In a lot of cultures - including much of America - the flower is often used as a metaphor for female genitalia. Whether it works depends on the image itself - and I think they've got it spot on.

A lot of people don't think about the full extent of female genital mutilation; that it's not only the removal of the clitoris, but also frequently sewing shut the vulva to close off the vagina, only to be ripped open via sex in the marriage bed. Sometimes the clitoris is sliced open and/or burned away. (I've included a link in my signature to the United Nations Population Fund website, which describes the practice as well as its consequences.)

While this may be a bit graphic by way of description for some of your readers, it's important to know what young girls are subjected to on an alarmingly regular basis. It all has to do with a terrible kind of misogyny, in which women are seen as wild and naturally promiscuous beings whose rampant sexuality and desire must be brought under control - and in fact, stamped out - lest they bring ruin to the community. FGM was even recommended by some Christian groups as a deterrent to female masturbation as recently as the mid-20th century!

As an oppressive control mechanism, it's frighteningly effective in scarring women both physically and psychologically, taking away a vital, physical piece of womanhood - as vital as the womb, or the breasts (both of which are also hyper-sexualized).

The image of a vibrant, beautiful, bursting red flower so brutally sewn shut is a powerful and haunting image; I hope, however, that along with education for the masses about this practice goes some deep cultural education in the places where it is still prevalent.

I appreciate Carol Lloyd posting on this topic - but there's a bit of ethnocentric assumption in the idea that mental illness around body image is always going to skew toward skinny.

In places like Mauritania, young girls sometimes stuff themselves sick (or are force fed by their parents) in order to fit a fat aesthetic. When thin is in, anorexia goes with it. When fat is in, the opposite would hold true. The cultural image of perfect beauty is what sets the fat-or-thin marker.

Of course, in the West we so completely can't grok the idea of people actually wanting to be fat that the idea of an eating disorder going in the opposite direction of what we're used to is, well. Pretty foreign.

I read this, and I feel ashamed to be an American.

What can we do? Why is the Bush administration not being tried for war crimes? Why are these sites still running? Where is the accountability? Why have proceedings not begun for impeachment of our criminal leader?

I feel powerless. My government continues to embarrass me, let me down. And I feel that there's nothing I can do.

To all of those being tortured, imprisoned, killed over this stupid war: I'm sorry. I am so, so sorry.

One of my best friends in college was raped at a frat party, by a guy she'd befriended that evening who was an active member of a rape prevention program. Of course she'd thought he'd be a safe guy to hang out with when she got plastered - but she was wrong. Despite myself and her family encouraging her to press charges, she was too afraid to report him - it was the early 90s, a condom was used as she was passing out (saying "please don't") so there was no DNA evidence, they were both drunk, and in a case of he-said, she-said, his credentials in the campus community were too solid. There are a lot of reasons why rapes go unreported, and after seeing someone go through that horrendous experience and being able to do nothing about it, I never doubted the statistics on unreported rapes on college campuses.

It disgusts me, this argument that "rape is all hype," and bravo to Niedzielski-Eichner and to the LA Times for printing her thoroughly awesome response.