Two important stories:
Curvy women: A study indicates that men prefer "women with curves" to very, very thin women. This will be very good news to those who insist on using "curvy" as a euphemism for "overweight," although the story itself makes clear that most men prefer women within the normal weight range. Whatever "normal" means.
Ever since Ralph Lauren fired a size 4 model for being overweight, many recent articles have focused on thinness and female self-esteem -- see, for example, here and here and here and here. Apparently, self-esteem is an issue of great international importance -- but only with females. It's a serious matter whenever a young woman doesn't like what she sees in the mirror. Meanwhile, a male who tries to roid his way to looking ripped is considered a narcissistic silly-billy.
Faster than light: German physicists claim to have accomplished the impossible -- they have demonstrated that a particle (in this case, a microwave photon) can be made to travel faster than the speed of light. And they did it without the aid of dilithium crystals! If replicated, their experiment may one day allow an astronaut to arrive before he leaves. Hell, I might even be able to meet a deadline. Of course, just because a photon may go FTL doesn't mean that an astronaut can.
But perhaps this breakthrough could allow us to communicate via radio in real time with beings in another solar system?
Feedback (on either story) is welcome. Experiment in progress...
25 comments:
I just sent a comment to you, it should have arrived yesterday.
I haven't looked into the first, but the second is old and I remember seeing it a while ago. Also the actual reporting is quite poor (as is often the case with this type of article). Check out this for more info:
http://stupac2.blogspot.com/2007/08/we-have-not-broken-speed-of-light.html
Light travels faster through glass, and maybe water, so light has been going 'faster than the speed of light' (in vacuum) forever. Not what is meant here, of course.
Bell's theorem, quantum entanglement, virtual particle pairs, are all the same topic as the reported experiment, and written about in various formats, from popularized science books like 'The Dancing Wu Li Masters,' to New Age takeoffs using quantum concepts, to probably Robert Anton Wilson's more conspiratorial fiction.
XI
I absolutely love me some "Curvy Women!"
I don't know about you but I always seem to want to ask a "Skinny woman" if she would like a sandwich!
Just saying...
:-)
I made the mistake once of responding to a post at a feminist blog that basically said that women have low self-esteem and self-image problems but men don't.
I said that men do have those problems, but we're not supposed to admit it. I DID NOT say that women don't have self-esteem and self-image problems, or that men have it worse than women, or even that men have it just as bad.
Anyone who has watched television late at night has seen the ads and informercials for Enzyte and other penis enlargement products. Men's magazines are filled with ads for products that are supposed to make us younger, taller, stronger, hairier, sexier, "bigger" and better in bed.
They wouldn't spend all that money on advertising if no one was buying their stuff. But instead of admitting their insecurities, men keep their feelings bottled up.
Consequently, men drink more alcohol, use more drugs, get more ulcers and commit suicide more often.
As you might guess, my comment was not well received. Apparently I was committing blasphemy or heresy or violating some taboo.
On the physics story - the claims of Nimtz and Stahlhofen:
http://lanl.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0708/0708.0681.pdf
http://www.pcnjournal.com/Files/3_1_nimtz02010800.pdf
http://www.physik.hu-berlin.de/nano/lehre/Gastvorlesung%20Wien/Seminar/Nimtz%20LectNot%202006
The rebuttel:
http://www.physics.utoronto.ca/~aephraim/aephraim.html
Aephraim M. Steinberg : “Breaking News: Relativity Still Correct! Photon tunneling hits the news again every 5 or 10 years, as those who would over-dramatize it hope for more and more of the voices of reason to get tired of commenting on the same experiments (e.g. my 1994 thesis). New Scientist covers the latest hype in the August 17, 2007 issue, also picked up by photonics.com and many media outlets which were too gullible to be cited here :-) ”
http://xxx.lanl.gov/PS_cache/quant-ph/pdf/9810/9810009v1.pdf
http://www.dhushara.com/book/quantcos/qnonloc/qnonloc.htm
http://lanl.arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/0709/0709.2736.pdf
http://arstechnica.com/old/content/2007/08/faster-than-the-speed-of-light-no-i-dont-think-so.ars
If men perceive that young boys are altering their eating habits, or behaving in ways that are detrimental to their long term physical and emotional health, based on advertising and popular images, then men need to make a big deal about it. Feminists and women have raised the alarm bells on behalf of girls. It's not their job to fight every battle. And the fact of the matter is that men buying Extenz and Rogaine is not the same problem as 10 year old girls dieting because they're afraid they won't get married. It's teenagers and pre-teens cutting back nutrition that is the concern. I'm just not seeing large groups of 4th grade boys taking steroids.
If men perceive a similar problem among males as women do among females, then they need to take a stand as women and feminists have done. It's not men's magazines fretting over young girls wrestling with anorexia. This is research being done by women on behalf of their own constituency.
As a feminist, I'm all in favor of helping boys to grow up and be happy, healthy adults. But it's not up to feminists to fight that battle as well as their own. As a group, we oppose the patriarchy which makes slaves of us all, but our specific battles must be on the behalf of girls.
Adding that an experiment is in progress will skew the experiment. No?
As for social-conversation-crack and gender specific responses, The Game by Neil Strauss is a silly but sometimes insightful romp. I like the cameo by Tom Cruise replaying the character from that frogs from the sky movie.
That was experiment #2. Trivia-crack for movie loving bloggers.
Well put, Lori, thanks. As for Viagra that's for these losers, who need some LOWER self-esteem:
http://news.cnet.com/8301-31001_3-10385299-261.html
The 66 year old employee of the SC state attorney was caught parking with a teen stripper and told police he always kept Viagra and sex toys in his car, "just in case."
I raised three kids, two boys and one girl. It never crossed my mind that my daughter was her mother's "constituency."
Boys AND girls are pressured into gender roles by the Patriarchy. There are people of both genders that don't adapt well to the pressure.
It's not a competition to see who has it worse. Today's boys and girls are tomorrow's men and women. If we're going to break the cycle we need to start with children that haven''t been brainwashed yet.
Half those children are male.
or behaving in ways that are detrimental to their long term physical and emotional health, based on advertising and popular images, then men need to make a big deal about it. Feminists and women have raised the alarm bells on behalf of girls.
Falsely, as it turns out: all reputable studies on the topic show that there is no, I repeat, NO link between images in advertisinng and etc. and eating disorders. Or to put it another way, what I prefer to call 'Movement Feminists' think women/girls are much stupider/more foolish/more manipulable than they really are.
It's interesting to note that in U.S. culture, men recoil at (and women recoil at) the sight of women being forced to undergo genital mutilation, but on the other hand men laugh at (and women recoil at) the sight of men who have NOT been forced to undergo genital mutilation (i.e. circumcision).
(Doesn't sound much like a patriarchy to *me*!)
As far as dress sizes go, it turns out that the numbers are shrinking due to marketing tactics. Primarily, smaller numbers make average and above-sized women more likely to buy, so manufacturers have over the decades reduced the numbers while keeping the absolute sizes the same: (for example) the same woman who was a size 8 in 1950 would today wear a size 0. Secondarily, there is the embarassment/maturity factor: it was realized that smaller women are more likely to buy a dress in a small women's size than to buy in a large girl's size - i.e they would rather be thought of/think of themselves as small women than large girls - and teen girls were more likely to do the same (so as to be thought of/think of themselves as women rather than girls).
As for the German experiment, it appears to be simple quantum tunneling, an established phenomenon (present, for example, in microcircuits). As for whether this is meaningful FTL, well, the debate rages on.
Sergei Rostov
The 'glamour' magazines are constantly harpooning young girl's and women's self esteem by putting forth unrealistic photos that have been airbrushed and touched up. Also, most of the models spend their full time, that others spend working, working on their appearance.
Just take a look at former Miss California (yup that one is for you myiq2xu) who felt she need FAKE boobs to win the 'Beauty Pageant'. :-( What message is that sending?
Today, boys too are being made to feel inadequate and older men are made to feel that they need to perform beyond the norm (via viagra has caused great harm there IMHO).
It is truly to bad we are not looking at the inner person rather than the exterior packaging. Maybe we can look forward to asking other planet folks how they worked out these issues, now that we can travel faster than the speed of light.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoTNGmlOO2g
WV
WV, back in the 1970s when I was young, I read an esteemed periodical called "The Savage Sword of Conan," a comic book published as a black and white magazine. (Some of you will recall the amazing work of Alfredo Alcala.)
Each issue had a painted cover. Some of the paintings were very good; many were hack work. Each image featured a scantily clad female lurking somewhere in the vicinity of Conan, who was fighting bad guys. Sometimes she was dark-haired, sometimes she was blonde. This female showed up on the cover even if there was no female character in that month's story.
The folks at Marvel jokingly named her "Miraj." Her obvious purpose was to display sex appeal.
One month, a female reader wrote in and said that she was no longer going to purchase this publication, because of sexism. She objected to Miraj and to her frequent state of near-nudity. She also raised the familiar argument (it was old hat even in 1976) that such images perpetuate an image of femininity that real women cannot hope to live up to.
It occurred to me: Each cover also featured a nearly naked man, who was MORE prominent than Miraj and even more undressed.
It also occurred to me that this nearly naked muscle-bound male might have been a factor which prompted the outraged female reader to pick up the magazine in the first place.
More than that. Miraj was curvy, but not really outrageously sexy. She was not unreasonable. I mean, there were actual, real girls at my high school who looked pretty much like her.
But there was NOBODY at my high school who looked even slightly like Conan. I had never met a guy with biceps like that.
Eventually, I did meet guys who had overgrown muscles. And everyone suspected that steroids were involved.
More than that. Everyone thought that someone who would endanger his health just to look "ripped" must be vain and foolish. In other words, when a male does something like that, we tend to blame -- properly -- THAT INDIVIDUAL, not some vague larger societal system. He made his decision; he must live with it.
Is there a young bulemic girl anywhere in this world? Blame "the Patriarchy." Is there a young guy out there stupidly doing roids because he hopes that having huge muscles will make up for the fact that he's only 5'5"? We blame THAT GUY -- no-one else.
Let's bring the matter back to painting.
We now live in a society where I simply cannot produce a painting of a sexually appealing woman without the work being labeled pornography. The quality of the work is immaterial. The context is immaterial. The style is immaterial. I could paint with the skill of all the great masters; skill does not matter. Only the subject matter would be visible to most observers.
If the woman in the painting is sexy, the artist will get The Standard Feminist Lecture on how poor widdle girls everywhere are taught an unreasonable standard of beauty and thus are starving themselves to death.
If Michelangelo were alive today, could he still produce paintings of big hunky muscle-bound guys? I should hope so. I hope nobody would have the gall to tell him what he can and cannot paint. I hope nobody argues that Adam in the Sistine Chapel creates unreasonable expectations of what males should look like.
But if Mike can have the freedom to paint whatever he wants, then why can't I? And why can't the artists (some good, some bad) who did all of those "Savage Sword" covers?
(continued)
I'm not sure just how many young girls are doing serious damage to themselves just because they don't look like whoever today's "hot girl" might be. But I do know this: I don't look like the current male heartthrob -- is that term used any more? -- and I never did.
So the fuck what?
The media will always inundate us with pictures of people, of both sexes, who are better looking than normal humans are. That's life. Get used to it.
Self-esteem? It is in the nature of teens everywhere to be down on themselves for all sorts of neurotic reasons. Take away one reason and another will pop up. This is what being a teen is all about.
How should parents deal with this? I suggest that mothers should tell girls should a variant of what fathers have always told boys.
You know what it's like to be a boy? Imagine someone picking you up by the hair, slapping your face, and screaming like R. Lee Ermey in "Full Metal Jacket":
STOP WHINING! BE A MAN! COWBOY UP! TAKE RESPONSIBILITY! BE STRONG! DON'T BLAME OTHERS! BE A MAN! THE TIME HAS COME FOR YOU TO UN-FUCK YOURSELF AND GET WITH THE PROGRAM!
Imagine having R. Lee (in one form or another) in your face day after day, year after year. THAT is the male experience.
And you know what? That experience has worked to our benefit.
We've had nearly four decades of feminism and what has it gotten us? Females today are -- in my opinion -- weaker, more simpering, more male-dependent, more submissive than they were when I was young. They are far more obsessed by fashion and imagery and vanity. They are far, FAR more obsessed with being attractive -- with being, to put it crudely, fuckable.
Your average 14 year old girl back in 1972 was FAR more independent and sassy and un-materialistic than is the average teen girl of today. That '72 girl was much, much closer to the feminist ideal.
Why? I don't know for sure, but I will hazard a guess.
I think that, too often, feminism CODDLES girls. It does not teach toughness. It does not teach strength. It does not teach self-reliance and personal responsibility. It tells young women to blame their own stupid mistakes on some imaginary male conspiracy.
Newsflash: Your self-image is your SELF-image -- created by YOU, not by any outside force.
I like the idea of young women who are genuinely tough and self-reliant. I want to see many more such women. The way to get to that goal is to for mothers to treat girls the way fathers have always dealt with sons. Pick 'em up by the hair, slap their faces and yell:
STOP WHINING! STOP BLAMING OTHERS! TAKE RESPONSIBILITY! COWBOY UP! TAKE CHARGE! YOU'RE IN CONTROL OF YOUR OWN DESTINY!
If you're a girl and you see someone on a magazine cover who looks sexier than you ever will? Big deal. There are lots of guys who don't look like they belong on a magazine cover either.
"But that's different...!" No it isn't. IT ISN'T.
Screw all casuistry. Screw all special pleading. Screw double standards.
Screw any form of feminism that coddles.
I say let's get tough. Not on men -- on girls. They NEED tough love. They need to be taught to be survivors, to be heroes, to be CONQUERORS. You don't accomplish that by boo-hoo-hooing about self-esteem. You accomplish that goal by telling them: "Stop feeling sorry for yourself. Stop simpering. Stop being such a damned narcissist. Girls who feel sorry for themselves weak and stupid."
If you keep on making excuses for weakness, if you reward simpering with sympathy, what are you going to get? More weakness and simpering.
If we force girls to toughen up, if we tell them to stop being so self-involved, if we ridicule them and shame them when they wallow in self-pity, what will we get? We'll get a generation of strong, healthy young women who understand that there is more to life than clothing and boys.
Bravo Joseph, bravo.
While I sympathize with the artist's conundrum described here, I do not agree with the points about feminism's overall effect on American females.
It is very hard to become master of one's self-image prior to achieving adulthood. It is very hard for ADULTS to control their self-image or accept themselves when they cannot meet artificial societal image expectations.
So we see epidemic levels of obesity, clinical depression, etc., in both genders, but the 'ideal' body image is much more oppressive for women's self-esteem than it is for men's.
Feminism is a smallish influence which may impact a fraction of girls or young women, but typically this isn't part of a home environment in the beginning of female life, but a more rare inculcation of later life.
So even those who later adopt feminism or an idea set influenced by feminism have had all their formative years, wherein societal norms are burned into one's consciousness as unquestioned and unexamined axioms, dominated by the far-from-feminist mainstream sexist culture.
Young women and girls learn early on that their worth is their sexual attractiveness and how hot their bodies look. This is not a result of feminism, obviously, and a later adoption of feminism cannot necessarily fully undo 2 decades of swimming as a naif in such a value system cesspool.
XI
That was an excellent post JC but I don't buy it. Certainly most people of our generation would lament the decline of personal responsibility and the failure of so many to have some sense of shame or contrition. However when I make my own mental list of potential causes...feminism ranks about 1046th and I'm a dude who can't stand listening to women's studies teachers for more than two microseconds before my irony meter explodes.
Do you really believe women are thinking more about clothing and guys these days? I've seen the explosion of junkier TV and advertising to feel the same, but facts show otherwise as university attendance and the job market suggest women are dealing with other realities much more than they use to (were allowed to ;-). Parental coddling may certainly influence adult development, but I'm not sure that men aren't in fact sheltered even more than women in this regard. Being given a mandate but not the tools to accomplish something is rather self-defeating. I think women are less sheltered and more capable today than our generation regardless of the media's lack of reflection of this. I too have a sense of nostalgia for certain types of famous female role models (usually involving barbs and gin); but I have to add that the male versions are also lacking from today's watercooler discourse.
Lastly it was in fact parts of our generation who popularized this whole self-help (and sometimes 'blame others') publishing dynasty, not the kids born in the last 30 years. UP with personal responsibility YES! Starting with DOWN with feminism, uh, NO!
Scriptum
PS: if you have too many whiny people in your life (female or otherwise) tell them to STFU. Oh wait, is that what blogs are for?
Joseph, you make an interesting point about the super-muscled men portrayed in caricatures. I've heard it before...when I complained that mainstream movies and cartoons quit doing offensive caricatures that exaggerated facial features and skin color of black people, but still exaggerate the sexual characteristics of women, I've had men say, well, they do that to men as well.
And I have to say, it may well cause insecurities in young men, too.
Now, if I had a son affected by that, and who felt insecure and tried to work out, but simply doesn't have the body type that is ever going to muscle up, would you tell me to quit coddling him, tell him to man up and quit whining and stop simpering and quit that nonsense about how many pounds he's lifting now?
It's absurd. You think the old-fashioned gruff father is the model we should emulate? You don't talk to children like that. I bet you don't even talk to your beloved Bella like that. And I know you must be caught up in some other dynamic to be posting such vehement diatribes about "ridiculing and shaming" young women.
I agree with some of your sentiment, but you can't possibly be advocating ridiculing and shaming the children under our care!
Now, my latest beef with young women who are already grown and are professionals and thus proper targets of ridicule are these women who speak with breathy baby voices. WTH is up with that? I hear teachers, doctors, women in positions of authority speaking with voices that sound like teen-aged Valley Girls. It's infuriating and they need to learn to modulate their voices, and yes, they need to do so in order to command the respect that they expect.
I think we need to integrate the old with the new. We don't want women who talk in breathy come-on voices all the time, and on the other hand we don't want girls to be raised in military fashion such as you seem to advocate. There's a time and place for dresses and whispers, don't you think?
We need a balance...maybe we should be talking about equilibrium instead of "equality." Going back to movies, there is a lack of equilibrium when the majority of our mainstream choices are super-action flicks with almost all male actors plus a token female, or else the denigrated "chick flick." Why the extremes? It's not healthy.
First of all, Joe, art that is created by women for women does not feature muscle-bound men. It features romantic heroes who are good at the romantic gestures that women like. Look at women's magazines edited by women - you don't see muscle bound men on the front. Now, look at Maxim, edited by men for men - girls in skimpy clothes.
Action movies that require the ripped physique usually target men as well. It's not women going to ogle Arnold. Look at the films that do well with female audiences, there are rarely muscular men baring their biceps in the ads.
The muscle-y behemoths of which you speak are almost entirely used to lure men, not women.
Along that line, is the dumb male character that a lot of men's groups complain about. Again, that character is used to entertain other men - not women. But shows that are designed to attract male audiences rarely have a powerful or bright female lead.
If you were right, and the muscle bound man on the front of the comic book attracted the woman to buy it, then why don't advertisers use that constantly?
And feminism doesn't coddle women. Feminism tells women to learn to carry their own weight and not let others take that away from you. The insidious images directed at young girls, that have them dieting by 4th grade, are images that are used commercially. Studies find young girls equate skinniness with success - that's an incredibly destructive message.
Show me the studies finding that boys are taking steroids in fourth grade because they think that it's the only way they can be successful and you'll have a comparison. Until then, this is just more male on male crime you're complaining about and blaming on women.
How on earth did you get such a hare up your ass about feminism?
"First of all, Joe, art that is created by women for women does not feature muscle-bound men."
Any art created by women for women (or men for men) is silly and low.
My point is, if Mikey can paint hunky guys, Frazetta can paint sexy, huge-breasted women.
You want to know one the problem I have with feminism? Censorship.
I don't like ANYONE telling me what I can and cannot paint or draw. Throughout my life, insecure ninnies with body hang-ups have tried to tell me what to do.
If I paint a fetching young lady with big boobs -- SO THE FUCK WHAT? What's it TO you? Why are people like you so damned insecure about your bodies that your fragile widdle egos can't deal with such an image?
I've never been bothered by anything that Michelangelo or the ancient Greeks painted or scultped.
And don't you DARE say "That's different." NO, IT IS NOT. I will not allow you to erect double standards in order to justify a narcissistic neurosis.
"If you were right, and the muscle bound man on the front of the comic book attracted the woman to buy it, then why don't advertisers use that constantly?"
Well, there was this fella named Fabio...
Lots of magazines use attractive guys to lure female buyers. They'd be nuts to put a guy like ME on the cover.
"And feminism doesn't coddle women. Feminism tells women to learn to carry their own weight and not let others take that away from you."
Bullshit. Coddling and blame-shifting is the very definition of feminism.
Feminists say: "Let's tell that Cannon guy and that Frazetta guy what to paint and draw. It's all their fault. Never ours. Let's blame the Great Patriarchal Conspiracy."
Feminism never tells girls to stop whining and take responsibility for their own shit.
"Studies find young girls equate skinniness with success - that's an incredibly destructive message."
And you know how to stop that? Tough love.
The mother -- and this IS the job of the mother -- should SLAP THE GIRL ACROSS THE FACE. I speak literally. Then Mom should go into full R. Lee Ermey mode:
"You're being a goddam narcissist. Do you know what that is?" (Offer definition if necessary.) "I will not tolerate this! The time has come for you to get your shit together! There's a lot more going on in this world than boys and clothes. All of that crap is CRAP. Look at you. You can be anything you want. You could be goddam President, for chrissakes! Instead, you spend all your time wrapped up in SELF SELF SELF. Get over yourself! It's a huge world out there. Take some interest in the outside world or you are going to grow up worthless!"
We should treat girls with the sort of ruthlessness we use to get boys in line.
"How on earth did you get such a hare up your ass about feminism?"
First, because feminism censors. Second, because feminism has FAILED.
I've watched it in action for nearly four decades. Women keep getting weaker and more self-involved. Self, self, self.
You judge a tree by its fruits.
Feminists (along with plenty of other societal forces) have given us the culture of victimization, the culture of blame-everyone-else-but-me, the culture of take-no-responsibility, the culture of I I I me me me.
Result? After four decades of feminism, you have massive numbers of neurotic young ninnies who see themselves as either baubles or semen receptacles or both.
Don't blame me. I cannot STAND these results.
Insecure women piss me off. Their shit is THEIR shit.
I recall what young women were like back in the early 70s -- they were far more intelligent and and independent and interesting and strong.
Look at YOU, Lori -- spelling your own name with the lower case initial, just like the submissive women do on the BDSM channels. What kind of impression do you think you are making?
Feminism (as presently constituted) is like Milton Friedmanism -- no matter how many failures it racks up, the adherents keep saying "Theoretically, this trick SHOULD work."
Feminism is incredibly successful. Women vote. they have their own credit cards and they can own property. Very few people believe that women are not intellectual equals of men or are deserving of fewer rights. By any objective standards, feminism has been a huge success.
There is no aspect of feminism that doesn't encourage women to take responsibility for their own lives - that's what it's all about. We should be able to go to school, get married, have children and pursue the careers or jobs that we want to pursue. As a feminist, one of the things I tell young single moms is that they should never rely on men to pay child support. Be glad if they do, but be prepared to make your own financial way.
Now, i didn't say they didn't put men on the covers of magazines, I said, correctly, that they don't use muscle bound men to draw women into magazines or movies. The fact of the matter is that Fabio's career was limited entirely to romance novels - something that very, very few women buy and enjoy. Glamour, Vogue, Mademoiselle and even Cosmo use women to advertise for women. The overwhelming majority of marketing that targets women uses other women - not men. I know of no magazine that has a primarily female audience that uses men on the cover more than women.
Feminists aren't telling anyone what they can or can't draw. Some feminists object to certain types of art but so what? There's nothing wrong with broadening the discussion and raising people's consciousness.
As for art created by women for women and art created by men for men, there's lot of it out there. It may not be defined that way, but what the hell do you think Michelangelo was doing when he created the Sistine Chapel? You think that women put him up to that? No, his patrons were male. You think that Norman Mailer envisioned women reading Harlot's Ghost when he put that tome together? No, of course not. He knew men would read it and those are the tales he told. Nothin' wrong with that at all.
Not to be too obvious, but part of what feminism is about is addressing the huge danger of sexual assault that women and girls as a class face all their lives. You think that moms should just tell their daughters to buck up when they are raped, or when their friends or family are raped and they are scared? I know, I'm being a bit extreme, but your rant really seems to be leaving out patent realities. You try being in danger 24/7 and then come back and tell us we should all just tough-love ourselves and our daughters out of it. I agree that self-involvement and narcissism seem endemic in our society, and are not helping us move forward. But to lay that at the feet of feminism seems inaccurate, unhelpful, and frankly dangerous.
Oh, and fyi, as a feminist I don't object to pictures of beautiful women with big breasts. I object to pictures of Rhianna in f-ing barbed wire, to give an example.
Err...
"Fabio's career was limited entirely to romance novels - something that very, very few women buy and enjoy."
Romance novels are the hugest sellers of any fiction books, outswamping any NYTimes list-topper in terms of revenue. Romance novels are huge.
On a personal note, when I worked in book publishing I always enjoyed visiting the romance publishers' booths. They were unabashed about their materialism and hyper-girlishness, sitting in pink-draped booths handing out heart-shaped cookies and crowing about their record sales.
Incidentally, they personified the tough women Joe celebrates in his excellent comments about feminism.
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