The Times of London has published a series of excerpts from the book (scheduled for release tomorrow), some of which are pretty hilarious. For example, on the Prime Minister's choice of sleepwear:

He was dressed all in white and I took him for a ghost. White silk pyjamas and a white silk dressing gown.

And, describing his behavior at a party with twenty women, where he was the only "man with copulation rights:'

He caressed them all. The Prime Minister needs cuddles.

More serious, however, are her claims that she was attacked after releasing tape recordings of her encounters with Berlusconi. D'Addario says another car tried to ram hers on the road near her hometown, and that she received frightening phone calls, including one threatening to rape her daughter. She says that she also suffered an attempted rape, and that an assailant punched her mother in the face.

But according to John Hooper of the Guardian, one of the book's biggest revelations is that lesbians attended Berlusconi's bacchanals. Hooper writes,

D'Addario claims to have visited Berlusconi's private residence in Rome twice last year. On the first occasion, she said, the other guests at the dinner included two lesbians. They "must be at home," D'Addario writes. "They kiss and stroke one another and address the prime minister in a very familiar way."

This has political significance. Many conservative Italians ready to forgive, if not endorse, heterosexual promiscuity will be disconcerted by a claim that their leader's private life extends to lesbianism.

Given that women were allegedly paid to attend Berlusconi's parties, it's possible that these so-called lesbians were in fact performing for Berlusconi's benefit. And Hooper's claim that "Patrizia D'Addario adds a lesbian dimension to the allegations surrounding Italy's billionaire leader" is rather oddly worded. Still, if his analysis of conservative Italian mores is correct, it's more than a little depressing — apparently Italians can tolerate Berlusconi's corruption and his bizarre public statements (he repeatedly referred to the Obamas as "tanned"), but two girls kissing is a bridge too far.

Call Girl In Silvio Berlusconi Sex Scandal Claims Series Of Attacks And Threats [Guardian]
In Bed With Silvio Berlusconi: 'The Room Was Dark. He Likes The Dark' [TimesOnline]

[Bruno-Turany, Czech Republic; September 27. Image via Getty]

Lesbian girls protest for their free marriage during their silence demonstration as Pope Benedict XVI celebrates a Pontifical Mass at the local airport of Brno-Turany on September 27, 2009. Pope Benedict XVI called Sunday for hope and a renewal of faith in the former communist Czech Republic, as he served a large open-air mass in Brno, watched by some 120,000 faithful. The pope is paying his first visit to the Czech Republic ahead of the 20th anniversary of the Velvet Revolution that toppled Communism in former Czechoslovakia in 1989. AFP PHOTO/ ATTILA KISBENEDEK (Photo credit should read ATTILA KISBENEDEK/AFP/Getty Images)

Both the coke and the bisexual woman seemed planted by producers for "Miami-ish" storylines. (As though coke and lesbians are completely foreign to L.A. Lindsay Lohan, anyone?)


While Khloe didn't actually partake in any snorting, Kourtney got in on a little girl-on-girl action by kissing her bisexual friend on a few occasions at a gay bar. She was just experimenting, though, and ended up realizing that she's straight.

On a different note, does anyone speak Spanish? I was trying to figure out what the inappropriate remark this man made at the two women, but I have no idea. They don't teach this stuff in Rosetta Stone.

Tea, whose last contribution to The Believer was an excellent 2006 essay that offered a queer theory reading of the Annual Taxidermy Convention, Competition, And Trade Show, here offers up a light Paris diary. But in between the Karl Lagerfeld and the Kanye West and the Kate Moss (who actually, during one climactic moment, walks up to Tea and pushes her), there are some real insights.

For one, sexuality issues in fashion are given a hearing, not least because Tea, a lesbian, is accompanying fellow lesbians Ditto, and Tara Perkins — the "Annie Oakley" behind the Sex Workers' Art Show Tour — who manages the Gossip. The fact that the three women are described as having each grown up very poor also motivates Tea to write some eloquent statements about fashion's foundational exclusivity, and about what it means to be on one side of the velvet rope. After being waved past a group of "queer boys with great style and no connections" outside the Nina Ricci show, Ditto remarks, "I've got survivor's guilt. I've got punk guilt."

We all know there's plenty to hate about the insanity of the consumer-driven, needs-manufacturing, world of fashion. But Tea also offers a cogent apologia for liking overpriced clothes:

"For a long time I hated beauty for the way people used it as a measuring stick to beat people, especially women. But I came to believe in a vast idea of beauty, one that included me and all my beautiful weirdo friends As for more conventional beauty, I didn't have to hate it just because people let it make them stupid. My attitude moved from the conceptual to the concrete: Take a beautiful dress. Say it's a Rodarte dress, made by these sort of creepy, gothic sisters who live with their parents in Pasadena. Their dresses look like a storybook princess messed them up while wearing them on a jaunt through the space-time continuum. They are torn tulle and stiff corset and lots of lace and flowers and fluffy bullshit stuck all over the place. Parts make you wonder if these sisters, the Mulleavy sisters — see, even their names make you think of the dark family landscape of a Joyce Carol Oates novel — are employing some sort of spider-beast to do their weaving. The dresses cost upwards of ten thousand dollars at Barneys. At one time in my psychological development, this would have made me hate the dresses, hate the designers, hate those poseur Mulleavy sisters, hate anyone and everyone who could afford them, hate capitalism, hate the world, hate the universe and whatever string of incomprehensible events led to the big bang. Now I think — when I go into Barneys to visit these dresses (the way I have gone to the SPCA to visit with various animals I can't adopt), to just pet their glorious fabrics and marvel at the endless detailing and giggle at the whimsical appliqués — I think: It isn't the dress's fault that it's so expensive. I love it like a living thing, and visit it at this department store. I don't love a painting on a museum wall any less for not being able to own it."

Beth Ditto comes across extremely well in the story. She seems kind, and down-to-earth; she can't sleep alone, and sometimes even then she has to make up jokes to combat insomnia. ("What do D&D-playing goth couples fight about the most? The thermoLeStat! Get it?") She spends hours doing different hair and makeup looks for the women in her life — she says if she weren't in a rock band, she'd be in beauty school. She goes to breakfast at her fancy Paris hotel in her pajamas. And Ditto is light years away from the typical raised-in-privilege star: Tea describes how she grew up "in a part of Arkansas with no MTV, no telephones, no indoor plumbing, and no money."

Yet everyone is on the star swag gravy train; Ditto and Perkins went "shopping" in London prior to fashion week, retrieving articles of clothing from designers' showrooms for nada. Even the girlfriend of a Gossip member grabs a free fur from Fendi. As Ditto puts it, "If people think you're rich they give you things. If they think you're poor, they don't give you anything." The true import of this paradox — the idea that fashion relies on a vast underclass whose belief in the value of products they could never afford actually inflates those very products' prices high enough that the profits they make for the label can be invested in giving away shit to those who actually could afford to buy at the inflated value — is regrettably never fully explored. If fashion is, even in part, a giant system for the regressive redistribution of wealth, then surely Tea could have drilled down on these issues with a source as articulate and informed as Ditto.

Many of Tea's criticisms of the fashion industry, seen through the particular seven-day-circus of fashion week, are similarly implicit. When discussing Ditto's magazine appearances, Tea notes that "magazines are always wanting to dress Beth burlesque, in feathers and corsets and other looks that died out around the turn of the present century, or else they want her to be naked. Beth's onstage stripping has more in common with Iggy Pop's frolicking in broken glass than a burlesque act." The fact that the nudity and burlesque concepts ends up reinforcing one of the tritest and most tired stereotypes about larger women — that they must be lusciously sexually available — must be an annoyance to Ditto, who puts down stereotypes like it's her job, but her reaction is not stated in Tea's piece, beyond the implication that Ditto finds burlesque shoots boring. And although Tea attributes this failure of magazines' imagination in part to "stylists unused to dressing fat girls," she fails to note the number one structural constraint of the industry that influences how Ditto might be styled: magazines shoot fashion samples. Fashion samples are made in tiny sizes. Any celebrity who can't fit into the ridiculously sized clothes is likely to be asked to pose naked. The industry that Ditto loves, and which claims extravagantly to love Ditto back (an LED screen at a party reads "FENDI <3 BETH"), cannot bring itself to make clothing she can wear, except by special arrangement.

Tea evidently likes Ditto; indeed, from the way she comes across in this essay — feminist, self-possessed, genuine — it would be impossible not to like her. But it seems like Tea's affection for her source kept her from asking, at crucial junctures, some hard questions. This shyness, this willingness to go right up to the edge of any of the contradictions that strikes through the heart of the fashion industry, but no further, is the only thing that keeps this piece from being truly excellent. All the sleepovers and makeovers and fashion parties make one yearn for something just a little bit deeper. To a certain extent, this problem of perspective ends up mirroring the frothiness of fashion itself. As Cathy Horyn once wrote, although there are many lively and informative angles from which to interrogate the fashion industry, from inside that world, perspective can be limited: "Fashion ain't deep. It looks into a mirror and sees...itself."

But although Tea's essay is at times perhaps a little too inclined to take the industry at face value, she understands and articulates a lot that most professional fashion writers never seem to get across. Perhaps it takes a genuine grown-up high school misfit to notice that most, if not all, fashion people are not the "cool" kids aged 10 years: "Though many would think of the term fashion people and conjure rail-thin, snotty, sickeningly wealthy women and their male counterparts, in reality, a lot of fashion people are ex-nerds, small-town gays who dressed eccentrically and got made fun of for being flamboyant and fruity." It really is a world populated by people who were always made to feel different. (Of course, having been at one time intimately acquainted with one's own disempowerment isn't necessarily a prophylactic against replicating that power structure later, in a new context, with oneself in a more secure place, and perhaps that is where the industry's "snottiness" comes from.)

At the end of the week, after Tea and Perkins sneak goodie bags and bump into Nan Goldin, and after Ditto talks with Vivienne Westwood about Leonard Peltier, the Gossip plays a Fendi after-party at the VIP Club wearing a specially-made sequin-and-fur ensemble she can take off, piece by piece — "a wonderful Russian nesting doll of an outfit," as Tea puts it. Ditto takes the stage, and announces, "I'm very, very rich!" before throwing her fur headpiece into the audience, and the band starts to play. The writer reflects:

"Even though I have been here all week, knowing that every moment was leading to this, watching Beth accosted by photographers and flattered by designers, I still cannot get over how this little band that I have known for so long, this indie queer feminist punk band, is the absolute star of the Fendi show. The reality is staggering. In many ways it shouldn't be a surprise — less-talented, less-interesting, less-charismatic artists get famous all the time. They just tend not to be so outspokenly queer, so flamboyantly fat, so poor in their roots, so disconnected from the music industry, with no secret dad producer or mom publicist. The Gossip got to this lit-up stage in Paris through the force of their own dogged dedication to their DIY garage-rock band. It makes my eyes fill with fucking tears."

If fashion — or music, for that matter — needed defending, that call-to-arms is plenty good enough for me.

All cell phone photos by Michelle Tea, courtesy of the Believer

Full disclosure: In 2006, I was a summer intern for The Believer and McSweeney's. I did a lot of fact-checking and tried to interest them in an essay about hoboes.

The Gossip Takes Paris [The Believer]
Charming Deformities [The Believer]
Conspicuous By Their Presence [NYTimes]

1.) One Life to Live Does Grey Gardens
During a drunken daydream, one character on the soap imagined life as Edie Beale. They did a musical number, and the Costume of the Day speech, although the accent was way off.

2.) Joan Rivers on Live TV
I love that for her publicity tour for her new reality show, she keeps dropping F bombs on live television.

3.) Police Women Get Stuck With The Vagina Jobs

4.) Moe
Former Jezebel editor Moe Tkacik was on MSNBC on Tuesday morning, where she talked about the economy and possibly got hit on.

5.) Do You Remember the Time?
It was discovered that a 3000-year-old tomb of a mummified woman looks exactly like MJ.

6.) Lesbians Aren't Into Sausage Parties
Zing to you, Gordon Ramsey!

7.) Wasted Housewives of Atlanta
I love how drunk and loving NeNe and Kim got at their "let's be friends again" dinner.

8.) Who Pulled Tiger Woods' Finger?

9.) Do You Wanna Hear Someone From Chicago Pronounce "Coup d'état"?

10.) Why Am I So Obsessed With Her?
Her feigned modesty is one reason.

Interestingly, later in the episode, when Kathy was "canvassing" — going out in the community and talking to people about how they voted — she learned that many voters were confused over the wording of Prop 8, thinking that voting "yes" on it was a vote for agreeing with gay marriage.

Earlier: Etheridge Calls Elisabeth Out For Her Support Of Prop 8

Apparently the organizers had had a hard time keeping creepy dudes out of the Pinkalicious dances - now the sole women-only party Down Under. Says one company owner, "In my experience feminine lesbians are often the target of heterosexual male fantasy, and therefore subject to more intrusive attention from them...It is a major concern that heterosexual males will attend the Pinkalicious event in the hope they can achieve their desire for a sexual experience with multiple women."

There's been a backlash - particularly because only last month the Attorney General demanded that Australia's elite men's clubs open up to women. Says Sue Price, director of the Men's Rights Agency, the ruling represents a double standard, and Pinkalicious is receiving special treatment.

But gay men's bars have long had the right to ban women in Australia - and we can see far more compelling reasons for the Pinkalicious ban. After all, at the end of the day, this becomes a safety issue: the intention is to provide an environment for a group who don't have many other venues in which to feel totally secure and drink cocktails with very large pieces of watermelon in them. Or, as the head of the Human Rights Commission puts it, Pinkalicious events are important because "they offer a disadvantaged group the chance to experience supportive social occasions, feel safe in public spaces and build a sense of belonging." And let's face it: the guys who'd want to crash said event are a self-selecting population, to put it mildly, and I'm guessing it won't pose much of a problem for the non-creeps of Australia. That said, Stephen Horner is obviously going to be furious.

[Jerusalem, June 25. Image via Getty]

Members of the Israeli lesbian community blow a condom on June 25, 2009 during the annual Gay parade in Jerusalem. More than 2,000 people took part a toned down Gay Pride parade in Jerusalem which drew only muted protest, in contrast to the violent controversy the event had stirred in the past. AFP PHOTO/MARCO LONGARI (Photo credit should read MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)

[Tel Aviv, June 12. Image via Getty]

Members of the Israeli lesbian community kiss during the annual Gay Pride parade in Tel Aviv on June 12, 2009. An estimated 20,000 people took part in the gay parade, dancing, swaying and sashaying through the streets of the sizzling beachside city. Isreal repealed a ban on consensual same-sex sexual acts in 1988 and as the heart of Israel's cultural life and a bastion of secularism, Tel Aviv has been hosting the annual parade for the past nine years with relatively few objections from the country's religious community, unlike similar events in Jerusalem which saw violence and even one stabbing. AFP PHOTO/MARCO LONGARI (Photo credit should read MARCO LONGARI/AFP/Getty Images)

She seemed a little nervous, but then again, so did Letterman… he'd just finished apologizing for making inappropriate jokes about Sarah Pailn's daughter. Anyway, Kathy made little jabs at "National Treasure" Dr. Maya Angelou, "scrappy" Katie Couric, and Governor Palin. Clip at left.

Guards said the segregation at the Fluvanna Correctional Center for Women was deliberate, and that the "masculine-looking women" (like Summer Triolo, pictured) were moved to a wing of the prison referred to as the "butch wing," "little boys wing," "locker room wing" or "studs wing." Guards say building manager Timothy Back came up with the segregation plan as a way of breaking up relationships between inmates. One guard remembers Back saying, "we're going to break up some of these relationships, start a boys wing, and we're going to take all these studs and put them together and see how they like looking at nothing but each other all day instead of their girlfriends."

Though material conditions on the so-called "boys wing" were not worse than on other wings, inmates there were kept away from other inmates even at mealtimes, and say they suffered harassment. Prison staff made comments like, "Here come the little boys," when they arrived at the cafeteria for meals. Warden Barbara Wheeler denies that any segregation happened, but inmates say the policy was obvious. Inmate Trina O'Neal said, "I have been gay all my life and never have I once felt as degraded, humiliated or questioned my own sexuality, the way I look, etc., until all of this happened."

Va. Women's Prison Segregated Lesbians, Others [AP]

Sarah waters describes her work as 'lesbo historical romps,' but while her meticulously-researched, erotic stories of mystery, thrills and the occult do an amazing job of "teasing out lesbian stories from parts of history that are regarded as quite heterosexual," as she puts it, she's far more than a "queer writer" - rather, she's an amazing storyteller who happens to paint lesbian characters unusually well. Influenced by the gothic chills of Wilkie Collins and Henry James, Waters' writing is engrossing and page-turning, but always deft, skillful, intelligent. To call her novels thinking women's beach reads maybe does them a disservice, but at the same time, what could be better for a long weekend of uninterrupted reading? Her latest, The Little Stranger, takes us inside the crumbling estate and crumbling family of the Ayres; the result is both ghost story and family drama. It's a bit of a departure for Waters, as it features a male narrator and more of a country-house-mystery set-up. We can't wait, but If, like us, you're at the mercy of libraries and paperbacks, start with her earlier catalogue:

Tipping the Velvet: Nancy Astley is an oyster-shucker in her parents' restauarant in a Victorian seaside village. She falls in love with a male impersonator and travels to London, where her ups and downs include a music-hall career, a stint as a male prostitute and the kept woman of a wealthy and eccentric lesbian noblewoman, observing the upheaval of the country's history along the way.

Affinity: An indolent, neurotic noblewoman in Victorian London, Margaret Prior becomes a volunteer at Millbank Prison. She begins a romance with the enigmatic prisoner Selina Dawes, behind bars for impersonating a medium, but seemingly possessed of supernatural powers. The novel tells the backstory of both women, blurring the line between real and magic, madness and sanity.

Fingersmith: Sue Trinder, an orphan raised by a band of thieves, is recruited by a con artist to help him ensnare a mysterious heiress, marry her, take her money and imprison her in a madhouse. Sue goes undercover as a maid in the heiress Maud's house, but the two women fall in love. This one's a thriller - a page-turner in the true sense - that must be read rather than spoiled.

Night Watch is told from four perspectives: Kay, an androgynous ambulance driver; writer Helen and her lover Julia; Viv, dating a married man; Duncan, an enigmatic ex-con living with a mysterious protectot. Through their eyes and their intricate interlocking narratives, we see the grim reality of Blitz London and its aftermath.

Sarah Waters.com [Official Site]
Sarah Waters: 'Is There A Poltergeist Within Me?' [Independent]
Sarah Waters Interview [YouTube]
Sarah Waters On "Little Stranger," Identity, And Lesbian Fiction [AfterEllen]

But his next target? Jessica Simpson, played by a woman with more weight on her than the singer has.

In case you miss it, there's attention paid to her "fat." Also, she is eating a burger whenever possible.

Reference is made to Amy Winehouse, but we'll get to her later.

A Kim Kardashian look-alike also plays a part in this video, intimidating mere mortals with her otherworldly ass.

Next we see Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson doppelgangers. The lyrics: "Lindsay, please come back to seein' men: Samantha's a two, you're practically a ten." The way "seein' men" is rapped, it sounds like "semen."

Then Eminem, dressed as Spock, puts a sleeper hold on "Uhura."

Right after Em mentions Ellen and Portia, (he says, "Sorry, Portia, what's Ellen DeGeneres have that I don't, are you telling me tenderness?") we see Sarah Palin, showing bra.

The Asian playing Inuit and the polar bear seem cribbed from SNL.

But Eminem doesn't just make fun of women, or reality stars. He makes fun of himself. Here he is as Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man, which is not only a tip of the hat to critics who say he is nothing without his producer but Em's own way of toying with the notion that he's the "idiot savant" who only knows one thing —how to rap — and not how to behave in public or be politically correct.

But it's about 3:13 miuntes in, when Eminem — as Spock — visits "Planet Womyn" — that will probably get people all riled up. This barren wasteland of butch dyke sterotypes finds Em fighting "Sam" Ronson while "Lindsay" looks on…

… From a cage. Homophobia alert.

Still, after dressing like Elvis and making out with "Amy Winehouse," it's intersting that Em is seen doing this:

Sticking the body of Kim Kardashian in a wood chipper [shades of 'Hustler'? Or 'Fargo'? -Ed.] , and watching cash come out. Because honestly, as the chorus of this song goes, "We're the ones who made you." It's easy to make fun of these women but to also see that they are targets, and in most cases, the more we talk about them, the more money they generate. Celebrity is a business that eats people alive, and there's an entire layer of this video which acknowledges this fact.

And "Sarah Palin" pulling off "Bret's" bandanna to find him bald is just hilarious, and something we have all speculated about.

While Eminem's video might be sexist and homophobic and also a little bit funny, at least he doesn't let himself off the hook: He's in the electric chair, getting fried.

By turning the attacks on himself, the video feels more like a zany free-for-all and a nihilistic look at one man's lost place in society than a straight-up attack on women and gays. It's not especially shocking; especially considering the kind of lyrics and videos hip-hop is known for. But judge for yourself:

Eminem — We Made You [This Is 50]

(Remember, kids: Don't do drugs!) In this episode, Rich and I answer questions about pubes, gossip, and female circumcision. Got a burning question? Send it to potpsych@jezebel.com. (Or send us your phone number! We wanna talk.)

How Long Do I Have To Wait To Have Sex After An Abortion? from Pot Psychology on Vimeo.

Her guest, Dr. Diamond, explained (patiently) that who women are attracted to has nothing to do with the availability of men. She then went on to explain the Kinsey scale, and how sexuality, for some people, is not as categorically cut-and-dry as gay and straight.

As for "women who really kinda don't look like women," Dr. Diamond said that the femininity or masculinity of one's mate doesn't determine how gay a person is.

Earlier: O Magazine Discovers New Trend: Lesbians!

Feministing has mostly praise for the article, lauding writer Mary A. Fischer for addressing "gender and queerness, particularly addressing female masculinity." Fischer talks to Jackie Warner of Work Out fame, who says of her formerly hetero admirers,

Many of them are in the second part of their lives, their kids are grown, they're still in their sexual prime, and now they're looking to expand and have excitement. Also, these women are attracted to the masculinity in me. I'm physically strong. I succeed in business, and they see my confidence.

It's nice to think of a "second part" of life in which women are free to change their sexual and romantic lives (except, of course, that they still face stigma, as several couples note). A little less nice is the story of Macarena Gomez-Barris, a USC professor who left her husband because he was unambitious and "someone had to care about making money to support our family." After dating some men who "were not so sure of themselves in their careers or financially," she met fellow USC professor Judith Halberstam, an out lesbian. She was impressed that Halberstam picked up the check on their first date, and once she got out of the "heterosexual framework that said only a man could provide for my kids and be part of a family," they fell in love. While their relationship does seem committed and fulfilling, it's still upsetting that Gomez-Barris's story is really another story of a woman looking for a provider — she just happened to find it in another woman.

The fundamentally traditional roles in Gomez-Barris's new relationship obviously work for her and her partner, but they also point out a basic flaw in the O Magazine piece. As sensitively as she portrays lesbian couples, Fischer's approach is still pretty conservative. For instance, she promulgates the notion that sexual fluidity is mainly the province of women. She cites the oft-quoted 2004 study in which women were aroused by all types of pornography without examining the possible social or evolutionary underpinnings of this response. When she reports psych professor Lisa Diamond's finding that many women say "they are attracted to the person, and not the gender," Fischer never questions whether most men would feel comfortable saying such a thing. And she mentions Katy Perry's "I Kissed A Girl" as an example of the new acceptance of lesbianism.

The idea that all women are bi and no men are is both ancient and dumb, and while Fischer isn't saying exactly that, she comes darn close. Nobody would expect O Magazine to be on the forefront of gender and sexuality studies, and, like Feministing, we applaud Fischer for what she gets right. Still, we wish that somebody in the mainstream media would take a look at male sexual fluidity too. And that everyone would stop using Katy Perry as an example of how totally hip lesbians are right now.

Why Women Are Leaving Men for Other Women [O Magazine]
O Magazine: Why Women are Leaving Men for other Women [Feministing]