repeatedly. After air kisses, Monique scurries away followed by underlings. In the resulting melee, someone steps on the hem of the taffeta concoction and it collapses in a pile on the floor. There are gasps. "I think it's time we go," says Allison.

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. She simultaneously places her right hand on her hip, tilts her head to eleven o'clock, and holds up the paper. It's not an accidental stance. After careful analysis, Allison realized this was her best look. There are hundreds of pictures of Allison online in the same exact pose, an unintentional Warhol copy of herself.

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.

Minutes later, Allison is seated at a first row VIP table decorated with fake flowers, gift bags, and miniature champagne bottles. The theme is prom night, which is apropos. "I'd wear prom dresses every day," says Allison. "That is my look. I love for people to look at me all dressed up."

The show begins. The cameras make like fireflies and a couple of things become apparent: Bonnie Fuller's seat is less good and there are at least three bejeweled women with protruding collarbones staring hard at Julia Allison. You don't need a dialogue balloon to read their collective minds: "Who the fuck is Julia Allison?"

"But tell me, is she an idiot?"
As word spread that I was writing about Julia Allison, my email filled with conspiracy theories, derisive notes wondering where my career went astray, and the generous offers of three media columnists to divine the meaning of Julia Allison in modern American society. Literary comparisons arrived almost daily. She was Lily Bart from Edith Wharton's House of Mirth. No, a journalist out of Balzac. Wait, she's Nicola Six, the cold-hearted villainess in Martin Amis's London Fields. Or was she the callow femme fatale from that Aimee Mann song?

The enthusiasm, if you want to call it that, seemed outsized. The 27-year-old Allison's Time Out and Star posts are not exactly high-profile. Still, these are hydroponic times for self-promotion and, as she happily admits, Allison is a preternatural attention addict. In a year, Allison has gone from an unidentifiable extra at media parties, whose cleavage was more recognizable than her name, to a bonafide emblem of scorn within the chattering classes. That final step is the surest sign she has made it.

"I was having lunch with a couple of reporter friends when she got the Star job," a New York Times staffer told me. "They were all saying, 'Can you believe she's making more than us talking on television?' But then we were saying 'Well, that doesn't sound like a bad job.'" The Times staffer paused for a second. "But tell me, is she an idiot?"

It doesn't matter. Slights, rebukes, and outright condemnation do not concern Julia Allison. Actually, the more the smart set mock her -- and how they mock! -- the bigger she gets. Think Godzilla. Or Arianna Huffington. Matter of fact, Huffington, alleged plagiarist/former ingénue/now multiplatformed media star, has adopted Allison, alleged plagiarist/current ingénue/budding multiplatformed media star, as her pet. Last spring, the nouveau Greek tycoon chaperoned Allison to the White House Correspondents Dinner.

Allison is a new type of It Girl -- which just happens to be the title of a reality show starring Allison being shopped around town by the William Morris Agency. Where the classic It Girl was enigmatic and manipulated by an impresario, think Edie Sedgwick and Andy Warhol, Allison has taken the opposite approach: self-managed maximum exposure. She pulls her own strings. This is either progress or a sign that Rome has burned.

"Julia's playing a character that's not really her," insists Via Osgood, one of her oldest friends. "It's like a Joan Rivers thing, you become this big thing that people either love or trash, but you've become an icon. The whole slutty thing, that's just a role she is playing. It's like what Jessica Simpson was doing, but I don't think Jessica was playing at it."

Here in New York City, narcissism has been democratized. Just construct a naughty blog and cultivate outrageousness. Rinse, repeat and pretty soon you're smiling for the camera on one of the 24/7 must-feed-the-beast networks where coquettishness long ago trumped credentials. Of course, an equal opportunity me culture has its down side. A new Julia Allison pops up every season and the old Julia is discarded. Fame now has the shelf life of a bodega banana.

To continue scoring her attention fix, Julia Allison will have to give more and more of herself away. That doesn't seem like a problem. John Updike wrote "Celebrity is the mask that eats away the face." But that was in the eighties. Julia Allison happily feeds celebrity her entire exoskeleton.

"H&M, but don't tell anyone"
Betsey Johnson concludes her show with a cartwheel and a victory lap with her petrified granddaughter. Julia Allison exits for a costume change. As she walks toward a cab, her dress billows in the back giving much of Midtown a shot of her backside. Her underwear is not exactly granny pants, but they're a little frilly and matronly for a sex columnist. An old man in workman's clothes taps her shoulder.

"Excuse me, miss, I don't mean to be disrespectful but your dress is open in the back."

The man walks away and Allison calls after him.

"What you meant to say was 'I mean no disrespect, but I can see your ASS."

One reason Julia Allison has become a raunchy Rorschach test is her use of sex as a tactical nuclear weapon. There have been risqué shoots of Allison displaying her ample assets; sightings of Allison as arm candy for accomplished men and a boatload of TMI romance moments on her blog. Allison often dreams at night of solving Britney Spears' problems and the two women divide observers the same way: pro Britney/Julia types say the duo are post-feminists in on the sexual objectifying joke while anti-Britney/Julia types insist they are no talent, slut wrecks. There's no polite way to say it, Allison haters say she has dated her way if not to the top, at least to the gooey middle. Allison insists this isn't explicitly true, but decisions like going to Halloween parties in a dress made out of Trojan magnum wrappers hasn't dissuaded her skeptics.

"The question is whether she is a wide-eyed bimbo or is smart and clever and using being insanely attractive to her advantage," says Rachel Sklar, an editor at The Huffington Post and an Allison pal. "I believe the latter, a lot of people believe the former but the thing is there's a war going on in Iraq, people are starving in Darfur, and still, people are talking about Julia Allison."

Sklar tells a story about receiving a frantic message from Allison a few months ago. "I'm at the Gallery [a Lower East Side bar] and I'm being set up with Zach Braff," texted Allison. "But I didn't shave my legs. Help!" Sklar met Allison down at the bar with a razor and shaving cream.

Allison closes up her dress, grabs a cab, and heads toward her apartment in the East Twenties. "People think I'm this big slut," says Allison. "It's not true. I just believe you can date multiple people if you're open about it. " She then notices the offices of fashion impresario Peter Nygard. "Oh my God, I met him on the Montel Williams Show," says Allison giggling. "He was on because he dated Anna Nicole Smith. He kept asking me out and then he took me to the Fashion Rock show where Aerosmith and Fergie were playing. I kept talking to other people and then at the end of the show, I just got up and left. Then I saw him at the Nicky Hilton show. God, that was awkward. I think that intrigued him more. Guys like that get more interested when a girl doesn't want their wrinkly, saggy balls."

Allison's apartment features a giant self-portrait that renders her vaguely Bjork-like. "It was done by the guy who does all Ikea's artwork," says Allison. She flips through her mail and opens a package containing what would ultimately prove to be unsatisfactory bang extensions. Her shelves hold a few dozen self-help books, some Ayn Rand paperbacks, and a giant block letter 'A.' Allison pets her lap dog Lilly, turns on her curling iron, and then riffs on her Fiscal 2007 dating experiences.

"Ok, so in December I met this guy Stephen who is Candace Bushnell's ex. And he flew me to his place in South Africa for New Years," says Allison. She taps her foot, waiting for her curling iron to heat up. "And it's weird, but if you google "Julia Allison and stripper pole,' you will find images because he had a stripper pole in his basement. I mean it was the wrong size so I didn't do it. But I didn't sleep with him, but I met [Men's Health editor-in-chief] David Zinczenko there who I'd met before. So a little while after I got back, I went down to the Super Bowl. And while I was in Miami I met Milo Ventimiglia, he's on Heroes. I totally fell in love."

The phone interrupts. 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.

"Where was I? Ok, but then Stephen flew me down to St. Barts for Valentine's Day," says Allison holding the iron tight for a half a minute. "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 David 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 Col Allan and his wife."

Her hair recoiled; Allison sits down at her desk and refreshes the screen of her pink-lined laptop. She checks her email and sighs. "God, Fox wants me to talk about pro or con did Britney's MTV thing ruin her career. Duh." She looks again and exhales. "Thank God, I got pro."

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 June. Well, it was actually Lake Como. Hmm, I don't know if his brother knows that."

Now re-dressed in a simple black skirt and white blouse -- "H&M, but don't tell anyone" -- Allison grabs her purse and slams the door. 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."

"I'm still astounded by male attention."
The backyard of Robin and Peter Baugher's suburban Chicago home opens on to the sands of Lake Michigan. The Wilmette beach will look familiar to Allison completists. Mrs. Baugher videotaped her only daughter on her last trip home as she lip synched 'Tomorrow' from Annie. It was immediately posted on her Web site. While Bonnie Fuller wasn't a fan -- she scolded Julia for being unprofessional -- the video received thousands of hits.

There's little inside the Baugher home that suggests an ingénue on the make. Dad's a Princeton-educated lawyer and Mom stayed at home after a stint as a Nixon speechwriter. Sitting in a spacious living room dotted with tasteful art and volumes of Will and Ariel Durant's A History of Western Civilization, they both shake their heads in wonderment at their daughter's trajectory. "Our son Britt's exactly the opposite," says Robin. "He's studying to get a PhD in physics at MIT. He's really quiet." She laughs a little. "Now that I think about it, maybe that was a reaction to Julia taking up all the oxygen."

Julia Allison Baugher always liked to be the center of attention. Approaching eleven, Julia was grounded for backtalking and her birthday party was canceled. Undaunted, Julia snuck out of the house, rode her bike to her parent's country club, and persuaded the club to set aside a private room for her. She threw a surprise birthday party for herself the next day trekking in a bakery cake on her Schwinn.

"Julia's been a natural disaster since I met her," says Osgood, one of her best friends and a potential running mate on the reality show. "Julia appreciates how rules are important in society. But she can't appreciate how they might apply to her. I met her in middle school social studies where the textbooks read primitive man did this, primitive man did that, and Julia went through every textbook changing it to primitive man/woman. And I was like, 'who the hell is that?' Even then, she was saying 'any attention is good attention.'"

Julia Baugher attended New Trier High School, a public school of high achievers and the inspiration for John Hughes' Sixteen Candles and The Breakfast Club. Yearbook photos show she had a flair for the dramatic whether it was hugging a bag of cat chow in a stand-alone for the Animal Protection Club snapshot or making herself her own row in the newspaper group photo. "I remember when digital cameras first came out, Julia saying 'this is going to change my life and save me so much money,'" says a high school classmate. "She was really interested in documenting her life even in high school."

Julia had a radio show as a freshman, but lost it when she blanketed the school's walls with unapproved promo fliers. She then directed her attention to the school newspaper where she wrote columns including one advocating coed sleepovers. Somehow, she managed to get herself quoted in the Chicago Tribune three times before graduating. Baugher also participated in debate where she met Dan Shalmon, her first serious boyfriend. The relationship hit a rough patch when Julia posted on a high school debate blog under her own name that her boyfriend was the best debater in the country and everyone else should just give it up.

"I was actually thinner in high school," says Allison. "But I was a huge dork. I was not popular. And I didn't feel attractive. I'm still astounded by male attention. And I have not gotten over that."

A major component of New Trier's junior year is a term paper-like project that students are supposed to be working on throughout the year. "Julia didn't start hers until a few days before it was due," said Shalmon. "She didn't finish it until six months later. I would always marvel how she got out of things. She's like a cat who falls 26 stories and then walks away like it was just a short trip."

Julia briefly attended Indiana University after high school, a detail airbrushed out of her public bio. She quit after a semester. Her parents landed her a job working as a legislative aide for family friend, Illinois Congressman Mark Kirk. That fall, she was accepted as a transfer at Georgetown University majoring in political science.

That's where the fun began. Julia spent her first year at Georgetown as a cheerleader but fell out with the squad's boss in a dispute over a boy. The next year, Julia pitched the school paper, The Georgetown Hoya, a dating column. "I thought it was this great original idea," remembers Allison. "Sex and the City at college. But then I found out someone was already writing one at Yale. I was pissed."

Still, Julia had a gimmick: her mom was editing her column. The combo of sex, mom, and a tight-assed Catholic university proved potent. Within a few months, Julia and Robin Baugher were making joint television appearances. Julia's personal life was also going public. The Washington Post's Lloyd Grove wrote in his gossip column that Julia had been spotted dining with then Tennessee Congressman Harold Ford.

But then in 2003, a student tipped the paper that a column Julia wrote on holiday gifts for your man was suspiciously similar to one that had appeared on another web site. While the paper's staff noted similarities, both columns proved so banal it was impossible to decipher whether it was plagiarism or just a frightful lack of imagination. "I completely appropriated from this article," Allison told me. "Did I read it? Yeah. I was like, this is a great idea; I'm going to do something like it. And there were certainly similarities, but it's in no way plagiarizing."

News of the controversy leaked to the Washington City Paper who eventually wrote about the plagiarism charge and added a new charmer of an anecdote: The Washington Post's Frank Ahern was standing in line at Hollywood's Mondrian Hotel in the Summer of 2003 when a young woman began screaming about an eight dollar grapefruit on her bill. The girl then name-dropped that she wrote for the Washington Post and suggested there would be problems if the offending citrus wasn't removed from her bill. It was Julia Baugher.

Baugher wasn't fired over either incident. "The paper thought, 'look this is an university, it's a learning environment, it exists for people to make mistakes and learn from them,'" says Josh Zumbrun, the paper's editor. "But she had her own narrative that any time we cut one of her columns or asked her to turn her copy in on time we were all conservatives trying to stifle her. One day I was proofing pages late and she was taking her dog around saying 'my rat dog hates conservatives, my rat dog wants to pee on the pages.' Then we got in a shouting match and she told me if I ever tried to censor one of her columns she would make sure I never get another job in journalism. At that point, I said 'you're fired, get the fuck out of my office.'"

"Don't worry, we'll just fake it."
VH-1 executives had seen Allison on television and liked her energy. They invited her to their midtown office one fall afternoon for a meet and greet. Allison invited me along and we met in the lobby of my office.

Her silvery top is Jessica Rabbit tight. Ignoring her breasts would be like Ali ignoring Frazier's fists. We jump on an elevator with three Spanish-speaking young men. They fall quiet in Julia's presence. "Are any of you single? I'm looking for single men," shouts Allison. "Seriously, single, anyone?" The goggle-eyed trio jumps off on the next floor.

There's still time for lunch at a nearby cafe. "I love being a caricature," says Allison with a smile as she curiously swirls French Onion cheese around a spoon. "I'm creating the caricature so it's totally fine. I love watching how people react to what I've created." She waves for the waiter. "Is this what I ordered?" asks Allison. He nods, she persists. "Wait, are you single? Am I'm being obnoxious? Am I the most obnoxious person you have ever met?" The waiter wanly smiles and says, No, this is SoHo and it's only 1:30. The truly obnoxious people are still asleep.

Allison has a sweet side hidden by bustier and bluster, but it's one still driven by meta-living. After the waiter retreats, Allison talks of two friends who hate their careers. Allison's solution is simple: convert them to the dark side. She's hiring media training coaches for them. "I think if you're unhappy you should take steps to change," says Allison. "I'd love one day to be like Oprah which I hesitate to say because everyone says 'Oh God, girl's got delusions. But I want to have a career where half the time I'm helping people and half the time I'm fucking with people."

Allison admits on the ride uptown that she hasn't cleared my attendance with anyone at VH-1. "Don't worry, we'll just fake it. I guess I should call my agent, I really have no idea what this is about." After some polite chit chat with mid-level apparatchiks, Allison is led into the office of VH-1 head Michael Hirschorn. Afterward, she recounted their conversation. It went something like this:

"I just want to tell you how much I love The Girls Next Door," says Allison.
"Yes, but," says Hirschorn.
"It is really my favorite show, says Allison, her head bobbing up and down. "I'm hooked."
"Uh," says Hirschorn.
"No, seriously," I love it," insists Allison.
"But it's not on this network," says Hirschorn.
Allison skips her way back to the elevator. "I think that went really well!"

"My Two-Year Plan: Become a cult figure."
Julia Baugher moved to Los Angeles after college with her then-fiancée. She tried developing a reality show based on the sex lives of college students that she would host. When both the relationship and the show idea fizzled, she moved to New York in late 2004. On a legal pad, she wrote out 'My Two Year Plan.' One of the main goals was 'become a cult figure.'

And that she did. First came a name change. Critics suggest it was to escape the google history of the plagiarism accusation, but Allison speed-talks her way through her reasons. "First of all, I had a stalker at Georgetown. It was bad and I had gotten date-raped in August right before I was going into my senior year. I just wish I had protected [Julia Baugher] from that from the start. 'Julia Allison' I can put her out there."

Allison started a dating column for AM New York under her new name. She also befriended Daily News columnist Lloyd Grove who she knew from her Washington days. "Do you know the term 'walker?" says Allison. "I'm using it technically. Traditionally, that was a term used to describe gay men who took society women to parties when their husbands were doing other things. The reason I use it specifically in this case was because there was no sexual relationship between us. Although people insinuated that there was."

Grove brought Julia along to media parties where Allison could network. Eventually, she befriended bloggers for Gawker, the New York media Web site. Their relationship developed into epic co-dependency. Gawker skewered Allison mercilessly at first, now they write about her with a jaded tip of the cap. The relation grew symbiotic after a time. Allison wouldn't even send them her blog links; she knew Gawker would trawl for them on their own.

Brand Allison ramped up in the summer of 2006. That July, Allison wrote about her undergraduate relationship with representative Harold Ford for Cosmopolitan. He wasn't named, but Allison let everyone in the media know it was Ford. The timing couldn't have been worse for the Tennessee politician. He was trying to become the first black senator elected from the South since Reconstruction. The timing couldn't have been better for Allison. Shortly after, she upgraded her dating column from AM New York to Time Out New York.

Meanwhile, Allison made progress on the television track. She sent her reel to television producers that she met while on the party circuit. She let them know that she was available at any hour to talk about anything. (That still continues. In October, I received a frantic call from Allison asking me if I could give her the 411 on "Joe Toro" and "Steinbrook." When I suggested maybe she should decline, she shouted back, 'No fucking way!") By November 2006, Allison was appearing on low rent Fox shows and was being limo'd to a Philadelphia cable station to talk about politics under a chyron that inexplicably read "Democratic political consultant."

Things moved quickly after that. She upgraded to Fox's Red Eye and MSNBC segments. Allison was hired by Star in April of 2007 as their on-air editor at large. Soon after, she was talking Britney as a "celebrity media expert" on Howie Kurtz's staid CNN show, Reliable Sources. On the 'net, Allison was videoblogging her break up and make up with Jakob Lodwick, one of CollegeHumor.com's founders. Last June, Allison attended the Time 100 party with Sklar. "As we walked up the red carpet, she stopped like she was a celebrity and the paparazzi just started snapping her picture," recalls Sklar. "She loved it."

Back in Wilmette, Mr. and Mrs. Baugher wring their hands with pride and concern. "I think it's great," says Robin Baugher. "She's taken off like a rocket ship." Her husband laughed a bit. "The only problem is at some point the rocket ship comes down."

"It's entirely possible I'm ruining my life."
These days, Julia Allison can be found just about everywhere. There she is at a fund-raiser for Good at the Museum of the American Indian. She's the one in the lime-colored gown bobbing in a sea of bohemian girls in peasant dresses worn over jeans. "I have to meet Ben Goldhirsh," said Allison mentioning the magazine's wealthy founder. "I am going to bed him and wed him." It didn't happen. What did happen was the next morning Allison and Lodwick went to a local beach and posed for non-ironic glam shots that were linked to Gawker the next day.

A few nights later, Allison is vamping it up at the Gotham Club's annual "New York's Funniest Reporter" night doing 13 minutes of excruciating stand-up while sitting on a stool. "First prize tonight is a date with Julia Allison," joked another comic. "The contestant most excited about that is Julia Allison."

The next evening, I was having dinner with friends in the Meatpacking District. I no sooner described Allison to a friend and there was Julia Allison at a nearby table, dining with David Zinsczenko. "He's helping me strategize for our sit-down interview," explained Allison.

On Halloween, Allison dressed up as a Shooting Star. Earlier that week, a young bachelor, whose family resides in the Fortune 500, canceled a date with Allison after he read about her pre-date prep on her blog. Allison fell into momentary despair. "I've always thought it was good to be open -- even if I was pushing the boundaries somewhat," Allison wrote me in an email. "But now I wonder -- especially with regard to how it's affecting my career, my dating life and my reputation -- was this all an enormous mistake? I'm beginning to feel like it's entirely possible I'm ruining my life, and I'll have absolutely no one to blame but myself and my naiveté."

"I know that I have an expiration date. Maybe seven years."
On a fall Saturday, Julia Baugher does her laundry. She's wearing jeans and a t-shirt, her hair pulled backed in a ponytail. The face is devoid of make-up, revealing a sprinkle of appealing freckles. For once, she looks her age.

A giant wedding album size folder is brought down off a shelf. It features every story she's ever written and nearly every photo taken of her. When she gets to a painful time -- the plagiarism scandal -- or a less glamorous era -- the Indiana semester -- Julia flips the pages quickly hoping I won't see them.

Over the next six months, Allison would break up with Lodwick, citing his psychological condition as a cause on her blog. She then penned her own cover story for Time Out New York. This was followed by a CNN appearance where she denounced the rise of talent-less celebrities.

"Julia has an extraordinary ability to transform herself when she moves from one stage of life to another," says Dan Shalmon, her high school sweetheart who remains a friend. "She literally forgets anything that is inconsistent with the person she is trying to become at that moment in time. It's a little sad, I have to be the custodian of her memories."

Back at her apartment, Julia Baugher talks about the separation of the personal and private persona with the acumen of a NYU media professor. There are suggestions of books to read for further amplification. She speaks of Julia Allison in the third person. "Julia Allison, I can put her out there," she says. "It's like my public persona, but it's not me. I mean, it is part of me, obviously, but I feel safe with Julia Allison. I wouldn't feel safe with my real name now. It makes me uncomfortable to see it in print. I feel like I'm really vulnerable."

A couple of hours pass and the inanity of daily life intrudes. Someone has stolen her laundry basket. "I find that really hurtful," says Allison. She pops her retainer in and out of her mouth in frustration. "That's mean. I may be a lot of things, but no one will tell you I'm mean."

It's time for dinner and I suggest we go somewhere in her neighborhood. A look of horror comes across her face. "I can't go out looking like this." This prompts further pontification/rationalization on the separation of her two sides. "Why would you want to present yourself in an unattractive light? I like being seen as attractive. I also know that I have an expiration date. Maybe seven years."

Food is ordered in. Darkness falls and it's time for Julia Baugher to turn back into Julia Allison. As we say goodbye, Julia makes a joke. "You know, I can go back to being Julia Baugher." She flashes the almost-forgotten adolescent smile. "There's still time."