Britney and Uma are just like me

There ARE many photos out there purporting to show Mischa Barton’s lumpy, bumpy, cellulite-riddled bottom, and I love poring over them. The photos of an “exhausted” Heather Locklear before she was carted off? Love them too.

I could stare for hours at the fine lines around Angelina Jolie’s eyes. (C’mon. Didn’t you see the cover of last week’s People magazine?) And photos speculating whether Britney Spears and Uma Thurman are sporting baby bumps or have been making too many late-night Haagen-Dazs runs?

More, please!

I don’t need a psychiatrist in wingtips to tell me why I love celebrity gossip rags. I love seeing the rich and famous taken down a notch or 10 because it just makes me feel better about myself. It’s that simple.

Actually, I feel like I’m just getting what’s due me after years spent growing up reading magazines such as Seventeen and then graduating to the likes of Vogue, Elle, Glamour and Cosmo. I’d compulsively turn the pages, completely captivated by one gorgeous image after another. I knew I could never, would never, look like that. So why bother?

But thanks to the no-holds-barred “reporting” done these days in the celebrity world, I get to actually see what Gwyneth Paltrow, Kate Moss and Madonna look like without makeup -- and without Photoshop. I’ve learned that Heather Locklear’s life isn’t as perfect as it seems, and neither is Salma Hayek’s. That Britney and Uma can look like everyone else in their bathing suits. And that Mischa has cellulite on her butt.

Pass the Haagen-Dazs, Uma.

-- Rene Lynch