Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso, who Wednesday won the Olympic gold and silver respectively, have been skiing rivals since they were 12. Lindsey is the Barbara to Julia's Jenna. Julia is known as a party girl who never leaves home without her Guitar Hero and karaoke set, eats Pop Tarts for breakfast, and skips out of training to surf in Hawaii. She owns her own underwear line, called "Kiss My Tiara." She once portrayed Lindsey as the Tracey Flick of the slopes:

She treats skiing a little more like a job. It doesn't always look like fun. I mean, it does when she wins, but when she's not winning, it doesn’t look so fun. I know Lindsey loves to ski, but it's regimented. She is following a plan, like something on a piece of paper.

Yesterday, at the top of the slope before her run, Lindsey's husband Thomas called her on a walkie-talkie. What did he say, the ever-curious Bob Costas asked her after the medal ceremony? "He told me Julia had skiied a really good run, so, that really got me going, you know, like I had to have an exceptional run." He told her Julia had a good run? Now that's some unusual, and possibly gender-specific coaching, or at least coaching as inspired by Gossip Girls or the Real Housewives. Want to get a girl juiced? Tell her that her main, lifelong rival did a great job.

Tags: Julia Mancuso, Lindsey Vonn, Thomas Vonn

For at least two decades now, whining about the oppression of political correctness has been a powerful recruiting tool for the right. Rush Limbaugh and his countless imitators have had a smashing success in painting a picture of liberals as a bunch of finger-shaking schoolmarms depriving red-blooded American white men of their God-given right to use racist, sexist, ableist, and homophobic language without risking criticism from the uptight, effeminate left. It was deafening, the weeping and wailing about out-of-control language-Nazis oppressing the conservative male with lip snarls and eye rolls when he merely wants to say something vicious towards disempowered groups. But now, of course, the biggest finger-shaking schoolmarm in the nation is apparently Sarah Palin, on the warpath against the improper use of the word "retard," and you have to wonder how the right that worships her will reconcile the cognitive dissonance.

The latest offenders who are no doubt squealing with glee about annoying a censorious authority figure is Seth MacFarlane and the writing staff of Family Guy, who made fun of mentally disabled people and specifically of the Palin family for having a member who has Down syndrome. If Palin were a Democrat, there would be no question of how this would be spun. The shock-jock, right-wing establishment would immediately snap into place, protecting the right of white guys like MacFarlane to act like junior-high-school kids who think it's "daring" to make fun of disempowered people, instead of turning their satirical eye toward the mighty. But, of course, Palin is on Team Conservative, and so this has to play out a little differently. Now that conservatives officially have embraced political correctness along with liberals, can we just stop playing the game of shaming people for having basic decency?

The answer is, "possibly." Palin, who is not known for being consistent about her outrage, broke out of character to shame Rush Limbaugh for using the word "retard." Cynics might point out she's trying to snatch his throne, but I do think that many conservatives have consistently demonstrated that when the disempowered are members of their own family, they suddenly grow a conscience on that particular issue. Arlen Specter's battles with cancer made him break against the Republicans to support stem-cell research. Dick Cheney's own daughter is gay, and while he's too much of a political coward to issue full-throated support for gay rights, he's come out in favor of gays in the military and always tepidly supported gay marriage rights. So I do think Palin's offense is sincere. Though I'm sure she's still fine with political incorrectness, as long as it's not aimed at her family.

Tags: family guy, political correctness

A few weeks ago, I posted about the uproar over Vanity Fair's lily-white "New Hollywood" cover. Like many bloggers, I noted that Gaby Sidibe, one of the season's bona fide, young, breakout stars could have been included on the cover, but wasn't. Sidibe talked to Access Hollywoodabout the controversy, and her response was sad and sobering:

“Was I satisfied [about being included in a photo inside the magazine]? Yeah, well… I mean, I come from a world where I’m not on covers and I’m not in magazines at all,” Gabourey said. “And so I was happy to be in the magazine."“At first I thought, ‘Hmm, should I be there?” she continued, about the cover shoot. “Then I very quickly got over it. I think if I were a part of that shoot I would have felt a little left out anyway ... I would have felt a little like… whether or not I should have been there,” she told Shaun.

Sidibe then said, very graciously, that it didn't matter and she was "excited to be mentioned anywhere," and that she's happy with the way she looks. But how sad is the idea that, if she had been asked to participate—if Vanity Fair had shown some subversive gumption—she wouldn't have felt proud and happy and equal to the other lovely women on the cover?

Tags: actresses, gaby sidibe, Race, Vanity Fair

As a casual reader of fashion magazines, I did something I rarely do yesterday: ran out and bought Vogue as soon as it hit the local newsstand. Why? Because my heroine Tina Fey was on the cover! There has been some hubbub about how Fey's scar was airbrushed—but this is Vogue's m.o.: They airbrush everyone into oblivion. I was far more interested in the content of the article about Fey. Conducted by Jonathan Van Meter, the interview with the 30 Rock star was fairly fashion-focused (after all, this is Vogue). It covered some of what has been mentioned in previous interviews, including the great one by Maureen Dowd in Vanity Fair last year—Fey's weight loss and subsequent transformation from frumpy Chicago writer to sexy onscreen siren. Even though there wasn't much new information in the article, there were still some great, funny comments from Fey within, particularly about her place in the culture. For instance: "I feel like I represent normalcy in some way. What are your choices today in entertainment? People either represent youth, power, or sexuality. And then there's me, carrying normalcy ... Me and Rachael Ray."

Here's Fey on the intersection of fashion and feminism:

I spend most of my time in my daily life trying to be like a fashion noncombatant. My hands are up! I'm not even trying! That said, to talk about the impact of fashion is really interesting. I think so much of it is tied into feminism. I am a post-baby boomer who has been handed a sort of Spice Girls' version of feminism. We're supposed to be wearing half-shirts and jumping around. And, you know, maybe that's not panning out. But you can tell different generations of women by whether or not they wear that Hillary Clinton blue power suit or the reappropriated Playboy-symbol necklace worn ironically.

What Fey represents is the approachable, reasonable middle ground between Playboy necklace and power suit. On the show and in her real life, she wears sneakers and jeans. (Van Meter actually begins his piece with an extremely uncharitable anecdote about running into Fey the morning after the Golden Globes last year. He says she looked so harried and tired he "was afraid it wasn't her.") When she has an awards show to go to, she looks fabulous and vampy. She is an idealized version of the rest of us, and for that we love her.

Tags: 30 Rock, Tina Fey, Tina Fey Vogue Cover

It's fashion week in New York, and the bimonthly news articles about models and their weight are back in the papers. There are articles in the New York Times and the New York Daily News about Canadian model Coco Rocha, who is a whopping size 4. Rocha—still an incredibly successful model, mind you—is no longer in demand on the runway, according to the Times, because she doesn't fit the absurdly small sample-sizes. The dek of the article in the Times sets up an anonymous straw man who believes Rocha to be fat: "Many consider Coco Rocha a veritable behemoth in a business that makes a fetish of being rail thin." The Daily News mentions a panel about models and weight that the Council of Fashion Designers of America hosted to talk about the super-skinny-model problem (for a full rundown of that panel, check out Jenna Sauer's great account at Jezebel).

The over-thinness of runway models is still a problem. This is undeniable. But the amount of broken-record coverage this issue continues to get is ridiculous. (Check out this NYT headline from 2006: "When Is Thin Too Thin?" Aparently no one has figured it out yet.) One point that is always mentioned is the impact size-0 models have on American teen girls. Sauers points out that the much bigger and more upsetting problem with very skinny runway models is not that a woman like Rocha is not getting work or that American teens have body-image issues. It's that very young teenagers from poor countries are being exploited. Sauers describes a "Ukrainian teenager who is living out of a suitcase in a model apartment and falling by the day into ever more significant debt to an agency that could theoretically drop her at any moment."

Sauers does a great job in general of deconstructing the more glamorous elements of the industry, and perhaps a more useful approach in solving the too-skinny model problem would be to stop behaving as if modeling were a realistic or healthy aspiration for the vast, vast majority of young women. Today's Times article hints at this absurdity. Guy Trebay writes:

Ms. Rocha is a model. Who isn’t nowadays? It used to be that kids wanted to grow up to be astronauts, police officers or doctors. Now it would appear that modeling is the career default of anybody who doesn’t have two heads.

For this, I blame Tyra.

Photograph of Coco Rocha by Frazer Harrison/Getty Images.

Tags: coco rocha, modeling, new york fashion week, weight

Bromancer Judd Apatow has a new film in the works, written by two women! Not that the plot summary is any kinder to the ladies than his previous flicks. The script, by Annie Mumolo and Saturday Night Live cast member Kristin Wiig, who will also star, is reportedly about "women competing to plan a friend's wedding party." How Apatow: The women plan obsessively, the men just crash. [Variety]

Is a female political class emerging in Iraq? Several women have formed a new party to defend women's rights, while female members of Parliament seek greater influence. All despite criticism from religious leaders and other women. [New York Times]

A new study shows that young women are more likely to practice safe sex after watching a TV show that deals with the issue than an educational news program. Viewing the same show made guys less likely to bother with protection. [New York Times]

Eating hamburgers at age 21 will make you as fat as Coco Rocha, the size-4 model who is speaking out about the job opportunities her nonanorexic, post-pubescent body has cost her. [New York Daily News, New York Times]

The Daily Beast rates the laziest countries in the world. (Hint: We win.) [The Daily Beast]

Tags: coco rocha, Iraqi women, Judd Apatow, Kristin Wiig, laziest countries, modeling, models, safe sex, Saturday Night Live, sex ed, sex education, snl