sexism

Newsweek has a piece on their website right now entitled, "How To Get A Raise: Stop Being Good" by Jessica Bennett. In it Bennett reviews a new book, Rachel Simmons' The Curse of the Good Girl which is about how raising girls to be "good" can actually be, well, bad when it comes to their careers. The book sounds pretty great, though not necessarily surprising. (Guess what? Women are socialized to be too nice to be taken seriously in the workplace!) Still, it's nice that Newsweek is addressing these issues for the not-necessarily-feminist set.

However, a lot was missing from the article, and a lot was there that frankly shouldn't have been. For example, as a photo essay accompaniment to the piece, Newsweek gives us "11 Powerful Women That Make Men (and Other Women) Squirm". While writing about the problems of the "psychological glass ceiling" that keeps many women from feeling confident in the workplace, isn't Newsweek perpetuating that same shit by basically calling women like Hilary Clinton, Martha Stewart, and Anna Wintour (and yes, they are all white women except for Yoko Ono) terrifying?

As the hearings for Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor continue, media coverage has ranged from the good, the bad, and the ugly. Meanwhile, Obama's recent nomination of Regina Benjamin as Surgeon General has gotten people talking about her weight rather than her wealth of qualifications. As the first Latina Supreme Court Justice, Sotomayor has faced a slew of sexist and racist coverage. Will Dr. Benjamin expect the same as a powerful, successful woman of color?
What have you seen that's outraged, inspired, or enlightened?

Internet buzz about Michael Bay's (director of landmark crap-tion films like Armageddon, Pearl Harbor, The Island) latest film Transformers 2 has mostly centered around who has the most scathing review, how hot Megan Fox is, and a few murmurs concerning coded racism in two of the robots.

This movie made me wanna barf and yawn at the same time. The following feminist critique of Transformers does contain spoilers, but frankly, there’s nothing I could further ruin about this movie that it doesn’t already do itself....

Vietnamese Mail Order Bride: $8,000. WTF International Diner's Club? Via Racewire. • New tapes reveal Nixon was warmonger, racist, and anti-Semitic. Why am I not surprised? At all? Not in the least? Not one---okay that's probably enough. • Hilarious new Infomania segment "That's Gay." • Joss Whedon gives his final answer to the question "Why do you always write such strong women characters?" The answer will warm your heart! • Kate Harding and Marianne Kirby write on the depiction of fat women in romance novels (there is usually a box of doughnuts involved, ugh). • The Washington Post turns an economic story on Jimmy Choo into a sexist stereotype of women going rabid over expensive shoes. • DIY health and beauty on Wiretap!• All I'm saying is Jenny Shimizu never looked like that on Make Me a Supermodel! Top 100 Hottest Butches of 2009 (author disclaimer included). • Amelie Gilette major burns Jennifer Love Hewitt's new relationship book. • Utne Reader reports on Pepperdine University finding correlation between promoting women and business success.

There is some buzz going around the blogosphere this week (and in the Bitch comments section) about sexism and conservative women. What with David Letterman making jokes about Sarah Palin and her daughter, Playboy listing the conservative women they'd like to "hate f_ck", and former Miss California's anatomy being discussed all over the place, it does seem like conservative women have been the target of more sexism than usual lately. It's no wonder, then, that Amy Siskind called people out on today's Huffington Post blog for selective sexism.

I agree with Siskind that sexism is unacceptable regardless of the circumstances, but should anti-feminists like Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean have their misogynist cake and eat their equal rights too? And can they wash the cake down with the supportive milk of the feminists they're so quick to condemn? (Okay, enough with the weird cake analogies, I promise.)

Last week, at a panel session during the Seventh Circuit Bar Association in Indianapolis, a couple of judges aired a grievance regarding women in the courtroom. Their complaint? Lady lawyers are dressing too damn sexy!

Discussion of this all-important issue included the thought by Chief Judge Michael McCluskey that some women come to court wearing "skirts so short that there's no way they can sit down and blouses so short there's no way the judges wouldn't look," and Bankruptcy Judge Benjamin Goldgar's belief that female lawyers' clothing is "a huge problem." He said sometimes he wishes he could tell the female lawyer before him, "I'd really like to pay attention to your argument." But he can't, you know, because her boobs are too distracting.

What's next? Keeping women out of the courtroom entirely because some of the male judges can't handle their pretty hair or nice eyes? More of a discussion (if you randy readers can handle it!) after the jump.

A quarter of a century ago, New York's Museum of Modern Art opened An International Survey of Recent Painting and Sculpture, a supposed international and comprehensive exhibition of the most significant contemporary artists. Every artist was a white American or European and of 169 artists featured, only 13 were women. Shortly thereafter, a group of kick ass feminists founded the Guerrilla Girls. Wearing gorilla masks to maintain anonymity, the Guerrilla Girls have been using various clever forms of activism to educate the masses about the gender and race gaps in the art world since before I was born. And it appears that the Museum of Modern Art may be beginning to pay attention...