My friend is obsessed with the YouTube star Jenna Marbles, and forced me to watch about fifteen of her videos in one sitting. At first, I was skeptical. I usually don’t find YouTube performers all that funny. But there’s just something about Jenna Marbles. Is she feminist? I mean…meh. What I do know about her latest video is that the blatant sarcasm mixed with gender commentary had me laughing, and that’s good enough for me.
[WARNING: this video contains profanity, sexual references and all that fucking shit]
We all have a favorite children’s picture book – one we read over and over, or that our parents did funny voices for. After revisiting my childhood and experiences growing up through Harry Potter, I wanted to look to some of my earlier literary experiences.
When I was in my local bookstore last week, I perused through the Children’s section and picked up some books clearly aimed towards girls. One, the Girls’ Doodle Book, included pictures you could finish – mostly structured around things like butterflies, flowers, baking, and nesting. Boys, on the other hand, had a doodle book where they drew inventions, action scenes, machinery. The other was geared towards “tomboys”, showing that it’s OK to like worms and sports and hate wearing dresses – but in…
I was at my friend’s house working on a project for school. It was getting late so her mum made us dinner. At the table, my friend’s dad was ordering her mum around and asking for things to be brought to him. Now, it was all in good fun, but it still bugged me a little bit because it reminded me of the times that Betty Friedan discusses in “Feminine Mystique.” And then, to make matters worse, my friend’s mum started talking about how she just lost her job. While we were eating, she started complaining about her lack of employment. Then she concluded that now that she is unemployed she MUST resume the housewife roll. She proceeded to name off a laundry list…
Lately I’ve been getting into fights with my parents. Well, one main fight. They want me to find a job.
The argument part started when my hair turned out three different colors by mistake this year and I really wanted to dye my hair back to its natural, dark color. They said they will pay to dye my hair, but only dirty blond because I need to have “sex appeal” in order to find a part time job while going to school. Gross.
I want to be all natural and real, not fake like I’m trying to look like workplace Barbie. They told me, “You need to use your femininity to get a job. Half the workers are male workers and you can’t even do those jobs…
I have been an avid fan of Young Adult fiction since the third grade. I vividly remember standing in the library check out line with the rest of my class during “Library Time” eagerly digging into my Judy Blume while my classmates palmed their Judy Moody books. I think that moment can also be pointed to as the precursor to my reading Anna Karenina in eighth grade when my classmates were reading…well, they weren’t reading. But that’s a self-indulgent admittedly pretentious digression.
I think it’s this deeply ingrained love of YA that caused the low grade rage I felt when reading the recent Wall Street Journal article by Meghan Cox Gurdon. It’s worth reading (in that it’s a piece of crap but will make the rest of this post make…
Bossypants: Why We Should All Bask In The Wisdom Of Tina Fey
Tina Fey is awesome. This is not new information. She’s hilarious, successful, and still dedicated to her family. Fey seems genuine and grounded, which is always nice to see in famous people, who I typically imagine snapping for servants on a beach in Cabo, drinking some sort of pink-colored beverage. I read her memoir (of life so far), Bossypants, like, as Mindy Kaling said, “a grown woman’s Twilight” – before I knew it, it was 5 AM, I was giggling to myself surrounded by Diet Coke cans, and my roommate had her pillow over her face, attempting to block out the light from my lamp.
Aside from being insomnia-inducing, Bossypants has some awesome nuggets of genius-wisdom about growing up, womanhood, feminism, motherhood, and women in the workplace without feeling preachy or…
10 Things Hillary Was Thinking When Osama Was Shot
Osama Bin-Laden’s death a week ago has caused speculation, excitement, relief, concern, and yet another totally uncalled for hyper-examination of Hillary Clinton’s body language. This time it’s not her cleavage or her tearing up…it’s her hand.
A photo of the situation room released shortly after the raid on Osama Bin-Laden’s compound has everyone talking about our Secretary of State’s hand—was she gasping? Stifling an allergy-related cough? Showing signs of feminine weakness? Hillary’s position in the photo has been scrutinized more than anyone else’s (big surprise), including Joe Biden, who is holding a rosary.
I haven’t heard any murmurs about Biden’s position (was he clinging to religion? Feeling nervous? Feeling regret?), but all anyone can talk about is Hillary’s “gasp” and what it “means.” So, for all the talking heads and newspaper editors spending hours analyzing…
I live in a catholic country (Italy), in a small town and I go to a catholic and very conservative school.
I am not very religious and, most importantly, I am a feminist. This means I don’t agree with my religion teacher (who is a priest) most of the time, but at least he’s prepared to listen. Religion doesn’t interfere with our academic education, but we do get educated in a Catholic environment: Latin choir, masses, prayers in the morning, that sort of thing. I usually look forward to compulsory religion lessons on Tuesdays, not because I’m particularly passionate about the subject, but for the chance of interesting discussions, where I can express my own feminist views on certain subjects we talk about: abortion, birth control, homosexuality, divorce etc.
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