For anyone not yet acquainted with the Michelle Obama Watch blog, today is probably as good day as ever to stop by for links to all things Michelle. And for MOW founder Gina’s blow by blow from the floor of the convention, go here.
Personally, I thought Michelle rocked the house last night. Seen any particularly interesting commentary or analysis out there? Feel free to post links in comments!
Ok, so my expectations for a week-long writing retreat were, dare I say, rather grand. The reality? I’m struggling. But trying to cultivate compassion and not harsh on myself too much.
The lesson here, I feel, is not so much be careful what you wish for, but be flexible. If one tactic for getting into what you’re working on doesn’t work, try another…right?
So today I’m working on a commentary that’s due, and that’s also connected to my chapter’s argument. Bird by bird, as dear ole Anne Lamott would say, bird by bird.
Anyone care to share their I-was-stuck-but-now-I’m-found writing story? I’m listenin’.
Image cred
A little bragging this evening on behalf of my newly minted husband, turned writer. Marco started a blog on Salon’s open network and they liked his debut post so much they posted it on the front page. It’s about Obama-Biden and the subtle art of political portraiture–and branding. Check it out while it’s frontpage news: www.salon.com.
Go M!
I’m so distracted I’m so distracted–this convention comes right in the middle of a week where I’ve sequestered myself at a writers’ retreat (blessed event!) and I’m having the DARNDEST time focusing. Fortunately, or unfortunately, perhaps, there’s wireless here.
Just as ya’ll helped immensely when I was at the outlining stage the other week, I turn to you, dear GWP readers, once again: Does anyone have any tips for avoiding checking convention coverage every 3 seconds? If you’ve got em, I’d love to hear them.
Check out this new video message from Obama and Biden, and Marco’s post over at Open Salon on their visual message from a graphic design perspective. Their ties look great together. But seriously, I’m so jazzed that we’ve got a ticket now and can take off running. I just hope Biden can go on the offensive the way the McCain camp is doing….
Yes, Happy Convention Day! As Allison Stevens reports, this year women are running much of the show and helping craft the script.
A quick reminder for those of you lucky enough to be in Denver this week:
The Women’s Media Center and The White House Project will both be reporting on the latest from the DNC–where together they are hosting a panel, Soundbites to Solutions: Bias Punditry and the Press in The 2008 Election, along with The Maynard Institute for Journalism Education. Panelists include:
* Jonathan Alter, Senior Editor, Newsweek
* Michele Martin, Host, “Tell Me More” on NPR
* Maria Teresa Petersen, Founding Executive Director, Voto Latino and Commentator for MSNBC (and a fellow PWVer)
* Jamal Simmons, Political Analyst, CNN
* Rebecca Traister, Senior Writer, Salon.com
At the panel, they’ll be releasing an accompanying report (authored by yours truly!) called BIAS, PUNDITRY, AND THE PRESS: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE?
Report available to public today too–I’ll be sure to post info when it’s up. Registration for the event required at www.seachangecom.
More women-focused DNC events posted here and here.
And hey–if you’re reading this from Denver and would like to post something about the events you attend here on GWP telling us about it, please email me at girlwpen@gmail.com.
Anytime Jean Kilbourne has a new book out, I pay attention. And last week, I came upon her latest while hunting for that new ProBlogger book at B&N. Kilbourne’s latest is called So Sexy, So Soon: The New Sexualized Childhood and What Parents Can Do to Protect Their Kids, and it’s coauthored with education professor Diane Levin.
I was waiting for someone to come out with this book. Like The Lolita Effect: The Media Sexualization of Young Girls and What We Can Do About It (note the similarity of the subtitles), the authors accuse the media of sexualizing children. No surprise there. But what does sound surprising is the extremity of the anecdotes. Here’s from the Publishers Weekly review:
Constantly, American children are exposed to a barrage of sexual images in television, movies, music and the Internet. They are taught young that buying certain clothes, consuming brand-name soft drinks and owning the right possessions will make them sexy and cool—and being sexy and cool is the most important thing. Young men and women are spoon-fed images that equate sex with violence, paint women as sexually subservient to men and encourage hooking up rather than meaningful connections. The result is that kids are having sex younger and with more partners than ever before. Eating disorders and body image issues are common as early as grade school. Levin and Kilbourne stress that there is nothing wrong with a young person’s natural sexual awakening, but it is wrong to allow a young person’s sexuality to be hijacked by corporations who want them as customers. The authors offer advice on how parents can limit children’s exposure to commercialized sex, and how parents can engage kids in constructive, age-appropriate conversation about sex and the media. One need only read the authors’ anecdotes to see why this book is relevant.
Any of you parents–or girls studies experts–out there got your own advice on dealing with this phenomenon? Inquiring minds are eager to know.
So check out the new widget (scroll down, right) from the Women’s Media Center! Shiny, no?
Among today’s tidbits from the widget, health research with a twist of gender:
Men, Women and Speed. 2 Words: Got Testosterone?
8/21/08
NY Times: Researchers say there is no one physiological reason for the gender gap in sports, although there is a common biological thread. Testosterone gives men what he calls a bigger and better-fueled engine.
Positive Thinkers ‘Avoid Cancer’
8/22/08
BBC: Women who have a positive outlook may decrease their chances of developing breast cancer, say Israeli researchers. The small study, published in the BioMed Central journal, also found that getting divorced, or being bereaved could increase the risk. But the researchers admitted that women were questioned after their diagnosis, which might significantly change their outlook on life.
Wait. Stop. Rewind. HUH??
A few days ago, Roy Den Hollander, a lawyer who has filed a series of misogynist lawsuits, came out with this gem: he has filed an antifeminist suit against Columbia University for offering women’s studies classes, arguing that Columbia uses federal funding to support a “religionist belief system called feminism.†Now, part of me would like to dismiss this as the silly lawsuit it is, but sometimes such trivial things are important for us to reexamine the larger issues at stake.
As an undergraduate at Columbia, the debate on women’s studies and on adding women writers to such classes as Literature Humanities (the great literary works from Homer to Woolf– one of two female authors in the series) and Contemporary Civilization (the great philosophers– from Plato to, well, Woolf once again, this time the only female writer), reared its head from time to time. In navel-gazing online college forums, such as Columbia’s The Bwog, where commenters are anonymous and misogynist remarks rampant, the debate ran along these lines: someone starts off with a misogynist remark, someone asks why there aren’t men’s studies if there are women’s studies, someone else points out that the past two thousand years were “men’s studies,” someone else ignores this somewhat cogent remark to take the opportunity to make a few jokes about “boobs” and other funny female body parts, and someone else rounds it off by saying that it is all moot as humanities majors are generally wasting their money on unemployable skills.
High-minded stuff, for sure. The point being that even those who try to get past the boob jokes are unable to articulate the purpose of women’s studies beyond a call for balance. Which makes me think maybe the trivial isn’t so trivial. Maybe it’s time to rearticulate some of the values of women’s studies. But more importantly, perhaps it’s also time to make a wholesale change over to Gender Studies, which would undermine the whole of the lawyer’s invidious accusations. Because in the end, with courses not only called “Feminist Texts” but “Gender, Culture, and Human Rights,” and “Sexuality and the Law,” and an institute called the Institute for Research on Women and Gender (IRWAG), that’s what we, and Columbia, are really talking about.
Gender studies is very much the evolution of groundwork laid out by Women’s Studies. While we now recognize that inquiring into women’s role in society is imperative for an understanding of power dynamics and social relationships, we also recognize that it is just as important to understand how definitions of masculinity may shape men’s approach to women, each other, and themselves. Even more so, we see that there is difference within difference: that seeing the world from a gay male perspective overturns traditional notions of maleness. The theory behind women’s and gender studies goes further to a better understanding of class and race. We are no longer shackled with a simplistic grouping of “working class” as a faceless mass of singular experience, recognizing that women’s and men’s roles differ significantly within that group. We recognize that citizenship may also be defined along gendered lines (historically, women give their reproductive systems and males their lives to the state–but how does that definition change now that women are also on the battlefield?)
The intersection of race and class helps us to understand that women are not one “sisterhood” of victimhood throughout history, that women are actors in the past and today–both the perpetrators and the perpetrated–divided along lines of racial, ethnic, economic, sexual differences. Even at the seemingly strict dichotomous line of “body,” we can overturn a male/female divide by recognizing that women have experienced their bodies differently throughout history: those who have reproduced, those who haven’t, those who have undergone forced sterilization, and so on.
Ok, but enough of Gender Studies 101. What’s the practical application? Well, a little thinking about gender might lead you to question a few things. For instance: Single sex public education, Gender testing at the Olympics, The effect of birth control pills on your love life, and to bring us full circle: Diversity in academia.
But maybe I’m jumping the gun of the whole Gender Studies thing. Is there still a place for “Women’s Studies” (single gender) in today’s colleges?
–Kristen
For all you first-time authors out there, I just came upon a very cool find. The Debutante Ball is a group blog for debut authors (looks like almost exclusively women). They offer “takes on weekly bookish and not-so-bookish topics” and invite readers to “watch our collective sanity crumble as our debuts approach.” Man, I know the feeling.
Thought I’d share some links from their blogroll, as they list a number of other group blogs about books that GWP readers may find of interest:
And speaking of group blogs, I just heard a new term to describe them: “grog.” I don’t think I like. Sounds too much like “frog”, or a drink you swig at an Irish bar, no? I think I’ll stick with “group blog” when referring to the future incarnation of GWP. Unless anyone else has a suggestion? I’m open!
