Here comes another goddamn rant

Well, the NYT always manages to put out these provocative articles about gender and modern feminism. I'm just going to ring off a series of quotes that got me hoppin' mad.

Now dating etiquette has reverted. Young women no longer care about using the check to assert their equality. They care about using it to assess their sexuality.

Men, apparently, learn early to protect their eggshell egos from high-achieving women. The girls said they hid the fact that they went to Harvard from guys they met because it was the kiss of death. "The H-bomb," they dubbed it. "As soon as you say Harvard Business School . . . that's the end of the conversation," Ani Vartanian said. "As soon as the guys say, 'Oh, I go to Harvard Business School,' all the girls start falling into them."

But nowadays most young brides want to take their husbands' names and brag on the moniker Mrs., a brand that proclaims you belong to him. T-shirts with "MRS." emblazoned in sequins or sparkly beads are popular wedding-shower gifts.

Moviemakers these days are more interested in exploring what Steve Martin, in his novel "Shopgirl," calls the "calm cushion" of romances between unequals.

In James Brooks's movie "Spanglish," Adam Sandler, playing a sensitive Los Angeles chef, falls for his hot Mexican maid, just as in "Maid in Manhattan," Ralph Fiennes, playing a sensitive New York pol, falls for the hot Latino maid at his hotel, played by Jennifer Lopez. Sandler's maid, who cleans up for him without being able to speak English, is presented as the ideal woman, in looks and character. His wife, played by Téa Leoni, is repellent: a jangly, yakking, overachieving, overexercised, unfaithful, shallow she-monster who has just lost her job with a commercial design firm and fears she has lost her identity.

In 2003, we had "Girl With a Pearl Earring," in which Colin Firth's Vermeer erotically paints Scarlett Johansson's Dutch maid, and Richard Curtis's "Love Actually," about the attraction of unequals. The witty and sophisticated British prime minister, played by Hugh Grant, falls for the chubby girl who wheels the tea and scones into his office. A businessman married to the substantial Emma Thompson, the sister of the prime minister, falls for his sultry secretary. A novelist played by Colin Firth falls for his maid, who speaks only Portuguese.

A lot of women now want to be Maxim babes as much as men want Maxim babes. So women have moved from fighting objectification to seeking it. "I have been surprised," Maxim's editor, Ed Needham, confessed to me, "to find that a lot of women would want to be somehow validated as a Maxim girl type, that they'd like to be thought of as hot and would like their boyfriends to take pictures of them or make comments about them that mirror the Maxim representation of a woman, the Pamela Anderson sort of brand. That, to me, is kind of extraordinary."

This makes me both sad and angry. It echoes what I observe in behavior at college. Why can I dream of having a successful career AND a loving family, but a woman can't? What makes us so different? Of course, women have to bear children, and that makes for difficulties. But there's not THAT much time during pregnancy and immediately following where a woman doesn't work. If men would share the burden, there would be no conflict.

The over-sexualized, submissive approach to relationships with men is just disgusting. Careers aren't the only way for women to have successful lives, of course. But if a woman approaches a relationship with the intent of taking a back seat, to get the thrill of being pampered without pampering back, to become a "Maxim girl", then there are serious implications. What happens when these girls age and are no longer attractive to the men they "hooked" while still young? Long-term relationships (and I know that I am of course an expert on this) between intelligent men and women should be built on admiration for personalities and intellectual stimulation, with a physical component of course. Fuck the world.

6 Degrees of Osama

Bravo, Fox. I mean, when I read the headline, I was skeptical because of the source. But I thought, "okay, I'll give it a chance and read the article." And yes, they prove a connection between Al Qaeda and Saddam—a connection with more intermediaries than an intervention convention. I guess this means Bush was right after all.

No Bull Moose Here

Mmm. This sounds sweet. Over and out.

Finally.

The NYT finally comes out with an elaborate analysis, description, and timeline of the Judith Miller case. Read on, you brave lonely soul who actually reads me.

Oh, you Poles. Almost...

So the newly victorious conservative coalition in Poland recently decided not to appoint the leader of the largest party for premier. The BBC speculates about why this could possibly be, throwing out a lot of reasons. Then comes this paragraph:

The choice of Mr Marcinkiewicz might have been prompted by the fact that Mr Kaczynski's identical twin brother Lech, a former justice minister who cracked down on crime, is running for president in next month's vote.

So you're telling me that Poland very nearly had identical twin brothers as president and premier?!? Why, why, could this not be?

Opting-Out is Still Here

Lisa Belkin stirred up a huge furor a few years ago with a NYT Magazine piece called "The Opt-Out Generation," in which she argued that female graduates of elite colleges were increasingly chosing families over careers. Now, today, the NYT comes out with an article saying that female Yale students are planning on "opting-out". Two things jump out at me. The first is this quote:

Sarah Currie, a senior at Harvard, said many of the men in her American Family class last fall approved of women's plans to stay home with their children.

"A lot of the guys were like, 'I think that's really great,' " Ms. Currie said. "One of the guys was like, 'I think that's sexy.' Staying at home with your children isn't as polarizing of an issue as I envision it is for women who are in their 30's now."

Seriously? God damn it, women. Men have been approving of women who want to stay home and raise families for thousands of years! You feel encouraged because guys think its "sexy" to stop a career and raise children? That is such unbelievable affirmation of gender subjugation, it blows my mind. And I'm not even a RADICAL feminist.

Second, where the hell are the guys on this? Raising children is not just the mother's responsibility, it's the father's. Guys shouldn't keep going out to their law firm or medical practice while saying their wives are sexy for staying home. They should be helping to share the fucking burden.

/rant

Paris Hilton's Cabin

Following up on the "Bi-Curious" post, comes this book analyzing the issue from a much broader perspective. Jen Egan's thorough review analyzes where the book hits the mark, and where it's less than convincing. Here's her thesis (read the article to make sense of my title):

Our popular culture, she argues, has embraced a model of female sexuality that comes straight from pornography and strip clubs, in which the woman's job is to excite and titillate - to perform for men. According to Levy, women have bought into this by altering their bodies surgically and cosmetically, and - more insidiously - by confusing sexual power with power, so that embracing this caricaturish form of sexuality becomes, in their minds, a perverse kind of feminism.