Viva la Revoltion!

Oh, Children's Place! What were you thinking, marketing this "back to school" shirt? 

Stop trying to put girls in some crazy box, where we can only like shopping, doing our hair, and glitter. We can like, and be good at, everything! And my inner teacher is screaming, "You can get better at math!"

The good news is, people voiced their concerns over the t-shirt to Children's Place...and they pulled the shirt off the shelves.

This type of action is what we should be doing - working together to improve the state of the world for women. I love it when I see groups of people working peacefully together toward a cause - any cause - because it reveals who we are as humans - passionate beings.

Ahhhhh-mazing!

If you have been following world news lately, no doubt you've heard of the riots in Egypt. What do the riots have to do with women and feminism? Well, mobs of rioters have been attacking and sexually assaulting the female protestors - "at least 91" women have been raped while protesting. And it hasn't been stopped by the military who are on patrol.

The good news is, this information got out. Watchdog groups got a hold of the stories about the attacks and made sure that this was publicized. And talking about it is what we can do to end it.

So, what happened? This:

Male protestors formed a human shield around the female protestors so that they could protest without fear of attack.

Doesn't look like much, you say?

What about this:

Or this:

Faith in humanity: restored.

It's a Barbie world.

This picture of original Barbie next to a "more realistic figure" Barbie has been floating around the internet this morning. I've been watching the comments regarding these two dolls on Do Something's Facebook feed. There's the usual, "Yay! She looks so much better!" and "Now she looks like a bad-ass surfer chick!" to the "Dolls don't define who I am." and "I never looked at my Barbie as a child and felt inferior." Those are very typical comments whenever Barbie comes up - and they're all valid. I played with Barbie for years and years (my play time was extended, I'm sure, because I had a younger sister. So when I probably would have "grown out of" playing with Barbie, I had a younger sister with whom I would play). I really don't remember ever thinking that I would never measure up to her, but I do vaguely remember thinking that she was beyond beautiful - and wishing that I could be that beautiful, too. Although I was young, so I didn't dwell on it.

And as an adult, Barbie doesn't affect my view of my own body. However, I think it's important to note that you can't be what you don't see. And I think that might work in reverse as well - if we don't see a wide variety of body types as a child, we'll never see them as "normal" or "desirable." That includes our own bodies.

No, I don't think Barbie's all that's wrong with the world. Advertising images in print, on television, and on the Internet are much more powerful than Barbie, because they're almost always pointing out a flaw that we have that their product can fix. But I also think it's important that children have dolls that have varying body types so that they can see that they all have value - that there's more than one way to look.

I'd love to see Crossfit Barbie - she would come with her own kettlebell, barbell, pull-up bar, and plyo box. Her thighs wouldn't fit in regular jeans because they are too muscular, and she'd have to wear shirts with spandex so that her arms would fit in the arm holes. I'd model her after my favorite crossfitter, Annie Thorisdottir...badass.

(This is Annie. She totally rocks.)

I'm in love.

This blog post (which you need to go read...right now...) is reason 1,236,943 I love Crossfit. And as I was thinking about some women I know struggling with body image right now, I thought about my own issues with my body and how I view it completely differently now, because of Crossfit.

I love crossfit because when the weather turned warm and long pants turned to shorts, one of my male friends at my crossfit box said, "Your legs are looking really muscular," and it made my day (and it wasn't nearly as weird as I make it sound in writing). Okay, my week.

Crossfit gyms don't have mirrors on the wall - it's not about what you look like. At all. It's about the progress you make from wherever it was that you started. It's about building a supportive community where everyone is challenged and supported. When I stared crossfit I couldn't jump up onto a 45 lb plate ten times (that about 3 inches...). Now I use 20" boxes in my WODs and have successfully jumped a few times on a 24" (which is often the men's height for the WODs). And even though I can now do so many things that I couldn't do a year and a half ago, there are so many more things that I'm still working on (and some that I'm not even able to work on right now, they're that far of a reach for me). What crossfit did is retaught me (because, deep down, I  knew it was true) that the scale doesn't matter. Looks aren't important.

Being bad-ass is.

We need feminism.

This was not the topic I planned on writing about today, but something about this website, Everyday Sexism, has really struck a cord. I came across a video of Laura Bates discussing the website and her project today while looking for something else. (Isn't that always the way it goes?) She started the website after walking on the platform waiting for the tube (subway in London) when a man came up to her and grabbed her crotch. She didn't know what to do, where to turn, and was too embarrassed and so she said nothing. But after she spent some time thinking about what happened, she realized that this type of sexual harassment must happen to other women, too, and that women aren't talking about it. So she started Everyday Sexism so the women who faced these situations could have a place to tell their stories and be heard.

Laura was expecting maybe ten or twenty women to find their way to the site and post on the live feed. But 250,000 stories later, she's convinced it's a much bigger problem than she had realized. And while the project's mission states that it's a site for women in the UK, there are postings from women all around the world detailing everyday sexism that we face.

Now you can visit the site to read stories from other women or to post your own.

Finding sites like this is such a double-edged sword. Friggin' fantastic that we have women out there creating these spaces for other women, I want to scream because we have to. It reminded me of another site that I really like, Who Needs Feminism? This is a social media project - you can submit a picture of yourself holding a sign what reads, "I need feminism because..." with your completed statement. Solidarity around strength is always powerful to see - and this site is definitely one that you need to see (and you need to participate! My women's studies course will be doing this next semester!).

Powerful women and a five year old...

You need to see and be inspired by these spectacular photographs done by Jaime Moore. She decided to photograph her five year old daughter as powerful women from our history. The results are stunning and can serve to remind us of all the good that women do for our world.

What powerful women would you like to see included?

What do you make?

Need a feel good pick-me-up? The documentary, Makers, has a website that includes tons of videos of contemporary women who "make" America (including the documentary in its entirety). You can stop in and watch a three-minute clip or snuggle in for a few hours for the full documentary. Either way, you'll see and hear powerful, interesting women talking about their experiences. 

My only gripe about this site/project is that it's sponsored, in part, by skin care products, so prior to watching the video of a rockin' woman talking about power, you'll told your skin is not good enough (but, hey, here's a product to buy that will make you perfect and more attractive). I try to ignore the ads...but the uber-feminist inside my head rolls my eyes every. single. time.

So, while you're watching these, think about your contribution to our society: what do you make?