We all make fun of the "very special episodes" from the 90's, but they were a major source of alerting my parents that some topics might have become age-appropriate that weren't on their radar yet and starting conversations about them, and also presenting them in a way that was relatable to me instead of cartoon…

right? My finally-ex-landlord whom I just met (long, weird story) asked me saturday if my new husband and I were planning to start a family. We've had a very contentious long-distance landlord/tenant relationship. We specifically did not tell you when we were getting married because we were afraid all our shit would…

Wow what a terrible response to her well-written post, which amazingly my pitiful white brain was able to understand. Way to turn people off a good and informative conversation by declaring they just won't understand it. Wait, black voices aren't represented in feminism? Well we should definitely keep telling the…

I wonder how much that actually holds back progress, that so many people feel so afraid of racial topics. One moment of ignorance, no matter how understandable for someone's situation in life, and someone's screaming 'racist,' and I wonder if that actually contributes to continuing social segregation. I hope you speak…

I hear what you're saying but what others are saying also rings very true to me that it's a lot to put on one man's shoulders because he happened to marry a woman who is not black.

this is why my dad learned to braid—it was something he could do that'd turn out right every time instead of battling the curls.

If I've learned anything about Downton's patterns, it's that whoever's on top won't be there for long. Look out Edith, you got a pretty dress but that's just a bigger target on your back...

and if you do organize something at a fancy place (say maybe the rest of your friends are more well off and it's a bigger group thing), give them a heads up. It's way nicer to be able to decline an invitation and cook for yourself at home, or just drop by for one drink, than to wind up stuck at a table of a fancier…

huh, and here I thought that if you were thin you'd be called fashionable no matter what you wore… but I guess thinness is a sign of wealth now too, so those two issues are in lockstep.

Agreed, and I would add one more:

"anyone who is any better off than I am is "rich"."

I can't even tell you how mad I was when I discovered there's a vaccine for tuberculosis, and children in the US just don't get it because we aren't deemed at a high risk. See having had tuberculosis, having the guilt of having given it to my mother, having everyone at school be told they had to be tested because of…

whoa. That was one heck of a year. I knew I remembered movies more fondly from my childhood, and that's a pretty good snapshot of why.

I actually wish the Hobbit had fewer women in it… Evangeline Lilly could've stayed lost on the island and I wouldn't have minded a bit.

But that "plastic surgery disaster" happens to have feelings too.

I do think that in no way it *makes* them subordinate. It may or may not *indicate* subordinance, but it's certainly not a 1:1 thing and depends completely on the reasons involved in the choice.

I wonder if some of that is that during the dating phase it's perfectly normal to purposefully make some time for just the two of you, but for many couples after marriage it's easy to feel like you can't make that same kind of time? That's frustrating enough to me as a newlywed without kids in the picture, I expect…

With the disclaimer that I haven't seen Gravity so I'm judging by other recent movies (Proposal, Blind Side, etc.) Sandra Bullock still plays 30s. By the author's admission Christy Turlington is getting photoshopped into agelessness. Julia Louis-Dreyfus looks maybe 40, I had no clue she was 52! Jessica Lange looks…

And I'd argue that hollywood normalizing it is part of the driving force in that. I remember when I was a kid that a woman of my mother's generation having "bottled" hair was considered vain and silly.

How many women in that age range do you personally know who have naturally buttery blond or thoroughly dark brown hair (not salt & pepper) ? Are that devoid of wrinkles? A few of them just look "well preserved" but most are clearly getting their hair dyed, and are having some miracle makeup or even photoshop magic…