Jan and Marcia Brady in Dyke Drama

This might be the ultimate answer to the lesbian drinking question “Marcia or Jan?”:

Marcia and Jan.

It looks like Oprah’s Brady Bunch reunion will be minus Eve Plumb, the actress that played Jan.

But the real reason is unknown.

Maureen McCormick, who played Marcia on the show, says she thinks her costar may be upset over a joke she made about them having a girl-on-girl affair years ago.

McCormick, writing for Fancast.com, said the Brady kids were to reunite on Oprah this September for the 40th anniversary of the show. All of them accepted the invitation except Plumb, a move McCormick potentially attributed to the joke.

“Eve Plumb…used to be my best friend but now apparently wants to distance herself from the show and, most troubling, from me,” she wrote. “I have no idea why, unless she’s mad at the joke I made a few years ago that we’d had a lesbian love affair. I made the crack to be funny – and for shock value. I’m sorry if she took offense.

However, last year McCormick published a memoir, Here’s the Story: Surviving Marcia Brady and Finding My True Voice in which she candidly detailed all of the good and bad aspects of being a teen star and how she got caught up in a fast-paced, drug-fueled, star-studded Hollywood existence.

In fact, the book reveals so much that Marcia and Jan in a little teenage tangle doesn’t seem far fetched at all.

Internet sources are reporting that McCormick was all set to reveal a fling with Plumb, but McCormick says it was just a joke.

Plumb has participated in several Brady Bunch reunions. Most recently, In October, the group reunited to tape several episodes of a televised game show hosted by her Brady co-star Christopher Knight. All of the Brady siblings were there, except Maureen McCormick, who was on a book tour at the time.

Prior to the book’s publication, the National Enquirer was reporting that “The most explosive comments will be how the then-blonde, blue-eyed cutie developed a crush on Eve Plumb, which led to some sexual play. This book will certainly come as a shocker. While Maureen is not a lesbian, she reveals there were some sexual hijinks going on behind the scenes.”

I don’t think the book includes this revelation (please drop a comment if you’ve read it), but that doesn’t mean it was edited out prior to publication.

I’m sure that even a hint of possibility of Jan and Marcia rolling around together has a whole fleet of 40-something straight guys and gay women running off for some private time.

But whether the two of them were actually entangled or not, when two women can’t be at the same reunion at the same time and one of them says she’s “only joking” about a fling, it’s a dyke drama by definition.

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Take it to the Mat: Miss America vs. Miss USA

When it comes to chick contests, I’m admittedly more interested in Roller Derby and erotic wrestling than in glued and sprayed swimsuit competitions. However, in the aftermath of this whole Miss California USA “Opposite-Marriage” thingy, I feel compelled to point out that all pageant queens aren’t created equal.

The Miss America pageant was founded in 1921. It began as a “beauty contest”, a title it now eschews in favor in of “pageant”. However, swimsuit and evening gown competitions, which remain part of the deal, now make up only 35 percent of a competitor’s total score.

Contestants are also judged on their lengthy personal interview, which makes up 25 percent of their overall score and does not take place in front of an audience, nor is it usually televised. During their interview they are awarded points based on their ability to be well-spoken, polite, articulate, and confident. Their overall score is also based on a talent competition, and their answer to an unrehearsed question they must answer on stage, which is suppposed to judge their ability to formulate an intelligent, thoughtful answer, on the spot.

The primary prizes for the winner and her runners-up are scholarships to the educational institutions of their choice. The Miss America Scholarship program, along with its local and state affiliates is the largest provider of scholarship money to young women in the world, and in 2006 made available more than $45 million in cash and scholarship assistance.

Young women enter the Miss America pageant by winning regional and state competitions. Miss California is one of those state pageants.

Miss California 2008 is Jackie Geist.

The Miss America USA pageant has been held since 1952, in order to select the USA’s entrant into the Miss Universe pageant. Both of these pageants are operated by the Miss Universe organization, which also operates Miss Teen USA. Competition consists of an interview, and swimsuit and evening gown competitions. There is no talent competition.

The swimsuit and evening gown competitions are held and eliminations are made before the remaining contestants are interviewed. Since 2001, the entire “interview” consists of a single question.

The question portion has now been made famous by Miss California USA 2008, Carrie Prejean, who grabbed a political hot potato in an attempt to please a notoriously conservative pageant audience. She bungled it, burning her impeccably manicured fingers in the process, but landing herself a spokeperson position with one of the most conservative, bigoted organizations in America, NOM, the National Organization for “Opposite” Marriage”. (Now known as “NOOM”.)

The Miss America USA pageant was orginally organized and owned by the swimsuit company Catalina. It has gone through several ownerships since then, and since 1996 has been owned by “The Donald” Trump.

In 2006, Trump’s organization was rocked by scandal, when news organizations reported that Miss USA, Tara Conner, had been drinking underage, tested positive for cocaine, and was in a lesbian entanglement with Miss Teen USA Katie Blair. She entered a rehab program and was allowed to retain her title.

In 2007, scandal hit again when Miss Nevada USA was stripped of her title after a series of photographs appeared in the media, showing her kissing and groping girls, and baring body parts in the very best “Girls Gone Wild” tradition.

By comparison, Miss America travels with a chaperone during the competition and her reign, an element of the pageant that was famously spoofed in a 1994 espisode of Seinfeld.

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Nipples in your Face… uh… book

I recently wrote about Facebook’s war on nipples, which has extended into the mothering community and has resulted in Facebook users having their accounts closed because they posted pictures of themselves breastfeeding their babies.

The social networking claims breastfeeding photos violate its decency code.

(You can read my earlier post here.)

iReporter Phil Hansen is among the “lactivists” protesting these actions. “I was surprised at the whole idea of removing breastfeeding photos, as a baby breastfeeding would totally cover the nipple and most of the breast,” says Hansen, pragmatically.

Hansen is a Saint Paul, Minnesota-based multimedia artist known for his viral Web videos.

Now, according to a CNN report, Hansen is busting Facebook’s chops with the first video in his new series called “Art Happening”.

In “Facebook’s War on Nipples,” Hansen documented his creation of a self portrait made entirely from pictures of his own nipples. (You can see his artwork work here on CNN.)

He posted the final product to his profile on Facebook.

We can see what happened next in Hansen’s follow-up video. It turns out that Hansen’s profile picture was removed after only two days, and he was notified that he had violated the company’s terms of use.

“I was expecting it to get removed,” says Hansen. “Because if it stayed up, that would mean my face made with nipples was more appropriate than a mother breastfeeding her child, which would just be weird.

CNN did ask Facebook for an official comment about the controversy. A representative e-mailed the following statement:

We agree that breastfeeding is natural and beautiful and we’re very glad to know that it is so important to some mothers to share this experience with others on Facebook. We take no action on the vast majority of breastfeeding photos because they follow the site’s Terms of Use. Photos containing a fully exposed breast (as defined by showing the nipple or areola) do violate those Terms and may be removed. These policies are designed to ensure Facebook remains a safe, secure and trusted environment for all users, including the many children (over the age of 13) who use the site. The photos we act upon are almost exclusively brought to our attention by other users who complain.

“As defined by showing the nipple or areola…” Mother of God. I get that Facebook needs rules, but whatever happened to thinking outside of the box?

We’re living in a day and age when it’s only mildly scandalous for Janet Jackson to show her areola and her nipple, pierced by a big metal bar, on national television during prime time. I can’t believe the Dilberts at Facebook can’t tell the difference between a nursing mom and an obscenity.

Why is it okay for women to use their bodies to entertain others, but not to feed their children?

I don’t think I’m being over-the-top when I say Facebook’s unrelenting ass-pucker is looking pretty darn misogynistic.

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