Keeping busy during her trip out to New York City, MTV reality star Lauren Conrad was back out on the town on Tuesday night (October 28).

On this particular evening, the “Hills” hottie made her way over to Cipriani 42nd Street, attending the Avon Foundation’s Hope Honors.

The Hope Honors recognize outstanding leaders “who provide hope, support, help, and healing, in the fight against breast cancer and domestic violence” - with the annual event raising over $15.6 million since its inception in 2001.

Joining Miss Conrad for the posh evening were American Idol alum Jordin Sparks, Avon’s Chairman and CEO Andrea Jung, along with Patrick Dempsey and his wife Jillian.

Source:www.celebrity-gossip.net

Jordin Sparks doesn’t regret defending the Jonas Brothers for wearing purity rings at MTV’s Video Music Awards on Sunday - but now wishes she’d chosen her words more carefully.

During the show, Sparks - who wears a purity ring herself - called out host Russell Brand for mocking the trio’s jewelry.

Sparks’s original comment on live television was, “It’s not bad to wear a promise ring because not everybody - guy or girl - wants to be a slut.”

But now she’s clarifying her remarks in a new interview with Entertainment Weekly. “I wish I would’ve worded it differently - that somebody who doesn’t wear a promise ring isn’t necessarily a slut - but I can’t take it back now,” Sparks, 18, told the magazine.

The Season 6 American Idol winner tells EW she has no hard feelings toward Brand, whose purity ring jokes were a running theme throughout the broadcast. “I have nothing against him at all,” she said.

The Jonas Brothers also said they aren’t upset with Brand. “For us it’s cool to see that he recognizes we are gentleman,” Nick Jonas said Tuesday during an appearance on BBC Radio’s Newsbeat program.

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Despite last year’s disaster at the MTV Video Music Awards, Britney Spears has an invitation to return - from her fans.

The pop star was nominated in online voting for best female video for her Piece of Me at the 2008 VMAs.

Fans also nominated Katy Perry for I Kissed a Girl, Jordin Sparks for No Air, Rihanna for Take A Bow and Mariah Carey for Touch My Body.

The big question is whether Spears, 26, will make an appearance at show on Sept. 7 at Paramount studios in L.A. The singer will have to shake off her lackluster performance at the 2007 show in Las Vegas.

Meanwhile, for best male video, fans nominated Lil Wayne for Lollipop, Usher for Love in this Club, Chris Brown for With You, Flo Rida for Low and T.I. for No Matter What.

Next week, voting opens online for Best Pop Video and Best Hip-Hop Video.

PEOPLE has the exclusive, first listen of Ali Lohan’s upcoming single, “All The Way Around,” which she says shows off her hip-hop vibe.

Listen to it here:

The 14-year-old Lohan says the sound of her upcoming album is different from fellow teen star Miley Cyrus: “She’s really good,” Ali tells PEOPLE. “But I have different music than her. It’s a different vibe - it’s definitely a different vibe. Mine is more hip-hop. Kind of like Rihanna.”

“All The Way Around,” recorded at the Maloof Music recording studio at The Palms Hotel in Las Vegas, was produced by Emanuel “Eman” Kiriakou, who’s worked with Nick Lachey and Jordin Sparks. It was co-written by Kara DioGuardi, who was named BMI’s Pop Songwriter of the Year in 2007.

And what about a duet with Lindsay? “I think that would be awesome,” Ali tells PEOPLE. “We talked about it.”

Ali’s not the only Lohan with a single ready to shake up the clubs this summer. In May, Lindsay premiered her track: “Bossy.”

Jordin Sparks’s singing the “Star-Spangled Banner” at Sunday’s Super Bowl was one big family affair.

Jordin’s mother Jodi lent her 18-year-old daughter jewelry to complement her Dolce %26 Gabbana sleeveless dress, her grandparents were on hand, as was her younger brother to keep her company.

And then there was her father’s contribution. Until he retired from the team in 2001, Phillippi Sparks played for the New York Giants - who just happened to beat the “unbeatable” New England Patriots on Sunday, 17-14.

“You couldn’t ask for a more fitting story,” Phillippi Sparks told the Associated Press. “How could it have been better aligned?”

As a result, “When they approached me to sing at the Super Bowl, I was like, ‘Yeah I want to sing at the Super Bowl - are you crazy?’ I’m very, very, very happy,” she said, though she did admit there was one thing missing: “I have always wished that I could have played, and I can’t.”

“Tattoo” singerJordin Sparks is determined to get a tattoo of her own - and she wants it to be the name of her brother P.J., whom she misses terribly now that she travels so much.

“This past year has made me realize how much I took my relationship with him for granted,” the singer, 17, tells the San Francisco Chronicle of her sibling, who is two years younger.

She wants the body adornment to be “in a nice script,” and is thankful it’s a short moniker. “It’s not like his name is Bartholomew or anything,” she says.

“Tattoo” is the first single from Sparks’s self-titled debut record, which came out last week. After shooting the video, Sparks suggested to her mother, Jodi, that they both get tattoos to celebrate.

Voting Rights

Jodi’s response: “I’ll go get one with you when you’re 18.” (Mark your calendars: Jordin turns 18 on Dec. 22.)

Sparks doesn’t have many other major plans for turning 18, though she does earn one big right - and plans to take advantage.

“I do get to vote,” she says. “I will be voting.”

American Idol winner Jordin Sparks wants to set the record straight: she and Blake Lewis are not dating.

“It makes me laugh. We went through this whole experience and it’s like I can’t even look at him that way,” she told Elvis Duran and the Morning Zoo on New York’s Z100.

But being the subject of gossip isn’t the only downfall to her newfound fame.

“I can’t really go to the mall anymore,” Sparks said. Even though she’s tried everything to be able to go out in public and not get recognized - including wearing hats and hoodies - she sticks out “like a sore thumb.”

“Everybody sees my hair and then they see how tall I am they’re like, ‘There’s Jordin, right there.’”

Not that she’s complaining. “Everything is coming so fast. My life is just turned upside down. But I love it and I want to do it for as long as I can,” she told the radio DJs just moments before they premiered her first single “Tattoo.”

The track, which describes the scar left when a relationship ends, was one of the first songs she considered for her debut album after winning Idol in May. “I didn’t even get through the first chorus before I was like, ‘I need to have this song!’”

Click here to listen to “Tattoo.”

While Sparks’s debut is due in November, previous Idols Kelly Clarkson and Carrie Underwood’s Grammy-winning, multi-platinum successes have put pressure on the 17-year-old to make her own mark on the music world.

“They’ve risen the bar so high and I’m like, ‘I hope I can reach it,’” Sparks recently told the AP. “I just really hope that when %26#91;my CD%26#93; comes out it’ll be great and maybe as good as theirs. And hopefully it’ll sell well and people will like it.”

Meanwhile, Sparks has spent the summer touring with her fellow finalists - including Lewis, Melinda Doolittle, Chris Richardson and Sanjaya Malakar - whom she considers like a “dysfunctional family.”

“It’s abnormally weird how well we still get along,” she admits. “We get on each other’s nerves, but, at the end of the day, we’re still just like, ‘Hey, you wanna hang out?’ ”

And as for Lewis, 26, he’s just been signed to 19 Recordings/Arista Records and is already working on his debut album, due later this year.

Jordin Sparks didn’t just win American Idol last week - she won a lifelong battle to accept herself.

“I think it really helped boost her self-esteem and made her realize she’s beautiful as she is,” her grandmother, Pam Weidmann, tells PEOPLE for its new issue. Jordin’s mom, Jodi, says of her daughter’s May 23 victory: “It was huge to see her confidence level grow. … She’s standing taller now.”

At 5′10″ and size 12 by the time she was in junior high school, “I stood out everywhere,” says Jordin, who use to hunch, wear oversize clothing and search in vain for her size at teen mall stores. “I’d look at my friends who were just naturally tiny, and maybe they weren’t even a size 2, but they were smaller than me and that was good enough. I was like, ‘Oh, why can’t I look like that?’ ”

Jordin tried dieting every now and then, but failed because, she says, giggling, “I like food too much to do it. I would try, like, ‘Hey I’m going to diet and I’ll be a size 8 by the end of the summer,’ but it never worked out.”

One day at their local mall, Jordin and her mom came across the newly launched plus-size store Torrid. “It was like angels - ‘ahhhhhhhh!’ - shining down on it because it’s sizes 12 and up. They have clothes for girls who aren’t an average size so they can totally feel cute and flirty and still keep up with the latest trends,” Jordin says, noting that being the store’s smallest size was “great for my self-esteem.”

In fact, just before auditioning for Idol, Jordin landed a modeling gig for Torrid. “I think it really helped boost her self-esteem and made her realize she’s beautiful as she is,” says her grandmother.

Her parents’ attitudes also helped Jordin feel good about herself. “My mom and my dad always were saying, ‘You’re beautiful, Jordin,’” says the Idol winner, whose father Phillippi, 38, a former star cornerback for the New York Giants, is 5′11″ (mom is 5′6″).

After nailing her Idol audition, Jordin’s confidence began to soar. For the first time in her life, she embraced her right to bare arms. Before the show, “I liked to wear sleeves because they would cover up my arms,” she says. When the show’s stylists made suggestions, “I’d go, ‘This dress is way too beautiful. If I add sleeves it will ruin it.’ So I just got over it.”

These days, “I’m really comfortable in my own skin,” Jordin says with her signature wide smile. “I learned that I’m not ever going to be a size 2. I would look so weird as a size 2. Somebody would blow and I would fall right over. It just wouldn’t be healthy.”

For more on Jordin, and how acting and music changed this former tomboy’s life, pick up this week’s PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday

Reporting by CHARLOTTE TRIGGS