Big Love is not really about polygamy as discussed here. If anything, the show highlights the abuses and ungliness of polygamy as practiced in these fundie sects. I don't know how anyone can watch that show and not realize that the show is really about good, modern minded people torn between their fundie roots and the world around them. I don't think the show glosses over polygamy at all. I also know that these tamer versions of polygamy families exist- adult women with kindly men, all voluntary. I suspect these situtations are very rare, since it's really in no woman's best interest to be in such a marriage and most would not be unless forced.

The first letter here shows how liberal minded people can fall into a thought trap and allow this bald faced exploitation to continue. The "live and let live" attitude toward fundmentalist mormons is reprehensible. Women who are deliberately uneducated, married off at 13, and who have several children by 20 can hardly be called "free to leave." The state of Utah has not prosecuted forced marraiges and sexual abuse until recently because they have given the fundies a pass, plain and simple. As for the argument that Utah hasn't wanted to spend the $- it's a well known fact that FLDS polygamists are adept at what they call "milking the beast"- that is, sponging off the state and federal goverment. The infamous polygamous Tom Green had several "wives" who collected welfare as single mothers, and this practice is not rare. These sects are far from self sufficient, and their fruad has been one more example of Utah treating them with kid gloves.

Obviously these shirts were meant as gag gifts at baby showers.

It's over the top, over-dramatic and silly. Then again, once I started watching HBO series, my standards are impossibly high. Once the Sopranos came back and Big Love started, I haven't even thought about the ABC dramas. By the way- despite the polygamous these, Big Love is a show dominated by some very nuanced female characters.

In my high school, we girls got older uniforms, worse gym times, and had to use the middle school gym when it was more convenient for the boys not to go across town. The sports schedules said "Basketball" and "Girls' Basketball". There was a huge, well organized group called the Pep Committee or something, but they only worked for Boys b-ball and football, and the other sports had to create ad-hoc mini-organizations. I think things have changed a lot since the eighties, but obviously things haven't changed completely.

A suggestion to Broadsheeters: this fall, a mother friend and I took our daughters to a high school football game, because there was a food drive going on. The team was terrible, yet the stands were full and of course there was a band and cheerleaders. We started talking about how the first place girls' swimteam never got this much support, for all the historical reasons, and then we decided to bring our first graders to as many girls' events as possible. We did, and our first graders had a lot of fun. We supported young women athletes, let our daughters see some good role models and had a nice outing every time. Mothers of daughters: support your local female athletes.

At my job, I meet a lot of non-married parents who seem to be perennially engaged, and it always seems like a sort of excuse. The saving money argument is probably bogus, since they have three kids together, for heavens sake. If they see marriage as a piece of paper ,and nobody's business but their own, why don't they say so? Why the pretense at respectability? Either marriage is important to them or its imaterial- both valid positions, as far as I'm concerned. It's the wishy washiness that bothers me, and perhaps other bystanders as well. Anyway, it's their own private business, shame on that town.

I don't hunt, but my husband does. He will take my daughter out when she is of age. As a liberal enviromentalist, I see more female gun ownership and hunters as a welcome change of the sport, which is still full of macho knuckleheads who will swallow any bait the NRA dangles in front of them. Many of the new hunters are liberal enviromentalists, and many of them are women.

As for protection, I have to say I agree that responsible gun owners are not and have never been the problem, and I have no beef with people who want to at least have one locked up, unloaded weapon around for when the shit hits the fan. A dog is better, as poster noted, but a gun might come in handy, as we saw with Katrina. There are many places in the world where the police are corrupt and ineffective, and people take it for granted that protecting ther homes is up to them. The Katrina debacle showed us US Americans how fast it can happen here too.

I read in a Diana Gabaldon book that the Scottish have given women backwards names for many years. I think the example in the book was "Segna".

I was intrigued by what was said in this interview, especially by the theories on weight. But when he started painting the old picture of Fench women and their fashion flair and beauty know how I had to roll my eyes. Rapaille says watch what a culture does at five o'clock and you'll know the culture. I say, watch the women, and I am an American women proud of the importance American women give naturalness and frankness. He describes a culture where men yearn to be overcome by women's beauty and women struggle constantly to be seductive- there are many ways this can suck for women.