City Year, Diversity, and Trayvon Martin

This a bold statement, but I'm going to make it: if everyone did a City Year, the Trayvon Martin tragedy wouldn't have occurred.

This is a departure from my usual focus on action-oriented feminism, but it's a departure I feel obliged to make. There are so many reasons why national service should be a part of every young person's life, but they are often discussed in the abstract. This is an opportunity for what I believe is a real-life, concrete example.

City Year is a national education-focused non-profit organization that does work in closing the achievement gap and is powered by AmeriCorps. Young idealists sign on for a year of full-time service in urban schools, serving students who are slipping through the cracks and run the risk of not having the skills necessary to graduate high school. Please note that I do not represent City Year Inc. and everything written here are my words and views, and not those of the organization.

As I'm sure you can guess, this puts City Year Corps Member in contact with a whole lot of diversity. Not only does the organization do an incredible job maintaining a diverse Corps in each of the 25 cities it serves, but the public partner schools are usually either racially diverse or mainly made up of minorities. For someone like me - a white, suburban woman of middle class Wisconsin - it was the first time I had meaningful contact with a diverse population.

Why More Men Having Plastic Surgery Does Not Equal Gender Equality

photo: prweb.com

While on a flight back from a work conference in Boston, I realized the limitations of my new Nook, other than being among the least sexy, if most useful, of my wedding presents: you can’t read during take-off and landing. Desperate, I picked up an in-flight magazines called American Way. And between the articles about people who dress up like mermaids and Armie Hammer was a piece titled “Nip/Tuck Secrets: Plastic Surgery AMONG MALES is booming, but it’s not one of those things guys want to discuss.”

Having recently read an amazing book titled “Beauty Junkies” by Alex Kuczynski, about America’s addiction to plastic surgery and cosmetic enhancement (non-surgical procedures like Botox injections), I was intrigued. The article starts off with the story of code name Brian, who had a surgery to give him a stronger-looking chin and is quoted saying “vanity these days is not just for women…I hate to say it, but I think a lot of people do judge you based on how you look. This is something for myself, not anybody else.”

Oh really? Before I move onto all the other seriously flawed statements in this article, of which there are plenty, I want to address the notion of plastic surgery being done “for myself, not anybody else.”

The Iowa Supreme Court and one "irristible" dental assistant

In case you missed it under the news of George Zimmerman's trial and the Asiana plan crash, the upheld it's previous ruling that it was lawful for a man to fire his dental assistant for being "irresistible." The woman in question, Melissa Nelson, was a dental assistant who has the misfortune of being attractive to her boss. The court found that Melissa Nelson's termination did not amount to discrimination, and that it was over a matter of a personal relationship, and not gender bias.

The Sacramento Bee sums it up nicely: "The all-male court found that bosses can fire employees they see as threats to their marriages, even if the subordinates have not engaged in flirtatious or other inappropriate behavior. The court said such firings do not count as illegal sex discrimination because they are motivated by feelings, not gender."

A Case Against the TV: Women and Consumerism

photo: jamesmaystock.com

While reading the mind-melting, life-changing book The Story of Stuff by Annie Leonard, an expert in international sustainability and environmental health issues, I thought a lot about the impact of our consumer-driven way of life on women specifically. In chapter 4, Consumption, she details out some of the more familiar parts of the story of Stuff: how advertising plays with our heads and gets us to buy more junk while we engage TV watching (one of our favorite pastimes), how we have to work more to have the money to buy this Stuff, and how the bulk of it is completely and utterly useless brickabrack that ends up either in a landfill or collecting dust in your closet. (She calls this the "work-watch-spend" cycle, and it's a treadmill most of us live on for much of our lives.)

I spent a good few years on that treadmill myself. I'm not here to explain to you how our economy was engineered so that we would work a ton, have too much junk, and completely and totally ruin the earth for our children and how we can fix it - to learn about that, pick up The Story of Stuff. (Ideally from a library or used book store. It really is a great read.) What I am here to explain to you is how I was a slave to the work-watch-spend cycle, and how I - inadvertently, I'll admit - managed to take break free and what it has done for me in terms of my self-image and confidence.

It goes like this: TV commercials market beauty products to young women. Over half - 56% - of commercials during shows with a high viewer population of young women focus on appearance. Compare that to just 3% of commercials aimed at men.

a note from my interlude

I've taken a bit of a break from writing, and that has been intentional. Between finishing my second year of service, buckling down on my wedding planning and rediscovering how to make exercise and health a part of my lifestyle, writing has been put on the back burner.

But I'm going to be a married woman in one week from today, and there are a few things I need to share before that happens.

I need to share what you probably already know: how much of a burden is put on women in terms of weddings and marriage. Justin, my fiancé, has truly tried to help with the planning, and has even succeeded to a certain degree. With my dad, also a chef, he has planned the menu, worked out the catering stuff, ordered the animals, and learned how to roast them; he's also handled ordering the pies from our favorite Milwaukee bakery, and set up the whole rehearsal dinner. This is a lot. Especially considering how much our society in general has made it clear that he shouldn't have really done anything except get an outfit together and pick out some choice whisky for the guys in the wedding party.

But more than dealing with these to-be-expected expectations from society (SOCIETY!), I've learned that just being aware of them has not been enough to get around them. I'm talking about myself now.

A great example of women's impossibly narrow fashion standards

While reading about the recent factory collapse in Bangladesh, I saw a link on the bottom of the page called "The right way to wear leggings in school." Curious and already somewhat annoyed, I clicked. What I found was a perfect example of the incredibly narrow and nearly impossible to reach standards that women are expected to conform to. These tiny windows of what's acceptable exist in multiple areas - personal and professional conduct, sexual expression, how intelligent you come off - and are especially obvious within the fashion world.

Case in point: the leggings debate. Are they pants? Can they be worn with tight shirts? Does thickness matter? What if you're working out?

The article claims that no, they are not pants, and gives several pictures of celebrities to help women understand the incredibly narrow, specific way that they are acceptably worn. But look closer - they still give an inconclusive definition of what's ok. Some women wear them with shirts that go below the rear end (what I had learned should be worn with leggings during college) but others are sporting shirts that go perhaps midway down the rear or - wait - don't cover it at all. Some of them are wearing tighter shirts, some of them looser. The author mentions the need to hide the lines from undergarments, but that's not a real problem depending on the thickness of the leggings, and isn't that also a thing that happens with certain sweatpants or even certain jeans?

The conclusion I draw from this has nothing to do with how leggings should be "properly" worn, but more on the fact that women must conform to an impossibly narrow standard of dress.

The 'deranged' sorority girl's email is just a reflection of society's priorities for women

I'm not about to defend the Delta Gamma's officer's email that has been making headlines for it's ridiculously over the top emotions and threats. I mean, really, she threatens to "c***punt" her sisters. She also ridicules her sisters as being mentally slow (I personally have strong feelings about why we shouldn't liken people we don't find intelligent to individuals with downs syndrome) and emphasizes not showing up to the night's event if you're going to be a "cock block," which seems to give importance to the sexual gratification of the fraternity they've been paired with. But this isn't another post to expose and ridicule the author of the email.

While the media has been quick to publish the email, offer commentary, give advice on the eternalness of online content, and even do parodied readings, no one has stepped back and asked why: why did this woman write such a heartless and shocking email that reflects such misplaced values? Why would someone value the women of the group she is leading being fun and exciting to the men in the fraternity they had been paired with over having fun and being themselves?

I don't think this question even needs answering, but here we go. The woman who wrote the email is simply a reflection - a big, cartoonishly exaggerated reflection - of the values that society dictates to women.