Io paraphrase Lloyd Bensen, from his debate with Dan Quayle in 1988:

1) We are on very good terms with the concept of “lifeboat ethics”.

2) The concept of “lifeboat ethics” is very useful to us, at times.

3) A woman’s uterus is not a lifeboat.

Unlike the “laws of the sea”, there’s no absolute obligation to take “on board”, much less keep “on board”, an unwanted pregnancy. Fertilized eggs, even implanted ones, are not autonomous human beings, much less sailors with interesting stories to tell. Many fertilized eggs never implant, and many implanted fertilized eggs never make it beyond a few months without spontanous miscariages, unlike, again, hospitality on the open seas.

And regarding JLH’s butt, we don’t want to spend many more words defending it, but it’s her butt, and it’s beautiful. It’s not the most flattering part of her, I’d have to say her smile is the most flattering. As far as why she chose to wear a certain bathing suit bottom, we’re pro-choice, so we’ll have to just defend her choice, ok? If she loses the ability to act, sing, or perform in moving public service announcements, then we’ll maybe criticize her, but off stage and off work she can dress as she pleases, tabloids be dammed.

Of course, the question arises - why on earth should she do that? why on earth should she care? - and there is no answer to that.

If it wasn’t for that, how many people really would be reading this post and comments about how little press there has been about the impact to poor women off campus who depend on those 400-some-odd “safety net” clinics for health care and clinic-dispensed contraception? (Kudos to Amanda, seriously — this may be one of the few posts even on the feminist blogs that discussed the impact to poor nonstudents. The mainstream press actually though has had some decent wire stories about the impact to “safety net” clinics, maybe because of concern to how it will impact poor women who might really carry their pregnancies to term and give birth to welfare babies.)

Now, if we could just somehow work shaming laddie blogs for their shaming of Jennifer Love Hewlett for having a fat butt in a bathing suit … SOMEHOW work that into appeals for reducing the cost of relatively new, popular forms of hormonal birth control – AND NOTHING ELSE – and actually get the mainstream press to cover both in the same story as giving back to pharmaceutical companies the right to market (at deep discounts) their new, overly expensive products to college students, not to mention all of about 400 community health clinics, to add more column inches which say nothing about Title X, Medicaid waivers for family planning coverage, much less affordable abortion access for minors – yeah, we’d be a lot better off…

…not.

Actually, it would probably do almost as much for the reproductive rights movement as it would for JLH’s butt. It would be better for more low-to-moderate-income women to see more column inches given to Title X and Medicaid waivers, and more plain-looking, average-sized Title X clinics built in the suburbs, and actually fewer Costco-sized superclinics and Starbucks-kiosk sized satellite clinics on campuses, and only on certain campuses. But all we’re reading about — at best — is restoring a discount program meant mostly to help market new contraceptives to college students, and — if we’re lucky, funding increases for clinics that BARELY keep pace with inflation but which don’t significantly expand services.

Hey, if it takes a tie-in to JLH’s butt to raise the awareness of the electorate to the broader, wider, meatier issues, let’s do it!

Can we take this even further … can we build on this theme, and this year’s trend in movies that don’t quite mention and don’t quite advocate abortion rights (Knocked Up, Superbad, Juno, etc) but which still get mainstream news coverage that draws dollars from pro-choice moviegoers? How about “I Know What You Did Last Reproductive Freedom Summer”?

I agree with Amanda that clothing sizes are arbitrary, but I also think you’re onto something. When I was about 12 years old and obsessed with Marilyn Monroe (gah!) I read somewhere that her measurements were 36-24-36. (Why are measurements a big deal/public info anyway?)

At that time, my mom had recently measured me for a holiday outfit she was sewing and I knew that my measurements were the same as Monroe’s purported numbers. Yet I looked like the 98-pound sack of pre-adolescent bones I was and she looked like a grown woman with hips and breasts.

That was a little lightbulb moment for me, that a lot of this stuff about how tiny and perfect celebrity women are is just not true.

but you know what? in a way, I think the vicious backlash against JLH indicates people really do hate the “fat-shaming” standards or just physical-shaming standards in general. I mean, not that they consciously know they hate them; I think people who write in nasty comments about JLH are probably just confused and unhappy.

but just — until that moment, she was on the team of “enforcers” of those fat-shaming/physical-shamingness. Not intentionally, but just by virtue of being a gorgeous celebrity. The visceral intensity of the meanness toward her seems like it might be misplaced unleashed hatred toward those standards. Seeing her fall is just so, so satisfying if you buy into those standards (as a self-hating woman or guy who feels only a sexxee girlfriend will do and yet you can’t land one) and yet are constantly wounded by them in life as you live it.

Shit, I need coffee!

*clutches pearls* Such language from the fairer sex!

Shit, I need coffee!

And don’t even get me started on the women who think an adult woman’s body (and 80% of them have cellulite– it’s a fact of nature) is disgusting.