Thank you all for a great conversation this week regarding the question “Is Quentin Tarantino a feminist?”
Responses were as varied as could be expected and ranged from expressions of the power and strength one may feel after watching Zoë, Abernathy, and Kim, and a desire to adapt Beatrix Kiddo’s better qualities; resilience, confidence and physical prowess.
In response to a Gold's Gym marketing campaign that declared July "Cankles Awareness Month" (WTF, douchebags?!) Imagine Today deemed August Self-Esteem Awareness Month. To celebrate, I've put together a few songs about standing up for yourself, being yourself, celebrating that self and flaunting it. And for the record, I think your calves and ankles look fantastic.
We've got a new internship opening up here at Bitch Media this month and would LOVE it if you all could help us spread the word - we are seeking to fill the position as soon possible.
The "Publishing Intern" works with our Operations Director and other staff on the nuts and bolts of running a non-profit media organization. The intern gains in-depth knowledge of independent media operations, non-profit business management, as well as valuable computer and financial administration skills.
Peggy Orenstein grapples with it and so do many other feminist mamas, aunts, sisters, cousins, dads and uncles: what to buy your girl-feminist.
A Bitch reader named Maura recently wrote to us asking readers to weigh in about the "best books for budding feminists," especially six- and eight-year-old girls.
So, please take two seconds to channel your feminist girl-self and talk about the fiction that made you feel like you could do anything and become anyone.
I asked Kimmie David, one of the owners of Bluestockings—the radical bookstore, fair trade cafe, and activist center in the Lower East Side of Manhattan—to share her picks for the best feminist fiction or nonfiction books for girls. Read on for her recommendations!
As coverage of this horrendous woman-hating event unfolds, it is important to continue to focus on the misogynist nature of Sodini's actions. This was a hate crime against women, and should be labeled as such. More coverage of the sexist nature of the shooting and the ways in which we as feminists can begin to process it (and encourage the media to do the same), as well as some historical context for gendered hate crimes, can be found by visiting the following links:
This shooting (one of the many violent crimes targeting women over the past several years) is a tragedy, but also an opportunity for issues of misogyny and violence to be addressed in the media. How do you feel about the coverage of this event so far? Is the gender-based nature of Sodini's actions being properly highlighted? What are you hoping to see from the media in terms of future coverage? Please share your thoughts in the comments section, and continue to do so as more information is released.
I knew the Little House on the Prairieseries from my mom reading it out loud to me over the span of many many months. As an idealistic Midwestern youngin', I felt a connection to the Ingalls family, romanticizing the debilitating diseases, crippling crop failures, and other completely unrelateable nineteenth-century pioneer ailments they experienced throughout their homesteading and pioneering. (Did I take a family vacation to the Laura Ingalls Wilder Historic Home and Museum in Mansfield, Missouri? Yes.) And as an only child, I was delighted to learn Laura Wilder's only daughter aided with the completion of the books. But Judith Thurman’s recent New Yorker article "Wilder Women" explores the lives and politics of both Laura Wilder and her daughter, removing both the series and the women behind it from the rosy lens of American lit-lore.
How did hormone replacement therapy become so popular for American women going through menopause? Well, it turns out that pharmaceutical giant Wyeth helped write many of the supportive scholarly articles about its own hormone replacement drugs. The New York Times revealed this morning that the manufacturer of drugs like Premarin and Prempro paid ghostwriters to pen research articles about the hormone replacing drugs, which were then signed off on by a doctor and printed in reputable places like The American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Sales of Wyeth's female hormone replacing drugs have fallen by 50 percent since 2001, when a Women's Health Initiative study linked menopausal hormone treatment to an increased risk of cancer. But before that damning study, the company sold more than $2 billion worth of hormone drugs to thousands of American women.
Love Sarah Haskins' hilarious critiques of media aimed at women? Check out comparably witty Bryan Safi's analysis of homosexuality and media in another infoMania segment aptly titled, That's Gay. In this one, Bryan examines gay and lesbian characters in TV commercials...
You see, if I was a guy, and I was sitting here with a cigarette in my hand, grabbing my crotch and talking about how I make music 'cause I love fast cars and fucking girls, you'd call me a rock star. But when I do it in my music and in my videos, because I'm a female, because I make pop music, you're judgmental, and you say that it is distracting. I'm just a rock star.
Are you also a feminist?
I'm not a feminist - I, I hail men, I love men. I celebrate American male culture, and beer, and bars and muscle cars...
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