The cool thing about being a woman—one of the many cool things about being a woman, I should say—is that our beauty doesn’t come wrapped up in just one kind of package. We’re a powerful assortment of delectable differences: thick and shapely, athletic and muscular, tall and long-legged. Still, the fashion industry has traditionally celebrated rail thinness as the only desirable body shape. And it’s affected generations of teenage girls. (Twiggy, unfortunately, wasn’t a sensation for naught.) Continual epic fail.

Maybe we should all ship our daughters for study abroad in Israel for a semester or two. Not because of the culture or the history or the lox (though those are all certainly reason enough), but because they seem to be light years ahead of us over there in the effort to broaden perceptions of women’s beauty. 

The first thing I did after hearing Mary Richardson Kennedy had died was start doing the math in my head. She'd been married to Robert F. Kennedy Jr. for 16 years. They had four kids. Which meant it was highly unlikely any of those children had yet reached age 18.

I was right. Reports say the Kennedy kids' ages range from 10 to 17. They're all old enough to understand the word "death." And yet, they're all too young to be facing a world without a mother.

If you ever browsed World Star Hip-Hop, you would really think our youth are on the fast track to self-destruction. It is depravity on display, to the point that I’m not so sure some folks don’t act a fool just so they can have their video clips featured on the site. But sometimes, it really captures trending behavior that’s both outrageous and appalling. And these doggone Twitter beefs are probably the most troubling. 

Fire up your DeLoreans. This bit of news will send you hurtling back in time. Two uptight moms were absolutely horrified to see high schoolers "dirty dancing" at their prom. So what's a concerned chaperon to do? They sprayed Lysol all over those grimy grinding girls and guys.

Way to go ... straight to jail? The mothers, who were also caught screaming "slut" and "whore" at the girls -- because dagnabit those harlots are leading those good boys down a path of no return -- are now facing all sorts of legal issues. Obviously their method of dealing with the "problem" was all kinds of crazy. But is dirty dancing really a problem anyway?

This week a Catholic school baseball team forfeited the Arizona Charter Athletic Association championship to Mesa Preparatory Academy because Mesa has a girl on their team. 15-year old Paige Sultzbach plays second base for Mesa.

Yup. They'd rather give up the championship than play a girl.

Paige shouldn't take it too personally. The school, Our Lady of Sorrows, has a policy of never playing co-ed sports. And having Paige on their team made Mesa's a co-ed team. The school issued a statement saying they teach boys respect by not placing girls in athletic competition, where "proper boundaries can only be respected with difficulty."

I remember when Yusuf Hawkins was murdered in Brooklyn. I wasn’t very old, but I can vividly recall being sad, then angry that a group of people felt collectively entitled to take the life of another person based on something as frivolous as their race. No provocation, no just cause, and certainly no remorse.

My mother had purchased the Eyes on the Prize collection, so I had seen more than my share of grainy footage from the Civil Rights era when men and women marched despite being pelted and spit on by antagonists furious at having their way of life and their white privilege threatened by a group of uppity niggers.

Leave it to Stephen Colbert, i.e., America's Voice of Reason, to put the latest parenting panic into hilarious perspective.

Last night's episode of The Colbert Report addressed the current behavioral "epidemic" threatening to destroy our nation's youth: Getting drunk on hand sanitizer.

"It's a national crisis!" warned Colbert, adding that according to the Los Angeles Times, "6 local teenagers have gone to emergency rooms in the last few months!"

"Our kids are getting sani-tipsy!" 

(Well, 6 of them are, anyway.)

The segment was more than merely funny, it made an extremely relevant point:

With all the stories in the news about girls being shunned for playing on a "boy's" team, it's hard to believe it's been 40 years since Title IX became federal law. And now for something completely different! A teenage boy is fighting officials at the head of a school field hockey league in Long Island because he wants to play on the same team ... as the girls.

Thirteen-year-old Keeling Pilaro allegedly got the boot from the team at the Southampton High School because he does well at the sport, which the county athletic officials say gives him an unfair advantage over the girls. His parents and even other girls in the league say that's not true: he's good but not the best. That seems to be why he's getting so much support around the interwebs, but frankly, they're all missing the bigger picture here.