A quick glance at today's Celebrity Skin page (not to be confused with Celebrity Body, devoted to Jessica Simpson's weight, Fergie's weight, Kate Hudson's weight, and Jim Carrey's beard -- and weight) reveals: “Leighton Meester wears lingerie, spreads legs," “Lady Gaga's 'Bad Romance' Video: Lingerie, Nudity, Vodka & Murder (WATCH),” "Eva Mendes Is Unbuttoned, Braless (PHOTOS, POLL)," “Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, British Reality Star, Shows Her Nipples,” and the fantastically self-explanatory "Vagina Exposed On 'So You Think You Can Dance'? (NSFW VIDEO)."

Is it weird that after reading through these headlines, it now burns when I pee?

Via email, a diligent colleague at Salon pointed out, “My investigation has shown the following text on the site: 'lingerie; spread legs; cleavage; unbuttoned braless; naked with wife; best breasts; nudity & vodka; star nude; best chest; bond girl nude; hottie; bare butt; bikini pictures.'" As a point of comparison, today’s front page of the Gawker porn site Fleshbot has the words “sexy, butt, asses, submission, footjob, burlesque, boobs.” Separated at birth?

It’s not that we require hard-hitting analysis behind every nip slip. We understand HuffPo is grabbing eyeballs (and whatever other body parts the audience will provide), and that no one clicks on something called “Celebrity Skin” with the expectation of C-Span’s Book TV. We further give props to the HuffPo for offering dozens and dozens of similar "Big News" pages, on subjects ranging from Pirates to Sleep to Women's Rights.

However: For a site founded by an ambitious, intelligent woman (albeit one who made her early reputation calling the women's movement "repulsive" and an attack "on the very nature of woman"), for a site that has attracted a stellar roster of contributors and is an admirable model of innovative social media experimentation, it’s a bummer to watch HuffPo lazily relying on a steady diet of T & A and crotch grabby headlines. It’s just so ... Old Media.

Yes, there are a few males on display here, too. Care to see Faizon Love’s ample posterior? Dying to know that “Rick Springfield To Bare Butt On 'Californication'”? Didn’t think so. Nope, mostly, Celebrity Skin is getting its page views on the backs – and formidable fronts – of women. Women who are more than their hooters, though you might not get that impression looking around HuffPo. If the 838 comments regarding Jennifer Connelly’s see-through dress or the 755 debating the best chest in Hollywood don't make you consider changing the name of your own site to allboobiesallthetime.com, you are far less cynical than I.

The fact that there's currently a counterpoint story from Susan Harrow, author of "Sell Yourself Without Selling Your Soul," stating that,  "I know flashing your flesh sells magazine covers and gets people involved in polls, but I find it discouraging at best" doesn't offer much solace. "If you'd rather people notice your insights than the size and shape of your breasts," she says, " then keep them under wraps -- or at least don't make them front and center." See, it's the stars' fault! They go around waving those things -- what are we supposed to do?

Maybe attracting readers is just a matter of putting together the right magnetic poetry collection of dirty words and a few soft-core photos of starlets. And one could argue that visitors come for the "Shauna Sand's SEX TAPE: Lorenzo Lamas' Ex's Explicit VIDEO" but they stay for the "Abortion Activists Reach Rural Tanzania." Why, then, does it feel desperate enough to tip over into downright aggressive, in a trying-too-hard, in-your-face, girls gone wild way? Whooooo-hoooooooo! By the way, butt, nipple, naked, spread, blow, moan, young, threesome, nude, naked naked naked!

HuffPo, please, we love you. Now put on your shirt and stop trying to make out with us.

Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling in The New York Times:

The Democratic majority has abandoned its platform and subordinated women's health to short-term political success. In doing so, these so-called friends of women's rights have arguably done more to undermine reproductive rights than some of abortion's staunchest foes. That Senate Democrats are poised to allow similar anti-abortion language in their bill simply underscores the degree of the damage that has been done.

Many women -- ourselves included -- warned the Democratic Party in 2004 that it was a mistake to build a Congressional majority by recruiting and electing candidates opposed to the party's commitment to legal abortion and to public financing for the procedure. Instead, the lust for power yielded to misguided, self-serving poll analysis by operatives with no experience in the fight for these principles. They mistakenly believed that giving leadership roles to a small minority of anti-abortion Democrats would solve the party's image problems with "values voters" and answer critics who claimed Democrats were hostile to religion.

Judith Warner, also in The Times:

[S]ome of the more insidious elements of the long-brewing antifeminist backlash have become an accepted part of our cultural landscape.

We've seen this for years in the way we talk about motherhood: celebrating selflessness, demanding an almost inhuman degree of child-centeredness, positioning the interests of mothers in opposition to those of their children, as our political and personal debates so often do. Nowhere has this come to be more true than in the abortion debate, in which anti-choice activists have pitted the lives of unborn children against the selfishness of their mothers.

And never was the false conflict between women's self-determination and the greater good more cruelly staged than in the dilemma that confronted the pro-choice Speaker of the House last Saturday night as she faced the decision of whether to let health reform -- desperately needed by children and families -- move forward with a such a considerable blow to women's rights embedded within it, or whether to allow it to die on the vine.

Eleanor Clift in Newsweek:

Pelosi, a practicing Catholic, has withstood verbal condemnation for her views from Catholic bishops throughout her political career, but meeting with them in her office at the Capitol on Saturday, they had the votes, and she didn't.

Pelosi had no choice, and to her credit, she understood that. Rep. Louise Slaughter, a New York Democrat and an Episcopalian, voiced outrage that the bishops could lobby so blatantly when their tax-exempt status should prevent such strong-arming, but those niceties were irrelevant with a make-or-break vote looming for health care.

And Katha Pollitt, ranting gloriously in The Nation:

Elections have consequences, you say? Exactly: Obama, the prochoice, prowoman candidate, won. Stupak didn't put him in the White House, and neither did the Catholic bishops or the white antifeminist welfare staters of Beinart's imagination. We did. And we deserve better from Obama than sound bites like "this is a healthcare bill, not an abortion bill." Abortion is healthcare. That's the whole point.

What makes the Stupak fiasco especially pathetic is the fumbling response from prochoicers. Missouri Democrat Claire McCaskill would not be in the Senate today were it not for prochoice and feminist supporters like EMILY's List. How does she thank us? By telling Joe Scarborough that Stupak isn't so bad, that it won't affect "the majority of America"--just low-income women--and that it's "an example of having to govern with moderates." So people who'll tip healthcare reform into the trash unless it blocks abortion access are the moderates now! (McCaskill took it back later that day, but the damage was done.) If I ever give that woman another dime, shoot me.

Finally, some great minds over at Urban Dictionary are offering definitions of "Stupak," which aren't quite as evocative as Dan Savage's definition of "Santorum," but still make for fun reading. The only problem is choosing which one deserves to become official. Should it be a noun meaning "A medical condition(subset of sepsis) resulting from unsafe -- unnecessarily so -- back alley abortions as a result of the 'Stupak Amendment' to the 2009 Health Care Reform Bill"? An adjective meaning "imposing religious beliefs of one group on another, especially through legislation or financial pressure"? ("You thought that forcing schools to teach creationism was stupak? How about forcing poor women into back alley abortions? That's the stupakest thing I've ever heard.") Or a verb meaning, "To do something ridiculous, silly, moronic, stupid, asinine, idiotic, etc."? ("Wow you really stupaked that Health Care bill in the House.") I can't decide, so for now, let's just say the Democrats have really stupaked us with this stupak amendment, and when the stupak restrictions on funding for legal medical services cause women to die of stupak, it'll be on their heads.

 

It doesn't exactly make for an upbeat Spice Girls anthem, but it's honest. "Having it all" -- a baby and a high-powered career -- is no walk in the park. That doesn't mean it isn't worth the effort -- in fact, Berry very much wants girls to aim for the stars -- but she also wants them to have realistic expectations, so that when they encounter this high-wire act they don't blame themselves for finding it challenging. "Women can feel very guilty, whatever path they choose," she said. "It is as if they have somehow compromised their principles. What we can do as teachers is prepare them to have aspirations, but not aim for perfection."

Berry doesn't want girls to settle, though, she just wants them to have fair expectations of themselves -- and their partners. "There is nothing wrong with them saying 'I need to work part-time' or 'I need a significant degree of support in order to enable me to do my career and have children,'" she said. "If you choose someone who undervalues you, you won't be able to have the support you might need." In short, if your partner doesn't respect you as both a career woman and a mother, you might end up having to trade one for the other.

Maybe, just maybe if we were more honest with girls about the challenges that lie ahead, women would be less likely to blame themselves for ultimately falling short -- and more likely to fight for the support that mothers and families need.

I saw this ad, in which a short-shorted woman tries to give a serious spiel on the sneakers, only to be distracted by the camera dude constantly zooming in on her sweet ass, while watching Hulu the other night. So this is definitely a real thing Reebok paid for. 

This morning, I saw a Tweet from The Illusionists, asking, "Is this uber-sexist (and NSFW) Reebok ad authentic?!?" with a link to what you see below. Because I didn't want to wake my husband sleeping in the next room and didn't know where my headphones were, I watched it with the sound down -- and having already seen the first ad, I concluded that this must be a parody. I mean, the camera does nothing but linger on a woman's breasts in a demi-cup bra for a full 20 seconds, before it switches to an ass shot, and then the shoes it's actually advertising. Whoever made it had to be sending up the whole idea of using sexualized body parts to sell sneakers to women, right?

Then I found my headphones. And noticed that the ad is called "Dialogue." As in, a dialogue between this woman's breasts.

Righty: Hey, did you see? Nobody's staring at us anymore. 

Lefty: Are we still hot? 

Righty: Clearly! You know what? It's all because of that stupid butt down there.

You get the idea. Now that the ass is 28% more toned and thus getting all the attention, the boobs are jealous. And that, my friends, is how you use a close-up on breasts to sell sneakers.

You know, advertising teaches me something new every day. All those times I got pissed off about a guy staring at my chest instead of talking to my face? My poor breasts were probably hurt that I stole their thunder. Would you believe I never even considered their feelings, much less the real possibility of internecine conflict between them and my butt? I just kept acting like only my brain should be allowed an opinion on whether being leered at is a positive thing, never realizing that my tits might feel all purposeless and empty inside if they go unwatched. What an appalling lack of empathy on my brain's part.

I trust I don't need to repeat my rant from yesterday on why companies trying to sell women products with images that appeal primarily to heterosexual men is infuriating. But the depressing question I didn't get to in that post is: How well does it work? Sterling-Cooper lost the Patio account with the Ann-Margret ripoff Peggy objected to, but Reebok paid for these and paid to run them. (Well, at least one -- has anyone seen the boob ad somewhere other than YouTube?) Some decision-maker was confident that women will be so enchanted by the thought of being ogled more often, they'll run out and buy these shoes. And what's really scary to consider is, they might not be wrong -- not entirely, anyway. When I ran the ads by a feminist friend this morning, she agreed that they were outrageous and insulting, but admitted she was still intrigued by the thought of toning her butt with no extra work. Even if women buy the product in spite of the ads, enough of them doing that will give the impression that the marketing strategy was brilliant.

But here's an interesting data point: According to a recent report, the undisputed market leader in athletic footwear is Nike, a company that's been selling women's shoes with ads that emphasize active participation in sports, not ogle-worthiness, since the '90s. Nike's far from perfect, of course, but when they used boobs, they belonged to Serena Williams and appeared under her crossed, muscular arms and a high-necked T-shirt that read "Athlete," with the caption, "Are you looking at my titles?" When they used close-ups on female body parts and copy about how others might perceive them, it was with text like, "My mother worries I will never marry with knees like these. But I know there's someone out there who will say to me: I love you and I love your knees," and "My butt is big and that's just fine. And those who might scorn it are invited to kiss it." If the new Reebok ads help the company knock Nike out of the top spot, then I'll admit that they made good business sense (after I'm done sobbing), but as it is, the market leader is the one that uses images of strong women who care more about being athletic than being pretty. The market leader is the one that figured out how to sell a major female fantasy: being treated with at least a modicum of respect by advertisers.