blogging life

This month’s guest post to The Man Files comes at us from Jonathan Felix — college student, drummer, sports fan, and astute social critic. In Jonathan’s words, “Me and my dad sarcastically laugh at the sequence of commercials during ‘guy’ shows on TV: beer, burgers, military. Beer, cars, televisions, military …” Here Jonathan takes on Carl’s Jr. ads asking why they portray guys as kind of stupid.

Masculine, Jr.

In true corporate marketing fashion, Carl’s Jr. depicts demoralizing stereotypes of men and women in efforts to attract consumers.

The fast-food chain’s current commercial shows a beautiful skinny blonde girl wearing make-up and a nice blue dress. She enters her boyfriend’s apartment expecting a classy night out, and finds him on the couch playing video games. The couple talks about a steak dinner, and the guy implies they are going to Carl’s Jr. for their new steak sandwich. The motto after the commercial is that Carl’s Jr. is “How guys do fancy.”

This is NOT how I do fancy.

Commercials like this give good guys a bad reputation. Hey Carl’s Jr. — Listen up! A lot of us actually have our lives together and enjoy taking women out to nice places and good dinners.

Or what about the ad with the guy and the avocado? It makes men look like total barbaric meatheads, who can’t even use a spoon to eat an avocado, and we somehow need Carl’s Jr. to make guacamole for us because we’re too stupid to figure it out.

Now I happen to like Carl’s Jr. But for them to portray guys as that lazy and ignorant is offensive. I can only hope my peers would agree that we have to do better than a #4 Combo if we plan on making good boyfriends and future husbands.

These commercials project a message to the world that men are lame and losers and unable to appreciate even the smallest bit of romantic effort. Far too often our society depicts “real” men as barbarians who love sports and beer and total sexual dominance. And although plenty of men have some of these traits, pop culture insists on exploiting our more obtuse characteristics to sell their products.

These ads completely ignore a man’s intellectual or emotional capabilities. This hurts men who actually have their lives somewhat together. It perpetuates negative stereotypes and affects women’s future opinions about men, be they Prince Charmings or Ronald McDonalds.

Show Jonathan some love and welcome him to Girl With Pen by posting your comments here. Or reach him directly at johnnylbeach at yahoo.com. Until next month! -Shira

This just in: the International Women’s Health Coalition just launched a blog called Akimbo about sexual and reproductive rights and health around the world.

They have a bunch of youth partners who are at the Commission on the Status of Women at the United Nations this week who will be blogging about their experiences there. Check out staff member Chelsea Ricker’s post, for instance, about the embarrassment of being a US-based activist.

The blog will be carrying input from feminist activists from around the world – including video interviews and posts by advocates from places like Nigeria, India, and Brazil.

A hearty welcome from this corner of the feminist blogosphere to new blog Akimbo! So very glad you’re here.

My fellow Progressive Women’s Voices-er, Deanna Zandt (also of WAM! fame) has some great posts up today on how–and why–to Twitter and tweet.  Definitely worth checking out.

We’ve been quiet over here today, I know.  I’ve been on deadline, but am now resurfacing.  I’m excited to bring you my new column over at Recessionwire.com: LOVE IN THE TIME OF LAYOFF: Take This Heart and Shove It. It’s a Valentine’s Day special in which I give my husband’s ex-employers a lil piece o’ my mind.

Have fun 🙂

And check out The Big Money tomorrow…I’ll see you there!

Writer’s block can strike any of us and at any time. Much has been written about this mysterious malady that haunts so many of the authorialy-inclined.  Less attention has been paid, however, to a similar equally serious condition that has originated with the advent of the internet age – blogger’s burnout.

This debilitating condition presents in a wide variety of ways; symptoms may include anything from navel-gazing posts to stagnant blog homepages to full-blown blog abandonment. This exhausting disease threatens the very existence of the blogosphere itself.  Luckily, many of the cures that have proven to be successful for writer’s block also apply to blogger’s burnout.  In this two-part series, we will explore strategies for avoiding and treating blogger’s burn-out.

Make a Routine, Break a Routine

Having a blogging routine has its benefits – you will blog regularly, meet deadlines, be accountable to your readers, etc.  On a daily/weekly/monthly basis, you commit headspace to blogging.  You sit down and get to it.  You get your blogging done.

But when you start dreading the quality time you’ve devoted to your blog?  Houston, you’ve got a problem!  Nothing is more tiresome – or more likely to inspire procrastination – than a chore.
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NYTimes Business section, today: A Site Chronicles Ways to Adapt in the Downturn.

If I look half as good in a little black dress as my Reccessionwire.com editor (Laura Rich, center) and her partners do, I’d be a slightly happier recessionista these days.  In the meantime, new installment (“Love in the Time of Layoff”) from me over there coming on Thursday!

And a hearty thanks to PursePundit, Bob, and Jen for their comments on my last one.  You keep me going; you really do.

Watch for a new installment of “Love in the Time of Layoff” — my new column over at Recessionwire.com (the upside of the downturn) !  The feature will be appearing regularly, on Thursdays, and today’s should go live soon. (My previous one is posted here.)

Meanwhile, those savvy bloggers are doing all sorts of clever over there — Recession Concessions, Productive Loafing, Recession Lexicon, and more!

Today marks the launch of the best little darn thing, IMHO, to come out of this damn recession so far: GWP readers, please meet Recessionwire.com.

It’s the upside of the downturn.

This new pop-up site promises to chronicle these tough economic times until they end. Content is aimed at urban professionals looking for news, inspiration, advice, cultural insights, and a dose of humor. Think of it as your user’s guide to the recession.

Here’s how it all began, as described on the site:

A party, wine, conversations about layoffs—it was so very holiday ‘08. It was also where Lynn Parramore, a freelance writer who had lost several gigs to the downturn, and Laura Rich and Sara Clemence, who had just been laid off from Condé Nast Portfolio, decided to turn misfortune into opportunity. Inspired to capture the stories and improve the lives of urban professionals who, like them, were getting effed by the economy, they founded a website in early 2009. And that’s how Recessionwire was born–as a pop-up site™, ready and willing to die.

The editors’ vision was so in sync with my own–the desire to do something creative with misfortune, the impulse to make lemonade from shit–that I just had to be a part.

As ya’ll know, I just haven’t been able to stop writing about gender shakeup in the wake of recession after Marco got laid off. So now my musings have a home. I’ll be writing a regular feature for Recessionwire called Love in the Time of Layoff. It’ll appear every Thursday. The first installment–“Honey, They Shrunk My Job”–is now live.

In addition to my rather personal (ahem) take on the ways and woes of relationships in tough economic times though, please look to Recessionwire every day for perspective, work (or out-of-work) advice, spending tips, and more.  Other regular features include:

Recession Briefing: A daily roundup of the news you need to survive and thrive
Lemonade Makers: Spotlights on people seeing opportunity in this economy
Redux: A cultural series that looks into history to see the path ahead
Retooling: Profiles of companies working out New Reality strategies
Recession Lexicon: The new terms, expressions, euphemisms that are coming out of this economy
Recession Concessions: Peeks at what people are giving up as they cut back–and the luxuries they won’t concede.

I promise you will find some solace here, or at the very least a snort or a laugh.  Personally, this site has made my month.  I can’t wait to share it all with you.  Do take a look, and then please please pass it on!

Reccessionwire.com

Conference Details
Date: Monday, February 2, 2009
Time: 09:30 AM – 05:00 PM
Location: George Washington University
Betts Theater at the Marvin Center
800 21st Street, N.W Washington, DC 20052

Even if you can’t go, do check out the conference program. The lineup includes bloggers including GWP’s own Veronica Arreola (aka Viva la Feminsta) and my fellow Progressive Women’s Voices gals Joanne Bamberger (aka PunditMom), Latoya Peterson (aka Racialicious), Kristen Rowe-Finkbeiner (aka Moms Rising Executive Director), as well as Melissa Silverstein (Women and Hollywood blog), Tedra Osel (Bitch PhD), and BlogHer co-founder Elisa Camahort Page!

A final, pre-conference twittercast takes place this Sunday. The theme will be: “Fem2.0 Agenda: What do you think? What themes are missing? How can we improve next time?”

For conference registration, click here.

Just saw this over at Feministing and wanted to spread word:

On Monday, Yes Means Yes co-editors Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman will be livechatting on Feministing with contributors Miriam, Samhita and Cara from the Curvature and Feministe about the book.

The chat begins at 3 pm EST, here and, as all things Feministing, promises to be lively!

Buy the book, here.

And if a GWP reader would like to review it, please do email me, here: deborah (at) girlwpen (dot) com .