ALL YOU NEED IS LOVE

A bare breast always attracts a certain kind of attention around Lake Tahoe. Feminists frown, but us Tahoe men drool. Maybe that¹s why guys will always be the weaker sex. Male hormones, after all, are capable of paralyzing brain cells by the billions, and I'll even admit that a tumescent mountain man is intellectually inferior to a relaxed gorilla.

I go to the dentist's office in Tahoe City. There, amidst old magazine piles, is Sharon Stone, naked from the waist up. Her hands cover her breasts. She is pale as milk and just as cold and I can't decide whether the pose is meant to evoke a Rubens painting or Xena the avenging goddess.

Inside the cover, an article reports that Sharon is Hollywood's glamour queen. I look at the photo again, holding back my drool for a moment, and think how there probably aren't too many glamour queens who would bare their breasts on the cover of a magazine if said breasts could be held in the palms of the hands.

Although this is Vanity Fair, whose cover is to starlets what Muscatel is to a wino, there is something larger here than Sharon flaunting her ta-tas.

The accompanying article reads that Stone's uniquely macho feminism has earned her the respect of "powerful women" in this, the "postfeminist" era.

I can't explain what postfeminism is, but I do know that post anything implies the death of the original, so postfeminism cannot be good news for the women's movement. However, any obituary is premature. Feminism, as I understand it, is the permanent pursuit of equality. It began long before Sharon Stone, and it doesn't end until every government, every drooling male, guarantees equal opportunity, equal pay for equal work, and a woman's right to control her own reproduction. Woman can no more give it up, or de-emphasize it, than black Americans can quit fighting for civil rights and economic justice. It's as basic as struggling to breathe when someone holds you underwater.

Its political failure lies in magazines like Vanity Fair. These days, movies portray the stabbing of men with ice picks and wearing short skirts without panties, a la stone's Catherine Tramell in "Basic Instinct." Is this what women respect? Think again. Stone might have nerve, brains, and talent, but its her breasts that put her on the cover. Maybe since feminists burned their bras, now postfeminists must bare their breasts.

At the dentist's, I'm still waiting for my root canal, whose deep-seated pain is a perfect analogy of my last relationship. Strumming through an old copy of Mirabella , which bills itself as "the only publication that showcases what really matters to witty, sophisticated, intelligent women," I come across a fashion lay-out.

"Real Power," the piece reads. "Now that we've got it, how do we dress for it?"

Inside, there is a photo spread on Armani suits for the power lunch. Only thing is, while filling my drool cup, I keep thinking that if the woman takes off her jacket, we¹re talking about naked lunch.

This woman's executive's suit coat is open to reveal bare skin from the neck to the navel. "Women," the article explains," are dressing in the public eye. And this is the sophisticated way to do it. Hey, sophisticated my right gout stricken toe.

Okay, so everyone knows this kind of attention is only Hollywood hype and Madison Avenue at work. No free thinking woman takes it seriously.

If not, then what is this magazine trying to say? That in the sexist male world a woman with an intoxicating navel has a marked advantage over Bella Abzug? What, that women are so powerful over us drooling men that they can bare their bazooms in the boardroom and slap any guy who leers with a sexual harassment suit?

God forbid tell a Tahoe woman what to do, but maybe instead of reading this stuff she should pick up a copy of Gloria Steinem¹s Revolution From Within: A Book of Self-Esteem. Although self-centered, Steinem is clever and well-informed. She's a great flirt who makes you want to court her with your brain. My brain doesn't have half her mileage, but even a misogynist like myself can find her irresistibly challenging. Unlike the familiar harpies of the women's movement, who are always trying to embarrass men for making sexist errors, her aim is simply to make a man behave decently and listen to what she is saying.

Steinem has nice breasts, too. I remember seeing a picture of her in a Playboy Bunny outfit when she went undercover at Hefner¹s lair in the seventies to expose exactly what pigs us guys are.

Okay, so I'm one of those pigs. Don't worry. I got my punishment in the dentist's chair. Thank goodness my doctor wasn't named Lorena Bobbitt. But just like us drooling guys, women want it both ways. They complain about being admired for their breasts and not their talent, but then place those selfsame bosoms on the cover of a national magazine.

Yeah, I'm a jerk, but I do know one thing. You won't see Bill Gates grabbing his crotch on the cover of Fortune Magazine.