Women Do!

Johnny Diaz, At It Again

2010-06-02T10:40:00.004-04:00

Our favorite Globe scribe has once again been astounded to discover, upon powering up his television of a morning, that there are women on it.

There’s a new weather pattern emerging in Boston: For the first time, all five of the meteorologists on Boston’s early-morning and midday newscasts are women. Stations have recruited and elevated more women from less-coveted weekend shifts to the highly competitive weekday morning race to deliver weather updates.

Oh my.

Moreover, these female weatherpersonesses -- these sheteorologists, if you will -- are closing the much-bemoaned Science Gender Gap.

Frank Colby, a meteorology professor at the University of Massachusetts Lowell, said, “What we are seeing is a trend toward women scientists,’’ he said. “To be a meteorologist, you need to be able to do math and science and this is like calculus and differential equations and apply it to the atmosphere and make sense out of it.’’

TV weather: It's so hard and sciencey. You really have to know stuff about using mathematical models to predict the behavior of complex and dynamic factors in the real world in order to stand in front of a map of the Eastern seaboard and point out the happy sun face over Hingham. Right, Stephen Colbert?

For those who have been sleeping in class and would like a refresher course on the women infesting Johnny Diaz's television, please refer to our March, 2009 tirade on Diaz's classic of the Women Do ____ genre, "The rise of the anchorwomen."

P.S. In an earlier version of this post, I missed the story and linked instead to the Globe's Weather Babes photo gallery. Forty lashes for me.

The Breeders

2010-05-06T15:59:00.003-04:00

This just in from Portland, ME: Women are capable of engaging in various artistic and cultural pursuits, even if they are also simultaneously performing functions common to all animal life forms, such as respiration, digestion and reproduction.

In other words: Moms Rock.

Salli Wason is a Portland mother of two precocious teenage daughters. She breeds her many bands as lovingly as her kids, having helped form Hatchetface, Man-Witch, and Hessian. She looks a bit like a biker chick, but not the kind who rides behind anybody.

When do we get to be people, Pinky?

Hegans

2010-03-24T15:39:00.003-04:00

The Globe's latest "Most Clicked" bait: Men leave their own mark on veganism.

Taylor Wells, who owns the cafe and yoga enterprise with her hegan husband, Philippe, estimates that 10 to 15 percent of their customers are hegans. “We get men who come in who want to cleanse and feel good. We like to ease them into it. I think the word vegan gets a bad rap, it sounds very militant and angry,’’ says Wells.

Anything I might add would be utterly superfluous.

Anyway, I hear Bostonist is going to rip this thing a new one shortly.

Reporter Blows Entire Lifetime Allotment of Commas in One Go

2010-02-03T23:22:00.003-05:00

I would like to call your attention to this story, "A woman surfaces in the Hudson River landscape."

Not because it's a Women Do, but because it's truly a stunning piece of work. It tacks back and forth between commas and em-dashes like a drunken mule on a pile of rocks.

Because of its locale, Cragsmoor — like Palenville — enjoyed an early period as an artists’ colony, with names like E. L. Henry, Frederick Dellenbaugh, George Inness, and, later on, Charles Courtney Curran bringing the attention of the nation to the raw beauty and majestic landscape that is literally perched atop Ordovician pebble soil — a distinctly different look and feel to the lay of the land than anywhere else in the Hudson Valley.

It has such an air of demented melancholy to it. If I were smarter, I would build a robot that could write like that and make it answer all my emails.

Women Die in Ignominy

2010-01-06T12:15:00.006-05:00

Mary Daly died this week in a nursing home in Gardner.

If this is the first you've heard of Mary Daly, that's because they don't teach squat to the youth of today. And because the New York Times is run by stone-cold bitches.

Does it strike anyone else as odd that the last century's boldest, toughest, most ferociously crucified, most unapologetically singular feminist philosopher didn't get an obit in the Times yesterday? They can't really claim ignorance, seeing as how they still own the Boston Globe, which saw fit to inform us in an obit that, despite being a tad on the bland side, at least had the requisite heft for a Public Figure.

If you'd like to get an idea of what Mary Daly is to contemporary feminist thought and theology, I recommend you go to the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard and pay a respectful visit to the prize of the fossil room, the sea-going Jabberwock, Kronosaurus queenslandicus. Take along a copy of the February 26, 1996 issue of the New Yorker, in which Daly recounts her epic battles with Boston College, God and the all-pervasive patriarcho-industrial complex. "Sin Big," she urges us. Look at those teeth.

One wonders just what a lady has to do to get obitularimazised in the New York Times these days. Run a strip joint for her ass of a husband, maybe. Yep. That'd do it.

**UPDATE!** Oh, look here! Somebody dredged up a teensy little AP item!

**UPDATE UPDATE!** Haw. The AP item linked above just tripled in size while I was linking to it. Somebody's playing catch-up.

We Interrupt This Broadcast

2009-10-20T13:08:00.004-04:00

I know you're here to make fun of newspapers, and I'm a let you finish. But first I gotta tell you we have the worst healthcare system OF ALL TIME.

Today, my wife's employer held a meeting to explain their new health benefits packages. They've got three: a high-deductible plan with an HSA, a "silver" PPO and a "gold" PPO.

We're on the Silver Plan. It's not great, but it does the job. We've got a $1200 family deductible, which we maxed out last year and are on track to do again. Her company chips in about $600 a month towards the "family" premiums, which is a mixed blessing. Since the federal government considers this taxable income (thanks, Defense Of Marriage Act!), she spends about $150 a month more for her premiums than the straight family man in the cubicle across the way. But whatever.

Anyway, they held a meeting today to explain that everything's going to be more expensive. Silver plan's going up by $80 a month. The family deductible is going up $500. Not sure how much the company's contribution to the silver plan is going up, but whatever that is, tack 25% of it on to whatever we pay out of pocket.

Upshot: a $2,000 pay cut for us, dangerously close to 10% of J's take-home pay.

Now, nobody at her job is happy with the new plans. But most people are switching to the HSA plan, if they haven't already, because it's much cheaper. Which, according to J, the company endeavored to explain.

Under DOMA (whee!), J can't legally pay any of my health expenses out of an HSA. Nor can she pay our daughter's, until her legal adoption goes through. (Hopefully soon. We just submitted affidavits to the court. Wheels of justice, etc.)

What does this mean? It means if we switch to the HSA plan, which has a $2300 family deductible, all of my (and my daughters') health expenses have to come 100% out of after-tax money until we max out the deductible. And of course, J will keep paying her premiums, plus an extra 25% of her company's contribution to the "family" plan. And the $60 a month that her employer kicks into the HSA can only legally be spent on J's healthcare, not the sprog's--ironically, since the two adults in the family have basically stopped going to the doctor because it's already too expensive.

As you know, women can't do math. I got through calculus OK, but this shite is hurting my tender women-brains. Anybody who has any opinions on which is the better bum deal for us is welcome to weigh in.

Emily Rooney Could Use Some Anger Management

2009-10-19T14:51:00.012-04:00

Here are some things that women, despite their general reputation for meekness and milksoposity, occasionally do:

"...have violent revenge fantasies
...make disparaging comments about immigrants
...make cranky-old-guy comments about new things
...make sweeping generalizations about gender"

That's from a sharp-eyed reader commenting on Emily Rooney's strange, apoplectic rant about Balloon Boy on the WGBH website. For a Real Live News Reporter, she sounds kinda like one of those pajama-clad Internet crackpots we've been hearing about lately.

And there's this:

I actually have a fantasy that I'd like to make chicklets of Mayumi Heene's smile.

Oof.

Hat tip to Universal Hub.

Useless Reveal: Now With 50% More Gay

2009-10-14T15:05:00.004-04:00

Remember the Useless Reveal? It's in the pages of this week's Phoenix. And it's wicked gay.

It’s just another Thursday night in South Boston.

Be calm, Reader, all is well. Or is it?

Local bars like the Boston Beer Garden and the Playwright are overstuffed with hard-drinking twenty- and thirtysomethings, mostly locals and the new crop of Southie transplants looking for a hookup.

In case you forgot what an ALTERNATIVE weekly we are, we threw some sex in.

The men are knuckling up to the bar, eyeing deals on pitchers of Miller Lite or Budweiser, scoping out prime real estate in front of a flat-screen TV to watch their favorite Boston sports team, and maybe even getting some love from one of the female hotties prancing around in skin-tight denim and low-cut halter tops.

More sex. More aimless verbiage. This is beginning to feel ominous.

The scene is similar at the Junction, another popular local watering hole. There’s a stench of beer and cologne in the air, pint glasses are being filled by the dozen, and the athletic attire that is the unofficial after-work uniform of the Southie male is everywhere in sight. But something seems off in this prototypical pub in the heart of historically xenophobic South Boston.

Uh-oh.

Maybe it’s this: almost every guy in the Junction tonight is gay.

KABLOOM! KABLAM! Mind: FUCKING BLOWN! IT CANNOT BEEEEEEEEE!

My Southie bawnanraised ex-girlfriend is going to have a goddamn field day with this.

Thanks to expert spotters Adam and Julia for finding this splendid specimen.

The Following Things Are For Men

2009-10-07T22:13:00.002-04:00

Science fiction, engineering, know-how, design, coolness, lightning, thunder, beer, GM, America.

Whereas, in contrast, these things are for women:

Environmentalism, organics, food co-ops, that which is emo, Europe.

Thanks for clarifying that for us, Slate.

The Ardipithecus Chronicles: Special Women Edition

2009-10-05T09:13:00.003-04:00

The NYT had a nice package this weekend on Ardipithecus ramidus, an astounding new Ethiopian hominid discovery. (Ardipithewhatzis? If this is news to you, you live under a rock and should get out more.)

Like the last big human-ancestor fossil find, Lucy, Ardi is a woman sort of hominid. (A womanid?) And you just don't get to be a big deal newspaper editor person without acquiring a deep, deep need to sling gratuitous puns, wisecracks and perky asides at every single female-type thing that passes within reach of your grasping inky paws. They had to go there.

Forget the high heels; her feet had no arches (Lucy’s did).

Was that really necessary?

Distaff Gator Slayers!

2009-10-01T10:18:00.004-04:00

For real.

Gators, beware: There are predators stalking the swampland of the South, capable of bringing down creatures up to four times their weight. These menacing forces have bows in their hands. And occasionally in their hair.

Today's shot of breathless incredulity with an "OMG, girlz" chaser courtesy of Sports Illustrated.

Welcome To The Borg, Martha Coakley

2009-09-30T14:34:00.005-04:00

When Globe reporter Matt Viser came a-calling on our esteemed A.G. the other day for a story about her U.S. Senate candidacy, she apparently told him to take a hike.

Coakley, the first woman to serve as Massachusetts attorney general, declined requests for an interview yesterday.

Well, if she thought that would stop Viser from writing a great fat Women Do story about her, she was sorely mistaken. "Powerful Women Line Up For Coakley," the article promises, and gets off to a rousing start with a quote from state Senate president Therese Murray:

“There’s just a real sense of excitement that she’s qualified and she’s got the whole package,’’ said Senate President Therese Murray. “Women have never been at this point in Massachusetts before for this office.’’

How true that is, President Murray. As a woman, I feel I am at a whole different point in Massachusetts today, thanks to Martha Coakley and her exciting package, for whom I have reserved the right not to vote, on account of I feel I need a little more information on the topic than the (admittedly well-sourced) rumor that she possesses certain ladybits.

As the story continues, it quickly rambles off into the meta-weeds with a lot of Globe-style handwringing from various commenters about whether or not it is proper for a woman, as a woman, to be campaigning for another woman qua woman and not qua office-seeker, despite or perhaps because of anyone's possession of ladybits, all the while firmly maintaining one's conviction that indeed Ms. Coakley is the best pol of any sex for the job, but unfortunately one's fellow voting-women are so dumb they have to be beat over the head with a giant vagina every November. Capiche?

Viser explains with less verbiage:

But much as Clinton did, Coakley faces a complex calculus. Her supporters and campaign aides want women voters, but they don’t want to be seen as courting them on gender alone.

Well, too bad, ladies of the Borg. Thanks to the Globe, now we all know you just want to get in our pants. Our hot, voting lady pants.

In other Women Borg news, Jezebel has a zippy little tirade today about media accounts of mean girls on both sides of the pond. A sample:

Anyway, according to these articles, women have some special bond through our giant shared vagina which means everything is automatically peaches and cream between all of us, and if someone is ever mean or nasty, this is to be ascribed to the entire gender.

I am not entirely sure I approve of the mixed metaphor, though there is a certain juicy felicitousness about it.

Patience Is A Virtue For Shooting Things Dead

2009-09-29T11:24:00.004-04:00

Women: They're better at killing stuff in the woods. Increasingly. Exponentially, even. It must be because of their wise, gentle, patient, practical, all-knowing, compassionate, humble, superior Goddess-nature.

Jeanine Elias says women make good hunters because she believes they're more patient than men, and their expectations are lower.
"They don't have this idea of, 'I got to have this perfect rack on my wall,' " Elias said. "When I go hunting, I'm not looking for the perfect rack on a deer. I'm looking for meat."

Oh, the soft bigotry of lowered expectations. (I'm not sure that's relevant here. I just like saying it. It's the best thing that ever came out of Dubya's mouth by a long shot.)

How's this for a trend: Increasingly, I'm getting really bloody tired of all these backhanded compliments, all this noble-savage talk about women being superior at basically everything because of some trumped-up essential quality we are universally presumed to possess. And the sloppy use of the word "exponentially" in news reports. I'm getting tired of that, too.

Depart from us, NPR, we never knew ye.

Women Exacerbate Dairy Crisis

2009-09-29T09:11:00.004-04:00

As you all know, unless you have been living under the proverbial rock these last twelve months, we are in the End Times--or, if not the End Times, perhaps their darling Victorian antechamber, where we will have a glass of sherry and have a look at some etchings before the butler arrives to usher us into the Apocalypse Proper. Odds are you've got it pretty bad. But unless you're a dairy farmer, it could be worse.

(I'm guessing you're not a dairy farmer, because if you are, you're probably not reading blogs about newspapers writing about women doing things. You're probably at your bank begging for a loan so you can buy hay to feed your cows so they'll make milk which you can sell to a giant monopoly that is currently under investigation by the Justice Department so you can maybe make back half of the money you spent on hay. Or you're at your 40-hour-a-week day job that you have so you can get health insurance, popping Ritalin so you can make it through the day and still get up at 4am to milk 100 goddamn cows. Or maybe you're out shooting your cows in the head.)

Being a dairy farmer? Not so hot right now. And it's about to get a lot worse, thanks to women. Women cows, that is.

The New York Times tells the tale for us citified types that haven't heard it yet. Since approximately the dawn of time, cows, like most animals, have been giving birth to male and female calves in roughly equal numbers. But a male calf on a dairy farm is, as Rip Torn might say, about as useful as a poopy-flavored lollipop. So a few years ago, Science gave the beleaguered dairy farmer marvelous new sperm sorting technology, ensuring that most calves born would be female.

Now farmers have a different problem: too much milk. And the first generation of bionic bovine fembots are about to hit the milk parlor, with a vengeance.

“Just as the industry starts to recover from these difficult times, we’re going to see these heifers enter the marketplace,” said Ray Souza, president of Western United Dairymen, which represents farmers who produce about 60 percent of the milk in California. “At the very worst it could certainly stop the recovery altogether and send us into another price recession.”

It's like the Chinese one-child policy, only with cows. Thanks a lot, Science.

for weak women.

2009-09-21T15:29:00.005-04:00

who knew we've been sick all along? quelle horreur!

a brilliant find to kick off a female-forward week.

purchase print of original collage for $24 at the paper apartment (because women do become artists in allston)

Arrrrrr!

2009-09-19T10:29:00.003-04:00

In honor of Talk Like A Pirate Day, please enjoy this Women Do Stuff At Sea story from the AP. It's pretty well-done--no grossly fruity verbiage or cutesiness, just the facts, ma'am. Its hero is Aysun Akbay, a 24-year-old Turkish third officer aboard the MV-Horizon 1, which has been hijacked by Somali pirates.

The pirates told Aysun that she could call her family when she wants because she is a woman, but Aysun calls us only when others get the chance to call their families too. She tells us not to worry," said her sister, Aysen.

A little old-fashioned, these pirates.

Useless Reveal On Steroids

2009-09-18T19:52:00.008-04:00

You folks are familiar with the Useless Reveal, right? We've discussed this before. It's a kind of lede common in women-journalism. Sometimes invisible to the untrained eye, but rather like Euphorbia prostrata, the Prostrate Spurge, once you know what you're looking for, you'll see it everywhere. Here are its markings:

1. A headline and/or large photo that screams "THIS STORY IS ABOUT A WOMAN TYPE OF PERSON,"

2. A gormless presumption on the part of the reporter that the reader does not know this,

and 3. Faux shock and awe when some kind of wardrobe malfunction, usually involving a blond ponytail tumbling out of a helmet of some sort, betrays the subject's basic feminitude.

Today's NYT has a three-paragraph Useless Reveal. Three paragraphs. Wow. I think I need a new pair of disbelief-suspension cables.

NEW ORLEANS — Mike Henry could not get comfortable in his stance. He knew the line judge was watching him. This was only a scrimmage, but Henry, a 6-foot-5, 289-pound freshman lineman, was trying to move up thedepth chart for the Tulane Green Wave. The whistle blew and a blur of black and white stripes came running his way.

“You need to get down, and stay down,” the official said in a voice that swiveled Henry’s head and widened his eyes. It was not the tone but the timbre of Sarah Thomas’s voice.
It was soft and lilting and grounded in the rhythms of her native Mississippi. Because Thomas’s long blond hair was tucked beneath a black hat swirled in stripes, Henry had had no idea the official was a woman.

Kudos to reporter Joe Drape for informing us that women are native to Mississippi. I did not know that.

I hesitate to offend the delicate sensibilities of our readers, but you should know that subject Sarah Thomas--who, you may have deduced, is a football referee--is occasionally subject to uncouth verbiage.

She understands intensity can give way to some salty language.

Shocking. I hope the NAIA covers the cost of the lead ovary-shields she obviously needs to perform her job safely.

News Flash: Effective Women More Effective Than General Population

2009-09-18T11:31:00.007-04:00

A recent study by Stanford and the U. of Chicago found that women lawmakers, on average, introduced more bills, attracted more cosponsors, and brought home 9% more bacon for their districts than their male counterparts.

Politico asks the obvious, though somewhat misleading, question:

Are women more effective lawmakers than men?

Er, yes. No. Sort of.

Set aside the issue of whether more pork = better lawmaking. Cheers to Politico for getting around to the real lesson, though it could have come a little higher in the story:

Researchers say the small number of female members may have something to do with their effectiveness. Women who run and win are likely the most politically ambitious and talented of their pool, having potentially overcome hurdles including voter bias and self-doubt about their ability to win. Female candidates also tend to attract more challengers.

You don't have to go all Carol Gilligan on the data to explain it. This study doesn't really say anything about women being innately better or more cooperative or what have you. It's a selection effect: only the most extraordinarily competent women can survive the election process. If my lawnmower cuts down all the dandelions over four inches tall, it stands to reason the ones left will all be short.

Good News!

2009-09-18T09:50:00.003-04:00

Greetings, fair Readers--

In the (unlikely) event that you spend your days worrying about Women Blogging About Newspapers Writing About Women Doing Stuff, you may have noticed a distressing scarcity of content in this cantankerous corner of the Interwebs of late.

Well, I'm sorry about that. I've been busy with many projects. Some of them involve journalism, and will be expounded upon in future. Others involve poop. Never mind that! I have great news for you all.

I've invited a few steadfast Women Do-ers to contribute to our little endeavor. Namely:

Christine Liu, cultural curator. One of the few people I know who can write about fashion and design without sounding like Beth Teitell with a mouth full of bubblegum. You should let her choose your shoes.

Ryan Rose Weaver, writer, editor and foodie. In a churning sea of new media that has sunk so many boats, Weaver is a stone deftly skipping across the waters.

Jenna Scherer, critic of, among other things, theater. The most acidulous pen in Boston, and perhaps the Eastern seaboard. If we are lucky, she will use it for good and not evil.

I am honored to have these ladies aboard. Together We Can.

Lest you fear we are turning into a gynocracy up in here, I would like to publicly extend invitations also to Messrs. Keohane, Kilburn, McMorrow and Moseman, all of whom have been avid noticers of Women Doing Stuff, and who are all well able to reason their way out of a wet paper bag. Gentlemen?

Not That Word Again

2009-08-07T10:52:00.003-04:00

Can somebody please read today's Globe's Women Do Stuff story for me? Looks like it's about women rocking out at the Bank of America pavilion. I can't get past the title without urping.

"Kickin' Sass."

Oh yes. They did.

UPDATE:

Okay, fine, I read it. Here's my favorite part:

Q. I know you don’t think of rock in terms of gender, but are you finding other people are framing this as a female rock tour?

A. No, no one has said that to me.

Q. Good. Maybe we’ve moved beyond thinking in those terms.

Hi, this is the Globe! OK if we ask you a few questions? So how long have you been beating your wife? Oh, you haven't? Of course you haven't! That's ridiculous! Can you believe anybody would print that in the newspaper? Jeez, some people.

Undercover Brother

2009-07-30T13:53:00.009-04:00

Recently, a communique regarding the ivory tower known as the University of Pennsylvania came over the transom, and piqued my highly sensitive WTF detector. "WTF?" I said. And then I asked a few friends in The Academy what they thought. It struck me as disingenuous at the very least, not to mention illegal, no matter how well-meaning.

Now, Boston's a hotbed of rrrrracism lately (of both the blatant and the alleged variety), and while I enjoy the hell out of a good argument, I am not in the habit of deliberately wading into wasp's nests. So I'm a little nervous to post this.

"The thing is, nobody could call attention to it without ending up being caricatured as a Klansman," said one friend in particular.

I'm not so sure about that. In fact, I'm staking my (arguably) good name on it. $20 says I don't end up on the front page of CNN as Boston's next famous racist. (I hope I'm right. I am getting married on Sunday, and am thus fresh out of most of my $20 bills.)

Here's the email I got:

"The University of Pennsylvania is launching an 18-month Academy focused on preparing Black males for admission to Ph.D. programs in education immediately upon completion of their undergraduate studies. They will begin the Academy this fall with 10 Black males who are in their junior year of college. Check it out here: http://www.gse.upenn.edu/blackmen

Each Academy participant will receive a 4-day all-expense paid visit to Philadelphia this fall; opportunities for meaningful engagement with the dean, faculty, graduate students, and Black male alumni; free enrollment in a 3-month Kaplan GRE Prep Course (for which Penn is paying $1,200 per participant); a current Black male Ph.D. student who will mentor him through the application process; and an application fee waiver when he applies for Fall 2011 admission to Penn (valued at $85). Most importantly, those who are admitted to our Ph.D. Programs two years from now will be fully funded for their entire 3-4 years of doctoral study.

Please forward this information to Black male undergraduates you know and encourage them to submit applications by August 21st. The Academy is only for Black men who are starting their junior year this fall and planning to graduate in Spring 2011."

First off, check out the URL. The one ending in "blackmen." When you click it, it redirects to a page with the ending "grad_prep."

Think about that for a minute.

When you get to the page, there's nothing there to indicate that they're targeting any particular group of students for the initiative. No place even to indicate your race or gender. No language about giving preference to applicants from minority backgrounds. No indication whatsoever to clue you in that in fact, only a very small group of students is even eligible to apply for the Academy. Which, if you make it through and get admitted to the UPenn Ph.D. program, guarantees you four years of full funding. That's not chump change.

Set aside, for a moment, the question of whether or not affirmative action works, of whether quotas should be hard or soft, of whether race/gender is a good enough shorthand to describe the kinds of folks that have the hardest time getting through the educational system (bad schools, no money, little family support, half their peers in prison, etc.). Set aside the fact that what we really, desperately need is change at the level of neighborhoods and criminal justice and public elementary and high schools. I personally think that, while it has its merits, affirmative action at the college-to-grad-school junction is a little like trying to get more vitamins by sticking broccoli up your ass: a bit late in the game, my friends. But even if you disagree, shouldn't this program be done out in the open?*

It sure looks like assistant prof Shaun Harper and GSE dean Andy Porter are trying to do this in a wink wink nudge nudge fashion without anybody noticing. I can just imagine some poor non-black-man undergraduate, heart afire for social justice and education and no Ph.D. money in sight, sitting there cluelessly filling out the application thinking, "Yes! What a cool program! Maybe I can get that doctorate after all!" (Perhaps that's why they aren't advertising it proudly on the department homepage, but instead trying to spread the word through Internet back channels.)

What really kills me are some of the comments around the Webs viz. this initiative and the issue of black women in education. They're so nice. So nonconfrontational. You'd hardly know somebody was gazing in at a very fine party she's explicitly not invited to by virtue of not having a Y chromosome.

Here's one:

"I can definitely understand the need for this program. I hope that it is successful, and that Penn and other universities might consider creating such programs geared toward drawing more Black women into fields in which they are underrepresented."

And another (actually, it looks like maybe it's the same person):

"As a Black woman professor who mentors young Black women interested in doctoral study, though, I must say that I am saddened by what seems to be the absence of similar programs for young Black women. Is this an indication that Penn administrators believe they already have enough Black women doctoral students in the School of Education? If so, then might the University consider developing similar programs in those fields in which Black women are underrepresented?"

I respect that people working on different social-justice agendas don't want to be undercutting each other in public. But if I were you, Black On Campus, I'd rage a blue streak about this. And I wonder how many social-justice-minded UPenn education juniors who busted their asses to be where they are are crying into their soup about not being able to apply for this, but don't want to speak up and get labeled racists.

Can we talk about this without everybody lobbing great flaming "Rrrrrracist!" accusations at each other? Let's find out! Whee!

*Full disclosure: I had a year of funding for grad school through a privately funded fellowship for women in science. I don't want to seem like an ingrate, but I'm not convinced throwing scholarship money around is the best way to fix the Larry Summers problem, nor do I think it's fair that the only man in my program wasn't able to compete for it. So it goes.

Men Increasingly Defying Nonexistent Stereotypes

2009-06-09T15:04:00.004-04:00

For too long, men have been denied a seat at the table at which serious questions of philosophy, morality, theology and wise government are discussed. It's high time they emerged from their man-caves and began engaging with the world of ideas.

Recently, we heard from Don Aucoin of the Boston Globe that area men are forming book clubs. They don't actually read any books, as this would take precious time away from traditional male pursuits such as drinking, gossiping and making simian noises about NASCAR. However, this is a great start. If the men keep their minds sharp with these little sallies into intellectualism, why, in a few hundred years they might even hold most of the positions of power in American society.

"Traditionally, it's difficult to get men together unless it has something to do with poker or NASCAR or Hooters clubs," says Douglas Lord, who writes the "Books for Dudes" column for a newsletter published by the Library Journal.

How true that is, Douglas Lord. Where in America do you see a bunch of men getting together to tackle the important issues of society? What we really need is more male safe space, so men can feel comfortable talking about big ideas without their wives and mothers and sisters there to tell them how to think. Men are natural networkers, and when you get them together, exciting things happen.

"We used to just sit around and drink beer and read Charles Bukowski, nothing great," says Pride, 51, of Quincy. "But the other night we were talking about evil. Drinking our red wine and talking about evil. We're moving into a deeper dimension. We don't want to read junk."

See? Brotherhood is powerful!

Ethical Dilemma: Solved

2009-06-02T23:38:00.003-04:00

New York Times columnist Randy Cohen, also known as The Ethicist, has produced some whoppers in his day. But this is the living end. I'm sure his proposal--to require all women to carry unconcealed weapons--is satirizing something. I'm just not sure what. Sexism? The ridiculousness of the pro-gun lobby? The ridiculousness of the anti-gun lobby? Hisself?

The best part is the little Gedankenexperiment where he imagines himself on the subway surrounded by Glock-toting females, and feels a snug, comforting sensation. (Clearly the subway around Lincoln Center does not have much in common with the Red Line.)

And then there's this:

Given women’s splendid record of seldom shooting at, for example, me, they’ve earned a provisional chance to serve the public good in this way. Even if some women prove imprudent with firearms — that is, act like men — feminizing gun ownership could ultimately reduce its appeal to men, making gun-toting as unmasculine as carrying a purse. There are occupations whose status (and pay) declined once they were taken up by women: secretaries, telephone operators, teachers. We already endure the mischief of such sexism; why not harness it for good?

Jonathan Swift you are not, sir.

Sarah Kershaw: Manning the It's-Not-1954-Anymore Beat

2009-05-28T14:57:00.005-04:00

Intrigued by Sarah Kershaw's "idiot-ass stupid-dumbfuck-balls article" about teen hugging (which we featured earlier today), Women Do! reader Jenna Scherer hit the NYT vault to see what else Kershaw had perpetrated lately. Looks like she's an expert in the field of People Defying Garbage Gender Stereotypes In Irritating Ways.

Somehow I missed her April 23 feature, "Mr. Moms (by Way of Fortune 500)." Is it as bad as I think it is, you ask? No! It's worse!

Even for the Times, this is pretty rich stuff. Dads who used to make more money than you now have to go to PTA meetings! Where they are hailed as saviors, apparently. Because everybody knows women can't do math. And who do you turn to when you can't do math? The guys who just got laid off from their fantastically highly-paid Wall Street finance jobs for DESTROYING THE KNOWN UNIVERSE.

The new prevalence of fathers around town is bittersweet for mothers, teachers and others. On the one hand, the PTA can use all the help it can get from men with financial expertise at a time when the proposed school budget is under enormous pressure. And women are happy to see stay-at-home husbands building closer relationships with their children. But one little-spoken effect is an uneasy feeling that these highly successful men are facing the pain and potential shame of being out of work.

Oh, the shaaaaaaaaaaame! Who knew being a regular person was so dirty?

Sarah Kershaw, we're onto you.

Deviled Egg-Off!

2009-05-28T11:42:00.003-04:00

A few months ago, you may recall, we got our knickers in a twist over a really thickheaded Globe story claiming that women do not eat deviled eggs. "How could they?" we quoth. We swore. We shook our fists at the sky. And we vowed to have a party. A great big egg party.

Well, grab your paprika bottle and shake it like a Polaroid picture, because it's time for the Inaugural Deviled Egg-Off. In the spirit of women and men doing things, both kinds of people, in addition to everybody else, are hereby invited to whip up your deviledest eggs and bring them to PA's Lounge on Monday for an epic showdown of eggy goodness.

Where: P.A.'s Lounge, 345 Somerville Ave., Somerville.
When: Monday, June 1, 7:30pm
What: Deviled eggs! Chicken celebrities! Foodie judges! Mayhem! Free admission!
Why: To show that there Globe what for, but mostly to have a good time and eat a lot of deviled eggs.
How: As zestily as possible.

Here is our Facebook invitation! By all means invite your friends.

Also, no one can eat fifty eggs, except Paul Newman. (Hot!) But we will try.

The Youth Of Today: They Hug One Another With Abandon

2009-05-28T10:10:00.005-04:00

Hot off the presses of our nation's paper of record: teenagers hug each other. Even the boy kind! No! It cannot beeeeeeeeee!

Our intrepid reporter Sarah Kershaw ventures boldly into the halls of Pascack Hills High in Montvale, New Jersey, where she is informed by junior Danny Schneider that gender as we know it has ceased to exist.

“We’re not afraid, we just get in and hug,” said Danny Schneider, a junior at the school, where hallway hugging began shortly after 7 a.m. on a recent morning as students arrived. “The guy friends, we don’t care. You just get right in there and jump in.”

And it's not just in New Jersey. All across the nation, the flower of manhood are bravely flinging their arms around one another, risking the ire of school administrators.

[S]chools from Hillsdale, N.J., to Bend, Ore., wary in a litigious era about sexual harassment or improper touching — or citing hallway clogging and late arrivals to class — have banned hugging or imposed a three-second rule.

Youth vs. authority! Shifting social norms! My God, it's a trend! We have here the elements of a newspaper story. But it's not really meaty enough for the New York Times. To make it worthy of the Grey Lady, we have to know: Will somebody make some sciencey noises for us? Is there a pop-culture buzzword? Can we make an incredibly awkward reference to hip-hop culture? And can we blame it on the Facebook?

But Amy L. Best, a sociologist at George Mason University, said

Yep.

The prevalence of boys’ nonromantic hugging (especially of other boys) is most striking to adults. Experts say that over the last generation, boys have become more comfortable expressing emotion, as embodied by the MTV show “Bromance,” which is now a widely used term for affection between straight male friends.

Check.

But some sociologists pointed out that African-American boys and men have been hugging as part of their greeting for decades, using the word “dap” to describe a ritual involving handshakes, slaps on the shoulders and, more recently, a hug, also sometimes called the gangsta hug among urban youth.

Er, check.

“Maybe it’s because all these kids do is text and go on Facebook so they don’t even have human contact anymore,” said Dona Eichner, the mother of freshman and junior girls at the high school in Montvale.

Okay, we're done here.

Words Of Wisdom

2009-05-27T13:07:00.003-04:00

Here's a riddle for you: What is strong enough to ruin an entire generation of American men, yet so weak that I could cripple it simply by choosing to wear the wrong sort of shoes? The answer, of course, is feminism. If you believe what you read in the papers, that is.

This post, a savage takedown of Ad Age/Details writer Simon Dumenco's irritating how-can-I-be-a-man-when-you-keep-making-me-empty-the-diaper-pail schtick, is six months old (quelle horreur!), but the sagacity therein is as fresh as a pail of new milk. My favorite bit:

Here's the deal: men and women are dicks, men and women cheat and otherwise do the wrong thing, men and women succumb to everyday selfishness and resentment and feminism doesn't have a good goddamn to do with it.

What she said.

Traffic Jam On Madison Avenue

2009-05-21T12:46:00.004-04:00

Seventy years ago, marketers hit upon the novel idea that men should eat soup.

Fast-forward to 2009. Things are so different now! It's pretty radical, but get this: women use computers. Not only that, but men drink soda.

What is this, Tehran?

Women Occasionally Mean, Unsupportive Of One Another

2009-05-10T17:19:00.012-04:00

Breaking news: Women in the workforce, despite being generally regarded as frail and timid, are in fact too aggressive. Especially to other women. Sometimes.

Just the mention of women treating other women badly on the job seemingly shakes the women’s movement to its core.

Oh, feminism, how frail thou (seemingly) art. A gentle spring breeze might blow you away. Only last week, I failed to give a pregnant lady my seat on the T, and God killed a radical lesbian-separatist kitten. So much for sisterhood being powerful.

According to a story in yesterday's New York Times, women are not as prone to bullying their subordinates as men, which fits nicely with received notions of women being altruistic. But when they do go rogue, they pick on other women, which is nasty, and hurts feminism. Also, they are stone cold bitches. (And here we thought putting women in charge was going to magically reform our corporate culture and fix the recession and stuff.)

It’s probably no surprise that most of these bullies are men, as a survey by the Workplace Bullying Institute, an advocacy group, makes clear. But a good 40 percent of bullies are women. And at least the male bullies take an egalitarian approach, mowing down men and women pretty much in equal measure. The women appear to prefer their own kind, choosing other women as targets more than 70 percent of the time.

What is this "nationally representative" study, you may well ask? Was it peer-reviewed? Did it appear in some fancy science journal thing? And where on earth did they get those lovely round numbers?

Actually, it's by a bunch of seminar-peddling consultants, who can be found here, here and here. Or if you like, you can help them make the world a nicer place by getting lawyers involved. And if you're really into this anti-bullying stuff, this June, you can spend three days with them in the glorious environs of Bellingham, Washington, learning to be an anti-bullying lobbyist just like Doctors Gary and Ruth Namie of the Workplace Bullying Institute. Only not as good.

No one else in North America can train you on this topic like Gary and Ruth Namie can! You will learn to customize the components for your personal needs and upon completion of this course you will be certified to deliver a presentation introducing Workplace Bullying to a variety of audiences — public or business groups.

See? You, too can be certified to give other people a PowerPoint presentation on Workplace Bullying! And, since the Workplace Bullying Institute is a nonprofit, Gary and Ruth Namie are doing this for the poor downtrodden American worker. Out of the goodness of their hearts.

Fee: $3,600 (USD) per person

Oh. Right then.

When Life Gives You Lemons, Enjoy Your Banker PMS

2009-05-08T15:12:00.007-04:00

There are a lot of things to love about being in the middle of a ruinous economic meltdown. Hobo chic, which is hilarious. Backwoods Home magazine getting fatter and fatter. Laughing at soulless twits who bought condos at the Natick Collection. And my favorite: the Banker PMS Story.

It used to be that 99%* of stories about people rendered insane by the cocktail of hormones coursing through their veins were about women. No more. Now, when you crack your morning paper and read about somebody losing their God-given marbles to an endocrine secretion, it's just as likely to be a banker-man.

It's a little bit of schadenfreude, to be sure. But having long been vexed by newspapers yammering about how irrational we women are when on the rag/pre-rag/pregnant/postpartum/lactating/adolescent/menopausal/postmenopausal/etc., I am enjoying watching the deposed Masters of the Universe marinate in their own humiliating stew of pop evolutionary theory and specious psychobabble.

*Not a number validated by any kind of science whatsoever.

Women Are So Much Better Than Everybody Else And Should Be In Charge Of Stuff

2009-04-30T13:44:00.007-04:00

Is it possible that the last op-ed ever to appear in the Boston Globe could be a golden paean to the loving maternal arms of the Nanny State?

Apparently without a shred of irony, editorial-page editor Renee Loth has taken up her silvered quill and penned a rather quaint Victorian essay on the Virtues of Womankind. Specifically, the women of New Hampshire. It seems that in New Hampshire, serving on the state legislature has become one of those tainted women-jobs, like cleaning toilets and fixing hair. The result? Gas tax! Gay marriage! Liberals! Hooray!

Loth attributes a recent leftward shift in New Hampshire politics to the superior ethical powers of women, who are increasingly taking up the mantle of public service out of their vast selflessness, and deciding what's best for everybody else. I wish I were making this up.

This is the more interesting question about women in power. Sure, women should be heard more in government - and the law, and science, and journalism - as a matter of sheer equity. But it's not the quantity of women so much as the different quality that can bring real change.

That last sentence. It appears to mean something. But what? What?

Women see the world as a web of relationships. They are more communitarian and less individualistic. They are less ideological and more practical. It's hard to imagine a better set of qualities for solving the intricate problems that face our world.

Naturally, all this female-superiority talk is playing straight into the grubby hands of the live-free-or-die-ers. The commenters on the Globe board, most of whom appear to be a bunch of third-generation Xerox copies of Howie Carr's mugshot come magically to life, are loving the hell out of it. A sample:

Let me summarize the article: Men are stupid, Women are reshaping NH (and the world) for the better.

Reverse all of the subtle and no so subtle points in the article and you have outrage from the liberal media and feminazis. Bashing men is so 21st century!

Well, Renee Loth, if you set out to prove nutjob libertarian gazillionaire Peter Thiel right, you're doing a hell of a job. Clearly letting those women-people vote is the first step down a nasty slippery slope of some sort.

But don't worry. Mommy is waiting at the bottom to catch all her wayward children, and gather them up into a bright and glorious future.

Don't Be Talkin' Down To Me, Math Lady

2009-04-23T10:31:00.004-04:00

I cannot really argue with the benevolence of a nonprofit that helps math-challenged po' women learn to add. Math-dumbness is rampant (especially among journalists!), and any effort to raise the basic numeracy of the American people is good by me. Still, there's a stench of condescension about the whole thing.

What often holds girls back is self-confidence; it drops sharply in middle school and is considered a reason that so many women don’t choose math-related fields, she said. But “many girls and women have the potential to improve their spatial skills to the point of being very successful" in fields that require those abilities, she said.

Buh. Call me when somebody founds a really sappy institute for reaching out to engineer dudes who break out in a cold sweat when forced to compose a few sentences in basic English.

We Shall Overcome (Our Pants)

2009-04-23T09:53:00.004-04:00

Women in law enforcement have long been held back by antiquated attitudes about female perp-busting prowess. And pants. Pants, once hailed as the harbingers of a new era of female empoweringfullnessment, are actually holding lots of women back. Literally.

Well, Female Law Enforcement Professional, no more shall you be detained by the cruel shackles of your own pants. I give you QuickPants.

“QuickPants are for those of us so tired of shucking off all our duty belt gear just to go to the restroom,” says Officer Becky MacLean of New Hope, Ala.

“No more having to take off the heavy gun belts and then figuring out what the heck you’re going to do with the darn thing. You don’t want to put it on the floor (of the restroom) do you?"

Also useful for sea captains and mountain lion hunters, the article notes.

Women: They Are So Very Compassionate

2009-04-23T09:24:00.003-04:00

Psychology professionals agree: Women are too compassionate for their own good. That's because they're "biologically programmed to be caretakers." It's a fact: Women have tiny little mind-control mechanisms embedded deep inside their brains that force them to care hard at all times.

Which explains today's Condi Rice news.

The P-Word

2009-04-22T08:55:00.003-04:00

To be added to the list of banned words: "plucky." How much of Mesopotamia do you have to reign over before they quit calling you that?

Women Do! Hero of the Month: Deb Harkness

2009-04-21T08:31:00.003-04:00

Kudos to Serious Eats for running this very Women Do-esque riposte to a recent marketing study on women and wine. It seems that in Obvious Town, women sometimes drink wine, kind of like men do.

What's the wine industry to do, now that they know that women aren't a specialized market?

Well, I'm hoping the study's findings makes executives think twice before they pay for an insulting advertising campaign directed at women that makes us out to be clueless, waistline-obsessed wine-swilling divas. I hope we see less cutesy wine labels with cuddly animals. And I fervently pray that the next time I order the wine in a restaurant, I'm the one offered a taste of it, instead of the waiter pouring it into the glass belonging to the man at the table. And I really hope this is the last study of this kind I see.

Bravo. My only quibble: I wish Harkness had linked to the study.

Women Destroy The Environment

2009-04-21T07:04:00.004-04:00

Dear URI undergraduates: Please stop destroying everything we hold dear with your constant showering. As a source of potent greenhouse gases, hot showers are up there, er, somewhere behind manufacturing, agriculture, poorly insulated buildings and the driving of big smokin' American cars. So cut it out. Especially you women. You soapy, soapy women.

"Shower length is the most difficult behavior to change; it seems to be ingrained in people as a right," said Scott Finlinson, coordinator of the project for NORESCO, the energy services company hired by the University.
"While men tend to be willing to reduce the length of their showers, women say that they have too much to do in the shower to cut back on the time spent there."

Also. Undergrads shower eight times a week? Not in my day, bub.

Whores In The Newspaper

2009-04-21T06:35:00.004-04:00

Recently, Universal Hub--where they care as hard about newspapers and their verbiage as we Women Do-ers do--got its knickers all in a twist over whether a Proper Newspaper would use the word "whore" in print. I am pleased to report that the answer is Yes. And in the New York Times, no less.

Quote of the year:

"“If I had my way, I’d destroy all the mosques and spread the whores around a little more,” the detective said. “At least they’re not sectarian.”

Thanks to Joe for passing that on, in the hopes that it would galvanize me into blogging afresh. It did! And thanks to everybody else who sent me a virtual kick in the pants over the last couple of weeks. I am sorry I did not get around to that Metro story, in which it was revealed that, gasp, women are also affected by the economic recession. I regret not doing a full autopsy on the Biker Babes of Bellingham. I am kicking myself for passing up the opportunity to slice up Newsweek's take on Understanding Male Post-Partum Depression.

I hope you will forgive me. April is indeed the cruelest month. There were taxes. There were family medical emergencies. There were exploding water heaters in the basement. Oh, and I got engaged. Which you would already know, if you were a regular watcher of Jim Braude's news quiz show on NECN. Check it out and see if you can guess which of these three fine Stooges I'm going to marry this summer. (Hint: Not Jim Braude.)

In Which A Rumor Is Dispelled

2009-04-03T20:37:00.002-04:00

I am not Fake Marty Baron.

Piling On

2009-04-03T19:48:00.004-04:00

It's a painful exercise, making fun of the Globe in its hour of doom. Some days, I wonder if there is any point in doing so. For the record, in case anybody is confused: I'd like the paper to live, breathe, thrive, kick ass and take names all over Boston.

But they're not helping themselves with running stuff like "Where the boys (over 35) are."

Trees died to bring you this vital news. Pulitzer-finalist photographers were laid off so it could continue to run. City Weekly was killed so that...I'll stop now, I can feel the earnestness coming on. Nobody wants to see that.

Further Notes On WAM!

2009-03-31T18:51:00.007-04:00

Well, the WAM! conference is all wrapped up, and everybody has headed back to their jobs/schools/anarchofeminist knitting circles for another year. Hope all you ladies had fun! And for everybody who, like me, didn't go, I have only a tiny nugget of stale, secondhand WAM! news to deliver.

Apparently last year, the conference erupted in ex post facto drama over some inconveniences experienced by various attendees, and there was much wailing and gnashing of teeth over whether or not these had been caused by racism. Some of said drama involved the WAM! party, which coincided rather unfortunately with another event in town hosted by queer women of color. Hearts were broken; sisterhood was disempowered; the dominant plutocratic hegemony of white androcapitalism continued its relentless marginalization of wimmin's voices/spaces. This year, WAM! organizers reportedly took the lesson to heart, and solved everything by holding their party at a Eurotrash craptini bar in the Theater District.

I am perhaps enjoying ragging on WAM! a little too much. The speaker lineup did look rather spiffy. I am especially sorry to have missed the war correspondents.

While we're on the topic of women, action and the media, I'd like to alert you all to this grant opportunity from the McCormick Foundation. You have until midnight to apply for $10,000, to be used for the purpose of saving journalism. But only if you have a vagina. The reasoning:

Connection. Women are natural networkers. They know how to initiate and maintain relationships. This is the essence of the digital world.

Conversation. Women are listeners. And talkers. They ask the tough questions. This is the starting point for good journalism.

Creativity. Women give birth to new people and new ideas. They are resourceful and make things happen.

Change. Women are on the move. They adapt to new realities, seize opportunities and take risks to improve themselves and society.

I especially like #3. I think I am going to tell the editor at my next job interview that, having given birth to a person, I am naturally full of ideas. If there are any media outlets left by the time I am back on the job market.

It helps that on the website for the New Media Women Entrepreneurs program, these talking points are in hot pink. Also, their logo appears to be made of dismembered fingernails.

Women! Action! Media!

2009-03-27T11:48:00.006-04:00

Spring is sprung. The grass is riz. Do you wonder where the media-savvy feminists is?

Wonder no more--they're descending on MIT's Stata Center today, for the Center for New Words' annual Women, Action and the Media conference, otherwise known as WAM! (Exclamation point included.) Women are pouring into Cambridge in droves even as I type. With the keynote address just a few hours away, they're Twittering up a storm, and you can follow them here.

I have had mixed feelings about WAM! since I arrived in Boston a number of years ago, a very green freelance writer, and spent an afternoon volunteering there in between exhausting catering shifts, in the hope that I might get a chance to do some good-old-girls networking. My job was passing out name tags to attending journos. I was desperate to get some non-food-service-related work and trying not to let it show, so of course it was humiliating, as was pretty much every interaction I had with professional writers at the time. (I remember a particularly galling MediaBistro event in which somebody asked me why the hell I didn't just move to some shitty town in Texas if I wanted to be a reporter. I think I had Crisco on my sleeve from making whoopie pies all afternoon.)

Naturally, none of this was WAM!'s fault. But I must say, it didn't strike me as being all that useful to a woman on fire to get some hot media action. In fact, from my outsider's seat by the check-in table, it struck me as having rather a high wankery-to-usefulness ratio. I haven't been back.

Incidentally, the theme of WAM! this year is Inside/Outside. I remain conflicted as to whether WAM! is friend or foe to the likes of me--a woman, mirable dictu, in the media, generally perplexed and disgusted with the way news outlets are always brimming with amazement that women are considered people, but with little interest in joining feminist-theory circle-jerks. (Full disclosure: I went to Smith College, where even the campus squirrels have feminist-theory circle-jerks. The allure of that kind of thing wore off after a year or two.)

Recently, Women Do reader Jezzica threw down a gauntlet. Was I going to WAM!, she wanted to know. And if not, why not?

Alas, I am not. I shudder to give you my excuses. They are stereotypically female in the extreme. But I told Jezzica I would, and so I must.

1. Women Are At Economic Risk. The conference costs almost $200. I am embarrassed to say how much of my average monthly take-home pay that is. I thought of putting up a PayPal link, a la Ana Marie Cox, but I am betting that me liveblogging WAM! is a matter of far less interest to the general populace than getting Wonkette onto the McCain campaign plane.

2. Women Spend An Inordinate Amount Of Time Sewing and Cooking and Washing Things. I signed up months ago for a sewing class that meets tomorrow. I am making a dress for the baby. Even thus do women take the fetters that hold them fast and bind them upon the tender limbs of their daughters.

3. Women Are Altruistic. On Sunday, I am going to Canton to get volunteer training from the Neponset Watershed Association in how to raise purple-loosestrife-eating beetles in my backyard. For the good of all.

4. Women Sacrifice Their Careers For Their Children. There is the matter of my full-time job, which mostly consists of shoveling various substances into and out of a small helpless person. It's not gonna do itself.

So sorry to disappoint, Jezzica. But we are hosting a WAM!-er over the weekend, a friend of my S.O.'s from out of town. I promise to pick her brains and report back.

Wellesley's New Firefighter Deemed Adequate

2009-03-26T15:26:00.004-04:00

Wellesley resident Joan Cullinan joined the town's fire department this week, becoming only the second woman in the town's history to do so. Fortunately for Cullinan, her sole female predecessor--whose name seems to have long ago faded into the mists of time--did not embarrass herself in any way.

“The first was 20-some years ago,” says DeLorie. He wasn’t on the squad at the time but has heard her reputation was “first-rate.”

“She did everything everyone else did and was well accepted.”

Cullinan's duties henceforth will consist mainly of putting out fires, rescuing people, and striving never to do anything that might sully the reputations of the rest of the roughly 3 billion women on planet Earth. In addition, she will be personally bringing the overall comfortableness of the W.F.D. to a new level.

What clearly pleases DeLorie about the appointment of Cullinan to the force is that the department will be able to provide residents with an additonal comfort level.
“Some patients just personally feel more comfortable dealing with a woman,” says DeLorie, “and Wellesley is long overdue in providing that.”

Verflucht! More Fershlugginner Tattoos!

2009-03-25T15:25:00.004-04:00

As you may remember if you've been a faithful reader of Women Do from day one, it was a Globe story about women and tattoos that awakened me from my dogmatic slumbers and got this blog going. That was a couple of months ago. The Globe must have thought we were in danger of forgetting that women were into this whole tattoo business, because they're at it again. This time, it's mom tattoos.

The most striking thing about this story--other than the fact that local tattoo master Fat Ram Hannan totally undercuts its whole premise, saying that he does way more kid tattoos on fathers than on mothers--is that it's already run in the New York Times. Two years ago. Sure, the exact words are a little different. But not much. Check out the parallels.

Tattoos not just for sailors/bikers/prisoners/rough trade:

“I’d always thought of tattoos as something biker chicks got, not something I would get,” said Ms. Scarborough, a neonatal nurse. (NYT)

Hardly a generation ago, tattoos and mothers coexisted in few places aside from a sailor’s biceps. (NYT)

The number doesn't reveal how many mothers get inked, but it points to the social acceptability of a practice that just a few decades ago was associated with sailors, prisoners, and punks. (Boston Globe)

Pew poll used as tenuous news hook:

Forty percent of women ages 26 to 40 have at least one tattoo, according to a report published this year by the Pew Research Center. (NYT)

Forty percent of American women ages 26 to 40 have a tattoo, according to a 2007 study by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. (Boston Globe)

Angelina Jolie duly name-checked:

She said she first heard the term “mommy tattoo” two years ago, around the time Angelina Jolie began getting the longitude and latitude numbers of her children’s birthplaces tattooed onto her arm. (NYT)

That trend has surged as mega-star mothers like Angelina Jolie celebrate their children with prominent body art. In Jolie's case, she has a tattoo of the longitude and latitude coordinates from the places where her children entered her life. (Boston Globe)

Miami Ink duly name-checked:

Two reality shows may be part of the reason that mothers who always saw themselves as conservative are decorating their bodies. The Learning Channel series “Miami Ink” and its new sister show, “L.A. Ink,” appear on a network once better known for its how-to fashion and home-improvement programming. (NYT)

"It's not like 'Miami Ink,' " he said, referring to the Learning Channel reality show, "where they ask what does this tattoo mean to you?" (Boston Globe)

Pain of tattooing compared to pain of childbirth (You have got to be fucking kidding me. --Ed.):

Ms. Murray said that women often draw a connection between the pain of childbirth and the discomfort of feeling an ink-filled needle get under your skin. “It’s pretty common for women to say stuff like: ‘I can deal with this pain. I’ve given birth,’” said Mike Shea, a tattoo artist in Cambridge, Mass. (NYT)
As for the pain factor of getting tattooed, Ruch, who sat for three two-hour sessions getting "Devin" inked on her side, said it was excruciating, as her entire ribcage vibrated from the needle. "But it's like childbirth. You forget the pain when it's over and you're looking at it." (Boston Globe)

At least you're never gonna break up with your kid LOL hardy har har!

“A lot of the women watch the TV shows and they think, ‘Hey I could do that,’” said Mike Rubendall, the owner of Kings Avenue Tattoo in North Massapequa, N.Y. “They figure their kid will always be their kid. They won’t ever regret it.” (NYT)
Unlike names of lovers and sometimes even spouses, he sees no regret factor in getting a tattoo with your children's names. "Your kids are always going to be your kids." (Boston Globe)

Doesn't the New York Times own the Globe? Couldn't they just have reprinted the old story? It even had a Cambridge guy in it. Or they could have, you know, run some news.

Food Eaten By Women, Men

2009-03-25T09:07:00.005-04:00

This morning, I went out in the yard with a few chicken bones tied together with a rag, muttered a few guttural incantations and left them hanging from the branch of an apple tree to ward off the evil eye. Why? Because the Globe is toying with my mind.

You may think this sounds paranoid. Well, then, you explain it. Why else would they run a great big blooming feature on the cover of Living/Arts--oops, sorry, "g"--devoted entirely to the thesis that men eat meat and women eat plants? And call it "Guys vs. Dolls"? And stuff it with irrelevant science? And, for the jaunty little sprig of parsley atop this teetering pile of madness-inducing verbiage, execute a rhetorical 180-degree-turn in the last few paragraphs that neatly disposes of the premise that THEY MADE UP IN THE FIRST PLACE?

Sorry for the yelling. Deep breath. Go to your happy place, Harris. Ommmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Now, I know they run this kind of drivel on a regular basis. There's no reason to think it's personal. Except for the deviled eggs.

Deviled eggs, you see, are men's food, along with everything else of animal origin. According to source Holly Safford, the Hingham caterer upon whose experienced shoulders this story's meager pretentions to factuality rest, no self-respecting female would be caught dead sinking her teeth into one of these savory little confections.

"I don't think I've ever seen a woman eat a deviled egg" at a social function, says Safford. "She might like them, but with all of the mayonnaise and everything it just feels too much like a whole meal. For a man, he might deny himself eggs every morning because he should watch his cholesterol. But at a party, he's not thinking about his statins," referring to cholesterol-lowering drugs.

(Ooh, they explained "statins." Thanks, nameless Globe editor!)

Deviled eggs are my Proustian madeleine. I sometimes think I might be the only person east of Worcester who owns a special deviled-egg plate and uses it on a regular basis. I never let a summer barbecue go by without making a giant mess of deviled eggs, and I usually consume an untoward number of them personally. When Joe Keohane and Jean Whitman left Boston recently to make their fortunes in New York, I was very sad, not only because they're fine folks and I will miss them, but because they were the only other people I know around here who made deviled eggs. I don't know how the Globe knows all this. Is it possible they've implanted some sort of chip in my spine?

But enough about my personal paranoias. Go read the story; go stare in slack-jawed wonder at its mind-boggling irrelevance, as with one fell swoop it divides the entire food-eating world into tremulous salad-pickers and boorish bacon-grease-swillers. And if you still haven't had enough, check out the bonus Q&A, in which a couple of female food bloggers face off against, unaccountably, a couple of Merrimack Valley radio guys to reveal their food preferences and ascribe them to the rest of us. A sample:

Q. What kind of salad dressing do guys like?
DJ: If I throw it against the wall and it sticks, that's the kind of dressing guys want.

I hope MC Slim J.B. rips this useless idea a new one in print somewhere. I hope Nina Planck reads this story and mails Globe food correspondent M.E. Malone a brick of lard for his or her birthday. I hope I will get a chance to eat a deviled egg soon. A really zesty one, with lots of horseradish and paprika.

Women Panic, Take Off All Their Clothes

2009-03-24T11:26:00.004-04:00

In what appears to be a real, actual, numbers-backed trend, women are competing with increasing ferocity for stripper jobs as the economy continues its headlong plunge into the abyss. This seems on its face to make a small bit of economic sense. On the one hand, stripping is as tough as it ever was, and as the article points out, the clubs aren't drawing so many big spenders these days. On the other, at least you can't get outsourced to China.

(I haven't been in Lower Manhattan since the housing bubble burst--do you suppose the few female refugees from Lehman Bros. are wandering through the deserted streets in tattered skirt suits, wearing sandwich boards that say "Will Whore For Stale Bread"?)

But to all you gomers out there hoping that the adult entertainment industry will save your bacon, be ye warned. Nothing is recession-proof. Exhibit A: this recent auction announcement in the Wall Street Journal. (Good eye, Em!)

Live at 10: Girls, Girls and More Girls

2009-03-18T08:13:00.006-04:00

Johnny Diaz had to know, when he got up this morning, stretched his nubile limbs and began steeling himself for another long day of filing content-free stories and pimping his latest book (Amazon keywords: mysterious skin, journalism conference, South Beach, Deco Time, Puerto Rican), that I was going to smack him for this story about women news anchors. Either that, or he's not spending enough time Googling himself lately. And that I find hard to believe.

Before unleashing a gallon of haterade on Diaz's latest scrap of journalistic tinsel, I should first confess that I don't watch much TV news. It takes something out of me physically. The last time I accidentally caught a few minutes of Channel 7, I woke up the next day with a tremendous boil on my forehead, which upon further examination, was found to contain a tiny, wriggling Frances Rivera. I find it safest to stick to print journalism, which is damaging enough to one's health.

But being an American living in a major metropolitan area and not in a coma, I feel I have picked up enough on the general zeitgeist to be able to utter the following points with reasonable confidence:

1. Journalism is dying.
2. TV news is getting worse.
3. Men are getting laid off everywhere because they make more money and generally want to be treated like people, an attitude that does not fly in the next Great Depression.
4. T&A sells.

But this is all OK. Indeed, it's great news. Because it all adds up to the increasing dominance of two-woman news anchor teams! And the news-lite formula, which must remain forever unexamined, is that More Women = Good.

Diaz's story reads like a parody of itself. In it, a barely-disguised pastiche of audience-pandering, economic misery and cold, calculating misogyny is whitewashed with almost Onionesque perkiness.

While their managers say they were the best candidates for the jobs, their gender influenced the decisions in some cases. Managers say today's audiences are more willing to accept news from a young woman. As stations lose industry veterans, who typically earn much larger salaries, they turn to younger anchors to cut costs and draw viewers.

Translation: Hey, women: You suck. But you're cheaper.

His station, which has a female news director, Linda Miele, also promoted reporter Sorboni Banerjee as its lone weekend morning anchor.
"We were running short of men," Ansin said. "And we said, 'Gee, let's see how it goes if we had Sorboni go at it alone.' "

I cannot even comment on this without my head spinning entirely around like Linda Blair in the Exorcist.

Some station managers also think they can increase their ratings by putting attractive young women in the anchor chairs, Papper said. "In television, what you look like matters, and that is true for both men and women," he said. "Young women can look more mature than men of the same age. The fact is that the average woman coming out of school, if you dress her up and put makeup on, she looks like an adult. The average guy coming out of school looks like he's coming out of puberty."

Might the perceived maturity of 22-year-old BU Comm grads in tartalicious heels have anything to do with the fact that women in television are generally sent off to the glue factory by the time they hit 40?

"It's not discrimination. It's biology."

If only Sojourner Truth were still alive to kick that statement's sorry, played-out ass.

"Viewers are so used to the yin-yang of a male-female anchor team, and I believe it's easier for people to assume they won't like anything other than that formula," [Rivera] said. "But there's the curiosity factor. Once that's appeased and they realize there is a unique dynamic with a female anchor team, they say they stick around to watch."

Ripped from the headlines of 1763. It Is Not Done Well, But You Are Surprised To Find It Done At All.

I feel it says a great deal about this story that so far, the comments on it are more perceptive than the reporting. I feel, also, that every time the shriveled monkey-paw of pop culture grants you a wish, it takes something precious from you as well. You want women to succeed in the prestigious world of TV news anchoring? Very well then. They shall be clad in pinstriped Spandex, and they shall dance the Macarena on Walter Cronkite's grave.

The Holy Grail of Women Gadget Stories

2009-03-17T17:12:00.005-04:00

I have found it. The ultimate story involving women and the gadgets they would buy, if only the makers of said gadgets truly grokked the ungrokkable miasma of mystery that is womankind. It is from the Yomiuri Shimbun, Japan's largest English daily, which has a history of being incredibly off-base in the women department, and it is about cars. It's as if the entire cast of Mad Men suddenly popped up in a Toyota dealership in Tokyo and decided, "You know what's missing here? Cookies!"

Toyota Motor Co. said that some time ago one of its female employees was overheard telling her coworkers, "Today's cars don't have any playful touches."

Her remark and similar comments prompted the launch of the Chambre a Paris, a special edition of Toyota's small compact Vitz car, which came out in February. The French term "chambre a Paris" means a small room in Paris.

Is Japan so squeezed for space that people are now actually spending their honeymoons inside their cars? No wonder their population is shrinking.

Yoneda said they first switched their focus from performance and comfort to creating a sense of neatness, both inside and out.

Ah yes. "Women have no wilderness in them, / They are provident instead, / Content in the tight hot cell of their hearts / To eat dusty bread." And to drive go-carts with snazzy cup organizers.

The car features colorful touches such as hubcaps patterned with a dot design and seats that come with seat covers in three colors, allowing customers to quickly and easily change the car's interior color scheme.

Just think. I could be spending every other Sunday wrassling with yards of auto upholstery. How fun!

Yoneda said the women polled requested comfortable, sofalike seats, a polka-dot paint scheme and other features that have not been found in cars so far.

Polka-dot cars! I hear they have great resale value. In Candyland.

Honda Cars Aichi set up a team of young female employees to revamp sales service at its dealership. It now also makes a variety of items available to its female customers. Women can now receive a blanket and cookbook to leaf through while they are waiting. Women also are served a cup of hot chocolate and given cookies during a sales pitch.

So I've got the blanket on my lap, the cookbook in one hand, the hot chocolate in another and my mouth stuffed full of cookies. Anything else you care to stuff in my face before trying to sell me that $20,000 piece of machinery? A roofie, perhaps?

Check out the rest here.

Erin Go Bleaaaaaagggggghhhhhh

2009-03-16T12:07:00.007-04:00

Today, a great blessing has been visited upon the land. We have been granted a day of rest in between the Southie parade and the actual St. Patrick's Day, during which, if we are lucky, we can hole up in a dark corner and slowly begin forgetting all our fine promises never to touch green 40s of malt liquor ever ever again. I'm guessing a great many of you--most of my fellow Bostonians, at least--are somewhat the worse for wear today. I recommend you drink a huge glass of tomato juice, have a few saltines, and contemplate the immortal words of Kingsley Amis:

He lay sprawled, too wicked to move, spewed up like a broken spider-crab on the tarry shingle of the morning. The light did him harm, but not as much as looking at things did; he resolved, having done it once, never to move his eyeballs again. A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum.

Also, women, you should know that this kind of behavior gives you cancer. At least, that's what a TV station in Rochester says. And that's where most of us like to get our science. Look:

A new study says as little as one drink a day can significantly raise the risk of one type of cancer for women.
Dr. Robert Anthenelli, an addiction researcher, said the study found just two drinks a day ups woman's risk of pancreatic cancer.

What? Cancer? From one drink a day? Or is it two? WHAM, your blithe fecklessness with facts is a little disturbing.

I was about to go flying out the door and see a guy about having my potentially cancerous pancreas out, the better to enjoy a nice IPA of an evening, but fortunately I read all the way to the bottom first.

Those addiction trials are on-going and results are expected in a couple of years.

Sheeeeeeeeeit. That's science-speak for "a whole lot of nothin'." And as the story notes, the point of Anthenelli's boozy women-research is to find new drugs. In thirty seconds of bullshit-detecting research on the Google, I discovered that Anthenelli's on the take from various pharmaceutical companies. The following is courtesy of Google cache:

"Robert M. Anthenelli, MD, discloses that he receives grant/research support from sanofi-aventis, Addex, and Ortho-McNeil Neurologics. He is a consultant for sanofi-aventis, Pfizer, and Alkermes-Cephalon and a clinical investigator for sanofi-aventis and Addex. He also is on the speaker's bureau for sanofi-aventis and Pfizer."

So he's working on some kind of alcoholism drug that they can target especially to women! Oh, my God, it's brilliant. Can you see the commercial now? We open on a shadowy living room, where a vaguely out-of-focus woman gazes alone with sepia-toned melancholy out a window, clutching a wineglass. Cut to a dazzling meadow, where our heroine, now clad in perky florals and surrounded by frolicking children, contemplates a brave new world of nuclear-family happiness, thanks to the miracle of modern medicine. Ask your doctor if Sozzilax is right for you.

Hey WHAM. There's this new thing. It's called fact-checking.

**UPDATE!** I made a mistake in an earlier version of this post, and conflated two separate studies mentioned in the WHAM story. It looks like the study on women and addiction is ongoing, but the one about cancer is already done. (Sorry! Physician, heal thyself!) I can't find the cancer study in PubMed though. Am assuming it exists in peer-reviewed medical literature somewhere, but this may be overly optimistic.

**UPDATE UPDATE!** Well, this will teach me to blog on an empty stomach. It's not Anthenelli's research at all. (Thanks a lot, WHAM!) It's out of Georgetown University, was funded by the National Cancer Institute and is in the current issue of Cancer Epidemiology, Biomarkers and Prevention. So, women, you're screwed. Better get that pancreas out after all.

Publicity: Ur Doin It Wrong

2009-03-13T12:27:00.006-04:00

Small, frightened women of Boston! Your hour is nigh! Tremble no more in terror of large steaks, beach season and the hooting barbarians of the Theater District. Regan's Lindsay Rotundi explains why:

Good morning!

With beach season just around the corner, Fleming’s invites everyone to come in and try their new Light Entrée menu. The Light Entrée menu gives diners the chance to have their beloved steakhouse experience minus the excessive portions. Fleming’s has chosen three classic dishes and downsized them in both size and price, but never in taste!

These menu options are perfect for women diners usually intimidated by steakhouse portions, for those looking to shape-up for beach season without compromising their dining experience, or for lighter fare before you continue your night at the theater or an event, (Fleming’s will also gladly shuttle you over wherever you choose in their Mercedes Crossover Courtesy Car!). The menu items are available during standard operating hours, seven days a week.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me.

Thank you!

The new items:

FILET MIGNON served with Fleming’s potatoes - $28.95

AUSTRALIAN LAMB CHOPS served with roasted plum tomatoes - $29.95

TUNA MIGNON served with grilled asparagus - $26.50

Thanks, Boston editor. You know who you are.

Show Us Your Tits Or The Mouse Gets It

2009-03-13T11:04:00.007-04:00

It's Casual Friday at Women Do HQ. What does that mean? Pajamas again for me! And sexual harassment for all! In today's lesson, we learn that women do ask for it. Just not in this case.

Thanks to Tom Egan of Mass Lawyers Weekly for passing along this highly entertaining read--a recent decision from the Massachusetts Committee Against Discrimination, in which G-2 Systems ex-employee Beth Citron, fed up with suffering the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune, takes arms against a sea of tit-ogling from bosses Tom Green, Steve Shepard and Hank Shepard.

Among the highlights:

...When Complainant approached him at his desk to ask questions about purchase orders, he said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t hear a word that you said, I was too mesmerized by your breasts.”

...As Complainant bent underneath her desk to get money from her purse, Shepard said that showing her “tits” would not get her out of it. Id. at 24. Complainant pointed out that her sweatshirt was zipped so high that it was practically a turtle neck, to which Shepard said, “Oh, I thought your tit was hanging out.”

And the piece de resistance:

Complainant testified that one day in November of 2004, Greene was standing by the door of Hank Shepard’s office and said that he was going to capture a mouse and allow it to live if she took off her shirt and bra, but kill it with a hammer if she didn’t. Transcript, I at 110-111, II at 137. Complainant responded by saying that she was disgusted by his idea and walked away. Transcript I at 111. Greene subsequently said that he was going to fill up a bucket of water about halfway and put a platform full of food in the bucket in order to attract a mouse. Transcript, II at 162. According to Complainant, Greene thereafter made the following comments in her presence or by fax: “mouse and hammer,” “I’m getting that mouse today,” “I’ve got that hammer ready,” and “help, I’m drowning signed the mouse.”

After sifting through the lurid facts, Hearing Officer Betty Waxman concludes that, indeed, Citron was sexually harassed, though she dismisses a second allegation of constructive discharge. But buried in Waxman's finding is this vile little nugget:

In short, Complainant’s behavior and dress were not sufficiently provocative to be deemed an invitation for sexual harassment.

Oof. Lucky for Citron she's "quiet, shy, and not temperamental," I guess. Being a habitual dropper of F-bombs, myself, I doubt I would make it through one of these hearings alive.

Globe Announces Limerick Contest

2009-03-11T11:16:00.003-04:00

In honor of the spectacular drunken mess scheduled for next week, the Globe has once again rolled out their annual contest for "limericks that sum up Boston." I couldn't resist entering it. Here's mine:

Said the Globe's troubled boss, Marty Baron,
"The news biz is, frankly, despairin'.
Half the folks who find facts
Will be getting the axe.
Now go cover some rich MILFs in Sharon!"

Anybody else? If you enter this contest, please, please post your limerick here as well. (Suldog, that means you!)

Women Have No Energy; Energy Has No Women

2009-03-09T16:30:00.005-04:00

Missouri 15-year-old girl struck with debilitating fatigue; with the help of their exceptional medical knowledge and scientific training, parents and local newspaper conclude it must have been the Gardasil. (You know what's great for your energy level? Cancer!)

In other Gardasil news, the FDA has once again deemed women ages 27-45 too slutty for the HPV vaccine. (Their reasoning appears to go something like this: Under 9: not slutty enough. 9-26: just right. 27-plus: Go get cancer, you bunch of hos.)

In other non-Gardasil news, local energy consultant Judy Chang would like to see more women get involved with energy and the environment. Accordingly, she's kicking off a new group, New England Women in Energy and the Environment, this week at the World Trade Center in Boston.

I suppose this is as good an opportunity as any to pimp my new other blog, which is much more boring and wonky than this one, but contains just as many terrible puns, if not more. It's called Captain Trade, and it concerns carbon finance: offsets, cap-and-trade, carbon tax proposals, etc. Any dumbness therein should be attributed solely to me, and not to the several billion people with whom I share certain general characteristics of anatomy.

Automotive Harlotry

2009-03-08T21:14:00.007-04:00

On the front page of Boston.com, in the Cars section:

FORGET THE CARS
These women truly own the auto show stage - the cars are but a backdrop.

Women in auto shows? Mais c'est impossible, ca! Fear not, Reader, there are not actually any women doing anything important at the auto show in Geneva. Click on through to the Cars page and all will be right with the world again.

FORGET THE CARS IN GENEVA
Sex and cars have always been a winning sales formula. Have a look at all the pizazz on the auto show floor.

Of course! That's what women are for. What a relief. But it gets better! Check out the slideshow, Girls of the 2009 Geneva Auto Show:

The overused phrase "sex sells" was probably coined by the automotive industry, and it's been used over and over to make men pay attention to its products. Put a pair of high heels in front of a Tata Nano or any sort of ugly, undesirable car, and they will notice.
Whether in print and television advertising or on the auto show floor, attractive females (and very occasionally, males) never fail to present a glamorous image. It's comforting, then, to know that style and sex are two things automakers won't cut from their budgets.
- Clifford Atiyeh, Boston.com Staff

Thank you, Clifford Atiyeh, for once again putting your finger on the pulse of Boston. How comforting the misogyny is to us all in these brutal times. Like a favorite pair of warm, woolly, women-hating slippers.

And who is in that unforgettable photo on the front page? Faceless, identical, with their milky limbs spilling out of the open door of a coupe like a couple of lissome harlots sculpted in plasticine? Oh yes! It's Gettysluts!

Everything South Of Canal Street Must Be A Howling Wasteland If This Tripe Is On The Front Page Of The Wall Street Journal

2009-03-06T20:03:00.002-05:00

That is all.

Apparently you thought so too, because several of you sent me this story, which informs us that women are on Craig's List selling their old pants.

Turkey: It's Just Like Here

2009-03-04T15:27:00.003-05:00

Those women in Turkey just won't stop. Yesterday it was chess. Now they're playing soccer. (Thanks for the link, Neal!)

Alas, life is tough for soccer-playing women in this repressive, sexist, overly-religious, weird little backwater of the globe. It's not easy in Turkey, either.

Let us count the woes of these Turkish footballerettes. First off, they can't fill the stands:

But at this game, between host Kartalspor and Ankara’s Gazi Universitesispor, the 22 players on the field outnumbered the people shivering in the stands. The weather was probably not to blame for the poor attendance; it was more likely because of who was playing.

Poor turnout for the ladies? Yep, we've got that here too.

"We’ve had men come to watch our practices and yell at our players: ‘What are you doing here? You should be at home, cooking!’ ” said Ozbar, one of the few women accredited as a soccer coach in Turkey, and the only one in Istanbul.

Obnoxious commentary? Check.

An amateur league of about two dozen teams existed in Turkey for a decade until it was shut down in 2002 amid allegations of mismanagement and rumors of affairs between female players — particularly scandalous in this country.

Lavender Menace? Check.

"Some believe that playing football can harm a girl’s build and make her manly,” Or said.

Hand-wringing over the damage the brutal, Hobbesian world of sport might inflict on women's tender willowy limbs? Check.

Selling women’s soccer also requires dolling it up. One of the new logos for the league features a slender woman’s hand with long, red-painted fingernails cupping a soccer ball. The background on Or’s computer screen is a photograph of a soccer cleat with a stiletto heel.

Tarting it up for the almighty sponsorship dollar? Check.

Only A Pawn In Their Game

2009-03-03T11:59:00.003-05:00

We interrupt this regularly scheduled program of newspaper-bashing to bring you this vital news: Women are going to play some chess this week in Turkey.

Why, for the love of all that's holy, are there women-only chess events at all? I can think of a few reasons, none of them all that good:

1. Women are generally worse than men at chess. Therefore, we have to give them their own event so they can win sometimes.

Even if you accept the premise, the conclusion doesn't follow. What do general statistical trends have to do with individual abilities? Not much. Saying individual women can't possibly compete with men because women rank worse overall is kind of like looking at national weight averages and concluding that Rosie O'Donnell must be skinnier than Pete Wentz. Anyway, if I was a top-ranked chess player and somebody said this to me in all seriousness, I'd put a knight through their frontal lobe.

2. Women are generally as good at chess as men are, or better. Therefore, we have to give them their own event so that grown men won't have to lose to 11-year-old girls.

One word: Pussies.

3. We have no idea if women are as good at chess as men, but the only way to get women playing chess is to give them their own special tournament.

Please condescend to me more in an attempt to make your favorite activity seem less dull to the Hannah Montana set.

Amazingly enough, a scientific paper recently addressed this very issue. Statisticians took a look at the performance gap between the top 100 ranked male and female players in Germany, and concluded that most of it could be explained by sample bias: i.e., not enough women in the sample to yield very high-ranking outliers. Read more about it on this blog, which also features some grown men crying about losing to 11-year-old girls.

London Times Hits NYT's Sloppy, Female Leftovers

2009-03-02T17:52:00.003-05:00

What is this bloated battlestar of a story--which appeared in the NYT magazine on January 25--doing in yesterday's London Times? Jesus Christ. Once was bad enough. Do they not have the Intertubes in merry olde England?

They did change the title, from the prim "What Do Women Want?" to the much more Austin Powers-worthy "What Turns Women On." And they misspelled the author's name. Those cheeky Brits.

In all fairness, the best thing I've read today also comes from that other Times, and it is this essay by Caitlin Moran. A sample:

But then, as a gimlet-eyed, hatchet-faced, ball-breaking feminist with recurring cystitis, which makes me additionally tetchy, I'm genuinely surprised that strip clubs still exist in the first place. They seem absolutely incongruous in a modern society - whenever I see one, it shocks me as much as if I'd just seen a sign going up saying “Minstrel Show!” or “Jew-Beating, Sticks £1!”. There's a Spearmint Rhino on Tottenham Court Road. Tottenham Court Road. To all intents and purposes, that means there's a titty-bar on the Monopoly board.

Nice. In an armed columnist's duel between Caitlin Moran and Alex Beam, my money would obviously be on the lady.

The Ruined Maid

2009-03-01T19:21:00.005-05:00

Dear readers: I need your help. I'm having a hard time pinning down exactly what bothers me about the Globe's Sunday magazine feature, about the year Globe mag staffer Neil Swidey spent being a fly on the wall of an 11-year-old in Rozzie. "Turning 12," it's called. "Everybody's talking about bras and boys, but Adele isn't quite ready to put down her dolls. One year with one girl at the age when everything changes."

One year. One girl. WATCH THE PUBERTY HAPPEN.

For the record: I respect the time and effort Swidey put into this story. I think he probably has the best of intentions. Reporters don't spend enough time talking to 11-year-olds, and I hate to smack anybody for making a damn sincere effort on that front.

But for all the meticulously reported anecdotes, there's not much there there. Just a creeping miasma of doom. As young Adele shuffles along from games of tag to Urban Nutcracker performances to her painful-sounding peer "rap-around" session, the horror grows. [Cue the ominous strings.] Sex. It's coming for sweet little Adele. And it's gonna get her in the end.

Look, I've got a daughter, and I hope to God she doesn't have to learn the mechanics before she's good and ready. But enough with the fetishization of female cluelessness already. Swidey writes as though pink cellphones are the gateway drug to a life of utter moral depravity.

Philip Pullman, the author of the His Dark Materials series, has already said this better than I could, so I'm going to stand back and let him. Here he is in an interview with a writer from Surefish, a British Christian website, on his moral objections to C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia:

You're not alone in attacking Lewis but you are really vehement in your criticism. You've called his books 'detestable'. Why do you feel so strongly about them?

Because the things he's being cruel to are things I value very highly. The crux of it all comes, as many people have found, with the point near the end of the Last Battle (in the Narnia books) when Susan is excluded from the stable.
The stable obviously represents salvation. They're going to heaven, they're going to be saved. But Susan isn't allowed into the stable, and the reason given is that she's growing up. She's become far too interested in lipstick, nylons and invitations. One character says rather primly: 'She always was a jolly sight too keen on being grown up.'

This seems to me on the part of Lewis to reveal very weird unconscious feelings about sexuality. Here's a child whose body is changing and who's naturally responding as everyone has ever done since the history of the world to the changes that are taking place in one's body and one's feelings. She's doing what everyone has to do in order to grow up.

Maybe one day she'll grow past the invitations and the lipstick and the nylons. But my point is that it's an inevitable, important, valuable and cherishable stage that we go through. This what I'm getting at in my story. To welcome and celebrate this passage, rather than to turn from it in fear and loathing.

Er, yes. What he said.

In Like A Lion

2009-03-01T11:05:00.005-05:00

Once again, it's March. We all know what that means. More goddamn snow. Women's History Month. Soft-core porn season at the Globe. And, most importantly, it means only a few more weeks til St. Patrick's Day. So if you've been putting off buying your Kiss Me, I'm Marty Walsh T-shirt, delay no more. It's all for a good cause: 100% of proceeds go to the Lissa Harris and Paul McMorrow Guinness Fund for Little Wanderers.

Word on the street is that Rep. Walsh himself thinks it's hilarious. Oh, Marty, if only you were my elected representative. (Though Linda Forry's pretty hot too.)

Bonus: If you manage to get on TV on St. Patrick's Day wearing this amazing T-shirt, send us a clip and you win a prize. In lieu of something valuable, you will receive one (1) guest post on this here blog, on the topic of your choice. (Local politicians, take note!)

Bring Out Yer Dead

2009-02-26T16:56:00.004-05:00

It pains me to do this. But it was bound to happen. I knew when I got into this Women Do racket that one day, a publication I'd recently written for would come out with a truly preposterous Women Do story. I am honor-bound to smite it, conflict of interest be damned. (Besides, the freelance check has already cleared.)

Today's item concerns women (naturally), who are flocking in increasing numbers (as is their wont) to the funeral industry. What do you suppose the headline is? Think about it for a minute before you click. Got it? OK! Here's the story!

Immediately we can see that Phoenix staff perkiness dispenser Sara Faith Alterman has turned the Useless Reveal, one of the standard tropes of Women Do literature, on its head. Gender stereotype first, manly occupation second.

Like any other 20 year olds, Megan Peterson and Mackenzie Byles chatter like hyperactive squirrels, excitedly finishing each others' sentences as though they're alien twins with melded minds.

Mind-melded hyperactive alien squirrel twins? That is so exactly what adult women are like!

It's incongruous to imagine their manicured hands expertly slitting a corpse's neck, fishing around under flesh and sinew with sinister-looking hooks for the carotid artery, exposed muscle tissue looking as plump and juicy as pre-packaged raw chicken breasts.

These fresh faces are the future of funeral service.

Be not distracted by all the hiply grotesque verbiage which is the Mark of the Alt-Weekly. Under all those juicy dead breasts is classic Women Do, as boilerplate as anything you might find in the dailies. To sum up the plot thus far: Women are dumb, and one is surprised to find them doing hard stuff, but they are. Let us continue.

As President Obama tries to resuscitate a flat-lining economy left for dead, a new wave of young females like Peterson and Byles are breathing life into the business of death.

This story was veering dangerously close to irrelevance in the national sociopolitical discourse, but we rescued it with a tacky analogy. Onward!

With increasing fervor, women are permeating what was once a male-dominated industry.

Permeate with fervor! DO IT, GIRL.

According to a study...

Hooray, Science! Enough of that. Why is it so crazy for chicks [sic] to be funeral directors?

The physical aspects of the job, historically, have been obstacles for women. Not because chicks can't haul a cadaver down a flight of stairs and then slice it open and snip rotting veins and arteries without crying and gagging at the sight of exposed muscle tissue, but because men have always assumed that they can't.

Damn those mens and their assumptions! Let's cut to the chase and find out why women are so keen on dead flesh. Increasingly. It's because they're caring. Is there ever any other reason? (Well, it might also be because they lust after corpses. Being an alt-weekly, we have to work sex in there somehow.)

Urges of a more cerebral nature have attracted many young women to the funeral industry; namely, the urge to help distressed mourners navigate one of the more difficult milestones of life.

Dr. Lyn Prendergast's slightly peevish quote indicates that perhaps a reporter has just asked her an irritating question. Maybe, "So, do girls get mortuary degrees because they like just want to help people or what?"

'The perception of the general public is that women tend to be more compassionate,' says Dr. Lyn Prendergast, founder (with her husband, Dr. Louis Misantone) of FINE. 'A lot of women do have compassionate sides, and I think it's one factor that draws them into the industry, but it shouldn't be a blanket statement. Unfortunately, though, it's mostly true.'

Can't...(cough, gasp)...fight...inherent...altruism. Must...help...people.

Of Diapers and Derring-Do

2009-02-25T13:52:00.004-05:00

It came to my attention recently, thanks to CNN, that women rob banks.

You may have heard this already. Last August, the Globe ran a similar piece of journalism entitled "Bonnie Without Clyde," a great whacking Sunday magazine monster of a story. Having given birth to a baby on Saturday afternoon, I was still too enfeebled to work up enough rage to throw it across the room. It's very kind of this story to come around again and give me another shot.

I am never quite sure what to make of Women Do Crime stories. They're so disarmingly cheerful. The prospect of women running around in ski masks terrorizing the populace is rarely presented as all that terrifying. You get the sense that the reporter is secretly rooting for them.

""Here's a crime that you can commit easily and its an equal opportunity crime," crime historian Robert McCrie said. Banks have become so customer-friendly and open, they've become "a safe place to rob," he added."

The best part of the story, aside from the always-helpful "Story Highlights," is the experts they dredged up to shed light on why women (the caring gender, remember) would want to rob nasty old banks. Forensic sociologist (!) Rosemary Erickson opines:

""Women are more pragmatic," forensic sociologist Rosemary Erikson agreed. "They need diapers for the baby that kind of thing.""

As I was reading this, my eyes suddenly rolled back into my head and I had a flashback to my last brush with crime about a year ago. I was at the CVS in Lower Mills, whalishly pregnant, perusing the shampoo aisle, when suddenly there was a commotion in Baby Care. A CVS serf in a red vest was having some sort of altercation with a fat man clutching a package of Pampers. Busted!

Shoplifting an item the size of an ottoman is no mean feat, especially after you're caught doing it, but fat man was undeterred. Finding himself cornered, he began uttering vague threats and clawing suggestively at the waistband of his sweatpants. A gun, however imaginary, was clearly out of CVS guy's pay grade. He backed off, and the Scarlet Pampernel escaped into the night with his absorbent booty.

The lesson here is that you should never rob banks to buy diapers. Bank robbers get caught. Pampers robbers get Pampers. Time to smarten up, ladies.

Thanks to Dave for the heads-up.

What Do Women Need?

2009-02-25T13:39:00.003-05:00

Unpaid writing jobs!

Hear ye, hear ye:

"A brand new online magazine "What Women Need"( http://whatwomenneed.com/)
needs writers.

Our website will focus on women aged 35-55. We're searching for several feature writers who have some meaninful or entertaining insights that they would like to share with others. This is an excellent opportunity to have your writing published online. At this point in our development, we're a start-up magazine and the position is unpaid. However, we believe that this will change and payments will be negotiated as we grow. We are hoping to have writers on a permanent basis. However, one-time submissions are welcomed.

The articles should be relevant to issues that women in their 30s and 50s can identify with. Some of the headline articles
will fall under these categories:

RELATIONSHIPS, BEAUTY & STYLE, CAREER & MONEY, SPIRITUALITY, MIND & BODY
HEALTH/ FITNESS & DIET, FUN, ART & MUSIC, HOME & FOOD, OUTDOORS & TRAVEL
PARENTING, POLITICS

Please forward a short bio, samples of your writing or articles that you would like us to consider to editor1@wwnmail.com.

Thank you!"

Not to be confused with www.whatwomenwant.com, which is sex, www.whatwomenmustknow.com, which is where you should go if you are "a person who is trying to make sense out of why you are not feeling healthy and vibrant," or www.womanwithin.com, which is the Lane Bryant Catalog.

Thanks to Adam for finding this.

Gettysluts!

2009-02-20T14:09:00.004-05:00

Sexting. It's rampaging throughout the land. It's burning up the pages of your local newspaper. And it's exacting a terrible, terrible price from our young people.

I'm talking, of course, about Getty models. Sloe-eyed and mild, they gaze at us from the pages of our great nation's newspapers, shining like vacant beacons of sluttery for all mankind. Who are they? NO ONE KNOWS.

There are all kinds of good reasons why newspapers use Gettysluts instead of running actual teen sexting pix in the newspaper. For one thing, it's a family newspaper. (Never mind that nobody under 60 actually reads it.) For another thing, it's like running a giant ad that says SUE US, PLEASE. And for a third, the last sexpic anybody ever personally sent your average newspaper editor was probably a vaguely dirty playing card in 1973.

And so it continues: the wretched trade in human flesh and dreams. Skanks, sexters, MySpace addicts, cutters--for every species of wayward teen there is a Gettyslut. Who are these nameless harlots? Are they lured to pose for us with promises of puppies and Snickers bars? Are they destined for a life of shame? Are they all really 27-year-old waitresses with SAG cards and nose jobs?

Their faces are blurred with shame, but their knees are suspiciously well-defined. (momlogic.com/Getty)

What a ho. (InjuryBoard.com/iStockphoto)

Oh God! It's a sext! Someone call her parents. (Charleston Post and Courier)

What body part is depicted here? Does it belong to a squid? There's no shame in that. (Salon)

Sexting: It's not just for 27-year-olds in acid-wash overalls anymore. (Slate)

Here we see that peculiar shade of blue that signifies high-tech, mental rot, and young libidos gone astray. (CBS/iStockphoto)

I thought about omitting this one for decency's sake, but you should know what your children are up to. (Considering Homeschooling)

FYI, here's a sample Getty model contract. (PDF alert!)

21st Century Man: I Has A Forward Thinking!

2009-02-19T16:15:00.004-05:00

From Indian news site OneIndia: Men today have a forward thinking [sic]. They no longer want their wives to spend all their time cooking and cleaning. That was the 1930s! Now they want them to still do all that cooking and cleaning and also make lots of money.

"Since there is a vast opportunity for education and career for women on these days, men expect to share their financial burdens with their partner. Even though they expect these modern trends men also wishes their partner to be good looking, a good cook and a housekeeper.

Men on the present day give least importance to the chastity in their partner."

Well, at least the poor thing can sleep around in her copious spare time.

I was about to be appalled by the incredible bullshit women in India have to put up with, but then I got to the last line.

"Researchers at University of Iowa conducted this study."

Tags: chastity, kitchen, housekeeper.

American Farmers Increasingly Female, Ethnic

2009-02-19T15:44:00.004-05:00

Sometimes the good Lord tosses you something so beautiful, all you can do is just stand back and drink in the wonder of it all. Like a sunset. Or like the lede on this story by Mike Swift (any relation? Oooooh!) of the San Jose Mercury News:

"Sherrie Kennedy, a 55-year-old former gym teacher from Gilroy, never saw herself as a farmer. She just knew that she was good at making good things come out of the Earth, and that people got so happy when they tasted her heirloom tomatoes.

But in the three years since she went into business selling the organic tomatoes she grows on eight acres below Pacheco Pass, Kennedy has seen her sales mushroom tenfold each year. Last year, boutique grocer Nob Hill Foods came calling, selling her produce in stores in San Jose and Gilroy.

"I treat my tomatoes like a box of Whitman samplers," said Kennedy, "where you open up that box and you say, 'I've got to have that.'"

Excuse me. I am weeping.

It seems the USDA has counted the farmers, and found that they are younger, femaler, smaller and less-whiter than they were in 2002. Or are they?

"Part of the reason for the more diverse statistics, USDA officials acknowledge, is the agency tried harder to track down smaller, immigrant-run farms for the 2007 count."

Oops! But we won't let that ruin our story, will we? No!

"The aging of American farmers, along with Americans' changing palates, are driving the feminization of farming.

"You're seeing women taking over as the principal operator because their spouse has passed on," said Carol House of the National Agricultural Statistics Service. "You also see some women coming in and doing things like raising goats and selling organic specialty cheeses. The niche-type things — they weren't overrun by white male operators — and there is this role there.""

Die, white male farmers, die!

Invigorated by their recent widowhood, the new breed of female, ethnic* farmers are bringing a certain je ne sais quoi to the lush valleys of central California. Mike Swift cannot really sais it either--he alludes to a vague benevolence spread through the land by the earth-loving ethnic-women, a "great mix," if you will. Although it might involve Asian long beans.

*Actual word used in story.

Women Sometimes Do Boxing

2009-02-19T11:40:00.006-05:00

It's been a slow week at Women Do HQ. The Globe's sins since the tattoo fiasco have mostly been minor. No Women Do Power Lunch. No Women Run Giant Lizard Farms. No Women, Once Liberated From The Tyranny of Needlepoint, Now Rediscovering the Domestic Arts Anew. Even Joseph P. Kahn seems to have given up on the Mr. Mom story he promised us.

I dared to hope. Could it be that a new day was dawning over Morrissey Boulevard? Had Marty Baron seen the light? Had somebody over there been reading this humble blog, and thinking, "You know, maybe we ought to take a few reporters off the Women Do Macrame beat and send them out knocking on doors in Dorchester. Maria Cramer's getting kinda lonely covering the entire distro area of the Bay State Banner all by herself."

Alas, as today's classic story proves beyond a shadow of a doubt, the women are still doing stuff. Namely, boxing. They do it. If there is anybody living under a rock in New Hampshire who remains unaware that women sometimes do boxing, consider yourself informed.

Milton J. Valencia's story contains a nice example of the old standby of Women Do, the Useless Reveal. This is a kind of lede, much favored by reporters on all beats, in which the first sentence or two lulls you into a sense of complacency by suggesting that nothing is out of the ordinary...

"These hands are no different from any Jack O'Neill has wrapped in his decades in boxing. Good jab, strong one-two. He would like to see a little more head movement, but so far he likes the progress."

...and then, WHAM! A surprising fact is interjected!

"Matie Desjardins, the woman who walked into his gym a year ago with barely any skills, has earned his respect."

Only the dark-horse vagina fails to surprise, because of course the giant screaming headline has already given the entire premise of the story away. Rats! Foiled again! Editor 1, Reporter 0!

I love the Useless Reveal, especially when it involves long blond hair cascading out of football helmets. My personal favorite isn't from a Women Do story at all--it's from a science story, in which a mysterious special clipboard-carrying person is revealed to be carrying not just any clipboard, but a clipboard for writing down things about bears. Globe columnist Kevin Cullen has also made good use of it: for instance, in his notorious June 5, 2008 column, in which ceremonial Fenway pitch-thrower Javier Serrano is revealed to have no hands.

The boxing story (which, mercifully, is titled "Round won" and not, e.g., "She box, he box, a-we box") would probably have made a decent profile. Instead, it meanders through the last 16 years of women-in-boxing-in-New-England history, pausing occasionally to dish out tepid compliments.

"Women are finding other women to box with them at major events. Most important say those in the boxing community, is that crowds are starting to enjoy women's bouts as part of the show, rather than an oddity.

"These girls even start to have a following," said William Hoar, executive director of New England Golden Gloves..."

It Is Not Done Well, But You Are Surprised To Find It Done At All.

Women Doth! Depression-Era Jujitsu

2009-02-12T10:42:00.005-05:00

I asked for vintage Women Do, and the Internets do not disappoint. BoingBoing (who else?) has a couple of marvelous 1930s British newsreels on jujitsu for the womens.

The first video offers a primer in handling "the objectionable people one meets at certain places." In the second, a Kiera Knightley-esque virago calmly dismembers her burly sidekick. "And in this position it is quite easy for me to dislocate his wrrrrrist [CRACK!], elbow, ["Aaarp!"] and shoulder."

Thanks once again to the indefatigable Ryan for the tip.

Did Martha Get A Bum Deal?

2009-02-11T22:04:00.003-05:00

While indulging in a little après-dinner Bernie Madoff-hating, I came across this: Mukesh Chatter at the MoneyAisle Blog points out that while Martha Stewart got deep-fried for a single stock tip, Madoff got away with it for years. Is it a girl thing, as one commenter suggests? Or was Martha just not spectacularly criminal enough to get away with it?

One is reminded of Sir John Harrington. "Treason doth never prosper: what's the reason? Why, if it prosper, none dare call it treason."

In case you were wondering: No, I am not going to comment on this, this or this. Why? Because by the time another single woman deliberately gives birth to a baseball team on top of the six she's already got, the goddamn sun will have burnt out. Call me lazy, but I don't think there's much useful social commentary to extract from an outlier about eight standard deviations to the right of the mean. Unless you're Jeff Jacoby looking for an excuse to whale away on Roe v. Wade some more.

(What is it called when you invoke the Paradox of the Heap facetiously? A Straw Heap? The point of the Heap is not to whine "But making subjective value judgments is haaaaaaard..." and walk away from it, Jeffers.)

I guess I did comment on it, then. Oops.

No One On The Corner Has Swagger Like M.I.A.

2009-02-10T15:04:00.006-05:00

Surely by now you must have seen this video of the peerless M.I.A. performing onstage at the Grammys on her due date. No? Well, have at it. [Oops. Copyrighted! Well, here's a different video.]

XX Factor's Marjorie Valbrun believes Ms. Arulpragasam had best check herself before she wrecks herself.

"The imagery of a scantily-clad, or should I say scandalously-clad, pregnant young women dancing on stage with a bunch of male rappers whose rhymes sometimes debase women, was just too much for me. And don't even get me started on what this cringe-worthy antic might say to impressionable teenage girl fans."

In other words: You lose. You lose for being pregnant. You lose for associating with men. You lose for not covering your shamefully pregnant body enough. You lose for being insufficiently feminist. Did I mention you lose for being pregnant? Stupid woman--you're not people when you're pregnant.

See, this is the trouble with blogging. I think if Valbrun had walked away from the computer and had a cup of coffee, before firing off some asshaberdashery about how M.I.A. should have stayed at home in a prairie dress knitting booties and quivering in terror, she would have thought better of it.

I nominate M.I.A. for Ballsiest Motherfucker in Hip-Hop.

**UPDATE!** You're Not People When You're Pregnant Part II: Rachael Larimore agrees.

**UPDATE II!** The Grammys called. They want their video back. In its place, please enjoy a home movie of a baby dancing to Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie."

Women Doth! The Westminster Follies

2009-02-10T09:58:00.004-05:00

The Westminster Dog Show wraps up today, amid a flurry of pomaded fur and questionable news coverage. Westminster, the oldest continuously held sporting event in America with a 133-year history, is a splendid prism through which to refract widely-held ideas about sex, money, oppression and public micturition. To wit:

Women of Westminster, your shoes are duly noted.

The economy sucketh: Part 298,398,202.

I am not sure exactly who is supposed to be urinating where in this LA Times account:

"...right now the floor covered [sic] in wood shavings, red fire hydrants on the left for the boys, a pink settee and glitter saw dust on the right for the girls and 1,000 dogs seemingly always on the go here.

There are exceptions, of course, and available just off the lobby, pink panties are being sold with Poise inserts. "Pink is a little sexier," says sales lady Neena Pellegrini..."

The always-appropriate PETA showed up in full KKK regalia. Because you know what fancy dog shows are exactly like? This. Mmmmm-hmmmm.

(Aside: How can you tell a KKK protester from a PETA protester cheekily pretending to be one? That is a real question. I have no idea.)

Of course, all this Westminster blithering is just an excuse to drag out the amazing 1907 story (PDF alert!) Adam Gaffin found in the NYT vault a few weeks ago. It has everything, including a headline of the They Just Don't Make 'Em Like They Used To variety:

"WOMEN WITH BIG DOGS IN WEST MINSTER'S SHOW; Fair Owners Comprise Nearly a Fourth of the Exhibitors. -- GIANT CANINES THEIR FANCY -- Miss Whitney Will Have Excellent Display of Great Danes -- Show's Big Increase in Entries."

Though the story exhibits some of the perkiness characteristic to the genre--even at a 100-year remove--a mysterious pall hangs over its protagonists, human and canine:

"...It will occasion no surprise if the catalogue of the coming show discloses the fact that of the probable 850 exhibitors close upon 200 are women. Many might suppose that they confine their fancies to the house pets or toy dogs, but that is far from being the case. The giants of the show ring are among their fancies, indeed, it may almost be said that in the slump of the St. Bernards they were saved from the fate of the mastiffs mainly by Miss Marks and Mrs. Lee. The former would undoubtedly have been an exhibitor at the coming show had she lived to enter the well-known Willowmere dogs."

Gulp.

And now, a supplication. Please, please, please send me your ancient Women Do stories. Send them on PDFs. Send them on crumbling microfiche. Send them on yellowed parchment and calfskin vellum tanned with its own brains. I want to know what the ladies were up to in what passed for newspapers in ancient Sumeria. I want incredulous accounts of motor-car-driving amongst the Fairer Sex from the era of Henry Ford. Oh yes. All your Women Doth are belong to me.

The Gals At Feministing Are Smoking The NYT's Crack Again

2009-02-06T14:03:00.003-05:00

The most popular story on the NYT's website today is a business piece about how women are getting ready to overtake men in the workforce--not by salary or prestige, but by sheer numbers. The reason: They're not getting laid off as much. The reason they're not getting laid off as much: They do crap jobs for no money.

Although Times reporter Catherine Rampell opines that this shift may "challenge long-standing gender roles," this story is not at all about women getting ahead. It's about class--or it would be, if the Times had just a little more huevos. It's about the fact that the only jobs surviving this wretched econocaust are low-paying, have no health insurance and can barely keep a family of four in dry beans, let alone afford the mortgage. Insofar as this story is about women, it's about the fact that women do a disproportionate share of this great nation's shitty jobs.

Somebody over at Feministing drank the You Go, Girl Kool-Aid, though.

Aside: Why are all the economic-hardship stories in the NYT about people a couple of tax brackets up from me? I'm very sorry you lost your $150K/year job, my friend, but I will not weep too hard into my Pot Noodle about it. Ryan Weaver agrees: "The NYT apparently cannot locate one person who falls between the extremes of Latina babymamas in Harlem and hateful, repugnant, rich Manhattanites. To read this paper you would have to assume that all of the predictions about the middle class disappearing are correct -- because not one reporter from either the NYT or the Globe can seem to fucking find it."

Aside aside: My household consists of two female reporters. God help us. I may have to start renting out the baby.

Motherhood: Ur Doin It Wrong

2009-02-06T13:41:00.003-05:00

Dear cartoon woman tending your mumpy, bedridden child: We have some parenting advice for you. You are too fat.

From the Globe's online parenting-ghetto, BoMoms. (There are no BoDads. Maybe they all lost custody or something.)

Scienceology at the Wall Street Journal

2009-02-06T12:10:00.003-05:00

Recently in the WSJ: Women in the US are having babies younger because they don't care about work anymore. Or something. Maybe. Although it might just be that there are more of those baby-makin' Hispanic women now, or fewer teen abortions, or more pregnant b-ball superstars. Who knows? Let's throw a lot of women-spaghetti at the wall and see what sticks!

Like most bullshit trend stories, this one has a tell, and it's this paragraph:

A one-year reversal doesn't make a trend, of course. But the study lends weight to anecdotal evidence that young women are tuning in more closely to their biological clocks. "It's the first time it's ever gone down, and certainly that's noteworthy," says Brady Hamilton, co-author of the study.

Anecdotal evidence which consists of: a speciously unsupported opinion from a Marxist historian (WSJ, we hardly knew ye!)*, a "college graduate" who decided to have some kids instead of becoming a librarian, pregnant basketball phenom Candace Parker, and a twentysomething mom whose husband is still in college. You see what they just did there? Three anecdotes plus an expert: it's a trend!

OK, geniuses, this is not a "study." (PDF alert!) It's a CDC report on a bunch of data they just released for 2006. A "study" would generally have a question--like, say, "Are women putting their uteri into production at an astonishing rate or what? Maybe they hate work?" Its authors would then go about trying, in whatever flawed way available to them, to answer this question in good faith. And in contrast to the way things work at the Wall Street Journal, some people would actually have to read such a study, and spend a few minutes thinking critically about whether it was bullshit, before inflicting it on the rest of us in print. It's called peer review.

*This is sophomoric, but I cannot resist. The Marxist is named Stephanie Coontz. What are the odds?

In Which I Get Into the Semi-Libellous T-Shirt Business

2009-02-05T10:53:00.002-05:00

It happens all the time: you're just walking down the street, minding your own beeswax, when out of nowhere a squadron of coppers appears to arrest you for indecent groping. What do you do? Claim to be Massachusetts state rep Marty Walsh, of course.

In honor of St. Patrick's Day--and of disgraced former state senator James Marzilli--Women Do! is offering one-of-a-kind "Kiss Me, I'm Marty Walsh" T-shirts. Here's your chance to own a machine-washable piece of Massachusetts history. (Just the thing to wear to the Southie breakfast!)

You can obtain this amazing T-shirt, in both women's and unisex styles, here.

For more on the classic American font used in the production of these T-shirts, Cooper Black, please see this incredible VH1-style documentary: "Behind The Typeface."

As for the libel, I kid. Satire is well-protected under the First Amendment. But please be advised that if you are arrested while wearing this T-shirt, Women Do! will be in no way responsible for your actions, bail or subsequent media coverage.

White Suburban Moms Do Hip-Hop, Command Respect

2009-02-04T09:13:00.005-05:00

I forgive Chris Faraone for writing a Women Do story, because the man is a seismic word machine deeply in love with his source material. A sample:

As a prepubescent thug, I often complained about the audio rotation on my father's car stereo, which primarily consisted of a steady mix of Moody Blues and books on tape. In return, he'd ask how I would feel if he wore Starter jackets and picked me up at school with bass lines blaring out his windows: "Yo, Chris: get in the motherfucking whip, fool." He was right: I didn't want a hip-hop pops. The only thing worse would be a mom who sported door-knocker earrings and loose overalls with airbrushed backsides.

Now that I'm on the cusp of 30, though, I'm beginning to see things differently, as my enthusiasm for rap music is beyond latent; this past week I got a Wu-Tang Clan logo tattooed on my right forearm. All those jokes about us Gen-X dudes someday telling our grandchildren about how we met their nanas while "We Want Some Pussy" played in the background — that's going to be me. If I ever settle down, I'll be a white hip-hop parent — blunts, curse words, Timberlands, and all. In short: I'll be an embarrassment to all who bear my last name, which I'll have embroidered on my oversize Celtics jersey. But at least I won't be alone.

Newspapers: A Place To Learn Stuff

2009-02-02T15:24:00.004-05:00

Newspapers today have so much to teach us. Especially if we come from 1983. For instance, there is this thing called the Internet, and people there have feelings.

On the Internet, people freely express their feelings of love or hate for people such as Kardashian, Hasselbeck, or President Barack Obama and things such as Beyoncé's "Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It)" video.

In my kitchen, I prepare and consume edibles such as broccoli, ham and cheese sandwiches or roast beef, and liquids such as orange juice. I thought you should know. If you like, I can tell you 900 more words about it.

That noodle kugel is creeping perilously close to the top of the Globe's most-emailed list again. Somebody perpetrate some journalism quick. (The one about Houghton Mifflin was good, but it won't keep that goddamn noodle kugel down forever.)

The kids, they also use cell phones.

File Under: Only In Broward County

2009-02-01T20:05:00.004-05:00

Is it me, or is this thoroughly disturbing?

Who trained a five-year-old to make that jaded Kate Moss there-isn't-enough-coke-in-the-world face? Why? And how? I guess we know where, anyway. All things under the sun eventually fetch up in South Florida.

Women Do! Hero of the Month: Diane Mapes

2009-01-31T18:12:00.004-05:00

I refuse to make fun of this story, because it's sort of heartbreaking. Being a female separatist in America would be sort of like being a vegan trapped in a churrascaria for all eternity, constantly fending off pushy waiters armed with giant sabres full of greasy chicken hearts and trying desperately not to vomit. You can't blame them for wanting to hide behind the salad bar.

Besides, there are worse brands of manophobia. I find the kind practiced by aging lesbians in Alabama communes far, far less irritating than the sort of empty, Hallmark-card female exceptionalism touted by your average Lola reader. The script goes kind of like this: "Women are so much smarter/neater/more hygienic/more psychic/saner/saintlier than those awful smelly clods who think they're Jesus Christ because they pick up the tab at Radius. Smirk! Giggle!" It's not really a kind of feminism, but it plays one on TV.

Which brings me to our Ms. January, Diane Mapes.* Mapes recently walked into a seminar purporting to teach her how to speak "Menglish" to those dim apes, emerged un-converted, and got paid to say so. It is fluff, but by God, it is honest fluff.

I learned that men were bound by duty, obligation and honor (weren't women bound by these things, too?) and that they all went through four basic stages of development, including something called The Tunnel, which either was a midlife crisis or a really bad commute between one stage and another.

Or maybe both.

By that time, I was starting to get a little confused about all the things that men were and weren't. Silly me, I thought they were just people like everybody else.

She ends up sneaking furtively out the side door:

Leaving early meant I would miss the top four ways I could gain a man's affection (i.e., charm and enchant him) thus compelling him to "take care of me, contribute to me, protect me and make me happy."

"Contribute to me"? Is that what those things are for?

I had plenty of respect for Alison's research (even more for her well-oiled marketing machine), but I really didn't care about becoming a queen in my own realm. Nor was I interested in learning Menglish or Portuegeezer or Guywanese.

Cheers to you, Mapes. While you're at it, can you put a stop to brocabulary?

*Tip of the hat to Jezebel.

I Want To See Sarah Schweitzer's

2009-01-30T16:39:00.004-05:00

Gawker is right: this is not only the worst newspaper office memo ever, it's the worst office memo ever, period. Not even Steve Carrell could be so dastardly.

Nevertheless, I would dearly love to see how the Globe's Fluff Squad would respond.

Also. Dear BU Comm majors: Heed the fucking writing on the wall and stay the hell away from journalism. Seriously.

This Has Nothing To Do With Women Do, But It's Sciencey And Porny, So Here Goes

2009-01-30T12:54:00.004-05:00

Knight-in-government-waste-hating-armor Chuck Grassley wants to hold up $3 billion for university science in the stimulus bill. Apparently, some guys [Just guessing--Ed.] at the NSF were watching porn on government time. Maybe Chuck should come blow up my house now; there used to be some mice in it.

Next up: Ranking GOP Senate Finance Committee Member Eliminates FEMA; quoth Grassley; "Those guys are always screwing around on the Facebook."

Women Do Time

2009-01-30T11:57:00.005-05:00

Brits are wringing their hands this week over a new report claiming a 22 percent increase in crimes committed by girls 10-17. Girl thugs! "Ladette culture"! Heavens!

Not such a bad story, as measured by the official Women Do! Crap-O-Meter. I give it a 1 for Irrelevance, 0 for Bullshit (they actually counted stuff) and 2 for Perkiness. (Ladettes!) But it scores that magical extra point for this:

Roger Grimshaw, from the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies at King's College London, told The Times that there now seemed to be a greater intolerance by police of disorder by women.

"Women are more independent, more confident about going out on the street in groups. When there are, therefore, circumstances in which conflict does occur, they can become involved," he said.

You let the ladies out on the streets without male escorts, like a bunch of uncivilized hyenas, and just look what happens. Tragic.

***UPDATE!*** It seems this worrisome phenomenon has reached American shores.

Women Do Bankers

2009-01-29T17:55:00.001-05:00

I should have posted this yesterday. But I hate this story so much and for so many reasons that it has blown a giant smoking hole through my forebrain, thus rendering any insightful commentary on it totally impossible. So sorry.

Girl, You So Feisty!

2009-01-29T15:44:00.003-05:00

Fine column by Gail Collins in the NYT, serving up a tasty dollop of context to Lilly Ledbetter's huge victory today. In it, she pays homage to the women who have battled to strike down laws upholding sex discrimination, thereby embettering other people's lives without thought for their own personal gain. (As is their wont.)

And then she has to go and drop an F-bomb in the penultimate paragraph. Why, Gail, why? I swear to God, if a vag-bearing person single-handedly saved the White House from an attack of killer warthogs dripping with SARS, armed only with her God-given courage and a ballpoint pen, they'd call her "feisty." If Chesley B. Sullenberger III had been a woman, the headline would have read "Sassy Pilot Just Doing Her Job," and the reporter would have made a note of her footwear.

I beg. No more. No more "feisty," no more "sassy," no more "you go, girl." I believe it is time to begin compiling the Banned Words List. Submissions, anyone?

(Excuse me. The thought of Chesley B. Sullenberger III being female is making me a little weak in the knees. I must go lie down now.)

A Few Tidbits

2009-01-28T13:47:00.006-05:00

-"A laptop for poor widdle women arms."

-Hooray, Science, Part I: Life officially not over until age 33.

-Hooray, Science, Part II: 23 hungry psych students prove women have feebler brains. It must be the hormones.

-Self-serving observation: In their roundup of vegetable-porn outrage, the SF Chronicle missed this.

Women: They Are So Very Busy

2009-01-25T15:26:00.005-05:00

Everybody knows women are so busy. It used to be that they were busy at home. Now they're busy at work, and also at home. Even in these challenging economic times, when everybody else is sitting at home in their underwear playing XBox, women are busy. But wherever their busy lives take them, Heather Staible of the Houston Chronicle will be right there to help them figure out what kind of sweaters to buy. Thank God for that!

Staible's recent story on in-home shopping is possibly the most unintentionally hilarious piece of service journalism I've read since John Quinlan's famous paean to the Olive Garden. It begins with what appears to be a line from a press release from 1952...

Home, these days, is where the shopping is shared by women who value personal service and timeless fashion.

...and just gets better from there. Industry spokesman Neil O'Keefe has this to say:

"Twenty to 30 years ago, women typically were at home and busy with family but didn’t have access to the variety of products that exist today..."

Ah yes. Who could forget the terrible '80s, when we spent our days squatting before the family cauldron, stirring the soup with a stick and praying that the mailman might one day bring us the Montgomery Ward catalog.

"...Today, many women are busy with jobs and the family, and shopping from home is a tremendous convenience. We also can’t overlook the increase in desire or need to create a source of income, especially in these challenging economic conditions."

No, we certainly can't. I have no idea how shopping from home can satisfy my increased desire or need to create a source of income, but by all means sign me up.

Further on, "collection recruiter associate" Lisa Liles offers a Zen koan on the benefits of trunk shows:

"The nice thing about trunk shows is that you won’t see yourself coming and going,"

What does that mean? Anyone?

In this desperate hour at the Houston Chronicle, what a relief it is that Heather Staible is still toiling away at her lonely desk, bravely recycling press releases amid the corpses of her fallen colleagues. Soldier on, busy woman. You're not alone.

What Happened While I Was On The Beach

2009-01-24T16:25:00.012-05:00

I understand some of you have been extremely disappointed in the recent dearth of postings. I have received several formal complaints. As this blog's senior management, official spokesperson, CIO, ombudswoman and Bwana-in-Chief, I take full responsibility for any lapses in content, and would like to issue a sincere apology--

Whoa. What's that? I'm not getting paid for this? In that case, Dear Reader, you can stuff it. I am currently on vacation, which differs from my usual pro bono activities in that my mom has been buying me lunch every day. Thanks Ma!

In the week or so since I last checked in with the world outside of Humboldt County, a lot has happened. We have a new President, and he's on the cover of Ms., which upset several people. Upon taking office, Mr. Obama immediately did away with his predecessor's loathsome abortion gag rule, prompting some 2,007 news articles; by comparison, Mrs. Obama's smashingly newsworthy yellow dress inspired 4,248.

I missed some alliterative nonsense from Natalie Angier, about how Obama's "geek chic" is going to be good for science-women in some unspecified way. (Memes? Really? How scientific, Natalie!) In addition to befuddling the brains of Ms. Angier, Science has also been hard at work on that age-old question, "How do we unify the three different quantum mechanical fundamental interactions of quantum field theory?" Oops, not that age-old question. "What Do Women Want?" Yep, that's the one. They're close to figuring it out, thanks to voodoo and mechanical fruit detectors.

Meanwhile, it seems not much has changed in Globe-land. The End Times are still upon us. Reporters still can't do math. And that prize-winning noodle kugel from September is still the most emailed story of the day. That one almost made me homesick.

Oh, All Right, I'll Take the Bait

2009-01-14T15:35:00.004-05:00

Be ye advised: Token conservative Jeff Jacoby at the Boston Globe has a dream. One day, journalists will be judged not by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.

If the color of Obama's skin is immaterial to his fitness to occupy the White House, surely the color of any other man's skin is immaterial to his fitness to cover the White House.

They better not have boobs, though. God knows those things get in the way of typing.

Meredith Goldstein, Call Your Lawyer

2009-01-14T12:44:00.003-05:00

When I founded this blog scarcely two weeks ago, I resolved to stay on message, and not to get my knickers in a twist over the off-topic antics of Meredith Goldstein, the Globe's High Priestess of Inanity. Whoops! So much for that.

Today's sticky little bonbon concerns people who found Twue Wuv on the campaign trail this year. My favorite passage:

One soon-to-be-married couple who couldn't go on the record with their names (he now works for Obama, who apparently likes to keep love on the down low) told me they met while campaigning in New Hampshire. It was a match made in heaven - or, actually, a match made in Manchester.

Does she have any idea what she's implying?

Just so this post will have something to do with Women Do, please enjoy the sensible words of tech columnist Don Reisinger. Glad to have you aboard, Don. We shall overcome someday.

Lauren Clark Shows You How It's Done

2009-01-14T10:57:00.004-05:00

Last week, F.O.W.D. Ryan Weaver expressed dismay about the Herald's sassy, schlocky Women Drink Drinks article. I concurred. Can't we get some smart coverage of the Boston cocktail scene up in this proverbial bitch?

Well, looky here!* It's a recent article about the very same Boston cocktail scene, featuring the very same Misty Kalfoken. Only it's well-written, knowledgeable and appears to have an actual point beyond "dude, girls drink something other than melonballtinis."

Proving only, perhaps, that trade mags written for people who actually care about stuff are kicking the newspapers right in their grey, saggy arses.

Nightclub & Bar Magazine: 1; Herald: 0.

*Tip of the hat to UHub.

Things to look forward to

2009-01-11T16:02:00.004-05:00

From the Globe's Reporters' Questions:

LOOKING FOR MR. MOMS

Are you a recently unemployed dad who's now playing
Mr. Mom at home? We'd like to hear how you're doing. E-mail Joseph P. Kahn at jkahn@globe.com.

The Audacity of Hope

2009-01-11T12:55:00.004-05:00

Much apocalyptic hay is being made of Michael Hirschorn's article in this month's Atlantic. (No, not the white-anxiety-bait article. That other one.)

Hirschorn claims, with typical hyperbole, that there's a nonzero chance the Grey Lady will be dead by May. I'll leave the dissection of that dire pronouncement to cooler heads than mine. But if you managed to wade through the gloom, Hirschorn makes another intriguing--and oddly hopeful--prediction: that journalism could be saved by severing itself from its dumber Siamese twin, Newsish Fluff.

Under the guise of "service," The Times has been on a steady march toward temporarily profitable lifestyle fluff. Escapes! Styles! T magazine(s)! For a time, this fluff helped underwrite the foreign bureaus, enterprise reporting, and endless five-part Pulitzer Prize aspirants. But it has gradually hollowed out journalism's brand, by making the newspaper feel disposable.

Funding hard news with fluff is a time-honored strategy--done best and most inimitably by Vanity Fair, which is fond of wrapping lengthy investigative news pieces in the pearlescent hide of Scarlett Johansson. Is it possible that its day is done?

...Over the long run, a world in which journalism is no longer weighed down by the need to fold an omnibus news product into a larger lifestyle-tastic package might turn out to be one in which actual reportage could make the case for why it matters, and why it might even be worth paying for. The best journalists will survive, and eventually thrive.

Imagine. A future in which reporters would generate actual news. A day no Women would Do. And forty acres and a unicorn for every unemployed member of the IRE.

The prospect of reading the NYT of a morning without encountering Upper-Class Twits like these is indeed a heady one. But I suspect Hirschorn is drinking his own Kool-Aid. Who is it that's going to pay for the revival of real honest-to-God news again? Advertisers? *coughs* Internet news-readers? *spits coffee all over self* Hirschorn points out that HuffPo has raised a bunch of money. Yep. I think Pets.com once did, too.

Bear in mind as well that this Received Wisdom is from the Atlantic, whose idea of a clever strategy for surviving the Great Magazine Die-Off is to just keep putting Barack Obama's shiny, hopey face on the cover.

(Then again, the Atlantic is still publishing, while its erstwhile associate, the all-fluff 02138, has kicked the bucket. Maybe there's hope after all.)

Change afoot at the Globe?

2009-01-10T16:18:00.004-05:00

Is it possible the Globe has abandoned Women Do in favor of Men Do? Look: "Some men have been secretly playing Dungeons and Dragons for decades."

Oh, wait, it's by Johnny "Men Do" Diaz. Never mind.

To the estimable commenter known as qweryzxcvbasdfg: Identify yourself, and I will gladly buy you a beer at the greater Boston watering hole of your choice. Except Shay's in Harvard Square. I believe I am no longer welcome at that establishment.

Live Forever, Manohla Dargis

2009-01-09T23:45:00.006-05:00

This is not, strictly speaking, a Women Do story.

But we must show the love. When's the last time the NYT ran a story that begins with the sentence, "Do Hollywood studio executives think that women have a gene for tulle?" and ends with "Die, Bridezilla, die!"?

"STOP THE PRESSES. WOMEN DRINK SCOTCH."

2009-01-07T14:23:00.003-05:00

I am not going to go to town skewering the Herald's story today concerning the tendency of certain women to drink decent cocktails. Why? Because Ryan Weaver beat me to it!

Like me, Weaver is a fan of the good works of LUPEC (Ladies United for the Preservation of Endangered Cocktails), who are profiled in the story. I have Misty Kalfoken to thank, personally, for the joy that egg drinks have brought into my life. It's so dismaying to watch people who are good and decent and newsworthy even without their female bits get sucker-punched by a Women Do story. Here's Weaver's take:

...We have riffed with the genius Misty Kalkofen at her former post at Green Street, and rubbed elbows with Toro's Kirsten Amann (the female Scotch drinker in this piece) at Eastern Standard. Which is why we think they deserve better than a very belated Herald's article (which amounts to "dude, girls drink something other than melonballtinis?!")...

...Here's to more coverage of Boston's cocktail scene in general in 2009—in which the women who are the backbone of said scene aren't seen as exceptions, but rather the rule.

Right on.

Also, "Raising the bar"???? That the best you got, nameless Herald headline-writer? Feh.

By Their Works Ye Shall Know Them; Or, How to Spot a Women Do Story

2009-01-07T11:50:00.005-05:00

First off, congratulations to Adam Gaffin and Shannon Larkin for their speedy work dispatching the task I set before you all. Also, the vintage (circa 1907) story Adam posted is incredible, and deserves its own entry at a future date. More on that later.

I feel a little business is in order.

It must be said: Not every story about women--not even every story about women doing things--is a Women Do story. It can, at times, be tough to tease apart good upstanding journalism featuring women from the works of the Beast. But that, O Readers, is our task. And with a little natural history, everyone can learn to distinguish proper news from Women Do, as easily as telling a Cinnamon Bittern from a Yellow Bittern in the field. (It's the bar-shaped pupil. Duh.)

Every proper Women Do story has three hallmarks, and they are three, and these are them:

1. Irrelevance. The true Women Do story is not about medical issues, or gender discrimination, or anything properly related to women qua women. Oh no. It is about the shocking spectacle of women doing stuff that people generally do. At its heart is typically an earth-shattering revelation that some women, for instance, like to drive motor-cars or eat ice-cream. The reporter sets about tackling this topic with all the barmy innocence of a two-year-old child, a Betelgeusian anthropologist or a time-traveler from 1769.

(Inside tip: As a rule, reporters and editors are not actually all that amazed that women can do stuff. But they think you are.)

2. Bullshit. You will often read, in the pages of your local News-paper, that some femiphenomenon is "increasing" or "on the rise" or that "more and more," women are doing it. You might be tempted to think that somebody has actually counted something. No! Rarely in your true Women Do story does what Jeff Vogel calls "Science, that cruel bitch-goddess" rear Her quantitative head. Science is indeed hard, and J-school graduates tend to hate and fear Her with a loathing typically reserved for oil magnates and bacteria found in sample bottles at the Macy's beauty counter.

But, because no news editor can possibly bring him/herself to run a story unless something is presently increasing or decreasing or physically on fire, things must be On The Rise. And thus, reporters will duly find a few examples, toss around some vague verbiage and call it a day.

(It's well known among news types that Three Makes A Trend. It is also said that the Plural of "Anecdote" is "Data." You are advised to take these slogans with the mighty grain of salt they deserve.)

3. Perkiness. The perpetrators of the classic Women Do story will inflict on us any number of stale puns, cliches, slogans, witticisms and bons mots. They will lard headlines, subheads, captions and ledes with great glops of insufferable cuteness. They will, in their gormless way, encourage girls to go.

I propose a ten-point scale for evaluating the excrescence of individual stories. Three possible points for Irrelevance. Likewise for Bullshit and Perkiness. And one point at the discretion of the judge, to be awarded if it seems clear that the reporter ought to have known better, if it clearly took space from a more important story, or best of all, if the story actually contradicts some earlier story the paper has run on the same topic.

What do you think?

In Which A Contest Is Announced

2009-01-06T14:17:00.004-05:00

I must say, I find the response to this nascent bloglet totally gratifying. It's been very well received. By which I mean that several people I already email all the time emailed me and told me they read it. Thanks, folks! And a hearty thank-you especially to Adams Gaffin and Reilly.

Several correspondents made sarcastic remarks about what might be the next entry in the Globe's 23,987-part series, "Women And The Things They Do." Their prospects were hilariously outrageous. But then again, so was that bowling story. I wouldn't put it past some newspaper somewhere to have actually written these stories. And so, the contest is this, O Readers: Find a story in any newspaper anywhere that has done these stories, or reasonably similar ones, and you will receive...

Hmm. There's a dilemma. As of yesterday, I had $5 of free tacos to give away. Oh yes, that very same $5. In El Pelon Bucks. It's been moldering in my desk since the Dig's flaky former business manager paid it to me, one day when they ran out of petty cash to give to stray freelancers. But it seems that El Pelon has just burned to the ground. So if you win, you'll have to be content with that smugness which, like virtue, is its own reward.

For Fictional Story #1, which informs us that women sometimes drive buses, our correspondent has kindly supplied the headline:
Women at the Wheel
Bus driving has long been a man's world, but that's starting to change

For Fictional Story #2, which concerns women and their big dogs, you have a lede to get you started:
"Mary is only 96 pounds and a meager 5'2". She seems delicate, tiny, when she walks her great dane, Bobo, around Hyde Park. But Mary, like a rising number of women today, are opting for dogs of beast-like proportions rather than the ankle-biters sported by Paris Hilton."

Are these stories too vacantly patronizing to exist? Is anything? I once thought I'd seen the most drivellous pap the news industry had to offer. And then I read about Mommy Dating.

a little backstory

2009-01-05T17:35:00.000-05:00

Hello there! Welcome to this cantankerous little corner of the blogosphere. If you are, or happen to know personally, a woman, this site is for you. And if you are perpetually amazed by how perpetually amazed newspaper reporters and editors are that women can do stuff, this site is REALLY for you.

Having begun in medias res, as it were, with a cranky rant about tattooixtresses, I thought it might be proper to give this blog a belated introduction. Far from having sprung fully formed from a fit of pique this afternoon, the Women Do Project has been underway for some years--since at least 2006, when I was toiling in the swamps of the Weekly Dig's Media Farm. There, it came to my attention one day that women go bowling. Amazed by this, I did a little poking around, and discovered that women also shoot guns and DJ. Yea, they even blog. There seemed no end to the stuff Globe reporters would uncover about these preternaturally accomplished she-beings.

In our next Farm column (alas, now lost from the Intertubes), we thrust a skewer of mockery through these nuggets of condescending twaddle, offered $5 worth of free tacos to whoever could put a stop to them, and called it a day. Alas, they kept coming. Soon, women were drinking sake and becoming police officers. (They were even ice fishing, though this is clearly hazardous to their health.) In other, less credulous newspapers, they could frequently be spotted buying electronics. And more electronics. And even more electronics.

I developed a reputation for hurling potted plants across the office whenever a "Women Do ____" story came over the transom. People began to send me particularly egregious exempla of the genre. Adam Reilly over at the Phoenix even got into the game. But to no avail. The Globe just kept right on yammering about women playing football and robbing banks. I left the Dig and went to grad school. Eventually I gave up yelling about "Women Do ____" and found other sources of meaning in life.

Until today. I just couldn't take it anymore.

Mein Gott, it's a tattoo!

2009-01-05T15:36:00.000-05:00

And not just any fershlugginer tattoo, O Reader. It's emblazoned on a haunch! A juicy, curvaceous haunch! One belonging to a female person, no less! And--get this--the tattoo artist doesn't even have a penis! CALL YOUR FRIENDLY NEIGHBORHOOD GLOBE REPORTER, STAT!

Behold, in today's Boston Globe, a classic example of that eternal evergreen, that trendalicious titillater, that freshly-springing font of copy, the "Women Do ____" Story. Thank you, Yoon S. Byun, for calling to our attention the incredible--nay, newsworthy--fact that the women of Boston are loose in the streets, posing as tattooers and tattooees both.

Like most "Women Do" stories, Byun's paean to female inkslinging contains a splendid specimen of The Pointless Female Exceptionalism Quote (PFEQ). Right up top, too. In case you were wondering what earthly difference it could possibly make what kind of junk the inky wretch carving "MOTHER" into your ass possesses.

"[He] was very chatty and nice," says Priddy. "But Sharon and I talk about girly things: her family, my family, the intricacies of family."

Family chitchat, vagina-Americans and tattooing, together at last!

We also get to meet another stock "Women Do" character, the Post-Feminist Pollyanna (PFP). Here we have the sadly deluded Eva Huber, thinking people will care how good she is at her job or something.

"I would like to think I get more customers because they like my work," she says. "I don't like to play up the fact that I'm a girl in a male-dominated industry. I'd like them to look at my portfolio and a man's portfolio and make a decision on the work, not on the gender."

Bzzzzt! Thanks for playing, Eva! Sure, you can make tattoo needles and tile floors and you're an artist and whatever. But everybody knows your genitalia are your defining characteristic. You can read it in the Globe every day.

As always, gentle reader--"It Is Not Done Well; But You Are Surprised To Find It Done At All."