get your coffee, tea, or mad dog 20/20 & settle in for Friday’s linkage

We got some awesomeness here. But seriously.

1. Jill at I Blame The Patriarchy hits it out of the park with “Toronto activists take back the slut”. She asks: can a slur be re-appropriated? What, if anything, will that solve? Also: the Sexual Assault Prevention Checklist is priceless.

2. On slur reclamation (again), coupled with artistic license: “the slants vs. u.s. patent and trademark office” as posted by Angry Asian Man. “We deserve the right to protect our name,” [Simon] Tam[, the band’s manager and bass player,] says. “In the larger sense, minorities should have the right to label themselves.” More details here.

3. Mash-up! In 1990 I was as enamored as all mid-teen girls with Roxette’s ballad “Must Have Been Love” – you know, one of those songs you try to record off the radio onto a mixtape (yes, a real mixtape) and sing along with girlfriends from the back of mom’s 1981 Mercury Cougar while being driven to Denny’s after a YMCA dance. That said, I never liked the film Pretty Woman much (but I have been known to make a few “Big mistake. Big.” jokes, usually after my debit card bounces whilst buying tampons). Anyway: FunkyBeccaBecca’s trailer re-imagining seems far more apt for this creepy so-called Cinderella story.

4. Speaking of film: Tami Harris writes “Sucker punched by Sucker Punch– Girls and guns don’t equal female empowerment”. My caveats to some of these types of article are noted in the comments. As usual, a great piece by Tami, one of my favorite social justice and pop culture bloggers.

5. Female (super)(s)heros: musings on Wonder Woman, then and now, from a girlhood fan: “Here’s hoping for a superhero every girl can aspire to” by Morven Crumlish. Crumlish pens a warm tribute to WW and the real-life WWs we’ve known and still know today.

6. From NYRA: “Taking any random childhood incident and pretending it made you successful!” What’s yours? What would yours be? I’m thinking, “I fell off my tire swing and ended up in a successful engineering career!”

7. Jasie alerts me my brother’s lady J. got Tumblr’d (J. later posted an update with the source image, which IMO all blogs/Tumblogs/etc. should do in the first place!). [ Frankenstein voice:] SO PRETTY

8. Make: sewing 101: oilcloth storage bin. Remedial-sewing-skills, expensive/designer fabric? Product = lovely, of course.

9. Reader and friend M. writes some bathtime brilliance: “French Jellyfish Icicle Party, Anyone?” After reading her ingenuity, I’m thinking anyone disinterested in baths could be persuaded to becoming a fan.

10. Tuesday Idzie asks people to weigh in with questions: I respond via email, and Idzie posits and answers: “Why is Unschooling so Fringe?” Idzie’s thoughts are on point, but in particular I enjoyed reading comments: such as Cathy who writes, “What I have seen, even in the unschooling world, is that parents don’t really ‘trust’ their children. They are often all for following the lead of their children, as long as their children follow the appropriate, known path.” Wendy Prieznitz makes a few brilliant points about the larger cultural picture. You know, all that stuff you’ll find me bitching about on a regular basis.

11. A fabulous interview regarding obesity, diet, health, and public cost: from 2009, “America’s Moral Panic Over Obesity” by Megan McArdle at The Atlantic and featuring an interview with author and statistician Paul Campos. I’m not sure how I missed it, but it’s golden.

“We’re in the midst of a moral panic over fat, which has transformed the heavier than average into folk devils, to whom all sorts of social ills are ascribed. […]

“[A]s Mary Douglas the anthropologist has pointed out, we focus on risks not on the basis of “rational” cost-benefit analysis, but because of the symbolic work focusing on those risks does – most particularly signalling disapproval of certain groups and behaviors. In this culture fatness is a metaphor for poverty, lack of self-control, and other stuff that freaks out the new Puritans all across the ideological spectrum, which is why the war on fat is so ferocious – it appeals very strongly to both the right and the left, for related if different reasons.”

You know, I kept copying and pasting quotations because it was just so good – so I finally just stuck with a couple pieces. The part about the upper West Side woman and social privilege and class… I got the chills. He owned it.

12. Natalie gives herself a zombie apocalypse manicure (using OPI Shatter which is somehow affiliated with Katy Perry but I don’t know much else because, guess what, I hardly give a fiddler’s fuck). And yeah, I got all up on eBay buying that stuff.

13. More consumerism, of a sort, via Angry Asian Man: The Morning Benders realease an EP with proceeds to Japan. This is a fabulous band and, since I “bought” the CD, I can confirm it’s a lovely listen.

14. Renee Martin posts a video; “tell us how you really feel”. Having a passionate, articulate, and strong-willed child of my own (with a retaliatory bent when things don’t go his way), I got quite a smile watching this.

15. So now “uterus” is a bad word. Fair points regarding deregulation and Republicans’ selective “big government” platform. But as for the author of this piece – I note liberals luuuurrrve to mock the GOP – in this case their “prudery”. Too bad misogyny is an American value that truly reaches across the aisle.

16. In the kitchen: Kung Pao Shrimp? HELL YES

17. Not Back To School Camp: WANT. For my daughter. No seriously, she wants to go to camp, but not the typical camps offered – specifically, an unschooling / life learning camp. I’m on the lookout. Any help or advice would be appreciated!

18. Ohmygoodness! How I love it when this happens. A reader tweeted me to say she enjoyed last week’s link to Anita Sarkeesian’s vlog “Tropes vs. Women: #1 The Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. She also wrote her own piece, “confessions of a recovering manic pixie dream girl”. Inspired, I dug up and (re-)published my piece on the Will Ferrell/Man-Boy movies: “film feministe: the cinematic man-child and his perpetual harem of willing, nubile females”. Good stuff!

19. Last week a young Egyptian cobra escaped the Bronx Zoo. I kept up on it thru Twitter. / She’s since been recaptured. / Or has she?

20. The Hogakidlets were featured as the Gratuitous Cute Kid Pic last week at Love Isn’t Enough. By the way, I’m dying to write for this blog again. Because of all the awesomeness (at the blog, not necessarily in my writing).

21. Appropos, as my husband did injure his back this last week. Unfortunately, we weren’t having a Montclair moment on the beach or otherwise at the time it happened.

Have a lovely weekend!