What's the point of this website?
A fair question. Two quick answers:
1. Those of us lucky enough to live in the most progressive parts of the world tend to focus on how good we have it, and yet we still haven’t achieved true gender equality.
2. I’m over trying to pitch women’s magazines. If the story isn’t about slimmer thighs for summer, they’re just not interested.
This stuff is important, I’ll try not to make it too dry.
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People are taking the piss out of you everyday. They butt into your life, take a cheap shot at you and then disappear. They leer at you from tall buildings and make you feel small. They make flippant comments from buses that imply you’re not sexy enough and that all the fun is happening somewhere else. They are on TV making your girlfriend feel inadequate. They have access to the most sophisticated technology the world has ever seen and they bully you with it. They are The Advertisers and they are laughing at you.
You, however, are forbidden to touch them. Trademarks, intellectual property rights and copyright law mean advertisers can say what they like wherever they like with total impunity.
Fuck that. Any advert in a public space that gives you no choice whether you see it or not is yours. It’s yours to take, re-arrange and re-use. You can do whatever you like with it. Asking for permission is like asking to keep a rock someone just threw at your head.
You owe the companies nothing. Less than nothing, you especially don’t owe them any courtesy. They owe you. They have re-arranged the world to put themselves in front of you. They never asked for your permission, don’t even start asking for theirs.
- Banksy
I wrote a novel called “These Days Are Ours.” It came out today.
The novel is about a group of college graduates living in New York City six months after September 11th. Hailey, the main character, still doesn’t have a job even though college is long over, and she is living in her parents’ apartment. She is obsessed with a guy named Michael Brenner - a Princeton graduate and future human rights lawyer with the perfect life and family - and she thinks if she can be with him, everything will be ok.
The book is really about that strange time after college when you’re not in school anymore but you’re not quite an adult yet either. Hailey and her friends stay out all night, think up get rich quick schemes and try to figure out what comes next. One friend told me she cried on several occasions while reading it, another told me that she laughed so hard while reading it she had to put the book down. Hopefully that means it’s a good balance.
I hear that when you’re writing a book, in order to motivate yourself, you should go to a bookstore and visualize it on the shelf. I did that. A bunch of times. Last weekend it was actually there.
I hope you read it. I think you’ll like it.
The Women Media Center’s “scorecard” of women nominated for the 84th Annual Academy Awards shows no women nominated for best director, cinematographer or feature documentarian, among other categories, and only one or two nominated for best screenplay, animated feature, foreign language film and film editing, among other categories.
In this Feminist Frequency video Anita Sarkeesian measures Oscar-nominated films against the Bechdel Test for movies (does the movie have at least two women in it who have names? Who talk to each other? About something besides a man?) As Sarkeesian says, “it is really the absolute lowest that we could possibly set the bar for women’s meaningful presence in movies.”
From a stranger who contacted me on Facebook:
I just received a magazine clipping in the mail from a friend. It was your article about tv sitcoms and the lack of strong female characters. I have no idea what magazine it’s from….but that’s not the reason I’m messaging you. I just wanted to thank you. I read these sitcoms each year dreading that I have to say to my manager and agent that I can’t stomach them enough to audition….I’m an actress. I am not a writer. My writer friends who write sitcoms usually can’t get a job unless they write this trash. I feel it’s a Catch 22…..but now I feel a little more empowered after reading your article. I’m about to get on these websites and demand better quality…..as a viewer, not as an actress.
Thank you.
Thanks to Walgreens for underwriting this post. I was paid as a member of the Clever Girls Collective, but the content is all mine. Visit http://www.discoverbeautywithin.com/
The elusive pocket-sized Vaseline I’ve only ever seen in London
Happy Valentine’s Day! Today I’m writing a sponsored post about winter beauty rituals. This post isn’t supposed to mention high end department store products, which is not a problem for me because a lot of my favorite beauty products are from drug stores. In fact, they’re so basic you could probably buy them at a gas station (but get them at Walgreens because they’re supporting women bloggers and don’t sell porn). I also have a personal rule that I only use products that have stood the test of time because I don’t want to be the guinea pig for a new product.
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