I heard it at The F-Word, where Jess McCabe writes:

The Guardian is running a competition to edit the Women section of G2 for a week. The competition celebrates the women’s pages 50ths anniversary, and opened back in July (thanks Dollymix), but there are only a few short weeks to enter. If you’re interested, head over to the Guardian pronto to get the full story. You’ll need to pull together:

– Five ideas for articles that you would like to see featured on the women’s pages, outlining each of them in no more than two paragraphs
– 500 words explaining why you would like to be women’s editor and why you would be well suited to the role
– A one-page CV outlining any relevant experience

What an opportunity, huh?

I’m so pleased to start off the day with a guest post from Melinda Parrish, a 22-year old instructor in the English Department at the US Naval Academy. Melinda is based in the Writing Center. Here she is! -GWP

Wendy Shalit’s new book, Girls Gone Mild, is the second in her legacy of literature, which includes numerous articles and online publications that preach abstinence to young girls as the best way to reclaim their feminine identity from the hedonistic, post-sexual revolution culture that currently holds it hostage. She claims that, “the plain fact is that girls today have to be ‘bad’ to fit in, just as the baby boomers needed to be good. And we are finding that this new script may be more oppressive than the old one ever was.”

But, Wendy, by countering the sexual revolution with another sexual argument, are you not just perpetuating the cycle? Whether you’re pro-abstinence or, well, easy, aren’t you still allowing what happens to your “good girl” (wink) define the entire girl? Isn’t THAT the biggest threat to the feminine identity of a young girl in modern society?

It makes me furious to think since the dawn of time, women have been defined primarily by their sex lives. I concede that in recent decades the values table has flip-flopped because of the sexual revolution and some young women may feel pressure towards promiscuity for social acceptance. But I don’t regard Shalit’s counter-argument as an enlightened or relevant one because it leads us back to where the feminists of the late sixties and early seventies started. Aren’t we a sophisticated enough society to progress beyond this issue? Can’t we find SOMETHING to focus on that doesn’t reside between our thighs?

My plea to my fellow young women: stop making your vagina your defining characteristic! Don’t let someone pigeon-hole you as a Madonna or a whore, or allow your life’s happiness to rest solely on the success you achieve in bed; rather, devote your energy into developing your (other) physical, intellectual and artistic abilities to such a degree that your worth as a human being is undisputed, regardless of who you go to bed with!

(If you’re interested in more of Shalit’s work, check out her blog entitled, “Modestly Yours.”)

A quick announcement on behalf of my friend Lori, who is leading a juicy sounding monthly discussion group at the Barnard Center for Research on Women Courses this Fall.

CONSUMING PASSIONS: Pleasure & Politics in Women’s Memoirs, with Lori Rotskoff
Wednesdays, 9/26, 10/24, 11/28, 12/19, 1/23, 2/27, 3/26, 4/30, 6/4, 7:00 – 8:30 pm
BCRW, 101 Barnard Hall
Fee: $315

Here’s the description:

What are the passions, pleasures, and political commitments that fuel women’s lives? In this class, we will discuss memoirs by American women who have embarked on journeys of personal fulfillment, intellectual growth, or political activism from the 1920s to the present day.

And here’s more Lori:

Lori Rotskoff is a cultural historian of American family life. She holds a Ph.D. in American Studies from Yale University, and has written articles and reviews for the Chicago Tribune, Reviews in American History, and The Women’s Review of Books. This is her third year teaching at the Barnard Center for Research on Women.

For more information call 212-854-2067 or visit www.barnard.edu/bcrw

I’ve had a number of responses to my offer the other week and am delighted to post this week from an English prof at the Naval Academy and perhaps, in addition, a Duke historian. Stay tuned! (And if you’d like to participate as a Guest Scholar-Blogger, please take a look at the guidelines and then email me at deborahsiege AT gmail DOTCOM.)

To kick off the week, here are two nuggets on one of my latest favorite subjects: men.

By way of the Christian Science Monitor last week comes news of a push to bring dads into kids’ school lives. Around the country, many African-American men are embracing a national movement called the Million Father March that encourages people of all races, but particularly black men, to be active in children’s educational lives. Created four years ago, the Million Father March is sponsored by The Black Star Project, a Chicago group working to build strong students, encourage parental involvement, and improve life in African-American and Latino communities.

Meanwhile, back at home, married men do less housework than live-in boyfriends, finds an international survey. But married women do more housework than their live-in counterparts. “Marriage as an institution seems to have a traditionalizing effect on couples-even couples who see men and women as equal,” said co-researcher Shannon Davis, a sociologist at George Mason University in Virginia. For more on this, click here.

(Thanks to via the Council on Contemporary Families for the heads up.)

Welcome back from a deliciously long weekend!

While this author was busy blissing out in the country (thank you, Daph, Sacha, and Rena!), then in New Jersey (thanks, Schettinos!), then in Prospect Park, the New York Times ran two interesting articles on how industrious authors are using blogs and social networking to promote their books. Check out Kara Jasella’s informative article on the blog book tour (The Author Will Take Q’s Now) and Pagan Kennedy’s tongue-in-cheek back-page essay in yesterday’s Book Review on MySpace (A Space for Us). I’ve blog toured a bit and will be sharing more of what I’ve learned soon.

Oh – and Girl with Pen made the Chronicle of Higher Education last week, broadcasting (via Broadsheet of course) that study about the lack of women “Shouts and Murmur” authors in The New Yorker. (Thank you for alerting me, Steve!) Funny how people there all assumed that the scholar who did the count was female. He wasn’t.

These are my cousins, the Fisches. This is a pic from their canoe trip in the Boundary Waters (between Minnesota and Canada) this summer. Today, I am not fishing (nor fisching), but I am out in the country with my dear friend and collaborator Daphne. Wishin everyone a happy long weekend! I’ll be back on Monday. Til then, be good 🙂

Here it is, here. I’d like to note that the rest of the paragraph that ends with “shaving your legs” went like this, before it was cut AGAINST MY WISHES:

To Walker, “third wave” meant a feminism linked to her mother’s, but different. It meant continuing and improving upon the best that second-wave feminism had to offer – grassroots activism and critique of the media, for instance – but still shaving your legs. It meant embracing multiculturalism, contradiction, and, if that’s what grooved you, proudly sporting a thong. Soon after Walker’s rallying cry, author/activists Jennifer Baumgardner and Amy Richards published their book, ManifestA, which provided analysis and strategy for the young women now poised to carry the torch. This was a propitious moment.

Just sayin. I did not want them to end with “shaving your legs” when there was so much more substance to the graf.

I just discovered this amazing blog, Jewesses with Attitude. Judith Rosenbaum, Director of Education at the Jewish Women’s Archive, is a Jewess this Jewess would love to meet. Ok, Judith posted a lovely review over there, but that’s not the only reason I want to meet her. I swear. She sounds pretty amazing. Definitely check out the blog.

I think I just made a new friend. I’ve met (and adore) Alison Peipmeier, but Marco and I just met her blogging and real-life partner, Walter. They live in South Carolina. Walter, upon learning that Marco is a graphic designer, posed to him the artistic challenge of the century: “Hey, can you design a butthole [sic] out of the Confederate flag?”

The backstory (sorry, bad pun), straight outa Wikipedia is this:

Originally placed [on top of the South Carolina State House dome] in 1962….[c]urrent state law prohibits the flag’s removal from the State House grounds without additional legislation. Police were placed to guard the flag after several attempts by individuals to remove it….In 2005, two Western Carolina University researchers found that 74% of African-Americans polled favored removing the flag from the South Carolina State House altogether. The NAACP and other civil rights groups have attacked the flag’s continued presence at the state capitol. The NAACP maintains an official boycott of South Carolina, citing its continued display of the battle flag on its State House grounds, despite an initial agreement to call off the boycott after it was removed from the State House dome.

I heart Walter. Nuf said.