Whether or not you think Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Weiner chose the proper target when they took on Jonathan Franzen and started the "franzenfreude" meme, it's undeniable that the two women writers have started what is an important—and now international—conversation. (The pair complained that the New York Times gives short shrift to women writers, particularly those who write popular fiction. We fact-checked their claims here .) Writing in the UK paper The Guardian , London-based, American-born novelist...(read more)

Schools across the country are banning rubber bracelets benefiting breast cancer activism -- all because they read, "I (heart) boobies." Administrators and parents are reacting to "boobies" as though it were a corrupting four-letter word from which we must protect our nation's youth. As though breasts themselves were obscene. As though they weren't a normal object of teenage lust. As though the First Amendment didn't exist. 

But, you know what? I'm offended by the bracelets, too -- just for a very different reason.

A growing number of activist campaigns are attempting to raise awareness (and perhaps other things) by simplifying the fight against breast cancer as a fight to save breasts. Not people, but breasts. Of course the implication is that lives will also be saved, but "boobies" are treated as the real star of this show. There was the infamous "Save the Boobs" ad, with a pair of bouncing bikini-clad breasts; the Men for Women Now campaign, which features famous(ly fratty) male celebs waxing poetic about breasts; the push for women to reveal the color of their bra in a Facebook status update; and the Booby Wall -- just to name a few. 

I've always found this approach to awareness-raising rather tasteless, but it wasn't until my mom was diagnosed with metastasized stage IV lung cancer that they became truly enraging. Not  only are women reduced to their breasts, but men are reduced to their love for breasts -- as though they will only pay attention to the cause if presented with a pair of luscious, jiggling tits. Over the last few months, I've watched my dad give my mom shots twice a day, methodically dispense her meds, drive her to appointments, wash her hair, rub her feet, sit with her in the hospital for hours and hours and hours on end. He does it without complaint; there is simply nothing he would rather be doing, given the circumstances. It isn't her lungs or her hair, now gone, that he loves -- it's her.

That isn't to say that you don't think about the diseased body parts: I stared at my mom's bone scan until I had memorized the location of each of the glowing white spots scattered from femur to collar bone. When we got a digital copy of her CT-scan, I obsessively clicked through the cross-sectioned images of her body, examining her intestines, uterus, diaphragm, heart and lungs. She is so much more than the sum of her parts, though. When it's an incurable case, when the prospects of survival are bleak, you aren't thinking about how much you love "boobies," or whatever the diseased body part may be, you're thinking about how much you don't want your loved one to die.

When death is truly knocking at your door -- and I'm not talking about early, uncertain cases -- most aren't thinking about how much they love their breasts, they're thinking about how much they love not being dead. They're thinking: Chop those things off, now. Women subject themselves to the pain of chemo and elect to watch their hair fall out; they do this not to save their precious secondary sexual characteristics, but rather to live another day, because it's worth it, breasts or no breasts.

Actually, Jess , Michelle Obama shouldered the bulk of the parenting beginning as early as 2002, when Barack Obama—already holding an Illinois Senate seat that required regular out-of-town trips—cast his eye on what would soon be an open seat for U.S. Senate. It only got harder for her from there, as he entered a years-long stretch of incessant campaigning. Both Obamas have acknowledged that his political absences created a problem for their marriage. Michelle Obama has said that eventually she realized...(read more)

You might have noticed headlines giddily trumpeting, "Man Having Sex Change 'To Look Like Lady GaGa'" -- but that is a tad misleading. Penio Daskalov, a former Bulgarian Big Brother contestant, told Radar: "I really admire the way she has created herself, so when I've had my operations I won't be quite a man or quite a woman." However, MTV UK frames the story like so: "Lady GaGa may have a huge fanbase but it has emerged that one of her Little Monsters plans to change sex so that he can look like Lady G herself."

Daskalov was already presenting as a woman on Big Brother -- so, while he may be telling his plastic surgeons to make him look like the pop star, I somehow doubt that the 24-year-old suddenly decided on a sex change just because of his love for Lady Gaga. (Note that "her" might be more appropriate, but it's unclear which pronoun Daskalov currently prefers, and the press is going with "he.") What's more, he apparently sees the operation as a transition not to being a woman but to being not "quite a man or quite a woman."

In any case, this is just the latest act in Gaga's riveting gender circus. First she was rumored to have a penis, then she posed as a man, then she was said to be dressing like a man dressing like a woman -- and now, a fan is having a sex change. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't on the edge of my seat, waiting to see what's next.

This post originally appeared on TresSugar.com A new study found more people search for the term "abortion" in red states , where policies are conservative or abortion options are limited, than in bluer states. The immediate takeaway is the argument pro-choice activists have been waiting for: limiting abortion access does not make the procedure any less in demand ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

The media keeps fanning the flames of the story of wrestler deaths in the WWE, the domain of Linda McMahon, who ran the wrestling empire before she became a candidate for governor in Connecticut. Here's this handy summing up from The Week : four men and one woman dead at young ages, two of them this month. And Democratic rival Richard Blumenthal still has had nothing to say about this. No attack ads or even just a biting line or two ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

The PR template for savvy politicians has long been to cooperate with major outlets on stories, because it’s easier to control the message that way. Even if the principal won’t sit for an interview, at the very least the principal’s staff and publicist should be talking to the reporter on background, knocking down rumors and promoting a positive perception of the boss ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

There’s been much ado here over the past few days about Vanity Fair’s musings on Sarah Palin’s exploitative parenting techniques . Of course this isn’t the first time Palin’s private life has been hauled out into the public square for taunting. Perhaps you remember Bristol’s pregnancy ? ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

Hanna and Jessica , I can’t decide whether the accounts in the Vanity Fair piece of Sarah Palin parading her children around at rallies and leaving Todd with the childrearing duties are sexist or just the sneering that is typical in most profiles of Palin by what she would refer to as the “lamestream media.” Such anecdotes usually seem pointless to me, because, let’s face it, there are very few people who are neutral about Sarah Palin. You love her or you hate her ... (Read the rest of this post...(read more)

Amanda , there’s an entirely different way of looking at that study about young women living in cities earning more than men. Yes, they are a cultural elite – young, educated women under 30 living in big metropolitan areas. But they are also a vanguard. Change always comes first to young educated women living in big cities, and then the rest of the country follows. The main engine fueling this change – the fact that for every 2 men graduating from college, 3 women will do the same – is not going...(read more)

We've noted before that the NYT has a tendency to run multiple stories on the same topic within the same brief time frame, suggesting that sometimes, the Times ' left hand isn't reading what the right hand is writing. This morning, the Business section has a lengthy piece on the dangers of prescribing psychosis drugs for young children , profiling a boy with "severe temper tantrums" who was prescribed a substantial cocktail: the antipsychotic Risperdal, the antidepressant Prozac, two sleeping medicines,...(read more)

Time trolls for panicked sexist responses with a headline that really seems too good to be true: "Workplace Salaries: At Last, Women On Top." Of course, as you read on in the article, you find out that, yes, women are making 8 percent more than men ... as long as they don't age past 30, don't get married, don't have children, and get more education than their male peers. Oh yeah, and if they live in 147 of the largest 150 cities in the country ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

—Unmarried, childless women under 30 who live in cities now earn more than their male counterparts. [ Time ] —In Tony Blair ’s new memoir , the former prime minister refuses to apologize for joining the war in Iraq or taking his time in the loo ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)

Countries of the world, take note -- this is an example of poor legislative timing: Canada has passed measures that arguably put sex workers in greater danger, just as anger mounts over the mishandling of the investigation into a serial prostitute killer. Adding to the current tension, a verdict is expected this month in a complaint challenging sections of the criminal code on the grounds that it violates prostitutes' constitutional right to "liberty and security."

The legality of prostitution is always controversial, even in a country like Canada where it is technically legal, and where everyone is purported to be so darn nice. (I say "technically legal," because the criminal code places restrictions on the sale of sex that effectively make it illegal in most practical scenarios.) However, given the recent focus on the case of Robert Pickton, a pig farmer who preyed on prostitutes in Vancouver, the debate has perhaps never been so intensely emotionally fraught. Add to that the fact that, according to a recent report out of the Vancouver Police Department, Pickton was allowed to continue his killing spree for years in part because -- to the surprise of exactly zero sex workers -- police discredited crucial tips from local prostitutes. Now they're really going to appreciate that law enforcement crackdown.

As The Toronto Star's Antonia Zerbisias puts it, the federal regulations broadly aimed at fighting organized crime were "enacted in the dead of summer without Parliamentary debate" and "give government the powers to wiretap, deny bail, and move in on people without the usual safeguards such as warrants." The upshot is that "a trio of prostitutes partying together with their 'dates' are tantamount to The Sopranos, and deserve the same treatment as gun runners or drug gangs," she writes. "Instead of a maximum two-year term, sex workers could now face 'at least five years' in prison, have all their assets seized and their children taken away." In the face of such penalties, advocates say sex workers will turn to the streets, which aren't as safe and take away their ability to fully screen clients.

As for the complaint currently sitting before the Ontario Supreme Court, the aim is to repeal the laws that effectively make prostitution illegal: the ban on public solicitation, living off the proceeds of sex for pay and running a "bawdy house" (broadly defined as "a place that is kept or occupied, or resorted to by one or more persons, for the purpose of prostitution or the practice of acts of indecency"). The plaintiffs' argument isn't just in defense of their right to make money by having sex, but also their right to do so without having to put their lives at risk. As Kate Harding summarized last November:

The fear of losing their assets and homes for illegally living on money earned by providing a legal service is one part of it, but the more important part is that changing the laws could save lives. Unable to work openly, in groups or to hire security, sex workers believe they are more at risk of robbery, assault, rape and murder under the current criminal code than they would be if prostitution were fully decriminalized.

It's easy to express outrage over the Pickton murders, and the fact that police exhibited a bias against local prostitutes that hurt the investigation and allowed a serial killer to continue his spree -- but the real question, the only one that really matters now, is what's going to be done to best protect sex workers and prevent this from happening again.

Young women earn more than their male peers -- not as much as, but more than. This is according to a new analysis of Census data that finds that among the young single and childless, women "have caught up and are now exceeding men in most of America's cities." Women in this demographic earn an average of 108 percent of their male peers, according to Reach Advisors, a consumer research company that announced the findings today. Of course the press is going nuts over this news, because it seems a reversal of the persistent pay inequity that we feminists are always whining about.

But, as I found when I called up one of the number-crunchers behind the research, it's important to note that it doesn't actually show that wage discrimination has disappeared, or been reversed, for this demographic. James Chung, president of the firm that conducted the analysis, responded to my search for clarification with a wry, "The devil is in the details," and added that "not all the nuances are communicated" when reporters are rushing to get the story out. So -- deep breath -- let's not rush.

When we talk about young women out-earning men, we are talking about averages. "It does not mean that a woman holding the same job and the same degree out-earns men," he said. Put another way: It does not mean that young women face no pay discrimination. The researchers have "been slicing and dicing Census Bureau data left and right" to find out "what happens with a generation of women who are 1.5 times more likely to go to college [or earn advance degrees] than their male peers." We know that women make 80 cents on every dollar men make, and that the average woman in her 20s makes 90 cents on the dollar. (Again, we're talking averages, which inevitably means comparing some apples to oranges.) What Chung and his colleagues have done is "isolate the segment where women have caught up with and exceeded men," and that is young, single, childless women.

These days, ladies are waiting longer to get married and to have kids – and it looks like it might be paying off. Chung says it is "crystal clear" that women's higher educational attainment is the real reason why. The study found three commonalities among nearly every city where young women clearly out-earn young men. First, there is "a heavy dependence on knowledge-based jobs, which in turn serves as a magnet for well-educated women." Second, minorities make up the majority of the local population (the researchers note that "Hispanic and African-American women [are] almost twice as likely as their male peers to earn bachelor and graduate degrees"). And, finally, "the community has seen a decimation of the manufacturing employment base, making it more difficult for men without similarly high levels of education to earn solid incomes."

The pay gap has always been a contentious topic, and some argue that it disappears when you control for occupation, education, parental status, lifestyle, et cetera, et cetera. But several studies that have controlled for such factors suggest that a significant gap still remains. Now, whether or not that gap can be explained by sexual discrimination is another issue for debate, and yet more research. The important thing with regards to this study is to recognize what it tells us (young, single, childless women on average are earning more than young men) and what it doesn't tell us (anything about wage discrimination). The fact that ladies these days are getting their learn on like never before, and that this gap is most notable in communities with "knowledge-based" job markets that prize higher education, sends a clear message of how we can help young men to catch up.

Today’s Wall Street Journal has the latest in a series of articles I’ve been reading the past few years about the bizarre, emotionally stunted lives of Japanese men. In this story, young, romantically inclined Japanese men go for the weekend to what formerly was a popular honeymoon resort, only these guys show up with hand-held devices which contain their virtual girlfriends. This follows the story about the Japanese men who don’t date actual woman, but instead are in love with body-length pillows...(read more)

As far as tell-alls go, Meghan McCain’s new campaign memoir, Dirty Sexy Politics , isn’t so shocking—especially coming from a woman who’s known for oversharing . The perplexing back cover, which has a very Def Leppard-consults-for-the-GOP vibe and features a wet-haired McCain in reptilian black boots perched atop a gold-flecked elephant, is about the most outré thing about it. The Washington Post highlights some of the “juiciest” bits , which include a night of too many beers in Nashville, a White...(read more)

Some sobering news for fans of sex stereotypes: They don't just hurt girls. A recent U.K. study asked grade school kids to assign statements like "this child is really clever" or "this child always finishes their work" to pictures of boys and girls. "It emerged that pupils from all ages were more likely to identify girls as being better behaved and harder working," reports the Telegraph. "Even boys were more likely to pick out girls as high achievers, researchers said." In another phase of the study, researchers found that when you announce before a test that boys don't perform as well as girls, lo and behold, boys don't perform as well as girls.

This will hardly surprise anyone who has paid attention to the wealth of studies showing the devastating impact stereotypes can have on girls when it comes to math.  Even subtle reminders of gender -- "male" or "female" check boxes, for example -- can hurt girls' test scores, and of course the same is true for boys. Lead researcher Bonny Hartley explains: "There are signs that these expectations have the potential to become self-fulfilling in influencing children's actual conduct and achievement." She warns teachers to avoid pitting the boys against the girls and using diminishing sayings like "silly boys" or "schoolboy pranks."

The moral of this study is that sex stereotypes don't just hurt girls, and teachers should treat all children like little people, not little men or little women. Leave it to the Daily Mail, though, to turn this into a battle of the sexes with this ridiculous headline: "Boys 'being held back by women teachers' as gender stereotypes are reinforced in the classroom." Not only is that not an actual quote, but if you make it to the end of the article, you discover that "the study drew no distinction between the beliefs and classroom practices of male and female teachers." 

A post from DoubleX contributor Helaine Olen: This past weekend, t he New York Times Magazine published a piece about the push to diagnose depression in preschool-age children, highlighting the work of Joan Luby, a professor of psychiatry at the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis. The article concluded by demonstrating the uses of a cognitive technique Luby, a pioneer in the arena of depression in the smallest among us, recommends called "Parent-Child Interaction Therapy" (PCIT)....(read more)

Jessica , the opening anecdote of Vanity Fair’s latest Sarah Palin takedown , in which little Piper is forcibly ushered onstage for a public display of maternal affection, didn’t do much for me either. I can’t imagine any political road show operates any differently. The kid is backstage playing with friends or dolls, and then the kid is pushed onstage to wave and look cute. Malia and Sasha have done it a hundred times ... (Read the rest of this post here .)...(read more)