And then, much like the consistent ache of losing a love one, we woke up one day and stopped thinking about her. Her television show had ended. We saw her exposed vagina too many times for her to play that card again. Her drug use no longer held shock value. The limelight had leached Paris of everything she had to offer us, and so we tossed her aside like she was the terrible olive ruining our Greek Salad of life.

White notes that Hilton was the quintessential It Girl:

“What is an It Girl and How can you be one? An It Girl epitomizes the moment, the very second… but it isn’t accidental. It Girls need to be rich (probably with famous parents); they should be fashionable and probably they will fulfill a typical hetero male fantasy. They need to fit many expectations of What Women Should Be. But the best It Girls also break those rules, a little.”

And so White seems to suggest, because Paris enjoyed drugs, sex and herself, we enjoyed her. Like a shimmering, narcissistic star, Paris’ flame flickered, propelled forth by the attention we willingly gave her.

I wish I could sit here and counteract White’s claims as to why we enjoyed watching Paris Hilton with another reason, but I honestly can’t. Could she be right? Was Hilton not merely a socialite, but a trailblazer for feminism? For standing up for yourself, your sexuality and your body?

I wish I could sit here and say, with confidence, that Hilton’s fame was based on our love of train wrecks. That we knew she would eventually get old, lose her looks and energy for mischief and then be left with nothing except an ankle-biting dog whose only trick is to be an accessory. I wish I could definitively slam my fist on the table and say that Hilton stood for nothing, that she was a placeholder in Hollywood, filling a void that simply needed to be filled with a warm body. I wish I could engage White in a friendly but heated debate, arguing that Hilton was what the lower and middle class loved to watch because she embodied what we all secretly hope the lucky and wealthy are: spoiled, talentless and consisting mostly of glitter, tulle and desperation; that there were dozens of famous women who took control of their body and pride the way Hilton tried to take on her own, but with purpose and without the vapidity Hilton oozed from her tiny, perfect pores.

But I can’t say that, no matter how desperately I want to, because we’re still talking about her. We’re still trying to figure out what the hell she meant to and for us. And maybe White is a friend of Hilton’s, trying to aide her in her supposed comeback, but I think — rather disappointingly — White just may have a point.

Besides, we wouldn’t have Ke$ha or Perez Hilton without Paris Hilton and for that we than– oh, god. I can’t even try and finish that sentence. I really think we could have done without Paris Hilton.

Image via ShutterStock

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Well, watch out Pinot Grigio! Because Fergie is about to Black Eyed Peas the vino market. (To “Black Eyed Peas” something is to remove the class in the name of profit.)

Fergie and her father, Pat Ferguson, or as I would like all of us to start calling him, Fergo, have somewhat recently released their new wine label, Ferguson Crest. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Fergie’s obsession with wine started at a young age, when she would sneak sips from her parents’ glasses before she even reached the double digits. This apparently was not a cause for alarm as a sign that she may have been on her way to become a budding alcoholic, which, thank God! Because if her parents had any concern at all, we wouldn’t be blessed with the finest wine some chick who peed her pants on stage had to offer. Ok — that’s mean. I once peed my pants in a McDonald’s ball pit when I was 4. Are we even, Fergie? My mom left without telling anyone who worked there. My apologies if any of you visited the McDonald’s playground in Middleboro, Massachusetts in the summer of 1991.

The grapes are grown by Fergo himself, who used to spend “hours in his garden”. In the very same sentence the article felt it appropriate to mention that Fergie’s parents are divorced. I like to imagine that there were no monetary issues, cheating from either parties, or a simple case of love lost. I like to imagine that Fergie’s mother just couldn’t play second fiddle to a vine of grapes. And now Fergie’s financial backing of the very activity that caused her parents divorce is some weird power play to get back at her mother for not letting her get a puppy when she was on Kids, Incorporated or something.

Pick up a bottle of Ferguson Crest anywhere Ferguson Crest is sold (FergusonCrest.com and a single store in LA).

Featured image via TheHollyWoodReporter

The post Big Girls Don’t Cry — They Drink Fergie’s Wine, Ferguson Crest appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Martinez suffers from Alport Syndrome, which causes mutations to part of a structural component that is important to membranes in the kidney, ear and eye. It also makes you pee blood, just in case kidney failure wasn’t enough. Because Alport is hereditary, no one in his family can donate.

He has two very young daughters and a wife, who he hopes to grow old with while watching his daughters become adults. Things were not looking good for Martinez – as of 18 months ago, he started to go through the grueling dialysis. Three times a week, Martinez sits in a chair for four hours, hooked up to a machine that takes his blood, filters out impurities his kidneys can no longer handle and pumps it back in.

The good news is that Martinez’s efforts have garnered so much attention both on the street and over the Internet that he now has had several offers for a kidney donation. He reports on his Facebook page, Earl Needs a Kidney: “I am still receiving messages from people who would like to donate and I am trying to get back to everyone to let them know I appreciate their support and hope that everything works out for the best.”

It takes an incredibly brave person to donate one of their organs, even if they have twice the amount of that organ than they technically need. Such a selfless act, especially when it is on the behalf of a complete stranger, is an amazing gift to offer. Earl sounds like he might be set, but he’s not the only one out there. Visit his page to see other stories from other people who are looking for a donation.

Visit LivingDonorsOnline.com to find out more on how you can follow through. Remember – many insurances in the US cover not only the kidney recipient’s medical bills, but the person who offers as well. So it won’t cost you an arm and a leg, just one kidney.

Featured image via ThinkProgress.com

The post Oregon Man Takes to the Streets to Find a Kidney appeared first on HelloGiggles.

I love a good snark fest, especially against the rich and famous. Imagine my surprise when my schadenfreude melted away and I was left feeling sorry for Lohan. Maybe not sorry for Lohan, so much as disgust for the rest of us who are not Lindsay Lohan, but are still talking about her constantly. Before the first paragraph ends, the author, Stephen Rodrick, notes that she moves through the Chateau Marmont as if she owns it, but in a “debtor-prison kind of way”. The next sentence divulges that Lohan’s mother is sitting a table away from her, attempting to eavesdrop on her daughter’s meeting for the film the title is referring to, Braxton Pope’s and Paul Schrader’s The Canyons. 

The article continues in a similar fashion. Paragraph after paragraph of prose that is heavily seasoned with insults directed at the former Mean Girls star, with descriptions of other people treating her like utter crap in between. The only nonnegotiable clause in her contract for The Canyons is that she is not allowed decision making rights. Lohan sobbed for an hour and a half outside of Schrader’s hotel room after she missed a meeting and was consequently, though temporarily, fired. Lindsay had to have a crew member from the film accompany her on her lunch break because she wasn’t “allowed” off set. She verbalized that she was afraid her co-star, porn star James Deen, would garner more success than she will from the film.

It’s  7,500 words that crap all over Lindsay Lohan like she is a beaten up Jetta under a tree and we’re just a bunch of Blue Jays that ate some berries. It’s exhausting to read how everyone is against her, but even more tiring when you take into account how it’s really only propelled by her own terrible decisions.

Schrader had to tell Lohan, age 26, not to take sleeping pills after 3 AM when she has a 9 AM call time. She actually, and apparently literally, ran away from the aforementioned crew member who was supposed to watch her when she went out to lunch. She tried to miss her first day of work until Schrader told her she would be replaced immediately if she didn’t make it in.

Lindsay Lohan is a sad, sad person who can’t take care of herself, which is the obvious consequence when you’re spoiled nearly your entire life. I just wish that we could stop paying attention to it.

Image via ABCNews

The post Are We Really Still Talking Crap About Lindsay Lohan? appeared first on HelloGiggles.

Though they met at the same high school in Boston, Damon and Affleck went their separate ways post-graduation when Damon found himself at Harvard, and Affleck decided to move west to make a name for himself in Hollywood. Eventually the pair found themselves together again, with Damon sleeping on Affleck’s floor as they worked on the script Damon had started for a class in his fifth and final year at Harvard University: “There was this playwriting class and the culmination of it was to write a one-act play, and I just started writing a movie. So I handed the professor at the end of the semester a 40-some-odd-page document, and said, “Look, I might have failed your class, but it is the first act of something longer”.

That’s where the attainable fairytale comes into play. Damon handed in 40 pages of a script that didn’t meet the requirements of an undergraduate screen writing course, but he followed his passion and it changed his life forever. The account of this phenomenon was recently recanted by Damon, Affleck and the other major players involved in this time period of their lives in BostonMagazine.com, and it’s a must-read for any person who desires a job involving the creative written word. How delightful to know that a movie that earned 9 Academy Awards was written during drunken late nights that bled into even drunker early mornings. How delectable to know these writers were semi-ignorant to the trials not-yet-successful screenwriters will inevitably encounter while trying to find an agent for their script. How goddamned riveting to hear that these 20-somethings would look each of these problems square in the eye before kicking its ass and making the movie they wanted to make. How terrible to know that Kevin Smith read the entire script while on the toilet because he found it too riveting to stand up and clean himself before putting down the script. No one needed to know that, Kevin Smith. No one needed to picture you standing up gingerly to test whether or not your legs had fallen asleep to the point of complete numbness.

Though beloved by all, I don’t think Boston has ever claimed a movie as their own quite like it has this one. Have you ever noticed that when avid watcher of professional sports talk about their favorite sports team, they use “we”, as if they did something more than shovel nachos into their maw while swearing at a television? Boston has a funny way of co-opting that practice for anything and anyone that has come out of Massachusetts. Aerosmith is ours. It’s nearly a right of passage to run into Steven Tyler if you live anywhere near Boston. (I ran into him at a Target I used to buy my tampons from when I worked at a local mall. My co-worker groomed his German Shepherd. My other co-worker saw him hanging out at the Genius Bar in Apple for almost two hours. My boss rode in a motorcycle parade with him. My father saw him while they were both driving on the highway. Twice.) Conan O’Brien? He’s ours. The Kennedys? I think a very small percentage of Massachusians pray in the name of that family instead of a more traditional God. Denis Leary? Ours. Whitey Bulger? Ours, and we’re all secretly upset that he’s in jail. I swear Boston mourned the day Whitey was found. Secretly, of course, because of the whole “murder” thing.

What caught the city’s eye and roped it in wasn’t the accurate Boston accents that finally found its way into a major film or the local actors they used, it was because Matt and Ben captured the city and its people. You’ve never seen a city comprised of so many intellectuals and heavily accented bros who call those intellectuals “f***in’ queee-ahs” as you can find in Cambridge. They saw that, they took notice of it, and they used that to make a film that was “simple… honest… beautiful.”

The BostonMagazine profile of the movie dissects the film like a medical autopsy, filleting it down the middle and parsing the parts of the whole. Matt, Ben, Kevin Smith and Gus Van Sant show you the brains behind the film, the heart that drove them in this endeavor and the liver that filtered the toxic shit that almost got in the way.

Image via Shutterstock

The post The Making of Good Will Hunting: “It Was Simple, It Was Honest, It Was Beautiful.” appeared first on HelloGiggles.

I thought that listening to what I consider my laptop’s mating call in order to find it was an indication of craziness. I assume my father had similar thoughts. Well, you know what, Dad? At least I didn’t poison your milkshake to gain Internet access like this Californian teen did.

The 16-year-old girl and her friend offered to buy the parents milkshakes, but then added a special, secret ingredient: crushed up anti-anxiety medication. With her parents fast asleep, nary a worry in their heads, she was able to bypass her 10 PM internet curfew. While a chocolate milkshake laden with Xanax sounds like a damned dream some days, I guess it’s not ideal if you’re a real adult with children and a job. But maybe we’re not placing enough blame on the parents. Maybe they should have been more aware. If your teenagers are offering to buy you milkshakes, just immediately assume they are trying to drug you. I was a teenager once. I know how they think. I’m surprised I didn’t try to poison my mother every single time she picked up the land line and disconnected my dial-up. YEAH, THAT’S RIGHT, TEENS. THAT’S WHAT HAPPENED IN THE EARLY 2000s. You don’t even know. You don’t even know.

This is just another situation that proves that video games are controlling our kids’ minds. I am calling for a ban on all milkshake video games. And certainly no more Cooking Mama. It’s too much. How many parents have to take a forced and uncontrollable nap before we finally outlaw Cooking Mama?

Image via Shutterstock

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I had to have a glass of wine before I was able to write “farting” in the title of this post. I will have to have another glass of wine to get over repeating it just then.

You can see why writing about the recent formal write up a federal employee received for stinking up his or her office several times a day with no remorse and little apology has become my own personal Everest. I decided to tackle the five page report the only way I knew how: step-by-step.

December 30, 2012, 7:48 AM EST: I see an e-mail from one of HelloGiggles’ amazing editors asking if I wanted to write up a “super silly” article about the a-fart-mentioned situation.

December 30th, 2012, 7:48 AM – 1:48 PM EST: I struggle between being a good little freelancer and showing a gung-ho attitude for every bone thrown my way or just e-mailing back an all-caps “NO THANK U, XOXO” before washing myself four times until I finally feel clean again. Decide to overcome my fears and graciously accept assignment.

January 2, 2013, 10:29 PM EST: Start reading the report.

January 2, 2013, 10:30 PM EST: Stop reading report.

January 2, 2013, 10:31 PM EST – 10:39 PM EST: Read the report in between bouts of staring at the ceiling. Begrudgingly laugh twice.

January 2, 2013, 10:41 PM EST: Question everything I know about my inner self after laughing at a sentence about farts.

January 2, 2013, 10: 42 PM EST: Marvel at the timetable of farts. Marvel that a human had to create a timetable for another human’s farts.

January 2, 2013, 11:22 PM EST: I have become mildly comfortable with saying the word fart. This written warning changed more than the work environment of so many offended olfactory-owning organisms, but it opened my eyes to a whole new world. This memo about farts was the Aladdin to my Jasmine.

The post Federal Employee Gets Busted for Farting, Freelance Flatulence-Fearing Writer Struggles to Comment on the Story appeared first on HelloGiggles.

I’m so annoyed that there is another story out there that calls for us to demonstrate that we must still defend female sexuality. I’m sick of having this argument, and being so annoyed makes me feel guilty. Like I’m not good enough of a feminist. I write this all with trepidation, waiting for the first e-mail from a woman who is A Better Feminist than I am who thinks I need to be lectured on how my laziness is part of the problem. But I am, I’m so sick of it. I don’t know why we just can’t be okay with boobs.

According to Wikipedia, a major selling point to the owners of World Famous Gold & Silver Pawn Shop in Las Vegas, Nevada found Olivia to be the top candidate in an interviewing process because she was just so darn attractive. Chumlee, a man who looks like his name, volunteered to train her in his off hours. This lead to whispers around the pawn shop that Chumlee had the hots for the new employee. This is the same man who, in an episode titled “Peaches and Pinups”, had a female employee  help him appraise a box of vintage Playboy magazines, despite her protests.

Co-founder Rick Harrison has admitted to dropping out of the 10th grade, preferring to make $2000 a week selling fake Gucci bags.

Overtones of sexual harassment and being a former criminal are things that The History Channel can apparently deal with, but don’t you dare come at them with a photo of your butt cheeks. Because that sets a bad example. Exposed butt cheeks are a nationwide killer. We need a gun in every home to stop these people exposing their butt cheeks. A police officer in every public school. Please, won’t you think of the children? They can’t know that people have butt cheeks.

This isn’t about telling you that it’s okay to post nude photos of yourself online, because maybe it’s not. That’s not a judgment call anyone can make for any one other person. It’s important to remember that what you want now, who you are now, and how you want to express yourself now are not the things you want or the person you will be in five years. A picture can last literally longer than your own lifetime. Your pre-frontal cortex isn’t even fully developed until around age 25, which is super unfortunate because that is the part of the brain that helps you exercise good judgement. So to all of the 18 year olds out there thinking about sending tit pix to the boy in their algebra class: maybe think about it first. You might get hired on a stupid television show that will later fire you. Or maybe nothing will happen. Leslie Mann’s boobs are on display in This is 40 and it is hilarious and nothing bad will ever happen to her future because of the scene. It demonstrates that boobs have a wider acting range than just sexy. They can also play funny pretty well too. Like an attached prop. Gallagher should have a sex change.

So, here we are. Another goddamned article stating that boobs are okay. Just a drop in the Pro-Boobies ocean. Sometimes I feel like we’re screaming and no one who holds any real power to make real change is paying attention, but then I  remember one of the truer cliches: we can be that change. Did you hear about the group of 200 women who brutally attacked a rapist and then all confessed to the murder together in solidarity? How unfortunate their voices weren’t heard when they tried to report their rapes to the police, only to have to fall on deaf ears. It may have prevented the situation from escalating in such a way, but change needed to happen somehow. And that’s what a singular voice gets you: change.

Olivia Black getting fired is hardly comparable to a serial rapist, but it shows us how far we’ve come in this country. We don’t have to stop now. We don’t have to settle for anything less than equality. On the surface this is just the job of one lady we don’t personally know, but I think it’s representative of something a little bit bigger. Kind of like how my left boob is a little bit bigger than my right.

(I wonder if that sentence will be used to get me fired someday?)

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