From Alternet

An interview with Feministing editor Samhita Mukhopadhyay (28) is like a fast-paced workshop on how to be a tireless wireless feminist. Mukhopadhyay is one of six female staff members that run the blog Feministing. The site editors and founders are motivated by their belief that young women are rarely given the opportunity to speak on their own behalf on issues that affect their lives and futures.

Feministing aims to provide a platform for women to comment on and analyze these issues. Roughly 25,000 unique users per day visit the site, which gets more than 50,000 actual hits a day, according to the site's most recent data. A men's group, in response to Feministing's success, has created a mock-feminism blog site at Feministing.org. Mukhopadhyay says: "That shit just makes us more famous."

From New York Times

When the board at Randolph-Macon Woman's College announced its decision this month to admit men, the college's interim president, Ginger Worden, looked at a distraught student protester nearby, tears rolling down the young woman's face.

"I'm sorry," Ms. Worden, an alumna of Randolph-Macon, said she mouthed silently to the student, as tears came to her own eyes.

Decades after Ivy League institutions like Yale and Princeton opened to women, the number of women's colleges has shrunk from about 300 in the 1960's to fewer than 60 today. The top institutions that do not admit men - Wellesley, Bryn Mawr, Barnard, Mount Holyoke and Smith - say they are doing fine. But behind them are small liberal arts colleges for women, like Randolph-Macon, increasingly struggling against financial pressures to win applicants in an era of unbounded choice. And in recent months, their numbers have been dwindling precipitously.

From Slate

This week, the Wall Street Journal reported ($) on restrictions that the Food and Drug Administration has placed on the use of an important acne drug by pregnant women. We're not talking about a few pimples-the drug, Accutane, is the most effective treatment for the kind of acne that causes scarring disfigurement and is often used as a last resort. It also, however, causes serious birth defects in the babies of women who get pregnant while taking it.

Despite long-standing warnings about the malformations that the drug can cause in the fetus, about 200 pregnancies occur in American women taking Accutane every year.

Last year, the FDA started a specialized program that closely monitors both women on the drug and the doctors who prescribe it. Because it is mostly adolescents who get acne, and adolescent pregnancies tend to be accidental, the steps the FDA has taken seem appropriate at first glance.

But however well-intentioned its efforts, the FDA is erecting a barrier to care and missing an opportunity to hit a public-health home run.

The awful side effects of Accutane should be an opportunity to help women avoid unplanned pregnancies, not punish them by decreasing access to a drug that can cure a serious condition.

From Feministing

I guess Maxim wasn't happy with just judging who the hottest 100 women are; they needed to up the frat-boy ante with another list. And this one's a kicker: TV's Least Appealing Ladies. How lovely that a crew of grown men decided to create a nation-wide slam book. The list includes CNN"s Christiane Amanpour, Pam Grier and Tina Fey, of whom the magazine says, "If Fey is truly the thinking man's sex symbol, then we humbly hand over our library cards."

I think Maxim has proved who the really ugly folks are, and it's not a bunch of women.

From Blackademic

Survivor already has its problems, since the premise of the show is to live like the “primitive natives” of various islands (who rarely make an appearance—only to serve the contestants food or dance for them), and conquer survive their terrain. it is bizarre enough that the contestants are given made-up “tribal” names, now take it one step further and divide them into groups based on their race. i think this could only lead to trouble on and off the set.

and the term, the “white tribe,” really makes me uncomfortable. are they serious?