Summer Living | Susan Tolson In Paris | Family Planning & Foreign Policy

Sensual and Superyoung

Eat Your Vegetables

Great Ways to Veg Out WSJ April 30, 2011

This minute Anne has a huge pan of veggies roasting in the oven — enough for the whole week.  Asparagus, eggplant, zucchini, carrots, fennel, three colors of peppers, exotic multi-color mini potatos, and onions with olive oil, salt and pepper at 450 degrees.

For those of us who want a more lavish treatment, WSJ delivers up more complex vegetable recipes that sound divine.

Vegetables As Aphrodisiacs

Aphrodisiacs have a bad reputation in America, when they have significant sexual wellness benefits. Take asparagus.

Sexual Health Benefits of Asparagus

• Beyond their duly-noted phallic-shaft shape, asparagus spears are loaded with potassium, phosphorus, calcium, and vitamin E, all essential for producing energy and maintaining urinary health.
• Asparagus helps your body produce hormones like testosterone, estrogen, and progesterone, which circulate in your bloodstream and stimulate sexual responses like clitoral swelling and vaginal lubrication.
• Vitamin B6 increases testosterone production.

AOC doesn’t cover all health news. Our focus is staying Sensual and Superyoung. Read the latest research about aging, eating and keeping you — the woman in the mirror —happy in bed. AOC Health

Design

Brazilian Soul

Oskar Metsavaht: The Soul of Brazilian Style VMan #22 Summer 2011

Oskar Metsavaht by Sweater Osklen“I like to say Brazilians conquer by seducing, not by aggressively competing to be champions,” he adds.. . When talking about how Brazilian culture is exported through its homegrown products and brands, Oskar uses a particular term to describe the energy of his country and people: “the ‘Brazilian Soul,’ as I like to describe it, is what I really think we Brazilians can bring to the world,” he says. “Binding our natural resources with our social and environmental sustainable development projects is a mandate that we are given.”

Hair Legend Edward Tricomi

Edward Tricomi: ‘Believe in the Art; Money Follows Like a Shadow’ Racked May 2, 2011

When I started to work with Xavier, I started to do shoots. I was living with Janice Dickinson. And Jan was shooting Vogue. She introduced me to Polly Mellen, and Polly Mellen came in for a haircut, I cut Polly’s hair, Polly loved what I did, and the next day booked me with Irving Penn. So I started my career with Vogue at the top. I didn’t work my way up, I worked by way down.

Summer Living

T Magazine Design and Living Issue Summer 2011 NYT May 1, 2011

The summer issue of T Design and Living is all about visions of home. In the cover story, “Man Cave With a View,” a fashion impresario’s dream house in Majorca leaves no stone unturned, while in “Inside Job,” two architects take their nice Brooklyn loft and make it great — and more livable. For the high-powered money manager in “Embassy Suite,” being the wife of the American ambassador to France gives new meaning to the phrase “gracious living.” T also visits the young designers Big-Game and Formafantasma; the art director Sofía Sanchez Barrenechea; Ai-Jen Poo, a crusader for domestic workers’ rights; and stylish stops in Turin, Italy. And the Edible Selby samples the java at Blue Bottle. See more from the issue.

Susan Tolson’s Life in Paris

AOC Focus: Susan Tolson, wife of the American Ambassador to France: NYT article and also Harper’s Bazaar. Watch Mary J Blige singing for Michael Kors at dinner bash in Paris.

Susan Tolson Rivkin | Life in Paris at American Embassy

Brainiacs

Learning from Egypt

The Black Swan of Cairo Foreign Affairs May/June 2011

The upheavals in the Middle East have much in common with the recent global financial crisis: both were plausible worst-case scenarios whose probability was dramatically underestimated. When policymakers try to suppress economic or political volatility, they only increase the risk of blowups.

Simply Stated, US Conservatives Condemn Women to Death, With Foreign Aid Riders

Family Planning and US Foreign Policy Foreign Affairs May/June 2011

An estimated 215 million women globally — particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and southern Asia — are sexually active but are not using any contraception, even though they want to avoid pregnancy or delay the birth of their next child. With the world’s population poised to cross the 7 billion mark later in 2011, and expected to grow by nearly 80 million people annually for several more decades, global unmet need for family planning is likely to increase.

Photo Credit: RH pink lady Gaby Kravencki | Daniel Sannwald | Metal Magazine March/April 2011 AOC Private Studio

The Collapse of the Congo

It’s estimated that over the past 15 years, war in the Democratic Republic of Congo has consumed about 5 million lives.  In writing Chronicle of death ignored, the Economist reminds us that it was only with the trial of Adolf Eichmann in 1961 that the term ‘Holocaust’ became common knowledge and currency to describe Germany’s extermination of the Jews.

Jason Stearns, author of Dancing in the Glory of Monsters: The Collapse of the Congo and the Great War of Africa, says that Congo should be ranked with Germany, Russia and China as one of the great vortexes of recent human violence.

Half a million women raped, some young girls of only five raped with gunbarrels or sticks, pregnant women disembowelled. Mr Stearns has met men who routinely killed 100 people a day, “using a rope to crush their windpipes and strangle them”. He asks how you become a mass murderer and finds unthinking machismo and delirium from years of abuse, but also strategic considerations. He seeks “a rational explanation for a truly chaotic conflict” and refuses to fall back on easy answers like the wanton savagery of Joseph Conrad’s “Heart of Darkness”. “The killers wanted to show the villagers…the consequence of any resistance. There were no limits to their revenge—they would kill the priests, rape the nuns, rip babies from their mothers’ wombs, and twist the corpses into origami figures.”

AOC has written extensively about the women of the Congo.

In this devastatingly bleak place for women, two good things happened in 2011. For the first time, Congo General Kibibi was sentenced to 20 yrs for raping women. Eight of his subordinates also received sentences between 10 and 20 years.

In 2009 CNN estimated that 200,000 women in Congo have been raped. Jason Stearns, who is widely praised for thoroughly covering this story from every angle and after endless interviews in the region where he worked for the UN, writes 500,000 women have been raped.

In February Vagina Monologue, feminist playwright lady Eve Ensler opened City of Joy Academy, saying:

“You build an army of women,” she said. “And when you have enough women in power, they take over the government and they make different decisions. You’ll see. They’ll say ‘Uh-uh, we’re not taking this any longer,’ and they’ll put an end to this rape problem fast.” via NYTimes

Key AOC articles on women of Congo

Congo General Kibibi Sentenced to 20 Yrs for Raping Women

Vagina Lady Eve Ensler Opens City of Joy Academy in Congo

New Savage FDLR Rapes of Congo Women Accompany US Reforms

Nicholas Kristof Reports on Women in Congo

Let’s Make ‘Congo Conflict Minerals’ the Next Blood Diamonds

APROSAF Midwives in Congo Fuel Lifesaving Rescues with Briquettes

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton Sends Message to Women of Congo

Hillary Stunned & Emotionally Drained Confronting Life for Women in Congo

Lynn Nottage and Lisa Jackson’s HRW Podcast on Women in Congo

Women in Congo: Imagine This Is Your Life

Girl, 9, One of 200,000 Congo Women Rape Victims, Shares Her Story to CNN

Hillary Stunned & Emotionally Drained Confronting Life for Women in Congo