Yearly Archives: 2011

Joe Paterno’s retirement statement is offensive. Fire him now.

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Joe Paterno’s retirement statement blows me away.

“I have come to work every day for the last 61 years with one clear goal in mind: To serve the best interests of this university and the young men who have been entrusted to my care.”

Does that include sitting by while they’re being molested?

“At this moment the Board of Trustees should not spend a single minute discussing my status. They have far more important matters to address. I want to make this as easy for them as I possibly can.”

So he’s separating himself from the crime and acting like he’s being magnanimous in doing so.

“With the benefit of hindsight, I wish I had done more.”

A ten year old was raped in the shower. What does he know now that he didn’t know then except that he’d be exposed for his negligence?

“My goals now are to keep my commitments to my players and staff and finish the season with dignity and determination. And then I will spend the rest of my life doing everything I can to help this University.”

So he’s going to show up on the sidelines keeping his commitments? What about the dignity of all those boys who were molested? Clearly, still, all Paterno is doing is thinking about himself and the reputation of the University. This is the kind of twisted thinking that allows sex abuse to go on.

You don’t look the other way when sexual molestation is happening. As long as people in power– respected leaders, “father” figures — continue to do so, whether they are in religious institutions, universities, or governments, kids will continue to be abused at the high rates they are. Who is going to protect them? Not the molester, obviously. Sane adults need to step in, but Joe Paterno acted more like a passive spectator to a crime.

Technically, Paterno did nothing illegal. In 2002, when Paterno’s heir apparent, Jerry Sandusky, was seen raping a ten year old boy in a shower, the eyewitness reported the incident to Paterno. Paterno told the Athletic Director and did nothing more when Sandusky was allowed to stay on.

Joe Paterno is Penn State. There is no one in that institution revered more than he. Paterno let Sandusky stick around to molest more kids. Sandusky is being charged with molesting eight boys from 1994 – 2009. There are probably many more.

How could fans show up at a game on Saturday and cheer on Paterno’s team? How could Penn State allow him to stay on through the season? What message does that send to those boys who Paterno failed to protect? And when the season is over, then and only then, the 84 year old is ‘retiring’? Penn State should do the right thing and fire Paterno now.

My husband killed a mouse and that’s why I love him

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It happened last night. The battle was long and fierce, and I feel sorry for the mouse. But mostly, I’m glad it’s dead.

I blogged a couple weeks ago about how this mouse ran past me early morning while I was trying to meditate. I just saw a dark blur, but I was completely freaked out. Of course, as I wrote, if I were a good Buddhist, not only would the mouse not disrupt my meditation, but I’d never wish it dead. Buddhists don’t even kill mosquitoes. But instead I screamed for my husband. So then there’s also the issue that I’m a feminist. If anyone is going to kill the mouse, it should be me, right?

But the great thing about my husband is that while I sit there intellectualizing in angsty moral dilemmas, he does things. He goes out and buys traps and sets them. For days the traps went off, the bait eaten, but no mouse was caught. Then last night my husband leaped out of bed and I heard SMACK SMACK SMACK. Silence and then several more smacks. A few minutes later, my husband came back upstairs, and got back in bed. “Who won?” I asked.

“I did,” he said.

He told me it was the biggest mouse he’d ever seen, so big he thought it was a rat. That was why it didn’t get stuck in the trap. “Mysteries were explained,” he said, “once I saw its size. It all makes sense now.”

He told me the mouse was flapping around with the trap stuck to its tail so he swatted it with the broom. But when he got the broom out of the closet, the mouse flapped into the closet. When he smacked at it, the mouse ran past him and down the stairs. Those were the mouse’s last steps.

This morning, while I was meditating, I felt so calm, not freaked out about the mouse coming. I felt so grateful to my husband for getting rid of it. I felt happy to be married and to have a husband who would get up in the middle of the night to go after a mouse.

Several years ago, I read an anthology that I loved called The Bitch in the House. The editor, Cathi Hanauer, wrote about her husband, then boyfriend, who refused to come over to her house when she wanted him to come kill a mouse. (I think it was a mouse, it may have been some other scary invader like an enormous spider.) Basically her future husband, who I believe is Daniel Jones, the editor if the New York Times “Modern Love” column, told her that he respected her enough to know she could take care of herself.

I completely understand that way of thinking. I do. But I am so happy my husband doesn’t practice it. My husband is never going to get in a discussion with me, if he can help it, about gender roles and mouse killing. My husband doesn’t use words like “heteronormative” or “ocularcentric.” He didn’t study feminist theory in school. He just gets it.

On our first official date, we went to a cafe with a huge magazine rack. I showed him a piece in Bust Magazine about a movement I’d started to make the word “pussy” a compliment instead of an insult. He was one of the first people who just understood what I was saying without me explaining it to him. He didn’t even think it was weird.

This from a guy who in so many ways is such a boy. He won’t walk by a dog on the street without talking to it. He can’t let a ball go by him without sticking out his arm and catching it. He’s a jock. He played sports at college level. He plays drums. He works outside. He builds stuff, paints our house, fixes things, and drives a truck. But still, he gets it. How did he get to be that way?

I think it’s his mom. She’s incredibly smart– she was a double math/ English major at UC Berkeley. When my husband’s father died, she raised seven kids on her own. She became a successful businesswoman and supported her family. Not only that, she’s an amazing cook. She bakes the best chocolate cake I’ve ever tasted. She also taught her son to open doors for the ladies. He always calls me Beautiful like it’s my name. Thank you mother-in-law.

Maybe social media is good

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I wasn’t sure what the point was. I’m 42 years old.  I didn’t get Facebook. Why would I want people to know what I’m doing all the time? It seemed like an invasion of privacy. I used to get paid for writing. Now everyone is an opinion writer and most people do it for free. I resented that.

I started blogging when someone asked me for help starting a blog. She asked me for advice because I’m an opinion writer, but I knew nothing about blogging. So I started a blog to learn how to do it to see if I could give her some tips. Immediately, I found blogging gratifying. You feel like you have something to say, you say it, and then you put it out to the world. It’s easy, its free, and anyone can do it. No pitching editors. The gatekeepers are gone. That’s pretty cool in some ways. It solves the issue that is frustrating to so many writers as far as distribution. You need to communicate to someone. Even if no one reads what you wrote, putting it out there is key.

Of course, that has a negative side. Blogging can be messy, sloppy, spontaneous. I used to have editors. And the commenters, don’t get me started. Anonymity breeds thoughtlessness. Especially, it seems, when unnamed commenters respond to women who blog.

But everyone is writing now, and that’s good. Instead of making a phone call, people send emails or texts. And again, the negative side is people may be communicating less directly, hiding behind technology. But it is kind of cool that everyone is writing– on Facebook, Twitter etc. Also, I find Twitter and FB develop some writing skills. You have to be so economical with your words. That’s a useful practice for any writer.

Then there’s the whole ChapStick experience. ChapStick took down its sexist ad because of the power of social media. If not for social media, that ad would be everywhere right now. Social media got JCPenney to stop selling in sexist T shirt. FB and Twitter facilitate political and social movements from the revolution in Egypt to Occupy. Bank of America and Wells Fargo got rid of their new, ridiculous fees in part because customers used social media to express mass distaste. As with Netflix. Consumers have more power so big business has less.

Now I like Facebook. I love keeping in touch with my friends and relatives, seeing photos and getting updates. It’s also great to use FB to connect with people who care about the same issues that I do.

I still need to make some money though.

What do you think? Has social media improved your life? Do you feel more connected or more isolated? Does it make the world a better place?

Post Halloween bliss

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This morning my five year old went to her food shelf, got out her plastic pumpkin tub of candy, ate half a Crunch bar, and then asked for a bowl of Cheerios.

I’ve posted on Reel Girl quite a bit about how I let my kids eat what they want, when they want, and however much they want.

They love getting dressed up for Halloween and they love the idea of getting candy, but the actual candy is no big deal. Every year, the “day after,” I am eternally grateful to be free of the fights and power struggles that can accompany Halloween candy.

Read more about how I feed my kids here.

No Comment! A Commentary on the ChapStick Story, guest post by Melissa Spiers

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I have news for anyone with his or her cursor poised over the “Comment” button right now: I will not read whatever it is you are about to say.  Nor will pretty much anyone else, except for those who want to argue over your personal qualities, mental deficiencies, and general unfitness to inhabit the world.

Recently I wrote a guest post for Reel Girl regarding an ad for ChapStick.  To my great surprise the post spawned a petition and a Facebook page, getting nearly 15,000 hits and coverage by Forbes, AdWeek, BusinessInsider, Jezebel, the Wall Street Journal and a lot of other media outlets.

That was all very unexpected and delightful.  On the predictable side, however, were the comments that followed each piece of media coverage.  It actually didn’t even occur to me to read the comments, since I’ve never seen any that were particularly thoughtful.  But a wildly successful blogger friend was horrified to learn I had not scrutinized them.

“What for?”  I muttered.

“To make sure none of the threats are real!”

“What?”

“The threats!  You have to check – always! – for stalkers and serious threats among all the garden-variety haters.” Wow.  OK.

I checked the comments for “real” haters but only found the usual: an inordinate amount of time wasted telling me I had wasted my time. And of course the typical snipes leveled at any woman writer:  you are an ugly, jealous, whining lesbian-troll-feminist, with no sense of humor, who hates men and sex.  (Oh, dahlings, how we sit around in our super-sized G-7XL Summit of Sexism Whining and laugh at these comments – mirthlessly – as we secretly run the world while scarfing bonbons and torching effigies of skinny, beautiful women that consume us with jealousy and/or lust!)

But I digress.  Back in the age of print periodicals, people turned eagerly to the “letters to the editor” or the Op-Ed page for concise, thoughtful (and sometimes scathing) commentary on the previous day’s articles. The writer’s comments were always associated with their name, and usually their town, and were chosen carefully by the paper’s editorial team.  This system served two purposes: first, if you said something incredibly stupid or nasty your grandmother (and others) would smack you upside the head in church the next week.  Second, and more important for the community (as important as a communal head-whacking for stupidity might be), it also guaranteed some level of reflection and editorial thought.  In the old system at least someone along the way had thought through a particular comment before it was available to others.

Online, anyone with the intellectual wherewithal to choose a pithy, identity-concealing handle like “ShutUpDumbDyke” can let fly with the first thought that scampers onto their cerebral center stage.  Unless they are engaged in a tough round of Pictionary or Charades, however, this is generally not a wise intellectual move.  It just leads to an emotional one-upmanship game of Typing Tourette’s.

There is of course no editorial staff censoring bloggers, either, as an astute commenter is bound to point out here.  But most often bloggers are putting themselves out there – not hiding behind anonymous monikers – and they are (mostly) aiming to say something.  Perhaps there is a blog somewhere consisting endlessly of “Don’t you have a life? You have no clue.  Find something that matters, you lazy sack of babble.”  But where would its readership be?  To be worth reading- to be worth wasting time writing – a thought needs to have a point.

It’s obvious that grandma’s sage advice “if you don’t have anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all” has had its day: we, as a society, will never pass that way again. Even Wikipedia’s definition of critical thinking seems hopelessly highbrow and out-of-date when contemplating today’s graceless online commentary smackdowns.  Alas, today’s forums – for better or worse – allow for all critical, no thinking.  But perhaps it’s not too late for another simple, old adage: think before you speak.

So go forth and comment passionately, wildly, sarcastically, amusingly – whatever moves your meter – but please have something to say that advances the dialogue.  And by all means refrain from getting into a fight with the next commenter, because his reply will always be that you’re a pigeon-toed idiot with bad breath and no education.

What’s your daughter thinking when she’s reading those fairy tales?

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My older sister, Kim, a voracious reader and great artist even as a tiny kid, made this Make-a-Plate when she was about ten years old. Kim was obsessed with fairy tales. She owned every color of Andrew Lang’s fairy books and also the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen. I wasn’t as big a fan– the middle of three sisters, it pissed me off that all the exciting adventures usually happened to the youngest or oldest girl. Though regardless of birth order, most female characters don’t fare too well is this genre. A girl in a fairy tale is likely to end up one of two ways: married off or murdered. Sometimes both.

I think this particular plate– one of a series– was inspired by Blue Beard. It’s fascinating to me how much care Kim took to represent ethnic diversity in these women. Also, their faces are so animated, even though they’re dead.

I was impressed but grossed out and disturbed when Kim drew this. She wanted to know which one I thought was the prettiest.

Does new ad show model ‘wearing nothing but her ChapStick’?

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Did the marketing team at Pfizer come up with this one too?

After ChapStick took down its ass ad, the company’s FB page read: “We’ve removed the image and will share a newer ad with our fans soon!”

Nine to Five from Australia reports:

ChapStick Australia has announced reigning Australia’s Next Top Model winner Amanda Ware as the new face of its 2011 campaign.

Amanda will feature in a series of cheeky adverts, wearing nothing but her ChapStick – inspired by the brand’s new tag line Never let your lips go naked.

Cheeky adverts? Really?

Maybe ChapStick is trying to change its image, no longer highlighting athletes like Picabo Street, Dorothy Hamill, and Suzy Chaffee, opting instead to showcase female body parts. That would be a weird tactic, because I thought the ass ad was supposed to have nothing to do with sexualizing women, it’s just a girl who’s lost her ChapStick, after all.

I have no idea if naked women ads are really in the works (the link is dated June 3, 2011) but I’d be bummed to see them.

Here’s another link that sounds like a Playboy press release: Amanda Ware to bare it all for ChapStick  at www.sassybella.com. The post reads:

Not known for their celebrity endorsements, Chapstick experienced a bit of a revival when Katy Perry sung about a “cherry Chapstick” in her debut hit ‘I Kissed A Girl’. The first ChapStick was invented in the early 1880s, making it one of the oldest beauty brands still around today with a comprehensive range of lip balms and glosses that covers the classics, shimmers and flavoured options.

So maybe the new campaign strategies represent Pfizer’s desire to reach a new generation of consumers, capitalizing on Katy Perry fans who don’t know ChapStick is known for previous celebrity endorsements? It would be so much cooler to just show the woman lifting the couch and finding the tube there.

Feminists are ugly, stupid, and have no sense of humor

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Lots of feedback about the ChapStick story. Here are a couple classics.

“I have to agree, the person who is complaining about this add has to be totally out of her mind or she is jealous of the fact she doesnt look as good. Just more bullshit from some frustrated lesbian who wants to strip away any feminine attributes for some one who looks more like some dog from mars.”

And another:

“1.) I think the ad is actually in some way calling to the reader to focus on “maybe it’s up her butt” which is hilarious.
2.) Girls work hard to make their bodies sexy, and in the recent 2 decades, a great deal of effort has been put on the butt. Since girls similar to the one pictured in the ad are the target demographic (segment) for this ad, it’s genius.
3.) If you think this is offensive, then get a life”

Besides hundreds of emails attacking Melissa Spiers, who wrote the post on Reel Girl, or me, the issue goes beyond the ad, which everyone is free to have her own opinion about. Or not. ChapStick wrote publicly it wanted its customers to “be heard” and then deleted their comments; then finally apologized to those customers who “felt like” they were being deleted. See Why Chapstick’s bad PR policy matters.

We actually think the Butt seriously, Chapstick Facebook page is pretty funny. But I guess that’s because we’re the perverts.