Letters to the Editor
Sandra M
Published Letters: 579 Editor's Choice: 139
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What's the male equivalent?
[Read the article: Should women get paid menstruation leave?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]"Blue balls days?" "Sperm backlog days?" "Uncomfortably laden with testosterone days"?
Sick leave is sick leave. Take it for a cold or for cramps or for a migraine or for food poisoning. Leave the genderized reasons out of it - everyone loses, but especially women.
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The pendulum should swing the other way
[Read the article: Accused Duke players go on "60 Minutes"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Our system of justice mandates an accused person is innocent until proven beyond a reasonable doubt to be guilty. These young men have not yet gone to trial. Evidence that has come to the fore suggests the presumption of innocence will bear out. Their presumed innocence does not mean the accuser is a liar - it simply means she has to prove she is not. This is a reasonable expectation given the gravity of the charges and the consequences that will be by the accused regardless of their guilt or innocence.
It is no small thing in this society to be accused. To be accused in this day and age is to be branded for all time - even if found innocent or acquitted, many people maintain a 'where there's smoke there's fire' attitude, and the accused is never truly exonerated. Jail time is avoided but careers, family lives and reputations are ruined- all because the stink of accusation is, in the end, as toxic as the stink of guilt.
Journalists have caused this rush to judgement. The stories about the Duke rapce case were uniformly slanted to suggest guilt by association - association of white, male, privelege, and stripper-hiring. Balance is a joke - journalists don't seek objectivity, they seek ad sales and lives are ruined.
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The responsibility of the reader
[Read the article: Jeepers, creepers: Where'd Demi Moore get those peepers?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I do not consider myself so vulnerable to suggestion, so helpless in the face of cultural pressures, that I am rendered unable to distinguish between a cosmetic company's marketing message and reality. Even when that marketing message is delivered by a 18-year-old model, who, by dint of clothes and make-up, is being presented as a de facto 30-something, or by a carefully preserved celebrity claiming, overtly or not, that she's 'natural', or even by a genetically gifted civilian who won the DNA lottery.
Cosmetic companies are selling an illusion - that women aren't good enough as they are, but if they simply buy the right gloss/mascara/blusher/whatever, they can look like (fill in name of current model/celebrity pitching product) here. No matter how 'bent' the message is - using super young models whose skin tone is attributable to their short time on this earth, using celebrities whose linelessness is more attributable to scalpel than an 'age defense micro-beads moisturizer' - it is incumbent upon ME to make the best decision for my ME. The first word in the prhase self-confidence is SELF, after all.
I think Ms. Moore is very attractive. I could give a rat's ass if it's natural or not, or how much surgery she's had - it's her choice. She chose a profession that puts a lot of pressure on the external and either doesn't have the spine to stand up to it or doesn't *want* to stand up to it. It's sad, but it doesn't mean she shouldn't be able to sell cosmetics or whatever. There's nothing dishonest about what she and the cosmetic company are doing. Their marketing does not take away my ability to reason, my choice to buy the message and the product or not.
The judgement here shouldn't be against the companies shilling illusions, or the actresses/models who personify those illusions. The judgement here should be against the individual woman who buys into the illusion with no thought, who willingly take sthe first step on that slippery slope of denial about the inevitable: we are all aging, all the time, and at some point it's gonna show.
Physical age and beauty are unrelated. Being young and feeling young - again, unrelated. Women can't seem to get this, while men do. It's not a matter of intelligence but a matter of caring too much what others think, seeing not ourselves but only the image of ourselves reflected back in the gaze of others. Men seem to live their lives in three dimensions, women only two. The culture can't be blamed -at some point we must be open to other messages, parse them, analyze them, engage in debate with others and the self, and come to our own conclusions about how to live our lives.
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What does character have to do with paid for sex?
[Read the article: Mike Tyson: "No. 1 stud"]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]I seriously doubt that any guy visiting a strip club or brothel asks the owner "is this girl a good mother? is she a convicted felon? cause no way am I having sex with her if that's the case!"
Heidi Fleiss understands the commerce of sex. Many men would never date the women they pay to have sex with them, nor would they ask the women they date to peform the acts they pay for elsewhere. That's the whole point, sometimes. Similarly, what women want in a *partner* and what they want in an paid-for sexual enounter have nothing at all to do with one another.
Though I can't personally relate, I'm sure, as Ms. Fleiss is, there are many, many women who, under the controlled environment o f paying for it at a brothel, would be happy to have sex with 'bad boy' Mike Tyson. He undoubtedly will fit the bill for what some women who frequent Fleiss' brothel are looking for - illicit thrills, not relationship material.
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How to Deal With Bill
[Read the article: Bill O'Reilly: Not a good obstetric-health authority]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]..when he makes patently false statements.
1. ignore him
2. sing "Falafel" to the tune of "Volare" (that Gipsy Kings tune that Ricardo Montalban crooned in the car commercial).
then, no matter what his rejoinder, say in Montalban-esque tones:
"spank me with your Corinthian leather paddle, Beeel"
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I would like to be in a 3 way
[Read the article: Feminism vs. femininity]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]with Donna35 and Laura Miller. The End.