The lovely @CruelSecretary twittered Is Angelina Jolie the Next Feminist Icon? :: Media and Technology :: AlterNet to me this morning. Let's say that I stopped taking seriously not just Naomi Wolff but Virginia Richmond as well after I read this part:

A quarter of American households are headed by single parents, often portrayed as sad, poverty-stricken and pathetic, and Jolie turned that it into a "fairly radical, vision... that made the relationship seem tender, glamorous, and complete, father figure or no father figure in the picture." She re-framed single motherhood "from a state of lack or insufficiency to a glamorous, unfettered lifestyle choice."

Why I was a bit ticked-off about this? Well, before there was Angelina Jolie the "children collector" and proto-feminist icon, I reckoned we had Josephine Baker more than three generations ago.

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Please do not lose any weight. Not one ounce. Not one milligram. You look perfect just the way you are right now.

Seriously, you make ME want to lose 40 pounds, cover myself in leather and tattoos and totally go butch for a night of good lesbo love for you.

Did I say I am a het?

Yet gurl, you got it going on after those twins. It's why I can't believe the rumors that you've been falling on your anorectic tendencies because you feel fat and ugly.

You know I don't have to tell you EVERY SINGLE WOMAN goes through that after giving birth. Don't knock yourself down woman. You look perfect. Eat more a couple of hamburgers a week and splurge on that pizzas you like.

'Cause, child, you make a het woman want to go totally bi for you. Am thinking if I want to hit that with you ten thousand ways to Monday, I'd have to find it in my heart to entertain Brad. Anyhow, you look lovely and perfect and healthy.

So girl, stay just the way you are.

Love,
liza

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Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn All that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country To allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own.

It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice."

Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession.

As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war,

Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.
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I re-broadcast here Mother's Day for Peace's beautiful homage to the anti-war promise of that is Mother Day's, on this my 10th anniversary as a mother.

I first posted this at Hollywoodistas.com, but it's such a culturekitchen topic to discuss that I just had to cross-post it.

I hate it when I get beaten to a story. For days now I have been researching the possible cause of Britney's meltdown ... and effing TMZ.com beat me to it by a day. URGH!

TMZ has learned Britney Spears' troubles may have little to do with substance abuse. Sources say doctors at her rehab facility think the underlying reason for her trouble may be post-partum depression.

Sources tell TMZ that Britney's doctors have two operating theories -- either that she suffers from post-partum depression or bipolar disorder. The doctors strongly believe post-partum is the problem.

I am not a doctor, so I cannot give a technical assesment of the pop tarts' situation, but as one of the many women who've been felled at one point or another by post-partum depression, I can tell you that what Britney's going through is way more extreme than your run-of-the-mill PPD.

Hers may be a case of post-partum psychosis.

There is actually quite a lot written about post-partum depression, easily available with the click of a google search. What seems still to be a subject of taboo is the idea of post-partum pyschosis, thanks in part to the Andrea Yates multiple infanticide case.
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