The XX Factor: What women really think.

The GOP Must Choose Between Sexism and Women

A post from DoubleX writer Amanda Marcotte:

Meredith Shiner and Glenn Thrush at Politico ask the question: Why does the GOP have a "woman problem"—i.e., a problem recruiting female candidates? This should be one of those simple answers to stupid questions situations, because the easy answer is that the Republican party has become the clearinghouse for straight white men angry that they have to share a little power with everyone else. Running too many women, especially women who don't play sexpot or crazed right-wing shill (Sarah Palin and Michelle Bachmann, respectively), would send the skittish angry white men of the party fleeing, hands over their ever-vulnerable man parts ... (Read the rest of this article in DoubleX.)

Why Can't Guys Mentor Women?

Meghan, thanks so much for posting about the importance of female mentorship. I'm no physicist (anymore) but with many friends plus a mom in science, I am especially sensitive to the need for and frequent lack of XX mentorship in these disciplines. We've all heard reports that Americans lag behind in the hard sciences generally—but less reported is the fact that women rarely take on the quant-heavy jobs that do exist, or that tenured female science and engineering faculty are almost nonexistent. Then there are the other, real disadvantages talked about in the Fisman/NBER report.

Some of this, of course, has to do with... (To read the rest of this post, visit our new website DoubleX.com!)

Ladies Top Forbes.com Celebrity 100

Women More Likely to Follow Men on Twitter

There's a MAN On The Shortlist???

Thinner Skin, Or Just Not Crazy?

One further—and purely speculative—thought about the conversation between Emily, Bonnie, and E.J. about the need for a woman justice to replace David Souter. And this one is based on conversations I have had over the years. I have heard at least a few powerful women lawyers who could be in the running for this type of gig say without reservation that they would never, under any circumstances, put themselves through the nasty, personal, and hate-filled confirmation process that has become almost unavoidable. (I keep thinking of Justice Alito’s wife bolting from her husband’s hearing in tears a few years back). One woman judge bluntly told me she could never do that to her family, no matter what the prize. Others have said they just wouldn’t want to go through something that was almost designed to make them look ridiculous or awful for all time. Just reflecting on the abuse that’s recently been heaped on Dawn Johnsen—Obama’s pick to head the Office of Legal Counsel—I can see why. I’m not quite prepared to assert here that women have thinner skin than men when it comes to being called the Spawn of the Devil on national television. I’m sure many of the women on the so-called short list have endured far worse. But it’s a good time to recall the rumors that there were several highly qualified women ahead of Harriet Miers on President Bush’s short list, who all evidently took themselves out of the running for some of these reasons.

Sarah Palin's Dream-Lawyer

Sarah Palin attracts national scandal so effortlessly, it starts to look as if she does it on purpose. Courtesy of Max Blumenthal at the Daily Beast, here’s a little background on her pick for state Attorney General, Wayne Anthony Ross. Some of these claims are disputed, but Ross has allegedly called homosexuals “degenerates” and is rumored to have said in a 1991 speech to a fathers' rights group, “If a guy can’t rape his wife, who’s he gonna rape?” and “There wouldn't be an issue with domestic violence if women would learn to keep their mouths shut."

What's undisputed is that Ross has a voluminous collection of writings, frequently penned in the key of Limbaugh. He opposes, among other things,  animal rights activists, environmentalists, legalizing marijuana, allowing Alaska natives to maintain their lifestyles, and abortion. He supports guns, fathers' rights, anti-government militias, and has defended a college student who created an “art project” featuring "a hooded and robed stick figure of a KKK member, bearing a cross in one hand and a flag in the other." Lauding the artist’s “courage” Ross then berated the African American student who objected to the work: “It might have been more fun to see Ms. [-----] try to remove the display. Then she could have been arrested and her future as a student of the university could have been resolved through the university disciplinary proceedings.”

Remember back in October when Gov. Palin couldn’t recall a single Supreme Court decision with which she disagreed, other than Roe v. Wade? Probably not a surprise, then, that her pick for the state AG says “his big remaining task on Earth is to help stop abortion, a practice he sums up as ‘killing kids.' ''I feel I have a good relationship with the good Lord (but) if I could overturn Roe v. Wade, I figure I got my ticket.”

Misogyny or Hilarity?

As of late, some blogs have made a sport out of calling out advertisers for being misogynist, but this one I really don't get. For some reason, Jossip (Jossip?) has deemed this IMO totally hilarious ad for U by Kotex misogynist. In it, a beaver uses a maxipad as a sleeping mask to drive home the point that users can "sleep easy with maximum protection." Of this joke, Jossip opines "this week misogyny ran rampant." Really? Now we're supposed to be offended by animatronic beavers wearing sleeping masks? "Nice to know the ad industry is opening its doors to vulgar 7th grade boys." Ugh, I say. Get over it! It's a beaver! It's a joke! (FYI, the campaign's been around for a while.) Does feminism mean we can't make beaver jokes? Maybe we American ladies could learn something from the Aussies.

Beauty Queen Dreams

At last, a new book reveals the secret identity of Sarah Palin's personal idol. Apparently, a People editor has churned what I'm sure is a very winning biography of Palin: Trailblazer: An Intimate Biography of Sarah Palin. (Intimate? What's that all about? Do we get to rifle through her underwear drawer?) Along with exposing various other creepy Palin factoids—including that she hid her Trig pregnancy until one of her daughters found the ultrasound scan and concealed his medical condition from her other children until he was born—the book discloses who Palin's girl-crush is.

Palin, who became an overnight sensation once John McCain tapped her to become his running mate, can fall victim to being star-struck. She once told husband Todd she was going shopping at Costco in Anchorage but detoured to J.C. Penney's to meet Ivana Trump—in town to promote a cosmetics line.

Ivana Trump. Ivana Trump! This explains so much. A woman best known for doing little more than marrying well, her stiff retro-hairdos, and her meticulous makeup, Ivana was the woman Palin aspired to be politically: a vapid statue with a hollow inside waiting to be toppled.

Who's Got It Worse?

Reading "Plastic Surgery Confidential" and "Growth Industry," I was struck by the similarities between the two. In the first, 27-year-old, 120-pound Melanie Berliet visits a slew of plastic surgeons who inform her that she's in dire need of $30,000 worth of plastic surgery. In the second, Kent Sepkowitz investigates male "enhancement" procedures that promise to turn men's penises into frankenfurters. There are plenty of women-run sites devoted to lamenting the multitude of ways pop culture turns female self-love into self-loathing, but far less attention is paid to how pop culture makes men neurotic about their masculinity.

In one surgeon's office, Berliet meets the Axis Three, a high-tech digital visualization program that uses fancy effects to show prospective surgical patients what their boobs might look like after they've been implanted. Meanwhile, at the University of Belgrade, men can have their penis disassembled and lengthened with the help of a transplanted rib. I'm actually all too familiar with the male "growth industry," having done more than one story on the subject, from penis weight-lifting to penile enlargement surgery. (Regarding the latter, suffice to say, it wasn't pretty.) 

In "Posthumans Go Hollywood! (Maybe)," Charlie Jane Anders asserts the cyborgization of the population is about escapism. But when the cyborg is you, is the escape from yourself or from the human population? While there's something pleasurable about imagining a world in which you can become whomever you want to be, the haunting backdrop is that of someone who inhabits a double-consciousness, stuck between who they appear to be and who they really are, the gap between unbridged.

Clinton's Senate Replacement: Boobs Like Hillary, Views Like John Breaux

OK, so, at first blush, Kirsten Gillibrand—the replacement for Hillary in the Senate, announced today—looks like the ideal solution to all of New York Gov. David Paterson's problems. Like Caroline Kennedy, she's a woman. Like the big names in the replacement race, she's a talented buck-raker (as of this summer, she was crowned the "top fundraiser" among the 42 Democrats in the House class of '06). But unlike Kennedy or Cuomo, she isn't saddled with all that dynastic baggage. Perfect!

But she's also got politics. (Amid all the oohing and aahing over a lady politician's ascent, we sometimes forget that these political girl wonders have views along with their unusual anatomy.) And her politics are quite different from those of the other contenders. She's definitely the most conservative pick out of the possible replacements the Albany Times-Union handicapped. How conservative? Well, this fall she called her voting record "one of the most conservative in the state," and while I was skeptical when I first read that—including Republicans?—it's not too much of an exaggeration, especially now that the antediluvian Vito Fossella has been booted from office. 

Among the mavericky votes Gillibrand has racked up: a vote in favor of giving immunity to the telecom companies that helped Bush spy on U.S. citizens; votes against both Pelosi-supported TARP bailout bills; a vote for the May 2007 war funding bill, which lacked a troop-withdrawal deadline, the liberal mania of the moment (no other New York Democrat voted in favor); and a vote for this fall's proposal to roll back the District of Columbia's prohibition on semiautomatic guns. (In general, the National Rifle Association is a huge Gillibrand fan, making the extremely rare move of endorsing her over her Republican opponent this year.)

I have no way of knowing whether Gillibrand is conservative at heart or whether she's simply fastidiously cautious about reflecting her district, which—until November—was the most Republican slice of New York represented by a Democrat. But her elevation represents another triumph for the Blue Dog-style, Rahm Emanuel-style philosophy of expanding Democratic power: make economic crusaders (TARP vote: check) with strong veins of conservatism running through their politics (gun love: check) the new faces of the Democratic Party. (The photo at the top shows Gillibrand next to Pennsylvania's Chris Carney, a top poster boy for the fashionable red-tinged brand of Democrat.)

Well. We'll see what Gillibrand sounds like when Chuck Schumer is done with her.

Sarah Palin: Moron, Author?

Is Sarah Palin going to write a book? Or should I say "write" a book? Purportedly, Palin has enlisted the aid of literary agent to the politicos Robert Barnett, a D.C. attorney whose client list includes Obama and the Clintons and who's scored TV deals for Brian Williams and Christiane Amanpour. Barnett's emitted a "no comment"—embarrassed, perhaps? One theory is that all Palin's anti-media griping has driven her to attempt to tell—or should I say sell—her own story in her own words—or should I say the words of her ghostwriter? The rumor reminds me of new rumors of another high-profile aspiring writer who may or may not be seeking a book deal: Britney Spears. My allergic reaction to the idea of a Palin book is as much born out of a deep dislike of—well, I was going to say her politics—but her everything may be a better way to describe it—as it is a sadness that books have become little more than one more crappy product to shill. Regardless of what Palin produces, one can be confident that it won't be worth the paper upon which her fake words are printed.

Redefining Political Experience

Am I the only one who sees Caroline Kennedy's "lack" of political experience as no big deal? At least Lisa Belkin mirrors this point of view in "The Senator Track." Instead of spending the past several decades of her life walking the "traditional" political career paths of her forefathers before her, this Kennedy wrote books on civil liberties, raised millions for public schools, and reared three children. Many have declared that privilege and a last name catapulted Kennedy into the spotlight as a senatorial candidate, but these knee-jerk reactions overlook the finer nuances of what Kennedy may bring to office, not to mention the idea that a life spent outside of politics might serve the public better than a professional glad-hander. In Obama's case, claims that he lacked sufficient political experience to win the presidency were drowned out by a nation that demanded change. Personally, I thought we were done judging candidates by their political track records the day Reagan was elected. Then again, I hail from a state that elected the Terminator its Governator.

Caroline Kennedy, Beauty Queen

What with all the time spent this year by women and journalists and everyone else obsessing over Sarah Palin's looks and lipsticks and wardrobe, it's hard to believe the absolute dearth of women journalists obsessing over Caroline Kennedy's physical appearance, makeup choices, and hairstyles. Why are her highlights not front-page news? I haven't a clue. Perhaps people are more interested in focusing on her politics. Just kidding! (See also: Tattoogate.) In either case, Fashionista points to Christopher Andersen's hammily titled biography of the Lady Kennedy, Sweet Caroline: Last Child of Camelot, which reveals Caroline's refusal to become Jackie O. 2.0.

According to the book, Jackie was irked a young Caroline wouldn't diet. When Caroline requested the dessert menu at the end of one meal, her mother purportedly informed her 5-foot-7, 145-pound daughter: "You're not having dessert," warning, "You'll be so fat nobody will marry you."

Caroline was not the only one suffering from the Kennedy women's obsessive body consciousness; the pressure to be was also felt by one of Caroline's favorite cousins, Maria Shriver. But only Caroline was routinely compared to her famously svelte mother, and as a result her self-esteem plummeted. In a fit of pique that bordered on the bizarre, she shaved off one eyebrow. "My face," she offered by way of explanation, "is too symmetrical."

Politico Says the Press Was Sexist? Great!

Poring through Michael Calderone's "Top Ten Media Blunders of 2008" in the Politico, it was hard not to notice how many of his favorite Fourth Estate screw-ups had to do, in some obvious or oblique way, with sexism purportedly making its way into the press. You've got the whole Hillary-in-New-Hampshire episode, in which Hillary wept and the media's subsequent mockery mobilized women voters on her behalf (or so the mythology goes); you've got MSNBC's choice to hand its election coverage over to Chris "She-Devil" Matthews; you've got the "Obama's baby mama" Chyron on Fox; and you've got the David Shuster pimp-Chelsea Clinton thing—along with the questionable coverage of two alleged Big Macher mistresses, Vicki Iseman and Rielle Hunter.

You could make the case that all the media's stumbles over sexism should alarm women, but I wonder if the opposite isn't the case. It shows how sensitive we've become to the various pitfalls inherent in covering women. (And, well, maybe too sensitive, but that's another debate.)

Dowdy Tina Fey

This Vanity Fair profile of Tina Fey, written by Maureen Dowd, has been making a big splash in the blogosphere the past couple of days, mostly because the thesis, boiled way down, seems to be that Fey's only made it big since she lost weight and prettied up her look while keeping her decidedly non-diva personality. For the most part, as a huge Fey fan, I lapped up the profile uncritically. What struck me, though, were the accompanying photos (to echo Nina's point about the power of a magazine's art department). Annie Leibovitz styles Fey as Wonder Woman-ish on the cover and Sasha Fierce-era Beyonce in the music video shots—obvious Glamazon girl power images. Then there are the shots of Fey in a low-cut white button-down and killer red pumps, which are supposed to be Fey as her own sexy librarian self, right? But I couldn't get rid of the feeling it was another reference to, perhaps, another tart social critic who's gotten a lot of buzz for using her feminine wiles to her advantage—the outfit and pose look an awful lot like a Maureen Dowd pastiche. So what's Vanity Fair trying to say—is it just a clever reference to their smartly assigned byline? Or are they explicitly setting up Fey as the new, updated version of Dowd, the smart, pretty woman all the dorky girls want to become? (For the new millennium: now younger, more neurotic, on TV instead of in those dying newspapers.) I trade 30 Rock lines with friends the way I e-mailed them Dowd's columns a few years ago. Fey certainly was the woman with the most incisive political satire this election season, and that's not even her day job. But did she only get to supplant Dowd in that role because she became more Dowd-y than dowdy, someone for whom the attendant sexy self-possession of a Beyonce reference isn't so crazy?

The piece closes with these lines:

Everybody wants to be Tina Fey, I tell her. Who do you want to be?

"I don't want to be somebody else," she says.

And why would she?

I'm not sure Vanity Fair entirely agrees.

Poor Britney

Because my taste in entertainment can tend toward the awful, last night I spent 90 minutes watching "For the Record," a faux documentary starring Britney Spears as the fallen pop starlet trying to stage a wobbly comeback. In sum total, it was pretty sad. The tired-looking, droopy-eyed, beweaved Britney comes across like a horse that's been ridden to the brink of exhaustion, and yet her minders continue to drive her onward, regardless of the fact that she's a barely functioning zombie on the verge of collapse. (All in service of a new album, fittingly called Circus.) In a nice deconstruction of the spectacle, Choire Sicha deems Spears "sick," and she sure looks it. Shots of the girl in action reveal her staring dully out car windows as the paparazzi bum-rush her ride, spacing out in chairs as she gets dolled up by makeup artists and hairstylists again and again, seemingly grinding through one more day to score a comeback that she denies she needs to make to regain her Princess of Pop title. The only time she lights up is when she's looking in the mirror.

While Britney's personal "revelations" range from the mundane to the strange—"What was I thinking?" and "Everyone shaves their head" among them—what's really mind-boggling is the constant swarming of the cameras around her as she attempts to live her life. This time, we see the view from inside the feeding frenzy—and it's pretty tragic. As her caravan emerges from a subterranean parking lot, the mechanical door rolls up to reveal a crowd of onlookers that resemble the Earthlings encountering the space aliens in Close Encounters of the Third Kind. Without a doubt, what we're watching is a 21st-century freak show, and Britney is its star. Since the show aired, some bloggers have denounced Spears for courting the cameras that she claims she wishes would leave her alone, but the fact of the matter is that the slobbering media hounds work for us, the American public, and if Britney Spears is a monster, we're the Dr. Frankenstein who made her.

The Brass Ceiling for Hillary?

Melinda and Emily, you're probably right that somebody should have whispered to Obama, "Wait, you'll be sorry," before he summoned Clinton for a Chicago chat about the State department slot. But either no one did, or he didn't listen, so now what's he going to do? Offer her secretary of Defense. The cons are all the same (and who knows, he may be counting on her to consider the prospect of filling out all those forms, and decline). But here are some fresh pros. For him: It wouldn't hurt to have someone who voted for the Iraq war in charge of handling the withdrawal, and she's been a member of the Armed Services Committee for years. He wouldn't be unleashing another globe-trotting Clinton when Bill is already out there, and it would ratchet down her hobnobbing with world leaders. Pros for her: Here's Clinton's chance to be a first and break the brass ceiling. State would be so been-there-done-that.

Of Women and Whitman

Meghan: I hadn't noticed that in his opening catalogue of binary-distinctions-beyond-which-we-must-move, Obama didn't mention that most primal of all binaries: men and women! That does seem like an extraordinary omission, one that I'd almost think was an accidentally skipped line (was he reading from a teleprompter there in Grant Park?) if it weren't for the ultra-precise and carefully calibrated delivery of the entire speech. Obviously Obama is, ideologically speaking, a feminist, but it's odd that rift in the electorate--which defined his primary campaign as much as any other factor--didn't spring more immediately to mind.

But how incredible that you got to be standing in Grant Park with all the other men and women, blacks and whites, gays and straights, etc., on that historic night. The frisson of awed patriotism you describe is exactly the mood evoked by this Whitman quote, from Leaves of Grass, sent to me the morning of election day by a friend who has a way of finding the perfect poem for every occasion:

 If I should need to name, O Western World, your powerfulest scene and show,
'Twould not be you, Niagara - nor you, ye limitless prairies - nor your huge rifts of canyons, Colorado,
Nor you, Yosemite - nor Yellowstone, with all its spasmic geyserloops ascending to the skies, appearing and disappearing,
Nor Oregon's white cones - nor Huron's belt of mighty lakes - nor Mississippi's stream:
This seething hemisphere's humanity, as now, I'd name - the still small voice vibrating - America's choosing day...

McCain-Palin Fails To Attract Women

CNN is reporting that Obama received 60 percent to McCain's 38 percent of the female vote with just less than 50 percent of national precincts reporting. This 22-point margin is much higher than polls predicted.

Adding Sarah Palin to the ballot didn't attract the women vote as McCain and the Republicans might have hoped. After picking Palin as a running mate, many speculated that Clinton supporters would flock to the McCain-Palin ticket. These early results don't show that to be the case.