Category Archives: Uncategorized

Can you imagine not being able to cry?

Posted on by
Reply

Bay Area domestic violence direct service workers convened yesterday at the Ivory Steuben luncheon to discuss the worldwide epidemic and what we can do about it in our community.

The panel of direct responders included Dr. Catherine Main, a therapist in Marin County, Julie Robbins MSW, ACSW, LCSW in SF, Rabbi Sydney Mintz of Temple Emanu-el, and Jill Zawisza of Women, Inc.

Catherine Main spoke about how her goal is to help people to identify DV earlier. The sooner it can be recognized, the more chance we have to stop and change the behavior. She said the beginning is subtle. Typically, it starts with intimidating behavior from the male in the family. He begins to withdraw emotionally, soon exhibiting signs of jealously. The next step is that he restricts the woman’s movement and friendships so she becomes more isolated and more dependent on him.

Julie Robbins began her talk saying she was happy to be with this crowd because the worst part of her job is all the time she’s got to spend just convincing people that the problem actually exists. She said it’s our job as a community to make it visible. Here are some stats:

One in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime.

85% of domestic violence victims are women.

Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence.

Nearly three out of four (74%) of Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence.

On average, more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.

Domestic violence is one of the most chronically under reported crimes.

Only approximately one-quarter of all physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of all stalkings perpetuated against females by intimate partners are reported to the police.

On a positive note, Robbins said that kids who grow up in violent homes can and do get better. She’s seen it. One of the best things about getting older, she said, is seeing a three year old survivor she played with on her office floor all grown up, stopping by to visit her with his new wife. The cycle can be broken, but just as with  other family epidemics like alcoholism, the disease is inter-generational. Everyone is affected. Repair takes time. The first step is recognition.

So how do we break the cycle?

Robbins summarized what happens to a kids in a DV home. A home is supposed to be the safest and most secure place in the world. How do kids deal with the fact that someone they love is hurting someone else they love? How do their developing brains process all the contradictory information? Robbins says kids decide it must be their fault as a coping mechanism. The kid thinks if he can be perfect, he can keep the chronic abuse from happening. Robbins spoke about how these kids become so hyper-vigilant they know when the violence is going to happen. They can recognize signs like hearing a car pulling into a driveway crooked. Kids who have been abused or around abuse have brains that get wired up that are hyper-vigilant and hyper intuitive– they hear, smell, and taste differently.

Rabbi Mintz talked about the caveman model– the cave guy whacks the woman on the head and drags her back to the cave. The rabbi said it may be a cartoon but that this is the model for the first relationship. I like what she said because I write about cartoons. Listening to her, I thought again about the lack of healthy role models for men and women out there. It was also great to hear the rabbi because she called the group to a higher level of action than we are used to. Listening, it almost made me wish I were religious so I would hear these kinds of words more often or more regularly. The rabbi believes we are all first responders. She also said she’s got a kid in her congregation who had just been picked up by Child Protective Services. She wants to know who in her community is going to take this kid in? Who of the Temple Emanu-el families will step forward?

Again, calling individuals to action, the rabbi also spoke about a fundraiser for the public schools where one of the donors said: “The best thing you can do right now is write a check.” The rabbi told us that’s not the best thing you can do. The best thing you can do is send your kid to a public school. Then write checks to that school and get involved in the community there.

Eve Ensler’s talk was amazing and I already posted about part of it, but I didn’t mention yet that she also talked quite a bit about men. Ensler said that in order to stop violence against women, we must include men in the movement. Men need to be able to stand up and say violence against women is wrong. She told a story about getting in a cab in New York and forgetting her wallet. When she realized she had no money, she said, “I’m so sorry. You can take me back home and I can get it or I can mail you a check.”

The driver was furious, screaming at her, shouting, calling her names. Ensler said she saw a man in horrible pain, a man who got no recognition for his work, a man who was angry about sitting in New York traffic, a man who was tired and frustrated. Ensler said that we have no idea the kind of pressure men are under to perform, to please everybody, feeling they are coming up short, feeling they can’t do everything right. She said, “Can you imagine not being able to cry? You cry, you go on, you cry, you go on. If I couldn’t cry, I would’ve been institutionalized fifty years ago.”

Eve Ensler speaks to SF community leaders about stopping violence against women

Posted on by
1

Yesterday, award-winning writer and activist Eve Ensler spoke to Bay Area domestic violence direct service workers about how to end violence against women. She spoke at the Ivory Steuben luncheon which is organized by Marjorie Swig and named for a survivor of domestic violence.

Ensler had just come from the Occupy Wall Street protest in New York and she spoke about how economic issues are inseparable from stopping violence against women: girls around the world are sold into sex trafficking for less money than the cost of a cell phone; women economically dependent on their partners can’t afford to leave abusive relationships; in Topeka, Kansas, after a 10% budget cut, the DA’s office announced it would decriminalize DV, no longer wasting money prosecuting that misdemeanor. THIS IS HAPPENING IN THE USA.

Ensler said stopping violence against women cannot continue to be our last priority, it has to be our first. Violence against women is inter-related to every issue: health, economy, education, politics, foreign policy.

Other community leaders at the event spoke about how no SF mayoral candidates had put DV in their written platforms. Chris Cunnie who is running for Sheriff was at the event and spoke about his commitment to stop violence against women. He’ll have my vote.

I’ll post more news from the event soon.

A poem and a recipe

Posted on by
4

Early this morning while I was meditating, a mouse ran up my stairs. I know Buddha had to deal with worse but it wasn’t cool. Alice (age 5) wrote a poem about it:

Mouse in the House

Mouses like crumbs,

But they are so tiny,

And mouses are bigger than crumbs.

Then Lucy made us a special breakfast. Alice doesn’t like butter right now so Lucy used a substitution. Here’s her recipe:

Chocolate cinnamon toast

cinnamon

sugar

chocolate sauce

sliced bread

Mix up the cinnamon and sugar sweet as you like it. Toast the bread. Spread the chocolate sauce on the bread. Sprinkle on the cinnamon sugar.

What do you do when you see a mouse?

Parents get sick of sexist marketing

Posted on by
Reply

T shirt-gate has a positive side. After JCPenney’s  “I’m too pretty to do my homework so my brother had to do it for me,” shirt for girls incited a protest that went viral, more parents are catching on to how damaging kidworld’s sexist marketing has become.

Parenting blogs all over the internet are posting on sexist marketing, many upset that massive chains like Target and WalMart have several aisles of action/ activity centered “boy toys” and far fewer options and space for “girl toys.”

Pigtail Pals, a site that creates clothing empowering to girls, is getting thousands of new customers and repeatedly selling out of its shirt created in response to Penney’s that reads, “Pretty’s got nothing to do with it.”

It’s great that parents are choosing more carefully when and how to spend their dollars because now as never before TV series, movies, toys, products, apps, video games are all linked, figuratively and literally by phones, computers, tablets on and on creating a super-monochromatic world to easily push products.

As Peggy Orenstein wrote in her bestseller Cinderella Ate My Daughter, an effective strategy to move merchandise is to segment the marketplace:

Splitting kids and adults, or for that matter, penguins, into ever tinier categories has proved a surefire way to boost profits. So where there was once a big group called kids we now have toddlers, pre-schoolers, tweens, young-adolescents and older adolescents, each with their own developmental and marketing profile…One of the easiest ways to segment the market is to magnify gender differences or invent them where they did not previously exist.

Just think about face creams. As any woman who has walked through a department store knows, you are not advised to buy one bottle of moisturizer but a day cream, night cream, eye cream, neck or decolletage, and then an SPF for face and another for body because, you”ll be warned: “You can get an SPF in your daily moisturizer, but you shouldn’t really ask one cream to do two jobs.”

Why sell a brown bat when you can get parents to buy one that’s pink and one that’s blue?

Adweek reports on new mom, Jenny Gill, who gave birth at New York’s Cornell Weill hospital and had her picture snapped the way you do when taking your kid to the zoo or the Academy of Sciences, and then was offered a Disney onesie, free.

Gill says:

“In the middle of taking the pictures, she pulls out this cutely wrapped onesie and says, ‘Oh, here’s a free Disney onesie. We’ll just need your email address,’” Gill recalls. “It weirded me out. I just gave birth, please lay off with the Disney already!”

Disney is unlikely to lay off anytime soon, and neither are the countless other brands in need of dollars. They’re part of a trend—fueled in part by the growth of digital devices—toward aggressively targeting a demographic that didn’t exist, in marketers’ eyes, until recently: infants to 3-year-olds. By getting their logos and iconic characters in front of babies—even those with still-blurry eyesight—they hope to establish brand-name preference before she or he has uttered a word…

Dan Acuff, a former marketing consultant to Hasbro, Mattel, Nestlé, and others. “Babies don’t distinguish between reality and fantasy, so they think, ‘Let’s get them while they’re susceptible.’”

Which brings us back to movies. As I’ve written before, it’s no fun picking on loveable cartoon characters. Everyone, including me, adores Nemo and the Lion King and Ratatouille, all great films. But let’s face it: these movies are also the first step in a mass marketing machine. When girl characters are left out or given limited roles (see Reel Girl’s gallery of 2011 movies ) both genders learn repeatedly that boys are more important and can do many more things than girls can. And as marketer Dan Acuff implies above, fantasy creates reality.

Reel Girl is now on Facebook. Click here to join.

Kidsmovies.com responds to ReelGirl

Posted on by
Reply

Thank you to Violette DeSantis of kidsmovies.com for her thoughtful email to ReelGirl. Here it is:

Hi, thanks for the KidsMovies.com mention. Actually I’m the content editor for that site and a mom of three girls by the way (a couple that like dressing up in frilly dresses and fighting with swords and another who is an xtreme sport fan and shops in the boys/men section for clothes because girl clothes have no pockets and are too pink or frilly – or not modest enough for her). I also used to be site editor at the daughters site on BellaOnline.com, one of the top internet sites for women. I’ve written movie reviews previously published at BellaOnline.com and soon to be republished at KidsMovies.com discussing great girl movies, and probably most of them were not best sellers or mainstream, but they are out there.

I see no point in being politically correct or incorrect in choosing movie covers based on the sex of the characters. Those images were chosen because they are favorite movies of my daughters and because girls enjoy these movies as much as boys EVEN if someone didn’t take the time to portray the leads as girls. No thought was given to the particular sex of any of the characters in these top movies or attempt to balance the scales. In honesty, movies were chosen based on an Amazon search of kids movies (probably best sellers come first in the search) and my kids and I picked the ones we’ve enjoyed over the last few years (remember we are all female). However this is a temporary theme and header so maybe some consideration will be given in the future when we’re ready to revamp the image better to suit the theme.

For the record we didn’t intentionally link to your article, your title must have shown up as part of a news feed. In reviewing that article though, I must point out that about half of these stories are traditional story book classics, spin offs of TV classics, or attempts at another sequel of a popular movie. Some of these classics have been favorites of all genders for many years. Hollywood wants to go with what it knows will sell. For the record though, our intent at KidsMovies.com is to cover kids entertainment whether mainstream or not, including special movies you should share with your daughters or your sons.

Thanks again for your mention and thoughtful article.

My reply:

Hi Violette,

Thanks for your email. It would be great if you did give some thought to the gender of the characters. I think the omission of girls is often unintentional and that’s part of the problem. It’s so ubiquitous and accepted as normal. Thank you so much for considering more diversity in another header.

I know kidsmovies.com didn’t intentionally link either, that it was just a Googlesnews feed which it looks like kidsmovies.com just took down? Too bad, I liked it.

I posted about the problem you refer to of Hollywood’s derivative movies and series recycling the same stereotypes for each generation anew. Also, I get that its about making money, specifically for the men who run these studios. We, the audience, want movies about girls that are cool and exciting. We will pay our $10 for that.

Please let me know when you post the reviews/ discussion of great girl movies. I will do a link.

Thank you for visiting ReelGirl.

Margot

Champ or Vamp?

Posted on by
2

Are women athletes celebrated more for what they can do or for how they look? Here’s a photo of Winter Olympics 2010 silver medal winner in Ladies Super Combined, Julia Mancuso. Have women athletes made any progress winning endorsements, acclaim, recognition, and money for their skill rather than their appearance? Here’s something I wrote about Summer Olympics 2000 and the state of female athletes that was reprinted in a bunch of papers. Tell me what you think about how we’re doing now.

SAN FRANCISCO — In the photo she’s wearing a tight two-piece suit. Legs parted, head thrown back, eyes closed, she smiles.

The woman is not a Playmate of the Month but Olympic high jumper Amy Acuff in Esquire magazine’s cover story/pictorial entitled “America’s Ten Sexiest Athletes.” But on closer examination, Amy is not lying down; she is jumping.

A perusal of recent issues of men’s magazines reveals the latest sex symbol is the female athlete.

Sports Illustrated features Olympic swimmer Jenny Thompson topless with her hands covering her breasts. And Gear has a photo of the Australian women’s soccer team, all players completely naked with their arms and legs placed strategically.

It’s no coincidence that this fascination with women athletes as soft-core porn stars comes right as women are making enormous strides in achieving parity with men in the Olympics. One step forward, two long jumps back.

At the 2000 Summer Games in Sydney, more women will compete in more sports with more media coverage than ever before. With 4,400 participants, women will represent a record 42 percent of the competitors. Most exciting, women will be competing in what were once exclusively male domains. New categories for women include weightlifting, pole vaulting, water polo, tae kwon do and the triathlon.

But the slew of wet T-shirt pictorials reveals a powerful cultural bias. The American public is still uncomfortable seeing women as successful athletes and celebrating them for embodying the qualities that athletes possess. Magazines like Maxim are undermining hard-won progress by reducing all female competition to just another beauty contest.

Athletes are valued for what their bodies can do, not how they look.

Athletes are competitive, ambitious and they know how to win, but those attributes just aren’t ladylike. Photographing sports superstars in lace panties and sheer camisoles keeps them safely inside the parameters of womanhood.

While girls learn early on they will be judged for their looks, boys learn that athleticism equals attractiveness. Ever since high school, the jocks were the big men on campus, a guy’s skill made him hot and the best player sealed his status by getting the prettiest girl.

The grown-up world isn’t much better. Male athletes are worshipped for their achievements. Joe DiMaggio won Marilyn Monroe, and that wasn’t because he looked good in his uniform.

For women, athletic skill doesn’t equal desirability. In a capitalist world, the girl with the most money wins. Blond and buxom tennis star Anna Kournikova makes $11 million to $15 million in endorsements, though she has never won a professional tournament. Her earnings equal those of Martina Hingis, who has earned her money by winning 26 career titles, and are much more than 43-time winner Monica Seles’ $7.5 million or defending U.S. Open champ Serena Williams’ $6 million.

Even a pretty female player isn’t valued like a male player. Tiger Woods gets $47 million; Michael Jordan, $40 million, and 70-year-old Arnold Palmer makes $19 million.

The excuse is that men make big money because their sports make more money from television contracts, but it’s all a vicious circle. When women aren’t valued for their skills, aren’t trained properly and aren’t celebrated the way male athletes are, they’re at a severe disadvantage.

While many call this just bad luck, the law calls it illegal. More than 20 years ago, Title IX, which demanded gender equity in sports funding, began to be enforced. A generation of women growing up under it is a major reason why female athletes have been able to make the advances they have.

Even with this law, females make up only one third of interscholastic and intercollegiate athletes.

Summer 2000’s gold medal favorite, Stacy Dragila, was once told women don’t have the upper body strength to pole vault. Today, pole vaulting is the most popular new women’s event, with Dragila holding the world record.

For reaching that record last summer, Dragila got only half the $60,000 prize money that men get for the same competition. But, she was able to generate more income and media coverage for her sport by posing with other track and field women for a sexy calendar.

Athletics should be the one place where there truly is a meritocracy, where women are rewarded for how high they can jump, how fast they can run or how much they can lift. But once again, the rules are different for women.

This summer, along with their shotputs and discuses, female Olympic competitors will need lipstick, good lighting and lingerie if they want to get the gold.

Supergirl PJs from Target ***GGG***

Posted on by
Reply

I got my kids Superman pajamas at Target a couple years ago; they still fit. We call them Supergirl PJs (though I guess they should be referred to as Superwomen– is there a Superboy?) The PJs have the Superman crest on the front, which lights up, and mesh red capes which attach with velcro. The girls transform when they put these PJs on; they start leaping and high kicking. Last night, three year Alice said to her dad, “Now I will defeat you and then you will work for me!” Then she leaped off the couch onto his back and said, “See, I can fly when I have the cape!”

Watching how my kids act wearing these outfits reminds me again how important it is to get girls out of their “pretty” dresses. Alice is a great hiker, but when she wears her flowing princess stuff to the park, she can’t climb or run, she trips and falls, losing her confidence, then whining. Wardrobe choices are subtle– and not so subtle– early training for what kinds of actions the kids get comfortable with, and if they mainly experience their bodies as something pretty to look or something that can do cool stuff. That’s why all the toys where girls get trained to dress dolls– paper dolls, plastic dolls, sticker dolls, magnetic dolls– drive me crazy.

Beacuse these are PJs, only worn around the family at night, the girls wear them happily without their usual self-consiousness about other kids possibly seeing them and making fun of them for being in “boy stuff.”