(Via: feministing)

In 1986 writer Jeffrey Zaslow asked a class of 4th grade girls if they were on a diet, most said they were.

Recently Zaslow went back to ask the now 32 and 33 year old women whether they feel it is even harder for girls to love their bodies and avoid eating disorders and unhealthy habits today. He received a resounding “Hell yes!” from his interview subjects.

How did this happen? I am not surprised by the results of the studies quoted in the WSJ article, but I am disappointed. As a 32 year old feminist who has fought a pretty uphill battle not to hate all 140 pounds on my 5‘4” frame, I had hoped that it would be easier for my younger sisters. That they would not find themselves packed into washroom stalls at lunch hour learning how to binge and purge.

Guess I was wrong.

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Props to Glamour magazine for recognizing a smart move, and going with it.

This September in an article titled What Everyone But You Sees About Your Body Glamour writer Akiba Solomon discusses what frontline workers in the fashion and beauty industry notice about women harshing on their bodies:

“Terms like chunky, huge and gross don’t belong in my store. It’s partly selfish: I don’t want to be influenced by their negativity. Besides, if someone came in and started beating up my customer, I would intervene. The same goes for verbal self-bashing.” - Gyasi Atkins, Saks Fifth Avenue sales associate

The article features this pic of plus-size (size 12) model Lizzi Miller.

Lizzie Miller fills us with joy and shows off her adorable belly. (Walter Chin (Glamour Magazine))

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Safe sex messages geared towards young people can be a hard-sell (no pun intended). Maybe it’s because teen sexuality is still incredibly enough a taboo topic, so efforts to create meaningful and effective public health materials reflect a lack of comfort rather than marketing genius? Whatever the case, it seems to me that a successful marketing campaign that deals with HIV and is geared towards young people is a rare occurrence indeed.

Take for example the posters I’ve been seeing around Toronto lately.

Poster by ‘One Life’HIV safety awareness campaign.

These posters and the associated messages bother me.

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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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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.

This Friday 29 May 2009, from 7:00pm - 9:00pm
at Shaika Cafe, 5526 Sherbrooke St. West, Montreal, QC

Because there are no stupid questions (The Sense Project)

“The Sense Project at Head & Hands hosts its annual celebration event to recognize all of the dedication that this community has shown to its goal of breaking the silence surrounding sex, and to celebrate the Sense Project’s 2nd year anniversary of sex education workshops and youth peer-to-peer health support.

Sex in the media will be our focus, with the launch of the Sense Project’s new website.

This is a great chance to check out this amazing new online resource and community, which features a youth-led blog and an anonymous Q&A forum.

Come for the interactive website launch, and stay for the:

• Screening of a *fabulous* film produced by the Sense Project Peer Educators


• A raffle with prizes donated by Lickety Split, the Coop la Maison Verte, Nomadic Massive, Worn Fashion Journal and Head & Hands!


• “Cervix undergoing LEEP procedure”, an art installation by Lynn Worrell


• Free safer sex supplies!


• Interactive Sex Ed Q&A!


• Refreshments and good company!


• Opportunities to donate and get involved!


• That warm fuzzy feeling of sex-ed solidarity!
”

If you’re in Montreal this Friday evening, come get some Sense!

You know what I hate?

I hate when marketers take things I love with all my being, and make them look ridiculous, vapid, and stereotypical.

Take chocolate and sex.

There are other sweet treats, but none are such a miraculous mixture of sweet, bitter, sharp and spicy as a decent chocolate bar (especially the chili/peppercorn variety). And as for consensual physical pleasures, I am including all sorts of activities here: massage, sexy dancing, making out in the park, holding hands for the first time - the whole spectrum. Like chocolate, sex is wonderful in its variety.

Even though I am clearly a demographic goldmine, I can’t stand the campaign for Fling chocolate bars. The “naughty but not that naughty” chocolate bar made especially for women:

“It is a delicate truffle,sitting on a subtle crisp layer enrobed in shimmering chocolate that looks as glamourous as the women it speaks to. It tastes indulgent but it keeps its figure, at under 85 calories per finger. Sneak out to a movie. Go curly. Lick the wrapper. Shake things up! Nobody’s looking.”

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The Globe & Mail reports that archeologists have unearthed the oldest depiction of the female form yet discovered.

“She doesn’t have a head, and her massive breasts balloon over a giant vulva.”

Also, she’s 35,000 years old and carved from a mammoth tusk. The lengths ancient civilizations would go to make sexually explicit material about women. For one thing, they had to kill a mammoth.

A carved ivory female figurine is presented in Tuebingen, southern Germany, Wednesday. The figurine, found in 2008 in a cave in Schelklingen, southern Germany is allegedly the world’s oldest reproduction of a human with an estimated age of at least 35,000 years. (Associated Press)

According to archeologist Paul Mellars, the sensual figurine, “could be seen as bordering on pornographic.”

Now my question is this: Just because our headless Venus is awesomely voluptuous, and indeed naked, does that automatically make her pornographic?

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Summer is almost here, and summer means entertaining; picnics, barbeques, outdoor brunches, drinking champers before noon, you know the drill. During party season, a person can easily become overwhelmed by demands on their culinary imagination.

Luckily, when the invitations rack up and you are sick to death of bringing your “amazing peach cobbler”, Weight Watchers recipe cards from 1974 offer a little technicolor ‘inspiration’.

Check out this recipe for a Chilled Celery Log

You could eat this log. Or you could stick your hand in a rusty kitchen grinder. Yeah, have fun. (CandyBoots)

Yum! And don’t worry there are dozens more where that came from.