Ann Romney in a swimsuit?!

 

NEWS OF THE WORLD!!

Ann Romney cooled off on a Florida beach this weekend as her husband got fired up for the final presidential debate.

As husband Mitt indulged in a beach football game between his staffers and invited reporters, Mrs Romney took advantage of the Florida sunshine in her fetching floral suit, going for a swim with her family at a public beach.

The 63-year-old wife of the Republican presidential candidate looked glamorous in the brightly-colored, halterneck suit with matching sarong on Delray Beach.

She splashed around in the water with her son Craig, his wife Mary and grandchildren, before she grabbed a towel and headed for a hired sun lounger surrounded by other families.

 

 

The seven of you who follow this blog will probably realize the heavy political emphasis I place on each and every post. In other words, yes, I am vaguely aware there is a Presidential election going on, or should I say a campaign, and that these-hyarr guys seem to be arguing it out every time I dang-well turn around. Not that any of this affects me in Canada, Land of the Silver Birch, Home of the Beaver.

But I DID sit up and bark when I watched my favorite hard-hitting analysis of world news, Inside Edition with Deborah Norville, and saw a gushing item about Ann Romney deciding to go to the beach in Florida: the BEACH?? Wait a minute. This woman is over SIXTY years old and is deciding to go to the beach? Then surely she won't be wearing one-a-them swimsuit things, will she? Gadawmahty. A Mormon, ain't she? With five kids and the Lord only knows how many grandkids?

So anyway, they show pictures of her in the kind of suit I would die to find, IF I could find one anywhere, which I can't, which is one reason I stopped going to the beach a long time ago, even though I am not 63 or a Mormon. And she looked - good. The suit had a colorful, sundressy flavor to it, no industrial-strength spandex straps or bumpy black crimplene in evidence anywhere.

But here's what got me: their style correspondent or whoever-it-was came on and started gushing on and on, analyzing the suit thread by thread, seemingly, and gasping in shock and awe and even disbelief that a woman her age could "still" look good in an actual bathing suit. It was as if Ann Romney had taken a huge risk, bigger than that guy, you know, the one who jumped out of that thing and spun around and around and around and still landed up OK.

This can't be happening, they seemed to say: some magic must be afoot, and we must find out what it is!

The word "age-appropriate" came up so many times that I wanted to gag. Yes, the suit was attractive, BUT it was age-appropriate. Yes, the suit was colorful, BUT it was age-appropriate. God forbid she should wear something that made her look like mutton dressed as sacrificial lamb, or some henna-haired Mormon chippie.

It just galled me, is all. Age-appropriate this, age-appropriate that, and wowee, a woman who looks good  (they didn't dare say sexy: she's past menopause, for the love of God!) who isn't 35? Normally those comments are reserved for the mausoleum look of such death's-heads as Joan Rivers and Mary Tyler Moore. Everybody knows that "older" women (women who are no longer 35) have to preserve their "beauty" at any cost. Which means their eyes suddenly tilt up as if they're Chinese, plastic cheekbones explode forth like ping-pong balls, lips blow up like inflated worms, and faces become dead of all expression, with noses caved in like Michael Jackson's.

I have nothing against political candidates if they want to go knock their brains out. To me, "Romney" still refers to the governer of Michigan, whom I guess was Mitt's Dad, George (and who in their right mind would name their son. . . but I digress.)

Anyway, the below-most little article more or less sums up the bumph I've been seeing on this recent sensation. Funny, when Jackie Kennedy used to go to the beach, nobody said, "My God!", or "what nerve" (which is the hidden subtext of all this gasping and slavering). I don't think it mattered how old she was or whether or not the cameras were snapping. She was cool like that.

MAKING A SPLASH: ANN ROMNEY'S FLAWLESS BEACH STYLE

By Tamara Abraham

While most women of 63 would be hitting the beach in all-obscuring black, or shrouded in a loose cover-up, the trim Mrs Romney knows she has nothing to hide.

Proving women in their sixth decade can have as much fun with swimwear as their daughters, the white floral-print number is a clever choice that flatters the figure without losing out on style.

The punchy print, with its bright flowers, distract from any lumps and bumps beneath, as does the ruching across the midriff.

The suit, which may actually be a tankini, though it is difficult to tell, appears to have some underwire to support the bust. This lends structure, helping to make the waist look smaller - and the wearer walk taller.

A slim halterneck, too, is always pretty - a thicker strap style would have looked matronly with that print.

And though Mrs Romney has slim legs that a woman half her age would envy, the co-ordinating swim skirt covers her behind, allowing for a more modest look befitting her age, while the tie at the side can be adjusted so as not to cut into the waist.

 

 

 

I found a whole bunch of Mormon stuff, too, which kind of gets more unbelievable with every site, but if true, then Ann Romney must have her "garmie" all bunched up inside of that swimsuit, an act which may scandalize the elders of the Mormon Church, not to mention the Sister Wives who really aren't in any kind of shape to wear a bathing suit anyway.

This is from one of those style-dissection sites and talks about Ann Romney doing scandalous things like wearing the skins of animals with cloven hooves.

We can all agree that the black leather outfit Ann Romney wore on The Tonight Show With Jay Leno last night was the closest to risqué she's ever come. But according to a chat forum titled "Why didn't Ann wear her garments ... ?" on a website called MormonDiscussions.com, some members of the LDS church are concerned that she might not be wearing "garments," a kind of underwear worn by most adult Mormons. Here's a sampling of their reactions:

From zeezrom:

Thank God for Ann. This is a cry to all the LDS Women in the world:
"It is okay to raise the hemline!"
Now, let us pray she begins to work on the sleeves next.

From Just Me:

She could absolutely wear garmies with that awesome skirt.
 

From DarkHelmet:

She's probably wearing garments. Garments tend to ride up a little bit. The skirt probably just barely covers her garments.

 

 

From Elphaba:

I have a couple of questions. First, are garments fairly standard in length? I know my mother's garments would definitely have shown when sitting down if she had worn Ann's skirt, but my mom is only about 5'5". Is it possible Ann is tall enough that they would not have shown when she sat down?

Second, does the Church approve of adjusting the garments in some way to prevent them from showing? If Ann's height did not ensure the garments would not show when she sat down, it's obvious to me she altered them somehow, such as taping the hems up. In fact, given she was on national television, I would be shocked to discover she didn't take precautions of some sort to ensure they did not show. I have no personal objection to that, but it does seem to me something the Church would oppose. I admit, however, I really don't know.

Neither do I, Elphaba. I'm going to go lie down now.

 

Three's Company: Polygamy Pushes the Envelope

(An excerpt from an actual Christian web site devoted to "building the family").

Been watching TLC's 'Sister Wives'?

Have you been surprised how loving, and normal, they seem? Would you be surprised to learn there are many non-Mormon Christians who have felt God prompting them to live this way? Maybe you are curious and trying to figure out if this lifestyle truly can work. Or maybe you are a believer in Christ and you are witnessing all of the practical benefits but still trying to figure out how to make sense of this in light of the Bible. But you are asking yourself “Does the Bible, and it's Author, accept this?" Read on.

In the show Kody Brown makes this statement: “Love is to be multiplied not divided.” The idea of marriage, or a union with a male and female, transcends all religious, cultural, and ethnic boundaries. People from every nation or sphere of the world join together and partner with one another in order to build a family. More than 80% of cultures throughout history have also practiced some level of polygamy.

What does God say?

But the real question is: does Jesus Christ, the Lord of the universe, approve of this type of family where one man joins with more than one woman? We at Biblical Families, an evangelical organization dedicated to historical Christianity, see that the Bible teaches and approves of this type of idea of love multiplying. Both the OT and NT teach that God is honored by this type of lifestyle.

Throughout the OT many of God’s holy men lived a lifestyle where they multiplied God’s love. Men like Moses the writer of the first five books of the Bible had two women at the same time in a union, Abraham, who had at least two and maybe three at the same time, Jacob who had four in a union, and numerous others like Gideon, King David, and King Solomon. Likewise, in one place in the OT God even presents himself as in a union with two wives (Ezekiel 23:1-5,7,11).


The NT never alters this idea of love. The theme of love is carried forth by Jesus Christ whose teachings along with the apostles verified this lifestyle as holy, normal, and to be accepted. The God-Man, Jesus Christ, even represents the three types of lifestyles in the Bible. He lived for awhile in a celibate condition, he then died, arose again, and then joined himself to the first church ever birthed in history, the Jerusalem church, which represents a monogamous relationship, and then as other church bodies were birthed he joined or united with them thus displaying a love relationship or union with those multiple members that make up his one body, or family (see 1 Cor. 12:-20,27; Eph. 5:25; 1 Cor. 11:2).

How can this work?

So how can one family have multiple wives in it and there be peace, harmony, joy,
satisfaction, and the blessings of the Lord in that family?

Here at Biblical Families we are teaching and sharing with people how this is possible. In the Christian faith this is not only possible but a very real testimony of the power of grace and the Holy Spirit working in the lives of those that believe. As the Bible says, where the Spirit of the Lord is there will be the fruit of the Spirit which is “love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness, self-control, against such things there is no law (Gal. 5:22).

. . . And so on, and so on, blah blah blah blah blah. I've included the juiciest part of what appears to be a bona fide Christian "family" web site, not only endorsing but encouraging the creepy practice of taking more than one wife with whom you're expected to have multiple children. This article goes on for hundreds of words, quoting the Bible ever more feverishly with each paragraph.

First I've heard of it, myself.

It seems the alarming traditions of fundamentalist Mormons are starting to overflow the container into "Christian" practice. TV shows like Sister Wives (and even Big Love, a satiric comedy/drama) seem to be giving lots of people ideas.

It was a long time ago that the "jiggle show" Three's Company was wildly popular. Not sure if it spawned a host of real-life imitaters or not, but it was, after all, only a sitcom (and those were more conservative times).

I know there is a movement called polyamory. This means any number of consenting adults can live together, with sexual sparks flying in every direction. Let's hope their offspring don't get together, or we'll have a genetic catastrophe. Polyamory is illegal, but every time the polygamy issue comes up, so do they, creeping out most of us to the point of disgust. 

I haven't looked at any polyamory sites, can't bring myself to do it. Once in a fit of madness I googled "marry your pet", and found an actual web site which was, I suppose, tongue-in-cheek (or maybe that's the wrong way to put it).

Some years ago, we had the spectre of a woman marrying herself. Not a bad idea: think what the sex would be like! Contraception guaranteed. It has a lot to say for it, but what happens when it's time for a divorce?

I do wonder sometimes just what's going on here. To be perfectly frank, this strikes me as license for a man to screw a whole bunch of women and still maintain his "faith". I cannot imagine that this practice would allow polyandry, i. e. a woman marrying more than one man, a subject which occasionally crops up on Sister Wives (and which Kody once pronounced "vulgar": a pretty good word to sum up the whole show).

I know I harp on this, it's an obsession and a fascination. In the recent season ender, Robyn had her much-anticipated baby (named Solomon!) at home, moaning in a way that seemed creepily sexual, then popping out ten pounds of Brown baby. One wonders how many more will follow, especially since Robyn has promised Meri to be her surrogate (ANOTHER Brown baby? When will it stop, particularly since the Browns have no discernable source of income?)

Other things crept out. Christine, who seems wholesome and matter-of-fact, isn't. She has probably suffered more than any of the others. A few episodes ago she admitted to marital problems with Kody that she couldn't resolve. In her presence, Meri more or less told her to shape up, that she'd had marital problems too and worked them out on her own, and that's what she was expected to do. Christine had no response to this.

Last week she said she'd been having anxiety attacks and was taking antidepressants. On the Robyn-giving-birth episode she made the baby a cute little sampler which she called a "peace offering" to Robyn: she felt guilty about treating her so badly. Treating her so badly? It made me wonder just what they edit out in these things. At any rate, it helped explain the marital friction and the antidepressants. Sister wives, when faced with towering problems like this, must put up or shut up.

Meanwhile, back at the polygamist Vegas ranch (which brings to mind Spinal Tap's Sex Farm),  Meri and Robyn have peeled off by themselves into the kind of tee-hee-whispering-nasty-rumours giggle-fest you see in Grade Five. Quite a bond they have there. Dynamics like this completely fly in the face of so-called true polygamy, lopsiding the energy and affection between the women, which already seems shockingly unevenly distributed. At one point Meri even mistily says she has the kind of bond with Robyn that she never had with any of the other sisters. Oh, that's going to go down real well with them, I can tell.

But this was the kicker. I've heard it before, so it may even be true (though I admit this comes from Perez Hilton):

OMG! One Of The Sister Wives Was Married To One Of The Other Wives' Brother!

Just when you thought Sister Wives couldn't get any more disturbing, here comes the INCEST!


Star Magazine reports that polygamist and reality show stars, The Brown Family, are more about keeping things within the family than we all thought. In a shocking twist, it was revealed that Kody Brown's second wife, Janelle, was brought in as his wife shortly after she divorced her first husband - Kody's first wife's brother!


What the what?


In one BOMBSHELL of a secret, it was uncovered that Janelle was married to Adam Barber in 1988. Adam is Meri, Kody's first (and only legal) wife's brother. The two divorced only after two years of marriage and three years after that, Janelle joined Kody's polygamist fam.


A family insider reveals:

"I know she was originally very upset over Janelle dumping her brother. I think there has been a lot of unspoken tension between her, Janelle and Kody all these years."

I'd say.

 

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The Sister Wives exodus: a very costly publicity stunt

An obsession's an obsession, am I right? Remember the Dead Munchkin Hypothesis that lasted, I think, five posts? I promise this one won't run as long (though it keeps coming back for more).


I stumbled upon an article that opened my eyes, wide, about the reality show Sister Wives: you know, the one I keep blathering on about. Their much-publicized flight from Utah to avoid criminal prosecution for their "lifestyle" turns out to be more hype than reality.

I don't know what came first: their exodus from Eden to the Promised Land, or this report which claims they were never really under threat of prosecution in the first place.


"In new legal papers in their court case, the Browns are requesting that the law they’re being prosecuted under be dismissed. That probably won’t happen, but they probably won’t get prosecuted at all either. The prosecutors have mentioned that they are trying to get the case dismissed, since all of the wives have entered into it by their own free will and there isn’t any incest, underage marriage or tax or welfare fraud. So Kody uprooted everyone, took his kids out of their school, giving them three days notice (and telling them not to tell their friends goodbye), and hightailed it to Vegas, all based on his own paranoia. He could have just stayed put and ridden it out. At least he created a great new plot line for his reality show, right?"

I couldn't have said it better myself. But is Kody Brown man enough to admit he made a huge, damaging mistake? What would happen if the family decided to return to  their megahouse in Utah? Nothing, probably, by the looks of it. But pride has a way of keeping people nailed in place.

At this point, it looks like nobody's happy with the move. The teenagers are so bitter and angry that I wonder if one of them isn't going to just plain bolt. You can't casually uproot a kid from this kind of exotic background: he won't find new friends readily, if at all. If the stigma of polygamy doesn't get him, the stigma of having a jackass father who flaunts his screwups on national TV will.

Like some bizarre latter-day (!) Brigham Young trailing a host of obedient wives and children, Kody has made all the decisions here, though as usual the wives pretend to be independent agents. The family seems to be on the verge of cracking apart. Polygamy for the most part must happen under glass: it's a bizarre way of life that makes most people profoundly uneasy. Outside the protective bubble, the spotlight can be pretty glaring.

Divorce won't happen, marital breakdown won't happen, but mental health breakdown is already taking place, and will only escalate. For all his patriarchal posturing, Kody Brown is about fifteen years old emotionally. He acts impulsively, not thinking how his dashing off to "my Plymouth Rock" (his grotesque name for Las Vegas) will affect the large circle of women and children whose security depends on him. Narcissism has a steep cost: but never to the narcissist, who inevitably hands off the damage to the vulnerable souls in his orbit.

http://members.shaw.ca/margaret_gunning/betterthanlife.htm

Four's company

Unless y'all've been buried under a tree lately, you'll know all about this new "reality" show on TLC called - what the hell's it called? Oh yeah, Sister Wives. Might as well call it Bob and Carol and Alice and Alice.

See, polygamy is fun now. It's cool. It's an alternative lifestyle, like composting and recycling and community gardening. Except that it's even more rewarding (or so certain people insist).

We have this guy named Kody Brown (not his real name - heh-heh) who lives in Utah, natch, and long ago married three rather large long-haired blondes (not that he has a "type"). They insist they all married this guy before any of their children were born, but then, hey presto, thirteen of them popped out (or should I say twelve and a half - one is still in the oven). This is not so much a family as a litter, a la the Duggars, the Gosselins, and that other family, the one that popped out the quints.

What's this fascination with raising such a mess of kids, anyway? Why is it being presented as such a barrel o' fun? It must be a modern-day version of the carnival side show. And what do you know - one of them really IS called Chrissie (well, Christine), though she's a little too stout to pass for that airhead on Three's Company.

We don't use the term "bigamy" any more - it's one of those words you have to blow the dust off of. Like polygamy, it's illegal as hell in Utah, as it is everywhere else. And the Mormon church is dead-set against it. Does it ever occur to this Kody guy (and who spells it with a K?) that he's not only living in sin, but living under the constant threat of arrest? Is breaking the law really the best example to his mass of kids?

But Kody has all that covered. In interviews, he literally says things like "shucks" and "dang it", insisting with sociopathic sincerity that he's merely obeying the laws of his religion. Having three kinds of nooky to choose from is faith-based, I guess, though I find that hard to comprehend.

Never mind: these wives all smile, smile, smile, and insist that their way of living is a free choice. Incredibly, they say it's up to their kids to decide what sort of life they will lead, but this flies in the face of the entrenched fundamentalism and profound, ruthless patriarchy of "plural marriage".

But there's a "surprise" here. Not content with all that vanilla, Kody wants a little chocolate in his life (or in the bedroom - though he complains of not having any "space" of his own, poor baby. I guess his only space is in these women's vaginas.) The impending addition of a fourth wife to the harem, a slim young brunette this time, seems stage-managed, almost a stunt for the cameras: or is that why the producers agreed to make this show in the first place? Is this impending shift of family dynamics going to make for good TV (bitching, hair-pulling, rrairrrrrrw!), or will it all be a whitewash of forced smiles and sweet sisterhood?

One of the worst Mormon/polygamist sayings is "Keep Sweet", and it might as well be embroidered on a sampler on the wall of every room (and how many would that be? Each wife has her own self-contained apartment, though nobody explains where they'll stash Wife #4). The truth is, Kody, who complains all the time about how tired he is (all that crawling from room to room?), will now have four flavours to choose from every night, with his only problem being keeping his "schedule" straight. It must be nice to be able to ejaculate on cue. Meantime, these sweet sisters have to grit their teeth and wait for their turn.

They're the unpaid help in the harem, programmed from birth to obey male-imposed rules in a patriarchal culture that withholds any control over their intimate lives. Though one of the wives (which one? Damned if I know, they're all blonde/bland) insists they don't "do weird" (i. e., Mormon orgies of four people rolling around on a king-sized bed), the whole premise of the show is more cringe-worthy than that last episode of Hoarders, where the old lady's house was so fouled with cat-shit that it had to be gutted to be made inhabitable.

So why do I watch these things? There isn't much on that's watchable besides Mad Men. And I will admit I have a fascination with the bizarre. I had no idea there was such a significant polygamous subculture in the States: I thought it was the province of crackpots who lived out in the desert with fifteen wives and a shotgun.

But is this Kody guy, this smarmy long-haired creep who oozes a sense of entitlement, this lone rooster in the henhouse, any less off-putting? While the family tries to figure out where to put the new wife (maybe Kody will build a shed for her out in the back yard), I contemplate the dynamics of other polygamous cultures in which the first wife always has the upper hand, the most power in a nearly-powerless situation.

Each succeeding wife has less control, and the last one, the little sister, has practically none. She is merely a sex toy for the husband, who has grown tired of all these breeding cows mooing around the place.

OK, so how long until she gets pregnant? Stay tuned.