Paul Murray is glad Nick D’Arcy didn’t qualify for the Olympic finals, and I am too. After getting a slap on the wrist for those gun photos—not to mention the infamous assault—he shouldn’t have even been in London. [MamaMia]
Was Katie Holmes the innocent bystander in Tom Cruise’s Scientological quest for world domination, as the media makes her out to be, or is there more to her and the divorce?
“I’m convinced that she’s the most fame-hungry person the world has ever seen.” [Vulture]
To bleed or not to bleed, that is the question most doctors should be asking their female patients interested in hormonal birth control. [AlterNet]
Apparently, six-year-olds want to be “sexy”. Cue outrage. While some points of the argument are valid, children are naturally sexually curious beings. I remember all my prep friends and I wanted to be “strippers” when we grew up, we thought Salt-N-Pepa’s “Let’s Talk About Sex” was the coolest thing going, and we used to play the “sex game” regularly. Kids just want to do what they think adults do, which they emulate in make-believe. I think it starts to become a problem if these ideals are still being expressed come the onset of puberty when the body is physically ready for what typically accompanies “sexiness”, but certainly not mentally. [Jezebel]
A deluge of complaints have come in about Carefree’s latest panty liner ad, saying that the use of the words “discharge” and “vagina” are offensive. When I first watched the ad, brought to my attention from a friend via Facebook, I was shocked: you just don’t hear the word “vagina” in advertisements. But good on you, Carefree, for finally bringing to the mainstream’s attention that most women have vaginas, menstruate and experience discharge. [Jezebel]
Interestingly, I had to unpack the psychology—and misogyny—of a compliment paid to me last week.
A male co-worker whom I hadn’t seen in a while complimented me on my hair. I said thanks, but I was thinking of changing it (appointment booked for next week!). He said I should keep it how it is because a lot of men would like it that way. I, tongue-in-cheek, said I definitely wouldn’t change it then because my mission in life is to wear my hair how men like it. He exclaimed that he can never give me a compliment without me taking it the wrong way. I said I take compliments fine, just not from him because there’s always a backstory laced with misogyny.
Earlier that day he’d also been talking about which celebrities he finds hot, and that he used to think Katy Perry was the bomb til Russell Brand posted that unflattering, make-up free shot of her on Twitter. After this, it was the final straw. I asked him to please stop talking about the way people look as if it’s the only worth they have. He said I was overreacting (ahh, the catchcry of gaslighters everywhere), and at that point I started to raise my voice. Two of my supervisors came into the office to ask if everything was okay, and I told them that my colleague was being misogynistic, offensive and inappropriate. He claimed I was the one being inappropriate, and my supervisor told him that if I’ve said something offends me and asked for it to be stopped, he has to stop. “No means no,” effectively. He started to sulk and said he would just stop speaking to me altogether (this would not be the first time he’s ostracised himself from fellow co-workers), and my boss said that wouldn’t be necessary; that he could just speak to me about other things.
This kind of behaviour has been going on with this guy since I met him three years ago; colleagues who’ve been there longer than that claim it’s been since day one. He says inappropriate things about peoples’ appearance, whether it be related to their sexuality or perceived sexiness, their race, etc. He has also been known to touch women’s hair and he comments on how I apparently look like Anne Hathaway, Natalie Wood and/or Kat Dennings and how hot he finds them in comparison. I’ve also called him out on defending rapists and saying that lesbians are gross. Obviously, he’s an abhorrent human being, one that until last week I avoided telling that his attitude is disgusting and would he please stop it.
My supervisor later told me that he would respect me more for calling him out; I’m sad to say that his misogyny is too deeply ingrained for what I said to make a difference. No doubt he’ll tell our co-workers that I’m “hysterical”, “overreacting” and “can’t take a compliment”. [Jezebel]
Kate Upton is fat, apparently. Well, she does like phallic-shaped sugary treats… [SkinnyGossip Warning: This is a pro-ana website and may be triggering for some people]
The Katie Holmes obsession has begun: here, a countdown of her top ten Dawson’s Creek quotes that could double as life lessons for her marriage to Tom Cruise. [Refinery29]
The YouTube makeup tutorial as public service announcement. [Jezebel, MamaMia]
After ABC’s Four Corners‘ exposé on the Catholic Church’s child sex abuse cover-up, Sarah Grant asserts that “I’m Catholic & I’m Ashamed.” As so she should be. [MamaMia]
“The real meaning of ‘I’m not like the other girls’ is, I think, ‘I’m not the media’s image of what girls should be.’ Well, very, very few of us are. Pop culture wants to tell us that we’re all shallow, backstabbing, appearance-obsessed shopaholics without a thought in our heads beyond cute boys and cuter handbags. It’s a lie—a flat-out lie—and we need to recognize it and say so instead of accepting that judgment as true for other girls, but not for you.
“What I’m trying to say is, There are as many ways to be ‘girly’ as there are girls in this world. There are always going to be people out there telling you that if you like things pop culture tells you are girly, you’re stupid, and that if you claim to like things pop culture tells you are guy stuff, you’re lying. And what I’m saying is that all these people are full of crap.” [Claudia Gray’s Blog]
Mia Freedman was so unimpressed with Lady Gaga’s Sydney concert, she walked out of it! That doesn’t bode well for me; I’m going on Sunday night! [MamaMia]
If not supporting Gina Rinehart just because she’s a woman doing something in a male dominated industry makes me a bad feminist, then that’s what I am. [MamaMia]
“Nuance aside, whether you’re playing yourself or a wink-wink persona, the law of cameo syllogism goes as follows: if you spend a certain amount of time playing yourself, you are no longer yourself but playing a version of yourself—a stereotype of you. Add a bonus layer if you are playing a stereotype of you in a fictional scene in which all the fictional characters are outraged by the possibility that the fictional (or fictional fictional) characters in a fictional book published by a real publishing house might be based on the actual real fictional selves they’re playing.” [The Believer Magazine, via Musings of an Inappropriate Woman]
With all the hullabaloo surrounding vaginas in the U.S. Senate at the moment, here are 25 Republican-sanctioned alternatives to the anatomically correct name for your lady garden. [Jezebel]
Checkmate, Pro-Choicers, the latest in anti-abortion internet trolling. Good for a hate-read, not so good for logic. Ahh, pro-lifers, you odd little things.
“Molesting any child is reprehensible, but taking advantage of a 4-year-old who has no awareness of what’s going on and no ability to fight back seems particularly deranged.”
I don’t disagree, but murder is a bit rich. Read the issue discussed further at Jezebel. [TIME]
Hey Christian Girl, for all your Ryan Gosling and associated conventionally-attractive-to-straight-women meme needs, with a religious edge.
I never had a problem with the Lingerie Football League… until now. Did you know they have “accidental nudity” clauses in their contracts, meaning they can’t wear anything under their uniforms to prevent wardrobe malfunctions? Did you know the League refuses to unionise the players or give them health insurance? Did you know they don’t get paid because the League is classified as amateur and therefore they have to pay to play?! [Fit & Feminist]
My male housemate isn’t the greatest when it comes to household duties. He claims he “forgets” to hang the shower curtain up after a shower and turn the fan on during it in our mold-susceptible bathroom after nine months of it being part of our daily routine. He also “doesn’t notice” the rack of clean dishes waiting there for him to put them away, two days after I washed them. When I complain about this to friends, colleagues and mutual acquaintances, the inevitable response—even from the supposedly progressive ones— is, “Oh, he’s a guy; you can’t expect him to remember to do those things.” While said semi-daily occurrences infuriate me to no end, I refuse to believe he does them because of his gender.
Rachel Hills wrote about mama’s boys last week on Daily Life and had this to say:
“It is not an excess of emotional intimacy and support that breeds a man who can’t take care of himself, after all… It’s a society that says that men shouldn’t need to know how to take care of themselves, and that puts women in constant competition for male attention and validation.”
A friend commented on Facebook that the patriarchy is to blame for the mama’s boy phenomenon:
“… [Mothers’] value to their family is generally based around being the main homemaker and not teaching their son any independent life skills because they assume they will marry someone in the same defined gender role who will do the same thing… [M]others who treat their sons this way often do not treat their daughters the same.”
Which, in turn, got me thinking about an article Sarah Ayoub-Christie wrote a while ago about her struggles marrying a traditional Lebanese upbringing in which the women lived to serve the men with her modern marriage.
My argument that all men aren’t household-hopeless dolts and all women don’t thrive in domesticity isn’t held up by any men I know personally, but (in addition to the foundation of my feminism essentially being that the genders aren’t alien to each other; we’re all just people) it is by a lot of women I know, whose homes, apartments and (let’s be honest; most of my friends still live at home!) bedrooms look like a bomb’s hit where cleanliness and hygiene aren’t top priorities.
I just refuse to believe that 1) women are inherently better at homemaking whilst men shun all domestic responsibility, and 2) that this is because of their relationship with their mother. If this is a gender-exclusive trope, then the fact that my mum used to be my “slave”, as I semi-affectionately called her, waiting on me hand and foot certainly flies in the face of my modern-day incarnation as domestic goddess in comparison with my housemate. Mum is somewhat of a Martha Stewart herself, though…
The Scarlett Woman 