This week in review

I've been lying in bed sorting through my bills, and decided to take some time out to recount some of the interesting news that has been presented to me this week. As Neil Gaiman would say, it's tab-closing time.

Lu and I were planning to do a weekly congressional review, but unfortunately Congress.org's updates are for those bills first mentioned a while ago-- they just update their status instead of presenting the new fodder. I understand, though. Things don't happen that quickly in the Halls of Legislation.

Anyway, I would first like to point out this somewhat patronizing but pretty interesting set of interviews with NYC strippers. It is sometimes funny, sometimes sad-- the one that gets me the most is 19-year-old Shaleen:

So where did you go out before you were a hard-working mother?
Well, that was when I was a teenager. I was just going to teen parties.

Next up, Jezebel thinks there's a Notebook reference to this tale of old lovers dying mere hours apart, but I don't like Nicholas Sparks. I do, however, like Ben Folds, and prefer to think of the sweet story in terms of "The Luckiest". The last two sentences of the article, however, don't quite gel right.

Harper's Weekly Review, another fantastic source for worldwide news delivered to your inbox every Tuesday, alerted me to what I considered obvious: Cheerleading is a contact sport. Of course, that may not be obvious to any of you who did not grow up with an older sister who captained both the cheerleaders and the softball team, but for me it was like a report saying that winter would last until March.

On that note, Happy Belated Groundhog's Day, as well.

Finally, in what I find the most offensive bit of science reporting this week: Men, run from the strong-jawed woman, for verily I say unto you, the man-faced skank-ho will cheat! Granted, I could be biased becuase I myself have a rather strong jaw (though, I don't think, masculine), but... the way this article is written makes it sound as though people are beholden to their facial features. They point out two examples from popular society-- Her Grand Ho the Duchess of Cornwall, and Delicate Faithful Dream Woman Joanne Woodward. Surely those two examples prove that this is unilaterally true!

There is some basis in science here, kind of. A "masculine" jaw is caused by a surge in testosterone in utero, and a "high level of the hormone increases sexual assertiveness in a woman". Assertive women, those filthy cheating sluts. I should, I suppose, give the article credit for completely the just-quoted sentence with the phrase "a tendency more attributed to males", however I can't bring myself to do so. Because it smacks of gender bias and double-standards to me. Men can blame their cheating on testosterone, because they're MANLY MEN and it's biology! But women should be soft-jawed and faithful... or soft-brained and gutless.

This could have been an interesting article correlating levels of testosterone and sexual activity-- but that, of course, wouldn't be news. We all know that testosterone is a pretty sexy hormone. And god knows it's the Daily Mail, and I shouldn't be overly critical. But really, did the lede have to be: "If you think it’s obvious why some men don’t fancy women with large chins, think again."

Oh, those horsey, ugly bitches. And what's worse, they then try to justify it with "evolutionary science":

Psychologists believe the reaction against women with large chins is due to an evolutionary desire to have a partner who is faithful, so producing children for only one man.

Now, don't take my use of quotation marks to indicate skepticism of evolution-- I've no qualms with evolution. I'm down with Darwin. What I have a problem with is justifying bad behavior or self-interested mindsets with evolution. I constantly argue with a guy friend over this. Sure, we may have evolved from lower orders, but I'll be damned if we aren't equipped with reason these days, and the ability to sort right from wrong. We may have an animal part of our brain, but that is easily superceded by the rational mind.

And honestly, there was no actual evidence that large-chinned women cheated more. What the study found was that those women were more sexually active, while simultaneously being considered less attractive.

Which smacks of cognitive dissonance to me-- "the results showed that women with larger chins were more sexually active than those with softer chins – and that men found these women unattractive." But clearly they're not unattractive enough to not fuck. Which means they've got some degree of attractiveness going on.

Oh dear lord, sexual politics frustrates me so much. I've been a hobbyist observer for the past decade, and while I can sort so much of it out, I really wish it was more dictated by reason. Ah well.