Ever wonder where BG goes when her cape starts to fray?

You may have seen the much buzzed-about New York Times article in which Maureen Dowd, in consultation with 79-year-old Catholic priest Fr. Pat Connor, laid out 10 requirements for the “ideal husband.” Though I’m pretty sure BG hates MoDo with the white-hot intensity of a thousand suns, I’ve got to say I think her checklist makes perfect sense. Having witnessed my parents experience the ups and downs of marriage, I’ve come to understand that love is just the beginning of a successful lifetime partnership. So here, in case you missed it, is what MoDo and Fr. Pat urge you to consider. (I’ll use male pronouns as the article implies that only girls are on the big hunt — lies!):

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In a society where even the most outgoing of girls succumb to insecurity by their teenage years, it’s difficult to find young female models of confidence and integrity in our popular culture. The New York Times recently explained this struggle best: “Who are you supposed to be, or to avoid becoming? A nerd? A ditz? A flirt? A tomboy? What kind of role models are those make-believe princesses, those Bratz and Barbies, to say nothing of the real-life Britneys, Lindsays and Mileys? Mean Girls, Gossip Girls, Girls Gone Wild, Girl Power, You go, girl! What’s a girl to do?”

It turns out girls need look no further than the silver screen for their answer. In the midst of a summer dominated by hulking male superhero flicks, the American Girl global-domination industrial complex franchise has released their first feature film, “Kit Kittredge.” (more…)

The New York Times ran a piece last week about the 1967 court case aptly named Loving v. Virginia, and indeed, it was obvious the state in question (“Virginia is for CERTAIN lovers”?) was trying to control whom its citizens could and could not love — or, at least, whom they could or could not marry.

The case centered on Mildred and Richard Loving, a black woman and a white man arrested and banished (like Romeo in Act III!) from Virginia for the “crime” of being married. It’s odd to think a country that may very well elect its first black president once — not that long ago — had laws prohibiting interracial marriage in 40 states. The Supreme Court ruling in the Loving case, according to the Times, “underscored the stupidity and unfairness of segregation” and “drew back the curtain on the secret history of race in the South.” Mildred Loving, who died this month, maintained that the two were married because they were in love, and chose not to fight a civil rights battle. Looks like their love ultimately won the war.

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!”

Speaking of deconstruction, here’s a piece from Sunday’s New York Times Book Review:

At least since Dante’s Paolo and Francesca fell in love over tales of Lancelot, literary taste has been a good shorthand for gauging compatibility. These days, thanks to social networking sites like Facebook and MySpace, listing your favorite books and authors is a crucial, if risky, part of self-branding. When it comes to online dating, even casual references can turn into deal breakers. “Sussing out a date’s taste in books is ‘actually a pretty good way — as a sort of first pass — of getting a sense of someone,” said Anna Fels, a Manhattan psychiatrist and the author of Necessary Dreams: Ambition in Women’s Changing Lives. “It’s a bit of a Rorschach test.'”

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James Collins, whose new novel, Beginner’s Greek, is about a man who falls for a woman he sees reading The Magic Mountain on a plane, recalled that after college, he was “infatuated” with a woman who had a copy of The Unbearable Lightness of Being on her bedside table. “I basically knew nothing about Kundera, but I remember thinking, ‘Uh-oh; trendy, bogus metaphysics, sex involving a bowler hat,’ and I never did think about the person the same way (and nothing ever happened),” he wrote in an e-mail message. “I know there were occasions when I just wrote people off completely because of what they were reading long before it ever got near the point of falling in or out of love: Baudrillard (way too pretentious), John Irving (way too middlebrow), Virginia Woolf (way too Virginia Woolf).” Come to think of it, Collins added, “I do know people who almost broke up” over The Corrections by Jonathan Franzen: “‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’ ‘Overrated!’ ‘Brilliant!’”

For me, honestly, the literary dealbreaker I recall most clearly was the guy who had no books. What about you? Which suitors have you judged — fairly or not — by their covers? Post your mini-memoir here.

For Shakespeare, music is the food of love. For me, food is the food of love. It not just about eating as sustenance, of course; I can do that over my own sink. It’s about enjoying eating as sustenance. Enjoying eating together. Here, taste this. No, this piece is yours. I toasted the pine nuts, just the way you like. (Someone once invited me out for Thai food. What would you like? he asked. “Spicy eggplant?” I suggested. “No,” he said, “I don’t like sauce.” Waiter!) It’s about appetite, in all senses. If you’re like me, you may (perhaps unfairly) border on lactose-intolerant-intolerance. If you’re like me, if you’re without someone to love food with, you get very, very peckish.

So what if you’re an omnivore dating a plainwhitepastavore? A cheesehead crushing on a vegan? Can this marriage of flavors be saved? The New York Times explores that question in today’s “Dining In” section. The answer? Sometimes.

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