It’s a happy birthday to Scarlett Johansson, who turns 23 today, and no doubt celebrates with a smoke or three. I wonder if Isaac Mizrahi will send her an email or a Target gift card or anything.

while I think she’s talented, she’s not been particularly well served by her choices, including continued collaborations with Woody Allen (two down, one yet to release); better to have done Match Point and skipped out, really. This fall’s The Nanny Diaries didn’t catch fire at the box office (there’s no cuddly relatability factor with Johansson among slightly older females), and I don’t know that other, forthcoming projects with a historical bent (The Other Boleyn Girl, Mary Queen of Scots), in the loose mold of over-acclaimed indie Girl with a Pearl Earring, are necessarily any more likely to give Johansson that much heat or traction. She’s kind of a “tweener” talent, in my opinion — the curvaceous figure and breathy voice of a starlet of years gone by, but with something intrinsically modern about her countenance. Johansson’s best performances (Ghost World, Lost in Translation) rely on an understated petulance or frustration, qualities with which most female lead characters are not typically infused.

The picture above, meanwhile, from the same Golden Globes where Mizrahi committed his carpet-walk grope, to me, umm, robustly embodies Johansson’s off-screen image makeover. It smacks of the ever-so-slightly plump high school ugly duckling who goes off to college, sheds a few pounds and takes their newfound self-esteem out for an over-sexualized test drive. And you know what? I’m fine with that… though I do think there’s a much shorter shelf life for that sort of occupational play.