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Author: Starshine Roshell

No to Botox

Published by Starshine Roshell on January 17, 2013

I don’t know what “natural beauty” is, but if I ever had it, it’s been long since smothered by the increasing mess of products I use to remain presentable as I age: tooth whiteners, lip plumpy-ups, retinol creams. I believe that if nature had intended for us to be beautiful as-is, she wouldn’t have invented tweezers.

So I don’t begrudge people who undergo cosmetic procedures to reverse the ruthless tug of time. Who among us hasn’t fantasized about having a silicone rack up to here and out to there? Who hasn’t stood at a mirror and pulled her flesh up around her hairline, watching in amazement as her skin stretched back to its sublime teenage tautness? Who didn’t recently invest in a waist-cinching, “tummy-taming” camisole called Suddenly Skinny, which is now her very favorite item of clothing and without which she will never again leave the house? (Wait … was that just me?).

But there is one vanity procedure to which I won’t submit: injecting Botox to eliminate the creases on my forehead. It’s not because I have concerns about shooting poison into my face (says the woman who bleached her hair throughout her pregnancies). It’s not even because, at a few hundred dollars per Botox prick, I’d be trading my wrinkled-haggard look for a financially destitute-haggard look.

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Come out of Your Shell

Don't Bogart Christmas

Published by Starshine Roshell on December 20, 2012

Most Californians don’t know from snow. We have no idea what it’s like to shovel a driveway, or awake to white-blanketed landscapes, or bundle up and stroll through frosty flurries (See? Frosty flurries — are those even a thing?). But we sing about it all just the same. Come December, we croon about sleigh bells and winter wonderlands and glistening treetops with all the enthusiasm of people who know what the flake they’re warbling about.

What I love best about this lyrical-geographical incongruity is that no one seems to care. People in nippy climes don’t ask us West Coasters to pipe down and stop singing about something we don’t — and frankly can’t — fully appreciate.

“Hey!” they don’t say. “Quit your convivial yodeling, and do some personal precipitation research!” It matters not to folks in icy Buffalo, New York, or glacial Grand Rapids, Michigan, whether our musical merriment is based in experience or willful ignorance. Whatever jingles your bells, man!

Why then — and you knew I was going somewhere with this, right? — should sourpuss religious zealots give a holly heck how the rest of us celebrate Christmas?

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Sex Won't Induce Labor (Even If Your Husband Says So)

Published by Starshine Roshell on December 6, 2012

She is an eruption waiting to happen, a burst woman walking. Her mass is so unmanageable, her sleep so uncomfortable, her bladder so irrepressible that she’d do just about anything to purge the stubborn little gestater.

It’s then — right then, when she is close to weeping at her wretched inability to draw a deep breath or pick up items she drops from her swollen piggy fingers — that her husband tells her, “You know, I might be able to help.” It seems a gal at work told him or he saw it in a movie once or he read it in the baby book and, er, he can’t remember which page, but anyway — some rockin’ sex might be just what the missus needs.

You can’t blame the guy for trying. And perhaps he’s even a little confused. Because back when they were in the delightful “trying to conceive” part of this pregnancy, he was lauded for his willingness (oh, he’s a giver) to drop trou for the cause. His heroic hay-rolling started this pregnancy, dammit, and there’s no reason (other than, you know, biology and basic logic) to think his Magic Mike-style moves can’t end it, too. Maybe it would make her feel better, and maybe it wouldn’t; he’s fairly sure it’d do wonders for him.

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Parental Kissing: Ewww

Published by Starshine Roshell on November 22, 2012

There are certain things a woman likes to hear after she kisses a man on the mouth: “Wow … please … more” and “Sweet cheeses, I’m in love” and “You taste like Wildlicious Pop-Tarts.”

But even “What do you think you’re doing, you trollop?” and “That is a LOT of saliva” would be preferable to what I hear after I kiss my husband: “Ewwww.”

The aspersion comes not from my spouse but from our 7-year-old son, an undersized-and-outspoken Puritan who finds even the chastest of our amorous embraces repugnant. Mind you, this child is not easily made queasy. He mixes fruit punch with Dr. Pepper and spoons applesauce onto his chicken nuggets, and I’ve seen the kid blithely pluck a strangled, desiccated lizard from a soccer net with a monkey wrench. Yet he finds nothing so disgusting as my lips touching his dad’s.

“Yuck.” “Nasty.” “Not again. Seriously? Come on!” It’s tough not to take that personally. I mean, why the horror? “Because the sound is gross,” he says.

Unfair! Sometimes we’re completely, no-slurping silent, I swear. He still cringes. “It just makes me … (sigh) … It’s just gross!”

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Dashing Through the SLO

Mini-Vibrators

Published by Starshine Roshell on October 25, 2012

I don’t want to brag, but my purse is a fricking wonderland. My fully loaded, survivalist handbag contains the tools to halt both heartburn and sunburn. The treasures rolling around in there can eradicate six straight days of headaches and stave off two, maybe three meals in a row. They can address a menstrual emergency, obliterate germs on shopping cart handles, and fashion a failed blowout into a casually fabulous chignon. But what my purse cannot do is produce a basic orgasm. And now I feel kind of lame about that.

I recently learned about a line of mini-vibrators that are disguised as basic, unsexy cosmetics — a faux lipstick, mascara tube, blush brush, and mirrored compact, each promising 80 full minutes of buzzing in two modes: “please” and “tease.” Why pose as makeup? It ain’t because they both bring color to your cheeks.

Billed as a “fashionably discreet sexcessory,” each little pleasure wand is meant to be tossed into your bag so that it’s handy … er, “when you need it the most.” I did some research (and I’m convinced the Internet was invented for precisely this purpose) and found others that double as a hairbrush, a pack of Life Savers, and even a lint roller, which is about as unhot as it gets.

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