Bosom Buddies

I’m all for stem cell research and making advances in medicine, but when I read this item in the BBC, I nearly projectile vomited by Kit-Kat all over my D-cups. Turns out scientists can create a mixture known as Celution which would combine both tummy fat and stem cells to grow breast tissue. I support this method being applied to women with mastectomies (as with the case studies going on Japan right now), but when I hear that, if licensed, it very well may rival silicone for those seeing bigger breasts, I can’t help but think that for the asking price (steep, to say the least), it’s going to be largely consumed by celebrities. So remind me why stem cell research is indirectly helping to fund yet another season of Dr 90210?

Yoko Is Back

I guess Yoko Ono find it hard to stay away from the spotlight for too long. John Lennon’s widow said she might still write her autobiography.

Spank Me I’m Your Work Slave!

For some odd reason, even though I recall unsubscribing quite a few times, I’m still on the email list over at Savvy Miss-the website that claims it’s For Intellectually Curious, Fun-Loving Women.

Don’t get me wrong. Really I like to think I straddle the whole “fun-loving” and “intellectually curious” pretty well, though admittedly most often I find myself teetering in the “intellectually curious”/”analytical kvetch” category. The point in all this is that female categorizations or gender qualifications of any sort tend to lend themselves to stereotypes.

So today I look at my gmail inbox and see Quiz: Are You The Office Brat and the actual exercise is “Are You The Office Bitch” and I can’t help but find this subtle semantic substitute just a wee bit reproachful.

Inappropriate conduct explicitly aimed at female bloggers is populating all the social criticisms of today’s media and yet some site that claims it’s for me written by people like me is demanding that I classify myself in terms of stale archetypes: The Corporate Dominatrix, the Goddess (the spiritual you), the Governess (the schoolteacher and mentor), the Queen (the sovereign) or the Schoolgirl (the student and apprentice).

I’m still trying to figure out how many market research focus groups Savvy Miss commissioned to come up with these catch-all titles (kinda like how many Poles does it take to screw in a light bulb?), but I’m missing out on how all this doesn’t somehow undermine the plight of the female blogger. Thinking in terms of social schemas is easy and it’s convenient, but ultimately its cost can be greater than we’re willing to pay.

Besides, so what if I’m The Office Bitch. Does that mean that I don’t crave a good, hard spanking once in a while?

Ah. Silly Savvy Miss. Didn’t cha get the memo? Tricks are strictly FTB (for the boys).

I Fart Therefore I’m Sarah Silverman

Every year, I quasi eagerly await the annoucement of the host of the MTV Movie Awards. It’s akin to the anticipation I feel at the announcement of the Oscar’s host.  I haven’t been all that into the MTV hosts in forever. Justin Timberlake and Jessica Alba in recent years didn’t do much for me. At least JT can sing and dance, but still. Is he or isn’t he “with” Scarlett Johansson? Who cares. At least, she’s funny… 

Anyways, this year’s MTV host is someone who is definitively NOT funny. She may have her own show on Comedy Central, but Sarah Silverman’s irreverent I’m a pretty girl and can fart act is as irritating as my upstair’s neighbors moving furniture at 11:50 PM on a weeknight. Then again, why did Comedy Central give Michael Ian Black (nee Michael Schwartz) his own show? Doesn’t he have enough gratuitous exposure over at VH1’s ”Best Week Ever”?

Boo on you MTV. So very, very unoriginal. And tsk, tsk to Comedy Central while I’m at it.

A Post Where I Get In Touch With My Sentiments About Starbucks

I hate Starbucks. (Click on this link’s “Small, Medium, Large” toon to watch a brilliant satire on Starschmucks) I don’t drink their coffee. It’s too bitter, too burnt, too unkind. I often get lumped in with the Dunkin Donuts coffee drinkers at those annoying networking get togethers where the world is insultingly and coursely divided into DD vs. Starbucks people. Truth be told I don’t much fancy the double DDs either. Give me a good ol’ cup of generic diner coffee any day.

Starbucks ambiance gets me too. Everyone sitting at a table is trying to look so studious and disengaged from everyone and everything going on around them and yet they are all bound together by that recycled white paper cup and a feeling of mild superiority at not being at the adjacent Dunkin Donuts or the alterna-coffee bar across the street whose patrons would have equally heightened airs just more piercings and tattoos. Don’t even get me started on those people.

I’ve come a few time in the past week to this Starbucks, mostly because I’m lazy and it’s easy and I know I can get internet access. It’s around the corner from my work and a change of scenery from the public library. I really do like the library but feared my presence with laptop was too distracting for people there. re: I used to wake up all the bums when my cell phone would accidentally ring. I felt bad about this, but contrastingly was always a bit put out when one of them would be occupying an entire table and give me a look of “Don’t you dare think of sitting here.” Why does one person need with four seats?

I guess the above scenario makes Starbucks look not so bad. You can always find a table and most likely there’s always people to gawk at (like the two gay men who were on a “date” only one had a wedding ring on and the other didn’t and they didn’t act “married”) if you can manage to squeeze past the 30 yuppie adults and children waiting in line to get to a table.

Explain to me what business a 5-year-old has with a mocha frapamijiggy. Aren’t we always trying to calm them down at that age? And isn’t it a mild form of child abuse, at the very least ushering in the early onset of obesity? But then I look at the Bratz girl attached to the whining and her adult version Bratz mom and I don’t care much either way. Wasn’t it Madonna who proclaimed, “Cause I’m living in a material world and I’m a material whiny Brat?

Yeah, something like that…

Men Are From Mars, Women The Jungle

I was introduced to the term “cougar” by a PR guy a few years back. He had spent some time in Toronto and explained to me that there were a ton of cougars there. “What’s a cougar,” I innocently asked. His devilishly brazen smile emerged and he replied, “Well a horny woman in her 30s who is single and on the prowl.” So from that, I understood the feline connotation of the word.
Previous to this categorization, I had thought men classify women into MILFs and Jailbait. Now I was starting to figure out that men were a more complicated gender than I could have attested to. They are 3-Dimensional in their conceptualizations after all. So after reading a compiled list of the Best Cougars & Jailbait in Film History by Double Viking’s Grant Guimont, I’d have to strongly disagree with Guimont’s classifications and the narrow-mindedness with with he approaches his female subjects. The world is not simply divided into cougars and jailbait and cougars and MILFs don’t always overlap. So we need to create a new category. In the meantime, here are some corrections to this dude’s post:

• Anne Bancroft in “The Graduate” is not a cougar, she’s a MILF (married bored housewife). In fact, she’s the quintessential prototype for MILFs everywhere. And if I’m not entirely certain, her role spawned the creation of the word.
• Jane Seymour in The Wedding Crashers=MILF.
• Stifler’s Mom, American Pie= Clearly a MILF

Let’s not mix apples and oranges here. Bored suburban housewife=MILF. Singleton female at her sexual prime=Cougar. Should they co-exist, so be it. I’m just shooting for a little more accuracy here.

The Science Of Stereotype

There is a new book out called The Enlightened Bracketologist: The Final Four of Everything. It’s co-written by a sports journalist and a literary agent. The former makes sense since Bracketology, a method for sports fans to keep track of which teams they are betting on to win, is traditionally associated with basketball, March Madness, and determining which collegiate teams will make it into the NCAA Finals.

Authors Mark Reiter and Richard Sandomir were recently interviewed on “The Today Show” where they talked about applying their Final 4 methodology to pop culture and most specifically illustrated one of the studies from their book in which they determined which bald-headed figure in modern culture was the most popular. No, it was not Homer Simpson, but he was a finalist. Other studies found in the book include “A Jew/Not A Jew” and “Women’s Magazines Sex Cliches.” If you’re shaking your head about now, you get where I’m coming from with my frustration with this ridiculous study.

Wait, there guys were actually paid to write this book and are collecting phat royalties off it?

Ok, so maybe I’m just jealous that these guys thought of a clever way to pitch their bogus, fun-filled project to a major publishing house and get paid a wad of cash to indulge their fancy. It’s conceivable. But I’m also concerned about the consequences that such ideas bring forth into the world. Why must we reinforce the idea that people need to be sized up and classified on the basis of superficial criteria? Who and what determines that criteria? Why judge people at all on the basis of some artificial construct?
While you can claim I’m rushing to serious accusation here, insidious as it might sound, such manufactured ideas have a way of seeping into the underbelly of our day-to-day conscious decision making. While in fact schema are necessary to function in everyday life (yes, I took my Psychology back in college) as they help us digest the world around us without sensory overload, they have a way of causing frequent errors in our judgment.

There was a line last night in “Reign Over Me” I held close to my heart. It was said by Don Cheadle’s character to his daughter when she called to her father (something along the lines of), “Your friend is here. The one that acts younger than JoJo.” Perhaps it wasn’t so much Cheadle’s words but the manner he affected when he retorted, “Don’t do that. Don’t judge him like that. It’s not kind.”

So shoot me. I’ll opt for a bit of kindness and a little understanding over shiteology any day of the week.