Balloon boy Falcon Heene has been found, in a box in his attic (the perfect place for a 6-year-old to hide), not the hot-air balloon that raced across our TV screens this afternoon. So I think, Hanna, that the balloons can go back to being a giddy, thrilling ride, as they were in Oz and my Smithsonian favorite, To Fly. And now we'll have a round of hand-wringing about wall-to-wall cable TV coverage of crazy mishaps involving small children. Arianna Huffington is already at it because she got bumped from talking on TV Thursday night about Joe Biden and Afghanistan. But you know, I don't begrudge CNN a minute of those wild hours of footage. Yes, it was sick-making to watch, imagining a child inside. But it was also the kind of in-the-moment drama that it's hard to turn away from. That's what cable news does best: Remember, CNN got onto the media map by saturating us with the search for Baby Jessica who fell down the well. If we have the cameras and the capability, how do we turn them off? It would be up to us, the hooked audience, to get unhooked, and it seems to me very human and fallible that we never can.

Tags: arianna huffington, balloon boy, falcon heene

I must say, Lucinda, given the nature of your column, I was expecting advice on whether I should remain friends with these girls, and if so, how to go about letting go of my anger and mistrust to rebuild my bond with them. I wrote seeking advice from an unbiased third party.

I was not expecting to be mocked or accused of being a liar, as you did to me in the column "My Friends Ditched Me When I Got Drugged."

For the record, I really was roofied, ma'am. The idea that I must provide you with a tox screen to prove it is galling.

I was in tears AGAIN after reading your "advice." For a few brief seconds, I felt the hopelessness, fear and anxiety I felt that day and the weeks after, and I am disappointed in myself that I allowed your comments to have an effect on me and my mood. But I agree especially with one commentor who said that telling the victim of a drugging that she might have just made some poor decisions is like telling a rape victim she really just regrets having sex with an unattractive person.

I am lucky that I don't remember any part of the night, and was perhaps wrong to attempt to piece it together from anecdotes from my friends; it did make me appear as though my story had holes. It does, in fact, have one BIG hole—from the time the band started their second set until the time I woke up alone in the hospital. Perhaps my writing, your editing, or a combination of the two failed to make that point. But I expected more from you in the way of helping me deal with my friendship with these women, not my own allegedly off-kilter expectations. If you wanted to know whether I have a history of getting drunk and wandering off (I don't), or even just getting wasted-drunk (again, I don't), could you not have e-mailed me?

And, as it turns out, there was one big piece of the puzzle missing that fell into place later—the explaination for why my friends were angry the next morning. While I was drugged, my friends tell me I ended up dancing with a boy my friend has a crush on. She thought I had violated the sacred bonds of friendship by dancing with (not kissing, not sleeping with) a guy she had told me she was attracted to. (I have no memory of dancing with him, and never would have if I had been aware of myself at all.) So even though she told me she thought something was wrong—I am rarely, if ever, wasted or stupid-drunk—she and the others left me at the concert, fed up with my flirty behavior.

But in the end, I don't need your advice after all—I figured it out all by myself. Ten years of friendship is a long time, but I was clinging to an institution and a bond that these women abandoned years ago. Perhaps we continued to see each other socially because it was easier than forging new bonds. I'm not sure. For now, these women might be in my social circle due to our vast network of mutual friends, but they are certainly not the close confidantes I once thought I had.

P.S. The day I rely more on a boyfriend than on a best girlfriend is the day I lose hope for womankind.

Tags: friend or foe, responses

As I eagerly await my copy of the November Glamour—the one with the naked plus-sized models—I’ve been following news stories about models: There’s the Polo Ralph Lauren dismissal and photoshopping of Fillipa Hamilton controversy, and Brigitte magazine’s announcement that it was replacing skinny models with “real” women who have “identities” rather than “protruding bones.” Karl Lagerfeld has been slammed for his hilariously concise and snobby response.

Since the Polo story broke, I’ve been eagerly awaiting an explanation, or even just a theory, as to how the model ideal got so extreme to begin with—I mean, why it is that models are required to be so thin and young and tall? Who is in charge of this? Casting directors? Advertisers? Editors? Finally, yesterday on the Today Show segment about the Polo mishigas, I was hoping that Cosmo editor-in-chief Kate White might offer an insider’s explanation on the whole super-duper-skinny model thing. Instead, she merely passed the buck:

It really starts with the sample clothes, because they've down-sized—they're now like a size 2 or 4. To some degree, it relates to the Kate Moss era. Before then, supermodels like Cindy Crawford and Christy Brinkley, they were really curvy. But they got skinnier and skinnier, and the clothes got smaller, and so it creates this cycle where you have to fit in the clothes to get the job, and then the models get smaller and that's who we have to use in fashion stories.

Fashion folks are not the most self-reflective lot. But surely the editor-in-chief of a major women’s magazine would feel compelled to answer the simple question: Why do models have to be so goddamn skinny? My first instinct is to tack the "heroin chic" preference by image-makers to two major cultural events: the fall of the Iron Curtain and the mainstreaming of gay culture in the wake of the AIDS epidemic.

I’ll be pondering this as responses trickle in about the Glamour spread. In the meantime, if you have any theories as to why standards of beauty got to be this way—that is, drastically skinny and young and tall—please let me know.

Tags: brigitte magazine, cosmopolitan, fillipa hamilton, glamour, karl lagerfeld, photoshop, plus-size models, polo

A little disappointment is inherent in parenting. Suzie doesn't inherit her hockey-forward mom's stick skills; Johnny lacks Dad's engineering bent. But a few women (and they all seem to be women) are disappointed enough that Johnny isn't Suzie to spend thousands of dollars and endure IVF, abortions, and even a divorce to produce the little girl of their dreams (who, I suspect, had better damn well like pink).

Journalist Ruth Shalit Barrett delved deep into the world of what some call "gender disappointment" and others call (in slightly different words) reproductive Veruca Salt syndrome. Amidst all the advice on how to make your vagina an X-sperm-friendly habitat or find a fertility clinic offering sex-specific IVF (a process that's prohibited in both China and India, where there are strong cultural preferences for boys), she found something else: women who were willing to tell the readers of Elle exactly how disappointed they were with their little boys.

I considered abortion when I found out it was a boy, several say. I was "gutted." "I was mourning a death." When one woman gave birth to two boys instead of the expected boy/girl pair, she "felt like a funeral should be held."

A lot has been said lately about the ethics of writing about the parenting experience. Should we detail our worst days as mothers? Blog about the trials of potty training? Profit from the material provided by our child's autism or marijuana addiction, or claim to love our husband more than our kids? As someone who's blogged honestly—and sometimes too honestly—about my difficulty bonding with my adopted daughter, I wrestle with these issues regularly. I am all for talking about difficult experiences in the hope of reaching out to others who have felt, or are feeling, the same way. But there's one line I've never crossed—one thing I think you should absolutely never say to or about your child: I didn't want you. I wanted somebody else.

Tags: elle, gender disappointment, parenting, ruth shalit barrett

The live footage of that helium balloon gliding over Colorado is the most peaceful and terrifying sight I’ve ever seen. It looks like some kind of silver jellyfish—pulsing and alive. It looks like a scene from a 1970s sci-fi movie. It would be beautiful, if not for the kid trapped inside, no doubt crouched and terrified. This is not Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, after all. Every few seconds, the balloon seems to tip dangerously.

Just last night my 6-year-old son asked me, after we read Babar, if he could go up in a hot-air balloon one day. Now there is a 6-year-old boy apparently trapped in this handmade helium balloon. He was playing in his family’s backyard, and untethered it. Something like this happens in the first few pages Ian McEwan’s novel Enduring Love. The narrator sees the balloon careening dangerously, with a man hanging from the rope, and he can’t stop watching. We were “running towards a catastrophe,” he writes, and that stands for the end of a promising relationship.

A hot-air balloon represents romantic hope and possibility. Babar and Celeste ride away in one for their honeymoon. Oz escapes in one, too. A hot-air balloon disaster? The crashing end of hope.

Photograph of the Heeene family © ABC. All rights reserved.

Tags: colorado hot air balloon, hot air balloon

Andrew Sullivan careens very close to revelation about the anti-choice movement today, asking, "What are the odds that the Christianists are prepared to do the one thing that would actually reduce abortions dramatically: guarantee free contraception as part of a public option." Answer: somewhere between zilch and nada. The Christianist movement that brought you abstinence-only education doesn't feel much better about contraception than they do abortion.

Dan Savage is right; the organized anti-choice movement is motivated by the desire to punish what they consider deviant sexuality much more than they are motivated by any love of fetal life. It's been well-observed by pro-choice activists for a long time that anti-choice activists, given the choice between punishing sex and reducing the abortion rate, will choose the former every time. The anti-choice movement's hostility towards contraception is an open secret; most people on both sides of the debate know about it, but anti-choice activists also know better than to flaunt their hatred of contraception when trying to woo people on the issue of abortion. As I discovered when an anti-choice handbook fell into my hands, activists are instructed to dodge questions about their hostility to contraception early in conversations, and put a great deal of work into softening targets up before hitting them with appeals against not just abortion, but contraception.

But for anyone who cares to know, the anti-choice movement's larger anti-birth control agenda isn't that hard to figure out. Some groups take a "moderate" stance of refusing to take an official stance on contraception, while quietly promoting misinformation about it. Some groups openly flaunt their desire to ban contraception; the American Life League holds annual protests against legal contraception on the anniversary of Griswold v. Connecticut, the 1965 Supreme Court decision that legalized contraception for married couples. Abstinence-only programs instigated by the religious right are rife with flagrant misinformation about contraception straight out of anti-choice mythology. If there's any angle prominent anti-choice activists can use to take potshots at contraception, they will. Knowing as we do that access to contraception reduces the abortion rate (duh), the only honest conclusion is that the "pro-life" movement doesn't care about the abortion rate so much as they care that women can get abortions without fear of punishment.

Incidentally, this is one reason I prefer the term "anti-choice" to "pro-life". In the public at large, "pro-life" is a feel-good term adopted by people who have no knowledge of the radical anti-sex bent of the anti-choice movement. In fact, many people who self-identify as "pro-life" oppose banning abortion, and many have abortions themselves. Calling yourself "pro-life" has as much weight in the real world as going on the record as believing that divorce is sad; you may want to be on the record as pro-marriage, but you'd get a divorce if you needed one. We need to distinguish between those attracted to the feel-good "pro-life" term, and activists out to ban abortion and severely restrict contraception access.

Tags: abortion, christian right

Rep. Jared Polis came to Washington with Barack Obama and without California's Proposition 8, in the fall of 2008. Now, the freshman representative from Colorado is navigating his first full year as a legislator—and his first year as an openly gay member of Congress. CNN, which is tracking the freshman years of various newly elected officials, has focused on Polis and his partner, Marlon Reis. Here's Polis' thoughtful introduction to the latest installment, on being gay in buttoned-up Capitol:

My partner, Marlon Reis, and I have been together for more than six years. We never saw ourselves or our relationship as anything different from those of other members of Congress, and while notable, the gender of my spouse has little to do with the overall experience of the congressional life and our "freshman year."

The life of a congressional spouse is harder than the life of the member. They do all the work and get none of the recognition. Fortunately, Marlon's passion for writing fiction is consistent with the necessary mobility of the congressional lifestyle and being able to work out of two homes. I am proud that Marlon has chosen to tell his tale.

Reis' tale is even better, wisely riffing on the "otherness" of his age, gender, and sexual orientation at spousal meetings usually reserved for dainty ladies in brooches:

At the time of my introduction, I was something of a novelty among the spouses. At 28 years old, I was one of the youngest spouses in the U.S. Congress. Jared is the second-youngest congressman. Almost immediately, I was mistaken for a staff aide; then again, for a son designated to attend in place of a spouse. More times than I care to remember, I was told, "But you're so young!"

Rarely has anyone seen me for what I actually am. I don my "Congressional Spouse" lapel pin proudly and hope each time not to be questioned, yet I still receive sideways glances and orders to produce an official ID. It is as if my story is too unbelievable to be true, that I am an interloper, someone in a place I do not belong.

It's certainly worth reading the whole story.

Now, I suppose we won't have true post-gender parity among elected officials until a scandal-spinning press conference features a gay man or woman standing stoically behind his or her spouse as they bite their lip and confess to some sordid infidelity. But this has got to be the opening shot in what will prove to be a long, fruitful history of same-sex spouses navigating the strictly gendered, heteronormative world of politics. And of course, I can't wish that cable-news fate upon this fascinating, pioneering power couple.

Tags: gay spouses in politics, Jared Polis and Marlon Reis, same-sex marriage

A new study from Citi shows that working mothers have been squeezed tighter than any other group during the recession, reports U.S. News & World Report:

Over half of the 1,000-plus women surveyed reported working longer hours, while just one in four women without children and one in three men reported doing so. Meanwhile, working moms have also adjusted their spending more than other groups: Three in four said their habits are forever changed, compared to six in 10 women without children. In fact, more than half of women with children said they've put off buying a car or other big-ticket item and 52 percent said they've tapped into savings to make ends meet. One in three said they're headed back to school in order to ultimately improve their job prospects.

It's not just low-income working moms who are feeling the squeeze, either—30 percent of women making more than $100,000 a year say they're worse of than they were a year ago, and 70 percent have cut back on expenses.

This runs counter to the major narrative about gender and the recession: the "mancession." Men have lost jobs in greater numbers than women, partly because women tend to work in more recession-proof (but still lower-paying) industries. (This, by the way, is true to a greater or lesser degree in every recession, not just this one.) Even as there's been a bit of handwringing over why women tend to cluster in those industries, it's been accompanied by crowing over the shiny stat that women now make up 49.8 percent of the work force—this is always framed as a feminist victory, and in many ways it is.

But the Citi study provides an important reminder that the hard employment data don't tell the full story about where and how economic pain hits. A recent poll of 1,000 women showed that women are more depressed by the recession than men. And the hard stats aren't all rosy, either, as Christopher Swann of Reuters pointed out recently:

While women have been better at clinging onto their jobs, they have not done so well holding onto their salaries. According to the U.S. Census Bureau, women in full-time work saw their annual earnings fall at twice the pace of men in the early stages of the recession — losing almost 2 percent last year.

The news actually gets worse for women. Most measures of employment and salary suggest the gender revolution has stalled. The gulf between male and female salaries, which narrowed dramatically in the last 25 years, has started to widen again.

In 2005 women on average earned 81 percent as much as men. By the end of last year, this was slipping back to 79.9 percent. Much of this is accounted for by shorter working hours and choice of industry.

And while I'm being depressed about the recession, as is my womanly wont, I'll throw some discouraging history into the mix. The children of the Great Depression and WWII grew up into the adults of the Eisenhower era, and, as Stephanie Coontz of Evergreen State College told the Christian Science Monitor in June, " "The whole generation of kids who grew up in that associated their mothers' work with their fathers' depression," Coontz says. "Instead of being proud of their mothers' work, they were embarrassed." That's not to say history will replicate itself exactly—way too much has happened in the ensuing decades. Rather, it's a reminder that the feelings surrounding loss of work can reverberate for longer, and more widely, than the hits to a bank account.

(More on this at Recessionwire.)

Tags: mancession, recession, women's happiness, working mothers

Gmail has introduced another experiment in protecting e-mailers from themselves. First there was protection against late-night drunken e-mailing you may later regret, in which, between certain hours of the night, you must prove your sobriety by answering math questions before your e-mail goes out. (Not sure how Gmail could help the DoubleX staff, documented daytime drinkers.)

Now there’s “Got the wrong Bob?,” a Gmail lab meant to head off those embarrassing auto-complete “to” line glitches. I’m sure we’ve all had them (and equally sure that none of mine have involved anyone named “Bob,” given that I only know one). Some are harmless: I spent a summer e-mailing my intern when I meant to e-mail my roommate by the same name. But luckily the subject matter was only embarrassing in its mundanity, things like “Did you get milk?” and—I’m not joking—“Whoa, did you see the new look of Gmail?”

I was once the “wrong Bob.” The misaddressed e-mail came from a friend of my mother’s, someone out-of-state whom I had met only once or twice. His e-mail was intended for his wife, whose name starts with the same letters as mine. They’d had a fight that morning. He wrote her a beautiful, poetic apology. And then sent it to me, the daughter of one of his peers. Awkward!

In the spirit of our ongoing call for your “awkward and wrong” e-mail/Twitter/texting/etc. tales, inspired by Gmail’s latest experiment, and as a show of solidarity with my mom’s friend, please share your own moments of being or sending to the wrong Bob. You can send them to me by e-mail. And we may publish your story here on the site. (Anonymity requests will of course be granted.)

Tags: awkward and wrong, email, gmail, reader submissions

I am a fan of O: The Oprah Magazine, but I usually only buy it as an airport indulgence. But when I saw the article by Susan Klebold, the mother of Columbine killer Dylan, excerpted on the Oprah website, I was inspired to buy a copy at a newsstand. The website only gave vague snippets and I was driven to read the entire story. What did I hope to find in that article? Revelations about her son's inner life? How she overcame the true tragedy that resulted from Dylan's actions? Tips on surviving the reputation that you're the worst mother in the world?

I did find all those things in the article, but still felt unsatisfied and fairly disgusted after reading the article. Not with Susan Klebold. With myself. It's one thing to read a neutral party's researched take on Columbine, like Dave Cullen's excellent book on the events leading up to the April 20, 1999 massacre. But it's another to be deeply drawn to the destruction of a decent person's life. I feel the same way about the endlessly hyped Jaycee Dugard interview in People, which hits stores tomorrow. Will I buy that magazine? Part of me will want to. But maybe this time I'll be able to resist the lure of misery porn.

Tags: Jaycee Dugard, misery porn, susan klebold, tragedy, unhappiness