Yoga Mats as Status Symbols - What Does Yours Say About You?

See? He's so cool he doesn't even need a mat! The Times was right!

Scorpio? Libra? Who needs a sign to make unfounded snap judgements about strangers? The zodiac is sooo 70's! According to the NY Times, the new thing is to judge a girl by her yoga mat. (Because yoga is soooo, uh, '70's?) Actually the Times article is mainly about whether to use a sticky mat or go commando on the bare floor (for all you hygiene enthusiasts, apparently the floor gets cleaned a lot more than your mat*) but anyone who has been to a yoga studio knows that your yoga mat says a lot about who you are and how you live your life. So what does mine say about me? That I'm cheap and that I love my lady bits!

There I was the other day, blissfully inhaling and exhaling through a nice deep down dog (oh yoga, why so porny?) when I looked through my perfectly starfished hands to stare at all the pretty lotus flowers etched on my mat. Lotus flowers a la Georgia O'Keefe, that is. At that zen moment I realized my yoga mat is covered with a repeating pattern of - oh yes - the female genitalia. Which explains why I got it for ten bucks at TJ Maxx.

I was not as bothered by this as one might think - there is something oddly fitting about being in a class all about body awareness whilst sitting on replicas of my, ahem, awareness. Although anyone who asks to see my yoga mat from here on out has to buy me dinner first.

So what does your yoga mat say about you? Let's break it down:

Color: Yoga classes are usually pretty subdued and yogis are generally conforming (You may think you're being an individual by binding when the rest of us are extending but unless you go totally rogue then we're all doing the same flow - even our breathing is synced. Baaa.) so neon or rainbow sparkles shows that you! are! different! And also, that you don't mind glitter stuck in your awareness.

Pattern: Are you a tigress? Or a pansy? Unless you are like me and shop at a store so steeply discounted that they only carry one pattern (hey at least I didn't buy my "lotus flowers" in pink!) then you must have chosen the adornment upon which you like to stand. Personally I find this baby panda creepy but maybe you just need a big hug when you're lying face down in Sivasana?

Thickness: Yoga mats come in every size from paper thin - you might as well just buy one that looks like wood planks - to super plush. The fluffier your mat, the kinder it is to your knees, back, head and elbows. Unfortunately it is also that much harder to roll up. I've seen people so devoted to their comfort that they give up on rolling up their mats and just walk around looking like they're carrying a piece of dry wall (with leopard spots!). Also, in case you missed all the "breathing through the pain" admonishments, yoginis are not supposed to be wusses so unless you're pregnant then I'd better see headstands on the hardwood people.

Material: Ever wondered what the "sticky" in sticky yoga mats is? Most likely it's some toxic combination of plastic and carcinogen that will not only sicken you from inhaling the delicious plasticky fumes but will live forever in our landfills. You're a junkie and a polluter! (Of course this is the kind I have. Cheap, remember?) If you are environmentally aware however, you can buy all natural rubber mats or at least synthetic ones that don't have that new-car smell. You're green and rich!

Shape: Think rectangle is your only option? Think again! The one time I visited a high-end yoga studio I was shocked to find all the mats were large cushy ovals. Corners harsh your mellow, I guess. Also available are circles, squares and "yoga sheets" - mats large enough that no matter which way you come crashing out of your inversion, you'll still land on mat. Although you should know that the larger your mat, the more territorial you appear. Floor space is at a premium; are you a good sharer?

Bag: While creativity is limited with the actual mats, options abound for the bag you carry it in. (Of course you need a mat bag! Always practice safe yoga, that's my motto.) Is your mat bag a simple, austere strap? (Do you also tie back your pony tail with a string you bit off the frayed cotton hem of your tank top?) Or do you robe your mat in bright flowers or polka dots? I'll admit it: mine is the grand dame of mat bags. Fed up with carrying a gym purse, a diaper bag and a yoga mat that unrolls at inconvenient moments, I finally got this baby:

Owner: This is probably the most telling aspect of your mat. Do you own your own mat or borrow one from the gym? Sure remembering your mat in the trunk of your car is hard but getting impetigo from putting your child's pose where someone else put their open-sore cobbler is much worse.

Do you use a mat in group fit classes, when you stretch or do yoga? Do you bring your own mat or use the gym's? Anyone else ever end up accidentally seeing va-jay-jays in something innocuous? Tell us what kind of mat you use and we'll make random authoritative judgments about your morals in the comments!

*One of the best yoga tips I ever got (and heaven help me I can't remember which one of you taught me this on your blog so if it was you know that a) I love you! and b) feel free to name check yourself and post a link!) was to fold your yoga mat in half - short edge to short edge - before you roll it up. That way the patterned side that you rest your face on never touches the floor side. Try it!

What is Your Secret to Body Confidence?

What does it say about me that I really want that dress? Except in green, please. They can keep the plastic barrettes though.

"You're prettier but she's way sexier." Thus started one of the worst back-handed compliments I've ever received. "She just knows how to use what she's got. You're... kinda spastic."

The speaker was Shane, my rakishly handsome neighbor my freshman year of college. My roommates and I all had massive crushes on him which he both knew and used to his advantage. Two of my roommates were quickly out of the game, one by her own volition (she claimed she was playing hard to get but it came across as just not playing) and one was summarily dismissed when it was discovered she was running from the law. That left my roommate Becky and I to vie pathetically for his affections.

For reasons I can only now attribute to a lackadaisical attitude towards school and an overconfidence in his parents' ability to take care of him the rest of his life (what a winner!), he was constantly over at our apartment. And his favorite game was wrestling. Preferably both of us at the same time. You have no idea how embarrassed I am to have just typed that so please forgive my idiocy and remember I was young - I was on campus part-time at 15, full-time at 17. Young girls do stupid things. Girls Gone Wild is a billion dollar industry based on that one fact. Not that what I did was Girls Gone Wild worthy. Wow, I'm just digging this hole deeper and deeper. Anyhow.

It was during one of these epic wrestling matches that he decided to lay that bit of wisdom on me. My face burned red and I knew I'd lost to the less-pretty but more-sexy Becky. Sure enough he was soon sampling all the flavors of her Lip Smackers - Dr. Pepper was the clear winner - and I was relegated to pretending not to hear despite the fact that Becky and I shared a room. (Sadly, that was not my worst roommate-makeout experience. That award goes to my junior year when I woke up to my bunk bed rocking. While I was getting my beauty rest on the top bunk, my adorable freshman roommate who only wore daisy dukes and camis even in the dead of winter, was playing birth control bingo on the lower bunk. Best part? As he was a (drunk) cop, he handcuffed her to the bed with real handcuffs... and lost the key. Yours truly to the rescue, hiking to his house in the middle of the night to get the spare. Hey at least it got me off the Noah's Ark Bed.)

But back to my original humiliation: Shane quickly learned that Becky, being more of a buffet fan than a single entree girl, was really more interested in the touchdown than the after party (10 yard penalty for the mixed metahpor!). Becky moved on to other more evasive men and he and I remained friends. In fact, when I had a pus-filled infected wound on my finger from - no joke - scraping it on a jagged corner of a formica desk, he was the one who volunteered to drain it for me and then hugged me while I cried for 10 minutes because it hurt. (Seriously - one of the most painful stupid injuries I've ever had! And I've had a lot them.)

One evening we were watching late night infomercials together after we'd both returned home early from bad dates when I asked him to explain. He was brutally honest. "You have no sense of self, no confidence. You have a great body but no idea how to use it. I love you but you are such a dork. When you try and act sexy, it's almost comical but in a painful way. You even hug self-consciously."

"I what?!?"

"I don't know how you do it but you do."

This was the memory that came back to me after reading the Fabulous Body Poll. The commenters were going back and forth about whether the men in the poll were lying through their British teeth when they said they most liked a "size 12" (size 8 US) woman and yet voted for bombshell Kelly Brooke (the only size 12 thing about her are her boobs) as their ideal woman. And then one of the commenters wrote: "I honestly think confidence is more important than any of it." And after my experience with Shane I have to agree.

Since body confidence comes from trusting and loving your body, it would make sense that I had none of it. Especially at that time in my life. I was geeky and weird. Way too transparent. Intellectually smart but dumb in common sense. So how does one get it if you are not born with it? If I were awesome, I'd come up with an inspiring bulleted list - with a picture of someone jumping! In front of a sunrise! On a big rock! - of five easy steps to loving the skin your in. Do I get bonus points for quoting a commercial too!

But the truth is I still don't know. I was discussing my obsession with those STUPID 10 POUNDS with my therapist the other day when she made an interesting point. She asked, "Why do those 10 pounds matter to you? Losing 10 pounds puts your BMI into the unhealthy range. Why would you want that?"

I answered, "Because people like me better when I'm that skinny. I get more compliments. People are nicer to me. People trust me more. Bag boys offer to get things off high shelves for me. I swear I even get more Google hits on those days."

She shot back, "Maybe it's because you're more confident and other people pick up on it. Maybe it has nothing to do with your weight and everything to do with how you feel about yourself."

The light went on.

So now I need to figure out a way, besides losing weight, to feel confident in myself. I've made a good start with aging - amazing what getting older can do - and also dancing, kick boxing, and running but I'm not there yet. Help me out - how have you learned to love your body? Do you have a favorite trick for those days when you need a little confidence boost? High heels? Sassy lipstick? Clinical strength deodorant?? Bonus points for aspirational pics!

Can I Be a "Formerly" If I Am a "Never Was"? (Giveaway!)

This is as close as I'll ever get to being a hot chick in a hot tub.

Stephanie Dolgoff is omnipresent in the body-image blogosphere these days. You might have read a review of her new book My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches from Just the other side of young (that comes out today!) from MizFit, Leslie, or Jezebel. Or perhaps you caught her front page story in the style section of the New York Times (which strangely pictured her amidst a large pile of shoes because shoes... are a measure of youth? Hotness?) ANYHOW. Even Gawker - a site dominated by gay men - had to weigh in on the debate surrounding the perceived hotness of older females in our culture. So of course I had to read it. Thankfully a few months ago I was privileged to receive an advance review copy of the book - which instructed me cryptically not to quote from it without consulting the final version first... which hadn't been released yet which made me read the review copy very closely looking for any covert messages Dolgoff might have slipped to me such as "Help! I'm locked in a cage! Send shoes!" I didn't find any secret messages, sadly, but I did get a sweet hand-written note from her saying she hoped I enjoyed it.

And I did! Dolgoff is hilarious and quirky and - it must be said - still hot, even in the conventional youth-loving sense of the word. Which is where my train and hers split tracks. (Don't disabuse me of my metaphor - I have read quite enough Thomas the Tank Engine books to know that trains do all kinds of wacky things like split tracks and bump buffers and, you know, talk. All the time. Frankly, if I were Sir Topham Hatt I'd put Thomas in the coal yard too just to get some peace and quiet.)

Stephanie, as I am wont to call her as her writing engenders such a feeling of familiarity, originally came to be writing a book about being Formerly Hot (or just Formerly for short) after a man on the subway asked her for the time. And that was it. As a hottie, she was used to being hit on and this man's narrow chronological focus surprised her. (Perhaps he was reading Gawker on his phone? Just a thought.) She realized that she had crossed the line drawn crookedly in the sand by our fun-house-mirrored society into... what, exactly? Not old age. Not even middle age really. Just, Not Young. As one would expect from any major life transition, this was jarring to her both physically and in her sense of self, causing her some deep (and witty) introspection.

Confession: I have never had a man ask me for the time with any intent other than to find out the time. I've never had a stranger send me a drink at a bar or a waiter leave me his number on the check or any of those other rom-com clichés. (DID YOU SEE THAT? I got the é to work! I love you guys!!) Nor have I even had a man try and use one of those awful pick-up lines every other female loves to giggle about. "Hey baby, are your legs tired? 'Cause you been running through my mind all night!" Never!

After reading through page after page of amusing anecdotes about boyfriends and college parties and the swingin' singles life in New York that she navigated with aplomb wearing both 6" heels (in the snow, when fashion called for it) and the title of editor of many lady mags like Glamour, Fitness, Redbook, Seventeen and even O, I had my own realization: I can't be Formerly Hot because I Never Was Hot.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not saying I'm hideous or anything. It's just that Dolgoff and I have had very different lives. My college years consisted of working three jobs, studying like a manic's dreamgirl to keep my scholarship and 4.0 GPA, and occasionally going out on double dates with my Barbie-esque blond roommate to whom I was always a distant second. (Side note: I knew I had to marry my husband when I asked him on our second date what he thought of Barbie and he looked genuinely confused and said, "Who?") By age 21 I had two degrees, a husband and a professorship (and an ulcer) - all great things but things that definitely lowered my hotness quotient. And it wasn't high to begin with. All I'm saying is that it's hard to miss what I never had.

Fortunately for me, Steph's (see what I did there? We're on such friendly terms I just wantonly truncated her first name! That's what she does to me when she tells me one of her life's mission statements is "Anna Wintour would not eat the fish!" You'll have to read the book to get the story behind that one. It's awesome.) Life Lessons Learned can be generalized to those of us who are living a very unsexy life. Advice like "wear clothing that fits your body now" and "treasure your adult girlfriends" definitely ring true to me now. Even her deliberations about plastic surgery - a subject she adroitly points out that feminists come down on both sides of - something that I, being poor, have only an academic interest in, are funny and interesting. And she totally had me at the chapter about upper lip waxing (sisters with pale skin and dark hair unite!)

Being 32, I'm not quite at the official "Formerly" age (what that is she doesn't come out and say exactly although she hints that it's hot on the heels of the GMFU, or "great metabolic f*** you", that hits around 40) so perhaps I'll relate a bit more in a few years. At any rate, it was a fun read. Want to check it out yourself? Leave me a comment below telling me about your experience with aging in our culture - did you notice crossing over into Formerly territory? Or are you a Never Was like me? - and you'll be entered to win your own copy!

What's your best "getting hit on" story? Please tell me so I can live vicariously through your fun!!

Pregnancy: Attack of the Body Snatchers, Jillian Michaels Edition

Tiger Lady. That's what my oldest son christened me as soon as he could talk, thanks to my knees-to-navel stretch marks. (Note: that proud day was also the day I decided he was too old to shower with mommy anymore.) So I will be the last person to tell you that you can have a baby and bounce back to exactly the same shape you were in before having a human erupt from your loins. Even if you do get down to your pre-pregnancy weight - a touchy enough subject - most likely things will settle into new positions. (We won't even talk about the disasters that befall your nipples.) For every Heidi Klum in her Victoria's Secrets, there are a hundred Charlottes in our control-top tights.

And yet it still rubbed me the wrong way when Jillian Michaels said in a recent interview with Women's Health that she didn't want to get pregnant because of the effect it would have on her body:

There is no doubt that “The Biggest Loser” trainer Jillian Michaels has one of the best bodies in America, and given her childhood history of being overweight, it's something the 36-year-old has worked ultra-hard to achieve. So hard in fact, that she’s not willing to let it slide even to become a biological mother.

“I’m going to adopt. I can’t handle doing that to my body,” Michaels told the new issue of Women’s Health magazine. “Also, when you rescue something, it’s like rescuing a part of yourself.”

Not being an adoptive mother, I'm going to let that comment about "rescuing something" slide (okay I can't let it slide: Children aren't puppies. And also, adoption is not about fixing yourself. Now I'm done.) but I'm always a little leery when women tell me they don't want to biologically have children for fear of marring their bodies.

While there are many good reasons not to have children - and I am in no way saying that all women should start popping out young 'uns like a Pez dispenser (oh, if only labor was that easy!) - I don't think fear is a good one. Especially not fear of losing your looks.

Jillian may be in a particularly unique position due to her job depending primarily on her physique but she certainly isn't the first woman who has voiced this concern. In a society that trades in sexuality and abhors aging it is often seen as a woman's currency to stay looking as youthful is possible. (The irony of living in a culture that worships sex but freaks out over the product of sex - see: men who love looking at boobs... until there is a baby attached to them and then they're "disgusting" - is a different rant for another day.) The problem with that is that everyone, even Demi Moore, will age eventually. The laws of physics will not be denied: Your body will move towards entropy. Not having children may buy you a few more years but in the end, everyone's boobs sag and their butts droop and their tummies deflate to bread dough.

Whether or not Jillian (or anyone else) ever has kids, or even wants kids, is none of my business. I wouldn't have batted an eyelash if she'd just said "I don't want to have children" or "I'm planning to adopt." Likewise I would have been fine with "I have a family history of illness I don't want to risk passing down" or "I don't have the resources to support a child" or even "I have a deep-seated fear of Ronald McDonald and the chance of running into that evil clown is exponentially higher with wee ones around and I'm just not willing to risk it."

Putting the blame on her body bothers me for two reasons: 1) I think her stance reinforces the view that pregnancy is an illness or a condition to be feared, rather than a natural bodily function for women and 2) It reads as if she is saying that women who have had children are inherently less beautiful and that our self worth should be tied to what we look like rather than who we are.

My last point may be purely speculative based on the wonderful experiences I've had with my kids but I also worry about regret. Call me biased (I did birth 5 of the little nippers after all) but I just think that if the only reason you choose not to have kids is fear of stretch marks and loose skin then there is a good chance you'll regret that choice when you realize you have stretch marks from puberty and loose skin from aging anyhow.

I'm not trying to come down on Jillian for speaking honestly; I just don't want her to miss out on an amazing experience because of something so ephemeral. You tell me - is Jillian just saying what everyone else is thinking? Did I misinterpret Jillian's meaning? Does fear of ruining your body impact your decision to have a baby? Do you feel like pregnancy has wrecked your body? Any thoughts on "rescuing yourself" by adopting a baby?


UPDATE: Jillian Michaels has taken to Twitter to further explain her comment. Like many of you suggested might be the case, she clarifies by saying "I never said I was anti-pregnancy or taht pregnancy ruins a body. I said that 'I can't put my body through it.' There are emotional issues and physical LIMITATIONS that have resulted in that conclusion. Some I have discussed publicly and some I haven't." [emphasis hers]

I want to thank Jillian for taking the time to clarify her comments and to apologize for misunderstanding her intent.

5 Olympic Stories You Might Have Missed This Year

Fridays are normally Greatest Hits (i.e. rerun posts) here at GFE but today I wanted to do a quick Olympic news roundup today instead. Between many of you awesome readers and my trusty Google reader, I have a whole (metaphorical) pile of Olympic stories that I keep meaning to blog about and haven't had time to get to. But the Olympics are almost over and there are so many things to talk about! So here it is, quick and dirty:

Strong Triumphs Over Skinny. AGAIN. Tanith Belbin, an American Ice Dancer, has seen a major upswing in her skating career the last few years. Her winning secret? She gained 10 pounds! Yeah, you read that right. After talking about her disordered eating and hitting a low point with her skating where she says, "I [wasn't] eating anything and I [was] exhausted and cranky and stressed and all of those things that make you gain weight even more.” At first when her coach recommended she gain some weight, Tanith like any good American girl, freaked. But as she followed her coach's advice, she began to see the wisdom in it. She "changed her eating and training habits. She grew stronger, allowing curves and muscles to be a part of her body. [skating partner] Agosto said that their lifts have improved, as she can hold herself up more easily." (Thanks for the tip, Becky!)

Skating Makes a Funny. Speaking of Ice Dancing, the skaters in this year's Olympics provided most of the comic relief. Have you see Buzzfeed's "The 20 funniest Figure Skating Faces" yet? You must. MUST. And then there's this roundup of The Best "Skate Face" that are just as hilarious. And here's a look at some of the funniest costumes (yes the US snowboarding team gets a mention with their faux jeans and retro plaids). Plus someone did an analysis of the skaters' hair. Seriously.

Curling is a Sexxxy Sport. The sport of Curling has the odd honor of having both the only (admittedly) pregnant female athlete competing - Canadian Kristie Moore due in May - and its very own line of condoms called "Hurry Hard." I'm not sure what I could possibly add to that little tidbit of awesomeness.

There is a Condom Shortage Crisis. Speaking of sex, Curlers aren't the only athletes getting their groove on in the downtime. Apparently the Olympic Village is facing an epic condom shortage (who knew that free condoms were even a perk at the Olympics??) after handing out 100,000 of the little foil-wrapped souvenirs, about 14 for each of the 7,000 people housed in the village.

A Uniform Question: Reader Laura asks, "Why do the female skiers wear skintight uniforms (Charlotte's note: a star spangled Under Armor unitard thingy) while the female snowboarders wear baggy faux-jeans and a plaid coat? Is it just about the 'tude?" Good question, Laura. It can't just be about performance because presumably snowboarders need to go fast too.

What has caught your attention about this year's winter Olympics in Vancouver, Canada? Anyone have a good answer for Laura? I sure don't - I've tried snowboarding exactly twice and cursed so much the snow melted in my path.

Trend Watch: Soft Porn Fitness

"If you've got it, flaunt it!" so the saying goes and fitness people certainly subscribe to this mantra. Seen a health or fitness mag lately? Unless it is Experience Life, I'd bet you a trailer of tuna steaks with whole wheat couscous and arugula ('cause everyone has those on hand right?) that the cover model is in some state of undress. The bikini-clad-standing-thigh-deep-in-generic-water pose is so popular that I don't think Shape has done a cover in the last 5 years without it!

Fitness TV shows, DVDs and podcasts are no better with female trainers sporting tiny booty shorts and sports bras. All the better to show off your hard-won physique right? Why else do we work out if not to get a body worth publicly baring? Ahem. Heck, even CrossFit's been porni-fied. And if you've ever tried CrossFit you will understand how very weird that is.

But is the trend going past flat abs and cut biceps towards something more... porno?

Reader Katie recently wrote me about a fitness site she feels very conflicted about:

The website is www.bodyrock.tv . [...] This website has really started to transform the way I approach workouts. They are short, intense workouts--from as little as 9 minutes to 45 minutes-tops. It's all bodyweight based and just requires a floor mat and the ability to do pull-ups someplace. The woman on the site is very fit and is not shy about sharing that these workouts are ALL she does and that a lot of her battle is also in the kitchen.

It all sounds great. Until you look at the site. I'm embarrassed to look at the site around other people because of the way her videos are shot, and the photos taken to show the individual movements. I feel like I'm looking at a soft-porn fitness site! When I've showed people where I've been getting several of my workouts from, they react with this same mixture of raised eyebrows, but then respect for her solid routines (and body). On the one hand, she sends such a positive message about being physically fit, nourishing your body with healthy food, and to a degree to not be ashamed to show off your hard work. On the other hand, she totally exploits her body and this razzes my feminist sensibilities. Therefore, the message gets a little muddled between the obvious display of silicone and play toward sex appeal and lack of modesty. This site combines so many of my vices---fitness, sex appeal, my love/hate relationship with this site's goals, and finding the real reason I work out--how much is for my own fitness and how much for outward appearance?

Here's a screen shot of one of the videos Katie is referring to: (to see the whole video, click the picture to go to her site. Her videos aren't enabled for external embedding - sorry!)

And here's a shot of Zuzana from her home page demonstrating a lunge:
I have to admit that while I am very used to seeing how sexified most fitness women are, this site seemed a little extreme. It wasn't the clothing per se but more the poses, expressions and mannerisms - ones our society normally associates with porn rather than fitness. Hawt TV trainers may dress like the sexy gym teacher or co-ed cheerleader every man dreams about but - here's the difference - they don't usually act like it. Zuzana calls our bluff and refuses to allow us to pretend that we're not looking at her boobs.

Celebrities on magazine covers and mad-hot Czech women on the Internet are one thing but what about real life? I remember the last time a girl showed up at my gym with night-club makeup, teased hair and sporting cleavage on both ends. People, both men and women, made negative comments about her look and the attitude they assumed she had. Jealousy rearing its ugly head? Or indignation about the breach of the implied moral code? Both?

On one hand, sex sells. Duh. Who wouldn't want to look like Zuzana? I do! And I tried a couple of her workouts - they're solid. (I also wrote down that apple cake recipe because even though I was rolling my eyes at her Daisy Duke getup the cake still sounded really really good.) But on the other hand, is it necessary to go all Jenna Jameson to pimp your fitness routine? Fitness is often a weird place where, like acting and modeling, your body is your product. Is there a line between showing off what you worked so hard to create and being sexy? Is there a point where overt sexiness in fitness ads actually turns you off the product?

And be honest - how much of your motivation to workout is for your health and how much is based on how you want to look?

PS> Anyone else really irritated by the banner on her homepage advertising her auction for her workout pants because her size 4s are now too big and she needs money to buy smaller ones? We get it: you are tiny and adorable.

Curing Cancer With Your Bra

In the illustrious history of Rick rolling, surprise kitty and, my personal favorite, the send-this-to-everyone-you-know-and-Microsoft-will-send-you-a-check-for-a-million-dollars e-mail, a new Internet meme has emerged and it is good. If by "good" you mean "hilarious" - which I always do.

If you were on Facebook this weekend and are a girl, you probably got an e-mail akin to this one:

Something fun is going on! Just write the color of your bra in your status. Just the colour, nothing else. Send this message on to ONLY girls --no men. It will be neat to see if this will spread the wings of cancer awareness. It will be fun to see how long it takes before the men will wonder why all the girls have a color in their status.

If you were on Facebook this weekend and are a non-stupid man, you probably got a good snicker... until you read that your mom's status update was "black lace with red satin choker."

Upon receiving this e-mail* I immediately saw my girlfriend's statuses lighting up like rainbows and, like the creative girls my friends are, were rarely limited to "just the colour, nothing else." My friends described their undergarments in such fascinating detail that I felt like we had taken our relationship to a whole new level - the Girl's Gone Wild one.

Wanting to be in on all the fun, my fingers hovered over my keyboard ready to chime in when two thoughts occurred simultaneously: 1) Nursing bras are boring and 2) This might be the best frat-boy prank ever.

You know me - I am not shy about talking about my bra when the context warrants it - but something about this particular meme smacked of the adolescent days when boys snapped bra straps and girl's bras were considered the most magical pieces of cloth invented - even surpassing the Borat thong with their powers. Did you tell a boy the color of your bra just because he asked? Of course not. That ruined the mystique.

But boys have grown up and this time they added the "cancer awareness" tag to the tired come-on. Call me the Facebook Grinch (do I get a t-shirt?) but I don't see how this helps cancer patients or research at all. Is there anyone, male or female, who is not aware of breast cancer? Bras may be magical but I'm pretty sure they haven't invented one yet that cures cancer. (Side note: breast cancer is not the #1 killer of women. Heart disease is. It's not even the #1 cancer of women. That honor goes to the unsexy lung cancer.) When I expressed my grinch-i-tude on Facebook, one friend (whom I love even more knowing that she wears a purple polka-dot bra on a bleak Friday in January) said, "If it gets one woman to do a breast self-exam then it is worth it." She has a point. But I ask you, did any of you give yourselves a firm pat down upon reading a friend's bra color? I sure didn't. And also, as Gym Buddy Krista pointed out, "The e-mail doesn't say breast cancer. How come no one is asking the men to post their boxer colors in support of testicular cancer?"

It was this disingenuity that bothered me about the bra-color meme. If my girls want to post their bra color (or underwear color or tupperware color or booger color) because it makes them happy then by all means go for it! But call it what it is: coy titillation. It feels like trickery and disrespect to tell women to bare their undies as a way to help "spread the wings of cancer awareness." How does "raising awareness" without raising money help anyone?

Because these things never go quietly into the dark (Internet) night, this morning I received a follow-up:

Since some woman spilled the beans, we created a new one to keep men guessing :):) Here is the game. this will get the guys thinking....To' see if they've got dirty minds or not!! It's not at all rude. lol. This is about how you are wearing your hair right now. up- write ON TOP, down- write SIDE BY SIDE, messy- write EVERYWHERE AND MESSY! see if they get this one! remember tho ONLY SEND TO WOMEN. This is also for Cancer as we know how many lose their hair fighting :(:(

This new meme ups the ante by more explicitly referencing sex and adding not only the generic cancer admonition but also a "lost hair" addendum to tug on your emotions. Thankfully none of my girlfriends have fallen for this one.

So let me have it: Do I just have no sense of humor? Am I missing the point? Did you post your bra color? What do you think of campaigns that "raise awareness" and nothing else?

* I want to emphatically state that I LOVE all my facebook girlfriends and do not think any less of those that sent on this e-mail or posted their bra color. I don't want anyone to feel bad for sending this to me. My issue is with whomever started this ridiculousness of "raising awareness".

Girls Gone Violent

Check out this snippet I uncovered in which a popular celebrity talks about arguing with their significant other:

"I say, 'You have to go and stop talking to me, because I'm going to kill you. I'm going to stab you with something, please leave.' I'd never own a gun for that reason," says [name redacted]. "I wouldn't shoot to kill. But I would shoot them in the leg, for sure."

Who could it be? What if I told you it was a recorded phone conversation between Chris Brown and a buddy discussing the incident with Rihanna? Well, it isn't. And it's not OJ Simpson either. It's actually the ever-quotable Megan Fox talking about her fiancee Brian Austen Green.

Hilarious, right?

The other day I was talking to the group of teenaged girls from my church that I volunteer with every week. They are, to a one, smart, funny, beautiful and nice girls. And yet, when talk turned to how frustrating brothers can be, one girl said she deals with her sibling by hitting him.

"Why do you do that?" I asked her.

"To get him to shut up," she answered perfunctorily.

"Does he hit you when he gets upset?"

"Oh no!" she exclaimed. "He'd get in way too much trouble!"

I paused. "So why is it okay for you to hit him then?"

"Well it's not like I really hurt him. Besides, he thinks it's funny."

The truth is, she being quite petite and her older brother being quite big, she probably doesn't hurt him. But since when does the amount of pain inflicted justify violence? Working with domestic violence survivors - I did a year-long stint working at a battered women's shelter and nine months on call as a rape-crisis counselor - I have spent quite a bit of time trying to teach women that it's okay to fight back, to stand up for yourself. And being a survivor of dating violence, I've spent a lot of time telling myself that as well. I'm certainly not going to say that a woman needs to take abuse, but this doesn't give us a free pass to hurt another person.

Like the girl from the example above, many often cite the women-are-the-weaker-sex argument in their attempts to justify violent speech or behavior. I'd say that Megan Fox makes an excellent, if unintended point here: guns level that playing field. Yet somehow in our popular culture we have decided that violent females are cute, sexy - Megan Fox's current film Jennifer's Body is a horror movie based around the concept of a hot girl who literally eats men - or the most cringe-worthy: empowered. This idea of female empowerment = violence is so popular these days that I saw the chicks rule logo above on a t-shirt at Wal-Mart. In the little girls section.

I get that traditional horror flicks have long traded in victimized (in oh so many ways) females; it's one of the many reasons I detest horror movies. But does going so far in the other direction make it any better? Rather than striving to raise the number of female serial killers to equal that of men, I think our time would be better spent in not glamorizing serial killers of any gender. The funny thing is that apparently women love horror movies. The New York Times recently examined this paradox:

"Recent box office receipts show that women have an even bigger appetite for these films than men. Theories straining to address this particular head scratcher have their work cut out for them: Are female fans of “Saw” ironists? Masochists? Or just dying to get closer to their dates?"

What do you think about Megan's statement? Would you not take her seriously knowing that she's a petite, gorgeous girl? Do you find the "girls kick boys' butts" message empowering? Are you a girl who loves horror movies?

Breaking News: Men Like "Thin and Seductive" Women!

Researchers from Wake Forest University shocked the world by discovering that men agree on what kind of women they find attractive: "thin and seductive." Good thing they told me because I'm not sure Hollywood is getting that message across clear enough.

Going past that singular conclusion, there are some other interesting tidbits revealed in the study on finding consensus among attractiveness ratings. In a setup that I'm sure every college kid is wishing they'd got in on right now, researchers asked more than 4,000 people of both sexes to rate pictures of the opposite gender for how attractive they found them and what traits made those people attractive.

The results for the men were not so surprising: "Men’s judgments of women’s attractiveness were based primarily around physical features and they rated highly those who looked thin and seductive. Most of the men in the study also rated photographs of women who looked confident as more attractive." The men in the study showed a high degree of consensus in this conclusion. But anyone who has read a ladymag or seen a movie in the past twenty years could have told you that. Men like beautiful women who appear to want to have sex with them?! Shock me, shock me, shock me with your deviant behavior. (Irrelevant but anyone else grow up quoting Empire Records like I did?)

The results for the women were more nuanced: "As a group, the women rating men showed some preference for thin, muscular subjects, but disagreed on how attractive many men in the study were. Some women gave high attractiveness ratings to the men other women said were not attractive at all." While I'd like to give my sisters mad props for embracing a more diverse ideal, I think these results reinforce the findings of previous research that women place a higher emphasis on other aspects of a man rather than his looks. Like, for instance, his earning potential. One study even found that "the number and frequency of a woman’s orgasms is directly related to her partner’s wealth."

So they're shallow but we're gold diggers. Lovely.

The researchers conclude that this emphasis on a narrow definition of attraction may be why women feel more pressure than men to conform to societal standards of beauty. In other news, chocolate is yummy and puppies are cute. My conclusion? This pretty much sums up Sex and the City.

What's your experience? Does this explain Michael Douglass and Catherine Zeta Jones?