Hot Takes For A Snow Day: “Idle Hands Spend Money,” Sandra Day O’Connor, Jennifer Senior, & More

+ Do you like shopping online? Lots of people do! As my mom put it to me this weekend, “Idle hands spend money.” The best one can do sometimes is spend wisely. In that vein, Racked was super excited to report — in what they called maybe the best Monday news of all time — that Reformation has just launched a new, more affordable collection called “Obvious.” Considering how hipster-y the clothes are, they seem to have missed a golden opportunity to call it “Obvious Child” but whatevs. If you like backless bodysuits and crop tops, insert money here.

+ Speaking of my mother, she told me a story about the time, back in the ’80s, when she and the other government lawyers who were also young moms went to hear the newly appointed Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor speak. They were so eager to hear her explain how she managed it, how she managed to be a wife, a mother, and one of the most prominent judicial figures in the land.

O’Connor’s answer? Outsourcing.

Hire help, she advised the audience. Hire someone to do everything you don’t have time to do. The women nodded dumbly and left. “As if it had never occurred to us,” said my mom. “As if all we needed was to be more creative in our problem solving. We were government lawyers! O’Connor came from a wealthy family, but most of us didn’t have money to hire help. It was just so tone deaf.”

+ Speaking of women and the sad state of American parental leave / work-family policies, Jennifer Senior is as right about childcare — the politics around it and the brutal necessity of it — as she is about parenthood.

Without government assistance — or nudging — most businesses will never feel the obligation to pay for family leave on their own. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, only 11 percent of private-sector workers got paid family leave in 2012. As Mr. Obama noted this summer, “many women can’t even get a paid day off to give birth.” …

According to a Pew study last April, our inability to provide affordable child care as a nation may help explain our declining rates in women’s participation in the work force.

With more and more families falling out of the middle class, women increasingly need to contribute a paycheck to keep their households solvent. Without affordable childcare options, though, many can’t, or at least many feel like they can’t.

+ Speaking of sad stories and the disappearing middle class, this trucker in Los Angeles who, since the recession, hasn’t been able to make ends meet, is a victim of the our new bullshit “independent contractor” economy. The stress has given him shingles. The LAT rewards him with a Money Makeover! — i.e., twenty dollars worth of free advice. One of the suggestions: his wife, currently at home taking care of their three kids, should get a job.

+ Something cheerful, something cheerful. Oh! The official highest grossing film of 2014 is now Mockingjay Part I.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay part I. As of last night, the third of four Hunger Games films has surpassed the $333.2 million earned by the Marvel superhero film [Guardians of the Galaxy, which btw was co-written by a woman]. This makes 2014 the second film in a row where a Hunger Games film topped the domestic box office. It is also, for what it’s worth, the second year in a row where a female-centric release topped the domestic box office. …

the Jennifer Lawrence vehicle still has the merit badge of being the highest-grossing non-3D/non-IMAX release in nearly nine years and the first such $300m+ grosser in 6.5 years.

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