Last night I almost made a gossip columnist drop her drink in horror with a single sentence. Luckily we were on the roof of 60 Thompson, which is such a classy establishment that the drinks are served in plastic tumblers, so no harm would've been done, but my gossipy friend's gasp drew the attention of another woman in our group, who asked me to repeat the shocking thing I'd said. She, too, did a double-take. "You let a man allow you to pay for your own dinner on the first date, and you're seeing him again?" I nodded. One of 60 Thompson's insanely bitchy waitresses stopped in her tracks as she overheard, almost dashing a tray of plastic-sheathed vodka tonics to the flagstones. What was going on here?

Says an assistant professor of cultural anthropology, of his students who arrange to have their marriage proposals surreptitiously photographed: "They both want to be famous and they want to be authentic, and yet there's something in their striving to archive their lives that's inauthentic ... It's almost like if it's not on Facebook, it didn't happen." Uh huh! And when the Times contains sentences like, "Whether inspired by tenderhearted sentiment, the desire to record history in the making or something more narcissistic, some marriage-minded men are remaking one of humanity's most private moments," it's almost like the last 30 years of the women's movement didn't happen! [NYT]

Pitchfork, the music site "often compared to Rolling Stone in its prime," can, they say, make or break an album. But rarely do we get to see the men behind the curtain. Men, you say? Oh yes, we say. Our Intern Sheila checked genders on 10 business days of Pitchfork's bylined reviews from each of the last two months, as well as from March, 2007 and from September, 2006. In each of those periods, reviews by men named Mark appeared at least twice as frequently than any reviews by women. The good news: Pitchfork appears to have doubled its contributions by women in the last year—their lady-numbers have jumped from 4% to 8% of all bylines! Wowza!

Today's teenage girls have some serious ish to contend with, and it cannot be helping that our former intern and current Radarer Neel Shah is being allowed to give them advice under the auspices of his unofficial position as Spokesman For Boys. This month in Cosmogirl, he explains the five reasons "Why Guys Lie." For starters: "See, unlike girls, when guys lie, we're not really thinking about the benefits or consequences to what we're saying." This is a lie. The article is full of lies, actually!

A concerned reader wrote us about our earlier post on Plan B. Apparently, we somehow misidentified the category of babykiller the pill falls under: "Pro-lifers love that the media continually get this wrong! Plan B is emergency contraception, not an abortifacient." Yes, of course! Rather than murdering a defenseless human being, with a beating heart and developed feelings and adorable little fingers and toes, Plan B actually prevents that little miracle of God from fully fertilizing its intended target. Sounds like a lot less fun than the outright destruction of a unique human soul, but, hey, however you pro-death types like to get your kicks is fine with us. Anyway, Gawker regrets the error. And the loss of life.

According to an article in The Stranger, "Smoking pot is a guy thing. Guys are the ones who deal, buy, and smoke. In 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services stated that adult males were 50 percent more likely to have smoked marijuana in the last month than females." Could be! Or maybe it's just that women lie more about their stonerosity because it's so much less acceptable for women to look lazy.

Neal Ungerleider is really working at his new blog-job at FishbowlNY to make not-friends. Today, he calls out Glamour preggyblogger Christine Coppa, who we think is kind of sweet and brave and smart (for Glamour—so basically we are saying that she is the one tard in the halfway house who is allowed to use a real butterknife), for spelling a word wrong in an email to his blog. Oh no he di int. ('Di'int?')

The new issue of earnest (bordering-on-sanctimonious!) magazine Good has arrived! It's the first anniversary issue, so there's a bit of self-congratulatory back-thumping and tabulations of how much money the magazine and its readers have donated to charity. That part is nice. There's also a charticle, "Girl Power," about global politics that announces, "Half of us are female, but only 10 of our leaders are." Which is funny, because a look at the Good masthead doesn't reveal too many staffers of the female persuasion, either!

Six-foot-tall amateur food semiotician Allen Salkin takes a close look at women who eat red meat on the first date. Why do they do it? Well, women eat meat mostly to fool guys into thinking they aren't neurotic, says Martha Flach—and she should know, as she's an Altarcations winner! Eating steak is also totally the new new new wave feminism. "Ordering meat...is a declarative statement, something along the lines of 'I am woman, hear me chew,'" says a vagina-blessed person. Salkin himself, although he probably has no vagina in his own body, postulates that "[t]he mediums of steak and hamburger each send a different message." Right, is true! And only sluts order their steaks rare.

You've heard about that Obama girl video, right? Everyone's talking about it. But is it harmless fun or an insult to womanhood's long struggle to be considered equal to men? It's an issue driving a wedge between even the closest of friends—for instance, Huffington Post media critic Rachel Sklar and Star editor-at-large Julia Allison. We've obtained a transcript of a recent (private) clash they had on the subject, and we make it public here because, well, it's very important. Whose side are you on? The answer might surprise you!

God, I'm glad I'm moving to Boerum Hill.

Last night I was on Red Eye and I was being really crazy the whole time. My metabolism still hasn't adjusted to doing yoga every day instead of smoking weed every day, so if I don't eat every four hours I become sort of unhinged? Long story short, the producers got mad. There was this, and then at another point they were trying to end a segment and I was just shouting "HELLO?! FEMINISM!" Anyway, speaking of feminism! This clip is from a segment about how John McCain is blaming the failure of his candidacy on his aides' insistence that he wear "gay sweaters." I called the famous former POW a "pussy," but they bleeped that word out with a meowing noise. I guess that's kind of funny, but when you consider that the other guest during my segment, comedian Donnell Rawlings, had literally no jokes besides "I am a black man and that means I have a big dick," it's also kind of enraging. HELLO?! FEMINISM!

"I grabbed a pad from under my sink and unwrapped it. I looked down on the little tab attached to the wings and noticed the message printed on it. "Have a happy period." FUCK YOU, I thought. Who the fuck has happy periods? No one. Periods only make you happy if you've been irresponsible that month. And that joy only lasts like 1.5 seconds of the 5 - 7 days you have to deal with it." [One D]

William Safire's former copy editor Jaimie Epstein, now a "freelance writer," took over his On Language column for this week's New York Times magazine and she is a big heap of "I rolled around in Daphne Merkin's hairshirt" nuts! It's like a mirage imagined by Lawrence Summers—lady takes over an oh-so-manly column and writes about her relationships and her feeeelings! See? I bet she can't do math either because she is all concerned with the affairs of the heart. She'll never win all of us a Nobel Prize. Unless there was a Nobel for emoting and journaling about dating in the modern age.

Today's WWD goes deep on the unexamined story of lack of women on media softball teams. Seriously. (Well, you try putting out a column on July 5! Go on! No seriously, please do, because we'll write about anything today.) Apparently the "New York Media Softball League," in its official capacity as People With Too Much Time On Their Hands And Not Enough Concern About Their Publications, has instituted a rule that insists that at least one woman be on the team for every five men. Vanity Fair and the New Yorker have not joined, so will not be subject to trying to find more women. "No knock on those guys, but they don't want to play on the same level, apparently," scoffs the editor of High Times. In fact, at our most recent game, we noticed an extreme, near-total lack of women on the New York Observer's softball team. (Makes sense: Of their six or so most recent editorial hires, only one was a woman.) Of course, if all women bat like our Doree or like Gawker Intern Kaila, we wouldn't want to hire them either. How could they possibly be any good at their jobs if they can't rock the diamond?

As the folks over at CBS's Public Eye note, summer is the season of the list. (The article functions as a collection of lists itself, which is probably intentional.) Why is this the case? Well, nothing happens between Memorial Day and Labor Day, and lazy journalists need to fill space. This problem also affects bloggers, who are even lazier than journalists. Inspired by Jon Friedman's contribution to the genre ("The biggest media stories of 2007 are..."), we decided to make another list of our own biggest stories this year, as judged by another special correspondent. She's very moody and capricious and opinionated! You could even say lippy!

Here is how the Post's Kati Cornell is reporting about Laura "JT Leroy" Albert's testimony in her defense against charges that she defrauded Antidote films by implying that a transgender teen truck stop hooker wrote her books: "'I didn't want my name . . . I could have my character come out. But when that's gone and there's nobody but 'Fat Albert,' there's no place to go,' the busty writer told her lawyer, Eric Weinstein." Yuck. But maybe Kati is just trying to be reassuring! After all, Laura's whole defense seems to be that she was fat as a kid and got teased and that this caused her to have split personalities, one of whom just happened to be a writer with incredibly marketable sob story. Calling her "busty" might be Kati's way of trying to help Laura heal her psychic wounds. What a shining example of how ladies, even ladies who pose as girl-boys to sell books and ladies who pose as misogynistic men to sell newspapers, can stick together!

"We've always thought we should save all our ire for corporate-controlled pap, rather than aiming it at our feminist comrades. But contentwise, these gals have recently sported some gnarly green between their teeth—er, pages," reads the introduction to an article in the Summer issue of Bitch magazine entitled "Et Tu, Bust?" Catfight alert! Wait... does saying stuff like "catfight alert" reify gender norms and undermine the possibility for serious discourse about dissent within the feminist movement? Or is it sometimes okay not to take everything feminism-related soooo damned seriously? This month, we read Bust and Bitch in search of the two independently published magazines' answers to those questions. Bitch's answers are: yes, no. Bust's answers are: no, and here is how to do your own highlights! Who will win? Hint: Not women.

Undeterred by the bloggy debate (that some terrible people have permitted to occur) about whether or not it's okay to publicly breastfeed, Maggie Gyllenhaal soldiers on for women's right to lactate in public without shame or apology. I'm 200% serious about this, by the way. If and when I have children I am going to breastfeed them until they're 6, wherever I go, because I am always going to be poor and that is free baby food.

Balthazar and Pastis owner and possible presidential candidate Keith McNally added further flame to his feud with New York Times restaurant critic Frank Bruni when the Dining section printed McNally's passive-aggressive letter to the paper today. We've already posted the draft, but the published version emphasizes the point that even William Grimes, "the last male restaurant reviewer for The New York Times," gave more stars to chick chefs. But in his femiladyist comparison, McNally neglects to mention any of the Times's female restaurant critics (Mimi Sheraton, Ruth Reichl, Marian Burros). Does McNally think only men can be sexist? There's a complicated word for that, isn't there? —Josh