By Alexandra Brodsky • @azbrodsky • 10 years ago

Photo of the Day: #Rose4Space

AXE Astronaut

So, AXE is holding a contest to send people into space. Actually. You sign up, your friends vote for you, you move on to the global competition, and then BAM you are ON A SPACESHIP.

The company had just assumed that dudes and dudes only would flock to the opportunity: the website calls for a “few brave men.” But Malaysia’s presumptive winner is Roshini “Rose” Muniam, whose #Rose4Space campaign, coordinated by Jaymee Goh, has galvanized international support. The picture above shows just how unprepared AXE was for a lady winner, and feels like a big, awesome middle finger to the company’s gendered expectations. At the same time, the image highlights the absurdity of our objectifying, heteronormative methods for celebrating male achievement: the fact that we would easily accept a picture like this with a man in the middle forces us to confront our dedication to masculine heroes and feminine prizes.

Check out Muniam’s video pitch after the jump.

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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