Recently in Reviews Category

Even though I am an aspiring professional, navigating my way through a serious undergrad career, I am need a little fun too--this is where the mindless game of Sims comes in.

I decided I would take my myself and my boyfriend back to the good 'ole days, so we lived in separate houses and had separate lives until--oops--one day we met at the park. Well, we soon fell in love, as it happens in the virtual world, and decided to get engaged, married, pregnant, the whole shebang (and did I mention neither of us work thanks to cheatcodes--ahh the life).

Now I didn't really pay attention to whether I was able to ask him to get engaged, married (which I should have), but I did realize that once we were married, I automatically was given his last name and mine was lost forever! I had no option to keep my last name. This problem is quite small in the vast world of crises, but I was disappointed. Sims is fairly progressive, allowing the same genders to fall in love and do all of that. God, you can even have a ghost baby, so I wonder why I couldn't keep my last name.

So, shame on you EA.

This weekend I was in Atlanta, GA and went to "Bodies: The Exhibition" downtown.  The exhibit itself was truly amazing - actual cadavers stripped of their skin in order to show the muscles, nerves, etc.  The exhibit is meant to show us how as humans, we tend to take our bodies for granted, when they are truly amazing.

However, I was bothered that all the specimens were male, with the exception of the reproductive exhibit, where there was one female display.  There were many different rooms with many different bodies, and they were all male.  I felt that they were portraying the male body as the normative, and the female body as some other than the normative. 

I asked a few of the exhibit employees and scientists who created the exhibit why they chose to only display male bodies, and received no answers.  I suppose it may come down to maybe more men chose to donate their bodies to science, but I find it hard to believe they couldn't find anymore female specimens to display.

I was curious to see if anyone else has seen this exhibit.  I believe it is a traveling exhibit, because I know that there was a Bodies exhibit in Portland, OR last year.  If anyone else has seen it, I would like to hear your take on it.

Here is a link to the official Bodies website if you are interested: http://www.bodiestheexhibition.com/bodies.html

About two months (cycles) ago my boyfriend alerted me to a special deal at iHerb.com. I can't remember the exact price I paid, but I knew it was much less expensive than getting one at a B&M store. I quickly placed an order.

My DivaCup came within a couple weeks, just as my period was coming to an end. I was able to try it out once, but didn't have enough time to really become aquianted with it.

The first thing I noticed about it when taking it out of the package was the size. I ordered the Model 1 - for women under 30 who have not carried a child. This is the smaller model, yet I was still surprised at its - well - girth. I doubted that it could possibly be comfortable, but I wanted to give it a try right away.

Immediately I knew I would have trouble when I first tried to insert it. It was at the end of my cycle and I had been using tampons which had sucked all moisture and natural lubrication from my body. Needless to say my first attempt did not go well. I decided to wait until my next period to really give it a go.

Days went by and I found myself actually excited for my period for the opportunity it would provide! In preparation for a convenient time to experiement, I sacrified the benefit of tampons for the benefit of a moist vag.

Much - MUCH easier this time! I'm pleased to say that for me, the DivaCup worked exactly as it promised. No leaks, even up to 8 hours. Totatlly as comfortable, if not more so, than tampons and pads. PLUS it's reusable so in the end it's waaaay cheaper than disposables.

However, this was only once, for a relatively relaxed week. I have yet to try it while doing anything like working out at the gym or swimming. We'll see, but overall I am very pleased.

I certainly recommend this to every woman who is SICK of paying through the nose (or vagina?) for dispossable pads and tampons.

Oh, and the new Always Infinity are shit. 

Caveat: I have not yet seen a single episode of MTV's new hit reality show "A Double Shot at Love."  The few times I flipped past Tila Tequila's Shot at Love were enough for me.

So.  This is not a new topic, but WTF is up with America and bisexual women?  MTV has a brand new reality show for all of us who were missing "I Love Money" and hadn't really gotten into "Charm School."  On Double Shot, two identical, bisexual twins will vie for the affections of twelve lesbians and twelve straight men to find their one (two) true loves.  Tila Tequila, MySpacelebrity extraordinaire, ramped up the bisexual-reality-TV-show genre last year when she (albeit minus her identical twin) tried twice to find the love of her life on MTV, and sadly failed.

Now we have the "Ikki Twins," as they've been dubbed": Rikki and Vikki Mongeon.  According to the review on Slate, the twins spent the first episode pretending to be one person, canoodling with the lesbians and straight guys and waiting to shock them with the realization that HOLY TWINS, there were two of them.

The elephant in the room, of course, is the possibility that the twins will make out on national television, which brings me to the crux of the post.  America's homophobia combines awkwardly with its misogyny to create an exception for women making out.  Essentially, while LGBT people are marginalized by society, women making out (I do not use the term lesbian or bisexual here for a reason) are tolerated for the supposed turn-on factor that they provide for some straight men. 

As a bisexual woman, I applaud women like Tila Tequila and the Ikkis for being comfortable enough in their sexuality to go on MTV. But at the same time, I cannot help but realize the following truths:

1) Besides on Bravo,and L-word, etc, lesbian, gay, bisexual, and trans relationships are hardly tolerated on TV except for their token value.

2) There will never be a "Shot at Love With Jose Quervo" because male bisexualism isn't tolerated in American society.

3) If the Ikkis do make out on MTV, there will not be a constructive discussion of incest in the mainstream media. 

4) Tila and Ikkis are not creating a safe space for bisexual women - indeed they are heightening the expectation that bisexual women are promiscuous and easily and readily objectified. 

Again, while I appreciate the strides that bi-visability can take through a show like Shot at Love and the dialogues that will take place around it, I also mourn the continuing emphasis on the sexuality of women, bisexual or not.