Does your marriage have a nagging problem? You know, the kind where one of you keeps pestering the other to do some simple tasks that never seem to get done. The more you nag, the more your partner dawdles and blows off your requests. Which leads to more nagging.

A recent Wall Street Journal article called this problem potentially as toxic as adultery. It’s a pattern that has certainly caused some chaos in my own marriage, and I’ve watched it corrode intimacy between friends. Nagging can be a vicious cycle, with both partners feeling like they’re being pitted against each other over things they should be on the same side about. You both want the dishes to be done and the bills to be paid. Why are you fighting about these things?

Amanda Marcotte has a great solution over on XX.  Continue reading »

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Caitlin Flanagan made her name with the hackle-raising To Hell with All That: Loving and Loathing our Inner Housewife,  in which she asked her reader to cast aside the murky demands of professional ambition and assume her rightful place in the broom closet. Her new book, Girl Land, is another plea for a return to traditional roles, to a simpler time, when girls were weaned on romantic fantasies rather than sexts and porn sites. Disclosure: I have not yet read the book, and truth be told, might not ever do so. But I did listen to every minute of this riveting interview with the author on NPR, where she debates the premise with writer Irin Carmon, who reviewed the book and wrote about the bizarre interview on Salon.com.

Like many of us, Caitlin Flanagan has a problem with our “crass, corrosive, sexualized” culture. She wants more control over what girls are exposed to, and urges parents to stay involved in their daughters’ lives. I’m on board with all of this. The problem for me (and a whole lot of other ladies) is the world Flanagan thinks should be taking its place, and the way she suggests we should get there.  The Girl Land Flanagan imagines is a fantasy pulled from her own past, which apparently involved a lot of reading romantic novels and writing in diaries.  Flanagan sees the girlish attraction to romance as something innate, which I find odd in light of the promotion of this idea to girls from a very young age. But Flanagan embraces the idea of the happily ever after fantasy. Instead of dismissing the idea of the savior prince as unrealistic, she challenges us to find ways of making it happen for our daughters. How do we do this? By creating a world where girls are protected from exposure to harmful images, and allowing their time, and their minds, to be dominated by their imaginations. This sounds like a pretty okay idea.

Until you think about it.

Continue reading »

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Do the strongest families have the samest names? No, not even a little bit.

I’ve been a wife for six years and a mom for nearly 11. But for decades I’ve been a Holler, and I doubt that will ever change. My three kids carry my last name as only one of their two middle names, something they tell me is a total rip-off, since their last names? Crazy common. But I thought I should throw their dad a bone. I not only got to decide whether they would be born in the first place but also got to be pregnant with them, nurse them and basically be their favorite person for their first three to nine years, give or take.

Also, last names just aren’t a big deal to me.

When it does get to be a big deal is when the fact that we have mismatched names could be somehow construed as a weakness in our family cohesiveness — that we have any less of a family identity than if we could all be alphabetized under the same letter. Which is something Meredith hints at in a recent post defending her decision to take her husband’s name full-throttle, no hyphenating, no nothing. Continue reading »

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Kids today.

If they’re not demanding to wear provocative, age-inappropriate clothing without recrimination, they’re posting preternaturally articulate vlogs about a woman’s right to wear provocative clothing without recrimination. The thirteen-year-old girl at left celebrated her two year anniversary on YouTube (!) by taking on the topic, explaining why calling a woman a “slut” is just plain WRONG.

Our young heroine barely seems to have reached puberty. But she is clearly doing some very advanced feminist reading, and it’s quite impressive to hear these ideas distilled down to a teenage level (or at least framed in teen cuteness). I loved getting a  glimpse of how a girl growing up in this deeply sexualized culture processes how she might be seen by others. The ever-increasing expectation for girls to look hot and sexy (at younger and younger ages) is disturbing in itself. But the blaming of women who are victims of sex crimes in the face of the dominant aesthetic is truly gross. The past year has seen a few really horrendous examples,  some involving very young girls. It’s also created a groundswell of resistance, including Slut Walks and other protests. It’s pretty excellent to hear these powerful words coming out of the mouth of a girl who has barely begun to explore her own sexuality. If all girls could go into adolescence armed with this much awareness and confidence, we’d be looking at a very different kind of future.

See her video after the jump. Almost 200,00 people have checked it out so far.

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OK, maybe I can't chunk a pumpkin (whatever that is), but mostly because I'm lazy, not weak

I’m hardly a hardcore feminist. I wear a bra. I shave my legs. I enjoy having a door held for me on occasion (some of those suckers can be heavy).

But I don’t appreciate when the same opportunities available to men are not available to me. I don’t consider myself weaker either figuratively or literally (except when it comes to some of those damn doors).

Which is why I particularly enjoyed Karen Mangiacotti’s essay over at The Huffington Post. But it also got me all kinds of irritated.

Continue reading »

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I was excited to see Amanda Visell’s Empowering Posters for Girls at Ohdeedoh — especially with the latest trend in negative T-shirts. Created to “show girls they can do anything,” the prints feature beautiful illustrations of confident gals declaring just that.

View my favorites from Visell’s collections below. Continue reading »

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It was the T-Shirt heard around the world wide web causing outrage! and tweets! and then promptly pulled from the JC Penney website. It’s been days now and people are still talking about it and even started a hashtag. Continue reading »

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