Declaring a Ceasefire Against Our Sisters

So, the Mommy Wars. They’re back. Again. Or still. A superquick recap: As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, last week Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen said on CNN that Republican Presidential hopeful Mitt Romney’s wife Ann, a stay at home mom, had “never worked a day in her life.” Naturally the Romney campaign latched on to [...]

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Oh Wow: The Meaning of Life

Of all the words that have been spoken or written (ours included) about Steve Jobs in the past few weeks, the wisest and most meaningful may have come from the eulogy delivered by his sister, novelist Mona Simpson, who recently shared it with the New York Times. By now, you have probably read Simpson’s opening: [...]

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Why We Are All Fashion Victims

In the ever-escalating fetishization of the female form, I was left scratching my head once again when I opened the latest issue of Newsweek to find a quick take on Paris Fashion Week. The story focused on the untimely collapse of a few high-rent benches at the Balenciaga show. News, right? But what sent me [...]

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Still Haunted by the Mean Girls?

So I came across a post over at BNET the other day that suggests that our high school selves sometimes come back to kick us in the pocketbook when it comes to our careers.   According to business writer Jeff Haden, our professional lives are “like high school with money.” But what might have led to [...]

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What Women Can Learn From Midnight In Paris

Life lessons via Woody Allen? Who knew. Surely by now you have seen his latest, Midnight in Paris, a sweet little movie that is both a love letter to Paris with a few big questions tucked inside the laughs. To wit: Do we idealize what we don’t have? Are we in love with a fantasy [...]

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Do Our Friends’ Choices Make Us Regret Our Own?

Remember when you were a kid, and you wanted to pierce your belly button or stay out all night, and you’d say to your mom, “But mooooom, everyone else is doing it!”? And then she’d say, “If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?” And then, if you were feeling especially petulant, you might [...]

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Slaying the green-eyed monster. Or hoping to…

So I confess.  I was ambushed by the green-eyed Facebook monster over the Memorial Day weekend.  I spent most of mine sitting at the dining table, gazing longingly out at our backyard, grading papers. Welcome to my life at the end of the quarter. So you can guess that all those posts and pix from [...]

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Good Grief!

This one’s a taboo buster, people, buckle up. So, last week, the Santa Barbara independent published a couple of excerpts from Undecided as its (incredibly illustrated!) cover story. One was long; one was medium; one was wee—just one lonely paragraph. But an important one. Despite the fact that I picked it (and, you know, wrote [...]

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The Fix is In: F-words Galore.

As F-words go, Fix might be one of the ugliest.  As in, if your life measures low on the perfection scale, just go for the fix.  Change the externals.  Happiness to follow. It’s enough to make you drop an F-bomb of an entirely different sort. This all came to mind Wednesday when our morning paper [...]

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This Just In! Facebook Makes you Sad!

In case you occasionally channel your inner adolescent, you oughta stay away from Facebook.    It’s not because — as in the days when the Mean Girls were the scourge of seventh grade — you will be judged.  It’s because you will  judge them — and find yourself falling short by comparison. Compare.  Contrast.  Fail. You [...]

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