Drawing the line between prostitution and charity

Last week, Charlize Theron sold a passionate, 7-second kiss for $140,000 to raise money at a live charity auction for OneXOne in San Francisco.

A couple days a go, a "die hard Phillies fan" was arrested and charged with prostitution. 

Theron, who sold her kiss to a woman, and as the steamy coverage would suggest, definitely stepped up to the plate (it's a baseball pun, get it?), was commended by the media, even Fox News pundit Bill O'Reilly.

Our hardball hooker Susan Finkelstein, on the other hand, became sort of a laughing stock among talk show hosts and news reporters.

The differences between the two are obvious. Theron did it for charity in a safe, public place. There were also no genitals involved (though one of the two could've probably copped a feel pretty easily).

What Finkelstein did was selfish and put herself, and potentially the sex-starved ticket-holder, in danger (you gotta assume a middle-aged woman trading sex over the internet probably contracted an STD or two at some point in her life).

I don't think Theron did anything wrong. In fact, I can't say I wouldn't smooch a lesbian for $140,000 for charity (or for me...). 

As far as Finkelstein is concerned, I definitely wouldn't sleep with anyone for money or tickets or whatever, but if she's dumb enough to put herself in that position, I guess I don't really have a problem with it. I think the police have better things to do. Even patrolling real hookers on street corners would be a better use of their time than surfing for internet crazies.

But in the end, they are both exchanging some physical manifestation of sexuality for monetary value. It's just a little confusing. When is it ok? Where's the line? Would it have been different if a man had bought the kiss? I think it's very possible the whole situation would've been looked at as sketchy rather than selfless if that were the case.

Is it ok when it's just a kiss? What if it's just a kiss alone in the bedroom? What if Theron had offered a kiss and a squeeze in one of the three primal areas?

It's just confusing, is all. Not that it really applies to most people's day-to-day life, but it's something to think about. Is kissing a whole different category, or was Theron and exception to the rule?

Fictional Female Fridays: Barbie

Unlike most Fictional Female Fridays, I didn't choose Barbie so I could shower her with praise. Actually, I have somewhat of a bone to pick with Barbie (as does Ken, I'm sure...that's what she said...).

I read an article on CNN this morning about the controversy behind the release of the new black Barbies. According to the article, some are happy with Mattel's recognition that leggy blondes aren't the sole occupiers of the world while others are upset that the black Barbies still have largely caucasian features, such as light brown, straight hair.

In the CNN article, an African-American iReporter says that she doesn't mind Barbie's straight hair because she straightens her hair every day, and that's a part of who she is. The black Barbie's black creator, Stacy McBride-Irby, is also pictured in the article with straightened hair.

Well that's great, except straight hair is one of the many features curly-haired women pursue to fit the caucasian beauty ideal which is promoted by almost all of the commercial elements of our society. Mattel is not only a part of this, but probably guiltier than almost everyone else except maybe Hollywood.

The thing is they still embody everything that is wrong with the original dolls. They're disproportionately slim and all bear a striking resemblance to Beyonce Knowles (not that the originals do--they're more like Heidi Klum). 

To me, the black Barbie dolls are really just a way of saying, ok, we told you what white women should look like, here's what black women should look like (basically the white woman that only like 1 percent of the white population resembles but with darker skin). Beyond the racist undertones, it's just sort of mean to all women regardless of race.

I read somewhere once, probably on one of those e-mail chains, that if Barbie were expanded in her original proportions to the height of an average woman, she would topple over because her breasts are too large and her waist too small.

I don't know if this is true or not, but it's kind of a nice image. Death of Barbie by breasts. Or maybe, Breast Reduction Barbie, complete with hospital gown and scalpel? Maybe they can put some of that extra plastic around her waist or hips. We wouldn't want to be wasteful. 

Leaving "Glee's" rendition of "The Thong Song" on the editing floor

As a self-professed "Glee" addict, I wasn't only disappointed with usually lovable Will Schuester's (Matthew Morrison) performance of the "Thong Song," I was also genuinely creeped out.

Will offered to give girl-next-door Emma Pillsbury (Jayma Mays) dance lessons for her wedding. The kicker being, of course, that Emma is in love with Will and only settling for her fiance.

Emma shows up to the lesson, alone, in her sequined and frilled wedding dress with a train longer than she is tall. He turns on "The Thong Song" because her gross fiance wants that to be their first dance.

Instead of teaching her to dance, and trying to make something of her predicament, Will sings along and bumps and grinds around the fabric that seems to be eating her alive. Kind of like a Broadway-style lap dance.

Meanwhile, Emma giggles and swoons over the adorableness of the object of her not-so-secret obsession while he's busy humping the air.

At first I was rooting for Emma and Will's impossible romance (as the producers undoubtedly want us to), but now that I see how disgusting it would be if taken to the sexual level, I kind of hope no one has to endure Will's scary sexuality.

Poor Emma, she can't be more than 90 pounds. She probably wouldn't survive one night with him.

Finding a new cover model for O, The Oprah Magazine

There's a lot to admire about Oprah Winfrey. She's the definition of a self-made woman, rags to riches, female empowerment. All that good stuff.

She has accumulated admirers across the globe and demographics. She sets the bar for fame, and she can do pretty much whatever she wants, or get someone to do it for her. Probably without paying them, because being able to grovel in her presence is enough for most earthly beings.

Frankly, she annoys the crap out of me. I'm glad that she helps people and donates to charity and yells really loud, but I don't want to hear about it. Her self-love has turned into self-obsession bordering on self-stalking.

Now, one could ask if I really have the right to complain if in the end, she's helping all these people. We could go into a whole ethics ends vs. means or whatever debate, and you'd probably be right. But I don't want to, and it's my blog so I don't have to.

I've gotten off track. All I really wanted to talk about was her magazine, O. I know for a fact she has is photographed alone on the covers of the last six issues, and undoubtedly more than that. We all know that empty frame above your bed is anxious to devour December's cover shot of you giving a reindeer a lap dance, but please, give someone else a turn.

Fictional Female Fridays: slasher flick virgins and their slutty friends

Health class has been teaching us for years that our sexuality is a matter of life and death. Whether you learned in sex-ed that unprotected sex could lead to STDs, AIDS and eventually death, or if your school district decided to take the moral high road via abstinence only education and kindly explain you'd be struck down by lightning and dragged straight to hell if you ever uttered the words "premarital sex," the bottom line is if you don't know what you're doing, you're going to die.

Most sex-ed teachers don't tell you that serial killers that specialize in brutal, adolescent murders use sexual status to determine their victims. Virgins are much more likely to survive a killer let loose behind the bleachers than her promiscuous friend who's screwed the entire football team.

Why is this so? No one ever really knows, because the killer is always slain by the innocent by the end of the movie, or has escaped his fatal wounds and gone into hiding until the "Twilight" and "Harry Potter" hype has gone down enough for him to revamp his slashing in a gory sequel.

The classic slashers all follow this formula. In "Halloween" the slutty friend is one of the first to go when she mistakes the killer for her boyfriend and tries to seduce him, not realizing he has already killed her boyfriend and hung him in the closet. The virginal babysitter escapes unscathed.

In "Scream," sweet Sidney isn't even attacked until she gives it up. She is pardoned, though, because having a mass murderer peer pressure you into having sex after killing most of your friends is kind of like a free pass on the virginity front. But maybe if it had actually felt good, the slasher gods wouldn't have been so forgiving.

Teenage slasher virgins are harder to come by these days, and often times lead to the deaths of all the main characters. Clearly, sex is to blame for these heartless murders. Couldn't you have just waited at least until college?

Not being obsessed with your period

When I was a freshman at UW-Madison, a women's studies professor I was interviewing for the school paper told me that a feminist is just someone who believes that women are equal to men.

Do I burn my bras? No, they're expensive. Do I walk around with unshaved legs and long locks of armpit hair? No, I want to be equal to men, not look like them. But yeah, I absolutely think women are equal to men, and therefore, I am a feminist.

But some people think this is not enough. They write books, they dissect the English language, they go on speaking tours and all of that is fine, until they "embrace" their periods as if Grey-Goose apple martinis were coming out of their vaginas.

British photographer Ingrid Berthon Moine photographs women wearing their own menstrual blood as lipstick.

New York artist Kate Goldwater uses sea sponges to collect her menstrual blood and use it as paint.

Activist Chella Quint has written a series of magazines about her period, and fun things you can do with tampons (besides sticking them in your poontang). She also travels around the country and photographs sanitary disposal units to document the travesty of women being told they are biohazards.

Here's some news for you: menstrual blood is a biohazard, you creeper. So are most male and female bodily secretions.

When men talk about their cum or their shit, women usually have one response: eeuw, how immature. And there's a good reason for that.

Women have come a long way in the last century, and we still have a long way to go. How is stopping to examine and salute our periods going to accomplish anything, except hold us back?

The most feminist-y thing, to me at least, to do is insert and move on, and when men shudder when we grab a tampon out of our bags on our way to the bathroom, we should be able to tell them to get over it, because we are.

Fictional Female Fridays: Nancy Drew

Halloween is right around the corner, and as much fun as blood, guts and gore can be, Halloween is about much more than a crimson mess. It's about mystery, suspense, thrills and anxiety.

There's no better way to commemorate the gory glory that is Halloween, than remembering the roots of the American mystery genre, and there's no better female icon to fit the part than Nancy Drew.

I used to read the Nancy Drew series as a little girl, and to be honest, I don't remember them very well. But looking back at American literature and film, it seems that Nancy Drew was one of the first (and for a long time, only) heroines that was sexy, smart, fearless and popular.

It's true she wasn't a very dynamic character. Like many mystery novels, we delve very far into her psyche, but that's sort of refreshing. Nobody's perfect. Everybody has their hang-ups and flaws.

But if nothing else, isn't the entire murder mystery genre about escaping reality? And if so, isn't it nice sometimes to escape all the complications of being human and just focus on who-dun-it with grace and style?

In a world of intense character studies and packing meaning into simplicity, Nancy Drew seems to have it pretty damn good sometimes.

Except, of course, for the body count.