It’s breast cancer awareness month, and everyone is seeing pink. Check out what PunditMom has to say about it all here. Tara Parker Pope weighs in at the New York Times blog, Well. And definitely don’t miss the Think Before You Pink website.

On a related note, the Feminist Law Professors weigh in on pink guns.

All in all, pink sure is a loaded color. When a boy recently wore a pink shirt to his new school, he got made fun of and called gay. But check out the solidarity of his male classmates, who showed up the next day, along with all the other boys they could rally, in pink tank tops, showing their support of the boy who was bullied. Gives a whole ‘nother meaning to pink solidarity, huh.

As Marco noted below, I was slated to speak on MSNBC this afternoon and got bumped. So instead, I’m posting some of my thoughts about the YouTube video of two middle-school girls fighting in a school locker room here and will just pretend that I said them on tv. (Sorry Mom, false alarm!)

As an astute observer noted in response to a previous girl fight also posted on YouTube, meanness and occasional violence among teenage girls is nothing new. The voyeurism around it is. American culture is obsessed with the girlfight—-think about the popular obsession with female mud-wrestling. Images of grown women fighting are often sexualized, staged, and designed to scintillate. Like porn. The girls are getting younger. And the fights are getting real.

But what’s really new (again, with homage to said astute observer) is the speed with which actual bad behavior is becoming entertainment. All it takes is a click of a phone. Notice that the girl who shot the clip with the camera on her cell phone made no attempt to break the fight or run to get adult help. Maybe she thought she was watching reality tv. Whatever the case, she was a spectator. Just like the thousands of spectators who then viewed the clip on YouTube. And the tv viewers (like me) who stared in awe as FOX News rolled the clip over and over again this morning on the air.

The YouTube clip is part of a trend. There are entire sites now, like www.girlfightsdump.com and www.fightdump.com, virtual repositories of girls behaving badly. I’m terrified at the way this has become entertainment. The violence in the video is scary. And so is the Cleveland school shooting for which I got bumped.

(An early plug for my friend Jessie Klein’s excellent book on school shootings, coming from Rutgers UP. The book, The Gender Police, focuses on boys. But Jessie has a chapter on girl fighting, too. Thank you, Jessie, for prepping me today. This post’s for you.)

Girl with Pen in New York Times blog today! In response to questions I’ve been getting, there ARE a few slots left in my “Making It Pop: Translating Your Ideas for Trade” webinar this fall. Please see this post and this one for more.

Suggestion: for a quick, deep glimpse into the heart of the beast, go for half-hour treadmill workout at your local gym where you can gaze at a battery of overhead flatscreen TVs, each tuned to a different channel.

A random sequence of images from this morning’s visit:
—an endlessly repeated video clip of a vicious girl fight in a high school locker room
—a promo for the Bionic Woman (much running, jumping, drop-kicking of bad-guys)
—a music video of Jennifer Lopez beating the crap out of more bad-guys in a brothel or something, setting an example for the oppressed sistahs
—a Hummer barrels menacingly towards the viewer through a nighttime wilderness, scaring off would-be attackers (wolves, scorpions); in a second ad the Hummer is shown from a gamer’s POV, barreling into a morphing sequence of rough terrains (desert, arctic, tundra).
— yet another news story on a private “security” firm killing more civilians in Iraq, two women shot dead in their car

What seems to be the signal cutting through all the media noise? Is it that it’s OK now for women to be violent, because, hey, we all get to watch, while men have ramped up to the next level and gone invisible (and unaccountable), inside our all-terrain, obstacle-and-reality-proof paramilitary vehicles? We can’t be sure. But let wolves, scorpions, the environment and helpless civilians beware.

[UPDATE: Deborah Siegel was originally slated to appear on MSNBC this afternoon to comment on the Ohio middle school girl fight video mentioned above, but the story was preempted by the tragic school shooting in Cleveland. With shock and sadness we recognize that the two events are part of a broader ongoing crisis — rage and violence amidst our children — which seems to compound itself day by day. Our thoughts and prayers are with the victims in Cleveland and their families.]

Just a quick reminder about tomorrow’s panel…Come one, come all! It’s free, there’s food, and there’s feminists.

The Tenement Museum presents…

Feminist New York
Thursday, October 11
6-8 PM

Lower East Side Tenement Museum Shop
108 Orchard Street at Delancey

I’ll be moderating the discussion with Pamela Thompson & Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, authors of the recently published Every Past Thing and Well-Behaved Women Seldom Make History. RSVPs requested (Bookclub@tenement.org). Check out Megan Marshall’s review of the latter in Slate, and Kathyrn Harrison’s review in the New York Times.

And next Wednesday, I’ll be speaking about Sisterhood, Interrupted at a private salon hosted by the illustrious Heather Hewett–the Gertrude Stein of the Valley (Hudson Valley). The same Heather Hewett who organized that fabulous conference on girlhood last weekend at SUNY-New Paltz, the one that featured “my gal” Courtney Martin. Can’t wait to see what Heather does next!

Did ya’ll see that article in Newsweek from Sept. 30, “Father Time”? Well, I just caught it and the most interesting finding, I thought, was this: The researchers expected that the dads who were really involved were going to be the dads who had working spouses. But that wasn’t the case. “In fact,” explains University of Maryland sociologist Suzanne Bianchi, “dads are more involved over time whether their spouse is working outside the home or not.”

And why are dadly responsibilities changing? Says Bianchi,

“Dads had a clearer message in the 1960s about how they were supposed to behave: they were supposed to earn a living. Maybe now it’s less clear that breadwinning is enough. We still expect dads to be good breadwinners, but it’s not sufficient: you’re also supposed to be caring and nurturing your children. I think men are also taking cues from their wives. Just because moms go to work doesn’t mean they lose the feeling they should be involved moms. And dads are also picking up the message.”

(Hey Paul, dude, fatherman, when are we going for lunch?!)

Inspired by Alex Juhasz (who is currently teaching a course on YouTube about YouTube), I’ve decided to teach my fall webinar “Making It Pop: Translating Your Ideas for Trade” as a bloginar. Meaning, the online part of the class will take place as–you guessed it–a blog.

What better way to learn about using the blogosphere as a platform for your books than by becoming more familiar with a blog, right?

So the class blog–private, of course!–will provide a forum where participants can post elements of their book proposals, or thoughts toward ideas, as we go along. And get feedback. I’ll be walking participants through the mechanics on our first conference call (that would be Nov 6). We’ve got some great NYC-based agents and editors lined up for the calls. And while I’m at it, and for those of you who like to get ahead (you know who you are), the suggested reading for the course will be from: Thinking like Your Editor: How to Write Great Serious Nonfiction and Get It Published. More info–dates, cost, rationale–here.

I think Marco took this (goofy) pic of me the day I got my current laptop. Boy, do I love me my MacBook.

I know I’m starting to sound like a Hillary supporter over here. Full disclosure: I am still undecided, as my feelings keep evolving. But I’m just riveted by the spectacle of her running. Not merely *her* running, but the fact that a viable woman candidate is.

So check this out: According to the most recent Newsweek poll (61,093 responses, 51% believe American voters would elect a woman to the White House in 2008, while 41% do not (8.4% aren’t sure). Everyone I talk to around this town these days (and granted, I’m talking about a rarefied urban island) seems to feel a woman can’t win. The Newsweek poll is (as they themselves note) not scientific. Has anyone seen a recent one that is?

These pics are from the amazing dude ranch wedding I went to the other week. (Congratulations, Rebeccemy!)

Now I know the good folks of Ratify ERA Florida are well intentioned. But the description of this “Hillary” doll that appears on their website is a bit…much:

This is the exclusive, celebrated President doll with the shirt that thrills us all, seen enlarged. You will not find “Hillary” anywhere else. She is 15 inches tall, finely-made, soft and completely undressable.

Meanwhile, the not-so-good folks at Walmart had a different objection:

“Hillary” announces that “Someday a Woman will be President” on her shirt that Wal-Mart banned from its shelves. They claim that having a woman in the White House “is against ‘Family Values’ “. We think it is most timely and just perfect.

Yeah, ok, I’ll give it to them there.