More Bad News

The Supreme Court voted 5-4 to uphold the late-term abortion ban. This is a terrible sign of the new Alito-Roberts court. It is an awful sign about the future of Roe v. Wade, the 1973 decision that legalized abortion. And it is a grim sign for women, our health, and the future of our right to make those decisions.

Justice Ginsburg, according to Reuters, called the decision alarming.

She took the rare step of reading parts of her dissent from the bench.

"In candor, the Partial Birth Abortion Act and the court's defense of it cannot be understood as anything other than an effort to chip away at a right declared again and again by this court -- and with increasing comprehension of its centrality to women's lives," she said.

Bush may be gone in 2008, but his legacy through these two anti-woman court appointees, will live on, a very long time. For those who voted for Nader in 2000 because they thought there was no difference between Bush and Gore, I give you: the criminalization of abortion.

Brace Yourselves

You know something's up when you turn on the TV at 10 at night and there's Brian Williams, in a raincoat, standing outside on a cold, windy night like he's reporting on a hurricane.

When the adrenaline flows to Nightly News making them all-night news, things are bad.

The death of over 30 students and teachers at Virginia Tech today is horrific. But here's the other awful part: we're going to have to hear about it 24-7 for a long time coming. I for one, do not look forward to that.

Matt Lauer said to Brian Williams in his stand-up that when he went on to campus (surprisingly easy!) students seemed surprised to see him there. They have no idea that this event that took place today, he said, was historic.

Imagine that. After surviving the unimaginable, I only hope the students can withstand the media storm.

This is Your Brain on Fairy Tales

I remember this ad campaign back maybe in the 70s or 80s with little girls saying things like: When I grow up, I want to be a princess.

Then the payoff: Girls who dream like this end up on welfare.

Fast-forward to the so-called opt-out revolution -- women choosing to stay home with their kids instead of climbing the corporate ladder. While the numbers to this "trend" definitely do not pan out (majority of mothers are working, not staying home), there's a new book out detailing just why staying home with the kids is such a bad idea, The Feminine Mistake, by Leslie Bennetts.

While I think someone should be pointing out the economic dangers of leaving one's career behind, since happily ever after is yet another fairy tale wish that doesn't always come true.

But again, agree or disagree with staying home with children, we're still not talking about the majority of Americans. Heck, most moms I know are dealing with economic vulnerability because they're paying for childcare and working. However, even if working pays just for childcare, the payoff is an investment in your career long-term.

Sure, it's not easy working and raising children, but guess what: most people with kids do it and make it work.

Wouldn't the national discussion be better served if we took a long, hard look on why our country's priorities aren't making it easier for working families? Good childcare and flexible working conditions -- that seems to be the real fairy tale here.

Check out Bennetts's post re-posted on Alternet today about her new book, The Feminine Mistake.

Imus Is Out

The shock jock is gone. Caput. Done. The amazing girls of Rutgers sunk the loose lips of radio.

So what's up with that? Well, for one thing, our little old blog-o-sphere wouldn't let the comment die. The 24-hour news cycle sometimes does have an upside.

But the nasty language Don Imus spewed to describe the team that he maybe would have gotten away with, was upended by the press conference with the actual team . They showed up and showed him down.

"No Damn Cat, No Damn Cradle."

When my sister was diagnosed with cancer and our world got turned upside down, we'd sometimes look over at each other and say, "no damn cat, no damn cradle."

Kurt Vonnegut, who died yesterday, had a perfect way of summarizing the absurdity of life.

He rocked my world when I read his books starting at age 13, as my political self was just developing. He had a genius way of speaking that was brilliant and accessible at the same time.

Through the Reagan years, the first Bush (and even compared to his son, he still was really scary) through the latest Iraq war. And through my sister's cancer.

No damn cat, no damn cradle.

Notes from Down There

A friend writes in from Pasadena to let me know that the vaccine against the HPV virus, Gardasil, is now being offered at the college where she teaches.

Which got her thinking: why is it just offered to women?

She has a point. After all, women are not directly spreading HPV -- the virus that causes genital warts and can lead to cervical cancer -- to each other. Men are spreading it. In fact, the only way to get HPV is by having sex. With men.

Gardasil was approved by the FDA for use on women. According to their own stats, HPV is the most common STD in the U.S. with 6.2 million infections per year, and over half of all sexually active men and women become infected at some time in their lives.

Here's what the FDA says about Gardasil's use on men:

Gardasil is not approved for use in males, but the manufacturer currently has a study underway to see if it is safe and effective for them. Once the study is complete and submitted to FDA, the agency will review the data and decide whether to approve Gardasil for males.

As far as I know, most of the drugs I take have ONLY been tested on men. Why the hesitation now not to give men something that's been shown, so far, to be safe for young women? Granted, there are plenty of question marks about the long-term side effects of the drug. But if only girls get vaccinated, only half the problem is being solved.

More on Childbirth

I have been getting schooled by women who know more than me on this subject. Turns out, there are reasons that maybe going au nautral with labor is preferable. And this is all fine and good. Really, who I am to judge on what way you want your babies to come out. Upside down, hands and knees, at the hands of a surgeon.

What I guess I was trying to get at is this: I think we're in an odd place now where we have made such medical advances with birth that women feel they have failed, or not had an optimal birth if it turns out not that way it was planned. From what I hear, very few go that way anyway.

And really, who among us does want a hangover from drugs. Who does want a needle stuck in their spine. Even if it is to kill the pain. Yikes. Who does want surgery with all its complications.

In the end, all these choices come down to what you want, and what must happen. I dunno, maybe they're teaching it wrong. But in the end, ain't it grand when everyone comes out healthy and willing to do it all over again.

Update: Money does really talk. MSNBC announced they're dumping the Imus show simulcast. While the NBC head made it sound like he was shocked, shocked that Don Imus could say such things, I'm sure he was more shocked when major advertisers General Motors, GlaxoSmithKline and Procter & Gamble decided to pull their ad dollars from the show. - April 12, 2007

Radio Show Down

First of all, their hair isn't nappy.

The women of the Rutgers basketball team are anything but "nappy-headed hos," as they
were despicably labeled by radio shock jock Don Imus. From the news conference pics I saw, they all had really sleek, well-groomed dos.

Look, I'm as much for free speech as anyone else. And speech that shows what everyone
knows, that Don Imus is an ass, is fine with me. But what gets me is, he's getting fired at in every direction by people who fall over themselves to get on his show.

And even though the talk-show host with the nasty racial and sex slurs about a bad-ass Rutgers women's basketball team is being publicly chastened, with his mea culpa to the media, money talks. I mean, the guy's radio show has 2 million listeners daily. And he makes these offensive remarks and then has the biggest players in the political scene on his show. It's like he's channeling his inner frat boy with an inner desire to play interviewer.

And the guests play along. Until Mr. Imus goes and does something really dumb.

Not that these classy, angry women ever asked to be thrown into a media maelstrom from a mouthpiece that gets his jollies off by picking on some college athletes who did nothing to deserve his invective but play really well. He says this stuff for radio play. His audience eats it up, advertisers make their money, everyone goes home happy.

But Imus slurred the wrong bunch of women. They're talking back to the talking head. This greasy-headed old white guy is headed for a fall.

Childbirth, Part Deux

Someone in comments asked what I would call unmedicated, vaginal childbirth. How about unfun?

Seriously, I just think that calling one kind of birth natural over all others just doesn't seem right. Do we have "natural" wisdom-tooth removal, "natural" open-heart surgery?

Yes, childbirth without drugs certainly harks back to a certain way-back time when women just dropped children in the fields. But they also died in labor, naturally.

I guess what I'm trying to say is: it's all natural.

Childbirth, Natch

I need to say something about childbirth. Here's what you should know: I have never had a child. But I think we need to change the term for "natural" childbirth.

After all, what exactly is "unnatural childbirth"? Until we have, say, robot-assisted childbirth (and ooh, I cannot wait for that day, sign me up) I'm just going to put it out there that all childbirths are natural. Yes, some may be using drugs, or Ceasar style in a brightly lit hospital with muzak. And others may be on someone's sorry futon at home with a bunch of earth-mothers looking on.

There are many ways for this elemental act to happen. Women may experience insane amounts of pain, take days to deliver and yell till glass breaks. They may schedule a C-section. They may induce labor with drugs. They may do all these things at once. But still, I say to you, it is all
very, very natural.

But like everything else in women's lives, childbirth is something to be judged on.

The ideal in the Bay Area, from hearing my friends and coworkers talk, is an unmedicated, vaginal birth with no complications. In Brazil, the ideal is a scheduled C-section. Isn't labor hard enough without adding on the pressure to have the right sort of delivery? When really the ideal is that the mother doesn't die, which used to happen all the time during, um, natural childbirth.

And really, hats off to all the women who make this miracle of life happen all the time, and then, just days later, get up and walk around as if it's nothing but a thing. Naturally.

I Heart Feminist Art

There are two huge feminist art retrospectives opening on opposite coasts -- and I can't choose what I like about them more: that they are called Feminist Art (I mean, really, when was the last time anyone used that term for something really positive in a mainstream kind of way?) or that vagina art has made a come-back. Alternet has a great write-up of the two shows. I am going to New York this spring and can't wait to see the Judy Chicago Dinner Party. Here's a close-up of some of the vagina-patterned place settings. Gorgeous! I wish I could have registered for those when I got married.

I am always of two minds when I think of shows dedicated to women artists -- marginalized or celebrated? But then I think of all the shows that are all about art by men, and I think I shouldn't be so concerned that one show sets apart artists for their gender. Because it's not just about that. I sure would like to see all museums with a feminist art component. As the Guerrilla Girls said back in the day -- do women have to be naked to get into the Met? But it's a good first step.

Keroack's Term Ended

In the continuing world of Bush double-speak (mission accomplished, clear skies rules, healthy forests legislation, etc.) we got an anti-choice zealot in charge of family planning over at Health and Human Services. Huh? I hate to be a stickler, but abortion is still actually legal. Anyway, in a very brief and unbrilliant career, Dr. Eric Keroack abruptly resigned his post this past weekend.

From the get-go, women's rights organizations, especially Planned Parenthood, protested this appointment relentlessly. And they -- we -- were heard. As Women's eNews reported,

In his federal position, Keroack oversaw $283 million in family planning grants used to provide contraception to low-income women, but his opposition to contraception provoked 107 House Democrats and three Republicans to call for his resignation in December.

It's Passover, Pass the Bread

So, I know the Jews have had it bad for the last 5,000 years. And I know that Passover is a really cool way to remember when the Jews were at the Egyptians' last nerve and so the Pharaoh was like enough, already, so go. And the Jews left, but so quickly they forgot to pack stuff like flour. And I mean, I know that matzoh is just a symbol of crossing the desert without a nice crusty croissant, but I mean, do I have to suffer again, just because they did?

Work with me here.

I guess what I'm saying is, wouldn't it be a better idea to eat more leavened bread the week of Passover, to celebrate that we got it good now?

OK, it was just a suggestion. Happy Passover.

p.s. I didn't forget to post yesterday -- Blogger seems to be having technical difficulties.

Is the New York Times on Glue?

If not, what would possess them to run a front-page story, not at all fact based, featuring a couple of upscale high school students from a Boston suburb trying to get into the most competitive schools in the country? Who admit that being smart is cool, but being hot is still better than being smart. OOOh, stop the presses! Young women feel pressured to look good!

OK, NY Times, when you start bashing Smith, you go too far.

The story centered around a woman, presumably a good student, whose mother attended Smith College, someone who was a role model to the daughter. She was rejected from many of her first-choice schools, but was admitted to Smith, not her first, second or even her third choice. And why not? The article doesn't say. Smith is a top school, and a name brand. What's the problem? The implication is that the same-sex school is not a draw.

While all-women’s colleges are not for everyone, and women of this girl’s mother’s age had less of a choice of schools to attend, it is still a worthy competitive option for students considering the best colleges in the country.

I recently attended my 15-year college reunion. I conducted a survey of my class, which showed that almost everyone who responded would recommend the school to their daughters, their neighbors, their local high schools. It is a school that is not stuck in its past, but continues to evolve in order to give women the most competitive edge upon graduation.

In an environment where women make up the majority of students and feel pushed out by smaller elite schools worried about gender balance, Smith is not saddled with this issue. Students aren’t isolated by their single-sex education. On the contrary, students take advantage of a 5-college exchange, a lively offering of arts and cultural activities, and yes, even parties where men are invited.

Don’t believe me? Go visit. You’ll be impressed with the multimillion dollar, state of the art student center, the engineering program, the newly renovated art museum. But most of all, you’ll feel the energy of all those smart young women, who continue to make the campus as lively and extraordinary as the days when students like Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem and heck, even my class, roamed the quad.

Women’s colleges are not an anachronism. They inspired the women's movement, and may be the stomping grounds of not just the first ladies of Bush and Reagan, but the first woman president. (Hillary Clinton is a graduate of Wellesley.)

I would urge all promising young women to give these campuses a second look. It’s better than you think.

It's time to school the NY Times that these microcosm story presented like a kind of universal experience, or anything new, is not just annoying. It's not good journalism.

Feminists of the World, Unite!

Or at least get together once a year to kibbutz, argue and bemoan the state of mainstream media at the a conference, Women, Action and Media, where I endured flying 6,000 miles roundtrip, a time-zone adjustment (more precisely, I did not adjust) and two short days clocking hours of concurrent sessions to take in as much as possible.

I don't know if I'm paying more attention to this but women seem to be getting savvy about marketing themselves. Some of my fave feminists, like Andi Zeisler from Bitch, Jessica Valenti at Feministing and Allison Fine have books, along with their online presence.

A new writer (to me), Courtney Martin, has a new book coming out called Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters, a topic that never seems to get old and spans pop culture and media criticism. I also ran into Rita Henley Jensen, founder of Women's eNews. Aside from being a Columbia Journalism School grad, and an award-winning journalist, she is a domestic abuse survivor who was a welfare recipient. One reason she founded the Web site that covers stories about women, by women (in English and Arabic) was inspired by her disgust with the New York Times coverage of the Welfare Law of 1996 (she is careful not to call is welfare reform), when the paper of record only profiled women of color as welfare recipients.

On the other hand, Ellen Goodman decried the lack of political content of women's media -- the old boy network is now in new media, with bloggers linking to each other on political issues, and the dearth of political women's blogs. Instead there are the popular mommy blogs, which Goodman called "the personal as apolitical" in her keynote address to the over 400 crowd of women from nonprofits, media organizations and feminist writers.

While we may not have the discipline of the lockstep right -- or the feminist response to Ann Coulter yet to handle smack downs at Fox News -- I couldn't help, as I circulated around after a meeting of freelancers, that this conference fulfilled a need, that once in a while, it's actually nice not to be part of the mainstream.

This Girl Needs to be Called a Woman

You know, this might be something I'd expect to see in a lesser rag, but the NY Times? The Thursday Style section, which hello -- can we just talk about what is the deal with every paper getting "Style" these days? It's like I can't open a paper without some lightweight content directed at women that seems to sidestep the otherwise highish standards of said paper. I digress.

So, this week's "Critical Shopper" column is titled "What Every Precocious Girl Needs." What would you think this column was about? Well, if you are me, you'd think it was about a children's store, but you (um, I) would be wrong.

I will grant that "girl" has its place. Girlish, girlie, girl-like, sure. But precocious girls are still girls. This shopper column was about a women's clothing store. Hey, Times, like I said, cut the Style crap and get it right. If you want to talk about a store for women, call it that. Even if it's for immature women.

Easy Rider



In 1993 my sister learned to drive a motorcycle -- while riding it cross country, from Pittsburgh to my place in San Francisco. She weathered floods, rain -- even snow on her way West -- in July.

Carolla finally gave me the scoop on her trip (she mainly spared me the scariest details while en route) when she was dealing with something much scarier -- terminal cancer.

Carolla's boyfriend Ted, also a motorcycle rider, is sending me the motorcycle jacket she wore through it all. It looks like it's really lived, just like Carolla.

That's a picture of Carolla wearing the jacket and sitting on her BMW 650 in front of my pad when I lived in the Haight.

You can hear in her own words the story of her ride across country at Bside radio.

We're All Going to Die

Thought for the day: Didn't Laura Bush have a cancerous skin lesion removed from her leg? Didn't Tony Snow go in to remove cancer in his abdomen, and they found more in his liver? Doesn't Dick Cheney have a history of heart attacks?

How long till we find our own president isn't even compos mentis?

Katie Couric, the CBS anchor, asked Elizabeth Edwards in a 60 Minutes interview Sunday night that she faces the possibility of death. "Aren't we all, though?" Edwards responded.

When I first heard her say that, I thought she was skirting the issue. But now I'm coming around to thinking she has a damn good point.

We are all going to die. Some of us are just doing it faster than others.

Elizabeth Edwards says she wants to keep campaigning with her husband for president because she doesn't want cancer to be her legacy. But maybe as she sparks a national discussion about death, illness and cancer, and, I hope, at some point, health care, being the new face of cancer as her legacy isn't necessarily a bad thing. Like I said before, she started it, and now it may be bigger than her.

Hard Couric

Well, Katie Couric can't win. The CBS news anchor is accused of being a light weight, then lands the biggest news interview of the week for 60 Minutes and gets called out for taking out John and Elizabeth Edwards. No soft-ball questions. This interview is no puff piece.

Actually, I found it kind of refreshing. I do think her line of questioning using the crutch "some say . . ." to sort of soft pedal her hard questions was timid. But overall I don't think her questions crossed the line. They needed to be asked. After all, the Edwards' started it with their press conference. They're expecting to be an open book. Some of the bloggers thought Katie should have come out with her own cancer stories. Um, no. She's a journalist, not their girlfriend. I don't care about Katie's brush with death, or her family's experience. I care about Elizabeth and John Edwards. Katie's not running for president. John Edwards is, with a very sick wife. Even if she comes out strong and positive -- and she should -- it doesn't change what she's up against.

By the way, if anything, they are just becoming a mirror for the American experience.

According to the CDC, cancer is the second leading cause of death in America, second only to heart disease, and a million people are diagnosed with cancer every year. Breast cancer is the number one cause of cancer death in Hispanic women. It is the second most common cause of cancer death in white, black, Asian/Pacific Islander, and American Indian/Alaska Native women.

Here's to You, Mrs. Edwards

I have to hand it to the Edwards'. Never has terminal cancer sounded so good. Treatable, not curable. Manageable, like diabetes. Mrs. Edwards even said she didn't look sickly or feel sickly.

OK, well. Cheers to you and your excellent health care that somehow didn't notice until the cancer had spread to your bones that you didn't beat breast cancer. When you are stage 4, statistics don't matter. Each person handles their cancer in a different way. It could be two months, it could be two years. I'm sure Mrs. Edwards will hear every kind of miracle story and miracle cure. And at this point, before treatment and before she feels or looks sickly, I'm sure she wants to call game on, and show her game face to the campaign. After all, nothing makes anyone feel more sick than when everything changes because of some number, some test that someone says of you.

Eventually, maybe not tomorrow or the next day, her cancer will catch up to her. And all the careful tip-toeing of the press to follow the Edwards' statement and not the reality about her illness won't matter. The treatment better be good. Because there is no cure for terminal cancer. What she does have is hope. And that will carry her a long way.

Mother's Little Helper

Recently Alternet reported on the "motherhood industrial complex," where celeb moms make having a baby look so cool and easy that real moms were shocked, shocked that wasn't the case.

Now celebs moms can be accused of yet another trend: the postpartum hot body. If celebs have them, why can't regular moms? Apparently, they can, with the help of a scalpel and elective surgery. For these women, risk factors and finances are not an issue when the end results are a flat stomach or big boobs.

A story in the San Francisco Chronicle today (yes, front page, too -- they really do have a nose for news) discusses this high-income, high-anxiety trend to go under the knife after going through labor. It doesn't stop at stomach and boobs, either. Vaginal "rejuvenation" is also a top request. It's like: take my body back pre-baby and, what the heck, pre-adolescence, too.

Women Warriors

There's a post on Women in Media & News about the cover story of Sunday's New York Times magazine about women coming back from the Iraq war who were raped and assaulted by fellow soldiers. Her beef isn't with the piece, but with what she considers to be cheesecake photos.

I don't think so.

Although the woman are in what could be taken as alluring poses, they are not Victoria's Secret model look-alikes. They look tough and strong and stolid. But the photos also capture a vulnerability and quiet resilience. I also don't think that the mom in the swing with the baby on her lap looks sexy. It's a photo full of pathos, of what she endured, and how she must carry on in civilian life, despite that.

That said, the photos, by Katy Grannan, have a decidedly artistic, posed feeling to them. They are not smiling. And they are placed in familiar settings: a kitchen, a living room couch, on the beach. They could be your neighbor, in fact, they probably are. They gave to their country, and went to hell and back.

There's Still Time

Where do you get to catch up with Lisa Jervis, co-founder of Bitch, catch a keynote address from columnist Ellen Goodman, and get a primer on how to create your own feminist publication from Rita Henley Jensen of Women's eNews?

It's all at the Women, Action and the Media conference. This year promises to be better than ever, with a pre-conference lineup of sessions ranging from citizen journalism to how to sell a great book proposal without selling out. Plus, there will be an evening event commemorating Molly Ivins and you get to rub shoulders with all your fave feminist writers and media types in one place. Including me! There really is still time to register, but you have to hurry. The conference is over the last weekend of March in Cambridge, MA.

I can't think of any forums like this anywhere else. Women who are on the ground and every day rebutting the larger media stereotypes that are the lazy crutch of mainstream news. Like Jen Pozner, who started her own mini-media empire, Women in Media and News. Or Jessica Valenti from Feministing, who raises feminist hell with her site.

I will be blogging from the conference, so if you can't make it, you won't miss out. But you will miss it.

More on the pink cigs.

I thought I'd give you a close-up view of Camel No. 9, the new "light and luscious" brand (their words, not mine) from Camel, the cigarette maker that will do anything to get women to pay attention to them. Turns out, they're not so popular with the ladies, and, not knowing much about them, thought that a rosy hue might help get their sales into the black. Just like the color of the women's lungs who choose to smoke them. Which leads me to wonder, is pink the new cancer?

The Blues About Pink

In the musical Legally Blonde, which was playing in San Francisco for its pre-Broadway run, there is a crucial scene with the lead, Elle Woods, who has left Beverly Hills for Harvard Law in a quixotic play for an ex-boyfriend. She has withstood withering contempt from professors and students alike, who underestimate this blonde underachiever. She is about to head home when she has a change of heart. She is presented with a lawyer's navy blue suit and refuses it. Instead, she jumps into a closet and comes out, as it were, dressed head to toe in pink.

Pink has come a long way, baby. It used to be relegated to baby blankets. The pink craze hit and turned everything pink, from cell phones to cigarettes. What? Yes, Camel just introduced Camel No. 9 (sounds like Chanel No. 5, doesn't it?). It's a new cigarette that's igniting controversy, that comes in a Pepto pink package and looks more like bubblegum than a cancer stick. What's next, pink 40 ouncers of malt liquor? Pink pistols for your pink purse?

I love what Legally Blonde did for pink. It claimed it as the color of girl power. All Camel No. 9 does is put a pretty color on a bad habit. I hope women everywhere decide this is one accessory they can live without.

That Takes Balls

Soccer balls, that is. True story.

The cast: a Smith grad turned girls' soccer coach in Georgia: Luma Mufleh.

The drama: Our heroine realizes there is a ragtag group of refugee kids who want to play ball, too. She puts some fliers out (she too, is an immigrant from Jordan) and soon has a kind of UN-version of the Bad News Bears on her hands. At first she coaches only boys, since the kids were Muslims from places like Iraq and Afghanistan, and many parents wouldn't let their daughters play, but this changes.

End Game: The New York Times makes it a front-page story, then Hollywood comes calling. I don't know how she has time to coach any more, since this local girl has made good. Check out the story.

Vaccination Proclomation

In more health news, the HPV vaccination, now widely available, is widely out of reach for those who need it most: college students. Here's the AlterNet story on it.

This is more of same: it's legal, it's so necessary, but that isn't enough. I'm so sick of women's health taking a back seat to either 1) Christian zealotry. 2) pharmaceutical greed 3) moralizing right-wing politicians.

I have to ask: if this was a vaccine for men, would this even be an issue? It's a vaccine that stops. Cancer. We don't have too many of those. They should be giving them away.

Pill Patrol

First the challenge was getting emergency contraception approved. Done. Now, the really hard part. Getting it at your local pharmacy.

Not every pharmacy feels it has to dispense the emergency birth control, which is only effective 48 hours after sex. Not getting EC is not an option.

So Planned Parenthood came up with a plan. It's enlisting us to head to our local Walgreen's or Costco and request Plan B. Then report back. To get involved, go to Planned Parenthood to sign up.

Baby I Can Drive My Car

I've always taken issue with the VW ad campaign about, you know, how in life there are passengers and and there are drivers. As in, the world is divided into two groups. For most of my life, I was the passenger. And not in life, just in the car.

People laugh when I say this, but it's true: I've always been a pedestrian by temperament. I prefer to be on my feet, take public transit, walk and not drive.

I did grow up in a suburb, Princeton, New Jersey, but it was an easy enough place to get around on bike. (My mom would point out that she drove me most everywhere I needed to go. She would be correct.) Then my mom moved to New York City, another place where a car isn't necessary.

Not that I didn't try to learn. I had a constant stream of learner's permits, just never bothered to follow through with the driver's test. I did finally get my license while at graduate school. But I still never learned to drive a stick, my husband's vehicle of choice. He held on for many years to an impossible-to-drive 1983 orange Nissan truck that simply refused to die. I finally had to put my foot down when I actually put my foot through the floor of the car. Seeing the road beneath your feet is never a good sign.

Now all that's changed. We have a Mini-Cooper S and it's automatic. Now I get to be in the driver's seat. Of the car.

Our Monthly

Did you know March is Women's History Month? All of the excitement of February's Black History Month with none of the marketing. Women's eNews does a good job of looking at the history that has brought the month on. Let's face it, we've earned a month. Hell, we probably deserve at least a year just for the whole child birth thing, the no voting for eons thing, the no feminism till the 70s thing, the constant barrage of old white men who think they know better about our bodies thing. But for now, we'll make do with a month.

A Tasty Show

When I pitched a show all about food to my senior B-Side producer, Tamara Keith, and then made a call for pitches, I had no idea (well, maybe some idea) of how many weird, wacky tales about food there are out there. Food as extreme sport. Food as barely recognizable as food. Food as fuel. Food as livelihood. That's all in the show we just wrapped and is online for your listening pleasure. If you like food, and even if you don't like food, you've got to hear this show. And while you're on our site, you might get hooked, so listen to all the other 50-odd shows. Or download our podcast and get B-Side to go.

No D & G for Me

I do love to shop and even though Dolce & Gabbana are so way out of my price range, I hope they care I can't afford and now don't want to buy any of their to-die-for creations. They've got an ad up in Italy that's got Amnesty International, for god's sake, up in arms. You know you've done something that crossed a line when a human rights organization has to say something.

You can judge for yourself. I mean, the ad's not exactly snuff porn, but it's a little edgy. A woman pinned by a man, surrounded by other men who look on.

Europe seems to be having less and less patience for the fashion industry. First, they're mad the women are too skinny (Spain demanded that women have a healthy BMI in order to walk the runways of their fashion week). Now an ad that's promoting gang rape. The image isn't exactly new -- think back to the 80s with Jody Foster on the pool table in The Accused. In fact, that movie alone seems to end up being the inspiration of ads pushing products. (I wrote for Bitch magazine about a similar ad by Sony years ago.)

There is really nothing new or sexy or breakthrough about this ad. What, buy this dress and you'll be asking for it? Not much of a sales pitch for the modern Italian woman, is it? Yes, it is just a fantasy, but whose? The stale machismo vibe says backlash, not buy this.

Hey You Guys!

Having gone to a women's college and NOT a girls' school, I did get very sensitive to how women are addressed. Especially in an all-female world.

But guys always seemed preferable to girls, the worst of the worst. But an article in today's Alternet makes a decent point that actually, guys is one of those catch-alls that really isn't.

Forth & Towne a Dead End

When retailers get it wrong, they really get it wrong. The whole concept just made me want to spit. You turn over 35-ish and all of a sudden you've forgotten how to dress yourself. You prefer higher waists (mom jeans, anyone?) and clothing that is so boring you fall asleep just looking at it.

Earth to Gap: Sarah Jessica Parker is over 35. You put her in a Gap ad campaign. Now you want to shuttle her off to some super uncool, unhip store in a mall? Thanks, but no thanks.

Well, guess what. Gap agrees! They're shutting down this pathetic excuse for a store. According to the New York Times, most of these super-niche type ideas for women of a certain age (excuse me? when did 35 become the new 55?) who lack style and substance.

My friend gave me a birthday card that said of my age: you're not getting older, you're just becoming a much better shopper. Where do women my age shop? H&M, Zara, Bloomies. Bluefly. Get with it Gap, or get out.

Harvard Shocker

Ellen Goodman's column today explains why she figured the country would have a woman prez way before Harvard. Hell, she figured the Vatican would be female before Harvard. Read her column here.

Fishy Report

Newsflash: Moms-to-be, eating fish will not retard your children. A long-term study reported in Lancet gives the all-clear to eating fish. The backlash that the fear of mercury consumption resulted in pregnant women eating no fish, actually led to dumber kids. (I'm obviously paraphrasing, but you get the idea). So, eat up that salmon! Dig in to a tuna fish sandwich! Seems to me that the commonsense approach of not overdoing it ( a glass of wine, a cup of coffee, a piece of fish) is not going to do any harm, and may even do good.

What Would Hitler Say?

All this parsing of Barack Obama's blackness reminds me of a similar conversation that Jews have. Or at least, that I use to have in middle school, when my classmates wanted to know if I was going to be bat mitvahed. The answer was no. So I wasn't really a Jew. Oh, really. My mom pointed out that Hitler never made such a distinction when deciding who to gas in the ovens. Leave it to my mom to put some perspective on an innocent childhood remark.

I guess I was Jewish enough for Hitler. Which sure makes Obama black enough for scared cab drivers. After all, Obama is literally an African American. You know, I don't think this is a race issue. I think it's a class issue disguised as a race issue. Obama doesn't come from the southern Baptist preacher tradition. He's Harvard by way of the Heartland. Seems like he's had it pretty easy. Maybe if he starts getting kicked around a bit he'll rally the troops. After all, he may only be half black, but I'm betting the racists will only see that half.

Truth in Advertising

In Alternet today is a piece about the mommy industrial complex -- the selling of motherhood, and the reality that doesn't measure up. The hot fashions, the cool strollers, the cute babies showcased on cuter celebrities all create a vision that the author says, can come crashing down to some deluded moms-to-be. Alternet's Janina Stajic writes:

Comments from these mothers include such thoughts as “children are mind-numbingly boring,” and “looking after children makes women depressed” to the slightly more disturbing: “I was an attractive, fulfilled career woman before these kids. Now I’m an overly-exhausted wreck who misses her job and sees very little of her husband,” and the even more disturbing: “It is no secret to my children that I consider myself to be carrying out a prison sentence and I'm counting the days 'til I am free."

Gee, if life decisions are made as easily as purchasing decisions, whose fault is that? One accomplishment of the women's movement, I think, is the acknowledgement of how major a life change to have kids is -- that it's not something done automatically, but with more thought than purchasing a good pair of shoes (even a really good pair).

Earth to fun-loving moms: care-giving is hard work. Note to editorial boards: perhaps a back story on how much help money can buy celebrity parents. Just as some women can't see past the airbrushed images of the perfect visions of scary skinny model/actresses on the cover of slick women's mags, there needs to be some truth in advertising the perfect celeb moms.

Sometimes, Newer Isn't Better

Turns out, that old birth control pill you've been on for years? Much safer when it comes to blood clots. Its newer form's got a synthetic version of progestin that increases the risk of blood clots. No, thanks. Isn't it enough to worry about getting pregnant without worrying that you'll die from a clot that's traveled from your leg to your lung? The watch-dog organization founded by Ralph Nader, Public Citizen, is petitioning the FDA to recall certain newer versions of the pill for just these reasons. Thank you, Ralph.

The Smith Connection

I knew there had to be one. After all, Harvard is hardly breaking any barriers by hiring the first woman prez in its 371-year history, Drew Gilpin Faust. The new head of Harvard crossed paths with Dr. Mary Maples Dunn when they were students at Bryn Mawr. Dunn was president of Smith when I was there. Dunn was known to us as NOT Jill Ker Conway, the groundbreaking first female president of Smith, a feminist who attained celeb status in the academic world with her book Road from Coorain. Dunn did boring things like establish an engineering program and beefed up the math and science in the school, which I suppose is a good thing if one wants to compete with the big boys, and I do think it paid off. But her legacy was easily overshadowed by the next president of Smith, Ruth Simmons, an African American, who went on to become the president of Brown. I digress. Point is, that after the former President Lawrence Summers made his notrious comment that women are genetically predisposed to be bad at science -- he demonstrated that he was genetically predisposed to put foot in mouth. Which led to this Faustian bargain. Check mate.

It's a Massachusetts Miracle!
Who knew Harvard would pull a Smith and hire a woman as prez!

From the New York Times:

Harvard Plans to Name Its First Female President

ALAN FINDER and SARA RIMER

Published: February 9, 2007

Harvard University is planning to name the first woman president in its 371-year history — Drew Gilpin Faust, a historian who runs a research institute at the university, according to university officials close to selection process.

Skip to next paragraph

Tony Rinaldo, Harvard University via Associated Press

Drew Gilpin Faust is currently dean of the Radcliffe Institute of Advanced Study, by far the smallest of Harvard’s schools.

Related

The Harvard Crimson

Back Story With Alan Finder

Dr. Faust’s ascension would come a year after Lawrence H. Summers, a former Treasury secretary, resigned from the post amid fierce faculty discontent. The opposition erupted in part over Dr. Summers suggestion that intrinsic aptitude could help explain why fewer women than men reach the highest ranks of science and math in universities.

What Next? No reading on the Subway?

From Reuters:

NEW YORK, Feb 7 (Reuters) - New Yorkers who blithely cross the street listening to an iPod or talking on a cell phone could soon face a $100 fine.

New York State Sen. Carl Kruger says three pedestrians in his Brooklyn district have been killed since September upon stepping into traffic while distracted by an electronic device. In one case bystanders screamed "watch out" to no avail.

Kruger says he will introduce legislation on Wednesday to ban the use of gadgets such as Blackberry devices and video games while crossing the street.

"Government has an obligation to protect its citizenry," Kruger said in a telephone interview from Albany, the state capital. "This electronic gadgetry is reaching the point where it's becoming not only endemic but it's creating an atmosphere where we have a major public safety crisis at hand."

Tech-consuming New Yorkers trudge to work on sidewalks and subways like an army of drones, appearing to talk to themselves on wireless devices or swaying to seemingly silent tunes.

"I'm not trying to intrude on that," Kruger said. "But what's happening is when they're tuning into their iPod or Blackberry or cell phone or video game, they're walking into speeding buses and moving automobiles. It's becoming a nationwide problem." © Reuters 2007. All Rights Reserved.

NOTE: Technical Difficulty

I will be attempting to upload to the new blogger format, so please be patient if my posts are delayed for the next day or so. Should stop the awful spam, I hope!

Death and Taxes

It's weird what goes through your head when you're calculating your worth to the government. Somehow I went from itemized deductions to, what is happiness?

We spend our time going to and from work, work that while we hope is meaningful, many days is not. We spend time agonizing over stupid petty things. Put the hours in. Bring home the bacon. Cook it. Maybe a little Heroes and Daily Show and it starts all over again.

Which made me think about my sister.

Carolla, who died from cancer in 2004, knew from the get-go office life wasn’t for her. In college she and her best friend ran a nonprofit art gallery. After college they started their own business. It didn’t make a killing, but it paid the bills. It wasn’t about the money, Carolla told me, but about doing what she loved, living the life she wanted.

She made it look easy, but it’s harder than it looks.

Out of Africa

As the war wages on in Iraq, it's easy to forget there are other wars that have been going on way longer. The hideous conflict that's been going on since the 1980s in Sudan has displaced a generation of mainly men. This documentary I saw tonight with a friend was on a postage-stamp size screen, but the story was larger than life and will break your heart. Go see it before it disappears: God Grew Tired of Us. You won't forget it.

Jock and Smithie

Here are two things you might not know about Molly Ivins. She was a basketball player when she was young. And she was a Smithie. She received a Smith College Medal in 2001. You can read Ivins’ 1993 Rally Day address, but here is one part I enjoyed:

Well, in Austin, Texas, there is a fundamentalist divine, the Reverend Mark Weaver by name. Reverend Weaver heads an organization called Citizens Against Pornography. He is hell-bent on driving sin out of Austin, Texas. I believe that he has his last work cut out for him. Reverend Weaver and his group march around outside the dirty bookstores and movie theaters of our town with signs that say, “Honk if you hate pornography.” I always honk. I do hate pornography. And besides, I think those signs add a certain je ne sais quoi to our municipal life.

Weaver and his group had come up with proposals for an ordinance under which you could not have a dirty bookstore or dirty movie theater within so many feet of a home, or school, or church. The upshot of it would be to drive all the dirty bookstores and dirty movie theaters out of Austin, Texas, to the general cultural deprivation of the citizenry.

Now, as a matter of fact, I do hate pornography, don’t like it worth a damn. On the other hand, I did not think it was a good idea to have Reverend Weaver deciding what movies we could watch and what books we could read. And so I hastened that very night to a meeting of the city planning commission and found there 350 citizens against pornography and four of us from the American Civil Liberties Union. I’m here to tell you there is nothing like sitting in the midst of a sea of citizens against pornography to make you notice that your friends look like perverts.

Now Weaver was up to speak first on behalf of his amendment, and Reverend Weaver is a fine preacher; he has a certain old-fashioned style of preaching, and he got preaching that very day.

That very day he got a telephone call from a lady who lives behind the dirty movie theater on South Congress Avenue. Well, I perked right up at the mention of that; it’s my neighborhood dirty movie theater.

In fact, driving up to the meeting that night I noticed they’d changed the billing. The new quadruple-X attraction was called The Nun’s Bad Habit.

“Yes,” said Reverend Weaver, “and after the five o’clock show a man came out of that theater, he went in the alley behind that theater, which is directly behind that lady’s home, and he there masturbated.”

Three hundred and fifty people simultaneously went “Ohhhhhhhh”—it made a very odd sound. “Yes,” said Reverend Weaver, “that man masturbated, and that lady has two little girls, two little girls who might have seen that man do that terrible thing, except, praise Jesus, she has a large wooden fence around her back yard.”

Whereupon, we all praised Jesus, and with that he was off and running, cussing sin up one side and down the other, and by the time he got through, it looked bad for the First Amendment.

We decided to send up our oldest living member, Mr. John Henry Faulk, who, doing his well-known impersonation of an enfeebled senior citizen, shuffled up to the microphone, and said, “Members of the planning commission, Revered Weaver, Citizens Against, ladies and gentlemen, my name is John Henry Faulk. I am 75 years old. I was born and raised in south Austin, Texas, not a quarter of a mile from where the dirty movie theater stands on South Congress Avenue today. I think you should all know that there was a great deal of masturbation in south Austin before there was ever a dirty movie theater.”

Stand Up Against the Surge

Molly Ivins' last column advocated that we, her readers, the real deciders, stand up against Bush's escalation of the war in Iraq.

Good Woman Down

Godammit we've lost one of the great ones. Molly Ivins, the syndicated columnist from Texas, hysterically funny, sharp-witted and liberal as they come, a Smithie and Texan to the core, unafraid of politicans or cancer, is dead at 62. Some samples of the syndicated columnist's words, courtesy of the Houston Chronicle. Molly, if I have just a bit of your wit, an ounce of your savvy, a dollop of your way with words, I will die happy. I hope you did too.

—"I'm sorry to say (cancer) can kill you but it doesn't make you a better person," she told the San Antonio Express-News in September 2006, the same month cancer claimed her friend former Gov. Ann Richards.

— "If you think his daddy had trouble with 'the vision thing,' wait'll you meet this one," Ivins on George W. Bush in "The Progressive," June 1999.

— "The poor man who is currently our president has reached such a point of befuddlement that he thinks stem cell research is the same as taking human lives, but that 40,000 dead Iraqi civilians are progress toward democracy," from a July 2006 column urging commentator Bill Moyers to run for president.

— "Many people did not care for Pat Buchanan's speech; it probably sounded better in the original German," Ivins in September 1992, commenting on the one-time presidential hopeful's speech to the Republican National Convention.

— "....our very own dreaded Legislature is almost upon us. Jan. 9 and they'll all be here, leaving many a village without its idiot," from a December 2000 column.

Good Advice!

From the Canada Globe and Mail:

Rural Quebec town bans stoning women

Canadian Press

Herouxville, about 165 kilometres northeast of Montreal, passed a document at a town council meeting this month that outlines what it considers to be its official behavioural norms.

The document, sent to both the provincial and federal governments, states that “a woman can. . . drive a car, sign cheques, dance, decide on her own.”
However, covering one's face other than on Halloween, burning women alive or burning them with acid is not considered acceptable.

I'm sorry, did I miss something? Can someone let me know what country burns women alive so I can be sure not to visit?

Cold Case

Here's a case that's sort of the anti-Judith Miller scenerio. Journalist Sarah Olsen got the only interview of the highest-ranking member of the military to publicly refuse to deploy to Iraq. Now, Olson has been subpoenaed to testify as an Army witness in the Lieutenant’s February 5th court-martial. She has refused. Check out her blog posting with Women in Media & News.

Why Can't I Like Hillary?

I know I should. I should be thrilled there's a viable female candidate. For president! I want to be excited. And I'm even willing to excuse the fact that she's got to where she has because of her husband. I mean, Bush got to where he is because of his dad, the former president, too. So, all's fair in nepotism.

But there's something about her that's too much of a product and too little of a person. Does she really want to find the middle ground on abortion? Does she really believe she was right about the war in Iraq? Maybe she'll surprise me. But so far, I'm still waiting.

Noun Trouble

Maybe it was a slip of the tongue, but I doubt it. In Tuesday's State of the Union address, Bush congratulated the new democrat majority. Incorrect. He used a noun instead of an adjective. A friend of mine mentioned this reference to me and I thought she was being paranoid. But then I heard Bush do it. OK, I can see how maybe the mis-use of parts of speech may seem like kind of an obscure point. And maybe that's all they have now, those clever Republicans with their way with words, their minority status and Iraq quagmire and such. But of course, it's taking the noun for democrat -- and who isn't a democrat -- we're all democrats who believe in the system of democracy -- instead of the adjective democratic to describe the party. That's right. Instead of reaching across the aisle, he pretty much slapped Nancy in the face. It's a sly attempt to change the name of the party. Well, sorry, but just because the Dems have a better name doesn't mean you get to go and change it. It's rude. It's disrespectful. It's downright maddening! If you hear it used in the news, be sure to call any announcers on it. Don't fall into the democrat trap.

Madam Speaker

Yah, so how cool was that: President Bush addressing the Dem's leader as Madam Speaker for the first time in our country's history! But after that, the elation was gone. After all, it is a sweet thing to know that everyone's against him; even his own party. But then the reality sets in. The guy's giving his seventh (7th) and quite possibly his all-time worst State of the Union address. What might have been worse: his poll numbers, also at an all-time low. Even lower than Clinton after he received articles of impeachment. Dude, that takes some serious effort. This from a guy who tries very little to do much of anything. Says it's such an honor to say Madam Speaker, but shows no respect for women. Says he wants to win the war on terror, but then heedlessly moves forward in a war that causes more havoc and death. He said a lot of things and sounded, oh god, this is going to look bad: Schwarzenegger-esque. Health care for all. Get off our oil addiction with alternate fuels. Al Gore, anyone? Jim Webb's rebuttal had me riveted. Really. I never look forward to the Dem's address. Always so wooden. Boring. Pathetic. Loserish. But not tonight. Bush was the Big L.

Roe v. Wade: 34 Today

Where are my manners? I completely forgot to mention that today is the 34th anniversary of the Supreme’s Court decision on Roe v. Wade, which established women’s right to an abortion. Today is Blogging for Choice day, and you can check out the various posts at Feministing.

I’m also linking to an essay I wrote about growing up with the right to choose.

Girl Goalies

Remember in gym class when you had to play in a co-ed soccer team and to keep it fair each team had a girl goalie? Well, sorry, but that's what I was thinking about when Hillary Clinton announced -- online -- her candidacy for president. Who will be the Republicans' choice if Hillary takes the primaries? Elizabeth Dole? Frankly, I always thought the Republicans would be the first to put up a woman candidate. If Hillary takes the nomination, it might be the best firepower they have. Except of course for the I Hate Hillary constituency, which if you believe Fox news, is rather large.

Not that being a woman president is anything new anywhere outside of the U.S. Chile, Germany, Liberia, for crissake. It's only here that we're only slightly behind the times in contemplating our first woman president. Of course, on TV we've got a black president (24) and a woman president (Commander in Chief). It's just real life where we seem to have trouble going beyond anyone with the last name Bush.

As Walter Shapiro writes for Salon today on Clinton’s announcement:

The challenge for both Clinton and Obama is to move beyond the blandness of their announcement videos to create a compelling set of issues to propel their candidacies. Edwards, who may ultimately benefit from Hillary and Barack fatigue, has predicated his campaign on a revitalized concern for poverty and the economically challenged. Colorado-based political consultant Rick Ridder, who was Howard Dean's first campaign manager, highlighted the need for a candidate to combine a formal campaign structure with a grass-roots movement. As he put it, "The question for Obama is at what point does the Barack movement become a candidacy? And the challenge for Hillary is just the opposite, since she is a candidacy looking for a movement."

Note to NPR

Just because you say "so called" before "partial-birth abortion" does not make it right. Your story this morning on the federal abortion ban up for review could have been worded just that way. "Partial-birth" abortion is not a medical term. It's a made-up political term by the anti-abortion movement who want to attach a moral judgment to a sometimes medically necessary and extremely rare procedure that happens because a fetus has a life-threatening birth-defect or the life of the mother is in the balance. Don't play to the hands of this movement. I thought NPR was a so-called objective news source.

Look good and think good?

So in today's Style section of the New York Times, Speaker Pelosi (my rep. from San Francisco, now the apex of power, can’t help but always mention it) is making waves not just for her first 100 hours but for her first 100 outfits. Not that it’s hard to stand out in the pol crowd, when most are wearing boring, boring, boring suits. Remember that scene in Legally Blonde 2 when Reese Witherspoon is heading up the Capitol Hill steps dressed head to toe in Pepto-Bismol pink against a sea of dark suits? You don’t? Well, it’s like that. That’s Nancy. Except in purple velvet. Wine wool. Rich tweed. She looks sharp. And she thinks sharp.Unlike Legally Blonde 2, where a cute blonde is like a secret weapon with a Harvard Law degree, nobody is fooled into thinking that Nancy Pelosi worries about her accessories and not her policies. This woman of style is also a woman of substance.

My husband loves me.

Proof positive: He's not intimidated by my complete adoration of Alec Baldwin, and maybe even shares it.

In fact, he even got Alec Baldwin to call me. Yes, me. Even though he's a famous actor of stage and screen. He wasn't even above telling me I have great legs. The only disappointment was that he couldn't pronounce my name. I mean, maybe he could have in real life, like if I had actually introduced myself to him in person. He could have looked down at me with those bedroom eyes and said with his deep, husky voice. "Nice to meet you, Claudine." But this was automated Alec, too dumb or lazy to put two consonants together. Sad, but still. It's Alec flipping Baldwin.

If you want to give it a try, go to the NBC Web site

Happy Golden Globe, Alec. You so deserve it.

B-Side Featured on NPR Podcast

The B-Side Coping Show -- my essay on retail therapy airs on this show -- is going to be featured on an NPR podcast, in conjunction with the Public Radio Exchange.

It's a special podcast in which NPR highlights work done by independent
producers and station-based employees around the country. We're totally
honored and excited. Check out this link and as a bonus you can read an interview with Tamara Keith -- senior producer and friend to the blog -- about B-Side.

Happy Shoe Year

The new Bloomies opened up in SF recently and in it I thought I'd found my perfect pair of shoes: black patent leather slingback on a wooden wedge. Lightweight, fun, funky and so cute. Until I saw the price: Six hundred and fifty dollars. Six. Hundred. For shoes. For cute shoes, but still. What the?? Just when I'd been bracing to pay some disgustingly obsence sum for my new "it" bag. Now I have to suck it up for shoes, too?

Fear not, reader, this shopper walked away.

But I was reminded of this shoe incident when reading Alex Kuczynski's "Critical Shopper" column today in the New York Times on a new Spanish shoe store in Soho. She takes a moment to compare the Spanish prices for shoes (reasonable) to current price tags on fashionista must-wears:

To anyone who looks at Vogue or W, it would appear that in order to be fashionable, to be stylish -- to be, in fact, footwear -- shoes must cost $700. There is something dark about this, as if we have become Stepford Wives, marching off to the high-end shoe brands as if our brains has been sucked out of our skulls and replaced with slots for credit cards. Ka-ching.

Have Your Say for 2006

What's a look back without a little anger and a little pride? NARAL's Hero and Zero Awards are just the thing. Who's the biggest evil doer and the greatest pro-choice hero? You decide.

A Dame Good Year

A woman at the helm of the speakership of the House. A viable woman candidate for president. Oprah's opened a school for girls in South Africa (seems more productive than sweeping in and taking one home. Hell, she could probably adopt the whole country). Damn, it's going to be the year of the dame.

2006: Good-bye, Betty. Hello, Britney?

Looking back on 2006, we lost one of my heroes, Betty Friedan. But what a year for women otherwise. On the plus side: HPV vaccine, voting down the South Dakota abortion ban, and voting in Nancy Pelosi as Speaker of the House (she takes that position today.)

Aside from seeing waaaaay too much of Britney Spears (giving new meaning to raunch culture but doing great favors for the Brazilian)I love this summary by Salon, some of it I'm posting here:

This year also saw the approval of a vaccine for human papillomavirus, an STD that affects 80 percent of American women by the time they hit 50. HPV is one of the leading causes of cervical cancer, and the FDA's approval of the vaccine to fight it should prevent a lot of ill health in future generations. The FDA also recommended the vaccine be given to girls aged 11-12, since it is most effective when administered before first intercourse. But that claim is facing a lot of opposition from the religious right, which argues that it would interfere with abstinence-only programs. Because, as you well know, readers, human papillomavirus vaccinations make teens horny.

Speaking of which, in the wonderful world of hormonal contraception, medical wizards this year discovered that the pill has been linked to a loss of libido for women. Nuh. Uh.

But birth-control enthusiasts rejoice! Scientists are well on their way to developing a male pill that promises no hormonal side effects, just a temporary suppression of sperm and a spooge-free climax. Oddly, many guys are not clamoring to get their paws on it; messing with your body to control reproduction is for girls!

And according to the government, reproduction itself isn't just for girls -- it's for women of practically all ages, from menarche to menopause, all of whom should start taking folic acid and treating themselves as "pre-pregnant" regardless of whether they have any intention of having children soon or ever! Because we all owe it to our unborn and possibly never-to-be-born children to treat our bodies as if they might at any moment achieve their highest calling by becoming holy vessels of birth. Women looking for an effective response to these new government guidelines might consider voting against assholes in future elections.

Does Kennedy Swing Both Ways?

Supreme Court watchers are naming Kennedy as an important swing vote on a key late-term abortion case. Linda Greenhouse wrote in the NY Times Week in Review:

THE Supreme Court, having decided only four cases since the term began in October, has not exactly been living in the fast lane. But the pace is about to pick up.

The coming months will be a testing time for the young Roberts court, including decisions due by early summer on abortion, school integration and environmental policy, with an unusually large emphasis on cases of significance to the business community.

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. has spoken often of the virtues of a court that speaks modestly and unanimously. Those goals may well prove elusive. The court’s conservative bloc reached out to hear challenges to voluntary integration plans put in place by the public school systems of Louisville, Ky., and Seattle, which had been upheld by lower courts.

If the Dec. 4 arguments were any indication, a majority will overturn student assignment plans that seek to maintain racial balance in systems that struggled for years to achieve it. The outcome is likely to prove divisive both within the court and outside it.

The Nov. 8 arguments in two cases on the constitutionality of the federal Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act of 2003 did not provide such a clear basis for prediction. Instead, they served to showcase Justice Anthony M. Kennedy’s position at the center of a court that is closely divided in cases that Justice Antonin Scalia has described as battles in the culture war. Before she retired a year ago, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor held that pivotal position.

Justice Kennedy did not tip his hand during the abortion arguments. But enough other justices tipped theirs to make clear that the first federal statute ever to make an abortion procedure a crime will stand or fall depending on Justice Kennedy’s opinion.

A New Low

I was planning on complaining that in the New York Times style section today an article on your BMI shows photos of all scary skinny women representing low BMIs and average to obese (by BMI standard) men. (The one exception being Rosie O'Donnell on the high BMI end). But Gawker one-upped me on the comment on the strapless bra story. They call it brainless and fail to see the news hook. But I disagree. I am personally a great fan of any kind of bra story that can be dreamed up. Bras are the bane of woman. Who doesn't get that? Gawker. I guess.

Anyway, in a year that got attention for being more bottomless than topless, can't we be a little bit happy about having a story where people are still wearing under-things?

Let's Review

This came to me From Katha Pollitt by way of Deirdre English: The Women's Review of Books is back. I always think it's curious that there's such a huge interest in women's popular culture with only a minor shrug to women in literature. (OK, when Britney Spears is showing her cha cha in front of god and everyone you've certainly got my attention more than an expository essay on Elizabeth Cady Stanton. Where is Camille Paglia when we need her?) It sounds like the new and improved journal is being revamped to be more relevant to a broader audience. Hell, I'll probably subscribe. Here's Pollitt's note:

SUBSCRIBE TO THE WOMEN’S REVIEW OF BOOKS!


Was Elizabeth Cady Stanton a racist-- or way ahead of her time? Do men and women really speak different languages --Martian and Venusian-- or do they both talk Earthling? What’s up with America’s obsession with black men’s penis size, anyway?

If you subscribe to the Women’s Review of Books, you’re up to date on these and many other topics, from Doris Lessing’s latest novel and Hirsi Ali’s latest polemic to the economics of prostitution and the sociology of abstinence-only sex ed . If you don’t yet know the WRB, you’ve been missing a lot -- great reviewing from Vivian Gornick, Dorothy Allison, Tricia Rose, Rosalind Barnett and Caryl rivers, Ann Snitow, the distinguished economist Barbara Bergmann and many other provocative writers and scholars, to say nothing of poems, cartoons, photographs and the ever-lively letters section.

I can’t tell you how often I hear complaints about the short shrift paid to books written by women in mainstream newspapers and magazines, and the lack of women -- and especially feminist women -- reviewers. Important books, both academic and general-interest, simply don’t get reviewed. Or are reviewed, how shall I put this, unintelligently. The WRB represents a real alternative -- for books, for reviewers, and for its many enthusiastic readers. If you care about women, about scholarship, about fiction, about books -- you need to be part of the conversation at WRB!

A subscription to WRB makes a great holiday present -- for friends, relatives, your public library, or yourself! And nothing could be easier -- just visit www.wcwonline.org/womensreview and click on “subscribe.” A year of Women’s Review of Books—six great issues full of reviews, essays, poetry, author interviews, and artwork by cartoonists and photographers—costs $33. That’s about the price of two CDs or dinner for two at one of those great little neighborhood places that don’t exist any more..

Happy holidays, happy reading,
and please forward this letter to people who might be interested!

Katha Pollitt
kpollitt@thenation.com

It's the Policy, Stupid

This is the kind of story that sends me into a tailspin. I so often try to imagine my life as a mother, and it bears no resemblance to my life now. Why? Because I can't figure out how to integrate my work with parenting. And it's not like my work does a bad job, probably better than most with working moms. But it's hard out here for a mom. Check out this piece in Alternet today that gives a hard-nosed economic reality check about how we as a country will fail unless we make the workplace work for moms. Check it out here.

Urban Jungle and Just Jungle

I'm not a nature girl. I did spend six months in Kenya when I was in college, much of it spent hiking and camping outdoors, and I figure I've done my time. Since then, I am comfortable viewing nature through the window of a four-star hotel, and a closed one at that.

I made an exception at our latest vacation to Mexico at a high-end resort near Puerto Vallarta. It was one of the most physically beautiful places I've visited -- thick jungle hillside up from a stunning patch of beach not too ruined by the boat loads of cruise-ship day trippers.

But nature had a way of finding us even if we weren't looking for it. My husband was stung by a scorpion as he was putting on a shirt to go to lunch (that's what he gets for being civilized). A scorpion sting is nasty and painful, but usually not deadly. The poison hits the nervous system and runs its course, trying to close off the throat and paralyze the limbs. Larry went numb, went pale through his sunburn, then was taken on the back of the man they called "the rabbit" down the hill at a dead run to the village doctor. The doctor had clearly seen worse. Es normale, he kept telling us when Larry would moan his next symptom. But hours later, he walked himself back up the hill to a waiting glass of tequilla.

Before I left, I wrote about my encounter with wildlife in San Francisco, which aired on KQED. You can listen here.

Here's the Plan

NARAL is calling for us to contact major pharmacy chains and demand they stock Plan B. Add your name to the petition here.

How Do You Cope?

Hear my essay on retail therapy on the latest edition of B-Side in a show all about coping that's hosted at a bar with Tamara Keith. For me, shopping wasn't just an escape. It was a strategy. A plan of attack on the senseless path life sometimes takes. You can listen by clicking here.

No Plan for Plan B

Emergency contraception is great in concept, but not so great in execution. Although this should really be something everyone, pro-choice and anti-choice should get behind (it's the medication that keeps athe sperm from fertilizing the egg -- no fetuses are harmed in the stopping of this pregnancy) and can avert unwanted pregnancies. That's the good news. The bad news is, many people who need the time-sensitive drug, can't get it. Read about this piece on Women's eNews as printed in AlterNet.

Since it can be dicey to get ahold of it when you need it, it's good to get it in advance and keep it on hand for when you really need it. And guess what, men can get it, too. So, guys: along with your condom stash, keep some EC in your cabinet next to the mouth wash.

Here's a snippet:

Because of its new non-prescription status, Carol Cox, a spokeswoman for Barr Labs, told Women's eNews that the distributor does not expect insurance companies to provide coverage for it and that Medicaid does not cover Plan B in all states.

Health advocates recommend that, because it can still be difficult to buy Plan B on a timely and affordable basis, women should buy the emergency contraception even if they don't need it, just to be on the safe side.

Women who can't afford to buy Plan B can try clinics in some regions, such as Planned Parenthood, that will provide the product on a sliding-fee basis.

Because of the age restriction imposed by the FDA, most women under 18 years old must still acquire a prescription for it.

Exceptions are women under 18 who live in Alaska, Hawaii, California, Massachusetts, Maine, New Hampshire, New Mexico, or Vermont. They may be able to get Plan B directly from a pharmacist who participates in the state's pharmacy access program, according to the National Women's Law Center. States in this program allow Barr to ship the drug directly to participating pharmacists, rather than stores.

Baggage

I'm on the hunt for my new perfect bag. It doesn't have to be THE "it" bag, just my "it" bag. As in: this is it!

But so far, the bags have been so incredibly large as to not just accomadate everything I could dream of stuffing into it (umbrella, wallet, sweater, large book, two pairs of glasses, bagel sandwich, two apples, small cat) but weighed half my body weight even before I began testing the capacity of the bag. (Note: cat did not appreciate said test.)

It used to be that bags were too small, too dainty, to ever meet my growing needs. I carried a backpack for years. Then after graduating from graduate school, swore off and switched to a grown-up Kate Spade bag the size of a piece of luggage. (I'm not kidding: it is actually offered as luggage in her store).

That really put me over the edge and had to be retired. The luggage now has a new life on top of my rolly bag. But I needed a replacement. I got something called a "hobo" (now I can just look like one) that is a slouchy carryall that carries almost everything, although I must take that too literally because the strap has broken not once but twice from the groaning weight of my "essentials."

Now I think I've found my new perfect bag. It's a Chloe, and it's very much the "it" bag, so it can't be mine. It costs as much as a month's rent. Maybe I could live in it.

12/6/06 Update: Lots of Baggage

So it seems I'm not the only one with the large-bag problem. The NY Times Style section has a cover story on the over-sized bag causing lots of overly fashionable women back and neck pain. One of the humungo-bags, by Chanel, has been described as looking like its only slightly less glamorous cousin, the garbage bag. Well, at least it's a Chanel garbage bag.