This week, The Daily Beast takes on the female condom's new marketing strategy, which has attempted to combat the prophylactic's reputation as a noisy, expensive, and awkward option (you heard it here first!). Reporter Joyce C. Tang doesn't find any regular women—women who do not work as female condom advocates—who have actually tried the unconventional condom. But she does point to some customer reviews on Amazon.com, which reveal one potential fan group for the prophylactic: "men with huge penises."

The female condom is being aggressively marketed as an empowering option for women who want to take charge of their own STD and pregnancy prevention (One Amazon reviewer calls it "the best protectant any women can use without worrying about 'him'!!!!!!!!"). But on Amazon, the female condom is also being hailed as a quick fix for the man who cannot comfortably wear a condom, for he is too huge. A sampling:

It is an excellent condom for those men with huge penises
These condoms are extremely excellent for those gentlemen with huge penises. Trust me, my better half has trouble finding condoms that fit, they are to tight on him. So we use the reality female condoms because they have a superb fit not tight, not loose, just perfect. Thank You! Rocio

Best condom by far! Much stronger yet far more sensitive. Not damaged by hot car glove compartment temperatures. I'm allergic to latex but not to this. OK for use with oil based lubricants for underwater fun. Does not degrade with age. Can be put in place hours in advance for completely spontaneous love making. Does not strangle a large diameter penis. Whether you are straight, bi, or gay – try it! You will like it!!

So worth the extra money!

My boy is little bigger then average and uncircumcised, so wearing normal condoms didn't do anything but make his penis flaccid. So when I read reviews about how a female condom may help out I had to try some. Let me tell you THEY WORKED WONDERS! He was able to stay hard for a long time and it felt like there wasn't a barrier down there at all. Using the female condoms can be awkward at first, but they feel and work so much better then male condoms.

But beware: While the condom neglects to "strangle a large diameter penis," it is also reportedly uncomfortable for men with penises of a certain length:

Not fit for all...

Female condoms are wonderful and I fully endorse them, HOWEVER: Depending on your partner's "length", it is possible for the condom to be pushed up inside the female, rendering it useless.

And, of course, the condom's superior fit for men with thick penises does not necessarily translate to a comfortable fit in all vaginas (and all anuses):

DO NOT BUY! very uncomfortable for my girlfriend

I wanted to try an alternative to traditional condoms and was hopeful that this product would be a good replacement. However the plastic ring was terribley uncomfortable for my girlfriend and we took it out immediately. I'm going to keep looking for an alternative but I do NOT reccommend these. Learn from my mistakes; save your time, money and an awkward bed conversation.

Photo by Darrow Montgomery

Brown frames the piece—how else?—by a Middle-Eastern take on the "stuck in the kitchen" analogy:

The lede: "It's time for Barack Obama to let Hillary Clinton take off her burqa."

Followed by: A bunch of valid points from Tina Brown Brown about Clinton's lack of visibility in the first six months of the Obama administration, and ending with:

The kicker: "You could say that Obama is lucky to have such a great foreign-policy wife. Those who voted for Hillary wonder how long she'll be content with an office wifehood of the Saudi variety."

While I appreciate Brown sticking up for HRC, I do wish her rhetorical stylings were a bit less offensive, and a lot less confusing. Hillary Clinton is Secretary of State. But more importantly, she is a woman! And thus her place in the Obama administration must be framed as some sort of polyamorous domestic dispute that recalls the traditional subjugation of Islamic women. Wait, what were Tina Brown's great points again? I got distracted by all the mixed race and gender metaphors.

"Does Kanye Dress Too Gay?" Elizabeth Gates writes on the Daily Beast. The speculation on the impact of Kanye West's dandy foppishness isn't invalid, but it does require a follow-up: too gay according to whom?

Gates makes the case that West dresses too gay for hip-hop, which she claims has backed off from its full embrace of flamboyant dress—see George Clinton, Dr. Dre (?), and my personal favorite, Cameo (above). But Kanye isn't too gay for the "black-male community" in general. Gates' main evidence of homophobia against Kanye's lavender suits are Internet trolls. In other words, Kanye is too gay for the most homophobic idiots ever.

Gates writes:

“Only gays wear that [crap]!” wrote blog reader “TheTruth,” while another reader advised that they should “go taste the rainbow.” “Bootylishious” wrote that he/she simply “feel(s) sorry for all those gay dudes,” and sadly, the list goes on. It seems that just as we settle into our most modern America yet, the tradition of black fashion has been lost.

Also lost in the Internet fray: decorum, intelligence, sincerity, accountability. Kanye isn't too gay for hip-hop—he's one of its biggest stars. But he is too gay to escape indiscriminate homophobic Internet trolls, a phenomenon that wasn't around when Dr. Dre was drawing on eyeliner and Cameo was strapping on a codpiece.

Clinton, though, probably would have been spared. Writes one more fop-friendly Internet commenter, "[calling Andre 3000 gay is] like saying prince is gay. prince is renown for pulling some of the finest woman of all time, in spite of being just so different. . . . oooor beter yet, like calling george clinton gay. lol, u crazy. he's just a funky individual."

In the Daily Beast this week, McCain calls gay rights "one of the [causes] closest to my heart," and insists that "if the Republican Party has any hope of gaining substantial support from a wider, younger base, we need to get past our anti-gay rhetoric." Later this week, McCain is slated to address the Log Cabin Republicans at their annual convention, and she works hard on the Beast to build up the the gay conservative group's inclusiveness as a part of its "core Republican values," while dissing the Democrats for being the party that's really anti-gay.

"President Obama, for instance, is also against gay marriage—a dirty little secret many of my gay friends were shocked to discover during the presidential campaign," McCain writes. "But you’d never know it because he always 'sounds' so inclusive."

Actually, Obama's position on gay marriage is a "dirty little secret" only to the most willfully ignorant of armchair political analysts. Actually, Barack Obama made clear his opposition to gay marriage throughout the campaign. Why? Because the only fucking reason Democrats still adopt that position is so they can stand a chance in the general election, where they're facing off against the Republicans—you know, the party that actually doesn't want gay people to get married.

The Washington Blade has more bullshit to call on McCain's new number one issue. Blade editor Kevin Naff calls the Log Cabin Republicans "a rudderless group right now, bereft of leadership following the resignation of its executive director . . . and the departure of other key staffers." But "there are other problems with Meghan’s take on gay issues and the role of Log Cabin in fighting for them," Naff writes. "Chief among her shortcomings is timing."

Here's a dirty little secret for you: Barack Obama is not the only major presidential candidate to have opposed gay marriage in the primary! The point is not lost on Naff, who is miffed that McCain decided to wait until her father lost the presidency to reveal her whole-hearted support for gay rights. "It’s easy to adopt these 'progressive' stances when the campaign is over and you’re looking for a provocative gimmick to get yourself booked on Larry King and 'The View,'" writes Naff. "But when Meghan’s pro-gay views might have mattered, she was silent."

Then, it gets personal. "In fact, the Blade reached out to Meghan several times during the campaign for comment. We sensed that she was a new kind of Republican, one who doesn’t subscribe to the Rush Limbaugh-enforced code that the GOP remain beholden to the most out-of-touch Christian conservatives on the far right," Naff writes. "She declined all interview requests, while her father supported Proposition 8 in California and a constitutional amendment banning same-sex marriage in Arizona."

Let the record show that I have also found my attempts to contact Meghan McCain rebuffed. Meghan, if you're listening: I don't care that you're late to the party. I know you'll be in D.C. this weekend. The offer to down shots in Adams Morgan still stands, girlfriend.

Banfield also suggests, in her title ("Drinking Age? We Need a Texting Age!") that there ought to be a minimum age that adolescents can send text messages. "We’ve already decided they can’t be trusted to drink in moderation, drive before age 16, or make many legal decisions before age 18," she writes. But Banfield doesn't suggest what age would be appropriate!

So: At what are are teenagers old enough to handle the technology that will inveitably ruin their lives?

Here's Swisher's message for the anti-gay Mormon elite who would stand in her way: "I’m not going away, because I have an Elizabeth-Taylor appetite for gay marriage."

Last week's Daily Beast feature which asked former Project Runway contestants to design a Michelle Obama inauguration gown—using only ridiculous materials and some pluck—accidentally asked the wrong Jay McCarroll to design the dress. According to Jezebel, The Beast actually contacted one Jay McCarrol, who has but one "L" in his last name, is not a well-known clothing designer, and has won no national reality television contests. McCarrol proved up to the challenge, however, taking the Beast at their word and asking a friend to sketch up a design for Michelle. McCarrol's buddy, a 20-year-old student, came up with this pretty okay design, above, considering that the anonymous designer could only use burlap sacks and American flags as material. Tina Brown's new Web-first outfit recieves a warning, while the fake McCarrol's young friend establishes herself as a front-runner for the next season of Project Runway.

UPDATE: I'd like to just comment here to clarify the headline of this post, because there's been some confusion in the comments. I'm not calling the lovely Michelle Obama nor the talented Jay McCarroll ugly. I'm calling the dress design ugly. Proceed to rip me apart for my misguided fashion criticism.

The Daily Beast posed this absurd challenge to former Project Runway contestants: Design an inaugural gown for Michelle Obama using only "Laura Bush’s 2005 Inaugural Ball dress, to be chopped up and repurposed, à la Pretty in Pink; an American flag; burlap potato sacks; and $10 worth of trims of their choice." (Umm, is that how this happened?) Head to the Beast for god-awful designs from Jay Carroll, Austin Scarlett, Mychael Knight, and others.

Jezebel does the Beast one better by selecting dresses from the Project Runway designers that Michelle might actually want to wear.
Sketches from The Daily Beast.