So Many Kinds of Wrong

So, lots of people have been writing about (and e-mailing about) this new study that claims pregnant women who eat more calories are more likely to have boys. And the fun part is, everyone’s pissed off about it for different reasons. Whee!
Liss takes down the unexamined assumption at the heart of it: that “How do [...]

Open for Discussion: Fat Kids

In comments on the Fat People are Big Fat Liars post, an interesting side discussion has cropped up about how parents deal with advocating for their fat (or thin) kids. I wanted to move it up here, because I know there are a lot of Shapelings who are parents, or aspire to be parents, or [...]

Evolution Will Totally Make Us Prettier. Except for the Goblins.

For the second time in a week, I find myself wondering if the BBC is seriously just fucking with us. Just when you thought evolutionary theorists were the reasonable ones, along comes Oliver Curry of the London School of Economics to tell us that H.G. Wells was right — somewhere down the line, the human [...]

Bad Mom Update

Solomon, as I was writing this. (Note blurred motion in tail area.)
So, I started a whole long post about cooking this morning, which I will probably go back to next week (since it’s more than half-finished, and that’s the kind of thing I like to have handy on vacay). Today, I need to tell you [...]

On Nappies and Wiener Dogs and Depression

The other day, I had two thoughts in a row. (I know, can you believe it?)
1. Oh my god, today was the best day ever! It was warm and breezy, and I got a green tea lemonade and went down to the beach with a book and saw a tiny wiener dog puppy! COULD [...]

More Rambling about Body Image, Yoga, and My Shitty Childhood

Thanks to Cynical Girl for sharing the new Dove ad (er, Dove “film”), “Evolution,” which I’ve watched about half a dozen times now. (The part that kills me is when they retouch the photo to make her eyes bigger; I pretty much expected everything else, but it never occurred to me that they do [...]

Remind Me to Start Going to Taste of Heaven Every Day

My new favorite blog: Control Your Kids. I’m way late in weighing in on the Taste of Heaven controversy, but oh well. The bug remains up my ass, because of crap like this:
“The looks I would get when I went in there made me so nervous that I would try to buy the food as [...]

A Beige Butterfly Ponders Procreation

In my first ballet (or, uh, “ballet”) class, when I was three, the teachers once told us that our dancing task for the day was to become butterflies.
“What color butterfly do you want to be?” they asked each of us.
“PINK!” said every other three-year-old there.
“Beige,” said Little Kate.
That’s basically all you need to know about [...]

It Deepens Like a Coastal Shelf

Reason number 80 kabillion why I should not have children: some days, I can barely tolerate the transition from sleeping to waking, and I will totally take out my displeasure on anyone who happens to be around for it.