i like this lady

This article (post? whatever) on Perez Hilton's fashion blog made me really happy.

very interesting philosophical look at lady gaga, hook-up culture, stuff like that in this article.

really, what fresh hell is this?

CW producers, this is NOT okay.

For some unfathomable reason, possibly to enforce the idea that to make a boy like you, you have to completely change your personality, the CW has decided to make a REALITY show about a girl who likes a boy but is too "frumpy" and "doesn't know how to flirt".

REALLY?

Why is it a reality show? This is a real person, who is allowing some British beeyatch to a)probably make her anorexic, b)make her wear lots of makeup, and c)have her spend all her money on "NICE" clothes. All for a stupid guy.

This reminds me of when I was six and watched Grease for the first time. I asked my sister what it was about and she said, "it's a musical about a girl who completely changes herself for a guy." Exactly.

I don't understand why the media seems to think it's a good idea to make girls think this. Do we want to destroy their self-esteem? Boys are stupid anyway. This is just stupid.

I'm sorry if this lacks the eloquence of usual Lady Times posts. This is my first time here.

I'm just sayin...

Look, y'all love me right? So which one of you is going to make sure I get one of these for my upcoming birthday?

xoxo

early sexualization; yucky sexualization

one thing i like about canada is that, in general, there is less overt sexualization of girls and women. there's a sort of feeling that dressing in an obviously sexually provocative way is only for very specific occasions and is the province of grown women. this little article about young girls acting "sexy" is very interesting. it's true that when someone is 12 or 14 or sometimes (in my case certainly) even 20, certain kinds of behaviors are essentially a performance because you don't know what they simulate, and i tend to agree that when young girls feel pressure to act out those behaviors it could prevent their actually learning what their bodies can do and feel. what do you think?

have you guys seen the sex and the city movie? i loooove this review of it. she says something about the movie being like gay men playing with life-sized barbies and an unlimited budget. it's strange how much this cultural phenomenon really affects, or maybe it reflects, women's ideas about their sexuality--the way they dress, their availability for sex, stuff like that. and it does seem...influenced by gay culture. is this a problem?

one more thing. i'm sooooooo furious about this.



men never think this stuff is dangerous, because it's not for them. this guy clearly just thinks the whole thing is funny; he's not even pretending to use good arguments. there's nothing at stake for him. i can imagine tina fey sort of letting this slide off her back after coming up with a great one-line roast for him, but i can't do either of those things.

speaking of tine fey, check this out:

Doonesbury

Is anyone else out there loving this Doonesbury thread? It is so touching and beautiful.

????????

In Utah, after a pregnant 17-year-old paid a man $150 to beat her in an effort to induce a miscarriage, legislators passed a law that would allow a woman in such circumstances to be charged with homicide. Ms. Balch of the National Right to Life Committee said her organization did not support that law because it penalized the woman, “and we don’t support that at all.” Similar legislation was introduced in two other states.

From this article in the New York Times.

money ladies

Oh, you thought it was Summatime? No, it's not. I have pushed the official launch of Summatime forward a little bit, and you all have to wait patiently with me for said Summa to actually arrive, because I'm still taking ECONOMICS 110. What the dude?

Economics is probably one of the bro-iest, sweatiest, male-iest fields I can think of. Maybe this is a judgment that ignorantly ignores the great work of someone named like, Martha Fry Beardlyred who did great work in the area of indifference curves or whatever, but generally, I think Econ can be considered to be pretty masculine in character, both in and outside universities. In fact, according to an Article I Read by Ann L. Owen and Elizabeth Jensen, the overrepresentation of men in the field is "undisputed", and has been most coherently explained not by "vague psychological factors" but by pedagogical and behavioral biases on the part of professors and TAs (article on Jstor).

What that means to me is this: the class is designed to make the dudes laugh more than me. The secret about college is, you can gauge your level of domination over a particular class, subject, etc. by the degree to which you are able to understand and laugh at jokes in the class material. Humor is essential for forming real understanding and confidence when engaging with course materials. When I was a TA for a Comparative Government class, I was made painfully aware of that fact. One of my primary responsibilities among the other TAs was to type up jokes on the large overhead screen about whatever hilarious country we happened to be studying at the time, and it was expected and required that I do so. ("Russian federalism? More like Russian NEVER-alism!!" Etc.)

Whenever my daily econ class engages in a hearty chortle at the expense of something hilarious like elasticity (yeah, that is how bleak it is), the laughter is clearly in a male octave. And the jokes are clearly oriented towards a certain perspective. This was made again painfully clear to me last night as I entered Hour Three of a midterm and encountered some kind of sports joke on a question about Nash Equilibria. Some sort of joke of about Steve Nash? I guess? Who plays basketball? I guess? SPORTS!!

The point is, that joke relieved the tension of whoever was lucky enough to find it humorous (dudes), eliminated an answer from the choices available, and generally improved, by some degree, understanding and success of dudes taking the test. The same professor who had me make up jokes about Russia in the poli sci class also wants me to work on his lectures for the next time he teaches it - updating jokes, among other things. He has also asked me to look for places where certain jokes might be too male-oriented for a general class, and how those might be adjusted. Which is a notable but small movement towards equalizing a general disparity in all the institutions where we Learn Stuff.

So I guess the question is: why is humor so important in dominatin'? Why is humor so male-oriented all the time? Who will pay me to do horrible dry political jokes on a cruise ship someday, and will I be allowed to eat all the free shrimp I want?