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

The charities on the royal couple's wedding registry shed light on their lifestyle, but they also offer clues to their past. Among the 26 charities to which guests can choose to donate is BeatBullying.org-and its inclusion on the list seems to be a de-facto admission that Kate Middleton was, indeed, bullied as a child.



When the princess-to-be was just 13, she attended Downe House, a posh private school in Cold Ash, Thatcham. But her parents pulled her out in the middle of the school year and enrolled her at Marlborough College in April 1996.

"She hated it, absolutely hated it," her former Marlborough classmate Jessica Hay said of Kate's time at Downe House. "The girls were horrible. She was picked on because she was perfect."

Hay shared a dormitory with Middleton at Marlborough, and said that she and Kate would share late-night heart-to-heart chats, during which Kate confided about her experience at Downe House.

"She said that there was a group of girls that called her names and

Read More »from Kate Middleton was bullied as a child? Includes anti-bullying charity on her wedding registry

"When it comes to sexual abuse, it's quite simple: No means no," Vice President Joseph Biden said as he launched a new initiative to prevent sexual violence at schools and on college campuses during a speech at the University of New Hampshire earlier today.

"No means no if you're drunk or you're sober; no means no if you're in bed in a dorm or on a street," he continued. "And it's a crime to disregard no. The allocation of blame has been for too many centuries allocated in a way that's totally irrelevant and inappropriate."

Urging the men in the audience to "speak up," Biden added: "So much more needs to be done to empower younger women as well as empower and educate younger men."

Studies show that about 20 percent of women and 6 percent of men are assaulted while they're in college-and, realistically, the number of victims is probably much higher. Incidents of sexual harassment and sexual violence are vastly under-reported and, according to the U.S. Department of Education and the

Read More »from Sexual violence on college campuses: Vice President Biden weighs in

From left: Shine senior editor Lylah M. Alphonse, White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, and Office of Management and Budget senior project adviser Preeta Bansal discuss the Ten days ago, we asked you to send us your questions about women and workplace issues. Yesterday, we took your questions to Washington, D.C., where Shine senior editor Lylah M. Alphonse sat down with two Obama administration officials to talk about the wage gap, parental leave policies, flex time, work-life balance, and information from "Women in America: Indicators of Social and Economic Well-Being," which was released earlier this month-the first comprehensive federal report about women since 1963.

Our interview with White House senior adviser Valerie Jarrett, the chair of the White House Council on Women and Girls, and Preeta Bansal, General Counsel and Senior Policy Adviser at the Office of Management and Budget in the Executive Office of the President, was livestreamed at whitehouse.gov and on the White House's Facebook page last night, but if you missed it, you can watch the video right here!

There was plenty of political back-and-forth when we asked you for your questions on

Read More »from Wage gap? Parental leave? Workplace issues? You asked... here are some of the Obama Administration's answers (video)

We know that rainbow-colored candies and neon-bright drinks have enough sugar to make kids act crazy. But what if all that food dye is the real culprit? Could M&Ms really be like crack for kids?

The Food and Drug Administration has long said that artificial food colorings like Yellow No. 5 and Red No. 40 are perfectly safe. Nevertheless, today a FDA panel began re-examining the food dyes and behavioral changes in children. (Also on the docket: talking about whether food label should be changed, and whether more studies are needed.)

The possibility of a link between all those fake, bright colors and hyperactivity in children has been in question since the 1970s, when California pediatrician Dr. Ben Feingold developed a highly restrictive diet that was supposed to control hyperactive symptoms in children.

More recently, a 2007 study by the U.K.'s Food Standards Agency found that kids who were given fruit drinks with artificial coloring in them were more hyperactive than kids who drank

Read More »from Food dyes and hyperactivity: Are M&Ms really like crack for kids?

Del Monte's newest snack offering: Single bananas, wrapped in plastic. (Photo/freshdelmonte.com)Calling it "perfect for the convenience market," food manufacturing giant Fresh Del Monte has debuted its latest healthy snack: A single banana. Wrapped in plastic.

Yes, it's still in the peel.

No, it's not an April Fool's Day joke.

Already-peeled grapefruit? Sure. Pre-cut apple slices in a sealed plastic bag? We understand, sort of. Baby carrots that are actually full-size carrots ground down into nubs? Fine, they save us the toil of peeling and chopping, we guess, so we'll look the other way about the waste.

But a plastic-wrapped banana? Nature has already divided bananas into single-serve portions-and they already come in a protective wrapper that's easy to remove. As Jon Stewart pointed out on "The Daily Show": "What function does the bag serve that the peel does not currently serve?"

(Our guess: It's a place to put logos and graphics? And a bigger price tag.)

Though the brightly-colored bags aren't sturdy enough to protect the bananas from bruises and will probably end up in

Read More »from A single banana wrapped in plastic: Food that makes us sad

If we could hand out prizes to each and every one of you who submitted posts for the Shine Essay Contest in honor of women's history month, we certainly would. Nearly 100 Shine readers took the time to introduce us to the inspiring women in their lives, and the stories are just wonderful. You're inspired by your mothers and grandmothers, of course, but also by your children, your sisters, your teachers, your friends, and yourselves. And we're inspired by you!

Here are the 10 finalists, in alphabetical order by the author's names on Shine. Click the links and read their stories, then come back here to vote for your favorite in the poll below. We'll announce the winner of the fashion and beauty goodies on Friday, April 1, 2011. (See the Official Rules for complete details.)

Ready? Get your tissues, and start reading:

1. Cara Concannon is inspired by her biological and adoptive mothers: "I was born in 1985 to a mother who was only 15 years old. She was strong, smart, funny, and loved

Read More »from Shine Essay Contest: The 10 finalists. Help us pick the winner!

When Lady Diana Spencer married Prince Charles in 1981, she promised to love and cherish her new husband-but not to obey him.

At the time, it was usual for brides and grooms to recite vows from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer, which calls for men to promise "to love and to cherish, till death us do part," while women are asked to pledge "to love, cherish, and to obey." Prince Charles' mother, Queen Elizabeth, recited the traditional vows during her marriage to Prince Philip in 1947; his sister, Princess Anne, did as well when she married Mark Phillips in 1973.

But Prince Charles and Lady Diana chose to break from tradition after the then-Archbishop of Canterbury, Robert Runcie, half-joked that "It's a bad thing to start your marriage off with a downright lie." Instead, they read from the 1928 Series I Alternative Marriage Rite of the Church of England, in which the vows are more egalitarian, and don't include the word "obey." The trend didn't last-In 1986 Sarah Ferguson opted to obey

Read More »from Will Kate Middleton vow to 'obey' her prince?

According to a prominent scientist, women could soon have another option when it comes to beating infertility: womb transplants.

Mats Brannstrom of the University of Gothenburg in Sweden has spent more than 10 years working on making such a transplant possible. In a study published last month in the Journal of Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research, Brannstrom wrote: "Uterus transplantation has been proven to be a feasible procedure in different experimentation animal models with proof of concept concerning surgery, control of rejection and fertility." Translation: His team has been able to implant donated wombs in mice, rats, sheep, and pigs, and hope that the process can be used to help women who suffer from permanent infertility.

The Daily Mail reports that a British team from Hammersmith Hospital in London has also been working on uterus transplants and have successfully done them in rabbits. The only womb transplant attempted on a human took place in Saudi Arabia in 2000; the

Read More »from Womb transplants may be the latest in infertility treatments