kid you gotta get a gimmick

i'm simone, i live in new york city & i have an rss addiction.

- books in '08
- project 365
- twitter.

here are some things i write about a lot: broadway, tv, feministing, books,
quotes, new york city, & real life

email me - gettingagimmick[at]gmail[dot]com

Women Targeted More Harshly by Media

And in other news: Earth, Still Round.

Seriously, I’m a proud Women’s Studies minor, who wrote a Senior Thesis on a topic many would find ‘trivial,’ but her argument sounds like it should be followed by a loud, WE Know.

Of course the tone of this article doesn’t help, they make it seem like she’s freaking Columbus sailing for uncharted lands.

Feministing - Washington University to give Phyllis Schlafly an Honorary Doctorate

if you know me, my hatred of phyllis schlafly is pretty well documented. (senior year i lead a protest against her speech when she came to speak at mhc)

i’m fully with the professor they quote in the article mary ann dzuback - there’s a profound difference in a student group or administration inviting her to speak (as happened at mhc, much to my chagrin) and the university honoring her, with one of the highest degrees the university is capable of giving.

what are they honoring her for exactly? i disagree with her on just about every major point she makes, but moreover she’s all pearls and jello. when poked she occasionally comes back with an idiotic soundbite there’s rarely anything there of real, defend-able substance. she just sort of jiggles and evades whatever question you ask. if their reasoning has something to do with ‘contributions to the women’s movement or women’s equality’ i will literally shit a brick.

i understand her family has connections with st. louis - but if that’s the reasoning. why stop there? why not just posthumously honor hitler for contributions to religious freedom?
Feministing- you and your shame-cave!
“ The images viscerally teach “the importance of being sexy” if you are female. The images teach all of us that acting sexy is how girls/women can have power without being rejected as domineering or bitchy (see media coverage of Hillary Clinton for the way “non-sexy” female power is conveyed). ”

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Feministing: Stockholm Syndrome in Media

and see media coverage of britney spears for what happens when you loose the ‘sexy.’ although in britney’s case there are other factors - i remember the media depicting her as ‘fat’ with a fiendish sort of glee.

SIUC responds to anti-feminist email

it’s a little weird to see the college i grew up at mentioned in the news like it’s a real place. logically i know it’s real, but after all this time it still doesn’t feel real.
“ … the schlub-hottie pairings that have become ubiquitous on screen lately also reinforce a dreary double standard. Guys are permitted to be flabby, lazy emotional wrecks, but as long as they crack jokes, some action will come their way. Girls, ideally, should have a sense of humor — mainly so they can laugh at those jokes — but for the most part they should look good in a bikini and like sex (though not too much and not anything too weird). Maybe someday, though probably not under Mr. Apatow’s aegis, a relatively ordinary-looking woman will have a sex comedy of her own. ”

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From A.O. Scott’s review of Forgetting Sarah Marshall

I’m looking forward to a movie where an average-looking woman snares some lothario with her sense of humor.

I might be waiting in vain.

(via mollycaitlin)

amen. as much fun as the movies are, i am growing to hate the schlub-hottie movies.

“ Congratulations, Aliza Shvarts ‘08: you have single-handedly trivialized not only an entire generation and a half’s fight to gain and retain the right to choose, through harassment and against massive odds, but also history of women’s struggles, not only politically, but with the emotional, moral, and spiritual impacts of the choice to terminate a pregnancy. You also spit upon every couple who has tried, and failed, sometimes repeatedly, to have children. it is the emotional impact of these struggles, emotional impact that you shamelessly exploit, not explore, in your senior project. ”

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Avant-Garde Assholes: Yale Senior Undergoes Multiple Self-Induced Miscarriages In The Name Of Art

amen. there is nothing i hate more than people claiming to promote ‘discourse’ by doing things that don’t mean anything.

“ The obvious implication of putting Gisele and Lebron James on the cover of Vogue’s “Shape issue” is that fashion is the female equivalent of sports. Well, no, scratch that, it’s not so much the implication as the explicit premise: “Gisele Bundchen,” the story explains, is “the Lebron James of fashion modeling.” As Vogue premises go, it’s actually a fairly logical one. Modeling and athletics are the two fields wherein one can preposterous financial returns primarily on the basis of one’s genes, and by genes I mean “bodies,” and bodies are what the “shape” issue is about. Sure, the ideals are different: as Gisele points out, Lebron’s foot is the size of her calf. In sports you have to work and train and psych yourself up and psych your opponents out and in modeling you basically have to deprive yourself of food and snort coke. ”

- Body Issues: Is Fashion The Sports Of Chicks? And If So, Isn’t That Kind Of Scary?
“

Iowa is now the 17th state to reject Title V funding for abstinence-only sex education, which provides $4 in federal funds for every $3 the state spends, allowing for $50 million nationally. According to the Sexuality Information and Education Council of the United States, the Iowa Department of Public Health, which is responsible for these funds, doled out slightly more than $212,000 in 2006, $45,000 of which went to the UI to cover the mandated evaluation of the program.

In 2007, Rep. Mary Mascher, D-Iowa City, sponsored a bill that, when passed last spring, set guidelines requiring all of Iowa’s sex-education curricula to be scientifically based.

”

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Yay Iowa!

Feministing - Iowa Rejects Abstinence Only Funds
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What bothers Allen about this picture is that these women reject, with every fiber of their latte-loving beings, the abstinence-only, father-knows-best, slut-shaming crabbed misogyny of the Republican right.

A far more important question is this: Why did The Post publish this nonsense? I can’t imagine a great newspaper airing comparable trash talk about any other group. “Asians Really Do Just Copy.” “No Wonder Africa’s Such a Mess: It’s Full of Black People!” Misogyny is the last acceptable prejudice, and nowhere more so than in our nation’s clueless and overwhelmingly white-male-controlled media. I can just picture the edit meeting: This time, let’s get a woman to say women are dumb and silly! If readers raise too big a ruckus, Outlook editor John Pomfret can say it was all “tongue in cheek.” Women are dingbats! Get it? Ha. Ha. Ha.

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thank you.

Dumb and Dumber: An Essay and Its Editors - washingtonpost.com
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