wasting away in margaritaville…

i’m in the keys ’til wednesday! i’ll have a drink for you! 🙂

Trimming trends: hair, Nair or barely there?

There comes a time in every woman’s life when she needs to make a seminal decision: full-on bush, landing strip or bare?

You see, the grooming and maintenance of one’s girly parts has slowly become an epidemic. You can’t even blame Britney for the peek-a-boo show. The upper echelons of pop culture parading their hairless privates only demonstrates just how far the trend has permeated society (the trendy lack of hair, I mean, not lack of underwear – that’s still never acceptable).

I can’t help but think that the pressure to be perfectly bronzed, tweezed, exfoliated, buffed and bare has brought us to desperate measures.

See, the thing that guys don’t know is that perfectly pornish, prepubescent-looking punani comes at a price.

Take the popular Brazilian wax. In financial terms, it costs around $60. But imagine the other costs: growing the hair to at least an inch long beforehand, the Lamaze-style breathing and painful lip-biting during and the baby powder administering afterward.

The alternatives seem only slightly less grim – shaving leaves bumps and Nair smells. It certainly all adds more meaning to the adage “Beauty is pain.”

But is the pain really worth the pleasure?

I agree a good degree of maintenance is always warmly received, but it works both ways and there should be limits to how far we go.

I shouldn’t be expected to be perfectly coiffed, which basically entails being sans any coif at all, without expecting a little man-scaping on your part. That’s right, boys: Trimming, like oral sex, works both ways.

Don’t feel pressure to take it all off. In fact, please don’t go too far off the metro edge. Nothing’s worse than a man who spends more time grooming than I do. But some strategic and thoughtful pruning is always appreciated.

Basically, a little trim is one thing, but a total overhaul of the area goes too far.

Surprisingly, a sampling of some guy friends and my own boyfriend revealed they generally think the same goes when it comes to the ladies.

Turns out most men are just happy to see you pantyless; they only ask their lady friends to be “neat and clean” in appearance, and they’re willing to keep up with their own manly manes.

And anyway, the trend, unlike the hair, doesn’t seem like it’s going to be gotten rid of anytime soon, so we might as well embrace it.

But as a lover of fashion, I can’t help but ask the question: Are avant-garde styles and Swarovski crystal hair clips for your south-of-the-border carpeting that far behind?

duh! news of the day

* MSNBC is pretty cutting edge (please read into the sarcasm there). Their resident sexpert recently rattled this off trying to explain why men would enjoy a ménage à trois: “the universal fantasy is for a guy to be with two very hot, basically heterosexual women who are so turned on by the guy they lose all control and play with each other.” I’m sure four breasts as opposed to two has nothing to do with it.

* The NYTimes examines the first study on friends with benefits and discovers the situation is often awkward and stressful. Well, I definitely could have told you that.

yoga classes at frat house?

Animal house no more? Some fraternities are now opting for yoga classes? Or is “yoga” just an acronym for hooking up with “your old girl’s ass”? You decide.

snorkle…

If you’ve ever had trouble breathing when you’ve ventured south of the border, this is THE device for you. It’s also one of the strangest things I’ve ever seen. Click at your own risk for other inventive inventions…

more reasons to quit smoking

Need even MORE reason to quit smoking guys? “Otherwise healthy men who smoke risk developing erectile dysfunction — and the more cigarettes they smoke, the greater the risk of erectile dysfunction, according to a new study.”

entertainment roundup

* More proof of Hollywood’s (and by reflection, our societies) obsession with the sexiness of unassuming anti-heroes: the 7 unlikely sex symbols of ’07.

* I love reality TV. Apparently though love doesn’t love reality TV. Rock of Love’s pink-haired punk princess Jes has a beau, and it’s not Brett. Season Two casting should begin soon; stay tuned!

kama sutra wines

Australians are pretty smart.
I mean wine and sex go together almost as well as peanut better and jelly or Pam and Jim from The Office!
Introducing – Kama Sutra wines. Not only does each wine contain natural aphrodisiacs, but their labels also present a unique position, from ‘The Union of the Monkey’ to ‘The Union of the Star.’
One caveat: their website doesn’t currently ship to the U.S. But us American’s are great at copying and repackaging overseas ideas (take The Office reference above!). So vineyards stateside, hop to it!

why do we always blame the other woman?

Confession time: I’ve been the “other woman.” I can honestly say it’s never a position a woman wants to be in, but sometimes out of lust or loneliness or just plain stupidity a woman finds herself entangled with an already taken man.
Britain’s Daily Mail offers a good question though: Why do we always blame the other woman when men have an affair?

male contraception

Ladies, in due time you may not be the only one’s setting your cellphone’s daily alarm clock to remind you to pop the pill. According to three cited studies at this week’s “Future of Male Contraception” conference, various birth controls for men should be available for mass-market consumption within a decade. The real holdup, however, is demand.
Men, you are equally responsible once a baby is conceived, don’t you think you should be equally responsible for preventing that if you are not fully willing and able to be active and involved fathers? It works both ways.

The Anti-Hero Hero is Hot

Filming recently began on a big screen adaptation to the wildly successful HBO sitcom Sex and the City. And because I own all seven DVDs (before you IMDB it, there were two DVDs for Season 6), watch the Season Two finale religiously after a breakup (try it, I swear by that and greasy Krystal burgers) and use Samantha quotes as bar pickup lines, it pains me to admit this, but I think the fairy tale is over.

As a young 20-something I have fervently held onto the belief that my own Mr. Big, my very special Mr. Right, was just right around the corner. But maybe my Jane Austen-loving self has been misled by Hallmark fueled holidays and happily ever after messages.

Maybe we are just disheartening ourselves into thinking our perfect match is just listlessly waiting for us.

If pop culture truly is the barometer of mass culture perhaps we’re now being force-fed a new message.

The anti-heroes of cinema (think loserish Ben in this summer’s hit Knocked Up) and television (think the lovable dorks of The Pick Up Artist) and our own campus (how cute is silver-foxed Jeremy Foley, the only division I athletic director to garner national titles in both football and basketball) have all replaced the traditional white knights.

Chances are you probably know, or are, an anti-hero. You know the type – spending too many hours playing World of Warcraft, quoting Will Ferrell movies constantly and probably in need of cleaning their bedrooms.

Story time – I saw Knocked Up in the movie theater this summer and left feeling horribly disappointed. Sure it was hysterical, but Katherine Heigel’s character seemed far too put together to actually like slacker Ben. A drunken one-night-stand seemed plausible enough, but for her to then fall for Seth Rogen’s character seemed the kind of stuff produced only in male fantasyland.

Fast forward to last night when I watched the DVD with my boyfriend. Not even halfway through I found myself staring at him out of the corner of my eye, a continuous “oh my god” repeating in my head. My boyfriend was of the Ben mold.

Thing is, I couldn’t be happier.

The anti-hero may not look like Brad Pitt, but his sweet, self-deprecating soul is incredibly more worthwhile and endearing than a six-pack.

My larger point – these movies and television shows work because they’re honest.

Life is unexpected and often a mess, sometimes the best you can do is muddle your way through it. And if you have someone warm and funny to do that with, well, there’s really nothing better.

I’ve spent a large majority of my life looking for what I thought Prince Charming should be, only to end up depressed and disillusioned.

I’m not advocating lowering your standards. I am advising, however, that you alter them. It’s not about what these men lack, it’s about their undiscovered depth and their earnest desire to just make someone else happy.

Sex and the City did get something right, however. In an early episode Mr. Big tells Carrie, who is concerned about Big’s past relationships with several model-types, that sometimes you just want to be with the one who makes you laugh.

Thing is, the moral doesn’t just apply to females. Both genders could stand to gain a lot from looking beyond the surface. Often times it’s our flaws that make us both beautiful and lovable.

Let’s face it – the anti-hero hero is pretty hot.