Thanksgiving, Part 2
Ok, I have a story to share about this one. Every year, I make two different stuffings for Thanksgiving dinner: the traditional bread stuffing & an oatmeal stuffing -- an old recipe handed down from my Jewish grandma, which she got from her Scottish housekeeper over 50 years ago. I make it every year, & every year my dad bitches that I didn't do it right. Honestly, my grandma hasn't made it in so long that I doubt he remembers what it's supposed to taste like. Regardless, it stresses me out every year - especially since I've often spent hours making both stuffings, the turkey, & a few other dishes. Anyway, to those of you who have similarly "pleasant" family members ... let's raise a glass in solidarity, because you're not alone! :/
Tina Fey
LOL :D
Love or Hate
Almost everything we feel about others is subjective -- remember this next time you're rejected, insulted, etc.
Half the Sky
"Half the Sky" is a new documentary on PBS which "... introduces women and girls who are living under some of the most difficult circumstances imaginable — and [who are] fighting bravely to change them."
Read more about the woman in the photo, Rebecca Lolosoli.
Ava Gardner
Why wait? This sounds lovely right now, while I'm younger & dark-haired!
Can They Talk?
Douche of the Day:
Fox News host Brian Kilmeade said on his radio show today "... that the way he and his network pick out female hosts is, 'we go into the Victoria’s Secret catalogue and we said, ‘Can any of these people talk?’"
Listen to it here.
Sexual Assault Prevention
Women are routinely taught how to avoid being raped. We're taught not to leave our drinks unattended, to not walk in certain neighborhoods, to not wear certain clothes, etc. The responsibility for rape prevention is placed on women's shoulders instead of where it belongs -- on potential rapists. It's about time that we saw more Sexual Assault Prevention Tips like these:
Birth Control
Contrary to what many conservatives would have us believe, affordable access to birth control isn't about making taxpayers pay for slutty women to have sex. Birth control is an economic issue and a basic human right:
Read more at Buzzfeed."Access to contraception isn't just a privilege, it's a basic human right, the United Nations says in its Population Fund's annual report, which came out on Wednesday. Lack of access to contraception, the report finds, is an economic barrier that can hinder economic opportunity and growth."
Lighter
Here are two 4-letter words I'd say about dating guys who'd have this lighter: FUCK THAT.
Inner Voice
True -- my inner voice sounds like my dad. :/
(Yes, a word's misspelled, but just pretend there's an "h" in there)
“This Is a Catholic Country”
This is what can happen when a country (Ireland, in this case) allows the religious beliefs of some to trump a woman's right to terminate a pregnancy: Savita Halappanavar, 31, was a dentist and was 17 weeks pregnant. She was miscarrying, but was refused an abortion even after her health started to fail. Ultimately, the fetus died inside her, and then she died shortly after from blood poisoning. It's simply disgusting how self-righteous ideology caused this woman's death:
"Savita was really in agony. She was very upset, but she accepted she was losing the baby. ... When the consultant came on the ward rounds on Monday morning, Savita asked if they could not save the baby, could they induce to end the pregnancy? The consultant said: `As long as there is a fetal heartbeat, we can't do anything.' Again on Tuesday morning ... the consultant said it was the law, that this is a Catholic country."
Read more at Huffington Post.
She Just Wanted to Learn
Badass Girl of the Day -- Malala, the 15-year-old Pakistani girl who was shot in the head by the Taliban last month. She was targeted because ever since she was 11, she'd been encouraging other girls to defy the Taliban and to go to school. This photo is from a few days ago.
Read more at CNN.
Not Very Gentlemanly, GQ
Can you spot the difference between these three photos? One of the things that indicates sexism is when women are treated in a way that reduces them to a superficial quality, such as treating women as sex objects. In these photos, "Ben Affleck and Channing Tatum sharing the 'man of the year' title and Rhianna [is] named 'obsession of the year.' Affleck and Tatum are fully dressed, while Rhianna just gets a leather jacket. Affleck and Tatum get closeups, while Rhianna gets a suggestive body shot."
Why am I getting deja vu? Oh yeah, it's because of the recent British GQ's Men of the Year covers, which featured fully-clothed comedian/Broadway star James Corden, fully-clothed singer Robbie Williams, fully-clothed rapper Tinie Tempah, fully-clothed "Mad Men" star John Slattery, and naked singer/Internet celebrity Lana Del Rey.
I'm noticing a trend here. Apparently, GQ doesn't think women are noteworthy unless they're undressed. You'd think that a magazine called Gentleman's Quarterly would behave in a more gentlemanly manner. But no.
“Special Snowflake”
This is what I think when I hear women talking about how they're "not like other girls" or they're a "cool girlfriend" because they like watching sports, or they don't mind going to strip clubs with their guys, or they're not high-maintenance. It's as if pleasing men is the highest priority & that either molding yourself to their interests or simply having those same interests makes you better, cooler, or more fun than women who don't.
Keeping Up with Limited Options
In a new study conducted by USC Annenberg and the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, researchers looked at the way women are portrayed in the media. They analyzed nearly 12,000 speaking roles on prime-time TV and in children's TV shows and family films, studying "female characters' occupations, attire, body size and whether they spoke or not."
The results were pretty depressing:The team's data showed that on prime-time television, 44.3 percent of females were gainfully employed -- compared with 54.5 percent of males. Women across the board were more likely to be shown wearing sexy attire or exposing some skin, and body size trends were apparent: 'Across both prime time and family films, teenaged females are the most likely to be depicted thin.' ... Perhaps most telling are the percentages of speaking female characters in each media form: only 28.3 percent of characters in family films, 30.8 percent of characters in children's shows, and 38.9 percent of characters on prime time television were women.
... [R]esearchers reported that they found a lack of aspirational female role models in all three media categories, and cited five main observations: female characters are sidelined, women are stereotyped and sexualized, a clear employment imbalance exists, women on TV come up against a glass ceiling, and there are not enough female characters working in STEM [science, technology, engineering, math] fields."
Media messages reinforce sexist attitudes about what women are capable of achieving. As this study shows, female characters are significantly limited in the roles they play -- they're often relegated to supporting roles, as characters less central to the plot, and as sex objects. This impacts how girls grow up feeling about their own abilities and what opportunities are open to them, and it also affects how boys learn to view girls -- who gets to be the star, who gets to be the boss, and who's supposed to just sit there and look pretty:
"Both young girls and boys should see female decision-makers, political leaders, managers, and scientists as the norm, not the exception. By increasing the number and diversity of female leaders and role models on screen, content creators may affect the ambitions and career aspirations of girls and young women domestically and internationally."
Read more about the study at Huffington Post.
