Women's mags: proof misery sells
by Rondi Adamson

        TORONTO - Like a repentant cattle rancher turned vegetarian,
Myrna Blyth appears to have turned on her former self. The retired editor of Ladies' Home Journal has written a book dishing scorn on women's magazines - "Spin Sisters: How the Women of the Media Sell Unhappiness and Liberalism to the Women of America."

        Ms. Blyth accuses an entire magazine genre of marketing anxiety
in order to perpetuate the myth of women as victims - and the fur's flying.

        Cosmopolitan's editor, Kate White, accused Blyth of "dragging
other people down with her self-loathing." Cindi Leive, of Glamour, said that Blyth was "trying to burn down the whole category of magazines." Ellen Levine, editor at Good Housekeeping, calls Blyth's condition "serious Ann Coulter envy."

        Meow.

        It is fair comment to point out that this book was written after
a successful career in the field the author condemns. I wouldn't pretend to know Blyth's motives. Or who she envies. But I'm certain she is right.

        Women's magazines fall into two categories, with occasional
overlap. There are the fluffy, and there are the fear-mongering - reflecting the bifurcated legacy of feminism:  be sexy while you file for divorce. The former fill their pages with eyeliner, Armani, and Beyonce's luscious curves. They are, I believe, harmless. The latter fill theirs with infidelity and infertility, and I cannot, for the unfulfilled life of me, see what good they do.

        My experience writing for several such magazines in Canada -
Chatelaine, Modern Woman, Flare, Homemaker's - confirm Blyth's claim that editors skew facts, court alarmism, and reject the positive. There's no better (seemingly bottomless) swamp to draw from than the one filled with insecurity and victimology that mainstream feminism has created. At times, I've played along - the pay's good. But one tires.

        Three years ago, I pitched what I felt was an empowering (to use
a word I hate) story to several women's magazines. I got the idea from my gynecologist, who, dismayed at my extreme fear of breast cancer, gave me a good talking to about what he termed "the breast cancer hysteria." The 1 in 9 statistic, he said, should read more like "1 in 9         if every woman on the planet lives to be 100." And three times out of four it will not be fatal, he said.

        I hoped to explore in this article the politics of the disease,
showing how the threat of breast cancer is disproportionate to the amount of attention and money it receives, and that attention takes away from other problems and, indeed, from the quality of life.

        Editor after editor rejected the idea with no comment, except
one at a magazine called Elm Street who snippily e-mailed: "There is no way this story can do anything but trivialize the plight of women with breast cancer."

        That this woman failed to see how condescending she was being to
her readers - as though females cannot grasp nuance - should not have surprised me. Ultimately, I wrote the piece for an online Libertarian magazine. This argument has been made elsewhere, notably in "PC, M.D.: How Political Correctness Is Corrupting Medicine," by Sally Satel, a Yale psychiatrist.

        On another occasion, an editor at Homemaker's hired me to write
a feature about the division of housework. I gathered up statistics and anecdotal evidence and found that men were helping and were particularly involved with childcare.

Madame Editor was grim. She told me to "find evidence" men didn't help, but not before going off on a rant about her second or third husband never having lifted a finger.

        She instructed me to interview a friend of hers whose husband
was "useless," and specifically told me to begin my piece with a description of this woman "having a meltdown." I attempted second and third drafts, neither of which conveyed sufficient misery for the editor. I gave up. The story appeared in the magazine, bylined by another, replete with meltdowns and lazy lunks, months later.

        Still another time, I proposed a story to several magazines. I
wanted to write about having a mother who was in her 40s when I was born. My focus was positive: about how much it benefited me and how close I am to my mum.  Homemaker's bit on the idea.

        I got back, with the first draft, a request that I add some
statistics about older mothers and birth defects, the "dangers" of old eggs, and that surely I could think of instances when my mother was "too exhausted" to play with me. I refused but was promised the story would run, nonetheless. It didn't. An e-mail and a call from me went unanswered by the magazine, so I sold the story to the Life section of a newspaper for Mother's Day.

        And that was the last time I bothered with women's magazines -
except to read them. But I go for the fluff. I'd rather read the story under the headline that says "Six Ways to Sexier Lips" than the one under "You're Going to Die Barren and Alone and Even If You Don't Your Husband will Probably Leave You" any day.

When embarking or disembarking a plane, or entering a foreign country, people ought to have the expectation of limited privacy. We expect, when we travel, that we will be asked questions, asked to show documents and possibly be searched. Since Sept. 11, 2001, this is not simply something we should expect, but something we should insist upon.

       But the implementation of US-VISIT last week, the new system by which many visitors to the United States will be photographed and biometrically fingerprinted, has not brought out the best in everyone. One Brazilian official made the requisite - and dumb - Nazi analogy and insisted that Americans in turn be fingerprinted when entering Brazil. This caused an American Airlines pilot to lift his middle finger when being photographed at São Paulo International Airport last week. (The emphatic pilot agreed to pay a $12,775 fine in exchange for not being charged.)

       Canadians are exempt from the fingerprinting unless traveling on certain kinds of visas. But previously able to visit the US with only a driver's license, Canadians, since Sept. 11, are now told it is "highly recommended" they bring along a passport. When you've had it easy, any condition can seem like a huge infringement.

       Fingerprinting carries with it any number of negative connotations, which may explain people's ire. But we are not on "Law & Order." And is it really such a violation? Where travel is concerned, I think I am knowledgeable, having lived in France, Japan, and Turkey and having traveled to many other countries. I was once even subjected to a grueling luggage search by El Al (including an interrogation and boot removal), fairly embarrassing at the time, but which ended with a cheerful apology from a cute soldier with a gigantic gun. I looked at it as a small price to pay for safety. El Al has not had a hijacking in more than 30 years.

       In the mid-1990s I worked in a Japanese car-part factory, not far from Mount Fuji. My second day there I spent a fast-paced morning at the local police station being photographed and fingerprinted for what was commonly referred to as my "gaijin card" (foreigner card.) Smack-dab on it was my fingerprint. I was told to take it everywhere and to hand it back to authorities when I left Japan for good. I do not remember feeling as though I had been robbed of my civil liberties.

       Perhaps this is because I had just arrived in Japan after teaching in an Istanbul high school. While my overall experience there was invaluable, it made me uncomfortable that the Turkish version of a gaijin card stated my religion. This I now think was far more a violation of my civil liberties than a fingerprint. After all, one leaves one's fingerprints everywhere, but whether anyone else should know my faith should be up to me, except under the most extreme of circumstances. But when in Rome....I filled my card out and showed it at borders and airports, and in other places on the odd occasion I was asked to show it.

       The US-VISIT system avoids the randomness of what I experienced overseas. By fingerprinting citizens of certain countries across the board, the possibility that persons will be singled out by ethnicity is avoided. By checking against terrorist watch lists, Americans are safer - as are tourists and foreign workers within US borders.What should concern us is just how effective US-VISIT will be. A two-month test program in Atlanta caught 21 people (out of 20,000) wanted on various charges, including rape and immigration fraud, so surely this system can limit crime. But will it prevent another Sept. 11?

       What's certain is that no measure is perfect. US-VISIT is a reasonable response to circumstances brought about in 2001.We have been forced to try out new tactics and forced, sadly, to forfeit trust. And that is what we need to remember as we curse the airport lineups and biometric screens - the ease with which people used to travel has been taken away by Osama bin Laden, not Tom Ridge or George Bush.

With a simplicity that might make the Democratic candidates for 2004 turn green, Canada will get - sans primaries or being yelled at by Chris Matthews - a new leader on Friday. Paul Martin, Canada's former finance minister, was crowned - with virtually no competition - the new head of the Liberal Party in mid- November. He takes over as Prime Minister Jean Chrétien steps down after 10 (it seemed like more) years.

       Mr. Martin is not required to call an election until 2005 but will probably not wait that long. It is doubtful he'll lose, as there is no effective opposition to the seemingly always in power Liberal Party.

       Still, the change in leaders represents, if not a sea change in policy, then at least a change in style. Martin is mature and diplomatic, less fractious than Mr. Chrétien. But as he has had little opposition within or outside his party, he has not been required to say much regarding his beliefs. One thing he has said, though, is that improving US-Canada relations will be a priority.

       Not that that should be difficult after the climate of overt hostility created by Chrétien. Under Chrétien's leadership, a federal politician referred - publicly - to Americans as "bastards," and his communications director called President Bush a "moron." All to the obvious delight of many Canadians. Chrétien blamed Sept. 11 on Western - aka American - "greed" and his transport minister, David Collenette, publicly mourned the passing of the Soviet Union because there'd be no one around to check American "bullying."

       Were that not enough, Chrétien gleefully told NATO leaders that "I make it my policy" not to do what the United States wants. So there. He also shook the hand of the Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad, shortly after the latter made his infamous anti-Semitic comments in October.

       Chrétien and Martin have had their own share of conflict, culminating in Martin's being booted out of the federal Cabinet in 2002. (Chrétien said Martin quit. Martin maintains he was fired.) The official line was that the two men could no longer work together, but comments about Chrétien's "megalomania" did get bandied about. Chrétien was said to be angry that - according to him - Martin was already angling for the job of Liberal Party leader.

       Regardless, during Martin's term as finance minister, Canada recorded five consecutive budget surpluses and erased a $42 billion deficit. (Prior to his involvement in politics, Martin, the son of another Liberal Party politician, was a success in the private sector, as chairman and CEO of Canada Steamship Lines.)

       The cost-cutting was done at the expense, in large part, of the Canadian military, such as it is or was. But Martin's choices most likely came from the overall spirit of the government he was serving. While Canada does have troops in Afghanistan, Chrétien, after much waffling, announced two nights before the start of the war in Iraq that Canada would give no support there.

       A recent report from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario, suggests that Canada couldn't have offered much anyway, and that in 10 years, without reprioritizing, Canada will not have a military at all. Currently, Romania has more power and influence than Canada does. The electorate, however, doesn't seem worried. As primary beneficiary of America, its neighbor, Canada has the privilege of luxuriating in social programs while the US spends on weapons and sacrifices lives. Martin has promised nothing regarding Iraq, but has said he will increase defense spending. He has also expressed enthusiasm for the missile defense shield endorsed by President Bush.

       Another of the few things Martin has already committed to is improving border security in order to quell US concerns about what are perceived to be Canada's lax immigration and refugee policies. He has intimated he will, toward this end, develop an office similar to the US Homeland Security Department. Whether it will be color-coded remains to be seen, but it's a step in the right direction.

       Martin has called the deportation to Syria by the US of Syrian-born Canadian citizen Maher Arar "unacceptable." Mr. Arar, arrested in 2002 at JFK, was traveling on a Canadian passport and, now returned to Canada, says he was tortured in Syria. Martin says he would not rule out an inquiry into the case.

       Other common issues of concern are softwood lumber and the mad-cow scare. Canadian lumber producers must contend with a 27 percent tariff, despite rulings from groups involved with both NAFTA and the WTO taking Canada's side on this matter. And, since one Canadian cow was found to be infected with mad-cow disease earlier this year, Canadian beef producers have lost more than $3 billion. Though cross-border shipments of steaks, burger patties, and roasts have almost returned to pre-panic levels, shipments of live cattle are still being slowed.

       There seems little doubt that most of this smoke can be cleared away fairly quickly if Martin douses the fires created by his predecessor.

       Days after taking over the Liberal Party leadership, he made a comment to the effect that he wouldn't let Washington push him around. But you have to say stuff like that if you want to lead Canada. It doesn't mean you have to behave childishly.

       That giant gush of air you might feel Friday could be several million Canadians breathing a sigh of relief that their new prime minister at least won't embarrass them. We Canadians can be fairly sure we won't see Paul Martin shaking Mahathir Mohamad's hand or stamping his feet. As another Canadian, Shania Twain, sings, the only way is up from here.

       There are those days when -- lost in a sea of debt and worry -- one feels one is a failure. But then there are those days when -- looking at things from a fresh perspective -- one knows without a doubt that one is a failure.

       Last week I read that my former classmate, Mabel Wisse Smit, was set to become a princess.Yes, a princess. Tiaras, carriages, state visits, dowdy suits, great big hats and all. And not of some cut-rate little kingdom like Luxembourg or Liechtenstein, nor of some country where the king rides a bicycle and does his own grocery shopping (like my mother's country, Norway), nor of some country from which the royal family is in exile, spending their days on the Riviera, waiting for whatever regime chased them out to crumble (too many to name). Mabel is set to marry Prince Johan Friso of the Netherlands, the second son of Queen Beatrix. She will be, by marriage, a member of the royal family of a country that behaved nobly during the Second World War, that is at once square and hip, that has brought us great chocolate, beautiful flowers and brilliant painters. That's not too shabby.

       Many full moons in Paris ago -- 1986 -- I was enrolled in a French course at the Sorbonne. It was designed for foreigners and mostly filled with young adult girls. Our teacher was Madame Amzallag, an elegant Frenchwoman who had once lived in Texas. We all found it difficult to picture Madame in Texas. Imagine Fanny Ardant home on the range. I was the only Canadian in class. There was one girl from Chicago and one from Yugoslavia, of whom I have painful memories. With the face of an angel she would stress to us that she was Serbian, not Yugoslav. And she was disgusted with how her country was being "overrun" by gypsies, Muslims and so forth, all of whom, she would say, unselfconsciously, in her beautifully broken English, were "breedink like the rabbits." Ms. Chicago and I would cringe when she spoke like this, wondering what it all meant. Sadly, we found out what it all meant a few years later.

       There were assorted others from Italy, Switzerland, the U.K., Israel, Mexico, Greece, even Ethiopia, a mess of Germans and two from the Netherlands. One of the Dutch girls was Mabel Wisse Smit, whom I remember because a) I have an appallingly good memory (no matter how hard I try there is much I cannot forget) and b) I thought she had the most excellent first name ever. Even now "Mabel" is on my shortlist for a daughter's name.

       Most of us worked as au pair girls. This meant that in the morning we memorized Saint Amant and Villon and complicated points of French grammar; that in the afternoon we got yelled at by Frenchwomen because we screwed up the vinaigrette or -- quelle horreur -- ate peanut butter in front of the children; and that in the evening we got drunk, got lovesick and missed our parents. Perhaps surprisingly, the world-class partiers in the class were not the Dutch. That distinction went to the Germans; some of us would joke that if you could no longer jackboot your way across Europe, there were other ways to crush and conquer.

       Mabel has been described as a "lauded human rights worker." My clearest memory of her was a day when the Ethiopian girl was giving a presentation about Ethiopian cuisine. Mabel spent the entire talk giggling and whispering with our other Dutch classmate. I gather that was before she learned about the human right of Third World citizens to be listened to when they're discussing the food of their people. I believe that's in the Geneva Convention.

       But no matter. She has put me to shame. A brief comparison of Mabel's life with mine makes that clear. Mabel has been linked to Klaas Bruinsma, a Dutch drug kingpin. I once dated a guy who took a lot of drugs. She admits to spending nights on his luxury boat. I once dated a guy who liked to canoe. Bruinsma was murdered in 1991. I have wanted to murder people. Mabel, it is rumoured, "liaised" with the then-married Mohamed Sacirbey, Bosnia's ambassador to the United Nations (now accused of embezzling from Bosnia's UN mission). I once dated a guy named Mohamed. Famous French do-gooder Bernard Kouchner wrote an open letter defending Mabel when her past became public and created problems for her. One of my exes has agreed to be a job reference for me. Mabel was the executive director of the Open Society Institute. I once dated a guy who was fired as executive director of something. Mabel helps children who've had limbs blown off in war. I once dated a guy who only had one eye. Mabel is often described in the press as "a beautiful, blond idealist." I'm blond. And I look OK sometimes. And when my sister uses our mother's handicapped licence to park in a handicapped spot I shake my head and tell her to "at least pretend to have a limp."

       Mabel is going to marry a prince. Mabel's prince loves her so much he gave up his right to be king when his fiancee's history made headlines and upset the Dutch. Consequently, she may not get to be called "Princess Mabel."

       Gosh! Who's really the failure here? Good thing we never stayed in touch. Of all the royal weddings I get invited to, that's one I'd be ashamed to attend.

An Islamic court in Nigeria's northern city of Katsina is expected to hand down its decision on the appeal of Amina Lawal Thursday. Ms. Lawal was sentenced in March 2002 under Islamic law - or sharia - to be buried up to her neck in sand and stoned to death for committing adultery. The carrying out of her sentence was postponed until next January so she could nurse her baby (sharia gets some things right) and Lawal's lawyer used the time to appeal.

       Sharia exists in varying degrees across the Muslim world. There are fairly open, nuanced versions, where a stoning or a beheading would be rare, and there is the rigidity of Saudi Arabia or northern Nigeria, where the majority of the population is Muslim. In countries with secular governments, sharia codes can be adopted by Muslims as a matter of personal choice, much like biblical teachings here in the West.

       Nigeria's southern states are predominantly Christian, and President Olusegun Obasanjo is a Christian. He has said that his government would not dispute the rights of the north to do as it sees fit. He has received, in previous elections, support from northern Nigeria. Still, he cannot be indifferent to international outrage over Lawal's case.

       But where is that outrage - particularly on our side of the planet? Almost three years ago, a teenage single mother in Nigeria was sentenced to - and received - 100 lashes for adultery. The publicity surrounding her case was extensive. While Amnesty International and women of the African National Congress have petitioned Mr. Obasanjo and marched for Lawal, what have women's groups, such as NOW been doing? The latter issued a press release, and - in its characteristically misplaced sense of equality - expressed concern that "clearly, a man participated in this and yet only Amina Lawal faces death." The Feminist Majority Foundation have been more vocal about Lawal, but other groups, as well as news shows and op-ed pages, have focused on Arnold Schwarze negger's "misogyny" and 24-hour coverage of the absurd Ten Commandments spectacle in Alabama.

       Since the Sept. 11 attacks, we in the West have, I believe, been emasculated when it comes to touching Islam. It is good, of course, that efforts have been made not to demonize an entire faith. No one wants a repeat of the internment of Japanese-Americans, for example. But these past two years have seen something different. A much-reprinted article - particularly on political websites - concerning Lawal, written by two leaders of the Nigerian group Baobab for Women's Human Rights, states that "dominant colonialist discourse and the mainstream international media have presented Islam (and Africa) as the barbaric and savage Other. Please do not buy into this."

       One must agree it is wrong to suggest that Muslims are all primitive. But to say that what might happen to Lawal has nothing to do with Islam is like suggesting the Crusades had nothing to do with Christianity, or the Holocaust nothing to do with Germans.

       This multicultural nonjudgmentalism almost amounts to Western self-loathing - a refusal or reluctance on our part to call out anything negative beyond our shores. It was evident in the "peace" movement earlier this year which suggested we have no "right" to bother with anything outside our borders because we are not perfect ourselves, and that imperfection, it is asserted, brought about Sept. 11.

       A painful display of this was the reaction to the riots over last December's Miss World contest in Nigeria. Not only was attention diverted from Lawal's case, but renowned Jurassic-feminists such as Germaine Greer and Glenda Jackson blamed the uproar on the horrors of pageants - rather than on the intolerance of Islamic fundamentalism.

       It goes without saying that a culture responsible for "Sex and the City" and McDonalds is flawed. But does that make us blind or impotent? One hopes not.

       Sharia is only one aspect of Islam, but it is very real. Ask Amina Lawal. She is being tried under the intolerant influence of what the West faces - hers is one part of a war we all face between free thought and fundamentalism.

       In the 1990s I had the great fortune to teach high school in Istanbul. Some of my Turkish students stay in touch with me. Earlier this year I received an e-mail from one telling me of a stoning in southeastern Turkey. An unmarried pregnant woman, Semse Allak, had been killed to restore the "honor" of her family. In some ways, Turkey is more secular than Canada or the US - but regional influences there allow premedieval realities to rear their ugly heads. Shortly before Ms. Allak's funeral in June, Turkey's parliament approved a bill that, among other things, forced judges to impose full sentences for honor killings.This legal change was made as part of Turkey's effort to secure acceptance into the EU - which indicates that external pressure does make a difference.

       Think what that external pressure could do for Amina Lawal if her stoning sentence is upheld Thursday.

Shortly after the war in Afghanistan began, I appeared on a Canadian TV show, in which a caller opined that George W. Bush was acting "just like John Wayne, just like a cowboy."Now, I could, and maybe should, have pointed out that there's nothing wrong with acting like John Wayne, or for that matter, like a cowboy. Instead, I mumbled something about Mr. Bush having waited a month after Sept. 11 before beginning operations in Afghanistan, hardly a hair-trigger response.

       "The Searchers," arguably the greatest American movie of the 20th century, was a Wayne vehicle.   Other great Wayne westerns include "She Wore a Yellow Ribbon" and "Rio Bravo."  But people snicker when you defend the western genre, largely out of snobbery and ignorance, the same reasons the term "cowboy" inspires such contempt.And cowboys were - and are, for those who remain - an integral part of American history, vital to the development of the Southwest and among America's most hardworking and underappreciated. And, like most things purely American, they were anything but, having roots elsewhere.

       When Spanish conquerors in Mexico "hired" Mexican Indians to work on their ranches, much of the imagery we know was born - broad-brimmed hats (sombreros) to protect them from the sun, chaparejos (chaps) to protect them from cacti, la reata (which became a lariat) and, ultimately, the original idea of a brave man facing the elements. The vaqueros lived lonely lives and tended herds, as would the original American cowboys, the men who drove cattle to the railheads in Texas in the mid-19th century.

       American cowboys were, like all things American, ethnically diverse - a fact perhaps not reflected enough in the picture we have of them. And, on the frontier of the time, a cowboy's enemies included not only nature but also Indians trying to protect their hunting grounds. A cowboy may have wanted to simply do his job and live in peace, but he rarely was granted that privilege. In short, cowboys were not only not so bad, they were good. Think of some of the historical and cultural clichés one could aim at other nations.

       Let's start with my own people, Canadians. I would much rather be called a "cowboy" than a coureur de bois. The latter were unlicensed fur traders in 17th-century Canada, who stimulated the fur trade, but also helped deplete the beaver population and introduced liquor to our Indians. Their intentions may have been good, but....

       And what of the French? What if everyone went around calling Jacques Chirac a "Jacobin," conjuring up images of beheaded members of the French aristocracy and people stabbed in their bathtubs? "Oh, Chirac, he's such a Jacobin," we could chuckle, as he uttered yet another condescending, anti-American comment, accompanied by an impressive Gallic shrug. Better yet, what if we called Mr. Chirac a "mime"? "Oh, that Jacques, there he goes, walking against the wind again!" Mind you, the idea that Chirac might actually stop speaking is unthinkable.

       And Gerhard Schröder? Oy. I wouldn't know where to begin. We could call him a "Vandal," or a "Visigoth" or ... well, there are some 20th-century German stereotypes I can think of. But Silvio Berlusconi took care of that earlier this summer. So again, "cowboy" wins out.

       What I like about Bush is the straight talking, the refreshingly open crankiness, the lack of pretense. Even when he mispronounces something, I find it infinitely preferable to the Clinton-era debate about the definition of "is" or of "sex." Bush may not be a scholar, but I suspect even a cowboy knows what both of those words mean. So when, in June, he suggested he would appoint a coordinator to "ride herd" on the Middle East peace process, and BBC commentators went wild, alternately mocking the president and calling his comment "patronizing," all I could think was, get along, little dogies! Do we not want someone keeping the herd in line along that trail to Middle Eastern utopia?

       And perhaps the best defense George W. Bush could use against the Euro-snobs, and his own cowboy-phobic citizens, would be to say as much. "I'm a cowboy? And? What's your point?" Of course, if he did that, people would dismiss it as "typical cowboy talk."

It seems odd to tell people they are now free, under the law, to have
romantic and sexual relationships, but that others would prefer that
they still can't get married. Even after 5, 10, 20, 30 years together.
Such is the current reality facing homosexuals in the US.

    The Supreme Court ruling in Lawrence v. Texas last month gave
homosexuals a boost to their right to live a private life as they see
fit, while at the same time highlighting in what way that right stands a
little bit short of the finish line.

    Gay marriages are legal in Belgium and the Netherlands, and were
recently legalized in the Canadian province of Ontario. Other provinces
have followed suit, and Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chrétien has
announced he will draft a bill giving legal recognition to same-sex
marriages throughout Canada. In the US, only Vermont recognizes "civil
unions" between same-sex couples, giving them many of the same rights
and responsibilities as married couples, but calling this rose by another
name. Opponents of gay marriage may ask, what's in a name, after all?
Large corporations increasingly are offering benefits to gay partners,
and more and more communities are seeing firsthand that the gay couple
next door with the 2.3 kids and the Lab and the minivan is not unlike
their own family.

    Surely relative acceptance and "commitment ceremonies" and shared
health insurance ought to be enough, no?

    Well, no. If someone decided blue-eyed people couldn't have
"marriage," but would be marginalized with only a "civil union," I'd be
mighty angry. Because there is growing evidence suggesting that gay
people no more choose to be gay than I chose to have blue eyes.

    But our governments are here - in theory, anyway - to represent all
of us, to give all constituents equal importance, to give us equal
rights. Which makes Senate majority leader Bill Frist's comments
supporting an amendment to the Constitution banning same-sex marriages
puzzling. "I very much feel that marriage is a sacrament," said the
Tennessee Republican.

    As far as I know, marriage is a sacrament only in the Roman
Catholic, High Anglican, and Eastern Orthodox churches. Protestants
generally don't regard it as such. And what of the many US citizens who
are Sikh, Jewish, or Muslim? What about atheists? Will their marriages
not be recognized?

    Western nations are supposed to be secularly run societies, living
by a separation of church and state. For a church to refuse to recognize
gay marriage is its own business, and ought to be respected. But if you
don't like it, don't join that church. Or join another. I see no
contradiction in a society where both gay marriage and freedom to voice
opposition to gay marriage coexist.

    I often feel the natural place for a gay person is on the right.
Conservatives should be all about an individual's right to his or her
own life, his or her own business, without the interference of
hypersensitive, offended others. And it follows that true conservatives
ought to support gay marriage, particularly those partial to family
values. It's difficult to argue that society doesn't benefit from stable
relationships. And what better way to encourage stable relationships
than to support gay marriage? It is hard not to snicker at the idea that
same-sex marriages would threaten straight ones. We straight people in
Canada and the US have done a good job of bringing the divorce rate
close to 50 percent all on our own. Rather than weaken straight
marriages, gay marriages may strengthen them.

    Being gay is not, I imagine, simply about sex. When a gay man
mentions his boyfriend, he's not flaunting his sexuality, as the accusation often goes, any more than I am when I mention mine. Being a homosexual is, I would guess, about most of the things being a heterosexual is about,
including the pain and joy of being in love.

    And why, oh why, should only straight people suffer through the
family fights, expense, pettiness, grudges, and stress of planning a
wedding?

        Last week it was determined that the pilots involved in the
friendly-fire deaths of four Canadian soldiers in Afghanistan would not
be court-martialed. The news was greeted the way most things involving
our relationship with the United States are here: with hyperbole and
paranoia. There were the predictable "they got away with murder"
comments. Murder? Manslaughter, maybe. There were even those who
suggested the big, bad US was punishing Canada for our lack of support
for Operation Iraqi Freedom. Did I mention paranoia?

    Canadians have a "bland" rep. We are bland ... but also whiny,
particularly when the cool kids ignore us. When George Bush gave his
speech to Congress after Sept. 11, and neglected to specifically thank
Canada for its support, the "snub" made headlines. It did not seem to
occur to us that a country under attack might have other concerns.

    The decision not to court martial, looked at realistically and not
through hysteria-colored glasses, is sensible. It is highly unlikely the
US pilots, if court-martialed, would be found guilty. A not guilty verdict
would allow them a future of promotions and flying. Convicting a pilot
in wartime of manslaughter is tantamount to convicting a driver at
LeMans of speeding. The general who made the choice against
courts-martial said the pilots would face punishments decided
"administratively." In Canadian newspapers, this has been portrayed as a
slap on the wrist. But it is a slap likely to keep both pilots from
flying again.

    Canadian reaction to this event has been a drop in the bucket
compared with the fury that followed the actual deaths of the soldiers.
Coverage of their funerals was undignified (at least by Canadian
standards of hype). Their remains were dragged across TV screens as
every politician who could, managed a sound bite. The deaths of four
young men doing their job - a job where death is a real risk - were used
as political fodder for anti-American ax wielders.

    A prominent Canadian politician expressed her "rage" at how we are
"taken for granted" by the US. One could suggest that we take America for
granted, as we will have to depend on the US for help should we be
threatened.

    More than 100 Canadian soldiers have died in peacekeeping operations
in the past 50 years, some from enemy fire. No over-the-top funeral
coverage for them, no politicians, little media. But those 100 did not
die at the hands of Americans. Prime Minister Jean Chrétien, commenting
on the decision not to prosecute the pilots said: "I'm not in a position
to comment on systems of justice in another nation."

    Rare shyness from a man, who, only a month ago, criticized the
deficits posted by the "right wing" Bush administration. "I'm a Canadian
Liberal; he [Bush] is a Southern conservative," said Mr. Chrétien, going
on to enumerate differences of opinion between the two men.

     But, our generous leader added, "that has nothing to do with him
personally." Chrétien granted that Bush was one of the few world leaders
with whom he could talk baseball.

    The message was clear. And it is a reflection of what your average
Canadian will tell you. We are pretty smart and sophisticated, while you
are nothing but a bunch of redneck, gun-toting warmongers. In the past
year, a Canadian member of parliament and an aide to our prime minister
have, respectively, called Americans "bastards" and Bush "a moron."

    This smug attitude has been magnified on "Talking to Americans," a
segment of a popular Canadian comedy show in which a "reporter" goes to the US to show the stupidity of Americans by asking them questions such as who our prime minister is, or what our national bird is. The silliest answers would be broadcast - like that of the man at Harvard sandbagged by the question of whether the seal slaughter in Saskatchewan should be stopped. His compassionate answer: "Yes." It was funny, of course, as would be something called "Talking to Mexicans," but we wouldn't mock Mexicans.

    In fact, a 2001 poll by Canada's Dominion Institute revealed that
Americans knew their own history and civics far better than did
Canadians. But we don't dwell on that up here.

    An American friend of mine - living in Canada - says that in the US,
greed is acceptable but envy is a sin. In Canada it is just the opposite.
I would suggest that envy is our national sport. And no one inspires
more envy in us than our southern neighbor. It is a shame, because any
legitimate gripes we may have about America get lost in a sea of
childish wolf-crying.

    Hillary Clinton and Martha Stewart are both driven, powerful,
talented, blondish women. Both have suffered marital woes, both have one daughter. Both find their every move vivisected. With so much in common, it's odd how far apart public perceptions of them are.

    Martha, indicted Wednesday in connection with an insider trading
scandal, has been demonized. And even before her legal woes began, her
leftover Hanukkah-candle bikini waxes were fodder for comics everywhere, a unifying factor in a world of conflict. Feminists derided her for the double whammy: making women feel inferior if they couldn't keep up with her horrifying combination of skill and energy, and suggesting - oh, the humanity - that looking after a home might be a worthwhile pursuit.

    Hillary is about to release her mightily remunerated autobiography,
"Living History," the cover of which looks like a self-titled debut
album. But she's no frivolous entertainer, of course. She's devoted
herself to worthwhile causes - her husband's career, her career - not
silly nonsense like baking cookies and hosting teas. She has made that abundantly clear.

    And overall, she has been treated generously, kindly, even fawningly
at times, by the same crowd who gleefully tear into poor Martha. To be
sure, Hillary has her critics, but the attacks on her nowhere near
approach the vilification Martha has suffered - unjustly, I feel. And
the curious combination of victim/aggressor Hillary appears to go
mind-bogglingly unchallenged.

    Breathless celebrities extol Hillary's value as a role model for
young women, but only occasionally will someone uncomfortably admit they like Martha. Had I a daughter, I don't know how I'd feel about her
looking up to the former first lady. To willingly continue in a marriage
where you're routinely humiliated as your husband gropes about outside
your marriage is an odd thing to emulate. Hillary may well have her
reasons for sticking it out with Bill. There can't be any question
they're devoted to (now adult) Chelsea, but surely children are better
off not living a lie.

    It has been suggested that Hillary's primary motive for hanging on
to the mister has to do with ambition and appearance. I have nothing
against ambition, per se. But when it comes at such a high price?
Hillary, sadly, fits in well with the world of victimology women have
created for themselves. They love her, perhaps, because they can relate
- for all our progress, we still can make stupid choices and then blame
others for our unhappiness.

    In "Living History," Hillary claims shock and betrayal when Bill
confessed to the Lewinsky affair. Is she being disingenuous, or is love truly blind (and deaf and dumb), or is a Yale education not worth much?

    Martha, on the other hand, liberated from her philandering husband,
forged on alone and created an empire. It's true, her divorce was
acrimonious. But there's something more authentic, refreshingly human,
about Martha's reactions to betrayal, particularly when compared with
Hillary's Stepfordesque, tight-lipped denials and buck-passing.

    Throughout the ImClone scandal, Martha has so far not blamed anyone,
saying the justice system will prove her innocent. Part of Martha's
image problem might be jealousy, or the class factor.

    Where the Clinton marriage has been parodied as a trailer park saga,
Martha's life, on the surface, looks like a John Cheever story. In
reality she's the hard-working daughter of immigrants. She has a good
deal of humor about herself, too, something she rarely gets credit for.
Before the ImClone scandal, she regularly read disparaging Top Ten lists
about herself on David Letterman's Late Show. She has also always been
beautiful - since her teen modeling days. We've seen Hillary, on the
other hand, through big glasses, mousy hair, headbands, and frumpy gowns - mistakes most of us have made.

    That may give credence to what I've long thought: Feminism has
liberated men in a much greater way than women. While men are freed from many of their previous responsibilities and expectations, women are
still at each other's throats, and we still hate the Prom Queen.

Apparently, I am not alone. An e-mail survey of friends revealed all kinds of driving angst. The No. 1 fear was making left turns, followed by freeway driving, parallel parking, going through intersections, and various kinds of lane changes. Hamish, in his late 40s, describes parallel parking as "torture" and "proof that I'm in touch with my feminine side, since it seems I have no spatial reasoning. Whenever I'm finished a parallel park I'm convinced I've got about an inch in front and behind and beside me to move, and then I get out and see I'm three feet away from the curb with plenty of room between my car and the others."

A girlfriend in her late 30s calls left turns her equivalent of a World War One foxhole, as in "there are no atheists in foxholes," or for that matter, at intersections where you're turning left. "It's something that if I absolutely can't avoid I'll do, but once it's done I have to turn into the nearest gas station or mall and just slow down my breathing." One of my brothers complains of the overwhelming feeling of nausea that comes over him when other cars pass him ... only he means when they pass him coming from the other direction in the opposite lane.

Toronto psychiatrist Dr. Irvin Wolkoff says that driving-related fears are not peculiar. "You'd have to be pretty creative to come up with a reason to be afraid of socks. But there's no creativity required in being afraid of any aspect of driving. It's dangerous out there." Fear of left turns or freeways, says Wolkoff, are completely logical. "Think of what's going on with a left turn or out on the highway. One second of distraction and you could be roadkill."

Sy Cohn, the Driving Therapist, whose Web site, http://www.phobiafree.com, offers a haven for those plagued by driving-related phobias, treats people in person and over the phone from his home in Southern California. Cohn -- who worked as a professional driving instructor for years -- is a licensed marriage and family therapist and has been helping people since 1964 "in the car and at the office," as his site says, to overcome all kinds of anxiety, including obsessive-compulsive disorders and post-traumatic stress issues. Cohn makes house calls and does phone sessions, and his site is the hub of an international (from countries as far afield as Australia, the U.K., Canada and the U.S.) online support group.

He also offers a Survival Kit, which consists of CDs, affirmations (examples: "I am a good, safe driver," "I now have the white light around me and the car for protection") and a video. With the help of his South American wife, Maria Andrade, he also offers bilingual consultations. For in-car work, Cohn will have people go over and over whatever intersection or stretch of road scares them. And then he will have his charge stop for a few minutes and do relaxation exercises. "That way they'll develop a more positive association with being in a car."

Cohn says that left turns, intersections in general and freeways seem to be the biggest bogeymen in the minds of his clients, "but I see all kinds of things." He also says there is no one reason for people's road fears. "Some people are good drivers who have never had an accident, but they have panic attacks. Some people have had accidents when they were at the wheel or when someone else was.

There's no set answer."

Well, almost no set answer. "There wouldn't be a need for therapists," says Cohn, "if there wasn't such a powerful human resistance to change." That, he says, is behind most people's anxieties, be they on the road, in the workplace, in their living room or anywhere else.

"Usually when I treat people for a driving phobia, I'll find that recently there's been some kind of big change in their lives. And that doesn't mean a bad one. People will also resist positive change, healthy relationships and so forth, if they are accustomed to the opposite. And that can show up behind the wheel."

One of Cohn's success stories, Susan Melanson, found that phone sessions with Cohn (she lives in Oahu, Hawaii) helped her overcome her fear of freeway driving, but not without a few tears first.

"There were some underlying psychological problems ... and we worked through them." She now finds freeway driving "exhilarating, not frightening," and confesses she tends toward a heavy foot.  Some 20 years ago, Cohn saw a need for driving therapy "since no one else was addressing these things." And, he says, there is nobody he's ever seen that he couldn't help. "The only requirement I have is that they really want help."

He doesn't promise a cure, though. "I can help you manage and handle your anxieties, but if I cured you of all that you feel, you'd probably have to have a lobotomy or be in a coma. You can't 'cure' people of their feelings. It is a question of seeing things with new eyes, of changing your mind." At any rate, concludes Cohn, there's no shame in your fears. "People with these phobias generally have higher than average intelligence, are perfectionist and very hard on themselves."

Tom Furlong, the regional director for Nova Scotia's Young Drivers of Canada schools, concurs with Cohn about "curing" people. "You teach them to manage their phobia if they can't conquer it," he says. "One way is for a driver to plan a different route or to avoid driving at certain times of day or to select their lanes early on. I've seen people drive around the block 27 times rather than parallel park, and if it's that big a problem, then fine, just don't parallel park." Furlong says that many drivers with fears simply weren't taught to drive correctly in the first place. "Then you just have to break things down for them into little segments which eventually they can put all together."

Echoing Wolkoff, he says, "It makes perfect sense to fear a left turn in traffic." Furlong has seen, he says, his share of "drivers with death grips on the wheel. And that's another problem. People think if they don't hang on tight the car will spin out of control. It's a question of teaching them they control the car, not the other way around."

One thing is certain, says Furlong (whose 85-year-old mother still drives, though "selectively"). Most young drivers who come into his school have no fears. "They haven't had enough experience to develop any." But, he says, he sure sees it in people who have been around the block a few times.

Copyright National Post 2002 All Rights Reserved.

So three weeks ago she set up the Web site with its plain-speaking tag line "Save Karyn! Help her pay off her credit card debt!" On the site's home page is the admonition that says it all, "Credit cards are bad!" A letter from Karyn explaining how she "got into this mess" says that when she sank into credit card hell she was "actually helping out the economy." She points out that she is "really nice" and admits that there is nothing in it for us if we help her, except perhaps a boost in our general karma.

In one section, frequently asked questions are answered. Question one is "Is your site for real?" It is, she says, and yes, in answer to another question, her debt has been consolidated. In sections like "The Daily Buck" and "Weekly Update," Karyn tells visitors to her site about ways she has saved money -- giving up on her previous frivolous ways (buying hair colour at the pharmacy instead of going to a salon, shopping at the dollar store) -- and about plans she has for making money (seeing if she qualifies for a PMS study). Online thanks are given to those who help and -- in an inspired gesture of atonement --there is a section devoted to some of the items that got Karyn into debt, items she is now auctioning off on eBay -- an "authentic wool Burberry shoulder bag/purse," for example.

A new section called "Good to Know" will go up this week, filling visitors in on some of the interesting information people have sent her. For example, after Karyn mentioned she was saving money by giving up bottled water in favour of a Brita filter, she received an e-mail from "some New York water safety guy telling me New York City water is the safest water in the world. And that's definitely good to know." Another tip she'll share online is that washing your sheets in vinegar will get the smell of cat pee out.

Last November, Karyn lost her job -- "nothing to do with September 11th, I'm not a victim of that, I want to make that clear" -- and spent nearly five months unemployed until she got a new job (in television) but one that paid considerably less and demanded a lot more time than her previous job had. The debt, though, started long before her employment woes. "I had a great job for my first two years in New York, and I thought, 'I can afford a $500 Gucci bag, I can afford Prada shoes,' and, you know, I couldn't." New York City is one of the reasons she's in financial trouble, says Karyn.

"This city is like one big shopping mall. And my mother always told me, 'At your next job you'll make more money,' so I never worried." A month ago, after Karyn's roommate told her he saw a piece of paper tacked up somewhere that said "I need $7,000," she toyed with the idea of putting out flyers saying "Help me pay off my debt." "I figured there are millions of people in New York, and if a fraction of them just gave me a buck each, I'd be fine." The pamphlet idea got tossed though, and Karyn vowed she wouldn't ask her parents to bail her out. "They always have, but I didn't want that." Instead, she put a notice up on craigslist.org, saying "Wanted, $20,000." The next day, she recalls, she got 15 e-mails, but craigslist took it down, saying they didn't post "things like this." She tried again and the same thing happened. So she created the Web site, along with a P.O. box to receive money. The first week, Karyn says, SaveKaryn got 100 hits, the second week over 300 hits and this past week over 20,000.

While Karyn tries to answer all her e-mails -- coming from as far afield as Norway and Australia --she is also trying to hang on to her anonymity. At this point, her parents don't know about the site ("They're not very Web savvy") and only a handful of close friends do. Her mother, she says, would find it funny, but she isn't so sure about her dad. "He's very conservative, very Midwestern. He's very against credit cards and wouldn't be happy with me not working for the money."

Some of the creepier e-mails she has received have convinced her that remaining anonymous would be a good idea. "I got one that said 'Don't think I can't find you. How would you like to open your door and be staring down the barrel of a gun?' " Others have been nasty, but in a minor league kind of way. "Mostly I get 'Why don't you get a job, stop panhandling,' all that stuff." But she gets encouraging e-mails, too. "I get the ones that say 'You go, girl.' I'd say it's half and half, nice versus mean." She also received an e-mail from a "BGates@Microsoft.com" but "it was a joke, and an obscene one. You don't want to hear the details."

Some people have offered her money in exchange for sex, or for a date, or for underwear she has worn. "No thanks to all of those," she says.

An Australian man planning to visit New York offered her $250 if he could stay with her. Also "No thanks." Another man who grew up in New York but who now lives elsewhere asked her to seek out some of the bakery food he loved as a child and mail it to him in exchange for money. "And I'll do that, once I find those buns he was talking about."

So far, the biggest chunk of money she has received is US$20 and the smallest, a penny. "Every penny counts," she says, "so I won't complain." She has also received -- after writing about her beloved cat -- a donation of several tins of cat food. "And that's great, too." In all, she has received just under US$200 from people (excluding eBay sales) but that was a tally done before this past week, the week with 20,000 hits. "I'm not asking you to give me a dollar over your favourite charity. I know there are people far worse off than I am, through no fault of their own. But I've learned my lesson and if you want to give a dollar to a charity and ten cents to me, I'd appreciate it."

Emerson concluded that those "rejected thoughts" of ours would come back to us with "a certain alienated majesty." If that seems hyperbolic given the premise of SaveKaryn, the movie industry doesn't seem to think so. Karyn has already received a call about movie rights to her story. That debt should be paid off soon.

Copyright National Post 2002 All Rights Reserved.

I was fingerprinted when I lived in Japan. As a foreigner living there, I had to make my way to the police station to get my gaijin (foreigner) card. I filled out a form, had my picture taken and was fingerprinted. One of the fingerprints appeared on the card and very occasionally I had to show the card to police, but only very occasionally. "Don't lose it," I was warned, "and make sure you hand it back in to the police when you leave for good."

I found it amusing more than anything. I was younger and didn't really contemplate the implications. I giggled as my Japanese Jack Webb pressed my fingers into the ink pad, imagining him telling me "just the facts, ma'am" in Japanese. Others I knew were offended at the fingerprinting. Still others didn't get fingerprinted, such as my housework-obsessed, highly unpleasant German roommate. The fact she was spared the fingerprinting bothered me. Was it nostalgia for the Axis, I wondered.

The racial profiling took place in Israel. I was working in Turkey and took my holidays there. On the way back to Istanbul, I was pulled out of the check-in line at Ben Gurion Airport and asked to follow two young men, both of whom had enormous guns. (What was I going to say, "no"?)

I watched as they opened my luggage and picked through every last item. The only thing they looked at twice was the plastic bag full of artificial sweetener packets I had stolen from various Israeli restaurants and hotels. "Impossible to find in Turkey," I said. They snickered, asked me to remove my boots, tried (unsuccessfully) to remove the heels, handed them back to me and then sent me out to the tarmac accompanied by a soldier. I asked him what gave. He told me they were checking all young women with Norwegian passports, or with a parent born in Norway, because they had news that some Arab terrorist or other had a Norwegian girlfriend helping him smuggle and blow things up. I've dated some cads in my time, I told him, but I would never (knowingly) date a murderer. And, I added, what happened back in the terminal was humiliating. I know miss, he told me, and we're sorry. "That's why we let you keep the Sweet 'n' Low."

Fair enough.

Racial profiling makes at least a bit more sense than identification cards. The first month I lived in France, a bomb went off in a department store in Paris. It was put there by an Arab terrorist who lived in France and had a "carte de sejour" as all foreigners in France must. While the French police are free to stop people on the street and ask for "vos papiers" the only time I was ever stopped was when I was out with Moroccan friends.

My most memorable experience as a foreign resident was when I taught in a high school in Turkey. Filling out my alien card I found that for "status" my options were "married," "divorced" or "virgin." None of the above, I told my vice-principal. He advised me to choose "virgin." But I'm not, I said. His mouth said "that doesn't matter," but his eyes said "of course you're not, you western trollop." For "religion" I was even more confused. "I'm an atheist," I told him. "Don't say that," he said, looking worried. "And don't say you're Muslim unless you are. And don't say you're Jewish, even if you are. Just put Christian."

Having lived in four different countries, and having travelled to many more, I can say with certainty that little of what is being proposed to increase security -- particularly once people are already here -- is without flaw. But even if I think ID cards are particularly useless, at least I have proof that for a full year of my adult life, I was a Christian virgin.

Copyright National Post 2002 All Rights Reserved.

Irrational-phobia
http://www.opiummagazine.com/filmadamsonspider.html
by Rondi Adamson

Since Friday, May 3rd, I have been laughed at more than Lucille Ball. Every time someone asks me "are you going to see Spider-Man?" I answer "No, I'm arachnophobic." This is followed by torrents of snickering. It's so nice to have "friends" who find amusement in my personal trauma.

I have been seriously arachnophobic for as long as I can remember. And I know I could not handle watching Spider-Man. He has spiderweb designs on his superhero outfit, for starters. And the mere sight of a spiderweb, even without its occupant, can give me the heebie-jeebies so badly I need an ativan and a glass of white wine just to be able to talk again without my voice trembling. Also, I have read that in Spider-Man, there is a scene where Tobey Maguire gets bitten by a (radioactive) spider. The radioactive part doesn't scare me. I'd sooner sleep near (or in, for that matter) a nuclear power plant having a meltdown than knowingly walk within a kilometer of an itsy-bitsy spider.

They're icky. And they're creepy-crawly. They have too many legs, and they walk funny, and I hate the way you can be sitting there eating you dinner and innocently watching Patton for example, and all of a sudden a spider drops onto your lap. Why? Oh, I don't know. Because he got tired of walking across your ceiling, saw you sitting there, relaxed and happy, and decided to scare the bejesus out of you.

I don't know why I am this way. And I don't care if there was some key moment in my formative years, that if I could only remember it would enable me to pick up handfuls of wolf spiders and daddy longlegs as though they were wildflowers. I am afraid. It is that simple. When I was little and saw spiders, I would scream, as my sister fondly remembers "blue, bloody murder" till someone came running. Often, my brothers would claim they had trapped the spider in question and put it outside, when in fact, they had simply moved it to another room in the house. When I twigged--because the eight-legged monstrosity inevitably would come and find me--I started insisting that my brothers allow me to watch them trap and take the spider outside.

Trap them, yes. Because, as much as I'd like to live in a spiderless world, I figure they have a right to their ghoulish little lives. I'm not saying I've never dropped an encyclopedia on a spider, in desperation, but whenever possible I try to put a glass on top of them and then find someone brave enough to slip a piece of paper underneath and set the little fella/gal free. I have met countless neighbours that way. I used to live in Turkey, and big, hairy spiders would frequently make their way into my flat. I met the local Imam thanks to them. He was sweet, and very impressed with my unwillingness to kill a living creature.

I also lived in Japan, where I shared my space with cockroaches so big I used to joke they broke the "no pets" clause in my lease. When I attended my brother's wedding in Malaysia, my bedroom was also home to a lizard family. And neither of those situations bothered me one one-billionth as much as a single tiny spider would have.

I currently live in a highrise and one day, as I approached the elevator, a spider dangled in front of me from one of those horrible silken threads they ooze, the ones that if you get them on your hand you can never get them off. I ran into my apartment, and phoned the management office, telling them that if they didn't send the janitor, I would phone the fire department next (after saving cats from trees, that's, of course, what firemen are for).

Years ago, I took my niece and nephew to see James and the Giant Peach unaware that one of the protagonists was a spider. I remember looking over at my brother's children, then five and eight, thinking, "Are they too young to be left alone?" They were. I stayed, eyes covered, weeping. When they asked me what gave, I told them, and they were delighted. Every time they visited me after that, a rubber spider would appear on my pillow, in my purse, etc. Oh, tee hee. That was the last time Auntie Rondi ever took those little monsters to a movie.

I used to work at a magazine, where, one day, a spider crawled up the back of my chair. I shrieked, and my boss, a man with the intelligence of an amoeba and the empathy of an SS torturer, treated me to a long lecture which amounted to this: "Spiders are our friends." Well I know that. That's why it's called a "phobia." It isn't rational. Another colleague told me that if I'd just open myself up to a personal relationship with Jesus Christ, spiders wouldn't scare me.

Nonsense. If Jesus came back, he wouldn't want a spider dropping from his ceiling, either. He would understand why, when I buy bananas, I shake them down first for tarantulas. And he would understand why, pretty soon, I will be the only person on the planet who hasn't seen Spider-Man.

When I began dating one of my colleagues, a gym teacher named Attila, I assumed I might not be able to buy any birth control without my ring and spouse. But by then, most of my neighbourhood knew that I was not just foreign, but Western, and, therefore, a woman of questionable morality.

Western women, I would discover, had "slut" written across their foreheads in ink that only Turkish men could see. So, interestingly, buying spermicide was a relatively easy task, since everyone assumed I would be going through caseloads of the stuff. I had to tolerate being winked at by the vendor, though, and, I figured, snickered about later on. Which probably happens in Canada, too. It is only too bad we cannot get phenobarbital so easily.

Copyright National Post 2002 All Rights Reserved.

Malak Karsh, who died of leukemia six months ago at the age of 86, was the younger brother of famous portraitist Yousuf Karsh, whose photographs of Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy and George Bernard Shaw, among others, are known worldwide. The brothers came to Canada from Turkish-occupied Armenia in the 1930s and settled in Ottawa.

When my parents knew Malak, he was just starting out, or rather, starting out again, after suffering the considerable setback of being confined to a sanitarium for several years due to tuberculosis. My Norwegian mother, 5'10", slim and blond, made a good model, though in real life, as she puts it, she was just a housewife. "I posed for Malak a number of times in 1947-48, usually as a young mother, or a teacher or something mundane. Sometimes I got to pose with a bunch of tulips and that was fun." What my mother really enjoyed about the modelling, was that she got to get "all tarted up. Barbara would put makeup on me."

After having grown up with a mother who forbade her to wear even the lightest shades of lipstick, lest the boys at school mistake her for a harlot, having a good excuse to put on "the works" was worth it. It has occurred to me that these experiences of Mum's are part of the reason she was so indulgent when, as a young teen and Debbie Harry fan, I began appearing at the dinner table wearing four metric tons of mascara and eyeliner.

At any rate, it never occurred to my mother that anything would come of the pictures. She just enjoyed the company. "Living with Malak and Barbara and their first child was great," she recalls. "They were gentle and kind and even though we had to share the kitchen and bathroom, we never had the feeling we were in the way." When my parents discovered that they were expecting my oldest brother, they decided it was time to move out and make a home of their own.

In spite of promises to the contrary, Mum and Dad lost touch with the Karshes, but heard about them in the news. Malak had become well known for much of his work, but particularly his photographs of tulips. The Dutch royal family, grateful for the hospitality Ottawa had shown them during the Second World War (Queen Juliana gave birth to Princess Margriet at the Civic Hospital in 1943) and for the role Canadian troops played in liberating Holland in 1945, sent 100,000 tulip bulbs to the national capital. The original gift became an annual bequest, and the springtime bloom is a welcome sight in a city that tolerates about six months of winter every year.

Malak first began taking pictures of the flowers as he recovered from his illness and by 1951 he had become the official photographer of the International Flower Bulb Centre of Holland. He even took a picture of then Prime Minister Mackenzie King, in 1948, surrounded by tulips on Parliament Hill -- ironic, as King had originally balked at the prospect of having the flowers on the Hill. In 1951, Malak approached Ottawa's Board of Trade with a proposal for an annual Canadian Tulip Festival and they snapped the idea up. (This year marks the 50th Canadian Tulip Festival and it is dedicated to the memory of Malak.)

Also in 1951, one of the pictures Malak took of Mum ended up in Claire Smith's Service Station calendar, representing the months of March and April. The caption is "Tulip Time on The Driveway in Canada's Capital" and features Mum leaning in toward a bed of yellow, white and red blossoms. My parents bought a few copies, lost them over the years in the moves and left it at that.

But life seems to have few endings so final, and nine years later, my oldest brother, Alan, then in Grade 8, spotted the old calendar behind his teacher's desk. He was quite excited and bragged to his classmates that the babe among the sea of tulips was his mother. At lunch that day, my mother remembers, "a bunch of male 13-year-olds followed your brother from school over to our house, to see if it was really me."

At the time, Mum was eight months pregnant with her sixth child (my older brother, Daniel) had curlers in her hair, not a stitch of makeup (as usual) and a maelstrom of kids and pets tearing about. "I didn't really look much like the photo," she understates. "Faces fell all around me and your brother's disillusioned friends walked away." Still, Mum says she "briefly felt like a calendar girl. It was terrific. I'm just sorry I disappointed those boys."

We have continued to have tulip connections in our family. My sister, Kristen, was born in the same room at the Civic Hospital as Princess Margriet, but 11 years later. Fitting, since her childhood nickname was "Duchess" for her love of putting anything that vaguely resembled a crown onto her head, and for her bossy demeanour. She has maintained the latter (and occasionally the former). And I taught in a high school in Istanbul in the early 1990s. Turkey, my students excitedly informed me when I told them about the tulips in Ottawa, is where tulips originated. A popular name for girls in Turkey is "Lale" or "tulip" in Turkish.

Last year, when Malak died, my mother, who had also lost her husband of over 50 years to leukemia, wrote Barbara a long letter. The two have renewed their friendship, something "we should have done long ago." Barbara even dug up copies of the long-lost calendar, allowing Mum to prove to me that a tale I thought apocryphal, wasn't so.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2002 All Rights Reserved.

Iran's Institute for the Intellectual Development of Children and Young Adults, a government agency affiliated with the Ministry of Education, has developed "Dara and Sara," two dolls meant to counter the popularity of Barbie, who along with Ken, Skipper and the gang, is currently flooding the Islamic nation. Dara, a boy doll, and Sara, a girl doll, promote traditional values with their modest clothing, including headscarfs and long skirts for Sara, and non-blond, non-glamorous appeal. Both dolls are dark-haired and sloe-eyed, and neither has a Dream House, convertible or 40DD bra size and five-inch heels. And no, Dara is not allowed to marry four Saras. Mohsen Chiniforoushan, the Institute's director, said the dolls are a strategic product to promote Iran's national identity. One hundred thousand of the Sara and Dara dolls, which are made in China, were introduced into Iran's market last week amid an impressive publicity rush.

In a country where the average monthly salary is $100, the $15 dolls are not cheap and certainly more expensive than an Iranian Barbie knock-off would be ($3). Genuine Barbies cost $40, but do sell well in Iran. A toy vendor in Tehran, interviewed about Sara and Dara, said that she considers Barbie "more harmful than an American missile." Barbie is, the toy seller said, "wanton" and young Iranian girls who play with Barbies could grow up to reject Iranian values.

As in the West, the focus is on girls, on Barbie, on Sara. No one over there seems concerned that Ken might make Iranian boys reject traditional values and become wanton. No one here seems concerned that Ken might be making boys grow up to be vapid, sculpted and uncommunicative. Of course, Ken has no penis, and therefore might be sending an even scarier message, but again, no one seems concerned.

The arrival of Sara on the doll scene was announced about a week after Mattel came out with "Kayla" a "multi-ethnic" Barbie, wearing something resembling a sari/kimono/bathrobe. Barbie already has African-American, Latina and Asian-American friends, and Mattel were not clear about exactly where Kayla's parents are from, or how they met. She looks vaguely Polynesian, though she has exactly the same figure as all the other Barbies. Even "Becky," the cheerful Barbie-in-a- wheelchair Mattel introduced five years ago has that kick-ass figure, in spite of her paralyzed state.

Which is all fine. For not enough credit is given to young girls in terms of their intelligence -- ironically, usually feminists are the ones doing the underestimating. Of course Barbie is wanton. And she has an impossibly wonderful body (though probably not much good for childbearing purposes) and a silly look on her face. But she is a doll, nothing more.

I loved my Barbie dolls and had all the accoutrements. But I never thought I had to look like Barbie any more than I thought I had to look like Raggedy Ann or Mrs. Beasley. I liked making clothes for Barbie, and playing house with her and Ken, except when my brothers would come along and put Ken in a compromising position with G.I. Joe. But even that did not traumatize me, because I knew they were just dolls.

In the early 1990s, a company called "High Self-Esteem Toys" (that's not a joke) came out with the "Happy to be Me Doll." She had a normal figure, even a little on the tubby side, and she wasn't very pretty. She didn't have great clothes, either. Sales were not good. She was left in Barbie's dust, to the surprise of many do-gooders. But there was nothing surprising about it. Little girls want an ideal. It's the same reason little boys like superhero action figures instead of dolls called "Bob, the miserable, overweight, middle-aged, commitmentphobic loser."

We do not give enough credit to girls for their intelligence or understand who they look up to. My niece, now in junior high, listens to her teachers, though I'm not certain she always should. When she became a vegetarian (like her auntie) her classmates panicked, telling her they thought she was anorexic. She isn't, she just doesn't want to eat dead animals any more. But the girls had been taught in health class that anyone who gives up eating a whole food group has an eating disorder, that eating disorders are widespread, and that Barbie is to blame. Who else?

Copyright National Post 2002 All Rights Reserved.

This story is disheartening, and concerns more than just the issue of public breast-feeding, but breast-feeding, period. Breastfeeding is not an alternative lifestyle, a road taken by neo-hippies in order to challenge the establishment. It is a choice made by informed women from all backgrounds who know that breast-feeding is best for them and their baby. Mainstream organizations, such as the American Medical Association, recommend that mothers breast-feed their babies for at least the first year of life, and if possible, longer. Whether a woman is willing, or can manage to breast- feed, should be up to her, and one would like to think not a decision influenced by the disparaging glances of others.

Breastfeeding was the norm, up until about the 1930s, when the first formulas were created. Back then -- as now, I suppose -- people looked to science to improve on nature. We have since learned
that where breast milk is concerned, nature cannot be improved upon. Countless medical studies show breast-feeding decreases the incidences of sudden infant death syndrome, diarrhea, respiratory and ear infections, bacterial meningitis, digestive problems and more in babies.

James P. Grant, a former UNICEF executive director, says "study after study shows that older children who were not breast-fed have higher rates of leukemia and other cancers, diabetes, viral infections, allergies, obesity and developmental delays. Women who do not breast-feed demonstrate a higher risk of breast and ovarian cancers." Not to mention the significance of the bonding that takes place between a mother and child during breast-feeding.

One would like to believe North Americans had got beyond the era of priggishness around this issue, but one would be mistaken. In a country where, in some provinces anyway, a woman can walk around without her top on, breast-feeding mothers are still not free from rude comments, glances, as well as people asking them to leave the room, store or office. Ontario's topless law is, in my opinion, ridiculous, for breasts are sexual. But when a woman is lactating, they are also utilitarian.  A friend of mine in Ottawa, 35, and the mother of a seven-month-old, has been, at different times, told to "cover up," "do that in the ladies' room" and "pump it into a bottle, already!"

Covering up is not easy or safe. When a woman is holding a baby, balancing a blanket over the child is a distraction and "my baby always grabs it and tosses it on the floor anyway," says my Ottawa friend. As for breast-feeding in the ladies room, I wonder how many of those who complain would like to eat their meals in a bathroom? True, breast milk can be pumped into bottles, but that is not always convenient or sanitary. When a baby needs to eat, it needs to eat. It also may not be what a mother wants to do. Some doctors believe women who are lactating should breast-feed exclusively from their breasts for the first six weeks of the baby's life, to increase both health and bonding benefits.

What has most surprised my friend is that the rude comments usually come from women, and young ones. It doesn't surprise me, at least not after some of the discussions I've had with my cohorts. Two of my younger girlfriends -- in their twenties -- are appalled by public breast-feeding. I've never been able to get a good reason out of them. Many young women are completely unaware of breast-feeding's indisputable benefits, and are not only against it being done publicly, but are planning not to do it themselves. One friend asked me, knowing my opinion, how I felt about a colleague of hers who breast-fed her baby in the workplace.

The only problem I could see there was that a woman with a young baby was working outside the home. This particular friend is not convinced about breast-feeding, which I find very odd, since she believes in God. Surely, if there is a God, then He wouldn't have a woman's breasts fill up with milk during pregnancy as part of some colossal joke. If He wanted us to suckle off another species, why give us milk of our own?

I am tempted to suggest that these attitudes come from women loving to sabotage each other. But I suspect they have more to do with ignorance. Generations of us have grown up seeing bottle- feeding as the norm and it will take time to undo that perception. In the meantime, if you feel offended at the sight of someone breast-feeding in a public place, why don't you be the one to leave?

Copyright National Post 2001 All Rights Reserved.

I don't know who said that, but it's funny and my mother likes to repeat it, and it certainly has been true for say, Ted Kennedy. Some form of alcohol, perhaps not whiskey, led to Chappaquiddick, which many believe prevented him from winning the Democratic nomination for the presidency in 1980. Whiskey has sometimes prevented me from getting work done, if not taking over the world, and it has also -- rarely, of course -- caused me to say things I later regretted.

Or how about this: "The Irish you know, they're pigs. All pigs." That was Princess Margaret talking to the Mayor of Chicago, a city with a not negligible Irish population. She said this in the late 1970s, after her uncle Lord Mountbatten was blown up by the IRA. So maybe we can indulge her her bigotry.

Or Conan O'Brien, speaking to Pierce Brosnan: "I'm so glad you're Irish, because otherwise everyone would think Irish men could never be handsome."

Or this: "The Irish people are undisciplinable, anarchical and turbulent by nature." That's from Matthew Arnold and actually, I kind of agree. I know I'm all of those things and I'm half-Irish, so if we can extrapolate and make gross generalizations, then it's probably true of anyone with a drop of Irish blood.

Even Hitler was known to complain about his "loathsome Irish relations" when his sister-in-law Brigid and nephew Patrick visited him in Berlin.

My mother is not Irish, and for most of my life, whenever I have displayed any character trait that she deems unappealing, I get told that I am "just like" my father. As in, "you sound just like your father when you talk that way!" Or, "you're bad tempered, just like your father." Or, "you kids are all a bunch of know-it-alls, just like your father." Or the worst insult of all, "you kids are all 100% Irish!"

Well, of course, we're not. We're half-Norwegian, but the traits we get from that gene pool -- pessimism, suicidal depression, isolationism -- are all positive, I guess.

My father's family came to Canada from County Galway at the end of  the last century, like so many Irish, and settled out West, first in Saskatchewan, then in Winnipeg. There they founded the Canada Territories Company, which later became the Western Trust Company. The family enjoyed relative financial and social success in Manitoba, including an appointment as chief justice of the province of Manitoba for my great-uncle, John Evans Adamson. He was fondly known as "Judge Necessity," because necessity knows no law. But family lore tells us that he was more concerned, like many of the men in my family, with golfing than anything else.

Golfing, almost as much as alcohol and mood swings, defines the Irish. In the book, How to Be Irish, Even if You Already Are, authors Sean Kelly and Rosemary Rogers have included a special section devoted to golf in Ireland. There are some pretty swishy golf courses over there, including what is reportedly Bill Clinton's favourite, the Ballybunnion Golf Club in County Kerry. But, they warn potential tourist duffers, everyone in Ireland plays golf, not just the high and mighty, and they do so in true Irish fashion: "The natives wear more informal outfits than do the visitors, eschew caddies and carts, and take swings with fags hanging out of their mouths."

When my father was dying, he told us he wanted his funeral service to be held at a Kelly Funeral Home, because "Kelly is a good Irish name." He also told us he wanted to be cremated but that it was up to us to decide where to scatter the ashes. "Those decisions are for the living," he said. My siblings and I talked and realized the place dad had been happiest was on the links. Could we, we wondered, convince the people at one of the Ottawa-area golf courses he played, to allow us to scatter dad's ashes there? It was, after all, after collapsing on the greens that he was taken to hospital and his leukemia was first detected. What we thought was just an older man fainting from the heat was actually something much worse.

I phoned one of the golf clubs dad liked to frequent, and stammered out my request, only to be greeted by an uncomfortable and shocked, "Gosh, we're really sorry for your loss but we can't allow that here. What would the other members say?" Honestly! I had to wonder, what would a few ashes hurt? People didn't need to know where they came from. But the idea was scrapped and I've never forgiven the powers-that-be at that golf course which shall remain nameless.

My mum says I should let it go, but I'm Irish and according to Kelly and Rogers, the way to "act Irish" is to be thin-skinned, have a terrible temper, and above all, "hold that grudge!" The definition of Irish Alzheimer's? You forget everything but your grudges. Amen.

Copyright National Post 2001 All Rights Reserved.

A bright spot in my life, though, was my growing crush on Mr. Yamaguchi, one of my students. The feeling was mutual, and eventually the day came when I felt I had to investigate the possibility, however unlikely, that Yamaguchi-san was my own true love. Off I went on a quest for birth control. I figured my potential true love would have condoms, but sleeping with someone is like potluck dinner -- everyone should bring something.

At the time, the pill was not available in Japan (it is now) and I decided against anything else that required a trip to the gyno. My one experience with a Japanese gynecologist -- Dr. Kayama -- had been entertaining, but not one I cared to repeat. Dr. Kayama's office had a picture of a kangaroo with a baby in its pouch out front. Everything in Japan is cute. And the doctor, as is Japanese custom, bisected my body during the checkup with a little curtain so we couldn't look at each other during the, um, inspection. There was what sounded to me like a team of 30 down there, defusing a bomb or something, chattering away in Japanese. Occasionally someone would call out Daijobu desu ka? (are you OK?), until the doctor finally stood up and said Owari (finished).

I was in no hurry to go through that again. So I went to the pharmacy. I had carefully copied out the kanji for "contraception" and boldly handed the piece of paper across the counter, feeling somewhat trampy. I was sure I detected a smirk on the pharmacist's face. I was sure he was thinking, "Hey you floozy gaijin (foreigner), you better not be planning to have sex with a Japanese man!" He handed me a box. I wanted to tell him that nice gaijin girls have sex, too.

Back at home, I opened the package, expecting maybe spermicide of some kind, or a sponge, or anything I recognized. What I found were little squares of what looked like cellophane wrap. Maybe, I thought, these are for the guy. But where would he put them? I looked at the pictures, something I relied on with Japanese medicine, but they confused me more. As far as I could tell I was supposed to stand on my head, cross my fingers, insert one (or maybe two?) little square things, and then, I presumed, have sex.

I called one of my colleagues, a Tom Cruise lookalike from South Carolina who spoke the best Japanese of all of the gaijin at the factory. Was it, I asked him, a barrier? Was I supposed to put it up against something in particular? Would it dissolve? Absorb sperm? Kill sperm? Repel sperm? Attract sperm? Maybe the pharmacist was tricking me.

Tom Cruise was no help, except he was able to decipher that whatever the birth control was, I was supposed to have sex within an hour of placing it wherever. We both solved some of the world's problems that day though, imagining an international system of birth control symbols for expats everywhere. You know, like a little picture of dying sperm (for spermicide), or a picture of Hoover Dam (for barrier methods), or a puffy woman retaining water (for the pill), and so on.

The mystery birth control was tossed aside, and Tom Cruise gave me the remainder of a box of condoms. Mr. Yamaguchi turned out not to be my own true love, but he was a nice man and still sends me Japanese New Year's cards, "Happy Year of the Dragon/Rabbit/Tiger," etc.

I filed this incident under "Unsolved Mysteries." Until a few days ago when, researching a story, a gynecologist gave me several packages of what he called "the fastest growing barrier spermicide in the United States." It was the cellophane squares! Both a spermicide and a barrier -- two, two, two birth controls in one!

I told the gyno my story and he agreed that we should petition the United Nations about international birth control symbols. This, we concurred, concerns love, babies and disease and is therefore at least as important as land mines and war. One only wishes Princess Di were alive to lead the charge.

Copyright National Post 2001 All Rights Reserved.

Obesity bigger problem than those skinny celebs
by Rondi AdamsonGolden

Globe winner has clearly lost the 20 pounds she packed on to star in movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary.

THE postmortem on last Sunday's Golden Globe Awards included a lot of talk about the fashions of the evening and, as would follow, about the bodies of those wearing the fashions.

"She's too skinny," every morning-after talk-show host seemed to screech, whether it was Lara Flynn Boyle, Renee Zellweger or Calista Flockhart being dissected. Boyle, in a beautiful blue gown, was indeed all bones and angles, as was Zellweger in black. And Flockhart was . . . Flockhart.

But should it be a matter of concern? There was the usual pablum about how all these skinny stars are sending out dangerous messages to teenagers and kids, about how we should pressure magazine editors to use heavier, "more realistic" women on their covers and so forth.

To hear all the fussing, you would think girls were dropping dead on the street, clutching a copy of Vogue in one hand and a package of diet pills in the other.

The reality is that obesity is a far greater problem in North America. Every study indicates that Canadians and Americans are getting fatter and lazier by the minute.

Obesity rates increased 57 per cent in the U.S. since 1991 and more than 50 per cent of Canadians are considered to be overweight.

Far from emulating Boyle or Flockhart, we seem to be emulating Camryn Manheim. And no one said a word about the dress she wore on Sunday.

Katie Couric didn't say: "Gee, she's so fat!" Jane Clayson didn't say: "She looks so huge in that dress, surely it isn't good for pubescent girls to see that!"

No one has ever suggested that it is "dangerous" to put plus-size models in magazines, lest it influence people to go out and stuff themselves with Doritos. And yet if we follow the anti-skinny argument with any kind of logic, perhaps such suggestions should be made.

Certainly, it is not a good idea to starve oneself. And I find nothing more tiresome than women who talk about how skinny they are, who weigh themselves every day, who talk about how little they eat, who think they look good with their drawn, weathered faces and their boyish bodies. As an ex-beau of mine used to say: "Rondi, a girl's gotta have boobs and a bum." Loved that guy.

But the idea that anorexia is a result of fashion magazines is hard for me to buy. There were anorexics in the 13th century and, as far as I know, there were no supermodels back then. (Some historians argue that female saints who fasted out of faith were actually anorexic.)

Whatever the causes - many psychiatrists point to certain personality types, genetic links and other factors - anorexia and bulimia remain a serious but not statistically widespread problem.

And those statistics have often been exaggerated, most notably by Naomi Wolf in the first edition of her book, The Beauty Myth. The statistics she used were challenged by several eating-disorder experts and she changed them for the paperback version.

Meanwhile, look around you. Obesity is becoming an enormous problem and it should give us all cause for concern. The health problems that result from obesity are going to cost taxpayers a fortune in health insurance during the coming decades - not to mention the resulting illnesses and deaths of people we love.

Diabetes, high blood pressure and heart attacks are often linked to excess weight and medical research indicates that overweight women are at a higher risk of developing breast, colon and endometrial cancer.

Of course, some obese people have thyroid problems or other medical problems that keep them the way they are. But most overweight people are that way for two simple reasons: They don't exercise and they eat the wrong foods.

Not that the fashion mags are helping me make my case, it must be said.

When Zellweger put on 20 pounds to star in the movie version of Bridget Jones' Diary, the powers that be at Bazaar dropped her from the magazine cover (she has since lost the weight). She was deemed too heavy.

Zellweger with an extra 20 pounds was, I'm certain, quite fine. But my point is that Zellweger with an extra 50 pounds would not be.

So, am I against all those critics who want to see more fat people on TV shows and magazine covers and as the romantic leads in movies? No.

But I think we should get a grip and stop worrying about how much Flynn Boyle weighs. And maybe we should start talking about how scary Manheim looked in her Golden Globe gown.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto writer who keeps a close eye on the fashion scene.

Ashcroft is pro-life, but voters were prod-dead
by Rondi Adamson

Controversial U.S. attorney-general nominee is the butt of jokes because he lost Missouri election to a dead man. But don't laugh - recently deceased people are quite popular.

Di-eified at first, princess has been dead long enough to be demonized.

THE BIG joke about John Ashcroft, U.S. President George W. Bush's pick for attorney-general, is that he is so unappealing he can't even beat a dead man in an election.

Late-night comics, not to mention newspaper reporters, are having a wonderful time pointing this out.

Missouri Governor Mel Carnahan died in a plane crash, along with his eldest son, last October. But his name was kept on the ballot in November's vote for the Missouri senate and he whipped Ashcroft, his Republican rival. Carnahan's widow, Jean, has taken his place in Washington.

Ashcroft is coming under fire for various reasons - his opinions on abortion and dancing (he's against both), among others - but his inability to defeat a deceased Democrat seems to be the biggest albatross around his neck.

The truth is, though, that beating a dead man in an election is a difficult task. We love dead people, and that's understandable because they no longer talk, making them preferable to many live people.

We really love them when they're freshly dead. Once they've been dead a while, we have to destroy them.

Look at Princess Diana. Her death sparked a veritable orgy of Di-eification. She was, people said, the greatest person who ever lived, a cross between Gandhi and Jesus, with a bit of Twiggy for good measure.

Two months after her death, the Nobel committee awarded a land mine organization the Peace Prize. It was hard to imagine that Di's famous trip to Angola - where, in her Ralph Lauren capri pants and a beekeeper's mask (really helpful if a mine explodes), she visited child amputees and posed for photographers - didn't have something to do with it.

I would be willing to wager that had British PM Tony Blair called an election shortly after Di's death, and had someone put Di's name on the ballot, she would have won in a landslide.

Then, a couple of years later, the Di-bashing began.

She was manipulative, hysterical, slept with married men and didn't understand world issues. She had no business making pronouncements about land mines, or anything else for that matter.

She loved children? So what? There were plenty of home movies taken of Hitler romping in the Berchtesgaden with the offspring of Speer and Goebbels.

Di was evil. Who could blame Prince Charles for wanting to be Camilla Parker- Bowles tampon? The truth, of course, is somewhere between angelic Di and demonic Di.

John F. Kennedy Jr. went through a pared-down version of the Di-eification after he died in a 1999 plane crash. Which means we're due for the trashing about now. . . .

Peter Finch won a posthumous best actor Oscar for his role in the 1976 movie Network. (It will be interesting to see whether the late Oliver Reed gets a posthumous award this year for his work in Gladiator. I'm laying odds.)

When famous dead people are still in our good graces, we tend to reward their relatives.

Mary Bono won Sonny Bono's congressional seat after he succumbed by skiing into a tree three years ago.

Lyndon Johnson beat Barry Goldwater by a landslide in the 1964 U.S. presidential election - and he was painfully aware that it the victory was due in no small part to the assassination of JFK the year before.

There was much speculation that Jean Chretien called last November's federal election in an attempt to ride the wave of public grief for Pierre Trudeau.

Relatives of famous dead people get standing ovations just for being related to a dead person.

Caroline Kennedy was given a huge standing ovation at last year's Democratic convention, as she is related to three famous dead people.

I say none of this to take away from any of the dead people in question. Many, if not all, of them were wonderful people who gave a lot to the world (when they were alive).

My point is simply that dead people usually win all the popularity contests.

A girlfriend of mine once dated a widower and used to sigh that "competing with a dead woman" was impossible.

The deceased wife was a goddess who had never done anything wrong in her life, at least not in the eyes of her husband. And my friend was a living, and therefore flawed, being.

So even those who find John Ashcroft's pro-life, anti-dancing politics laughable shouldn't giggle about his loss to Carnahan.

That was to be expected.

I had resisted seeing Bounce because -- judging from the trailers -- it looked like, quite possibly, the most putrid movie ever made. Few things could be more nausea-inducing than Ben Affleck saying things like, "She's not the kind of woman you get tired of. I'm more worried she'll get tired of me."

While it turned out not to be the most putrid movie ever made, what was noteworthy about it was that Gwyneth Paltrow went brunette for her role as a noble and plucky single mother. As she said during a recent appearance on Oprah -- remember, I've been home sick -- she needed to be "deglamourized" for the part. All she changed about herself was her hair colour, and presto, she was deglamourized. She was noble, she was plucky. No blond woman could ever be those things, unless of course, she's a bleached, sleazy blond and therefore would not really be noble, but more along the trash-with-a-heart-of-gold lines. Think Helen Hunt in Pay It Forward. Or Marilyn Monroe in her numerous sweet but stupid roles.

In the movie Erin Brockovich, dark-haired Julia Roberts plays a gutsy single-mother -- again with the single mothers -- who stands up to an evil corporation that has been poisoning the little people. The real Brockovich is blond, and I wonder why Roberts' hair wasn't dyed for the role. Maybe the producers thought no one would believe a blond could bring evil poisoners to heel.

Also anti-blond was The Truth About Cats and Dogs, a 1996 flick in which a man chooses between a stupid, attractive, tall blond (Uma Thurman) and a funny, soulful, intelligent, short, dumpy brunette (Janeane Garofalo). Of course, he chooses the latter. To hell with Thurman -- she's blond, she'll get over it, right?

Such things perpetuate the image of blonds as dumb, shallow, unfeeling, sexually indiscriminate and preternaturally glam. As a natural, unbleached blond, I must take exception to this. I am half-Norwegian, half-Irish, and therefore never stood much of a chance of being anything other than a fair-haired girl. And I can tell you, I am not glamourous. In the past month, for example, I have a) been sick, b) read a translation of Rommel's writings about the use of the tank in battle, c) changed my bellybutton ring from a plain one to a festive one with a Christmas bauble on it and back again. Hardly the life of a glamour queen.

I don't think I'm dumb and I am not shallow. Indeed, I (occasionally) have deep thoughts. I'm quite certain I'm not unfeeling. I cry during The Sound of Music and long-distance commercials. And as I write this I am enjoying an alcoholic beverage in an attempt to anesthetize myself and get over the day's little woes.

I am not sexually indiscriminate. In fact, one of my (brunette) girlfriends once said to me, in a burst of enthusiasm, "I really admire you Rondi, because you never have sex!" Well, I do (sometimes) have sex, but what she meant was I don't have sex indiscriminately (and the girl who made the comment does). Taking a cursory look at my girlfriends, it occurs to me the only really slutty one -- and I use the word "slutty" in the best possible, most non-judgmental sense -- the only one who does 1970s-type things like sleep with people she doesn't know, is a brunette. And many famous hussies -  Elizabeth Taylor, Monica Lewinsky, Ava Gardner, Cleopatra, the list goes on -- have been dark-haired.

Most important, I know at if I were a single mother, I would be as noble, brave, true and plucky as any brunette single mother on the block. And I would definitely stand up to poisoners, yes sir.

I like my blond hair. The scary grey hairs coming in (prematurely) don't show against it, and it takes a lot of pressure off to have people expect so little of you. I once dated a guy who told me he was "amazed" at how much I knew. Before I ditched that sweet-talker, I felt like telling him to read the Joe Orton play Loot in which one of the characters says: "God is a gentleman. He prefers blonds." And God is always right.

Copyright National Post 2001 All Rights Reserved.

Ooh, that's catty! And I'm certainly not the only one to talk that way about Harris. She has been the subject of countless jokes, most focusing on her appearance. But she does have some support out there.

Yesterday morning, I watched two freakishly awake morning show hosts (I'm a morning person too, but no one should chirp before 10 a.m.) talk about the supposed double standard that exists out there for women. A column in yesterday's National Post took the same line, using Harris as a starting point. You know -- we judge women by how they look but not men and we don't care about what a woman says and does, just whether she's pretty and isn't it so unfair and blah-blah.

This is the received wisdom. And like much received wisdom, it doesn't hold up under scrutiny. We don't judge men by their appearance? OK, there is less to talk about with men because they don't wear makeup -- at least not in public -- and they don't have the wide variety of apparel available to them that women do. You can't make much hay out of suits and ties. But for at least as long as there has been television, we have taken note of a male leader's appearance.

Where to begin?

If Richard Nixon were alive, we could ask him about his sweaty upper lip in the 1960 presidential debates, and what he felt that cost him. We could also ask about his ski-jump nose and his overly Brylcreemed hair. If Lyndon Johnson were alive we could ask if people ever said anything about his ears. The first thing I remember hearing about Diefenbaker when I was a kid -- from my senior public servant father, no less -- was that he had really godawful jowls.

Pierre Trudeau? His style didn't matter? His roses and cheekbones didn't win him votes? Joe Clark, no chin. Brian Mulroney, the jaw that walked like a man. Preston Manning underwent a complete overhaul in order to get away from his "Mr. Dressup" look -- fat lot of good it did him -- and what do we so often discuss when it comes to Stockwell Day? Great abs! Lycra becomes him. Bad hair though, if you ask me. Too much of a Tin Tin thing going on there. Oh, and memo to Lucien Bouchard: Lose the Hitler haircut. You're an attractive man apart from that. Roy Romanow? Get rid of the combover. Go bald gracefully.

Leonid Brezhnev inspired a cornucopia of "ugly" quips; Mikhail Gorbachev's birthmark was a boon for writers; Ronald Reagan had his orange hair; and Jean Chretien ... there wouldn't be room here to make a list. I seem to recall a rival political party making a perfectly tasteless campaign ad, using the PM's exterior as fodder.

Before we say goodbye to him -- if we ever do -- we could ask Bill Clinton whether or not he has been ridiculed about his appearance over the years -- his hair, his nose and, lest we forget, his weight. David Letterman has, since 1992, turned "pasty white thighs" into a running joke.

Turning to things most recent, the first Gore/Bush debate in October brought about a slew of comments concerning Al Gore's "rouge" (he was wearing way too much of it!) and the fact that both men were wearing red ties. Why red? What were they thinking? Gore had even hired Naomi Wolf -  the same chick who flicks her hair about like a weapon and makes sure her cleavage is always accentuated while saying those things should not count -- to help him dress properly. And if I only had a nickel for every time I have said that Warren Christopher looks like a Muppet.

Finally, I would say that women take much greater note of the superficial -- on both male and female public figures -- than men. Some feminists might say this is the influence of the patriarchy and its need to divide us in order to conquer. But I say it's the influence of estrogen and its need to put down the competition and size up the objects of desire.

Looks matter for everyone. Or rather, they are something peoplelike to talk about. They're immediate. But they don't matter as much as we may think. Even for women. There have been any number of highly unattractive, unfashionable women who have been elected to higher office. My excellent upbringing prevents me from naming names, but I'm sure you can think of a few.

Copyright National Post 2000 All Rights Reserved.

Dear Tom/Dick/Harry/other:

While I am as susceptible as most women to cozy domestic sentiments, my overriding priority at the moment is a strictly practical one: I wish to bear and raise at least one child with the generous values I learned in a large family whose like I hardly expect, alas, to see again.

By virtue of, in order, your intelligence, your manifest moral and esthetic cultivation and principles, and your vitality, I have concluded that you would make an excellent biological father. I accept that any greater sentimental attachment between us would have shown itself by now and is therefore unwise to pursue.

While there are a number of impersonal options available to us with regard to conception, it seems to me that we might at least attempt to dispense with the associated expense and fuss by trying traditional methods first.

I look forward to hearing from you. Yrs sinc, etc.

It was written in speculative spirit to cheer me up after a challenging Thanksgiving weekend. It was  a long, long weekend during which I had been on my second date with a man who did not remember -- though I had told him on our first date -- that my father was dead. Hey pal, I thought, I don't expect you to remember every detail of our conversation. But I expect you to remember one of my parents is dead. If you were listening.

I sent a panicked "high priority" message to my friend, stealing from Helen Fielding, that I was resigned to dying barren and alone, with never any love or children.

The joke letter made me laugh. And it got me wondering, would I do this? With little hesitation, I came to that conclusion that, no, I wouldn't. Curious to see how others would react, I forwarded the letter to about 15 girlfriends, the youngest 24, the oldest 55.

The results were surprising. I was, I had previously believed, the only member of Gen-X who felt that not only should you be married when you have children, you should even --gasp -- be married when you get pregnant. You should maybe even like him.

But it seems I have company. The girlfriends in my age group dismissed the idea as selfish and irresponsible. "If I were the recipient of this letter, I'd run for the hills," wrote one. The girls under 30 were of more of a live-and-let- live-attitude. Not yet fettered by the concerns of aging eggs, most treated the issue lightly -- one made the flippant comment that it was "a clever way to get sex." (But ... all you usually have to do is ask.)

The ladies over 45, to a woman, thought it was acceptable, commendable even, to take this approach. "The most important thing is for the child to know he or she is loved," said one, in a burst, perhaps, of 1960s groovy, drug-addled, all-you-need-is-love-ism. One woman had two friends who had children this way, and another (childless) friend expressed some regret that she had not done the same. Still, some of them -- married with kids of their own -- stressed that childrearing really does take two.

I understand that a husband can leave, or die, and you will be alone. I understand that accidents happen, and you can get pregnant. But to set out to have a baby alone is different. Is there not something peculiar about wanting the product of a relationship, without having the relationship? Women who go this route are, it strikes me, more concerned with having a baby than being a parent. If you want to raise children, why not adopt? True, adoption by a single person isn't the best-case scenario, nor is it always possible. But you are trying, at least, to give a home to someone already here, rather than adding to an already grossly overpopulated world in order to satisfy yourself. The women who spend fortunes -- in money and emotions -- on fertility treatments, sperm banks and turkey basters ought maybe to figure out why their desire to give birth overrides all good sense.

We live in a time when people do not seem willing to grasp the concept that everyone cannot have, and be, everything. I would like to live in Italy and have a great art collection and wardrobe and have influence over people. I would love to be Pope, in other words. But I am not Catholic, or male. And being Pope is no more a "right" than having a child is.

I would also like a family of my own. And that may happen. But not, I hope, through a letter to Tom, Dick or Harry. As the one male friend I sent the e-mail to replied, in a boldly, capitalized message: "Rondi, do not send this! It may get you something, but I guarantee it won't be a family."

Copyright National Post 2000 All Rights Reserved.

She turned out to be right -- about the family, at least. The family I got stuck with were awful and crazy, especially the mother. And nothing prepared me for how a French woman views her au pair girl. I was ``la fille,'' something she would call me in my presence, that is, when she wasn't referring to me as ``elle.''

There was clearly some sort of post-traumatic French Revolution syndrome going on, whereby Madame felt she now had a peasant girl to boss around. Her first words to me when I stepped out of the taxicab -- ``Oh my God. You're not fat. Our last Canadian au pair was fat'' -- set the tone for much to come.

My first night there I got screamed at just before dinner. Madame -- who I had to call ``vous'' -- spun into hysterics when she saw there was no baguette. How could you, she yelled, have forgotten to buy baguette? How can we have a meal without baguette? Still jet-lagged, I was stunned. I thought about explaining that I didn't come from a country where a national crisis ensues when one is forced to eat a meal without baguette. I thought about explaining to her that there were whole parts of the world where people enjoy meals without baguette. I thought about it but didn't bother. I apologized and never forgot again.

During that first dinner, Madame asked me what religion I was. No one had ever asked me that. I am not baptized, I never went to church except for weddings and funerals. My mother grew up Lutheran, my dad Anglican. So I ventured an answer. ``Protestant.'' She got a sucked a lemon look on her face.

Madame and Monsieur were both doctors, and they had two sons. The boys had been looked after  over the years by a succession of Canadian, American, Dutch and Danish au pair girls. In retrospect,  I realize that this accounted for the boys' basic sweetness, something they did not get from maman. Monsieur was nice enough, but he was never around, not even in the evenings. He was with his mistress, whose phone calls I had to field and whose messages I had to surreptitiously deliver. One day she called, asking for Monsieur. I told her Monsieur wasn't home and she hung up. Madame ambushed me. Who was that? she wanted to know. I don't know, I told her, it was for Monsieur. She went ballistic. Why didn't you call me to the phone?

Another day, walking the boys home from school, I was approached by a Frenchman who asked the obligatory, ``etes vous Suedoise?'' (are you Swedish?) and then announced his desire to get to know me better. This is not an uncommon experience for a tall, blonde girl in Paris, and I always found it amusing, but the kids were there. That evening they dutifully reported the incident to maman, giggling. She took me aside to tell me that she didn't want her children witnessing ``des telles choses'' (such things). I told her I had no control over how Frenchmen behave and she got that sucked-a-lemon look again.

Madame hated that I was vegetarian and made fun of my eating habits. Homesick for peanut butter (the food of the gods) I was blissful when I discovered a small American grocery store. Enjoying toasted baguette with Skippy one night, I looked up to see Madame glaring at me. ``Je trouve a degueulasse,'' (I find that disgusting) she sniffed. Well lady, I thought, I find all those snails, slugs and animal vital organs you eat pretty putrid too.

So by the time my first vacation rolled around I was chomping at the bit. I planned a week in Normandy with a couple of the Irish girls (also au pairs) I regularly drank with. I wanted to see the Bayeux Tapestry, but I also wanted to visit my uncle's grave. My mother's brother, Lieut. Norman Christopherson, had been part of the D-Day invasion. Having survived the brutality of that day and the following two months, he was killed Aug. 10, 1944, at Falaise Gap, a German shell to the head. More than 40 years after his death, my mother could still not talk about him without dissolving into tears.

It is hard to imagine, when your biggest problem is your math grade, what living through a world war, with all its loss, sacrifice and nobility, could be like. As a small child my mother and I had a recurring conflict over my desire to watch Hogan's Heroes. She -- understandably -- objected to the portrayal of Nazis as wacky, inept and even lovable. I objected to someone trying to keep me from watching Lebeau, the little Frenchman imprisoned with Hogan, who, I am now ashamed to admit, I had a crush on. I won that battle but it made me think. And visiting the Canadian War Cemetery at Bretteville-sur-Laize, just outside Caen, became a goal.

That week gave me a chance to see another side of the French. When I told the cab driver taking me to Bretteville that I was going to see my uncle's grave, he turned off the meter. Unlikely anywhere, but in a country where cab drivers will yell at you if your tip doesn't suit them, unthinkable. He was youngish as well, about 35, not someone to have been directly affected by the  German occupation.

He became chatty, sentimental, inquisitive and when driving me back into Caen (again with the meter off, after waiting more than an hour outside the cemetery) invited me and my girlfriends to dinner with his wife and family. We got bombed on Calvados that night with them, and practised our mediocre French. It dulled the powerful emotions of the day. I have gone back twice since and the stories are the same -- the same goodheartedness and warmth I found the first time.

And the gifts keep coming. When I ultimately returned to Canada, I wrote an article about my uncle that appeared in a local paper on the 50th anniversary of D-Day. I began to hear from men in my uncle's regiment -- Algonquin -- including a medic and my uncle's ``runner,'' Owen Lockyer, a retired gentleman (and quite the charmer) living in New Brunswick. Owen is now a friend of the family,  who sadly, we don't see that often. But he has brought a certain peace and many answers to my mother.

When I returned to the family, they, unfortunately, had not changed. Madame still called me ``bete'' (stupid) when I didn't know how to work her French washing machine. I still spent mornings ironing Monsieur's clothes while watching old episodes of Mannix in French. But I felt differently about my time in France and I realized one dysfunctional famille did not a whole country make. I was determined not to let Madame bug me as much. And when my time as an au pair was up, I stayed in France for quite some time, working as an English teacher. I learned to make a mean vinaigrette, I fell in love (and out) with a man from Lyon, I made lots of friends, travelled, and, when I could, took trips to Normandy to put flowers on my uncle's grave. Christiane and I are better friends than ever and as for the Brush family... well, I don't know what happened there. But I hope Monsieur left Madame and ran away with his mistress.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto writer.
Copyright Ottawa Citizen 2000 All Rights Reserved.

This headline on the cover of a recent Cosmopolitan magazine is typical of so many articles in women's magazines:

Ways to make a guy want to have sex with you; tips for upping your sex appeal, dressing sexier, wearing sexier makeup, shoes, jewelry, accessories, nametags, nose rings, tattoos, what have
you.

What a waste of space. But maybe not for the reasons you think. I am certainly not a basher of Cosmo, nor of any other women's magazine. That would be hypocritical, since I write for so many
of them.

I like women's magazines. I like any publication that gives me a dollar a word to write about wrinkle cream.

I'm not bothered by the skinny girls or the airbrushing. And I like reading about clothes, makeup and, yes, men. I don't consider those things frivolous.

And I think it's unfair to try to make women feel it's somehow shallow or silly to want to be pretty, fit and fashionable.

Ditto for making a woman feel she's inadequate if she wants a boyfriend. Who doesn't want one? Boyfriends are great, especially when they're generous and have a car.

But I am nothing if not practical and the preoccupation that so many women's magazines seem to have with helping women get men into bed represents so much misplaced energy for readers. It's
just not necessary.

Picture all the page space devoted to this general area. If we took it all and laid it end to end, we could write a letter from here to Corregidor - and still have room for one heck of a long postscript.

I mean, holy Odin. Think about it. Men don't like sex, right? They never want to get into bed with a woman.

So, we have to think of ways to entice them. We have to machinate. We have to make them think that it's their idea when really it's ours.

We have to expend energy and make huge efforts to look drop-dead gorgeous and drag our loverboys into the boudoir. And we have to learn special tricks to keep them there.

So totally not.

Please - or, as we ladies say, puh-leeze.

One day, I would like to see the following article appear in Cosmo or our own beloved Flare or any other women's magazine:

``Ten Ways To Make A Man Want To Sleep With You.''
 

And the 10 ways would be:

1.) Be sexy (or dowdy);

2). Lie down (or stand up);

3.) Be slim (or fat);

4.) Be tall (or short);

5.) Be pretty (or ugly);

6.) Be kind (or nasty);

7.) Be smart (or dumb);

8.) Show an interest in him (or don't);

9.) Tell him your name (or refuse);

10.) Be rich (or poor).

Any woman knows, as does any man, that all of the above would work.

But so would this: Have a vagina.

That's the one and only real criterion for making a guy want to have sex with you.

I'm not convinced you actually need to be female, or even to have a pulse. Men want sex and they want it all the time. This is not an indictment; it's simply the way it is.

They don't need to know you or like you or even be attracted to you.

Finding a guy to have sex with you is the absolute easiest thing in the world, and getting a man to sleep with you is the easiest part of any relationship.

And every woman, at every women's magazine - from the lowliest intern to the Queen of the Heap - knows this from personal experience.

So why don't women's magazines devote more page space to the parts of relationships that truly are a challenge?

Here's a cover story I'd like to read: ``How to get a man to talk to you.''

And also: ``How to get a man to care about how you feel'' And that most lofty of ambitions: ``How to get a man to call when he says he will and show some consideration for your time and feelings.''

These are the areas where most of us need help. And they are certainly the areas where there is some debate as to how to improve things.

I suspect that one of the reasons these topics are neglected is that few people have a clue about how to deal with them. It's not nearly as simple as that ``have a vagina'' thing.

I have been reflecting on these matters for some time and the best all-purpose advice I can come up with is this:

1.) Promise him sex if he calls on time/shows concern for your feelings/ talks to you three times a week (thus setting up a Pavlovian kind of a deal, though you'll have to come through, of course, or it won't work, so be prepared, psychologically and otherwise);

Or 2.) Withhold sex every time he neglects to call/ behaves in an insensitive manner/ shuts down on you.

In other words, be ready to use your most powerful weapon, the only thing that matters to him, your vagina, as a field of negotiation.

Which, I guess, brings us full circle. If you get what you want, he gets what he wants.

If may sound simplistic, sexist and cruel, but it's all I could think of. After all, I write for women's magazines.

Copyright Toronto Star 2000 All Rights Reserved.

"At the time," the now single Welton recalls, "I thought, 'This girl is a menace. She should be arrested by the Love Police.' " Welton, a freelance management consultant, at first considered creating a line of greeting cards with a love police theme. But with the Internet revolution, he changed that to electronic greeting cards, and then, finally, it morphed into its current incarnation.
In just four months, the Web site's growth has been far and above what its founder expected. The first month there were 10,000 visitors, the second more than 20,000, and in April there were 60,000.

"People have loved it and spread the word," Welton says. "It's been spectacular. But it shouldn't surprise me. I think everybody who has been in a relationship can relate to the need for the Love Police. And everyone currently in a couple -- even someone in a blissfully happy couple -- could probably use us to iron things out here and there."

Here is how it works: let's say your beloved commits a love crime. You send him or her an e-mail citation (that's the only catch, no Luddites in love need apply) from the Love Police, chosen from a list available on the site. Once you do this, you are officially a deputy on the Love Police Force.

Never fear that your complaint will not be there; the list is long and complete, and divided up into 10 categories of violations: Communications, Third Party, Memory, Bad Habits, Parenting, Personality, Dating, Behaviour, Money and Sex. Each category has at least 10 options. For example, under Dating Violations, you can cite someone for Failure to Appear, Failure to Appear Sober, Poor Table Manners or even Excessive Dutch Treating. Under Sex Violations there are choices such as Too Little, Too Much, Speeding Through Foreplay, Wrong Name, Same Old, Same Old or Pornography Problem. Along with your citation, you send a suggested bail option from the Department of Corrections. Some bail options are typical and time-honoured -- Send Flowers, Chocolate or Candy or Take Me Out to Eat. Some are decidedly modern -- Take Viagra, Upgrade Systems, Buy Fitness Equipment.

And some are painfully realistic and heart-wrenching -- Find Someone New, Get Into Therapy or Divorce. Divorce is the very last bail option, and, says Welton, that is not a fluke. "Obviously that's the last thing we want, but you know, sometimes it's for the better."

Next to each bail selection is a link where offenders can get the corrections rolling, such as a Web site where you can order flowers, candy, a treadmill, a cyberdate or, yes, a divorce kit. Sadly, says Welton, he knows that several of the latter have been ordered by his visitors. As for the links, he gets a small percentage from most each time a visitor buys something. Some links he has included for free, just because they seem particularly fitting.

Offenders have more options, however, than simply posting bail by sending a gift (or a divorce kit) to the deputy in question. They can offer up a plea along with an explanation or any mitigating factors. (Example, "I was raised by wolves.") Plea options include Guilty, Guilty With Explanation, Insanity, Diminished Capacity or Not Guilty.

Based on e-mail feedback from Love Police visitors, Welton guesses that the majority of his deputies are female and that the age demographic is 18 to 35-ish, though there are lots of hits from people in their 40s and 50s as well.

"There are plenty of single boomers out there. And women seem to really love it. Frankly, I think a lot of them have been waiting for something like this. Men have a tendency to become defensive when you tell them you want to talk. But if you do it with humour, they may take it better."

Rajiv, a 20-year-old university student in Madras, India, is living proof of that. When his girlfriend felt he wasn't spending enough time with her, she sent him a citation with the bail option of taking her to a movie. "If she would have just spoken to me, I probably would have got irritated and started telling her how busy I was, etc. But instead I burst out laughing."

And Elise, a 22-year-old in California, used the Love Police to tell her boyfriend his apartment was getting a bit too messy for her comfort. "It was the best way to do it without sounding like his mom. And instead of getting mad, he took me out to dinner, which was the bail I wanted."

Welton good-naturedly calls his own gender "bears with furniture, blunt and ego-sensitive," adding that women are just plain better at relationships and the subtleties of communicating things. In fact, he says, most people expect the Chief of the Love Police to be a woman.

Though he can't read the citations and e-mails that people send to one another, Welton can get an idea of what the popular ones are from the click-through figures he gets on the bail links. The most common complaints appear to be in the communications department (particularly Sending Mixed Messages), and the most common bail option is Buy Lingerie.

The Chief is pleased to report that his site is also used by parents to try to talk to their kids (and vice versa), and by bosses to talk to employees (and vice versa). "So we're helping all kinds of relationships. I consider it a kind of public service.

"Who knows? Maybe we'll put some mediators out of business."

Copyright National Post 2000 All Rights Reserved.

You are constantly second-guessing how you deal with that special someone, worrying (``Did I sound silly and uninformed?'') and wondering if you should give them ``their space'' and not phone
too often.

It's a hellish way to live, so hellish that when it suddenly becomes easier, it can be life altering.

Recently, I accepted a freelance assignment to write about celebrities in Toronto and where they go to work out.

I set about making a list of buff-looking celebrities but was hard pressed to think of any in my area code, so I settled for untoned celebrities, media folk and politicians.

As I psychologically prepared myself to call them, I got that knot in my stomach, the one I get when I'm about to call people for a story, anticipating their suspicious reactions and unwillingness to talk.

I begin with Canadian Auto Workers' union boss Buzz Hargrove, hoping a man of the people will be nice to me.

He answers his own phone. Already a good sign. No phalanx of secretaries to get through.

I tell him I am writing a story and have some questions for him. ``What's this about?'' His tone is pained.

I tell him. His voice changes - there is almost a snicker - and he tells me everything.

Feeling a little braver, I call former premier David Peterson. No secretary, but voice mail. I leave a message and Peterson returns it within half an hour.

``What's this about?''

There's unmistakable snickering as I tell him, followed by the comment that this is indeed a story ``of vital, national significance.'' followed by a rundown of his workouts.

Throughout the conversation, he uses my first name a lot, as in ``well, Rondi . . .'' and ``you know, Rondi . . .''

I think this is a Dale Carnegie ploy. Before hanging up, he asks me if I am a full-time fitness reporter.

For sure I am.

Next on my list, media critic and Massey College master John Fraser, whose personal phone number I was given by a (now ex) beau who warned me in a fever-pitched voice: ``Don't tell him I gave you his number!''

Fraser's first question - even before ``What's this about?'' - is ``Where did you get my number?''

``Umm, ahh . . . you know . . . through the, umm, journalistic grapevine . . .''

He buys that and we move on. He snickers, too, when I tell him the topic - and then he talks a blue streak.

I call author and radio raconteur Stuart McLean, who was my broadcast teacher at Ryerson. I hated everything about that class, but my deadline looms and I know Stuart will give good quote.

``Do you need me to say something funny?'' asks the proprietor of CBC Radio's Vinyl Cafe .

Oh, yeah!

On and on he goes, and I know I already have the quote on which I will end my story.

He then offers me other people's numbers. ``Do you want to call Ken Finkleman?''

I play along. ``Oh, sure!''

The wheels of my brain turn madly as I try to recall who Finkleman is. The name sounds vaguely familiar and, since it's Stuart I'm talking to, I figure he must be someone from the CBC. Stuart is so nice that I suffer massive guilt pangs for all the nasty things I used to say about his class and for all the wretched fates I used to wish upon him so he wouldn't make it to school in the mornings.

I phone my old classmate Vanessa and try to expiate my guilt. ``Don't feel bad,'' she tells me. ``He may have been nice today, but that class was purgatory.''

Feeling uber-brave, as things are going so well, I decide to phone John Turner.

The knot in my stomach comes back, though. If a former PM isn't a big man on campus, I don't know who is.

I get voice mail. An hour or so later, a woman calls ``from John Turner's office. What's this about?''

I tell her. She stifles her snickering and asks me to wait a moment.

I hear muffled conversation. And then that familiar voice. ``Rondi, good to talk to you.''

Again the first name. Perhaps, I muse, this is the key to power. He is totally charming. I can hear the politician in him and I feel myself being won over. I start to feel guilty that I lived overseas for so many years and didn't vote.

``You sound like you're pretty fit yourself, Rondi,'' he coos.

Swoon.

I feel like asking him to marry me. But then I remember that he's more than twice my age. And that he's already married.

After speaking with Turner, my editor calls for a progress report. I tell him that I am amazed, that no one seems to value their privacy, that people are telling me not only where they work out but at what time and on what days.

Everyone's a media whore!

``Well, they're Canadian celebrities,'' he snickers. ``They need the publicity.''

Out of control now, drunk with the power of writing a story that doesn't scare interviewees, I call Pamela Wallin.

An assistant answers. ``What's this about?'' I tell her. She doesn't snicker. There's a significant pause.

``Well,'' she hesitates, ``what if she doesn't work out?''

``Then I don't need to speak to her, but thanks for your time.''

``Oh, no, wait,'' says the assistant. ``Couldn't she help you, anyway? Wouldn't you like to speak to her?''

``Um, well, thank you, but the story's about, you know, working out.''

``So, you don't want to talk to her?''

``Thanks, but not this time.''

``Because, you know, I could go get her, and she could speak with you right now.''

``Ah, no. But thank you. I mean, I'd love to talk to her about something else, another story maybe.''

Sweet Jesus, I feel guilty. I just shunned Pamela Wallin. Who do I think I am?

Just someone who is no longer afraid of the big man on campus, someone who now uses people's first names to the point of distraction and someone who is desperately trying to think of a story for which she could interview Pamela Wallin.

Copyright Toronto Star 2000 All Rights Reserved.

Web sites such as cheater.com, cheathouse.com, BigNerds.com, papers123.com, schoolsucks.com (whose catchy slogan is "download your workload") and a myriad of others boast about the "help" they offer to high school and university students overwhelmed by assignments, under pressure to bring home A's or perhaps simply too lazy to make that trip to the library.

Not only do such sites offer ready-made essays, many offer customized ones, whereby a student can provide specifics in order to get the perfect paper. A student with a raging feminist professor can tell the service as much, and a paper teeming with quotes from Andrea Dworkin will be written for him or her. Rates vary for customized essays, but they can cost as much as $25 per page. Internet  paper mills, which offer pre-written papers, are mostly free to members, the only stipulation being that to become a member you must first submit a paper of your own for others to use. You give a little, you get a little.

With unparallelled disingenuousness, all of the sites offer disclaimers and statements about what they insist is their real intent. For example, from papers123.com: "It is illegal and unethical to take either part or all of someone else's work and submit it as your own for academic credit. The Paper Store will provide a perfect model of the paper you need only with the mutual understanding that you will use it as one of your references and give us proper credit in the bibliography ..."

Paul Farris, the young (19) president of BigNerds.com is well aware that students often plagiarize the papers his site offers as "research tools." But he takes a guilt-free stance on the whole issue. "Handing in someone else's paper is dumb. If people are going to do it, that isn't my problem and it definitely isn't what I recommend." Farris started the site up when he was in high school and now makes about $1,000 a month (from advertising). He runs the site from his college dorm room in Pennsylvania (where he is studying, appropriately enough, business) and says the site has, on average, 2,500 hits a day. He suspects that his "clients" are divided about 50/50 between high school and university students.

Alan Ridgway, an Ottawa high school teacher, is well aware of what's going on. He says there has been a real increase in plagiarism with the advent of the Internet. "Sure, it's always been done, though there hasn't been the accessibility there is now." But, he continues, one advantage to high school kids is that "they tend to fold when you confront them. They're still a little more scared of authority."

One of the problems these days, he says, is that kids now are "frighteningly computer literate" and many older teachers are not. "But a lot of us are making a real effort to become familiar with what's out there." As for preventative measures, Ridgway says the best prevention is a smaller student-to-teacher ratio. "When you know your students, it's a lot easier to spot work that doesn't come from them. It's also easier to tell when they're uneasy and may be lying to you."

Roseann Runte, the president of Victoria University in Toronto, agrees. She says "when classes are smaller, you can also give more writing assignments. And with more of those, it's easier to see someone's personal style." And it follows, she adds, that it is easier to spot something incongruous.

But smaller classes are harder to come by at the university level. Some classes have hundreds of students and are held in large halls where a teacher can barely see every face much less learn names. And a professor with hundreds of students may not have more than a few minutes to devote to each paper.

Shirley Katz, associate to the office of the legal counsel of York University, has, since the late 1980s, been actively involved in trying to quash both the pre-Internet essay services and the online paper mills. In 1995, she gave a lecture on the topic to the Canadian Association of University Solicitors. Katz admits that "we don't have hard evidence" but estimates that about one third of students might cheat if the opportunity presented itself, one third of students regularly cheat and one third never cheat under any circumstance. "And we must remember that the students who don't cheat are just as disgusted with these kinds of things as teachers are."

Katz sees the problem as part of a larger societal dilemma. "Students don't think you can be successful and honest at the same time. It's sad."

There are many reasons for the cheating, but one thing all of these students have in common, she says, is that they "can't grasp what the purpose of education is. They think it means good marks and nothing more."

And sadly, fear of penalty doesn't seem to stop potential copycats. "This is a very rights-based society. Trust me, these kids aren't frightened."

Another reason students may not be frightened is that professors don't always mete out tough penalties. Nancy McCann, a graduate student at Memorial University, is also a teaching assistant. She says that first-year students who cut and paste off the Internet will often get nothing more than a low mark and a sternly worded comment at the end of their paper. "If it were up to me, I'd give them a zero."

Katz echoes Runte and Ridgway in praise of smaller classes, and thinks another method of dealing with the problem is for teachers to be more creative when giving assignments and assessing their students. "Stay away from the same old, because that's what those Web sites offer. If I were teaching now, I would rethink my topics very carefully." In other words, if you teach high school, stay away from Animal Farm and Lord of the Flies. If you teach university, avoid T.S. Eliot and, yes, Shakespeare. Or at least don't ask for essays about them.

Some Canadian universities, says Katz, have recently begun to test out some of the plagiarism-  detecting software that has been developed in the United States. But the results are not yet in. "I don't know," says Katz, "of anyone who has successfully used that kind of software. "An example of the latter is plagiarism.org, developed in Fresno, Calif., by Berkeley graduate student John Barrie. Barrie's program purports to detect passages that have been taken from other sources. According to a recent story in the New York Post, five California high schools are using the software on a regular basis.

Alex, a 16-year-old student in New Jersey, doesn't understand the fuss. "I try not to copy from those sites, but even when I do, I don't feel I'm doing something that's all that bad."

Alan Ridgway begs to differ. "These kids may grow up to be surgeons and CPAs and whatever else. We want to be able to trust them."

Copyright National Post 2000 All Rights Reserved.

When you get up, he has a shower to get rid of your perfume/body-fluid smell. You make him a cup of coffee so he's good for driving and he gets dressed, kisses you goodbye and hops into his car.

He goes home to his wife and you watch one of those reruns of Law & Order on A & E and fantasize about Det. Logan.

Okay, so romance isn't always what we want it to be, right? And maybe you've just got to grab it where you can find it. But - morality aside - such complicated assignations are difficult to co-ordinate. Unless, of course, you enlist the help of a friend willing to lie for you.

Being such a friend is how Ace Alibi Agency got its start in Britain almost a year ago. Founding partners Scott Hall and John Watson had a pal they wanted to help out.

He was not trysting with a lover but simply wanted to attend an important (in his mind) soccer match in Glasgow, the same day as his mother-in-law's birthday.

His wife, he reckoned, wouldn't understand soccer's importance and would hit the roof if he went to the game. He complained to his mates, Hall and Watson, who cooked up a fabulous scheme.
``We printed out a letter saying he had to go on a training course for his company that day,'' Hall recalls.

The wife took the bait and off hubby went to see his beloved (soccer team).

It was Hall's wife who, upon hearing the story - and after shaking her head at the shenanigans men get themselves up to - commented that there must be a lot of people in similar situations, people who could use a good alibi here and there. Ace Alibi was born soon after.

Working out of London, the company provides alibis for people around the globe, thanks to its Web site. At the outset, says Hall, it was decided that if Ace Alibi were to grow internationally as well as in the U.K., it would have to be Internet-based. ``And so far, the Net is where most of the inquiries originate.''

The majority of Ace Alibi's clients are based in Britain, though Hall and Watson say plenty of business is coming from other English-speaking nations, especially the U.S., where they have 40
regular clients.

In theory, the company can make alibis for anyone anywhere, but since its telephone lines are all registered in Britain, the stories all involve ``attending something or other'' in the U.K.  For example, let's say Nancy in Toronto decides to spend a  weekend in Montreal with her lover, Jean- Claude. But she wants to keep her marriage intact - she's an old-fashioned girl - so she logs on to http://www.ace-alibi.com and makes the arrangements, then tells her husband, Ted, she has to
attend an important business event in London.

Ace Alibi can send fake letters confirming hotel reservations, plane tickets, conferences, etc. Nancy can leave a number for her ``hotel'' and, if Ted calls her there, a ``hotel clerk'' (really an Ace Alibi agent) will answer and inform him that Nancy isn't in her room.

The fake clerk then phones Nancy in Montreal and tells her to call Ted, which she does. Easy, no?

``In a perfect world, none of our clients would be unfaithful,'' says Hall. But the world we inhabit is far from perfect and Ace Alibi does get a number of requests from straying spouses.

Mind you, it also gets less-adulterous assignments. Hall says the strangest situation the agency has handled was the case of the Londoner who wanted to break up with his imaginary German
girlfriend.

The man had told his friends that she existed, but they were doubtful and dared him to prove it. It took a while, but Ace Alibi managed to engage the services of a German woman and choreograph a call to the man in the presence of his pals.

They ``listened in amazement'' as she shouted him down in German, Hall recalls. ``The German girl thought it was hilarious.''

Ace Alibi's clients range in age from their late 20s right up into their late 50s and Hall says 40 per cent of them are female - perhaps calling into question the conventional wisdom that women are less duplicitous than their testosterone-influenced opposite numbers.

Rates for the many creative ways the agency will deceive someone for you begin at around the equivalent of $40.

Hall says the agency is making a profit, but for now the money is going into more phone lines and computer equipment.

There is currently no Ace Alibi equivalent in Canada, but the partners are considering opening North American branches.

As for the questionable morality of it all, the agency's Web site offers the curious rationale that if short-term affairs (and other lies) were discovered, many a happy family life would crumble.

By covering up, the agency says, it's helping to keep a home together.

Copyright Toronto Star 2000 All Rights Reserved.

Which brings us to that Methuselah-aged question: Can a lesbian convincingly play a straight woman on screen?

Well, of course she can. And I'll tell you why: Lesbians, contrary to popular belief, do not hate men. At least none of the ones I've met hate men.

They have no reason to, since they don't have to get intimately involved with them.

And let's face it: The only really good reason to hate men is that they frequently insist on such appalling behaviour in their romantic relationships.

In most other areas, men are quite wonderful and they've done great things.

They won World War II for us, invented the telephone and discovered penicillin. (And while on the topic of romantic relationships, let us not underestimate the importance of that last one.)

I think men have it bad nowadays. I'd rather be a bouquet of cut flowers than a man. At least flowers get some words of praise here and there.

Sadly, it's mostly in the area of sincerity and willingness to make themselves vulnerable to another human that men appear to be challenged.

They can be brutal when caught in the heady gyrations of love, tossing all standards aside in a never-ending quest to get their cojones off.

And this is what makes many straight women want to male-bash. The point was brought home to me recently when - never one to miss a trend - I had dinner with a couple of my lesbian friends. (Daughters of Sappho are so in these days, and not only in downtown Toronto.)

After agreeing that there's no reason DeGeneres can't stare goopy-eyed at a male actor and pretend she loves him, we caught up on other topics, from movie reviews to rehashes of big stories from the past several seasons.

Things got really animated when we eventually turned to the life and times of the Princess of Wales, our differences of opinion playing out strictly along sexual-orientation lines.

With the benefit of two years' hindsight, the lesbians called Diana ``the world's most overpaid prostitute.''

Well . . . um . . . gosh.

I mean, maybe she wasn't deserving of that bizarre, orgiastic, weep-athon that took place after her 1997 death, but to call her a prostitute?

I tried to defend Di.

``Her husband was so mean to her,'' I said, pointing out that not only had he cheated on her but that he'd done so with a quite unattractive woman.

``And, you know, he was, he was mean to her. She loved him and he didn't love her back.''

The lesbians stared at me, a mixture of pity and amusement on their faces.

I imagined they were thinking what a silly, straight woman I was, giving any importance at all to whether a husband return his wife's affections.

Finally, though we'd tried to avoid it, the conversation turned to Monica Lewinsky and the Big Creep.

Wide-eyed, one of the lesbians told me of her horror when President Clinton admitted to an ``inappropriate'' relationship with ``that woman, Miss Lewinsky.''

(``Frustrating'' would have been more my word to describe it, especially from Monica's point of view.)

Equally straight-faced, the other lesbian told me that she never for a moment doubted Clinton's initial denial of an affair - the famous ``I did not have sexual relations with . . .'' spiel, complete with pointing finger and red face.

At first, I thought they were joking. Maybe they're testing me, I thought, trying to see how gullible I am.

But they were deadly serious. These educated, intelligent, well-read, cultured, experienced lesbians actually believed Slick Willy.

For a moment, I was almost in awe of their naivete, but then I experienced an epiphany. I understood.

They believed him because neither of them has any romantic history with men. Experienced they may be, but not with the opposite sex.

Never for a second - make that a nanosecond - did I ever think the inappropriate relationship did not take place. From the first sound bite and gleeful headlines on CNN, I knew it had to be true.

And I wasn't all that surprised. Weary, maybe, but not surprised. When Zipper Boy issued his denial, it didn't occur to me to buy into it. I never even briefly entertained the notion that he could have been telling the truth.

But then, I know what guys are like. I'm straight.

Still, there was common ground as our evening ended. We agreed that Monica was a little hooch - a predatory little hooch at that. Because women can be nasty pieces of work, too.

And that's a whole other tin of sardines, best left to straight men - or gay women - to open.

Rondi Adamson is a Toronto freelance writer.
Copyright Toronto Star 1999 All Rights Reserved.

"We have to bring one in from Toronto," laughs Hilary Rodrigues, founder and president of the six-year-old Rodrigues Winery in Markland, 80 kilometres west of St. John's. Rodrigues, the largest of Newfoundland's three wineries (Notre Dame and Flynn are the other two), is famous for its partridgeberry and Barrens Blend wines, and also makes plum, blueberry and strawberry wines.

The aforementioned rabbi, a member of the Rabbinical Council in Toronto, travels to Rodrigues Winery twice a month to oversee the making of all the wines produced on the premises. The yeast comes from a kosher plant in Denmark, the tartaric acid comes from a kosher plant in Spain and none of the ingredients has had any contact with milk, meat or fish.

Rodrigues himself is not Jewish but thought the kosher market might be a good niche for his product. "Marketing is very important. We found through our research that the kosher market would appreciate a high-quality product," he says, adding that "in Canada, we knew we would be the only ones. And that can't hurt."

The kosher market apparently also appreciates having a wine for seders that isn't as syrupy sweet as so many kosher wines are: "Usually our partridgeberry wines are about a 1 on the sugar scale." So how did Rodrigues, a 56-year-old practising dentist originally from Goa, an island off the west coast of India, come to found his winery?

After moving to Newfoundland via London, England, 25 years ago -- "the government here was really desperate for dentists" -- he heard stories about the pre-1949 Newfoundland traditions of homemade partridgeberry wine.

"It was part of the folklore here," he says. "At Christmastime, especially, people would have a barrel sitting behind the stove and that would be the house wine."

Partridgeberries -- tiny, wild, deep red and tart members of the cranberry clan -- are abundant all over Newfoundland, as well as in other northern climates such as the Northwest Territories, Labrador, northern Quebec and across Scandinavia. Partridgeberry wine takes considerably longer to ferment than grape wine, five months as opposed to four to six weeks, due to a naturally occurring anti-fungal agent on the berries' surface. "You can put partridgeberries in water, leave them in a cool place for a year, and they will not go bad," says Steve Delaney of the Newfoundland Opimian (wine) Society. "This durability earns them a certain affection out here."

The home-vintner tradition died after Newfoundland joined Canada, but Rodrigues thought it would be a good idea to bring it back. He bounced the idea off various people knowledgeable about the wine market; all of them told him to forget it. "You'll never be able to compete with the grape- growing wineries," was the recurring refrain. Rodrigues forged ahead regardless. He bought an old college hospital in Markland to use as his base and then, purely on speculation, produced his first year's batch of 500 cases (12 bottles per case) of various berry wines. That first batch sold out within 10 days. The next year, 3,500 cases were produced, 5,500 the following year, 8,500 the year after that.

Rodrigues Winery now produces 12,000 cases a year, for sale in Newfoundland, Ontario, Alberta, Quebec and New Brunswick. Soon the Rodrigues products will be available in the rest of Canada, Japan and the northeastern United States, particularly Boston and New York, which have large Jewish populations. "We'll be doubling our production to include those markets," says Rodrigues.

Of the current 12,000 cases Rodrigues makes, just over 5,000 sell in Newfoundland. And depending on where the wines are sold, the marketing approach can be very different.

In Newfoundland, for example, the "kosher" label has virtually no appeal for the average buyer and the wine is shelved along with the rest. In Japan, where "kosher" also lacks appeal, but where blueberries are a top-selling fruit (according to Rodrigues' research), blueberry wines will be the only ones exported. In Ontario's Vintages stores, Rodrigues products are always displayed in the kosher section, and sales increase accordingly around high holidays.

While berry wines in general have been considered the drink of college students, hillbillies and the generally unsophisticated, "they have gained a good deal of respect in the last 15 years," says Irvin Wolkoff, international wine judge and wine columnist for The Medical Post. "Wine is simply a beverage that is made by fermenting fruit that contains sugar. There's no reason that fruit has to be a grape."

Wolkoff, who is also a doctor, is quick to point out the particular health benefits of partridgeberry wine. "Red-skinned berries are very high in anti-oxidants and vitamin C." But how does said wine go with dinner? As a partridgeberry wine would tend to be dry, fresh and acidic, says Wolkoff, it would make a "beautiful accompaniment" to fish or lighter meats.

And it looks as if there will be more beautiful accompaniments to come. Rodrigues Winery has just purchased a distillery from a company in St. Pierre and Miquelon, in hopes of producing and selling fruit brandies, schnapps and vermouth.

"When I tell people I run a berry winery, they expect to see a couple of tanks in the back," laughs Rodrigues. "But things are booming so much that I think I'll be cutting down on my dental practice a bit."

- The winery's Web site is http://www3.nf.sympatico.ca/rodrigues.winery/

Copyright National Post 1999 All Rights Reserved.

It's high time North American women freed themselves from the tyranny of Bic, they said, while pseudo-sophisticates sniffed their approval, noting that many European women have never stopped letting their hair down.

But if most of us are being honest, we'll admit that we greeted the Roberts' photos with a great big Eeeuuwwww!

And if a woman's hairy pits cause squeals of disgust, what can you say about confronting a hairy male back?

Few sights can make women shudder more. While a hairy chest can be a turn-on (as long as it doesn't go all the way up to the neck), a hairy back definitely works as a woman-repellant. And a
growing number of men seem to be figuring that out.

The terror of waxing - the process by which hot wax is poured on body hair, so said hair may be torn out by the root - used to be an experience only for females to enjoy. But now men are joining
in the fun.

Toula Bintas has been waxing and plucking people for 10 years at Allazo Skincare, the Danforth Ave. salon she co-owns with her sister, Victoria.

In the past four years, Bintas reports, there has been a sharp increase in the number of gentlemen callers requesting a back wax.

Men are becoming more conscious of their appearance and image and it's not just a question of working out any more. They want a cleaner look.

While summer brings a definite increase of beach-bound clients, Bintas says back waxing is now something she does all year round. Bintas says her male waxing clients are mostly in their mid- to
late 20s, though one of her customers is in his early 50s.

Back waxing for men can take from 15 minutes to an hour, depending on how much of the back needs to be done and how hairy the fellow is.

As with women, a quarter-inch regrowth is necessary before re-waxing can be done. In other words, you'll be pain-free for about a month to six weeks.

Most Toronto aestheticians charge $20 to $50 for a back wax, again depending on the area being treated.

Bintas says that men, like women, are motivated to go under the wax for ``a better self-image and more self-confidence.'' And, one imagines, the hard-wired desire to appeal to the opposite sex.

Swimmers and other athletes have special reasons for getting smooth as well as buff. One Allazo Skincare client, for example, is a runner who finds that a waxed back decreases perspiration, making long runs slightly more tolerable.

Bodybuilder Jeff Kippell, 29, has his whole body waxed for competitions. But he also gets regular back waxes, even when he's not putting himself on show.

``I'm not a gorilla,'' he laughs, ``but at the gym you're going to be walking around in a tank-top. And you may feel less self-conscious if your back's not shedding.''

Kippell insists that his girlfriend doesn't mind his back going unwaxed, but he agrees that most women do not share her tolerance. As a man who has been waxed all over, he now feels he has more empathy for women ``and that bikini-line thing.''

Having one's back waxed is painful, he says, but dealing with other areas of the body are far worse.

And which ones are those?

``Oh, God,'' Kippell demures, ``you don't want to know that.''

Copyright Toronto Star 1999 All Rights Reserved.

Mr. MacLean, 48, is currently in Toronto to lead the eager and the thirsty in two nights of whisky nosing sponsored by Seagrams. Nosing is just as it sounds -- learning to appreciate the subtle differences in various whiskies not only by their taste and colour, but by their aroma. And for Mr. MacLean it is serious business.

Though he studied law and divinity as a young man in Edinburgh, it was his training in "the sensory evaluation of potable spirits" at the Scotch Whisky Research Institute that helped him find his niche.

Mr. MacLean is also the editor-at-large of Whisky magazine, newly available in Canada, and a renowned lecturer, author and consultant on all things potable. A frequent guest on many U.K. television and radio programs, his nose and palate are so respected that a company in Poland recently asked him to taste its vodkas.

His Pocket Whisky Book and new Malt Whisky book have won him acclaim and awards, and his several other whisky books have sold well across the U.K.

The Scotch Malt Whisky Society counts 15,000 members in Britain, and the nosing panel consists of  only 12 of those. Membership is not expensive, about the equivalent of $60, and society members have access to special whiskies not available in stores. The panel screens those whiskies on a weekly basis. "About 50% of the whiskies we taste get rejected," says Robin Laing, who sits on the panel with Mr. MacLean. Mr. Laing -- one of Scotland's foremost singer-songwriters -- is currently touring Ontario. On Monday in Toronto, he and Mr. MacLean hosted "The Angels' Share," a special evening of songs and lectures about whisky. (The angels' share is what distillers call whisky lost through evaporation.)

Mr. MacLean was elected "Keeper of the Quaich," in 1992 for "services to the whisky industry." The honorary title holds significant weight in a country where people know what a ''quaich'' is. (It is a two-handled drinking cup.)

As to whether malt whiskies are better than blended, Mr. MacLean puts it this way: "Single malt whiskies aren't better. 'Better' is subjective. They're more complex. But I drink more blended whiskies than single malts. Blended whisky is like bread. Single malt is like cake. It's a treat." Mr. MacLean adds that he enjoys a good bourbon here and there.

Torontonians are fortunate enough to welcome the man described by the Times of London as "the leading authority on whisky" thanks to his friendship with Ian Burgham, the vice-president of Toronto's Tranzac Club, where the tastings are being held. A tasting is being held at the Tranzac Club at 7:30 p.m. tomorrow. Call 923-8137 for information. Tickets are $60 for non-members, $50 for members.

Copyright National Post 1999 All Rights Reserved.

For although Schwing! has been called everything from a "punk-golf" to an "alternative-golf" magazine, Thatcher likes to think of it as "the Maxim of golf." Maxim is one of the relatively new, very glossy mags aimed at men who like to buy grown-up toys of all kinds and enjoy looking at the D-cup women on the cover. In the same vein, Schwing! has featured a former Playboy Playmate on its cover -- dressed and golfing, of course. "She has a great swing," insists Thatcher. It has also featured curvy pro-snowboarder Tina Basich on its pages, and in less-jiggly but still-funky mode, the current Schwing! features as cover boy U.S. mogul skier and Olympic medalist Johnny Moseley.

Thatcher, 41, a former pro-skateboarder, is one of the powers behind High Speed Productions, the  publishers of Thrasher and Slap, two skateboarding magazines and 'Juxtapoz, an art magazine. An amateur duffer himself, Thatcher, along with buddies Adrian Young, drummer of rock band No Doubt, and Joe Escalante, bass player for Southern California's The Vandals, came up with Schwing! eight years ago, but all felt the time wasn't right.

Things are different now, says Thatcher, as "many young people, musicians and artists are starting to play golf." With Young (an excellent golfer who sports a purple mohawk) and Escalante as partners, Schwing! was born, the first issue of the quarterly out in January, 1999. High Speed Productions would eventually like Schwing! to be a monthly, but for now are happy with the steady numbers they've been getting (about 50,000 copies of the last issue sold, exceeding expectations) as well as the overall reception Schwing! has received. There may be some nose-in-air tendencies from the V-neck sweater set, says Thatcher, "but we have got very positive mail from golfers in their 60s and 70s."

Conventional wisdom aside, anything goes in golf, continues Thatcher. "You can even wear stripes  with your plaid." And if one of the slings aimed at the golfing milieu is that they wear ugly pants and two-toned shoes, Schwing! shows us that middle-aged, country-club-dwelling white guys don't  corner the market on tee-off fashion crimes. Features have included "grunge golf" in Seattle, baggy pants, cropped shirts and all; "on the green," with Eddie Van Halen wearing large Bermuda shorts and garish shades; the rock band L7, carrying scimitars and skulls, and wearing distinctly punkish clothing; and an interview with sometime-golfer Debbie Harry of Blondie, three-inch dark roots against platinum hair proudly displayed. (Harry's biggest beef about golf is the use of golf carts: "They're horrible. Part of the game is walking and enjoying it. Not racing through it.")

Harry echoes the quite respectful tone Schwing! uses when it addresses the actual game of golf. "We are a golf magazine. We love the game," says editor Dom Callan, another accomplished amateur golfer. "We would never do anything that would encourage any trashing of it." Callan doesn't see it as a young person's magazine, either. "It's all in your attitude. If you're 85, love golf and are young at heart, you'll like Schwing! I can't see why you wouldn't."

Far from espousing rebellion on the links and looting at the pro shop, Schwing! devotes a good deal of space to golf etiquette, dos and don'ts for those new to the game, articles about equipment, golf books, and oddly enough, serious tips on how to dress properly for the sport. Less-reverential columns include "America's Worst  Courses," as well as CD reviews (from punk to Frank Sinatra), book reviews, celebrity interviews and other lifestyle pieces. Still, for  all the talk about the universal appeal of Schwing! Callan admits it is a magazine more for the public course golfer. "All of the other golf magazines are geared toward people with expensive club memberships. Schwing! is more for people who enjoy golf despite its image, not for its image."

According to Thatcher, the making of the 1980 movie Caddyshack, starring Rodney Dangerfield and Bill Murray (Thatcher has golfed with Murray and featured the actor in Schwing!), was a defining moment in golf history. "I'm not saying it's Citizen Kane or anything, but it's a hilarious movie. The greatest movie of all time about golf, and the world of golf is still in denial about that, let me tell you." And the Adam Sandler vehicle, Happy Gilmore? Thatcher sighs audibly. "Happy Gilmore should be honoured to be mentioned in the same sentence as Caddyshack."

While Callan concedes that "there will always be people who are offended by anything new," most of those in the mainstream golf world are withholding judgment. "No one on the pro tour has criticized us, as far as we know." An instructor at the Sandra Post School of Golf, north of Toronto, says simply: "I haven't seen the magazine yet. But if it gets more and varied groups of people interested in the game, as long as it doesn't denigrate golf, then I don't see a problem."

So when will Schwing! feature Canada's own golfing songbird Celine Dion on its cover? Callan laughs. "Oh gosh. She's a busy gal, I think. Besides, I don't think we could afford her at this point." He adds quickly though, that if she'd like to be featured in Schwing! all she has to do is call.

Schwing! is available in Canada by calling High Speed Productions at 415-822-3083.

Copyright National Post 1999 All Rights Reserved.

Key lime pie evokes images of the U.S. south: plantations and Key West sunsets, palm trees and the poetry of Wallace Stevens. Made with egg yolks, sweetened condensed milk and sugar, it is, as someone once called fettucine alfredo, "a heart attack on a plate."

Canadians may associate key lime pie with summer, but in Florida it's a year-round delight. Floridians consider it their unofficial, official state dessert.

The pie is named for the key lime, which is also called a West Indian or Mexican lime (or a citrus aurantifolia, for the smarty-pants crowd). It is a small, yellowish fruit, slightly larger than a golfball. It has a more acidic, tangy flavour than its better known cousin, the green Persian lime (the kind we see in our supermarkets), and a much thinner skin. Key limes are generally juicier and more pungent than Persian limes and, in North America at least, are much harder to come by.

In Florida, key limes are pretty much a "backyard crop," with plenty of thorn-covered key lime  trees shading family swing sets and back porches. The only groves to speak of -- in southwest Dade County -- are so small that they account for only 10% of annual sales in the United States. The rest come from Central America and the Caribbean.

Things were different two centuries ago. Back then, key limes were abundant throughout the entire area and are even said to have given the British their famous nickname, "limey." In the mid-18th century, key limes were consumed in huge quantities by British sailors after a naval surgeon discovered that citrus juices prevented scurvy, the vitamin-C deficiency that plagued people on long sea voyages.

Key lime plantations were established in the Florida Keys in the early 19th century. Near the end of the century, the key lime found its path to fame in Key West, the southernmost city in the continental U.S. As fresh milk was then hard to come by, people in Key West relied on condensed milk, which was too sickly sweet to drink on its own. No one knows exactly which Key Wester discovered that key lime juice would not only tone down the milk but, with the addition of a few other ingredients, make a great pie filling.

Whoever it was created culinary history.

Then, in 1926, Mother Nature stepped in. A hurricane wiped out most of the key lime plantations in South Florida. They were replaced with Persian limes. Persian limes, it was reasoned, were easier to pick because they had no thorns, and easier to export, thanks to their thicker skins.

The key lime pie could still be found in name on restaurant menus, but most of those pies were made with Persian limes. And, as any connoisseur of sweets will tell you, the difference is obvious, not just in flavour, but in appearance. A real key lime pie is yellow, with only a hint of green. Any green key lime pie has either been made with food colouring or Persian limes. In either case, it isn't a real key lime pie, say the purists.

But in the last 30 years, two changes brought back the popularity of the real McCoy. First was the growth of the Latino population in the U.S. south, particularly in Florida. For Central Americans, key limes are part of everyday cooking and the demand for them grew. Second was the boom in American cooking, led by people such as cookbook author Claiborne and celebrity chef Norman Van Aken, who is widely considered the father of South Florida's New World cuisine.

Key limes have subsequently been imported in much larger numbers from Central America, the groves in Dade County are cherished, and bottled key lime juice is available at many grocery stores -- even in Canada -- and through mail order from such companies as Key West's Key West Key Lime Pie Company, which also makes key lime salad dressings, mustards, marmalades, ice-cream and cookies.

Still, fussy types will tell you that the bottled juice just won't do. It is stale, they say, and tastes as much like freshly squeezed key lime juice as grape Kool-Aid tastes like a bottle of Cabernet Sauvignon.

Some restaurants in Florida, such as Manny and Isa's on Upper Matecumbe Key, guarantee the use of freshly squeezed key limes in their pies. It would be a challenge indeed to find a restaurant of any calibre in Florida that didn't serve key lime pie of some variety. There are differences of opinion, of course, as to whether a graham-cracker or pastry crust is better, or whether the pie should have meringue on top (as it does in Jimmy Buffett's Key West bar, Margaritaville), or whipped cream, or neither.

But one thing Key Westers, or Conchs, as the natives call themselves, firmly believe: A key lime pie should never, ever contain food colouring. Send any green pie back, they say, and tell the waiter you didn't ask for Persian lime pie.

Canadians who want to make a key lime pie, and can't find the key limes or bottled juice at their local market, have two options. One is to substitute the recipe's demands for key limes with half lemons and half regular limes, a combination which apparently results in a flavour very close to that of key lime juice. The other, according to Glenys Morgan, co-author of The Girls Who Dish -- Top Women Chefs Cook Their Best, is to use a kaffir lime leaf (a Thai seasoning similar to a bay leaf) in the mix, which will give an extra citrus-y zing and lime flavour to your pie.

Oh, and of course, there's always President's Choice, the good people who bring us memories of everything. Their key lime pie is, indeed, made with key lime juice, though to Conchs, the pie may look a little green.

Copyright National Post 1999 All Rights Reserved.

A woman I know, a beautiful woman at that, believes that her current beloved never checks out other women. Of course he does, her friends tell her. But she says no way, I'm the only one he lusts after. I've never seen him look askance, so it just isn't so.

If she's never seen him do it, she's luckier than most women. It's safe to assume that men, even men in committed relationships, check out other women. But many women would be envious of someone whose beau is discreet enough to only gaze at someone else's butt or cleavage when he is unencumbered by his wife or girlfriend.

Christine Watson, a now-married mother of two, remembers one of her first boyfriends as the original wandering eye. "I would get very jealous when he checked other women out - which was often. Right in front of me, too!"

The relationship didn't last long, and she later discovered that he had not only been looking but groping as well.

Why are men such boors? Is it genetic? Cultural? Evolutionary? Jerry Seinfeld has a theory. Watch men and women with the remote control, he says, and you'll learn all you need to know about the war between the sexes. Men surf, and women nurture. Men watch three of four shows at once, and even if they're hooked on a particular show, they can't resist checking out the other channels during commercial breaks.

Women, on the other hand, are faithful to the show they're watching. Even if it's not that interesting, or if it fails to satisfy them on some level, they'll stick to it until the bitter end.

Evolutionary psychology backs Seinfeld up. A recent study reported by cognitive scientist Steven Pinker in his book How The Mind Works seems to indicate that when it comes to sex and attraction, men and women have quite different psychologies.

The notion that men will chase anything in a loincloth and that women are looking for the brute with the best cave and the most woolly mammoths under his belt is not a politically correct one. But if the forces of evolution have shaped us differently, then, as Pinker says, "it would be remarkable if we didn't have different attitudes to sex."

The study in question was unusual. Psychologists hired good-looking male and female models to approach university students at random and then to ask them back to their place. If the students agreed to the latter, the models were to invite their targets to bed with them.

Seventy per cent of men agreed to go back to the woman's place and no fewer than three-quarters of those agreed to immediate sex. Only five per cent of women agreed to go home with the pretend admirer, and none consented to sex.

In biological evolution, there is only steadfast truth: reproduce or die. For men, the more sexual partners they have, the more offspring. Spread that sperm, big fella.

For women, multiple partners are of no use. One pregnancy takes over your body for nine months, and of course, for many years after that. In other words, what a guy needs is a morally bankrupt cheerleading squad, and what a gal needs is a good provider with good genes. Which might explain those less than enthusiastic responses from the women in Melbourne.

True, promiscuity is not the same as simply looking someone over. Many men look, but they don't necessarily answer the booty call.

Toronto family and marriage counsellor Dr. Sandy Shiner believes that while evolution plays a role, culture does as well. And, she says, just because men are programmed, so to speak, to hunt, they are not necessarily incapable of keeping their pants on.

Shiner says her late husband, to whom she was happily married for 40 years, was also "a man's man" who appreciated beautiful women. "He told me, 'Honey, it's when I stop looking that you're going to
have to worry.' "

In other words, staring at Jennifer Lopez's butt may simply be something that makes a guy feel more like a guy, and is not a reflection on the significant other in his life. A wandering eye is not necessarily a wandering body.

Shiner says that if a woman is so easily intimidated by her man's occasional glance in another direction, she may do better to look in the mirror and work on her own self-confidence, rather han putting her focus elsewhere. And speaking of focusing elsewhere, what about women checking guys out?

"If your partner's roving eye is driving you to distraction, sure, you can do that," laughs Shiner. But women, it seems, are a little more discriminating. It's that good gene thing again. A woman may look at Mel Gibson, but she probably won't be distracted by Lloyd Robertson, fine human being though he no doubt is.

After all, it's hard to fight the environment that shaped us. And if that sounds a little archaic, remember - that environment is called "The Stone Age."

Copyright Toronto Star 1999 All Rights Reserved.

Still, as the Mattel spokesman rather defensively pointed out, when you're attempting to ``bring  these things into the mainstream'' there are always going to be critics.

And Share A Smile Becky is indeed a beautiful role model for the physically challenged; great figure, great hair, great face, and a great attitude. Here are some other role-model Barbies that Mattel ought to consider:

Battered Wife Barbie: ``Debbie'' will come with removable bruises, cuts and scars as well as a list of excuses for why she won't leave her husband. Instead of a dream home, Mattel will offer a cheerfully painted Just Like Mom's Battered-Women's Shelter where Debbie can periodically visit after a fight with Abusive Husband Ken. This new Ken doll will come complete with five-o'clock shadow, a case of beer, and a list of self-serving reasons for his violent rages.

Bomber Pilot Adulteress Barbie: ``Kerry,'' the first Barbie to fly a B-52, will be quite a role model for girls aspiring to a career in the military. Accessories for Kerry will include a pink-and-turquoise B-52, as well as matching bomber-pilot uniform and an assortment of slinky lingerie for her romantic trysts with the husbands of enlisted women. Unlike regular Barbies, Kerry will have changeable facial expressions -- ``tough and determined'' when flying, ``sultry'' when trysting, and ``teary- eyed'' when defending herself on 60 Minutes.

Homeless Barbie: Guaranteed to develop your child's compassionate side, ``Marnie'' will be the only Barbie with body odour. Carrying a tiny bottle of booze in a paper bag and pushing a shopping cart full of dirty, discarded Barbie clothes, objects and plastic food. With the pull of a string, Marnie will mumble obscenities and shout at passers-by.

Bulimic Barbie: ``Tracy'' will have fingers that can be stuck down an opening in her smiling mouth. She will come with cardboard laxatives and diuretics, fashion magazines for her to obsess over, several bags of chips, and removable padding to reflect her fluctuating weight. The new ``therapist Ken'' will help Tracy to deal with her ``issues.''

In one group-therapy session, Tracy will meet her new best friend ``Super Obese Denise,'' the first fat Barbie. Denise will have no removable padding because, thanks to Therapist Ken, she will learn valuable lessons in self-esteem and accept her fatness as part of who she is.

Radical Lesbian Feminist Barbie: To keep your little girl's mind thoroughly open, buy her nose- ringed, butch-haired, badly-dressed ``Jan.'' Jan will be the only Barbie who doesn't smile. Instead she will come with a miniature ``Keep Abortion Legal'' picket sign, and work as a volunteer in the Just Like Mom's Battered-Women's Shelter where she'll help Debbie (see at left) understand Ken's role in the patriarchy. Then, when market testing shows the ``mainstream'' to be ready, Mattel will launch Jan's cat-loving girlfriend ``Mira,'' who will come with five insertable in-vitro treatments so she and Jan can practise family values.

And speaking of ``Pro Bono Ken,'' why be sexist? Why doesn't Mattel create ``Marcia,'' a working mother and attorney, to represent Debbie (when she finally presses charges against her husband), Kerry (when she fights her court-martial), Marnie (when she fights for her right to live outside of mental institutions), Tracy (when she sues Calvin Klein for causing her eating disorder), Denise (when she joins class-action lawsuit against the airlines for not having wide enough seats), and Jan (when she takes her claim to share her lover's health insurance all the way to the Supreme Court)?

As Mattel will discover, the possibilities are truly endless.

Copyright Ottawa Citizen 1997 All Rights Reserved.

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