Young Women

Year after year, the clock ticked by and the calendar marched forward, carrying the three women further from the real world and pulling them deeper into an isolated nightmare. Now, for the women freed from captivity inside a Cleveland house, the ordeal is not over. Next comes recovery - from sexual abuse and their sudden, jarring reentry into a world much different from the one they were grabbed from a decade ago. Therapists say that with extensive treatment and support, healing is likely for the women, who were 14, 16, and 21 when they were abducted.

It is a drizzly, steel-gray morning in Woodbury and inside the Lighthouse Community, young women are descending the staircase with their babies, four, five, six of them, shaking off sleep, taking another tentative step toward the razor-edged world outside the windows. Their hair still wet from showers, their babies sucking contentedly on bottles, the women settle into chairs in a small sitting room. Covering the walls are religious inscriptions and pictures and a number of images of lighthouses.

Whether it's combing through Grandmother's attic, recycling worn-before gowns, shopping at off-the-beaten-path boutiques, or hitting up the online luxury dress rental site Rent the Runway, young women attending Saturday night's Academy Ball will be changing up staid red-carpet rules. "I'm renting my dress because I like the idea that I'm getting to wear a really nice designer gown without breaking the bank," said Andrea Lewis. Lewis, 26, is a Rutgers University Ph.D. student whose gold beaded Nicole Miller will be arriving Thursday at her Center City apartment from Rent the Runway, where you can borrow from the latest special-occasion designer collections for a fraction of the price.

In 1904, a group of civic-minded Jewish women founded the Rebecca Gratz Club to cushion the way for young immigrant women, newly arrived in America. In the mid-1940s, with immigration interrupted by World War II, the group turned its attentions to young women who had flocked to Philadelphia, seeking jobs in the city's industries. By the 1950s, the focus shifted again, to mentally and emotionally troubled women who had nowhere else to turn. The late 1960s and early '70s saw yet another focus, on the problems of troubled, abused or neglected teenage girls.

College fraternities, long known as bastions of grace and decorum, are these days featuring yet one more accoutrement of scholastic refinement - the stripper pole. The most important campus development since the keg, the stripper pole shines like a luminous totem festooning the halls of the American academy. It's erected for a single, glorious purpose: To get drunken chicks to do slutty stuff. As students convene on college campuses, many will be partying on and around sturdy items such as the portable Lil' Mynx dance poles, manufactured with love in Fresno, Calif.

Look out for Girl Culture. The focus on young women is here, and it's getting bigger. It's showing up in novels, academic studies, guidebooks and TV commercials. Watch the young women in the Nike commercial urge parents to let their girls play sports. "If you let me play," the girls tell the camera, then the chances of the girls suffering from a number of social and health ills will shrink. The message: Playing sports increases a girl's self-esteem. Page through "The College Woman's Handbook" (Dobkin & Sipp)

Their friendship didn't get off to the easiest start. Phyllis Markoff was waiting in her oncologist's office for chemotherapy treatment when she noticed the scarf on the woman across from her, a woman also in her mid-30s named Emily Scattergood. Markoff asked where she bought it. "She just said, 'My sister got it for me.' I was wearing my wig and she didn't think I was a cancer patient so she was really put off," said Markoff, of Cherry Hill. "I was like, 'I'm going to the beach, and I don't want to go bald.

Janel Schillig has been stepped on, kicked, and whacked in the head. She has faced objects flying at her at high speeds. She has been bruised and battered - and wouldn't trade the experience for anything else. That is because Schillig is a soccer goalie, a position that carries with it a long list of occupational hazards. When a ball takes flight, a goalie is considered fair game. Sure, she can use her hands, but that doesn't mean opponents can't barrel into her at full force. Yet despite the dangers, Schillig relishes her role: "I just love playing the game, and it's such a great challenge.

A feverish, coming-of-age melodrama about same-sex love consummated in a Canadian girls' school, Lost and Delirious aspires to be both the bookend to and update of that 1931 landmark, M?dchen in Uniform. Filmmaker L?a Pool's perfectly cast, if insufficiently dramatized, film presents three adolescent female archetypes on a collision course. There is the goddess, a sexually experimental bombshell named Victoria, played by va-va-voomy Jessica Par? of Stardom fame. There is the tomboy, an unapologetic lesbian named Paulie, played by plucky Piper Perabo of Coyote Ugly infamy.

TWENTY YEARS from now, when my baby daughter is on the brink of full adulthood, I will tell her about my experience as a 20-year-old intern in Washington, D.C. A decade ago, I headed to the District for a month-long stint in a Senate office. Like most dreamy-eyed and ambitious young women in the Beltway, I was high on the glamor and history of our august Capitol, in awe of all the important men who rustled and hustled in dark tailored suits, and impressed with the media entourages that trailed the politicians like starved ducklings.

Year after year, the clock ticked by and the calendar marched forward, carrying the three women further from the real world and pulling them deeper into an isolated nightmare. Now, for the women freed from captivity inside a Cleveland house, the ordeal is not over. Next comes recovery - from sexual abuse and their sudden, jarring reentry into a world much different from the one they were grabbed from a decade ago. Therapists say that with extensive treatment and support, healing is likely for the women, who were 14, 16, and 21 when they were abducted.

REDWOOD CITY, Calif. - A stretch limousine that burst into flames on a San Francisco Bay bridge, killing five women inside, was carrying one too many passengers, investigators said Monday. The state Public Utilities Commission had authorized the vehicle to carry eight or fewer passengers, but it had nine on the night of the fire, California Highway Patrol Capt. Mike Maskarich said. He did not comment on whether the overcrowding may have been a factor in the deaths. The cause of the blaze remains under investigation, and the vehicle has not yet been inspected, Maskarich said.

NEW YORK - Hundreds of young women from around the world are kicking their dance routines into high gear in New York this week. They're vying to appear with the Rockettes at the 2013 Radio City Christmas Spectacular. The aspiring dancers lined up yesterday on a Manhattan street outside Radio City Music Hall for the open audition. Their hair was pulled back. Their makeup was perfect, and they all wore tan-colored, high-heeled shoes. They were taken into a rehearsal studio to learn a dance routine, then performed three-by-three in front of a panel of judges.

THE BLACK, midcalf lace dress that 19-year-old Alicia Gaitor modeled for her family and onlookers hit all the right notes. It was classic, yet fresh. Form-fitting, yet tasteful. "I love it," her sister said. "That dress was made for you," an onlooker agreed. It was a great choice. But the look on Gaitor's face said it all: It wasn't the dress. "She's always been picky," sighed her mother, Michelle. "Usually about the wrong things. " She and her other daughter headed back to the chairs they'd been keeping warm for more than an hour.

George Washington got one. So did Andrew Jackson, the Wright Brothers, Charles Lindbergh, Thomas Edison, Winston Churchill, and Neil Armstrong. But 161 years would pass before the Congress of the United States awarded its Gold Medal to a woman. Now, says U.S. Rep. Jon Runyan (R., N.J.), it's time for Congress to posthumously accord its highest civilian honor to Alice Paul - the unyielding civil rights advocate from Mount Laurel credited with passage of the 19th Amendment giving women the right to vote.

  It wasn't long ago that Francesca Ruscio would click through pictures of herself on the computer and think: "I'm ugly. I'm ugly. I'm fat. I look awful. " The 20-year-old Temple University student was diagnosed two years ago with polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder in women that can cause fertility problems and long-term health complications, as well as physical changes such as weight gain. She decided to fight the effects by changing her lifestyle and adopting a gluten-free, vegetarian, low-glycemic diet.

It wasn't long ago that Francesca Ruscio would click through pictures of herself on the computer and think: "I'm ugly. I'm ugly. I'm fat. I look awful. " The 20-year-old Temple University student was diagnosed two years ago with polycystic ovary syndrome, a hormonal disorder in women that can cause fertility problems and long-term health complications, as well as physical changes such as weight gain. She decided to fight the disorder's effects by changing her lifestyle and adopting a gluten-free, vegetarian, low-glycemic diet.

CHICAGO - Advanced breast cancer has increased slightly among young women, a 34-year analysis suggests. The disease remains uncommon among women younger than 40, and the small change has experts scratching their heads. The increase likely has numerous causes, said Rebecca Johnson, the lead author and medical director of a young adult cancer program at Seattle Children's Hospital. "The change might be due to some sort of modifiable risk factor, like a lifestyle change" or exposure to cancer-linked substances, she said.

Ladies' Home Journal is one of the nation's most popular women's magazines, with more than three million subscribers. The magazine, originally called the Ladies Home Journal and Practical Housekeeper, had its start in Philadelphia in 1883. Cyrus Hermann Kotzschmar Curtis, a pioneer of magazine publishing who would later establish the Curtis Publishing Co., expected young couples to turn to the magazine regularly for housekeeping advice. His wife, Louisa Knapp Curtis, worked as its editor until 1889.

ATLANTIC CITY - Ellen Cohen has resigned herself to the fact that she may never know precisely why the Miss America Pageant packed up like a scorned girlfriend seven years ago and left town for Las Vegas. She's just glad - make that ecstatic - that the high priestess of pageants is hightailing it home come September, at least for three years, according to the official announcement Thursday from state and pageant officials. The Miss America Pageant is expected to bring in tens of thousands of visitors and create as much as $30 million in revenue for the region, officials said.