Feminist Law Professors

Or so the as the NYT advises in yet another breaking news story that comes helpfully illustrated with what it denotes as “Graphic: The Eyebrow Chronicles: A Tale of Pluck and Daring” (click the link for a larger rendering, or follow the NYT link above to see the full-sized original):

Why the continually morphing eyebrow mores? Because your eyebrows need to match your outfits, and clothing fashions are ever changing, of course:

Some women who once plucked zealously are now hoping that the thin brown lines on their foreheads bloom into thickets. …

The fringed frons is making a comeback because of chunky, angular fall fashions, said James Kaliardos, a makeup artist in New York and Paris. Previous seasons were full of frilly, delicate, ladylike clothes best complemented by pink-hued cosmetics and a thinner hyper-groomed brow. But this season’s outfits with their pared-down constructivist silhouettes call for a more natural-looking face anchored by a prominent brow, he said.

But what if you don’t have the patience to grow out your eyebrows, or they are naturally on the thin side? Must you leave the house in a hat that falls mid-retina to hide this appalling facial deformity? Not necessarily, because luckily, there are plenty of NYT advertisers ready to help you solve your horrible eyebrow deficiencies if you have adequate time, motivation and expendable cash:

To achieve the furry but tamed Hemingway eyebrow, Ms. McGrath suggested an appointment with a professional eyebrow groomer.

“Giving yourself a beautiful eyebrow is not one of the easiest things to do,”Ms. McGrath said.

For those who want to create fuller brows at home, she suggested a way to ensure that they look evenly shaped. Start by drawing over the straggly hairs you want to remove with a white eyeliner pencil to guarantee that the placement is right before tweezing them.

Next, to create fullness, use a brow pencil or brow powder that is two shades lighter than your natural eyebrow color to fill in between the hairs. The brow should look blended rather than drawn on, she said. Finally, use clear mascara or eyebrow gel to fluff hairs : push them up so they are almost vertical : and then brush them back down, fixing them into shape, she said.

For those with very sparse brows, some salons offer eyebrow extensions. At LuxLash on Newbury Street in Boston, for example, Suzanne Cats, the owner, thickens brows by gluing a tiny fiber onto each existing hair. The process, which costs $75 to $250, can take 45 minutes to two hours and the false eyebrow effect lasts two weeks, she said. She also offers brow prosthetics : hairpieces for the eyebrows : in 20 different shapes and shades.

“It’s for women who previously had their brows made too thin,”Ms. Cats said.

The NYT story is entitled “Throw Away Your Tweezers” and I am sure that tweezer manufacturers will love it if you do, because anything as painful as hair tweezing cannot possibly be permitted to lapse permanently from the realm of socially obligatory grooming rituals. Sooner or later you will be called upon to ritually and zealously remove some patch of naturally occurring body hair from your body if you want to appear beautiful, and if you’ve followed the NYT advice to throw your tweezers away, you’ll need to buy a new pair, so everyone wins except you. Me, I’m thinking the NYT should pluck off.

–Ann Bartow

Here she is fighting crime in a very short skirt, and miniscule underwear, if any.

Here she is taking off her jacket to go through airport security. Hope that’s not a gel bra.

Here she is fighting “Power Girl,” who seems to have an ass sutured to her chest, and a belt that is securing an invisible article of clothing.

A bikini model who is also an engineer?

Or a mainstream comic strip that doesn’t take cheap shots at women?

From Raw Story:

A new study published Monday has found that teenagers who listen to music with raunchy sexual lyrics are more likely to have sex at a younger age than those who don’t listen to sexually explicit music. Though the result appears to be obvious, the study published in the August issue of Paediatrics, the journal of the American Academy of Paediatrics, claims to be the first to examine the relationship between the music that teens listen to and their sexual development.
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The authors tracked the sexual behaviour and musical tastes of 1,461 US adolescent participants in reference to 16 top artists whose lyrics “depicted sexually insatiable men pursuing women valued only as sex objects.”

Among heavy listeners of sexually degrading music – where men are “studs” and women are sex objects – 51 per cent started having sex within two years, versus 29 per cent of those who listened to little or none of that type of music.

“Adolescents who listen to a lot of music containing these objectifying and limiting characterizations of sexuality progress more quickly in their sexual behaviour, regardless of their race or gender,” said Steven Martino, the study’s lead author and a researcher for the Rand Corporation.

Martino said there was no correlation found between sexual behaviour and sexualized lyrics that were not degrading in tone.

Martino said that degrading lyrics teach boys to relentlessly pursue women, while girls view themselves as sex objects.

“We think that really lowers kids’ inhibitions and makes them less thoughtful,” he said.

The study abstract is available here; the full text of the study report is available here.

Slate has a provocative article about “To Hell With All That: Loving and Loathing Your Inner Housewife,” by Caitlin Flanagan, and “Manliness,” by Harvey Mansfield up here. Below is an excerpt:

… Flanagan and Mansfield are united in nostalgia for a kind of Douglas Sirk version of the ’50s, without the irony, in which men provided, led, fought, and defended, and women cultivated, nurtured, healed, and willingly acquiesced to men’s desires.

Like many of my peers born in the late ’60s and ’70s, in the heyday of what was once called women’s liberation, I’ve grown somewhat inured to hearing that feminism is dead, that tradition is back, that equality is a fantasy, that career women and their partners can’t, as the phrase goes, have it all. Hearing it, and ignoring it, because in my own life:brought up listening to Free To Be … You And Me by a mother who worked long hours as a hospital executive, and a father who quit his job at 50 to work at home and support her career:self-determination for women was never exactly an idea up for debate. I’m a husband who shops, cooks, cleans, does laundry, and has a full-time job, so hearing Flanagan and Mansfield prattle on about how only women are hard-wired to do housework makes me want to laugh.

What’s most distressing about these books, however, isn’t that they play on ancient prejudices and dredge up empty stereotypes, but that they aren’t being met by a fusillade of other, better books:books that examine contemporary relationships and gender roles without panic, dread, or shame. This is particularly true, of course, when it comes to books about men. We’ve recently seen much debate about the hazards of boyhood (exemplified by Michael Thompson’s book Raising Cain) but little reflection on what happens afterward: that is, on what it means to grow up. …

Read the whole thing here. Via Feministing, where Vanessa has some interesting observations as well.