* Zack Rosen at The New Gay on the assumption that gay men love Sex and the City: "assumptions about my relationship to SATC make me about as angry as being called fabulous," he writes. "We’ve all gone on bad dates or slept with someone who never called us again. We do not all, however, live in a New York City haze of money and extreme fashion. We do not all act as if women and gay men are half-formed creatures that will die flopping on the floor if they cannot find a mate. And most importantly, we do not all subscribe to the notion that the life lived by the SATC gals is a mirror image of that undergone by the contemporary urban gay male."

Rosen isn't just peeved at the constant comparisons between all gay men and a set of sexually promiscuous, frivolously spending, Cosmo-swilling white ladies; he's also unimpressed with the film's depiction of actual gay men: "this movie . . . features a gay wedding between two men who hate each other, love an all-white color palette and hired Liza Minnelli to sing 'Single Ladies.' I’ve hosted orgies that were less stereotypically gay than that."

* Who would you rather work for: Andrea or James?

Madeline Heilman at New York University once conducted an experiment in which she told volunteers about a manager. Some were told, "Subordinates have often described Andrea as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. She is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

Other volunteers were told, "Subordinates have often described James as someone who is tough yet outgoing and personable. He is known to reward individual contributions and has worked hard to maximise employees' creativity."

The only difference between what the groups were told was that some people thought they were hearing about a leader named Andrea while others thought they were hearing about a leader named James. Heilman asked her volunteers to estimate how likeable Andrea and James were as people. Three-quarters thought James was more likeable than Andrea.

The story goes on to examine the experiences of two transgender scientists at Stanford who transitioned mid-career—one transitioned to male, the other to female. I wonder who had a better time post-transition?

* SAFER Campus on WaPo's recent examination of campus rape: When you headline a story "Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence," shouldn't you then report on some schools that are actually trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence?

I found the title of the article “Schools trying to prevent and respond to sexual violence” in the Washington Post to be extremely misleading. I expected to read a some stories of how schools are adequately and sincerely making efforts to prevent and respond to crimes such as rape, but instead I found myself reading a boring, shallow article that barely grazes the real picture of violence on college campuses and how institutions are dealing with it.

* Student journalists at the University of Utah who secretly inserted words for genitalia in the school newspaper will not be penalized. Apparently, publishing "penis" and an unidentified "slang term for the vagina" are not, in fact, outlawed in the school's Code of Conduct. "Administrators said academic holds on the journalism students were lifted after they determined the student code was not violated by the prank, which spelled out the words in large capital letters within The Daily Utah Chronicle's farewell columns."

* Alyssa Rosenberg points to another lady-centric movie I will definitely see:

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Rating recent commentaries on issues related to Elena Kagan's appearance:

* WIN: NPR on how Kagan's success informs our speculation over her gender conformity: "Forty years after the birth of modern feminism, we are still not able to think about women who attain certain kinds of professional success as normatively gendered," writes Patricia J. Williams. It's not just Kagan's short haircut, her interest in poker and softball, and her wardrobe that have critics questioning her femininity: For women, "success itself is masculinized."

* LOSE: Beyond her concern that Kagan does not cross her legs when she sits in a skirt, Robin Givhan is also apparently dismayed that Kagan is not the nation's first cougar Supreme Court Justice:

Kagan is only 50 years old, which might be the equivalent of 100 in Hollywood years, but within the Washington establishment she would be classified as a young'un. Her style, however, makes her seem so much older. There's little that could be described as fun, impish or creative in her dress. It's a wholly middle-age approach to a wardrobe — if one stubbornly and inaccurately defines that transitional period in life as the beginning-of-the-end of sex appeal, effervescence and sprightliness. Kagan's version of middle-age seems stuck in a time warp, back when 50-something did not mean Kim Cattrall or Sharon Stone, "Cougar Town" or "Sex and the City."

Givhan adds: "Looking drab has its advantages for both men and women in the nation's capital because it insulates them from accusations of superficiality—a sure-fire political career killer." ORLY? Because from where I'm sitting (with my legs positioned in an unladylike spread-eagle formation), "looking drab" has inspired plenty of accusations against Kagan, thanks to people like . . . Robin Givhan.

* DRAW: The Atlantic's Wendy Kaminer rejects the high standards for Kagan's appearance:

What do Elena Kagan and Sarah Palin have in common?  They each offer complementary cautionary tales about the continuing appeal of an ersatz, "Sex in the City" feminism that rewards beauty and punishes plainness with all the subtlety and compassion of a Playboy centerfold.  Kagan's appearance and fashion sense are mocked or savaged, especially but not exclusively by pundits on the right, following a familiar script.  Hillary Clinton and Janet Napolitano endured similar hazings. Sarah Palin, to say the least, did not.

Palin's fans would counter that, conversely, she has paid a political price for her beauty.  Liberal feminists dislike Palin partly because she is "very attractive," feminist psyche expert Bill Bennett declared during the 2008 campaign.  He didn't explain how the equally attractive Gloria Steinem became a greatly admired liberal feminist leader, despite feminism's presumed disdain for good-looking women.

Well . . . that's an easy one. People of all political stripes (even feminists!) are more likely to use sexist attacks against women they really don't like. Why don't feminists ridicule Steinem based on her good looks? Because they like her politics, and it's easy to refrain from leveling anti-feminist attacks against women you don't want to attack. So why have some feminists ridiculed Palin's good looks? Because they don't like her politics, and it's really easy to fall into anti-feminist attacks against women you are eager to attack. Republicans were playing the same little game when they defended Palin against detractors who would ridicule her appearance, while condoning sexist remarks against certain other candidates (uhhh Hillary).

Now that we've exhausted the decade in masculine trends, it's time for us to take a look back at the aughts' many cultural incarnations of femininity. The versions of femininity that have been aggressively marketed to us over the past ten years, from "not that innocent" pop tarts to Sex & the City fashionistas to Kill Bill's ass-kicker.

POP TARTS.

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Peak Year: 2000

When Britney Spears' first single, ". . . Baby One More Time," dropped in 1998, Spears' aesthetics presented a "disturbing mix of childhood innocence and adult sexuality" (according to the immortal words of the American Family Association). By the 2000's, Spears had abandoned the "innocence" part in favor of shimmying on-stage in nude bodysuits, cavorting with a live python, and frenching Madonna. Soon, Spears was accidentally flashing her genitals, shaving her head, and endangering her children (providing the AFA even more fodder for their campaign against sexual girls). For a time, fellow sexy-innocent (and former Mouseketeer buddy) Christina Aguilera appeared to be on the Spears trajectory—in 2002, Aguilera began referring to herself as "XTina" and appeared in assless chaps in the video for "Dirrty." Then, Aguliera got (and stayed) married and had a son. That was the narrative of the pop tarts of the aughts—her commercialized and sexually-charged celebrity either forced her to crash and burn, or petered out into a more traditionally feminine role—wife and mother.

Ambassadors: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera

Uniform: Live snake, belly-button piercing, thong or nothing.

Activities: Writhing, belting, riding with Paris

—

NERVOUS WRECKS.

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Peak Year: 2001

In 2001, Bridget Jones arrived on-screen to comfort every woman who believes she is too old, too fat, too drunk, and too daft to ever be loved. Hey! Despite all the self-loathing, she comes away with two handsome suitors (and aren't men the point of life, anyway?) Despite Jones' more anti-feminist tendencies—she's a career girl, but she's still obsessed with losing weight and finding a boyfriend—she helped make way for the comedy based on the flawed leading lady. By the end of the decade, viewers were ready to embrace a more interesting flawed character—Tina Fey's Liz Lemon. Amanda Marcotte has this to say about how Lemon's flaws work: "Over the course of the show, we’ve learned that Liz is lazy, a glutton, anti-social, a bully, insecure, prone to fantasies, and emotionally screwed up to the point where she can’t have normal relationships. These facts have caused some feminists to bunch up, but I’m pretty happy overall with it. If we don’t want women relegated to window dressing in comedy, they have to play deeply flawed characters, because comedy is built around laughing at deeply flawed people navigate the world, making light of our own flaws and making us feel superior." The difference between Bridget and Liz is that Liz isn't ultimately rewarded for her self-loathing.

Ambassadors: Bridget Jones, Liz Lemon

Uniform: Granny panties, food stains.

Activities: Obsessive dieting, lying, self-mockery.

—

The Centers for Disease Control is currently weighing whether to recommend the circumcision of boys and men in the United States. If the CDC finds that a circumcision recommendation would reduce the risk of HIV among American men, I think that's swell. Providing people with information to help protect themselves from disease is a wonderful thing. But a CDC recommendation would likely come with one major adverse side-effect. For women who already find uncircumcised penises disgusting, wrong, or unfuckable, the recommendation will also provide more fuel for their ignorance.

Women who shun uncircumcised penises has always struck me as short-sighted. These are the women who will glibly deem their sex partner's genitalia unacceptable if, several decades ago, his parents did not predict her sexual preferences and subject him to newborn penis surgery accordingly. Sound familiar? We're women. We know what it's like to be unfairly judged on impossible physical standards! And yet, even women who are well-informed about sex—women who like it, talk openly about it, and even get paid to write about it—are keeping the genital snubbing alive.

Yesterday, the Frisky's Annika Harris wrote: "Uncircumcised penises repulse and scare me, so my sons are getting cut whether it’s PC or not." And she writes for a sex blog.

On the Simple Life, Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie laughed over catching sight of some uncircumcised dick at a nudist beach, with Richie calling uncircumcised penises "fucking disgusting." And they're Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie.

In circumcision documentary Partly Private, a woman on a Sex and the City bus tour announced that "Ninety-nine percent of women in America would be shocked if they got in bed with someone and they were like: Oh! Huh!" (Watch her genital superiority, above, at the 1:33 mark). And she was standing outside of a sex toy shop while paying homage to a television show almost exclusively devoted to having sex with men. Note that this woman doesn't just express her extreme dislike of uncircumcised penises—she attempts to justify her position by extending the disgust to her entire gender. In the Sex and the City's circumcision episode, incidentally, the girls' penis preferences were split about 50-50.

Whenever I've encountered women like this—women who find uncircumcised penises inherently gross—various medical statistics will doubtlessly be raised in defense of their penis discrimination. Uncircumcised penises, they'll say, have a higher risk of contracting HPV—plus, they look weird. Uncircumcised penises have a higher risk of contracting penile cancer—also, what the fuck do you do with it? Uncircumcised penises have a higher risk of spreading HIV—and none of my girlfriends would ever fuck an uncut guy. These women are interested in sexual health, but they're more interested in protecting their own prejudice against unmodified genitalia. When it comes down to it, it doesn't matter if the guy's clean of STDs—to these women, he will always be unclean.

Again, facts are great. And when the CDC gets around to making a recommendation, we'll all be better informed about just what the risks of circumcision are. But no matter what the HIV link to uncircumcised penises turns out to be, you will never be able to determine a man's status by examining his genitals. (And in some cases, you wouldn't notice the difference anyway). So if you're one of those women who dislikes uncircumcised penises because you consider them to be "unclean," you would be better served to reserve that reaction for penises that don't have condoms on them, or any sexual conduct initiated before you and your partner undergo fresh STD tests. No matter what style of penis you prefer, those two little accessories are a lot more likely to keep you safe than an irrational repulsion to unmodified dick.

... and she's boring, vapid, and obsessed with eating ice cream out of the carton. If that sounds like your wife, Esquire has this gift guide of Christmas presents that will be just perfect for her!

A breakdown:

Ice Cream and Ice Cream Accessories (2). including the "Prepara Ice Cream Pint Sleeve," a neoprene sleeve whick "slips over her favorite pint of ice cream so she can finish it off without frostbitten fingertips or, even worse, melted fudge chips in her Chunky Monkey."

Handbags (2).

Lingerie (1). Esquire's pick, the "Victoria's Secret Jacquard Merrywidow," is chosen for its "practicality."

Beauty Products (3) Including the "Anastasia All About Brows Eyebrow Set" and "Clarisonic Skincare Brush." Because nothing says "Merry Christmas" like a $195 machine that removes dead skin.

Sex and the City DVD Collection (1). The Esquire gift guide for your "lover" (note: eww), at least, swaps Candace Bushnell for Marguerite Duras.

Books (1). This pick, Beryl Markham's West with the Night, is a Hemingway-approved autobiography that details the female pilot's life. Great! But Esquire pairs it with this condescending gift note: "A must-read for the 21st-century woman who thinks Carrie Bradshaw is what being a strong female is all about." Because this gift guide proves that women are simply caricatures of themselves who need the prodding of their husband to inject any sort of substance into their views about women. Read it while watching Sex and the City and grooming your eyebrows!

Photo from prepara.com.