All blog posts published in November 2007 - Shameless Magazine - your daily dose of fresh feminism for girls and trans youth

All posts published in November 2007

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- Media Savvy
Talk to your daughter before Unilever does

November 28, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

Thanks to Nicole’s comment regarding The Toronto Star piece on the ongoing Unilever debate, I discovered this smart little video who sums up the glaring hypocricy perfectly. Rye Clifton has ingeniously recut the Dove Onslaught ad to include only images from Unilever’s other campaigns:

From the Star article:

Psychologist Susan Linn, director and co-founder of the Boston-based Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood, says it’s important for the public to understand that one company rules over both brands.

“There’s an inherent hypocrisy in promoting the well-being of girls with one product and promoting degrading sexualized stereotypes with another,” she says.
- Bibliothèque
“If I was any more mature, I’d have Alzheimer’s disease.” - Celine

November 27, 2007 • Anna Leventhal

No, not that Celine.

Who knows why our brains work this way? It’s been two weeks since Stacey May asked for our recommendations for young adult fiction of days gone by, and this book just came to me today, while riding the bus. Maybe because I don’t think of Celine, by Brock Cole, as “young adult” fiction - it’s simply one of my favorite books ever, categories be darned. If you can image Miranda July writing Catcher in the Rye, it’s something like that - a wry, hilarious, at times almost creepily intimate story about a sixteen-year-old who is painfully aware of the falseness and manipulation of the adults around her, and whose running commentary on the absurdities of the world and her place in it is consistently dead-on and funny as hell.

I haven’t heard of Brock Cole before or since, but moments from this book still haunt me to this day, a good 17 years after I read it for the first time. Like Celine’s thoughts on sex:
Ah! Sweet mystery of life! I’m beginning at last to understand those darker, irrational impulses that shape one’s life. I, too, have done strange and inexplicable things, almost against my will. I once pushed a navy bean up my nose… I know what it is for the body to be invaded by foreign objects, half consented to.
The New York Times reviews it here; if that’s not enough incentive, let me say again: GET THEE TO THE LIBERRY.
- Media Savvy
Your Dad was a womanizer, so drink this.

November 27, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

Has anyone else caught this Canadian Club print ad that’s been showing up in newspapers lately? Not that alcohol marketing has ever been a haven for good taste or feminist values, but I have to say the idea that my dad was a womanizer who got a lot of phone numbers doesn’t exactly make me want to run out and buy some CC. Honestly, I prefer to live in a dreamland where my mom was my dad’s first, but maybe that’s just naive me. Adrants comments:

Hauling out imagery 60’s and 70’s imagery from actual Beam Global employees and positioning Dad as a once cool manly man, ads state “Your Mom Wasn’t Your Dad’s First,” “Your Dad Was Not a Metrosexual” and “Your Dad Never Got a Pedicure…” Are we seeing a full-on return to the glory days of the hard liquor cocktail when beer was for factory workers and wine was for sissies?

Okay, so your dad was a real man who got a lot of action, not a sensitive girlie sissy man who indulged in grooming activities, a man who drank whisky? Liquor and beer ads are not just bikini clad beach babes and snow bunnies anymore. Their reinforcement of appalling gender stereotypes has gotten a lot more creative. See after the jump to see what I mean.(more inside…)
- Media Savvy
more developments in the dove saga

November 27, 2007 • Nicole Cohen

In this installment: upon examining Unilever‘s conflicting brands and marketing tactics, the ad industry discovers there’s something strange afoot!

Apparently there’s a bit of a controversy about the Dove vs. Axe advertising contradictions, which we’ve been discussing on this blog for quite some time. I wonder what will happen when industry-types start calling out Dove for its disingenuousness?

In it’s defence, the company stated that “The Axe campaign is a spoof of ‘mating game’ and men’s desire to get noticed by women and not meant to be taken literally… Unilever is a large, global company with many brands in its portfolio. Each brand’s efforts are tailored to reflect the unique interests and needs of its audience.” I’m not quite sure that marketing-speak is going to convince people this time.

(Thanks to Kevin for the tip!)
- Media Savvy
Finally, a “lady” ad with a sense of humour

November 25, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

I’ve never been a big fan of television ads for products made for women’s “issues” (check out this truly offensive Vagisil spot.) Well, despite the fact that taking a pregnancy test is never really a funny experience in the moment, I have to say I really appreciate this ad that I caught on television tonight:
- Media Savvy
“Finding feminism is like discovering the matrix.”

November 25, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

In the latest issue of Xtra, Julia Gonsalves has penned a brilliant, insightful and enlightening piece on the modern view of feminism titled “That Strong Angry Thing.”

She has a healthy nostalgia for the tag, and asserts that her definitions of self have expanded substantially over the years. I love her take on how feminism changed her life, how it became like a “second religion” for her, but over time, as she questioned her gender identity, she came to realize that defining herself as one thing became problematic.

Rather than dismissing the label all together, she asserts that its a vital part of who she is, yet who she is is so much more:

Finding feminism is like discovering the matrix. You can’t believe you didn’t notice all this stuff, you can’t believe no one told you how fucked up things are. You feel angry for knowing, angry for having not known. It’s such a harsh transition to make. You don’t just gently start to pick up on misogyny here and there. Once the floodgates are open you are smacked relentlessly with realization after realization. It can be devastating and it can feel like the only way not to drown is to find a really big crew and a really big boat, put your head down — and paddle.

Great, smart stuff.
- Playlist
“Being feminist and queer came out of my pores” - Beth Ditto

November 23, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

For no other reason than the fact that Beth Ditto, this song and this video are amazing, here’s your piece of Friday (gender-bending) fun. Have a fantastic weekend.
- Media Savvy
Feminism not sexy, responsible for the “disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants.”

November 23, 2007 • Stacey May Fowles

I was actually browsing the internet for something funny to post on a Friday, but instead I found this sexist, anti-feminist, anti-woman diatribe concealing itself as journalism. It’s not exactly Friday fun, but it’s so out there it could be seen as hilarious?

Here’s some gems:

If all fashions are symbolic, dresses in particular symbolize womanhood by more fully embodying the ideal of a true lady, the objective understanding of what men find attractive in the fairer sex: passivity, domesticity, childrearing, coital love, piety and fertility. These defining aspects of womanhood are immutable. We all tacitly reaffirm these attributes in our attempts to find a partner. Flirtation and courtship are reaffirmations of what it means to be masculine and feminine because it is only by fulfilling the obligation of our form that we can attract the opposite sex…

…What’s not sexy is feminism (not to be confused with femininity), which is directly responsible for the disappearance of our beloved dresses and the adoption of pants by the “new woman….”

…The miniskirt, a dress of sorts that doesn’t extend below the knees, is both lacking in modesty and elegance. Elegance is essential to femininity, and the lack thereof implies a sort of masculinization. Modesty is essential to feminine virtue, and the lack thereof implies a state of whorification. Immodest, inelegant dresses constitute a degeneration and androgynization of true dresses…

…The ideal form of a true lady is a constant, immutable aspect of humanity, and this strange new development can only represent a bizarre aberration of a perverse and ignoble culture. Dresses are an essential part of any true lady’s attire, and they should be worn.

Speechless, folks. Speechless.

Good thing Feministe does a brilliant analysis of this pants-on-women-hater.
- Film Fridays
Searching…

November 23, 2007 • Tuval Dinner

I’ve been wanting to watch this movie since I heard about it a couple of years ago but never seemed to be in the right place at the right time. Last night I finally made it happen.
“Searching for Angela Shelton” is a curious film that is never quite what you think its going to be. This is one woman’s quest but she takes a lot of other people along for the ride. Angela Shelton (the film-maker) decides she wants to drive around the USA and meet all the other Angela Shelton’s that are willing to talk to her. Its all filmed in a straight-forward documentary style but what unravels makes for riveting viewing.

What the central Angela finds out is that, including herself, 24 out of the 40 Angela Shelton’s she talks to have been raped, molested or abused in their lifetimes. Her attempt to find out the state of American women by using her name as a tool to generate a random sample serves as a powerful setup for exploring violence against women.

While the other Angela’s provide a way for the film to move forward this is really the central Angela’s story and her journey through her own pain. Moving, funny, and brimming with courage I encourage everyone to watch this and to show it to at least one person who claims they don’t care about violence against women.

You should be able to find it in your local library system (I did!) or cool movie rental establishments.
Nothing makes a daring comeback.

November 22, 2007 • Catherine Hayday

Tomorrow, Friday November 23rd, is Buy Nothing Day in North America.

What that is: “Buy Nothing Day is an informal day of protest against consumerism observed by social activists. In 2007, Buy Nothing Day falls on November 23rd in North America and November 24th internationally. It was founded by Vancouver artist Ted Dave and subsequently promoted by the Canadian Adbusters magazine.”

Adbusters themselves explained the motivation for Buy Nothing Day concisely in last year’s bulletin: “Recycling, protecting our waterways, driving hybrid cars — all the old environmental imperatives — are great, but it’s becoming obvious that they don’t address the core problem: we have to change our lifestyles, we have to change our culture, and we have to consume smarter and consume less.”

I appreciate the inclusion of the idea that we need to “consume smarter”.
Having observed this day for a few years, I know all about the challenges you get from friends, coworkers and family. From “how am I supposed to get to work if I can’t buy tokens?” to “how are we supposed to eat if we can’t buy groceries for dinner?”. Which, hand to the Sky Bully, are the sort of questions I have been asked. Questions which miss the point. The point of Buy Nothing Day is to, for one 24-hour span a year, make conscious an activity which has become at once unconscious and an end in itself.

(more inside…)