songs about hips and hearts

theatlantic:

Boys on the Side: How Hookup Culture Affects Women

Single young women in their sexual prime—that is, their 20s and early 30s—are for the first time in history more success­ful, on average, than the single young men around them. They are more likely to have a college degree and, in aggregate, they make more money. What makes this remarkable development possible is not just the pill or legal abortion but the whole new landscape of sexual freedom—the ability to delay marriage and have temporary relationships that don’t derail education or career. To put it crudely, feminist progress right now largely depends on the existence of the hookup culture. And to a surprising degree, it is women—not men—who are perpetuating the culture, especially in school, cannily manipulating it to make space for their success, always keeping their own ends in mind. For college girls these days, an overly serious suitor fills the same role an accidental pregnancy did in the 19th century: a danger to be avoided at all costs, lest it get in the way of a promising future.

Read more. [Image: Emiliano Granado]

“There is no retreating from the hookup culture to an earlier age, when a young man showed up at the front door with a box of chocolates for his sweetheart, and her father eyed him warily. Even the women most frustrated by the hookup culture don’t really want that. The hookup culture is too bound up with everything that’s fabulous about being a young woman in 2012—the freedom, the confidence, the knowledge that you can always depend on yourself. The only option is what Hannah’s friends always tell her—stop doing what feels awful, and figure out what doesn’t.”

theatlantic:

On National Pot Day, A Speech President Obama Should Give

My Fellow Americans:

Every day this Administration seeks as best it can to evaluate our nation’s existing policies and priorities to determine whether they continue to make sense or whether they are counterproductive to America’s evolving goals and ideals. As individuals, we make these sorts of re-evaluations all the time in our own lives. We learn from experience what works and what does not. We change our minds. We strive to be better. And as a nation we must do the same to ensure that the path we have chosen is still the one we want to be on.

So, after careful consideration and a through review by the Justice Department, and with the consent and cooperation of other relevant federal agencies, I announce today that this Administration will have a new approach to the issue of medical marijuana in those states which have legalized it. Our new policies are consistent with the promises I made as a candidate, they finally make good on pronouncements I made early in my term, they are faithful in their traditional deference to states’ rights, and they sensibly redirect federal resources at a time when we need every budget dollar we can find.

I have directed the attorney general to issue a directive to all U.S. attorneys and other federal officials that they may no longer raid or threaten to prosecute medical-marijuana growers and distributors in those states that have legalized the use of the drug. As of today, the federal government will be content to allow state authorities to monitor those growers and distributors to ensure that they are complying with state law. To those states we say: We are still here to help you if you need us. To the American people we say: No longer will your federal tax dollars be spent interfering with these particular state policy choices.

Read more. [Images: Reuters]