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Don't underestimate the influence of a fairy tale like Beauty and the Beast. It's spawned an animated feature (the first to be nominated for a Best Picture Oscar), a Hallmark made-for-TV movie, a prime time series on CBS, whatever this is, an amazingly popular musical, and now Beastly — a tween romance starring Mary-Kate Olsen, Vanessa Hudgens, and Alex Pettyfer. More »
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Responding to Katie Roiphe's argument that we've gone all virtuous since the gin-soaked days of Sterling-Cooper (which arguments in sum Amanda Marcotte termed "so wrong that it makes people physically uncomfortable") people are making the case for our own debauchery: More »
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What are morals? And why does generation after generation insist on infusing certain behaviors, whether they be eating pork or eating meat, cloning cows or cloning zygotes, driving pickups or buying Barbies at Wal-Mart, drinking or smoking, with the radioactive taint that is MORALITY? Why do the universal biological instincts we call "conscience" impel toddlers to offer you their drool-stained teddy bears when they see you cry, and yet adults, in the name of the universal moral order their consciences supposedly constructed, see fit to publicly flog other adults who allow said children to name their teddy bears "Mohammed"? What was up with Will Smith telling that newspaper he didn't think Hitler thought of himself as a terrible guy? And why the fuck are people so quick to misinterpret every goddamn thing someone says, as if they've been standing in the shadows for years, waiting for that deep-rooted innermost hatefulness to reveal itself? Why does righteousness so easily slide into immorality? And why does every experiment testing the universality of "morals" involve runaway tolleys? Is what we call "morality" just another example of of evolutionary biology, which is the new "socialization"? Can we blame Darwin for Bratz dolls, AND our moral opposition to the existence of Bratz dolls in our Wal-Mart stores? More »
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One of the best ("best" = soul-wrenching!) parts about working on Jezebel is reading what Jezebel readers have to say back. So we were practically drawing straws for the chance to wade through your thoughts on our decision to pay $10,000 so we could run an un-retouched Redbook cover featuring Faith Hill. (Yup, Baby Spice "won" this assignment!) We braced ourselves for who among you would meet us, as Women's Wear Daily did, with contempt and disapproval that we would undermine "one of the few venues where celebrities are spared the warts and all coverage of the tabloid age." But none of you did! Nice ethics, bitches! Anyway, what your observations taught us about anatomy, Victoria Beckham, back fat, and Photoshop, after the jump. More »
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