You’re still shopping, aren’t you? Or rather, you haven’t started. Don’t worry; you’re me, half the time. (The other half of the time I feel way too ambitious then use the energy to radically overcompensate and buy way too many presents too early and end up with way too many copies of the same book that I can’t really give to everybody because they’ll know I bought in bulk and ANYWAY.)

But don’t worry: The Bad Moms Club is right here to save your way-too-busy ass.  Here are a few easy-peasy, last minute gifts – just as long as you’re willing to brave the malls. Visa Ho!

For the bookworm: This year’s Giller nominees were top notch, and any one of them would look like a thoughtful, well planned-out-in-advance gift. Look at you, looking smart and intellectual and stuff because you even know what the Giller prize is.

For the foodie: A gift certificate to the hottest new restaurant in town. It doesn’t have to be enough to cover the whole meal, just enough for a couple of plates of things with lentils and sauces made out of Pepsi or something. But you’ll still get the credit in the end, especially if they get a sitter and turn it in to a date night. See what I did there?

For the fashionista: Everyone needs a new scarf. Everyone, and especially your friends whose children have commandeered all their winter gear and used them to build snow armies in the back yard. And everything’s on sale everywhere right now as retailers try and desperately beat their 2010 Holiday Season numbers. And best of all, there’s some superawesome pretty scarves that will make any bad mom feel like a supermodel.

For the organizationally challenged: A datebook. Go to Calendar club and get them one of those books that has a new photo of Paris or London or Rome every week. Not only will they actually remember lunch with you, they’ll get a little lift when they look at a pretty picture of the Louvre or the Trevi Fountain instead of spilled cheerios and Thomas the Train packages.

And for your best friend, the one who listens to you no matter how late or illogical it is: A big bottle of wine. And two glasses. And sitters for both of you sometime in January so that you can drink it dry.

Merry Christmas, Bad Moms!

Look, world!  Here’s the “real” Angelina Jolie. She’s in her own clothes! She’s not wearing makeup! She is carrying her own six year old handbag!

Translation: Wow, this is how good she looks when she really should look like hell. Why don’t you look like this, too?

Yes, this afternoon springs upon us yet another deceptive, patronizing ad campaign aimed at women who will then believe that if only they carried a Louis Vuitton bag, they, too, could end up sitting on a bridge in Cambodia getting photographed by Annie Leibovitz looking ethereal!  Who needs a shower! Who needs coffee! Who needs makeup!

Except, not bloody likely.

Do you really think she’s makeup-free?  Are we really meant to believe that a woman who has six children and a thriving career  miraculously does NOT have some kind of quick-dry cement-style undereye concealer to hide the gigantic bags under her eyes?  Do you really think that they’d ship Annie Leibovitz to Cambodia to take a photo of Angelina Jolie and NOT have an incredibly expensive coat of Bobbi Brown Sandwash Pink coating those famous lips?

My feelings about The Jolie notwithstanding (and for the record, they are not positive ones), it slays me, SLAYS ME that this ad campaign is meant to illustrate “core values”. Apparently, the “core values” of the people both in and behind this ad is to pay an actress $10 million go to one of the poorest countries in the world to take a photo that will be used to sell insanely overpriced handbags – and then to lie about it.

When I get out of bed and put on my own clothes and go makeup free, (and by the way, nobody miraculously pays me $10M to do so), I call it “Tuesday”. I get up to take care of my child and clean the house and figure out what to do with my life. Those are my “core values”, Louis Vuitton.  You want to sell handbags to Moms of six, or moms of any amount of kids? Then don’t make your ads full of shit. Just make the bags stainproof, reliable, and big. Big enough to hold my smartphone, a snack pack of cheerios, and that gigantic tub of undereye concealer. Because trust me: we all need it.

I have mixed feelings about Tyra Banks. On the hand, she’s batshit and she humiliates young women for sport. On the other, I really can’t stop watching ANTM – which makes me a terrible person, I know, but SERIOUSLY – and also, she makes videos like the one below, which not only provides the tremendous service of explaining how to walk in heels properly – seriously, you all need to take notes – but also makes a very (and entirely unintentionally) funny point about not hacking your stilettos near children. THE MORE YOU KNOW, PEOPLE.

Seriously, though: I love heels, and I wear them as high as I can whenever I am out in grown-up land without my kids, and I cannot tell you how often I get asked how I walk in those and don’t my feet hurt? To which the correct answers are a) watch the above video, and b) yes, of course.

Now you know.

(Apologies for the auto-start on that clip. I have no idea how to turn it off. My life skills beyond heel-wearing are very limited.)

source

Rule number one for the social media mother, or any mother, or anyone, who carries a lot of stuff: learn how to accessorize. No, not with purses and handbags. With bags for tech gear, and everything else that you carry that won’t fit into your knock-off Fendi clutch. (Ha. You’re a mother. Like you carry a clutch.)

I travel, a lot. And when I travel, I tend to bring a lot of gear with me, because I’m usually working when I travel, and my work involves words and pictures and video, and in a computer age that means using devices that capture photos and video and that put words onto the Internet, which is to say – camera, video camera and laptop. But the problem has always been this: there are plenty of bags on the market that are designed for toting those things around, but they are all – what’s the word? – UGLY.

They’re all man-bags. Made of canvas, usually, or maybe some fancy waterproofed fabric that is nonetheless hideous for being waterproofed. Sometimes they come in leather, but then only in black, usually. Otherwise, they’re gray or brown or khaki with lots of Velcro and buckles. They are HIDEOUS. So what’s a techie girl to do?

For a long time I just hacked my diaper bags. Diaper bags actually make excellent gear bags, because they’re sturdy and roomy and have lots of compartments and if you have decent little camera bag (Golla makes some cute ones) you can tuck it right in there alongside your laptop in a padded sleeve and have lots of room left over. And diaper bags are pretty cute these days – if you made the sensible decision to invest in a nice one – or even two – when your baby came along – you’ll have something nice to work with, and all the more justification for that investment. So, yeah. Diaper bags! Not just for diapers!

I mentioned Golla bags; these are cute, non-man-baggy camera bags, but they don’t make a style that can accommodate a camera and lenses and a laptop or netbook or tablet, and mama’s got a lot of gear. So I was thrilled when Maile Wilson of Epiphanie Bags recently sent me one of her latest designs – the Clover – which is a gorgeous camera bag slash laptop bag slash purse. It’s everything that the man-bag is not, and I love it, and I want ten of them, just because (or, at least, one of the Paris, which also holds laptop and camera and more). On my recent trip to Disney World – during which I was, of course, taking lots of pictures and video and uploading it all to my computer for posting on the Interwebs – the bag accommodated my laptop, my camera, two extra lenses, a large Moleskine notebook, my wallet, my iPhone, an iTouch for the kids, a small make-up bag, some diapers, two sets of Skullcandy headphones for the kids, a copy of the New Yorker, and a book, with room to spare for boarding gate snacks. WIN.

Right?

It’s my number one favorite tech AND style accessory. Yes, I love it more than shoes, and my tripod.

What’s your favorite tech accessory? It doesn’t have to be a style-related accessory (although, since we’re on the topic, I should also mention my Kate Spade iPhone case, and my Karim Rashid netbook, which isn’t so much a tech accessory as a piece of tech in itself, but it’s so stylin’ that I have to mention it whenever I combine the words ‘tech’ and ‘pretty’ in a post.) (In the ugly-but-beloved tech accessory category: my DSLR lenses, the aforementioned tripod, back-up hard drives – there’s a whole ‘nother post to written on how I came to learn to love those beastly things – and the docking-slash-stereo station for our iPad.)

Share your favorites here or join the discussion at the Intel Canada page on Facebook, where we’re talking about accessorizing your techie life in style, or at least style-adjacent.

Too small.

I thought I was being so smart.

Have you ever tried to dress a kid? Seriously, it’s EXPENSIVE. Kids’ clothes cost a fortune, and even more of a fortune because you’re replacing it every time you turn around. I can remember buying stuff for my newborn at Baby Gap, such as $30 jeans that were just so adorable! And then I blinked, and then those $30 jeans were suddenly way too small, just like the rest of her wardrobe, and I had to trudge out and shop some more.  And shoes. Seriously, kids’ shoes. $45 for a pair of shoes half the size of my hand, shoes that will last her about 3 months tops. But it’s not like you can cheap out, because OMG BABY’S FEET I WILL WARP HER FOR LIFE IF I BUY THE WRONG THINGS SHE WILL BECOME CRIPPLED FROM BAD SHOES OMG!

So this summer, I thought I was going to beat the system when it came to the shoes. Oh, I will get the good shoes, people. FOR LESS. My cunning plan went something like this: Summer shoes go on sale in the fall, right? So I bought her summer shoes, half price, six or seven months ago, estimating what size she was going to wear because hey! Kids are predictable, aren’t they!

Sure they are. And yesterday, when I pulled those five pairs of shoes out of the closet, some I planned to use this summer and others in to the fall, and started the Ceremonial Shoe Trying On, I realized the flaw of my cunning plan. Namely: Child Of A Man With Size 12 Feet. The trying on went something like this:

First pair: Tried to get them on her feet with socks on. Could not. Worried, pulled off socks and got shoe on right foot. Child squealed with glee. Pressed end of shoe. Toe has 0.02 mm space at end of shoe. Oh, god.

Second pair: See first pair.  Child, unaffected, walked around wearing two different shoes that barely fit her for 10 minutes while I fanned myself on the couch.

Third pair: Fit perfectly, even with socks. Awesome. Except they’re fall shoes, meaning they’re heavy and sweaty. On my toddler’s already sweaty feet. Awesome.

Fourth pair: Same.

Fifth pair: Mercifully, at least these ones are still too big, meaning my pride is at least somewhat salvaged.

Serves me right. I should have known better: If you try to plan ahead for any kid, you’ll learn a quick lesson on unpredictability.

In other news, anybody wanna buy some kids shoes? Unused, except for the pall of shame.

Hope My Daughter Likes This Style Cause It's What She'll Be Wearing FOREVER

Bathing suit shopping, as any woman can tell you, is basically the wardrobe equivalent of walking over hot coals. You go in to the shop with the impossibly thin mannequins modeling scraps of spandex held together with plastic rings and dental floss. You pick out the suits that you think will cover the parts you want to hide (ie. all of them) and scuttle in to the dressing room. You peel off your coat and strip down to your socks and pull the swimsuit on over your underwear and stare at yourself under the horribly unflattering flourescent overhead light and wonder if you are willing to be seen in public wearing this particular variation on 8 ounces of $150 worth of flourescent fabric.

And this is what it’s like for a grown adult.

So imagine what it’s like for an 8 year old trying to purchase swimwear. Spare a thought for the poor child whose main aim in bathing suit shopping is to accentuate her non-existent breasts in her string bikini. Because when she builds her sand castles and hunts for snails along the oceanfront she shouldn’t actually *look* like an 8 year old. God forbid we allow children to look like children while they are still children.

Right, Abercrombie and Fitch? That’s why you’re selling a pushup bikini top for tweens, right? A completely impractical bathing suit for an active child, one that will easily fall off as she jumps and splashes in the water, one where she can learn at an early age that her body is inadequate because she doesn’t fill these cups yet and she really should so you, benevolent you, will give her some help in that department until she does.   Oh sure, you’ve taken the word “pushup” out of the description because even you realized it was completely ridiculous to market a pushup bra to girls who don’t even  have breasts yet. But the product’s still out there, isn’t it?

Many, many bloggers have already written about this. News networks have already covered it. And they’ve all pointed out the obvious issues: The early sexualization of children, the message that no matter how young you are, your sexual attractiveness needs to be enhanced (which: VOMIT), the message that your body needs to look a certain way to have value. And, practical/pale mom that I am, I’ll point out another issue: These stupid little scraps of bathing suit SUCK at sun protection. So not only are we creating a generation of daughters who feel inadequate over their breasts and their looks at age 8, we’re also creating a generation of daughters with a nice hefty risk of skin cancer.

The fail here is so epic it’s almost unfathomable. Marketing a pushup bra to an age range with no breasts is lunacy. But they’ve also missed the entire point of children’s swimwear. The point of putting a child in to a bathing suit and taking her the beach is not so that she can show off some skin.  It’s so that she can show off some imagination. Some creativity. Some activity. Some joy.

Not some T&A.

Food as art. Also, insanity.

Look, people, it’s an absurd world out there. Completely absurd. And every absurdity is being captured by the lens of reality TV.

Homeless men can get broadcasting jobs and free homes just by pitching a guy with a flipcam at a traffic light. Adult, seemingly sane women “compete” to marry a man who’s been sleeping with 16 other women right under their noses. People throw themselves in to mud pits and eat live insects for the remote chance of winning the jackpot.

Let’s face it. We are one network executive’s wet dream away from The Running Man.

The unfortunate truth is that there must be an audience for this stuff, otherwise why would every single television station in the world be churning out reality TV at the rate of 1,496 shows a minute?  And where there’s an audience, there’s also inevitably rabid fans, prepared to defend their chosen absurdity to the death.

So when a mom speaks out and says that, one, some of this reality TV is completely pointless, and two, some of the people on these pointless reality TV shows seem to be employed solely in order to be gratuitously nasty, and three, that said gratuitously nasty person’s hairdo could maybe use an upgrade of a decade or three, well, that mom who spoke out has a point.

But beware when you poke the Reality TV Beast, people. Because even gratuitously nasty headband cake people have a posse.  The Cake People Are Angry. pH3@r the Cake People.

And you know, normally when there’s people being crappy in comments I’d get all, we need to raise the level of discourse and oh, the humanity but god, people. It’s Cake. And gratuitous nasty. And Headbands. It’s got built-in absurdity. There’s just nowhere even to start. But boy, is it funny.

Still, backlash from Angel-Cake-Lovers or no, Bad Moms will persevere in pointing out the absurdity in Reality TV and everywhere, Cake Anger and everywhere else. Because really, if we don’t do it, who will?

So, Lady Gaga arrived at the Grammys last night in what everybody was calling an egg, but what I think looked more like an egg-shaped placenta, and really, wouldn’t a placenta be more her style?

You tell me:

Either way, it’s clearly a commentary on postmodern motherhood and the childbirth industrial complex. That model in the evening gown is obviously the doula, and those latex-clad guys carrying the Placentamobile represent, I think, broken condoms.

Why they’re all wearing work boots, I don’t know. Maybe they just don’t want to deal with splatter from the afterbirth.

I should probably re-phrase that question: did Victoria Beckham get pregnant just to be in Vogue MAGAZINE? (AMERICAN Vogue magazine, that is.) Because, of course it’s in vogue to have babies. That’s what People magazine and TMZ and Celebrity Baby Scoop tell us, anyway. Having babies is cool! Just ask Natalie Portman and Rachel Zoe and, um, Victoria Beckham.

ANYWAY. The story going around is, Posh was promised by Vogue that they’d do some sweet nekkid preggo feature starring HER if she got pregnant. Or something. So! That’s OBVIOUSLY why she got pregnant. Not because she, you know, wanted a baby or anything. Who has a baby just to have a baby anymore? People who don’t get to be in Vogue, that’s who.

/rolling eyes.

source