I was flipping through a magazine the other day and came across an article featuring a roundup of fashion picks for a girls' night out. I lingered over the photos of cute dresses and chunky necklaces and thought about how my typical wardrobe consists of yoga pants and a Humane Society t-shirt featuring an unfortunately boob-centric cartoon hamster design on the front.

I also thought about how my last girls' night out was seven months ago, when I went to BlogHer in San Diego. The girls' night out before that? BlogHer 2010, I think.

I don't get out very often, is what I'm saying. Or more accurately, I don't socialize much outside of my family. Or more (humiliatingly) accurately still, I have virtually no local friends whatsoever.

Almost as much as I enjoy eating, I love sleeping. Oh dear, sweet, blissful sleep, how I love your unconscious, drooling ways! I will sacrifice just about anything -- including, most days, my morning workout -- to make sure I get my full eight hours. And now there's another great excuse reason for me to demand all that sleep: It keeps you skinny. Fist pump! Boo-yah, SLEEP.

Gotta love those scientists. They're always studying sleep. And the latest study shows that people who don't sleep enough eat more, move less, and gain weight. Yipes! Sleep-deprived parents, are you worried about this?

While it would be so much fun to get to walk the red carpet at a big event like the Oscars and get all gussied up in a fancy dress, I can't help but think that it would be pretty tough to feel confident about your body with a bunch of svelte looking celebrities running around.

And judging from just how incredibly thin a few ladies looked at the show last night, it's obvious that they aren't exempt from feeling the pressures of having to look perfect on camera. And they also seem to buy into the whole "the camera adds 10 pounds" thing.

One Oscar beauty who has always been a bit on the thin side is Angelina Jolie, but lately, she really appears to be wasting away to practically nothing. Did you see just how rail-thin her arms are? They look like a couple of twigs that would snap in two if you so much as brushed against them.

Women's reproductive health has certainly been a hot topic lately, which explains why a small university in Pennsylvania is suddenly making headlines for a "controversial" vending machine that has actually been in place for a couple years now.

The particular vending machine in question dispenses Plan B One Step emergency contraceptive to students who need it for $25. It's the opposite of shocking that some religious conservatives and activists are opposed to the machine simply because they are opposed to the "morning-after" pill in general. But in this case, there's not a lot they can legitimately complain about ...

Bummed out about the birth control recall? Worried about the safety and effectiveness of your pill? Welcome to the I-hate-dealing-with-birth-control club. There were plenty of reasons not to love the pill even before this latest debacle. There's the hormones, the puffiness, the mood swings, the cancer risk, the forgetting to take it. Ugh!

It's enough to make you just want to give up on birth control altogether -- almost. Except that there's that whole getting pregnant thing. Which most of us don't want to do every nine months. But here's a radical idea: How's about the guys worry about the birth control a little? Time for us to remind the men of the world about what a huge favor they'd do us if they'd just get a freakin' vasectomy.

You can feel the "get fit!" spirit everywhere you look -- from the mall to TV commercials and Facebook. People are getting back on treadmills, buying workout gear, swapping eggnog for protein shakes. After a season of stuffing ourselves with holiday cookies, the season of resolutions is here. For most of us, that means resolving (or re-resolving) to lose weight this year. 

Maybe it's 10 pounds or 100, but either way, we all need a game plan to make our resolution a reality. As someone who has made the resolution to either lose weight or maintain weight loss pretty much every year of my life, it's empowering to know there are several simple lifestyle tweaks anyone can do to help you shape up.

Oh no, it's officially December! That means if you haven't already slipped into party mode over the Thanksgiving holiday weekend, you'll surely be tempted to over the next four or five weeks. There's no time like this time of year for eating, drinking, and being merry, but of course, those behaviors never seem to go hand-in-hand with a rigorous weight-loss program. Until now!

Cara Alwill Leyba, a writer who works for MTV, has come up with a plan that's perfect for the holiday season called The Champagne Diet. And for some time, she's been documenting her experience with it on a blog, soon to be a book, called The Champagne Diaries. The philosophy that helped her pare pounds: Eating nutrient-dense, tasty foods -- anything you want, as long as it's in the range of 1,200-1,400 calories a day. Oh yeah, and having a glass or two of champagne. That's all there is to it!

Ok, admittedly, the photos look bad. The name, Miss Bum Bum Brazil, is worse. And the promo photo of all the contestants posed together as if they are the apostles in Da Vinci's "Last Supper" is really on the wrong side of the line. The concept is completely gratuitous and degrading. While scrolling through the photos, I was wondering, why on earth am I not completely offended? And then it hit me. I'm Latina and, generally speaking, we are a little obsessed with our butts. Jennifer Lopez anyone? Shakira? These are women who are proud to be round.

Get past the boobs and the high heels in these photos and what you will see is a culture of people celebrating some big ol' butt!