Need some belly lovin’? How about a little swish swish of those insides (oh, especially come January 1?).

We find ourselves at that point of the year. You know, the busy, insane part that ends up looking like sitting in traffic to get the presents bought and dragging ourselves to every last holiday party even though we hit our breaking point on December 2nd. Funniest thing about all these shenanigans is that it’s actually just about the best time of the year to sit and reflect. I believe, even as I book my tickets for 85 X-mas themed events over the next five days, that this is the true point of December/Winter/New Years. But somewhere along the way, we lost that innate tendency to reflect as our lives, and desires, took over. Some of us (my generation, ahem) have never known it any other way. Which is why, when I received two little gifts of stimulating questions on Friday, couple with a piece I wrote at BNT several weeks ago about developing a personal manifesto, I looked up at the sky and said, “ok, I get it.” Time to ponder 2009, and slowly and gently bring it to a close.

All anyone ever seems to be talking about these days (and really all days) is how much we need to change. Change our hair color. Change our bodies. Change our attitude. Change our nose, eyes, chin, eyebrows, the space between the eyebrows, jiggly thighs, untoned (is that a word?) ass. What is so wrong with all of us that we feel we need to change everything physically, emotionally, and mentally about ourselves? Is what comes at the end of these “changes” really better? Look at Joan Rivers, for pete’s sake. Well, I guess one reason that change is a part of all of our vocabularies is that it’s the only constant in life. Change comes whether we like it or not. And so maybe to a certain extent, we see deciding to make changes as a way of getting ahead of the forces that will eventually force the changes we don’t want on us.

Despite the hoopla over Climategate, don’t go out and buy four Hummers yet. There’s some purty depressing realities out there, including the fact that global warming has outpaced predictions. Yep, that means things are already worse than experts thought they would be at this point. Looks like by the end of this century, sea levels are gonna rise by two meters, or around six feet. And guess what? We’ve already passed the tipping point. According to Stefan Rahmstorf, a scientist at Germany’s Potsdam Institute and a widely recognized sea level expert, it’s officially unstoppable: “There is no way I can see to stop this rise, even if we have gone to zero emissions.”

A woman reading Playboy feels a little like a Jew reading a Nazi manual. ~Gloria Steinem
If love is a four-letter word, feminism is rooted in hell – just check in with an unfortunately large number of this society, any society, really. But how do they relate? Love and sex, sex and womanhood, womanhood and love. Or, step back. Love is sex, sex is womanhood, and womanhood is love. So why am I struggling so to codify my feminist belief system with my desire to be found sexy? It’s messy, messy, ugly when, on paper, it sure shouldn’t be. As a feminist, I should feel complete and utter power in my sexuality. Isn’t that part of what we’ve been fighting for? But sometimes it feels limited, as in “I’m not supposed to feel my sexuality in any way that is based on patriarchal ideals, or a male perception of what is considered beautiful vs. not, or anything that can later be used against me.”