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There’s a new front in the battle for abortion rights—the literal front, that is, of a t-shirt designed by writer and feminist activist Jennifer Baumgardner that proclaims “I had an abortion.” The shirt, initially for sale on Planned Parenthood’s national website and now available on Clamor magazine’s website, has generated controversy among not only the antiabortion community but also pro-choice feminists.

Two years ago, the preppy mall staple Abercrombie & Fitch released a line of t-shirts that paired early 1900s–style caricatures of Chinese men (complete with coolie hats, big grins, and slanted eyes) with slogans like “Wong Brothers Laundry Service—Two Wongs Can Make It White” and “Wok-N-Bowl—Let the Good Times Roll—Chinese Food & Bowling.” The clothing chain then professed great surprise when Asian-American activists cried foul; A&F’s pr flack Hampton Carney told the San Francisco Chronicle, “We personally thought Asians would love this t-shirt.... We are truly and deeply sorry we’ve offended people.” As a result of continued protests, the shirts were eventually pulled from stores (and quickly became hot commodities on Ebay).

A film studies professor once told me that everything you need to know about a movie is revealed in the first five minutes. This is particularly true of The Stepford Wives. 


In the opening scene of Bryan Forbes’s 1975 original, Joanna Eber­hart (Katharine Ross) takes a long, scrutinizing look at herself in the bathroom mirror. Her reaction is one of mild surprise, then subtle resignation, as if she’s thinking, That’s me?…Oh, well. She appears wistful and intro­spective as she walks around the silent Manhattan apartment that has been emptied for her family’s move to the suburbs. Compare this to the start of Frank Oz’s 2004 version: Joanna (Nicole Kidman), a powerhouse network executive, struts like a supermodel up to a podium, delivers a ­self-congratulatory speech, and ­previews the coming season’s reality shows to a huge industry crowd. The mood is loud, flashy, and in-your-face. The dif­ference between the two scenes is night and day, and therein, as my professor foretold, is everything we need to know.

From the ancient Greeks to the current Queer Eyes, the cocktail of knowledge, ideals, aesthetics, and manners that makes up the concept of taste has served as a tireless organizing principle for a class-based society (and really, is there any other kind?). Like all organizing principles, taste is a construction rather than a law of nature: It’s almost impossible to say why, for instance, we believe it’s in good taste to put flatware in a certain order, or in bad taste to wear vinyl pants to your cousin’s wedding.