Every other Thursday I profile a new incredible woman, each from a different walk of life. Different professions, causes, backgrounds, ethnicities, orientations, and anything/everything else!

So without further delay, let me introduce…whoops, that’s right! Of the three wonderful ladies I’ve interviewed in the last few weeks, not one was able to get their answers back to me in time for today’s post. C’est la vie! They’re busy ladies and I’m sure we all totally understand.

Instead of leaving you with nothing, I thought it might be fun to share with you my favourite highlights from my past Shameless Women interviews.

Some are bits of advice, some are clever quips, and some are just random awesomeness caught in the context of a blog post.

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A page from Amy’s Diary (The Amy Diary)

Amy Barbara of Vancouver recently posted her junior high diaries on her new blog the amy diary. A testament to the power of a grade-school diaries, the amy diary is a sweet little snapshot into the language and life of a young woman.

Pamela Masik working on The Forgotten, a portrait series of Vancouver’s missing women.

Vancouver-based artist, Pamela Masik, has unveiled the first painting in a series of portraits depicting the missing women of Vancouver’s Downtown Eastside. The series, entitled The Forgotten, includes a total of 69 paintings, each standing at 8 by 10 feet or 8 by 12 feet. Many of the “missing women” of the downtown eastside were indigenous, poor and working the streets. As well, many of these cases not only remain unresolved but were never taken seriously by officials.

The style in which Masik paints is violent and aggressive. She uses fast brush strokes and giant sweeps across the canvas, which fits and reflects both the pain that exists in indigenous communities as well as the pain she herself feels.

Masik has completed nearly 60 of the paintings and hopes to exhibit the entire series by 2011.

I actually found out about Masik’s work through The Globe and Mail. The title of video clip was “Vancouver artist paints missing women.” I clicked on the link and was annoyed to find that The Globe and Mail never actually named the artist, only refering to Masik as “a Vancouver artist” (while the video clip did). Readers should be able to have easy access to information like the artist’s name, which could empower them to do further research and education. Without having watched the video, I would have just had to google something like “vancouver artists painting missing women.”

I got my first tattoo when I was 18. It was actually my 18th birthday present from my sister and was part of an amazingly wild May 2-4 weekend. But as crazy as the weekend was, the tattoo part of it was extremely planned out.

I had wanted a tattoo forever, and although my mom was okay with it, she made sure I had found a reputable (i.e. clean and capable) place to get it done and had really, really thought about what I wanted.

She talked to me about how having a tattoo visible in certain places could effect aspects of your life like your career. She explained to me that what I may want now might not be so cool 20 years down the road. She even drew examples on my back so I knew exactly where I wanted my tattoo placed.

To this day, I love my tattoo (and each that has followed) and have no regrets.

But that’s just me.

Kimberley Vlaminck on the other hand…

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Author Virgina Woolf’s A Room of One’s Own is an eloquent argument in support of the idea that a woman, should she want to pursue her own dreams and goals, must have a measure of financial and material independence.

For Woolf this was because:

Intellectual freedom depends upon material things. Poetry depends upon intellectual freedom. And women have always been poor, not for two hundred years merely, but from the beginning of time. Women have had less intellectual freedom than the sons of Athenian slaves. Women, then, have not had a dog’s chance of writing poetry. That is why I have laid so much stress on money and a room of one’s own. (Full essay here)

(If you have not taken the time to read this brilliant but dense essay I urge you to do it. It is a great argument, although long.)

So it was surprising to me to read the headline “Females who rent weigh less”. The subhead? “Home-owning women outweigh their renting counterparts by an average of 12 pounds.” That’s right ladies, do not try to own property - you may think it leads to a greater degree of financial security, and thus more social power and control over your life circumstance, but in fact it just makes you fat. And we all know fat, stressed out, property-owning ladies are not as good as skinny, care-free, renting ladies.

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Hey ladies! Didn’t you know that you didn’t need a rugged, “manly” man? And that Feminism with a capital “F” has trained your brain to not only think for itself (!!) but to long for not-too-rugged jaw lines? Well, don’t fret because the New Male Beauty is here!

Ed Westwick’s GQ photoshoot remixed (Jezebel)

Straight from Jezebel, it seems that Irina Aleksander at the New York Observer has scoured the television for images of this new man. Her argument? They all look the same: girlie, non-threatening, and their faces are completely symmetrical.

Now, if you’re on the hunt trying to distinguish one of these beautiful boys from our popular culture here’s a list of traits to look for: “heavy upper eyelash and eyebrows, not super-strong cheekbones and very soft jaw lines”. According to a prominent scholar, nowadays women are interested in men who look like babies not those handsome, rugged manly men of the yesteryear like George Clooney and Brad Pitt!
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She’s Shameless launches TONIGHT in Toronto!

SHE’S SHAMELESS / SHE’S WRITING
Gladstone Hotel Ballroom, 1214 Queen St West, Toronto
Tues June 23; 8pm (doors 7:30pm) $5 (or free with book purchase)
With readings from Dianah Smith, Shannon Gerard, Zoe Whittall and Shannon Webb-Campbell.

Prom and anti-prom attire encouraged!

Here’s what people are already saying about She’s Shameles:

“An offshoot of the self-described, ‘fiercely independent’ Shameless magazine, She’s Shameless is an anthology that boasts an array of autobiographical accounts taken from the lives of female writers, thinkers, and activists who have learned to be unashamed of themselves and the paths their lives have taken. Body image, teen pregnancy, sexual discovery and creative pursuits are all fair game for conversation in these poignantly honest firsthand narrations of PoMo coming-of-age.”
-Kelli Korducki, This Magazine

“Cautionary tales abound — a pregnant 16-year-old contemplates, then rejects, abortion; a fourth-grader’s French teacher peers down her shirt; a virginity is lost to a slimy married father twice her age — but that’s not the point….Young women are rarely ever heard from in society. It’s adults, often men, that are invited on TV to wring their hands about teen-girl crises (pregnancy, anorexia, depression, promiscuity) and asked how to ‘fix’ these problems…Grow up, be smart, take responsibility, teens are told — but in practice they’re not often given that agency, which is what makes She’s Shameless remarkable. The essays neither condone nor condemn; some are full of regret, but the contributors’ bios tell of eventual successes — writers are ‘proud feminist mamas,’ university graduates, artists.”
-Canice Leung, Metro

Read an interview with Stacey May Fowles at Open Book Toronto, an interview with Megan Griffith-Greene at Masthead Online, and an interview with Ibi Kaslik at Pages Books and Magazines.

Many thanks to Tightrope Books, NOW Magazine, and Pages Books and Magazines.

See you tonight!

I don’t know about the rest of you, but I was more than just a little bit upset by the new Bacardi Breezer ad campaign that Mir posted about this morning. This campaign, with the tagline “Get Yourself An Ugly Girlfriend” is one of the most offensive, sexist attempts at promoting alcohol that I have ever seen, which is saying a lot, considering the general grossness of alcohol advertising.

I’m not sure how Bacardi thought it could convince women to drink Breezers by insulting their looks, but, well… that’s what they’re trying to do. Certainly the best way to sell a product is to remind women of all the things they hate about their bodies, right? That makes total sense.

I have been looking for an excuse to do some more feminist adbusting since Your Mom Had Groupies, and this seemed like the perfect opportunity. Thus, I present a new ad campaign that I like to call Take A Beach Stroll With Sally (Click the image to make it bigger):

Once again, I’m putting out the call for contributions, because adbusting is more fun in groups! Who would you like to join you at the beach or at the mall? Make your own ad or just leave a comment saying how you would bust this gross ad campaign. If you have a contribution, please submit it here and I’ll make a big post with all the responses!

Or, if you don’t feel like spending your day messing around with Photoshop, you can just tell Bacardi exactly how you feel about their new campaign.

EDIT: Sources in Israel (oooh, I love saying that) have informed me that this is an old campaign, dating from 2007 or 2008. They are not sure if it was dropped by the company or even if it was ever officially used by Bacardi. McCann Digital is an Internet exclusive ad agency known for its disgustingly offensive campaigns. McCann recently listed the ad campaign on Best TV Now, dating it as being from this month and listing the client that commissioned it as Tempo.

Possibly, and this is entirely my speculation, it was going to be submitted to the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival. Does anyone else have any clues? I, for one, would love to hear from Bacardi on the matter. Adbusting remains very satisfying, whatever the response.

EDIT: McCann has pulled the promotional minisite down and removed it from their website!

Check out the fantastic summer ad campaign by Barcardi:

The Get An Ugly Girlfriend campaign (Link via Jezebel: I don’t wanna send any traffic Bacardi’s way) proposes that ugly girls make better friends, because by hanging around mirror-busters you (the hot but totally shallow one) end up looking better.

It’s astounding how low an opinion ad executives have of women.

The only time I ever have ever drunk Bacardi was when, as a young woman / lightweight I used to get plastered on Breezers and then end up having a post-party puke-fest at the donut store.

How’s that for ‘ugly girlfriend’?

Bacardi, you make terrible bottled mixers suitable only for naive lightweights who can’t hold their liquor.

Oh yeah, and your latest campaign is pathetic.