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

Sex Strikes

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 22, 2011

Sometimes you just have to use what you’ve got. When Liberia’s 14-year civil war tore her family and native country apart, mother-of-six Leymah Gbowee organized a women’s peace movement. She led sit-ins. She led pickets. And when all else failed, she launched a sex strike.

“What does it take to make those who fight listen to reason?” she asks in her new memoir, Mighty Be Our Powers: How Sisterhood, Prayer, and Sex Changed a Nation at War. “As a woman, you have the power to deny a man something he wants until the other men stop what they are doing.”

Widowed and raped and too often ignored by war, women have the highest stake in it, argues Gbowee, who’ll discuss her book at a free event Sunday, October 2, at 4 p.m. at UCSB’s Campbell Hall.

It’s fascinating to view political unrest from the explicit point of view of mothers, daughters, wives, and lovers. The juxtaposition of the battlefield and the marital bed is startling (one pictures pent-up heads of state imploring stubborn sweatpants-sporting wives for sump’n sump’n). But if tenderness is the opposite of violence, then perhaps shutting down the ole shag factory is a reasonable whack at peace.

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Avoiding the Custody Shuffle

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 15, 2011

My parents split up when I was a toddler, and I’ve always felt lucky that I was too young to feel the full sting of my “normal” being torn in two.

While divorce alleviates the intolerable tensions of a sour marriage, the children of divorcing couples rarely feel the same relief. Mom and dad’s breakup rocks their notion of “family,” and ping-ponging between dual residences upends their sense of “home.”

That’s why more and more divorcing couples are opting to let their kids remain in the family home while the parents rotate in and out instead. Dubbed “bird-nesting” (in some species of birds, both parents share in the feeding and protection of their young), the practice tends to be tricky for mom and dad, but easier on kids.

Santa Barbara dad Maddox Rees and his wife have been bird-nesting from their family home since they separated two years ago. When one is at home with their sons — ages 10, 9, and 4 — the other stays at a one-bedroom apartment that they also share.

Weird? A little. But it made the most sense for them at the time.

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I'm Gluten-Free Vegan-Intolerant

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 8, 2011

If you really are what you eat, then everyone I know is nuts. You can’t lob a legume through a restaurant these days without hitting someone on a fussy — and fairly freaky — diet.

Gluten-free. Dairy-free. Sugar-free. Wheatless and meatless, pescetarian and Paleolithic, macrobiotic and Master Cleansed. And for heat’s sake, raw.

As nutritionists analyze our diets to bits, as they break down every edible ounce into shockingly potent micro-ingredients, ascribing common ailments and valorous remedies to each (“These cause bloating, these fight cancer, these are linked to erectile dysfunction, these thwart nuclear radiation”), our eating has gone from absurd to exasperating.

Do you have legitimate medical and/or moral reasons for your odd eating, or rather, non-eating, habits? Yes, I’m certain that you do. Does it make you any less irritating to the rest of us? No. No, it doesn’t.

The line between “conscientious” and “pain-in-the-ass persnickety” is invisible to the naked eye. You say, “I avoid foods with a high glycemic index.” We hear, “I only eat miso and millet, tempeh and tofu, quinoa and kale. And only when it’s organic and seasonal. On Tuesdays. When the tide is low. And the Redskins are ahead.”

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What If My Kid's Gay?

Published by Starshine Roshell on September 1, 2011

It’s probably unwise to wonder this aloud, but that’s never stopped me before: What if you suspect your child is gay? Or — you know — will be gay eventually?

My own boys seem humdrumly hetero thus far, but I’ve known lots of kids who bucked traditional gender stereotypes to the extent that I wondered if they were gays-in-the-making.

A person’s sexual orientation can be neither truly discovered nor fully revealed until said person is, well, sexual. And yet there are those kids …

“My daughter has always wanted boy toys and boy clothes and her best buddies are boys. I’d say she was a possible future Chaz,” says a friend of mine, only half-jokingly. “But it’s hard to say. Boy clothes really are more comfortable, and boy games more fun. Ever play Pretty Pretty Princess?!”

Another friend suspects her kindergartner may wave a rainbow flag one day. “He loves to play beauty shop, has known the difference between mascara and eyeliner since he was three, and will always comment on a new haircut or dress. He’s obsessed with drawing hearts and rainbows and has told me that he’d like to marry boys,” she says. “Perhaps this is all typical 5-year-old boy stuff … but my guess is that it isn’t so much.”

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The Dirt on Flirting

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 25, 2011

Grandma used to flirt with the butcher. During WWII, when meat was rationed, she’d sidle up to his counter in her finest frock and chat him up for hours.

“Grandpa really liked pork chops,” she told me, “so I’d say, ‘Gee, I’d really like to have those, but I don’t have enough stamps,’ and he’d tell me, ‘Well, I think we can arrange that.’

“I just made him feel important,” she said. “And you’d do just about anything to get more meat.”

I used to blame the desperate times for Grandma’s indecorous behavior. Having come of age myself at the peak of second-wave feminism, I couldn’t fathom using my femininity as a tool to manipulate a tenderloin vendor. Also, I’m uncomfortable with the juxtaposition of sexual tension and ground chuck.

But I recently found myself at the meat counter of my local market, staring in confusion at the oddly named offerings, when a hunky young aproned man leaned over the counter and offered to help.

And just like that, I was righting my posture, flashing my teeth, and complimenting his dizzying raw-cow know-how. No ration stamps. No wartime. Just a dopey damsel in dinnertime distress going all girly and guileful for a gallant gristle-chiseler.

What the flank?!

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Lewd Lullabies

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 18, 2011

It’s our beloved bedtime ritual: In the dark of my son’s room, at the edge of his small bed, I sing him to sleep every night. From the day he was born, I’ve been lulling him off to dreamland by warble-whispering the random anthems filed in my musical memory. Lullabies. Folk tunes. Soulless pop songs from the 1980s.

I love our routine so much, love sending my custom soundtrack — like a mommy mix-tape — resonating through his subconscious as he slumbers. It relaxes him. It relaxes me. It’s achingly peaceful.

Until the vulgarities start flying.

You see, he’s a musical child. Sings with conviction, dances with abandon, and hopes to play the tuba someday … when he’s bigger than one. The kid’s got perfect pitch, impeccable rhythm, and — herein lies the problem — uncanny recall for every lyric he’s ever heard. Ever.

So if he recognizes a song during our nightly tunefest, he sings along boisterously — negating the whole “lulling” objective. If I “sshhh” him in that gentle-but-I’m-dead-serious way that only mothers can, he begins dancing horizontally to the ditty, thumping its backbeat on the pillow, making James Brown faces and kicking his legs in spastic homage to a mosh pit he clearly visited in a former life.

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The Rubdown Lowdown

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 11, 2011

Complex. Cryptic. Complicated. This is how men describe women. Whereas guys claim to be simple creatures easily won over with a frosty beer or an unobstructed glimpse at boobies, gals are perceived as inscrutable human vaults whose hearts and, well, parts are guarded by a system of locks so intricate they can be opened only with the precise combination of money, breeding, and charm.

But that’s bunk. It’s hooey. Truth is there’s an easy and too-infrequently-used shortcut to our affection. Want to crack our safes?

Learn to give a decent massage.

That’s right. An old-fashioned, no-cost, fingers-on-flesh rubdown.

This is no hush-hush secret, I assure you. I’m not breaking a classified girl code by telling you this. We want you to know it! We want you to use it! We can’t figure out why so many of you are wasting your time sculpting your calves at the gym when you ought to just be squeezing holy hell out of those squishy office balls that build hand strength. Squeeze, brothers. Squeeze!

Ladies melt under the benevolent touch of a warm-palmed fella intent on liquefying our tension. Something unexpected transpires between generous hands and underappreciated flesh — something far more satisfying, more thrilling, than you get with a paid massage. It’s sensual. It’s electric. It’s bloody alchemy is what it is.

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My Child, My 'Friend'?

Published by Starshine Roshell on August 4, 2011

As a mom or dad, you hear it all the time. Too often. It’s one of those firm parenting axioms recited by smug sages — like “sleep when your baby sleeps” — that’s as nonnegotiable as it is unachievable.

“Children don’t need a friend,” the advice goes. “They need a parent.” And it’s true. Except on Facebook, where it turns out to be entirely false.

After years of careful evasion, my husband and I finally let our 8th grader create a Facebook account. We’d been holding out, we said, because publishing personal information to hundreds of people requires a modicum of maturity; crude comments and damning photos can have disastrous consequences.

But here was the real reason: We didn’t want him to see our crude comments and damning photos on Facebook: The status updates whining about our kids’ whining. The picture of dual-mounted street signs at the intersection of Inyo and Butte. The absurd pages I support, including one called “When I was a kid I thought Cal Worthington said ‘Pussycow,’ not ‘Go See Cal.'”

But our reasons for keeping the kid off social-networking sites (“Beware the cyber bullies, whatever those are”) were growing thinner, and our hypocrisy (“We’ll discuss this later, son; I’m busy on Facebook now”) ever fatter. So we caved.

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Is Murdoch the World's McCaw?

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 28, 2011

I felt like a lunatic. There I was, a perpetually un-rested working mother, wide awake and giddy before sunrise. Sneaking out of bed and tiptoeing downstairs to watch a live feed of (woo-hoo! woo-hoo!) British Parliament. Grinning like a kid on Christmas morning. Giggling like a full-on fruitcake.

My gift: a pointed Parliamentary probe of media baron Rupert Murdoch. Reporters at his now-shuttered News of the World tabloid had for years been illegally hacking into private phone systems and bribing police as a means of news-gathering (read: gossip-mongering). And Murdoch — whose behemoth News Corporation owns Fox News and newspapers from the Papua New Guinea Post-Courier to The Wall Street Journal (as well as Tattoo and Truckin’ Life magazines, which tickles me) — was finally and formally being needled about his knowledge of the corruption. I relished every tense, awkward moment.

Why would I savor the sight of an old man being smacked around for unethical practices? It’s a learned response. I’ve developed a taste for watching arrogant, power-mad, billionaire newspaper owners get called on the carpet.

“He or she who controls the media, controls all,” says my friend Annie Bardach, a local resident and Newsweek reporter-at-large. “Check out what the Berlusconi monopoly did to Italy. That is the cautionary tale for all of us.”

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The Brand Canyon

Published by Starshine Roshell on July 21, 2011

Do you love buying shoes? Are you someone for whom shoe-shopping begets a Zennish euphoria? Yes?

Here’s some advice for you: Don’t do it with a 12-year-old.

My 8th-grade-bound son has long coveted classic Converse low-tops. Last week, we found a pair of lookalikes on sale for \$15. Sweet! “We’ll take ’em,” I bellowed, relishing the rare and unparalleled near-delirium of buying fabulous shoes at ridiculous prices.

“Um,” my son muttered sheepishly, staring at another pair of shoes: The Converse brand. All Star Chuck Taylors. Same color. Same style. Forty-five bleepin’ bucks. “I’d rather have the real ones.”

In my mind, I said this: “Well, I’d rather have a ’57 Chevy Bel Air convertible, yet somehow we’re leaving here in a dinged-up Honda.” But sensing that we were heading into tricky parenting territory, I uttered this instead: “But … they cost three times as much.”

“Yeah,” he said, forcing himself to meet my puzzled gaze.

“And they look … exactly the same.”

“Not exactly,” he explained. “These have a label.”

I had several problems with this situation. First, when pressed, my normally articulate child could not put into words why the brand mattered so much. His stuttered attempt contained the phrases: “important to me,” “make fun,” and, of course, “cool.”

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