Elaine Irwin-Mellencamp for Almay

Yesterday as I looked up at the TV while I was moseying along here on the treadmill I espied a beautiful woman who looked like a dead ringer for Elaine Irwin-Mellencamp who, back in her supermodel prime,

graced seemingly every fashion magazine cover

on the planet month after month.

I watched, mesmerized, and it turned out that it indeed was Ms. Irwin-Mellencamp for Almay, where she's been a spokesperson for over two years.

Word travels slow here.

Though modeling et al takes second place to her family now — she's got two boys, Hud and Speck, along with her husband John, perhaps raising the count to three — her timeless beauty (she'll be 37 this year)

lets her pretty much call her own shots.

Her sons appear with her in both her print (below)

and TV ads.

I guess her husband still represents a kind of third rail, much too dangerous and unpredictable to put up alongside mom and the boys.

Her career began in 1985 when a two by three inch photo (below)

appeared in Seventeen magazine when she was 15 and still in high school in Boyertown, Pennsylvania; the rest of the ride was via rocket to the top as she became a superstar covergirl

in Europe while still a teenager.

Her current cover count is well over 50 and every now and then I see a new one, on Self magazine and its ilk.

I could watch her commercials all day, as opposed to ones like the brain-dead Taco Bell "good-to-go" family spot which became annoying during the first zeptosecond of the second time I saw it.

It only comes up on VH1 about three or four times every hour so I suppose I shouldn't complain.