Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

Remember when you went to a concert and someone famous sang to you? That doesn't happen much anymore, at least if your seeing a female pop star perform. Yesterday, singer Pink was rushed to the hospital when she fell from her harness during a concert in Germany. The artist was performing a song in mid-air when she dropped 8 feet, landing on a steel barricade. Escaping major injuries, the artist tweeted that the fall was a result of not getting clipped into the harness properly. Sure but why were you flying in the first place?

Maybe it's because she's female. "Like everything else, there's a double standard with female artists. How they look is going to matter more than men. It's pored over in magazines and on TV and drives their career," says Caryn Ganz, deputy editor of RollingStone.com. "That translates to their live performances," she explains. Whether it's to flaunt their body or test their strength, female pop stars are expected to visually blow people's minds. For most

On a recent episode of "The Real Housewives of New Jersey", Teresa Giudice revealed that she cleans her own house. That would seem unexceptional, until you see her house. All 12,000 square feet of it. The Jersey mother of four (Gia, 9, Gabriella, 5, Milania, 4, and Audriana, 10 months), opens the doors of her palatial six bedroom, six bathroom mansion, in the new issue of In Touch.

"My house is very warm - even though it's big, it's very inviting and that's what I love," says Giudice, now in her second season of hit Bravo reality show, airing Monday nights. "We designed our house knowing we wanted to use every room."

One room in particular took a starring role. The great room, designed with a built-in plasma screen over the fire-place, was the site of their 200-person house-warming party-- not to mention on-camera drama.

But with the camera's off, Giudice, author of the "Skinny Italian" cookbook, spends most of her time in the earth-toned kitchen.

"That's where I live," says

That's totally normal that you're posing shirtless with your face cut off.

This week one mom launched the dating site, Date My Single Kid, to pawn off her own very adorable 31 year-old son, Colby. Balk if you must (actually, don't--that's a terrible sound) but Colby's mom may be on to something. Just as some grown men need a little help from mom with fashion, they also need a woman's touch when it comes to self-promotion.

In the name of science (okay under the name 'Science'), I scrolled through hundreds of male profiles on online dating sites like Nerve, Match and OKCupid to find the 10 most common blunders guys make when profiling themselves. But I know there are more so drop them in the comments section!

1. NOBODY CARES ABOUT YOUR CHEST
I mean we do, but when we're alone in bed with you. At this point, it's more important that we see you're jacked...on the inside. It's also more important that we don't see your chest. Proof that you work out, possibly obsessively, and with the help of injections is something we'd rather find out never.

2. THAT'S GREAT

Scrolling through Mel Gibson's Wikipedia page, we noticed underneath the various allegations of racism, sexism, alcohol abuse etc., was the entry "Prankster." Before he was known for tirades, Mel Gibson was famous for his practical jokes.

During his ten year reign over Hollywood in the 90's and early 2000's, directors and leading ladies, in particular, came to anticipate Gibson's antics. Helen Hunt even claims she "begged" him to spare her on the set of "What Women Want." That's because his "jokes" were not of the Saran-wrapped toilet seat variety. Designed for a scare more than a laugh, his largely female targets rarely seemed to laugh as hard as the movie star himself. In a 1995 interview, Mel explained his penchant for pranks: "A practical joke is based on making people believe the worst, or finding out their greatest fear is and then playing on it."

In an effort to dig up some of his old pranks, we searched archived articles from his heyday. What we found was pretty disturbing.

When Levi Johnston texted Bristol Palin the words " "I miss you. I love you. I want to be with you again", nothing would ever be the same--at least for Sarah Palin.

Since the invention of the text message, significant things have happened. People replaced words like "your" and "for" with "ur" and "4" (props for Levi for spelling out "you"). They also discovered that a simple text can alter the course of their relationship, their career and sometimes, their entire industry.

Today, Bristol Palin and Levi Johnston sent an engagement announcement out to five million of their closest friends and family with a little help from Us Weekly. After one canceled engagement, and a public media war, Sarah Palin's daughter and future son-in-law reunited over custody agreement meetings. Awwww.

While the world wonders how Sarah Palin really feels about the arrangement, we got the opinion of people who matter most: Celebrity Twitterers

In a totally unscientific poll of tweets from random famous people, we discovered that more are in favor of than against the union. Check out the results.

In the YES! I LOVE THESE CRAZY KIDS TOGETHER camp

Comedy Central's Michael Ian Black : "Bristol & Levi" Is my new favorite summer reality show.

Comedienne Sandra Bernhard: levi and bristol married! that is some of the sexiest, best news of the week. talented smart keeping it hush hush, no.

Bravo honcho Andy Cohen: Levi, you've given me no choice but to announce that Bravo will pick

Guess what? Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher are doing the Master Cleanse!

Hello? I said they're doing that juice fast thing, where you only drink water with lemon, cayenne pepper and maple syrup for like 10 days. Don't you have questions or want to talk about it? No? Me neither.

But they do. It's an undocumented phenomenon: when people fast, they really like to rub it in everyone's face.

Here are a few unsolicited twitter updates from the Kutcher-Moores this week: "Starting the Master Cleanse today" and "9 hrs into the master cleanse" and " "2nd day of master cleanse and off to hike with hubby and the dogs."

You'd think they were the first people ever to attempt this feat. They're not. Beyonce did it. So did Eddie Vedder. My best friend does it periodically. A couple of guys I knew in college did it together. I did a variation of it. What I know now, and what Demi and Ashton are about to learn, is that a side effect of the fast is an extreme, cult-like obsession with telling people

In 1996, Starbucks was a coffee shop with open mic nights, Putumayo was a resource for both dresses and mix tapes, Jennifer Love Hewitt and Neve Campbell vied for the title of teen movie crush, and young girls across the country mourned the cancellation of their favorite show, The Jordan Catalano Eyes Kiss Heart-Pounding Sigh show, or "My So-Called Life".

It was the perfect moment to launch Lilith Fair, an all woman music festival designed to prove that a line-up of female singers could compete with Lollapalooza and generate millions. And it did.

After an 11 year hiatus, organizer and singer of sad, sad songs, Sarah McLachlan, has re-launched Lilith Fair in the U.S. this month with an all-star line-up. Many of the original performers are still on the bill, but the fashions--over-sized hats, shapeless dresses, crop tops--have been retired. Or have they?