Perez Hilton justified the crotch shot he posted to his Twitter feed of Miley Cyrus, claiming he was trying to teach her to act like a lady.
www.amazon.com
Perez isn’t the only guy around instructing women on how to behave. Derek Blasberg, a 27 year old from Missouri, recently came out with a modern manners how-to, just for the gentler sex: Classy: Exceptional Advice for the Extremely Modern Lady.
When I saw this at a bookstore, I thought it was a joke. Alas no, Blasberg sold his wisdom to a publisher, and it’s fast on it’s way to becoming a best-seller. In the intro Blasberg writes: “I can categorize the young women I’ve met through my trials and travails into two groups: ladies and tramps.”
It’s 2010– can we please stop recycling this age old virgin/ whore dichotomy? And while we’re at it, stop slut-shaming Miley Cyrus already, criticizing her clothing, her dancing, and her song lyrics in an endless 24 hour media cycle. Cyrus doesn’t need the media telling her how to behave anymore than women need advice from Blasberg on how to be classy.
No woman, in her twenties no less, would ever get way with writing a condescending tome like Blasberg’s and be recognized as some kind of witty authority on how a man can act like a man. But maybe she ought to. Here’s something for her first chapter: Don’t take and publish crotch shots. It’s not gentlemanly.
Carly Fiorina, doing what she can to set back the cause of women in politics: The California Republican nominee for the Senate refused to apologize to Senator Barbara Boxer after she was caught on camera mocking her hair. Asked about the incident by Greta Van Susteren, Fiorina said, “I was quoting a friend of mine. My goodness, my hair’s been talked about by a million people, you know? It sort of goes with the territory.” She then brought up her battle with cancer, saying, “Especially when you don’t have any. As you remember, I started out with none.”
Carly Fiorina
So Fiorina’s friend said the hair comment first and that makes it OK?
Then Fiorina says that she’s been made fun of before, so she’s allowed to make fun of other people? Um, Carly: two wrongs don’t make a right.
Next: It “goes with the territory?” Meaning it’s just fine to make fun of women in power for the way they look? After all, everybody does it.
The point of getting women into power positions is to change that dynamic, not perpetuate it. (Not to mention lead, not follow.)
And finally, Fiorina attempts to switch the issue in a bid for sympathy, playing the cancer card.
Maybe I’ll invite Fiorina over for a playdate, hoping some better manners rub off on her. But I won’t be voting for her for California senator. Who wants mean girls in political office?
Yesterday, The New York Times reported on an exciting, potential political candidate with a stellar resume. Which of these two photos do you think appeared on the paper’s front page?
www.nytimes.com
Diana Taylor
www.nytimes.com
Diana Taylor’s career began as an investment banker with Smith Barney; she then became superintendent of banking under Gov Pataki, emerging as a prescient watchdog who predicted the mortgage crisis; she was chair of Action, a leading microfinance lender which has distributed more than 23 million worldwide, and since last July, has been a member of the board of directors of Citigroup.
But New York Times readers don’t learn any of this information about Taylor’s credentials on the front page of the paper. Reading through this muddled article, whenever I found an actual fact on Taylor’s career, I felt the kind of joy of discovery I see my on my kids faces during a scavenger hunt.
It’s not only the cover photo of Taylor in evening wear with her boyfriend, the Mayor of New York, along with the late placement of her substantial qualifications, but the language of the article that continually sexualizes and trivializes Taylor’s ambition and her candidacy.
The headline reads: “She has the Mayor by her Side, But Politics is Wooing Her, Too.” When has politics ever “wooed” a male candidate? When considering a senatorial bid a few years ago, this dreamy lady “muses” what kind of “relationship” she’d have with then senator Chuck Schumer. Bill Paxon, former congressman, recalls a “previously undisclosed meeting…at the Ritz Carlton hotel,” but details of Taylor’s “flirtation” with the senate run have “remained hidden.” Is this a story about a tryst or a political career?
When The Times finally gets to reporting on Taylor’s professional history, page A-3, she “mixes” with global leaders, sounding as if she were flitting about various soirees. Describing her position as chair of Action, there is no quote from Taylor from that time, but instead rockstar, Bono, saying: “Diana, you know how I feel about you. But don’t tell the mayor.”
Isn’t the New York Times supposed to be a bastion of the liberal media elite and sensitive to sexism? I guess when it comes to reporting on women, the only party that matters is the kind you dress up for and running for office is just like dating.
Joran Van der Sloot, the alleged killer of Natalee Holloway, the co-ed who disappeared in Aruba in 2005, was captured tonight in Chile. He’s under suspicion for the stabbing death of 21 year old Peruvian Stephany Flores. On June 2, Flores’s body was found in Lima, Peru in a hotel room registered to Van Der Sloot.
http://mylifeofcrime.files.wordpress.com
Joran Van der Sloot, Natalee Holloway
Van der Sloot was arrested twice for Holloway’s killing. He was released twice due to lack of evidence. Part of the “lack of evidence” included Van der Sloot talking on video about Holloway’s death and how her body was taken out to sea. This video “did not incriminate” Van der Sloot because he claimed he was just trying to “impress a drug dealer.”
Violence against women is epidemic, but perpetrators like Van der Sloot, too often don’t get punished and become repeat offenders. There is little public awareness of the ubiquity of the crimes, and insufficient funding for education, prevention, prosecution, or protection for women.
When the media covers stories about victims like Natalee Holloway, it’s usually in the most sensationalistic, ineffective way. If the women are attractive, white, and middle class, as she was, networks endlessly recycle former cheerleading or prom photos. But rarely do Larry King, Greta van Susteren, or Bill O’Reilly and co. accompany these horrific stories with facts about how widespread violence against women is, featuring direct service workers, experts in the field, who can educate the public with real statistics and solutions.
Today, in the Bay Area, Roselyne Swig, founder of Partners Ending Domestic Abuse took a step towards helping to stop the violence in a more effective way. Swig convened a summit in San Francisco with leaders from Bay Area organizations committed to ending violence against women. Swig’s hope is that these Bay Area organizations will collaborate, providing a leadership position, bringing public awareness to this widespread issue, taking action to end it.
JaMel Perkins, Board President of Partners, opened the summit by sharing terrifying statistics including some of these:
31% of American women report being physically or sexually abused by a husband or boyfriend.
Around the world, 1 in 3 women are beaten, coerced into sex or physically abused.
Women of all races and ethnicities are equally vulnerable to violence by a domestic partner.
Homicide is the leading cause of death for pregnant women.
77% of those deaths occur in the first trimester.
Abused women are 60% more likely to require hospitalization while pregnant.
90% of our homeless population are victims of abuse.
The health-related costs of rape, physical assault, stalking and Homicide committed by domestic partners exceed $5.8 Billion each year. Nearly $4.1 billion of this is spent on direct medical and mental health care services.
1 in 5 female high school students reports being physically or sexually abused by a dating partner.
The summit was attended by representatives from Bay Area organizations including SF Child Abuse Center, Blue Shield Against Violence (the leading private DV funder in the state), La Casa de la Madres, the police department and DA’s office who convened to network and collaborate.
“Domestic violence is something we should all be concerned about,” said Swig. “We need to create a collaborative voice.”
Marcia Smolens of HMS Associates, a local lobbying group, urged advocates to use social media to bring awareness to the issue of domestic violence to create change.
Judy Patrick, President and CEO of the Women’s Foundation of California, said that the goal of her foundation is to ensure that women and families are safe, healthy, and economically secure.
www.cbsnews.com
Stephany Flores
Marj Plumb of the Women’s Policy Institute trains women leaders who work in direct service to affect change in Sacramento. Women working on the front lines need the skills to lobby legislators to make policy that will help women and prevent violence.
Plumb had the women at the summit break into groups and identify problems and solutions to eradicate violence. Most groups felt that education was key, including curriculum for kids at middle school level, educating families, cultural awareness, and men.
I wish the media was a better educator. It’s such a missed opportunity. Domestic violence, and all violence against women, should be renamed as “gender crimes,” receiving the elevated level of attention and punishment that hate crimes do. The word “domestic” has always softened the crime for me, a crime that’s already not taken nearly seriously enough. Too often, crimes against women are written off as cultural issues, a misunderstanding, a married woman can’t possibly be raped by her husband or alcohol was involved so no one is to blame, or she’s to blame, or the guy who said he raped her was “just bragging.”
If the Taliban had been named worldwide for what it was– gender apartheid– maybe there would have been the universal outrage against it that people felt for South Africa’s racist government. Instead, most Americans, even good old San Francisco liberals, looked away, ignoring a regime where women were beaten and murdered, daily by their husbands and fathers as part of “cultural ritual.”
This year Yale student Annie Le was murdered and stuffed into a wall; UVA star Lacrosse player, Yeardley Love was murdered by fellow lacrosse player, George Hughley; Bruce Beresford-Redmond, a producer of the show “Survivor” is the prime suspect in the murder of his wife, Monica Beresford-Redmond, who was found dead in Mexico.
All of these killings received media attention, because these women were young, attractive, or middle class. Would we know about Peruvian Stephany Flores if Natalee Holloway hadn’t been killed by the same suspect? Maybe, her father is wealthy, but she’s got a strike against her: she’s not white. How many gender crimes happened today worldwide that we don’t know about? How many are happening right now?
Statistics say that in America 3 women are murdered by their husbands and boyfriends every day.
The book is an adaptation for kids of a small segment (the story of building the first school) of Mortensens’s original book for grown ups, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace, a book that sold millions of copies chronicling his experience building schools, mostly for girls, in Pakistan and Afghanistan. This is an interview with the talented and prolific Susan L. Roth. (Full disclosure: Susan Roth is my godmother. She has never given me any spiritual guidance.)
www.amazon.com
How did you come to partner with Greg Mortensen to write Listen to the Wind?
Actually, through a big collaboration with my dear friend from California high school days at Tamalpais High School. Julia Bergman, President Emeritus of Greg’s organization, the Central Asia Institute (also recently retired librarian of City College of San Francisco) carried the first library to the first school in Korphe, Baltisan, Pakistan, practically on her back!
I was in California one time about 14 years ago. We had breakfast together, and I asked her what she had been doing lately that was exciting. She told me all about her trip to Pakistan, activities with the Central Asia Institute and especially this school. She started with a description of the 24 different varieties of apricots that grow in the high valleys in Northern Pakistan and her images were so vivid that I could just see them in a collage in that moment. The story was compelling, too, and I said I wanted to write and illustrate a book about it, She said, “Do it!” And so I began. Incredibly, it took 12 years to find a publisher who was willing to take the chance to publish it.
By the time I was ready to start the illustrations, it was too dangerous for me to travel to Pakistan, but Julia supplied me with essential photographs, books, artifacts, stories, and primary sources, all of which enabled me to create the book without actually traveling there. I still want desperately to go there, of course, and I shall as soon as it is a little safer.
Greg helped too, with his first-hand reporting and his great knowledge of social and religious customs there. It is difficult to be aware of the subtleties of culture that are so very important when writing any book, especially one for children. I needed to be respectful and I needed to be accurate! With his and other’s help I think (hope!) I was able to be both.
Did you know Listen to the Wind would be a best-seller?
Absolutely not. No one can predict things like that.
Why do you think made the book so popular?
My gorgeous pictures? That’s a joke, Margot. Maybe my pictures helped a little, but surely the extraordinary success of the original book was the main reason. A close second was the brilliant merchandising of the three versions of the original story: grown-up, middle aged children’s, and picture book versions all were published together and inspired communities all over the country to do ‘whole town reads.’The result is the chance for book club type readings for whole families. It is interesting, uplifting, inspirational, an activity for everyone to do together.
Was it difficult to translate a book for adults into the kind of story kids could understand and relate to?
Not really. The story I tell is a very small piece of the whole, and I think it’s accessible to children since it’s about other children. They are different but essentially the same: kids and school.
Speaking of full disclosure, very good seller. Not best as in New York Times…
I heard Dolly Parton bought hundreds of copies and gave it to everyone she knew.
www.amazon.com
No, much nicer and better. Dolly Parton is a major philanthropist with an intelligent, great and sensitive heart. She has a huge organization that provides books for children who otherwise might not be able to own them, all over the country. And she presents these books in a beautiful way to these children, by mailing them individually to their homes. I am a fierce admirer of Dolly Parton.
Is it a surprise to you when a book becomes popular…
Always!!
Or something you know is going to happen?
Never!
What do you think makes a book a hit with kids?
If only I could predict that.
You came out with A Dog’s New York, a sweet story about two dogs who keep each other company as they see Manhattan’s greatest sites. You rewrote the book after 9/11, re-titling it, It’s Still a Dog’s New York, transforming it into a book to help kids deal with the sadness, fear, and other repercussions of the attacks. How do you think being a New Yorker influences you as a writer?
Maybe I am a “writer of place.” Or at least an “illustrator of place.” I think I definitely am that– it’s sort of visual collage or inspirational collage– I paint, so to speak, what I see, maybe? Even the pictures in my book My Love for You All Year Round was sort of a New York book. the pictures were inspired by my own garden and the river I see from my back yard.
Did the stories you wanted to write about besides A Dog’s New York change at all after 9/11?
I don’t know. Do you think they did? Maybe I’m getting meatier, more serious I mean, in my old age. I really would like everyone to appreciate other cultures as I do, and to love their children and other people’s children and to have no wars. But I think I always believed and tried to express this sentimental but reasonable stuff. I’m a softie with exotic appreciations, I always have been. I have an web site/ art project that kids can do to help teach these ideas. Also, or anyway, I have to cover both fronts. When I wrote It’s a Dog’s New York, I had just moved here and New York was still exotic and foreign to me then, another country, really. The original version was really the story of my first New York neighbor, stereotypically very bossy and New Yorky, but well-meaning.
I started my blog ReelGirl, because I have three young daughters and was so frustrated with the lack of girls in starring roles in kids’ books and movies. Sometimes I feel like female authors don’t get it at all. Like why didn’t J. K. Rowling just make Harry Potter a girl?
You will not get many people questioning her choices of anything in those books from the point of view of publishing success!
The recently released movie hit “How to Train Your Dragon” was also based on a book by a woman with males in the leads. Then I wonder if my feminism is autocratic and stifling to creativity.
My mother had the same frustration when she was a kid about the lame plots for girls. She went to the Little Red Schoolhouse in New York City and one of her teachers, Mimi Levy, wrote and published a book called Corrie and the Yankee about a slave girl who escapes from the Deep South.
On the back of the book, Levy said my mom inspired her to write the story: “While she was teaching a fifth grade class, Jill, one of her pupils,complained that in books of adventure, it was almost always a boy who did anything of importance. Miss Levy promised Jill she would write a story about a girl doing lots of brave and stirring things.”Levy’s book came out in 1959, and here I am in 2010 blogging about the same issue!
One of my favorite of your books is Hard Hat Area, about a real life iron worker, the only female among many men.
www.amazon.com
You know that all the background photographs were taken from the balcony of your mother’s apartment in New York City, right? And that even she has a cameo appearance in the montage, somewhere! Collages of place!
Another great feminist story you wrote is Brave Martha and the Dragon, about a girl who saves her town from a monster
Oh, this is funny, speaking of your mamma. On the way back from researching that book, I used to stop in Paris to see your mother, every time. I had forgotten that until this minute. And also, Brave Martha’s model is my daughter who came with me on several of those French trips. I do paint what I see!
I hear a lot of writers with girl protagonists featured in their books say they were inspired by their daughters. I love that!
www.amazon.com
You also have a book called Princess, the illustrations are beautiful as usual but this protagonist talks a lot about her shoes and her gown. My mom told me you signed one of the original illustrations for my daughter, by mom never gave it to me because she said I wouldn’t like it. I feel bad about that!
She may just have been in one of her more acquisitive moods. I’ll make her give it back.
OK,its in the downstairs kids room. Though if you have any Brave Martha or Hard Hat Area, I might trade her! I wouldn’t have an issue with the whole princess thing if she was one character among many…
At least my princess was sort of naughty, and even though her mother finally made her go to school (you can’t really fault a mother for pushing education) Princess certainly tried to or at least imagines her rebellion first. And I guarantee that her mother would have made her brother, the Prince, get up and go to school too. If he had been the naughty one and if he had existed.
…OK, but it’s the princess’s dominance in girlworld that drives me bats. Maybe that’s true with you– you’ve written forty books about all kinds of people and creatures, one just happens to be a princess. Very long prelude to my big question here: do you think about gender when you write?
I surely did with Hard Hat Area— but the story presented itself pretty much as it is. Although the Princess-like heroine in real life is truly beautiful and even college educated English major (might as well get into class and education while we’re discussing) Kristen Doyle, her real name, decided she wanted to become an iron worker like all the boys in her family before her, at least 4 generations of them, and she still is a very good iron worker, too. I do not think I’d like to force the issue. Some people are boys. Some are white. Some people are rich. Some people are educated. What can you do? I want to tell the best stories I can write.
Most of your books are illustrated with collages. They are so beautiful and unique, I can easily recognize them passing quickly by a bookstore window.
Thank you, dear God-daughter!!
Your very first books were illustrated with woodblocking prints such as The Butterfly Kiss and also Patchwork Tales. Is collage your favorite form?
Yes, yes, yes!
What do you like about it?
It’s spontaneous, immediate, and fast!!!
Do you still do woodblocks?
No, but I still love looking at woodcuts in museums and books and walls.
What other kinds of materials do you use?
I use anything if it’s not edible i.e. rot-able or bug-attracting or too fragile, but I only work in collage.
You and my mother, who is a hand bookbinder, collaborated on The Christmas Story, a story about adoption featuring cats. The story has original handwritten manuscripts by you and is bound with needlepoint by my mother. It’s incredibly beautiful and was sold by the the great Paris bookdealer, Pierre Beres, for $50,000. The Catholic League was apparently offended that the cats had halos.
They were very well behaved cats, even if not too religious. Besides, the story happened on Christmas Eve and it was a little bit holy by default.
Do you think you’ll make a work of art like that again?
If your mother could be pulled out of retirement, I’d do one in a minute. I still have a whole set of collages left over from our second book that I never could quite get around to finishing before she moved away from Paris.
What are you working on now?
Answering your questions! And also, illustrating a book about the Watts Towers in Los Angeles on a tight deadline.
And another, about an incredible, amazing scientist who has begun to solve some of the problems of world hunger by creating forests on the coast of Eritrea.
And then ten small books for an e-publisher in Korea featuring my own grandchildren, against, what else, a background of New York City. Books of Place.
We recently discovered ReelGirl, a blog by writer and commentator Margot Magowan. She also co-founded the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, which provides professional training for young women. We decided to pick her brain about raising three daughters, her favorite blogs, and why dieting bored her to tears.
How do you instill a healthy body image in your daughters?
I tell my daughters they’re beautiful “on the inside and the outside,” all the time. It’s kind of cheesy but I think it works, and it’s true! I also tell them how smart and strong they are. When I hear them ask each other what pet, animal or creature in a book illustration is the “cutest” or “prettiest” I interrupt and say, “But what does she do? Is she smart? Is she strong? Does she have fun? Is she happy?” Whenever possible, I try to take the emphasis off of appearances. I try not to say disparaging things about how I look or the way other women look, even positive stuff, actually, like comment on the hair or make up or outfits of women on TV or in magazines. I hide my Us Weekly!
You wear a lot of hats–writer, speaker, mom, wife–what do you do when you need to recharge?
My kids go to bed at 7 p.m. I get dates confused, I’m often late for appointments, but those kids are on a schedule and that schedule hardly changes! That way, I know when it’s my time. I love spending that time with my husband, reading, hanging out with friends, or seeing a movie. I love to walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I’d love to say I wake up at five a.m. and meditate, but I don’t. It’s on my list.
What do you see as some of the greatest internal or self imposed barriers that keep women from succeeding professionally?
I think a lot of women for one reason or another have bought into a split (that men aren’t subject to at all) that they have to choose between being a “good mom” or being successful professionally. I don’t feel that division emotionally. Having kids has made me more ambitious and much more financially responsible. I’m a better mother and more present for my kids when I spend time away from them in other ways that fulfill me.
Too often, sexism is invisible to us, whether it’s too geographically distant or we’ve just become immune to witnessing women treated like objects instead of like humans. In 2010, naming the enemy is half the battle.
In her new book Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert used a Rumpelstiltskin simile applicable here. The story of Rumpelstiltskin is about a girl forced into slavery; she must spin straw into gold. She will only be freed when she can name one of her captors. When she discovers his name and calls it out, he loses all his power and must set her free. Gilbert wrote, “Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstiltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names.”
I’ve launched The Rumpelstiltskin Campaign: sEXISTs EXIST. Post news about sexism, when and where you see it, on ReelGirl. Photos welcome. The campaign won’t end sexism, but it’s a crucial step towards setting us free.
Email me your info if you want stickers or T-shirts. T-shirts come in all sizes and baby dolls $25 each. A percentage of proceeds goes to The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization I cofounded to train young women to be leaders and change agents.
Pulitzer Prize winning author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Sheryl WuDunn, gave a free talk at the Palace of Fine Arts Monday night, telling the audience the best way to stop poverty and end terrorism worldwide is to achieve gender equality. WuDunn argued that gender equality is the most important struggle of this century, and that the key to world economic progress is unlocking women’s potential.
www.plannedparenthood.org
Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Half The Sky
WuDunn said that the paramount moral challenge of the 19th Century was slavery, in the 20th, totalitarianism, and in the 21st century, it’s gender quality.
WuDunn told the audience we are wasting half our resources by failing to educate and honor women. After her talk, she told me that she was inspired to write her book, because of all the missing women worldwide; they’d just vanished. No one had written about a book about them.
At the beginning of her talk, WuDunn asked the audience: Are there more women or men in the world?
About 98% of the audience (including me) believed there were more women in the world. We knew women generally lived longer than men. But this statistic only holds true in the developed world. In the developing world, women are vastly outnumbered.
Approximately 60 – 100 million women have gone missing.
Women die due to poor health care; they die in childbirth; they die from violence by men; girls are kidnapped into sex trafficking, never surfacing again, and female fetuses are aborted.
I’ve been a fan of WuDunn and her husband/ co-author/ New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof ever since Half the Sky came out. About a year ago, the book was featured as the cover story of the New York Times Magazine. With the publication of this one book, national attention began to shift back to feminism and gender equality, bringing a renewed awareness in the media and in the public about the oppression of women worldwide and how that oppression affects and limits us all.
The very basis of the Taliban, of course, is oppression against women. While there was worldwide outrage about Apartheid in South Afriica years ago, no one seemed to care much about the gender crimes of the Taliban until 9-11. Even since 9-11, it’s been a challenge to keep the focus on educating women, in Afghanistan and all over the world.
WuDunn laid out a simple path to creating a better, safer, stronger world, as logical as a tenth grade geometry proof:
Overpopulation is the biggest indicator of poverty. When women are educated, they marry later and have fewer children, and they are more likely to make sure these children are educated.
WuDunn said governments must make it their highest priority to educate women.
WuDunn was asked by an audience member: Why is now women’s time?
She referred again to the missing women, then adding “Brawn used to matter.” In agricultural and farming societies, physical strength was seen as crucial to success. Now we’ve entered a period of technology and brain power, and its the opportunity for women to get ahead.
WuDunn argues again and again that the best way to bring about change is by investing in women. We’re losing our most valuable resource. When people in the audience asked what they could do to help women worldwide, WuDunn said give money to support women’s organizations. She said she loves Doctors Without Borders but we need to create Bankers without Borders, Lawyers Without Borders. We must rally our governments to commit to educating women.
Kavita Ramdas, CEO and President of the Global Fund for Women, was also speaking. The Global Fund is the world’s largest grantmaking foundation focused exclusively on international womens’s human rights. Ramdas told the audience. “If you can’t help women in the Sahara, help women in East Palo Alto. Here in the United States, 70% of those in poverty are women.”
www.abcdlady.com
Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women
Listening to the talk, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a horrible example my home state of California, in my home country of the United States, sets with its bankrupt public educational system. How can we insist countries of the world educate women when we are are so substandard at home?
When a male high school student in the audience asked Ramdas what he could do to help women worldwide, she said, “I have a sixteen year old daughter. I worry about her. Set an example in how you treat your peers. Don’t use the words bitch and whore.”
The talk was fascinating, listening to WuDunn and Ramdas circle the globe and came back home to the Bay Area. They highlighted again and again, that until conditions improve for women, humans will not reach anything close to our potential.
Margot Magowan
I blogged about this a couple days ago. Here are some sad stats about the lack of women in America’s leadership positions. More women are going to law school but they’re not becoming law partners; they’re in medical school but they’re not chief surgeons. Women in America get paid less for doing the same work as men, and the Equal Rights Amendment was never passed in this country. It’s worldwide problem, our worst problem. We need to recognize it exists, identify it and then eradicate it everywhere. Order sEXISTs stickers and T-shirts here, one dollar from every item sold goes to the Woodull Institute for Ethical Leadership.
Sheryl WuDunn’s talk was free to the public because it was sponsored by Facing History and the Allstate Foundation.
Facing History is an international educational and professional development nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.
The Allstate Foundation partners with non-profit organziations and community initiatives that promote safe and vital communties, tolerance, diversity, and economic empowerment.
At first, it sounds empowering, it’s a woman to woman CEO winning relay. How often does that happen? Well, Never! Fortune.com reports:
Anne Mulcahy, who last decade turned Xerox around and last year turned over the CEO reins, today gave up the chairman title to Ursula Burns, her CEO successor. It’s all quite historic since Burns is the Fortune 500’s first black female CEO. Theirs was the first-ever woman-to-woman CEO hand-off in the ranks of America’s largest corporations.
www.rttnews.com
The bummer is, of course, the female CEO switcheroo keeps the gender CEO stats of Fortune 500 companies in their exact same pathetic state at 3% female. Robin Marty reports on www.Care2.com:
Women CEOs lead in only 15 of the 500 companies, or 3 percent. Even worse, there was no gain in female leadership since last year; for every woman who entered the list, another was lost.
Here are some facts about American women, who make up 52% of citizens in the country of the free and the brave and 46.5% of our labor force.
Women hold 15.2% of seats on the boards of Fortune 500 companies.
Women are 19% of partners in law firms.
Women represent 17% of the United States Congress.
Throughout our history only three women have held the office of Supreme Court Justice.
There are only seven female governors.
Women make up 14% of all guest appearances on the influential Sunday television talk shows; among repeat guests, only 7% are women.
Only 15% of the authors on the The New York Times best seller list for nonfiction are women.
Only about 20% of op-eds in America’s newspapers are by women.
In Hollywood, women make up:
8% of all writers
17% of all executive producers
23% of all producers
18% of all editors
2% of all cinematographers
I’m so tired of people acting as if we live in some postfeminist era, as if we’ve achieved equality, and everything is groovy now.
Sadly, people take sexism even less seriously than racism, often attributing gender crimes to cultural beliefs instead of the political practices they are. When I was in college and everyone was protesting aparthied in South Africa in the quad, in my sociology class next door I was learning that female gender mutilation was just fine because that’s “their culture.” Not only that but “women do it to each other” so it can’t really be sexist. It took me years to undo the relative ethics dogma I learned in my college education in early the nineties.
When I was producing talk radio programs later in that same decade, I wanted the liberal talk show host I worked with to discuss the Taliban. I’d tell him: “It’s gender aparthieid. The laws are completely different for women and men and nobody seems to care at all.”
At that time, one of the only vocal, public figures in America even speaking about the Taliban was Mavis Leno, Jay Leno’s wife. I’m serious. Mavis Leno. That’s how I found out about about the slavery of women across the world, not through my president, other politicians, the New York Times, campus protests or liberal talk show hosts like the one I worked for. When I insisted to the host the Taliban mattered, that you can’t isolate those kinds of sick beliefs, he said, “Come on, how does the Taliban affect people in the Bay Area?”
Too often, sexism today is invisible to us, whether it’s too geographically distant or we’ve just become immune to witnessing women treated like objects instead of like humans. In 2010, just naming the enemy, calling it out, seems to be half the battle.
Margot Magowan
Rumplestiltskin Campaign
In her new book Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert’s used a Rumpelstiltskin simile which is totally applicable here. Rumpelstiltskin is, of course, the story about a girl forced into slavery, spinning straw into gold. She will only be freed when she can name one of her captors. When she discovers his name and calls it out, he loses his power and sets her free. Gilbert wrote, “Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstiltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names.”
So today, I’m launching The Rumpelstiltskin campaign: sEXISTs EXIST. Post it where you see it on ReelGirl. Photos welcome. Stickers and signs are here. Logo needed. It won’t end sexism but at least it’s a step towards setting us free.
When I blogged a couple weeks ago about Sarah Silverman’s hilarious new memoir, I wrote that as the mother of three little kids, I now enjoy activities I used to dread for the private time they provide. Flying solo to New York and back to San Francisco a a couple times this month, I read a lot, including a beautifully written memoir: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren.
Lauren, a nice Jewish girl from Jersey, drops out of NYU to pursue her dreams of stardom. To pay her New York rent, she supplements her income with stripping and then gets involved in prostitution via an expensive escort service. Eventually, at eighteen years old, she’s invited to travel to Brunei, as a guest of the Sultan, to spice up his parties. No one tells her exactly how much she’ll get paid for her services: “Don’t worry, you won’t be disappointed.”
For those who don’t know (as I didn’t) where or what Brunei is, Lauren writes it’s
a Malay Muslim monarchy located North of Borneo. Independent from England since 1984, Brunei still retains strong cultural and diplomatic ties with the Queen. At that time, the Sultan of Brunei was, thanks to oil and investments, the richest man on the planet.
www.jillianlauren.com
Jillian Lauren
There’s more than a few memoirs and polemics about sex work out there, but Lauren’s book is unique. In part, just the location makes it fascinating, traveling to a palace in Southeast Asia and meeting the exotic men and women who inhabit it– it’s like The Other Boleyn Girl meets “The Hills” but much better writing than either. (Yes, the “The Hills” is scripted.)
There’s an on-going debate in Third and Fourth wave feminism about sex work, whether it’s empowering or degrading for women. Lauren’s book doesn’t preach or pick a side, just describing her experience in a brutally honest and insightful way. A woman telling the truth about her sexual life like this is rare and revolutionary.
Lauren writes:
“To those who haven’t profited financially from their sexuality, those of us who have often inspired an extreme range of emotions: Why would we take off our clothes for money? What makes us take the initial plunge? What makes one financially strapped girl into a hooker and another into a Denny’s waitress and another into a med student? You want to connect the dots. You all want reassurance that it won’t be your daughter up there on the pole. Shitty relationship with my father, low self esteem, astrologically inevitable craving for adventure, dreams of stardom, history of depression and anxiety, tendency towards substance abuse- put it all in a cauldron and cook and the ideal sex worked emerges, dripping and gleaming and whole.
Lauren’s writing about her family is also eloquent and excruciating. Before her decision to leave home, she’s rude to her mother, ignoring her when she enters the house. Her mom asks if she’s on drugs and her father flies into a rage, calling her an ungrateful little bitch.
With every punctuation mark, my father pulled me forward by my throat and them slammed my head back again. When he let go, I crumpled to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest. I called it my civil disobedience trick. I closed my eyes and made myself the tiniest ball. I showed no soft bits.
I worried about Jillian reading the book, her crazy parents and her recklessness. But I knew she’d come out of her story okay because she’s so smart.
Here’s my interview with Some Girls author, Jillian Lauren. Her book just hit the New York Times best-seller list.
You flew by private plane with another “party girl” from Brunei to Kauala Lampur to shop. You were driven to malls accompanied by men who carried suitcases of cash so you could clean out Chanel and Armani. As one of the prince’s favorite girls, there was no limit on what you could spend. But you were never allowed to leave your hotel room except with that entourage for that purpose. It seems claustrophobic and suffocating– just being in Stonestown mall in San Francisco can feel oppressive, and you shopped for over twelve hours. Was it fun? Were you thinking I’ll be able to write about his someday?
I was an avid journaller, but I was definitely never thinking of writing anything beyond that. The shopping was a whirlwind. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it was an adrenaline rush. I was excited and yet sort of disgusted with myself at the same time.
You were a guest of the Sultan’s brother, Prince Jefri, though one day, “Robin,” as he was called, shared you with his sibling, sending you to the royal yacht where female kitchen workers, wives, and girlfriends were cruel to you before you met the Sultan.
You write:
My survival instinct kicked in. I didn’t have any reason to believe that if I was unwanted, was deemed uninteresting and undesirable, I would be thrown off a cliff or stoned to death in public or shoved in the trunk if a car never to be seen again. Yet I was ready to fight with all I had to stay on the tightrope of royal favor. Maybe there didn’t need to be a threat of corporeal danger; maybe the threat of being unlovable was enough.
In your book you call yourself a “feminist sex activist” but your beliefs and feelings seem more complicated than “sex positive” feminism. Can you elaborate?
I really came into the feminist movement with a very particular viewpoint. And in the early nineties, when I was coming of age, there was this sex-positive explosion in the feminist movement. There was Susie Bright and Carol Queen and a bunch of bright, incredible women who were very vocal about being sex positive. Now I’m friends with a lot of these women. I do absolutely consider myself part of that camp. However, Its not simply about, “Sex work is so empowering, hooray.” Because that’s not how I feel anymore, now that I’m out of it and have lived with the consequences for 20 years. Sex work affected my relationship with my body, with my sexuality.It still has a ripple effect in my life. Taking your clothes off for money is a valid choice. For some women, maybe it’s the only choice. Certainly decriminalizing prostitution and having health care available for sex workers would help. But I don’t think it’s the greatest thing women can do for our souls, for the most part.
Did you make any lasting friendships in Brunei? Do you know what happened to those girls? What did they seem to want out of their experience there?
I’m absolutely still friends with some of the girls and they’ve been very supportive of me telling my story. But I can’t speak for them; I can only speak for myself. It’s up to them to assign meaning to their own experiences.
When you went back to Brunei a second time, you describe having sex with Robin again and this time, the intimacy startles you because you’ve been away and you’ve forgotten to click your “off” switch. For a moment, he’s human you’re shocked by the feel of skin and his hair. Were you able to recover from turning yourself off? Is it something you have control over?
It took me many, many years to come back to my body. The end of the book is really only the beginning of the journey. I still struggle with dissociation but I have tools with which to address it now.
You write a lot in your book about your childhood dreams of stardom, wanting to become a performer, a singer, a dancer. You never mention wanting to grow up and be writer yet that’s what you are now. Was becoming a writer something you ever wanted? The second time you went to Brunei, you brought a computer and exchanged short stories with a friend in New York, though you made fun of those writings. Was this the beginning of your writing career?
I never wanted to be a writer, but ironically writing was the thing I was generally doing the most of. I’ve kept journals since I was probably around eight or nine. Brunei was the place where I unknowingly started to develop a daily writing practice and that practice has been the most important thing to my writing career. So in a way, I guess my career did start in Brunei.
What happened in the years after Brunei, before you got married? Did you stay involved in sex work?
I was still involved in sex work for a while on and off until a terrible substance abuse problem pretty much made it impossible for me to do anything else. It wasn’t until I got sober that I met my husband and my life started to resemble the life I have now.
How did you make the transition into married life and motherhood?
I made the transition into marriage and motherhood not by any one big choice but with a series of small daily decisions through which I learned to take better care of myself and the people I love.
Did you know you wanted to marry your husband? What made him different than the other men? Was it the right time?
My husband is that rarest of things…he’s a truly good man. Besides being cute and funny and a great musician and all that other stuff. I knew almost immediately that I was going to marry him.
Your parents do not come off well in the book– your father is abusive and your mother neglectful. What is your relationship like with your parents now?
I don’t think my parents come off badly. I think they come off as complicated. I tried to the best of my ability to treat their portrayal with compassion and love. They’re still very upset about the book but I have faith that we’ll work it out. We’ve been through worse.
What is your new book, Pretty, about?
Pretty is a girl who survived a horrific car accident that killed her boyfriend and is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house, while attempting to complete her last two weeks of vocational-rehab cosmetology school. It’s about trying to find faith in a world of rampant diagnoses, over-medication, compulsive eating, and acrylic nails.
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Carly Fiorina
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http://mylifeofcrime.files.wordpress.com
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We recently discovered 
www.plannedparenthood.org
www.abcdlady.com
Margot Magowan
www.rttnews.com
www.jillianlauren.com