Blog Posts by Lylah M. Alphonse, Senior Editor, Yahoo! Shine

The Crawley sisters, just before Edith's wedding. The early 20th century was not known for being fabulous for women. We couldn't vote, we didn't have many rights, and in England, where "Downton Abbey" is set, we couldn't even own property (though we were considered to be property ourselves). And still, Sunday's episode (you can read our recap here) had several great "girl-power" moments.

1. The Dowager Countess telling Edith to walk away. As Sir Antony Stallan stammered "I can't" at the altar and the local pastor seemed about to go on with the wedding, the matriarch of the family -- the one most-bound by tradition -- got up and told her Edith to walk away from the man who didn't want to marry her. "It's over, my dear. Don't drag it out," she murmured to the crushed bride. "Wish him well and let him go." It was a powerful moment, when a woman whose entire life was defined by her marriage urged her granddaughter not to be ruined by hers.

2. Lady Cora comforting Edith. Instead of feeding her distraught daughter some insipid line about

That dress! It's more beautiful than Mary's! Edith will have to pay for that somehow... When we last saw Lady Edith Crawley, at the end of the premiere of Season 3, she was happily planning to marry her much-older suitor, Sir Antony Strallan, in spite of the the massive age difference and his old war injury. Sunday's episode opened with her looking radiantly happy, possibly for the first time in her life, as her family and the staff got Downton Abbey ready for her wedding, just a month after her sister Mary's. But then? OMG. Here are 10 things we loved about the last episode.

Related: The Real Downton Abbey? Highclere Castle

1. Edith's wedding dress. Costume designer Caroline McColl says that the real inspiration for Edith's Grecian-style satin wedding gown was an original silk train that she borrowed from a friend. "We brought through the embroider from the train and put it on the shoulder and the hips,"she told Entertainment Weekly. "It was like a draped silk dress. It's very simple and elegant." (That gorgeous tiara was the same one that Mary wore in her wedding in

Is fast food giving your kids asthma? (Photo: Thinkstock)We've all heard plenty of warnings about the dangers of fast food and how it's at least partly to blame for our childhood obesity epidemic. But a new international study shows that kids who eat fast food three or more times per week are at risk for more than just a little extra weight: Those chicken nuggets and cheeseburgers have now been linked to higher rates of asthma and eczema in kids.

Related: The Five Worst "Healthy" Fast Food Meals for Kids

The study, published Monday in the medical journal Thorax, used data from more than 319,000 13- and 14-year-olds in 51 countries, along with 181,000 6- to 7-year-olds from 31 countries. All of the participants were also involved in the International Study of Asthma and Allergies in Childhood, a collaborative research project made up of nearly 2 million children from 100 countries.

WATCH: Human Guinea Pigs Paid Thousands to Eat Fast Food Every Day

The participants' parents were asked about whether their kids experienced wheezing, rough or

Beyonce at the BET Awards, July 2012. (Photo: Christopher Polk/Getty Images For BET)Now that the hoopla over her underboob photo shoot has died down a tiny bit, GQ reveals a few fascinating quirks about Beyonce.

Related: Designer Says Beyonce is the Only Star to Dry Clean Borrowed Clothes, Write Thank You Notes

1. She has an archive of everything she's ever done. And we mean everything -- publicity photos from the Destiny's Child era, raw interview footage, recordings of all of her concerts, even personal diary entries recorded on her laptop -- all kept in a temperature-controlled digital-storage facility down the hall from her office. And if you're talking to her, you're agreeing to have that conversation recorded for posterity as well.

Related: Beyonce's 10 Best Looks

2. She's her own stalker. Her personal library -- which she rightly calls her "crazy archive" -- holds much more than music videos and paparazzi snapshots. "Beyoncé's inner sanctum also contains thousands of hours of private footage, compiled by a 'visual director' Beyoncé employs who has shot

Earlier this week on Twitter, fake-kid Honest Toddler mused about how the Berenstain Bears managed to get so big.

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As Honest Toddler's followers retweeted the ideas, the Berenstain Bears took a break from tweeting things like "Yay! :D" and "Bear-y good! :D" to defend themselves:

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Who knew they had internet access in that tree?

Honest Toddler replied as only an honest -- and possibly sociopathic -- kid could: By throwing a friend under the bus.
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And then things really started heating up.

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We know that plenty of people love that kindhearted bear family, but there was always something about them that made us a tiny bit uneasy. Who names their firstborn son "Brother?" Why is the girl "Sister" but the youngest cub "Honey" instead of "Baby"? Who hollowed out that enormous tree? And where do they get all of their stuff?

Honest Toddler has an idea:

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The U.S. is experiencing one of the worst flu seasons ever. Have you had the flu? (Photo: Thinkstock)The flu has created a public health emergency in Boston, with 700 confirmed cases reported in the city since October 1, 2012 and 18 deaths in Massachusetts so far. Compare that to the 70 cases reported all of last season, and it's easy to see why people are starting to panic.

Related: Do You Have A Cold, or the Flu?

There hasn't been this bad of an outbreak in Boston since 2009, which was the height of the H1N1/Swine Flu epidemic, Boston Public Health Commission executive director Dr. Barbara Ferrer told WBUR.

Related: Flu Shot Myths, Busted

"For us, there is a lot of urgency to this," Ferrer said. "We'd like there to be no more deaths. And one way to prevent further deaths from flu is to make sure that we do a better job getting the word out that people need to be vaccinated."

Massachusetts isn't the only state affected by the outbreak. "Reports of influenza-like-illness are nearing what have been peak levels during moderately severe seasons," Dr. Joe Bresee, chief of the

Is your diet soda making you depressed? (Photo: Thinkstock)We know that sugary sodas aren't good for our bodies; now it turns out that they may not be good for our minds, either. A new study of more than 260,000 people has found a link between sweetened soft-drinks and depression -- and diet sodas may be making matters worse.

Related: Diet Soda May Be Making You Fat

Americans drink far more soda than people in other countries -- as much as 170 liters per person per year (no wonder New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg banned super-sized servings of the stuff). But the impact of this study isn't limited to the United States. "Sweetened beverages, coffee and tea are commonly consumed worldwide and have important physical-and may have important mental-health consequences," study author Dr. Honglei Chen, an investigator at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, said in a statement.

Related: Are the Health Risks of Soda Really That Bad?

The study, which was released on Tuesday and will be presented at the American Academy of

Women may be watching their weight, but fewer of them say they're on a diet, a new survey finds. (Photo: Thinkstock)In spite of the fact that getting in shape and losing weight are two of the most-often made (and broken) New Years resolutions out there, a new survey shows that dieting has fallen out of favor among women in the U.S.

Related: In 1912, the Perfect Woman Weighed 171 Pounds

According to data from NPD group, a food-and-beverage market research company, the number of women reporting that they're "on a diet" has declined dramatically in just a generation. "Women are leading the decline in dieting," Harry Balzer, chief food industry analyst and Vice President of NPD, told National Public Radio's blog, The Salt.

Balzer and his team queried 3,800 adults as part of NPD's National Eating Trends food survey, and found that about 23 percent of women reported being on a diet in 2012, down from 34 percent who had reported the same back in 1992.

Related: Which Is Better for Losing Weight, Diet or Exercise?

"Our data suggests that dieters are giving up on diets more quickly than in the past,"