Category archive for: Columns

Sex, politics, fashion and everything else a gen-X everygal loves to dish about.
Published bi-weekly, 2 or 3 times a month

Mini-Vibrators

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 25, 2012

I don’t want to brag, but my purse is a fricking wonderland. My fully loaded, survivalist handbag contains the tools to halt both heartburn and sunburn. The treasures rolling around in there can eradicate six straight days of headaches and stave off two, maybe three meals in a row. They can address a menstrual emergency, obliterate germs on shopping cart handles, and fashion a failed blowout into a casually fabulous chignon. But what my purse cannot do is produce a basic orgasm. And now I feel kind of lame about that.

I recently learned about a line of mini-vibrators that are disguised as basic, unsexy cosmetics — a faux lipstick, mascara tube, blush brush, and mirrored compact, each promising 80 full minutes of buzzing in two modes: “please” and “tease.” Why pose as makeup? It ain’t because they both bring color to your cheeks.

Billed as a “fashionably discreet sexcessory,” each little pleasure wand is meant to be tossed into your bag so that it’s handy … er, “when you need it the most.” I did some research (and I’m convinced the Internet was invented for precisely this purpose) and found others that double as a hairbrush, a pack of Life Savers, and even a lint roller, which is about as unhot as it gets.

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May I Have This Dance?

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 11, 2012

The moment had come. She stood there pretty as a picture, and he was nervous as could be. Could he pull it off? Would she say yes? “I pulled out a rose, got down on one knee, and popped the question,” the young man said. “She was just staring in disbelief, like, ‘What is going on right now?’ But she said yes — thank gosh.”

What makes this story strange is that the happy couple aren’t adults, they’re high-schoolers. And this wasn’t a marriage proposal, it was just an invitation to the homecoming dance.

But in fact, there’s no such thing as “just an invitation” to a dance anymore. Teens all over America have taken to grand, showy gestures to land a date to homecoming or prom.

“You have to,” explained Jack Haley, the question-popping San Marcos High School junior mentioned above. “It’s expected. You can’t go up to a girl and just go, ‘Hey, you wanna go to homecoming with me?’ because the girl will say, ‘Ask me in a better way,’ and you won’t get any respect from your peers.”

Inspired by watching The Last of the Mohicans in history class, he wooed his date by blasting the movie’s theme song from his car in the school parking lot as he fended off faux attackers (his “bros”) with a plastic sword, shouting, “No, she’s mine!” When the last bro was mock-slain, Haley knelt and asked the amused, confused girl to the dance.

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Go, Losers!

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 27, 2012

Men are supposed to be the logical ones. The more rational sex. And to the extent that they’ll fetch a tool or phone a repairman when something breaks — as opposed to weeping, repenting to the callous gods of karma, and then yelling at it, as I typically do — I concede that guys are largely governed by reason.

But when football season begins, their logic vanishes like a bowl of Hot Wings Doritos in front of a flat screen on a Sunday afternoon. (I know, I’m generalizing. Brace yourself because I’m going to do it some more.)

Football fans spend four months of every year hooting and rooting for teams that they’ve chosen to support for cockamamie reasons.

“Where I grew up, I was a Bears fan. It was expected of me. It was the right thing to do.” … “I bought my son a Broncos sweatshirt when he was 3. He’s still a fan.” … “I’ve liked the 49ers since I was young because games in Kezar Stadium looked so glorious when it was snowing in my native Ohio. And the red and gold looked much better than the hideous schemes offered by the Bengals and the Browns.”

Implicit obedience? Wardrobe attachment? Color schemes? These are dudes we’re talking about — right?

They pledge their undying, unsound fidelity to a team because it’s the one their dad rooted for. Or rooted against … whichever. My husband still flies the Raiders flag because, as a boy, he loved Ken Stabler’s nickname, “The Snake.” My sons chose their teams because “I wanted an underdog” and “my best friend hates them.”

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Kid Herding

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 13, 2012

Never mind the baby books. Forget the motherhood magazines. Everything I needed to know about parenting I learned from other parents. Wiser parents. Parents who went before me, hacking through the murky jungles of momhood with the Machete of Courageous Experimentation and calling back to me each time they lurched into the Quicksand of Poor Parenting: “Okay. So you’re gonna need a rope …”

When I was pregnant, a friend advised me to get a pedicure because I’d be spending countless hours of labor staring at my feet in stirrups and would be disheartened if — on top of soul-splitting, sanity-rattling, life-begetting contractions — I had icky toes. I got the pedicure, and the merciful, thank-ya-Jesus foot massage that went with it. It was the best advice I ever got.

The best advice my husband ever got also came while I was pregnant. An experienced dad told him, “Listen, there will be a moment when you have a strong urge to hurl your crying baby at the wall. Sounds crazy, I know. Just trust me, it’ll come. And here’s all you need to remember: Don’t do that.” We figured the guy for a nut-job until … it came. And my husband heeded the advice — relieved to know he wasn’t the only frustrated father to have ever needed it.

Even now, with my oldest entering high school, I’ve benefited from the been-there-learned-that counsel of my friends with older kids: Take Spanish in the summer, bring blankets to the football games, and choose water polo for PE; it’s the only sport where your kids come home nearly clean.

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She's a Bad Mammograma

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 30, 2012

Do you know what I love about mammograms?

Neither do I, but I’m open to suggestions. Because my current feelings on the procedure are unaffectionate.

My friends refer to mammograms as “the boob mash” and “getting squished.” The annual exam falls into that category of medical must-dos — along with Pap smears and dental cleanings — that we work hard to avoid thinking about. Before, after, and even during the dreaded appointment, we simply banish all thoughts of it from our minds — a disciplined-if-desperate meditation on anything at all but the bootie-wearing stranger unceremoniously kneading our chesticles.

But during my recent exam, several especially awkward moments yanked me right out of my blissful bubble of denial, forcing me to confront the full-frontal affront of this fondle-and-flatten ritual.

There’s something overly cutesy about my mammogram office. Like a pediatric dentist’s, compensating with giant grins and happy hues for the misery they’re about to cause you, the receptionists here are unreasonably jaunty, the décor unseasonably pink.

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Family Car Decals

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 16, 2012

Frequently, I am confounded by the stickers that I see on the back of cars: The grenade silhouette. The TRUTH fish eating the DARWIN fish. The Calvin-esque little boy who pees on things.

Never, though, have I been so baffled by a bumper-sticker trend as I am by the stick-figure family decals that have become de rigueur on the back of minivans and leviathan SUVs. You’ve seen them: a string of cutesy cartoon characters straggling across a rear window, diminishing in size from yoga mom and lawnmower dad down through shopper teen, baseball boy and ballet girl to dog, cat, bird, and a fourth, unidentifiable beast that will only be fully realized just before you rear-end the offending vehicle because you’re tailgating, compelled to know what the hell pet they feel is worth commemorating on their Buick Enclave.

I don’t get it. Why enumerate your bulky brood with “personalized car clings”? It feels like these families are keeping score and the rest of us are losing — not only by the paucity of our progeny but because the doofs in front of us are multiplying even as they impede our path and sightlines with their colossal clan-haulers.

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Dog Hair: The New Superfood

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 19, 2012

Dear medical researchers in Finland,
You have made my flipping day, and I want to tell you why. Your recent study linking pet ownership to healthy kids is the best news I’ve heard since … well, since my obstetrician said, “Okay, you can stop pushing; it’s out.”
I’ve read that Finland is the seventh happiest country in the world (source). With good health, a high employment rate, and more saunas per capita than cars, why wouldn’t it be?
But here in the United States, aka Land of the Free and Home of the Seriously Stressed-Out, anxiety is a religion — and moms are the high priestesses. From conception to college graduation, American motherhood is basically a series of humiliating episodes confirming that we’ve gone about parenting all wrong.
I’m no exception. I failed to introduce healthy vegetables to my kids before they could say, “Eww, get that off of my plate,” and neglected to start them on scholarship-earning string instruments before they could say, “Violins are for dorks.” I allowed them to eat sugar and watch television too soon — and sometimes, god forgive me, simultaneously.
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Don't Say 'Vagina'

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 5, 2012

It was the “vagina” heard round the world. Michigan State Rep. Lisa Brown was on the House floor, speaking out against a bill that would restrict abortion access, when she uttered these bons mots:

“And finally, Mr. Speaker, I’m flattered that you’re all so interested in my vagina, but no means no.”

From that place of interest, a great controversy was born. Republican House leaders barred Brown, a Democrat, from speaking in the state legislature the following day for trouncing on “the decorum of the House of Representatives.” They called into question her “maturity and civility.”

And feminists — as you might imagine — blew a flipping fuse. Brown and other women lawmakers performed The Vagina Monologues on the Capitol steps before 3,000 Michiganites waving signs like “MI-gina” and “I have a vagina, a voice, and a vote.” Their point, and it’s a good one: How can you dare legislate a body part that you can’t even speak of aloud?

But it’s disingenuous of Brown and her supporters to pretend that her speech wasn’t sexually charged — wasn’t explicitly, if a little deliciously, designed to make old men squirm.

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Cool or Not Cool?

Published by Starshine Roshell on June 21, 2012

Sometimes my kids ask me questions that rattle my mind like a cold, brass church bell. My skull had only just stopped reverberating from their last confounding query (“Mom, what does nothing look like?”) when my teenager riddled me this: “Why don’t old people at least try to be cool?”

It was an honest question, and it struck me as kind of brilliant — in the way that one often chooses to focus on her children’s refreshing curiosity rather than dwell on their astounding lack of manners or perspective.

I considered telling him that the answer lies in simple physics: Cool is a fast-moving target. And old people are slow. Then it occurred to me that by “old people,” he might very well mean me. I needed more information.

“If they would just put on a pair of skinny jeans and a V-neck T-shirt,” my son said, “they’d be cool.”

“According to whom?” I asked, cautiously. The parenting books say that active listening encourages your kids to speak openly. They also say it’s bad to call them idiots. So I listened.

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Fatherly Lessons

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 28, 2012

I suppose they were reasonable things to come from a father’s mouth. Still, they took me by surprise. “Only move one body part at a time,” I overheard my husband saying as he helped our young son up a ladder. “Grab it around the stripe; fingers across the laces,” he explained a few days later on the subject of throwing a spiral. That night, he gave an impromptu lesson in scooping unyielding ice cream from a carton: “Use the fancy spoons,” he said. “They don’t bend.”

The information floored me. I didn’t know these things. How did I not know these things? Was I supposed to have learned them from my dad?

I asked friends what their dads had taught them and was aghast to find that their pops had instructed them in physical feats like surfing and fishing, and practical tasks like changing tires and hammering nails. They’d insisted their kids give firm handshakes and pack only what they could carry. They spouted sensible maxims like “Finish what you start” and “There’s no excuse for being late. Ever.”

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