It’s not often I find myself agreeing with Amanda Peyser, cranky-pants doyenne of the New York Post, but it must be said: Gwen, the new “homeless” doll from American Girl, is at best a head-scratcher and at worst a horribly offensive cultural trainwreck.

I don’t quite agree with Peyser on Gwen being a tool of political indoctrination. But selling a “homeless” doll for $95—without any of that money specifically going to homeless charities—is more than a little obscene. It’s also a bizarre choice for a company that makes its bones selling meticulously crafted clothes, furniture, and trinkets for each of its characters. Not a lot of accessory potential here. (Gwen does come with a “a pink headband that doubles as a belt.” Very thrift-store chic!)

Gwen is actually a sidekick in the American Girl-verse: The main attraction is the limited-edition Chrissa, a fourth-grader who moves to a new town and has to deal with a bunch of bullies. As far as I can tell, Gwen is there mostly to show how open-minded and generous the non-homeless Chrissa is.*

Given the extensive research that went into creating Rebecca Rubin, the Jewish American Girl that debuted this spring, I’m surprised at this gaucheness. On the other hand, AG has finally answered my nine-year-old dreams: Chrissa’s other sidekick is a (presumably) South Asian girl named Sonali, who has long beautiful hair and, thankfully, does not come with a sari.

* Which, incidentally, reminds me of the funniest, most brilliantly subtle bit of undermining I’ve ever read in a profile: In a 2005 Elle feature on Emmy Rossum, the Phantom of the Opera star is quoted as saying, “[My] parents taught me to be a very kind person, to be compassionate. That's something that I have in common with Christine, something I could tap into. At Spence, one of my friends was a girl who was handicapped. And I have a friend who had a craniofacial deformity [like the Phantom].”

Tags: amanda peyser, American Girl, homelessness

After hearing Hanna, Emily, and Margaret discuss the Hofstra rape case and the concept of “gray rape”—that confounding area that lies between explicit consent and explicit denial—a reader wrote in with a question: Is it rape if the person you think you’re sleeping with is actually a shape-shifting villain?

That’s the quandary that comic book fans are currently debating. In a recent issue of Amazing Spider-Man, a villain named Chameleon impersonates Peter Parker (who, as you probably know but Chameleon doesn’t, is the titular superhero). Earlier in the storyline, the real Peter had drunkenly slept with his roommate, Michelle. She did not react well when it became clear that he, um, hadn’t actually meant to do that.

In this issue, Chameleon/Peter comes home and finds an irate Michelle—and decides to defuse the situation with a kiss. The scene ends with the two sinking to the floor, out of the frame, with a speech bubble from Michelle that reads, “GIGGLE,” covered in little red hearts. When the real Peter comes home, he’s confused to find Michelle wearing his T-shirt and boxers, demanding cuddle time, and generally acting like a pushy girlfriend from a cringe-worthy sitcom. (io9.com has scans of the pages, plus a good summary of the ensuing debate.)

There’s a lot of back-and-forth going on about whether Michelle was actually “raped” by Chameleon—she did give consent, after all, but to a completely different partner than she actually got. The author of the issue, Fred Van Lente, wrote in a private email:

My understanding of the definition of rape is that it requires force or the threat of force, so no. Using deception to trick someone into granting consent isn't quite the same thing.

Which is not to say it isn't a horrible, evil, reprehensible thing that Chameleon did. He is a bad man.

FWIW, as of 2007, 15 states, plus Puerto Rico, did have some kind of provision against rape by impersonation (PDF), particularly spousal impersonation. But I’m less interested in the legalistic, is-this-rape-if-so-what-kind-of-rape discussion than I am in the fact that the comic does not, in fact, seem to reflect Van Lente’s assertion that Chameleon’s act was “horrible, evil, [and] reprehensible.” The hearts on the giggle-bubble; the fact that Michelle seems blissed out by the experience; the fact that she, in effect, is doubly-shamed—first by being duped into sex and then by being duped into thinking she had a new boyfriend. It all makes it seem like something to be laughed off—maybe even at—not an issue to be taken seriously.

Van Lente notes that, in an upcoming issue, it’s revealed that Michelle and Chameleon/Peter “did nothing more than make out … There was no sex, and therefore no rape.” But I agree with io9—the scanned images sure do imply that sex was had in that kitchen. What’s the point of making that insinuation and then letting it linger?

What do you think—was Michelle raped? Does the definition matter? Did the Spider-Man creative team handle the issue responsibly?

More discussion on: Daily Scans, Geek Feminism, Bleeding Cool

Tags: comic books, gray rape, spider-man

Amanda, I like your comparison of the boundary-less world of Facebook to the typical small-town life. If we can’t bump into the former homecoming queen at the grocery store (OMG she works at the grocery store now? And did you hear she got dumped by her high school sweetheart who we were all sure she’d marry, like, the day after graduation?), we can at least follow her fall from grace remotely.

Still, it seems like there’s something unique about the unraveling of a marriage—or any relationship, really—as it’s broadcast on these social networking sites. Although news spread through your small town, Amanda, about relationships crumbling or adulterous ones sparking, I doubt the lead players in those romances would find a perch in the town square to shout out their latest feelings or relevant song quotes about the whole thing. Dahlia’s chick lit novel, which is unfolding on Slate now, gives us a great example of the divorce as narrated through Facebook and Twitter. I can see how someone might actually see this as the ultimate retaliation against small-town-style gossip: Instead of being talked about behind your back, you’re blasting out your own take on the matter.

We’ve asked before for you to share your awkward and wrong stories about Facebook, Twitter, texting, and the like, and now seems like a good time to ask again. Has anyone had a particularly trying or hilarious or uncomfortable experience with a social networking break-up? Did you have to watch your mom’s TMI tweets during the trial separation, or negotiate with your ex about when to finally update your Facebook relationship status? Send your tales to us, and—with your permission, of course—we’ll run our favorites here on the site.

Tags: awkward and wrong, chick lit, divorce, Facebook, reader submissions, twitter

Today on DoubleX, our writers (and the sisters Ephron) describe moments when wardrobe played a particularly memorable role in their personal history, in response to the book (and now play) Love, Loss, and What I Wore, which takes as its premise the idea that there is more meaning than we realize in the everyday act of getting dressed. But even those whose quotidian existence is anything but put more thought into the details of an outfit than we might guess: Madeleine Albright, the first female secretary of state, who surely cannot be accused of shallowness, has just released a book, Read My Pins, relating the stories behind the brooches with which she always accessorizes. Some are sentimental, some had diplomatic import. From a thoroughly delightful NPR interview:

After the Russians were caught tapping the State Department, Albright protested by wearing a pin with a giant bug on it. On days when Albright felt she had to do "a little stinging and deliver a tough message," she wore a wasp pin.

At one point, Russian leader Vladimir Putin told President Clinton that he knew what the mood of a meeting would be by looking at Albright's left shoulder. (Albright's pin with three monkeys, which she wore when discussing Chechnya, was meant to draw attention to the fact that Russia took a "hear no evil, see no evil, speak no evil" stance toward the Chechen atrocities.)

More on the diplomatic doyennes's jewelery in Talk of the Town, and if you're in New York, you can stop by the Museum of Art and Design to see her pins on display.

Tags: love loss and what i wore, madeleine albright, read my pins

Reading Amanda Fortini's piece on the way that Facebook is turning previously private parts of life, such as your divorce, into public spectacles, I realized suddenly why the idea of having everyone in your virtual community know about your divorce and its details as soon as you do doesn't bother me as much as it might other people. I spent my entire adolescence living in a community of 6,000 people, which means that having control over what details of your life everyone knows about seems like the novelty to me. You don't have to put tales of heartbreak on Facebook, but in small towns, you don't have that choice.

The luxury of being scandalized at public displays of unhappiness and heartbreak is really an invention of the modern, urbanized world, a world that I fled to as soon as I could, but for reasons other than irritation at everyone being up in your business all the time. Learning about your divorce through the grapevine, everyone and their dog witnessing you on your worst days, divorce lawyers knowing every thing about the opposition's behavior in order to build a case—all old hat to small town folks. My mother's divorce lawyer didn't need Facebook to learn about her ex-husband; he saw him at the shooting range every weekend and had the grapevine to provide information. I have countless tales of spouses learning about infidelities only after everyone else in town saw the adulterers snuggling in some public place, and horror stories of false rumors spread by spurned lovers taking over the town before the truth could get its pants on. That was our hell, and now everyone else gets the joy of experiencing it.

Somehow, small town people manage to endure the slings and arrows of everyone knowing your business. In fact, I've always been impressed by how divorce and adultery not only survive but thrive in an environment where there's exactly no way you can go about either without everyone you come across knowing all the dirty details. I've seen people get into loud fights about cheating in public places, making sure that any details that the town didn't already know were exposed, and then go straight back to carrying on the affair the next day in full view of everyone. The dark part of the human spirit that wants to lash out at the demands of marriage will not be hemmed in by something as minor as public humiliation.

And so I face the expansion of Facebook and the creation of virtual small towns with no fear that it will do anything significant to change anyone's behavior. If anything, I admire the fact that Facebook creates a neat compromise between the anonymity of the city and the gossip of the small town. It both fills our need to be nosy while giving ultimate control to the person being gossiped about. Since you don't have to sit down and type out what you're feeling, the act of gossiping about someone is a lot more consensual in our digital age than it was in my small town youth.

Tags: adultery, divorce, Facebook, Gossip, marriage