Roundup: Paris' ban on women in pants

• Paris may finally repeal its technical, though unenforced, ban on women wearing trousers. It's only about two centuries overdue.
• Researchers compare the changes women's brains go through on birth control to being on steroids.
• Rape victims in the Democratic Republic of Congo share their stories with a special United Nations panel.
• Jessica Valenti argues that "the feminist movement needs to leave gender essentialism at the door," otherwise "the movement will become meaningless."
• Cosmopolitan casts readers -- lots of them -- as the stars of its latest ad campaign.
• In response to Susan Faludi's recent piece on "feminism's ritual matricide," Katha Pollitt defends young feminists. (She also gives a shout-out to Broadsheet, as well as Feministing and Jezebel, as sites that have "introduced a lot of young women to feminist ideas and activism.")
• Carmakers are trying to woo women, which allegedly means gone are the days of bikini-clad models at auto shows. (I'm filing this under: Believe It When I Don't See It.)
• A whopping "76 percent of people reported about in the world's news are male." (Note: Men do not make up 76 percent of the world population.)

By Tracy Clark-Flory

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