With politics boiling over all around us people are becoming quite polarized. I know that I have had many a fight with my right-leaning sister-in-law (whom I normally LOVE) that would have turned to blows had my brother not jumped in (literally) to break them up. It wasn’t like I planned to fight with her; I just couldn’t believe the things she was saying and, before I knew it, I was biting off her head and spitting at her.

What can I say? I’m very passionate.

Which made things a bit difficult for me recently when I met a wonderful guy…whom I soon found out was a Republican (ew). I wanted to like him – really I did – but was it really possible to be with someone who votes for the other party? I mean, it may be just a vote, but doesn’t it all tie back to someone’s beliefs, morals and passion?

I tried to stick it out, but I couldn’t get myself past the fact that he declared his love for Fox News within the first 5 minutes of my arrival.

Don’t get me wrong; there is nothing wrong with Fox News. And there is nothing wrong with Republicans. But someone who makes a bold statement about his love for Fox News is not someone I want to be with. It is one thing to date someone who votes for the other team; it is quite another to date someone who votes for the other team and then declares his love for said team from every pedestal/mountain/tall chair he can find. Read More »

Tired of all the washed – up rags out there that regurgitate the same gossip and beauty tips month after month? Well, there’s a new magazine on the rack that will be offering some different material. Muslim Girl is a magazine catering to just that — young Muslim girls who feel alienated by trashy, sex – fueled magazines like Seventeen and YM.

While Muslim Girl will offer advice columns and fashion spreads, the advice columns will focus not on blow jobs and dieting but “ethical dilemmas,” and the fashion spreads will not have scantily – clad tweens but modest models. But the magazine will spend the majority of its pages emphasizing positive female role models in Muslim culture.

I think Muslim Girl’s “white” counterparts should follow its suit. Seventeen, of course, was at the pinnacle of my reading list when I was all of twelve (I moved on to Cosmo when I was fifteen). For all the time I spent guiltily reading about crazy (and most definitely untrue) sexual exploits and blue eyeshadow, not to mention obsessively scrutinizing my developing body in comparison with the Brazilian models they used in photo spreads, I could have benefitted from some demure female role models of whatever ethnicity.