When I was a little girl, my mother always told me I had to love myself before I loved anyone else. I never really understood what she meant. Even during my sulky teen years, when I declared that I wanted to die, nobody understood me, blah blah blah, she would roll her eyes at me—and still tell me that I had to love myself. I’m really just now learning what the hell she was talking about. I do notice that when I'm a little nicer to myself, I'm a lot happier--and even more productive.

Both women and men are bombarded with reasons to hate themselves (and one another, of course) every day that really often don’t stem from ourselves at all. Relatives, well-meaning friends (and of course, friends in misery who love company), and especially the media are constantly telling us why we’re ugly, no good, and above all else, unworthy of being loved.

Read more >

Second Life throws off the most interesting controversies, doesn’t it?  I recently read about the latest dust-up over an artist who designed a series of custom female skins that include heavy bruising.  The designer, Gala Phoenix of Curio, named her series “Battle Royale,” referencing the cult Japanese film where teenage schoolgirls end up beating the crud out of each other in order to survive. 

 

Read more >

Female MajorityI have been thinking a lot lately about how the author of anything on the internet is presumed to be male.  People have even referred to my articles here as having been written by a "he," even though they are on feminist issues, and my author's name is clearly female.  (In many languages, even!)This is annoying as hell, particularly when you start noticing it everywhere.  However, I do think that we ourselves are partly to blame for this. And for the larger perception that the internet is a boyzone, even though men are the minority of internet users.

Read more >

This afternoon I happened to stumble across blogger and freelance writer Raincoaster's story about her brush with Canadian pig farming serial killer Robert "Willy" Pickton.  One of the fascinating things about Raincoaster's story is that she knew this guy was Bad News about five minutes into their first conversation.  

We talk about "instinct" and "gut feelings," and those terms are a useful (if vague) way to describe it.  And at the time, it can feel like a sudden flash of insight, the warning bells go off in your head and you don't really understand why.


Read more >

The New Face of HomophobiaI have been only dimly aware of Katy Perry as someone that people hate.  Turns out?  Totally justified.

Katy Perry is in the news lately for her song "I Kissed A Girl." Which (aside from the title) has nothing to do with singer-songwriter Jill Sobule's earlier song.  Perry's song is essentially an MTV-ready version of the "Girls Gone Wild" video series. 

Read more >

Sparkle Princess Powers, Activate!I've been thinking about the Disney Princesses and the color pink a lot.  And why isn't Tinkerbell part of the Disney Princess line?  Not being a parent, I didn't even know there WAS an official Disney Princess lineup, but you can find all of them here on Disney's website.

Note how they never look at each other.  That's part of the official Disney code. Let that page load up, then watch it for a few minutes.  Notice how each princess fidgets a little bit, to get your attention.  A little eerie, is it not?  And yet, not half as eerie as it ought to be.

On the "pro" side for princesses is the - so far as I know - universal-among-little-girls understanding that a princess is:

Read more >

1. pretty, and
2. the boss of you.  
   

The BMI is not so much about women's (and men's)health as it is a convenient metric that's based on an "ideal" phyical type, not in terms of health, but in terms of an unrealistic aesthetic. It doesn't allow for different body types. It's badly flawed, in fact. Take a look at Kate Harding's BMI Project.

Read more >

The New York Times is reporting that the Walt Disney Company is now offering refunds for its Baby Einstein series, which the Times describes as "a tacit admission that they did not increase infant intellect."

Baby Einstein is a local issue for me, because it was debunked by researchers at my very own college, the University of Washington.  Not only were the Baby Einstein videos shown to be bunk, but they actually decreased a baby's vocabulary.  


Read more >

RIP GeocitiesYou may have heard the news: Geocities finally closed its doors, shuttering all of its websites as of today.  I have been reminiscing about Geocities and what it meant to me, and thinking about what it meant to women on the internet.

Geocities was a launching off point for a lot of people, a way to get their feet wet with internet communication.  By providing a safe and easy way to create a website, without a lot of technical nonsense, it made it possible for a lot of "regular people" to create websites, formerly the purview of the technical elite.  


Read more >

Falsies Are Safe AND Affordable!The scourge of too-thin eyelashes has finally, triumphantly come to an end.  Latisse, a prescription product originally tested as a glaucoma medicine, is here to rescue us from those dark days of yore.  The days when everyone had "some" lashes, and no one really cared.

Here's the thing: I have talked to many women about this issue, and none of them ever expressed anxiety about the thickness or length of their eyelashes.  And yet the commercials make it sound like this is the female version of the male obsession with thickness and length.  (Which is silly enough, but keep in mind that eyelashes don't actually DO ANYTHING.)  The only concern I have ever heard is from blonde women, whose eyelashes are invisible if they don't use mascara, and NO eyelashes is indeed a somewhat unsettling look.


Read more >