Yesterday, I went along with Hanna to the Smart Girl Summit, a conference in D.C. for conservative women. (Many of the women who attended were Tea Partiers.) As I’m sitting here typing up my notes from the event, I noticed that twice, speakers referred to the women of their movement as “steel magnolias,” a phrase Sarah Palin used semi-inexplicably while endorsing Rita Meyer. And another speaker, Dana Loesch, said the conservative female movement was like “something out of a Sally Field/Dolly Parton movie.” That movie, of course, is Steel Magnolias, from which the fabulous line “If you can't find anything good to say about anybody, come sit by me” entered the culture. Loesch quotes the line, unattributed, in her official bio. (Later, I thought Michele Bachmann was going to quote it, too, but she finished the line the traditional “don’t say anything at all” way—with the crowd joining in—while boasting that none of the mama grizzlies featured in Newsweek’s recent cover story had agreed to comment.)

The mean-girl implications of that line also align nicely with the famous Sarah Palin snark. (Another panelist proudly described herself as a mean girl and a bully.) So is "steel magnolia" going to be the new catchphrase used to describe conservative feminists? It’s traditionally been used for a certain sort of tough-but-still-feminine Southern type. That’s also, more or less, how the conservative women’s movement is positioning itself, minus the regional specificity. And it’s more inclusive than the "mama grizzly" label, which implicitly leaves out the nonmothers of the crowd. The movie is about a group of close-knit female friends, a sisterhood of sorts—and this conference was focused on creating precisely those sorts of networks for conservative women.

Magnolia illustration by Francisco Manuel Blanco from Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: dana loesch, steel magnolias

Misty Mueller is heading West from New Mexico when she drives off a Colorado mountain road into a ravine and dies. Her action foreshadows many other acts of aimless escape in Antonya Nelson’s new novel, Bound. When Misty’s now-orphaned daughter, Cattie, finds out about her mother’s death, she runs away from the East Coast boarding school she hates and camps out in a house in Vermont owned by her classmate’s stepsister. There she meets a soldier named Randall, who is AWOL from the Army. When Cattie decides to head West to return to the house she shared with her mother, Randall goes with her, though neither knows what awaits them. In the meantime, Catherine, Misty’s estranged best friend from high school, receives a letter revealing that she is Cattie’s legal guardian. Catherine has lived in Wichita, Kansas, her whole life; she even sleeps in the same bed she had as a teenager. But unbeknownst to Catherine, her life is not as stable as she believes; her much older husband, Oliver, is contemplating running out on her.

Like many of her characters, Nelson seems to have embarked on a journey (of novel writing, in her case) without great consideration for destination. Though there is some resolution over the course of the novel—Cattie finds a home, at least temporarily—the emotional arc is as flat as the book’s Midwestern setting. Cattie is as lost and isolated in the end of the novel as she is in the beginning. Catherine is practically as unfulfilled and clueless. Oliver’s only progression is toward an increasing awareness of his own old age. Other plotlines—like that of the soldier, Randall, and a mysterious sideplot about a serial killer on the loose in Wichita—go nowhere at all.

It’s hard to criticize Bound too thoroughly, though, without noting that Nelson is a remarkable writer. Narrative shortcomings aside, this is a wonderful collection of characters, deftly drawn and expertly unveiled. Cattie’s situation is tragic, but Nelson resists the urge toward pathos; instead, and far more rewardingly, she reveals Cattie’s experience of her mother’s death in the slow, complicated, and often backward way that grief can unfold. If anything grows over the course of this novel, it is our understanding of the relationship between Misty, the teenage burnout redeemed through single motherhood, and Cattie, the socially isolated daughter in danger of becoming her mother. What seems cold and dysfunctional at first is revealed, through Cattie’s memories and thoughts, to be a deeply loving relationship, a union of two outcast souls, uniquely suited for one another.

Tags: Antonya Nelson, book of the week, Bound

— Tyler Clementi was a Rutgers freshman who committed suicide after his roommate shared Webcam videos of Clementi having sex with another man. Where should the law step in? Follow the debate. [New York Times]

— Later this month Bill Clinton and Sarah Palin will be campaigning at the same time in Orange County, Calif. Whose events would you attend? [Politico]

— Abstinence-only sex education is finally seeing a change: Federal funding is backing sex education without an abstinence-only rule for the first time in a decade. [Breitbart]

— Brooklyn Assistant District Attorney Masha Saeidi-Azcuy tried to get the best of both worlds by keeping her job while participating as a contestant on Donald Trump's The Apprentice. What will happen when the Trump tells her "you're fired!"? [NYPost]

— Can you still "love your neigbor" if you find out they're a Tea Partier? [Washington Post]

— Weight-loss surgery is seeing a rise with a slightly different demographic: teens. [Daily Beast]

Photograph of Bill Clinton by Brian Harkin for Getty Images.

Tags: abstinence-only, bill clinton, gastric bypass, Sarah Palin, the apprentice, tyler clementi

The good news this week is that—as this stream of local news stories can attest—HHS has started handing out the $55 million in Personal Responsibility Education Program (PREP) grants. These grants go toward sex-education programs that have met evidence-based standards for reducing teen pregnancy and STI transmissions, which is a fancy way of saying that they teach kids about contraception. The bad news is that this doesn't mean the end of abstinence-only education.

In all the melee over health care reform, the baby-splitting compromise over sex education went understandably under-reported. In the grab bag of goodies being tossed at conservative Democrats and Republicans to get them to support health care reform, $50 million in grant money for abstinence-only programs was added to the $55 million for PREP. States can choose which money they'd like to apply for. Quietly, Congress instituted a form of red state/blue state balkanization of the sort that fed up people on both sides of the aisle are increasingly demanding, at least over cocktails, when, should politics come up amongst like-minded people, someone is bound to say, "Why can't the red states and blue states just go their separate ways already?" Well, on sex education, it looks like a looming possibility.

Should the "go your own way" strategy with sex education really take root, it will likely grow the already-existing inequalities between sexual health outcomes in red and blue states. As Naomi Cahn and June Carbone demonstrated in their book Red Familes v. Blue Families, more conservative states generally have higher teen pregnancy rates. There are complex reasons for this, but lack of social support for contraceptive use for sexually active teenagers is a major factor. Having the federal government help fund contraception-positive messages in blue states and contraception-negative messages in red states can only make this situation worse.

The good news is that red states aren't (yet) all completely in the thrall of the anti-sex league. There comes a breaking point for many where teen pregnancy rates get so high they're willing to start taking another look at those condom thingies. Arkansas quietly added contraception education to its health programs that used to be anti-contraception. For them, the breaking point was 62.3 births for teenagers out of 1,000 live births, 48 percent over the national average. Of course, some states, like Mississippi, will probably be building maternity wards in their high schools before they start to think that maybe it's not the worst idea if sexually active teenagers wrap it up.

Illustration about promoting abstinence by Adrignola for Wikimedia Commons.

Tags: abstinence-only education, comprehensive sex education, health care reform

Willow Smith, the 9-year-old daughter of Will and Jada Smith, has a hit song out and recently signed with Jay-Z’s RocNation record label. She seems like a great kid; bubbly, poised and, like many child stars, or the offspring of stars, very precocious. It’s easy to understand why her catchy single"Whip My Hair" is a hit; it has a fun, danceable beat and she sounds like another Jay-Z protégé, Rihanna, who signed with his record label at the tender old age of 16.

Willow is also a fashionista in the making, according to this article, and has walked the red carpet at Fashion Week in Milan, among other places. The author of the piece, Helena Andrews, questions whether Willow is too “grown” for her own good but also notes that she seems not to have lost her childlike innocence.

After watching this video of Willow being interviewed by Ryan Seacrest, I tend to agree. But I did find the cute fifth-grader’s matter-of-fact revelation that she’s not getting much schooling a bit surprising.

Here is part of her exchange with Seacrest:

Ryan: You’re 9-years-old, you are doing the flash and the red carpet thing, but you’re also learning your times table. That’s where you are in school, right?

Willow: Oh, Yes. I never really get to go to school because I’m always on tour with my father, or Jada is doing something.

Ryan: So is a tutor around?

Willow: Yes, most of the time, but usually I’m working so she comes but never really do work.

Ryan: And what’s the worst thing about math? Cause is math the worst subject for you?

Willow: Yes.

Ryan: Me, too.

Willow: The worst thing about math is that all the kids are ahead of you cause they go to school and when you’re trying to do your math tables, you’re, like, stuck and they’re like, "Oh, it it’s easy, you’re in fifth grade, oh it’s easy." And I’m like (inaudible).

Will and Jada Smith are clearly engaged and proud parents, and their kids are genuinely talented, but I sure hope that they don’t skirt on their kids’ education just because they have gobs of money. After all, we’ve all heard the stories about onetime child stars gowing up to be broke adults—even when they came from families with money. Of course there’s no telling whether this could happen to Willow and her equally talented actor brother, 11-year-old Jaden—who also discussed his schooling and tutors during this appearance on David Letterman's show but was not as revealing as Willow—but their parents should probably make sure they hit the books, anyway.

Photograph of Willow (r) and mother Jada Pinkett-Smith by AFP for Getty Images.

Tags: record deal, Whip My Hair, Will and Jada Smith, Willow Smith