Friday linkage (my apologies I missed last week)! Short, but sweet:
Got Milk? Got Misogyny at Soc Images. The PMS thing is such crap. I’ve been pretty good at ignoring it much of my life. I find it terrifically interesting our culture holds that normal biological or physical processes of women are inherently flawed, scary, silly, unmentionable, gross – or all the above. I’m pretty much done with that, how ’bout you?
Oh and speaking on that – Tami Harris has some choice words on a few recent commercials which are almost unbelievable even as experienced by my tired-out leathery-psyche of anti-kyriarchal cynicism. Just: wow.
An Apology To Parents at PickleMeThis – now admittedly these sentiments seem like only the beginning of a greater understanding of adultism and attendant misogyny, but heck, it’s a good beginning. This entry seems a lot better off than I was for many years. I wish this person well and hope others find the words helpful.
This is over a year old; but I hadn’t shared it yet. You can read the text here. It’s well worth it.
New WA DUI law in effect. Anyone have any opinions? (Um, “Don’t Drink & Drive” not worth the effort to type it, so don’t, or your ass is modded).
I was also thinking – tangentially so – of my favorite film scenes involving drinking. I came up with a few. On the humor scale: Cary Grant in the beginning(ish) of North by Northwest comes to mind, as does Will Ferrell’s turn in Old School (the latter film I don’t exactly reccommend, although Juliette Lewis’ “I’m sooorrrrry” while blowing cigarette smoke is also choice!). On the awesome-in-a-drama/realistic way I’d cite the entire performance of Ray Milland in The Lost Weekend (as I believe I’ve mentioned before), Paul Giamatti’s work in Sideways, and the family dinner scene in Half Nelson which makes me grit my teeth, it’s so perfect.
Teh Awesome: from one of my favorite thrillers. I would love to sponsor this one at the 7th Street!
Make: How-To: A Custom Pair of Tap Pants at CRAFT. I only own one dress but I’d like to own more. Why not have some funderwear for underneath? Instead of my usual cotton.
Make: Buttermilk Potato Salad by Martha Stewart. I made this for this week’s Conch and it was delicious!
Finally: “Red Light Bulb” by Madeline:
Red Light Bulb from Do it for the girls on Vimeo.
Interesting food for thought. The Soc Images article leaves out the fact that the milk people got involved because they know what the poster doesn’t: calcium in milk is more easily absorbed than calcium supplements. I noted that in my comment. There may be other foods whose calcium content is more easily absorbed, too, but I’m not sure of those. But the whole idea of the ads is so wrong I thought I was looking at ads from the 50’s and not 2011. And quite frankly I find it another symptom of this need to control women’s bodies that we’ve seen in recent news, don’t you?
The valedictorian’s speech was great. I wonder how many people felt uncomfortable when she read it? Just the other day my husband was saying that he thought the real reason public school was started in the US was to create a day-care system because parents no longer had jobs that allowed kids to be with them and learn they way they could in the 18th and 19th centuries. Interesting thought, that. Funnily enough, the valedictorian of my high school class was very much like her. He even re-took freshman English during summer school so he could have an A and keep his all-A average. The result of this was that when he got to Princeton, he found out that everyone else there was just like him and he wasn’t special because of his grades. He ended up leaving Princeton with a B- average after 1 semester and coming back home to go to a local school. I always wondered what the point was to be so focused on your grades, to the exclusion of pretty much everything else.
The Tap Pants: very cool. I have some silk that I’ve been hoarding; this would be an excellent use for it.
I hope you guys have a great weekend – it’s supposed to be warm and I’m contemplating the beach. Any recommendations for a good place to go?
Looks like they pulled the milk ads:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/43854582/ns/business-us_business/t/got-apology-milk-board-cans-sexist-campaign/?gt1=43001
Thank the goddess above that the milk people pulled the ad and redirected their site to a big fat apology:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/07/22/138600837/calif-milk-board-dumps-controversial-pms-campaign?sc=fb&cc=fp
“Over the past couple of weeks, regrettably, some people found our campaign about milk and PMS to be outrageous and misguided — and we apologize to those we offended.”
Some people? Seriously? You mean ALL WOMEN? Assholes. Way to make men look like overly-weak freaks who are bullied by our insane “PMS” too, btw.