Why I Love "What Not To Wear"

There are a lot of makeover shows out there. A lot of shows that involve making women look younger, trendier, and they easily offer the women light plastic surgery in order to achieve these goals. I hate almost all of them. The exception to these shows, of course, is What Not to Wear.

The premise of the show is that someone sends in a tape asking Stacey London and Clinton Kelly to give one of their friends/relatives/co workers a makeover. The women they nominate range in age, race, and body type, but they all have one common denominator: their wardrobes are atrocious. Some want to “be different” so badly that they wear a costume tail on their butts (seriously), and others want to blend in so badly that they wear nothing but sweat suits constantly. They don’t dress appropriately for work, or for special occasions, which has kept some of them from promotions or even getting into upscale restaurants. As it turns out, these women are usually using their wardrobes to disguise some part of them, whether it’s weight they don’t want or self-esteem they don’t have. That’s where Stacey and Clinton come in.

Stacey and Clinton are, first and foremost, fabulous and hilarious. Clinton has had some one-liners that have caused me to laugh out loud on several occasions. They work excellently together, have chemistry and are always dressed great. Their first order of business is to throw out every piece of clothing the women have and then give them a credit card with a $5,000 limit for a new wardrobe. Their goal with these women is to make them look good. They emphasize dressing the body you have, not the body you want. They keep away from making the women look trendy, but instead tell them to purchase classic pieces that, while they may be expensive, they can wear for years. They are big on fitted blazers and trousers, and can flatter any body type. The result is that the women have more confidence and (hopefully) this is enough motivation for them to keep dressing their best.

I like that Stacey and Clinton never tell a woman she needs to lose weight, get her teeth brightened, or have her nose done. They work with what they’ve got, and the results are always fantastic. Between their wardrobe help and the help of a hairstylist and make up artist, they show the women how to show their best selves to the outside world, and it’s never even that difficult! A few new clothes, a new haircut and a little makeup is usually all it takes for these women to look ten times better. It always surprises me how just making a few changes for these women increases their self-esteem so much. By not using plastic surgery to make the women look better, they are telling them that what they have is enough to make them look beautiful all the time. That’s why their self-esteem takes such a boost, and it’s why I love the show so much.


What Not To Wear: Mom Makeovers

What Not To Wear Season 3 - Episode 40: Worst Dressed Woman on the Rise

What Not To Wear Season 3 - Episode 1: Matt

Obama Signs Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act

The Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, intended to extend the statute of limitations for women to sue when the find out they are receiving less pay than their male counterparts, was blocked during the Bush administration. It has since passed the Senate and the House, and today President Obama signed it. Part of his statement:

It is fitting that with the very first bill I sign - the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Restoration Act - we are upholding one of this nation's first principles: that we are all created equal and each deserve a chance to pursue our own version of happiness.

It is also fitting that we are joined today by the woman after whom this bill is named - someone Michelle and I have had the privilege of getting to know for ourselves. Lilly Ledbetter didn't set out to be a trailblazer or a household name. She was just a good hard worker who did her job - and did it well - for nearly two decades before discovering that for years, she was paid less than her male colleagues for the very same work. Over the course of her career, she lost more than $200,000 in salary, and even more in pension and Social Security benefits - losses she still feels today.

Now, Lilly could have accepted her lot and moved on. She could have decided that it wasn't worth the hassle and harassment that would inevitably come with speaking up for what she deserved. But instead, she decided that there was a principle at stake, something worth fighting for. So she set out on a journey that would take more than ten years, take her all the way to the Supreme Court, and lead to this bill which will help others get the justice she was denied.

Because while this bill bears her name, Lilly knows this story isn't just about her. It's the story of women across this country still earning just 78 cents for every dollar men earn - women of color even less - which means that today, in the year 2009, countless women are still losing thousands of dollars in salary, income and retirement savings over the course of a lifetime.

But equal pay is by no means just a women's issue - it's a family issue. It's about parents who find themselves with less money for tuition or child care; couples who wind up with less to retire on; households where, when one breadwinner is paid less than she deserves, that's the difference between affording the mortgage - or not; between keeping the heat on, or paying the doctor's bills - or not. And in this economy, when so many folks are already working harder for less and struggling to get by, the last thing they can afford is losing part of each month's paycheck to simple discrimination.

So in signing this bill today, I intend to send a clear message: That making our economy work means making sure it works for everyone. That there are no second class citizens in our workplaces, and that it's not just unfair and illegal - but bad for business - to pay someone less because of their gender, age, race, ethnicity, religion or disability. And that justice isn't about some abstract legal theory, or footnote in a casebook - it's about how our laws affect the daily realities of people's lives: their ability to make a living and care for their families and achieve their goals.

Ultimately, though, equal pay isn't just an economic issue for millions of Americans and their families, it's a question of who we are - and whether we're truly living up to our fundamental ideals. Whether we'll do our part, as generations before us, to ensure those words put to paper more than 200 years ago really mean something - to breathe new life into them with the more enlightened understandings of our time.

Interactive Jacuzzi Girl

Could this be the future of YouTube? It reminds me of those Goosebumps books where you got to choose your path through the book to get out of the amusement park alive, except this is quite hilarious.

Books Critiquing America Series: The Feminine Mistake

The Feminine Mistake: Are We Giving Up Too Much? By Leslie Bennetts

Bennetts’ main message is that women should not quit their careers once they get married and have children. She proves, over 300 pages, why women dropping out of the workforce once they get married or have children is a really terrible idea. Bennetts argues that stay at home moms (lets call them SAHM for brevity’s sake) put themselves and their children at risk by not working. When a woman completely depends on a man for economic support, she puts herself and her children at dire economic risk. What if your husband decides he wants a divorce? This topic took up several chapters. Bennetts interviews so many women whose husbands have left them for younger women, or just decided they “weren’t happy anymore.” They left, and the women who had been out of the workforce for a decade or more were basically stranded. The courts aren’t as favorable towards women in divorce trials as they used to be, because now women can hold and maintain jobs, so the alimony they award SAHM is significantly less. In fact, it’s now called “rehabilitative alimony,” because the courts expect the women to start working. Even though the courts may assume that women can just get up and join the work force at any point, it’s much easier said than done.

Bennetts cites many studies that show how difficult it is for women to return to full time professional work after dropping out, even after just a year. Given that most SAHM wait ten years or more to opt back in, it is almost impossible for them to return to full time, well paying work. And if your husband has just left you, or has become disabled or died, then what will you do for yourself and your children? I never thought of full time work for mothers as essentially an insurance policy, but Bennetts points that out as well. If tragedy strikes, having that extra income is literally a life saver for the women and her children.

I used to think that having a college a degree was enough to get a job, no matter what time I decided to make use of it. Of course, this isn’t true. If you were a manager and you were faced with two candidates, one who has been in the field for three years and one who has been at home for three, who would you pick? And employers don’t necessarily count church work and school event planning as fine resume material. A large percentage of women who opt out, even just for a year, find it impossible to ever go back to full time work. Even though the mainstream media might sometimes applaud stay at home motherhood, the business world doesn’t reward it. This is something we don’t usually read about, but it’s an important thing to remember.

Bennetts interviews so many women, some who are current SAHM and love it, others who were SAHM and their husbands either left them or suddenly died and are now severely struggling to make ends meet, and working women. The working women are by far the happiest and healthiest. In her interviews, she finds that SAHM, even in happy marriages, are treated more like children than partners, since they have no control over the finances. They must ask their husbands for money, or if they can splurge on something. Some husbands in the book use this power to control their wives, and the wives are basically helpless since they don’t have any income of their own. And without their own money, they have no freedom to make their own choices. They are essentially trapped in the marriage, and in so many of her interviews, Bennetts shows that with one partner controlling all the finances marriages usually turn sour.

What I found most interesting in this book was how happy the working mothers were, and how they managed to make everything work out just fine. They loved having their own money and having money to contribute to their home and to provide more opportunities for their children, like instrument lessons or study abroad. Having their own income also made them equal partners in their marriages, which turned out to be happier than most of the SAHM marriages. Bennetts herself admits that working while children are young is the hardest and most stressful part, but what women don’t see when they “opt out” is that that period is very short lived compared to how long and fulfilling a career a woman can have. When women first have children, they think they can’t handle the stresses of both work and family life. But this period dies down after a decade or so, once all the kids are in school full time, and if the woman doesn’t drop out of the work force her wages increase exponentially over time.

There is one thing about this book that really irked me, and it was the question running through my head up until the last few chapters: where are the husbands? Bennetts interviews so many working women who say it’s difficult to balance both work and home, and how for the first few years it was so hard they thought they couldn’t handle it. Well, what about your husbands, ladies? How come they aren’t helping with the housework? One working mother said that her husband worked at home but did essentially nothing around the house, and when she would get home he would actually “disappear” into his office instead of helping. Isn’t marriage supposed to be a partnership? And if you’re both working in order to better provide for yourselves and your families, shouldn’t you both be responsible for childcare and household duties? The men in the marriages of working mothers are barely ever mentioned, in fact Bennetts makes the working women sound like single mothers, having to do everything on their own. Bennetts finally acknowledges this in the last couple of chapters, but she says that in even the best marriages where both parents work, the men do only about one third of the housework. Working mothers work full time, then come home for the “second shift” of housework.

Overall, I really liked the book, and I was surprised to learn about all the real benefits of having both parents work. Women were happier, their husbands respected them more and were able to lean on them in times of crises, and their children were better provided for. Contrary to some beliefs, the children did not end up druggie serial killers, but instead happy. The stories of SAHM basically terrified me. Although there were a couple of women who were more than happy to let their husbands work and be in control of the finances, most of the others got screwed big time. Once the kids were old enough, the husbands left their SAHM wives for younger women, or just decided to up and leave. Most of them never really respected their wives for the work they did because they never took home any money. Yes, they are assholes. But the fact is that in our society if you’re not making money and contributing something then your value decreases in some way. No, it’s not fair. Being a mother is a full time, non-paying job and should be respected as such. But it’s not going to be while women retreat from the workplace. It’s women who need to stick with their careers in order to advance and then implement policies that protect mothers better. Better maternity leave, more flex time, etc. We are never going to get these things if women keep opting out.

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The Worst Food in America

The winner for the worst food in American 2009 is:

Baskin Robbins Large Chocolate Oreo Shake
2,600 calories
135 g fat (59 g saturated fat, 2.5 g trans fats)
263 g sugars
1,700 mg sodium

We didn't think anything could be worse than Baskin Robbins' 2008 bombshell, the Heath Bar Shake. After all, it had more sugar (266 grams) than 20 bowls of Froot Loops, more calories (2,310) than 11 actual Heath Bars, and more ingredients (73) than you'll find in most chemist labs.

Rather than coming to their senses and removing it from the menu, they did themselves one worse and introduced this caloric catastrophe. It's soiled with more than a day's worth of calories and three days worth of saturated fat, and, worst of all, usually takes less than 10 minutes to sip through a straw.

Yikes! Although I do believe it's up to each person to be responsible for the food that they eat, something like this should really come with some type of warning. Click here for the complete list of America's worst foods.

Obama and the Health Care Solution

Today President Barack Obama was sworn in as the 44th President of the United States. I caught his speech at work, and man, was it good.

So the question is, what now? He has so many expectations on him to save this entire country, where will he start? A lot of people have been asking these questions, and so have I. Although I remain optimistic, it would be naive to think one man can fix everything in a short amount of time. It's going to take a big team of professionals, and, unfortunately, a lot of time.

One question I have is what the health care answer will be. Although I do have some staunch opinions when it comes to some political issues, the issue of health care is one that I am very much on the fence about. I know Obama's plan is a type of universal system, and his Secretary of Health and Human Services Tom Daschle has proposed a new public government health care plan to cover the many uninsured that don't qualify for Medicaid. This isn't very surprising- a public health care plan is what all the Dems were pushing for during the campaign. However, I don't think this is necessarily a great idea. Yes, our health care system needs some work, definitely. But there are many people who have good, affordable health insurance provided by their employers, including myself. It wasn't always like this for me. My previous employer only offered a high deducible health savings account plan, which was awful and expensive. That is the type of plan many Republicans push for: employees saving their money in a tax free account so that they can make "informed health care decisions." But the truth is, it doesn't work that way at all. Health care choices are daunting and confusing for most people, and in my case, I would forgo going to a doctor in order to save money for a real emergency. And when I went, the doctor wouldn't know how much exactly each visit would end of costing. In one instance, the doctor told me I needed a shot. I didn't quesiton it, it's what the doctor ordered. The last thing I was thinking about was how much it was going to cost me. The result? A bill for $180.

So now, my health insurance plan with my current employer is similiar to others: each month, pre tax money is taken out of my paycheck to pay Aetna to keep covering me, and my employer also pays a huge chunk. It's been working pretty well for me so far, as it has for millions of other Americans who get insurance this way. Now if a public plan were to get passed and become successful, why would my employer keep putting money towards my health insurance? They might as well cut out their health insurance benefits and point their employees toward the public program to help their bottom line. And honestly, I don't have much faith in the government that they will make a comprehensive, effecitive program for me- at least not one better than what I have now. Although I may not choose to be covered by Aetna, my employer has chosen them, because they deemed Aetna the best in the market. The choice between the providers may not be a choice that the consumer makes, but their employer makes it, making competition an important part of the market- at least in one respect.

I'm nervous about the public plan and what it means for people happy with their insurance. Of course I know there are millions without insurance who can reap many benefits from a new plan, and that this is specifically aimed at them. I think there is one thing that many politicians are overlooking, which is why the costs of care have skyrockted. When I first started my current job, I went to the dermatologist for an issue I had seem him for before, one that cost me $260 under my health savings account health plan. Even though I had a insurance plan at the current job, I hadn't gotten that all important member number, so Aetna told me to pay upfront, and they will reimburse me. When I went to pay, it was just $60. $60 for the same procedure that this doctors office had charged my old insurance plan (and really, me) $260 for. I think there lies the main problem with this system: doctors overcharging providers for whatever reason, and providers then declining to pay for certiain sky high costs. When the doctor charged me it was $60, when he charged the provider it was $260.

A health savings account plan might work for most people if the sheer cost of going to the doctor, getting a MRI, etc wasn't so exorbitant. But the costs are just too high. I hope that this is something that isn't overlooked, although I haven't seen it mentioned. I'm sure there is more to it than just this, but what is the answer? I know that no plan will be best for everyone, but is there even an answer that will be best for most of the people, most of the time?

Americans Talk About Love

Salon has introduced a new column called "Americans Talk About Love," told from the point of view of the subject, instead of a journalist. The way that Paul Pesce, 83, talks about the relationship he's had with his wife was honest and captivating. It reminded me of the couples that tell their stories throughout When Harry Met Sally...:

So she gives me her address and phone number, and I pick her up, take her to New York, and take her to see a play. And as we're exiting from the play I turned to her and I said, "Will you marry me?" She looks at me -- pause -- and she says, "OK."

Now you gotta realize that the time that we spent together did not really include much communication. Having coffee was not the most intimate relationship. Through the play we hadn't talked to each other. I was standing next to a stranger and so was she. And as we're walking out, "Will you marry me?" "Yes."

Now she's left the room, but at this point, when she's listening, she usually says, "And what's the name of the play?" And this was 55 years ago. I always answer, "I don't know. I don't remember." Which I don't.

Their relationship has lasted many, many years, and together they have ran businesses and a family. Any ideas he had, he says, she made them happen. He wanted to own a store, she went out and found one to buy. He mentions maybe they should open shops in a strip mall, and she executes the plan.

Day to day, it's always been in my mind, how lucky I am. We weren't shy with each other, we were very affectionate. Lovey dovey. If I got upset, she calmed me down. Out of the 56 years we've been married, I've only been away from her for two weeks...

Anyway. Now she's got Alzheimer's. Which is heartbreaking for me. She's had it I'd say about four or five years now. I don't think she realized it when it was happening, and neither did I. It was her friend who said to me, "Hey, Paul, what's goin' on with Eleanor?" She would keep repeating the question -- the same question -- after you gave her an answer. I started realizing it. And when I spoke to the doctors about it, they agreed.

Mostly she doesn't communicate. She just sits and stares. Occasionally I'll get a giggle out of her. She's pretty well aware of her condition. Which is terrible, you know. If she didn't know it wouldn't be so bad...

I consider myself one of the luckiest people on the planet. I've gone through wars, depressions. Never been hungry. But this is horrible. I'm 79. I'm sorry -- I'm not 79. I'm supposed to say I'm 39. I'm 83. And … All my friends are leaving. And now this. It's horrible...

And even after all that, after over 50 years together with the same person, he writes:

She'll last longer than me. Even with the Alzheimer's. Eventually her brain will forget to tell her heart to beat, and she'll die. But she'll outlast me. Because women last longer than men.

I'm not sure that the Bible is anything real about heaven. I think that there is something or somebody, something that has created us. I think of it as a guy who made, like, a little miniature railroad track with a town and a train. And he watches what's happening as it runs. If there's such a thing as an afterlife, I hope I can spend it with her.

Quick Hits

Hello, and happy new year! You may notice my new blog design if you are not reading this in a RSS feed. I thought it was time for a change, including a new tag line.

So, in the news:

Teen pregnancy rates have risen in 26 states, with Mississippi ranking highest, above Texas.

Mississippi's birth rate soared 60 percent higher than the nation's average, with Texas and New Mexico close behind with 50 percent higher rates of pregnancy.

This is the highest spike in 15 years. Although I don't think it's right to blame this exclusively on abstinence only education, I do think that should shoulder most of the blame. Obviously, it just doesn't work.

And just when I thought I had heard enough about that damned Gardasil, now Merck is seeking FDA approval for males! I can't wait to see that new advertising campaign and how it will undoubtedly just cause fear in prepubescent males and their parents, although maybe Merck will surprise me. However, this isn't even the best part. Somehow, I had missed that now the Department of Homeland Security (despite protests from the CDC) is requiring that all immigrant women to receive Gardasil before coming to the US permanently.

Dr. Jon Abramson, head of the CDC's Advisory Committee for Immunization Practices, tells the Journal, "If we had known about it, we would have said it's not a good idea…We don't want someone coming into the U.S. who hasn't been vaccinated against measles or chickenpox, [but] HPV can only be communicated by sexual contact…This is not something that endangers kids in a school setting or puts your population at risk."

And as I've posted before, it's not even effective, it's not a cervical cancer vaccine, and it's basically a big whopping waste of your money. Applying for a green card already costs over $1,000, and that isn't even including the $300 vaccine and other vaccine's that actually prevent diseases like measels and polio.

Moving on, atheists in Britain have raised a bunch of money and got ads on buses that say "There's probably no God. Now stop worrying and enjoy your life." A lot of atheists are upset with the use of the word "probably," as that belongs more to an agnostic belief than an atheist one. What spurred this bus ad movement was a previous bus ad, with a passage from the Bible and a link to a Christian website, where the visitor can learn that she and her friends were heading straight to hell to be tormented for all eternity if they are nonbelievers.

That’s a bit extreme, she thought, as well as hard to prove. “If I wanted to run a bus ad saying ‘Beware — there is a giant lion from London Zoo on the loose!’ or ‘The “bits” in orange juice aren’t orange but plastic — don’t drink them or you’ll die!’ I think I might be asked to show my working and back up my claims,” Ms. Sherine wrote in a commentary on the Web site of The Guardian.

So to wrap up: it's time to bring back talking about condoms and birth control in high school, ineffective Gardasil will not be going away anytime soon (unfortunately), and atheists are displaying agnostic beliefs on buses in London.

True Love Exists!

But only for 1 out of 10 couples.