As the series' official site explains, the show follows 52 state "title holders" as they compete for 15 slots in the actual January 24 pageant.

With 52 women to get to know — and one hour in which to do it in — the premiere didn't give us a particularly strong impression of any of the contestants. (We think we remember liking the spunky Miss Missouri.) But then... there was Gretchen Carlson. The former Miss America winner and current co-host of Jezebel hating Fox & Friends turned up as a special "consultant" and was given the task of posing questions about hot-button social issues — sex education, same sex couples and adoption — in order to get the contestants to "debate". (Culture wars? What culture wars?) In the clip above, Carlson the Republiblonde is introduced to the ladies by the show's host, and then gets down to the business of separating the real Americans from the arugula-eating elitists. (If nothing else, we now know that Miss America is probably going to be a Republican.) Below, stills of the ladies' reactions to Carlson's initial appearance on the scene.

"The chick from Fox News???" (The pursed lips give it away)



Check out the girl in the middle:



Here's a two-fer:



Color this one unenthused:



It just gets better:



A classic Bish Plz:



Love. Her.



Even Carlson's co-consultants look on with suspicion.









In her defense, during the round of table interviews with the "pink" team, Carlson gives as good as she gets (to those from blue states, mostly):





Fun fact: Did you know that Michele "Batshit" Bachmann used to babysit Gretchen?




By the way, this is Miss Iowa, self-professed Gretchen Carlson fan, checking out the competition at the pink table. Keep an eye on her.

Earlier: Fox & Friends Insists That Palin Haters Are All New York City Women
Jezebel "Bugs" Fox & Friends Host Steve Doocy

Earlier: Moms In Uproar Over Snarky Motrin Ad

But did you know that a decade ago, it was discovered that fat has stem cells in it that are similar to the stem cells in bone marrow? The new fat put into breast tissue is sent to a lab prior to insertion, so that the stem cells within can be fortified. This process is all the rage in Asia and parts of Europe, where women are paying "$15,000 to $30,000 or more depending on the surgeon and clinic," according to the Wall Street Journal.

Sounds just dandy for the rich and frivolous, right? Wrong! There are major, as yet-unexplored risks, the Journal notes. "Some doctors worry the fat, when reinjected in the breast, could calcify and interfere with mammographic cancer screening. Another concern is that fat injections could increase the risk of breast cancer, because certain anticancer drugs work in postmenopausal women by inhibiting the production of estrogen, a hormone in fat tissue."

But that hasn't stopped some U.S. doctors, like Jafar Koupaie, from performing the FDA-not approved surgery. In fact, Koupie was generous enough to perform the controversial procedure on his wife. The Journal interviews Erika Igarashi, a woman who volunteered for the fat-enhancement at the Tokyo-based Seishin clinic. The Journal says that the Seishin clinic uses photos of Igarashi to tout the procedure, but we couldn't find them ANYWHERE ON THE INTERNET!! Japanese-speaking Jezebels, perhaps your sleuthing will be more effective — let us know if you find anything.

Anyway, a company called Cytori is looking into marketing a device that "combines fat with a mixture of stem cells and other regenerative cells," and there are real ailments like cardiovascular disease (and of course, breast reconstruction for those who have had mastectomies) that could be treated with the potent stem cell combo. If this is the case, why not use cosmetic surgery devotees as guinea pigs? If they're willing to risk their health for perfect tatas, at least they can help others in the meantime.

Stem Cells And Breast Surgery [WSJ]

Botox For The Résumé: One Woman's Makeover [WSJ]

It occurs to me that frequently in these columns, there is a moment where, finally alone and generally late into the night of a long day, I find myself reduced to tears by some list of knocks and slights. Perhaps this only means I need a new device; I don’t think of myself as such a sad sack figure as all that. But this week, actually the night after my spirit-crushing turn as a volunteer clotheshorse for a designer who most definitely could have afforded to pay me, my sadness metastasized not into tears, but into a rage-inflected political platform that just might transform my industry.

Well, OK, first I cried. Then I thought: models should unionize to work for better conditions and rates of pay.

It’s a common misconception that modeling is easy, safe and highly lucrative — the reality is that the girls with the million-dollar campaigns are so rare I wouldn’t believe they actually existed if I didn’t see them at night clubs during fashion week. Most models I know are lucky if they are working at all; between agency commissions (70% in Paris, 50% in Milan, 20% in New York), travel expenses, and rent in the various pricey cities in which we are required to live, your eventual wages come so garnished I’ve known plenty of models who can’t always afford food. Even the girls who are lucky enough to work every day are doing well if they break even, and can sneak off to Germany or Los Angeles or Hong Kong and make a quick buck shooting catalog jobs every once in a while.

And safe? Once I was staying with a girl from Seattle in a shitty one-bedroom (total number of models: six! Minimum in rent our agency would’ve made from the shitty one-bedroom that month, assuming a consistent model population: $5400!). We were both on option for the same editorial (daily rate: $150 and lunch). She got the job.

She returned home nine hours later, hair and body painted silver. The magazine was doing a “green” issue; this eco-conscious theme was enacted in, variously, shots in which the poor Seattle girl had a tulip plant placed in her mouth, shots in which she had to lie on top of a scratchy 8 ft. hedgerow while the photographer shot from a crane, and shots in which she closed her eyes and shards of broken glass were applied to her face. They put dirt in her mouth and glass on her eyelids and painted her silver from head to toe. My roommate showered twice and vomited once that night.

Models have incredibly short-lived careers, and our collective youth, third-world origins, and the instability of the market we work in makes our bargaining positions, individually, weak. For every 15-year-old wunderkind who stalks 40 runways a season and books $100,000 perfume campaigns for college money, there are at least a hundred girls who turn 25 with a few grand in bank at best, realize their careers are over, and that they never graduated high school.

It’s also no wonder given how close many models are to insolvency that there are areas where modeling shades into prostitution; modeling sort of prepares you — trains you, even — to see your income in your own body. And also to hang around with plenty of creepy, older, rich dudes. A + B can = C. The BBC did an exposé in 2000 that caught Milanese businessmen on hidden camera trying to buy sex from models as young as 13 in night clubs, and uncovered evidence of agency bookers acting as procurers and drug dealers. In the furor that ensued, Gérard Marie and Xavier Moreau, two top executives at the Elite agency, lost their jobs. The industry promised a clean-up. There was talk of “standards,” of girls younger than 17 being accompanied by chaperones at all times, of blacklisting clients who used or promoted drugs.

Gérard Marie — who was filmed soliciting a reporter who he thought was a model for sex — is currently back at the helm of Elite Paris. I do not know if the man who explained his desire to sleep with underaged models thusly: “We are men, we have our needs” has reformed. I do know that such episodes of revolving-door contrition and forgiveness fill me with disgust, and that one of the biggest tasks of any models’ union would be to keep its membership safe.

A union would also offer, obviously, the benefits of collective bargaining. The overwhelming counterweight of the fashion business class’s wealth give models an unacceptably weak negotiating position. A union could help insure models’ best long-term interests are served by their jobs — a union could argue for retirement benefits, and, in the USA, health insurance coverage. A union could mandate that sufficient time be given for models under 16 to attend school, without setting back their careers. A union could also serve as a voice for models’ interests in the ongoing debate over what is perhaps our biggest immediate health issue — the slightly-underweight physique we are required to maintain. A union could protest and shame under- and non-paying clients, a union could mandate that appropriate food be available at every job, and a union could ensure that conditions on the job site always meet safety standards, so nobody has to pose covered in broken glass or eat dirt ever again.

The obvious counterpoint to modeling is, of course, acting. The Screen Actors’ Guild does an admirable job of representing the interests of a workforce that is dispersed over a vast geography, and which enjoys short-term contract-based employment, when it gets employment at all. It’s ironic that one of the reasons commercial modeling — catalogs, television ads and their ilk — is so rewarding when compared with high-fashion modeling — magazine editorials, runway, etc — is because of SAG’s vigilance; commercial castings in Los Angeles are not infrequently stated union jobs. And even the ones that are non-union are pretty highly paid. I have friends who are only able to work full-time in Paris because they have commercials still airing in the U.S., and receive the appropriate checks quarterly.

Individually, we are weak, and wealthy white men manage to make an awful lot of cash off our bodies and labor. Collectively, we could hold the industry we work in to a higher standard, and perhaps even change the nature of fashion itself. I imagine the union would have an awful lot to say, for instance, about those clients who put “NO ETHNICS” on their casting notices, and those agencies who fail to notice, or care, that certain of their charges have eating disorders.

Of course there are plenty of reasons to doubt any of this will come to pass. The economy is especially dreadful right now; any moves to unionize would be viewed as a threat by the class that controls the fashion capital. Besides, every year there’s a new raft of 14-year-olds from countries with economies far shittier than ours, and these 14-year-olds are all six feet tall and very, very hungry. And, through no fault of their own, they exercise a huge deflationary force on the modeling labor market. But it occurred to me, as I was working that presentation for that designer who amuses herself by collecting Picasso, that the reason she was paying the security guards at the event and not me was because the security guards have a union. And I don’t.

I want to at least try my best to change that.

E-mail Tatiana at Tatiana.Anymodel@gmail.com

Earlier: Welcome To America, Models! Tatiana Can't Wait For The Extra Competition. It Was Almost Getting Too Easy.

Related:

Model Bosses Quit After BBC Exposé [BBC]
Girls Interrupted [NY Mag]

1. Television News Anchor. Okay, so this is obvious, but topical, because surely you've found yourself in recent weeks thinking, "What would Tim Russert's female equivalent look like?" And is there a single woman of prominence who looks anything remotely like her? No.
2. Pharmaceutical sales representative. (Or really, most jobs ending in "representative" now that our call centers have all been relocated in India.) Commonly recruited from college cheerleading teams, the practice of hiring hot drug reps probably originated around the time Big Pharma realized it could sell a lot of mood-enhancing pills to people who didn't need them if they took doctors out to dinner here and there. There's been some cutbacks in this industry since the major pharmaceutical companies got so focused on building their sales forces they forgot to develop any new drugs, but I bet being a babe doesn't hurt.
3. Any kind of "Director" that is not "Managing" This is obviously a gross generalization but my sense is that, from publishing to fashion to design to advertising to basically any sector besides film or traffic, "directing" is one of those things that can be done by people with minimal actual skill and therefore they probably got hired because their boss liked looking at them. I'm pretty sure "director" was a popular title at American Apparel, though in that case I might amend that last sentence to just finish reading "naked."
4. Intern When did all female magazine interns start looking like they'd been cast for a reality show? Seriously, when?
5. Italian cabinet member. In a scene in the latest British Esquire, Silvio Berlusconi is giving a town hall meeting and a woman rises from the audience to ask a question about the economy and her career prospects. "Don't worry," he tells her. "I'm sure a woman as beautiful as you can easily find a rich man to settle down with." But wait, it's not so bleak as all that! If she's really so insistent on working, I'm sure there's a spot for her in his cabinet.

Money Honeys [W Magazine]

Here international airlines are ranked on the basis of stewardess hotness. You'll note Australian airline Qantas is on the list but Qantas is totally a respectable airline, I don't think they have ever crashed and they fired that stewardess who had mile high sex with Ralph Fiennes.

Here's a picture I found from a blog post I found on the history of sexy stewardess uniforms and another blog post on the history of sexism w/r/t sexy stewardesses.

And here's an old Southwest Airlines commercial.

10. On March 13, Plaintiff was working in her office which she shares with other American Apparel employees. Defendant Charney barged into the office screaming and yelling Plaintiff's name in a loud voice. After he entered the office, Defendant Charney continued to rant and rage at Plaintiff, while wildly waving his arms in a threatening manner. Defendant Charney placed his face in extremely close proximity to Plaintiff's face, to the point that Defendant Charney's spit struck Plainfiff's face, while he continued to repeatedly threaten that he was going to "kick your ass."

11. Defendant Charney repeatedly shouted to Plaintiff that she should be f**king scared" and that if she did not do what he asked, plaintiff needed to resign. Defendant Charney made several references to an interview he had conducted with Jane magazine wherein he had received oral sex from an employee during the course of the interview and the reporter had engaged in masturbation. Defendant Charney sat down and ordered Plaintiff to "pretend to masturbate."

12. Plaintiff continued in a state of shock and terror and refused to respond in any manner to Defendant's demands. In addition Plaintiff was extremely embarrassed and humiliated at being sexually objectified in the presence of her co-workers, including her immediate supervisor, Matthew Swenson.

13. After an extended pause waiting for Plaintiff to respond to his command, and realizing that she had no intentions of complying, Defendant Charney then ordered Mr. Swenson to "pretend to masturbate." As Mr. Swenson complied with his Defendant Charney's instruction, Defendant Charney moved next to him and simulated an oral sex act with him.

14. Shortly after arriving home that evening, Plaintiff received a phone call from her supervisor, Mr. Swenson, who informed her that Defendant Charney had just called him screaming at him and demanding that he call her and instruct her to immediately call Defendant Charney. Plaintiff called Defendant Charney as instructed. Defendant Charney proceeded to launch another verbal tirade at Plaintiff, indlucing such statements as, "I don't give a f**k about you, your dinner or your f**king life, I have thousands of employees. I don't need to waste my time on you." Defendant Charney demanded that Plaintiff immediately work on a project relating to his public profile. Plaintiff complied with his demands which required her to work until almost midnight.

American Apparel Employee: My Boss Is A Jerkoff [TMZ]

Related: Change At American Apparel [WSJ] Woody Allen Dressed Down by American Apparel In Response To Lawsuit [NYDN]

Earlier: Working At American Apparel All It's Coked Up To Be Everything I Needed To Know About The American Economy I Learned At American Apparel

She told a judge she was a drug addict who had taken Xanax, Ecstasy, OxyContin, heroin, coke and LSD, to which the judge replied, "If all that is true, you should be dead," a statement that becomes immeasurably more accurate without its preambulatory clause. She also: skipped out on a Denny's bill — Denny's! thank the deities for poetic justice — and stabbed her boyfriend with a pocket knife and keyed his car...Oh, I don't know, maybe she's just a worthless drug addict. Anyway now she's finally going away, to juvi, and apparently also "crying," and definitely also sporting a fresh set of highlights. Who knows, maybe she will become even more famous in prison. The Mumia Abu-Jamal of our Generation. Then I can die.

Some videos:

Paris Hilton Of Palm Beach Has A Problem [NPR]

Girl Scout Cookie Thief Sentenced [Fox 29]

"You Should Be Dead" [Palm Beach Post]

The Part Where She Skips Out On A Denny's Tab [CBS 12]

Videogum Weighs In [Videogum]

"I Don't Know, Doesn't Everybody Like Money? [Fox 29]

"If Ian MacKaye Were Here, He Would Grab That Frappuccino Out Of Her Hand And Smash It Over Her Head And Say, 'Chill Out'" [Metatribes]

So here's the thing: Rachel Moss seems like an intelligent, cool, normal person. What the fuck do such people really want with mocking the fats? Did I not get the memo about how fat-trolling burns calories? I have friends like this. Indie rock listening friends who preach tolerance and limiting their carbon intakes low and desiring change in government — and yeah, Moss is an Obama girl! — who nevertheless disdain fat people and for whom being relatively thin almost seems to be a conversational prerequisite. Because fat people remind them of the suburbs they so detested as hopelessly victimized youths? I guess. But isn't that just so boring? Yes. So boring I wouldn't bother posting about it, except for my fear that such people are totally going to turn into Republicans one day.

The Offending Post
Public Shaming [Amptoons]
The Dimensions Of Hypersurfaces

"I'm worried," she says. "Jana is beautiful and younger, and Bob is Bob, but you, you I worry about. You need someplace to go."

But it's hard not to think: "well, Trader Joe's, obviously!" In the movie, he would meet a younger, liberally tattooed ingenue, one of those twentysomething girls in that stage where you're grappling with what comes after precocious, and they would fall in a sort of resigned kind of love. And my friends would go see that movie, just so one of us could eviscerate it on the internet, because there has to be some way to retaliate against the uncomfortable suspicion that being young and beautiful is actually, in this economy and in life, such a necessary scam if you happen to be a female. We should all get to be as deeply pathetic as T.L. Shine!

Times Magazine Dapples Sunlight On Its Memoirist [Observer]

Anyway. I've addressed this topic countless times, so extensively we have this tag "American Titocracy," so if you've been reading awhile you know I think that the American economy is so driven by "want creation" that all work performed by women is on some level gradually acquiring properties of sex work. Which is why I feel so adamantly that somebody needs to punch Gordon Patzer in his conventionally handsome still-boyish-at-50 face.

(Let's face it: is there anyone of whose intellect you are generally more suspicious than a really really pretty person? Later on in life, that can actually work to their advantage, since the pretty people find adoring boyfriends who will stay in while they catch up on all the reading they missed out on in high school. I know a bunch of really pretty people who have totally overcompensated in this way, to the point that I now consider it a neutral if someone is extraordinarily attractive, though there is still a lot to be said for having been ugly throughout most of your formative years.)

The point is, however, that Gordon Patzer's brand of dismayed resignation is NOT WHAT AMERICA NEEDS RIGHT NOW. The threat to American hegemony is not the superior skin and/or bone structure of the BRIC nations. (Well, Brazil maybe?) And we need our fucking science minds to stop going into plastic surgery.

How Plastic Surgery Can Help Your Career [US News]

I wish this was the kind of world where say, 'Wow, I'd like to touch your breasts,' and people would understand that it's not a way of reducing you to a set of nipples and ignoring the rest of you, but rather a way of saying that I may not yet know your mind, but your body is beautiful.

We were standing in the hallway of ConFusion, about nine of us, and we all nodded. Then another friend spoke up.

"You can touch my boobs," she said to all of us in the hallway. "It's no big deal."

Now, you have to understand the way she said that, because it's the key to the whole project. The spirit of everything was formed within those nine words - and if she'd said them shyly, as though having her breasts touched by people was something to be endured or afraid of, the Open-Source Boob Project would have died aborning. But she didn't. Her words were loud and clearly audible to anyone who walked by, an offer made to friends and acquaintances alike.

Yet it wasn't a come-on, either. There wasn't that undertow of desperation of come on, touch me, I need you to validate my self-esteem and maybe we'll hook up later tonight. There was no promise of anything but a simple grope.

We all reached out in the hallway, hands and fingers extended, to get a handful. And lo, we touched her breasts - taking turns to put our hands on the creamy tops exposed through the sheer top she wore, cupping our palms to touch the clothed swell underneath, exploring thoroughly but briefly lest we cross the line from 'touching" to "unwanted heavy petting." They were awesome breasts, worthy of being touched.

Well, that didn't go over so well. Ferrett and his nerd cohorts were showered with outrage and mockery and virtual kicks in the balls and now he's apologized, saying what "works in a microcosm can't work in a macrocosm" and all sorts of stupid shit someone is surely saving for a screenplay on a GeekCon Rom Com about a booth babe who falls in love with a friendly hacker, because the Open Source Boob Project is seriously the funniest thing since Band Camp, unless you're the type to get offended by "double standards" or whatever, and we talked to someone who gets offended by that stuff (and also, has to actually attend science fiction conventions) and the only thing that offended her was that there were no rules for groping dudes. "I am a total repressed groper," she admitted. Me too, kinda! But um...that's what crowded bars in Williamsburg are for, right? Wait, forget I said that.

No No Ojou Chan!
Earlier: Elegy For A Booth Babe

Yeah, not really.

I don't speak Spanish but I am kind of in love anyway.

Tax the Beautiful [Ode Magazine]
Feosexual, The Blog
Related: In Argentina, Ugly People Strike Back
Earlier: Dear Pretty Girls Who Are Also Smart: Some Tips For Avoiding Our Antipathy

The edict against Julia was lifted once — in a stunt carried out during New York Fashion Week last September — but for the most part, no mention of her was made. Readers (most of them, no doubt, New Yorkers) wrote in unsolicited after the blog launched to request that we not mention her, which only served to underscore that I'd made the right decision in keeping her off our roster of blog-worthy media and cultural personalities. Except when I spotted her and her (admittedly adorable) white dog from afar at some media clusterfuck, in my mind, it was (almost) as if she didn't exist.

The thing is, Julia Allison and her sisters in conspicuous consumption and shameless self-promotion do exist, and it's getting harder and harder to ignore them. Their latest assault came via the NY Times' "City" section, which devoted some 2,000-plus words (and multiple four-color photographs) to Julia in a piece titled "Channeling Carrie" yesterday. My reaction to the piece was not unlike the expression shown on a woman shown standing behind Julia in a photograph taken at her 27th birthday party in NYC's West Village: a mixture of curiosity, uncertainty, discomfort and mild disgust. (Or maybe I'm just projecting.)

In the article, Julia practically crowns herself the new queen of New York narcissism: "If Carrie Bradshaw were coming to New York today," the Times quotes her as saying, "she would be me." To a Times reporter interviewing her on video for an accompanying web feature, she strikes a more humble note, explaining that being "compared to a character who has inspired a lot of women by opening herself up and questioning the issues that concern not just single people in their twenties and thirties but of all ages, that's a compliment."

Maybe so, but here's the question that no one seems to be asking regarding both Sex and the City and the Scary Sadshaws it has spawned: What important issues did the series identify and illuminate? What barriers did it break? What did the characters ("Carrie & Company") ever do for anyone outside of themselves? What, praytell, was so damn groundbreaking about a group of narcissistic rich white women with a love of shopping and gossiping about their sex lives? (Despite what Candace Bushnell thinks, the themes of no-strings-attached sex, female friendship, conspicuous consumption and social-climbing had been amply investigated long before she came on the scene.)

I'm willing to admit that it's possible the problem isn't with the Scary Sadshaws but with me — perhaps, as Julia asserts, I can aspire to be both "serious and thoughtful" while also being "shallow and frivolous", although I don't see how I'd have the time — so last night, I went online and spent $300 on a box-set of every episode of Sex and the City ever produced. (It comes in a suede cover in a hue of hot pink not unlike the plastic case covering Julia's white MacBook.) I've decided to watch all 94 episodes between now and the premiere of the Sex and the City movie on May 30 — around 12 episodes a week — in the hopes that I can embrace my inner Carrie Bradshaw and figure out what all the fuss is about (perhaps I'll even learn to like pink!). At the very least, the next time I see Julia, we'll have something to talk about...although Candace Bushnell can still kiss my middle-income black ass.

Channeling Carrie [NY Times]
Web And the Single Girl [NY Times]

Earlier: Before Sex & The City, Talking About Sex Was Practically Illegal
Julia Allison Asks: What About Fashion Makes You Want To Hurl?

Here's where Wurtzel's self-absorption is most evident, but also where she makes her strongest argument. As one of the "third wavers" of feminism who included Katie Roiphe and Susan Faludi, Wurtzel says that she and her sisters promoted "Do Me" Feminism. "I appeared topless on the cover of one of my books, a decision I stand by still," she writes. "But I don't think the idea that you could own your own orgasm was ever intended to teach college coeds that it is a good idea to spend spring break in a shower with your roommate in a motel room in Daytona Beach having a lesbian encounter for the cameras of Girls Gone Wild. That's not feminism!"

As Dodai pointed out earlier this week, Wurtzel is right: those spring breakers are not embracing feminist principles when they lose their shirts. I am not of Elizabeth Wurtzel's generation — I am of the generation that Hugh Schwyzer praises for such "optimistic" feminists as Feministing's Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte — but I agree with Wurtzel that things were better in the halcyon days of the 90s.

Take the Real World as a cultural barometer. When the show debuted in 1992, there were three women on the show, Julie, Becky and Heather. Each one had career aspirations: Julie wanted to be a dancer and took classes constantly; Becky was a musician who played at clubs in the city; Heather was a rapper. The women went on dates and had both relationships and hookups, but they were not getting wasted and competing with one another for male attention. None of the three were conventionally beautiful. Flash forward to Season 19 in Sydney, Australia. Besides the young Iranian woman, Parisa, who is derided about her looks by the other female cast members, the other ladies are interchangeable bleached blondes with fake tits or empty-headed brunettes with long, flowing hair. Kelly Ann got on the show because in her audition video she stripped down to her undies, on which she had written, "Make it Hott: Pick Me!" Shauvon left the show to get back with her boyfriend, whom she had originally broken up with because he was making her choose between him and her career.

Again, the question is: what's happened in the intervening 16 years? Is it the pornification of culture because of the internet? Did we become inured to the idea of women as objects because of the Starr report? Can we blame Britney for this one? Can't we have sexual freedom without flashing a camera?

Bitter Ashes Of Burned Brassieres [Los Angeles Times]

It's Not All About Wurtzel [Los Angeles Times]

Ashley Dupre In Girls Gone Wild Video [New York Post]

Related: Some Young Women Maybe Be Confusing Confidence With Carnality

The Real World: Female Empowerment Is A Stranger To The Seven Roommates