If there’s one thing I love more than gorging myself on turkey (and stuffing, and cranberry sauce, and pumpkin pie… mmm… wait, what was I talking about again?), it’s loafing on the living room couch before and after Thanksgiving dinner and taking in some fine Thanksgiving television.

Holiday-themed episodes of TV shows usually follow a predictable pattern—the gang is planning some kind of celebration until everything goes horribly awry. But by the end of the show, problems have been solved, fights have ended, and everyone sits down together to enjoy a nice meal and/or some serious present opening, accompanied by a well-known holiday tune.

While most Thanksgiving episodes still adhere to the formula, there’s something about them that makes them even more satisfying than Christmas/Hanukkah/Valentine’s Day specials. Maybe it’s because they tend to be less cheesy than other holiday shows. Maybe it’s because I just like watching people enjoy a hearty meal. Whatever the reason, Thanksgiving episodes deserve some appreciation.

So, without further ado, here’s my list of the best Thanksgiving episodes. They’re all funny, entertaining, and heartwarming without being cloying—yes, even that episode of South Park.

[Click on any image to view the gallery]

But the article’s vocabulary isn’t the only baffling thing about it. In the piece, author Shane Watson proposes that all women have a “fashion sex,” a sort of gendered style that comes naturally to them.

Confused? So was I. Watson tries to explain herself by pinpointing the “fashion sexes” of some celebrities: “Anyone can see that Scarlett Johansson is a Girl, who should stick to asset-flaunting bodycon dresses” (whatever those are), she writes, while Kristen Stewart is “a tomboy through and through” whose outfits should never clash with her “natural urge to look a bit rough, undone, cool and … boyish.” Madonna is another celeb who Watson classifies as boyish: her “DNA is probably 12% bloke — in a good way. It’s the reason she looks like a man in drag in a pussy-bow blouse, but fabulously hot in a pair of chaps,” Watson writes.

I guess what this really means is that, according to Watson, women are innately either traditionally feminine, a little more hard-edged (read: manly), or androgynous. These traits are “non-negotiable,” she says, meaning that an inherently girly girl should never wear “the leather trousers, jacket and peaked-cap look” that serves Catherine Zeta-Jones so ill in the picture that accompanies the article.

Of course, the thing is that in that picture, Zeta-Jones doesn’t look uncomfortable or inappropriate. She’s Catherine-frickin’-Zeta-Jones—even if she hasn’t made a good movie since winning a Best Supporting Actress for Chicago, one thing she does have going for her is that she’s still one of the most beautiful women on the planet (and a very lucrative deal with T-Mobile). I think she would probably look smoking even if she was wearing a burlap sack and one of those big, furry Russian hats.

The notion of fashion sex is totally ludicrous; having short hair or, in Stewart’s case, a curiously surly demeanor (does that girl just not know how to smile?) doesn’t make a woman un-feminine—look at a pixie-haired Halle Berry in that famous Oscars dress, for just one example of why Watson is completely wrong. Hell, even K-Stew looked pretty, classy and, dare I say, comfortably girly at last week’s Oscars. So-called “boyish” types can look great wearing frilly dresses, and so-called “girly” types can look amazing in jeans and distressed Chucks.

Every girl should wear whatever she wants without fear that she’s somehow going against “type,” whatever that means. There’s no sense in pigeonholing yourself to just one kind of look, especially if you’re only doing it because some crazy British lady thinks you should.

If teen magazines are to be believed, from January to June, there’s exactly one thing on every female high school student’s mind: prom. Or should I say: ~~*OMG PROM!!@! Only writing out the word like that can give it the respect it deserves.

According to sources like Seventeen, CosmoGirl (now only a website—RIP, CG!), and even classier options like Teen Vogue, prom is the absolute apex of a teenage girl’s existence. The big night apparently requires months of preparation and planning: who’s your date going to be? What are you going to wear? Can you get your dad to spring for a limo? Are you going to lose your virginity, or your dignity, or both? How will you resist the pressure to drink at the after parties? (… Because obviously, nobody ever voluntarily drinks alcohol in high school.)

I know what you’re probably thinking right now: “This is a website for women in college! Why is this stupid blogger talking about something that we all experienced years ago? I can barely remember my own prom. Sure, it seemed really important at the time, and I guess I had fun, but it definitely wasn’t actually the biggest night of my life.”

And that’s exactly my point. Prom fever, frankly, is totally ridiculous. Which makes it a prime topic for this column—because our culture inexplicably imbues this event with so much significance (can you think of a major teen movie that doesn’t end with a prom scene?), any articles that focus on prom are inevitably going to be teeming with Bad Advice for women, if you can call HS seniors “women.” That’s because there’s literally no reason any girl should make such a BFD out of prom in the first place.

But the most egregiously bad prom advice I’ve come across stands in a class of its own. It’s a specialized website on seventeen.com called the “Prom Dress Workout Finder.” The point of the site? To determine what kind of exercises you should be doing so that you don’t look like a big ‘ole cow in your dress of choice, no matter what style it is.

See, if you’re wearing a backless dress, you need to do a move called “The Usher,” according to Seventeen Trainer Jenna Philips in this workout video. But if you’re wearing a minidress, says trainer Jessica Smith, you have to do a different exercise to target your thighs. God help you if your dress is short and you’ve mistakenly been doing The Usher anyway. Probably, your date will end up dumping a bucket of blood on you or something.

It’s bad enough that girls are tricked into buying into the whole prom industry in the first place—but now they’re supposed to perform special exercise routines for the sole purpose of looking nice on a night that, truth be told, is probably going to end with their best friend throwing up on their shoes? There are plenty of great reasons to try to stay fit, but doing it in order to squeeze yourself into a certain dress is not one of them. I wish I could say that I expected better form you, Seventeen… but if I did, I’d be lying. Just like I did when I told my mom I’d be spending the night of prom at my best friend’s house.

It’s not easy being a woman. We only earn $.78 for every dollar dudes earn, we have to put up with things like periods and high heels, and—maybe worst of all—we’re constantly being bombarded with advice from lady mags, lady sites, and lady-oriented talk shows that purport to know what we should be doing to get thinner, sexier, and happier. Too often their tips are questionable at best and downright moronic at worst.

So every week I’m taking a look at the advice that falls into the “moronic” end of that spectrum. If I can convince even one girl to reconsider whatever’s being professed in her glossy of choice, I’ll sleep a little better at night.

In the relatively small pool of article templates that women’s magazines turn to month after month (find the best jeans for your body type! Learn how to make a smoky eye! Consider swinging—wait, whaaa?) there are two perennial models that will never go out of style: tips on how to lose weight and tips on how to snag a man. Knowing this, the editors at Women’s Health have come up with a genius idea for an article that combines both topics. It’s called “Prevent Love Chub,” and it’s about how your S.O. is making you fat.

Yes, even though ladymags believe any female who isn’t constantly attached to or trying to become attached to a man is kind of sad at best and totally pathetic at worst, now Women’s Health is also saying that boyfriends are any body-conscious chica’s worst enemy.

See, men sabotage our toned limbs and flat bellies in five distinct ways—they love eating out (… at restaurants! Get your mind out of the gutter!), they prevent us from being physically active, they encourage us to eat more in order to keep up with them, they buy unhealthy food, and, worst of all, they make us happy. And as author Jill Waldbieser says, “Research shows that what’s good for your heart may be bad for your hips.” More specifically: “A study published last year in the journal BioPsychoSocial Medicine found that happy people were less likely to succeed at losing weight than those with a ‘slightly negative and cautious outlook.’”

Uh-oh! Somebody better call the diet police, stat! There’s got to be a way for women to be both perfect girlfriends and perfect stick figures at the same time. What say you, Women’s Health?

Well, to begin, the magazine suggests that fatties like you should eat “a healthy snack that contains protein and fiber a few hours before your meal,” if you and the boyf are planning on grabbing dinner out. Yup—eating in secret before you eat in public with your boyfriend. That sounds healthy.

It also advises women to eat “about three-quarters of what he’s eating”—but not if he’s eating something fatty. In that case, Waldbieser suggests having “portion-controlled, lower-calorie alternative[s] on hand to munch while he takes down that bag of chips or pint of ice cream.” Because a guy certainly wouldn’t think there was anything odd about you breaking out a plate of celery stalks while he’s chowing on Doritos—and that low-cal alternative snack will definitely be as satisfying as whatever he’s snarfing. Relying on “popchips” or Skinny Cow ice cream sandwiches, as Waldbieser suggests, seems like it’d just encourage women to eat more of those supposedly healthier options—which makes this whole thing a zero-sum game.

Finally, to make sure that you don’t balloon up just because you’re feeling confident and loved—the horror!—the article makes its craziest proposal yet: “regular weigh-ins.” It’s unclear whether Waldbieser means that you and the boyfriend should weigh each other regularly or whether you should just be obsessively monitoring your poundage on your own. Either way… come on!

Maybe women who are in relationships do tend to gain a few extra ounces in comparison to their single friends. Even so, “Prevent Love Chub” creates a mountain out of a molehill. It acts as if gaining weight is equivalent to murdering puppies, something any sane girl must prevent from happening at all costs—no matter how crazy it makes her look to that boyfriend she worked so hard to find.

It seems that according to Women’s Health, we just can’t win—you’re either skinny and lonely or happy and chunky. And if you’re in the latter camp, and you take this advice in order to try to get thinner, chances are your hard-won BF is going to think you’re completely bonkers and dump you in favor of a girl who isn’t so insecure. Ugh. Stay classy, Women’s Health.

Maybe my eyes were watering from the 32-degree weather, or maybe I was looking anxious because of all the stuff I had to get done later that day. For whatever reason, though, when I stepped up to get my waffle, the dude working the truck took a look at my face and started clicking his tongue disapprovingly. “Tell me what’s wrong,” he said. “Why don’t you smile?”

I was taken aback. Why was this guy assuming that there was something wrong with me just because the sides of my mouth didn’t happen to be turned up? And even if I had been upset, what made him think he had the right to pry into the personal life of a total stranger? I stuttered something vague and grabbed my food, happy to get the hell away from that truck. And, okay, still psyched to eat an awesome waffle.

Let me make one thing clear: I am not a gloomy person by nature. I crack jokes all the time, even when doing so might not be entirely appropriate. My laugh is so loud and distinctive—kind of like another notable Hillary’s famous guffaw—that my friends have dubbed it “the cackle.” Even so, I guess that everyone must think I have a natural bitchface or something, because random people are always suggesting to me that I should smile. More often, though, it’s just a command: “Smile!” There’s an implied “or else” at the end of that imperative.

When I was indignantly recounting the waffle incident for my roommate later that evening, she made a good point: “That’s kind of sexist! Nobody ever does that to dudes.” Her statement is totally valid. There’s no way that a guy walking down the street with a neutral expression on his face would be harassed by “concerned” passersby about turning that frown upside down.

I’d argue that the smile demand is as bad a piece of advice for women as telling them to introduce frozen grapes into their sexual repertoire. It implies that ladies should always be happy—or, even if they aren’t happy, they should project the outward appearance of being happy in order to put other people at ease.

If a man isn’t smiling, it’s no big deal. But if a woman isn’t smiling, she must either be a bitch or be undergoing some kind of profound emotional trauma. Being a bitch is no good because it makes you unfeminine, while revealing that you’re upset is also a no-no because it makes everybody else feel uncomfortable—and that goes against the old stereotype that women should always put others before themselves.

Well, screw that. If the way my face looks naturally is somehow offensive to you, you’re just going to have to deal with it. And that goes for all women; in what rulebook does it decree that girls have to sport a simpering grin at all times? Smile when you feel like it, but don’t go around beaming just because you feel some weird obligation to. Plus, frankly, I think that people who smile all the time are creepier than people who don’t.

The next time the waffle guy—or anyone else—commands me to smile, I think I’m just going to respond by saying, “No.” Then, after I turn around, maybe I’ll let my lips curl into a smirk. If I do, though, it’ll be because I felt like smiling—not because I’m trying to please anybody else.

**Note: the waffle did make me smile.

Is this chic enough for the cereal aisle?

Okay, I’ll admit it: I spend a decent chunk of my time gawking at the heinous outfits documented on Go Fug Yourself, a site where two hilarious writers analyze the wacky get-ups worn by the rich and supposedly stylish. There’s something so satisfying about seeing how even gorgeous celebrities, who are endowed with personal stylists, makeup artists, and assistants upon assistants, can somehow leave their mansions thinking that things like this (or this! And don’t forget this!) actually look good.

But even though the Fug Girls can get a little vicious from time to time—any celeb wearing leggings instead of pants better be prepared to get seriously ripped apart by these ladies—I really admire the fact that their site generally only critiques the crazy things stars wear to high-profile events, like movie premieres and awards shows. Even these bitchy bloggers try to stay away from criticizing boldface names for throwing on ratty jeans and sweatshirts while they’re walking their dogs, or pumping gas, or doing any of the other menial chores that gossip rags love to say make stars seem Just Like Us. That’s because everyone knows that sometimes, it’s nice to forget fashion and wear whatever’s comfortable—especially if you’re just out running errands.

Well, everyone but Suze Yalof Schwartz of Glamour Magazine. In January, Schwartz took a trip to a Whole Foods store in search of women whose choice of garb left something to be desired. Her quest to take unsuspecting shoppers from “eek to chic” was documented for a Glamour Don’ts to Dos segment on the Today Show.

After checking out some produce, the video shows Schwartz ragging on a girl whose skirt is longer than her jacket. (Guess her victim must not have been a big Cake fan.) Then she praises another girl for dressing in “Whole Foods chic,” whatever that means. After saying snarky things about a few more shoppers, she finally zeroes in on Claire, a college student who says, “I don’t have a style. I wear lots of, like, sweatshirts and zip-up hoodies.” Good for you, Claire! I know plenty of college students who dress like this most of the time, and they seem to lead perfectly happy, normal lives despite their style deficiencies.

But to Schwartz, fashion suicide is the worst crime of all. As she explains to Claire, “You don’t want to get caught out looking like that.” They go shopping, and at the end of the segment, Claire debuts her new look.

Yes, she does look pretty cute in her post-makeover outfit—I’m a sucker for stripes. Even so, I have issues with the message of this video. Schwartz disses Claire for looking “more like she was headed to pick vegetables than buy them.” But honestly, why is that such a BFD in the first place? When a girl’s out grocery shopping, she’s probably thinking about whether she should splurge on organic apples or how much Psych reading she has to do that afternoon—not whether her ensemble is sufficiently stylish.

Telling women that they have to be hyper-aware of how they look at all times, even when they’re doing nothing more than running out to buy a quart of milk, reinforces the old stereotype that if you’re female, appearance always has to be your number one priority. What’s next, telling girls that they should spend half an hour on their hair and makeup even when they’re just hanging out at home? Oh wait…

And then there’s the mean-spirited tone of this video, which also irks me. Making fun of the ugly thousand-dollar dresses that public figures wear to gala events is one thing. Bitching that some girl you don’t even know should feel ashamed for wearing legwarmers is quite another. This video is tacitly telling girls that it’s okay to be mean, as long as it’s in the name of Fashion. But what’s the point of judging people because of what they wear, especially at the freaking grocery store? That’s just petty.

I’m sorry, Glamour, but as far as I’m concerned Schwartz’s conduct is a definite Don’t.

With all that in mind, I’m certainly open to hearing tips on how to successfully snag a dude. So when I saw an article on marieclaire.com called “How to Date Like a Man,” I was intrigued.

The piece starts out pretty innocuously: “When you walk into a place, act like you know where the hell you’re going, even if you don’t. Everyone will wonder who you are and why you’re there, but they’ll never think you’re useless and confused,” writes Erin Dailey in her first paragraph. Okay, so far, so sensible. Looking confident and carefree is definitely more attractive than looking frightened and meek. It’s a little irksome that Dailey genders confidence as a masculine trait, but whatevs, I won’t fight it.

After that, though, things start to get a little iffy. Dailey tells women that once they’ve found a hottie, they should “look him straight in the eye and think, You should be attached to my lips by now; why aren’t you? Trust me, he’ll read your thoughts like they’re projected above your head on a wide-screen.”

Hm… I don’t know about this one. It seems like if you’re giving a guy a crazy, unblinking stare, he’s most likely going to think, What’s up with Captain Bug Eyes? and back away slowly. That sample thought—“You should be attached to my lips by now”—and the title of this section of the article, “Eye Your Prey,” also give this piece of advice a seriously creepy vibe. Dailey sounds like she’s decided to make Samantha Jones her personal man-handling guru, which makes her suggestions seriously suspect.

And things just go downhill from here. Dailey’s next bit of wisdom is to “fake interest” in whatever the dude is talking about, since “no one cares about what anyone else has to say. They just don’t.” Ouch, man. Why bother chatting up a guy if you have to feign enthusiasm for whatever he’s talking about? How could you form a relationship with someone you find totally boring? This just sounds mean.

Finally, Dailey tells us what to do after we have sex with the dude (because you should have sex with him immediately, since “that’s pretty much all they want from you until they get to know you.” And presumably letting him get to know you is like, too time-consuming or something?): “Never exchange all your information. This is so incredibly important. Give him your name. Give him a fake cell number. In this age of the Internet, anyone can find you if they want to.”

See, if you do give him your real cell number, “he will call you.” But… isn’t that the point? How are the two of you going to go out on another date if he can’t get in touch with you? I’m not the only one who thinks this sounds totally bizarre, right?

Maybe this article is actually supposed to be brilliant satire, and I’m too dense to recognize it. Maybe the title is just a little misleading; if it were changed to “How to Date Like a Douchebag,” or maybe “How to Score a One-Night Stand,” these tips would make a lot more sense. As advice for the date-seeking woman, though, Dailey’s piece falls flat. It’s also kind of offensive to guys, since in her eyes, “dating like a dude” means acting like a total a**hole. Thanks but no thanks, Marie Claire.

This will make you happy.

Meet Lori Gottlieb. She’s a 40-year-old single mother—she got artificially inseminated because she wanted to have a baby but didn’t have a boyfriend—who has discovered the secret to why more women aren’t married: their standards aren’t low enough.

No, seriously. Gottlieb recently expanded this 2008 article from the Atlantic into a full-length book called Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. Her basic premise? Modern women all have “checklists” for their potential life partners, and we’re too quick to dismiss guys who don’t necessarily satisfy all of those requirements. So in order to avoid being single and, therefore, miserable in our 40s, women in their 20s like you and me should forget searching for Mr. Right and, instead, make do with Mr. Good Enough.

Don’t worry if this advice sounds ridiculously retro—Gottlieb freely admits that she’s telling women to ignore modern ideas about male/female relations because, as she says at the beginning of her book’s third chapter, “feminism has completely f*cked up my love life.” All that talk about “freedom” and “choice”—yes, she actually puts those words in quotation marks—is a bunch of hooey because, as opposed to what Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan would have you believe, women really do need to get married and have lots of babies in order to be fulfilled: “The truth was, every one of my single friends wanted to be married, but none of us would admit how badly we craved it for fear of sounding weak or needy or, God forbid, antifeminist,” Gottlieb writes.

Excuse me for just a minute—AAAARRRRGGGGG!!! This crap is so ludicrous that I can only express my anger in capital letters and multiple exclamation points. I can immediately think of about fifty things that are totally wrong with Gottlieb’s thought process, but I’ll spare all of you and just mention what I think are her most glaring errors:

1) How can this lady seriously make a blanket statement like “If you say you’re not worried [about getting married], either you’re in denial or you’re lying”? How can she possibly believe that every single woman on the face of the Earth must, without exception, ultimately aspire to be a wife and mother? Her most basic assumption is incredibly insulting—especially to girls our age, who are in a better position than any women before us to really do whatever we want with our lives. (That is, unless your dream is to be a print journalist…)

2) And on that note—do any real women really keep the sort of extensive checklists Gottlieb assume we all have? I’ve got maybe three qualities that I look for in a guy (reasonably good-looking, not dumber than me, good sense of humor)… and I might even be able to let two of them slide if a dude was funny enough. Gottlieb hews closely to the age-old stereotype that women are uniformly demanding, stubborn, and delusional. What year is it, again?

3) Just like that Cosmo article I talked about last week, this book makes lowering expectations and learning to be content with what you can get the woman’s burden exclusively. Women have to settle, says Gottlieb, but men—even the fat, balding, boring dudes the author is recommending we settle for—can get with whoever they want because all chicks are desperate. Again: so insulting I can barely find the words to describe it.

4) Maybe the craziest part of all this is that for all her sage wisdom, Gottlieb herself isn’t married. She’s basing her entire philosophy on a hypothetical idea: if she had settled, maybe she would be happier now because maybe she would be in a dull but stable relationship. Gottlieb is talking about marriage like she understands it intimately, but how much of an authority can she really be? Would you ask someone allergic to dogs for tips on how to train your Weimaraner? Yeah, didn’t think so.

The bottom line: I would never want to be in a relationship with someone if I found out that we were only together because he had decided to “settle” for me—and I’m guessing that a guy would feel the same way. Imagine how devastated your boyfriend or fiancé would be if he found a copy of this book on your bedside table. I’ve got an idea for a title for your next book, Lori Gottlieb: The Case for Modern-Day Misogyny.

Unfortunately, it’d probably be a bestseller.

Maybe that’s why for nearly a decade and a half, I was under the impression that boys were an entirely different species that thought and acted in ways totally opposite from those of women. I had no idea how to talk to dudes because I figured that I could have absolutely nothing in common with any of them. They were from Mars, and I was from Venus; they got mini-Hotmobiles in their Happy Meals while I had to make due with miniature Barbie dolls. As far as I knew, that was just the way the world worked.

Since then, of course, I’ve learned that guys and girls really aren’t that dissimilar. Sure, maybe they’re more likely to enjoy movies that feature explosions and we’re more likely to watch anything starring Meryl Streep, but real people prove that even such widely agreed-upon stereotypes have plenty of exceptions—especially since those old clichés also assume that all men and women are hetero.

But even though dudes and chicks can’t actually be separated into two conflicting groups, magazines still insist on bifurcating men and women into opposing sides. Hell, the entire women’s magazine industry is predicated on the assumption that all men behave the same way—and that women can only understand men if they read publications that promise to decode their mystifying manners.

Take Cosmo’s “5 Things Women Don’t Know About Boyfriends,” for example. According to this article, “there are guy-unique love habits you’re not privy to.” Luckily, Cosmo offers to come to your rescue by interpreting those habits.

The takeaway point of this article is that in any relationship, the woman must unfailingly be sensitive and mature because guys just can’t help being juvenile and inconsiderate. Author Stephanie Booth tells women to accept that men stop acting romantically after a certain period of time (because “The more serious a relationship gets, the less a man will reassure you”), to be cool with the fact that men never act appreciative (“Stop waiting for a reaction, let alone a thank-you, and keep doing those little things that make you both feel so good”), and to coddle their guys incessantly because “He may act like a tough guy, but he secretly wants to be babied.”

There is something seriously wrong with that sentence—with all of those sentences. Shouldn’t an adult relationship be a partnership in which both parties are equally loving and supportive? An expert Booth quotes says that “it’s truly the woman’s responsibility to take the pulse of the relationship,” since guys “don’t spend a ton of man-hours pondering the state of your union or analyzing its ups and downs.” But why does Cosmo think that this is okay?

If there is a grain of truth in this article’s declarations about how men uniformly act, it’s only there because pieces like this one reinforce age-old ideas about masculine and feminine behaviors. Maybe men really do always take the little things their girlfriends do for them for granted—but just because our culture has indicated that that’s an acceptable way for a man to act. Nothing will change for the better until we start holding guys up to a higher standard, one that doesn’t sell dudes short by assuming they’re all nothing more than sex-obsessed, overgrown adolescents.

It’s 2010, for crying out loud; shouldn’t this sort of retro, gender-based BS be obsolete by now? You’re breaking my heart, Cosmo.

Gotta load on the makeup for the big night....in.

When it comes to beauty, I’m pretty low-maintenance. I never really learned how to put on eyeliner because I’m afraid I’ll poke myself in the cornea, I can’t get the knack of painting the nails on my right hand, and I’m too impatient to slap on anything more than Chapstick and maybe mascara, if I’m feeling fancy, in the morning.

So to me, articles (or even videos) about how to get the perfect smoky eye or choose the right mineral foundation for your skin tone or make yourself look like a tiger or whatever aren’t generally that interesting. Even so, I can understand that there are plenty of industrious girls out there who actually find beauty tips useful.

And I’ve certainly got nothing against beauty hounds. In fact, I envy their hand-eye coordination and perseverance—while I’m embarrassed about the bags beneath my baby blues but too lazy to actually do anything about them, those girls always look effortlessly put-together.

But a four-page photo spread that I came across in the latest issue of Glamour crosses the line between giving helpful pointers and doling out straight-up bad advice. The piece, which unfortunately isn’t available online, is called “Have a Gorgeous Night… In.” Here’s its introductory paragraph:

“You’re young, you’re hot—you should not be in a Snuggie! The next time you and your guy are just hanging out at home together, try these undeniably sexy beauty ideas. And have fun!”

The article goes on to suggest that while a girl is spending a low-key night in her natural habitat, she should consider wearing lacy, revealing underwear, spending ten minutes on crafting a sexy, “bedhead-y ponytail” that artificially simulates hair that’s been slept on, and swiping on “red lipstick like Dior Serum de Rouge Lipstick in Crimson ($32, saks.com).” This will trick guys into finding her attractive, even if she’s just whiling away her time by munching on some Pirate’s Booty and watching Tough Love.

While I totally understand the appeal of glamming it up every now and then, isn’t a night in supposed to give us time off from worrying about hair and makeup? What’s wrong with a lady laying prone on a couch while clad in a zebra-striped Slanket, enjoying the way her face feels when it isn’t caked in inches of powder? In this situation, there should be no need to spend time painting your pout bright red, let alone with lipstick that costs as much as a skirt from Urban Outfitters.

This article is basically saying that girls always need to make sure they look their best, even if there’s nobody there for them to impress (if you’re just sitting around with “your guy,” doesn’t that mean that the two of you should be comfortable enough with each other that you don’t have to make an effort for once?). “Have a Gorgeous Night… In” implies that appearance is everything, regardless of where you are or what you’re doing.

When I’m spending an evening at home, I’m focused on staying comfortable and trying to decompress—even if there does happen to be a dude vegging out in the armchair next to mine. If this means that I’m doomed to die alone, well, so be it; I think I’d rather enjoy myself than constantly worry about whether I’m wearing my fake eyelashes correctly. Way to go, Glamour!