A 50-foot waterfall is still Class V. My kayaking instructor said he kayaked over one when he was young. All his friends who kept doing things like that ended up in traction.
Oh, and I'd totally rent out my overeducated uterus to someone who wanted kids and could pay me twenty grand. I have a problem with the whole 'rich people farming out their babies on poor people' subtext of Frank's article. Most surrogates actually find the experience at least somewhat rewarding, so it strikes me as unfair that both journalists paint them in such unflattering colors.
@Annabellie: @supergeorgina: I'm apparently in the 3% of people who've kept more than 30lbs. off for more than 5 years. I had to change my lifestyle- more excercise, more vegetables, eating at different times of day. Given how I felt before, it was easy once I realized how much better I felt in general (besides getting smaller). Someone who gets up to 500lbs. is starting off with a seriously flawed relationship with their body and with food, and surgery can't fix that. I think Ruby is doing the right things- that kind of surgery should be an absolute last resort. Bariatric procedures are very risky, and I worry about how popular they've become in recent years.
I believe in equal rights for women. However, every time I talk to someone who is a self-proclaimed "Feminist", or identifies very strongly with the "movement" (?), they always end up saying something that makes me want to haul off and punch them. I don't have anything more in common with women as a group than I do with men. There is no "common goal" if we can't agree on what it is, past basics like suffrage, education, and access to credit. Most women my age feel like they've been given their rights, so only those with more extreme views have felt the need to identify themselves strongly as feminists. I believe the remaining inequalities will iron themselves out, largely due to changing attitudes among both men and women, and there are just too many angry, hypersensitive nuts on the "Feminist" bus these days for me to feel comfortable riding.
Oh, and can I please strip the "This is What a Feminist Looks Like" shirt or totebag off the next haggard, belligerent woman I see screaming at a Starbucks barista? She's doing no one any favors...
Neither girl nor boy was thinking straight because they were both deee-runk! How is the drunk boy any more able to think rationally than the drunk girl? If anything, this is an ad against getting trashed, because there's no such thing as reliable consent or protection when you can't remember your own name.
Eating disorders have their own little positive feedback mechanism, a virtual self-fulfilling prophesy. You develop one because you feel like the weakest, most pointless person on earth, and then you starve to the point where it becomes true. So you're always right about at least one thing, even if it's killing you. These pro-ana "communities" are built by those who can all agree they must be the worst person in the world. How charming.
I think Updike writes women a hell of a lot better than most female authors write men. And if you ask me, the men come off waaay worse than the women in "Eastwick".
I'm still mad I was REQUIRED to read "The Fountainhead" for summer reading when I was fifteen. I tried to write the $10,000 essay, too, but it was just too painful.
Nevermind the navel- does the outfit on Kirkova remind anyone else of the eagle people from Flash Gordon??
@shantidevi:
All I'm saying is that as long as babies come out of women, and women are affected by those hormones, there will be a difference in our behavior and our choices. There are also studies that indicate that male and female perception is different; our brains work in different ways. Not all of this is nurture. It is entirely possible that women who excel in traditionally male-dominated fields exist on the tail of a bell curve.
All I'm saying is that as long as babies come out of women, and women are affected by those hormones, there will be a difference in our behavior and our choices. There are also studies that indicate that male and female perception is different; our brains work in different ways. Not all of this is nurture. It is entirely possible that women who excel in traditionally male-dominated fields exist on the tail of a bell curve.
I'm curvy and I love wrap dresses. I do tend to sew on a tiny snap to keep the neckline where I want it, but I always have to fiddle with the fit of things because I'm petite. People keep asking me if the dress I got at Target for $24 is a DVF. No, but clearly the dress is working!
I have to agree with Larry Summers- male and female brains are different. We're biologically adapted to excel at different things, have different intellectual and emotional responses, and this influences women to make certain choices. These choices mean there are fewer of us in certain fields. So what Summers' words are poorly chosen and some of his logic is flawed; if we can't even deal with the possibility that Larry Summers isn't entirely wrong, we're deluding ourselves and we deserve exactly what we get.
Aspergers, the mildest form of autism, is hard to diagnose in general, and since it is much more prevalent in boys, it's likely missed just as often for them. I also doubt it is actually any easier to deal with for boys. ANY mental disorder makes you more vulnerable to crime and abuse. Awkward boys are more likely to get the crap kicked out of them as kids, and boys are more often expected to fend for themselves emotionally. With proper therapy, though, I've seen a bunch of Asperger's friends and neighbors become socially functional people with fulfilling lives and normal, loving relationships.
Maybe I just grew up in a heavily Jewish area, but I never thought looking "Jewish" was a bad thing. I mean, just because you have typically (insert ethnicity) features doesn't mean they aren't pleasantly arranged. I look "Italian", but so do Sophia Loren and Danny DeVito. We had a lot of hot Jews in my high school (guys and girls). Whether or not they were being given complexes at home I don't know. But everybody's background lends itself to some sort of complex.
@rednrowdy: You reminded me that a Jewish friend of mine, who cannot possibly weigh more than 110, gets constantly abused by her still-anorexic-at-72 grandmother for being "chunky". It's so bad she hates to be around her own grandma, but at least she's balanced and confident enough to let it roll off her back.
Intolerance for carrying extra weight gets handed down. Thank goodness for my meaty Italian kin...
@WallSt_Rabbit: @Titania: Did they bandy about the old saying "Smith to bed, Holyoke to Wed, Amherst girls to talk to" at the womens' colleges?
Amherst girls to talk to, except when it's 3am and you're soooo drunk hey you're actually kinda hotmwuhmwuhmwuh...then it's Amherst girls to run into awkwardly at the breakfast bar on Monday.
Calorie counting was always a pain because you had to hunt down the info yourself. I have no beef with posting calories when half of our national weight problem stems from the fact that we have NO IDEA what we are actually eating. Most people will guess that a 600-calorie snack has 300 calories in it. That breakfast burrito that has a day's worth of energy in it was never a good idea. Maybe if we were a little more conscious and informed about food, we'd make savvier choices instead of sticking our heads in the sand while the rest of us gets bigger and bigger.
@BeSarcastic: I really miss the pillowfights...
@Titania: As an alum from one of those other colleges, I have to say it was only the shallowest girls who resented girls from the womens' colleges coming over to party and peruse the dudes. Honestly, our school was so small we knew by the end of freshman year whether or not we were going to date any of those guys. Any girl who had her head screwed on straight could see that there was no real competition. I met a lot of very cool girls because they came to party/date on our campus. Some of them would probably have gone Republican hunting with me in 2004, if I'd thought of it...
Also, we applied the "fuck truck" term when referring to the men who went in search of booty at the women's colleges, so it's sort of an equal-opportunity term in my mind. It was college; people wanted liquor and ass, and sometimes getting it required a bus.
I have to agree with CeegeeMcBeegee- women simply don't write as much stuff I'd want to watch. I have several friends who are writers/playwrights, too. I appreciate their dedication to their craft, but if I were picking their creative works out of an anonymous lineup, their plays wouldn't be anything I'd pay to see.
The reason for the double-standard is this: most middle-class kids get knocked up have babies on their mommy & daddy's dime, and ALL poor kids who get knocked up have babies on the public's dime. If you make lousy choices and your family pays, it's not my business. But if you have a baby and expect my taxes to pay for it, you're deserving of my scorn.
