The XX Factor: What women really think.

Up Is the New Down

So I take my eye off Planet Palin for a half a minute—and by the time I get back, Dahlia has sworn off the stuff altogether, and the rest of you are acting like what Barack Obama said about lipstick is no big oink; are you kidding? I am so outraged, I am ONLY going to communicate in down-home phrases re: pigs from now on, in a kind of sarcastic solidarity with my fellow feminist John McCain. That'll show him how the hog eats the cabbage!

Seriously, I take all my cues on sisterhood from John, because who respects women more? That's why Obama'd have hardly anything to work with if he wanted to make an ad in response. Well, except for the footage of McCain laughing and then saying, "Excellent question'' when asked, "How do we beat the bitch?'' OK, and maybe that clip of the minister asking McCain if he really called his wife the c-word. I'm not sure Obama should rely on the 1986 story in the Tucson Citizen quoting McCain telling a joke about rape—even if it was a lot like the one that drove his buddy Claytie Williams out of politics. I guess if Obama really wanted to get down in the mud, he could reference the stripper McCain dated, or the gentlemanly way he behaved with his first—oh, who are we kidding?—with both of his wives. If Hillary's gotten over that—what's the word I want?—deferential joke he made about Chelsea, then who are we to go there? And it would be a total cheap shot to use the footage of him telling biker dudes of America that the mother of four of his children would make a great Miss Buffalo Chip. But John McCain, friend of the female? My friends, that would be a change.

My Evolving Blondness

Evolutionary Strippers

Meghan, Anne,

Here's another recent study to add to the pile of questionable evolutionary psychology findings about women's sexual signaling—the evo psychs are obsessed with proving that women on their fertile days actually do experience estrus like other mammals. Sure, you may be sitting around a conference table discussing the last sale's quarter, but really you're just repressing the urge to lift your buttocks like a baboon in heat. Researchers at the University of New Mexico decided to actually look into fertile women's buttocks' movements, so they tracked the tips 18 lap dancers earned at various points during their menstrual cycle (and wouldn't you be pleased if your UNM tuition was helping pay for this study). Surprise! The lap dancers' tips dropped considerably during menstruation, even though, the male researchers point out, "menstruating dancers can wear tampons (with strings clipped short or tucked up) and change them often during heavy flow days, without revealing any visual signs of menstruation." The findings, say the researchers, are "the first direct economic evidence for the existence and importance of estrus in contemporary human females. ...These results have clear implications for human evolution, sexuality, and economics." Or, another way to look at it is that the results have no meaning beyond the fact that contemporary human female lap dancers know g-strings and tampons are not a good combination.