We’ve all fallen down the Buzzfeed rabbithole once or twice or 17 times a week. It’s OK to admit it, especially now that Buzzfeed came out on its Tumblr and admitted it “unequivocally” supports feminism. YAY!
While it’s AWESOME to hear Buzzfeed say it out loud, it should come as no surprise that Buzzfeed is a bunch of feminists just like you and me. They’ve published numerous peaces on the body peace movement, called attention to the hilarity of women’s lingerie, highlighted everydayfeministstruggles as well as how feminism helps everyone and publicizedfeministmoments and clips of celebrityfeminists declaring their support for gender equality in a positive light.
Not to mention that Buzzfeed has done a fantastic job of being inclusive of all issues surrounding gender and racial equality; highlighting subjects from hijabs to Ferguson. They’ve covered LGBTissuesextensively, maintained a sexpositive attitude, and talked extensively about kickass women in the media, art, music, politics, television, andbooks – and covered them well. They’ve also made huge moves to ensure diversity in their hiring and therefore in their staff.
In short – Buzzfeed is a feminist, liberal, intersectional powerhouse and they’re going going to get more powerful. Feminist and liberal organizations aren’t ignoring that fact – organizations like Planned Parenthood, the American Civil Liberties Union, the National Women’s Law Center*, and NARAL Pro-Choice America* all have active Buzzfeed accounts. Buzzfeed’s audience is the future generation of feminists and social justice activists. From here on out, we’ll be seeing a lot more .gifsets.
Full disclosure: I work at NARAL Pro-Choice America and am a former employee of the National Women’s Law Center.
I mean, REALLY Subway? In the ad, she food-shames her co-workers (who apparently only eat burgers when they aren’t going to wear swimsuits, which is the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard) and tells them that it’s “Halloween Costume Season” – and in order to be an attractive person in a costume, you must be thin. EXCUSE ME? I mean, first off, all her costume ideas are *yawn* so uninspired. You can do better. Why not dress as a Subway sandwich? A SEXY subway sandwich. No cheese, ’cause that’s fattening. But overall, this is all such BS. As if women needed more reasons and “seasons” we needed to diet in. I look at my health as a holistic part of who I am – and who I am is someone who, yes, loves pizza, oreos, and has a candy stash she dips into just a teeny bit every day at her desk. But I also love fresh summer salads, and running, and greek yogurt. It evens out. So let’s all just stop stressing out about seasons and costumes and clothes please. We’re gorgeous at exactly the size we are right now, and my halloween costume will be kickin’ no matter what size my waist is.
I’ve been making my way through Roxane Gay’s AMAZING book Bad Feminist, which you should go out and read ASAP. As Gay talks about her own experiences, the flaws in our looks-obsessed and patriarchal society, I’ve been trying to come to terms with my own biggest flaw as a feminist.
After struggling with my weight for my whole adolescence (and, let’s be real, still struggling a little – my relationship with my physical form will always be at least a minor battle), then losing quite a lot of weight through calorie counting and Jillian Michaels tapes; which leave you with some CRAZY messed up ideas about beauty, then realizing what a toll those standards were taking on my mental health and outlook on the world and other women on my life … I FINALLY (with a LOT of effort) reached some version of body acceptance. This battle, though, has left my staunchly, unapologetically feminist self with one little blip.
I have ingrained VERY deep in me the weight loss culture and traditional societal expectations of what “healthy” is and how to be desireable. They’re bullshit. I’m fully aware of it.
And yet.
And yet I occasionally make “she’s so skinny you’d never think she eats a donut!” jokes – they’re nervous ticks, really, at this point. Empty words I say in conversation that I know don’t add anything, things I don’t really believe in. I know size is no way to judge a person’s diet, fitness, or health. I know that perfectly healthy people eat donuts.
I do these things WAY less than I did when I first started successfully losing weight; far less than I did when I finally started getting help to bring myself out of my messed up body image crap and accept and love my natural body type that came when I exercised regularly and ate a balanced diet. They come up once every few months. But when I say these things, they bother me for WEEKS.
I don’t believe them. So why do I say them?
I’ve already decided that every time I make one of these comments, I’m going to give $5 to SPARK. They do amazing things to promote healthy body image and healthy sexuality. But I call attention to my flaw because I think that everyone can relate to it. One of the biggest hurdles to self-love is how ingrained these ideas are in us. I don’t have an answer of how to fix them – but at the bare minimum, we all need to be more aware of them, call out media which uses them, and tell them: we are not. buying it.
This week, Sheryl Sandberg and LeanIn began their “Ban Bossy” campaign. I like the idea of being more sensitive about how seemingly innocuous words we use primarily to describe young girls can affect their confidence to lead and contribute in the future (although I hate the word “ban”), but something else came out this week that made me more concerned about women leaders..
This week, The Atlantic published an article about how young girls who played with a Barbie as opposed to a Mrs. Potato Head were less likely to believe that they could do jobs in the future as well as boys could:
The children played with their respective toys for five minutes. Then they were presented with photos of 11 male- and female-dominated professions, so appointed according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
[…]
Depressingly, all of the girls thought a boy would more likely be able to do more of both the male- and female jobs:
But the girls who played with the Mrs. Potato Head doll thought they could do more of both kinds of jobs than the girls who played with either kind of Barbie. And the “Doctor Barbie,” they found, did not yield better results than “Standard Barbie.”
(Via The Atlantic) Sure, Barbie has a nice doctor’s jacket and a stethoscope, but what good is that when girls don’t see it as a path to doing the same? Add this together with the fact that women in swimsuits perform worse on math tests than women in sweaters, and the message seems pretty clear to me: when women have looks at the forefront of their mind, they doubt and underestimate themselves. 40-60% of elementary school girls are worried about their weight, and 20 million American women suffer from an eating disorder in their lifetime. That’s a lot of women feeling that their natural bodies and selves are inadequate – from a very young age.If we teach girls that what’s more important is what’s inside their head instead of what their body looks like, maybe they won’t beat themselves up about their bodies, or feel held back by standards of beauty. Here’s hoping that the Lammily doll takes off, promotes realistic beauty standards, starts all sorts of careers (including quite a few in STEM fields), and gives Barbie at least a brisk walk (if not a run) for her money.
Hong Kong’s Security Secretary’s response to a rise in reported rapes this past year (via):
“Some of these cases…involved the victims being raped after drinking quite a lot of alcohol,” Hong Kong security secretary Lai Tung-kwok said on Tuesday during a press briefing, in describing this year’s jump in sexual violence. “So I would appeal that young ladies should not drink too much.”
WHAT THE WHAT WHAT?!?
Many people I have spoken to when I discuss rape culture dismiss it as a item only in popular culture; not something that exists in the government, or in any of our institutions. But this quote and the recent onslaught of scandals regarding rape in the military proves that is not the case. Politics, culture, society – they all intertwine constantly. Rape culture is real, it is global, and it is a problem.
For those of you that know me even a little bit, you know that I went to American University and am damn proud of it. I love our motto of “Ideas into Action, Action into Service”; I chatter endlessly about my amazing experiences, wonderful friends I made, and the fact that AU has been ranked as the #1 most politically active campus in the nation.
I credit American for making me the passionate, outgoing, thoughtful person I am today. I volunteer at Alumni events, get really stoked when I meet fellow AU Alumni, and my sister, who is a Freshman at American now, constantly has to tell me to shut up already – the whole 9 yards.
So imagine my sadness, disgust, and disgrace when I saw this Op/Ed from The Eagle, American’s student paper, posted around Facebook:
Op/Ed: Mind what you’re wearing, not what they’re eating
Tell Phi Sigma Kappa to stop objectifying women
By Kendra Lee
I used to go to the gym to take my mind off of daily anxieties, until another gym patron unthinkingly and unexpectedly threw my anxieties right back in my face.
For the most part, the boys at Jacobs Fitness Center are perfectly pleasant, though their height and muscles and the fact that they’re usually in packs is pretty intimidating. Still, no one has ever gone out of their way to make me feel uncomfortable or unwelcome. Or, no one had, before tonight.
Tonight there was a pack of “bros” all wearing their frat T-shirts, as per usual. As I was resting between sets of decline flyes, I spotted a shirt that said, on the front, “Please don’t feed the sorority girls.” And on the back, “Campus Beautification” and the Greek letters Phi Sigma Kappa. My empty stomach dropped. I unconsciously glanced at myself in the mirror and I fought the urge to cry.
I am a second-year law student here, and I am recovering from an eating disorder. It’s called EDNOS, which stands for “eating disorder not otherwise specified.” My behaviors and thoughts are consistent with anorexia, but I never lost enough weight, even at my worst, to “qualify” for the anorexia diagnosis. When the disorder at its worst, I would meticulously log each calorie – 5 calories balsamic vinegar, 17 calories egg white, 9 calories spinach – and then I would throw away half of the meal, so I was only eating half of the small number I was logging.
I avoided social functions, extracurricular activities, even class sometimes if I thought there would be food there. I didn’t work out because it made me so hungry I couldn’t control the urge to eat afterwards. What’s the point of burning 300 calories on the treadmill if I’m just going to go home and eat 400 because I’m starving? I might as well just stay at home and fast, again.
I’m recovering now. I still count my calories and eat less than I technically should. Every single day I struggle; I still feel like I don’t deserve to eat, like I should just control myself and stop. Every single day I have to tell myself that it’s OK to eat breakfast, lunch and dinner. I work hard to resist the urge to throw out all my food and lock myself in my apartment until I wither away. Weightlifting is something I look forward to, something to help me get out of bed and remind me to put some fuel in my body and make me feel OK about myself.
But now I don’t feel safe or wanted in the fitness center. I chose to go to AU because of its culture of public service and activism; a large student organization advocating the most lethal mental illness to girls for the sake of “campus beautification” is objectifying, misogynistic, even violent. It’s not as if it was just one random guy in a gross shirt; someone in his fraternity came up with the shirt, and enough “bros” wanted it that the frat ordered it and stamped its letters on it and its members wear it to the gym. It’s indicative of an unsafe culture, where sorority sisters are worth little more than the cute donkeys and elephants dotting the campus. We’re just here for aesthetics, but only as long as we’re starving.
I don’t think it’s too much to ask that students try not to trigger their classmates’ eating disorders, especially at the fitness center. A dress code at the gym that includes a ban on offensive and potentially triggering items would be a great step. Other universities, including Harvard, Queens College, St. John’s College and Kalamazoo College, have designated a few hours each week where the gym is women-only, and that would be even better.
But for now, I only ask that my classmates be sensitive to the ways they present themselves, and how they make others feel. They may be driving more women away from the gym, which seems to be the opposite of their tasteless, insulting point.
Kendra Lee is a second-year student at the Washington College of Law.
This focus on our appearances isn’t healthy, or normal. Our culture’s obsession with what we look like is forcing us to think about things like clothing size or waist inches or keeping our calorie counts as low as possible, instead of, oh, I don’t know, world issues.
I am particularly disappointed in my Alma Mater for allowing a fraternity to make these t-shirts with the official seal of the Frat on them, although rumor has it they’re an old design and have been banned since – then why, may I ask, is a current student wearing the shirt and wearing it to a public place?, disappointed in the frat for associating anorexia and starvation with a beautiful campus, and disappointed in the gym for allowing him to enter the gym wearing that disgusting t-shirt.
If you ask me, this incident should prove that even at politically minded campuses where their focuses lie in international affairs, politics, and world issues; the message that thin is better is still alive and well. Let’s change that.
Obvious statement of the day: I am a giant nerd. I can quote Star Wars and Indiana Jones to you like it is my JOB. I belong to a science-fiction book club. But why, oh why oh why, does every girl in nerd culture have to wear skin-tight outfits and pose in the most “sexy” position possible? Which is why when I saw this, I instantly guffawed:
It is 100% genius, and I love it. Look at the Hulk. LOOK AT HIM.
But seriously. What is up, nerd-merica? I understand that nerd culture does unfortunately focus on pandering to men, and that I am not the first to write about this by any means, but every nerdy guy I know has acknowledged at least a little bit how ridiculous the imagery of women is in all things nerd-tastic. But why does Hollywood seem to think that this is the only way that men will be interested in seeing a woman on screen in an action movie? Newsflash: it’s an action movie. Those who are interested were going to go see it anyway. Scarlett Johanssen in black spandex, while it doesn’t hurt (seriously – that girl is SMOKIN’), doesn’t make or break people’s decisions to see the movie.
What are your thoughts? Leave ’em in the comments.
Recently, Phyllis Schlafly (remember her? She’s the one who lead a campaign in the 1970’s to stop the Equal Rights Amendment from getting ratified) said to a group of men:
“Feminist is a bad word and everything they stand for is bad … Find out if your girlfriend is a feminist before you get too far into it. Some of them are pretty. They don’t all look like Bella Abzug.”
Well, sorry Phyllis, but we feminists are actually a pretty awesome set of people to date. Here’s why:
We’re independent. Feminists are all about being useful, contributing members of society and being their own person. Vaginas ≠ inability to unclog a toilet, fix our computer, or kill a bug. Although we do still appreciate when you offer, we won’t necessarily expect it of you.
We’re open-minded. Feminism wouldn’t have been possible without people being open to change and shifts in society; and we get that – which is why we try to remain as open-minded as we can.
We split the check. It’s still nice when a guy offers to pay, and sometimes I accept, but I certainly don’t expect a guy to always pay for me – hell, sometimes I pay for the guy. We understand that a relationship is a two-way street, both emotionally and financially.
We don’t buy into conventional ideas of beauty. This doesn’t necessarily mean that we never shave our legs or never shower or anything like that, but instead that beauty is about being healthy, happy, and internal beauty. It comes from within. And that goes for you too!
We’re definitely not boring. Feminists care about the world around them, and are passionate about things. We’re open to debate, discussion, and interesting people. And think about it – who would you rather have as your constant dinner mate?
I’ve been making my way through Roxane Gay’s AMAZING book Bad Feminist, which you should go out and read ASAP. As Gay talks about her own experiences, the flaws in our looks-obsessed and patriarchal society, I’ve been trying to come to terms with my own biggest flaw as a feminist.
The children played with their respective toys for five minutes. Then they were presented with photos of 11 male- and female-dominated professions, so appointed according to Bureau of Labor Statistics data.
For those of you that know me even a little bit, you know that I went to American University and am damn proud of it. I love our motto of “Ideas into Action, Action into Service”; I chatter endlessly about my amazing experiences, wonderful friends I made, and the fact that AU has been ranked as the #1 most politically active campus in the nation.one random guy in a gross shirt; someone in his fraternity came up with the shirt, and enough “bros” wanted it that the frat ordered it and stamped its letters on it and its members wear it to the gym. It’s indicative of an unsafe culture, where sorority sisters are worth little more than the cute donkeys and elephants dotting the campus. We’re just here for aesthetics, but only as long as we’re starving.
Vaginas ≠ inability to unclog a toilet, fix our computer, or kill a bug. Although we do still appreciate when you offer, we won’t necessarily expect it of you.
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Becka Tells All 