Blogcritics Author: Lilly PuTian

Announcement: Short-content feeds

Phillip Winn — Sun, 26 Aug 2007 12:00:00 EDT

Sunday, August 26, 2007, marks the switch of all Blogcritics.org article feeds from full-content to short-content. This is the result of several converging factors, and is unfortunately a permanent decision (as permanent as any decision can be on the web, that is). We are aware of all of the reasons that this is a Bad Idea, and we are aware that some of you will be quite upset about having to click on something to read the free content, and we're sorry. Unfortunately, despite great effort, full-content feeds are not currently economically viable. Two other factors are involved: full-content feeds have resulted in an unprecedented level of content theft, with BC content appearing on many websites, usually spam sites, without attribution or permission. This duplicate content causes a cascading set of problems, not the least of which is that search engines generally aren't favorable to duplicate content, and don't always guess correctly. Finally, our RSS advertising partner is strongly in favor of short-content feeds. We hope that you'll continue to subscribe to BC via RSS, and when an article grabs your eye, it's only a click away, still free on the BC website. Thank you for your understanding.

Product Review: Sally Mack Girls Jacket

Lilly PuTian — Mon, 4 Sep 2006 14:09:23 EDT

Having spent a lot of time in bathing suits and leotards, the thought of the flexible give and take of spandex was appealing when I ordered my Sally Mack cotton and spandex (two percent) jacket from Storybook Heirlooms.If you haven't heard of Storybook Heirlooms, it's one of those wonderful websites with professional photos, a catalog, and a great search engine that allows you to search by size as well as type of clothing. Unfortunately, it's also going the way of the dodo -- no new items seem to be displayed, so I must conclude that the going-out-of-business rumor is true. This site is just selling out its stocked items before closing down. What a shame. I thought this might even be the perfect place to buy a wedding dress some day.The jacket in question was in my favorite color, purple. The website described it thusly: Contrast Stitch BlazerA terrific twill blazer with floral print lining. Notch collar, welt pockets with flaps, 4-button front, 3-button cuffs, and center back flap with 2 buttons. Oh-so versatile. By Sally Mack.™ Substantial, soft cotton-spandex. Machine wash. Imported. Eggplant. Regular retail price was $59.00. You don't get to see the inside lining or the back, but the price has been knocked down to $24.99. You can also buy it on Amazon for a little more.The lining is a cute cotton floral pattern that seems totally out of sync with the fashion statement in the photo. The background color does match the eggplant of the jacket, but the bright pink, blue, and white flowers do not. Think country western. It also doesn't lie as flat as one would want. This is probably because it has no spandex content and can't stretch as much as the rest of the jacket. The problem with the cotton spandex material for the jacket is that the jacket gets old fast. What do I mean by this? The ends of the sleeves and the bottom of the jacket show considerable wear although the jacket hasn't been worn much.I'm guessing that's the spandex giving up the ghost and the threads fraying. So this jacket isn't a great deal at $59 or even $25 unless this is really for a 12-year-old girl who won't wear it longer than a season, outgrow it, and give it up to charity. I have the same problem with old leotards and swimsuits, but those both lasted longer than a season and the swimsuits were battling the effects of chlorine.What I'm hoping to do to cover up this problem is use some faux fur trim to cover it up -- just another one of those sewing and repair projects piling up at my house.I've made other purchases from Storybook Heirlooms and bought items made by Sally Mack that I'm much better pleased with, so this isn't particularly a negative review of the brand.

I'm 4-foot 11-inches and overweight when I hit 95 lbs. I usually struggle to keep over 85 in the summer. I'm almost a perfect size 12 (children's) except my waist is too small and I rarely shop in the women's section any more. I worship at the altar of Nordstrom for its wonderful children's clothes and shoes. These series of articles is about shopping for the petite (not necessarily sweet) adult woman.

The World May Not Be Flat, But I Am: Buying Business Jackets in the Boys Dept.

Lilly PuTian — Fri, 21 Jul 2006 22:08:43 EDT

It's not easy being flat-chested when Playboy to Playtex reminds you that you need something to either lift and separate or push up and present. Yet one advantage of being at a bust disadvantage is that as a petite you can shop in the boys department. The boys department generally offers clothes that are sturdier than the girls and in the case of suits, just like the men's department, the alterations are included. My favorite boys department is at Nordstrom's. Although I don't particularly favor browns, blues, and beiges, I did buy one jacket and a full pants suit. The separate jacket is the Nordstrom brand, double breasted in a medium brown with flecks of an almost teal green. Unlike my women's jackets from the Nordstrom petite department, this jacket hasn't dated at all, very classic clean lines. The lining is brown and sewn in smoothly. I only wish the boys department carried brighter colors, but one can't have everything.The suit I have is also brown, a Polo brand from Ralph Lauren. I love both of them despite their color (brown not being a favorite color of mine). A Polo men's sport jacket runs anywhere from over $100 to a little over $2000. Women's jackets range from just over $100 to $700. Boys is $100 to just over $200.I also highly recommend their classic Oxford shirt, but only if you're going for the preppy look or trying to dress up capris or walking shorts. The Ralph Lauren Web site currently features an Oxford you can customize by choosing the color of the logo and your monogram. The girls version costs $49.50. The boys Oxford costs only $45. They are available in the same colors (blue, pink, and white). Yet compare that to the women's custom Oxford at $79.50 or the men's at the same price.I can't recall the price, but I guarantee that even at Nordstrom, the price for a boys designer suit is much less than a similar suit in women's or men's -- and all the alterations, including hemming and the taking in of the waist, were included in the price. Did I mention that I've sworn never to move anywhere that doesn't have a Nordstrom? More on that and other means to get nice business jackets later.Want to feel a little Garbo? Or put on the business-like air of a young Katherine Hepburn or be rebellious like George Sand? Get a designer jacket in the boys section and strut your label knowing that compared to your taller contemporaries, you saved a bundled and did it in a style that wouldn't flatter if you weren't flat.

The Auto Industry and Petite Women

Lilly PuTian — Mon, 3 Jul 2006 23:41:26 EDT

According to MSN.com Autos, the 2007 crop of automobiles will be safer for women. Why? Automakers are going to consider the safety of petite women when they design airbags.Finally...it only took about 20 adult deaths in the US. Most of these were women of short stature and one third were elderly women. The media attention was really on the deaths of young children who were sitting in the passenger seat. That's important, of course, however, automakers would have uncovered the problem if they had considered all drivers, if they had considered that women of all sizes and ages drove cars.The 2004s are the first vehicles required by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to begin phasing in new, smarter, gentler airbags designed to minimize the risk of injury and death to front-seat riders during a crash. While some automakers already have been adding the so-called advanced airbags in recent years to their cars, the 2004 model year marks the start of an industry-wide ramp-up of the airbags required by NHTSA. Indeed, by the 2007 model year, all passenger vehicles are mandated to have the advanced bags that are expected to be safer for children and small-statured adults such as petite women.Frontal airbags began appearing in a small number of new cars in the 1970s and by the mid-1980s were a growing feature. They were not required by NHTSA until the 1997 model year, following years of debate.Safety is a good thing, but not when it ignores both children and smaller adults. I'm not talking about dwarfs, although their needs should be considered as well. I'm talking about women who might even be too tall to be considered a dwarf and not afflicted with dwarfism.NHTSA noted frontal airbags' life-saving potential, saying that the lives of more than 5,300 people had been saved by airbags in the 14 years between 1986 and March 2000. The federal agency estimated at least 2,400 people annually would be saved in car crashes once all vehicles on the road had frontal airbags. The real-world data also showed a troubling problem. More than 150 people, most of them children, were killed by airbags, often in low-speed crashes, according to NHTSA statistics. The reason: Frontal airbags had been designed to meet government requirements to provide protection for a 50th-percentile male who is unbelted in a car crash. Therefore, automakers had to make sure their airbags deployed quickly enough and with enough pressure to give the requisite protection for a sizable male body not held in its seat by a safety belt. What researchers discovered was this kind of airbag could be lethal to smaller-sized people, including children, small women and the elderly in some circumstances, particularly if they are sitting too close to the airbag.The NHTSA still advises that children 12 years old and younger not sit in the front seats. That's sort of hard when you want to drive. It's hard enough to find a car that you can drive when you're petite. Sometimes the car seat won't move up enough for me to reach the pedals. If I can reach the pedals sometimes, I can't see over the dash. Sometimes, my knees are bumping into the dashboard by the time I'm close enough.I currently drive a Toyota Previa. I bought a 1991 model specifically because it didn't have an airbag and it was one of the few vans that a petite woman could drive. The model that preceded the Previa was not a comfortable drive -- the seat cut off the circulation to my lower legs by cutting into the back of my knees. The dashboard and the pedals were totally incomfortable and required shifting around in the seat -- a sort of twisting gymnastics that should be reserved for parked sex as opposed to everyday driving or worse, during emergency reactions.That's sort of funny because the Japanese car industry actually focused on women drivers before the American auto industry caught on. More women were working full-time and living at home, giving them a large disposable income. Yet in the US, we don't get a lot of the models offers by Japanese automakers to their domestic market -- even those that would surely sell to men, such as the Figaro -- a retro 1950s car with modern amenities.I always pause and drive more conservatively in a rental, all of which have been post-1992 models, specifically because my life depended upon it, because even a low speed minor collision could have been fatal.Perhaps the joy of driving will really be mine by 2010 -- a plug-in Prius and airbags that won't decapitate me.

Tech Review: Keyboards for Smaller Hands

Lilly PuTian — Mon, 3 Jul 2006 20:55:02 EDT

On a regular size keyboard, I can type 70 wpm. And yet, a few years ago, I was in danger of losing my job at a major Internet company. Why? My hands hurt. My hands began to hurt all the time.Nothing new. People who type a lot get carpal tunnel syndrome and suffer from repetitive motion stress. Women and older employees are more likely to have this problem.After watching other people type, and reading about the kind of pain that other people felt, I came to the conclusion that my keyboard was too big for me.Let me backtrack a bit. I am under five feet tall. I weigh less than 100 pounds. I am a perfect size 12 -- almost. That's a children's size 12 and what keeps me from being perfect is my waist. I have one. Children do not have a small waist in comparison with their other measurements. I also have hands and feet that are small for my size. When I played the piano as a junior high school student, I had one teacher who, with a faux kindness that made her Southern accent grating to my nerves, assured me that with practice, I would be able to reach an octave. All I got was pain that spanned across the back of my hands. When I quit playing piano, the pain stopped.And this pain was similar to what I felt when I typed too much.If a keyboard is made, like many things, for the average man, then for the person who is smaller, much smaller than the average male, the keyboard is oversized.I noticed how other people's hands fit and flitted across their keyboards. How they didn't have to strain their forefingers and pinkies and didn't have to look down because they could touch type.After some research, I found and showed to my consulting ergo person what I considered a solution. The most the company was willing to provide was a slim profile board -- the keys were still too far apart.The keyboards that I bought and currently use are one third smaller than the average keyboard. The one that is readily available, by A4 Tech, comes in various colors. I have ABC at the top of the board and the keys are colored to help me along. There's also software to help teach typing that I've never looked at.I liked the yellow keyboard I got so much that I also got one for home in order to keep my typing speed up so I didn't have to change mindsets between home and work. I have the aquamarine colored model at home.These keyboards work well for both Mac and PC.There is actually a better, more professional looking board. Advertised as aimed at K-6 grade children and for people that have to type with one hand, I would love to get more than the one model that I have at home.The LittleFingers keyboard from Data Desk Products feels sturdier than the A4 Tech, however, but seem to be hard to come by and may no longer be in production.I will probably get another A4 Tech keyboard to take with me in a briefcase and act as a back up should my one at work have problems since my work is unwilling to provide non-adult sized items for employees.Oddly enough, when the ergo consultant advised me to use two mice, the other one I purchased was from Ergo Cube.Deciding to have fun since my keyboard already has ABC and some hokey pictures of sports figures at the top of the board, I ordered fun mice. I have a tiger and two dogs.In defense of my workplace and their ergo awareness, they DID provide me a special chair for petite people; however, this was only after a manager, who is taller and heavier than I, got one and I had to pursue the issue after accidentally finding out about it.In any case, the A4 Tech keyboards are not that expensive and mine has lasted for over two years. Your kids might not be able to tell you if they feel pain, but I highly recommend getting an A4 Tech keyboard. If your child grows or as your child grows, you can get another keyboard.Currently, the A4 Tech keyboards come in blue, Barbie pink and aquamarine. They also have a new wireless multimedia mini-desktop keyboard that I haven't tried. From time to time, you'll find other websites putting these keyboards on sale.