Posts by Ashley:
- Marriage (a broad topic here; could include name changes, household chores, the patriarchal connotations behind marriage… anything!)
- Family (your mothers and fathers, your children, your siblings, etc.)
- In-laws
- Same sex partnerships
- Interracial relationships
- Long-distance relationships
- Moving in together
- Moving somewhere new together
- Boyfriend/Girlfriend relationships
- Weddings
- Friendships
- Body image and relationships
- And the list goes on and on – anything you come up with, I’d love to hear it!
- Overall impressions of the book: Did you like it? Were you informed? What surprised you? What didn’t surprise you? Explain.
- What do you think about the tone of the book? Does sarcasm at some points help or hurt what Pozner is trying to get across? Why?
- Do you think our students and children could get into this?
- Have you ever seen a reality TV quest-for-love show not follow this formula? If so, what was it, and how did you feel about that show.
- Answer this question.
- Answer this question.
- Do you feel this sort of competition amongst women in your lives? If so, how do you actively combat it? If you don’t, how could you combat it in the future?
- Do you think this makes our kids less likely to think critically? What about adults – do you think it makes us less likely to think critically?
- What kind of social change do you think America needs?
- Some women do feel this way in real life – I’ve met a few. So what comes first, the chicken or the egg? Or, what came first, reality TV cutting or women who actually feel this way? Does this sort of cutting produce women who feel this way or prolong this sort of attitude, or both?
- How do we, as teachers and parents and feminists, teach against this?
- How do you plan on putting this into practice?
Ask a Feminist: Guest Speaking on Feminism in a High School Classroom
February 16th, 2011Apparently, I am the resident expert in feminism in my school. This doesn’t necessarily surprise me, though I do think many of the young teachers here fall somewhere on the feminist spectrum. However, as the one who A) wrote her master’s thesis on feminist blogging, B) didn’t change her name after marriage, and C) is a feminist blogger, I apparently go above and beyond as far as being a feminist. So when one of my friends asked me to speak to her Rhetoric class about being a feminist after they read The Awakening and several essays on feminism, I jumped at the opportunity.
I was honestly a little nervous! While I do teach with a feminist lens, I tend to follow the old-school mentality that teachers shouldn’t push their political or religious beliefs on students, so I rarely discuss my personal feminism with my own students unless they ask. These were students in my school that I may see again in the hallways, and one was even a student that I had last year in class, so I had to have a sense of my audience.
My friend, the teacher of the class, had the students write questions to ask me before I got there, so they would have a jumping-off point. We sat in a circle and they asked me their questions and I did my best to respond. At first, they seemed overly concerned with my relationships and kept asking me questions about how feminism has affected my relationships. It wasn’t until I told them that I am married and joked that not all feminists are man-hating lesbians that the ice seemed to break and we were able to talk about some really interesting things. What follows is a smattering of the more interesting questions I was asked and my answers.
1. “How has feminism affected your life?”
I think it’s made my life better. I am empowered to make my own decisions and choices about how I want my life to be, and I may not have had that if I didn’t become so involved in a community of feminists. I also feel more likely to demand things from people that I may not have demanded without the support and encouragement of like-minded people. If I see an injustice here at work, for example, or with my friends, I’m more likely to call someone out on it because the feminists around me have encouraged that and supported me so much.
2. “If or when (the student actually said “if or when” – so wonderful!) you have children, will you try to shelter them from traditional gender roles?”
I would see my job as a parent as similar to my job as a teacher. It’s my job to give my students the tools to be successful and accept themselves and love themselves, and it’s my job to help my students define their own successes. It is not my job to tell students what is and isn’t success or what they should and shouldn’t do. Same thing with my future children. I don’t think you can really avoid having your kids know about gender roles, though, but I do think you can’t pressure your kids to act a certain way. I certainly would never tell my son he couldn’t play with dolls or tell my daughter she had to play house. It’s about giving options and letting them choose.
3. “Do you see blatant sexism in the media? Not advertisements, but other media.”
Um, yea. For example, this new law the Republicans are trying to pass making rape that isn’t “forcible” not really rape? That’s pretty blatant sexism in the media. But then on top of that is that football player, Roethlisberger, who was accused of raping a woman and played in the Super Bowl, which people were pretty upset about. The announcers that day thought it would be “cute” or “funny” or something to make a joke about it by saying something to the extent of “He’s really raping those guys on that field.” I didn’t hear the actual comment because I wasn’t really watchign it, but I read about it. And that just isn’t cool. That’s pretty blatant sexism.
4. “How do you not lose your mind with anger at all the sexism that is out there? For example, I saw a billboard with a woman with a diamond in her mouth and the caption said, ‘Diamonds: That’s one way to shut her up’ and I just got so angry and my family just told me to calm down!”
Well, it helps that I have an outlet. I have my husband to talk to, and my mom, and friends, and I have the blog. I can spew anger on the blog and that helps, especially when my like-minded readers are supportive of that anger. And you do have to step back and ask yourself how to make good out of a situation like that. Maybe you analyze it on a blog and someone reads it and learns from it. Maybe you start a letter-writing campaign or something. But you do have to see a solution through the anger. And picking your battles is good, too.
5. “What’s the point of fighting for women’s rights if women are just going to turn around and join society again anyway?”
It all goes back to choice. Everyone has their own personal definition of feminism, but mine always goes back to choice. If you want to work outside the home and not change your last name and all that, that’s your choice. If you want to stay at home with the kids and cook and clean, that’s your choice, too. Just like it is a choice for a man. My duty, as a feminist, is to fight for your right to make choices, not to tell you what choices to make. My thing is that no one should tell you what you should and shouldn’t do. That’s having equal rights.
6. “Do you think it’s harder for female comedians to be perceived as funny in our society?”
Sub comment from another student: “I don’t care if they’re a man or woman. If they’re funny, they’re funny.”
Yea, I do think it’s harder, and I have a lot of sources to back that up. And you might sit there and say that you don’t care about gender and you just want to laugh or whatever, but think about this: What you see on TV has already been filtered by agents, people holding auditions, networks, etc. It’s not about you caring about their gender. It’s about what people decide to put on the air, and how they decide that is based on gender. Tell me the last time you saw a female comedian on Comedy Central. And for every female, how many male comedians are on the station? You see a lot more men because it’s already filtered by sexist people.
7. “What are some great feminist role models right now?”
Oh, there are so many. Jessica Valenti jumps to my mind. She founded Feministing.com and wrote several books on feminism. And books are a really good place to start, but keep in mind that this is the same thing with the comedians. What is printed in books is filtered through publishers, editors, etc. and made marketable. There are publishers out there who might say, “This is a great idea for a book, but don’t focus on women so much.” That becomes a filter. So what you read may have been looked over and changed in order to make money, or make it marketable. I’d say the best place to look for feminist role models are the blogs. When you own your own website, you can publish whatever you want, and a lot of the information out there on sites is good stuff that didn’t make it past the book-filters.
All in all, this was a wonderful experience. It was such a treat to talk with such engaged, intelligent young people and share some ideas and conversations with them. It gives me hope for the future!
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Punishing Teens Who Are “Gender Nonconforming”
February 11th, 2011According to a recent article from the Ms. Magazine Blog, parents, teachers, police, and other adults in charge of discipline are more likely to punish the victims of bullying rather than the bullies when it comes to LGBTQ youth.
Thus, teens who are “gender-nonconforming”—whose bodies and sexualities rebel against the state’s “political strategy”–may be subjected to systematic punishment. Girls are even more likely to be targeted because the feminine body has been manipulated to be inextricably linked with sexuality. (Just check out any American Apparel ad for proof.)
This all sounds a bit like a conspiracy theory out of 1984, but remember that these processes work on the subconscious level. Adults who are more likely to punish LGBTQ teens aren’t evil machines of the state. Instead, they—like all of us—have been conditioned to fear, suspect and, yes, punish non-normative bodies and behaviors. On the high-school level this social conditioning is expressed as bullying; on the adult level, it becomes institutional discrimination.
Unfortunately, I have seen this institutional discrimination at work. I had a student in one of my classes a long time ago come to me very upset because another student was yelling homophobic slurs at him outside of the lunchroom. He told me he was just so angry that he wanted to punch that kid in the face. I tried to talk to him about the situation and we talked together to come up with some solutions for him, one of which was to talk to his counselor to switch his lunch period so he wouldn’t have to see that kid anymore. I then sent him to his counselor who sent him back with a list of anger management techniques he should use to avoid punching that kid in the face.
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Oh, baby!
February 8th, 2011So. The conversations about babies have started. I’m surprised it took this long.
I think a lot of it started because we’ve been sort of idly searching for houses but it’s been a difficult process because we’re not really sure what kind of space or location we’ll need down the road, mostly because we’re not sure if we want kids. But think about how much of a difference having kids makes on your house selection: number of rooms, schools, access to programs… and the list goes on and on.
It’s been a difficult process, and one that isn’t even close to over… in fact, it’s barely just begun.
And, honestly, people don’t care much about the house search yet, as long as we find something that makes us happy. But babies? That’s another story. Like weddings, people seem to have plenty of opinions about babies – when you should have them, how many to have, whether you want a boy or a girl (like you can choose), what’s best for you when you’re pregnant, what’s best for your kids once they’re born… that list goes on and on, too.
But here’s the thing. Tim and I are really unsure if we want kids. When we tell people that, as you can imagine, most people think we’ll change our minds, or one of us will talk the other into it, or we’re just saying that to get a rise out of people. Maybe people feel like they can offer up those opinions to us because of that key word in our mindset: “unsure.” We know we’re not ready yet, but we might be ready later, and we might not. We’re leaving the possibilities open.
Surprisingly, however, many more people than offer up those opinions offer up this one: “Shouldn’t you really know by now?” When I hear this one, I’m often taken aback and plagued with self-doubt. Am I supposed to know? Is there something wrong with not knowing? Is there something wrong with me that I’m a woman and babies don’t make my ovaries hurt with desire?
And then I’m plagued by more questions: Is the reason that we’ve added the caveat that we’re “unsure” because we don’t want to feel bad about not wanting babies? Are we feeling this societal pressure so much that we’re keeping our options open because we feel like we should? Should we just come right out and say it: “We don’t want kids!”?
After this onslaught of questions, I usually shake my head violently to clear it of all of these thoughts and then have a long discussion with Tim about it over lots of wine or beer which I can drink because I am not pregnant.
The fact of the matter is, for us (and I do mean us – Tim is actually more on board with the Just-The-Two-Of-Us thing than I am), there are many pros and cons to being parents. We would make really great parents, and our kids would be surrounded by extended family to love and spoil them. When I see Tim holding his baby cousin and running around chasing his under-teenage cousins, I know we would have a really good family. But I also know we have a really good family now, and that there might never come a point where just the two of us isn’t enough anymore. Or there might come a time when we want to share this love with mini-Ashleys and mini-Tims. Or the decision might, at some point, be made for us (you can’t plan everything, you know…).
So, we’re OK with the “maybe”s and the “unsure”s in our life right now, as far as babies go. We are definitely sure that we want to spend the next few years being together, taking trips, buying property, and sleeping through the night. We’re going to put the kid thing on the back-burner for now, and maybe deal with it when all of those other things are done. Just like we dealt with marriage after the degrees were gotten and the bars were went to and the singleness was old. We’re not going to condemn those who choose to have babies or who want them with all their hearts. In fact, we’re so happy for you, and we’d love to baby-sit your bundles of joy. We’re just not sure if we want our own just yet.
More on the Selfish/Selfless Balance
February 7th, 2011Why I love my Mommy: She will always gently remind me when I border on the too-selfish while NEVER telling me I’m a bad wife if I tend too much to myself and not enough to my husband. There are many, many other reasons, but I have felt so glad over the past few months that I can actually talk to my mom about some of the problems that have arisen between Tim and me without worrying that I’ll feel blamed or attacked or told that it’s up to me to fix the problem. I know people in situations who feel they can’t talk to their moms for fear of being blamed, and I don’t know how they can navigate a marriage without fair advice from their moms.
So when my mom read my latest post on striking the balance between selfishness and selflessness in a marriage and discussed it with me, I thought it was really great that she could remind me how big of a part supporting your partner when they accomplish something big in their lives really plays in the selfish/selfless balance. It isn’t enough to “let” them do what they want to do and do what you want to do, she reminded me. You also have to support them and celebrate their accomplishments. Tim does this for me times 100, and he has shown a thousand times over that his selflessness includes both encouraging me to pursue my passions and celebrating my accomplishments. But do I do that for him?
I can say, honestly, that I’ve tried. But I haven’t been that supportive about this marathon-running thing. In fact, I’ve been a bit of a selfish, whiny… well, you finish that sentence. And that kind of selfishness is not the good kind of selfishness in a relationship. I suppose we could sit here and explore why the actual date of our anniversary is so important to me and why this particular marathon this particular year is so important to him and all that jazz, but the fact of the matter is that both celebrating a year of marriage and running a first marathon are both important to both of us in different ways. It doesn’t really matter why, only that they are. And what more fitting of a way to celebrate the biggest day of our lives with another really big thing? And who the heck says we have to be married to celebrating our anniversary on that exact day, anyway? Oh, gross, that was a really bad pun. Enough said.
This is really the only thing thus far that Tim has said he really wants to do just for him, and he’s been talking about it before we even met. I need to be (and am, really I am) supportive of that. Just like he’s supportive of all of my harebrained schemes.
It’s the doing things for yourself and supporting your partner when he or she does the same that is the true balance between selfishness and selflessness that needs to be negotiated, not just the “letting” and the “prohibiting,” or the “giving” and the “taking”. I’ll tell you what, though. It’s a sharp learning curve, and thank god for people wiser than you to gently put you back on the right path.
Selfish! Selfless! Is there an inbetween?
February 6th, 2011Tim signed up for the Chicago Marathon this week. Guess when it is? October 9. Does that date ring a bell? (Hint: white dress, big ceremony, happiest day of my life…)
Historically, this has always been a big weekend for us. As the only 3-day weekend in our favorite season, we took our first weekend-away together the first year we met. The year after that, we drove up to Madison to have my awesome cousin take our awesome engagement pictures. This led us to choose our wedding date. October 9, 2010.
So, naturally, I might expect some romantic, long-weekend getaway to celebrate surviving our first year of marriage. And while I might be enjoying a nice Chicago hotel room on October 9, 2011, I’ll be enjoying it alone because my husband will be running 26.2 miles that morning, and probably sleeping most of the rest of the day.
If I’m going to be perfectly honest here, I did encourage Tim to sign up for the marathon. He was a little back and forth about it, but I did give him a little push, as long as he promised a romantic long-weekend and a romantic hotel stay in Chicago. To which he happily agreed.
But the reason I suggested this in the first place is because I believe a healthy amount of selfishness in a relationship is a key to success. Not too much, but a little. Is Tim’s desire to run this marathon selfish? Sure it is. He’s really the only one benefiting from the situation. But is my desire to lock myself in the office and blog for hours on end selfish? You betcha. And these disparate desires allow us to spend some time apart and appreciate the time we have together.
The problem, as we’ve seen in all too many romantic comedies, is when the selfishness takes over. Did you know that marathon training can ruin a marriage??
Newlyweds have long recognized the risks of potential sickness, infidelity and ill fortune. But few foresee themselves becoming an exercise widow. After all, the idea that one’s beloved will take the occasional jog sounds appealing—until two miles a day becomes 10 miles, not counting the 20-mile runs on weekends. “His dream of doing marathons happened just when I got pregnant with our third child,” Stephanie Beagley of Colorado Springs says of her husband, Michael, a purchaser for the U.S. Olympic Committee. “Now we don’t have tons of time with him.”
OH MY GOD. You mean that Tim may become obsessed with his marathon training to the point that he completely ignores me and our future children?! But, you know, as a wife, you need to be completely selfless in encouraging your husband to spend as much time as he needs away from his family:
And all along she has mixed messages of support with pleas for more family time. “I love my husband, and I’m happy he’s passionate,” she says. “A husband wants to come home to a wife who says, ‘I hope you had a good workout.’ “
That’s right, wifeys. Take care of all of that housework and child-rearing so your husband can run in circles worry-free. And be sure to smile and ask how his workout was when he gets home, along with getting that marathon-friendly dinner on the table. And don’t forget to vacuum in pearls and high-heels, too!
Gross.
Here’s the thing. We all know being too selfish can ruin a relationship. Relationships are about compromise; sometimes you have to agree to your partner’s marathon and take a romantic hotel stay in return. (I can personally think of many, many worse situations!) But too much selflessness can equally ruin a relationship. I’ve spoken with quite a few older (read: grandparent-aged) people since our wedding, and their advice is generally the same. Work together as one, give up yourself, realize that all that matters is the family and the happiness of your partner and that is the key to a long, happy marriage.
I call bull. There may be a multitude of reasons why these couples have stayed together for 60+ years, but constant selflessness is not one of them. Maybe the selflessness of the women played a part, but as feminists familiar with the patriarchal norms of marriage, I think we all understand that, so I won’t kick a dead horse. Too much selflessness will eventually build up to resentment. If one half of a pair is always cleaning, always cooking, always mowing the lawn, always taking the kids out so the other person can work in peace (or entertaining the kids so the other person can go for a long run), the other half of the pair will begin to resent the time he or she could be spending on his or her self if the other person would just chip in a little more, or spend more time on the family and less time on the self.
Just like anything in life, it seems like the best idea is to strike a healthy balance between the selfish and the selfless, and that can be tough to do. In fact, I bet Tim and I are going to spend the next 60 years trying to figure out how to strike that perfect balance. And if we are fortunate enough to spend the next 60 years figuring that out, I’ll be the happiest woman in the world.
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Assignments Do Not Exist in a Vacuum
February 1st, 2011I have spent some time recently working in collaboration with several people who are not teachers to develop activities, projects, assignments, and unit plans for my classes. These experiences are both essential to good curriculum planning and so frustrating that I’d rather just do it myself and not recieve any feedback at all.
By working with people who are not teachers to plan curriculum, I feel privileged to know two things: 1) How to work together to create dynamic activities that I might not have otherwise been pushed to create or implement, and 2) How little people outside of schools know about what happens inside of school. Read the rest of this entry “
Re-Thinking Body Image
January 31st, 2011I need to start re-thinking my body image, and I need to get into a healthier headspace regarding food and weight.
Allow me to explain.
I’m a stress-eater. When I’m stressed, I eat. A lot. I’m not a busy-eater. When I’m just busy, I actually find it easier to make healthy choices, but when I’m stressed, I want salt, comfort, and fried things. So you can imagine what moving in with Tim in July an planning for a wedding in October did to me. I gained 7 pounds in two months. That isn’t a lot, sure, but it is pretty rapid weight gain which isn’t too good for you. Also, I had a wedding dress to “fit into.”
Yup. As much a I resisted it, the wedding weightloss mentality got to me.
So I started getting healthier and watching my calories. Turns out I was eating way more than I needed. No surprise there, I was a stressed-out stress-eater. I managed to get back to a place I felt good about for our wedding.
But the calorie-counting and the poking at myself in the mirror and the weighing myself daily hasn’t really stopped.
I used to be really good at just being healthy. Eating healthy food that made me feel good, going to the gym, living the active life my husband and I love. But somehow, between wedding-fever and new-fangled calorie counter programs for my iPhone, I lost the ability to just enjoy food in moderation and enjoy my life in full. It’s not really that I feel overwhelmed by calorie counting, but more that it’s time consuming and just takes the joy out of almost everything. Food is a big part of life!
So I need to re-think the way I deal with food and body image. I want to enjoy eating again but not over-do it. And I want to ditch the calorie number crunching!
Any suggestions?
(Cross posted at Deconstructing the Fairytale)
Yea, we fight. You don’t?
January 29th, 2011Tim and I haven’t had a good, blow-out fight in a really long time. That’s usually how it goes; we go for a long time in happy, coupl-y bliss and then something starts building up – usually with me – and we (ok, usually I) explode. And then Tim explodes right back with whatever has been building in his mind.
Last night, we had, in retrospect, one of the most avoidable fights we’ve ever had. Here’s the story: Tuesday nights, I have rehearsal for one of the school plays until around 7:00, and then don’t get home till 7:45. He has practice for basketball, but usually gets home at around 6:30. Usually, I’m home before him, but on Tuesdays, it’s much later. So I came home Tuesday thinking he would have started to make the meal we had planned. And I walk in and he’s sitting on the couch. OK, maybe I wasn’t clear enough that he needed to make dinner tonight, I thought. So I made some snide comments and we made dinner together. The end.
Until last night. He came home from his basketball game and I was both very hungry and very excited to finally spend an evening with him. We decided to make quesadillas. Until we discovered that no one had bought tortillas. Plan effectively ruined. So I’m thinking, hey, we’re going out for drinks anyway, why don’t we just go out for dinner? And he says, “OK, I’ll go out and get tortillas.” I suggest going out. He comes up with a million reasons why we shouldn’t. So the fact that I practically made dinner after a 13+ hour day on Tuesday comes up, and the fact that I make dinner every night of the week comes up and before you know it, I’m screaming, “WOULD IT KILL YOU TO TAKE YOUR WIFE OUT FOR DINNER?! It’s like you just expect dinner to be made for you every night! When was the last time we went out?! Like a month ago?? Seriously??”
OK, maybe I sound like a spoiled brat here. But for two busy people making a modest living, it seems like, occasionally, date nights could be more than a glass of wine, whatever I made for dinner (or some pizza, depending on the outcome of my kitchen endeavors), and a free Netflix movie. I’m not asking for every weekend, here. Just once in a while. But when I bring it up, it’s generally the same argument: “I’m tired.” “We don’t have money.” “What’s wrong with the food in the kitchen?”
I know he’s tired. I’m tired, too. We do have money, we’re just trying to save for a house. And, for the love of Pete, nothing is wrong with the food in the kitchen except for the fact that I have to prepare it!
Don’t get me wrong. Tim does amazing work around the house, and I generally do the cooking because I like to do it and I’m better at it than he is. (It sounds mean, but it’s true.) But it just seems that he was constantly taking me out before we lived together, trying to impress me, and now that he’s got me, we’re good just sitting around most of the time. This isn’t the case, of course, but it just feels that way sometimes.
So I cried, screamed, threw a bottle of conditioner in the bathroom which punched a hole in the bathroom door, cried some more, and calmed myself down. He did his share of yelling, too, but he doesn’t tend to throw things like I do… Or cry.
We worked it out eventually, ended up not going out for drinks, not spending any time together, and making frozen pizza at 1 AM. But we aired out some important issues, and that was maybe more important than going out to eat some greasy food.
Here’s the thing, though. We fight. Sometimes I blog about it if I have something to say about the situation; sometimes I don’t. But I definitely do not pretend that we don’t fight, and I hate it when people feel the need to do so. It just makes me sad when newly married couples feel as if they have to project an image to the world that they are so happy because that’s what other people expect from them. Or, even worse, they actually don’t fight with their partner, even if they want to, because they are afraid of what might happen, so they just hold it all in.
Well, I’m here to tell you that, sometimes, wedded bliss isn’t bliss at all. We fight, we air out our issues, and we make up and move on. And I think that is an important part of being a feminist wife, or any kind of wife at all. It’s vital to a marriage to be able to communicate problems, and sometimes to yell it out, and then work it out together.
So. We fought. We came to some solutions. We at some food. We fell asleep. Today, I’m spending some much-needed time with my mom, and tomorrow we are going to go out to eat.
And, in the meantime, does anyone know how to fix a hole in a door?
Wedding Recap, With Pictures – Finally!
January 28th, 2011I have been promising a wedding recap on this blog complete with pictures since, probably, around October 10. Every time I sit down to blog, I think: Gosh, I really should post some pictures from the wedding since I’ve been promising to do that for over three months now. And then I think: But this other topic is so much more pressing in my mind right now! I guess that’s just proof positive that life does, in fact, move on after your wedding, albeit slowly. But I have some time right now, and I’ve been through these pictures so many times I could talk you through them in my sleep, so here goes nothin’. I’m going to put quite a few pictures up here and briefly describe them. Each picture represents one of my favorite moments or favorite things from the wedding, but I’ll try to keep it brief. Enjoy!
The whole wedding party at the rehearsal. We’re a good looking group! Our whole wedding party was awesome – bending over backwards to help make our day special and easy.
My favorite, frivolous wedding accessory. I wore this zip-up hoodie to the salon to get my hair and makeup done. It says “Tying The Knot” in Tiffany blue and has rhinestones all around the lettering. I know it’s pretty useless now, but I still wear it at night, and I don’t regret buying it one bit. 🙂
My brother’s girlfriend, Carly, made these cupcakes and put them in the bridal suite for us because she figured we wouldn’t have time to eat the cupcakes at the reception. That touch from her was just so nice!
Our rings are from Tiffany’s and they are beautiful.
My flowers. See that material around the handle and interspersed in the flowers? That was my mom’s wedding veil. Pieces of it now reside on our bedroom dresser in a vase.
Our badass wedding party. 🙂 Seriously, look at these pictures. Badass.
One of my favorite pictures. I don’t know why – it just is.
My mom and I were in very good spirits that day!
The back of my dress was what made me fall in love with it in the first place. I think it speaks for itself. 🙂
A favorite moment from the ceremony: my brother singing “They Bring Me To You” by Joshua Radin. Such a beautiful song, such a beautiful moment. Thanks, Chris.
Another ceremony favorite. Exchanging rings was cool, but it was even cooler because my uncle, someone we know and love, officiated our whole ceremony. Definitely made the ceremony more personal, more feminist, and more awesome.
The kiss! I didn’t even realize I had touched his face, but I guess I did! Made for a very nice picture and an even nicer moment.
Family. 🙂 That’s what it’s all about, isn’t it?
Cosmos! Always my mom and my drink of choice (next to wine, of course), we were ecstatic at the possibility of having a martini bar at the wedding, complete with cosmos. Since I had been so stressed out and nervous before the ceremony, and since my girls were stressed out for me, my mom and Carly went to go get martini glasses and a pitcher of cosmos for us to sip while we took pictures. And we ended up with one of the best bride & bridesmaid pictures I’ve ever seen!
Just some portraits. 🙂 We clean up nice.
My brother’s girlfriend, Carly, made the cupcakes and the cake for the reception, too. I told her I was in love with the cupcakes, but sad that I couldn’t have a cake like the one behind Buddy Valastro when he does his Cake Boss interviews. So she made us a cake that looked almost exactly like that one. 🙂 So delicious and so wonderful knowing someone did that for us out of love!
I cannot say enough about the wonderful, heartfelt speeches. So much love, so much laughter. Cheers!
My dad and I had a dance. My mom and I had a dance. It was wonderful to be able to share moments with both of my parents, feminist-style.
My bridesmaids also requested a song and pulled me out to dance. It was hilarious and awesome and unexpected.
Speaking of dancing, Tim and I took months of dance lessons to choreograph our first dance and learn some social dances. Then we had a merengue dance-off competition with two of Tim’s friends, Fel and Ruby. Seriously, who does that at their own wedding? We do.
High school best friends. So good to know that, even after college, moving away, various other events, and almost 10 years, we can still remain close friends. And it was so wonderful of Deven to come back all the way from New York just to be a part of the day.
Bride & Groom beer coozies and toasting flutes. It’s amazing how much of a wedding has to do with alcohol…
And, finally, one of my favorite pictures from the night. Me and my father-in-law – he is relaxing after the reception, I am still in my wedding dress. I stayed in that dress in the hotel until 3:00 AM! Even when everyone else was in more comfortable clothing.
So, there you have it. A few of my favorite moments from the wedding. I hope you enjoyed the pictures!
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Columbine by Dave Cullen – Full Review
January 27th, 2011The cameras missed the outside murders and could not follow Eric and Dylan inside. The fundamental experience for most of America was almost witnessing mass murder. It was the panic and frustration of not knowing, the mounting terror of horror withheld, just out of view. We would learn the truth about Columbine, but we would not learn it today.
– Columbine
It’s not often that I feel compelled to review a book – or, at least, blog about it – only part way through. Maybe it’s my English major college experiences, but I tend to like to finish a book completely before I even try to talk about it. Columbine was different. I needed to get my thoughts down about it about a third of the way through it, and then I felt I needed to finish it as quickly as possible or else it would haunt me.
And haunt me it did. Does. I finished the book on Tuesday, and yesterday I needed to just collect my thoughts and not try to write about it yet. The book was phenomenal. Cullen’s writing style was very similar to what you might read in a newspaper (which makes sense, considering Cullen is a journalist) with short, choppy sentences and long, descriptive paragraphs with little revealing sentences at the end. Cullen did a nice job of giving us just enough information to keep us interested, but not too much that we were overwhelmed by the violence or the thoughts and texts of Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, leaving us with questions but always coming back to answer them later.
I did find the latter part of the book a little easier to get through than the first third. This is not to say that I found the book boring or unable to engage me; it was just the opposite. I was completely engaged with the book, but as I was reading, I kept thinking about two things: 1) As a freshman in high school, I remember being totally terrified and totally glued to the television to see some sort of positive ending to the whole situation. I remember watching the news as the story was unfolding, and I remember many of the images on television and almost all of the narrative the media unfolded in the aftermath that were described in the book, and 2) As a high school teacher, this is my worst nightmare. There were so many things some of the teachers described in the book – warning signs, protocol, procedures – that are completely different now because of the Columbine tragedy, helping students and families understand what is going on with their children and get the help they may need, yet so many protocols and procedures that are eerily the same, providing little help for students or simply in place to cover the teachers in case of an unforeseen situation. The latter part of the book, however, focused mostly on trying to draw to light the truth that the media seemed to miss that day and the weeks following, as well as trying to answer the question: why? Why did this happen? What motivated these two teenage boys to cause such destruction?
The accepted narrative is that Eric and Dylan were bullied and snapped. That seemed logical at the time; I remember so many times in high school being picked on or put down, and although I would never turn to violence, it morbidly made sense that someone might. This was the narrative that was overwhelmingly accepted in the aftermath of the Columbine tragedy, and one I’ve heard repeated several times. As a teacher, we are trained and trained again on warning signs and how to handle students who are victimized or who are, themselves, bullies. And we are trained on this because of Columbine. Many schools, including my own, use the Columbine tragedy to promote tolerance and acceptance through speakers and assemblies like the Rachel’s Challenge assembly in memory of Rachel Scott, the first student killed that day.
Cullen’s extensive research, observations, and interviews provide a different narrative that the media was not privy to at the time because information was so slow to be released from the police department, and by the time the information was released, the media had moved on to another news story. The narrative that Cullen presents is almost just as simple and easy to accept: Eric Harris was a psychopath, and Cullen provides ample clinical information to back this claim. Dylan Klebold was an intensely depressed, lonely, and gifted boy who craved friendship and a way out of this life – two things he found in Eric. Cullen also presents an alternative view of what happened with some of the students in the library, namely Cassie Bernall, the girl perceived to be a Christian martyr. Preliminary eyewitness accounts stated that she was asked if she believed in God, and responded “yes” and this is why she was killed. Cullen’s narrative is one that is proved by multiple eyewitness accounts and forensic evidence that it was not Cassie who stated her belief in god, but another girl entirely.
These are just a few examples that are presented in the book, but from a few comments and emails I’ve received and my very limited internet research on the book, this alternative view of the tragedy makes some people very angry. In a few direct emails and comments, I’ve been urged to read differing accounts, and told that Eric and Dylan were bullied and many people can back up that claim. Here’s the thing: Of course Eric and Dylan were bullied. They were high school students that didn’t fit the norm. Could that have fed into their hatred of society? Absolutely. Especially the impressionable and lonely Dylan. Was it the reason they brought guns and bombs into school? Cullen’s evidence to the contrary is compelling. However, I can see why Cullen’s view, even backed up with such extensive research, can be hard to stomach. As a teacher, I like the idea that there are warning signs and things I could do to prevent such a tragedy. I imagine this is a popular idea for parents and students as well. The idea that Eric was actually a nice kid, people liked him, and he had a whole lot of people fooled is terrifying. It’s also so easy to accept such a narrative as truth as the tragedy is unfolding, and for many people, once that narrative is solidified, it’s difficult to change your mind about it. We love to wrap up tragedies with a nice little bow and put them in the backs of our minds where we can forget about them for a while. To unpack that box and change the contents opens up old wounds that we would rather keep tied up. The fact that a few people are so resistant to this book solidifies in my mind its validity.
Do I accept this book as the end-all, be-all of the Columbine tragedy? No. There were many, many perspectives that Cullen did not cover or glanced over. However, I feel Cullen’s writing hit at many core truths of the tragedy and provide an alternate narrative I have an easier time believing than the one presented almost 12 years ago. His extensive notes and research only serve to persuade me further.
I can also see how the penultimate chapter and the build-up to it might anger some people. Columbine does an extremely good job of presenting Eric and Dylan as just boys. Just kids. Just two more victims of this tragedy. In their final scene, Cullen describes their death without a whole lot of clinical or forensic detail, but with great compassion. The boys are portrayed as, well, boyish in their final minutes of life, and I found myself just sad at the whole situation. Not angry, not afraid. Just sad. And I can see how that might anger some people who hold the belief that anyone who causes such tragedy does not deserve our sympathy.
All in all, I highly recommend Columbine. I will warn you, though, that the descriptions of the violence and the sections that delve in to the killers’ psyches can be difficult to read in large chunks. However, if you, like me, remember the tragedy but always felt you had several questions left unanswered by the mainstream media, you will be captivated by this book.
[President Clinton] was fond of quoting Ernest Hemingway, and Clinton recited his favorite passage: “The world breaks everyone and afterward many are strong at the broken places.”
“Every day, from now on, the world will break someone,” Clinton added. “These magnificent families, in memory of their children, and their teacher, can help them always to be strong.”
–Columbine
Shameless Self Promotion! – NEW BLOG!
January 26th, 2011Hey feminists! There’s a new feminist blog on the market. Deconstructing The Fairytale: Feminist Perspectives on Weddings and Marriage! If you love Small Strokes (and you know you do), you’ll love this blog! Rosie, Jillian, Safa and I will be blogging all about having feminist weddings and being feminist wives!
So come, follow along, ask advice, and help us on our quest for feminist partnership in a patriarchal society!
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Columbine by Dave Cullen
January 24th, 2011
I started reading Columbine by Dave Cullen (book #4 in my 30 Before 30 challengeyesterday and made it through a third of the book in a nonstop reading session. At that point, I physically had plenty of time to read more, but I had to make myself stop. I started becoming obsessed with the tragedy all over again, just like I was in high school when it happened. I even hit the information superhighway and started looking up YouTube videos and photos so I could put faces with names in the book – the faces I was so familiar with 11 years ago.
Cullen’s book is an excellent one so far, and I’m glad it was written. Like so many other tragedies, the media had this one all wrong: there was no bullying, no trenchcoat mafia, no targeting of jocks or black students. In fact, there was no targeting at all. This was a completely indiscriminate attack meant only to kill as many people as possible. But that’s not what we heard from the media. In short, pretty much everything you think you know about Columbine is wrong. This book is definitely worth a read if only to understand why critical media literacy is so important.
I became so obsessed with it all again, though, that I couldn’t sleep last night. I cried as Tim hugged me; it was like reliving it all over again. It may not be surprising to hear that this event really shattered my faith when it came to safety in school.
Tim asked me if I was so upset because everything I thought I knew was debunked. “No,” I responded. I was always pretty sure everyone had got it wrong. “I’m so upset because… they were just kids.” Nice kids. Kids people really liked. Kids with good parents and siblings. They weren’t “crazy” or “messed up” or obsessed with Marylin Manson or using drugs. They were just kids.
I don’t know if this gets to me more now that I’m a teacher or if it’d be the same if I had chosen some other job. But I do know I’m excited to finish the book both to find more answers and to be able to put the book behind me.
In Sickness and In Health…
January 21st, 2011It has been two weeks of uninterrupted sickness at the Sam/Rob household. (Just to confuse you more, I have now shortened our last names for purposes here.) This is the first time since we moved in together that both of us have been miserably sick at the same time, and, let me tell you, I now am beginning to understand why wedding vows have traditionally incorporated the whole “in sickness and in health” bit. It’s really easy to enjoy each other and check in with the status (or the “health” if you’ll excuse a bad pun) of your relationship when you’re both your sprightly selves, happily doing your work during the day and coming home to each other at night to a nice, home-cooked (or at the very least a warm take-out) meal that you share while watching your favorite television programs.
But when you’re sick, it’s very easy to forget about everything else aside from your sickness.
I had maybe the worst flu I’ve ever had ever in my life, and it started last Monday. That’s Monday, January 10. I went to work Monday and Tuesday, and missed work Wednesday and Thursday (unheard of for my workaholic self) and went back Friday, which was probably a little bit premature. Then, I proceeded to sleep through the entire three-day weekend. And I just now got my voice mostly back, although it still does have that sultry, raspy quality at times.
Tim came down with the same thing last Thursday, and went to the doctor last night complaining of a sinus infection. He still has his voice, but his headaches make it difficult for him to even sit up and watch television.
We’ve spent the entirety of two weeks caring for each other, but not so much in the spirit of maintaining our marriage and relationship. We’ve been completely focused on treating our ailments. And that has consisted more or less of whoever happened to be able to sit upright at any given time was volunteered to make a Walgreens run. Our sickly appetites may have allowed us to save money on groceries these past few weeks, but we’ve been single-handedly keeping the cold and flu medicine companies in business. Yesterday was the first day in two weeks that I’ve felt well enough to actually make some food for dinner and the first day in two weeks that either of us has felt well enough to actually eat it.
For two weeks, we haven’t even felt strong enough or well enough to cuddle on the couch and watch a movie. In fact, last week, when Tim gently laid a hand on my shoulder, I think I may have smacked it and yelled at him not to touch me because my body was so achey I couldn’t stand it. And, if that’s the case, you can imagine how many actual conversations we’ve had with each other in the past two weeks.
You guessed it. Zero.
I haven’t even felt like blogging or reading for two weeks. That’s how mushed my mind was with this flu. Last night, when we finally sat down for a meal of solid food, I looked at Tim across the table and realized: I miss my husband. I mean, sure, we’ve been in the same apartment – usually the same room – for hours on end every day for two weeks, but our bodies and minds have been so consumed with sickness that we haven’t shared one single intellectually stimulating conversation. Heck, at this point, I’d settle for a conversation with him that was anything outside of “How are you feeling? Not great? Me either.”
After this ordeal, it’s clearer to me how ailments of the body can affect a relationship. When you’re not feeling your best, sometimes everything else falls by the wayside. Thankfully, Tim and I are on the mend, and hopefully we can intellectually reconnect soon, but loving someone in sickness is much different than loving them in health, let me tell you!
I’m looking for guest posts!
January 16th, 2011It’s been a while since I’ve posted some guest posts on feminism and relationships – mostly because now all of my submissions are coming from people trying to advertise for free on my site. 🙁 I miss your brilliant posts! So please submit them to me so I can read them and post them! Even if you’ve already written something and want to write something else or a follow-up or whatever, that’d be great!
You can interpret the term “relationships” as loosely as you want, but some ideas for posts might include topics on “Feminism and…”:
What are my guidelines? As you may know from previous calls for guest posts, my guidelines, like all good things in life, are flexible and open to interpretation. But in general, I’d say posts should be about 400-800 words in length and spell-checked/grammar-checked to the best of your ability. Hyperlinks are OK in bios and in posts. Just make sure I have a list of all URLs in case something is lost in translation, so to speak. Also, please keep in mind that I am a high school teacher, so I cannot publish curse words, sexually explicit language, or anything overtly political. If you think you have a topic that might fall into one of these categories, go ahead and e-mail me a pitch and we can totally figure something out.
Of course you can cross-post something to your blog, as well, or submit something you’ve already written on the topic, but I’d appreciate a link back here from your blog. Also, you don’t have to be a blogger to submit a post! If you just want to write something for me but don’t necessarily write on your own, that’s swell, too!
All posts or pitches can be submitted to samsanator (at) gmail (dot) com along with a brief bio and a link to your blog if you’ve got one.
I look forward to hearing from you!
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#chifems Book Club – New Book!
January 11th, 2011We have a new book for the Chifems Book Club! For February 25, we’ll be reading Dirty Girls Social Club by Alisa Valdes-Rodriguez and discussing it in light of a situation with NBC trying to adapt it for the small screen. We’re working on contacting Valdes-Rodrigues to give us some insight into this, as well! How cool is that?
The details are on our Goodreads page, so check it out and read along! Even if you don’t live in Chicago or can’t make the meeting, read with us and you can participate in the online discussion. Last month’s meeting was awesome, and I bet this one will be even better!
In Which I Discuss Politics for the First and Maybe Last Time
January 11th, 2011I don’t talk much about politics. Much of this is because, like many Americans I assume, I tend to tune in to discussions about politics that matter to me and tune out the rest. I also tend to believe that how you vote should be private and, like with religion sometimes, there’s no arguing politics with some people, so I tend to just keep quiet unless someone says something really offensive and then I step in. I’m kind of old school like that.
But the events in Tuscon, AZ this weekend, well, they need to be talked about.
I’ve been trying to follow the news as best I can, but between the flu and teaching, it’s been hard to catch every bit of information out there. Not to mention several bloggers and independent news outlets are doing a great job of covering the details – and adding great opinions to the conversation that definitely need to be said (and can’t be covered by most of the major news outlets because they need to be “unbiased” or whatever). I don’t want to go into the details or any of that, but I do want to add my personal view to the situation.
And my personal view is pretty simple. I don’t care who you are or where you work or what “side” you’re on, you don’t deserve to be shot. Particularly at your job.
This is pretty much how I feel about all acts of violence – school shootings, bombings, acts of terrorism… you name it. No one deserves to die that way. No one. And no one deserves to feel fear every time they go to work because something like this might happen to them. No one.
Selfishly, I really wanted this shooting to be politically motivated. This is not at all because I disagree with Giffords’ politics – quite the contrary, actually. It is, however, because I’m so sick and tired of seeing violence in the news in general, and it’s becoming hard to deal with. Especially violence without reason. Acts of violence like this where the shooter ends up dead and are therefore written off as “senseless” or “crazy” (or even if the shooter is alive more often than not their acts are labeled as such) are really hard for me to process. I work much better with reasons, no matter how unfounded or “radical.” I wish this never happened in the first place, but now that it has, I wish I could ask “why?” and have an answer. I suppose not all of the reasoning has been fleshed out yet, but the mainstream news media and most of the politicians talking about the incident are trying really hard not to make it politically motivated. And they’re really trying hard not to make it about political rhetoric.
Honestly, I don’t care if the whole thing was because of, for example, Sarah Palin’s map with crosshairs over certain districts. But that stuff needs to stop. Politicians are just as guilty as some of us are of using the internet to further their goal, thinking that nothing on the internet is permanent. I saw a tweet from Sarah Palin 9 hours before the shooting about “Don’t retreat, reload” or something of the sorts. People – politicians included – seem to think that information moves at the speed of light as far as the internet goes, and 9 hours in twitter-time is old news. Which means that you can say whatever you want without thinking, because in a few hours it won’t matter. Well, I think we all need to be a little more careful about what we put on the internet – politicians and public figures included. Maps with crosshairs, tweets about reloading, YouTube videos that do nothing but get your name out there… none of it is appropriate. Not all publicity is good publicity, people, and much of what I see on my home feed on Twitter might get a lot of hype but is inappropriate, as well. We could all benefit from Thinking Before You Tweet. Or Speak. Or Put That On A Webpage. Words stick. That’s why we all read and write so prolifically – we hope something might stick to us or that our words might stick somewhere. It doesn’t matter if something no longer appears on your front page or is “old news” in the Twitterverse. The fact of the matter is that it was there, and should never have been. Maybe this whole thing of crosshairs on a map and someone shooting at a political event was an unfortunate coincidence – only time will tell. But we all need to do a little more thinking before we put words out there, especially America’s politicians.
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Teaching While Sick
January 11th, 2011We’ve all done it: felt the ache of sickness coming on in the early morning hours and forced ourselves out of bed and into our classrooms despite knowing that it’ll only get worse througout the day. We alter assignments so we don’t have to talk too much through sore throats or waning voices and we push on, hoping upon hope that a sharp glance from behind our desks will be enough to keep students from straying too far off-task or fooling around too much.
As you read this, I am doing just what I described above. I knew all yesterday that I shouldn’t be at school today, but I made myself get out of bed and get to school mostly because I couldn’t cancel our second play rehearsal after school, but also because it was easier than writing sub plans at 5 AM and trying to figure out a way to get them on my desk for the substitute by 8 AM and, frankly, because I feel bad being sick.
Happy 2011, 2010 Recap, a General Update, and 30 Before 30 – WITH PICTURES!
January 8th, 2011
Image by Chu? via Flickr
Happy 2011! Here’s a cute robot-looking-thing to help you usher in the New Year. 🙂
Many of you bloggers have been doing a 2010 recap. Here’s mine: wedding, wedding, teaching, wedding, California, wedding, California again, marriage. Oh yea, I finished grad school somewhere in there, too. All said, 2010 was a wonderful whirlwind of a year, but I spent most of it getting ready to get married, and now I’m really looking forward to spending time actually being married, as well as having more time (and money) for other things I really love.
Because of this, 1/1/11 truly seemed like a clean slate this year. Between our wedding and my best friend’s wedding (which was in December), I was in wedding mode all year and now, suddenly, all wedding-talk has ceased. It was kind of sad but also kind of nice to go back to school the Monday after the new year and be asked to work on something for school and actually be able to do it without the sense of being overwhelmed or having something else I’d rather do. I had a really hard time teaching last semester and found myself with a really negative attitude about it, and I blamed it on a million things, but not having a wedding to plan on top of it has really taken a weight off my shoulders and has brought this semester to a much better start. I’ve been so busy planning and re-planning my curriculum for this semester, as opposed to last semester when I just used stuff that had worked well enough in the past because, well, I had other things to do. And let me tell you, I love it. I love having the time to come up with new ideas and implement them the way I really want to. Seeing kids deeply involved in a lesson in which you’re also deeply involved is the biggest payoff.
For me, productivity in one area of my life usually leads to productivity in another area as well, and I’ve been able to knock off several of my 30 Before 30 list in just the past few weeks. See how motivated you can be by just writing things down? I knocked off #2 – Visit San Francisco a few weeks ago, which I knew I was going to do before I created that list. But it’s not cheating because I’ve always always always wanted to go to San Francisco. I just happen to have a wonderful husband who was willing to take a honeymoon there because I really wanted to. I have so much to share from that trip that it’ll have to be a post in and of itself later.
Last night, I also tackled #30 – organizing my jewelry. I have to admit, that one was thrown on the end there because I needed a 30th thing for my list, but it had really been bugging me how disorganized my jewelry was for a long time. I have some really nice pieces of jewelry, but I never wear them because I can’t find one of the pair of earrings or don’t have time to untangle a necklace from the mess. And it seriously was a mess.
I mean look at that. What the hell is all that stuff, anyway? There’s like a tangle of jewelry, a little book, a plastic baggie, bags from stores… Jeeze.
So I searched around on the internet and asked some people for tips and came up with a solution that I liked. Since I have a ton of wall space in my vanity area (outside of the bathroom and next to the closet – I usually get ready in this area in the morning), I knew I wanted something hanging. I went to Target and bought some of those hooks you can stick to the wall, a mesh letter tray from their home office collection, and a hanging tie rack.
Tie Rack
Letter Tray and Hooks
Then I set upon the task of matching earrings and untangling necklaces. That took about two hours, but I have to say, every necklace came untangled and EVERY EARRING HAD A PAIR! This is a source of pride for me, because I had no flippin’ clue whether or not that would be the case.
Look at all those nice pairs!!
Then I went about hanging them on the letter tray. I hung those with posts closer to the open end of it so I could get them off without taking the tray off the wall, and hung the ones with hooks as close to color-coordinated as I could. It doesn’t really matter, though, because as soon as I wear them, I’ll probably put them back somewhere else.
I also hung the necklaces very carefully on the tie rack. I realize now that it would have been smarter to have a tie rack that had all the prongs in a row rather than up and down, and maybe I’ll switch over to that a little later, but this works OK for now. After I had all the jewelry in place, I put the hooks on the wall and hung the jewelry displays in the bathroom. Not only do I have more counter space and organized jewelry, but I now have sparkly things on my bathroom wall. Which sort of tackles #26 – Get some artwork for the walls of our home. It may not be artwork, but it definitely makes the walls in there look less white and more interesting.
Speaking of not-artwork on the walls, I also picked up some pretty sweet picture frames for wedding stuff. I always knew I wanted a collage frame for fun pictures of the wedding party and families (ever since I saw my friend and bridesmaid, Jill, had one in her house), and there happened to be one at Target that was PERFECT (and black! Our room isn’t black, but our wedding colors were black and white, so I wanted black frames).
I also picked up a shadowbox and some scrapbooking stickers and put together a little montage of our wedding stuff – a program, invite, and save the date card to hang on the wall.
I’m really proud of this one, especially since my #4 is Learn to Scrapbook (even though this isn’t scrapbooking, it’s a start!). The items are on a sparkly black background (and the glitter is totally all over the shadowbox, but it still looks cool…) and held in there by pushpins. I then put scrapbooking stickers on top of the pushpins to create a 3-D effect. Unfortunately, the pushpins came out the back and hurt pretty bad if you touch them, but since it’ll be on the wall, I just covered the sharp edges with tape and hope no one tries to take it down for a better look. 🙂
So that’s what I’ve been doing lately instead of blogging, and I’ve got to say, I feel pretty accomplished. I’ll feel even better when we get this stuff on the walls and it isn’t cluttering up my living room, which is my next task! I’ll also have a pictorial blog update about San Francisco and some of my favorite wedding pictures. I know I’ve been promising that last one for a while, but I swear it’s coming!
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Reading Guide for #chifems Book Club 1: Reality Bites Back by Jennifer Pozner
December 29th, 2010Tonight is the very first ever Chicago Feminist (#chifems) book club!! Yay! I’m very excited. 🙂 If you missed us this time and want to join in on the fun next time, check out the group’s Goodreads page here. (That’s also the place to go if you have no idea where we’re meeting.) Since this was my brain child to begin with, and since you can take the woman out of the classroom, but you can’t take the teacher out of the woman, I felt it necessary to create some sort of discussion guide, which follows. Feel free to discuss in the comments if you read the book but can’t make it to the book club meeting tonight. Also, I imagine we’ll come up with a few choices for books to read the next time around, and then vote on them later, so if you have any suggestions, send them my way!
General Discussion Guide Questions
Introduction
Don’t Get Depressed, Get Active
From … tips on how to write a protest letter to guidelines for deconstructing media content, you’ll learn how fun fighting propaganda can be.
Chapter One
Mistaking the Trappings for Love
Here’s the formula: First take a naïve beauty who longs to get married and offer her a gorgeous guy who says he shares that wish. Next, send her to a series of bridal gown fittings, let her select a wedding right, and eventually have her write vows with the other half of this arranged marriage equation. Throw in a healthy heaping of liquor-lubricated sex scenes and, voila, “love” – reality TV style.
Chapter Three
What Reality TV Teaches Us about Women
To illustrate the way media shapes what we think of as “the truth,” imagine that you’ve never in your life met an American woman or girl. How would you perceive American women as a group, if your impression was formed solely through reality television?
I Know Better Than to Trust Women
Who benefits when women are conditioned not to trust one another?
“The Mommy War” seems to have made its journalistic debut in July 1989 when the Texas Monthly declared that “Working moms view stay-at-home moms as idle and silly, traitors in the battle to encourage men to assume more responsibility at home. Stay-at-home moms view working moms as selfish and greedy, cheating their own children out of a strong maternal bond.” Ever since, headlines such as The New Your Times’ 2001 “LOVE & MONEY; Is My Mom Better Than Yours?” and 2003 “The Opt-Out Revolution” (which claimed that educated women were fleeing the workforce to stay home with their babies) have abounded.
No One Wants to See a Brainiac in a Bikini: Woman as Stupid
Apparently, no one wants to see a braniac in a bikini. One wonders how a med student slipped through the casting process in the first place. Not to worry; future seasons have mostly avoided participants prone to such pesky habits as critical thinking.
Chapter Four
Charity, Not Change
But by defining philanthropy so narrowly, the show reinforced the notion that what America needs is charity, not social change.
Chapter Eight
“Equal Society? I’m Sick of It!”
“…The fact that I’m not married right now at twenty-four years old makes me feel like a failure! Walking down the aisle would finally make my life complete.”
Chapter Nine
“It’s Not at All about Making Better Television”
Advertising is profoundly manipulative at its core. Its imagery strives to deprive us of realistic ideas about love, sex, beauty, health, money, work, and life itself, in an attempt to convince us that only products can bring us true joy.
Chapter Ten
Media Literacy: Fun for the Whole Family
As parents, siblings, teachers, and friends, we have to get beyond condescending or judging the media that girls and boys identify with and enjoy. Instead, it’s up to us to pay attention to the TV they’re watching, the social media they’re interacting with, the video games they’re playing, and the music they’re listening to. Interact, play, listen, and watch with them. Talk with them about what they’re learning from these forms of media, how they feel about their favorite musicians, actors, TV shows, movies, magazines, and websites and how they feel about themselves when (and after) they engage with these media.
(P.S. This is book #2 for #15 of my 30 Before 30 challenge!)
Happy Holidays!
December 24th, 2010To everyone who has read, commented, shared, joked about, or even mentioned in passing something about this blog…
To everyone who has listened to (and read about) me tirelessly complain about name changes and white dresses and people who don’t understand feminism (or weddings) and feminists who bash brides…
To all of my guest posters and muses, who generate ideas without even knowing you inspire me…
To everyone trying to subvert gender norms and society’s expectations in all kinds of relationships…
Merry Christmas & Happy New Year ... Happy Holidays from Ashley and Tim!
…Happy Holidays from this feminist former bride, wedding survivor, now wife with her own last name and her feminist-loving, housework sharing husband!
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