10 things not to say to a guy while you’re shopping.

Katherine Heigl’s new ‘do. Oy.

Ebony magazine was a wee bit off on this one…

Tom Colicchio’s havin’ a baby!

Meet the Project Runway designers.

Santa Claus is scary (but totally hilarious)!

Proposition 8, The Musical.

The perfect anti-flu remedy.

Check out the Bromance trailer. It’s gonna be good.

Is Spencer drugging Heidi!?

Self-mutilation takes on a new form.

Madonna is the new face of Gucci.

Ew, shag sweaters?

A few final exam tips.

A friend sent me this post last week and asked me what I thought about it. Being a very sarcastic (and witty, if I do say so myself) person, I got scared. And embarassed. An angry. “Yeah, cuz this loser knows what he’s talking about.”

Woops; that was just more unfeminine sarcasm.

I couldn’t stop thinking about the strong opinions the author held and wondered if they were his alone, or if all the men I have ever liked (and not dated) felt the same. Do guys find women who are sarcastic unattractive? Is sarcasm the unibrow of a woman’s personality (hence the photo)? I asked a guy:

On Saved by the Bell, Elizabeth Berkley gained pre-Showgirls notoriety, for the famous Jessie Spano Caffeine Pill Breakdown (I’m so excited! I’m so scared!). Of course, Full House and SBTB were heart-warming sitcoms, where everyone learns their lesson in the end, and move away from their self-destructive behavior, never to mention anorexia, bullimia, or drug abuse ever again.

The breakout Canadian teen sensation, Degrassi, which airs in the US on The N network, covers a variety of teen issues, without the cavity-inducing sugary sweetness of the stuff we grew up on. Among the kids who dabble in drugs, alcohol, eating disorders, and bi-polar disorder, Degrassi introduced the world to Ellie Nash, who is a cutter.

I’m too old for Degrassi, but I don’t care. I’m pretty much obsessed with it. The best part about the show is that it doesn’t sweep the issues under the rug at the end of each 22-minute episode. And because the writers have the balls to “Go There.” I mean, come on: we all know the caffeine-pill incident was a stand-in for a harder drug, like speed or something, but hard drugs don’t exist at Bayside High.

I remember when the cutting craze swept my middle school. I have no idea who started it, or why it caught on, but at my school, cutting was the iPhone of the late 90′s. Everybody did it. How sick is that? Needless to say, I went through a period of self-mutilation. Before I explain, let me insist that hurting yourself is completely different from, say, suicidal tendencies. I didn’t want to die; I just wanted an outlet to relieve stress. So, when I got upset about some stupid middle-school-drama, I would sit in my room and make little cuts on my wrists or abdomen.

I know, this habit is totally lame, and morbid, and… did I mention lame? And that’s why I stopped; it was embarrassing to have to wear chunky bracelets or long sleeved shirts in the summer. When people asked what happened, I had to make up stupid excuses, and try not to look like a pseudo-goth psychopath. The “trend” at my school faded away along with flared jeans and Chumbawumba, and I grew out of my own habit.

But, there’s still a part of me that gets the urge to cut from time to time. Even though I am way to old to be relating to a fictional character like Ellie Nash, there was an episode where Ellie explains to some other troubled teen that her urge to cut is something she has to live with, not something that will go away. If I’m pissed off after a bad day at work, or stressed about an exam, sometimes I have the urge to hurt myself. It’s almost like craving a cigarette. Of course, I have healthier outlets to relieve stress, e.g. the Elliptical machine at the Y.

So, for whatever reason, cutting has been around for some time, and it is most likely to occur in teenage girls. Many of them will grow out of it, like I did, but there are cases when the habit can snowball and lead to serious outcomes. I think that shows like Degrassi do a better justice to the trials and tribulations of growing up, because we can’t all have a Zack Morris run into our bedroom and throw our problems on the floor.

My first thought? Oh, no! Save the children. My second thought? Ummm, obvi?

When I was young, my role models were Barbie and Kelly Kapowski. Barbie had an impossible waist paired with magic tits, and Kelly Kapowski had cheated on Zack Morris with college boy Jeff, her boss at the Max. Parents today are concerned that the Bratz dolls negatively influence girls’ body images. I think they look like ghetto skanks with big heads, myself. But I suppose if they are inspiring young girls to seek a ghetto-skank look, there is cause for concern.

But I digress. BBC reports that girls are suffering from various social anxieties: two in five girls studied knew someone who had self-harmed; two in five knew someone who had panic attacks; and one in three knew someone with an eating disorder.

These problems suck; I know, I’ve dealt with all of them. I went through a brief bout of anorexia when I was thirteen, dropping to 104 pounds on a 5’7” frame. When I started eating again after an intervention, knives and razors became my friends. However, when I began working part-time jobs at sixteen, I realized that people look at you like you’re crazy when you have scars up and down your arms, and gave that up too. In college, I saw a school psychologist and got prescriptions for anti-depressants and tranquilizers (for anxiety attacks), which I fondly referred to as “Crazy Pills.” However, even the crazy pills had to go because I couldn’t remember to take them every day (the reason I still use condoms instead of the pill), and it was warping my mind.

I still have body image issues. I still sometimes have an urge to hurt myself. And, though I still have anxiety attacks, I’ve learned how to talk myself down without reaching for a bottle of pills. Yes, these are serious issues, and many people should seek professional help to deal with these problems (and there is absolutely nothing wrong with going to the pro’s, trust me), but I don’t necessarily think it’s a new phenomenon.

I might get a lot of negative responses for saying this, but am I the only one who has had to deal with problems as a teenager? Hell, even in grad school, I faced cattiness, backstabbing, and fake people, besides the obvious fact that grad school is basically a vehicle for a nervous breakdown. But I survived. So why is social pressure such a huge deal for kids today?

I will agree that it seems that tweens have a more difficult time dealing with popularity, body image, and self esteem, but why? BBC reports that the most important protection against anxiety is a supportive system of family and friends.

If a strong, supportive family is so important, then I predict that this problem is going to snowball, as more and more teenagers are getting pregnant and becoming young, inexperienced parents. And Miley Cyrus’ latest shower pics aren’t helping either.

Readers, were your high school (and college) years all cotton candy and sparkles? I welcome your comments.

I’m not Amy Winehouse’s biggest fan. Not because I don’t think she’s talented—I do—I just don’t get her. I don’t get anyone who’s famous and then misses gigs and seems genuinely uninterested in the fans who gave them that fame. She’s a little too weird for me. But I figured the baby-who-hasn’t-eaten-for-weeks look and her huge hair was a thing she had cultivated for a while, a trademark. Part of her essence.

I figured wrong.

It seems like Ms. Winehouse was completely normal looking a few years ago. Buxom, smiling, basically tattoo free, and clean. She looked cute and friendly. Well fed. In no need of rehab.

Then something happened. Not being a Winehouse scholar, I have no idea what that something was. Massive amounts of drugs? A sudden urge to wear children’s shorts? A dislike of washing her hair? A midnight realization that her life would be so much better if she only looked like Nicole Richie? I don’t know. But something happened. Something drastic. It might rhyme with choke (and actually sort of be made up of the same lettering, minus an “h”), but I wouldn’t want to point fingers.