The holiday season is approaching, which means it’s time to roll out more products to help our little girls feel very bad about their bodies. (That, or pregnant). Over the years, toy-makers have boldly invented new mechanisms by which they can make money off of the body consciousness of young girls. Below, inventors push girls to look simultaenously curvier (grow boobs already!), skinnier (but make sure to lose your baby weight!), sexily reproductive (be six years old AND skinny AND pregnant!) and matronly (breastfeed babies with the boobs you don’t have!).

The Weight Loss Doll, 1991

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Last week, New York Times theater reviewer Charles McGrath penned a piece on Sienna Miller’s Broadway debut. The piece has been roundly criticized for overstating Miller’s affairs with famous men. The story begins by reviewing Miller’s “long and well-documented romantic history,” which includes “flings” with “Jude Law, Daniel Craig, James Franco and most recently the married oil heir Balthazar Getty, with whom she was photographed topless and in a sailor hat.”

Originally, McGrath had grouped Heath Ledger and Puff Daddy in with the bunch. A correction appended to the story later clarified that the”misstates the nature of the relationships that she had with Heath Ledger and Sean Combs. She was friends with both of them; she did not have romantic flings with either of them.” But the problems with McGrath’s piece go far beyond the inflated slut-shaming.
Read More “New York Times Sienna Miller Profile Doesn’t Like Girls” »

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when beach-bound girls were sexy, confident, and refreshingly childlike!

This Week In Sexist History:

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Watch out, Washington-area adults, children, teenagers, and male tweens: The tween girls are taking over the District of Columbia. This October, the “leading tween girl research firm” will team up with the nation’s largest “tween girl social networking site” to host the first “National Tween Girl Summit“—ever. Details!

Read More “The Tweens Are Coming!” »

Bethesda’s Holton-Arms School

Bethesda’s Holton-Arms School is one of four schools across the country that will offer single-sex Internet courses through the new “Online School For Girls” this year, the Washington Post reports. The single-sex online education experiment is meant to cater to female students who “learn differently with technology than boys,” proponents say. The reasoning behind the online school is similar to that of classroom-based initiatives which claim to serve the sexes better separately:

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The Sexist will be out for the holiday weekend tomorrow, so I leave you with last week’s greatest hits. What better way to celebrate America’s birthday than reading a bunch of random shit about sex on the Internet?

1. This Week in Sexist History: Girls, Girls, Girls Edition, an indulgence in olde-tyme sports writing. I say it’s sexist! Commenter says it isn’t! Steve Silver says it’s “interesting how it has to be explained to some readers 100 years later that an article published 100 years ago describing women purely as objects for men’s pleasure is sexist.”

2. Teen Sex Scandal!, in which I put the feminist linkbait-and-switch theory to work.

3. Big Penis Site Reveals Inches Before First Date, in which 7orbetter.com has more longevity than I gave it credit for.

4. Disney’s Closeted Gay Agenda, in which High School Musical debunks all theories about Disney promoting heterosexuality.

5. Sex Tips From Drunk People, in which I pledge to do more research in this area over the holiday, and I encourage you to do the same! E-mail your drunk sex insights to ahess@washingtoncitypaper.com.

Photo by Misserion

Newspaper stories from the good old days say the darndest things. So every week on the Sexist, let’s take a ride on journalism’s way-back machine, to a time when descriptors like the following—”big girls and little girls, blonde girls and brunettes, dark-haired blondes, sunset blondes, Rhinegold blonde—blondes of all kind save the prescription pattern”—qualified as college baseball commentary.

This Week in Sexist History:

Good Ol’ Day: June 23, 1909

Dateline: New York, NY

Subject: Reporter at Yale-Harvard rivalry baseball game fluffs up his flowery play-by-play with a rhapsodic account of the glorious array of girls in attendance. Collect one in every ethnicity!

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So, R. Kelly has pulled the vocoder out of the closet and recorded a remix to Lil’ Wayne’s “Every Girl.” The original track declares, “I wish I could fuck every girl in the world.” Wayne doesn’t get into the logistics, but that’s gotta be a scenario that involves some nonconsensual sex. The original song, at least, sidesteps outright rape by inserting “in about 3 years” before the line “holla at me, Miley Cyrus.”

But now that the lyrics have been taken from Wayne’s mouth and into the hands of noted teen enthusiast R. Kelly, the use of the world “girl” seems a whole lot fuckin’ creepier. Let’s recap:

1995: R. Kelly, 27, marries 15-year-old Aaliyah while working with her on her debut album titled, strangely enough, “Age Ain’t Nothing But A Number.”

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Christopher Hitchens, rare funny arguer of the unfunny female

Bored magazine columnists have debated for years as to why women are, or are not, funny.  Inspired by Tiger Beatdown’s post yesterday on another drop in the unfunny girl barrel—a study that found that women do not immediately react to the sight of a unicycle with humor (I fucking wonder why)—I believe it’s time to rephrase the question.

Why are those who argue that women are not funny so unfunny?

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A typical short American hairstyle

The United Arab Emirates has launched a campaign to raise awareness among girls of “the dangers of appearing as men,” and “emphasizing the virtues of being female.” The campaign is titled “Pardon me, I’m a girl.”

Why does the UAE need to encourage girls to be girls? Well, “Locals attest to a growing trend of Emirati girls who cut their hair short, dress and talk like men.”

It doesn’t sound to me like these girls want to be like men—it sounds like they want to be like American girls. But experts remain confused:

Read More “The United Arab Emirates Doesn’t Like My Haircut” »