Top-heavy
BY JENN SHREVE (07/13/99)

I desire as much as any other woman that all women -- of all shapes, sizes and ethnicities -- be respected, appreciated and valued. And despite my deep-seated belief that all forms of pornography are damaging and demeaning to women as a whole, I was intrigued that Playboy would feature a more voluptuous woman in its pages.

But I use the term "voluptuous" loosely here. Despite weighing what some consider to be her ideal body weight, Rebecca Scott is still a lean woman. Furthermore, it is abundantly clear that despite her other "curves," her breasts are indeed augmented. So, still she meets the general requirements of a Playboy centerfold fantasy, as she is lean with a disproportionate bust. She is still airbrushed and computer-altered. She is without substance and reality -- as are all the other women Playboy would like to make us believe is the ideal.

Whatever advancement in similarity to real American women she represents, she does not look like the rest of us -- nor, for that matter, does she even look like herself.

-- Melissa Ramirez Naasko

So if Rebecca Scott is "average," then why use words/phrases like "round," "thick," "unusual size," "fatty" and "heft"? Make your point, or don't. My 4-year-old daughter, who is beautiful, can easily be reduced to tears if someone calls her chubby. I think I'll buy this Playboy issue for my family, to show my son and daughter what Barbie should look like, glorious hooters and all.

-- Tricia Paker

Stay-home economics
BY PHAEDRA HISE (07/13/99)

As the host of a nationally syndicated talk radio show, "Work & Family From the Wall Street Journal," I often hear the argument that a mother's income only goes for luxuries and that a great deal of money will be saved if mom (and it's always mom) stopped working. I have even had callers say that I was a bad mother because I was on the air rather than at home with my daughter. These calculations never seemed to take into consideration that a woman might be making a decent wage and, in fact, might be making more than her husband. As someone whose income has helped us buy a new home, and contributes markedly to my family's bottom line, I'm glad Phaedra Hise further explored the costs associated with one parent's unemployment, as well as the costs that come from having one parent in the home. She is right when she tells readers to do it because they want to, not because it is to their financial benefit.

-- Jan Wilson
Host/executive producer
"Work & Family From the Wall Street Journal"
New York

Please do not waste your precious space with any more of the Great Debate of stay-at-home vs. working mothers. I've been listening to it for the 10 years that I have been a parent and have had enough. Parents who are honest enough with themselves realize it is an extremely personal choice reflecting the best situation for their family at any given moment. Either way it is not an easy choice or lifestyle. Reducing such a choice to the analysis of a financial balance sheet is insulting to your readers.

-- Deborah Blair

Where does this Phaedra Hise get off? A person's spouse does not have to make a lot of money for him or her to stay home, whether it's mom or dad. Since when do you always have to wear brand-new clothes, sign your kids up for Gymboree or take the kids out as often as Hise suggests? Has she ever heard of sewing? Taking the kids to the park? Entertaining her kids herself rather than missing out on their lives by having someone else do it? It's sad that people have to have so much money that they shove their kids in day care and miss out on those small moments that stick with you forever.

-- Blythe Miller

Don't you know that it's different for girls?
BY RACHEL LEHMANN-HAUPT (07/09/99)

As a parent of a son and a daughter, I was heartened to read about someone making a film about how girls experience sex, and our need to feel good about it. I've spoken openly with my son about the need to please a girl -- about how, if he figured that out first, he would be a better lover.

Stereotypes die hard, and the promotion of sexual stereotypes in film in this country is nauseating. Remember how pissed off and uncomfortable men got over "Thelma and Louise"? Can't wait to see this film, no matter what the rating.

-- Sara Kiesel

Rachel Lehmann-Haupt and her interviewee rant and rave about the MPAA board, stating that according to current standards, it's OK to show men being sexually promiscuous, but not women. If something bad slips through the filter, however, you don't let every other bad thing through as well; you filter out all the garbage.

-- Jon Hartman
Dallas

Where the boys are
BY CATHY YOUNG (07/10/99)

People aren't really fascinated with women's sports because -- wow! -- women, too, can be violent, skilled, tough. Women's sports has something that men's no longer has, and that it needs badly. Simply put, it's feeling. The more women's sports "rises" to the professional level, however, the more it looks like the men's game -- and the more boring it becomes.

-- George Beinhorn

Cathy Young fails to recognize that in the United States, with few exceptions, both male and female professional athletes are sold to the public in the same manner as presidents, movie stars and most public figures packaged as heroes: in sanitized, protective wrapping that is pleasing to the eye and devoid of any complicating reality. In this packaging system, women are married to or dating men, men are married to or dating women, and there is no such thing as an out-of-wedlock birth.

The packaging of professional athletes on television is about making money, not making social progress. Women playing sports is not new; what's new is that television advertisers have finally realized that female athletes are an untapped source of revenue. If social progress were the goal here, marketing decisions would not be made as they currently are, mostly by men or by a few women operating in a realm where so-called traditional definitions of women go largely unchallenged and a tight lid is kept on the personal lives of female athletes who don't fit the heterosexual norm. Advertisers rake in the dollars in this climate by minimally expanding images of women, cleverly offending none of them while simultaneously homogenizing all of them. Young states that women's "sports have been normalized as a part of mainstream American culture," and that this is "truly revolutionary." This event was not revolutionary, but inevitable.

-- Jana Panarites
Brooklyn, N.Y.

Run, Hillary, run
BY CHRISTOPHER HITCHENS (07/12/99)
I wonder whether Christopher Hitchens should, instead, point out that the leftist movement in the entire country has for quite some time been in dire straits? I understand he is writing specifically about the New York race for the U.S. Senate. But what about the big picture, about how the dynamic duo got to the White House in the first place? A movement that puts the Clintons in office as a liberal backlash to the horrors of the right-wing Republicanism of the previous decade deserved what it got. And now we will suffer the consequences, with the distinct possibility of frat-boy Bush being swept into the Oval Office on the basis of his fund-raising machine. I can only pray the backlash to that will be some serious liberal soul-searching in the first years of the new millennium.

-- Angelo Young
Tepic, Mexico

Hitchens is a grumpy old thing. More cogent questions this political season could be addressed to Gov. George Bush. Shouldn't we all be horrified at how easily he drums up multimillions, and at his utter lack of substance or even a position on any issue? He has not "governed" Texas in any way, since this is a "weak governor" state, a result of reconstruction in the last century. His sole successful business, a major-league baseball team, only achieved the financial heights it reached because of a deal cut with the local city government to condemn land for a stadium which the taxpayers then paid for. If I were Hitchens, I'd have a lot more questions to ask Bush than I could ever think of for Hillary Clinton.

-- Jennifer J. Mattingly
Austin, Texas

Digital divide is growing
ASSOCIATED PRESS (07/08/99)

As a single mother living in rural California (where some of us are still waiting for electricity), I contend that the issue here is not one of income or race, culture or locale. The critical factor in Internet usage is literacy. Of secondary importance, but still a significant factor, is the discipline to think sequentially and retentively. And, oh yes, let us not omit something as mundane as the ability to type. It's reading, writing, arithmetic.

-- Allena Hansen
Caliente, Calif.