“Are you trying to find naked pictures of Miley Cyrus?” asked my girlfriend yesterday, glancing at my Google image search results. Needless to say, I wasn’t. I was trying to find those Vanity Fair photos to judge this ridiculous controversy myself.

Today I think I’ve got a better handle on the whole thing, thanks to Nancy Gruver’s post on Stockholm Syndrome in the Media. Gruver has done a lot of thinking on girls in the media. She’s the founder and CEO of New Moon, a fabulous feminist magazine for girls. Here’s her perspective:

Girls are barraged by sexualized images all around them and everyone they come into contact with in daily life is also surrounded by those images. The images viscerally teach “the importance of being sexy” if you are female. The images teach all of us that acting sexy is how girls/women can have power without being rejected as domineering or bitchy (see media coverage of Hillary Clinton for the way “non-sexy” female power is conveyed).

Now imagine the extreme confusion girls feel when they are surrounded by images promoting the power of female sexiness and at the same time are told that it’s bad for girls to be interested in sex, to act sexy themselves, to dress sexy, etc. The real message being conveyed, of course, is that girls shouldn’t want to be powerful.

Usually, I barely follow this sort of stuff. Bubblegum pop stars are well below my notice. But if I have to watch another young woman be eaten by the celebrity gossip/entertainment industry machine, I might just cry.

Poking around Feministe’s shameless self promotion open thread yesterday, I found this interesting discussion on things that girls need to know about sex. Here are the first few:

1. There are reliable ways, besides abstinence, to prevent pregnancy.

2. There are reliable ways, besides abstinence, to prevent STIs.

3. Abortion is safe (safer than carrying a pregnancy to term, in fact) and there’s a wide range of legitimate opinion as to when and whether it is appropriate.

Things might be about to change for our American friends – brooklynite has collected some quotes from presidential nominees which suggest that they might be on board with sex ed in a way that previous generations of American political leaders have not been.

So, what do you think every girl should learn about sex?

I do love a good romantic comedy. And there are so few fluffy romance movies with queer couples – on the big screen, nearly every lesbian love story ends in murder or suicide. Until recently, my mental list of happy queer romance movies included (1) D.E.B.S., (2) The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls in Love, and… well, that was it.

I’m adding another film to my list. Show Me Love is about two girls in love in small-town Sweden. (It’s from 1998 – I’m always behind the curve on this stuff.) I like that it’s a movie about teenagers played by teenagers, not 25-year-olds. It is funny and awkward and believable, and I promise, it will win you over. Go on, buy some chocolate and curl up in bed.

I found Show Me Love at my local video store, West Side Stories. You can’t throw a DVD in the west end of Toronto lately without hitting an indie rental joint, but West Side Stories is special. For one thing, they’re super friendly. Just west of Dundas and Dufferin, they are also Toronto’s first DVD merchants “specializing in women and the LGBT community.”

Besides the usual new releases and a solid collection of hipster favourites, Dawn and Tanya have a good selection of queer flicks and section for “women in film.” They have also been hosting small film screenings. The next one is next Saturday, 29 March at 10pm. The movie is Mai’s America and I really wish that I could go, so you should go for me. (Note that according to Facebook, the event is “women only safespace.”)

Like seemingly everyone I know, I watch House MD. I love House – both the show and the character – for their wit and intelligence. So when I heard that David Shore, the show’s Canadian creator, was going to be interviewed on CBC’s Q, I stuck around on my couch to listen. Then Shore started talking about Cutthroat Bitch.

Okay, so maybe this requires a little background. One of this season’s new characters is a young doctor named Amber. She is competitive, ruthless even – she works very hard, but she also misses no opportunity to mess with her coworkers to get the job. Other characters on the show often refer to her as Cutthroat Bitch, as if it’s her name. So does David Shore, with a self-satisfied smirk on his voice.

Sometimes it’s hard to figure out whether sexist comments in a script reflect the opinions of the show’s creators, or are just there to develop an unlikable character – House is every sort of misogynist, and I think we’re usually supposed to laugh at him. But my perception of this show is changing.

Let’s talk about women in House. The other new female character is emotionally stunted and nameless – they just call her “13.” Cuddy, the Chief of Medicine, is both unable to control House, and usually in the wrong, frequently slowing down the real doctors’ lifesaving work. Because Cuddy has so much power, she is also unable to get so much as a boyfriend, let alone a partner. Her attempts to start a family are ridiculed and then forgotten. Cameron is probably the best developed female character, but then she was pathetically in love with her unavailable boss.

Coming from a supposedly boundary-smashing show, this is really tired stuff. Women on television who get ahead almost always do it at the expense of family or morals. Sure, go to medical school – you might be good at what you do, but you’ll die sad and lonely.

Is lecherous trash more or less excusable when it comes wrapped in witty dialogue? I saw Charlie Wilson’s War last week, and I laughed and enjoyed myself plenty. But in this “literate, wryly sophisticated parable of American politics” about one Texan congressman’s campaign to drive the Soviets out of Afghanistan, nearly every shot begins with an extreme close-up on cleavage or tightly-clad ass.

And let’s talk about characters. The men of this movie are politicians, spies, weapons experts, freedom fighters, and chess masters. They are powerful and witty – dashing and arrogant one moment, charming and self-deprecating the next. The women are anonymous breasts in a hot tub, strippers, Playboy models, and a team of aides referred to as “jailbait.” Julia Roberts’ rich heiress pursues her political goals by manipulating and sleeping with powerful men, and is out-of-touch and reckless when she speaks on her own. All women have to offer the world is sex.

I know that this is a satire, a cartoon version of Washington. Wilson sees arming the mujahideen as a noble, uncomplicated goal, but the audience understands that the story is more ambiguous. Wilson sees the women around him as shiny objects, and perhaps the audience is expected to understand that he is a slimy creep. But the ridiculous camera work continues whether Wilson is in the scene or not.

I also understand that some of this is realistic – powerful figures in Washington tend to be male, and there’s no point airbrushing their culture in an already unflattering film. But Aaron Sorkin has done so much better in the past. On The West Wing, most of the women are secretaries, but Sorkin didn’t resort to objectification, or even neglect – in fact, I think he really sunk his teeth into the challenges faced by women in or near political power. Characters on The West Wing argue openly about sexism, and it’s some of the wittiest television ever made.

There’s no excuse for this nonsense.

Slate has a fascinating article up about women in politics. It looks at a study on the impact of female leadership on village councils in India. Guess what? Villages with more women in power have more and higher quality public services. There’s more:

They were also less corrupt — villagers with female-headed councils were 25 percent less likely to report having to pay bribes to access basic services like getting ration cards or receiving medical attention.

India’s female pradhans were remarkably unappreciated for their efforts. Despite the objective upgrades in village amenities, both men and women living in villages headed by women expressed lower satisfaction with public services.

I like this piece because it explains not just the results of the study, but its design, and the reasoning behind that design. There are even a couple intelligent criticisms in the comment section. For example, were these women resented because they were put in power partly by an affirmative action program?

Slate reports on research by American economist Caitlin Kowles showing that women wait abot 20 seconds longer than men to be served at coffee shops. Check out the original paper here. Knowles has eliminated a few possible causes other than sexism - no surprise, it’s not because women order fancy drinks or flirt with the barristas.

Tyler Cowen, over on economics blog The Marginal Revolution suggests that women are more indecisive, but doesn’t really dispute Knowles’ main conclusion: “The simplest explanation, however, is that the staff feel more implicit psychological pressure to meet the needs of the male customers.”

Not a life-altering injustice, surely, but just another reminder that sexism lives in all of us, and intrudes on our lives almost constantly.

On the upside, it’s nice to see some feminist economics getting press coverage. I love feminist economics.

I’ve been catching up on documentaries lately, which is a mostly depressing activity. Most recently, I Jesus Camp, Heidi Ewing and Rachel Grady’s look at an evanglical Christian summer camp.

This is no ordinary camp, and it makes for pretty disturbing viewing. Camp director Becky Fischer berates the kids for being dirty hypocritical sinners until they’re sobbing and speaking in tongues. Then she brings in a children’s entertainer to teach them that abortion is wrong, giving everyone their own fetus doll to hold. And that’s just the beginning. Fischer freely admits that she is buliding an army of God.

Lots has been said about this doc (here’s a discussion with the filmmakers) so I won’t go into whether this is brainwashing, indoctrination, abuse, etc. (I think it pretty clealy is.) I took something different and sort of strange from the documentary.

Early in the film, we meet one of the campers in her room at home, where she’s dancing in her mirror and talking about her favourite music. She’s listening to Christian rock, which she likes because it isn’t always about sex - Britney Spears and friends, she tells us, don’t really share her values.

There’s an urge that feminists have in common with even the most radical arms of the Evangelical movement, I think, and it has to do with building an alternative culture. I see something poisonous in contemporary culture, just like that girl does. I wish I could build a universe for my loved ones without that poison. And there are other things we agree on. The kids in Jesus Camp are encouraged to give their own sermons, which seems kind of cool and empowering to me.

But most of the documentary is, obviously, not cool at all. So here’s my question for you, dear readers: What went wrong at Jesus Camp?

The New York Times reports that Girls Are Often Neglected Victims of Concussions, though they don’t really manage to explain why.

“Generally speaking, the medical profession does not do a very good job in recognizing that female athletes sustain concussions at an equal or even higher rate as males,” said Dr. Robert Cantu of Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, one of the nation’s leading experts in concussion management. “It’s flying under the radar. And as a result, looking for concussions in women is not pursued with the same diligence, and it’s setting girls up for a worse result.”