Rick Perry: Wendy Davis Is Proof Women Don’t Need Abortion Rights

At a National Right to Life conference yesterday, Texas Governor Rick Perry said State Senator Wendy Davis's remarkable life story is proof American women don't need their right to an abortion. Think Progress has a video of the remarks.

"Who are we to say that children born into the worst of circumstances can't grow to live successful lives? In fact, even the woman who filibustered the Senate the other day was born into difficult circumstances. She was the daughter of a single woman, she was a teenage mother herself. She managed to eventually graduate from Harvard Law School and serve in the Texas Senate. It is just unfortunate that she hasn't learned from her own example that every life must be given a chance to realize its full potential and that every life matters."

Looked at another way, it's extremely fortunate Davis hasn't leveraged her own example to make health care decisions for all women. But Perry's cool with making that choice for her as well.

Here's some Wendy Davis nail art that might make it feel better, courtesy Austin Texas's Nails Y'all.

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The Preferred Fashions of Cheating Women

The philanderers over at cheating site Ashley Madison recently polled more than 50,000 women to determine which brands and wardrobe staples they prefer for an extramarital tryst. Good question! Sort of like shopping advice for a very specific woman. And now, labels like Banana Republic, J.Crew, and Chico's are getting a racy-by-association makeover.

Anyone expecting a wardrobe of Kiki de Montparnasse and Agent Provocateur might be disappointed, as it seems adulteresses head straight to business-casual stalwarts to "spice" up their wardrobes: Banana Republic topped the list. According to CEO Noel Biderman, "If your spouse suddenly seems more consumed with style and putting outfits together after spending years in sweatpants, that is a telltale sign she could be two timing." In addition to brands, the survey points out "maxi dresses, colored skinny jeans, and pencil skirts with slits"— secretary fantasy, duh — as key trends in this growing sector. Accessories were also tabulated: If a friend starts wearing Aldo pumps or Ray-Ban aviators, perhaps it’s time to ask her how her marriage is going.

The (admittedly dubious) survey also revealed that 12.4 percent of cheaters admit to returning items worn during a rendezvous. Consider that a PSA to launder every item you buy at the mall.

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Women Are the Most Powerful Celebrities and the Least Powerful Workers

Six of Forbes’ "Top 10 Most Powerful Celebrities" — revealed today — are women. Three, debatably four, of them go by one name. In order: (1) Oprah, (2) Lady Gaga, (4) Beyoncé, (5) Madonna, (6) Taylor Swift, and (10) Ellen DeGeneres. The Daily Mail is all "Feminist mission accomplished," but, personally, I had hoped Angelina Jolie (41), who recently got the U.N. to recognize rape as a war crime, would be higher up and Ashley Judd, whose abortive political career revealed a new, ugly side of Senator Mitch McConnell, would make the list. But this is a ranking of powerful entertainers (as opposed to entertainers with power) — a much friendlier list, historically, for women and minorities than, say, Most Powerful People or World Billionaires. Also, all power lists are pretty much meaningless. More troubling is that the same gender breakdown still applies to the world’s least powerful people: Nearly two thirds of the people earning minimum wage are women.

That's largely because women dominate some of the lowest paid jobs, like child care, home health care, and housecleaning. It doesn't take into account the wage discrimination women face relative to men within their chosen fields, a gap that is larger in states where the minimum wage hasn't been raised above the federal minimum, $7.25 per hour. Additionally, three in four people earning the federal tipped minimum wage of $2.13 per hour (which has not budged in literal decades), such as restaurant servers, are women.

These statistics are in the political ether this week, the 75th birthday of minimum wage, as House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Representative Rosa DeLauro have set out to rebrand raising minimum wage as part of a “women’s economic agenda,” the Huffington Post reports. The agenda includes "guaranteeing workers the opportunity to earn paid sick leave, expanding affordable child care programs and passing the Paycheck Fairness Act." “It’s about time we stop treating work in fields where women are the majority as less valuable than in male-dominated fields,” Vice-President Joe Biden said in a speech yesterday. 

It’s a logical strategy, both because the “war on women” thing ain’t broke, and because Democrats need to wrestle work-life balance, as an issue, back from Republicans and their deceptively named Working Families Flexibility Act. The proposed legislation would allow employers to encourage workers to trade their overtime wages for the flexibility to attend a parent-teacher conference or take care of a sick child, as if they should have to choose, and has been pitched on mommy blogs. Plus, who could blame Democrats for hitching their agenda to women, when women have been killing it at getting stuff done lately?

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On Wendy Davis, The Supreme Court, and Speaking Out as Women

At first it was just a few women speaking alone. The week began with Ruth Bader Ginsberg reading aloud her dissents in the Supreme Court’s decisions to gut the Voting Rights Act and narrow employment-discrimination protections under the withering eyeroll of her male colleague. Then it was Sen. Wendy Davis taking to the floor of the Texas State Legislature to filibuster a restrictive abortion bill while fielding questions from one after another male lawmaker, some of whom asked whether she understood the Roe v. Wade decision. (Davis is a Harvard-educated attorney.) It triggered a flashback to every time I’ve been in a room full of powerful men and thought, “Well, there’s no other woman here. Guess I’m going to be the one to say this...”

While the Supreme Court rulings — both Monday’s disappointments and yesterday’s landmark gay rights decision — are of huge national importance, it was the hours-long saga of Davis’s filibuster that captured this emotion on Tuesday. Women, people of color, gay people—anyone who’s underrepresented in national politics—are so desperate to see ourselves reflected and our interests voiced in real time. Not by a small throng of protesters outside on the capitol steps or by an encampment in lower Manhattan, but in the center of the action, by a credible and even-voiced and authoritative representative, someone who actually has the power to change things. This isn’t to say that straight white men never speak up for our interests. But there is a level of comfort in knowing that the person speaking has lived your experience. And shared experience is also a galvanizing force. By the time Davis had stopped talking, hours later, this week was no longer about a few women speaking up. They were joined by women in the Texas senate chamber, out the door in the rotunda, outside the capitol building, and on Twitter, and all over the world.

We couldn’t look away from Wendy Davis. During her more than 10-hour filibuster of a bill that would drastically restrict abortion access by closing all but five clinics in the state and ban most abortions after 20 weeks, Davis got personal. She didn’t just rattle off statistics about how women who seek later-term abortions are often doing so as a last resort to protect their own health. She also talked about her own ectopic pregnancy, a life-threatening condition. Davis didn’t just recite talking points about how women take these decisions seriously. She read letters from dozens of women who struggled with the choice to abort a pregnancy — then follow through on that choice. Davis didn’t just explain that this bill would reduce the number of abortion providers in the state to only five far-flung locations. She calmly explained that there was a period of her life during which she could barely afford the gas money to get to and from work, let alone traverse several counties for a $500 medical procedure. She talked about being poor and uninsured and relying on Planned Parenthood. “This,” Davis said, “has been my life.”

It’s become clear this week that objective facts of American’s lives — that some of us are in loving, committed relationships with someone of the same gender, or that some of us have needed an abortion at some point, or that some of us have had a racist or sexist supervisor make our lives a living hell — are still contentious. Our everyday experiences are up for debate. The burden of proof is on women and gay people and nonwhite Americans to justify their lives, to explain to those who have never felt this sort of powerlessness or discrimination that it’s very much real. Somehow that was all distilled for me when, after Wendy Davis explained in patient detail her ectopic pregnancy and her financial struggles, one of her colleagues retorted, “You know, Senator Davis, this bill really is about women’s health.” As if these things were completely unrelated.

For us, they are related. They are real. Like hundreds of thousands of people, I listened to Davis speak — for me, for Texas women, for all women — thanks to a grainy livestream and obsessively refreshing Twitter. Katie Naranjo, a local women’s rights advocate who spent more than 13 hours in the Senate chambers on Tuesday, told me on the phone that night, “As she was reading the testimony of all the women who weren’t allowed to testify before the committee, we all knew she was our voice. We were her and she was us.”

She was us. And so when Davis was yanked from the floor on a parliamentary technicality — Republicans said she violated the rules of order by making points about women’s health that they deemed were “not germane” to the women’s health legislation under consideration — other women rose to speak. Or tried to. Senator Leticia Van de Putte, who had rushed to the capitol directly from her father’s funeral earlier that day, was granted the floor and asked, “At what point must a female senator raise her hand or voice to be recognized over the male colleagues in the room?”

It was at this point the women in the chamber, who had been shushed for hours, erupted in a chant of “Let her speak! Let her speak!” The chorus had a distinctly female, strangely jubilant timbre. It had been Davis’s intention to speak until midnight, not yielding the floor until the legislative session expired so that the abortion-restricting bill would not be able to come to a vote. But when she was pulled from the floor just minutes before midnight, the women who had assembled picked up where she left off, drowning out the legislators’ attempts to call a vote.

We are her. She is us. Let her speak.

“Senator Van de Putte came back from her father’s funeral and they wouldn’t recognize her even though the entire gallery heard her yell, ‘motion to adjourn,’” Naranjo said. “They cut off all the Democrats’ microphones. We knew there was no justice or legitimacy, so that’s when we started yelling.”

The women in the gallery yelled for 20 minutes. They yelled for Wendy Davis and for Ann Richards and for every strong Texas woman they’d ever known and loved. They yelled for their sisters and friends and daughters. They yelled because they’d been told to keep quiet all day long, to sit down and respect the rules of order that were all stacked against them. They yelled to be heard. “It felt great, because we were a part of something,” my friend Asha Dane’el, who rushed to the senate gallery after she finished her shift at work on Tuesday, wrote me over Gchat. “Feminists and women who are pro-choice have been disenfranchised in Texas for a long time. Last session, the legislature really wreaked havoc on our state with the budget cuts to health care and public education. We watched Planned Parenthood get gutted. Tonight, and the other nights we fought this bill, felt like we were doing something, and getting something back.”

In his announcement that the vote had not gone through and the bill had failed, Lt. Gov. David Dewhurst explained poutily, “An unruly mob, using Occupy Wall Street tactics, disrupted the Senate from protecting unborn babies.” But this wasn’t Occupy. It wasn’t a movement of outsiders raging against the system. This was a group of citizens — most of them women — working at the very center of the halls of power. It was a joint effort, capped off with bear-hugs and text-message emoticons, between women politicians and activists and citizens and long-distance supporters who spoke together all said, “No.”

After each election, when we tally the percentage of women represented in each legislative body, there’s always a reasonable op-ed that points out that gender is not necessarily the best predictor of voting behavior. (See: Bachmann, Michelle.) As I have written many times, “A woman candidate is not the same thing as a woman’s candidate.” But last night was a gut-level reminder of the power of shared, lived experience in politics—and what happens when you ask one too many times that women prove their experience is legitimate. This is, to a certain extent, what makes this week’s Supreme Court’s decisions this week so powerful, too. The Court’s evisceration of the Voting Rights Act relied on big-picture statistics that many black Americans felt did not represent their lived experience with race. And the ruling to overturn DOMA, in essence, did the opposite: The justices validated relationships that gay Americans had struggled for years to convey as deeply important in their sameness to an often blissfully ignorant straight majority.

Of course, the outcome in Texas last night was basically neutral. Late yesterday, Gov. Rick Perry called another special session and re-introduce the same bill that was just shouted down. There and in a dozen other states, we’re going to have to continue to explain our lived experience. Yesterday Ohio legislators introduced a bevy of abortion restrictions. Still, “I feel like something’s shifted,” Jessica Luther, a women’s rights activist who has been at the Texas capitol throughout the entire special session, told me. She says that messages have been pouring in from activists in Tennessee and Georgia and the Carolinas. Texas gives us hope, they say. We heard you speak. We’re ready to do the same.

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For Women, Is Masturbation the Last Sex Taboo?

“Tonight is the night I’m gonna celebrate,” sings Sarah Silverman in a new music video, which features a guest appearance by Will.i.am. “Stay at home,” she continues, “order in, watch a movie, then masturbate.” She smokes some weed. She waters her plants. She follows a few B-list celebs on Twitter. She gets stoned again. She watches some YouPorn on her iPhone.

What’s brilliant about the video is that, despite Silverman’s reputation, it isn’t audacious raunch-comedy. It’s a depiction of self-love fitting into normal, everyday life. This is how we all assume any man masturbates. Not because someone’s watching him. Not because he’s in a particularly sexy mood. Not as a performance for his partner. Just as something he’s doing when he’s got a little downtime.

This attitude is apparently all too rare among women, 46.6 percent of whom say they masturbate less than once a month, according to a forthcoming new app called HappyPlayTime. The app encourages women to touch themselves more often by providing anatomy lessons and techniques — “This is the clitoris. Make a circular motion here.” — all courtesy of anthropomorphized vagina that looks oddly like a Kewpie doll. As designer Tina Gong explains her motivations, “The fact remains that many women and girls don’t masturbate at all and may not even know how to.”

We expect boys to start playing with themselves while they’re still in utero and continue until they’re old men. But decades after the sexual revolution, in our supposedly post-feminist era, cultural ideas about women and masturbation remain much more complex. On the one hand (er, “with one hand?”), a full 92 percent of women say they’ve touched themselves. On the other, I know some adult (feminist!) women who never masturbate or claim they don’t enjoy it. Yet, vibrator sales have soared, with the devices now mass-marketed by condom companies. Trojan’s fingertip massager and Durex’s vibrating bullet are both available at that bastion of mainstream American values, Walmart. Still, apparently it’s still taboo enough that women need a new app to encourage them not to be grossed out by their own genitalia.

iPhones or not, we’ve come a long way. In 1953, only 62 percent of women admitted to sex researcher Alfred Kinsey that they had masturbated — in contrast with 92 percent of men. Playgirl launched in 1973 but bills itself as “Entertainment for everyone.” Cyndi Lauper’s 1984 hit “She Bop” and accompanying video, which features the singer perusing a Beefcake magazine and suggestively touching a vibrating motorcycle, was named one of the “Filthy Fifteen” by Tipper Gore’s Parents’ Music Resource Center. (The song, by the way, is the namesake of a woman-friendly sex shop in Portland.) At a 1991 concert in Austin, the Divinyls were forced to stop performing their self-love anthem “I Touch Myself” mid-song. Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders was fired from the Clinton White House in 1994 for suggesting that masturbation "is part of human sexuality, and perhaps it should be taught." (Elders recently endorsed legalizing marijuana, which I’m taking as tacit support for the Silverman-articulated combo of smoking and self-love.) These days a Google search for “porn for women” is as likely to return jokes about men cleaning the bathroom as it is pictures of them naked, and a Christian group called Dirty Girl Ministries crusades against “the evils of female masturbation.”

This backlash against onanism is odd, because research says that, overall, women are more likely than men to discuss sex — but not self-sex. When it comes to talking about masturbation, it’s more acceptable in certain liberal, educated circles to make jokes about women getting themselves off. Male jack-off jokes? Kind of gross. Or juvenile. But my female friends and I still text each other things like, “Have fun at Sarah’s party. I’m staying in to give myself a HJ.” One friend told me about how she was “going manual” for a few weeks because she was worried she liked her vibrator too much. (She’s back on the batteries now.) Another refers to Father John Misty, one of her top celeb sex fantasies, as “Father John Masty.” Men, apparently, exhaust their capacity for masturbation humor while still in high school. The upside about the taboo of female masturbation is that jokes about women and self-sex are transgressive well into adulthood.

After reading Daniel Bergner’s new book on female desire a few weeks ago, one idea has stuck in mind: The notion that women enjoy sex has not yet achieved scientific or cultural acceptance. To social conservatives, it seems downright dangerous. What’s left to hold our society and nuclear family structure together if even women like sex more than they like babies? There’s no purer example of this than a woman enjoying the pleasure of her own company. And so it remains taboo. Bergner reports on an Ohio State University study in which female college students were more likely to admit that they masturbated if they had a guarantee of confidentiality. It’s not hard to understand why; Pop-culture depictions of women touching themselves are still overwhelmingly porny. It’s something bad girls do, not something every girl does. Sure, maybe a friendly, step-by-step app will help alter this. But broader change will probably come once we get used to the idea that many women are doing what Sarah Silverman is — just touching ourselves as part of a low-key Saturday night on the couch.

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The 10 Ways That Men Text Women

In general, men don’t know how to text. We’re slow learners. Even though we’re a full decade into the Texting Revolution, our tiny missives are sometimes rude, sometimes girly, and always confusing. We text when we should call. We forget to reply. And we’re behind the curve when it comes to texting like thissss. 

This is all the more embarrassing when you consider that, with some exceptions, men prefer to text. (Phone is too invasive, e-mail is too taxing, IM is too 2003.) Part of the problem is structural. Texting is an awkward medium, stripped of the nuance of eye contact, body language, or even written elaboration; there’s a fuzzy line between friendly banter and cutting insult. Women have solved this. If a woman garnishes a text with an exclamation point or emoticon, this can lighten the tone, sell a joke, and transform caustic to playful. The smiley face, for all its ridicule, is a useful tool. 

We’re not sure how to use such tools, and when we do, it often looks foolish. These are our ten moves. None of them are ideal.  

The Tweener
Sample texts: “lol!”; “you got the tickets?! omfg!”; “thanks cutie! :)”

He’s so afraid of sounding passive-aggressive that he overcompensates. Plus, it’s artifice. A 36-year-old lawyer, who usually dates much younger women, told me with a straight face, “Yeah, when you’re texting girls in their early twenties, you need to throw in lots of smileys and shit.”

Recipient: Often younger than the guy. This is blatant pandering.

The Passive-Aggressive Texter
Sample texts: “okay.”; “that’s fine.”; “if you want.”

The default. Causes endless misunderstandings. The confusion (usually) stems from an asymmetry of information, not malicious intent. We’re oblivious. When we text, “Okay,” we mean, “Okay,” not, necessarily, “Okay, but I’m going to sulk in my corner and daydream about how good it’d feel to be single.”

Recipient: All recipients — even fellow Passive-Aggressive Texters — can be thrown by these. Texts can be cold. Terse. Brutal. A period in a text carries more weight than a period in an e-mail. Sometimes I receive these from a male friend and catch myself thinking, Why is he being such a prick? before realizing that that’s exactly how I sound. Which is why I often use the following tactic:

The Cliff-hanger
Sample texts: “sounds good ... ”; “i know what you mean … ”; “hope you have a good night … ”

It strikes me as the least awful option — neither curt nor effeminate — and the tone is friendly but not saccharine. I now overuse the Cliff-hanger, so most of my texts sound like I’m about to say something else, and then ...

Recipient: Often left bewildered, as the texts are loaded with different shades of subtext. Do you reply to “I know what you mean … ” or is that the end? This shifts the burden to the recipient. It’s sort of dirty pool.

The Gusher
Sample texts: “I should probably look for a new job, but if I do that, I might lose my discount at the gym. Plus, at my current gym I have a locker, where I can store my protein powder. What do you think?”; “On the one hand, Maury has a right to know about the drug problem, but on the other, shouldn’t we respect his roommate’s privacy?”; “Space is good. We need that space. But how much is too much? You had a really good point last night about—(3 of 7).”

Not only does the Gusher think his life is more interesting than it really is, but he’s the over-texter (or, alternatively, blatherer). He hates the phone, and he fails to grasp that texts should be used primarily for: (1) Logistics; (2) Friendly banter; (3) Flirting. They are not a substitute for real conversation.

Recipient: Girlfriend, friend, co-worker, mother. Anyone. It’s more about who is sending it.

The Buy-a-Voweler
Sample texts: “K, cu l8r”; “TU”; “Ur 2 funny!”

He types as if every letter costs a dollar. Not only is this lazy, it’s selfish: The seconds he saves by typing “k” instead of “okay” (or, Jesus, even “ok”) are unloaded to the reader, who is forced to spend more time deciphering the gibberish.

Recipient: Happily, there’s a silver lining: Now you know there’s no reason to waste your time on a date.

If you ask him a direct question, he’ll answer, but if it’s anything that can go either way? He’s gone. He views texts the way an Army radio operator views transmissions: Once the mission is complete, there’s no need for chitchat. Over and out.

Recipient: Maybe you texted him something funny, hoping to start some conversational pitter-patter. No response. Is he blowing you off or did he see your text, chuckle, and just not realize that he should keep the ball rolling?

The Exclaimer!
Sample texts: “thanks!!!”; “dinner sounds good!!!”; “hope you had a good time at the funeral!”

A subset of the Tweener. As a friend of mine said, “Yeah, I overuse exclamation points. I’m not proud of it. But if I don’t use them, I sound like a dick.” So he, and many men, litter their texts with exclamation points in a misguided attempt to sound friendly! 

Recipient: When someone texts with an Exclaimer!, he or she, subconsciously, becomes more likely to also overuse exclamation points. This causes Exclamation Inflation.

The Shouter
Sample texts: “SEE YOU SOON!”; “YES. SOUNDS GREAT.”; “I’M GOING TO TAKE A NAP. TALK TO YOU LATER.”

There’s a good chance that he’s actually 57. Have you met him in person? How old are those photos on OKCupid?

Recipient: Wonders how, exactly, to tactfully bring this up in conversation. (Is there a way to do this? Please tell me.)

The Carver
Sample texts: “Movie. I’ll get tickets. 8pm. see you there.”; “I had fun.”; “I liked meeting your parents. good people.”

Models his texts after Raymond Carver short stories. Pithy. Choked of emotion. Stops just short of being rude.

Recipient: Probably overcompensates; asks her friends “what it all means.”

The Sexter
Sample texts: “What are you wearing?” “What are you doing right now?” [at 2:07 a.m.]; more?

No straight guy has ever texted “What are you wearing?” curious whether the answer is Betsey Johnson or Alexander Wang. For the Sexter, maybe not every text is a sext, but he skews NC-17 and reveals too much, too soon. Creepy at best and Senatorial Scandal at worst.

Recipient: The only true difference between whether something is Creepy or Sexy is whether the recipient likes the guy. If there’s good chemistry and he’s hot? You’ll probably give him more rope. If you’re lukewarm? Then the exact same text will be viewed as sketchy.

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Fucking on the First Date? How It Worked Out for 8 Women

On the hundred-something first dates I’ve had, I’ve been taken to Burger King, the car wash, and an NA meeting; I’ve left after five minutes, cried after six drinks, and engaged in many unladylike things. But sex on a first date? No way. (Or rather, in the name of journalistic integrity, not that I can remember.)

I’m not sure why sexually liberated women like myself, and most of my friends — women who enjoy intercourse, who browse Coco de Mer, who talk about size and performance like weather and traffic — still live in this lame, antiquated fucking-on-the-first-date fear cave. Sure, there are many smart, justifiable reasons to wait (STDs, comfort zones, intimacy issues, etc.), but simply put, I think we don’t want to fuck it up by fucking fast. Experience has taught us women, more times than not, that sex-too-soon equals hungover regret, not long-lasting relationships. And that’s the thing: If we’re sleeping with a man, we probably/hopefully like him, and we want to see him again. (Of course, sometimes we do it for the fun, the thrill, or sheer physical need, but that’s not what this is about.) Alas, even if it’s not our rule, and not our world, why risk ruining everything?

When co-authors Andrea Syrtash and Jeff Wilser sent me a copy of It’s Okay to Sleep With Him on the First Date (out this month), I was excited to learn their theory, which basically says that if the chemistry is there, the to-bang-or-not-to-bang dilemma “doesn’t really matter.” They argue that as long as you’re cool, smart, and lovely, a man doesn’t care/notice if you give it up after two margaritas or two months. I wasn’t sure if I bought that, though, so I sought out eight couples who went head first to find out how it worked out for them. Are the chances of relationship survival really the same, legs open or closed?

Emily, 44, teacher
I met Joe twenty years ago, when I was 24. Our first date was in Martha's Vineyard, where he had invited me for the weekend. We slept together the night I got there. I wasn't worried I went too far, too fast, because I never believed in that kind of thinking. It never crossed my mind. I think I had a healthy approach to sexuality; I always looked at it as something that should be consensual and fun.The entire relationship and its progress felt natural and organic after that. It was all very simple and lovely, and I think that mentality was directly related to our pure and uncomplicated sexuality from the start. We had a sweet little beach wedding a year after we met. And we've been together ever since; we've been happily married for 19 years. 

Nina, 34, nurse
I knew this guy peripherally through the hospital. Funny and charming, even if not the most handsome. One night we decided to hang out, and a few hours and few drinks in, I realized I actually really liked him. He made me laugh, and was really attentive, chivalrous, and genuinely interested in learning more about my life, family, and friends. “He really likes me,” I thought, so why do the song and dance of three or four more dates before sleeping together. If it's inevitable, it's going to happen. I'm not shy, and wasn’t into playing coy, so I whispered that he should come home with me.  He readily jumped in a cab. We had a great time and he even stayed a bit in the morning. A couple of days later, I heard he was having a barbecue and friends of mine were going … I wasn’t invited and still hadn’t heard from him. I texted him casually to say hello, and we made loose plans for the following week. We slept together a few more times, but it never went anywhere. All the effort came from me. I had set the precedent that I was doing the chasing, and think I just made myself too available (physically, socially, et cetera). Looking back, I'm convinced I made it too easy for him. No challenge. If wish I played it differently — at least then we could have actually dated and not just fucked meaninglessly a few times.  

Liza, 27, TV producer
I slept with my fiancé on the first night, and I think it’s the best thing that could have happened. During the drinks part of the date, I wasn’t sure if he was mature enough for me; if he was a “boy” or a “man.” When we started fooling around, he had so much sexual confidence that my entire impression of him changed. Plus, he had one of the most beautiful cocks I’d ever seen. That alone bought him a second date. If I didn’t experience his raw, animalistic, super-horny side, I don’t think there would have been a second date. And the rest is history: wedding this summer, after two happy years together.

Beth, 33, pastry chef
I went out with a new-to-NYC Aussie. He was hot, smart, successful. It was an OKCupid date — drinks and a movie. When I saw him, I knew it would be hard to resist hooking up with him later. I promised myself not to put that energy out there … at least for a few more dates. I’m really looking for a boyfriend. After we started making out in the movies, he randomly pulled out a condom. This was all mid-Gatsby. I was somehow charmed by that. We grabbed a drink after the movie and continued to sort of kiss and discuss the film, and all our shared interests in travel, art, and being young entrepreneurs. It felt real.

He asked to see my apartment because he was thinking about moving into a similar building (or something like that). We ended up hooking up hardcore in my elevator, then more in my hall, and before I knew it, we were in my bed. It felt too good to stop. He didn't call after that. I was sure he would. We had such great conversation and chemistry. I think the inappropriate fooling around ruined it – I mean, I practically blew him in my building’s hallway. I guess, for him, the mystery was gone. I was no longer a sophisticated New York woman, but a slutty drunk lush. 

Liza, 26, musician  
I am not about rules at all. I went out with this guy I met through friends. After seeing a concert in the park, I invited him over for some tea. Sleeping with him that night was a no-brainer — I had no neurosis about it. Unfortunately, I forgot that I had my period, and it was after about twenty minutes of sex that I realized, I had a tampon in. Things got surgical pretty fast. Awkward. If we were a real couple, we could have laughed, but this was too much. I never heard from him again. Oh well. I guess it proves you should know someone better before getting involved sexually, because there are repercussions. But it also proves that guy was kind of a dick.

Victoria, 39, author
When I saw him my heart stopped. He was the most beautiful man I had laid eyes on. We chatted for about twenty minutes over drinks and then we parted ways. As I walked away I noticed he and his friend were checking me out. After a few minutes, I wondered if I would see him again. Then he walked to meet me and – I am not sure what got into me – but I grabbed him and we started to make out in front of everyone. After we kissed, he suggested we go down the street to a more quiet bar. I couldn't believe what came out of my mouth next (since, I think, it was college, over fifteen years ago, when I last had a one-night stand): "How about my place?" We picked up a bottle of wine and condoms. The morning after he left, I didn't kick myself for sleeping with him twenty minutes after meeting him. I threw caution to the wind and he was fuckin' hot! I was actually pretty damn proud of myself. The rule I did keep was that I refused to let myself text him the next day. I didn’t want to be that girl. Almost three years later, we live together and look forward to getting married and having children.

Rose, 40, stylist
The first time I had a real date with Chris, I knew it would be hard to resist him. I was already madly in love with him from some prior encounters, and I invited him over for dinner. I cooked him a real Sicilian meal, which I knew he would love, being that we are both Sicilian — lots of oranges, red onions, olives, garlic, not exactly the best set-up for good breath and romance, but the two bottles of wine I bought helped us forget anything bothersome. We shared a beautiful meal and then promised we'd take it slow so our lives around us could catch up (I was getting divorced, he was ending a relationship). The fatal mistake was choosing to still spend the night together, “to just sleep,” arms entwined. After a few minutes of restless non-sleep, we shared our first kiss and decided to throw all promises to the wind. “Just fuck me,” I said.

I really had never had amazing sex like that before — it was a combo of passion, love, and skill. After, he was hungry again. I made aglio e olio. I'm sure that sealed the deal. Next month marks four years. We are engaged and more in love than ever.

Anna-Maria, 25, painter
I always thought that either you have chemistry or not. To paraphrase from Samantha Jones, if he likes you, he’ll call whether you fucked after a minute or a decade. This guy who was pursuing me forever, I finally went out with him. I got really drunk, really fast, and we slept together that night. Then he completely vanished. After all that chasing, he just disappeared! If I waited, he would have given me more respect. I could have roped him in for good.

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Ad Age Notes Which ‘Women to Watch’ Wear Pants

Ad Age’s annual "Women to Watch" list comes with a key to help you quickly identify which of the women honored (a) have a child, (b) own a fish, (c) have a dog, (e) have traveled the world, (f) have worked for an agency, or (g) often wear pants. Needless to say, listicles of male CEOs don't usually consider a daddy badge relevant. But pants? (Or are those jeans?) I'm not even sure what I'm supposed to glean from that information. Does it denote her dedication to casual Fridays? Is it a metaphor for her marital dynamic? Does the advertising industry secretly adhere to unspoken dress code of the Mormon church? It's nothing against the nominees, who include Lucky editor turned Target exec Gigi Guerra (improbably, she did not get a pants badge). Read about her and other radical, trouser-wearing broads at Ad Age.

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When ‘Horse Girls’ Become ‘Horse Women’

It was the night of the Exotic Erotic, and I was stuck in traffic in suburban Connecticut with the college equestrian team. The annual Exotic Erotic dance (“the less you wear, the less you pay”), would start in one hour, and there was no way I was going to make it back in time to partake in my new favorite pastime: “pre-gaming.” It was at that moment, drenched in a potent mixture of sweat, manure, and horse snot, that I decided that I wouldn’t be spending the next four years driving around New England; it was time to pair an unflattering bathing suit top with a pair of cut-off Seven jeans and do shots of Popov vodka. It didn’t matter that at the age of 8, peaking around 11, slightly petering out at 15, and then roaring back for college at 18, I had been obsessed with horses for most of my life.

All this came flashing back this year, a decade later, when I was bored one day and biked over to my old barn. I happened to observe a group of thirtysomething ladies taking a lesson together. They looked like they were having a ball. So I decided it was time to get back in the saddle, even though I felt slightly embarrassed. When I heard horse-related murmurings coming from my cubicle-mate Amelia Diamond's desk, it took me a while to venture over there to talk shop. “So, do you ... ride?” I tentatively asked her one day. Actually, she rides twice a week, occasionally thrice, and even competes. And Amelia, despite a phase as a pre-teen during which she watched National Velvet from start to finish every single day after school, also happens to be markedly well-adjusted. Soon, we both started talking about one of summer’s biggest book releases, The Yonahlossee Riding Camp for Girls, out this week via Riverhead, which is beautifully written, and essentially horse porn for literary-minded equestrians.

Other than the fact that paying for lessons costs as much as a nice dinner for two, I obviously had reservations about getting back into it: There was something a little silly about a grown woman partaking in something associated with pre-pubescent girls. It's kind of like if I had decided to start playing with American Girl dolls or trading Absolut ads again. I would soon realize that riding as an adult is a lot different from riding as a girl. Gone are intolerable horse-moms, snooty mean girls, scary trainers, and all that adolescent angst. Only as a critically thinking woman can I now fully grasp how insane and amazing it is to be able to use your mind and body to seamlessly communicate something to a massive animal which, in turn, allows you both to fly through air. Whereas the relationship between Man and Horse was something I once thought of as “cute” and “fun,” I now think it’s kind of transcendent. Plus, riding gear is chic! A tucked-in white button down paired with a pair of tan riding pants and knee-high, lace-up black boots is just classically elegant. With dirty hair, it can look awesome.

Beyond the uniform, why did I like the hobby so much? That’s what I hoped talking to other women, riding as adults, could help me determine. “As an adult, I'm now more conscious of and can now articulate what it is I like about horses,” Yonahlossee’s author Anton DiSclafani told me the other day. She rode competitively as a teenager up until college, only returning to the sport a year and a half ago. “Riding requires so much mental and physical energy, and when I’m doing it, it’s the only time of the day when I’m not worried about something. It’s better than therapy.”

But though she leases a horse, rides several times a week, and has gotten to the point where she’s not embarrassed to go to the grocery store covered in all manner of equine goo, she says, “I have to be careful; I'm aware of not wanting to come across as that weird lady obsessed with horses.” I too feel the need to keep my horsiness in check, knowing that it could easily spiral into something verging on kooky, in a non-endearing kind of way.

Sarah Maslin Nir, a New York Times reporter who rode competitively as a teen and now rides three times a week, is less concerned with coming across as a weirdo than as a spoiled snob. There's no denying that horseback riding, at least here on the East Coast, is a sport that’s tied up with privilege; little blonde girls with pigtails photographed atop their ponies next to mom’s Jack Russells; Polo Ralph Lauren; Georgina Bloomberg. “I always think that saddest part of the sport is that it is associated with the elite, because at its heart of hearts, it's just being outdoors and being with a beautiful creature.” While it's still not cheap by any means, Nir says that she’s a strong enough rider to be able to “sit on anything,” and makes it work by riding other people's fancy horses. As a grown-up, she says the superficial values that made horseback riding slightly icky back when she was younger mostly seems to have disappeared. Yennie Solheim, another rider who works at Google and has been riding steadily since she was a young girl, adds that as a teen, there was a lot of pressure to have this fancy helmet, and that fancy riding coat. “For me, now, riding is purely a way for me to relax; it's a getaway.”

As young girls, the barn offered the same thing. “I was less interested in boys than my friends were,” DiSclafani says, “and didn't, like, love middle or high school. The barn was a total refuge.” (Like her, and all who rode, really, Christine Quinn writes in her new memoir that horseback riding was “the activity that sustained” her as a teenager).

But the sexy stuff is unavoidable. “This might be an oversimplification, but girls have a lot of sexual energy at that time, and being obsessed with horses was one way to direct that,” DiSclafani adds. Looking back on my early teens, my friends and I definitely used to talk about horses like we talked about boys (whom we were definitely not talking to): Wasn’t Toy just so cute today? Sarah rode Lucky, and it was so clear he didn’t like her! Windy and I just really have such good chemistry. It's no coincidence that Yonahlossee, a bildungsroman set during the Depression about a young girl whose wealthy family sends her away to a horse-centric boarding school, charts her relationship with an older man as she becomes a more competitive horseback rider. “As she becomes more interested in the world of sex, she becomes a better rider, and riding is an even more important part of her life,” DiSclafani says.

These days, the riders I spoke to seemed to be navigating the world of horses and men just fine. Diamond says that most of the guys she encounters don’t seem to have a problem with it. “But there’s always some dude who says something gross. Like, ‘You ride? Have you seen Cruel Intentions 2?'”

Nir recalls a blind date she went on with a guy who was named after a horse, and, shockingly, liked horses just as much as she did. “I thought, wow, it’s the closet thing to dating a horse as it gets. This is great,” until something just felt off. “I love talking about horses with my girlfriends, but talking about horses with him felt like talking about getting my nails done.”

It's true that there is still some sort of girlish glee that riding brings out in me. Diamond put it best when she said “there is something actually delicious” about that first whiff of horse and leather she gets now when she walks into a stable. Even if it comes at the expense of more grown-up activities: “When you get to this age, and you’re still riding, you've weighed your priorities, and your horse comes before your partner,” Nir adds, before clarifying: “But it’s not a sacrifice. I really feel like the luckiest girl in the world.

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Democrats Confident GOP Will Continue to Reveal Gross Ignorance About Women

Judging from EMILY’s List e-mail blasts and DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz's remarks on MSNBC, Politico is pretty sure Democrats are planning to repeat the surprisingly effective “war on women” strategy in the 2014 election. 

The most recent gaffe came from Georgia Senator Saxby Chambliss, pictured, who echoed amateur zoologist Erick Erickson during Tuesday's Senate Armed Services Committee, when he suggested that military sexual assault is an unfortunate side effect of nature and not, as fellow committee member Senator Claire McCaskill stressed, an abuse of power. “The hormone level created by nature sets in place the possibility for these types of things to occur,” he said. Sure enough, a slew of Democratic legislators offered Politico condemnations of Chambliss — and he's not even seeking reelection in 2014.

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When Women Pursue Sex, Even Men Don’t Get It

I’ve never been one of those people who sees the humanity in all animals. I don’t share whimsical sloth pictures on Tumblr or insist that a dog is “really connecting” with me or try to psychoanalyze my friend’s cat’s behavior. But when I read Daniel Bergner’s description of rat clitorises — one of the more fascinating sections of his totally engrossing new book, What Do Women Want?: Adventures in the Science of Female Desire, out this week — for once I felt a serious connection with the animal kingdom.

Here are some facts about female lab rats: During sex, a female rat will evade her partner, darting away in the midst of his pumping, so it doesn’t end too quickly — she wants it to last, because it’s more pleasurable for her that way. It’s not clear whether they orgasm, but “female rats do what feels good,” a researcher explains. When graduate students stroke female rats’ clitorises (which apparently look like little eraser heads) and then stop, the rats will tug on the students’ sleeves and beg for more. “This,” writes Bergner, “went on and on.” No research yet on how the situation is exacerbated if the female rat has had a really tough week at work.

Female animals don’t just enjoy sex, they are not shy about pursuing it. Bergner’s new book is a reexamination of everything we think we know about sex and female biology. An excerpt in The New York Times Magazine two weeks ago explained how, contrary to long-standing cultural beliefs that women are turned on by stability and emotional intimacy, long-term monogamy actually saps women’s sex drives. A German researcher “shows women and men in new relationships reporting, on average, more or less equal lust for each other. But for women who’ve been with their partners between one and four years, a dive begins — and continues, leaving male desire far higher.” We fundamentally misunderstand women’s lust, says Bergner. And not just when it comes to married women.

Bergner explains that, in the past, “scientists fixated on what the rat female did in the act of sex, not what she did to get there.” And if you’re friends with any single women or are one yourself, you know that “what she did to get there” is often the most taxing part of the sexual act. It’s also where cultural factors really start to work against women’s newly documented desire. Bergner makes a pretty strong case that women are socially, not biologically, discouraged from initiating and enjoying sex. (You think those female rats are compelling? I had to take a walk around the block after reading about female rhesus monkeys. Game recognize game.) Men and women have been barraged with the message that women are not naughty by nature. They are thought of as hardwired to hunt for a partner and a mate, while men pursue sex as a pleasurable act in and of itself. It follows from there that women — at least good women — must be pursued and coaxed into sex, and men enjoy the thrill of the chase.

In one small study of college students, 93 percent of women said they preferred to be asked out, while 83 percent of men preferred to do the asking. An oft-cited 1989 study of university students found that men were far more receptive than women to direct offers of casual sex. During the early aughts panic about the prevalence of campus hookups, many socially conservative experts alleged that women didn’t really want all that casual sex they were having. But a University of Michigan researcher found in 2011 that “gender differences are minimized when women feel that they can avoid being stigmatized for their behavior.” Women like having sex. They don’t like being socially punished for it.

There are other factors propping up the idea that women prefer to be sexually passive. Bergner reports that preliminary research indicates women are most turned on by their partners' desire for them. It's easy to see how this could be misconstrued as passivity — especially because more than a century of conventional wisdom says women don’t like sex as much as men do. But if we accept Bergner’s radical thesis that women do, in fact, like to get off, and get off on being desired, the question of who pursues whom poses a real conundrum for single women.

Think about it: Women want sex, and in particular, they want sex with people who really want them. But socially, many straight men still find it a turnoff when women are sexual aggressors. Which means that, for women, aggressively pursuing the thing they want actually leads to them not getting it. I suspect this is the source of much sexual dissatisfaction of the modern single lady, who's so horny she's running across the street to Walgreens to buy more batteries twice a week, but is unable to pick up men despite social conventions that men are "easy" to bed and women have to be coaxed into casual sex. The thing women are told they can access any time is, maddeningly, often just out of reach.

Even in research about appropriate dating behavior among adults today, “men and women both agree that men should actively pursue female partners and that women should be passive recipients to their advances,” says Jessica Carbino, a Ph.D. candidate in sociology at UCLA who studies online dating and relationships. “For example, women and men overwhelmingly state that men are supposed to plan dates, ask out the woman, and pick her up. Moreover, when women do not adhere to these scripts they are viewed negatively. For example, women who initiate dates are viewed by men as more promiscuous and not interested in forming a serious relationship.” If the rats are any indication, maybe they aren’t! We’ve already established that females of all species are interested in sex for pleasure. But in the human realm, that simple, fundamental motivation is all too easily labeled as “sluttiness,” or some sort of deep desperation wrought by singledom.

This catch-22 presents women with a few options, none of which are appealing. You can directly pursue a man, but only if you want to convey that you’re only in it for sex. You can choose not to pursue him, but then you’re relegated to this historic, passive role that doesn’t jibe with your active, considered approach to any other area of life, be it work or real estate or even friendship. Carbino sees this tension in her own research. “According to these women, their professional background is already intimidating to many men and they feel as though asking them out would make them less attractive and even more intimidating,” she says. “The men I interview also state that they prefer to be the individual who initiates the date and at times find women who ask them out to be more aggressive.”

Women aren’t the only ones experiencing some cognitive dissonance between their animalistic urges and the social conventions of dating. “More and more men are finding it difficult to be as direct, when it comes to dating and sex, as previous generations of men maybe once were,” says Chiara Atik, author of Modern Dating: A Field Guide. We all get that the rules of traditional courtship — in which men make every single advance and women demur or acquiesce — are dead, but we haven’t replaced them with a new standard operating procedure. “Everyone's being kind of wishy-washy,” Atik says. “Women want sex, but they don't want to be seen as forward (or worse, desperate). Men want sex but are intimidated, unconfident, or don't want to be seen as domineering. We're not sure who should be the sexual instigators, and then no one really steps up to the plate.”

Here, again, perhaps the animal kingdom can be a source of inspiration. Sex for pleasure: Lady birds do it, lady bees do it, and, I’m sure by dint of their socioeconomic status and feminism 101 classes, even educated lady fleas do it. The sooner we can agree that pleasure is one major motivation to pursue sex — for both men and women — the sooner we can all start instigating it.

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The Sexagenarian Who Teaches Women to Be Stylish

Wearing nothing but footless black pantyhose, a long-sleeved black shirt, and red lipstick, Tziporah Salamon, 63, is ready to get dressed. A dozen women, mostly middle-aged and in sensible workwear, watch as she stands with a clothing rack and a row of shoes. They have assembled on the Upper West Side on a chilly April evening for her two-hour seminar, “The Art of Dressing,” which she has delivered more than a hundred times for thirteen years.

Part instruction and part show-and-tell of her extensive vintage wardrobe, the class is normally held at Tziporah’s apartment on 72nd Street but was relocated at the last minute to her neighbor’s home, nearby on 70th Street, because of renovations. This doesn't seem to faze any of the students, most of whom had heard about the seminar through word of mouth; a few others knew Tziporah from the local synagogue. “The first time I saw Tziporah was about five years ago, on the No. 5 bus,” recalls one woman in a dramatic shawl. “She got on, and what she was wearing just took my breath away. I thought, Boy, I wish I knew that woman."

Tziporah (or “Tzippy,” as her friends call her) is a cult style icon in New York, beloved by the Times’s Bill Cunningham and street-style bloggers like Advanced Style’s Ari Seth Cohen. “Bill has never not photographed me,” she tells the class. “I don’t always make it into the paper, but he always takes my picture.” Last year, she was discovered online by a model scout who booked her for the fall 2012 Lanvin campaign, photographed by Steven Meisel. “They were looking for unknowns,” she explains. It’s her first and only campaign to date, but in February she approached Models 1 in London, and they signed her immediately. “So I guess I’m a model now!” she says, shrugging.

Tziporah began her seminars in 2000 at the behest of her late friend Lucie Porges, a former designer who taught at Parsons. She asked Tziporah to share her clothes and styling advice with her students, and Tziporah continued to do so every semester until Porges’s death in 2011. She also provides one-on-one personal wardrobe consultations to women looking to dress more creatively and occasionally opens up her closet to designers like Diane Von Furstenberg and Ralph Lauren, who have approached her for archival references.

The crown jewel of Tziporah’s collection is her assortment of hats. She owns well over 200 of them, many stored in her linen closet (“Give me a hat over a sheet any day!”). Her Oriental textiles, some of which are more than 200 years old, are another highlight (“I keep them on a rack in my room because I like to feast my eyes on them”).

Her approach to dressing is “like making a painting,” she says, with her body as the canvas and her garments as paints that she mixes to find balance and proportion. She won’t buy something unless she knows exactly what she’ll combine it with. “When I’m out in the world, I’m always completing outfits in my head,” she says. “It takes me years sometimes. And then I’ll see something, and it snaps — ‘Oh, those are gloves I need for the such-and-such!’”

Despite her astounding wardrobe, she is not wealthy. Her mother, a dressmaker, and father, a tailor, both survived concentration camps during World War II. She was born in Israel in 1950 and emigrated with her family to New York in 1959. “I owe everything to them,” she says. “They sewed all my clothes, and my mother went to great lengths to make me into a little doll.” Her parents instilled in her a keen eye for tailoring, and she alters almost every piece she buys, replacing buttons, hemming sleeves, and adding darts.

Addressing her class, she starts her seminar with the basics. “Know your body,” she instructs, throwing back her shoulders and taking a wide stance like a ballerina in second position. She advises going to a department store, trying on as much as you can, and “taking a good hard look in the mirror.” Personally, she never shows her calves. “After years of running, they just don’t look good anymore,” she says, pulling on a pair of loose pants that taper at the ankle. She feels similarly about her midsection. “You know, after you turn 50, you just don’t want to show this anymore,” she adds, patting her stomach. Her audience chuckles in agreement.

She then produces a long, rectangular purse with gold handles and emerald-colored leather and gamely passes it around the room. “That’s the Rolls-Royce of bags,” she says proudly. “Prada only made five of them. Madonna has one.” She spotted it for the first time when she was working at Barneys and a customer came in with one. Years later, she was browsing at the Pier Show in New York when she happened upon it again. “I grab it, I hold on to it,” she recalls to the class, clutching the bag to her chest. The vendor told her it was $800, and she convinced him to let her pay it off over the course of a year.

Since most of her clothes are vintage, they’re often patched in places. “See?” she says, raising one leg to show barely discernable stitches at the inner thigh. “It’s from the bike.” Tziporah gets everywhere on her turquoise Milano Bianchi bicycle, which she rides without a helmet. “I know — bad girl.”

Tziporah’s style wasn’t always a point of self-assurance. “When I went off to college, my mother made a wardrobe with capes and culottes and everything,” she says. “I looked like Ali MacGraw in Love Story.” But her bra-burning classmates at SUNY Buffalo were not impressed: “Everyone was like, ‘Where does she think she’s going?’” Later, studying for her PhD in psychology at Berkeley, she hung out with hippies and hid her copies of Vogue between Mother Jones and Ms. magazine. “God forbid anyone saw!” But she could only keep this up for so long. “Twice a week, I would go to the stores on Telegraph Avenue [in Berkeley], just to look and to feel and to touch. I didn’t buy anything — I didn’t have that kind of money. Then, at 29, I had a life crisis and I thought, Oh gosh, what am I going to do? So I moved back to New York to pursue fashion.”

When she arrived in Manhattan in 1979, she got a job as a salesgirl at the now-defunct Charivari, then one of the city’s most fashionable boutiques. But even with her employee discount, her $7-per-hour salary didn’t go far. “So I figured out how to shop at vintage stores. The clothes are made better, and they’re much cheaper. I got this for $60, and it’s incredible!” she says to the class, modeling a tailored Victorian-style jacket.

She also worked at Jezebel, a bohemian theater district restaurant owned by a woman named Alberta Wright, who encouraged her eccentric dressing habits. “I walked into the kitchen, and there’s this black woman with dreadlocks wearing this wonderful headdress and frying up okra. She says to me, ‘What are you wearing, dear?’ and I said, ‘Oh, I don’t know, a Yohji Yamamoto jumper,’ which is what it was. She gave me a job.” With Tziporah manning the hostess stand, Jezebel became one of Manhattan’s hottest restaurants in the eighties. “Alberta stretched me,” she recalls. “She would bring in these amazing hats for me and say, ‘Here, wear this tonight.’”

Still, Tziporah often felt self-conscious. Her father, who had closed his tailoring shop and was working in the women’s alterations department at Bergdorf Goodman, often criticized her flamboyant appearance. “It was very much the Holocaust survivor mentality,” she explains. “The message was ‘Stay down. Don’t draw attention to yourself.’”

Her Jewish faith was ultimately what brought her relief: In the late nineties, she met rabbi Reb Zalman, one of the founders of the Jewish Renewal movement. “I was all dolled up, and he said, ‘You represent Hod in the Tree of Life.’” Zalman was referring to the Kabbalah, in which “Hod” represents splendor and humility, and Tziporah found the association empowering. “That’s when I began to take dressing very seriously and was no longer ashamed,” she tells the roomful of rapt women.

Bill Cunningham discovered her on the sidewalk outside of Bergdorf Goodman shortly thereafter. She was going to visit her father, and Cunningham would often linger there to photograph the customers.

Between Tziporah’s multiple costume changes — about a dozen, overall — and lengthy stories, the class runs overtime, but none of her students seem to mind. As she begins to put her clothes away, a woman opens a bottle of wine and passes around tiny cups for a toast. “The point of this class isn’t to get people to dress like me,” Tziporah concludes. “What I want is for you to dress like you. I want you to make your own individual statement. I just show you what’s possible.”

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Women Narrowing Gap in IT Jobs

for Nextgov 2013-04-23 21:49:54 UTC

Women in information technology jobs are earning roughly the same salaries as their male counterparts, provided they share equal levels of experience and education and parallel job titles, a recent report found. Now, a new report shows the number of women in IT jobs is also on the rise.

Dice.com’s Tech Trends for the first quarter of 2013 indicates that while women still only make up 31% of the IT workforce, this year has marked some notable job growth for women in the field. According to Bureau of Labor Statistics data, 46% of new tech positions have been awarded to women since the start of 2013.

Meanwhile, the unemployment rate for all tech professionals was 3.5% in the first quarter, compared to 7.7% for the overall U.S. workforce. The last time unemployment for IT professionals was above the national average was the first quarter of 2004, Dice noted.

Technology consulting continues to dominate the job growth in IT, with more than 17,000 new positions added since the start of 2013. But other areas, including manufacturing, data processing and hosting, continued to lose jobs since the start of the year, Dice found.

Several other jobs had unemployment rates below the national average for IT, including Web developers (1%), network architects (1.7%), software developers (2.2%) and database administrators (2.8%).

Although many IT professionals have good job prospects given the low unemployment rate, most are not leaving their jobs, Dice found. During the first two months of the first quarter of 2013, for example, 380,000 in professional and business services quit their jobs on average, down from 389,000 per month in the fourth quarter of 2012, according to BLS data.

That’s also down significantly from the previous recession, which ended in November 2001, when 494,000 quit their jobs each month.

IT professionals are not immune to layoffs or discharges, either, Dice found. The number of layoffs and discharges in the first two months of 2013 averaged 386,500 for employees in professional and business services. “Having more layoffs and discharges than voluntary quits is the job market we have, not the job market anyone wants,” the report states.

Image via FREDERIC J. BROWN/AFP/Getty Images

This article originally published at Nextgov here

Topics: Business, Dev & Design, information technology, Jobs, women, women in tech, women in technology Nextgov is a Mashable publishing partner that is the all-day technology resource for federal decision makers, delivering news, analysis and a nationwide community of expert voices on how technology and innovation are transforming government. This article is reprinted with the publisher's permission.

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