Prime Ribs: Porn, ‘Portlandia’ and Prom
By Elissa Strauss January 6, 2012
Pornhub.com wants Melissa Rivers to star in an adult film, and the XXX site believes it would be the first-ever adult film to feature “a sexy Jewish American Princess,” TMZ reports. Apparently Pornhub missed Complex.com’s list of the “50 Hottest Jewish Women,” which featured its share of adult actresses.
Republican Rep. Shelley Moore Capito, of West Virginia, tells Forbes that she doesn’t think being nice is a feminine weakness, and that it can actually help you get ahead.
Carrie Brownstein, former Sleater-Kinney front-woman and star of hit comedy series “Portlandia,” was the subject of two well-deserved profiles, in The New York Times, and in The New Yorker.
Peggy Orenstein makes the case for gender-neutral toys, despite the fact that, according to a number of studies, gender preferences for playthings among young children are inherent. “At issue, then, is not nature or nurture but how nurture becomes nature: the environment in which children play and grow can encourage a range of aptitudes or foreclose them. So blithely indulging — let alone exploiting — stereotypically gendered play patterns may have a more negative long-term impact on kids’ potential than parents imagine,” Orenstein writes. Apparently, boys from more egalitarian homes are better with babies.
The Sisterhood mourns two inspiring Jewesses: Evelyn Handler, a biologist and the first female president of Brandeis University, who caused a stir when she secularized some on-campus activities, died at age 78. And the abstract painter Helen Frankenthaler, who was a pioneer of the Color-field movement, died at age 83. May their memories be for a blessing.
Mattu and Nura Maznavi explain why Muslim women think Jon Stewart should have beaten out Bradley Cooper as People magazine’s sexiest man alive.
Prom is our second favorite theme for a party — bat mitzvah being the first, obviously. Needless to say, we’re excited about Women, Action & the Media’s second annual prom on January 13. Blogger Amanda Marcotte will be the DJ, and the giveaways — let’s just say your high school would never sanction them. For more information, check out the Facebook invite, or the WAM! video “instruction manual” below:
Why I became the Forward’s editor-in-chief
You are surely a friend of the Forward if you’re reading this. And so it’s with excitement and awe — of all that the Forward is, was, and will be — that I introduce myself to you as the Forward’s newest editor-in-chief.
And what a time to step into the leadership of this storied Jewish institution! For 129 years, the Forward has shaped and told the American Jewish story. I’m stepping in at an intense time for Jews the world over. We urgently need the Forward’s courageous, unflinching journalism — not only as a source of reliable information, but to provide inspiration, healing and hope.
— Alyssa Katz, editor-in-chief
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