Put them in burkas

Seriously?

The latest statistics show that 29 per cent of men admitted being distracted by short skirts and low-cut tops in the Summer weather, leading to record numbers of accidents on the roads.

And according to car insurance company Sheilas' Wheels, the summer smash phenomenon is getting worse each year - in 2009 men made 16.4 per cent more claims during the Summer than in any other month.

Behavioural psychologist Donna Dawson explained: "Research shows that men are far more easily distracted behind the wheel than women.

"Men are more visually orientated and so distractions such as an attractive woman walking down the street can quickly take their attention away from driving and the job in hand.

Ah yes. If it's not those ''women drivers'' it's those ''women pedestrians.''

But what's this?

"Testosterone also plays a part, as it makes men more prone to aggression, especially when frustrated by a confined space such as a car - and men are quicker than women to expose such irritability in hot weather." 

Except, of course, if it's a woman's ''time of the month,'' of course.

Photo Credit: © Raimond Spekking / Wikimedia Commons / CC-BY-SA-3.0 & GFDL

H/T Hysperia

Someday my prince will come

From the always awesome Sociological Images:

Which gives me an excuse to post this little nugget from The Nation which I have been saving for just this sort of occasion. It's by Barbara Ehrenreich, one of my idols.

Disney likes to think of the Princesses as role models, but what a sorry bunch of wusses they are. Typically, they spend much of their time in captivity or a coma, waking up only when a Prince comes along and kisses them. The most striking exception is Mulan, who dresses as a boy to fight in the army, but--like the other Princess of color, Pocahontas--she lacks full Princess status and does not warrant a line of tiaras and gowns. Otherwise the Princesses have no ambitions and no marketable skills, although both Snow White and Cinderella are good at housecleaning.

And what could they aspire to, beyond landing a Prince? In Princessland, the only career ladder leads from baby-faced adolescence to a position as an evil enchantress, stepmother or witch. Snow White's wicked stepmother is consumed with envy for her stepdaughter's beauty; the sea witch Ursula covets Ariel's lovely voice; Cinderella's stepmother exploits the girl's cheap, uncomplaining, labor. No need for complicated witch-hunting techniques--pin-prickings and dunkings--in Princessland. All you have to look for is wrinkles.

<SNIP>

Seen from the witchy end of the female life cycle, the Princesses exert their pull through a dark and undeniable eroticism. They're sexy little wenches, for one thing.

<SNIP>

It may be old-fashioned to say so, but sex--and especially some middle-aged man's twisted version thereof--doesn't belong in the pre-K playroom. Children are going to discover it soon enough, but they're got to do so on their own.

There's a reason, after all, why we're generally more disgusted by sexual abusers than adults who inflict mere violence on children: we sense that sexual abuse more deeply messes with a child's mind. One's sexual inclinations--straightforward or kinky, active or passive, heterosexual or homosexual--should be free to develop without adult intervention or manipulation. Hence our harshness toward the kind of sexual predators who leer at kids and offer candy. But Disney, which also owns ABC, Lifetime, ESPN, A&E and Miramax, is rewarded with $4 billion a year for marketing the masochistic Princess cult and its endlessly proliferating paraphernalia.

Let's face it, no parent can stand up against this alone. Try to ban the Princesses from your home, and you might as well turn yourself in to Child Protective Services before the little girls get on their Princess cell phones. No, the only way to topple royalty is through a mass uprising of the long-suffering serfs. Assemble with your neighbors and make a holiday bonfire out of all that plastic and tulle! March on Disney World with pitchforks held high! 

Which reminds me. It's the Night of the Living Mini Disney Princesses this weekend.

PS: Coming soon: Disney's The Princess and the Frog ...

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: My Tweep @evinmaria reminds me of this wry but instructive exhibit by Vancouver artist Dina Goldstein. I have blogged about this before but it is very relevant here!

Mr. Big Stuff

Shelly Nickason Friesen posted this on our Facebook ''Proud to be a member of that 'left-wing fringe group' called 'Women'" page. Felt I had to re-post it here:

Just a couple of caveats though.

It's just a little too partisan for me. I'm all for voting the Conservatives out for their anti-women (plus anti-gay, anti-minority, anti-war resister etc.) agenda but I can't forget how the Liberals lollygagged on bringing in a national daycare program plus, last year, a whole whack of them voted on that bill that was not about curtailing abortion rights until it became about curtailing abortion rights.

Speaking for myself, I find the NDP and Bloc Quebecois have much more women-friendly politics.

But I still like the video.

Plus you can dance to it.

Oh -- and the Facebook group is up to 2,166 members -- in less than a week.

We should have t-shirt info firmed up by tomorrow.

Oh snap

You want snapping?

Here's snapping.

Here's me really angry at the coverage accorded to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who was in eastern Congo where she spoke out against the horrific mass rapes there.

According to UN estimates, some 3500 women have been raped this year alone. This is a subject about which I have blogged before, and is deserving of serious and extensive international attention in the mainstream media.

You'd think.

But, today, yesterday, while taking Clinton was speaking with a Congolese audience, an interpreter mistranslated a question from a student.

What happened next then became top of the news.

Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton's temper flared yesterday when a Congolese university student asked for her husband's thinking on an international matter.

"My husband is not secretary of state. I am," an obviously annoyed Clinton replied sharply.

A week after former president Bill Clinton travelled to North Korea to secure the release of two detained American journalists and stole the limelight from the start of his wife's first trip to Africa, Clinton was clearly nettled by the question at a town hall forum in Kinshasa.

"You want me to tell you what my husband thinks?" she replied when the male student asked her what "Mr. Clinton" thought of World Bank concerns about a multibillion-dollar Chinese loan offer to the Democratic Republic of Congo. "If you want my opinion, I will tell you my opinion. I am not going to be channelling my husband," she said.

And so, Clinton ''snapped.'' She ''lost her cool.'' She had an ''outburst.'' She ''replied sharply.''

She has even demonstrated her lack of suitability for the job.

If you ask me, and I you must be asking me since you're reading this, I too would be snippy if, in the middle of a town hall on the violent abuse of women in a virulently sexist country, I were queried on what my husband had to say on another subject.

Her behaviour, while less than diplomatic, is understandable.

The sexist coverage of it is not, not when women are suffering the way they are in Africa.

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: For some reason this post has inspired 15 (and counting) comments on my Facebook page. Most of the guys claim Clinton was out of line. But some of us are wondering what may have transpired before this badly-translated question was asked.

My friend and fellow blogger Aaron Braaten suggests that we read this:

In a forum with University of Kinshasa students yesterday, Clinton confronted questions about past U.S. involvement in backing authoritarian rule in Congo, formerly known as Zaire.

“I cannot excuse the past, and will not try,” Clinton told the questioner. “Many countries, including many in Europe and many in Africa, have interfered with the development and the potential of the Congolese people.”

This might explain her obvious irritation, as well as her body language as that ''husband'' question was posed.

UPPITY YOURS DATE: Just in case the rest of the media need a cribsheet, the New York Times has the story on what Clinton has proposed for Congo.

Mrs. Clinton used her unprecedented visit — she is the first secretary of state to venture into the war zone here — to unveil a $17 million plan to fight Congo’s stunning levels of sexual violence, a problem she called “evil in its basest form.”

She announced that the American government would train doctors, supply rape victims with video cameras to document violence, send American military engineers to help build facilities and train Congolese police officers, especially female police officers, to crack down on rapists.

Finally. Some action. It took a woman like Clinton to take it.

Which is why I couldn't care less how snappish she got.

 

Intra-spection: A Reproductive Rights Round-Up

A couple of months ago, a girlfriend emailed to say that she'd had an IUD inserted and that, according to her doctor, it would be good for up to 10 years.

''Why doesn't every woman get an IUD?'' she wondered.

Good question, especially since they've come a long way, if you don't want a baby, baby.

We discussed many aspects of the contraceptive device, including my experience with it in the early 80s when my ''Copper T'' resulted in painful period cramping, a problem I never had before or after the IUD.

But now, according to this report by The Star's Trish Crawford, this is less of a problem.

"We are under-using the IUD," says Dr. Jennifer Blake, chief of obstetrics and gynecology at Sunnybrook and Women's College Hospitals.

"We were very easily scared and thrown off by scary news," says Blake of the controversy in the early '70s over the Dalkon Shield, an IUD that was ultimately pulled from the Canadian market in 1974 and millions paid in damages. Infections, infertility, miscarriages and even death resulted from its use and women in North America turned away from all IUDs as a form of birth control as a result. "It had a chilling effect," says Blake.

But safe and effective alternative models have been developed and have flourished in popularity throughout the world, she says.

Only 2.9 per cent of Canadian women and 1.8 per cent of American women use IUDs for birth control, the United Nations department of economic and social affairs reported in 2007. This compares to roughly 15 per cent of all women throughout the world choosing the IUD, with 19.6 per cent in Asia and 13.9 per cent in the Caribbean.

However, for women who are concerned about the estrogen contained in birth control pills (such as those predisposed to certain types of cancer), the IUD is a safe, effective alternative, says Dr. Elyse Lackie, a gynecologist at North York General Hospital.

IUDs are not only more reliable than any other form of contraception except the pill -- provided you take it correctly -- but they're better designed, do not subject women to hormonal interference, and don't require forking out big bucks to Big Pharma every month.

But there is a catch, as you can see from the comments on Trish's piece.

IUDs, like the pill, prevent implantation of a fertilized egg in the uterus --which is the medically-defined and agreed-upon start of pregnancy.

(In any case, research shows that the IUD can actually prevent conception.)

This has led to the anti-choicers railing against these methods of preventing pregnancy as ''abortifacient'' -- or causing abortions every month. (This leads to crazy things like this.) But then they rail against everything that gives women control over their bodies, don't they?

''The Pill Kills'' blah-blah.

Oh, and while we're on the subject of reproductive rights?

Here's April Reign on how the forced birthers are now saying that eggs are people too.

And here's the sequel to that sad story of the Brazilian nine year old pregnant with twins -- after being raped by her stepfather -- whose abortion led to the excommunication of her mother and doctors. Seems the Pope has dug his high heels in deeper than ever.

"Formal cooperation in an abortion constitutes a grave offense. The Church attaches the canonical penalty of excommunication to this crime against human life," reads the statement, which widely cites past Vatican documents. "The Church does not thereby intend to restrict the scope of mercy. Rather, she makes clear the gravity of the crime committed, the irreparable harm done to the innocent who is put to death, as well as to the parents and the whole of society."

Never mind that the pregnant child had little hope of surviving the pregnancy. She is no longer ''innocent'' in the Church's eyes.

Last but far from least, I got this via Dammit Janet!

Republican lawmaker John Adams is re-introducing a bill in the state of Ohio that would require women seeking an abortion to obtain consent from the biological father. Apparently abortion isn’t all that bad as long as the ‘man’ approves of it.

<SNIP>

Just to add flame to the fire, the bill also would require survivors of rape to provide a police report in order to obtain an abortion. Can you say re-victimization? I must have forgotten that women are untrustworthy and lie about being raped. Ridiculous, I know. Newsflash, women who are survivors of rape face incredible amounts of psychological truama, and forcing them to seek out a police report after already showing up to a clinic is torturous, in my opinion.

Oh and it gets better:

In cases where the identity of the father is unknown, women would be required to submit a list of possible fathers. The physician would be forced to conduct a paternity test from the provided list and then seek paternal permission to abort.

Claiming to not know the father's identity is not a viable excuse, according to the proposed legislation. Simply put: no father means no abortion.

What's next? Scarlet letters?

Ah yes, just another day of men poking into women's ... business.

The accompanying English drawing, done in 1822 by Jacques-Pierre Maygrier, shows a physician examining a woman's abdomen via the "compromise" procedure, used to avoid actually looking.  (I figured you might be wondering.)

UPPITY WOMAN DATE: Almost forgot this, also via Dammit Janet!

The United States and Canada face a dangerous shortage of trained abortion providers. In 2000, 87% of the counties in the United States had no provider*. The “graying” of current providers (57% of whom are over the age of 50, violence that targets physicians, and restrictive legislation threaten to drive these numbers even lower. In addition, medical schools are simply not addressing the topic; most physicians are graduating with little more than circumstantial knowledge of abortion.

It's all working out according to their evil plan, isn't it?

Eggsactly the problem

Some sort of production screw-up at Starbase has prevented today's column from going online.I waited all day for it to be fixed but it's a holiday, so no luck.

Here's the entire unedited version, straight from Microsoft Word on my computer, to you. I have added the links, as usual:

It’s all about the eggs.

Whether they’re chocolate or chicken, boiled or Beitzah, the egg unites Jews and Christians at this time of year, when Easter and Passover are celebrated.

In fact, for several centuries after the birth of Christianity, early followers continued to observe the Passover of their Jewish ancestors. That is until the Council of Nicaea, presided over by the Roman Emperor Constantine, started messing with the calendar.

Which is why what we Greeks call “English’’ Easter is this weekend while Orthodox Easter is next weekend, always after Passover ends. For what was the Last Supper but the last seder?

Or at least that’s my reading of the theological research.

What I also see is, the egg. 

The symbolism of the egg is pangeiac, universal, all over the world. Even in China, painted red for festivals.

Pan-geiac. As in geography, geology, gynecology -- and the Greek word gyneka , wife, woman.
As in Panageia, the Greek name for the Virgin Mary whose image appears all over Southern Europe, and in particularly south of Rome, painted over ancient frescoes and statues of the goddesses of Mt. Olympus.

Entire temples dedicated to Hera and Aphrodite were appropriated by the earliest Christian proselytizers who also cleverly lifted from pagan festivals and customs to convince the non-believers to sign on to the Jesus train.

And let’s not get started on the word Easter, as in Eostre, Ostare, Ostara, and Egypt’s Ishtar.

No matter what she was called, she was the Great Mother Goddess of the Saxons in North Europe and the dawn goddess of fertility for the Teutonic people.

Can you say estrogen?

The Hebrews had essentially accomplished all this borrowing millennia before, by reworking ancient

Egyptian and Babylonian customs, learned while they were enslaved.  But then they converted  the egg into a symbol of mourning at Passover rather than rebirth and resurrection.

Now obviously, many of our pagan roots in the west have been lost in the mists of time, as well as buried by the wrathful male God of the Jews and, later, the Christians.

But, once upon a time, as we can still see in many North American Indian societies, the west was a goddess-worshipping matriarchal place.

It was all about the eggs.

And then, somewhere, somehow, somebody figured out the sperm part and, all of a sudden, the mother goddesses disappeared as men moved to protect their lineage.

Women have yet to recover.

As Susan Squire writes in her eye-opening book I Don’t: A Contrarian History of Marriage, ‘’The word ‘seed’ is mentioned no less than 222 times in the Old Testament, where it is deemed so precious that to spill it anywhere but inside a reproductively capable woman’s reproductive orifice (and none other) is to incite the murderous wrath of God.’’

Yes, but not nearly as murderous and wrathful as cuckolded husbands through the subsequent ages.

Not surprisingly, many Christian fundamentalists, the born-again, Jesus-is-my-homeboy bumper sticker crowd, have issues with “Easter,’’ and Easter eggs.

That’s because they rightly recognize their pagan origins and, more important, how they celebrate womanhood.

More to the point, they denounce how Easter eggs also lift up Woman, that evil temptress who led Adam to his fall, not to mention all the other evil females and queens whose stories survive ancient times.

Because we all know, and we still see in the most primitive Islamic societies, how women make men do such bad things that they must be confined to the home and smothered in head to toe sheets.

All of which is why I stopped saying of strong women whom I admire, ‘’She’s got balls.’’

Nope.

It’s all about the eggs, baby.

UPPITY DATE: Now this is very interesting and sort of relevant:

The home of a mysterious female "king" in Canaan, the land that became ancient Israel, may finally have been identified.

Archaeologists digging in the ruins of the Canaanite city-state Beth-Shemesh last summer found a decorated plaque with what could be the first known depiction of a ruler known as the Mistress of the Lionesses.

The plaque—which is slightly smaller than a cigarette pack—shows a bare-chested figure wearing a kilt, with short-cropped hair and bent arms holding up two long-stemmed lotus flowers.

The figure is standing on a basket called a neb, which in ancient Egyptian iconography signifies a ruler or deity.

Although the tablet bears no writing, the figure's hairstyle and the fact that it is holding lotus flowers suggests it is a woman, said Tel Aviv University archaeologists Shlomo Bunimovitz and Zvi Lederman, who made the discovery.

There is some debate over the authenticity of this find, or at least its meaning.

I think it's entirely possible that the earliest Jews had female leaders, at least way at the beginning.

Just like the rest of us.

Don't look down

Oh hippy day!

Ladies, the next time you start hating on your lower half, remember this:

The hips of females from the species Homo erectus, a primitive relative of   modern humans, have been found to be wider than was previously thought.

That means they were well equipped for delivering babies with a larger cranial   capacity which ultimately allowed intelligent human beings to evolve.

Scientists came to their conclusion after reconstructing a 1.2  million-year-old fossil pelvis discovered in Gona, Ethiopia.

The new pelvis fossil suggests that Homo erectus infants were more than 30 per  cent larger than has been believed until now.

The need to give birth to large brained infants was probably the primary  driver behind the shape of the pelvis.

Previous research based on the skeleton of a young male, named Turkana Boy,   had led experts to believe that Homo erectus had a tall, thin body shape   adapted to a hot climate or endurance running.

A narrow pelvis for females would have caused infants to be born with   relatively small brains.

<SNIP>

Modern humans of the species Homo sapiens typically have a brain size of 1,400  cubic centimetres, which is more than twice the size of a modern chimpanzee   or gorilla.

Homo sapiens originated in Africa about 200,000 years ago and the species is   descended from Homo erectus.

Homo sapiens displaced Homo neanderthalensis, and other species descended from   Homo erectus, partly through reproducing more successfully.

This explains a lot.

Unfortunately, it won't change a thing. No-hipped, big-boobed giraffes will be the body of choice for a long time, or until an eco/eco cataclysm comes, and only the best fat-storers will survive.

Until then, console yourself with the thought that men who choose the Skinny Minnies over you are bound to have dumb babies.

Sex and the single girl

Why is it so many women feel compelled to lie about certain numbers? Their age, their weight, the number of people they have slept with.

Speaking for myself, I don't lie about my age. I just don't reveal it. But anybody can do the math based on personal information I blog and/or columnize about.

My weight? Nobody but my personal trainer knows for sure. And, after a bad weekend, I even lie to him. (Hi Sebastien!)

As for my lovers,* well, even if I could remember them all, I doubt I would spill, for fear of being stamped a tramp.** But why am I falling for this double standard, the exact same double standard I rail against today in my treeware column?

Last week, when The View's Whoopi Goldberg used both her hands and feet to tally up her "50 lovers," it wasn't a confession.

It was a virtual finger flipped at conservatives — and even liberals — who, lately, have been admonishing women to keep their legs crossed for their own good.

The View co-hosts were discussing French first lady Carla Bruni's revelations about her past, which includes, if you go by her song lyrics, 30 lovers.

"You should do an album!" said a shaken Barbara Walters to Goldberg, referring to Bruni's new release, Comme si de rien n'était (As If Nothing Happened, or Simply), on which she sings about sex, drugs and her former rock 'n' roll girlfriend life.

Walters' reaction was pretty funny, considering her recent tell-all autobiography in which she discussed her affairs.

My question is: why should men have all the fun, and get to talk about it, without judgment?

Most of us expect men to be experienced, or to have "notches in his gun," as my mom would put it. And yet women still can't admit to sleeping around, hooking up, whatever you call it, and not be branded sluts, skanks, hos, nymphos ...

Even on Sex and the City, when Miranda listed her 42 partners, she was mortified. And the girls didn't call the morning-after return home "The Walk of Shame" because they were proud of it.

Men, on the other hand? They are playboys or players. Stick men. They "score."

Oh, they may be "bad," but they're "bad boys" not bad guys.

But are sexually active women supposed to pretend they're virgins? Are they supposed to lie about their love lives?

Here's what Carla Bruni told Barbara Walters on 20/20 last Friday:

WALTERS: Yeah? Another lyric: "I am a child, despite my 30 lovers." Is that autobiographical, 30 lovers?

[OVERTALK] BRUNI-SARKOZY: No, of course, not. But "20 lovers" didn't sound good. "Ten lovers" doesn't sound, I mean, I'm talking about phonetics for this song.

WALTERS: So not 30 lovers. How many lovers?

BRUNI-SARKOZY: Oh [LAUGHS], I mean -- I never counted my lovers.

WALTERS: Yes.

BRUNI-SARKOZY: You know? And, and I was 40 years old when I met my husband, and of course, you know, I was not a 19-years-old young woman.

WALTERS: Mm-hmm.

BRUNI-SARKOZY: So I, I have a past, and I can joke about it in my song, but the truth is that I have a past and I don't think it's shocking, you know? I think it would be shocking for me to pretend not to have any past. And also, it would be a lie.

<SNIP>

WALTERS: Well, when we talk about your image, there are certain quotes that have been said about you. "Glamorous ambassador." "Femme fatale." "An adulteress."

BRUNI-SARKOZY: And a what?

WALTERS: Adulteress.

BRUNI-SARKOZY: [LAUGHS] I was never married, how could I be an adulteress?

WALTERS: You know what I'm saying.

Of course, in some parts of the world, being an ''adulteress'' — or even being the victim of a rape — can get a woman stoned to death.

Back to my column:

With the resurgence of the chastity-promoting right in the U.S., with its promotion of the gag-inducing Purity Balls, dangerous abstinence-only sex education programs and, on both sides of the border, the pro-life movement's push to rob us of our reproductive choices, including oral contraception, we need more women to stand up and say: "Hey, I've been around, I've survived, and you know what? I am fine with it."

<SNIP>

Now, nobody is advocating profligate promiscuity here, especially if it is an unhealthy search for love and/or approval. But sex, when practised safely, is natural, fun and life-affirming.

If women weren't meant to have it, then why do we have an organ that exists only for sexual pleasure? It's not for nothing that the most patriarchal cultures perform genital mutilation on their girls.

The puzzling thing is, the people pushing this neo-puritan agenda are the very same as those who would punish women by condemning them to carry on with their unwanted pregnancies. So, if they're against abortion, you'd think they be for freely available contraception.

But no.

So what's this really about?

* I like what my pal Sheena says: ''More than my shoe size. Less than my IQ."

** I wear size 9.

Who's the boob?

Lilith, by John Collier, 1892.

Stories of how dumb Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier is — if not for his less-than-diplomatic acts, then for his choice in girlfriends — continue to circulate. But, until the news of Julie Couillard's past biker ties broke, he was considered to be hotttttt!

Of course, the fact that he could snag a babe like Couillard added to his swagger.

The thing is, she's now been tossed to the media wolves, her life wrecked, because he got jiggy with her jiggle, as my treeware column today points out.

You realize that, if Julie Couillard had worn that handkerchief hem dress to a Montreal political function instead of last summer's federal cabinet swearing-in ceremony, nobody would have batted an eye, except in an admiring way.

And, of course, had Foreign Affairs Minister Maxime Bernier's purportedly now ex-girlfriend not filled out her decolletage so fetchingly, we wouldn't keep seeing that image of her entering Rideau Hall over and over again. It's used even when the news is the government response to or the opposition challenges over Bernier's judgment, or lack of it, in canoodling with a woman once tied to biker gangs.

But then Couillard, 38, is a gorgeous woman and, as a result, makes for better visuals than your typical Ottawa matron in a conservative suit.

Which is stating the obvious.

What's not being said is how this woman's life has been destroyed by this tempest in a D-cup while Bernier will, if not maintain his cabinet post, still come out looking studly.

To their credit, the media did not rush to cover Couillard's biker chick past. They deemed it of no consequence to Bernier's competence and qualifications, which had already come under fire.

In any case, there was no evidence of wrongdoing on Couillard's part. She has no record. All she's guilty of is a taste for men who run with the big dogs, and maybe acting a bit too "kitten with a whip" for Ottawa observers upset by how she was involved in Bernier's affairs.

So how the tragic trajectory of Couillard's past reflected badly on him, or was a threat to the nation, was lost on the press gallery until the opposition revved it up.

Which is when Couillard was tossed into the maw, to be chewed up and spat out like tabloid fodder.

Now some would argue that she is trash, that anybody who cohabits with one biker and then marries another is guilty of living off the avails of and sanctioning everything from prostitution to murder to the illegal drug trade.

That is certainly one valid way to look at it.

But you have to wonder: If Couillard were not a stunner — or more to the point, a woman — would she be locked into the public stocks as if this were Puritan times? This is the figurative stoning of a ''harlot,'' as one reader called her in his email to me.

If she'd been Bernier's anything-but-hot-girlfriend —€“ his golf buddy, his chauffeur, his housekeeper —€“ nobody would have paid attention.

But, she told the Journal de Montreal, this incident has destroyed her life.

She's a ruined woman, paying the price for Bernier's political mistakes.

Yes, well, she wore that dress.

She was asking for it.

Which brings me to the subject of cleavage. As my colleague Diana Zlomislic reported on the subject today:

So how much cleavage is too much cleavage?

Image and etiquette consultant Diane Craig works with financial, pharmaceutical and law firms across Toronto. She also has an office in Ottawa where she has been advising politicians on the secrets of sartorial success for more than 25 years.

"In business, it's important that no cleavage be shown. ... It's plain inappropriate. It's declasse. It's as disturbing for women as it is for men."

Craig also advises well-endowed women against wearing long chains or necklaces "so we don't get the effect of hills and valleys."

It goes back to Adam and Eve and the serpent, says David Schatzky, a Toronto psychotherapist. Our compulsion or revulsion toward the valley that divides a woman's breasts reflects a "deep-rooted mistrust of women as the seductress who will lure men off their path and into something that's evil and dangerous.

"I'm not presenting this as my view or as a moral judgment. I think it's a reflection of a deeper way that people think, unconsciously."

Fascinating how cleavage makes some men turn into blithering idiots. Or strikes them blind. (Hello? What colour are my eyes? Hello?) As I have written in the past, I am well-endowed.  So I have front line experience. Every time I use a Facebook profile shot that shows a little of the grand canyon, I get all sorts of friend requests from guys with whom I share no mutual friends. Hmmm ...

Want more proof? Diana's story has been the most-read and most emailed on The Star's website today.

But I digress.

The thing about Couillard, as I said, is her chest. Except nobody is really talking about it, just using it. Compare that to what happened to Hillary Clinton last summer when she showed what amounted to little more than a shadow at the top of her blouse.

Clinton's decolletage became an "issue" after The Washington Post's Pulitzer Prize-winning fashion editor Robin Givhan caught Clinton on cable last month.

"She was talking on the Senate floor about the burdensome cost of higher education," Givhan noted. "The cleavage registered after only a quick glance. No scrunch-faced scrutiny was necessary. There wasn't an unseemly amount of cleavage showing, but there it was. Undeniable."

Many pundits trashed Givhan for the piece. But she was just doing her job, fashion writing as cultural criticism. That Clinton might be abandoning her boy power suits was legitimate column fodder, just as vice-president Dick Cheney's parka was.

Never mind the truly shocking style news: Clinton was in something pink and shiny instead of her usual black hole ensembles, the ones that suck the light out of my HD flat screen. That presidential contender Clinton displayed as much cleavage as my toes do in pumps was enough to get the Beltway flapping about push-up bras instead of the push-ups being performed by holy-rolling Republican politicians in houses of ill repute.

Yet you couldn't get a cracker crumb in there. It could have been a wrinkle, the product of sun damage. And it wasn't even the first time she flashed it. A Google image search turns up a powder blue suit with a deeper divide than that.

But I digress again.

(It's kind of like men looking down your shirt, no?)

Back to Couillard. Montreal Simon has an alternate take:

The whole thing would be hilarious if I hadn't lived through the bloody Biker Wars in Montreal. When the Hells Angels and the Rock Machine terrorized the city by killing each other by the dozen.

And if I hadn't heard the sound of the biker bomb that killed 12-year-old Daniel Desrochers by mistake ....as he played on the street in one of Montreal's poorest neighbourhoods.

He hung on for four days with a piece of shrapnel in his brain.

And all of this at the same time as Julie Couillard was living with a bigshot Hells Angel. And denouncing the anti-biker gang squad for busting them in their bedroom, in the pages of the lurid tabloid Allo Police.

I know she has never been convicted of any crime. But Maxime Bernier really should have known better.

Assuming he was thinking with his brain.

If only he had one.

But the best part of this story?

The way the social conservative Conservatives must be reacting behind closed doors.

Heh.

The Young & the Restylaned

Perhaps there's hope for us older broads. As a critical -- and vocal mass -- of female celebs and artists get older, and as film-loving empty-nesters crowd out the kids at the Cineplex, maybe all that youth worshiping will die down for a while, at least until we baby boomers die off.

In recent years, we've seen some awfully smart stuff with so-called ''older women'' in leading roles. Meryl Streep, Diane Keaton, Judi Dench and Jane Fonda still have careers. Helen Mirren is a hottie. Jessica Lange is back on screen. I'd kill to look like Susan Sarandon.

Our TV talk shows are dominated by older women, from The View crew to Ellen to Oprah.

And some of the most talked-about shows on TV right now -- I'm thinking Glenn Close in Damages, for example -- star women of a certain age, as they say.

Since its Canadian launch a year ago, More, aimed at women over 40, has rocketed to the top of our magazine subscription lists. It's been a huge success at making women feel sexy, valued, smart, connected.

And hey, I am still at the keyboard, as are some of the most influential opinionators in the country, including The Globe and Mail's Peggy Wente and Christie Blatchford, The Star's Carol Goar, Chantal Hébert and Rosie DiManno and CBC onliner Heather Mallick. Even our news anchors are no longer twentysomething twinkies. CBC's Dianne Buckner, CTV's Sandie Rinaldo, Citytv's Ann Mroczkowszki, CP24s Ann Rohmer ... the list goes on.

Yeah, I'm sure we all would like to be younger, in our bodies if not our minds. (Oh if only we knew then what we know now, eh?) And it seems you can't turn around without encountering an ad for an anti-aging product or cosmetic surgery.

But then, when you see what happens to some faces -- and we're talking about women who have the money plus access to the best surgeons in the world -- you have to think, do I really want to look like my face is pulled into a ponytail? There's a scary sameness to the faces of these women. (If you have some time to kill, check out Awful Plastic Surgery.)

While renewing my mortgage this week, I was briefly tempted to bump it up so I can have my mug rearranged. I passed, although I can't say I won't change my mind in a few birthdays.

Yeah, I am weak.

Still, this was the jumping off point for today's column:

The iTunes email offering an advance order on the new Madonna album, Hard Candy, arrived Tuesday.

It's vaguely S&M, with a black leather wrestler motif, Madonna's taut thighs spread wider than her skin across her cheekbones.

Listen, I don't know for sure if she's had work done. I just don't remember her chin ever looking as if it could crack ice back in the '80s.

But hey, more power to her, as the Material Girl is about to become the Middle-Aged Girl, turning 50 on Aug. 16.

Also 50 this year are Sharon Stone and Michelle Pfeiffer who are – note that I don't say "still" – stunningly beautiful and will remain so as long as they don't ratchet up their faces too much.

I'm already having trouble recognizing Nicole Kidman – and she's only 40.

It's a cliché to complain that women get a raw deal as they age. We all know that a flabby Jack Nicholson can get the girl, plus the sixtyish Kathy Bates and Diane Keaton. Male rock stars whose hair was last seen in 1972 don't need to worry about strutting around on stage in high heels and hot pants.

Okay, so Prince just got a hip replacement so he can continue doing just that – but you get my drift.

The thing is, the more these older women try to look younger, the more the pressure on us mere mortals to do the same.

It's like the Size 0 thing. We all start to hate ourselves because we can't be thin.

Now we're self-loathing because some of our favourite celebs, not to mention friends and co-workers, are starting to look "rested" and "refreshed" while we're fighting the pillow creases still embedded between our wrinkles after lunch.

As Phyllis Koch-Sheras, a Virginia-based clinical psychologist quoted in April's "Look younger now!" issue of Allure magazine, tells it, "We tend to have much more help denying aging than we do accepting it."

That's because there's more money to be made in fighting it -- through pricey creams with unproven promises plus expensive and risky surgery. Look at the ads in magazines today. Doctors who could be saving lives are now lifting faces. You can book an entire vacation, complete with private care, around a tummy tuck, although I can't imagine that would be much fun.

Pay attention: We baby boomer women have hit the age where we're not seeking yet another lipstick to be in style or to make us feel better. We know what colours work at this point, and so we're dropping fewer bucks on blush than we used to.

So they have to harness our earning and buying power somehow.

Ladies, we're being had, again. We're being manipulated by the media to hate ourselves for our looks, just at the point when we should be comfortable in our skins, crepey though they may be.

Which brings me to Jamie Lee Curtis's interview in AARP Magazine, which is the U.S. organization's version. Lots of to-do over the fact that, OMG, she's turning 50 this year and she's grey-haired, wrinkly and topless on the cover!

Well hardly, she's got those plastic inflatables – which have been on view all over the Internet for years – submerged in a pool of water.

But what's really notable is that she says she has not only accepted the idea of aging, she welcomes it: "I actually think there's an incredible amount of self-knowledge that comes with getting older. I feel way better now than I did when I was 20. I'm stronger, I'm smarter in every way. I'm so much less crazy than I was then."

Aren't we all?

So why are we allowing the Botox bullies to drive us bonkers?