Whatever Happened to Zooey Deschanel?

I saw Zooey Deschanel on the cover of Marie Claire, with her long dark shag of a bangs-in-your-eyes haircut (that I've frankly seen too much of everywhere lately) and her signature cute-as-a-button smile and, most of all, the promise that she'll share with you exactly how she lost 30 pounds. Because she really needed to.

When She & Him released their first album back in 2008, I was all about Zooey Deschanel. There was something very real about her, very understated, very fashionable. She was wearing things we hadn't seen before, or at least things we hadn't seen in awhile (lots of flowery vintage-inspired frocks) and there was something sweet about her demeanor that seemed very anti-Hollywood. She was quirky, yes, but it was almost as if she didn't know it... back then.

Nowadays, Zooey Deschanel talks about exactly how quirky she is all the time, and even appears on SNL spoofing her quirkiness (which would normally equal self-deprecation, which I'd normally find endearing, but in this case it seemed a bit too, "I'm SO cute!"). And here's my biggest complaint: she hasn't evolved in the last four years. An "It Girl" should teach us what we need to know over the course of time, don't you think? A good comparison is Chloe Sevigny. She's often defined as quirky, out there, uniquely individual, an Indie darling, yet she's grown over time and constantly blows us away by her ahead of the curve fashion sense, her bold to-go-where-no-woman-has-gone-before (yet we'd all like to follow her there) intuition. We keep our eye on Chloe Sevigny because she surprises us. Zooey, as a person, is a bit of a one trick pony, a one hit wonder, and while those can be fun to listen to sometimes, we're left with wondering what else they've got to share with the world. Here's the bottom line, folks: Zooey Deschanel's cutesy schtick, which has only gotten worse with her television show, New Girl, is simply reaching the end of its adorable little rope.