…but they do get idealized by the Anglo world a lot. From books like “French Women Don’t Get Fat” to the linguistic roots of the word ‘chic,’ the stereotype of French women as slender, sexy dames from youth to old age pervades our cultural imagination.

Finally, a feminist at The Guardian has written the rebuttal to the cottage industry of idealizing French women with the needed insight and wit. We need to be reminded that all those books about French women’s eating and personal grooming habits are ridiculous, especially when tripe like this can still be published in the Washington Post. Yes, the second linked article is written by an American informing us how French women are just so beautiful/skinny/classy/confident that they know how to enjoy sex well into their golden years.

If I can weigh in on some thoughts about French women: I’ve lived with 4 of them. Some of them are fat and ugly and do not enjoy sex in their golden years. They, like you and I, spend a lot of time eating pudding on the couch and then falling asleep watching reruns. Though chances are, you and I aren’t watching dubbed versions of 90’s girl-power dramedies, such as “Charmed.” (In France, this is pronounced with two syllables, like a word at the end of a Shakespearean couplet. Charmèd.)

Still, our countries aren’t that different where it counts.

I haven’t been posting at all recently so consider this my comeback. It only took Christopher Hitchens’ bloated ego/body to raise me from my slumber.

While the rest of you worry about Obama or the economy, I am worrying about the cover article of Vanity Fair’s April issue. This month’s “Who Says Women Aren’t Funny?” is an attempted rebuttal to Hitchens’ “Why Women Aren’t Funny” from last year.

Hitchens’ main argument explaining why women are not funny is best summed up here: “Humor, if we are to be serious about it, arises from the ineluctable fact that we are all born into a losing struggle. Those who risk agony and death to bring children into this fiasco simply can’t afford to be too frivolous.”

He is saying that life is absurd, and that the absurdity of being born into this absurd world is the root of all humor. Since women bring things to life—that’s right, because women GIVE BIRTH—we are incapable of finding humor in the absurd. We are just too serious about our roles as mothers to admit that life is absurd, because that would render our life-giving role less meaningful.

The best way to attack that argument is to deny his premise that all humor is rooted in absurdity. But say I accept that premise. Then it shouldn’t be too hard to undermine the idea that women’s birth-giving capacities determine our sense of humor. That idea is pretty insulting, as is Hitchens’ other pseudo-anthropological theory that men need humor to get laid and fulfill their evolutionary destiny. Of course humor is determined by circumstance, but more likely by sociological than biological circumstance.

Women have not been as successful in comedy as men. This is because the universal standard for ‘what is funny’ is a male standard, determined by men to fit what men already find funny. It is very foolish of Hitchens not to realize that his argument rests on a male/standard definition of humor, and that his argument could be easily demolished when asking “who defines humor? and for whom?” That said, I think his definition about ‘what is funny’ is not a bad one. It wouldn’t be a stretch to say humor is often a coping mechanism for dealing with absurd, painful, meaningless, or difficult situations that life presents us. And if that is the essence of what is funny, women definitely participate in that kind of humor.

The gender binary is breaking down a little bit in mainstream comedy. But even so I still think women have a distinct sense of humor not shared by the male population and therefore not appreciated on a larger scale.

If I were to characterize women’s humor as different from men, I would point out mainly a structural difference. In my experience, women’s humor is based on anecdotes while men are more likely to tell punchy one-liners.

To conclude, I think Hitchens has some interesting things to say, but I think he is biased towards the male standard of ‘what is funny.’ Alessandra Stanley’s rebuttal does not really address Hitchens’ argument as much as it says “nah-nuh-nah-nuh boo boo, look at these successful funny women.”

In the future, the best we can do is alter our humor standards to be more inclusive of women’s ways of being funny.

I cannot contain my excitement about the Oscars.

Unfortunately, I don’t have a television with channels, and none of my tv-endowed friends like movies as much as I do…So if any of you bloggers or readers out there want to invite me over Sunday night, I’ll bring the popcorn. You can read my full predictions here. For now, my message to the Academy is this: “There Will Be Blood” is better than “No Country for Old Men.” Period.

However, this view is not shared by everyone. Though David Carr (aka the Carpetbagger and New York Times movie blogger) and I agree on the winners, we disagree on who ought to win. See his predictions here. Please weigh in with your thoughts on the “Blood” vs “No Country” Battle of the Ages. Or, tell me who you think will win. Let the gambling begin!

Normally I hate it when the New York Times makes up a trend and tries to convince you that it has seized society through flimsy statistics and generalizations made from a few personal observations. I’ve seen 2 of those this week: one about the immodest sexiness of bride’s dresses (this probably only happens among millionaires in NYC), which I find utterly and totally unconvincing, and another about an eco-pious housewifery sweeping the nation’s mothers (but only appears to happen among millionaires in California…see the trend?)

Today, however, there is a really interesting AND convincing piece about the popularity of blogging and internet-savvy behavior among teenage girls, versus the popularity of such activity among teenage boys.

The article accounts for the phenomenon through sociological evidence that may explain why young women blog more than their male peers. As explained by a gender studies prof at U of I, “Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” and therefore take to the emotional-confessional format the blog invites.

If this trend is true, I wonder what it means for the future of the Internet. Of course, these teenagers are blogging about daily life, and making websites about pop culture. Will this trend translate into blogging about politics? Will these girl-bloggers turn into culture critics, journalists, writers? Or will they just use the blog like I once used my pink fluffy diary, and cast aside the blog/diary’s potential for story-telling introspection as soon as a driver’s license enters the picture, allowing for freedom from house and computer?

I can only think this trend is positive, unless, as the gender studies professor remarked, blogging and the other internet behavior popular among girls will signal a ‘feminization’ of their activity to the larger society. Feminization is a type of ghettoization, in that whatever is marked the domain of the feminine, men stay away, and the societal value of the feminized thing drops in a major way. Examples of feminized professions: nursing, teaching (not college teaching), and to some extent, social work. Next up, blogging?

I hate Roger Cohen. I hate the photo he has next to his weekly columns, in which he gazes pensively at the camera, his hands folded so as to draw attention away from the dull eyes and bland face…

Roger Cohen is the master of the obvious. Every one of his columns read like Foreign Policy for Dummies, Volume I.

Anyway, I just wanted to take this time to make fun of a sentence in today’s column:

“Readiness to talk to everyone, enemy dictators included, does not a foreign policy make.”

He’s talking about Obama. But he sounds a whole lot like one small green Jedi council member I know, perhaps even conjuring the righteous warrior persona of Master Yoda.

Kosovo has declared its independence from Serbia. This has major implications for US relations with Russia, and also the fate of all those separatist and independence movements clustered over the European continent.

Russia opposes Kosovar independence in favor of a united Serbia. Serbia and Russia have been brothers-in-slavhood since the good ol’ days of Pan-Slavism, when the two countries’ shared (Christian) Orthodoxy and Slavic language inflamed the hearts of nationalists in early 20th Century Russia. Now Russia plays the protective big brother for Serbian interests in the Balkan peninsula.

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I’ve been waiting for a pseudo-scholarly woman leader mash-up in the wake of Clinton’s rise (or fall, as the case may be after Saturday.) Thank you, Nic Kristof, for writing this amusing romp through pop history.

So my question is, do we believe his thesis? Kristof is basically arguing that women are under more scrutiny today from the eyes of the masses and media, which makes it more difficult to be a monumentally groundbreaking leader. Considering the bias toward and high standards for women possessed by regular peeps and media alike, it is difficult for women leaders to achieve respect and admiration. This is in contrast to women monarchs, who were, by Kristof’s account, more successful than men because they had unique skills and perspectives, and had fewer people to prove themselves to in the pre-civil society era.

Since I only know about Russian History, I’ll put in my two cents about ‘women leaders.’ Yes, Catherine the Great took up the mantle of Peter I’s progressive reforms; she established some universities, encouraged the arts, freed up the presses from national control…and talked the “Enlightenment” talk. But before Catherine there were three relatively superfluous tsarinas: Catherine I, Anna, and Elizaveta. That makes the good-woman-leader to average-woman-leader ratio 1:3 in Russia. This renders Nicky’s argument kind of lame: lady monarchs weren’t necessarily special in any way, even though we continue to be fascinated by them.

Furthermore, Kristof implies that women leaders should be more compassionate or at least care about their fellow woman more so than men. He says “women have been mediocre prime ministers or presidents in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh, Pakistan, the Philippines and Indonesia. Often, they haven’t even addressed the urgent needs of women in those countries.”

True dat—and this is because the women leaders from his Southeast Asian list, or at least Gandhi and Bhutto, are from powerful dynasties of politicians (kind of like Clinton, the Argentinian president, etc) and identify less with women than they do the ruling family from which they inherited power.

So: Is it really fair to lump all the women leaders together in one pan-national, pan-era blob? Is it even useful?

Is Kristof making a valid point about women leaders of old vs. the new?

Am I taking this article too seriously?

In the immortal words of fellow IDS Columnist Indira Dammu, “Obama supporters are just like Ron Paul supporters…but more attractive.”

This isn’t to say that Ron Paul supporters are ugly, but to indicate that Obama supporters (or Obamaniacs, as they are sometimes called) express the same cult-ish adoration for their candidate as the notoriously passionate Paul supporters… But unlike Ron’s Revolutionaries, Obamaniacs come outside every once in a while and are more fully integrated with the non-blogosphere world. Paulites rarely see the light of day as they are too busy googling Paul’s name every five minutes to find the latest mention of him on a blog. (Heaven save me from their wrath for implying they are a bunch of computer nerds.)

By now it’s been well observed that supporting Obama is a college fashion statement. Today Slate posted a humorous article written by a young white guy who supports Clinton and consequently is now a social pariah, since all his friends support Obama. The Guardian has also noted this phenomenon here.

Both Paul and Obama have been getting the youth vote in droves. Obama looks the part more than anything; it’s way hipper to support a black dude than crusty old folks, so says conventional wisdow. (But if hear ONE MORE JOKE/SNYDE COMMENT about OLD WHITE MEN being innately conservative I will punch someone. Newsflash: Obama and Hillary are not that different from the old white men.) Paul has attracted the youth through his radical Iraq plan and has tapped into libertarian leanings of our youth, and richly deserves his followers.

I know there are good reasons to support Obama; I have many informed friends who support him for one specific reason or another. But on the other hand, I have heard more young people vomiting back the line about ‘hope’…Young, uninformed people seem to like the friendly, non-confrontational, optimistic, non-partisan Oprah-philosophy Obama’s message draws on. And that’s pretty annoying.

As one friend asked me, “How can you disagree with hope?”

I ask myself, “How much longer can I put up with this?”

Stanley Fish wrote an interesting column today about the phenomenon of Hillary-hating. It’s about damn time someone wrote about this, especially as other NYT columnists (read: DOWD) frequently indulge the petty, vicious personal attacks that have come to characterize the pundit/columnist version of Hillary-Hating.

Fish’s article was basically inspired by this one in GQ magazine, written by Jason Horowitz. The GQ feature gives a good idea of the people populating the anti-Hillary universe and the type of money and machine behind the ‘cottage industry’ of hate. One thing the feature doesn’t do, however, is try to explain (in its own words) why Hillary Clinton, in particular, is hated so vehemently and irrationally. It lets all the crazies do the talking instead, and argues that Hillary-hating is an institution that has built mountains from a lot of pathos, a couple of facts, and a little help from the Republican smear machine.

Horowitz explains that to her detractors, Clinton is “an empty vessel into which they can pour everything they detest about politicians, ambitious women, and an American culture they fear is being wrested from their control.”

Carl Bernstein, ‘an astute observer of Hillary’ quoted in the article, said that Hillary-hating “is often as much about the beholder as Hillary…Some of this stuff goes deep into some angry people’s psyche. It sets off the crazy button.”

But it seems to me that the operative word in any Hillary-hating is “bitch.”

The word itself deserves a rich analysis, but for now, I’ll just say that the word defines exactly what our society does not want in women. A bitch is controlling, or manipulative, or vicious, ambitious, calculating, cold, angry, mean, powerful, aggressive, back-stabbing or any combination of those words. The woman-specific attachment to the word bitch is one of the great indicators of sexism around; all those qualities are pretty normal when it comes to the game of lusting after power in politics or at the office. unfortunately for her, Hillary Clinton’s image has come to embody the word ‘bitch,’ and being a bitch is a most unforgivable thing to be.

After Mark Bittman’s article about the meat industry, “Rethinking the Meat-Guzzler,” was published on the NYT the other day, it shot right up to the top of the coveted ‘most emailed’ list, wedged in between day-old opinions and Caroline Kennedy’s Obama endorsement. Why? Because the article surprised Americans, who hold that meat-eating is a fundamental tenet of our national identity, right next to stars and stripes and SUVs. Americans were surprised that eating meat can be unhealthy–for our bodies, for our environment, and even the global food supply.

People often ask me, “Why are you a vegetarian?” I think they expect to hear, “Because I love animals.” But here’s the truth: I don’t love animals. I don’t think cows or chickens have feelings. I don’t think humankind should return to the animal-prohibition of the pre-Noah-flood history. (In Genesis, God only allows eating animals AFTER the flood, since he lowered his standards for humankind’s capacity to choose good. Before the flood, Adam, Eve and their progeny were vegetarians. I can only assume that Abel was a shepherd in order to exploit the animal for wool and milk, and not meat.)

I am a vegetarian because of the excesses of the meat industry. Bittman suggests in his article we cut back on meat. I suggest this too.

This is where you get your protein when it’s not from a slab of meat: in dairy, but more healthily in legumes like beans and lentils, in some whole grains, and in nuts.

Hummus recipe after the jump…
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