You don't want Rick Grimes as your boyfriend. (AMC)

Have you noticed that in the last several years, most of the "brilliant" TV shows on AMC, Showtime and HBO star these dangerous, psychopathic anti-heroes? From Dexter to Don Draper, Nick Brody to Rick Grimes, Walter White to the ultimate don, Tony Soprano, one gets the sense that while the rest of American culture is taking one step forward on progressive women's rights issues, our beloved TV shows are moving us two steps back.

And what's weird is how we love these horrible men. "I'm such a Carrie" no longer refers to the ultimate Bradshaw, but the bipolar Claire Danes on Homeland ... the kind of gal who falls in love with a terrorist, despite the fact that he ends up subjecting her to electro-shock therapy treatments after they have sex. And they are still in love, or something! How sexy is that, ladies?

But wait, it gets worse...

From Newsday.com:

A Williston Park man who police say shot his girlfriend in the back with a rifle after a heated argument over the television show “The Walking Dead” was ordered jailed without bail at his arraignment Tuesday.

Jared Gurman, 26, of 516 Marcellus Rd., is being held on a charge of attempted murder after the shooting at about 2:40 a.m. Monday at his apartment.

A single round from a .22 caliber rifle pierced the victim’s lung and diaphragm and shattered her ribs, police said.

It's a funny thing, too: a quick glance at the weapons used in The Walking Dead shows a lot of .22 caliber rifles ...

Housewife Aviva Drescher and social critic Camille Paglia. (Getty Images)

Two weeks ago, feminist Camille Paglia did an interview with Salon.com in which she came out as the world's biggest fan of The Real Housewives franchise, calling it "a revelation of the deep truth about female sexuality." She added:

It’s like the Discovery Channel—sending a camera to the African savannah to watch the cheetahs stalking the gazelles! What you’re seeing is the primal battles going on among women. Men are marginalized on these shows—they’re eye candy, to use Obama’s phrase, on the borderlines of the ferocity of female sexuality.

We decided to call up Aviva Drescher, RHONY’s newest villainess (though we still think she's very nice), to get her reaction to the compliment.

"So this woman ... she a feminist psychologist?" Ms. Drescher asked, not having heard the news about the endorsement. We said maybe more like a contrarian feminist theorist.

"I think even looking at the title of the show--it's a celebration of housewives," Ms. Drescher said. "And it's not the ’50s version of a housewife either. It's all about the differences in women to whom we apply this blanket term. And yet it is still of tremendous importance to the stereotypical 'housewife.'"

So even the name of the show might be Bravo's attempt at a subversive feminist critique? After all, Ms. Drescher is one of the three married "housewives" among them (besides Ramona Singer and Heather Thompson). Caroline Radziwill started the season in an open relationship, Sonja Morgan is divorced, and LuAnn de Lesseps might technically still be in a relationship with boyfriend Jacques Azoulay after she was accused of cheating on him during the reunion.

"Out of all the women, I'm the only actual 'housewife,'" Ms. Drescher said. "But just the fact that this a show where six women who are employed, who are being paid to be themselves on television, is empowering by it's nature."

"In terms of the ferocity of sexuality, you get the whole gamut," she continued, adding, "I'm the one who's more conservative, the mom with four kids who isn't really that interested in going on a girls' Vegas-type trip."

"Bravo's really celebrating women's differences," she said. "And when it's comes to differences, nobody wins."

"Well, except in the fact that everyone watching the show can find someone to relate to," she explained. "That's what we're celebrating."

And Bravo's ratings, of course.

(Getty)

My girlfriend of four years, Sabrina, and I have been in an ongoing conversation about babies. Should we recruit a gay friend, adopt, or go the sperm bank route?

Those are the tough ones. The question of breastfeeding, luckily, is a subject on which we both agree: It’s not going to happen.

In part, this is simply a practical matter. Sabrina is a children’s therapist who sees an exhausting number of clients throughout the day; I juggle multiple gigs. Since we won’t be equally linked to our children biologically, we don’t dig the idea that one of us will forge a superior bond—and shoulder a disproportionate burden—by doing all of the feeding.

On a more ideological level, we’re eschewing the nipple because of how breastfeeding stymies the progress of feminism, which is why we’re stewing over Mayor Bloomberg's new initiative, Latch on NYC, which takes effect on September 3. The new campaign will encourage new moms to breastfeed in the interest of babies’ health: breast milk is proven to lower infants’ risk of gastrointestinal and ear infections, along with other benefits.

Under the new rules, about two dozen hospitals will discourage new moms from formula-feeding by educating them on the benefits of breast milk, and will not provide formula unless medically indicated on the infant’s chart or requested by the mother. The rules will also prohibit formula freebies and ads in hospitals.

“Human breast milk is best for babies and mothers,” NYC Health Commissioner Thomas Farley said when the campaign was announced on May 9. He added that receiving free formula at hospital discharge time “can impede the establishment of an adequate milk supply and undermine women’s confidence in breastfeeding.”

Breastfeeding advocates hail the new policy, which takes Mr. Bloomberg’s nanny-state regime to its logical conclusion, but what has gone mostly unexamined is the antifeminist undercurrents of the lactivists’ cause. The notion that “breast is best” simply because it’s natural sounds ringingly similar to the arguments made by pro-lifers and even contraception opponents, all of which begin with the same basic premise: women should be shackled to their corporeal destinies. Your body is designed this way—to get pregnant, to bring an embryo to term, to nurture life—therefore you must submit to its dictates.

Our bodies age and die, too, but that doesn’t stop people from pumping them full of medicine, slathering on skin-care lotion and doing everything else we can think of to overcome “nature.”

Never mind the difficulties of breastfeeding for women who juggle multiple jobs and kids in single-parent homes. It’s a tricky task to pull off for all working mothers, in even the most progressive workplaces. Not everyone has a private office for pumping; nor does every company have a “lactation lounge.” And despite all the supposed good vibes around breastfeeding, ask any woman who has actually pumped every two to three hours at work for months how that went down with her boss and colleagues. (No prob, maybe, if you run a yoga studio; not so easy when you wait tables or teach or even sit on a trading desk.)

How much of that magical oxytocin, the “love hormone,” does it take to counteract the stress of holding down a high-powered job while expressing milk every couple hours?

Aside from being a potential career-killer, breastfeeding operates against all parents in more insidious ways. A bottle positions men and women equally over the care of infants, while breastfeeding cements the notion that women are central to the process of nurturing children. Wasn't feminism all about de-emphasizing our corporeality by arguing that our bodies should not define or limit our rights and responsibilities?

Cultural critic Hanna Rosin touches on this point in her myth-shattering 2009 must-read for The Atlantic, “The Case Against Breast-Feeding.” The consequence of reinforcing women's parental centrality—superiority, really—in matters of child care is that it overwhelms mothers and undervalues fathers.

That unequal relationship is at the very crux of pay inequality between men and women, according to Stephanie Coontz, professor of history and family studies at The Evergreen State College in Olympia, Wash. She says women start taking a financial hit when parenthood begins, “because moms are still the default parent—the ones most likely to adjust their work hours or change or quit jobs to do childcare.” It’s a lot easier to breastfeed when you’re home with the baby, right?

Plus, pumping milk at your desk isn’t even good enough for our most passionate nursing advocates. They insist on direct feeding from the breast itself, even though its supposed emotional benefits over a bottle haven’t been scientifically validated. Two leading breastfeeding experts I interviewed couldn’t point to a single study concluding that nursing emotionally trumps a cuddly bottle feed.

Instead, curiously, they resorted to sexual metaphors.

Dr. Jack Newman, author of The Ultimate Breastfeeding Book of Answers, contends that “no close holding of the bottle-fed baby can duplicate the nursing relationship." We asked whether there are any studies that support his thesis. “Feeding a baby with a bottle is akin to making love with a condom,” replied Dr. Newman, who founded the Newman Breastfeeding Clinic and Institute in Toronto. “Ask the men. They’ll tell you direct contact is different.”

No thanks, we’ll take your word for it!

Katherine Dettwyler is an anthropology professor at the University of Delaware, who co-edited two crucial books on the topic. In an email, she likened breastfeeding to partnered sex and bottle-feeding to masturbation with a vibrator. “Orgasms are lovely, but they only represent the tip of the iceberg,” she said. “Breastfeeding is a complex, physically intimate, loving relationship between two people who love, trust, and respect each other.”

Okaaay ...

Still, nobody is arguing for the abolition of the vibrator. Or Mayor Bloomberg isn’t, anyway.

Here’s an idea that might preserve women’s choice to parent according to their own preferences, while also supporting the health of babies: advocate for making formula better. Wouldn’t that solve a lot more problems than pushing every new mother to become a milkmaid?

If the supposed health advocates who insist on breastfeeding held children in such high regard, they'd also be rallying for advances in formula to ensure that all kids, including those sad unfortunates who aren't breastfed, are well-nourished anyway.

There are different kinds of formula bases—cow’s milk, soy, amino acid—and they contain several vital nutrients. The fundamental problem with them is that they are not a live substance with all the antibacterial and immunological benefits of breast milk. For instance, white blood cells, which are contained in breast milk and defend against infectious disease, can’t be replicated in formula. Moreover, breast milk is made to measure for each baby at the moment he or she drinks it, changing all the time (from the beginning to the end of a feeding, for instance) for optimal effect.

That said, whether or not formula could contain some of the key ingredients of breast milk is a question biochemistry should be asking, said Suzanne Barston, author of the forthcoming Bottled Up, a sharp and measured critique of America's discourse on breastfeeding. “If my iPhone can talk back to me, if we can view photos of Mars in real time, if we can transplant someone's heart into another body, I think it is entirely possible for us to come up with a formula that doesn't fall short," she noted.

But Ms. Barston, the star of a Pampers-sponsored reality web series, A Parent is Born, and author of the provocative and independent blog fearlessformulafeeder.com, believes that part of the reason formulas still don’t measure up is that there’s no financial incentive for manufacturers to improve them. Even if they did make scientific strides, Ms. Barston believes, the psychological appeal of breastfeeding would be so strong that the activists would find other reasons to favor the natural approach.

It’s a vicious cycle, whereby formulas remain subpar and therefore women who resort to them are seen as subpar moms. "Once we as a society can accept that many women cannot or do not want to breastfeed, we can then deal with what their babies will be missing,” she added.

Not that the breast-is-best crew is likely to be satisfied. “Even if there was a formula that could compete with the benefits of breast milk (which there isn’t now, and never will be),” Ms. Dettwyler insisted, “I would still be a passionate proponent of breastfeeding.”

It’s arguments like these that pretty much convince me that underneath all the pro-lactation rhetoric is a nostalgia and conservative orthodoxy that wants to affix every woman's destiny to her biology. But as the highest-thinking creatures on Earth, isn't the goal to move beyond the limits of our bodies?

In that spirit, Sabrina and I, two formula-fed babies who grew into hearty, healthy women, will be nursing our infants from bottles. Some people, we know, will disagree with our choice. They can suckle it.

Stephanie Fairyington is co-editor of The Slant: There's Always More to the Story.

For more on breastfeeding and related issues, check out our parenting column Mothers Superior.

We found ourselves on the receiving end of one today, however, that struck a chord of curiosity from one person who sent it on.

The email, which came with the subject line "FW: Eye Candy? Not." extols the educations and qualifications of Fox News's female on-air talent. It begins as follows:

Impressive backgrounds for Fox News' women reporters...

Check out these "Dumb Gals" on FOX News.

For the past 10 years FOX News has had higher ratings and the largest audience numbers (for news and business/political "talk" programs) than all of the other TV and Cable news channels combined, including CNN, MSNBC, ABC, NBC and CBS!

Some folks who are "bitter" about this claim that FOX's higher ratings are only because FOX purposely hires a lot of female "reporters" who do nothing but sit around in short skirts and merely "read everything off of a TelePrompTer."

Bottom line: The next time you hear someone criticizing FOX News for supposedly having a "bunch of dumb gals" doing the news, etc. that are only on the tube to serve as "eye candy" to catch the attention of stupid, right-wing men, etc. well don't be so quick to jump on that left-wing band-wagon!

Still not a believer? Well, scroll down and let the FOX ladies speak for themselves!

It's boilerplate email-forward type stuff, but it then goes on to briefly list the names and credentials (with photos) of "Fox News' women reporters."

We received the email by way of someone fairly close with Fox News, who's already received it multiple times from people having nothing to do with the network: In other words, it's making the rounds, whatever those rounds are, and it's going some degree of old-school viral.

But they correctly point out some omissions from the email: Lauren Green, an African-American woman who's worked as Fox News's on-air religion correspondent; Santita Jackson, one of the few African-American women working as on-air talent at Fox News (who also happens to be Rev. Jesse Jackson's daughter); Jemhu Green, also an African-American woman working at Fox News (who once called Tucker Carlson a "bow-tied white boy"); and Sally Kohn, an openly gay former community organizer whose partner was once the executive director of the Environmental Grantmakers Association.

This isn't the first place the women of Fox News have been quite literally "whitewashed" by their fans. Even the "Girls of Fox News and Fox Business" fansite—yes, it exists—omits most of the African-American Fox News contributors.

A screengrab of part of the email is at the end of this post. We're curious: Have you seen it? Who started this email? What prompted it? And why, with such careful diligence put toward comprehensively listing these women, were the omissions made? If you know anything about it, we'd love to hear it.

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Helen Gurley Brown in 2001 (Getty).

As a single man, I live for the single girl.

With the passing of Helen Gurley Brown, the original Cosmo girl, the old debates about her retro-progressive, sex-positive brand of feminism will be rekindled. And even as she is lauded as a catalyst for a spectacular wave of newfound sexual empowerment among a gender that was often brow-beaten and moralized into frigid submission, she may well perpetually be reviled by the old-school feminist cadres whose humorlessness almost ruined feminism for the rest of us.

Of course, the cartoon image of feminism was never the whole picture, as HGB well knew. Feminists‚ a group to which I believe I firmly belong, have largely been distorted into monsters through the prism of dick-brained male priapism, especially the right-wing testosterone cases who seem to live in perpetual fear of being bested by a member of the fairer sex.

It’s a tricky business this feminism. But one thing you can be sure of is that HGB was not the emasculating type—far from it. In fact, while championing the remorseless sexuality and self-enlightened pleasure-seeking of the modern gal, she did a great service to the male of the species, and I stand before you now, naked and not ashamed, to tell you just how much we owe Ms. Brown.

The short answer, of course, would be a debt of gratitude for the approximately eight-quadzillion sex tips she published in Cosmo between the moment she landed there in 1965, on the cusp of an American social revolution, and her exit 32 years later—an avalanche of advice about, as James Brown might say, using what you got to get just what you want.

Even as a superannuated Brown headed for retirement, she was doing sit-ups during an exit interview, and I am betting she kept up with her kegels right up until her final moments, because Helen Gurley Brown knew this to be true: to be sexy, feel sexy.

HGB was no bombshell—she was a self-described “mouseburger”—but what she saw in herself was unlimited potential. She was an atom waiting to be smashed, and when she figured out how to unlock her power the ensuing blast was felt across generations. That 30 years later her vision of urban independence and guilt-free sex helped incubate the seeds for that toxic television show Sex and the City is unfortunate, but just as one can't blame Jesus for the awfulness of so many of his followers, so I don’t hold HGB personally responsible for the Sex and the City girls (the Observer bears some liability), whose nearly unerring bad taste in clothes and their slavery to fleeting metropolitan trends made dating in New York City a nightmare during the heyday of its run.

Hopefully, we can all agree that looks aren’t everything. HGB wasn’t necessarily a romantic—she was goal-oriented to the point of being cynical—but she was never shallow, and her ends made for some pretty nifty means.

She talked about getting oneself together. She put high value on a good job, self-reliance (she could go toe-to-toe with Emerson in that department), and personal style, and by proselytizing this to women, advocating these self-empowering values, by extension she gave guys like me half a chance.

Over at Screw we prided ourselves on our feminism, and no one more than our fearless eater, Al Goldstein, who like others in the porn racket, worshipped women. (Most everyone, that is, except the duplicitous Hugh Hefner, whose disdain for the double-x chromosome was always palpable, even now as he continues to promote the most negative stereotype-reinforcing mannequins money can rent.)

A lot of people were surprised, too, when we rallied behind Martha Stewart. We didn’t really like her per se, but we knew that she got fucked on that insider trading thing because she was a woman in man’s world. No one with a penis would have done five seconds of time for that nonsense.

And we loved HGB most of all for her unabashed approach to satisfaction. Of course we buried Andrea Dworkin and Catharine McKinnon and anyone else who didn’t laugh at our jokes. Dworkin, especially, who thought that all penetration was rape, was a bigot, plain and simple, and I feel for the great waves of passionate and sensible feminists who couldn’t escape her sizable shadow.

Brown wasn’t always right: she more or less advocated sleeping with married men and pilfering office supplies to make ends meet, and she so believed than any attention bestowed upon a woman by a man was benign at worst that she defended Clarence Thomas as the victim in his imbroglio with Anita Hill.

But thanks to HGB, millions of women know how to find their man’s secret G Spot, and do things with their mouths and with such alacrity and technique as would make Fanny Hill blush like a child. And, like Moses leading his people out of Egypt, it would have been enough.

But nothing could be more important than her prime directive: To be sexy, feel sexy.

What else do you need to know?

Mike Edison is the author of the memoir I Have Fun Everywhere I Go. He is the former publisher of High Times magazine, and was the editor-in-chief of Screw. His most recent book is Dirty! Dirty! Dirty! – Of Playboys, Pigs, and Penthouse Paupers, an American Tale of Sex and Wonder (Soft Skull Press).

A woman, Occupying Wall Street

Ugh, women. Can't they go five minutes without ruining a rally against corporate greed with their claims of inter-protest misogyny, objectification, and rape?

When filmmaker Steven Greenstreet created his Tumblr Hot Chicks of Occupy Wall Street in mid-October, he was attempting to show "the sexy side of protesting." Unsurprisingly, his site was only up for a day before feminist blogs tore into the "creepy voyeur" for what they perceived as a sexist objectification of women - many of whom were photographed apparently without their knowledge or consent.

Mr. Greenstreet addressed these issues five days after his launch, in a October 15th post titled "Why?" His excuse was pretty flimsy, and his argument against detractors boiled down to "Any excuse is a good excuse to bring up the topic of women’s rights." Not a lot of feminists bought the line, yet the site continues to grow in popularity. Because hey, who doesn't like to look at attractive people?

But Mr. Greenstreet's site is only part of the problem for women thinking of joining the Occupy movement. Three days later, a 19-year-old Cleveland woman claimed she was raped at the protests after "camp leaders" directed her to share a tent with a man named Leland. The OWS message boards erupted: the young woman was called a liar, accused of secretly working with the government to make OWS look bad, or at the very least she was asking for it by getting into a tent with a strange man, and other misogynistic excuses. Perhaps the only surprising aspect of the reaction to the alleged assault was that it was Occupiers themselves that were turning against the victim, who they perceived as a threat to their community and tentative relationship with the local authorities.

Of course, not all message board trolls speak for the majority of the OWS movement. Yet the "women issue" continues to be, well, an issue. Ashwini Hardikar wrote a blog post on October 13th titled The Value of a Safe Space: One WOC’s experience with harassment at Occupy Wall Street where she describes being hugged by a male protester, an act she considered intrusive and non-consensual:

“What the fuck do you think you’re doing? You can’t just touch people without their permission. It’s not ok to be in someone’s personal space if you haven’t gotten their consent. I have no idea who you are, you can’t just touch me!” I was yelling, getting louder and louder. I wondered if anyone was listening.

“I was just giving you a hug. I’m not allowed to give people hugs?”

I couldn’t believe he was arguing with me. My heart was racing. All those other times that I had been harassed or groped, and it happened so quickly by a faceless assailant, or when I just felt paralyzed, flashed through my mind. All those times that I didn’t feel like I had a voice. This time, I had found mine somehow.

“No, you are not allowed to touch people if they haven’t asked you to. You’re giving this movement a bad name right now because you are going around and violating others’ space, and it makes people feel unsafe.” My voice sounded clear and very strong, even though I was shaking. Wow, I thought to myself, I know exactly what to say for once!

While some may dismiss Ms. Hardikar's reaction to the gesture as extreme, she speaks to a growing community of women who agree with OWS' message, but who worry that their basic human rights might be getting lost in the shuffle. For that reason, Ms. Hardikar created a Safer Spaces Working Group in the General Assembly. It is described in one sentence: "Working for respect of women, LGBTQ, & POC, Rape victim advocates, queers encouraged to come!" They have created their own female-only sleeping space in a section of Zuccotti Park.

Sarah Seltzer's article for The Nation serves as an antidote to those offended by Mr. Greenstreet's objectifying blog. Her Wednesday post, titled "Where Are the Women at Occupy Wall Street? Everywhere—and They're Not Going Away" described Ms. Hardikar's experience, as well as those of other strong women who continue to protest even when they feel their voices aren't heard as loudly as their male counterparts.

Ms. Seltzer's article quotes a female activist who goes by Ketchup, who has been on the ground at Zuccotti since day one, and whose attention, it's noted, has shifted toward helping create these safe spaces. Yet Ketchup remains optimistic in the face of intra-group misogyny:

“I would just say if you are a woman, please come here! Understand that while there will be misogynists in any group, people with bias in any group, the process here exists here to check that and there is ample support to deal with that.”

Some have argued that women like Ketchup and Ms. Hardikar are detracting from OWS' message to talk about "women issues." But we wouldn't be too worried: as OWS keeps reminding us, they never had a cohesive message to begin with...let alone one that is about to be derailed by women demanding their right to walk freely and Occupy unmolested.

Metsgrrl blogger and author Caryn Rose spotted this ad (below) on Facebook for Moneyball.

Rose notes:

moneyball movie promo sexist stereotyping MAJOR FAIL. This ad showed up on Facebook this morning, and just made me want to spit.

Seriously, FUCK YOU, Hollywood. Some people with ovaries HAVE ACTUALLY READ MONEYBALL, and some people without ovaries have actually NOT read it.

She has a point, and to further it: some of the best movies about baseball are based around women who know more about baseball than the men they're surrounded by. Who among us have seen Bull Durham or A League of Their Own, and can actually change the channel whenever they come on television thereafter?

[The misguided and Tim Robbins, that's who.]

The based-on-a-Michael-Lewis-book, Aaron-Sorkin-scripted, Brad Pitt-starring Moneyball shows up in theaters on Friday to over 2,900 theaters. Maybe some women will con their boyfriends into seeing it!

fkamer@observer.com | @weareyourfek

Whitney Cummings in her new show about lady stuff.

Ouch. Here we thought were in the post-Bridesmaid era of empowering female comedy, what with TV's new fall lineup revolving around such quirky leading ladies as Zooey Deschanel (Fox's New Girl), Kat Dennings and Beth Behrs (CBS' 2 Broke Girls) and Whitney Cummings (NBC's Whitney). But maybe America just isn't ready to have a sitcom where boys aren't the main focus, since despite not airing until September there is already an online petition to get Whitney canceled.

In an open letter to NBC titled "Cancel NBC's "Whitney" Before It Cancels Us," (which...what?), the argument reads:

This is a petition asking NBC to cancel "Whitney" before it airs, and to make a big spectacle about how they were only just kidding and that they'll keep looking for good programs to put in that time-slot.

Reasons "Whitney" Already Sucks:

1. It's multi-cam and filmed in front of an audience encouraged to laugh.
2. She considers herself one of those "edgy" comics.
3. It might as well have Paul Reiser in it.

Please, let's get rid of this show before we have to live knowing that something like this happened on television, forcing us to give up on having and raising our children because it's all gone to shit, it's all shit anyway man... I can't even do this anymore... Somebody put money behind this shit.

Sincerely,

The Undersigned

So far there are only nine signatures to cancel Ms. Cummings debut program, which deals with a character named Whitney (d'uh) and her boyfriend who aren't married but live together. Okay, so that concept seems pretty thin, but so is the argument that a multi-cam sitcom with canned laughter is by itself a reason to nix a program. (How I Met Your Mother and Two and a Half Men are still doing pretty well, right?) And yikes...using the word edgy as an insult for a female comedian is the equivalent of saying Barack Obama is articulate.

And yes, the previews for Whitney are pretty cringe-worthy, mostly because Ms. Cummings is an observational stand-up comedian, not a comedy actress. Though the show's scenarios are based on bits from her act, watching the premiere one gets the sense that at any point Whitney may just turn to the camera and mug, "Am I right, ladies?"

We're willing to give Whitney the benefit of the doubt...it's certainly doesn't look worse than the twee-tastic New Girl, in which we're supposed to believe that Zooey Deschanel is too awkward to land herself a boyfriend. Because hey, when we're not crying about periods or boys, there is nothing us ladies like to do more than make jokes about them. Alex Borstein know what I'm talking about!

Ms. Chicago has had her share of grief. Her infamous 1970s piece The Dinner Party drew standing-room-only crowds at the San Francisco Museum of Art, where it opened in 1979. (It's an installation of a giant triangular table, including the names of 1,038 female innovators--39 of whom have their own place settings with plates depicting vulvas.) But some critics eviscerated the work, and its museum tour was canceled amid Congressional debate over funding for the institutions that showed it. The Dinner Party itself was banished to storage for nearly three decades.

 "The Dinner Party went into storage and I went into shock," said Ms. Chicago, a small, passionate fireplug of a woman with short red curls and rose-tinted glasses. "It was the piece everyone wanted to see, and nobody wanted to show."

This is not a problem Ms. Chicago suffers from much these days. The artist was included in three New York exhibitions last year: at ACA Galleries; at the Hebrew Union College Museum; and in a Jewish Museum show. This month, a show of her tapestries, done in collaboration with weaver Audrey Cowan, opened at the Museum of Art and Design and runs through June 19.

As for The Dinner Party, the piece is now on permanent view at the Brooklyn Museum's Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art. That's a vindication for the artist, considering that it was widely and publicly panned--conservative Congressman Robert Dorman, dubbed it "ceramic 3-D pornography" on the floor of the House of Representatives, and The New York Times pronounced it "very bad art." ("It reiterates its theme ... with insistence and vulgarity," argued the paper's Hilton Kramer.) Today, nearly one-third of all the visitors to the museum view her artwork, according to the institution.

At first glance, the tapestries in the MAD show appear to be among the more decorous of Ms. Chicago's works, which tend more toward painting and sculpture. But, the woven works, along with the black-and-white and color images, "cartoons" and woodcuts Ms. Chicago created as patterns for Ms. Cowan (who first worked with her when she did the stitch work on the Dinner Party Eleanor of Aquitaine table runner), they forcefully weave together many of the artist's central--and resolutely political--themes.

Ever the radical, she's subverted pretty much everything about both the medium and its message. She has used the ancient Aubusson high-warp weaving technique, employed to make the famed medieval Unicorn Tapestries, which pregnant women were barred from practicing in the Middle Ages. They were told they might fall off the looms and miscarry, she explained. "Any excuse would do," Ms. Chicago snorted. "The idea of using Aubusson [named for the city in France] was particularly delicious to me because it originally prohibited women because of their fecundity and capacity for birth."

Ms. Chicago also reinvented the process of this ancient technique for her own purposes. Tapestries were traditionally woven from the back, so the weaver never saw the design. In Ms. Chicago's update of the process, the artist's patterns are attached to the piece so that the weaver can see each section as she completes it, giving her the rightful "agency" previously denied, she explained. There is also her offbeat subject matter, which ranges from the striking details of Creation,(part of "The Birth Project" shown at the Hebrew Union College Museum last year ) to the pigs hung for meatpacking in The Fall (from her "The Holocaust Project: From Darkness to Light"). Powerheadache depicts a male head grimacing in much the way Bernie Madoff must have when his Ponzi scheme toppled.

Ms. Chicago, whose name is virtually synonymous with feminist art, acknowledges that there has been some progress toward equity in the art world (and in general) since she began her work. But she's also aware that to many of the current generation of women, feminism is considered an F-word, a label to be avoided.

She continues on a crusade to change that. "Women's history and women's art needs to become part of our cultural and intellectual heritage," Ms. Chicago declared. "If we all learn that, then women will learn pride in the history of women--and they will want to claim their history as feminists, instead of disassociating themselves," she said. "The degree to which young people are unaware of the history of the feminist art movement is an indication of the failure of our institutions to keep up with changes in consciousness. The key is institutional change." The artist added:  "When I was working on The Dinner Party, I believed the story of erasure that I had uncovered and was attempting to recount was in the past. As we see the battles in Congress over reproductive rights, it becomes clear that erasure is still a danger."

That erasure of women is clear from the continuing lack of available literature on women and their historical place in art. "You want to know the figures on publications about women 10 years ago? One point seven percent. Today it is 2.5 percent." To help combat the deplorable literacy level when it comes to women's history, Ms. Chicago developed "The Dinner Party Curriculum," a program for classes K-12. (It, like the titular artwork, references female pioneers from Sappho to Saint Bridget to Sacagawea to Georgia O'Keeffe as a teaching tool.) She also recently co-published, with art historian Frances Borzello, Frida Kahlo, Face to Face, which, she said, "provided a vehicle of exploration of a lot of ideas beyond Kahlo herself--such as that women aren't one-trick ponies. She did a lot more than just self-portraiture."

As for the artist herself, and her best-known piece: "My abiding hope," said Ms. Chicago, "is that before I die, The Dinner Party will be seen as one work in a huge body of work."

But Ms. Chicago is the first to acknowledge that her seminal (no pun intended) work has "opened up many aesthetic paths," including the tapestries (which evolved from the embroidered table runners of The Dinner Party) and glass (used in making the plates), the medium she has been exploring since 2003.

Ms. Chicago's next big project is perhaps a good fit. As part of a multi-institutional $14 million Getty Trust art initiative called "Standard Pacific Time" that will premiere in Los Angeles in the fall, the artist will create a smoke-and-fireworks extravaganza, Atmospheres. It comes as no surprise that Ms. Chicago has a license to use pyrotechnics.

But it looks like Kate won't be putting together Christmas catalogs for much longer. The Daily Mail reports that she's quitting the gig to prepare for the April 29 wedding and to settle into the full time job of being the world's prettiest prettiest princess.

She will be missed it looks like!

According to one friend, Kate, who helped organise parties in her former guise, has taken on the role of wedding planner with 'gusto and energy'.

The friend, who was quoted in Hello! magazine, said: 'Catherine is a naturally creative individual and has spent her professional life in the creative industries having worked at Jigsaw, then as a website designer, photographer, marketer and events organiser. Skills she has built up in her working life translate naturally to organising a wedding.

Her hubby, however, will keep his job in the Royal Air Force. Your move, feminism.

Click for Scandal Report: Champagne Mania Makes for A Boozy Golden Globes

nfreeman [at] observer.com | @nfreeman1234