I’m getting ready to live blog today’s conference, From Soundbites to Solutions: Bias, Punditry, and the Press in the 2008 Elections, jointly sponsored by the Women’s Media Center, The White House Project, and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. The crowd is gathering…Stay tuned!
Note: I’ll also be posting over at Majority Post.
Claire Mysko, who I know from her great work at Girls Inc, is about to release her first book, which is quite adorably called You’re Amazing: A No-Pressure Guide to Being Your Best Self. A bit of pre-publication buzz:
“A great tool to help tween girls prepare for and overcome school drama, friend drama, and even a bit of body drama!” –Nancy Redd, New York Times bestselling author of Body Drama
“It is both a revelation and a revolution!” –Courtney Macavinta, founder of RespectRx.com and co-author of Respect: A Girl’s Guide to Dealing When Your Line is Crossed
A bit of background: Throughout her teens Claire starved herself and binged and purged while devouring the picture-perfect fantasies in the pages of magazines. She got help and went on to be the director of the American Anorexia Bulimia Association. Along with model Magali Amadei, who became the first top model to tell her story on behalf of an eating disorders organization, Claire founded an educational program called Inside Beauty. For the last decade, the two have worked together to give girls and women a beauty reality check. And Claire has had quite an impact at Girls Inc of course as well.
And now, Claire’s got her own book. Claire Mysko, YOU’RE amazing. More about her oeuvre here.
While headlines continue to duke it out over whether pink is the new blue, the current issue of The Women’s Review of Books features “The Boys Against the Girls,” which reviews Playing with the Boys: Why Separate is Not Equal in Sports, by Eileen McDonagh and Laura Pappano and Equal Play: Title IX and Social Change, edited by Nancy Hogshead-Makar and Andrew Zimbalist. Worth checking out.
Veteran lesbian activists Del Martin, 87, and Phyllis Lyon, 83, whose 2004 wedding in San Francisco was invalidated by the California Supreme Court, were the first same-sex couple to legally marry there yesterday at 5 p.m. County clerks across the state must begin issuing licenses to same-sex couples this morning.
This here is a rather gorgeous picture of my friend/colleague Susan Marine, Director of the Women’s Center at Harvard, with her wife Karen. Hear Susan read from a beautiful essay about her quest for the white dress on NPR. (Note: scroll forward to about the last third of the show to hear Susan’s essay.)
For those of you here in NYC, join me tomorrow from 9am-12 for a stellar event, and one whose theme I will be touching on, actually, during campus talks this fall. The event: “From Soundbites to Solutions: Bias, Punditry, and the Press in the 2008 Elections.” Sponsored by the White House Project, the Women’s Media Center, and the Maynard Institute for Journalism Education, the event is free of charge, and open to the press and the public. But seating is limited. To register, click here.
For those of you nowhere near NYC, there’s a chance I may be live blogging part of it (wireless pending), so come back tomorrow for the scoop.
Ok, so I’m stepping up my blogging savvy this season and I’m taking you with me. I’ve started religiously reading ProBlogger for the latest in tips; I really like this guy’s approach.
So I’ve been resisting Twitter, but there’s an interesting post up over there on the importance of building an online network before you need it. Writes Darren Rowse, the ProBlogger guy:
When I began to interact on Twitter I had no plans to use it as a medium for book promotion – however when launch day came I had 6000 people just a 140 character message away.
Another example was recently using LinkedIn. I’ve never really found a way to use LinkedIn effectively before but have promoted my profile on it (in my blog’s footer) because I knew that there would come a time when it would be worthwhile having connections there. Last week it paid off as I used my network of 600 connections to get introductions to a number of key people that I’d have had no way to contact previously.
In both situations the network came before the need to use it.
Hmm…Check it all out and see what you think, here. ProBlogger dude also just came out with a book called, guess what, ProBlogger. I’ll let you know what I learn!
This just in, courtesy of the Women’s Media Center: Shaky Economic Times are Shakier for Women by Heidi Hartmann, director of the Institute for Women’s Policy Research.
A summary:
As politicians’ focus turns from the Primaries to the General Election, the economy has become the biggest issue for voters. Based on an Institute for Women’s Policy Research survey about Americans’ economic insecurities, there are differences between men and women, as Heidi Hartmann reports in the latest WMC Exclusive. Hartmann points out that women are especially concerned about Social Security, whatever their income level or minority status, and highlights that three primary facts drive women’s economic concerns. First, women have the children and generally rear them to adulthood. Second, women earn less than men. Third, women live longer than men. Hartmann concludes by saying that “women rely on Social Security. This election season, with economic issues becoming paramount, women would do well to find out which candidate-whether running for the White House or the Senate or House of Representatives-is most likely to sustain and strengthen the system that is so important to them.”
Check out this quickie in Dame about the advent of the male pill–an injection or patch once every 12 months that acts as an impermanent vasectomy. Writes Dame’s Jonathan Bender, “It’s about time science caught up to the changing gender roles.” More on the science of it here. Thoughts?!
While my own dadio was having brunch with my family in the Chicago burbs (without me – man I hate long distance father’s days), our man Obama was speaking on fatherhood at a Chicago church.
In honor of Father’s Day and dads across the land, do check out the latest on both The Daddying Movement and Reel Fathers. The latter is a collaboration between Allan Shedlin and Deborah Boldt, who are working toward the first annual REEL FATHERS Film Festival in Santa Fe on Fathers’ Day weekend 2009. How cool is that?
(Thank you, Suzanne, for the heads up!)
