In Which Everything Ascribed By The Globe To Women In General Is Actually True Of Me Specifically

While yesterday's installment of hot bloggy goodness was undeniably a rollicking good time, in its own way, it did not -- it must be noted -- have much to do with Women And The Things They Do (According To Newspapers).

Fear not, O Reader, we still do that sort of thing around here. And the Globe, being the Globe, still does too, I'm secretly a little bit glad to say. (Would it still be the Globe, if they stopped ladling practically every lifestyle story that goes out the door with a soupçon of pointless and self-conscious gender commentary? Would I still have a reason to get up in the morning if someone, somewhere, wasn't writing a really obnoxious Useless Reveal lede about women who drive cement mixers?)

Well, I'm late in hitting a couple of recent splendid specimens from Morrisey Boulevard, but since they're not really news anyway, it hardly matters.

First, this bizarre little story, "The strange allure of the stand mixer." (Hat tip to champion noticer Amy Derjue for tipping me off to this.)

They may be mere appliances, but they have something to say about women! And feminism! And also non-women! (The Globe is not sure exactly what that something is, but they feel compelled to take bold declarative sentences about Women And Their Stand Mixers, fold them up into tortured little origami, and call it a day.) Viz.:

These women are teachers, lawyers, bankers — modern women with robust lives outside the home, and yet this symbol of homemakers, this tool for home chefs continues to draw them in. While some may be novice bakers or kitchen hobbyists, many would rather leave the cooking up to someone else. Nevertheless, they’re dazzled by this symbol of culinary proficiency. And in their signature color, of course.

But what is it about a hard-working countertop mixer that has some women so transfixed? Is this “keeping up with the Joneses” or is it feminist commentary at its finest?

Questions for the ages, that will forever go unanswered. This being the Globe, the ostensible point in all this verbiage -- that there is a special bond between women qua women and KitchenAids -- is dispensed with halfway through the story.

And it’s not just women who love them.

“I think what’s happened more recently is that many more men are becoming interested in cooking as a form of leisure and relaxation,” Kinchin says. “In fact, it’s just as likely to be the husband who will put that on the registry as the bride.”

Well then.

Full disclosure: I have a stand mixer. It is buttercup yellow and chrome, and it is a sexy beast, and I sometimes lick its smooth enameled flank when no one is looking. Make of that what you will.

Secondly, there is the matter of Billy Baker's story about Southie last month. (Hat tip to Adam Gaffin for this one.) You should be apprised that the douchebagification of Southie is all the fault of women who want to get into Matt Damon's pants.

GOOD WILL HUNTING has turned out to be a double-edged sword. It captured something great about Southie and at the same time ruined it forever. Because what I saw after that was unbelievable: Young women would get out of college and choose to move to Southie. Sure, it’s close to downtown, but the real reason they were moving was because they were subconsciously thinking they were going to find “a Southie” like Matt and Ben. Everything else followed them, namely young guys. That’s how everything changed. That’s how the old Southie reality ended.

It sort of boggles the mind, but I must put a Full Disclosure on this one, too; I moved to Southie briefly myself, lo these seven or eight years ago. Specifically, into a life of sin in a triple-decker on Second Street with an oldskool, hockey-playing, R-dropping, trash-talking, wisecracking, track-pants-wearing, 100% South Boston Irish red hot ticket whose nickname was, in fact, "Southie." So there's that.

I am reasonably sure no Jersey douchebags were hot on my trail, though. And if they were -- hey, sorry about that, Billy.

Johnny Diaz, At It Again

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.

Women Die in Ignominy

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.

Welcome To The Borg, Martha Coakley

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.

Not That Word Again

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.

Men Increasingly Defying Nonexistent Stereotypes

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!

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

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.

Women Destroy The Environment

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.

In Which A Rumor Is Dispelled

I am not Fake Marty Baron.

Piling On

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.

Wellesley's New Firefighter Deemed Adequate

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!

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

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.

Live at 10: Girls, Girls and More Girls

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.

Globe Announces Limerick Contest

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!)

Automotive Harlotry

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!

The Ruined Maid

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.

Of Diapers and Derring-Do

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.

Women Sometimes Do Boxing

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.

Motherhood: Ur Doin It Wrong

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.)