If all that isn't persuasive enough, a fuzzy screenshot of the moment is included so the Internet can weigh in on the question of the hour: Shadow or nipple? Says Sklar, "My last-night TV rewind told me nipple, but here's why I will argue for it based on a small, unclear still: Note the difference in how one side of the jumpsuit is cut to the other side. The 'V' of the decolletage is not symmetrical." Lawyered! Also, seriously?

I'm still not convinced there was visible nip, nor am I convinced I should care. If you'd like to investigate for yourself, Mediaite has clips. Personally, now I just want to watch the "Bad Romance" video all day instead of working. Perhaps you'd care to join me. 

The video introduction does show us several snapshots of the girls with sweat pouring down their faces and posing in their jerseys -- scenarios that are actually relevant to the game -- but the glamour shots are garnering controversy. Each player has a bio paired with a photo of her in a shiny dress lounging in or against a limo. One group shot captures the whole team inside the luxury vehicle, their uncomfortable grinning faces reflected in the metallic ceiling. As a university press release explains, the intended message of the site is: "Women athletes are powerful and beautiful" -- assuming they're gussied up like princesses. There's nothing subversive about the site. It's not like they're shown playing a game in their gowns, makeup smeared by sweat and dresses torn to tatters at their feet, or absurdly attempting to pass a ball between their legs while wearing a floofy floor-length skirt. This isn't a critical commentary on the sad limitations of beauty ideals, it's a desperate attempt to conform to them.

I suspect this isn't merely an attempt at sexing up female athletes in order to improve the team's visibility. Carnal Nation points to "Training Rules," a new documentary about homophobia in women's collegiate sports. The film focuses on the story of Rene Portland, the Penn State University women's basketball coach who was accused of repeatedly discriminating against players she suspected to be a lesbians. Female basketball players have long had to fight against the stereotype that they're gay and, after watching the preview for "Training Rules," it's hard not to wonder whether this straight-gals-going-to-the-prom photo-shoot is evidence that it's still the case.

We can all easily sketch out the differences between the sexes: Women have breasts, ovaries, a uterus and a vagina; men have testicles and a penis -- end of story, right? For most folks, it is, but then there are the exceptions: A person can be born with one testicle and one ovary, or with a penis, uterus and ovaries. Someone with XY chromosomes can have both a vagina and undescended testes because of a condition that blocks their bodies from responding to testosterone. You can have two X chromosomes, one of which is merged with a region of the Y chromosome. And, and, and ...

I could easily go on, if you had a couple of hours. As Alice Dreger, author of “Hermaphrodites and the Medical Invention of Sex,” tells Levy, "People always press me: 'Isn't there one marker we can use?' No. We couldn't then and we can't now, and science is making it more difficult and not less, because it ends up showing us how much blending there is and how many nuances, and it becomes impossible to point to one thing, or even a set of things, and say that’s what it means to be male."

The International Association of Athletic Federations, which is investigating Semenya's sex -- still! -- "does not define the criteria that its group of experts must use to reach their determination," Levy reports. Dreger, a professor at Northwestern University's Feinberg School of Medicine, refers to it as the unscientific "I know it when I see it" approach. Worse still, the organization allows for any athlete to undergo testing if someone, anyone raises a stink about his or her sex. In Semenya's case, all it took was a speculative blog post and the gender hounds were unleashed. The good news is that IAAF is holding a conference at the start of the new year to review its policy -- but it's hard to be too optimistic about the outcome considering that they're asking the wrong question to begin with.

Levy, however, asks the right question: "If sex is not precisely definable, how else might sports be organized?" She considers a couple of different solutions to this foundation-shaking query: There is the possibility of categorizing athletes "by size, as they are in wrestling and boxing" (downside: "women would usually lose to men") or "skill level" (downside: "the strongest elite female athletes would [almost always] compete against the weakest elite male athletes"). A more drastic scientific approach would be "to divide athletes biochemically" since testosterone has an enormous impact on athletic performance. In that case, "the division would be determined not by gender but by actual physical advantages that gender supposedly, yet unreliably, supplies," she concludes.

Of course, international athletic competition isn't about fairness and equality; ultimately, someone is supposed to win. "Different bodies have physical attributes, even abnormalities, that may provide a distinct advantage in one sport or another," she argues. For example: The many N.B.A. players with a condition that causes growth hormones to go into overdrive and the double-jointed Michael Phelps with his primate-like arms and legs. If the speculation about Semenya's biology is true, why is her particular abnormality worth policing? The IAAF attempts to control for potential physical advantages by dividing athletes by sex, as opposed to any other criterion because it's the easiest shorthand we have -- in sports and generally in navigating day-to-day life -- but this case shows just how incredibly fallible it can be. Unfortunately, Semenya is suffering now because it's so much easier to point the finger at her than it is to call into question the way we've organized sports -- and, as Levy puts it, "the way we've organized our entire world."

All right, I'll officially say that's a good thing. And now Sady Doyle, occasional Broadsheet contributor and blogmistress of the fabulously named Tiger Beatdown, has gone and given me yet another feminist angle on "Twilight" to consider. ("Twilight" is officially the new Sarah Palin: I hate everything it stands for, but since so much of the reaction to it is sexist, I keep feeling compelled to defend it. Sigh.)

Doyle admits to a fondness for Robert Pattinson, who plays vampire Edward Cullen in the series, although she does not admit it's partly because he's hot. Other than that, she covers the reasons why I, too, am fond of the surprisingly candid and self-aware young star -- "Robert Pattinson talks shit about the projects he is in. Robert Pattinson is honest about the fact that he is not the best actor" -- with a bonus articulation of something I'd never considered: "And Robert Pattinson's main source of employment is facilitating his own objectification, which he does, but also complains about all the time. Robert Pattinson is... Megan Fox, basically!

That Fox/Pattz comparison is so apt, Sady's not even the only ladyblogger in my Google reader who made it today. And the difference in our reaction to each of those actors' being subjected to an audience's lustful gaze says a lot about who's meant to be looked at and who's meant to be listened to in this culture. "People outside the superfan matrix don't tend to have strong feelings about The Pattz," she writes, "but they do tend to get all squirmy and giggly and uncomfortable with the way that so many women relate to his filmed image (for example, by screen-printing it on their underpants) and/or his person." All that raw, ridiculous, pointless lust is just so unseemly. And when The Pattz speaks in interviews about how strange and oppressive it is to be the object of a million fangirl fantasies, or how awful his character is ("the more I read the script, the more I hated this guy"), those of us outside the superfan matrix like him more for it. That poor guy! He can't go anywhere! People expect him to be something he's not, just because he's good-looking and plays such a one-dimensional character, desperate people can project whatever they want onto him. Isn't that sad? But that whiny, stupid Fox girl, on the other hand -- where does she get off complaining about getting paid to look hot? "We have no problem with objectifying Megan Fox," says Doyle. "We just have a problem with everything she says, and specifically the things she says wherein she takes issue with being objectified. We just hate her."

Much like we hate those women buying Edward Cullen underpants (among other products) and making Robert Pattinson's life difficult. "Because those women are acting in a way that is typically reserved for men. And they're treating Pattinson like a girl." The objectification of women in pop culture, writes Doyle, is both so common as to go unnoticed and inevitably "tacky as all hell, aesthetically."

[A]nd so criticizing it, in an aesthetic way, seems pointless. Congratulations, you went looking for art in a product intended to provide boners and came up empty. Surprise! But when girls do the exact same thing -- when they prove themselves capable of the exact same sort of objectification, and the exact same goofiness or tackiness or unrealistic fantasy in the name of getting off -- well, it freaks people out. It's weird. Why are they acting like this? Don't they know that Robert Pattinson is a person? Why are they treating him like a big chunk of meat? Why doesn't Edward Cullen act like a real guy would? Etcetera!

Let me be clear: I think those are all perfectly reasonable questions. It's just that I think they're perfectly reasonable questions to ask about the objectification of Megan Fox, and every other Action Movie Girlfriend in history, as well. Treating a man just as poorly as women have long been treated in films made for young male audiences is not the kind of gender equality that gives me hope for the future. But thinking critically about why folks become so offended when they see that happening might, in fact, lead to a bit of progress. Why is it so unsettling to see a young male actor dehumanized, but not his female counterpart? Why do we sympathize with a man saying it's hard to be nothing but a pretty face, but vilify a woman who says it? Whether or not you can answer those questions, if you can at least spot the difference, you are obliged to do one of two things. In Doyle's words: "Be less weirded out by the fact that ladies are getting all freaky about Robert Pattinson. Or be MORE weirded out by the dudes getting all het up about various lady movie stars."

For now, I'd recommend both. Ultimately, I'd love to see more movies made for all audiences that go beyond a cheap appeal to our basest fantasies; recognizing and resisting objectification of anyone in pop culture is a goal dear to my heart. But it would also be nice if, in the meantime, people recognized that women and teenaged girls have our own base fantasies, and quit acting like it's headline news that we have real human libidos, which are sometimes activated by pretty young things who stand around doing very little in blockbuster movies. Just as surely as "New Moon" has proven that catering to a female audience can be as lucrative as catering to young men, it's proven that one-dimensional sex objects can sell to lady audiences as well. So, while it may not get beyond one obnoxious stereotype of female desire -- violent, overprotective dudes get us hot! -- at least it busts the myth that there's no such thing.