I Have Boobs, Deal With It.

Sing it, Meghan McCain!

So by now most of us are already over the non-controversy regarding Meghan McCain and a certain chesty twit pic. However it is her response today in the Daily Beast that really intrigues me as it seems to encapsulate the struggles that all well-endowed women face. So McCain posted a picture of herself on twitter sporting vaguely porny looking cleavage. She claimed it was in preparation for her big night in that involved a good book and some takeout. Now I don’t know a 20 something female who would post and unflattering or dowdy picture of herself on the internet and as Broadsheet pointed out, “What do they think young Republican women wear to bed? Lanz of Salzburg?” OK, so posting a megaboobs shot of yourself online might be vaguely tacky (however again, I challenge you to find me a 20-something female who doesn’t have at least one vaguely saucy pic of herself on Facebook) but to be called a slut over it? What century are we in?

 McCain says she has, “struggled to accept the fact that the way I look in a tank top comes off more “sexual” than a flat-chested woman.”  I can totally relate here, there are some styles smaller chested women can wear without stares that I just can’t pass off without looking like Marilyn Monroe. Although it can be a nuisance at time, I’ve always ultimately thought of it as a nice problem to have. I do my best to dress appropriately for the situation I’m in, try to keep it all “tucked in” and not flash people in public, but in the end… I have boobs. They’re big, sometimes people are going to notice them. I’m not going to go around wearing turtlenecks every day or uncomfortable chest minimizing bras just because some people can’t handle the sight of a fully grown woman. 

What’s up with people behaving as if having large or noticeable breasts is a sign of promiscuity? Last time I checked, there was no correlation between cup size and number of sexual partners and if there is… boy did I miss out when I was single. It doesn’t work the opposite way, people don’t look at women with small breasts and think, “Oh, she must be such a prude.”  Why do we look at a woman who has larger breasts, breasts that are often more visible than the breasts of a smaller woman and automatically think that she’s a slut just because her body’s doing what it does naturally? 

Although breasts are highly fetishized in our culture, the fact is that they serve a very practical evolutionary purpose; feeding human babies. Unless you have a lactation fetish, that’s just about the least sexual thing I can think of. Having large breasts is not an invitation for people to stare, comment or think ill of my character any more than having a large nose or ears would be. Living with the body I was born with and feeling comfortable in it, comfortable enough to not want to hide behind boxy clothing doesn’t make me, or Meghan McCain a slut. And while we’re at it, I’m so done with slut shaming. What’s a slut? Anyone who’s had more sex than you have? I’m tired of the word slut. I’m a slut, you’re a slut, we’re all sluts. Why in this day and age do we really think it is our business to comment on who or how many people anybody else is sleeping with anyway? 

Meghan McCain says she’s proud  of her curves, but like so much of her other writing, I feel that she gets close to making a great point and then backs off it in the end. She says she’s not perfect and that she’s still “making mistakes” and that she says she’s, “learned a valuable lesson about the internet and boundaries” and hopes, “other girls can learn from this episode.” Learning to draw the line between the internet and real life is a valuable lesson for sure, but in the end is this a lesson about being who you are, critics be damned, or covering up and shutting up when a few assholes pull out the S word? After all, McCain did threaten to take down her twitter page after the whole incident, something she has never done when the media has repeatedly called her fat. Why is it that a tiny four lettered word like slut has the power to make a confident woman like McCain consider silencing herself? Why is it that we use the word slut so often to defame, discredit and shut down young women? 

It’s something to think about. In the mean time, don’t you even think about calling me and my C cups slutty. Unless, of course, you mean it in a good way.

Weekend Update: Rage Edition

Most of the time I don’t mind the political wing nuts who protest in Harvard Square. Usually they are pretty harmless. Free Tibet? Why not? Stop global warming, don’t mind if I do! Sure, they can be annoying and self-righteous at times, but they’re political groups, that’s what they’re supposed to be like. I never found any of them offensive, until today. 

This afternoon as I was walking through the square I passed a group of protesters carrying a giant sign that said: STOP OBAMA’S NAZI HEALTHCARE PLAN.

Because apparently trying to make sure every American has health insurance is somehow comparable to the systematic slaughter of six million Jews.

Usually I like to live and let live, but in this case I stopped and gave the people holding that asinine sign the finger, which was a lot nicer than what would have happened if I’d allowed myself to open my mouth. In that case I would have let loose a torrent of obscenity, nay, I might have exploded in rage. They’d be scraping bits of me off Bartley’s Burger Cottage for weeks. I think in that situation, giving the finger was the politest thing I could have possibly done. Those groups may have freedom of speech but so do I and I have a right to let them know that I might tolerate  their overblown, ignorant, offensive and extremist opinions in my neighborhood, but I sure as hell don’t agree with it. Not just because I’m one of those commie liberal types that thinks every person deserves access to affordable health care, but also because I find the appropriation of the Holocaust to support a political cause to be absolutely unconscionable. 

I am sick to fucking death of people comparing everything they don’t like to Nazism. What’s next, the kid at Berryline doesn’t put enough granola on your fro-yo and he’s Hitler? Come on people. And while we’re at it, I’d like to give everyone who compares Obama’s political agenda to communism, fascism and socialism (booga booga!) a fucking dictionary so they can look up the meaning of the words because they have absolutely no clue in hell what they mean. If they did, they would realize that the analogies they are trying to draw make no fucking sense. Those are just big, scary words that somebody wagged in front of their faces and told them they were supposed to be frightened of. Wake up people, for the last eight years we were practically a fascist country under the Bush administration, and you people ate it up. If socialism means putting my tax dollars to work for something that will actually benefit myself and others (health care reform) instead of just using them to  fund a 2.5 trillion dollar vanity war then sign me up!

I can’t believe that so many people in this country have been duped into believing that helping those less fortunate than ourselves by making healthcare a basic human right somehow degenerates our society or makes us less free. You know what makes me feel less free? Slaving away at a job that offers me no benefits, not having the right to demand those benefits, and being robbed of my dignity by being unable to take care of myself when I’m sick. To me, that’s the essence of an unjust society.

I know I shouldn’t get so worked up about this. In all likelihood the people I ran into in Harvard Square today are the type of people who just need something to proselytize about on a Saturday, they probably didn’t even bother to really think through how offensive their words were. Obama’s health plan will probably pass, all of those people will realize that the sky isn’t going to fall in if their neighbor who just lost her job can actually go see a doctor when she’s sick, and they will move on to protest the next fashionable cause. In the mean time, I’ve got my work cut out for me trying not to end up rage-splattered all over Bartley’s.

Love Me, Love My TV

Growing up I wasn’t allowed to watch very much television. My parents gave me the familiar spiel about how TV rots your brain and how I’d be better off reading a book or playing outside. However as an adult who has done more than her fair share of child-care for somebody that doesn’t actually have kids of her own I have realized that half the reason had to have been because most children’s programing is really effing annoying. I mean, have you ever seen Sponge Bob!? Some people love it, to me watching that show is like having a bad acid trip while locked in a room with a bunch of hyenas hell bent on clawing the flesh off your bones.

All those years that I thought my parent were being strict, loving, compassionate people who valued my intellectual curiosity and development so deeply that they didn’t want my childhood marred by advertising and junk culture, but in reality they probably just wanted my sister and I to turn off the tube so they could get some damn peace and quiet.

The moral of the story is that Kid Sister and I didn’t get to watch much TV so what we did get to watch we really had to make count. Although I probably only watched about an hour of TV a week as a kid, the shows I grew up on really did influence me. So here we go kids, the top TV shows that made little Fever who she is today:

Fashion Sense:

Clarissa Explains It All

Oh how I shamelessly ripped off Clarissa’s fashion sense as a pre-teen. I remember watching the premiere and going straight up to my room to desperately try and reconstruct my unfortunate mid-90s wardrobe of over-sized flowered palazzo pants and puffy poet blouses into something cooler.

Clarissa’s life was everything a young Sassy reader like myself could possibly covet. She was an aspiring journalist (I soon after published “zines” with my friends that were xeroxed off of notebook paper and sent around via the mail. Back in the days of dial-up before every teen with an opinion had a blog with which to broadcast her every inner desire this was how we rolled, biotches!), with a hip, floppy haired best guy friend (OK, so at that age I made fun of any boy who approached me until he rolled up crying in an emasculated ball which is probably why I didn’t date much as a teen, but a girl could dream), and an awesomely decorated room (that boys were allowed in!) with a real life giant Swatch watch hanging on the wall. (Only the coolest of the cool kids had those giant Swatch watches, and I could never convince my parents to get me one.) What more could a child of the 90s ask for?

Sense of the Bizzare:

The X-Files

Just listening to the theme music on my shitty computer speakers makes my stomach churn deliciously in horror. It’s Friday night, circa 1997. My parent are out of town. What are my sister and I doing? We’re not hosting a kegger or sneaking boys into the house, we’re curled up in the dark in our suburban living room under grandma’s afghan watching the X Files and scaring the ever loving shit out of ourselves.

Pop Culture:

The Adventures of Pete & Pete

Most people’s first exposure to Godfather of Punk Iggy Pop might have been through a mix tape or a local college radio station. Mine was because of The Adventures of Pete and Pete, where he played Nona’s dad.

There were a million great cameos on Pete & Pete; Luscious Jackson played the school dance, Michael Stipe guest-starred as an ennui-ridden Popsicle man (let me know if I’m missing any others) but to me the real beauty of this show was it’s spot on portrayal of sibling relationships, first love, and the simple joys of growing up in the burbs.

Sick Sense of Humor:

Ren & Stimpy

When my sister was little I remember her kindergarten teacher telling my mom that bathroom humor was only a passing phase. Oh, how I know my mom wishes that were true. To this day I still can’t resist a good fart joke. I have no idea how such a demure woman gave birth to two such twisted individuals. Perhaps we were irrevocably warped by watching a show with a character called “Powdered Toast Man” who entreated his subjects to “cling tenaciously to his buttocks”. And of course, who could forget log?

Propensity for Loving Doomed Cult TV Shows:

Eerie Indiana

Remember Eerie Indiana? Neither do most people. It was like a kiddie X-Files with a little Twilight Zone thrown in there for good measure. My sister and I couldn’t get enough of it which means of course it got cancelled after like two episodes. Fortunately, the show’s creators don’t seem too worried about copyright infringement, as there are plenty of full episodes up on You Tube.

Budding Liberal Idealist:

The Wonder Years

Is it just me, or is there very little the Baby Boomer generation loves more than reflecting back on itself? This might explain why The Wonder Years was one of the few shows my family watched together, even my relentlessly channel surfing dad was transfixed.

Aging hippies love regaling their punk ass kids with how tough ‘Nam really was and how groovy that Jefferson Airplane concert was. The Wonder Years gave the ‘rents a chance to re-live those times without my sister and I stomping off to our rooms, slamming the doors and blasting Pearl Jam.

The ironic thing was that as I followed Fred Savage’s character throughout that series I actually felt like I grew up with him, losing a bit of my innocence along the way. For those of us who grew up in the gay 90s when the future was bright and the culture wars of our parent’s time seemed archaic, The Wonder Years was eerily prophetic of the times to come. Just like Kevin Arnold, we watched our parents behave like hypocrites, screwed up our first real relationships and lost faith in our government. I don’t think our parents ever dreamed that we would inherit a world that would become just as tumultuous as it was in the 1960′s but here we are, arguably worse off than we were a generation ago. It’s enough to make a person want to protest. Or grow their hair real long, or quit their job and travel the country in a VW Bus. Except these days we’re getting fired from our jobs, everybody’s way too freaked out about the economy to notice that we’re losing a war and gas is too damn expensive to facilitate any epic road trip/life altering experiences. Thanks George Bush!

So there you have it, my top handful of influential programming. It’s not a bad lot, if I do say so myself. Maybe it’s even a good thing that I drew so much inspiration from TV instead of all the books I read. After all, it could have been worse. Thank Maude I never went through a Little House on the Prarie fashion phase.

Gold Diggers, Skinny Bitches and Trophy Wives, Oh My!

Cue the Kanye kids; I feel a blog entry coming on…

Want to learn the secret to true and lasting relationship fulfillment? Don’t want to work when you’re over 40 (or perhaps at all)? Wondering why all your type A female friends are “slaving away” while all the bimbos you know are off getting hot stone massages? You need Smart Girls Marry Rich. Penned by the same altruistic mavens who brought you (the thinly veiled vegan-orexic propaganda) Skinny Bitch, Smart Girls Marry Rich is the ultimate guide to achieving security and happiness in your long-term relationship (hint: it has nothing to do with your dude’s sexy blue eyes). Because who else would you trust to give you relationship advice than the women who bestowed upon us the sage like nutritional adage: “Healthy = skinny, unhealthy= fat”?

OK, I know (or perhaps I just hope) that supposedly instructive tomes such as Smart Girls Marry Rich and The Rules are just a bunch of inflated crap that’s designed to be incendiary so the authors can get on talk shows and sign six figure book deals, but I just can’t look away. It’s not just that they fry me… they fascinate me. There is something about looking at a view so violently opposed to my own that I can’t write about it without squirming in my chair. Maybe it is because it forces me to examine and defend my own views, or maybe it’s because I love a fight. At any rate, here’s my take on Smart Girls:

First of all, I can’t stand self-help books that divide all women into two opposing camps. Either you are a miserable, overworked career harpy or a pampered, cerebrally challenged bimbo. Has anybody ever met anyone who truly embodied either of these stereotypes? What if the overworked career woman actually (gasp) finds her job fulfilling? And for the last time, why is it automatically assumed that every woman who doesn’t work outside the home lives a life of leisure? The hardworking (mostly) stay at home mom that raised me would take exception! She worked her ass off bringing up two kids, running a household and helping my dad sustain the family business. To this day girlfriend has never had a hot stone massage, although she sure as hell deserves one.

I may be about to start a feminist shit-storm by saying this, but I’ll say it anyway. Women, whether we’re high-powered career types, stay at home moms, or some amalgamation of those things, make choices. None of these choices are inherently weaker than others, they are just different. I think it is actually pretty cool that at some point in my life I will be able to make a choice to shift my focus from career path to mothering, to some sort of collage of those two things, and back again, as it makes sense for my family and I. I get to decide how to put my life together. Chances are the man I start my family with will never get to make those sort of compromises because it is assumed that the only way any natural red blooded heterosexual male would ever want to contribute to his family is by working a very narrowly defined 9-5 job. We all say how terrific we think stay at home dads are, but the overall subtext is that any man who would give up a life of ambition to focus on fathering is lazy, emasculated and unmotivated. We feel sorry for stay at home dads and the women who marry them. How can she respect him when she makes more money than he does? How can he feel like the man when he’s changing diapers?

Don’t even think your partner might relish having a more equal hand in creating a home bringing up your family. According to the Smart Girls you’re kidding yourself. Ask for anything aside from a traditional male partner who will play his part to provide, provide, provide and you’re asking for trouble. And he better be established before you tie the knot because a self made man whom you support in achieving his goals will leave you once he gains success. Once again, my parents who married in 1972 with 500 bucks between them and went on to start a successful business and own multiple homes would bristle at this assumption.

Nobody asks guys if they “still want to be working at 40.” Nobody expects that men would all be happier if they married wealthy and live their lives sipping Mimosas by the pool. Yet time after time, women are told that we’re supposed to feel unfeminine, nay, unnatural for having a drive, curiosity and ambition that might challenge us to explore (and even find deep satisfaction) outside the domestic sphere. Women’s work is incredibly undervalued in our society, yet we’re instructed that we give up all our chances for power, security and a happy life if we attempt to pursue other types of work. Clearly, the only power that is is safe and appropriate for me to have is the power to get a man to buy me stuff.

Smart Girls really plays into the whole security hysteria that is plaguing our culture right now. Everyone likes to think they could have avoided the stock market crash. We all would like a little more stability in our day-to-day lives. It is tempting to believe that marrying rich can provide that stability. I understand the point Smart Girls makes about the fact that romantic love is fleeting so a marriage that lasts a lifetime needs to be built on something more stable, but I disagree that money is what makes a marriage stable. Just ask all those bankers who are getting divorced by wives who “didn’t sign up for” life in the middle class.

I thought the whole point of an egalitarian society was that we don’t have to depend on our partners for material things so instead we can depend on them for the things that money can’t buy, you know… love, compassion, understanding, emotional support, all the stuff Bernie Madoff can’t embezzle away.

Maybe this is just an oversimplification by one of those single, career oriented, childless harpies. Perhaps once I’m gestating little Frances Bean Peaches Bjork Jr. in my womb I’ll start thinking about the cost of cruelty free prenatal vitamins, cloth diaper service, day care, braces, Rock n’ Roll Camp For Girls and Harvard and send my mate out packing to pull down six figures.

Until then, here’s one thing I do know: life’s a bitch kids. Getting up every day, going to work, making ends meet, raising kids, its hard work. I can’t imagine it all being worth all the toil sacrifice unless I’ve got someone I love deeply in my corner, fighting that fight right alongside me. Life is shitty enough, why the hell would I want to come home in the evening to someone I wasn’t crazy in love with?

Peaches Part Deux: Fashion Redux

One of the fun things about going to shows is that you get to check out all the messed up stuff  the cool kids are wearing.  The Peaches show was no exception. As you can imagine the crowd offered some serious pageantry, ranging from the sublime to the completely douche-tarded.

I’m going to refrain from passing too much judgment on people’s looks as I’m loath to fan the (completely hilarious) flames of the hipster hatred fire. Hipsters after all, are people too, and hating on them has become as trendy as actually being one which makes it totally fin. I’m not sure what it is about hipsters that makes people so angry. OK so maybe if you went to art school and got sick of girls in tutus with rat’s tales talking about their puffy painted thesis projects, then I can understand. There is something about purposely looking bizarre and having absolutely no sense of humor about it that sort of gets me. If you are going to go out every morning with a handle bar moustache and a monocle, you best be able to laugh at yourself. But then, far be it from me to pass judgment on people’s fashion choices. I used to go to school slathered in glitter wearing a nausea-inducing psychedelic polyester dress, red argyle socks, Tevas, a patchwork bucket hat and a Lisa Frank back pack. All at the same time. Yep, I was that girl. That’s what Catholic school does to you.

So anyways, here are my top five favorite looks from a set of people who are clearly not burdened by the constraints of trying to build a tasteful business casual wardrobe. Enjoy.

1) Plaid Flannel Shirt With Matching Rambo- Style Headband.

The girl I saw sporting this look seemed to be channeling Euro joke-pop sensation Gunther.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Too bad she didn’t try to touch my tra-la-la.

(NSFW)

2) Pirate Chic

There will always be a spot in my heart for pirates, but I thought the pirate -chic look was supposed to be oh so five minutes ago? Regardless, any girl who can rock an eye patch with a cocktail dress and still look fierce gets a gold star in my fashion playbook.

She looked just about as glam as this lady, which is to say very.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

3) Members Only Jackets.  

I’m not gonna lie, I’m jealous of anyone with a Members Only Jacket, especially if it happens to be gold lame, like the guy I saw at the Peaches show. Members Only jackets remind me of my grandad, but not in a creepy way, I swear. This particular dude had an old school MJ vibe going on, which was fine by me.

4) Fascinators 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I’ve been a big fan of fascinators for a while now.  In my other, other life (the one where I’m not a blogger or an educator but a girl who likes to dress up as a crazy french lady and high kick down Mass Ave with feathers in her hair) fascinators are my go to fashion staple when I need that little something extra to go with my false eyelashes, ruffled rumba pants, and 60-yard cotton candy pink crinoline. You know, when I feel like being understated. Girls who don’t have a femme to femme drag queen complex like yours truly are sporting them with jeans and T-shirts, which I think is a tres charming way to mix it up a little.  You can get them all over etsy now but this one is from Truly Fallen,  where I’ve gotten some fun stuff in the past. Bonus, the lady who sells them is super nice. 

5) Moustaches

The number one hipster accessory of the mo has gotta be a kickass moustache. And to think, I was once so ashamed of mine that I had it burned off my face with costly laser procedures! But that’s another blog entry. Anyways, kids these days are all about the facial topiary, even Peaches herself is know to be apologetically hairy. The great news is if you can’t grow one, there are a variety of fake moustache options out there on the internet. 

So there it is kids, all the fashion news from the front lines that’s fit to print. And in honor of all things eccentric, I leave you with one more Peaches clip. This one has been my theme song today and it’s rife with some good old fashioned equal opportunity objectification.

(NSFW)

Stuff I Like: The Steamy Bohemians

 

All right kids. I’m just gonna put this right out there. I have a big, huge, raging lesbian girl crush on The Steamy Bohemians. Scratch that, it’s more than a crush. I am viciously, wildly and perversely in love with the Steamies. If I could, I would marry them in a big, gay Massachusetts wedding, because that’s what will start happening when we let the gays get married. People will start marrying their dogs, their cousins and their favorite stand up comedy duo and we’ll all end up going to hell. Just you watch.

But, I digress.

A Steamy Bohemians show is is like watching your raunchiest gal pals riff off each other after a couple of vodka tonics, except, you know, funnier. And with guitars. And banana shaped maracas.

The Steamies know how to keep it real, tackling such hot topics as what happens when your second cousin is really really hot:

(Warning, none of these vids are even remotely SFW, unless you happen to work in a brothel, in which case, rock on!)

Or how to handle the static when some dude catches you making out with his girlfriend:

And if incest jokes and vagina puns aren’t enough for you (vajungle, anyone?) how about a trip to sex town?:

They are the MCs and twisted masterminds behind Jerkus Circus, the freaky, sexy, fun variety show that swept Boston and is now poised to take over the world, or at least a very small section of it in select urban areas. Chances are they’ll be coming to a bar near you, so check ‘em out. I’ll be the creepy girl in the back, scrawling love letters on a cocktail napkin in crayon.

Please, Think of the Hipsters!

OK, so most of my readers are aware of my well documented love/hate relationship with American Apparel. An affair that has been complicated of late with the announcement that AA has now launched a line of (sort of) maternity clothing. Now just ‘cuz you got knocked up doesn’t mean you can’t still dress like coked out disco skank! This adds yet another perverse layer to the American Apparel Hates Fat People (or at least fat women) debate. What does it mean that AA is willing to start a line especially for husky guys but their answer to expecting women is to just try and wriggle themselves into some of their stretchier styles? Clearly they have demonstrated an understanding of the fact that larger people need larger clothes, so why doesn’t the idea ring true for the women’s line? Is being pregnant just not a good enough excuse to get fat?

So here goes kids, I’m dusting off my hate letter to American Apparel. Enjoy:

Dear American Apparel,

I appreciate that your 100% cotton garments are so expensive because they are made without any slave labor in sunny L.A where you pay your workers a living wage. Really I do. I appreciate it so much that I continue to buy your products even though you are enabling a generation of hipsters to dress like aerobics instructors from the 80s without even the effort of raiding a thrift store. I appreciate it so much that I even look the other way from your horrific print adds. You know, the ones with some anorexic, strung out looking girl in some vaguely masturbatory pose that’s supposed to be provocative with a look in her eyes that says she’s oh so bored with everything, even sex (which she probably can’t even muster the energy to have since she’s so emaciated that she looks unable to menstruate, let alone break a sweat)? Yeah those ones.

In your Cambridge store today I witnessed a phenomenon that makes me want to whack you upside your collective fashion mullet. To put it bluntly, you seem to think that the only people who should be wearing your 100% cotton slavery free garments are people the size of the waifish models you use to pedal them. Lest you mistake me for a lone whiner, it has been well documented that I’m not the only woman with this problem.

I think a person my size should be able to fit comfortably into a size large at any mainstream retail store. Hell, throughout most of the 1990s (before the whole size inflation thing happened and I woke up the next day and was suddenly a size 6 without doing anything differently) I WAS a medium or a large at most shops. If you are trying to take a stand on the whole vanity sizing things and have Americans start thinking realistically again, then I respect that, although somehow I think your motives are not so altruistic. 

Okay, okay, I understand that a womanly figure is threatening to the other greasy haired, concave chested half of your sales demographic, the MALE hipster.

So I beg you, AA, if you can’t muster any compassion for your female shoppers, think of the male hipsters! What about all the sensitive men who’s self esteem you are destroying with your size deflation when they find they can’t fit their scythe like hips into your tightie whities or striped cotton 70′s athletic shorts?  Female eating disorders have long been a scourge in modern society, now must you now send the other half of the fashion conscious sector to purge over toilets as well!? Aren’t they better employed spending their parent’s money on weed or flunking out of an art school they aren’t talented enough to be at in the first place? How will they manage to roll out of bed by 3PM to pound a Miller High Life and get to band practice if they are too worried about their love handles? How will these fragile men live their lives if they are forced into the same kind of all consuming body image schizophrenia that most women engage in on a daily basis!?

The real dirty thing about all this business American Apparel, is that I bet the size deflation doesn’t run through to the male side of your clothing line. In fact, I wonder if size inflation/deflation is even an issue with men’s apparel in general. Tell the truth AA, nothing is worse than a fatty, especially a fatty who tries to wear trendy clothing and feel good about herself even if she’s not a size two. That’s just like, ew. And while we’re at it, nothing is more threatening to the image conscious, emotionally crippled pretty boys you like to sell your clothing to than a woman who could kick their asses. 

But this psychology is nothing new. We saw it in the 90s with Calvin Klein who said so famously that women over size 10 shouldn’t wear jeans. We’ve seen it throughout history. Because nothing freaks the fashion industry out more than a mature woman who isn’t willing to contort and starve her body by any means possible in order to fit into YOUR clothing.

But I’ve been unfair to you, AA. It’s not just you, it’s not just the fashion industry. It is the culture that supports it. The culture that tells women that we need to look adolescent to be sexy and that a mature woman in power is undesirable.

It’s me too, after all, I bought the little size XL sundress you had on the rack. And the A-line skirt, and the leggings, and the tiny tank tops in a rainbow of basic and fluorescent colors, and the sparkly gold hot shorts. And even though I’m not your target consumer, even though I’m spending my hard earned cash at a store that has tried to ward off my child bearing hips by making most of their styles too small to fit them, I still think I look hot in your clothes if I do say so myself. And sometimes I kinda hate myself for feeling that way. Damn American Apparel, I wish I could quit you. 

xoxo,

Fever

The Sarah Palin Drinking Game

Look kids, I may just distinguish myself as virtually the only feminist blogger on the net not to post a searing opinion on the Pitbull in Lipstick. I’m not going to post any of her scary gaffes in the Katie Couric interview about Roe v. Wade or John McCain’s stance on deregulation. I’m not even going to post any You Tube videos of Amy Poheler and Tina Fey brilliantly lampooning her on SNL, even though that shit’s hysterical. But I will post a link to another video that’s pretty damn funny.

Don’t get me wrong here, I hate the woman’s guts. And it isn’t because she’s a woman, or a mom or has a shoe collection most women would kill for. It’s because I think she embodies everything that’s bad and scary and harmful about the far right, and I can’t believe that some political strategist was so stupid that they assumed all they needed to do was put a candidate with tits up there and all the feminists and soccer moms would vote McCain because, “She’s just like us!” However I also believe that when you demonize someone with the fervor that other lefty bloggers have demonized her you give her too much power. Sarah Barracuda, I’m not afraid of you.

I’m not even gonna wax poetical about the Veep debates and how much more massively satisfying they were than last week’s predictable presidential snooze fest. Broadsheet already posted an article about exactly why Joe Biden is my new political crush, so I’m only gonna go there briefly. Biden is an old school working class hero, the type of guy that reminds you of what makes your dad and your granddad great. He’s long been a champion of women’s issues without being patronizing or talking down to women. Both a single dad and a working man with a career, he’s seen it from both sides the way few men have, so you know he gets it. Joe Biden, I heart you.

On my girl scout’s honor, I’m only gonna post one snarky thing about Sarah Palin in my blog, and then I’m gonna return to telling you all about burlesque, body image and how my vagina has opinions, because man does it ever.

So here we go, my one cheap shot about our would be Veep…

Ladies and Gentlemen, Fever2Tell proudly presents, The Sarah Palin Drinking Game*:

Take a shot every time she uses the word “maverick”.

Take a shot every time she uses a folksy phrase that appeals to the average “Joe six pack”.

Drink double if she mentions Russia.

Chug your entire beer if she says she can see Russia from her backyard.

Take a shot if she winks.

Drink every time she continues to insist on something that’s an outright lie, even after she’s been called out on it multiple times.

Drink every time she mentions invading Iran.

Drink triple every time she sleazily invokes the memory of the Holocaust in order to justify invading Iran even though that would add a third war we can’t afford to fight to the tally and where exactly is Bin Laden again? Oh, who cares, let’s just shoot all the brown people and have it over with.

Take a shot if she uses any fake swear words to pluckily show emphasis while still remaining a ladylike hockey mom, for example, “doggonit”.

Drink double if she totally ignores the question asked in order to robotically refer back to the McCain talking points she has memorized.

Drink every time she mentions, “hungry energy markets”.

Drink every time she says she’s read “All of the magazines.” Really, all of them? SO you read Bitch, BUST, The Advocate, Hustler, Maxim and Jugs too?

Drink double if she can’t name a single important supreme court case besides Roe. v. Wade.

Drink when she says she’d council a 15 year old incest victim to choose life.

Drink every time she sleazily tries to associate the word rape with Joe Biden by mentioning how he compared offshore drilling to raping the continental shelf, when she’s really trying to deflect her poor record on protecting rape victims. Remind me who pays for rape kits in Wasilla, Sarah?

Drink every time she says she’d like to promote a “Culture of life”, even though that culture doesn’t seem to extend to the wolves that she advocates killing, or the pregnant teenage moms at Covenant House, which she slashed funding for.

Just crack open the whiskey and start chugging if she actually admits to her literalist interpretation of the Bible which involves a lack of belief in evolution, the idea that dinosaurs lived 4,000 years ago and walked the earth with humans, and that the End of Days will happen in our lifetime.

And if these people actually slime their way into office, pack your bags, and move to Canada.

*Game was invented during last week’s debate, and so would be best enjoyed with the aid of a time machine. However, if you’ve no access to a Tardis this game can be applied to just about any interview, speech or public appearance.

cheer up emo kid….

turns out everyone really does hate you.

Having angry Mexican rioters lob tomatoes at you is really the epitome of suffering for your scene, and suffering is like, cool, right?

I must be ancient, because I just don’t get teen subculture anymore. It’s not that I find what’s hip to be weird and scary a la Grandpa Simpson, it’s more that I find the new rebelion as lame and wussy and suspiciously prepackaged. OK, so there is something about emo’s abundance of fey, makeup wearing boys that would have send my teenage heart aflutter, but once we got past the eyeliner to the gooshy, whiny caramel center within, I would have run screaming back to Robert Plant and his hairy chest on the covers of my favorite Zeppelin albums.

To me emo is like punk or goth lite, without a decent musical ourvre to redeem it. In the face of even the most arrogant punks or pretentious goth kids, I could never deny that the Clash and Depeche Mode rule. My Chemical Romance just doesn’t resonate with me the same way. Again, it’s probably because I’m old.

I should probably refrain from ragging on hipsters though, lets I prove myself a total poser. After all, on some days I tend to look suspiciously like this stereotype from Your Scene Sucks, right down to the fantastic plastic. At least I have a sense of humor about myself, right?

Beaver Ballyhoo!

Just in time for St. Patty’s day, this ad is a total hoot:

I don’t understand why Broadsheet even has to ask us if we think this is offensive, but there I go again being a bad feminist doing my sexist, oppressive male push ups and thinking that laughing at your vajayjay occasionally can be empowering.

Rhilly, Beaver is a far less offensive term for yer coochie than the dozens of others I hear thrown around on a daily basis. And is anybody else refreshed by seeing a tampon commercial that doesn’t assume all women are humorless prigs who find their periods a vulgar embarrassment? Not to mention that I’m tired of most feminine hygiene commercials, which try and capitalize off our insecurity by touting how their product will help keep the fact that we bleed for a week every month top secret and continue to help us fool the world into thinking that we women excrete nothing but flowers and sunshine.

Finally, a period product who’s advertisements don’t cater to the body shame ridden sensibilities of our grandmother’s generation and instead appeal to the modern woman with a simple message: that your period shouldn’t be a drag and instead of simply plugging it up a la Carrie once a month, you should take care of your snatch and treat it with a little kindness, cuz, y’ know, you only have one. This hip advertising that doesn’t talk down to women would be enough to make this devout Diva Cup user consider U Tampons… if I was a tampon girl in the first place. (And there’s your daily dose of TMI!)