Halifax Mall Gets in on the Sexism Too!

This time it's not a t-shirt -- though I fear there will be yet another terribly demeaning t-shirt slogan before the back-to-school season is over -- now a mall taken up the call where clothing manufacturers failed. A mall in Halifax just pulled ads that they somehow didn't realize would upset people (Are girls people too??! Who knew?). Here are the ads:

WTF?!! Frankly, I'm running out of creative things to say about this shit. I'm just fed up and tired. Advertisers, why are you making me so damn tired? Seriously, what human wouldn't see the problem with these ads? What advertiser worth their salt would come up with a such a tired and sad campaign in 2013? What ad company if presented with such an idea, assuming they were smart enough to not come up with it, would not say to the mall, in the past few years similar campaigns have been called sexist and the ads/clothing has had to be pulled? Who is doing this?

Sigh. Statement from the mall's marketing director, Rebecca Logan:

“We’ve heard what our customers have to say and we understand why you’re angry. It was never intended to be offensive.”

I'm guessing you didn't intend it be offensive, but how could you realistic think otherwise? What did you think the reaction would be? Unless Ms. Logan became a marketing exec by shopping, I'm guessing the statements don't hold true for her. The ads are now down and the only good thing to come out of this is that the mall is donating  $5,000 to a charity for empowering girls. Hopefully all the girls who saw the ads will be attending seminars from the charity.

Disney Princesses Want Equal Pay Too!

How can a princess live happily ever after making $0.77 for every dollar a man earns? She can't. Disney Princesses want equality too!

This song and video, Disney Princesses for Equal Pay, sung by "the Little Mermaid" and featuring some of the other Disney Princesses, is both hilarious and true. A bit of fun for a boring afternoon courtesy of the Tex Pats. Hopefully we'll see more from them soon. Enjoy!

The Thin Pink Line

It has begun. Last weekend after a playdate with a few of my daughter's preschool friends, my daughter cried at me, "You forgot my nail polish!" Several times. Each time with more energy and disappointment in her voice. Her little friend was wearing nail polish. The peer-to-peer girly indoctrination had begun.

As someone with super short I'm-trying-desperately-not-to-bite-them nails, I don't wear nail polish. Or at least so rarely she would have no memory of the last time I wore it. And let me state that I have no problem with nail polish. But my daughter is three. And I think, though clearly some would disagree with me, too young for make up, which nail polish is. I know people who have taken their daughters, younger than mine, for manicures and spa days. For me, this sends the wrong message; for others, it's okay. Clearly her friend's mother had no qualms about painting her daughter's nails. I do.

And I don't.

On the flip side, there is nothing wrong with being girly, whether it's a little or a lot, IF it is tempered with other things -- books, science, math, etc -- basically anything that reminds her that it's what she does with her brain that defines her (though she should defy definition), not how she looks.

But she going to be bombarded with the opposite message for the rest of her life. I had hoped for more time.

Part of me wishes that I had been raised in a more girly household. Make up, shaving my legs, hair styles, nails, jewelry, foot care, facial hair -- these are all issues that I tackled on my own, because I had no guidance on them. In fact, at times when I was a teenager and in my early 20s, I felt like I was teaching my mom about these things (in her defense, she was in a house filled with boys for many years before I came along). I admire the fact that my mom wasn't a slave to the feminine commercial engine and that we didn't have a house filled with fashion magazines. But sometimes I wish she'd taken me for a manicure, to have my "colours done" or just out to dinner to chat about ladies' stuff. But I wished for these things when I was 13, not three.

From my daughter's perspective, all she saw was that her friend had brightly coloured nails and she did not. Those nails must have looked fun, and she would have thought nothing of seeing a boy with same nails (yet), so it can't really be chalked up to her wanting to be girly. And it's okay if she does want to be girly. She already likes dresses and skirts, and play bracelets and rings. Is nail polish so different? She also loves trains, superheroes, books, cars, cooking, learning about animals and the Science Centre. And her favourite colour is green, not pink.

I think I had play nail polish when I was about seven or eight years old (Tinkerbell brand, if I'm not mistaken). I have not bought my daughter any nail polish. I have also not ruled it out completely.

Another clothing season, another t-shirt in poor taste

It seems every time a new season is upon us, another t-shirt is released that demeans girls and their abilities. Are the designers not following the news? Is the same idiot designer jumping from store to store every season in a moronic plot to beat down the self-esteem of girls everywhere? And, what mom or dad do they this is actually going to buy these things?

The latest offender is Children's Place. I wasn't a fan of the store before, but I'm steering clear for sure now (add it to the huge and growing list). The t-shirt says:  "My best subjects" and has a checklist with shopping, music and dancing checked off. Fourth on the list, and not checked, is math, with "Well, nobody's perfect" underneath.

I'm sick of writing about this. We wonder why there is a lack of women in STEM careers. We've been bombarded with this shit our whole lives and we are continuing to do it do our children. Children, not just girls, need to be encouraged to study, to grow and to value themselves and their talent.

And I feel like I need to shout this from the rooftops, NOT ALL WOMEN LIKE TO SHOP. Many women hate it. And many men enjoy it. Argh. Enough with the damn false gender roles, people. We're done now.

(I just read in the Toronto Star that the t-shirt has been pulled. Let's hope none were bought.)

Mom Discrimination in the Workplace

An article, titled "Half the mothers I know have been driven from their jobs," in today's Guardian brought back many painful memories for me. This headline/quote is true for me. Many women that I know/knew had babies around the same time as me. Approximately half of those women lost their jobs. Now that my daughter is three and those women's children are older, many, including myself, are back in full-time employment. But not with the employer that we were with when we got pregnant.

My former employer was very supportive of my pregnancy. When I went on mat leave, I felt there would be no problem with my return -- a great person was hired to take over while I was gone and my job would be waiting for me when I returned. It was. But I learned on my second day back that I had essentially been demoted. The department of one that I had turned around and worked for years to reform and make very profitable had changed. The atmosphere had changed. I was no longer supported in leaving to pick my daughter up at daycare or take her to the doctor (though she was so sick she was hospitalized at one point). My former ability to work from home and work flexible hours was taken away. I complained. A week later I was let go.

A close friend working in a similar position was made redundant from her unionized job (which we all thought was safer) a month before she was due to return to work. The guy who replaced her happened to be bilingual. Though that skill was not needed her position, her job description was changed to include bilingualism as a requirement so that the company could keep her replacement full-time.

Another mom from my neighbourhood found out she was being let go a few weeks before her maternity leave was up. Downsizing. Several other professional women I know were downsized out of their positions while on mat leave. Much easier to downsize someone who isn't there, especially if no one replaced her while she was gone. If two people can do the work of three, why bring back the third?

I realize that the economy hasn't been at the top of the cycle for the past few years, but this problem seems to be systemic and international (judging by the Guardian article). Workplaces are run on men's timing, men who either don't have children or aren't involved with their children; that needs to change. We have the technology and the capability to offer all employees, including fathers, work/life balance with shared hours, flex time, telecommuting and good old empathy. But so many employers aren't doing it. We have to stop assuming that mothers are going to be less focused on their work or that moms will be happy to be out of a job they love. Mothers can bring fresh perspective to a position and a workplace. Yes, we want to be with our kids, but we also want meaningful work. And a little understanding.

Rape Joke: A Poem

This poem was written by Patricia Lockwood. It is beautiful and devastating. It needs to be read.

Rape Joke

The rape joke is that you were 19 years old.

The rape joke is that he was your boyfriend.

The rape joke it wore a goatee. A goatee.

Imagine the rape joke looking in the mirror, perfectly reflecting back itself, and grooming itself to look more like a rape joke. “Ahhhh,” it thinks. “Yes. A goatee.”

No offense.

The rape joke is that he was seven years older. The rape joke is that you had known him for years, since you were too young to be interesting to him. You liked that use of the word interesting, as if you were a piece of knowledge that someone could be desperate to acquire, to assimilate, and to spit back out in different form through his goateed mouth.

Then suddenly you were older, but not very old at all.

The rape joke is that you had been drinking wine coolers. Wine coolers! Who drinks wine coolers? People who get raped, according to the rape joke.

The rape joke is he was a bouncer, and kept people out for a living.

Not you!

The rape joke is that he carried a knife, and would show it to you, and would turn it over and over in his hands as if it were a book.

He wasn’t threatening you, you understood. He just really liked his knife.

The rape joke is he once almost murdered a dude by throwing him through a plate-glass window. The next day he told you and he was trembling, which you took as evidence of his sensitivity.

How can a piece of knowledge be stupid? But of course you were so stupid.

The rape joke is that sometimes he would tell you you were going on a date and then take you over to his best friend Peewee’s house and make you watch wrestling while they all got high.

The rape joke is that his best friend was named Peewee.

OK, the rape joke is that he worshiped The Rock.

Like the dude was completely in love with The Rock. He thought it was so great what he could do with his eyebrow.

The rape joke is he called wrestling “a soap opera for men.” Men love drama too, he assured you.

The rape joke is that his bookshelf was just a row of paperbacks about serial killers. You mistook this for an interest in history, and laboring under this misapprehension you once gave him a copy of Günter Grass’s My Century, which he never even tried to read.

It gets funnier.

The rape joke is that he kept a diary. I wonder if he wrote about the rape in it.

The rape joke is that you read it once, and he talked about another girl. He called her Miss Geography, and said “he didn’t have those urges when he looked at her anymore,” not since he met you. Close call, Miss Geography!

The rape joke is that he was your father’s high-school student—your father taught World Religion. You helped him clean out his classroom at the end of the year, and he let you take home the most beat-up textbooks.

The rape joke is that he knew you when you were 12 years old. He once helped your family move two states over, and you drove from Cincinnati to St. Louis with him, all by yourselves, and he was kind to you, and you talked the whole way. He had chaw in his mouth the entire time, and you told him he was disgusting and he laughed, and spat the juice through his goatee into a Mountain Dew bottle.

The rape joke is that come on, you should have seen it coming. This rape joke is practically writing itself.

The rape joke is that you were facedown. The rape joke is you were wearing a pretty green necklace that your sister had made for you. Later you cut that necklace up. The mattress felt a specific way, and your mouth felt a specific way open against it, as if you were speaking, but you know you were not. As if your mouth were open ten years into the future, reciting a poem called Rape Joke.

The rape joke is that time is different, becomes more horrible and more habitable, and accommodates your need to go deeper into it.

Just like the body, which more than a concrete form is a capacity.

You know the body of time is elastic, can take almost anything you give it, and heals quickly.

The rape joke is that of course there was blood, which in human beings is so close to the surface.

The rape joke is you went home like nothing happened, and laughed about it the next day and the day after that, and when you told people you laughed, and that was the rape joke.

It was a year before you told your parents, because he was like a son to them. The rape joke is that when you told your father, he made the sign of the cross over you and said, “I absolve you of your sins, in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit,” which even in its total wrongheadedness, was so completely sweet.

The rape joke is that you were crazy for the next five years, and had to move cities, and had to move states, and whole days went down into the sinkhole of thinking about why it happened. Like you went to look at your backyard and suddenly it wasn’t there, and you were looking down into the center of the earth, which played the same red event perpetually.

The rape joke is that after a while you weren’t crazy anymore, but close call, Miss Geography.

The rape joke is that for the next five years all you did was write, and never about yourself, about anything else, about apples on the tree, about islands, dead poets and the worms that aerated them, and there was no warm body in what you wrote, it was elsewhere.

The rape joke is that this is finally artless. The rape joke is that you do not write artlessly.

The rape joke is if you write a poem called Rape Joke, you’re asking for it to become the only thing people remember about you.

The rape joke is that you asked why he did it. The rape joke is he said he didn’t know, like what else would a rape joke say? The rape joke said YOU were the one who was drunk, and the rape joke said you remembered it wrong, which made you laugh out loud for one long split-open second. The wine coolers weren’t Bartles & Jaymes, but it would be funnier for the rape joke if they were. It was some pussy flavor, like Passionate Mango or Destroyed Strawberry, which you drank down without question and trustingly in the heart of Cincinnati Ohio.

Can rape jokes be funny at all, is the question.

Can any part of the rape joke be funny. The part where it ends—haha, just kidding! Though you did dream of killing the rape joke for years, spilling all of its blood out, and telling it that way.

The rape joke cries out for the right to be told.

The rape joke is that this is just how it happened.

The rape joke is that the next day he gave you Pet Sounds. No really. Pet Sounds. He said he was sorry and then he gave you Pet Sounds. Come on, that’s a little bit funny.

Admit it.

-Patricia Lockwood