At least the Pap smear spots clearly had women's health in mind — as opposed to say, their breasts. Broadsheet readers might recall Canada's Rethink Breast Cancer ad, which featured a pair of bouncing bikini-clad breasts and beseeched viewers to "save the boobs." It was a fun and sexy approach, but also one that assumes the plight of nice knockers will stir men into action faster than the living, breathing, thinking and feeling human being carrying them. Gents, there is equal opportunity for offense here.

On a similarly fratty note, Men for Women Now — which almost sounds caveman-like, right? — has enlisted all manner of male stars to talk about boobs in online videos. The thinking behind these spots seems to be that saying "boobs" enough just might make men give a shit about breast cancer. Again, here's an assumption that is offensive not only to women but perhaps especially to men. Kevin Connolly of "Entourage" delivers the following sales pitch for the group's Facebook application: "Really, what is Facebook all about — faces? Ha-ha! I don't think so. It's about boobs. Ladies go there to show 'em off. Guys go there to check 'em out. I mean, really, when you think about it, it should be called 'Boob-book.'"

Another spot features Bob Saget, who has turned his squeaky-clean image as the dad on "Full House" into a comedy routine in which he acts as filthy and unfatherly as possible. "I save breasts," he tells the camera with a straight face. "I keep them in a chest, which is kinda redundant, at the end of my bed, and sometimes I'll spray Pledge on them to keep them lemony fresh." He continues on with his particularly desperate brand of creep-out humor: "I give Pap smears door-to-door. It's just me, you can let me in. I'm a dad on TV — there's nothing to worry about."

The creator of Men for Women Now, Noreen Fraser, tells the Daily Beast that "men are kind of marginalized when it come to women’s cancers." She asks: "Why shouldn’t men stand up for women's cancers?" I absolutely agree. By all means, men should be encouraged to learn more about diseases that threaten women and share what they know with the ladies in their life. I just don't see salivating over boobs and telling jokes about breast-collecting psychos as very effective consciousness raising. That isn't to say there aren't men out there who can only be persuaded to care or even think about women's health by a pair of jiggling jugs or sexual innuendo. But, frankly, I think I'm better off without those guys thinking about the state of my breasts or cervix.

Take Kornblut's tips for "How to shatter the 'highest, hardest' glass ceiling," which include: Beat breast cancer. No, really. Surely, it's a tongue-in-cheek strategy suggestion, but given the number of female politicians who have successfully leveraged their triumph over the disease to improve their image — Florida Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz, Secretary of Homeland Security Janet Napolitano, Washington Gov. Christine Gregoire, Connecticut Gov. M. Jodi Rell — it might just be one of the best. By contrast, only Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin have provided evidence that advice like "Don't take women — especially young women — for granted" is sound.

Then there's the "Women Leadership Styles" piece (which notes that former Hewlett Packard CEO Carly Fiorina is "is pointing to her recent survival of breast cancer as evidence she is tough" in her campaign to unseat California Sen. Barbara Boxer), which identifies five models, including one ("The Businesswoman") that is admittedly "untested." Beyond that, the "Iron Lady" has a good track record internationally, but only Clinton and Madeleine Albright fall into that category in the U.S. We apparently favor "The Prosecutor" — e.g., Napolitano, Gregoire, Claire McCaskill, Amy Klobuchar, and Jennifer Granholm — although "The Young Mom" can sometimes be a crowd-pleaser. Reps. Wasserman Schultz, Stephanie Herseth Sandlin and Linda Sánchez have done all right with that, but then, the only female governor of Massachusetts, Jane Swift, might have been forced out because she gave birth while in office, and the other noteworthy figure in this category is Sarah Palin. On the upside, if Jane Swift waits until she's a bit older to try again, her maternal image could make her a fabulous "Grandmother in Pearls" — a love of children is evidently an asset as long as you're done raising them — à la Nancy Pelosi. Who, although she "is, after all, the most successful woman in American political history" is also the only woman working that particular model, making it not so much a "women leadership style" as "one woman's persona." And that's the whole list. (As Bitch Ph.D.'s M. Leblanc tweeted, "Women leaders, get them in ALL THE FLAVORS!!!")

So the path is clear for little girls who want to be politicians when they grow up: Become a successful prosecutor with young children and grandchildren simultaneously, and never let work interfere with your home life, or vice versa. Failing that, cultivate an image of toughness — and enough actual toughness to endure all the jokes about your either having testicles yourself or being inclined to remove other people's — or become CEO of a huge corporation and cross your fingers that that will work someday. Bonus points if you survive breast cancer. Oh, also, in the immortal words of Ani DiFranco (whom you probably shouldn't listen to unless you want to grow up to be some kind of commie, but still), "God help you if you are an ugly girl/'course too pretty is also your doom." If, like Clinton, you dare to have undereye bags in your 60s, you'll be savaged. If, like Pelosi, you have obvious work done to counter the criticism that you look too much like an actual aging woman, you'll be savaged for that, too. And if, like Granholm, you're younger and conventionally beautiful — hey, guess what! Also a problem! "Voters can find a woman attractive, but they don't necessarily think that translates into gravitas," writes Kornblut. Neither, apparently, do a Harvard law degree and experience as a prosecutor, at least until you fug yourself up in television ads. Says one of Granholm's advisors, "When we took it down a notch, people said, 'OK, she can be governor.'" God bless America.

And of course, there's Palin — an inescapable part of the conversation whether we're discussing beauty queen governors, female presidential contenders, moms of young children, the 2008 election or a laundry list of other issues. Her very omnipresence in articles and now books about women in politics only serves as a reminder of how few serious success stories there have been from which we can draw lessons for the future. Kornblut lumps her in with all the others in these short pieces, as though Palin's just one more highly accomplished woman butting her head into that glass ceiling, sidestepping the fact that — although she's taken her share of purely sexist criticism — the former Alaska governor's reputation suffers most because she distorts facts, presents ignorance as a virtue, translates the Constitution as saying that freedom of speech means freedom from criticism, et frickin' cetera. That this is one of the most visible women on the political stage — a fluke and a national embarrassment — is all the evidence necessary to prove that we still don't know jack about what it takes for a woman to succeed on merit at the highest levels. And when the number of successful female politicians is so pathetically small that even an expert on the subject is reduced to offering insights like, Umm, it probably helps to be an average-looking breast cancer survivor, and having kids is good except when it isn't, all that tells me is that we need to elect a hell of a lot more women before seeking patterns in their examples will be worth the trouble.

In tandem with Harriet Risen's biography of the same name, director Nancy Porter's film looks to be a lively portrait of a woman who was uncommonly clever and ambitious in a time when women were rarely prized for being either. And though she's a beloved literary heroine to generations for the book her editor described simply as "a girl's story," Alcott, it turns out, was also a hash-smoking, free-thinking, pulp fiction-writing one-of-a-kind American icon. Imagine the fanstastic blog she'd have if she were alive today.

Now, I'm all for reminding everyone that EC is an option up to 120 hours after sex, and if you're over 17 it's available without a prescription — consider yourself reminded! — but contraceptive campaigns targeted solely at women make me a little pissy. Where's the one encouraging men who showed up without a condom, or were right there when it broke, to send the women involved a helpful text message the next morning? "Sorry I was 2 wasted 2 put it on right, but if yr pharmacist isn't a fundie, u can get Plan B. Happy new year." Instead, this campaign asks women to look out for each other, by sending "humorous" texts from imaginary bad dates like the Iceberg Lettuce Connoisseur because, while you can't help your bestie with that drunken message to grandma, you can act like her meddling mother the next day.

It turns out there's a good reason the "Don't Drop the Ball" project was aimed at girlfriends, though. Samantha Levine, director of marketing and media relations for the National Institute for Reproductive Health, told me on the phone, "Obviously, I think we'd all agree that the onus shouldn't be solely on women," but they nixed the idea of encouraging men to take responsibility for emergency contraception for fear of anti-choice backlash. "Not that we ever want to cater to the antis," she said, "but there is this mythology out there that men will get women drunk and then force them to take EC," thanks to the usual "paternalistic concern that the woman's not a conscious player" in her own sexual and reproductive choices. So the people creating the campaign were "nervous" that aiming it at men would reinforce the notion that nefarious guys will use women for sex and then stick around long enough to shove pills down their throats instead of just hitting the road or wearing condoms in the first place. Or something. Oh, antis, your ability to concoct ever-more-absurd scenarios to deny that women have any sexual agency never ceases to amaze.

Don't get me wrong — with all due respect to women who freely choose to ring in the new year with a new dude, one of my first thoughts when I saw that EC use skyrockets after Dec. 31 was, "I wonder how much of that drunken, unprotected sex is nonconsensual — and where's the 'Hey, guys, if she's drunk on cheap champagne this New Year's, don't rape her!' campaign?" But I certainly didn't worry that the use of emergency contraception might be nonconsensual, on account of how I'm not nuts. So I can understand why the National Institute for Reproductive Health would want to avoid reinforcing that myth — and regardless of how it's accomplished, increasing awareness of morning (and then some)-after options is a good thing. Says Levine, "It's surprising how many people still don't know about it." Even in conversations with her friends, who are pretty well informed about contraception, she's found that a lot of women don't realize or forget that it exists. "We didn't need to do 'Make sure you go buy a condom,' because people know about that," she said. But for some women, that text from the Iceberg Lettuce Connoisseur on Jan. 1 just might come as an enormous relief.

Now consider the tale of Charlie Sheen — truther fruitbat and television's most highly compensated actor, who was arrested in Aspen, Colo., on Christmas following an 8:34 a.m. call to 911. After being booked for second-degree assault, menacing and criminal mischief, Sheen spent a night in jail, posted $8,500 bail, and is now set to return to Colorado next month to face charges. His wife, Brooke Mueller, with whom he has 9-month-old twin sons, meanwhile allegedly claimed Sheen threatened her with a knife — and then recanted her story after telling police she'd been drunk she when made the call. According to TMZ, Mueller tested at a blood alcohol level of 0.13, lending credence to her assertion of inebriation and giving Mr. and Mrs. Sheen a Christmas morning straight out of Norman Mailer.

And on the other side of the world this yuletide, Finnish ski jumping champion and Olympic medalist Matti Nykanen was arrested after allegedly spending his Christmas attempting to stab and strangle his wife. Nykanen was also arrested in 2004 for stabbing a companion in a bar fight.

Sheen's attorney Richard Cummins, meanwhile, told People on Saturday that Sheen and Mueller "have two children together and they love one another and they’re going to work through what is a difficult time and they’re going to do that together and as privately as possible."

The incident is far from Sheen's first domestic dispute. The hooker aficionado was arrested in 1996 for attacking then-girlfriend Brittany Ashfield and served two years' probation for the offense. More recently, his ex-wife Denise Richards detailed a laundry list of abusive behavior in her 2006 divorce papers, culminating in a showdown in which she says Sheen shoved her in front of her daughter and threatened to kill her — an incident which, notably, occurred on Dec. 30.

What is it about the ostensibly most wonderful time of the year that makes it so fraught with potential violence?

On PsychCentral earlier this month, Dr. David Schneider, chair of family and community medicine at St. Louis University, noted a toxic combination of factors that can push families over the edge. "There’s a lot of stress associated with the holidays, from pressure to provide for the family and money issues to spending more time with distant family," he said. "Domestic violence often revolves around high-stress times. Additionally, people tend to drink more alcohol around the holidays, and about half of all domestic violence occurs when either the perpetrator or victim is under the influence of alcohol."

And as Janet Scott-Mace, associate executive director at the Women's Center and Shelter of Greater Pittsburgh explained to the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review after a harrowing Christmas-morning standoff involving a local man and his pregnant girlfriend, "Anytime an outside stressor comes into play in families where there is abuse, the violence will escalate, especially over the holidays. Don't get me wrong — Christmas doesn't make families violent. But if there are domestic violence issues in the family, it often escalates."

We don't have to go all urban legend about on the worst times of year to get in a domestic dispute — it can happen at any time. A 2008 US Census report detailed more than 60,000 domestic violence calls in just one September day. Nor, as the incredibly murky details of both Woods' and Sheen's stories suggest, is the story always a straightforward case of male-on-female abuse — men make up approximately 15 percent of domestic violence victims.

One thing is clear — the pressure cooker period between Thanksgiving and New Year's is particularly, sometimes tragically, fraught for men and women who are already vulnerable — those with a history of violence and substance abuse, for example. And though they missed celebrating Christmas together, Sheen's wife has apparently belatedly given him something to remember her by — a restraining order.