Turn it off. Turn it all off.

I've recently been rereading my favorite feminist literature. In one book, the author spent a year only reading, watching, hearing things created by women, or with a positive message about women. What if we all took the time to control our environments like that? Of course, there are the things we cannot control, like the men whistling at you on the street, or overhearing a group of male co-workers bash their female counterparts.

But, if we all took the time to only read positive, uplifting things about women, all minority groups for that matter, would there be as much domestic and racial violence? Would we, as a society, finally overcome the negativity and shame simply associated with being different?

Another example of overcoming the negativity of society by controlling your surroundings is a woman who was disgusted by fat people. She put up beautiful, black and white nudes of fat women from the 1940s on her bathroom mirror. Over time she began to recognize them as beautiful and even gained a few pounds herself.

I guess the point of this post is this: if we all recognize what is horribly wrong in our culture and media, why don't we just cut those negative parts out? Why don't we turn off Entertainment Tonight and take control of our envronments?

If George W. had taped up pictures of a happy Muslim family on his bathroom mirror, we might not be in the turmoil we're in today.

Cunt: A Declaration of Independence

That is the title of the book I am currently re-reading. I read it last year and for the whole week I was reading it, I walked around in a happy-haze. I had finally found a book that was all about women, written from a woman's perspective. The first part of the book is about the ancient word "cunt" and how our modern-white-male-centric culture has taken a once pleasant, all-encompassing word for woman and has changed it into a debasing slur.

The book is also about a lot of other subjects specific to women, but the one thing I found fascinatingly, and surprisingly true is the fact that most women are uncomfortable with that one part that makes us all women. It kind of reminded me of that lecture we watched in class about how women's breasts will never be perfect. Most women are uncomfortable with their vaginas. Some women are well into their lives and have never even taken a look at them. Do you think a man exists that has never explored every square inch of his private pieces? I think not.

I think the reason women learn to dread their bodies starts in middle school. I went to a Catholic School where in fifth grade the girls and boys were split up to learn about the birds and bees. I can't say what went on in the boy's classroom, but in ours we were taught that our "time of the month" was dirty.

"Make sure to pay extra attention to hygiene during this week. Don't talk about it in public, especially if the other sex is present."

Personally, I think the fact that I can grow another human being in my body the most fascinating and wonderful thing ever. Women should never be ashamed of this. We should never feel like we have to conform to male standards so much to the point of cutting up this precious part of our anatomy to be the pornographic ideal. Nor should we starve ourselves to make the rest of the world happy.

My absolute favorite part of this book is the call for all women to support each other solely based on the fact that we are women. It's a call to push aside the catty attitudes and rise up together to create a women-friendly society and world. If we could just stop judging each other by who we are or aren't dating and what we're wearing, we could change the world.

European & American Sexual Culture

As a femenist, I have always been taught that the Sexual Revolution of the 1960s was a great advancement for women. Birth control allowed women the freedom to experiment, sexually without fear of a pregnancy. Unwed mothers are still stuck with a negative stigma today. Playboy magazine came about. Television shows became more open about sex. Advertising became more sexually oriented. It's obvious that everyone (especally men) was obsessed with sex all along, it just wasn't socially acceptable until then. But how far is too far?

I think of myself as a very liberal person, but I still have a line in my mind that, when crossed, doesn't make me uncomfortable, but makes me question whether the Sexual Revolution really was for the benefit of women, or just another way to publicly objectify women, without shame. (Sorry for that horrible run-on sentence.) I've seen interviews with Hugh Hefner where he praises his magazine for advancing womens' sexual freedom. I'm not sure if I agree.

I'm a person that actually reads Playboy for the articles. I've seen Playboy in the 1960s and 70s , when women were still allowed to have their own breasts and pubic hair wasn't considered gross. Now Playboy's centerfolds are all exactly the same. It's no longer a celebration of the female form (if it ever was...). Just like every other image of women in the media, it perpetuates an unachievable ideal.

I don't have a problem with nudity. I don't see every image of the naked human body as porn. I think our American culture does and I think this is where many of our problems stem from. If we cannot appreciate our bodies as beautiful works of art, then what's stopping us from objectifying them? What's stopping us from cutting them up and putting fake parts in (breast implants, collagen injections)? What's stopping people from committing violence against eachother?

I think because Europe had a Renaissance, they have a different view of sexuality and the human form, than Americans, who's sexual repression and disgust goes back to our Puritan forefathers (and mothers). This is not to say that Europe is perfect and doesn't have any problems with objectification. But they are able (in general) to appreciate the human body as art. You would never see th people of Florence cover up David's manhood. Nor would you see the people of Paris demand that Venus wear a bra. Yet, in Granbury, Tx, a mural had to be repainted because it featured a Boticelli-like topless woman. And parents complain when their 10-year-olds see nudity on their field-trip to the art museum.

The Jena 6

I first heard about this story on NPR. I'm not really sure what to make of it. Obviously there are grave civil rights problems in this town, otherwise there wouldn't be hundreds of people marching in protest. I don't think the same charges would be raised against a group of white teenagers. It would probably be the old "boys will be boys" saying.

I honestly can't blame the boys for wanting to beat up a white boy that hung nooses around a tree that they wanted to sit by. What world are we living in? Am I so sheltered to believe that things like this don't happen in 2007?

Disability Issues

I guess I am just as biased as everyone else. I don't often include disabled people when I think of minorities. News stories just use them as subjects of their stories, not as sources. I think we would all have a broader view in journalism if we asked disabled people how the news effects them.

Life Magazine, 1972

I had a lot of fun working on this project. My mom and I went to Half-Price Books and looked at the old magazsine racks. She picked up this issue with Liz Taylor on the cover and laughed. She said she remembered it. My mother has always idolized Elizabeth Taylor ever since she was a kid. I think this is because my grandmother loved her too. They loved her violet eyes and her jewelry. She's also pretty funny in her interviews.

When my mother looked at the date on the magazine she said it was the date she graduated from high school. She then began to tell me that my grandfather didn't want her to go to college at Texas Weslyan. He wanted her to go to secretarial school. This might be appalling to most people, but my grandfather only went to school until seventh grade. He was in a family of thirteen and the son of a sharecropper. They were so poor that they couldn't afford shoes. The kids at school would tease him because he didn't have shoes and being red-headed with buck-teeth didn't help much, either.

In the end, my mother was the first to graduate from college and she worked three jobs to pay her own way.

schema theory

This idea makes a lot of sense to me.
“the real environment is altogether too big, too complex, too fleeting for direct acquaintance. We are not equipped to deal with so much subtlety, so much variety, so many permutations & combinations.”

If we all abandoned our stereotypes, it would be like saying, "I know that I don't know anything." And I think this would be a good thing. If we all embraced the fact that we only have skewed, one-dimensional, ideas of cultures and lifestyles that we aren't constantly in contact with, we could learn more about new people without any preconceived notions.

I DON'T KNOW ANYTHING!