At 5ft 10in, Chloe should have a body mass index, or BMI, (indicating her levels of fat) of 20. Hers is 26.03.

Chloe's BMI puts her as undeniably overweight.

Our doctors' surgeries are full of people whose problems are caused by their weight.

Devastating conditions - from Type 2 diabetes to heart problems and many cancers - are caused or exacerbated by obesity.

And if Chloe is so overweight at barely 17, one shudders to imagine just how fat she will be a few years down the line.

Bollocks. Absolute, unmitigated bollocks. Chloe's BMI, at any height, should ideally be somewhere between 20 and 25. 26.03 is slightly overweight, but not exactly pushing into gastric bypass territory. Furthermore, since she appears to have little fat around her middle, I would bet that she's not unhealthy at all. She might benefit from losing a few pounds, but she's not exactly a poster girl for heart disease and Type 2 diabetes.

Chloe may be a little on the chubby side, but she is surely no more overweight than many of her fellow finalists are underweight. Where's the hysteria about them?

Here's the angry feminist bit: the reason brunettes supposedly have more "fun" is that they are more likely to marry rich men. No statistics for women who become rich through their own intelligence and hard work then. "Fun" is being rich, and getting rich means marrying into wealth.

Experts at LOVE@LYCOS the dating channel of Lycos.co.uk analysed the WAG's hair colour of the world's top 100 billionaires to determine if there is a predominant hair colour wealthy men seen to go for. The majority by a long way were brunettes, with 62% of billionaires marrying women with brown hair.

With wealthy men showing such a considerable preference for brunettes, it will be interesting to chart the number of women requesting a change of colour at their local hairdresser!

Eww.

And here's the debunkment bit: the reason that 62% of billionaires marry brunettes rather than blondes is probably simply that brown hair is more common. Duh.

A couple of years ago I was on a quick lunchtime shoe shopping binge with a colleague. She picked up a pair of high heels, turned them round, and put them back on the shelf with a distasteful, "Eurgh, they've got lesbian heels." Since the heels in question were of a clumpy nature I guess she was buying into the idea that gay women wear ugly shoes and thus are ugly women. Since when did women's shoes become so ridiculously fetishised? How did it come to pass that there is a style of shoe associated with being an unattractive individual? In a way, it's kind of liberating - you can control how attractive people think of you as being by changing your shoes. But it's also just plain weird. And it royally sucks that in order to be considered "attractive" you have to be uncomfortable.

Why must our sexual attractiveness be tied up in being uncomfortable? Why is a woman teetering in stilettos more attractive than a woman walking confidently in trainers? Why is "sexy" underwear made of scratchy lace, "chicken fillets" and what a male friend of mine charmingly refers to as "arse floss"? Why is it so difficult to find nice, pretty underwear that doesn't involve "arse floss"?

In so many cultures throughout history, a woman's attractiveness has been directly related to how uncomfortable, and in extreme cases how disabled, she is. There was foot binding, which rendered the victim unable to hobble more than a few metres, and corsets which rearranged the internal organs. There are some cultures today that feed their girls until they are morbidly obese in order to make them more attractive marriage prospects, some that butcher girls' genitals for similar reasons. These are things that parents (usually mothers) do to girls though, in order to increase their prospects in highly patriarchal societies in which the best a girl can hope for out of life is to be well married. High heels and arse floss are things that women do to themselves in a society in which they have the same legal rights as men. They choose to do it to themselves. But then again, and depending of course on what your profession is, being attractive can massively increase one's success at work. Has anybody ever seen that back page of Glamour magazine, where they take photos of random people on the street and critique their outfits? There was a horrid one a while back, in which they'd photographed a woman wearing a suit with trainers and said that this was a massive no-no. It made me spit with rage - this woman probably had to wear horribly uncomfortable shoes at work, and why the hell shouldn't she wear comfy shoes for the journey and change when she got to the office? Are we to look perfectly sexy 24 hours a day? I wonder if Glamour thinks that it's acceptable for us to take our heels off at night?

There is nothing inherently vile about high heels. I like high heels as much as the next twentysomething woman. In my wardrobe you will find several stratospheric, spangly, studded creations that would make Carrie Bradshaw weep with envy (although thankfully for my bank balance, none of them are Manolos). However, on an everyday basis you're much more likely to find me in old martial arts trainers. I have worn out several pairs of jodhpur boots in my time, but I have yet to wear out a stiletto heel. Does this mean I'm a minger? Well if it does, at least I'm comfortable. And at least I have a filter for any men who are so ridiculously shallow that their opinion of a woman is coloured by her shoes not being sufficiently sexy.

I get considerably more male attention when I wear high heels than when I wear flat shoes, to quite an amazing extent. I can simply change my shoes and nothing else, and watch the number of neanderthals who try to grope me in the street skyrocket. I can't believe that they actually make me that much more attractive. I just can't believe that being a few inches taller is going to make a significant difference to my attractiveness - I honestly don't think many men are that bothered about the difference between 5ft2 and 5ft6, surely? Likewise, I don't think looking slightly thinner is going to make much of a difference either. There's also the theory that wearing high heels forces the wearer to arch their back and stick out their tits and arse, but I don't buy that either - I happen to have a lot of tits and arse and a very hollow back even without high heels, and the heels still massively affect the amount of male attention I get. I'm sure it's about more than just how you look in the shoes. Because high heels are stereotyped as "sexy", wearing them gives out a "message" that you are hot and ready and up for it. (I may well be hot and ready and up for it, but not with some creep who yells at me to get my tits out just because I am wearing "heterosexual shoes").

Most of the time this attention is just annoying, but it can be terrifying. It takes me ten minutes to walk from the tube station to my house, and last Saturday night, whilst wearing a pair of high-heeled cowboy boots with skinny jeans, I had two rape threats during that ten minutes. One of them was particularly unpleasant, involving two guys in a car cruising past me for a couple of minutes wolf whistling and shouting about how they were going to take me up the arse, and then speeding up and turning into a side street which of course made me think they were lying in wait. Of course they weren't waiting for me in that side street - they had sped away by the time I walked past. They'd just been threatening me for fun.

Because you're more likely to get harrassed when you look "sexy" and because you're more likely to look "sexy" when you're wearing something that in some way restricts your movement, the very time at which you're most likely to be threatened is the time at which you're least likely to be able to physically defend yourself. The main reason I was scared by those naughty men on Saturday night was that I knew I wouldn't be able to run as fast as them, and that a black belt in taekwondo is no good when you're wearing skinny jeans. I wonder if vulnerability = sexiness. Would I have been even more "sexy" if I'd been wearing shoes so uncomfortable I'd been struggling to walk? Is a woman who can't fight back the best kind?

I know that the official feminist party line on this is "it doesn't make a difference what you wear, women get harrassed regardless" but let's face it, women do get harrassed much more when they are dressed in a manner which the patriarchy defines as "sexy". I know damn well that if I had worn that skinny jeans and bomber jacket combo with flat boots, I would not have received anything like the same amount of harrassment, and the harrassment I had received would not have been so unpleasant. I know this because that is exactly the sort of outfit I wear on an everyday basis with little or no trouble - it's only the addition of a pair of high heels that makes men think it's okay to harrass me in such an aggressive manner. This is one of the most annoying things - you know that if you hadn't worn the heels you wouldn't be being harrassed so much, and so you feel some sense of responsibility for it. Or, if you're me, you don't feel that the disgusting behaviour of such lowlifes should affect your wardrobe choices and so you wear the heels regardless and get very angry at the patriarchy.

I was out from 6pm - midnight on Saturday night, and during that time I probably walked past hundreds of men. Only three harrassed me, so it's not as if men in general are a problem here. But those three were enough to make me feel petrified, furious, embarrassed and, as ever, astounded at the effect a pair of heels seems to have on what "sort of girl" people think I am. It's frankly weird that the shoes a woman wears are considered to be so heavily indicative of attractiveness, sexual orientation, sexual availability, so many attributes that really have sod all to do with shoes. How did all this happen? Why are we judged as ugly or "easy", gay or straight, depending on whether or not we happen to have chosen spangly stilettos or DM boots to go with our outfits on any given day? And how the hell can we stop it?

From Johann Hari in the Independent. Go read the rest of the article here.

French women are creatures to be emulated. They do not get fat, according to French Women Don't Get Fat, by Mireille Guiliano; the same author, in her next book, French Women for All Seasons, tells us that they are always happy with the season of life they are in, be it the young-filly season or the old-bag season. This is because - and I have scoured this book; I am not being facetious, this is literally her answer - they don't get fat. What a wonderful secret they've unearthed - a way to come to terms with mortality that is the same as being thin. How could such a thing possibly be managed? "When being served meat, soup, vegetables, whatever at someone's home, or even in a restaurant, French women are apt to tell the person dishing it out, 'La moitié, s'il vous plaît' - just give me half of that." No! But this is too, too delicious! They have these wonderful lives, and qualities, by looking at how much everyone else is eating and just having half of it.

Astonishingly, there is a book by an entirely different author, Debra Ollivier, called Entre Nous: A Woman's Guide to Finding her Inner French Girl, which is subtitled, Why French Women Stay Chic, Love Life and Don't Get Fat. Presumably, one of these women could have sued the other for ripping off her title, except that French Women Don't Sue One Another Because Suing is an Ugly Thing That Leads to Wrinkles. Ollivier's book is the same, really - just a load of bilge about how amazing their self-control is, these Frenchies - "Would you look at that, I just saw a Frenchie standing next to an ice-cream van, and she chose a Gauloise instead, what amazing willpower, I wish I were more like her, yik-yak-yik-yak."

This actually made me laugh so much I spat about half of the chocolate I was eating at the time over my keyboard, so perhaps I won't get fat either. I'm glad I'm not the only woman who gets pissed off about the idea that in order to be elegant, sophisticated and "feminine", I am supposed to be wearing Chanel, smoking Gauloises, pouting a lot whilst sitting outside cafes, and not getting fat. How many women actually have the money and inclination to buy designer clothes? And since when has smoking given you anything except yellow teeth, chronic bronchitis and a greater-than-average chance of dying a hideous death? As Williams points out, "Just as a lot of subtle racism slipped in under the guise of anthropology in old-school National Geographics, so a lot of misogyny slips in under the obfuscating, colourful gauze of Studies in French Etiquette."

Can you imagine what Simone De Beauvoir would have said about being called a girl? About being included in a book whose next chapter explains why it's important to buy your walking shoes in Prada, because you can never be too well dressed? About being name-checked by a person who doesn't just not know the meaning of the word existentialist, but can't even be arsed to look it up before committing it to a paperback? Can you imagine? She would have had a cow.

Quite.

French women, I'm sure, don't think of themselves like this any more than we think of ourselves as foul-mouthed alcopop-hounds who eat a lot of fried food. But you cannot escape the implications - that somewhere, not too far from here, is a land where they never had anything as vulgar as a sexual revolution, where women are still, eternally, women, where they get their own way with their cat-like cunning, not with unattractive shouting, and what do you know? They are exactly the same as you; as successful as you, as educated as you, as well paid as you; they have come to the very same endpoint, only they are thinner. This is the most arrant misrepresentation of French feminists, for starters, who are no greater suckers for body-sculpting cream than any other variant of feminist; but it is also a traducement of the aims and ends of feminism, which was not just there so we might all get into the cabinet, but so we wouldn't have to resemble Elle McPherson to do so, any more than Kenneth Clarke has to justify himself by looking like Russell Crowe.

What am I doing? This is where the extra 10kg come from, which make me look more like an English woman than a French woman. I am not seducing anybody. I am not making time for myself or my beauty regime. I am not internet-shopping for a pair of Tods. Would a Frenchwoman rant on like this? She would not. She would have a fag, and she would say, "Bof".

I haven't much to say about this article because I just agree with all of it. French women are not goddess-like bastions of slimness and sophistication to which we must all aspire, and they deserve to be celebrated for more than this anyway.

Minette Marrin is not my favourite journalist in the world for reasons completely unrelated to feminism: a few years ago she wrote a piece in The Times about fox hunting, in which she denounced the "ritualistic slaughters" practised by Jews and Muslims, drawing parallels with fox hunting and claiming that it was only political correctness that stopped people from speaking out against Kosher and Halal traditions. I wrote a VERY angry letter, which The Times to their credit printed, but evidently Marrin is still writing for them, and writing some pretty vile stuff at that:

Right up and down the scale, a man can rent a girl a great deal better and more cooperative than the woman he lives with. She will be probably be much more sexually experienced and more accomplished than most wives too. In plain English, or so I am told by perfectly nice men, prostitutes tend to be better at it. They tend to be younger and more energetic. They are also prepared to do things which her indoors might draw the line at.

[my emphasis]

Ew.

This whole article seems to rely on two assumptions:

Well, I'm a bare stem, as are the majority of our readers I would guess. Oh woe is me, I so regret losing my beautiful petals - NOT!

Seriously, this is vile. And blatantly, blatantly sexist. Trying to give young women and girls guilt complexes, stopping them from enjoying sex, encouraging them to close their legs and think of Jesus instead of having a good rodgering simply in order to appease some bizarre patriarchal obsession with female purity. You're not a frickin' rose, you're a girl, and you should have sex if you want to (with contraception, obviously).

Whilst on google images trying to find out where this image originally came from, I also found the following gem:

Yes, abstinence is the most effective method of avoiding diseases and unwanted pregnancy. But it really would be nice if the word "No" was an adequate, 100% foolproof way of ensuring that you weren't penetrated.

Via Feministing

For the benefit of anyone who's been on another planet recently, Levi Bellfield was convicted on Monday of bludgeoning to death two female students, and he is also being questioned in relation to the high-profile case of Milly Dowler, the 13-year-old who went missing 6 years ago. He attacked women who rejected his sexual advances.

Next up we have Mark Dixie, who was recently convicted of the murder of Sally-Anne Bowman, in a bizarrely grisly trial in which he denied her murder but confessed to necrophilia.

And finally we have the lovely, the charming Steve Wright, who murdered not one, not two, but FIVE women over the course of ten days in Ipswich in December 2006, the most intensive murder spree in British criminal history. That's quite some accolade.

Joan Smith thinks that if violence against women wasn't so readily tolerated, perhaps these men would never have got as far as committing such heinous crimes:

So many people were aware that they abused women but nobody felt able to do anything about it. In a society where domestic violence is commonplace and rape goes unpunished, what is someone to do when they suspect that a man is abusing girls and women?

I am not arguing that all men treat women badly. But a substantial minority do, and we refuse to read the signals or condemn their behaviour unequivocally. Bellfield had a reputation for picking up under-age girls and having sex with them in the back of his van, even offering to prostitute his 16-year-old "girlfriend" and her 14-year-old sister to an employee; a former partner recalled finding magazines in which he slashed photographs of blonde women, with whom he had a lethal obsession.

Wright had a series of violent relationships, attacking partners and abusing them as "slags" and "whores". The Yorkshire Ripper, Peter Sutcliffe, told a drinking friend he had attacked a woman with a stone hidden in a sock, but it took five years for the man to inform the police; while he was thinking about it, 13 women were murdered and half a dozen others attacked.

Several people have been murdered. And it makes me angry that it sounds so much more serious when you use the word "people" instead of "women".

I don't think anybody thinks that these crimes would be any less horrific if the men had targeted other men, or had killed indiscriminately regardless of gender. But if these men had shown early signs of being violent individuals, having committed violent crimes, or just generally being absolute raving maniacs without specific victimisation of women, I suspect that it would have been brought to the attention of the authorities sooner. And it's not just about protecting future victims - let's not forget that however disgusted you might feel by their recent actions, these men needed and deserved psychiatric help which they might have got had they been brought to the attention of the authorities. Feeling the urge to hurt and kill other people is regarded, quite rightly, as the sign of a dangerous lunatic. Feeling the urge to hurt and kill women specifically, particularly sex workers, might be frowned upon, but it is more readily accepted.

Smith also has much to say about the culture of blaming mothers when children grow up into violent misogynistic psychopaths:

Men do not commit such crimes out of the blue; most of them don't even bother to hide their hatred of women. There is usually a childhood history of domestic violence, which means that they grow up in an atmosphere of physical fear and contempt for women, whom they regard both as victims and the cause of their fathers' violence.

I've heard a great deal about the role of absent mothers in the psychopathology of men who kill women, but cause and effect are being confused here; a misogynist culture inevitably overlooks the father's role and blames the mother, even when her reason for leaving the family is to escape violence.

It's a pity that The Independent website doesn't allow comments - it would be really interesting to see what people make of this.

That is all.

I have to say, I think that the promotion of long-term contraception to teenage girls, whilst continuing to stress the importance of using condoms, is a bloody good idea. Condoms sometimes break. And for some girls, long-term contraceptive injections or implants can drastically improve PMS symptoms. Make it available - yes. Actively recommend it in suitable cases - fine. But enforce it - are you frickin' crazy? Surely this would be a massive infringement of human rights?

Weldon thinks that it's the "loose morals" of today's teenage girls that are causing them to breed like rabbits:

I do not believe it will encourage "promiscuity" because girls will feel they have nothing to fear in sleeping around. In truth, they seem to be doing that already. I'm afraid we are now in a time when sex is mere recreational pleasure to thousands of young women.

Oh, heaven forbid that sex should be pleasurable and fun for young women! She has a stab at sex education too:

Sex education hasn't helped, and may indeed have harmed. Freud's view of the psychosexual development of the child has been ignored. His opinion was that you interfere with the "latency" phase of ages nine to 12 at your peril, for fear of stopping further development.

In Freud's theory, the latency phase is when a child unconsciously denies the facts of life until he or she is ready to face them. If unpalatable facts are forced down the child's throat it's traumatising, and progression to sexual maturity is halted.

In other words, if you start teaching the birds and the bees too early, all that the nine, ten or 11-year-olds will do is want to experiment with what they have been taught before they have the emotional capability to deal with the fallout.

Freud's theories have always been massively controversial, and it's inappropriate to imply that they should be heeded like this. And anyway, although it might seem a young age for children to need sex education, we live in a society in which children are constantly exposed to sexual images and often unrealistic depictions of adult sexuality. No parent, no matter how protective, can prevent their children from absorbing this, and so sex education is wholly necessary. In addition to exposure to raunch culture, children are physically maturing faster than they did a generation ago. There are many 9, 10 and 11-year-olds physically capable of reproducing. It may be an uncomfortable fact, but it is a fact, so swallow it. A girl in my class got pregnant at 12. Sex education needs to happen before children start thinking it's a good idea to bump uglies. But Weldon seems to think that a good old-fashioned dose of fear and ignorance wouldn't go amiss:

The trouble is that pregnancy no longer holds the fear for teenagers it once did. The social stigma has gone.

The fear of pregnancy used to stop girls having sex. To be pregnant and unmarried was a major life disaster (as it is still in some of our ethnic communities.)

You were disgraced, soiled goods: the child was removed, no one would marry you.

Let's all stop and have a wistful sigh as we lament the loss of the good old days when silly girls knew their place...

It is worrying that pregnancy doesn't scare many teenage girls. Getting pregnant at that age ought to be an absolutely bloody terrifying prospect. It means either facing the responsibility of having a child when you're barely out of childhood yourself, or having an abortion, which is never a pleasant experience. But surely enforced sterilisation isn't the way forward. It's all a bit Brave New World for my liking.

An e-mailer named Tiffany responded sarcastically: "Duh, I'm a black woman and here I am at the voting booth. Duh, since I'm illiterate I'll pull down the lever for someone. Hm... Well, he black so I may vote for him... oh wait she a woman I may vote for her... What Ise gon' do? Oh lordy!"

Tiffany urged CNN to "pull this racist crap off" the Web site and to stop calling Hillary the "top female candidate."

"Stop calling Barack the "Black" candidate," she wrote.

If you are reading this, Tiffany, you kick ass.

Margaret Cho has been none too pleased about this either:

I too am insulted at the idea that just because I am a person of color and a woman that I should be expected to automatically vote for Obama or Hillary. Why are white men allowed to look at the issues and judge for themselves and the rest of us are expected to take sides grade school style? That is racist and sexist and dumb. That is like if all the stupid people voted for Huckabee (please God let this not happen). Guess what America! People of color and women think! Just like white men! For reals!!!

Oh bloody hell...it's the 21st century and people still need to have the fact that non-white women are capable of genuine engagement with politics spelled out for them. Something is so very wrong with the world. Oh, and I love Margaret Cho. Keep getting pissed off about crap like this Margaret, we love you!

Sponsored by the Assalaam Foundation, an Islamic educational and social-services organization, circumcisions take place in a prayer center or an emptied-out elementary-school classroom where desks are pushed together and covered with sheets and a pillow to serve as makeshift beds. The procedure takes several minutes. There is little blood involved. Afterward, the girl’s genital area is swabbed with the antiseptic Betadine. She is then helped back into her underwear and returned to a waiting area, where she’s given a small, celebratory gift — some fruit or a donated piece of clothing — and offered a cup of milk for refreshment. She has now joined a quiet majority in Indonesia, where, according to a 2003 study by the Population Council, an international research group, 96 percent of families surveyed reported that their daughters had undergone some form of circumcision by the time they reached 14.

It is absolutely worth mentioning that FGM is not a "Muslim problem" at all - it is a tradition that is practised by Christian, Muslim and non-religious communities, and has been condemned by many Islamic leaders. A pity that the NY Times didn't see fit to point this out.

According to Lukman Hakim, the foundation’s chairman of social services, there are three “benefits” to circumcising girls.

“One, it will stabilize her libido,” he said through an interpreter. “Two, it will make a woman look more beautiful in the eyes of her husband. And three, it will balance her psychology.”

FUCK OFF

FGM is one of the most horrendous atrocities in the world. The most common arguments I've heard for not intervening are 1 - What about male circumcision then? If you feminists want equality, what are you doing about that? and 2 - Rah rah rah, cultural imperialism, rah rah.

FGM has very little in common with male circumcision. Whether or not you believe that male circumcision is right, a circumcised man can still function sexually. As The NY Times points out, 80% of female circumcisions involve the removal of the clitoris and labia, drastically reducing the amount of sexual pleasure the girl will ever be able to feel. Male circumcisions are not performed with the express intent of "taming" or "tempering" libido, or of making the victims "more attractive to their wives" or of preventing them from having extra-marital affairs by making sex at best not as much fun as it should be and at worst painful. The intent behind FGM and the method of execution make it completely incomparable with male circumcision.

As for the cultural imperialism argument, I'm all for letting other cultures get on with their traditions, but this just has to stop. Children are being mutilated. Women are dying needlessly in childbirth. If believing that this should end makes me an insensitive racist, then so be it.

Apparently, for the first time in ages, women aren't purchasing the majority of men's pants (hooray!) and men themselves are becoming more exacting consumers. But despite variations in the size of men's tackles, there are no plans to adopt a "cup size" scheme:

There is one delicate area of pant advancement where men are not yet ready to go – universal package sizing. Stretch fit, says Ruth Steven, marketing manager at Jockey, is currently essential because the same waist measurement must fit a great variety of crotch dimensions. "There are no actual pouch sizes, as there are with women's bra cup sizes. We have discussed it, but I don't think it will happen. Men are a bit shyer than women. Can you imagine having to ask for a double-A size?'"

Quite. Unlike breast size, with penis size bigger is nearly always regarded as better, and being on the small side is a cause for serious embarrassment. The big difference is that with breasts, everybody can see what size they are and judge you accordingly as either "frigid" or a "nasty slut" if you fall outside of average. It's a good thing that men's penises aren't on display because they'd go through hell if they were. Sorry, where was I? Oh yes, pants.

I once bought my last boyfriend a pair of Superman Y-fronts and was highly amused when he actually wore them on quite a regular basis. And where I live in North London, there is a ridiculous fashion for young men to wear baggy pants so low their entire arse is hanging out, so you can't help but see their pants (usually tartan print boxers for some reason. I mean, if you're going to have your boxers hanging out, surely Calvin Klein is the way to go?) Other than that, I've never given men's pants much thought. I certainly don't have any "aesthetic preferences". Generally, if I've got to the point where I can see a man's pants, I'm much more interested in their contents. This makes me wonder why women's lingerie is considered so important for impressing men. Are men really that bothered by it? If a woman is posing in lingerie I can understand a preference for it to be of the sexy kind, but surely in real life, if the average guy has a real half naked woman in his bed, he couldn't give a toss whether she's wearing a full-cup or a balconette bra.

But what made me decide to actually blog this was the revelation that according to Jockey, the average British woman will spend £20,350 on underwear in her life, compared to just £1,200 for men. That is A LOT of money. I don't really understand how the "average woman" could manage to spend so much on smalls. Assuming that she lives to the age of 80, that's £254 a year. I don't even spend half that, even though I wear quite expensive bras (not through choice really, it's just that the only manufacturers that produce bras in my size are the upmarket ones). I'm not quite sure where Jockey got that information from, and what type of women they surveyed, but it doesn't ring true for me.

Be warned though, this article definitely strays into Too Much Information territory with some of the celebrity interviews. There is the hilarious revelation that Blur, instead of making crazy M&M-related celebrity demands, used to request a new pair of M&S pants every day when they were on tour, but there's also the following from Paul Daniels:

I wear whatever Debbie buys me: a vast mixture of Y-fronts and boxers, whatever's on top of the pile, and different brands. I don't have a favourite, or a lucky pair – what's inside is lucky, and that's me.

Ew.

austad68 said that she “cannot believe that women all over this country are not up in arms over Oprah’s backing of Obama. For the first time in history we actually have a shot at putting a woman in the White House and Oprah backs the black MAN. She’s choosing her race over her gender.”

Hang on a second - Oprah should have NO responsibility to back political candidates based on race or gender. The issue as I see it is not whether she has a greater loyalty to her race or her gender - it's the fact that whichever candidate she backs, it will be seen as a race- or gender-based statement because she is a black woman. The idea that a black woman has a responsibility to back political candidates based on their race or gender, and will do so based solely on these criteria, is endemic of sexism and racism.

Positive discrimination is a total insult. A belief that black or female political candidates should be given preferential treatment implies a belief in their inherent incompetence. To believe that Oprah must be backing Obama because of his colour is an insult to him and possibly to black people in general. And whatever you think of the cult that is Oprah Winfrey, it is an insult to her to insinuate that her political beliefs comprise nothing more than a personal crusade against sexism and racism.

Apart from anything else though, I'm wondering if The Times might be blowing this all out of proportion. Is this angry messageboard really representative of the views of American women in general? Maybe I'm being optimistic, but I seriously doubt it.