As the year draws to a close, we at the Ms. Blog look back proudly on our first nine months of blogging (we began on March 8, International Women’s Day). We’ve put up 1,000 posts, had more than a million visitors and enjoyed nearly 10,000 comments from you, our very interactive readers. Can’t wait to be […]
Year: 2010
Dec. 31, 1912: “Suffrage Mission Accomplished”
Nothing like it had ever been done before. In fact, until four years earlier, no group of women had ever been bold enough to defy custom and propriety by marching even a few city blocks in a public demonstration of support for woman suffrage. But Rosalie Jones proposed a 150-or-more-mile march from New York City […]
A Bitter Pill: Birth Rates Fall, But It’s No Reproductive-Rights Victory
It seems that the Great Recession may have done for America’s teens what countless hours of puritanical preaching have failed to: dissuaded them from having babies. Federal health authorities reported last week that the birth rate among U.S. girls between 15 and 19 fell six percent from 2008 to 2009 to a record low of […]
Repealing Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell: Back to the Future?
We now have decisive action from Congress in its long-awaited repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell. But what many don’t realize is that repealing this 1993 law moves us ahead in our thinking while actually moving us backward in our military practice. Before World War I, the U.S. had no legal restriction against homosexuals in the […]
Sisters Doin’ It For Themselves: Last-Minute Holiday Downloads
Need some perfect season-greeting music for Christmas Eve and Day? You can’t go wrong with two excellent new albums by fiercely independent, iconic women artists: Annie Lennox’s A Christmas Cornucopia and Shelby Lynne’s Merry Christmas.
Feminist Fairy Tales for Last-Minute Xmas Gifts
Who’s afraid of the Big Bad Wolf? Certainly not Little Red Riding Hood–at least not before Charles Perrault and the Brothers Grimm penned their literary versions of her story in the 17th and 19th centuries respectively. The original oral folktale that inspired them, entitled “The Story of Grandmother,” was at once more bizarre, more overtly […]
My Little NON-Homophobic, NON-Racist, NON-Smart-Shaming Pony: A Rebuttal
I have been a lifelong feminist, and as an artist working in the animation industry for more than 16 years I have striven to do right by women and girls in the animated projects I have been part of. I try to bring sincerity and depth to the female characters I’ve animated and have fought in development […]
Last Day of Feminist “Advent”—Catch Up on What You’ve Missed!
When I was a very young child, I received a late November package all the way from my grandmother in Germany. It was a large, cloth Advent Calendar, designed to hang on the back of my bedroom door and fitted with little pockets, one for each day leading up to December 25. In each pocket […]
The Ms. Q&A: How Lisa Henson is Moving the Company into the Future—and Pushing Girls Toward Empowerment
Ah, the holidays. As I sit here, flicking through the rounds of seasonal television, I have to ask: What state would the world be in if children didn’t have an alternative to watching Charlie Brown scrape around for his anti-depressants? And no, I don’t want to watch a giant ogre trolly around with his anthropomorphic […]
Don’t Ms. These Feminist Events: Holiday Roundup Edition
Sorry for the lag in posting fabulous feminist events, but as you know this is a grossly hectic time of year as we transition into 2011 via holiday family visits, frustrating family political chats, late-night bar visits with good friends and looking forward to the new year and what it will bring–I bring you a […]