no boys allowed in the room!!!!

lol xpost.

i think putting them in dollar stores would be kinda mean -- they'd have to go somewhere absurd -- like pet stores

Probably the reason I'm a feminist is because another neighbour got pregnant at 14 and to terminate, had to represent herself as a mature minor in order to avoid parental notification. She succeeded and it made me totally pro-choice to the point where I'd counsel a teenager to just plain get rid, but this was on a backdrop of full-colour 'this is your fetus' leaflets handed out by 50-year-old men in the Reagan era.

I have considerable sympathy for young women in that position, especially w/ so many states having parental notification laws and restricted access to abortion. It's terrifying to be in that situation and sometimes there doesn't seem to be any other option.

― Jenny, Friday, September 24, 2010 4:58 PM (8 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

Yes, exactly.

guys theres a bitchin iphone app and website called epocrates where you can look up pills buy name, shape, color, imprints etc. it crazy. anyway you can check drug interactions there.

havent been on this thread in a while (omg @ christine upthread)

Hmm...Which part?

discus

http://animalnewyork.com/2010/09/femen-to-metro-molesters-i-will-rip-your-balls-off/

ever get the feeling you've been cheated

I feel like their message is undermined by presenting themselves as sexualized in a male gaze-approved kind of way, but I always feel that way about this kind of thing because I've got a stodgy second wave streak a mile wide.

With ya. I'm happy for you if you feel powerful, womanly, have a sense of claiming territory, etc with yr shirt off or whatever, but I still veer between "It would be a greater loss to let someone else's opinion override your right to feel that way" and "How powerful can it be when you're playing right into their hands?"

yeah see for some reason i think this woman is a total hero
but i kind of don't see anything wrong with toplessness; i just wish it were an equal opportunity endeavor
i also have the kind of chest people don't tend to stare at

she's holding up a sign that says she will CUT THEIR BALLS OFF
that's pretty fierce

Which she'll never actually do because it would be assault and also honestly she probably wouldn't win a physical confrontation. Whereas men WILL harass her for being shirtless, don't you think?

Actually -- this is so layered, I can agree with you but there's a price... I think she's a hero in that she looks fierce and iconic in an "images of the feminine" way and absolutely resolute -- and if she's willing to bear the burden of the disconnect between how the world should be and how the world is, that's her personal undertaking and I wish her strength and cheer and beauty to balance things out.

you put it better than i could have, but yes -- i agree. i have a tendency to live in that disconnected zone so i guess it's not surprising that i would applaud her.

I have no problem with toplessness qua toplessness at all but you can't look at this in a vacuum. She does look fierce but exactly in the way that male comic book artists draw women as fierce, right down to the in-your-face sexualization. I might feel a little more impressed if she didn't land smack dab in the middle of acceptable beauty standard and stood around with her boobs out holding a sign, too. Basically I applaud her message and her fierceness but I feel like the fact that she looks and acts lime what dudes wish feminists looked and acted like (sexy, fierce lady warriors) dilutes the radicalness of her act.

I'm looking at this from an American perspective, though, which is not entirely fair to the woman's intent but I think still works for the purposes of this discussion.

xp pretty much what Laurel said. I definitely don't live in that disconnect, for a lot of reasons.

she can't help what she looks like and whether or not she's attractive
it's the spirit of what she's doing that i like

I'd be interested what men actually DO in that sitch, tbh. You know, I was imagining the worst, some kind of hooting circle that would stay a little way back and enjoy the show, or random outbursts of anger because she's acting against the status quo...but it's also likely that they just put their heads down, tried not to look, and went about their business feeling intruded upon. Which is honestly hilarious. Because that's what they expect women to do, isn't it.

No, but it does matter that she's attractive, because that's the territory that harassers are trying to claim. If she weren't conventionally attractive, she'd represent territory that men are told they shouldn't WANT to claim because it would reflect poorly on THEM if their desires were out of line with the norm. Which is a whole other thing....

it sounds like from the article that there were a group of women doing this, or am i misreading?

Yeah but I didn't say it didn't matter; I said she can't help it.

That's true, and you're right. Maybe they only chose to photo her for the paper for that reason? There are too many filters here with too many different agendas/bodies of influences to really grasp. So maybe it's better just to admire the spirit of the thing. :)

i just think the dynamics of it being a group action are different than were it the action of a sole individual

I know she can't help it. I'm not holding that against her nor do I think it means her convictions are weak or anything but I think it weakens the gesture as activism. That's all.

Though sarahel has a good point abt group dynamics and whether this one woman who fits so well what we want a fierce sexy warrior woman to look like was pictured in the paper for that very reason.

I was going to revive this thread yesterday to ask about hair dryer diffuser attachments but never got around to it. I like this conversation better. :)

i'm trying to figure out exactly what the gesture is? Is it "look don't touch"?

I was referring to the toplessness specifically not the overall protest against being fucked up on public transit.

Summary: being smoking hot, thin, young, and perky while topless in public does not feel that radical because that's kind of what dominant cultural narratives claim young, thin, etc. woman are best suited for. American POV disclaimer.

Fucked WITH not fucked up. Different issue totally.

i kind of read it as "MY body stay away but if you want it so bad here it is ARGHGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGGHHHHHHHHHHHH" like a crazy person running naked through the forest on a rampage.

knowing what i know of ukrainian men, and i have not had a whole lot of good experiences outside of one particular student who liked to tell jokes, they will look down their noses at her and preemptively reject her on the basis that she is crazy. no offense to ukrainian men (i am of ukrainian descent) but some of the most obnoxious students i have ever had have been outrageously self-important ukrainian men.

I've got a stodgy second wave streak a mile wide.

― Regular Stormy (Jenny), Friday, October 1, 2010 9:03 AM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

hi Jenny, this is the best way of putting this i've ever encountered, i'm going to start using it immediately. me, too: stodgy second wave streak.

Do you all have any girl friends who make fun of their friends/acquaintances that they think are prettier than themselves? I.E., when they are making fun of someone you haven't met or seen yet, you know that they must be pretty, or being seen as "competition" in some way by the one making fun? It works the other way too, i.e. praising/becoming friends with girls they view as less attractive than themselves, or not their competition in some way. I think this is such a fucked up way of viewing the world (duh) and it seriously makes me nauseous.

I mean... no?

Well, you're lucky and living in a grown up world and I envy you.

I can think of one friend right off the top of my head who I think is unquestionably, by any standard, not considering style or taste or character or anything else, simply objectively almost always the most beautiful person in the room. This is not her fault, and I don't think she particularly cares, and as I see it, she makes a strong effort never to trade on her looks at all. I'd feel like a horrible person for even mentioning it.

Do you all have any girl friends who make fun of their friends/acquaintances that they think are prettier than themselves?

if i do, they don't make fun of them in my presence

Also I make fun of all my friends, probably, for their peculiarities! But I like to think: not ones they themselves haven't in some way put out there. :(

Tbh I'm having trouble thinking of how yr scenario would even play out, without the speaker being given sidelong glances and possibly taken aside and talked to afterward? Or at least it wd represent her really poorly to anyone who heard.

xpost I'm not talking about model looking people who do this, I'm talking about objectively average-ish people who do this.

Do you all have any girl friends who make fun of their friends/acquaintances that they think are prettier than themselves? I.E., when they are making fun of someone you haven't met or seen yet, you know that they must be pretty, or being seen as "competition" in some way by the one making fun? It works the other way too, i.e. praising/becoming friends with girls they view as less attractive than themselves, or not their competition in some way. I think this is such a fucked up way of viewing the world (duh) and it seriously makes me nauseous.

― hoos wears orange camo pants ffs (roxymuzak), Friday, October 1, 2010 3:22 PM (9 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

not exactly this, but i had a roommate and friend a while back who was ridiculously beautiful, in an unreal movie star kind of way. she hadn't had many female friends over the course of her life, and i am unsure how to express this (maybe i'm being sexist, i don't know), but i think at least part of that was a direct result of how she looked. my other female friends at the time didn't make fun of her, but they often, for example, expressed disbelief that she could possibly hold the feminist views she professed to hold because she wore too much makeup (possibly irrelevant item: she didn't wear much makeup at all) or some other seemingly hostile observation that i could only understand as jealousy or at least assumptions based on what she looked like. it was depressing.

Like this person will just make fun of someone (her friend) for looking old, or something (behind their back obv), when they are like obviously a very cute person. Maybe wanting people to agree so that her self image will improve? But still, how would that improve your self image?

xp that seems like a very high school way to talk about people.

Thinking about people who invariably talk about appearance, the only person who comes to mind is my mother. and of course, that's different–she's usually talking about people my age, which makes me uncomfortable.

xpost

it is really crappy that anything exists in the world that causes people to feel like that/do those things.

That sounds really mean. And depressing to be around.

xp that seems like a very high school way to talk about people.

we were all in our early twenties, and i'm not in touch with any of those people anymore. maybe that's not the way they are anymore.

hmm, the only time something like that comes up in conversation is akin to discussing a personality quirk or a known fact in terms of relationships with others. Like "attractive friend A" should be the one to approach the bartender to try and get us free drinks, etc.

it would be nice if the pressures that i assume lead to these behaviors were expressed directly instead of at the expense of other women. like, "it sucks that so much of women's perceived value is tied up in how they look." but i guess i'm stating the ridiculously obvious.

i guess some friends of mine (not just women, also guys) will occasionally be catty when it comes to an attractive woman's appearance and her relative success in the music scene.

yeah i have to say lots of the dudes i knew back then made hostile comments about this woman, too. those had a slightly different tenor, though; those dudes tended to be rejected suitors.

What my mom-in-law does is kind of the opposite, praising how beautiful someone is around them, in really kind of boundary-free ways, until they are clearly super uncomfortable. She does this to her daughters, especially, but one time she started in on me, telling my husband how lucky he was "to be able to love a woman with such firm and beautiful breasts and strong calves" etc etc...awkward!

omg Abbott

Your MiL is really...different. Isn't she.