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30 Apr

I Shaved My Legs For This

So I spent yesterday being a grown up, which is not to say that I am not a grown up every day, just that I usually don’t feel like one until I put on a bra and clothing that is not made of lycra/spandex and venture out into the world without a diaper bag to talk to other real live grown ups about things not related to the relative merits of Dora versus Angelina Ballerina, the difficulty of finding good babysitters, and the high cost of yoga pants these days. Which is not to say that those aren’t, in certain very important respects, grown-up subjects, but, also, they’re not.

I felt very grown-up because I was speaking on a Very Serious Panel at the Canadian government’s Privacy Commission consultations. You know that a panel is Very Serious when there are people in a box at the back of the room translating everything that you say into French. Also, when you shave your legs for it, even though you know full well that no-one is going to see your legs because Very Serious panels take place on stages, behind lecterns and tables with swagged fabric. Anyway. I would say more about the leg shaving, but I won’t, because I am feeling very reflective about over-sharing after lengthy discussions with experts about how people navigate issues of privacy online. Anecdotes about leg shaving are probably irrelevant to any serious discussion about privacy, meaningfully understood, but still. A girl has to have her secrets, you know?

My panel was on children and online privacy, and you can watch a webcast of it here, if you’re into that. I’m writing a more serious account of the proceedings for BlogHer, so you could just wait to read that (I’ll link to it when it’s up), or you could wait to see if I decide to break my silence about the leg-shaving. That’s totally up to you.

In the meantime, I need your help on making a very important decision. Or, if you don’t give a shit about my Very Important Decisions, you can just go read what I had to say about Sandra Bullock and adoption, or my thoughts on body image, depression and the celebumommy industrial complex. Or you could go shave your legs. OH THE DECISIONS.