Like The Root blogger Jimi Izrael, I’m pretty sick of the recent spate of stories that paint all black women as overly-ambitious career women, and all black men as uneducated imbeciles—as Izrael puts it, “the story of the hard-working, over-achieving black women being held back by the shiftless watermelon-stealing, generally no-account black man.” Unlike Izrael, however, I don’t think a helpful addition to the discussion is to suggest that black women just stop going to college so much. But that’s exactly what Izrael does here in an essay that manages to be not just sexist, but pretty damn misanthropic through and through.

Read More “Why Black Women Shouldn’t Go to College” »

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!” »

What do the First Lady’s toned arms truly represent, for the future of America? How will J. Crew be remembered in presidential history? Do Joe Biden’s teeth gleam when he makes love to Jill?

. . . And other burning questions—revealed!—in this edition of Sexist Beatdown, wherein Tiger Beatdown blogger Sady of NYC and yours truly of Washington D.C. discuss Vogue’s latest covergirl, Michelle Obama:

Read More “Sexist Beatdown: Michelle Obama’s Arms Edition” »

* Wow! Creepiest ending to a Craigslist personals ad in recent memory: “There is a unique kind of yoga I’ve been doing…when I’m not at the gym”

* Womenstake’s Melanie Ross Levin describes the scene at the signing of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. “Surrounded by a “who’s who” from the women’s movement, I couldn’t help but feel overwhelmed by the significance of this occasion,” she writes. “As a newbie to the White House signing ceremony world, I ran around the room trying to capture the moment by taking as many photos and talking to as many people as possible.” Ha ha, n00b!

* Gender Goggles reviews “Violet,” an “interactive fiction game in which you are a graduate student attempting to finish your dissertation”—and in which you can make your protagonist a lesbian by choosing the “heteronormativity off” option.

* Lisa Schiffren of the National Review is unsurprisingly nonsensical, this time about the Obamas hiring a new White House chef, like every other Presidential family has done from the beginning of time ever. She writes: “But today, news comes that the Obamas will not run a national Top Chef competition—because they are bringing their own, private chef from Chicago to the White House. Well, isn’t that nice?”

Short answer: It is not nice, it is terrible in every way except that it now allows Schiffren to smugly dangle in front of us all this incontroversial evidence of what Michelle Obama has been all along—an elitist servant-driver and a shitty mom. “I believed all that stuff about how Michelle was an overburdened modern working mother, rushing from school dropoff to her high-paying, demanding work at the hospital, to dress fittings, to whatever it was she needed to do to support her husband’s political aspirations, back home to take care of her daughters,” writes Schiffren. “Call me naive, but that model usually includes making dinner.” It gets better—later, Schiffren evokes Sarah Palin!

Photo by migraine chick

This 67-year-old pro-life activist at today’s March for Life, who didn’t want her name published—”I’m very well known, and I don’t want people to know I’ve had an abortion,” she says—lists three things to like about our new President.

1. “He’s married, even though it’s to that angry, hateful Michelle, who last year delivered a pro-abortion speech, a pro-abortion speech at a Planned Parenthood abortuary.”

Read More “Three Reasons For Pro-Lifers to Like Obama” »

Still ruining everything: Palin paved the way for Obama to kill “feminist”

The death of the word “feminist” was broadcast on the evening news. In September 2008, at the height of the presidential campaign, Katie Couric boarded John McCain’s airplane, took a seat with vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin, and lobbed the first in a series of softballs: Did Palin consider herself a feminist? Palin’s response:

I do. A feminist who believes in equal rights, and I believe that women certainly today have every opportunity that a man has to succeed, and to try to do it all, anyway. And I’m very, very thankful that I’ve been brought up in a family where gender hasn’t been an issue. You know, I’ve been expected to do everything growing up that the boys were doing. We were out chopping wood and we were out hunting and fishing and filling our freezer with good wild Alaskan game to feed our family.

“Feminist” isn’t the only English-language word that suffered from Palin’s candidacy, of course (see “maverick,” “terrorist”). But while other terms employed by the Alaska governor withered from twisted meanings, “feminist” experienced a more symbolic death. Palin killed “feminist” not by altering the meaning of the word—its meaning has never remained consistent in a century of use—but by eliminating its taboo.

Read More “The Feminist Mystique: How Election 2008 Killed a Notorious Word” »

I missed Beyonce singing “At Last” to Barack and Michelle at last night’s Neighborhood Ball—I was busy scoping out presidential connections (and duck wraps!) at the Hawaii State Society Inaugural Ball—which means I got to cry a little bit over YouTube this morning. Here’s the first dance, in case you missed it, too:

We here at the City Paper love Sarah Masterson. A couple weeks ago, I interviewed the DC BABY author and prolific kid blogger about her mommy issues and my fear of children. Well, Masterson was such a delightful interviewee that The Sexist asked her to check in on a regular basis—and the very, very busy Masterson graciously agreed. In the future, I hope to hash it out with her on women’s issues, local gender news, and—my particular area of non-expertise—parenting. Today, she dishes out advice to the Obamas for relocating to the District with Malia and Sasha in tow.

Read More “An Open Letter to the Obamas” »

The dress that launched a thousand middling blog post reviews, Michelle Obama’s election-night Narcisco Rodriguez, landed her at the top of Vogue’s top-ten list this week. Congratulations Ms. President-Elect: Michelle and her post-election glow beat out nine borderline horrific ensembles, including Gwyneth Paltrow’s I-see-London tank dress, Chloe Sevigny’s meh nightgown thing, and Hilary Swank’s one shoulder robo-Swank.

Photo by bobster1985.

Interested in enrolling your kid in a GLBT-friendly school? (I’m looking at you, Michelle and Barack). Woodley Park’s Maret School, a K-12 college prep day school, will hold an event this Sunday for interested GLBT families to learn more about the school. The event will bring together GLBT parents and faculty along with Director of Admission Annie Farquhar and Associate Director of Middle School Admission Patrick Scott. Refreshments: served! More details after the jump.

Read More “Maret School To Hold GLBT Open House” »