Slate has posted a conversation between a few of its female contributors about American Girl, the doll superpower, on the occasion of their first major motion picture. American Girl dolls are, they suggest, the very opposite of Barbie. Or are they?

While some dolls represent different periods in American history, coming complete with their own historical biographies, the “just like you” dolls come in a wide variety of hair, eye and skin colours. Yes, that’s right – not all the dolls are white! Though, no surprise, their “dark” skin tone seems pretty light to me. And I don’t really know enough to judge the historical accuracy to Disney stereotype ratio of the accessories designed for Kaya, the lone First Nations character.

There was a time when I coveted these dolls, but even at age ten I felt some ambivalence. I knew that American history wasn’t my history, and the relentless patriotism wore a bit thin. But the dolls seemed to reflect my world – they played sports, learned math, and used computers.

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My taste in movies is a little eccentric – most of the time, I like documentaries better than “fiction film.” So a few days ago I was thrilled to stumble on Freedocumentaries.org, a website that streams hundreds of short and feature-length documentaries. Documentaries are divided by title, region or theme. There are a few weird ones thrown into the mix – 9/11 conspiracy videos and the like – but also a lot of big name documentaries, from Sicko to Shut Up & Sing. I was pleased to find Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch’s War on Journalism, a great little film about Fox News. Maybe this means I will finally get around to watching The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, a leftist favourite about Venezuela.

I have to say, though, that the legality of the site is a bit fuzzy. According to the frequently asked questions, they haven’t asked permission to host most docs, choosing instead to embed video from other, presumably sketchier, websites. That’s not to say that the site’s creators don’t have noble intentions – there are no ads, and they seem genuinely passionate about introducing their visitors to high-quality, educational films, and helping independent filmmakers get their work seen. But if copyright infringement really offends you, this won’t be your kind of site.

Feministing‘s recent series of guest posts from Justice Now, a women’s prison justice group, has really got me thinking. The poster at the top of this most recent post lays it out:

Increase of Women in Prison, 1980s to present: 14,000 to 140,000. Female offenders, mostly black women, are the fastest growing segment of the prison population. 80% of them are imprisoned for non-violent drug offenses.

I’m no expert, but my guess would be that much of this stems from the United States’ mandatory minimums on crack cocaine. Crack, which is stereotypically associated with people of colour, carries much tougher penalties than powdered cocaine, associated with the white elite. And even though the majority of crack users are white, most people who go to jail for crack use are Black. (I double-checked these points with this great fact sheet from PublicEye.org on racism in the American justice system.)

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A couple months ago, I launched a blog about my first love, feminism, and my current intellectual passion, economics. I’m doing my best to make EconomicWoman.com accessible to economists who haven’t encountered much feminism and to feminists who haven’t encountered much economics, without boring those who are already interested in both.

My site now has a bit of an audience, so the comment threads are more lively every day. Despite the fact that two very different intellectual groups are meeting up, everyone has been quite civil. *crosses fingers* Still, I’d like to see a few more women commenting. So please, come over and join the discussion!

“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.

There’s a lot more in the original post – you should click over and read it. As I’ve written elsewhere, quality sex ed is in short supply, especially in the States, and a lot of non-professionals are pitching in on the internet with material like this list. This movement has its ups and downs – without doctors vetting curriculum, some misinformation and strange emphasis can slip in – but it’s certainly better than abstinence-only education, which just doesn’t work.

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.