Yearly Archives: 2012

Obama on free speech

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Here is what Obama said to the UN today:

As president of our country, and commander in chief of our military, I accept that people are going to call me awful things every day, and I will always defend their right to do so.

Americans have fought and died around the globe to protect the right of all people to express their views – even views that we profoundly disagree with. We do so not because we support hateful speech, but because our founders understood that without such protections, the capacity of each individual to express their own views and practice their own faith may be threatened.

I love this.

It’s a great lesson for our kids, especially girls who really need to ‘get’ this: People will say mean things about you. The more powerful you get, the more mean things will be said. Don’t let that stop you from speaking.

On some level, there are times that everybody would like to bully people who disagree with them, especially rudely disagree, into shutting up. That’s human. But better than censoring someone or punching them in the face, keep speaking your truth respectfully instead. It feels better. Real power isn’t about making others shut up. It’s about not being silent even though people may insist that your experiences aren’t valid or never happened.

There will always be people who won’t like you. They might call you names, but remember, sticks and stones. I really believe that fundamental belief (fundamental, ha) is what makes America great. Thank you, Obama, for reminding us, though I wish you hadn’t taken quite so long.

The Bookbinder’s Daughters

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Here is some pretty cool art, though its beauty can’t really captured on an iphone: “The Bookbinder’s Daughters” by Chris Dorosz from a show at the Scott Richards gallery in San Francisco.

I love Dorosz’s art because the images seem so alive, almost moving. When you see this piece and you walk around it, it looks different from every angle. Every figure conveys her own personality.

Here is how the press release describes Dorosz’s work:

Using the two-dimensional images as a guide, Dorosz then creates three-dimensional models, which he arranges in a group. To make the works, the artist employs a technique he has developed over the years: he fabricates a grid of clear nylon rods suspended vertically within a Plexiglas stage; he then applies drops of paint to the rods, and the images materialize.

The resulting figures seem to move, fracture apart, and reform—almost like holograms—as the viewer walks around them, bringing to mind digital pixels or even DNA.  The moment of action is suspended in time and space, as indicated by the show title and the titles of all of the works in this series: Stasis, a state of equilibrium.

“Out of material discovery,” Dorosz says, “I began to regard the primacy of the paint drop, a form that takes shape not from a brush or any human-made implement or gesture, but purely from its own viscosity and the air it falls through.”  Editing all the way down to a drop of color, the smallest element of a painting, Dorosz is pushing the medium, and the creation of image, to its very limits.

Of course, every artist needs inspiration. Here are the models: that’s me in the middle, my sister Kim on the left and my sister Hilary on the right. Dorosz made this piece from a photograph taken by my mother, a bookbinder.

Golden retriever, 2 years old, dies on NYC- SF airline flight

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I never met Bea in person, but I knew her through her Grandma’s photos on Facebook. I was so sad to find out that this adorable dog died at age 2 on a United airline flight from New York to San Francisco. Bea’s tragic story makes me very nervous about how pets are treated while flying.

People.com reports: 

But when Rizer, 34, her husband, Alex Mehran, and their 10-month-old son Zander landed in San Francisco on Sept. 3, they found out one of their family members had been lost along the way: Bea had died.

The golden retriever’s passing was inexplicable. Bea was young and had undergone a requisite physical examination – and was found to be in perfect health – just days before the flight. Golden retrievers don’t usually experience problems during air travel.

“We’re completely devastated,” Rizer tells PEOPLE. “[The airline] didn’t even have an excuse.”

In a passionate blog post on Rizer’s website, Bea Makes Three, she paints a picture of United employees reluctant to admit wrongdoing or share any information about the company’s internal investigation.

According to Rizer, her veterinarian performed a full necropsy and determined the cause of death to be heatstroke, “the absolute worst thing I could have imagined happening to her,” Rizer says. “She died 30 feet below us, alone and scared. Nobody was there to help her because someone made a mistake.”

According to Rizer, her veterinarian performed a full necropsy and determined the cause of death to be heatstroke, “the absolute worst thing I could have imagined happening to her,” Rizer says. “She died 30 feet below us, alone and scared. Nobody was there to help her because someone made a mistake.”

In a statement, United tells PEOPLE that, “We understand that the loss of a beloved pet is difficult and express our condolences to Ms. Rizer and her family for their loss. After careful review, we found there were no mechanical operational issues with Bea’s flight and also determined she was in a temperature-controlled environment for her entire journey. We would like [to] finalize the review but are unable until we receive a copy of the necropsy.”

Rizer considered filing a lawsuit but hopes that speaking out about her experience will help inform people about the risks of traveling with a pet in cargo.

“I don’t think dogs should be treated like bags,” she says. “They’re living, breathing creatures and parts of people’s families.” She adds that she will never fly with her dogs again.

Please read Maggie Rizer’s blog post about her dog, Bea, and share Bea’s story to do what you can to help protect pets and keep them safer in the future.

Teaching your daughter how to pose like a girl

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Yesterday was picture day at my children’s school and, according to my kids, the girls were told to tilt their heads while boys were told to sit up straight.

Why is posing for school pictures an issue we ought to care about?

First of all, why is a kid taught to position her head according to what gender she is? How stupid is that?

Secondly, the classic female head tilt is one of the most annoying qualities of the ubiquitous, submissive princess. In coloring books, toy figures, and on diapers, female figures are most often positioned smiling, eyes lowered, and head tilted.

Imagine you are standing next to someone you love and admire, and that person is giving an important talk. How might you pose? Smiling with a head tilt? That would show you are attentive, supportive, and proud of him. Classic First Lady.

Now if you were the speaker delivering the talk, how might you pose? We’ve made those power positions into figures of speech: “Chin up!” or “Hold your head high” and even “Looking down your nose at someone.” That would be the opposite of a head tilt.

Say you’re Ann Romney and you’ve got to make a speech at the Republican convention. How might you pose to show how grateful, sweet, and non-threatening you still are?

Can you imagine Mitt doing this?

On Reel Girl, I’ve posted about gendered posing from the art of Edouard Manet to Wonder Woman. Ever wonder where our kids get trained to stand like a girl or a boy, besides by museums, toys, and politicians? Apparently, authority figures in America’s schools.

Update: I communicated with my kids’ school and was told by the principal that boys and adults were included in the head tilt, that he was asked to tilt his head ‘ever so slightly,’ but appreciates my concern, and will talk to them about it.

I’m psyched he got back to me right away and is talking to them about it. From what I heard from my kids, it wasn’t a slight head tilt, more like the princess kind, and they were telling me about the individual, not group, photos. Here is the web site from the photoform. What do you think of these images? (After you click, wait a second for them to come up)

Muscles, muscles, ass, muscles and why poses matter

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“Look at the girl, she’s sticking her butt out!” said my daughter. She showed me this photo in a costumes catalog we just received in the mail.

(Sorry about the flash glare.) Technically, its her hip, but the point is the same: emphasis, pelvis.

Imagine the males standing like that. What do these poses communicate?

I’ve blogged quite a bit about sexism in superheroes and ass emphasis. This post on the Avengers has gotten about 700 shares. Check out the great art if you haven’t seen it yet. Why do poses for superheroes matter? Because heroes are heroes!

What are our kids being taught to idolize in females? Weird twitches?

And of course, sexist posing isn’t limited to the fantasy world. Look at this photo in this month’s Vanity Fair, a profile of MSNBC hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough (via Miss Representation/ Salon.)

Did you read that part about hosts on a news channel? Imagine these poses reversed. She’s up front. He’s in back, showing leg. What would your kids think about men and women if they saw this photo?

Salon writes:

the image tells the familiar story of a man who commands the attention of others and a woman who seeks only the attention of that man.

You’d think Catwoman would want to seek something more.

School photos whiten teeth, even skin tone, and banish flyaway hair

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It’s photo day at my kid’s school, and if I pay a little more, my daughter gets treated like a supermodel!

If I order “Basic Retouching,” her face comes back to me blemish free. For even more perfection in my first grader’s portrait, I can buy “Premium Retouching” which  “whitens teeth, evens skin tone, removes blemishes, scars, and flyaway hair.” Think that includes replacing lost teeth?

Unfortunately, Lifetouch, no matter how much airbrushing you offer us parents, you can’t get past those cheesey backgrounds and fake smiles. Even skin tone is the least of your challenges. In fact, your best quality is how you regularly and consistently document the humiliation of picture day. We’d all be better off if you stopped trying to get more money out of us and just let kids be kids, flyaway hair and all.

 

Why is Dora sunbathing in the freezer aisle?

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Look who I saw while searching for fishsticks at Whole Foods:

Remember when Dora used to be cool?

Sadly, Breaded Fishie Dora looks less like her former self and more like sexy Ms. Green getting stalked by Yellow on an M and Ms package:

This pose– one leg out, one leg bent, in a bathing suit and smiling at the camera– is commonly used when toy, food, and game companies are marketing products to girls. Why not show Dora swimming instead of vamping? Does this pose say: “Look what I can do!” or “Look how cute I am?”

Next time you’re shopping, check out packaging featuring boy and girl characters. Boy characters, whether on cereal boxes or toys, will be doing things. Girl characters will be looking “pretty.” What do these stereotypes repeatedly teach our kids about gender? What do they tell our kids that they will get attention for? That they are capable of?

American moms shelling out thousands for girl babies

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Slate reports on moms who are shelling out thousands of dollars to gender select girl babies in order to “balance families.”  Here’s a typical reason why moms want girls: “I’m not into sports. I’m not into violent games. I’m not into a lot of things boys represent and boys do…”

So what happens when your girl baby becomes a soccer star? Should she get a sex change operation?

WTF? This is Target’s gender segregated Jim Crow toy aisles run amuck.

Rebecca Traister tweets:

Do these moms know that not all of their daughters will like pink princesses and that some of their sons will?

Slate reports:

Gender selection now rakes in revenues of at least $100 million every year. The average cost of a gender selection procedure at high-profile clinics is about $18,000, and an estimated 4,000 to 6,000 procedures are performed every year. Fertility doctors foresee an explosion in sex-selection procedures on the horizon, as couples become accustomed to the idea that they can pay to beget children of the gender they prefer. Why not see who your kid grows up to be instead of deciding her personality for her? Can you try that, parents?

If this gender selection really happens, if parents promoting gender stereotypes are backed up and supported by the medical establishment, America is going to have a generation of confused, unhappy children.

Why not see who your child grows up to be instead of trying your hardest to decide all that for her? Can you try that, parents?

This blog, Reel Girl, is dedicated to imagining gender equality in the fantasy world. There isn’t a mom out there who hasn’t fantasized about who her baby is going be when she grows up. But what if moms tried harder, while doing all that fantasizing, to be a little more creative in what they imagine? I know it can be challenging when we’re surrounded by art, books, films, TV, science, and stores that relentlessly promote gender stereotypes. But what if moms, for example, instead of worrying that their kids might turn out gay, worked to create a world that treats gay people more fairly? Your kid is going to be who she is going to be, right? The best we can do is support them and help to provide real choices for them as their destiny unravels. If moms could truly imagine gender equality in the fantasy world, let it exist in our own heads, I have no doubt, we would change the world. And maybe that’s why it’s so scary to even try.

Who was healthier post-baby: fat Jessica Simpson or thin Jessica Valenti?

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Founder of Feministing.com and author of Full Frontal Feminism Jessica Valenti recently came out with her book Why Have Kids? While pitching stories to media outlets about issues on motherhood covered by her book, including paid parental leave and affordable childcare in America, a major news organization came back to her, emailing this suggestion for a story:

Would Jessica be interested in writing something about weight loss after having a baby? We’re doing a lot of coverage around Jessica Simpson’s efforts to lose the baby pounds, and we’d love to hear from Jessica Valenti about what it was like for her to shed the weight.

So here is a feminist writer– probably the most well-known one of her generation– with a new book out on motherhood and all this so-called “news” organization wants to know is how she lost her baby weight? Seriously?

On her own web site, Valenti posts a video where she reveals her secret for losing that weight so fast, so easily: she had a preemie. Her baby weighed just two pounds. Valenti was living in a hospital, stressed out and sleepless, watching her baby cling to life.

I am so happy Valenti posted this video, because in doing so, she takes on the bullshit myth that this obsession with women and fat has anything to do with health. It doesn’t.

Contrary to popular belief, all thin people are not healthier than all fat people. There are plenty of thin people who smoke cigarettes, yo-yo diet, do drugs, and are actually sick. There are plenty of fat people who exercise daily. There are fat vegans and fat vegetarians.

When you see a “fat” person, in a magazine or walking down the street, you often don’t know if she’s just lost fifty pounds. You don’t know if she just gotten sober and is healthier than she’s ever been in her life. Or maybe she just got out of an abusive relationship. What’s more, her own doctor often has no clue what’s going with her, because doctors rarely ask, yet, magically, they still know everything about what their patients should be eating.

After the birth of her baby, Valenti was sick and her baby was sick, but she lost that baby weight. So its all good, right?

After Jessica Simpson had her baby, her baby was healthy (9 lbs, 13 oz) and she was healthy, yet, she was mocked for being fat. She’s still talking about how she can’t lose the weight as fast as she’d like, and how she really needs to, because, you know, “extra weight” isn’t healthy.

Fat obsession is not about health. It’s about judging and controlling women’s bodies. Thank you Jessica Valenti for calling that out in this great video.

Lee Miller and Man Ray at SF’s Legion of Honor

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Ever heard of Lee Miller?

She was an artist, photographer, war correspondent, model, and girlfriend of the famous surrealist Man Ray.

There’s an exhibition right now at San Francisco’s Legion of Honor “Man Ray/ Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism.” It was fascinating for me to see this show the day after I went to the Cindy Sherman retrospective at the SF MOMA. In many ways, Miller seems like a precursor to Sherman. Like Sherman, Miller was obsessed with depicting females and female body parts in a way these subjects, though done so many times before, hadn’t yet been presented.

Miller’s photographs show heads that appear to be severed by using lighting techniques or positioning them over cloaks, and one that I loved of a hand that appears to be floating, fiercely clutching an elaborate hair do. The creepiest and most Shermanesque image– or I suppose Sherman is Milleresque: the photographer stole severed breasts from a hospital (where a patient had a radical mastectomy)  and photographed them on dinner plates. It amazes me that Miller had the guts to create this photograph, in 1930 no less. Miller has many more fascinating shots in the show including a female head suffocating under a  bell jar (before the more famous Sylvia Path used that image) and a model pinned against the wall by knives thrown by another woman.

The next gallery documents Miller and Man Ray’s break-up. When she left him, he was tormented, writing pages of her name: “Elizabeth.” There are also framed love letters and a series of art works of Miller’s body parts by the obsessive Man Ray: giant lips floating through the air, an eye attached a  metronome, severed legs. You can see why Miller experienced herself as so fragmented and disembodied. Her career as a model obviously contributed to this experience.

In one fascinating pairing in the exhibition, there is nude portrait of Miller by Man Ray next to Miller’s nude self-portrait. While Man Ray’s photograph has Miller in a typical seductive pose with typical soft lighting, Miller’s joyful art in a powerful pose is far more unusual and striking. When I looked at Miller’s photograph, the highlighted biceps and subtle smile– it also reminds me of poses made famous so many years later by Madonna.

Another gallery shows Miller’s war correspondent work, she was one of the few females to photograph war time– still not a profession that many women venture into.

This show is a beautiful and fascinating documentation of how a passionate relationship creates great art.

Reel Girl rates “Man Ray/ Lee Miller: Partners in Surrealism” ***HH***