71 posts tagged “feminism”
In the wake of the Miley Cyrus bared-shoulder scandal, a member of ONTD took it upon themselves to compile 14 years' worth of Annie Leibowitz's Vanity Fair covers for the annual "Holywood Issue". That's a whole lot of powdered skin, awkward poses, and facial expressions that bespeak either ennui or a powerful need to fart. You be the judge.
The covers are fold-outs, meaning the left third of each image is actually what a potential buyer sees on the cover. Jezebel sees a racial bias in the covers, because a majority of the actors of color are pushed off to the right two-thirds. I'm sure that's not an accident, any more than the fact that when men and women are both in the shot, the women have on average about 96% less clothing than the men.
Of course, the funniest thing about going back over a decade and a half of so-called "It" actors and actresses is the schadenfreude that comes with realizing how many of them totally fizzled out. Wait, so people really thought Monica Potter was going to be the Next Big Thing? Wow, people were stupid in the '90s.
Hips, thighs, arms, shoulders and boobs are all a little bigger; painfully jutting hip bones have been smoothed out. I'm sure it's no accident that she's even whiter and blonder in the "after" photo, too.
So, I'm sure we're all aware by now that models and actresses are Photoshopped within an inch of their life for magazines and movie posters, and almost always to make them look thinner. However, the use of Photoshopping to make them appear less deathly underweight is now on the rise.
Belinda Coleman, of the retouching agency The Shoemakers Elves, said there was a trend towards presenting less "extreme" images of thinness and of enhancing figures. "Where models are looking particularly gaunt, magazines are saying, 'We can't have that - fill out their chests,'?" she said.
Or you could, I don't know, hire models who don't look as if they just got released from a concentration camp.
This has got nothing to do with "promoting a healthy body type", or whatever retarded spin Condé Nast et al. are choosing to put on it. It's just another way to make women hate themselves and sell them stuff to combat it. You're too fat, you're too fat, you're too fat--now you're too skinny! You have to be skeletally thin, but without pancake boobs or visible ribs or a protruding collarbone! No one could ever actually attain this "ideal" body type. It's physically impossible.
You gotta love how the fashion-obsessed see the world. Most of us look at the plight of the 416 children removed from the polygamous and abusive FLDS compound in Texas and think it's terrible. Fashionistas look at it and think "My god, those pastel dresses are fab-yoo-luss!"
Call up Pantone and the folks at FIT, as a new chapter is about to be added to the fashion history books: Polygamist Pastels.
Marc Jacobs has already announced a new line of women's accessories for Spring 2009 that include an abusive rapist of a husband old enough to be your father, and several excess sons that you'll have to abandon by the side of the road like unwanted puppies once they reach puberty.
Feministing has a feature called the "Anti-Feminist Mailbag", in which they share some of the more retarded hatemail the site receives. This week's is especially schadenfreudelicious, and not just because the email claiming that men are so much S-M-R-Ter than women contain (as per usual) a totally piss-poor grasp of elementary school-level grammar and punctuation.
Men are better than women look at the comparison in IQ men are scientifically proven to have a higher IQ by roughly 5 points, or 5% you cannot dispute science sorry and if you want a much better website than your shitty one you might want to go to [redacted]. I think you would gain a lot more knowledge from that website and you might learn about the truth that way you would not be so stupid and ignorant you stupid cunts.
Oh, also: piss-poor elementary school-level math skills. 5 points !=! 5%, unless all IQs in question are exactly 100.
No, what really makes it hilarious is that since this genius was dumb enough to send a harassing email from his school email account, he has been revealed as Alex Kochno, the Public Relations Officer of the Southern Illinois University College Republicans (here's his MySpace and Facebook). I am totally shocked that he's a Republican.
Calling 51% of the world's population "stupid cunts", now that is some stunning PR. And the Feministing entry is now the first thing that shows up when you Google his name, pretty much guaranteeing that this will follow him for the rest of his life. Good luck finding a job after graduation, brainiac!
ETA: And this entry is the 2nd thing that shows up when you Google him. Ha ha!
An 8-year-old Yemeni girl has been granted a divorce from her 30-year-old husband. Just let that sink in for a moment. She's 8. Married to a 30-year-old. Her father forced her into the marriage, and when her mother and aunt told her there was nothing they could do, she marched down to the closest courthouse by herself and started asking judges and lawyers for help. Who is this girl, Punky Brewster?!
15 used to be the legal age for marriage in Yemen, but it was ammended in 1998 to allow parents to contract marriages for underage daughters. Their husbands aren't supposed to be "intimate" with them until they are "ready" or "mature". Well, that's not vague or anything.
An uncle has stepped forward to be her gaurdian, but the Supreme Court of Yemen says it does not plan to return her to her family, in case they try to marry her off again. She's going to be placed with a private organization that works with children. I hope like hell there's a happy ending to this. Look at how spunky she is! If you could convert her sassiness into energy you could light the Statue of Liberty torch with it!!
You know, I believe in cultural relativism, but only so far as it doesn't infringe on basic human rights. I do think there are some things that are moral absolutes in any society, and a girl who isn't even old enough to menstruate being forced to marry a man old enough to be her father who beats and rapes her, is wrong by any cultural yardstick.
Bitch Ph.D. is currently running a piece about menstruation which decries our "culture of concealment" and condemns our need to feel we have to hide when we're on our period.
I still worry about bleeding onto my clothes, or onto furniture. I still put the tampon in my pocket, or tuck it in my waistband if I don't have pockets for the walk from wherever I'm sitting to the bathroom, to make the change. I still don't think I would ask a female friend for a tampon within earshot of any dude not my boyfriend.
Oh, for fuck's sake. I do all those things, too. And it's not because I'm ashamed (I don't bat an eyelash over buying tampons, for instance). But staining the furniture with biological waste or walking around with bloodstained clothes is fucking gross. I would feel the same way about urine stains or particularly nasty food stains. I put my tampon in my pocket when I walk through the outer office to get to the bathroom to change it; I also don't announce that I have to go take a crap or offer to show people my tissues after I blow my nose. And I don't like male or female co-workers to know when I'm having my period, because if I bite their heads off over a particularly retarded mistake I want them to think Gee, she's right, that was stupid, and not Oh, she's just cranky because her Aunt Flo came to visit.
I'm sick of these pieces that act like there's no happy medium between letting our menses drip down our leg and fingerpainting art dedicated to Kali and Diana with it, and being a cringing shame-filled patriarchy supporter who agrees to live in a darkened hut in the backyard when it's that time of the month. Telling women that they ought to celebrate their cycle is another, even stupider, form of oppression. My period is just a biological process. It is not special because it's something only women do, and it's no more spiritual to me than moving my bowels. No one pressures men to "celebrate" the pain of getting kicked in the balls.
And the next "wombyn" that starts shrieking about how I should be using Instead or the Diva Cup instead of tampons is going to get a maxi pad stuffed down her throat. I like to have as little contact with my own waste products as possible. I'm just funny like that.
Attention my fellow unmarried harlots single women! Did you know that in addition to unravelling the very fabric of society, we're also destroying the environment? According to Britain's Office of National Statistics, an increase in the number of "singletons" has caused energy consumed by lighting and electrical appliance to increase 136% in the last 30 years. It's probably because of your hair dryers and curling irons/straighteners, you shallow, hair-obsessed strumpets!
Or um, maybe the invention of, I dunno, the personal computer and the proliferation of electronic gadgetry has something to do with it? Just throwing that unlikely suggestion out there! In that case: It's all because of your Blackberries and your webcams (sluts!!) and liveblogging Project Runway! Now light some candles and knit some baby booties, before we all drown in a sea of melted icebergs and pissed-off polar bears.
This is a British study, so I can't speak for how "singletons" (HOORAY ANOTHER STUPID NICKNAME!!!) live over there, or even for how all of them live in this country, but most of the single people I know don't live alone. I've never lived alone, not even when I lived in the Shack: that was a detached structure, but still part of the house where Ana (and sometimes her daughter) lived. I've always lived with at least one other person, minimum; usually 2, and occasionally 3.
The fact remains that the single best thing you can do for the environment is not have any children. I'm doing that. In addition, I also don't drive anymore, and won't be doing so for the forseeable future. I take public transportaton, ride my bike, or walk everywhere. I can't claim I was motivated to do either of those things soley for the environment--it's just a nice side benefit that I get to be smug about. The way I see it, I can wipe my ass with panda cubs for the next 20 years and still come out ahead.
Blow me, Office of National Statistics.
I can haz alfalfa sprout?
This week the French fashion industry signed a charter to promote "healthy body images". Unlike Spain, which bans models with a BMI of less than 18, or Britain, which which requires models to show medical proof that they don't suffer from eating disorders (or, if they do, that they are being treated for them), the guidelines in the Land of a Thousand Cheeses don't actually impose any restrictions. Instead they focus on "awareness raising" and "information sharing", and probably aren't going to do a damn thing to promote the use of healthy models. But at least when the next 18-year-old underweight model drops dead on the catwalk, everyone will be aware that anorexia stopped her heart!
None of these campaigns are addressing the root of the problem: Designers that essentially make clothes to fit human versions of wire hangers. Harangue the models all you want; but when every single big-name designer is continuing to make size 0 and under clothes, the problem isn't going to go away, because healthy models won't be able to fit into their clothes.
And in somewhat related news, remember Chloe Marshall, the size 16 contender for the title of Miss England? That birdcage-bottom rag The Daily Mail (which previously ran an interview in which the columnist could barely contain her outraged disgust at Chloe's body) ran an article written by a former Miss England judge, Monica Grenfell, in which she spewed venomous hatred all over Chloe Marshall for refusing to hate her body so much that she becomes a shut-in:
Feted and fawned over for her courage in daring to break the mould, Chloe boasts she wants to be an 'ambassador for curves'. Who does she think she's kidding? What she's demonstrating isn't bravery but a shocking lack of self-control. Instead of flaunting her figure, Chloe ought to own up to the truth. She is fat and she got that way by over-eating. It would send an appalling — and very dangerous — message to other young women that it's OK to be fat. Chloe is a stark reminder that obesity is now virtually normal in our society — and we should all be hanging our heads in shame.
What bothers me here is not so much the accusation of fat (although Chloe isn't obese, according to Carla Wolper of the Obesity Research Center at St. Luke's Hospital in New York City), but the indication that fat people don't deserve to feel happy, to aspire to the same things as skinny people, to take part in society. Monica Grenfell sounds like she's one enraged tic away from suggesting that Chloe ought to be locked in a cage and put on display so everyone can throw rotten tomatoes at her. And she's by no means a lone voice in the crowd, I see this attitude almost on a daily basis.
Destroying the economy since 1943!
Oh good, it's another douchebaggy evo psych "science" report: Sex and financial risk linked in brain. Wondering why we're teetering on the brink of recession, about to plunge headlong? Is it because of corporate greed and deregulation, a war that's dragged on for years, a government who caters to the top 1% wealthiest elite?
No, you silly gals! It's all because of your boobs!
A new brain-scan study may help explain what's going on in the minds of financial titans when they take risky monetary gambles — sex. When young men were shown erotic pictures, they were more likely to make a larger financial gamble than if they were shown a picture of something scary, such a snake, or something neutral, such as a stapler, university researchers reported.
The study used 15 male heterosexual college students, which is totally representative of all sectors of financial America. They didn't bother to scan women (although that didn't stop one of the authors from making a joke about women and chocolate that is more tired than John McCain after running the Boston Marathon--Haw haw! Those wacky girls and their lust for the cocoa bean!) because they weren't sure what aroused women.
Well, not being blamed en masse for this shitty economy would be a good start, guys.
It has been scientifically proven that every single unmarried woman in the world spends her Saturday nights alone, scarfing ice cream and weeping into her Chardonnay.
In this confucing article for the Sydney Morning Herald, columnist Samantha Brett writes about the "Hollywood Freemale" and somehow seems to equate how they live to normal single women. You know, because all people who share a vaguely similar lifestyle are one homogenous lump, with exactly the same motivations and emotions, regardless of the cultural or personal context!
Ms. Brett starts out with a positive "You go, girl!" mentality; but because there is nothing in our society more terrifying than a woman who's not the property of some male, she switches gears halfway through and it becomes one of those "You're going to die alone and miserable and surrounded by cats!" pieces that we've been inundated with lately. She even references that horrible Atlantic Monthly piece by Lori Gottlieb, in which she advises women to settle for losers if they're still single by the time they hit 30, and uses old sitcoms as case studies to prove her point. (Shockingly, Ms. Gottlieb has not taken her own advice and is still single.)
Single woman have a hard enough time getting any respect in our society, you don't need to pile comparisons to Tyra Banks and Paula Abdul on top of it. The best unintentional lulz of the article comes in the form of this gem of a quote from Ms. Abdul: "It's damn near impossible for a successful woman to date men who don't earn as much... Men are intimidated by me." Honey, they're not intimidated because you're "successful" or famous. They're intimidated because you're a fucking loon. And possibly a pill-popping drunk.
Look, here's some totally outrageous advice: Work with what life gives you. If you find yourself single, find ways to enjoy it. Believe me, they aren't elusive--not having to consult with someone else about purchases, being able to eat what you want for dinner, deciding on the spur of the moment to paint the bedroom walls fuschia if the desire takes you, I could go on and on. If you find that's not fullfilling you, then go on a fucking date and see what happens.
Jesus. Why do these coulumnists always have to approach life as if it were the Sunday edition of the New York Times crossword puzzle? Life isn't some fiendishly clever puzzle designed by sadists to torment you for a few decades until you keel over dead from the sheer exhaustion of trying to figure it out. It's just life. It's not supposed to be that hard.
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