• More Olympian ovations! This week we crushed on Shelly-Ann Fraser's gleaming braces and Shawn Johnson's balance beam dominance.
• You sent in your retro sports photos, which won the adorable Olympics.
• We audibly squeeeeeee-d when we discovered that Ryan Gosling and Rachel McAdams were back together. Squeee!
• We did not squee over P.U.M.A.s, Will Bower, or any other mouth-breathing, politically destructive a-holes.
• International Male from the early mid-80s. Fringe and short shorts and spandex oh my!

• We pondered fast fashion.
• We no longer want to ponder the status of Jennifer Aniston's vagina, ring finger.
• It's the weekend, y'all! So eat some questionable sushi, read some delightful YA novels about brother fucking and relax!

• We said our final au revoir to Moe [sniff]
• The McCain campaign said it's final goodbye to tasteful commercials with its eminently mockable Paris-Britney one, its new Moses one and it's kicky Spanish language one.
• Watching Gavin walk a mile in Tracie's shoes made for far, far better viewing.
• We tried it out ourselves, metaphorically speaking, in posts talking about sterilization, teen pregnancy and sex workers.
• Walmart talked to its workers about voting Democratic. It's bad, they think. [HuffPo]
• It might have been cool to be a pretty girl when we were younger, not that it keeps you from getting hurt or getting Photoshopped into something supposedly prettier, but some people think it might help you get a man.

• Obama got taken to task for supposedly not paying enough attention to the issues of the African-American community, and we took a woman to task for making a stupid list about what dudes don't know about her.
• Moe tackled the complexities of mass murderers' psyches and the psyches of female suicide bombers while finding time to weigh in on boy-shorts — but left the even absurder man-tights questions to Sadie and the important questions about the decline of the ladies' magazine industry (to which her departure will certainly contribute) to Dodai.
• Margaret and I got a little obsessed with incest. Yeah, don't ask.

• The long-awaited "all black" issue of Italian Vogue hit newsstands, and we gave you a guided tour.
• Judy Blume taught us that having your dessert isn't all it's cracked up to be when you're a disgruntled 60s housefrau.
• We became your personal style guru.
• Three words: dolphin assisted birth.
• See little Emily walk. See little Emily run the fuck away from George Bush.
• We wanted to run screaming from Today Show bungler Ann Curry.
• Speaking of loathsome tv personalities, it was a big week for Elisabeth Hasselbeck! She told us she has never used a vibrator and cried during a discussion of the N-word.

• We shared our dirty desks with the world.
• We discussed chick lit and Maxi with author Janelle Brown.
• Times of London essayist said: incest is best put your brother to the test. We said: do not want.
• We reminisced about advertising icons and proposed a few updates.
• This week marked Dodai's one-year Jezeversary, so pour some out for our Hello Kitty-lovin' editrix this weekend!

And anyway, she keeps trying to prove that the sexual union with her brother was completely normal and healthy and didn't interfere with their relationships, except she "found it hard to be physically intimate with anyone else" and eventually her brother almost agreed to dump his fiancee, on the condition that they "Stay together and not see anyone else. We could be the old boring brother and sister who never got married, but ended up sharing a house because no one else would have them! I know this is meant to be wrong but I've never felt anything so right.” [Note: if she feels so strongly about breaking the taboo of incest, why is this article anonymous? Just sayin'.]

The tone of her essay reminded me of a comment left in response to a story I did on Ellen Tien, who wrote in O denigrating her husband and thinking about divorce constantly. She was upset about our judge-y coverage of Tien, and said, "What about 'when a woman tells the truth she is creating the possibility for more truth around her'? If this is the truth of Tien's experience of marriage I'm glad she described it, and I don't think she's a selfish or nasty person for it." But our truthful reaction to Tien was that her article in O was incredibly bitchy, just as my truthful reaction to this incest story is ew. If your takeaway from that quote is truth is God, then these articles and our subsequent reactions are truly worthwhile. But is every transgression, no matter how base or cruel, from the status quo worthy of shouting from the rooftops?
"I Had Sex With My Brother But I Don't Feel Guilty." [Times of London]
Earlier: O Writer Claims That Beneath Every Marriage Runs The "Chyron Of Divorce"

According to the Guardian, even the Orthodox church, to which the majority of Romanians belong, thinks the girl should be permitted to get the abortion. Constantin Stoica, a church spokesman, said that her case is "an exceptional situation which must be treated in an exceptional manner and the family is the only one to take this decision." The Britain abortion plan's opponents, including the National Doctors Council, say that the "the rights of the fetus should be considered and the pregnancy should go ahead." A government committee decides this girl's fate today. Fingers crossed that she's allowed safe passage across the English Channel.

UPDATE: The girl will have her UK abortion! The Telegraph also has some heartbreaking quotes from the child's parents about the situation. But thank goodness for reasonable heads prevailing.

Romania To Rule On Abortion In UK For Girl, 11 [Guardian]
Pregnant 11-Year-Old Romanian Rape Victim May Travel To UK For Abortion Because Of Our Longer Legal Limit [Daily Mail]

Earlier: 14-Year-Old Polish Rape Victim Now Caught In Abortion Rights Battle
Romanian Abortion Drama 4 Months Opens To Rave Reviews
I Watched That Romanian Abortion Movie So You Don't Have To

Three of the Texas Supreme court members wrote in a dissenting opinion that while the Department of Family and Protective Services was wrong to take all the children, there was proper evidence given in order to remove adolescent girls from "a pattern or practice of sexual abuse."

While the Department of Family and Protective Services clearly abused power, some of the evidence presented by the Department was incredibly damning. According to the Texas Supreme Court decision, "the Department presented 'Bishop’s Records'— documents seized from the Ranch — indicating the presence of several extremely young mothers or pregnant 'wives' on the Ranch: a sixteen-year-old 'wife' with a child, a sixteen-year-old pregnant 'wife,' two pregnant fifteen-year-old “wives,” and a thirteen-year-old who had conceived a child." The expert witness from the FLDS themselves "confirmed that the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints accepts the age of 'physical development' (that is, first menstruation) as the age of eligibility for 'marriage.'"

Texas Court Upholds Polygamist Removals Ruling [Reuters]
FLDS Ruling Upheld By Texas Supreme Court [Los Angeles Times]
FLDS Ruling [Texas Supreme Court]

But it's not just photographers looking to profit off of the Fritzl family's misery. A hospital worker allegedly snapped some pictures of Elisabeth and her children and tried to sell them for upwards of 200,000 euros. Two out of three of Elisabeth's children who were kept in the cellar with her — Stefan, 18, and Felix, 6, — along with the three raised above-ground, Alexander 12, Monika 14 and Lisa 15, are all at the hospital with their mother. Elisabeth's oldest daughter, Kerstin, who was raised in the cellar, is still in a coma, but sources say she is on the mend.

Elisabeth is planning to be interviewed for her television debut by reporter Christoph Feurstein, the same guy who interviewed Natascha Kampusch, the other young Austrian woman who was locked in a cellar for several years. Elisabeth is expected to discuss the child she had who died and was subsequently thrown in the furnace by her father. "It might not be good for the psychological healing process but Elisabeth's heart pumps nothing but pure venom for him," a source tells the Daily Mail. It's vaguely ironic that the Mail, a rag that publishes tabloid pictures of Lisa Marie Presley merely to poke fun at the pregnant star "piling on the pounds," would be the paper to suggest that the media's gone too far in the Fritzl case. But at least someone's pointing it out.

Elisabeth Fritzl Is To Talk About The 24 Years She Was Imprisoned In Her Father's Dungeon On Austrian TV [Daily Mail]
Exclusive: Kerstin Fritzl Winning Fight [Sunday Mirror]

Austrian Man Locked His Daughter In The Basement For 24 Years
Who Is Josef Fritzl?

P.S. No animals were drugged in the making of this video.

This crime, perpetrated in the town of Amstetten, 93 miles outside of Vienna, was only discovered because Elisabeth's 19-year-old daughter, Kerstin, became so seriously ill that she had to go to the hospital. A DNA test done on Kersten showed that Josef was her biological father, and that set off an investigation that uncovered Josef's "house of horrors," as many papers are calling it. One of the more bizarre aspects of the gruesome tale is that Josef's wife, Elisabeth's mother Rosemarie, reportedly didn't know about what was going on in her cellar, and thought the three children that she and Josef were raising above ground were left on their doorstep by the still-"missing" Elisabeth.

The case is somewhat of a national embarrassment for Austria, as in 2006, it was discovered that a woman named Natascha Kampusch had been held in a cellar for 8 years by an abductor, Wolfgang Priklopil, who had kidnapped her when she was 10 years old. Austrian newspaper Der Standard said in an op-ed about the crimes, "The entire nation must ask itself just what is fundamentally going wrong."

All six of the children — three boys and three girls — who were raised in the Fritzl's household are now in the care of authorities. There was a seventh child, who was the twin of another one of the children, but it died shortly after birth and was thrown into an incinerator by Josef. Police spokesman Franz Polzer told the BBC, "[The children] are being cared for individually - those between 12 and 16 years of age who grew up with their grandparents, and two boys who, when they came out yesterday with their mother, saw the daylight for the first time in their lives."

Austrian 'Hid Daughter In Cellar' [BBC]
Austrian Detectives Study Cellar [BBC]
Austrian Admits 24-year Abuse Of Daughter In Cellar [Reuters]
'House of Horrors' Father Confesses [CNN]

• We were so into the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints and their Yearning For Zion Ranch, where girls in their early teens get married off to gross molesty old men with multiple other wives, none of whom are allowed to wear red because that's Jesus' color.
  
• Are those teens better, or worse off than the brave 8-year-old Yemeni girl name Nojoud Muhammed Nasser who was married off by her crazy homeless father, but has now successfully filed for divorce.
  
• A study in contrasts: the marriage of Nojoud Muhammed Nasser versus the insane Southern belles of MTV's True Life who call themselves "old maids" at age 24.

• OMG I almost forgot about that Australian father and daughter who fuck and have babies. Oh ew.
• Can't some people just have a nice, normal wedding that doesn't involve incest, polygamy, statutory rape, fake boobs or Botox?
• Mommablogger Dooce appears to be a fairly reasonable person whose wedding probably didn't involve any of those things.
• Karl Lagerfeld hates Dooce's kid, though. Actually he hates all children. And also fat people!
• You know who probably had kind of shitty moms? Those horrid teenage cheerleader bitches who beat the living hell out of their friend and may now face life in prison.
• So make a bonfire out of Cosmo's "Sexy" issue, and rip off that bandanna you've been wearing. Let it all hang out this weekend!

To be fair, Jenny's two non-inbred older children seem sort of convincingly geeky and articulate. And also, if you were going to write some sort of "intellectual" book about incest, "Deaves" would be a kind of decent surname to start with yes? ("Celeste" might be a touch heavyhanded, though.)

So, a lot of experts are interviewed. This incest thing, it's sort of a fetish! Genetic sexual attraction syndrome, or something. I thought you were supposed to be attracted to people whose genes were less likely to cause congenital heart failure upon merging with yours? Jenny says she found herself "looking at him, sort of going, oh, he's not too bad," and she calls their sex "normal." John says sex is "fantastic." And Jenny's mom has this to say about the two of them: "We used to joke he would turn up once every two years to spend a day with her."

Yeah, um, so. Think Jenny's got abandonment issues she's just too much of an "intellectual" to recognize? Or is the sex really awesome? You decide!

Incest Couple John and Jenny Deaves's first child died [News.com.au]
Mother Glad Truth About Incest Couple Is Out [NineMSN]
Australian Man Fathers Child With Daughter [Times]
Father And Daughter Have A Baby Together After 30-Year Separation [Daily Mail]
Father, Daughter Had Another Child Together [Sydney Morning Herald]

Brothers Can Be Sexy!: "The Best of 'Human Nature' Sex Stories of 2007" has us pondering incest and the rules surrounding it. Saletan (again!) writes about everything from the abolition of menstruation to virgin shark births in this roundup, but his last item on a German brother-sister couple is what caught our eye. The couple is challenging the laws which say incest is illegal, arguing that such laws are outdated and that they violate their civil rights. They claim that their incestuous relationship is no different than any other coupling because they were not raised together and plus, they aren't planning on having more children.

There's No Shame In Liking 'Em Young: Slate writer William Saletan's external monologue about what the age of consent should be bounces around from 12, to 16, to 25, depending on physical and emotional maturity factors. Some girls are still making their Barbies hump at 14, while others are getting finger-banged in the school parking lot. The point is, the age of consent varies from person to person but certainly there's a difference between a moderately intelligent 16-year old choosing to have sex with her college football-star boyfriend and her older brother doing the nasty with his 13-year old neighbor. The line has to be drawn, albeit maybe a little bit off from where it currently sits, at 17.


"Big" Butts Are Popular, Have Racist Undertones: Despite what Glamour's Suze Yalof-Schwartz says, women have always wanted bigger, rounder, fatter asses and she should just get with the times. However, Feministing clued us in to a slight problem with the slideshow Oh, That Darling Derriere — it seems that, in addition to not showing any men with plump hineys, they also have included an icon of racism, Hottentot Venus (a Khoikhoi woman who was a sideshow attraction in 19th Century Europe) without giving any context about her place in history (aside from her prominent rump).


Kinsey, Schminsey: He may have been the first sex researcher to pols thousands about their desires, but he wasn't the most accurate, especially since he seemed to choose people who were neither representative of the American population at large. However, this reminds us of what has to be the most thorough pleasure poll we've ever taken (again and again and again) — the Purity Test, that blush-producing fun-filled activity in college dorm rooms everywhere. Take it again and relive the scandal.


Mad Cow Disease Is Not An STD: But the government thinks it is. Swedish sperm is hard to come by in the US nowadays. Unless you're Paris Hilton's mouth, of course.


People Still Think That Gardisil Is A Free Pass To Prostitution: The debate rages on between intelligent people and morons as to whether giving the HPV vaccine to teenagers is a necessary precaution in a cancer rampant world or just another excuse for dirty teenage whores to have sex.


Seniors Are Having Trouble Having Sex: Nursing homes are totally cock-blocking your grandma and grandpa from doing the nasty, even though a survey of 75 to 85 year-olds showed that most of them were still getting it on on a biweekly basis.


Vibrators Used to Look Way Scarier: The Rabbit freaks us out a little, but Not Your Grandmother's Vibrator, a slideshow of vibrators past and present, demonstrates that a frisky little bunny is just adorable compared to the heavy machinery and drill-like contraptions from yesteryear. Note: Vibes didn't always look so phallic!


There Are No (Sex) Answers, Only (Sex) Questions: Or something. Long-time sexperts, from Dan Savage to Dr. Ruth, reveal what decades of doling out sex advice hasn't taught them. Apparently, there's a lot!