Living

And correctly defines "feminism"

Even after years of the prying questions and condescending sympathy, it still bothers Jennifer Aniston when people ask her why she’s not a mom.

“I don’t like [the pressure] that people put on me, on women—that you’ve failed yourself as a female because you haven’t procreated,” she told Allure for their January issue. “I don’t think it’s fair. You may not have a child come out of your vagina, but that doesn’t mean you aren’t mothering—dogs, friends, friends’ children.”

The actress, who has gotten critical praise for her role in the upcoming film Cake, explained that she finds the incessant commentary about her maternal status hurtful. “This continually is said about me: that I was so career-driven and focused on myself; that I don’t want to be a mother, and how selfish that is…Even saying it gets me a little tight in my throat.”

Aniston also seemed well-prepared to answer the now-omnipresent questions about feminism–and why it’s such a complicated issue. “Because people overcomplicate it,” she said. “It’s simply believing in equality between men and women. Pretty basic.”

[Allure]

Wife of Bill Cosby addresses sexual assault allegations against him

The wife of Bill Cosby fiercely defended her husband in a statement Monday as outrage continues to mount over accusations that he drugged and raped multiple women throughout his career.

Camille Cosby, who has largely remained silent on the allegations, released a letter that compared the accusations against the actor and comedian to Rolling Stone‘s explosive story of an alleged rape at the University of Virginia. Discrepancies that emerged after publication of that story cast doubt on the accuracy of the piece.

“The story was devastating, but ultimately appears to be proved to be untrue,” she writes in the comparison. “None of us will ever want to be in the position of attacking a victim,” she adds. “But the question should be asked — who is the victim?”

The entertainer has faced accusations of sexual assault from more than a dozen women and has largely declined to address the claims. In a recent interview with the New York Post, he praised his wife and admitted that his public relations representatives “don’t want me talking to the media.”

Far more than believe in climate change

More Americans believe the Christmas story is historically accurate than believe in climate change.

According to a new Pew Survey of over 1,500 U.S. adults, 73% say they believe Jesus was born to a virgin, and 74% say they believe Jesus’s birth was announced to the shepherds by an angel (among Protestant respondents, that rate is 91% and 90%, respectively). 78% of women say they believe in the virgin birth, 65% of the respondents said they believe all elements of the Christmas story are factually true.

These findings are remarkably consistent with last year’s Pew study which also found that 73% of respondents believe Jesus was born to a virgin. And a 2007 Gallup poll found that 31% of Americans thought that the Bible was “the actual word of God, to be taken literally.”

In this year’s survey, 44% of Americans say they thought Christian symbols should be allowed on government property, even if other religious symbols arent.

By contrast, a Pew study of from January found that only 61% of Americans think that climate change is happening, and only 40% believe it’s caused by human behavior. Which means that almost twice as many Americans believe in the virgin birth as believe in human-induced global warming.

Includes the complete guide to the golden weapon: free in-flight wi-fi

This article originally appeared on Map Happy.

While the holidays are about nice, happy things like spending time with family, it’s really every person for him or herself at the airport. Better get your battle helmet on.

This is the time of the year that I usually show up at the airport and realize everyone, their mother and their mother’s mother is trying to snake their way through the security line. Frankly, if beating the system was easy, this blog wouldn’t exist. In the meantime, what we can do is cover a few of the key highlights that you might encounter when you go into the wild.

God bless. Now I must prepare to go do battle.

Get dropped off at arrivals. Then make your way up to the departure area instead of having to fight through a sea of cars just to drop someone off and then kiss them goodbye.

Get to the airport early. Typically, I abide by the be-at-the-airport-one-hour-before-boarding-time rule (notice I didn’t say departure). I have a couple of things in my favor—like being a PreCheck member for instance—but I find it’s a nice balance between waiting around forrreever and having some nice cushion time before your flight so you’re not stressing. This no longer applies during peak holiday season.

I would instantly add a minimum of thirty to forty-five minutes to this cushion time. Shoot for one hour if you’re doing heavy travel during the worst days possible for Thanksgiving, say like the Wednesday before the feasting and the following Sunday before work. That’s about two hours before boarding time but you’ll thank me when you see the security line.

Skip the check-in to save time. At this point, if you’re avoiding online check-in, you must be living in the Stone Ages. To save even more time, just stick to the personal item and carry-on bag. Pie not included.

It’s time to use every exception you possibly can. If you’re traveling with kids, ask security staff if there’s a special dedicated line for them. Same goes for seniors and handicapped.

Pack correctly. Do everyone a favor and put your liquids and electronics in an easily accessible, front-facing slot so you don’t have to spend 900 minutes opening up your bag and making the people behind you wait.

Be courteous. The most annoying thing you can do is to start putting your shoes right at the x-ray belt as other items are trying to move past you. The smarter thing is to pick up your belongings, move to the very end of the belt or to a nearby bench and then repack your belongings.

Fighting for overhead bin space. This is why it’s key to pack light, light, light. Many people take this as an opportunistic time to shove their way to the front of their boarding group so they get first dibs, which is actually not very nice.

In fact, this is a good opportunity to gate-check your bag for free if you so desperately originally wanted to check in your bag. Most gate agents will probably be happy to take it off your hands if it’s a packed plane.

Pack your food. Flights are long and food is expensive and free peanuts have been annihilated by a comet, making them an extinct species. Shoot for mess-free, nourishing foods that keep free at room temperature. I always try to make some time to swing by a local convenience store before I get on the plane if I don’t have time to prepare for it by then.

Do you need Wi-Fi? I just wrote a complete guide on how to hack it here.

Freshen up on the plane. Bring the appropriate accessories and it can make the difference between feeling like a million bucks or being ready to strangle a cat by the time you get out of the airplane cabin.

In case all else fails, I also wrote about this last year with detailed tips for different stages of the process. You can never be overprepared for Fight Club.

Read more from Map Happy:

• The Guide to Carrying on Holiday Foods and Goodies
• The Complete Guide To Hacking In-Flight Wi-Fi
• This Is Exactly How Much In-Flight Wi-Fi Will Cost You

Katy Steinmetz is a TIME correspondent based in San Francisco.

With a federal LGBT non-discrimination bill in the pipeline, it's a good time to think about the words we use

Last week, Sen. Jeff Merkley announced that he will be introducing a comprehensive LGBT non-discrimination bill in the spring, which means, among other things, that a lot of lawmakers and media outlets are going to be making decisions about how they talk about LGBT people.

Reporting for TIME on transgender issues (particularly for what became the cover story “The Transgender Tipping Point”), there was one maxim that pretty much every person I interviewed seemed to agree on: there is no single story about being transgender that sums it all up, much like there’s no one story about being Hispanic or blonde or short or straight that sums that experience up. But I also came to learn that there are some good rules of thumb to follow when it comes to language.

For instance, if you meet a trans person—someone who identifies with a gender other than the sex they were assigned at birth—it’s generally a good idea to ask which pronouns (he or she, him or her) they prefer and to use whatever that is. If you meet a trans person, you should not ask about the particulars of their body, much as you would likely prefer strangers not to inquire about yours. And if you meet a transgender person, you should not refer to them as “a transgender” or “transgendered.”

Referring to someone as “a transgender” can sound about as odd as saying, “Look, a gay!” It turns a descriptive adjective into a defining noun and can make the subject sound distant and foreign, like they’re something else first and a person second. This guidance is part of GLAAD’s media reference guide, under the heading “Terms to Avoid”: “Do not say, ‘Tony is a transgender,’ or ‘The parade included many transgenders.’ Instead say, ‘Tony is a transgender man,’ or ‘The parade included many transgender people.’” These key language nuances haven’t been consistently adopted by the media. For example, on Dec. 15, the Associated Press listed this story in among their “10 Things to Know For Today:”

4. PHILIPPINE AUTHORITIES CHARGE US MARINE WITH MURDER

Prosecutor says the 19-year-old American is accused of killing a transgender in a hotel room. (The story has since been updated to say a “transgender woman.”)

This is something TIME has done in the past, too.

Of course it’s hard to find a word in identity politics that goes undebated, that is universally panned or lauded as just right. Julia Serano, author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity, says that older transgender people might prefer and use transgendered when speaking about themselves; in the 90s she recalls that term being de rigueur among trans activists.

But the language people use to refer to themselves, particularly minority groups, changes. Today some people prefer the abbreviated trans or trans*, and transgendered has largely fallen out of favor (though some media outlets are still using it). When I recently asked San Francisco-based attorney Christina DiEdoardo, a transgender woman, how many out of 10 trans people she knows would say they dislike the word transgendered, she quickly answered: “11.”

“The consensus now seems to be that transgender is better stylistically and grammatically,” DiEdoardo says. “In the same sense, I’m an Italian-American, not an Italianed-American.” The most common objection to the word, says Serano, is that the “ed” makes it sound like “something has been done to us,” as if they weren’t the same person all along. DiEdoardo illustrates this point, hilariously, with a faux voiceover: “One day John Jones was leading a normal, middle-class American life when suddenly he was zapped with a transgender ray!”

Moving away from the “ed”—which sounds like a past-tense, completed verb that marks a distinct time before and a time after— helps move away from some common misconceptions about what it means to be transgender.

One is that being transgender might be a choice that involves a person simply deciding to be that way or a result of something that happened to them, like sexual abuse. The majority of trans people I’ve spoken to have said they knew they had feelings of identifying as a boy (when assigned female) or girl (when assigned male) as far back as they can remember—even if they didn’t have the vocabulary or understanding to articulate what was going on—and even if they tried to change or stifle those feelings for half their lives. Imagine how it would sound if one described people as “gayed” or “femaled,” as if there was a point when that wasn’t the case.

Another misconception is that the defining part of being transgender is having surgery, as if a trans person isn’t really trans until they’ve gone under the knife and come out the other side fully “transgendered.”

“There’s a tendency in American culture for entertainment and news outlets to focus on surgery, surgery, surgery,” Mara Keisling, executive director of the National Center for Transgender Equality, told TIME in a previous interview. But, she says, while surgery is very important for some trans people, others have no desire to have surgery; they might not have surgery for medical reasons, religious beliefs, financial constraints and so on. There’s an “authenticity issue that trans people face,” says Elizabeth Reis, a professor of women’s and gender studies at the University of Oregon. “People are so focused on whether or not they’ve had surgery, as if that’s the pinnacle of authenticity. Even if they haven’t had it or if they haven’t had it yet or they’re never planning on having it, they still have these feelings about their gender.” Avoiding the ed isn’t going to solve that authenticity issue, but it doesn’t hurt.

However, Keisling also says that focusing on whether the “ed” is tacked on the end of transgender can be a distraction. She believes it’s more important for everyone to be having a conversation about LGBT civil rights issues than to wag fingers at people over terminology. “I don’t ever want to say that communities or cultures can’t have language variations,” she says. “Language is very important and what people want to be called is very important. But we have to have a common language that we can bring people into. We have to have language that they can grasp.” And, she says, just as transgendered has become unpalatable, there’s no telling what will be preferred down the line.

Still, “for now,” Keisling says, “I would use the word transgender. Particularly if you are outside of the family, that’s going to be okay.” (If you have more questions about terminology, the GLAAD media guide is a great place to start.)

Katy Steinmetz is a TIME correspondent based in San Francisco. In addition to writing features for TIME and TIME.com, she pens a feature on language called Wednesday Words and organizes the occasional spelling bee. Her beat is wide but it thumps hardest in the Northwest.

A French study finds that some really do like it hot

Men with higher levels of testosterone—the hormone often associated with risk-taking behavior and heightened sex drive in men—tend to love spicy food, according to a French study published in the journal Physiology and Behavior.

In the study, titled “Some Like it Hot” and conducted by researchers from the University of Grenoble-Alpes in France, 114 men ages 18 to 44 sat down to a meal of mashed potatoes with spicy pepper sauce and salt. Researchers saw a clear correlation between higher hot sauce usage and higher levels of testosterone levels found in the saliva of the men. In other words, men with greater testosterone levels tended to douse their food with more hot sauce.

How much capsaicin—the chili pepper compound that makes them spicy—a man likes has been linked to social dominance, aggression and “daring behaviors,” the study authors write. “Conversely, low testosterone levels have been associated with lethargy or depressive mood.”

Though the hot sauce correlation was clear, the mechanism behind it is still unknown. “A wide range of factors, including genetic, physiological, psychological and social forces, influence the liking and consumption of capsaicin-containing food,” the study authors write.

"There are bigger things going on in other countries"

Tying down George Clooney "was really one of the greatest achievements in human history," Walters said

Amal Clooney, the human rights lawyer who married George Clooney earlier this year, was tapped as Barbara Walter’s most fascinating person of the year.

Although the former Ms Alamuddin’s career successes are bountiful—clients have included Julian Assange and Kofi Annan, and she has worked extensively on human rights in the Middle East—Walters said it was her wedding that could be considered her crowning achievement.

“You could say hers was the wedding of the year, but let’s put it into perspective,” Walters said. Getting Clooney to the altar “was really one of the greatest achievements in human history.”

After all, in 1995 the actor did tell Walters that he would never get married again.

With the marriage, Walters ranked the new Mrs. Clooney among Jackie Onassis and Princess Di. When it come Clooney’s fellow “most fascinating” people, she joins the likes of Mother Teresa and J.K. Rowling.

[ABC]

Prince William and Kate released the images to thank media for honoring their request for privacy

Happy holidays, Prince George fans! Prince William and Princess Kate are offering their season’s greetings with three new photos of their rosy-cheeked son.

The pictures offer a glimpse at three new faces of the little royal.

There’s the knowing smirk, as if he’s about to set off on a new mission; there’s the inquisitive sideways glance, perhaps at one of his parents standing behind the photographer; and there’s the cheeky grin.

The shots were taken in late November by Ed Lane Fox, Prince Harry’s private secretary, and show George, who will be 17 months old on Dec. 22, seated on some stone steps in a courtyard at London’s Kensington Palace.

George watchers will notice his longer, thicker hair is neatly combed and parted from the right, and that he’s still blond like his dad.

The toddler is wearing a navy vest decorated with soldiers over a white, long-sleeve top, and shorts with knee-high socks and navy leather Start-Rite buckle shoes.

RELATED: PHOTOS: Kate and William’s East Coast Adventures

His parents acknowledge that there haven’t been any new, sanctioned images of the future king since his first birthday in July, and “are well aware of the interest in him and are keen to share some special moment in his life,” a palace source tells PEOPLE.

The royal couple saw Christmas and the end of the year as the perfect time to update people on the prince’s progress with the new shots.

Next up for George, after the annual pre-holidays bash at Buckingham Palace, is the Christmas holidays. He and his parents are expected to head to the Sandringham estate where they’ll stay in their newly renovated 10-bedroom country home, Anmer Hall, and visit great-granny Queen Elizabeth’s Sandringham House for some of the main festivities.

This article originally appeared on People.com