The Monday Morning Stimulus Package

 Well, it ain't $2,000, but it ain't nothing.

Wombat-socho has Rule 5 Sunday: Kalinka Fox ready for your digital amusement at The Other McCain.

Hilarious!

Megan Fox at PJ Media, Cultural Appropriation Alert: Alec Baldwin's Wife Torched for Faking Spanish Accent and Heritage

Hilaria Baldwin is married to Alec Baldwin, the mouthy star who does a terrible impression of Donald Trump for Saturday Night Live. Hilaria, or Hillary Hayward Thomas as she was known growing up in Boston, is on the receiving end of internet sleuths who seem to be out to cancel her for faking a Spanish accent and lying about where she was born. Page Six has the story.

Hilaria Baldwin has been forced to defend her fluctuating Spanish accent — and admitted that her name is “Hillary.”

 

The wife of Alec Baldwin took to Instagram Sunday morning after a Twitter storm erupted following a tweet which read: “You have to admire Hilaria Baldwin’s commitment to her decade long grift where she impersonates a Spanish person.”

Baldwin’s own bio on her agency’s speakers site states that she was born on the island of Mallorca, Spain, and raised in Boston. Her 2016 interview with Hola! magazine also stated: “Hilaria, who was born in Spain, has made certain to raise her children with her native language, Spanish.”

 

During TV appearances, she has spoken with a pronounced Spanish accent, and on one occasion during a cooking segment she even seemingly forgot the English word for “cucumber.”

Here’s an ABC video of her with a strong accent describing married life, and another of her “forgetting” how to say cucumber.

Here she is pretending not to know how to say cucumber in English 😭 pic.twitter.com/g8xYNktsNY

— elena ilana alana alina elana (not) (@lenibriscoe) December 21, 2020

Twitter is having a lot of fun digging up the inconsistencies in her constantly-changing stories.

A minor crime. Let's stone her! 

Another Day Ending in "Y"

 How about Yoga pants?

The Wombat has a double stuffed Late Night Double Scoop Rule Five Sunday: Babes In Choppers up at The Other McCain.

Another Day Ending in "Y"

So, how about Yoga Pants?

The Wombat has Rule 5 Sunday: Marina Watanabe out on time and under budget.

First World Issues

From the Government Executive: Is It Weird to Wear Leggings at Work? Absolutely not!

I don’t remember what specific combo of frustration and busyness led me to wear leggings to the office one day recently, but I do remember it felt magical. With nothing but a stretchy band and Nulu(™) fabric holding me in, I felt freer, like I was dancing through my duties, rather than trudging through them encased in polyester and wool. My computer seemed to run more quickly; my sources were more responsive; the PR people were less angry.

Normally, I only wear leggings in the culturally appropriate setting of Clarendon, the Washington, D.C., suburb where I live. Whenever I see adult humans out and about, they are wearing leggings. Their sweat has been wicked away. Their barre-weary haunches have been compressed by elite performance mesh. Leisurely, but athletic: This is how Clarendonians live.

Work is another story. Most everyone at my office is nicely dressed, from the occasional TV-ready suit-wearer to our fashion-conscious female editors. Occasionally, some mayor or other VIP stops by. Leggings are not part of this world. In fact, when I told my colleagues I was working on this article, several of them came to my desk, in their traditional slacks, and registered their complaints. “Tights are not pants,” people told me.

That’s not an uncommon view in America’s cubicle farms. But I would argue that tights are better than pants. Working in leggings is approximately 400 times more comfortable than working in literally any other garment. I sit for at least 10 hours every day. Sitting for that long is not comfortable in regular pants. The waist band digs in, the legs ride up, and, depending on how long in the pelvis you are, the crotch gets more intimate with you than is common on Tuesday afternoons.

All of this led me to wonder: Is it okay for me, or any woman, to wear these puppies to the office regularly, or what? I don’t mean the leggings that are made to look like dress pants—though that’s basically all women’s dress pants these days, and we’ll get to those later. I mean leggings, the kind you wear to yoga or to the couch when you’re hungover. I mean nothing but a thin layer of spandex between your butt and the conference-room chair, supporting you as you talk about synergies.

My office dress code says nothing on the subject, so I decided to ask around. It turns out you can—but it’s fraught.

Leggings sauntered into our lives in the second half of the 20th century. The concept came from the dance world (think ballerina outfits), and by the 1950s, cool girls at Barnard were hanging out downtown in black tights and oversized men’s sweaters, says Deirdre Clemente, a historian at the University of Nevada at Las Vegas who focuses on American fashion in the 20th century. Leggings made headway in the aerobics-crazed 1980s, when synthetic-fiber technology became more sophisticated. By the 2000s, they’d taken off in tandem with yoga.

Once they started showing up in offices, however, the outcry began. Work is one of the most sartorially conservative places for women. It’s long been thought that women shouldn’t look too sexy in the workplace, and leggings ... well … they show your butt. Before leggings, says Linda Przybyszewski, a history professor at the University of Notre Dame, there were controversies over cleavage and midriffs. The ’70s brought complaints about women wearing sheer blouses, and back in the ’30s there was consternation over sleeveless tops.

The other place where leggings are deemed unacceptable today: church. After a mother wrote a letter to the editor of the student newspaper at Notre Dame, pleading with leggings-wearers to “think of the mothers of sons the next time you go shopping and consider choosing jeans instead,” Slate’s Ruth Graham explained how leggings have long been controversial in several faith communities. Graham herself admitted that she rarely wears leggings out of the house. Again, because they show your butt. (One common leggings workaround is wearing a long sweater or shirt to mask the butt.)

In an informal internet poll performed by the Society for Human Resource Management this year, 90 percent of the 9,000 respondents said leggings violate their office dress code. I conducted my own small survey too, sending out a Google form through social media that asked for women’s experiences wearing leggings to work. The 50-some responses spoke to how much thought women put into how they’re perceived at work, and how even the elasticity of one’s pants can be seen as a career obstacle. Women feared that leggings would make them look unprofessional or too sexy. One 22-year-old, who asked to remain anonymous to protect her job, said her boss once said leggings made her look “young.” Another woman was told she looked “cozy.

Besides, you never know when yoga might break out.

The Wombat is back in action with a double stuffed Rule 5 Sunday: New Year Double Scoop Delight!

The Great Rhode Island Yoga Pants Protest

Can we talk about that Rhode Island yoga pants protest for a moment?

This was one of those throwaway stories which cable news uses for a lighter break between the pressing coverage of politics and war, but it represents a disturbing trend which is getting completely out of hand. In case you missed it, a man in Rhode Island named Alan Sorrentino recently penned a letter to the editor of his local paper on the pressing subject of women wearing yoga pants. Alan sent in his largely tongue in cheek missive to The Barrington Times (a newspaper with a circulation of 5,000), complaining that the workout apparel was tacky and ridiculous, best suited for the confines of a yoga studio, and not something to be worn by women over the age of twenty.

You don't look a day over 70

 Don't worry girls, I won't judge you for wearing yoga pants past 20.

The result? Death threats, vulgar voice mail and a wave of outrage on local social media accounts which resulted in hundreds of women showing up in front of his house to protest. (Fox News)

Hundreds of women, girls and other supporters proudly donned their yogapants Sunday as they peacefully paraded around the Rhode Island neighborhood of a man who derided the attire as tacky and ridiculous.
Alan Sorrentino said the response to his letter to the editor, printed in The Barrington Times on Wednesday, has been “vicious” and that he’s received death threats. He maintained the letter was meant to be humorous.
But organizers said even if Sorrentino’s letter was meant to be a joke, the message is clear.
“Women are fed up with the notion that we have to dress for people’s visual pleasure,” said Jamie Burke, parade organizer.

 Hey, nothing wrong with yoga pants!

Pretty funny, huh? It’s the sort of popcorn story which gives cable news anchors a reason to chuckle and guffaw, play interviews with the activists and make a few fashion jokes. But Sorrentino took it pretty seriously. His life was disrupted and he’s been turned into a villain, all over a note which he admits he wrote as, “a humorous break from the current political campaign rhetoric.” Now he’s become a symbol of female oppression. And to top it off, Alan is gay and owns yoga pants himself.

Be careful what you wish for. Here's a News Flash: Feminists Hate Men

Wombat-socho has "Rule 5 Sunday: Wonder Girls And Indians" and "FMJRA 2.0: Go Tribe!" up in time and under budget at The Other McCain.