Jezebel: tampa

Uh-Oh: Double Trouble

Dodai — Tue, 25 Nov 2008 16:10:00 EST

Two baby white tigers made their public debut at Tampa’s Lowry Park Zoo today.
Image via Chris Boex/MyFox Tampa Bay.

Click here for video!

(Thanks to MJ for the tip.)

Obama Wins!!

Megan — Tue, 04 Nov 2008 23:59:31 EST

Tonight, Barack Obama became the first African-American man to win the Presidency of the United States. There are many, many things that we could say about this, and we will, but sometimes, pictures are really worth 1,000 words. And so a gallery of celebration can be found after the jump.

Christine King Farris, sister of civil-rights leader Martin Luther King Jr., center, is mobbed after a cable news channel projected Democratic presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama as the winner during an election-night party at Ebenezer Baptist Church in Atlanta, Tuesday, Nov. 4, 2008. (AP Photo/John Bazemore)

Dear MILFs: Shagging Your Students Is Still A Crime

Dodai — Mon, 31 Mar 2008 13:30:00 EDT

Three female teachers were recently arrested for allegedly having sex with their students in completely unrelated cases. (They were all, coincidentally, located in the Tampa Bay area.) Stephanie Raguza, 28, is accused of having sex with a 14-year-old boy in her apartment and in the back seat of her Lexus. Mary Jo Spack, 45, is charged with having sex with a 17-year-old male student in a motel room where she and the guy's friends had been drinking together. And Lisa Marinelli. 40, allegedly had sex with a 17-year-old boy on 10 different occasions — mostly in her car. But are women who prey upon young males taken as seriously as men who have sex with underaged girls? Newsweek reports that some guys have a "high five" attitude about the cases: Banging the teacher is a well-established male fantasy. Val Halen wrote a song about it.

While morning radio is not exactly a bastion of morality, The Buckethead Show on a rock radio station has established a "school pool" — listeners win prizes for correctly guessing the site of the next sex scandal. The contest is promoted with the slogan: "We'll give you the cash for new school supplies and maybe some 'private tutoring' of your own ;-) ." Would a radio station ever get away with mocking a cases in which female students were the victims?

Among the evidence that resulted in the arrest of Ms. Marinelli were text messages to her victim. One read "How about a quickie 2 morrow afternoon :-)?" while another stated, "Ur car looks awesome! Al u need is a hot milf sittin next u and ud really b in business." Not appropriate communication between teacher and student, to be sure, and not just because "ur" ≠ "your." But honestly: Is it as creepy as if a 40-year-old man were writing to a 17-year-old cheerleader?

It's easy to think of situations where a 17-year-old dude would be psyched to get laid by an older woman. The term MILF and the plot of movies like Loverboy sum up the general thinking when it comes to the sexual psyche of teenage males. Gordon Finley, a psychologist and professor at Florida International University says, "Female sex predation is not a victimless crime. It is male victimization. They suffer to some degree the same consequences as female victims." But do we really believe it? Are these women — teachers who have overstepped extremely clear boundaries — taken seriously as criminals? And are the boys taken seriously as victims?

School Sex Scandals [Newsweek]

Label Whores Head To Tampa

Jennifer — Tue, 29 May 2007 13:21:01 EDT

When we heard that Jezebel's Jennifer Gerson was heading off to Tampa for the Memorial Day weekend, we couldn't resist the opportunity to ask her to take her faux designer clothes with her and see what the good people of Florida would say about her wares. We'd desperately hoped that Floridians would disprove the snobbishness that ran rampant among the East Village shopkeepers during Jennifer's outing in NYC's East Village the previous week. And, in a way, they - er, she - did. The details on what went down after the jump.

Above: Club Monaco skirt (left); Club Monaco sweater (right).

The Labels: Isaac Mizrahi; Calvin Klein; Donna Karan; Richard Tyler.

The Clothes: H&M buffalo plaid cotton/polyester dress ($39.99); Club Monaco linen sweater ($99); Club Monaco cotton skirt ($129); Club Monaco cotton/spandex jacket ($199).

The Shop: Traige Consignment
Triage Consignment Showcase — a shop our relatives swear up and down is the nicest designer consignment store in town — raises our suspicions when we spot a rack of clothes devoted solely to Jones New York. We hand our bag of clothes to the girl behind the counter who informs us that she seriously doubts we're going to do very well with the pieces and encourages us to go home and try to, um, find a pair of Gap jeans to add to the mix. "It's all about brands here," she told us, "and I know this one is sorta a good brand [the fake Calvin Klein sweater] but the rest really aren't." She offers us $18 for the sweater, $20 for the dress ("And that's me doing you a favor. This dress is SO out of style. It's really old. No one is wearing anything like this now") $15 for the skirt (which also, apparently, looked "old"), and $12 for the jacket ("I've never even heard of this — I don't think it's a very good brand").

The Final Tally:

H&M dress (original price, $39.99) masquerading as Isaac Mizrahi: $20 offer
Club Monaco jacket (original price, $199) masquerading as Richard Tyler: $12 offer
Club Monaco skirt (original price, $129) masquerading as Donna Karan: $15 offer
Club Monaco sweater (original price $99) masquerading as Calvin Klein: $18 offer

Earlier: Label Whores Hit The East Village