Polly and all - thinking more about this (and checking out Polly's blog, looks like nice work!) because it occurs to me now that my 16-year-old daughter is a dancer.

(The Duke lacrosse "dancer" is horribly in the news - probably connects to the Oprah show too?)

But she has little common experience with the Oprah-featured and culturally exploited "dancer" Karinne. Her study and preparation/performance work has been professional, classical, almost sheltered. Exploitation is fully recognized by all concerned as the enemy at the gate.

Oprah never danced yet like Karinne, she was sexually exploited while young, demeaned and dismissed as a one-dimensional sex object (odd, why don't we say "subject" rather than object, as in subject to someone else's desires and control?)

Apparently she's turned it to cultural advantage in later life. Is this really stupid, or really smart? Both, neither?

I don't know what to make of this, all thoughts welcome.
Right now I'm remembering Our Inner Ape and other scientific observations, about the peaceful and highly sexy bonobos versus the fierce but frustrated chimpanzees, how culturally smart the bonobo females are and how they survive, thrive and dominate. The young females purposely exploit their own sexual appeal to "exploit" in turn the strongest males they can entice, to gain protection and pecking order power which they accumulate so that, as they become mothers and grow older, they can rule BY sex without using sex.

. . .if a male tried to harass a female, all the females would band together to chase him off. . . At the center of a traveling party, one usually finds high-ranking females close together. Their sons are allowed to enter this aggregation, but adult males without mothers tend to stay at the periphery. . .female-centered society, in which even the male rank order is largely dictated by mothers."

Or maybe (Liza, advice?) I should blog separately about such cross-species cultural connections, and we could take this tangent there for more discussion?

"Ask MisEducation"