Do you know your sociosexual orientation? Me? Hadn’t even heard the word before this morning. Evolutionary psychologists -- yeah, the same ones who can, on occasion, drive us batty when pop versions of their theories are used to describe why dating sucks so much -- use the term to measure how sexually liberal one is. In sex, of course, it’s all about the numbers, and thus researcher David Schmitt has compiled a helpful index to rank the sociosexuality of people -- most fall between four and 65 -- and countries.

Drum roll, please: The most promiscuous men and women in Western industrial nations can be found in Britain, well ahead of the United States (six) and those clichéd countries of European romance, France (seven) and Italy (11). (The highest overall ranking was Finland; the lowest, Taiwan, but neither is discussed in this particular piece).

Britain's liberal sociosexuality, according to researchers, has much to do with the ladies -- and the diminishing slut-stud double standard. “Historically we have repressed women’s short-term mating and there are all sorts of double standards out there where men’s short-term mating was sort of acceptable but women's wasn’t,” said Schmitt, who also cited a less stigmatized view of premarital sex, increased sexual equality at work, and a highly sexualized pop culture. You can almost see the posters: Feminism! It gets you laid!

But along with sexual freedom comes, well, freedom. The British are apparently more likely to have "poached" their partners: A third of men and 28 percent of British women are in relationships with people who were in a long-term relationship with someone else when they first got together. What a term! It almost makes me want to claim my boyfriend as stolen property, just so I can introduce him as my "poached lover." Sounds like a delicious dish!

OMG! Barbie's' clique of pageant-pretty princesses is totes going to destroy Bratz' urban crew of trendy tarts. A federal judge has ruled that Mattel is the legal owner of MGA Entertainment's Bratz, following a court decision that the line's creator was under contract with the company when he developed the idea.

For several years, Mattel has promised to "litigate to the death" over what it called (for realz, no joke) a "Barbie genocide." After winning a $100 million lawsuit against MGA, Mattel decided to wage its own "genocide," and called for all Bratz dolls to be impounded and destroyed. It's like a feud between rival prom queens, only in the language of, like, actual war.

Now that Mattel owns the lucrative line, it will be interesting to see whether it will make good on its threat of destruction, or pimp out the dolls for its own profit. Bratz fans have until at least February 11, when the rival companies next meet in court, to save a few wide-eyed, Jolie-lipped dollies from what I imagine will be a mass, fiery death. One question: Will they be selling tickets to that show?

Meet Melissa Beech, a young woman who grew up in suburban Pennsylvania, "where the blood is as blue as the sky, and the wealth as abundant." Once at college, she struggled to become financially independent from Mom and Dad. She took a part-time retail job, only to spend more than she made. She took a gig as a waitress, only to discover that it's exhausting work. She turned to prestigious internships, only to find that they were all unpaid.

He presented "his financial package": A monthly allowance, "desirable gifts" and vacations galore

That's when she decided to make use of the "invaluable tool for success" provided by the privilege of having been "raised with class, sent to the best schools, and taught to be well read, well spoken and well traveled." That invaluable tool? Selling her body and companionship for cash.

That's according to her Daily Beast personal essay, which has, what do you know, stirred the blogospheric pot. It all started with a potential employer, who didn't hire her for the position she was initially interested in, but did suggest another one "that seemed perfectly suited to my attributes and skills: he proposed that he become my benefactor." They met over dinner and, after a speed get-to-know-you session, he presented "his financial package": A monthly allowance (including paying for her $1,600 a month apartment), "a steady stream of desirable gifts" and vacations galore. She agreed on a trial basis, but insisted that they wait a bit until they had sex.

During the trial period, Beech was "swept off my feet" -- by the AmEx Black card, posh getaways, and the Chanel and Dior. (She asks: "How many other college students are wearing Christian Louboutins to class?" To which I respond: Loubou-what-the-eff-is-that?) After three months, they started having sex; they have kept the business deal going for a year now.

It's a story as old as, well, the oldest profession. Beech skirts around that stigmatized word, using euphemisms like "sugar daddy" and "benefactor," until acknowledging that outsiders might see her business arrangement as "the distant cousin of -- dare I say it? -- prostitution." How distant is it, though? We -- or rather, those who like to moralize about such things -- make a classist distinction between high-class call girls and streetwalkers. The difference: Purchased sex that is more expensive, and purchased sex that is less expensive. Which is to say: What, exactly, is the significant difference? Is it suddenly not prostitution if a john takes an escort out to dinner before having sex with her? No, of course not. So, why would it not be prostitution if he establishes an ongoing business relationship with her, in which he pays for her sexual companionship?

As Hanna Rosin points out in XX Factor, this particular "sugar daddy" arrangement is not all that far from those of many self-described prostitutes: "The Internet has made it possible for prostitutes to fly solo and not get burned. They interview potential johns in public places, usually expensive restaurants. They 'date' for a long time -- sometimes months -- before agreeing to pair up. They may even hire a private detective to check the guy out."

Not to mention, sex workers of all stripes will tell you that sex is often just one of the services they offer; it is not at all uncommon to hear prostitutes -- at both ends of the sex work spectrum -- talk of clients who spend the majority of their paid time talking or crying. The idea that "real" prostitutes only sell sex is a myth.

That raises the question of how one draws prostitution's boundaries. Beech has chosen a very strict definition, from which she is excluded, and flippantly argues that "women have used their wiles and charms to get ahead for years." This is true. For ages, men and women have made emotional and financial calculations and concessions before entering into a number of different types of relationships, especially marriage. So, while I'm bothered by Beech's euphemistic handling of her arrangement, I can't disagree with Melinda Henneberger, another XX Factor writer, who suggests that business relationships like Beech's "further [blur] the definition of prostitution."

Wikimedia

"Migrant Mother" (1936) taken by Dorothea Lange for the U.S. Farm Security Administration.

You've likely never heard of Katherine McIntosh, 76, a housecleaner in Modesto, Calif., but you'd recognize Dorothea Lange's iconic Great Depression photograph in which the then-4-year-old girl clings to her mother while hiding her face from the camera.

In the black-and-white photograph, known as "Migrant Mother," Katherine is the child on the left. Her mother, then-32-year-old Florence Owens Thompson, had seven children at the time, who worked with her in the fields, picking cotton.

Lange was traveling through Nipomo, Calif., taking photographs of migrant farmworkers for the government when she shot the defining image of the Great Depression. McIntosh told CNN: "She asked my mother if she could take her picture -- that ... her name would never be published, but it was to help the people in the plight that we were all in, the hard times. So mother let her take the picture, because she thought it would help."

The next day, when the photograph ran in a local paper, the family had already moved on, but they heard about it. "The picture came out in the paper to show the people what hard times was. People was starving in that camp. There was no food," McIntosh said. "We were ashamed of it. We didn't want no one to know who we were." Living in tents and cars, sometimes her mother would go hungry so her children would have food.

Florence Owens Thompson died at age 80 in 1983. The inscription on her gravestone reads: "Migrant Mother: A Legend of the strength of American motherhood." In these tough economic times, her daughter has this message for President-elect Barack Obama: "Think of the middle-class people."

Let us be the first to suggest that McIntosh would make a wonderful honored guest at Obama's inauguration in January.

Traveling through Italy one summer, I developed an unexpected love for the country's nude beaches. Sure, there were a fair number of impossibly bronzed women who appeared to have fallen out of a swimsuit catalog, but there were others as well, old and young alike, thick and thin in all the "wrong" places. I left the country convinced America could cut its eating disorder rate in half if we simply embraced the same relaxed attitude toward nudity.

As it turns out, I may have misread the situation. NPR has just declared that feminism is out in Italy and that the woman as sex symbol is back in. The happily naked women I admired may have just been filling the role they have been taught is best to play. As NPR so succinctly puts it, "scantily dressed women can be seen -- but rarely heard -- on all types of programs, from quizzes to political talk shows."

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$200,000 worth of inflatable boobs are lost at sea. Last seen on a cargo ship bound for the land down under, the 130,000 breasts, intended to be a free giveaway in the January issue of men's magazine Ralph, have mysteriously disappeared, according to a story (called "Storm in a C Cup") in WAToday. Ralph editor Santi Pintado has issued a cry for help, urging anyone who has information regarding the displaced breasts to contact him. So far, the only explanation he has come up with is pirates. A likely explanation. In the world of booty, they're moving on up.

It isn't news to Broadsheet readers that the Bush administration plans to any day now enact a "right of conscience" rule that would compromise women's access to birth control and abortion -- but today's Los Angeles Times reports that its reach doesn't end there. It could allow providers to also morally or religiously object to sperm donation and artificial insemination.

"Any employee can declare they are not willing to do certain parts of their job"

As previously written about here, the rule allows workers to withhold information about abortion, and to refuse to prescribe (and pharmacists to refuse to dispense) birth control. It also extends the right to refuse to participate in an abortion to all healthcare workers -- not just doctors and nurses, who already have that legal right, but even "an employee whose task it is to clean the instruments." Judith Waxman of the National Women's Law Center told the Times, "This kind of rule could wreak havoc in a hospital if any employee can declare they are not willing to do certain parts of their job."

Basically, your healthcare provider would have a right to make a personal, rather than medical, decision about whether you should start, end, prevent or plan a pregnancy. They would have a legal right to process any or all of your reproductive decisions through their own moral or religious framework before providing you with care. If you find the threat too abstract, the Times offers a handful of concrete, real-life examples:

In Texas, a pharmacist rejected a rape victim's prescription for emergency contraception. In Virginia, a 42-year-old mother of two became pregnant after being refused emergency contraception. In California, a physician refused to perform artificial insemination for a lesbian couple. (In August, the California Supreme Court ruled that this refusal amounted to illegal discrimination based on sexual orientation.) And in Nebraska, a 19-year-old with a life-threatening embolism was refused an early abortion at a religiously affiliated hospital.

Those types of "conscientious refusals," and more, would be defended at an estimated "4,800 hospitals, 234,000 doctor's offices and 58,000 pharmacies," according to the Times.

To those of you thinking, Obama's coming into office! He'll overturn the rule and all will be righted, take heed: "While the rule could eventually be overturned by the new administration, the process might open a wound that could take months of wrangling to close again," says the Times. Sens. Hillary Clinton and Patty Murray have already vowed to wrestle this bruiser to the Senate floor. Here's to hoping they succeed.

Ho-hum. Another day, another way to eviscerate Britney Spears -- this time starring bingeing, purging and diet pill abuse.

Did anyone need another reminder that the maternal body gets no respect in our culture? Right, I didn't think so

As you'll no doubt recall, just a little over a year ago Spears wobbled around in her underwear onstage at the MTV Video Music Awards in a performance universally dubbed disastrous -- from her lackluster dancing to her inability to remember the words to her own song (that she was lip-syncing). Among Britney's much-lamented MTV gaffes: Her scantily clad body didn't look exactly like it did before she had her two sons. (Did anyone need another reminder that the maternal body gets no respect in our culture? Right, I didn't think so.)

Well, guess what, folks? Now, apparently Britney's lost a bunch of weight, so it's time to revel in the sordid details of her long-rumored disordered eating! According to a source close to one of her bodyguards  quoted in Star magazine -- and every celeb gossip blog, not to mention the Sydney Morning Herald -- Britney has been bingeing and purging and abusing diuretic diet pills in pursuit of her newly svelte figure.

There's even a cute buzzword for Brit's affliction: "bulimorexic." Get it? Bulimic and anorexic! Wait until the pro-ana groups over on Facebook get a load of this! A source told the Star: "Britney is thrilled she has finally got her pre-baby body."

So, let's review: Either Britney's a flabby mommy who can't lose the baby weight fast enough and has no business showing off her naked gut in public (bad Britney!) or she's super-trim but bingeing and barfing to get that way (bad Britney!).

Yuck. After yet another cycle of gorging on Spears' misfortune, I'm feeling a bit Britneyorexic myself.

Ah, remember the days when women’s reproductive rights were simply (and perhaps simplistically) represented in that old feminist slogan, “My body, my choice?” The cover line for last Sunday’s New York Times magazine shows what happens when women are divided by a  chasm of privilege and puts it a bit more bluntly: “Her Body, My Baby.”

The woman providing the body would be the obviously pregnant one on the left-hand side of the cover, Cathy Hilling, clad in a playground-worthy ensemble of loafers, jeans and t-shirt. The owner of the baby, however, would be the one clutching her barren belly, wearing heels and a black cocktail dress and looking like she’s about ready to exercise her right to hit up a fabulous party. That would be Alex Kuczynski, whom you may recognize as style columnist for the Times, the author of a book on plastic surgery (for which she did plenty of firsthand research) and wife of gazillionaire investor Charles Stevenson.

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This month's Vanity Fair cover story is about Tina Fey (maybe you've heard of her). The profile, written by Maureen Dowd (maybe you've heard of her?), features such headline grabbers as the backstory behind Fey's mysterious chin scar -- according to her husband, she was cut in her front yard by a stranger when she was five -- and the fact that she was a virgin till she was 25. More interesting than those details, however, is Fey's development from writer's room puritan with a "chord of anger running through her comedy," as her one-time colleague Adam McKay put it, into a va-va-voom leading lady.

Much like Virginia Heffernan's 2003 New Yorker profile, Dowd's piece depicts Fey as a sober, hard-driven, deeply principled woman who is a galaxy removed from the pill-popping icons who came before her on "Saturday Night Live." When Dowd asks Fey what's the wildest thing she's ever done, she replies, "Nothing." This is, after all, the woman Colin Quinn nicknamed "Herman the German." Lorne Michaels compares her to Nazi propagandist Leni Riefenstahl. Fey's husband discloses the story of the worst trouble he ever got into with her: He went to a strip club.

"I feel like we all need to be better than that," Fey says of the incident. "That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that."

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