The XX Factor: What women really think.

What Price Do You Put on Virginity?

A post from DoubleX intern Claire Gordon:

Last week, a 19-year-old New Zealand student, known only as Unigirl, sold her virginity to a stranger for $32,000. Her online ad was viewed by 30,000 people and received over 1,200 offers. Thanks to the Internet, women like Unigirl are putting their sexual initiation up for sale in the very public marketplace. Though these auctions have a new global reach, the pricing of virginity is an ancient human practice—according to the book of Deuteronomy, a girl’s virginity is worth 50 shekels, paid to her father. In today’s economy, how much is a woman’s virginity worth? ... (Read the rest of this post in DoubleX.)

Pregnancies in Your 40s—Whoops

It's hard to catalog the amount of media—books, articles, movies, commercials—dedicated to scaring women about their biological clocks. We're told over and over again that if we wait "too long," then we won't have a man, much less a chance to have a baby. Unfortunately, the endless drumbeat about how your ovaries dry up 20 or more years before menopause begins is beginning to affect women's decision-making, according to the Family Planning Association. Women hear, over and over again, that you can't get pregnant after 28 or 35, and they believe it enough to ditch the contraception, with predictable results ... (Read the rest of this post in DoubleX.)

Baby Brees

Kerry, I watched the Super Bowl with my husband, 14-year-old daughter, and a friend of hers, and we were all discouraged by what you identify as the truly nasty tone toward women that ran through the ads (and let’s not mention the explicitly porn style of the Go Daddy ads which had the girls vowing they would never use Go Daddy.) And Jess, I agree with you that if this is the way companies want to advertise their products, let them. But I was struck that all the loathing of domesticity in the commercials was completely undercut after the game by the image of a tearful Drew Brees ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

No One Wants To See a Really Truthful Ad About Abortion

Well, we’ve seen the Tebow ad and I guess we can see how it slipped past CBS restrictions on advocacy ads, as there was nothing even mildly controversial about it. But I wanted to respond to KJ’s post from late last week about a reluctance to see “soft-focus” ads on either side of the abortion issue.

KJ, you wrote that my idea for an ad—showing people going through their daily routines and then telling viewers “my mom chose life”—was disingenuous because it shows only one side, and that a truthful ad would have to show coat hangers and neglected poor kids ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Die, Beer Guy, Die

Anthropologist Grant McCracken had a good post a while back about the mythic Beer Guy. Beer Guy is the guy you usually see during Super Bowl commercials. He is the likeably dumb, happy-go-lucky former frat boy. He showed up during this Bud Light commercial. McCracken didn’t get into this, but Beer Guy requires that the people around him—often, women—be his foils. They are humorless, dull, competent. They join book clubs and actually want to talk about the books. I skipped the Super Bowl, but watching these commercials, I’m not seeing a lot of Beer Guy. I see his angrier counterpart ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Sarah Palin Is a Genius at Taking Umbrage

How seriously should we take Sarah Palin as she makes all the early exploratory moves of a presidential candidate? (See: the urgent speech to the base in Tea Party land, the dangling of herself as "willing" to challenge Obama on Fox, the appearances on behalf of other candidates like Gov. Rick Perry, the assembling of an experienced set of handlers, and of course the Facebook account and Twitter feed.) In mulling that question, it's worth spotlighting her mastery of the favored tactic of the 2008 race: taking umbrage. As John Dickerson wrote two years ago, when Obama and McCain were just getting started, "If done correctly, candidates can exploit flamboyant displays of public upset to gain attention, raise money, put their opponents on the defensive, and distract from an unfavorable story." Palin did this effectively when Obama made his quip about how he bowls as if he's in the Special Olympics, and she did it again last week ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

CBS Shouldn't Be Responsible for Policing Bad Taste

Amanda, I disagree that the Tim Tebow ad was meant to be cruel and braggy. I found it innocuous—and even when I thought it was going to be more explicitly anti-choice, I did not think pro-choice people should protest in order to get it yanked off the air. Dayo, you say that CBS was complicit in the airing of sexist, misogynist ads during the Super Bowl. I agree that those ads, particularly the FloTV commercial, were deplorable. But I don't think asking CBS to be more strict in its regulation of standards and practices is a good solution. Especially since it's one that might backfire ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Could Male Unemployment Explain the Macho Super Bowl Ads?

The 44th Super Bowl was a fairy tale for the New Orleans Saints—and a bad dream for the women who made up one-third of the television audience. Over at The Sexist, Amanda Hess has graciously compiled all of the most egregious instances of sexism, racism, and homophobia broadcast during the commercial breaks last night. None of them are funny. Most of them are downright offensive. But all of them, Hess points out, were approved by CBS ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

We're Talking About: Sarah Palin and More

—Sarah Palin isn't ruling out a bid for the White House in 2012. Claiming she'll run if it's the right thing to do, she said it was "absurd" to rule it out—some are even joking she thinks it's her "divine mission." [Washington Post, The Daily Dish]

—Some claim the Focus on the Family ad featuring Tim Tebow in last night's Super Bowl was a whole lot of hype. The ad, which steered clear of explicitly stating the group's message, was meant to be pro-life but seemed more pro-Tebow than anything else ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Tebow Ad All Smiles, Cruelty

After all the sturm und drang over the Focus on the Family-sponsored Tim Tebow ad, it was inevitable that some people would find the ad itself underwhelming. If you had no idea what the underlying story of the ad is, you would think that the Tebows spent a ton of money to explain that the Florida Gators quarterback has a mother who finds him loveable, a message that is a tad obvious even in these dark times. Trying to put myself in the shoes of someone who hasn't seen the ad, the most I could come away with was, "Are they trying to taunt the motherless?" It was heartening to see Focus on the Family flush millions of dollars down the toilet for an eminently forgettable spot. Half the audience probably thought Tim and Pam Tebow met on eHarmony ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Jenny Sanford, Bad Parent

Jenny Sanford, the soon-to-be-ex-wife of Mark Sanford, governor of South Carolina, is out with a memoir, which, according to the New York Times, she wrote "in part for their four boys, who remain confused about their parents' pending divorce." Jenny apparently thinks her book will set her sons (and the world) straight—as if this is the very thing her boys and the world most need. While I think Mark Sanford is likely a loon and clearly wasn't a good husband (or governor), and she (and the people of South Carolina) are right to divorce him, this is one case where I think Jenny is the bad parent ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

To Be Young, Gifted, and White in Hollywood

The blogosphere is a-twitter about Vanity Fair’s latest “New Hollywood” cover. Specifically, its stark lily-whiteness. As Dlisted put it, this year’s annual Annie Leibovitz shot “makes a BYU class picture look like a Benetton ad.” Bloggers have pointed out a few obvious, nonwhite actresses who could have been included, like Gaby Sidibe, who is featured in the portfolio inside the magazine, but not on the cover ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

The Orphan Fantasy

The other day, the Guardian published a list of its favorite literary stepmothers, scouring children's classics for the few that aren't just pure, unredeemable evil. Here at DoubleX, we asked: Why are stepmothers always pure, unredeemable evil? And why do characters' biological parents so frequently have to die? ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Book of the Week: "Fly Fishing With Darth Vader"

Reading Matt Labash's skewering of the enviro-guru Low Impact Man, I snorted with laughter and overlooked the glints of climate-change denialism peeking out among the jokes. For about a minute. Then I read the piece again and launched a big e-mail argument with Matt, who is a friend of mine. It is in this spirit that I recommend his new book, Fly Fishing With Darth Vader: And Other Adventures with Evangelical Wrestlers, Political Hitmen, and Jewish Cowboys ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

Lori Gottlieb Insults Women Writers

Yesterday, Jessica Wakeman of the Frisky asked Lori Gottlieb about the article I wrote earlier this week about Gottlieb's book, Marry Him: the Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough. To recap, Gottlieb's argument is that college-educated women in their late 30s and early 40s who are still single are without husbands because they were too picky when they were younger and more marketable. In my Slate piece, I quote statistics she uses directly from her book to show that her argument is not grounded in data: Marriage rates are still quite strong for college-educated women, and overall marriage rates have dropped in the United States because the least-educated women are not getting married ... (Read the rest of this post here.)

There's Life After a Sex Scandal

The bizarre truth is that sexual scandals no longer hold anyone back, or at least not for long, it seems. Ashley Dupré, Spitzer's call girl and possessor of the much-touted "best vagina in New York" (I imagine that means it emits warm light and automatically syncs to iTunes playlists?) now has her own New York Post advice column. It took Bill Clinton more than a few years to bounce back into public favor after his sex scandal, but a mere nine months after resigning from governorship, Spitzer was writing financial columns and appearning on a host of cable talk shows on the regular ... (Read the rest of this article here.)

The PC Police

I agree with Jack Shafer that the ritual self-criticism Rahm Emanual was forced to engage in for using the word “retarded” is ultimately counterproductive,  even if it makes sense to retire the word as a medical description. But I have my own case to make for retiring a commonly misused medical term. In a recent piece on whether Barack Obama is the next Jimmy Carter (dear God, please, no), Walter Russell Mead describes Obama’s “split personality” on foreign policy and then writes, “Afghanistan is a case study in presidential schizophrenia.” I often see the word schizophrenia used to describe conflicting impulses in mentally healthy people, but this does a disservice to our understanding of this devastating disease ... (Read the rest of this article here.)

We're Talking About: Palin's Tax Avoidance and More

Authorities in Alaska claim that Sarah Palin failed to pay taxes on two house-sized "cabins" built on her land ... (Read the rest of this article here.)

Would You Abstain if You Thought You Were on the Brink of Death?

Adolescents are not known for reflecting upon their own mortality. They're supposed to run around robotripping and crashing cars into brick walls because they "think they're invincible" and thus incapable of risk/benefit analysis. But a recentish study in the Journal of Adolescent Health suggests that teens are actually pretty morbid. When around 9,000 15- and 16-year-olds were asked "What is the chance that you will die from any cause in the next year?" and "What is the chance that you will die from any cause between now and when you turn 20?" they massively overestimated the likelihood of their own deaths. The mean responses were 18.6 percent and 20.3 percent, respectively, and the medians about half that. One in five teens put their likelihood of perishing soon at 50 percent ... (Read the rest of this article here.)

My Time as an Abstinence-Only Guinea Pig

A post from DoubleX writer Sonia Smith:

Emily, I attended public school in Texas in the ‘90s, which made me a guinea pig for Gov. George W. Bush’s abstinence-only curriculum. While my peers in more liberal corners of the country were being shown how to put condoms on bananas, I was trapped in a stuffy high-school classroom viewing pictures of what various STDs looked like when they infected someone’s eye, as the program coordinators were presumably too squeamish to show us pictures of actual genitals ... (Read the rest of this article here.)