Don't try to game the system.

Sure, at 30, you'd think I would already know this. But this year, after thinking about it for almost twenty years, I decided to try laser hair removal. My specific combination of Latvian and black Irish heritage, plus a unique endocrine system to lil ol' me, has equaled a lifetime of anxiety and worry about all the kinds of body hair that women might worry about. If they worry about it, if Jezebel writes about it, I struggle with it. Sure, I've gotten used to it - to a degree - and become more accepting of it - to a degree - but in the mid-1990s when laser hair removal went commercial, I said, someday I will try that!

It took the invention of Groupon deals AND a generous spouse to finally take the leap.

And I thought to myself, well, I better start somewhere that doesn't hurt, doesn't show, and doesn't feel too private. Underarms it is.

But there are two ways you can't game the system, my friends. First, the woman will tell you it feels like a rubber band snapping against your skin. She is right. If that rubber band were on fucking FIRE. And second, don't pick based on perceived pain when you have no context for it. At treatment number 2 - of 6! - the lovely woman told me that she turns up the laser each treatment a bit, and that underarms are, "probably the most painful area to treat." Oh, how I lose. System games ME.

(OK - not true. I don't lose. Because P.S... this stuff WORKS, people. At least on me. After 2 treatments I am already stunned at the effects and look forward to a lifetime of hair-killin' treatments all over the place that have begun NOW!)

A dash o' the 'belle

I don't read Jezebel like I used to; I'm not as much of a Jezebelle as I used to be, due to more limited time online each day and week for pure personal surfing.


But this essay is worth clicking over there for, and made me cheer, for great concepts and killer wording, like: "for a society that produces ads and photospreads so airbrushed that they're technically cartoon" and "for men who believe that a woman is only as valuable as she is interesting to their dicks" and "once again, we'd be well-served to emulate Hillary's "give zero fucks" example."


Yeah!!

M v W

I write a lot about femininity, but trust me, I think about it even more. What is it, what does it look like, what does it feel like. Can it be also powerful and authoritative, or does that negate its very existence? (That's a real question, by the way, because we say, oh, of course it can be!, but society and blogs and magazines and coworkers and friends tossing off thoughtless comments lead me to genuinely ask it.)

But for all that, the silent, and very real, other side of this coin of conversation is masculinity. And how broad a spectrum men are given to be real men, to be considered and seen as manly. This lovely tribute to Patrick Swayze on Jezebel has comment calling his masculinity (partly born of a football playing father and ballet dancing mother, both activities he did very well) "unforced masculinity".

This is now a phrase I love.

Because it IS the "unforced" part that makes a man so delightfully masculine, whatever kind of man he may be. (And it's not about being sexually attractive, though he may be, because it's much more expansive than a dual hetero-homo view of the world.) It's a little bit of self confidence, it's a lot of devil-may-care, it's a dash of choices made well - and if not, of lessons learned with humor - and it's an effortless grace with and true interest in talking about, experiencing, viewing, reading, feeling and enjoying both ends of the gender spectrum in ways we see it - weeping and punching, nurturing and seizing, listening and talking, dancing and footballing.

I need never write about female sexuality and how it develops again.

Because you just have to read this: http://jezebel.com/5550321/why-the-kendra-wilkinson-sex-tape-should-make-you-angry

And that's it; that's what I've been feeling, saying, talking about since I was 20, and experiencing that exploration of sexuality for myself and my young women peers. If there's a damn thing we can do to teach women and men about this, SIGN ME UP.

Keep it on topic.

Did your teachers ever remind you to keep the discussion on the topic at hand? Well, at times on Jezebel, there is a zinger that I can't let go by without publicizing it - and today is one of those times.

They wrote about the blog and soon-to-be-iPhone app for Hollaback, a place where you can snap a photo of someone who harasses you on the street/subway/bar/etc and upload it with a brief description. Anyone who has ever been given a vulgar catcall (my first one was at age 14 in NYC with my dad; lovely) or been leered at on the sidewalk (why just last week, a drunk sketchy guy kept saying "uhhh...nice pants...." to me (three times) in a crosswalk outside work!) might find Hollaback a safe outlet for their discomfort, anger, shame, fill-in-the-blank emotion.

So in the age of the internet, no sooner does Jezebel say that it's pretty crazy to live in a world where this is so ubiquitous as to deserve an iPhone app, and if it helps, then yeah, go for it... no sooner... does a commenter then point out how it could be used wrongly, for some poor innocent nice guy who might want to tell a woman she is wearing a lovely dress.

So leave it to SarahMC (commenter extraordinaire and NO, not me) to say: Yes, the real victims here are the men who can't tell ladies they like their dresses.

God I love when someone reminds us to stay on topic. And when they remind us, too, that adults of both genders - it turns out! - can usually tell the difference between a lovely compliment and a flipping creepy invasion of personal space. Who knew?!