“Teenage Girl Blossoming into Beautiful Object,” proclaimed a recent headline in the Onion. The faux-newspaper goes on to describe the high school junior’s, quote, “staggering metamorphosis from a young girl with thoughts, feelings, and aspirations into a truly stunning commodity.” This kind of nailing-of-truth-through-satire is what makes me a great fan of the Onion: where writers specialize in humor that makes you wince. And think: about the truth behind the laugh. The struggle of young women—to be treated as persons, not objects—is not a new theme. It’s not a “problem” we’re going to “solve” overnight. It is a chronic danger; one that burbles up over and over again, in every corner of the world. In many places, more poisonously than others. I recently saw Seattle Shakespeare Company’s riveting production of one of theatre’s most moving stories about a woman’s struggle to be a person, not a plaything: Henrik Ibsen’s play, A Doll’s House. At first, we think the main character, Nora, is as pretty and flighty as her husband Torvald thinks she is. He treats her like a little girl and she behaves like one. But as the plot thickens, we understand more and more about Nora. She has a secret: without telling Torvald, she took out a loan to save his health. Her pretense was that she got the money from her father. Now she’s being blackmailed. Pressure is mounting. She has to confess to Torvald. Will he stand by her? Will he understand the depth of love behind what she has done? No. Torvald [...]