So Dove has a new spot–which, sorry, I think is pretty great–called “Onslaught.” Broadsheet’s Catherine Price thinks it’s pretty nifty too:

The Dove ad team is at it again with this spot, set to a song called “Here It Comes” that starts with an innocent-looking young girl who is then subjected to an onslaught of images of models on bus stops, women binging and purging, plastic surgeries and TV commercials telling her to lose weight. The tag line? “Talk to your daughter before the beauty industry does” — followed by the suggestion to download Dove’s self-esteem kits. Yeah, yeah, yeah, it’s an attempt to recast skin and beauty products as “self-esteem boosters,” but I’ll admit it: I like Dove’s ads.

What do you think?

And speaking of beauty myths, Naomi Wolf is having a book party tonight to celebrate her new one (which just hit the New York Times bestseller list), The End of America: Letter to a Young Patriot Congrats, Naomi!

Meanwhile, the Woodhull Institute’s online trainings continue over at Dove’s Real Women, Real Success stories site. Our “Financial Literacy” units are now all live, and next week begins “Authentic Voice and Advocacy.” Spread the word!

If you’re a New Yorker reading Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America, you can’t help but relive those first few days. So my question while reading it so far is this: Where do we draw the line between private expression and public expectation, between personal, psychological response and national script?

I was among that “mob of idle Good Samaritans,” as Faludi calls it, who was turned away for blood donation. The profound sense of impotence after the towers fell — it wasn’t just a narrative script, it was a deeply felt emotion. (And the firefighters, as I don’t think Faludi would negate, were heroes. I was living below 14th Street at the time, and I’d burst into tears on my morning runs through the frozen zone when I’d see their white-dust-covered engines drive by. For weeks, you couldn’t walk past a fire station, invariably flanked by a make-shift memorial of candles and wreaths, without weeping. It’s just how it was.)

I was also one of those women who got engaged soon after 9/11 in part out of the carpe diem spirit that overcame both my partner and me. Did we take refuge in the domestic, or did we follow our hearts?

Six years later (and one husband down), I’m still not sure that I could write neutrally about 9/11. Faludi is one of my favorite cultural critics, and, as to be expected, she does it well. So I’m not sure if my lingering question comes as the question of someone who still feels too close, or if it’s a larger critique. I’ll let you know when I finish the book! For now, I’m feeling a little un-ironic. Then again, perhaps that’s exactly her point.

I love it when there are enough books by feminists hot on the popular radar that I have a hard time deciding which to think/write about first. I’m thinking of course of Faludi’s The Terror Dream, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich’s Well-Behaved Women Rarely Make History, and Katha Pollitt’s Learning to Drive and Other Stories. Since I’m still in the middle of them all, I’ll just point to an interesting convo that’s going on.

Over at TMPCafe Book Club, Garance Franke-Ruta, Jessica Valenti, Amanda Marcotte, Chris Hayes, and Todd Gitlin are collectively offering their takes on Katha’s book. Katha kicks it off with a post titled “When the Political Can’t Be Personal,” in which she expresses her surprise at some of the indignant, misogynist public response to her getting personal, particularly the New York Times review by Toni Bentley–which I agree was energetically negative and over the top.

But I remember Katha’s 1999 review, in the same venue, of three books from the 1990s that seemed to use an n of 1 to make sweeping and often misguided claims (what my sociologist friend calls “me-search”): Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty, Danielle Crittenden’s What Our Mothers Didn’t Tell Us, and Katie Roiphe’s Last Night in Paradise. Her review was titled “The Solipsisters” and began,

Surveying the recent spate of books about women, even the most dedicated feminist might find herself muttering, ”Be careful what you ask for, you might get it.” I’m thinking of the way ”the personal is political,” that watchword of 1970’s feminism, has morphed and mushroomed into something quite other than originally intended — indeed, almost the opposite.

Katha went on to take these young writers to task for assuming that “personal testimony, impressions and feelings are all you need to make a political argument.” I couldn’t agree more, and my distaste for these particular books (well, Shalit’s and Crittenden’s for sure) is and was strong. Katha also noted how some of the most influential texts of feminism (like The Second Sex and The Feminine Mystique) have actually been rather un-self-revealing.

So my question becomes, where and how do we draw the line? And what’s most effective in terms of affecting readers and changing minds?

I’m thinking my next book may have more of “me” mixed in with the commentary this time–but I’m wary. I’m going to a feminist salon later this month where the topic is “Writing in the First Person” and can’t wait to mull over the question with the pros.

Meanwhile, I loved Katha’s retort to Bentley:

[I]t is a strange experience to be accused of telling too much by the author of an ‘erotic memoir’ about sadomasochistic anal sex, in which she describes, among many other graphic details, saving her used condoms in a box. I’m no Freudian, but the concept of projection does come to mind.

HAHAHAHA!

Quit hit: Check out Rebecca Traister’s take on Susan Faludi’s new book, The Terror Dream. Ok, I want to read this book so badly, I’m going out to buy it. Right now. Watch, now the review copy (which hasn’t yet arrived) will be waiting for me when I get home. Either way, watch for more on it all here soon!

From the academic forefront come some very cool resources, of course, these days. In case you missed it(!), the Summer 2007 issue of the journal Feminist Studies focuses on Feminism and Mass Media. It includes an essay on the feminist cultural work of The Sopranos by my gal Lisa Johnson (“Gangster Feminism”). And on a very different subject–so different that I can’t even think of a way to link other than the fact that I admire all the authors–the University of Michigan Press is coming out this month with a book on everything you need to know about advancing academic women in science and engineering, Transforming Science and Engineering: Advancing Academic Women, wouldn’t you know. Take that, Larry Summers ole pal.

(So Marco and I were trying to figure out what a gasket was last night, so I looked it up and had to use it somehow in a post. A gasket, for the record, is a mechanical seal that fills the space between two objects, generally to prevent leakage between the two objects while under compression. You don’t want to “blow a gasket,” if you know what I mean.)

…to Clarence Thomas. Again. Don’t miss this.
Says Hill on the op-ed page of the New York Times, “I will not stand by silently and allow him, in his anger, to reinvent me.”

Meanwhile, check out these savvy responses on HuffPo–from Ann Friedman and Rachel Sklar–to that inane Times article about how Hillary cackles. Like a witch. Says Ann, “I’m betting that the next time a woman runs for president, her laugh won’t sound so strange.” Take that my pretty.

Three quick hits before I dash off to a Girls Write Now meeting tonight:

Camille Paglia sounds off on “the sisterhood myth” over at The Guardian, while six leading feminists sound off on the books that changed their lives.

Molly Bennett interviews feministing.com’s Jessica Valenti in The Nation.

And last weekend Smith College celebrated the 65th anniversary of its renowned Sophia Smith Collection with history, art, feminism and the vivid voices of women across decades. Headlining the festivities was “Voices of Feminism Oral History Project,” a four-year initiative highlighting the stories of women overlooked by the longstanding notion of feminism as a white, middle class movement. Happy anniversary, archives!

So tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the death of Rosaura “Rosie” Jiménez, the first known victim of the Hyde Amendment in the United States. And the amazing Gloria Feldt is going to be joining María Luisa Sánchez Fuentes (executive director of Grupo de Información en Reproducción Elegida) for a cross-border dialogue about the recent gains and losses in the reproductive rights movements in the United States and Mexico over at the Women’s Media Center. Check out what Gloria has to say about it all today on HuffPo.

Journalists welcome:
9:30-10:30 am EST
The Women’s Media Center
350 Fifth Avenue, Suite 901
New York, New York 10118
RSVP by email (kathy@womensmediacenter.com) or by calling the Women’s Media Center at (212) 563-0680. A call-in option is also available.

Let’s make this news.

For those not in the know, Halo 3, which launched in the U.S. on September 25th, is the latest in an extremely popular series of “first-person shooter” video games which are the cornerstone of Microsoft’s XBox 360 empire. Microsoft has declared Halo 3 to be “the biggest entertainment launch in history.” And just who exactly plunked down the bucks? Well, I haven’t yet found hard numbers, but there seem to be no surprises on the gender front — at least according to the amusing video below from online pop magazine JetSet, wherein an intrepid (and exasperated) girl reporter goes on the hunt for gamergrrls at a Halo launch event.

It’s quite likely you are sitting there thinking “Well, thank God there aren’t more young women wasting their days and brain cells on such violent, proto-jingoistic tripe.” Ah, BUT… as reported just a couple of weeks ago by The Economist and then by Jezebel, a study conducted by the University of Toronto demonstrated how women’s spatial acuity (i.e. spotting “unusual objects … in [one’s] field of vision,” etc.) is dramatically and permanently improved after playing ten hours of Medal of Honour: Pacific Assault. “Join us or DIE!” seems to be the subliminal message to women here; but doesn’t the market support other types of games, with all the benefits and none of the (virtual) bloodshed? After all, there may actually be more women gamers in the U.S. than men: according to an online survey conducted early last month by the J. Walter Thompson ad agency (JWT), out of over 1000 respondents 44% of women said they owned a gaming console vs. 39% of men. These include owners of Wii, a platform known for broadening the gaming market across genders and generations.

There are definitely popular alternatives to the first-person shooters: you can improve your physical dexterity with say, “Dance Dance Revolution” or “Guitar Hero.” And for those who still prefer a good fight there is the intriguing strategy game A Force More Powerful. An interactive teaching tool developed by The International Center on Nonviolent Conflict, it “simulates nonviolent struggles … against dictators, occupiers, colonizers, and corrupt regimes, as well as campaigns for political and human rights for minorities and women.” Now that frankly sounds kick-ass enough for most men and women I know.

Online Videos by Veoh.com

Re. the pic at the top of the post: in a bid to corner the homebound nerd market, SuicideGirls reveals Halo hunk Master Chief to be… the lovely “Alaina.” (Thanks to BoingBoing Gadgets).

Anita Hill is responsible for getting me my first job. Well, indirectly. I was first hired by the National Council for Research on Women in 1991 to write a report synthesizing current research on sexual harassment. And I’ll never forget standing on my chair at a fancy luncheon along with women state legislators at a CAWP-sponsored conference held the Hotel del Coronado in San Diego soon after the Clarence Thomas confirmation hearings were over. Anita Hill was the speaker, and as she made her entrance, the legislators, my boss, and I waved pink napkins high in the air and hooted and hollered like banshees. It was a highpoint of my early twenties.

Now, sixteen years later, Supreme Court Justice Thomas has a new book out, and over at the Women’s Media Center, Freada Kapor Klein responds. Klein, an expert in issues of sexual harassment and founder of the Level Playing Field Institute, argues that Thomas is still trying vindicate himself at Hill’s expense. She notes that every employee in the United States whose workplace has policies about a harassment-free environment owes a debt to Anita Hill, who had the courage to speak up about unfair treatment when her attempts to lodge a confidential complaint were denied.

I’ll swing a napkin to that.