From the Editor’s Desk
A love letter to the post-partum body, an airline’s overreaction to a girl with autism, the gender gap in household chores and more. Here’s what got us talking at the Savvy office this week.
1. This dad’s tribute to the ‘Mom Bod’
You may have heard some of the buzz about the ‘dad bod.’ It’s a term first used to describe frat boys who are less-than-chiseled due to their prowess with keg stands and all-you-can-eat wing nights. But nevertheless, it’s been embraced by moms happy to admit they like their partner’s soft edges, largely because they’d feel more self-conscious about their own bodies if they were living with gym rats. So when Toronto Star columnist Ed Keenan answered that discussion with this lovely piece, In Praise of the Mom Bod, we all swooned a little. We’re even more charmed because Ed’s other half is Savvy Storyteller Rebecca Cuneo Keenan of Playground Confidential who shared her take on the dad bod in this post, The Real Reason I Dig a Dad Bod. They’re our kind of journalism power couple.
2. The airline that kicked an autistic girl off a plane
Continuing the trend of airlines behaving badly, we were dismayed to hear of this incident on a United Airlines flight from Houston to Portland. Dr. Donna Beegle was on her way home from Disney World with her 17-year-old daughter, Juliette, who has autism. Juliette became upset, but not disruptively so, over the food options on the flight, despite her mother’s extensive preparation with a whole backpack of her daughter’s favourite snacks. Juliette prefers warm meals, and so her mother asked if she could purchase any warm food from business class. Eventually the flight attendant reluctantly brought her some rice, but also had the pilot divert the flight for an emergency landing. Seems like a huge overreaction and a missed opportunity to offer compassionate customer service to us.
3. Great satire on the sex-ed debate
On a lighter note, we got a good chuckle out of this satire on the debate that’s been raging over the new sex-ed curriculum in Ontario. Perhaps it’s the parents who aren’t mature enough for sex education?
4. The gender gap in household chores
When it comes to housework, the picture has been steadily improving for women. We spend an hour and 45 minutes less on household chores per day than we did in the 1960s, and men have tripled the amount of housework they do. Sounds pretty good, right? But since women were doing virtually all the housework back then (our poor moms and grandmas!), even after tripling the amount men do, there’s still a big gap. A study from the University of Maryland found that, as of 2012, women still did 1.7 times as much daily housework than men.
5. Kevin O’Leary’s shout-out to women in business
But in better news for our gender, we were happy to see this ringing endorsement of female business leaders. Kevin O’Leary, of ‘Dragon’s Den’ and ‘Shark Tank’ fame, said the one category he recommends investing in these days is companies with female CEOs. He says companies run by women make up 55 per cent of his investment portfolio but account for 100 per cent of his earnings. He told Huffington Post Live that ‘There’s an old adage that says, if you want to get something done, give it to a busy mother,’ he said. ‘They’re so advanced at managing their time—raising a family, taking care of kids, and doing something else in addition to that, like running a business. So maybe it’s their ability to manage time that’s taking them ahead in running small cap, mid-cap businesses.’ Huzzah.
One last thing before we go, we just had to share this fresh new interpretation of the women’s bathroom sign. Fun, right?
