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Author: Starshine Roshell

Fatherly Lessons

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 28, 2012

I suppose they were reasonable things to come from a father’s mouth. Still, they took me by surprise. “Only move one body part at a time,” I overheard my husband saying as he helped our young son up a ladder. “Grab it around the stripe; fingers across the laces,” he explained a few days later on the subject of throwing a spiral. That night, he gave an impromptu lesson in scooping unyielding ice cream from a carton: “Use the fancy spoons,” he said. “They don’t bend.”

The information floored me. I didn’t know these things. How did I not know these things? Was I supposed to have learned them from my dad?

I asked friends what their dads had taught them and was aghast to find that their pops had instructed them in physical feats like surfing and fishing, and practical tasks like changing tires and hammering nails. They’d insisted their kids give firm handshakes and pack only what they could carry. They spouted sensible maxims like “Finish what you start” and “There’s no excuse for being late. Ever.”

Size 10s Need Not Apply

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 17, 2012

I thought I had women all figured out. Thought I understood how they think. Thought I knew what makes chicks tick.

Ladies, I’ve always presupposed, want a man with a certain set of attributes: funny, smart, romantic. Confident, dependable, good listener. Passionate, generous, and possessing a pot to piss in. The list is so predictable, it’s clichéd. Or so I thought.

Turns out there are at least 13 single gals in the greater New York area who find this to be a fetching characteristic in a fella: He requires that his sweetheart fit into clothing between size zero and eight … and that she prove it.

Earlier this month, a baker’s dozen of single-and-searching women paid actual money to attend a Manhattan matchmaking event called Skinny Minny Speed Dating. Hosted by OnSpeedDating.com, the soirée promised to introduce single fellas (of any size) to women three to seven dress sizes smaller than the average American gal.

The photo accompanying the online invitation shows a man stroking the chin of a woman who looks like Skeletor on Atkins. “Guys, no need to worry about meeting a biggie-size chick,” the invitation said. “We’ll be checking labels at the door!”

One Tyke, One Teen

Published by Starshine Roshell on May 10, 2012

It’s the most irksome and indubitable law of the universe: Fate favors The Planner. The gal with the foresight to research preschools while she’s pregnant. Or to begin funding a 529 plan before her child can even gurgle the word “college.” Or to know what the frack she’s serving her family for dinner before she gets home from work at 6:22 p.m. and announces, yet again, “Umm … exciting news, everyone: It’s soup night! Grab your favorite can!”

In life — and in parenting, especially — she who wings it regrets it. But that’s exactly how I wound up having my kids seven years apart. When the other moms in my baby group were plotting their second and even third children, citing anecdotes about brotherly bonding and quoting stats about the effect of sibling spacing on each child’s health, intelligence, and self-esteem … I was busy trying to distinguish Boudreaux’s Butt Paste from Motherlove Nipple Cream, clawing my way out from beneath daily heaps of burp cloths and wondering if I’d accidentally stuffed my once-vigorous mojo into the Diaper Genie during a bleary-eyed late-night changing.

By the time I emerged from the disorienting fog of baby care into the dense haze of toddler care and then, well, into the light but still unpleasantly wet mist of 1st-grader care (okay, I’m easily overwhelmed), it was too late to have children who would ever want to ride the same rides at Disneyland much less be able to attend the same school.

Indecent Exposure

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 26, 2012

I hate things that make me sound like I’m 90 years old. And that’s what online porn is doing. Beckoning our teenagers from their laptops, iPhones, and tablets, X-rated Web sites are causing me to curse technology and pine for the good old days when smut knew its place: on the pages of a shrink-wrapped girlie magazine on the periodicals shelf of your neighborhood 7-Eleven.

Back in my day, we pored over dog-eared Playboys, passed around Penthouse letters, and stared agog at warbly VHS tapes of Deep Throat — all lifted from our parents’ stash. Or our friends’ parents’ stash. Or our parents’ friends’ stash.

We had to work hard to see porn, and I’m not complaining; we had quite the work ethic. But today’s teens have to work hard not to see it. It’s free, it’s abundant, and it’s a single click away. Most of it is explicit, and much of it (what? I conducted a study) is so in-your-face graphic that you have to wonder if it’s intended to turn off the viewer.

Our teens — and, in some cases, ick, our preteens — are looking at this stuff. It’s not a question of if or when. They. Are. Looking. And how can you blame them? It’s a fascinating alien world. A big-box toy store. A freshly stocked cookie jar. I think it’s healthy for teens to explore their sexuality, and at least on-screen you can’t catch anything. Or create anyone.

Coregasm

Published by Starshine Roshell on April 12, 2012

Continue readingCoregasm

Mommy Porn

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 29, 2012

It’s being called “mommy porn” by even the soberest of news media — so naturally I had to check it out. E.L. James’s erotic novel Fifty Shades of Grey began as Twilight fan fiction, meaning the characters and a few plot points bear striking similarities to Stephenie Meyer’s girl-meets-vampire love story. But James, a British first-time author, reenvisions the story with a bookish young virgin who falls for a hunky self-made billionaire who’s perfect in every way. Except that he wants — nay, needs — for her to be his kinky sex slave.

Studded with more steamy sex scenes than you can shake a riding crop at, the book’s buzz among undersexed suburban housewives has driven it to the top of Amazon’s “Hot New Releases” list. The Fifty Shades trilogy, including sequels Fifty Shades Darker and Fifty Shades Freed, occupies numbers one, two, and three on the New York Times best-seller list for ebook fiction. Hollywood studios are flogging each other for the movie rights.

I read Fifty Shades of Grey to see what all the fuss was about, and here’s what this mommy can tell you unequivocally: It’s a dozen shades of awful.

Good-Bye, Private Parts

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 15, 2012

Have you ever been skinny-dipping? It’s just about the best feeling in the world: fretless, grin-in-your-skin freedom.

I was 11 years old and taking a bare dip in my backyard pool when I heard rustling in the neighbors’ tree and realized their pre-teen son was spying on me. Outraged and embarrassed, I skittered inside to tell my mother. I’ve never forgotten what she said:

“Eh, let him look. Why should he stop you from being at ease in your own yard? Don’t give him that power.”

The notion was radical — that I could simply choose not to feel violated by such an invasion of privacy. That I could disregard the peeping perv and refuse to waste energy guarding the confidential information his little eyeballs were gathering for who-knows-what degenerate purpose.

I’ve summoned that outlook countless times since then — when the tampon drops from my purse during a business lunch, the pharmacy clerk loudly inquires about my rash, and the neighbors hear me yelling at my kids. Eh, I think. Let ’em look.

But it’s harder than it used to be.

From the auto-fill feature in our Web browsers to the cameras installed at stoplights, our privacy is receding faster than a naked girl can scramble from the deep end of an exposed swimming pool into the folds of a blessed towel. And there’s more at stake than just a pre-adolescent fanny flash.

'Om' Em Gee: I Did Naked Yoga

Published by Starshine Roshell on March 1, 2012

I don’t love yoga. But I’m supposed to. Women my age, in my town (and let’s just say it, with my name) are supposed to swear by the practice’s tush-tightening, mind-loosening properties. I’ve been to a dozen yoga classes in as many years — the sweaty kind, the meditative kind, the pregnant kind — hoping to tap into that puzzling peace-through-pain bliss that yoga fans endure, er, adore.

But yoga mostly makes me … uncomfortable. From the hissing ujjayi breath to the groin-punishing poses to the inscrutable, translated-from-Elvish instructions (“release any stale energy and breath through your scalp”), the classes always leave me feeling physically and psychologically awkward.

When I received an invitation recently to view a new DVD called Yoga, Undressed (yogaundressed.com), I realized there was really only one way to make yoga more uncomfortable: Do it naked.

But what if discomfort is sort of the point? What if I’d failed to appreciate yoga because I hadn’t been uncomfortable … enough? Were my unbelievably cute yoga top and super-flattering yoga pants a moisture-wicking but Zen-preventing barrier to yogic understanding? If I stripped away my hold-it-all-in outfit, could I truly let go? Could I blast, birthday-suited, straight through the awkward to bask in the awesome just beyond?

After-School Gospel

Published by Starshine Roshell on February 16, 2012

I have a severe allergy to evangelism. Shiver-me-creepies, the very word sends me into spasms of fretful swatting punctuated by explosive shrieks of “Get ’em off me! Get ’em off!” I dislike religions that dole out piety points for saving souls, or make it their mission to convince me that I’ll wind up Satan’s scullery maid without their handy pamphlets.

Imagine my anxiety when I learned that a Christian evangelism group was recruiting young souls in our public schools. Thanks to a 2001 Supreme Court ruling, the Good News Club is allowed to operate after-school Bible study classes on tax-supported campuses in order to carry out its self-stated mission of reaching “unchurched kids” and “establishing them in Bible-believing churches.” The club operates at more than 3,500 public schools across America, including 10 in Santa Barbara.

I first learned of them in 2009 when my journalist friend Katherine Stewart noticed the club at her child’s school and wrote a cover story for The Santa Barbara Independent about the infighting its presence caused among students, parents, and school administrators. “I started getting email from parents across the country saying, ‘This came to our community, and it blew us apart,'” she told me.

The muffling of 'I love you'

Published by Starshine Roshell on February 2, 2012

If I could begin again, I would change the setting. But not the sentiment. The sentiment was perfect.

We were in line at Jack in the Box when I first said “I love you.” Young, broke, and decades from cholesterol issues, we had diddled away the morning in bed and were hunting for affordable, at-the-ready gut-fill. I stood behind you with my arms around your waist, deliriously inhaling the scent of your shirt, when the words tumbled clumsily from my mouth.

I love … you.

The sound of it was electric; it shocked me. It crackled and buzzed with the gravity of the future. I wanted to retract it, to bang the oral “delete” key like a maniac. I also wanted to shout it until I was hoarse, and to tattoo it across my chest in ornate purple letters.

The phrase was so leaden with significance that I thought it might fall crashing to the ground before it rose to your ears. In just three stunted syllables, it quashed my protective cool, exposed my secret notions of what’s worth loving, and declared my reasonless allegiance to all that you stood for, and did, and said.

And then it was time to order. Two sourdough burgers, a side of fries, one marriage, a mortgage, and two kids. To go …