Life decisions!

First of all I would like to note that almost all of you ladies are residing together in Utah together, and to soothe my jealousy I expect a short report (blog or email) on the whole affair from each and every one of you! Not kidding.

Okay, here's the thing. I thought I wanted to minor in Women's Studies, but the classes I would want to take for it next semester, with the exception of Black Women in America, are all either during other classes I need to take or not offered until Spring.
I need you ladies (especially the college grads) to give me some input. Here are my thoughts:
I want to minor in Women's Studies because a) it'll force me to focus on some non-computer things and therefore possibly prevent me from going insane, b) it's the only way I can get into the Feminist Text seminars, c) it's not that many requirements and might look good on my resume, and d) I think lady times are important.
BUT, my major is pretty intense, and I was hoping to be able to continue taking Hindi, and at the very least a class called Intro to Indian Civ that I've heard really good things about from several people. If I do those things, I definitely won't be able to finish a Women's Studies minor by the end of my four years.
So what do you think? And what are your thoughts generally on majors/minors/how to effectively use and structure your undergraduate college years?

(note--I'm going to see if Barnard will let me design my own MEALAC (Middle Eastern and Asian Language and Cultures) minor in South Asian studies. Am I too obsessed with minoring in something?)

cute!

Here's what I think is feminism: Eva and I. Texting/communicating/emailing/calling/inter-coasting by all meejums possible to help each other Through The Night. I even sang a song for her.

It Can Be Viewed Here, But Only By Feminists

Carrie

Will this music video/song ever get old?
I think not.
I love her TJ Maxx outfits, and how her bra straps are showing as she walks down the street exploding windows with her rage.

Also, does Carrie remind anyone else of little Lula Asplund a little bit? Except obviously Lu would never wreck someone's car, probably. But when she was younger, she might've.

OK, sleep.

Lady Educators and Students

I need your take on this article before I rip off my angry comment to her comments section.

Marni, is she accurately parsing Ted Sizer at the end of the article?

Doesn't her analogy of sharecropping as equivalent to school garden seem terribly fallacious?

I mean, I see some of her points, but could she be right that these school gardens are responsible for the achievement gap between white students and Hispanic or African American students?

Discuss.

Briefly

Ok, Anna and I have resolved to work for the next 2 hours before wandering out onto the steps by Low Library to eat our dessert, but I just had to quickly let you all know how the new grocery scheme is working out so far.
Pulled pork was a great success, although I ate almost half of it while waiting for it to be done crock-potting (just because I'd never used this crock pot before and I had to make sure it wasn't, like, a high-tech, super-speedy slow cooker!)
Pasta with mushroom white wine reduction (what exactly classifies a reduction, actually? I just sauteed the mushrooms with garlic and a generous portion of butter, added the wine, and then let it all simmer down until it was a more reasonable consistency and tasted good.)
Made stuffed mushrooms on a whim--stuffing consisted of mushroom stems, bacon (of course), garlic, red onions, parmesan, and lotso Stilton. Divine. Stuffed mushrooms don't really last as long as they should, though, in the sense of you can eat seven of them before you even realize you've begun eating.
And last but not least blueberry syrup--simmered blueberries with water, sugar, and a little bit of cinnamon to eat on Friendly's vanilla ice cream (very corn syrupy, sorry Anna! You all can testify how wary I am of vanilla ice cream, though.) In a stroke of genius we impulsively decided to add a splash of Rose and let it boil down a little more (sounds glamorous, right? It totally was.)
Anyway, now that I've used up a good fifteen minutes of our two hours work time I'll leave you all. I'm excited to read the article Emmy posted and her account of her travels in Tunisia just as soon as I get back from the steps!

xoxo

interesting

question

Is it wrong or right that I sometimes feel like I'm striking a blow for women everywhere when I'm slightly immodest at BYU?

Here's the thing. I go to BYU. There's a dress code, which I generally respect and see the purpose of. The dress code is also a little bit more difficult for women to negotiate than men, because since when did a boy have to worry about 'extremeness' in his appearance? What, like, extremely high Converse? Short shorts that society wants him to wear? Is this a basketball game in 1973? Exactly.

So women usually operate on a little different of a scale. There is Type A, the badly-dressed very modest girl. She wears things like flowered knee-to-calf length skirts and straightens her hair with fierce determination. She isn't 'cool.' Hipsters look down upon her.

On the other side of things we have Type B, the well-dressed trendy girl. She probably has good hair that is slightly relaxed/cut in a hipster-lookin' way. As with people who follow the Style of the Time, there is sometimes a need for her to wear skirts that might distance themselves above the knee. She walks flagrantly through campus in this manner, hoping that other people are only listening to the Arcade Fire.

So I guess I'm saying, why do we use things like this to divide groups of women from each other? Does the dress code help bridge gaps between women who wear different clothes and who might see each other with different labels, or does it separate people even further? When will the hipsters stop their judgin'? Isn't it slightly justifiable for someone who is 5'1 like me to not wear the skirts of the 'Nun or Dead' length?

I unno.

grocs

Just bought some groceries I'm kind of excited about--I've been stress eating a lot lately and so the theory behind my shopping this week was that I would buy nicer groceries but fewer--same price, less food, but possibly (hopefully) same amount of satisfaction. Maybe people will be shocked at the amount of groceries that is "less than usual" for me. I eat and cook a ton, I pretty much never eat out except that there's this 2 dollar hot and sour soup from the chinese place downstairs that I'm really addicted to.
So here's what I got:

Pork roast and mesquite bbq sauce (Stubbs. I love Stubbs.) for pulled pork (I've been waiting for like three weeks until I had the time to make pulled pork. Now that I'm on SB '10 and not going anywhere or celebrating in any other way, I figure--how can I not?!)
Stilton cheese (actually not that expensive--does that mean it's not good?)
Sourdough bread from bougie market
Bananas (not a luxury or anything, I know, but I usually don't buy fruit.)
Cucumbers and red onions (for salads, to eat with the hummous I made last night, etc.)
Mushrooms and white wine and new garlic for pasta sauce.
Bacon.

Another thing, regarding lady times:

I just spent a few hours REALLY cleaning the kitchen and our common room, and it was SO SATISFYING. (Stop with the caps lock, Eva!!! Your writing is surely suffering!) And I was thinking about guys I've known well enough to be in their kitchens, and some stuff I was reading in Cosmo (Ok, I know it's a horrible magazine--somehow extremely smutty and elitist at the same time, a tool of oppression, etc. But I've got a yearly subscription. And I like reading it. And, for whatever this is worth, I DO think it's a fairly accurate barometer on current white upper middle class attitudes on "feminism" or at least lady times. And if there is one biddy on this website who is completely immersed in white upper middle class dudes at the moment, it's me.)(Is everyone losing all of their respect for me right now?) Anyway, I wish that our society valued "women's work" more, and I wish that everyone (male and female) had the opportunity to be taught by their mothers the way I was the value and even the pleasure in doing these tasks. Which is not to say I don't find these chores annoying and that I don't really hate the way washing too many dishes makes my fingernails get all gross and my hands dry and smelly.
It's more just the idea that you are making a good environment for yourself, and for everyone you live with. That's something that can give one a lot of satisfaction, and if you get good at it it's useful and can save a butt load of money. But I think a lot of people miss out on the pleasure of cooking and cleaning and working with children, since it's been "women's work" in the past, and so as a society we've been taught to think of it as less valuable, as something to be avoided, done grudgingly, and then abandoned as soon as we have made enough money to pay someone (poor woman of color) to do it for us.
Is this too much of a generalization? I feel like there might be something slightly wrong with what I've said--if anyone disagrees please let me know.
Also, maybe I sounded a little bit like my grandma just then... But, hey. She's a pretty freakin wise lady.

Releap

So I went to my Manhattan singles ward today for the first time since freshman year. I went with Kasey, an awesome Columbia freshmen who waited for me in the subway station for like 20 minutes because when she said to meet at 8:25 my brain turned that into 8:45, probably because being anywhere outside of my apartment by that time is inconceivable. Man, Mormons are so nice. I know, I know, generalizations and everything. But there you have it.
Okay, but here are some thoughts:

We had a relief society lesson about the fall today. The woman teaching apparently hadn't really been given advanced notice, so it was sort of just like a fun discussion of the general topic, and it's such a weird topic to discuss. I don't think anyone really gets it. And so some people try desperately to make everything work with whatever their view of the gospel/the plan is, and other people just throw up their hands, and others just read that scripture in 2 Nephi (I think--the one about how if they hadn't transgressed they could have never known joy because they would not have known misery, and never done good because they would not know sin, and then the one about men are, that they might have joy.) and skip over the rest.
Anyway, so then somebody read Alma 42:29--"...only let your sins trouble you, with that trouble which shall bring you down unto repentance."
How awesome is that?
Anyway, it all just makes me think that maybe the gospel is more flexible than I've ever been willing to believe.
Except, am I the only one who gets really really annoyed when people say things like, "Eve was created the very last, so in a way women are the very PINNACLE of God's creations.", or the Institute teacher classic, "God loves his daughters better than he loves his sons." (jokingly, I guess.)

I dunno, what does anyone think about this stuff? I certainly have no idea what's going on.

more lady mormon blogs

Here's a list of a few more cool-looking mormon lady blogs:

http://timesandseasons.org/index.php/2010/02/5-things-to-do-while-waiting-for-feminist-mormon-housewives-to-return/

Does anyone read feminist mormon housewives?  I used to a few years ago, and then kinda forgot.

xo