You have a child. Congratulations! Now you just have to raise it.

You’ve been living in the lap of green luxury with your partner. You spend a minimal amount on food because you’re so good at gardening, farmers’ market shopping and home cooking. You recycle, compost and ride your bike everywhere. Life is good. Simple, affordable and semi-logical. Then one of you brings it up: children.

“It’s a good time to start,” says one of you. “Plus, we’re not getting any younger.”

Children: a perennial favorite. Children are wonderful! In celebration of this, let us ponder on all the reasons they’re not.

20. They might have that one family gene that Uncle Bob has. The one where he thinks he is part alien, part groundhog. Or was a spy. While also being a famous rock star.

19. Someday, somehow, you know that it is your children who will act as the agents of your own death. They’ve already stolen half of your chromosomes. Who knows to what other lengths these tiny genetic replicants will go? You’ll have to watch every move they make. Haven’t you known since your own childhood that all it takes is step on a crack and you’ll break your mother’s back? Children cannot possibly be trusted to maintain your spinal integrity. The world is full of aging sidewalks bulging with rips and tears, and your bone density is low enough as it is.

18. What if they’re all cisgendered? What will you blog about then? 

17. The manifold and shimmering joys of spinsterhood will never be yours.

16. Your daughter is going to have an iPhone by her fifth birthday, and she’s going to use it exclusively for internet bullying.

15. Capitalism, you know, man? Capitalism.

14. American children eat practically every day. Do you have any idea how wasteful that is? Do you even know how many small female-run businesses you could support in Nigeria with that kind of money? Seven. You could support seven, and they would all make the most amazing shoes. Well, not shoes exactly. More like slippers. Incredibly comfortable slippers. But you decided to have children, so instead of reviving their local economy, all of these women got malaria and died, leaving behind 26 motherless children, none of whom have any slippers.

13. There’s an 80% chance that any child born after 2011 is going to end up posting at least four videos of themselves wearing a cat mask to Xtube. I’m sorry, but there it is.

12. What’s your family’s stance on negotiating with terrorists? What if one of your children is kidnapped? Do you pay the kidnappers, or do you write off your losses and focus on the survivors? What’s your absolute price ceiling? Do you adjust for yearly inflation or stick to a flat rate? If one of your children is ransomed, won’t that set a dangerous precedent for his or her younger siblings?

11. They probably don’t even know what Dim Sum is.

10. Your children are going to absolutely hate Radiohead.

9. If you take your baby on a plane with you to visit your family on the East Coast, and your baby cries, and the man in the seat in front of you whips his head around and glowers unpleasantly, you’re going to feel really uncomfortable for the entire six-hour flight. Also, the flight attendant will forget to bring you your ginger ale, but you’ll feel too self-conscious to remind her to bring you one the next time she checks in on your row. You don’t deserve a ginger ale, because you’re a terrible mother who can’t even keep her own baby from crying, you terrible mother of a crying baby.

8. Think of all the juice boxes, granola bar wrappers and other packaged crap they’re going to beg you for. YOU, the queen of recycling and organic eating!

7. Your son is going to have a Flickr account if Yahoo doesn’t kill it first, and it’s going to be absolutely terrible.

6. None of your children will finish graduate school before the age of 35. The only degrees available will be an MBA in gaming apps or a doctorate in dessert photography. All of your offspring will be unemployable. This is also right around when Social Security will give out.

5. Any child born after the Global Banking Act of 2017 must serve three years as an unpaid intern in Bank of America’s deep-sea titanium mines.

4. You’re still going to die, you know.

3. You know that cats suck the air right out of babies’ mouths, don’t you? So you’ll always have to worry about that. Cats are witches, and witches hate babies.

2. What if only one of your children is gluten-intolerant, but you convince all of them that they’re gluten-intolerant because it makes arranging dinner easier? What if then your daughter goes to a birthday party without your supervision and accidentally has a cupcake and realizes that you lied to her and the revelation drives her to madness?

1. You can’t just walk away. Ever.

Image: photologue

A weekly roundup of EcoSalon’s top stories.

Anything But Shorts, Please is a fun look at a summer trend we simply cannot embrace unless hiking, biking or post surf: shorts. Instead, we give you a nice round-up of some great skirts that will love you for who you are and add a little more style when cruising about town.

EcoSalon Editor-in-Chief Sara Ost writes that DailyWorth is a “fuss-free, no-nonsense, wouldn’t-even-think-about-patronizing financial tips, guides and advice for women. From growing your savings, making your money work for you (instead of the credit card company), and ensuring you negotiate a pay raise on par with the guys, DailyWorth takes women and money seriously. Because we’ve come a long way, baby, and so have our bank accounts.” Don’t you owe it to yourself to know more about what your money can do? Read the article here to find out more.

Fast furniture retailers show no sign of slowing down, but the essence of slow furniture is something we can settle into. In Slow, Meet Furniture. Furniture, Meet Your Maker, Shelter Editor K. Emily Bond writes: “Like the slow food movement, the slow furniture movement is sweeping cities from Los Angeles to Toronto and is a reaction against mass-produced, cataloged, assemble-it-yourself, “disposable” furniture. Slower also denotes organic, as in the fabrication process is completed with human hands using sustainable materials. Slow food advocates seek a connection to the origin of each meal; slow furniture makers identify with their raw materials.”

You might have seen the headline, All We Are Saying Is Give Peas A Chance, and thought columnist Susan Goldberg was really into The Beatles – but no, she’s really into not tricking kids into eating veggies. Goldberg writes: “Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?”

In this week’s Sex By Numbers: Taking You For Granted, writer Abigail Wick encourages us to stop wasting time being so self-conscious and instead, live life to the fullest. She writes: “It’s this disproportionate focus on perceived lack that has really started to rub me the wrong way. Rather than celebrating their abundant gifts, there is a systematic zeroing-in on self-doubt. It frustrates me to see lovely, lovable female friends mired in such petty preoccupations. ‘Wake up!’ I want to scream. ‘Stop taking it for granted, stop thinking about yourself so much, stop this self-indulgence. Don’t wake up 30 years hence and rue the potential and pleasure you frittered away in a misery of your own making.’”

ColumnTricking your children into eating their veggies presents an ethical and culinary dilemma.

Several years ago, Jessica Seinfeld (or as she is more commonly known, “that woman who married Jerry Seinfeld”) was involved in a messy court battle over a book she had written. Another author, Missy Chase Lapine, had just written a cookbook that advocated “hiding” nutritious vegetables in kid-friendly foods (pureed yams in yellow cake, for instance), thereby tricking children into ingesting small amounts of fiber-rich tubers, as well as other veggies. Seinfeld came out with a similar book around the same time and Lapine accused her of ripping off the concept.

The case against Seinfeld was found to be baseless and her book went on to become a huge success, far outselling the book already published by Lapine – a writer who had the bad luck not to be married to America’s favorite funnyman.

But while these ladies were duking it out in court, I couldn’t help feeling that there was something unseemly about two accomplished and well-heeled women fighting over a concept that boils down to lying to six-year-olds about what’s in their food. No matter who thought of it first, the whole idea behind Seinfeld’s book, Deceptively Delicious, seemed flawed, not to mention slightly immoral.

Besides the inherent ethical issues of deceiving one’s offspring, the problem with tricking children into eating vegetables is that they will grow up completely unaware that they have ever eaten or enjoyed a vegetable. If you steam, strain and puree spinach only to hide it in brownies, your kid will have no idea that he likes spinach – he will only know that he likes brownies. With childhood obesity at epidemic levels, do we really want to push more desserts on impressionable young people?

And how much nutritional value is ultimately is being gained by all this deception? Seinfeld’s Trojan Horse brownie recipe calls for half a cup of spinach in a recipe that will yield 12 brownies. Do the math and you’ll  find that each brownie contains one third of an ounce of spinach. Is it really worth all that steaming, pureeing and trickery – not to mention mucking up a perfectly nice pan of baked goods – to yield such a negligible serving of greens? Wouldn’t you be better off just trying to get your kid to actually eat some spinach? Or else openly and honestly giving him a Flintstone’s multivitamin and calling it a day?

In the interest of full disclosure, I should admit that I was not even a little bit successful at getting my own kids to eat produce when they were young – a maternal shortcoming that caused me a great deal of guilt and shame. My son, when he was three years old, made my failings in this department all too public when he pointed to a fruit basket in a store window and yelled, “What’s that stuff?” (This from a child who, even as a toddler, could distinguish a Lorna Dune from a Nilla Wafer at 40 paces.) So maybe it wouldn’t have killed me to be a little more aggressive in getting my kids to eat healthier.

I must also admit that I have, at times, been intentionally and flagrantly dishonest with my children. My husband and I, on several occasions, taught our baby daughter the wrong words for certain things, just to see how long it would take her to figure out the deception. My only defense is that we were young and sleep-deprived, and we thought it would be an interesting social experiment. Also, we found it amusing as hell.

Ironically, one of the words we messed around with at the time was “broccoli,” which we taught my daughter to call “dumplings,” (inspired no doubt by the fact that both of those foods could be found in our usual Chinese takeout order). Looking back on this parental deception, my daughter has let me know that she thinks her father and I were massive tools – she also thinks she might be owed some kind of monetary reparation. To this day she will spear herself a forkful of broccoli, glare at me and hiss, “dumplings indeed.” On the bright side, however, she is 18 years old and eats her vegetables without needing to have them boiled and mashed and hidden in chocolate pudding. Jessica Seinfeld’s children may not be so lucky.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: Nick Harris1

ColumnWhen your youngest kid goes to college, it’s time to throw out the booster seat.

The female of the species, while expecting her offspring, frequently becomes engrossed in preparing her home for the new addition. This phenomenon, which has been documented in birds, humans, and other mammals, is known as “nesting” and it hits the mom-to-be with a freakish surge of energy, along with an urge to make a comfortable and welcoming spot for her child. Typical nesting behaviors are cleaning, organizing, and badgering one’s mate to assemble a hand-made Italian crib. Nesting may also lead to the irrational purchase of high-end taupe carpeting, which the newborn’s vile and projectile bodily functions will ruin instantly.

What no one prepares you for is what occurs at the other end of the parenting cycle: the infinitely sadder and slower process of de-nesting, which involves preparing your home for the next, child-free stage of life. I am heading into this phase – morosely and entirely against my will. My oldest child has graduated from college, started a career, and left home for good; the youngest is leaving for college in two short months. With this in mind, I have had to face the fact that it’s time for my home to become less child-centered. I have forced myself to de-clutter: to throw out boxes full of soccer cleats, flash cards, and decapitated Barbies. I have admitted, finally, that the old changing table will not really make a good potting bench and I have given it away. And I am feeling a healthy compulsion to take apart the swing set that is quietly rotting in my backyard, long untouched and devoid of all activity, except for a good-sized wasp nest that comes alive every spring.

In the spirit of recycling, I feel like I should pass along all the kids’ toys and artifacts, but there are some things I can’t bear to get rid of. Giving away the red plastic Little Tykes car would feel like saying an irrevocable goodbye to the sleepy toddler who liked to nap in the front seat, one hand holding his bottle and the other holding the steering wheel (this led me to worry that my son, as an adolescent, would have a similar tendency to drink and drive). The oversized rocking chair I used to lull both children to sleep takes up too much room in my basement, but I would part with my spare kidney before I’d give that away.

There are some parts of my house that have matured, organically, over time – my bookshelves used to be crammed full of childcare manuals by Dr. Spock and Penelope Leach, along with Dr. Ferber’s Guide to Solving your Child’s Sleep Problems. Now those shelves are filled with books that have grimly aspirational titles, like Letting Go and Surviving and Thriving in the Empty Nest. I am sure I’ll survive but I’m not so sure about the thriving part. I can’t help feeling that I am being fired without cause from a job I have loved beyond reason.

My husband is a devoted father, but he is protected by a stoic Y chromosome from feeling the same desperate need to hang on to our youngest child. My daughter is seldom home this summer, as she goes out into the world, trying her freedom on for size. While she is out, my husband tries to distract me with movies and dinners and outdoor concerts, but I find myself hanging around the house on the off chance that she will come home and ask me to make her a sandwich. And while I’m at home, I fill albums with baby pictures, and I frame my daughter’s grade school self-portraits, all of which depict a happy girl with a big pink hair bow that I don’t recall her ever actually owning or wearing. I am not de-nesting so much as making my home into a shrine to the kids who have flown the coop.

But I refuse to be a buzzkill. My daughter is overjoyed at the prospect of going to school, and she can’t wait to perform in college plays and study her twin passions of psychology and theater. So I put on a happy face and act like I am not feeling acute despair at the thought of her leaving. And somehow I am pulling it off – my daughter pirouettes happily through her last days at home without seeing any hint of the anguish I work so hard to stifle. She may be the budding theater star, but it seems that I am a pretty good actress as well.

Susan Goldberg is a slightly lapsed treehugger. Although known to overuse paper products, she has the best of intentions – and a really small SUV. Catch her column, The Goldberg Variations, each week here at EcoSalon.

Image: haydnseek

After two decades of making dinner, I am finally ready to cook like a man.

The day my father died was the day my mother officially stopped cooking. From that point on, she might scramble an egg or make a tuna fish sandwich, but she would never again prepare what could be considered a proper meal, one with a protein, a starch and a vegetable. This was not a protest or a manifestation of extreme grief, it was merely her way of declaring a formal and definitive end to an era. She had put dinner on the table every night during the forty-one years of her marriage, and my father’s death provided a natural stopping point. She was, quite simply, done.

I am considerably younger than my mother was then, and my husband, thankfully, is very much alive. But I am feeling the first rebellious stirrings that I suspect will eventually lead me to hang up the pots and pans. After 25 years, I have been rendered sad and stupid by the grindingly repetitive nature of dinner, by the never-ending need to plan the evening meal, then shop for it and prepare it, night after night, year after year – a mind-numbing rotation of meat and side dishes that my family greets, more often than not, with an obnoxious chorus of  ”chicken…again?” I am tired of having to remember who likes fish and who won’t eat red sauce, who will be home on Tuesday nights and who won’t. I am bone weary from it all, which is unfortunate, because I would actually enjoy cooking if I could do it as a lark, once in a while, with no pressure or expectations – which is exactly the way my husband cooks.

It may be a gross generalization, but I firmly believe that men and women approach dinner in entirely different ways. My husband cooks for fun – he tinkers with exotic and savory ingredients until he comes up with something novel and delectable. I, on the other hand, have cooked all these years in order to stave off starvation in the next generation of humans. I cook because otherwise children will die. This difference in approach leads to vastly different types of dinners: my husband’s meals are creative and beautiful while mine are grim and workmanlike. To put it in artistic terms, my husband’s cooking is like painting the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; mine is like slapping a coat of primer on the backyard shed.

To be fair, it’s not like my husband and I have a level playing field. Since I work at home, with flexible hours, I am the one who cooks on weekdays, when there is limited time to shop or study a recipe. I will very often throw something together using whatever is on hand – my default meal is slathering some Dijon mustard on a chicken breast and calling it a night. My husband, on the other hand, only cooks on weekends and holidays, when he can spend hours going over recipes, planning his menu, going to gourmet shops to find the perfect crimini mushrooms or his favorite brand of Asian fish sauce. He takes great care with his ingredients – when he makes chicken, he will rinse it thoroughly in cold water, then pat it gently dry before painstakingly plucking each individual bit of feather, and massaging tenderness into the meat. For a chicken, being prepared by my husband is like spending the day at Canyon Ranch.

My husband can afford to be meticulous, since the whole family is around on weekends, and he views us as a small and resentful staff of sous chefs. He will not hesitate to bellow for me or one of the kids to come and put up a pot of water or get him a paper towel, or find the butter. When I prepare the weekday meals I do it alone, cooking all the courses, making the salad, setting the table and cleaning as I go.

And despite the drudgery, the effort has been worth it, because all of those meals, prepared by a grumpy and indifferent cook, were eaten by a family that enjoyed sitting down together to talk about their day and bond over an overcooked piece of poultry. But my kids are grown now, and when my youngest child goes off to college next year, I plan to stop cooking, cold turkey (which is what we’ll have for dinner some nights, on rye bread with mayonnaise). I may cook for fun once in a while, but I am looking forward to following the matriarchal tradition of turning my kitchen into the appendix of the house: a useless, vestigial organ that I may have to get rid of if it starts to rot. Except for the oven, which I will continue to use the way my mom did – to store sweaters out of season.

Image: Kevindooley

More people are choosing to remain childfree.

My friend, Katherine, has always been sure that she wanted a house full of children; she’s just one of those people who falls into motherhood easily and happily. Another friend, Anna, does not want to have children. I walk the middle line, with the mother role being something I’m still learning to wear comfortably.

It’s a cliche by now that those with children encourage, pressure, even browbeat all the misguided people who claim to care less about having children. But why should this be so?

Taking On Parenthood

Parenthood is a major life change and it requires a huge emotional, financial and lifestyle investment for the rest of your years. How can we blame anyone who honestly assesses their hopes and dreams and decides that being a parent is not part of them? What our society should do is encourage and support those who do want children, and applaud those who realize that they don’t. Pushing people to take on such a huge unwanted responsibility can only spell misery for everyone.

Many people call the childfree choice selfish. Selfish, to me, would be having children and then always placing your needs and desires above theirs, resenting them for demanding time, money and energy you don’t want to give, and making them feel unwanted. Realizing that you don’t want to go down this path is simply being self-aware of your mental, spiritual and financial demands, and knowing that a child simply doesn’t fit.

If You Don’t Want to Be a Parent, You Can’t Be a Good One

I recently read a comment by a woman who spelled out all the reasons she chose not to have children and why she didn’t want to be a parent. She then added that she really resented it when she told people this and they assumed that she would be a poor parent. They’re right. You can’t have it both ways. You can’t say that you don’t want to invest the time, emotion, or money it takes to be a parent, and then say that, nevertheless, you would be a great parent.

I don’t choose to invest hundreds of thousands of dollars into attending law school, spend hours studying kitchen plumbing or log enough airtime to become a pilot so similarly, why would I force anyone to become a parent? While no parent is perfect, the baseline requirement is wanting to be one.

The Great Divide

While I support a person’s right not to have children, I also don’t want to be glared at in restaurants, resented in the workplace, and disparaged because I chose to have children. Similarly, childfree adults also don’t want to be discriminated against for their choices.

The family landscape is changing, and the point is choice. The number of women not having children is rising whether society chooses to accept it or not. We can let this issue drive a wedge between parents and non-parents, or we can see it as a way to improve our society’s health. Is it such a bad thing to promote fewer families with children, and stronger family units? To have individuals who lead better, more contented lives because they are encouraged to feel proud of their chosen lifestyle?

Image: kevindooley

QuoteDaily quotes at EcoSalon.

“The most common way people give up their power is by thinking they don’t have any.” – Alice Walker

Image: Haags Uitburo

ColumnArmed with an iPad. And dangerous?

After a weekend in New York for eco fashion, it was off to Cape Cod with our managing editor, Amy DuFault, who makes her home here with her family: a musician-designer husband, two children and a cockapoo named Mick. They live in a classic New England cottage flanked by two ponds and woods. It’s April, but it’s still quite cold, and the winds whip through the bare trees and howl around the house. Inside, it’s warm and cozy, and Amy and I work on spring plans from the dining room instead of the office downstairs, where we can catch glimpses of house wrens and ospreys in the branches of the oaks and fat gray squirrels scurrying across the decks.

In between calls and ticking off to-do lists after dinner last night, Amy looked up from her laptop: “Sara? Let me just read you this email.” I know that tone of voice well. It’s the tone that comes with sharing a query from a hopeful writer wanting to cover the healing properties of crystals on a passionate case of eczema or the story about how slathering oneself in essential oil of Dalmation sage mixed with powdered placenta can cure the depression. It’s the tone that asks if we’d like to advertise cat psychics. Or perhaps we’d like to attend and cover the trade event in San Pedro about new 1.3763% more efficient copper conductors in industrial incinerators? It’s a dynamic industry.

This proposal was from one Clyle Reed, who suggested we introduce an eco-spirit section led (obviously) by him, and named for him. It was written in English, but appeared to have been improved upon by either a spambot or a drunk Scot. We really couldn’t decide. Topics would include his mother, his childhood, and his expertise in – among other gifts – spirit gathering.

We’ll blame the time of day; Amy responded. “Tell me more, Clyle.” This unleashed a flurry of emails from the Lord’s minion (his actual email address). We fell into an earnest – and loud – discussion about culture and psychology, or more accurately, online oddballs and insanity, forgetting that Amy’s young teenage son was nearby. As we read email after email from Clyle, aghast at what we’d semi-wittingly unleashed, her son ignored us, engrossed in whatever he was doing on his iPad. A few more minutes of our noisy analysis, and he sauntered into the kitchen. “Sometimes I really worry about what the world is coming to,” Amy said, shaking her head. And then we heard it. A snicker from the kitchen.

We looked at each other. We looked at the kitchen, graced by one immensely puffed up child, grinning ear to ear. He croaked “Clyle!” before collapsing into a fit of laughter as we shrunk in horror. The query, so strangely and brilliantly written. The succession of increasingly eerie ramblings, the insanity of which would have impressed John Updike; the perfectly crafted personal blog; the fresh gmail address. We’d been had by a thirteen-year-old, and he’d been audience to the entire progression of his macabre puppet show. Needless to say, he was thrilled by our total mortification. After we managed to make eye contact with him, we explained why the joke – while ingenious – was inappropriate. We sent him to bed post haste, so that we could laugh until we cried.

Kids these days. I remember rolling my eyes in frustration for months at trying to teach my mother how to use email (“You don’t use caps, Mom!”); this child had created an entire supporting ecosystem in mere minutes for his prank. He knew how, he accessed the services and tools, and he did it all in moments for a lark – for free. The internet is now home to one more blog which will never be used again, and Cape Cod is currently host to two embarrassed adults who, while fast themselves, are clearly no match for a seventh grade boy.

My own “kid” brother, who is 25, can text on his smartphone without looking at it. In fact most of the time it’s in his pocket. I’m not so much older than he is, but the rapid iteration of technology savvy – not just from generation to generation but between siblings and a year or few – is remarkable. He’d be an easy victim for Clyle, too.

The unreserved integration of technology by “the youth” scares many people, who fear for the innocence and safety of our children. I’m not one of them. While I don’t hole up in my house fervently watching for signs of the Singularity, I believe the fact that kids use technology without thinking about it – while we are still muttering and marveling over the details of the transition – is a positive thing.

Yes, there are predators on the internet, but there are predators IRL (that’s “in real life”), too, and what today’s kids intuitively grasp is that living online and off seamlessly is a productive, useful way to make life better because they can. They know this well enough to be wry about it, if last night’s missives from Clyle are any indication.

They’ll have to grapple with text thumb and their brains will be studied for changed learning patterns – consequences of change we are only beginning to understand and won’t be able to dismiss. But we should look at this cultural shift another way. One thing these children will not do is waste time. They will have grown up used to living in the present, all the time, and there will be little pause for regret, much less the gridlock and analysis paralysis of our social and political fabric. Jenny McCarthy’s inane babbling about indigo children has it all wrong; these are kids who simply have horse sense with no patience for horse shit. Their brains have been trained to look at reality and now, not myth and belief and maybe, and they’re used to witnessing the results of their actions in real time. We played Telephone with cans and strings and grew up to spin messaging with publicists. They’ve grown up with the iPhone and Android and Google cache, and they’re going to be kicking livid at what we’ve done.

So I doubt the results of this “tech stuff” will be anywhere near as apocalyptic as the cynics fear; I doubt things will even fray. Shame and love and altruism are still effective social motivators, and unless these suddenly evolve out of us thanks to “the Twitter,” will continue to be. Belonging is everything to humans, and our children will wonder why we cared so little about this, and why we did everything so stupidly. While we whine without ceasing about “their” infatuation with instant gratification – texting, Facebook, games – they’re soon going to ask what the kettle has to be so shrill about.

It’s a truly useless cynic who sees a dystopian future instead of a hopeful one. If we can manage to hand them the world without destroying it first, they may just be able to save it.

This is the latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, exploring topics such as media, culture, sex, politics, and anything else. Cheers and spellcheck!

Image: Zawezome

We’ve been waxing on women’s issues more frequently lately, so you’d be forgiven the impression that team ES is sitting around a conference table cooking up angry gal content. The truth is that we are working from all over the world, leading varied lifestyles, individually coming to our own conclusions about troubling things that are absolutely not sustainable for women – or for anyone. And that’s the scary thing. A conference table and some headline goosing would be nice for a change.

Why the abundance of news material to work with? Perhaps women have grown lax, accepting too much from our male counterparts (and possibly alpha women) as just joking, just teasing and just, you know, being anything but serious – so that we’ve forgotten to ask point blank questions like, “Excuse me. Why is this okay?”

Case in point: I track trend sites daily and one of my kitschy favorites, Trendhunter, is adding fuel to an already blazing feminist fire roaring out of kitchens and minivans worldwide. Based on their “trends” from correspondents that send in their finds, apparently, we women (including children) are spreading our legs for every Jim, Jack and Johnnie – that is, when we’re not busy plowing through the vodka and Valium.

Kindergarten Couture? Give me a break.

Trendhunter says of former French Vogue editor, Carine Roitfeld: “Carine Roitfeld has been known for being an editor to run controversial material during her time at French Vogue. Her final stint at the magazine was her last chance to go out in style, and she made sure that happened.”

That means gathering a group of 6-year-olds and smothering them in tons of toxic makeup and sky high stilettos.

Even Gawker’s Maureen O’ Connor calls it “prima facie disgusting.” Carine certainly knows how to go out with a bang.

French Vogue, Cadeaux

Trendhunter thinks that in addition to involving sexy grade schoolers posing with exotic animal pelts, deranged housewives precariously lighting butts by stove top is a trend we should be watching. Really? Is Trendhunter really saying this is something we will see more of? (I’m pulling my fork out of the toaster.)

We all understand – and most of us adore – the fantasy of fashion, but some fantasies are best left in the box.

You’ll notice the little girl in the corner is walking in on Mother having her domestic breakdown.

Vogue Italia, ‘Home Works’ by Miles Aldridge

Cue the Talking Heads Song, “How did I get here?”

The “Boozer Babe Spreads” are a hot trend I can see really blossoming into future editorials including, “Addicted to heroin and all my veins have collapsed” spreads, “I lost all my children because I’m a full-force alcoholic” spread and let’s not forget, “Hey, where’s the cartilage in my nose, I snorted too much coke” spread.

Simon Powell photographs

If fashion magazines are a barometer for what’s stylishly happening to women, I’d like to scrub them all out with a good bar of organic vegetable soap. Taste, class, consciousness: that’s an ecology that sustains (and is sexy). Booze, babes and cigarette butts? Hardly. But of course, I should probably just lighten up.

From bad green design to ridiculous marketing campaigns, find out what peeves the writers and editors of EcoSalon in our team column, The Beige Report.

Being a woman in the 21st century is not a piece of cake. It wasn’t easy in 1950 or at any other time in history, either. But in 2011, in today’s universe that keeps getting bigger and faster and richer, it takes serious cojones to be a girl.

Today more than ever, women are bombarded with expectations – be beautiful, bear a baby, become a millionaire, be educated, be a good wife and please do it all while being good to the planet. So, anything else?

Never mind, don’t answer that.

Yes, there are obstacles, but I celebrate the women who break the mold and laugh at conformity. They are brave, outspoken and rather revolutionary. What is it that we girls tolerate least of all? Being told what we need to be happy.

So, I’m here to smash a few of these assumptions. I’ll do so without bearing a grudge or turning against men because I love being a woman. And in my opinion (humble as it may be), getting angry never got us anywhere other than backlash and behind where we started.

Here’s our list of things women don’t need in order to be happy:

1. A child. It’s true, our eggs get older and less viable as we age. There comes a point when we just can not have a baby, whether we have a hankerin’ for it or not. There’s no denying biology or the clock. But a childless woman is not necessarily an unhappy or devastated one. In fact it’s possible to feel quite free and fancy, sexy and spontaneous. And I can personally attest to the fact that there is absolutely no greater pleasure in my life than being an aunt to Rose and Jack. My heart explodes with love for them, but you know the catch…um, returnable.

2. A wedding. If I learned anything by watching friends and colleagues get matched, married and divorced over the past 20 years, it’s this – weddings are a great party, but mostly they just cost a mountain of money, a monstrous amount of stress and aren’t always worth their weight in white cake. Nothing costs as much, has the potential to rip families apart rather than bring them together, and is over faster than wedding night foreplay. Just elope – it’s easy, cheap and just think of all the extra time you’ll have for foreplay.

3. A diamond ring. By no means does a diamond a girl make. And anyway, a diamond is far from the best choice when it comes to sustainable stones. There are plenty of other far superior options if that’s what you need to signify your relationship status. But why wait for someone else to shower you with the shiny? I revel in my single-hood and independence and joy in shopping for a precious piece of jewelry for myself. You should, too. Especially if he can’t (or won’t) buy it for you.

4. A perfect body. Well, actually…this one would be nice. Admit it. But “perfect” is such an ugly word. We’d much rather be happy than perfect, right? Right? Actually, I don’t know many women who are completely satisfied with their physique. There’s usually a little here or there that we’d prefer to improve, but skinny is not a requirement for happy. My friends come in all shapes and sizes, and their happiness depends on deeper issues. Thinking that once we get to this place of perfect, we will have joy? We all know the answer to that one.

5. A thousand friends and followers. As in Facebook and Twitter, of course. In the beginning (when was that anyway?), I spent way too much time worrying about my worthiness in the world in relation to my number of social media connections. Come to realize, I may not be a maven but I’m worth my weight in effort and outspokenness. I do not need to meet a certain number to feel like I’ve made it. Who can be effective with that many followers, anyway? (Follow me though, really, if you aren’t already. Follow me! @kimderby77)

6. A man. Who needs one when there are plenty of gorgeous women to hang out with? Seriously, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it. I dated a woman for two years, and it’s fun and different (and entirely personal of course). But just sayin’. Never say never, because I did and I’m still eating my words.

7. A pair of perky breasts. Again, this would be nice and definitely more probable if we abide by number 1 above, but not necessary or impossible if not. A gorgeous, lacy and luxuriously padded bra will do the trick.

8. A soul-mate. Don’t believe in them. Never have and never will. One person who we are destined to be with forever? Silliness. Life is a random flow of crossing paths and we will probably connect with more than a few people on a deep, spiritual, other-worldly level. And if things don’t work out after truly trying, well, move on. Whoever said we should stay together for the kids, through pain and suffering, never set foot in my house growing up.

9. A partner with a low sex drive. Excuse me while I fall off my chair laughing. I hear all kinds of stories, especially from women with babies who lose interest and couldn’t be bothered. I’m terribly sorry. Seriously. But the average woman without hangups whose hormones are level and loaded should be totally driven in this department. End of story.

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