In his new book Girls on the Edge: The Four Factors Driving the New Crisis for Girls, psychologist and family physician Leonard Sax posits that many girls growing up in the 21st century lack a stable, internally developed sense of self. The anxiety that absence generates, Sax argues, is behind girls' increased rates of depression, cutting, and alcohol abuse; increased propensity to look and act sexy before they feel sexual; obsessive management of their personal brands on social networks; and the pursuit of academic or athletic excellence above all other concerns. External validation is everything. Today's girls, Sax claims, often "find themselves not so much living as performing." And when, for whatever reason, that performance stops eliciting external approval or comments on Facebook walls, girls implode.

Fortunately, Sax is up to more here than pronouncing young women irrevocably doomed. Less narrative-heavy than Reviving Ophelia, its best known '90s predecessor, Girls on the Edge doesn't dramatize the self-destructive behavior it describes. And whereas many a teen daughter read Reviving Ophelia, Girls on the Edge speaks exclusively to parents and offers concrete ways to help their daughters cultivate stronger personal identities. The most useful chapters are those on why and how to protect your daughter on the Internet when she is already more tech-savvy than you ever care to be, and the one on the importance of cultivating a girl's spiritual life, even if you're a proud secular humanist. Sax also makes a good case for limiting your daughters' exposure to chemicals in most plastics, which have been linked to early-onset puberty.

Since Sax's first book was Why Gender Matters, it's not surprising that the overall remedy he prescribes is to accommodate gender differences in everything from how girls are taught physics to how coaches warm up their athletes. This has always been a contentious proposal. Some feminists have long claimed that teaching, coaching, and parenting girls differently or separately from boys projects the idea that women can't compete with men "in the real world." Sax points out pretty convincingly that, actually, coed school is very different from the real world, and that we ignore girls' unique needs, established by countless studies on gender and development, at their peril.

Tags: DoubleX Book of the Week, girls on the edge, leonard sax

Yes, Rielle Hunter, who appeared yesterday on Oprah, is the kind of woman who drives me batty. She lives, as I’ve written before, as if the dictates of the supreme inner-being that lives inside her are more important than anything else, and to be a moral person, all she has to do is put her ear to her heart and listen. This spiritual amoral world view is, as Alessandra Stanley wrote, impervious to “contradiction and sarcasm.” She says things like, “I’m a very private person,” while she’s talking about her sex tape on Oprah. She doesn’t seem to regret or apologize for anything—even the sex tape—because apologies aren’t necessary if you always follow your heart.

That said, this latest round of Rielle bashing seems just cruel. Comparing her to Ahmadinejad (as Stanley does)? Calling her a “borderline simpleton, fame-seeking narcissist” (from Salon’s Rebecca Traister)? I’m beginning to agree with Katie Roiphe, who pointed out in the last round of Rielle-apalooza that we were all taking too much glee in pinning the Scarlet Letter on her. How do you explain, for one, why Oprah treated John Edwards gently, asking him general questions about the affair and concluding, “You can see that this a home with love.” With Rielle, on the other hand, I can barely remember a time we got Oprah that down and dirty, unless it was with James Frey or someone else who had personally crossed her.

"Not to sound like Dr. Phil," said Winfrey, "but what were you thinking?" she said about the GQ shoot in which Rielle posed on her daughter’s bed with no pants on.

Then she dug in more, getting impatient. "Because you actually have to take your pants off."

Then impatience curdled to sarcasm: "What did 'Johnny' think about those photos?"

I’m not sure there’s a great gender point to make here. Our culture, is for the most part arbitrary about which person we choose to bash on in an affair. We’ve been relatively easy on Tiger’s mistresses and hard on Tiger. Sandra Bullock’s husband has been squashed. Some people take a beating, I think, because they make themselves vulnerable to it. Rielle is an easy target because she has a dumb martyr quality about her. We feel like no matter how many times we set her up, she’ll fall into the trap and say, over and over, some nonsense about her heart.

Tags: rielle hunter, Rielle Hunter on Oprah

—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton drops an abortion “grenade” in Canada’s lap and reveals herself to be a fearless crusader in the abortion wars. [Washington Post]

—After 27 years, downtown Seattle’s Lusty Lady, the kibbutz of strip clubs, will finally close its doors. [LA Times]

—Many high school seniors who cannot afford to attend their top-choice school have written emotional letters of appeal to financial aid offices across the country. [New York Times]

—Sarah Palin announces her support for “hockey dad” Todd Emmer as the next Republican governor of Alaska. [Politico]

—On Oprah yesterday, John Edwards’ one-time mistress Rielle Hunter showcased her uncanny aptitude for making absurd claims in a disturbingly calm tone of voice. [New York Times]

—Meet Stephanie Grace, the Harvard Law student who inexplicably decided to publicize her views on the genetic inferiority of black people. [Feministe]

Tags: college admissions, law school, Oprah, politics, racism, rielle hunter, Sarah Palin, stephanie grace, strippers

I love graphic novels. I read graphic novels for adults (like The Squirrel Mother). I just ordered Gene Yang's Prime Baby for my son (and for me). But I am not sure I'm ready for the graphic novel version of A Wrinkle in Time. Frankly, I don't even like seeing it with different cover art than the particular paperback I treasured as a kid. A Wrinkle in Time is hardly the first classic to get the graphic treatment. There are graphic novel versions of everything from Crime and Punishment to Through the Looking Glass. But it's such a beloved icon for multiple generations of dreamy, bookish girls who saw the world through Meg's spectacles (obviously including me) and it hasn't been particularly well treated in adaptation before (for example, the made-for-TV Disney movie version, of which Madeleine L'Engle herself said "I have glimpsed it ... I expected it to be bad, and it is."

Hope Larsen is an artist, and the work she's done on her own graphic novels is wonderful: thoughtful, well-developed, nuanced. Of the adaptation, she said "This is a dream project. Wrinkle is one of my favorite books, and Madeline L'Engle is one of my favorite authors and a huge influence on my storytelling." She's a perfect choice, that is, if the world needs an adaptation at all. It has to be said that she recognizes the challenges. She promised, in her blog announcement, to treat the book with respect and stick as close to the original story as possible (hello, Disney). I am trying to see this as an addition, rather than a subtraction—another way for kids to come to the story—but honestly, as much as I respect Larsen's work, I don't really want my daughter to see Camazotz via Larsen's vision, instead of her own.

Tags: A Wrinkle in Time, children's literature, graphic novels, Hope Larson, Madeleine L'Engle

Finally, more people are coming around to a nuanced narrative about Generation Y's failure to launch: There's a new study from Oregon State University that shows that more young people are living at home, not just because they're lazy and entitled, but also because there just aren't that many jobs available that pay even enough to live frugally on one's own. As I pointed out in a post from earlier this year, the trend of twenty- and thirtysomethings living with their parents has been going on since the early aughts. The OSU study notes, "[D]ownward trends in wages and economic opportunities can be directly linked to young people staying at home longer, returning home later, and postponing or even forgoing marriage and children."

So basically, this is about the disappearing middle class, rather than a generation of layabouts. Certainly there will always be young people who sponge off their parents—the OSU study points out that many of the twentysomethings who live with their parents who contribute to the household finances. But rather than shame people for living in a multigenerational home (as many commenters of this New York Times blog post take joy in doing), why not accept that the financial situation of this country no longer supports people living independently in their early adulthood?

Tags: disappearing middle class, generation y, millennials, oregon state university

Just the fact that we're talking about which potential nominee to replace retiring Supreme Court Justice John Paul Stevens is also a "mom" is an indication that motherhood still affects the way a woman is perceived in her professional life. The "motherhood penalty" among working women is rarely questioned: The gap in wages between working mothers and nonmothers is larger than the gap between women and men; a study published in the American Journal of Sociology by researchers Shelley Correll, Stephen Benard, and In Paik in 2007 found that when considering equally qualified candidates for the same position, mothers were perceived as less competent and consistently recommended for a lower starting salary. Worse, a new study from Benard and Correll (not yet published) finds that when presented with two unambiguously qualified female candidates for the same position, one a mother, one not, women—not men—viewed the exceptionally successful mothers as less likable and as having more negative interpersonal qualities. In other words, it looks like women would rather have a drink with Elena Kagan than with Diane Wood.

In the Daily Beast, Peter Beinart argues that putting a mom on the Supreme Court (another mom—Ruth Bader Ginsberg has two children) would send a message to young women that you can achieve professionally and still have a family, a message that, in spite of politician "ubermoms" like Sarah Palin, Nancy Pelosi, and Michelle Bachmann, Beinart suggests is still drowned out by comments like that of Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell’s about Janet Napolitano's appointment to head the Homeland Security Department: "Janet has no family. Perfect. She can devote, literally, 19 to 20 hours a day to it.” We see mothers differently.

For the record, both Wood and Kagan taught at my law school when I was a student there, and I'd happily have another drink with either—or see either put on the Supreme Court robes. But until a woman can walk into a job interview or a confirmation hearing and feel confident that no one's given more than a passing thought to her home life, I'll always be inclined to root for the potential nominee who, in that one respect, looks most like me.

Tags: Diane Wood, Elena Kagan, Supreme Court, working mothers

It’s terrible to watch a country go from democracy to dictatorship, but that’s what happening in Venezuela. Piece by piece Hugo Chávez is dismantling civil society—the universities, the press, the courts—firing or jailing those who oppose him. One of the latest victim is Judge Maria Lourdes Afiuni, who, as the Washington Post reports, was arrested in December, along with the courtroom staff, a few minutes after she released a prisoner against the government’s—that is Chávez’s—wishes. No evidence has been presented against her, but Chávez has already pronounced the sentence, saying the judge, who is 46, should serve 30 years “in the name of the dignity of the country.” In other words, Chávez is Venezuela, and as with all dictators, his moods, slights, ego, and psychopathology not only trump the law, they are the law. Ominously, Chávez, who is great friends with fellow lunatic and suppressor of free elections, Iran’s Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, has reportedly offered Venezuela as a redoubt for Iran’s murderous Revolutionary Guards. (Chávez denies this—what a surprise.) This Washington Post editoral notes that Chávez just bought $5 billion in weapons from Russia, and says Chávez’s recent actions have been greeted by the administration with “nonchalance.”

Tags: arrest of a judge, dictatorship, hugo chavez

The two new anti-abortion laws just passed in Oklahoma seem on the surface to contradict each other: One is ostensibly about giving a woman an overwhelming amount of information about fetal development in order to improve her decision-making abilities, and the other encourages doctors to withhold information from women about fetal defects in order to prevent women from making what lawmakers consider the wrong choice to abort. But what ties these two laws together is a strong belief among anti-choicers in the profound stupidity of women and the inability of a woman, by her very nature, to make good choices.

To my mind, the main purpose of the ultrasound law is to shame women who seek abortions and maximize their time spent having unpleasant objects shoved in their bodies. There's a perverted whiff to it, one that makes you wonder if the next step from Oklahoma legislators will be requiring women who have abortions to post pictures of their spread legs and genitalia on the Internet. But the ostensible reason for the law, which is that women need "full information" before choosing abortion, implies an attitude about women that would make the sexists of the Mad Men era recoil in offense. The assumption behind ultrasound laws is that once a woman realizes that she's pregnant and there's a fetus in there, then she will naturally realize that she was silly to think abortions were so great and immediately embrace the joys of motherhood. In reality, of course, women are quite aware that they're pregnant, and terminating that pregnancy is usually the point. In fact, abortion clinics often already do ultrasounds (albeit not the vaginal probe kinds) to determine age of gestation, and many patients often ask to look out of curiosity or to fully own their decision.

The law protecting doctors from lawsuits who lie to patients about fetal abnormalities embodies this same paternalistic belief that women are silly twits who can't be expected to make a real decision for themselves. Carhart v. Gonzales reflected this belief. Shot through the anti-choice arguments and Kennedy's decision itself was this belief that women simply can't be trusted to make decisions, and have to have male authority figures do it for them. No doubt they believe that they're doing nothing but protecting well-meaning, intelligent doctors from hysterical attacks from stupid women who give birth to children with birth defects. Perhaps they even believe these women will thank them later for taking the decison from them.

Tags: Oklahoma abortion law

—Guardians of “Twetiquette” spend their free time policing Twitter for improper grammar and other nettlesome errors. [New York Times]

—A new study reveals that lower wages and a lack of job opportunities have conspired to extend the path to “adulthood” for many young Americans. [Science Daily]

—In her new memoir, former first lady Laura Bush divulges details about painful events from her teenage years and her husband’s presidency. [Washington Post]

—President Obama will nominate Janet Yellen to be vice chairwoman of the Federal Reserve, the second-highest ranking Fed position. [CBS News]

—In many offices on Capitol Hill, there are no formal policies for maternity or paternity leave, forcing staffers to beg for time off to bond with their new babies. [Politico]

—Much to their mothers’ dismay, an increasing number of girls under the age of 12 have ditched flavored lip gloss in favor of more adult makeup. [New York Times]

Tags: adolescence, childhood, Federal Reserve, grammar, janet yellen, makeup, Obama, paternity leave, politics, social media, twitter

The title has an unfortunate, somewhat bigoted insinuation—“Should Baby Boys Be Singing Beyonce?” (OMG, what if it turns them gay!)—but the meat of Jacob Bernstein’s Daily Beast article about the slew of toddler-tainment videos on YouTube raises some interesting points. Perhaps that innocuous-seeming video that has almost definitely landed in your inbox by now of Timmy, the chunky, redheaded boy tarting it up and swinging his hips to Lady Gaga, isn’t as harmless as it seems. The video’s garnered almost 2 million views and mentions on blogs like Jezebel, but growing hand-in-hand with the video’s popularity are the predictable hate comments calling Timmy, who looks like he’s maybe 4 or 5, a “disgusting faggot,” a “pathetic gay,” and worse. One commenter callously states: “Kill him.”

Personally, I find the videos of toddlers revolving their baby butts in the fashion of a sexualized pop star pretty creepy—like Toddlers & Tiaras-level creepy. Some argue, however, that all the prepubescent gender-bending is good for us. Michael Musto of the Village Voice writes, “In the past, the kid would have been given a G.I. Joe doll and sent off to military school.” And Kevin Hertzog, a stylist Bernstein interviews for the piece, says, “It doesn't matter if the kids are gay, some of them probably won't be. They're mimicking what's on television. But if you don't give them the space to do that, then how will they become the people they truly are?”

But the thought that mimicking what’s on television is really a necessary step towards self-actualization seems painfully ironic. And my big question, which the article doesn’t address, is: Do these toddlers really want to be performing pop hits for millions in the first place? Or are their eager performances the results of encouraging parents seeking Internet fame and glory, training their children how to do the “Single Ladies” dance for kicks, and then uploading it for the anonymous masses and expecting them to have the same reaction as their family and friends would during a living room performance?

Tags: daily beast, exploitation, toddler videos, youtube