Jezebel: Valleywag

Reddit Reluctantly Bans Child Porn

Adrian Chen — Mon, 13 Feb 2012 15:30:00 EST

Metastasized Xbox fan message board Reddit is a little less pervy this morning after it explicitly banned all "suggestive or sexual content featuring minors," aka child porn. Only took six years and a couple public scandals. More »

Fashion Bloggers Run Afoul Of New FTC Rules?

Jenna Sauers — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 15:20:00 EST

A few weeks ago, we received an intriguing invitation in the tips inbox. Ann Taylor wanted us to come inspect their summer Loft collection — and they were willing to pay us to do it. More »

Will Period Jokes Hurt The iPad?

Irin Carmon — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 11:00:00 EST

One day of period jokes later, the snickering over Apple's new iPad is hard to avoid. Does it matter? More »

8 Reasons Women Should Be Excited For Apple's "iPad"

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 14:40:00 EST

In less than one week, Apple is expected to unveil some thingamajig that will be like a Kindle from heaven and supposedly save print media. What this new gadget might be called is where people might have an issue. More »

Queen Bees, Wannabes & How Technology Has Changed Teens Forever

Doree Shafrir — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Rosalind Wiseman is the author of Queen Bees & Wannabes, the 2002 book that inspired the movie Mean Girls. A new edition comes out today—and pretty much scares the shit out of me. More »

Are Apple Products Secretly Girly?

Katy Kelleher — Mon, 27 Jul 2009 12:20:00 EDT

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Last week, Forbes writer Bridget Brennen asked: Is Apple the world's most discreetly feminine brand? We wonder: When did user-friendly become code for female-friendly? More »

#Urahoe: More Proof Of The Stupidity Of Twitter Trending Topics

Anna North — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 09:30:00 EDT

Thanks Twitter, for bringing us first #liesgirlstell, and now trending topic #urahoe, in which users list ways to determine if a woman is a "hoe." More »

Does The Huffington Post Use Sexism To Drive Liberal Page Views?

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 09 Jun 2009 15:20:00 EDT

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The Sexist blogger Amanda Hess says, "Yes." And we're a little hard-pressed to disagree. More »

"I'm Pregnant," And Other "Lies" Twitterers Say Women Tell

Anna North — Thu, 28 May 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Need a healthy dose of gender stereotyping, with an added dash of creepy? Check out the newly-popular Twitter tag #liesgirlstell, where men and women list all the ways ladies are supposedly stretching the truth. More »

Dell Discovers Ladies Use Computers For More Than Diet Tips

Margaret Hartmann — Fri, 15 May 2009 12:00:00 EDT

In response to widespread internet backlash, Dell has revised "Della," its website marketing netbooks to women, purging it of references to calorie counting and shopping. More »

"Get Your Man Back Now": The Horror And Humor Of GMail Breakup Ads

Anna North — Tue, 12 May 2009 12:00:00 EDT

Anyone who's gone through a breakup in the age of email will likely recognize some of the horrible GMail ads that prey on emailers at their most vulnerable. A hall of shame, after the jump. More »

Internet Becomes A Never-Ending Nightmare For One Family

Dodai Stewart — Mon, 27 Apr 2009 14:00:00 EDT

Nikki Catsouras, 18, died in a horrifying car crash in 2006. Days afterward, her father received an email with a picture of the bloody accident scene and the caption, "Woohoo! Hey daddy, I'm still alive." More »

The Many Delusions Of Playboy CEO Christie Hefner

Megan Carpentier — Tue, 09 Dec 2008 16:40:00 EST

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Christie Hefner, the current CEO of Playboy Enterprises, is hardly a shrinking violet. But, sometimes, even the best CEO can use a little media training. In a series of new videos for the site Big Think, she spouts off about the Playboy brand, her father's sense of perspective and the future of online porn that made us wonder, frankly, how she managed to be a relatively successful CEO with such blinders on (or whether she's an even better bullshit artist than her dad). More »

How Leveraging Your Date Rape Skills Can Make You A Tech Billionaire: The Inspiring Story Of Henry T. Nicholas III

Moe — Fri, 06 Jun 2008 13:00:00 EDT

Oh. My. God. Okay: Henry T. Nicholas III is the former CEO of Broadcom. Broadcom makes chips that run your cable boxes and cell phones and modems and crap, but that is so beside the point here. (Well, there is this theory that porn drives all communications and media innovation, but let's cut to the chase.) In the midst of investigating Broadcom on a run-of-the-mill options backdating scandal, the Feds learned something interesting about how Henry T. Nicholas III would close a deal with a cable box manufacturer or a modem maker or whatever: he'd slip drugs into their drinks. Generally Ecstasy. Sometimes meth or coke. No seriously. The indictment is here. He'd do this, among other places, at concerts, the Super Bowl, Rome, and in an underground room and tunnel he'd built under his Rodeo Drive apartment. Seriously, check it out. And now, thoughts. More »

Kathy Griffin Talks About Billionaire Ex-BF Steve Wozniak On Today

Tracie Egan Morrissey — Thu, 05 Jun 2008 11:00:00 EDT

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Kathy Griffin talked to Al Roker (and gave him a lap dance) on Today this morning, to promote her upcoming season of My Life on the D List. One of the 10 new episodes will feature a staged date with Britney Spears' ex-paparazzo Adnan Ghalib. Kathy's ex-BF, Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, will also appear on the series, as the two were still dating at the time. They've since broken up, but remain good friends and she let Al know that she's ready to meet another billionaire. Clip above. More »

7 Reasons This Is Not A Recession

Moe — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 18:30:00 EDT

Surely you've heard by now but we'll pat our aching, aging backs one more time because we're just so elated — America is NOT IN A RECESSION! The American Gross Domestic Product actually grew last quarter, which was a huge disappointment to the whining Marxist doomsayers so intent on making Americans forget they are living in the greatest civilization that ever danced with the stars. Well, we've seen the data, Americans. We've scanned the fine print and scoured the blogosphere so you wouldn't have to, and we are here to tell you: it's true. The American economy grew last quarter, and we know exactly why. So don't listen to the haters! In lieu of the usual evening news roundup, Jezebel is here to bring you the seven reasons this great nation is still on the upswing. More »

Everything I Needed To Know About The American Economy I Learned At American Apparel

Moe — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 13:40:00 EDT

A story in Saturday's Wall Street Journal offers something of a preamble to the final chapter of the American Apparel narrative. There are companies that are more interesting and innovative than American Apparel, but none that captures the entire story of the American Economy, What The Fuck Happened Dept. so quickly and efficiently and dystopianly, like a hypersexed science fiction sex. Plus the CEO likes to curse, masturbate in front of reporters, and hire underaged cokeheads from whom I will no doubt be sent some more highly thought-provoking text messages of dissent. Herewith, a brief batshit tour through one of the most colorful corporate histories of our age! More »

Google Billionaire's Wife Sat On Jezebel Editor's Couch And Jezebel Editor Was Too Drunk To Notice

Tue, 01 Apr 2008 17:00:00 EDT

No doubt this post will inspire grief because it breaks an unspoken rule: speak no ill of a former Jezebel writer. But it is a good yarn — well, more to the point, it is NOT — and it speaks to one of the reasons Jezebel will improve so greatly under the corporate embrace of Conde Nast. Read on, and pity the fool. A photo recently surfaced of Lucy Southworth in college. You should know who Lucy Southworth is, but lest you don't: she is married to Google co-founder Larry Page, who is a billionaire many times over who is not headed to jail. A closer inspection on the part of Jezebel editor Maureen Tkacik revealed that the photo depicted the radiant Ms. Southworth sitting in Ms. Tkacik's house with three of Ms. Tkacik's closest college friends, one of whom she had actually reportedly given a blow job on one occasion. Today, Ms. Southworth is engaged to one of the most powerful men on earth. More »

Disney Resorts Wants More Visits From Perverts, Chronic Masturbators

Moe — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 14:20:00 EDT

What's that banner ad getting the way of your Kristin Davis porn? Oh look, it's for Disney Resorts. Maybe you should take the kids this year! Anyway, this screenshot, and many more if you click, come to us courtesy the investigative journalism of the DrunkenStepfather, who found them surfing the putrid site Egotastic and emailed us with a typically inimitable missive (actually, you should click for that alone.) And to think we were just posting how great minds think alike! Enjoy! More »

Dear Ben: Seriously, Next Time, F*** Wall Street.

Moe — Tue, 18 Mar 2008 18:30:01 EDT

Today the Federal Reserve, hot on the heels of saving Wall Street, elected to cut interest rates once again, by 75 basis points. And while the stock market had a screaming orgasm over this, I did not personally think it was such a great move. Herewith, a dissenting opinion.

Canned Career Columnist: "Take That Career Drive And Direct It Toward Mating!"

Moe — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 13:30:00 EST

Last we heard from Penelope Trunk, she was a Yahoo! Finance career columnist in the midst of being unceremoniously sacked for the women's ghetto of the company's "Lifestyle" channels. We were deeply saddened, as we often agreed with her advice, like the time she said that if you want a better job, "Don't work hard! Work out!". Well, THANK GOD PRINT ISN'T DEAD. Because Penelope has resurfaced in the pages of the Boston Globe with some urgent advice for her old "Brazen Careerist" followers: freeze your eggs, get them tested for "premature aging" and: "If you are past your early twenties, and you're single and want to have children,you need to find a partner now. Take that career drive and direct it toward mating - your ovaries will not last longer than your career." Oh, Penelope. Spoken like the scorned woman you... are! But here's the thing. More »

A Love Letter To Bill Gates, And His Better Half

Moe — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 12:00:00 EST

Bill Gates is a great guy. Perhaps, in rabidly defending the market share of the Microsoft-Intel alliance, he stifled competition and innovation and squeezed vendors. Meh. You know where I am not really hurting from the terrible dearth of innovation? Software! Oh sure, this blogging software I am using drives me to suicidal thoughts every few minutes, but hello! Back in high school there was NO INTERNET. Meanwhile, my mom's new car has the fuel economy of the Model T Ford. Meanwhile, the ENTIRE APPAREL INDUSTRY HAS YET TO FIGURE OUT HOW TO SEW A BUTTON. So anyway, my point is, Bill Gates is giving away all his money and Warren Buffet's money, too, and I get to write about it today because yestederday he told us that he's doing it for the us:

"If we are serious about ending extreme hunger and poverty around the world, we must be serious about transforming agriculture for small farmers, most of whom are women," Gates said.

Iz Tecknology Ruining Yr Relationships? Expert Sez Yes

Jessica G. — Thu, 24 Jan 2008 14:30:00 EST

Would you rather text someone than talk to them face to face? Then you might have technology overload, which means you engage in addictive behavior towards technological devices According to John O'Neill, the director of addictions services at the Menninger Clinic, "I think [technology overload] shares some of the same components as people who become addicted to alcohol and drugs in that we start to see that someone cannot really put it down and cannot stop the use of it even when there are some consequences." So what are the symptoms of this life-ruining addiction? O'Neill tells Reuters: "Using text messages, email and voice mail when face-to-face interaction would be more appropriate, or limiting time with friends and family to tend to your email, return phone calls or to surf the Internet." Hmm, by those rubrics, 90% of our friends are incurably-addicted to their sweet, sweet tech. More »

Seven Kids Hang Themselves In The Name Of "Networking"

Moe — Wed, 23 Jan 2008 15:00:00 EST

How about a MySpace suicide story seven times more depressing than Megan Meier? Because there's been a spate of hangings in Brigend Wales. It starts with Dale Crole, a 20-year-old straight from juvi who hanged himself in a warehouse and was found a year ago. A friend of Dale's named David hung himself next, and a friend of David's went next, and four more boys followed before last Thursday, when 17-year-old Natsha Randall hung herself in her family basement. Now cops seem to be wondering whether Randall spearheaded some sort of vapid suicide cult. It's hard to say. All the members of the suicide ring had heavy internet habits. A story about Natasha "sxiwildchild"'s page on the social networking site bebo in the Daily Mail portrays her as one of those teenagers whose inability to distinguish right from wrong seems palpably traceable to an inability to distinguish real life from the internet. (The story notes that "Will you have sex with me?" is the fourth question she asks prospective friends on the site. More »

Dig A Tech Girl: Where The Shit You Accomplish With Your Brain Means Nothing

Slut Machine — Thu, 06 Dec 2007 15:30:00 EST

There's this site called Dig a Tech Girl, (which used to be called Dig a Silicon Valley Girl, before they were issued a cease and desist from Digg) that's sort of like Hot or Not for geeks who like geeks... sort of. As Boinkology points out: "...Many of these tech girls were chosen more on the basis of appearance than any tech skills — even nominal ones." For example, Attack of the Show! co-host Olivia Munn, or Time Out New York columnist Julia Allison who was nominated apparently because she "was in the valley for a few days in the summer and caused quite a stir." Uh, oh-kay. But perhaps more insulting was the inclusion of this in Ms. Allison's description: "Good looking but a bit empty in the head." So is this what constitutes a "tech girl"? And is that what would make someone "dig" her? More »

Horny Sex-Starved Countries Can't Stop Googling "Sex"!

Moe — Thu, 18 Oct 2007 13:00:04 EDT

Who Googles "sex"? Funny you should ask! Today the New York Post declared that Turkey and Egypt were the top Googlers of "sex." (Oooooh, Allah-worshipers have libidos also whodathunk???) Anyway this discovery was reached with the help of Google Trends, an ingenious service of the company that tries not to be evil so as not to rob its users of the fun of doing that themselves. And wow! "Sex" is googled most often by people who are in countries where social/religious mores are such that you'd expect them to be kinda hard up, unless that scene in Darjeeling Limited was actually realistic, which if it was would have been helped if the actress had actually sounded at all Indian. And those places are! Egypt.... Morocco... Bombay... Ankara.... Amsterdam??? So wait? Are Amsterdamians repressed too? We tried the trick on a few other search terms to figure it out. And we're still confused! Seattle — does all the frantic Internet searching of the female orgasm yielded your G-spot yet? More »

Do Women Pick Workplaces Like They Pick Boyfriends? Forbes' List Makes You Wonder...

Moe — Thu, 11 Oct 2007 16:30:07 EDT

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Forbes came out with one of those "Top 100" lists it generates every few hours and it's all about powerful women. But don't touch that scrollbar! The Street went through the list, did the dirty work and came back with a portfolio of ten stocks you can buy to support women CEOs. And boy, is it NOT PRETTY. Seriously, the list of companies they came up with is like the investment equivalent of a room full of ill-advised ex-boyfriends! Pepsi is the boring frat boy, Alcatel Lucent is the straightedge vegan bike messenger whose tattoos had some cachet in 1998 but then you realized he was (duh) broke; Kraft Foods is a really boring trust fund kid you were attracted to mainly for his nihilistic best friend; and Wellpoint ..... sells insurance. Do I sense a connection? More »

Workplace Harrassment, The "Gray Rape" Of Your Sober Years

Moe — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 17:30:51 EDT

You know that line, "If Clarence Hill looked like Denzel Washington, it wouldn't be a problem"? Well, ha ha ha until we read your comments on yesterday's post about EMC, the only technology company pioneering enough to think to paint its initials on strippers' ass cheeks for a company function. Which prompted a startling thought: sometimes having a crappy sexist boss can be worse than, I dunno, gray rape. I mean, I don't want to get carried away here: the senior partner one of you refused to blow was kind enough to present you with that little severance package for your gag agreement the next day. And the fiftysomething boss who listed in order the twentysomething assistants he wanted to fuck and then would make a big thing of saying, sotto voce, "That's number eight!" — that guy at least gave you a good anecdote. (Though nowhere near as great as the boss who told you that whenever he was fucking his girlfriend and couldn't come, he'd just think of you and immediately "blow his load.") More »

Ever Had A Boss Who Made You Hate Men?

Moe — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 18:30:00 EDT

A story in today's Journal about a bunch of workplace sex discrimination lawsuits filed against EMC, a data storage company (fun fact: data storage = causing some problems for us today!) got us all a-body-spasming. We thought it was bad when one of those Wal-Mart managers had surreptitiously taken employees to a strip clubs! Well, at EMC, they got the strippers to paint "EMC" on their ass cheeks. In one lawsuit, filed by a longtime executive at the company, the boss man decides to perform some exotic tricks on a dancer hired to entertain a company event.

...a stripper was hired to come to the hotel where a company meeting was being held to celebrate the promotion of two managers. Ms. Nelson left the room and waited in the hallway, her lawsuit said. While waiting there, she heard male salesmen who left the room saying that her "boss licked whipped-cream off the strippers' breasts," her complaint said.

WHY IS IT MALE BOSSES THINK THIS SHIT IS OKAY? We polled our friends. Interestingly, about half of them had no bad work stories whatsoever; the other half had mooore than enough to compensate. More »

Facebook: Boobs Are For Body-Shots, Not Baby-Feeding

Tracie Egan Morrissey — Fri, 07 Sep 2007 09:30:00 EDT

Facebook has began taking down pictures of women breastfeeding their children and in some cases, even banning users for putting the photos up in the first place. The claim is that such imagery is "obscene content." Okay, we think that women posting pictures of their babies sucking on their boobs is a little weird and maybe even a bit obnoxious, but nothing about it is obscene. 'Cause isn't breastfeeding the whole point of breasts? The Lactivists (an activist group who strive to normalize breastfeeding in public) are all up in arms about the situation, but they're also questioning the logic behind Facebook's no-suckling policy, as the images that were removed contained no nipples. In an official statement, Facebook said that they're not actually opposed to the titty-sucking as much as the actual flesh:

Photos containing an exposed breast do violate our Terms and are removed.