Recently in Popular Culture Category

While reading Huffingtonpost.com (which I generally quite enjoy), I came across an article about women hating when their husbands take naps on the weekends.  The short article has sweeping stereotypes about gender behavior and attitudes, as well as defining household roles for both sexes. 

The article begins, "Why do women begrudge men a nap? If you want to infuriate your wife, try taking a nap on a Saturday afternoon just as she's revving up the to-do list. Forget sex, communication, in-laws and the toilet seat wars. If you really want to stir up a hornet's nest inside a marriage, just bring up the subject of naps. Men love them and women despise them"

We can learn from author Lisa Earle McLeod that: "When a woman sees a pile of dirty dishes and laundry strewn about the floor, we don't just see a mess, we literally feel failure...it's the way most of us are wired" and that "women are hardwired to keep things running at peak efficiency."  Men, on the other hand, see their homes as "a long soft comfortable surface -- which if you knock the pizza boxes and old newspapers off -- is the perfect place to lay down." Because men always pile pizza boxes on stuff. It's just how they're wired, right?

Ew! I'm glad that I have been enlightened to know that when I clean my house it is because I am a born lean, mean, and efficient cleaning machine. I don't clean for personal success, I clean to not live in a messy house. And, for the record, I love my Saturday afternoon naps.

I expected more than this from the Huffingtonpost!

According to this article Britney has been seen "binging" on junk food and this will ruin her comeback because she might gain a few pounds (oh the horror).

Her managers have placed her on a strict diet of 1200 calories a day and are calling it a "healthy lifestyle". Last I recalled eating only 1200 calories a day is not healthy.

This is just like the whole Amanda Palmer thing where for women to be successful in this industry they have to be super thin.

The tone of this article was hilarious (to me anyways) the way the article was stating that because Britney had decided to have a burger she was going to ruin her comeback. Are they for real?

I have large breasts, big hips and a small waist.  I tend to dress elegantly, even for casual situations.  I wear a lot of black, a lot of dresses, and I like to play up my curves and look nice.  I wear scoop neck and V neck tops pretty often, and of course there's the cleavage that comes with it.  Even when I wear crew neck tops, bam, my breasts are right there.  I don't like to wear baggy things, and why should I?  Street harassment's been a problem for me since I was 14 or so and I grew my breasts in the first place, and while the catcalls have always bothered me greatly I never really thought about them in terms of my body, personally.  Those guys are assholes, they do that to everybody, just because I'm wearing a dress and walking alone they think they have the right to blah blah blah.  But I never really thought of what my body, specifically, meant to them and means to the culture at large.

An extremely insensitive, tactless, and misinformed comment my dad made to me in the car a few days ago finally brought it home.  We were having one of those big heart-to-hearts, the same one we have every time I come home from school, in which he dissects what he thinks is my mental and emotional state based on I don't know what.  This time he said that, when my breasts are "on display" like they are "all the time," it's an "invitation for rape."  He doesn't know that I've been raped, and that comment of his was extremely hard for me to hear.  Does he want me to wear burlap sacks?  Walk with a hunch?  I don't know how what I'm supposed to do with that comment.  Who decided that breast size is in direct proportion to sheer amount of sexuality?  My breasts are just a body part like any other.  It's not my thick thighs or big nose or size 8 feet that have those sexual connotations, though I have just as much control of those things as I do my breast size; that is to say, none.  They're just traits, and don't mean anything.  Large breasts, however, mean something.  The patriarchy has decided that a person with large breasts is a sexual person for as long as their breasts are "nice" and in the "too big" range.  If I'm rushing to class ten minutes late, the harasser sees my big boobs coming down the street and thinks I'm on my way to see him for a beer.  If I'm showing my parents a piece of artwork I'm proud of they tell me to put on a jacket because I look like a whore.  This happens in crew neck tops.  Even in a high necked, black dress, on a dark night, my chest is the first thing many men comment on.

I didn't put that symbol on my body.  I'm in a sexual mood just as often as everybody else is, not 24 hours a day as the patriarchy would have us believe.  Is there a way to dress and look nice and still be considered a full person when I step outside my door, and not just a breast transporter?  I just want to own my own body and be in control of what it says.  I don't know why that has to be so hard.

On a fairly regular basis I go to pub quizes held by Geeks Who Drink in Denver. It is a fun way to get out of the house and have a beer or two. Every week a bar will hold an eight round quiz with two audio rounds, one visual and other randomly themed rounds. The themes attempt to be clever and relevant; however, as a feminist I have been offended more than once.

Most recently, I was irritated by the round titled "Thats what she said." I was excited to have a female dominated round, which you find few and far between in these weekly quiz games but was left disappointed. I should have known that the sexual connotation to "Thats what she said" would play as a recurring motif in the questions. If the quote was not of a sexual nature, the woman who said it most definately was, with the notable exception of Eleanor Roosevelt's quote on women being like tea bags. The definition of woman was a narrow one, limited to sexualized public figures like Pamela Anderson, Dolly Parton and Madonna. Hillary Clinton was quoted with regards to the Clinton sex scandal. Hilary Clinton has said far more important things than in regards to Bill and the whole blow job thing. I mean she just ran for President, aren't some of those quotes more relevant anyway? While some might say I am taking this too seriously, I have to argue that there have been many rounds focused on men's quotes and most of them have nothing to do with sex.

Furthermore, I have noticed that there are few all-women teams that place during pub quiz. They post pictures of winning teams on the blog and there are several all-male teams that win and a few mixed gender teams. Perhaps that is because there are fewer women playing quiz games than men. Or maybe it is because the questions have a gender bias. Or maybe even it is that being geeky is embraced by more men than women. This is not to simplify the situation and say Geeks Who Drink only caters to men, because they don't. Many of the best quiz masters (the people who lead the pub quiz) are women and there are a lot of women who play. I would just like to see more women involved in writing pub quiz rounds that feature women's voices and salute the cool things women do. I am planning on writing a Feminist round in response. Hopefully I won't get told that my round is too obscure...

Again, a bit of a rant. It's my recent personal experience with some truly bigoted people on the internet .

I recently posted a vlog on youtube . I'll be the first to admit it was a stupid thing to do. Not only was it not very well thought out, but it was twenty minutes long.

I deleted it the day after I posted it.

But there is a bit more to the story than that.

I originally did the thing to post on facebook . I had seen a lot of people who seemed perfectly nice do disgusting things on the site. One of the main ones was a "piece of flair" that went around my high school. I deleted it as soon as I got it, but perhaps I should of saved it to. I can only say it was similar to this:

Yuck

The main difference is it also showed two same sex couples, which were labeled "perversion".

Yuck, right? It was also sent to my out male friend, by a girl who we both knew. She had always seemed nice and polite. I found it shocking that she could turn into such a bigot.

I've also gotten sick and tired being blasted by people I consider my friends for considering myself a feminist. Not to mention all sorts of little things I see every day in the high school environment .

So I ranted to a webcam for twenty minutes. I intended to post it on my facebook , and hopefully get all my friends on there to stop and think before they send people things, say something, etc.

Then I proceeded to make a very stupid decision. I posted it on youtube . This was Monday .

I then went to bed, got up, and went to school. I checked a on my youtube a couple times through out the day. I got one comment, which was quip about my neurotic tendencies . During a period where I had already taken my final and had access to a computer, I posted one here about the comment, and other ways people have tried to get minorities to be quite.

I can hardly believe this.

American Idol producers allowed a known stalker to appear on the show, despite the protests of Paula Abdul, who's dealt with the woman for 18 years and held restraining orders against her. Apparently entertainment is more important than safety. But I guess the safety of women just isn't all that important... besides, stalking is just something silly women get all paranoid about, right?

While reading the HuffingtonPost.com today, I came across this disturbing post about a female robot that had been created to react like a "real female" in interactions with people. The post is titled Aiko the Female Robot: Inventor Le Trung Talks About his Perfect Woman. Not only does this creep and gross me out (really, fem-bots?), the demonstration of this is disturbing. Le Trung, the creator, claims that she can be used as a "receptionist" or to work at an information desk, and that she can open doors and help around the house. However, in the video, the only demonstrated abilities are that of her to defend herself from bodily violations. Trung squeezes her arm to solicit a response from her, which is, "Please let go of my arm, you are hurting me. Why did you do that to me?" Then at 1:07 in the video, he reaches up to squeeze her breast, and in response she "hits" Trung and says "I do not like it when you touch my breasts."

To me, the idea of bionic people is a bit frightening, but bionic women that can be abused and sexually assaulted is even more disconcerting. If this robot can wash dishes and open doors, why isn't this highlighted instead? And, while we're at it, why are her only skills touted as housework and "reception"? Sexist portrayal of female roles in society much? And this is someone's idea of a "perfect woman," which is even more disgusting.

Is anyone else extremely bothered by this?

This post is about the PC game The Witcher , which someone I know has just started playing. But this post is less about the game and more about cultural representations and assumptions about gender and sexuality. He and I had a conversation around it today, which got me thinking a lot about female sexuality, male entitlement, and homophobia in our culture. So please bear through my discussion of the game to get the "big picture" analysis.

In browsing around the internets and reading people's discussions around gender and sexuality in the game, I very often read these reasons for why the game isn't "that bad" vis-a-vis women and (women's) sexuality: the sex scenes are well done (they are in fact pretty tasteful) and the women aren't represented as all dumb bimbos (as if commodifying women's sexuality is only sexist if the women are represented as idiots.) In fact, those were the same reasons given to me by my friend. He also mentioned that in reading reviews, many women said the sex in the game wasn't "that bad." But in this game, it's not really the sex that's the problem.

At first, I thought that gender and sexuality in the game wasn't so bad, but the more I was told the more troubled I became. Originally, I thought the sex in the game was just optional, with no reward attached, and the sex scenes aren't gratuitous or very objectifying. Point one for the game?

Well, that's not exactly it. You do get something for your various sexual encounters: sex trading cards. After a sexual encounter, you obtain pin-up trading cards to represent that sexual conquest--players, collect them all! (mass-printed cards, authentically medieval, right?) The idea of "collecting" women you have sex with (proof of your masculinity?) is really troubling to me. And by having sex with all the women available, you have a complete collection of woman-objects. Having sex with all the women you are able to, thus, becomes a goal for the character, even if the "reward" for doing so is negligible (bragging rights?). As one gamer suggested , "Women are COLLECTIBLE." Commodification at its finest.

Not only do you acquire cards representing each woman you bed in the game, but the sex is at times a reward for your in-game accomplishments. One example I was given is that in a quest to save several prostitutes, after you have rescued them sex is your "reward" from them. I wonder, is their sex a reward because they are prostitutes , and therefore their sex is seen to be "worth" something, because it is seen to have a dollar value? Or is it just that women become sexually available to men with good behavior? Or that sex is the most important reward a woman can give? Any of these options are problematic.

I know that we are all used to cosmetic advertising that tells us we are all filthy dirty swamp-things salvageable only through the use of [insert product here]. This commercial for soap, however, takes the cake in my opinion. Listed on the Dove website as "Soap Scum TV Ad" the ad admonishes women (because Dove is primarily marketed to women) that even though they may think they are clean because they have used soap, they are actually going about their day covered in a layer of disgusting soap scum. Poor deluded fools!

The commercial continues, "if you could see the difference..." & displays it with a side-by-side dramatized comparison which has the women in their towels under a UV light. The light reveals the scum, in tandem with some 'scare' music on the soap-using woman, who looks like she is suffering from an early-stage zombie infection. The Dove-using woman smiles to the tune of some new-age-y music... he skin feels how healthy clean skin is supposed to feel. You know. The feeling you can only get with Dove.

I mean, I'm all for being clean. The implication that women have to be clean under a pretend black-light in order to be socially acceptable is sort of annoying, especially when you contrast it to virtually any man's cosmetic advertisement. Men who preform basic hygiene functions, such as wearing deodorant, are God's Gift... women come after them in droves. Women, on the other hand, even when they bathe with soap, are just barely socially acceptable.
The fact is that I'm the last person who would expect a high level of respect or responsibility from the advertising industry, but Dove is the one brand you would think would know better. I don't think this type of marketing is great for their brand identity, either, and that just makes this that much more annoying.
Check it out:

(Cross-posted at Citizen Girl, with sad zombie picture ;)

Since the 1930's or so, menstrual product manufacturers such as the makers of Kotex have sponsored pamphlets (unintentionally hilarious as they are condescending: see 'Mothers Don't Wait!' http://mum.org/mmay235.htm) and filmstrips (Disney http://www.feministing.com/archives/002524.html).

Clearly this type of education has always been a self-interested service, and the "femcare" industry has been accused of shifting the focus of menarche from a developmental milestone to a hygiene issue, with puberty running as a secondary theme to cleanliness (and secrecy) and fertility running a far third.

During my middle school 'sex-ed' I vaguely remember getting some product samples but I don't remember what they were. Mostly, I remembered feeling gypped that boys got wet dreams (were pleasurable & lets face it, they weren't doing their laundry) and all I got was bleeding and this mess of fallopian tubes. Also it was never suggested that girls could have erotic dreams... but that's a gripe for a different day.

I certainly thought of menstruation as a hygiene issue, and in fact, the first time I got my period I used one of my mom's jumbo tampax and didn't tell her till much later because I didn't want her to make me late to meeting people at the mall.

I didn't stay with tampax forever though. Generally, I used whatever cheaper store brand had a cardboard applicator, since I didn't like the plastic ones (so cold going in!).

Eventually, I switched to the Keeper which I loved primarily because it paid for itself, was more convenient for camping and hiking, and made less waste. After about a year and a half, a cute puppy ate it (tearing through several different containers to do so), and I started using birth control, and lite tampons- usually those tampax compacts because they have in for free where Itake a class and they stay together better in the mess of my bags.

I am working on my women's studies senior capstone as we speak, and I was wondering if any of you remember learning about menstruation with a "femcare industry" curriculum? Also, if you did, was that brand the same that your mother used? Why do you use the brand of menstrual products you use now and have you ever switched brands? Why?

PS: I just had to share this with you all- In the '40s, with the prevalence of tampons and rise of youth culture etc. there was they fear that tampons could destroy the hymen and send girls on a downward spiral of masturbation and premarital sex. In 1940 one gynecologist, Dr. Robert Dickinson, stepped in to say that not only would NOT tampons do this, it was actually pads that were the defiler of innocents because a pad is inserted between the legs into a "cleft so narrow there is not room for it[it] produc[ed] some degree of triple surface rubbing [with] every jounce when sitting producing upward pressing," & "Any external menstrual guard, in addition to applying some degree of heat within a confined space, is responsible for the rhythmic play of pressure against surfaces uniquely alert to erotic feeling."

Just. Wow.