Dear GIRLS,

Thanks for reminding me of this stunner.

Love,
Alex

" [Bristol] Palin’s language around the incident reflects a nameless hesitancy that young women feel when reporting violations of their own sexual autonomy. When incidents of rape are treated as finger pointing cases of women just getting what they had coming to them, then what happens when we try and talk about all the violations in between? It would be easy to end this on one of the most solid points of the movement to end sexual violence and rape, the idea that rape is rape is rape. But what happens when we can’t even define it for ourselves?"

-Coco, Persephone Magazine

salve for clique mentality disguised as a study guide for girls: $39.99

"Dear Friend,

On a beautiful late spring afternoon, this past year, a young woman received some devastating news. She had just gotten back her ACCUPLACER test scores. It wasn't what she had hoped for. In fact, it wasn't even close to her expectations despite her former good grades in high school.

The worst part was that she knew that she could never go straight into the college-level courses she had planned to take her freshman year with ACCUPLACER test scores that low.

Then she remembered her friends and felt even worse. All of her closest high school friends had already gotten their ACCUPLACER test scores back and were almost certain to go straight into the college-level classes they had all planned to attend together. Before her test day, she had been procrastinating about preparing for the ACCUPLACER test, because she hated standardized tests, and this only confirmed her hatred.

"Why do you have to take the ACCUPLACER test to get into these classes?" she angrily wondered.

She didn't look forward to having to tell her embarrassing news to her friends. "What would they think of her?" she thought, eyes brimming with tears, as she imagined her friends going together off to classes without her and the isolation and exclusion of being left behind and stuck in remedial classes.

How to Solve the Problem

Unfortunately, this hypothetical situation occurs all the time. Someone thought they were going to breeze through the ACCUPLACER test and get into the classes they wanted, told all of their friends, made plans for the future, and then got an embarrassing reality check from their ACCUPLACER test scores."

It's a Good Thing [?]

"The lightning-fast transition from newly minted vaccine to must-have injection in the United States and Europe represents a triumph of what the manufacturers call education and their critics call marketing."

re: Gardisil and other cervical cancer vaccines. Cervical cancer represents less than 5% of cancer-related deaths for American females per year (lung cancer represents the most, at ~40%).