Over at the Daily Beast, Pamela Redmond Satran has written what’s being billed as “The Elite’s Top 50 Baby Names.” Actually, it’s just a list of names that users have been searching for on Satran’s Web site, nameberry, which the author—if she does say so herself—calls “the high-quality, intelligent source for stylish names” for “discerning parents.” I’m not quite sure how she’s defining “elite”—it seems to be some combination of cultural savvy, wealth, and not going to Applebee’s—or how we’re supposed to know that her users fall into this particular demographic.

But at the very least, these are names I could easily imagine being yelled over the Putumayo jams at the hip-mom cafes of brownstone Brooklyn—names like Sophia, Atticus, Milo, and Imogen (a name that elicited many wistful sighs here in the DoubleX cubicle pod). Satran definitely puts her finger on the way that, for some parents, picking out a baby name is like curating the perfect bookshelf or outfit—it should telegraph refinement without snobbishness, exclusivity without gaucheness, uniqueness without declassé wackiness. (DoubleXer Noreen notes that her sister complains about non-Irish parents who give their kids Gaelic-ish names, like Finnegan, perhaps because they’re “exotic” while still being “white”—or what I like to call the Tory Burch effect.)

Satran then took her top 50 list and compared it with the Social Security Administration’s list of popular baby names from around the country. A few conclusions that seemed worth pulling out:

In a reversal of the naming habits of the general population. Elite parents are more likely to give their sons non-traditional names than they are their daughters. … Rich boys can get away with a quirky name like Quinn or Phineas, while upscale girls are more often given conventional, non-hoochie names such as Caroline and Jane.

Names on the Elite boys’ list more often have soft sounds—Asher, Silas—and vowel endings—Kai, Milo—which telegraph a greater acceptance of an unconventional style of masculinity.

Obviously, Satran hasn’t done a robust study here, but what do you think of these hypotheses—are “elite” boys really allowed to be zanier than their sisters? And are “nonelite” boys’ names really that much more macho—or are we just more used to them? (After all, five of the top 10 boys names in the United States have “soft sounds.”)

While you’re pondering, I leave you with this little gem of weirdness from the A/V department of the Social Security Administration:

Tags: baby names, class, daily beast, elite

Sorry, Amanda, but I feel zero sympathy for the part-time blogger delighted by his government-financed rabbit feast because he is "sort of a foodie" who's just "not going to do the 'living off ramen' thing." He doesn't sound like a victim of the recession; he sounds like a victim of his own choices.

I have no problem with people "eating healthy food instead of junk food while on food stamps." But organic-only grocery stores are not the only places that sell healthy food. It's entirely possible to eat healthfully while shopping at Safeway and eschewing the marginally better-for-you organic fare that Whole Foods overcharges you for.

I don't want to get into a food fight, though. I have about as much appetite for food moralizing as that blogger does for ramen. To me, this is less about a few individuals' food choices than it is about the government's benefits choices. I say a government has gone off the rails when it is providing underemployed thirtysomethings the werewithal to live in culinary luxury. Food stamps should keep people nourished, not keep their freezers stocked with gourmet ice cream.
I'm not saying there's anything the government can or should do about this. I agree with you and Jess that this is a microtrend amplified for a piece that will generate lots of comments and lots of clicks for Salon. Surely there are more truly impoverished young people who benefit from food stamps than there are hipsters traipsing through the aisles of specialty food stores. But let's not pretend that people who buy heirloom tomatoes and do the bulk of their shopping at Whole Foods are "victims of the recession" who "deserve our sympathy."

Tags: food stamps, foodies, hipsters, recession, whole foods

The Daily Mail is basically the unintentional Onion of the U.K., so it shouldn't be that surprising that "Ironing? Leave it to her: Women are far better at it that men" was a headline on the paper's Web site this morning. According to a new study, women proved themselves innate domestic goddesses in a series of household tasks—threading a needle, making a bed, and ironing—beating their male counterparts in three-minute trials for each activity. But men, ever-handy specimens they are, fared better at reading maps, changing a tire, and pitching a tent. (Although, relatedly, men seem to enjoy burping a baby, at least on their iPhones.) According to the paper:

The study was carried out by research analysts MindLab International and featured more than 1,200 adults. It found clear divisions in what men and women could complete in just three minutes from a selection of various tasks. Women could iron two shirts far more adeptly in the time limit. Overall they excelled in those jobs which needed speedy hand-to-eye co-ordination and verbal reasoning, such as threading six needles or winning an argument with logic. Men, in contrast, did better at those jobs which needed what researchers call spatial awareness, such as map reading, understanding self assembly instructions and putting up a tent."

The most incredible aspect of this article is realizing that MindLab International, presumably a scientific entity of some sort, brainstormed and concluded, "You know what needs some more very serious scientific speculation? Whether women are better than men at ironing!" and then spent money conducting "activity trials" to give validity to a very special tenet of the patriarchy: Women are born chore-doers. It couldn't be because, oh, you know, ironing and sewing have been designated woman's duties for the last century or anything; it must be because ladies' brains were created specially to be excellent household runners. Thanks science!

I often wonder if they put this stuff out there specifically to be newsworthy for the lady blogs.

Tags: Daily Mail, stupid gender studies

Rielle Hunter has never been as interesting as John Edwards' weakness for her. She's a type, as Hanna explains. Passivity is her religion; she can't own a single action in her interview. She's a vessel. Sometimes cosmic forces remove her pants in front of a photographer or throw her into a hotel room with a presidential candidate, but when her belly swells and John denies paternity, well, what can she do? She just takes "whatever life brings."

The rather more captivating woman in this drama—the axis around which the Lifetime movie should turn—is Cheri Young. She would appear, in this interview with Oprah, to be the most intelligent person in her marriage. And yet she took Rielle Hunter in, lied to her children about it, and came close to pretending that her husband had impregnated his boss's mistress. She evidently shopped for Rielle Hunter, brought her groceries, and answered her children's questions about why she was grocery shopping for the strange lady in their home. What motivates a woman to so indulge her husband's obsequious relationship to another man? Why risk your own dignity in the service of turning your husband into a doormat?

Tags: andrew young, John Edwards, rielle hunter

I find all this Rielle Hunter bashing troubling. Sure, she is trashy. Sure, she is not that sophisticated or wildly intelligent in her analysis of the affair, but lots of celebrities in magazine profiles are equally New Age-y and pose for pictures in equal states of undress. There is something in all of this bashing that to me has a Hawthorne-like quality. Think of Hester Prynne in the Scarlet Letter. There is a nasty female cattiness to all of this, and a retrograde moral subtext to the school-yard fierceness. Women always blame women in questions of betrayal, and I think this tendency should be examined. Who cares if Rielle Hunter is sort of silly? What does the extremity of our reaction to her say about us?

Tags: rielle hunter

Rielle Hunter says she trusted the GQ photographer who took the pictures that accompany her artless prattling not to use them (or at least, maybe to use just one sexy one, because that would have been much better). Is there any way to blame Mark Seliger for permanently linking the image of Barney with that of John Edwards performing oral sex in Hanna's mind? Sadly, no.

After condemning Rielle Hunter for her poor judgement in posing, I listened to Barbara Walters describe an interview with Hunter in which Hunter says she "screamed for two hours" when she saw herself sexily arrayed next to her daughter's impressive pack of branded, stuffed creations. I wanted to feel at least a little sympathy—she wouldn't be the first woman to find herself manipulated by a photographer and a glamorous photo shoot. But still, Walters never said so directly, but she certainly implied that she would have been happy to have the first interview with Rielle Hunter. I'd imagine dozens of news programs and publications would have been. But Hunter chose GQ. Why?

My first guess was money, but I was flat-out wrong—Hunter "didn't make a penny for this interview." So the question that I really wanted Walters to have asked (and maybe she did, but didn't get an answer) was, then why GQ? It seems to me that when Hunter agreed to play with GQ, she agreed to play by their rules—and their prime directive when dealing with women subjects is titillate first, ask questions later. That can't be a surprise to anyone who's ever walked by a newstand. It's hard to believe Rielle Hunter could have been naive enough to think she could manipulate GQ into changing their game, but then, it's hard to believe anyone would describe John Edwards as having fallen "to grace" or "living a life of truth."

GQ has had its moments of serious journalism, but if Hunter was really hoping that her interview would be one of them, she shouldn't have taken off her pants. It may be that a woman who puts "being is free" on her business cards just isn't a woman who ought to attempt to play with the big dogs. But that ship has sailed, and now Hanna is stuck with her unfortunate new Kermit the Frog associations. The rest of get a fresh reminder of an important rule that's been true since the days of the daguerrotype: the man with the camera suggesting you undo just one more button almost never has your best interests at heart.

Tags: John Edwards, Rielle Hunter poses for GQ

Thank you, Jessica, for coming down on that silly article trying to raise ire against people who are, whether they dress with more flair than the average Joe, still victims of the recession and deserve our sympathy. The writer, Jennifer Bleyer, deserves an award in the art of using loaded language to lure her audience into sitting in judgment of people for basically eating healthy food instead of junk food while on food stamps. It wasn't just the use of terms like "delectable" and the focus on rare purchases of cheese your average person doesn't know the name of. The starkest example of priming the well was the use of the increasingly meaningless term "hipster," a term guaranteed to set a vocal population of impossibly bitter readers into full-blown judge-and-scold mode.

People who were geeks and outcasts in high school are way overrepresented in the ranks of hipsterdom in my experience, and yet the way people carry on about them, you'd think they were a pack of adult Heathers, dashing into the homes of innocent Hootie and the Blowfish fans to ransack the place and throw out all the khaki pants. I've been on the receiving end of more than one online "I hate hipsters!" freakout for using my personal blog and Twitter to talk about bands I like that the angry person has presumably never heard of. The circle of things that make someone eligible for this overwrought anger seems to be growing, too. It used to be that you were a bad person just because you had good taste in music or were a bit of a fashion victim. But now you're a "hipster" if you're a foodie? I know middle-aged women who wear overalls and like Celine Dion who are foodies. I've even seen the term flung at people for the high crime of being a smart-ass. I'm not saying there aren't hipsters who gain self-esteem by obsessing over people who aren't as cool as them, but honestly, that kind of behavior is really rare in my experience.

I can't help but think the use of the term "hipster" has become a signal to people that it's safe to engage in the all-American sport of arguing that we don't need no stinkin' culture, and that arty-farty people are elitist scum who think they're sooooooo smart. Right-wing nuts don't need an excuse to engage in that sort of thing, but I guess liberal-minded people itching to engage in a little philistine-tinged haterade relish the opportunity to aim that energy at people who offend them by being big time into indie rock and vintage fashion.

Overall,  hipster hating is a harmless pursuit aimed at relatively privileged people who can shrug it off most of the time (even if it annoys me when people tweet at me while I'm off at South by Southwest). But when it's used to bash people who've found themselves out of work and on food stamps, that's when it stops being cute, and starts being cruel. What next? Wishing death on someone who takes comfort in their love of rock music after a cancer diagnosis?

Tags: food, food stamps, hipsters

—House speaker Nancy Pelosi may push for a "deem and pass" measure rather than a vote on the Senate health reform bill. Citing a 1998 Supreme Court ruling, some Republicans say the tactic would be unconstitutional. [Washington Post]

—Expanding on Katrin Bennold's New York Times article on women in the sciences, Latoya Peterson blames video games, in addition to social conditioning and historical misconceptions about female intelligence, for the decreased number of female scientists. [Guardian, New York Times]

—Last night Jon Stewart mocked elephants and asses alike for their sex scandal hypocrisy: Boehner, who defended Hastert for not outing Foley, lambasts Pelosi for protecting Massa. Ha! And that's just the House ... [Gawker]

—Studies show that prospective employers and even physicians are biased against the overweight. Is Michelle Obama's campaign against childhood obesity just teaching kids early that fat people are unacceptable? [New York Times]

—A new study suggests that women are better than men at almost every three-minute task, including winning an argument and rewiring a plug. The Daily Mail's conclusion? See, women really should do all the ironing! [Daily Mail]

Tags: boehner, gender differences, hastert, health care reform, Larry Summers, mark foley, massa, Michelle Obama, Nancy Pelosi, we're talking about, women in science

This Salon headline is meant to irk: "Hipsters on food stamps." The blog post is about art-school grads and part-time bloggers who spend government money on Japanese eggplant and organic asparagus. The post acknowledges that the "overwhelming majority" of Americans on food stamps are the poor and working class, but goes on to cover the microtrend anyway.

I'm not sure that "hipster" food stamp recipients are anything but a fake trend, but it does appear that no article about food purchasing or ingesting can be written without irate and judgemental comments. The twenty- and thirtysomethings in the article are predictably called lazy and overly indulged, for example: "Of course people are going to be pissed that they're busting their asses every day in real jobs so that some douchebag can satisfy his 'flexitarian' gourmet diet." But even if these hipsters were using their own money to buy their organic food they'd be slammed. Or if they were buying the stereotypical foods purchased with food stamps—which is to say, heavily processed—they'd be criticized for contributing to the so-called "obesity crisis." Eating is now a major moral issue in America, and whatever choice you make is wrong.

Tags: flexitarian, food stamps, hipsters