NEWSGENDER STEREOTYPES

When female boxers enter the ring, the Amateur International Boxing Association (AIBA) would like them to be wearing skirts, according to a recommendation by the sport's governing organization. After all, nothing says pugilistic prowess like a good miniskirt.

The AIBA came up with this brilliant idea as a way to help distinguish female boxers from their male counterparts. Apparently, this has been a problem for some folks in the past, though I can't imagine who.

Female boxers have already had to fight long and hard outside the ring to get the respect they deserve inside of it. The 2012 London Games will mark the sport's Olympic debut, after having been previously rejected by the International Olympic Committee  in 2005 for not meeting safety and universality standards. AIBA's sartorial suggestion undermines that progress.

After AIBA issued this suggestion, only two nations had their female boxers wear skirts: Romanian and Polish fighters wore them in the the European Championships late last year. Most athletes seem to share the opinion of  Ireland's three-time world champion, Katie Taylor. "I don't even wear miniskirts on a night out," Taylor said. "So I definitely won't be wearing miniskirts in the ring."

The AIBA, responding to criticism, has said that, as of now, the skirts are merely a suggestion. Final uniform dress codes will not be decided until they meet this month from January 18-22. Until that time, the organization is asking for input from the wider boxing community and from the general public.

Change.org member Rachel Walden seized the opportunity to have her voice heard and created a petition asking the AIBA to rescind its recommendation that female boxers wear skirts. "The ideal result of this petition is to send the message that this sort of misogyny is intolerable, " says Walden. Join her in asking the AIBA to play and not require female boxers wear skirts.

Photo credit: babastever

In an example of political reporting at its best, local St. Louis paper the Riverfront Times recently led its news section with some heavy-hitting reporting: "Sarah Steelman: Hot or Not?"

In all seriousness, a story called "How Hot is Sarah Steelman anyway?" -- a piece judging the attractiveness of potential 2012 Missouri Senate candidate Sarah Steelman -- is a good example of the unequal treatment of political women in the newsroom and our political discourse at large. Inspired by a radio host who called her "hot" but not intelligent, the Riverfront Times ran with the story: "Just how hot is Sarah Steelman? Is she Sarah Palin hot? Nikki Haley hot? Or -- be still our hearts! -- Kirsten Gillibrand hot?"

Reporter Sarah Fenske actually justifies the fact that she's discussing a candidate's looks before launching a call for reader feedback on Steelman's hotness quotient: "​For the record, we don't believe women should be judged on the basis of their looks, or lack thereof...[but] Steelman's looks are clearly gonna be an issue." Okay, it's unfortunate that the political discourse immediately trends towards judging women's looks rather than, rather than discussing their policy positions. But -- tempting as it is to join in the hot-or-not-fun -- here are a few directions the author could have gone in instead:

I've always had what many people consider to be a "boy's name." My full name, Alexandra, is clearly feminine, but the name I've gone by as long as I can remember, Alex, is decidedly not. As I've written before, the fact that I would be able to choose to go by a gender-neutral name was a key consideration for my mother.

But for a lot of people, Alex is primarily a male, rather than a gender-neutral or female, name. They assume, seeing the name Alex, that I'm a man — just last week, a woman I was interviewing admitted she was surprised upon hearing my voice on the phone, having expected a male voice. Nonetheless, I've never been bullied over my name, and certainly not beaten up. A 12-year-old girl in Mississippi named Randi wasn't so lucky.

As Dana Rudolph reports on Gay Rights, Randi was assaulted by a group of fellow Hernando Middle School students after a Fellowship of Christian Students meeting. She relates that the four girls and a boy started referring to her as male and unattractive, told her she "shouldn't be in this world," and criticized her for having a "boy name." They then attacked, beating her, kicking her in the ribs, and throwing her against a cafeteria table (the incident was caught by a security camera).

What sense does it make to beat somebody up over a name? Because Randi was deemed to be transgressing an arbitrary gender boundary, she was targeted by fellow students for a collection of letters.

A popular meme going around on Facebook in honor of Veteran's Day is asking people to change their profile pictures to one of a veteran. It showed up in my inbox of messages a few days ago. "It doesn't have to be a picture of your husband! Anyone who has served, living or dead would be wonderful!" it proclaimed to me. How amazing, I thought, and not at all condescending, especially not if you happened to be both a woman and a veteran, since being women and servicemembers are not mutually exclusive.

I haven't changed my Facebook picture in about a year.

I also spent the next morning at the Veteran's Day ceremony — which the President was supposed to attend (security switched at the last minute) — not having my hand shaken by VFW members and not being talked to by anyone going around talking to and thanking veterans. I am fairly certain that it had something to do with having accompanied the Brownies who were handing out programs, and having a friend's baby strapped to my chest because he was on duty. Women with children could not possibly be veterans. Add to that the fact that the General's speech brought tears to my eyes as I sat next to a Korean Non-Commissioned Officer, thinking about the career I lost from disability. Servicemembers don't cry I suppose. I felt invisible.

"We are very judgmental, we forgot the crime, and we remember how she dresses."

This is the analysis of Rima Sabban, a sociologist from the United Arab Emirates working at Zayed University in Dubai, of the recent murder of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim. Tamim had been having an affair with Egyptian businessman and politician Hisham Talaat Moustafa (who owns the Four Seasons in Cairo, among other properties).

When Moustafa told her he could not marry her because he did not have his mother's permission (and -- although this doesn't prevent him from taking another wife in Egypt -- he also already has a wife and three children) Tamim left him and fled to Dubai. Moustafa then hired Mohsen al-Sukari, a former Egyptian state security officer, to kill her for two million dollars. Sukari went to Dubai, knocked on Tamim's door and, when she answered, slit her throat and stabbed her.

The photos of Tamim's body hit the pages of Arab newspapers and a high-profile investigation ensued that ultimately led to Sukari and Moustafa, and revealed taped conversations in which Moustafa suggested that Tamim should be run over or thrown off of a building. Sukari later confessed that Moustafa had wanted her severed head before paying up for the killing.

It's no surprise that being skinny is an advantage for women in our society. Just how much of an advantage? About $15,000 worth.

A recent study by Timothy A. Judge of the University of Florida has revealed that very skinny women — those weighing an average of 25 pounds less than the "normal" or "average" weight for women of their group — earn $15,572 more per year than women of average weight.

Women whose weight is around 25 pounds higher than the "norm" for their group make $13,847 less than the women of average weight. The study proposed that women are most harshly punished for an initial deviation from the ideal —  a jump from being 25 lbs underweight to "normal" or just below normal weight — and they suffer the biggest drop in salary when they make this initial transgression. From then on out, they'll take smaller pay cuts for each increase in weight.

Men, meanwhile, get a financial pat on the back for gaining weight. They're penalized for being "too thin." Gaining 25 lbs per year brings a man a yearly salary boost of $8,437. This boost drops slightly to $7,775 per year once the men have reached above average weights.

So let's get this straight: women earn in the ballpark of $15,000 extra for being too skinny, whereas men earn in the ballpark of $7,000 extra for being over their recommended weight. Any sort of argument about how our society's obsession with weight is merely tied to health concerns flies out the window in the face of a study like this.

Here's how WRKO-AM radio producer in Boston, Bill Cooksey, chose to endorse Republican state treasurer candidate Karyn E. Polito:  “I think she’s hot. She’s tiny, she’s short. She’s got a banging little body on her. Facial wise, I give her about a seven. Body wise, I give her about an eight-and-a-half. Tight little butt. I endorse Karyn Polito.” The  station has refused to issue an apology.

This is the same sexist language — and sexist perception of women — that plagues them as they try to move forward in careers across the board. Women work hard to prove they're serious and intelligent only to be evaluated and objectified based on their appearance. The only reason this continues is that people think it's no big deal.

But using gender stereotypes to describe candidates matters, both culturally and at the polls. As fellow blogger Roxy MtJoy wrote last week, sexist attacks against women actually hurt female candidates chances. In fact, if women candidates don't fight back, they sink even farther in the public's estimation. I'm not sure what the statistics are — or if there are any — on women who receive sexist endorsements. However, the sexist attack and the sexist endorsement are part of the same problem: assessing a candidate based on her sex rather than her politics.

Man, don't you hate it when you just want to head down to the bar for a few shots of tequila with some hot chick, and instead there's an old woman, like, in her fifties, sitting there near the only empty bar stool? Gross.

Such is, more or less, the message sent by Jose Cuervo's latest blatantly ageist commercial, which plays on our culture's obsession with youth in an utterly obvious, uncreative, and insulting way.

The video has a cutesy little tactic of conjuring up a male fantasy: the narrator reads, "cue the lights. Cue the chairs. Cue the crowd. Cue the..." and so forth, naming the crucial elements of this scene until he gets to "cue the girl" whereby a cardboard woman pops up.

She is older and pretty, with sleek grey hair, a sly smile, and a slim figure. She is dressed well and seems inviting. But no, "not that girl," with a hint of condescension and smug distaste.

"That girl." That one is young, thin, in a tank top with her breasts pushed up. When she first swings up from under the bar as a cardboard cutout she has a surprised pursed-lips look on her face like a little girl. She is in her mid-to-late twenties, in her prime, so to speak. She's the girl we want. The message could not be any more obvious: are you beyond thirty, and not a cougar (the only version of sexuality we'll accept from older women)? Then you do not belong in the bar, and you do not fit in this bar scene.

Are you the daughter of divorced parents? Do you think their split is your fault? Apparently, you aren't alone, though this isn't nearly as terrible as it sounds.

In 2003, a pair of economists released their findings from a study on census data from the 1940s until 2000, which indicated that today, couples with male children were five percent less likely to divorce than couples with female children. (The gap widens with each consecutive female child the couple has). In the past few years, this idea has been considered several ways. Maybe parents prefer boys, argued Slate's Steven Landsburg. There are more reasons for parents of boys to avoid divorce, Landsburg later argued after his first argument didn't go over so well. Some even wonder if the study doesn't offer implications about the wage gap, since it was first conceived to look at correlations between gender, parenting, and upward mobility.

But this week, Notre Dame psychology professor Anita Kelly stirred up the speculation all over again when she tossed out the idea that women with daughters have less need for a male partner. Since nearly three quarters of all divorces are initiated by women, Kelly says the question is not why are families with sons divorcing, but why are mothers with daughters leaving their husbands more often than mothers with sons. Kelly also writes that "divorced women with daughters are substantially less likely to remarry than divorced women with sons."

The basis of Love Plus+, a video game from Japanese company Konami that was released in Japan last September, is that male players can choose between one of three high school girls to be their virtual girlfriends, and then engage in a sort of competition against the game to keep their girlfriend happy and maintain a relationship with her. The girls are anime dolls: wide-eyed, pale-faced, with slim girlish figures and school uniforms. Their expressions suggest sweet, sad, teenage innocence. The men buy the girls flowers, kiss them via a few sweeps of the mouse, and, lately, take them on vacations.

As sometimes happens in Japan, the line between fantasy and reality, particularly when dealing with sex, has become blurry. One man has already married his virtual girlfriend. Many men are obviously willing to make real-life compromises, decisions and purchases for their pixelated adolescent lovers; last Christmas Konami, the company that puts out Love Plus+, put out a cake that men could buy for their girlfriends. The cake sold out before the bakery had even opened.

More recently, Konami has paired with the dying seaside town of Atami to offer vacations and honeymoons for the men and their "girlfriends." Atami was once a hot destination for, ahem, real life couples, but has suffered economically in the past decade. So its businesses jumped at the prospect of indulging in a little suspension of disbelief to encourage lonely Japanese men to take their fantasies one step further. Restaurants have named dishes after the game, the town has put up billboards of the three teenage girls, and a hotel has offered special "suites" with two of everything for the men and their hand-held devices. The female hotel employees dress up like the girls in specifically designed Japanes yukatas, and the hotel employees must check in the Love Plus+ vacationers as couples, actually registering both names in their records. An iPhone app lets the men take photos of themselves with the girls.