Long overdue is a Pop Skank review. I have resisted it for months – far more important things going on, new wanderings and ponderings, etc. – but I’ve given myself a brief window to plumb the depths of sex-talk and such, so I’d better get this done.

Those of you who know me well know that I have an irrational crush on Lindsay Lohan. I don’t really get it – overall I consider myself to have fairly refined, almost neurotic-fussy tastes. But something about Lindsay Lohan snaps a circuit breaker in my head. Luckily, it’s wearing off with her latest antics. She’s hanging out with Britney Spears, for Chrissakes… this is a problem.
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I stumbled across this little gem, entitled “Fifty Mistakes Men Make When Having Sex” in my wandering on Digg.

Now, I am pretty sure Rod Philips is just a fake guy trying to sell his product, but he clearly put a lot of effort into this, and I’d guess is earnest. Let’s review a couple, shall we?
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I’ve been debating – for well over a year – how much of this I should thrash out in public. But knowing that there are a great deal of young people in the world struggling with this, and wanting to tell them how wonderful their pain can be, I think I’ve finally figured out a way to put it out there without hurting anyone.

My father abandoned my mother, brother and me when I was very young. I know now that there were many reasons – the situation he was in personally at the time, his own psychoemotional capacity, his perception of what was best for my brother and me, and his relationship with my mother. I have seen him once (an awkward and near-wordless exchange in a courthouse in 1987) in the last 25 years.
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Alex Williams penned a salacious piece in today’s New York Times centered around the “weight anxiety” experienced by girls leading up to Spring Break. That we are, for “sufferers of eating disorders,” moving into “the most dangerous time of year.”

Self-denial and restraint in America? Now that’s dangerous – to our way of life.

Setting aside that the backdrop of alcohol abuse over Spring Break dwarfs any danger of starving oneself into a bikini, I should start by saying that I understand anorexia nervosa can be debilitating and dangerous for those affected by it. Just as I sympathize with people in plane crashes or victims of pit viper bites and lightning burns.
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The unspoken truth about the media buzz surrounding Jessica Simpson’s visit to Congress is something very primal that most people aren’t comfortable talking about in pleasant company. Ron Reagan said it quite brilliantly tonight on Chris Matthews’ show when he observed that “meeting Jessica Simpson is the closest most of these guys will ever come to an erotic experience.” Well put (not that she’s my type.) But why do so few dare say that out loud?

As with many things from food to drugs, Americans – most especially the so-called “intelligentsia” – have a rather schizophrenic attitude about beauty and sexual attraction. Most will uncomfortably admit, if hard pressed, that beauty really matters; but we seem to want to pretend it doesn’t, as if it’s somehow less worthy of our attention and admiration than intelligence or charisma.
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I keep forgetting to blog about UPN’s show, Americas Next Top Model, which is one of my guity pleasures. Well, here goes.

The one who clearly should win is Kahlen Rondot. I picked this little angel immediately out of the group of 20 – I mean, just watching her catwalk strut was a love-at-first sight deal for me. There’s a running joke around the office that I might change my no-marriage policy in light of Kahlen’s existence.

But even removing the blinders of my personal crush – from an industry perspective, she has demonstrated more range, beauty, dedication, energy, and industry knowledge than any of them. Not a dumb girl, either. But this is reality television, and stupid things can happen. Although the judges are industry pros and need to hand the winner off to sponsors Ford Models and Cover Girl, so…

I see Naima as second. She works hard and has a great personality. A possible winner based merely on the chance that the judges decide the fashion industry doesn’t need another blond-haired, light-eyed baby doll prancing down the runway. [Post-finale EDIT: In fact, Nigel Barker said exactly this about Kahlen during their final deliberations] But aside from that consideration, Naima is a distant second.

There are only a couple others left:

I think Keenya is going to self-destruct, because she shows no signs of stopping with the face-stuffing. My guess is she’ll be sent off next, possibly with a Taco Bell gift card. One more plate of pancakes and the art director’s PowerMac is going to run out of RAM.

Brittany is a sweet, pretty girl, but she just doesn’t have the poise and grace of a fashion model. She’ll be much more at home doing motorbike and beer calendars or something. Or just Spring Break videos. I can’t imagine her as winner.

A doll from the archives…

peri (PEER-ee) noun

1. A fairy in Persian mythology.

2. A beautiful, graceful girl or woman.

[From Persian peri, variant of pari (fairy), from Avestan pairika
(witch or female demon).]

Hrmmm.. well it’s a bit hard to describe.. it’s, like, a thump-thump kinda sound, right under the dashboard on the passenger side…

[Nick Knight photographing Angela Lindvall for Christian Dior]

I just finished a great book called Survival of the Prettiest. For my entire life, I’ve been particularly struck and moved by visual beauty – especially when adorned by color and fabrics and such (i.e. fashion, makeup, etc.) and most especially when combined with a youthful innocence. That may sound a bit dumb, because you might say we all are, especially men. But I have often felt that my psychoemotional response to those signals exceeds that of my male contemporaries. (Although I had one friend suggest that this may just be because I am a bit more resistant to letting society’s rules beat something out of me, which I considered a huge compliment.) As I consider myself to be a fairly substantive person, I’ve long struggled over whether my reaction to these signals is some sort of character flaw – a sign of preferring style over substance (“shallowness”) – or just a sign of immaturity. However, as I get older I believe this less and feel more comfortable with it. I don’t think it’s shallow. It’s only shallow to not see it in its proper context.

In “Survival of the Prettiest”, Harvard Medical School psychologist Nancy Etcoff takes the reader on a fascinating exploration of the ancient biological reasoning behind our response to physical beauty, youth, fashion, decoration, and so on.

Here’s a quick outtake, edited slightly:

—
One cannot escape the irony of sexual attraction today – in a world where men and women try to stave off pregnancy for a majority of their sexual encounters, sexual preference is guided by ancient rules that make us the most attracted to bodies that look the most reproductively fit. Nor can we escape that women compete in the mating world for men whose brains are hard-wired to find nubile teenagers highly desirable and particularly beautiful. Females tend to prefer slightly older males, and correspondingly, males prefer youth, with the gap increasing as males age. This is because the best way to find a fertile female is to grab her young and before she has started making babies… males prefer the physical signs of a woman below peak fertility, and therefore signs of age are important visual cues to reproductive capacity… while [modern, human] males may like younger women for many reasons including longings for his own lost youth, the desire to play a father figure, and the need to dominate and control, [the fertility difference] is the sole basis for the male’s erotic visual preference for [young women] … Beauty is a biological adaptation. The argument is a simple one: that beauty is a universal part of human experience, and that it provokes pleasure, rivets attention, and impels actions that help ensure the survival of our genes. Our extreme sensitivity to beauty is governed by circuits in the brain shaped by natural selection. We love to look at smooth skin, thick shiny hair, curved waists, and symmetrical bodies because in the course of our evolution the people who noticed these signals and desired their possessors had more reproductive success. We are their descendants.
—

A great book.