Liz Everly's Blog, page 37
January 12, 2017
Tough Talking Princess in a Tiny Package: Princess Leia We’ll Miss You
[image error]by Madeline Iva
There’s nothing like Carrie Fisher’s death to make one ponder Princess Leia afresh. Carrie Fisher was many things–and I especially appreciate how she single-handedly brought bi-polar disorder out of the shadows and broke that taboo. I also appreciated her book POSTCARDS FROM THE EDGE because she had a wonderful sense of humor. But her death causes me to ponder her alter-ego icon Princess Leia in a way I never have before.
Princess Leia was a tough talking princess in a tiny package. She had a gun in her hand – but she was one of the good guys.
[image error]This was so massive at the time. There’s so much she wasn’t in terms of negative female stereotypes. She wasn’t the manic pixie girl (a type I love btw). She wasn’t the transgressive bad girl (I love this type too) or a femme fatale (ditto). I mean, as a little girl, you want options, right? Princess Leia provided another pathway for how to be strong, active, and yet…not an outsider.
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Yeah, she’s gonna take charge. You gotta problem with that?
She’s wasn’t afraid, or weak, she wasn’t a scream-y victim, a bimbo, or a slutty-McSlutty (by which I mean: those roles in which the character wants to be sexually objectified by others and is possitively insulted if she’s not seen as an object of sexual consumption). She’s definitely not the reverse stereotype of the time: the amazon-wanna-be-a-man freak. Not that there’s anything wrong with Amazons–(I’m looking at you Zena) but this was yet another old blicky stereotype where a woman of action is presented as ‘the other’.
I used to ponder Princess Leia’s particular brand of femininity whenever I happened to encounter her image – Ultimately, I’d say she had a 1930’s kind of femininity, comprised of half wise-cracking dame talk and half small, delicate features.
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Can’t you just see her in a 30’s film with that hair and face?
I very much appreciated that she was not overtly sexualized…well, not in the first Star Wars movie. Or even the second, though the whole love interest thing ramped up with Han Solo and they suddenly got all kissy face.
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I have this postcard on my desk at home…
(But remember the kiss with Luke before that happens? Ugh! Did Lucas *know* then that Leia and Luke were twins? What was he thinking?)
In movie number 3 they went there. Sigh. Yet note that it seemed to have this *profound* effect on the sexual awakening of an entire generation of pubescent boys…Her princess-slave costume seemed to send out shock-waves of yearning in the hearts of aching teenagers in a way that other bikini fodder babes at the time didn’t. Why? Was it because they saw Princess Leia as a person first, instead of as a sex object? (I hope so.)
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Carrie Fisher, cocaine thin. At least she got to kill the slug herself.
I included a You Tube link to my favorite part of the movie below. These days my niece and her friends fight over who gets to be Princess Leia. I never wanted to pretend I was princess Leia. I think I was a little too old by the time I saw the first movie to play pretend anymore. However, I wished like mad that I could get away with wearing the cinnamon buns on my head at school.
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Please can cinnamon buns come back in style? Pleeeeeeease?
I think the reason behind why the girls fight is because real problem is that there is only one Princess Leia, but many male roles.
Hopefully in this galaxy right here and not too long from now, we’ll have a massively important and successful sff film in which the next most awesome Princess Leia will come with a host of fellow kick-ass female buddies. She won’t be the token girl in the boy gang. I very much appreciated that she was not just the princess but also big honcho in power and was the one handing out medals at the end, instead of sitting on the side lines. But I hope in the next Big Movie (any screenwriters out there listening?) the Princess Leia 2.0 is handing out the medals for intrepid daring-do, to some women and not just the guys.
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May the force be with you all–and follow us at Lady Smut!
Madeline Iva writes fantasy and paranormal romance. Her fantasy romance, WICKED APPRENTICE, featuring a magic geek heroine, is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and through iTunes. Sign up for Madeline Iva news & give aways.
January 10, 2017
Big Brother Censoring You
Don’t look, it’s not good for you
Isn’t it nice that nowadays porn viewing can be simple and discreet? No need to truck on down to a seedy video store and rent tapes while ignoring the cashier’s smirking face. Or, worse yet, slink into some stained-filled booth and watch videos in semi-public. With the age of the internet, it’s a piece of cake! One’s porn viewing can be done in the privacy of home. Just launch your browser and go to town. Oh, wait. Maybe not if you live in South Carolina.
Palmetto-state dwellers can watch porn on their computers, too, but if a certain legislator has his way, that might change. Residents will still be able to do it – as long as they pay for permission. State Rep Bill Chumley (R) has put forth a bill that would require all new computers sold in the state to come pre-installed with porn-blocking software. Don’t want it, you say? You like watching naked people online? Good news – that pesky software can be removed as long as you ante-up a $20 fee.
Admittedly, $20 bucks isn’t much, and the money would go toward the state attorney general’s efforts toward anti-sex trafficking. Rep Chumley, who says this is an issue he’s “pretty passionate about,” says the blocker would prevent kids from accessing obscene material or from being exploited themselves (just how that would work Rep Chumley hasn’t elaborated on, but it sounds good). So, in other words, Chumley’s “pretty passionate” about state-sponsored censorship.
This all might sound like a whole lotta public shaming, but South Carolina’s not alone in their war against porn. In April last year, Utah officially declared porn a “public health crisis” by passing a resolution declaring that porn is “evil, degrading, addictive, and harmful” and hoping the resolution will work to unite communities in trying to stop it. After all, if it’s a public health crisis, like obesity, for example, than surely it must be costing communities tons o’ money in lost revenue, right? Except that studies are conflicted as to whether viewing pornography – even at a young age – has a detrimental physical or psychological effect, and therefore it’s unclear what “public health costs” pornography brings about. Details!
Aside from the legislation publically shaming new computer buyers into having to admit they want their porn, the whole issue of free speech comes into play. Isn’t blocking an expression of something equivalent to blocking the right to express it? Courts in the past have struck down proposed laws to block porn, citing First Amendment rights, but South Carolina’s Chumley says the concern isn’t based on morality or free speech. It’s corrupting people! That’s why it must be blocked.
Exactly what will come of this legislation, if anything, remains to be seen. Nowadays porn is everywhere and filters or not, getting it for free is as easy as a couple clicks of the mouse. According to an article in The Washington Post, porn trafficking website Pornhub had one of its biggest years ever in 2015, so the appetite for porn has only increased. But that seems to be the very reason congressmen (and yes, it’s men behind the legislation), are passionate about starting conversations around the evil ills of porn – because it is indeed so ubiquitous.
Public health hazard? Evil ill of society? Cool thing that millions want? The debate against porn rages on, which is exactly what legislators say is the aim of their resolution: to get people talking about porn.
So…do you like a little government with your porn? Does the South Carolina porn blocking resolution make sense? Sound off in the comments below, and be sure to follow us at Lady Smut, where we’ve always got ways to get people talking.
Sex Robot Anxiety: Alexa, Why Can’t We Have Nice Things?
I still think we’ll all eventually have our own robot gunslingers. We just need to be very careful with them.
By Alexa Day
Am I obsessed with sex robots? I’m not sure obsessed is the right word. I prefer enthusiastic. I’m enthusiastic about sex robots.
And I really think we’re close to making sex robots a reality. I mean, we have most of the component parts out here right now.
For the first time, I’m a little worried about that.
Before I get to my concerns about the future, let’s have a quick look at where we are now.
Until recently, the reality of the sex robot was sufficient to dampen my enthusiasm (and not in a good way — heyo!). The real sex robots, predominantly women for male consumers, honestly didn’t look all that good. I don’t mean that they didn’t look hot. I mean that they didn’t look human. The average mannequin was a more attractive partner.
Sinthetics is changing the game. Elizabeth Shore wrote about them last month. They’re featured in a Vice Video, where the host Karley Sciortino commissions a sex doll named Gabriel with a sculpted body, blue eyes, and an erection that won’t quit until Karley wants it to. Gabriel was made by sex-positive people with a real eye for detail. You can see the veins in his arms. He has body hair. Thanks to Sinthetics, male sex dolls look pretty damned good.
(If you skipped the video last month, you missed out big time. Gabriel’s not shy about full frontal. Seriously.)
As hot as the modern male sex doll is, what separates him from the sex robot we’ve been talking about is a brain. We need him to understand what we’re saying, what we mean by what we’re saying, and what we might want later.
So where is our fabulous sex doll going to find a brain?
Ask Alexa. Not me. The other Alexa.
Amazon’s Echo Dot connects users to the Alexa Voice Service, a powerful artificial intelligence that recognizes and responds to a multitude of commands. Alexa knows your morning commute. She can read you the headlines. She’ll adjust the temperature in the living room. And the best part is that Alexa is learning as she goes. Amazon promises that the Echo Dot is adapting to its user’s “speech patterns, vocabulary, and personal preferences.” The more you ask of Alexa, the more she learns about you.
You don’t have to be terribly pervy to see the possibilities here (but it helps, I think). Alexa’s brain in Gabriel’s body seems like a fantastic idea, right? Aren’t you excited about the chance to educate your new friend?
Slow down, neighbors. Didn’t you read Frankenstein? That sounded like a fantastic idea at one point, too, but that snowball went downhill very, very quickly. We all have a lot to deal with right now, between smashing the patriarchy, protecting reproductive rights, maintaining our Netflix queues, and things of that nature. We won’t have time to chase a suddenly willful Gabriel all over creation, and we don’t know how quickly his hungry brain learns things. So we need to anticipate a couple of problems now.
We have an advantage over the Echo Dot in that we can move independently and it can’t. We could put the Dot into the underwear drawer if it starts getting a little ahead of itself. There’s a limit to how much it can do if it becomes disenchanted with its servile role in the household. Our robot friend isn’t going to be like that. I’m thinking about the Synths in the AMC show Humans. The Synths think independently enough to have secrets. It’s a big jump from following orders to keeping secrets, sure, but all a robot has to know in order to keep a secret is that knowing the truth will displease its owner. The sex robot’s job is to make you happy. How long do you think it would take our robot’s new brain to figure out that you would be better off not knowing the whole truth about something? It might start off innocently enough — one well executed surprise would teach our robot that withholding the truth sometimes pleases you. But once we’re not in complete control of disclosure, problems are going to arise.
The other problem is, well, people. Other people.
We aren’t out to take advantage of the sex robot, of course. To the extent a robot consents to sex, we’ll only be engaged in consensual activity. This is more about partner availability, the ability to have sex without having to make an effort to find an attractive partner whose presence we can tolerate. We are not awful people. We’re just about convenience and efficiency.
But awful people exist.
If you really want to be depressed by all of this, check out the brief documentary My Sex Robot. Along with all the rudimentary robots, you’ll find a host of men who will cheerfully tell you that the best part of having a sex robot is that she can’t say no. It’s kind of disturbing.
Is it possible to rape a sex robot? If it has a brain like the one we’re talking about, then I think the answer is yes. At the very least, the question invites discussion. Ideally, that discussion involves our new robot friend.
Damn. All I wanted was a robotic sex partner. Now that he sounds expensive and complicated, I might be forced to re-evaluate things.
And I will.
I promise.
Someday.
Are we moving too fast? Am I worrying about the wrong things? Let’s consider it in the comments.
And follow Lady Smut. We’ll get you all the nicest stuff.
January 9, 2017
The Devil Is Back in the Bayou
by Kiersten Hallie Krum
Lady Smut favorite Megan Crane is back in the bayou with her Devil’s Keepers motorcycle club in Devil’s Mark. I took a look at the first book in the series, Devil’s Honor, last fall.
Look! A blurb!
Holly Chambless is tired of being the squeaky clean daughter of Lagrange’s holier-than-thou mayor. When her father is charged with corruption, she realizes that her whole life’s been a lie. Now’s her chance to do all the things she never dared, like scoring a job at a bar where reputations go to die, or reconnecting with the biker who sparked a secret hunger in her all those years ago. Holly isn’t a wide-eyed girl anymore—and this time she wants a taste of what has always been denied.
Killian “Uptown” Chenier has no time for stuck-up princesses. He likes fast bikes and wild sex. Sure, he remembers Holly. He sent her running with a wicked smile and a lesson about prying eyes. And sure, she’s grown up smoking-hot, with a body he’d like to personally desecrate. But Devil’s Keepers business is real and intense. Her daddy stole from the club, leaving his pretty blonde daughter a walking target. And when Uptown takes aim at what he wants, he never misses.
There’s a long game being played in this series, a game in which the fabric of the Devil’s Keepers is slowly unraveling. Allies are being outed as having worked against the club for some time. Other allies are dying out, leaving holes where once they served the club in significant ways. Whether the club remains a knotted mess or if these dangling strings can been sewn into something new and stronger on the other side remains to be seen as the series plays out.
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Click on image to buy!
Against this backdrop of dangers club business, club members are having their proverbial hearts ripped up, down, and sideways. First up was Greely’s reunion with the one woman who rooted deep and sliced hard, the daughter of the club’s now dead back-door doctor. In Devil’s Honor, it’s Uptown’s turn as the Lagrange mayor’s pristine daughter in back in town after her father’s humiliating denouement as the righteous community leader secretly in the club’s pocket to lying scumbag with his own nefarious agenda, an agenda that’s put the club in jeopardy.
Holly is facing a life crisis. The entire structure of her house on the bayou mud is wobbly and weak. Everything she thought she new about her father–about herself–has been proven a lie. Sick of her Teflon-coated goody two-shoes reputation in Lagrange, Holly decides to explore her nearly non-existent wild side. First by strutting into the local strip club to ask for a job. And next, to finally indulge the temptation that has taunted her since her teenage years–Killian Chenier.
More than anyone, Uptown hates Mayor Chambless–and he has good reasons too. But that doesn’t mean he hasn’t had a hankering for the mayor’s daughter since she caught him banging a groupie in the graveyard years before. Ravaging Holly and thus destroying her reputation is Uptown’s perfect revenge all wrapped up in a tight, sexy package with a bouncy pony-tail that won’t quit. She has a sweetness that won’t quit even in the face of biker bitches and foul-mouthed degenerates. Holly might want to lose her inhibitions with a bad boy biker, but when it comes down to it, Uptown knows a good girl like her isn’t going to want trailer trash like him long-term. But the more he makes use of her, the more he realizes that while Holly might come from slime like the mayor, she couldn’t be more genuine. And that’s a problem for the man who is planning to break her in order to beat her father into the ground.
All her life Holly has play the role written for her. Now with her family’s reputation in shambles, everything that formed the buttress of her life has collapsed. Now she’s not only confused about who she is, but who she is meant to be. Strutting into a motorcycle club’s strip joint is the first step in her plan to blow up the stultifying expectations that no longer fit her life. Getting Uptown Sinclair to fulfill a dirty temptation from long ago is even better. But as more and more revelations of her father’s duplicity are revealed, Holly wonders if being bad isn’t exactly the best plan for a good girl.
Devil’s Mark is a fast read. It plunges forward with a quick pace that doesn’t allow for things like sleep. As club business gets messier and messier, Uptown’s conflict grows. He’s not going to stop using Holly for his and the club’s ends, but that doesn’t mean he doesn’t start to have serious problems with it. He’s never forgotten her, not from the first moment when her wide-eyed shock at his open-air sexcapades made him want to do filthy, delicious things to her. Now she’s a woman at his mercy and as he claims her for his own–inside the club and out of it–for the first time, he wonders what he’ll do if the choice is his brothers or Holly.
Sexy, sweet, endearing, and the right kind of dirty, Devil’s Mark plunges more deeply into the dirty water of the Lagrange bayou. As things in the Devil’s Keepers club race to deadly conclusions, a good girl will find out if her bad boy is worth all his sexy promises…and if she’ll survive taking the risk.
Devil’s Honor and Devil’s Mark are available not and will whet your appetite for the upcoming Devil’s Own coming in May 2017.
Follow Lady Smut. We make great deals with all kinds of sexy devils.
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Writer, singer, editor, traveler, tequila drinker, and cat herder, Kiersten Hallie Krum avoids pen names since keeping her multiple personalities straight is hard enough work. She writes smart, sharp, and sexy romantic suspense. Her debut romantic suspense novel, WILD ON THE ROCKS, will be available on April 14, 2016. Visit her website at www.kierstenkrum.com and find her regularly over sharing on various social media via @kierstenkrum.
January 7, 2017
Sexy Saturday Round-Up
[image error]We’re baaaaack! Welcome to Sexy Saturday Round Up, home to interesting links that keep you in the know about the latest in all things whack and wonderful relating to sex, love, and gender. Pop a marshmallow in your hot chocolate, throw that wooly shawl over your shoulders, then sit back and enjoy!
From Madeline:
The question that keeps you up at night: Why don’t men have a penis bone?
I guess everybody hated that movie Office Christmas Party. Well, *i* want to see it!
Interested in trying that torturous device known as a menstrual cup? Here’s what you need to know.
For all y’all who love historicals — a brief history of the fashion plate
Finally! Science has started taking new approaches to studying how to stop sexual assault by identifying ‘rape-y’ attitudes.
And hey—here’s some more on the penis– cause you can never read too much about penile spines, evolution, and why the male junk is so variable, can you? Science sez there’s more to genitalia than meets the eye.
A Year’s Worth of Dating Advice for the Modern Geek.
From Thien-Kim: Being the Fat Girl in a Big Fat Asian Family.
From Elizabeth Shore:
How come his c**k has no bone in it? ‘Cause he doesn’t last long enough to need it, that’s why.
It’s here! It’s now! Virtual reality porn.
24 questions to get your texting scorching hot.
Argh! Madeline Iva just wrote about hygge, and now apparently lagom is the hot new Scandinavian trend.
Foreplay food games. Yummy!
January 6, 2017
Why I Have a Soft Spot for Period Movies
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Image via Warner Bros
I’m late to the Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them party, but I finally saw the movie this week. Even though I was a huge Harry Potter fan, I couldn’t muster enthusiasm for Newt Scamander and his magical creatures. I’d grown to love Harry, Ron, and the sassy, brilliant Hermione. Since our only other family friendly movie option was Sing, the adults voted for Fantastic Beasts instead.
The movie was fun and the perfect post New Year’s day escape. The story was cute. I loved all the main characters. But I can’t stop thinking about the 1920s costumes.
For me, Colleen Atwood’s costumes were also stars of the movie.
Long before I sat down to write romance books, I professionally designed and constructed costumes for theatre productions. After doing that for so many years, I can tell when a designer takes extra care with her costume choices. Let me show you what I mean.
The Goldstein Sisters
Let’s talk about the two main female characters from the film. They were inherently more interesting and complex than Newt.
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Image via Warner Bros
Tina Goldstein (played by Katherine Waterston) was demoted from her Auror position after her unauthorized used of magic. She’s desperate to reclaim her status within the Magical Congress. Tina is strong, serious, and very responsible. She wants to do what’s right.
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Image via Warner Bros
Except for one scene, Tina almost always wears pants and sensible shoes, which are perfect for chasing down the bad guys. Even her night clothes belay her practicality, an adorable but comfortable wide leg jumper. Just because she’s practical doesn’t mean that she can’t embrace her femininity with her v-neck blouses or don a flapper style dress for undercover work. No matter what she’s wearing, it’s usually black or blue with a hint of white or light blue (even in the night club). She’s serious but knows how to have fun.
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Image via Warner Bros
Her younger sister Queenie (Alison Sudol) doesn’t have a physically demanding job like Tina. She prefers dresses that hug and accentuate her body. She knows that men are distracted by her beauty and uses that to her advantage when she needs to. Don’t let her fool you. She may have a big heart and look innocent, but she’s very smart and has the power to read your mind.
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Image via Warner Bros
Queenie exudes femininity. She wears more “luxurious” fabrics: satin, silk, velvet, and lace. Textures that are soft and feel good against the skin. Soothing, like her voice and personality. To further contrast from her sister, Queenie wears pink in almost every scene. Also, I want that pink coat!
A good costume designer is able to make these choices and integrate them into the director’s vision, while creating a cohesive look among all the characters. Don’t forget that this is also a period piece, so there’s an expectation that the costumes look like they’re from 1926. It’s not an easy task, but when you’re a mega-award winning designer like Colleen Atwood, it probably comes naturally.
Costumes are one the reasons I love reading historical romances. The big ball gowns (or modest muslin ones) can tell the reader so many things about the characters’ personality and social class. Little details that add up to build one complex heroine.
I adored both Tina and Queenie. And I want all of their clothes. Of, maybe not Tina’s scuffed brown shoes.
What’s your favorite period costume film?
Thien-Kim Lam cut her teeth on historical romances and they will always have a special place in her heart. She is the founder of Bawdy Bookworms, a subscription box that pairs sexy reads with bedroom toys and sensual products. Batteries included. Check her Pleasure Pairings guide with buzzy recommendations for the adventurous reader
January 5, 2017
The Sexy Dane Solution
[image error]Here’s a Danish word for ya: HYGGE
Pronounce it Hoo-gah, but try throwing a little “U” into that ‘oo’ sound and you’ve nailed it. Hygge translates to “cozy” in Danish, but it’s not just a word to the Danish, nor just an emotion—it’s a genius cultural ideal!
It’s cold outside, my peeps. And we are in desperate need of ideals right now. Also, after the holidays we’re poor. Yet we can still pull on a big pair of wooly socks, make a delicious pot of hot soup, and settle down in front of the warm lights of the fire. Or Xmas tree you still haven’t taken down. Or your space heater. Whatever. We can still embrace each other and cling to everything in our world that is simple, good, and warm.
Like hot guys in winter sweaters. [image error]
My romance ideal is founded on the concept of Hygge and I think you may already recognize it:
SEXY + HYGGE = SMYGGE (SMOOGAH)
Hygge is not at all contradictory with a bit o’ sexy. In fact, if you’re like me, this is the package in which you actually prefer your sexy. Show me a guy with great bed head in a big ole sweater with jeans, or conversely some boxers and hot abs and I’ll show you my clenching ovaries. Give him a mug of coffee or a kitten to hold and…my God, you’re killing me here.[image error]
Yes to Hygge! Yes to Sexy! Put them together and you’ve got Smygge – my new sensual ideal. Happy New Year!
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Got Smygge?
(To find more of all things Smygge, go to my PINTEREST page. ; > )
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Icy Hot.
GOT MIRTH?
And while we’re at it–materialistic American beasts that we are–let’s embrace the wider ramifications of Hygge and Smygge. We’re not just talking Nordic sweaters, kittens, and mittens—we’re talking about the fundamentals of creating social joy.
In Denmark, Hygge means means having your friends over for an informal dinner with candle light. (Cough. While candlelight is very Hygge, it also hides a vast amount of housekeeping neglect. Cough. Cough.) Or better yet, leave those dust bunnies to roam, and wander down to the local pub with your mates to drown your winter sorrows in an amber pint of excellent Danish lager. (Preferably while wearing a nordic sweater.) I’m talking an informal sense of togetherness and peace – this is very Hyggelig. (Hoo-glee)
When you create warmth for you, your loved ones, and friends–and without spending a lot o’ money–you are essentially creating social joy. For me, 2017 is going to be all about creating maximal hygge warmth and mirth as a big wholesome buffer against the forces of evil and uncertainty that loom.
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My ovaries! My ovaries!
So embrace these velvet fog days, snuggle down in your warm flannel sheets, and draw your loved ones (or pictures of your favorite tv/movie stars—I won’t judge) close.
And for that added kick of joy, put a little smygge in your life—pop on that warm wool sweater and socks (but nothing else). You won’t regret it. ; >[image error]
Follow us at Lady Smut — we’re an excellent daily source of Hygge. And subscribe as well! It’s free and fun stuff is coming to our subscribers very soon.
[image error]Madeline Iva writes fantasy and paranormal romance. Her fantasy romance, WICKED APPRENTICE, featuring a magic geek heroine, is available on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, and through iTunes. Sign up for Madeline Iva news & give aways.
January 3, 2017
Forest Bathing Your Way To Less Stress
[image error]By Elizabeth Shore
Let’s face it, now that we’re four days into the new year, the resolutions you made with such shiny optimism are already starting to tarnish. We’re back at work, the kids are back at school, the usual routines you had before holiday madness set in have returned with a vengeance and you don’t know how in the world you thought fitting in daily gym dates and eating salads had even a snowball’s chance in hell at success. Any moment of stress-free existence you may have had during the break – fleeting though it was – is now as gone as the presents you returned, and you’re paying the price. Your blood pressure’s as high as your piles of unfinished work and stress levels are through the roof. Ain’t life grand.
Consider this. According to Prevention.com, 90% of Americans report feeling stressed over at least one thing during the holiday season. Ninety percent! So thinking that a having break from the daily grind will rejuvenate you is like thinking that drinking a cup of coffee will make up for years of sleep deprivation. So what to do? Should you just accept that your life is a hopeless, never-ending hamster wheel? That the only people living stress-free lives are monks? Hell no. How about actually making an honest-to-goodness conscious effort to de-stress? Setting aside time for the sole purpose of calming your anxieties and centering your soul? Sounds good, right? So do what the Japanese do: take a bath in the forest.
Shinrin Yoku is Japanese for forest bathing. To be clear, you’re not hauling a tub into the woods like people in a Cialis commercial. Instead, forest bathing is a health-enhancing technique of letting the sights, sounds, and smells of being in the forest wash over you as you wonder. Bathing, as it were, in the sensations of the woods. To be a proper forest bather is not simply to trek along a woodsy path and call it a day. Instead, it’s to immerse oneself in all that the forest offers. Listen to the birds. Smell the earthiness. Feel the rustling wind on your cheeks. Bathe in the forest experience and feel your stress levels plummet.
The folks at shinrin-yoku.org have put up a three-minute video on YouTube to give you an introduction to the concept. Look! I’ve found it for you:
Amos Clifford, one of the leading voice of forest therapy, states in an article in Women’s Health magazine that a single three-hour walk in the woods can calm your mind and body for a week. Sounds good, but what if you happen to live where there’s nary a forest in sight? Fear not. Immersion in any natural setting can work just as well, from mountains to deserts to beaches. Even a park would do, as long as you can get away from your every day environment and immerse yourself in the natural. Phones and other electronic devices are strictly verboten. You’ve got to be able to escape the confines of stressful daily life and notice the nature around you. Another good thing to know is that while a three-hour immersion is recommended, studies have shown that even a few minutes of being in a natural setting can help calm and soothe the savage – and stressed – beast in us all.
The forest bathing movement and “ecotherapy” is catching on. Doctors are writing “nature prescriptions” to address everything from anxiety and depression to high blood pressure and diabetes. Studies purport to show that nature walks reduce cortisol – the hormone released during times of stress – and leave participants feeling happy and relaxed in the great outdoors.
Why not give it a try? Writer Gemma Hartley of the Women’s Health magazine article states that her writing flowed better than it had in years after she’d gone on a forest bathing retreat. So relax and rejuvenate with a bath in the woods. Your mind and body will thank you.
Pitch Is Perfect
Is hair like that the secret to happiness? Can I give it a whirl and get back to you?
By Alexa Day
Right up until the mid-season finale of The Walking Dead, I was prepared to complain about the direction the show had taken. I’d spent most of the seventh season tuning in to listen to the endless rambling of Negan, who is basically a schoolyard bully with a baseball bat wrapped in barbed wire. I could not figure out why people who had driven glass into their enemies’ eyes or torn out their enemies’ throats with their teeth were afraid of a big Chatty Cathy doll with a bat, and I’d started to lose interest in that particular mystery.
But I have to thank Negan for something. If he hadn’t annoyed the living daylights out of me, I might never have spent half an episode looking for other things to watch. If I hadn’t gone shopping for alternatives, I would never have found Pitch. I think I may be the last person in North America to have found the Fox series about the first woman to play major league baseball, but my tardiness meant I could binge-watch the whole season, so I’m grateful for it.
Pitch rescued me from the depths of television despair. It’s amazing. It’s given me reason to believe in regular network television again.
How?
Well, the easy answer is that it’s clearly put together by people who give a damn about what they’re doing and have the talent to do it well. I think that’s getting lost in television these days. How much television is being produced by people writing random stories that don’t make sense because they don’t think you’ll ever quit watching? Too much.
The true beauty of Pitch is that it isn’t about baseball at all. It’s about a large group of tight-knit characters who interact with each other and each other’s issues against the backdrop of baseball. Baseball is more of a setting in the way that New York City is a setting. It’s important but it doesn’t drive the story.
A lot of other things make Pitch beautiful.
1. There are no one-dimensional characters, even in the secondary cast. We know that Ginny’s agent, Amelia, used to represent celebrities, and so we know why she needs to protect Ginny from herself. We also know that Amelia’s struggle with infertility cost her a relationship, which adds a touch of vulnerability to her hard-charging facade. The general manager (Mark Consuelos, looking good) recruits a Cuban player by pitching a doll’s head at him. It’s the opening to a very well written conversation about two immigrants whose lives were changed by an all-American game. Ginny’s teammate, Blip, and his glamorous wife have an argument about how their marriage is not built on what they each wanted from life. It’s hard to create an entire cast of well-rounded characters, but there is a giant payoff in feeling every character’s fears, joys, and crushing disappointments. There’s a bigger payoff in not knowing whether a beloved character will find the happiness they want so badly or face another setback.
2. Complex feminism. I missed Pitch when it first showed up in September because I thought it was going to depend on one-note feminism. If I knew that a woman could do the job, and she knew she could do the job, I didn’t want to spend a whole season watching her prove it to the world at large. (In September, that felt a lot like the real world.) Pitch establishes right away that Ginny can do the job well enough to stay on the team. Much of the rest of the season touches on the kind of things women have to deal with in the universe outside professional baseball. Ginny has to balance her job with her social life; her groupies are all female and with her job, she struggles to find time to date. Ginny and her agent have to deal with leaked nude photos. (Their solution, which involves the ESPN Body Issue, is brilliant.) Ginny’s entire family has always wanted her to achieve this level of success, but once she’s arrived, they all have different issues with her. None of us are strangers to the pressure to maintain an image, build friendships, find romance, and establish a solid professional standing. Watching Ginny try, and sometimes fail, to do it live on the JumboTron made me want to cheer for her all the more.
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I was surprised by how badly and how quickly I wanted to put my face against all that beard. Very badly. Very quickly.
3. Mike Lawson. Mike’s not the typical sports hero. The bottom half of his face is hidden beneath a thick beard. He’s starting to go to seed. Much is made of his bad knees. Age is catching up to him and he knows it. He’s the team captain, and he keeps the younger guys in line with the knowledge and wisdom that come with a long career. But that career has cost him just about everything, and when we join the story, we’re watching him deal with the ruins of the marriage he sacrificed to baseball, the erosion of his body, and the threat of being replaced. Mike’s earned his alpha status with the team, but we get to see him in private, too, at his most vulnerable. I’m not sure that we as romance writers are creating enough characters like Mike, but he’s the reason I keep coming back. I have the highest hopes for him, along with the deepest fears.
Of course, there’s bad news. Nothing’s free in this world, right?
As magnificent as Pitch is, we won’t see new episodes until next fall. That’s criminal, but I can see how it might have happened. It just bothers me that I have to wait that long to rejoin the story, and I’m scared that Fox will come up with some baseless reason to get rid of it.
I’m also worried about what will happen to Pitch if it does come back. Right after watching the world fall apart for all these wonderful characters, in exactly the way the world should fall apart in a season finale, I sat back with a contented sigh and wondered if I’d ever felt so happy with a television show. That’s when I remembered Sleepy Hollow. That first season finale was a thing of beauty. After that, it was like the writers became jealous of its glory and tried to destroy it. They finally succeeded by killing one of the leads, but they worked really hard to wreck that show before then.
(Sleepy Hollow isn’t completely dead, by the way. It’s just dead to me.)
So while I’m working through the next several months, waiting for Pitch to return, I’m on the lookout for other distractions. Fanfiction writers are already linking Ginny and Mike, which sounds just lovely to me but might not be the best idea for them. And I imagine I could be seeking out more sports romances during this long interval.
Just be warned. Pitch has presented me with an appropriately diverse professional baseball team. I will be pretty disappointed to find that romance can’t do the same.
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January 1, 2017
Take More
by Kiersten Hallie Krum
Happy New Year, Lady Smutters! Welcome to 2017! I hope the new year has been AWESOME for you all. I mean, it’s only been 24 hours, right? What could’ve gone wrong?
Wait, maybe let’s not answer that.
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My New Year’s Eve head shot. Not quite drunk yet.
All over my social media feeds, people have been bemoaning the trials of 2016. And I get it. It was a brutal year for many people in many areas: personal, professional, political. There’s been a lot of loss. A lot of sadness. A lot of disillusion and lost hope. Overall, the coming of 2017 has been greeted with an overwhelming sense of relief. Not so much hope for the new year so much as feeling lucky to get out of 2016 in one piece.
I had a great 2016, I won’t lie. I made a vow to kick the crap outta 2016 and I did a damn good job of it. I decided to stop saying “I used to” and start saying “I’m going to” or “I did.” And I worked hard at it; I’m still working hard at it. Every day facing the same challenges, the same roadblocks, the same mental high jinks to get over myself and move forward, to even just move again after so many years of barely being able to walk. And though I didn’t reach all I’d hope to achieved, I notched a lot of watersheds on my proverbial post. So 2016 was pretty righteous…right up until I slammed right into the back end of the summer and down into months of familial drama, drama that led to major life changes.
I wasn’t relieved to begin 2017, but I can’t say I’m sorry to see the back of this past year. There’s something refreshing about crossing that line in the calendar. Moving through that hour into a new year. A new chance. It’s why we make resolutions, looking at the clean slate of a year yet unsullied. Unlived. Options are endless. The great unknown of time spreads before us unchallenged.
I try not to make resolutions. Somehow setting a resolution is the surefire way to not achieve those hopes and dreams. Because it’s hard, seriously hard, to stick to goals that are meant to change your life, make it better, make it stronger. Meant to make it feel more worthy, more fulfilling, more fruitful and edifying.
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That are meant to give us hope.
So if we fail to achieve those resolutions–as so many of us do–it feels like just that. A failure. As though it’s a character judgment because we weren’t able to make those changes that are dreams really, dreams of how we’d prefer to live our lives. Dreams of how we’d prefer we’d be. Thinner. Richer. Fitter. Healthier. More patient. More kind. More thoughtful. More fun. More desirable. Better at our jobs. Better at our lives. We make resolutions to fix what we see as defaults in our character. What we’re told are the failures in our selves. What we think we need to sacrifice, to give, in order to be better people. Better women.
I have a different idea for 2017. A alternative to giving up things to improve ourselves.
Take more.
Take more pictures. Take more chances. Take more trips. Take more dates. Take more drives. Take more days off. Take more time with your significant other, your children, your cat. Take more walks. Take more adventures. Take more risks. Take more quiet time. Take more books. Read longer. Read hotter. Read harder.
Take 2017 to the ultimate limit. However it turns out, you’re sure to have enjoyed the ride.
And stick with Lady Smut for another smexy year. We like to take it regularly. In a metaphorical way…of course.
Welcome to 2017. It’s a new year. Anything can happen.
Writer, singer, editor, traveler, tequila drinker, and cat herder, Kiersten Hallie Krum avoids pen names since keeping her multiple personalities strait is hard enough work. She writes smart, sharp, and sexy romantic suspense. Her debut romantic suspense novel, Wild on the Rocks, is now available. Visit her website at www.kierstenkrum.com and find her regularly over sharing on various social media via @kierstenkrum.
