Thanks, Jess, for giving us some much-needed perspective on all the Lori Gottlieb coverage. Although her book, Marry Him: The Case for Settling for Mr. Good Enough, surely prompted lots of entertaining “I wonder what my life would be like if I had married that guy” Sunday brunch chatter, I’m guessing that many women concluded that they’re glad they didn’t. Because they probably listened to that little voice in their gut that told them something wasn’t quite right, and they wish it were as simple as his annoying habit of saying "awesome" too much. I imagine the rest of the conversations were dedicated to pointing out the just-OK fates of friends who let marriage anxiety and baby panic make decisions for them. You know, the friend whose husband isn’t all that helpful with the kids, or the one who makes cutting comments about domestic life that make you cringe. Unfortunately, those stories tend to outweigh the ones of your college roommate who snagged the short, fat diamond-in-the-rough.

Gottlieb is no helpful older sister to women of a certain age—who are already wracked with anxiety—by perpetuating the myths that men are in short supply and we are losing our chance to have a family by the minute. Not only are there lots of great guys out there, including the second rounders coming off their first divorces, but women have more options in the baby department than ever before. The science of egg freezing has vastly improved and offers a viable option for women who need a few more years to figure out the right partner. As for women too old to have a biological child, donor eggs and foreign adoption have made motherhood possible for thousands. I know many women who held out for the right guy and had children using donor eggs who are blissfully happy. They didn’t unnecessarily freak out and make bad decisions. Gottlieb succumbed to her own worry over not meeting her baby deadline by visiting the sperm bank in her late 30s. Still, lots of women in her boat get married, too. I appreciate the fact that Gottlieb wants to share her regrets over her reluctance to marry. I just wish she wouldn’t attempt to push women to second-guess their guts. Or convince any women that her life is over at 42.

Tags: lori gottlieb, marry him: the case for settling for mr. good enough

It's been hard for me to support the Obama administration in the past few months because of what I perceive as an epic failure on the health care front. Even Obama's thumping of House Republicans seems like too little, too late, as though he just realized that they fully intend to block any national progress and then run against Obama as a failure—a strategy bloggers and pundits have been telling him was the Republican strategy from roughly day one. But then I read articles like this one on the reworking of No Child Left Behind, and I am reminded that there are good aspects to having such a wonky president, even if he occasionally falls behind on his political battles.

The reason this wonky nonsense gives me confidence is that it manages to do what Obama always claims he wants to do, which is take good ideas—wherever they come from—and use them and refine them to be better ideas. And I can't say I completely object to the selling point of No Child Left Behind, which is that the federal government should have educational standards and accountability. My problem with it was that it always seemed a bit dangerous to suggest that a highly punitive approach is appropriate for education, since punitive approaches on the administrative level end up trickling down to students, and most evidence shows reward-based learning is a lot better than punishment-based learning. And, sure enough, schools seem to prefer weeding out the students who are a drag on their scores over actually getting them up to speed.

The "one high standard" promise of NCLB is also straight-up unfair. For students who live in districts where they're far more likely to have adequate nutrition, rest, and family involvement, getting kids to pass a standardized test isn't that big of a deal. Kids whose parents are crippled by poverty, however, don't have those advantages, and it encourages more of the dreaded "teaching the test," instead of educating the students. Focusing strictly on standardized testing is highly criticized for missing the point of education as well. Though I have to point out that "teaching the test" neatly aligns to conservative demands that education be nothing more than accounting and literacy skills and stays the hell away from teaching critical thinking that would probably do some serious damage to long-term Republican prospects.

The administration wants to get away from teaching the test, and instead return to framing education as preparation for life, with a standard for graduating students "college or career ready." Money is also being shifted in a way that emphasizes rewarding schools for taking action, instead of punishing them for failing to achieve test scores. It's going to be more complicated, but there is more potential for effective improvements. And the wonky Obama administration is just the crew to handle such a complex task.

Tags: no child left behind, Obama, standardized testing

Ross Douthat steps into the abstinence debate today with a fairly radical proposal about how sex education should be handled by school districts. He is absolutely right that liberals were awfully gloating and simplistic last week about the rise in teen pregnancies—blaming them all on Bush’s promotion of abstinence education. There had also been a remarkable drop in teen pregnancies for the last decade, so Bush should then get the credit for that, too.

He is also right that great statistics on what works in sex education are hard to come by, as Kristin Luker proves in her book When Sex Goes to School. But we do have some good information. We know, for example, after comprehensive, long-term studies, that abstinence education in most cases does not delay sex all that much and does result in teens having more unprotected sex, as Mark Regnerus points out in Forbidden Fruit. We know that it works best when a group of teens create a kind of distinct abstinence-clique explicitly apart from their peers. We also have some fine-tuned information about the circumstances under which information about condoms and other protection tends to stick.

So is the answer, as Douthat argues, to let districts decide for themselves? (No condoms in Alabama, no abstinence in Berkeley.) No way. This just seems like condemning some children to bad information and permanent ignorance. Instead we should try to design a fairly neutral education that mentions all the options, and different ones will resonate with different teens depending on their families' and their own values. Forgive me for calling on my favorite TV character here but ... on the last episode of Friday Night Lights, Principal Tami Taylor is accused by some conservative board members of having counseled a girl into getting an abortion and “imposing her values” on her. In fact, she did no such thing. She merely explained flatly to the girl the entirety of her options, and in fact never brought up the abortion option until the girl hinted she might want it. Without a neutral Taylor figure, that girl would have made the same choice, but had an entirely different shameful experience. Why lie to and bully a child just because he or she happens to live in Alabama—or Berkeley?

Tags: Kirstin Luker, naturalist, Ross Douthat and abstinence education, sacrilist

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Amid little fanfare, the Miss America pageant aired live from Las Vegas Saturday night. The event barely made a ripple, except among a few entertainment and feminist bloggers eager to (again) ponder its lack of relevance and implicit sexism. Growing up in Georgia (the heart of pageant country), I attended a public high school that hosted two student beauty pageants every year. Like those dismissive bloggers, I used to give them the eye-roll treatment, too. But after years of watching romantic comedies and flipping through women’s magazines, I’ve come to love pageants for their honesty.

Many Gen Y women still feel a sometimes unbearable pressure to be “effortlessly perfect”—a phrase coined by researchers at Duke University in 2003 to describe the pull young women feel to be "smart, accomplished, fit, beautiful, and popular," without visible effort. In this cultural moment, I’ve come to respect pageant contestants for their blindingly obvious effort. Makeup, bleached teeth, and sprayed-on tans are celebrated. Pageants are simply a more honest manifestation of our whole beauty-obsessed culture—and I find that liberating.

At Miss America, you won’t find any ethereal, Angelina-like waifs floating around. Instead, when the girls strut across the stage in bikinis and heels and Bumpits, their bodies are chiseled and curvy and human. Some look “like armor,” noted former Miss America Susan Powell in this year’s TLC pre-show. They appear to have worked damn hard to look camera-ready. They tell me: Don’t be ashamed to spend time in front of the mirror primping—or to (gasp!) apply lipstick in public.

And so I say: Give Miss America a break. She may no longer represent who we aspire to be, but in one important respect, she represents who we are.

Photograph of Miss America winner Caressa Cameron by Ethan Miller/Getty Images for Planet Hollywood.

Tags: effortlessly perfect, miss america