Viva la Feminista

Have you seen Honda's new ad campaign? It's called "The Leap List" and I guess the reason I didn't get a pitch about it is that I'm an old married mother. Far past the apparent target audience for "The Leap List." It's a rip off from the old idea of having a bucket list, but instead of making a list of things to do before you die, it's asking pepole to make a list of awesome things to do before making a big leap in life. Two leaps that Honda thinks you should make lists about? Babies and marriage. Take a look: So what do we learn here? That men will be restricted from doing awesome things because a baby weighs him down and women can't make movies after they get married . Oh, that Honda cars aren't for us old married parent types. I'll certainly keep that in mind when it's time *knockonwooditisyearsfromnow* for my husband and I to buy a new car. Because heaven knows that a Honda can't take the boredom that goe...

Dear Target, Payless and other sellers of shoes, As the mother of an active seven-almost-eight-year-old girl, I am asking you to please, please, please stop selling a zillion types of sandals for summer and only a limited types of actual shoes, especially sneakers. Here is a what the Target girls shoes site looks like: Note that there are *85* different types of sandals and only 15 different types of sneakers. Yet the best sellers include a boot, a sneaker and an active sandal/shoe. The Payless site looks to have the same representation of sandal versus real shoe. We stick to the lower end of shoes because well, when you have a girl who tears through shoes faster than her foot is growing out of them, you don't want to invest a lot of cash into shoes.But even at Nordstrom there are three times more sandals compared to athletic shoes. OK, some of their sandals are actually functional... Over the last few years the different type of sandals for girls has escalated and it is ...

cross-posted from Blog for Choice with permission. The anti-choice leadership of the U.S. House of Representatives is waging a War on Women, and the attacks keep getting more extreme.  Mother Jones is reporting  that H.R.3, the dangerous "Stupak on Steroids" bill , could subject survivors of rape and incest who choose to terminate their pregnancies to audits by the Internal Revenue Service. Nancy Keenan, president of NARAL Pro-Choice America, which helped break this story, called the bill a callous assault on women's freedom and privacy : This bill gets more outrageous and insulting by the day. Not only would a woman have to describe her sexual assault to the police, but she could then be forced to relive that horrifying experience with an agent from the IRS. The 221 members of Congress who signed their names to this egregious bill must explain to their constituents why they want to give the IRS authority to audit rape survivors. Why, indeed? It's yet ...

Cross-posted from Blog for Choice with permission. Yesterday, Sen. Rand Paul of Kentucky turned a hearing on energy-efficient light bulbs into a rant about his right to choose . His right to choose toilets, that is. When it comes to a woman's right to choose abortion care, Sen. Paul is against that-- even if the woman has been raped or is the survivor of incest . The senator's exchange with Kathleen Hogan, a Department of Energy official, was so bizarre that we're sharing it here with you for full effect: So, if we understand Sen. Paul, he essentially says that women should have greater rights at the appliance store than in their doctor's office, where they will make profoundly personal decisions.  Let's tell the Senate to flush this misguided philosophy.

I got this in the mail today. I get a lot of educational direct mail. I dunno if it's me or the fact that Chicago has so many schools. Either way, I usually just toss the mailers in the recycling box. But the kiddie drawing caught my eye. Congrats marketing artist! Then I did a double take...WTF? Yup, Kendall College , an institution of higher education was trying to convince me to give them $250 a credit by using gender stereotypes. Um, yeah. Not so much.

I was fast asleep at three in the morning when I got the payphone call, And she said, ’did I wake you up,’ I said, ’hey, no, not at all.’ ~ Dar Williams "The Blessings" I am almost speechless folks. I seriously can NOT believe that anyone, much less an advice columnist, would say it was ok for friends to NOT come and get you in the freaking ER in the middle of the night. Especially if you are calling because someone drugged you at a club. Did I mention that you are supposed to be best friends with the cold-hearted slackers?  Thankfully Amy Benfer read the riot act perhaps three times over to unnamed "advice columnist" - you can get all the info in Amy's post. I know everyone says the internet is our new permanent record and we should watch out what we say, but I blog to not just get my opinion out t...

This is becoming an annual event! Ah, sometimes posts never go out of style. Is that what we really want our daughters to be this Halloween? I have to admit that Halloween is my favorite holiday. What I don't like is that it too has been pornified in recent years and the pornification keeps trickling down to younger and younger kids. Take this costume for example #1: Major Flirt . You daughter can be sassy, cute, and of course, sexy all at the same time! And please, don't try to tell me that this is the same as a cheerleader costume. The label is FLIRT! [2009 Update: It's been renamed as Attitude, but the description still says FLIRT.] Flirts have sexual power. But look through the costume aisle at your local store and you'll see that the costumes are sexed up even for girls. AND also notice the gender line that is clearly drawn. I was in Target last week browsing with my daughter and noticed it oh so well. In the boys aisle you can be a doctor, police officer, an...

My Dora watching started way before my daughter came along. One day I was flipping around the TV channels and stopped on a cartoon of a Latina. A Latina that looked like my sister-in-law. My husband & I quickly got her son, our nephew, hooked on Dora. Success! Thus we knew that Dora would have a place in our life. I've seen and enjoyed more Dora than an adult woman should admit to, but I have. I remember that my husband & I were fixated with where does Dora live? As Latin@s of Mexican decent, we always jump to Mexico first. But it was the episode with El Coquí that did it for me. One quick web search for the Coquí turned up Puerto Rico. This made sense with the lush jungles and forests that Dora & Boots spent 22 minutes discovering. Part of the press release on New Dora that hasn't gotten a lot of buzz is that Dora & family are moving on up to the big city! As tweenage Dora, our heroine has moved to the big city, attends middle school and has a whole new...

Mattel finally let us in on how the new Dora will look . I have to admit that she doesn't look as bad as I thought she would. She looks like almost any 10-year-old you would see running around this world. If this was the image for a new cartoon with a smart and adventurous Latina as the lead, I think we'd have a party to celebrate. But it's not. It's our dear beloved Dora the Explorer. Mattel & Nick are upset at us moms for attacking the tweening of Dora: "I think there was just a misconception in terms of where we were going with this," Gina Sirard, vice president of marketing at Mattel, says. "Pretty much the moms who are petitioning aging Dora up certainly don't understand. ... I think they're going to be pleasantly happy once this is available in October, and once they understand this certainly isn't what they are conjuring up." But even with a nice drawing of New Dora, I'm still not happy with this move. First, New Dora will ...

Over two years ago I picked up on a warning that Hoyden About Town posted about: Dora was growing up. She wasn't growing up in the Jodi Foster way. She wasn't packing her beloved BackPack for Yale, UCLA or Evergreen. She was thinning out and getting sexy . Mattel, the makers of all things Dora (except the ones at the flea market), has said : As tweenage Dora, our heroine has moved to the big city, attends middle school and has a whole new fashionable look. What’s more, she now has a rich online world in which girls can explore, play games, customize, and most importantly solve mysteries with Dora and her new friends. Adding to the play value, Dora’s online world is interactive with the new doll line. Mattel & Nickelodeon somehow think that if Dora grows up with the audience, that they won't lose market share to a certain doll who is celebrating her 50th birthday. What is scary about this change is the Dr. Frankenstein aspect of th...

There's a great article in the current issue of Ms. about fake pregnancy clinics and how college campuses are referring students to them . When Nina Lopez, 19, a student at Santa Monica College in California, learned that her school routinely referred students concerned about possible pregnancies to a “pregnancy resource center,” or “crisis pregnancy center” (CPC), she was concerned... Lopez, a member of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance (FMLA) on her campus, decided to check out herself whether one particular center recommended by her school was actually offering a full range of choices to young women. So she went for a pregnancy test at the center, which promises “informed pregnancy and sexual health choices” in its brochure and which, according to its website, has medically trained staff and offers medical consultation. As someone who works with college students, this is scary. I have noted that there are at least 3 of these fake clinics listed on a resource board on my ...

I've had a lot of hits of people finding this blog because of this post , so I thought I'd repost it for all my new readers since last Halloween! ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ Is that what we really want our daughters to be this Halloween? I have to admit that Halloween is my favorite holiday. What I don't like is that it too has been pornified in recent years and the pornification keeps trickling down to younger and younger kids. Take this costume for example #1: Major Flirt . You daughter can be sassy, cute, and of course, sexy all at the same time! And please, don't try to tell me that this is the same as a cheerleader costume. The label is FLIRT! Flirts have sexual power. But look through the costume aisle at your local store and you'll see that the costumes are sexed up even for girls. AND also notice the gender line that is clearly drawn. I was in Target last week browsing with my daughter and noticed it oh so well. In the boys aisle you can be a doctor, poli...

Monday night I strolled into the Starbucks/B&N at the DePaul Center downtown and on my way to buy some cupcakes for a meeting (sue me, I forgot to stop at a real bakery) I spotted a greeting card. Yes this one. Are you kidding me? Of course I had to stop and find out what occasion would a crying (note drawn in tears) Hillary Clinton be appropriate for? Your birthday idiot! And if you can't read the inside of the card it says: "It's your birthday and everyone's a little CHOKED UP about it." You really gotta love that one incident where a woman who has a reputation as a ball-buster and seems to make Maggie Thatcher warm & cuddly gets choked up, now stamps her as a cry baby. 35 years of working on women's rights and this is what she gets. Forgive me for not flipping the card over and seeing who makes this card so we can flip them off. crossposted at Shakes

I ask because I recently caught their new PSAs for the " Click it or Ticket " campaign and they use two very attractive women to urge their men to use their seat belts. Two women... one white and one African-American with sultry voices and in cute outfits telling their men, "You know what I want..." Where is the Latina PSA? En Espanol ! Because us Latinas are never more sexy than when we're seducing our hombres into wearing seat belts than when we're speaking Spanish, eh? The problem is that not all of Latino men speak Spanish or at least would be watching Spanish language TV. I can only consider that a lack of English-language Latina PSA means that the state thinks we all only speak Spanish, they could give a damn about us English speakers, or our Latina sexuality is just too much for English TV. Can you imagine if JLo, Salma, or Lynda Carter aka Wonder Woman did a PSA in English? Ay, Papi, we'd bankrupt the state due to all the Latino men falling u...

Thanks to Shakes for posting the utterly craptastic responses by the two Democratic candidates for President in response to today's ruling that California's gay marriage ban is unconstitutional. I am seriously so pissed that their responses that I can't even form a coherent rant. So congrats Hill & Barry...You have left me speechless over your continued pandering to the homophobic voting block. Now to my non-hetero sisters and brothers...Congrats. While I have theoretical objections to the institution of marriage, I also know how nice it feels to be married, especially the health benefits. I hope that this ruling leads to a flood of weddings in California and that it's a huge economic boost. I can't remember where I read it, but seriously, if gay men really do know how to accessorize, can you imagine the wedding bling? *wink* Technorati tags: Hillary Clinton , Barack Obama , equal marriage , gay marriage , love

We're only 40 minutes into the PBS Frontline special on " Bush's War " and my heart is broken all over again. The arrogance is sickening. Just sickening. I can't believe that I haven't puked. I'm surprised I'm not crying my eyes out. The arrogance, lies, and that smirk. That fucking smirk. Oh how the press kissed their asses and now they have an arrogance about a wrong war. The media needs to be brought up on war crimes too. Just like Cheney, Rumsfield, Bush, Rice, and the others. Blair and Powell are living their punishment, IMO. They let the others play them, run over them, and they know they were right to focus on Afghanistan. People still talk about Powell with reverence - VP, President...I can never trust that man again. Go teach others how to deal with war mongers. The saddest thing of all? The lies we sold the Afghan people, especially the women and girls. There are many a day when I think I can justify the invasion of Afghanistan, but most I st...

So...days after Marcia Pappas sends out a firecracker of a press release , the NY Times decides to look at the generation gap within feminism . Wow...real cutting edge there folks. Yes, I think that it was a huge pile-o-poop. Thankfully it's short enough that I think I can quickly rip it to pieces: First - dueling photos. Jessica (of Feministing fame) gets the "I'm cute and have friends!" photo complete with her holding a wine glass. She's refined too! Marcia gets the serious "Don't fuck with me" photo. which in fact is the "Do I have to look into the sun for this photo?" I've had my photo taken for a news story enough to know that sometimes it sucks. There is one story with one photo that I hope every single copy got lost and it never made it to microfilm. But back to the feminist fotos...Why didn't they use Jessica's book photo ? At least they would have equal serious shots? There is a Sun-Times article where I wasn't quot...

I was pretty struck by today's news that the Smurfs are 50 years old. Of course, as the 80s kid I am, they've only existed since 1980ish when they came to America. As a girl, I of course identified with Smurfette as the only female. So when I saw a headline saying that there will be a movie and more female Smurfettes, I was all "woohoo!" Until I read the origins of Smurfette : Blond-haired Smurfette, originally created by evil sorcerer Gargamel to foster jealous rivalry in the community, has been the single love interest for almost every other Smurf for years. WTF?!? Off to Good Search! (I GS for WIMN , you should too.) to find the skinny. It was worse than I thought! Who created Smurfette and why? One day, while feeling extremely frustrated and spiteful, Gargamel decided on a new plan to exact revenge on the Smurfs, "a ruthless curse that will make them beg for mercy". Gargamel decided to send them a female Smurf - a Smurfette! How did Papa Smurf get invo...

In August I blogged about Wife Swap's longing for a feminist mom to appear on their show. Well, they found one . And people, she's not just a strong feminist, but also a home schooler! The family she's swapping to? One centered around a beauty pageant daughter. Oh, this should be puke-alicious. Grab a sturdy waste can and don't eat a big dinner if you plan on watching. I won't be. Once I stop dry heaving, I'll write up a bit more on why this episode makes me break out in hives. H/T Feministing Update : I ranted about the show in more detail at Chicago Moms Blog . Check it. Update2: My rant was cross-posted at the WIMN's Voices blog. Technorati tags: feminism , Reality TV

My heart literally sank when I saw this post about the latest Dora dolls. What happened to my daughter's best doll friend? Just the other day she was a happy-go-lucky exploradora and now she looks like she needs a few tamales! I may need to order " Yum! Mmmm! Que Rico! " for Dora for Christmas. Come on Fisher Price, you're killing us here! Here's a few reasons why I love Dora: She's Latina: How many Latinas can a Latina watch on TV nowadays? I keep our cartoon watching to Noogin, so outside of Dora & Diego's sister, Alicia, that brings us to zero. She's adventurous: She's not afraid of a challenge. Find baby blue bird's mommy? No problem. Take Santa his gift? A snap. She shows that when you need help, you ask for it: Map, Backpack, & Boots are her constant side-kicks aka helpers. Dora's not afraid to ask for help when she needs it and that is an invaluable lesson. Especially for the daughter of two perfectionists with her own perfe...