I don’t do a lot of fund raising on Sarah and the Goon Squad but this is something that I believe in.
Choralis is a first rate community based choir in the Washington D.C Area. Besides being kind enough to let me in, they also provide scholarships to 12 students each year. Gretchen Kuhrmann is an amazing director and I suggest you come see us perform if you are in the area.
Of course if you can’t I understand.
But, I promised these people I would raise $100. Running a choir isn’t cheap, providing scholarship is expensive.
I figured that if I could get each of you to give $1 (or $5 if you are loaded or really into choral music) we could probably raise $100.
I know things are tight, and I know we aren’t curing cancer, but I figured you guys could all spare a dollar for a noble cause.
The paypal button below will let you donate directly to Choralis leaving out the middle man. If you feel more comfortable going through me, my e-mail address is goonsquadsarah at gmail dot com and I can get the money to the choir.
I don’t do this much over here, but I wrote this for Draft Day Suit and I thought I’d like to talk to you guys about this too. Don’t forget to click more or you will miss Danica Patrick in a bikini.
See? Adorable. The assholes who said she was fat should feel stupid and mean. She looks great right?
This whole thing should be so exciting, women athletes rarely grace the front cover of Sports Illustrated. Hell, women rarely appear on the front cover of SI unless it is the swimsuit issue. I was very pleased when I saw this, a woman athlete, an olympic sport this close to the Super Bowl! Not that I am knocking the Super Bowl in any way. I love the Super Bowl almost as much as I love bacon but it was nice to see something different for a change.
Sadly, things just couldn’t stay nice. People can’t just shut up and be happy for a nice all-American skier, can they? Nope.
“Oh,” cry the women, “she is being objectified!”
No. She really isn’t.
That is what skiers wear. Yes, the pose is exaggerated but it is photography. The photograph is cool. If you see that magazine cover and think about sex maybe the problem lies within because when I see that picture I think about skiing.
As my friend Laurie put it when we were discussing Lindsay Vonn yesterday, “she can’t win, obviously – she’s either cheating to win because she’s fat or she’s hot bending over.”
Women athletes are objectified all of the time – don’t even get me started on Danica Patrick or Anna Kournakova – this is not one of those times.
Let’s all take a deep breath and be excited for the Olympics and skiing and Lindsey Vonn.
It isn’t even 5:00 PM yet and my county has already canceled school tomorrow due to Snopocalypse II: Electric Boogaloo.
The kids are going ape shit. They already tried to wash the mirror with bright purple foaming kids soap.
My local twitter prognosticators are saying that school probably won’t be back in until Tuesday at the soonest.
I know that one to two feet is a lot of snow but wow.
When I was at the grocery store yesterday there was a huge run on hot dog and hamburger buns. I’m still fairly new to snow, is one supposed to barbecue during a blizzard? Is it like the Fourth of July? Because my plan was to sit on the couch with a blanket and read a nice book or something.
I just got a text that said there was a run on Spam at Costco. SPAM. It is a snow storm not a nuclear holocaust.
I guess what I am trying to say is that I understand we stand a chance of getting 24 inches of snow. I understand that 24 inches is an assload of snow, but can’t we all just calm the hell down and stay inside?
And by stay inside, I mean after school on Friday, and only until Monday morning.
My first reaction was to recite that to myself 800 times a day and see if it worked. I’ve been having a lot of trouble getting motivated to lose weight in the last couple of years. I thought maybe this would help.
Instead, it just made me realize how wrong she was. Here is a short list of reasons why Kate Moss is wrong.
beer
Doritos
Pringles sour cream and onion chips
bacon
bagels
a bloody mary
macaroni and cheese
foie gras
french fries
Anything from Five Guys
brownies
fresh strawberries
cheese steak
fried rice
burritos
beef stroganoff
wine
pizza
fried chicken
See? Those are just off the top of my head. I didn’t even put any real thought in to that list. Just think if I had more time to expand!
“Kate Moss’s comments are likely to cause many more. If you read any of the pro-anorexia websites, they go crazy for quotes like this.”
The slogan is adopted on various websites, including one called Starving For Control.
Green, 22, who is a size 12, added: “Millions of girls aspire to be like Kate Moss. These comments are shocking and irresponsible.”
Wait a second. Pro-Anorexia websites? There are multiple websites that support a disease?
What is this world coming to? Are there pro-polio websites? Are people hoping to successfully become alcoholics? Do we need websites to help us get sick?
Getting back to Kate’s motto, maybe I’m not the best judge of what being skinny feels like. The last time I was truly “skinny” I was recovering from mono, so to me skinny feels like a really bad sore throat and dying. I’m sure it feels different to her. Maybe to her it feels like millions of dollars.
I have no personal reference to how millions of dollars feels, but I bet it is pretty awesome.
It just seems to me like in this day and age (the day and age where I just became my grandmother by using that phrase) where even France has banned runway models that are too skinny and young girls are dying every day from anorexia we could try to promote more healthy concepts than “Nothing tastes as good as skinny feels”.
And in that top picture at least, skinny actually looks sort of painful.
I am trying to raise a daughter over here. I would love it if she can be spared the weight issues and self-esteem bullshit I have been dealing with since I was 12.
I wrote this piece about Elizabeth Lambert yesterday for BlogHer. I’ve had some negative feedback (which I anticipated) but I am wondering what you guys think. I do see soccer as a violent sport. Am I wrong?
As soon as I saw the Elizabeth Lambert video I knew that I would be writing about her this week. Elizabeth is the “mean girl” soccer player that was suspended for rough play this week. She is the girl who was caught on video punching another player in the back and pulling hair.
I am not saying that this excuses her behavior. I do not think that anyone (perhaps anyone outside of WWE wresting anyway) should be pulling other people to the ground using their hair.
What I am saying is that while Elizabeth Lambert certainly overreacted and was clearly unsportmanlike, her competitors were elbowing her too. Why isn’t anyone upset about that?
And have none of us ever watched a soccer game before?
Soccer can be a tough game and it appears that’s especially true in the Mountain West Conference. Footage of the conference semifinal game in Provo, Utah – where BYU beat New Mexico 1-0 – has been making the rounds and not for any of the right reasons.
Why is it that the only time women’s sports make the nightly news is when the players cross the line? Last summer, an on-court brawl between the Detroit Shock and the Los Angeles Sparks was front page news. Now, game footage of the BYU – New Mexico match is being rerun on ESPN and major network news shows.
The two teams in question combined for what would seem like a stunning 25 fouls, however according to The Sporting Blog, that’s actually not a huge number:
“In the three games of last year’s Women’s Final Four, there were 23, 24, and 33 fouls. The shocker is that only one yellow card came out in this game, which seems wildly out of proportion to the amount of brutality in the above video.”
See? I don’t want you to think that I approve of Lambert’s actions, but soccer is a violent sport. It is like the only things anyone knows about women’s soccer is Brandi Chastain in a sports bra and this Elizabeth Lambert debacle.
It is a fantastic image, but did anyone actually watch the game? Would anyone be freaking out if this was a men’s soccer game? I doubt it.
…I think a lot of times more force than necessary is used on athletic fields, but I’ve never been out there so I don’t know what it’s like. I do know that winning is a huge expectation in high stakes games and pressure drives people to crazy behavior. I’m not sure that’s always a good idea. And whereas I do believe strongly in accountability I think it’s sad that of all the things a highly competitive, talented female athlete can be known for in her collegiate career, it boils down to headlines with words like “dirty” and “violent,” and stupid, videotaped, aggressive behavior. I’m sure she can do way better. Let’s hope she does from now on, no matter who’s watching.
Elizabeth Lambert has been indefinitely suspended from The University of New Mexico’s athletics department and she has issued an apology.
I still think the issue is that the violence was done by a woman. This type of brutality is not at all uncommon in men’s soccer.
Soccer Hooligans are famous for rioting. I guess Americans just aren’t used to seeing this kind of thing from the ladies in their colleges. I think Elizabeth Lambert deserved to be suspended. I think she acted inappropriately, but I also think the outrage is coming from people who don’t watch soccer.
