The XX Factor: What women really think.

Accessorize, Palin-Style

Susannah, you remind of the good old days. Meaning the early '90s, when the Independent Women's Forum was just getting started, and they would celebrate every minor anniversary at a local shooting range. Only they were city girls for the most part, or aspiring city girls. So Ann Coulter would gamely trek out to the range in her size 0 jodhpurs, and Laura Ingraham in her tight skirts, and they would aim but the birdies would all just go plopping down.

Although, to keep with our theme of yesterday, Sarah Palin owns this one, too.

As for the high clothing bill. Come on, girls. You are suddenly picked to be the VP candidate. You have to do about a million public appearances a week. You need to wear something, and so does your large family. It doesn't seem excessive to me. It's like the average clothing allowance of a Conde Nast editor, who mostly just goes to the office.  

Shoot 'Em Up Palin

Thanks, Dahlia, for throwing down the welcome mat. Although, I'd add that part of what I was trying to point out in my post about the Palin sex doll is that it's not just the male population—your "dirty old men"—that are obsessed with Palin's sexuality—it's women, too. And Hanna, I loved this: "Maybe Sarah Palin is the first one to own the sex appeal and use it as her weapon." Speaking of weapons ...

Last week, a Fox news outlet in Colorado wondered if Palin's gun-lovin' 'tude would inspire other ladies to take up the hunt. The number of U.S. hunters is on the decline, but Palin could become a "role model" for those who like to kill their dinner. The billion-dollar hunting industry has taken up targeting women, including marketing pink firearms.

Intrigued, I found a few girlie guns online. Crickett makes three different models of single-shot, .22-caliber pink rifles. Remington makes a pink-barreled shotgun that reads: "Shoot like a girl ... if you can!" And Taurus manufactures a 9 mm semi-automatic pink pistol.

Let's hope the inflatable Palin love doll doesn't get taken out in the crossfire.

Closer to Home

It would have been just one more distressing story about a controversial, possibly threatening student essay; gun possession on campus; and an expulsion and involuntary hospitalization in Virginia. There are almost too many layers to untangle: The 23-year-old student who wrote the violent short story for a college writing class was a former sailor in the Navy. Guns found in his car were legally owned, although in violation of campus policy. His work of fiction references Sueng-Hui Cho and the killing spree at Virginia Tech last year. And the professor subtly threatened with death in the work of fiction is named "Mr. Christopher." That’s because the assistant writing professor at UVA-Wise—the one whose life may have been threatened—is Christopher Scalia, son of the U.S. Supreme Court justice.

More on Girls 'n' Guns

My friend Corey Owens takes me to school for last week's gender-based generalizations . . . . 

Guest post follows:

Not to stand between you and your spitball-straw, but "...if women ever ran the country"...?!? Come on. The not-so-subtle suggestion that a) women do/would care more about that fact that "kids keep dying" and b) men somehow care less is both ill-informed and dangerous. The importance of the fact that many (albeit not all) of the politicians who would defend the right to carry assault rifles into elementary schools happen to be men should be mitigated by the downright foolishness of so many men AND women on both sides of the gun control debate. "...if women ever ran the country..." is a pretty good way to keep the debates about both guns and gender stuck deep in the mudholes of old.

Girls 'n' Guns

In just over a week, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in the most important gun rights case of our lifetimes. And two days ago, the student body president for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill was shot to death in a residential neighborhood. Yet again the two events will go unconnected in the media, where we treat gun killings the same way we do car accidents—the sad but inevitable price to pay for living in a dangerous world.

Slate’s Tim Noah observed last year, right after the Virginia Tech gun massacre, that the only thing more deafening than the silence of our elected leaders on the issue of gun control is our own silence in the wake of these gun tragedies. Just spit-balling here, but I’d wager that if women ever ran the country, we might indeed create a world in which “nothing ever gets done and everyone spends the day talking about Botox," but we might still manage to give a shit that kids keep dying for the holy blessed right to bear arms.

They Shoot Plus Sizes, Don't They?

Baby Bond Girls

Parody site of the day, via feministing: Guns for girls. "My Little Carbine" takes the cake for its pastiche of My Little Ponies with assault weapons. It's startling to me how perniciously traditional many children's TV ads still are. We didn't have a TV when I was a kid, and I sometimes think that one reason I didn't realize I was supposed to behave like a "girl" was that I never was held captive by ads like this stunner or this.

Sadly, the Disney Princess Poison Ring seems all too realistic a talisman, at least among eighth-graders; I'm fairly sure I must have worn one, metaphorically speaking, at some point.

 via Feministing.