Cirque du Soliel

Here's my favorite for this week: This is Cirque du Soliel from their show "La Nouba." Chuck and I have been to two different Cirque performances and have been completely entertained/in-awe the entire evening. The music, costumes, set, props, make-up and performances are all amazing. They involve the audience too, which makes it even more fun. It's a marvelous, marvelous date night and we will definitely be taking Eden in the future. Put it on your list of things to do before you die. You won't regret it!

Here's the new do. I have to give a shout out to Mystica, my lovely stylist, who was able to cut and style it exaclty like the pictures I brought in. How often does that happen? Needless to say, I'm tickled.

Woman Power?

I had to share something I read on the Jezebel website. I've never been there before and probably won't go back because the language in the editorials is horrible and offensive, but, I found this interesting. I got to this through a series of sites where I was looking for hairstyles of Faith Hill. I always love her hair and I'm getting mine cut tomorrow and I need some inspiration. So I got to Jezebel where they were talking about the latest Redbook magazine cover with Faith Hill and how much her photo had been retouched. Then I linked to another article on that and read what you see below. I'm not really a fan of Oprah, but this fascinated me.

Imagine a scenario in which a powerful, self-made, self-possessed woman deigns to follow the orders of a much-less powerful, egomaniacal foreigner and crash-diets herself to aesthetic "acceptability" so she can appear on the cover of an American magazine available to the public for, at most, 4 weeks. That scenario is exactly what happened when Oprah Winfrey was asked — and agreed — to appear on the cover of Vogue's October 1998 issue. As the story goes, Winfrey spent months whittling herself to Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour's exacting standards so that she would look acceptable in a Steven Meisel-photograph for the cover. "If you want to be on the cover of Vogue and Anna Wintour says you have to be down to 150lbs - that's what you gotta do," Winfrey told the BBC, adding, tellingly, "I didn't think for one moment 'Now I am going to be a Vogue model' nor even did I think I could hold that weight."
The Vogue cover turned out well, as many remember: Oprah looked hot. But there was something spooky beneath the Vogue image's Meisel-perfect, glossy veneer; namely, the idea that even a woman who had made her fortune validating women's strengths, hopes and dreams — and becoming one of the most powerful people on the planet in the process — would so eagerly and willingly help to perpetuate the "cover lie" of a medium that has made its mark by invalidating women's strengths, hopes and dreams with an endless parade of stories on how to be thinner, sexier, trendier, and — ugh — better in bed.

Sad State of Affairs

A recent study by the Parents' Television Council found that visual references to voyerism and sadomasachistic sex outnumbered married sex by 3 to 1.
References to adultery outnumbered references to healthy marraiges by 2 to 1 and the highest references to adultery were packed into the "family hour" or the first hour of evening programming children are expected to watch.
They also found that the current system for labeling shows with sexual content as a warning to parents was inconsistent, at best. The Council stated that prime-time TV "seems to be actively seeking to undermine marriage by consistently painting it in a negative light."

Well, who runs prime-time TV? God? nope. So, yes, the force that is driving prime-time TV is relishing the fact that marriage looks boring and lame. He is doing all he can to put the worst stuff on at the time when the kids are there to soak it in. No surprise there. Appalling, yes. Surprising, no.

This is another example of committees and councils blaming anyone but the parents for what the children are exposed to. (They're pushing for stricter government regulation because of the findings.) It's the PARENTS' responsibility to check out the shows they're putting their kids in front of. I think, if you can judge character well at all, you should be able to watch one, maybe two episodes of a show you've never seen before to know if it tends toward objectionable content. You could probably even just read a review somewhere online and know. It's not that hard parents! And since when do we have a RIGHT to be able to have a certain number of tv shows that aren't objectionable? How long has tv been around folks? Just since the 1930's. Maybe we should dry plopping kids down infront of the radio like they did then. They won't see sex scenes there.
Ok, I'm really not that extreme. I'm just trying to battle the entitlement syndrome. I plan on letting Eden watch TV, but we'll probably have a lot of DVDs and just a few shows that she's allowed to watch. From the sound of things, we may only let her watch pre-recorded things while she's little, we'll see. You can't even trust Sesame Street anymore. I remember seeing a skit years ago where a little bird was flying from one nest to the other to visit his two sets of parents and singing about how it was perfectly normal and ok. Just a note on that: I understand that divorce is a real part of a lot of kids' lives, but that doesn't mean I want Eden to think it's normal and ok. There's a difference between a disease running rampant, a plague, and a normal, healthy human being. Catch my drift?

No Duh

"Parents want to feed their kids healthy meals, but America's chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail," Center for Science in the Public Interest (CSPI) nutrition policy director Margo G. Wootan said in a statement about a report released Monday by the nonprofit public health group. She went on to say that the big fast food chains are "conditioning kids to expect burgers, fried chicken, pizza, french fries, macarroni and cheese and soda in various combinations for almost every lunch and dinner."



Really.



The National Restaurant Association, in response, said that it would try to put nutritional values on menus as well as providing more choices for parents but the group stresses that "exercising parental responsibility is key to childhood nutrition."



Um, no duh.



The group went on to counter that the report "fails to acknowledge the essential role of nutritional education, physical activity and parental responsibility in childhood nutrition - good eating habits and healthy living must be established in the home."



Yay for the National Restaurant Association. CSPI, you are rediculous! Between the sex education and religious controversy in public schools and this... parent's don't seem to be held responsible for much of anything anymore. I just can't get over it: "America's chain restaurants are setting parents up to fail." I just can't get over it.

Be creative with only half the work!

You must try wordle.net. It's an awesome, free, fun spot where you can design the words of your choice into cool peices of word-art. I did the one you see above with Eden's name and some scripture. Play with it!

Make-up session

I missed Favorite Friday because I took Eden to the pediatrician (anyone else tend to want to say they take their kid to the vet? I make that mistake a lot.) and we ended up spending a good amount of time there. It began to storm somethin' fierce while we were there and when we got back home, there was no cable, internet or phone. That's the catch with those bundle dealy-o's. Comcast didn't come out and fix our internet until today, so here's my Favorite Friday make-up... about make-up.
I LOVE Bare Escentuals make up and I'll tell you why.
I know you've already seen all the info-mercials, but I really am one of those people that says "I wish I'd known about this a long time ago!" Seriously, I wish I'd had Bare Escentuals back in highschool when I had terrible acne and no good way to cover it without looking like I'd used flesh-colored plaster on my face. I still have acne, but now, at least I feel like I can mask it and still look fresh-faced.
When I use their All Over Face Color in the color True as a blush, people have actually said I look like I'm glowing and I totally attribute it to the blush.
The products last a really long time. My mom bought me my first B.E. products about 5-6 years ago and I'm still using the same All Over Face Color I've been using almost every day. It takes so little.
The product line is expanding, so there are plenty of fun, fun things to try out. I'm using one of their eye shadow kits now. It comes with a couple or three colors already matched together and instructions on how to apply it. I'd like to think I've always been pretty good with make-up, but instructions and diagrams are still helpful.
I could go on, but I won't. If you're looking for something new to try, I don't think you'll be dissapointed.