Hanna, I agree with you that I was entertained by what looked like a rare moment of unguardedness from our commander-in-chief. But you're right, the video shows that Obama is a perfect gentleman, while Sarkozy takes undisguised pleasure in the girl from Rio. This whole now-international non-event actually makes me feel sorry for people in public life. Yes, most of them have asked for the spotlight, but it's got to be crazy-making to have to monitor your every word, facial expression, and glance—and then be called to account for the slightest instance of simply being human. I have a fondness for Sarko—he's such a combination of boldness, passion, and insecurity. Watching the video you can't help being tickled by his delighted amusement at life's passing parade.

Photograph of Nicolas Sarkozy at the G8 summit by Jim Watson/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: Barack Obama, nicolas sarkozy

When I saw this photo yesterday of Obama checking out this fine, shimmering booty, I felt—dare I admit this—a weird kind of pride. Obama has always portrayed himself as master of his own impulses. He exercises every day, doesn’t eat the cupcakes, dines every night with his kids, makes regular date nights with his wife. Once in Dreams of My Father he let himself wax on about the high he gets from playing basketball. But then mid-riff he stopped himself. “My wife will roll her eyes right about now,” he wrote. Nothing wrong with this self-control. It’s impressive, in fact. Except that it makes one long for some glimmer of the old male appetite. Sandra Tsing Loh got at the problem in her recent marriage essay when she wrote that men these days no longer buy mid-life crisis roadsters because they’d be worried about the safety of the seat belts.

Now finally, here was a tiny glimpse of Obama’s id. Despite his gentleman self, he seems to be sneaking a glimpse at this young lady’s gorgeous behind and fabulous hair when she can’t catch him doing it. And how can we fault him? I would have stared, too.

But, alas, if you watch the video, the old Obama returns. If he is indeed looking, its in a millisecond the photographer happens to catch. What he’s really doing is being his old gentleman self and helping another lady down the stairs. Nicolas Sarkozy, on the other hand, is openly ogling.

Tags: obama booty, obama ogling

In Foreign Policy, Reihan Salam is predicting that male dominance will be a casualty of the economic downturn (or the he-cession, as he calls it, since more men than women are being laid off). He writes:

The great shift of power from males to females is likely to be dramatically accelerated by the economic crisis, as more people realize that the aggressive, risk-seeking behavior that has enabled men to entrench their power—the cult of macho—has now proven destructive and unsustainable in a globalized world.

What will follow is not a femitopia, but rather "surly, lonely, and hard-drinking men, who feel as though they have been rendered historically obsolete," and whose "massive psychic trauma will spread like an inkblot." It's possible that some of these men will adapt, by embracing what an expert Reihan quotes calls "consumption marriage." This is an even worse name than companionate marriage for about the same thing: marriages in which both spouses make marketplace contributions, ie work, and also share domestic responsibilities, presumably. Reihan predicts that men in the West will tend to adapt along those lines, while men in the East resist—creating a new fault line between societies (or rather, reinforcing an existing one). Reihan also acknowledges that women still bear more than their share of the burden of poverty, lack of benefits, and unemployment. And here's his closing, sweeping thesis:

As women start to gain more of the social, economic, and political power they have long been denied, it will be nothing less than a full-scale revolution the likes of which human civilization has never experienced.

This is not to say that women and men will fight each other across armed barricades. The conflict will take a subtler form, and the main battlefield will be hearts and minds. But make no mistake: The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender. We have no precedent for a world after the death of macho. But we can expect the transition to be wrenching, uneven, and possibly very violent.

This is the kind of deliberately provacative argument that we're all trained to poke holes in. But at the moment, I'm still digesting. Could the recession really topple traditional sex roles to anything like this degree? My own reporting, all U.S. based, has made me skeptical. In the past, periods of unemployment have produced a lot of men who sit around the house rather than chip in with the dishes and the kids. On the other hand, there's some suggestion, or at least hope, that this downturn could be different in that sense. But could the tradeoff for a more egalitarian West really be a more dangerous East teeming with surly ex-macho predators? Thoughts?

Photograph of Japanese men protesting automaker layoffs by Toru Yamanaka/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: economy, foreign policy, gender roles, he-cession

Emily, you wrote yesterday about the tricky feeling of watching your son outperform you, and finding it discomfiting. But kids can be just as uncomfortable in the surpassing role as the parents are about being bested. My all-girls basketball team used to gather every Sunday afternoon to scrimmage our parents. It was mostly dads who took the bait. One girl’s father was notoriously rough on defense; another had gangly arms no 12-year-old girl could possibly outreach. It was meant to be a fun practice, and our fathers typically let us stay in the game enough to keep our confidence high, while still asserting their ultimate dominance on the score board.

I still remember the day we won. Watching these men bent over during water breaks, out of breath, sweaty, injured—it was devastating. They were our fathers: strong, athletic, unbeatable. But they looked, suddenly, like tired, middle-aged men. It was hard to watch.

You said, Emily, that what you’re supposed to feel when your kid outdoes you is pride. But even that is a complex emotion. Isn’t pride just a way of taking ownership of your kid’s success? My mother seems to think so—she hates the idea of parents telling their children they’re proud of them, or, more specifically, of her own mother saying she's proud of her. Although I think my mother takes her anti-parental-pride agenda a bit far—often snorting in disgust during the climactic, choked-up line in many a parent/child drama: “I’m so proud of you”—I do understand her basic point that to take pride is to take credit. You wouldn’t say you were proud of some child prodigy you had no part in raising, right? But you think you get to be proud of Eli—his powerful throw, his keen Scrabble mind—because you created him; his achievements are yours to take pride in. But isn't it possible that what you call pride is really stifled envy—a way of turning that uncomfortable sense of competition into feeling better about yourself?

For my part, I’ll gladly welcome my parents' pride. But what I really want is for my dad to forever dominate on the basketball court.

Tags: parenting

So between Marjorie and an e-mail from a friend, I'm going to recant a bit about Paris Jackson speaking at her father's funeral. I can’t take back that on a gut level I found the entire spectacle off-putting, but I ought to have reminded myself that being in the limelight can be tough, especially when you're having real feelings. What's genuine seems staged, what's staged is supposed to be genuine, it's hard to parse the difference, and the difference hardly matters. When grieving, no one should have to concern herself with what other people think, even if the “other people” number 30 million.

As my friend, whose mother died when she was 14, said in an e-mail taking me to task for not being more generous to Paris Jackson:

From the point of view of someone who did speak at the funeral of her parent, I can tell you that I honestly felt that if I hadn't said something, if I had just remained silent and let everyone else do the talking, I would have done a disservice to my mother. Everyone keeps saying they "Feel so sorry for the children," but one of the groups who actually benefits from seeing Paris talk is other kids who’ve lost their parents, getting to watch a peer grieve and go through what they’re going through. There is something comforting about watching another member of that club—a club no one wants to join, but one that offers a lot of succor to those who are in it.

It’s the ultimate trump card, and I, for one, can’t argue with it.

Tags: grief, Michael Jackson's funeral, Paris Jackson

The Paris haute couture shows have come to a close. The reviews are in and there’s discussion going on about how luxury is being “toned down” for these “hard times,” how "fancy" is being "snubbed."

In the case of the officially bankrupt house of Christian Lacroix this makes sense. He was forced to make do with bolts and scraps of fabric he already had lying around his studio. He drastically cut back on his color-happy, pouf-loving aesthetic as a result. It was the equivalent of Matisse having his pigments confiscated and being forced to complete a canvass with nothing but a stick of graphite.

But this post isn't even about the "toned down" clothes as it applies to other couture houses. Why do professional fashion critics (and editors) feel the need to defend luxury's right to exist by framing it in terms that emphasize polite inconspicuousness? It begs the question that applies to all branches of journalism concerned with the topics of luxury and consumption: What is being "toned down"—and for whom? The foreclosed masses? The Madoffed?

Haute couture used to draw its clients from the ranks of the upper middle class. Then, in the 1960s, the cost of labor went up in France, ready-to-wear in funky boutiques became hip, and custom clothes became very costly and available only to the rich. And since this time haute couture has grown increasingly costly, until, finally, it morphed into the fantasy stage production that it is today—and only available to the richest people at the top of the greatest wealth bubble that ever existed. But these haute couture businesses, with the notable exception of Chanel, operate at a loss. The richest people don't subsidize the glitter. Instead, the spectacle is financed by the perfume-and-purse buying hoi polloi, as Dana Thomas recently discussed in her book, Deluxe.

So, what I am wondering after reading the fashion show coverage is this: has the haute couture been “toned down” for the uber-rich clients? Presumably the world's richest people can continue to consume as they did before October 2008. And, in my opinion, shouldn't "tone down" their aesthetic in deference to the hoi polloi; what are aristocrats for if not cultivated excess? Or (as I sniff my perfume-drenched wrist…) is haute couture "toned down" so as to not offend the perfume-and-purse buying hoi polloi who pay for the glitter?

I wish fashion critics would take a few risks these days and sink their teeth into matters having to do less with industry gossip—is Elbaz leaving Lanvin to replace the Kaiser at Chanel?, for example—and more about matters of class. Isn’t that what fashion and luxury are largely about anyway?

Photograph of model at Christian Lacroix show by Pierre Verdy/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: bernie madoff, Chanel, Christian Lacroix, haute couture, John Galliano, paris fashion, perfume

Why do women keep their maiden names? Some of us take the answer to that question for granted: Those names are the ones we were born with. Others go ahead and swap when they get married. I don't have a big political wind up for this one: It's a deeply personal choice, there are a lot of factors to consider, and if my maiden name was something I thought dreadful or dull, I might have jettisoned it. After all, it's just as patralineal as my husband's name. Just from a different generation.

I'm interested, though, in the women of the last century who broke with convention by keeping their names, in a way that nothing we do can really match now. In 1923, Margaret Mead wrote a letter to her grandmother in which she says: "The Pressmans weren't a bit shocked at my keeping my name. Mrs. Pressman...was perfectly willing to call me Margaret Mead." (Can anyone make out all the words in the ellipsis?) In her autobiography, Mead later wrote that she kept her name because of her "mother's belief that women should keep their own identity and not be submerged, a belief that had made her give her daughters only one given name, so that they would keep their surnames after marriage." Which suggests, I think, that Mead's mother expected to use Mead as her middle name after marriage. So maybe she had some support from her mother, and then took the idea a step further.

Photograph of Margaret Mead by Edward Lynch, World-Telegram staff photographer

Tags: margaret mead; maiden names