The last time I was in Paris, I wondered why so many locks were attached to bridges and railings.

I have seen similar locks in Prague and in Budapest, but that’s nothing compared to Paris. Some Parisian bridges are completely covered with them.

I always assumed people put locks on bridges to symbolize that the place has made a profound impact on them and that a part of their heart will always be in Paris, Prague, Budapest, Taiwan, or wherever.

This week, I became padlock-enlightened when I read this piece in The New York Times. The padlocks, apparently, are symbols of the visiting couples’ everlasting love.

Agnes C. Poirier writes in the Times article:

“Once discreet, doing their deed at night, visitors soon acted in broad daylight, in pairs, photographing each other in front of their locks, and videotaping the throwing of the keys into the Seine…..For couples visiting from all over the world, these locks were symbols of their everlasting love. Indeed, in other cities the locks have also caught on as an expression of passion — in Seoul, Budapest, Rome and Tokyo. Living in one of the world’s most visited cities, with 27 million visitors a year, and supposedly the world’s capital of romance, Parisians should have guessed from the beginning that this strange ritual had to do with the fantasy of everlasting love.” 

Locks and love? That one, I must admit, I never saw coming. Locks and lust, I can see. But what do locks have to do with love?

By the sounds of things, this is the question Parisians are asking, as well.

Instead of sharing the world’s — however banal — celebration of everlasting love, Parisians are apparently getting increasingly irritated by people’s misunderstanding what true love means. 

Poirier writes that behind love — at least love French-style — lies the idea of freedom, not commitment:

It's a question that's been asked a million times around the world: "If both your mother and your wife were drowning, which one would you save first?"

Usually, this is followed by a long episode of eye-rolling and the statement: “Yeah, like that’s ever gonna happen.”

Which is probably what Xiao Guo, 28, from China's Anhui province, thought before he took his 52-year-old mother, Madam Sun, and his wife, Xiao Qing, on a fishing trip to Dianbu River.

Then the boat tipped over.

Neither Madam Sun nor Xiao Qing could swim. Faced with losing his wife or his mum Xiao Guo proved to be devoted husband, rather than a loyal son.

According to Asia One, he saved his wife first. Then he went back for his mother and saved her, too.

Even though both women survived, Xiao Guo is now in the doghouse. His dad got angry by his son's choice and according to Asia One, reporters allegedly overheard him ripping into his son at the hospital:

"Your mother was drowning and you only thought about your wife! She was hanging on to the boat already! How much danger was she in that you have to take her to shore first?"

As offended as his dad was about choosing a wife over a mother, the public seemed to side with Xiao Guo.

I’d like to start by apologizing to all those women (and their daughters) I have, over the years, called “tomboys.”

I meant well. I always thought that a girl who “exhibits characteristics or behavioral traits typical for boys” are cool.

Well, I definitely always had a soft spot for Shiloh Jolie-Pitt’s cute "tomboy" outfits, anyway.

What I didn’t realize was that “tomboyism” was actually a medical term, not to mention a condition people feel the need to “cure.”

You would think we are past the rigid gender-roles era already, but then again, anyone who has followed the Olympics this year (and the related gender-verification challenges of athletes) would probably counter that — if anything — defining gender has become progressively more challenging over the years.

The study I was reading today is definitely one to support their argument.

http://www.springerlink.com/content/m1523l7615744552/?MUD=MP ">The paper, authored by Alice Dreger, Professor of Clinical Medical Humanities and Bioethics at Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, was just published in the Journal of Bioethical Inquiry.

It details a shocking medical intervention employed in the US on pregnant women to intentionally engineer the development of their fetuses for sex normalization purposes, http://www.news-medical.net/news/20120803/Risky-prenatal-use-of-steroid-... ">News-Medical.net reports.

What that means, specifically, is that if a fetus is considered high-risk for conditions such as tomboyism, lesbianism and bisexuality, a steroid can be given to pregnant women to reduce the rates of "behavioral masculinization" in babies.

Here's the money quote:

“The pregnant women targeted are at risk for having a child born with the condition congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH), an endocrinological condition that can result in female fetuses being born with intersex or more male-typical genitals and brains. Women genetically identified as being at risk are given dexamethasone, a synthetic steroid, off-label starting as early as week five of the first trimester to try to "normalize" the development of those fetuses, which are female and CAH-affected. Because the drug must be administered before doctors can know if the fetus is female or CAH-affected, only one in eight of those exposed are the target type of fetus,” News-Medical.net reports.

The study also outlines the following:

• For more than 10 years, medical societies repeatedly but ultimately impotently expressed high alarm at use of this off-label intervention outside prospective clinical trials, because it is so high risk and because nearly 90 percent of those exposed cannot benefit.
• Mothers offered the intervention have been told it “has been found safe for mother and child” but in fact there has never been any such scientific evidence.
• The US Food and Drug Administration has indicated it cannot stop advertising of this off-label use as “safe for mother and child” because the advertising is done by a clinician not affiliated with the drug maker.
• A new report from Sweden in the Journal of Clinical Endocrinology and Metabolism documents a nearly 20 percent “serious adverse event” rate among the children exposed in utero.
• Clinician proponents of the intervention have been interested in whether the intervention can reduce rates of tomboyism, lesbianism and bisexuality, characteristics they have termed “behavioral masculinization.”
• The National Institutes of Health has funded research to see if these attempts to prevent “behavioral masculinization” with prenatal dexamethasone are “successful.”
• The United States’ systems designed to prevent another tragedy like DES and thalidomide — involving de facto experimentation on pregnant women and their fetuses — appear to be broken and ineffectual.

What I want to know is, how exactly does a physician have “that "behavioral masculinization" conversation with the pregnant patient? This is how I picture it going in my head:

What happens in Ibiza, stays in Ibiza.

Or wherever else British girls are going on vacation this summer, apparently.

That seems to be the general attitude of British women toward sex when traveling abroad.

You see, they get “swept up in the moment and forget to use condoms,” according to a survey into the sexual habits of women, Medical Daily reports: