I’d wager my winnings from Hot Flash that we’ll all agree this video is creepy. Yes, it has the dreaded “breast-bared-but-nipple-censored” thing going on, but exactly how and why it’s so disturbing may be up for debate.

From Treehugger:

“This send-up of the new greenwashing trend in advertising will give you a good belly-laugh, if you don’t pause to consider the tragic fact that even human milk is not free from chemical contamination.”

First I thought it was clever. Then it offended me. Now I’m just confused. What do you think?

T.G.I.Faggity, everyone!

Not long ago I posted on Faggity Ass Fridays, the weekly dance party held here in Montreal every week to benefit The Sense Project, a youth-oriented, queer-friendly, youth-initiated sex-ed program. This week, the party will kick off with a performance by the Big Moves dancers.

Every body can dance, yo.

At Main Hall, 5390 boul St. Laurent. Doors at 10, show at 11, suggested donation $5-10. With mega hot DJs to follow.

So I’m back from my wild four-day weekend away in Las Vegas (don’t ask, it’s staying there) and thought I’d share this little sexist gem that I captured while spending way too much on nickle slots.

Stereotypes of lipstick-wearing, asprin-popping, diet-crazed, emotional, hormonal, mad-spending females galore! Oh, and please note that the dog house is labeled “Men:”

A closer look after the jump.

(more inside…)

… and I’m not talking about I’m OK, You’re OK.

In honour of Valentine’s Week (yes, I know I’m late, it’s been a busy week, okay), I’m posting for your enjoyment this video for one of my favorite songs about, yes indeed, female masturbation. While debates rage on, Cyndi Lauper is busy, well, getting busy.

I also appreciate the grammer lesson in this song: “She bop, he bop-a we bop, I bop, you bop-a they bop…” Everybody now!

A few more for the self-service playlist:
Missy Elliott - Toyz
Liz Phair - Turning Japanese (covering The Vapours)
The Divinyls - I Touch Myself (duh)

Diana Rigg has had a long and storied career as an actress. She’s performed in numerous stage plays, married James Bond, and had her prized diamond necklace recovered by Muppets. But the role she’s best known for is the surefooted, quick-witted British agent Emma Peel on the 60s-era landmark spy series The Avengers.

John Steed (Patrick Macnee) and Emma Peel (Diana Rigg) track down a killer who’s fond of kittens. No, really.

Every bit the equal to her crime-solving companion John Steed, Emma Peel was far from the typical damsel in distress of most spy fiction. She knew several martial arts and could dispatch any number of evil henchmen with ease. But more than just a lethal weapon, she also had a solid scientific background and often proved herself more intellectually capable—and quicker with a finely turned witticism—than Steed. Rigg played the part of Mrs. Peel with an elegant charm, lending her character a certain dignity that raised the show above its occasionally camp origins. Though Honor Blackman was the first to star opposite Steed as one of his female partners, the very capable and independent Catherine Gale, it’s Emma Peel that everyone remembers so fondly.

Sadly, though the producers of the show were ahead of their time in creating a liberated female protagonist, they weren’t bright enough to extend that same philosophy to Diana Rigg herself. She left the show after two successful seasons partially because she was fed up with how the producers treated her. It’s said that twelve episodes in, Rigg discovered that she was paid less than the cameraman. Reportedly, Rigg also had few friends on set. One of her defenders was none other than John Steed himself, Patrick Macnee, who tried to convince Rigg to stay—but to no avail. And though Rigg eventually moved on to other marquee projects, The Avengers lasted just one more season with the somewhat naive and innocent spy-in-training Tara King by Steed’s side—in many ways a watered-down wallflower version of Emma Peel.

(more inside…)

We’re thrilled to be nominated for FOUR Canadian F-Word Blog awards:

Best Canadian Feminist Blog
Best Entertainment Blog
Best Group Blog
The Support Bro: Best support by a male

The first round of voting continues today and tomorrow, so please swing on over and lend us your support. While you’re there, check out some of the other amazing sites that have been nominated.

UPDATE: Sorry, I missed Wesley’s category earlier. He snagged two nominations for this award, congrats, Wesley!

I was out with a couple of my best girlfriends earlier this week, both of whom have suffered, and continue to suffer, from acute anorexia. You wouldn’t know it to look at them - they both make efforts to eat properly, so they don’t look underweight - but inside their heads they say it’s a constant battle. In the spirit of tackling their problem head-on, they’ve agreed to meet up once a week to eat an entire meal together. Which, they joked, will usually consist of steamed veggies, brown rice and fish, “A typical anorexic dinner!” I laughed as well. Often humour is the best way to deal with our problems.

It’s such a terrible shame that for so many women today food is such a problematic issue. While for centuries most people struggled just to get enough to eat, in the west today, where food is cheap and plentiful, different problems have become ubiquitous: chronic overeating and chronic undereating, particularly among women. For both groups, food becomes an enemy, not a friend.

Which is such a heartbreaking shame: food - along with sleep and sex - should be one of the joyful cornerstones of each of our lives. We should love to eat, and to eat well. And yet for so many of us, the simple act of consuming food is fraught with guilt and pain. Compulsive under-eating, just like over-eating, can become like an addiction.

These problems are so complex, and can be so difficult to alleviate. And yet for all the self-help books out there, endless diet tips in glossy women’s magazines, and countless exercise regimes advertised, there seems to be a real dearth of healthy and helpful information that deals with the issues. Not just from a nuts-and-bolts perspective regarding nutrition and health, but also from a psychological and - dare I say it - feminist perspective.

Which is why it’s so great to see The Guardian‘s new series on weight loss, authored by the editor of the women’s pages, Kira Cochrane. Click here for the first installment - she’ll be putting out a new column every two weeks for the foreseeable future. It’s a wonderfully atypical perspective.

(more inside…)

I’m not big into high school movies, or song and dance movies, or remakes. So was Hairspray ever fighting an uphill battle with me.

A friend of mine gets teen swag and sent some my way, in the form of the 2007 Hairspray DVD. I probably wouldn’t have seen it otherwise, which is good and bad, because if I hadn’t seen it I wouldn’t have all these damn songs in my head.

(more inside…)

It seems that women are rejecting cooking for shoes - well, the ones who can afford to, anyways.

According to this article in the The Tyee, “liberated women” don’t want to cook. Noting the trend for women (read upper-class, slightly rich, and I would venture to guess, white women) to consider cooking as old-fashioned and low-class, this piece pretty insightfully considers how cooking food, no matter its cultural and political importance, has often been associated with women in Western culture and is therefore unvalued activity.

This piece also provides a fascinating look at how men have taken up gourmet cooking. I can’t help but point out that men have long taken up the cooking that is seen as particularly “skilled” and full of showmanship. Just check out Ontario’s cottage country on any summer long weekend and you’ll see many a man behind the BBQ grill showing off! Making kid-friendly food, or maybe pureed stuff for babies or the sick or the elderly, is just never gonna make it onto the Iron Chef.

Anyways, the real point here is that it is likely impossible for women to seem liberated in the kitchen, no matter how skilled they are - as this writer at the Tyee puts it, they are more likely to be perceived as “domestic suckers who aren’t paying enough attention to their ambition or their libidos.”

So on this Valentine’s Day, what are you eating? And is it the way to your feminist heart?