Picking a clever women’s magazine is kind of like selecting the classiest member of the cast of Jersey Shore.

Still, Marie Claire kind of hovered a bit above rags like Cosmo with some pieces on women’s issues around the world and a less trashy style focus. Like many former glossy readers (I consumed most of them voraciously in my college days at FIT) I can’t recall the last time I’ve flipped through the pages of one, but I seem to recall Marie Claire being slightly less focused on blowjobs, stilettos and lipgloss. In a time when magazines are desperately clinging to readers and trying to convert the techie ones to blog subscribers, the magazine with the motto “More Than a Pretty Face” has managed to fritter away a lot of that lingering esteem with one single, poorly written blog post by writer Maura Kelly.

Kelly, an admitted recovering anorexic, posted at length about her disgust at a new show that dares to depict fat people making out. She describes her horror at a new CBS sitcom about fatties, called Mike & Molly, in terms that have sparked widespread outrage in the blogosphere:

My initial response was: Hmm, being overweight is one thing — those people are downright obese! And while I think our country’s obsession with physical perfection is unhealthy, I also think it’s at least equally crazy, albeit in the other direction, to be implicitly promoting obesity! Yes, anorexia is sick, but at least some slim models are simply naturally skinny. No one who is as fat as Mike and Molly can be healthy. And obesity is costing our country far more in terms of all the related health problems we are paying for, by way of our insurance, than any other health problem, even cancer.

So anyway, yes, I think I’d be grossed out if I had to watch two characters with rolls and rolls of fat kissing each other … because I’d be grossed out if I had to watch them doing anything. To be brutally honest, even in real life, I find it aesthetically displeasing to watch a very, very fat person simply walk across a room — just like I’d find it distressing if I saw a very drunk person stumbling across a bar or a heroine addict slumping in a chair.

(Is a “heroine addict” someone who is dependent on romance novels?) Kelly goes on to insist she’s not a “size-ist jerk” despite the prior two paragraphs proving the opposite without a shadow of a doubt, even dusting off the “I have fat friends” argument. Then she lays down the icing on the fat-hating cake- the condescending advice to fat folks that may be tempted to walk across a room in her line of sight, people who clearly don’t know Kelly’s secret formula to being not repulsive:

(I’m happy to give you some nutrition and fitness suggestions if you need them — but long story short, eat more fresh and unprocessed foods, read labels and avoid foods with any kind of processed sweetener in them whether it’s cane sugar or high fructose corn syrup, increase the amount of fiber you’re getting, get some kind of exercise for 30 minutes at least five times a week, and do everything you can to stand up more — even while using your computer — and walk more. I admit that there’s plenty that makes slimming down tough, but YOU CAN DO IT! Trust me. It will take some time, but you’ll also feel so good, physically and emotionally. A nutritionist or personal trainer will help — and if you can’t afford one, visit your local YMCA for some advice.)

Kelly tacked on a majorly half-assed apology to offended fatties, but judging by the comments, it has done nothing to improve goodwill toward the magazine in the wake of the post’s publication. (Marie Claire is also currently a trending topic on Twitter.) Does Marie Claire need to re-evaluate its online editorial policies? Do you find this piece horribly offensive, or just sadly truthful? And is it just me, or is Kelly way too horsey-faced to complain about having to look at fat people in public?

‘Marie Claire’ loses ‘thinking women’s’ distinction with anti-fatty blog post is a post from: The Inquisitr

If you’ve been on internet forums or any social media outlet, you’re probably aware that certain topics are almost always ground zero for a flame war- among them are circumcision, tipping waitstaff and breastfeeding.

A Tulsa coffeeshop owner managing a Twitter account for his business learned the hard way yesterday how pissing off the wrong contingent of Twitter can catapult a business to undesirable infamy when he tweeted that his shop was a no-breastfeeding zone. And we all know that hell hath no fury like a mommyblogger sent to her car or a toilet stall to feed her baby.

Double Shot Coffee Company owner Brian Franklin sent the ill-advised tweet sometime yesterday:

“Notice: No breastfeeding at the DoubleShot. Thank you.”

Putting aside the fact that he’s wrong, that women have rights in his state to breastfeed wherever they are legally allowed to be present and generally breastfeeding women are not looking to have you stare at their boobs; I also wonder who spends money in his shop while much of the population is out at their day jobs? Who has more time to spend in a coffeeshop during daylight hours- the workforce, or a woman spending the majority of her time with a breastfeeding infant? I mean, doesn’t this have “bad marketing strategy” written all over it? Multiplied by social media, it’s even worse.

Franklin quickly began backpedaling, but the sad thing is that he doesn’t seem to have ever grasped why his tweet was so inflammatory. He seems to be placating what he views as an angry set of “nipple nazis,” not ever realizing that if you’ve ever been asked to feed your infant in a filthy restroom stall, merely reading a tweet like that from hundreds of miles away still can make you apoplectic with rage. He sent some confusing and inconsistent tweets after he deleted his first:

Settle down, folks. We just don’t like walking across the room and seeing your breast. Maybe you could do it in private.

Ok ok, breastfeeding allowed again at the DoubleShot. Hey! Breastfeeding all around.

I was just kidding anyway. Didn’t expect that blow up. Sorry to get you guys riled up.

So women shouldn’t expose their “breast,” but it’s okay anyway and he was just kidding in the first place. Franklin clarifies further to the local news:

“Some of the people angry about this were concerned for their individual rights and the right of their baby to eat.  It is as if I had tried to pass a law banning the practice of breastfeeding universally.  The fact is, these people aren’t concerned with individual rights.  They are concerned with THEIR rights.  They would not fight for my right to ban breastfeeding in my establishment if I chose to do so. I don’t mind if people breastfeed in the DoubleShot, but it’s funny to me that people don’t consider the rights of others; only their own.  If one really believes in the American dream of individual rights, they must believe in the rights of others to do or think or say things they don’t agree with.  My capitalist ideals tell me that business owners should be able to make their own rules and individuals should then decide if they want to support that business or not.  As it is, the over-regulation of our government seems to step in and tell us everything that we can and can’t do.  I agree with the rights of people to boycott businesses they dislike, though in this case, people are mislead.  We allow breastfeeding and women do breastfeed when they want,” says Brian Franklin.

No, Brian- the problem is not that individual businesses are having their rights assailed. It’s that if people with your level of ignorance were allowed to routinely ban breastfeeding in public places, many would, and women would be forced to use formula or breastfeed a child in a hot car or dirty restroom.

Laws are needed precisely to protect women from businesses that may behave as yours does- who exactly do you need protection from that requires a law? How is a woman nursing harming your business? And if an upset customer complained to you that a black person was sitting at the table next to them, would you ban black people from your establishment to retain business? Should there be laws protecting classes of people from discrimination, particularly in areas where there is known to be tendencies to discriminate? And if so, why should breastfeeding women be excluded from the same protection afforded other classes who tend to be discriminated against?

This all goes back the the fact that if this argument hadn’t made it to social media in the first place, Franklin a) probably would still have the offensive policy in place and b) wouldn’t have gotten all the attention from the Twitter scandal. The effects of incidents like this in social media on a small business are difficult to measure, but hopefully as angry tweets from lactivists roll in hour by hour, he’ll at least begin to understand why saying polarizing things on Twitter isn’t necessarily clever business practice.

[via Consumerist]

Tulsa’s Double Shot coffee shop percolates Twitter outrage over breastfeeding ban is a post from: The Inquisitr

That was fast.

On Monday night, a CUNY grad student we can only assume was garbage diving (bad idea in NYC, bed bugs!) was horrified to find scads of unworn, new merchandise discarded at the Herald Square H&M rendered unwearable, presumably by store management. Winter jackets slashed and spilling fiber fill, little girls’ mary janes with the insoles shredded and “warm socks” were among the curbed items Cynthia Magnus found that chilly night in Manhattan- sad especially because of the high number of homeless people just in the Herald Square-Penn Station area alone.

Although it was only Monday night that the act was discovered, press and blogs picked up the story- the idea that decent clothing would be destroyed like that when so many people right now don’t have jobs resonated, and the topic quickly became popular on Twitter. H&M quickly denied the practice being widespread, which doesn’t quite make sense. (Why would anyone go to the trouble of destroying clothing and shoes in such a large volume if not instructed by someone to do so?) What does seem likely is the possibility that the retailer feared unscrupulous folks would return unpurchased items for credit or exchange, but H&M did not indicate the reason the Herald Square H&M destroyed the clothing.

H&M responded immediately and promised the practice was being discontinued, and insisted it was not corporate policy in the first place. Twitter rumors also suggest that a manager was fired for the incident and ensuing brouhaha, but that has not been confirmed via the press or by H&M. Although H&M did not defend their practices to Magnus when she called to report it, involvement of the New York Times got a statement immediately:

“It will not happen again,” said Nicole Christie, a spokeswoman for H & M in New York. “We are committed 100 percent to make sure this practice is not happening anywhere else, as it is not our standard practice.”

Ms. Christie said it was H & M’s policy to donate unworn clothing to charitable groups. She said that she did not know why the store on 34th Street was slashing the clothes, and that the company was checking to make sure that none of its other stores were doing so.

The company followed up with a statement on their Facebook about what Racked is calling “trashgate”:

“H&M is committed to taking responsibility for how our operations affect both people and the environment. Our policy is to donate any damaged usable garments to charity. We’re currently investigating an incident in a NY store that is not representative of our policy. We will follow with more information as soon as we are able. H&M’s US sales operation donates thousands of garments each year through Gifts In Kind Int.”

See, internet? You did good. Now you can get back to fapping.

[Image]

Internet hands H&M its ass over mutilated clothes, H&M apologies and promises to stop is a post from: The Inquisitr

The furor over Jan Moir has died down on Twitter, but a new evil British columnist has stepped into the Twitter hate limelight.

This time it’s UK restaurant critic AA Gill, who you may remember for describing the Welsh in general as “loquacious, dissemblers, immoral liars, stunted, bigoted, dark, ugly, pugnacious little trolls” or his description of his countrymen as “beady eyed” and “beefy-bottomed.” Gill posted a gleeful piece this weekend in the Sunday Times about killing a baboon essentially just to watch it die. (Mind you, regarding the Johnny Cash reference that Cash has stated he wrote the lyric because he couldn’t think of anything more evil than killing someone just to watch them die, and he wanted to indicate that the song’s subject was indeed an evil man.) Gill is currently getting a lot of Twitter rage from our gun-shy friends across the pond who take issue with his gratuitous murder of a cute and clever animal.

Gill talks about how baboons try to, you know- not die when they see jerks like him swanning about on holiday with guns:

I’m told they can be tricky to shoot: they run up trees, hang on for grim life. They die hard, baboons. But not this one. A soft-nosed .357 blew his lungs out. We paced the ground. The air was filled with a furious keening of his tribe. Two hundred and fifty yards. Not a bad shot.

As the dead baboon’s baboon friends and family grieved him, Gill remorselessly assesses the impetus behind killing the little monkey:

I know perfectly well there is absolutely no excuse for this. There is no mitigation. Baboon isn’t good to eat, unless you’re a leopard. The feeble argument of culling and control is much the same as for foxes: a veil for naughty fun. They might, at some unspecified theoretical future date, eat birds’ eggs, young impalas and dik-diks — they are opportunist omnivores. You wouldn’t trust one to baby-sit.

The baboon hunt, which goes on for a whole page, is merely a lead-in to a review of a restaurant. Tweeters have been tweeting their disgust increasingly, and here are a few recent ones:

AA Gill…. what a massive wanker.

If I shoot AA Gill will I know what it’s like to kill a baboon?

I just shot AA Gill to see what it would feel like to kill Nick Griffin.

I hereby copyright a “Pay-per-view event of a monkey shooting AA Gill.”

And of course, it wouldn’t be internet rage without referencing the past few big internet scandals:

I was going to get angry about AA Gill until I read (an) excellent Jan Moir piece about how baboons make questionable lifestyle choices.

The controversial column has predictably spawned a new hashtag: #baboonboy.

This week’s UK Twitter villain: AA Gill, who killed a baboon for the hell of it is a post from: The Inquisitr