Get It, Girls

"The girl and the woman, in their new, individual unfolding, will only in passing be imitators of male behavior and misbehavior and repeaters of male professions. After the uncertainty of such transitions, it will become obvious that women were going through the abundance and variation of those (often ridiculous) disguises just so that they could purify their own essential nature and wash out the deforming influences of the other sex. Women, in whom life lingers and dwells more immediately, more fruitfully, and more confidently, must surely have become riper and more human in their depths than light, easygoing man, who is not pulled down beneath the surface of life by the weight of any bodily fruit and who, arrogant and hasty, undervalues what he thinks he loves. This humanity of woman, carried in her womb through all her suffering and humiliation, will come to light when she has stripped off the conventions of mere femaleness in the transformations of her outward status, and those men who do not yet feel it approaching will be astonished by it. Someday (and even now, especially in the countries of northern Europe, trustworthy signs are already speaking and shining), someday there will be girls and women whose name will no longer mean the mere opposite of the male, but something in itself, something that makes one think not of any complement and limit, but only life and reality: the female human being." Rilke

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womenorgnow: Happy Birthday Rosa Parks. May your courage continue to be an inspiration to all of us.

womenorgnow:

Happy Birthday Rosa Parks. May your courage continue to be an inspiration to all of us.

Diablo Cody is Such a Badass

The conventional knowledge in Hollywood is that an unsympathetic female character can tank a movie.  I’m hoping that’s not true.  I’m knocking on wood really emphatically right now but honestly I have a lot of theories sometimes I wonder if it comes down to mommy issues. The idea of a cold, unlikeable woman or a woman who is not in control of herself is genuinely frightening to people because it threatens civilization itself or threatens the American family. 

I think Diablo Cody is really smart and that she has even better work to come. I haven’t seen this movie, but I will. I think what she’s saying about the portrayal of women is important.

There are some feminist voices which are outspoken about the portrayal of women in the media as overly sexual, unintelligent, objectified sort of things. I’m not into this portrayal for sure. Diablo makes another point about the portrayal of women which I think is also important: that women have flaws, and it’s ok. 

I don’t know why people are always willing to accept and even like flawed male characters.  We’ve seen so many loveable anti-heroes who are curmudgeons or addicts or bad fathers and a lot of those characters have become beloved icons and I don’t see women allowed to play the same parts.  So it was really important to me to try and turn that around.

Women are multi-faceted. And the facets don’t have to be limited to a) cute when you’re meeting your boyfriends’ parents, b) sexy in bed, and c) smart in an interview. We can also be disproportionately emotional (http://tinyurl.com/73zm6rt), angry, or overwhelmed. Seeing those facets in the media could relieve the pressure to be or to seem to be a certain kind of woman.

How to Talk to Little Girls

This article is great. Read about the messages we send to young girls.

I always bite my tongue when I meet little girls, restraining myself from my first impulse, which is to tell them how darn cute/ pretty/ beautiful/ well-dressed/ well-manicured/ well-coiffed they are.

Lisa Bloom ”nudges” against the norm by asking the little girl she meets which book is her favorite, instead of complimenting her physically. A really lovely nudge.

Trailer for Jennifer Siebel Newsom’s documentary “MissRepresentation” which premiers on October 20. The docu focuses on mainstream media’s representation of women and the resulting popular ideas about what it is to be a woman.  Shows ugly stats about women achieving parity and jarring images of insecure and disrespected women in the media. Will watch.

"We’re dealing with a generation of girls that have their shit together like you’ve never seen before. These are young girls who are, like, on the internet, and they’re funnier than I was ever able to be at their age. They grew up knowing they were entitled to have a career, have a great boyfriend, or they don’t need a boyfriend. This is like a race of supergirls and the equivalent guys are just not up to the task and it’s a bummer."

—

Julie Klausner, WTF with Marc Maron, Episode 217 Live at the Bell House (via fatgirlinohio)

I love that people are quoting this, I just wish I didn’t say “like” so much. :(

(via julieklausner)

Reblogged to bring it to the attention of Nicole and http://getitgirls.tumblr.com (Tumblr, why no tagging? LiveJournal did have a few good ideas…), but also as a regular reminder that

(a) Julie Klausner is the best and if you haven’t read her awesome book or listened to her podcast yet, get on that yesterday; and

(b) Hey fellow dudes, let’s all work a little harder to cut the crap and realize we’ve got some catching up to do to get with the program, OK? Good.  Glad we had this talk.

(via leffjakin)

Thanks, Jeff! Love it. There are definitely superboys out there too. As evidenced by you being man enough to reblog this.

(via leffjakin)

Chilean girls stage 'occupation' of their own school seeking free university education policy

It began early one morning in May, when dozens of teenage girls emerged from the predawn darkness and scaled the spiked iron fence around Chile’s most prestigious girl’s school. They used classroom chairs to barricade themselves inside and settled in. Five months later, the occupation shows no signs of dying and the students are still fighting for their goal: free university education for all.

The students have built a hyper-organised, if somewhat legalistic, world, with votes on everything including daily duties, housekeeping schedules and the election of a president and spokeswoman. The school rules now include several new decrees: no sex, no boys and no booze. That last clause has been a bit abused, the students admit.

The students are demanding a return to the 1960s, when public university education was free. Current tuition fees average nearly three times the minimum annual wage, and with interest rates on student loans at 7%, the students have made financial reform the centrepiece of their uprising.

At the heart of the students’ agenda is the demand that education be recognised as a common right for all, not a “consumer good” to be sold on the open market.

This reminds me of this sign held at Occupy Wall Street:

Three Women Receive Nobel Peace Prize for their Work Towards Peace and Equality in Yemen

NPR’s Philip Reeves said this year’s award is being viewed as “an extremely important moment for women in the fight for equality and rights.” Only 10 of the 98 Nobel Peace laureates, he noted, have been women.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2011/10/07/501364/main20117103.shtml

Homecoming Queen and HS Football Kicker

On Friday, with Pinckney leading powerful Michigan rival Grand Blanc, 6-0, at the half, Amat, the first girl to play football for the school’s varsity, was asked to return to the field. When she arrived, she was told that her fellow students had voted her queen. When the tiara was placed on her head, she was wearing not a dress, like the other girls in the homecoming court, but her No. 12 uniform, pads and all.

Damn, girl. 

Name Norms

This past weekend I went to the beautiful wedding of my beautiful friend, Shannon. Shannon and her new husband Thomas announced at the wedding that they had combined their former last names into a new hybrid name that they would both take. 

The hybrid name has side effects as far as lineage and vital records and more, but what it speaks to is an equality of power between husband and wife. It’s about both members of the couple making a change from their past identities to align themselves with one another. The norm of a wife taking her husband’s name takes away something from the wife’s identity, and adds volume and strength to the name of the husband. Here both parties had the loss of their former name, and both gained an equal new name. 

I think it’s good for gender equality, good for the marriage. Congrats, Shannon and Thomas!