Ugh, no, I know. I just get so tired of Internet hyperbole-speak sometimes. I would have accepted without comment a "Tudors"/arranged marriages reference that provided an actual structure to said joke, but "making a joke" is not in fact the same thing as "making shit up."
I'm aware he wasn't talking about women, I'm not an idiot. But I'm not totally insane in thinking that a site using the tagline "Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women" is, you know, for women, am I? I just feel like sometimes the emphasis on inclusion is a little silly; Jez may have gay male readers but I doubt that this is in their top hundred sources for information on what men think. I'd be more interested in hearing lesbians' insights on women; it just feels so random to me.
"Way way back in the day, we had limited choices in terms of living spaces — this cave or that one — and either you just hooked up with whomever wasn't your brother, or the elders told you where to live and who to hang with."
Is there any actual basis for this statement other than a half-remembered reading of "Clan of the Cave Bears" and a Psych 101 lecture about the incest taboo? The anthropology student in me would like to know.
Am I the only person who finds the inclusion of a gay man's opinion utterly baffling? Why would I, as a straight woman, care in the slightest what a gay man thinks about my pubic hair? I barely care what STRAIGHT men think about my pubic hair. I know Jez has male readers and gay male readers, so maybe this is targeted at making them feel included, but an informal poll of "all my gay guy friends who are on Gchat right now" says that 100% of them would rather walk on hot coals than read an article purportedly about women's pubic grooming, so it's still a bit odd to bother including.
I mean, I think it's a concern, but she's not saying these things in a vacuum--it's up to those of us who believe in a woman's right to choose to recontextualize that bullshit wherever we hear it and say there you don't have to be the "perfect" abortion patient (i.e. an underage rape victim) to justify getting an abortion, anymore than you should need to be the "perfect" rape victim to have your rapist convicted. Women and men are not asked to be perfect under the eyes of the law or of any religion that I'm aware of--we're just supposed to do the best we can with what we're given. I'm happy to stand up next to Chelsea and say that yes, your boozing, pot-smoking 16 year old is not a fit parent and you're not a bad person for preventing her from becoming one out of some misguided sense of hubris or cultural obligation.
Hat tip to you, then. I may be biased since I'm just back from four days of the worst mass-produced conference food in history, where I was literally stealing bread rolls off other tables like a Depression-era granny because it was all I could stomach.
Ugh, I'd say it's more like, what kind of ever-loving optimist orders an easily-overcooked protein at a shitty conference center lunch? I'm hardly an abstainer from meat, alcohol, or anything really, but I would never order a pork chop under those circumstances.
Yeah, agreed. A lot of guys who work in finance in New York are exactly like this, and they want women like the women described. If that's what you want, then maybe this is how you get it.
As my mother put it to me once, "Women who marry for money earn every penny."
Yes, I know, which is why I haven't gone off the pill. I'm aware there's no medical basis for what I'm feeling--if I'm not ovulating and getting pregnant, it just means my pill is doing its job, not that I'm infertile. But it's a fear, and interesting to read that it's so common; I do wonder if it's linked to the prevalence of effective birth control pills.
Ahh this is totally me. I've been on the pill for a long time now (like 10+ years) and I'm genuinely terrified that I'm infertile. Such that I've totally considered going off it just to make sure I actually get my period. I recognize intellectually there's no medical need for that, so I haven't done it, but it's definitely a fear of mine.
No, I see what you're saying. But obviously you didn't end up brainwashed into a Stepford wife, and I would have loved to have gotten a play kitchen and an E-Z bake oven or something like this Lego set instead of the endless gender-neutral, educational toys that I got, not that that stopped me in the long run. I just think that at the end of the day, by the time you're old enough to play with Legos safely, you're probably old enough to have some sense of self, and the toys you're given and all your parents' efforts ultimately are just thrown into a mix of influences that are complex and hard to account for.
I think you bring up an interesting point in your other reply, though. The marketing and advertising is actually a lot more problematic for me than the toy itself, a problem of received messaging vs interpretive, original play.
I'm sorry, did you just refer to Boris Becker as Lilly Becker's date? Along with decathlete Daley Thompson? Geez. I'm not much of a sportsfan, but the nice thing about the Laureus Awards (I attended in Abu Dhabi last year) is that all of these people are actually on this red carpet for reasons far better than appearing on reality TV or taking their clothes off in photos.
Horses: the great equalizer. Every horsey girl I have ever known was an epic combination of girly-girl and down-and-dirty tomboy. If I raise a little girl who loves horses, that will be my sign that I'm doing it right.
A team of experts in Denmark may not know what's best for your little girl, but neither do a team of feminist advocates. The parent who reviewed the product is right on the money--there are little girls out there who want to have toys that let them enact all of those scenes, so why shouldn't they be allowed to buy a product that reflects that. Whether it's a product of nature or nurture, there are in fact girly-girls out there, and they shouldn't be shamed for their interests. I'm a super-feminist graduate of a women's college working full-time and supporting myself, and I love to bake--always have. Never been a conflict of interests for me.
Tanning, though, that's fucked up. No kids toy should promote that.
No, it absolutely is a lucky break. But for kids who are just as bright and are facing a summer working at Starbucks because they can't afford for nothing, it should be about more than luck. I was lucky to be able to take those internships, as well as to be able to get them.
I agree there's a good reason this statue doesn't apply to non-profits. But Hearst is very much a for-profit company, even if it's not as much profit as they've made in the past--crying too poor to pay minimum wage is ridiculous.
I never felt as an unpaid intern that I needed to be paid, personally--in magazines, being rewarded with bylines (exactly what we all wanted, even though it directly and obviously violates the "performing work that would otherwise be done by a paid employee" standard) was basically the payment for a job well done. But the law is clear--it's not a question of the internship system, it's the labor law, plain and simple. Of course interns can do work that benefits the company, you just have to pay them to do it. And the law is there because there are people who are not privileged white girls from Westchester like me who need labor laws to protect them. The veneer of glossy magazines makes it seem like these interns should just be happy to have the experience, but what if other industries tried this? What if there were stockroom interns lifting heavy boxes at Best Buy, or construction interns hanging drywall, or retail interns folding clothes, all for "experience"? No one would do it. And frankly, not paying magazine interns--expecting them to feel lucky to just have the chance to work--devalues the work of professionals within the same industry, because once companies think they can get something for free, they're reluctant to pay for it again. And I'm sorry, the media industry is not better off for firing mid-level staff and replacing them with an army of interns, however bright and enthusiastic.
I did six magazine internships between the ages of 15 and 21, all but one of which were unpaid. This is absolutely an accurate article, right down to the end, which makes no sense--how would forcing magazines to pay minimum wage reserve all the internships for rich kids when that's exactly the complaint about internships now? I was lucky in that I lived just outside NYC so could live at home during the summer, and had parents who were supporting me throughout those years, and I know there are people who are kept out of these jobs because they're in more complicated positions.
I think every publisher should mandate that interns be paid minimum wage, because when you look at the actual price of that labor, you can see there's clearly the equivalent of a full-time position's hours being worked. Assuming that most magazines have 2 or 3 interns at any given moment throughout the year, that's around $45k/year. My starting salary as an editorial assistant was 30k, which is still about what it is at most magazines. I guarantee if they were looking at paying that amount of money to interns, they'd hire more entry-level employees.
Um, that strikes me as a little racist, no? Pretty the country with the most successful soccer team in FIFA history has some conception of teamwork and its importance in winning. She's a wife feeling defensive of her husband, and I imagine every player on that team will a) understand that, seeing as they're human beings and b) not care, because she's model, not their football coach, and thus just one of the many billions of opinions they'll be trying to ignore today.
My boyfriend and I simultaneously said Michael Fassbender for our guy. Awk-ward!
