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Barnes & Noble and Borders in the US have requested that a magazine cover up due to what apparently has a controversial cover: an androgynous-looking man with his shirt off wearing makeup and girly hair. Because, says B&N “the model is young and it could be deemed as a naked female.” I’ve seen the picture (click on the link, it’s in the article) and don’t see it, but some people spend their lives working really hard to see filth everywhere.

In Canada, Lisa Huie, the public relations managers of Indigo and Chapters (our version of the large chain bookstores) says in a statement “[o]ur company provides the choice and availability of a wide range of books and magazines for our customers, even when some books or magazines may contradict the opinions and sensibilities of some customers.” Thank you, Lisa Huie, for that bracing reminder.

Perfect comeback #2:

I was reading the New York Times review of the movie Bridesmaids (they loved it) and in the review, they linked to a 2007 Vanity Fair column by Christopher Hitchens entitled “WhyWomen Aren’t Funny.” Sure, it’s four years old, but I hadn’t seen it before and was planning to pick it apart in a post talking about personal opinion and taste, lack of a cohesive argument and what happens with the development and maintenance of stereotypical beliefs. However, I am currently reading Tina Fey’s Bossypants -which I would buy for every woman (and most men) I know if I had the money –  and she says it much better, so I’m going to quote her instead. In the book, she mentions that both Jerry Lewis and Christopher Hitchens have argued that women aren’t funny, makes it clear in a rather elegant way that she’s not picking on them specifically, but on the opinion held out there by the famous and not-so-famous and says:

“Every time there’s a bad female standup somewhere, some dickhead interblogger will deduce that women aren’t funny … Unless one of these men is my boss, it’s irrelevant. My hat goes off to them. It is an impressively arrogant move to conclude that just because you don’t like something, it’s empirically not good. I don’t like Chinese food, but I don’t write articles trying to prove it doesn’t exist.”

Thank you, Tina Fey!