Broadsheet
Parade shames Gloucester Girls
Look, it takes a lot to shock me, especially when it comes to the content of local parades. After all, I live in San Francisco, home of the Folsom Street Fair, the world's largest leather event, and grew up across the Bay attending the whacked-out "How Berkeley can you be!?" parade. I've seen naked hippies, leather chaps, walking penises and cross-dressing nuns on my walk to the neighborhood grocery store. But my jaw went crashing to the floor when I came across a video of last weekend's parade in Beverly Farms, Mass.; I have never before witnessed such a trashy town exhibition. Every year, participants in the Horribles Fourth of July Parade are encouraged to "comment on local, state, or national events" and, oh, did they! The target of choice this year: the so-called Gloucester Girls, the high school students who maybe, possibly made a pregnancy pact.
The slut-shaming fun starts with a float with signs reading, "Knock 'em up high where expectations are low, Gloucester, MA," "G.H.S. girls went to band camps came back pregnant tramps," "Get your greasy pole out of that hole," "She smelled like tuna I should have pulled out soona," and -- wait for it! -- "Sluts missed sex ed." A fake classroom is set up on the float and a boy dressed as a woman stands in the back giving birth. Oh, and did I mention that hanging above the float is an oversize penis squirting a mysterious liquid? Because there is.
It gets worse. After a skit by two adolescent girls dressed as a drugged-out Amy Winehouse and umbrella-wielding Britney Spears, comes a float featuring six teen girls sexily hip-shaking while rubbing, thrusting and bouncing their fake baby bumps to "I Got It From My Momma." They are complemented by colorful posters reading, "We got humped now we've got bumps," "Jamie-Lynn led us to sin" and "We didn't use a rubber now we're stuck cooking supper."
The shining star of the show, however, is a float featuring a dummy of a pregnant woman lying on a surgical table with her legs spread. The grand finale: Grown men wearing diapers and oversize baby bonnets come running out of ... her vagina. The float is flocked by man-babies riding on tandem bicycles and signs reading, "If you are pregnant you are cool," "Maternity is a bitch then you graduate" and "Want to go on a whale watch? We hump for free!"
As evidenced by the crowd, this is a family-friendly event. Get that, boys and girls? If you follow in the footsteps of the girls in neighboring Gloucester, you'll be shamed in front of the entire town!
Frankly, I'm horrified and speechless. Just watch:
Obama and late-term abortion
Editor's note: Salon published an article by Kate Michelman and Frances Kissling on the Democrats and abortion rights. Kissling forwarded this addition after the piece was published.
When Kate and I wrote our piece last week, "Are Democrats Backpedaling on Abortion Rights?", Obama's comments to Relevant magazine on mental distress and late-term abortions had not been published. Speaking only for myself, I was troubled by them. Not because Obama holds that late-term abortions (and I assume he means those in the third trimester) should be the legal exception rather than the rule. Roe holds that the states can prohibit third-trimester abortions for health reasons, although it does not specify a method for determining this. Several pro-choice members of Congress are on record as supporting limiting such abortions to circumstances where there are serious health risks for the woman. These members have never suggested excluding mental health risks.
It is not clear if Obama is further narrowing the meaning of serious mental health risks or simply saying that mild "distress" is not a serious diagnosable condition and would not qualify as an exception. That would leave open what other mental health conditions would be serious health grounds for a third-trimester abortion. I hope this is what he meant.
At the same time the remark smacks of the kind of pandering I am worried about. To satisfy those opposed to all abortions, candidates are willing to make remarks that diminish women's moral sensibilities as well as rights and feed into right-wing antiabortion beliefs that women and doctors will find a loophole to allow abortion under any circumstance at any time in pregnancy. For Obama to feed into that sentiment, even unwittingly, is unacceptable.
The limits or boundaries to a pro-choice position are not carved in stone. Some supporters have absolutely no limits and believe abortion should be purely the decision of the woman whatever stage of pregnancy. They are in a distinct minority, numbering about 17 percent of the population. Most pro-choice supporters, including me, believe some limits are reasonable especially if one believes that some balance between women's autonomy and rights and fostering a society in which life in all its forms is respected would be wise. It would take more space than I have now to flesh out that concept, but at a minimum, viewing abortion in the third trimester as an exception over which medical evaluation is appropriate is beyond the pale of pro-choice views.
What is actually most absurd about the way we talk about third-trimester abortions is the sqeamishness about acknowledging that the most frequent reason for such abortions has little to do with women's health and more to do with fetal health and child survival. These abortions occur when women discover late in wanted pregnancies that the fetus is so severely damaged that birth would result in a condition that is incompatible with child survival and well-being.
PSAs in your panties?
Imagine: Before your upcoming tropical beach vacation, you head to the local department store in search of a mid-summer discount on a string bikini. You sift through the racks thinking only of paper drink umbrellas, strawberry daiquiris and your soon-to-be wicked tan. The worst thing on your mind: today's bikini waxing.
That is, until you head to the dressing room with a swimsuit flirtatiously monogrammed with cherries and begin to slip the suit on. Right there in the crotch of these cutesy bikini bottoms is a sanitary liner that jolts you out of your pampered and privileged life -- and not because you're horrified by the realization that the suit has come into contact with other people's private bits. The hygienic protector is a new advertisement for the Association of Women Against Genital Mutilation that features an image of a rusty razor blade and the words, "Every year 2 million girls worldwide are unable to avoid genital mutilation."
This makes Amnesty International's attempt last year at fighting female genital mutilation with a series of advertisements featuring roses with their petals sewn together look relatively subtle and unobtrusive. When the campaign made its debut, the New York copywriter behind the blog Copyranter wrote: "I think the words 'genital mutilation' are more powerful than any visual." This new ad campaign seems an exception to that rule, because it's more than just images and words -- its power is in its placement. The message is: While you are shopping for that just-right swimsuit that makes you feel sexy and comfortable in your own skin, girls' genitals are being mutilated with razor blades.
That being said, while you shop for groceries, people are starving; when you climb into bed at night, there are people sleeping on the streets; and while you have blissful consensual sex, women are being raped. We should think of these things often, of course, but should we be confronted with these realities at every turn of our daily routine? It's an advertising assault and a slippery slope. Is there no place -- not even the crotch of bikini bottoms -- that is advertising-free? First, your bikini bottoms are alerting you to the horrors of female genital mutilation; next, your Victoria's Secret panties are questioning the freshness of your nether-region and recommending Vagisil Deodorant Powder.
What do Broadsheeters think: Is this ad campaign an effective way to raise awareness about a horrific practice or is it, as Copyranter suggested, a form of "mental mutilation"?
(Image via Copyranter)
Jezebels without a cause
I love Jezebel. I try to read it every day, and whenever I do, I'm impressed at the way the site traded in Gawker's needling, East Coast cynicism for a kicky, smart-girl enthusiasm, so that spending an hour there never feels like bathing in bile. When I talk to recent female college graduates with writerly aspirations, rarely do they want to work for the Times or (god forbid) Newsweek; often, they want to work for Jezebel.
Like many Jezebel readers, I must cop to a minor fascination with the site's two most prominent personalities -- Moe Tkacik and Tracie Egan, who goes by the moniker "Slut Machine." (I believe that's a Shakespeare reference.) Both were great additions to the Nick Denton dramatis personae: They are deeply opinionated, prolific, and gleefully willing to broadcast their own damage. It's probably just a personal preference, but I've been less interested in Moe -- who is capable of political analysis but too often lets herself run off the rails -- than I have been with Egan, a feminist singularly devoted to feeling no sexual shame. On her own Web site and in regular posts for Jezebel, Egan flaunts an unapologetic promiscuity and a relentless, fuck-all candidness.
Both of their signature qualities -- that candidness, that tendency to run off the rails -- were in evidence in a recent controversial appearance on Lizz Winstead's "Thinking and Drinking" series, in which they managed to show a pretty staggering amount of youthful callowness, making dumb jokes about rape while knocking back booze. "There's a not-so-fine line between reclaiming women's sexual power and denying the reality of rape," a friend of mine e-mailed me yesterday after watching the video. "Sex-positive feminism: UR DOIN IT RONG."
"Daily Show" co-creator Winstead had invited the pair on to talk about feminism, politics and sex. Afterward, she wrote on her blog at the Huffington Post, "They had no regard for the people who came that night and paid money to hear them speak. They do not understand the influence they have over the women who read them, nor do they accept any responsibility as role models for young women who are coming of age searching for lifestyles to emulate."
Here are video excerpts of the hour-long discussion, which Winstead posted.
For those unable (or unwilling) to watch the above clips, a brief setup: Winstead asks the pair about sexual responsibility and whether they feel the need to caution young readers against the dangers of going home with strange men. MOE: "What's going to happen?" WINSTEAD: "You could get raped." MOE: "That's happening too, but you live through that." WINSTEAD: "Sometimes you don't." MOE: "That's true if they have weapons."
Reading the quotes (Winstead posted more on her blog), I found the pair's glibness shocking. When Winstead asks Egan why she thinks she avoided being date raped despite going home with so many strangers, she responds, "I think it has to do with the fact that I am, like, smart. I don't hang around with frat guys." Moe, meanwhile, does talk about her own date rape. And when Winstead asks, "Why didn't you turn him in to the police?" she responds, "I had better things to do. Like drinking more."
It's a painful exchange. In an apology posted on Jezebel this morning, managing editor Anna Holmes calls the incident nothing less than "a fucking shame."
What's clear from the clips is that the two were trying to be funny. As Winstead veers away from jokes and becomes more serious, they refuse to abandon their me-so-drunk-and-horny patter, like rebellious high school students who simply will not take the teacher's assignment seriously. To be fair, this is their shtick. It's what they do. It's just that, while they were tossing back red wine, the shtick hit the fan.
Not long ago, Egan stepped in it on her own site while talking about the Roman Polanski documentary. No need to rehash here; interested parties can read a recap on other sites. But in her steadfast refusal to don the mantle of victim, Egan has sometimes shown a flippant tone-deafness.
Moe, for her part, seems to be slicing herself open and asking us to grab an artery. She continues to circle back to her own date rape (armchair therapists: do your thing!) but maintains a casual slouch and talks with the braggadocio of a 10th-grader about how totally wasted she is. I go back and forth from wanting to slap her to wanting to hug her.
But what also strikes me about their appearance is their sloppiness; I don't mean that they're drunk (though they are), but I mean their lack of depth and articulateness. At points, they actually seem bored. (Egan admitted as much on her own blog in a post called, "Rape Can Be Boring.") And where is their insight, their thoughtfulness? These are two smart women, failing to acknowledge any dark undercurrent of sexuality. Sex is fascinating, powerful, dangerous because of this very volatility, an evening's ability to seek out switchbacks when you were expecting a straight route. Any woman -- any man -- who doesn't know that isn't liberated; they're naive.
Moe and Tracie probably do know this; they're just not interested in or willing to have the conversation. They're on the party bus, and they are not taking the Lizz Winstead stop. (To be fair, Lizz Winstead, next time you want heady discourse, you might reconsider inviting someone who goes by the name Slut Machine.)
I wondered how much of their behavior had to do with both women's tendency to self-mythologize, to present themselves as characters rather than real people. My first introduction to both was through glam photos taken of them in various postures of druggy flameout. I remember seeing it and thinking: These women don't want to be writers; they want to be stars. They are in that first blush of Internet success, in which they seem to feel they have arrived and are very impressed with their own fame. (It's more than a little reminiscent of former Gawker employee Emily Gould, who belly-flopped in her appearance on "Larry King Live" with a similar "whatever, you know I'm hilarious" attitude.)
As someone who writes often about her own experience, I have to be careful to check my own narcissism. And I was chastened to read one friend's take on the pair's appearance: "What's clear here is that there is a lack of curiosity about any experience that is not their own, about any story which cannot circle back to how crocked they are or how much sex they have. To consider them feminist standard bearers does no one, including them, any good."
Like many in the Denton empire, these women were hired not because they are writers or thinkers or political intellects. They were hired because they are fame-seeking entertainers and characters. By this more realistic measure, both women did their jobs -- and how! -- on Winstead's show.
But can't we expect more? I'm reminded of something Madonna once said about her younger, angrily provocative self. "I had everyone's attention. Now, what was I going to do with it?"
Pink-collar ghetto, here we come!
If I had 77 cents for every time I heard the statistic that women earn 77 cents for every dollar their male counterparts make ... well, let's just say I would no longer need to save my pennies. Thankfully, the newest wage gap study has a bit more nuance to it. According to the Collegiate Seniors' Economic Expectation Research (SEER) Survey & Index, women who were about to graduate from college expected to earn less than men in their cohort. Only 35 percent of graduating men, compared with 51 percent of their female classmates, were planning on a first-year salary under $30,000 -- that is, less than a year's tuition at most private colleges.
SEER's authors aren't pinning the lion's share of blame for the disparity on men out-earning women in the same careers, though. Instead, they point out that, while male students tend to major in hard-science subjects, women favor the social sciences, which simply pay less. It's certainly nothing new that men tend to dominate computer and engineering fields, and though I wish it weren't so, it's not as if I'm doing anything to tip the balance. The only hard-science class I took in my undergrad days was called "The Planet Earth." You might know it as "Rocks for Jocks." So rather than scolding women for failing to flock to higher-paying careers, perhaps we should be wondering why the fields college-educated women dominate are so devalued in the first place.
As I was reading SEER's findings, something else occurred to me: What if female coeds are just more realistic in their post-baccalaureate expectations? It would be interesting to revisit these seniors a year out of college to see if their predictions hold true. I'm especially curious to see about the 24 percent of men and 12 percent of women who anticipate earning $50,000 or more within a year of graduation. Seems pretty optimistic, seeing as we're deep in the throes of a recession, doesn't it?
Harvard for toddlers
Just last week, I invoked the cliché that, for many families, the cost of having two parents in the workforce can be so high that it doesn't even make economic sense. But even my eyes bugged out when I saw the price tags attached to the on-site day care at Google, voted "Best Company to Work For" by Fortune magazine for two years running. Seriously, sit the eff down before you read these figures. When I asked my boyfriend to take a wild guess, he was off by 40 grand.
Under a new proposal, reported by Joe Nocera in the Times, the cost of day care at Google would jump 75 percent. Want to drop off your infant? That'll run $2,500 per month (up from $1,425). Crunching numbers, Nocera calculates that parents with two kids would end up paying $57,000 a year, up from $33,000 a year. Just to put that in context, the median household income in 2006 was around $48,000, with an average personal income of $26,000. A year at Harvard (including tuition, room, board and fees) comes out to $47,215. A bargain!
You may be thinking, as I did, that the average Google-size salary has little in common with that of the average American. But after a bit of poking around (I Googled it!) I realized that, while the company has plenty of pre-IPO millionaires, its salary range is actually slightly below Silicon Valley standards. Some employees (though presumably very few) can make $35,000 or under. You know how much those unlucky few must be loving sharing the spa rooms and organic cafeteria with their multimillionaire brethren. But even families who make a pretty comfortable income presumably would have a tough time paying that bill -- you know, after paying for trivial things like housing, food, diapers and electricity.
And perhaps the creepiest part of the article is that, according to Nocera's reporting, it looks like Google could have provided cheaper slots to accommodate more parents. Instead the company chose to cut the number of available slots, in part by raising the price so that fewer parents could afford to place their children in the first place.
The whole baroque story is amusing in a bang-your-head-against-the-desk kind of way, but to summarize: the first Google day care center, Kinderplex, opened three and a half years ago and was run by a company called CCLC. According to most accounts, it was a perfectly pleasant place -- with low student-teacher ratios and organic food, of course -- but it did not subscribe to the Reggio Emilia philosophy, favored by, among other people, Susan Wojcicki, a prominent employee and the sister-in-law of co-founder Sergey Brin, to whom some conspiracy-minded employees seem to ascribe an undue amount of influence. Google then opened a second day care center, called the Woods, which did follow that philosophy. Apparently, it took Google a while to notice that this fancy new day care was costing the company a whopping $37,000 per child per year in subsidies. Meanwhile, the wait list to get into either center ballooned to 700 employees for 200 spots -- which meant parents were waiting two years or more.
OK, soaring costs, ballooning wait lists, what do you do? Get this: First, the company decided to fire the cheaper provider and make both centers more like the one that was gobbling up all the money. Second, it initiated the previously mentioned stratospheric price hikes across the board. Finally, it started charging several hundred dollars to remain on the wait list.
According to Nocera, when the changes were announced, "some parents wept openly." But hey, it worked. Faced with prices greater than most people pay for housing, many employees dropped off the list, magically solving the space crunch. At a company meeting, according to several parents, Brin "said he had no sympathy for the parents, and that he was tired of 'Googlers' who felt entitled to perks like 'bottled water and M&Ms.' (He later denied the quote through a spokesperson.)"
To which I say, hey, keep the drug store candies. Plenty of companies wrestle with how to deal with on-site day care, but as a leader in technical innovation and employee satisfaction, Google could have done much better than turning its day care into a luxury for the highest bidders. As Nocera writes: "Google may be providing the greatest day care ever, but so what? It doesn't matter how good the day care is if only its wealthiest employees can afford to use it. If Google had really wanted to do something path-breaking about its day care crisis, it would have spent less time creating elitist day care centers and more time figuring out how to 'scale' day care for everybody no matter what their salaries." And just for fun, I'd like to point out that the originators of the much-lauded Reggio Emilia Approach were Italians living in villages ravaged by World War II. While I haven't thoroughly researched how many among them were multimillionaires, I strongly suspect they may have educated their preschoolers with fewer resources than those available at the Greatest Company in the World.
The male biological clock
Years ago, the first time I ever brought up the idea of parenthood with someone I was seeing, the guy in question allowed as how he was in no rush. He'd been born when his own dad was 50-something, and like many men, he fully bought into the idea that there was no expiry date on his swimmers. "Hey, look at Trudeau!" he said, offering a geeky Canadian version of the examples Jezebel suggests -- "notorious celebrity cads like Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty" -- in a post on male infertility today. Granted, that boyfriend was just trying to sidestep the question of whether we'd have kids together (and thank heaven for that, in retrospect), but his response was typical of the way many people regard men's fertility. While Adrienne Barbeau giving birth to twins at 51 was a bit of a man-bites-dog story, male celebrities having children at the same age or older are just thought to be doing what all aging men could do if they were lucky enough to have partners with sufficiently young eggs.
According to the BBC, though, men have their own "biological clocks," and they're ticking faster than we might think. In a study of over 12,000 couples, French researchers found that "the chance of a successful pregnancy falls when the man is aged over 35" and is "significantly lower if he is over 40." A recent L.A. Times story also notes, "At least 20% of infertility cases are due solely to male factors such as low sperm count, and in 40% to 50% of cases, male factors contribute." Unfortunately, men aren't nearly as keen as women to get themselves tested. A survey conducted by fertility center network IntegraMed found that in almost 70 percent of cases, it's the woman who first seeks out fertility treatment, and not quite 50 percent of female respondents said they had to pressure their male partners to be examined.
Let's recap: Women automatically leap to the conclusion that there's something wrong with their bodies, while men have to be nagged to admit they could possibly have health issues. Please forgive me for all the times I've argued that sitcoms don't reflect reality. Seriously, though, it sounds like heterosexual couples who are trying to conceive need to understand that Jack Nicholson and Warren Beatty are not examples of what every man could achieve with a little Viagra and a woman young enough to be his daughter. Given recent advances in male reproductive technology, if both partners get tested, says male fertility specialist Dr. Thomas Walsh, "We can dramatically increase the likelihood of couples conceiving at home or with the least amount of technology possible."
Turks gone wild!
On Saturday, about 70 Turkish women slipped into sundresses, spaghetti strap tops and shorts, and marched in Istanbul chanting, "It's not exhibitionism, it's male abuse!" They took to the Galata Bridge, the scene of a severe crime committed last summer. Brace yourselves: A woman went fishing while wearing a lightweight dress.
Some fishermen reported the offense; the woman was found guilty of exhibitionism and was given a five-month suspended prison sentence. (For comparison, men who groped a woman at a public New Year's Eve celebration were fined $45.) Last week, a judge upheld the ruling, sparking outrage among secularists. "They think women should stay home and dress properly," protester Cigdem Mater told the BBC. "The question is what is proper? No-one has the right to tell us what to wear, that is the point."
In related news, today's Independent looks at the rise of "Islamic tourism" and hotels that cater specifically to Muslims. These hotels offer segregated swimming, perform daily prayers and do not sell alcohol. Some argue that, like the fisherwoman incident, the hotels are evidence of the Islamisation of Turkey. But, fear not, Turks! Serafettin Ulukent, the owner of one such hotel, says it is instead evidence of, as the Independent paraphrases, "the patriarchal attitudes of macho Turkish."
Ah, in that case, carry on!
Money, money, money
Just over a month ago, "Sex and the City" had the most successful debut ever for an R-rated comedy, knocked "Indiana Jones" out of the top spot and earned almost twice what its own distributor had expected for its opening weekend, proving that a movie starring four women over the age of 40 can be a bona fide blockbuster. But what about three women over 50?
On the weekend of July 18, when "Mamma Mia!" hits theaters, we'll find out. Although three men and a young, beautiful woman -- which sounds a lot more like the typical cast of a summer hit -- are crucial to the plot, Meryl Streep is the big star, and her character's best friends/former backup singers (Christine Baranski and Julie Walters) are at the heart of the story. Better still, three other women (just barely) over 50 -- writer Catherine Johnson, director Phyllida Lloyd and producer Judy Craymer -- who were behind the worldwide smash musical on which the movie is based, maintained creative control of the big-screen version. Reports The New York Times, "Having three women in these crucial jobs makes 'Mamma Mia!' a rarity in the movie business. According to Terry Lawler, executive director of New York Women in Film and Television, women directed only 6 percent of the top 250 films last year and wrote only 10 percent. And some 50 of those films listed no women at all among the main credits. For directors, Ms. Lawler said in a telephone interview, 'the numbers are basically in the same place they were 20 years ago.'"
"Mamma Mia!" alone makes up for some of that gender gap this year, with a female production designer, editor and costume designer on board, as well as several other women in the crew. "Ms. Craymer said that she hadn't been trying to make a feminist point when she first enlisted Ms. Johnson and Ms. Lloyd to help realize her notion of an Abba musical or when she started hiring people for the film. But somehow, as she sought to fill the movie crew with others who 'got' the 'Mamma Mia!' factor, she ended up with even more women," says the Times article. And that "getting it" factor is what moved Universal Pictures to put their faith in the same team behind the musical, according to Donna Langley, president for production. After being so deeply involved with the original, "They just understand what it is and why it works."
Whether the movie will work as well as the theater production remains to be seen; the article reminds us that translating Broadway musicals to the screen can be tricky, and for every "Chicago," there's a "Producers." But if "Mamma Mia!" takes off, 2008 could be remembered as the year when Hollywood finally had to admit that women can both create and "open" money-making movies. My my, how could they resist that?
Reader, she married him
If you haven't logged time at a buffet in a banquet hall eating dainty hors d'oeuvres and considering the centerpieces, well, chances are you will be soon. (Try the bacon-wrapped asparagus. It's delicious.) We're in the thick of wedding season. And as our tabloids buzz with the salacious details of high-profile divorces (A-Rod's wife recently filed) -- Sunday's New York Times offered three instruction manuals on that slipperiest of ideals: the happy marriage.
Whom not to marry. Maureen Dowd, possibly tipping back mojitos at some glorious destination wedding as you read this, devoted the majority of her weekly spot to advice dispensed by a 79-year-old Catholic priest. The column, called "An Ideal Husband," shot to the top of the site's most-e-mailed list and features excerpts from the priest's lecture, titled "Whom Not to Marry." (Possible answers to that question: Madonna, Peter Cook.) The column is tailored for high school seniors, "mostly girls because they’re more interested," and includes such tips as "Never marry a man who has no friends" and "Does he use money responsibly?" It's common-sense stuff, though it's surprising how many of us (men and women) lose our common sense when pierced by Cupid's little dart.
How not to marry. I steer clear of the "Vows" section of the Times; like fashion magazines, "Vows" does little but underscore all the fabulousness my life currently lacks. It's a paean to a culture of money and privilege I'm not terribly interested in, but then some stories are just too annoying to ignore. Case in point: the tale of "Nanny Diaries" co-author Nicola Kraus and her husband, David Wheir, which reads like an elaborate eff-you to their exes. In addition to a cringe-inducing amount of "you complete me" romanticizing and Tibetan soul-searching, the write-up dwells uncomfortably on the couple's past relationships. Kraus refers to her exes as "toxic freak shows," while a good deal of the narrative concerns Wheir's efforts to leave his "combustive" and "self-destructive" former relationship. Tacky, tacky! I'm a romantic at heart, but even I tasted my breakfast again upon reading the last line: "When their bodies entwined, it was not so much a kiss, as a melding -- a complete embrace of happiness and hope." Good luck with that, folks!
And if all else fails… Is it OK to marry your pet? Well, my cat would be right pissed if I made him suffer through a ceremony, never mind the tuxedo. But let's face it -- romance can be terrifically disappointing, and some humans (like Leona Helmsley, who famously left $8 billion to her dog) seem better suited to animal companionship than human. A Times story called "Sit. Stay. Love." explores this dynamic and also brings us news of a site called MarryYourPet.com ("Don't let your pet live in sin!"). It's a joke. Or is it?
Sugar, spice and science
You've heard the argument a zillion times: Women are hard-wired for empathy, and men are hard-wired for total cluelessness about human emotion, on account of having to kill woolly mammoths and spread their seed or something. So what if those are gross generalizations that underestimate the complex social skills of both genders, not to mention the variations within each group? They did a study! It's scienterrific!
Amanda Schaffer has unpacked some of those arguments over at Slate and, not surprisingly, found them wanting for both evidence and logical consistency. For starters, most of the data supporting claims that women are more empathetic than men comes from questionnaires filled out by the subjects themselves. Generally speaking, women will get higher scores for empathy and nurturing behavior on these than men -- which could mean that women are the bigger softies or could mean men just don't want to sound like the bigger softies. Studies that go beyond self-reporting bear out the latter theory: The gender gap "all but vanished when other measures like physiological responses or changes in facial expression were considered." Furthermore, even among studies that rely on self-reported data, the difference between men's and women's empathy scores has decreased over the past 50 years, suggesting that as social pressure on men to be all stoic goes down, their willingness to admit they have feelings goes up, giving lie to the whole "hard-wired" bit. Gee, who could have seen that coming?
But the "sex difference evangelists," as Schaffer calls them, aren't about to let facts get in the way of a good story. British psychologist Simon "Baron-Cohen calls the empathizing brain type E, or 'the female brain,' and contrasts it with systematizing brain type S, or 'the male brain,'" writes Schaffer. "But only 44 percent of women are type E -- not even a majority. Which makes the labeling seem odd. When I asked him about this, Baron-Cohen admitted that he's thought twice about his male brain/female brain terminology, but he didn't disavow it."
Oh, well, then. At least he used his fancy systematizing brain to think twice! I swear, even if I do have some innate capacity for caring about my fellow human beings, if I read one more argument on gender differences that boils down to "sugar and spice and everything nice" versus "snips and snails and puppy dogs' tails," it's gonna be right out the window.
Lady superstars are totally marriageable after all
Oh, I know this is small and incidental and fluffy and who cares, but a reader sent this in Thursday morning and it stuck in my craw and it's the day before a holiday weekend and so why not get a little ruffled over some stupid coverage of celebrity sex lives?
In the recent tabloid brouhaha about the "possibly ending but no one really knows because no one really knows them" demise of Madonna's marriage to Guy Ritchie, ABC News Thursday morning published this uplifting little item about how "every time a super-successful female star gets together with a lower-profile man, tongues wag."
Really? Do they wag? The tongues, I mean. Because I don't really remember anyone batting an eye over Madonna's marrying Ritchie, an attractive film director who is not as successful as she. You want to know why he is not as successful? Because she's Madonna. Who's she going to date? Jesus is unavailable, though I guess it's possible she's hanging out in all those Kabbalah classes, hoping to snare the next Messiah as soon as he gets here, making sure she's the first to get his number.
This silly story lists other potentially emasculating babes like Gwen Stefani, Sarah Jessica Parker, Charlize Theron, Heidi Klum, Sandra Bullock, Drew Barrymore and Courteney Cox, and Susan Sarandon makes the list alongside partner Tim Robbins because "while Sarandon's star kept rising, after he won an Oscar for 'Mystic River,' Robbins' success fell short." Right. Robbins undoubtedly feels unmanned and like a failure next to his wife. Except for that Oscar he won.
First, all of these women are partnered with successful and moneymaking men. Second, who cares if they weren't? Are we really sitting around wondering if Matthew Broderick, an actor beloved to generations of Ferris fans and the star of one of the most successful musicals of all time, sits around and mopes because his wife's TV-spinoff movie is a big success?
Would it cross anyone's mind to write a story about whether the less successful wives of Hollywood's leading men feel threatened by their husbands' economic success? Duh.
It's simply mind-blowing that it would be considered any kind of breakthrough insight to have Us editor Bradley Jacobs opine that "a lot of men don't mind being in the shadow of a very successful woman. It really comes down to the guy." Yeah! And you know what else it comes down to? The woman. And their relationship. And the fact that they may in fact be sentient and moderately evolved human beings who don't base their every life decision on outdated gender stereotypes.
Happy Fourth!
Exploitative Fourth of July peg of the day!
Back in January, there was a New York Times article about my little blog (among others), and a producer from the "Today" how saw it and invited me to come on the show the next morning. I said yes and started frantically packing and running errands so I could get on a plane to New York that night. Then I got the second call: Heath Ledger had just been found dead in his apartment, so I was bumped. Fair enough. At that point, though, I had to call or e-mail everyone I'd called or e-mailed about the appearance an hour before and tell them to unset their DVRs -- which inevitably led to the question, from all but my journalist friends: "So, are they going to have you on on another day?" No, of course not. On that particular Wednesday, I would have been "Kate Harding, who was in the New York Times yesterday." The day after that, in journalistic terms, I became "Kate Harding, same nobody she always was." Timing is everything.
So I understand the need to have a timely peg for a subject you want to cover. (Just last week, I jumped on a New Zealand Herald article about LaVena Johnson because it gave me a fresh reason to write about her here, three years after her tragic death.) But there's "timely" and then there's "desperately pushing it." Take, for instance, this Fox article, "Women Can Stop the Fireworks on Independence Day: Psychotherapist Offers Tips for Women in Abusive Relationships." I know it's Fox, but come on.
The article itself isn't totally objectionable -- it makes the important point that emotional abuse is often a precursor to physical abuse, and plenty damaging in itself -- but the "declaring independence" angle comes awfully close to making a mockery of the subject. Getting out of an abusive relationship takes a little more than throwing your hat in the air, Mary Tyler Moore style, and convincing yourself you're gonna make it after all. And "women can stop the fireworks"? Really? In addition to being an especially cringeworthy effort to tie domestic violence to the upcoming holiday, that skirts the edges of victim blaming, and they wouldn't do that, would they? Oh, wait.
"[Psychotherapist Melanie] Wells contends that the most difficult sign to spot is when women blur the lines between acceptable vs. abusive behavior. When this happens they have become abuse-able and are actually participating in the abuse by tolerating it or lying to themselves about it."
Are you kidding me? Somewhere in there is a valid point about setting boundaries and standing up for yourself early and often, but this just makes it sound like domestic violence would disappear altogether if you ladies would quit being so darn abusable! (Never mind the men, straight and gay, who find themselves in abusive relationships, of course.) I guess maybe we just have to wait a few months for the follow-up article, "A Holiday Gift That Costs Nothing: Don't Abuse Your Partner."
Throwing out the bonus with the bath water
What's the problem with company plans for compensating people during parental leave? That often there is no plan. At least that's what the Wall Street Journal posits in this piece about the financial losses some women (and presumably men) are being hit with when they take time to be with their newborns.
In the Journal's work/family blog the Juggle, Sue Shellenbarger asks whether some women on maternity leave are being cheated out of part of their pay -- and says that based on her e-mail and complaints to the advocacy and research organization Catalyst Inc. in New York, they are. For example: New mothers sometimes lose out on annual bonuses, even if their performance during the time they were at work would have warranted one, because performance targets haven't been prorated for employees on leave. (Shellenbarger asserts that compensation consultants say this should be common practice, since it avoids "discouraging people from continuing to work hard while they aren't on leave.") Another example: A female salesperson at a Fortune 100 company was told she wouldn't get commissions on sales she'd made before she left. Instead, her deals would be taken over by a fill-in if she took a long leave, with all commissions paid to her substitute. The result? She rushed back to work five and a half weeks after giving birth.
Now, of course there are other people besides new moms who need to take time off from work. And yes, the two cases I mentioned above are dealing with commissions and bonuses, not salaries. But the point is not that employers should fork over undeserved incentive pay. It's that they should have plans in place for how to fairly compensate people for the work they have performed while in the office. To me, at least, a fair system would be one in which employees who had to take time off would receive prorated incentive pay, based on their performance during the time they were in the office. Most important, though, companies should have a plan so that employees know ahead of time what they're getting into. Unfortunately, though, according to Shellenbarger, many don't.
"At many companies, these moves aren't so much a deliberate swipe against women as a sign of neglect," she writes. "At the saleswoman's Fortune 100 company, 'each time a woman gets pregnant she's told something different, based on her individual manager's preference' -- a clear sign that nobody's paying attention."
According to Michael Carter, a compensation consultant for the Hay Group interviewed by Shellenbarger, there's "increasing interest" in the issue among employers. I see that as a good thing -- regardless of what policy employers decide on, setting consistent standards would at least allow women (and stay-at-home dads) to know ahead of time what they were getting into.
At the end of her post, Shellenbarger poses a few questions to her readers -- how does your company handle bonuses and commissions for people taking parental leave? Have you seen examples of unfair practices toward people who took time off for childbirth? How far should employers be expected to go for new parents? Or do you think that parents should just suck it up? I think they're good questions. Thoughts?
The economics of abortion
I think I may have found the most upsetting stock art image ever created: this photo, accompanying an article from ABC News about how an increasing number of women are saying that financial concerns played a role in their decisions to get abortions. I've stared at it for a while now, and I think that in addition to the juxtaposition of a fetus floating in space next to a broken dollar bill and an upward-facing arrow (What? Did someone's womb accidentally stumble into a Lehman Bros. report?), it's the backlighting that's really getting me.
But I digress. The article is based on a report asserting that 40 percent of women in Minnesota who provided a reason for their decisions to have abortions cited economic pressure as a factor. According to the state's annual abortion report, that's the highest percentage to report economic factors since the poll first started being taken about a decade ago. (Other top reasons included not wanting to have children at this time, already being a single parent and unfulfilled educational goals.)
What I think is interesting about this is the fact that if you think about it, all of the factors named above could have to do with economics. But thanks to the current national focus on all things monetary, people have started to isolate economics as a separate reason for having an abortion. (In other words, I doubt that there's a sudden trend of people comparing the cost of babies with their bank accounts, despite the stock art to the contrary. People are just isolating that variable more as an independent reason.) Alternatively, as another Broadsheeter pointed out, it could have to do with the fact that many women feel guilty about having abortions and will pick the least personal variable to justify their decision.
In the end, I don't think it really matters which reason a woman cites for her decision to terminate a pregnancy. But one possible fallout from using money as a reason is that it gives fuel to antiabortion activists like Scott Fischbach, excecutive director of Minnesota Citizens Concerned for Life. He says that abortion can be combated by pouring more money into things like programs for women's housing, education and adoption planning. Granted, all of those things could definitely have positive effects (and possibly reduce the number of abortions -- which I think all would agree would be a good thing). But they wouldn't solve the problem of what to do when a woman just does not want to be pregnant, period. Economics or no economics, that should still be her choice.
Update: I just stared at the photo a little more and realized that it also looks kind of like the fetus is being shot into the air by a geyser. Or, perhaps someone went drilling for oil and accidentally hit a baby field.
