Kristof begins by discussing how the problem of the 20th century was slavery and gender inequity is the major problem of the 21st. He and WuDunn then launched into a long-ranging discussion about their observations from global conflict zones. Celebrities like Angelina Jolie, George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Demi Moore, and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton also did segments for the show.

While the effort was wonderful for consciousness raising, some issues felt as though they were glossed over. For one thing, images of suffering women were shown often - but where were those who inflicted the suffering? A warlord was featured at the beginning of the show, but perpetrators were conspicuously absent from this narrative. Where were the pimps? Former sex slave Long Pross was stabbed in the eye by a female pimp - but this was barely touched upon. In the clip above, Kristof also brings up how the owner for one of the brothels is also an employee of the local police force.

Watching the segment reminded me of the frustration many activists felt when reading The Woman's Crusade article in the Saving The World's Women issue in the NY Times magazine. As Melissa over at Shakesville wrote:

If I'm not mistaken, I just read seven pages that are the philosophical equivalent of "She got raped." Passive. Rape is something that happens to women. Something that gets done to them.

So, apparently, is worldwide institutional oppression.

I don't guess I need to say that I am all for giving women around the world every tool, every resource, every dollar and dinar, every bit of choice and opportunity and access, everything possible to lift themselves up and achieve everything they could want or imagine.

But how can we talk about lifting women up without a serious discussion of, no less without more than the merest passing reference to, who and what has been keeping them down?

The segment focused on women's oppression, but glossed over other complicating factors. For example, Kristof actually purchased two girls from sexual slavery and returned them to their villages. One girl remained in her village and wed - the other went back to the brothels, presumably in search of drugs. Kristof mentioned that this made him understand that "freeing" someone is "more than just opening a door" - but that type of analysis was lacking in the articles and segments that Kristof appeared on. Instead, the focus was on feel-good narratives and painful images of poverty and suffering.

On Oprah's website, she has a registry sub-site set up to help.

The various ways to assist (financial and awareness-based) are helpful, but is human intervention enough in the face of structural and societal problems of this magnitude?

George Clooney, Ben Affleck, Demi Moore And Hillary Clinton [Oprah]

Related: Half The Sky Movement [Official Site]

The Women's Crusade [NY Times]
Here's Your Big Chance To Ask: What About The Men? [Shakesville]

Time magazine summarizes this dynamic beautifully: "In the end, all of the tea-party town halls, Glenn Beck rallies and "death panel" rumors may have less of a hand in bringing down health-care reform than an intraparty Democratic culture war."

The battle over abortion rights is more than a cultural conflict. While politicians choose to position the impact of the amendment differently, it still amounts to a frighteningly blatant assault on women's autonomy. The Time piece sheds some light onto the political wheeling and dealing that led to Stupak:

In mid-June, Stupak and 18 other pro-life Democrats sent a letter to Nancy Pelosi warning that they could not vote for the bill that had been introduced unless it was changed to prevent taxpayer funding of abortion. (The original health-reform bill introduced in the House contained no reference to abortion, which both pro-life and pro-choice activists read as allowing coverage of abortion through the so-called public option, a government-run alternative to private insurance plans that some individuals and small businesses would have access to.) They received no response.

A month later, five other pro-life Democrats led by Tim Ryan of Ohio sent another letter to Pelosi expressing their concerns as well, but suggesting a compromise to the abortion quandary. This time, Pelosi was interested and she gave Ryan the green light to develop language that ended up known as the Capps amendment, because Lois Capps of California introduced it during the House Energy and Commerce Committee's markup of health-reform legislation.

The provision extended the decades-old Hyde Amendment prohibitions against funding of abortions through Medicaid and federal employee health plans except in the case of rape, incest, or to save the woman's life to the medical care covered under the public option. In addition, Capps put forward a system in which an insurance plan could segregate private funds to pay for abortions from public subsidies, which could not.

At the time, Stupak's opposition to the Capps amendment - he was suspicious of it because it had been drafted without his group's input, by a pro-choice Democrat no less - seemed unimportant. Democratic leaders thought their solution would allow them to cobble together enough pro-life votes, and they were convinced that the amendment had taken abortion off the table.

Indeed, up until the last week before the House vote on health reform, both Pelosi and Stupak thought they each had the votes to get their way on abortion. As a result, when Indiana Congressman Brad Ellsworth, a pro-life Democrat, tried to draft an amendment tightening the Capps language in the last weeks before the House vote, both sides attacked him. Planned Parenthood said the effort, which attempted to strengthen the segregation of funds and ensure that no federal dollars could ever be designated to fund abortions in the exchange, could "tip the balance away from women's access to reproductive health care." And the Catholic bishops conference issued a memo calling the amendment "not a meaningful compromise."

The one-two punch took the life out of the Ellsworth amendment and denied pro-life Democrats the opportunity to vote for something less extreme than the final Stupak amendment. According to several members who voted for the Stupak amendment, they would have supported a more moderate compromise along the lines of the Ellsworth language if they had been given the chance. As it was, 10 of the 19 Democrats who signed the initial Stupak letter to Pelosi voted against health reform even after their demands on abortion were met.

While I am shaking my fist at my computer screen, Politico lobs this bomb:

Taxpayers currently provide deep subsidies for health insurance plans that cover abortion - a little-recognized fact responsible for much of the angst over an anti-abortion amendment attached to the House health care bill.

Stupak and his allies, including every House Republican, a quarter of the chamber's Democrats and the Vatican, say that it simply extends an existing prohibition on federal funding for abortion - an annually renewed policy called the Hyde amendment - to the health care exchange that would be established for the uninsured under the health care bill making its way through Congress.

But lawmakers who support abortion rights contend that, if the Stupak amendment's logic is extended to the $250 billion in tax breaks Americans get to buy coverage through employer-based plans, it could strip abortion coverage from tens of millions of women who already have it.

Rep. Diana DeGette (D-Colo.), co-chairwoman of the Congressional Pro-Choice Caucus, said that the next step beyond Stupak for the anti-abortion movement will be to make sure that "if that federal wand has been waved over your insurance, then you don't get to get abortion coverage.

All of this calls Obama's motives into question - how does one "maintain the status quo" when we are obviously upending the status quo in favor of this craptacular amendment? Still, there are some who believe that this type of trade would have little impact on the day to day lives of women in America.

The New Republic calculates how many women would be heavily impacted by the amendment:

How many women would the Stupak amendment affect? It wouldn't immediately impinge on the roughly 60 million women ages 18-64 who presently get health insurance through their jobs or their spouses' jobs rather than Medicare. At least in the short term, nothing would change for these women because they wouldn't receive any federal funds. But most of them aren't reimbursed for abortion coverage under the current system. There's a debate about how many private health care plans cover abortion—estimates have ranged from 46 percent to nearly 87 percent. But, regardless of the number, the Guttmacher Institute found that only 13 percent of all abortions in 2001 were directly billed to private insurance companies. Some women may have filed for reimbursement on their own; others may have been reluctant to file claims because they didn't want their employers or spouses to know they had abortions; and other women were uninsured. Nevertheless, 74 percent of women who had abortions paid for them out of pocket.

That doesn't mean the Stupak amendment would maintain the status quo on abortion funding. It would restrict the choices of women who buy private health insurance on the new health-insurance exchange designed to provide affordable coverage. The Congressional Budget Office estimates that, under the House bill, 21 million Americans will buy insurance through the exchange by 2019. This group will include some of the 17 million women, ages 18-64, who are currently uninsured (and, obviously, don't receive any abortion coverage) and some of the 5.7 million women currently purchasing coverage through the market rather than through employers—including self-employed and unemployed women, and those whose jobs don't offer benefits.

It's some subset of this last group—the women who switch from private plans that now cover abortion to private plans on the federal exchange—who would be most affected by the changes. The overwhelming majority of people who buy private insurance on the exchange will be receiving federal affordability credits, and the Stupak amendment says that, if you receive a federal subsidy, you can't buy insurance that covers abortion. (The amendment allows women who are farsighted enough to plan for unplanned pregnancies to buy a single-service abortion-insurance "rider," but, in practice, past experience suggests these riders won't be readily available.) "The bottom line seems to be that abortion coverage, if it exists at all on the exchange, will be rare," says Adam Sonfield of the Guttmacher Institute. This may not be a great financial burden for the majority of women who have first-trimester abortions, which are relatively cheap—in 2006, the average cost of a first-trimester abortion was $413—but it could represent a more serious burden for women who have later-term abortions, which are more expensive.

(While much has been made of the 13% statistic, it is important to note that the Guttmacher institute disagrees with any framing of the statistic that would result in reducing the availability of abortion services and coverage. In a press release, they said: "Guttmacher's 13% statistic, therefore, should not be cited as evidence that insurance coverage for abortion is not widespread or to suggest that restricting such coverage would have an impact on only a small minority of women." While the TNR piece above states some of the Guttmacher caveats, the statistic is still what gets the most play.)

The most sensible take on the whole debate comes from this week's New Yorker, where Jeffrey Toobin puts our current bout of conservative hysterics into historical context:

Abortion is almost as old as childbirth. There has always been a need for some women to end their pregnancies. In modern times, the law's attitude toward that need has varied. In the United States, at the time the Constitution was adopted, abortions before "quickening" were both legal and commonplace, often performed by midwives. In the nineteenth century, under the influence of the ascendant medical profession, which opposed abortion (and wanted to control health care), states began to outlaw the procedure, and by the turn of the twentieth century it was all but uniformly illegal. The rise of the feminist movement led to widespread efforts to decriminalize abortion, and in 1973 the Supreme Court found, in Roe v. Wade, that the Constitution prohibited the states from outlawing it.

Throughout this long legal history, the one constant has been that women have continued to have abortions. The rate has declined slightly in recent years, but, according to the Guttmacher Institute, thirty-five per cent of all women of reproductive age in America today will have had an abortion by the time they are forty-five. It might be assumed that such a common procedure would be included in a nation's plan to protect the health of its citizens. In fact, the story of abortion during the past decade has been its separation from other medical services available to women. Abortion, as the academics like to say, is being marginalized.

It is being marginalized, and the sad part is that the effort is working - instead of looking at abortion as a part of medical coverage, we have allowed all kinds of political and religious posturing that do not contribute to the ultimate goal of health care reform: to improve access to care and coverage, not to create new restrictions. Toobin continues:

Yet it's not only with regard to insurance that abortion services are being treated like a second-class form of medicine. There is, for instance, the proliferation of "conscience clauses," which allow medical professionals to refuse to conduct procedures that they disapprove of. Shortly after Roe, Congress passed the first major conscience clause, which stated that medical professionals and hospitals that receive certain federal funds did not have to provide abortions or sterilizations if they objected on "the basis of religious beliefs or moral convictions." The Bush Administration sought to dramatically expand the clauses to cover not only doctors and nurses but anyone who works in a hospital, including pharmacists, and to increase the range of practices that might be rejected-a step that could potentially include such services as the dispensing of birth control. President Obama has said that he will revise or overturn the policy.

The President is pro-choice, and he has signaled some misgivings about the Stupak amendment. But, like many modern pro-choice Democrats, he has worked so hard to be respectful of his opponents on this issue that he sometimes seems to cede them the moral high ground. In his book "The Audacity of Hope," he describes the "undeniably difficult issue of abortion" and ponders "the middle-aged feminist who still mourns her abortion." Elsewhere, he announces, "Abortion vexes." The opponents of abortion aren't vexed-they are mobilized, focused, and driven to succeed.

Toobin's conclusion is one we would all do well to remember:

Every diminished of that right diminishes women. With stakes of such magnitude, it is wise to weigh carefully the difference between compromise and surrender.

Abortion fight is excuse to kill reform, Pelosi says [Politico]
Can the Dems Overcome Their Abortion Split on Health Care? [Time]
Abortion deal spins a very tangled web [Politico]
Stupak is as Stupak Does [The New Republic]
Misuse of Guttmacher Statistic on Insurance Coverage of Abortion [Guttmacher Institute]

In fact, the so-called "third sex" have a storied and respected history in India, occupy their own caste, and were traditionally the companions of queens. But nowadays, hijras - a term that today includes eunuchs, the intersex, transgender individuals, transvestites and self-identifying "third-gender" communities - are the object of discrimination. The estimated 200,000 hijras in India are frequently cast out by their families, forced to leave the educational system and are reduced to begging and sex work. Says the Times of India,

Hijras have few rights and are not recognized by Indian law. Except for the state of Tamil Nadu that has sanctioned special toilets - and a database to map the population of transgenders in the state and find out detailed demands such as ration cards and voter identity cards - they are denied the right to vote, own property, marry and the right to claim formal identity through any official documents such as a passport.

But, as Kalki Subramanian, the founder of the site and a gender-rights activist, explains to the Times of London, "It wasn't always like this...Only in the past 200 years, under the British, did we become too narrow minded." (The British government classified hijras as "a breach of public decency" and were deemed a "criminal tribe.") She adds, "Many of us would like to marry men; most of us would like to have children, to adopt...But for too long, because of our place in society, these have been distant dreams. People think of us as sexual perverts or clowns."

While "hijras" are represented in some same-sex dating sites, this is the first matrimonial site in the world for self-identifying hijras hoping to meet and marry men. The site states, "transsexual women by birth may not be physically women. But, by soul and heart, we are real women." And as is clear, starting it out of Madras is a major statement. Of course, the fact that the site is explicitly geared towards the population - one could argue, ghettoized - is a double-edged sword: hijras are still very much a group apart. And while the site is a designated safe space that seeks to promote larger discussion of gender identity and discrimination, it still only lists six perspective "brides." And yet, those women boast flattering head-shots and profiles (in Tamil) and their courage has reaped results: as the Times of London tells us, the site has attracted "more than 350 proposals of marriage from men in India, Britain, France, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the US and the Middle East." While one imagines not all the inquiries are serious - or savory - one can only hope that at least one relationship will result in the Valentine's Day wedding the site's founder envisions. And the site is explicit when it issues its challenge to prospective grooms:

Are you a man who believes in equality? Do you respect women and believe in eliminating oppression and exclusion based on gender? Are you someone who is against caste system and dowry? Will you treat your wife as a friend and an equal partner in your life? If so, the transsexual women you find on these pages are looking for life partners.

World's First Matrimonial Site For Transsexuals [Times Of India]

Eunuch Marriage Website Paves Way For Third Gender Comeback In India [TimesUK]
<a href="">Thirunangai.net
World's First Matrimonial Site For Transsexual Women [IndiaServer.com]
documentary [YouTube]
Eunuchs — India's Third Gender [ThingsAsian]

After all, look at how bad it used to be!

Now, I have to admit, the piece gave me a bit of pause. In the intro article, the writers explain:

So it's worth stopping to look at what happened while we were busy ending the Cold War and building a multicultural society and enjoying the longest economic expansion in history.

Umm. Yeah. That's not quite how I'd describe the last thirty years, though many of these goals are works in progress. While reading through the fifteen segments that compose Time's series, I kept thinking of a phrase I hear often in anti-racist circles when discussing the realities of racism. The phrase (which adapts a bit depending on the speaker) is that whites like to measure progress by how far we've come; minorities like to measure progress based on how far we have left to go. This article is definitely taking the "how far we've come" view.

Much of the article frames gender issues as small matters, individual squabbles between couples, instead of systemic issues. However, it also does a bit of reframing, pushing the idea that women are the cause of their own problems:

This is not to say there's nothing left to argue about. More than two-thirds of women still think men resent powerful women, yet women are more likely than men to say female bosses are harder to work for than male ones. Men are much more likely to say there are no longer any barriers to female advancement, while a majority of women say men still have it better in life. People are evenly split over whether the "mommy wars" between working and nonworking mothers are finally over.

And the tenuous idea of happiness resurfaced:

Among the most confounding changes of all is the evidence, tracked by numerous surveys, that as women have gained more freedom, more education and more economic power, they have become less happy. No tidy theory explains the trend, notes University of Pennsylvania economist Justin Wolfers, a co-author of The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness. "We looked across all sectors - young vs. old, kids or no kids, married or not married, education, no education, working or not working - and it stayed the same," he says of the data. "But there are a few ways to look at it," he adds. "As Susan Faludi said, the women's movement wasn't about happiness." It may be that women have become more honest about what ails them. Or that they are now free to wrestle with the same pressures and conflicts that once accounted for greater male unhappiness. Or that modern life in a global economy is simply more stressful for everyone but especially for women, who are working longer hours while playing quarterback at home. "Some of the other social changes that have happened over the last 35 years - changes in family, in the workplace - may have affected men differently than women," Wolfers says. "So maybe we're not learning about changes due to the women's movement but changes in society."

And of course, there is the idea that inequality can be completely resolved in the span of forty years, and suddenly men will be the ones with a systemic disadvantage:

If male jobs keep vanishing, if physical strength loses its workplace value, if the premium shifts ever more to education, in which achievement is increasingly female, then we will soon be having parallel conversations: What needs to be done to free American men to realize their full potential? You can imagine the whole conversation flipping in a single generation.

It's no longer a man's world. Nor is it a woman's nation. It's a cooperative, with bylaws under constant negotiation and expectations that profits be equally shared.

Journalist and First Lady of California, Maria Shriver, writes an ode to her recently departed mother, Eunice, but also goes into a discussion of shifting gender roles and confusion. However, I appreciate how she still reframes the argument to look at the inequalities that have not been resolved:

Men are feeling out of sorts and stressed out as well. Wherever I went, I was surprised at how open men were to sharing their bafflement about what women want - and their insecurities about what's expected of them. "All of us grew up thinking this was a man's world, that doors were just gonna open to us because we had a Y chromosome," a Seattle man told me. "And suddenly we have to adjust to the fact that that's not the case. And the recession has made it even more intense for us. So every family is trying to figure out what does it mean that we're both working, or that I'm laid off and you're working? We haven't thrown some switch to go from a man's world to a woman's world. It's more like we're finally, for the first time, in a position where it's no longer only a man's world. Now what does that mean?"

While there's much to cheer about these days on the equality front, we still have a long way to go. Women still don't make as much as men do for the same jobs. The U.S. still is the only industrialized nation without a child-care policy. Women are still being punished by a tax code designed when men were the sole breadwinners and women the sole caregivers. Sexual violence against women still is a huge issue. Women still are disproportionately affected by a lack of health-care services. And lesbian couples and older women are among the poorest segments of our society.

What I find most interesting in the series are the discussions and breakdowns by race. While there is quite a bit of consensus, it's interesting to look at just how different opinions can be along racial lines.

Take "The Argument About Women Working is Over," a segment exploring breakdowns by race, asking respondents if having women in the workplace was "a positive change":

[T]hat view holds regardless of age, race or political ideology: 81% of African Americans view it as a positive change, along with 84% of Latinos, 88% of Democrats and 68% of Republicans.

And I would love some more analysis on racial/gender attitudes toward marriage:

Being married is very important to 58% of men vs. 53% of women. Only 38% of men strongly agree that a woman can have a fulfilling life without marriage, compared with 54% of women. Both white women and highly educated women (61%) strongly agree vs. 37% of Latino women. Of both black and Latino men, only 35% strongly agree.

Also, although one section is titled "Working mothers are broadly accepted..." the actual statistics show that race does influence overall attitudes:

Seventy-four percent of men and 84% of women say women with children are just as committed to their jobs as women without children. Seventy-two percent of black women strongly agree vs. 57% of Latino women and 55% of white women.

I am in favor of looking at racial analysis alongside of gender analysis because the lives of black, Latina, indigenous, and Asian women to differ a bit from the white norm. I was at a feminist conference earlier this year, and one of my co-panelists was trying to nail home the fact that women should be grateful that we have so much power and visibility. She, an older feminist, noted that many of these advances would have been unthinkable 40 years ago, and she feels that the situation and potential for women was wonderful. She began naming successful women in Hollywood, and continued to do so until I pointed out that not a single one of the women she held up as proof women had broken through all the old barriers was a woman of color. Sometimes, our gender struggles look a little different through a racial lens, and- as the stats above demonstrate - it's important to remember that the term '"women" encompasses a large and diverse group.

The Time piece concludes by following up with some of the women profiled in the magazine's 1972 feature "Where She Is and Where She's Going." The women profiled all saw their lives changed, as some worked outside of the home in the years following the article. Other women said in 1972, they felt fine with their lives and placing others first, but also felt grateful their daughters had more opportunities. Interestingly, the original article also wondered why women were not happy, when they had so much more than women of previous generations.

I will admit one thing though - the Time article certainly has me reflecting on where I am and where I would live to be in terms of gender equality. Readers, how does "The State of the American Woman" look from where you sit?

The State of the American Woman [Time Magazine]
Where She Is and Where She's Going [Time Magazine]

The article begins by explaining Rotana's policies, with an emphasis on their liberal application of the country's mandatory dress code and women in various positions of power. The work environment is such a radical departure from the normal manner of doing business that men who apply to work at the company must be tested to see if they can handle such a dramatic shift:

The sight unnerves enough men who come looking for a job that human-resources manager Sultana al-Rowaili has developed a trick to see if a male applicant can handle working in a mixed-gender office. She arranges for a female colleague to interrupt the initial interview, and watches to see if the man loses concentration or stares too much. Sometimes even that isn't necessary. Many men are undone by the very idea of being interviewed by a woman. "They are in a state of shock to see a woman in a position of authority and to have to ask her for a job," al-Rowaili says.

The women of Rotana appear to be happy and fulfilled with their work, and Andrew Lee Butters uses their cheerful beginning as a way to discuss the changing role of women in Saudi Arabia. While women are becoming increasingly educated and have indicated a willingness to participate fully in society, they are still faced with large obstacles:

Critics outside the government say the state is still failing to take a systematic approach to dismantling gender barriers. While the government is trying to encourage women to enter the workforce, for example, there are still no clear guidelines as to what is legal and what is illegal in an office setting, according to Abdulaziz al-Gasim, a former judge who now runs his own law firm in Riyadh. "We would like to hire women," he says. "Women in the law faculties send us their CVs. But where would we put them?" Without a separate entrance for women, or gender-specific meeting rooms, firms fear they could be prosecuted. There are also still no laws to protect women from harassment at work. "There is no meaning behind female education if they can't enter the workforce," says al-Gasim.

In addition to matters of law, matters of perception also influence how much women can push for change. Sadly, it appears that many women are just fine with the status quo:

There's evidence, too, that many women don't want radical change. A government poll in 2006 - one of the few attempts to gauge women's opinions - found that 86% thought women shouldn't work in a mixed environment, and 89% agreed women shouldn't drive. Iman al-Alqeel, the editor of Hayat, a conservative magazine for girls, says most of her readers find the thought of working or studying around boys and men intimidating. "They want to be able to relax and not worry about what other people think about them," she says, though that's partly because Saudi men don't know how to behave around women. "Before you bring in something new you have to fix the old habits," she says. "If you want women to drive, send the men to driving school."

Still, the article ends on a hopeful -yet defiant - note:

"We are not a bunch of Barbie dolls," says al-Rowaili, the Rotana television executive. "All of us have faced so many challenges to get here. We are pioneers. And we are going to win."

Saudi Arabia's Small Steps for Women [Time]

In the Canadian Journal of Administrative Sciences, Kelan's article ""Gender Fatigue: The Ideological Dilemma of Gender Neutrality and Discrimination in Organizations," cuts right to the heart of the issue:

Dr. Kelan found that workers acknowledge gender discrimination is possible in modern organizations, but at the same time maintain their workplaces to be gender neutral. The author notes, "gender fatigue" as the cause for workers not acknowledging that bias against women can occur. [...]

Employees from both companies claimed their organizations were gender neutral and that employees were evaluated based on merit. With further questioning, men and women interviewed could describe past situations where gender bias occurred against women, but limited it to happening 10 to 20 years ago, from contacts outside their own organizations (i.e. customer contacts), or to an isolated male colleague from an "older" generation. "Instead of denying gender discrimination, workers acknowledge it can happen but construct it as singular events that happened in the past, placing the onus on women to overcome such obstacles," stated Dr. Kelan. [...]

The problem with gender fatigue is that it prohibits productive discussion regarding inequalities between men and women, making gender bias difficult to address," noted Dr. Kelan. "Future studies should explore what happens to gender fatigue over time and whether practical strategies can be developed to shape the way in which people in organizations speak about gender."

In the interest of helping with Dr. Kelan's research, I'll throw this one out the room - has the perception "gender fatigue" stopped you from bringing up issues of gender discrimination?

Gender discrimination still a factor in modern organizations — 'that's what she said' [Eureka Alert]

Sue Shellenbarger of the Wall Street Journal talks about a rising trend of assigning mental-health workers to preschools. These therapists and consultants can help teachers resolve kids' problems, like tantrums and rough play, before they get out of hand. Shallenberger writes,

The idea of assigning mental-health workers to child-care centers and preschools is jarring; I was skeptical when I first heard the idea. Children so small shouldn't need mental-health help, it seems, and having therapists or counselors working in classrooms seems to risk stigmatizing them with labels, or simply interfering with the innocence of childhood.

But therapists can help preschools reduce their expulsion rates, which are currently three times higher than those in kindergarten through high school. Preschool teachers also say behavior problems are rising, perhaps because preschool is becoming more academic or learning disabilities more prevalent. And if depression can occur in kids as young as three, maybe having therapists on hand isn't such a stretch.

Perhaps even more controversial than giving very young children therapy is talking to them about race. According to Po Bronson and Ashley Merryman in Newsweek, researcher Birgitte Vittrup asked parents of white five- to seven-year-olds to talk to their kids about racial equality, with or without accompanying videos. She hoped the conversations would change kids' racial attitudes. They didn't — because parents couldn't actually bring themselves to have them. Rather than talking to kids explicitly about race, the parents "reverted to the vague 'Everybody's equal' phrasing" — or dropped out of the study early because it made them too uncomfortable. Another study found that 75% of white parents never, or almost never, bring up race with their kids.

Bronson and Merryman write that parents may believe "we should let children know a time when skin color does not matter." But kids are never really oblivious to skin color. A study of six-month-olds showed they stared longer at faces with different skin color than their own, implying that they perceived these faces as more unfamiliar. And an experiment by Rebecca Bigler of the University of Texas shows that children may be "developmentally prone to in-group favoritism." Assigned to wear red or blue T-shirts for just three weeks, preschoolers began to believe that kids who wore the same color shirt as them were more likely to be nice and smart.

So it may be better to address racial prejudice with children head-on, rather than pretending it doesn't exist. Parents — especially white parents — may be so uncomfortable discussing race that they dance around the issue or shush children when they bring it up. But kids may not understand abstract words like "equality," and it doesn't do them much good to learn that all discussion of race is taboo. Bronson and Merryman say that white parents could take a cue from minority families, who are typically much more likely to talk about racial issues. One psychologist, they write, found that "minority children are coached to be proud of their ethnic history," and that this is beneficial for their self-confidence. Bronson and Merryman add,

That leads to the question that everyone wonders but rarely dares to ask. If "black pride" is good for African-American children, where does that leave white children? It's horrifying to imagine kids being "proud to be white." Yet many scholars argue that's exactly what children's brains are already computing. Just as minority children are aware that they belong to an ethnic group with less status and wealth, most white children naturally decipher that they belong to the race that has more power, wealth, and control in society; this provides security, if not confidence. So a pride message would not just be abhorrent-it'd be redundant.

In fact, white children may need not pride, but a little guilt. Rebecca Bigler found that after a lesson on Jackie Robinson, white children had much better attitudes towards blacks if they learned that Robinson had faced discrimination from white people. Bigler says the lesson "made them feel some guilt. It knocked down their glorified view of white people." Instilling guilt in innocent children may sound cruel — but again, kids aren't really innocent when it comes to race. They tend to think their own group is the best one, perhaps especially if that group happens also to be socioeconomically advantaged. Teaching them that they're not superior may actually be kind, both for their personal development and for a society where they will one day be voters, workers, and parents. By the time they grow up to inhabit those roles, it may already be too late.

See Baby Discriminate [Newsweek]
Therapy In Preschools: Can It Have Lasting Benefits? [Wall Street Journal]

• After barring a woman from helping her autistic sister try on clothes at the chain's Mall of America outpost, Abercrombie & Fitch was fined $115,264 for discrimination. Now we can say it definitively: Abercrombie doesn't like disabled people. [StarTrib]

• There are pictures of Threeasfour's inspiration boards, fabrics, and the in-progress pieces of its collection with Yoko Ono, which will be shown next week in New York. Ono contributed original artwork and inspiration to the collection, and the dot drawings that were transformed into original prints look fantastic with their repeated circular-organic shapes. [The Cut]
• Oprah is going to co-host next year's Met Ball. Oprah. Let that sink in. Co-hosting, of course, will be the woman who made her lose 20 pounds to be fit for the cover of her magazine: Anna Wintour. [Yahoo! News]
• This year's Met Ball model co-host, Kate Moss, stormed out of the GQ awards show in London because host James Nesbitt made a joke about her naked appearance on the cover of that magazine. She managed to interrupt Dizzee Rascal, who was being interviewed after accepting an award — twice. Once to storm out, and once to ask if anybody had seen her lipstick. [Telegraph]
• GQ anointed comedian and Little Britain star David Walliams as the most stylish man of 2009. He accepted the award wearing goggles and denim hotpants. [Mirror]
• Craig "Radioman" Schwartz, apparently some sort of serial movie set hanger-on, nearly rode his bicycle into Sarah Jessica Parker while she was filming for Sex And The City outside Bergdorf's. She stumbled over the curb. Do people really have nothing better to do than flashmob the SATC set? For the rest of the day, Parker was protected by ten bodyguards between takes. [WWD]
• Meanwhile, co-star Kristin Davis' line with Belk department stores has been discontinued, and the actress' planned New York Fashion Week show canceled. Belk and Davis say the decision was mutual. [The Cut]
• Three words: Lady Gaga Headphones. (No, she's not doing a side project with David Bazan.) [Engadget]
• The house of Ungaro has tapped Lindsay Lohan as an "artistic adviser" and relatively unknown designer Estrella Archs as its chief designer. When the Lindsay-for-Ungaro rumor started — back before the young, talented Colombian designer Esteban Cortazar had been fired — it sounded like crazy talk. Now it's happening. "Odds are it could work," says C.E.O. Mounir Moufarrige. [WWD]
• Heidi Klum, on that time Karl Lagerfeld sneered that he didn't know who she was, and that she was obviously fat anyway: "It's bizarre to me that he says he doesn't know who I am because he's dressed me in the past. I've worn Karl Lagerfeld. Not even Chanel – his line. Lagerfeld doesn't just send random things everywhere." Klum in fact wore Lagerfeld to the CFDA awards a few years back. [P6Mag — story not online yet]
  
• Fashion success story Christopher Kane, on childhood: "I was this wee kid who just stayed in the house, watching The Clothes Show with my mum and scrooging all the money from my first communion." [ToL]
• Model Crystal Renn, who was directed as a 14-year-old to lose 9" off her hips in order to work in the industry, and struggled for years with anorexia and exercise bulimia as a result, says that Glamour magazine was the only client who ever noticed her eating disorder, and took action by calling her then-agency, Next. Not that she was appreciative as a frightened young teen: "At the time, I was really embarrassed because someone had figured me out. They called it and brought it to light. I wasn't only not only not pleasing my agency but I wasn't pleasing Glamour. When I became a healthy model like I am now, they were one of the first people to shoot me at this size, and that says something." Renn, whose memoir Hungry came out yesterday, would like to have a plus-size clothing line because she says her rock 'n' roll aesthetic is under-represented in the larger sizes. [GlamChic]
• Tara Moss, who modeled for 10 years, now writes crime novels. And she does her own stunts: to research events for her books, she tries to experience the things her characters feel. In addition to spending days in morgues and courtrooms, flying fighter jets, and being set on fire, she has had an Ultimate Fighter choke her until she lost consciousness. [Reuters]
• Hadley Freeman says, of the attempts by models too numerous to name to raise awareness about the industry's working conditions, "The fact that all these efforts have come from models as opposed to the outside media (which gets too distracted with painting models as evil fem-bots and harbingers of eating disorders to see them as underpaid homesick teenagers), suggests maybe people find the idea of models making them feel fat more upsetting than the very real fact of models being raped." The serial rapist designer Anand Jon Alexander was sentenced to 59 years in prison this week; other sources interviewed for this story express amazement that any of his victims, all young models over whom he had authority, came forward at all. [Guardian]
• Anna Sui's Gossip Girl-inspired Target collection launches this weekend online and in 600 stores nationwide — and today, if you live in New York and are willing to go to a pop-up store in a townhouse on Crosby St. [WWD]
• A woman told the Post that sometimes she goes to Yigal Azrouël's Meatpacking District store to try on clothes "just to be naked in the same room with him." Azrouël is sexy and all, but that's just creepy. [NYPost]
• This story about Fashion's Night Out, which is tomorrow, includes an unexpected reference to Fitzgerald. Then Anna Wintour says, "What am I looking to buy? Something in red, some new boots, and some kind of savage fur (that's American Vogue shorthand, so you know, for a rough, shaggy stole or collar of some kind). It's not a lot, but isn't that the whole point of shopping these days." [ToL]
• Club Monaco locations in New York City will be serving champagne until 11 p.m., and the SoHo store will have a cupcake truck outside until September 12th. [FWD]
• The Financial Times' coverage of Fashion's Night Out casts Wintour as Ben Bernanke in a grand fashion stimulus plan. [FT]
• Wintour's appearance on Letterman drew slightly higher ratings than the show's average for the week and month, but ABC's Nightline still won the timeslot. [WWD]
• "Would I think twice about buying a dress that costs $2,000? Yeah! Of course I would. I'd try it on and go home and think about it before I bought it," says Victoria Beckham. Nonetheless, she says that demand for her uber-expensive dress line is outstripping supply. [People]
• Robin Givhan reports that now, the time just before Fashion Week, is a period of "soul-searching and hand-wringing" for designers and the industry. [WaPo]
• Neiman Marcus suffered a $168.6 million loss during the fourth quarter. Revenues decreased 24%. [WWD]
• Yesterday, Gap-owned e-tailer Piperlime started selling designer clothes, in addition to shoes. [NYTimes]
• Same-store sales at Laura Ashley rose 6.7%, to £101.5m. [FT]

The first objectionable phrase Martin and Visconti discuss is, "You're not diverse." Visconti tells an anecdote about a hospital system employee who told him that the system was "81% diverse." She really meant it was 81% women and people of color, and Visconti uses her words to talk about the assumption that white people are not a part of a diverse workplace. Obviously diversity means including a wide variety of different groups, and if one of those groups is white men, the entire community isn't necessarily less diverse. However, this is more of an issue of language than Visconti makes it out to be — measuring the company's "percentage of diversity" is misleading, and calling a single person diverse or not diverse is just bizarre. The assumption that white people can't be included in diversity at all is a bad one, but we're not sure how often people actually make it.

Visconti also has some odd things to say about the concept of white privilege. He tells Martin,

White privilege, I tell other white people, is the most amazing thing. You can give away your white privilege by helping other people gain access, and it never diminishes your white privilege. You're born with it, and it remains with you, so it's the gift that keeps on giving.

Throughout the interview, Visconti comes across as someone who genuinely wants to work toward a more equal society. However, his idea of white privilege as a "gift" that whites can bestow on others is somewhat paternalistic. It promulgates a view of race relations in which white people "give access" to minorities, rather than everyone working together to create equal access. It also assumes that white privilege is something you can give away, when the idea that it "remains with you" is probably closer to the truth. Helping a person of color does not make that person white, and does not confer upon them all the unconscious benefits that society gives to whites. All people can work to reduce the influence of privilege, but that involves a widespread change of behaviors and attitudes — not individual "gifts."

That said, Visconti does have some good ideas about race relations. He says no one should ever say the phrase, "There's no way you as a white person can understand." He should have mentioned that people of color do have experiences that white people probably can't fully understand (similarly, a man can't really know what it's like to be a woman, nor can a woman know what it's like to be a man). However, he's right that by focusing only on differences or on what is incommunicable, "you eliminate potential allies, and you shut people down."

Many in the past have said that white people have no place in creating equality, or in erasing the wrongs they themselves have perpetrated, but Visconti makes a persuasive case for including whites in the drive to end discrimination. He mentions the many white men he has known whose lives were affected by prejudice, perhaps through an interracial relationship or a gay family member. Many of these men want to work against the discrimination they have seen, and Visconti argues that their help is valuable. Of his work for diversity, he says, "what this is all about is enabling people to bring themselves to work 100%, so they can be engaged, productive, and innovative, because their heart is in it." Despite his missteps, Visconti's heart seems to be in it too, and his message of inclusion deserves a hearing.

Diversity 101: What Not to Say to White Colleagues [NPR]
9 Things NEVER to Say to White Colleagues [DiversityInc]

Dean's mom, May, explained the situation thus:

[Abercrombie] hired her unaware that she had a disability, however when they were made aware, within 6 shifts, they removed her from the shop floor and wanted to hide her in their stock room because her prosthetic hand was breaking their "Look Policy". [...] her minor imperfection was repeatedly pointed out by various staff members who harassed her for wearing a mini cardigan (which she was instructed to wear over her usual uniform). After only her 2nd shift on the shop floor, she was told that they could not have her being seen on the shop floor, as she looked different to everybody else and asked her to report to the stockroom while they found a replacement.

So basically Riam Dean was not only discriminated against, but also jerked around, as store employees first forced her to wear a cardigan and then made fun of her for it. Riam told the BBC that her manager told her she could return to the sales floor if she removed the cardigan, and that this made her feel "taunted."

In her statement to the court, Riam says,

It made me feel as though [the store manager] had picked up on my most personal, sensitive and deeply buried insecurities about being accepted and included. Her words pierced right through the armour of 20 years of building up personal confidence about me as a person, and that I am much more than a girl with only one arm. She brought me back down to earth to a point where I questioned my self worth. My achievements and triumphs in life were brought right down to that moment where I realised that I was unacceptable to my employer because of how I looked. I have never before encountered the stark reality of this attitude, but deep down I have always feared this, and in that moment my worst fears were realised. My entire perception of my own my self worth was shattered. It was a moment of clarity and pain.

A former Abercrombie "visual manager," once in charge of hiring and recruiting, e-mailed to let us know that the discrimination against Dean was par for the course for the company. The ex-employee says that an Abercrombie regional manager "canceled one of my otherwise-perfectly-good hires when it turned out he had a deformed arm." He also says,

There is a "style guide" that hiring managers get to see. It contains almost no text - just a few dozen pages, each with a full-sized color photograph of different ethnicities - a male and a female for each. They are supposed to serve as examples of the kind of people you should hire. Presumably so the managers will know what good-looking minorities look like. They're amongst the confidential files that are never meant to leave the office, but I'm surprised none have ever surfaced. (And all of the minorities, by the way, are as white looking as a person can be without actually being Caucasian).

This sounds different from the "guidebook" that Dean was given as an employee, which dictated the length of her hair and fingernails — and frankly we're not sure which is more upsetting. All the information about Riam Dean's case suggests that her mistreatment was not an isolated incident, but rather part of a pattern of discriminatory and authoritarian policies that created not only a hostile work environment but also an environment that was subtly damaging to customers. After all, what kind of message does it send to shoppers when all your employees must be "white-looking" and conform to a bizarrely rigid set of appearance standards? May Dean says Riam "is prepared to put up a fight on behalf of all disabled people and refuses to allow such prejudice to go unnoticed." So do we.

Disabled woman sues clothes store [BBC]
Student With Prosthetic Arm Sues Clothing Store Abercrombie [Daily Express]
Riam Dean: "I Questioned My Self-Worth" [Zelda Lily]

Earlier: Abercrombie "Banishes" Girl With Prosthetic Arm To Storeroom Because She Doesn't Fit The "Look Policy"

When I previously (and gleefully) wrote about the economic troubles that Abercrombie was having a few months back, I mentioned that my personal hatred for the store comes from the fact that one of the women I was in the intensive inpatient unit with during my treatment for anorexia was heavily recruited by the store just days before her hospitalization (she was incredibly underweight) because she had "the look" they wanted. Turns out that this horrific "look policy" doesn't just revolve around being stick-thin; according to Riam Dean, she was forced to work in the stockroom, as opposed to on the floor, at Abercrombie's London flagship store because her prosthetic arm didn't fit the company's attractiveness standards. You stay classy, Abercrombie!

When Riam applied to the store, they took a photograph of her and gave her a handbook that listed the company's expectations, as far as physical appearance goes. According to the Daily Mail, the handbook "stipulates that staff must represent a 'natural, classic American style' and instructs them on everything from how to wear their hair (clean and natural) to how long they should wear their nails (a quarter of an inch past the end of the finger)." Apparently, Riam's prosthetic arm wasn't "natural" or "classic" enough for the store- they made her buy a cardigan to wear in order to hide her arms while working.

The cardigan, however, wasn't enough to satisfy the Abercrombie team. As Riam recalls:

"A worker from what they call the "visual team", people who are employed to go round making sure the shop and its staff look up to scratch, came up to me and demanded I take the cardigan off. I told her, yet again, that I had been given special permission to wear it. A few minutes later my manager came over to me and said: "I can't have you on the shop floor as you are breaking the Look Policy. Go to the stockroom immediately and I'll get someone to replace you. I pride myself on being quite a confident girl but I had never experienced prejudice like that before and it made me feel utterly worthless. Afterwards I telephoned the company's head office where a member of staff asked whether I was willing to work in the stockroom until the winter uniform arrived. That was the final straw. I just couldn't go back."

She is now suing the company, which, by the way, already paid 2.2 million dollars to employees who felt that that the company was unfairly forcing them to buy Abercrombie's clothes in 2003. Oh, and did I mention they paid a 40 million dollar settlement in 2004, after being accused of discriminatory employment practices? Because they did! This is a company that continues to be called out for their sexist, racist, discriminatory practices, and by issuing half-ass apologies and paying off their accusers, they expect us to forget the nastiness at the core of this operation. Sadly, all of this only makes Riam's story as unsurprising as it is upsetting.

I Was Banished To The Stockroom [DailyMail]
Abercrombie & Fitch To Pay 40 M To Settle Bias Case [USAToday]
Employees Win Dress Code Lawsuit [CBSNews]

Earlier: Finally Teens Don't Like, Or Want To Be, Girls Who Wear Abercrombie And Fitch

• One of Annie Leibovitz's Louis Vuitton ads with astronauts Sally Ride, Buzz Aldrin, and Jim Lovell is out. (Gorby was busy that weekend.) [WWD]
• Karl Lagerfeld: "Ballet is an extraordinary art: this torture of the body to make something so graceful. All this hard work, to look effortless."

• "Swans, they are the meanest animals in the world, you know. I had problems with them as a child. They hate children. I was caught by one, so I know. The idea of swans is lovely, and they have a beautiful shape, but they seem more romantic than they in fact are. I don't think really they die like this. They just drop dead, hmm? But who wants to see that?"[Guardian]
• Christian Lacroix has vowed to keep his 22-year-old label alive even as it has declared bankruptcy, but its July couture presentation is in doubt. [WWD]
• Miranda Kerr is nude on the cover of the June Rolling Stone — in Australia. Because she cares about the environment. [News.com.au]
• Whichever "fellow student" told the Daily Mail "The end of year exams are a big deal at Cambridge University and we've all spent weeks revising. I don't know how she has managed to fit any revision into her busy social life," is certainly no "friend" to model/student Lily Cole. But then, if Lily Cole didn't want tabloid attention, she might not walk around London with her boyfriend wearing a gold ring on the ring finger of her left hand. [Daily Mail]
• Everybody you might care slightly about is getting a new fragrance this year. Kate Moss is naming hers "Vintage." [WWD]
• Kind of like the departed Mr. Blackwell — or Republican trickster Roger Stone — but only for hats, Luton, England milliner Philip Wright releases an annual list of the best celebrity hat-wearers. This year, Carla Bruni-Sarkozy topped it, for her "neat, chic, pill box hat" which "was a supreme example of classic simplicity at its best - a stylish understatement which captured the attention of the world's media." She beat the Queen. [Times of London]
• I've always thought that custom-made clothing, at the right price point, could and should be a bigger part of the apparel market than it is. Because all of us have issues with the fit of standardized sizes — who doesn't have a wardrobe half full of shirts that are tight in the shoulders but loose at the waist, pants with the wrong crotch depth, and skirts that don't move quite right when you walk. But all I want to know about this Ryan Taylor, aka "Taylor the Tailor", of Los Angeles, who supposedly takes his clients' measurements and turns out custom-fitted clothing in a couple days at prices "competitive with brand name department stores" is: where does he manufacture? (A question which, funnily enough, CNN seems to have no interest in.) Because everything I know about fashion leads me to suspect that level of service is only possible if you're e-mailing those customer measurements to a guy in Malaysia. Or Hong Kong. [CNN]
• A lone man pulled off an $8.5 million jewelry heist at Chopard in the Place Vendôme in Paris. [CBS]
• A study in the U.K. found that while women make up 52% of the fashion industry's workforce, they are paid 15% less than their male counterparts, and have only 37% of the top jobs. In New York, anecdotally, I've heard from many a design assistant toiling in the trenches of a major brand that, even though here as there the industry is largely female, things like on-site daycare are nonexistent. [Independent]
• Gilt Groupe, the members-only sample sale site, sponsored Zac Posen's resort show, which is happening tonight. Interesting. [WWD]
• Shares in the national mall chain Wet Seal fell 17% in Friday's trading, following the announcement of poor first quarterly results. Same-store sales fell by 7.3%, and even though it beat analysts' expectations by turning a $5 million profit during the quarter, news that the company does not expect to meet profit forecasts in the next quarter was enough to set the stock price sliding. [The Street]
• Lord & Taylor is closing one of its 47 stores nationwide. The Landmark Mall in Alexandria, Virginia, will no longer boast a Lord & Taylor as an anchor tenant after July 12. Both Landmark Mall and its parent company, General Growth Properties, have filed for bankruptcy protection. [WSJ]
• The U.S. division of Dutch brand Oilily filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and closed its Madison Avenue store. This follows the bankruptcy of its parent company in Hollard nearly two months ago. [Crain's]
• A statement from Wells Fargo, the principal creditor of the bankrupt Hartmarx company, which owns the menswear brands Hickey Freeman and Hart Schaffner Marx, has put Hartmarx's potential deal with private equity firm Emerisque in doubt. Emerisque's bid of $119 million for the business had been accepted by Hartmarx last week, but Wells Fargo, which is owed $114 million, said that with only $70 million of the bid being cash it "fails to provide adequate value to Hartmarx lenders." Wells Fargo also objects to the bid on the grounds that the offer "does not even ensure that Emerisque will continue running Hartmarx's business operations after the acquisition," something which Emerisque had pledged to do. The bankruptcy court is scheduled to hear objections to the bid today. [Chicago Tribune]
• Mango might do most of its business in Spain, but that won't prevent it from opening a store this September in Irbil, the capital of the Kurdish region of Iraq and the country's third-largest city. [Times of London]
• Benetton's seven stores in Georgia closed in protest and Georgian politicians voiced thunderous objections to the chain's decision to open an outpost in Sukhumi, the capital of the disputed Black Sea region of Abkhazia. Tbilisi regards Abkhazia as a breakaway province; the EU and NATO concur; Russia recognizes its independence; 1.5 million Russian tourists visit Sukhumi every year. No doubt lured as much by the thought of all those rubles as by the international goodwill it advertises, Benetton has nonetheless been forced to abandon its plans to open the store. [WSJ]

The commercial was produced by the Sydney advertising agency The Foundry for a challenge on a show about advertising called The Gruen Transfer. On the program, two advertising agencies pitch an ad to (as a tipster describes it) "sell the unsellable."

For the show, scheduled to air last night, two agencies were asked to come up with a campaign for the idea of Fat Pride, to as Gruen's producers explain, "end shape discrimination and make overweight Australians feel less humiliated by the constant public disapproval of anyone who isn't a size 10 or under." The ABC network decided the commercial was too offensive to air on television, but the producers were allowed to post it online, along with a panel discussion with its creator about the thinking behind the ad.

The black and white ad features people telling the extremely offensive jokes:

"How do black women fight crime? They have abortions."
"How do you stop a poofter from drowning? You take your foot off his head."
"What's the difference between Santa Claus and a Jew? Santa Claus goes down the chimney."

Then after the final joke, "Why did God create alcohol? So fat chicks could get a root," the line "Discrimination comes in all shapes and sizes," flashes on the screen.

The 15 minute debate about the ad makes it clear that creator Adam Hunt's intentions were good, and gives some interesting insight into what advertisers consider when making public service announcements (it's hard to imagine the debate airing on U.S. television, as the panelists all remain respectful and let each other talk).

Hunt explained that the idea he was trying to get across was, "if you discriminate against somebody on the basis of their shape then you are no different to someone who is racist, homophobic or anti-Semitic." He said he came up with the idea when his friend told him a "fat chick joke" after he received the assignment from the show. "I literally choked on that laugh, beer went everywhere and I had an epiphany about shape discrimination starting with laughing at a fat chick joke."

The agencies usually produce funny ads for the show, and The Foundry's competitor, JWT Melbourne, made an ad that celebrated fat people as voracious consumers who could save the economy, according to the Sydney Morning Herald. Hunt said, "Any idea that made you laugh at people was actually going to celebrate shape discrimination, not end it."

Todd Samson, a regular panelist on the show, explained that the ad failed because viewers were so shocked by the first racist joke that they missed the point of the ad. Samson added, "I dont think you need to offend one group to help another."

The Foundry's Anti-Discrimination Ad
Discrimination: Gruen Ad Ban Sparks Online Debate [The Sydney Morning Herald]

[Sao Paulo, Brazil; May 12. Image via Getty]

Afro-Brazilian girls get ready to present outfits during a demonstration against discrimination of Afro-Brazilian models on fashion shows, at the main entrance of Se Cathedral, in downtown Sao Paulo, Brazil, on May 12, 2009, ahead of the upcoming Sao Paulo fashion week 2010 Spring-Summer show next June. AFP PHOTO/Mauricio Lima (Photo credit should read MAURICIO LIMA/AFP/Getty Images)