This originally appeared on Dana Norris’s website. Republished here with permission. To the guy who rode past me on his bicycle last night telling me to “Smile, pretty lady,” here’s what you need to know: 1) I don’t take orders from you. 2) I’m not going to smile just because you tell me to “smile.” […]
From the end of the so-called Mommy Wars, to the decreasing acceptance of fat-bashing, Lynn Beisner shares what she’s looking forward to in the year ahead. Optimism is my default setting, but I find myself particularly optimistic about the new year. It seems to me that we saw some pretty great things growing in 2012 […]
Men’s shapewear is more popular than ever, and Emilie Littlehales wonders what it says about men and body image. Lately it feels like every time I think I’ve really gotten it (whatever it happens to be), something happens that ultimately shows me how wrong I was. I guess it’s one of those “the more you know, the […]
Emilie Littlehales says it’s time to reevaluate what it means to “nag” and the impact it can have on gender and relationship dynamics. Curious about the origins of the verb to nag, I decided to look it up. The definitions I found in the dictionaries I consulted (Merriam-Webster, the OED, and dictionary.com) showed a consensus about the […]
This week’s roundup of our favorites from across the interwebs to help you make sense of men and women. 1. Hasbro Makes An Easy-Bake Oven For Boys by Hanna Rosin of Slate.com says when some companies are called out for being small-minded or bigoted, they get even more small-minded and stupid. Others do the right thing. […]
What are we telling young boys if the examples of fatherhood they see everyday are parodies of incompetence? Every time I see a promo for the new Scott Baio sitcom, See Dad Run, I gag a little. I can hardly believe that a) Scott Baio is still working, and b) they’re still pushing this “Idiot Dad” […]
Must women transcend their femininity to truly be considered funny? In a recent piece on women and raunch culture, Emily Heist Moss wrote the following: “There’s a danger here that we [will] slide too far past refreshing, humanizing, true-to-life humor, and skid into the arena of that lowest common denominator humor that my mother was […]
This originally appeared on Everyday Feminism. Republished here with permission. It’s pretty common for us to worry about how women, especially our own daughters, are put into gender boxes and encouraged to engage in behavior that hurts them, simply because they’re female. It’s far less common for us to worry about men, including our own […]
This originally appeared on the Princess Free Zone. Republished here with permission. My daughter loves sports and has played soccer and baseball, and is currently playing basketball. She’s a really good athlete—highly coordinated and focused. Coaches love her. There are a few girls in the basketball league she’s playing in, but she is the only […]
Lynn Beisner shares her method for getting her kids to share (and love) their gender-specific toys. What sensitized me to the problems of gendered toys was not any feminist ideas about how we teach gender. I had yet to be exposed to any of those ideas. What got me thinking about the gender toy trap […]
Lyla Cicero is all for equal parenting, but a part of her still wanted her kids to think of her as #1. Only when my twins were 20 months old did they master the correct use of the words “mama” and “dada.” They took quite a long time to even say these words, despite beginning […]
Emily Heist Moss is sick and tired of the men who harass her and make her feel unsafe in public spaces. It’s a drizzly Friday in Chicago and I’m leaving a bar with my roommate sometime after midnight. We’re on a quest for tacos and we’re discussing the finer points—Should we get pork or beef? […]
