Mommy with a Penis

Jessica Simpson's cover of Elle this month seems familiar, doesn't it? And I don't think any of us has to dig too deeply into our sleep-deprived, vodka-soaked brains to suss out the reference. Who could forget the Vanity Fair cover that Annie Liebovitz shot so startlingly of Demi Moore's pregnant voluptuousness back in 1991? From the exact same pose, to the ginormous bling on their left middle fingers, to the fact these two celebutants are both carrying girl children, the Simpson pic is a duplicate of what some found scandalous twenty-one years ago. (Although I prefer Demi's arrogant in-the-distance gaze to Jessica's in-your-face,  Zoolander  directness.) But this piece isn't about who did what first, nor artistic integrity, nor is it about nudity on magazine covers, which for the record I am wholeheartedly for. No, this is about trends. Recently, Ms. Simpson announced that her baby girl will be named...take a breath here...Maxwell.  What!  For thos...

Reading the newspaper today, my husband came across a  Los Angeles Times article  in which the Parents Television Council, a conservative watchdog group, has been counting the number of times penis  and vagina  have been used in network prime time television. The usage of these words, we are told, has escalated dramatically over the past ten years, which prompted PTC president, Tim Winter, to say, "It's a broader reflection of the progression of raunch." The progression of raunch? The utterances of penis  and vagina  from our lips is raunch? Now, I don't know about other parents, but in our house we don't use the colloquial pee pee  and va jay jay . We labels it as we sees it.  It's big p and capital v all the way. Consequently,  penis  and vagina  are said quite frequently, and as the children have gotten older these two choice anatomical sobriquets have only gained momentum, quite possibly making ...