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Family

14 beach body cartoons that are just the right amount of real.

They're making a tote bag that can carry your beach gear AND your solidarity!

Beach body season is upon us!

It's time to drink ice cold lemonade, decide what is really going to be the song of the summer, don some swimwear, get some sun, and try to avoid annoying ads like this!

Image via My Body Does/Instagram, used with permission

Not cool.

But see that sticker that says "I am cultivating a loving relationship with my body"?

That sticker — fighting the idea that a "bikini fear" is even a thing — is made by an online body positivity platform called "My Body Does."

The founders of My Body Does have an incredible Instagram featuring inspiring, smart, and funny images of all kinds of bodies.

And they know that, too often, the signs of summertime are not the sun, the beach, and enjoying life ... but the objectification of human bodies, ads presenting a severely limited range of body types and races, and an assumption that everyone is straight and on a diet.

Image via My Body Does/Instagram, used with permission.

The My Body Does people weren't all about this.

They made an image that says something different about summer bodies, and they put it on a tote bag: "Don't Worry Beach Happy."

All images via My Body Does, used with permission.

One of the My Body Does founders, Ashley Simon, explained that, like the stickers above, they created the tote bag and illustration because they "wanted to create something that would serve as a counter-message to the content we tend to see around beach season."

The tote is available on My Body Does' merchandise website. Their goal is to sell enough to cover costs, and any extra funds will go toward more counter-messaging goodies.

I love these folks!

They reached out to Maeve Norton, a Brooklyn illustrator, and together created the "Don't Worry Beach Happy" tote.

While it might seem like body diversity and illustration go together, the reality is that animation and art training don't go hand in hand. Just a look at the Disney princesses.

But at the Pratt Institute, where Norton trained, all the amazing variations of the human form were front and center and celebrated.

"At Pratt, we had a wide range of models with all different body types," Norton said. "There was definitely an emphasis on knowing how to draw the human body in any form."

Her passion and her training led her to other women who agreed that all bodies are beautiful bodies. "All too often we only have one body type represented, especially in fashion, and that's just not a realistic view of all the different and beautiful people there are in the world."

I am loving these beachgoers on this bag — because it's like being at an actual beach!

Everyone is just living their life. They do seem pretty beach happy!

"The banner 'don't worry, beach happy' is not meant to be flippant," Simon said. "But rather, it's an invitation to celebrate the full diversity of body types, abilities, races, and gender expressions that you would actually see at a public beach."

Norton says her art is fueled by a joy in finding others who want to fight for what they believe in, so this was an ideal project for her. She wants to make a difference, one drawing at a time.

"More representation of different body types in art and fashion can make a real difference," she says.

So here's to that: to happy people, diverse beach bodies, and creating more things to fight for and not against!

My Body Does posted this goal list for 2016 too.

Image via My Body Does/Instagram, used with permission.

Check, check, check, and ... we'll get there.

Family

Korean mom has a perfect response to the teacher who called her son's lunches 'disgusting'

Good for her for standing up for her child's culture.

via Roman Harak/Flickr

A Korean mother and her son

A recently posted story on Reddit shows a mother confidently standing up for her family after being bullied by a teacher for her culture. Reddit user Flowergardens0 posted the story to the AITA forum, where people ask whether they are wrong in a specific situation.

Over 5,600 people commented on the story, and an overwhelming majority thought the mother was right. Here’s what went down:

“I (34F) have a (5M) son who attends preschool. A few hours after I picked him up from school today, I got a phone call from his teacher,” Flowergardens0 wrote. “She made absolutely no effort to sound kind when she, in an extremely rude and annoyed tone, told me to stop packing my son such ‘disgusting and inappropriate’ lunches."

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parenting
Joy

Dog does the ‘pick a card’ challenge and we get to live the dream with him

Suddenly dogs everywhere need teddy bear robes.

Opie the Pit Bully|TikTok

Dog does the 'pick a card' challenge and it's adorable.

There are a few kinds of dog parents: ones that only have outside dogs, those who have inside dogs but they're absolutely not allowed on the furniture and dog parents who treat their dog as if they birthed them themselves and give them every luxury invented for four-legged fur children.

Clearly, people are going to have feelings one way or the other about dogs and their place within a household, but I think everyone can agree that seeing a dog be pampered will always be adorable. Opie the Pit Bully is one of those lucky doggos who wound up living in the lap of luxury, and the pooch got to do a "pick a card" day to showcase that his owner loves him the mostest.

In a video uploaded to TikTok by Opie's owner because...ya know, opposable thumbs and all…Opie is faced with two cards that he can't read: 1) because he's a dog, and 2) because the cards are facing toward the camera. That doesn't stop the sweet puppers from playing along, though.

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pick a card date night
Family

Ring doorbell video captures the phenomenon of what it's like to be the default parent

Millions of us know what it's like to be the "default parent."

Toniann Marchese/TikTok

Ring doorbell video captures what it's like to be the default parent.

Kids, man. I'm not sure of the scientific way audacity is distributed, but kids have a lot of it and somehow make it cute. That audacity overload is especially interesting when you're the default parent—you know, the parent kids go to for literally everything as if there's not another fully capable adult in the house. Chances are if your children haven't sought you out while you were taking a shower so you could open up a pack of fruit snacks, then you're not the default parental unit.

One parent captured exactly what it's like to be the default parent and shared it to TikTok, where the video has over 4 million views. Toniann Marchese went on a quick grocery run and *gasp* did not inform her children. Don't you fret, they're modern kids who know how to use modern means to get much-needed answers when mom is nowhere to be found. They went outside and rang the doorbell.

Back when we were children, this would've done nothing but make the dogs bark, but for Marchese's kids, who are 3 and 6 years old, it's as good as a phone call.

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parenting
Science

90-year-old tortoise is a hero to his species by becoming a first-time dad to 3 hatchlings

Way to go, daddio!

Photo by David Cadenas on Unsplash

What we imagine the look on Mr/ Pickles' face to be after becoming a dad.

It’s been an exciting time for a couple of tortoises at the Houston Zoo—and really, for tortoises everywhere.

The zoo announced on its blog that their oldest resident, Mr. Pickles, a 90-year-old radiated tortoise, and his 53-year-old companion Mrs. Pickles (that’s quite an age gap there sir, but no judgment) recently welcomed three new hatchlings.

Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better, here are the new baby names: Dill, Gherkin and Jalapeño.

Clearly, Jalepeño is the spicy one of the bunch.

While this news is certainly momentous for Mr. and Mrs. Pickles, it’s also a huge achievement for the entire species, which is currently critically endangered.
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animals & wildlife
Education

100-year-old woman's speech against book bans in Florida school district goes viral

Grace Linn speaks for millions of Americans.

Jodi Picoult/TikTok

Grace Linn, 100, speaks at a Martin County School Board meeting on March 21, 2023.

Four hundred years ago, copies of William Tyndale’s English translation of the Bible were publicly burned by the bishop of London, with church authorities insisting that the Bible should only be read in Latin (and only by the clergy). In the centuries since, many books we now consider classics such as Daniel Defoe's "Robinson Crusoe," Jack London's "Call of the Wild," Walt Whitman’s "Leaves of Grass," Victor Hugo’s "Les Misérables, Charles Darwin’s "Origin of Species"—even Beatrix Potter's "The Tale of Peter Rabbit" and "Benjamin Bunny"—have been banned or censored in one way or another in various countries.

Battles over books are nothing new, but once in a while, they become particularly ugly or absurd, prompting people to speak out against book bans.

People like 100-year-old Florida resident, Grace Linn, whose speech at a Martin County School Board meeting has gone viral.

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book bans
Pop Culture

Jennifer Aniston and Adam Sandler have the cutest friendship, and she has the receipts to prove it

Plenty of teasing. Lots of love.

The Tonight Show/ Youtube

Jennifer Aniston appearing on "The Tonight show"

Let’s face it, platonic relationships between men and women rarely get the same amount of attention as romantic ones, to the point where we debate whether or not they can actually exist in the first place.

That’s what makes a clip of Jennifer Aniston gushing about her decades-long friendship with Adam Sandler so cool to watch. There’s no Harry-Met-Sally-ing here, just one pal talking about another pal.

Aniston sat down with Jimmy Fallon to promote the film “Murder Mystery 2,” starring both Aniston and Sandler, but the conversation quickly veered into several anecdotes about “The Sand Man,” including how the two first met at a deli in their 20s.

As with any healthy friendship, there’s plenty of ragging on each other.

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