Some stories from around the world… In India, one village plants fruit trees to celebrate the birth of a girl…and to give her a dowry/savings account later in life. The Economist’s perspective on maternal health in Mexico and other developing countries: basically, contraception and midwives are good, but infrastructure and general spending on health are [...]
Entries Tagged as ‘Uncategorized’
July 8, 2010
Serena’s (female) body
By Alison Thurston This weekend, Serena Williams took home her thirteenth Grand Slam title (in straight sets, no less) at Wimbledon on Saturday. This victory marks her fourth singles’ Wimbledon championship. She also is appearing in August’s issue of Harper’s Bazaar, out this month. As far as I can tell from the previews, the magazine [...]
July 6, 2010
More Thoughts on Racial Profiling
By Alison Thurston In my post last week, I talked about my experience working in retail and being told by my managers to follow around black women, to make sure they did not steal. I wrote that though it does make me feel uneasy, it often serves its purpose. I don’t want my stellar retail [...]
July 3, 2010
From Masculinity to Misperception: Gender Observations from South India
By Kelly Roache Three weeks into my summer in Hyderabad, I am still finding gender issues to be some of the most fascinating and perplexing aspects of the local culture. They are also what have affected my experience here the most personally. In particular, I am beginning to develop an oftentimes contradictory picture of what [...]
July 1, 2010
The Rainbow Weekend – a Party, Protest, or both?
By Elizabeth Cooper Pride invaded NYC this past weekend, and like many queer women, I partook in some of the festivities. Note my choice of language. Festivities. I just read a Gawker article “A Straight Person’s Guide to Gay Pride” where they describe Pride as “a giant celebration of living somewhere over the rainbow.” Yet the [...]
June 29, 2010
Bones Before Bodies
By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux Cross-posted at Princeton’s Mount Menoikeion’s seminar blog. Reading on a bench under a bank of jasmine in the courtyard a few days ago, I watched one of the nuns beat mattresses while others greeted delivery men, chatted with tourists, and walked up and down the cascading stone steps with baskets of laundry. [...]
June 28, 2010
Musings on Clothes & Empowerment
By Jillian Hewitt This article, which we recently linked from Jezebel, got me thinking a lot about how we dress, and what that does—or doesn’t—say about us as people, or women, or feminists, or whatever. Anna North tackles the issue of dressing “immodestly,” and whether sporting skimpy attire is empowering or not. I especially liked [...]
June 22, 2010
EW Reader
Another day of articles… NYT puts together something interesting on Lady Gaga! Empowerment in showing more skin? Over the counter birth control? Why not? Apparently sex after age 45 isn’t so great anymore… Til when can women give birth and rear children? Borderline Personality Disorder as a ‘sexy’ disorder? Happy LGBT Pride month! Texas FAIL: [...]
June 22, 2010
How I Became a Racial Profiler
By Alison Thurston I haven’t gone a summer without gainful employment since I spent my seventh grade summer as my father’s junior legal secretary (and yes that is as inflated a title as it sounds). I got my first job in retail at fifteen, in a higher-end store for “tweenage” girls. There, as in the [...]
