In a Washington Post review of Wendy Shalit’s new book, “Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It’s Not Bad to Be Good,” Jennifer Howard writes that Shalit engages in “some very dubious sociology.” Here’s my favorite part:

Even more detached from reality is Shalit’s takedown of older feminists. These are the good ladies, second- and third-wavers, who run organizations such as NOW and who have fought for years to give women the same chances as men — not, as Shalit would have it, just the chance to sleep around like men. She attacks them for “the concessions they made to pornography” and for being “so committed to the idea of casual sex as liberation” that they’re baffled by younger, more restrained women.

“As the third-wavers continue to advocate a public, crude sexuality and younger girls feel oppressed by how public sexuality is, the two sets of women are on course for an inevitable collision,” Shalit writes. This is bone-headed conservatism at its most offensive. Last time I checked my Feminist Manual, letting it all hang out in public didn’t appear on the must-do list. Nor did making concessions to pornographers, but maybe I missed that section. Shalit would have us believe that feminism is not a dirty word in her vocabulary. Yet she seems surprised when a Wesleyan undergraduate “rejects sexual exhibitionism even though she identifies as a feminist.”

Imagine that! A feminist who doesn’t take her clothes off. What is this world coming to?

For more on Shalit’s book and the younger women she quotes, see Jessica Valenti’s post from July.

Rachel Kramer Bussel interviews Heather Corrina, a 37-year-old Seattle resident who for the past eight years has been providing teens with non-judgmental and accurate information about safer sex via her website, Scarleteen.com.

Corrina has a new book out, “S.E.X.: The All-You-Need-To-Know Progressive Sexuality Guide to Get You Through High School and College.”

Asked how her identity as a feminist factors into her sex-ed philosophy, Corrina replies:

It has a pretty strong influence. One of the biggest errors we see with both sex education and with cultural sexual ethics and practices is that it’s usually done in the context of the prevailing oppressions. For instance, most sex ed is glaringly heterosexist, and presumes a heterosexual default. Much of it is overtly or covertly noninclusive when it comes to class, race, sex, gender and orientation.

Sex is often framed with some pretty decrepit and dangerous gender roles and stereotyping: assuming or encouraging female passivity or male dominance in sex and relationships, heralding vaginal intercourse as a be-all-end-all, setting the male/female romantic relationship above and beyond all others, presenting sexuality — particularly for women — as something a partner gives to you, or you to them, rather than something which exists all on its own and is sometimes chosen to be shared.

We don’t get to decide if society oppresses us as a class, be that by sex, by orientation, by color, by economic class. But we absolutely do get to decide that we are only going to be in intimate, interpersonal relationships based on equality. So, even though women are still taught to be largely passive sexually — even the vagina, a very active muscle, is more often presented as a passive receptacle than not! — we can see the negatives in that, for women and men, and opt for better.

*Sigh.* If only government-funded websites were written by smart, thoughtful sex educators …

Emma Watson is; Hillary Duff is not. Because that would be, like, icky.

Human Genome Project Yields Important Results: “In a long-delayed harvest from the human genome project, researchers say they have found six new sites of variation in the genome that increase the risk of breast cancer,” reports The New York Times. “Together with already known genes, the discovery means that a sizable fraction of the overall genetic risk of breast cancer may now have been accounted for, researchers say, and much of the rest could be captured in a few years.”

Nicholas Wade continues: “The findings do not point to any new treatment and are too little understood to serve as the basis of a diagnostic test. But they are a critical step toward understanding the biology of breast cancer, scientists say, from which new treatments should emerge.”

Dairy Council to No Longer Promote Milk’s Link to Weight Loss: Also from the NYT: “A national advertising campaign that associates dairy products with weight loss will be curtailed because research does not support the claim, according to the Federal Trade Commission. The advertisements, conceived by the promotional arm of the dairy industry and overseen by the Agriculture Department, feature slogans like ‘Milk your diet. Lose weight!’ and suggest that three servings of dairy products a day can help people be slim.”

Report Links Discriminatory Beliefs Against Women with Vulnerability to AIDS: A new study released by Physicians for Human Rights connects “widespread discriminatory views against women in Botswana and Swaziland to sexual risk-taking and, in turn, to extremely high HIV prevalence.”

The study, Epidemic of Inequality: Women’s Rights and HIV/AIDS in Botswana & Swaziland: An Evidence-based Report on Gender Inequity, Stigma and Discrimination, reports that 75 percent of HIV-positive 15- to 25-year-olds in sub-Saharan Africa are female.

How Much More “Proof” is Needed?: A California district attorney is under fire for refusing to bring charges against members of the De Anza College baseball team involved in the rape of a 17-year-old girl who was nearly passed out from drinking during the time of the assault. Three young women pushed their way into the room where the girl was being assaulted by one man as seven other men looked on. The women took the victim to the hospital, but could not identify the person assaulting the girl.

California National Organization for Women and the National Coalition Against Violent Athletes have protested in front of the District Attorney Dolores Carr’s office in San Jose, demanding she reconsider, and the girl at the center of the case said this week that she wants her day in court. Carr insists that there’s not enough evidence to bring charges, in part because the team members are not cooperating and witnesses have provided different accounts of what took place. Read more at Broadsheet.

Foreign Correspondents and Sexual Abuse: “Women have risen to the top of war and foreign reportage. They run bureaus in dodgy places and do jobs that are just as dangerous as those that men do. But there is one area where they differ from the boys — sexual harassment and rape,” writes Judith Matloff at Columbia Journalism Review. “Female reporters are targets in lawless places where guns are common and punishment rare. Yet the compulsion to be part of the macho club is so fierce that women often don’t tell their bosses.”

Men Make More Money than Women on Kibbutzim: “Although the communal farms were once thought of as egalitarian communities, the current reality shows a different picture,” according to a study by professors at the University of Haifa’s Institute for Research on the Kibbutz. “Fifty-three percent of male kibbutz members earn more than the NIS 7,300 monthly average gross wage, while only 23% of women members do so. 66% of the men think their work provides a proper livelihood while only 47% of the women do.”

New York’s Schools for Pregnant Girls Will Close: “The schools’ demise, like their origins, may be a sign of changing times,” reports The New York Times. “Pregnancy schools across the country appear to be slowly fading away, partly stemming from the decade-long declining rate of teenage pregnancy and partly because of the idea that the girls should not be segregated from other students.”

Urban Theater Puts Teens Center Stage: “At a time when young women are often the silent subject of a cacophonous public debate — the scandal over radio host Don Imus, sex education in public schools, accusations of misogyny directed toward hip-hop culture — ViBe Theater Experience provides them the chance to speak for themselves,” Courtney Martin writes at Women’s eNews. The 5-year-old theater group has produced 15 full-length plays for more than 4,000 audience members and has worked with more than 100 urban teens between the ages of 13 and 19.

Wish List: “Girls Who Bite Back: Witches, Mutants, Slayers and Freaks”: I just came across this review, though it looks like “Girls Who Bite Back” was first published a few years ago. Definitely a must for the summer-reading pile!

They are well-worn platitudes: Image is everything in modern society. Women are nothing but sex objects in our mediated world. Yet I guarantee these familiar phrases will take on a new meaning and depth after you read Allison Stokke’s horror story.

By day, Stokke, 18, is a star track athlete at her California high school and a national record holder in the pole vault. But on the Internet, Stokke has become another objectified young woman who has no control over her image.

The Washington Post has a disturbing front-page account of how the star athlete found herself the subject of unwanted attention. The wave began when a popular sports blog — which also post photos of “hot chicks” — published, without permission, a photo of Stokke that was taken by a sports journalist for a California prep track website. Dozens of blogs and websites either re-posted or pointed to the photo, according to the Post.

“Within days, hundreds of thousands of Internet users had searched for Stokke’s picture and leered,” writes Eli Saslow.

And Stokke, who two years ago successfully got a photo of herself removed from a message board when a fan posted it along with a lewd comment, soon realized that this situation was far beyond her control. A search for her name in Yahoo! revealed almost 310,000 hits, writes Saslow. “It’s not like I could e-mail everybody on the Internet,” Stokke said.

And you can imagine how crude the comments have been. Now Stokke is afraid to leave the house alone and her father, a lawyer, scans message boards each day for potential stalkers. Saslow does a very good job explaining the degree of violation and its effect on Stokke and her family:

For the first week, Stokke tried to ignore the Internet attention. She kept it from her parents. She focused on graduating with a grade-point average above 4.0, on overcoming a knee injury and winning her second state title. But at track meets, twice as many photographers showed up to take her picture. The main office at Newport Harbor High School received dozens of requests for Stokke photo shoots, including one from a risqué magazine in Brazil.

Stokke read on message boards that dozens of anonymous strangers had turned her picture into the background image on their computers. She felt violated. It was like becoming the victim of a crime, Stokke said. Her body had been stolen and turned into a public commodity, critiqued in fan forums devoted to everything from hip-hop to Hollywood.

After dinner one evening in mid-May, Stokke asked her parents to gather around the computer. She gave them the Internet tour that she believed now defined her: to the unofficial Allison Stokke fan page (http://www.allisonstokke.com), complete with a rolling slideshow of 12 pictures; to the fan group on MySpace, with about 1,000 members; to the message boards and chat forums where hundreds of anonymous users looked at Stokke’s picture and posted sexual fantasies.

“All of it is like locker room talk,” said Cindy Stokke, Allison’s mom. “This kind of stuff has been going on for years. But now, locker room talk is just out there in the public. And all of us can read it, even her mother.”

And now the student who was recruited by the nation’s top schools will begin her college career having already been stripped of her privacy.

“Even if none of it is illegal, it just all feels really demeaning,” Stokke told the Post. “I worked so hard for pole vaulting and all this other stuff, and it’s almost like that doesn’t matter. Nobody sees that. Nobody really sees me.”

Check out these titles for some good reading:

Full Frontal Feminism: Interviews with Jessica Valenti, executive editor of Feministing.com and author of the new “Full Frontal Feminism: A Young Woman’s Guide to Why Feminism Matters,” ran last week at AlterNet, Salon and New York magazine.

Huffington Post is running a book excerpt, along with Valenti’s touching explanation for why the book is dedicated to “Miss Magoo.” And Valenti’s six-point manifesto for becoming a feminist is posted at The Guardian. In it she writes:

“I wanted to write the book I wish I’d read as a teenager. A book that would cut through the nonsense stereotypes and tell it like it is. A book that would talk about how amazing it is to be a feminist. And how necessary. Because I truly do believe that feminism is necessary for women to live happy, fulfilled lives — especially given the society we live in, which constantly and consistently tells women that we’re just not good enough.”

Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: Courtney Martin, a contributor to Feministing.com and other media outlets, is getting lots of press for “Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters: The Frightening New Normalcy of Hating Your Body.”

Writing in The New York Times, Holly Brubach calls it, “a smart and spirited rant that makes for thought-provoking reading.”

“She opens with some sobering statistics,” continues Brubach, “seven million American girls and women with eating disorders, and up to 70 million people worldwide.”

Brubach goes on to quote from the book: “Ninety-one percent of women recently surveyed on a college campus reported dieting; 22 percent of them dieted ‘always’ or ‘often.’ In 1995, 34 percent of high-school-age girls in the United States thought they were overweight. Today, 90 percent do.”

How Sassy Changed My Life: Kara Jesella and Marisa Meltzer, co-authors of “How Sassy Changed My Life: A Love Letter to the Greatest Teen Magazine of All Time,” appeared on NPR’s “Talk of the Nation” last week to discuss the magazine described on the program as the “antithesis of the homecoming queen, please-your-boyfriend culture. It published articles about suicide and STDs while Seventeen was still teaching girls how to get a boy to notice you.”

NPR has also published an excerpt from “How Sassy Changed My Life.” More at Venus and Media Bistro.

World Bank May Target Family Planning: “Under beleaguered President Paul D. Wolfowitz, the World Bank may be scaling back its long-standing support for family planning, which many countries consider essential to women’s health and the fight against AIDS,” reports the Los Angeles Times.

“In an internal e-mail, the bank’s team leader for Madagascar indicated that one of two managing directors appointed by Wolfowitz ordered the removal of all references to family planning from a document laying out strategy for the African nation,” the story by Nicole Gaouette continues. “And a draft of the bank’s long-term health program strategy overseen by the same official makes almost no mention of family planning, suggesting a wider rollback may be underway.”

Noting that it “sounds like possible plot from a Dan Brown novel,” the Women’s Bioethics Project points to The Guardian’s coverage of the World Bank story, which notes that the World Bank’s managing director who allegedly ordered the removal is said to have links to the Roman Catholic sect Opus Dei.

International Planned Parenthood Federation has started a letter-writing campaign in response to the World Bank’s actions.

Popular Health-Insurance Plans Punish Women: “High-deductible health insurance plans favored by many employers often wind up being an unfair burden to women, a new study says, largely because women need many routine medical exams that quickly add up,” reports the Associated Press. “The median expense for men under 45 in these plans was less than $500, but for women it was more than $1,200, according to a study by Harvard Medical School researchers.” Loved the sub-hed: “Females charged more for having reproductive organs, Harvard study finds”

High Health Costs Hit U.S. Women Harder: “American women are more likely than men to go without needed health care, because they can’t afford it, a new report finds,” reports Health Day News. “The report was released Thursday by the Commonwealth Fund, a private foundation advocating for improvements to the U.S. health system, and prepared by researchers at the National Women’s Law Center.” The study is available online.

School Ban on Anti-Gay T-Shirt Upheld: “A U.S. District Court Judge on Tuesday ruled in favor of Neuqua Valley High School’s attempts to ban a student from wearing a ‘Be Happy, Not Gay’ T-shirt. The senior wanted to wear the shirt as part of a national effort this week by Christian students to publicly oppose homosexual behavior,” reports the Chicago Tribune. Alliance for Justice, the group representing the student, plans to appeal. School officials banned the same shirt last year, prompting the student’s lawsuit.

Trust Us, We’ve Noticed: Salma Hayek tells Marie Claire (via MSNBC’s Jeannette Walls): “I think it’s terrible women are put in that position. Motherhood is not for everyone — it is for me, but there’s no reason women should feel rushed to have a child … I don’t know if you’ve noticed, but society thinks if you don’t have children, you’ve failed as a woman, even if you are CEO of a company. You’ve got to be beautiful, smart, skinny, tall, rich, successful at your job, married to the right guy — and have genius children.”

Happy Sweet 16, Teen Voices!: Feministing interviews Tori Costa, marketing director of the Boston-based Teen Voices magazine, an international feminist magazine that’s kicking off its 16th birthday with its April issue.

Barbie, At Age 48, Gets Another Makeover: “Over the years, [Mattel] has tried dozens of small changes and a few big ones. There was the reduction in bust size, a gritty new urban look with a reduction in skirt length, and, of course, there was the big breakup with longtime paramour Ken,” reports the Chicago Tribune. “On April 26, the world’s largest toy maker will unveil Barbie Girls, its first big new Barbie concept in four years.”

Key Health and Health Care Indicators: Kaiser Family Foundation released a data update this week looking at disparities in infant mortality, diabetes-related mortality and AIDS cases among African Americans and Hispanics in all 50 states and the District of Columbia. It also provides similar breakdowns showing the percentage of each group in each state that is uninsured, enrolled in Medicaid and living in poverty.

Plus: KFF has a transcript, video and podcast of a recent discussion of of Jonathan Cohn’s new book “Sick: The Untold Story of America’s Health Care Crisis — and the People Who Pay the Price.” Participants include Cohn, Susan Dentzer, senior health correspondent of “Newshour with Jim Lehrer,” and Michael Cannon, director of health policy studies at the Cato Institute.

FYI: “A fruity cocktail may not only be fun to drink but may count as health food, U.S. and Thai researchers said on Thursday,” reports Reuters. “Adding ethanol — the type of alcohol found in rum, vodka, tequila and other spirits — boosted the antioxidant nutrients in strawberries and blackberries, the researchers found. Any colored fruit might be made even more healthful with the addition of a splash of alcohol, they report in the Journal of the Science of Food and Agriculture.”

The story concluded with a little humor not typically found in Reuters health news: “The study did not address whether adding a little cocktail umbrella enhanced the effects.”

“In an emerging revolt against abstinence-only sex education, states are turning down millions of dollars in federal grants, unwilling to accept White House dictates that the money be used for classes focused almost exclusively on teaching chastity,” the Los Angeles Times reported this week.

Those states are on to something.

On Friday, a report produced by Mathematica Policy Research, Inc. for the Department of Health and Human Services noted the ineffectiveness of abstinence-only education. The study is available here in its entirety (PDF); here’s an overview that describes the impact of the four abstinence education programs under review. From the executive summary:

Findings indicate that youth in the program group were no more likely than control group youth to have abstained from sex and, among those who reported having had sex, they had similar numbers of sexual partners and had initiated sex at the same mean age. Contrary to concerns raised by some critics of the Title V, Section 510 abstinence funding, however, program group youth were no more likely to have engaged in unprotected sex than control group youth.

Scott Swenson at RH Reality Check has the reaction from all sides:

“This report should serve as the final verdict on the failure of the abstinence-only industry in this country,” said William Smith, vice president for public policy of the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the U.S. (SIECUS). “It shows, once again, that these programs fail miserably in actually helping young people behave more responsibly when it comes to their sexuality,” Smith continued.

In 1996, the federal government attached a provision to the welfare reform law establishing a federal program for abstinence-only-until-marriage programs. This program, Section 510(b) of Title V of the Social Security Act, dedicated $50 million per year to be distributed among states that choose to participate. States accepting the funds are required to match every four federal dollars with three state-raised dollars (for a total of $87.5 million annually, and $787.5 million for the eight years from fiscal year 1998 through 2006). Programs that receive the Title V funding are prohibited from discussing methods of contraception, including condoms, except in the context of failure rates.

On a call yesterday organized by the Abstinence Clearinghouse, abstinence-only proponents were clearly rocked by the potentially ruinous news in the report. High profile abstinence-only advocate, Robert Rector, led the preemptive damage-control planning. He outlined several strategies the abstinence-only movement could use to rationalize the findings in the report saying, “The other spin I think is very important is not [program] effectiveness, but rather the values that are being taught,” Rector said. Whether or not these programs work is a “bogus issue,” Rector continued.

How bogus? 10 years worth of public funding to the tune of $1.5 billion.

And the value of disseminating ineffective and sometimes dangerous and demeaning misinformation (PDF)? Priceless.

Last month we pointed to a study in the journal Pediatrics that found increasing rates of childhood obesity in the United States may be contributing to an earlier onset of puberty in girls.

Writing in Women’s eNews, Molly M. Ginty looks more closely at the Pediatrics study and at another March study, published in the Journal of Adolescent Health, that found girls’ girth is also likely responsible for earlier onsets of menstruation: The average age of first menstruation, writes Ginty, declined from 13.3 years in girls born before 1920 to 12.4 years in those born during the early 1980s.

Though research linking weight to puberty dates back for centuries, the recent Pediatrics paper was the first to peg which comes first. It indicated weight gain triggers early puberty, instead of early puberty triggering weight gain.

In the United States in the early 1800s, breast buds and menarche arrived around ages 13 and 16 respectively. Those changes now come around ages 9 and a half and 12 and a half.

Scientists say girls are eating more food and putting on pounds, which is causing their bodies to boost production of the hormone leptin.

“Leptin is made in fat cells and is necessary for normal reproductive function,” says Paul Kaplowitz, chief of endocrinology at the Children’s National Medical Center in Washington and author of “Early Puberty in Girls,” published in 2004 by Random House. “There’s an evolutionary benefit to this. You don’t want to get pregnant if there isn’t enough food for you to carry a pregnancy successfully. You would risk the baby’s life and your own.”

Ginty also covers other factors that can accelerate puberty, including exposure to chemicals, birth weight, genetics and home environment — researchers have found that absence of a father and the presence of an unrelated male, such as stepfather speeds up the process.

A large-scale study is in the works:

To better track the physical causes of puberty, the Bethesda, Md.-based National Institutes of Health has launched a study of 14,000 children born in 2001 that is “longitudinal” and will follow its subjects over time. The results of this research will not be available for 10 years or more.

The national leadership of Delta Zeta sorority has filed a lawsuit against DePauw University — less than three weeks after the university severed ties with the national organization following the sorority’s “membership review.”

That review, you might recall, led to the eviction of almost two dozen sorority members, some of whom claimed selection was made based on appearance and popularity.

The New York Times earlier this month reported that Delta Zeta national officers said they would no longer be communicating with news organizations, but they’re making a big PR effort now.

“The wrong message is out there about Delta Zeta,” Cindy Menges, executive director of the sorority, told USA Today. “I am disappointed that there is not as much interest in the facts as there has been interest in a story that’s been created by the public at our expense.”

Menges also responded to questions in this Q&A. Asked whether decisions had to do with physical appearance, Menges responded: “These women are proud of who they are, but this campus created an image of Delta Zetas that was unfair, and in that environment our women could not be successful. Never ever would we want that (message) conveyed.”

Huh?

Delta Zeta filed the claim in U.S. District Court in Terre Haute, alleging DePauw of breaking contracts and defaming the sorority. “As a direct and proximate result of defendants conduct, Delta Zeta has incurred substantial harm to its business, including current and prospective financial losses,” the suit contends. The sorority is demanding a public apology, unspecified damages and a return to the university’s Greek System. It also wants DePauw to acknowledge that Delta Zeta “did not make any decision based on appearance and race,” according to media reports.

Senior Katie Holloway, who quit the sorority just before the names of the evicted were announced, said, “The graceful thing would be for the sorority to accept this and let it lie.”

DePauw officials said the suit lacks merit.

“From the beginning, DePauw University has acted to protect its students,” Ken Owen, director of media relations, said in a statement posted on DePauw’s website. “We are disappointed in Delta Zeta’s decision to initiate legal action. We believe that this lawsuit completely lacks merit and have every confidence that the courts will determine that the University acted lawfully and in the best interests of its students.”

Doctors Examine Themselves: Barron H. Lerner, a professor at Columbia University’s Mailman School of Public Health, has written an interesting review of two books by doctors who are also frequent contributors to The New Yorker magazine:

The new books — “Better: A Surgeon’s Notes on Performance” by Atul Gawande and “How Doctors Think” by Jerome Groopman — share a similar message: The performance of physicians is less than perfect. The question is whether scrutiny of such imperfections can lead patients to become better medical consumers and thus receive better care. [...]

Physician-writers have only recently detailed the deficiencies of medicine to the public. For most of the 20th century, doctors urged one another to conceal medical errors, largely because they feared lawsuits. But as a result of a series of research scandals in the 1970s, charges of paternalism and spiraling health care costs, medicine could no longer remain insular. Greater scrutiny of what doctors do came from journalists, bioethicists, insurers and economists — and, eventually, from doctors themselves.

Birth Control Prices Soar on Campus: “Millions of college students are suddenly facing sharply higher prices for birth control, prompting concerns among health officials that some will shift to less preferred contraceptives or stop using them altogether,” reports The AP’s Justin Pope (via Washington Post). “Prices for oral contraceptives, or birth control pills, are doubling and tripling at student health centers, the result of a complex change in the Medicaid rebate law that essentially ends an incentive for drug companies to provide deep discounts to colleges.”

It’s astounding that apparently no one saw this coming when Congress passed a deficit-reduction bill in 2005. The bill took effect in January of this year, and the way Pope explains it, “the discounts to colleges mean drug manufacturers have to pay more to participate in Medicaid. The result: Fewer companies are willing to offer discounts.”

Cosmetics Industry Tries to Build Case with Consumers: Kara Alaimo reports for Women’s eNews on the public relation efforts by the Cosmetics, Toiletry and Fragrance Association to reassure consumers that the use of phthalates — a chemical used to prolong color, scent and absorption — doesn’t pose a health risk. “There are huge gaps in what we know about cosmetic chemicals,” said Stacy Malkan, a spokesperson for the Campaign for Safe Cosmetics. “There is new science coming out almost daily about the negative effects of these chemicals. The industry is under increased regulatory pressure.”

Modern Makeup: Reading Seth Stevenson’s take on a new Dove commercial led to this 1998 piece by Judith Shulevitz on the feminist history of beauty products.

Teaching Moment: Rocky Mountain News columnist Tina Griego weighs in on the challenge of raising girls, a la the American Psychological Association’s recent report on the sexualization of young girls and Judith Warner’s recent New York Times (Select) op-ed on mothers as “agents of destruction requiring change” because they don’t practice what they preach around their daughters when it comes to, say, promoting a healthy body image. Griego’s comments about her daughter are incredibly sweet.

New Magazine Debuts for Teenage Girls: Muslim Girl magazine, geared for 12- to 19-year-olds, “profiles professional women like BBC broadcast journalist Mishal Husain, shows off models sporting cute-yet-conservative clothes and offers specialized advice, such as how to deal with a crush in a culture that looks down on dating,” writes Michelle S. Keller in the Chicago Tribune. “I wanted to provide girls with an alternative to Cosmo Girl! and Seventeen, where they would see fun stories about popular culture but … also provide guidance and information to boost their self-esteem, develop their self-confidence,” said the magazine’s founder, Ausma Khan, a former lawyer who taught international human rights law at Northwestern University.

“New Face” of Cancer: “Just two decades ago, a breast cancer diagnosis was something a patient likely wouldn’t share beyond close family and friends. Even the word ‘cancer’ was barely spoken out loud. And no wonder: It raised immediate thoughts of a death sentence,” writes Jocelyn Noveck in the Washington Post. “So when Elizabeth Edwards greeted the waiting media with a smile, a frank account of her worsening illness and a declaration that her life would go on exactly as before, it was an important reminder to many in the cancer community of how far things had come — and how people like Edwards are representing a new face of the disease.”

Plus: See The New York Times story on Kay Yow, the Hall of Fame women’s basketball coach at North Carolina State who is battling Stage 4 breast cancer.

Are We There Yet?: Lucinda Marshall interviews Katha Pollitt about women’s equality and how the media influences perceptions of women. “Once you get rid of the idea that you can’t, or shouldn’t, do this or that because you’re a woman — whether it’s learning calculus or having an orgasm — the world gets a lot bigger, and a lot more interesting,” said Pollitt.

A late Double Dose …

National Back Up Your Birth Control Day: Today! Feministing has the details. “I just started working at the Institute for Reproductive Health Access and NARAL Pro-Choice New York and have been doing the online outreach of the campaign (it’s a project of the Institute) to remind peeps about the significance of EC and that just because we — as in adults, not minors (except in certain states) — now have OTC (over-the-counter) status doesn’t mean our work around EC is finished. Not by a long shot,” writes Vanessa.

Over at RH Reality Check, Andrea Lynch posted 10 ways to celebrate. Number 1 on her list: “Contact your Senator and ask her/him to support the Prevention First Act, which would ensure that survivors of sexual assault receive factually accurate information about EC (they often don’t).”

Funding Restored: The FDA finally decided to fully fund the agency’s Office of Women’s Health. The Washington Post last month reported that agency insiders said more than one-quarter of the $4 million operating budget had been removed.

From the Post: “‘It is disappointing that on the important issue of women’s health, FDA had to be persuaded to simply maintain the funding level that was requested by the administration and provided by Congress,’ said Rep. Rosa DeLauro (D-Conn.), chairman of the House appropriations committee that funds the FDA. At the same time, she said, ‘It is very gratifying that the FDA reversed course.’”

A Day Without Feminism: University of Wisconsin Oshkosh imagined what it would be like. Check out what the school website might have included in the early 1900s.

Another Blast from the Past: “The Making of a Militant,” from The Nation: “This article originally appeared in the December 1, 1926, issue, inaugurating a feature called ‘These Modern Women,’ ‘a series of anonymous articles giving the personal backgrounds of women active in professional and public life.’ The editors explained, ‘Our object is to discover the origin of their modern point of view toward men, marriage, children, and jobs. Do spirited ancestors explain their rebellion? Or is it due to thwarted ambition or distaste for domestic drudgery? The next article is by a woman who, though willing to fit into the conventional picture, found herself unable to do so.’”

Despite ‘Mommy Guilt,’ Time With Kids Increasing: Back to the present, The Washington Post reports on a new University of Maryland study: “In 1965, mothers spent 10.2 hours a week tending primarily to their children — feeding them, reading with them or playing games, for example — according to the study’s analysis of detailed time diaries kept by thousands of Americans. That number dipped in the 1970s and 1980s, rose in the 1990s and now is higher than ever, at nearly 14.1 hours a week.” Also see the related story on fathers.

The Girls Are All Right: Mike Males, a senior researcher for the Center on Juvenile and Criminal Justice, sees a lot of good in health and crime statistics and education and employment reports concerning teenage girls, despite the fact the media “reverberates with fears that teenage girls are more violent, disordered, miserable, mean, promiscuous; in short, worse every day in every way.” Plus: Also see Gina Piccalo’s review of “Unhooked,” by Laura Sessions Stepp.

Project Girl: Males also writes, “[Every] new study (check the latest by UCSC’s and other researchers) claims popular-culture images — underdressed starlets, violent heroines, skimpy fashion models, misogynist ads, music and games — are vastly more women-objectifying, preteen-pornographying, drug-glorifying, fashion-mongering and anorexia-inducing than any previous generation faced.”

Enter Project Girl, a Madison, Wisc.-based arts initiative that helps girls become active media critics and informed consumers. The Capital Times recently ran a good story about Project Girl and the organization’s first multimedia art show, which is on exhibit at the Sonderegger Science Center at Edgewood College through April 22.

Plus: The art show opening celebration included a talk by Lyn Mikel Brown, author of “Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters from Marketers’ Schemes.” I was excited to see that Brown is presenting at the WAM! conference in Cambridge on March 31. Check out the full line-up here. OBOS’ panel, “Our 21st Century Bodies, Our Multimedia Selves” is scheduled for Saturday, at 11 a.m.

Some good news concerning the national sorority that last month ousted almost 23 members at DePauw University based on their appearance and popularity.

DePauw University President Robert G. Bottoms made it known today that the university is severing ties with Delta Zeta sorority. The decision was announced in a letter delivered this morning to the sorority’s national president, Deborah A. Raziano, in which Bottom noted, “[We] at DePauw believe that the values of our University and those of the national Delta Zeta Sorority are incompatible.”

As you might recall, university officials had been engaged in a public dialogue with Delta Zeta’s national office about its treatment of the students since December. In a statement released Feb. 28 (scroll down), the university addressed why it did not immediately revoke Delta Zeta’s charter:

Initially we hoped that we could reach an acceptable resolution for our students by communicating on their behalf with Delta Zeta national officers. When that did not occur, a formal letter of reprimand was sent by President Bottoms to the national office outlining our dissatisfaction with Delta Zeta’s treatment of our students. As this issue has continued to unfold, we have tried to be sensitive to the remaining student members of Delta Zeta who continue to live in the chapter house and to the DePauw Delta Zeta alumnae who played no role in their national office’s decisions.

Though admittedly we were skeptical this relationship could (or should) be salvaged, it looks like the final straw was the decision by the national Delta Zeta office to publicly criticize the students it ousted on its website, along with their campus supporters. I can’t get on to the Delta Zeta site (update: it’s reportedly “undergoing maintenance”). But according to The New York Times today, Delta Zeta published the following:

“Delta Zeta National apologizes to any of our women at DePauw who felt personally hurt by our actions,” the sorority said in a message posted earlier this month on its Web site. “It was never our intention to disparage or hurt any of our members during this chapter reorganization process.”

That apology, however, did not bring reconciliation at DePauw.

“It’s like a thief who’s sorry that he got caught, rather than for what he did,” said Rachel Pappas, a junior who left the sorority before the evictions and organized a campus event about it last month.

In addition to the apology, the sorority also posted on its Web site statements critical of the women who were forced out of the DePauw chapter, and of faculty members who supported them.

Bottoms also alluded to the website in his letter — along with Delta Zeta’s decision, as of March 1, to stop communicating with the news media:

Now, three weeks after my initial letter to you, my dissatisfaction with your organization continues to grow. I am proud of our DePauw students and the way they reacted to an unwarranted situation. Our students have shown a maturity beyond what one might expect of undergraduates. Yet postings on your Web site attempt to discredit any DePauw student critical of your actions. Your Web site has also been critical of our faculty for their willingness to openly discuss the way the membership review took place within the Delta Zeta chapter.

In summary, we at DePauw do not like the way our students were treated. We also disagree with your portrayal of the University in the media. We are opposed to your media freeze. One of the foundations of a university is free and open communication, which has been a hallmark of how we at DePauw have responded to this situation. We also vehemently contest the assertion on your Web site that “at all points in this process we (Delta Zeta) have worked with the University, sought their advice and acted upon their advice in our reorganization efforts.”

Sheesh. Delta Zeta’s actions just might inspire one of the other 165 campuses with Delta Zeta chapters to re-think whether this is a sorority with supporting. With sisters like that, who needs enemies?

Plus: Check out the published letters of support for DePauw from Delta Zeta alumnae.

Carnival of the Feminists: The 33rd Carnival of Feminists is up at The Greatest Blog You’ll (Probably) Never Read. Another terrific, don’t-miss mix.

Of Books & Bodies: Before the word “vagina” became an issue, there was “scrotum.” I first read about the controversy over the Newbery Medal-award winning children’s book, “The Higher Power of Lucky,” by Susan Patron, last month, but can still appreciate this spot-on column by David Hawpe, who also identifies what’s really obscene in America.

Speaking Out: Parents are accusing a suburban Chicago high school of “promoting a homosexual agenda by allowing gay students to speak before freshman classes about their personal experiences, cite research and invite questions,” reports the Chicago Tribune. One of several comments by an upset parent that left us gaping: “I don’t think they should be treating [homosexuality] in the same way they treat conditions that are immutable and carry no behavioral implications, like race, sex, ethnicity and disability.”

Designer Vaginas: Referring to cosmetic surgery’s “new frontier,” laser vaginal rejuvenation, Caitlin E. Borgmann asks, “Is this kind of surgery really such a far cry from female genital mutilation?”

Want To Pay $1,200 To Hear A Bunch of Men Pontificate About The Future?: I stole Ann Bartow’s title. Go read what you get for your money. Also check out Alicia Shepard on All Men, All the Time, in News Business.

Three Positive Steps: Jaclyn Friedman’s essay at Women’s eNews outlines three steps to address sexual assault against women, starting with what should be obvious but isn’t: hold boys and men responsible. “[If] we want to raise awareness about the links between drinking and rape,” writes Friedman, “we should start by getting the word out to men that alcohol is likely to impair their ability to respond appropriately if a sexual partner says ‘no.’ When was the last time you read that article in any kind of publication?”

Child-Care Crisis: Washington Post columnist Leslie Morgan Steiner reports on the best and worst states for child care, as identified by a state report card issued by the National Association of Child Care Resource & Referral Agencies (NACCRRA).

Seeking Submissions: Make/Shift, a new magazine produced by an international community of feminist writers, artists, academics and activists, is seeking submissions for its second issue (Fall/Winter ’07).

Enough of the Diva Duels: “‘Who’d win,’ demanded AOL, ‘if Beyonce, Jennifer threw down?’ In the story line of the diva smackdown — AOL’s term — it’s not enough that female stars are feuding; we in the audience have to lay bets and pick sides and flash our own claws,” writes Mary Schmich.

The community of John Jay High School in Westchester County, N.Y. is in a tizzy over the word “vagina.”

It seems that three female high school juniors received permission to read part of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues” during a public open mic session. But they were told to avoid using the word “vagina,” which is mentioned in the excerpt, because young children would be in the audience and it would be taped for local cable TV. (The students have countered that the youngest audience member was in ninth grade.)

With us so far?

The students — Megan Reback, Elan Stahl and Hannah Levinson — divided the piece into thirds and then read the final line of this section together:

My short skirt is a liberation
flag in the women’s army
I declare these streets, any streets
my vagina’s country.

They have all received one-day in-school suspensions — not for saying “vagina,” exactly, but for disobeying school officials. The students told the Journal News that they debated not saying “vagina,” but ultimately decided it was important to stay true to the work.

Both the students and the principal held press conferences on the controversy. And the principal sent this statement Tuesday morning outlining the school’s position.

As we wonder at what age, precisely, vagina is an acceptable word, we turn to the Journal News for the community reaction:

“When I was able to say the word ‘vagina’ and be proud to say it … and it wasn’t crude and it wasn’t inappropriate and it was very real and very pure, it was important to me,” Reback said yesterday. “We were willing and ready to take whatever came.”

The administrators’ decision to suspend the girls has caused an uproar within the school, with students making T-shirts and posters to protest the punishment. A group opposed to the suspension has been created on Facebook.com, a popular Internet networking site, and had attracted more than 350 members yesterday.

The move has prompted parents to write to the Board of Education and circulate e-mails calling the suspension a “blatant attempt at censorship.”

Eve Ensler, who grew up in the same county, has weighed in: “What is wrong about the word ‘vagina,’ which is the correct biological term for a body part?” Ensler asked. “It is not slang. It is not dirty or racy. The fact that it was censored is an indication of exactly what is going on in American schools, where girls and boys are not being educated about their bodies in a healthy way. We’re pushing everything into the closet.”

“We need open, healthy sex education where girls know and love their bodies,” added Ensler.

The Journal News notes that the U.S. Supreme Court has said students “do not shed their constitutional rights to freedom of speech and expression at the schoolhouse gate.”

Public school officials, however, may regulate student expression that substantially disrupts the school environment or that infringes on the rights of others. Many courts have held that school officials can restrict student speech that is lewd, The First Amendment Center said.

The courts have been very generous to school authorities over the years, but It’s difficult to see how using the the word “vagina” does any of the above or could be considered “lewd.”

Allen Hershkowitz, a former town councilman and father of two students at John Jay high school, is right on when he says, “No one should be embarrassed to use the word ‘vagina.’ … It’s exactly the opposite message we should be teaching our children.”