Mastery Of The Boob Tube

For your consideration: How Nice Guys Control The Remote at Pandagon. It's a great post that discusses men, women, and TV programming. It also touches on sports and that stupid Bravia LCD commercial that some people may have noticed. The comments are really thought-provoking too. All in all, a nice chewy piece for us all to mull over when it comes to implicitly marking women as inferior.

The Perils Of Superficial Trappings

I'm not sure when or how exactly this happened, but these days I find myself less swayed to slather my face in makeup before I leave the house. The fact that I have mornings before work where I think: "Fuck it, I don't have patience for this foundation and eyeshadow bullshit." would have been unthinkable a few years ago, when I still in school. On the other hand, I find myself much more fashion conscious. I blame What Not To Wear for this condition completely. I remember how aghast and offended I was when I first watched the show. I had the same mentality that many of the unsuspecting victims of the show had; it shouldn't matter what I wear, clothing is superficial, comfort over appearence, etc. But after a while you see Stacey and Clinton's point: "Yes, it would be nice if people weren't judged according to how they looked. But the world doesn't work like that. Just... try out this new look for a bit." It's a more realistic perspective. And it takes into consideration that there's really nothing wrong with a wanting to look attractive. Feminism is about giving women choice and freedom without judgement. Both the woman walking around in track pants with a football AND the woman walking by with a skirt and a toy poodle could be feminists.

Still. The longer I think about sexism and racism and all the other -isms and where we're heading for as a sentient race, I can't help but think back to my social psychology class and come to the conclusion that we were Built To Be Bad. Biases, cognitive shortcuts, stereotypes, subconscious labels and attributes... our brains are just wired to do these things. There's no way to get around it.

There was a post I read somewhere on the internet where someone was describing how gender stereotypes manage to perpetuate themselves. For example, someone might say that girls naturally tend to play quiet games like dolls while boys run around and play rough. But it may be difficult for little girls to go around and play active games like boys when their parents stick them in frilly pink dresses and shiny black shoes and admonish them not to get their pretty clothes dirty. I was reminded of how when I was in grade 2, we had to do an exercise where we drew a picture of what we wanted to be when we grew up. I really had no idea what I wanted to do, but for the sake of picking something, anything, I picked a ballerina. Not even a year later was I already internally disgruntled that I had picked such a lame thing to be when I grew up. Something like firefighter or astronaut was more my style. I think I had even contemplated it. But as a seven year old girl (unconsciously) intent on conforming to gender stereotypes, the choice was inevitable :(

Our Neighbours To The South

Canada slams "ignorant" US comments on security

Here's the excerpt that really caught my attention...

Hostettler also lashed out at "South Toronto," which he said was "the type of enclave that allows for this radical type of discussion to go on."

Toronto is Canada's largest city, but there is no area known as "South Toronto." Crimes rates in the southern part of the city -- which lies on the north shore of Lake Ontario -- are relatively low.

*facepalm* Some of these politicians are quite well versed in making themselves look like utter morons. Kudos.