I swear, perhaps too often. My default frustration lines are typically "for fuck's sake" or "are you fucking serious?" And yet my first reaction to obvious bad behavior on the part of Garbage McWoof was to open my mouth and let one of my mother's favorite phrases come flying out. Apparently, it's a fairly common phenomenon. According to the Daily Mail, "eight out of ten of today's mothers admit they use the very same cliches to discipline their children that they had to endure from their own parents." Granted, I have a dog, not a child, but the phenomenon still applied. When it came to laying down the law, I went with one of Mom's old standbys, followed by another one of Mom's old standbys: "You're skatin' on thin ice, Mister!"

Kathryn Crawford of TheBabyWebsite.com tells the Daily Mail that mothers often revert to cliched sayings because we've seen them work before: "The funny thing is that many mums will insist they are nothing like their own mothers," she says, "But the reality is that we can't help but teach our children as our parents taught us, and that means using old sayings and routines which worked for our parents." Naturally, there are learned behaviors, and instantaneous reactions that one picks up during one's own childhood. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it. (After writing that sentence, my mother's voice popped into my head again to say, "Isn't. The word is Isn't. Don't say ain't. You weren't raised in a barn.")

According to Crawford's site, the Top 20 sayings passed on from parents to children include "Wait and see," "Because I said so," "I've told you a thousand times," and "That's for me to know and you to find out." "Cripes Almighty," isn't on the list, though it certainly makes my Top 20 Momisms. Feel free to add your own parental hand-me-downs in the comments.

Are We Turning Into Our Parents? [The Baby Website]
Because I Said So: Eight Out Of Ten Mothers Admit To Repeating The Old Adages Their Parents Used On Them [DailyMail]

Rubin is careful to note that her list is "utterly unscientific" and based her own observations and behaviors, so there is an obvious slant in her article as far as what constitutes a boring conversation. She says that she thinks she's boring people when she notices that they shift their posture or quickly change the topic: "If you're talking to someone about, say, the life of Winston Churchill (I have a tendency to dwell at length on this particular subject), and all of a sudden the other person says, "So how are your kids?", it's a sign that he or she isn't very interested or perhaps not listening at all," she writes.

But Rubin's first two signs on her list, "Repeated, perfunctory responses" and "Simple questions" ironically strike me more as reactions from people who have read similar pieces on how not to appear boring at a party by presenting themselves as engaged listeners; asking questions, seeming extremely interested in what the other person has to say, etc. It's a bit funny to me that Rubin views these reactions as signs that she's boring her guests, when in reality, her guests might be reacting in such a way in order to not appear dull and boring to Rubin.

I guess the point is that nobody wants to be the awkward, dull person at a party. Nor does anyone want to be the blabbermouth who puts everyone to sleep with their self-involved stories. Rubin suggests avoiding topics such as dreams, "recent changes in your child's nap schedule," and movie plots, as those tend to be conversation killers, but I'm sure you guys could come up with a few more to add to the list. How do you know when you're boring people? And what topics should be banned from all party settings, for the sake of everyone involved? Feel free to leave your suggestions in the comments.

Eight Tips To Know If You're Being Boring [Psychology Today]
How To Tell If You Are Being Boring [BoingBoing]

The "turkey drop," according to NPR, is a breakup that occurs over the Thanksgiving holiday, typically between college freshmen who return home for the first time and finally pull the plug on a high school relationship, though as Dan Savage notes, adults can fall victim to the "turkey drop" as well, due to a desire by one partner to split before the pressures of the Christmas-New Year's-Valentine's Day season kick in. "Thanksgiving is really when you have to pull the trigger if you're not willing to tough it out through February," Savage says.

Savage has a point: it's pretty rough to break up with someone at Christmas, and even harder to ditch a relationship right around Valentine's Day. But at the same time, it's even crueler to stay in a relationship you'd rather not be in just to protect someone's feelings throughout the holiday season, isn't it? I'd imagine that racking up all of those Christmas and New Year's memories is just adding fuel to the post-breakup fire. (Though I have known couples who have stayed together through the holidays, not for their own benefit, but for the benefit of their children and/or family members.)

Still, some "turkey drops" are unavoidable: I actually went through it during my freshman year of college, breaking up with an on-again/off-again boyfriend whom I suddenly had nothing in common with after being away for three months. He was relieved, actually, as he felt the same way. It's quite strange when people you've known for years become strangers; I'd go so far as to guess that many people go through "turkey drops" of sorts with friends during this period as well, due to realizing you're not the same person you were mere months earlier, and neither are they.

So what say you, commenters? Have you been through a "turkey drop?" And do you think it's ultimately cruel or kind to initiate a breakup during the holidays?

Want To Break Up? 'Tis The Season, So Better Hurry [NPR]

[Image via Natalie Dee.]

Anna N.'s post title earlier today, 5 Tips for Dating Your Family, was just a joke, of course, but in the Home and Garden section (of course!) of the New York Times this weekend, the practice of American cousins marrying each other is a trend a serious matter.

The gist of the piece is that while marriage between first cousins is widely practiced, and even favored, in many cultures throughout history, here in the U.S. it's still seen as a trashy, hillbilly practice that results in inbred babies. Texas banned cousin to cousin marriage in 2005, though it was part of a larger law banning polygamy. Aside from the cultural stigma of cousin marriage, even doctors who are generally not against it admit that there are higher risks for the offspring of such unions that vary from couple to couple.

The story features several couples with varying degrees of community acceptance. Kimberly and Shane Winters are comfortable enough to display in their home a photo of themselves embracing with the word "cousins" on top and the phrase "the most important thing in life is family" along the bottom, which makes Kimberly's mother uncomfortable but is a pretty funny joke if they did it as a joke (another hint that the Winters might have a sense of humor about their unusual union: Kimberly calls Shane her "cusband.") But another couple, Bob and his wife from upstate New York, have a more heartbreaking tale:

They now have two daughters, 13 and 14, who are in good health, he said, but her parents - his aunt and uncle - refuse to speak to them.

The couple, who live on a military base, have advised their daughters not to tell friends that their parents are cousins.

"We don't typically tell folks," Bob said. "We told our daughters, ‘It's not something to be ashamed of, but if you tell your friends, your friends may trust you today, you may be good friends, however, roll the clock forward, people are fickle, and preteens and teens can be downright cruel.' "

Shaking Off the Shame [NYT]

As some commenters pointed out, Grey's words in Newsweek, though unfairly slammed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, were actually kind of annoying. In response to the Mark Sanford scandal, she wrote,

Americans act so shocked when they hear about politicians, celebrities, and athletes having affairs, but I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don't ask, don't tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband-whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex. We create our own morals. It's once the affair goes public that morals change. The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. [...] Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.

Commenter Old Jean Gallagher called this response "shockingly victim-blaming," which is pretty accurate. Grey criticizes political wives for making a public stink about their husbands' cheating, and sort of implies that they are all violating some previously agreed-upon quid pro quo. But while we may "create our own morals," when we're in relationships we need to agree on some of them, and it's unlikely that all wives of powerful men agree, even tacitly, to infidelity. As to her suggestion that we should all have something on the side, that's just as prescriptive as saying we should all be monogamous.

Grey seems much more thoughtful in her Dazed Digital interview with John-Paul Pryor. Pryor asks, "Do you think without prostitution and pornography there would be more instances of rape and so on? Or do you think that they actually allow for an arena where those kinds of abuses can take place?" The idea that porn and prostitutes act as a safety valve for men's natural desire to rape isn't new, but it is offensive — luckily, Grey handles it pretty well:

I think it depends. You have women on the street who are obviously being abused and they have pimps, I mean all you have to do is watch a few documentaries to see what that's like and how raw it is. That just perpetuates the negative stereotypes of prostitution, or pimping, or the johns. And then you have the women like Christine – they are like call girls, and they might not have a pimp; they are doing it on their own. I don't think that those necessarily perpetuate the abuse and the violence, but in the same vein, I don't think they help stop it at all. But the guys who are paying for the higher echelons don't beat the girls up – well, that's generally speaking from the research we did, maybe some politicians are going to go out there and beat some girls up, I don't know.

She makes the streetwalker-versus-call girl distinction that's been so much in the news lately, but she's careful to qualify it. She recognizes that just because she hasn't heard of violence against call girls doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Here's Grey on sex and communication:

Well, I just think it's 2009 and we're still so afraid to talk about sex. I think ignorance breeds fear and vice versa and the less you know the more negative things can happen, such as teenage pregnancy or the skyrocketing rate of STDs in young adults. It is about sexual freedom but it's about more than that, it's about communication and talking and learning. I think people are so afraid to do that; people are afraid of the truth – we'd rather hide inside a bubble.

And on acting:

I think the technical aspects and the people and the crews are all very similar but as far as performances go, I really hate it when people say, ‘Oh this is reality porn!" No. Because any time you put a camera in front of anybody, even if they have never been in front of a camera, they are going to act differently. For me, pornography is performing – it is what it is and I am an extension of myself, I am hyper me, whereas in a film like this, I am doing character research and I am stepping into the shoes of someone else, and I am thinking about my mannerisms.

It's nice to hear someone point out that pornography isn't real without denigrating it — Grey's words remind us that we can enjoy porn as a performance without expecting our actual sex lives to mimic it. Throughout the interview, she comes off as smart and appreciative of nuance — Kathryn Jean Lopez is missing out by dismissing her. However, Grey's also only 21 years old. While in most of the interview she sounds very mature and articulate, she occasionally makes statements like this one: "Before Christianity and Catholicism took over most people were in poly-amorous relationships."

I don't have the entire sexual history of the pre-Christian world at my fingertips, but I do know a little bit about Greece and Rome in the centuries immediately BCE, and I know that while upperclass men there often did have sex with multiple partners, the lives of their wives were pretty rigidly circumscribed. Of course, this doesn't mean women never had "something on the side," and it's frankly a little hard to tell who was screwing who thousands of years ago, especially among groups that didn't leave written records. But men were trying to control women's sexual behavior long before Christ, and the idea of a polyamorous pre-Christian golden age doesn't really hold water.

Maybe it's ageist of me to chalk up some of Grey's more sweeping statements to the fact that she's barely old enough to buy booze. I'm a half-decade older, and while I bet I could beat her in an ancient-history trivia contest, I may not actually know more about relationships. K. Lo's apparently 33, but being old enough to run for Senate hasn't taught her not to judge other people's personal choices. Grey can be judgmental too, but even in her short and very public life, she's managed to learn the value of "communication and talking and learning." A 21-year-old could do a lot worse.

Sasha Grey / The Girlfriend Experience [Dazed Digital]

Related: Governor Sanford's Appalachian Adventure

Earlier: Newsweek Too Hot For National Review Writer

Well, yes, on some levels. Edward Cullen is both predatory and alluring; much is made of his beauty and his uniqueness, and the risks of dating a vampire who has to fight his own urges carries a sense of danger and excitement that might appeal to some readers. He is your standard tortured bad boy with a (questionable) heart of gold and, well, skin that happens to sparkle in the sun.

I've often taken shots at Edward Cullen, as I find the character, and the relationship he shares with Bella Swan, to be quite creepy; Cullen, to me, reads as extremely controlling and stalker-esque, and I find it hard to believe in their romance when there appears to be so much fear and intimidation involved. However, I often wonder how I would have viewed this book when I was younger, say 13 or so, before I'd ever been in a relationship of my own. As much as I hate to admit it, I think I might have loved Edward Cullen, as well, just as I loved Billy Corgan or Trent Reznor, for being dark but pretty and for seeming slightly dangerous but like they understood what I was thinking as the rest of the world didn't.

For all of his creepiness, Edward Cullen is really just the latest scream-worthy dude that's driving the kids crazy. My mother flipped out over George Harrison, much to my grandparents' dismay. My older sister had a picture of INXS on the wall and kissed it whenever she could. My parents used to shake their heads as I smeared my eyes in black kohl and walked around moping to Siamese Dream. Every one has their unrequited teenage crush; it just seems like teenagers are all zeroing in on the same kid at the same time.

Edward Cullen may come in a different, darker package, but he still represents your typical teenage Tiger Beat dream boat: he wants only you, girl, he'll always be true, girl, he'll totally wait till you're married, girl, there's nobody else in the world for him, girl, he may be bad, but he'll be good to you, girl, etc. He's the guy you can dream about making out with, because you know you'll never make out with him. He represents the kind of love that never comes with rejection, because you know he's not real and you could never have him anyway. He's a safe means of falling in love for those who desperately want to know what it feels like.

The troublesome aspect of the Edward Cullen adoration, of course, is that girls will grow up believing that a boy who sneaks in to your room to watch you sleep is a real catch, as opposed to a total psychopath, and that the disturbing aspects of the Cullen/Swan relationship will stick with teenage girls as a marker of what "real love" is supposed to be. However, I think at times we don't give teenage girls enough credit for growing up and out of these phases; one hopes that if the world presents them with the right education regarding healthy relationships, they'll eventually see that Edward and Bella aren't exactly the ideal, and perhaps their teenage crushes will turn into adult eye rolls.

Who you are and what you believe about love when you're 13 is rarely who you are and what you believe about love when you get older; there are difficult lessons to learn and crushes that will eventually fade away. If there's one answer to why teenage girls love Edward Cullen so much, I'd argue that it's because teenage girls love love so much, and all that comes with it, and Cullen just happens to be the hottest representative of romance in the 7th grade right now. He's an extremely flawed representative, there's no doubt about that, and I hope someone else comes along to knock him off soon, if only because I think teenage girls deserve a better imaginary boyfriend to share initial hearts with in their notebooks.

So what say you, commenters? Would you be into Edward Cullen if you were 13? And did you learn anything from your imaginary teenage crushes?

Why Have Teenage Girls Been Bitten By The Edward Cullen Bug To Devour The Twilight Novels [Guardian]

Kaufman, who has a three-year-old son, notes that he understands the frustration people feel when they're subjected to out-of-control kids or lousy parenting methods: "I can't stand bad parents or bad children, either," he writes, "There are parents who are over-permissive to the point of absurdity. There are kids who are just hyper or obnoxious." But Kaufman argues that society, as a whole, confuses "bad children" and "bad parents" with kids who are just tired, or cranky, and parents who are doing their best to keep their kids under control, as "anyone who's been in charge of a toddler for more than three minutes knows that even the most perfect parent in the entire world can't prevent or stop every tantrum."

I'll admit that in my early twenties, I was one of those people who would start pouting as soon as I walked onto a plane and saw a toddler squirming about in his seat. "Oh great," I'd hiss to my boyfriend, "he'll be crying in ten minutes." I had no concern for the parents or the child, who were probably just as stressed about the flight and what would happen in the air; I saw them as an inconvenience to my own traveling, as if they should hop aboard the Magic School Bus or some such to reach their destination instead of flying on the plane with the rest of us. I was a complete crab when it came to crabby children, and I instantly blamed their parents for not being able to "control" their kid's tears. In short, I was a total jerk.

As Kaufman notes, there's a big difference between getting annoyed at a parent who allows little Suzie or Timmy to kick the seat repeatedly as if it's some type of adorable behavior and getting annoyed at a parent who is desperately trying to get Timmy to stop throwing his tantrums. It wasn't until my niece was born 7 years ago that I began to understand this; watching my sister and my brother-in-law handle her tantrum phase was rough, as I knew they were great parents and my niece was a great kid, but tantrums happen, and, as Kaufman notes, "Toddlers have to have tantrums. It's how they learn boundaries."

Now, whenever I hear a kid crying on a plane, my thoughts immediately move to sympathy for both the child and the parent; maybe the kid is teething, maybe she's just exhausted, maybe she's scared, poor thing. Every child, in some way, has become my niece or my nephew, and their parents my sister or brother-in-law. I am not a parent myself, but by trying to put myself in the other person's shoes (or even in the kid's shoes) has made me a much more understanding person. Of course, this doesn't mean that I still don't get extremely annoyed when I have to sit in front of someone who thinks it's just charming that little Billy likes to throw Matchbox cars at strangers, but taking the position that all crying or slightly obnoxious behavior in public on the part of children and/or their parents automatically makes them "bad" people isn't fair to anyone.

I don't think we live in a child-hating society, but I do agree with Kaufman's argument that the public does often make enemies of parents and small children who are just trying to live their lives. "I don't like screaming in my ear, either," he writes, "I also don't like people who wrestle the armrest away from me, people who lean their seat ALL the way back, and people who claim their suitcase is a purse and cram the overhead compartment with too many bags. But that's life. That's what traveling by air means. Heck, that's what it means to live in this world." Yes, kids can be annoying, but so can everyone else. It took me years to realize that the eyeroll from the 20 year old who thinks she knows everything can be just as painful and irritating as the screams of a 3-year-old who just needs to take a nap.

Why Does Our Society Hate Children [PsychologyToday]

Watson begins by acknowledging that the words "good wife" are saddled with centuries of baggage: "In a postfeminist world, the word 'wife' on its own sounds quaint enough," she writes, "and 'good wife' conjures up images of blissed-out 1950s housewives admiring their hostess trollies. Good wives are what women had to be before we fought for the right to be good at something else." Still, she argues, there's a difference between being a subservient wife and being a "good wife," and she offers a four part charter to help women separate the idea of being a "good wife" from being a Stepford one, pushing women to make their husbands a priority, to find time for sex, to "beware resentment" and to "be kind and supportive."

Watson's argument, backed by authors Lionel Shriver and Ayelet Waldman, is that women often treat their husbands poorly, putting them last in line when it comes to attention and affection: "Even women who would never call themselves feminists have bought into the idea that men are bottom of the list after their personal fulfilment, fitness routine and, of course, the kids," she writes. Watson's charter is filled with tips and tricks from the likes of Waldman, who claims that couples should create "who does what?" questionnaires to get a sense of how the domestic chores are split, or from Shriver, who says she has to remember to "to remember to treat my husband as well as I treat other people."

The "Good Wife Charter" itself seems to be steeped in marital stereotypes: women withhold sex from their husbands, women put their kids above their spouses, etc. It's meant to be a piece that celebrates healthier partnerships, I suppose, but something feels a bit off about it. She's trying to prove to women that being a good wife is more about being an engaged, caring partner than adhering to the 1950s relationship playbook, but it reads as though marital roles are still centered around a lazy, chore-inept husband and a frazzled, overworked wife.

In fairness, a "How To Be A Good Husband" piece, written by a man, is tacked on to the end of Watson's article, but that's steeped in stereotypes as well: "Talking is important. Talking and listening. I know it can be excruciating, but wives need conversation. They cannot exist on grunts alone. You must save that for the pub. If you don't, you will be nagged. And nagging, as we all know, is the marital equivalent of waterboarding." Yikes.

Overall, Watson's piece offers advice that could really apply to either partner in a relationship: be kind, be involved, be willing to help out. I'm not sure it's entirely helpful to continue to strive to be a "good wife," as much as it would be helpful for both partners to try to bring as much as they can to the relationship. "We have become socialised and media-ised to think it's all about us," Watson writes, "Ask yourself, why did I marry this guy in the first place? But the other questions to ask are, why is he married to me? What's he getting out of it?" Perhaps a better question would be "Why did we marry each other? How can we help each other out?" A "good wife" or a "good husband" is really no match for a "good partnership."

The Good Wife Charter, And How To Be A Good Husband [TimesOnline]

A 38-year-old woman wrote to Godson, concerned that her re-entry into the dating world, after leaving a marriage of 13 years, was being derailed a bit by her pubic hair; specifically, the fact that she has any. The 27-year-old she's now dating was "shocked" to see that she had hair on her genitals, and as the woman notes "I do look after myself (hence the gym) but I don't think that a permanent tan and Brazilian wax should be deal-breakers in a relationship. Or am I just hopelessly outdated?"

Godson's answer, though it comes with a great deal of apologetic buildup, is basically yes. She explains to the woman that the pornification of the world is greatly responsible for younger men's tendency to expect a hairless woman. "There is something hugely irritating about being forced to conform to an aesthetic ideal instigated and perpetuated by the porn industry," Godson writes, "but, like keeping one's armpits and legs smooth, it is now expected. If your boyfriend has been conditioned to expect a tidy Brazilian, he may genuinely find anything else very off-putting."

Oh. Okay then. Because men have been "conditioned" to expect Brazilians, this woman needs to have one right away. We wouldn't want this woman to have any say over her own pubic hair, would we? I mean, she clearly states that she doesn't think Brazilians are necessary for a relationship, but apparently she's wrong in Suzi Godson's eyes, as only a woman who conforms to her boyfriend's pube desires really deserves relationship status. "Though the feminist ethos of your "take me as I am" argument is perfectly valid," Godson argues, "your boyfriend's reaction is instinctive - and in the face of something that is honestly perceived as a turn-off by one partner, rational arguments simply do not work."

Look, if the guy is so turned off by this woman's pubic hair that it really is a sexual dealbreaker for this couple, that's a conversation this couple has to have. But instructing a woman to wax simply for a man's happiness, regardless of her own personal preferences, is ridiculous. Just because men are "accustomed" to a certain thing, it doesn't mean that women have to do it to make them happy. And if a man really can't handle it, maybe it's not the pubic hair that has to go.

Sex Advice: Do I Need To Wax? [TimesOnline]

In the car on the way to film her segment for the show, Hailey opened up about how Jon is emotionally abusive.


It sounds like they have a codependent, miserable relationship.


Unfortunately, Hailey only believes that physical abuse is grounds for a breakup.

Mehmet, 38, spends the majority of the piece discussing her own beauty; how her mother, a beautician, pushed her to focus on her appearance, how she began using makeup at 12, and how these efforts eventually led to a career as a part-time model. It's evident from the get-go that Mehmet's self-worth is directly tied to her appearance, which casts a sad shadow over the rest of the piece, which reads, quite honestly, as someone having a slightly tortured conversation with herself.

Mehmet admits that she's jealous of her 17-year-old daughter, who is now "blossoming into womanhood." Yasmin is young and pretty and, according to her mother, a dead ringer for Mehmet herself in her younger days, which complicates her jealousy and resentment even further: "And although she was oblivious of all this, I couldn't help resenting her for it," Mehmet writes of her daughter's coming-of-age, "I began to make comparisons all the time, and a terror of getting old and losing my looks enveloped me."

The first time I read this piece, I was so irritated (it is the Daily Mail, after all) that my first instinct was to write a headline like "Mom Realizes She Is Not 18 Anymore, Calls Dina Lohan For Advice On How To Fix Situation," but after reading it a few more times, I realized the piece is just sad, really, in that Mehmet really doesn't seem to be able to let go of the idea that she is worth more than her looks, and that true beauty and happiness are not, despite what the magazines and the media might tell you, about trying to look 18 when you're 38.

I do feel a certain sympathy for her, as obnoxious as the article reads at times, in that I think it's normal for people to feel pangs of envy or jealousy when they realize certain points in their lives are behind them. The entire article is a sad commentary on the increasingly obnoxious values we place on youth and beauty, and the most disturbing aspect is that Mehmet doesn't seem to understand that she's just setting up her daughter to feel the same pangs of worthlessness and jealousy by constantly placing such a value on her child's looks.

Instead of trying to keep up with her daughter, or comparing herself with her daughter, Mehmet should find her own path and attempt to show her kid that life doesn't end at 18 (unless you're a member of Menudo, and then you are so out of there) and that true beauty has no age limit and that living in the past is a surefire way to miss the really great things happening in the present and waiting in the future. Yasmin claims that "we all get old, and to my mind there's so much more to life than looks. In 20 or 30 years, if I have a daughter, I'm sure I'll be confident enough to be glad that she's more gorgeous than me. I'll have had my time, and I'll definitely be ready to grow old gracefully. If only Mum could see it that way." If only both of them could see that there's so much more to "their time" than being the most gorgeous one in the house.

I Used To Be The One Who Turned Men's Heads, But Now It's My Teenage Daughter [DailyMail]

Shriver's report is fascinating, in that it shows 75% of Americans taking a positive view of an increasing female presence in the workplace, and a desire by both men and women to work together to come up with a way to balance work, childcare, and paying the family bills. Interestingly enough, "Sixty-five percent of men and women surveyed felt that the decrease in children growing up with a stay-at-home parent has been somewhat or very negative for American society," though the solution, amongst those surveyed, doesn't appear to be "Well, make the women stay home," as much as a desire for employers to consider more flexibility in hours, better benefits, and more realistic view on what it means to be an American family in today's society. As Heather Boushey, of the Center for American Progress tells Allison Linn of MSNBC, "We live in a world that is designed for one kind of family that no longer really exists."

Poll Finds Wide Support For Women At Work [MSNBC]

My first reaction was, admittedly, confusion, and also a sense that perhaps maternity leave was being played up as a vacation of sorts, as opposed to a time of adjusting to having a new child in the home and recovering from pregnancy and giving birth. However, Sam Baker of Red Magazine tells Wallop: "This isn't a working mum versus working non-mums argument. Nobody thinks maternity leave is a holiday. Employers, especially now, need to incentivise their staff in imaginative ways and that could involve offering leave. Some companies are already doing this."

Wallop sites one company, BT, that "offered its staff the right to take a year off, in return for taking a 75 per cent pay cut," a move that allows a "maternity leave" of sorts, for an extremely reduced salary, in order to cut costs for the company, allow workers to opt for time off and still maintain a job to return to—hopefully in a better economic climate. However, there is nothing in Wallop's piece about the benefits given to these employees, and I"m still not sure how, exactly, this matches up with a traditional maternity leave.

What do you think, commenters? Should a leave of absence be made available to all women, or does this make maternity leave seem like a vacation instead of a time of stress and physical recuperation? [Women Without Children Should Be Allowed Maternity Leave, Survey Says [Telegraph]

[Image via CPSU]

According to Sarah Kershaw's piece in today's New York Times:

The study, published in the Journal of Couple and Relationship Therapy, reported that the couples thought their age difference mattered more to the outside world than to them, and that the men were more strongly drawn to the relationships at the start because of physical attraction.

Imagine that: A younger guy being attracted to an older woman. Why, it flies in the face of everything we know about dried up old hags!

And listen to this insanity:

Consistent with most other research and what many relationship experts are saying about these connections, the authors found that women liked the vitality the younger man brought into their lives, and men liked the maturity and confidence in the women…

You mean older ladies are not desperate mountain lions pouncing on young, virile, unsuspecting men? And these guys actually think the gnarly old crones are hot???

It's true. And in addition: These fools are normal.

"Initially I thought I would find more issues," said Nichole R. Proulx, the lead author of the study, who is a marriage and family therapist in Maine. "But it's a relationship like any other, despite what society might say. I thought I'd find that he looks at her like his mother, more inequality, more power struggles."

A relationship like any other? Someone had better tell Courteney Cox.

Rethinking the Older Woman-Younger Man Relationship [NY Times]

Earlier: "This Whole Business Of Calling Yourself Cougars? It Needs To Stop. Now."
Courteney Cox Doesn't Know If "Cougar" Is A Compliment
No One Harmed At Cougar Convention
How Do We Survive The Cougar Attack?
5 Reasons Why Courteney Cox's Cougar Town Looks Awful

Writes Elizabeth Bernstein,

We need new rules now. How about these? You can look, but don't make contact. Strike an agreement with your current partner that you will each disclose any Facebook friends you have slept with. Or, like Katie Robinson, limit your online "friends" to people of the same sex. "It is hard enough to have a relationship without the intrusion of people from your past," says Ms. Robinson, a 33-year-old artist in Memphis, Tenn. Some couples share their passwords. "If your bank accounts are common, why not your Twitter and Facebook accounts?" asks Clemson Smith Muñiz, a Spanish-language sports announcer in New York. Sound scary? Mr. Smith Muñiz discovered one of the drawbacks when he checked his Twitter following-which he spent months trying to build-and discovered an alarming trend: It kept shrinking.
At first, he worried that people found him boring and were dropping out. He tried harder to be clever, "tweeting" about Cuban baseball players and his dental problems. He even pleaded for readers: "Follow me and I'll follow you." Then he discovered his problem: his wife."She told me she was going on my account and taking off women she thought were coming on to me," says Mr. Smith Muñiz, 51. She didn't care if they were old girlfriends or porn stars. "She said she doesn't want temptation to be there," he says. (His wife declined to be interviewed.)

Wait, what? This is weird, right? Look, I admit to being somewhat lax in these matters (the one concession I've ever demanded was that a boyfriend not friend a one-night stand with whom he'd cheated on me) but I can't help but wonder: when do rules start to rule you? (Yes, that took a few minutes' thought.) All-female friends? Secret un-following? Hell's no. That's sacred. Trivial and pointless, perhaps, but sacred in some sort of modern irreligious way. Granted, this piece deals exclusively with Boomers who all seem overly involved with the newly-discovered gadgetry and don't share our tacit reluctance to appearing cyber-desperate ("Follow me and I'll follow you?") But seriously, is this a thing? And not just amongst those weird couples who seem to get off on the delusion that their partners are wildly desirable and everyone's constantly hitting on them? I'd always understood these sites to be more-or-less public information; as such, hasn't enough personal editing gone on that more isn't required? And as for those threatened by the presence of exes - well, better the evil you know, surely? As one more cynically-minded friend put it, "it's not like you'll be able to friend them yourself!"

That said, I know reading about cracked fillings in 140 or fewer has me hitting "Direct Messages" every time, so maybe she has a point.

When Old Flames Beckon Online [Wall Street Journal]

Whenever female friendships are portrayed on the big screen, they usually fall into to the straight woman/wacky best friend pattern, or the sassy girlfriends crew, or the underminer best friend plot line which basically presents female friendships as time bombs that stand in the one of one's career or eventually happy ending with a man. It's a shame, really, as a more honest depiction of female friendships—particularly the difficulty many of us have in making friends as we get older—could be quite interesting to watch.

Rachel Dickinson of Smithsonian.com notes that roller derby, currently in the spotlight once again due to Barrymore's film, is popular with women not only for the athletic and theatrical elements, but because it provides a "a kind of athletic sisterhood that's tough to find once you leave high school or college."

And she's right: the insta-friend factor (or, at the very least, insta-acquaintance factor) that comes along with organized sports, or dorm floors, or various extracurricular activities is hard to replicate after school comes to an end, and roller derby, open to active women of all ages, provides that type of bonding experience. Roller derby, I suspect, is not only popular because of the thrill it brings, or the exercise and empowerment it provides, but also, if even just a little bit, because it offers a chance to make friends, which, for some of us anyway, is harder to do as you get older.

I have moved three times in the past five years, and most of my college friends are scattered around the country. I am a terribly shy person, and organized activities at school always provided a kind of structure that made it much easier for me to make friends, as there were set goals that everyone shared and people involved were generally like-minded. But now that I'm older, I find it harder to push myself to show up to anything if I don't have a friend to tag along with. It's a pretty frustrating cycle for the socially anxious among us: when you're new in town, you look to such activities to try to meet people, but at the same time, it's so hard to show up alone. However, pushing myself to do so has paid off, in that I've met many lovely people as a result. I'm not going to lie though; it's tough.

Often enough I feel like a complete weirdo for getting as nervous as I do over such things, but at the same time, I don't think there's anything incredibly unusual about this, as many of my friends, also displaced to new towns filled with strangers thanks to various job offers and the whims of life, have gone through similar experiences. Perhaps if there were more films like Whip It! which celebrated the love, empowerment, and support of female friendships instead of sassy zingers and man-trappin' trips, those of us who find ourselves hesitating would all be a little less afraid to just get out there and jump in.

So what do you think, commenters? Do you find it harder to make friends as you get older? And what steps do you take to meet new people?

Roller Derby's Sisterhood [Smithsonian]
Box Office: 'Zombieland' Rules As 'Whip It,' 'Invention' Bomb And 'Capitalism' Fizzles [NYPost]

Bob's anger problems do sound pretty disturbing. Barnes describes him flipping off old women, beating sprinklers into submission, and, in one outburst, shattering their breakfast table, grabbing her by the arms, and asking, "Why are you making me do this?" Finally, with therapy, Bob learned to control his temper. But when a friend asks Barnes what "flaw" she would choose if her marriage had to have one, she says, "Anything but wrath."

It's an interesting commentary on what we can and can't accept in relationships. Even though Barnes has learned to deal with her husband's temper, she still thinks of "wrath" as the worst thing that can enter a marriage. Many people who watched their parents fight a lot, or who have been contentious relationships in the past, similarly think of anger as relationship-kryptonite, and some seek out calm partners as a result. But for others, early experiences of conflict seemed to normalize it — and some even miss it when it's gone.

It's important here to distinguish between anger and abuse, a line Bob's behavior seems to walk. People who were abused as children sometimes become abusive themselves, or enter a pattern of abusive relationships, and this is obviously unhealthy. But there's a certain amount of garden-variety yelling in every relationship, and people's appetite and tolerance for it varies widely. I've only really yelled at a boyfriend once — because he criticized my parking — but a friend of mine doesn't feel she's truly close to a partner until they can have a good fight. Whether you believe there's such a thing as a "good fight" at all may depend both on your natural temperament and whether you've had a lot of "bad fights" in your life.

So what's a "bad fight?" One that includes physical violence, obviously. One that involves emotional abuse, which HelpGuide.org defines as words designed "to chip away at your feelings of self-worth and independence." Beyond that, though, it's hard to distinguish between a fight that clears the air and one that just leaves it cloudy with resentment. Maybe the answer is different for every couple. Or maybe I just don't know the answer because I'm not much good at fighting.

One thing that's clear from Barnes's piece is how little our own love lives tell us about other people's. Barnes's friend Lacey tells her, "I want a husband like yours. Someone who reads me love poems over breakfast." She is unaware that Bob once broke their breakfast table, but her perception of Barnes's marriage is also colored by her own anger over her husband's porn viewing. Barnes's essay didn't really teach me how much "wrath" is too much — though Bob's clearly was, for them — but it is a good illustration of the fact that we tend to judge other people's relationships by what we can and can't handle in our own. And that this method, like many we use when trying to understand other people's private lives, isn't terribly effective.

With This Rage, I Thee Wed [Oprah.com, via CNN]

I know of several couples who, after amicable breakups, met for lunch and agreed that when they got back to the office, they both would simultaneously change their relationship status from "In a Relationship" to "Single" in one, smooth, sane move, and devote the rest of the afternoon to explaining to curious friends that they were just ready to move on. But in a Salon piece today on the way Facebook is affecting the lives of those going through divorces — and their lawyers — makes that kind of levelheadedness seem rare, at least among an older, less savvy generation.

It seems that every social networking feature that helps keep us connected can also be an irresistible temptation for those who feel wronged by their former spouses. The piece centers on Lauren (fake name), a mother of two who took to Facebook to air her dirty laundry and diss her ex:

"During the month that followed, as the marriage continued to unravel and her grief intensified, Lauren began chronicling her divorce via status updates. "Lauren would cry, but then he wins," she wrote. "There isn't enough Kleenex in the world." "My house is a mess. My life is a mess." "Lauren is facing the aftermath.""

And forget about trying to sneak in status updates aimed directly at your ex's hopefully-jealous heart (and everyone knows when someone's doing that anyway!):

"When she began to write about her new relationship, her husband finally lost it. "I wrote that I was ‘Going to pizza night and beyond,'" Lauren said, "and he was offended by it. I thought it was vague enough.""

Then Lauren expanded her multi-platform revenge empire to the photo-tagging feature:

"Lauren, for example, "tagged" her ex-husband in a photo of their two boys and a coral snake — she gave the snake her husband's name."

Okay, that one is just plain funny. But in their attempts to express their frustration in an increasingly isolated world, some divorcees are accidentally getting creepy:

"Chad Post was expunged by his wife after he posted about chopping down trees in preparation to sell their house. "I wrote that I was probably not in the best mental state to be using a chain saw," he told me. "My wife didn't say anything, but then she defriended me. She just wasn't there anymore. It was super-surreal in a 21st century-meets-third grade sort of way.""

And as if looking nutty to your friends (and high school rivals, and former Sunday School teacher, etc) and sacrificing a bit of your self-respect forever, revealing too much about your post-breakup life on Facebook can have real legal consequences as well, like the possibility of losing custody if your pictures show you drinking or smoking (!), or this kind of thing (which sounds quite far-fetched):

"If, for instance, photos surface online of you and your new paramour toasting each other at a pricey restaurant, you could be found to have committed "marital waste" (spending marital funds on another person)."

Apparently all of this is so common that it's now a just a regular formality in the family law industry:

"Many lawyers, in fact, advise clients not to get on Facebook, MySpace or Twitter at all during a divorce, and some firms require that clients suspend their accounts."

Good plan! The lesson here is not a new one: always remember that nothing you put online can ever be taken back, and that nobody, but nobody, has ever won a breakup or divorce by being less than graceful about it, even before social networking. The article advises regular people to act like celebrities (or, I'd add: pre-Twitter celebrities) and keep your insecure, spiteful, and vulnerable quips close to the vest, no matter how cathartic you think it'll feel to broadcast them. I'd add something to that as well: why not just not answer the relationship part of your Facebook profile? After all, unless you keep your Facebook page as a dating tool, it's really nobody's business, and you can avoid some serious heartache later. Think of it as a social networking pre-nup: reveal nothing, and later have nothing to take back.

The Facebook Divorce [Salon]

I'd forgotten about this incident until the other day, when my boyfriend accidentally hit me in the boob when I spun around too quickly as he leaned in for a hug. I instantly did the "I'm in pain" inhale and grabbed myself, and not in a sexy way, mind you, but in an "oh my god, the pain! The pain!" kind of way, and my poor befuddled boyfriend, still mid-hug, started yelling, "What happened?!" as I continued to feel myself up on the kitchen floor.

"It hurts when you get hit there," I whimpered, displaying my inability to choose a proper word to describe a part of my own anatomy. This is another problem: I hate using "breast" in everyday conversation, as it sounds very clinical (and, admittedly, using it still reminds me of breast cancer, which my grandmother passed away from), but the alternatives are all so stupid that I always feel like an idiot, no matter what term I use. I usually go with boob. Classy, I know. I'm working on it.

In any case, my boyfriend was not aware that it hurts to get hit in the boobular area. I suppose this is because he grew up without any sisters, and also because he doesn't go around punching people in the chest, but he was slightly stunned when I informed him that yes, it hurts, and that it also hurts for women when we accidentally get hit in the pubic area as well, even though men swear we can't possibly understand the pain of getting "kicked in the balls."

I'm sure many of you, like myself, have walked into the corner of your desk, or hit yourself with a door or drawer and nailed your pubic bone (again, not in the sexy way). It is ridiculously painful. It's not surprising, considering that your vaginal area, like your breasts, consists of multiple nerve endings, and when you take an accidental knock to either, it's fairly unpleasant, unless you're into that kind of thing. I did this at work a few months ago and had to half-dance into the staff bathroom to let out a silent scream. I'm pretty sure my co-worker, also a woman, saw it happen, as she gave me an understanding nod whilst trying not to laugh.

I'll admit that for a while, when I was a teenager, anyway, I wasn't sure if there was something wrong with me, as I noticed that it really did hurt whenever I got hit in either area (I am ridiculously clumsy) and none of my friends had ever talked about it, at least not on the level that the boys I went to school with did, who constantly bitched about the pain of getting hit in "the junk" while simultaneously challenging each other to idiotic ball kick-offs. But after a friend of mine took an errant pitch to the boob during a softball game (ouch), we all started sharing stories about various accidental boob injuries, and I realized it wasn't weird at all, just not talked about very often.

My friend may be right, in that I won't ever know what it's like to be kicked in the balls, but I can say that yes, getting accidentally knocked in the breast or the crotch hurts for women as well. I'm not trying to compare the pain or say that one is stronger than another, as that would be unfair and a bit absurd, I'm just pointing out that although we may not talk about it as often, it does hurt for women, and if nothing else, we should all try to be more careful out there. If you're going to end up getting to second base with yourself on the kitchen floor, let's try to make it for all the right reasons.

[Image via Natalie Dee.]