Grandma’s girdle

Whenever I see a picture of that vintage torture device known as a “girdle,” I remember something my grandma once told me that scarred my brain. She said that as a teenager, when she slept over at a girlfriend’s home, she would wear her girdle underneath her nightgown when she went to bed.

Now that says something about what the folks of her day thought of women’s bodies. Granny couldn’t bear the thought of her actual (as opposed to conformed) body being detected, even by a good girlfriend in the middle of the night in the privacy of a home while she was asleep.

You could argue that this may be my grandma’s personal issue, and it is true that she was probably shyer than some. But she didn’t learn her horror of her natural shape in a vacuum,

Anyhoo, I ran across this today and thought it would be good idea to require all men to wear this not-so-vintage contraption every day for a couple of years. Just so’s they can get a truly visceral experience of what daily life can be like for women. We could cut them a break and let them take it off at night.

Oh, and here’s my beautiful grandma at age 20 posing for a wedding portrait with my grandpa, circa 1945.

What she’s really saying about you

“He knows how turned on I get by simultaneous mocking and objectification.  And he drinks rot gut so nasty he can shit through a screen door without hitting metal. I want to shag him rotten!”

Via.

Of poles and holes: Raising a generation of slutty prudes

Or is it prudish sluts? Anyway…

On the one hand, our “sex ed” classes for teens are mostly about why they shouldn’t have it; we hold “purity balls” (snicker) for girls ‘n their daddies; we suspend girls from school for taking birth control; we fund programs that remind both sexes that the burden of abstinence falls squarely on the girls’ narrow shoulders.

On the other (very busy) hand, for prepubescent and tweens, we have playdates at the spa, padded bras, thongs, high heels,¹ stripper pole toys,  and most recently, stripper pole-as-photo-opp. For teens we have sexting, t-shirts that say stuff like “who needs a brain when you have these” and sport the bunny logo, and yet more stripper poles.

Then when our girls are all grown up and can legally do what we’ve been encouraging them to do-don’t-do for so many years, we slut-shame the shit out of them (and make money off of it).

Interestingly, the only people who seem to be doing anything rational in response to this are the girls themselves, with girlcotts and lawsuits and the like.

Excellent practice to prepare them, the future Sisters of St. Hillary the Dontfuckwithme, for world domination.

or, The Madonna-Whore Complex: the Emotionally Retarded Man’s Guide to Understanding Women.

Technorati Tags: slut-shaming, misogyny, pop culture

1. I didn’t believe this one until I saw with my very own eyes a 4-year-old in high-heeled mules in Target! [↩]

Word.

Found here.

illogical, unnecessary, and evil… and totally hot

As Rib Readers know, I’m a collector of creative rationalizations for sexism. My faves are those based on masturbatory Victorian-style logic, arguments blissfully blind to their own gaping holes.

Asshat Kanazawa really rubs one out in the most recent post from his oxymoronic “Scientific Fundamentalist” blog.  You can actually smell the sweat forming on his brow as he beats his facts.

I’ll summarize because porn on fast-forward is funny: Women now make as much money as men (so much for that proven 77-cents-to-the-man’s-dollar statistic) yet they are still “unhappy;” therefore, money doesn’t make women happy and wanting unbiased treatment makes them miserable.

But the climax is what makes Asshat Kanazawa a world-class wanker:

It is true that, in all human societies, men largely control all the money, politics, and prestige.  They do, because they have to, in order to impress women.  Women don’t control these resources, because they don’t have to.  What do women control?  Men.  As I mention in an earlier post, any reasonably attractive young woman exercises as much power over men as the male ruler of the world does over women.

Can’t you just see him, panting away: “….money ….politics ….p-p-prestige …reasonably attractive young women!…….AAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHH!”

Ten bucks says he’s wearing a harness, too.

Technorati Tags: feminism is evil, asshats, gynophobia, fundamentalism, pseudoscience

Sound and fury, signifying very little in the grand scheme of things

aka the highlights of another Sunday morning in Feed Hell. Not a lot them this week, but most of the news was boring, the battery icon on my laptop is red, and I have to pee.  Enjoy.

• Today is International Friendship Day and the world’s silliest old bear is the Ambassador. Aww.
• We’ve survived this week’s record-breaking SUNami but not without a record-breaking amount of whining. Seriously, you have not heard whining until hear Seattle during a heat wave.  At least we got some good photos out of it.
• All the feminist blogs are posting furiously about the most recent corporate-sponsored female body image crisis: cankles.  I should be joining in the outrage but I can’t stop giggling. It’s the word, I guess. “Cankles.” Heh.
• Because marriage is sacred except when that’s no longer convenient, Sarah Palin is getting divorced.
• Apparently cussing can help alleviate pain.  See? Science is proving that we potty-mouthed folks are in touch with our inner mutherfucking healer.
• Speaking of mutherfucking, this Colbert Report video is also in heavy blog rotation these days. Nobody mocks fatherfuckers better than le Colbert.
• It’s beginning to look a lot like Summer of Death, and I’m getting tired of it. There’s only so much losing of icons in a single season that one can take. RIP Walter Cronkite.
• A friend of mine turned me on to this craft (and I use the term loosely) blog. I did the whole snort-coffee-up-nose thing when I saw this post.  If your sense of humor is even slightly warped, check out this blog immediately.

Image borrowed from Craftastrophe.net.

Your tantrums grow tiresome

Yesterday during my daily walk I wrote a blog post in my head about the need to silence one’s inner editor-slash-insecure lit snob while writing a first draft (working title: “ralph intr.v. Slang. , ralphed , ralphing , ralphs . To vomit. [Imitative use of the personal name Ralph.]”).

It was, of course, scintillating, insightful and funny, and now that I have a spare hour to write it, I feel anything but.  So I’ll save that for this weekend when theoretically I’ll be less exhausted and can do it better justice.

Meanwhile, celebrate Hump Day with a gander at the 15 Creepiest Vintage Ads of All Time.  Personally I don’t agree with Retro Comedy’s ranking; I think this one should be closer to number 1.

I don’t even get this ad.  How does a guy with a bad tan yelling at an indifferent, dare I say uppity, woman translate into a burning desire to buy postage meters?

Technorati Tags: creepy vintage ads

Don’t we just love it when men talk about abortion as if they can have one?

As if they know what it’s like to be pregnant? Like when they compare all women considering abortion to the mentally ill woman in France who, after giving birth, murdered her infants by burning and smothering them?  Doesn’t the sheer brilliance and insight of that argument make us want to give up the right to decide what happens to our own bodies?

Technorati Tags: William “Asshat” Saletan, Slate Magazine

The banality of sadism

It was recently announced that Plan B will soon be available to 17 year old girls without a prescription…

And surprise! the misogynists of the country have been spewing the usual crap about it ever since, which boils down to: “Now our womens ain’t gonna be nothin’ but a bunch of sluts!” whilst the usual double-standard stage-whispers from between the lines: “Condoms should be available for free to 17 year old boys because, well, boys will be boys, you know? But girls will be virgins, dammit!”

So the articles are pretty much run-of-the-mill, yawn-inducing claptrap… except the one by CNN commentator Mike Asshat Galanos. His seriously creeps me out.

Oh, most of Asshat’s comments are the usual asshattery, ranging from the simply duhduhdumb…

Timing is essential to the drug’s effectiveness, Plan B supporters say, so getting parents and doctors involved would unnecessarily delay the teen’s ability to pop the pill the “morning after.” Does it really take that long to get a prescription?

[Uh, yes, it can, especially when some pharmacists are refusing to dispense it.]

…to the willfully ignorant:

Think of a 17-year-old girl. Most of the time she’s a high school senior, still living at home with Mom and Dad. She still needs her parents in the tough times. But they will be cut out of a traumatic situation.

[I know you might find this hard to believe, Asshat, but choosing to prevent a pregnancy is often not traumatic for women! And when trauma is involved, such as in the case of rape, I’m pretty sure most women think that bearing the child of their rapist would be A HELL OF A LOT MORE TRAUMATIC than taking two pills.]

But these comments just rouse a kind of good-natured “what an idiot” reaction. This is the comment that actually creeps me out:

We are making it available to high school girls. We’re enabling teenagers to act carelessly with an easy way out. […] With Plan B, they can do it now and deal with it later.¹

A chill went up my spine when I read that, and not for the reasons Asshat was hoping.

Lets not for a minute assume Asshat’s use of the word “teenagers” includes boys. The article never once discusses the male’s role in the need for Plan B. This missive is clearly about high school girls.

So essentially Asshat is saying, “We cannot allow girls to get away with sluttish behavior. If she has sex and gets pregnant, she deserves all the life-destroying consequences she gets. We as a society need to enforce that.”

Asshat. Listen. You need to look at your desire to ensure that women suffer when they do not conform to your own ideas of morality. Don’t take the easy way out - don’t put the mask of Concerned Elder on your head and stick it in the sands of righteousness.  Deal with your sadistic misogyny now.

Technorati Tags: slut-shaming, Mike Galanos, sadism, Plan B, birth control, morning after pill

1. Ignoring for now the fact that this statement completely contradicts his earlier argument, as “trauma” is rarely premeditated. [↩]

Kindred spirits, we haz dem.

I’ve written my share of rants about the bizarre cultural trend of sexualizing little girls, as evidenced by the rising popularity of padded bras, thong underwear, and stripper poles for eight-year-olds.  As depressing as such things can be, it’s heartening to know others are just as pissed off about them as I am.

Nine Deuce’s post on “making your 6 six year old sexy as fuck” via quality mother-daughter time at a day spa managed to make me laugh and cry (and throw up a little in my mouth) at the same time.

Hey, if you don’t get her used to the idea early on that she exists on this Earth to be looked at and lusted after, she might get the foolish idea that she’s a human being, and we all know that leads to disappointment, frustration, and a sense of unfairness — and then on to FEMINISM! And we wouldn’t want that. Men don’t want to fuck you, what power have you got as a woman?

Word.

Technorati Tags: feminism, misogyny, sex