"I love feministing.com and always learn from it." Katha Pollitt, The Nation
"Many people need a morning "fix." For some, it's coffee. For others, it's "SportsCenter." For me, it's Feministing.com." Katie Stone, The Denver Post
"Feminism is fun again! Every bit as edifying as your women's studies books from college, but with a biting sense of humor that keeps things punchy, not preachy." Marie Claire, December 2006
Tamar McFarlane has worked with Families United for Racial & Economic Equality (FUREE), a multi-racial, women-led, membership-run organization based in Brooklyn, New York, for the last two years. While at FUREE, she has worked on welfare reform, youth empowerment, and the beginning of a pay equity childcare campaign. With a long history of youth activism under her belt, she’s onto gentrification and Mayor Mike Bloomberg’s plan to develop Brooklyn.
“Basically, at one point I was reading Patrice Lumumba [a former Congolese anti-colonial leader], and it just came down to this…even if I am able to move these young people, if their parents don’t have a place to live, or an affordable place to live, then they won’t be able to live as healthy, conscious human beings. And so people have to start thinking about each other and their communities. They can’t wait for their government or someone in office to. They have to start taking care of each other.”
It was pretty hard to miss this model's ribcage -- even amid all the blinding Pucci and Gucci prints -- in the NYT style section today.
Spain's decision to keep super-bony supermodels off the catwalk has beenwidelycovered. But let's face it-- banning skeletal runway models won't really have much effect. The truth is that most young women see images of disgustingly skinny celebrities and models everywhere-- on billboards, in movies, in magazines and on television. And I don't think we should be passing legislation that mandates a minimum body weight for any woman who appears in the media.
Symbolically, though, I do like the fact that the Spanish government has publicly recognized that it's destructive to hold up this body type as an ideal. Now if only magazine editors and casting directors would agree, we might actually get somewhere.
A press release for Boobiethon '06 made its way into Feministing mailboxes this week. Wait, you ask, didn't we already participate in Boobiethon '06? But no, this is an annual event that "features bloggers showing their (covered and uncovered) breasts in order to raise money for charity during Breast Cancer Awareness Month."
There will be a separate, passworded "pay-per-boobie" page for bare-breasted photos, which will be available to donors of $50.00 or more.
At the risk of being labeled "anti-boobie" (which I'm definitely not), I say: Ugh. I'm no fan of breast cancer, and I'm certainly not ashamed of my body, but I won't be participating. Is this really the best way to raise money and awareness?
Broadsheet called it "objectification for a good cause." Then Boobiethon founder Robyn Pollman writes in comments, "I happen to think sending a message that "if our breasts are worth looking at, they're worth saving" is very empowering."
And I think that gets to the heart of what's unsettling to me about this campaign. I don't like the implication that certain parts of women's bodies are "worth saving" because they're sexy. Boobiethon is sending a message that breast cancer should be stopped because it claims beautiful breasts as its victims-- not because it's a horrible disease that's killing women. I'd almost prefer a website that featured women naked from the belly button up, and showed their faces. Because at least then you can see that this disease affects real women, not just disembodied breasts.
Then take a look at where the Boobiethon proceeds are directed. You'll note that the effort benefits the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, which lends its pink ribbon logo to help sell M&Ms, Kitchen Aid mixers, Yoplait, Lean Cuisine frozen meals, Avon products, on and on and on. The foundation also focuses its efforts on finding a cure rather than searching for and exposing causes of the disease.
This is a perfect opportunity to plug what looks like an amazing new book, Pink Ribbons, Inc., about the market-driven industry for breast-cancer survivorship. (Twisty is a fan. And you can check out an excerpt here.)
Public Health Students for Reproductive Freedom, in collaboration with Byllye Avery and the Avery Institute for Social Change, proudly present...
Sexual & Reproductive Rights: Moving the Movement Forward
Date: Saturday, September 30th, 2006 Time: 9am-5pm Cost: $5 (Includes breakfast and lunch) Location:Columbia University Health Sciences Campus
Russ Berrie Medical Pavilion
1150 St. Nicholas Avenue, near 168th St.
(take A, C, or 1 trains to 168th; Russ Berrie is located on the corner of St. Nicholas Ave and 168th Street)
Agenda: We will be discussing sexual and reproductive rights, past, present, and future, connecting leaders and novices in the movement and developing a strategic plan for the future.
Co-sponsored by the Black and Latino Student Caucus, the Global Health Forum, the Student Government Association, and the Heilbrunn Department of Population and Family Health.
Featuring:
Jessica Arons, Center for American Progress
Ava Barbour, ACLU
Jennifer Baumgardner, SoapBox
Dr. David Bell, CUMC
Sylvia Henriquez, National Latina Institute
Dr. Hilda Hutcherson, CUMC
Loretta Ross, SisterSong
Aimee Thorne-Thomsen, Pro-Choice Education Project
James Wagoner, Advocates for Youth
Dr. John Santelli
Yet another fabulous female from Saturday morning cartoons of the 80s. Random: When Vanessa and I used to play, she would insist that only she could be She-Ra since she was the one with the blonde hair. Bitch.
Britain's Channel 4 will show "Super-Skinny Me: The Race to Size Zero" early next year, as a group of female journalists film their attempts to drop to a size 2, equivalent to a U.S. size 00.
"This documentary will highlight the dangers of aiming for a super-skinny look, and expose the serious health risks of extreme weight-loss methods, all of which are already in the public domain," said a Channel 4 spokesman.
"At every stage of filming there will be continuous full medical support and expert guidance at hand."
The channel said it hoped the findings would provoke the same type of debate as Morgan Spurlock's documentary film "Super Size Me," which showed the health effects of a month long binge on fast food.
..."The documentary will also look at how the super-skinny American fad is spreading to the U.K. and question whether it is spawning an extreme, collective eating disorder," Channel 4 said in a statement.
OK, I'm all for highlighting dieting dangers--but do real women seriously have to do this to themselves in order to prove the point?
It seems even the experts think it's a bad idea. Britain's Eating Disorder Association says that "it could be very difficult to eat normally again after this experiment is over." Um yeah...that tends to happen when you starve yourself. Jeez.
A new study says that the length of a woman's ring finger "could be an easy way to tell if she has future sports potential." Obviously.
Researchers at King's College London conducted a study of 607 adult female twins in the U.K., comparing finger measurements with a woman's achievements in sports.
They found that women with ring fingers longer than their index fingers — a trait commonly seen in men — performed better at running and sports involving running, such as tennis and soccer.
Well I guess if you can't get into the board room, the living room works.
Nearly half of all U.S. businesses are run from home, and most companies owned by women are home-based, according to a government report released on Wednesday.
The data, showing 56 percent of female-owned businesses are run from home, illustrates how women opt to work from home for an array of family reasons, workplace experts say.
Among businesses owned by men, less than half, or 47 percent, were home-based, said the U.S. Census Bureau report.
"A significant percent of women having businesses in the home are comprised of women who are doing it for family reasons," said Kathleen Christensen, director of the Workplace, Workforce and Working Families program at the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation in New York.
The word "opt" always makes me nervous. I mean are women *really* opting to stay at home? Or is it because a) they can't afford day care and b) it is difficult for women to advance in the corporate world? Also, I think the internet has made at home businesses much easier to run, especially for women and people of color, who are historically excluded from the workplace.
I am not a fan of censorship, especially at the highschool level. I think young people should be allowed to express themselves how they feel. Repression is problematic, but what if how you are expressing yourself is detrimental to yourself or the people around you?
How do we feel about young girls wearing suggestive sexual slang on their shirts in highschool?
They're blatantly sexual, occasionally clever and often loaded with double meanings, forcing school administrators and other students to read provocations stripped across the chest, such as "yes, but not with u!," "Your Boyfriend Is a Good Kisser" and "two boys for every girl." Such T-shirts also are emblematic of the kind of sleazy-chic culture some teenagers now inhabit, in which status can be defined by images of sexual promiscuity that previous generations might have considered unhip.
At Potomac Senior High School in Prince William, a girl recently wore a black T-shirt parodying the "Got Milk?" ad, with sexual slang replacing the word "milk." Steve Bryson, the school's administrative assistant, brought the girl into his office. "I asked her, 'Why would you wear something like that?' And she said: 'I don't know. My dad knows that I have it,'" he recalled. "So I called the dad, and, of course, he had no idea. He said, 'Throw it away.'
One popular merchant of suggestive shirts is Hollister Co., a chain owned by Abercrombie & Fitch. Its shirts say such things as "two boys for every girl" and "FLIRTING MY WAY TO THE TOP."
Asked about the messages his company markets to teenagers, Thomas D. Lennox, Abercrombie & Fitch's vice president of corporate communications, said, "Our T-shirts are sometimes controversial, which we're fine with." He declined to elaborate.
Yuck, I hate Hollister and Co. We can't really ignore the corporate motivation behind this notion of "controversial." I mean is it really still student self-expression if everyone is wearing the same shirts and an entire company dedicated to marketing to young people is endorsing it?
I don't necessarily know if the shirts themselves are so bad, as is the lack of sex education in most public schools. Are most young women getting the education they need around self-esteem and sex? Furthermore, an analysis of how corporate enterprise supports these shirts is impossible to ignore. How do companies like Hollister benefit from the "slutification" of young women?
This study found that some women do report symptoms of depression during their pregnancy.
The survey found that three in five women were surprised by how emotional they felt while being pregnant. Two thirds felt even more exhausted than they expected and more than half needed more reassurance than they would have anticipated.
Current estimates in Britain suggest that one in 10 women suffer from depression during pregnancy, experiencing symptoms including low self-esteem, irritability and pessimistic thoughts about the future.
A recent study in the British Medical Journal found that of 9,000 pregnant women, 12 per cent were depressed at 18 weeks, rising to 13.5 per cent by week 32.
However, the study by the University of Bristol found that eight weeks after giving birth, depression rates fell to 9.1 per cent.
The study suggests that depression during pregnancy may be almost as common as post-natal baby blues.
Bitch magazine is celebrating 10 years of bitchin’ existence and the release of the anthology Bitchfest: Ten Years of Cultural Criticism from the Pages of Bitch Magazine tomorrow in Chicago.
Here's the info:
Hideout, 1354 W. Wabansia
9pm
10$ at the door
