Broadsheet’s Amy Benfer recently highlighted some antediluvian romantic advice from Countess LuAnn de Lesseps, star of “The Real Housewives of New York City.” Apparently the countess thinks she’s just dripping with gems of wisdom, which she shared with two women sitting together at a bar (one of whom happened to be surfing on her Blackberry).

Without tearing into the racist, sexist, ignorant comments that framed her words, I will attempt to deflect her message in its entirety with my Wonder Woman bracelets.  Fwing! Zing!

Sayeth the Countess, “When men see females on their BlackBerrys working hard, it really turns them off. Men like women to be females, to not be like workaholics, as that comes off as being uptight in the bedroom and control freaks.” How confused is the countess? Let me count the ways:

1. Smartphones are usually indicators of success, money, and social connection (attractive things, unless we’re in bizarro world), and in bars they are kept handy for social reasons, and also for looking up which actor from that show played the guy in the movie.
2. Dear men, have you ever been turned off by a woman who could settle your bar bet with her Bat-phone?
3. No one likes to feel neglected or ignored in the presence of a Crackberry, but she’s not saying “don’t be rude.” She’s saying, “Men won’t want to rescue you if they think you don’t need it.” The countess also doesn’t see the difference between “workaholic” and “gainfully employed.”
4. The work/life/love balance deserves thoughtful advice, preferably from those who actually walk that tightrope every day. I’m sure our readers have some valuable insight and anecotes.
5. It’s dismissive and just plain unhelpful to say that all men like a certain thing. Figure out what you like.
6. “Uptight in the bedroom” HA. HAH! HAHahahahahahahhaha! Honey, if you only knew!

I guess I shouldn’t be flabbergasted that a woman with an old-world title has a damsel-in-distress outlook on marriage, but I like to think that’s part of why people set out in pursuit of happiness to the new one.

Via Broadsheet:

List of the Day has a series of photos in which scorned women get back at cheating exes. I feel a heady mix of emotions when I look at this compilation, which includes snapshots such as half a dozen hatchets buried in the hood of a car and other boil-the-bunny shockers: horror, amusement, sadness, shock. I feel hungry, but only because it’s nearly noon and I ate an early breakfast. Mostly I feel grateful that some combination of anger management, decent exes and propriety has prevented me from lashing out in such an operatic manner myself. Then again, I’m still young. Kind of.

Via Broadsheet:

Turns out there’s an old law on the books in Wisconsin that prohibits couples from leaving the state to marry and returning with a union that’s not valid in Wisconsin. Not sure this is what the drafters in 1915 had in mind, but this would apparently include going to California, say, to marry a partner of the same sex and then coming home to the Badger State. The offense: fraud, carrying a penalty of up to nine months of jail time and a fine of up to $10K.

Would anyone actually want to prosecute them? Ya, shore, you betcha. “Someone has to prosecute them,” Julaine Appling of the Wisconsin Anti-Fraud Family Council told CNN. “That’s a defrauding of the government.”

See you in court, say Wisconsin couple Kathy Cox and Kim Whalen, who, having been together for 20 years, plan to visit CA to tie the knot in August. “The pioneers get the arrows, and the settlers get the land,” they told CNN. “So we’ll take a few arrows.”

Via Broadsheet:

Yes, it’s happened again. An expert has proclaimed that single women, despite their protestations to the contrary, are completely miserable. According to Pam Spurr, an author and psychologist, single women who assert they are happy with their lives despite “their crushing loneliness and desperation” are not merely deluded, but outright lying. How does she know? Body language.

Upon talking with a woman at a party, who had every semblance of confidence, maturity and fulfillment (every semblance, that is, except for a ring on the all-important finger), the subject of sex and marriage came up. The sex therapist recounts:

“She immediately described herself as happily single. And yet her body language told another story: Chloe crossed her arms defensively over her chest until I just wanted to shout: ‘Yes my dear, now try pulling another one.'”

Hmm. You don’t suppose her body language seemed defensive because she realized she was talking to a hostile busybody eager to make snap judgments about her life on the spot and write disparagingly about her in an international newspaper, do you?

(more…)

Via Broadsheet:

You know how teens have oral (or, wow, anal) sex instead of SEX sex in order to maintain that they are “technical” virgins? (As in, “I did not have sex with that hockey player”?)

Well, turns out the grown-ups had it wrong. Again.

(more…)

Via BG’s alter ego at Broadsheet:

What to do with that old engagement ring? You know, after you whip it at your lying, cheating ex-fiancé?

Keepsake? Yeah, right. EBay? So impersonal. Pirates? That’ll only do more damage.

Now, as today’s New York Times reports, there may be a more appealing option: an auction site called ExBoyfriendJewelry.com (tag line: “You don’t want it. He can’t have it back”).

At first glance, I cringed. After all, I consider most public expressions of us vs. him (or her) anti-ex bitterness to be inelegant, tacky, TMI. That said, I will also give a pass to just about anything with real humor and heart. And this site, I must admit (which is not hetero-only), has inspired some gems of poignant free verse.

The description for some Celtic knot earrings: “At some point, he began to take fabulous trips to Ireland. Without me.” For an engagement ring and wedding band: “Hey, Mom and Dad. Remember that time I got married really young?” (Her offer: “I can’t pay you back for the wedding, but I’ll split whatever I get for these with you.”) For an emerald ring, this novella: “It was 1989 on Long Island. Poison and Paula Abdul were battling for the top billboard spots. He was 19, drove a white honda crx and rocked skidz; I smoked marlboro lights and lied about my age of 14. We fell in love over whoppers and the run dmc that pumped out of his ridiculously large speakers. When he bought me this emerald and diamond ring from Sears, it was probably the single best thing that had ever happened to me. I wore it all up and down that high school with pride. But soon enough, it was time to trade my gold for silver as the 80s gave way to the 90s. I got into Nirvana and Ani DiFranco and it was clear that an ocean of Drakkar Noir lay between us.”

And, for some clip-on earrings: “Clip ons. Clip ons!”

There’s also an area of the site for “Gifts That Should Have Been Jewelry.”

I see just one pitfall, really: the perhaps inevitable description reading “I dumped him because he bought my engagement ring used from this site!”

This Broadsheet post at Salon.com by FOBG Sarah Hepola is so delightful and spot-on, we’re just going to cut and paste the whole damn thing.

Good news for single women between the ages of 25 and 44 — not only are you a booming demographic, but you also might not be a poor and luckless lonelyheart. Go figure. All this, and you get your own buzzword, too! According to the Guardian:

“‘Freemales’ — manless women who are happy to remain so for the present at least — are now a force to be reckoned with and are overturning the dated Bridget Jones image of the lonely woman staring despondently at an empty Chardonnay bottle. They are too busy living life to the full to make time for ‘Mr Mediocre’ and the last thing on their minds is, ‘Will I find Mr Right today?'”

Well, good for them. I’m always skeptical of these trend pieces, but it’s nice to hear news stories about women who are actually happy with their current situation. Too many articles depict a stricken, desperate existence for us single women. (Lori Gottlieb, anyone?) But not all single women are fumbling for the panic button. In fact, a new report in Britain states that while the number of women living alone between 25 and 44 doubled in the past two decades, “more than two-thirds of people questioned in a recent survey believed they did not need a partner to enjoy a happy and fulfilled life.”

Now, let’s admit that “freemales” is a terrible buzzword. It sounds like the kind of account you get when you join Yahoo. (I have been amusing myself by pronouncing the word like “tamale.” Sorry, just living life to the fullest! You know how we freemales get!) Apparently, I am on the “terrible buzzword” beat: It was only last week I wrote about “thrisis,” the acute anxiety of mid-thirtysomethings freaking out about their future. But since we do so much reporting on what is tough and frustrating and painful about being a woman, I thought it was worthwhile to hear that some news, dumb buzzword notwithstanding, isn’t so bad. As one single woman quoted in the article noted: “It’s not difficult being single. It’s not lonely. It’s pleasurable.”

By the way, in my experience, it is occasionally difficult being single. Rumor has it, that’s true of marriage, too.

One of BG’s favorite metaphors for partnership, offered by “The Heart Is A Lonely Hunter” in this letter, is: having someone in your life who can “share the driving.” One shortcoming: the metaphor doesn’t really work for women in Saudi Arabia who, since the establishment of the state in 1932, have not been permitted to get behind the wheel.That, finally — noreallythistimewemeanit — may be changing. The Saudi legislature has formally recommended lifting the ban on female drivers. But, as my alter ego at Broadsheet reports:”There’s just one caveat. No, wait. There’s like 17. According to a source in the legislature, the Shura Council’s recommendation also includes the following stipulations:

The woman driver must be under 30.

The woman’s driving is conditional upon the permission of a relative [father, husband, brother or son]. [Son! “Can I have the car keys, son? C’mon, pleeeeeeeeease?!”]

The woman driver must be modestly dressed.

The woman driver will be permitted to drive alone in the cities, but outside the cities she must be accompanied by a relative.

The woman driver will be permitted to drive Saturday through Wednesday between 7 a.m. and 8 p.m.

The woman driver must be able to prove that P=NP and have the power of telekinesis.”

Well, it’s a start. Perhaps someday soon (during a lunar eclipse?) they’ll be able to carpool over for a girls’ weekend at the new women-run, women-only Luthan Hotel & Spa, prompting vexing lesbian rumors! More on that at Jezebel.

Via BG’s alter ego at Broadsheet:

Hey, kids, how’s that abstinence-only sex ed going for you? The answer, if you ask the grown-ups, often has to do with how many teens simply don’t abstain and how many get pregnant (PDF) as a result. But the latest data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention remind us that there are other consequences to sexual cluelessness, and right now, they’re pretty darn dire. That is, the first study of its kind on this demographic has revealed that one in four American girls has a sexually transmitted infection. At least one STI, actually. Mostly HPV (which can cause cervical cancer), then chlamydia (linked to infertility), plus herpes simplex and trichomoniasis. Nearly half the black teens surveyed had an STI, compared with 20 percent among both whites and Mexican-American teens.

Man. Be careful, you guys! Don’t think you can’t get something because it’s your first time, or because you used a condom (HPV can be wilier than that), or because you just, like, think you can’t. I’m certainly not trying to perpetuate the ridiculous — but still deeply hurtful — stigma associated with STIs. But these things can harsh your mellow, cramp your dating style, and, in some cases, compromise your health down the road. Get checked (some STIs are asymptomatic), take precautions (less than 100 percent effective in certain cases is way better than nothing, which is ZERO percent effective), and while you’re at it, lobby for your state to join the 17 others that have refused funding for abstinence-only education (which, you see, has also been less than 100 percent effective).

Soulmate, schmoulmate? FOBG Lori Gottlieb has created a bit of a stir with her piece in the current Atlantic Monthly, wherein she urges women who want to get married to consider taking their lofty lovey lerfy lurvy expectations down a notch or five. In other words, ladies, she’s saying you should settle. Yes, SETTLE.

Okay, now you settle down. The real issue with the piece is that according to Gottlieb, women who want to get married are … all women. If you say that’s not you, she says you’re in denial. “Take a good look in the mirror and try to convince yourself that you’re not worried, because you’ll see how silly your face looks when you’re being disingenuous,” she writes. (“I took Gottlieb’s advice, and my face does look silly. But that’s just because I’m making gagging faces and pantomiming a stabbing motion to my throat,” Broadsheet’s Sarah Hepola responded, adding, “Maybe I swallowed my panic and desperation. Though it tasted, for all the world, like a delicious cheese blintz.”)

(more…)