Scandals
Pop Culture
Love & Sex in YA Lit: THE COMPLICATED

Our friends, Em & Nora (who we like to call “Em & No”), recently launched a site for grown-ups about young adult literature called LoveYALit.com*, since (according to the New York Times) more and more people 18-and-over are enjoying books originally intended for the 18-and-under set. Of course, books about teens, the most hormonal among […]

Personal Essays
Confession: The Top 10 Reasons I Hate American Apparel

photo by acidcookie Our contributor Abby Spector, who is majoring in Feminine/Gender/Sexuality Studies at Wesleyan University, has a confession to make: Here are the top 10 reasons I love to hate (and hate to love) American Apparel: The newest line looks like something out of my grandmother’s closet. The models, sales people, and those who […]

Pop Culture
Sexy Sesame Street Halloween Costumes?

First the Katy Perry debacle, and now this! Okay, so they are not actually marketed as “sexy” Sesame Street costumes; they’re called “sassy.” We guess there’s a difference. But still, is there nothing sacred? It’s hard enough to find little girl costumes that aren’t all tarted up, but now we have to tart-up the most […]

Pop Culture
Katy Perry’s Cleavage Knows How to Get to Sesame Street

Or rather, how to get kicked off Sesame Street. Perry shot a music video with Elmo for the pre-schoolers’ show featuring a version of her “Hot n’ Cold” hit, this one about playing dress up (natch). Sesame Street does this all the time — kidifying a pop tune with the actual artist; check out Feist’s […]

Pop Culture
To Be Young, Gifted and Black…

…apparently means to be Photoshopped by Elle magazine. Or at least, that’s the theory that’s got ladies mag readers all abuzz. For their 25th anniversary issue, Elle just released 4 different covers featuring 4 different 25-year olds, “young women changing the world” they said, though they forgot to add “in Hollywood.” Let’s be clear, these […]

News
Our Favorite Dandy, Sebastian Horsley, Died

After both of us were on vacation for a week, pretty much avoiding all news and headlines, we were shocked and saddened to receive an invitation to a funeral this morning for an acquaintance we didn’t even realize had died: UK artist, writer, self-proclaimed dandy and all-around nut, Sebastian Horsley. For a second we thought […]

Sexual Health
One Woman's Tale of Dying to Give Birth

photo by Lynsey Addario/VII Network for Time It’s reasonable to assume that, in this day and age of technological advances and common knowledge about good health, maternal mortality rates should be next to nil. But even in the United States, one of the richest countries in the world, it’s up at 13.3 deaths per 100,000 […]

News
Frontline's "The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan"

click to watch the Frontline episode We just got around to watching Frontline’s late April report called “The Dancing Boys of Afghanistan” — it’s a horrific and mind-blowing look into the world of “bacha bazi,” or “boy play”: …Afghan journalist Najibullah Quraishi (Behind Taliban Lines) returns to his native land to expose an ancient practice […]

Vids
Little Girls Do "Single Ladies" and Our Inner Gloria Steinems Weep

Wrong. This is just plain wrong. Think “Little Miss Sunshine” — except this is real life. We really hate agreeing with Fox News (it’s like one of the signs of the coming Apocalypse), but 8 year old girls should not be dressed up in sexy Pussy Cat Doll outfits and then taught how to gyrate and bump and grind in moves evocative of […]

News
Boobquake Roundup

If you haven’t heard of it by now, here’s the ten-second scoop: Iranian cleric blames the world’s earthquakes on women’s immodesty so Jen McCreight (above), a self-proclaimed “liberal, geeky, nerdy, scientific, perverted, atheist feminist trapped in Indiana” at Purdue, organizes Boobquake, a day (yesterday, April 26th, 2010) for women to wear their most immodest outfit […]

TV
Get the Best TV Show About Sex – Ever! – on DVD

SEX: How to Do Everything Our 10-part television series, SEX: How to Do Everything, is now available on DVD! Each show tackles a specific topic (seduction, oral sex, kink, etc) with tips, on-the-street & in-studio interviews, silly segments like our confessional booth in the middle Times Square, and how-to demonstrations from various models illustrating a […]

Confessions
Comment of the Week: The Stupak Back-and-Forth

In response to our post “What You Need to Know About the Stupak Amendment,” commenter Kile wrote: Your article is non-sensical.  You state that women would have to buy a rider for a completely unexpected event, (who plans to have an abortion?) ALL insurance is for unexpected events.  People don’t buy car insurance because they […]

News
What You Need to Know About the Stupak Amendment

There’s been a lot of self-congratulatory back-patting around the House’s passing of the Health Reform Bill this past Saturday — but it’s come at a huge price. The Democratic Congress pretty much abandoned women’s reproductive rights by including the last-minute Stupak-Pitts Amendment to appease some religio-conservative members of Congress, including several male conservative Dems. Don’t […]

Pop Culture
Crazy Las Vegas Billboard

photo by EMandLO.com Sometimes what happens in Vegas simply can’t stay in Vegas. While driving through Sin City this past weekend, Lo saw the crazy-ass billboard above — so crazy-ass that she had to pull the car over and take a picture. The ad is for a night club — not a BDSM club, or the […]

Dear Em & Lo
Strap-on Sex Won’t Turn You Gay (If You Aren’t Already)

We usually don’t dignify the crazies with a response, but we just can’t let this one go: A string of reader responses got us so infuriated that we decided to dedicate an entire column to setting him straight (no pun intended). We’ve edited his comments for space and readability while maintaining their warped content and […]

News
The Case of the Naughty Library Book

the cover of our scandalous (at least in Michigan) book We probably shouldn’t be as tickled pink as we are over the fact that the presence of our humble little book, SEX: How to Do Everything, in a Michigan public library ruffled one pastor’s starched feathers so much that he filed an official complaint which […]