Posts Written by Heather
By Heather Adair • 11 years ago

“Pinning” with purpose.

A SYTYCB Entry

We all use Pinterest at this point, right?

No?

Ah. You have better things to do than catalogue the recipes you’ll probably never make, the clothes you’ll probably never buy, the hair color you’ll never wear, the homemade laundry soap you’ll never wash with, the amazing abs you’ll never discover under that belly jiggle, the perfectly decorated home in which you’ll never live. You’re a wiser woman than I.

It’s a web-addict’s fantasy-land, ripe with opportunity to question what our online lives ACTUALLY look like.

For every hundred and fifty “cutest wedding photo ever!” snapshot there are perhaps one or two “pins” of any real intellectual or social merit. For every three hundred “fifty calorie fudge” pins, we have maybe five or six pins linking back to articles that tackle Real Issues.

I’ve been wondering over the past several weeks whether Pinterest is really an accurate reflection of the way we spend our e-time, and whether the deluge of “thinspiration” and “cake pops! cake pops! cake pops!” pictures out there really constitute the interests and fantasies of our online buddies.

Call it a pipe dream, but what if — WHAT IF?!?!? — we put our minds to pinning (and therefore directing massive amounts of web traffic toward) images that came from CHALLENGING web content? If those cute “pregnant lady fashion blogs” are able to garner thousands of hits from a picture of a maxi skirt snapped with their iPhone, wouldn’t it be something of a revolution if ...
By Heather Adair • 11 years ago

“This is 40″ bloated with tired stereotypes

A SYTYCB entry

I wanted to get excited for this movie. I mean — Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Judd Apatow — we’re pretty well conditioned to laugh before the trailer even BEGINS, right? It has all the ingredients for Grown-Up Comic Gold; Paul Rudd is basically Movie Jesus, after all, blameless savior of cinema, beloved by women, children, and smart men the world over. At first watch, the subject seems watchable enough: suburban malcontents trying to spice up their life at the cusp of middle age? Sure, most of us burb-dwelling, middle-management types can get excited about that.

Except: if the entire film is anything like the trailer, “This is 40″ will be one giant confirmation of stereotypes about women.

Such as:

Women are ...

A SYTYCB entry

I wanted to get excited for this movie. I mean — Paul Rudd, Leslie Mann, Judd Apatow — we’re pretty well conditioned to laugh before the trailer even BEGINS, right? It has all the ingredients ...