Feminism | Posted by Sheridan T on 02/8/2010

A Woman and Her So-Called “Girly Parts”: The Shaving Dilemma

Schick Quatro "TrimStyle" – one such product made for them girly parts

Pubic hair has become kind of a controversial topic, especially among feminists, who seem to have gotten a reputation for being, well… hairy. But with so little exposure in porn and in the media to what an actual average female looks like… what can we say really? Who knows how many women shave? As far as I know, nobody’s done a poll or drawn up statistics. No one seems to be talking.

Google pubic hair and you’ll find several resources… some of them rather intriguing (You can style it in a Mohawk! You can dye it pink!) but none informative. When women talk about shaving with other women, they often…

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Feminism | Posted by Kate S on 02/3/2010

International Night for Dummies

yay diversity and stereotypes

This post occurs at the same boarding school where girls have to wear pastel dresses for commencement. Ah, the bright future that lies ahead of us as the esteemed, Ivy-Leagued educated CEO’s wives…

Another tradition (among many) that irritates me is International Night. This is an evening event hosted by yours truly, ASB, where the student body celebrates its diversity through ethnic dinners, performances, and finally, dance. The motivation behind the event is truly commendable: a campus fraught with students from various regions around the world takes benefit of its diversity and celebrates it. However, when applied, it becomes a crow-pleaser—a victim of superficiality.

As an avid critic of school events, I have never attended this event since my freshmen…

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Feminism, Pop-Culture | Posted by Julie Z on 02/2/2010

The Super Bowl and Abortion

2010 Super Bowl

This year I, like nearly 100 million other Americans, will watch the super bowl. However, this fact has very little to do with the game of football. I have no idea what occurs in this game, and if you asked me to name more than 3 football games I’d probably just walk away. The few times I’ve gone to see my high school team play I’ve left even more confused than before. No, I watch the super bowl for the ads.

Let’s be honest, the ads are awesome. About 99% of the time I watch T.V. ads make me want to bang my  head against a cement block repeatedly (a lethal combination of sexist and stupid), Super Bowl ads…

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Feminism | Posted by Shira and Dina on 02/1/2010

Coming of Age

Source: Rachel Papo, “Hanging Out on the Weekend.” 2005.

I have always thought the Jewish coming of age ritual for a girl was a Bat Mitzvah, the grasp of the Torah in ceremoniously manicured hands a rite of passage. Rachel Papo’s photographs show me that the coming of age for Jewish women in another hemisphere is the army, the positioning of a weapon in expecting hands a passage to a nationality that overrides patriarchal assumptions of femininity.

The United States military continues to be dominated by men. Masculinity continues to be conflated with violence and weaponry with notoriously phallic connotations. Maybe because of their minority status (women make up 20 percent of the US armed forces) and maybe because of the…

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Feminism | Posted by Julie Z on 01/29/2010

To Have a Boyfriend…

There are a lot of things that suck about high school. For one, getting up after about four hours of sleep because of some ridiculous paper I forgot was due and started at 11. Also, having to pick out an outfit that won’t make me look like I escaped from a mental institution. Another one is the “boyfriend” issue. I always get asked by parents (mine AND others) and other various clueless adults seeking insight into our world, if having a boyfriend is still all that important to girls. Without even getting into the “it’s not an assumption that all teenage girls are heterosexual…it’s a fact in my mind” issue of misguided adults, they also reason that girls have as many…

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