I'm ambivalent about documentaries like Gotta Dance and Young at Heart because, while they're inspiring and the stories are great to see, they often seem to play their protagonists' age for maximum cuteness. I like "Advanced Style" but wonder why we ghetto-ize it. I wish, more than anything, that we had a relationship with our elderly in which they were integrated into our lives and our cultures and our homes rather than whipped out for an "aww" and then brushed out of sight again.

We like feel-good stories, and things that end in death aren't happy. It's happy if a young person can learn valuable lessons first, but without a Harold or a Mitch Albom, it's simply depressing. (Rant over, as we say.) This NY Times piece about the regular talent shows at the Bronx's James Monroe Senior Center is wonderful, and it is heartwarming: but reading it, I couldn't help wondering if it's as moving as it is because people are doing something wonderful in the face of indifference. Of course older people can sing, dance, play instruments, enjoy socializing and performing. Why isn't this a standard feature in a city where babies take pre-verbal French classes and learn to make sushi on weekends?

In fact, Senior Services have been hit hard by budget cuts, and Senior Centers around New York and the country are closing or in danger of closure - largely because such services often fall under "discretionary" budget designations, and are not legally mandated. 1 in 8 Americans is over 65. And, yes, volunteers are needed. I've wanted to write about this for a while, especially as I've seen the organizations with whom I work get their budgets slashed, but it's tricky because I feel like the done thing is to present Life-Changing-Stories, and for the most part, that's not what it's like. As anyone who's done much volunteer work knows, it doesn't make you feel automatically terrific; if you deliver meals or do friendly visits or weekly phone calls to home-bound seniors, you become acutely aware of how very little time it is, how much yawns between visits with no companionship. But it's more important than ever, and for those with time to spare, a great thing to do. Maybe people will be wise; maybe they'll even be cute. They're people and come in a wide range of types and personalities. We've heard a lot about the depression-ready wisdom of the Greatest Generation and, yes, I daresay some people have some good tips (everyone I know grew up in New York, and the stories tend more towards watered-down condensed milk than home-canning.) but that's not why it's important just now.

*Volunteer opportunities vary from place to place; sites like this can hook you up in your area, and Meals on Wheels and the Little Brothers can also direct you, if they're not active where you live.

Glee! The Retirees' Talent Show [NY Times]

There's a piece today on Salon asking why in God's name the appalling Cougartown is a hit. Well, I see that and raise you Glee.Yes, I know. It's a classic high school underdog story and, hey, who doesn't love a musical number? It's got Ned Ryerson - with a Ryerson last name, no less. It's got the peerless Jane Lynch. It's got rapturous reviews. What's not to like, you say?

Some of my gripes are personal. I've never been a big fan of Desperate-Housewives-style broad "satire" nor of the po-mo-atmo of such favorites as Pushing Daisies. The super-produced aesthetic and the overtime Fox-hype-machine have always struck me as a cynical contrast to its alleged support of the Aw-Shucks Other. Also, I don't find it remotely funny. These are matters of taste with which people are allowed to disagree, and clearly do. That it's a smug, G-rated Election on uppers with 2-D characterizations would not, in itself, prompt anything more dramatic than a Tivo thumbs-down.

What gets me most is the portrayal of female characters. Yes, everyone's a cardboard cliche - it's supposed to be "playing with" stock types - but I think things get nefarious where the dames are concerned. We've got Shrewish, Lying Wife; Sweet Perky Neurotic; Bitchy Cheerleader; Tracy Flick-esque Nerd; Strong Black Woman. Sure, Lynch's over-the-top psycho-coach is watchable, but only because she is, not because there's any more nuance to her. And all of whom orbit around Main Guy, who is apparently perfect, and a saint. Also saintly: football QB. Both are being manipulated by women in their lives while worshipful Perfect Women wait in the wings to ease their burdens.

I also think it's becoming irresponsible to reiterate high school cliches, thereby reinforcing them. Nerds = glee club. Popular kids = cheerleaders. A show like Freaks and Geeks or Friday Night Lights plays with these ideas with a lot more nuance and sensitivity, whereas Glee simply adds another brick to the status quo. It's cheap and it's disingenuous. And portrayal of the world of the Dramatic Underclass was done a lot better by the movie Camp, which you may not have seen - but I'm guessing this show's creators did. That film was flawed, but it had ambition and heart. Glee makes a pretense of this, but I never feel it.

Cougartown and Glee are both hits because people watch bad shows all the time. In the case of Cougartown, though, it wears its offensive, repulsive trashiness on its sleeve. Look at the title; this isn't a program that's going to advance women's position in society. Glee pretends to be more, but in its way I find it just as offensive. And the more so because it pretends to care.

High-Fiving 40-Year-Olds? Get Out Of "Cougar Town"! [Salon]

You know what? At the end of the day, I don't care: trash your dress, paint your pregnant belly, eat your placenta. Choose your choices, however inexplicable, dubious and narcissistic. There's nothing wrong with this "trend", which one photographer describes as "a more creative way to express yourself...in a way you can't on your wedding day" by having yourself photographed covering your virginal, pricey Big Day glad-rags with paint or mud or axel grease. According to another photographer, it plays with the idea that the bride is a "pure" an untouchable creature - this, like the Real Housewives' revelatory "alter ego" portraits, presumably shows the woman in all her two-faceted complexity.

Says one defiant bride, while some people might consider it "destroying something sacred," she regards this as a means of making a work of art. Well, maybe some do consider it a desecration - but it's not the gesture's cutesy, expensive "boldness" that took me aback. It was just bad timing for harmless old "TTD" that I happened, on a long flight yesterday, to run across a piece in British Marie-Claire about a 25-year-old American woman who moved to war-torn Uganda to do relief work in a refugee camp, met and married a young Ugandan minister, and with him set up an organization that helped couples in Pader have a "group wedding" - a seemingly modest goal with big implications. First of all, almost all of the women had been raped by rebels - some held as "wives" - and had thought they'd never marry as a result. Then, having fallen in love, many of the grooms were unable to come up with the traditional dowry, let alone the trappings of a wedding. And planning marriages amidst the chaos and despair of the camp was a challenge that the newly-married Katie Karpik appreciated. They raised the money for a wonderful wedding, and six couples were able to get married - in dresses donated by British women to an organization called Jireh Women. More than 50 gowns and bridesmaids dresses were donated, and Karpik says they'll continue to use the gowns for future weddings.

It's a deeply unfair comparison, and a manipulative one. I admit it. The two have nothing to do with each other. It's also, as I said, pure chance that I should read about this story in a glossy magazine while on vacation, and it takes some cheek to draw such a heavy-handed judgment, especially when during the same flight I cried real tears during Ghosts of Girlfriends Past. Because one thing's great doesn't make another bad, and I don't even think it's particularly fair here to bring up the Wedding Industry or Consumerism or, yes, the Economy. It might feel a little icky to see wanton destruction in the name of "art" and it might seem a slightly tone-deaf choice for the show, but hey, they've got hours to fill and "trends" to manufacture and people have the luxury of tuning out the Marmees for a few hours a week. And who wants to give all her presents to the Hummels? Just remember that there are options, and ones that can do much good. But tar and feather your gown in the name of self-expression, and I promise not to judge. Except, maybe, the couple who had their picture taken in the shallow grave. Which I feel confident panning on artistic grounds.

Jireh Women
Donating Wedding Dresses
My Big Fat Ugandan Wedding [Photoma]

Well, yeah, kind of. As I noted earlier in this morning's Dirt Bag, Kardashian and her sisters have earned over one million dollars over the past few months, thanks mostly to Khloe's wedding and Kourtney's pregnancy. Khloe and Kourtney have been particularly visible over the past few months, which makes me laugh, as I secretly think they're on a neverending mission to upstage Kim, who is clearly the Marcia Brady of the fam.

The Kardashians, despite what you may think of them based on their various reality shows, aren't idiots when it comes to working the system: Khloe's wedding has been breathlessly followed by celebrity magazines who will jump on anything remotely wedding related, no matter who is involved, and they're willing to shill out the money to get their hands on the prized pictures of Khloe's ring, or her rehearsal dinner, or her floral arrangement, or what have you. It helps that she's marrying LA Lakers star Lamar Odom, but seriously, my toothbrush could be getting married to my shoe, and as long as they were once featured on a reality show, they'd probably get a front page post on USWeekly's site. Don't believe me? The top headline on People magazine's site right this moment is an exclusive about the wedding of American Idol runner up Justin Guarini. Stop the presses!

It's irritating to me that dumb celebrity weddings are still the money makers they were a few years ago, that even in a recession people are willing to pay for shots of a D-list reality star cutting a cake and showing off her enormous ring. It's also irritating to me that Kardashian spoke out against Prop 8 but seemingly has no issues with making her wedding the biggest deal ever.

On the other hand, it's also irritating to me that I've been programmed to yell "Fake!" whenever something like this comes around (or that I care at all) , and that despite Kardashian and Odom's claims that they are happy and in love, I see it all as a dumb stunt that, if it goes according to the D-List celebrity playbook, will just end up another high profile celebrity divorce that's played out for cash, much like Page Six and TMZ are reporting Kardashian's wedding will be. Maybe I'm wrong and they'll live happily ever after. But at a time when the country is dealing with a recession and when people are denied the right to marry, I'm getting a little sick of being invited to the extravagant and doomed weddings of reality stars. I know we all need to escape into the absurd once in a while, but I think it may be time to start rejecting these invitations.

It's Not Too Late To Turn Over Prop 8!!! [Khloe Kardashian]
American Idol's Justin Guarini Marches Down The Aisle [People]
No Keeping Up With Their $$ [PageSix]
Lamar Wants Prenup, But There's A Problem [TMZ]

According to ABC Health, "While you were busy worrying about "muffin-topping" over the waistband of your jeans or the "cottage cheese" on your thighs, you should have been fretting over the shapeliness of your ankles. A growing number of Americans are working to eliminate unwanted ankle fat. "Cankles," or less-than-svelte ankles, are the thunder thighs of the new millennium." O RLY!?

You know what? There is no fucking way in hell that I should be worrying about the shapeliness of my goddamn ankles. I also should not have been worrying about "muffin-topping" or "thunder thighs," and I suspect most women wouldn't worry about such things either if these fucking trend pieces didn't insist upon drilling it into women's minds that they need to be physically perfect at all times or else. Are "cankles" the new "muffin-tops?" Sure, if you mean "a completely idiotic term coined in order to push diet plans and gym memberships while shaming women into feeling even worse about themselves."

Can we just stop this bullshit, please? Please? Cankles, cougars, muffin tops, tramp stamps, thunder thighs: we're all adults, so why are we still pushing this crap as if it has any real relevance whatsoever? Why are we talking about our bodies the way 7th graders would in the locker room? Why has the Universe decided to become a live-action version of Judy Blume's Blubber? Why can't we focus our attention on the things that matter when it comes to weight and nutrition, like, say, heart disease, the number one killer of women? Why must it always be about an idiotic obsession with one body part? If it's not your abs, its your ankles. If it's not your ankles, it's your arms. If it's not your arms, it's your thighs. If only we paid so much attention to our brains, eh?

So no, ABC Health, women shouldn't feel bad about the shape of their ankles. Nor should they be worried about their "thunder thighs" or "muffin tops." If anything, we should be worried that this garbage is held up as a real problem to fret over, and that nobody is bothering to stop for a second and say, "Hey, this shit is stupid and it hurts women." Perhaps instead of demanding that women start to hate yet another part of themselves, we should be pushing the idea that you don't need the shapeliest ankles on the block to get out there and kick some ass.

Cankles: The New Muffin Top? [ABC Health]

It's pretty obvious that the "announcement" will either be a divorce or a separation, as the Gosselin's marriage has unraveled in a particularly nasty and public way over the past 6 months or so, and the promotional spots for the episode certainly don't seem promising, in terms of a miraculous family reunion of sorts. Naturally the tabloids went crazy over the promo, hyping the show, as I'm sure TLC hoped they would, as a must-see event, and I'm sure millions and millions of people will tune in tomorrow night to watch the Gosselins fall apart. Soon after, they will take to their computers to bitch about how much they hate Jon and Kate and wish they would just fall off the face of the earth.

Guess what?! Unless by some miracle Jon and Kate's announcement is "We've realized that it's kind of shitty to put our eight children through this, so we're pulling the plug on this show and we'd like to be private citizens again, thank you," the Gosselin family isn't going anywhere. The public is fascinated with the downfall of this family, most notably the downfall of Kate Gosselin, who, over the course of the past year or so, has morphed from annoying mother of eight children known and loved/hated by TLC viewers to Kate Gosselin: Crazy Haired Cruella De Vil, and every move they make is being analyzed, documented, and plastered on the cover of the tabloids for the entire world to see. Even when the family fades from the spotlight, we'll surely get updates on whatever happened to the Plus 8, and one can only hope that after the strange and extremely public upbringing they've received, those updates will be positive rather than negative.

I am sick of the Gosselins. I am sick of people talking about Kate's hair, I am sick of Jon's Ed Hardy wardrobe staring me in the face every time I look for Snap Judgment pictures, I am sick of stories about sordid affairs and spanking and withholding water and bachelor pads and divorce lawyers and nannies and tummy tucks and free vacations and anything that doesn't have to do with what the show was supposed to be about: the adventures of raising eight little kids. And yet here I am writing about Jon and Kate Gosselin, because Jon and Kate Gosselin are EVERYWHERE, and I'm pretty sure it's because we, as a country, constantly need to be distracted from the real troubles in our own lives by focusing on the problems of others.

We're obsessed with the Gosselins for the same reasons we're obsessed with Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag: we need an enemy, we need someone to rally against and talk shit about in order to feel socially connected to others. We are so removed from actual reality at times due to our dependence on screens and keys that we find a type of solace in watching other "real" people fall apart on television: it gives us a means of feeling like our lives are better by comparison, and allows us to connect with people that we've never even met before in order to bond over our shared dislike of a very real human being. It's a weird phenomenon, but it seems perfectly normal and natural to those of us raised on reality television: we're friends with everyone else who shares our loathing of these "characters" who have invited us into their lives.

That is not to say I feel an overwhelming sense of sympathy for Jon and Kate Gosselin (though I do feel bad for their kids) and I don't have any warm feelings towards Spencer and Heidi (who have mastered the art of playing the heel and know exactly what they are doing and are laughing all the way to the bank), but the way we feed these reality machines and then complain that they're still up and running seems a bit strange to me. If you really want Jon and Kate to pack it up and fade into pop culture history, it's probably best to start with ignoring any announcements they make that don't essentially add up to "Goodbye."

Special K is the Cosmopolitan of cereals, a product that has survived for years by making women feel about themselves and offering incredibly stupid tips on how to lessen that self-hate. If Special K was a woman, she'd be that bitch who says things like, "You could be so pretty if you just lost a few pounds." She'd probably also hang out with MeMe Roth and try to make you feel bad about ordering dessert after dinner. Special K is a total buzzkill, and her reign of terror has lasted long enough.

The product thrives by being marketed as a diet product: the "Special K Challenge" has been deceiving women for years, pushing a crash diet as a realistic nutritional plan and making promises about how many inches one will lose over a few weeks, simply by dropping actual meals in favor of low-calorie cereals and supplements. Meal 1: a bowl of cereal. Meal 2: A Meal Replacement bar. Meal 3: a "normal" dinner (the site shows lean meat and greens), and snacks: more bars! That's a healthy attitude, no? For nothing says, "this isn't a complete set-up for failure" quite like dropping whole grains, healthy fats, and balanced meals in favor of a bowl of cardboard-esque flakes swimming in watery skim milk. Mmm...healthy!

The major problem with Special K is that it pushes weight loss for all the wrong reasons: there is always an emphasis on a bathing suit, or a bikini, or, in terms of their New Year's advertising, a need to make up for the "bad" behavior of the holiday season, when you allowed yourself to—gasp—eat food and enjoy it. It's typical crash diet fare: restrict, restrict, restrict in order to hit a goal. There's no emphasis on changing the way you eat in a realistic, healthy, life-long way. It's all about the damn bikini. The Special K website is currently running a banner that reads "Get Two-Piece Ready!" Awesome! All I have to do is starve myself to look sexy. Thanks, stupid cereal!

I say we finally give Special K the ol' heave-ho. Please stop buying into this unhealthy bullshit, ladies. The only true way to be "two-piece ready" is to have the confidence to rock a two-piece no matter what you weigh. Confidence is the beautiful thing- and you're not going to find it at the bottom of a cereal box, no matter how "special" that cereal claims to be.

As I've stated before, I'm not a great personal advocate of the institution to start with, and the more people like Katherine Jean Lopez and Ace of Spades shit all over feminists like Jessica Valenti for agreeing to try to make it something less of a wholly religious, patriarchal institution that strictly exists for the subjugation of women and their sexuality to men and their sexuality, the less keen I am. And then I read about how asswipes like Tucker Carlson thinks fucking can save a bad marriage and Dennis Prager thinks women should just submit to their husbands who, without the bounds of matrimony and civilization, would devolve into rape-y chickens, and I frankly begin to worry a lot about being involved with people to whom the institution is important. And let's not even get me started on the Wedding Industrial Complex.

You know what small things give me hope about marriage? Watching people who don't — and can't — take the availability of the institution to them for granted fight for their right to get married. Watching the enthusiasm with which, in a variety of non-traditional outfits, same sex couples flocked to courthouses and simple ceremonies, flush with the pleasure of having the state sanction their love and their relationship. Watching the emotions and pride in people's eyes when they can take part in a state institution that they thought their love for another human might permanently bar them from. Scrolling through pictures of same sex weddings on newswires was enough to make even me think that there might really be something to this whole marriage idea that wasn't encapsulated in Being A Princess For A Day and rom-coms and sad little people clinging desperately to an institution that has failed to live up to the expectations of more than half of the participants in it.

But then I read Sam Schulman's recent Weekly Standard piece in which he defends marriage as not — I swear to fucking God — about love or individual commitment or promises meant not to be broken (he ought to know, he's on his third). In fact, the very idea that marriage is about love and commitment, to Schulman, is an idea gayer than the Stop H8 movement. Schulman then defends straights-only marriage on the grounds that it is the only institution that, for centuries, has more-or-less successfully subjugated women and kept men from sleeping around — unless you're Sam Schulman, Dennis Prager, Newt Gingrich or Rush Limbaugh, in which case it apparently doesn't keep one from having multiple sex partners and wives. Yup, Schulman thinks that marriage should only be for the straights, to keep us from fucking each other too much.

An example of the kind of marriage that Schulman decries:

The relationship between a same-sex couple, though it involves the enviable joy of living forever with one's soulmate, loyalty, fidelity, warmth, a happy home, shopping, and parenting, is not the same as marriage between a man and a woman, though they enjoy exactly the same cozy virtues. These qualities are awfully nice, but they are emphatically not what marriage fosters, and, even when they do exist, are only a small part of why marriage evolved and what it does.

The entity known as "gay marriage" only aspires to replicate a very limited, very modern, and very culture-bound version of marriage. Gay advocates have chosen wisely in this. They are replicating what we might call the "romantic marriage," a kind of marriage that is chosen, determined, and defined by the couple that enters into it.

Basically, Schulman says that the only things about the institution of marriage that make it remotely attractive to anyone uninterested in conservative religion and the subjugation of women don't require marriage and, in fact, might not exist at all.

And lest you think that I'm getting too paranoid that this guy wants to slap a chastity belt on us — or, rather, that he'd like to buy my dad one to slap on me — this is what Schulman explicitly defines as the purpose of marriage.

The first is the most important: It is that marriage is concerned above all with female sexuality. The very existence of kinship depends on the protection of females from rape, degradation, and concubinage. This is why marriage between men and women has been necessary in virtually every society ever known. Marriage, whatever its particular manifestation in a particular culture or epoch, is essentially about who may and who may not have sexual access to a woman when she becomes an adult, and is also about how her adulthood—and sexual accessibility—is defined. Again, until quite recently, the woman herself had little or nothing to say about this, while her parents and the community to which they answered had total control. The guardians of a female child or young woman had a duty to protect her virginity until the time came when marriage was permitted or, more frequently, insisted upon. This may seem a grim thing for the young woman—if you think of how the teenaged Natalie Wood was not permitted to go too far with Warren Beatty in Splendor in the Grass. But the duty of virginity can seem like a privilege, even a luxury, if you contrast it with the fate of child-prostitutes in brothels around the world.

Just to break this down:

• Parents (probably fathers) and marriage protect women from rape.
• Pre-marital sex is degrading to women.
• Marriage basically only exists to determine who can fuck certain women.
• A woman's only choice (and that of her family) is to protect her virginity until marriage or end up a child prostitute.

Not content to simply sound the horn of Jericho at the walls of his precious institution, shattering the illusion of many Americans that the institution is about love, fidelity, building a life together or even an equitable and state-recognized partnership, Schulman decides to dance on the ruins.

This most profound aspect of marriage—protecting and controlling the sexuality of the child-bearing sex—is its only true reason for being, and it has no equivalent in same-sex marriage. Virginity until marriage, arranged marriages, the special status of the sexuality of one partner but not the other (and her protection from the other sex)—these motivating forces for marriage do not apply to same-sex lovers.

Yup, marriage is solely about controlling who can impregnate the woman and has nothing to do with male sexuality... and that's why The Gays shouldn't be allowed to corrupt this precious institution of virginity-fetishization and control of women's sexuality. No wonder feminists keep saying same sex marriage is a feminist issue, if it can go so far as destroy this bullshit idea of the institution.

Also, by the way, according to Schulman, letting The Gays marry means that everyone will fuck their relatives and encourage interracial and inter-ethnic marriage (and, God, how I wish I was kidding).

Incest prohibition and other kinship rules that dictate one's few permissible and many impermissible sweethearts are part of traditional marriage. Gay marriage is blissfully free of these constraints. There is no particular reason to ban sexual intercourse between brothers, a father and a son of consenting age, or mother and daughter. There are no questions of ritual pollution: Will a hip Rabbi refuse to marry a Jewish man—even a Cohen—to a Gentile man? Do Irish women avoid Italian women? A same-sex marriage fails utterly to create forbidden relationships. If Tommy marries Bill, and they divorce, and Bill later marries a woman and has a daughter, no incest prohibition prevents Bill's daughter from marrying Tommy. The relationship between Bill and Tommy is a romantic fact, but it can't be fitted into the kinship system.

Just like it's important to keep Irish women from making out with Italian women, it's important to keep some bisexual man's future daughter from marrying his ex-lover, as though there's some current prohibition on me marrying my mother's ex (not that she had one). Actually, it seems to me there were at least two movies based on the concept of that happening. But, you know, whatever! People will start fucking dogs!

Schulman, having thus totally proven his point that social conservatives spend way to much time thinking about fucking dogs and family members, then goes on to say this:

Third, marriage changes the nature of sexual relations between a man and a woman. Sexual intercourse between a married couple is licit; sexual intercourse before marriage, or adulterous sex during marriage, is not. Illicit sex is not necessarily a crime, but licit sexual intercourse enjoys a sanction in the moral universe, however we understand it, from which premarital and extramarital copulation is excluded. More important, the illicit or licit nature of heterosexual copulation is transmitted to the child, who is deemed legitimate or illegitimate based on the metaphysical category of its parents' coition.

Now to live in such a system, in which sexual intercourse can be illicit, is a great nuisance. Many of us feel that licit sexuality loses, moreover, a bit of its oomph. Gay lovers live merrily free of this system. Can we imagine Frank's family and friends warning him that "If Joe were serious, he would put a ring on your finger"? Do we ask Vera to stop stringing Sally along? Gay sexual practice is not sortable into these categories—licit-if-married but illicit-if-not (children adopted by a gay man or hygienically conceived by a lesbian mom can never be regarded as illegitimate). Neither does gay copulation become in any way more permissible, more noble after marriage. It is a scandal that homosexual intercourse should ever have been illegal, but having become legal, there remains no extra sanction—the kind which fathers with shotguns enforce upon heterosexual lovers. I am not aware of any gay marriage activist who suggests that gay men and women should create a new category of disapproval for their own sexual relationships, after so recently having been freed from the onerous and bigoted legal blight on homosexual acts. But without social disapproval of unmarried sex—what kind of madman would seek marriage?

Let us now take it for a given that Schulman knows no actual same sex couples well enough to have been invited into their emotional lives where — surprise, asshole! — there are tons of questions of love, fidelity, commitment and the right time to engage in intercourse. That's the whole fucking reason they want to be able to participate in the fucking institution. But, hey, since no one can be threatened with a shotgun for having impregnated someone else's daughter through "illicit" sex (which will get less exciting but more "noble" after marriage, as though the beast with two backs is somehow an ennobling act) it's not for The Gays! Also, Schulman's wife should probably watch her back, as he just said the only reason he married her was because he couldn't otherwise fuck her, which is probably why he has two ex-wives.

At this point, he's basically just urinated on the ruins of the institution, but oh yes, now it's time to straight-up defecate on them, and someone's been eating his fiber. Schulman's final argument is that marriage is just a way for dudes to find new hunting partners in their father-in-laws and wives to find new book club participants (fucking gag me with a spoon), and since gay people are inevitably rejected by their parents, this doesn't happen in same sex marriages, so they shouldn't get married.

Even in modern romantic marriages, a groom becomes the hunting or business partner of his father-in-law and a member of his clubs; a bride becomes an ally of her mother-in-law in controlling her husband. There can, of course, be warm relations between families and their children's same-sex partners, but these come about because of liking, sympathy, and the inherent kindness of many people.

Oh, yes, and let's not forget how all women are harpies who set out to "control" their husbands and sons. I love how Schulman starts out defending it as a way to control women's sexuality, and ends up deciding that it's just a way to control men. If he's this concerned with power dynamics, I hope his wife's got some lovely fetish gear under the bed.

Oh, and the final nail in the coffin of same sex marriage, as far as Schulman's concerned, is that same sex couples are all too old.

In contrast, gay weddings are rather middle-aged affairs. My impression is borne out by the one available statistic, from the province of British Columbia, showing that the participants in first-time same-sex weddings are 13 years older, on average, then first-time brides-and-grooms. This feels about right. After all, declaring gay marriage legal will not produce the habit of saving oneself for marriage or create a culture which places a value on virginity or chastity (concepts that are frequently mocked in gay culture precisely because they are so irrelevant to gay romantic life).

Yes, undoubtedly, Schulman is an expert on "gay culture" having obviously been so friendly with so many LGBT people in his short, well-examined life.

And, so, Schulman says, The Gays will eventually grow tired of getting married, as so very many breeders have done — except for Schulman, who just gets tired of being married to individual women, one at a time.

Since gay relationships exist perfectly well outside the kinship system, to assume the burdens of marriage—the legal formalities, the duty of fidelity (which is no easier for gays than it is for straights), the slavishly imitative wedding ritual—will come to seem a nuisance. People in gay marriages will discover that mimicking the cozy bits of romantic heterosexual marriage does not make relationships stronger; romantic partners more loving, faithful, or sexy; domestic life more serene or exciting. They will discover that it is not the wedding vow that maintains marriages, but the force of the kinship system.

Schulman knows a lot about how getting married doesn't keep a relationship together. In one sense — not the kinship system bullshit — he is right. Wedding vows and state approval don't alone make a spouse faithful or a relationship work or the spark remain intact — and that goes the same for everyone participating in any relationship, as the thrice-married Schulman well knows.

But in the mean time, unlike Schulman's rants about controlling my uterus, having boring sex, controlling my husband and not fucking my relatives, same sex marriages will destroy the institution to which Schulman has so proudly submitted 3 separate times in order to gain sole access to some sweet, sweet pussy for some period of time before he becomes utterly bored with it. You know, 'cause otherwise who would get married if they could just have sex?

Every day thousands of ordinary heterosexual men surrender the dream of gratifying our immediate erotic desires. Instead, heroically, resignedly, we march up the aisle with our new brides, starting out upon what that cad poet Shelley called the longest journey...

And that's why gay people shouldn't get married, so that Schulman can't have more sex. Actually, that's probably the sole legitimate argument against same sex marriage Schulman made the entire time: if keeping same sex couples from entering into state-enforced contracts with one another really would keep Sam Schulman from having more sex with women, it might be worth considering.

The Worst Thing About Gay Marriage [The Weekly Standard]

Earlier: Conservatives Think Feminists Should Stay Away From Marriage
Tucker Carlson's Guide To Not Getting Divorced
Conservative Dennis Prager Knows It's Not Rape If His Wife "Submits"
Dennis Prager Still Thinks Women Should Just Give It Up Already
Dennis The Menace

Someone wrote the following into the NY Times' etiquette column:

I was heading out of a local bakery, lost in thought. It turned out that a lady had opened the door for me, and I failed to register her kind gesture. When I turned back to thank her, she curtly said, "You're welcome," before I could speak. What do you make of this?

Oh, cruel, cruel! The unkindest cut of all! Is there anything worse that knowing in that moment that you have been judged and found wanting? That a lifetime of careful courtesy and people-pleasing and scrupulous good manners is erased in a moment, and you've somehow let down yourself, your mother, and your generation? For the courteous doormats amongst us? Not hardly.

Of course, you also come away hating the entitled, "you're welcome" smart aleck - yes, he is despicable, too. And then you have anger and shame and guilt all roiling inside you and it takes a lot of ranting (which no one ever sympathizes with!) and a lot of pudding to make it right. Do I speak from experience? Could be. Let's take a visit to the grocery store a few days ago. I had three items - a sponge, an onion, and a bag of navy beans. Since the guy behind me had only a quart of milk, I ushered him ahead of me. Then, since the woman behind him had a fussy baby and only a couple of cans, I waved her ahead too. Finally, I was about to place my own few provisions on the conveyor belt, when a belligerent old woman behind me said, resentfully, "If someone behind me had only one thing, I'd let her go ahead of me! It's the polite thing to do!" Of course, I gritted my teeth and let her put her Carnation milk down ahead of me - she swept by me imperiously, like she'd taught me a thing or two - but I was fuming for the rest of the day.

Obviously, I suffer from the sin of pride. Pride in my own righteousness, which is pride of ancient proportions. And the point of courtesy is to help others and make the world run more smoothly, not to cover yourself in low-rent laurels every time you hold a door. In my saner moments, I know this. But when I feel the sting of unfair judgment, it almost seems as though there is no point at all. I have a terrible temper, but it's a weird, unpredictable kind of temper that doesn't come out at appropriate times and then I snap without warning about strange things. The time I screamed at the old woman is legendary in my family. It happened a few summers ago, when my brother and I were walking one hot summer day through Lincoln Center. I accidentally stepped on the back of an old lady's canvas huarache - what we call "giving a flat" in our house. I apologized at once. But she appeared unmollified, turning to scowl at me as she pulled the canvas over her heel.
"I said I was sorry," I repeated, feeling the rage begin to heat my cheeks. She glared again and began to walk away.
"Did you not hear me?" I said, raising my voice. "DID YOU NOT HEAR ME APOLOGIZE, MADAM? MADAM?" I'm told that here I chased her down the sidewalk. "IN SOME CIRCLES, MADAM, IT'S CONSIDERED COURTEOUS TO ACKNOWLEDGE AN APOLOGY FOR A COMPLETELY UNINTENDED INSULT. BUT, OH, OH, I SUPPOSE THE SIN OF ACCIDENTALLY STEPPING ON SOMEONE'S HEEL IS WORSE THAN PUBLICLY REJECTING A SINCERE APOLOGY? I TRIED! I TRIED! IT'S PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO ARE DRAINING EVERY DROP OF KINDNESS AND CIVILITY FROM THE WORLD! YOU! YOU!"

The old woman had long since moved down the street. Everyone else had heard, though. My brother gently pulled me away. Later, of course, he related the whole thing to everybody and they thought it was hilarious and off-putting in that "oh, she's nuts" sort of way. People ask me a lot why I can remain calm in the face of actual problems or or insults, but little breaches of courtesy like this set me over the edge. I think it's because it's a reminder that, as the original question-poser said, there are no second chances. You're not judged on a lifetime but on a moment, which is an infuriating reality, and a hard one for those of us too conditioned to please others. That, and that "your welcome" thing is just obnoxious.

Social Q's [NY Times]

Honestly, you guys? My first reaction when I saw the picture was this: "That is a hardcore case of SexyFace."

SexyFace, of course, is the ridiculous, open-mouthed, come-hither look that is always the go to for stories on ingenues and sex symbols. A woman is usually seated in a somewhat awkward position, with her eyes expressing one emotion (lust for sex symbols, innocence for ingenues) and her mouth hanging open in a way that makes it seem like she'll do anything with it except, you know, talk to you.

I understand the science behind SexyFace; the mouth is supposed to turn people on, the look is supposed to make people feel like they are intruding on a private moment, whatever. But you guys, I swear, with few exceptions, SexyFace is the unsexiest face in the history of the universe. It often looks similiar to the face one makes when one smells something really bad, or when one hears a story that ends with "and then I was in the bathroom for like two days straight." It's such a pre-designed, calculated, mass marketed idea of female sexuality that it becomes quite sterile and ridiculous looking. Every magazine has at least one shot of hardcore SexyFace within its pages, diluting the notion of "what is sexy" to a lame-ass cheesecake shot that has been done a billion times before.

The SexyFace phenomenon has spilled over onto the red carpet as well; actresses tend to pose with their SexyFace on in an attempt to give off an air of mystery and sexuality, when all it really does is make them look absolutely ridiculous.

Here are few examples of the total ridiculousness of SexyFace in action (feel free to caption these in the comments):


Jennifer Lopez


Paris Hilton


Christina Aguilera


Lindsay Lohan


Megan Fox

So my question here is this: is there any other way to represent female sexuality without dragging out the same old shot? Because right now, unfortunately, we're being represented by SexyFace, and the notion of what is sexy has been boiled down to an open mouth and a pair of empty eyes.

Scarlett Johansson Pour Vogue [Vogue Paris]

[All images via Getty.]

What's prompted this discussion is a new book called Dinner At Your Door: Tips and Recipes for Starting a Neighborhood Cooking Co-op, certainly a laudable idea for earnest souls who wish to save money, eat well, and bond with a community. The book, according to "the Ethicurean" (via Bittman at Bitten) is designed to

suggest a solution that applies not just to people interested in sustainable, local cooking, but also to mainstream eaters and inexperienced cooks - basically, anyone with busy lives who wants to eat more delicious, homemade meals. Their recommendation is to find like-minded households and start a dinner co-op, embracing core ideas of community.

Well, put like that, it's great. The reality sounds...messy. Beyond vaguely frightening notions of commune-style dumpster-diving (which I'm very sure has nothing to do with the actual book), such concepts strike fear into the heart of the kitchen control freak. To such, ahem, people, there is nothing more frightening than being at the whims of another's tastes and palate. Many of us have poorly-suppressed collegiate memories of meals involving homemade tofu (note: don't try this without a recipe) and gouging our palms in an effort to keep from reaching out and saving a sauce from misplaced creativity or incomplete knowledge. Ruth Reichl's accounts of cooking in a Berkeley coop, at the mercy of self-righteous food faddists, are all too familiar. I speak as someone who can't bear to let my very willing boyfriend fix dinner, as his cooking bears the unmistakable stamp of a youth of impoverished vegetarianism (a dangerous, if common, combo.)

This said, we are obviously the ones who need exactly this sort of thing: relinquishing control, learning to share, growing and changing with the aid of freer spirits...we've all watched A Good Year, or something like it, on illegal download. Don't get me wrong: I love my semi-monthly dining club and eating at friends' homes. But this is quite a different matter from entrusting one's everyday nourishment to others. And to me, my bowl of oatmeal, my cup of soup, my dinner are practically sacramental: one area over which I can exercise my own tastes and whims. To such as I, who fall into despair when hungry or are downcast at a bad meal's wasted opportunities for pleasure and nourishment, the benefits of such a worthy enterprise are obviously not worth the costs in neurosis. For the rest of you, it actually sounds lovely: I'll be over here, hoarding a pumpernickel roll.

Learning To Share: "Dinner At Your Door," By Alex Davis, Diana Ellis, And Andy Remeis [Ethicurean]
On Cooking Together [NY Times]

I've been a waitress. I know it's rough, and you develop weird shticks, and a lot of customers probably respond to the whole "co-conspirator" approach to dessert ordering, the sly proffering of the dessert menu, the impish wink of the enabler, otherwise it wouldn't be so common. But. Trying to "tempt" me or winkingly insinuate that there's something naughty about getting a piece of cake or generally carrying on as though we're somehow putting something over on someone by having a sweet is offensive. Because you know what? There's nothing particularly "decadent" or wild about ordering dessert. Is it because I'm a woman, and it's supposed to be taboo and naughty and yogurt-commercial-ish for me to be treating myself? Is the implication that I'm sneaking something or cheating on a diet?

You may say I'm overreacting, that it's in my head like when I worry waiters think I'm my father's younger girlfriend and I call him "Dad" unnecessarily loudly in front of them. Perhaps. But I have felt the dessert girls club imposed upon me, and cringed at it, and not two nights ago while dining out with a group of female friends, a waitress leaned over the table conspiratorially and in the voice of an indulgent nanny said, "do you like chocolate and peanut butter?"

When I was a waitress myself, I am told I overcompensated. At one early gig, I had a colleague who was very nudge-nudge wink-wink about sweets, especially with tables of women, and threw around words like "sinful" a lot and as a result thereafter I not only never suggested dessert to anyone (something my various managers had to speak to me about several times) but if someone did order cake or pie I was stern and stony-faced throughout the whole transaction. (It should be said that this person also had the annoying habit of saying she'd gone to "a little school in Boston" instead of just answering "Harvard," so maybe I shouldn't have let her influence my behavior one way or the other.)

I have asked various male friends if they've experienced the phenomenon. They were 1) not interested and 2) hadn't. I choose to believe it's of a piece with the unhealthy relationship our society has cultivated between women and food, where matter-of-fact enjoyment has no place at the dining table. This is not the fault of any server - most of whom are not even guilty of conspiring - but rather of centuries of creepy marketing, a pernicious diet industry, and six seasons of Sex and the City. In answer to your question, yes, I will have that piece of pie. A la mode. And without a side of knowing winks.

Sometimes I feel like Alice slipping through the looking glass, toggling between worlds. In one world, I interview C.E.O.'s, write articles for national publications and promote my nonfiction book. In the other, I clock in, sweep floors, endlessly fold sweaters and sort rows of jackets into size order. Toggling between the working class and the chattering class has taught me a lot about both: what we expect of ourselves, how others perceive us, ideas about our next professional step and how we'll make it...The contrasts between my former full-time job and my current part-time one have been striking. I slip from a life of shared intellectual references and friends with Ivy graduate degrees into a land of workers who are often invisible and deemed low-status.

The woman, it should be noted, works "six to eight hours a week" - i.e., one shift.

I'm extra-prickly about this sort of anthropological experiment approach in this case because I've done the freelance-writer -retail thing, if that's a "thing." I just thought of it as having a job, like many of the people I know. It's true, she's older than I - a woman who, presumably, has a career behind her which makes taking on something "demeaning" more noteworthy. But this is not novel: even before the current economic troubles, people worked these jobs. And now, I know numerous people, financially devastated, who are going back to work at whatever can be found without complaint or comment, and working far more than eight hours a week. To a degree, she acknowledges this - that she is lucky to have this job (although at minimum wage, one shift can't make a huge difference, surely?) , but her wish to distance herself from it is palpable and distasteful.

I love sharing my expertise and experiences. When customers tell me they're going to Fiji, Kenya, the Grand Canyon or Cuzco, Peru, I can offer first-hand advice from my own trips there. I know what they need to stay warm, dry and comfortable on the ski slope, boat deck, hiking or bike trail.

We get it: you're better than this. And then, of course, she Learns Lessons. She naturally gets to know salt of the Earth types, appreciates that ego isn't allowed and that people are judged on how hard they work. She learns that some customers are shockingly entitled, not realizing that "We, too, are intelligent and proud of our skills; many of us are college educated. Some of us travel often and widely, speaking foreign languages fluently."

No shit. It's called a job, and most of us have been working them since high school. It's not a degradation or a novelty, but a simple reality of pursuing a creative career. Look, whatever, more power to her. But if she wants a medal, she's not getting it. She doesn't need to sell me on retail: I worked it for years, really enjoyed it, and was grateful for the human contact, steady income and chance to flex totally different muscles, literal and otherwise; I still pick up a shift when I can. I somehow managed to survive the devastations of "scraping gum and food off the floor or standing for five straight hours...refolding clothing so many times the skin on my hands cracks from dehydration." I know, hard to believe.

My Retail Job, Crazy As It Is, Keeps Me Sane [NYT]

Let me start by saying this: I am not a wedding person. While I understand that for many people, a wedding day is a huge deal and a big celebration that they are willing to spend a lot of time and money on, and if that's your thing, good on you, I have never, in my life, dreamed about my wedding day. I may have dreamed about a giant Carvel Fudgie the Whale cake with "A Whale of a Wedding" scrawled on it, but that's about it.

Popular culture is currently filled with Wedding Mania: on any given Saturday, you can probably find at least 800 wedding shows dealing with everything from finding the perfect dress to throwing the perfect reception. Weddings have become a serious business: the average American couple spends at least $28,082 on a single day of celebrating, though one wonders if the economy tanking will finally put an end to such spending. But perhaps the worst part of Wedding Mania is that the true meaning of getting married gets lost.

For example: as soon as I started telling people I was engaged, they had two reactions: 1. "Let me see the ring!" and 2. "Have you set a date yet?!" I understand that these are the standard responses, though my boyfriend, er, fiance, was greeted by "Oh hey, awesome. Congrats," by comparison. For being an Officially Engaged Person of female variety, apparently, means that you're suddenly a walking date book and advertisement for a jewelry store. No longer are you Hortense, girl on the go! No! You're "bride-to-be, who has a big party to plan!" To which I say this: Fuck. That. Noise.

You heard me! Fuck that noise! For one thing, my engagement ring was a Cherry Ring Pop, which, btw, was what I said I wanted nine years ago in a random conversation with my now fiance, who remembered. No, he didn't go to Jared, ok? He went to the candy store. And for that, he rules your face.

Secondly, we DON'T have a date. Because we are busy, and we have lives, and we have only been engaged for a month and we don't feel like planning anything yet. And if we don't end up eloping, which we may, due to this insane pressure to plan plan plan that has suddenly been placed upon us by previously sane friends and family, we're going to throw a wedding/party our way. There will not be fancy invitations. There won't be Save the Date magnets. We're not posing for a couple's portrait at Sears, Mom, because we would NEVER pose for a couple's portrait, EVER, so please stop asking.

All I'm saying is, world, for some Officially Engaged People, the world does not revolve around our upcoming nuptials. Yes, we're excited. And we're happy that you're excited too. But some of us just want to do things our way. We go to your weddings and enjoy the open bar and celebrate your love in the way you've planned it out, so just let us do our own thing, okay? I know that weddings are mass-marketed, and there are expectations placed upon us that society thinks we need to meet, and I am not dumping on people who are really in love and celebrate it in the traditional way, like my older sister did and my younger sister plans to do because that's your thing and it's awesome, and your weddings were and will be fun and beautiful, but for fuck's sake, universe, some of us just don't feel like picking out table settings or touring country clubs or meeting with florists. What is an exciting time of planning and sharing for some couples is a total drag for others, dig?

I am still a go for that Fudgie the Whale cake though. Because that's just classy.

With This Dress I Thee Wed And Wed And Wed [NYTimes]

Demands the New York Post's Maureen Callahan belligerently,

Just who decided French women are better than we are? The French? When did American women buy into this? Who says French women are more stylish, more cultured, have more and better sex, and can smoke and drink and eat whatever they want without suffering bad skin or contracting lung cancer or - worst of all - getting fat?

Her outrage is prompted by the latest entry in what Callahan terms the "American inferiority complex" genre, French Women Don't Sleep Alone, by some Francophile American who schools yanks in "The French Art of Flirtation." This of course comes on the heels of Mireille Giuliano's French Women Don't Get Fat juggernaut and the raft of copycats it inspired. (My personal favorite? The weirdly gushy Entre Nous.) Screw those soigne sylphs! Rails Callahan. Their awesomeness is a myth!

Oh, and not only do French women totally blow, says Callahan, but they all know it! And wish they were like American women! Who are way better groomed! Oh, and guess what? We have way more female CEOs and actual sexual harassment policies! This last salient fact actually comes from Mireille Giuliano herself (who, as is her wont, comments seemingly with no context,"It makes me very sad to see the fat people walking around in New York.")

Confession time: I am pro French Women Don't Get Fat. Twee? Sure. All that scarf-draping and baguette baking? Ludicrous. But! It's as common-sensical a diet book as I've ever seen, and there are far worse bestsellers than one that promotes water drinking, moderation and walking. Don't forget, all this started as an antidote to Atkins, the Great Satan of the Naughties. What's always struck me as funny about the phenom is that the concept — French mystique as diet book — is about as American a construct as has ever been thunk up; what people embraced as the height of continental sophistication was just domestic product, cleverly packaged. The whole French Women thing is a totally American construct! (I mean, obviously, they exist. And do they tend to be slim and chic? A lot of Parisians sure do.) Which is why Mireille Giuliano's business book should be a best-seller: talk about someone who's made the most of both cultures.

Oh, and to Maureen Callahan and her ilk, cool your jets: French women are probably more baffled by our weird girl-crush than triumphant. Says one of my friends, "I think it's really funny. French people don't really know how cool Americans think they are. They know about "la French touch", I even saw this indie Parisian band sing a song called "je suis French et j'ai la touch". But most French people don't know about that weird obsession you guys have for us. I only fully realized it when I moved here. People getting really excited that I'm French. It's kinda weird to be honest. But flattering." Obviously, I got enraged and told her to suck it, like a good American. Then I ate a donut.

French Women Can Suck It! [New York Post]

The essay, "A Guest Star in His Romantic Drama," is about open relationships, but that's hardly the point. Katherine Ruppe is, her byline tells us, a "screenwriter in Venice, Calif." which goes some way, I suppose, in explaining the execrable quality of the better part of Hollywood's exports. For rarely if ever have we encountered such aggressive cutesiness, such nauseating self-importance or such thorium-weight dialogue. "All dialogue in Modern Love is based on memory?" Yeah, memory and a few hundred hours of Friends.

Okay, before I get carried away: Ruppe has bad luck with men. She's drawn to "adventurous, charming, yet fatally flawed boy-men" and so when she meets a nerdy engineer who "also indulged in Red Bull and Jägermeister" she thinks her luck has changed. ("He owned a plane — hot.") They embark on a thing and she's so enthusiastic that she takes a leap of faith: she invites him to a Moby concert. But ah, here's the rub: turns out the mild-mannered nerd is in fact a swinger who's in an open relationship with another woman - who wants to meet our heroine. But...what of planes and aging club kids?!

I told him I had no interest in meeting his ball and chain and hung up. Clark Kent had a secret identity all right. As I poured myself a bucket of wine, I mourned this new blow to my trust in people. Why couldn’t men surprise me with roses or trips to Paris instead of requests like “My girlfriend wants to meet you”?...After my brief pity party, however, the Steven Spielberg (Soderbergh?) in me became intrigued. Maybe there was a screenplay in this.

Of course, things get complicated. ("He explained that he didn’t become emotionally involved with the women he played with; they were just friends.Double ick. I hadn’t been anyone’s playmate since fourth grade.") She and the girlfriend talk and have some false-ringing dialogue about the difficulties of the open dynamic - a weird third-act shift to Serious Emotion after two pages of wacky rom-com antics. Then she ends things with the dude. "I sensed our meeting was destined for the cutting room floor of my imagination, so I finally asked him what I most wanted to know: 'Were your affections toward me just an act, or did you really feel anything?'”

I'm not going to dignify this particularly lackluster episode of SATC with any kind of analysis of polyamory or emotional availability or judging books by covers, because that would suggest that this essay had larger implications than it did. Interesting topic? Sure. But the desperate gloss of would-be hilarity strips it of any power to interest, inspire, start conversations, or even entertain. More than anything, it depressed me: why does this kind of trivial nonsense still qualify as legit women's writing about relationships? And seriously, I couldn't help but ask myself: if this is who's writing movies for women, can we wonder that they blow?

A Guest Star in His Romantic Drama [NYT]

Whereas once third grade was necessarily given over to the tedium of copying curls and loops, now it seems kids aren't learning cursive, and when they are, they won't use it. "It's a bit like going for a root canal for them," says one teacher. Apparently only 15% of students wrote their SAT essays in script, opting instead for block print. Most experts blame the "digital age" for this disinclination to write; while people have long known how to type, now there's apparently very little call for handwriting at all. "Unless you use it, you lose it," says another teacher.

What's odd about this is...once you learn cursive, isn't it easier and faster than printing? To say nothing of the purely sensuous pleasure of gliding a good pen, uninterrupted, across a page. And is the concept of "handwriting" — revealer of character, neuroses, criminal identity — a thing of the past? For generations of kids, handwriting conformed to the stringent dictates of the Palmer Method, a school of handwriting instruction that resulted in the distinctive, homogenous spidery penmanship we associate with the 19th and early 20th centuries. The abandonment of this method may have been regarded as a small triumph for individuality, but it's ironic that kids are now voluntarily opting for a more uniform sort of writing again.

Incidentally, I'm a sucker for bad penmanship. I've always loved the vulnerability of a little boy scrawl; apparently this, in itself, now dates me — and widens the holding pen for my "type" dramatically. That's a small casualty though; the decline of penmanship provokes in me a serious strain of old-womanish regret for lost arts, even as it's sort of awesome to actually be on the tail end of such a dying art! I didn't know we possessed any! Because writing was something that, unlike long division and kickball, was actually a "grown up" life skill, plus a small measure of artistry brought to even the most quotidian every day. My regret is not for something vague and societal and regimented; rather, it's the loss of a small satisfaction and a very real pleasure. Kids today don't know what they're missing...even if I'll apparently be crushing on all of them.

Cursive Writing A Dying Art [UPI]

Okay, confession time: my cup does not runneth over, my breasts are an average size on a good day and they are pretty easily ignored, most of the time. I thought I was pretty comfortable with my boobage until I made a trip to Agent Provocateur.

While attempting to try on one pretty little bra, a saleswoman jumped into the fitting room with me and explained that Agent Provocateur sizes are not like "American bras" and that I should consider trying on different sizes. Okay, sizes are (frustratingly) different everywhere, so I tried to keep an open mind about it.

I awkwardly tried on my regular 34B while the saleswoman stood there ("Hey...uh...oh, you're not leaving? Okay....) and emitted an exasperated sigh. "Let's talk about bra sizing," she said. Great, I'm a female failure, I don't even know my proper bra size. She then ran out of the fitting room and came back with bigger bras. "You're a 32D," she said flatly.

What?

Me? A D-cup!? For small-to-average boob-havers out there, D is a magical-sounding size. That's the size that curvy movie stars and Joan Holloway probably have, right? D-cups fill out a sweater and fill up a hand. D-cups make even a t-shirt look feminine. Instead of regular coffee cups, I felt like I was holding cafe au lait bowls. I had, you know, breasts.

Naturally this made me a little excited, I felt like a 14-year-old who had just gotten sized at Victoria's Secret. Suddenly, I had to buy as many bras as I could, or else I might lose the magical-sounding D-cup. When I got home and looked at my receipt, I suddenly felt played. Just because I was a D-cup in Agent Provocateur sizes didn't mean I was a 34B in every other bra I owned. And, hey, there are a lot of women out there with larger breasts than me, how are they supposed to squeeze into these cute bras if they cut smaller?

But was I really getting tricked? Maybe I was caught up in the re-sized afterglow, but everyone is a different size in different brands of clothing. I've worked retail and I know there is a lot of vanity-sizing out there so it causes sizes to jump up and down. I have no problem trying on several sizes of dresses when I go to a new store, so why should I assume that I am always going to be the same size in my bra? It isn't Agent Provocateur's fault that I naively expected all bras to fit the same way and put up with some ill-fitting bras because I was lazy. Could women's magazines and morning talk shows be right, at least a little bit, about being open to wearing different bra sizes in different bras?

Earlier: Bra Science: Hope For Those Whose Cup Runneth Over
Wearing The Wrong Bra Can 'Damage' Breasts—So What?

He totally has gay friends, you guys! "I have many gay friends. I've eaten dinner in gay homes," Warren says, "No church has probably done more for people with AIDS than Saddleback Church." Warren also cites a "wonderful conversation" and a signed cd from Melissa Etheridge as a means to boost his "But I love gay people!" credibility. You know what, Mr. Warren? I have "gay friends", too. Though when I go to their houses to eat dinner, or hang out and watch a movie, I don't leave a note saying, "Be back soon, off to a gay home!"

Warren seems a bit taken aback by the hostility he's encountered since getting the Inauguration nod. "The hate speech against me is incendiary," he tells NBC's Ann Curry, "Tolerance used to mean, "I treat you with respect even though we disagree." Some people want tolerance to mean now that all ideas are equally valid. That's nonsense. There are some things that are right and there are some things that are wrong."

As a librarian, I felt a need to correct Mr. Warren, who seems to have gotten some bad information. A little reference for you, sir:

Main Entry:
tol·er·ance
Pronunciation:
\ˈtä-lə-rən(t)s, ˈtäl-rən(t)s\
Function:
noun
Date:
15th century
1: capacity to endure pain or hardship : endurance , fortitude , stamina
2 a: sympathy or indulgence for beliefs or practices differing from or conflicting with one's own b: the act of allowing something : toleration

The act of allowing something, you say?! Like, perhaps, allowing fellow citizens their basic rights to marry and live how they choose, even if it conflicts with your personal religious beliefs, which, if I'm not mistaken, have no place in a Constitutional setting?

The line that you'll most likely hear all over the news today is this one: ""You don't have to see eye to eye to walk hand in hand." But when he sits down with a major news organization and gives quotes detailing how even if it was scientifically proven that being gay is biological and not "a choice", he would still consider homosexuality to be wrong, Warren's "Let's all be friends," rhetoric rings pretty hollow.

Warren compares being gay to being immature and slutty, and tries to tie the idea of biological homosexuality to the urge of a straight man to sleep with multiple women. "I've had many gay friends tell me, "Well, Rick, why shouldn't I have multiple sexual partners? It's the natural thing to do." Well, just because it seems natural doesn't mean it's best for you or society. I'm naturally inclined to have sex with every beautiful woman I see. But that doesn't mean it's the right thing to do. And why should I reign in my natural impulses and you say, "Well, because I have natural impulses towards the same sex, I shouldn't have to reign them in." Well, I disagree. I think that's part of maturity. I think it's part of delayed gratification. I think it's part of character."

You know what else is part of maturity and character? Love. Open-mindedness. Tolerance. And not "Everyone should agree with the Bible or else" tolerance, Mr. Warren, tolerance for people who do not see the world the way you do, who just want to live and love and marry and have the same rights as everybody else. Because the world is not made up of "gay friends" and "gay homes", Melissa Etheridge signatures do not excuse you from your hateful statements masked as "tolerance", and millions of people are raising their hands to you and saying, "Hey, we just want to be treated as equals," and you, Mr. Warren, are the one who is refusing to look them in the eye and take that walk with them.

President-elect Barack Obama has weighed in on the controversy with this: "During the course of the entire inaugural festivities, there are going to be a wide range of viewpoints that are presented. And that's how it should be, because that's what America's about. That's part of the magic of this country ... we are diverse and noisy and opinionated."

Yes, President-elect Obama, we are diverse, noisy, and opinionated. And you can let Rick Warren say his prayers and complain to Ann Curry about the reactions, and you can quietly sidestep the real issue at hand here, but that noise is only going to get louder, and louder, and louder, until you can't avoid it any longer. And maybe then, we'll really see what America is about.

Rick Warren: Pastor In The Political Spotlight [MSNBC]
Warren Defends Obama Inauguration Invite [HuffingtonPost]
Warren Supports Program That Seeks To Cure Gays of Same-Sex Attraction[ThinkProgress]