As a woman, I don’t spend too much time hanging out over at askmen.com. Maybe I should start, though, because people who frequent the site are getting valuable life lessons hand over fist in the form of the askmen Top 10. Today’s topic? Subtle Ways to Tell Her She’s Getting Fat.

According to askmen.com, one way to subtly tell your female partner she’s packed on a few too many lbs (you know, besides having a conversation with her about it) is to “sabotage her chair” by removing some of the slats or screws. That way, when she sits down on the chair and it breaks, you can shame her into thinking it was because she’s too fat! It’s a win-win!

Some of the other tips in the Top 10? Buy your girlfriend clothes that you know are too small for her, serve her unsatisfactory portions (but go back for seconds yourself when she isn’t looking), and trick her into going places where she will need to put on a bathing suit. All of these suggestions are to be followed up with some good ol’ fashioned shaming, just to make sure you get your point across. (You can read the full list of suggestions here, if you think your blood pressure can handle it.) I have included a few images from the list, just to spice things up. At least askmen.com is consistently misogynistic in their words and their images, right?

This one is from, “Ask her to wear an old dress.” Oh no!

Now I am all for people feeling comfortable enough in relationships to be honest when they would like their partner(s) to improve their health and appearance. If you are with someone who has gained weight, you have every right to mention it in a respectful way. You also have every right to not care one bit about it. Whatever works, right? The key is to have an adult, respectful conversation about it instead of trying to trick or embarrass someone into changing her/his lifestyle. (I am sure that you savvy Bitch readers are way ahead of me on that one, though.)

Of course, not every suggestion on the list is as abhorrent as the chair advice. Some, like changing your own eating habits, or encouraging your partner to go to the gym with you, seem perfectly reasonable. However, askmen just couldn’t resist adding snarky little comments at the end about how she might “see through your ploy” or how you need to take action by “separating her from fatty foods.” And that snarky advice is kicked up a few notches when the suggestions get more outrageous. (Hey askmen, leave the snarkiness where it belongs: right here at Bitch.) When the list suggests you serve your gal “unsatisfactory portions,” the author explains, “By making her ask for more food, you might succeed in shaming her into an acknowledgment of her recent weight gain.” Ah, sooo productive.

Here is the image from, “Playfully grab her love handles.” The text predicts that when you grab a woman’s “unwanted flab” she “recoils and feels embarrassment.” Mission accomplished!

And this leads us to one of the problems (among many) that I have with this Top 10 list: It’s so mean-spirited. Nearly all of the suggestions involve an element of deceit, and many of them require downright mocking. The tone is infantilizing toward women, and makes it seem like women, on our own, have no idea how to take care of ourselves. Apparently, the only way we’ll make a positive change in our lives is if our boyfriend (I am assuming a heterosexual audience here) makes us do it through trickery. And of course he isn’t doing it for our benefit, but rather so that he’ll want to bone us more. (Which is perfectly fine in a different context, obviously.)

Another problem here, of course, is that this list targets women only, as if there are no askmen.com readers who are in relationships with men that they’d like to see slim down a little. Would the advice be the same if it were directed toward men? Would askmen.com be telling those of us who date men that we should start tricking our fellas into sitting on broken chairs? Should we shame them into wearing swimsuits and then mock them once they do? Does this advice go both ways?

I think this advice should go nowhere except into the misogynistic, immature, garbage heap. (And yes, in my mind, that exists.) The people over at askmen.com should start asking themselves why they are such assholes, instead of encouraging their readers to disrespect women even more than they do already. To get your blood boiling and your comments flowing, here are a few choice comments from the askmen.com article:

NyteHawx says:Just be blunt: “B!tch you fat. Lose weight.” DONE. Women tells us bluntly to lose weight when we get pudgy; we should do the same to them.

Lenny Kramitz says:Why put up with it at all? This mangina crap only comes into play if you have to depend on one woman to take care of your sexual needs. If you have several women, you can just kick fatty to the curb.

Stephen says:My number 1? Yell “Man the harpoons!” when she walks into the room.

So what do you think?

bitchmagazine.com

Leafing through some women’s magazines while waiting for a hair appointment, I came across an interesting Vogue article. In fact, the article’s opening paragraph completely changed my life:

“There are three things a woman really needs at 38: a husband, at least one child, and a dress with long sleeves.”

Brilliant.

The husband and child need not be explained. It is a well-known fact that a woman cannot be complete unless she is married and a mother.

The long sleeves were baffling, until I read further and learned that a woman must always be ashamed of her arms and cover them: “A lot of women who have flabby arms think they have to wear sleeves. But I think if you have muscly arms, you must cover them. You must soften them!”

Of course. Regardless of how your body looks, you must be ashamed of it and cover it. Flabby arms? Cover them! You work out and have great biceps? OMYGOD YOU’RE NOT FEMININE, COVER THOSE UNSIGHTLY MUSCLES! You’re damned if you do and you’re damned if you don’t.

The article ends with the heartbreaking story of an evening gone very, very wrong: “I made a grave error. I had been invited to a dinner party at a grand house in the English countryside… I decided to wear a sleeveless Zac Posen dress. I arrived to find the hostess in gray silk and diamonds. The other girls were in chiffons… the men were in white tuxedos.”

So we already know this was a party for school girls and adult men. Because who in their right mind would call a grown woman “a girl?” That would be demeaning, belittling and totally inappropriate.

She continues: “It was pouring rain. Despite the storm, the hostess elected to keep the huge windows of her dining room thrown open all night… I was forced to put an inexpensive Club Monaco turtleneck over my Zac dress . I felt cold and unchic. If only I had worn sleeves.”

I think my head just exploded.

momgrind.com

I received this as an email and instead of saving the email, I decided to post it here so that I know I always have these great tips on my site. I plan on trying every single one of them too. I actually just tried the dryer tip (#17) at the bottom, so we’ll see how that one works out. Oh yeah, I probably won’t be trying the hair conditioner on my legs for shaving either since, well…I’m a guy. A lot of these tips are things that I can actually use on a regular basis too.

1. Reheat Pizza

Heat up leftover pizza in a nonstick skillet on top of the stove , set heat to med-low and heat till warm. This keeps the crust crispy. No soggy micro pizza. I saw this on the cooking channel and it really works.

2. Easy Deviled Eggs

Put cooked egg yolks in a zip lock bag. Seal, mash till they are all broken up. Add remainder of ingredients, reseal, keep mashing it up mixing roughly, cut the tip of the baggy, squeeze mixture into egg. Just throw bag away when done easy clean up.

3. Expanding Frosting

When you buy a container of cake frosting from the store, whip it with your mixer for a few minutes. You can double it in size. You get to frost more cake/cupcakes with the same amount. You also eat less sugar and calories per serving.

4. Reheating Refrigerated Bread

To warm biscuits, pancakes, or muffins that were refrigerated , place them in a microwave with a cup of water. The increased moisture will keep the food moist and help it reheat faster.

5. Newspaper Weeds Away

Start putting in your plants, work the nutrients in your soil. Wet newspapers put layers around the plants overlapping as you go cover with mulch and forget about weeds. Weeds will get through some gardening plastic they will not get through wet newspapers.

6. Picking Up Broken Glass

Use a wet cotton ball or Q-tip to pick up the small shards of glass you can’t see easily.

7. No More Mosquitoes

Place a dryer sheet in your pocket. It will keep the mosquitoes away.

8. Squirrel Away!

To keep squirrels from eating your plants sprinkle your plants with cayenne pepper. The cayenne pepper doesn’t hurt the plant and the squirrels won’t come near it.

9. Flexible Vacuum

To get something out of a heat register or under the fridge add an empty paper towel roll or empty gift wrap roll to your vacuum. It can be bent or flattened to get in narrow openings.

10. Reducing Static Cling

Pin a small safety pin to the seam of your slip and you will not have a clingy skirt or dress. Same thing works with slacks that cling when wearing panty hose. Place pin in seam of slacks and — ta da! — static is gone.

11. Unsticky Measuring Cups

Before you pour sticky substances into a measuring cup, fill with hot water. Dump out the hot water, but don’t dry cup. Next, add your ingredient, such as peanut butter, and watch how easily it comes right out.

12. Foggy Windshield?

Hate foggy windshields? Buy a chalkboard eraser and keep it in the glove box of your car. When the windows fog, rub with the eraser! Works better than a cloth!

13. Reopening Envelopes

If you seal an envelope and then realize you forgot to include something inside, just place your sealed envelope in the freezer for an hour or two. Viola! It unseals easily.

14. Smoother Legs With Conditioner

Use your hair conditioner to shave your legs. It’s a lot cheaper than shaving cream and leaves your legs really smooth. It’s also a great way to use up the conditioner you bought but didn’t like when you tried it in your hair…

15. Goodbye Fruit Flies

To get rid of pesky fruit flies , take a small glass fill it 1/2″ with Apple Cider Vinegar and 2 drops of dish washing liquid , mix well. You will find those flies drawn to the cup and gone forever!

16. Get Rid of Ants

Put small piles of cornmeal where you see ants. They eat it, take it “home”, can’t digest it so it kills them. It may take a week or so, especially if it rains , but it works & you don’t have the worry about pets or small children being harmed!

17. Info About Clothes Dryers

The heating unit went out on my dryer! The gentleman that fixes things around the house for us told us that he wanted to show us something and he went over to the dryer and pulled out the lint filter. It was clean. (I always clean the lint from the filter after every load clothes.) He told us that he wanted to show us something; he took the filter over to the sink, ran hot water over it. The lint filter is made of a mesh material – I’m sure you know what your dryer’s lint filter looks like.

WELL…the hot water just sat on top of the mesh! It didn’t go through it at all! He told us that dryer sheets cause a film over that mesh that’s what burns out the heating unit. You can’t SEE the film , but it’s there. It’s wha t is in the dryer sheets to make your clothes soft and static free – that nice fragrance too, you know how they can feel waxy when you take them out of the box, well this stuff builds up on your clothes and on your lint screen This is also what causes dryer units to catch fire & potentially burn your house down with it! He said the best way to keep your dryer working for a very long time (& to keep your electric bill lower) is to take that filter out & wash it with hot soapy water & an old toothbrush (or other brush) at least every six months. He said that makes the life of the dryer at least twice as long!

How about that!?! Learn something new every day! I certainly didn’t know dryer sheets would do that. So, I thought I’d share!

Note: I went to my dryer & tested my screen by running water on it. The water ran through a little bit but mostly collected all the water in the mesh screen. I washed it with warm soapy water & a nylon brush & I had it done in 30 seconds. Then when I rinsed it the water ran right thru the screen! There wasn’t any puddling at all! That repairman knew what he was talking about!

aimlessdirection.com