No One Cares About Your Hymen

Published by Starshine Roshell on November 3, 2015

Tradition deems that a bride should give a few gifts on her wedding day. She might give jewelry to her bridesmaids and chocolates to her guests. She might bestow a monogrammed hankie on her mother, and will likely present her groom with a little sumpn special back at the hotel ifyouknowwhatimsayin.

But here’s a nuptial-day trinket you don’t often see a bride offer up in 2015: a note from her gynecologist to her father avowing that her hymen is thoroughly, virtuously intact. A Maryland bride did just that recently, posing with her dad, a big ole virginal grin, and a physician-signed “certificate of purity.”
Let’s review: Her wedding. Her gyno. Her father. Her hymen. The situation is wrong on so many levels. Here are just four of them.
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Best Commenters: My Awards Back Atcha

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 20, 2015

What’s a writer without readers? That is to say, if I write a column in the forest and no one is there to post rude comments after it … did I even make a point?
Wired recently predicted the end of online comments sections, as Bloomberg, the Verge, the Daily Beast, and Motherboard have all eliminated the after-article comments features from their sites. I hope The Independent doesn’t follow suit. I often read the comments posted after my columns there to see what kinds of discussions are fueled, and if I’ve missed an important consideration in my thinking. Mostly, though, I find phrases like “giant turds” and “fat chicks” and comments like this one: “This is so stupid I could vomit.”
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Love Makes You Fat. Here’s Proof.

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 8, 2015

“Love makes you fat,” my adage-spouting grandmother always said. Now science proves it.
European researchers discovered earlier this year what anyone with eyeballs and a few married friends could have easily told them: that couples are generally heavier than single people.
It’s been proved before — by a study in 2013 that showed the happier people were in their marriages, the more weight they gained. And by yet another one the year before that.
(Okay, lightweight social scientists, time to find a new subject. Might I suggest 7 Ways That Listicles Are Making Us Stupid or Why Are We Still Talking About Donald Trump?)
So what’s the reason for this now officially undeniable link between mass and matrimony? There’s the obvious answer, of course: that once you’ve found a partner, you stop working so hard on your appearance. You skip a spinning class here and there, stop spending mornings wrestling with your straightening iron and — oh, what the hell — buy your first-ever pair of elastic-waist pants.
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Tattooing My Teen in Vegas

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 25, 2015

Dang it, there goes my Mother of the Year Award. Again.
Last week I sent my 16-year-old son to Las Vegas overnight to get a giant black tattoo in a place where he’ll see it every day for maybe 70 years. And I didn’t just let him go; I arranged rides, booked flights, got a hotel, and even pleaded with a reputed Sin City ink slinger to defy his own no-minors policy and scar this child’s otherwise flawless forearm forever.
But I had good reasons. I think.
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Tongs for Nothing: My (Latest) Parenting Failure

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 16, 2015

You know that moment when you’re heading out your front door for a big trip and you keep going over that mental list to make sure you’ve taken care of everything?
Dog sitter, mail hold, toothbrush, tickets, directions, deadbolt …
That’s where I am right now as a parent. My oldest is driving, earning paychecks from two jobs, and getting ready to apply to colleges. As he heads toward the front door for the trip of his life, that list keeps ticking through my head. Have I taught him everything he needs to know?
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Can Transgender Folks Futz with Pronouns?

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 2, 2015

For me, the issue first came to light while I was staring up the skirt of a drag queen.
Stage-side at a Pride festival with my family one summer, I pointed out a dazzling diva, gasped, and said, “Ooh! Look at her spectacular shoes!” Sheepishly, my son asked me why I referred to her as “her” when her biceps, Adam’s apple, and baritone growl indicated that she was a he. It was a fair question, but before I could craft a careful response, this tumbled out of my mouth:
“Well … I guess because she’s gone to a whole lot of trouble to be perceived as a she … and frankly, what do I care?”
Thus was my position on LGBT pronoun-ing established. Because I truly didn’t care. Why on earth shouldn’t people be called what they want to be called? I’m no us-versus-them gal. I’m a fiendishly tolerant liberal; I don’t give a flying flush who’s allowed into the ladies’ room — and you can’t make me squirm.
… Except that I’ve recently changed my mind. And I’m squirming.
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Crude Awakening: When the $#!% Hits the Sand

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 4, 2015

Living in paradise, one can get awfully smug. My friends and I have a ritual of meeting at sunset on the beach about once a month. Plopped in beach chairs, toes in the sand, eyes on the horizon, and a syrah on our lips, we toast to our extraordinary good fortune. “Aren’t we lucky?” we gasp as dolphins and even whales dance past in the surf.
From our unspoiled, cliff-edged beaches, it’s easy to see why Oprah lives here: Where else would she live?! It’s easy to understand how we earned our highbrow nicknames: The American Riviera and the Galapagos of the North. And it’s usually quite easy to forget that at any given moment, countless gallons of toxic, black sludge are whooshing silently through pipelines beneath our shores.
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Hot for the Dad Bod?

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 21, 2015

I have bad news for CrossFit fellas, mud runners, and other muscle men: The hottest look on the beach this summer is not the sculpted torso and chiseled thighs of the gym rat.
It’s the Dad Bod.
You heard me. What’s got girls giddy is the plain, pasty, paunchy physique of a man who’s more likely to be dining on leftover chicken fingers and mac ‘n’ cheese than he is to be hoisting kettle bells. (Is that what one does with kettle bells? Does one hoist? Endowed with a Mom Bod, I wouldn’t know.)
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