Earlier today, Nicole Sia, a self-described “not unfashionable” fashion writer living in Brooklyn, posted a rant about the humiliation and rejection she suffered at the hands of resale clerks (you know, those ladies who pick over your castoffs and dish out cash or store credit). Sia writes: “I filled three big bags with clothes, shoes and other apparel I didn't want anymore and marched into one of Brooklyn's most reputable thrift store chains”—I’m guessing Beacon’s Closet?— “and anticipated a fat payday. In reality, I was marching into a self-confidence vacuum.”

Sia is careful to mention her fashion cred up front—no, she isn’t some frumpy-come-lately. She sports dorky-cool glasses and “thoughtfully disheveled hair,” has basics of "Tim Gunn’s Essential Items," as well as a few “indulgent” trendy pieces—including Louboutins. Surely somebody would covet a piece of her discounted secondhand wardrobe?

But the clerks poke at a few items and swiftly reject Sia’s castoffs. “Shock, confusion, self-doubt takes me over in one big wave. What was happening?” She writes. “In three big garbage bags there wasn't anything that anyone, anywhere would ever wear again?” Humiliated and angry, Sia consigns her castoffs to the charity heap, i.e., oblivion.

This episode reminds me of the one truth about fashion today—namely, that there is no fashion. The slapped-together, layered looks are essentially ill-conceived, the improvised looks are beyond reproach. In this anything-goes sartorial culture shop clerks are flatterers and cajolers, and there are few, if any, opportunities for outright rejection. Come to think of it, slobbism is a lot more common than snobbism, right? Ironically, the place we go to dump our castoffs and make some quick cash is one of the few retail outlets where a woman risks experiencing the once-common practice of gleeful discrimination.

Photograph of thrift store by Matt Cardy/Getty Images News.

Tags: castoffs, resale, secondhand

If you are young, ambitious, and possessed of a pair of breasts, Italy is evidently a very confusing place to live. On Monday Italian health undersecretary Francesca Martini sent a bill to parliament that would make it illegal for minors to get breast implants. In 2009, La Reppublica reported a survey finding that 14 percent of 16- and 17-year-old girls in Italy are worried about the size of their breasts, and Martini says the number of minors having breast-augmentation surgery, sometimes performed by uncertified practitioners, has increased.

Unless you believe the government should have no say in how parents raise their children, the legislation sounds like a responsible move in a country famous for objectifying women. The problem with the breast augmentation ban is that it targets the young women seeking breast enlargement, not the cultural circumstances that make a 16-year-old girl want to go under the knife.

Thanks to Italian prime minister Silvio Berlusconi, who made his fortune through his media mega-corp Mediaset, the outrageously buxom spokesmodel, or velina, is a fixture of Italian prime time. Turn on the tube in Italy and breasts are everywhere, especially on sports shows and game shows (in addition to the host's pert mammary equipment, this one also relies on tutus and line-dancing for appeal). On the Internet, of course, it's even worse. According to Google translator, this is an Internet-only commercial for washing machines [NSFW].

But it's not just the promise of attention, money, and B-list celebrity that lures young Italian women to get boob jobs. As Carla Power wrote in Time last November, Berlusconi has turned fielding former showgirls as candidates for government office into a major political strategy, a tactic that has come under criticism, but thus far has won his party plenty of seats. That's convincing evidence that, in Italy, a great rack helps propel a political career, and perhaps give you an advantage in other highly competitive fields. As though to underscore the point, Mediaset is producing an Italian version of the Colombian telenovela Sin Tetas No Hay Paraiso ("Without Breasts There Is No Paradise") about a young woman determined to get breast implants as a way to lift herself out of poverty.

What's really scary is that this whole pull-yourself-up-by-your-bra-straps message could be construed as some warped brand of feminism. In the United States, the rare glimpse of a politician's cleavage becomes a national issue (and puppet cleavage provokes outright censorship). Italy, on the other hand, elects women whose female parts are out front-and-center. Finally, a country that allows openly sexual women to legislate! And who's to say that a "showgirl" doesn't have the brains to run a government? Several of those former beauty queens and exotic dancers were successful businesswomen before Team Berlusconi recruited them.

The problem with this argument, of course, is that the success of Berlusconi's elect-a-babe campaign also tells young women that you have to have a certain cup size to even enter the political fray, and that your mind alone won't get you far.

There is movement afoot to undermine the objectification of women in the Italian media and the political sphere. Italian businesswoman Lorella Zanardo produced the documentary Il Corpo delle Donne ("Women's Bodies") highlighting the objectification of women on TV. Even female members of Berlusconi's inner circle have decried the amount of female flesh bared on primetime. Quite possibly, women whose career trajectory involved sexual favors or plastic surgery resent feeling those measures necessary. And now there's the breast-augmentation ban for girls.

But all of this has got to smack of hypocrisy to the young, ambitious, A-cup, Italian woman. How fair is it that she is banned from having a surgery that, grotesquely enough, is a proven method of getting ahead in Italy, especially when it was available to the female politicians currently in office when they were launching their careers? It's distantly parallel to forbidding athletes performance-enhancing drugs. There's obviously more dignity in succeeding with what you've got, but try explaining that to young women newly denied that extra boost—or, rather, bust.

Tags: berlusconi, carla power, francesca martini, Il Corpo delle Donne, italy bans breast augmentation for minors, lorella zanardo, mediaset, Sin tetas no hay paraiso, verlina

Jessica, it’s funny you should mention the Appalachian Trail. New York governor David Paterson’s defense of his aide reminds me of another all-male club that wants to keep its secrets in house—a club that sheltered Mark Sanford and urged his wife to be easy on him. I’m talking about a brick townhouse on Capitol Hill called the C Street House, where a group of evangelical congressmen, including Sanford, have bunked. The house is associated with the Fellowship, a secretive Christian organization that Jeff Sharlet has written an excellent book about. The house also claims tax-exempt status as a church, which a group of ministers have decided to complain about in a letter to the IRS.

In that complaint, the ministers raise many reasonable objections—among them, how can a place that does not list its phone number or official address be a church? But they also get into the more uncomfortable atmosphere of the clubhouse scene. The men who live there support one another in Christian fellowship. This habit stems from the Promise Keepers, the movement of the '90s that encouraged Christian men to form friendship groups where they could be open and honest about their feelings.

But to the wives, the honesty sometimes looks like collusion. Missouri Republican Chip Pickering lived there while he was carrying on his affair, his wife Leisha claimed in a lawsuit against his mistress. Ditto for Nevada Sen. John Ensign. Mark Sanford thanked the group in his lovesick press conference. And then Jenny reports the details in her book: Someone from the house told her that staying angry with Mark “was not an option,” and that she should “open my heart and be kind”—and especially not withhold sex from him. She should behave in all ways, the friend from the house advised, like “the Bride of Christ.”

Of course, this is not the same as covering for a friend who has committed domestic violence. And Jenny herself does not seem offended. But I will be offended for her. In fact the church’s emphasis on insta-reconciliation, above all else, has sometimes encouraged a too-quick forgiveness of domestic violence. But even short of that, how about some honesty in the wife’s direction? No one shared with Jenny, for example, that the woman from Argentina was not his only mistress.

Tags: C street house, Jenny Sanford, John Ensign, mark sanford, the fellowship

In 1959, the Ladies' Home Journal published an article called “Cruelty in the Maternity Wards,” in which women told stories of their inhumane treatment during childbirth. Despite the uproar it provoked, 50 years later, nothing substantial has changed. Really. Recently, a pregnant Florida woman was confined by the court to bedrest and ordered to submit to any treatment her doctor deemed necessary, including cesarean surgery. This is one of a string of similar stories appearing over the past months: A New Jersey woman with PTSD and depression in her past was deprived of custody of her child at birth because she refused to sign a blanket consent at hospital admission for cesarean surgery, an act cited as proof she was too mentally ill to be a fit mother. An Arizona woman with a prior cesarean was told if she showed up in labor and refused automatic surgery, the hospital would get a court order and perform it anyway. And an Illinois woman was literally tortured throughout labor by her doctor to punish her for not calling before coming to the hospital while medical staff stood by and did nothing.

These stories aren’t aberrations. We have a culture of impunity in maternity wards. Once pregnant, a woman effectively cedes her right to autonomy and bodily integrity to obstetric staff who sometimes—on grounds of fetal welfare, self-protection from malpractice suits, or mere convenience—manipulate women into compliance in ways that would be considered fraud in any other venue. Without fear of being called to account for it, they can bully, coerce, humiliate, and threaten. And, yes, they can physically mistreat or even sexually assault them—imagine if the Illinois woman’s story occurred outside of an L&D unit.

Tags: labor and delivery, ladies home journal

A recent Pew survey shows that 80 percent of "Millennials"—about the same percentage as with older respondents—say they believe in miracles. There's also a consistency of belief in concepts like demons, angels, and prayers. Yet increasingly few people ages 18-29 claim an affiliation with an major organized religion. If "belief" in church, synagogue, or mosque is going down (the percentage of "unaffiliated" youth was smaller in surveys done in 1970 and 1980), why would belief in miracles and the more supernatural elements of religion stay the same?

Researcher Greg Smith, in the great tradition of collectors of data, takes no position—but he does point out that "very consistently, we find more people saying they believe in heaven than say they believe in the existence of hell." And it's worth noting that the survey tied together the question of angels and demons. (Do you completely agree/mostly agree/disagree, etc, that "angels and demons are active in the world"?) In her book The Wishing Year, Noelle Oxenhandler raises the question of whether some religious beliefs are meant to be literal articles of faith or whether it's possible that the idea is simply to live as though a particular belief was true with the faith that the belief itself will lead to a better life. The question may not really be whether most Americans truly, rigorously believe in angels and heaven, but rather whether most Americans, of any age, want to believe. Who wants to check off a box on a form denying the possibility of miracles?

Tags: Religion, religion in the recession

For weeks the New York-based blogosphere has been talking about a possible bombshell the New York Times would reveal about Gov. David Paterson. Everyone thought it was an embarrassing affair of the Sanford variety involving "snuggling," but, in fact, the scandal is much more sinister: It's about a domestic-abuse case involving Paterson's aide David W. Johnson. According to the Times, the 6'7'' Johnson had been living with a Bronx woman and her son for about four years when, this past Halloween, he allegedly "choked her, stripped her of much of her clothing, smashed her against a mirrored dresser and taken two telephones from her to prevent her from calling for help, according to police records." She filed charges and requested a protective order against Johnson in the aftermath, and subsequently the woman went to court twice to complain that she was bullied by members of Paterson's police detail who wanted her to drop those charges. After that, Paterson got involved, the Times reports:

[J]ust before she was due to return to court to seek a final protective order, the woman got a phone call from the governor, according to her lawyer. She failed to appear for her next hearing on Feb. 8, and as a result her case was dismissed.

For his part, Paterson says the woman initiated the phone call. He also says that there will be an investigation of state police impropriety. Johnson has been suspended without pay. But the Times also notes that Johnson has a history of violence that Paterson has overlooked: "Mr. Johnson has had three known altercations with women, according to interviews with the women and the governor. Two of them involved the police, and one required the intervention of Mr. Paterson’s chief of staff at the time." If it turns out that Paterson did play a part in getting this woman to stay away from court, he will make hiking the Appalachian Trail look like a walk in the park.

Photograph of David Paterson by Mandel Ngan/AFP/Getty Images.

Tags: david paterson, david w. johnson

—Despite Sarah Palin’s recent attempts to feign outrage at Rahm Emanuel’s r-word outburst, prominent disability-rights organizations do not want the former Alaska governor as their celebrity advocate. [The Daily Beast]

—The rivalry between Olympic skiers Lindsey Vonn and Julia Mancuso intensifies as Vonn’s slalom fall harms Mancuso. [New York Times]

—Tiger Woods’ mistresses will compete to win $100,000 in a beauty pageant organized by Howard Stern. [Gawker]

—Affluent parents hire occupational therapists to serve as homework coaches. [New York Times]

— Don’t Bring Home a White Boy author Karyn Langhorne Folan urges college-educated black women to find a new market for their commodity and date outside their race. [Washington Post]

—A panel of experts addresses the question of whether “sex addiction” actually exists. [NYT Consults blog]

Tags: interracial dating, Lindsey Vonn, olympics, overparenting, Race, rachel uchitel, Rahm Emanuel, Sarah Palin, sex addiction, tiger woods