Some say that '70s feminism began its fall from grace in 1986 when a study claimed that a woman's chances of marrying sometime in her life drops to 5 percent after she passes her 35th birthday. The notion that so many nominally liberated women found this conclusion distressing gave rise to the cynical belief that reconfiguring a woman's place in society is fine as long as she isn't required to give up that ring.

This has led to what in the latter half of the '90s has been termed "Duh Feminism," which takes in Ally McBeal, "Bridget Jones' Diary" and the multifaceted martyrdom of Monica Lewinsky. For a time in the 1980s, Cosmopolitan and Glamour reluctantly boosted job hunting over man hunting, but they've recently returned in full glory to the three topics they've always liked best: sex, sex and sex (not necessarily in that order). And with titles like "10 Make-Him-Throb Moves So Hot You'll Need a Firehose to Cool Down the Bed" (from January's Cosmo), it's obvious who that sex is for.

Japanese women have always been considered a step-and-a-half behind their Western sisters in the march toward equality, so if the rise of Duh Feminism and the popularity of "The Rules" indicates a retreat of sorts (at least in the U.S., where both have become an obsession of the media), it may mean that young Japanese women with a realistic sense of themselves have pulled up abreast (no pun intended).