Wow: Condoleezza Rice got $316,000 in bejeweled gifts from the kings of Jordan and Saudi Arabia last year, three times more than the president. She must be doing an amazing job!
Everyone knows that girls can't metabolize their alcohol like boys! That's why they're always staggering out of Mansion at 4 a.m., vomiting, crying, and curling up on the sidewalk like baby deer. In the last ten years, the ones who didn't drink much are now drinking, and the ones who already drank are drinking more, reports New York Mag. Their article on women and drinking is basically a public service announcement: What is happening to America's girls?
Ladies, there's no reason to copy Carrie Bradshaw, who is a fictional character, in everything she does. For example, Page Six reports that bridal designer Gabriella Risatti will knock off 30 copies of the wedding dress that she wore in the Sex and the City movie. Um, hello? That's the dress that she was wearing when Big left her at the altar. (When they got married for real she wore a tasteful suit at City Hall.) The actual Vivienne Westwood dress, which was fairly ridiculous in the first place—that was the point! that the much-vaunted big wedding was hubristic and silly!—does not come avec bird-on-head hairpiece.
Sure, Barack Obama appointed a number of women to prominent positions in his national security team, but he is still a patent misogynistic. How else to explain the terrible set-up of the podium at his press conference this morning? All the women had to readjust the microphones, which still looked like they were coming out of their heads. It's too much work to get a little milk crate for Hillary and Janet and Susan? We know Obama's a master of stagecraft and political spectacle, so we can only imagine that this was totally 100% intentional, appointing all these short women who you can barely see. After all, Robert Reich didn't have to speak at the economic team press conference, did he? Click for our video compilation of mic-adjusting humiliation!
As if life isn't depressing enough for Hillary Clinton right now, when everyone from the president elect on down seems to be giving her the cold shoulder, now the former Democratic presidential candidate has to contend with the warm, unfortunate embrace of Sarah Palin. Palin said in part two of Greta Van Susteren's interminable interview that Clinton broke the glass ceiling for her Republican vice presidential run. Then she remembered that Hillary lost, so she amended her statement to say Clinton just bloodied her head against the glass ceiling, apparently so a social conservative whose looks earned her outsized press attention could complain about the media's "double standard."
Back story: I'm lurking around one of the low-rent haunts of the highbrow magazine elite Wednesday and come upon a friend of mine, Jess, who introduces me to Donavan Hohn, a brilliant writer whose recent piece on a Hong Kong toy fair had inspired me to write a handjobby post about how much I love 'Harper's.' Anyway, like pretty much all journalists under 40 who bother with the whole "crafting exquisite paragraphs" thing anymore, Hohn has cash flow issues. So Jess suggests — naively, I'm assuming — he get into the celebrity profile racket. Her friend Mark Kirby does it! He just wrote a profile of Megan Fox for 'GQ' that was really actually a rewarding effort! And I'm thinking, "Oh Jess, guys like Donovan Hohn are just not wired to hustle celebrity profile assignments. Not least because guys like Donovan Hohn probably didn't know who Megan Fox even was when he saw her at a comic book convention at which he was busy jotting down the philosophies of some enchanting small-time hucksterpreneur, and plus, everyone knows celebrity profiles are the lowest form of hackery." Well shit, was I so totally wrong. Jess had just tipped me off to the best celebrity profile in years. Seriously, you know how the celebrity profile is totally dead? This profile could do for the genre what…Megan Fox does for impotence or something!
Well, duh to this: MSNBC wants to give their beloved new anchorlady and coiner of the term "post-rational" Rachel Maddow a makeover. (Click through to see Gawker's Steven Dressler imagine the results.) Who doesn't want to give Rachel Maddow a makeover? Rachel Maddow is Every Girl's Best Friend Said Girl Would Love Just .01% More If Said Friend Would Layer Her Hair And Buy A Lipstick Already. I am that friend to a lot of people! Plus there is a storied tradition of anchorwomen celebrating their new jobs with makeovers. Greta Van Susteren got an eye job when she went to Fox, and I heard once that former Wall Street Journal reporter Becky Quick got carded at R-rated movies before she started appearing on CNBC every day in 2000. Oh, but she is a dyke icon you are telling me?So what, she has to be the female Cojo or something? Last I checked dyke icons were still allowed to have haircuts I coveted. And of course Page Six is all over MSNBC for allegedly putting its "glam squad" on Maddow. The hypocrites! But Rachel Maddow, an ex-landscaper a few years fresh from a long career in left-wing activism, has spent her whole entire life not using her irresistible sexuality and expertly applied smoky eye to advance the media ranks. Maybe she wouldn't mind a little glam squad in her life just this one time. Maybe it could be kind of fun. So Rach, and I say this as an avowed enemy of the insecurity industry: fuck the haters, as long as they are paying you to take the day off and enjoy a little microdermabrasion, seize the opportunity. It is good for the economy I hear.
Hey, remember that CNN freelancer who was looking for people bartering sex to get their masters thesis edited or kitchen renovated or taxes done or whatever? It was kind of an uphill battle, since the freelancer ruled out using anonymous sources. But she still managed to find one sex trader! It all started with a young a college coed spending a semester in hot, steamy Brazil, dying for the rainforest tour no one would give her — until she met a native busboy at the local resort. And then... (cue steamy music)
Many of us have in our days taken issue with feminism. (No no no not the idea of it, silly, just like some of the "dogmas" and "pieties" and all those crazy ladies planning to vote take back abortion rights from their daughters as punishment for falling in love with that charismatic black man.) Anyhow as crazy as those women are they do not hold a aromatherapeutic incense stick to batshit barrister Roy Hollander. He is suing Columbia, where he attended business school, for having a women's studies department, and also waging multipronged legal wars with Ladies Nights, and his Chechen ex-stripper wife and because the God of Baffling Internet Misogyny is a generous god he granted an interview to Maureen O'Connor, a young female correspondent at Ivy Gate. Did he mention he prefers women in their teens and early twenties? Why yes he did! That's why he usually lies about his age. Here is their most charming interaction, which I would not be posting at this hour if it were not TOTALLY hilarious. [And also, if you are reading Nick, involving a shrewd future member of the Ivy League media mafia!]
So apparently a hysterical new "non-partisan" group, started mostly by bitter supporters of Hillary Clinton, has been formed with a very important mission. The New Agenda will fight for paid maternity leave, affordable health care and fair pay for women. Or at least they will do those things once they are done getting Chris Matthews fired from his job as host of Hardball on MSNBC, which is at the top of their self-described "to-do list," because Matthews, a longtime Democratic Congressional aide, is at the nexus of all types of awful problems for women, including wife beating:
Who's most poised to break "blogging's glass ceiling?" The New York Times pegs BlogHer, the yearly convention and ad network, as the center of discussion on how women ought to get more attention online — and the cash that comes with it. The core issue is that there are at least two very divergent camps within BlogHer.
A query from a freelancer working on a piece for CNN found its way to us today. They're looking for subjects that have traded sex for goods and services—you know, "used casual sex to get someone to assemble that Ikea shelving unit... help you move, do your taxes, edit your masters thesis, cut you a deal on the rent, or any other favor?" Personally? No; I put together my own shelving units and pay people to do my taxes, thanks. But we will not judge if you don't, especially since they'd also like to hear from those who have been offered sex in exchange for mildly frustrating menial labor. Click for the full query and see if you can help—the writer's deadline is July 24th!
Remember that episode of Sex and the City when two women tip Samantha off to a great new male masseuse, who does special things not typically included in your standard massage? (When she finally goes to him, he refuses to "perform" and she gets him in trouble, which enrages the other women—"Who's going to fuck me now?!") Well! Turns out this situation is not an urban myth. Tango, the magazine about relationships, investigates: "'It's such a well-known thing for guys, and women are finally getting more comfortable asking for it,' said Anna, a self-described 'massage healer' who has worked at several upscale spas and performed happy endings on female customers." Huh. After the jump—the spas in question.
Forget the glass ceiling for a second. This week anyway, the worst enemy of "women in tech" (like we're all one big happy girl army) is the Hot List. Playboy's "Hottest Blogger" contest is still rolling, still prompting faux-thinky "conversations" about objectification and what sets women back. (An aging softcore publication is the least of our worries.) By now a couple of Playboy's nominees have confided that they're eager to lose the vote and get it over with. What, there weren't any serious "Women of the Internet" who would pose anyway? Dear Playboy: Skip the voting on the collection of contenders we've assembled. Photo-shoot them all.
Patti Smith; who doesn't love her? (Even though the last time I saw her show, she forgot half her lyrics onstage and appeared totally stoned. Rock and roll!) Thing is, however, is that the media has been tremendously unimaginative in the last twenty or so years when writing about a lady who is equal parts artist, rock star, and stay-at-home mom. "Punk poet" and "godmother of punk" are the standard descriptors that have been in use since 1977. Deb Solomon mostly sidesteps that trap in this week's New York Times Magazine, asking instead: What's up with her hair?
The National Press Club in Washington, D.C. is celebrating its centennial this month. It's only semi-recently since they've tolerated women in the club: "In 1956, the men offered a compromise by inviting women to attend the luncheons, so long as they sat in the balcony and left as soon as the lunch was over. While the men dined below, the women shared the balcony with television cameras, hot lights, and coils of electrical wiring." They weren't allowed to join as full members until 1971, and that was only because they needed money, and capitalism trumps sexism. But women weren't the only ones dissed. Radio news broadcasters (the bloggers of their day) "were also treated as second-class citizens at first, being permitted to join the club only as non-voting members." [Oxford University Press blog] Celebrate the old days with a clip from "His Girl Friday," after the jump.
Oh my God, it took gossip columnist Liz Smith, 60 Minutes reporter Lesley Stahl, and the other momladies behind the new WowOwoW "women over 40" website about eight months to come up with something that stands for "Women on the Web." As they explain to Charlie Rose: first, they couldn't figure out what to call it. Then, once "women on the web" was decided upon, they found there was a porn site with a similar name! All the other good names were taken. So they had to buy the porn site... oh, my goodness gracious. It really was quite the conundrum, kind of like the time the neighbor's dog—the Smiths, you remember, they lived next door—got into the vegetable patch and ate everything! (Video follows.)
YouTube is encouraging teen girls to brutally beat each other and tape it! But seriously, girls between the ages of 13-18 are vicious and should be locked up anyway. And God knows how they're hazing in sororities these days.
We brought Lori Gottlieb's Atlantic article, "Marry Him! The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough," to your attention already. It advised, among other things, to "Settle! That's right... Because if you want to have the infrastructure in place to have a family, settling is the way to go... Marriage isn't a passion-fest; it's more like a partnership formed to run a very small, mundane, and often boring nonprofit business." Oh, how we laughed, but now who's laughing all the way to the bank? Gottlieb, since "Spider Man" actor Toby McGuire's production company optioned the book and movie rights to her article. Settle that! [Variety via NY Observer]
