Blog Posts by Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

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 Smith

(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 was convicted of killing New Jersey state trooper Werner Foerster and sentenced to life in prison in 1977. She managed to escape in 1979 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 Foerster in the head. You can read the FBI's account of what happened here.

1977: Shakur was found guilty of first degree murder, assault and battery of a

Not long ago, Hawaiian Tropic was known fortwo 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 contests

They both sometimes wear black. (Getty Images) She's 23. He's 37. She's 5 foot 1. He's 6 foot 6. The first time they met at a party she said "You're huge." And he said "You're tiny." And so began the greatest love story of our time. No joke. Hayden Panettiere, "Nashville" star and Lifetime movie regular is very possibly engaged to Wladimir Klitschko, the Ukrainian professional heavyweight champion whose bloody head was once silk-screened onto an opponent's t-shirt. I probably wouldn't have set the two up on a blind date, but what do I know.
"We've been friends for five years - we've never not been close," Hayden says in latest issue of Glamour. These two crazy kids have been off-and-on for a couple of years, and now they're maybe going to marry and have kids and take more beach vacations like the one they've been tweeting about this week. So it works. Maybe it's because opposites attract (according a famous cat) or maybe it's because they really have more in common than we realize. For example: They both were human kids once.

You said it! (Getty Images)If you took a little nap last Friday and your alarm just went off now, you've got a lot of catching up to do. For starters, two women were appointed to top governmental security positions, guilt trips got a bad rap, and cats were all up in our faces. Also we learned little from the Supreme Court, and a lot about hard boiling eggs. (We've been totally doing it wrong!) It was a week where we really needed a good laugh and guess who brought it? Commenters. Forget the headlines, here are all the best reactions, courtesy of the Yahoo! Shine peanut gallery. On the female undercover CIA boss who's been secretly protecting our country, Clint wrote: "Fantastic. But can she catch Jason Bourne?" On processing the fact that Jesse James just had his fourth- that's right fourth-wedding, sebastian56 wrote: "Serial Husband. Send a gift of antibiotics." On the news that guilt trips could have damaging effects on kids, Nobuddy said: "Guilt trips were the only holidays my parents could afford." On

So you want to make a playlist for your Valentine. Make sure you do your research: some songs with the sweetest titles are truth bombs on closer listening. From the controversial to the just plain wrong, here are 10 romantic hits that will totally kill the mood. --Piper Weiss, Shine Staff

Sean needs more sunblock. St. Croix has great shopping. The show's resident "crazy" got the boot. And now hometown dates are so close you can almost taste them. Big things happened on Monday night's episode. In the meantime, here are some of the little things you might have missed.

--Piper Weiss, Shine Staff