Why? on Wednesday - Celebrity Edition

I was really stressing out because I haven't really been inspired to write anything lately.  But I was determined that today I was going to post SOMETHING so I opened up the interwebs and I was blessed when THIS shit graced my home page...

"Actress and vegan diet enthusiast Alicia Silverstone has a strange way of feeding her 11-month-old son Bear Blu. In a video posted on her healthy living website thekindlife.com, Silverstone chews a bite of food and then passes it straight into her little boy's mouth mama-bird style."

When I saw the headline, I had a moment of thinking "Wow, that kid is NEVER going to live that down. Elementary school is  going to be difficult for him."

Then I saw his fucking name. 

BEAR BLU?  BEAR MOTHERFUCKING BLU, ALICIA SILVERSTONE!!! 

Clearly she hates her kid.

As if it isn't bad enough that she named him BEAR fucking BLU, she POSTS A FUCKING VIDEO of her feeding him like a fucking bird. 

I am not offended that feeding her kid her chewed up food is kind of bizarre and gross (because CLEARLY it is).  I mean, I let my kid eat chicken nuggets and hot dogs and really, when you know where that shit comes from it's kind of just as gross. 

And before you go yelling at me for my ignorance, YES! I do realize that before blenders and baby food, mothers did this shit all the time.  And that tribal mothers and mothers in less "western" parts of the world do this all the time.  But seriously, Alicia.  SERIOUSLY...Does he have to fish it out of your mouth with his tongue?  Couldn't you use your fingers or a pair of tongs or something?

What really bothers me is that celebrity parents have no concept that when they make their personal random proclivities public (and SERIOUSLY, what IS it with the ridiculous names) they give their kids just ONE MORE THING that their mean classmates will be able to dig up and torture them with.

I just don't understand what the fuck is it with celebrity parents who purposely set their kids up for a disastrous life of mental illness.  I mean, seriously.  Children of celebrity parents tend to have the deck stacked against them sanity-wise WITHOUT making out with their mothers in a video posted on the internet.

Please, Alicia Silversone.  Think about your son's future. It's fine if you want to practice "alternative parenting techniques" and emulate some !Kung bush mother.  FINE.  Keep it to yourself and your (future serial killer) son.  But for the love of GOD, change his fucking name and stop posting your freaky hippie parenting techniques all over the interwebs for his friends to usen someday as ammunition to bully him into snorting a brick of crack and killing a hooker. 

Unless, of course you are purposely trying to create a superhero (because they all haven horrible traumatic events in their childhoods), and in that case, YOU'RE DOING IT RIGHT.

WHY? on Wednesday

With all the wars that we, as a culture seem to be waging, I feel that there is one serious and criminal offense that no one is talking about.  Sure, you've all heard about the war on terror, the war on poverty, the war on childhood obesity, and the war on drugs (how's that been working out?).  But I am here to declare war on something else.

Those terrifying couple's pregnancy portraits. 

Here's how I imagine the conversation went:

Photographer: Let's do something that

      really represents your personalities.

Pregnant Lady: Well, he's a huge baby

      and I am a huge drunk so......

There is nothing cute about them.  Even the more tasteful ones (and I use that term loosely) are fucking awful. 

There is a fine line between THIS one, and
having this next one hanging on your mantle to
make everyone uncomfortable at Christmas dinner:

 It's okay to love your dog....but it's not
okay to LOOOOVE your dog.

Before you attack me and tell me that I am a horrible, unfeeling human being, I want you to know that I GET it.  I understand that this is a special time and that you want to have an artistic representation of this most glorious time in your lives together.  But seriously.  Do you have to do THIS:

or THIS:

or even THIS:

Seriously.  How about if you pull out the digital camera and just take some nice photos with your clothes on and no props and then keep them to yourselves?  Because once you cross that line of putting your most intimate moments on a Christmas card, the law should step in and confiscate the photos forever. 

Don't think anyone would do it?

I am sure 2nd cousin Danny was
thrilled when this came in the mail.

And it isn't really just the couple's portraits.  There are some serious mishaps with the pregnant ladies alone too:

Someone should rescue her!  She must have opened a
meteor like Stephen King did in Creepshow!

Children of the Corn?

I am  not alone in my distaste for these awful photos.  There are entire websites devoted to this stuff.  And if there are enough people out there who want this insanity to stop, then perhaps you should think twice before you pull out the mop and broom and pose for with your significant other with your gigantic belly sticking out.

Seriously.  A MOP?

Just to further prove my point, I present the following:

Who are we showcasing here?

Whose idea do you think this was?

They clearly have been training for the zombie apocalypse.

I'm just saying....

New Addition to my Shit List.

I am sure this is going to make me seem bigoted and narrow-minded, but for some reason this really infuriated me when I read it.

Listen, I am all for gender equality and all that shit, but this couple should probably have been sterilized before they had the chance to ruin this kid's life. 

Couple Finally Reveals Child's Gender, Five Years After Birth

It's a boy! And he's five. Beck Laxton, 46, and partner Kieran Cooper, 44, have spent half the decade concealing the gender of their son, Sasha.

"I wanted to avoid all that stereotyping," Laxton said in an interview with the Cambridge News. "Stereotypes seem fundamentally stupid. Why would you want to slot people into boxes?"

Laxton, a UK-based web editor, and her partner, Cooper, decided to keep Sasha's sex a secret when he was still in the womb. The birth announcement stated the name of the gender-neutral name of their child, but skipped the big reveal. Up until recently, the couple only told a few close friends and family members that Sasha was a boy and managed to keep the rest of the world in the dark. But now that he's starting school the secret's out."

(courtesy Yahoo! News)

Sasha better get used to that attitude...

There are about a thousand things wrong with this but I will start with some of the most obvious:

First I want to answer this asshole's question about why you would want to assign someone a gender or ("slot people into boxes").  Here it is:  Because I am pretty sure that throughout the history of the earth, this system has seemed to work pretty well for nature FOR MILLIONS OF YEARS.  There are boy bees and girl bees, and they have different tendencies.  There are even male and female parts on plants.  Who the fuck are you to thwart your little experiment in defying nature on some innocent kid who just wants to be a kid? 

Do I understand that the way we act and the things we do in life are sometimes dictated by our genders?  Yes.  Do I know that some people feel that they are not made to be the gender their sexy parts tell them to be?  Yes, and I have seen that first hand.  Do I agree that the male and female roles are something that is entirely based on a man-made construct? Well, mostly.

You see, although I know that much of gender is psychological, I also realize that men and women are physically different.  Not just because of their puzzle pieces but also because of hormones, brain construct, muscle and fat distribution and a myriad of other traits that have been more or less consistent throughout the history of the species.  It is true that there are many exceptions to this and it is true (to a point) that we are all individuals and genetically have an endless array of variations.  But I can acknowledge that perhaps the roles reflect the inherent strengths and weakness of each sex.  No matter how bad Ben wants it, he will never carry a baby (and have all the hormonal and emotional havoc associated with it) and no matter how hard I try, I will never thoughtlessly leave my socks in random places because that's where I needed to take them off at that moment.

Hey, it makes him feel beautiful, okay?

But to me, it seems there is something more questionable about this.  These parents are not celebrities.  Beck is a web editor and apparently Kiernan is a stay at home parent who likes to think of fun ways to force children into a lifetime of therapy.  That being said, who the hell is this "rest of the world" that they care enough to "conceal" his gender from?  Sasha?  The mailman?  The pedophile down the street?  It stands to reason that perhaps they were just looking for their 15 minutes (5 years) of fame because who the fuck cares about your kid and what genitals it has?  We aren't talking about simply giving a kid all the gender-neutral options here.  We are talking about purposely refusing to tell anyone (I am assuming the kid as well, because 3 year olds CANNOT keep a secret) because they have some bizarre fetish with androgeny.

But there's more to this story:

For years, Becks has been referring to her child, the youngest of three, as "the infant" on her personal blog. But guarding the public from her son's gender was only part of her quest to let her kid just be a kid.

Sasha dresses in clothes he likes -- be it a hand-me-downs from his sister or his brother. The big no-no's are hyper-masculine outfits like skull-print shirts. In one photo, sent to friends and family, Sasha's dressed in a shiny pink girl's swimsuit. "Children like sparkly things," says Beck. "And if someone thought Sasha was a girl because he was wearing a pink swimming costume, then what effect would that have? "

Ooooooh I can't WAIT to go and link over to her blog! I bet it is filled with all kinds of fun stories about the dog really wanting to play with catnip and the cat trying to fly like a bird.

Sasha can only dress in clothes he likes if those clothes are either gender-neutral or super girly.  No cargo pants (even though they make them for women) and no skulls or "masculine" things?  But sparkly skirts?  YES!  WONDERFUL!  That seems a little shady to me.  As if they are trying to force the issue that he select opposite-gender things.  What if he really LOVED skulls and lightening bolts and monsters?  I bet that would be a HUGE dissappointment to these dicks.

A big ass is not the kind of "cargo" these
pants are made for.

But there is something else. There are more kids in the house...who know what parts they have. So although little Sasha probably is too little to be aware of what ass hats his parents are, the older children have been in school and have likely been sworn to secrecy by their parents and been harrassed and teased for the he/she brother/sister they have. And kids LOVE having to lie and keep secrets from their friends. Nothing could be more fun for a kid than to have a dark secret to keep.

Sasha's also not short on dolls, though Barbie is also off limits. "She's banned because she's horrible," Laxton says in Cambridge interview.

On a macro level she hopes her son sets an example for other parents and makes them reconsider buying their sons trucks or forcing their daughters into tights. She's seen how those consumer trappings affect how and who kids play with in the sandbox.

Ohhhhhh. BARBIE is horrible. She may have porno boobs and weird feet, but at least she isn't running a social experiment on her kids.

And I believe that her dreams of setting an example is lost on me. I am pretty sure that you can just tell people "she is a girl" but still allow her to dress and play however the hell she wants.   Or you could just do what other parents do and name your kid something totally unisex like Pat or Terry or Beck or Kiernan.  

My point is that there are plenty of ways to encourage a kid to like and do non-gender specific things without sending him/her out into the world totally unprepared for the very realistic and extremely likely possibility that he WILL be put into a hundred different categories throughout his life and people WILL have different expectations of him based on those things.  Boo hoo hoo.  That's the way it is.

But the sandbox is just a precursor to the classroom. When Sasha turned five and headed to school, Laxton was forced to make her son's sex public. That meant Sasha would have to get used to being a boy in the eyes of his peers. Still, his mom is intervening. While the school requires different uniforms for boys and girls, Sasha wears a girl's blouse with his pants. (emphasis mine)


Oh Jesus Christ.  I am going to go see if anyone has set up a place to send donations for this kid's lifetime of therapy costs.

Read the full article here:

http://shine.yahoo.com/parenting/couple-finally-reveals-childs-gender-five-years-birth-180300388.html

Trying Something Out

I have started another blog to talk about my depression and the progress and issues and other things that come with it. (Quick, guess what it's called!)

Because although I am sure that motherhood and depression are somehow linked in my mind, the truth is that this blog here is my "Mommy Blog" and I need to stick to "Mommy things" here.  So I have created a special little home on the interwebs for journaling and complaining and working shit out so that I can become a better, less deranged human being.

Go check it out, and let me know what you think.  You guys have (unwillingly?) been a huge support for me through all this and so it is important that you give me feedback (in the form of comments over there), good, bad or ugly.

Oh, and Follow.  Because I don't want to be that blogger who has 0 followers.

Go Here:

Because Depression Sucks

I think I can identify the killer!

So, I saw this:

Fla. dad tells 911 toddler fatally shot mom

By KELLI KENNEDY, Associated Press Kelli Kennedy, Associated Press – 2 hrs 20 mins ago

FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. – Police are questioning the father of a 2-year-old boy who claims his son somehow got a hold of a pistol and shot the toddler's mother to death.


(Read the whole article here)

And all I could think was how I wanted to see the mug shot because I am sure the kid looks a lot like this:

Now, I realize this is a terrible and sad story, but this is just where my mind goes sometimes.

Thank you, captain obvious...

When did shit that is completely obvious become "news"?  Today I opened up my interwebs to find this fucking brilliant headline shocking me to attention:

Parenting can take a toll on health, study shows

Oh, really?  Tell me more!!! 
 
Health declines, particularly in moms, due to poor diet and less exercise.

My kid's idea of a balanced meal:  all the colors are there!

First off, I am shocked that it took this long for any science-y person to look around and think to themselves, "Is it just me or do mom's seem to age like 15 years in the first 5 years of their children's lives?"  Part of my not really being particularly desperate to pop a baby out had to do with the simple observation that the mothers I saw around me (not including assholes like Angelina Jolie or Kelly Ripa who can pop out 12 kids in 6 months and be back on the beach in someplace like Bali in their bikinis the next month) did not look good.  They were fat.  They were tired.  They looked pale and/or greasy.  In fact, I theorized that that glorious "glow" that pregnant women had was like the big finale at the fireworks show.  They'd never have that youthful vitality again.

Kelly Ripa on her way
home from the hospital
after the birth of her 3rd
baby.

So onto the obvious details.  As soon as I had my kid, I lost all ability to function for myself.  When she was a newborn, I never ate.  I certainly never slept.  Hell, I didn't shower. The life upheaval involved in having a baby is as stressful as the death of your former self and no one looks good when they're grieving.  I had a child that I was convinced was probably the Anticrhist because her only goal seemed to me to push me to murder.  She cried non-stop for about 6 months (that's how I remember it).  And the doctors all just said, "it's colic.  She'll out- grow it".  Well you know what?  I didn't.  I never got over it. 

As she got older, she took on the attitude of "if Mommy is standing, then I need to try harder," and her entire purpose seemed to be to wear me out.  From the running around, to climbing all over me, to demanding 4 different drinks because each one was "wrong", to refusing to eat anything I put in front of her, to needing to change her clothes 6 times because of one spot of water, to never sleeping through the night until she was 3; everything she did was designed specifically to make me into a zombie.
 
Who can exercise when they can barely get out of bed?  And who the hell are these mothers who work all day and come home and find it possible to spend an hour making a nutritious (and organic and meat-free) meal that their kids will just love rather than just throwing a frozen pizza into the oven? 
Fuck those moms. 

More importantly, besides the "news" that this study reveals and common-sense advice (because don't we all KNOW what we SHOULD be doing?) to take better care of ourselves, this article DOES offer one useful suggestion.  Unfortunately, it is buried at the very end of the article and as far as I can tell has not been repeated in subsequent articles that have been posted on the web:

...Berge said she hopes that the results will push health care providers to pay additional attention to parents.

Community initiatives could also be part of a solution, she said.

“You can’t extend the hours in the day, but by working with others in the neighborhood we can make sure that the parents are taking care of themselves, too..."

Shit..If I had a village of nannies (or even just a village of Mommy friends), I am sure I would have more time to shower and exercise and eat well too. 

To me, this "study" was simply a piece of information that serves absolutely no purpose except to remind me of how unhealthy I am.  Because realistically, until my kid goes off to college or at least becomes a bit more agreeable than the pain in the ass preschooler that she is now, I will likely continue to be too emotionally and physically drained to bother with the necessary chores of meal planning, local vegetable buying and hour-long daily workouts that would be required to get me even remotely into a condition that can be considered healthy.

Because playing WII bowling with my kid while chomping on Goldfish crackers is just not going to cut it.