You Caption It

P.S.

There's a Christmas Crazy update coming very soon. I'm just waiting for a few eggs to fall into their baskets before I tell you how pretty they are. :-)

77Kids Brings More Awesome with Wish 4 Snow

I know I've mentioned 77Kids a lot over the past few months, but that's because we routinely have conversations like this:

Me: "Alexis, please get your shoes on. We need to get going."

Her: "Where are we going?"

Me: "The mall."

Her: "ZZZZZZZOMMMMGGSNURF! CAN WE GO TO 77KIDS?"

Truly. The kid loves going there. Too much. I almost miss the days when I could walk through the mall without a visit to the photo booth at 77Kids.

To continue reading and for a chance to win a $50 gift card for 77Kids (valid in-store or online), click on over here.

A Skinny Girl's Rant

It's been at the forefront of my mind a lot lately, I suppose in part because of the now infamous Marie Claire post that made its way around the internet. I'm intentionally not linking to that trash, but if you missed it, there was a very poorly written blog post on Marie Claire's site in which the author basically said fat people gross her out. I think the intention of the post was lost in bad writing and personal demons, but, whatever, it opened up floodgates of anger.

Some of that anger was directed at skinny people. A lot of that anger was directed at skinny people.

It has always been OK to make jokes that anyone who is thin needs to eat a sandwich or must have an eating disorder or whatever. Ever since Alexis has grown old enough to sort of pick up on the body image issues around us, it has made me cringe to hear such things. It really doesn't matter whether it's a fat joke or a joke about someone being skinny, it's all inappropriate and dangerous. At least that's my opinion.

But it was during the American Music Awards that my head really exploded. It started with all of the comments about how thin Taylor Swift looked. Which, yeah, she did. However, she's like six years old and seventeen feet tall and whatever. It's none of my business how she manages to stay model thin. I saw tweet after tweet and post after post proclaiming her "too thin" and "sickly" and such.

Then Christina Aguilera appeared on stage wearing an outfit that I think could best be described as "unfortunate." Mostly it was unfortunate that nobody told her that the belt was too high and too unflattering, but the fact remains that nobody would look good in what she was wearing. Not even the "too skinny" Taylor Swift could make that mess look attractive. Of course, the minute Christina appeared on stage, people started to tweet that she looked "fat."

WTF?

No, really, DOUBLE-YOU-TEE-EFF, people.

There is no way on Earth that woman is fat. NO WAY. She's so tiny I could fit her in my pocket right alongside my life-size cutout of Taylor Swift. I'd still have room for Johnny Weir in there, too.

If Christina Aguilera is fat, then my goodness, I must look like a cow. WHICH I DON'T. I have a personal rule that I will never refer to myself as fat for as long as I'm wearing single digit sizes. Doing so is a lie. A big, fat lie. I'm not big and fat, and I prefer to keep my lies from being that, too. I may need to get more toned. I may need to work out more often. I may be better off if I were to lose a few pounds. I'm not fat, though. Not even close. And I REFUSE to give Alexis the impression that there is something wrong with how I look.

People, you can't complain that Taylor Swift needs to eat a sandwich and then ten seconds later call Christina Aguilera fat. I know they're in the public eye and we get to comment in all sorts of ways about everything they do, but the message we send to our kids when we can't get our story straight is a very scary one.

No wonder so many people wind up with eating disorders.