It's a shame that even though women are making equal pay for equal work and rising in the ranks of business, industry and the professions, when it comes to sex, many of us are still not getting our due.

Some bad old habits and beliefs are keeping us from having the best sex possible. I'm suggesting seven simple, common-sense ways for women to have more fun and fulfilling sex:
1. Don't Talk Yourself Out Of What You Need
It's too easy for us women to convince ourselves to settle for less. We're so helpful and accommodating, so eager to please and afraid of rejection that we're quick to give up the things we need, including when it comes to sex.

What we need to see is that doing this will leave us chronically frustrated. While it's true that every relationship requires a certain amount of compromise, going without the things that we really need just doesn't work. We'll end up unhappy in the relationship or resentful toward our partner.

The bottom line is, we need to know what we can't live without, sexually, and what we just can't live with. We ignore these non-negotiables at the expense of a fulfilling sex life.
2. Accept Your Body As It Is Now
We need to be in touch with our bodies; with what feels good, what feels not so good and what feels wrong. We also really need to stop judging ourselves in terms of our weight and our shape. Only a superficial dope would give us a hard time over our imperfections. If someone makes us feel bad about our physical selves, this is more a reflection of his inadequacies than of our own.

Our negative self-talk has to stop. The running commentary on how fat we are, how much cellulite or how many wrinkles we have is guaranteed to kill the mood, often before it even starts. Feeling good about our bodies is crucial if we're going to let go and enjoy ourselves. Being physically self-conscious will keep us from experiencing the joyful abandon of great sex.
3. No Pets In The Room
We might love Fluffy or Rover, but they don't belong in the bedroom when we're being intimate. Our pets are very territorial and could get jealous or want to play, too. Dogs might bark or even growl. Cats might jump onto the bed and start walking around. We can avoid these disasters by remembering to shut the door and leave our four-legged friends outside.
4. Enjoy The Give And Take
The best sex is the kind in which each person is trying to please the other one. The sharing in sex is one of the things that make it great. It can be technically amazing, but when one person gets the impression that the other person really isn't there with them, it can ruin the whole experience.

What makes someone a fantastic lover is not their technical ability or their repertoire of moves but their attentiveness and their efforts to make their partner happy. When both people show that they really care about meeting their partner's needs, sex becomes something wonderful.
5. Share Your Needs And Feelings With Your Partner
If you can't ask them for what you want in bed, you shouldn't be sleeping with them. Good sex happens when we feel safe and at ease. If we're afraid to ask for something or to tell our partner that we don't like something, sex will never be more than mediocre.

This second tip follows from the first one, in that once we identify what we want and don't want, we have to express these things clearly. It's unfair to expect our partner to be a mind-reader and "prove" that they care by somehow knowing what we want without our having to tell them. Healthy sex comes out of healthy communication.

The miracle of life starts with its own set of miracles when it comes to a pregnant woman's body. The gorgeous glow, longer and luxurious hair, and curvier curves, as well as a boosted bust size and increased sex drive -- all the changes (flattering and not) make for some of the most memorable nine months of a woman's life.

Come what may, every woman is different, and with that comes a distinct beauty to every body -- not to mention some fantastic photo ops to document the nine-month-memories.

Celebs like Demi Moore, Mariah Carey, and Cindy Crawford have bared their "baby bods," and now it's your turn. Whether you're biking with a baby bump, in a bold black-and-white body shot, a candid capture among friends, or celebrating any other mommy-to-be milestones, share with us your favorite photos taken during your pregnancy and check out those sent by other readers in our slideshow below.CLICK HERE AND SEE PREGNANCY PIC

Welcome to Fashionably Late, where we round up the style scraps that didn't make it to our news page this week. Click through and catch up on what else happened this week!
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Katniss Everdeen is deep in the woods, surrounded by greenery that in any other circumstance would be considered beautiful, but in the novel and new film "The Hunger Games" is only menacing. She's just watched her only ally die and has subsequently shot an arrow straight through the killer's chest. She sits on the ground in a pile of leaves, holds her head in her hands and sobs. It's a devastating moment, but as I sat in the theater screening the film, which premieres March 23rd, all I could think was: "This isn't the Katniss I know."

From the minute I flipped open the novel "The Hunger Games," the first installment in Suzanne Collins best selling three-book young adult series, I was absorbed into its post-apocalyptic world. The setting is the totalitarian state of Panem (what was once North America), where 24 boys and girls compete to the death on national television each year, and between the poverty-stricken Districts, the anxiety-filled battle scenes, the stirrings of adolescent love -- it's not surprising that the book was hard to put down. But more than the dystopian landscape or any of the plot points, what hooked me was the series' protagonist, Katniss Everdeen.

Reading "The Hunger Games" I kept wishing it had been around when I was 12. Katniss is someone I hope I would have admired and related to, a diversion from the almost uniformly bubbly, bland female characters I encountered in "The Babysitters Club," "Sweet Valley High" and "The Saddle Club." Katniss Everdeen is an imperfect heroine, which makes her all the more compelling to me now. She's conflicted and often selfish; she loves but resents her mother; she has reservations about marriage and children due to the harsh reality of the world around her; she has complicated feelings for the men in her life; she makes rash decisions and sometimes they're the wrong ones. In short, she's a human being. And thus, as Katie Roiphe put it in her review of the novel in The New York Times, this character who is "both murderer and victim, somehow representing female strength and female vulnerability all mingled and entwined," is "mesmerizing" and "sweepingly sympathetic."

While Gary Ross' film was a highly enjoyable distillation of detail-packed source material -- and one that I believe won't disappoint even the most hardcore fans -- some of Katniss' complexity gets lost here. She's warmer, more overtly emotional, even a bit maternal -- all in all more conventionally likeable, but it made me like her less. I kept wishing that she would be a little more manipulative, a little more callous with others' feelings, a little more unsure of what the right and "good" decisions were. In the novels, you're forced to wonder -- along with Katniss herself -- what her motivations are for an act of apparent compassion in the end, and for a split second you wonder whether she'll go through with it. The film doesn't raise those questions.

When I was discussing the movie with a colleague, she mentioned that at the end of the film, you feel that Katniss won the games because of her innate goodness;in the book, she won because her will to live in the face of systemic terror and cruelty had pushed her to become a ruthless warrior. Though Jennifer Lawrence still delivers on the promise of an on-screen woman who trades on her skills more than her looks, ranks romance below other concerns in her life, and pushes the boundaries of traditional femininity, she falls short of really challenging the audience. This isn't her fault -- she didn't write the screenplay and did a generally fabulous job in the role -- but rather a byproduct of turning a beloved series into a mega-franchise, which requires a lead character the masses will love.

Questionably likeable on-screen protagonists are few and far between in Hollywood -- especially if they're female. Three recent examples that spring to mind are Charlize Theron's character in 2011's "Young Adult," the women of Leslye Headland's upcoming "Bachelorette," and Lisbeth Salander of "The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo." Neither "Bachelorette" nor "Young Adult" were intended to have the widespread appeal that "The Hunger Games" trilogy does, while "Dragon Tattoo" was a financial disappointment. This film is expected to make over $100 million at the box office in one weekend, potentially outpacing "Twilight: Breaking Dawn." And to do that, Katniss has to be universally palatable -- you don't take chances with a 100 million-dollar payday. After all, she's following in the footsteps of Hermione Granger, who's annoying know-it-all personality and conventionally unattractive buck teeth were considerably toned down in Emma Watson's on-screen embodiment of the character.

Listen up Guy Ritchie. Madonna doesn't really care that your marriage failed. In fact, if her newly-leaked single says anything, it's that she "Don't Give A."

With lyrics like, "You were so mad at me / who's got custody / lawyers / suck it up / didn't have a prenup," followed by "I tried to be a good girl / tried to be your wife / diminish myself / swallowed my life," it's pretty clear that Madge's "I Don't Give A," the latest track off her upcoming MDNA album, is a response to Madonna's ill-fated marriage to Ritchie.

Madonna's Super Bowl collaborator Nicki Minaj -- no, not the one who flashed her middle finger during the halftime show -- is also featured on the track, lending her rhymes to throw a few jabs and volvos, Aldo shoes and yes, Ritchie. "I was cutting him checks / I was his boss," raps Minaj.

This isn't the first song from Madonna's MDNA to leak online. "Superstar," a sweet follow-up to 1998's ode to new motherhood "Little Star," features her daughter Lourdes Leon, 15, singing backup on the track.

"I'm Addicted," Madge's techno love song, was leaked in early March, and blogger Perez Hilton has reportedly nabbed the entire album (and will be leaking the tracks up until the album's release on March 26).

Madonna's back with one hell of a mea culpa. Her new track from the upcoming MDNA album, "I F****D Up," begins with everyone's sorriest excuse and continues with more self-pitying words made strangely catchy by the song's heavy bassline.

"I F****D Up" is the latest track to be released in the steady drip of songs leading to the album's drop date, March 26. They include "I Don't Give A," thought to shed light into her split from ex-husband Guy Ritchie, and "Give Me All Your Luvin," featuring Super Bowl cohorts Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. Madge's 15-year-old daughter Lourdes also takes a turn on the track "Superstar," though she remains uncredited.

MDNA has been hailed as the 53-year-old pop legend's return to music made for the dance floor.

Sarah Palin has dismissed "Game Change" as unimportant, but a top aide says the HBO film about her 2008 vice-presidential bid was "true enough to make me squirm."

Nicolle Wallace, a senior advisor to the campaign, was assigned to work with Palin after she was chosen as John McCain's running mate and later wrote a novel with a mentally-ill character inspired by the former Alaska governor.

"This is a movie about the vast gray area where 99 percent of our politics actually takes place,” Wallace told "This Week" on Sunday. “You’re just feeling your way though a gray area and doing your best and that campaign was one of those instances for me."

Wallace has previously butted heads with Palin and once described her as bitter, cynical and aggressive.

"I believe that if she were on the cusp of becoming the nominee for the Republican party a whole lot of people... would talk about some of her more troubling deficiencies," she told MSNBC in 2010. "Her incredible cynicism, her bitterness, her aggressive attempts to claw anyone that points out an area for her to work on, I think these things will continue to reveal herself and the people that love her will continue to love her, but the people who are not so sure about her will, I think, formulate harder opinions and more clarity about her."

John McCain also spoke out about the movie on Sunday.

"Of course I'm not going to watch it," he said Fox News Sunday. "Why there continues to be such an assault on a fine and decent person, Sarah Palin ... They continue to disparage and attack her person. I admire and respect her, I'm proud of our campaign and I'm humbled by the fact that I was able to give her [the Republican vice-presidential nomination]."

Although rumors persist that Jacobs will leave Louis Vuitton for Christian Dior, the native New Yorker's aesthetic has become critical to the image of the French fashion house. However, Jacobs, who has been the artistic director of Louis Vuitton since 1997, is just one of many to have helmed the house since it was founded in 1854. When the brand's namesake, who was born in 1821 in eastern France, founded Louis Vuitton in the 19th century, it was initially an inventive luggage company that specialized in "packing of fashions." The first trunks were not even the leather Louis Vuitton is known for today, but actually waterproof waxed canvas. Vuitton's son, Georges Vuitton, took over the brand in 1896 and was the one who is responsible for inventing the "LV" monogram. Fast-forward a century and enter Marc Jacobs. The current exhibit, which was celebrated Wednesday night by the designer-of-honor along with Gwyneth Paltrow, Sarah Jessica Parker and more, links the stories of both Marc Jacobs and Louis Vuitton and shows a wide range of Louis Vuitton's history: including pieces from the brands heritage like a trunk from to 1869-1871 that pre-dates the signature monogramed leather and more contemporary pieces like Takashi Murakami's cherry monogram canvas bag from 2005 and more.

The South Africa native, who most recently thrilled us by attending the Oscars with her husband Prince Albert, opened the "Grace Kelly: Style Icon" exhibit in Victoria, marking her first trip to Australia as a royal. The special exhibit showcases one hundred of Kelly's most famous costumes and dresses from designers like Dior, Balenciaga, Givenchy and Yves St. Laurent. "Her beautiful style was a reflection of her natural elegance, taste and character," Charlene told the crowd. "Her style is so gracefully unique it remains an inspiration to all across generations and cultures." And since we've long waxed ambivalent about Charlene's sartorial tastes (she favors tan and black instead of color), we were totally stoked to see her dressed to the nines for the opening. Are those... sparkles? Yes! They're sparkly, and they're actually Swarovski crystals: Costume designer Johanna Johnson spent hours with the princess to custom design the spangled pink frock, which Charlene paired with blinged-out strappy heels. We're also loving Charlene's casual hairstyle, especially because this is the first time we can recall seeing her with her hair down, which really highlights her bangs and her smoky eye makeup. Charlene married Albert II, the only son of Grace Kelly and Prince Rainier III, in July of 2011. "Grace Kelly: Style Icon" will run until June 17, 2012 at the Bendigo art gallery.

When you think of an artist's tools of the trade, what comes to mind? Some paintbrushes, a canvas, a couple tubes of paint. How about... a chainsaw?

It may seem more a tool of destruction than creation, but UK artist Tommy Craggs has grown to become quite skilled with his weapon of choice.

On his website he says, "I see the trees come back to life in my artistic struggle working against the grain, with all of the beauty of the wood showing through."

Environmentalists have nothing to fear: Craggs only uses tress that have fallen naturally or need to be felled for woodland management purposes. He has won numerous awards for his work at carving festivals around the world (yes, they exist). He placed third in Canada's Chetwynd Chainsaw carving championship in 2011 and snagged the top prize at the English Open Chainsaw Competition with his take on "Alice In Wonderland."
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It's Saturday, and we spent all week sifting through reviews and collecting the snarkiest critiques of blunders and missteps in the latest movies and ...

If there was ever anything to make you wish to God (with a capital G) that Molly Ivins were alive and sitting right next to you with a glass of Maker's, providing a running commentary, it is ABC's new series "GCB." I will not be as good at reviewing this fictional Texas scenarios as Ivins was at critiquing things that actually happened in Texas. Have you ever read her take on the Texas legislature? It was a beautiful thing to behold, but I am not there yet. Additional handicaps: 1) I am from the South and grew up visiting relatives in Texas, but I am not a Lone Star native. 2) My taste in television tends toward "The Bachelor" and "Criminal Minds." Consider your source.

Here's what I do know: Generally speaking, it's not terribly effective to give a film or series that you want people to remember a name that is an acronym -- especially an acronym easily confused with CBGB or BCBG. Fortunately, there's an easy way to remember this one -- just remind yourself what the series was going to be called before a lot of people got very upset: "Good Christian Bitches." (For a while, the title was going to be "Good Christian Belles," which would have been no fun at all.)

Billed as a Texas version of "Desperate Housewives," the show is based on the book "Good Christian Bitches" by Kim Gatlin, who also co-wrote the series. The premise is this: Recently widowed former mean girl Amanda Vaughn (Leslie Bibb) is forced to move back to her hometown of Dallas with her two kids to live with her socialite mother, played by Annie Potts. The women Amanda terrorized in high school, who in her absence have grown up to control the Dallas society machine, are less than thrilled by Ms. Vaughn's return, especially since their husbands definitely are thrilled. The GCBs, led by Carlene Cockburn (Broadway veteran Kristin Chenoweth), thus conspire to make Amanda's life hell. A lot of the conspiring and hell-raising happens to take place in church.

As Brooks Barnes noted in the New York Times, "If the first episode is any guide, the series ... will be way, way (way) over the top."

I'd say so. The entire thing begins with a failed Ponzi scheme and oral sex that proves fatal to both parties.

It's understandable that some Christians feel that this show misrepresents them: God here is made an accessory to the GCBs outfits and their antics. Some have argued that naming any show "______ Bitches" is demeaning to women in general. That's probably true, and if so, an acronym hardly fixes the problem. And I suppose it threatens to misrepresent Texas women, specifically, to the larger world.

In Mumbai the rich build helipads atop their houses, the poor beg not just for food but also water. The condominiums of the wealthy tower above the tarp roofs of the poor so that when they turn to the heavens in prayer they see instead the rich at play. Obvious disparity is a defining feature of Mumbai, and the city's survival and relative harmony despite this is what makes it so fascinating to writers.

I don't recall when I slipped from writing about the mainstream to writing only of the margins. But one evening a few years ago I found myself accompanying a young hijra, an Indian transgender, to the home of her guru for a story I was reporting. I was then invited to attend a brothel madam's birthday party in the red light district. Thereafter it seemed only natural that when the brothel workers went on pilgrimage to a shrine high up in the hills outside Mumbai, that they would invite me along.

With every interview, I learnt a little more of the intimate hardships of poverty. Through every shared experience I saw how great a struggle it was for an already marginalized person to survive in a city with eyes only for the prize of power and wealth. For the courage they displayed, everyone I met deserved to have his or her story told. Then in 2005 I was introduced to a girl called Leela who didn't just have a story, but who became part of a story that captivated India.

Leela was 19, and a bar dancer. Every night she danced fully clothed to Bollywood music in a seedy little bar called Night Lovers. The more energetic and calculated her dancing, the more likely it was that her customers, the men who'd come to watch her, would reward her. If they liked what they saw, they flung money at her. On a good night Leela earned the equivalent of $50. Customers also showed their appreciation with gifts of perfume and offers of money for sex.

Leela was one of 75,000 women who danced in bars. And at the time there were 1,500 such bars in Mumbai. Their aesthetic was a curious blend of a 1970s nightclub and a Bollywood set. But even among the crowd, Leela stood out. Most bar dancers were illiterate. Leela read novels. She had a wicked sense of humor. And she knew without a doubt that she deserved better than her customers. Through hundreds of hours of interviews I found that despite the physical hardship and routine degradation at the hands of customers and cops, Leela's life, relative to the alternative of the street or back in the village was under her own control, and, as far as she was concerned, a happy one.

In the summer of 2005, the local government decided to ban dancing in bars. The decision was a bald attempt to capture the middle class vote, and cost thousands of women their livelihood. Innumerable bar owners, waiters, bouncers, even taxi drivers and tailors who'd earned money from the bars also suffered losses.

Leela's life, which I chronicle in my book Beautiful Thing, was now out of her control. Like the Bollywood films to whose music she danced, it was chaos in the extreme. READ MORE

And that's how the new series introduces us to the three new Angels - ex-cat burglar Abby (Rachael Taylor), former dirty cop Kate (Annie Ilonzeh) and disgraced marine Gloria (Nadine Velazquez). Yet, the same can also be said for the three actresses that signed on for this "Charlie's Angels" ABC reboot.

Sadly, there's nothing here that distinguishes this from the original "Charlie's Angles," except that Bosley is now a smooth womanizing computer hacker named Bos (Ramon Rodriguez)

We learn from an opening Charlie voice-over that the Angels are on a mission to rescue Sarah Daniels, a 16-year-old being held captive by the legendary unseen trafficker Baharo. Long story short, thanks to some kung-fu magic -- and the fact that Bosley somehow has access to a 'satellite camera' that can see inside the room (insert groan here) -- the Angels rescue Sarah.

So what do they do? Celebrate, of course! But one Angel is not happy. Gloria is frustrated that they will never track down Baharo himself, but the matter doesn't concern her for long because as she leaves the agency, Gloria is killed by a car bomb!

And now the girls are sad -- very sad. And they say things like, "I never thought my heart could hurt this much" and "We were a family, she was our sister." And now we're sad because it's not over yet.

It all starts with the best of intentions. Mom and Dad, feeling that the family needs to spend more time together, decide that we should take a vacation ... but between the itineraries, the sunburns, and the sing-alongs, the only thing relaxing about a family vacation is when we finally make it home.
To see more awkward vacation pics or be a part of the Embassy Suites Awkward Family Vacation Photo Contest, where submitting one of your embarrassing family shots can win you a $20,000 vacation, click here

Exciting new novels by Mohammed Hanif and Aravind Adiga (two of the hottest stars of South Asian literature), new novels by underrated writers Dana Spiotta and Tom Perrotta, meditations on race and politics by Caryl Phillips and Randall Kennedy, thoughts on the transformation of Beijing and the centrality of Deng Xiaoping, the follies of the unwinnable war on terror, a classic tale of an impostor who didn't know when to stop, a reimagination of the life of Princess Diana, the convergence of the Muslim world toward democratic norms, a bold study of the contemporary "post-romantic" marriage, and prose poems from a beloved modern master--these are just some of the thrilling books awaiting your summer reading pleasure.
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It's kind of like a movie unto itself: two bombshells, one movie franchise. In the beginning of what would become the smash series 'Transformers,' the leading lady was played by the aptly-last-named Megan Fox. After another film and a somewhat offensive historial reference, Fox was replaced by Victoria's Secret angel, Rosie Huntington-Whiteley. 'Dark of the Moon' hits theaters this weekend and we're wondering how Huntington-Whiteley will fare in Fox's shoes.

Upgrade? Downgrade? Below are their stats, from birthdays to boyfriends, to help you decide. We can't blame you for comparing notes--we just want to make it a fair fight.
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Up until about a year ago, the most direct line Kenny Wormald could draw from himself to Kevin Bacon in that famous game of six degrees involved a lifetime of staring at the television screen. Now, the 26-year old Boston native IS Kevin Bacon, for all intents and purposes.
As the star of the new big screen remake of the iconic dance film "Footloose," Wormald is charged with breathing new life into Ren McCormack, a big city bad boy dance savior of Beaumont, Texas, the portrayal of whom launched Bacon to superstardom in 1984. But as daunting as that task may seem, the real pressure came for Wormald, a seasoned dancer with just a few small film credits to his name, in getting the part in the first place.
"I had more pressure on myself for booking the role. Once I booked it, I felt amazing because I put a ton of work into the audition process, and then all of the sudden the weight of, oh yeah, you have to make 'Footloose' now hit me, and I was like 'okay, here we go,'" he remembered in a conversation with The Huffington Post on Thursday.
The trepidation makes sense; throughout the film's protracted pre-production, there were a number of big names attached to star in the film, including this generation's top singing and dancing teenager, Zac Efron. And he'll co-star with "Dancing With The Stars" dancer Julianne Hough, a star in her own right, and girlfriend to megawatt personality, Ryan Seacrest. So, pressures on. But again, the confident Wormald was mainly concerned with his own moves.
"You know, its funny, you can always compare yourselves as dancers and actors and you're like 'oh man I could've done that and then it was all of the sudden boom, it was my opportunity to prove that I could do that. So I was glad that the Ren character had such a buzz, because of those guys, and I think it's really cool it ended up being me," he said. In fact, he thinks his casting has its unique advantages for the film, too.
"As a dancer, I think y'know, I did a lot of the stuff in the film and you didn't have to use choreography, a stunt double, excuse me a dance double, and you know I was totally psyched for the opportunity and I didn't care who was onboard before," Wormald insisted. "It was my movie, and it was my mountain to climb, along with the help of an amazing director in Craig brewer, I think we did a great job at it."

Casey Anthony's mother, Cindy, made a shocking revelation in court today when she said that she, not Casey, had conducted Internet searches for "chloroform" in March 2008.
The bombshell testimony came during day 25 of the trial. Casey Anthony is accused of multiple charges, including capital murder, aggravated child abuse, aggravated manslaughter of a child and misleading law enforcement for the death of her daughter, two-year-old Caylee.
The prosecution is seeking the death penalty.
Called to the stand on behalf of the defense, Cindy Anthony explained she conducted the computer searches in an attempt to figure out why her Yorkshire terrier was "extremely tired all the time." The dog was known to eat bamboo plants, so Cindy Anthony said she started out searching for chlorophyll, a green pigment that is found in most plants.
The search for chlorophyll led to a search for “chloroform” because some species of algae produce a natural form of chloroform, Anthony said.
Anthony also told defense attorney Jose Baez that she conducted searches for "chest injuries" and "head injuries" around that same time because a friend of hers had been in a car accident.
"[I was] looking up specific terminology that someone had asked me to look up," Anthony testified