You’ve got to give swimmeur Laure Manaudou [for French readers] credit for staying afloat amidst “sex, lies, and videotape.” Still, BG may have to make a poolside appearance.

Crap.

More later. BG’s busy with Elizabeth.

Here’s a PSA from FOBG-run Theatre Askew:

This fall, Theatre Askew is inviting high school students to submit a letter to the next President of the United States. We’re encouraging students (up to 18 years) to describe their vision for the GLBTQ community, including the biggest challenges we must overcome, by the end of the next President’s time in office.

All letters will be reviewed by a panel of GLBTQ-community judges, who will choose the top letters for a special theatrical presentation (by some of New York’s leading actors) in the fall of 2008. Students whose letters are chosen will be invited to participate in a youth-based performance in 2009 using their letters as a jumping-off point to create an original theatre piece.

AND All student letters will be delivered to the White House in January 2009!

If you know of any New York-area youth who might be interested, or anyone who works with young people, please pass this along. Thanks!

Last week we told you that the top five cities for meeting men over 35 were spread throughout the country (#1: San Jose, #2: Salt Lake City, #3: Raleigh). Now the New York Daily News suggests that landing a man on the Eastern seaboard isn’t as tough as all that. In fact, New York has been ranked the #2 state to land a single guy, edged out only by Washington, DC. (Hey wait! That’s not technically a STATE! No fair!) According to the News, “there are currently 3.9 million men in New York City, and 35% of them are single.” Too bad there’s also 4.3 million women also living in the city, with nearly 70% of them being unmarried. (So, um, why isn’t the article — or, like, any article ever — about the best region for meeting single WOMEN, hrmm?). Apparently, though, a little move upstate will do some additional good to your odds: in Albany, 75% of men — and 75% of women — are single. (Now does someone want to do a study on why political cities are such singlesfests?)

Meanwhile, over at CNNMoney.com: Hoboken, NJ shows the most single people with 57.7%, followed by Cambridge, MA; Somerville, MA; Berkeley, CA; and Boston, MA (hello, college town). Albany appears at #15; New York City doesn’t show up at all.

Man. If only there were some sort of map. Oh, wait.

You may remember the AskMen.com survey finding that 77% of men had cried over a woman, and not just on the day they heard about Natalie Portman and what’s-his-name. Now, the BBC tells us that their peers across the pond (or maybe, like, all sentient beings) aren’t so different. Here’s what makes those blokes well up:

• Making parents proud
• Birth of first child/grandchild
• Tribulations of a loved one
• Letting a loved one down
• Letting yourself down
• Saying “I’m sorry”
• Winning/losing a hard-fought game
• The farewell scene in Weekend at Bernie’s < KIDDING

I have a feeling that if we keep making TOO big a deal out of the “news” that “real men cry!” BG herself will burst into tears. But come on fellas, do tell: what turns on your waterworks?

You thought the Ally McBathroom was controversial? While such progress is, in many parts of the US, stalling, the BBC reports that the Kampang Secondary School in Thailand — a country known for its tolerance, if not warm fuzzy embrace, of men who dress and live as women — is now providing its student body with girls’, boys’, and transgender bathrooms. (See super-keen sign at right; call it the international symbol for “adolescence just got a liiiiittle bit easier.”) Kampang is not the first Thai educational institution to set up such a system, though it may be the first secondary school to do so, reports FOX. This news has stirred not controversy but discussion in other schools now wondering if they should follow suit.

As for Kampang itself, head teacher Sitisak Sumontha estimates that “in any year between 10% and 20% of his boys consider themselves to be transgender.” (No word, it should be noted — and perhaps explored in a complicated socio-cultural dissertation — on girls who roll as boys.) He explains that the boys who desire to be girls are uncomfortable in either girls’ or boys’ restrooms, and that often, the girls and boys are uncomfortable there with them. So perhaps there’s still room for some diversity education, but at least in the meantime, these boys will be that much freer to heed the call of nature.

NPR’s recent on-air essay about sex without condoms has drawn quite a bit of debate. Speaking on the “What’s the New What” series, Oakland teen Pendarvis Harshaw reported that for his peers these days, forgoing condoms “signifies taking monogamy to a new level” — one where “partners are required to trust each other completely.”

Harshaw called this Commitment 2.0 “the new engagement ring.” Several commenters on the story agreed that in an age where people choose to get married later in life, or not at all, this step is an unspoken strengthening of an already serious and monogamous relationship. Harshaw — since you’re wondering, slash, getting nervous — urges that both partners get tested for STIs and use other methods of birth control.

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The results of AskMen.com’s Great Male Survey are in, and some of the findings may surprise you. (Or not, assuming everyone in your relationship reads BreakupGirl.net and is therefore most excellent and discerning.) The “Internet’s top men’s lifestyle site” asked more than 70,000 readers to take the 150-question survey, which was broken down into five sections: Lifestyle, Dating, Sexuality, Power & Money, and Men in 2008. AskMen.com also teamed up with Yahoo! Shine, a lifestyles website for women, to host the Great Female Survey, which included 40 questions from the male survey about dating and sexuality. (Women, evidently, have no Power or Money, and are interesting only when talking about men.)

The survey’s goal — and this is where we’ve got their back — was challenge the all-too-common image of today’s men as immature, insensitive, and afraid of commitment. Says AskMen.com editor-in-chief James Bassil, “These survey results will be surprising to many women, most of whom have a completely different perspective of what the average man thinks and feels.” Selected results after the jump…

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Courtney E. Martin had an interesting piece at The American Prospect the other day about the ways in which the legalization — here and there (but not there) — of gay marriage and has prompted her to reevaluate her own aversion to the tying of the knot. As a feminist wary of wedlock myself, I can’t help but nod along with her argument that historically, marriage is both heterosexist and just plain sexist. At the same time, it’s hard for a straight gal to condemn an institution that once considered women property at the same time that her gay friends are happily flocking to California to make their love public, official, and legit in the eyes of the very law that heretofore shut them out.

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Alas, the bloom’s off this rose: Bachelor Brit Matt Grant and his chosen fiancé Shayne Lamas have, as you may have heard, announced that their engagement is off.

“We tried hard to make it work but we realized that we were both heading in different directions,” the two said in a statement. “We truly care about each other and will remain close friends.”

Over the past 12 seasons, The Bachelor‘s ratings — as opposed to relationships — have remained fairly solid. Who knows what’s to blame: the pressure of the spotlight, the alleged unlikelihood that a true bachelor will ever change his spots, or retribution from the gods for ABC’s casting almost exclusively white people.

Yet we can’t help but watch, and we can’t help but hope. Could season 13 prove to be the luckiest in love? Maybe … if Brooke and Matt from Farmer Wants a Wife write some sort of self-help guide. (No country wedding yet, but at least they’re definitely still together.) That, or perhaps all Mr. Season 13 needs to do is ditch the tux and hop a tractor?