Yes, that's been suggested, Gauldar. Also suggested: Stop being in dangerous situations! Look at your own behavior, ladies, and stop being all, you know, rapeable!

Basically the equivalent of Wanda Sykes' wish that she could leave her vagina at home. Really sad, essentially, that simply existing as a woman comes with risk that people might violently stick things in you. Gross. I wasn't going to comment on this post, because what can you say?

At the end of the day, you walk around with a certain level of ambient fear that this could happen to you. Wearing this device is an expression of that, and its existence is just sort of a sad commentary on that fact.

I don't know...what do you men think you would do if you had to walk around with the vague fear that you might be anally violated, if you knew lots of guys it had happened to, and that you pretty much needed to be on some level of guard...forever? Suggestion box is open. I'm not personally willing to kill someone even if it means being raped.

Copout: meet cop. Out.

If you want to respond honestly, yeah, you do actually have to read my post. If you don't want to, you can't really respond to it, by definition.

You lost me at "nakation."

Okay the study is crap. So let's talk about people that go a little sideways in terms of mood-alteration, minor law-breaking, and body art. What is it about these people? Is it about conformity versus eclecticism? Where's the creativity intersection? Is it just about being a slacker loser?

(For the record, I have quite a few tattoos, have been in jail, and hold a Masters and am a fairly successful human.)

Maybe the conversation should be about stereotypes? Or maybe about that guy who just got glasses tattooed on his face--now that's whack.

Yikes. First up, go Cola. And then Ted, read Fat Girl's comment about the difference in the level of pressure she received as a thin person compared to her experience as a heavier one. This is similar to the difference in how the environment--media, all of it--supports certain ideals for women more than for men in the body department.

So it's not really a fair point to just say "don't blame the media for our senses of inadequacy." Although some pressure exists for men to look young and in shape, an older guy with a gut can still be considered the sexiest man alive. It's a totally different ballgame. And the existence of the sheer volume and everpresence of a narrow beauty ideal for women makes it an operative force in women's senses of themselves. It's just not as easy as "quit blaming others."

I get some snark and some grief for being naturally thin, but I wouldn't compare my experience to that of fat women, because there's no way I get the same level of hate. It would be an absurd contention. And if you as a man contend that your experience with regard to societal pressure to look a certain way is on par with that of a woman, and that your solution, to ignore it and cowboy up, should be good enough for anyone, that's equally absurd.

At the end of the day, nobody can make us feel adequate but ourselves, but there's also nothing wrong with inquiring and challenging other factors in play.

I like the idea of more relatable images of women in magazines, because it's good to be reminded that beauty is idiosyncratic and diverse. I even think it's a better ploy for selling clothes, because I think sometimes when we see an impossibly tall, thin 16 year old wearing an outfit, we may dismiss out of hand the notion of wearing it ourselves, because it doesn't seem to be made for us. When we see someone who could be our neighbor or our self modeling the same thing, we might be more likely to make the connection with wearing it.

I always think high fashion models are like interesting creatures, like a slightly different species. I don't mean to dehumanize them, but they exist within a highly specific framework of standards, and I don't so much envy them as tilt my head and inspect them as I would a piece of coral. Women that fall more toward the average range of the spectrum are interesting in another way--they aren't as rare and unexpected, so they are more familiar-seeming and perhaps comforting to the viewer.

You (and most of us) were confused because that's exactly what the title of the post describes. This other thing, what's actually being invented, sounds great.

@ Zaulankris:

"Aren't most poor people poor because they make poor choices?"

No. I know it's hard, but it's important to understand that we live within a complex network of forces and are not, each of us, born at the same exact level with the same exact potentials and options. Have a gander at, I don't know, India, and ask yourself if the millions of destitute people there each simply made some bad decisions in an otherwise completely open and potential-rich environment. I'm not even sure why I'm saying this; it's so stunningly obvious. Unless you're trolling, in which case, well done.

@fnord: this kind of thing happens all the time on various scales; it's common on toll bridges, for instance.

And some things can just be kind of neat. They don't have to make sense on every level, like how it might be "better" to donate money to a shelter or how the literal math has most people paying basically what they would have paid anyway. There's something about the psychological process of being the recipient of generosity and then being inspired to exercise generosity to someone else. It feels good; it may make people feel connected to the rest of the human race moreso than they usually do, etc.

The impulse to poke holes in such a story says more about the poker than the phenomenon. What's the pay off there? Oh, continued smugness. Yay!!

We thank scot, actually, for proving that feeding the trolls is a preventable disease. I feel like we've all grown a little thanks to this exercise in fail.

Next up: rigging the coffin at his mother's funeral so she screams "BOO!!!" as the mourners pass to pay their respects. Stay classy!

@ Stacy: Okay. But that's a separate point. Let's just say that if you made a diabolical experiment to see whether straight sex or gay male sex produced a higher transmission result, gay sex would "win." The reasons behind black women's HIV rates are different, and in fact likely have a lot to do with gay sex and, actually, its stigma.

It's more notable, but there's certainly still a stigma attached to HIV. Because it's bloodborne, sex and intravenous drug use are your main transmission routes, and gay sex moreso than straight. And the gays and the junkies are not the most universally accepted of people, so there you go.

The impulse to mention other means of transmission is worthy in that it reminds us that everybody's at risk and that research for a cure is in everyone's interest, but it's hard to point out without leaving a sort of loud silence around examples that contracted the disease from gay sex. It sort of marginalizes while trying to be inclusive, or something.

Hi everybody!

a) Is it really making DUE? That's weird. That...looks wrong.

b) But you can't sleep in it? Because that's kind of key. I speak as a person who has just returned from four months traveling/camping, and who read The Road during my trip. I am speaking as an erudite homeless apocalyptic person, that is. So where's the utility? I'm over art that points toward the functional without actually being so.

c) hi everybody.

I did miss that, Miss C. But I just thought that point was the central one of this story, and it seemed basically unaddressed by the post. Context might have been helpful for those not already aware of "the circumstances surrounding the song."

Hi people. Still in Mexico. Water feels like a bath after the rain, but it hasn't rained in weeks and I'm going batsh*t crazy. Still beautiful, though.

So: are we not talking about the fact that they were dismayed their performance was giving much money to Chris Brown, beater, and that they chose a domestic violence organization in order to reroute the money/popularity from a symbol of pathos to a gesture for change? I don't understand why that was left out.