Calm down, I'm not advocating incest. I'm merely suggesting that some of the same identity-obscuring, affect-flattening nostrums found in modern dating guides can be useful when interacting with Grandma, Uncle Ted, and that one cousin who always wants to talk about guns. Sure, you could watch the 1950 short "A Date With Your Family" (above) to learn about how it's your duty to dress attractively for your male relatives (ew?). But for more up-to-date advice, check out the following tips:

1. Don't talk about yourself too much.

Personal information — like your political views, religious beliefs, or the fact that your name is not actually "Becky" — shouldn't be revealed until the second or third date with your family. Or better yet, not at all. You know the old rule about letting a man talk two-thirds of the time, while you talk one-third? This works well for your family, too, except that the two-thirds portion should be filled by the television.

2. Don't try to cook anything new or complicated.

You know how the way to a man's heart is through a simple yet delicious man-brisket? Families have similarly conservative tastes. This Thanksgiving, my mom made a pie with whole-wheat crust. Three aunts and six cousins broke up with her right away. Don't let this be you.

3. Just agree with everything anyone says.

Many great relationships have ended because of superfluous opinions on the part of the woman — and these opinions can be just as damaging to a family gathering. Instead of saying what you actually think, simply smile and nod, or at most say, "Interesting!" Will it really kill you to pretend you don't believe in the moon landing? No, it won't.

4. Choose inoffensive entertainment.

People have different tastes, and as a woman, your job is to satisfy all of them. Just like a romantic date, an evening with your family isn't about what you want to do — it's about what's least likely to piss off someone else. Family-friendly films include Miss Congeniality, Miss Congeniality 2: Armed & Fabulous, and any biopic that does not involve drugs. Family-friendly music includes nothing.

5. Don't talk about healthcare reform.

This one should just be obvious.

These tips may seem difficult to follow, but over years of subsuming your true thoughts and feelings, they will become second nature. And once you've mastered them, you too can land a family who loves you for who you pretend to be.

Hand Turkey FAQ

Q: What is a hand turkey?
A: An adorable craft made by American schoolchildren — and you!
Q: How do I make one?
A: Click the "full size" link, print the image (you might have to copy and paste into your favorite graphics program), cut it out, and glue or tape to a section of toilet paper roll. Use to decorate the dinner table this afternoon!
Q: What's special about these hand turkeys?
A: They are inspired by some of the year's biggest "turkeys" — public figures I felt should be immortalized in gobbling-bird form.
Q: Why don't the people have any arms? And why are there fingers sticking up out of their backs?
A: It's been a long time since I made a hand turkey, okay? Shut up.
Q: Why is the Alaskan flag green?
A: Seriously, shut up.

Sarah Palin

Jon Gosselin

Tucker Max

Carrie Prejean

Happy Thanksgiving!

Ok!
"Oops, I Did It Again!"
Justin Trawick was tucking in Britney's boys when Sean blurted out, "Good night, daddy!" Britney's heart "simply melted," says a source. It was then that she realized how good a father and husband he would be! Britney wants a "real" wedding this time — the white dress and the wedding cake — but she doesn't want it to be a spectacle, says a "friend." The mag says Britney and Jason will wed on the beach in Costa Rica, Hawaii, Mexico or Australia, which really narrows it down! Brit will fly in 200 guests, including Madonna, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan. Also, Britney is hoping "Jason can give her something else she's never had: A baby girl." Next: A source says that Jennifer Aniston will only date guys who are approved by her close friends, and she has rules: He has to be over 40, never married, no children, not a player, not a musician and not an actor. Producers are ok, as are writers and directors. But he has to be financially stable and emotionally stable. Finally: Robert Pattinson has a Christmas "surprise" for Kristen Stewart: He's planning a secret getaway to a cottage in the English countryside; then they'll spend Christmas in London with his parents.
Grade: F (stress fracture)

In Touch
"Katie Moves Out."
Katie's been telling Tom that she needs her space, but he keeps showing up to the set of The Romantics on Long Island. They had a fight in her trailer, and she said she's had it with his domineering ways and can no longer relate to his movie-star lifestyle. (?!?!) She's decided to stay in New York alone after the movie wraps. Tom was furious — they'd talked about purchasing a home in NY but Tom had never considered the idea of Katie living there alone. Katie's "embracing" their differences by shopping at the Gap instead of the designer boutiques her husband prefers — and hanging out with her parents, who don't like Tom. Two awesomely ridiculous sidebars: "Does Katie Have The Dawson's Creek Love Curse?" and "Tom's Exes Have Broken Free." (See image 7.) Moving on: "Celebrity Cellulite Wars" alleges that Rihanna and Beyoncé are "constantly pitted against each other." Now Beyoncé is "getting her revenge" because Rihanna "has embarrassing cellulite" while Beyoncé is "smooth and sexy." The copy declares: "Rihanna was spotted with lumpy thighs. It's been a rough year all around." Angelina Jolie is "ruining the holidays" by informing Brad that she plans on taking their six children to Vietnam. The accompanying caption reads, "No yams in Ho Chi Min city." Sob! Angie says she won't go to Brad's parents' house in Missouri because they don't get along. Brad's mom is "always telling Angie that the kids should be in school, and have a routine, and that they look messy." Also, when he's with his parents, Brad gets lazy — he lets them take care of the kids and "just sits around drinking beer." Brad and Angie had a fight about all this stuff, so he packed his bags and headed for the chateau in France, but as soon as he got there, Angie called and begged him to come home, "confused and trapped in a dysfunctional cycle of fighting viciously and making up, he agreed," an insider says. Next: A two-page story breaks down John Mayer's lyrics from his new album to illustrate how he's dissing Jessica and Jen. The song "Half Of My Heart" is about how John only loved Jessica with half of his heart — the part that liked her hot body! In Nicole Richie news, she has pneumonia, but hasn't been feeling great since she gave birth to Sparrow, is having a tough time handling two kids, fainted once and is too thin. "Their Real Bodies Revealed" features the freaky physical problems of the stars: Megan's "clubbed" thumbs! Denzel Washington's crooked pinky! Etc. (See image 8.) Finally, the best part of this magazine was a picture of Willow, an English terrier mix, reading My Son Marshall, My Son Eminem, a book by the rapper's mother. (See image 9.)
Grade: D- (plantar fasciitis)

Us
"Stuck On Mr. Wrong."
So basically Jennifer Aniston "can't let go" of John Mayer — there's something about him she can't resist. But John is "still in love with" Jessica Simpson. "He can't get over her — all of his friends don't get it." This despite the fact that John used to make fun of Jess — putting the phone down when she'd call and walking away while she rambled. When it comes to the ladies, John has system: "He charms them for weeks over e-mail, impresses with his intellect, and seals the deal with his prowess in bed." Jessica loved how John would educate her about music and life, and would listen like love-struck schoolgirl." Moving right along: Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes were at dinner party, when Tom turned to Katie and asked, "Where did you go to college? You went to Columbia, right?" Katie had to say: "I got into Columbia but I never went." Awkward! Ashlee Simpson spent over $20,00 on Pete Wentz's credit card and acted like it was nothing; "he's over it." Robert Pattinson has "secret demons" — Margaret thought he maybe killed a man or something, but no: "He's so unhappy," a source says. "He's grateful for the success, but it'd be great if he could just walk away from it all now. He feels completely trapped!" Lastly: Celebrities with shaggy bangs are clearly inspired by canines. (See image 10.)
Grade: D- (bunions)

Star
"48 Best And Worst Holiday Beach Bodies"
What's the difference between a regular beach body and a holiday beach body? Guess Star is hoping Americans waiting in airports and train stations this weekend want to know. There are 17 pages of male and female celebrities in swimwear. FYI: America Ferrera has "killer curves" and Jennifer Lopez has a "big red caboose." Kelly Bensimon has "patches of crepey skin" and Ryan Seacrest has a "jelly belly." Moving on: Joanna Krupa changed her implants, says a plastic surgeon who doesn't treat her (See image 11.) Taylor Lautner gave Taylor Swift a $200 sterling silver heart "commitment" ring from Tiffany. Blind item! "Which sexy celebrity chef was overheard bragging loudly about her fling with a famous singer? The crooner's known for lovin' and leavin', but she has a clueless husband. Burn!" Snoop Dogg almost didn't ring the bell at the NYSE — he slept through his alarm! Britney's kids drew all over the walls of her home, causing thousands of dollars in damage, but instead of teaching them to draw on paper, she put up plain wallpaper and let them go at it, because she wants them to explore their creativity. "Inside Jen & John's Twisted Romance" alleges that Jennifer Aniston planned her trip to Cabo for the two of them — but John Mayer never showed up. In October, she flew to NYC to visit him, only to have him ignore her calls for 3 days. "She was just waiting in her hotel room," an insider says. Then she flew home broken-hearted. "One minute he'll tell her he's not feeling in, and then the same night, he'll drunk dial her, telling her she's the love of his life. He tells her they're star-crossed lovers, and their romance is like a Greek tragedy." Who gets to poke out their eyes? Once Jen found a lacy thong in his bedroom, but John said it was hers. They argued about it, a source says, and "finally she gave up and said it might actually be hers — it's as if he has the power to brainwash her." And "After he flaked out on her in Mexico, she started emailing him photos of herself in a bikini and writing stupid stuff in the subject line, like "2 good 4 u." Next: Beyoncé and Jay-Z have been "working overtime" to conceive a child but have not had any luck, and Beyoncé is heartbroken. Shauna Sand says Chace Crawford was her "teen lover." She's 14 years older and says four years ago when he was 18, they had a "steamy, sex-filled romance." He was a virgin when they met and the first night he came over, she checked his ID to make sure he was really 18. When they first started hooking up, she had to show him a thing or two, but by the end, they were having "wild" sex with whipped cream and so on. Is Tiger Woods cheating on his wife with someone named Rachel Uchitel? They met in May and have been sexting. Allegedly. Teresa Guidice from RHONJ was filming a guest spot on Mercy and could barely remember her lines and kept cursing. When someone asked if she was the housewife who flipped a table, she said: "Don't effing bring that up." Carey Mulligan's best friend Keira Knightley has become a "La Beouf-blocker." Carey told Shia that Keira warned her that he's a player, which enraged Shia, because he's really genuine. Finally: Nicole Richie is in talks to star with Joel Madden on an at-home talk show where Nicole's famous friends pop by to be interviewed by the couple. She's turned down roles because she doesn't want to be away from her kids, but this way, she'd work from home.
Grade: D (corns)

Life & Style
"It's On!"
The editors of this magazine got a draft of the script for The Tourist, a new flick that Angelina Jolie and Johnny Depp have signed on for. And there are sexy scenes! For instance: "The outline of her naked body is visible in the shower," the script teases. "Frank walks to the shower and opens the glass door. Walking in, he lifts Kara against the glass, clutching at her slithery body, kissing her frantically. She kisses him back with ardor, wrapping her dripping legs around his back." Since Angie has hooked up with costars before (Jenny Shimuzu, Jonny Lee Miller, Billy Bob Thornton, maybe Colin Farrell, definitely Brad Pitt), and they're both Geminis, it is clear that they MUST fuck while filming. There's a great sidebar about how Angie and Johnny have so much in common: They both love France! Their kids love Pirates! (See .) Next: Janet Jackson has talked to ABC's Robin Roberts why she gained 60 lbs: "There are people that — if there's something that's stressful, whatever it may be, they don't eat. I'm the opposite." She discusses this in her upcoming book True You, which will be released in 2010. She told Robin: "It was originally about weight loss, but I wanted it to be more about my triggers. [My emotional eating] started when I was very little. My brothers were gone on tour a lot, and I would miss them so much. I wish I had a book like this when I was that young." Moving on, Lindsay Lohan is in counseling. She goes two or three times a week, and it's not a program or substance abuse thing, or a police officer watching her. It's someone to talk to in a confidential setting. A friend says: "Her problems are all about Daddy. If Lindsay had a stable dad, none of this would be happening." And this is an actual sentence in the magazine:

"Is seeing a therapist twice a week enough? All I can say is maybe," says Marc F. Kern, an addiction specialist in Beverly Hills who doesn't treat Lindsay.

In a sidebar, we learn that Lindsay posed for pictures for an upcoming issue of the French magazine Purple in which she's topless and simulating a threesome with a male model and a female model — the guy is lying on top of her. Is it a ploy to make Sam Ronson jealous? America's Next Top Model Nicole Fox says: "If there is any opportunity for me to model — I'll take the job." Lastly: Check out these weird courtroom sketches of Nicole RIchie, Amy Winehouse and Paris Hilton. (See image 13.)
Grade: D+ (callouses)

From In Touch

From In Touch

From In Touch

From Us

From Star

From Life & Style

From Life & Style

As some commenters pointed out, Grey's words in Newsweek, though unfairly slammed by Kathryn Jean Lopez, were actually kind of annoying. In response to the Mark Sanford scandal, she wrote,

Americans act so shocked when they hear about politicians, celebrities, and athletes having affairs, but I have to believe that many women who are married to men with power are aware of affairs, and accept it. Don't ask, don't tell; as long as they receive something in exchange from their husband-whether that exchange be children, money, material items, or sex. We create our own morals. It's once the affair goes public that morals change. The wife feels shame and humiliation because of public awareness, yet felt no desire to speak out prior. [...] Ideally, we should all openly have something extra on the side.

Commenter Old Jean Gallagher called this response "shockingly victim-blaming," which is pretty accurate. Grey criticizes political wives for making a public stink about their husbands' cheating, and sort of implies that they are all violating some previously agreed-upon quid pro quo. But while we may "create our own morals," when we're in relationships we need to agree on some of them, and it's unlikely that all wives of powerful men agree, even tacitly, to infidelity. As to her suggestion that we should all have something on the side, that's just as prescriptive as saying we should all be monogamous.

Grey seems much more thoughtful in her Dazed Digital interview with John-Paul Pryor. Pryor asks, "Do you think without prostitution and pornography there would be more instances of rape and so on? Or do you think that they actually allow for an arena where those kinds of abuses can take place?" The idea that porn and prostitutes act as a safety valve for men's natural desire to rape isn't new, but it is offensive — luckily, Grey handles it pretty well:

I think it depends. You have women on the street who are obviously being abused and they have pimps, I mean all you have to do is watch a few documentaries to see what that's like and how raw it is. That just perpetuates the negative stereotypes of prostitution, or pimping, or the johns. And then you have the women like Christine – they are like call girls, and they might not have a pimp; they are doing it on their own. I don't think that those necessarily perpetuate the abuse and the violence, but in the same vein, I don't think they help stop it at all. But the guys who are paying for the higher echelons don't beat the girls up – well, that's generally speaking from the research we did, maybe some politicians are going to go out there and beat some girls up, I don't know.

She makes the streetwalker-versus-call girl distinction that's been so much in the news lately, but she's careful to qualify it. She recognizes that just because she hasn't heard of violence against call girls doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Here's Grey on sex and communication:

Well, I just think it's 2009 and we're still so afraid to talk about sex. I think ignorance breeds fear and vice versa and the less you know the more negative things can happen, such as teenage pregnancy or the skyrocketing rate of STDs in young adults. It is about sexual freedom but it's about more than that, it's about communication and talking and learning. I think people are so afraid to do that; people are afraid of the truth – we'd rather hide inside a bubble.

And on acting:

I think the technical aspects and the people and the crews are all very similar but as far as performances go, I really hate it when people say, ‘Oh this is reality porn!" No. Because any time you put a camera in front of anybody, even if they have never been in front of a camera, they are going to act differently. For me, pornography is performing – it is what it is and I am an extension of myself, I am hyper me, whereas in a film like this, I am doing character research and I am stepping into the shoes of someone else, and I am thinking about my mannerisms.

It's nice to hear someone point out that pornography isn't real without denigrating it — Grey's words remind us that we can enjoy porn as a performance without expecting our actual sex lives to mimic it. Throughout the interview, she comes off as smart and appreciative of nuance — Kathryn Jean Lopez is missing out by dismissing her. However, Grey's also only 21 years old. While in most of the interview she sounds very mature and articulate, she occasionally makes statements like this one: "Before Christianity and Catholicism took over most people were in poly-amorous relationships."

I don't have the entire sexual history of the pre-Christian world at my fingertips, but I do know a little bit about Greece and Rome in the centuries immediately BCE, and I know that while upperclass men there often did have sex with multiple partners, the lives of their wives were pretty rigidly circumscribed. Of course, this doesn't mean women never had "something on the side," and it's frankly a little hard to tell who was screwing who thousands of years ago, especially among groups that didn't leave written records. But men were trying to control women's sexual behavior long before Christ, and the idea of a polyamorous pre-Christian golden age doesn't really hold water.

Maybe it's ageist of me to chalk up some of Grey's more sweeping statements to the fact that she's barely old enough to buy booze. I'm a half-decade older, and while I bet I could beat her in an ancient-history trivia contest, I may not actually know more about relationships. K. Lo's apparently 33, but being old enough to run for Senate hasn't taught her not to judge other people's personal choices. Grey can be judgmental too, but even in her short and very public life, she's managed to learn the value of "communication and talking and learning." A 21-year-old could do a lot worse.

Sasha Grey / The Girlfriend Experience [Dazed Digital]

Related: Governor Sanford's Appalachian Adventure

Earlier: Newsweek Too Hot For National Review Writer

Wine Cake.

Now, I'm a decent cook. I delight in multi-day recipes and serious desserts, can whip up a 30-pound turkey and am the designated gravy-meister at my house. I pore over cookbooks and this year's variations like everybody else and can debate brining and what to do if, against Cook's Illustrated's explicit instructions, you absolutely insist on stuffing your turkey (bring it to some absurd temperature in the microwave first, of course.) And I'm not saying wine cake is what you want to make for your FCI entrance exam, or even for snootie foodies. But in all other cases, Wine Cake is a sort of O-positive of desserts.

My grandmother was the worst cook you'll ever meet - her cooking was a combination of passive-aggression and performance art and rotten ingredients and to be avoided whenever possible. The one exception was Wine Cake, which goes to show that it's fool-proof. Wine Cake is the traditional birthday cake on that side of the family, a tradition I've continued. It's one of those objectively revolting, 1950s-style recipes that makes no bones about its chemical antecedents and becomes more unfashionable every year. In a bid for respectability, I once worked out an all-natural version, but it just made me miss the original. Friends of mine have brought Wine Cake to feuding families and CIA picnics and block parties, and it's always a hit. Anyone can make it. So, without further ado, I give you:

Sherry Wine Cake

1 box yellow cake mix (I like Moist Deluxe, but grandma always used generic, so.)
1 lg. regular vanilla pudding (or just use 2 small)
1 c. oil
3/4 c. sherry wine (cheap, please)
5 eggs

Preheat oven to 350
Mix everything. Bake in a buttered-and-floured bundt pan for about 50 minutes, until the proverbial tester comes out clean.

Glaze:
1 cup powdered (confectioner's) sugar
1/2 cup sherry, or less. The point is, you want a quite liquid glaze.

Now, here is the crucial part. Without unmolding the hot cake, poke the exposed top - really the bottom! - all over, and I do mean all over, with a skewer, a chopstick, or a fork. Now, drizzle a goodly amount of glaze over the holes. It'll absorb.

Let it sit for another couple of minutes, just so it doesn't all run out. Then, unmold onto a rack. Or the serving dish, I guess, if you don't mind icing all over. If you do use the rack, do yourself a favor and put some waxed paper underneath. Now, repeat the pricking and pouring routine all over the rest of the cake. Soak it well! Now, let it cool.

After the cake is cool, I like to glaze again, this time with a thicker icing (just dump more sugar into the dregs of the glaze.) Drizzle this thicker, white icing over the cooled, glazed cake. Let firm up.

Et voila! Trust me, vile as this may sound, it's scrumptious in a mid-century sort of way. Do not dismiss it without trying it, like those most irritating of all Epicurious commenters. People will hate themselves for it, but they won't be able to stop eating it, or making it, or trying to figure out what makes it so moist. If you are a no-fun ascetic, I suppose you need not glaze quite so heavily; I must admit, my grandmother was not quite so enthusiastic in this department. But in my opinion, it's the 1/2" of sugary lusciousness - so rich and damp a cake, as Captain Hook would have it - that makes this so good. It is customary, in my family, to stick a fat pink candle in the hole. This may be omitted.

And if you just can't stomach it, here's another wonderful dessert. This one respectable. So, give: what's your fail-safe?

For starters, those earrings on the cover are $19,600. They're not just earrings, see, they're 7.67 natural amoeba diamond slice earrings in 18K gold with colored diamonds. Plus, they possess the power to hypnotize!

This, friends, is a candle. A pretty candle, and yet: something you set fire to. $395. Are you feeling witty yet?

Rose gold chain with diamonds, $4900. Skinny jeans, $194. Hairdo that involves refereeing a cock fight: Priceless.

This Lacoste polo featuring a crocodile clusterfuck is a limited edition collaboration with Brazilian designers Humberto and Fernando Campanas and "reflects their commitment to creative chaos and triumphantly simple solutions." Witty! And $165.

"You can pretend to be serious; you cannot pretend to be witty." — Sascha Guitry

Honestly, I like the idea of peppering the catalog with witticisms, like this one, even though I had never heard of Sacha Guitry. I looked him up! He was a French actor, dramatist and director who wrote his first play at age 17. He wrote and directed and acted in Pasteur, a biography of the famous scientist; and there's something in his IMDb biography about how he lived a lavish lifestyle while the Germans occupied France in the '40s… He was jailed for a few months after the liberation of Paris. He was married five times, all to actresses who co-starred in either his plays or films. And! His name was apparently spelled Sacha, not Sascha.

But none of this is the point! The point is: That hair bauble, which would most certainly instantly fall out of my hair and through a sewer grate, is $1,990.

"Show me a sane man and I will cure him for you." — Carl Jung

"Show me someone willing to pay $2,900 for these earrings and I will show you someone rich and dumb." — Yours truly.

There's a Dorothy Parker quote on the lingerie page, where $125 gets you a strip of silk for romantic, light BDSM evenings.

Dammit, if I had $365 and poor eyesight, I would love a pair of Albert Maysles glasses. He directed Grey Gardens! He's avuncular! He rocks! And the Maysles Institute in Harlem is a nonprofit organization that provides training and apprenticeships to underprivileged individuals. And you can see movies there, too!

A "choosing between two evils" quote on page where both items are made of rabbit fur? Witty?

"If I were two-faced, would I be wearing this one?" —Abraham Lincoln.

New idea: LOLFoundingFathers.

Oh, hey, if this loose, body-disguising psuedo-homeless style looks familiar, it's because these garments are from The Row, aka Mary-Kate and Ashley's clothing line. $490 for the cardigan, $225 for the tank and $1,700 for the pants. That's $2,145 to look like you just rolled out of bed and threw on some laundry from your floordrobe.

Since alligators have been seen in the Mississippi River, a Mark Twain quote on this page is actually an inspired choice.

Barneys New York [Official Site]

Earlier: Ashro: Stop Being Such A Slob And Get Yourself A Suit, Hat & Wig
19 Crappy & Crazy Christmas Gifts From Sky Mall
Dean & Deluca Thanksgiving: Mouth-Watering, Wallet-Emptying
All previous catalog posts

We know Sarah Palin isn't the biggest fan of Vogue, but we think she'd do really well guest-editing her own issue. So we've worked up a sample cover in the style of our Cover Lies feature (in which we expose how little relationship ladymags, like Sarah Palin, have to reality). While the real Vogue bows to the recession with its $300 "Steal" of the Month, Palin could show us how to get a $150,000 wardrobe for free — and how to pick a $700/night hotel, complete with robe and slippers. In lieu of book reviews, she could offer up a bunch of snide remarks about Katie Couric — "the perky one" probably can't read anyway. And for balance, Palin could add some media elite contributors, like Trig-birther Andrew Sullivan and Rebecca Johnson. (Johnson works for the fake America but the real Vogue, and says all Palin wanted to talk about in her much-maligned interview was "drilling for oil" — but what else is there, anyway?) In fact, right after a Jeffrey Steingarten piece on moose-meat, Going Vogue should include a free sample of premium Alaska crude. We hear it gets rid of both wrinkles and endangered wildlife.

Fact Check: Palin's Book Goes Rogue On Some Facts [AP, via Yahoo News]
Palin's Katie Couric Myths [Daily Beast]
Palin's Ego Trip [Daily Beast]

Jon almost seemed manic. And for all his talk about making changes, growing up, and being a the best father he can be, he sounded like a first-semester NYU student.


Jon also talked about how he has to work on his relationship with Hailey. Kate said that the kids don't know about "girlfriends." Speaking specifically about Hailey, Kate said, "I don't envision a future there involving my kids…at all."


During one of his custody visits, Jon planned on setting up a lemonade stand with the kids to raise money for the local fire department. He wouldn't allow the twins (the two older girls) to participate, because one of them had made a remark about how she prefers doing things with her mother. Later, at the lemonade stand, Jon wore a shirt that read, "Lies, Lies, Lies," while he sold the drinks to paparazzi.


Kate gives her final thoughts on the series coming to an end, and how she never intended for Jon to not be in "the driver's seat."

Details of Kim's death are still emerging. This morning, Paris Match wrote that sources inside the police investigation say the model left a suicide note. Fellow gossip title Le Parisien stated that "multiple sources" are saying that Kim's father, a Samsung executive, does not believe his daughter killed herself. Kim's mother flew to Paris on Friday, and her father arrived in the city today. An autopsy is to be performed tomorrow — standard police procedure for violent deaths — and the pathologist's findings may be known as soon as the end of this week.

Friends of the young model are also speaking to the press. Several people told the Telegraph that Kim, in the words of reporter Kim Willshire, "had become fed up with modeling and its demands, considering her life was too frenetic and incompatible with forming the sort of long-term relationship she hankered for." Another anonymous friend said Kim would sometimes dodge her agency's calls in order to carve out some time for herself. One of Kim's former agents said, "She was an excellent model, but she used to say she had hard times off the job."

But the richest source of information on Daul Kim remains her blog. The temptation of recent posts that referenced feeling "mad depressed and overworked," a poem that reads in part, "i just know / the more i gain / the more lonely it is," and, most of all, the fact that her last post was titled "say hi to forever," has apparently been too much for major news sources to resist. These mostly quote selectively, ignoring the fact that Kim said she felt depressed and overworked in Seoul and was happy to be leaving for Paris, that Kim titled virtually all of her posts with "say hi to..." and that the post in question was just a YouTube clip of one of her favorite house DJ's tracks, and that in her poem, the lines about feeling lonely were followed directly by lines about falling in love. "but when people grow together," wrote Kim, "its something that is not easy but is nice / and that is something."

It's probably a good thing Kim died in Paris, not in New York, or else we'd have to contend with Geraldo Rivera's opinions of her verse, and television cameras filming the removal of her body, as we were treated to last year, when 20-year-old Kazakh model Ruslana Korshunova jumped to her death in the financial district.

It's understandable that reporters would look to a blog for insight into its author's mind when the author is no longer available for questioning, but it should be done in such a way that the excerpts accurately reflect the whole. Kim often wrote about being busy, yes, and sometimes seemed lonely — but she also wrote about loving Milan Kundera, Klaus Kinski, and Boy George, joked about how she would make a good wife one day, and posted pictures of her paintings. (She had a solo show in Seoul in 2007.) In one of her earliest posts to I Like To Fork Myself, she wrote mock-seriously about ending her life, and then immediately followed up: "KIDDING. I'm fine. Just tired." The overwhelming impression given in her blog wasn't that of a depressive lost soul crying out for help in post after tragically ignored post: it was of a smart young woman with an interesting life, managing bewildering array of responsibilities with a wickedly dark sense of humor. And some issues with insomnia. Not everything in her life should now be re-evaluated in light of her death. To try and turn it all into a series of "signs" diminishes the person that she was.

While it's natural that her next of kin would want to put a stop to quoting out of context, Kim's words have already been featured in articles published from here to Australia. The "I know I'm like a ghost" quote, the "mad depressed and overworked" quote, they're out there. They will be repeated from article to article, from broadsheet to broadsheet to tabloid to tabloid, until all context is erased. Ending access to Kim's blog, while it may tamp down interest in the short term, in essence only serves to deny interested parties a chance to glimpse the wider context of Kim's life. Or at least to see her life as she wished it to be understood. While of course, in the case of a 20-year-old's death, there are no parties more "interested" than her actual family, blogging was evidently important to Kim — she found time to write sometimes several times daily, even as she traveled to three or four countries in a week — and in my opinion, it would be a shame if the record of her life Kim chose to publish were to go permanently dark after her death.

I Like To Fork Myself [Official Site]
Daul Kim: Model 'Had Become Fed Up With Work' [Telegraph]
Daul Kim, La Jolie Fleur S'est Fanée [Paris Match]
Daul Kim S'est-Elle Vraiment Suicidée? [20Minutes.fr]
Enquête Relancée Après Le Suicide Du Mannequin Daul Kim [Le Parisien]
I Know I'm Like A Ghost: A Cry For Help Before Dying [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: 5 Fashion Model Blogs That Are Actually Interesting

Whatever you're planning to wear to your company Christmas party is nowhere near as good as this. A red suit is clearly what your life has been lacking. Don't like this one?

Try one like this instead.

Or this.

Or perhaps emerald green is more your thing.

It goes on like this for pages and pages and pages! After a while, you start wearing down — believing that, yes, what you need to be wearing is a fancy skirt suit and a hat.

An elegant black ensemble is probably what I'd choose. No word on whether it comes with Jeeves, to help you out of cars.

All-over floral worries me. And I am, admittedly, a magpie maximalist: I like sequins and flowers and rhinestones and doodads. But I fear that wearing something like this would make me look like the new Von Trapp nanny who's gotten into the curtains. Or wallpaper.

Statuesque posture, unshakable confidence: Required; not included.

Sometimes overtly "feminine" fashion — adorned with flower blooms or buds and other veiled vaginal references — can be delicate, demure… almost weak. This, for some reason, reads "strength." …And "vulva-esque."

Did I mention that Ashro has a wig section?

Man, I love that the wigs come in gray. That means that somewhere out there, some sassy grandma is wearing this sassy cut.

Asymmetrical even!

So, here's why I have the Ashro catalog: I once ordered a caftan. To blog from home in. Feels slightly more appropriate than pajamas when the UPS guy shows up.

I can't vouch for the "approrpriate-ness" of the other casual wear Ashro offers, however…

Ashro [Official Site]

Earlier: 19 Crappy & Crazy Christmas Gifts From Sky Mall
Dean & Deluca Thanksgiving: Mouth-Watering, Wallet-Emptying
All previous catalog posts

Harris feels that, lately, there's an unprecedented amount of vitriol directed at moms.

Maybe people were nicer to our moms, maybe people weren't. In one way or another, our culture has always been weird about mothers. Love/hate, Jocasta/Joan Crawford, supermom/"evil" stepmom, you name it. But right now, in some circles, it seems we're leaning toward hate. Yes, even when you control for the anonymous online jerkwad factor. And yes, even — perhaps especially? — as more and more blogs, books, sitcoms and movies, successful or not, explore with unprecedented candor the experience of being a (white, middle-class) mother.

In Harris' view, it's no coincidence that this is all about women.

And it's not only about "parenting," either. No, I am telling you, it's about mothers. (White mothers, generally, and usually urban ones — if in part because they're out and about on sidewalks and subways, not cloistered in carpools and playrooms.) You know them, or at least their epithets: "Stroller moms," the "stroller mafia," the particularly objectionable "stroller Nazis" — and while we're at it, the "helicopter moms" and "sanctimommies."

She adds,

Women — still — are not "supposed" to take up space. Mothers, in particular. We are — still — supposed to remain in the background, doing whatever it is mothers do, smiling. We grow a belly, we need a seat, we say "excuse me, please," we speak up (or, God forbid, blog), and we've crossed the line, said or asked too much, become "entitled."

Okay. I love children. I dote on babies. I plan to have kids at some point. I'm not a child-hating grinch with a vendetta against "breeders," as the haters would have it. And yet, I totally get the mommy rage. And Harris' reaction is disingenuous: It's not about the kids. It's not even about the stroller-blocking. It's about the parents. And as she makes very clear, it's a self-selecting, moneyed, privileged and child-centric group of parents - a tiny percentage of the parents in this country and in the world at large. Much of the baby industry may be geared towards this population, but it's still a very small one. Yes, I said parents. Now, while I'm well able to believe that there's plenty of societal ambivalence coming out here towards women, this is an equal-opportunity resentment. While it's usually moms we see, when one does see an indulgent helicopter dad (and do you ever!) it provokes exactly the same reactions. I could spin you a little yarn about a father, an ill-behaved, angelic flaxen-haired child named after a jazz musician and the artisanal bread booth at the greenmarket, but there's been enough snarking. And the problem with satirizing such a population (and again - it's a specific population, as Harris makes very clear) is that it's beyond parody.

Yes, there's a class element here. But, come on, it's not just a class thing: if this were just a bunch of wealthy parents with nannies and fancy baby clothes, it would be a very different matter. It's the combination of smugness and obliviousness, Berkeley ethics funded by serious money, of campaigning for liberal politicians while complaining about nanny problems. It's people talking knowingly about the obliviousness of the 50s and Betty Draper's terrible parenting and knowing they're superior, while a toddler rolls on the floor under other coffee drinkers' feet (also this weekend). It's not that people just mind the strollers taking up the street; it's then getting mad when you won't move for those strollers. In short, it's the narcissism of single people, but expanded to fit a whole family. As Neal Pollack told the Times, "'I don't think it's a bad thing that people want to continue a semblance of their pre-parenthood lifestyle...Going to rock shows and bars, he added, is "just what their lives were.'" This is really it in a nutshell: the sense some of these parents give is that they'll have it all, on their terms. There will be no concessions made: instead, the world will concede.

Harris brings up Park Slope, the nexus of all New York's fabled mommy-snark. There was a minor fracas in '08 when Union Hall, a bar and music venue in that neighborhood, asked moms not to bring strollers and mobile kids to the bar, because the space was not kid-proof and it was a legal issue. Parents across the blogs were up in arms - so much so that the bar had to take it back. This was, in some eyes, a good answer to Harris's question.

In sum, no one reasonable hates parents. What people don't like is inconsiderate self-absorbed parents who expect the world to be reordered. Of course, what's hard is that defensive, self-righteous and oblivious parents are more than matched by total assholes on the other side of the aisle, who shout their kid-hate from the rooftops. My initial reaction to Harris' piece was, what? We don't dislike moms! And then I read the comments. Here are a few, just from page 1:

"we don't want to hate you, but we will if you deserve it."

"I resent that my choice to be child-free subjects me to condescension and pity, even though I'm not the one taking up the whole aisle at Target with said SUV stroller and screaming, unruly brats named after medieval professions."

"Quite simply I hate your baby."

"Having children these days is something that highly uncreative women do to fill their lives. PERIOD."

"You write vapid, pointless articles about how hard it is to have a kid during the most wide-open, accepting and privileged time and place(s) in history."

"One child per person. Period. The right we all share is to ensure life for everyone not just our own."

Helpful as these comments are, they do serve to underlie the total fruitlessness of this argument. No one is backing down. It's like oil and water coming together, forming a translucent puddle on the internet. Now, in some lights, that oil floating on top of the water is beautiful. But most of us would rather step over it - and help our kids do the same. "I hate moms," sighed my friend Cora the other day. We were pushing her one-year-old in a stroller. And I knew what she meant.

Everybody Hates Mommy [Salon]
Look Who's Getting Rolled Out Of The Bar [New York Times]

In her surreally titled Newsweek article, Julia Baird argues persuasively that cries of "Palinization" obscure both Palin's real limitations and her belittling remarks about other women. Of Palin's outrage over her leg-exposing Newsweek cover, Baird writes,

Palin's pins are not her major problem. Her problem is that the end of her that is supposed to be "really functioning" isn't functioning very well at all. She was a popular and tough governor, is forceful and bold, and has a canny knack for speaking to the disenfranchised. But she has made a stunning number of errors, and her claim to celebrity outshines her claim to authority. She has not proved her ability to run a campaign or a country, and she quit her job as governor of Alaska before her time was up, with a lame excuse about being a lame duck.

She adds,

Palin also does not shy from "Palinizing" other women, notably Katie Couric, whom she calls "The Perky One" and "the lowest-rated news anchor in network television." While she writes that her "blond, pretty" McCain campaign adviser, Nicolle Wallace, possesses charm she thinks some other women in politics lack, she blasts Wallace for leading her to believe that her gaffe-laden interview with Couric was going to be a homey chat between women. It is offensive to assume that someone seeking serious political power should not be asked hard questions or critically scrutinized-that it's OK to think an interview with a serious journalist like Couric would simply be a girly chat between working moms. This is embarrassing for women. And working moms.

Palin's not necessarily the champion of powerful women she claims to be — and despite her claim in Going Rogue that "whatever your gender, race, or religion, if you love this country and will defend our Constitution, then you're an American," she may not be a supporter of all Americans either. LZ Granderson writes on CNN,

I'm a black man with dreadlocks and, judging by the racial makeup of most of the cities Palin has scheduled for her tour, it doesn't seem I'm her target audience.

I'm not suggesting that she should avoid going to places like Noblesville, Indiana, or Washington, Pennsylvania, both with overwhelmingly white populations. It just seems that in going to few diversely populated cities, she's purposefully steering clear of minorities. I mean, what author with a $5 million book deal avoids promoting books in large cities?

Palin's unconventional book tour schedule has been cast as a way to avoid "liberal media" hotbeds, but it's also had the effect of producing audiences that are overwhelmingly white. And these audiences aren't always friendly to those who aren't like them. The Times talked to Chris Schwartz, who camped out to see Palin in Grand Rapids — she makes the somewhat sinister pronouncement that, "My goal is to make [Obama] a half-term president. We need to get enough people in Congress to stop him in his tracks. One term is too long." Her words aren't outright racist, but they reveal a level of hatred for Obama that, in many Palin supporters, has a xenophobic character. One Palin fan interviewed at a recent book signing said Palin wouldn't be able to win in 2012 because Obama was naturalizing too many "illegal aliens" who would vote for him. Another echoed the common refrain that Obama isn't a citizen. A third said, vaguely and chillingly,

We do need to have profiling. I meant the political correctness has got to get out now. I mean, we're Americans, and she sticks up for the American people, not for other people. We're first, other people last.

Granderson doesn't accuse Palin herself of racism — he simply points out how little she did "to address the racist ugliness around her during the campaign." And now that the campaign is over, Palin has done equally little to reach out to people of color, forgetting that it's not just white people who have the working-class values she champions. Granderson writes,

As a Midwesterner with some Southern roots, I actually have a lot in common with Palin. I've hunted with dogs, fished, had a kid in hockey, I go to church on Sundays and, having worked in New York and L.A., I've had my fair share of run-ins with elitist, liberal snobs.

This is why I am so profoundly disappointed with her. Instead of using her popularity and influence to highlight our similarities and move the nation forward, she has allowed some of the nation's most painful wounds to be re-opened to advance her career.

Billy Graham apparently believes that Palin's purpose is "to wake America up" (I prefer to use an alarm clock). But what she seems to be doing instead is stirring up hate. If she's really "tired of the divisions and the special interests that pit us against each other," as she says in her book, she'll speak out against the racist comments of her supporters and quit "Palinizing" other women. If she doesn't do these things, she'll show that she likes divisions just fine as long as they work in her favor.

Palin In Black And White [CNN]
The ‘Palinization' Of Palin [Newsweek]
Enthusiasm For Palin, And Echoes Of 2008 Divide [NYT]
Matters Of Faith, Politics On Table As Palin Visits Graham [Charlotte Observer, via Politico]

Earlier: Borders Line

Variety reports that Princess Tiana-oriented merchandise is outselling other Disney Princess-branded items by double digits. (Disney hasn't had a new princess-like character since Mulan in 1998.)

The LA Times spoke to The Disney animation team of Ron Clements and John Musker — who wrote and directed the The Little Mermaid and Aladdin — about the first animated African-American Disney heroine (who has an interracial relationship!)

Clements explains:

"Disney has actually been interested in the Frog Prince all the way back to Beauty and the Beast. They never got a version they were totally happy with. Weirdly enough, Pixar had been developing versions and they never got quite a version they were happy with. Their version actually started in Chicago and then moved to New Orleans partly because that is John Lasseter's favorite city in the world. Even more recently, Disney bought the rights to a book called The Frog Princess by an author called E.D. Baker and that was a twist on the fairy tale… We took elements actually from everything and came up with our version, which is basically an American fairy tale set in New Orleans in the 1920s."

The Princess and The Frog is family-friendly fare, but considering the fact that Precious broke records for an indie flick (and continues to see strong numbers as it goes nationwide) and New Moon broke a box office record set by The Dark Knight, Hollywood should be learning that women are not to be ignored.

"New Moon explodes the myth… that fanboys hold all the power," Pamela McClintock writes for Variety. Last year seemed to be the year of the dick flick, but with major successes from Julie & Julia, New Moon and Precious (keep in mind that New Moon's opening weekend beat Transformers, X-Men Origins: WolverineTransformers and Star Trek), the message is clear: Women buy movie tickets, and we're interested in great stories with women in the lead roles. And! Fangirls should be taken seriously. As Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein writes for The Huffington Post:

Women accounted for 80% of the New Moonticket buyers; and [the audience was] divided evenly between women under and over 21. …There is an audience out there hungry to see films that appeal to them. I'm not trying to say that all women's films will be as successful as New Moon because that's silly. These kinds of movies come along rarely cause Hollywood hardly makes them. But this weekend's number indicate that they should make more of them.

'New Moon' Shines At Box Office, New 'Princess' Lifts Disney [Variety]
New Moon Brings a New Dawn in Hollywood [The Huffington Post]
Q & A With 'Princess And The Frog' Animators [LA Times]
Anika Noni Rose In Disney's 'The Princess and the Frog'; 'Dreamgirl's' Latest Role Is History Making [NY Daily News]
A Frog Of A Different Color [Newsweek]

Butler, feminist philosopher and author of Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity writes persuasively about the flaws in the IAAF's gender-testing system:

[I]f we consider that this act of ‘sex determination' was supposed to be collaboratively arrived at by a panel that included ‘a gynecologist, an endocrinologist, a psychologist and an expert on gender' (why wasn't I called!?), then the assumption is that cultural and psychological factors are part of sex-determination, and that no one of these ‘experts' could come up with a definitive finding on his or her own (presuming that binary gender holds). This co-operative venture suggests as well that sex-determination is decided by consensus and, conversely, where there is no consensus, there is no determination of sex. Is this not a presumption that sex is a social negotiation of some kind? And are we, in fact, witnessing in this case a massive effort to socially negotiate the sex of Semenya, with the media included as a party to the deliberations?

Media outlets have generally used the phrase "gender testing" to describe the ordeal the IAAF put Semenya through, but many have pointed out an inaccuracy in the terminology — if sex is biological, and gender is socially constructed, then what was really at issue was Semenya's sex. However, as Butler explains, the testing appeared to be an effort to socially construct the runner's biological sex via the opinions of a panel of "experts." The bizarreness of this approach shows how poorly understood sex still is. And the sheer number of experts the IAAF relied on (maybe they should've called Butler) speaks to the fact that the group really hasn't arrived at a single standard of what makes someone "female enough" to compete. Butler says they should simply decouple the question of femaleness from that of eligibility. She writes,

[W]e can invoke certain standards for admission to compete under a particular gender category without deciding whether or not the person unequivocally ‘is' that category. If the standard turns out to be, for instance, hormone levels, and it is decided that one cannot exceed certain levels of testosterone to play in women's sports, then a competitor could still be a ‘woman' in a cultural and social sense and, indeed, in some biological senses as well, but she would not qualify to compete under those standards. [...] standards for qualification do not have to be the same as final decisions about sex, and these can certainly be distinct from larger and overlapping questions of gender.

If only the IAAF had adopted such a sensible approach — focusing only on whether Semenya could run and not on "what" she "was" — perhaps the media wouldn't have felt so free to define Semenya's sex for her. But few involved in the case have been sensible. Ariel Levy, writing in The New Yorker, quotes bioethicist Alice Domurat Dreger, who describes the IAAF's approach to sex testing as "a kind of ‘I know it when I see it' policy." And she talks to Athletics South Africa president Leonard Chuene, who not only lied about authorizing sex tests for Semenya, but allowed her to compete in Berlin against others' advice, even though he knew the test results were "not good" and scandal was likely. Chuene sounds fantastically self-absorbed when he tells Levy,

If I will do this, it's ‘Why did you withdraw her?' If I did not, ‘Why did you allow her to run?' Whatever way you look at it, I'm judged. I'm judged!

He adds,

This thing has given her more opportunity! Everybody knows her. The world is out there to say, ‘Your problems are our problems.' Imagine if I had not let her win!

Chuene's words about "opportunity" are pretty insensitive, especially given that Semenya has indicated she's uncomfortable with her notoriety. Still, her story has inspired more public discussion of intersex conditions, and it might encourage some people to examine their preconceptions about sex and gender. Levy includes in her piece an interesting discussion of various movements within the intersex community. Some object to queer and/or transgender people aligning themselves with those born intersex, while others go even further, preferring to describe themselves as having "disorders of sex development." Levy writes that "they want disorders of sex development to be treated like any other physical abnormality: something for doctors to monitor but not to operate on, unless the patient is in physical discomfort or danger." Whether intersex conditions are indeed "disorders" or simply points on a non-binary gender spectrum is an interesting question, and Semenya's ordeal may have done some good if it brings this issue into the open.

But what has it done to Semenya herself? Former ASA official Wilfred Daniels says, "now her life is over," and many others have had similarly dark predictions for her future. However, at the conclusion of her piece, Levy talks to Semenya herself:

I asked her if she would talk to me, not about the tests or Chuene but about her evolution as an athlete, her progression from Limpopo to the world stage. She shook her head vigorously. "No," she said. "I can't talk to you. I can't talk to anyone. I can't say to anyone how I feel or what's in my mind."

I said I thought that must suck.

"No," she said, very firmly. Her voice was strong and low. "That doesn't suck. It sucks when I was running and they were writing those things. That sucked. That is when it sucks. Now I just have to walk away. That's all I can do." She smiled a small, bemused smile. "Walk away from all of this, maybe forever. Now I just walk away." Then she took a few steps backward, turned around, and did.

Despite all she's been through, Semenya appears to have more dignity than any of those who have tried to test her or speak for her. Her running career may be over, but her life is not.

Wise Distinctions [London Review Blog]
Either/Or [The New Yorker]

The biggest misstep of the night was obviously Jennifer Lopez falling on her butt during her performance of her new song "Louboutins." Ironically, she wasn't in her Louboutins when she fell. (She changed into them later.)

Janet opened the evening with a medley of her greatest hits, and she did the "If" dance!

Then Paula Abdul came out to welcome everyone to the awards. But her mic wasn't on. Poor Paula. (She still sounds drunk to me.)

Rihanna's performance was kind of boring, although her costume did have lasers on it.

But Lady GaGa upstaged her and everyone else.

Still, the Queen of Hip-Hop Soul can't be outdone when it comes to facial expressions.

Whitney won International Artist of the Year, and she brought the house down.

She made Reba cry.

Bobbi Kris was proud.

I'm glad we have Whitney back to her old sweaty self.

Earlier: Oprah's Favorite Things 2007: The Audience Freaks Out!

1.) Martha Stewart Vs. Rachael Ray
Last night on Nightline, Cynthia McFadden tried to stir up shit between the two women.

2.) Martha Stewart Vs. Sarah Palin
But on the red carpet this week, Martha didn't need any encouragement to talk shit on Sarah.

3.) Piper Palin Child Beauty Queen
Earlier this week, I joked that Piper Palin was wearing so much makeup for Sarah's interview with Barbara Walters that she practically looked high glitz.

Later that day, Oprah's camera crew went to Wasilla to film the Palin family at home, where Piper was wearing a crown and a sash.

4.) Mother/daughter bonding

5.) The D.E.N.N.I.S. System
It's funny 'cause it's true.

6.) Crap letter from a dude
As featured on True Life: I Can't Leave My Boyfriend. The guy later came back to her apartment when she wasn't home, and stole all of her electronics and her dog.

7.) America's Next Top Amityville Horror
ANTM aired some never-before-seen moments, and I'd rather that this one had stayed unseen.

8.) Drunk idiots
The people on the Real World/Road Rules Challenge get so stupid drunk that they always end up fighting, and subsequently kicked off the show (whichseems to be their sole source of income). Brad started in with Darrell for no reason.

And then Darrell turned Brad into Quasimodo.

9.) Sewing with Nancy
Her awkwardness makes me uncomfortable.

10.) Stomache

On Sunday, the Chronicle of Higher Education published a piece exploring the struggles of colleges trying to measure the effectiveness of programs designed to reduce rape and sexual assault. These programs have shifted the focus from women to men - and have stepped up the idea that men can assist in preventing third party assaults.

The Department of Justice's Office on Violence Against Women gives grants to colleges to develop or strengthen various resources, including policies related to prevention, victim counseling, and training for administrators and the campus police in identifying and responding to sexual assaults.

Some colleges try to reach all their incoming freshmen during orientation, or work the training into their curricula, while others aim to reach a few hundred students a year. On some campuses, well-financed women's centers funnel thousands of dollars into the effort, while other colleges have found ways to educate a good chunk of students without a real budget, relying on student volunteers and fund raising.

The challenge for colleges is that even the best prevention strategies lack guarantees. "There is no magic bullet," says Paul Schewe, a psychologist at the University of Illinois at Chicago and director of the Interdisciplinary Center for Research on Violence. The field is relatively new to academe, and not all experts agree on the best approaches.

John D. Foubert, one of the pioneering instructors, believes that one of the ways to stop sexual assault would be to focus on getting men to envision what it would be like if they were raped:

The program, which Mr. Foubert created in the late 1990s, consists of an hourlong workshop on sexual assault. The cornerstone of the program is a video that dramatizes the rape of the male police officer, which is both graphic and disturbing. And according to his research, Mr. Foubert says, the video increases men's aversion to rape while casting them not as potential abusers but as "potential helpers" who can help prevent assaults.

On its Web site, Mr. Foubert's organization highlights statistics from studies he has conducted on the program's effectiveness. It says that not only does the program improve men's understanding of how to help a woman recover from rape, but it also lowers "the likelihood of raping for an entire academic year-longer than any other program evaluated in the research literature." Furthermore, Mr. Foubert concluded that 75 percent of "high risk" men who attend his program report lower likelihood of raping after the program concludes.

This sends up some red flags. One, who determines who is high risk? Anyone is capable of sexually assaulting someone else, and while it may help deter men in social settings where a lot of peers are egging on forcible contact, it doesn't really stop one-on-one occasions like acquiescence rape. Secondly, are these statistics based on self-reporting? As we've seen before, many people will dance rings around the word "rape" without realizing that their behavior falls squarely within the definitions.

The more commonly known strategy aimed at women is a "risk reduction" tactic - where programs explain to women what they can do to try to mitigate the risk of an assault:

While some rape-prevention strategies were created specifically for men, others were designed to empower women. The latter include "risk reduction" programs that have been shown to decrease the likelihood of being assaulted. Such programs teach women, for example, to keep an eye on their drink to prevent someone from drugging it; to attend parties in groups; and to set boundaries in sexual situations. Self-defense training can be another component.

But the majority of programs are for both genders, according to a recent review written by a panel of sexual-assault-prevention experts, including Mr. Berkowitz and Mr. Schewe. Most rely on a lecture format, but many use videos, interactive skits, role-playing, and rape survivor stories. And according to Rape Prevention and Risk Reduction: Review of the Research Literature for Practitioners, mixed-gender programs have been shown to produce positive changes in attitudes about rape, although they have generally not been successful over the long term.

Several companies have gotten into the game, too. Colleges can book a performance of Sex Signals, a two-person play designed to educate students using a mix of improvisational comedy and audience participation. NFormed.on.sexual.assault, which bills itself as a "not for too much profit" company, offers online video training to colleges at a cost of up to $6.95 per student.

Although it's important to applaud educators for taking a closer look at rape prevention, it's possible the dwindling and hard to measure returns will continue as long as they solely focus on risk management, to the detriment of everything else. One of the reasons I enjoyed the Yes Means Yes! anthology and blog (full disclosure: I'm one of the contributors) is this idea of enthusiastic consent. So often, questions of consent hinge upon hearing "no" as in "she never said no" or "I didn't hear her say stop." Yes Means Yes reframes that idea, positioning that the absence of no should not be taken as consent, and that only a full, enthusiastic yes leads to a positive sexual experience for both partners.

In addition, there are a number of amazing documentary films examining the larger role of cultural influences that often go unchallenged. Dreamworlds 3 is one of these resources, where the images of women in society are critically examined. While some men may gain valuable insight by trying to place themselves in the shoes of someone who has been raped, another effective tactic may be to show how dominant and unquestioned are certain ideas about sexuality. The segment in Dreamworlds on masculinity and control is a major eye-opener:

In addition, Byron Hurt's Beyond Beats and Rhymes provides a hip-hop focus that still provides men and women with a shocking glimpse of what types of behavior become normalized.

At 6:37, the statistics begin flashing on screen: One in four black women are raped after age eighteen, that black women are 35% more likely to be physically assaulted than white women, and that more than 700,000 women are assaulted each year, with 61% of those victims being under 18.

The following segment, "Sisters and Bitches," provides an illustrated view of the problems with rationalizing away behavior. As the scenes Hurt films become more sexually aggressive and more violent toward women, he eventually approaches as police officer, who more or less shrugs it off as regrettable but not preventable:

In order to change the way sexual aggression is viewed in the culture, people must make sure that they examine and challenge assumptions. Which brings me to this problematic passage in the Chronicle of Higher Education report:

The majority of rapists, almost all of whom are male, are never reported or prosecuted, according to David Lisak, a clinical psychologist at the University of Massachusetts at Boston who has spent more than two decades studying rapists. These "undetected rapists," as he called them in a 2002 paper, hold rigid beliefs about gender roles and objectify women. They are usually hypermasculine, equating aggression, sexual prowess, and violence with their own adequacy. They tend to use alcohol deliberately to make their victims more vulnerable to attack.

While I agree that the majority of rapists are never reported or prosecuted (thanks social stigmas!) I disagree with creating a profile of someone who could commit a sexual assault or rape. For one thing, putting characteristics like hypermasculinity into the mix could become confusing. How then, does one deal with the manipulative dynamics of Nice Guys, or the murky consent dynamics of the open-source boob project?

In addition, a focus on the outcome (dealing with or preventing rape and sexual assault) can also lead to ignoring the causes and effects leading up to these types of assaults. At Racialicious, we recently published a piece from Fiqah who talked about her problems dealing with sexual advances from a uniformed police officer that lives in her neighborhood. She wrote:

"Where you headed?" he asked, looking down at me as my eyes landed everywhere else: his shoes, a lamppost, a trashcan, a little boy barrelling down the sidewalk on his scooter. As we stopped at a crosswalk, he moved a full step closer to me so that we were separated by no more than a few inches. I swung the shopping bag hanging from my hand between us, casually, so as to appear non-deliberate. My flitting eyes landed on the gun at his hip. I quickly looked away.

"Oh, not far," I'd said, calmly, making small talk as my mind screamed angry accusations and panicked instructions. Don't let him walk you to your building! Stall him! It's your fault for wearing a V-neck shirt without a minimizer! Tell him you have run to the bodega across the street and pick up something you forgot! Tell him your boyfriend's waiting for you! You must always remember to wear your wedding ring when you go out or this will happen! This is your fault! Your fault! Don't tell him your real name! Don't tell him anything! Keep talking! This is your fault!

"OH!" I said, feigning dismay. "I forgot something! I gotta run into one of these bodegas and grab it."

"No problem, I'll walk you there," he'd said. My stomach turned over.

"Thank you so much, that's really nice, but I got it."

"You sure?" he'd asked, handing me my bags.

"Oh, yeah, it's not a problem. I mean, a little weight-lifting won't hurt!" I added. He laughed, and gave me one last nauseating up-and-down.

"Don't get too much exercise, now," he'd drawled.

I had swallowed my rising bile and forced a smile, thanking him for his help, and hastily crossed the street.

As is par for the course with any blog posts on rape, street harassment, and sexual harassment, comments started creeping in asking what the cop did wrong, why the writer would feel threatened if a man was just saying hello, and asking what men are supposed to do if women dress in a way to attract attention. One commenter even went so far as to suggest Fiqah would have been fine with this harassment if she thought the police officer was attractive.

These types of ingrained ideas need to be explored. There is no reason why men should have so many problems distinguishing between flirting and sexual aggression, or why reflexive reactions like "well why are you wearing that?" should go unchallenged.

Luckily, on campuses, administrators are open to changing tactics. As Dorothy Edwards, creator of the Green Dot program, says at the end of the Chronicle article:

Ms. Edwards, of Kentucky, echoes some of her peers when she says it doesn't matter to her which strategy comes out on top, as long as the goals are met. "I couldn't care less about Green Dot," she says. "I want to end rape."

Rape-Prevention Programs Proliferate, but 'It's Hard to Know' Whether They Work [The Chronicle]
Official Site [Yes Means Yes Blog]
Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape [Amazon]
Dreamworlds 3 (Unabridged) [Media Education Foundation]
Hip-Hop: Beyond Beats and Rhymes [PBS Independent Lens]
Nice Guy (TM) at XKCD [Restructure]
Open Source Boob Project [Feminist SF Wiki]
Unreported [Racialicious]

Earlier: Rapists Admit Repeated Crimes - As Long As You Don't Call It "Rape"

Kenneth Clark's famous study was dispiriting: almost every child preferred the white doll. In
2006, filmmaker Kiri Davis re-created the experiment, and 15 of her 21 young subjects chose the Caucasian baby doll. While, as we all know, children "have to be carefully taught," this is clearly ingrained early - and dies hard. On the View yesterday, Elisabeth Hasselbeck remarked on the looks her daughter got when she carried a Tiana doll from The Princess and the Frog on the street (although I personally might have been looking at the celebrity, but that's just me. And she says she was wearing a hat.)

Yet, what makes the whole thing even more depressing is that on the surface, there have never been so many doll "choices": a piece in today's Wall Street Journal points to the trend in doll-girl matching and, amongst toy companies, "an intensifying concern with matching the characteristics of the figurine with those of its owner."

There are, of course, several different issues at play here. On the one hand, we've got standards of beauty - kids need to see more varietals than Barbie, and know that all kinds of appearance and coloring are equally valid - that one is not always the heroine while the others are the chorus, the satellite, the token friend. In a word, we need diversity of dolls to become commonplace, taken for granted.

And then there are the different forms of play: some children like to "parent" their dolls; just yesterday I saw a little girl assiduously mothering her baby doll while her mother tended to a real-life infant sibling. In these cases, you don't need a shrink to tell you that the play is helpful for transitioning, for working out issues, and for learning positive behaviors. And you don't need to be a sociologist to know that for a little kid, your baby most often looks like you. (Although Brangelina may be putting paid to this notion for any child whose mother has a Star subscription.)

Of course, for most kids, it's not about that particularly. Like Hasselbeck's daughter, most young children just want dolls as friends or characters. As the Journal put it,

More commonly, children have enjoyed dolls not for narcissistic satisfaction but for their imaginative potential as hand-held adventurers that can be moved about and made to talk or fly. A corncob doll works as well for those purposes as a custom-made mini-me.

Which is what makes the whole "model-of-myself" trend kind of strange. There is a difference between wanting to see a wide spectrum of dolls, to know that you're represented as a valid human being, to own a toy you identify with (hopefully unthinkingly) and needing your doll to be a replica of you, the child. One is all about imagination; the other is about the opposite.

For children who wish to see their own faces reflected back at them, the toy industry has never before strained so assiduously to please. American Girl, the Mattel-owned company that sells 18-inch dolls with realistic hair and moveable limbs (including a line of historical dolls), offers an array of mannequins that can be configured with Godlike genetic specificity: For $95 to $109, parents can purchase a playmate that mirrors their daughter's hair (blond, red, auburn, caramel, brown, dark brown, brown-black or black-brown), eyes (blue, hazel, green or brown), skin (light, medium or dark), and even attributes such as freckles, bangs, curls and pierced ears.

While they may be contemporaneous phenomena, companies producing a wide range of ethnicities and features, being able to find a doll with glasses or one with a wheelchair, seems to me a very different thing from the mini-idols that every company from Madame Alexander to Bratz is now producing. I feel like the two get conflated, but they're different. I remarked on this phenomenon when Strawberry Shortcake got her infamous makeover: why, I wondered then, do toy companies think a child can't relate to a doll who isn't exactly like herself? I speak purely as a passionate doll-lover, but it seems to me a real lack of understanding of the toy's appeal. Would I have wanted such a thing? Well, for one thing, I never saw a sallow Blythe doll with matted hair (the only approximation that would have come close), but I don't think so. Sure, it would be fun to see yourself mirrored on Christmas morning, and I imagine there's a satisfaction to acquiring each accessory, making the doll's hobbies and wardrobe mirror one's own, but doesn't that get old, fast? That's not a doll that looks like you in the general sense; it's a model of you.

Do Our Dolls Have To Look Like Us? [Wall Street Journal]
Kiri Davis: A Girl Like Me [YouTube]