Do I detect gender stereotyping?

By Phil Lawler ( bio - articles - email ) | Nov 26, 2004

The ever-reliable liberal bellwether Maureen Dowd of the New York Times is not the first columnist to write about intrusive airport body searches of female passengers. In fact her outrage on this, as on most other issues, is perfectly in tune with this week's fashions.

But listen to this:

Then a beefy female security agent runs her hands all the way around your breasts, in between, underneath - again with guys standing around staring.

What's the word "beefy" doing in that sentence? Would it be more acceptable if a willowy female security agent did the frisking? The reference to a "beefy" woman conjures up thoughts of what Maureen Dowd would, on her better days, call "homophobia."