Friday Hoyden: Poppy King
If I write about a present-day hoyden she is most likely to be a raving lefty like Camila Vallejo. To balance the scales somewhat, I thought it would be novel to feature a capitalist hoyden this week. Digging around in my makeup bag the other day I found a ‘Poppy’ lipstick. I only ever owned [...]
Ob Twilight: Breaking Dawn Thread
Love it? Hate it? Meh? It’s a bit hard to totally ignore this week, just sayin’. (obviously, Spoilers Alert)
Ahoy ye hoydens! on the good ship Menopause with Pirate Queen Roseanne
This is the illustration from her article, and the article is Even Better.
Enabling Femininity?
Going on from bluemilk’s post on Masculinity and the fear of losing it and Mena’s comment is allowing our girls to wear nail polish and dress up in pink enabling femininity? Are we giving our daughters the wrong message? From a personal perspective, I would say no because I allow both my son and daughter [...]
Friday Hoyden: Katharine Hepburn
This is a repost: first published March 30, 2006 as Hepburn and Mephistopheles (before I’d got into the Friday Hoyden habit). I’ve taken this opportunity to correct my original misspelling of her given name, and I’m very happy that the website I snarked on then still exists for you to … enjoy.
Video: Learning Gender from Ads for Toys
These ads not only market toys to children but it also promotes and encourages gender specific values that are very limiting to boys and girls in different ways. The values and skills promoted in these commercials can play a critical role in the socalization of youth and their development of emotional expression, conflict resolution, the confidence to pursue various careers and the ability to maintain healthy relationships as adults.
How things have changed
I’ve been poking trhough William Heberden’s Commentaries on The History and Cure of Diseases (1802). Chapter 62, Menstrua, includes the following: “The pains, which several women experience during some part of the menstrual flux, are safely mitigated with opium; and such persons should always have in readiness half a grain or a grain of opium, [...]
Baby toupees: “i’m Not a Boy!”
Dissatisfied with lacy elastic garters as a salve for gender-neutral panic in the carers of baby girls, the market has come up with this hideously hirsute scalpgirdle: The splash page reads: Baby Bangs – for the girl who has everything. Except hair! I briefly wondered which was worse – the idea that baby girls need [...]
Friday Hoyden: Candice Bergen and her singing voice
Friday Hoyden: Candice Bergen
Why do I have Bergen pegged as a Hoyden? The characters she has played on television does bust submissive femininity norms, so that’s part of it. But I think it’s her bad singing that has really reeled me in. It’s hard enough to sing in public when you can hold a tune, but it takes a special kind of hoydenish chutzpah to do it when you can’t. And I like that.
Feminism Friday linkage:
Impossibly Beautiful
from Shakesville by Melissa McEwan (read the whole series, linked at the foot of the post)
Olympic medal-winning women called “gold-diggers”
from Feministing by Ann
Why feminism should be taught in schools
From The Times by Joan Smith
Looking back, I’m amazed at how much we achieved – many feminist ideas, such as the right to maternity leave, have become mainstream – but I’m also horrified by the casual misogyny of 21st-century life. Since my book, Misogynies, was first published in 1989, it has got much worse.
But 21st-century politicians don’t use the vocabulary of their 20th-century forebears, and feminism needs to reinvent itself as much as any other political movement.
Also from The Times:
Sex and the City in the Crib: Heelarious Heels for Babies
These sorts of shoes for girls have been around for a while: Related posts: SRSLY: If Your Shoes Are Causing You Pain, Wear Different Shoes Pirelli 2009 calendar hits every -ism in the book Risk: “Man Up” Shoes, Remedial Interview with the makers of “Heelarious” high heels for babies
Creeping pinkification: “the persistent feminization of unisex commodities”
In breaking news, marketing drones continue to lack imagination, sticking to the apparently conventional wisdom that if you want women to buy things that both men and women tend to use and want, just run up a version in pink and do a fluffy/flowery/frilly ad campaign. Butterflies are good. In June last year (in an [...]
The Dog Candy doesn’t carry a warning.
The website trumpets: » 1964 online players at the present time and 206 851 registered Bimbos! Miss Bimbo is a webgame aimed at girls as young as seven years old (grade 2). With a pricey-text-message business model and a pink-slathered aesthetic, the game rests on participants performing competitive virtual femininity with pots of enthusiasm and [...]
Newsflash: Toys Now Indistinguishable From Satire
Because I couldn’t make this up. Not if I tried. Struts Runway Magic. It’s a plastic equine! It’s an unfeasibly insubstantial fashion model! It comes in clearly delineated racial types! It’s – Struts Runway Magic! Now selling at a polymer-soaked femininity indoctrination centre near you. Struts Sierra! Related posts: Video: Learning Gender from Ads for [...]
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