Another year, another Equal Pay Day! 2013 is just another year in which women had to work until April 9th to earn the same amount of money that men made in 2012. In other words, it takes women about 15 months to earn the same income that men make in 12 months (ridiculous, right?)!!! While to most PBG readers equal pay is an important women’s rights issue that gets our blood boiling, I have recently realized that many young women are unaware of, or at least uninformed about the severity of, the gender wage gap. This is very troubling to me since this is an issue that women should be aware of as they enter the job market. In fact, we are the next generation that will be responsible for continuing the fight against the wage gap. While Equal Pay Day 2013 has passed, this is still an important issue that everyone—especially young women—should be aware of!
According to the National Women’s Law Center, today, women who work full time only make 77 cents to every dollar a man makes! While 23 cents may not seem like a big deal to some, 23 cents adds up; every year women make $11,084 less in median earnings than men. The average full time working women will lose $443,360 over forty years of work! And these figures do not include the long term impacts on women’s Social Security and Retirement savings.
The new and improved Shades is just the book we’ve been waiting for! Packed with cynicism, and satirical humour, nothing could be more representative of the modern feminist revolution. The book includes fifty stunning and compelling works of writing, all critical and intellectual, but also at times deliciously sarcastic.
Shades, like many other feminist works, expresses a general disapproval of society. However, this book highlights something that I feel has been almost forgotten in most modern feminist texts: a sense of success.
At PBG, we often talk about the various pressures from this American society that girls face to look a certain way. Well, in South Korean society, people have taken such extremes to be beautiful, that women are all beginning to look the same.
The 2013 Miss Korea pageant contestants broke the news under headlines such as “Beauty Clones” for their striking resemblances to one another.
ShenTheWise of the Japanese blog Reddit first released the photos with the caption, “Korea’s plastic surgery mayhem is finally converging on the same face. Here are the Miss Korea 2013 contestants.” Commenters immediately accused him of being racist. However, it was soon clear that the caption was by no means so. When the headshots of all the contestants were juxtaposed, it was as though the pictures were of the same woman with different hairstyles. They all had the same narrow nose, slender face, and large, doll-like eyes - even their smiles were similar.
Margaret Thatcher: Revolutionary Feminist, or Power-Driven Capitalist?
By Kara Chyung May 6, 2013
As Great Britain’s one and only female prime minister, Margaret Thatcher might seem like a woman to be put on a pedestal by feminists. However, she desired exactly the opposite. As someone who has found a community and an outlet in PBG, I found the following words by her were rather shocking to read:
"The feminists hate me, don't they? And I don't blame them. For I hate feminism. It is poison."
There are definitely many widespread opinions about Margaret Thatcher. Some say that the Feminist community should weep because they lost one of the most powerful woman in the world, and that she helped empower other women indirectly through her career. On the other hand, others say that she is the worst possible feminist and that her personal success had no benefit to other women because her policies failed to help the female community in Britain.
I grew up as a competitive Irish dancer in a world where, once girls turned twelve, they flocked to the spray tan. Competitions were filled with girls who had expertly bronzed thighs as well as those who'd gone for the cheap stuff and turned out orange. I thought this was just some weird dance phenomenon.
Then I got to high school.
Tanning is ubiquitous. Now that prom is just around the corner, talk in the gym locker room has turned to the best way to achieve that "healthy" glow. While many girls are choosing spray tan or lotion, and a few are going without, an alarming number of my classmates are making appointments at the tanning salon.
There's no question that tanning beds increase the likelihood of contracting melanoma. A group from the International Agency for Research on Cancer reviewed nineteen international studies and found that people of any age who use tanning beds increase their risk for melanoma by 75%. Dr. Beatrice Secretan, coordinator of the IARC group, declared, "There is no such thing as a safe tan."
I’ve always enjoyed the fun and catchy song, “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Disney’s Mulan. But until recently, I never stopped to think about what the lyrics actually mean. Unfortunately, too often in American society, being a man has more to do with physical strength, power, and dominance than strength of character. When this message is combined with the sexualization and objectification of women, it leads to a culture that tolerates violence against women. The fear of being viewed as “too feminine” often prevents men from taking a public position against this violence.
Admirable, brave and independent women have long been absent in the world of video games. Most of the time female characters are lucky to even appear at all, but if they do so happen to pop up they can generally be defined by one of the following distressing categories:
1. The sexy sidekick: this character wears minimal clothing and fights alongside the main character, our male protagonist. She gets little recognition for her talents and abilities. Generally, the only reason she is included in the game at all is for her physical presence.
Lydia from The Elder Scrolls
2. The sexy heroine: this character also wears minimal clothing, but unlike the sidekick she actually gets to be involved in the action. She is often dressed in tight black leather and the majority of her skin is uncovered. Although she fires weapons and fights valiantly, she is highly sexualized -- often pictured bum-first, or with her breasts angled towards the camera. She generally works for men or amongst men rather than with other women or independently.
Thinking about Talking: Keeping your cool in discussions on gender
By Hannah Johnston April 22, 2013
Last week was crepe week in my French Club meeting. Everyone brought toppings and Madame brought an electric crepe maker - voila! - fine french cuisine in 5 minutes or less. There was a handful of us, and we were all waiting in line to sample the skinny pancakes when it was Mr. Tinsman’s turn. He’s a good person: generally kind, well-spoken, intelligent, ambitious and athletic. He took the crepe and paused for a moment. He then turned to me, handed me the crepe and said, “ladies first”.
With those two small words he had stirred the equalist in me (I consider myself an equalist, not a feminist)! I immediately said, “No thanks, I don’t want special treatment because of my gender.” I probably should have phrased it better, but it was the most concise way I could think to put it at the time. He was taken aback. Seeing the look on his face, I explained to him that sexism works both ways, and that for me to accept special treatment but disavow discrimination was not cool. I told him that the code of chivalry he was employing dated back to the era of the Antebellum South when women were expected to submit to men in exchange for such perks as “ladies first”.
An open letter to all journalists, news broadcasters, radio personalities, bloggers, and news outlets in general:
I’m sick of turning on the news or reading an article that was only written because of the “mass hysteria” it hoped to create. News is about more than catastrophe - at least, it’s supposed to be. News should be about ALL forms of information: the good and the bad, the innovative and the discriminatory. This was most evident with the recent bombing at the Boston Marathon. Newspaper covers in and surrounding the area chose to feature headlines that screamed “TERROR” with gruesome pictures. Why not report on the facts, but also include details such as the number of people who lent out space in their homes for people or helped pay for victims taxi fares or the runners who finished the race and then ran all the way to the American Red Cross to donate blood?
