Turns Out, Math Class Isn't Hard

A new study out of high school students shows no gender gap in math scores. Take that, Barbie. You know, the one who said "Math class is tough." Yah, not so much anymore.

According to the story in the New York Times,

Although boys in high school performed better than girls in math 20 years ago, the researchers found, that is no longer the case. The reason, they said, is simple: Girls used to take fewer advanced math courses than boys, but now they are taking just as many.

“Now that enrollment in advanced math courses is equalized, we don’t see gender differences in test performance,” said Marcia C. Linn of the University of California, Berkeley, a co-author of the study. “But people are surprised by these findings, which suggests to me that the stereotypes are still there.”

Maybe a new Math Genius Barbie would do the trick.

Finally, a Remote Control You'll Want Your Man to Have

If you're like me, you either have too many remotes in your house, or find yourself at battle over who gets to control them. Here's a twist on the topic I never expected: scientists in Australia are hard at work developing a remote control over men's sperm count. According to the article,

"Since it is flexible, the polymer either contracts or expands as a result, and this movement allows the valve to be opened or closed as needed," explains team leader Said Al-Sarawi.

"It will be like turning a TV on and off with a remote control," added team founder Derek Abbott, "except that the remote will probably be locked away in your local doctor's office to safeguard against accidental pregnancy or potential misuse of the device."

Aw, no fair!

Nineties Nostalgia

Maybe it was the idea of Hillary Clinton bringing sexy back to the White House for a rehash of '90s policy, peace and prosperity. Or maybe it was the sudden outcropping of frozen yogurt shops again. Or possibly, the acerbic T-shirts, new fondness for grunge rock and way-back hip-hop I've noticed in movies like Definitely,  Maybe (much of which takes place during the Clinton run for the White House in '92) or The Wackness, set very seriously in 1994. But it seems like we've hardly crested the 00s when we're trying to re-live the 90s. 

Now, I'm not digging up my favorite pair or vintage men's Levis, the ones with holes carefully cut out of them and rolled up just so. My hair is down to a reasonable size for once -- this decade has been good for curly hair. So I'm not advocating diving back in. But the 90s, and maybe this is because of  9/11 and the ugliness of the Bush administration, they just keep looking better and better. Hey, maybe rollerblading will come back, too. Now that was fun.

Not Fertile? Not a Problem

First I saw them when traveling on BART. Then I got home and tuned to the classical station and heard them. I'm beginning to feel tracked. They're fertility treatment ads for a for-profit fertility treatment center in San Francisco. That's right; for profit. But I'm sure they have everyone's best interests at heart. It's not that I begrudge women this option; what gets me worked into a hot lather is the marketing campaign around a procedure that is neither easy nor fail-safe, nor covered by insurance. 

Or maybe it's that the ad in BART wasn't to get a fertility treatment: it was after my eggs (well, not mine, but someone 20 years younger with better SAT scores). They're also all over the classifieds (someone must still be reading those). As the popularity and well, simply the stigma attached to IVF goes away as older women seek to reproduce, the demand for those young, healthy eggs will only increase. And it strikes me as a little too much like trafficking in flesh. I imagine two vastly different types of women, one providing -- shouldered with higher education loans and a low-paying first job, willing to give up what she has for a nice, fat check. On the other end are the highly successful women who never had time to think about their eggs until it was too late, now lining up to thumb through the books of descriptions and photos of the eggs for sale. What she can't offer on her own is now yet another problem solved with stacks of cash. 

Cavalier and Clay
He brought us New York. He brought us Ms. (but thought it odd for a man to be publisher of a feminist pub, so handed it off to Gloria Steinem). He brought us Urban Cowboy and Saturday Night Fever. But what I know from Clay Felker was a semester in journalism school where he tried to re-create the new journalism for the new journalists. As a student of his, I loved the stories, but struggled to sound like Tom Wolfe. He sent us to bars to find a story (I wrote about one in the Mission that gave manicures with the drinks.) He sent us to profile journalists, which we later found out was an exercise in networking, possibly not far off from actual journalism. He could be gruff and dismissive. He could also be inspiring and poetic. But mainly gruff and dismissive. He told me I was lucky I was a woman, since people would trust me who shouldn't. We had no allusions about what we'd learn from him in that magazine writing class. We wanted to learn about the old school new journalism, and that's what he delivered.

Wait Wait, Tell Me

Years ago, my husband Larry was a contestant on the NPR quiz show Wait Wait . . . Don't Tell Me! He won and for years we had Carl Kasell's voice on our answering machine. That was when we actually used an answering machine. Anyway, now that we're all about iPhones and Wait Wait is all about podcasts (and people actually know what it is), you can listen to Larry's few minutes of fame here. Scroll down to Round 3: Bluff the Listener. 

Delayed

There was all kinds of fanfare, ads and then an expansion of the wonder-drug for HPV, Gardasil. There was talk of expanding it beyond the range of young girls to most women. But turns out the FDA has other ideas. They want more documentation that it's effective.

According to the article,

"Merck said it has already discussed the questions with FDA and expects to respond to the agency in July. Amy Rose, a spokesperson for Merck, said, "Once we go back to the FDA, we'll have a better sense of what the review timing looks like." Linda Bannister, an analyst for Edward Jones, said, "It's hard to get a feel for if this is a dead issue or if this is delayed."

Wuv. Troo Wuv.

I remember the first time I saw The Princess Bride. In college. On campus. With hundreds of women. But it certainly wasn't my last. It was my Star Wars, or something like that. Sometimes, watching a movie over and over on VHS just isn't enough. That's at least the premise behind those developing the Princess Bride game, based on the movie. When you think about it, the whole thing is just game candy. Rodents of Unusual Sizes? A battle of wits? Inconceivable!

I'm an Icon

And this time not even in my own mind, but to a very small sample size of one, that is, my desk mate, who is sad to see me leave my current job, and by default, him. His ode to moi, here. You know, fellow enchained worker, it doesn't end here. Due to the miracles of communication, I know our bon mots will continue to stream through cyberspace.

What I Learned from Madonna

I find birthdays super-depressing. I love the lead-up. Never saw a gift I didn't like. But the actual day can be a little hard to take. It never helps that my birthday reliably falls on the day when San Francisco has a serious Arctic flashback and becomes even more foggy, windy and cold than I thought was possible from the year before.

Back when I was kid, the mournful day usually fell during finals week, so I spent my birthday having one of those exams that most of us re-visit in our nightmares and wake up in a cold sweat.

No matter. This year, one of the gifts my husband gave me was the new Madonna CD, Hard Candy. And immediately I got some perspective. Here's a woman who has made a career out of re-inventing herself, and for laughing at the idea that a rock star, especially a woman, has to be young and drug addled. She's certainly not young (50?) but she's got a body so cut it could break glass.

Madonna isn't just the woman whose music I rocked out to in the living room with my best friends in high school, or showed my voguing skills at the Madonna black bra parties in college. I have followed her career trajectory as I have muddled through mine. She's made a bigger splash, way, bigger, but way, way bigger mistakes than I'll ever come close to making, I hope (Sex book, anyone?). But at least she's out there, doing it. And, as she reminds me every time I go for a run to my Madonna play list, all I've got is four minutes.

B-Side on KQED

Happy Father's Day from B-Side. Tune into a special Father's Day edition of our show on the San Francisco public radio station, KQED. Or listen online.

OMG: The Media Is Sexist

The post-mortem of Hillary Clinton's failed bid for president had started way before she had actually conceded the race. Mainly cooing tributes about how Hillary Clinton had buried the idea that women couldn't seriously be considered viable presidential candidates or commanders-in-chief. The New York Times reported that NOW and EMILY's list are going after the media for sexist coverage of their candidate. NOW has gone so far as to create a media hall of shame.

Back before the campaign had started in early 2007, when Clinton's name was mentioned, when she was a celeb member of the Senate, helping the Democratic Party resuscitate its image and fundraising for candidates like Obama, Ellen Goodman spoke at the Women, Action and Media conference. She remarked that Clinton had effectively "de-gendered" herself. Clinton wasn't promoting herself as a potential woman candidate for president, but as the leading candidate for president. For women trying to pioneer any kind of new role, this is often the most effective strategy: being better than everyone else, making sex a second thought. So she put sex aside. But the media was having none of that.

Still, sexism was only one of Clinton's problems.

Obama's way was using narrative as his strength. His speeches often drew from his memoir. Clinton didn't want it to be about her, but about, as she would say, all of us. She tended toward telling the story of the people set met while on the campaign, preferring policy to the personal. In the end, the cable commentator cracks said more about them than her.

And Speaking of Superheroes

Watch The Daily Show's Kristen Schaal fight sexism with a single bound, and stripping.

Super Heroine

So Hillary Clinton's out of the race. And just when I think she's changed everything, there in the Style section of Sunday's New York Times is a nothing piece dissecting Michelle Obama's style.

And so it goes. See how great she wears purple shift dresses and channels a mixture of Barbara Bush (the fake pearls) and Jackie O. (the hair). So are we to think her biggest goal is re-decorating the White House? Seems so hollow coming on the heels of a substance (and sometimes substance-abusive) primary season. Not that Clinton got her due respect just because she was running as the candidate, and not the candidate's wife. There was the "iron my shirt" incident. Cleavage-gate. And who could forget the pandemonium around a misty-eyed moment. Of course these weren't the moments that lost the campaign for her. They were the telling moments that said more about the electorate, rigid notions of gender and the media frenzy than it did about her. Through it, Clinton kept going with her 90-point plan on health care and green jobs and the rest of it, showing that hard work is the answer to any demented sexist comment, rather than stooping to respond.

Still, maybe it was that one nothing style story that let me know reality had hit: back to covering male politicians' women as arm candy, as decorative pieces. Sure, these are the upgraded models with more brains and bod, but that's what we're left with. Our candidate has a stylish wife.

This weekend I took in the Superheroes fashion show now showing at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. And while there are plenty of superheroes to go around, it reminded me that I grew up on a steady diet of Lynda Carter as Wonder Woman, and everyone from Eartha Kitt to Michaelle Pfeiffer trying their paws at Catwoman. Maybe these characters weren't role models, but they did embody the ideals of the '70s-chic notion that women were sexy and strong, powerful and smart. For the next show, there should be a superhero in a pantsuit.

No Tears

Hillary Clinton may have gotten teary-eyed in New Hampshire last year right before swooping to victory the next day. But I'm not shedding tears now. As a Hillary Clinton supporter (albeit incredibly torn between the candidates) I found myself in the strange position of being able to cast a happy and historical vote no matter which way I cast my ballot.

But the glow of Super Tuesday has long since faded, and now I'm grimly waiting for the end of a great primary season and the start of political grind of politics as usual. Now, Obama may disagree with me, but maybe the thrill of the strong, talented Democratic pool of talent initially blinded me to the fact that in politics, nothing really has changed. After all, our system is just as stupid, inefficient and money-hemorrhaging as ever. Millions have been spent for two strong candidates to battle it out, when I read that there's trouble raising funds toward the Democratic Convention and beyond. Both candidates have made gaffes that were really not much of anything, made much of a lot by the media and the competing campaigns. I laugh when I read that this was a muddy campaign. Ask Michael Dukakis about mud. Ask John Kerry about mud. They had mud.

The campaign that transcended race can't seem to win where lots of white people live. The campaign that transcended gender is crying sexism when that is, in some ways, the least of Clinton's problems.

I am no fool. I don't want to hear Clinton's obituaries written all too eagerly by the likes of Arianna Huffington, who praise Clinton and want to bury her. Clinton has changed the way people see women, or elections, or leaders, or whatever. No, not really. Because what Clinton represents is as exceptional as her rival Obama. They are both stand-outs. And it will be a long, long time before we see another candidate with Clinton's tenancity, fortitude and brass ones. Not to mention name recognition and bundles of money. And really, same for Obama, unless you know of other star black politicians with best-selling memoirs who also graduated from Harvard who can orate like JFK.

It's an exceptional political season. I'm glad I lived to see it. I'm sorry to see it go, because it may not come again in my lifetime.

It's Not Just About You

Years ago, when Amy Richards was promoting Grassroots Feminism, the book she co-wrote with Jessica Baumgardner, I interviewed her on riding the third wave of feminism. I told her many of my friends who embraced feminism were struggling with the new role of motherhood. She, a new mother, told me she was working on a new book called "Opting In," about being a feminist and a mother. Opting in plays on the now infamous Lisa Belkin 2003 piece for the New York Times Magazine on the "Opt-Out Revolution," that trumpeted the pseudo-trend of smart women leaving high-powered careers for mommy and me playdates. While Richards didn't buy it, she also wanted to push moms to not just make their mom-work-lives work for them personally, but get involved to change policy, too. Here's some of Courtney Martin's interview with Richards in Alternet on her new book. On a feminist litmus test:

For me, the best way to explain it is that it has to be about more than you. It's great if you want to have and can have a home birth, but can others? It's great that you and your partner can start a chore wheel to have a more equitable household -- but what if you don't even have time to start a chore wheel? Feminism isn't about securing rights just for yourself as a mother, it's about ensuring that others can have that confidence and freedom, too.

On why the personal is threatening:

I think it's really hard for us to bring things down to a personal level -- one, because we don't want to be perceived as judging others, and two, we don't want to be vulnerable or exposed. Also, lobbying for legislation simply requires us to say, "Yes, parenting is hard work and it should be remunerated," or to show up at a meeting and testify that early childhood education is an under-addressed problem. But more personal transformation actually requires us to re-examine our lives. For instance, if we really want to be "green," why are we buying that new sweater? If we really want to be a progressive parent, why are we frustrated that we have to pay our babysitter $18 an hour, which is a living wage, rather than $12? Personal activism requires so much more from us. . .

. . . I do think the mere fact that I gave birth "out of wedlock" gives me certain feminist credibility, though there are lots of feminists out there still asking me when I'm going to get married. And yet it wasn't so much a well-thought-out choice -- more circumstantial than premeditated. But yes, I think feminism's job, and this goes beyond parenting issues, is to keep us from being lazy. And yet, feminism requires so much from us that sometimes I often want to just retreat into convention.

One argument I make in Opting In is that I'm sympathetic to women who want to "just stay home." It's the societally accepted choice, and it makes sense that people would be seduced by it. I don't think this makes your life easier, but I think you have to explain yourself less. And yet, feminism's job is to get us to not just accept our roles, but legitimately choose them.

Sex and the City Girls

I wasn't going to comment about the summer movie phenom that's coming to bazillions of movie screens soon near you. (That's right, there really isn't any reason to get tickets early or stand in line in overly high heels. Really.) The proud chick-flick tradition of Thelma and Louise (even if they did end up offing themselves for their freedom) has begat the Manolo-clad foursome of a larger than life TV show turned (I'm just guessing here), over-hyped movie. It doesn't help that women aren't seeing a lot of women on screen this summer -- after all, when do we ever? I'm not going to the opening weekend (of course not, I am flying to NYC to see it the weekend after) and pink drinks give me a headache.

I mean who really needs "Sex" when we could have power? I'll take the reality Hillary Clinton show any day of the week. It's been a good run, but this summer it looks like we'll be back to having our fantasy on movies, and not in the White House.

Barely Legal

I don't want to brag or anything, but California just became an even cooler state to live in: we just got word that the state supreme court overturned the gay-marriage ban. And you that as California goes, so goes the nation.

Conventional Thinking

Like many Democrats these days, I have my eyes on the Convention. But that seems an awfully long time away from now -- it'll be in August. And miles away from W. Virginia, Kentucky and Puerto Rico.

It's funny. With Clinton winning West Virginia in a cake walk, she is still up against the conventional thinking that this is racism that got her where she is. I love the idea that these ignorant, no-education white men would happily vote for the status quo candidate: a 60-year-old, white woman. I can't believe that all these racists ran out and voted for a Democrat, and a woman at that.

I really can't wrap my mind around a Democratic party that turns out a 95% white voting population. So this victory rings a little hollow, since she has the racist vote, or at least 2 in 10 in the exit polls saying race played a factor, according to New York Times exit polls. So all these under-educated racially biased folks in West Virginia are happy to vote for the woman candidate over the black candidate?

One small point -- and I do hate to upset the conventional wisdom of this race. But if Clinton won so lopsidedly, over 60% looks like, then didn't she just by sheer majority, also get those Obama demographics, too: young people and people with college education? Oh, wait. She did. According to the New York Times, in one of the last grafs of its story:

She also won the support of most voters younger than 30, a group that has typically voted heavily for Mr. Obama. The New Yorker also edged out Mr. Obama among college graduates and higher-income voters, also groups Mr. Obama has relied on.

Not that race is a new factor in this race. The New York Times did a good job a couple of weeks ago of tracking the history of Democrats, race, and the southern strategy.

Race has been a marker in this election, just that there hasn't been such a white state. In North Carolina, where Obama won a similar lopsided victory, exit polls showed him winning 9 in 10 blacks.

Dame's Eye View

There's just too much out there for a card-carrying feminist like me to choose.

First, getting ready for the Sex and the City movie coming out at the end of the month, a story from ABC News says, it proves you can have sex at any age. Since when did 40 become octogenarian? And, if you believe Manohla Dargis' screed bemoaning the dearth of women in summer movies -- she dismissed SATC friends as a bunch of gay men in drag -- they're not women anyway. As the story on ABC tells it:

Today's middle-aged woman is a far cry from her dowdy and prudish mother.

"Women can be sexual at any age," Sari Locker, sexologist and author of "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Amazing Sex," told ABCNEWS.com.

"With advances today in both plastic surgery and fitness centers everywhere, and even the information about eating healthy out there, not to mention the beauty industry, women are really looking for youth far later in life," she said.

As someone getting ever closer to 40, I can't wait to tell my mother who came of age during the free love 60s and the second wave of feminism, the arrival of the pill and legalized abortion, how dowdy and prudish she is compared to me.

In other news, seems that Starbucks, having introduced its retro 70s logo of a woman showing some tail, is in danger of being boycotted for promoting slutty coffee. From the MoJo blog:

"The Starbucks logo has a naked woman on it with her legs spread like a prostitute," explains alarmist Mark Dice, of a Christian group called The Resistance. "Need I say more? It's extremely poor taste, and the company might as well call themselves Slutbucks."

I'm so glad we have groups like this to remind me of what's important in life. Sex and coffee.