•  Muslim lawmakers in Aceh, Indonesia may soon forbid women from wearing tight trousers. Ramli Mansyur, regent of the district, says women who flout the law may have their pants "destroyed" and he has set aside 7,000 skirts for women unable to afford "proper attire." •  Ever wondered how much you'ree getting paid to sit on the toilet? WorkPoop.com helpfully calculates exactly how much money per year you are make by hiding out in the stall at work. •  As the average age of motherhood has risen, so has the number of cases of Down syndrome detected in the womb, according to a new study. However, fewer children are being born with Down syndrome, since the majority of women do not choose to carry the screened fetus to term. •  A new study shows that Israeli Jews who survived World War II are at a higher risk for developing cancer than other Jews. Researchers speculate this may be due in part to the hardships endured in the Holocaust. •  Women may be catching up to men in one unfortunate area: Heart disease. Up until recently, more men suffered from heart disease than women, who are protected by our hormone fluctuations, but with rising rates of obesity, women are making gains on men. •  Amazing writer (and personal girlcrush) Alice Munro revealed last week that she has had heart bypass surgery and "just had cancer." For the sake of great literature, get well soon! •  According to new statistics, there is a gap between the number of women in top positions in large law firms and the number of men. Above the Law has a few theories to explain the dearth of women rainmakers. • A rape victim who was assaulted 13 years ago testified yesterday against Richard Thomas, who is also accused of raping a 12-year-old girl in 2004. DNA confirms that Thomas raped both women. •  A recent study suggests that anxiety during pregnancy may have an impact on the size of the baby. They found that women who suffered from severe chronic anxiety during pregnancy are more likely to have smaller babies than those who only reported low to moderate anxiety. • Madeleine Albright and Condoleezza Rice have come together to write an op-ed for Politico detailing women's economic gains in the US and stating, "we must extend to all societies the universal right of women to choose their own fortunes." • According to a small study, extra testosterone makes men more miserly. The effect of seeing the Ghost of Christmas Past was not studied. • The city of Seoul is making an active effort to become more "woman friendly" through changes in a dozen sectors, from restrooms to workplaces. But many women feel that not enough has been done. "Personally I don't know where those 'women-friendly' places are," says one Korean woman. "I never see them." • 

[Kiev, September 27. Image via Getty]

An elderly woman cries in front of the Minora Monument on Babiy Yar ravine in Kiev, on September 27, 2008, during a mourning ceremony marking the 68th anniversary of the beginning of Jews mass execution in September 1941. Babiy Yar, place in Kiev, where Nazis shot more than 100, 000 Jews in 1941-1944, became one of the terrible symbols of the Holocaust. AFP PHOTO/ SERGEI SUPINSKY (Photo credit should read SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

• A state panel has found that there is probable cause to believe that a suburban Philadelphia swim club, which asked a group of mostly black and Hispanic kids to leave, was guilty of discrimination. One of the girls who was asked to leave reports overhearing a club member asking, "What are all these black kids doing here? I am scared they might do something to my child." • For the low price of $39.95, you can be the proud owner of a Joe Wilson action figure, because nothing says I'm well-versed in politics! quite like a plastic figurine. •  Girls are fast catching up to boys in violent crime, according to new data. Although the increase first began to appear in the 1980s, it was only in the past decade that we saw a true rise in violence among young women. Professor Kerry Carrington will publish her findings in her book, Offending Youth. • The man accused of beating a female soldier outside an Atlanta Cracker Barrel has been indicted on charges of aggravated assault, cruelty to children, and false imprisonment. Federal officials are currently investigating whether he should also be charged with committing a hate crime. • A South African man has been sentenced to life in prison after being found guilty of the "corrective" rape and murder of Eudy Simelane, one of the country's leading female soccer players. Two other men were acquitted due to lack of evidence. • Police have been unable to link Philip and Nancy Garrido to the disappearance of two young girls. Last week, it was reported that police found what could possibly be human remains on the Garrido's land, but it has since been determined that the bones are "far too old to be relevant to our case." • Max Baucus has backed down on his proposed tax on the medical devices industry. The so-called "Q-tip tax" has been amended, so that items under $100 (including tampons, sanitary pads, and Q-tips) would no longer be taxed. •  Researchers have found that providing Mexican women with new, pollution-reducing stoves can dramatically improve their respiratory health. Many Mexican women cook over indoor, wood-burning stoves, which causes them the same damage as smoking a pack of cigarettes every day. • Bad news for breeders: Scientists have linked childbearing to an increased risk for developing metabolic syndrome. • High school science teacher Susan Vincent was disappointed to realize that inner-city girls don't get to spend a lot of time outside, so she introduced a program at her school that brings kids to the Hudson River estuary. She hopes that they will eventually be able to fund a field-trip to the Mississippi River delta. • According to a recent poll, women are twice as likely to ask someone else to park for them than men. Women are also more likely to admit to being flustered while parallel parking, and to becoming self-conscious when watched. This leads the Daily Fail to deduce that "parking is a masculine strength." • Though Justine Henin retired from tennis last year at 25, when she was ranked number one and held two Grand Slam singles titles, she announced yesterday that she's returning to competition, and may even be back for the Australian Open. • A study of 2,000 British children ages 7 to 11 found left-handed kids are more likely to enjoy school and get along with their teachers. • According to another study of 2,000 adult Britons, many people are in denial about their weight problems. Though only 7 percent of those polled thought they were obese, the actual figure was 27 percent. • The FDA has banned the sale of candy, fruit and clove-flavored cigarettes, effective immediately. However, the ban does not apply to flavored cigars, smokeless tobacco products, or most notably, menthol cigarettes. Menthol cigarettes are preferred by 80% of black smokers and 25% of white smokers, and are increasingly popular with teens according to Jonathan Foulds, director of the Tobacco Dependence Program University of Medicine & Dentistry of New Jersey-School of Public Health, but he says banning them too would result in a "pretty major revolt from industry." • Experts say the murder and persecution of women and children accused of being witches is increasing around the world, and may number in the millions. U.N. investigators say the persecution and killing of accused witches, who are often elderly women, is becoming common in South Africa, Nepal, Papua Ne Guinea, India, and other countries. In other areas children accused of witchcraft are abandoned or killed by their families. • Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad backed off his denial of the Holocaust in an interview with the AP yesterday. He said he isn't interested in debating the past anymore, but that the Holocaust shouldn't be used as a pretext to repress Palestinians today. • Some of the 42 African-American members of Congress who attended the Congressional Black Caucus conference this week said that "tea parties" and the people protesting against Obama's healthcare reform show that racism is on the rise. Democratic Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson, said Joe Wilson shouting "You lie!" could signal the return of "folks putting on white hoods and white uniforms again, riding through the countryside." • In the late '80s, when Glenn Beck hosted a Phoenix, Arizona radio show he used to do a version of Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" every Halloween. A rival radio host, Bruce Kelly, told a newspaper reported the bit was a stupid rip-off of an old joke. As revenge, Beck called Kelly's wife, Terry, live on the air a few days after she had a miscarriage. According to Brad Miller, one of Beck's former co-workers, he said," We hear you had a miscarriage... When Terry said, 'Yes,' Beck proceeded to joke about how Bruce [Kelly] apparently can't do anything right — about he can't even have a baby." •

[Berlin, July 22. Image via Getty]

A girl jumps from a concrete stele to another at the Memorial for the Murdered Jews of Europe in Berlin on July 22, 2009. The memorial, designed by US architect Peter Eisenmann, is made up of 2711 concrete steles forming a curved landscape in the heart of the capital. AFP PHOTO DAVID GANNON (Photo credit should read DAVID GANNON/AFP/Getty Images)

["Ljubelj South", Slovenia; June 5. Image via Getty]

A woman explores on June 5, 2009 the chamber of former World War II nazi concentration camp 'Ljubelj south' where the names of all nazi concentration camps were engraved, some 100 kilometers from Ljubljana. Slovenian President Danilo Turk and his Austrian counterpart Heinz Fischer visited the tunnel and the entrance to the 'Ljubelj south' World War II nazi concentration camp at Slovenian side of the border with Austria. Between March 1943 to May 1945 Ljubelj south in Slovenia and Ljubelj north in Austria were a branch of notorious WWII Mauthausen nazi concentration camps, from which thousands of political internees, the majority of whom were French, were transported to Ljubelj from there. AFP PHOTO/ HRVOJE POLAN (Photo credit should read HRVOJE POLAN/AFP/Getty Images)

[Washington, D.C., April 21. Image via Getty]

A woman lights a candle under the names of the Auschwitz-Birkenau Nazi concentration camp as people read the names of Jewish Holocaust victims at the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington on April 21, 2009 to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, which falls on the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising in 1943. Some six million Jews were killed by Nazi Germany during WWII. AFP PHOTO/Nicholas KAMM (Photo credit should read NICHOLAS KAMM/AFP/Getty Images)

Although she saved almost twice as many people from the atrocities of the Holocaust as Oskar Schindler, - no slouch in the heroism department himself - Irena Sendler was until recently completely unknown. As a social worker in Poland, Sendler smuggled 2,500 Jewish children out of the Warsaw ghetto, and although she was tortured for three months - with Gestapo officers crushing her legs in a vice and smashing her bones with hammers - she refused to divulge their whereabouts. Having buried their names in jars, after the war Sendler used the information to help the children track down surviving relatives.

Under Communism, Sendler was persecuted and imprisoned for her affiliation with the "capitalist and bourgeois" exile government, and even with the anti-Nazi resistance groups, who were regarded as reactionary; later, as a result, her children were denied the right to study at Polish universities. In 1965, she was recognized by Israel as Righteous Among the Nations, but Sendler's story did not come to larger attention until 1999, when three Kansas ninth-graders, began researching her for a history project. Although Sendler remained modest until her death last year- giving much credit for her heroism to her compatriots in Zegota, the Polish Council to Aid the Jews - she was honored by the Pope in 2003, granted Order of the White Eagle, Poland's highest civilian decoration, and in 2007 inspired a movement to award the 97-year-old the Nobel Prize (it went to Al Gore.)

This Sunday, CBS will premiere The Courageous Heart of Irena Sendler, starring Anna Paquin. While we can't help feeling such a woman deserves a feature film, we're eager to see it. Here's Paquin talking about the role on the Tavis Smiley Show on Wednesday:



'Irena Sendler': A Heroine for the Ages [Washington Post]

The Courageous Heart Of Irena Sendler [Variety]
Nobel Prize Is Sought for Polish Heroine [NY Sun]

Despite the fact that tax and nanny issues reportedly stymied Caroline Kennedy's move to the Senate — which Governor David Paterson is now denying — tax-and-nanny-issues Tim Geithner was confirmed by the Senate after a minor delay and sworn in yesterday. He then gave a speech that I didn't hear because I was at a bar toasting the fact that a man with documented tax and nanny issues can be elevated to the role of Secretary of the Treasury but a woman with rumors of the same should hang her head in shame and withdraw from public life.

Earlier in the day, Barack Obama spent some time shaming the Bush Administration and its "environmental" policies, directing the EPA to try to figure out away to rescind the Bush era order that California isn't allowed to regulate carbon dioxide emissions from cars and get on regulating emissions on a federal level. Hillary Clinton followed that up by announcing that Todd Stern is going to be the State Department's envoy on climate change — meaning that one of the Clinton-era negotiators of the Kyoto Protocol on greenhouse gas emissions is going to be in charge of outreach and negotiations on climate change matters. That's probably a good sign — and a better one than the fact that, for the second time in a week, Obama has decided to wave his own rules on lobbyists joining his Administration and announced that a former Goldman Sachs lobbyist is headed to the Treasury Department. I think we've sort of had enough Goldman guys at Treasury for a while.

In other foreign policy-esque news, Obama's pick for CIA director, Leon Panetta, is in a holding pattern having reportedly forgotten to turn in a bunch of his financial disclosure paperwork for his confirmation hearing (early reports indicate the dog at it) but now that Geithner's been confirmed despite his, it'll all probably be ok. Our new UN Ambassador, Susan Rice, called Darfur an "ongoing genocide" and isn't planning on letting it out of her sights when the cameras are off, which is probably a welcome change after the forgetfulness of the last Administration if she follows through.

And in straight-up fucked up news, the Vatican recently un-excommunicated 4 priests who split with the Vatican over the Church's sixties-era statements that anti-Semitism is bad. One of those priests celebrated by getting on television while in Germany and denying the Holocaust. The Nazi Pope thinks that's very poorly done of him, and plans to do fuck-all about it. In the meantime, the gas chambers that the Nazis tried to destroy at Auschwitz to cover up their crimes are falling into severe disrepair — as is much of the Birkenau complex — because of lack of funding, which will allow the next generation of Holocaust deniers to point and say: "Look! Nothing to see here." You know, sort of like the government of the Sudan is hoping to do in Darfur. It seems that evil people, at least, learn the right history lesson.

Pretty In Pink [Radar]

• Oh lord: Tom Ford is having a baby in 2008. It will be "biologically" his, not his partner Richard Buckley's. "I don't want to get to 75 years old and just have made a lot of dresses, done some houses." In the same interview: "I don't find a guy's cock or a woman's vagina offensive; in fact, I find them beautiful." So will he be penetrating one to achieve this demonspawn? He probably won't be able to keep them off him! "I was having sex with girls when I was 14, and that was because they were pouncing on me." [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• Waris Dirie says she's super sorry about that whole "disappearance" thing last week. She said she got lost in Brussels and spent the whole three days she was "gone" walking around and sleeping in hotel lobbies since she didn't know where she was and didn't have any money. Um, Anne Heche enough for you? [MSNBC]
  
• Katoucha Niane's family is asking French police to investigate the possibility that she was murdered, despite the conclusion of accidental death by drowning from the autopsy. [Telegraph]
  
• ELLE Fashion News Editor Anne Slowey learns the whole "never put limp plumper under your eyes" lesson the hard way. [Fashion Week Daily]

• And in other ELLE news, soon-to-be-ousted International Creative Director Gilles Bensimon is very Zen about his looming departure from the fashion mag: "I'm surprised, but I'm not upset. It's not their obligation to use me [to shoot covers] and [creative director] Joe [Zee] does not have to explain anything to me....ELLE is my life. I've been there since I was 23 years old. I will be at ELLE until the last month, the last minute. I'm not upset at [editor-in-chief] Robbie [Myers], really. I don't want to hate people. Hate makes you weak." [Chic Report]
• And in other inspiring news, Diane von Furstenberg is thinking about writing a book about her mother, a Holocaust survivor. When her mother was forced to leave her home, en route to the first of three concentration camps she would be put in, she threw a note into the street which read, "I don't know where I'm going but I want you to know I'm leaving with a smile." [WWD, 1st item]
• Color us shocked: Rihanna says she wants to do her own clothing line. [Sunday Mirror]
• Even better: roses with the Louis Vuitton logo stamped onto them! [Inventor Spot]
• Kate Moss's personal assistant has resigned to have a baby and now Kate Moss is crying, saying her life is over. Oh Kate, maybe you'd be less hysterically self-absorbed easier if you had kids of your own...I mean... [Daily Mail]
• Beck's wife Marissa Ribisi will be showing her Whitley Kros collection at L.A. Fashion Week, which will also play host to Nicky Hilton and Lauren Conrad's shows. [LATimes]
• Urban Outfitters: It grows. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Nike: Feigning concern over the fact that some of its shoes are made in Chinese factories that are not held to the labor standards upheld by the Nike brand. [FT]
• Brace yourselves, Dubai: Bloomingdales is headed your way! [WWD, sub req'd]
• Feathers: Big for fall. Animal rights groups: Unhappy. [Independent]
• Is Colette Dinnigan doing a lingerie line for Target? And if so, will it only be for Target Australia? Wait, there's Target in Australia? [Sassybella]

If you want to be America's next top model, you have to be really patient. Really, really patient. At least this is what I conclude, since I am there for 5 hours and probably actively "auditioning" for all of, oh, maybe 10 minutes. The first phase of the waiting-game takes place outside, and if outside means New York City this past Saturday, that means blistering mid-90's heat. On the line, already hundreds deep, mothers abound; delusional, surely-psychotic mothers who have come to stand beside their daughters to go and scope out the size of the line for them, offer a make-up compact for an impromptu mascara touch-up, or to assure their little beauties that surely Tyra herself will be on hand to appreciate their greatness. The mothers are soon dispatched (no one besides potential contestants allowed inside!) but an overwhelming Holocaust-rooted paranoia takes hold of me: We told to walk silently with our arms at our sides as we enter the hotel, making sure we keep pace — "You aren't moving fast enough!" one Gestapo agent / CW network peon hisses — and we twist and turn through endless hallways, up and down flights of stairs, only to end up in a hallway outside a ballroom and handed numbered mailing labels we are told to keep on us at all times. I am 334.

We file into the ballroom, and settle into the rows according to our numbers. I look around me. Why does no one else seemed panic? Why is no one else listening carefully for the sounds of German shepherds? Why is that girl behind me eating... a Whopper and fries? Suddenly, I am pulled out of my horrific moment of revelry as I hear the piercing shrieks of one of the guards, calling my number, "334! 334! How many times do I have to call you, 334? You need to sign in on the sign-in sheet, 334! You are slowing everything down, 334!" (Surely I will be denied my ration of watery broth this evening.) I sign and examine the girls around me. To my immediate left is a plump 18-year old. She just graduated from high school, she blabs to no one in particular, thinks Lindsay Lohan is the best actress ever and is destined to become a big Broadway musical star. To my right is a bleached blonde who says she's 27, the oldest you can be to be on Top Model, but seems to be a little closer to 30 . She has makeup caked on, at least 6 inches thick and is short, which means, definitely under Top Model's 5'7" height requirement.

"No cell phones! No cameras! No contact at all with the outside world while you are in here! Do not talk to anyone about what you see or do here! If you speak to the press you are immediately OUT!" the 'guards' holler every 15 minutes or so. Finally, after several hours in the holding room, in which we are again berated about the significance of our numbers and asked to turn in the 15-page applications needed to attend auditions today and asked to complete an additional brief form in which we detail three emergency contacts and three adjectives that best describe our personalities, we are eventually led in groups of 100 out of the room. We are told to move silently, and move closely. Our toes should clip the heels of the person in front of us.

We are now in staff-only hallways. The lighting is dim. There is no air conditioning. (Sorta like a cattle car?) We run up 4 flights of stairs. I am relieved I am in flat shoes. And at last we are brought to our next holding area, a narrow and dank hall. We are not sure where we are or how long we will be there. Another hopeful contestant, about 10 girls behind me, starts telling anyone who will listen about what we have in store: This is her 4th time auditioning, you see. "You will walk into a room," she tells us. "You will line up — they will cram us in between 30 -150 at a time, depending on how behind schedule they are. We will say our names. And then they will call the numbers of the people who they want to stay. I have heard that if you make it past this, then you are brought to another room where you are asked to speak to Tyra."

After waiting in yet another hallway for 45 minutes, we finally enter a conference room with more people barking orders at us: "File in! Stand with your right shoulder against the wall! Make sure your feet are touching the feet of the person in front of you! Faster, ladies! Faster! And remember — you are NOT PERMITTED TO SPEAK." Behind a long table sits the casting director and her assistant. There is also some sort of other assistant, a young man whom I want to smack: He wears one of those not-so-ironic t-shirts that says, "You Looked Better On MySpace." Thoughtful, buddy.

The casting director tells us we will go around the room and when it is out turn we are to say our full name, our age, our height, and our weight to the camera. She asks us to take a moment to practice, as if we mess up — we are immediately out. "Jennifer Gerson, 23, 5'8", 118," I chant over and over again in my head, until it is at last my turn and I say it out loud. The moment the last girl finishes, the casting director informs us that she is going to call a series of numbers: Those ladies are to stay, and everyone else is to leave the room immediately. The room is silent. And then, shockingly, I hear it: 334! Once the losers have been cleared, I see that there are 8 of us from our group of 100 who remain. We are asked to line up in numeric order: It is time to be measured. One at at time we are led to a wall where an impromptu ruler has been constructed, with increments ranging from 5'8" to 6". We are told to shove our hair down to make sure an accurate reading is made on our height. Then we are told to stand shoulder-to-shoulder against the opposite wall. Two of the girls are unsure of what this means, and touch one another's shoulders with their hands. The casting director's assistant snarks, "Well, that's one way to interpret that direction." A camera man steps forth. We are told to offer up a blank face, a half smile, a full smile, and then stand in profile. And we are told to lift up our shirts, so they can see our "waists." This is problematic as I am the only one here in a dress. I do not expose myself. And after that, two of the girls from our group are asked to stay... and I am not one of them..