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Wagatwe Wanjuki

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Study finds couples who fairly share household duties have more and better sex.

This article originally appeared on 11.16.15


In the magazine aisle there's no shortage of suggestions to spice up your sex life with your partner.

They usually range from "duh" to ... absurd.

Not a real Cosmo cover. But it sooo could be. Image by @Remiel/Flickr (altered).

While most magazine tips focus on what women can do for their male partners (I mean, there's a reason why Cosmo has a reputation), a newly-released discovery is for the fellas.

What Canadian scientists recently found is an easy-to-follow tip that probably won't be in the next issue of Esquire: Do your fair share of chores.

Sorry. I hate chores, too. GIF from "The Office."

I know, I know. Sorry. But it doesn't have to be so bad! If this did make it into the Cosmo and Men's Health sex and relationship tips sections, I imagine it'd go a little bit like this:

"Think of her carpet ... and how badly it needs to be taken care of. Then reach for the vacuum for a loud cleaning session to make that rug spotless."

"If you really want an irresistible move to get her in the mood, try introducing plastic into your routine. Using plastic gloves while scrubbing the tub and toilet doesn't just give your skin a relief from those harsh cleaning chemicals, but that cleaning sesh will really show you mean business."

"To achieve sex-god status, you have to truly master cleaning the pots. Firmly hold the handle of the pot and gently scrub away that grease and grime. The clean, shiny insides of her cookware will really get her going. For extra points, clean the pans, too."

Sexy, right?

This guy knows what he's doing. Image by garlandcannon/Flickr.

If you've been following research on the effect of chore division on a couple's sex life, then you might be scratching your head. This new research goes completely against a bombshell 2012 University of Washington study that said men doing what is traditionally seen as "women's work" in the home leads to heterosexual couples having less sex.

But wait, before running to mop the floor a few extra times. It isn't a certain qualitativeamount of chores that helps couples reach the sexy times jackpot.

The key to the couples' satisfaction is whether the man feels he is doing his fair share.

While pouring over a five-year study of German couples and their sex lives, researchers found a trend for which couples had the most frequent and most satisfying sex: the ones who had a male partner confident that he's pulling his weight in the household.

Sorry folks: Skipping doing the dishes in hopes of more romps in the bed is the wrong way to go.

The finding is helpful for cohabiting couples trying to balance their needs for both a clean house and sexual intimacy.

They only studied heterosexual partners, but I bet the moral behind it could be true regardless of gender. When people make a fair contribution to the household, everyone feels better and the couple has more opportunity for quality time.

Sounds like a win-win to me.

GIF from "The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air."

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Women share the reality of wearing a hijab. Their wisdom has lessons for us all.

In a short yet powerful video, these 6 ladies get vulnerable as they share their truths about life as a hijabi today.

These days there's plenty of commentary about the religion of Islam and/or Muslims on the news.

What about hearing straight from the source?

BuzzFeed Australia just made a great video featuring six women sharing what it's really like to be a hijabi today.

Hijabi women are Muslim women who wear a scarf called, well, a hijab to cover their hair, ears, and neck. They also observe a conservative style of dress that entails covering their entire body save for their hands and face. These women offer a unique point of view since the hijab makes it clear to the world what their religious identity is.

The video starts with a simple prompt — "I'm a hijabi woman, but..." — that reveals itself as a powerful springboard for dropping some serious truths about Islamophobia.

The video is only two and a half minutes long, but it is jam-packed with some great nuggets of humor, vulnerability, and wisdom that could benefit people of all beliefs (or lack thereof). Like:

Make sure you double- and triple-check before you think you've spotted Malala Yousafzai.


No, she won't be signing any autographs. All GIFs via BuzzFeedYellow/YouTube.

Don't judge a book by its cover (or, in this case, a woman by her hijab).

... so no making assumptions about personality.

These women get that the hijab may be the first thing you notice about them, but they are sooo much more than that.

And are willing to talk about nearly anything else.

Turns out hijabi women as just as diverse and complex as any other group of people. Shocker, right?

Islamophobia sucks. It has a huge impact on small parts of their day-to-day lives.

And probably most heartbreaking:

It's super unfair of people to keep demanding these women publicly condemn Muslim terrorists.

I mean, did anyone call for white male Christians to take a public stand in the aftermath of the 1996 Centennial Olympic bombings or this year's Planned Parenthood Colorado shooting?


But this woman will keep doing it anyway.

It's awful that the narrative around Islam and Muslims has been dominated by people who aren't Muslims themselves. The sad truth is that most Americans don't really know anything about the religion or its people.

That's why this video is so refreshing.

In it, we finally see Muslims share what it's like to be them, and we get a real look at the female Muslim experience in these tenuous times.

Want to learn more? Find a hijabi woman to ask (respectfully, of course). She might just be up for some more sharing.

Just try to make sure you do some basic research first. People can be a great resource, but they're not your private search engine.

In fact, watching the full video below could be a great start...

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What one man's anger can teach us about the way we treat welfare recipients.

The possessions of welfare recipients are not our business. Period.

Here's a sweet Christmas story for you: Timmy* really loved his big sister. So one year, he decided he was going to give her a big surprise for Christmas.

*Not his real name, but this story is inspired by a real Tumblr thread.

Photo via marcisim/Pixabay.

He wanted to buy her a Nintendo DS Lite. Since their family was poor, Timmy knew he would have to work really hard and save money to get her the gift.


For months, Timmy worked hard to earn money. He was so determined to treat his sister that he pushed past his social anxiety to ask neighbors if there were any chores he could do for them.

After nine months of counting his earnings every day to track his progress, his hard work paid off.

He had earned enough to buy a DS Lite and a Pokémon game to go with it.


Awww. <3 GIF via "Pokemon."

But that's where the story takes a turn.

A few weeks after Christmas, a neighbor saw Timmy and his sister with the system outside their house. He approached them and yelled at them. Why?

He felt entitled to comment on their possessions because their family was on food stamps.

According to his sister — who told this story in a Tumblr thread — the neighbor's words stayed with Timmy for years. He started to withdraw from friends and avoided going outside for fear of running into the neighbors.

But a person's possessions only tell a small part of someone's story.

What does being poor look like? The truth is that there is no one answer.

Many people have assumptions about what living in poverty should look like, but it's important to remember that every situation is different. And there's an infinite number of possible paths to poverty. One possession does not cancel out financial hardship, whether it's a designer purse, refrigerator, or a Ph.D.

We're taught that we shouldn't judge a book by its cover. That rule still applies when we're talking about people living in poverty.

Imagine how much better our world would be if we took the energy spent judging people on social assistance programs and put it towards fixing the problems that led them there in the first place?

Read the screenshot of the entire Tumblr thread that inspired this piece below:

Family

Tinder's latest move makes the app a powerful tool to help save lives.

Becoming an organ donor is as easy as swiping right.

Swiping through Tinder can be like opening a box of chocolates. You never know who you might get:

An engineer, a model, a comedian, ... an Olympic gold medalist.

Image via Tinder/United Kingdom National Health Service. Used with permission.

For the next two weeks, Tinder users in the U.K. might be surprised to find a few celebrities up for matching, like tae kwon do Olympian gold medalist Jade Jones MBE, reality TV star Jamie Laing of "Made in Chelsea," or soap opera "Emmerdale" actress Gemma Oaten.

When users match with them it's clear that these celebs only have one thing in mind...

Instead of a hot date, users get a powerful reminder about the need for organ donor registrants in the area.

It's not a love connection. They want you to save lives. They're hoping you'll want to make a donor connection.

Tinder and the United Kingdom's National Health Service teamed up to get more young people to register as organ donors.

This match between the dating app and the NHS seems strange until you look at the numbers.

It's part of an initiative to get more people between the ages of 18 and 35 — a demographic the NHS says is particularly important to them to reach — to sign up as organ donors. The average Tinder user spends 90 minutes daily helping to rack up a whopping 1.4 billion daily swipes globally.

Urging users to take a fraction of their time to join the donor registry makes perfect sense — it's actually kind of ingenious.

The initiative isn't just for Tinder users: The celebrities are also tweeting under #timetosign to promote the cause.


This partnership is just one of the latest moves in NHS' push to tackle the U.K.'s organ donor shortage.

Last month, NHS Blood and Transplant launched a campaign called "The Wait" to highlight the number of people who die while waiting for an organ transplant. They released a 14-hour film of the same name that follows a former doctor's six-years-and-counting wait for a new kidney.

This move comes in light of some sobering statistics: In the past decade, over 6,000 people died while waiting for an organ match. NHS hopes that the almost 7,000 people currently on the U.K.'s organ transplant waitlist can evade the same fate.

For every person disappointed they won't be dating the Olympian who has their heart, here's hoping there's another who'll register to give a different organ to a stranger in need.


Looks like it's working. :)

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