Good lord, woman. It’s your right to do as you wish with your sex life and skeevy photo ops, but leave your daughter out of it!
And if you thought that was bad:
John Edwards had better watch out! Barney seems like he’s horning in on his territory!
Is this really news? That Shiloh Jolie-Pitt has a short, cropped hairstyle and favors jeans over dresses?
Again I say, rilly?
And who are the idiots claiming that Brad and Angelina are purposely dressing her like a boy to be “politically correct?”
Do any of these people actually have children?
Because if they did, they would know that by age three, most children have distinct likes and dislikes about the clothing that they wear. Perhaps B&A simply don’t feel like fighting her sartorial choices every time they walk out the damn door just to prove to everyone else she is a girl. I’ve been in the trenches in the getting dressed wars, and it can be ugly. Parents have to pick their battles, and as long as the kid is decently covered, all should be considered well.
As for Shiloh’s hair, it looks to be very fine and a short haircut probably gives it a bit more bounce. Not to mention it’s easier to deal with, especially if she has what is clinically known as a “tender head.” OK, maybe that’s not the official term, but we all know girls who hated having their hair brushed.
So she is a tomboy? Big deal.
I happen to think she looks freakin’ adorable.
I’m sure you’ve heard by now from one source or another about the study results released yesterday about how SNACKS ARE EVIL and DESTROYING OUR YOUTH.
Can I get a communal groan from the peanut gallery?
I’m sorry, but this is yet another study in which people (read: fat haters, of which there are an alarmingly large amount) get all hysterical and finger-pointy at us poor parents. Who are obviously doing everything wrong.
My son is as skinny as the proverbial rail. When I buy him pants, we have to notch the waistband as tightly as possible, or else he will find himself inadvertently displaying his drawers to the public.
Does he eat some unhealthy snacks?
Hell yes.
You see, I believe that it is important to give kids choices in life, and to not micromanage every single thing that passes their lips. Believe it or not, even though he has unhealthier options available to him, he often chooses healthy ones first.
Even more key? Getting him out of the house and running around.
But you know what? He is lucky because we can afford healthy foods, and we live in an area that provides ample open and park spaces in which to play.
It’s been noted by people more scholarly than myself that socioeconomic levels have a lot to do with children and their exposure to healthy food and lifestyle choices.
Why don’t people get all riled up about that?
Yes, the fashion shows are lovely and exciting, but it’s easy to forget who is actually on those runways. It is all too common for designers to use tweens and teens to model their clothes, since I’m guessing that an as-yet fully developed body has the right structure to show off their designs. Let’s pause for a moment and ponder the wrongness of that.
We’ve come a long way since the 80’s supermodels such as Naomi Campbell and Cindy Crawford, both of whom were grown women in their heyday, and sported very curvy bodies (at least as far as the fashion world is concerned, not the real one, which is a story for another time). But for some reason designers abandoned that look and now push a much more emaciated looking model as perfection.
Take this statement from my new fave model, Coco Rocha, which reads in part:
But this issue of model’s weight is, and always has been, of concern to me. There are certain moral decisions which seem like no brainers to us. For example, not employing children in sweatshops, and not increasing the addictiveness of cigarettes. When designers, stylists or agents push children to take measures that lead to anorexia or other health problems in order to remain in the business, they are asking the public to ignore their moral conscience in favor of the art.
Surely, we all see how morally wrong it is for an adult to convince an already thin 15 year old that she is actually too fat. It is unforgivable that an adult should demand that the girl unnaturally lose the weight vital to keep her body functioning properly. How can any person justify an aesthetic that reduces a woman or child to an emaciated skeleton? Is it art? Surely fashion’s aesthetic should enhance and beautify the human form, not destroy it.
Her entire statement is wonderfully written, and worth reading in its entirety.
As always, the consumer is the one with the power of the pocketbook, and it should be up to us to swing the pendulum back in the proper direction. Because teenagers are not the ones buying these clothes, even though they have been deemed the proper vessels to showcase them.
Yes, there is yet another wave of products on the ever-increasing baby market that claim to make your child smarter, even in utero!
They are being dubbed “womb boxes” and for some strange reason, parents are falling into the trap of technology=better. Some are beaming in classical music, while others like Sheila and Ian Savage simply feel that their voices are “too muffled” for the baby to hear them without amplification.
Say what?
There is one parent quoted in the article who piped Mozart to her unborn sons, and they wound up becoming successful professional musicians. But the article also states that the father is a professional musician as well, so I’m guessing it’s not a stretch that there is musical talent running in the family, regardless of their appreciation of Eine Kleine Nachtmusik at 30 weeks gestation.
Actually, there is a quote from a physician that perfectly expresses how I feel:
“This could be a hindrance to a baby’s sleep cycle,” says Dr. David Cabbad, a pediatrician at the Brooklyn Hospital Center.
“Why don’t we just let the baby develop normally in utero? Let him hear the father screaming at the mother, the TV, the phone ringing, and then when he gets out let him deal with that. It’s not natural. They’re in a womb, a protected atmosphere. Now you’re going to give them outside interference? Why don’t we give them a cellphone, too?”
If you haven’t heard, there is currently a huge kerfluffle going on about a Friend of Teeny Manolo, Tavi Gevinson. My esteemed colleague raincoaster wrote about Tavi’s fantastic blog long before Tavi was sitting in the front row of couture shows in New York and Paris. And writing for Harper’s Bazaar, and being on the covers of magazines and being BFF’s with the women behind Rodarte.
Which, by the way, has apparently gotten some fashion insiders quite annoyed.
And hey, I suppose that is their right to get annoyed at things. I get annoyed all the time, I totally understand.
However, instead of taking the, ahem, adult high road and demurring politely when asked about the thirteen year old blogger, they are instead swinging for the bleachers.
Perhaps they are thinking that if Tavi wants to “play in the big leagues” she should be ready to take some criticism, and to some degree, that is true. But they also need to take into account that no matter how mature she seems, she is still a thirteen year old. And they are grown women. There is a difference between being candid and just being cruel, and it seems they have no problems being rather harsh about a teenager whom they see as their rival.
One even had the temerity to criticiz Tavi’s father:
Why wasn’t Tavi at school?
At the Dior show, trying to fight my way backstage to get a quote from John Galliano, I nearly fell over a tiny, grey-haired woman who, from the back, I took to be a septuagenarian Japanese fashion fanatic, as she was dressed head-to-toe in Comme des Garçons. When she was ushered into the inner sanctum before me, and turned around, I saw, with a sick lurch, that it was actually Tavi Gevinson, the 14-year-old fashion blogger from Chicago. She was being shadowed by her father, an English teacher, and has recently dyed her hair the trendiest colour.
As a mother of a 14-year-old, my first thought was,“Hang on, isn’t it term-time in America, too?”. Had I not been so busy trying to attract Galliano’s attention, I would have asked Mr Gevinson why he thought it was right to take his daughter out of school to go to haute couture shows, where she would be treated like a celebrity by paparazzi? Or why he thought it OK for her to model for Pop and Love magazines last year?…
…It’s all happening too fast for Tavi, and I wonder if her father knows how to protect her from it. I hope she’s got her nose to the grindstone, catching up with missed lessons this week, but it’s hard to imagine a kid being able to come back down to reality after that.
I’m sorry, but there are some things that are possibly once-in-a-lifetime opportunities, and traveling to France to meet John Galliano would seem to qualify as one of them. I would have no issues taking my own son out for something even less exciting than that. The quote above speaks as sour grapes masquerading as “motherly” concern to me.
I think that Tavi is a wonderful writer, and her appeal to both the general public and the fashion world is undeniable. Perhaps she may not always have the spotlight shining on her as brightly as it does at this moment. Perhaps she will lose interest in the fasion world and its denizens and move her considerable talents on to something else.
But, she’ll always have Paris.
The above picture of David Beckham is now totally ruined for me because of this:
According to copyranter, this really bad idea was dreamed up by an advertising agency for Goodnites, a product designed to help with bed wetting. I don’t know what kind of drugs they were on at the time, but hey, any kind of publicity is good, right? Even if it exploits children! Because sex sells, uh, children’s bedwetting protectors! Right?
Happy Monday! Er, wait, is there such a thing?
Well, my pathetic attempt to have the internet decide if I should cut my hair was all for naught, as a full fifty percent of you claimed that the length of hair all depended on the person. Boo! Why must you be such a pragmatic bunch? Forty three percent said that as long as the hair was in good shape, it is all good. I spend enough money I my hair, it had better be in good shape. A refreshing five percent of you had a strong opinion and voted that after thirty or so, the hair should be shorter. So great, my hair appointment is Friday and I have no idea what I’m going to do. That’s what I get for being wishy-washy.
Today I’ve got a question regarding a couple who were arrested for giving their children homemade tattoos. The children ranged in age from ten to seventeen.
