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Saving Face: Funny Girl, Strange Mug, True Beauty

4 Jan

Sometimes even a road-tested, time-proven doyenne like Barbra Streisand can finally see her own beauty only in a rear view mirror. Despite whatever your may feel about Ms. Streisand’s visage, at age 68, the self-admitted insecure-about-her-looks star has finally come to see herself as “quite beautiful as a young woman.” The only critic’s voice that counts.

The star of “Funny Girl” warred with her own insecurities about her unconventional looks growing up (when blondes (and “blonde” obsession) not only ruled, but were The Rule, no matter how coloring mismatched and horrible it actually made them look) in a time when the standard of beauty was even narrower than today.

Babs told Britain’s OK! magazine, “Recently, doing DVDs, I’ve had to look at myself in old movies or on album covers… I thought, I really looked good there. Why didn’t I know that then?

“But I do have a strange face. It changes so much from angle to angle. Sometimes I think I really did look quite beautiful and a lot of times I looked really bad. It’s a shame. But I’m not going to cry over it. I’m trying to be in the moment, I’m enjoying my life.”

So if you feel like an outcast, too fat or flat, too short or tall, too 2-D or big nosed, wrong hair-textured, or…otherwise not neatly slipping inside the skinny bitch lines of today’s beauty standard, take heed in the wisdom of TIME and space exemplified by a successful, actually beau coup talented, real life Diva like Barbra Streisand. Don’t waste time!, realize now that you — in all your weird, gawky and terrible beauty — are today as beautiful as you ever were and were meant to be. Get over it to share it, flaunt it and take a saucy smelling bubble bath in it, darlin’. YOU ARE GORGEOUS. — PopSmartsZen

Thank you.

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.

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Oops!, Chris Brown Did It Again

1 Jan

Former good boy Disney singer turned notorious girlfriend beater, Chris Brown, is still evolving — this time into a homophobic Twit. Even though he’s apologizing to former B2K star RazB, Brown’s growing pattern still shows signs of his (albeit successful yet) highjacked childhood’s lack of discipline and character-building boundaries. Not to mention airing his dirty homophobic, misogynistic, abusive psychology for all the world to see. Who’s your mama, again?? And why do you think young fans should pay to be influenced by you?

To get back at RazB’s comments condemning how badly he treated his ex- Rihanna, Brown slap-Tweeted RazB’s previous allegations of sexual assault during his time in B2K: “”Tell me this. … Why when the money was coming in u won’t complaining (sic) about getting bu**plugged!”

I don’t care how old he’s getting, Chris Brown’s growth trajectory shows he needs (and missed out on) a good spanking — if that’s too unPC for you, then an indefinite Time Out with expectations he grow up and start thinking of someone other than himself.

Support your own best values — stop funding Chris Brown’s allowance now.   — PopSmartsZen


Image: ethanol4all

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.


Sshhh! Women Overcoming Their Secret Garden

10 Dec

Secrets are only good on soap operas. In real life they can wreck relationships and cause mental anguish.

Smart and fierce globe-trotting journalist Lisa Ling had a secret. And it turned this confident and accomplished full-fledged woman’s world upside down. Ling had a miscarriage and wondered what she’d done wrong. She was sure she was alone on top of her secret guilt, this played havoc on her self-assuredness. When she found out how many of her friends and acquaintences suffered this same event silently and alone, Ling did something about it. She started a website called Secret Society of Women.

Is it any good? I don’t know because she publicized it on her old show, the very public ‘The View’, its servers were still freaking out when I logged in. Beyond the Home page, I could only get to About Us. PopSmarts can just imagine tantalizing page names like ‘Secrets’ and ‘Daily Wish’ and ‘Wisdom’ are jamming up traffic worse than on the 405 at rush hour.

Will you go to SSoW and confess all your deepest darkest secrets anonymously, find new compadres and find comfort — or do women like their secrets? If secrets aren’t healthy for your relationships or mental health, then why is our stereotypically caregiving gender especially good at harboring the darkest ones — and often for years and decades. Today’s secrets kept in, are good fodder for illness and disease tomorrow, y’know.

PopSmarts can’t endorse a site she’s not fully navigated, but she sure digs the idea of a world where fewer women are living lives of lies and often self-propagated shame. If you can’t manage to tell someone, and if the dark side of the web’s nature is kept at a minimum at this secrets-slaying site (e.g., possible abuse of intimacy by/and lies by the unstable or frustrated people with too much time on their mis-directed hands), and if this product of Lisa Ling’s authentic fabulosity rules, then — go tell your secrets to this new mountain and start living truthfully and in the light, people.   — PopSmartsZen

Image: laurel_blogger


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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.

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Celebrity Rights: Me, Me, Me! I Can Crash a Plane!

7 Dec

Cutie jackass Josh DUmHamel (a.k.a. Mr. Fergie) got kicked off a plane a couple of days ago, when his refusal to turn off his Blackberry turned off another put-out, dissed flight attendant instead (love ya, Steven Slater!). S/he made them turn the plane around to disembark the troublemaker passenger at NY’s La Guardia. Fortunately for us Business Class-and-below-riding mere mortals, Dumhamel says “lesson learned” and will now obey flight crews’ instructions. Gee mighty Transformery ‘n all of you, Joshie diva. Hey, only I should get to endanger my own life, celebrity status or not.

Sorry for the rant, but this reminded me of the time I was at John Wayne in the OC and the rental car that I personally bothered to reserve, was not there for my pick-up. Up sauntered Jim Lange of ‘The Dating Game’ fame, and suddenly POOF!, a same-class car I reserved showed up as ready…for him! He, who stated upon walking up to the desk, that he had not even bothered to have his assistant make him reservations. PopSmarts is considering having her Glare ON! patented, because he took one look at me and took the Geo Metro instead.

Dumhamel could take a page from Lange’s book on graciousness, but clearly some celebrities who are so used to having their ass kissed, could use a good kicking instead. I might drool over you, but I wouldn’t Wannabe you.  —PopSmartsZen

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.


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Marriage Hard Work!, Keith Says of Mick Jagger

26 Oct

“He’s full of piss; someone has to extract it,” Keith Richards explains of his own best practices in handling the ginormous bladder that is bandmate Mick Jagger’s ego. Marriages that last are because the choice to do the work has been made, and the Rolling Stones jumped the broom in 1962. Whoa.

Over the years Richards has nicked down Jagger’s ego by mocking his love of royalty and calling him a “dictator.” But always with love.

Richards is pimping his new memoir Life in which he tells all about his lifelong bud’s out of control ego, and told the BBC the behavior “started to annoy me and then slowly enraged me.” So how did he avoid splitsville? Decades have showed him that “nobody has the perfect marriage.”  — PopSmarts

Image: Mick & Keith, the hug – by HoneyHoney

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.


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Today’s Pop Stars Disappoint Yesterday’s Pop Star

23 Oct

Elton John said a mouthful when he complained about today’s pop stars as being completely forgettable in the coming decades, and cited Jennifer Lopez in his example. He said they rely too heavily on songwriters for their hits.

John feels that those crooners who can’t write, fail to truly connect with their fans. “Now it’s all about getting on the radio instead of making quality music.

“Nobody’s gonna be singing ‘Jenny from the Block’ in 10 year’s time.”

Not surprisingly and for so many reasons, the notable singer/songwriter, formerly of the eye-catching eyewear, likes Lady Gaga who writes “great songs” proving he ain’t no old fogey hat-ah. Good points, Rocket Man. And you absolutely earned a place to whine about the poor quality of fly-by-nights with your, “When I was young-isms”. Soulful quality work of god given talent counts.  — PopSmarts

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.


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Seal Heidi With a Kiss

30 Sep

I like Heidi Klum. I like Seal. But somehow, I love Seal & Heidi sitting in a tree K-I-S-S-I-N-G. And for five years now! That’s some kinda record in Hollywood circles. They are just a believable and sweet couple that seems to know how to love, and aren’t afraid to share that example. Nice.

“It’s the story of two people in love. My husband is what I always wanted and never thought I would have,” Heidi told Us Weekly magazine.

So it’s not Breaking News!!! I’m just sayin’, is all. No worries, your cranky pants PopSmarts’ brain hasn’t gone completely bonkers on an oxytocin cocktail, just thrilled to see some people in the spotlight we all track actually, uh what’re the words, again?…oh yeah…happy and well-adjusted.

Image: Moe Jackson

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.

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Kanye West, Obsession of the Heart

19 Sep

Can looks literally kill? Not sure why it’s been on my mind so long, but when I heard Kanye West is still blaming himself for his mother Donda’s 2007 death (from heart disease and plastic surgery complications), I realized I wasn’t the only one stewing on this troubling incident. The most troubling part for me is his hypothesis that if he hadn’t moved (“…even from New York…”), and his mother hadn’t followed him, to perfection, beauty-obsessed L.A., then his mother would most likely be alive today. Who can ever know about that, but the power of perfect beauty-obsession culture to motivate is for dang sure. Why would a woman — a 58 year old doctor and noted scholar — who presumably had it going on, was educated and life experienced, and had everything to live for, take her life into her own elective hands when her career and livelihood didn’t directly benefit from her looks? How deeply does self-hatred, even of the successful and self-made, run? PopSmarts ain’t professing to know fake lash blinking thing about Ms. West or her psychology, I’m just saying: skin deep can run straight to the heart.

Image: Vince Bucci, Getty Images

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© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmartsZen™. All rights reserved.

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Lady Gaga: Meat Me Half Way

14 Sep

It wasn’t enough she got flack for wearing a bikini made of red meat for a Japanese photo shoot, so Lady Gaga beefed up her costumicktry at the MTV VMA’s receiving her award in a full red meat dress with a steak hat balanced on her marketing brainiac noggin. This animal-lover was furious with the gratuitous display of animal butchery by the megashiny pop star, but still had room to be confused by her speech: “I promised that if I won this award (sniff sniff!), I would announce the name of my new song.” One mystery still unsolved, and now this. We’re supposed to pay homage with an award to be rewarded by her “sneak peaking” her new song’s name that we inevitably will buy and download by the party yacht-full anyway? Lady Gaga makes me stop think and question things, all right.

Image: Vogue Hommes Japan

SITE IMAGE NOTICE: The images used on this website are believed to be public domain. If you feel any of these images or videos are violating your copyright, please contact (popsmartszen@gmail.com) and we will remove them as soon as possible.

© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmarts™. All rights reserved.

Career Counseling: Tragically (Broken) Hip

11 Sep

Now I know it’s easy to spotlight them because they’re so high profile, but aren’t they just reflecting the excesses and idolatry of our culture/our selves? Axl Rose, Whitney Houston, Steven Tyler, rock stars whose sheen are of different denim fades — but who doesn’t know someone (or is themselves) going through a career or life stage change that ain’t so purty as their once more glam daze? What do you do if these are your only skills? Even waify supermodel Kate Moss, 36, has sworn off the jet set hearty partying, “…It’s about time I got myself in order because I’m no longer a little girl. So it’s early to bed and early to rise.” How do normal people, “off-” and “on-stage”, age gracefully in our high health techie (average American life expectancy rate is 78), youth-obsessed culture? I’m not sure but have been thinking about it after seeing some pretty scary (to me) products and books recently released by stars older than my parents. What’s the matter with a culture that doesn’t allow itself to mature with grace? Sound off — thoughts???

SITE IMAGE NOTICE: The images used on this website are believed to be public domain. If you feel any of these images or videos are violating your copyright, please contact (popsmartszen@gmail.com) and we will remove them as soon as possible.

© 2010 Simone da Rosa and PopSmarts™. All rights reserved.

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