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3 Halloweens ago my best friend Vanessa passed away. Today is always hard but my wonderful friends at Wonderworld are really getting me through it. Scott my hairstylist dressed as the Guitar Hero 80’s rocker dude and another friend is Willy Wonka. Please keep Vanessa’s family in your prayers today… We all love and miss [...]

Ways to enjoy Halloween as a man.

Noah Cyrus, Miley’s little sister, and her best friend Emily Grace Reaves bring you two new episodes of their new show from behind the scenes at Miley’s concerts in Kansas City – Party in the USA!!!
Check out the full episodes exclusively at MileyWorld.com!

It’s time for another installment of Pot Psychology, the biweekly “advice” column in which we attempt to solve everyone’s problems with an herbal remedy.

(Remember, kids: Don’t do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about vibrator sex, NYC, and shark sex. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. Or to Twitter.

What’s The Best Position For Using A Magic Wand During Sex? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

To celebrate The Fame Monster, you can make yourself a Fame Monster on Lady Gaga’s Facebook page now! Use your best Halloween photos and share your photo with your friends! The best Fame Monsters will be featured on Gaga’s Facebook page! Go to http://bit.ly/makemeafamemonster to get started now!

In this week’s compilation of pop culture crap, a woman celebrates her 105th birthday at a male strip club, Barbara Walters gets scary, and Chaz Bono opens up about sex reassignment.

1.) 105-year-old celebrates birthday at male revue

Love her. I also love her door-knocker earrings, purple nails, and Baby Phat track suit.

2.) Glassy-eyed Fanilow
Paula Abdul attended a Barry Manilow concert, where Entertainment Tonight caught up with her backstage.

3.) Hailey Glassman
Jon Gosselin’s girlfriend was on The Insider this week to discuss how hard it is being famous. In this clip, she pays Kate Gosselin a compliment, then insults her, then goes into detail about when Jon first stuck his ween in her.

4.) Boys don’t cry.
Mary Hart tried her damnedest—during her exclusive interview with Chaz Bono regarding his sex reassignment process—to get Chaz to break down and cry over how horrible all of this must’ve been for him. Chaz wouldn’t bite. It’s kinda great watching him kind of get off on being withholding.

5.) Big-ass joint
In the History Channel’s docu-drama Manson, the reenactment of Dennis Wilson getting high with the Family seemed cartoonish.

6.) Man down, code 10!
Keyshia Cole’s mom Frankie hosted BET’s Red Carpet pre-show for the Hip Hop Awards.

7.) Babs!
She was in rare form this week.

Really rare.

8.) Holly Montag
Who would’ve thought that Heidi’s sister would turn out to spike the punch of The Hills with her dance “fights.”

9.) “Nuptial Decadence“
Why does that term sound so delicious?

10.) Ew.
I don’t know which is more disturbing: the fact that the woman in this commercial is afraid of her husband, or the fact that frozen mussels actually exist.

Jennifer was the most popular girl’s name from 1970 all the way to 1984, and its sheer ubiquity makes Jennifer seem wholesome, trustworthy — and a little run-of-the-mill.

It’s actually all the way down to #84 in America now, but when I was growing up in the eighties and nineties, Jennifer was everywhere. One commenter on The Baby Name Wizard says, “When you are a ‘Jennifer’ you will always be known by your first and last name, never just ‘Jennifer’” — and indeed, I knew a lot of girls who were doomed to go through school as Jennifer L., Jennifer K., or Jennifer W. Perhaps it’s inevitable that a name so common would pick up a girl-next-door vibe, and to me Jennifer immediately conjures up the image of a neat ponytail and a nonthreatening expression. Jennifer’s pretty, but she isn’t beautiful — and she certainly isn’t slutty. She’s nice, and she has good friends — she might be the kind of girl with two really close besties, but they’re no mean-girl triumvirate. Jennifer will lend you an extra pencil if you need one, but she won’t give you her kidney. She’s not a Beth, after all. The best thing about being a Jennifer is that no one has anything bad to say about you. The worst thing is that they might get you mixed up with all the other girls who have your name.

Celebrity Jennifers fit the Jennifer stereotype to a T — and maybe they’ve helped define it. Diva J.Lo is something of an outlier, and Jennifer Connelly seems kind of icy, but smiley Jennifer Garner looks just like the kind of Jennifer G. who got picked a solid third in gym class seven years in a row. And would Jennifer Aniston be the all-American girl to Angelina Jolie’s dangerous temptress if her name were, say, Isabel? I think not. Of course, perhaps Aniston’s pleasant face and the lengths to which her publicists have gone to make her seem “relateable” have contributed to the image of a Jennifer as a comfortable, average girl — even if she was once married to Brad Pitt.

A common name does have its advantages. As I write this post, I’ve been thinking back to all the Jennifers I’ve known — giggly Jennifers, no-nonsense Jennifers, hilarious Jennifers, downright scary Jennifers, and of course a large assortment of Jennys, Jens, and Jenns. Everybody knows a Jennifer, so everybody probably has an opinion of what Jennifers are like — and some of these opinions are bound to be interesting. Having a vanilla name also gives you the opportunity for under-the-radar coolness. Mike Doughty has a pretty great song called “27 Jennifers” that goes, in part,

I went to school with 27 Jennifers,
16 Jenns, 10 Jennies, and then there was her.

When you share your name with 26 other people, you’ve got a shot at being her, the one who stands out from all the rest and makes an everyday name into something new and weird and awesome. Having a name that’s cast from a common mold can be pretty cool, if you’re the one to break it.

Jennifer [Wikipedia]
Jennifer [Baby Name Wizard]

Earlier: I Is For Isabel, Who’s Snooty, But Earns It
H Is For Hillary, A Barrel Of Laughs
G Is For Grace – What’s That Up Her Sleeve?
F Is For Francesca, And I Wish I Were Her
E Is For Emily, Who Seems Sweet (At First)
D Is For Danielle (Or Dani, Who’s Apparently Kinda Judgey)
C Is For Courtney, Who’s Too Cool For School
B is for Beth (And Barack! And Bandana!)
A Is For Anna: What My First Name Says About Me

Behind its Photoshop-of-Horrors cover, this month’s Vogue is packed with the type of supposedly socially responsible content that’s been its wont lately. But as regular Vogue readers already know, everything — including social responsibility — is easier when you’re rich.

From its bizarre combination of resort-wear and guerrilla gardening (hoeing in Donna Karan wedges seems like a great way to twist an ankle) to its gushy coverage of “wwoofing” (working without pay on an organic farm), November Vogue does a great job of portraying environmentalism as a fun hobby for rich people with time on their hands. Perhaps most egregious is Sally Singer’s piece on hiring consultants to help make her apartment in the Chelsea Hotel more environmentally friendly. She laments that it’s hard for her to save energy because “I receive no water, gas, or electricity bills.” And her cleaning lady “cannot understand why her beloved long-handled dust mop must make way for a cut-up organic T-shirt on a bamboo stick.” But somehow, Singer pushes through. After all, she says, “at yoga class, they tell you that if you breathe correctly, your virtue will be contagious and the world will begin to change” — and surely, if you write about your virtue in Vogue, other rich people will make their cleaning ladies scrub the floors with T-shirts too. Be the change you want to see!

The votes are in and the top four have been announced!! Sabrina, Kristen, Emily and Amy!!
Now the heat is on and the next round is quickly approaching. What will the category of singing be? FAVORITE DIVA!!!
Congratulations to everyone who got so far, you all did awesome!!
Just remember YOU, the fans are keeping the contestants here [...]

We discovered a lot of things on last’s night’s episode! For instance:

When the designers sit with their backs to the runway, you assume that there’s going to be an OMG AMAZING SURPRISE! Instead it was: Yawn.

Some unseen minions dragged their old garments onto the catwalk. Big deal.
(The kids had $100 and one day to make an outfit to complement on of their “best” garments on the show so far.)

We found out that Logan is extremely bowlegged.

No, really: Watch him walk.

It was revealed that Gordana is a Bosnian Serb. How come it took this long to tell us that?!?!

We found out that Tim Gunn can be a little bitchy.

We found out that Carol Hannah has three stars on her hand.

We found out that Althea hates Logan for stealing her zipper collar idea.

We found out that Irina’s dial is stuck on catty.

We found out that Althea thinks Logan is hot, but that’s part of why she hates him: “He thinks because he’s, like, cute he can do whatever the [bleep].”

We found out that people call Irina “Meana Irina.”

An example of Irina’s mean: “Are you insane? Or are you drunk? You’re supposed to get inspiration from your own look. Not from mine.”

Actually, a lot of people were being snotty; Althea called Carol Hannah a “one trick pony,” and Logan said of Gordana: “My grandma has better taste than that.”

I have to say, for an episode called “The Best Of The Best, all the clothes were MEH.

The judges liked Carol Hannah’s flirty little dress. Kerry Washington especially loved the pockets.

Irina’s Aspen nighttime look was okay, although Nina said the dress “looked cheap.”

Althea won with her cozy sweater and paper-bag waist pants which probably only look good on models.

Guest judge Nick Verreos called Gordana’s look “Office worker in Poland.” Don’t you mean Sarajevo?

Christopher’s dress was called a “carnival float” and Heidi said “it looked like she took the bedspread with her.” I think maybe what he needed was a hoop? Because the sketch is actually super cute.

The judges ripped Logan’s look apart. Kerry Washington thought it was reptilian.

The worst part was when Heidi said, “I think this is one of our toughest decisions.” Pardon? Our? Nick and Kerry just got there! Nina hasn’t been around! These people haven’t had to make decisions with you before! Nina looked like she wanted to laugh, since this season’s judging is SUCH A JOKE. Kerry Washington’s face was like, “Um, what she said.” Nick just seemed scared.

Anyway: Logan was Auf’d.

Click here to read my goodbye letter to Logan.

Salon’s review of two shows about middle-aged guys who still act like frat bros reveals that while we often complain about roles for women in TV and movies, roles for men aren’t that awesome either. Here are some exceptions:

First, a description of the problem. Salon’s Heather Havrilesky introduces her review of the TV shows The League and Men of a Certain Age with this depressing assessment:

[W]hile it’s still unnerving to observe the casual arrogance of a gaggle of young men in their prime — their baseball caps molded into the perfect C shape, their boxer shorts peeking out above their low-slung jeans, the almost prissily self-aggrandizing set of their broad, hairless shoulders — watching that same smug spirit butt stubbornly from within the cramped confines of adult life can be surprisingly poignant. Because even as the older guy’s guy accepts the responsibilities and burdens of demanding wives, pesky children, gigantic mortgages, tedious jobs and arthritic knees, even as he gives in to the perils of prostate checks and surrenders to the burden of acknowledging people’s feelings and succumbs to the unbearable reality of neurotic teenage offspring and little motorized devices that yank the stray hairs out of his nose, there’s some small part of him that is never completely at peace with this shackled, neutered state. Something deep inside him can still feel that tacky, spilled-beer floor under the soles of his shoes, some part of him can hear the faint strains of “Louie, Louie” playing on some quad far, far away, some stubborn cells at his core can still smell the Polo cologne and the cup-a-noodles heating up in the mini microwave.

Are these really the choices for men? “Louie, Louie”-loving frat boy or “neutered” married guy? Yes, I’m aware that television offers men plenty of chances to solve crimes, diagnose obscure ailments, and bed beautiful women — but personality-wise, many TV men seem pretty arrested. Women may have hookers, victims, and doormats to choose from, but guys have assholes, man-children, and slobs. But there are a few awesome men on television, a few who — aside from the flaws every human being has — a boy would be lucky to grow up to be.

Tim Gunn, Project Runway

Nurturing yet firm, Tim Gunn is the perfect surrogate parent to the sometimes childish contestants of Project Runway. He knows what he likes, but he’s not a dick about it, and he genuinely wants to help designers make beautiful things and average people look their best. Yes, I know Tim Gunn is actually a real person and not a “character,” but I’m assuming his persona on Project Runway isn’t all there is to him. However, that persona — unflappable yet light-hearted, with the grace to say “Macy’s accessory wall” repeatedly without sounding like an idiot — is pretty awesome in itself. TV’s couch-dwelling slobs could learn a lot from Tim.

Image via Boston.com.

Admiral William Adama, Battlestar Galactica

Adama doesn’t always make the right decisions, and he’s a little over-reliant on military solutions for political problems. But he’s a man of principle, someone who’s been given enormous power over the human race and manages (largely) not to misuse it. You won’t see him screwing around with interns — in fact, Adama’s very supportive and fair to the women under his command, as his close mentorship of Starbuck (though that, too, has its faultlines) shows. Battlestar Galactica has some of the best female characters of any sci-fi show, and part of that has to do with the gender equality of the Colonial Fleet, for which Adama bears (fictional) responsibility. Male bosses, take note.

Image via LA Times.

Capt. Jean-Luc Picard, Star Trek: The Next Generation

Yeah, okay, I’m a nerd. But I’m a discerning nerd, and I’m not a big fan of Captain Kirk’s swashbuckling, lady-killing approach to the universe. Capt. Picard, however, shows that being bald can be hot, ordering tea can be cool, and, most importantly, being thoughtful can be manly. Picard spends just as much time puzzling over the moral implications of contact with alien races as he does firing his phaser, and he shows over and over again that the brain is mightier than the sword. Margaret says her brother “always says he learned everything he knows about respecting other cultures from Captain Picard,” and I’m hoping some of the Captain’s awesomeness rubbed off on my brother as well.

Detective Elliot Stabler, Law & Order: SVU

I struggled with this one, because Stabler has a lot of problems. He brutalizes suspects, he has rage issues, and he can seem unpleasantly narrowminded. But just as great female characters don’t have to be perfect saints, a male character can still be compelling even if you don’t like everything he does. And what’s refreshing about Stabler is that he’s a capital-A Adult who cares deeply about his family — even when his marriage on the rocks — and doesn’t shy away from responsibility. I don’t approve of his interrogation methods or his politics, but I do think Stabler could teach The League’s overgrown frat boys a thing or two about growing up.

Cliff Huxtable, The Cosby Show

Cliff Huxtable the character had a big cultural influence, given that The Cosby Show was one of the first to depict middle-class black family life. But Cliff himself was also a big influence on his family, an involved dad who actually enjoyed spending time with his kids. Contrast him with one of the dads from The League, who says, “If Sophia and I split up, 50 percent of my time I would have to spend 100 percent of my time with my kid. Right now, I’m rocking like 50 percent coverage 30 percent of my time, you cannot beat those numbers” — and you might just want to take a trip back to the eighties. But you don’t have to — as Kate says, “though he’s not exactly in the Cliff Huxtable mold,” Darnell from My Name Is Earl is the “only character on that show with a brain and a conscience, and also not a bad dad.”

In Defense Of The Aging Frat Boy [Salon]

Earlier: Report: Television Violence Against Women On The Rise

The other day, I was talking Mad Men, which we both watch religiously, with my 60-year-old dad. “There’s something off about it,” he said. “For all the attention to detail, they miss the point.” Heresy!

What my dad was getting at, I think, is something that even those of us who like the show have suspected on occasion. It’s what I think of as The Titanic issue: we read and read about the exact replication of every stateroom fitting, each dish, each deck railing. But then we had Rose, supposedly a 1912 lady of 18. giving someone the finger. Of course, Mad Men would never succumb to that level of anachronism – how often have we read the reverent accounts of danishes exactly the right size, or light bulbs the correct brightness? – but when it does happen, it serves to make everything feel affected, precious, self-conscious. In one of the best reviews I’ve ever seen of the show, the Atlantic’s Benjamin Schwarz writes,

But even if the portrayal were as “dead-on” as The Times assures us it is, that portrayal is hardly neutral. In describing a scene in which sexist badinage is exchanged at an account meeting, McLean correctly points out that “the series is critical of this limited view and is not afraid to spell [its criticism] out.” That stance-which amounts to a defiant indictment of sexism and racism, sins about which a rough moral consensus would now seem to have formed-militates against viewers’ inhabiting the alien world the show has so carefully constructed, because it’s constantly pressing them to condemn that world…And that stance is responsible for the rare (and therefore especially grating) heavy-handed and patronizing touches in an otherwise nuanced drama. Must the only regular black characters be a noble and cool elevator operator, a noble and understanding housekeeper, and a perceptive and politicized supermarket clerk? Must said elevator operator, who goes unnoticed by the less sensitive characters, sagely say when discussing Marilyn Monroe’s death, “Some people just hide in plain sight”? Get it-he’s talking about himself. He’s invisible. Even worse, that stance evokes and encourages the condescension of posterity; just as insecure college students feel they must join the knowing hisses of the callow campus audience when a character in an old movie makes an un-PC comment, so Mad Men directs its audience to indulge in a most unlovely-because wholly unearned-smugness. As artistically mistaken as this stance is, it nonetheless helps account for the show’s success. We all like to congratulate ourselves, and as a group, Mad Men’s audience is probably particularly prone to the temptation.

Therein, for me, lies the problem: we’re never with the characters, exactly – we’re coming from the place of enlightenment. We’re all winking and nudging each other all the time, feeling like we’re understanding a past which is really just our modern conception of it. Unlike other things (hello, Glee!) I don’t enjoy criticizing Mad Men, because I so want to love it. I want it to be perfect and smart and never fall into heavy-handed portraits of Lives of Quiet Desperation. Sometimes I think in our desire to love it, we fall into the reductive trap of assuring ourselves that They Know What They’re Doing, and if Mad Men does it, with their intelligence and commitment to accuracy, it must be right! And when something is wrong, not accurate, well, we’d rather assume they’re right than acknowledge other, larger things could be equally anachronistic. For instance, Schwarz points to another niggling problem, something a friend and I were talking about just the other day.

Betty, the show establishes, was in a sorority. So far, okay. Pretty, with a little-girl voice and a childlike, almost lobotomized affect; humorless; bland but at times creepily calculating (as when she seeks solace by manipulating her vulnerable friend into an affair); obsessed with appearances and therefore lacking in inner resources; a consistently cold and frequently vindictive mother; a daddy’s girl-Betty is written, and clumsily performed by model-turned-actress January Jones, as a clichéd shallow sorority sister. (Just as Don’s self-invented identity is Gatsby-like, so Betty, his wife, is a jejune ornament like Daisy, though without the voice full of money.) But she’s also a character deeply wronged by her serial-philanderer husband, and she’s hazily presented as a stultified victim of soulless postwar suburban ennui (now there’s a cliché). So, perhaps to bestow gravitas on her, or at least some upper-classiness, the show establishes that she went to Bryn Mawr. But of course Bryn Mawr has never had sororities. By far the brainiest of the Seven Sisters-cussed, straight-backed, high-minded, and feminist (its students, so the wags said, preferred the Ph.D. to the Mrs.)-Bryn Mawr was probably the least likely college that Betty Draper, given to such non-U genteelisms as “passed away,” would have attended. So much for satiric exactitude.

The thing is, I think we can enjoy the show and still acknowledge its problems. It doesn’t need to be an Oracle, or a History Lesson. It’s neither; and much as I loathe Don’s backstory, I do think it serves the valuable function of grounding the show firmly in the realm of the fictional. It’s a very good show that shows a heightened reality. We’d never expect total accuracy from any modern drama – it’s irrational to expect the same from a period piece. Focusing on the superficials is almost besides the point – cool as they are.

Mad About Mad Men [Atlantic Monthly]

While riding a nearly-empty train in the evening, Marsha Coupe was attacked by another woman who kicked and punched her repeatedly, leaving her with 40 bruises and one eye swollen shut. The reason given? Coupe took up two seats.

“‘You big fat pig’ is all Marsha Coupe heard before she was kicked in the face.” So begins a BBC article exploring why fat people are so frequently and openly abused — emotionally and, yes, physically. Although the piece is extremely (and somewhat shockingly) sympathetic to fat people, one thing that contributes to fat hatred can be found before it even begins: The traditional headless fatty photo. The BBC’s is of a man’s naked, hairy torso, spilling out over his jeans, and, as headless fatty photos usually are, it is sure to evoke disgust. Further down in the article, there’s a picture of Martha Coupe’s battered face, which is unsettling and a bit grainy, but a far more accurate depiction of the article’s subject than a disembodied gut — with a tape measure around it, no less. One evokes sympathy for an abused person, and the marginalized group she belongs to. The other dehumanizes a fat person, quite literally reducing him to nothing but a big old gut, and — given the prevalence of anti-fat sentiment outlined in this very article — is likely to make people laugh at best and recoil at worst. People responsible for choosing the images that accompany articles like this (and producing B-roll for TV reports on obesity) really need to think about the messages they’re sending — and recognize that they’re bigoted shits if that actually is the message they mean to send. (Note: There are some more understandable reasons for choosing such photos, and the one I’ve chosen here — of longtime fat activist Marilyn Wann — isn’t perfect, though I do love it. I’ll elaborate on this in comments.)

With that out of my system, let’s move on to the text. It’s pretty fabulous overall, quoting people who actually know something about size acceptance and citing thoughtful explanations for anti-fat attitudes and abuse. They even get bonus points for not falling into the “it’s the last acceptable prejudice!” trap (please see rule 11 if you were thinking of doing that in comments here), while making it clear that it very much is a widely acceptable prejudice, with real consequences for real people.

Some key points:

• “Often the assumption is that overweight people have lost their self-control.” Says Fat Is a Feminist Issue author Susie Orbach, “Most people want to be slim, but this perceived physical perfection is difficult to hold on to and they fear losing control of it…They project that fear and unhappiness on to people who are bigger and that often translates into abuse and attacks. It’s a way of people disassociating themselves from what they fear the most — getting fat.”
• It’s based on the simplistic and inaccurate assumption that fatness is always the result of laziness and greed. Psychologist Ros Taylor: “There is true aggression towards overweight people and it comes down to fear and a complete lack of understanding of the issue. People think ‘I can control what I put in my mouth so why can’t they’. But we’re not all the same, we don’t all start from the same point.”
• The government and media (pick your government and your media; it’s certainly as true here as it is in Britain) have created a full-fledged moral panic about fatness. Martha Coupe: “The government and the press have created an atmosphere where people think they have a legitimate right to go up to an overweight person and tell them how to live their lives. To them we are all the anonymous pictures of fat people they see in the papers and are the cause of all society’s ills, as well as a drain on the NHS. We deserve what we get. We’re not people with feelings.” (See? She even told you why headless fatties are problematic!)
• People tend to have unconscious but powerful negative reactions to those they find unattractive. Weight specialist Dr. Ian Campbell: “It’s innate in people to dislike what they see as a lack of attractiveness. It makes them think such people are worthy of derision. Very young kids have been shown to have a bias against their overweight peers.”

That last point is fine, as far as it goes, but in addition to the fact that our big brains can override kneejerk negative reactions once we recognize that they’re irrational (which the article does point out), what we find attractive is certainly dictated in large part by the culture, not just some sort of vaguely defined “innate” characteristics (which it does not). I’ve seen this slide into a bullshit evo-psych argument far too often. “We want people who look healthy! Fat people look unhealthy! IT’S HARD-WIRED CAN’T CHANGE IT PUT DOWN THE FORK IF YOU DON’T LIKE IT.” Yeeeah, except for how any amount of fat equaling ill-health in the collective consciousness is a very recent development. Throughout history, being relatively famine-proof was more likely regarded as a big advantage. Women with pelvises bigger than their heads were almost certainly regarded as more likely to be fertile. And even in fairly recent history, what was widely considered attractive was a hell of a lot different than it is now. Noting that negative reactions to “unattractive people” are not completely within the average person’s control — at least until she takes a moment to apply reason — is one thing. Implying that this means we all have an instinctive aversion to fatties is quite another. The idea that fat people are categorically, universally unattractive is a function of fat hatred, not a reasonable explanation for it.

Speaking of which, Elizabeth Bluemle has a terrific post over at Publishers Weekly about fat characters in children’s literature, which further elucidates how subtle but unmistakable — and frequent — messages about fatness can turn an irrational prejudice into the prevailing wisdom.

While we have all become accustomed to popular culture’s celebration of thin, what I didn’t expect is that books – the refuge of the chubby kid, the place where people understand the value of what lies beneath the surface, a land of acceptance and tolerance for difference – would come around to betray their readers. But you can hardly open an [advanced reading copy] these days without coming across one of the following:

* snide comments about a character’s weight or about fat in general when they have nothing to do with the plot or theme of the story;
* descriptions of fat used deliberately as shorthand to indicate a character’s villainy, isolation, absurdity, and/or repulsiveness;
* books with assumptions about fat people carelessly tossed off as though they are truths rather than opinion.

Right on, Elizabeth Bluemle. It’s been a while since I read any children’s literature (although Lizzie Skurnick frequently tempts me to revisit old favorites), but I notice this shit in grown-up books all the time — throwaway bits of fat hate, often apparently meant to endear author to reader, because of course everyone finds fat people ridiculous/disgusting/other than fully human, amirite? Jane Fallon’s novel Getting Rid of Matthew was completely ruined for me because of that shit. It’s couple hundred pages of smart, funny writing that’s almost perfectly suited to my taste, and only a couple of lines that felt like she’d slapped me in the face for no obvious reason beyond “hur hur, fatties!” But they did, in fact, feel that way, and that’s really not what I’m looking for in a book.

Having read Martha Coupe’s story, I guess I can be grateful that I’ve never actually been slapped, kicked or punched in the face for being fat. But she is far from the only one who has, and we can’t pretend that such abuse is somehow separate from the moral panic over obesity, the fiction that looks-based hatred is hard-wired, the way our collective guilt about overconsumption is projected onto fat people, the automatic equation of fatness with laziness and greed, and a million little fat jokes that people “didn’t really mean anything by.” Of course, that’s exactly what the BBC commenters try to do — I only read about a dozen, but most are along the lines of, “Look, it’s shameful and illegal to beat someone up, but fat people are still a huge problem for society to solve!”

Be better than that, Jezzies. Be smarter than that. And above all, please be kinder than that. Fat people are not a blight on society; we’re human beings. Acting like we’re some abstract problem to be solved only contributes to the kind of hatred that left Martha Coupe with a bruised and bloodied face, just because she dared to take up as much space as she needs.

Why Are Fat People Abused? [BBC]
Fat, But [Publishers Weekly]

In a year of milestones for Miley Cyrus, the Hollywood Records superstar just reached another big one, having her first #1 hit single at Top 40 radio with “Party in the U.S.A.” On October 26, the single hit the top spot, with nearly 11,000 spins, beating out competing tracks by Beyonce, Lada GaGa and [...]

President Obama shouldn’t apologize for spending time hanging out with the guys. It’s a sign of weakness.

Why aren’t there more black coaches? Their inclination, of course, is to blame racism.

The key to drinking like one of the “Mad Men” is to be a man. And to pace yourself.

Just because you’re eating leftovers doesn’t mean you have to suffer