Fifteen facts about golf courses that will make you think twice about picking up that putter. 

Avid golfers look at a golf course and see lush, green fairways, rolling hills, and the summer sun reflecting off the dew. They feel the silence before an important shot and smell the crisp, verdant aroma of freshly shorn grass. But many environmentalists look at a golf course and see a giant ecological disaster. They see wasted water, pesticides, and displaced wildlife. They miss the natural landscape that was cleared in order to make room for the links, and they despair at a parking lot full of gas-wasting SUVs.

The golf industry has received harsh criticism for its lack of environmental stewardship, and the good news is that many golf course designers and superintendents are paying more attention to the environmental impacts of golf courses. More courses are now designed to feature native plants and grasses, especially those that are most pest-resistant and require the least amount of water. Increasingly, courses are irrigated with reclaimed water, taking the pressure off of municipal drinking water supplies. That’s all good news.

The bad news is that golf courses still wreak havoc on the environment, and as more people take up the sport and play golf regularly, the future’s full of even more courses vying for scarcer resources. The golf industry may be trying to change itself for the better, but as these facts show, it might not be changing fast enough.

• The United States is home to about 18,000 golf courses, about half the world total of 35,000.
• Golf generates about $49 billion per year for the American economy.
• It takes about 2.5 billion gallons of water to water the world’s golf courses each day.
• The UN estimates that 2.5 billion gallons of water per day would provide 4.7 billion people with clean drinking water.
• The average golf course is treated with 18 pounds of pesticide per acre per year.
• The average acre of agricultural land uses 2.7 pounds of pesticide.
• Only 29 percent of American golf courses participate in any formal environmental stewardship program.
• The average golf course in Thailand uses approximately 6,500 cubic meters of water per day, or about the same amount as is consumed daily by 60,000 villagers.
• According to the Golf Course Superintendents Association of America, about 27 million people in the United States play golf regularly, which is less than 10 percent of the total population.
• There are approximately 2,244,512 square acres of golf courses in the United States, an area of land larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined.
• The size of golf courses is growing. Thanks to modern equipment, golfers hit the ball farther than they used to, resulting in newer courses being longer and wider than older ones.
• The average American golf course uses about 312,000 gallons of water per day. A desert course (such as one in Palm Springs or Las Vegas) can consume up to one million gallons of water per day.
• The average American family of four uses about 400 gallons of water per day, or one million gallons every 6.8 years.
• Las Vegas is home to more than 60 golf courses. The Palm Springs region has more than 125.
• According to a survey conducted by Golf Digest in 2008, 41 percent of golfers do not believe in climate change.

Image: lana_akaBADGRL

The post 15 Reasons Why You Should Give Most Golf Courses the Finger appeared first on EcoSalon.

10 diets that should make you want to run (for your life).

It’s okay to be a little freaked out by the prospect of stuffing your pale, corduroy-shielded backside into a bathing suit in just a few short weeks. It’s also okay to cut back on the pasta and do a few extra squats or lunges at the gym in preparation for the yearly “unveiling.” It’s even okay to learn a few new toning moves from women’s magazine articles with titles like, “6 Weeks to Your Best Bikini Body Ever!”

What’s not okay, however, is undertaking a faddish, questionable, and gimmicky diet in order to drop pounds as quickly as possible. If you want to lose weight, eat veggies and lean protein, avoiding processed foods, carbs, and alcohol. Skip these shams, along with any “doctor” who tells you that you can lose weight by eating cookies all day. (Hint: Not true.)

Any [Single-Ingredient] Diet

These have been around for decades, employed by high-school girls desperate to look skinny for prom. The cabbage soup diet. The grapefruit diet. The anchovy diet. Most of these schemes promise unlimited amounts of the magic ingredient (“You can have all the cabbage soup you want!”), as if consuming 900 percent of your daily allowance of beta-carotene makes up for not consuming any other vitamins or nutrients.

The Feeding-Tube Diet

For the busy woman who simply has no time to think about eating, a feeding-tube diet (technically called the K-E Diet, short for ketogenic enteral nutrition) may be the perfect solution. Pioneered in Europe, this ten-day regimen involves inserting a nasogastric tube to deliver liquefied nutrition, and promises that patients can lose up to ten percent of their body weight in only ten days. This diet is popular with self-obsessed brides-to-be and women who contemplate ingesting tapeworms.

Die Fat or Get Tough

Are you fat? If so, it’s your fault. As the book’s website says, “Get ready for a 2,000-volt cattle prod to your consciousness.” You think like a fat person, therefore, you’re probably going to die. Sorry. You’re not fat because of portion sizes, cortisol, or your thyroid – you’re fat because you’re weak and pathetic. Doesn’t that make you feel better? Get tough like Steve Siebold, the writer, so you can be an awesome winner like he is. (Note: The website doesn’t specify exactly what a fat person “thinks like,” but it’s safe to say that his diet plan probably involves yelling at your thighs until they disintegrate in submission.)

The Paleo Diet

Also called the “Caveman Diet,” because it’s modeled on how cavemen ate. (Supposedly.) No wheat, no carbs, no sugar, no alcohol, no beans, no corn, no dairy. Sounds reasonable, right? Except that you replace bread and milk with meat. Lots and lots of meat. Bacon, sausage, beef, ham, meat three times a day. Meat as snacks. Meat for dessert. Meat. Meat. Meat. Avoid this diet for the sake of your cholesterol and the environment.

The Cookie Diet

What’s not to love about a diet that allows you to eat cookies? The fact that these aren’t so much “cookies” as they are “low-cal bran clumps,” for one. Also the fact that this diet only allows you to consume about 1000 calories a day, which is far too few for any healthy adult.

The Apple Cider Vinegar Diet

Can drinking pure apple cider vinegar with every meal help increase your metabolism, curb your appetite, and decrease bloating? Well, the jury’s still out on those claims, but apple cider vinegar definitely reduces your appetite. Drink a shot of it before meals and you will find that you’re not as hungry as you thought you were. In fact, you’re downright nauseated. Weight loss achieved! But the vinegar rotted your teeth away, so there’s that.

The Texas Firefighter Diet

Texas currently has the twelfth-highest obesity rate in the country, so the author of this book will pardon us if mentioning Texas firefighters doesn’t instantly conjure up images of svelte, manly fitness. The secret to this diet, created to curb obesity among firefighters, is eating fewer barbecued ribs and more vegetables. Shocking.

The Sleep Diet

Sleep – your doing it wrong. Lucky for you, author Michael Breus has the answer. If you sleep better, you’ll lose weight. Here’s how it works:

Step 1: Sleep more.
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Your metabolism is raised, burning fat and decreasing cravings. Congrats! You’re skinny!

The Hot Diet

After carefully studying 104,000 people, the author of this book noticed that fat people tended to drink beverages with ice while they ate. Thus, ice is the enemy. Science has spoken – only consume warm things.

The Jesus Diet

What Would Jesus Eat? Well, He would probably have eaten a lot of fish, whole grains, fruit, vegetables, red wine, and olive oil. Nothing processed and not too much red meat (saved for special occasions) or pork (unkosher). Actually, this one makes a lot of sense, so go for it. Just remember that once you reach your goal weight, you’ll have to cover up at the beach, because He demands modesty.

Image: isox4, edkohler, uberculture, deansouglass, Kyle May , Rich 701, mccun934

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Water generates most of our electricity but what are we doing to protect water?

It’s been called the source of the next great global conflict. More than oil or food, scarcity of water has been predicted to cause intense the most intense battles between nations.

We tend to think of water consumption in terms of the water we use at home for cooking, cleaning, and sanitation. According to the EPA, an average family of four uses about 400 gallons per day at home. Taking a shower? Two gallons per minute. Flushing a toilet uses 1.6 gallons per minute, although old toilets use up to four. Running the dishwasher? That uses between four and ten gallons per load (depending on the model of washer), which sounds like a lot until you realize that washing them by hand can drain up to twenty gallons per sink of dishes.

The conservation-minded meticulously turn off faucets while brushing teeth and install efficient appliances. We even admonish the kids that “If it’s yellow, let it mellow,” all in the name of preserving water. We install low-flow toilets and snivel at desert cities that use their water for irrigating golf courses and plush lawns. We do everything we can to not waste it.

But while Americans use more water for residential purposes than citizens of any other country, those 400 gallons don’t even tell the whole story. In order to sustain the average American lifestyle, it takes about 2,000 gallons of water per person, each and every day.

We never see the majority of that water. As a nation, our biggest water drain is the generation of electricity. About 42 percent of all the water used in the country goes toward producing thermoelectric power, creating steam and cooling generators. That’s the electricity that powers not only our houses, but also manufacturing and agriculture – even the power needed to pump water from its sources, which invariably grow farther and farther away as sprawl grows and water supplies shrink.

Irrigation eats up another 37 percent of our fresh water, and explains why California, Texas, and Florida – states with huge agricultural industries – are among the top water-consuming states in the country. Then there’s the industrial uses: factories, malls, schools, hospitals, and anywhere else that people make stuff, sell stuff, or buy stuff. After counting crops, livestock, mining, public needs and commercial use, less than 9 percent of the water consumed in the United States ever ends up in a house or in a glass.

At least 36 states are expected to face water shortages by the year 2013. Conservation efforts on the individual scale are welcome and important – in many cities, the overall rate of water consumption has stayed the same even as population has risen – but the only real way to conserve on a large scale is to address the water that facilitates our power and our food. It’s easy to look at fountains and golf courses in the desert and blame that waste and profligacy for our dwindling supplies of water, but the root problem is also our collective over-reliance on air conditioning, our lack of investment in public transportation, and our industrial food system.

Most municipal water systems keep prices as low as possible. In fact, in many places, they’re prohibited by law from turning a profit, and while that’s good for consumers’ budgets, it often camouflages the true cost of the retrieval, treatment, and transport of residential water. And the cost of items we purchase doesn’t reflect the true cost of what it took to produce the item – from the electricity for manufacturing to the fossil fuels for transport to the water used to support livestock.

The two best ways to save water are to use less electricity and to eat less non-local food, especially beef. Even a single commercial hamburger takes more than 600 gallons of water to produce. As growing cities and suburbs start fighting for ever-more-scarce sources of water, the way toward sustainability isn’t just by watering lawns at night – it’s by addressing everything we consume, from electricity to food to fast fashion to imported electronics. And ultimately, consuming less of it all.
Photos: Dottie Mae,  danperry.com, Steve Johnson

The post Want To Save Water? Shop Local and Turn Off the Lights appeared first on EcoSalon.

What do you get when you ask doctors from the world-renowned Mayo Clinic to bare their tortured-artist souls?

For the second year in a row, Mayo dermatopathologists are competing in a friendly art contest, using the images they see every day on lab slides as creative inspiration. “Every single day, dermatopathologists get to see beautiful images under the microscope, and most people never have the opportunity to see that,” says Dr. Julia Lehman, the creator of the contest. “So I thought it would be a nice way to show not only the science of dermatopathology, but also the art.”

Last year, the winning entry was “Hair Follicle Triplet,” created by Dr. Alexander Meves by introducing fluorescent dyes to a photo of hair follicles.

“Art can be seen in every aspect of life,” Dr. Lehman says. “You just have to have an open mind and be looking for it.” But while the gorgeous images from the competition highlight the amazing beauty of even the tiniest parts of the human anatomy, they’re also a great reminder of what we destroy when we neglect to wear sunscreen.

Check out all the 2012 contest entries and then vote for your favorite here.

Images: Mayo Clinic

The post Doctors at the Mayo Clinic Get Artistic With Dermatopathology appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair share of email pitches, and we’ve decided to give you a weekly peek at this valuable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure that they should be.

Vince Vaughn’s Dirty Footed Mom Will Help You Breakthrough!

Shea Vaughn can help you be fit and fabulous at any age with her new book Breakthrough: The 5 Living Principles to Defeat Stress, Look Great, and Find Total Well-Being. Shea’s resume is impeccable: she is a certified personal trainer, she’s well-versed in “Eastern practices,” and she gave birth to Vince Vaughn—how many people can make that claim? She also developed SheaNetics, a “revolutionary blend of ancient and contemporary values and movements that deliver a powerful mind-body experience.” Side note: just like in this picture you’ll need to have dirty feet to be a Sheanetics-er. Did we mention Vince Vaughn? Everybody loves Vince Vaughn! So buy his mom’s book. (SheaNetics)

Screw Praying, Meditating Or Asking Santa For A Man, The Frog Whisperer Is Better Equipped!

Is all your professional success getting in the way of you finding love? Are you kissing a lot of frogs, but still going home at night to cuddle with your cats? Don’t be miserable, alone, and childless, let Jane Atkinson, a.k.a. “The Frog Whisperer,” help you change yourself in order to become marriage material. Her new book The Frog Whisperer: A Three-Step Approach to Finding Lasting Love will help you figure out what you’re doing wrong and how you can fix it. She has ground-breaking suggestions on how to be a better catch, such as wearing sexy jeans, doing a makeover, and taking “a sincere inventory of your attributes.” Thanks Jane, I didn’t already try those things to attract a man. In addition to wearing pheromone oils, lots of lip plumper and panties with a built in shelf ass I’ll try this new sexy jean idea! (The Frog Whisperer)

Get Jacked Like a Tattooed Carjacker Courtesy Of  Felon Fitness

Felons are hard core. Sure they have to sleep on bunk beds, fend off hepatitis, and devise weapons out of ear wax, but those lucky-duck prison inmates have the best bodies! How do they do it? Without fancy-pants gym equipment or personal trainers, that’s for sure! The new book Felon Fitness: How to Get a Hard Body Without Doing the Hard Time shows couch potatoes how they can get ripped just like murderers and car thieves do, with straight-from-the-cellblock advice on exercises that use everyday items such as weights and dumbbells, stretches, real workout routines from real inmates, and diet tips from the clink. You might be wondering what the author of a book like this looks like and how much time he did to know so much. Watch this video below to see if everything matches up for you. (Felon Fitness)

Image: kevinpoh

The post Better Living Through Publicists: Self-Improvement Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnA behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

Ever wondered how Star knows which celebrities partied at which Vegas nightclub? Thank a publicist. Ever wonder how an editor knew about an exciting new product launch? Thank a publicist. Yes, publicists are always ready to helpfully suggest story ideas that educate, enlighten, and entertain, and they really have a handle on the kinds of things that women truly need to know.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair share of email pitches (whether they fit our sustainable angle or not), and we’ve decided to give you a peek at this valuable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure that they should be.

Be an Asshole This Christmas
Are you looking for a gift that costs actual money while being both rude and totally useless? Are you shopping for someone you don’t like very much? Well, if you need pointless, tasteless, and senseless gifts, head to Stupid.com for items like a Farting Santa ornament, which enhances your favorite Christmas carols with tinkling toots. We all know that “Nothing says peace and love like pooping animals,” so why not buy your friend a sweater adorned with the image of two pooping moose? Or if you are really into poop, there are also Pooping Santa Candies and two different kinds of fake, edible reindeer excrement, not to mention a drink dispenser where the liquid emerges from Santa’s crotch. These gifts give new meaning to the phrase, “You shouldn’t have.”

Confirm Your Baby’s Paternity the Yuppie Way
Hey, soon-to-be New Dad. Are you worried that hospital staff will think you’re just some sketchy pedo lurker who’s skulking around the maternity ward hoping to get a glimpse of a vagina? Are you miffed that your wife got to experience all the fun and excitement of pregnancy while you just got to drink beer and ride rollercoasters for nine months? Well, your wife has her fashionable organic cotton birthing dress, so why shouldn’t you get something special and snazzy to wear for the Big Birth Day? Daddy Scrubs don’t just tell everyone in the hospital why you’re there, they also tell everyone just what kind of classy dude you are.

Pumpkin Chucking for Breast Cancer
Step 1: Throw Pumpkins
Step 2: ??
Step 3: Cure Breast Cancer
By now, you’ve probably heard of Punkin Chunkin, the annual festival wherein people with lots of time on their hands gather in a field in Delaware, and compete to see who can catapult a pumpkin the farthest. People take this contest very seriously. You know what’s also serious? Breast cancer. So a group of gals have decided to literally throw pumpkins to metaphorically defeat breast cancer. Or something. Whatever. They have a giant pink thing called the Ta-Ta Tower, so maybe you should watch. Because of course this is televised.

So now you know.

Image: Wayne’s Eye View

The post Better Living Through Publicists: Gross Anatomy Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

A behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

Ever wonder how Star knows which celebrities partied at which Vegas nightclub? Thank a publicist. Ever ponder how an editor knew about an exciting new product launch? Thank a publicist. Yes, publicists are always ready to helpfully suggest story ideas that educate, enlighten, and entertain, and they really have a handle on the kinds of things that women truly need to know.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair share of email pitches (whether they fit our sustainable angle or not), and we’ve decided to give you a peek at this invaluable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure they should be.

Don’t Be Such a Betch, Betch
Ugh, you’re like, such a betch. But that’s okay, because, like, betches are totally awesome? There’s even a blog all about being a betch and how, like, fun it can be? You know? To get together with other betches and talk about betch stuff like the betches we love and the betches we hate and the future betches who are like, totally going to be cool, and calling non-betches fugly because obvs only hotties can be real betches. Because being betchy is way more fun than being nice, or cool, or being smart, or being a good speller. Betchin. (Betches Love This)

Meet Suzana

This is Suzana. Suzana is an “actress-dancer-creator.” Suzana was recently in a one-woman show in New York called Blood/Nectar/Glitter, in which she smeared fake menstrual blood all over her legs and pretended to eat it. Suzana likes wearing leotards in Central Park, being bendy, and inspiring people. Suzana is a very accomplished actress-dancer-creator. Why, just last month she performed a scene for a graduate directing class, where her performance was described by fellow students as “very impressive.” She wrote an article for Backstage titled Hard Nips and Such. Get ready to see a whole lot more of Suzana. (I Am Suzana)

There Has to Be a Better Way!
Are you tired of traditional, old-fashioned shoe bags? The ones that—gasp—permit your shoes to actually touch each other? Well, now there’s a better way to transport your shoes from here to there! Bhold Shoe Bags feature special technology that keeps shoes separate! It’s true! These aren’t your ordinary shoe bags – these bags have a divider. They also have other amazing features, such as drawstrings. When you use a Bhold Shoe Bag, your shoes don’t have to touch each other, since we all know how gross that would be. Perfect for men and women! Gifts! Also they carry other stuff! Only $25! (Bhold Bags)

So now you know.

Image: cogdogblog, maebmij, Sebastyne, Little Blue Hen

The post Better Living Through Publicists: Total Betch Edition appeared first on EcoSalon.

Editor’s note: Better Living Through Publicists is a behind-the-screen look at the consistently ridiculous inbox of a writer.

Ever wondered how Star knows which celebrities partied at which Vegas nightclub? Thank a publicist. Ever wonder how an editor knew about an exciting new product launch? Thank a publicist. Yes, publicists are always ready to helpfully suggest story ideas that educate, enlighten, and entertain, and they really have a handle on the kinds of things that women truly need to know.

At EcoSalon, we receive our fair avalanche of email pitches, and we’ve decided to give you a peek at this valuable information inside our inboxes. These products, people, and services are 100 percent real, although we’re not always sure that they should be.

When the Wet Spot Isn’t Enough

Sex tapes are sooo 2004. The latest way to preserve the evidence that you got laid is the Love Is Art kit. For only $60, artist Jeremy Brown (who has apparently been immortalizing his own adventures in boning for over a decade) helps couples “create an intimate work of art during the act of making love.” Yes, you and your lover can slather yourselves in black paint, get freaky on a giant piece of canvas, and then hang that sloppy mishmash of knee- and assprints above your mantel for all your friends and family to see. Jackson Pollock would be so proud.

You’ll Never Believe What People Leave at Airport Security!

Phones, mostly. And wallets. Also iPods and glasses. Basically, they’re exactly the kinds of thing you’d expect people to leave at airport security, but the lost & found team at Singapore’s Changi Airport would really, really like to tell you about their fast-paced careers in the finding stuff industry. They find some pretty “unusual” items! Cardigans, for example! Here’s something “fascinating” to think about: about 55% of lost items are claimed within a month. Here’s something else to think about: the lost & found team at this airport in Asia has its very own publicist (and to think your company doesn’t offer health benefits).

Some Celebrities Went to a Cemetery and Ate Popchips

Cemetery parties are so hot right now. On October 27th, Nicki and Paris Hilton, the Maddens, Brandon Davis, and Jamie King attended VEVO’s “Six Feet Deep” 3D experience at L.A.’s Hollywood Forever Cemetery, powered by Dubset. Guests grooved to live DJs, competed in a costume contest, sipped cocktails by Belvedere, and noshed on Popchips, all while dancing on the gravesites of luminaries such as Mel Blanc, Douglas Fairbanks, Cecil B. DeMille, Estelle Getty, Hattie McDaniel, Peter Lorre, Johnny Ramone, and Rudolph Valentino. Oh Popchips.

You Should Do Something About Your Fat Face

You do crunches and leg lifts, but what are you doing to exercise your face? Wait—you don’t exercise your face? Personal Face Trainer and facial fitness expert (a totally legitimate profession) Cynthia Rowland is rolling her eyes at you, you lazy piece of woman. You and your fat, saggy face will never get a man. But for the nominal fee of $500, Cynthia will come to your house and show you how to eliminate wrinkles and naturally prevent aging using her special method of facial exercise—no injections or surgery! If you’d prefer to feel bad about yourself in private, you can try her DVD. Of course she has a DVD.

And now you know.

Images: Love is Art, Yesboleh, YogaDork, Popchips, Headless Horseman

The post Better Living Through Publicists appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnThis could be your reader. She deserves better.

Did you hear a funny sound or see smoke trickling out of your computer last week? That was the sound of lady website XOJane blowing up the internet by publishing a post by said site’s health editor on how using birth control such as condoms or the pill is, like, totes the pits, which caused just about the entire int-her-net to clutch our pearls and foam at the mouth.

I’m not so terribly offended that an adult woman writing for a professional website in the capacity of health editor would claim that only fat goody-goodies take the pill. What really offends me is that apparently this is what passes for good writing on the internet these days. THIS.

“Yup, on my bad days I am the glowering, self-critical too-much-eyeliner-on nightmare that terrorizes every workplace setting I choose to inhabitate with the kind of toxic insecurity that destroys … well, it’s not particularly compelling to anyone else or powerful in any way, so it doesn’t destroy much except my own self-worth and happiness, from hour to hour, until I hang out with a friend or something and the self-obsession and negativity recedes and I feel normal again!

(Does this stuff ever end? Do I have to hurl myself into a mirror? Why didn’t I watch that movie more carefully so I can reference it better? Jesus, mang. I’m so BORED of being UNHAPPY.)”

Is this good writing? Jane Pratt – she of Sassy and Jane – says it is and that it’s why her website is awesome. She says it’s “riveting and raw.” But really, is it good? I’m asking honestly. I’d form an opinion myself, but I have no goddamn clue what’s going on in that paragraph.  It was supposed to be about eye liner, and I’m confused.

As those of us who do it for a living know, writing for the internet can be challenging. We contend with a lot of prejudice, both from people who assume we’re not good enough to get into print (not the case) and from those who assume we’ve never heard of spell-checking (sometimes the case). But in our defense, online articles go from pitch to publish really fast, and humans make typos and mistakes. Very few websites have the leisurely pace or the proofreading staff of The New Yorker, is what I’m saying. We already have a bad rap, so writing professional stories like a teenager scribbling in a diary Does Not Help. Not to mention the fact – you read it here first – that readers don’t read dishy, confessional blogginess and think, “Wow, what a raw and edgy personality!” They read it and think, “Wow, that girl should book some extra therapy sessions.”

There’s wonderful writing on the internet, and it’s not all about the quote-unquote important stuff. I’ve read slideshows on the Top 10 Celeb Booby Shots and captions to cat videos that were so hysterical they made my eyes bleed. Great writing has nothing to do with being formal or stuffy or serious or even appropriate. But I think it’s fair to say that to be called “good writing,” something should meet a basic standard of mechanical proficiency, readability, and clarity. To call this kind of sub-grammatical apunctuated word salad “riveting and raw”… well that kind of chaps my ass on behalf of all of us who try every day to form complete and coherent sentences – maybe even good ones that make you laugh or make you think.  Because we do try. Very hard. “Inhabitate”? I mean, really. Come on, now. Just because it’s the internet doesn’t mean you get to make up words.

Lo, our beloved English language, it changeth even as we speak. And that’s natural. But it’s under enough siege already, what with the all the textin n stuf. Must we now consider this acceptable, nay, better-than-average? Is this the future? A lazy future in which every professionally-written sentence sounds like a text from a thirteen-year-old girl who got hold of some Ritalin and marabou heels? (OMG you guys it’s SO awesome! Like, FOR REALS! HAHAHAHAHAHA I’M SO EDGY!)

As much as I feel bad for English-speaking humanity, I also feel bad for the writer herself. Because that’s another tough thing about the web: when you have a bad day, an uninspired day, and you churn out some junk because you’re on deadline and you have other stuff to get done (which happens to all of us), it lives forever. A clunker story doesn’t just disappear into the ether as soon as the next issue of the magazine hits newsstands. Nowadays, it’s always just a Google away, and that writer will forevermore be known as That Girl Who Wrote the Ridiculous Thing. It’s rough.

But maybe the joke’s on us. Maybe in twenty years we’ll be analyzing the sub-grammatical apunctuated word salad the way we analyze ee cummings or James Joyce or David Foster Wallace, even though now it seems like the unholy love child of LOLcats and Twitter. And if that happens, I think I speak for all of us when I say, “I can haz cynanide?”

Editor’s note: This latest installment in your editor’s column, The Insider’s Guide to Life, is penned by the fabulous Ms. Ford.

The post The Insider’s Guide to Life: On Writing Good appeared first on EcoSalon.

Thoughts from a boho, kooky, unserious, curly-haired woman.

If I’ve learned anything from the News of the World hacking scandal, it’s that if I’m ever called to testify in front of Congress, I really should stop and get a blowout first.

Because like former News International CEO Rebekah Brooks, I have very, very curly hair. The kind of hair where each strand twists and contorts itself until they all join up to form a labyrinthine web of kinky corkscrews. The kind of hair that is, by nature, untamed and wild.

The kind of hair that Robin Givhan, writing about Ms. Brooks in The Daily Beast, characterized as “boho,” “distracting,” “look-at-me hair.” “It was a ballsy rebuke of our expectations…There was no suggestion of humility, timidity, or caution…no attempt to disappear into doleful anonymity.”

Basically, Givhan argues that by virtue of its natural existence, Ms. Brooks’ hair sticks a finger in the eye of all things proper, righteous, and upstanding, and that if she cared about looking like a real CEO, she might have put it in a bun. I can’t speak for Ms. Brooks, but when you have the kind of hair that prompts entire columns about its perceived implications, trust me – doleful anonymity sounds pretty good.

I don’t mean for my curly hair to be a declaration of my identity. I didn’t ask for it to be this way. But whether I like it or not, my hair walks into the room before I do. It is and always has been the singular defining feature of my physical being, and it’s all people want to talk about. I have been forced to discuss it in job interviews and at funerals. When you have curls, no one cares about your big heart or your big thoughts; you are reduced to a person with big hair. My curls signify to the world that I am kooky, scatterbrained, free-spirited, unconventional, unruly, unkempt, unprofessional, un-corporate, rebellious, eccentric, quirky, and nonconformist. Or at least that’s how people like Givhan interpret them.

The idea of a curly-headed woman as distracting and unpolished is well-woven into our pop culture fabric. On any makeover show, the hair transformation will always involve a straightening iron. As they say, Messy Hair = Messy Life. In The Princess Diaries, Anne Hathaway isn’t princess material until she tames her frizz into a sleek blowout. On Friends, it’s no accident that ditzy Phoebe is the only female character with long waves. Even in the Harry Potter series, whip-smart Hermione is considered downright fugly until she emerges for the big dance with her usually wild hair fashioned into a demure straight style. I’ll stop here, but believe me – I could go on.

But curly hair isn’t just a semiotic concept; an idea to be parsed and analyzed in a what-does-it-all-mean kind of way. It’s personal. It’s personal every time I see a news segment showing how employers are less likely to hire curly-haired women, and men are less likely to want to date them. It’s personal when my husband asks, “If we have kids, what’s the chance they’d have hair like yours?” as if it were a disease. It’s personal when I assure him that genetically, it’s unlikely, and realize that I’m relieved, too. And it’s personal when fashion editors write columns decrying women who look like me as messy, defiant, and brazen.

Mostly, it gets personal every time some random stranger comments, “Oh, I’d love to have hair like yours!” Trust me – if people really wanted curly hair, fashion magazines wouldn’t be so full of blowout tips. Curls may be okay in theory, as long as they belong to adorable orphans or cartoon characters, but not on an adult woman. That is, assuming she wants to be taken seriously.

I was walking with my best friend once when a little old lady stopped me on the street to regale me with stories about how much she paid for perms, and how I was just the luckiest gosh-darned girl in the world. As we walked away, my friend said, “I have to tell you – your hair is great, but I would never want it in a million years.” I really loved her for that.

Image: lupzdut

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