After many gorgeous action sequences-in which our girls wipe out skinheads across the most scenic sections of Paris-Garofalo, being the white sidekick, gets shot, of course. But it's only a surface wound; Latifah comes to her rescue. ("Don't worry, little Girlfriend. I gotcha.") When the Medevacs arrive, Garofalo jokes that she did this on purpose to get out of wearing high heels. The movie ends when Garofalo gets released from the hospital; Latifah takes her to a salon to get a weave of her own. Everybody laughs. Fade until the blockbuster sequels, Latifah Weapon II and Latifah Weapon III.

2. The Little Merman. A Disney animated cartoon about a buff young "merman" from Sea World who falls in love with Sage, the fearless female captain of a Greenpeace ship. In order to win Sage's love, the Little Merman makes a deal with an underworld sorcerer to trade his voice for a great pair of legs and buns. Sage does fall in love with him, seeing as he's the only guy she's ever met who actually listens. The couple sail off into the sunset together-with Sage at the helm, of course.

3. Breezy Rider. Two aging hippie chicks decide they've had it trying to be happy by using "healing crystals," rolfing, and St. John's Wort. So they take off across country on motorcycles instead. As they zigzag across America, they meet a renegade cheerleader alcoholic who joins them for a lot of groovy adventures, including crashing debutante cotillions, riding mechanical bulls in bars, picking up guys at Dollywood, and p.i.s.sing off the Religious Right by streaking across the campus of Oral Roberts University. Features nifty motorcycle chase through the Mall of America, lots of smart dialog, and steamy love scenes between the heroines and way-buff Eagle Scouts half their age.

4. Saving Ryan's Privates. Five hundred thousand American women served as WACs and nurses in World War II. Surely someone can make a movie about their heroism and experiences with all the depth, power, and nuanced realism of Spielberg's epic. No weepies, please.

5. Des Garcon du Lait ("Milk Boys"). A touching French film about two poor, handsome young men who get a job delivering milk and cheese to a brilliant, eccentric widow living outside of town. As they take turns making deliveries, each of the milkmen falls in love with her. (Hey, the French are good at these May-August things.) One writes poems to her on the labels of the milk bottles. The other plays her music and paints her portrait on the brie wrappers. Being sensuous and wise, the widow teaches both of them, of course, about s.e.x and life. The milk boys take turns being her love slaves and the three of them live happily after. (Think Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, and, say, Sophia Loren? Or Ryan Phillippe, James Van Der Beek, and Anne Bancroft. This way her mature s.e.xuality is exalted, not turned into a joke like it was in The Graduate.) 6. Speed Rachel. Speed Rachel is a gorgeous, gay, girl Mario Andretti. Behind the wheel of her race car, the Mach 7, Rachel races-and beats-legions of drivers whose minds are narrower than the tracks at the Indy 500. Her girlfriend, Trixie, cheers her from the sidelines. Since this movie has both lesbians and race cars, every guy on the planet should go nuts over it, too.

7. Sisters from Another Planet. A legion of high-tech, supersophisticated female s.p.a.ce fighters arrives in our galaxy and makes quick work of Earth's defense system. When their ships finally land in the US, it turns out, tah-dah: They're Puerto Ricans! And boy, are they p.i.s.sed about the way the media has portrayed Hispanics down here in Los Estados Unidos-especially Hollywood. So: payback time! (Rosie Perez stars in an all-Latino cast. None of this Meryl-Streep-in-a-black-wig s.h.i.t.) 8. Brooklyn p.o.r.n. Basically, a conventional p.o.r.no flick, except that (a) the p.e.n.i.ses are negligible, (b) fourteen hours' worth of c.u.n.n.i.l.i.n.g.u.s instead, (c) everybody in them talks and moans with Brooklyn accents: Owh gawd. Owh hawdah. This way, gals who still feel guilty about their pleasures don't have to pretend to watch p.o.r.n 'cuz it's funny.

9. Hot Flashes. Two menopausal women (Cecily Tyson and Bette Midler?) realize that, since our culture generally treats older women like they're invisible, they'd make excellent spies. And so they become brilliant counterintelligence agents-tracking down moles and spies across the globe. Each time the bad guys realize that the women are not Mary Kay saleswomen on holiday but master spooks packing heat, it's one more for the Girls' Team.

10. Just Desserts. Antonio Banderas in an ice-cream truck. Need we say more?

11. The Empress Strikes Back. I've always thought it was pretty arrogant for filmmakers to a.s.sume that in a galaxy far, far away, the world would still be dominated and saved by white guys. Sure, Princess Leia was a smartmouth leader in the original Star Wars , but there were those ridiculous danishes on her head, and by the end of Return of the Jedi, she had been relegated to eye candy. And Princess Naboo was given so little s.p.u.n.k, she might as well have been generated by a computer.

This movie takes place in a galaxy far, far away-but it's a galaxy ruled by Leia's great-granddaughters, a matriarchy of witty, agile princess fighters. They fly cool s.p.a.cecraft, negotiate complicated intergalactic alliances with other species, work out their archetypal "mother issues" by fighting Diva Viper, hang out in bars full of fantastical muppets, come to the rescue of cute, helpless princes, and triumph in daring, spectacular battles with the forces of evil. Harrison Ford, meanwhile, spends the entire movie in shackles wearing nothing but a gold lame Speedo bathing suit.

Now that's entertainment.

Chapter 20.

Play Like a Girl,

Watch Like a Girl

Like many young women, I grew up

believing that (1) physical ability

wasn't very important, and

(2) I didn't have any.

-JANICE KAPLAN.

Oooh, I am just lovin' this whole women's team sports thing. How about US women's soccer? Can those women kick b.u.t.t or what? And tell me the WNBA isn't the coolest thing since PMS nail polish. It's such a brilliant antidote to all the s.e.xism out there. Plus, hot d.a.m.n it's fun. Every time I see a soccer match or a basketball game or any other women's team in action, I get a rush. And I've never been a sports fan before-or an athlete, for that matter. t.i.tle IX was completely wasted on me: When I was little, my idea of a "sport" was to twirl around the living room in a tutu. And gym cla.s.s? The sole exercise I ever got was in faking a stomach ache. Only s.a.d.i.s.ts could've dreamed up boys-against-girls dodge ball.

Until recently, the one real appeal of going to a baseball game to me was the fact that you could shout "hot dog" in the middle of the stadium and have some guy run up forty flights of steps to serve it to you. And football? Ugh. Just another p.e.n.i.s contest: Guys jump all over each other, then argue about who has more inches. I mean, how original is that? And okay, sure, I got into Michael Jordan-but so did about four billion other people who otherwise didn't watch much basketball.

Part of my disinterest, I realize, stemmed from the fact that sports' appeal is largely vicarious. Sports fans identify personally with the athletes; you put yourself in the players' sneakers, experiencing their trials and triumphs as your own.

But when you're a chick, sometimes it's hard to put yourself in someone else's sneakers if they're a size fourteen.

Now that women are playing professionally, it's a whole other ball game. Apathetic, pathetically femmey gals like me are now able to "get it"-to experience the thrill of sports, to admire the strategy, speed, and skill involved. For the first time in our lives, we're seeing ourselves on the playing field-as national heros.

I watch soccer matches on television now. I've happily sat through a doc.u.mentary on Tennessee's legendary women's basketball coach, Pat Summitt. Best yet, I'm going to WNBA games with my other newly enthusiastic girlfriends. We shout "You go, Girls!" at the home team, boo the referees, and do the funky chicken in the stands, hoping to get on the Teletron.

Granted, we watch like girls. My friend Bari and I get weepy when the players come out. We get farklempt when the national anthem gets played. We get weepy and farklempt when the players actually begin to play. Dear G.o.ddess, you'd think we were watching an opera.

But we're all just so d.a.m.n proud to see these legions of cool, muscular, powerhouse women leaping and dashing and throwing and scoring. We're thrilled to see women being cheered for their strength and skill instead of for, say, their breast implants. And it touches us to the core to see this cheering coming from both s.e.xes-but especially from girls.

Because by now we all know the benefits of girls playing sports. We know that it fosters confidence and coordination, teamwork skills and physical strength. Studies have shown that young women who play are more likely to do better in math and science, and less likely to become s.e.xually active at a young age or stay with a guy who beats them.

But there's something to be gained for girls by watching women's sports, too, by supporting them with our hard-earned shekels and cheering them on from the stands.

Front guards make far better role models than fashion models do. In a culture where movie stars are currently trying to "out-diet" each other to fit into a size zero-a size zero!-it is beyond fabulous that young girls are now able to see women who are competing to outdo each other on the basis of their strength. When the members of the US Women's Soccer Team were introduced during the 1999 World Cup, my girls and I went bats.h.i.t because each player's height and weight was announced-and they were life-sized! They were gals who weighed in at more than 120 pounds and showed muscles, not ribs!

It's also crucial for those of us with XX chromosomes to watch, because the fate and fortunes of women's professional sports really depend on us. If we come out for games and demonstrate that women's professional sports are highly lucrative, then the leagues will continue to grow. By a.s.serting ourselves as a demographic, we can do the equivalent of getting a hot-dog vendor to climb forty rows to serve us-except on a national, prime-time, multimillion-dollar level.

Plus, any collective interest in women's sports p.i.s.ses off the far right, who keep whining that antidiscrimination laws like t.i.tle IX are unfair or unnecessary, and that all women are really interested in are babies, feelings, and marriage.

But more important, for so long, we girls have cheered for boys. We've cheered as cheerleaders, groupies, voters, wives. Certainly, we've cheered out of a genuine desire to see our guys succeed. But we've also cheered from a position of weakness-because there were certain things we weren't allowed to succeed at ourselves. We've cheered for heroes we couldn't ever be, for teen idols we could never have, for contests we weren't eligible for, and for leadership that excluded us. Women have a very long history of cheering from the sidelines: For years, we understood that this was the closest we'd ever be allowed to get to center stage or center field. I mean, why else would we kill to be on the pom-pom squad? For our resumes?

But now, for the first time in history, we can cheer for our own. And the guys are cheering with us! And let me tell you: At the WNBA games, our own voices sound different. They're more alto than soprano. There's no hysteria or desperation in them. They resonate with pride, power, and ownership.

Granted, professional women's sports have been around for a while now. But until recently, they've been backup dates-or, in the case of figure-skating, treated like the athletic equivalent of chick flicks.

And until now, most of the female athletes who have captured the national spotlight have been, frankly, variations on ballerinas. They've been gymnasts: tiny, anorexic-looking girls balancing like exotic birds on a high thin beam. Or figure skaters, twirling prettily in sparkly costumes. Or graceful tennis players in little skirts.

Moreover, these athletes have been loners, not team players. As those sudsy TV bios show us, a lot of girls start training for the Olympics before they're even ready for training bras. By the time they've reached junior high school, they've moved away from their friends and families to live in a gym. They train 24/7 with Roumanian coaches and play Beat the Clock against their own p.u.b.erty. And then, when they do win the gold, they win alone. It's just them out there on the ice, the court, the mat. Inadvertently, their stories reinforce a message that young women receive too often already: If you're going to be a strong, powerful woman, you're going to be alone.

No wonder the Spice Girls were such a hit with the girls! We gals crave our own dream teams! Sure, we want to be fabulous in our own right, but we'd like some camaraderie in our glory! We want leagues of our own!

Well, hallelujah. Finally, we're starting to get them-both as athletes and as, ahem, athletic supporters. There's a whole new sisterhood to be forged-and mercifully without the folksingers.

Of course, women's professional sports have not come close to occupying the place that men's sports do in our culture. But it's a start. And if we keep root-root-rooting for our Home Teams, our little sisters and daughters (not to mention our little brothers and sons) will grow up in a world where it's not only taken for granted that girls play ball fiercely, but that they can make a career out of it. Perhaps girls' teams can finally start pullin' in some of the big bucks that the boys get-more fab athletic scholarships, lucrative endors.e.m.e.nts, and big-a.s.s salaries! And more and more "soccer moms" will be women who kick it at the Olympics while their kids cheer them from the stands.

And not only will the high road be open to us, but the low one as well.

We too can experience the thrill of standing outside in five-degree weather with half our torso painted blue, the other half painted silver, and a sixteen ounce beer in each hand, as we shout "Detroit sucks!" at the top of our lungs. We, too, may have the thrill of mooning the Teletron before being hustled out of the stadium by a couple of humorless security guards. We, too, can enjoy the challenge of creating elaborate and inpenetrable spread sheets for office betting pools. We, too, can get so upset after our team loses that we punch a wall and break our hand-thereby inspiring a peculiar mixture of respect, pity, and fear among our colleagues when we come to work with a sling. We, too, can go nuts over all that groovy c.r.a.ppola sports fans can buy-the T-shirts, the hats, the foam fingers, the battery-powered light-up sweatshirts.

For "s.e.xual equality" shouldn't just mean having to outperform men to prove that we're just as competent. It should also mean that we get to revel in all of our society's tribalism and silliness and stupidity and joy!

So I say, let's take ourselves out to that ball game and get out the greasepaint!

Or, just as good, let's invite the crew over and tell our loved ones that we can't do the dishes right now because the game's on.

And then we can sit back in our Lay-zee-Girl recliners with our clicker and our Diet c.o.ke-and shout at the television, as people who resemble us play some serious ball-and feel pretty d.a.m.n fantastic.

Chapter 21.

Give Us That Ol'-Time

Religion-So We Can Clobber

Sanctimonious Morons with It

The Bible contains 6 admonishments to

h.o.m.os.e.xuals and 362 admonishments

to heteros.e.xuals. This doesn't mean

G.o.d doesn't love heteros.e.xuals. It's just

that they need more supervision.

-LYNN LARNER You know, when it comes to Bible stories, I think our girl Eve has really gotten a b.u.m rap. She is constantly painted as this evil temptress because she ate fruit from the Tree of Knowledge of Good and Evil, then convinced Adam to have a bite. But how hard must that have been, really, seeing as she was standing there naked? Heck, she could've told Adam to eat the snake and he would have gone: Sure, okay. Whatever you say, Babe.

Besides, it's thanks to Eve that, instead of living like blind, infantilized playthings in a garden, we humans are morally conscious and capable of thinking for ourselves.

I thought of Eve the other day as I was reading a speech written by humorist P. J. O'Rourke-an ex-Rolling Stone reporter who seems to do quite a lot of thinking for himself. In his speech, delivered at a Cato Inst.i.tute conference, O'Rourke argued that collective wealth is bad, capitalism is good. He based his argument on-what else-the Bible.

In his speech, O'Rourke argued that the Ten Commandments actually instruct folks to become free-market capitalists. The way he sees it, he said, the final commandment (which basically says: Thou shall not covet thy neighbor's stuff) implies that people shouldn't dream of making their neighbor's stuff their own: They should get up off their lazy a.s.ses, earn their own d.a.m.n money, and buy their own d.a.m.n stuff.

Wow. Simplistic little moi, I thought that the Tenth Commandment meant: Keep your hands off your brother's toys, you idiot. Jealousy and stealing are bad!

But his speech got me thinking. Not about people making their own fortunes, but about people thinking for themselves and using their own interpretations of the Bible to justify arguments before the Cato Inst.i.tute-and everywhere else, for that matter. And it struck me that those of us with XX chromosomes have not been doing this nearly enough-even though you'd think it would be our birthright and all, seeing as we're supposedly descended from that troublemaker Eve.

Western religion is a power tool in our culture, and we SmartMouth G.o.ddesses have much to gain by drawing upon it for our own arguments-by using it as creatively and selectively as everybody else seems to do.

Now, I know that for young women today, religion is an especially touchy issue.

First of all, we have enough people already trying to tell us what to think.

Second, some of us Western gals find religion mind-numbingly boring. The Bible? Great cure for insomnia. Just start reading those begats and you're out like a light.

Others of us see that ol'-time religion as downright dangerous and oppressive. In the eternal game of boys-against-girls, traditional patriarchal piety has not exactly been on our side: It's taught women to think of G.o.d as a big vindictive Daddy in the sky. It's taught us that our bodies are shameful; that we should shut up and submit to men; that our s.e.xuality is sinful; and that contraception and premarital s.e.x are the moral equivalent of homicide. It's also been used to justify slavery, c.l.i.toridectomies, war, and "ethnic cleansing"-none of them big winners with us, either.