International Women's Day is all about pausing to reflect on our achievements in the long-standing effort to create equality between men and women. For over a decade, Beyonce has been singing about girls and women being independent. However, when I found out last month that the megastar and girl power proponent was calling her tour the 'Mrs. Carter Show' I thought I was going to short circuit.
This week, a number of our bloggers were moved to give spirited takes on what we're teaching kids -- and ourselves -- about gender and our bodies. The posts ranged from the oft overlooked destructive effect that "girl power" has on boys (written by a blogger whose young son likes pink skirts and serving tea), to the confusion that comes from a culture in which successful women deliver a message of female empowerment -- but do so "half-naked, through pouting lips while humping the ground or spreading their legs." Taken together, they offer a fascinating look at what feminism and sexuality mean to us today.
These award shows don't celebrate real women, or those who work to advance our interests. It's fine for a character in a movie to go against the norm in Hollywood, but when the actress who portrays her accepts an award wearing a low-cut dress, thus bowing to Hollywood convention, I put a little less stock in her ability to influence the perception of women or their roles in society.
I meet a lot of people who are either unhappy with their career choice or just plain unhappy with life. There's a feeling of confusion, of being lost, of having lost oneself somewhere along the way. Do you know that person? Maybe you are that person. The good news is it's a simple fix to turn that around. Here's what to do in five easy steps.
The feminists have discovered The Jane Austen Guide to Happily Ever After. Or, at the very least, decided that they can't go on ignoring it -- and they're definitely not sold. But does taking a modern approach on Austen's classic work ruin it? Which approach really reduces Austen's work? Taking her principles seriously, and asking how her insights might apply today? Or dismissing her ideas about love and sex -- wherever they don't overlap with modern enlightened opinion -- as blind prejudices that she would surely grow out of if only we could whisk her to the 21st century?
So have you seen that statistic about what fashion magazines do to the female brain? Apparently it takes just three minutes of looking at the sculpted bodies of the models to make 70 per cent of women "depressed, guilty, and ashamed." But the new Verily magazine offers something a little more realistic to today's woman.