You go to one party on injectable fillers, and the world thinks you're an expert. Why not! Here I am talking Botox—and "Boytox!"—with Morris Jones and the gracious Hiba Hakki of Luxxery Express Botox Boutique. Memo to MoJo: Boytox.com is still available!
Plaintiff: The Equal Employment Opportunity Commission has filed an anti-discrimination suit in U.S. District Court on behalf of Christopher Woodson: Virginia man, professional mover, and practicing Rastafarian since 2004.
"Rastafarians do not cut their hair based on their sincerely held religious belief that they should grow their hair in an unbridled or dreadlocked fashion in order to be one with nature," the EEOC complaint reads. And so, "Woodson has worn his hair and beard in the dreadlock hairstyle from 2004 to the present."
Defendant: Lawrence Transportation Systems, a Virginia-based moving company, which the EEOC claims discriminated against Woodson on the basis of his hairstyle, and hence, his beliefs.
Let's play a little game of sexist or no, shall we?
THE TARGET: DCRealEstate.com, a local marketing and real estate firm. DCRealEstate promotes its own home-selling prowess with a "Realtors to Avoid" ad series, which gives potential clients a taste of the competition. At issue here is DCRealEstate's realtor-to-avoid #8: The Newbie. "She's got plenty of customer experience," the ad reads, aside a stock photograph of a shocked young blond woman. . . "From the Gap." Zing!
IN THE "SEXIST" CORNER: Local Diana Ziegler, who happened across the ad—and was put off by the implication that young women are more fit to sell jeggings than homes.
Last night, D.C.'s first walk-in Botox clinic opened its doors to the wrinkled. Dr. Ayman Hakki, the cosmetic surgeon behind Glover Park's new Luxxery Express Botox Boutique, aims to inject the popular muscle-freezing protein into area faces without the hassle of a doctor's appointment. After all, hassle leads to frowns. Frowns cause wrinkles. And wrinkles require Botox.
Perhaps it was the heavily-trafficked open Champagne bar; perhaps it was the carefully blocked nerve impulses. For whatever reason, few frown lines were on display at Luxxery's grand opening fete yesterday evening. "Everybody's in a good mood here tonight," Hakki's 81-year-old mother, Maha, told me. "It's the idea of plastic surgery. It makes people happy."
After she fended off a bear attack with a spare zucchini, anonymous online commenters are accusing a Montana woman of having inserted the vegetable into her vagina. Important gender relations update: A woman now cannot defend herself against a deadly wild animal without facing widespread speculation about her sexual habits.
Also in body-policing: Katy Perry has been declared "too hot for toddlers" after appearing in a segment on Sesame Street while possessing large breasts. Something tells me that Sesame Street's key demographic is hardly concerned with the magnitude of a guest's décolletage; besides, they eat that stuff for breakfast.
The Centers for Disease Control has released new figures charting the rising risk of HIV among gay and bisexual men. In the 21 major U.S. cities surveyed by the CDC (Washington included), one in five men who have sex with men is HIV-positive. Of particular concern to the District: Black, gay men are at the highest risk of infection. And half of HIV-positive men don't even know they have it.
A very recent history of mainstream political sexism: Rep. Betty Sutton should "go back to the kitchen"; vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin is a "mean girl"; Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley is an "ice queen"; presidential candidate Hillary Clinton either shows too much cleavage or not enough; Sen. Kirstin Gillibrand is the "hottest" member of Congress; Sen. Mary Landrieu is "the most expensive prostitute in the history of prostitutes."
And then there's this, said of 2008 Pennsylvania congressional candidate Sam Bennett, and printed in her local newspaper: "Sammy Bennett is phony political w**** who gives good h**d and makes cheap, blatant political opportunists look like Mother F****** Teresa. Even her p**** is made of plastic" (asterisks Bennett's).
During the campaign, Bennett never responded to her detractors. But today, Bennet—president and CEO of the Women's Campaign Forum—held a press conference at the National Museum of Women in the Arts, urging women not to follow her lead. According to new research sponsored by the WCF, sexist attacks do hurt female candidates—but calling them out as sexist can help women regain their ground.
The District-based Men Can Stop Rape has been selling its brand of gender-based activism to men in high school, college, and the armed forces since 1997. Last night, at the organization's annual "Men of Strength" awards dinner, MCSR unveiled a new target for its advocacy work: tweens.
The evening's MC joked that Men Can Stop Rape is looking to engage men in its sexual assault prevention "from the cradle." Well, it's not exactly Infants Can Stop Rape over here, but MCSR does hope to reach students as young as 12 with ads focused on bullying, cyber stalking, and sexual harassment. And local boys even agreed to model for the series—after the jump!
Today, linguist Deborah Tannen and journalist Sally Quinn met for a morning summit at Georgetown waterfront restaurant Sequoia to discuss the state of women. Tannen is a Georgetown University professor who produces popular books named after gendered linguistic cliches like "You Just Don't Understand" and "That's Not What I Meant!" Quinn is a storied Washington Post columnist who made a career by reporting on (and playing) the Washington social scene; now she writes about God.
Topics discussed, in front of a crowd of hundreds, included: Nipples in the office; the Bill O'Reilly make-up room double-standard; discovering Elizabeth Warren's hidden babe. After the jump, Tannen and Quinn's top 20 insights into the ladies:
Advice for the lazy: Truncating this week's advice columns.
Judd Apatow's "ouevre" is evidence that "men and women do seem to have different ideas of what is acceptable, sexually." If you don't want your sister to tell her kids about your history with drug use, don't tell her not to tell them. Don't make up with your rape-victim-blaming mom for the inheritance; do it because you love her. If you discover that your friend's husband cheated on her, side with her, and then discover that your friend's child is not really her husband's offspring but rather that of a man your friend had an affair with before her husband cheated on her, we don't know why you're so upset. [Ask Amy]
Confused about how LGBT civil rights issues are faring in our current political climate? Andrew Sullivan provides this helpful analogy: "Gays, The Battered Wife Of The Democratic Party."
Mmm, no. As a friend of mine breaks this down, "female domestic violence victims are not a metonymy for any action you don't like." In other words: Women are not the "bashed gays" of the Democratic party, just as Republicans are not the "child molesters" of LGBT rights, just as the KFC Double Down is not the "battered wife" of sandwiches, just as Andrew Sullivan is not the "KFC Double Down" of battered women.
KFC is, however, the PETA of fried chicken:
The Afflicted: Women's Campaign Forum, a national organization supporting pro-choice, female candidates.
Pipe dream: Tomorrow, WCF will host a reception honoring the female chiefs of staff working in the Capitol. The evening's entertainment: A small performance piece requiring the services of a local bagpiper. WCF has worked to elect women to the highest political offices in the United States, so why shouldn't they tap a woman fill their freelance bag-piping job, too? "We think it would be really interesting to have a woman performing the non-traditional instrument,” says Niya Apostolova, research and operations manager for WCF.
Kimberly and Kristina Skokan, the mother-daughter duo behind forthcoming sex shop KK's Temptations, have set a grand opening date for the Old Town Manassas store. KK's was the subject of an absurd Sept. 7 Manassas town hall meeting, in which local residents claimed that the store's opening would bring everything from sexual deviancy to economic ruin to the quaint Old Town district. On Wed., Oct. 20, Manassas will discover what KK's hath wrought.
The Skokans' official announcement contains an olive branch for Old Town Manassas: "After our grand opening, we encourage you to enjoy spending the day visiting our museums, shops and restaurants." KK's supporters, prepare to re-stock your lotions; detractors, ready your pitchforks.
Has there ever been a more opportune time for Mattel to roll out its television reporter Barbie? Months before sports reporter Ines Sainz' plunging necklines inspired commentators to dismiss her as a sexy ditz undeserving of basic human decency, oddly prescient girls from around the world voted for another lanky blond to take up "news anchor" as her latest career accomplishment.
Last week, Georgetown blog Vox Populi noted that Newsweek had ranked the university among its "Best Gay-Friendly Schools" for 2010. I was a bit surprised to see Georgetown snag a ranking in the category. After all, as Vox's Chris Heller reminds us, 2009 brought a series of bias-related crimes against LGBT students to the Georgetown campus—including incidents of verbal harassment and physical assault in the fall of last year.
Many, many Georgetown students rallied around GU's LGBT students and allies in the wake of the crimes. Still, given its recent history with out-and-out on-campus assault, it's worth asking just what makes Georgetown one of the most gay-friendly schools in the United States.
It's the college newspaper cycle of offensiveness: Print copy with offensive undertones of misogyny, homophobia, or rape; circulate on college campus; field criticism for offensive undertones of misogyny, homophobia, or rape; issue apology; field criticism of apology; repeat.
The college newspaper class of 2010-11 has already tried its hand at the "offending" portion of the evening. Last week, Johns Hopkins University issued the year's first first non-apology apology. On Monday, Purdue University submitted a more honest sorry.
I'd submit that "we made a mistake in printing Friday’s sex position of the week" isn't the optimal way to begin a college-campus-wide discussion about sexual assault, but that's what the students of Purdue have got to work with today.
After Dr. Laura Schlessinger turned her on-air indulgence in racial epithets into a crusade for her First Amendment rights and was forever swept from the airwaves, I'm loathe to acknowledge that she still actually exists. However, I must say that am amused to report that Dr. Laura is still filing gender-essentialist field reports—from her boat. You win this round, Dr. Laura.
Anyway, Schlessinger's got her own ideas about why men are losing a grip on their masculinity: The incessant nagging of women is feminizing them, of course. "Guys need time away from women and children, to re-establish their masculinity, which women and children tend to drain out of them by 'Do this! Do this! Do this! Do this! Do this!,'" Schlessinger says. "They have to go out and do their macho throwing a ball in a hoop. Whatever. Or go fishing. And sit there. Don't say a word. For hours." The new masculinity: It's the new misanthropy!
This week, Newsweek tackles the question of how American men can reverse their gender's reported descent into anxious masculinity: A trend marked by widespread unemployment, generalized flare-ups of machismo, and the very existence of "male studies" scholar Lionel Tiger.
How can men possibly recover from this spiral of manliness? In a cover treatment entitled "Men's Lib," the mag encourages men to "man up!," "reimagine masculinity," and adopt a "New Macho" regime, wherein gender roles are re-jiggered to incorporate "girly" pursuits like diaper-changing and nursing into a modern conception of "manliness," all in the pursuit of recovering the "male morale." Who are you calling "anxious"!
Last week, I posted a local Craigslist job listing from a cliche of a sexist boss. Our intrepid discriminator sought a "Smart, Sexy, Young, Female" with mad fax machine skills to assist him in his Washington area office; we ridiculed him.
But a reader got serious via e-mail: "Isn't it illegal to advertise for a job in such a clearly sexist way?" Likely: Sex and age discrimination in employment are prohibited by federal law. Federal law applies only to employers of 15 people or more, but D.C. law, at least, covers workplaces of all sizes.
Now: All we need is some old, not-particularly-sexy male candidates with mad fax machine skills and a hunger for a legal battle to test this guy's criteria!
Parents, teachers, sex reporters, and other adults looking for a creepy window into the sex lives of our nation's youth! Welcome to TBD's digest of local college sex columns:
"FAT CHICK" SENSITIVITY EXPERT: Last week, Johns Hopkins News-Letter Managing Editor Greg Sgammato penned an opinion piece based on his unique experience at a Phi Kappa Psi lingerie party: Mainly, fat women refused to feel shame for their bodies in Sgammato's presence. "The event was by many accounts a success, but unfortunately featured a disproportionate amount of fat chicks," Sgammato wrote. "When buffalo—especially those who frequent frat parties—consume alcohol, they undergo an extreme and sudden inflation of self-image." Egad.
The column was later deleted from the paper's website. Now, editors of the News-Letter have weighed in to clarify that they don't think you're fat—just stupid! In a letter from the editors, the News-Letter declared that Sgammato's column was "deliberately written as a satirical piece so as to demonstrate a phenomenon of superficiality that exists at Hopkins." They continue: "Taken as a satire, we had hoped the article would be accepted for what it is, a criticism of a depthless, flawed and real culture of thought that persists in the minds of many students."
