What advice have you got for the Jewish girls, after reading their response?

"Withnail & I" is a bit of a canonical film - an English equivalent of "Caddyshack" or "Office Space", say? (It's also on an awful lot of top 100 films of all-time lists, etc.)

I think it's more that Doug Barry lives in a (highly constricted) world of his own.

Yet another Doug classic - it's like he was raised in an isolation tank and learnt English from Google Translate.

Doug Barry is the only writer in the world who'd attempt a goose/overeating metaphor and wind up talking about cheese cubes instead of foie gras.

Killer link, with a bonus weird coincidence - the director of the Duke Women's center is someone I sorta knew long, long ago. Had no idea what she was up to... fun.

Verrry solid. Lot of potential for a full-scale numbered philosophical text there, a la Wittgenstein.... the "Tractatus Dudebro-Philisophicus" maybe?

Thanks for the update - I did look for reliable age-group stats but couldn't find any in a quick minute... on reflection, the spread I used is likely too wide — BMI is a pretty strong proxy over huge populations, so yup.

Darned good testimony!

Nonsensical work here. The list of male cabinet members who've been singled out as attractive by Obama (or even by Hillary, if we want to extend the point) is well-established.

Your own cite concludes with a (partial) rundown of non-African cultures where lip plugs are male-only. "Primarily" by whose accounting? And why does primary even matter if they're meant to be a proof that beauty is a distinctly female burden?

Haha... okkayyyy. Body modification and fashion are tied to multiple functions, including status display and other non-beauty considerations relevant to both sexes... In fact, lip plates and corsets are used by men in multiple cultures (feel free to confirm - it's trivially easy), which kinda undercuts the point, no?

Every conversation (or introduction) in business and politics should be confined to "how people are doing their jobs"? That's an extremely banal vision of life... though I have no doubt it suits some folks who find Chinese propaganda posters and the like uplifting.

I'd like to learn more about this historical context. Could you offer up some suggested readings on, say, how attractiveness was valued for medieval women relative to piety? Or labor capacity/skills? Or social position?

Here's a (no-doubt partial) list of other prominent politicians Obama has introduced by referencing their looks recently:

Wage analysis is problematic in porn. In some ways it's the ultimate cash-driven market; in other ways, it's pretty counter-intuitive. Two obvious examples:

You could always look at elite athletes that've been training since early adolescence or before, and see how they perform in adulthood...

I've sat through a ton of public events, and it's rare to see a light intro that DOESN'T touch on something "irrelevant to the person's capabilities".

I get what you're saying, but the implication isn't that AG Harris's looks were at all relevant to her appointment or performance - just that they're a nifty personal characteristic. (Or if you want to be more cynical, that most AGs are older men and by definition not attractive. Ouch.)

How are you so certain that the 44 male attorneys general aren't included in Obama's assessment?