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image courtesy Feministe

What is it? No really, what IS it that freaks people out about Hillary Clinton? I have yet to hear a coherent explanation that makes the outsize fear she causes among certain people understandable. Except for the most obvious one.

Other bloggers have covered this thoroughly, and I have to say, I hope the next time some douche pinches a woman’s cheek or rubs her shoulders in a pathetic ape-man dominance display, she punches him on his stupid smirky mouth. Enough of this bullshit.

Whatever it is that makes Chris Matthews and his ilk lose their marbles in the presence (or at the mere mention) of a woman with any power whatsoever, it also seems to have infected a few posters in this Metafilter thread. A relatively mundane post about a new magazine for Canadian teens that proudly proclaims feminism, acceptance for LGBT teens and people of color, among others, brought out some astonishing responses:

I looked briefly. It seems to be a tool for turning teenage girls into feminists. There is a proper place for self-empowerment and gender equality, but the world already has far too many feminists…

I find the site to be pretty disappointing. A typical inbred cookie-cutter liberal/feminist blog, with no indication of any appeal to real living teen girls as opposed to ideological fantasy teen girls. They should focus less on The Message and more on presentation.

my use of feminist is as follows: A female who believes that an imbalance exists in every area of life between men and women. Never content with any concession from any male, she believes fairness means imparting special priveleges to women to decide what is or is not proper, regardless of circumstances. She will accuse essentially any man who challenges this belief of being sexist, pedophilia inclined, porn addicted, power hungry, or some combination thereof without ever allowing herself the realization that such a worldview is essentially sexist in the opposite direction.

I’m sure yours differs. I no longer care. I’ve defined my terms.

Yeah. In their concern-trolly attempt to tell girls how to be feminist, so long as “feminist” is defined as “not too uppity”, such posters emphasize just why teenage girls might need a magazine that isn’t about clothes, shoes, and man-pleasin’. Sheesh.

Shameless does look like a good magazine, by the way. I may order a subscription. First the Canucks give us Degrassi, now this! Bless ‘em.

It is the 21st century, right? Because I just had to comment on an (otherwise level-headed) parenting blog about the fact that worrying about what astrological sign your child is born under is bunk. People were all concerned! “Oh yeah, if he’s a Leo, you’re in for a rough go. My little Virgo is an easy kid.”

Bha-wha? Now I understand astrology-as-parlor-game, trying to see if you can make yourself fit into it and reading your horoscope. Using it to decide when to buy a lottery ticket (it’s as good an indicator as anything else for that, which is to say, your odds are the same either way). But actually being worried about your unborn kid’s future personality because they’ll be born under a day associated with a certain constellation?

Pregnancy has many things to worry about–maybe the kid will get your dad’s huge schnozz, or your spouse’s annoying habit of sucking his teeth, or your horrible teenage acne. Or more serious inheritable traits like heart problems and depression. All of these worries are connected to actual reality in some way.

As opposed to worrying if your child will be too prone to folding their socks precisely, or stealing cars, because they were born on the wrong day.

Like I said, superstitions can be fun, especially when you’re a kid and you actually make up your own (step on a crack, break your momma’s back; yelling “Jinx!”, etc.) Wearing your lucky shirt to job interviews may give you more confidence, even if you know deep down that there’s no magic. It’s generally a good idea not to walk under ladders anyway. Using little mental games and tricks can be one way of dealing with the randomness of life, provided you don’t take it too seriously.

But if I were someone on a major parenting blog, posting about actually being worried that my kid would be born under the wrong sign…that’s just sad.

…in fact, it makes them delay it. And I don’t mean strict “abstinence ed” either. Via Feministing, news of a CDC study that shows:

…teenage boys who had sex education in school were 71 percent less likely to have intercourse before age 15, and teen girls who had sex education were 59 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

Sex education also increased the likelihood that teen boys would use contraceptives the first time they had sex. . . But sex education appeared to have no effect on whether teen girls used birth control, the researchers found.

Additionally, black teenage girls who received sex ed in school were 91 percent less likely to have sex before age 15.

That 91% figures is pretty amazing.

Now for those who have always opposed sex ed* on the principle that sex magically won’t happen if you don’t talk about it, this poses a dilemma. Do you change your tactics to do something that actually helps teenagers postpone sex? Or do you go “lalalalalalala” and pretend that abstinence-only programs work, despite lots and lots of evidence to the contrary? In other words, what’s more important: being anti-sex-ed, or helping kids?

When kids are ignorant about sex, or only get told weird, negative, one-sided and inaccurate things about it (the way most abstinence-only programs do), bad things happen. Pregnancy rates go up, STD rates go up, and an awful lot of lives get affected.

This is a big issue with me, because what I see is adults letting kids down in a monumental way, because they are uncomfortable with the knowlege that their kids will one day have sex. Being so squeamish or scared to tell your kid about sex or let someone else do so that you keep them in ignorance is BAD PARENTING. Because what your kids don’t know can really hurt them. They need knowledge to protect themselves, because ignorance surely won’t. It’s like putting them behind the wheel without teaching them to drive. Irresponsible.

It’s about control, too. By the time sex becomes an issue, your kid is not under your direct supervision 24/7 anymore. They are at friends’ houses, at school, at parties, on band trips. They are going to have to make decisions about sex without you around to make them be responsible–so if you don’t teach them how to think for themselves and how to protect themselves beforehand, you’ve missed your chance. And you can tell them your preferences for what they do, but ultimately, you can’t make them adhere to those preferences, and as a parent, you have to accept that. Once your teenage son and his girlfriend announce a pregnancy, punishment is a moot point. The best you can do is try to teach him beforehand why he should try to stay out of that situation, for his sake and hers. And then, you have to let them go, and hope for the best. Which is terrifying. But that’s parenting. And for me, if some other adult is able to back up what I teach my son about respect and responsibility, that’s even better.

*All comprehensive sex ed programs I’ve ever heard about, by the way, do tell you that abstinence is in fact the best way to avoid pregnancy, disease, and other complications. Telling someone how condoms work does not equal telling them that they need to have lots and lots of sex, right now.

NYTimes article on the etymology of the word “vajayjay.”

Key quote:“It sounds warm and familiar and it almost makes the vagina feel like a little cartoon character with eyes that walks around.”

OK, so boys had Transformers, Thundercats, He-Man, GI Joe, etc. etc. All of which I watched, most of which had 1-2 women if at all.

Girls had Jem. Oh, and She-Ra. But mostly, just Jem.

Jem was typical Crapjanimation, stiff and improbably animated, and like all girl shows, way too goody-goody and pink. However, it was probably the only place a girl could see another girl with a guitar rock out; we had Jem, Chryssie Hynde, and…well, that was pretty much it.

But really, it was crap, and the songs were all about “be yourself! yay!” and friendship, and I don’t know, flowers and unicorns. BORING. And girls nowadays still don’t have it very much better in cartoon-land; it’s either be SluttyMcFashion Puppet, or else be PinkUnicornPrincessFairy from SparkleCastle, sold separately.

But in the wonderful age of YouTube, there have been a lot of Jem remixes, for those of us wishing we could travel back in time and make this show as cool as we really wanted it to be.

Hence, Jem covers (ha) Le Tigre’s Deceptacon. AWESOME.

(via Feministing)

Oh, oh, but wait. Here are three teenagers with their own awesome take on the same song. Involving a hapless mannnequin in drag and robot moves. Love the trick camera work. Love the utterly cool goofiness of teenage girls. Not a PinkUnicornPrincessFairy in sight.

They warm the cockles of me heart, they do!

Group 1: Kids wear pink shirts in solidarity against bullies–leading to an official, annual, pink-shirt-wearing anti-bullying day! Ye gods.

Group 2: Kids walk out of forced Pledge of Allegiance, create own awesome Pledge.

Group 3: Girls AND boys protest invasive security guard harassment by wearing maxipads and tampons as protest jewelry.

I mean…ya’ll! NONE of this would have happened in my high school. I am so inspired by these kids, and especially by the fact that they are fighting across gender lines, and fighting stereotypes. Maybe my son will be like these kids.

Wow, you should try this. And if I could get the audio feature to work, I could narrate it too!

Behold, my animated version of a recent post.

Gina Kolata is a science writer for the New York Times. I picked up her new book Rethinking Thin at random, while I was browsing at the library new-books shelf. And now I’m all fired up.

Without giving away too many spoilers, I’ll just mention some of the things she discusses that were surprising:

1. Almost all diets out there today–including lo-carb diets, low-fat diets, eat-slowly diets, etc. etc.–have been around since the 19th century. In fact, many people have been struggling with their obesity (people like President Hoover, the writer Henry James, and others) and with discrimination against the obese, for at least that long. In fact, there are weight-loss regimens that date back to ancient Greece (in that case, for athletes). I don’t know about you, but I’ve assumed, and been told in many articles and books, that obesity is a new thing. That it’s an epidemic. That it stems from having so much food around, which didn’t use to be the case for your average person. That before, say, the early 20th century, it was pretty much confined to very wealthy people who didn’t have to walk everywhere. That Americans are a lot more sedentary than we used to be. According to Kolata, none of that is true. Intriguing.

2. That the goalposts for who is and isn’t obese or overweight have, over the last few decades, been moved further back. You can now be considered overweight at a weight that would have been healthy 10 years ago.

3. How a highly controversial but scientifically sound study (PDF format) which was published in the Journal of American Medicine in 2005 showed that overweight, except at the extreme end of obesity, does not increase mortality. In fact, overweight may even be better for you than underweight, in terms of how long you live. The study has been attacked by many researchers–almost all of them receiving some funding from the weight-loss/diet/pharmaceutical industry organizations. Even the Wikipedia mention of this study under “Overweight” appears highly critical, although, according to Kolbata, no one has actually debunked the findings.

“Fat Will Kill You!” has been the mantra for so long for most of us that all of this is pretty startling. Those who are supposed to do research on health and nutrition have also grown up in this environment, which makes it unsurprising to me that so many of them freak out at any statistics that might show an opposite result.

But science is supposed to be about facts, not presuppositions. And when there’s so much money involved in keeping people dieting, buying pills, buying workout equipment, and buying diet books, well…you have to wonder if, just maybe, the Fat Will Kill You crowd isn’t just the tiniest bit compromised. If there isn’t more to the story.

It isn’t just a fat-acceptance thing, though, for me. I mean, I am a fan of Big Fat Blog and extremely tired of fat people being the only people it’s acceptable to hate in our society. I’m not even that big by non-Hollywood standards, so I escape a lot of overt commentary, but I hate that it’s out there. It’s not right. And I’d think that even if being fat were really just a matter of will power.

What Kolbata’s book says is that the research implies that it’s not. That powerful hormones and neural pathways have far more to do with how often and how much we eat than our psychological issues or our parents telling us to clean our plates as children.

And so if heaviness doesn’t kill us faster, and we can’t change our weight outside of a certain range…what does that mean for what we think is an “ideal” body we “should” all have? For beauty standards in general?

A good read.

Listen to an NPR interview with Kolbata here.

I saw a post recently on the Krofft Superstars, and while Sid and Marty wrought much nightmare material for the young ones back in the day, at least they gave me Electra Woman and Dyna Girl.

Those outfits! So fabulous.

Much more can be found at the unoffical EW and DG fan site.

Man. Via Boingboing, I see this letter a guy posted on Flickr that his grandma got from Disney. She applied to their animation school in 1938 but was rejected…because they didn’t hire women for creative work. Gotta save the good work for the menfolk, doncha know.

Enlarged and readable version here.

No wonder Snow White was such a simp.