A rep responded: "I assure you the model of choice was not meant to slight our petite customers in any way. I stand at a whopping 5'1 so believe me, I feel your pain. Basically our choice to use a standard sized model vs. petite really comes down to logistics... Although we have petite offerings at times... we are not a petite specific site. To cast and book additional models, do model/grooming changes on set would take up more time than we can offer given the shoot schedule." • Collagen-enhanced foods including yogurt, tea, cocktails, and cheesecake are all the rage among Japanese women. They hope eating collagen will help fight wrinkles, but experts say they do nothing. • A poll of 800 self-identified "news watchers" found that Hillary Clinton is now much more popular than Barack Obama. Clinton has a 75 percent approval rating and a 21 percent disapproval rating, while Obama has a 51 percent approval rating and a 45 percent disapproval rating. • Women have a more sensitive touch than men, but Canadian scientists discovered it has nothing to do with sex. "We now understand that this sex difference is not actually a 'sex effect', but rather an effect of finger size," says one researcher, who made the discovery after asking male and female student to detect fine grooves on a surface. • A new study says that a group of teenage girls "at risk" for obesity had more success keeping their BMI from increasing with a year of Interpersonal Psychotherapy than another group of overweight girls that took traditional health education classes. The therapy has been shown to help reduce depression and tackle binge eating. • The "No To Rape" campaign has gathered more than 3,000 signatures on a petition to make raping your wife illegal in Singapore. Currently there is a marital rape immunity law, but the group hopes to change the law when they present the petition to Singapore's Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong in the next few days. • Two 10-year-old British boys have been charged with the rape of an 8-year-old girl. "The incident took place in Hayes, in west London, on October 27, that's pretty much all the detail we have," a police spokesman said. • A British woman is suing her gynecologist for sexual harassment because she claims he gave her two "leg buckling" orgasms in under two minutes during an exam, while a nurse was in the room. Bibi Giles said that after Dr. Angus Thomson performed an internal exam in 2006, "... there was no doubt that the conversation and touch was sexual. When I realised he was doing something out of the boundary I didn't want to say anything as I was still under his care." Giles says he talked about having an affair with her on many visits, but she stayed with him because she didn't want to go through the "intrusion" of another gynecologist. •

Representatives from the City Council met with the N.Y.P.D. and the Metropolitan Transportation Authority in order to address the issue of sexual harassment and assault, which James P. Hall, chief of the Police Department's Transit Bureau, describes as the "No. 1 quality of life offense on the subway." Hall reports that as of November 15th, there had already been 587 reports of sex offenses on the subway, but he believes this number does not accurately reflect the disturbingly commonplace nature of this type of public harassment. "we strongly suspect this is a highly under-reported crime," he said.

Earlier this year, Sadie delved deep into the complicated issue of Someone Masturbating Against Me In A Crowded Subway (or, to make things more simple, SMAMIACA). Judging from her experience, the hundreds of comments, and my own uncomfortable trolley ride a couple of weeks ago, I'm going to go ahead and agree with Hall: This happens way more often than police reports reflect. But the NYPD is trying to do something about it: Hall describes a campaign that has been in place since 2006, aptly titled Operation Exposure, in which cops go undercover to bust subway creepers. They've also developed a protocol for receiving cell phone pictures from victims, which sounds like it could be a very effective way of catching the men (because it is usually men) who do this.

Police also seem to have a pretty good idea of the kind of guy they're looking for, the City Room reports:

The police have arrested 412 people for sex offenses in the subway so far this year. Of the 412, 71 had committed prior sexual offenses and 14 were registered sex offenders. Five of the 14 were the most serious level of sex offender, Level 3.

The average perpetrator is a 39-year-old male, while the vast majority of victims are females over 17 years old. "It's a crime that goes more to a middle-aged individual," Chief Hall said. In contrast, other crimes in the subway generally involve younger men, from 17 to 25 years old, he said.

The fact that 17% of the men arrested for subway harassment were already known sex offenders is downright scary. And given the many, many cases that are never reported, much less result in arrest, the real number is no doubt much higher.

The Metropolitan Transportation Authority has decided to focus on PSAs that encourage women to speak up about inappropriate behavior on the subway. Unfortunately, they only run the poster campaigns for a few months at a time. And, as Sadie noted, one of the biggest problems with subway harassment is the ambiguity of the thing. It is difficult to muster up the courage to report something when you're not even sure if it really happened, which is why I'm standing in support of Councilman Peter F. Vallone's idea: posting a "wall of shame" for convicted offenders. Although it's by no means a perfect solution (and, it should be added, not one that authorities have decided to adopt) the emphasis is finally on the right person: the perpetrator. Because the question shouldn't just be how do we get more victims to report it but how can we get men to stop?

Sexual Harassment Is 'No. 1 Quality Of Life Offense On Subway,' Police Say [NYT City Room]

Earlier: When You're Not Sure If Someone Is Masturbating Against You In A Crowded Subway

• 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." •

[Kiev, November 16. Image via Getty]

Activists of FEMEN, a Ukrainian women movement defending women's conditions in the society, perform during their protest action on November 16, 2009 in front of Ukraine's Education Ministry in Kiev to denounce sexual harassment of students by some university professors in the country. AFP PHOTO/ SERGEI SUPINSKY (Photo credit should read SERGEI SUPINSKY/AFP/Getty Images)

But her parents recall that Taylor's rise to fame has not been easy. Her father said "you could write 10 pages" about what he had to do to get her into the Irish Amateur Boxing Association. •  Meet Diane Macchino, the so-called "Cement Princess." Macchino owns eight cement trucks, which she refers to as her "babies," manages a cement yard, wears three inch heels, and fights sexual harassment on what sounds like a daily basis. Macchino says shes had trouble from competitors, who don't like the fact that a women is getting into the business, but she has big plans: "This Cement Princess will be back like a woman scorned. Offering the best product at the best prices, honest service with a smile, and a woman's touch." • Police have discovered a seventh body in the Cleveland, Ohio home of convicted rapist Anthony Sowell. He was arrested last week after the decomposing bodies of six African-American women were found in his house and buried in his yard. • Three female college students from North Dakota have gone missing. Authorities refuse to speculate on what has happened to the girls, but a friend reports receiving two late night phone calls that mentioned water and asked for help. •  The Georgian Court Hotel in Vancouver has recently reopened with a new feature: A floor dedicated exclusively to female travelers. The "Orchid Floor" will provide extra amenities, including curling irons, yoga mats, and a collection of women's magazines. • According to a new government report, America's disturbingly high infant mortality rate can be blamed primarily on poor access to prenatal care and the resulting premature births. To make things more depressing, many low income mothers do not have access to proper care, which accounts for the high numbers of infant deaths among women in the US. •  Subjects in a Canadian study looked at photos of men's faces and said they thought those with wider, longer faces were more aggressive. The volunteer's guesses correlated highly to the men's actual aggressive behavior. "The greater the width-to-height ratios, the higher the aggressive rating, suggesting that we may use this aspect of facial structure to judge potential aggression in others," said the researchers. • Evelyn Border, 56, and her daughter Tina Griekspoor, 35, stood outside a Pennsylvania courthouse for four and a half hours today holding signs that read: "I stole from a 9-year-old girl on her birthday! Don't steal or this could happen to you!" The women, who were convicted of stealing the girl's gift card when she put it down on a shelf at Wal-Mart, agreed to hold the signs rather than serving jail time. • Ingmar "Iggy" Sprude, who appeared on the cover of Gulfshore Life magazine's recent issue, was arrested for allegedly pulling the fire alarm inside a Naples, Florida nightclub twice on Halloween. He was dressed as Pamela Anderson at the time. • In addition to taking care of the grounds, White House Horticulturist Dale Henry has developed a relationship with many presidential pets. Henry is Bo's primary walker when Michelle Obama is out of town. He says he's amazed by the public's fascination with With House pets: "Sometimes I think they're more interested in the pets than the president." • Voters at a town hall meeting in Dudley, Massachusetts have made it illegal to own more than three cats without being granted a $50 residential kennel license. The law was created after the neighbor of Mary Ellen Richards said her 15 cats are destroying her yard. Richards is selling her house and says she's moving to a "more cat-friendly community." •

The plaintiff had been acquitted of all charges in a criminal court. It turns out that the defendant had made the allegations against him only after she had been accused of stealing money from the store in which they were working. Her, the defendant admits that her employment was being "watched by the state" after she had failed multiple drug tests—one while pregnant—and had her child taken away from her. If she were to be fired from the hardware store, she'd be in trouble with the state again.


In a civil court, the burden of proof for the plaintiff was much heavier than "beyond a reasonable doubt." However, when he played audio excerpts of testimony at his trial—in which it was revealed that the defendant had been accused of stealing money at her three previous jobs—JJ had come to her decision. She awarded the plaintiff $2500, not because of the defendant's questionable history, but because she had made statements under oath in the first trial that contradicted her statements under oath in JJ's court.

Hey, guess what time it is!

Writing for Vanity Fair online, Nell Scovell, one of only seven women ever hired to write for Letterman's late night talk shows, not only confirms that the sexual politics at the office sucked but reminds us all that the boys' clubbiness of comedy writing in general systematically excludes and demeans women. About her experience as a staff writer on Late Night with David Letterman, his old NBC show, she writes:

Without naming names or digging up decades-old dirt, let's address the pertinent questions. Did Dave hit on me? No. Did he pay me enough extra attention that it was noted by another writer? Yes. Was I aware of rumors that Dave was having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Was I aware that other high-level male employees were having sexual relationships with female staffers? Yes. Did these female staffers have access to information and wield power disproportionate to their job titles? Yes. Did that create a hostile work environment? Yes. Did I believe these female staffers were benefiting professionally from their personal relationships? Yes. Did that make me feel demeaned? Completely. Did I say anything at the time? Sadly, no.

I hereby rescind any reservations I once had about condemning Letterman for, as a NOW statement put it, "setting the tone for his entire workplace... with sex" and raising "serious issues about the abuse of power leading to an inappropriate, if not hostile, workplace environment for women and employees" with his behavior. As a general principle, I still think it's a good idea not to leap to conclusions, but Scovell's piece removes the "leaping" element entirely and places us knee-deep in conclusions. Game on.

Having said that, Scovell lists among her reasons for coming forward, "I'd like to pivot the discussion away from the bedroom and toward the writers' room, because it pains me that almost 20 years later, the situation for female writers in late-night-TV hasn't improved." Not a bad idea. So what is the situation? "At this moment, there are more females serving on the United States Supreme Court than there are writing for Late Show with David Letterman, The Jay Leno Show, and The Tonight Show with Conan O'Brien combined."

Translation: Among all three shows — which have a combined writing staff of about fifty people — there are zero women. That's not the result of any single factor, but a perfect storm of elements that devalue women's (not to mention people of color's) contributions, including sexual politics, lazy networking ("the shows often rely on current [white male] writers to recommend their funny [white male] friends to be future [white male] writers"), a lack of transparency about the application process, and the desire of male writers to "be able to scarf an entire bag of potato chips while cracking fart jokes and making lewd comments without fear of feminine disapproval."

Scovell makes short work of that last one ("Crack a decent fart joke and, as professionals, we will laugh."), but in my experience with such complaints about lady energy throwing off the comfy vibe in a boys' club, chips and fart jokes are offered up as a proxy for the real problem, which is harder to articulate without sounding like the world's biggest douche. To wit, "Girls make us think about sex. That's distracting!" (I don't know how underrepresented gay men are among the white malefest, but I'm gonna go ahead and guess that they are.)

And that, unfortunately, brings us right back into the bedroom — via a detour through the larger culture. When we're all constantly told that women's primary worth lies in our sexuality, and that men sizing up our fuckability everywhere we go — train, park, grocery store, dentist's office, workplace — is not a culturally sanctioned method of demeaning women but an inevitable consequence of male-female interaction (hardwiring!!!), then of course men think women in the office automatically equals distracting sexy thoughts. And of course some people will start having distracting sex, fucking up the entire office environment if they're not painfully discreet and/or equally low on the food chain. And of course, to a guy who has never considered that maybe the problem here is a culture that believes there is no context in which evaluating a woman's fuckability is anything but the inevitable consequence of interacting with one, the logical conclusion will be that the fewer women there are in the workplace, the fewer problems along those lines we will have.

Before anyone points out that women often enthusiastically participate in workplace sex (and idly evaluating co-workers' fuckability), as if that negates the above point, let me remind you that I'm talking about cultural factors, not individual decisions. As I said in one of my earlier Letterman posts, I had a 4-year relationship with a guy who started out as my boss, and I neither regret nor apologize for it. But it doesn't change the fact that our societal conditioning encourages men to focus on women's sexuality, in damn near every context, to the extent that it frequently overshadows our talent, intelligence and hard work. Put it this way: How many straight women do you know who would fear working in a primarily male environment because they might be driven witless by sexual temptation? And how many times have you heard exactly that argument in reverse when it comes to the military, for instance? A large number of men in one workplace are not automatically regarded as a sexual smorgasbord (except perhaps to homophobes arguing against allowing gays in the military). A large number of women — like, more than one or two — however? Well, that's just asking for trouble.

I'm not completely against office relationships, any more than I'm against encouraging existing employees to recruit their friends, or eating chips and cracking fart jokes in the workplace. I have, at times, had good results with all of those things. But when they combine to create a glaring overrepresentation of only one kind of person among a large staff, it's time to change, even if it means relinquishing the comfort of the status quo. That the discrimination in question may be merely passive, not the result of conscious and active bigotry, doesn't make things a damn bit better for women or people of color trying to break into a writer's room full of white dudes. And even if you lack an inherent sense of justice and fairness, there's still a good reason to rectify that situation. As Scovell says, "it's been my experience that a room with a fairer sampling of humanity will always produce funnier material."

Letterman And Me [Vanity Fair]

Earlier: Feminist Leaders Slam Letterman; Lawyer Claims Evidence Of Harassment

I should start by saying that my initial reaction to the news was much milder than Anna North's, although I had to admit all the points she made about power differentials and the effect on the overall office environment are difficult to argue. But between a bit of outrage fatigue (Letterman should probably send Roman Polanski a big fruit basket for ensuring that this scandal came with built-in perspective) and the tiny detail that I once dated my boss for four years (I was his sole employee, so the only workplace dynamics it altered were our own), I just couldn't get too worked up about Dave admitting he had sex with employees. I mean, it's not a good thing, but as far as we know, there were no questions of consent beyond those that arise whenever two people are unequal in status — which are valid to ask, but very difficult for anyone outside of the situation to answer conclusively. We have no real idea how it affected the office environment, and because he was so refreshingly honest and self-effacing about it, it was hard to be angry. Not to mention, dude was the victim of a wackaloon extortion plot, which was actually more interesting to me.

Then I sat down to watch the monologue with my husband last night, and mentioned all that to him. Hubby: "Whatever. I'm sure I'll laugh at his jokes, but it doesn't change the fact that none of this would have happened if he hadn't cheated on his wife."

You know what ranks really high on a list of awkward conversations? The one where the person you've recently vowed to remain faithful to forever goes, "Hello! Adultery bad!" and you're like, "Oh, right, that." It's pretty sad that I've gotten to the point where learning that a powerful, famous man cheated on his partner is such a total non-shock, it barely even registers on me as wrongdoing. (My husband is a much better person than I am, which is a big part of why I married him.)

To Dave's credit, at least he didn't forget that part, peppering the entirely self-referential monologue with jokes — one suspects they would more accurately be described as "jokes" — about how pissed his wife is ("It's chilly outside my house... it's chilly inside my house"), and frankly, how much she deserves to be. Around, the one minute mark of the clip above, Dave feigns changing the subject: "OK, let's look at the news, first of all, Bill Clinton said..." [Grimace.] "Uh, no." Ditto Mark Sanford and Eliot Spitzer, and the same basic line just keeps getting funnier — though that's partly because Paul Shaffer keeps throatily "Ho ho!"ing like a drunken shopping-mall Santa in the background.

Around that time, I turned to hubby and said, "You know, art doesn't trump bad behavior, but maybe being funny does." (Hubby: "Still cheated on his wife." Me: "Oh, right.") Obviously, Roman Polanski's crimes are not in the same galaxy as David Letterman's offenses, and again, Dave is lucky the comparison inevitably comes to mind this week. But the comparisons to Clinton, Sanford and Spitzer are somewhat more on point — and when we're talking about woefully ill-advised consensual sex, there is a lot to be said for both owning up and joking at your own expense (at least without indicating that you take it all too lightly, which is a line I think Letterman walked quite gracefully). Of course, even those comparisons ultimately fail, because politicians aren't in a position to play it off the same way, with good reason. As Craig Ferguson said in his own monologue on the topic last night, "If we are now holding late-night talk show hosts to the same moral accountability as we hold politicians or clergymen, I'm OUT!" Given that I didn't vote for Letterman and don't expect celebrities to exhibit much moral leadership beyond, you know, not committing felonies, his straightforward admission that he fucked up and seemingly genuine self-deprecating humor about it actually achieve their intended purpose: Reminding the audience that he is still very good at his job, which involves cracking jokes and maintaining a basically likable (if prickly) persona, not saving the world or our very souls.

So, outrage fatigue and my own history of boss-banging aside, I think the main reason I'm predisposed to give Dave a pass is that he's made a good-faith and appropriate effort to restore his credibility as a late-night talk show host, which is exactly what I need him to be. His wife and son need him to be more than that. The employees he slept with — and the employees he didn't — need him to be more than that. The audience doesn't. I think it's great if people take this as an opportunity to have a national conversation about sexual harassment, about the grey areas that come with differences in power between partners, about the effects of a boss-employee relationship on the entire office — and yes, honey, about cheating on one's spouse. But I also don't feel like I need any more input on the matter from Letterman himself; he doesn't owe his audience of perfect strangers any more than he's already given us.

His wife, on the other hand, is probably gonna require a little more effort. One disappointment of last night's show is that it was hyped as including "an apology to his wife" — and is this morning being reported as such — but when he got around to that part, he kinda biffed it.

After pulling a passive-voice acknowledgment of how terribly she'd been hurt, he did acknowledge that he was the one who did the hurting, saying, "When something happens like that, if you hurt a person and it's your responsibility, you try to fix it. And at that point, there's only two things that can happen: either you're going to make some progress and get it fixed, or you're going to fall short and perhaps not get it fixed." A good start — and a refreshing exhibit of accountability — but he followed it up only with, "I've got my work cut out for me." Hubby and me, simultaneously: "That was not an apology!"

The good news is, we don't need one. In fact, for an apology to his wife to hold any meaning, it shouldn't be done on television, where it would be part of an effort to restore his image as a talk-show host, not a husband. His wife doesn't need him to say it to a camera, she needs him to say it to her face. For the rest of us, unless evidence comes to light that his transgressions were much more serious than we've been told so far, what he's said to the camera should be plenty.

Letterman Apologizes To His Wife and Staff [NY Times]

Earlier:"Office Romance"? No, Letterman's Affairs Were An Abuse of Power

The details of the case are pretty salacious. Plaintiff Jennifer Braude alleges that her boss, Meredith Sossman, told her that she liked having foursomes and getting slapped during sex. Sossman also said she had kissed her female best friend, who looked like Braude, and that she wanted them to have a threesome. She told Braude she had a "huge" chest, "great dick-sucking lips" and was "dirty hot," meaning "you exude sex ... like you know you're dirty in bed just by looking at you." According to the suit, the firm — Maron Marvel Bradley & Anderson — noted Sossman's behavior, determined she was a "cancer," and fired her. Braude is suing because the firm didn't react quickly to her complaint, first telling her to deal with the situation herself; because after she complained her boss was hostile to her and she did not receive a bonus; and because when she asked for a leave of absence to deal with the stress of the harassment, she was told she would need to reapply for her job. Basically, Braude feels that even though Sossman was eventually fired, she herself was penalized for rocking the boat.

Braude's experience with Sossman turns a lot of conventional wisdom about sexual harassment on its head. For one, it shows that women can be just as creepy as men, and just as capable of creating a threatening work environment. It's also a break from the stereotypical harassment situation of female victim going up against an old boys' network. Here, the perpetrator was also female, and instead of closing ranks around her, the firm gave her the axe — but not before making Braude feel unwelcome too. If Braude's allegations are accurate, then it's clear that those who report sexual harassment can face discrimination even when the harasser is unpopular.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of sexual harassment claims are filed against women, and whether these claims are more likely to be taken seriously than those against men. One study suggests they're actually taken less seriously, at least by men — male college students were less likely to perceive the situation as harassment if the harasser was female. But it's just as difficult to find information about sexual harassment by women as it is to find out about female sexual abusers — almost all the data seems to be about women as victims, not perpetrators.

This may be because people see sexual harassment by women as a joke or, alternately, as a turn-on. Elie Mystal at Above the Law (admittedly not known for its restraint) has an especially classy take on the Braude case. Of Sossman's "dick-sucking lips" comment, he says, "I did not know that women noticed things like that." But, he adds, "I do know that women notice things like" dirty-hotness. He also writes, "this firm sounds 'dirty hot' to me," and asks, "do you think employees suffering from Post-Lesbianic Harassment Syndrome should be entitled to some extra time off from work?" Maybe — but I also think harassment victims deserve not to have their stress belittled with silly names. And I think we're never going to find out anything about sexual harassment by women if we keep calling it "hot."

Girl-On-Girl Sexual Harassment At Delaware Law Firm [Above the Law]

Suchitra Krishnamoorthi, now a Bollywood star, recently wrote on her personal blog about her experiences as a young woman trying to break into the industry. "I remember many years ago, while still in my teens, I had gone to meet a very successful producer regarding a film role at a plush suburban hotel.… They were looking for a new face to launch." He asked her about school and family, the producer instructed the teenager to inform her parents that she'd be spending the night in the hotel with him. When, instead, she left, he said, "I know you are a good girl but if you want to become an actress you have to do it! So and so and so and so (he named some of the top league actresses of that time) … do it. She do it and even she do it! They are my discovery. Everybody has to do it."

Whereas the "hard audition" is a Hollywood cliche, apparently it's always been a somewhat taboo subject in the more conservative confines of Indian cinema. Says Bollywood reporter Rajeev Masand, "I have always known about the casting couch. Every single person who enters the industry doesn't necessarily make it into the industry through the casting couch. However, the casting couch does exist though it is spoken about in whispers." Added India Daily,

It is all there and very common. The policy is do not ask and do not tell! No body forces any one. It is just an understood norm in Bollywood to keep every end happy for smooth sail to the top!

Perhaps as a result, it was considered a major scandal when Shakti Kapoor, a prominent actor, was caught on tape compromising a reporter posing as an aspiring actress.

Krishnamoorthi writes on her blog that the experience "scarred" her. But acknowledging the hierarchy of power and the fact that the system is very much in place is important - as is demonstrating that one can be a success without it.
I Experienced Casting Couch: Suchitra [Times of India]
www.suchitra.com.
Bollywood's Casting Couch [Bollyspice]
There Is No Casting Couch In Bollywood: Shakti Kapoor [Apunktachoice]
The Casting Couch [India Daily]

UPI summarizes the University of Minnesota study, which makes the point that the stereotype of sexual harassment focuses on women being manipulated by higher ups, but women supervisors seem to be bearing the brunt of the harassment:

Fifty percent of women supervisors, but one-third of women who do not supervise others, reported workplace sexual harassment, U.S. researchers said. "This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination," study primary investigator Heather McLaughlin of the University of Minnesota said in a statement. "Male co-workers, clients and supervisors seem to be using harassment as an equalizer against women in power."

In addition to this grim news, the study also includes more disturbing information about the second most prevalent type of harassment:

The sociologists found that, in addition to workplace power, gender expression was a strong predictor of workplace harassment. Men who reported higher levels of femininity were more likely to have experienced harassment than less feminine men. More feminine men were at a greater risk of experiencing more severe or multiple forms of sexual harassment (as were female supervisors).

In a separate analysis examining perceived and self-reported sexual orientation, study respondents who reported being labeled as non-heterosexual by others or who self-identified as non-heterosexual (gay, lesbian, bisexual, unsure, other) were nearly twice as likely to experience harassment.

Strangely enough, there just is not good advice for workers dealing with harassment in the workplace. Women already have to deal with the to-bitch-or-not-to-bitch conundrum, which holds that women supervisors are too emotional to lead and when they do show initiative are seen as overly aggressive or mean. Or, we are self-sabotaging ourselves by being too nice, while we are trying to distance ourselves from the bitch label.

Even Pink, the only magazine I am aware of that focuses specifically on women in business internalizes the criticism, admonishing women to "Polish Your Act: Does Your Management Style Need a Makeover?"

These types of articles don't attack the reasons behind harassment, only noting that it occurs and it is helpful to try to deal with it as best we can. Pink published another article, specifically dealing with harassment noting:

FORGET THE TIRADE. Rather than huff and holler when slapped with a discriminatory comment, take the high road in the moment. "My goal is to appeal to the reasonable people in the room and handle myself with class," says Theragenics CEO Christine Jacobs, who recently dealt with one inappropriate remark by remaining silent at the time but later reporting the behavior to the company's chairman. Other people complained as well and the offender was reprimanded.

EDUCATE WITH EMPATHY. When confronted with an inappropriate comment, calmly reply, "How would you feel if someone said that to your daughter?" That's what one former trade magazine editor wishes she had said when her boss jokingly suggested she lay across his lap during a photo shoot. "It shook my confidence," recalls the woman, who spoke on the condition of anonymity. "It was also revealing. I could never look at him the same way and believe he was truly championing me."

However, in the same article, an expert Pink quotes explains that men have problems seeing women outside of the realm of wives, mothers, and daughters. Would invoking the idea that men in the workplace should treat women in the way they would (hopefully) treat their daughters actually help associate women with the daughter/mother/wife roles we are trying to break out of?

The most straight forward advice about dealing with harassment comes from Penelope Trunk, who doesn't think you should report your harassment. She points out that human resources is going to try to protect the company, and most of these cases are very difficult to prove. She also warns career women about the threat of retaliation, and rightfully illustrates explaining that what you lose by taking a stand often outweighs what you gain. However, her ultimate solution leaves me cold. Trunk suggests leveraging the sexual harassment in your favor to move up the corporate ladder. But Trunk also makes the assumption that the harassment is tolerable, which may not be the case.

Ultimately, as long as sexual harassment has been a problem, I am amazed that the onus is always on women to change or adapt to the behavior. Where are the anti-harassment guides aimed at men? And where are the articles that advise men to stop using sexual intimidation to retaliate against successful women in the workplace?

Study: Sexual Harassment Not About Sex [UPI]
Female Supervisors More Susceptible To Workplace Sexual Harassment [Eureka Alert]
Polish Your Act [Pink]
Attitudes toward Women As Managers: Still The Same - Few Women Hold Executive Positions - Women In Business [BNET]
Women Managing Women - Problem Areas Women Leaders Encounter [Inc.]
Sweating The Small Stuff [Pink]
Don't Report Sexual Harassment (In Most Cases) [Brazen Careerist]

• In response to falling sales, drug company Merck & Co. is planning to push Gardasil as a back-to-school essential. • According to the first-ever large scale study of workplace power, gender, and sexual harassment, women supervisors are more likely to experience sexual harassment than women who did not hold managerial roles. "This study provides the strongest evidence to date supporting the theory that sexual harassment is less about sexual desire than about control and domination," said lead researcher Heather McLaughlin. • Although England's women's cricket team has won the World Cup and the World Twenty20, they are still less celebrated than the men's team. In order to turn things around, the English Cricket Board has hired the managing editor of Tatler to give the team a "makeover." • A man nicknamed "Prince" (real name: Allen Brown), has been accused of running a prostitution ring (which, weirdly, included both his mother and his niece). He reportedly confiscated the identification cards and cellphones of the women he had working for him, and demanded a nightly quota of $1,000. • Evelyn Coke, home care aide and advocate for fair pay, died on July 9th at the age of 74. • A recent study found that the children of Bangladeshi women who are victims of domestic violence have a higher risk of suffering from infections and diarrhea than those born to un-abused mothers. • Clinics in Australia have been cleared to prescribe RU486, the so-called "abortion pill," for pregnancies under nine weeks. Pro-choice advocates hope the increased availability of the drug will reduce the risk that women might seek out illegal drugs for abortion purposes. • In the past four decades, there has been a decline in the number of highly educated black women who chose to marry and have children. Hanna Brueckner, professor of sociology at Yale University, says that the gains women have made in higher education have "come increasingly at the cost of marriage and family." • Professor Bill Ledger from Sheffield University is urging all 30-year-old women to take a "fertility MoT test, even those who are not trying to conceive. • On Saturday, Liberia's deputy ambassador to the U.S. met with the 8-year-old rape victim from Arizona who made the news last month after her family refused to house her out of "shame." Edwin Sele said the girl cried heavily during the meeting, and asked to see her parents. • Catholic archbishop Denis Hart says he does not remember telling a woman abused by a priest to "go to hell, bitch" in 2004. "It was a number of years ago. I don't recall precisely," he said. • Depressing, but not surprising: The recession has screwed over pregnant woman, making it more difficult for them to take maternity leave. •

The situation: Padel and Walcott were both candidates for the prestigious position of Professor of Poetry at Oxford. Walcott, a 79-year-old poet born in St. Lucia, was the frontrunner, until members of the Oxford faculty received anonymous letters detailing past sexual harassment allegations against Walcott. Walcott stepped down, and Padel was chosen. Then The Sunday Times revealed that Padel had sent two journalists emails drawing their attention to the allegations. Now Padel has stepped down, saying, "I acted in complete good faith, and would have been happy to lose to Derek, but I can see that people might interpret my actions otherwise."

One of Padel's nominators, Professor of Philosophy A.C. Grayling, said,

It would have been really marvellous actually to have a women professor of poetry at Oxford, had it been a straightforward, clean fight. So it's deeply, deeply disappointing that things worked out this way and that this kind of scurrilous...campaign was run against Derek Walcott.

But it's also disappointing that any discussion of Walcott's history of sexual harassment — and he has admitted to propositioning one student — is now tainted by Padel's appearance of self-interest. Padel's involvement has sunk the issue into the realm of identity politics, leading Yasmin Alibhai-Brown of The Independent to compare the conflict between the two poets to "the fierce contest between race and gender represented by Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton." Like Clinton, Alibhai-Brown argues, Padel has come in for harsher criticism because of her sex:

the shockwaves set off by her emails suggests that ambitious women are not allowed to play hard. Men can and do use any weapons they have when battling against competitors, but not so the gentler sex. How many male professors across the land can honestly say they have always played fair to reach where they are?

And like Obama, "Walcott was judged by uniquely high standards and I do wonder if that was because of his race." But the fact that both Padel's emails and Walcott's harassment might have been excused if perpetrated by white men doesn't mean that either action is acceptable. Padel has made unbiased discussion of Walcott's misdeeds impossible by injecting her personal ambitions into the conflict. And these misdeeds themselves are hardly any less reprehensible because they are common. Alibhai-Brown writes,

When Walcott stood down, he must have felt he was being "punished" for something that is widespread in higher education, even today when universities have anti-harassment policies. When in Oxford in the early Seventies, we all knew who the letch tutors were, so too the obliging wenches who happily gave themselves to the lotharios. I walked into the office of my "moral tutor" to find him and a young woman certainly not engaged in matters of the mind. His large 18th-century desk was clearly good at multi-tasking.

If it's true that, as Alibhai-Brown says, this "tradition [...] is alive and well today," this is all the more reason why Oxford shouldn't be fostering it by honoring professors with records of harassment. Unfortunately, the debate over what Oxford should have done in this situation — and what it should do with future candidates who stand accused of similar infractions — is likely to fade amid arguments over Padel's motives.

Oxford Poet 'Sorry' Over Vote Row [BBC]
Oxford's First Female Professor of Poetry Resigns [New York Times]
Yasmin Alibhai-Brown: A Male Poet Wouldn't Have Been Blamed For Rough Tactics [The Independent]
[The Movement to Stop Derek Walcott's Election as Oxford Professor of Poetry] [The Suburban Ecstasies]
Walcott Set to Take Britain's Second-Highest Post in Poetry [The Suburban Ecstasies]
Derek Walcott - Possible Inaugural Poet [Suite101.com]

Allen is suing American Apparel for putting his picture on billboards in Los Angeles and New York City's Lower East Side back in 2007.

Image via Curbed LA

The image, a still from Annie Hall (from the scene where Allen, eating dinner with Annie's family in character as Alvy Singer, imagines himself through Annie's very Gentile grandmother's eyes — or, maybe, it's some combination of how he imagines the grandma sees him, and how he imagines himself at that moment). The Yiddish text, which, along with that prominent American Apparel logo, overlays the still, translates to "the holy rebbe."

The company didn't have the director's permission to associate his likeness with its brand, and now Allen wants $10 million in compensation.

So far, American Apparel's legal team, led by lawyer Stuart Slotnick, has focused its efforts entirely on attacking Allen's image. Slotnick said the director "devalued his reputation by becoming involved with his lover Mia Farrow's adopted daughter Soon-Yi Previn, whom he later married," and that therefore, his image on some billboards oughtn't be worth anything close to $10 million. Slotnick also requested, during the discovery period, the nude photos of Previn, taken by Allen, that Mia Farrow found when she discovered Allen had been sleeping with her daughter.

But! "Dov (and everyone else at the company) LOVES Woody Allen," says memorandum-writer "Iris", who is undoubtedly Iris Alonzo, a company creative director and Dov's assistant. Alonzo has modeled for the brand; there was a photo of Dov kissing her in reporter Claudine Ko's infamous Jane article (that was the one where Ko described Dov masturbating in front of her), and the only picture on Alonzo's profile on the company website looks like exactly what it is: her ass with a red handprint on it.

Back in 2005, Alonzo claimed in an American Apparel ad to be busy reading The Collapse Of The Common Good: How America's Lawsuit Culture Undermines Our Freedom by Philip K. Howard. Which must have been as formative as it was informative, for now, she wishes to share her insight into the real nature of the company's sticky situation with Allen.

"Some of you may know," Alonzo writes in the memo, "that the billboards with Woody Allen's picture, and the text 'Our Spiritual Leader' (that's what the Hebrew [sic] letters said) were intended to be a social statement and not an ad. We making [sic] a comparison between Woody Allen and Dov and the scene in Annie Hall where Alvi [sic] is judged by his girlfriend's grandmother. At the time, many people consumed [sic] with the sexual harassment lawsuits that we were facing, and through that experience, we saw firsthand what media scandal feels like and how quickly the truth gets lost."

The memo goes on to say the billboard "was in no way intended to sell clothing," and that the statements made by Slotnick, the company's lawyer, about Allen's compromised reputation "aren't inaccurate" (although Alonzo seems to mean to say that they are inaccurate, since she takes pains to point out Charney's deep and abiding respect for the director and his work — "For the 5 years that I've worked here, I can't tell you how many times I've been made to watch Annie Hall or Zelig or Hannah and Her Sisters again because Dov wanted me to see something amazing just 'one more time.' "). Alonzo also denies Slotnick tried to get the nude photos of Previn: "We did not request the nude photos of Soon Pi [sic] (Woody's wife) and I'm sorry if any of you were under that impression."

The memo wraps up, "for everyone not directly involved, I hope you can trust that we will adhere to the ethical principles that this company believes in." (Alonzo may display an almost touching innocence of conventional English spelling, punctuation and grammar, but she has a certain knack for comedy.)

So there we have it: American Apparel's grand counter-argument is a denial that gigantic billboards with the company's logo (and extensive use of the Allen billboard image online) do not constitute advertising, and that the lawyer in their employ doesn't actually speak for them. And what was supposed to be American Apparel's commentary on "how quickly the truth gets lost" when salacious sex cases make the headlines (by the way, Iris, those vintage 2007 sexual harassment lawsuits? Plenty are still ongoing!) ended up with the company trying those very smear tactics against Allen, because of salacious sex allegations. Which isn't just "ironic", it's actually ironic, if you think about it.

The case goes to court on May 18.

American Apparel LOVES Woody Allen, Internal Memo Explains All [Gothamist]

Related: Breaking: Woody Allen on Alvarado/Sunset [Curbed LA]
Woody Allen In Legal Battle With American Apparel [WCBS]
Iris [American Apparel]
Meet Your New Boss [From Jane, via OneAngryGirl, PDF]
American Apparel Plays Hide The Quarter [The Spunker]