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]

Though I honestly don't know anyone who is going to (intentionally) wear Spanx as outerwear, unless they're dressing as an Ace bandage for Halloween, I wouldn't be surprised if I saw someone walking down the street working a support garment as if it were the hottest thing on Earth. That's the nature of trends, really; some people find them ridiculous, and others embrace and celebrate them.

I have a tendency to panic when reading trend reports; I go worst case scenario and imagine stores filled with only "sexy" band-aid pants and the shorts-over-tights ensembles that I already rocked pretty hard in 1994, and I begin to slip into fashion Grinch mode, calling everything "stupid" and "ugly" and "annoying," as if that's going to stop Suzy McModel from wearing—and looking adorable in—a pair of plaid shorts and a shirt with four boats and a clump of bird feathers stuck to the front of it.

This season has already sent me into a panic: my initial reaction when reading Moore's piece, which predicts the return of "dress-up denim" and "Lycra bike shorts everywhere," was the reaction I typically get when reading fashion pieces or seeing fashion shows: "I don't get it." But the truth is that there are many, many people who do "get it," and who love it, so for those of us horrified and irritated by the trends (and those of us who don't feel like "reliving" the 80s for the 900th time, good lord), it's just a matter of trying to find the silver lining in a dark, Lycra spandex storm cloud.

Yes, it'll be harder to find certain things once the trends take over, but at the same time, the point of fashion is to take something and make it your own, and, I've been told, to find your own style and stick with it. The best part about trends, as overwhelming as they may be, is that they serve merely as an inspiration to create your own unique look; ruffles are in, sheer is in, stripes are in, shorts are in, and yes, Spanx are in, and though the magazines and the runways and the stores will present one way of wearing these things, in the end, as always, it's up to you to decide what really makes it from the runway to your closet.

What Might Make It From The Runways To The Store Racks [LA Times]

Writes the New York Times' Guy Trebay,

Too pronounced to be blamed on the slouchy cut of a T-shirt, too modest in size to be termed a proper beer gut, developed too young to come under the heading of a paunch, the Ralph Kramden is everywhere to be seen lately, or at least it is in the vicinity of the Brooklyn Flea in Fort Greene, the McCarren Park Greenmarket and pretty much any place one is apt to encounter fans of Grizzly Bear.

It's a fun piece, but I'm not quite sure what's given anyone the idea this is a new phenomenon: I'd go so far as to declare that the Grizzly-Bear-listening population, much like that of the general population and, indeed, members of the band itself, represent a wide range of physiques - and in any case were not those who were most prone to the overblown metrosexual orthodoxy in the first place. But some quoted in the piece suggest that this embrace of the gut could, in fact, be the hipster's contrarian response, not just to the pre-recession tyranny of Men's Health-style abs, but to the svelteness of the Commander in Chief. Being rebels sans causes, you see, these hipsters - who would, presumably, otherwise be hitting the gym between concerts? - have decided to develop guts. But why stop there? Maybe the gut - "the Kramden," to use the piece's term - is a response to the Recession, a sort of means of storing up supplies for the long winter, bear-style?

I'd be more inclined to point to the increasing acceptability of the shlub-with-hottie phenom in pop culture, something which we've detailed at some length in these digital pages. (And no, women have not embraced the Kramden; a letter in today's Wall Street Journal asking how to camouflage "flabby upper arms," and the tip we just received on combatting "the Stubborn, Unbeatable Bulge" is a reminder that insecurities are always in.) But even this would presuppose that this avant-garde gut is some sort of deliberate letting-go, or even subconscious rejection of norms. In fact, I think the phenomenon's a lot more straightforward: the hipsters who used to be really scrawny are now older, and can't drink as much PBR without it showing. And being women, we're nice about it.

It's Hip To Be Round [NY Times]
Youthful Blouses To Hide Arm Flab [Wall Street Journal]

The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.No Pants - Sometimes. I'm on record in my opposition to the exposed-ass look, but sometimes there's nothing like a men's shirt and gams for pure sex appeal. Just ask Elaine Stritch.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Color - a lot of it. So what if everyone looks at you? You're brightening their day - and they're looking on your terms.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Absurdly Big Hair. If you're lucky enough to have an old-school beauty shop nearby, they'll know how to crank out a classic beehive, and cheaply enough that you can just rock it for an evening to the movies. There is nothing like the supreme confidence of absolutely stiff hair. And yes, wigs are awesome too - plus an afternoon in a good wig shop is an afternoon well spent.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Completely Unique Makeup. Anyone can be "flawless." Lynn Yaeger's made a career of looking totally like her vision of herself. And for something that would seem to be self-conscious, it's done totally un-self-consciously. Isn't that really the key?


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Golden Girls chic. Which one, you ask? Well, you really can't go wrong: from bedazzled sweat suits to big-shouldered power jackets to leopard-print caftans, nothing says confidence like a little mid-80's Miami heat. And if it matters to you, this is actually a good look for hipster-heavy situations, because no one knows what to make of it and so, fearing what they don't understand, automatically respect and fear you. Also: easy to source at thrift stores.


The image associated with this post is best viewed using a browser.Wear an Enormous Hat. Bring the hat back. It's bold. It's completely gratuitous. It's the sort of thing that, unless you're in a costumey phase, you simply don't do as a teenager. Because being grown-up is wonderful.



What Not To Wear Beyond Your Teens [MSN]

It's hard to even predict at this point, as most of the trends I thought we'd never see again (Hammer pants? Really?) are back with a vengeance. As is often the case in such revivals, the most extreme fashion statements are always dragged back out, either for ironic purposes or due to the fact that people who missed the fads the first time around (see: 16-year-olds wearing 80s-inspired clothing) want a chance to try the decade on for size. But for those of us who are still a bit horrified about our middle-and-high-school fashion choices in the 90s, the revival is a bit harder to get excited about: we've already had one round of Hammer pants, thanks, and that's quite enough.

This is not to say that the revival is all bad: most of us still wax poetic at times about the comfort factor of our 90s ensembles: baggy pants, flannel shirts, and lots of corduroy, for example. But for the most part, the 90s were a decade that desperately sought its own style by ripping off decades past: the 70's revival was in full swing when I was in high school, and bell-bottom jeans and platforms ruled the hallways. We also spent the latter part of the decade in y2k mode, wearing "futuristic" silvers and neons and iridescent dresses and punked out hair colors It was, in a way, our 90s version of Judy Jetson's wardrobe. Still, there are certain trends that should never be allowed to return. Let's take a look at a few, shall we?

The Kris Kross Remember that hot minute there when we all thought wearing our clothes backwards was an awesome idea? It pains me to think of the various bathroom-related accidents this fad caused for 4th graders across the nation.


The Ironic Hawaiian Shirt: Sadly this one has never really gone away, but we could certainly do without the "I"m only wearing this hideous shirt because it's so ugly and hilarious" crowd. You're still wearing the shirt, dude! My eyes! MY EYES!


Goggles As Accessories If you are not skiing or swimming, you do not need to wear goggles. Period.


Big Johnson or Coed-Naked shirts If you wore these shirts in the 90s, the odds are that you were either a douche, a frat boy, or a youngster who really did not understand innuendo very well.


Overalls Unless you are a farmer, a toddler or a member of TLC circa 1992, you should not be wearing overalls. It doesn't matter if you sex them up by going shirtless or dropping one shoulder, either.

So which trends do you think should stay buried? And which ones do you hope will come back? Feel free to post them in the comments.

Can't Touch This Style Comeback [ABCNews]
How To Wear Catsuits [TimesOnline]

While it's true that Vogue put three black women on the cover in the last three months — after years of being dominated by white faces — do we really have Michelle Obama to thank?

Harris writes:

There is little doubt that she is the biggest political icon to hit the fashion industry since Jackie Onassis. Her face stares from magazine covers, her favoured designers become overnight sensations and the clothes she wears often sell out in the shops as soon as she is seen in them. […] Fashion houses and their models can influence the way millions of Americans think, act and feel about themselves. That can be for ill - with the modern obsession with thinness. Or it can be for good - in the shape of Michelle. A black woman - and also a well-built, professional, educated, older woman - is staring out from the magazine stands and asking Americans to be like her.

There's no question that people are obsessed with Michelle Obama — her clothes, her smarts, her arms. There's even a site called Mrs. O, dedicated to following the First Lady's fashion. But the question is whether she is influencing magazines, or if there has been a sea change in the air? In the fall of 2007, model mogul Bethann Hardison held a "conversation" about the lack of black models on the fashion runways. She called the process "a slow tsunami." In July of 2008, Italian Vogue's "All Black" issue hit stands. This was four months before the election, and back then, Michelle was not quite the icon she is now — in fact, she'd gotten some flak for not being "proud" of her country and there were rumors that she'd called someone "whitey." Clearly, it's all about how you spin it.

Rachel Shields wrote a story for Sunday's Telegraph, in which she argues: "The fashion world is changing its formula, embracing diversity and celebrating a more natural approach to beauty." She notes the three black women on the covers of Vogue as well as the make-up-free issue of French Elle. Shields writes: "The magazines appear to be joining a backlash against Photoshopped, cosmetically enhanced and unrepresentative images that have dominated the fashion industry and moving towards a more natural, realistic aesthetic." And the Guardian's Harris spoke to BJ Gallagher, a Los Angeles-based sociologist and author, who claims: "The election of a black president, and his wife's enormous popularity, are both part of the same cultural shift. America is changing from a culture of assimilation to a culture of pluralism." So perhaps Michelle Obama is not the genesis of this movement but one of the touchstones — or milestones — along the way. Towards a future with a more inclusive fashion industry, more diversity in media and advertising? Bethann Hardison spoke with the Guardian, saying she's not sure where the "Obama revolution" is leading us: "I am sure all these fashion designers voted for Obama but they still have a lily-white roster of models… Talk to me in two years. We'll see what happens when the dust settles down." But a story in the Washington Post may hint at what the future holds: instead of Miley, Britney or Zac, tween girls are obsessed with Sasha and Malia Obama.

"Sometimes I go up to my room and I just think, 'I want to meet them, I want to meet them, I want to meet them,' " says a desperate Sophie Metee, a fourth-grader at Wood Acres Elementary in Bethesda. "My main, main, main, main, main goal is to meet the girls — the Obama girls. Then the Jonas Brothers."

America's New Vogue For Black Fashion Is All Due To Michelle Obama [Guardian]
Fashion Flirts With 'Real' Women [Independent]
Move Over, Miley. In Washington, The Obama Girls Are the Latest Craze. [Washington Post]
Related: Mrs. O

Writes the Wall Street Journal's Daniel Akst, "If there is a silver lining to a financial crisis that threatens to leave the entire country dressed only in a barrel, it is this: At least we won't be wearing denim." Not only is denim hot, harsh, and frequently unflattering, says Akst, but it's a sop to our national identity crisis:

If hypocrisy had a flag, it would be cut from denim, for it is in denim that we invest our most nostalgic and destructive agrarian longings — the ones that prompted all those exurban McMansions now sliding off their manicured lawns and into foreclosure, dragging down the global financial system with them. Denim is the SUV of fabrics, the wardrobe equivalent of driving a hulking Land Rover to the Whole Foods Market. Our fussily tailored blue jeans, prewashed and acid-treated to look not just old but even dirty, are really a sad disguise. They're like Mao jackets, an unusually dreary form of sartorial conformity by means of which we reassure one another of our purity and good intentions.

Akst isn't the first to critique denim; a number of the glamorous eccentrics profiled in Simon Doonan's eponymous book cite it as a malign influence on individual style, and it's generally regarded as a major part of the decline of smartness and occasion in dress. But if he thinks an economic downturn will spell the end of denim, he's bound for disappoinment: unemployment doesn't generally do much for the bespoke market, and there's a lot to be said for a garment that can go an unseemly number of days between washes.

But in one thing, perhaps Akst and his ilk will be vindicated: if there's one casualty of this marketplace, boutique denim seems like a likely candidate. Already, pre-downturn, the bubble was starting to burst. As brands like Cheap Monday and Blank started replicating of-the-moment styles for a fraction of the price, the three-hundred dollar jean became increasingly demode. And in the current economy, where utilitarianism becomes, daily, less of an affectation and more of a necessity, such excess seems downright obscene, however raw and organic the fabrication, however subtle the cut, however abstract the brand name. But jeans aren't going anywhere - and for a reason Akst should understand. People crave uniforms we don't need to think about, and as official dressing rules have broken down, ironically, the defiantly proletarian answer to archaic dress codes has become just as inviolate a de facto uniform. But at least now maybe we can start to remember why we started wearing denim in the first place: It's cheap, durable, and doesn't show dirt. When Lanvin can say that, we'll talk.

Down With Denim [WSJ]

The actual story, "When Grandma Can't Be Bothered," deals with grandmothers who, unlike Michelle Obama's hands-on mom, Marian Robinson, aren't intimately involved with their grandchildren. And some who are totally disinterested! Take this family:

As for Catherine Connors, before she had her first child, Emilia, three years ago, "My mother put me on notice," she said. "She told me she was not interested in baby-sitting. She said she'd come to visit but that she didn't like newborns."...True to her word, Judy Connors flew to Toronto from her home in British Columbia a week after her granddaughter's birth. "It was clear she was bored," her daughter said. "There was a lot of sitting in the living room while I struggled to figure out how to nurse. She said, ‘I don't know why you don't just give her a bottle,' and then repaired to the veranda for a cigarette."

Apparently these folks are known as "glam-mas," and because they've "put in their time" raising their own kids, feel no desire to bond with their own grandkids. There is, obviously, no happy medium between grandparents who live in and love being surrogate nannies and people who, apparently, don't really want to know their grandchildren. The article identifies some of the potential areas of tension: today's "helicopter parenting" can seem excessive to a generation of more hands-off parenting, while in turn grandparents who don't share an obsessive interest in children's doings can seem like a personal affront. Then too, some parents apparently resent having to shell out for pricey childcare when their folks are nearby and not doing much. The upshot of the piece is: people are different. Some grandparents are involved, others aren't, some people are selfish, others selfish, some people are arbitrarily resentful when their families don't conform to the standards of a First Family of whose childcare situation they weren't aware two years ago.

We kid, sorta, because it is a legit issue: there's been plenty of talk about how the economy and the First Family's example will conspire to lead to a reinstatement of the multigenerational household. But no one doubts that there are people out there who will buck trends, others who will conform, and that all of them are available for comment in the paper. Nor is either hands-on grandparenting or its hands-off equivalent anything new: I can't pretend I wasn't a bit hurt when no (perfectly healthy, mind you) grandparent came to see me speak at my college graduation and I had to give my extra tickets to folks with more doting families. But by the same token, my own folks are already stocking up the baby stuff they find at tag sales and have assured me that they'll be on hand for (completely hypothetical) childcare. People, as we have mentioned, are different. That's one trend we can bank on. Luckily, so can the 'Styles' section.

When Grandma Can't Be Bothered [New York Times]

Though the number of men getting Botox injections has increased, it still only amounts to 300,000 men, or 7% of the total Botoxed population. But, as with the terms "manorexia" and "manscaping," now that the media has noticed that practices once exclusively thought of as female actually aren't, a new term has been created for guys. According to a Time article on the trend, though both sexes use the injections to smooth out wrinkles in the forehead, men use Botox differently than women because they want to get rid of vertical lines between their eyebrows, but don't worry about crow's feet. Also, according to anecdotal evidence, "boytoxers" are different from "girltoxers" because, "They get so jacked up worrying that it will hurt," says nine-time Olympic gold medalist Mark Spitz, spokesman for Allergan, a company that produces Botox. "Maybe that's why women have babies and we don't." [Time]

The long and varied history of breastfeeding — perhaps one of the most natural and organic of processes — is, writer Jill Lepore argues, inextricably linked to social change and economic issues. Long seen as a mark of social humility, breastfeeding was, amongst the upper-classes of prior centuries, generally farmed out to a paid wet nurse. But in the 18th Century, Rousseau (himself apparently a crap father) encouraged a romanticized view of back-to-nature mothering, one backed up by Linnaueus' studies of mammalian nature. An alleged "milk shortage" in 19th Century America started a fad of feeding babies cow's milk — often with fatal consequences — and started a decline in breastfeeding. Modern science — and the new practice of giving birth in hospitals - then ushered in an era of sterility. And, as Lepore points out, "perversely, Freud’s insistence that infants experience suckling as sexual pleasure proved a boon to stork-style repression, too: mothers, eager to keep infantile incestuous desire at arm’s length, propped their babies up in high chairs and handed them bottles."

Milk-banks and early wet-nurse directories gave birth to a new formula industry. "Once milk banks replaced wet nurses, human milk came to be treated, more and more, as a medicine, something to be prescribed and researched, tested and measured in flasks and beakers." Breast-feeding was regarded as old-fashioned and unsanitary...a trend that La Leche League intended to curb when they established in 1956. Read their pamphlet: "With his small head pillowed against your breast and your milk warming his insides, your baby knows a special closeness to you, he is gaining a firm foundation in an important area of life—he is learning about love.” And, unsurprisingly, this ethic appealed to many upper-class women of the 1960s.

In more recent years, breast milk's superiority has been touted by medical professionals as a deterrant to various health and immune problems. However, American breast-feeding is at a low, something hospitals and government have been at pains to address. Measures have ranged from workplace breast-pumping stations, tax exemptions, and amendment of indecency legislation that gets in the way of public breastfeeding. (The fact that a woman was just arrested in a Connecticut bar for drinking while nursing shows there's still some issues to figure out.) A 2007 case against an airline that confiscated breast milk led to its reclassification as “liquid medication" — significant in more ways than one. This, Lepore concludes, is the age of the breast pump. And that's not a great thing.

Non-bathroom lactation rooms are such a paltry substitute for maternity leave, you might think that the craze for pumps—especially pressing them on poor women while giving tax breaks to big businesses—would be met with skepticism in some quarters. Not so. The National Organization for Women wants more pumps at work: NOW’s president, Kim Gandy, complains that “only one-third of mega-corporations provide a safe and private location for women to pump breast milk for their babies.” (When did “women’s rights” turn into “the right to work”?) The stark difference between employer-sponsored lactation programs and flesh-and-blood family life is difficult to overstate. Pumps put milk into bottles, even though many of breast-feeding’s benefits to the baby, and all of its social and emotional benefits, come not from the liquid itself but from the smiling and cuddling (stuff that people who aren’t breast-feeding can give babies, too). Breast-feeding involves cradling your baby; pumping involves cupping plastic shields on your breasts and watching your nipples squirt milk down a tube. But this truth isn’t just rarely overstated; it’s rarely stated at all...No one seems especially worried about women whose risk assessment looks like this: “Should I take three twenty-minute pumping ‘breaks’ during my workday, or use formula and get home to my baby an hour earlier?”

In Lepore's view, the current mentality is essentially another round in the breast milk carousel: the only difference is, this one's a convenient synthesis of a few views: the same sterile packaging as 1950s "science," with the benefits of alternative research — minus, of course, the romanticism. Meanwhile, the issue is as starkly class-based as ever: any "good," progressive mother knows breast milk's benefits — but breast pumps and the accompanying paraphernalia of conscientious working motherhood are shockingly expensive. Another failure of "having it all" - or progress, of a sort?

Baby Food [New Yorker]

Related: Woman Arrested For Breast Feeding At A Bar [Babble]

The cinematic events which apparently heralded this sea change were Sex and the City: the Movie, Twilight, and Mamma Mia. In other words, women had promiscuous sex, had sex in the city, and didn't have sex with vampires, and amidst financial turmoil and political change, we ate it up.

However, all this is positively Bergman-esque compared to 2009's distaff-themed offerings. Says the FT,

This year women will be targeted even more precisely. One sub-sub-genre to emerge is feature films adapted from self-help books, notably French Women Don't Get Fat, which instructs women they can stay slim while still scoffing the air in the éclair choux pastry, and He's Just Not that Into You , which proffers advice such as that if a man runs away from a woman he is not in love with her.

The article quotes one feminist's dismayed response to this trend: "Self-help books send out the message women need to improve themselves instead of being happy with who they are." Well, that seems a tad unfair. For one thing, as self-help books go, these two are fairly common-sensical: both were remarkably short of psychco-babble and long on clearing up misconceptions, albeit obvious ones. There's a reason these books were such runaway bestsellers that they caught Hollywood's roving eye, and it's more than just numbers. Self-help offends people by its lack of artifice, its vulgarity, but chick lit and women's fiction hews to a similar formula of control-wresting and triumph. After all, a film like Sex and the City or Mamma Mia is no more virtuous for wrapping its self-help cliche's in shoes and ABBA; the self-help films will simply make no bones about it. The irony is, the end result will probably not be too different from what Hollywood's already turning out.

However, it will be interesting to note whether the stigmas of self-help carry over to its cinemazation. After all, a woman who can justify seeing Sex and the City for a laugh or Twilight in the name of cultural anthropology - no small class of women, I'd wager - might have a harder time pulling the trigger for French Women Don't Get Fat in widescreen. We like to be silly, not to feel stupid. Whether or not one finds the self-help film trend dismaying in itself, one can't deny that the "woman/smart " divide is being made nakedly stark. In removing all the artifice from what have essentially been self-help movies all along, Hollywood's ironically respecting our intelligence. And I wonder if that might not, also ironically, result in a backlash of denial - not the kind of escapism anyone wants.

Year of Women [FT]