Reuters: They're ba-aaack. It's not clear whether the return of silicone breast implants, which were cleared for sale by the FDA today, is good news or not. It's nice that, according to the agency, the new implants are safer than their earlier incarnations, which were yanked from the market in 1992 after reportedly leaking and causing health problems in some women. Those seeking fake boobs, either for cosmetic or reconstruction-related reasons, will probably welcome silicone's return. But critics including National Research Center for Women & Families president Diana Zuckerman and U.S. Rep. Rosa DeLauro, D-Conn., said the FDA had put business interests before women's health and not performed a thorough enough investigation of silicone's risks.
Boston Globe: More late-breaking breast news! The flight attendant who kicked a woman off a flight for refusing to cover her nursing child with a blanket has been disciplined by Freedom Airlines, which said the attendant acted "contrary to the company's expectations."
Reuters, again: Reigning Miss Israel Yael Nezri, 18, has been granted permission not to carry an assault rifle during her mandatory stint in the Israeli army, on the grounds that the resulting bruises on her legs interfere with her modeling career.
Boing Boing: The directory of wonderful things links to A Hole in the Head's trove of not-so-wonderful issues of the 1960s crafts magazine Woman's Household. Intra-Broadsheet debate: Is Boing Boing being too harsh by describing the archive as "Mind-bogglingly depressing"? On one hand, it is demoralizing to see a small-town housewife crowned Queen of her local Weight Watchers club. On the other hand, Woman's Household shows real women leading regular lives, which is a far cry from what you see in most magazines these days.
Us magazine: Broadsheet favorite Tina Fey recently defied show-business convention and spoke frankly about other celebrities on the Howard Stern show, generally skewering the myopic self-promotion of stars like Paris Hilton and Matthew McConaughey. Priceless.
BBC: French Socialist Segolene Royal handily won her party's presidential primary on Thursday, giving her a pretty good shot at the presidency. The Beeb notes that "the U.K. had Margaret Thatcher, Germany has Angela Merkel as chancellor, and both Chile and Finland have elected female presidents in the last 12 months," but gets points for observing that "the French media has occasionally focused on such burning questions as whether or not she should have worn high heels on this or that foreign trip."
Feminist Daily News: Women's rights advocates convened in Kabul this week to address the continuing problem of women self-immolating in Afghanistan and elsewhere. The director of German women's rights group Medica Mondiale says that "most women commit this type of suicide for fear of physical or sexual violence," according to Feminist Daily.
New York Post: As reported in Salon's daily entertainment report, The Fix, publisher Judith Regan has acknowledged that she agreed to publish O.J. Simpson's forthcoming book "If I Did It" because of her own history of abuse and because she personally believes Simpson to be guilty of the murders of Nicole Brown Simpson and Ron Goldman. "I never lost my desire for his conviction. And if Marcia Clark couldn't do it. I sure wanted to try," Regan writes. The decision to give Simpson enough rope to hang himself, as it were, seems both shady and potentially counterproductive. We got an email from the women's advocacy group Legal Momentum aptly noting that "If I Did It" is more or less "a cookbook recipe on domestic violence and murder," and the book and upcoming Fox interview are essentially "profiting from a scenario that involves violence to a woman." Keep an eye out for more Salon coverage of this weird saga in the coming days.
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