The Weight Loss Doll, 1991

Perfect for: The girl who’s just entering the “I’m fat” phase, but hasn’t yet abandoned the “plays with dolls” phase.

How it works: This doll provides dieters “a friend, a companion in the weight-loss process” who gains and loses weight along with you. Or, more accurately, loses its skin. “Layers of ’skin’ made of stretchable synthetic material, such as vinyl, are added or removed from the doll each time the doll’s owner gains or loses one weight increment, respectively. Each layer represents a particular predetermined weight increment, which may be determined by the doll’s owner. The doll may be male or female, preferably includes jointed body parts, and may be dressed, such as in a running suit which fits over the layers of skin.”

The Magical Boob Growth Doll, 1976.

Perfect for: The prepubescent girl who wishes she could lose her baby-fat belly and magically grow a rack, all in one upward motion!

How it works: You crank the weight from your stomach to your boobs. “Lower torso member includes a waist member having a lower portion of a first girth and an upper portion of a second, lesser girth so that pliable, rubber-like upper torso waist member may be slid from lower portion of lower torso waist member where it simulates waist of pudgy pre-teenager to upper portion of lower torso waist member where it simulates trim waist of a teenager while simulated breasts are simultaneously pressed outwardly against upper torso member causing bulging of the rubber-like material to form a simulated bustline.”

The Pregnant Doll, 1989

Perfect For: Little girls who yearn to play act an “attractively svelte” baby-maker, without all the icky scientific accuracy.

How it works: “When the baby is in the pocket of the mother, it bulges the pocket and the mother appears pregnant; when the baby is removed the mother appears attractively svelte . . . The baby is preferably placed upside down in the pouch; but the pouch may be sized to receive the baby doll in other positions since young children are not likely to be biologically precise about this.”

The Breastfeeding Doll, 1981.

Perfect for: The little girl who is into all that icky scientific accuracy.

How it works: “the mouth of the baby doll can be fastened to the breast pf the mother doll to simulate breastfeeding.” But why? “It is old and well known in the art to produce dolls resembling a mature woman as well as to produce baby dolls. It is also old and well known to provide humanoid dolls which are capable of simulating certin human functions such as crying, taking nourishment from a bottle, wetting and the like. [But] with respect to a simulated nursing operation between a mother and her young, the only known representations involve animals.”

The Diet Aid Doll, 1990.

Perfect For: Any kid who eats food. This human-pig hybrid doll is not made specifically for the children. But the fat-shaming figure sticks right on the family refrigerator, so your growing girl will get the hint every time she descends to the kitchen for a midnight snack.

How it works: “When a person presses the nose of the pig doll, a portion of the doll is inflated to a greater size. This expansion of the pig doll is to visually remind people that their own bodys will expand in size when they continually over-eat. . . . When the person sees that the body of the doll has expanded, this reminds the person that his or her , own body can expand by over eating and look unappealing.”

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.

Take the paragraph that follows up the topless sailor incident:

Ms. Miller is opening on Thursday in the Roundabout Theater production of “After Miss Julie,” Patrick Marber’s adaptation of the Strindberg play “Miss Julie.” The audience at previews has included Sienna lookalikes, blond fashionistas in miniskirts and heavy makeup, and scholars less of Scandinavian theater, perhaps, than of her Vogue cover appearances. That some people have trouble taking Ms. Miller seriously as an actress—or don’t even know she is one—is because she has so frequently been her own worst enemy.

According to McGrath, Miller’s fanbase is a group of shallow “fashionistas” who are so dumb they don’t even know that Miller is an actress. Boy, I bet they were confused when they showed up at a Broadway theater to see Miller in a play, and ended up having to sit through hours of acting.

McGrath is concerned that nobody is taking Miller “seriously as an actress.” Perhaps the problem is that McGrath refuses to take Miller’s fans seriously. Apparently, the people who are willing to shell out the cash to see Miller on Broadway are not “serious” because they read Vogue, wear skirts, and apply make-up. In short, they’re girls. Worse, they’re girls who look like Sienna Miller. The fact that McGrath instantly discredits entire groups of people who happen to resemble his interview subject says a lot about his own bias in writing this profile.

McGrath spends the remainder of the piece attempting to convince his readers that Miller is capable of “charming” and “sensitive” performances, as if he is the only one who can see past Miller’s beauty and relationship history. “Not a great many people have actually seen what she can do,” McGrath writes—as if the women lining up to see Miller on Broadway have somehow failed to complete the simpler task of watching one of her films. And despite McGrath’s presumably unique appreciation of Miller’s talent, he continually refuses to focus strictly on her work throughout the piece. Miller, he writes, is “smaller” and “prettier” in person. She manages to be a good actress despite being “beautiful.”

After all this—the rehashing of her former “flings,” the snarking on her female fans, the constant protestations of Miller’s beauty, and the condescending admission that the girl can actually act in addition to fucking dudes and looking hot, McGrath concludes that Miller is not taken seriously because she has “so frequently been her own worst enemy.” I think it’s time Miller transfer the “worst enemy” title on over to Charles McGrath.

Photo by Caroline Bonarde Uni via Wikipedia Commons

This Week In Sexist History:

Good ‘Ol Day: July 22, 1893

Dateline: Long Branch, N.J.

Subject: The summer of 1893 is nearly ruined for this sad sack New Jersey scene reporter—until the sexiest underage bather this side of puberty catches his roving eye!

What’s lifting these male vacationers from the depths of their pathetic existences? If you’ve been studying your Sexist History, you’d know that the answer probably starts with Pretty and ends with Girls:

Oh, it makes no difference what shape you are in the freewheeling social scene of the Jersey surf! Unless, of course, you’re “pretty girl” shaped, in which case your body will likely be obsessively detailed in the pages of the New York Times. Proceed:

Euugh! How old is the young lady in the red swimsuit, anyway? One the one hand, it’s great that this girl is still in her spluttering-around-in-the-water bathing suit phase, and not yet in her crippled-by-body-issues bathing suit phase. On the other hand, I’m willing to bet the girl’s sexy childhood innocence was shattered riiiiiight arrroooound July 23, 1893—the day this Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Reporter’s ruminations on her sexy childhood innocence was printed in the pages of the New York Times.

How can Skeevy Turn-of-the-Century Reporter possibly redeem himself from the true skeeviness of ogling bathing children? By turning next to an even sleazier specimen: The Skeevy Turn-Of-The-Century Sketch Artist.

Done and done.

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!

Washington’s Capital Hilton Hotel will play host to 250 female tweens along with several notable non-tween “policy makers, marketers, experts, celebrities and other persons of note.” Areas of discussion include “community service and activism, personal safety online and off, tween pressure and self-image,” and some insider-baseball type tween stuff: “what’s hot and what’s not in the world of tweens.”

‘Tween policy-making sessions, the hundreds of tween girls will also have the chance for some down-time. What better place for a tween to relax than at the “Tween Video Game Lounge,” where tween-friendly titles like “LITTLEST PET SHOP™ FRIENDS, LITTLEST PET SHOP™ ONLINE and CHARM GIRLS CLUB™.” There’s also going to be an Ice Cream Social. And Michelle Obama is invited! Needless to say, this is going to be awesome.

Where do I sign up?

Wait—what the fuck? A tween has to be “9 to 14 years old“? But wait—it says here that The First Ever National Tween Summit is planning a special treat for post-tweens, as well: it’s going to be called tweensummit.com, and it promises to be “a place for parents, press, marketers—adults.”

As if. Tweensummit.com is totally going to be a thinly-veiled containment area to keep the worst kind of grown-ups from totally ruining everything for the tweens. Whatever.

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:

Backers of girls’ schools say there are benefits to having no boys in the classroom: Girls prosper when teaching methods are designed just for them, they can pursue interests free from gender stereotyping and their hands shoot up more often when boys aren’t around.

I don’t begrudge Bethesda’s prep-school set from exploring all its educational options. But personally, I find this particular solution to gender inequality in education to be utter bullshit. Tailoring teaching methods to girls, eliminating gender stereotypes in the classroom, and encouraging girls to participate? These goals ought to be no-brainers in every classroom, and teachers ought to be instructed to teach to the whole class. Why not put our resources toward addressing these issues together?

Girls and boys will be collaborating and competing with each other well past prep school. Learning to collaborate and compete as equals is important, and not just in the interest of everyone getting along. If the sexes have different educational needs, as these segregated programs suggest, why see it as a liability? Why not, instead, see difference as a huge asset to both boys and girls, who can learn valuable tactics from each other? Equality-minded co-ed education won’t just help girls achieve future success in a co-ed world. Boys, too, will learn to respect a diversity of learning styles in place of an institutionalized respect of male competititive style. And they may just learn a few things from their hot-shot female classmates, too.

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

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!

First, let us immerse ourself in the peculiar style of turn-of-the-century Ivy League baseball reporting:

The “real old Jamake,” guy? Whatever—this man has clearly got column inches to fill. And then:

Who has a baseball game to report on when there are girls to scrupulously detail?

At this point, you might be thinking that this guy should get back to the game at hand instead of ranking the glorious blossoms of the rose garden that is female college baseball enthusiasts. No? Okay. What were they wearing?

That explains it: He fancies himself a novelist. Say what you will about this reporter’s choice to obscure the whole ballgame with testimony on gowns “such as made Paris a memory” and excuses for his own lechery—it beats his baseball reporting:

Yeah, where are the girls again?

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.”

2002: R. Kelly, 35, is “indicted on 21 counts of having sexual intercourse with a minor.” He is later acquitted.

2008: R. Kelly, 41, tells BET:

BET: Let me ask you something real that millions of Americans are thinking about and wondering about you. Do you like teenage girls?

Kelly: When you say teenage, how old are we talking?

BET: Girls who are teenagers.

Kelly: 19?

BET: 19 and younger.

Kelly: I have some 19-year-old friends, but I don’t like anybody illegal if that’s what we’re talking about, underage.

2009: R. Kelly, 42, releases a song in which he declares, “I want to fuck every girl in the world.” Among them: a girl, her friend, her sister, her cousin, her mom, and “the Statue of Liberty.”

I suppose this song could be good PR for R. Kelly. See, he likes older women too—the Statue of Liberty is like over 100 years old! But I have to believe that the repetition, over and over, of wanting to fuck girls  can’t be doing him any favors. Add to that the fact that this song is absolutely terrible, and we might havethe—but can it be true? Hath the Gods of Nonconsensual Sex Tracks finally revealed to us the most worthless date rape jam ever: A song that sounds completely terribly, and is also super sexually creepy? I think we’ve got him!

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?

First, let us review:

Funny women are not sexy. According to a 2006 study by Eric Bressler and Sigal Balshine, women rated “funny” men as more sexually attractive than men they didn’t find funny. The opposite was not true. “And women, don’t start trying to tell jokes to attract men,” writes Tom Siegfried of the study. “The study found that men rated ‘funny’ women as no more desirable than the others.”

Women don’t have enough testosterone to be funny, concluded Professor Sam Shuste, after riding around a lot on his unicycle and noting that only men made fun of him. “The sex difference was striking. 95% of adult women were praising, encouraging or showed concern. There were very few comic or snide remarks. In contrast, only 25% of adult men responded as did the women, for example, by praise or encouragement; instead 75% attempted comedy, often snide or combative as an intended put-down.”

Women are too concerned with having babies to be funny, according to this classic Vanity Fair piece by Christopher Hitchens. “Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous,” he writes. “One tiny snuffle that turns into a wheeze, one little cut that goes septic, one pathetically small coffin, and the woman’s universe is left in ashes and ruin. Try being funny about that, if you like.”

Women are not funny because Germaine Greer needs to explain why she said women were not funny. Reasons include: They focus too much on bras and weight loss, cut down other women, are bad at improvisation, aren’t competetive enough, would prefer to marry than work, and they’re not desperate enough to be funny to get laid.

Those tasked with defending women in comedy have their own explanations for why women are not funny.

Women write their own stuff now. Alessandra Stanley begins her Vanity Fair response, “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” strangely: “There are people who lament that no women now are as funny as Carole Lombard or Barbara Stanwyck in the screwball comedies of Lubitsch, Sturges, and Hawks. They are missing the point: today’s comediennes are on television, where they are often responsible for their own material.” So, women aren’t as funny as they were before, but at least they write their own material now, which is less funny than the male material they used to do.

The comedy environment is too hostile for women. In a response to Greer, Lynne Parker writes: “Moreover, there has been a common perception that comedy is a hostile environment for women. We are compliant in creating this image. The practicalities of life on the circuit are not for the faint-hearted—many hours on the road and antisocial hours do not engender a traditional home life. Many a promising female act has given up the juggling of career, marriage and motherhood, even temporarily, for the sake of an easier life.”

Women are not socialized to be funny, as men are. On Broadsheet, Kate Harding responds to Greer: “Throughout the essay, Greer keeps offering great setups for an analysis of why women are culturally discouraged from developing and displaying robust senses of humor, then following them up with conclusions that amount to, ‘We’re from Venus — whaddaya gonna do?’”

Since all these arguements as to why women aren’t funny—or why they’re not allowed to be funny—are based on half-baked speculation and anecdotal evidence anyway, let’s float a new theory: Why are people who argue that women aren’t funny so unfunny?

The study by Bressler and Bashine showing that women are more attracted to funny men used the following statement as an example of humor: “Birthday cake is the only food you can blow on and spit on and everybody rushes to get a piece.” The researchers themselves acknowledged that their funny statements were not very funny. “Given the sophomoric nature of some of our humorous statements, it is not surprising that participants did not ascribe ‘intelligence’ to our humorous individuals,” they wrote. Perhaps women are actually more attracted to men who are not funny, and also stupid?

And those unicycle quips? “Equally striking [said Shuste] was the repetitive and predictable nature of the comments from men; two thirds of their ‘comic’ responses referred to the number of wheels—’Lost your wheel?,’ for example.” Hilarious.

Germaine Greer is humorless, but she gets a pass because she has a body that can produce children, and is without a good handle on the inherent comedy of the unicycle. (Christopher Hitchens, actually, is pretty funny).

So, we’re not funny, the birthday cake and unicycle comedians of the world claim, because we’re girls. What’s their excuse?

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:

Muna Al-Bahar, senior executive adviser of the social program at the Emirates Foundation, which is helping finance research on this topic, said she has seen this quite often among her female university students.

“Some of the girls I taught in my classes were like this; they behaved like boys but they denied they were like boys,” she said.

“From a brief discussion and reading the proposal for the research, I get the sense they see it as gender identity confusion, because after they finish school, these girls get married, have kids and settle down,” Al-Bahar said.

“Sometimes it’s a gender identity crisis, and maybe they feel that if they’re like boys they will be more powerful,” she told The Media Line.

Since research is still in its initial stages it is difficult to pinpoint the reason for this growing trend of female cross dressing in the UAE.

Al-Bahar said it could be a matter of hormonal imbalance, a psychological problem or even just a matter of peer pressure that will vanish by itself when the girls graduate and start a new life elsewhere.

Or, cutting your hair, wearing pants, and speaking out is not, in fact, a “problem,” and doesn’t have anything to do with a desire to get married and have kids. Somehow, American women manage to balance their short hair and their childrearing at the same time, while consuming hamburgers and drinking Coca Cola soft drinks. Join us!