I KNOW YOU’VE SEEN THIS. But while it was going viral, BG was staring at her supercomputer hitting refresh every 15 minutes to vote for David Tennant. And we didn’t want this not to go down on our permanent record. So.
Charles Atlas meets the 97-pound weakling meets that guy who’s so handsome he never really had to develop a personality meets … well, many, many women in Japan. It’s Charisma Man! I’m pretty sure the images of Japanese culture are reductive, if not offensive, but (as you’ll see) the underlying notion that the same person can be different people to different people — follow me? — is spot on. What do you think?
Filed under: issues,News,Treats — posted by Breakup Girl @ 9:41 am
It’s the National Sex Ed Week of Action! Now with PRIZES! (For the first reader who emails me with answers to the quiz below!) But first, a quick true or false:
• The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate among the world’s developed nations.
• According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, at least one in four teen girls has a sexually transmitted infection.
• Half of sexually active young people in the U.S. will contract a sexually transmitted infection by age 25.
• Approximately 750,000 teenagers in the United States will become pregnant this year.
• The health care reform bill included a renewal of $50 million per year funding of abstinence-only education for states until 2014.
• This Op-Ed by an Atlanta teen about the importance of comprehensive, accurate sex ed is awesome.
Answer key: TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE, TRUE.
Which, now that we’re all riled up, brings us to the one with PRIZES!Planned Parenthood of NYC, BG’s local affiliate, is giving away a package of safe-sex goodies to the BG reader who emails me with the correct answers to all five of the following (at least peripherally) sex-ed related questions. Pencils ready?
1. In how many states is it still illegal for an unmarried heterosexual couple to live together?
2. What was the name of the first daytime television show to feature a same sex wedding?
3. What famous female advocate founded the first birth control clinic and later founded Planned Parenthood?
4. Japanese love pillows, which usually decorated with life-size animae characters are called what?
5. What species was the famous gay couple who raised an offspring named Tango together?
Check out this whole-series Buffy trailer, which made me wishsohard I had the entire thing to watch over again, for the first time. For those of you non-Buffcore fans following along at home, yes, the series ended in 2003. And yes, people are still making these trailers. Still. Shouldn’t they (um) get over it and move on? (They even had the chance to rebound with Angel! And then Cordelia was even on Veronica Mars, which was like Buffy without the undead!)
Eh, I don’t think so. Because — as our tipster said — “the fact that fans are still working this turf really speaks to the power of a beloved story and the ability of media to create a sense of family.” Might seem weird, yes, but it’s undeniable and therefore important. Related: Show of hands — how many of you have, as a beginning-of-relationship rite of passage (through probably not pass/fail like the football trivia quiz in Diner), re-watched all of Buffy just so your new loved one could, you know, “understand”?
What was that alligator doing running loose last weekend in Queens? Perhaps officials should question my mother.
When my father was courting her, which was back when people still said “courting,” he spent a summer teaching in Florida. That was also back when one could actually mail baby Florida alligators up North as scaly souvenirs. And so, in lieu of flowers, Dad sent one to my mom.
A teddy bear, sure. Live lobsters, yum. But an alligator? What was he thinking? What genius expert gave that dating tip? (“Fellas: Win her heart with random cruelty!”) Surely Dad knew that his intended was, like him (despite appearances), an animal lover — but with a much less sturdy constitution and a much more bleeding heart. How could he possibly have reasoned that this reptilian keepsake would give her the fuzzies? (Continued…)
Cursing isn’t really Breakup Girl’s style, but jaunty breakup songs with catchy melodies in a Sixties-soul vein sure are. If you’re at work this morning, turn down your speakers (NSFW) and enjoy.