this is what concerns me

Doree Shafrir wrote an interesting take on discrepancies between male and female wages over at Jezebel. She takes into consideration a lot of the outside factors often ignored in the 77-cents-on-the-dollar figure that’s normally thrown around in this debate, normalizing for different career choices and the like — though it turns out “there’s still a five percent wage gap for male and female college graduates, even after controlling for things like age, race and ethnicity, region, marital status, children, occupation, industry, and hours worked, according to testimony given in April to the United States Joint Economic Committee.”

Doree concludes that this is because women are less likely than men to negotiate their salaries, and I think she’s right to a certain degree. I know I was really freaked out by the prospect at first, and I’ve always been more willing and perhaps able to negotiate in jobs that I didn’t want as much as the ones I did.

But the thing is, I think Doree is ignoring the sociology behind negotiations. This argument presumes that women would be able to win those arguments were they even to bring it up; given she led with Peggy Olsen from Mad Men being snubbed when asking for a raise, this seems pretty funny to me. Women are not rewarded for being aggressive or going after what they want, and I’ve certainly gotten a toned-down Don Drapering myself sometimes when asking to be paid a fair wage for my work. I think it’s important  to encourage women to negotiate, but it’s unfair to put all the blame on them for not asking when there’s still the matter of someone — usually a man — with the real power.

Then again, more men have hired me than women, so fuck if I know what’s going on here, but it probably has something to do with my breasts.

“These athletic pants boldly proclaim just where she stands by pointing out that ‘True Love Waits’ in a large screen print on the front and back of these pants.” Where it really counts!

But these might actually sell — as Gawker reports, we are statistically in an age of fewer sluts. Is it only a matter of time before they roll out the Abercrombie for Abstinence collection? “Boys want to buy me promise rings” and “My pastor wouldn’t approve of you” stretched across pubescent virgin humps? Yeah, that’ll keep it in their drawstringed “athletic pants.”

I kind of wish true love would just wait for mom to peruse the hair conditioners so “she” can stuff some Kmart condoms into her school bag.

This week’s installment of Harper’s Findings is pretty sexy. (This is their science column, not to be confused with the weekly news report.)

Half of all women were estimated to have no G-spot … An Australian study reported that college students make up 40 percent of Melbourne’s prostitutes … A sex hormone was found in the drinking water of San Francisco, and anti-anxiety medications were found in the drinking water of Southern California … A Scottish study determined that roughly half of a person’s happiness is due to genetics … Honeybees can recognize individual human faces.

It must be swarming season!

A recent study by Montreal’s Concordia University has shown that rats choose mates much not at all like people: the men prefer the hard-to-get, not the slutty one. This “Montreal male” referred to in the article has clearly been schooled in the Annihilation Method: he knows what it takes to lure a quality lady these days. I’m going to call this rat… Modele. So this Modele, he likes a classy woman, right? La modestie, that really turns him on. Or is it just the thrill of the chase? Is it all a terrible Game?! Or is Modele playing right into the hands of those damn Rules women…

“When you really don’t like a guy, they’re all over you, and as soon as you act like you like them, they’re no longer interested,” generation-spokeslady Beyonce says of the Rules. Well, shit! If only Mrs. Brisby hadn’t thrown herself at Justin all the time, maybe things could’ve worked out differently.

And: In other rat-related news, the Department of Health has officially closed the rat-infested Village Taco Bell/KFC. Shock and aww: is Gobo next?!

Between yesterday afternoon and this morning, four of my flights from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina have been canceled due to weather. I’ve been stuck in Charlotte, North Carolina for a few hours now. They guarantee I’ll be back to New York by Sunday (or else my money back?)! Hopefully I’ll make it til then: I’ll have to ration these three Clif Bars. And who knows where and when my luggage will show up.
Fortunately the Charlotte airport has free wireless internet. But there are conditions: they block all websites that are flagged “Adult/Mature Content.” The ones I’ve discovered so far: Nerve and MySpace. VeganPorn’s okay though. Oh, Charlotte, a woman after my own heart. Now if only she could get her act together and get me on one of these damn planes before my computer battery dies (in 33 minutes…).

Update, 4:59 p.m. E.T.: Six canceled flights, down to one bar. But I found an outlet. I’m not sure what my total is then: negative twenty-three hours?

Some background: Trina Robbins is the self-appointed expert women cartoonist “herstorian” (and herself a rather crappy woman cartoonist) and founder of the now predominantly male-run women cartoonists organization Friends of Lulu. When I did my journalism master’s thesis on women cartoonists, TR didn’t return any of my e-mails; this was also the case for lessers in the same mold, e.g. Heidi MacDonald, who generally suck up to cartoonists, men and men cartoonists, but who seem to be threatened and/or out of their element when it comes to women infringing in their womanly territory (trad male hegemony tactics, girls: divide and conquer). I wonder how TR and HM get along.

Now: I’m not so much a fan of Aline Kominsky-Crumb either, mostly because I don’t care for her work (though she’s worlds better than TR) plus the odd impression she makes in Crumb. However, my opinion of her has increased at least 47.3% after reading this interview she gave to Daniel Robert Epstein for the Suicide Girls (big gender WTF there as well).

This snippet works on so many delightful levels. Not only does it confirm my opinion of TR, but there’s cat-fighting, misogyny, narcissistic wounds plus the goddamn Suicide Girls? Amazing.

This is the first in what will hopefully be a regular occurence of Quick Mondays, a short spot on something short and sweet.

This past weekend was the Tokion Creativity Now conference. If you aren’t familiar, Tokion is a beautifully designed, less beautifully written cultury magazine based in NY and Tokio. Each October they put on a two-day conference on “the arts.” This year, all the scheduled speakers were men. They claimed more women would show up, but I haven’t heard word on whether this actually occurred or not - if you went and could shed light on this point, I’d be very interested to hear what happened. In any event, here is an interesting e-mail exchange between the artsy Wooster Collective and Tokion’s editor in chief Ken Miller, regarding this gender disparity.

Coming soon, some less-quick and less-regular: cookie recipes, trials and tribulations, and other things of brief interest.

A week after Katie Couric’s unfortunate CBS Evening News debut, I cannot help but reflect on what Couric’s new $15 million position means for America.

Like, bad things.

So, first sole female evening news anchor – uh huh, whatever. She broke the glass ceiling with one high cheerleader kick – not with actual journalism experience or thoughtful reportage. She’s exactly what America v. ’06 wants: attractive, vapid and rich. She’s topping the ratings because we’ve sunk to a new low. She showed the Tom Cruise (alien) baby pictures on the evening news for christ’s sake.

What I’m really trying to say is I’m glad I don’t own a television.

For Anthem July/August ‘07. I know the date is wrong. This is for clippy purposes.

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This summer, don’t be surprised to discover a whole new kind of well-manicured bush at the Grove in LA–in the sumptuous coffee table erotica at the new Taschen store. The 550 square foot shop, located in the center’s clock tower, will provide a shock of sexy technicolor to the shopping playground of starched white collars from the O.C. to Porn Valley.

Another retail outpost in Los Angeles ain’t no thing for power-publisher Benedikt Taschen–it’s just another notch in his beautiful belt. Taschen has come a long way from its 82 square foot comics shop in Cologne, Germany: the Grove location will be the third LA store for the best-known name in art book publishing.

For those who aren’t too embarrassed to buy their vintage porn and Dali in one fell swoop, the pristine Philippe Starck-designed shop will specialize in affordable tomes, mostly under $50 a pop. Starck calls Taschen “political” for its down-market tack on the traditionally bougie art book industry. Hopefully they’ll be keeping late hours this summer, because as any good plebe knows, there’s nothing better than winding down with free air conditioning and Inside Cuba after a long day of working for the man.

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In my unemployment I’ve been reading a great deal more than perhaps I ever have before, and that means exhausting my usual outlets – and yes, it’s true, I have begun perusing Slate. Which is how I came across this article by culture editor Meghan O’Rourke, and laughed for at least fourteen minutes.

Ms. O’Rourke attended the Center for Talented Youth (CTY) summer program in 1988, and writes about her good, clean fun (minus the making out during Mandatory Fun! scandalous!) at “nerd camp,” where she still remembers feeling “the sense of relief at finally being in a place where people felt, in some sense, normal. It was a place where kids could be cool without having to downplay their interests.”

Okay, Meghan, I’ll grant you that one. And I also agree on the intellectual-growth points: I can say with a fair bit of confidence that CTY is what made me want to become a writer.

But here is where our memories diverge a bit (or perhaps just our divulgence of the juicy details). I attended CTY about ten years later, and while I, too, remember “the sense of relief,” I also remember the 14-year-olds ditching Mandatory Fun, getting drunk, dealing ecstacy, having sex in the bathrooms and being shamelessly courted by their residential advisors.

Meghan writes, “Each [dance] concluded with either “Sympathy for the Devil,” “Ana Ng,” or “American Pie,” at the end of which students chanted “Die! Die! Die! Die! Live! Live! Live! Live! Sex! Sex! Sex! Sex! More! More! More! More!” Delighted, we would go home invigorated and exhausted—a kind of clean high.”

C’mon, Meghan. That’s just what you wanted them to think.