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Like Hanna, I, too, am finding it hard to muster enthusiasm for the White House Council on Women and Girls. Obama's heart is certainly in the right place, but this council seems amorphous and somewhat random. What I can get onboard with is all the funding increases for sexual and reproductive health programs coming out of the omnibus bill the ...

Marjorie, I've been watching and rewatching the clip of a past-her-due date M.I.A. performing at the Grammys, and like Jessica am unable to muster up the same kind of ethical and fashion objections you express. Like Nina, I couldn’t get enough of M.I.A.’s stage strut or the male performers’ reactions to it. (Whether Kanye West’s frightened ...

Samantha and Jessica: My objection to the sugar-daddy system is that I don't think it actually helps female journalists or journalism. Instead, sugar daddies have contributed to a Carrie Bradshaw-wannabe effect among women writers. Rather than serving as the means to a career goal, these men and the lifestyle they've supported become the material. ...

Emily and Hanna, you might be interested in This Film Is Not Yet Rated, Kirby Dick's 2006 documentary about the Motion Picture Association of America. Through a side-by-side comparison of footage, Dick revealed several prevailing MPAA biases: beyond drawing distinctions that favor violent displays over sexual ones, the MPAA seems to punish ...

Planned Parenthood has an alternative for Indiana shoppers who were uninspired by this year's exceptionally bleak and cheerless Black Friday. Instead of stocking stuffers, residents of the Midwestern state can instead give their loved ones gift certificates in increments of $25 that can be credited toward any of the organization's services and ...

Discussions of the recent update of Joan Baez’s anti-draft poster have so far barely mentioned is that while Baez may have been coy when she suggested that she’d only sleep with anti-draft men, she wasn’t being original. The same goes for her imitators. Women have used abstinence as political leverage throughout feminist history. The tactic ...

Perhaps it was the overblown coverage of her every move and misstep or perhaps I too have come down with a case of Palin fever. But last Friday, as I read the details of the report confirming that Palin abused her power as governor to get her brother-in-law fired, I was bored. Troopergate is a significantly more severe infraction than anything ...

I agree it would be terrible if Sarah Palin, despite being an avid reader of newspapers, really couldn't name a single Supreme Court case besides Roe with which she disagreed.   But what if she's bluffing? The woman vehemently criticizing Exxon v. Baker in this footage bares a striking resemblance to Palin and is, in fact, the Alaskan ...

Why are pro-voting ads so frequently creepy? When seemingly oblivious celebrities express their views on the candidates themselves, the results can be entertaining or mildly insightful. But for some reason all of the stars' charm and charisma gets lost when they start standing up for our electoral system. These ads for Declare Yourself, which ...

Family values are in the news again today, but this time it's the Democrats who are taking the heat. McCain's latest ad attacks Obama on the subject of sex ed, misstating the senator's voting record in the process. Over nursery school music, viewers are told that Obama is ''wrong for [their] family'' on the grounds that he wants kids to learn ...