Dear Mr. Thong Inventor,

I would like to preface this letter by saying that your work has made a large yet incredibly skimpy contribution to my adolescent years. And while I do believe in the nobleness of your cause, I am rather puzzled by the method to the madness of such an invention. As I hold up the tiny piece of fabric that is my underwear, several questions come to mind, such as:

• Which came first: The thong, or “The Thong Song”?
The first time I heard the thong song, I was 11-years-old. Try explaining to a sixth grader, still under-clad with flower-print Hanes grannie panties, the concept of a thong. Watching a leprechaun of a man do cartwheels on the beach doesn’t really do that good of a job of explaining the exact science behind the thong. In fact, I’m pretty sure I thought he was singing about summertime footwear up until 2001, when I realized I needed to wear this contraption to be socially acceptable.

• Where the devil did you get this genius idea?
Was it a public service project? Did you see one too many VPLs (Visible Panty Lines, for you not-in-the-knows) and proclaim “I’ve had it! I’m inventing buttless underwear!” To you, Mr. Thong Inventor, going commando just wasn’t an option. Now that point I can understand, as I probably have not washed my jeans since the opening night of “Sex and the City.” And who really likes walking around with that “I’m wearing the pant equivalent of dirty underwear” feeling all day? Yeah, neither do I. So really, Mr. T.I, you were the answer to my laundry-lazy, VPL-phobic prayers.

• How the hell did you get it to catch on?
No seriously. It takes pure skill to get a woman to try on a permanent wedgie, let alone make it a long lasting trend in the sexy lingerie industry. Think about it: it’s a tiny scrap of cotton, satin, silk, or pearls (hey, I dunno what kinda stuff you’re into…) that is designed to chill between your butt cheeks all day. But women still go crazy for them! They even tease other women that don’t wear their underwear up their ass. Read More »

Thanks to satirical cartoons and recorded history, it’s pretty common knowledge that Walt Disney was a nut bag. Besides being obsessed with cryogenically freezing his own head, the guy was an anti-Semite and hired Nazi rocket scientists to design his rides.

Then there’s the racism and sexism in all of the cartoons his company has produced.

But I guess we’d all thought, with the advent of the first ever black female lead in a Disney cartoon, that the company had turned a new, desperate leaf and was actually interested in being a culturally aware organization rather then a profit-hungry global conglomerate steeped in Nazi tradition (Did you know?: Pirates of the Caribbean is powered by the OCCULT!).

We thought wrong. Looks like theres’ a huge labor dispute going on right now between Disney and a few thousand hotel employees, which was brought to a head today when protesters marched on the California Disney locations, dressed (hilariously) as Disney characters.

Bewildered tourists in Disney T-shirts and caps, some pushing strollers, filed past the commotion and gawked at the costumed picketers getting hauled away. The protest shut down a major thoroughfare outside Disneyland and California Adventure for nearly an hour.

“It’s changing my opinion of Disneyland,” said tourist Amanda Kosato, who was visiting from north of Melbourne, Australia. “Taking away entitlements stinks.” Read More »

Every once in a while, your editors come across something that hurts them to the bottom of their core. Usually, they just swivel towards one another and scream about it until everything feels better, but this week, they are separated by many a mile. So, what happens when a report comes out about the iPhone being sexist, and there’s no one to scream to?

We IM our asses off.

Read More »

From the moment John Edwards dropped out of the race in January, everyone knew this would be no ordinary primary season. Remaining contenders Obama and Clinton were very similar politically and both were making history by challenging the twin traditional societal norms of racism and sexism.

The upshot being of course that as the death knell sounds for the Clinton campaign politicos are not only discussing how she lost politically but also how the “female-thing” influenced voters.

I myself am hesitant to immediately point to sexism as the cause of her loss—just as I would have been equally reluctant to point to racism had Obama lost. Yet the uphill battle that Hillary’s campaign faced in the news media is a reminder of the difficulties of being a dominant and ambitious woman in today’s society.

While during the campaign we heard the tired old argument that a woman is too weak to be president especially during a time of war and that world leaders wouldn’t respect her (umm… yes let’s just discount Margaret Thatcher shall we?), Hillary came under intense fire for her personality as a woman. Read More »