MamaPop™

Are TV Moms Crazier than Their Real-Life Counterparts?

Like it or not, TV has become ingrained in our culture and both reflects and propels how we view ourselves and our lives. Since parenting and family is such a huge part of life, TV will undoubtedly have something to say about how those aspects of life change over time.

Bret Easton Ellis Doesn't Think Too Highly of Female Directors

Perhaps I'm just getting bitter and/or more nonchalant in my old age, but when Bret Easton Ellis says stuff like he doesn't think, in general, that women can direct, I don't get angry. I just kind of shrug and tell him to quit talking and go write some messed up book for me to read kthanxbi.

I See Promises, Promises and Decide the Newsweek Writer is an Idiot

Last week newspapers, television, and pop culture at large was all up in arms over Ramin Setoodeh's opinion that openly gay Sean Hayes should not be playing a straight man in the new Broadway musical Promises, Promises. I saw the show this weekend. He's wrong.

Julie Taymor's Film Version of The Tempest Sounds Amazing

Film/theatre/literature/feminism nerds rejoice! Julie Taymor is adapting William Shakespeare's The Tempest for the screen.

FOX and ABC Still Hate Plus-Sized People

FOX and ABC got caught being prejudiced again. The last time I wrote about them it was about how they wouldn't run a gay dating commercial. This time, ABC refused to air a Lane Bryant commercial because it showed too much cleavage.

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There Are So Many Things Wrong With This Cover, I Don't Know Where To Start

Punch #1 to the nuts of feminism: Kim Kardashian has lost 5 lbs in 5 days to exact revenge on her former boyfriend, Reggie Bush, for moving on too quickly.  Because that's healthy.  Not just the pound-a-day diet, the idea that she needed to get skinnier to make her ex jealous. 

And that's just the beginning of wrongness that is splattered all over the place with this week's Life & Style cover.

Fuzzy Wuzzy Was Disgusting, or Was She? It's a Hairy Situation When It Comes to Mo'Nique, Amanda Palmer, and Their Shaggy Sisters

We have been conditioned to see body hair on women as brazen and unpalatable. While men's armpit, leg, and chest hair is out and about all over the globe, an otherwise pulchritudinous Julia Roberts is suddenly seen as unclean, her hirsute armpit a shameful slap in the face of social decency.

In an age when remaining as hairless as a nine-year-old girl is seen as a nearly mandatory social requirement for women, there is a slow swell rising against the tide of our present definition of femininity. Who are these women who have dared to bare their hair and brave the finger-wagging masses?

Transsexual Performer Vomits on Susan Sarandon

Poor sweet Susan Sarandon.  After separating from long time love Tim Robbins, all she wanted was a night on the town.

Kourtney Kardashian Did Not Lose All the Baby Weight Overnight. IMAGINE THAT.

So tabloid magazines photoshop celebrity cover pictures, did you know this? I mean, I for one am falling over from the shock of that news flash, my god. So no one (not a soul) is actually shocked to hear the news that OK! Magazine photoshopped (to hell and back) a photo of Kourtney Kardashian post-baby on a recent cover. But just because it's the least shocking thing I've heard all week doesn't make it any less uncool or creepy or  downright ridiculous, either.

Heidi Montag Isn't Addicted to Plastic Surgery But She Is Obsessed, Which is Totally Different

Oh, Heidi. As much as I find you ridiculously intolerable and also downright stupid, I also feel very, very badly for you because you are 23 and you have now racked up more plastic surgery than most celebrities twice your age. What's more, you see nothing at all wrong with that or the message it sends. And not that MTV reality stars are exactly known for their stellar role modeling, but I would say even the densest of the bunch (I'm looking at any one of the stars of the last ten seasons of The Real World) would call ten plastic surgery procedures in one day "addicted" and also "slightly messed up OMG."

"The Naked Truth": Most Women Don't Look Like THIS Either

The cover of the February 2010 issue of the Australian edition of Marie Claire magazine features 2004's Miss Universe -- Aussie Jennifer Hawkins -- in what they're calling an "un-retouched nude photo... to encourage positive attitudes [regarding] body image" in women.

ORLY?

10 Reasons Polygamy Is The Way, As Informed By My Engaged Viewing Of Big Love

Me and my wife don't smoke crack so we watch TV on DVD, compulsively. Like, just one more before bed. Please baby. One more episode. That kind of thing. So anyway, we recently started watching Big Love and I can't stop thinking about having sex with a bunch of women and having it sanctioned by my religion. Because, obviously, that would rock the house.

Dee Snider Is Taking Back The Horns.

Dee Snider of Twisted Sister is pissed. He's pissed at Texas. He's pissed at Bon Jovi. He's pissed at AOL and now he's pissed at you. Snider is engaged in an all out war with the general public. The 80's Metal Soldier is enraged over the blatant disrespect and common misuse of the Metal Horns; The universal symbol adopted by Heavy Metal some three decades ago.

So A Princess, A Frog, And Barack Obama Walk Into A Bar...

I haven't seen The Princess And The Frog. Yet. I want to see it, because I'm dying to know whether it lives up to its hype (first black Disney princess! best Disney princess story yet! JAZZ! NEW ORLEANS! THIS AIN'T YOUR MAMA'S CINDERELLA!) Also, because - ahem - I like Disney movies, princesses or no, and I like taking my kid to movies, yadda yadda.

But there was a vampire movie that I had to go see first, so.

Pap Smears: The Gift on Every Woman's Holiday Wish List, Am I Right?

CBS has launched a new holiday PSA campaign that when broadcast in my home, silenced the room and made me look sort of quizzically at my husband. See the ads encourage men to give the women in their lives something meaningful, like a pap smear appointment! So, pap smears are the new eternity necklaces, I guess? How do you wrap those suckers up?