• On Sunday, Michelle Wie won her first LPGA tour title. This was her 65th LPGA tour event, and while she had finished second six times, she had never managed a win. ''Wowww-w-w ...... never thought this would feel THIS great!!!!" she said on Twitter. • President Obama told - not asked - Burma's junta to free pro-democracy leader Suu Kyi at a recent summit with the Burmese prime minister. •  A Zambian reporter has been acquitted of pornography charges, which could have held a five year sentence if she had been convicted. The so-called porn possessed by Chansa Kabwela was actually photographs of a mother giving birth in a car park, which Kabwela did not publish but instead sent out to women's rights groups. • The suburban swim club outside Philadelphia that was accused of discrimination earlier this year has announced plans to declare bankruptcy. The club reportedly asked several children not to return because of "racial animus" expressed by a member. But the swim club's president denies that their closing has anything to do with the legal proceedings. •  A bushfire on the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve has turned the area into an "animal graveyard." Some blame Terri Irwin for improperly managing the property, but Irwin blames it on pig hunters, who she claims were probably trying to clear the land. •  A recent study published in the British Medical Journal found that current policies to reduce teen pregnancies are simply not working. The study also linked certain factors to teen pregnancy, including dislike of school, poverty, unhappy childhoods and low expectations for the future. •  For the first time in decades, the U.S. skating team has no clear-cut Olympic medal contender. "In the past, we've had Michelle Kwan, Peggy Fleming and Dorothy Hamill year after year, and every time we felt that they were going to win the gold medal," said David Ruth, executive director of US Figure Skating. "But when Michael Jordan left the N.B.A, they were looking for a new star, and we're looking for a new star." • Researchers have found that texting may be linked to neck pain, caused primarily by the hunched-over body position favored by serial texters. • Doctors are hopeful that a vaccine for chlamydia isn't far away. However, previous research has shown that injections don't work very well, so a vaccine may come in the form of a vaginal cream or spray. •  Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi has pissed off some 200 Italian women after he placed an ad recruiting "attractive girls between 18 and 35 years old" for an "event." While most expected a party, the event turned out to be a two hour lesson intended to convert them to Islam. •  A recent report touts the benefits of distributing contraceptives in Uganda. The report estimates that meeting just half of Ugandan women's unmet needs for contraceptives would yield dramatic health benefits, including an expected 21% decline in maternal deaths. • Angie Young's film The Coat Hanger Project tells the story of how abortions have actually become increasingly less accessible in the decades since Roe vs. Wade. One good example: the Stupak amendment. You can take action against the pro-choice Democrats who supported the amendment by signing a petition to send them a coat hanger. • The Association of Chief Police Officers in England and Wales has proposed a domestic violence register to track an estimated 25,000 serial abusers. The register would allow people to look up a man's history including convictions and unproven allegations. The Association is also pushing for the creation of a "course of conduct" offense to make it easier to go after serial offenders, even if there isn't enough evidence to prosecute each individual case. • Janet Clark went to a British hospital because she believed she'd gone into labor in her 25th week of pregnancy, but a doctor and four midwives told her to go home. The next day she went back and was told to go home again, and then started giving birth on the toilet. "A pregnant woman shouldn't have to plead with medical staff," said Clark, who had a healthy baby boy. • In a study 54 Caucasian subjects were asked to manipulate the skin color of male and female faces on a computer screen to make them appear as healthy as possible. Most increased the rosiness, yellowness, and brightness of the skin. "In the West we often think that sun tanning is the best way to improve the color of your skin," said researcher Dr. Ian Stephen, "But our research suggests that living a healthy lifestyle with a good diet might actually be better." The study didn't address what makes non-white faces appear healthier and attractive. • Researchers found that in business, gender is a factor in measuring a team's performance, but but not the leaders themselves. In industries in which most leadership positions are held by men, people will expect more of teams led by men, but expectations of the leaders themselves are not influenced by gender. • In an interview on CBS' Early Show Mary Lou Quinlan, author of What She's Not Telling You: Why Women Hide the Whole Truth and What Marketers Can Do About It, says women tell "half truths" about "anything with a number in it. Their age, their weight, how many drinks they had." • In a new interview with CBS News, Laura Bush said Texas feels like it's a million miles away from Washington. "...Not that I ever felt like I had the weight of the world on my shoulders, or that George did when I lived there — but when it was gone, I could notice it," she said. "There's a great feeling of freedom." •

• Lindsay Lohan, finally addressing her disastrously received first Ungaro collection, says, "I am learning." But she will be back in Paris for the next show! "It's already in January. I thought it was in March." January? January means couture.

Could Mounir Moufarrige seriously be reviving Ungaro's couture division — which was shuttered in 2004 — with Lohan at the helm? God help us. Lohan also denies any responsibility for, or foreknowledge of, those ridiculous sparkly heart pasties that the Ungaro models purposefully flashed during the show that just walked in Paris. [People]

• Selena Gomez is launching a fashion line, called Selena Gomez Dream Out Loud. Something called Cynosure Holdings is responsible for the collection, which seems appropriate, somehow. It's not coming out till fall 2010, so if the economy gets worse, there's still time for it the whole idea to slink quietly away, like Pastelle. [WWD]
• Here are some first looks from Rodarte's Target collection, due out on December 20. It includes a lot of leopard print, lace, sequins, and tulle. [Seventeen and A Tiny Machine]
• Carmen Marc Valvo focuses on the positive: "I've survived in this business for over 20 years. And I've survived colon cancer; so a little dip in the world economy isn't enough to keep me down." [Houston Chronicle]
• Badgley Mischka are doing a lower-priced line, called Mark & James. [WWD]
• Ordinary New Yorkers speak out on Filippa Hamilton, the Ralph Lauren face who was fired for being too fat, at size 4: "It makes me angry," says Alexandria Blackwell, 15, of the Bronx. "They always want skinnier." Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child and teen development expert, says, "If a stunning size 4 model is too overweight to look good in their clothes, then they need to change their clothes, not the model." Revolutionary! [NYDN]
• Delia Ephron, on clothes and life: "Clothes have special power. I'll always remember the raspberry colored v-necked silk sweater I was wearing on my husband and my first date. If I hadn't been wearing that sweater that night, would any of it have happened?" Nora says dressing well becomes more important as women age. "Of course it does, because looking good is so easy when you're young. For openers, you're young, and that looks good." [Glamour]
• Linda Evangelista, on doing a shoot for W with chickens: "I grew up in Canada, in an area where everyone had chickens. I mean, we weren't supposed to have chickens — it was a residential area, but we did. Also, when I went back to Italy with my parents where they grew up, there were chickens. So you can say I know a lot about chickens." [W]
• Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles' limited vocabulary drew the attention of Fashion Week Daily, which provided a handy summary of Coles' questions for Hilary Swank, with every repetition of the word "assume" highlighted. [FWD]
• Crocs is opening a flagship store in Boulder, Colorado. [UPI]
• Someone, somewhere, "officially" named Ines de la Fressange the most chic woman in Paris. Carla Bruni, eat your heart out! [Telegraph]
• "I'm excited to go to Olympics in Vancouver," says former figure skater Vera Wang. "I'm definitely going. I always try to go anytime the Olympics come close to our continent!" She still thinks about her former sport. "Skating became a different sport with the magnification of television. And certainly a few exciting things happened in between, like knee clubbing and scandals to raise the sport's profile. But in the end, it's one of the most beautiful spectator sports that you can watch. It's not just about being insanely athletic; it's all being expressive and artistic. There's no other sport that combines spinning, jumping, choreography, costumes, music all in one- it's a full on press." [FWD]
• When she moved on to being an editor at Vogue, Wang had a few hairy moments. "There was a time where I put all of the furs on a Vogue shoot with Deborah Turbeville into the water, and the entire fur industry wanted to sue me," the designer recalled. "Another time we ruined a Frank Stella painting…we were shooting at night and I remember watching a model jumping up and down in front of a work of art that fell apart. It's hard to put a number on it, but that work of art was worth a quarter of a million 35 years ago. That's probably $3 billion now." [WWD]
• Vera Wang popped in to Karolina Kurkova's baby shower, which was also attended by Adriana Lima, Michelle Monaghan, Rachel Roy. Lima, who is also pregnant, compared bellies with Kurkova. [P6]
• Heidi Klum says she's not going to try and lose the baby weight just to be in this year's Victoria's Secret show. [People]
• Jason Wu is greeting his adoring public in Taiwan this week. [WWD]
• Zac Posen is dipping his toe in the churning waters of advertising. Coco Rocha stars and Ellen von Unwerth shot. [Fashionista]
• "Being fierce is a state of being, not something you can become. It's a high point of being a certain persona. Ferosh is a downgraded version of being fierce." — Leading ferocity expert Christian Siriano. [Star-Trib]
• The Gap is bringing back television advertising, after two years without. The chain will also open a flagship in China next year, but overall the company plans to reduce its retail space by 10% over the next five years. Its September same-store sales were down a relatively modest 1%. [TS]
• H&M's same-store sales slid 8% in September. [WSJ]

In an article that might be triggering for some, Kirk describes her three year battle with an eating disorder, noting that "a lack of control over various aspects of my life manifested itself in what I ate." As she fell deeper into her disorder, Kirk began noticing that other skaters were struggling as well: "Although I tried to ask for help in passive ways–hinting about what I was doing to my body to my friends and family–I soon realized that many of my friends in the sport were facing the exact same struggles themselves."

Kirk, who retired from the sport in 2005 and now claims that her "decision to quit skating was largely due to my desire to crush my eating disorder and regain a healthy, positive attitude towards food and my body," says she is speaking out about the unhealthy behaviors and disordered eating she observed in her peers because, well, nobody else will. While gymnasts, dancers, and wrestlers are often brought up as examples of athletes who develop eating disorders while under extreme pressure to maintain a certain body type, it's rare to hear such stories from skaters, something Kirk says is the result of the sport's lack of openness and willingness to confront the issue. "It makes me angry that there is no one speaking out against what is so common in figure skating," she writes, "Some coaches promote what these skaters are doing to their bodies, and others don't try to stop them."

Whether or not Kirk's willingness to share her story will make a difference in terms of the backstage behaviors of figure skaters is yet to be seen, but her story is certainly a powerful one and raises many questions about how we can encourage our elite athletes to maintain a sense of health and wellness, even in the face of extreme pressures and competition.

Skating's Not-So-Secret Shame [TrueSlant]

This On the Town special is one of the best! Somehow a sailor costume feels like a perfect way to deal with the inherent cheesiness of the man's costume! Score: 8.9


Love the skirt, love the pocket square, points off for the bodice! Score: 6.3


A little tango, a little '20s, a lot fab? Score: 9.0


Classic Sonja Henie glam - and dig the cravat. Score: 8.2


This pink feels a bit less fresh than some of the other retro-toggery. Score: 7.6


I know it's sultry and tango and all that good stuff and that she's not always upside-down....but I think the gloves take this a little too Spider Woman. Score: 7.4


The jitterbug cheerleaders are cute, if a bit late-'90s. Score: 8.6


Oh, the bobbysoxers! I like how the guy's shirt evokes a '70s prom tux. Score: 8.8

[Images via AP]

Never mind the prowess and guts it takes to land an axel. Many sports fans simply can't see past skating's aesthetic, which combines the flash of competitive ballroom dancing with the final scene of "Xanadu."...In recent years, the more-is-more mantra has been particularly acute in the men's competition. While top female skaters such as Yu-Na Kim and Rachael Flatt have struck a pretty and traditional tone with their costumes, theatrical garb that "tells a story" is en vogue among the guys, with designs that have no antecedent in modern fashion. Tailored masculinity, once the hallmark of the sport, is rare, if not downright passé.

Women's costumes have always been pretty crazy - lycra lends itself to sheen, sparkle crates an illusion of speed, and many skaters, especially of the Russian school, feel a costume is necessary to "telling a story" - but before '03 men could actually get points deducted for excessive garishness or showing a lot of chest. Nowadays, the sky's the limit, and Johnny Weir is the exemplar of lavish costumes.

His designer tastes are legendary — Weir has modeled for Heatherette runway shows and dares you to try prying the Balenciaga work bag from his hands. But on the ice, the costumes he co-designs have a certain sartorial madness, much to his delight. At the Turin Games, he wore a shimmery swan costume, replete with a single red glove that he referred to lovingly in press conferences as "Camille." Since then, he's sported enough mesh, lace and rhinestones to exhaust the inventory of a crafts store.

While Weir says "excess is necessary," and that "if you're a figure skater, you should wear a figure skating costume," there's surely got to be more than just sartorial mixed feelings about the trend. Figure skating, after all, can already have a hard time getting respect as a sport without the aid of pirate costumes. Costumes are frequently balletic; now ballets are frequently minimalist. And yet, it seems the trend is away from minimalism, towards increasing showmanship. Which is surely going to attract a generation of magpie-like children, but what about their parents?

The pull of the sequined vortex [LA Times]

• A convenience store in Britain has issued an apology after a customer found used condoms in the cardboard packaging of a four-pack of beer. • Scientists have created a "living doll" made of human cancer cells, which they believe may be useful in the testing of new treatments. The neon-green, human-shaped doll is made up of 100,000 "beads" of connective protein. • Skate Canada is trying out a new marketing campaign designed to highlight the more "rough and tumble" aspects of figure skating in order to make it seem "more manly." Good luck with that! • A new study shows that although African Americans are aware of the benefits of the HPV vaccine, only 24% of eligible black female adolescents have received the shots. • In what has got to be one of the tackiest breakups since the (fictional) SATC Post-It message, a British man recently used Facebook updates to inform his wife that he was leaving her. Sensitivity: ur doin it wrong. • Today, the BBC features an article on the history of women serving in the military, in honor of the WRAC's 60th Birthday. Since the beginning, recruitment campaigns have stressed the importance of retaining femininity while serving in the armed forces. • A study performed on mice has found that the childhood environment of the mother can effect the development of memory in her offspring. Previous research in "mouse models" has also shown that mothers with an enriched environment while pregnant are more likely to give birth to intelligent babies. • Osama bin Laden has been rejected from the "best job in the world" (looking after Australia's tropical Hamilton Island). Apparently, a video of bin Laden speaking was given subtitles in which he describes himself as "outgoing," "familiar with sandy areas" and experienced with "large scale event coordination." No word yet on whether my application has been accepted. • New research suggests that part of the reason teens are such brats is because they'e simply unable to see any point of view other than their own due to underdeveloped brains. • A group of American female badminton players were denied visas after being invited to participate in a tournament in Iran. • Nadya Suleman, the suddenly-famous mother of octuplets, has been discharged from the hospital. Suleman has also chosen NBC's Ann Curry (ugh) to tell her story. She can look forward to an interview filled with non-questions and vague rambling! • The 14-year-old former "wife" of polygamist leader Warren Jeffs has been receiving instructions to "stay angry" and to "keep crying, pout, sleep in." • Alexandra Vdovina, a 92-year-old Russian woman, lost her savings and her sheep after being slapped with a huge fine for an accident caused by one of her sheep wandering into the road. Francis Monkman, a British composer and musician, has offered to pay the fine, and provide her enough money to purchase some new livestock. • Former Giants slugger Barry Bonds has been accused of using steroids during the 2003 baseball season. Federal prosecutors say that Bonds was also taking a female fertility drug to mask the evidence of the 'roids. • An Australian cow that was struck by lightning has miraculously survived, and is already back out roaming the fields. • A 68-year-old woman in South Korea has failed her driving test 771 times. Surprisingly, it is not the actual driving portion she finds difficult, but the written part of the exam. • A teenage boy from outside Milwaukee has been accused of tricking at least 31 male classmates into sending him nude pictures, and then using the photos as blackmail to pressure them into sex. • Two women were arrested for kissing in a mall. The lesbian couple now faces charges that range from trespassing to assaulting an officer. • A 60-year-old Canadian woman has given birth to twins after going to India for fertility treatments. • An Austrian insurance company is facing charges of discrimination after refusing to hire people because of their astrological signs.