Another female Nobel laureate!

Congratulations to Elinor Ostrom of Indiana University for taking (okay, sharing, but it's still the first time a woman's ever gotten it) the prize in Economics!

Cupcakes are like so 2007 anyway

Two major announcements on the Oh Hey Guys Women Are People Too agenda:

First, the bad news: Misogynist anti-abortion loonjobs have decided that today is National Pro-Life Cupcake Day. Seriously. I'm not nearly creative enough to be making this shit up. As if it isn't bad enough that some people consider the rights of my hypothetical lima bean to be more important than my own as an adult citizen and fully-integrated member of society, they wanted to drag sweet, innocent cupcakes into it. My friends and I are considering starting our own pastry-related celebration of feminism and rational thought, but it will be far superior because it will celebrate our right to choose from a wide variety of delicious baked goods.

And now for the good news: though eclipsed by the buzz surrounding Obama winning the Triwizard Cup or whatever, this has been a record year for female Nobel laureates. Americans Elizabeth Blackburn (also kind of a badass for standing up for stem-cell research, which lead to her controversial dismissal from Bush's President's Council on Bioethics [oxymoron??]) and Carol Greider took the prize in medicine for genetics research including the discovery of telomerase. Israeli Ada Yonath took the prize for chemistry, which has not been awarded to a woman since 1964. Finally, Romanian Herta Mueller won the prize for literature. Congratulations, ladies!

Models in Photo May Be Fatter Than They Actually Appear

My sincere apologies for the lack of amateur XXX food pictures, but I've been quite poor and busy as of late, which has meant a lot of pasta and eggs and freezer pizza. I also recently sustained some pretty dramatic mouth injuries, which has meant soup. And this lamesauce is not organic.

Our good friend Dan, however, has pointed me to this fascinating site steaming with culinary impropriety, created by the writer of this particularly indulgent and well-written food blog that has been occupying the majority of my procrastination time over the past twelve hours or so. Mm. I am typing left-handed (because I found some leftover freezer pizza, you sick bastard).

***

On the other side of the topic of food is an issue that I've been kicking around as a possible thesis topic for next semester: in an effort to combat the spread of eating disorders like anorexia, lawmakers in the U.K. and France have been pushing to require that retouched pictures in advertisements and fashion editorials come with a sort of disclaimer that they have been Photoshopped . Here is the first article I read on the subject [note: sorry, it's in French, but the Google translator does a pretty decent job for those of the non-francophone persuasion], and here is another one (in English).

This is a fantastic idea. Sure, there are a few issues with it, including the fact that pretty much all published photographs are retouched in some way or another (I like the idea of a 'ratings' system, as proposed at the end of the second article), but if French women get any skinnier, they're actually going to disappear completely.

Seriously, though. Consider the prevalence of websites that promote eating disorders with tips on how to lose weight, how to hide such unhealthy habits from friends and family, and 'thinspiration' (simply do a Google search on 'pro-ana' and prepare to be shocked and saddened). While the idealization of a specific female body type is as old as civilization itself, the contemporary shift of media consumption has enabled a fetishism of disorders like anorexia and bulimia that is beyond upsetting. What's even worse is how young some of these girls are.

It's great that people are looking to change this overseas, but will it ever make its way to America? I'm not feeling optimistic. Back in April, French Elle ran editorials photographed by Peter Lindbergh featuring Eva Herzigova, Monica Bellucci, and Sophie Marceau sans maquillages et sans retouches. Obviously, good photography, flattering lighting, and, y'know, being a friggin' supermodel all ensure the fact that the models still look absolutely stunning, but this isn't about hating on the pretty people. It's about being at least a little realistic about our standards of beauty. Will American magazines ever run something like this? Fat chance (groan).

I leave you now with a video you may remember from a few years ago from an old Dove campaign that I think (and my mother agrees) every prepubescent girl should be required to watch:

Scratch that, I am always fun to be around

A day off!

What a week. Starting two new jobs has meant forty hours on my feet, dozens of names to remember, frantic bike rides, 7am start times, hundreds of wine cases lifted, maintaining the required maniacal cheerfulness, maintaining poise, getting rained on, killing gnats, filling water glasses from heavy metal pitchers in a partially-lit dining room, et cetera et cetera et cetera. I would kill for someone to rub my shoulders. I came back to my house last night from a party that was a block away to use the bathroom, and after sitting on the couch for a second, realized I wasn’t going to be able to stand up again. Oops. Hopefully these jobs will whip my pansy ass into shape pretty soon.

And just to make this clear: I’m really happy that I’m working, that I have work, that I’ve been working so much. I don’t mind waking up early, or doing some heavy lifting, but my normal sleep schedule and my skinny arms are rebelling. And hey, I work at a place that does frequent tastings and Sandwich Saturdays. I for goddamn sure can’t complain about that.


But anyway, zonked out early last night without warning. Woke up today, made myself some iced coffee, a fried egg on toast, and settled back into bed for The Onion’s crossword puzzle and this week’s worth of Daily Shows and a box of Joe-Joe’s (uh, they’re like Oreos). Bliss, right?

Well, that was the idea. Ugh. Fucking Mike Huckabee. Who’s he again? Oh, right, he’s that guy who tried to run for president in a fit of epic failure, and he’s the governor of Arkansas, and he shares a name with that sort of amusing movie with Jason Schwartzman and Marky Mark. Oh, and he’s a huge douchebag.

First of all, I’m pissed because he ruined the entertainment value of my little Daily Show watching time to which I had so, so looked forward. Like I said, it’s been a long week.

But more importantly, Mike Huckabee ruined the radiant and sunshiney joy that Jon Stewart brings to my life with his decision to discuss his bullshit old white guy opinions on the government’s right to my vagina. Not only do I not care for one goddamn second what he thinks about abortion, since he will never have to consider getting one, but this is an issue I have already spent three slightly rageful, slightly weepy long-distance hours arguing this week, and I emotionally exhausted by it, and it’s now fucking up my day off.

The intensity of said argument was apparently my own personal prejudice against people who love Jesus, or who love babies; I was told I have some sort of appalling incapability to lend a sympathetic ear to powerful white males and the women who love them. Please. I think babies are great. Everybody thinks babies are great. Abortion is sad and expensive and dangerous as any other invasive medical procedure. Duh.

But hey. I don’t care if Obama went to that silly Catholic university with the football team and shit and gave a nice diplomatic speech about hey-guys-can’t-we-all-just-get-along, because a) I'm starting to think he's full of shit anyway (for more reasons than just that, believe me), and b) I am aware that babies are great, and most people think babies are great, but if we’re going to talk about Mindfulness and all that quasi-New Age-y bullshit invented by grad students who smoke too much cheap marijuana and can’t get real jobs (more eloquently described by an incredible man of genius who sadly could not live by these words*), then it should be quite obvious that the issue for which there needs be more awareness is the subtle ways in which women are marginalized. And by subtle, I mean ‘less obvious than the adorableness of babies.’

Seriously. The world is currently a misogynist place, and it pretty much always has been. Maybe there are very few people who maintain a conscious and literal mantra of hatred towards women, but there are many, many more who complacently operate within a social and political structure designed to keep the powerful white guys in power. For those who have read the DFW speech above, this is water. This is fucking water.



Here’s the deal. Nobody is allowed to mess with my vagina unless I give my explicit permission. This includes but is not limited to: my boyfriend, my gynecologist, the government, Mike Huckabee, and Jesus.

There is no reason a woman should face the consequences of an action a man also performed, yet the man is able to walk away with impunity.

If this offends you, then I support your choice to go read something else. Also, please suck it.



Postscript. I still love Jon Stewart. Obviously.



* highly recommended