How We’re Doing: International Women’s Day Edition

Many are celebrating today, ourselves included. But being the level-headed, pragmatic feminists that we are, we can’t help but temper the festive mood with a healthy dose of analysis. Eager to see just how far we’ve come in the 15 years  since Hillary Rodham Clinton famously declared women’s rights to be human rights, we’ve been closely following this week’s session of the UN Commission on the Status of Women, where delegates are conducting a 15-year review of the implementation of the Platform for Action, a global agenda for women’s empowerment created in 1995.

Who Ravished Robert Pattinson?

In her March 5 column – rather sensationally titled “The Ravishing of Rob Pattinson” – Wall Street Journal columnist Nancy de Wolf Smith admonishes the young star’s women fans for their age-inappropriate obsession with him, criticizes the media for promoting his hyper-sexualization, and bemoans his rapidly dying innocence. Hmm. And here I thought he was just another chain-smoking, beer-guzzling, 20-something-year-old celebrity jerk who talks about hangovers and vaginas during magazine interviews.