I don't know the circumstances, but a little boy was acting up and his mother spanked him outside the dining room. Well, this was not the place to do that. Within an instant, the mother was surrounded by irate grandmas literally screaming at her. Someone grabbed the child. Someone else called shrilly for social services. And one woman in a nut-brown wig delivered a scathing lecture in which the words "unfit to be a mother" figured prominently.

Now, obviously, watching a child be dealt with with unnecessary harshness is horrible, and seeing the sweetness getting yelled or hit out of a blameless child by an angry parent is one of the most upsetting sights in the world. And when you see that, you understand things like the "spanking ban" that Sweden's had in place for 30 years. There's a really interesting piece on NPR that takes on the issue. It's arguably changed that country's child-rearing culture - but some feel it's overly indulgent. And others simply feel it's nobody's business - and that there's a wide margin between a spank and abuse.

I came from the kind of home where corporal punishment was tantamount to eating fast food - unthinkable! But some of this, I'm sure, was the influence of the times and a deliberate distancing from their parents' generation (at least, on my mom's side.) And yet, plenty of my friends grew up in more traditional setups and don't feel the occasional spank did them any harm. To most of us, there seems to be a wide margin between true abuse and the little boy I babysat whose mother "never wanted him to hear the word 'no' and who has now been kicked out of his school for bad behavior. Now, there are concrete arguments for the legislation: it's been suggested that spanking can be a gateway to more serious abuse, and effect children's cognitive and emotional development. And if either of these things can be prevented in a world where we can't prevent much, obviously, they should.

But in American it's never that simple. The issue is largely cultural, as the Catskills incident shows, and in America, that kind of legislation would have to but up against a myriad of backgrounds and mores. I'm anticipating hearing a wide range of perspectives here, from mothers as well as those of differing backgrounds, and I want to. Because the issue becomes: what is abuse? Is it in the intent? Is it in neglect? And by this logic can harmful indulgence be considered punishable, too? Yes, I'm playing devil's advocate here, but it's an issue that, in its complexity, demands that.

A Spanking Ban In The U.S.? [NPR]
Related: Study: Spanking Worse For Kids Than Yelling

"A Strong Natural Tendency To Escalate": How Mild Spanking Can Lead To Child Abuse

• Get your resumes ready: A tourist attraction in Britain is offering a salary of £50,000 for a knowledgeable witch. Duties include: teaching tourists about witchcraft and magic, hexing competing businesses, and pain-free wart removal. • Elderly Swedes may soon have the option to live in a gay-friendly nursing home. Plans have been in the works for ten years for a home that would advertise their welcoming attitude and accept all residents, gay or straight. • Same sex couples in Australia have won a legislative victory, with Law and Justice Committee in the New South Wales Parliament issuing a recommendation to change the law and force most adoption providers to allow adoption agencies to judge based on parental suitability and not sexual orientation. • D.C.'s new law recognizing same sex marriages performed in other jurisdictions went into effect today. Councilman David Catania plans to draft a bill to allow the city to perform same sex marriages but, given that Congress has 30 days to disapprove any law D.C. passes, its changes are uncertain. • The Viinzs Aviation Training Institute is now offering courses to Kashmiri women looking for upward mobility in careers like aviation. • Sad news: Oscar Mayer, the grandson of company founder Oscar F. Mayer, died today at the age of 95. • England has abandoned a £5.9m project to reduce teen pregnancies after figuring out that the program made girls more likely to become pregnant. "This pilot was based on a successful American programme. It didn't appear to reduce teenage pregnancy so we will not be taking it any further," said a spokeswoman from the Department of Health. •  A new report by the Guttmacher Institute shows that the United States' restrictions on Medicaid funding for abortion (i.e., the Hyde Amendment) forces 1 in 4 poor women to carry unwanted pregnancies to term. Conservatives have responded that that's the point. • One in four women in America who has an abortion has a medical abortion rather than a surgical one. • Police in Germany received a call on Wednesday about a badger believed to be lying dead in the middle of the road. It turns out that the badger was alive, but not quite well: he had gotten extremely drunk off fermented cherries, which gave him a bad case of the runs. Police eventually chased the non-responsive animal from the road with a broom. • The UN High Commissioner on Human Rights and the UN's Assistance Mission in Afghanistan issued a report on the culture of impunity in Afghanistan that results in further violence against women. •

The anonymous blogger says that while the quantity and "quality" of call girls has not changed, there seems to be higher price elasticity of demand — i.e. the more a call girl charges, the fewer clients she can expect. The post continues:

On the Eros guide (warning contains explicit content), the central clearing house of escort services in the New York area (of course, I only visited the Eros cite to research my forthcoming article on the subject), some of the "VIP" providers are offering "Wall Street adjusted courtesy rates". A non trivial number of the women also claim to be formerly employed in the "financial services industry".

Behind the blogger's I'm-so-naughty gags (he [or, to be fair, she] also writes that "there may be some guilt-ridden bankers in New York looking to get spanked") is the interesting observation that more people may enter sex work during a recession. These are usually people who were "already on the fringe of the industry" — the blogger cites a one-time kept man who became a rent boy when the economic crisis drove his benefactor out of town.

But talking about prostitutes like they're sacks of sugar — with supply, demand, and price elasticity — ignores larger questions about the social position of sex work. Swedish academic Susanne Dodillet had such questions when doing her comparison of Swedish and German prostitution laws. Germany recently legalized brothels and made prostitutes eligible for all the benefits of other skilled workers. Sweden, meanwhile, passed a 1999 describing prostitution "as an unacceptable expression of society's genderised power structures." Dodillet says Swedes are more trusting of their government to provide moral guidance, while Germans remember the Third Reich. She also writes,

While Swedish prostitution policies are based on a normative view of how equality should manifest itself for women and men, the German left emphasises that there is a large range of sexual identities and modes of expression. According to this way of thinking, selecting some as more equal and thereby superior to others entails discriminating against deviants.

Will a recession make us more accepting of prostitution as more people enter the industry? Will greater trust in our government after the departure of Bush II actually pave the way for stricter prostitution laws? Or are we just going to keep treating sex work with a combination of tacit acceptance and occasional persecution? Unfortunately, history suggests the latter.

Sex workers in the recession [Economist]
Is Sex Work? [EurekAlert]

The new Economist takes a look at the different reactions of Europeans to the problems of sex work regulation and trafficking and found that no one has a great solution.

In the Netherlands, they legalized brothels in order to attempt to eliminate trafficking and the participation of organized crime — an effect that has yet to be seen in the last eight years. Since women have to work in brothels, they remain subject to exploitation by management. Around the same time, Sweden decriminalized selling sex but criminalized buying it; the country saw a reduction in the numbers of street prostitutes, but sex workers now have a more difficult time vetting clients and clients supposedly aren't willing to report suspected trafficking and are heading overseas to get their paid freak on. All over Europe, countries are tightening their laws, criminalizing the buying of sex and, as we reported earlier, England is even on the verge of making it a separate offense to engage in sex with a woman who it later turns out was trafficked.

The only country with as liberal laws on sex work as those Prop K is proposing is New Zealand — in 2003, the country decriminalized prostitution altogether (although without the bit on trafficking and racial profiling). Since then, police report that the number of sex workers appear to be constant and

More than 60% of prostitutes felt they had more power to refuse clients than they did before. The report reckoned that only about 1% of women in the business were under the legal age of 18. And only 4% said they had been pressured into working by someone else.

One of the major differences between the Dutch (and Nevada) experience and the New Zealand one — other than that its isolation appears to mean that trafficking is less of a problem — is that, in New Zealand, most sex workers own their own businesses, so to speak, and that the law is not only designed to encourage sex worker entrepreneurship but, additionally, bans pimping. Another big difference between the New Zealand law and the San Francisco proposal is that the New Zealand law codifies a series of occupation health and safety standards, such as a requirement that condoms (and other barrier methods) be used, a requirement of sex education for all sex workers and a requirement of regular testing and training. It also allows that sex workers can claim worker's comp if they're injured on the job or contract an STI. None of these things are part of the San Francisco proposal, which seems like a bad idea.

All of this is to say that it's a thorny problem with no simple solutions but — as with health care and the financial system — maybe rapid and unmonitored deregulation of sex work in San Francisco isn't going to be the boon to sex workers there that Prop K proponents hope, or the anaethma to moral values and law enforcement that opponents fear.

Prop K Calls For Decriminalizing Prostitution In San Francisco [SF Chronicle]
Regulating The Sex Trade [The Economist]

Earlier: UK Suggests That Men Who Patronize Trafficked Prostitutes Be Prosecuted

Related: A Guide To Occupational Health And Safety In The New Zealand Sex Industry [New Zealand Occupational Safety & Health Service]
Brazil's Government Gives Tips To Prostitutes [Forbes]

• U.S. researchers announced on Saturday that an "aggressive effort" to vaccinate older women against cervical cancer would help lower cancer rates dramatically. • A recent study found that women with disabilities are more likely to report some form of domestic violence than women without them. • An elderly Chinese couple got married after they met each other online. • HBO has created a licensing agreement with Vesuvio Import Company to create Sopranos Wine, a line of Italian wines ranging from $11.99 to $29.99. • Emo animals' hair is everywhere. • Australian researchers say that playing the trumpet, eye rubbing, sleeping face down and doing yoga headstands can lead to pressure spikes in eyes which can become eye risks for people with short-sightedness and glaucoma. • The Trade and Ethical Council Against Sexism in Advertising in Sweden has condemned Lego for promoting gender stereotypes in its catalog. • Meanwhile, a British man who is obsessed with Legos recently got engaged. He says he "never thought he'd find a girl [he loves] as much as Lego." • A new survey has found that the birth control pill remains to most popular form of contraception for women in England. • About 30% of women experience some hair loss in their lifetime but they should steer clear of Propecia, which works on testosterone and has not been tested for women. • Suzan-Lori Parks, author of Topdog/Underdog, will become the first playwright to fill the Public Theater's Master Writer Chair since the position was launched three years ago.•

[Image via Linkinn.]

• Designer Miuccia Prada has broken her longstanding ban on black models in fashion shows! At the label's Milan show last night, British model Jourdan Dunn walked the runway and showed those white girls a thing or two. [Oh No They Didn't]
  
• At the Missoni party in Milan on Sunday night, model Irina Lazareanu reported that she was wearing, "Zac Posen pants and my boyfriend Pete's jacket; it's his old school jacket from cricket and I took it because I think it suits me better." Yes, that's Pete Doherty she's talking about. [Fashion Week Daily]
  
• London's Telegraph's fashion critic Hilary Alexander on PETA protesters outside the Burberry show on Monday: "I I have no use for that kind of nonsense!" [Chic Report]
  
• Just what your toddler needs: A T-shirt with Agyness Deyn's face on it! [Nylon]
  
• Agyness has also been molded into a mannequin. [Telegraph]

• Though Marc Jacobs has finally gotten back into fashion critic Suzy Menkes' good graces, he's since managed to piss off the entire country of Sweden: officials claim he ripped off an iconographic, historic design of the country's in a new scarf design. [UPI]
• Start petitioning Denton to send us all to Dubai so we can partake in the first-ever Cavalli Club. Yes, as in Roberto Cavalli. [WWD, sub req'd]
• No shit: Skinny models still dominate the runways. [Times of London]
• Versace sales are up by 7.7%: Brava, Donatella. [WWD, sub req'd]
• Sales of Italian shoes: also up, which is pretty impressive considering the exchange rate isn't helping them here. Russians and trade legislation are to thank. [IHT]
• Or, um, well... things made in Italy? Often made in China. [LATimes]
• Black lipstick is turning up everywhere on the runways. Maybe because it is such a pleasing and flattering look! [BellaSugar]
• Shakira, the beauty line. [Sassybella]
• Unintentionally salient quote from a fashion person of the day: "Women inspire me and I inspire them to be independent and free which is how I feel when I use my American Express Card." —Diane von Furstenberg. [Vogue UK]

1) Ride a bike. It instantly gives you that gamine look, and brings a healthy flush to your cheeks to boot. And oh yeah, maybe it'll help with that little weight-problem even the tall and normally-svelte Swedes are said to suffer from.

2) Slip on your shades — you'll keep your cool and your air of innocence.

3) Scarves! Scarves! Scarves! And did we mention... scarves?

How Swede It Is [Style.com]