Madonna/Whore redux

A friend and reader, gothicfeline, sent me a CNN story about a “John school“–a one day program for men arrested for soliciting a prostitute. They spend a Saturday being scared limp (sorry, couldn’t resist) by “former prostitutes, health experts, psychologists and law enforcement officers” until they understand that prostitution is not a victimless crime. This [...]

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Thursday quickie

My excuse this time is that the semester starts in one week and I am NOT prepared. So no time to be witty or thoughtful or insightful. However, I thought people might enjoy this link. When I tell you it is a review of a romance novel, please don’t roll your eyes and refuse to [...]

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People in Zoos

Ever since she was a child looking at her grandfather’s National Geographic, Amit Paley was fascinated by the women of the Padaung, who wear brass rings around their necks, so that their necks appear elongated; she wanted “to see these curious women, who suffer painful disfigurement to emerge as graceful beauties.” Growing up, college, and [...]

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Brush up your Shakespeare

Okay, I promise I won’t do this often, but not much is happening on the pop culture scene (not much that interests me anyway) and I’ve been spending most of my time crafting an edition of Shakespeare’s Henry VI Part 2.  Editing a text means reading it very very closely, and then reading it again, [...]

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Viagra-vation

This morning, Dana of Mombian sent us this link to an article about a documentary called Orgasm, Inc., which details the pharmaceutical industry’s mission to profit from FSD (female sexual dysfunction).  While I applaud the author for deriding the notion that women who lack sexual desire should be characterized as “dysfunctional,” I think this article [...]

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The Running of the Genders

The issues involving Caster Semenya, the gold medal runner who has been asked to undergo genetic testing, are complicated and multi-layered, and lay bare many of the assumptions we hold about gender. First there is the simple question of why she is suspected of being a man at all, which is apparently simply that she [...]

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Thursday quickie

I thought I’d collect up a few cultural oddities you may or may not have heard. 1. Howard K Stern is suing Rita Cosby for defamation, based on her portrait of him in her book about Anna Nicole Smith. Recently, however, a judge ruled that while the defamation suit could go ahead, it could not [...]

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Stress Test

I came across this article on Yahoo news a couple of days ago, and my initial reaction was that the author’s interpretation of the study’s findings was not quite right.  So I dug a bit more and unearthed this article by Reuters.  I’m intrigued by the different approaches to the same information by two journalists [...]

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“I did not have ‘sex’ with that woman”

Okay, the impetus for this topic is from a couple of months ago, but we didn’t have the blog a couple of months ago and I’ve wanted to talk about the article since I read it. Now I can! So, back in May, Glamour published an article called “What Counts as Cheating Now” In it, [...]

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Free to be (a better version of) me!

Here’s the September cover of Self magazine, featuring Kelly Clarkson: And in case you (like me) don’t follow the careers of past American Idol contents, here’s how she actually looks: Notice a difference? While it should come as no surprise to anyone that magazines retouch photos, this one was so blatant that the editor of [...]

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