Pittsburgh Post-Gazette: Unsurprisingly, an article about body types at the Screen Actors Guild Awards ceremony mentions Jennifer Hudson's and America Ferrera's bodies (from "Dreamgirls" and "Ugly Betty," respectively). It must be frustrating to them that their bodies are talked about more often than are their abilities as actresses -- wasn't that supposed to be the point of the awards?
The Australian: In order to draw interest to an upcoming women's golf tournament, the women's Australian Open has decided to sell golf with, you guessed it, sex -- along with the tagline, "Women's Golf Has Never Looked Better." Despite never having won on the U.S. tour (she has a world ranking of 20), Natalie Gulbis has been chosen as the "marquee player of the week," thanks to, as this article puts it, being "bulbous in all the right places."
Associated Press: The Super Bowl will help you get a man? Apparently so, according to this piece. Paula Duffy, a sports lecturer, travels the country teaching women about football (including private sessions at upward of $250 an hour) and estimates that 60 percent of her clients sign up to try to "snag a guy." There's Football University, a one-night class held to teach women about the game. And then there are the football alternatives, like the couples football and cooking parties hosted by Christine Cheng, who hires a gourmet tailgating chef. "The ladies learn to make mini Kobe beef burgers, salmon quesadillas, homemade sweet potato fries and crab cakes, which they later serve to the guys," reports the AP.
BBC: New Zealand is beginning to try to address one of its "dark secrets" -- high rates of domestic violence, especially among the Maori population. According to the article, "fifty percent of those sentenced for the offense of 'male assaults female' in the year 2004-2005 were Maori, although Maori make up only about 15 percent of the country's population." Equally upsetting, "42 percent of Maori women said a partner who had abused them physically, compared to only 20 percent of white women."
And, again from the BBC, Moscow's mayor, Yuri Luzhkov, has said that gay rights parades will never be allowed in the city. Why? Because gay parades "cannot be called anything other than satanic," said Luzhkov.
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