One less bell to answer? One less egg to fry? Hell, after a mani-pedi I'll be just fine, thank you. Okay, maybe after a pint of Chunky Monkey as "Last Goodbye" blasts 75 times.

Are you listening, Elin Nordegren? If you dump Tiger, even after all the humiliation, you'll be back out there in no time.

In an article that reads like a high school student auditioning for a job at Cosmo, Molloy explores - unsatirically, it seems - every shitty stereotype about gender and relationships. Although she titles her piece "Tough guys less willing than women to dive into dating pool after breakup," there seems to be no reason for the focus on the brokenhearted guy's "toughness." Yet she keeps at it:

Big, bad, tough guys are devastated when women leave them, while gals tend to jump right back into the dating pool, a new poll says.

The men who answered the survey are expected to be "tough guys" simply because they are men, and all penis-bearing people should be categorized as tough guys. And they shouldn't have emotions or icky, girly stuff like that. They should all be strong, silent and we must assume, deeply misogynistic. However, Dr. Keith Ablow points out that online daters are a selective pool of subjects, and may not accurately represent all men. "Men who gravitate toward those sites may do so because they're rejection-sensitive," he said. "They may use the computer as a filter." Unlike the Don Drapers of the world, who Molloy points to as an example of a paragon of masculinity, online daters are just a bunch of wimps. Or, to put it another way:

Men were programmed in the caveman days to club their woman over the head, but now even approaching a babe in a bar can trigger fear.

Meanwhile, women, like elephant seals, may just want a larger selection of potential mates.

We also apparently want our mates to treat us like crap. Another expert, Francine Kaye, weighs in on What Women Want. Speaking for ladies everywhere, she argues: "The demands of the workplace have changed us, and brought out our more masculine side. We're taking that home with us...bullying our men into submission. We don't actually want men like that, and we end up resenting them for not being...fearless." Working may have made us into masculine, ball-busting bitches, but all we really want is a fearless man who can put us in our place. Molloy takes this to mean that we are all secretly "yearning for a bit more caveman." Yes, she is actually advocating for the type of man who is "programmed" to club a woman over the head. Fortunately, we have a one-syllable response ready for this type of dude - and this type of "trend" piece: Pshaw.

Tough Guys Less Willing Than Women To Dive Into Dating Pool After Breakup [NY Daily News]

Maybe it's not helped by the fact that Daniel Bergner (who's examined the fairer sex's fairer sexuality before) begins his discussion of one researcher's therapy session this way:

At her group therapy sessions for women despairing of low sexual desire, Lori Brotto likes to pass around a plastic tub of raisins. The women, usually six to a group, sit around two pushed-together beige tables in a fluorescently lighted conference room at the British Columbia Center for Sexual Medicine in Vancouver. A little potted tree is jammed randomly in one corner. Ragged holes scar one wall where a painting used to hang. The décor doesn't speak of sensuality. That is the job of the raisin.

We get it; it's not sexy. In fact, it's vaguely sad, isn't it, all these women yearning after bodice-ripping desire and playing with that dowdiest of all foodstuffs, raisins. It rather serves to cast doubt on the author's feelings about the whole science - which, his piece goes on to explain, has trouble being taken seriously by a traditionally male establishment. And if he, an author whose work is devoted to, well, taking these things seriously, can't forbear a little gentle smirking, it's telling indeed. And yet, it's a fascinating piece, and an important one: Brotto, the researcher, estimates that some 30% of women experience bouts of "hypoactive sexual desire disorder" - a loss of libido that's almost completely mental, and that "between 7 and 15 percent of all young and middle-aged women - an age range that researchers generally set between the neighborhoods of 20 and 60 - feel distressed over the absence of desire."

The lack of understanding - and funding - of the syndrome is what Brotto seeks to address. What's traditionally been dismissed or roped in with other forms of dysfunction seems too wide-reaching and too fundamental to not deserve its own area of study. Brotto's therapy, whose results by her own admission are difficult to classify, involves "an immersion in physical sensation" - a sort of sexual biofeedback that helps the women reconnect the mental and physical.

Much of her approach is based upon the work of a researcher called Rosemary Basson, whose " Basson Sexual Response Cycle" is making waves in the medical community. Bergner explains it thusly:

"desire follows arousal," is a real rearrangement of expectation and a reweighting of sexual theory. The model with swollen red lips gazing out with molten need from the billboard or the MTV dancer pumping her half-covered hips at the camera - these icons in heat embody a cultural standard. And though some women, according to Basson, do feel such craving some of the time - at the beginning of a new relationship, for example, or possibly at a certain point in the menstrual cycle - and though a few women may sense such electricity surging regularly through them, these images, she suggests, are largely illusory ideals. More likely for most women, Basson argues, the start of plenty - and maybe the great majority - of sexual encounters is defined not by heat but by slight warmth or flat neutrality. And there's nothing wrong with this, she says, nothing disordered...Brotto knows too that there are sexologists who maintain that desire by any definition - whether the sheer lust Basson minimizes or the responsive variety she trumpets - is almost entirely a cultural invention rather than a biological reality; that it has been made to seem essential by the sex scenes in movies and the advice columns in magazines; and that it is best deleted from the D.S.M. Leonore Tiefer, a professor in the psychiatry department at New York University and the author of a collection of essays titled "Sex Is Not a Natural Act," argues that the contrivance is compounded by the pharmaceutical industry, which offers research money to sexologists who find ways, no matter if unconsciously, to inflate hugely the numbers of women suffering from an already-fictive condition - a disorder that the drug companies intend to cure. High numbers help to increase awareness, which stokes demand. To what extent this theory represents truth, as opposed to being merely plausible, is hard to sort out.

What it all comes down to is quantifying - or qualifying - the normalcy of feminine desire. Bergner, himself, has made a study of the subject (his latest book is called "The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys Into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing") and seems no closer to getting an answer than anyone else. Female lack of desire, in cultural terms, is not the badge of shame that men's sexual dysfunction is: a Viagra ad on the subway may show a man looking embarrassed, angry, emasculated, but "having a headache" is a standard cultural cliche. (That's why, after all, a Samantha Jones is still automatically comical.) So much for men: as long as he's "functional," the shrinks seem to feel he's fine! But there is, as the author and every frustrated researcher he quotes, no way of measuring a woman's sexual imperatives, so tied are they to society, culture, personal history. Not to mention, those who simply dislike raisins.

Women Who Want To Want [NY Times]

The article explains:

The mystery of why women have sex, and what they want out of it, has long been an elusive study-something even Sigmund Freud called "the great question." Researchers have historically theorized that women's motives lie in love and commitment, while newer studies have shown they do it for pleasure, just like men. But women are complicated creatures: their sexual health is determined as much by their emotions as by their physical state, which might help explain why as many as 50 percent of women have trouble getting aroused. Yet while scientists, in recent years, have labored over the "how" of female desire, no major study, until now, has actually asked women to describe why they have sex in the first place.

In their new book, Why Women Have Sex,University of Texas psychologists Cindy Meston and David Buss aim to illuminate the complexities of women's sexual motivations through women's own words-an important step, they say, to better understanding how women can achieve sexual satisfaction.

No! You're kidding! What a novel idea! Let's just ask someone what turns them on!

The intrepid researchers also notice that motivations for sex vary:

Based on five years of research and an online survey of 1,000 women, the authors consider motivation ranging from altruistic sex ("I felt sorry for the guy") to revengeful sex ("I wanted to get back at my partner") to palliative sex ("I had a migraine"). We hear from women who've had sex to boost their confidence, even if it's with a man (or woman) they find repulsive, and from those who've used sex to barter for gifts or household chores (9 percent of us have used this form of economic sex, according to a University of Michigan study).

But my personal philosophy is fairly close to Dave Chappelle's:

But in case this needs to be clearer, here is a partial list of things that turn me on:

• Sexy men
• My boyfriend cooking
• A clean house
• First handsome guy spotted post yoga
• Assorted celebrities
• Hot guys with shape ups or dreadlocks
• Sexy yoga instructors

Getting the idea? I tend to follow patterns because I'm boring like that.

Things that turn me off:

• Stress
• Fox News
• Jamming it in. Ouch, damn it!

Feel free to help out the researchers in the comments section.

The Pursuit of Sexual Happiness [Newsweek]

Usually manufacturers just slap a coat of pink paint on when the marketing electronics to women. Sony Ericsson clearly put a lot more thought into its Jalou phone, which comes out later this year, but still managed to come up with one of the most insulting pieces of electronics on the market. According to the press release:

Sony Ericsson explored art, architecture and furniture trends whilst delving deep into the couture and fashion world to ensure Jalou encapsulates some of the hottest fashion trends which will emerge next year. Structured forms, intricate corners, hidden depths and jewel accents are set to be some of the hottest fashion trends in 2010... Jalou reflects these trends with its delicate facet-cut diamond shape design, clean and expressive lines and variety of different shine and matt finishes, that give depth to the handset.

Jalou is "encased in a beautiful facet-cut jewel form," just like the engagement ring we desperately want on our fingers. Apparently, the hot colors in 2010 will be Deep Amethyst, Aquamarine Blue and Onyx Black, but if you simply must have a pink one, there is a more expensive rose-colored Dolce & Gabbana edition (which comes with a silk jewelry bag). Plus, the phone is only 73mm long, which the press release explains this is "shorter than your favourite lipstick." (Sony realized that sometimes ladies get confused by math.)

Since Jalou "exudes style as well as substance," Sony Ericsson provides a list of the phone's features and how a stylish woman might use them. For example, you can use the 3.2 megapixel camera to "snap your favorite outfit and send it to your friends." There's a button that turns the entire screen into a mirror so you can "check your hair before a hot date," and the phone "automatically updates with zodiac signs," since all women are into flakey stuff like horoscopes. It's also the first Sony Ericsson phone to feature a BMI calculator and the Walk Mate step counter, "to help you stay in shape wherever you go."

But as Mother Jones points out,

Vanity, body image, and horoscopes aren't the only stereotypes Sony Ericcson made sure cover. Catfights will also be all the rage in 2010. Jalou is derived from the french, jalouse meaning jealousy.

There's nothing wrong with designing an attractive phone (or even liking the color pink), but like Dell and Memorex, the folks at Sony Ericsson seem to assume that female consumers care mainly that the phone is cute. Certainly women aren't using their cell phones to make business calls, read news on their web browser, or download stock quotes like a man would.

As mentioned earlier, electronics companies are still designing products for women as a niche, as if we're a feeble-minded minority rather than half of all electronics consumers. The European Information Technology Observatory just reported that mobile phone users make up 2/3 of the world's population, so some women must have already figured out how to operate a cell phone. Maybe Sony Ericsson should have asked some of these ladies why they bought the wretched non-jewel shaped phones they're using now, rather than imagining how to make this newfangled device simple and pretty enough for a woman to use.

Communicate In Style With Jalou, The Irresistable Compact Fashion Phone From Sony Ericsson [Sony Ericsson]
Dolce&Gabbana Design Special Edition Jalou For Sony Ericsson [Sony Ericsson]
Diamond Shaped Phones Are Girls Best Friend [Mother Jones]
More Than Four Billion Mobile Phone Users Worldwide [EITO]

Earlier: Memorex Launches Electronics Line By Women For Morons
Dell Discovers Ladies Use Computers For More Than Diet Tips
Della Website Suggests Marketers Don't Consider Women Regular People

According to psychologist Richard Wiseman, author of the study on romance carried out at the University of Hertfordshire, women do not want expensive presents. "Contrary to what many men believe, you do not have to spend large sums of money to woo a woman – it really is the thought that counts," he said. Wiseman, who, by the way, has an amusingly bizarre personal blog, conducted a survey of 6,500 men and women from various countries. He asked men and women what they thought was romantic, and found that among the Brits, there was a large discrepancy between what the ladies want and what men think they want.

Wiseman generated a list of the best ways to woo a woman, which beings with "cover her eyes and lead her to a lovely surprise," and ends with "make her a compilation of her favorite music" (yes, the other eight are also moves pulled straight from your average chick flick). However, British men seem woefully ignorant about the ten magic gestures that women really want: they are, apparently, up to 10% less likely to make romantic gestures than men from other countries, and when they do, it is often the wrong one.

He found that "only 32 per cent of British men had written a song or poem about their partner, compared to 41 per cent of non-British men." Only 32%? That's still a lot of terrible poetry. He also said that only 44% had taken their partners on a surprise vacation, compared to 51% of men overseas. Wiseman concluded that there is a disparity between how men and women rank romance, with men tending to ignore the "psychological impact of small romantic gestures."

This means that men should stop buying expensive lingerie and start drawing women a lot more baths. "Women like them because they show men are into them and thinking of them rather than themselves," he says.

British Men 'Among Least Romantic' [Telegraph]
What Women Want: Top Ten Romantic Gestures [Telegraph]

According to these press releases, women are supposed to believe all kinds of crazy things, like:


People will like you better if you serve fancy tap water! (Emphasis ours)

Looking for the ideal gift basket companion for the perfect hostess? [BRAND REDACTED] Water, intelligently-chic herbal infused water, has a unique bouquet of flavors with aromatic scents certain to tantalize the senses. The line offers an array of tastes sure to spruce up any party favor.
* Must-have drink mixer for "skinny" cocktails sure to impress party goers
* The culinary herbs accompany any dish in a flavorful harmony
* Flavor your ice-cubes with bursts of delight without the calories
* Brighten up your party favors with an enchanting color scheme of flavors

The jeans you have aren't good enough, because they don't contain cashmere!

I just wanted to tell you about the new [BRAND REDACTED] denim brand that would be great for a new posting about the perfect jeans for the summer. Made with a cashmere blend, these jeans are lightweight, incredibly soft and compliment every woman's figure.

Note: These jeans were priced between $188 and $204.

You need to know about our jeans, because a celebrity wore them!

Kate Beckinsale spotted leaving The Ivy restaurant in London wearing [BRAND REDACTED] skinny jean in Driftwood, a torn-up light wash jean. Anyone interested in a friendly fashion competition, Erin Lucas wore these same jeans from [REDACTED] in New York City in May with a very different style outfit!

Ladies love the outdoors… if you make it luxe! (Emphasis ours)

I would love to send a press kit to introduce you to [REDACTED] located just an hour north of [REDACTED]. We have just launched our unique B&B and event facility and I feel we have captured something very special for [REDACTED]. We lodge our guests in beautiful luxury tents from India. We call it "Glamping" where camping is glamorous and luxury in the wild means fine linens, full bathrooms and gourmet meals!

Lip gloss and body shimmer will change your life and help you please your man!

Nothing steams up a night quite like a seductress transformation. So be sure to bat those eyes and pucker up because this arsenal of beauty must-haves guarantees an earth-shattering night!

Your sex toys should be recycled!

My client [REDACTED] a retired gynecologist and an Israeli company are manufacturing eco friendly adult toys. The first product line of dildos are made from recyled materials so women can be good to the earth and themselves at the same time.

Eat cookies to get thin, just like the stars, who surely do not have personal trainers or chefs!

I thought this would make for a fun story idea, or a great "celeb item." Recently, two of the old and new 90210 stars, Shannen Doherty and Jennie Garth were spotted at [NAME REDACTED] Diet Store in Beverly Hills. Shannen and Jennie reportedly were stocking up on their monthly supply of cookies telling people in the store that this is their go-to diet before they begin shoots, parties and especially because beach weather is finally here.

I guess being the "drama teacher" and "guidance councilor" led these two stars to pack on some pounds – which made them strive to get their bodies back to their original Beverly Hills 90210 glory days. If you are a local Beverly Hills resident then you can stop by [REDACTED] store to pick up your own supply of cookies where celebrities like Shannen, Jennie, Jennifer Love Hewitt, Kim & Khloe Kardashian, Ashlee & Jessica Simpson, Jennifer Hudson etc. have been spotted doing the same!

But wait! Stars are fat! Don't be fat like the stars!

Hi Dodai,
Hope you had a good weekend…[BRAND REDACTED] has announced "Biggest Gainers of 2008." While stars around them were cutting back, these five celebs packed on the pounds:
1. Joaquin Phoenix
2. Mariah Carey
3. Oprah Winfrey
4. Matthew Perry
5. Jennifer Love Hewitt
Joaquin Phoenix "walked the line" from gorgeous Golden Globe winner to Hollywood dropout deadbeat, clinging on to the coattails of his A-list friends. Now that he's sworn-off acting, he's sworn-on his refrigerator. Mariah Carey is no longer every man's "fantasy". As a married woman, the average weight gain is 6 pounds a year; soon she'll be crushing Nick Cannon! The Queen of Talk Shows, Oprah Winfrey might be known for her grandiose audience giveaways, but looks like she's keeping all the food for herself. Has Matthew Perry eaten one of his "Friends"? He's kicked some bad habits, but may be replacing the butts for burgers. Party of Five? Jennifer Love Hewitt looked like she was eating for more than one when she was caught by the paparazzi over the summer in her teeny weenie bikini.

Ugh, that one needs to be disemvoweled.

Earlier: The Worst Emails Of The Week
The Worst PR Pitches Of The Week

Suraya Singh , says the Independent, developed a desire to see a "a classy erotica magazine that women like her would be happy to buy," when she found herself paging through a succession of interchangeably vapid ladymags during her lunch breaks while"working for an education quango." Men's mags, she observed, didn't seem to have a problem mixing the erotic and the frivolous; why shouldn't a woman's? So, she founded the self-funded quarterly Filament. As the website says, Filament is all about "images of men made for the female gaze," intelligent writing, and doesn't include "fashion and cosmetics, diets, or celebrity gossip."

Marketed as "the thinking woman's crumpet", the first issue features a semi-naked man in a praying position on its cover. Inside, artistic photoshoots of scantily clad male models are juxtaposed next to erotic short stories and erudite articles on off-beat topics such as the merits of being a geek. And if you tire of the sex, there's always a recipe for spicy celeriac bake to keep you busy.

Spicy celeriac bake aside, this is hardly a novel notion; the article describes successful women's porn as "a holy grail" of print media; Playgirl and Penthouse's For Women were, Singh feels, just about repackaging a gay male aesthetic rather than trying to figure out What Women Want, while Cosmo and their ilk treat sex alternately as something naughty or cherry-flavored. "Erotica," meanwhile, has often carried the tinge of "lovah"-inflected purple prose and horrifyingly cheesy images of Joy of Sex-style earnest shenanigans. Singh decided to take it to the streets, and her focus-testing showed that rather than Playgirl-style beefcakes, her target demo was more interested in "toned men with oval-shaped, often quite feminine faces," and she recruited models who met these criteria off the street. (Judging from the images on the website, we dig dudes who look like a cross between Donovan and Russell Brand.) So far, there's no full-frontal, but Singh isn't ruling it out.

But even if she nails the formula (whatever that is), "the thinking woman" can't help but wonder whether a print mag is really a practical concern: whatever the new openness towards female sexuality, surely the internet is a more likely target than a quarterly? As any hardcore mag can tell you, there's not much need for anyone to "buy erotica" nowadays. Perhaps hard-copy helps reinforce the idea of respectable, arty "erotica" as opposed to covert porn, but it seems like a large number of intelligent female sex writers and aggregation sites have already taken pretty large strides towards achieving Singh's goal - and with the web's bounty of media at their fingertips, no less. Of course, it's true you can't exactly read Literate Perversions on your lunch break - and Filament will, obviously, fill this void.

Can an ex-civil servant finally persuade women to buy erotica? [Independent]

Tracy Clark-Flory at Salon beat the rest of us to the punch on Sunday, though, like for too many men, coming too early to the party doesn't necessarily make for the best time. Clark-Flory mostly runs through the findings, points out that there are sexually aggressive women and women who openly enjoy gay porn and then questions — as pretty much everyone does — the idea that so-called female narcissism is biological:

But I have a fundamental problem with the semantic framework. How is a woman's arousal at witnessing a man turned on by another woman's body narcissistic? Why isn't it simply that she's delighting in female sexual power? Is it necessarily narcissistic to enjoy driving your partner wild? And might it be that women focus on the idea of a man being turned on by a woman because our sexual culture revolves around that dynamic? The "narcissism" inference seems akin to suggesting that men's undivided focus on the female porn star being robotically pounded demonstrates an inborn interest in female pleasure. (Please!)

Actually, I think the studies sort of indicate that it's not "delighting in female sexual power," but that would be a good theory. Clark-Flory does hit it on the head with regards to Meana's work: that women's sexuality very tied to what we're taught are erotic images: the female form.

Amanda Marcotte at Pandagon says much of the same things with more intellectual rigor.

There is nothing inevitable about the sexualizing of the female body and not the male one. I suppose it’s “politically correct” to say so, but I think women’s bodies represent sex, and therefore cause arousal responses, in both sexes because we live in a male-dominated society where men who control our media-saturated culture put forward women’s bodies as sex objects while often avidly downplaying the sexual representation of male bodies, because they think it’s demeaning to be looked at as a sex object.

I do love when she gets a full head of steam up, so I'll just let her continue:

Women live in this culture, too. I can testify that it took me years to get past my cultural training that put all of men’s allowable physical appeal above the neck. “He has nice eyes/hair,” was the extent of girl talk about men’s physical characteristics. Now I’m happy to talk about men’s legs or ass or what have you, but I think that puts me on the far side of the “slutty” scale in our culture, still.

Honestly, with “being aroused by men’s bodies” taken off the table, and with much of your life being dedicated to living up to the image of a sexually attractive woman, is it any wonder that women eroticize being desired so strongly? Most women spend much of their time looking at themselves and trying to imagine what a straight man would see, because it’s our social duty to be sexually attractive.

Her best line, though?

The only people who think about women’s bodies more than straight men are women, for which you can thank/blame the patriarchy.

Courtney at Feministing takes aim at the article more than anyone else, from the inaccurate subtitles to the all-white illustrations. But she, too, is fascinated by Meana's assertion that women get turned on be being desired.

Wowzer. I think this is fascinating. In a world where women are often objectified against their will, is the ultimate turn on being able to control and even illicit our own objectification? This line of thinking also holds up when considering the number of women who have fantasies of being dominated, and sometimes raped. Is it sexually arousing to feel a sense of power over your own decision to submit in a world where you feel vulnerable to others domination against your will? (See Stacey May Fowles' essay in Yes Means Yes.)

And if this is the case, is it something we should problematize (i.e. why should my sexuality be determined by my experiences of a patriarchal society? what would it look like if it was truly created from my own original physiology, emotional states, and ideas? is that even possible?) or should we embrace it and get off, counting it as sweet revenge on a half-changed world?

In other words, should we spend so much time worrying about what gets us off as much as just getting off? I have a preferred answer to that.

Courtney does have the best parting shot — and criticism of author Daniel Berger— of anyone:

All fascinating questions, not really explored in much depth by Berger, who by virtue of writing this piece, controls how the researchers' voices and ideas get organized and communicated (interesting parallel to how female sexuality gets processed through a male lens so often).

Jill Filipovic at Feministe strikes just the right tone between rant, intellectual rigor and just plain kick-assness:

How about the fact that women grow up in a society that is centered on men’s experiences and lives? That the female body is used as a representation of sex itself, whereas (hetero) men’s experiences and understandings of sex dominate our cultural narrative? To go back to an old feminist gem, men watch; women watch themselves being watched.

And women’s bodies are positioned as public property. Whether it’s ongoing political battles about what we can and can’t do with our reproductive systems or a cultural religious/virginity narrative that places female sexuality as a bartering chip between male “protectors” or not being able to walk down the damn street without a reminder that we don’t have the same right to public space as men do, to be female is to be told, “Your body is not yours.”

Plus there’s the fact that female bodies are marked as decorative, whereas male bodies are active. Men’s bodies do things — they represent strength, ability, power. Women’s bodies look like things — they represent sex, beauty, fertility.

Of course we feel disconnected from our bodies. Of course that impacts our sex lives.

I love a good nurture-over-nature partisan. She then takes on, and eviscerates, the biological "narcissism" argument.

Shocking, absolutely shocking, that when women are raised in a culture that equates the female body with sex itself, that positions the female body as an object of desire, and that emphasizes that being desired is the height of female achievement, women will see sex as a process primarily centered on male attraction to women, and will get off more on being wanted than on wanting.

Shocking, too, that when “naked chick” is cultural shorthand for “sex,” women will look at naked chicks and think “sex.”

It’s not narcissism. It’s a lifetime of experiencing the world secondarily, and seeing ourselves through male eyes; it’s the lack of agency and power that comes with being an object to be looked upon.

Way to put her finger on the problem with the argument that it is somehow a biological impulse for women to view nude women as sexual.

What Do Women Want? [New York Times]
Narcissism: The Secret To Women's Sexuality! [Salon]
Women Want Less Condescending Articles About What We Want [Pandagon]
New York Times' Post-accurate Framing of Female Desire [Feministing]
Sometimes just reading the headline is enough to know an article will make you feel stabby [Feministe]