This week, Tom Gabel, lead singer for the punk rock band Against Me!, announced in Rolling Stone that he is planning to make a transition from male to female. The 31-year-old rocker claims that he suffers from gender dysphoria and will take hormones and undergo electrolysis to help his transformation into a woman. He will now go by the name Laura Jane Grace. He also will stay married to his wife, Heather and continue living his life with her and their 2 year-old daughter.

After I heard this news, a lot more things started to make sense when it came to Against Me!’s music. One song in particular became quite clear. The song “The Ocean” off their album, New Wave. Gabel sings, “If I could have chosen, I would have been born a woman/ My mother once told me she would have named me Laura, I’d grow up to be strong and beautiful like her.” Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. Sometimes with mean words. We love a strong woman (unless she happens to be charging at us with her fists raised), so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like is photoshopping wrong!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Recently Kye Allums became the first publicly transgendered student-athlete in NCAA history to play as a male identifying player on the George Washington University women’s basketball team. It’s a big step for transgendered athletes everywhere and first off I have to say kudos to him. Still, with any kind of groundbreaking change like this, some questions arise, and it’s time to weigh in.

The big, obvious question, of course, is where does Allums belong in the sexually segregated world of college basketball? Though he hasn’t yet undergone gender reassignment, Allums does plan to have the surgery over the summer before returning for his senior season. He has no plans to take testosterone, and therefore won’t have any hormonal advantage over the other players on the women’s team, so it seems as though it shouldn’t be an issue. But on a very base level one has to wonder how things are going to be affected. Obviously it would be unfair to expect Allums to play on the men’s team, because of the physiological differences including the lower testosterone levels, but at the same time, he is essentially a man playing on the women’s team.

What do we do with that? Where does that leave the lines that have been set up by the sport’s governing body? Read More »

[It's pretty obvious that the average CollegeCandy reader has some very strong opinions. Opinions that she likes to share with everyone on the site. We love a strong woman, so we thought we'd give her a real forum to discuss her thoughts, feelings, and perspectives. Every Friday I'll be featuring a hot topic (like a textbook throwdown!) and leaving it up to you, the readers, to duke it out. So, read it and get your debate on in the comments section below!]

Two weeks into the semester and most of my friends are already sick enough of their new roommates to have practically moved in with their boyfriends. All this shuffle got me to wondering – wouldn’t it be easier if they could all just live with the boys the way they almost are now?

Turns out that I’m not the only one thinking along these lines. In fact, murmurs have been floating around for the last couple of years about some schools that are not only making their dorms coed, but their dorm rooms.

That’s right, mixed gender roomies. Read More »

Pamela Anderson is glamorous enough for Vivienne Westwood? WHAT?

Please, don’t drink the Kool-Aid.

Saturday Night Live will have some new additions.

Katy Perry pulled a “Janet Jackson.”

Does Bergdorf‘s discriminate against the slightly chubby?

All the great musicians are dying. Maybe it’s the drugs.

The “pregnant man” is at it again and Barbara Walters is all over it.

The Olsen twins have fashion? I had no idea.

Here’s another reason to leave your house on Black Friday.

The Sex and the City copycat is gone! Yes!

Today is Friday. Tomorrow is Saturday. That means the stock exchange is closed, which also means that the economy can’t crash for 2 whole days! Wahoo! Grab you’re your favorite snacks (fat is in!) and celebrate!

That is the best news we’ve heard all week, but that isn’t saying much after the week we’ve had:

Gay rights activists get locked out of a campus, a**holes continued to break girls’ hearts, celebs got all cocky on us, Joe Six Pack made an appearance, the presidential candidates “debated,” we had to watch Rachael Ray porn, Bubba had some transgender issues, our boyfriend posted that (PRIVATE) sex tape online, and I missed out on a fantastic opportunity to get with my campus’s most notorious man-whore.

But don’t worry; Barack Obama can make it all better! (No, that was not a political statement…that was a sexual one.)

Happy Friday, peeps.

Here at the College Candy offices, we watch a lot of TV. In our mindless daytime TV repertoire is everything you can ask for…if you’re asking for trash.

But it’s good trash! Jerry Springer, The Price Is Right, Judge Judy, and then our favorite…back-to-back episodes of Maury.

I love Maury Povich. He’s pushing 70 and he can still instill fear into the toughest baby-daddy. And that, my friends, is admirable. After watching 2 episodes a day for the last few weeks, I’ve noticed a pattern from Maury. He’s not just a talk show host. He’s a teacher willing to listen, educate, and then find our real fathers. And because he’s a veritable saint, there are many things we could all learn from Mr. Povich.

Write this down: Read More »