I get that Carolla is just cracking wise, from inside the bubble of his own lame version of post-rockabilly guy-shtick -- he is interviewed inside a garage, with what looks like an orange Camaro behind him in the middle distance -- and that if you brought up the fact that those old-time "chick jobs" paid 40 to 80 percent less than "guy jobs," he'd get all irritated with you for being a drag. He's still an idiot, though, even if he's an idiot in quotation marks. That's kind of the problem with "Mansome," which tries to tackle the enormous subject of contemporary male vanity as an assemblage of whimsical anecdotes, which are often entertaining in themselves but studiously avoid any semblance of intelligent analysis or historical understanding.

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Who understands this better than professional dominatrixes? With so many speculating this week on Roiphe's article, I decided to hand the microphone over to women with a unique perspective on the dynamics in power and play.

Several said that Roiphe is actually on to something when she talks about submission as an escape from life's stresses -- only, this reasonable point is overwritten by her wrongheaded focus on women and the impact of feminism. Roiphe wonders whether there is "something exhausting about the relentless responsibility of a contemporary woman's life ... all that strength and independence and desire and going out into the world," and suggests "that, for some, the more theatrical fantasies of sexual surrender offer a release, a vacation, an escape from the dreariness and hard work of equality." What about the exhausting, relentless responsibility of contemporary people's lives?

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It started when the company began aggressively marketing to boys back in 2005, offering up what BusinessWeek recently described as "spaceships and laser cannons … martial arts and supernatural powers," a world in which "80 percent of the characters are boys." But the extreme genderfication of Legos put the company in a self-imposed bind. How to respond to the demands of consumers who want a more daughter-friendly Lego? There was only one thing to do next – make some girly Legos!

Just in time for the holidays, the Danish brand rolled out a pink-themed line of Lego Friends last December, featuring curvaceous, pretty girls who play in pastel-themed, gently constructed cafes, beauty shops, puppy houses and their own little stages. That's the life of a girl for you  – looking pretty, "decorating your house" and eating cupcakes.

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This may be the Year of the Sitcom Woman, but the biggest, most vibrant group of women on TV today can be found in a brutal, self-serious war drama set in a made-up medieval world — just the kind of story, it so happens, that’s often assumed to be the sole dominion of dudes.

For George R.R. Martin, the novelist who created this world in his “Song of Ice and Fire” series, the medium is the message. The things that make the story so daunting and so off-putting to some — its sheer massiveness and its huge cast of characters — are part of what makes it so thrilling to me, as a woman who likes to see other women on-screen. It’s not just that the women in “Game” are strong — and the primary females are, in both figurative and literal senses — but that there are so goddamn many of them, each one fighting to exercise power over the world and her own life. They’re far from a sisterhood (one of the main themes of the show is that trusting others is a rube’s game) but as a collective, they make an unavoidably huge impression.

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Much like J.C. Penney's recent "Too Pretty to Do Homework" shirts or, more revoltingly, Topman's  line of rape apologist wear, the revelation that somewhere, men's trousers are telling them to pawn off their dirty laundry on the nearest set of ovaries was not met with universal amusement. On Monday, Barnett tweeted a photo of the tag, saying she was "so shocked at this label in my boyfriend's new trousers."

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Apparently, not today.

On Wednesday, Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius unexpectedly overruled the Food and Drug Administration’s recommendation that emergency contraception be sold on drugstore shelves and made available without a prescription to women under the age of 17. The move came as a surprise blow to healthcare and women’s rights activists, the kinds of people regularly counted as supporters of the Obama administration.

Today, Obama doubled down on his disregard for the concerns of these groups, claiming that while Sebelius made her decision without his counsel, he agreed with it. Obama pooh-poohed the findings of the FDA, which had concluded that Plan B pills posed no medical hazard and supported Sebelius’ official argument, citing a lack of confidence that “a 10-year-old or 11-year-old going to a drugstore would be able to, alongside bubble gum or batteries, be able to buy a medication that potentially if not used properly can have an adverse effect.” The logic expressed today by the president, and yesterday by Sebelius, is ludicrous: Medicines like Tylenol – which have been proven to have adverse effects in high doses – are available by the truckload on drugstore shelves, at prices far cheaper than the $30 to $50 it would cost a preteen to purchase just one dose of Plan B, let alone go wild with it.

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--Alexandra Styron, "Reading My Father: A Memoir"

"Ocean’s Kingdom," a ballet composed by Paul McCartney, with costumes by his daughter, fashion designer Stella McCartney, had its starry premiere in New York in late September, marking the first formal collaboration between a father and daughter who are famously close -- and the happy antidote to what has otherwise been the year of Embittered Daughters of Famous Men.

In recent months, we have seen high-profile memoirs by the daughters of writers Joseph Heller and William Styron. Dubbed the "daughterati" by the New York Times, Alexandra Styron and Erica Heller both chronicled difficult, distant relationships with fathers so absorbed in their own careers and personal miseries they barely seem to notice their offspring. Jane Fonda's latest self-help book, "Prime Time," again revisits her famously prickly relationship with her aloof father -- a relationship already explored at length in her 2005 memoir (and in Patricia Bosworth’s new Fonda biography as well).

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These may seem like startling displays of same-sex affection and innuendo for a pair of heterosexual teenage boys -- even despite their blow-dried Justin Bieber bangs -- but Eric Anderson, an American sociologist, says it's part of a larger trend among teens and young adults.

"It is normal in the United Kingdom for young straight boys to sleep in the same bed, frequently, and to cuddle," says Anderson, who has primarily focused his research on white males living above the poverty line. In a recent study, he found that 90 percent of heterosexual undergraduate men in the U.K. had at least once kissed a straight male friend on the lips. Things are not so fluid in the U.S. -- he found 7 percent of heterosexual college guys had smooched a straight male pal -- but his in-depth studies of American jocks and frat boys, those expected to be the most homophobic, have revealed them to be increasingly comfortable with same-sex physical and emotional intimacy, he says.

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The idea, explains assemblyman Leonel Luna, is to help couples avoid "the tortuous process of divorce." Instead, couples could opt for a renewable contract for a minimum two-year term, complete with provisions for the division of assets and custody of children. "If the relationship is not stable or harmonious," Luna says, "the contract simply ends." Luna says there could be a vote on the new marriage contracts by the end of the year.

Unsurprisingly, the Catholic Church, still fired up over Mexico City legalizing same-sex unions in 2009, is none too pleased with the move. Mexican archdiocese spokesman Hugo Valdemar told Reuters this week that "This reform is absurd. It contradicts the nature of marriage. It's another one of these electoral theatrics the assembly tends to do that are irresponsible and immoral." Because anything other than a lifetime binding contract between a man and woman is hooey!

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His study, "Sexual Economics: A Research-Based Theory of Sexual Interactions, or Why the Man Buys Dinner," was presented Sunday at the American Psychological Association and shows that countries with greater gender equality have higher rates of sexual activity. With parity comes a greater likelihood of casual sex and more sexual partners. This might seem like excellent news, just one more argument in favor of equality -- and it is! But it also paints a mathematical, emotionless portrait of relations between the sexes.

Instead of using evolutionary or social constructionist theories, Baumeister turns to economic principles to explain sexual behavior. The result is a world where women use sex to get what they want from men -- whether it's a free dinner or a lifetime commitment. It's similar to an argument made by Mark Regnerus, author of "Premarital Sex in America: How Young Americans Meet, Mate and Think About Marrying," who talked to me earlier this year about his belief that feminist advances have driven down the price of sex to an all-time low in the U.S.

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2. Movie nation of the day: New site Slacktory has a great chart of the most popular Netflix film for each state.

I can't really tell, but I'm pretty sure Delaware's is "Final Destination."

3. Mila and the Marine update of the day: Welp, it looks like their date might not be happening, because Kunis is super-duper busy. But maybe it will anyway? Stay tuned!

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"And people heard this Tracy shit mostly third-hand. He didn't stand on a public stage and say this stuff. He didn't make these announcements: 'Here, America, are my views.' Where you say something makes a huge difference about what you say and what it means and what you let yourself say…And I think the person who really fucked people up and hurt people with Tracy's words was whoever took it out of that Nashville club and put it on the national stage -- whoever called Huffington Post or whoever started this shit, and said, 'Guess what Tracy Morgan said,' and announced it to the rest of the world. He wasn't trying to say it to the rest of the world. So when I read stuff like, How are gay people going to feel when they read this? Well they didn't have to read it! They weren't part of that show. Maybe there were gay people there who were laughing. You don't fucking know. Nobody gets to say that they represent anybody and they're offended on behalf of the whole world."

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This concept, while foreign to me, is interesting, as it used to justify so much judgement and separation in our society. When my daughter came home from school one day saying that a classmate had two mommies, my response was, "Two mommies? How lucky is she?!" What does it actually say in the bible that will cause some people to be upset by my line of thinking?

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Leaving aside the rehashed argument that "Teletubbies" "Sesame Street" is a liberal attack on family values, can we talk about how Ben Shapiro's first sentence on the show was, "Yeah, I kind of want to take them out back and cap 'em." What? Hopefully, he is talking about Big Bird and Elmo and not the children that Hannity said were going to hate the conservative author/pundit after his book comes out. Family values!

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Luckily, awesome actor and human being George Takei has a solution. In a new video posted in reaction to SB 49, the "Star Trek" star urges teachers, "Don't say gay ... say Takei!"

Amazing. I'm starting to get my outfit ready for Takei Pride Week as we speak.

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Obesity is a national health crisis ... If current trends continue, it will soon surpass smoking in the U.S. as the biggest single factor in early death, reduced quality of life and added health care costs ... Obesity is responsible for more than 160,000 excess deaths a year ... The average obese person costs society more than $7,000 a year in lost productivity and added medical treatment." — Scientific American, January 2011

Considering those troubling statistics, Advertising Age's headline this week is welcome news: "Weight Watchers Picks a New Target: Men." The story details how the nation's biggest diet company is using the NBA playoffs to launch its first male-focused advertising campaign. Sounds great -- except for one thing: Why only now?

This is a significant question in a country whose debilitating weight problem is more male than female -- and "more" means a heckuva lot more. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, almost 70 percent of men are overweight, compared with 52 percent of women. Yet, somehow, 90 percent of the commercial weight-loss industry's clients are female, and somehow, this industry hasn't seen males as a viable business. How can that be?

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Quinn, who was down in front of the field, then shouted, "Hey there are kids out here," he said during a news conference at the Los Angeles office of noted attorney Gloria Allred.

Quinn alleged that the coach replied that kids don’t belong at a baseball park, picked up a bat, walked up to Quinn and asked him, "How much are your teeth worth?"

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1. Rebecca Black's "Friday" to be covered on "Glee": It makes sense when you think about the concept of "Glee" as a metaphor for Black's trajectory: a group of teens hated by the rest of their high school for singing annoying songs.

2. Nic Cage in trouble with IRS for giving too many gifts: Oh, what, they're going after Santa Claus next? Nic Cage is just a really generous guy, that's all.

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Look, we're not claiming this definitely is the case, we're just taking the stance of this objective Fox News article and saying that it may be. It probably is. There's like a 90 percent chance that this ad is part of the homosexual agenda, at least according to the experts we get to weigh in on the new campaign, which shows a mom painting her son's toenails with the caption "Lucky for me I ended up with a boy whose favorite color is pink. Toenail painting is way more fun in neon."

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