NBCNews.com: 'Cougar Cruises' find cubs to love at sea →

Check out my first piece for NBCNews.com!

Gif from Cougar Town

"At a time when only the one-percenters have a trust fund to fall back on, the rest of us have a lot to gain by joining forces with a partner. Especially if your professional aspirations include making a film, or launching a start-up, or writing a novel, or taking any number of creative risks, you’re going to need financial support to fall back on. In other words, for a certain subset of the creative class, dependence is a privilege."

What’s Independence Worth? - NYmag.com/The Cut (via minimumragers)

(Source: annfriedman, via minimumragers)

Thought Catalog: Things You Should Know Before You Date A Writer

Jamie Anne Royce muses on the writing life:

I know, it may seem cool to earn money from writing, but it’s not. It’s just what we do. I do not lead a glamorous life. Writing is mentally taxing labor — albeit conducted while in sweatpants on my couch and surrounded by cats — but labor just the same. And we almost never see the sun. Seriously. Take us on a midday stroll or something. We probably need a break from staring at those two paragraphs we were working on all morning.

Read the rest at Thought Catalog.

"Feminism has long argued that men’s earning power shouldn’t buy them more power in domestic relationships—just because you’re earning doesn’t mean you don’t have to pitch in around the house. For the first time, lots of women now have to decide, when they get home from a long day at the office, am I entitled to sit down and relax for a while or do I need to make sure we’re sharing the load 50-50?"

Liza Mundy, author of The Richer Sex: How the New Majority of Female Breadwinners is Transforming Sex, Love, and Family (via Publishers Weekly)

Salon: All the shengnu ladies

Salon’s Roseann Lake writes about Chinese women’s marriage problem in “All the shengnu ladies”:

[Chinese women] represent the world’s largest female population, the highest percentage of self-made female billionaires, and with 63 percent of GMAT takers in China being female, they’re attaining MBAs with a ferocity that’s making the boys blush. And yet, no matter how ambitious or accomplished, they remain bound. Not by their feet, but by something that can be just as inhibiting — marriage.

Read the rest at Salon.

"The recent rise in single motherhood has set off few alarms, unlike in past eras. When Daniel Patrick Moynihan, then a top Labor Department official and later a United States senator from New York, reported in 1965 that a quarter of black children were born outside marriage — and warned of a “tangle of pathology”— he set off a bitter debate. By the mid-1990s, such figures looked quaint: a third of Americans were born outside marriage…Now the figure is 41 percent — and 53 percent for children born to women under 30."

Jason DeParle and Sabrina Tavernise, “For Women Under 30, Most Births Occur Outside Marriage” (via The New York Times)

Let’s all relax about single parenthood. Based on what I’ve heard from my interview subjects, we’ve got it on lock.

Read my sex and dating interviews with folks from Man Jose. (via Nerve)

"

I actually talked to the guy [who seemed like he was going after my girlfriend] in person finally (we get along great, strangely), and he’s told me that he’s stopped talking to her altogether now. He admitted to me that he had a crush on her, and he didn’t want to get in the way or cause a disturbance. We later smoked weed and played some MTG.

The funny thing is, one day my girlfriend starts venting to me about how he’s immature cause he isn’t texting her, and I blew up in her face, telling her that he has a great sense of honor and respect for other people. And I bitched how, for her to not see that, she is pretty blind. She started crying but she apologized and we had really good makeup sex.

Things are better now. When she leaves for work tonight, I’m gonna go back to his house and chill with him.

"

stupernan (via Reddit)

"Many of the things that people frequently find sexually desirable can be linked to reproductive success. Clear skin and good teeth are signs of health. Curvy female hips are a signal of sexual maturity and suggest that a woman will bear children easily. But there is huge variety in what can be found sexually appealing, and quite a bit of it has no meaningful bearing on reproductive success whatsoever. Long lean bodies, short fleshy bodies, pale skin, dark skin, blue eyes, brown eyes, red hair, black hair, moustaches, and hands with long thin fingers all have their ardent partisans, although none of these characteristics are necessary in order to make happy, healthy babies. Why should ‘gentlemen prefer blondes,’ as some assuredly do? Or redheads? Why should women find cleft chins appealing? What’s the percentage in being besotted by freckles?"

Hanne Blank, “Straight: The Surprisingly Short History of Heterosexuality” (via Publisher’s Weekly)

"No, I’m not in an abusive relationship. I just play a full-contact sport, and I bruise easily."

Kim, quoted in my set of interviews “Talking to Strangers: White Plains, NY” (via Nerve)