Blake Lively, Jessica Alba, and the new era of celebrity homemakers

Sure, Blake Lively was cut from this years hit Side Effects after requesting too much money, her last two acting gigs were the now-concluded series Gossip Girl and last summers dud Savages, and she doesnt have any new roles on the horizon.

But dont pity her shes devoting her time to baking.

The 25-year-old actress, who resides with her husband (the actor Ryan Reynolds) in the rural village of Bedford, New York, has lately been in the entertainment press for buying a giant ovenand for attending the opening of a Target in Canada. It feels nice to get a good deal and a great product, Lively told the Toronto Sun.

Lively is just the latest actress to devote herself to performing the role of a real housewife of Hollywood once acting dries up a little. Her fellow Toronto Target attendee, Sarah Jessica Parker, talked to the Sun about kids bathing suits and Easter baskets. Jennifer Garner is by now more famous for showing up at awards ceremonies on the arm of Ben Affleck, doing interviews about childrens skin care, or for paparazzi photos shopping for school supplies than has been in years for her m! ovie work. And Jessica Alba, whose last live-action role in wide release was as the mom in a 2011 Spy Kids sequel, has launched a weird feud with Gwyneth Paltrow. Alba has claimed that her book The Honest Life is more feasible for the workaday housewife than Paltrows tips in email newsletter Goop.

But all of these actresses are allies, not enemies: theyre united in bringing back an old-school sort of stardom, from the studio era when actresses would use their families and domesticity to bolster their images. Think of Joan Crawford allegedly adopting children solely for publicity photos, or Katharine Hepburn that most undomestic of stars publishing a brownie recipe. Those stars were humanized (at least for a time!) by their domestic touches. Later came the realization that in a celebrity culture that simultaneously rewards and reviles edgy or neglectful behavior generally, the cover of Redbook and adulation is easy to snag by hewing to an ideal of domestic perfection and talking about it, loudly.

Todays stars use it to continue manufacturing press. Any celebrity can have or adopt a child or get good at cooking its the truly clever one who can insert herself into the attachment-parenting debateor have an entire second career as a decorator once the agent stops calling.

Perhaps Livelys truly interested in cooking and home decor she did interviews about a class she ! took at Le Cordon Bleu in 2010 but theres no denying that its a productive angle for the public figure moving from actress to celebrity. Gwyneth Paltrow, for instance, gets more press coverage than she did in her mid-2000s dry spell for perpetually breaking her silence on what food is good for kids. And if theres something about it that seems a bit fake Paltrow is a well-known, award-winning actress with the means to order in every night, for instance, and its hard to reconcile Parkers image as Carrie Bradshaw with her interest in kids bathing suits or believe that Alba tests recipes all day long it seems ungenerous to say so.

Though not herself a mother, just someone who loves homemaking, Livelys making herself skew older: if theres one way for a 25-year-old actress to set herself apart from the Jennifer Lawrences and Kristen Stewarts that snatch up all the roles, its by making herself safe, approachable, and comforting. Expect the cookbook soon and then a career renaissance, if not the one Lively first imagined.