As a giant sucker for teen flicks and coming-of-age stories, I was psyched when Breakup Girl was invited to a screening of the forthcoming film Toe to Toe — sort of Bring It On, with lacrosse — plus a panel discussion moderated by Melissa Silverstein (Women & Hollywood) featuring Courtney Martin (contributor to The Shriver Report and senior correspondent for The American Prospect), Rachel Simmons (NYT bestselling author of Curse of the Good Girl and Odd Girl Out) and Emily Abt, writer/director of Toe to Toe.

Drawing from the diverse, but racially and socio-economically divided landscape of Washington, D.C., Toe to Toe opens with a very powerful female voice. We hear Tosha chanting the mantra “Black Bitch” as she prepares to face her opponents for a lacrosse tryout. In that moment, we get a very raw glimpse of Tosha — warrior, high achiever, focused, dedicated and hard at work; for her, not a lot comes easy. Tosha tries to score a goal, only to come up short. As we see Tosha ‘s frustration, Jesse appears. Fun-loving, with a certain arrogance of grace and skill that, along with the comforts of privilege, come naturally, Jesse says: “Watch me!”– and  deftly winds her way to the goal and scores. On the exterior, their competitiveness on the lacrosse field, as well as the obvious markers of race and class, would seem to divide them, but something surprising happens as Tosha accepts Jesse’s help with her lacrosse game. Curiosity wins out as each girl sneaks a peek into the other’s world.

Obviously, their friendship is not uncomplicated. Preceded by their reputations, they take up different roles in the high school hierarchy. With their personal struggles, pressure from other students, and an interest in the same boy, the two find themselves “toe to toe” on more than just the lacrosse field. By the time Tosha’s locker is tagged with her mantra “Black Bitch,” their friendship has unraveled.  The school goes into an uproar; the administration takes action. I was struck by this moment because throughout the film, we see Jesse at her locker with the word “Slutster” written across it. While never acknowleged, the label is there. Somehow, in a school quick to take up arms over race, it is still acceptable by both male and female students to demean a young woman or girl by labeling her a slut.

While similar in theme to more comedic fare such as Mean Girls, Toe to Toe stands out because the struggle for Tosha and Jesse comes from working within, yet pushing the boundaries and limits of the roles they have been given. They are unapologetic about who they are and own their actions, both “good” and “bad.”

Additionally, Abt broaches very women-centric topics such as the “virgin/whore” dichotomy, the normality of sports in women’s lives, girls’ aggression, working mothers and absent fathers, displacement of care with mothers leaving their own children to care for children of more affluent households, negotiating multiple identities, lesbians, rainbow parties, cliques, appropriating language, issues of privacy and technology, the power of perception and — there’s more! — the power of female sexuality. The film as a whole is an unapologetic portrayal of girls on the verge of becoming women and the dynamics of their worlds.

The panel, likewise, spoke to these topics and asked some important questions. How do we get people, namely boys and men to watch films with complex female characters? Why is it important to have male viewers?

We already know women have some serious box office mojo. The second installation of Stephanie Meyers’ Twilight series broke into the number 3 spot for all time box office opening weekends. An Education and Precious are in contention for Best Picture. A year or two ago Juno walked away with an Oscar for Best Screenplay. Does anyone even need to mention the phenomenon of Sex and the City?

Women want images that represent their multiple identities. No, I’m not talking multiple identities in the crazy sense. Just like men, we aren ‘t all the same. Maybe we just want a little reciprocity. So, all you women AND men out there, support independent film-making. Support women. See Toe to Toe, even if you never quite saw the point of lacrosse. (You will now.) Then, come and tell us what you think.

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What we learned from watching the Super Bowl: women are frigid, scoldy bitches, unless you drink beer. What we learn from most media analysis of studies of women’s (waning?) libido is often — if less uncreative and nasty — equally reductive.

How refreshing, then, to read, in yesterday’s Washington Post, about Daphne Miller, M.D.’s thoughtful consideration — and successful treatment — of her 47-year-old patient’s complaint of waning desire. Her point, however, is not her success; it’s that when it comes to finding a “cure” for stalled libido (exercise? counseling? drugs?) one woman’s mrrrrrrow! is another’s meh. Dr. Miller writes: “A woman’s sexual experience depends on a complex interplay of her neuroendocrine system, her multiple sex organs and any number of social circumstances, and it stands to reason that there might be many places where the process can go awry.” In other words: women are complex! Also, a unicorn! Brava.

Bonus quote from Rosemary Basson, director of the Sexual Medicine Program in the Department of Psychiatry at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver. “Look,” she explained to Miller, “if there was a drug that was so potent that it could overcome all misgivings we have about ourselves, our sexual image, our uncertainty about our sexual partners, the kids banging at our bedroom door, you could not make it legal. It would be slipped into drinks. What are people looking for?”

“Super Fly meets The Equalizer?” Super fly! That’s why you might want to meet Jay Potts’s Blaxploitation homage, “World of Hurt.” As Potts describes it:

“WORLD OF HURT is a comic strip love letter to the Black action films of the 1970s. I’m not talking about the flicks with signifyin’ Technicolor pimps performing slow-motion karate or anything featuring Ray Milland’s head surgically attached to Rosie Grier’s body. If you want to know where I’m coming from with WORLD OF HURT, check out flicks like Shaft, Superfly, The Mack, Trouble Man, Foxy Brown, or Slaughter’s Big Rip-Off. Although none of these movies boasted massive budgets or flawless production values either, there was an undeniable edge and raw energy to them. These were films that spoke to a previously untapped market of urban Black audiences, who finally got to see their own heroes, and a bit of their own turbulent world, refracted through the prism of the silver screen.”

The weekly newspaper-style Web comic set in the 1970s follows Isaiah “Pastor” Hurt, a streetwise fixer in Pointe Blanc, California, as he investigates the disappearance of a bright young black woman, Alicia Patterson. Not only does it have a serious plot full of all the fist-flying, pow, fighting action you could want, but the Web site features blog entries giving readers the inside scoop on the artistic process.

What we like is that it’s not played for ironic jive-talkin’ laffs. As AintItCool.com put it: “…[S]tories paying homage to such blaxploitation films such as SUPERFLY, SHAFT, and FOXY BROWN are often written as spoofs. In WORLD OF HURT, the danger is real and the tone is straight…Approaching the material with a straight face is something fresh and new and worthy of notice.“

Plus, the clothes.

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Is NECCO not keeping up with internet memes fast enough for you? Now you can customize your own candy hearts and send them as an eCard. We have traditional eCards too!

Thank goodness! FOBG Mary Beth Williams at Broadsheet explains this article from yesterday’s New York Times, which struck me as just so strange that even someone with a Breakup U. education couldn’t figure it out. Now, I wasn’t a math major, but all I could think was, I understand that 45 percent is less than 55 percent, but do still-nearly-half-male campuses really, REALLY, make all institutions of higher learning feel “women’s colleges”? And, more to the point, does this EMERGENCY!!!! man-shortage really drive smart co-eds to make foolish choices?

We think not. From Williams’s awesome fight song:

According to yet another of those scare tactics stories that makes my weekend coffee seem just a little more bitter, when women outnumber men in colleges, they’d better lower their uppity-ass standards, stat!

Take, for example, the heartache unfolding at the University of North Carolina. On yet another “tiresome” evening out, writer Alex Williams explains, the girls are forced to “slip on tight-fitting tops, hair sculpted, makeup just so, all for the benefit of one another,” because as one future spinster bemoans, “there are no guys.” “With a student body that is nearly 60 percent female,” it’s “just one of many large universities that at times feel eerily like women’s colleges.” And at the University of Vermont, where it’s 55 percent female, locals “sardonically refer to their college town, Burlington, as ‘Girlington.'” I’m sorry, I’m just a set of knockers who can’t do math, but a 45 percent male enrollment makes for a no-man’s land?

Sure, Williams throws us the bone that all this education “is hardly the worst news for women” (no, it’s your withering love box that’s the bad news). But all that fancy book learning comes with a price – “it is often the women who must assert themselves romantically or be left alone on Valentine’s Day, staring down a George Clooney movie over a half-empty pizza box.” And that’s an inevitable tragedy that shouldn’t have to happen until you’re at least 35.

But no, women barely above drinking age are hooking up for desperate one-night stands.  “A lot of my friends will meet someone and go home for the night and just hope for the best the next morning,” explains one desperate little hussy. You read right, New York Times readers: College women! Having easy sex! Because they are lonely and sad. And if they’re lucky enough to land one of those precious boy thingies, they’d better be wiling to put up with his shit: Cheating is described as “a thing that girls let slide, because you have to.”

Well, what do they expect, really? This is what happens when a university is “obligated to admit the most qualified applicants, regardless of gender.” Paraphrasing W. Keith Campbell, a psychology professor at the unnaturally 57 percent female University of Georgia, the Times explains, “Women on gender-imbalanced campuses are paying a social price for success and, to a degree, are being victimized by men precisely because they have outperformed them.”

No, it’s OK. Go bust your ass on the SATs and take out loans you’ll be paying until well into your 40s, as long as you don’t mind paying the price and being victimized and all. Happy now, girls? HAPPY NOW? No you are not, that’s the answer. And “the loneliness can be made all the more bitter by the knowledge that it wasn’t always this way,” Williams writes, sadly citing a girl who tells of her roommate’s parents, who met (siiiiiiiigh) in college. Dammit, why did they have to ruin everything with stupid learning? Now they’ll never have babies!

But brace yourselves: Not all young women are looking for serious boyfriends. Psssst…. not all young women are into boys, period. (Note to the Times: it’s pronounced lez-be-in.) Never mind that drinking and hooking up and heartache and occasional insensitive behavior are part and parcel of the human experience. Never mind that the number of men in colleges is actually holding pretty steady. Nope, outnumbering the menfolk, even slightly, is a romantic death sentence. And if you can’t trust the people who helped sell us the Iraq war to get it right, who can you believe?

MSN.com, Match.com, HappenMagazine.com: they’re in a healthy and satisfying 3-way relationship. Meaning that you can find MSN/Match.com’s “Ask Lynn” columns –penned by BG’s alter ego — over at Happen now as well.

This week Lynn advises a gal who has become close with the boyfriend of her friend who died of cancer. Now that its turning romantic, she worries what others will think:

we also have another friend who was best friends with the deceased and she seems upset by the fact that we like each other and are becoming romantic.

Obviously she should be sensitive to the friend’s feelings, but, as her signature puts it, “Do I Have To Lose Him, Too?” Read Lynn’s advice at Happen, then tell us in the comments how you would handle this less than ideal situation.

Still stings on March 16, 1998…

Dear Breakup Girl,

My fella, who I adored, was transferred to another city. We agreed to try a long distance relationship. All I ever asked was that he tell me if he found someone else. Within a few weeks there, he was sleeping with a much younger woman who he had HIRED for his department. I found out after about a month and threw the book at him. I don’t want him back, but I so want to stop thinking about him and stop feeling so hurt. I’ve filled my life with a lot of new things…going to college, golf, country dancing, etc. I’ve met a few men, but the thought of being hurt like that again is too much…it makes my stomach turn over. It’s been almost a year and I am still feeling the sting. Any ideas?

— Linda

(more…)

The brainiacs over at OKCupid — a dating site incubated by a bunch of Harvard math geeks in ’04; also where I met my music-nerd future-hub in ’09 after being a member for all of a 48 hours — recently crunched a few numbers to analyze the effectiveness of users’ profile pics. (Effectiveness = how many contacts were received monthly.)

What they found, which they’ve published in a lengthy, graph-dense screed, blew them away: “In looking closely at the astonishingly wide variety of ways our users have chosen to represent themselves, we discovered much of the collective wisdom about profile pictures was wrong.”

Specifically:

* It is not better to flash a pearly grin; instead, keep lips sealed and upturn your mouth corners coyly-yet-half-assedly. Females should do this while making “flirty eyes” at the lens; males should do this while gazing off-camera.

* By all means, do use a self-shot pic taken on a cell or webcam; what you forsake in high-pixel polish you’ll recoup with “an approachable, casual vibe that makes you feel already close to the subject.”

* Chicks especially can cash in big-time with the cell/webcam pic’s stylized subset: the  “MySpace shot,” which even OKC can only put into words as “taken by holding your camera above your head and being just so darn coy.” Like porn — which, c’mon, that’s what the MySpace shot is, right? First cousin to an American Apparel ad? — it’s hard to define a MySpace shot, but you know it when you see it. And when dudes see it, “the MySpace shot is the single most effective photo type for women,” annihilating the second most effective (in bed) by about 3-to-2. (And it’s not just because of the shot’s down-the-shirt angle, according to OKC’s stats.)

* Males fare better not wearing a shirt than wearing one… gah, hard to read much past this without short-circuiting my keyboard with the tears I weep for the future. The second half of the article talks about how old dogs (i.e., me, 35yo) should not learn these new tricks, as the backfire ratio swoops skyward the older you get.

AKA, OKCupid is not OK for “cougars.” Unless (and yes, I unfortunately do speak from experience here*) you do not mind being bombarded with IM requests from Fordham sophomores (and UPenn juniors and NJIT frosh…) to come see their dorm rooms tonight, because they’ve slept with tons of older women and they know just how to push your buttons and maybe they can show you how to use a webcam since when you were born phones actually had dial tones.

* Actually, it was pretty entertaining chatting with them.