Monday, February 25, 2008 - Posts
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Hanna, you've made me realize that to me, there is really only one red dress, this one, and all the others are knockoffs.
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In a Sunday column for the Los Angeles Times, Heather Mac Donald of the Manhattan Institute questions the incidence of campus rape, which is reported to affect 20 percent to 25 percent of college women. (Penn State, the college I attended, is among the schools Mac Donald scolds for repeating the statistic. I say “college I attended” because alma mater’s a little highfalutin for my state school.)
She argues that the statistics are flawed because some of the women counted as being raped did not, in fact, consider themselves to have been raped. She writes, “A 2006 survey of sorority women at the University of Virginia, for example, found that only 23% of the subjects whom the survey characterized as rape victims felt that they had been raped.” That means either A) college women are woefully uneducated about what constitutes rape or B) the stats are inflated. Mac Donald, of course, believes the answer is B, though I suspect it’s a combination of the two.
It’s fair to question the accuracy of the numbers and to debate the definition of rape. The real problem with Mac Donald’s piece is, as Jezebel puts it, that she “descends into a Laura Sessions Stepp-like rant against drunk sluts.” Feministing also slams Mac Donald for “think[ing] girls who dare to leave the house and socialize are getting what they ask for.”
The article concludes primly, “College is for learning.” I’m always confused by that admonition. Of course college is for learning. But learning and partying (that all-encompassing term for drinking, hooking up, eating greasy pizza at 4 a.m., singing along to “Livin’ on a Prayer”—sorry, getting a wee bit nostalgic here) aren’t mutually exclusive. I graduated in 2006 and had a good time in college. I partied my fair share and also managed to learn, land internships, work, and take part in extracurriculars. I guess she was just looking for a pat way to wrap up the piece, but scolding college women for spending too little time with books and too much time with booze isn’t the cure for any of the ails Mac Donald bemoans. It won’t keep women from being raped or make statistics more accurate. She seems more disturbed by girls getting drunk than the prospect of sexual assault.
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One recent Hillary line that sure works for me is the one about how it's no more OK to discriminate against sick people than it is to discriminate on the basis of race or ethnicity. For the last two years, my friend Lisa Girion of the Los Angeles Times has been documenting how insurance companies currently get away with murder in this regard, canceling policies as soon as customers file a claim by hoking up evidence of some pre-existing condition. As it turns out, there is a word for this: recission. And secret bonuses for the most prolific recissors! On Saturday, Lisa finally had some good news to report: One of California's largest for-profit insurers, Health Net Inc., has reversed course and stopped canceling sick policyholders. But what caused the switch? On Friday, the judge in a case that would have been perfect for John Edwards ordered Health Net to pay more than $9 million to a breast cancer patient it had dropped—wait for it—in the middle of her chemotherapy. Don't you wonder how many millions more they'll have to spend in pink PR, trying to get across how much they really do care about us? This is why God made trial lawyers—to convince companies it is cheaper to do the right thing the first time.
I also see where the formerly admirable Ralph Nader claims he is being discriminated against; the New York Times reports that he has even compared the terrible marginalization suffered by independent candidates to bias against blacks in the Jim Crow South: "One is based on race," he said, "and the other is based on status.'' Exactly! And don't we have a right to hold his status as a world-class irritant against him? I say yes—and wonder if he doesn't have more safety concerns than Obama. Wouldn't you think Nader would get more invitations to step into the alley than he'd get votes at this point? Whenever I get into one of my global warming funks, his is the face I see.
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I too think we need to revisit our first ladies in red conversation after the Oscars last night. With Hillary and Michelle, the color just seemed derivative, a pol-gal's safe way of standing out in a crowd. But last night the meaning of red seemed much clearer. The most memorable Oscar gowns came in black or red. Both choices were very serious (no room for Cameron Diaz's spaced-out airy-fairy pale pink). Black was the more stern choice (war, writers' strike, grim set of movies), while red allowed some possibility of grounded celebration (writers' strike over, movies this year very good). The color came in all varieties: Heidi Klum (mistress of the mansion), Anne Hathaway (thorn fairy), Helen Mirren, Ruby Dee (great dames), Katherine Heigl (Marilyn Monroe with morals), Miley Cyrus (tasteful prom). All sent the same message: Red is what you wear when you want to show up at the party but stay sober.
Look for Hillary in red, should she squeak by in Ohio or Texas.
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As Oscar host, Jon Stewart let the woman talk! He deserves an award of his own—a plate of brownies, maybe?—for bringing the silenced Markéta Irglová, who won for best original song but got the hook before she could open her mouth, back onstage to have her say. I wasn't sure how well Stewart's Hillary joke went over; he said the Julie Christie movie Away From Her, about a woman with Alzheimer's, "is about a woman who forgets her husband. Hillary Clinton called it the feel-good movie of the year.'' But everyone from Miley Cyrus to Helen Mirren seemed to have been shopping at that red dress store Hillary and Cindy and Michelle like so much. And since I've already blown Lent anyway, isn't Nicole Kidman too young to be looking so waxy?
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