There's a new documentary out about women and creativity.
Lynda Carter says Palin is no Wonder Woman.
A school bars males students from wearing makeup. (File under: Patriarchy hurts men, too.)
Yesterday was Coming Out Day! The Bilerico Project has a great series of coming-out posts. And Wanda Sykes has a great little ad on why saying "that's so gay" is insulting.
Nezua on politicians "microtargeting" Latino voters, while at the same time neglecting the big picture: "And as if the fluffed-up bios are somehow a substitute for staking out a position and promising action on issues integral to community and family and the health of children, such as immigration? Feel the pride."
The NYT profiles Queen Latifah.
Asylum for women fleeing domestic violence is in jeopardy.
Palin Sexism Watch: Lipliner edition. (Ditto for hairstyles.)
Carmen wrote an open letter to white voters.
What happens if the anti-choice ballot initiatives pass in South Dakota and Colorado?
"Hair and makeup is killing female hip-hop," says a source. "The grooming cost to break a female rapper versus a male rapper is 10 times as much per appearance. That tends to have an adverse effect on a record company's willingness to even entertain a female rapper."
More "isn't breast cancer sexy?" advertising.
On the invisibility of Muslim women.
MzBitca has an interesting post on "feminist dealbreakers" -- exploring the question of how we discuss feminist statements and actions coming from a person who hasn't historically been a feminist or ally.
Chicago is considering opening a gay-friendly high school.
Check out the Black Masculinity Project. And ?uestlove's thoughts on the daily life of a large black man.
On Michelle Obama's hair. (Shark-Fu has more.)
Actions
Participate in a survey about street harassment.
The Native American Task Force of the South Dakota Campaign for Healthy Families needs your donation to help mobilize Native American communities against the proposed abortion ban. (Link leads to a few other events and actions as well!)
Events
Chicago, IL: Free screening of Quinceanera. Monday 10/13.
NYC: This Is What Women Want Pre-Debate Speakout! Tuesday 10/14 in Long Island City, Queens. Free! Featuring Kate Bornstein, Kety Esquivel, Shelby Knox, Maegan "la Mala" Ortiz, Betsy Reed, Amy Richards, Luz Rodriguez, Deborah Siegel, Carmen Van Kerkhove and others.
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The coming-out posts are awesome. I'm going through them right now.
Re: the breast cancer ad. Get over it. It's ridiculous and silly but it's not saying that breast cancer is sexy. It's saying that breasts are sexy, which they are.
Sometimes the best way to deal with something is to laugh at it.
I second nattles. My immediate reaction to the link was: "Oh noes! not boobies in a breast cancer ad!"
Sorry, but there's two things at work here: de-stigmatizing the "private part" and reminding people that they want to help said part.
You guys REALLY wouldn't dig Circle of Hope's yearly fund-raising tea. Booby-shaped cupcakes and a naked calendar of breast-cancer survivors (usually with mastectomy scars covered).
As for the hip-hop thing, yeah, maybe if we didn't as a society glorify $10,000 hair salon bills as a real thing, we would get over this.
In regards to the school banning the goth boy from wearing makeup: I honestly hope his mother goes ahead with a lawsuit.
Even as my most backwards local high school, the dress code basically says that parents are responsible for what their children wear, and therefore make these decisions, not the school.
I don't get too worked up about those "Save the boobies!" breast cancer ads, but they do bother me, because they're like, "Save the boobies BECAUSE they're sexy!" Not because the breasts are attached to women, but because they're so hottt! I mean, there's no ovarian or cervical cancer awareness campaigns using this same technique, probably because ovaries aren't playthings that are fun to look at.
nattles_thing: regardless of how you feel about the breast cancer ad, is it really cool to tell someone else to get over it? I mean just because you are not bothered by it doesn't mean that someone else can't be. I'm not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I get a little frustrated with the "just get over it" attitude. I think we are all entitled to our own opinions and I don't appreciate being told how I must feel about something.
(I'm a tad touchy today. I've been working on my PhD exams all weekend)
nilbog: It's totally cool.
If you're trying to be offended, you will be. You can be offended about water bottle tits or you can be offended about me telling you to get over being offended by water bottle tits.
The fact is that no matter how much we all claim that we're not really trying to tell anyone how to feel, we all know that's complete bullshit. There are people who believe an embryo is a human life and that it's okay to stop women from having abortions. You're going to try to change their opinion. There are people who believe it's okay to rape someone because she's wearing a short skirt. We can't tell them how they should feel?
I think it's stupid to undermine a perfectly innocent ad for a good cause because it has water bottles representing the relevant body part. I think people who are offended by the ad should get over it.
Ahhh, let me guess: the Palin lipliner link (which is not working for me now) is the HuffPost puff piece of a few days ago. Google it; it's ridiculous (close ups of Palin's mouth as people try to guess whether her lipliner's tattooed.)
FWIW..."Get over it" just doesn't work in most debates with anti-choicers, anti-gay marriage, etc. The only time I've ever gotten anywhere with closed minds is when I take them at their word, take them seriously, and respond to their arguments with attention and care. I agree with nilbog and would take it a step further to suggest that "get over it" is actually damaging to furthering dialogue with people who don't share one's opinion--whether they be fellow feminists of a different stripe, or KKK fundies.
But it does feel good to say it; on that we can agree.
For the record, I think Good Feminists(TM) can disagree on the issue of promoting breast cancer awareness with "breasts are sexy" messaging.
I come down on the anti-sexy-breast advocacy (ha, there's a bit of shorthand for you) side because I see this sort of advocacy as, in many cases, minimizing the women who are attached to the breasts. Fine by me if nattles (and others) aren't bothered by this one campaign. But it gets more troublesome, for me, when I consider it in the context of lots of other campaigns, like Save the Ta-Tas. Here's a longer post I wrote on the subject.
has anyone seen videos from palin's puck drop in the flyers/rangers game?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g7TgDanmWkg&feature=related
it was a nice little pick-me-up.
Thank you for linking to the street harrassment survey. I just finished taking it and had to confront some unpleasant memories of that crap I used to put up with and I know many women still do. I"m sure this is fodder for a whole other discussed but this only really seemed to happen to me when I was living in the city, first NY then Boston. Now that I live in a small VT town with my spouse I have only had ONE experience like that in my two years living here.
I found the slogan in the breast cancer ad a little distasteful. "Every mouthful helps raise awareness"? Right underneath a graphic of what looks like a pair of naked breasts? And the nipples are actually the tops of water bottles... where you would put your mouth? Who exactly are they targeting this ad at anyway? I can handle a little "breasts are neato! let's save them!" in my breast cancer awareness/fundraising, but they're fairly blatantly alluding to a sex act there. That's just kindof creepy.
I might be a bit late in saying this but it is toooo awesome that Spider Jerusalem is a feministing reader.
The black masculinity stuff is fucking fascinating; I love Byron Hurt. More on masculinity pleeeez!
Ann,
Just wanted to thank you for the link love and resulting traffic. I now feel like I am operating a feminist blog as I got my first "shut the fuck up and get back in the kitchen" response.
my problem with the whole "save teh boobies" thing is that it likes to think that only young attractive women get breast cancer. What about an elderly woman? or one who's overweight? I have a feeling noone wants to save their boobies because "no one want's to look at them anyway" (my impression of a frat boy)
this also extends to the problem of ignoring that there is a woman attached to them.
that said, if these campaigns get people to donate who otherwise wouldn't, then I can live with them.
On the subject of anti-choice initiatives, California is running the parental consent proposition again. I haven't heard much about it, either here or in ads (most of the ads this season are about the gay marriage amendment), and I'm not sure if that's good (as in it doesn't really have any force behind it this time) or bad (as in nobody's paying attention to how much force is behind it). Anyway, Californians be aware.
Btw, this isn't related to anything, but is anyone else currently having a problem with the site, wherein they are no links to past pages appearing at he bottom of the screen?
And for the record, I, too, have a problem with sexualized breast cancer awareness ads. These companies are only interested in breast cancer because then they can talk about breasts openly and call it charity. They make everything pink or with ribbons and tell you that the best way to stop cancer is to BUY MORE SHIT, meanwhile, the money tends to go nowhere useful. Tell me, has anyone actually gotten any closer to finding a cure, now that I can buy pink ribbon fleece and matching baseball cap? No one's looking for a cure, they're looking for an easy profit.
If companies really cared about cancer in general, then we'd have products that promote awareness of every kind of cancer: lung, prostate, skin, colon, brain - but we don't, because they're not sexy enough. To focus only on breast cancer simply because it's BREAST cancer is exploitive. Sure, it seems like they care about women, but they just care about your money.
I don't think breast cancer is cute and I wish advertisers would treat it like the serious disease it is.
And, no, this I will not simply "get over".
Re Wanda Sykes' ad, which I love... (sorry to self promote but its related!) I made a little kiddo zine along the same lines a while back, about how saying "that's gay" isn't cool...
heres the link: http://www.etsy.com/view_listing.php?listing_id=13651483
again sorry for self promoting, hope I'm not out of line for doing so!
WORD to "an open letter to white voter"'s calling out of "hockey mom" and so on as euphemisms for "white." I wondered about this myself about a week ago.
Thanks, MaggieF, for mentioning California's anti-choice ballot measure. California feminists have a lot to get riled up about on the ballot this year. No on 4, No on 8!
I feel like 4 (the parental consent measure) isn't getting much attention because it's been defeated so many times now, but I'm worried the anti-choicers will slip it in there while nobody's paying attention.