In the News

As a woman who does not wear a bra, one might ask why I'm interested in this art bra exhibit. Ah yes, art is art and some of these nifty bras qualify as art. Just remember sisters, those underwire bras are now suspect for cutting off your circulation and that just might be one cause for breast cancer.

Why I don't wear one? Well, back in the day, I used to draw bras, hundreds of bras for catalogs and ads putting myself through art school. The popular ones back then had cups that were stitched in a circle and I was working with pen and ink. Stitch, stitch by stitch with each row after row after row.

Thank you nooneknow1028 for the link. George Carlin's rant about anti-abortion conservatives is right on the money.

A year ago, Jezebel writers Tracie Egan and Moe Tkacik were invited to appear on Lizz Winstead's show "Thinking and Drinking" to discuss their unabashed sexual adventures and the explicit recounting of such on their popular blog. Both ladies showed up to the set inebriated and ready to speak with Winstead.

As a unnecessary lush (nursing a hangover as we speak), I must say that to watch these lasses slur their way through a conundrum-fuck was mildly entertaining. Also, I completely and utterly understand what they were trying to say. But, the fact that they were drunk and can't even solidify their statements makes it a failed attempt to offer a new and controversial approach to the sensitive issue that is rape.

Father Ksawery Knotz's book, entitled In Sex as you don't know it: For married couples who love God, has been described as a "Catholic Kama Sutra".  The Franciscan friar has raised eyebrows by going into graphic detail about how married couples can spice up their sex lives.

"Every act - a type of caress, a sexual position - with the goal of arousal is permitted and pleases God," he writes.

"During sexual intercourse, couples can show their love in every way, can offer one another the most sought after caresses."  Sex in marriage, Father Knotz explains, should not be boring but "saucy, surprising and fantasy packed".

New guildlines for cervical cancer screening say women should delay their first pap smear until they're 21 years old. Hasn't anyone heard of HPV?

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius reaffirmed that women SHOULD get mammograms at 40 defying those BS recommendations of that bogus task force. The American Cancer Society must be pleased.

Kate Moss takes the heat for saying, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels". Betty, Christina and I debated this last night and we get her point.

The US Department of Health and Human Services commissioned a task force to study mammograms.  Their findings: women don't need mammograms until their 50s and even then we only need a mammogram every two years.  The cherry on top: we don't need to do self breast exams either.  Why would you discourage people from examining their own bodies - something that takes no time and no money - when it could mean the difference between life and death?

And they're promoting their findings all over the place - The Today Show down the line.  The argument is that for every 1900 women who undergo a mammogram only 3-4 will have breast cancer.  In other words, 3-4 female lives aren't worth the expense.

Dear Betty,

I am a 40 year old woman. I have never been able to have an orgasm from oral sex. I was married for 15 years to someone who didn't like to go down on me, so I have limited experience with it. But I have a partner right now who loves giving oral. So I'd like to take advantage of it but I can't seem to do it. I can orgasm from masturbation without a problem. Can you help? Thanks so much.

The first pics from Levi's Playgirl pictorial have hit the web.  He looks kind of hot - the best he's looked yet.  You so know that this issue is going to sell like hotcakes.  Who doesn't want to see the penis that knocked up Palin's teenage daughter. 

And Playgirl timed Levi's spread to dovetail with Palin's book release.  That's what happens when you deny someone's paternity rights after parading him around in your unsuccessful bid for the White House.  Levi has been quite vocal about Palin blocking him from seeing his son.  He also made claims that Palin makes fun of her special needs child (I believe it).  Hell hath no fury like a teen dad scorned.  This 19 year old has successfully inserted himself into every interview Palin has had on her book tour....even with Oprah:

The U.S. Constitution grants an absolute right to free speech. Until recently, it was one of the best protected rights in the United States, as ruling after ruling by the Supreme Court determined that sexual speech is protected in a wide diversity of circumstances. The obscenity protections in a famous 1973 decision called Miller vs California. This decision made it nearly impossible to be prosecuted for obscenity. Everyone from Allen Ginsberg to Larry Flynt benefitted from this - and as a result, so did we. Many other forms of speech were protected under this safe umbrella.

Then came the Internet. Restricting sexual speech in a series of incremental rules and regulations, that right is being tightened like a noose.

A real government agency has finally said it...the emperor has no clothes on...10 years of abstinence-only sex ed hasn't kept kids from having sex at all.  They still have sex, it's unprotected, and sex infections are spreading rapidly. 

The latest statistics on chlamydia, gonorrhea and syphilis show that these three highly treatable infections continue to spread in the United States.

"Chlamydia and gonorrhea are stable at unacceptably high levels and syphilis is resurgent after almost being eliminated," said John Douglas, director of the division of sexually transmitted diseases at the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

What do people think is sexy?  A rosy complexion.  What gives you a rosy complexion?  Eating fruits and vegetables.  I just heard Eric say a "hell yeah". 

In a study were people were asked to rate an individuals level of attractiveness, researchers have found it was all about skin tone (another study confirmed these findings -"glow" and "radiance" were the key indicators of "beauty" even over symmetry).  An individual with a rosy complexion was rated as the most attractive even over those with a "golden" complexion so you can save some money on spray-on tans. 

This week, an Amsterdam style "coffee shop" opened in the US. It's the first of it's kind to test the Obama administration's relaxing of policing medical use of marijuana.

I'm all for it - and I don't even smoke pot. I'm hoping this marks the beginning of us Americans relaxing restrictions on things that help us to feel good.

The reality is that people like drugs. They always have. They always will. But, superstitious thinking has wrestled the naturalness of pleasure away from us.

If you've never watched Secret Diary of a Call Girl on Showtime, you should.  It's based on a british blog about the day-to-day life of a high-end escort.  There's been widespread speculation about "who" really penned this blog with rumors it was a gay escort and not a woman at all.  Most felt that it glamourized sex work.  It does and that's the point.

Well, meet the real Belle Du Jour: Dr. Brooke Magnanti.  Magnanti is a respected specialist in developmental neurotoxicology and cancer epidemiology in a hospital research group in Bristol. Six years ago, in the final stages of her PhD thesis, she ran out of money and turned to prostitution through a London escort agency, charging £300 an hour.

I'm going to see the movie Amelia tomorrow. Although this news item refers to Amelia's wild side, opting for non monogamy is hardly what I'd consider "wild." She wanted her husband to know that she didn't expect either one of them to adhere to a lifetime of sex restricted to one another. I find that an act of courage in a society that demands monogamy of women while many men get to cheat.

Not only did she lead a conventional life, but it seems that her plane just didn't "disappear". My friends made a film about TIGHAR, a group of researchers digging for truth, something that always turns me on.

Amelia's fourth cousin, Wally Earhart, believes that Amelia and her navigator, Fred Noonan, did not die as claimed by the government and the Navy when their twin-engine Electra plunged into the Pacific on July 2, 1937.

My university social biology professor says, "Sperm is cheap. Psychotherapy is expensive." I couldn't agree more.

I grew up in the meat packing district of Manhattan's West Village in the 70's, so it makes sense that at the age of 11, my mom introduced me to her tantric master. She wanted to make sure she raised a son who was an excellent lover.

My first lesson: orgasm control.

Tantric master taught me to pulse, and contract the muscles around the anus and urethra the closer I get to orgasm - stopping myself just short of release - relaxing into the sweet orgasmic feelings.