Reese Witherspoon covers the new issue of InStyle Magazine. I’m also including (below) some photos taken of Reese in the past week. Notice all the costume changes. She’s getting pap’d multiple times a day, often in completely different outfits. I stopped looking when I reached seven different photo sets/outfits in the past week (but there are totally more photos). Is this a case of the paps just knowing where to find her? Or is it something else? Cough. Anyway, in the May InStyle, Reese talks about being a spitfire, her Southern mafia and her Southern values. She’s laying it on a bit thick, right?

Surrounding herself with real friends: “I learned a few years ago that there are people who don’t want good things for you. You’ve got to get away from them. Now I surround myself with supportive friends. I have a close group of girlfriends I call my Southern Mafia. One’s from Oklahoma, one’s from Arkansas, another’s from Tennessee. I get a lot out of my relationships with them.”

How she relates to her Southern Mafia: “Parenting, getting through your marriage, getting through your day, these are hard things, and I find solace in the fact that other people struggle with the same stuff I do. We all have concerns about our kids, our marriage, our dreams.”

She’s a spitfire: “I’ve finally gotten to an age when I’m not afraid to have an opinion. I feel that my perspective matters. It took me a while to figure that out, but I’m there now. I was always pretty outspoken, actually, but now I’ve learned to say sorry when I make mistakes, too. I’ve always been a little spitfire. Sometimes it’s gotten me into trouble.”

Fighting for strong female roles: “I grew up seeing incredibly strong women like Holly Hunter, Sigourney Weaver and Debra Winger. I want to ensure that my 15-year-old daughter grows up seeing those types of strong women playing complicated parts.”

When she realized she was a feminist: “I went to Harpeth Hall, a wonderful all-girls school in Nashville that encouraged us to see ourselves as working women in the world, to speak up for ourselves to ask for equal pay and advocate for gender equality. Outside that school, I experienced the full force of a patriarchal society, but I had a core value system that said, ‘No, you really deserve to be treated equal to men.”

Her clothing/lifestyle line, Draper James: “I’ve had so much fun developing and creating Draper James… it’s is based on my Southern upbringing. It’s a reflection of the fact that I’ve travelled all over the world but where I really love to be is home. I just think the brand reflects a lot of my Southern traditions and values.”

[From ET Canada and E! News]

I have such mixed feelings about Reese. Like, I think parts of her shtick is completely legitimate, and I believe she genuinely cares about seeing and developing interesting, female-driven films. I also believe she’s genuinely influenced by her Southern background. But I also believe this IS a shtick, that she’s been trying on this image as a sweet-but-spitfiery Southern gal who can get drunk and bitch out a cop AND fight for feminism, y’all. Part of it caricature, at least that’s how it seems to me. Mostly, Reese is out for relevance. She’s out to profit from this image she’s created over the past few years.

Photos courtesy of Fame/Flynet, cover courtesy of InStyle.