I'll admit it: I'm messy. I was raised that way, in a chaotic home filled with scattered books, junk mail, and the box of "vintage" Christmas ornaments my mother swore were "collectible" in whatever parallel universe we not just divested ourselves of crap, but had the werewithal to sell it. We tried, we really did - and I do! - but none of us had been born with either the organization gene nor the sense of propriety to feel sufficiently disturbed to do anything about it. To this day, it goes against the grain not to throw my clothes on the floor, and my purse is a mass of receipts, loose change, and a mysterious and ever-present cache of crumbs. My apartment isn't generally dirty, but it is messy. I'd always understood this was something of which to be ashamed, an outer indication of inward disorganization and larger failures to fit in with societal standards. Guests, at my parents' house, were a source of stress. "Don't go in there!" my mother would shriek, throwing herself in front of a startled visitor and slamming the door of whatever room she considered shameful. And, "their house is so clean," she'd sigh sadly when we left someone else's home. ("Is their house really clean?" she'll invariably ask suspiciously when I meet a new boyfriend's parents - doubtless anticipating the dramatic levels of door-slamming their visit will occasion.)

No one who's voluntarily entered this contest apparently shares these qualms. Each contestant gives a brief explanation of his squalor, usually defiant. "I had spent two months organizing hundreds of people to break the world record for the most people to do Michael Jackson's Thriller dance, and hadn't really prioritized cleaning my room," says one entrant. "I have better things to do such as jump on my trampoline," declares another. With the exception of the odd dead mouse, most of these places are more "bad roommate" than "hellhole." Think loads of dirty clothes, plenty of dirty dishes, the occasional stack of pizza boxes.

I have a few issues with the contest. First of all, I don't think anyone should be allowed to nominate himself, because obviously this encourages the entrant to cultivate the squalor and adds an element of artificiality. Second: obviously no one who enters this is actually going to have the world's worst: that honor surely belongs to some shut-in or mentally-ill person living in true, Grey Gardens, Collyer-style filth and squalor, who probably doensn't think about it one way or the other.

It's funny, a few generations ago, people would have been mortified to show anyone such a messy apartment; now, we're proud of it. This isn't, oh, my place is a mess. This is, look how rebellious I am! In some ways, this is probably good: it marks a move away from arbitrary standards and doesn't make a fetish of the domestic. And yeah, if they're okay with it - and don't have roommates - rock on. But at the same time, it's infantile: I know we fetishize youth, but living in a state of suspended adolescence, where on some level we expect some magical mom or maid to pick up after us, is irresponsible. (And one of the Brooklyn women, 29, reveals that her mom is actually en route from Arkansas to clean her place.) Like I said, I speak as a slob. And even as I castigated myself, I secretly thought of neatness as arbitrary and even neurotic. But as I got older, I started to understand the benefits of not living amidst chaos, and in taking pride in my own space. (A shrink said she thought it was a means of expressing my inner control and repression; whatever, she hasn't seen my parents' place.) Also, I really don't want to be slamming doors at my mom's age.

Filth Isn't Dirty Word: Dead Mice, Rotten Food Snag Brooklyn Woman Fourth Place Among Foulest Digs [NY Daily News]
Dirtiest Apartment Contest [My Apartment Map]
Brooklyn Slobs Make Finals In Filthiest Apartment Contest! [Gothamist]

Nobel wants women to support his new life, and when they don't, he gets critical:

I've learned that otherwise intelligent, urbane, and morally imaginative women — the bulk of my friends — often cannot bring themselves, even when they invite the conversation, to hear my stories, to deviate from a high contrast model of human behavior, see how grey it can be in practice, to see the devil in their friend.

He goes on to lament "the derision in the eyes of and occasional open attacks from friends' wives (it's not contagious)" and "the burden of being a lightning rod for the fears of women and the resentments of burdened men (three drinks in, they all admit they're jealous)." "I've suffered plenty," he says, "I still suffer. But our reigning cultural norms demand that, like Hank Moody in Californication, I suffer more. [...] Why?"

The reason is in your parentheses, Danger Man! You say your choices are original, that "it's not contagious," and then you say all men are jealous of you. You want us not just to listen but to like you, even as we contrast your life as a "DILF" dating "twentysomething hip-hop intellectuals" with that of one of your naysaying friends, a "single, 42-year-old" woman whom you imagine "dead in her Upper West Side one-bedroom, prized dachshund licking at her corpse." Gee, Phil, do you think women might want you to suffer because, in your vision of the world, men either fuck around or want to, while single women get eaten by their dogs?

What Nobel did may not be "contagious," but it happens often enough to make a lot of women worry. We worry that a man will do grown-up things with us, like marry and have kids, or just fall in love and make us feel safe, and then he'll announce that he never really grew up at all and that he needs to go back to his twenties, with a twentysomething girlfriend to match. A few exceptions aside, this option still seems far less open to women — especially when others assume that not being married means becoming dachshund fodder.

Of course, none of this is solely Nobel's fault. It's the fault of a culture that trumpets the sanctity of marriage while painting male fidelity as lame. And that casts older women as unsexy and unsexual. The solution to this problem isn't to force people like Nobel to stay in unhappy marriages — it's to understand the sexual double standard that makes women feel so vulnerable, and to set about changing it.

Elle

• Lindsay Lohan turned herself in for that DUI in May. She was formally arrested and then released on bail about an hour later. [People]
  
• Plus: Did Lindsay Lohan's antics shut down a movie? [PageSix]
  
• Soooo many blind items: A "socialite" went down on a party paparazzo; the son of a "gazillionaire record genius" died of AIDS; a celebrity chef ran around naked on liquid ecstasy in Mykonos; a rock star's daughter with a drug problem. Guesses, please! [PageSix]
  
• "Peach colored toilet paper to match her complexion, and rose petals in the toilet bowl.One hundred-and-twenty designer bathroom towels also in peach. Ten highly specified designer floor lamps." So begins a story titled "The Bizarre Truth About Life With Barbra Streisand." [ThisIsLondon]

• America's Next Top Model winner Jaslene wants you to know she is not anorexic, just a skinny cha cha diva. [ET]
• Kyllie Minogue and Olivier Martinez are not back together; she just loves his dog! [TheSun]
• By the way, the Emmy nominations were announced yesterday. No real surprises: Grey's Anatomy, House, The Sopranos, Heroes, Entourage, The Office, Ugly Betty, James Gandolfini, Hugh Laurie, Kiefer Sutherland, Edie Falco, Kyra Sedgwick, Patricia Arquette, etc. [E!]
• Wait! There is exciting Emmy news: "Dick In A Box" is nominated! [TMZ]
• Also: Project Runway! [UW]
• Brigitte Nielsen is about to get out of rehab. We didn't know she'd checked in. [TMZ]