15. Russian Glamour, June 2009
Beyoncé's skin looked digitally darkened on the cover of Russian Glamour — and the editors had a guide! A magazine called Joy used the same shot in December 2007. Was something lost in translation? Save your "black Russian" jokes until the end.

14. L'Oreal, August 2008
Beyoncé's skin seemed very light in ads for Feria haircolor. One theory: she was washed out by the strong lighting usually used in shooting hair.

13. Vogue, November 2009
The cast of Nine is chock-full of gorgeous women, but this shot is a mindscramble of random rays of sunlight in hair and dresses with edges so sharp they look like they're for paper dolls. As I wrote in October: "I'm guessing [Annie] Leibovitz shot them each separately and then did a composite, but when you have a person who doesn't cast a shadow on the lady next to her, then that person is a vampire." Poor Kate Hudson looks like she was slapped on as an afterthought.

12. Complex, April/May 2009
Kim Kardashian's waist was cinched, her thighs were slimmed, her skin skin smoothed out and her hairline was cleaned up. Plus, her head appears to be a different shape in the "after" image. Who would have thought a skull could be made "sexier"?

11. Self, September 2009
Kelly Clarkson's "Total Body Confidence" came from digitally slimming her waist and behind. Two Self editors explained that the cover: "is not, as in a news photograph, journalism. It is, however, meant to inspire women to want to be their best."

10. King Arthur poster, 2004
Movie marketers felt they must, they must, they must increase the bust. Ironically, Keira Knightley told the Guardian that she lost her chest, doing archery and preparing for the role:

To fight, convincingly, shoulder to shoulder, she had to do that thing that is so de rigueur, which is totally to change your body shape. "I was about three times the size I am now. It worried me, but it was cool, it was a body that was doing what it should do. I haven't got a clue because I don't weigh myself, but it was all muscle and I was big. My neck disappeared. My chest flattened even more. It wasn't the most feminine thing in the world, but it worked for the part, because there was strength there, and it was needed."

Of course, Hollywood can't imagine a world in which people would see a movie starring an athletic, flat-chested woman. So a digital boob job followed.

9. Redbook, July 2007
The crazy thing about the Faith Hill Redbook cover is not that it was Photoshopped — it's that this is the standard amount of digital altering that goes into a cover. Unlike some true Photoshop disasters, there are no alarming mistakes here to tip you off. That makes it easy to accept the retouched image without even blinking. Faith Hill is a beautiful woman. But she needed 11 different kinds of alterations before she could be on the cover of Redbook. What a world.

8. Campari calendar, 2008
Jessica Alba: Just another woman whose real body wasn't good enough. In this case, her waist needed to be nipped in so she could shill liquor.

7. Vogue, May 2008
RoboGwyneth looks like a robot, or an alien, depending on whom you ask. One thing is for sure: Her head and neck are not in the same space-time continuum.

6. Redbook, June 2003
Jennifer Aniston's head was placed on to Jennifer Aniston's body — from another photo shoot. At the time, her publicist, Steven Huvane, said: "It's a combination of three pictures. If you're going to do it, then at least match her head up to her body, and make the neck look like it belongs to her. I still can't figure out which exact picture the face came from." A Redbook spokeswoman downplayed the changes: "The only things that were altered in the cover photo were the color of her shirt and the length of her hair, very slightly, in order to reflect her current length."

The neck does look alarmingly unreal, and her head and waist are out of sync somehow. Angelina is surely to blame.

5.Redbook, July 2003
The month after the Aniston debacle, Redbook was at it again: According to USA Today, "[Julia's] head comes from a paparazzi shot taken at the 2002 People's Choice awards. Her body, meanwhile, is from the Notting Hill movie premiere [in 1999]." Julia's publicist, Marcy Engelman, said, at the time: "It's a shame they didn't use the body that went with the head, because it was a great Giorgio Armani pantsuit (that she wore to the People's Choice awards)."

4. Newsweek, March 2005
The editors used Martha's head and a model's body, because Ms. Stewart was still in jail when the issue was being put together. It wasn't supposed to be a photograph, anyway, it was art: "The piece that we commissioned was intended to show Martha as she would be, not necessarily as she is,'' Lynn Staley, assistant managing editor at Newsweek, told The New York Times. Staley acknowledged that the cover carried a disclaimer: ''In this case, we identified this piece as a photo illustration." As Martha would say, it's a "good thing" you did.

3. Seventeen, May 2003
Think about all the Buffy plots which could have been orchestrated around Sarah Michelle Gellar's weird wrist appendage over there on the left, if her arm actually looked like that.

2. GQ, February 2003.
Some people saw Titanic over and over again — but they never saw those legs, on the left. Kate Winslet was pissed about being trimmed down on this cover, saying:

"The retouching is excessive. I do not look like that and more importantly I don't desire to look like that. I actually have a Polaroid that the photographer gave me on the day of the shoot… I can tell you they've reduced the size of my legs by about a third. For my money it looks pretty good the way it was taken."

1. Ralph Lauren Blue Label ad, October 2009
In which model Filippa Hamilton was turned into a string of spaghetti.

Newsweek.com's major crime seems to be allowing loose women to speak. These ladies of the evening include porn star Sasha Grey (pictured above), whose views on the Mark Sanford scandal have forever soiled Lopez's brain — she writes, "what's shocking is that I even know her opinion on the woman, on the situation, on politicians and their wives, and that she thinks we should all openly have something extra on the side." Also scandalously allowed to have an opinion is former madam Heidi Fleiss. Never mind that Newsweek tapped her to talk about escorts, a subject she presumably knows a lot about — according to Lopez, she's still gross.

But not as gross as a gay guy talking about sex. The final exhibit in Lopez's case against Newsweek is "crude sex columnist" Dan Savage, who mentioned blow jobs in a piece on Larry Craig (Lopez renders this as "b*** j**" — presumably so her readers' eyeballs don't explode). Savage is actually making a pretty conservative point — he writes, "It annoys people like me - openly gay men - when the Craig incident is described as a ‘gay sex scandal,' as if his actions in the toilet that day tell you something about gay men. Openly gay people - gay men with integrity - have boyfriends and husbands." But of course, gay sex is dirty, whether it takes place in an airport bathroom or a marital bed.

It's kind of hilarious that, given what's available on the Internet (though this too is a taboo topic for Lopez), she would single out Newsweek as "all about sex - perverse and paid for." What's not so funny is the message she articulates — that people who have sex she deems unacceptable shouldn't get to speak in the national media. It's especially strange that she doesn't really criticize Mark Sanford or Eliot Spitzer — just the porn star and madam who mistakenly thought they were allowed to talk about them. Of course, Sanford and Spitzer came in for their fair share of vitriol, but Lopez's piece reminds us who are the enduring enemies of the right's traditional-values squad: women, gays, and anybody they can dismiss with a claim of "perversity."

Sex Sells [National Review Online]

• Police believe Joshua Woodward, a restaurateur from L.A., gave his 13-weeks pregnant girlfriend an abortion inducing drug without her consent. She claims just hours before she miscarried, Woodward touched her sexually, leaving white powder in her underwear. • Conseulo Carreto Valencia, 61, has been sentenced to 10 years in prison - the maximum sentence - for forcing girls to work as prostitutes. In this rather tasteless article, the NY Daily News refers to her as a "mini-madam," due to her short stature. •  A Danish political party has fessed up to pasting yellow penis stickers all over the posters for opposing parties. "We admit we did it," said party Vice President Niels Andreasen. But it seems like their hilarious efforts paid off: "At first we figured we'd get around 200 votes. But now we've had 10,000 visitors to our Web site and we have 500 new Facebook friends." • Two cities in California have voted to outlaw the declawing of cats. Beverly Hills City Council and the Los Angeles City Council joined Santa Monica and San Francisco in the recent ban. •  A 20-year-old Somali woman was stoned to death for adultery in front of a crowd of 200 on Tuesday afternoon. She had recently been divorced, and was reportedly dating a 29-year-old man. He received 100 lashes for his part in the affair. • A research team from the UK found that almost 50% of women have a genetic variation which reduces their ability to produce vitamin A from beta-carotene. This may mean that up to half the women in England could be at risk for vitamin A deficiency. • Doctors believe that they may be able to use eggs donated by younger women to increase the chances of conception among older women. A team from Japan removed the nuclei from eggs of women undergoing IVF and injected them into eggs donated by women under 35. • The city of Sacramento, California has presented 18-year-old Margarita Vargas with an official proclamation, calling her decision to call the police after hearing about the brutal gang rape of a teen girl "a bold act of humanity." • Olivia Thomas, the oldest person in the U.S., died this week at the age of 114. Thomas was believed to be the third oldest person in the world at the time of her death. •  A police officer in Arkansas recently tasered a 10-year-old girl when she refused to get into his police car. The report says the stun was "very, very brief" and only used to bring the girl to a youth shelter. • It seems Brian Adams, the photographer who shot the picture of Sarah Palin in shorts for Runner's World violated his contract by reselling the photo to Newsweek. A spokeswoman for Runner's World said the picture was supposed to be under embargo until August 2010, and "Runner's World did not provide Newsweek with its cover image... It was provided to Newsweek by the photographer's stock agency, without Runner's World's knowledge or permission." A Newsweek spokesman responded, "We purchased the photo from an agency and were not aware of any issues with it." • Police say they're not filing any more charges in the murder of 5-year-old Shaniya Davis until it's decided which North Carolina county will handle the case. Her mother, Antoinette Davis, and Mario McNeill have already been arrested and charged with kidnapping and child abuse involving prostitution. • Katherine Sebelius addressed the confusion over new breast cancer screening recommendations saying, "The U.S. Preventive Task Force is an outside independent panel of doctors and scientists who make recommendations... They do not set federal policy, and they don't determine what services are covered by the federal government... The Task Force has presented some new evidence for consideration but our policies remain unchanged. Indeed, I would be very surprised if any private insurance company changed its mammography coverage decisions as a result of this action." • A 13-year-old boy in Alabama was arrested after he asked an undercover officer posing as a prostitute for sex. The officer says she tried to run him off more than once, but he insisted, so she had to arrest him. He was charged with a misdemeanor count of loitering while looking for a prostitute. • In its 2009 state of the world population report, the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) says the world's poor are the most vulnerable to the effects of climate change, and most of the 1.5 billion people living on less than $1 a day are women. "Poor women in poor countries are among the hardest hit by climate change, even though they contributed the least to it," said UNFPA executive director Thoraya Ahmed Obaid. • Last month the U.K.'s Law Commission proposed that unmarried couples who live together for two years should be able to claim half of their partner's estate if they die without a will. Baroness Deech, chairman of the Bar Standards Board says, "Cohabitation law retards the emancipation of women, degrades the relationship, takes away choice, is too expensive and would extend an already unsatisfactory maintenance law for married couples to another large category," adding, "Women do not need and ought not to require to be kept by men after their relationship has come to an end." • British hedge fund manager Mark Lowe is being sued for sexual discrimination by female executive Jordan Wimmer because he repeatedly forwarded the office sexist emails. She confronted him when he sent around a dumb blonde joke. He said in court: "I didn't for a moment suppose anyone would take exception to a feeble joke of this sort. It was not directed against [Ms Wimmer]. The thought never occurred to me that she'd be offended." •

On the Today show this morning, a Newsweek editor, Dan Klaidman, defended the magazine's choice of a Runner's World photo to illustrate its two stories critiquing Palin as a political figure. He basically stuck to the magazine's talking points, arguing that the picture did "illustrate the themes of the cover story," which is to say, that Sarah Palin lacks gravitas and exploits her all-American image.

And some female critics agree. As Lindsay Beyerstein writes:

The bottom line is that Palin's a clown. She doesn't get a pass because her chosen clown persona is stereotypically feminine.

She caricatures herself. Day in and day out. Good for Newsweek for pointing and laughing.

The story is about why Sarah Palin is a problem for the GOP. The picture answers the question. She's a problem because she's a freak with no judgment who regularly makes a spectacle of herself.

So does this "freak" matter as anything other than as a momentary soap opera for politics junkies? On Today, Tina Brown put forward a theory that's growing in steam (and that liberals fervently wish to be the case): "[Palin is] really not remotely interested in politics as far as I could see... She really was quite happy to play as a celebrity talk show guest, and she did a fabulous job at that." And yesterday, Ana Marie Cox told Rachel Maddow that McCain staffers believe Palin has no intention of running for office, adding, "This is as famous and politically credible that she's going to be."

But NBC Washington Bureau chief Mark Whitaker — who, as former editor in chief of Newsweek, used to be Klaidman's boss — calls bullshit both on the dismissal of Palin's political future and the hypocritical handwringing among his own about how much she's being covered:

The widespread suggestion in some of the media commentary that she simply isn't qualified enough to be considered a viable presidential candidate is ridiculous....Call it sexism or what you will, but why should the media only compare ambitious women to impressive men, when so many ambitious but underwhelming men get so far in this world?

Media debate about why Palin is getting all this attention is also pretty laughable. Cable and network news producers cover her on television to boost ratings, print editors put her on their front pages and magazine covers to sell newsstand copies, and then everyone turns around and tsk-tsk's: "What's all the fuss? Is she good for the GOP? Is she good for America?"

That would be, more or less, the headline Newsweek itself went for. Except they went ahead and said that the answer is no, she's bad for both.

Update: Politico's Ben Smith takes the pulse of the presidents of various feminist organizations on the Newsweek cover. Their response is basically to shrug. White House Project president Marie Wilson: "It's much more complicated than sexism... What the [Republican] Party was selling, and people were buying — and what the candidate colluded [in] — is what shows up in that Newsweek picture." And Terri O'Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, says that while Palin has been at times a victim of sexism, this cover isn't an example of it. She adds, "Women's right's organizations are really clear that we're struggling for the rights of ordinary women...Sarah Palin is not with us on that."

Palin Calls Newsweek Cover Sexist [Today Show]
Where Coverage of "Going Rogue" Goes Wrong [MSNBC]
The Truth Hurts: Palin's Newsweek Cover [Majikthise]

Earlier: Sarah Palin Gets Her Criticism of Newsweek Cover Right

Meacham tells Politico's Michael Calderone, "We chose the most interesting image available to us to illustrate the theme of the cover, which is what we always try to do. We apply the same test to photographs of any public figure, male or female: does the image convey what we are saying? That is a gender-neutral standard."

Meanwhile, over at MSNBC, Andrea Mitchell just asked her guests for their thoughts on the cover, adding delicately, "Maybe you're not the best people to ask." Cut to two dudes, at least one of whom (Democratic strategist Steve McMahon) has no qualms about answering bluntly:

"This is a woman who is basically the Tonya Harding of authors. She came out and kneecapped every single person who helped her along the way. And she's making millions of dollars for it. She has no right to complain, she has no reason to complain. She can complain all the way to the bank."

Palin Calls Newsweek Cover Sexist and Degrading [Politico]

Earlier: Sarah Palin Gets Her Criticism of Newsweek Cover Right

As posted on Palin's Facebook page last night:

The choice of photo for the cover of this week's Newsweek is unfortunate. When it comes to Sarah Palin, this "news" magazine has relished focusing on the irrelevant rather than the relevant. The Runner's World magazine one-page profile for which this photo was taken was all about health and fitness – a subject to which I am devoted and which is critically important to this nation. The out-of-context Newsweek approach is sexist and oh-so-expected by now. If anyone can learn anything from it: it shows why you shouldn't judge a book by its cover, gender, or color of skin. The media will do anything to draw attention – even if out of context.

First things first: Sarah Palin chose to pose for these photos in Runner's World. Yes, her commitment to exercise is proven and admirable. But she had to have known by then that the cheerleader-esque photos could be used against her. As the Washington Post's Robin Givhan pointed out in an appearance Friday, the obsession with say, Palin's red pumps may have been disproportionate, but she still sent a message by choosing them.

Still, Newsweek isn't exactly exercising its commitment to as be as "intellectually satisfying and as visually rich an experience as the great monthlies of old," in the words of its editor not long ago.

But sparring with Palin and her defenders has been a lucrative strategy for Newsweek (and just about everyone else). It started with its September 15, 2008 cover, which used a 2002 file photo of Palin wielding a gun. The age of the photo was disclosed, but a casual observer would be easily forgiven for thinking that Palin had just posed for the photo during the campaign season.

And then there was the second Palin-Newsweek-cover brouhaha, which consisted of Fox news commentators complaining that the closeup shot had been insufficiently airbrushed.

Newsweek probably couldn't have anticipated such a ridiculous complaint. Still, both cover photos paid off both in news cycle buzz and at the newsstand: each Palin issue was that month's best-seller, according to the Audit Bureau of Circulations.

And let's not forget that this is a magazine for whom a "glimmer of progress" boils down to "we laid off enough people and cut unprofitable circulation to lose less money this quarter than the first two." So far, a major prong of their strategy for stepping out of the muddy middle, away from rusty, team-reported grand narratives, amounts to so much page-view whoring. It's all new packaging for newly sharp-edged commentary — some of it quite nuanced and progressive — from the same old, mostly white and male, voices.

So why not go in for another piece of Palin? After all, we're buying.

Bonus: The ladies of the View are pretty much united in outrage on this one.

How Sarah Palin Hurts The GOP And The Country [Newsweek]

Related: Palin: Newsweek Cover Sexist, Country Needs to Exercise More [Mediaite]
I'm A Runner: Sarah Palin [Runner's World]

Earlier: The Sarah Palin Non-Photoshop Chop: Fox News Wants To Alter Your Reality.

The first go-round was bad enough. Today, Samuels posts a follow-up piece rehashing the same points with a supposedly damning photo of Zahara's hair. Newsflash: that's what natural hair looks like with a wash and go. That's what my hair looks like right now! What does Ms. Samuels want her to do, put on a headband? Is a wash and go suddenly okay if we use accessories?

Seriously, there are three big issues at play here that she missed in her analysis.

Zahara Jolie-Pitt Is A Transracial Adoptee And Third Culture Kid

First of all, all of the Jolie-Pitt kids have some unique circumstances. In addition to the transracial adoption angle, the Jolie-Pitts are a nomadic family, settling in places for a while and then moving on. This means that they are all Third Culture Kids. They do not have a dominant society that they grew up in, which means that they may or may not absorb the cultural norms of any of the places they have lived. The children may grow up to feel allegiance to one particular place, or none at all. All this is to say that Zahara may not grow up identifying with the black American experience.

No doubt, Zahara Jolie-Pitt is black. But in the global sense of the word, not in the American way Samuels applies in her piece. As many commenters pointed out in our original post about this, Z is not African-American. She was adopted from Ethiopia, and if Ms. Samuels is ever in DC, I would be more than happy to take her down to the U Street Corridor so she can see how many women from Ethiopia wear their hair. (If she wants to look right now, here's some traditional styles - she'll notice that braids, cornrows, curly fros, loose hair, and the Quntcho (represented stateside and elsewhere as a fro-hawk) are all represented. For more contemporary styles, the contestants in the Ethiopian Millennium Pageant also rock a variety of looks.)

Ms. Samuels is applying a uniquely African American framework to a child who does not have that experience.

Now, that doesn't mean Zahara Jolie-Pitt will have a life free of hair struggles. Curly haired readers from across the globe have pointed out their issues with beauty standards and black hair. Which brings me to my next point.

The Black-on-Black Crime That is Hair Policing Has to End

One of things that drives me insane about these conversations is that they are all hair policing. As Samuels writes in her latest piece:

But the actress should know that the next time Zahara asks about hair, it won't be why her hair isn't similar to others in her house. It will be why her hair doesn't look like other brown girls' does.

On a cultural note, I'd like Angelina to also know how much bonding goes on when mothers sit down to comb their daughter's hair; something that happens in almost every culture, but particularly in the African-American community. My fondest memories are of me sitting on the floor as my mother brushed and oiled my hair.

Okay, that's great. Let me ask her this: what happened after those fond memories? The styles of childhood do not continue into our preteen years, the age when black girls normally get their first relaxers. Does she have fond memories of her mother basing her scalp before she applied the chemicals that would straighten her hair? Or is that a ritual that is just understood as a part of growing up? Are her memories scarred with the taunts of other children? My cousins came home crying after being teased about their "beady-beads" and their "kitchens." And who did the taunting? Many times, it was other black students. We need to stop encouraging conformity and hair hatred, because there is a logical end to the path we are walking down. Instead of fighting each other when someone's hair doesn't conform to our specific ideals, wouldn't it make more sense to fight against a racist system that penalizes and politicizes certain hair styles?

Loose, Curly Hair is Not the Enemy.

Wearing it loose is one of the things a person does when she actually likes the look of her natural hair. Crazy, I know. It isn't as if Zahara can't get ponytails and plaits - the pic used to illustrate this post proves that. But there is nothing wrong with wearing hair loose. Just because the dominant narrative says that curly hair looks wild, unkempt, or untamed unless it is partially braided, in a head band, or otherwise "tamed" doesn't mean we have to buy into it.

To be honest, I'm pissed. I'm pissed at these messed up dynamics, I'm pissed that someone with a Newsweek-level platform can keep bashing the hammer about Zahara without discussing the larger dynamics involved with discussions of natural hair, and I'm pissed that I feel like I'm defending the Pokemon-style adoption tactics of Angelina Jolie, or glossing over the very real indicators shown when a white adoptive parent can't be bothered to learn how to properly care for their child's hair. But specifically in this case, I think the ire directed at Ms. Jolie about her child's hair is misplaced.

Please, for all that is right and good in the world, let's leave Zahara be. We can help to shape a world where she doesn't feel pressured to relax her hair to conform, nor does she feel deficient if she decides to wear her hair the way it grows out of her head. We can shape a world were a decision to relax one's hair is an inconsequential as a decision to dye it or cut it. And if little Zahara grows up and does choose to relax her hair, she should be able to do so in a world that will not judge her personal politics by what she applies to her head.

Zahara Jolie-Pitt And The Politics Of Uncombed Hair [Newsweek]

Related: We Are All Team Zahara [Newsweek]
Third Culture Kids [Wikipedia]
Ethiopian Hair Styles [Ethiopedia]
Are curls the new straight hair? (The Germany Files) [Racialicious]
Hair, Apparently. [Racialicious]
Nappily Ever After? Not Quite… [Racialicious]

Earlier: Thanks For Your Concern, But Zahara's Hair Will Be Fine

Barbie Nadeau pens a quick opinion piece, noting the problems she had with the health care system when she moved to Italy. She blasts the doctors and nurses there for the "anachronistic approach toward mothering and the lack of communication" and reminds readers of an opinion piece she wrote in 2002, titled "Next Time, I'll Pay." So what changed in the ensuing seven years? Just her perspective:

I still dislike the way they treated me, his mother, but my son is alive today and I didn't have to go in debt to save him.

But it never really occurred to me just how important the outcome was, at the expense of all the other atmospherics, until I found my lump. Living without health insurance in America for nearly eight years was a huge risk. Back then I was too old to ride along on my parents' health policy (they were farmers so their policy was complicated and expensive), and I made too much money to be covered by Medicaid or social assistance. I worked for a small magazine that couldn't afford to pay benefits, but I took the job because I needed journalism experience and bylines. I couldn't have afforded even the most basic coverage on my own: cash went to rent, food, and car insurance-because it had to. Like a lot of underemployed, I just hoped to stay healthy. It was before the Internet, and I couldn't Google symptoms or home remedies. When I was seriously sick, I either ignored the symptoms or borrowed prescriptions from friends. Back then I would not have had this lump checked out. I would have ignored it and simply hoped it went away.

A lot has changed since then. Not only have I moved abroad, but I also married into a private-insurance policy that works in conjunction with Italy's socialized health-care system. Many Italian residents have basic public health insurance but navigate the system using private health care when it is urgent for things like fevers and anomalies like breast lumps. (Private insurance costs a fraction of what it costs in the United States.) A basic family policy in the States, according to a USA Today poll, runs up to $13,375 a year, whereas its Italian equivalent costs roughly $1,500. Government-sponsored health care suffices for routine issues like for vaccinations or specialized equipment like mammograms or MRIs. I had my private doctor diagnose my lump and then visited a public facility for the specialized ultrasound. I had a private surgeon remove it last week.

Ultimately, Nadeau wishes the systems were different and notes that each system has it's own flaws. But at the end of her second piece, she reinforces that ultimately, the outcome - a healthy and still living son, the removal of her lump - made it all worthwhile.

Over at the Washington Post, Ezra Klein also tries his hand at demystifying the terms socialism and equal payer, and explains:

About 30 percent of Americans think HMOs are socialized medicine. Which implies a couple things. First, the term "socialized medicine" has been diluted beyond all meaning. Second, it's no longer considered a terrifying outcome. And third, nothing that's this amorphous — and actually preferred by a plurality of the population — is likely to prove a terribly effective attack against health reform. Socialized medicine has become such a stand-in for "not this system of medicine" that it's begun to look good in comparison.

Meanwhile, what we're actually going to get is not socialized medicine or single-payer health care. It's a hybrid system. Private insurers, hopefully competing with a public option. Private doctors and private hospitals. Government regulation and subsidies. It's going to be complicated and messy and inefficient and hopeful and the product of a strange mix of corporate preferences and public compassion and latent populism. It will, in other words, be a uniquely American system, and hard to describe with a single epithet.

So why is there such animosity toward socialized medicine?

Perhaps it started with Ronald Reagan.

Now, my own views on Ronald Reagan are informed by having black parents in the 1980s, so I learned Reagan was like this:

Seriously. I still remember a conversation like this:

Me: Mommy, why are there so many homeless people on the streets?
Mom: Reagan.
Me: Why do they talk to themselves?
Mom: Ronald Reagan closed the places where they could get better in order to save money. They have no where else to go to be alone, so they talk to themselves on the streets.
Me: Was Reagan mean?
Mom: He was the devil incarnate.

But to many conservatives, Reagan is an icon who staunchly defended personal freedom and liberty. In 1961, Reagan - then a private citizen - assisted with Operation Coffee Cup, an appeal to voters to vote against socialized medicine. Here's one of the most famous addresses below (audio only):

The legislation Reagan spoke out against would eventually become Medicare.

These ideas about the erosion of personal freedom are quite powerful. In 2005, the Winter Cato's Letter featured John Goodman speaking out about the myths of socialized medicine. He raises some good points, particularly when discussing how some systems start to thrive on the inefficiencies and how marginalized populations tend to suffer under government run initiatives. (Check out the Indian Health Service for how that plays out today.) However, one of Goodman's key points falls a bit flat:

The cosmetic surgery market is about the only market where patients are really spending their own money. And guess what? It works like a real market. People get package prices. They can compare prices. And over the decade of the 1990s, the average price of cosmetic surgery actually went down in real terms, even as there were all kinds of technological innovations that we are told drive up costs elsewhere.

Well, one of the reasons that cosmetic surgery can function like a real market is because cosmetic surgery is an elective surgery. You can postpone a nose job indefinitely, but not a ruptured artery. So in this case, does our adherence to free market principles still work ? Or is it as Nadeau states, where the outcome is what needs to be prioritized?

On Second Thought [Newsweek]
Next Time, I'll Pay [Newsweek]
Health Reform for Beginners: The Difference Between Socialized Medicine, Single-Payer Health Care, and What We'll Be Getting [Washington Post]
How AMA 'Coffeecup' gave Reagan a boost [SFGate]
Cato's Letter - Winter 2005 [Cato Institute] (PDF)
Who Is Responsible for Your Health Care? [Racialicious]

• Contrary to a report in the National Enquirer, Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie are not splitting up. In fact, they're in love. Imagine that! [Us Magazine]

• Meanwhile, Angelina Jolie has been named by Forbes as the "world's most powerful celebrity," stealing the top spot from (dun dun dun…) Oprah Winfrey.Forbes' Celebrity 100 power rankings are based on a combination of earning power and media exposure, and four out of the top five places are held by female stars: In addition to Angie and Oprah, there's Madonna and Beyoncé. Do it, ladies! [Telegraph]
• Interestingly, Forbes chose Beyoncé as their cover model. Maybe Angelina was too busy making out with Brad? [People]
• The Forbes "Celebrity 100" list is here. [Forbes, Forbes]
• Eminem speaks about the Bruno stunt: "Sacha called me when we were in Europe and he had an idea to do something outrageous at the Movie Awards. I'm a big fan of his work so I agreed to get involved with the gag… After the ceremony I went back to my hotel and laughed uncontrollably for about 3 hours. Especially after I saw it on air." [Rap Radar]
• Power ballad showcase showdown: Jake Gyllenhaal and Zac Efron are "neck and neck" to play the lead in the big-screen version of Broadway's Rock of Ages. [Gatecrasher]
• George Clooney is dating another waitress, this time she's an aspiring model in Miami. She looks really tall! [Janet Charlton's Hollywood]
• Ashlee Simpson "had to be restrained" at an event where she was drunk and told her husband Pete Wentz's ex — Michelle Trachtenberg : "I hope you know, the whole time you were dating Pete, I was fucking him!" [Page Six]
• Did Susan Boyle lose Britain's Got Talent votes due to a YouTube scam? [Telegraph]
• Lindsay Lohan is following Sam Ronson around London, but it seems like every time LL arrives at a club where Samantha is hanging out, Sam leaves. Wonder why? [Daily Mail]
• Oliver Stone and Shia LaBeouf have made a deal: Shia will star in the Wall Street sequel. [Page Six]
• When he's out of town, Kate Hudson watches boyfriend Alex Rodriguez play ball on TV. [Page Six]
• Stephen Colbert will be guest-editing Newsweek's June 8 issue. Is that concept intriguing enough to get you to buy the magazine, at a time when print is flailing? [MSNBC Scoop]
• Oh shit, here comes the Adam Lambert smack-talk. A "source" says: "He is such a diva. Rude to everyone - from fans right down to the lighting folks." Clay Aiken, is that you? [MSNBC Scoop]
• Miley Cyrus fired United Talent, her agency, and will go with CAA instead. UTA had repped her on her Hannah Montana deals, but Miley is probably looking to "grow up." [Deadline Hollywood]
• Oh dear: Christina Ricci and boyfriend Owen Benjamin have called off their engagement, Sad face! In this report is the classic phrase, "They're definitely still friends." [People]
• Kim Kardashian says: "I am not engaged!!! My new publicist was talking with Star Magazine earlier today and accidently referred to Reggie as my fiance so they posted the news on their website! There have been so many rumors flying around recently about Reggie and I being engaged that she assumed we were! So, sorry Star Magazine for ruining your exclusive! It's totally my publicist's fault haha." [Kim Kardashian.Celebuzz.com]
• From a review of Britney Spears' concert in London: "The costumes are pretty skimpy and there's nowhere the set designers haven't contrived to put a pole for her to gyrate around. And yet there's something unsexy about all of it, possibly because there's something weirdly characterless about the woman at its centre: you'd happily trade some of the special effects for the sense of Spears actually engaging with her audience rather than slickly going through the motions." [Guardian]
• Britney's trying to sell her old house — she even dropped the price by about a million dollars — but no one's buying. People! This is the scene of the famous ambulance ride. Surely you want to… Never mind. [E!]
• LeAnn Rimes is accused of "stalking" Eddie Cibrian in the new Us, but in response to that allegation, she says: "You know what, I'm a classy woman, I'm never ever going to battle anything out in the press." And: "I can't control other people but I can control what I say and what I don't. I refuse to get down on any one else's level and I'm going to take the high road on everything." Okay then! [People]
• The stars of The Hangover — Bradley Cooper, Ed Helms and Zach Galifianakis — have a wacky, silly banter off the screen, as well. [USA Today]
• Real Housewives star Bethenny Frankel gave Caroline Kennedy a copy of her book, Naturally Thin. Surely, just what Caroline always wanted. [Gatecrasher]
• Eyeroll: Kristin Cavallari threw glitter at some models during a fashion show in St. Maarten and almost got in a fight, yawn. [Page Six]
• Mel Gibson's divorce — what with the real estate being held in trust for the kids and millions in the bank — is going to be messy. [TMZ]
• Mel Gibson's pregnant ladyfriend has an ex-husband who was married to her for five months. He says: "It's a period of my life that I would rather forget." Asked what his former wife was like, the man sniped, "You should ask all the other men - there were enough of them!" [Daily Express]
• While on break from shooting Dollhouse, Eliza Dushku visited Uganda and met with former child soldiers who are trying to reintegrate themselves back into society. "You learn so much that you would never be able to read in a book ... meeting people and hearing stories firsthand," Dushku says. "I can't bear to hear people say that they're bored in this day and age." [AP]
• Edie Falco says being the star of Nurse Jackie is different from playing Carmela on The Sopranos: "It really feels like changing careers in a way. [Sopranos creator David Chase] oversaw everything; we called him the master cylinder. We all had our input, but it ultimately trickled down to David alone in a room somewhere, I imagined, making all the decisions. I had trust in that. [But at Jackie], they're asking for my input on levels I've never been asked before. That's revelatory for me, and it takes a great deal of chutzpah, confidence, to be able to say that. I really am just an actress." [USA Today]
• Vanessa Hudgens and Mary-Kate Olsen will be in the teen romance film Beastly, a retelling of Beauty and the Beast. [Variety]
• "Stephen Fry and Ricky Gervais defend science writer sued for libel." [Telegraph]
• "Jude Law stuns the critics with a 'lucid, excellent' performance of Hamlet." [Daily Mail]
• Terrence Howard will develop a a TV drama based on the life of undercover LAPD detective Ronald Farwell, who infiltrated the Black Panthers. [Variety]
• Not-so-blind item: "Which rehabbed starlet is back in the tangled web of getting drunk every night?" [Gatecrasher]
• "It was just a comment that you make, the same comment when you're 12. He just made it when he was 38 or however old he is. They had a friend over last night who is gay. I have two gay brothers. It was not done with malice, because I know them. It was a slip of the tongue. His "uh-oh" moment. Let's give Joe his "uh-oh" moment. We all get them. The Joe I know has no phobias, has no discrimination, he has family members that are gay. He has friends that are gay. He welcomes and embraces my two brothers that are gay." — Caroline Manzo, of The Real Housewives Of New Jersey, on Teresa's husband, Joe, calling someone "gaylord." [E!]
• "It did take a lot of work. I thought it was gonna drop off easily because I had been in shape my whole life, but it wasn't. I gained about 50 pounds with my twins, and the first 30 dropped off like that, and I was like, 'Ha, this is gonna be so easy.' That last 20 - that took a while." —Jennifer Lopez, on losing her "baby weight." [Mirror]
• "First of all, you gotta run them around before the bath. Play a game of hide and seek or wrestle or muck around. Then they're exhausted. Then we all fall asleep on the bed!" — Hugh Jackman's secret to getting the kids to go to sleep. [People]
• "I'm reaching out to Susan. She should hook up with me and [Catholic classical trio]The Priests. We would be the world's first gospel supergroup. I think it's horrible people have been making fun of her. Susan just wants to love Jesus and sing – it's cute. Only I can help her out of her meltdown." — Beth Ditto wants to hang with Susan Boyle. [The Sun]
• "Filming a scene that involves being entirely naked and takes a couple days can be a little awkward. Thankfully you're there for so long and you're doing it for so long that you dispense with the awkwardness pretty quickly and start to have mundane, normal conversations – the difference being you're not wearing pants." — Ryan Reynolds, on letting it all hang out in The Proposal. [People]
• "In the movies, you often see the average-looking guy with the incredibly attractive woman. In my movies you see the average-looking woman with the super hot John Corbett. I'm happy to make those movies for all of us women. Guess what? We need people like me on screen. That's what movies are. You go and escape for a sec." — Nia Vardalos, whose directorial debut, My Life In Ruins, opens tomorrow. [LA Times]
• "They are men. They have desires. They have testosterone. If they make a mistake, I'm not going to hate them. I don't think they are above or below being seduced. I would be foolish if I thought that. I pray for them." — Denise Jonas, mother of the Jonas Brothers, worries that your slutty Jezebel lifestyle includes tarnishing her purity-ring wearing sons. [MSNBC]

Writer Wray Herbert applies to McAllister four cognitive mechanisms that are not necessarily related to the horror of finding out a loved one has committed murder. Perhaps she is suffering from "the endowment effect," which in studies showed that people who already owned tickets to a basketball game overvalued them when asked to sell. Or maybe she's experiencing "loss aversion," as she is "facing a huge loss-the end of her dreams, symbolized by her canceled summer wedding plans." We've all wondered why McAllister stuck by Philip Markoff for so long, but it's impossible to understand what she's going through from a few random findings about the human brain. But, we can guess that a man would be just as traumatized, and have just as much difficulty knowing when to call it quits, were the situation reversed.

Standing By The Craigslist Killer [Newsweek]

Earlier: After Visiting Markoff In Jail McAllister Says Wedding Is Off

Newsstand sales among the 70 biggest magazines in the U.S. fell 31% between 2001 and 2008, according to MediaPost. Though the number of subscriptions is usually higher, the number of newsstand sales is still considered an indicator of a magazine's health. Though most titles had their ups and downs over the last seven years, the trend was clear, as newsstand sales at 55 out of 70 titles declined.

Among the magazines with the biggest decline since 2001 were Glamour, down 41%; Marie Claire, Time, Newsweek and Entertainment Weekly, which were all down more than 50%; and Woman's Day and Redbook, which were down more than 65%. There were a few titles that saw an increase in sales, including The Economist (up 68%), Elle (up 14%), and men's magazines Esquire (33%) and GQ (15%).

The decline is generally blamed on the rise of the internet (duh). Most magazines put a portion of their content on the web, and apparently there are some blogs that post all the juicy bits from magazines online. But recent figures suggest it isn't just the internet cutting into magazine sales anymore. The decline accelerated in 2008 as consumers decided shelling out for magazines each month wasn't an essential part of their recession budget. While newsstand sales dropped 23% on average from 2001 to 2007, they dropped another 9% in 2008 alone.

In addition to established magazines seeing a drop in sales, for the first time the magazine death rate has exceeded the magazine birth rate, reports The New York Post. In the first quarter of this year, 101 magazines folded and only 95 new titles were launched. There's some disagreement over the numbers, but according to Trish Hagood, president of Oxbridge Communications, which publishes the Standard Periodical Director and the National Directory of Magazines, the number of new titles is on the decline. "Other than entrepreneurs, people are definitely being more cautious with launches," said Hagood.

Clearly the recession is taking a toll on sales across the board, but can the steady decline in magazine sales actually be blamed on the internet, or has the quality of their content been declining too? Is the internet now satisfying your need for magazines, or do you still yearn to flip through their glossy fluff-filled pages ?

Mag Bag: Newsstand Sales Fell 31% from 2001-2008 [MediaPost]
Cash-Starved Times Compared to Darfur [NY Post]

I suppose it was about time to read another one of these articles where some writer wrings his or her hands over Americans’ allegedly inconsistent commitment to fashionable dressing. The rhetoric in these trend pieces never changes: we are always and in perpetuity too fat, too lazy, and too dumb. (Although there was, always and in perpetuity, a mythical time in the not-too-distant past when every male citizen of every state wore a 40R jacket and every female citizen could rhapsodize extemporaneously about the superior hand of natural fibers.)

What I don’t understand is why writers like Reddy, and Lynn Hirshberg of the New York Times, who wrote one of these dismal pieces in 2007, consent so easily to playing the scold. Writes Reddy, “The stereotype of the ugly American has become intractable.”

If you ask citizens of other countries to paint a portrait of the average American tourist, it would look something like this: a loud, chubby sight-seer wearing a fanny pack, baseball cap, printed T shirt, jean shorts and sneakers.

I wonder, why do we care? And do these people not realize they have elasticized waistbands in France, too?

Reddy harks back to the age of Mad Men — a fictional, modern-made television series with a professionally styled wardrobe department — as evidence that we only recently forgot ourselves and embraced casualwear in the workplace. That Nicole Phelps, executive editor of Style.com, points out that real working women of the 1960s had to wear girdles more painful even than Spanx to fit the reigning professional silhouette of the era, doesn’t trouble Reddy, probably because he is a man.

Once upon a time, he continues,

Those with the means made a virtue of exuding relaxed elegance; they didn't try to overdo anything, but they saw no shame in appearing put together. It was an extension of what they believed in, a polished pragmatism that, today, has given way to self-indulgence.

Comfort has its place, of course, but if that becomes the guiding value in getting dressed—or anything else—then we've got a problem. This misplaced priority has arguably contributed to our current troubles with credit, education and productivity. Compared with our parents and grandparents, we've had it relatively easy. We've got cable TV, microwave popcorn and GPS. The world is at our command and we are at ease, but this kind of comfort breeds complacency—not to mention Velcro straps and elasticized waistbands.

You heard the man. Velcro and other signifiers of “self-indulgence” caused the credit crisis.

Hirshberg’s piece was not much better: “I have long believed that leisure wear is one of the great evils of our times,” she writes,

When a waistband can give and give, why should anyone stop eating? When a shirt does not need to be tucked in, who cares about the belly beneath?

Although the sizism of these kinds of pieces — specifically denied by both writers — is easily parsed from the continual references to "tent-size" shirts, "sloppiness," and “XXL polo shirts”, what’s also distressing is their classism. While dressing well needn’t be expensive, what these writers seem to be calling for isn’t merely fashion as fun self-expression, it’s fashion as a system of social representation — the idea that one ought to look good, so that one can be recognized by other good-looking people, and feel mutually reassured in one's tastes. And that kind of dress-as-shibboleth requires the sublimation of most of one’s ideas about clothes into the safe confines of designer labels. Reddy detests chubbiness; I don’t like his clubbiness. Or his condescension.

Inherent in these stories is the idea that a certain way of looking equates with a certain way of being. I love fashion; I love playing with ideas of representation and how we declare ourselves in the world. But I think that when you start alleging that fashion — or, worse, "taste" — has some kind of absolute, timeless value, you get into potentially dangerous moral (and extraordinarily boring sartorial) territory. Hirshberg’s story ends up reifying Italian President Silvio Berlusconi and former French Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin as tidy dressers; it’s as though the fact that each is often in the public eye for corruption somehow makes their alleged fashion savvy more impressive.

Reddy thinks fashion in ’09 will take a turn towards his narrow definitions of “chic” with the coming of the Obamas. What I’d like to see from fashion in ’09 is fewer hectoring “trend” stories about lazy poor fat people and their lazy poor fat people habits. Comfort is not the enemy of style, and fat is not the enemy of fashion. Maybe we could just end the entire idea of fashion as a capital-F top-down regimented enterprise fit only for vetted experts. Then we could get back to wearing what we want, wearing what we think is fun, wearing what makes us feel good, wearing what reminds us of that one really great day when…and not being judged by mean writers for it.

Putting The Chic Back In Dressing [Newsweek]

Related: The Emperors' New Clothes? [NY Times]

Also, why haven't we seen Michelle raise her voice above an "appropriate" decibel level? Michelle Obama doesn't seem to be anything like the image of black women that we see on TV and in films. Who is the real Michelle Obama? Get ready for it:

Michelle Obama is totally normal. A normal, well-educated wife of a politician and mother of two.

Samuels points out that Michelle is a type of black woman that many Americans don't get to see, since mostly, black women are portrayed in the media as either sassy, abrasive and angry or drug-addicted, poverty-stricken and AIDS-infected. But there are many different types of black women out there in the world. Some of whom — gasp — have a college education (complete with gender/race related undergraduate thesis), a good job and generally fit into the "normal" idea of upper-middle-class Americans. You just rarely see them on TV:

Usually, the lives of black women go largely unexamined. The prevailing theory seems to be that we're all hot-tempered single mothers who can't keep a man and, according to CNN's "Black in America," documentary, those of us who aren't street-walking crack addicts are on the verge of dying from AIDS. As writer Rebecca Walker put it on her Facebook page: "CNN should call me next time they really want to show diversity and meet real black women that nobody seems to talk about.''

Like Walker, I too know more than my share of black women who have little in common with the black female images I see in the media. My "sistafriends" are mostly college educated, in healthy, productive relationships and have a major aversion to sassy one-liners. They are teachers, doctors and business owners. Of course, there are those of us who never get the chance to pull it together. And we accept and embrace them—but their stories can't and shouldn't be the only ones told.

Like the fictional Huxtables before them, Samuels sees the Obamas serving as an example to both blacks and non-blacks through their upper-middle-class regular-ness. Perhaps Michelle has "softened" her image throughout the campaign, but if she becomes the First Lady she'll have to figure out her role in the White House amid criticisms much in the same way that Jackie Kennedy and Hillary Clinton did before her.

And even though Michelle will probably never gain acceptance from some of her critics, Samuels still sees her life in the spotlight as a way for Americans to see a "regular African-American woman" in action, showing "what we think and what we face on a regular basis." Some may argue that Michelle doesn't need to "teach" Americans about what it's like to be a black woman, but Michelle's prominent position in the public eye will invariably shape both black and non-black American's perceptions of what a black woman is, and can be.

What Michelle Obama Can Teach Us About Black Women [Newsweek]
Barack Obama Again Dances In A Slightly Embarrassing Manner On 'Ellen' [Wonkette]

Earlier: Following Criticism, 'Mom In Chief' Michelle Obama Charms Americans

From the subject's perspective, that's a no-brainer. As Postrel puts it, "except for professional models, photo subjects generally expect the wedding album standard to apply: Photos should look realistic, but as attractive as possible. Anything else, whatever artistic justification the photographer or editor may put forward, feels like an ambush. Nobody voluntarily agrees to an unappealing portrait."

Postrel makes the point that there is no such thing as one "reality": "Every portrait is inherently false: a static, two-dimensional representation of an ever-changing, three-dimensional face...Even without deliberate distortions, a still photo captures distractions that the mind edits out." To eliminate a distracting hair or bit of natural discoloration is actually to enhance the "trueness" of an image, since it's more like the impression one would receive from meeting a person in life. "Portraiture chooses one image at one moment to stand for the complexities of a personality and a life." As opposed to a plain old photo, a portrait in this sense is for the ages — a picture of a person rather than a person at a particular moment in time.

Okay, so we get why people want minimal touch-ups. I get why, too, in the wake of the Jill Greenberg fiasco, Republicans and those who love them are extra-touchy on the subject, especially when Palin's looks have been a major selling point. The real issue, of course, is that we're so used to perfection that we can't handle normalcy. We're used to the airbrushing of covers — we've come to expect that and some even like it — but it's only recently that we've needed to add it to our lives: Facebook and MySpace, of course, but also dating services and camera phones that have become a part of everyone's daily existence. We've talked plenty about how much we as a sex loathe being photographed, the neuroses and pressures that render the selection of a Facebook photo traumatic. This is not who I am!, you want to scream when a picture goes up without your consent.

But what, at the end of the day, is "perfection?" What for that matter is beauty? The most interesting element of the piece, for me, was the author's assertion that it's often animation — so appealing in real life — that can make someone appear "unphotogenic."

Candid shots are particularly perilous for people with animated faces, who illustrate their speech with bulging eyes or distorted mouths. In person, they look lively and entertaining. But, in between more flattering expressions, they produce a lot of strange shots. That’s why Hillary Clinton’s enemies have no trouble finding silly photos of her, while Barack Obama’s foes must make do with shots in which the candidate isn’t gazing glamorously upward. Obama’s cool countenance makes weird candid shots less common.

Mobility, life, is ironically the enemy of posterity — or maybe not ironically at all. Models are not valued for sparkling vivacity, but for the ability to conjure a slow-motion approximation of real emotion. What we perceive as 'beauty,' as perfection, is a face essentially devoid of expression.

This is not new; portraiture or daguerreotypes wouldn't exactly have been facilitated by an animated model. But it does seem strange that the same conventions — the idea of "best portrait" should still adhere to constraints imposed by the necessity of antiquated media. Perhaps it might be a stretch to suggest it, but it does seem like there's something pernicious in the equation of blank serenity with beauty. (And yes, I speak as someone whom the camera tends to catch 90% of the time in some awkward expression-transition.) We're told over and over, if somewhat disingenuously, that beauty is more than the physical — yet we're implicitly encouraged to reduce ourselves to a blank and "objective" composite of features for the school picture, the graduation portrait, the wedding announcement. The serene mask that means beauty is, when you think about it, a black canvas: the "mystery" of beauty is that we can project onto it — a face animated with expression and thought has already been inhabited and claimed by the wearer and is, perhaps, the less beautiful for it.

Which brings us back to those politicians and their portraits. What they want — need — is not so much perfection as blankness without distraction. They must be a reassuringly blank slate onto which people can project virtues and hopes and, most significantly, a bit of themselves. Because at the end of the day, however critical we might be of our realities, there's nothing in the world more appealing than the dream of our perfect selves.

The Politics Of The Retouched Headshot [The Atlantic]
Related: The Sarah Palin Non-Photoshop Chop: Fox News Wants To Alter Your Reality

Tyra Banks Goes From Model To Mogul: "Paris was weird and confusing for me… I asked my mom to send care packages of Fiddle Faddle and Oreos. I ended up eating them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. So I got sick. "




Dara Torres on Being a Mom With Medals: "I feel like I'm one with the water, like I was meant to be in the water. I don't know exactly why I've done well, but I know I've surrounded myself with the best. I'm probably genetically gifted."




Rosario Dawson's Humble Beginnings: "Members of my family had HIV, and I was very aware of their mortality and how a little cold that I had meant that I couldn't be around them because it could cost them their lives."




Anna Sui On Launching Her Label: " The biggest compliment is when someone tells me, 'I have a dress I bought from you 10 years ago and every time I wear it, my husband tells me I look beautiful.' You can't ask for more."




Cynthia Nixon's Battle With Breast Cancer: "I feel like there is a complete double standard about the age at which men and women are considered attractive on screen. But that's what's wonderful about being a New York stage actor. If you can remember your lines, there will be roles for you. I plan to die onstage."




Helen Gayle (CEO of CARE) On Fighting Global Disease: "When I was doing my residency training in pediatrics in an inner-city hospital, I saw so many children who showed up in the emergency room at night for non emergency care because they didn't have insurance to pay for regular health care. I realized that many of the things my patients were facing really were linked to broader issues. If I really wanted to have an impact and keep that child out of the emergency room, I had to look at other ways of helping tackle the underlying issues."




Sheryl Sandberg (Facebook COO) , An Inside View of Facebook: "Facebook allows people to be their authentic selves online and therefore use the power of technology to discover each other and share who they really are. The connections they make have a real impact on their lives. Collectively, those bonds can change societies."




Lisa Price (founder of cosmetic company Carol's Daughter) on Becoming an Entrepreneur: "I came up with the name at the very beginning. I made a list of things that I was and a list of things I wanted to become. There were other things on the list, like Robert's daughter and Gordon's girlfriend. But when I said Carol's daughter, I got goose bumps. It sounded right."




Kimberly Pierce on the Power of a Plot: "I read a story in a newspaper that turned into the movie "Boys Don't Cry." The main character, Brandon Teena, was a woman who lived life as a man in order to be with women. She fell in with a group of people who both accepted Brandon and then at a certain point didn't accept Brandon. From the day that I read the story, it was as if I had no choice."




Nancy Andrews (Dean of Duke Med School) on Women in Medicine: "I never felt at a disadvantage, but there were moments in my training when I would suddenly become aware that there weren't a lot of other women in my position. I remember being on rounds with an all-male team and hearing the residents and doctors talk about women patients and nurses and women faculty in ways that shocked me."




Tyra Banks Goes From Model To Mogul [Newsweek]
Dara Torres on Being a Mom With Medals [Newsweek]
Rosario Dawson's Humble Beginnings [Newsweek]
Anna Sui On Launching Her Label [Newsweek]
Cynthia Nixon's Battle With Breast Cancer [Newsweek]
Helen Gayle on Fighting Global Disease [Newsweek]
Sheryl Sandberg, An Inside View of Facebook [Newsweek]
Lisa Price on Becoming an Entrepreneur [Newsweek]
Kimberly Pierce on the Power of a Plot [Newsweek]
Nancy Andrews on Women in Medicine [Newsweek]

Yes, She's A Feminist:

"So have evangelicals accepted the sexual revolution? Yes and no. While they generally agree that women should have careers, evangelical women and men still have some traditional social views — that sex should be reserved for marriage, that marriage is between a man and a woman, and that the possibility of abortion on demand, far from being a key to women's happiness, is simply wrong. In other words, like most Americans, they have rejected the more radical elements of feminism."

— Naomi Schaefer Riley, in the Wall Street Journal.

"Palin grew up in an age when many of her female counterparts chose to reject marriage and husbands. She grew up in an era when many women decided to send their children to day-care or not to have children at all. She grew up in an era when women could pursue the most masculine of careers and make a good living doing so. […] If feminism is about giving women choices, she should be cheered as an example of the success of feminism."

— Karin Agness, on Townhall.com.

"Sarah Palin represents a new feminism. . . . And there is no bigger threat to the elites in this country than a woman who lives her conservative convictions."

— talk show host Laura Ingraham. From a story by Robin Abcarian, in the Los Angeles Times.

"On the one hand, her political views (she's anti-abortion and pro-gun and an evangelical creationist) seem directly counter to the until-now traditionally liberal tenets of feminism. Yet at the same time, she's a powerful governor and mother of five, a combination that seems the very definition of what the women's movement was fighting for. […] Palin is a classic third-wave feminist, benefiting from all that came before her in terms of the women's movement, while remaining the embodiment of patriotic, religious, small-town values. […] Certainly, she's the change agent they might need: a right-wing politico in the body of an attractive modern "executive", wife and mother."

— Barbara Lippert, in Adweek.

"On that stage last night, Sarah Palin represented everything the feminist movement claims to strive for: a successful working woman with a happy family life and a husband who helps raise the children. Yet, rather than hailing her accomplishment, the feminist establishment has sat by silently as she's savaged for being a working mother. Turns out old feminism is really just a bunch of good 'ole girls telling you what to think. […] Where is the condemnation for the sickening misogyny, such as the DailyKOS's mock Playboy cover with Palin? The Huffington Post's photo montage of Palin, headlined "Former Beauty Queen, Future VP?" The Washington Post's Sally Quinn criticizing Palin for being a working mother? Well, I suppose she could've stayed home and baked cookies."

— A column by Kirsten Powers for the New York Post, via FrontPageMag.com.

"Palin's candidacy brings both figurative and literal feminist change. The simple act of thinking outside the liberal box, which has insisted for generations that only liberals and Democrats can be trusted on issues of import to women, is the political equivalent of a nuclear explosion. The idea of feminists willing to look to the right changes not only electoral politics, but will put more women in power at lightning speed as we move from being taken for granted to being pursued, nominated and appointed and ultimately, sworn in."

— Tammy Bruce, in a column for the San Francisco Chronicle.

No, She's Not

"Really, most of the 'feminism' talk is coming from conservatives appropriating the language of the movement to push a ridiculously anti-feminist candidate. But what I find even more upsetting is the Palin/feminist talk coming from mainstream outlets who are demonstrating absolutely no knowledge of feminism. Take the Adweek article, for example, which says 'Palin is a classic third-wave feminist, benefiting from all that came before her in terms of the women's movement...' So by this definition, any woman who has benefited from feminism is a feminist. So, all women are feminists? Uh, yeah."

— From a post by Jessica Valenti, of Feministing.com.

"The Palin pick is disheartening on so many levels. For starters, even what little we know about the Alaska governor's policy views is enough to make a traditional feminist weep. The staunchly conservative Palin not only opposes abortion rights (even in cases of rape or incest), she also supports abstinence-only sex education and takes a strict free-market approach toward health care. Of course, these days, the feminist mantle is claimed by pro-life conservatives and pro-choice progressives alike. Palin herself is a proud member of Feminists for Life. Feminism seems no longer to denote a particular set of values or ideological agenda; it is merely a label appropriated to proclaim that one is committed to the best interests of women—whatever one believes those to be."

— Michelle Cottle, in an article for The New Republic, September . (Here's a reaction piece by Emily Bazelon on Slate.)

"Conservatives have probably used the word 'sexist' more in the past week than they have in the past 50 years. This would all have been entertaining if it were not such rank hypocrisy. These are people who have inveighed against affirmative action, a version of which undoubtedly played a part in this selection. […] The governor has talked about the choice she and her pregnant teenage daughter have made, but would deny other women the right to make their own choices. She talks about fighting the old boys' network and corrupt politicians, but would turn over the private reproductive decisions of American women to both. […] But she could certainly help move the inevitable tide of women's rights, the tide that has floated her own boat, by demanding that she be honored with the same tough scrutiny the guys in this race get. Which was, in case these improbable born-again friends of feminism missed it, the entire point of the exercise in the first place."

— Anna Quindlen in Newsweek.

Note To Mainstream Media: Sarah Palin Is NOT A Feminist [Feministing]

This whole thing is…problematic. On the one hand, whenever a woman says she was raped, I want to believe her wholeheartedly and support her. But Tanya Harding's claims are certainly coming at an odd time. She's currently featured as a commentator on TruTv's The Smoking Gun Presents (tagline: Real Video. Real Stupid. Real Awesome.) alongside other bright lights of recent history like Amy Fisher, Danny Bonaduce, and Leif Garrett. "If people are going to read [Tanya's book], they have to read it for the entertainment value, and not go by every word as the gospel truth. She struggles with being taken seriously," says gold medalist Brian Boitano.

Whether or not she's telling the truth might be culturally irrelevant. The mere fact that she's using the trope of female victimhood to her own financial ends is troubling. Of course, if you are raped it's your business to disseminate that information in any way you see fit, but Harding's claims that "she's more concerned with having an impact on other victims of abuse," as opposed to making money, seem to be a total farce. I mean, the woman was boxing fellow 90s scandal mainstay Paula Jones for fun and profit a few years ago. Her credibility is dubious at best.

Tonya Harding: The Victim? [Newsweek]

According to a focus group in California, "community workers felt that men do not participate in the [contraceptive] process because they do not want to be viewed as being told what to do by their wives. One female participant even revealed that she used contraceptives without her partner's knowledge because of 'his accusations that her use of contraception is a mechanism to have an affair with other men [without becoming pregnant].'"

The Latino Initiative hopes to reach teens by emphasizing the importance of family and planning. The group has penned a manual that "Stresses the importance of using traditional Hispanic values—familismo (family-centeredness), simpatía (affection), respeto (respect)—as a compass." The pamphlet encourages teens not to get pregnant out of respect for their elders.

But are teen hormones any match for the amorphous notion of respect? Wouldn't the Initiative be better off handing out condoms?

Learning to 'Think Twice' [Newsweek]