Mermaid Dresses Become Her

Take a look at these two dresses. One she wore to the Oscars last weekend and the other she wore in a recent photoshoot with Ebony magazine (cover image below). Though I wasn't a fan of the Oscar choice (it was a House of Dereon original, y'all), you have to give it to Bey for sticking to what works for her.



One word: Fierce! First off, let's talk about the hair. Big, curly and a more natural, darker hue definitely works for my girl. Could this be a return to the "Work it Out" days?


Actually, now that I look at this still from the video, that yellow-gold hair color was too, too much.

Something about Beyonce that I absolutely love? She gives Black publications the very best interviews. Remember that last Vibe cover that she did? Or the Giant issue where she boldly went where no other pop star had went before: posed for a magazine with hair curlers atop her head.

In this issue, she revealed a little something about her new, domesticated life with Jigga and why she'll never retire. Check it out.

-- Whitney

You Look Like You Work at a Hasidic Meth Lab!

This was the hands down funniest moment of the Academy Awards last night. Ben Stiller's dead on imitation of Joaquin Phoenix was worth every other painstakingly tedious moment of the rest of the telecast.

FYI: "You look like you work at a Hasidic Meth Lab!" will be my standard insult from here on out.

-- Whitney

Solange sipping (and twittering) on sizzurp

Note: This story didn't make it onto another website, so I'm going to throw it you cool cats.


Solange Knowles recently had a little run-in with a syrup bottle. Don't worry, it wasn't the illegal, chopped and screwed kind, but it did land the "I Decided" singer on the floor of an airport (probably Los Angeles' LAX) and eventually in a hospital for dehydration.

According to Sol-Angel's twitter blog, she drank a little bit too much NyQuil sometime between midnight and 2 a.m. EST on February 17 (her twitter status was "never taking nyquil again. I feel so wierd.").

What happened next is unknown to anyone, even the singer who confirms that she passed out sometime between writing this tweet "I'm closer to Julez! I'm" and typing "Woaah......How'd I end up in the hosptal?" about an hour later, around 5 a.m. EST.

The youngest Knowles kept up a steady stream of Twitter updates, totaling 12 messages during the two hours that she was in the hospital, letting all of her 10,000 followers know that she was "super dehydrated" and hooked up to an IV, that Mama Tina came to see her in the hospital ("my mom is here! I'm ready to go! I'm fine now! Just let me go home and drink Gatorade!") and that she was pretty embarrassed about the whole thing ("I've been embarrassed enough today.")

Solange joins a recent celeb trend of blogging while in treatment. Erykah Badu recently twittered throughout the birth of her third child.

-- Whitney Teal

How much info is TMI? What do you think about celebs twittering through birth and dehydration?

Can I Have a Quick Word?

To tell you how obsessed I am with purple (wait, have I already written about that here? Not sure...). It's my hands-down fave color and I'm really feeling this Solange with the purple, "Star Trek" meets tribal eyeshadow. You think I can get away with that for work tomorrow?



On another, but related, note. Will someone please buy me this new Baby G watch? Do you remember in 10th grade when anyone who was remotely cool had a "talking" Baby G? Mine was purple! Ha!

-- Whitney

Supermarket Survey

My decision to stop at the store was a whim. I knew that I had waffle mix at home, plus bacon, but that I had gulped down the last of my Sunny-D. So I stopped in the neighborhood Safeway to pick up the juice drink, but also got a carton of eggs, a few Snickers ice cream bars, a box of frozen T.G.I. Friday's quesadillas, all impulse buys. With my few purchases loaded in the grocery cart, I wheeled it to a check stand and settled behind a tall, buff Black dude. As I put my stuff on the conveyor belt, that very familiar feeling of supermarket shame came over me. He was buying fruit, bottled water, healthy stuff. My junk food looked unhealthy, wasteful, and worst of all: immature.

What's worse is that I experience this feeling nearly every time I visit this store. I've never felt it before, but something about this boutique Safeway with the sophisticated clientele always makes me feel like an overgrown kid with a horrible diet. Ah, yes, and here is the woman with the large tub of Haagen-Dazs, a Butterfinger bar and a six-pack of Wild Cherry Pepsi putting her items in front of the lean, mean, running machine and his VitaminWater, boxed couscous and pita bread.

But amid all of that, I can always muster up a minute feeling of superiority when I bust out my Baggus. They're colorful, eco-friendly grocery bags that I carry with me always. After living in New York, I came to assume that everyone despised wasteful plastic bags as much as I did, but since moving to marry-land, I've seen that me and my strict, no-plastic policy are in the minorty. I lost one of my three baggu's recently, and therefore have been on the hunt to replace it.

I've considered trying out one of their new, funky-colored designs. Or moving away from the familiar brand to another, equally cute, equally cheap bag.



Decisions, decisions.

-- Whitney

I Love This Image

[Michelle Obama, Vogue, March 2009]

25 Things, Divided by 5

[Solange, Giant]

Everyone on Facebook has been posting these notes with 25 Things about them. The premise, as I'm sure you already know, is you write down 25 things that most people wouldn't know about you, or that you find interesting and you tag your friends, who are then supposed to post their own note. I've been tagged a couple of times, but I have a strict no-notes policy on Facebook so I haven't responded.

Plus, as I'm sure you know from reading this blog, I'm not terribly interesting and don't really believe that people care about when my left big toe was broken by a dresser drawer, then the toenail turned black and fell off, leaving me without a nail for like a month. True story.

So instead of doing it the traditional way, I've decided to post just 5 random, mildly interesting Fun Whit Facts. Enjoy. Criticize. Make Fun of. It's your choice.

5 Whit Facts:

1. I listen to NPR all day. Literally, all day. My car radio is always on WAMU 88.5 (although if someone is in the car with me I'll sometimes hastily turn the dial to WPGC or click on the Jazmine Sullivan disc in embarrassment). I also download the podcasts onto my work computer and listen to interviews and book readings on my iPhone while I'm doing my hair or brushing my teeth.

2. People that don't work (and complain about money) disgust me. Excluding people with disabilities or that for some other reason can't physically work. And, I don't include stay-at-home moms in this category since caring for children is HARD work. But, I mean people that complain about money, but won't go looking for a new job. Or people that turn down jobs because the pay is not what they want or it's not their absolute dream job. That kind of stuff really irks me and is so prevalent among young people today. I guess because I come from a family of stone-cold hustlers, it's really, really hard for me to have sympathy for someone who is lazy. My motto: If you don't work, you don't eat. I like to eat, therefore I work as much as possible.

3. I am the most easily annoyed person alive. Really, try me. I have a list of pet peeves as long as the state of Texas and will readily list them off to you. My latest is people that compare themselves to me. I'm me, you're you, no comparison. Like for example if I mention a new dress. "Ugh, I don't like dresses." Cricket, cricket. Hence why I bought it for myself, and not for you.



4. I tend to form really weird girl-crushes. Like my most recent ones are Solange and Zooey Deschanel. Zooey for the obvious reasons and Solange because I just dig her all of a sudden. She's still sort of an annoying twit, but you've got to love someone so unapologetically bratty. My girl-crushes, like my guy-crushes, rarely last long and they normally end after a month or two of me furiously googling them and reading every interview they've ever done, seeing/listening to all of their work and chatting about them endlessly to anyone who'll listen. Then I get burnt out and watch Superbad for the 800 millionth time.

5. You probably only know about 2% of me. I am really, really private. The people closest to me don't even really know me. I don't know why, but I've developed this idea that if I say what's really on my mind people will hate me afterwards. I'm working on not stifling my thoughts, but it takes awhile to re-train yourself, you know? If you read my blog then you are probably way more intimately acquainted with me than my friends and family.

-- Whitney

In Transition/Random Musings

I'm growing out my hair relaxer and it's been a really great experience. The last time that I know for sure I had a relaxer was near Labor Day 2008, but I may have had another one after that, I'm not sure. I haven't been really strict with relaxing for a long time so it's hard to keep up.

Anywho, naturals call the in-between stage "transitioning," meaning that you probably have two very different hair textures coming out of your scalp and that you're having to tend to both textures.

I feel as if I'm constantly transitioning. The great profession that is writing/journalism/publishing (which I chose very, very willingly) has often put me through the ringer and required that I be very adaptable, moving from city to city, writing for different publications, freelancing here and there.

So much so that since I graduated from college in May of 2007 I've lived in three different apartments (two in the D.C. area and one in New York), not to mention the five months in Fort Worth, Tex. that I spent while I saved money to move to New York.

I've worked for countless companies since then, from temporary jobs to part-time retail jobs to internships to freelance gigs.

And I have to tell you, that I loved nearly every minute of it. My life has had such a feeling of vivrancy and immediacy and spirit. I feel like a hustler, someone who's able to make it anywhere. My goals and dreams come in very clear when my back is up against the wall, I learned from those experiences.

My life now feels settled. Which in some ways is AMAZING! I never thought that I'd enjoy doing things like paying bills online or furniture shopping or gasing up the car. But they're MY bills, paid with MY money, furniture for MY apartment, gas for MY car. I love it! Yet a sneaky part of me feels as if settled = domesticated. And I wonder if I'll ever write that novel before I turn 25, or publish any of my short stories in The New Yorker, or write a screenplay, or direct a documentary. When I feel like this I get soooo antsy. I start to think about moving to London or L.A. I tell myself that there's a whole big world out there that I haven't seen.

Which brings up some really fundamental questions. How do we ever have the time in the day, or the weeks in a year to pursue all of our dreams? When we've accomplished one goal, does that make the other, more distant goals less of a focus in our life? Is growing older really all about growing stale?

-- Whitney