The XX Factor

Salvadoran Woman’s Story Is a Powerful Argument for Legal Abortion

Gillian Kane — Fri, 17 May 2013 21:13:37 GMT

Proponents of legal abortion could not make up a more heartbreaking scenario to prove their point. Beatriz (not her real name) is 22 years old with a one-year-old son. She has both lupus and kidney failure.

She is also 23 weeks pregnant with a non-viable fetus. The fetus is anencephalic, which means that if the pregnancy comes to term, the baby will be born with half a brain.

Beatriz’s doctors have advised her to get an abortion because the pregnancy is interfering with her chances of treatment and, ultimately, survival. Problem is, Beatriz lives in El Salvador, where abortion has been illegal since 1998. If she goes ahead with an abortion, both she and her provider will be subject to criminal sanctions, which may include prison terms of up to 10 years. According to the Center for Reproductive Rights, 46 Salvadoran women have already been charged with illegal abortions; of those convicted, three are serving prison sentences.

As moving as this predicament is, it has not swayed the Catholic Church. José Luis Escobar, Archbishop of San Salvador said, referring to Beatriz potentially getting an abortion, “it’s incredible, it’s inhuman, it’s against nature.” He added, “Sure, she [Beatriz] has health problems, but she’s not in grave danger of death. Since we need to consider both lives we need to ask, whose life is in greater danger. We think that the fetus is in greater danger.” It should be noted that most anencephalic fetuses die in utero before coming to term. If an anencephalic fetus does make it to term, it is not likely to survive the first few days after birth.

Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch have both weighed in on the case, demanding that the Salvadoran government exempt Beatriz from the abortion prohibition. So has the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, the U.N. body overseeing human rights violations in Latin America.

Beatriz first requested an abortion in March. In April, her lawyers appealed to the country’s highest court asking that Beatriz receive a therapeutic abortion. (A therapeutic abortion exception has never been approved since the ban was put in place.) The Supreme Court accepted the case and convened to hear it this week. But yesterday, instead of resolving the issue, the Salvadoran high court kicked the can down the road. They said they needed an additional 15 days to review the suit.

Beatriz will enter the third trimester of her pregnancy in two weeks. Even if the Court issues a positive decision, they are putting her health and life in greater danger: the more advanced a pregnancy, the riskier the abortion procedure. With each day that goes by, Beatriz’s pregnancy is progressing and the case for legal abortion is strengthening. It remains to be seen if the Supreme Court of El Salvador is listening.

A Military Parent’s Homecoming Should Not Be a Surprise

Emily Yoffe — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:35:16 GMT

Last night at the Tampa Bay Rays stadium, 9 year-old Alayna Adams, whose father has been deployed in Afghanistan for the past year, threw out the first pitch only to discover the man in the catcher’s mask was actually her father, Lt. Col. Will Adams. I’m still wiping my eyes at the sight of this long-legged sprite rushing in joy and shock to his arms. But I wish I’d never seen the video, and that the people in the stadium had not been allowed to be voyeurs. Though I know these reunions are staged for the best motives, a parent’s return should not come as a shock to the kids.

The children of our military personnel bear a heavy burden. They deal with the long absences of a beloved parent. They endure the gnawing fear that one day there will be a surprise—a stranger in uniform walking up the front steps to deliver awful news. A parent serving in the military is not the same as a parent on an extended business trip. Even the expected return of a military parent who may have been gone for a year can be overwhelming. It seems unwise to surprise these children as if springing a trip to Disneyland on them. This post explains that an unexpected return can have all sorts of negative ripple effects, from encouraging a child’s belief in the power of his or her own magical thinking, to causing pain for kids whose parents are not scheduled to come home (or who may never return), to undermining the sense that school is a stable, reliable place.

The surprise return has become such a staple that it’s even spawned two reality show series, Lifetime’s Coming Home and TLC’s Surprise Homecoming. As a Washington Post story critical of these reunions points out, both shows were done in cooperation with the military. ABC’s Good Morning America shows reunion clips (some from homecomings they've helped arrange) to give viewers a quick fix of warmed hearts and jerked tears. A site devoted to surprise returns offers a “best of” reel, presumably using a Richter scale-type measurement of amazement and weeping. The surprises can be elaborate—Mom emerging from a giant gift box at a school assembly, Dad whipping off his Darth Vader costume. But military homecomings are complicated emotional events, especially for children, and turning them into public spectacles in front of classmates or strangers can add to the stress.

I’ve only been able to watch a few of these videos. I’ve found myself turning away from the rawness of the emotion. I feel like an intruder seeing the children’s overwhelming relief, their uncontrollable sobbing. Our Commander in Chief has done such a good job as a father keeping his children out of the public eye and giving them the privacy they need. I wish this administration would encourage the military commanders to put out word that the children of returning service members deserve to reconnect in a safe, private space.

Counterpoint: Please Don't Leave Your Stupid Kid at the Park

Drew Magary — Fri, 17 May 2013 20:03:31 GMT

Yesterday, Lenore Skenazy wrote this article about why it's important to take young children outside and then leave them unsupervised.

The idea is that at around 10 a.m. parents take their kids to ... their local park. And then they leave them there ...

If they're at least seven or eight years old, why NOT leave them there with the other kids gathering? It could be their first chance to finally do that thing we did as kids without thinking twice: Play.

As the author of a new book about my experience as a dad, I'd like to counter Skenazy's argument by saying to you other parents there: Please, don't leave your stupid kid alone at the park.

First of all, what kind of park are we talking about? There are different kinds of parks, you know. If you live in a gated community in Idaho and there's a small playground at the end of your cul-de-sac, that's a wee bit different than dropping off your kid at an Upper West Side kiddie war zone. There are THOUSANDS of children at those parks, all jostling for sandbox time and plugging up the swirly slide. No responsible human being just leaves a first grader at this kind of park for hours at a time. That's lunacy.

More important, leaving your stupid kid at the park means I'm the one who ends up having to deal with him when he decides to put someone else's dog in the baby swing. Where are you, Miss Enlightened? Who's gonna make this little idiot come correct? If you want a nanny, pay me. There are kids of all ages at these parks. Those of us with younger kids HAVE to watch over them. And when your stupid kid steps on their head to commandeer the monkey bars, what then? Two seven-year-olds should be able to resolve their own conflicts on a playground. But an unsupervised tussle between your seven-year-old and a two-year-old ends up with my kid being thrown over a railing. You, Miss Hippy Dippy, should at least be NEARBY, so that I can grab you and tell you that your child won't stop piledriving babies into the mulch. You can't just go have lunch at Panera and expect anyone to congratulate you for it.

I agree with Skenazy that kids that age should be left alone to play and build their imaginary princess forts and all that. But her solution to just abandon a seven-year-old for a day isn't the right one. Many Americans live in neighborhoods where the infrastructure inherently presents more hazards for a child playing alone. Maybe I want my kid to bike to the park, only there are no sidewalks to get there. Maybe they have to traverse a four-lane highway and cross a Wal Mart parking lot to get there. The reason too many kids stay indoors these days is because many exurban areas are set up in a way that actively encourages it. If you live on a farm, you can let your kids out the door in the morning and then go ring the dinner bell for them to come in at 5pm. We do not all live on farms.

A seven-year-old isn't old enough to bike down to some park alone. A ten-year-old? Fine. I get that. Ten-year-olds are big and strong and annoying. But a younger child should have unsupervised play in a less crowded, less hazardous area: a backyard, a basement, a school recess. You have to have some measure of common sense about what kind of environment you're leaving your kid in. And you have to be a good judge of what the right age is for fully unsupervised play in the environment you're dealing with. When I was twelve, I used to bike down a railroad track to town to go rent video games and steal Playboys. Twelve is a good age for that sort of thing. I would not suggest an eight-year-old do that. He wouldn't appreciate the Playboy as much anyway.

There is definitely an obesity crisis in America right now, and shutting in your kids doesn't help matters much. But Skenazy's "just leave them!" proposal is an airy fairy idea that doesn't take into account where you live and how your community is set up. Many of us CAN'T leave kids to play on their own, and there are legitimate reasons why. Those are the deeper issues that need fixing. Kids need better places to play than what they have now. You are not kickstarting a revolution by adding the extra twist of you being twenty miles away.

Inside Ten Days on a Lesbian Porn Set

Amanda Hess — Fri, 17 May 2013 19:32:26 GMT

Whenever a new acquaintance learns that I report on porn sets, I end up fielding a similar line of questioning about What It’s Like. Are the performers trapped? Are they hurt? Coerced? On drugs? Do they have no other options? Are they dumb?

Most of those questions have easy answers—it's usually “no”—but it’s difficult to communicate the full lives and experiences of a diverse group of people working in an industry steeped in public fascination and shame. Now, I can tell them to buy a ticket to I Love Your Work, a new online documentary that follows the lives of nine women over ten days of shooting a lesbian porn film in New York City in 2010. Jonathan Harris, 33, followed these women from wake to sleep, capturing ten-second video clips every five minutes of whatever they happened to be doing—taking the subway, sharing their wedding photos, putting on their shoes, discussing their tattoos, debating feminism, talking about frogs, walking in the park, undressing for the camera. Then, he compiled the footage into a six-hour interactive experience, and offered it up to viewers for $10 for a 24 window of access. (You can watch the trailer here). I talked to Harris, 33, about his experience making the documentary.

Slate: You followed nine women working on the set of a lesbian porn film. Why did you choose to focus on this particular set of people?

Jonathan Harris: I think porn plays a complicated role in many of our lives. Most men (and many women) watch porn, but very few admit it. It is simultaneously ubiquitous and hidden. For most of us, porn is a series of fantasies, engineered to make us feel aroused, always slightly out of reach, and usually experienced in private. I wanted to understand the realities of the people who produce those fantasies. I wondered what their fantasies would be like. I wondered what it was like for them to be objects of anonymous desire, and, in turn, what they desired.

Slate: The porn industry is subject to endless public debate, but we rarely get a look at the full lives of the people who make it. Did the project change any of your own preconceptions about porn?

Harris: Definitely. When I see porn now, I see real people performing. I think about their lives, what they had for breakfast, what their apartment might look like, where they get their groceries. The power of pornographic fantasies is diminished for me now, because I understand the role of makeup and lighting and camera angles to convey a certain image that usually has very little to do with reality. And I think this is ultimately a really humanizing thing to realize. It makes me feel better about my own body, and about the bodies of other people in my life. I can still appreciate the fantasies, but they have less control over me now.

Slate: You filmed these women for ten seconds every five minutes. Did anything happen in all of those 4 minutes and 50 second gaps you wished you'd been able to catch on tape?

Harris: I filmed at least 10 seconds of video every five minutes, and sometimes more. In the editing process, I selected the best—the most interesting, sensible, continuous, or beautiful—10 seconds of contiguous video from that five minutes of real-world time, and that's what's in the final piece. The whole idea of the project was not to show too much—to keep the tantalizing feeling of porn that is constantly just out of reach. It's like a strip tease, or a peep show, or a teaser, but in this case, the teaser is for everyday life.

Slate: The interactivity of your project reflects how we consume porn on the internet—jumping from clip to clip, catching glimpses of video in between mundane email replies and, sometimes, visits to performers' own blogs. How has the internet changed the way that we consume porn, and view it on a cultural level?

Harris: The Internet's clearly made porn more accessible, so a much higher percentage of the population experiences it now than in, say, the 1990s, when you had to pirate some sketchy VHS video tape, or walk into a seedy magazine shop and hand over your money to get a pornographic magazine. The stakes are much lower now. Porn is something you can watch instantly, anonymously, secretly, and without spending money. It's bright and easy. And because of this, I think it's starting to make sex in general more normalized. I see the American Puritan ethic as beginning to recede a little, and people are opening up to each other about their sexual desires. You see this pretty clearly in something like the 50 Shades of Gray phenomenon, which probably wouldn't have happened if porn hadn't already set the stage. The very fluidity of how we consume porn now— like you say, between checking emails— has made sexuality a more integral part of life. It's no longer something that has to be buried away and done in the dark. People can claim what they like and talk about it openly. I think the prevalence of porn has a lot to do with this shift, although of course not everyone's there yet.

Slate: Nobody pays for porn anymore. Why pay for a $10 for a ticket to I Love Your Work?

Harris: I Love Your Work is not really porn. … it's a project about how people live their everyday lives. It's just as much about youth, fame, gender, fear, vulnerability, honesty, and privacy as it is about porn and sex. Most of all, it's a rare chance to experience a day in the life of nine different human beings, moment to moment, unfiltered and unedited. It's not like reality TV, where there's some editor with an agenda, manipulating the footage for a certain effect. In I Love Your Work, the editing is totally neutral—entirely determined by the time constraints—and this neutrality gives a feeling of raw honesty and truthfulness.

Presented By:

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:32:26 GMT

Are Boys More Competitive Than Girls Because They Play in Groups?

Jessica Grose — Fri, 17 May 2013 16:53:13 GMT

When I was doing research for a piece about the uber-successful Emanuel Brothers and what their parents did to encourage them to be so competitive, I ended up talking to Ashley Merryman, the co-author of Top Dog: The Science of Winning and Losing. According to Merryman and her co-author Po Bronson, part of what might have made the Emanuel brothers so ambitious from childhood is that they were all boys, and that there were three of them. Girls tend to play in pairs, while boys arrange themselves in groups, and group play breeds the competitive spirit. So what’s behind this, and why does playing in groups make boys more aggressive?

Harvard evolutionary biologist Joyce Benenson speculates that the instinct for men to align themselves in groups goes way back in human history. Men hunted in groups, and so they had to learn to get along quickly in a bunch, and this quality was supposedly bred into men through natural selection (maybe you got picked off by a lion if you didn’t bond with the group). Whether or not you buy this, Merryman and Bronson cite a 2004 study from Benenson that shows male infants as young as six months prefer photographs of groups to photographs of pairs or individuals. Girl babies show no preference.

In Benenson’s studies of older children, the differences are starker, Merryman explained to me over the phone. “In observed lab studies of six- to eight-year-old boys, they spent 70 to 80 percent of their time playing in groups,” while girls spend less than 20 percent of their time in groups. Boys are so desperate to arrange themselves in groups that “when [researchers] put a pair of boys in a room and forced them to talk to each other, they ended up talking about what it would be like to have a group of boys there.” By contrast, “Girls in a group will look at each other and try to find a single friend.” This behavior extends all the way up to the boardroom.

So why does it matter? Because men’s experience in groups may be why they not only compete more as adults, but why they’re also less concerned about the outcome of the competition, Merryman and Bronson argue in Top Dog:

“Groups are rarely a collection of true equals. It’s expected that, within a group, people will have different experiences, abilities, resources. That’s often the group’s greatest strength. Therefore, as long as everyone has signed on to the group’s larger purpose, its members don’t need to conform in other ways...Occasional challenges to group hierarchy can be welcomed, because they force everyone to improve over time.”

Furthermore, the natural communication style of groups is assertiveness—you need to pipe up to be heard over the din of several. Not so with dyads. The natural communication style of pairs is “a mutual exchange of feelings,” Merryman and Bronson say. “In a conversation between two people, even a mild difference of opinion can be perceived as a threat.” Because women are socialized to have this self-deprecating style of exchange from their first interactions, it’s no wonder they have trouble making themselves heard in the office.

Essentialist takes on how children behave are tricky, and it’s possible that kids follow a more fluid set of rules than the researchers suggest. Still, after reading Top Dog, I want to stick my daughter in soccer as soon as she can stand upright, so that she’ll get used to speaking up in a group. If she’s not athletically inclined, it will be debate team all the way.

Enough With Star Trek Into Darkness's Boring Bromance. Give Us More Uhura!

Alyssa Rosenberg — Thu, 16 May 2013 21:39:00 GMT

Of all the changes J.J. Abrams made to the Star Trek universe when he re-launched it in 2009, one of the sharpest was the decision to make half-human, half-Vulcan Spock (Zachary Quinto) and Nyota Uhura (Zoe Saldana) not just colleagues, but a couple with great sexual chemistry and some crackling dialogue.

They bickered over Uhura's first assignment after her graduation from Starfleet Academy. Spock, Uhura’s teacher as well as her boyfriend, had sent her to the U.S.S. Farragut "to avoid the appearance of favoritism," and Uhura protested in a scene that let her be both sexy and professionally ambitious. "Did I not, on multiple occasions, demonstrate an exceptional aural sensitivity, and I quote, 'an unparalleled ability to identify sonic anomalies in subspace transmissions tests?'" Uhura snapped (and punned) at Spock. And the tenderness of their relationship brought out the human side in Spock, particularly after he saw his home planet of Vulcan destroyed by a terrorist. "What do you need?" Uhura asked Spock, kissing him tenderly after the attack. "I need everyone to continue performing admirably," Spock told her, broken up. They were a partnership of equals.

But in Star Trek Into Darkness, this refreshingly grown-up relationship (at least by the standards of blockbusters) has taken a back seat to the bromance between Spock and James T. Kirk (Chris Pine). Kirk jumps between the two on every occasion. "Are you two fighting? Oh my God, what is that even like?" he asks eagerly. And when they finally bring their grievances into the open air, Kirk's right there in a shuttle with them, like a roommate who just can't help butting in.

Even when Uhura gets to do actual work in Star Trek Into Darkness, the movie manages to bollix up her role. When the crew gets stuck on the Klingon homeworld of Kronos, Uhura reminds Kirk, "You brought me here because I speak Klingon. Then let me speak Klingon." But instead of allowing her to achieve victory through diplomacy, the movie first lets a long shot linger on her posterior while she talks to a group of Klingon warriors, then turns her into a damsel in distress who needs to be rescued by her male crewmates. At the movie's climax, Uhura fires a bunch of shots at the movie's primary villain, but it's her boyfriend who ultimately puts the bad guy down, fueled by his anger at—you guessed it—the man's treatment of Kirk.

There's nothing wrong with treating friendship like it's an important stake in an action movie, and the relationship between Kirk and Spock has always been critical to Star Trek. But it would be nice if Into Darkness acknowledged, as Iron Man 3 did this spring, that a man's girlfriend can be as good a colleague and partner in combat as his bros.

Mindy Kaling's The Mindy Project May Be Subversive, But It's Not Good

Amanda Hess — Thu, 16 May 2013 20:40:21 GMT

The season finale of FOX’s The Mindy Project aired on Tuesday, and it was a deeply emotional episode for me. The primary emotion I am feeling is relief. After following Mindy Kaling's impressive writing and acting at NBC's The Office, I’ve spent the 2012-2013 television season desperately trying to like The Mindy Project. I have failed. How did one of the most subversive figures on network television end up making such a bad show?

In a TV landscape dominated by white men, Kaling is the rare woman of color to create, write, and star (as New York obgyn Dr. Mindy Lahiri) in her own network sitcom. White men fill a unique role on Kaling’s show, too—they appear in the form of Mindy’s constantly refreshing stream of man candy, who Mindy beds (and usually, discards) at breakneck speed. This week, Rachel Sklar called the show “subversive and sexy” for its depiction of a single woman who “unapologetically hooks up with a parade of adorable guys” with none of the sexual shaming or cloying melodrama that accompanies most depictions of single ladies on television. And as Nisha Chittal recently told Jezebel, “it's really interesting that Mindy Lahiri dates white men,” which she sees as a “conscious decision to refute the stereotype that South Asians only date other South Asians.”

Theoretically, The Mindy Project’s take on hooking up does sound radical. If only it weren’t so boring in practice. On the Mindy Project, men come and men go, but they never go anywhere interesting. Take the guest appearances of the Meyers brothers: In the show’s second episode, Mindy meets-cute with a charming architect played by Seth Meyers. The pair plan a date, but we don’t see it; in fact, we never see Seth, or hear about him, ever again. Later in the season, Mindy flirts at a bar with another charming guy played by Seth’s brother, Josh Meyers, who turns out to be a prostitute. He, too, gets one episode, then disappears. With the right comedic tone, Mindy’s quick turnover of love interests could play out like a fun–or even dark—inversion of rom-com tropes: No, Mindy doesn’t end up marrying the handsome architect after a series of clutzy romantic blunders; she unwittingly falls into a Pretty Woman situation with a guy who looks eerily similar, and that doesn’t work out like the movies, either. But ironies like those aren’t given any space for exploration on the show. Every time Mindy presses the reset button on a new dude, her thin character development resets, too.

It’s potentially subversive that Mindy doesn’t get too emotionally invested in her sex partners. The problem is that we don’t get invested in Mindy herself, either. Occasionally, The Mindy Project will make a bid to insert some emotional heft into Mindy’s romantic life, but these moments also feel like stunts as opposed to stories. For instance, the show clumsily hints at a brewing attraction between Mindy and her coworker, Dr. Danny Castellano, by arranging for them to inadvertently touch hands on a bumpy plane ride.

Maybe the problem is Mindy’s inability to dig deeper inside herself. When one of Mindy’s past partners unexpectedly resurfaces on her birthday with a thoughtful gift, Mindy tells him that after their hook-up failed to materialize into a relationship, she “cried every night.” But we never actually saw Mindy cry. Is she even capable of it? The attempt to bolster Mindy’s unapologetic hook-ups with these melodramatic touches doesn’t feel sexy and transgressive—it feels disjointed, even oddly sociopathic. Even Mindy’s friends and coworkers feel similarly disposable and largely stereotypical. When Mindy’s initial married-with-kids BFF proved boring, writers threw in a new, single (also boring) BFF to pick up confidante duties. The show’s first season also traded in a woman in a wheelchair whose main shtick is acting inappropriately sexual, and a black nurse who communicates largely through singing.

This isn’t Louie, where Louis CK’s constant romantic interactions form the absurd set pieces for his existential anxiety. It’s not 30 Rock, where stereotypes are pushed to absurd limits for comedic effect. The Mindy Project is a potentially subversive take on modern love, shoehorned into the outdated trappings of a run-of-the-mill wacky workplace comedy. It is bad. But it doesn’t have to stay that way. At the end of the season finale, Mindy articulates her character’s main romantic tension: “No guy has ever wanted to commit to me before, because I work too much, I’m kind of selfish, I’ve never voted, and usually a guy figures that out, and then they leave,” she says. Then, she rushes to the hospital, unzips her party dress, wipes off her lipstick, pulls on her scrubs, and delivers triplets. That was the sexiest moment on the show this season, and it had nothing to do with any random guy.

In Which I Explain to My Conservative Relatives That the IRS Won’t Take Away Their Health Care

Amanda Marcotte — Thu, 16 May 2013 17:07:00 GMT

Rep. Michele Bachmann is always happy to spread whatever garbled rightwing conspiracy theory is trending. Her ravings are often a wall of meaningless paranoid noise, better ignored than engaged with. Still, her latest rant, reported by Atlantic Wire, deserves a little attention, because she's inadvertently hurting conservatives in her stampede to paint all Democrats as genocidal hell beasts.

Here's her theory, with each high-level-conspiracy bolded. The House Oversight Committee's hearings on Benghazi spooked the White House so much that they decided to take advantage of "a Friday dump day" (Bachmann's words) to "confess to such a flagrant misuse of politics and power" (World Net Daily's) as the IRS investigation of Tea Party groups. But what really worries Bachmann is that the IRS, which is largely responsible for administration of Obamacare, will use its new-found partisanship to "deny or delay access to health care" for conservatives.

According to WND, Bachmann said, "It now is an entirely reasonable question for the American people to ask: Will Obamacare be so politicized and misused?" In other words, she's running around scaring conservatives by telling them that the IRS will be targeting conservatives and denying them their health care benefits. How they will do this is not explained, but I'm guessing she's implying that the IRS will be monitoring insurance claims now. (They will not. The IRS's only role in Obamacare is to levy a tax on those who don't have health insurance.) Those of us in the reality-based community who have friends and family that have been sucked into the Fox News/Drudge vortex know what this means: More panic-based communications where our loved ones insist they're about to lose their health care coverage and we have to explain patiently that they are going to be just fine. We will try to be patient and not angrily insist that it's ludicrous to claim that legislation that's supposed to get Americans into health insurance plans is actually a secret plot to take away health insurance, but it won't be easy.

I beg of you, right wing pundits and politicians, cut it out. You may not believe your own nonsense, but sadly, your audience does. When you tell them the evil black President is going to take away their health care, they don't just chuckle knowingly and pass along the rumor. No, they often freak out, understandably. Not having health insurance is scary. That's why it was so critical to pass legislation to make sure people have it.

We all know how the game is played at this point: Conservatives invent half-baked conspiracy theories and faux scandals to get all bent out of shape about, in order to rustle up votes they couldn't get with a sober-minded examination of policy differences between the parties. Birds got to fly, fish got to swim, etc. But for the love of Reagan, could you do that without causing your own people to fear for their very lives? These folks give you their time, their money and their votes. The least you can do for them is not cause them to stress out for no good reason.

Why You Should Leave Your Kids at the Park

Lenore Skenazy — Thu, 16 May 2013 14:41:00 GMT

This Saturday is the fourth annual "Take Our Children to the Park...and Leave Them There Day."

For real.

The idea is that at around 10 a.m. parents take their kids to—as you might expect from the name of this holiday—their local park. And then they leave them there.

Not if the kids are babies, of course. Not even if they're toddlers. But if they're at least seven or eight years old, why NOT leave them there with the other kids gathering? It could be their first chance to finally do that thing we did as kids without thinking twice: Play.

And by "play" I mean: Stand around, get bored, wonder what to do, wish there was an Xbox around, feel hungry, feel a little too hot or cold, feel mad at mom for not organizing something "really" fun, like a trip to Chuck E. Cheese, feel bad all around, realize the other kids are feeling bad too, and then—in desperation—do something.

Start a game of tag. Or basketball. Or fairies versus witches. And suddenly, those bored kids who were desperate to go home don't want to go home at all. They want to KEEP playing— with any luck, for the rest of their childhoods.

Playing is that powerful. It's addictive. It's what children have done since the beginning of time...till about a generation ago, when we decided, as a country, that letting kids go outside on their own is just "too dangerous."

Do you know how many kids play outside on their own these days? One study I read said that in a typical week, the number is down to six percent. That's kids ages nine to 13—the sweet spot for goofing around and, incidentally, becoming independent. But instead of exercising their bodies and minds and ability to organize ANYTHING on their own, including a couple hours of free time, most kids are either supervised in leagues or stuck inside, usually with a screen.

One reason for this lockdown is that parents today are so scared of predators. They believe—or so I've been screamed at—that if Saturday is "announced" as kids-outside day, predators will celebrate by circling the parks in white, windowless vans.

The fact that we are enjoying the lowest crime rate in decades has not gotten through. A Pew Study on gun violence released just the other day said: “Firearm homicide rates in the late 2000s were equal to those not seen since the early 1960s.” That’s right—gun crime is down to the level it was BEFORE COLOR TV.

The Pew study added that most Americans (especially women) believe crime keeps going up, even though the crime rate is now LOWER than when most of today's parents were kids.

What's higher is the number of times you will see the Cleveland kidnapping victims on TV. Desperate for ratings, the media bombard us with the most searing images it can find. And no matter how rare these heart-sickening stories are—the Newtown tragedy, the Marathon bombing—if you see them for weeks and weeks on end every time you look at a screen, it starts feeling as if they're happening all the time. On TV, they are.

But it is actually safer for kids to play than not to play. Play is good for the brain—it makes kids into problem solvers. Play is good for the body—it makes kids less obese. Exposure to dirt builds the immune system. And don't obsess about accidents: More kids go to the hospital from falling out of bed than trees.

So this Saturday, take your kids to the park...and leave them there.

Sunday, they can bike there on their own.

Stop Saying Women Don't Like Game of Thrones Already

Alyssa Rosenberg — Wed, 15 May 2013 18:42:03 GMT

Game of Thrones is one of the most outrageously enjoyable shows on television right now, not least because of its incredible roster of female characters, from medieval Girl Scout Arya Stark (Maisie Williams) to court manipulator Lady Olenna Redwyne (Diana Rigg). But what's incredibly not-fun is how much stupid writing the show has inspired about female television watchers, and what we like or don't like.

The latest attempt to explain Game of Thrones in relation to All Ladies comes courtesy of Thrillist's Renata Sellitti in a piece entitled "Why Girls Hate Game Of Thrones: The reasons she throws shade on your medieval man show." Her arguments include such gems as "We hate gross things. Know what's gross? Screwing your sibling," in reference to the relationship between twins Cersei and Jaime Lannister, girl-trolling like "It’s hard to follow," or nerd-baiting, including "It reminds us of the kids that used to play magic cards in the cafeteria. And people who go to Renaissance festivals." At least Sellitti has the originality to attribute new obnoxious ideas to all women who watch television, though she doesn't reach the heights of originality scaled by the New York Times' Ginia Bellafante, who suggested when the show premiered in 2011 of the incest and prostitution plotlines "that all of this illicitness has been tossed in as a little something for the ladies, out of a justifiable fear, perhaps, that no woman alive would watch otherwise."

This kind of treatment of women as if they're narrow, fantasy-averse, or pervy, makes me want to slowly and carefully lower my forehead to my desk repeatedly in imitation of Mad Men's Peggy Olson (to use a Sunday night prestige show reference Bellafante might appreciate). Bellafante may not have ever met "a single woman who has stood up in indignation at her book club and refused to read the latest from Lorrie Moore unless everyone agreed toThe Hobbit first," and Sellitti may believe that "Eating a giant drumstick and drinking out of a goblet is cool, just not every Sunday night for three months straight." But there's something bizarre about the inability to imagine that some women dig stories about swords and sorcery, even to the extent that we'll strap on custom costumes ourselves, not just gather in front of the television on Sunday nights to watch other people wear them.

Did it occur to Sellitti that some of us tune into Game of Thrones precisely because it is like a soap opera, except with a wider range of roles available to women? Or that, for the straight ladies, the show offers up an unusual amount of man candy, particularly in its third season? Maybe we're actually interested in what will happen when Danaerys Targaryen starts liberating slaves and conquering cities. Maybe want to know if Tyrion Lannister can find a way to pay off the Iron Bank of Braavos, or whether Arya Stark will actually get revenge on the people who murdered her friend, killed her father, and brainwashed her sister? Perhaps we're curious about things other than traditional lady business—what Sellitti calls "the romantic crap" in her advice to men to get the women in their lives on board

I'm fine leaving them with their Lorrie Moore volumes and their Mad Men episodes—in point of fact, liking The Hobbit and Game of Thrones doesn't preclude me from reading fiction by women or crushing on Ted Chaough. I just wish they wouldn't get so perturbed by those of their fellow women who like to spend a little time in Westeros.

Why I Chose Not to Get Tested for BRCA Genes

Florence Williams — Tue, 14 May 2013 22:05:59 GMT

From a healthcare perspective, Angelina’s Jolie’s case is pretty clearcut, even if her personal decisions were fraught and complex. Her insurance presumably paid for her breast-cancer gene tests because her mother died of ovarian cancer.* When women like Jolie appear to be at higher than usual risk for breast cancer, their risk factors are punched into a mathematical model and out comes a magic number that helps us make health care decisions. A first-degree relative with breast cancer is pretty much a slam-dunk, and most insurance companies will pony up the cost for Myriad’s monopoly-priced diagnostic panel.

For the rest of us, figuring out risk is trickier. The standard breast-cancer model, the Gail model, tends to underestimate risk, and doesn’t take into account all sorts of well established risk factors such as obesity, alcohol consumption, exposure to radiation, use of hormone replacement therapy and family history of breast cancer in relatives more distantly related than a sister or mother. As a baseline, the average risk of U.S. women is 12.2 percent, or the risk of one in eight women getting breast cancer if they live through old age.

When my doctor used the Gail model, my risk was slightly higher than average, about 14 percent, but neither of us found that reassuring. That’s because I have two grandmothers and a great-grandmother who died of breast cancer or ovarian cancer, which is genetically related to breast cancer. My doctor referred me me to a genetic counselor, who ran a more sophisticated risk model called the Tyrer-Cruzick that upped my estimated risk to 19.8 percent. That’s two-tenths of a percent lower than the risk that triggers the use of “high-risk” detection tools like regular MRIs in addition to mammograms. Welcome to the gray zone of risk assessment. Both my counselor and I thought I should get tested for the BRCA genes, but my insurance carrier firmly disagreed. At over $3,000, Myriad’s test is too expensive for me and most other women to get, regardless of what they and their doctors may think.

So why didn’t I just cough up the money? Isn’t my health and life worth it? A couple of reasons. For one thing, I learned that our fear of breast cancer is clouded by misconceptions. We tend to think of breast cancer as a heritable disease, but in the vast majority of cases, it’s not. Straight hereditary factors only account for about 10 percent of all breast cancers. And while the BRCA genes are the well-known poster children of risk, they get more credit than they deserve. In families with histories of breast and ovarian cancer, about half do not have BRCA mutations at all.

Given my family history, I could have a genetic flaw like the one that originated on a BRCA2 gene in 16^th century Iceland. Or my grandmothers could have inherited one of the 700 other distinct “founder effect” mutations on BRCA genes discovered in Dutch, German and Pakistani populations, among others. But it’s just as likely they had totally different genetic variants that can cause breast cancer, including TP53, PTEN, STK11/LKB1, CDH1, CHEK2, ATM, MLH1, and MSH2, or ones that are as yet undiscovered.

I decided to opt for a much cheaper panel that tested for several known genetic mutations, the dominant BRCA ones excluded thanks to Myriad’s DNA-grabbing patent. When that panel came back negative, I was relieved. Many companies offer these tests, including 23andMe, which does it for $99.

Using the models, tests and screens made me feel like I was doing something, but ultimately, they’re not terribly meaningful. It’s not even very helpful to know your magic risk number for breast cancer. Most women with lots of risk factors will never get breast cancer, and many without the big risk factors will get it nonetheless. In other words, many of the standard risk factors (early puberty, late menopause, obesity, older maternal age, obesity, smoking) are fairly useless. The reason is that we still don’t know really know what causes breast cancer. But at least most of us don’t have Jolie’s BRCA gene (it occurs in 1 in 500 people), and for that, we should be thankful.

Correction, May 14, 2013: This post originally stated that Angelina Jolie's mother died of breast cancer. She died of ovarian cancer.

Don’t Be a Skintern. What Not to Wear to Your Summer Internship.

Katherine Goldstein — Tue, 14 May 2013 21:28:00 GMT

It’s that time of year, folks. Winter coats are being stored away, blossoms are dappling the trees, and before long, the annual summer parade of skinterns will begin.

Skintern is a term I first heard from a male colleague who disapproved of the yearly ritual of scantily-clad young women showing up to do summer internships at our company. (This was before I started working at Slate.) Every June there would be a new batch, just as clueless about appropriate office attire as those from the year before. Think dresses so clingy they leave nothing to the imagination, tops worn without a bra and tied together with string, daisy dukes, sheer harem pants, and cleavage straight out of a men’s magazine.

But don’t worry, ladies. I’m not here to judge. I’m here to help.

I spent most of my early 20s is a state of panicked confusion about what was appropriate professional attire. And I get that when it comes to office wear, summer is the worst of all: It’s hot outside, you want to look good, and often there’s no clear company dress code. But fear not! Follow the tips below, and I promise you won’t get fired—or the intern equivalent—for your sartorial artlessness. (No luck if you’re terrible at your job, though. The perfect A-line skirt can only do so much.)

Nothing see-through. No sheer shirts, dresses, or pants. If you are wearing anything that doesn’t block light, you should wear something that fully covers you underneath, like a full slip or cotton tank top.

Your bra and underwear are your business only. When it comes to thongs, lace, and patterns, to each her own. You rock whatever garments make you feel great. However, no one at the office should know anything about your preferences.

Save your skin. Mini-dresses, mini-skirts, short-shorts, halter-tops, and half-shirts should not be worn in a professional setting. (When in doubt, if the article of clothing has a hyphen in it, it is probably off-limits.) More than a hint of cleavage should be avoided—and no bare backs. Showing skin in the office does not make you look sophisticated, it makes you look naked.

Shoe choice matters. I’m less bothered by sneakers and flip flops than laceup, over-the-knee boots and sexy four-inch heels. You may have picked a wonderfully appropriate skirt or dress, so continue the winning streak by saving the glittery platform sandals for another occasion, like pole dancing class.

The shorts conundrum. I am unable to offer you a hard and fast rule about shorts. I wear (appropriate-length) shorts to work. My boss does too, because “What else are you supposed to wear when it’s 90 degrees outside?” Slate’s HR manager, however, says shorts are a no-no—though she would not stage a shorts intervention unless the offending culottes were “distracting.” Since opinions vary, this brings me to my next point.

When in doubt, ask. I hire and manage some interns during the summer, and exactly one intern has asked me what was appropriate to wear to the office—and I respected her for asking. A friendly HR manager, internship coordinator, or person you report to should be happy to give you a few guidelines specific to your office, especially if it means she won’t be getting an eyeful en route to the coffee machine.

Now that you are armed with this essential knowledge, go forth into the workplace and impress everyone you meet with your hard work and keen intellect. Ladies, I will see you on the other side of the glass ceiling.

Cable News Is Pale, Male, and Stale

Amanda Marcotte — Tue, 14 May 2013 17:30:12 GMT

When Media Matters counted all the guests to appear on 13 cable evening news shows on CNN, MSNBC and Fox in April 2013, their mission was to chronicle what the face of an “expert” looks like. It turns out it looks disproportionately white and male: Caucasian men made up 58 percent of cable news guests, although they are only 31 percent of the population. This problem persisted across the networks. CNN had the biggest diversity issue—62 percent of its guests were white men—but MSNBC did only slightly better, inviting white, male guests 54 percent of the time.

The researchers broke down the results by show. On all 13 programs, male guests outnumbered women. On 12 of the 13 shows, white people were overrepresented. All In with Chris Hayes was the only exception. According to the Census, non-Hispanic whites make up 63 percent of the population, and they were 59 percent of Hayes' guests. Hayes did better than his competitors and colleagues on gender diversity as well, with 41 percent of his guests being women. (On that front, Rachel Maddow was his closest competitor, bringing in 37 percent female guests.) God only knows how much worse it would be if reproductive rights weren’t constantly demanding media attention.

The white maleness of the cable news circuit creates a self-perpetuating cycle. When most of the “expert” faces we see are white and male, white maleness gets associated with the concept of expertise. This, in turn, makes it harder for the producers of the shows to strive for diversity. Consciously or unconsciously, the people who book guests may worry that if they don’t deliver enough white male faces, audiences won’t perceive their shows as expert-heavy. So they bring on more white men, continuing the process by which white maleness and expertise are strongly, and wrongly, associated.

One way for producers to throw a wrench into this cycle is to set diversity as a deliberate goal. It also helps to cover more stories that hold special significance for women and people of color. But the real trick to it may just be thinking of women and people of color as potential experts on all sorts of issues—on tax rates, congressional budgets and foreign policy, for instance, as well as on poverty, racism, and reproductive rights. If cable news leads the way, the imagined link between white maleness and expertise can be broken.

Angelina Jolie Removed Her Breasts to Save Her Life. Some Fans Wish She Hadn't.

Amanda Hess — Tue, 14 May 2013 14:01:37 GMT

Today, Angelina Jolie published a piece in the New York Times about her decision to undergo a preventive double mastectomy last month. As a carrier of a gene mutation called BRCA1, Jolie cut her chances of contracting breast cancer from 87 percent to under 5 percent by undergoing the procedure. I felt so honored to read Jolie’s detailed first-person account of her experience, as well as her advocacy for all the women around the world to gain access to the too-expensive tests and procedures that have empowered her to fight for her own life. Those warm feelings were soon deflated by some of the unexpectedly nasty commentary that pooled around her story. Commenters snarked that Jolie had received a “boob job.” Some suggested that her medical emergency was just a tabloid ruse to cover up elective breast implants. Others morbidly asked after the whereabouts of the breast tissue removed from her body. “RIP Angelina’s boobs” was a typical ignorant comment. Said one commenter on a Jezebel post about the op-ed, “How many guys stopped reading as soon as they realized Angelina Jolie has no breasts—she's dead to me!"

I’d like to dismiss these commenters as trolls, but their attitudes are unfortunately pervasive in our culture, and they don’t just represent a personal affront to Angelina Jolie, a veteran of such inappropriate body commentary. These comments affect every woman who has undergone a similar procedure—every woman who has overcome the pain, the fear, and the constant and casual reminders that her breasts are more valuable than her life. Really, these comments affect all women who have seen their bodies reduced to mere objects for others to consume. As scholar of the stars Anne Helen Petersen says, “Remember: What we talk about when we talk about celebrities is, as ever, ourselves.” Some of us are not speaking very highly of the women in our lives today.

Jolie, for her part, addressed aesthetic concerns straightforwardly in her op-ed. (She also made a worrisome reference to "wonderful holistic doctors working on alternatives to surgery," which I can only hope won't steer readers away from the valid medical treatment they may need). “There have been many advances in this procedure in the last few years, and the results can be beautiful,” Jolie wrote. “On a personal note, I do not feel any less of a woman. I feel empowered that I made a strong choice that in no way diminishes my femininity.” It’s powerful to hear Jolie own this choice as beautiful. But I’d go further to say that, regardless of the aesthetic aftermath of breast cancer surgeries—and the individual choices every woman makes in how to deal with them—the results of these procedures are necessarily and breathtakingly beautiful. Not only does this procedure not diminish a woman’s femininity in any way—it highlights her humanity. As Jolie put it, “Brad was at the Pink Lotus Breast Center, where I was treated, for every minute of the surgeries. We managed to find moments to laugh together. We knew this was the right thing to do for our family and that it would bring us closer. And it has.”

And yet, perversely, some fans feel as if a part of Jolie has been stolen from them. One well-meaning but misguided commenter told me on Twitter yesterday: “Happy to hear she's giving herself much better odds. As a guy, I will miss her lovely curves though.” (The reconstructive surgery she described presumably restored her curves.) I can tell you from experience that when a person you love makes it through that surgery, they have never looked more lovely. I don’t mean that in a strictly emotional sense—it registers physically, too. The way that they look at you when they wake up. The breaths they take. Their smile. The way they move through space. You don’t miss anything: You are reminded of all of the wonderful things that you are not missing. It's gorgeous.

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Tue, 14 May 2013 14:01:37 GMT

Applauding Kermit Gosnell’s Guilty Verdict

Emily Bazelon — Mon, 13 May 2013 22:24:05 GMT

Kermit Gosnell has been found guilty of murder for the deaths of three babies who were born, and then killed, in his hellhole of a Pennsylania abortion clinic. From Fox:

“Prosecution experts said one was nearly 30 weeks along when it was aborted and it was so big that Gosnell allegedly joked it could ‘walk to the bus.’ A second fetus was said to be alive for some 20 minues before a clinic worker snipped its neck. A third was born in a toilet and was moving after another clinic employee grabbed it and severed its spinal cord, according to testimony.”

That’s all you need to know to welcome this verdict. There is nothing controversial about finding a man guilty who killed live babies. Gosnell was also found guilty of involuntary manslaughter for the death of a patient who died of an overdose in his care. Her death is a reflection of the abusive, repulsive scene of his clinic, a place of unspeakable conditions. The grand jury report that laid out the charges against Gosnell is excruciating to read, a document of horrors visited on poor and desperate women and innocent newborns. So are the accounts of the Pennsylvania agencies that dropped the ball on investigating and catching this man.

We can debate whether Gosnell’s trial got enough press coverage—whether the mainstream media shied away from putting it on the front page for fear of putting abortion in a bad light. But Gosnell’s misdeeds aren’t about legal abortion. They’re about killing babies after viability—after they could live outside their mothers’ wombs. In Pennsylvania, abortions after 24 weeks are illegal. It’s important to remember why women were driven to Gosnell’s clinic. But you can fully support a legal right to abortion—and greater access to it—and simultaneously applaud this guilty verdict. The women and babies of Pennsylvania are safer with Gosnell facing many years in prison or the death penalty. That is front page news.

Narcissistic Is Writing an Article in Time About How Those Rude Millennials Are Ignoring You

Amanda Marcotte — Mon, 13 May 2013 20:55:00 GMT

Elspeth Reeve at the Atlantic Wire has some fun dismantling Joel Stein's "get off my lawn" Time article, in which Stein denounces the millennial generation as a bunch of self-satisfied narcissists. (It's behind a paywall, so this famously broke generation is unlikely to find out what mean things Stein is saying about it.) Reeve objects to Stein's evidence, but the real meat of her post chronicles the long history of articles like Stein's—essays in which a member of the older generation dismisses the youngsters as self-involved. The WWII generation did it to the Boomers, the Boomers to Generation X, and now Generation X to the Millennials.

What becomes apparent in all these articles, which go back at least to 1907, is the egotism not of the accused generation, but of the writer. The writers invariably fancy themselves part of a generation that, unlike the youth of today, has deep thoughts and knows the value of hard work. Stein even starts off his piece by saying, "I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow." But even though he knows it's unlikely that every generation is less awesome than the one before it, he's going to plow right ahead and say it anyway.

If one bothers to step outside of the cycle of whining, the more honest conclusion is that today’s kids are pretty great people, especially compared to the rest of us screw-ups. Millennials are more liberal than the generations before, suggesting a shift away from the politics of resentment and toward a politics of generosity and social support. They're pretty responsible, too. They're the ones who managed to cut the teenage pregnancy rate by 42 percent since 1990, and even though there are as many of them as there are Baby Boomers, they managed to come of age without creating the same massive spike in the crime rate. Even though they're starting out their adult lives in an period of economic crisis, they're an optimistic crew. Frankly, as someone from the tail end of Generation X, my main problem with this generous, optimistic, tolerant generation is that all their goody-two-shoes stuff is insufferable. I'll just be sitting in the corner with my punk records and inability to say anything that's not drenched with irony, secretly glad that such good people are taking over the world.

Early Formula Is Not the Enemy, Can Help Mothers Breast-Feed Longer

Jessica Grose — Mon, 13 May 2013 18:09:00 GMT

Last summer Mayor Bloomberg said he was going to tell hospitals to keep infant formula locked up in cabinets to encourage new mothers to breast-feed. He might want to reconsider: A new study shows that limited early formula supplementation might actually help some moms breast-feed longer. Doctors took 40 babies who were between 1 and 2 days old, exclusively breast-feeding, and had lost between 5 and 10 percent of their birth weight. Twenty of those babies were given only breast milk. The other 20 were given a small dose of formula via a syringe (to avoid nipple confusion) after they breast-fed—not enough to make them full and possibly reject breast milk at their next feeding. These formula moms only supplemented their breast milk until their mature milk came in.

The results were that moms who had supplemented their breast milk in the first days were less likely to use formula down the road than the mothers who were exclusively breast-feeding during those difficult early hours. At three months, 95 percent of the babies who had received formula in those first few days were still getting some breast milk, compared with only 69 percent of the babies that had received no formula. And as an added benefit, the babies who were given formula lost slightly less weight in the short run.

It’s difficult to know exactly why that tiny bit of formula in the early days made the difference, but one speculation is that it eased anxiety about the babies gaining weight. Since many moms stop breast-feeding because they’re concerned that their children aren’t getting enough food, getting that limited boost from formula in the early days gave them the assurance to keep going with breastfeeding, the study’s authors hypothesized. They had a potential escape valve of formula, so could relax.

Forty women is a small sample, and as the authors point out, their sample size was mostly white and Asian, and more educated than the general population. And it doesn’t answer all the questions about early use of formula–say, whether it is associated with more allergies. But this is at least a rare infant study that was able to use a randomized sample. And even with these measured caveats, the takeaway here seems to be that we can open our minds to the possibility that a little flexibility in feeding can lead to more confident moms and better outcomes for babies.

Game of Thrones Lady Power Rankings: Week Seven

Alyssa Rosenberg — Mon, 13 May 2013 16:24:43 GMT

I think we can all agree that no one had a worse week in the Game of Thrones than Theon Greyjoy, who lost his manbits as part of a mysterious man's campaign to totally destroy him. But this was an episode full of continuing shifts in the power rankings for the ladies, from Talisa's pregnancy to Brienne's fight with an actual bear. From top to bottom, here are the women winning—and losing—the Game of Thrones:

1. Daenerys Targaryen: Dany may have been advised to blood her Unsullied early, but the Breaker of Chains and Mother of Dragons is clearly feeling a little feisty herself. “You will release every slave in Yunkai," she tells the Yunkish emissary, who is trying to buy her off. "Every man, woman, and child shall be given as much food, clothing and property as they can carry as payment for their years of servitude.” When he refuses, her dragons get excitable. “You swore me safe conduct," the man tells her, panicked. “But my dragons made no promises. And you threatened their mother," Dany shoots back. A whole bunch of gold and the potential conquest of a new city is one heck of a Mother's Day gift.

2. Margaery Tyrell: Okay, so her plans to marry her brother off to Sansa Stark may have failed. But Margaery has good advice to offer to the younger woman—and her plotting is far from over. “My son will be king," Margaery tells Sansa. "Sons learn from their mothers. I plan to teach mine a great deal.” In the Game of Thrones, patience, and the ability to recover from setbacks, are some of the greatest virtues.

3. Melisandre: “My mother’s a tavern wench,” Gendry tells the woman who bought him from the Brotherhood Without Banners as they sail through the wreckage of Stannis Baratheon's fleet. “Mine was a slave," Melisandre counters, reminding him that he should never count himself out. "So was I. Bought and sold, scourged and branded, until the Lord of Light lifted me up." And she warns Gendry, "There is power in a king's blood." It's not clear what Melisandre has planned. But given the way she's talking to Gendry, maybe he isn't the one who should worried about what happens when she gets her work underway.

4. Talisa: Robb Stark's wife hasn't been much of a player since she married the King in the North. But everything changes after she reveals she’s pregnant. Now, Talisa's the woman who will give the Starks an heir, a position that makes her, if nothing else, an extraordinarily powerful pawn.

5. Brienne of Tarth: Normally, getting tossed in a pit with a bear with only a wooden sword to defend yourself makes for a terrible day in Westeros, a country with a lot of bad days to choose from. But this day, and this torment, happen to make Jaime Lannister discover that he cares rather a lot for Brienne. They've bonded on their road trip. Now that they’re back together and on the same page, they'll make a fearsome pairing.

6. Ygritte: One moment you're smooching your boyfriend on top of a giant ice wall and teasing him about his country's style of fighting. The next, Orrell, who is the archetype of a creepy Westerosi Nice Guy, is trying to get between the two of you. He tells Ygritte, of Jon, "You like his pretty hair and his pretty eyes? You think pretty’s going to make you happy? You won’t love him so much when you find out what he really is.” And the thing is, he may be right.

7. Sansa Stark: All season long, all I've wanted is for Sansa Stark to wake up and recognize what's happening around her. Now she has, bitterly castigating herself for her childhood dreams. “They seemed so nice in their painted armor," Sansa says of her romance with King's Landing. “All those candles burning in all those windows. I’m stupid. Stupid little girl, with stupid dreams, who never learns.” She may be terrified by the prospect of marriage to—and sex with—Tyrion Lannister. But with Margaery there to comfort her, and a clear-eyed assessment of her life, Sansa might just begin to find her way.

8. Shae: Sansa isn't the only one to get a dose of misfortune out of her betrothal. Tyrion's engagement leaves Shae to give her lover some real talk about their relationship. “I am a Lannister of Casterly Rock,” Tyrion says. “And I'm Shae, the funny whore," she rebuts. And when he offers her a home and children, Shae's assessment of this fairy story is withering in the extreme. “Children? You think I want children who can never see their father? Who would be killed in their sleep if their grandfather found out about them?” "You'll always be my lady," Tyrion tells her, trying to substitute sentiment for logistics. "I'm your whore," Shae tells him. Let's hope the energy from that anger helps her find a way out of her predicament.

9. Arya Stark: I love the younger Stark girl, but tonight, Arya finds out that spunkiness is not always her friend. After telling Thors of Myr that her god is Death, Arya makes a run for it, only to end up in the custody of Sandor Clegane, aka the Hound. "Kick all you like, Wolf Girl," he tells her. "It won't make a difference." We just got a setup for a buddy comedy even blacker than the one Brienne and Jaime lived through.

10. Osha: Poor Osha. Bran's blowing her off. The Reeds are forcing her to go North. And in this episode, we find out just how much she lost. "I had a man once, a good man. Bruni his name was," Osha explains to her charges. "He came in through the back of the hut. Only it wasn’t Bruni, not really. His skin was pale, like a dead man’s. His eyes bluer than clear sky. He came at me, grabbed me by the neck and squeezed so hard I could feel the life slipping out of me. I don’t know how I got the knife. But when I did I stuck it deep into his heart. And he hardly seemed to notice. I had to burn our hut down with him inside." All those Westerosi women complaining about their arranged marriages have no idea what pain can follow when you get to choose the person you're with, especially when winter is coming.

This Mother's Day, Give Mom the Gift of Ending the Mommy Wars

Amanda Hess — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:45:00 GMT

I’m looking forward to reminding my mom how much I love her this weekend—as Hallmarky as Mother’s Day is, there aren’t enough minutes in the year to express my appreciation of my mom. But my enthusiasm is tempered by the increasingly ridiculous mom-themed marketing pushes that have been hitting my inbox in preparation for the holiday. I teared up watching Google’s Mother’s Day ad featuring Google Plus—I am not made of stone—and yet I remain unconvinced that I should honor my mother by inviting her to the most irrelevant social network on the Internet. Then there is the press release factory that keeps trying to sell me on an interview with a marketing executive about “the many ways in which Mom has transformed—her responsibilities, her values, even her personality.” It’s almost as if mothers aren’t real people—they’re just monolithic “mom” now, something marketers create to sell products

I suppose it could be worse: I also heard from a porn company that’s celebrating the holiday by “giving away free rentals of three of the studio’s most popular MILF scenes."

Of course, Americans have been raising the alarm about the commercialization of Mother’s Day since the 1920s, when Anna Jarvis—a pioneer of the holiday—promoted the holiday as one of “sentiment, not profit” and dismissed greeting cards as “a poor excuse for the letter you are too lazy to write.” But even before Jarvis coined “Mother’s Day,” her own mom, Anna Reed Jarvis, organized something more radical: Her “Mothers' Work Days” in the 1850s were meant to organize women around social justice issues in their communities. As Stefanie Coontz wrote in her terrific 1992 history of the holiday, the apostrophe initially fell at the end of “mothers,” and that was a significant choice: Mothers’ Day was organized under a collective spirit, and “celebrated the extension of women's moral concerns beyond the home.” It was only when Mother’s Day moved to celebrate the individual mom by focusing on “sentimentalism and private family relations,” Coontz writes, that it became “so vulnerable to commercial exploitation.”

Today’s moms are facing down a new permutation of that commercial exploitation: An incessant stream of click-bait trend stories that focus on the private family choices of mothers, group them into factions based on a few scant identifiers (Formula Feeders! Feminist Housewives! Pregnant CEOs!), then politicize their every move as another shot fired in the Mommy Wars. These narratives simultaneously fail to treat mothers as complex individuals and fall short of any real collective consciousness. It is all in-fighting: Click, click! Only when Mother’s Day rolls around are we instructed to treat all mothers on the same happy-go-lucky terms: Here. We bought you all the same flower arrangement.

So this Mother’s Day, while I’m tempted to tell my mom how much she’s meant to me as her daughter, I also want to remember to celebrate her as a wonderful person—one whose tireless social activism extends far beyond my own existence. That’s not the most compelling trend story I’ve ever pitched, but I think it would sound nice in a letter.

The Best Description of Depression You’ll Ever Read, in Comic Form

Katy Waldman — Fri, 10 May 2013 21:24:37 GMT

Allie Brosh is back! She’s the genius behind the blog and web comic Hyperbole and a Half, and we’ve missed her since October 2011, when she disappeared from the Internet to battle depression.

It is a truth universally acknowledged that depression sucks. In his memoir Killing the Black Dog, the poet Les Murray describes his fragmentary thoughts, filtered through the disorder, as “kelp marinated in pure pain.” But out of that darkness Brosh has given us a searingly smart and precise account of what it’s like to not “feel anything about anything,” to be stuck in a “boring, lonely, meaningless void.” And she ends on a note—not of hope, exactly, but of the precondition for hope, which is a sense that nothing is definitively known or fixed. We love her post, and we hope you do too.