Sarah Palin’s not happy with the photo used by Newsweek to promote their cover feature on Palin’s “Going Rogue”, says the Christian Science Monitor. I admit to being startled myself with the sexy pic.

Reality is, though, Palin’s been a “babe” among males since day one.

Many sharp, talented women are brainiac babes. Let’s face it: sex sells, although not in American politics, where women make up about 10 percent of Congress.

How about babes being taken seriously as a news story? Can sexy, articulate women with ideas be taken seriously, when editors don’t think twice about using them as femme bait on the cover of Newsweek?

Based on our web traffic and growing influence, I could say “sure”.

Indeed, there’s a place for Smart Sensuality babes, who are particularly effective in stealth attacks.

Newsweek may think that Palin’s metaphorically “stupid”, and I’ve heard her called that endless times in the past week, but Going Rogue is now and will be for weeks the best-selling book at Amazon. Sarah is laughing her way to the bank, and she does resonate with many people.

Does Palin get any real credit for achievement in her cheerleading guise? After all, it’s quarterbacks who are the superstars, not the rah rah girls who cheer them on.

I’m a Hillaryite, so Palin and I aren’t drinking the same coffee blend either. Yet, I don’t like seeing the woman getting roughed up this way.

Presently, I’m evaluating the actual status of women in America, long after I stopped marching in the streets. Reality is not a pretty picture. For all the talk of shirking off that good ‘ol American guy paternalism that glorified us in our corsets but didn’t see us in a pin stripe suit, we’re way behind the curve ball.

As a pragmatic woman, I ask “what’s the bottom line here?” Has America’s babedom culture hurt women or helped us? Does a culture that loves seeing us as under-30 California girls have a silver lining, or is it a crown of thorns?

Given American women’s lack of equality in a long list of key measures illuminated in the World Economic Forum’s recent gender equality report, I looked at the Newsweek cover with sobered-up eyes.

Palin looks great in a short skirt but hey, America received a 61 in political gender parity and a composite score of 31 against the rest of the world in the four key measures of ‘our women’: economic participation, education, health and political empowerment.

Note that the report attempts to strip out the effects of a country’s wealth. The premise isn’t that the country with the most boy toys wins. Dollars disguise inequity and having a nation of sexy cougars doesn’t count in a country’s score.

In the matter of gender relations, America is NOT the global best. We’re way down in the rankings, sort of like the Chicago cubs in baseball. This reality precedes the Catholic Church dictating the terms of women’s reproductive health care in Nancy Pelosi’s office 10 days ago, which has to be worth a 10-point penalty in the rankings.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel meeting Pope Benedict XVI in Castegandolfo outside Rome in Italy. Pope Benedict XVI and German Chancellor Angela Merkel spoke on the telephone to try to put a row over a Holocaust-denying bishop behind them, the two said in a joint statement on February 8, 2009.Wanting to sober up on this topic, I haven’t had a drink in a week. Suddenly, I believe in abstinence, going from a siren to Lysistrata.

The more I read, American women are NOWHERE near the top in global gender equity.

There are good girl cultures and smart women cultures. How many chick lit books have been written with the key message: good girls finish last? I told you in September: Repeat After Me: Stop Being a Good Girl.

The subject that day was how to get a raise, but good-girlitis is a major femdom affliction in America.

You may get sainthood and a top spot in heaven being a good girl, but on nonreligous, global equity measures not only of income, but health and education and support in growing your business, you will be way down on the patriarchal totem pole.

Are American women screaming that 10 years into a program setting aside a measly five percent of government contracts for women-owned businesses, that women are NOWHERE in achieving this paltry government handout in the form of a placemat at the table?

Maine Senator Olumpia Snowe is mad as hell about this government contracts for women lack of performance. Palin is well — surprised. Does Palin support set-asides for women? No, because we are good girls.

Are American women screaming over our global 61 in political participation in Congress? No.

We are good girls, believing that men actually do know best, when it comes to running the country. We can’t blame this reality on men. American women don’t support American women in Congress, which is why we got that lousy global score of 61 on political participation.

Our disgraceful lack of female governance is the ultimate Prince Charming-Cinderella babe complex.

America is the land of good girls.

Men are about ideology; women want to get things done. We’re pragmatists, or so I read. Personally, I think women outsmarted ourselves here in the good ‘ol USA on the subject of gender equity.

Are American women screaming that we’re losing our reproductive freedom? No, because we believe the Catholic Church knows best, and what does a separation of government and religion mean anyway? It’s a minor matter in the grand scheme of eternity.

So we don’t get what we deserve in this life. I promise you that heaven will be better.

If you believe in separation of church and state, get your gorgeous derriere to Scandinavia. In those countries, the patriarchy has backed off, not requiring women to overthrow their governments to gain gender parity across a wide range of indicators.

I have some good friends from these countries, and they make a strong argument for why women’s rights is an OK practice. When the chips are down, a Scandinavian woman can count on her legal rights and not go begging to her daddy for some sugar.

Drinking martinis may be preferable to staying on the covered wagon.

Sobered up, I notice everything these days. Still smarting over the blatant trampling of women’s legal rights that tightened the noose of access to legal health care for poor women in America, I read Barbara Grossette’s The World’s Women Stuck in the UN’s Blind Spot in The Nation.

In a global health report that speaks as much to the powerlessness of women as it does to the diseases that are killing them, the World Health Organization said this week that the leading cause of death for girls and women aged 15 to 44 is now AIDS. The report also found that in poor countries, unsafe sex and lack of contraception is the single leading risk factor for death and disability, resulting in unsafe abortion and range of infections including HIV. Domestic violence poses an additional risk to sexual and reproductive health.

Am I the only woman connecting the reality that the same folks who say no-go to reproductive freedom in America do not permit a married, African woman whose husband has AIDS to use a condom?

This mother of two or maybe 10 is expected to accept a high-probability death sentence, one that will earn her a top place in heaven for her suffering, unless she can persuade her husband to forsake sex. She is a good girl in her martyrdom, knowing that her living, breathing life matters less that of her nonexistent 11th child.

This has no human right to protect herself from AIDS. She could be beaten, divorced, thrown out, burned, scalded or acidified for saying “no” to her husband. No good mother abandons her children even if she could slip away into the night. No sir, she grins and bears her burden in good girl duty.

Heavenly reward is on the way.

Think about that fact of life, my dear babettes. Let’s get down to bedrock on this issue. Off with our veils, even though I embrace sensual mystery more than your average woman.

Back to Sarah Palin’s failure to be amused with this Newsweek cover, I support her annoyance.

Maybe America’s not ready for babedom. The Swedes, Danes, Norwegians and Finns know how to handle Smart Sensuality women. America does not.

Will America recalibrate our patriarchal compass to reach gender equity? Not in this life, honey.

Even where men are willing — and many are in the USA — American women won’t take on the challenge. We talk big, but the truth is that we are very, very good girls. And we can’t stand it when big daddy is mad at us.

America’s big daddies have better manners than the men in Sudan yelling “prostitute” at Lubna Hussein and the other trouser girls. Unless he’s Representative Tom Price shouting down the Democratic women with an objection every moment they tried to speak on health care for women.

Price told women to shut up, and we have for the most part. Do you know of any rebellion brewing? Drop the info in my contact box, please.

Trust me, daddy can be very, very angry when provoked. Your salvation and surrender are his sexual business, especially in America, so get in line, girl. You’re marching to his tune. Anne

Read guest Journal contributor Opiyo Oloya’s Face the Facts: Men in Every Country Are Afraid of Liberated Women.