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Rob Lowe Says No to: Do Drugs, Get a Career

PopSmartsZen.com — Mon, 02 May 2011 22:27:35 +0000

I was never (ok, much) into pretty boys but the ’80s Brat Pack was All Attractive Vibes, All the Time (yeah and go, Demi, go!). So when the BP’s poster boy Rob Lowe was recently pimping his tell-all memoir on one of Oprah’s precious last weepi-sodes, I kinda half cared more. And it turned out Lowe did have some surprisingly thoughtful things to say (including sweetly and awkwardly side-stepping questions about old flames and sex tapes, his wife of 20+ years was front, center and all St. Elmo’s fired up) — like his take on his sobriety which demonstrated his maturity and gratitude for the rehab process and…the lucky, lucky life it helped him create.

He credits his sex tape scandal (what naive times!, today that’s a career-starter for the less-to-no talented) with shining a spotlight for him on his drinking, which in taking care of it, resulted in how he lives his life today. ”What it ends up doing is accelerating my alcohol stuff to where I finally get sober and I’ve been able to have the rest of my life that I’m so blessed with, which is now 20 years of sobriety. I don’t think any of it happens without that.”

And on the profundity of rehab: ”I was loving the ammunition I was getting to live my life and understanding things about myself that I never ever understood before. Rehab is a serious business for serious people. It’s not a place you go to get good publicity or escape the law or to rehabilitate your career, which unfortunately is what it’s become.”

Hope LiLo and company check in to their DVRs soon. — PopSmartsZen

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Clooney UnPoliticking “Truth”: I Drank the Bong Water

PopSmartsZen.com — Thu, 24 Feb 2011 20:26:43 +0000

In my earlier bedhead, post-blog posting, Spam deleting, Aqua Aura-energized H20 drinking stupor, I was actually thinking about asking you this: How truthful are you? In our hyper-savvy age of over-stimulation and -information, strutting around like super models in, one can only hope, sustainable outer wear for Global Climate Change accessorized with evilly-designed planetary financial flip flops — do you really know who you are? And if you think you do, do you walk your talk? How can we expect today’s disaffected youth to have values that will sustain us in our old age (and assuming we leave them a planet to take up that hefty task on) with all the two-face smack talk we do individually, and in our media, our culture?

Hours later and still sans coffee, a full circle moment happened when I joy-read this lil diddy that George Clooney says no political career because of sex, drugs. It especially tickled PopSmarts’ pondering funny bone. Thank you, Dr. Doug Ross for that Rx of 2 Truths and the Morning After. Included among the reasons Clooney knows he wouldn’t make a good US political candidate are the facts that he — in his words to Newsweek magazine, “I didn’t live my life in the right way for politics, you know. I f– too many chicks and did too many drugs, and that’s the truth.”

Before today, truth be told, I always thought something — didn’t know what exactly — was wrong with that brilliant but rich aging player, yet do-gooder package. I wonder no more. He’s living his truths and that’s what is barely recognizable in our day and age. Oh. So we need to know ourselves, our truth in the two (at minimum) worlds we occupy in order to use our power for good. One of those paradoxes I tout so much, but in my own unnoticed growing jadedness, nearly couldn’t recognize. Oh.

Yes you of the political, actual human rights-affecting efforts. You slutty stoner you. You’re a funny truth teller I’d bring home to papa. — PopSmartsZen

Lady Gaga: Meat Me Half Way

PopSmartsZen.com — Tue, 14 Sep 2010 17:59:04 +0000

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

Plan Ahead Immortal Plastic Surgery

PopSmartsZen.com — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 17:57:29 +0000

Once upon a time gubernatorial candidate and charming hubby of the ailing 93 year old Zsa Zsa Gabor (who’s been in and out of the hospital since her July hip break she suffered in the couple’s Bev Hills casa), Prince Frederic von Anhalt, wants to immortalize his wife’s body via plastination after she dies. He hopes anatomist Gunther von Hagens, the puppetmaster behind controversial Body Worlds exhibitions, will do the deed. “My wife has always dreamed that her beauty would be immortal.” He wants to capture her in the context of one of her famous movie scenes. Gabor’s film credits includes appearances in movies such as 1952′s “Moulin Rouge” and Orson Welles’ “Touch of Evil” in 1958.

You give new meaning to the phrase “plastic surgery” and real hubster love (of PR) and beauty adoration, von Anhalt. So great to be loved not for what you look like…ever after.

Smart, Practical Girls

PopSmartsZen.com — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:03:22 +0000

3-2-1…Cue talent! Perennial cutie (I mean that in the very best ways) Drew Barrymore knows how and when to step off and take a Time Out with(-in) her relationship with Justin Long. In fact, the actress and producer of hip chick-power flicks like the ridiculously awesome and made-me-polish-my-wheels ‘Whip It’ , makes and uses her own self-help cards for when they’re just not into each other . Hers say things like, “I love you,” and “Five minutes” — a huge PopSmartsZen cheers to a woman who knows how to make potboiler movies, not relationships.

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Shopping List: buy a sense of humor, Madonna. Richie Rita, ya can’t afford not to. The material girl is mad she’s known and pointed out on the streets by strangers as The Material Girl. After her 1985 song by the same name (c’mon, Madge!, who didn’t understand it was an ironic commentary of the times and female power?), she’s pissed (and I don’t mean Brit for “drunk”) that people who don’t know her call her by this moniker, suggesting she is materially obsessed. Now, I love a girl after my own heart and I love Madonna — Ms. Ciccone says that while she’s not materialistic, she does love beautiful things — I get that! And thoroughly believe in it. It’s called, sing it with me: embracing the paradox. — PopSmarts

Image: Sire Records distributed by Warner Brothers or Madonna herself — not PopSmarts who’s just connecting dots visually here. But here’s the latest on worth of a name for the MG.

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Pro-Ana (Anorexia) Websites: Sticks & Stones, Bones

PopSmartsZen.com — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 16:59:30 +0000

Yes, we’re talking Pro-Anorexia.

Just when I thought I’d written my last long piece about body image for a while, I turned on the news and saw a story about “Pro-Ana” sites. This is a self-described (at the site) satirical name and reference to the disorder Anorexia Nervosa. Maybe you already know about these sites, some girls, regulars on those sites, certainly do. They’re where they eagerly swap diets and offer each other support and encouragement for this “lifestyle choice.” I’m choosing to share information here from Pro-Ana-Nation, a site that appears to me to be serious, responsible and clearly states that they do not endorse Anorexia as a lifestyle choice, but describes it as a mental illness (which result from a combination of socio-cultural, biological and psychological factors). And here in a nutshell is one of the driving reasons I started my blog towards empowering girls and women especially: The most common element surrounding all eating disorders is the presence of is low self-esteem.

If for whatever reason you are interested in seeing the sites that actually promote eating disorders (ED) as a lifestyle choice, you’ll have to do your own Googling, Nancy Drew. I liked Pro-Ana’s overall messaging.

The self-hating stats are appalling, here’s a sample (© Pro-ana-nation):

• 1 out of 3 women and 1 out of 4 men are on a diet at any given time

• Diet and diet-related products are a $33 billion/year industry

• 1 out of 4 TV commercials send some sort of message about attractiveness. 80% of women who answered a People magazine poll said that images of women on TV and the movies make them feel insecure

• 50% of women wear size 14 or larger, but most standard clothing lines cater to size 14 or smaller

• Over the past 3 decades, models, Miss America contestants and Playboy centerfolds have grown steadily thinner, while the average woman’s weight has actually risen

• If today’s mannequins were actual human women, based on their theoretical body-fat percentages, they would have probably ceased to menstruate

Kate Beckinsale, actress: “I always felt that anorexia was the form of breakdown most readily available to adolescent girls.”

What sites instill and encourage self-esteem and -confidence in girls and women? If you or the girls in your life visit support sites, what messages are they most obviously supporting?

Image: headache-nightmare

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Congrats, PopSmarts’ Movie Tix Winners!

PopSmartsZen.com — Mon, 09 Aug 2010 23:15:54 +0000

Congratualations to ‘The Sicilian Girl’ movie ticket winners, Junette K and Sabrina W and their guests — enjoy. PopSmarts always did like a good “family” flick…! Thank you, Landmark Theaters.

Keep watching here for future giveaways. If any of you or your business(es) have related (media or pop culture or Shop. Think. Pray.-oriented) items for promotional consideration and you’d like to partner with PopSmarts, contact me here and we can chat. PopSmarts would love to keep our little group fun and rewarded and ain’t too proud to ask for help.

EMAIL: PopSmartsZen@gmail.com.

Bikini Cover Reveals…Issues

PopSmartsZen.com — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 18:39:57 +0000

We all know that media dictates and culture accepts what “good” body image is. These mere words are enough to set teeth grinding at best, and create food issues in girls at worst. In the interest of transparency, I’m letting you know I’m a size 0 but one that is both naturally athletic (read: healthy) and because I’m short — yet another media “negative” body image, but one I embrace in my usual Snap!-like way, and thereby escaped having issues with. So why am I writing this?

Sadly, this makes me some kind of sociological anomaly. Because I was (unfortunately rare) mostly unaffected by negative body image, the first time I remember connecting the dots of how powerful media images were to girls’ body image and what “sex sells” really meant in relation to same, wasn’t until I was 14. (Today studies show 60% of 11 year olds have started dieting.) My BFF that semester was the sensitive, over-looked and majorly-family-transiting Julie who had once described herself in freshman English as a big boned girl. The latest issue of Cosmopolitan, our then-fave mag — which back in the day productively focused on NY Times Best Sellers about psychology and building careers than today’s What 6 Things He Wants in Bed articles — had just hit our mailboxes. She called me to lament in deep detail how she’d pored over the bikini cover girl for about four hours straight, “I’ve been staring and staring, and going over that thing with a fine tooth comb,” she said. This amazed me, so I cradled the phone with my shoulder and casually flipped over my copy to see what the heck was the big deal to her. The pretty cover girl in the silver bikini (cool!) with her slicked back hair looked totally “normal” to my eyes. The only thing remarkable about that cover for me was that she had goosebumps on her upper thighs, and was glistening like she’d gotten out of the pool about a minute earlier without a towel handy. I vividly remember naively wondering if that imperfection was a mistake on their usually ideal covers. Julie continued, “She’s too perfect. I hate her. I’ll call you back, I’m still checking it out. I’ll let you know if I find anything wrong with her…”

The Eyes Have It

I have always been very visual. Mine and my brother’s childhoods/adolescences climbed securely on a solid mountain of drawing paper our (once-) art teacher dad brought home daily. I was endlessly fascinated with the art direction of Cosmo’s covers — it’s monthly color palette, and coordination of text to accessory styling helped shape my sense of space and taste. To my eyes, this issue Julie was so negatively consumed with, was a heavenly union of cool to icy blues, silver and a hint of white. It made the model’s coppery skin and even her (obviously a mistake!) damp gooseflesh all pop. It was beautiful! I hoped to create anything that amazing. But sadly, in this pre-Photoshop airbrushing era, Julie could only see (and perceive) an impossible perfection that she would never attain. And hate herself for it.

Later that weekend, my family visited our relatives in the south bay. My cousin M. had obviously become obsessed by this cover girl image. He asked if I was done with the magazine yet, and if so maybe I could let “them” borrow it. Ew.

It was our disparate reactions to the same single image that finally hit me how deeply even recognized-as-airbrushed “perfection” sold: magazines, consumer and lifestyle ideals (damn!, I coveted that cool ass silver bikini), boys’ their idealized impressions of feminine sexual desirability, and (directly connected) too many girls’ suggestions/concepts/sense that their own amazing and healthy bodies are…failures. At 14, I just didn’t know what to do with all that information.

Today as an adult, when I feel hypnotized or taken over by a picture in a magazine, or lifestyle promise of some ad, I stop and meditate on the image per se. I allow myself to recognize and really feel its powerful sway over me. Usually I am able to let the most trendy or frivolous things go as false, unimportant or not fully of me — on the rarer occasions when I still can’t stop obsessing, I just keep the image around and in plain view, so it loses its immediate gratification, lustful importance, its lock on my attention. This immersion therapy-mediation may sound odd but I am attempting to release the power of the thing, while trying to feel, connect with better feed the actual need it represents in me.

Back to the Future

But what would adult me say to the insecure adolescent Julie today? I would tell her to just stop staring at and unconsciously allowing herself to become seduced by that magazine cover! I want to let Julie know now (and we are in touch) that my own mom had much empathy for her life transitions when we were 14. Deeply importantly, she was wrapped in a mother’s wish for her to experience more unconditional love and self-acknowledgment so that she wouldn’t feel she had to seek these things outside of herself only. Adult me could only add to that brilliance that she was loveable, acceptable and perfect just the way she was.

What images have shaped the way you look at and judge your own body, defined what you sexually lust after, or want to buy or emulate/become? What can you say to the young, impressionable Julies in your life to help them see their own beauty in the face of relentless idealized cultural images?

Image: Hearst Publications

WIN! MOVIE TICKETS GIVEAWAY. Enter now!

PopSmartsZen.com — Tue, 27 Jul 2010 19:12:02 +0000

Enter Drawing: Movie tickets in San Francisco! ‘The Sicilian Girl’ screening will take place on evening of August 12th at a LandmarkTheatre in San Francisco. Winners will be notified of exact location details.

THE SICILIAN GIRL is a fictionalized account based on the life and journals of Rita Atria, the determined 17-year-old daughter of a slain mob boss. After Rita, the first woman to do so, sees anti-Mafia judge Paolo Borsellino to denounce the system that is responsible for the murders of her father and brother, her days are numbered… This film is in Italian; fully subtitled in English.

View trailer.

To ENTER, email: PopSmartsZen@gmail.com with (* fields required for entry):

* NAME (first & last):

*EMAIL ADDRESS:

CITY/STATE:

How did you hear about this contest?

No purchase necessary. Winners will be notified by email August 9.