Feminist Ryan Gosling: what timing! A week from today is annual Love Your Body day, sponsored by the NOW Foundation.

Gotta love a good vintage sex gallery.

PLUS: Our Bodies, Ourselves at 40 (The Daily Beast)

(via jessbennett)

Jess Bennett, one of your nwk tumblrs (who is filing from vacation? what the heck, jb?!), looks at a new book that controversially says women should use sex appeal to level the playing field at work. The author, Catherine Hakim, defines this so-called “erotic capital” as a combination of beauty, style, social skills and charm that can be learned—or, as Jess surmises, bought.

“Anyone, even quite an ugly person, can be attractive if they just have the right kind of hairstyle, clothes, and present themselves to the best effect,” Hakim tells The Daily Beast. “This isn’t a frivolous spending of money. It has real benefits.” As a famous cosmetics creator once put it: “There are no ugly women, only lazy ones.”

Controversial, indeed! [The Daily Beast]

French women are exhausted. We have the right to do what men do — as long as we also take care of the children, cook a delicious dinner and look immaculate. We have to be superwoman.

The editor-in-chief of Elle France, on a new Pew Research Center survey, which found that three in four French people believe men have a better life than women—by far the highest share in any country polled. As the New York Times puts it: “The birthplace of Simone de Beauvoir may look Scandinavian in employment stats, but it’s Latin in attitude. French women appear to worry about being feminine, not feminist, and French men often display a form of gallantry predating the 1789 revolution.”

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Ouch. Sweden, anyone?

(via equalitymyth)

(via equalitymyth)

In which we declare it “Man Week” at Newsweek, and try to take our minds off, ahem, larger problems. A roundup:

On this week’s cover, Andrew Romano and Tony Dokoupil argue for “Men’s Lib,” in which men embrace girly jobs and dirty diapers.

Watch them on the Today Show, view a gallery of their favorite ad men, and get Joshua Alston’s take on why, for black men, the goal has never been about pursuing “manly” careers.

Also: the authors of this story, about sexism at Newsweek, argue for feminists to embrace the New Macho.

And Rachel Sklar picks the story apart, piece by piece.

In other news, how ‘bout Peggy’s feminist awakening on Mad Men? Women writers, we wish there were more of you.

Second, no movement could possibly tame the great wild lions of love, lust, and luck. Feminists fought for respect and equality: they never promised a perfect world, where nonbelching princes would gallop up at exactly the right time and impregnate us. They told us to be wary of fairy tales, and not to spend our lives waiting for them to come true. It doesn’t mean you have to “settle,” or give up on love. Some things are still worth dreaming about.

“The Case Against Settling” [Newsweek] (via sarakatherine)

Julia Baird is really great in this