Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

What happens when you enter the search term "Mother" in a stock photography website? You get lots of sunshine, hanging laundry and salad bowls. You also get a month's worth of nightmares. Moms made of plastic, moms wielding weapons, and even worse, moms whose emotions we just can't read. In honor of Mother's Day, we bring you the scariest stock images of our nearest and dearest.

It's intentionally bad and we just don't get the joke.

It's actually really emotionally complex—like "Sophie's Choice" but with Bradley Cooper and ice cream.

It's about butts, and people are into that.

It was made 10 years ago and was only supposed to air internationally (or not).

It's the long-awaited sequel to the DiSaronno commercial (really, they are

Sparks with Safe Haven's Julianne Hough and Josh Duhamel. (Target Presse Agentur Gmbh/Getty Images)Nicholas Sparks knows a shocking amount about "ladyfantasies"—the ones where you move to a small Southern town and Josh Duhamel works at the convenience store. 

He's something of a female telepathic. "The Notebook," "A Walk to Remember," "The Last Song," "Dear John,""Nights in Rodanthe,"—those all came from his brain. If it weren’t for Sparks,we’d still be reading romance novels with Fabio on the cover, and Ryan Gosling would just be that young guy who briefly dated Sandra Bullock. Miley and Liam wouldn’t have met and R. Kelly would never have broken up with his wife (sure).

In his latest novel-turned-movie, "Safe Haven" (out on DVD Tuesday), a thriller about a woman with a dark past and a bright future sucking face with a hunky convenience store manager, played by, yes, Josh Duhamel. How does he know what feels good in the cushion-y parts of our female minds? "I’ve been blessed to have great women in my life," Sparks told Yahoo Shine. “I had a great mom, I married well.”  A little back

We've heard a lot about the work-life balancing act lately, but seeing it is a different story. Twelve years ago, photographer Ali Smith, decided to capture real moms in their daily lives. Not the power-suited mom of '80s movies or the happy homemaker of '50s advertising, but real women with real parenting challenges. One botched book deal, forty moms, and $35,000 in donations later, Smith has self-published, Momma Love, a pictorial homage to the tightrope walk of motherhood.

The original goal, says Smith, was to "present an honest portrayal of it to counter the copious amounts of slanted B.S." She recruited both friends and total strangers to serve as muses. Then, half-way through her project, she saw her savings drained when the company planning to publish her book was shuttered. "The money was one thing," Smith tells Yahoo Shine. "But emotionally it was devastating...I cared about the women and the subject too much to let it drop."

Enter the fundraising site Kickstarter, where

(FBI Handout)This week marked a dubious moment in women's history. On Thursday, the FBI added Assata Shakur, to the list of the country's most wanted terrorists. Shakur, born Joanne Chesimard, became the first female on the list, for incidents that date back forty years. Shakur, now in her 60s, was convicted of killing New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. She managed to escape and has been a fugitive for the past three decades. But Shakur, who is the step-aunt of Tupac Shakur, never disappeared, in fact she might be one of the most well-known fugitives on the FBI's list. Here is a rough timeline of Shakur's case.

1973: Shakur and two fellow passengers were stopped for a broken tail light on the New Jersey Turnpike. After a heated exchange, they exchanged fire with police officers, and allegedly Shakur shot and killed Foerster. You can read the FBI's account of what happened here. You can also read conflicting accounts from witness reports, collected by

photo: Lionsgate

"Every wedding-themed romantic comedy in one movie!"  That's the unofficial tag line for the new star-packed film, "The Big Wedding", out Friday.  They've really packed it in with this one. They've got your quirky parents (Diane Keaton and Robert Deniro) with romantic baggage and a secret that will totally be exposed, a pretty blonde society bride (Amanda Seyfried), a mother-in-law who everyone's afraid of, a guy who falls in love too fast (Topher Grace), a wacky priest (Robin Williams, at your service), and a pregnant, disgruntled Katherine Heigl. It sounds like they've got it covered. Well, almost.

If you're really following the marriage movie recipe, it's not just about the main characters but the side players too. Behold, the six people you meet in wedding movie heaven.

#1: THE WISE OLD MAN WHO CUTS THE B.S. WITH ONE "LIFE IS TOO SHORT" SPEECH

(The Wedding Planner/ Columbia Pictures)

#2: THE FLAMBOYANTLY FOREIGN WEDDING PLANNER WHO HAS ONLY ONE CLIENT
(Father of the Bride/Touchstone)

#3: THE ICE QUEEN WHO MAKES EMOTIONAL, POOR, OR UNDER-DRESSED YOUNG WOMEN

Not long ago, Hawaiian Tropic was known for two things: tanning oil and beauty pageants. Those days are over.

On Tuesday, the brand announced the retirement of their famous bikini contests, first launched in 1983. That means no more oiled up fitness models in neon string bikinis competing for the title of Miss Hawaiian Tropic on beaches across the world.

What you really need to know about sunscreen

The reason? Women. “The bikini contest wasn’t resonating with our target female consumers,” Danielle Duncan, Hawaiian Tropic Brand Manager, tells Yahoo Shine. With women making up 70 percent of the brand's users, that was a problem. The solution, according to Duncan, was to reinvent product offerings "to appeal to today’s Hawaiian Tropic women.”  

That means saying goodbye to yesterday's Hawaiian Tropic women. Known as a slightly raunchier version of Miss Universe, the Tropic pageants rose to popularity in the '90s, but faded from a national spotlight in recent years. Since 2008, the