Tag Archive for 'jezebel'

News and Culture Five

News Round-Up Dec. 9: Dreaded Family Visits, Advice From Jezebel and Using Kids in Politics

What we’re reading today:

1. Is TV too pro-baby?

2. Some people find large family gatherings that happen around the holidays crazy stressful. Here’s some advice for someone who dreads them.

3. Cute: A dad writes into Jezebel asking for book suggestions for his 13-year-old daughter.

4. So yeah, that kid who told Michele Bachmann his gay mom doesn’t need fixing: Should we use kids in politics? With the Bachmann thing, we’d like to believe it was kid coming up with the idea, then getting shy and his mom just encouraging him, not pushing him.

5. The Quidditch World Cup!

Photo by cseeman via Flickr

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Are You Formerly Hot?

Formerly hot?

Are you a “formerly,” as in “formerly hot”? Author Stephanie Dolgoff, the recent subject of a New York Times article, explores this newly-minted phrase in her book My Formerly Hot Life: Dispatches From Just the Other Side of Young.

We kind of feel like this is an improvement over ”MILF,”  “yummy mummy” or the truly gross “cougar.” These are all appellations that suggest a certain kind of “trying too hard to cling to the vestiges of youth” or whatever. MILFs share clothes with their teenage daughters. Formerlies are okay with being age appropriate. Formerly tips its “hot” to the fact that you were once super-hot and super-cool but suggests you just don’t care anymore, which is kind of cool, right? Well, Jezebel certainly doesn’t think so. In a blog post on her website, Dolgoff describes how they slammed her book in a post.