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"Pop culture constantly re-affirms these narratives. It frequently naturalizes the idea that women should turn to men, and not women, to reinforce their value. Portraying women as in competition is part of that. The "trophy wife" vs. the "busy mom" is one of those match-ups. "

"There are many ways to read a book. One of them is to do so topless. That, at least, is the premise behind the Topless Pulp Fiction Club, a small group of young women who have taken to gathering in city parks to read their favorite works of fiction sans brassierre or any other covering."

"Dark sides are important. They should be nurtured like nasty black orchids." Given my choice between allowing portrayals of women who are sexually manipulative, erotically aggressive, fearless in a deranged kind of way, completely true to their own temperament, desperately vital, or the alternative - wallowing in feminist propaganda and succumbing to the niceness plague - I'll take the former. If "Gone Girl" is sending the wrong message about women, then Emma Bovary should have gone to medical school instead of cheating on her husband, Anna Karenina should have been a train engineer rather than throwing herself onto the tracks, and Eve Harrington should have waited her turn. The idea that every portrait of a woman should be an ideal woman, meant to stand for all of womanhood, is an enemy of art - not to mention wickedly delicious Joan Crawford and Bette Davis movies. Art is meant to explore all the unattractive inner realities as well as to recommend glittering ideals. It is not meant to provide uplift or confirm people's prior ideological assumptions. Art says "Think," not "You're right."

" Across a variety of gambles, the findings were the same: Men took more risks when they were stressed. They became more focused on big wins, even when they were costly and less likely. Levels of the stress hormone cortisol appear to be a major factor, according to Ruud van den Bos, a neurobiologist at Radboud University in the Netherlands. He and his colleagues have found that the tendency to take more risks when under pressure is stronger in men who experience a larger spike in cortisol. But in women he found that a slight increase in cortisol seemed actually to improve decision-making performance."

But why do some women, in particular, seem to hate words like "moist" and "panties" more than men do? Carol Lloyd in Salon offers one possibility: "The word 'moist' straddles the same cultural polarities of shame and openness that still haunt modern female sexuality. After all, moist is now mostly used with positive connotations to describe baked goods and soil, but it still harbors its less than appealing root meanings. First cited in the English language in 1374, the word came from the French word 'moiste,' for damp, which came from the Latin words for moldy, slimy and musty."

"Teaching males to seek feelings of worth through displays of power, toughness, and competitiveness turns male bodies into readily exploitable generators of profit. The costs to all but the tiny few who appropriate these profits are enormous: ruined bodies and minds, premature death, perpetual war, depression and drug use, interpersonal violence, and the abuse of women and others who are not men in good standing."

Is Loneliness a Public Policy Problem? Zach McDade May 23, 2013 9 Comments Is Loneliness a Public Policy Problem? Shutterstock inShare3 Share Print Share on emailEmail Urban Institute MORE FROM THE URBAN INSTITUTE: The "Disconnected Youth" Paradigm Stemming the Tide of Federal Prison Growth The Continued Decline of North Korea Is a Case for Inclusive Politics A fascinating recent article in The New Republic reviewed a body of new science documenting the pernicious physiological effects of loneliness. Researchers have shown that loneliness-more formally, the want of intimacy-exacerbates a host of ailments, including Alzheimer's disease, obesity, diabetes, high blood pressure, heart disease, neurodegenerative diseases, and even cancer. The share of Americans who report "not feeling close to people" at any given time is 30 percent and growing, and deemed by some a social health crisis. Should public policy researchers and practitioners care about something as intangible and inaccessible as loneliness? I'll give you three reasons why I think we should. First, some background… Feeling lonely actually sends misleading hormonal signals that physically change the molecular structure of the brain. According to the article, this "wrenches a whole slew" of bodily systems out of whack, causing loneliness to be seen by some as a risk factor for death as great as smoking. Who tends to be affected by loneliness, according to this research? Women more than men, blacks more than whites, the less-educated, the unemployed, the retired, anyone different. In other words, many of the same people affected by today's long-term unemployment and wealth disparities, persistent poverty, and isolation. If loneliness exacerbates these ills, it will further diminish people's ability to engage in economically and socially valuable and productive activities, which in turn could exacerbate loneliness. Three reasons why loneliness should be a p

"But about the larger picture, I'm mystified. Our racial bigotry has often been tied to the ignorance abetted by unfamiliarity, our homophobia to a failure to realize how many gay people we know and respect. Well, women are in the next cubicle, across the dinner table, on the other side of the bed. Almost every man has a mother he has known and probably cared about; most also have a wife, daughter, sister, aunt or niece as well. Our stubborn sexisms harms and holds back them, not strangers. Still it survives."

Indeed, the United States has experienced an upward redistribution so profound that it affects far more than incomes. Whole sectors of the economy and regions of the country have been decimated by these economic changes. The descent in all manner of social indexes is most apparent among poorly educated whites. Conservative commentator Charles Murray has documented in his new book the decline in marriage rates and family stability within the white working class. And now, as the New York Times' Sabrina Tavernise has reported, that decline includes longevity as well. While other Americans' life expectancy has advanced, the life expectancy of whites without high school diplomas has declined since 1990 - by three years among men and five years among women. The market is not just redistributing income in the United States, then. It is redistributing life.