Oklahomans who believe in a little thing called the "right to privacy" can breathe a big sigh of relief, for now. Late Friday, a judge extended a temporary restraining order against a bill that would publish online extensive details about women's abortions. Now, enforcement of the law will be set aside until a February 19 hearing on its constitutionality, thanks to a lawsuit by the Center for Reproductive Rights. In a press release, staff attorney Jennifer Mondino said the organization is "very pleased with today’s ruling" because "women in Oklahoma should not have to jump through hoops to access legal medical care."
The loathsome law, which we've written about before, requires women to fill out a highly personal 10-page questionnaire before they terminate a pregnancy. In particular, the cross-examination focuses on the reason for the woman's decision to have an abortion. Answers are then posted anonymously on a state Web site that can be accessed by anyone -- next-door neighbors, parents, friends, you name it. Despite the results showing up without a name or address attached, it's still possible -- especially in a small town -- for women's identities to be discovered. Even the most amateur of detectives could visit the site and put together the various puzzle pieces -- age, marital status, race and approximate gestational age of the (note the bill's wording here) "unborn child subject to abortion."
The measure's anti-abortion bent is clear, but proponent Sen. Todd Lamb insists it's just a way to "collect hard data that can be a useful tool in helping prevent future unwanted pregnancies." But, as Linda Meek, executive administrator of the Tulsa clinic Reproductive Services, brilliantly told NPR, "If they want to reduce the number of abortions, then they need to concentrate on educating women about preventing unwanted pregnancies, educating them about emergency contraception, birth control -- and making birth control more accessible." Yes, if only they were actually interested in education and prevention.
An iPhone app released by Pepsi attracted harsh criticism a few months ago for a premise so blatantly sexist that it was eventually yanked from the store. But "Amp Up Before You Score," which doled out pickup lines pegged to 24 female stereotypes, is but a twinkling star in the galaxy of offensive apps that have snuck past Apple's notoriously stringent store guidelines. Without further ado, I present to you the five most sexist apps of the year.
PMSTracker: Unlike apps designed to help women keep track of their own menstrual cycle, this one is meant specifically for men. It "allows you to quickly track the approximate time each woman in your life has PMS" using a color-coded method that functions much like the U.S. government's terror alert system -- only it's red alert, severe chance of PMS attack!
Shake That Booty: This app allows you to manipulate an image of a woman's butt -- or, as the official app description calls it, "BOOTY!" -- by physically shaking your phone. Of course, this jiggle fest is presented as something that she desperately wants so players don't have to feel guilty. Look at that: Everyone wins!
Pole Dancing: "Get these hot girls to spin around a stripper pole by shaking your iPhone/iPod touch from side to side! Even better, clap, yell, make some noise and they will spin around at your command." Control her without even forming complete sentences -- just a few claps or grunts will do!
Michelle: She's your brand "new virtual girlfriend" and "can be who you want her to be." You can take Michelle "to the beach or pool and choose which bikini or bathing suit she should wear." Guess this one's for the guys whose parents never let them play with dolls.
iControl Her: Here's another riff on the apparent desire of many app developers to have complete power over virtual women. iControl Her is an actual remote that appears on the iPhone screen, with such clever buttons as "Stop Whining," "Clean" and "Give Me Beer." Here's an idea: Develop a remote for women with a button that reads, "Delete that app and stop being such a jerk."
My mom had a handy phrase for those moments when she realized she sounded exactly like Grandma: "My mother's in my mouth." As a kid who took everything too literally, I found that image downright frightening, and even now, I still wrinkle my nose involuntarily when I think about it. But I do think about it all too frequently, because every time I catch myself sounding mom-like, that's the inevitable next thought. "Nearly every parent has had that moment at which they open their mouths and sound just like their mother," writes Lisa Belkin at the New York Times' Motherlode blog today -- and my childless self is here to tell you, it's not just parents. But a recent survey commissioned by The Baby Website found that having kids only exacerbates the problem: "Eight out of ten of today's mothers admit they use the very same cliches to discipline their children that they had to endure from their own parents."
At the risk of reading too much into a marketing survey, what I find interesting about the results is that many of the top recycled parental admonishments listed by respondents (which, despite the British inflections, will mostly be familiar to Americans) seem to fly in the face of today's parenting standards -- at least as those are conveyed to the public by today's trend pieces. "Stop crying or I'll give you something to cry about" (No. 17) seems an awfully harsh (and, one does hope, hollow) threat at a time when "shouting is the new spanking." "Do as I say, not as I do" (No. 20) seems a dangerous tactic to use in an era when mothers, especially, are judged narcissistic and unfit for such poor role-model behavior as drinking, dating, swearing or thinking about themselves for five minutes. And the number one classic, "Because I said so," contradicts everything the media has taught me about the perils of issuing commands rather than reasoning with small children. If people are really still saying these things to their kids, then I just don't know what to believe about the current generation of parents, which the New York Times has assured me is a "pregnancy-flaunting, soccer-cheering, organic-snack-proffering" one, with mothers who "warn, 'You're making bad choices' when, say, someone doesn't want to brush his teeth." Now you're telling me they actually sound just like the last generation of parents? That means I'll have to formulate a whole new set of smug judgments.
Kidding aside, while I relate to the surprise of realizing you just said something that annoyed the hell out of you when your mother said it twenty years ago (even if I haven't had the experience of annoying my own child that way) it bums me out a bit that it's so often presented as not just shocking, but horrifying. It's always, "Oh my god, I sound exactly like my mother!" not, "Huh, I guess one of Mom's lessons actually sunk in." Sure, some of the sayings could stand to be retired (do kids really find the promise of improved night vision a compelling reason to eat carrots?), but a lot of them have lasted because they're genuine bits of wisdom scaled to a kid's comprehension level. (I mean, would you jump off a cliff if all your friends did?) And moms don't say them because giving birth automatically turns women into short-tempered killjoys, but because they have the thankless job of teaching tiny human beings with "high mobility and no brains" (that's a direct quote from my mother) right from wrong, safe from unsafe, and appropriate from inappropriate. No matter what the current parenting wisdom is when you have kids -- and no matter how much technology and the cultural landscape have changed -- that task poses the same basic challenges generation after generation.
I may never say, "My mother's in my mouth" -- because, ew -- but nine years after my mom's death, I find it far more comforting than irritating to realize how much she's still there in my mind. Acknowledging that you're just like your mother is always presented as a depressing moment in a woman's life, but couldn't it be that some of us turn out like our moms because deep down, we think they did a pretty good job? Deep down, we might even think they're good people to emulate? If I ever have kids, I'm sure I'll do a lot of things differently than my parents did, but I'll tell you this much: If one of them wants an air rifle for Christmas, I already know what my response will be (No. 4).
Perhaps the one surprise left in the ongoing, slow motion, almost guaranteed to end in divorce court disaster that is the Tiger Woods scandal is that it's taken this long to turn it into a porn movie. Maybe it's because this story came with porn stars pre-installed.
While Holly Sampson revealed recently that her own adult version of the Tiger tale is "in the works," Adam & Eve Pictures are already on the job with an"official" porn parody, under the inevitable title "Tiger's Wood."
That's right, pornography is at last going to explore the issue of black men getting it on with well-endowed blondes. Adult star Tyler Knight, who's playing the title role, is currently merrily tweeting his updates from the set. And Kayden Kross, who's playing the Elin role, self-deprecatingly describes herself as "adding yet another blond pantyless spray tanned breakdown to the list." Potentially kookiest aspect of the whole thing? There's a buttoned-up Gloria Allred character -- though no word yet on whether she'll be on the receiving end of what the film refers to as his "long drive." All we do know is that at the rate Woods's conquests are coming forward, this thing had better have a cast of thousands.
Below, our beloved Sarah Haskins recaps the lessons in womanhood offered by advertisers in 2009, and explains how to "make yourself a better lady in 2010." First step: "Stop asking dumb questions like, 'Is Congress using us as a pawn in the healthcare debate?' and start asking, 'Are my boobs jealous of my butt?"
Whoever said money can't buy happiness must have been talking about men, people. Watch and learn.
A year and a half after her approval rating hit a low of 44 percent, Michelle Obama is now enjoying the "overall favorable" opinion of many more Americans -- 68 percent, according to a recent Marist College Institute for Public Opinion poll. Even 67 percent of Republican women gave the first lady a thumbs-up in an April Pew poll. Lynn Sweet at Politics Daily says the reason for the change is clear: "She has done this by framing herself as a wife, mother, daughter and sister, not trying to redefine the role of first lady, limiting interviews and staying militantly noncontroversial. "
It's not like this analysis comes as a surprise, but seeing it all spelled out -- with the implication that it's a brilliant strategy future first ladies would do well to take note of -- was a kick in the gut nonetheless. Consider: "Mrs. Obama has become a fashion plate, a mom who attends the soccer and basketball games of daughters Malia and Sasha, a woman who works on her tennis game, and an executive who presides over a staff of around two dozen in the East Wing" -- but don't get excited about that last part, because the staff is there to "help her execute her limited, but safe agenda." Also: "The only new ground Mrs. Obama has broken has been her wildly successful White House kitchen garden." And then there's this approving quote from presidential historian Douglas Brinkley: "She hasn't gone the Hillary Clinton or Eleanor Roosevelt route of becoming a shrill policy advocate." Yes, he said "shrill." But thankfully, Michelle and her two Ivy League degrees and decades of professional experience are not! They are far too busy planting vegetables and delivering toys to needy children and working on their tennis game to go shrilly meddling in manly business.
Don't get me wrong, I'm happy that people love Michelle now; it's a lot better than the alternative. And I understand that the combination of racism, sexism and widespread hatred of all things vaguely liberal leave her little choice but to fly under the radar as much as possible, lest she become a disproportionate distraction. But the more I see this narrative recycled -- Michelle is so smart for recasting herself as non-threatening, maternal and basically empty-headed! -- the more I toggle between anger and despair. What's left out is that she was forced to work overtime establishing herself as a caricature of traditional femininity because when she acted like herself, too many people missed the obvious: that she never was threatening, that she always had an apparently wonderful relationship with her daughters -- cultivated while her husband was constantly traveling to build his political career -- and that her brains were a major asset to the whole family. Also left out: how she feels about being at the mercy of image consultants who apparently decided there was nothing wrong with her that a belted cardigan and a lobotomy wouldn't fix.
"Happy Mrs. Obama should be," writes Sweet, based entirely on those approval numbers. And maybe she is, even. But I can't read a story like this without thinking back to the New York Times magazine profile of the first marriage, in which Jodi Kantor asks both Obamas "how any couple can have a truly equal partnership when one member is president." The president hems and haws, then jokes that "My staff worries a lot more about what the first lady thinks than they worry about what I think." But Michelle doesn't settle for blowing off the question. "Clearly Barack's career decisions are leading us," she says. "They're not mine; that's obvious. I'm married to the president of the United States. I don't have another job, and it would be problematic in this role. So that -- you can't even measure that."
He's running the free world, she's costarring in public service announcements with Elmo. And time and again, as her image becomes more traditionally feminine and toothless, we're told not only that this is a turn of events worth celebrating, but that she should be applauded for recognizing the danger of stating an opinion more controversial than "Exercise is good for you." The primary evidence of her intelligence and political savvy is that she now knows better than to offer any evidence of her intelligence and political savvy -- and the more she behaves in a relentlessy ladylike and "militantly non-controversial" manner, the more she's lauded as an excellent role model for young girls. Fantastic.
If a pollster called me right now, I would count myself among those with an overall favorable impression of the first lady, but it's not because of how she's changed -- it's because I hope that secretly, she hasn't. It's because I hope this Donna Reed veneer is artificial and temporary, that she's just riding out the presidency without making waves, so she can say, "Now it's my turn" when it's over. It's entirely possible that I'm wrong about that and projecting way too much onto a woman I will never know. But since that's all any of us are really doing, I like my version a lot better than the one that's made her so uncontroversially adored.
It's Hard Being An Egalitarian
40 Years After Rossi, Mommies Propagate Prejudice
