Stop Fucking Up Your Faces!

So, while I was playing armchair fashion police during Sunday’s Oscars, “Private Practice” actress Kate Walsh was tweeting. And into the umpteenth hour of statues and montages and Cirque de Soleil, she dropped this twitbomb: …dear Hollywood actresses, stop fucking up your faces, it’s looking the the bar scene in Star Wars.— Kate Walsh (@katewalsh) February [...]

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More Americans Than Ever Are Living Single. Here’s Why.

Flying solo is in–in a serious way. A New York Times Q&A with Eric Kilnenberg, NYU sociology professor and author of the new book “Going Solo,” leads with the facts: In 1950, 22 percent of American adults were single. Now that number is almost 50 percent. One in seven adults lives alone. Half of all [...]

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You Are Your Brand?

In the era of information overload, of Facebook, of “personal branding,” of Rachel Zoe–a woman famous for dressing other famous, ahem, grown women–how do we define ourselves? Have the little things come to mean too much? Have we sacrificed nuance in favor of a slick and quick elevator pitch, or swapped the legwork of figuring [...]

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Women, Willpower, and Thanksgiving

Hey you! Yes, you–the one with all those balls in the air! Before you take another bite of pumpkin pie, read this. A couple of new books–Willpower, by social psychologist Roy F. Baumeister, PhD and New York Times reporter John Tierney, and The Willpower Instinct by Stanford University psychologist Kelly McGonigal, PhD–dig into the science [...]

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Freedom, Fertility and Feminism (Redux): The Real Cost of The Pill

At long last: your birth control pills will finally be covered by insurance! The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services has announced sweeping new guidelines for women’s health care to take effect Aug. 1, 2012. Among other things, these new guidelines will classify birth control pills as preventative medicine, meaning they’ll be covered without [...]

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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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Maybe, Baby (But Not Yet)

Life begins at 40? I don’t know about that, but, for an increasing number of American women, 40 is around the time motherhood begins. The CDC, which surveyed data between 2007 and 2009, found that the birth rate for women over 40 in the United States rose steadily in those two years. In other age [...]

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Analysis Paralysis, anyone? Anyone?

Thanks for the offer.  But let’s just have some chocolate cake and call it a day. More about this cake business later, but first, there’s this:  Newsweek is the latest to hop aboard the streetcar named Can’t Decide — our own trek for the past two years — with its current cover story on the [...]

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When Mormon Motherhood Porn is Your Happy Place

So, today, I must must write about the most shocking, scandalous, jaw-dropping thing I came across this weekend. (And, no, it has nothing whatsoever to do with Ricky Gervais.) The item of intrigue was a story on Salon.com, entitled… wait for it… “Why I can’t stop reading Mormon housewife blogs: I’m a young, feminist atheist [...]

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Whipsawed by Confusion? Just Do It–Well

Hi, I’m Shannon, and I’m an advice-column-aholic. From Elle‘s “Auntie” E. Jean to Salon’s Cary Tennis, theirs are my go-to pages. I typically get a couple Q-and-A’s from Auntie Eeee down while still standing by the mailbox, and, no matter the top headlines of the day, “Since You Asked” is my first click on Salon’s [...]

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