Now some of you are going to think I have completely lost my mind with this one but trust me, this item is SERIOUSLY poised for a comeback! I’m sure most of you thought you had seen the last of the humble bum bag (or fanny pack to you, my delightful friends across the pond) in around 1995, but word on the street is that these handy belt-like handbags are about to storm back in an unprecedented fashion.

For those of you lucky enough not to remember them the first-time round, and to remind those of us who would rather have forgotten, let’s take a moment to reacquaint ourselves with all things fanny pack. Originally designed for travellers, cyclists and hikers for ease of access and protection from pickpockets, the pack reached popularity within the general public in the late 80’s to early 90’s. Their ease of access however made them a popular choice for gang members to store loaded handguns, which some consider to be the beginning of their demise.

While their popularity seriously dwindled by the mid 90’s, some designers have attempted to utilise the quirky irony of a bum bag by rebranding them as packs, to limited effect. However, while the hardcore 80’s revival is waning, subtle touches such as visors, skinny belts and the bum bag/fanny pack are the perfect accent to accompany the neons, block colours and geometric influences of this season.

So, what bum bags are available for those brave enough to embrace the biggest comeback since the legging?

Bisadora (available from ebags.com) offer a reasonably priced Hip Purse with chain belt that doesn’t scream bum bag, and is just a teensy bit chav-tastic. If you want to run with the trend, the obvious choice is to go vintage, and pick up an original pack from the past. Take it to the extreme with something vivacious and zany featuring wild patterns rocking a classic design, or keep it simple and on-trend with block colours. A great idea is to really commit to your look by adding matching nail polish.

Built by Wendy does some sweet-as-a-button fanny packs and this Brooklyn-based designer is seriously backing their momentous return with a price tag of $108 each!

However you decide to embrace all things fanny-tastic, the most important thing is not to take this look too seriously. And don’t be afraid to team your new best friend with jeans, flowing skirts or even a cocktail dress. Anything goes!

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For those of you who haven’t noticed, it’s 2009. Many of us consider ourselves to live in societies of relative freedom, tolerance and acceptance — where people of all colors and creeds can live and work side by side in harmony.

On June 8^th this year, the far-right political group, the British National Party (BNP) won two seats in the European Parliament. No big whoop, yeah? What are two seats in an organization of that size? When the Party’s immigration policies include offering financial incentives and political pressure to persuade legal immigrants to leave Britain and return to their countries of origin — no matter how long they have been settled in Britain — and their membership excludes people that are not of direct white, British descent, then I think there is some serious cause for concern.

Nick Griffin, the leader of the BNP, is an incredibly outspoken individual with some seriously scary points of view. In a recent television interview about immigration from South Saharan Africa, Griffin said a way of tackling the problem would be to sink the ships bringing the immigrants. Another comment that jumped out was Griffin’s musings about Third World Aid, when he stated he did not believe Britain should be “obliged to subsidise the incompetence and corruption of Third World states by supplying them with financial aid.” This kind of open hatred is seriously troublesome in the early 21^st century.

Most controversially, members of the BNP have publicly expressed incredibly controversial views regarding the Holocaust. While most members may not openly engage in Holocaust denial, they have made insane claims regarding the numbers of Jews killed in the atrocities. Griffin has previously made comments such as;

“I am well aware that orthodox opinion is that six million Jews were gassed and cremated or turned into soup and lampshades. I have reached the conclusion that the ‘extermination’ tale is a mixture of Allied wartime propaganda, extremely profitable lie, and latter witch-hysteria.”

“There is no doubt that hundreds, probably thousands of Jews were shot to death in Eastern Europe, because they were rightly or wrongly seen as communists or potential partisan supporters. That was awful. But this nonsense about gas chambers is exposed as a total lie”

However, the population of the UK are not just sitting back and doing nothing to protest against the unacceptable views of this far-right party. The Hope Not Hate campaign, fronted by Nick Lowles is at the forefront of the crusade against the BNP, and social networking sites such as Facebook have provided the campaign with a platform to encourage the public to show their support. The Hope Not Hate group has over 18,500 members, and the 1,000,000 United Against the BNP group has just under 600,000 members on Facebook alone.

Watch the now infamous “sink the ships” interview. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/uk_politics/8141069.stm

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“Army girl,” “rapper” or converting my favorite staples (a leotard and tights) into “80’s girl.” I admit the topic of Halloween costumes fascinates me because the holiday is my favorite thing to procrastinate. I never plan ahead and it always seems to sneak up on me forcing a frantic rush to throw together original costumes.

Women often use Halloween as an excuse to dress slutty. Come on, admit it— you’ve heard people say it, maybe even dared think it yourself? I’m not trying to argue immunity from the slutty nature of female costumes, but simply trying to delve deeper into the psyche of my own gender. On Halloween, we give ourselves the opportunity to be anything. Maybe that’s why American culture has adopted and adores the originally Celtic tradition. So why do we choose to be “sexy cats” and “half-naked ghosts?”

This year, as my friends excitedly purchase their Halloween costumes, I have vowed to start planning too. But honestly, and perhaps embarrassingly, I cannot help but recall the Sex and the City movie. Although I would not mind dressing up as Carrie Bradshaw all other times of the year, I keep coming back to the scene when Miranda complains women only have two choices on Halloween. As the more feminist voice of the crew, Miranda subtly points out that costumes are a mere extension of feminine stereotypes, given the choice of sexy nurse or witch.

If we’re using Sex and the City as an authority on female cultural habits (let’s be honest, who isn’t), why on Halloween do many self-respecting women take any costume idea and tack slutty to it?  Truly anything can be slutty from an angel, devil, pumpkin to Little Red Riding Hood. Halloween has become a guilt-free day where wearing those hooker heels is just part of a disguise and not because you feel like showing a bit more leg.

There’s nothing wrong with hiking up your skirt if you want to, but the issue is simply that if Halloween is a time where you can be anything you imagine, women are choosing to be sluts. We do not live in a society where it is unacceptable to show cleavage or wear miniskirts, yet we still relish a time when we’re allowed to unleash our repressed sexual deviant nature.

For the Celtics, Halloween was the New Year’s celebration and dressing up involved the process of telling fortunes as well as parades celebrating saints, angels, devils, and commemorating the dead.

America has clearly made a leap from the original fall festival, but we still associate the holiday with its devilish roots. Maybe Halloween allows us the freedom to use our imaginations and embody what we are not. So if we will never be Betty Boop or a flapper from the twenties, then why not celebrate a holiday that focuses on deception and really objectify ourselves?

While we’re pretending, I think I’ll be Max from Where the Wild Things Are. Only sluttier, of course. He wears fishnets, right?

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I notice immediately how bright and full of energy Caitlin Boyle’s voice is as soon as we start talking. It’s hard to believe her success story started with an off day, just a few months ago. “I was at school taking night classes and having a bad day, and I thought, if I’m having a bad day, other women must be having a bad day too.” This led her to scribble a simple note on a Post-it and stick it on the mirror. She snapped a picture of the note, which read “You are beautiful!” and posted it on her blog.

Her readers loved the idea, and began sending in pictures of their own posted notes. Within 48 hours, she had so many e-mails flooding her inbox, she decided to launch a second blog at Operationbeautiful.com. Since the site’s launch in June, Caitlin has received notes from women, and men too, living all over the world. At last count, she’s received over 1000 notes, from countries as far away as Australia, Japan, Nigeria, Canada and even from a soldier in Iraq.

When asked what she thought she had tapped into with her blog, she mentions, “It’s this sneaky phenomenon that when people do things for other people, they feel good themselves.” She also mentions people “get a rush of happiness just form posting a note,” in many ways “they’re writing the note to themselves.”

A feeling of happiness isn’t the only benefit of this growing trend. Caitlin describes one of her favorite e-mails she received from a girl named Zic, who had been getting treatment for an eating disorder. She hadn’t eaten solid food in two years and after doctors forced her to eat a 500-calorie meal, she rushed to the bathroom to vomit. She found a note on the door of the stall that said “You are beautiful, just the way you are” and decided not to throw up. Caitlin remarks, “I’m actually starting to believe in fate after doing this for a few months. It’s like all of these notes are meant for a specific person. People seem to find the notes when they need it most.”

Not only has Caitlin been able to impact women all over the world, she also has been able to transform her own. The blog has been so successful, she signed a book deal and was able to quit her, as she put it “mind-numbing corporate job” to write full time. She remarks, “It’s so crazy, I randomly posted a note and four months later I quit my job and have a book deal.” She explains how much the experience has been a testament to the notion that “you will never see what can happen in your life without giving things a chance.”

Spread the good feelings yourself by posting your own “You are Beautiful!” notes and sending them to Caitlin at seebriderun@gmail.com.

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I currently live out of a suitcase. Be careful what you wish for because this was always my dream. I wanted a job where I traveled. I wanted a job that was never the same, required no office, had no boss, and yes, a job that forced me all around the world on a moment’s notice. I now have it. So all I’m saying is be careful what you wish for.

I just returned home to my beautiful apartment after having spent almost a month on the other side of the country and some places in-between. In that time, I have met new people, added faces to the patchwork collage of my memory, teased my mind with “name input” overload and forced my inner clock to the verge of insanity trying to keep up with my most recent standard time zone.

I have slept in five-star hotels overlooking the NY harbor, on couches, trundle beds, air mattresses, awkwardly in the airport on long layovers, painfully on East Coast subways and rather quaintly on an old-fashioned train. I’ve eaten Vegan, New York Italian, good ol’ fashioned Tex-Mex, Florida’s finest fresh fish, home cooked, precooked, on-the-go, cold, hot, sweet, spicy, salty, paper napkin-ed, sterling silverware-ed, at a wedding, at 4 a.m., while watching a movie and while half-asleep. I also drank wine, chocolate martinis, milk from the carton and overly sweet, sweet tea. I’ve talked, danced, worked, slept, swam, ran, biked, laughed, cried, napped, hugged and hiccupped.

I live a life of uncertainty, of outrageous ambiguity, adventures with unforeseen twists and turns on a Technicolor rollercoaster. I chose it. It didn’t just happen to me. I sought this lifestyle out far in advance, custom-built it, patiently awaited its arrival and now it sits before me, daring me to find a single flaw in the painstakingly premeditated steps I took making it mine.

And yet I sit perplexed how I have the audacity to question it now. Or perhaps this is a classic case of the “grass is always greener.” Because only now am I discovering the beauty in simplicity, routine, in the conventional ― all the things I denounced and swore off in my lifetime are whispering sweet nothings to me now more than ever. I must agree with our generation’s criticism as being fickle because I exercise that stereotype on a daily basis. It’s a matter of time until I get what I want and then that want quickly mutates into something else, patronizingly the complete opposite at times so I’m forced to swallow my pride and the bitter pill of hypocrisy.

However in lieu of questioning my entire career, running from the dream I’m forced to endure on a daily basis (insert sarcasm here), rather than impulsively whacking the pendulum even farther in the opposite direction and choose a completely different career altogether, I had an epiphany. It is not about my job. It’s not about the pros and cons I can write down, consider, mull over, stew on and allow to completely inundate my thoughts to endless distraction. In fact, it has nothing to do with grass of any kind much less varying shades of green.

I woke up this morning, packed my suitcase for the umpteenth time, had a car sent for me at 4:35 this morning to drive me to the airport and as I sat sleepy-eyed in the belly of a beautiful, black steel stallion, questioned, “Does all of this make me happy?” I carefully assigned worth to all the different facets of my life; my relationships, my career, my health, my finances, my lifestyle. I meticulously calculated all the intangible factors in hopes of computing an accurate happiness tally.

Immediately, I thought the job is getting to me. I need more family, more familiar and less foreign. I need more routine and less chaos, more drawers and less suitcases. I hit the eject button and the sirens in Happyville went off. I panicked thinking, if I’m questioning it, I must not be happy and if I’m not, what is it about my life I need to change? The contentment police pulled out their magnifying glasses in hopes of discovering the perpetrator meddling with my joy and corrupting my peace.

But as I sit on my couch, exhausted from a month straight of traveling I realize it has nothing to do with my career. It’s not the amount of traveling I’m doing, my single status, or any other outside factor I could point at. It all boils down to choosing contentment and happiness in spite of circumstance ― the good, the bad and yes, even the single. It requires digging deep into your soul on a daily basis and making the choice to be joyful, not because you have the perfect job, found the love of your life, or won the lottery. It means that when presented with the choice this morning, you checked the happy box.

It’s so easy to look outside yourself for the answers, looking for someone else to do the work, to hand you a free ride to “Happily Ever After,” but I don’t think contentment is given, it’s earned. I think it’s worked for every single moment of every day, a responsibility we have, and a choice we get to make. So “does my job make me happy?” is a futile question; just as much as does my family, my body, my boyfriend, my book? No, because, I do. Me, myself and I.

And here’s the kicker, so do you. You have to stop looking outside yourself to find it, hoping that it’s magically going to show up one day or the formula will be written in the sky for you to jot down and memorize. It’s always much more simple than we make it. Decide right now, this second that in spite of the endless “to-do” list, the broken heart, the work drama, the economy, world hungry, poverty and all the other endless excuses you could exercise, that for the next say, three minutes, you check the “hopeful, adventure-seeking, optimistic, eager, energetic, can’t-stop-smiling, obnoxiously happy, anything is possible” box for no other reason than you can.

Stop blaming others, making it into something it’s not, creating grass-colored hierarchies to justify your mediocre life, and depressing, self-pity stories that “life’s not fair.” Life is nothing but myriad of choices and based on those, an endless slew of more to follow. That’s it.

In retrospect, don’t be careful what you wish for – wish for it all, wish for nothing, dream big or small or not at all. Regardless of what you get or don’t get, your ability to enjoy it rests in your choice alone. So go ahead, choose happy today.

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Since 2001, women have patrolled war zones, opened fire at enemy combatants and even died in hostile action. Yet regardless of their heroic sacrifices and immeasurable bravery, women are still derided as damsels to be protected by certain letters of the law. 

The current wars in Iraq and Afghanistan mark a turning point for women at arms. Due to the unpredictable nature of insurgency, battlefields appear everywhere, thus blurring the distinction between combat and non-combat roles and propelling women into front lines for the first time at equal capacity with men. Cultural sensitivities make female troops indispensable when searching Muslim women during patrols, necessitating all-female search teams (dubbed the Lionesses) to accompany combat units. During conflict-heavy phases of war, U.S. enlistees are stretched thin, consequently forcing military leaders to use whatever man and woman power they have.  

According to retired Lt. Colonel John Nagl, a counterinsurgency expert, “We literally could not have fought [in Iraq] without women.” 

The House Armed Services Committee ignored these realities when it approved an amendment in 2005 barring female soldiers from serving in direct ground combat forces.  

Specifically the law prohibits women from joining teams below brigade level whose sole purpose is direct ground combat — such as infantry, armor, Special Forces as well as most field artillery units — and from doing support jobs while living with those units. Endorsed as a way to protect women from ill-defined Army policies, the ban is as impractical as it is chauvinistic because it does little to keep up with the ever-changing face of warfare.  

Supporters of this exclusion cite unit cohesion, sexual harassment and personal hygiene as critical reasons to keep women behind front lines. But these issues are simply matters of maturity and professionalism that must be expected of all soldiers at all times rather than merely in circumstances when women in combat arise. The reality is more than 356,000 female troops serve in the armed forces today, and their presence in war has had a transformative effect.  

In 2004 and 2005, retired Lt. Colonel Michael Baumann led thirty women soldiers and six female officers in Baghdad. Though he followed military policy by assigning these women to a separate chemical company of the division, his superiors knew these women were essential members of his field artillery battalion.  

To Baumann, the question over whether women can handle infantry work is obsolete. “Not only could [women] handle it, but in the same way as males,” he explains. “I would go out on patrols every single day with my battalion. I was with them. I was next to them. I saw with my own eyes. I had full trust and confidence in their abilities.” 

So why do lawmakers continue to be naysayers? Women have fought and will continue to fight in combat regardless of legislation. And reports of their performance under fire repeatedly disprove critics’ claims.

As retired Navy Capt. Lory Manning declares, “We are waiting for the policy to catch up to the real-world practice.” 

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