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~Stuff I pinned at my TIAW and Wisdom boards.
~Engineering toys for girls. How awesome! I kind of wish they came in colors other than pastel pinks and purples, but kudos to creating a toy geared towards the way girls’ brains work that teaches them to love engineering.
~This mama has started telling her daughters she is beautiful. This is something that is so important to all of us, whether or not we have kids. We need to be telling ourselves we are beautiful. And you know what else? We need to tell our friends we are beautiful. The more we see/hear women praising themselves, the more women will praise themselves.
~Last week after I posted about Amanda Palmer’s letter to PETA, commenter Myssie pointed me to this song of hers celebrating pubes for women. Love it. I’m adding it to the playlist, too.
OK, I guess that’s all I got today. Well, I do have some heavier stuff I could share, but things have been just so heavy lately. I need a break.
Tomorrow is Thanksgiving here in the US. What do you have to be thankful for this year? What about your body are you thankful for? I know I’m grateful that my body is strong so that I can do my favorite hikes. Maybe I’ll do one this weekend.
Happy Thanksgiving!
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~Stuff I pinned at my TIAW and Wisdom boards.
~I love this. It’s exactly right. As long as we pit ourselves against each other with phrases like, “Real women have curves,” we only hurt… everyone. Ourselves, other women, and feminism as a whole. Your body is beautiful. It just is.
~Sonia Sotomayor tells America’s preschoolers that Princess isn’t a career choice. Finally! Someone balancing out the pink toy aisles in stores.
~Speaking of pink toys… We don’t have one of these Legoland Discovery Centers here, but I have heard that they are divided up by gender pretty strongly. This post goes on to point out that the “girl Legos” are always located next to the toddler ones, insinuating that girls’ toys should be simpler to manage than boys’. Not cool, Lego. How about just a big table for ALL the kids, with ALL the colors and ALL the design options. For the record, we do have a Legoland Theme Park near me (which is mostly rides and very little opportunity to play or create with Legos), and when we go I always notice that the girls I see tend to be wearing Darth Vader t-shirts or something else awesomely badass. Point being that girls like boy things AND girl things. Huh. Funny how that works.
~In other news, Amanda Palmer wrote to PETA about an ad insinuating that pubic hair is not pretty or feminine. I had been considering posting this video she did recently with the Flaming Lips because she’s all nude and hairy and so very pretty AND feminine and now I have a very good excuse to.
~Speaking of body hair (I like how all these articles have teamed up in pairs), this woman has decided to stop trying to hide her facial hair in order to participate in Movember. Awesome. She’s showing support for men while showing women how to be a hero.
~This article on NPR highlights my own belief and experience and reasons for creating SOAM and TIAW. Because the more you see of differently shaped bodies, the more normal they will be. The more normal they will be, the more beautiful you will find them.
~And to add to the plus-sized end of the spectrum of bodies are a whole bunch of fashion bloggers. These girls are damn cute. I want them to buy all my clothes and tell me what to wear every day.
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Holy crap what a ride. I have never been worn down by an election the way this one wore me down. The thing that really got me was when I re-posted the Pre-Election Roundup over at SOAM’s Facebook page early this week and there was drama. It wasn’t much. From what I gather from my Facebook friends, their personal news feeds sounded worse than what we had to endure at SOAM’s page. But it was more than what I usually have to deal with, and it was painful to be involved in. The part that really got me is that people get so tied up in the abortion debate, they can’t even see that this is about rape culture, which is far more ambiguous and vague an issue.
A couple of weeks ago a teacher was arrested at my former high school for having had a sexual relationship with one (or more) of his students. A group of kids stood together and staged a protest in front of the school the following morning. He wound up being released, but his case is not over. What really struck me, though, was how similar it was to a case several years ago (like, back in the days of MySpace). Another teacher was arrested (and eventually convicted), this time for having molested his stepdaughter, and my former classmates were outraged. They claimed they “knew” he was innocent because he was “nice”. The thing is? Molesters are nice. Most of them aren’t creepy guys hanging out in the back of an unmarked van asking for help finding puppies (although some of them are). Most of them are people you know who are incredibly charming. That’s how they operate.
These students who decided to take a stand for their teacher are acting out the same scenario these men in government are – were – trying to. Blaming the victim, supporting the one who victimized her. I don’t blame the kids for coming together for something they believe in and being vocal about it. Those are the qualities I love about teenagers, and exactly what we need in the next generation. Rather, society has failed them by not teaching them to A) identify rape culture and B) keep themselves and their friends safe from it. So these kids were out there with good intentions but missing the mark.
That’s what the debate on SOAM’s page felt like. Where I saw the links I shared as being important to protecting all women’s rights, others saw it as being pro- (or in one case requiring) abortions. I get that the two are intertwined. And I understand how hard it is to have a discussion of one without the other. But I, personally, think it’s ridiculously important to get this rape culture shit nailed down before we can talk about any other aspect. Without being on that common solid ground of knowing when we are and are not being manipulated or inadvertently manipulating each other, we cannot possibly begin to come to a consensus about the more difficult issues.
I’ll admit, I was in a dark place before the election. With so much being said against women this year, and so much of it violent, I was frankly terrified about what the next few years might begin to look like. And, yet, this morning I woke up to a better, stronger world. Now we know these men for who they really are and we told them exactly what we thought of them. As Thomas Jefferson apparently did not say, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” Whoever did say that is right on the money. And I hope that today the government knows that we are a force to be reckoned with.
And guess what? There were so many women elected last night. Today I am proud to be an American. Proud enough to wear my Stars & Stripes Chucks. ‘Merrica!
