The XX Factor: What women really think.

Everyone's Talking Polka Dots

I still don't think M.I.A. was trying to look sexy, Marjorie. I think she was trying to look provocative and faintly goofy. She's wearing puffy white sneakers with that getup, not spiked heels. And M.I.A.'s not the only one to find the polka-dotted dress entertaining: the designer, London-based Henry Holland, tells New York's Fiona Byrne, "We are going through all the blogs and looking at all the comments people put about the dress. It's quite amusing," adding that some bloggers were "saying that she’s a skanky ho who couldn’t wait to get her baby out before getting back in the game!"

Do Women Really Aspire To Drink Men "Under The Table"?

If there is a cultural phenomenon about which I can really do without the expertise contained within the average weekly magazine feature on the subject, it is the one about women who live in New York and drink more than they ought. Still, I am a female contributor to a female-centric blog, and women have savored women-getting-wasted stories at least since Anne of Green Gables got Diana sloshed on that raspberry cordial, so I dutifully began to read it this afternoon for possible posting purposes and indeed found myself snickering in recognition over this passage:

FEMINIST ONE: You would be proud of me. I drank alone last night!

FEMINIST TWO: I am proud! I should have called you. I was too drunk.

FEMINIST ONE: I opened a bottle of wine—a good bottle that I had been saving—poured some into a juice glass, and watched The Age of Love. My dad called, and he was like, “You know that drinking doesn’t solve things long-term?” And I was like, um, that’s a lie.

FEMINIST TWO: Hahahaha!

FEMINIST ONE: I know. I was so serious too.

FEMINIST TWO: Yeah, it solves things long-term, as long as you commit to drinking.

FEMINIST ONE: I told him booze was no different from Klonopin and it’s cheaper!

That's so funny! I thought upon reading the first few lines. I have had IMs exaclty like…

Oh ha, indeed, the IM had originally appeared in a July 2007 post on Jezebel, a women's site I co-founded which the New York story dubs "very pro-alcohol." (I am "Feminist Two," and for the record I have never tried Klonopin.) But more importantly I really don't think of myself, or anyone else on the site, as "pro-alcohol." Pro-pleasure, sure, pro-"honesty" or "candid examination of the human condition as experienced by women at this particular cultural moment," maybe. And insofar as our treatment of women and alcohol ab/use during my tenure was concerned, I think the site was probably best described "very pro-jokes," as one might glean from, say, my posts chronicling my adventures with alcohol-cessation drugs.

But no: the author illustrates me and certain of my former colleagues as "misguided" budding alcoholics drinking to reach some warped form of boozer parity with the men in our life men by a rationale "akin to the type of reasoning that paints Girls Gone Wild participants as sexually liberated."

I think this is unfair. Women make mistakes. Women do embarrassing stuff. Women regret that stuff sometimes. Women cope with it by joking about it, growing out of it, getting pregnant, getting help, or in lieu of all that, drinking more. That is the problem with alcohol: it can be a vicious cycle -- the way you drink too much, stay out too late, get too little sleep, wear yourself out the next day working late, blow off steam getting drunk all over again. But that's how it is for guys too. Sure, our bodies are different, and while drinking certainly has an added appeal to anyone who is experiencing menstrual cramps, what woman with a drinking problem would lay the blame on all the societal pressure to match the ounce-per-ounce consumption of our male drinking buddies? (Because that woman probably has bigger problems than her drinking problem, just saying.) Because I personally drink a lot -- less than I used to, more than I'd like -- and I can't even approach what my male companions can regularly put down, and I'm not trying to pretend that is good news. In other words, yes, New York, we have a drinking problem, but just like so many other problems it seems to be affecting all of us.

Be My, Be My, Be My Yoko Ono

Hmmm. What must Yoko Ono, herself a formidable artist and media force, think about her de facto daughter-in-law's performance art in New York magazine this week?

Charlotte Kemp Muhl, apparently Sean Lennon’s girlfriend and Sarabeth DeLeury (a "philosopher and actress"), Charlotte’s "best friend," are pictured in the magazine’s weekly portrait essay called "Look Book." The best friends are "trying to create a new way of moving forward as a collective." How? "We eat watermelon and make art."

There was no age listed for them in the piece, but they appear to be teenagers pictured provocatively touching tongues and spouting inanities ("We're friends with Sean Parker, who invented Napster, who just sold his business for, like, a billion dollars and always carries around a syringe full of antidote"). The “best friends” met at a party, where someone noted to Charlotte, "Hey your breast is hanging out." When Sarabeth heard her reply, "That's OK, I have another," the two became soul sisters. The two later “went to Europe and L.A., where … we both had mental breakdowns.”

I suspect the women are not total nitwits (despite one blogger calling them "culturally parasitic members of the human race") and were instead engaging in high-octane preciousness and self-parody. After all, Ono's art usually contained a deep bed of irony.

Even if it was a satire, two gratuitous mentions of the iconoclastic artist struck me as odd. Isn’t there some code among Gen Y not to discuss friends in the context of their well-known forebears? Perhaps the iconoclastic Yoko is in on the joke  (it's not clear whether NY mag is ... ), or maybe young Charlotte represents some kind of cosmic karma messing with the older artist's oeuvre.