Pink Ribbons, Inc., a documentary based on the 2008 book by Samantha King, looks at the effects of “pinkwashing” (when companies use the ubiquitous breast cancer-related pink ribbon to promote a product while also selling products linked to the disease), damns the ribbon as contaminated by profit. At first, the ominous soundtrack feels heavy-handed as it [...]
I love seeing disgusting women on the big screen. Every time we have an incorrect, impolite or flat-out mean woman as a protagonist, the angelic female figure of our cultural imagination loses her wings. Onscreen, leading men are often allowed to be ugly in spirit and action, (think Greenberg, Curb Your Enthusiasm), but there are very [...]
Here are the cliff notes to this review of the new Our Bodies, Ourselves: Get this book. Get it because you have always seen it but never opened it. Get it because you have an older version and want to see what’s new. Get it because you will find yourself in these pages, whether you are [...]
June 17 was supposed to be the day Catherine Ferguson Academy, the much-lauded Detroit school for pregnant and parenting students, would close. The news since the closing announcement had been bleak. A demonstration by students in April had been quickly quashed by police, and the community had little power as the decision to close the [...]
How many stories do we have of education that works right? How many stories do we have of young women being empowered? How many stories do we have of pregnant and parenting students being given childcare, support and a chance at completing their education and going to college? How many stories do we have of [...]
Amy Martin’s cartoons are like a heavily inked mirage of what Sex and the City should have been and almost once was: non-vomitous. Martin’s women do the same as the SATC gals–they drink cocktails, wear heels, mope in front of their laptops and lust after partners who don’t return their calls. However, this time it’s like [...]
We know that the sexualization of women and girls is rampant. It is the stuff of Ms. magazine’s “No Comment” section, eyes rolled at reality television, training bras for 7-year-olds and high heels for infants. But maybe we don’t realize the full effect of these images. Did you know that 92.8 percent of music videos [...]
Why can’t we have an organization of female writers … one that would really be a forum for discussion along any lines of the female writer’s experience? An opportunity for women writers to be exposed to everything (or almost everything) that’s going on in our country with regard to women’s literature? That’s the notion that [...]
After reading Deadly Delivery: The Maternal Healthcare Crisis in the USA, an Amnesty International report released last Friday, my first thought was of a speaker I heard at a conference years ago who aptly said, “If you’re pregnant, you’ve probably been fucked.” The statistics are maddening: Maternal mortality ratios in the U.S. have increased in [...]
Ever try to get tech help from a former Soviet state on March 8th? I did a few years ago, while working on a project with a website managed by a Ukrainian company. When the site crashed on the 8th and I emailed for help, every message bounced back saying cheerily, “We are celebrating International [...]
