Yet I have come to the realization that I have turned into Ted Mosby.

For those of you who don’t watch How I Met Your Mother, start watching it. Immediately.  It stars Ted Mosby and his group of friends as he tells his children the story of how he came to meet their mother (duh). Ted is a romantic from day one, a professional architect with high hopes of finding the love of his life somewhere in New York. He thinks it is Robin Scherbatsky, and endeavours to assimilate her into his friend group. Eight seasons of shenanigans ensue.

I am ready to admit it: I’m a self-proclaimed realist who, somewhere along the line, inadvertently became a hopeless romantic. I look for relationships in all the wrong places, seeking out true love with partners who are seeking a completely different situation. As much as I would like to be completely alone, one of those powerhouse women who doesn’t need nor want a partner, I somehow always end up with my heart on my sleeve, hoping that someone that I care for won’t hurt me.

That being said, searching for love has never been at the forefront my mind; I have had so many other goals throughout my life. A career, some sort of success in my fields of choice — when I talk about my future, these are the things that I discuss first. But as much as I claim to not care about love, to not be searching for it, never directly hoping to discover it, I really would not be against it. And by that I mean I would really like to find a partner.

Writing that sentence makes me feel like a failure.

I sometimes feel like a bad feminist for wanting to fall in love. I try so hard to be analytical, intelligent, and forward-thinking, but I’m a sucker for poetry, chocolate-covered caramels, and subtle displays of affection. Is that even possible? Is that allowed? What kind of feminist needs or wants to be loved?

I guess this one does. Maybe it isn’t a necessity for my survival, but it certainly is something that I want, something I can’t help but pursue, however futile those pursuits may be. I’ve fallen head-over-heels in love with the idea of being in love. It probably sounds silly, but the concept of meaning something to someone, of being the last thought on someone’s mind before they go to sleep, of being held when I’m sad, of being someone’s emotional rock and having that support for myself, is something that I have found myself desiring. Is that needy? Is that submitting to the patriarchy? Am I giving in to an embedded need within myself for a partner to take care of me?

I have come to a point in my development as a feminist and as a woman at which I am suddenly unsure. I want to be able to classify myself as an opinionated, informed feminist thinker, but still take pleasure and rely on a steady interpersonal relationship. There is little popular literature on feminism and love, at least in my own research, a fact that has surely contributed to my confusion in relation to my seemingly contradictory beliefs and desires. I didn’t want to be this person, yet here I am: an academic, a free spirit, an artist, and a hopeless romantic. I guess I’m the feminist Ted Mosby.

Written by Emily Hill
Follow her on Tumblr and Twitter!

In 2011, the American Medical Association (AMA) issued a statement in recognition of the negative influence of digitally altered images on body image. Who could possibly deny that? Not only is it giving an unrealistic expectation for what the human body should look like, it’s also completely stripping personhood from models, as many of the images are composites of random hair, faces, legs, arms – much of which doesn’t even belong to the original model; women become worth only their best bodily feature. There are many naysayers who disagree with AMA’s statement, but I’m definitely inclined to agree. There tends to be some confusion about the process itself, as many people think it’s just a bit of airbrushing and viola, but in reality it’s an immense effort that can take days and days and a world of patience. Once you see what really happens behind the scenes, it becomes apparent that not only is categorically impossible to conform to society’s expectations of perfection, but also that we as women are suddenly valued only as parts of a body to paste together into someone’s idea of a flawless Female 2.0.

This is Katy Perry, or rather, a dismembered Katy Perry composed of body parts from different photographs and retouched to make a whole Katy Perry 2.0. This is a great example to show how powerful programs like Photoshop actually are, giving insight on the work that happens behind the scenes.

Not sexy enough? No problem. Photoshop can give you an entirely different facial expression, as well as remove many years off your face. After all, who wants to admit women actually age?

This picture should give you some déjà vu, because it’s Demi Moore’s head plastered onto supermodel Anja Rubik’s body. Why alter and airbrush the shape of a body when you can just decapitate a celebrity with the face to sell and put it on the unattainable body of a supermodel?

Even companies jumping on the anti-Photoshop bandwagon are ironically encouraging the commodification of bodily perfection. Dove, famous for their Real Beauty campaign, among other feel-good campaigns promoting diversity in body image, is owned by the same company as Axe. That’s right, Unilever owns Dove and Axe, who made this.

…And this.

I spoke with Karis Drake, a veteran photographer and Photoshop artist, on his thoughts regarding AMA’s official statement and the link between retouched images and plummeting body image. “Photoshop can create a perfect face when selling makeup, and the company selling that makeup will do anything in its power to reach [their customer]. That includes creating false ideals of perfection. Repeat this thousands and thousands of times and all of a sudden it has been woven into our everyday life. It becomes very normal, and in ways, expected.” He emphasizes it is consumerism that drives the industry, as negative body image is, sadly, profitable. If people link their appearance to their success in careers, relationships, or life in general, they will do and buy anything to achieve this success. Dove plays the same song to a different tune, where they emphasize ethics that their parent company very blatantly defies, all because it’s profitable. One hand is lecturing against the idealization of bodily perfection while the other is endorsing it and using it to market products to men. It’s two completely opposite messages coming from different corners of the same mouth, but all for one purpose – profit.

Axe + Dove = One company that actually could care less about real beauty or your body image, only your money. Photo source: ccampaigns.blogspot.com

Exactly how much time and effort goes into photoshopped images? “I’ve spent over 12 hours on a photo for a hair competition,” Karis explains. “It was shot by a photographer who wanted a composite created from nine different images. This includes changing arms, torso, and even a head, and adding every angle of good hair available. The result ended up winning for a certain competition, and I was the secret that was never mentioned in the details. Never accept what you see, no matter how good it looks.”

Madonna and… not-so-Madonna?

On the flip side, these celebrities who are being promoted as the ideal of feminine perfection are often treated as though they owe it to us, their fans and followers, to be the epitome of beauty at any given moment in time. Just look at all the flack Kim Kardashian has been getting for gaining weight during her pregnancy. It is never okay to shame someone for any part of their appearance for any reason, pregnant or not, but this is a great example of the no-tolerance attitude taken by media and consumers.

When Christina Aguilera made her comeback, websites were filled with comments from readers in regards to her supposed weight gain. While I regretfully didn’t screenshot this comment, I actually read “Get on the treadmill and try again, bitch.” Madonna in turn is frequently criticized for… aging, because how dare she? Shirley Manson, front-woman of Garbage, made some great commentary in her defense:

“The tabloids complain about her looking old, and people laugh at her for that. Then Madonna goes and fixes her face, and they laugh at her for that. Even though they begrudgingly say she looks amazing, they’ll still laugh at her for trying to look young. Then she steps out, looking amazing, and the tabloids go and blow up a picture of her aging hand. Nobody’s doing that to George Clooney, blowing up pictures of his hands! I look at these magazines, and I want to say to them, What’s your point? That she’s aged? Does that surprise you? Or is your ‘point’ an attempt to undercut what she’s achieved? I think it is, even if it’s on a subconscious level. And you probably wouldn’t turn down those hands if they were grabbing you under the table, you fucking idiots.”

She makes a fantastic point, as the pressure is mostly on females to defy aging and pregnancy and continue to look like they never did because the pictures – the point of comparison – were Photoshopped to begin with. The rate of eating disorders in North America is much higher in females, and this can clearly be linked to the emphasis on feminine perfection and the quest for attaining the unattainable; this subsequently brings us back to the realization that this quest  happens to be extremely profitable for the beauty industry. It is a profit made at the expense of not only the physical and psychological wellbeing of us as individuals, but at the expense of women as a whole, as our worth is reduced to marketer’s efforts to trick us into thinking there’s something wrong with us for not looking like a picture of 10 different dismembered women cut and pasted together into an ideal Frankenbride.

Photoshop isn’t all bad. It has been abused with negative intentions, but it has also provided limitless possibilities for digital art. “I want to point out that I don’t blame Photoshop entirely for being the problem,” Karis says. “It can absolutely open up opportunities, and I would be lost without it. Now I spend my focus on adjusting lighting and color, and that is much more pleasing than giving someone 8 inches of extra length on their legs. The problem in part lies with corporations and the media trying to sell us all these false ideals without telling us that it’s all a lie. We as a society should be insulted that we continue to fall for this. We need to educate ourselves on what we are looking at everyday. When I look at a fashion magazine, I know I’m looking at a fantasy. But does a 14-year-old girl? This is where a huge part of the problem lies. So who’s responsible for the wellbeing of that girl?”

A beautifully retouched image by Karis, minus the attempted annihilation of self-esteem commonly found in media.

On that note, who is responsible for the wellbeing of young and/or impressionable consumers? How should we be approaching the correlation between body dysmorphia and image editing? Placing warnings on airbrushed images like France is considering? The problem is much more than airbrushing, as the issue is the driving force to destroy the female self-esteem in order to promote products we probably wouldn’t ever think of using otherwise. From foundations, eyeliners, and hair dye to intense plastic surgery, many women go to extremes to mimic a fantasy. We must learn to embrace ourselves as we are, be aware of what we are consuming, and most importantly, spread this awareness to others. While Photoshop isn’t the villain, it’s proving to be a very effective weapon.

Written by McKayla Reilly

While a concentrated effort to improve the condition of Nonhuman Animals is commendable, LUSH unfortunately replicates many of the harmful, misogynistic tactics favored by fulltime animal rights organizations like PETA. Offering some vegan products in their stores and getting active to end some forms of animal exploitation is obviously a good thing, but the damage LUSH could be doing to women is alarming.

Take, for example, their anti-vivisection street demonstration that featured a young woman in a nude body suit enduring graphic reenactments of torture at the hands of a male “researcher” for ten hours. The woman was dragged about by a rope tied to her neck, forcibly pushed into various positions, and force-fed. She was pulled by her hair, injected with saline needles, and her head was shaved. While the woman was a consenting professional performer, the pain she endured was clearly real. This event took place in a store window and was fully visible to the public.

The use of a female actor was no coincidence. LUSH explains:

“We felt it was important, strong, well and thoroughly considered that the test subject was a woman. This is important within the context of Lush’s wider Fighting Animal Testing campaign, which challenges consumers of cosmetics to feel, to think and to demand that the cosmetics industry is animal cruelty free.  It is also important in the context Jacqui’s performance practice:  a public art intervention about the nature of power and abuse.  It would have been disingenuous at best to have pretended that a male subject could represent such systemic abuse.”

LUSH intentionally chose a female actor to endure 10 hours of torture in a public space to, in so many words, teach women a lesson. Incidentally, products marketed to women are much more likely to be free of animal testing, unlike men’s products. The next time you are in a store that sells toiletry items, check the packaging of men’s products. How many are cruelty-free? You will be hard pressed to find any. Furthermore, most animal testers, farmers, and slaughterhouse workers are men. Men are more likely to hunt and men consume more Nonhuman Animal products than women. It’s even men who are buying animal hair coats, as the ability to adorn women with fur acts a male status symbol. Is it really so disingenuous to question men’s role in the systemic exploitation of animals?

The truth is that women are easy targets. Women are LUSH’s primary customers, and I suspect that LUSH is hoping to frighten women into choosing LUSH products over their competitors. LUSH is drawing on and aggravating the reality of male-on-female violence to secure sales.

LUSH has hosted many similarly problematic promotional stunts. For instance, one anti-vivisection demonstration featured bound women on their knees lined up outside the store with their mouths taped over. A woman dressed as a scientist (drawing on male imagery) loomed beside them. At another store, female employees were dressed as foxes and coquettishly arched their backs, smiling as a man threateningly hovered over them with a kitchen knife.

One store featured a 24 hour storefront display of an anguished woman in a leg-hold trap. In another, a woman was suspended by hooks inserted through the skin in her back to protest shark fishing. In a French store, a woman dressed as a rabbit cried out in anguish as her “fur” was peeled away, displaying her raw flesh below. Her naked body had been painted to resemble bloodied muscles.

LUSH is not afraid to use nudity, either. Protesting oil dependency, naked store employees wore mock oil barrel signs that cheekily read, “Time for an oil change or we’ll lose it all.” In one worldwide event, LUSH employees (who are mostly female) were paraded outside the store wearing nothing but aprons and high heels to hand out leaflets announcing LUSH’s “reduced packaging.” For some stores, aprons read: “Ask me why I’m naked.” Encouraging nude female employees to approach gazing men with LUSH leaflets is unsettling. But, handing out soon-to-be-trashed leaflets to men who are probably not in the market for bathbombs to advertise reduced packaging is just confusing. What’s the real objective here?

Entering a LUSH store is a magical experience, I can’t deny that. Stores are fragrant and colorful, and the staff is friendly and knowledgeable. I love having more than one vegan product to choose from (although I’m still confused as to why LUSH refuses to go completely vegan). I’ve been wearing their Karma perfume for 6 years now. But I can no longer shop with LUSH. When this bottle of Karma runs out, it will be my last. I’ve already informed my friends to find alternatives to the LUSH gift certificates I often receive.

It is clear to me that LUSH is exploiting the victimization and sexual objectification of women for profit. If LUSH is sincerely expecting these stunts to benefit animals, they might consider that aggravating normalized violence against women is counterintuitive to a campaign hoping to end violence against Nonhuman Animals. A message of peace and justice cannot be clearly articulated through oppressive actions.

There are many completely vegan and genuinely cruelty-free companies selling natural, hand-made cosmetic products that don’t throw women under the bus “for the cause” (or for the company). When (and if) LUSH decides to grant the same respect to women as they purport to grant to Nonhuman Animals, perhaps I’ll be smelling of orange blossom and patchouli again one day. In the meantime, I’m looking elsewhere.

Written by Corey Lee Wrenn
You can follow her on Twitter and on her blog, The Academic Abolitionist Vegan.

A lot of progress was made for women on TV when the original Star Trek aired. The character of Lieutenant Uhura was played by Nichelle Nichols, a woman of color. Her position as a major character in the TV show and six movies was groundbreaking — at the time, only a few other black women had ever portrayed anything other than a servant on TV. She kisses Captain Kirk in an episode during season three, one of the first interracial kisses on television.

In the show, Dr. Carol Marcus is a single mother who leads a team of space biologists to create the Genesis Project, a program that creates habitable planets out of those that have no life. Then there’s Nurse Chapel, who is an extremely talented nurse, close friend of Uhura, and who eventually becomes a commander. Do we learn any of this in the new movie? Kind of.

In the Star Trek Into Darkness universe, Uhura can speak a dozen languages, is a trusted officer and confidant of Capt. Kirk, and Dr. Carol Marcus has a doctorate in Physics and extensive weapons knowledge. They are not afraid to do the jobs they are sent to do, or to speak their minds. Dr. Marcus takes the lead in de-arming the missiles when no one else can. Uhura speaks to the Klingons by herself when there’s not much hope of any of them getting out alive. Dr. Marcus mentions her friend Nurse Chapel when speaking to Captain Kirk. So far so good, right? Nope.

Carol Marcus gets no backstory, other than the fact that she is the daughter of a general and is really good looking. And in the end, both those attributes completely overshadow the fact that she’s a physicist and weapons expert. She ends up in her bra and underwear for absolutely no reason, and her desire to not be stared at by Captain Kirk while she is changing is completely ignored. Quoth one of the producers of the movie:

“Last time, Zoe needed to wear underwear, and this time it was Alice Eve’s turn. You know, it’s a rather large male fanbase, and JJ wanted to appeal to that.”

He has since apologized for that remark and the general uselessness of that scene, but the sting from the blatant sexism still lingers.

Lieutenant Uhura’s brief shining moment in this movie is when she goes out to speak with the Klingons, a terrifying warrior race of creatures that show no mercy. She speaks to them because it is their only chance of making it out alive, and she does so by herself. Captain Kirk never says it to her face, but he doesn’t believe she can do it. Then, instead of discussing Uhura’s skills and bravery and allowing her to defeat the Klingons, we have to spend most of her screen time discussing her romantic relationship with Spock.

Nurse Chapel doesn’t make an appearance in this movie at all, except as a passing mention. (Apparently two major female characters was enough for this movie.) And worse yet, she becomes a punchline to a joke about Captain Kirk’s promiscuity and womanizing. Kirk does not remember her, and she has apparently left the Enterprise to be stationed out in space far, far away from Kirk. For an original character who becomes a commander, this is an incredibly sad watering down.

Speaking of Kirk’s sexual conquests, I have a real problem with the fact that the twins he sleeps with at the beginning of the movie are Asian cat women.

Oh, and it doesn’t pass the Bechdel test.

Star Trek Into Darkness does not carry the same support of independent spirited women as the original series does, and this spirited independent woman thinks that’s a load of bullshit.

Written by Peggy Korpela

The passage Gail Horalek referred to comes from the unabridged version of Anne Frank’s diary. Many schools choose to use the version that was edited by Anne’s father, Otto. The edited version which was published in 1947 and titled The Diary of a Young Girl does not include passages that are considered controversial by some parents.

It wasn’t until the fiftieth anniversary of Anne’s death in 1995 that The Diary of a Young Girl: The Definitive Edition was published, including the following passage that Horalek takes issue with:

“Until I was eleven or twelve, I didn’t realize there was a second set of labia on the inside, since you couldn’t see them. What’s even funnier is that I thought urine came out of the clitoris … When you’re standing up, all you see from the front is hair. Between your legs there are two soft, cushiony things, also covered with hair, which press together when you’re standing, so you can’t see what’s inside. They separate when you sit down and they’re very red and quite fleshy on the inside. In the upper part, between the outer labia, there’s a fold of skin that, on second thought, looks like a kind of blister. That’s the clitoris.”

Gail Horalek said the following about the passage above and others that have created a stir, “It’s pretty graphic, and it’s pretty pornographic for seventh-grade boys and girls to be reading.” Horalek continued, “It’s inappropriate for a teacher to be giving this material out to the kids when it’s really the parents’ job to give the students this information.”

Horalek is not the first parent to take issue with the diary. It was swiftly removed from the curriculum in a Virginia school after a parent complained about the use of the unabridged text and its inclusion of homosexual themes and material that they considered sexually explicit.

Luckily, the Michigan school released a statement saying that the book was beneficial, and any censorship would detract from the students’ learning experience.

The latest complaint aimed at Anne’s writing points to a disturbing, long-standing trend when it comes to literature inside the classroom. A number of classics have been banned in the U.S. and around the world including, but not limited to, Their Eyes Were Watching God by Zora Neale Hurston, Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger, and I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou.

These books were taken out of curriculum and removed from schools due to sexual, often termed “obscene” content, thought to not be fit for young eyes. When asked about banning Beloved by Toni Morrison in 1974, a school official in Wisconsin answered, “If there’s a possibility that something might be controversial, then why not eliminate it?”

Why, indeed? What do we gain by removing literature from schools, effectively shielding children’s eyes and steering them away from the perceived evils of books with complex themes?

I bet I’m not the only one who has fallen in love with Zora Neale Hurston’s brilliant stories and her thought provoking handling of matters like race, class, and love. Or been so gripped by the characters and tale Ken Kesey weaves in One Flew Over the Cuckoos Nest.

Even the Harry Potter series, which teaches the importance of love and friendship while showing the complexity of evil, was not safe from overzealous parents and religious groups who had the books removed from schools and in some cases, burned.

These books, including modern tales that are being banned, all contain themes that teens today must face. Who are we fooling when we pretend that teenagers won’t struggle with a myriad of issues in their lives, including sex, sexuality, and even violence?

If they are attempting to create a safe, picturesque world for our children where these issues don’t exist, these parents have failed. The truth is, whether we are comfortable with it or not, the world will continue to be a difficult place for kids and teens to grow older.

But by all means, if these parents have found a better way to introduce complex themes to their children than by allowing them to explore all that the world of literature has to offer, I’d love to hear it.

Written by Estee Shaw

I identify as fat. In a realistic spectrum I fall somewhere in the middle — not as fat as some, not as thin as others. I am relatively hourglass-shaped, which means that my relationship with my fatness was tied into my relationship with my femininity from the beginning. As women in the Western world are well aware, the hourglass shape is it’s own sexist commodity (which many have written about, see “Some types of fat are hotter than others”) and it comes with a wrapper of hyperfemininity that fits mostly two forms: docile and effeminate 50s house-wife, and overtly sexual pinup girl.

I gravitated toward what seemed to be the tougher of the two acceptable images I was presented with — the pinup. Tattoos fit into that identity because of the way that modern women have created the image (trope? Niche?) of the tattooed girl in retro clothes, and I made straight for that. It seemed tough, beautiful, and sexy — all things I preferred to be associated with after a chubby, awkward, greasy childhood. I climbed the ladder of self-confidence slowly, one rung at a time, learning how to meticulously do my makeup and curl my hair, thrifting vintage dresses, stretching my ear piercings, and amassing ideas for future tattoos.

My first tattoo was acquired during the peak of my retro-pinup look. I designed it carefully and repeatedly. When placement became an issue, I looked to the place I could cover with the most ease (so as not to horrify my parents.) That place, I decided, was my thighs. My cellulite-covered, pallid, spider-veined thighs that I had hated since they became something I was taught to hate, despite have cultivated a decent, if not downright worshipful, relationship with various other parts of my fat body. My ugly thighs that I always covered up with pants or leggings or knee-length shorts — yes, that would do.

This decision brought on a very unexpected result. I fell in love with my tattoo, because it was both a piece of my own artwork and a really well-chosen personal symbol … and by extension, began to fall in love with my thigh. The veins now framed a piece of my heart, the pale flesh became a perfect canvas to showcase the detailed work. I began to buy real shorts and dresses that came above the knee. I started to show people my thigh, to pull up my dresses joyously. Covering my thighs had been a priority when I got dressed. Now I chose garments specifically to show them. I still hang on to a pair of Bermuda shorts and some Capri-length leggings to make sure my parents don’t have to stare with mixed feelings at my tattoo (or it’s brand new sister on my other thigh), but I no longer dressed with hiding anything in mind.

Along with this freedom of clothing came another strange effect of this tattoo — I began to deconstruct the carefully cultivated feminine image I had created for myself. I had adapted to fit into a box that society had created for a certain type of fat girl, full of self-doubt and body hate, that I was no longer comfortable inside. With shorter skirts and shorter shorts came new frontiers of dressing and new ideas about what could be feminine, or even just beautiful. I discovered my queerness and the inspiring world of outspoken women (and bois and bulldykes and trans* folks and genderqueers …) from all over the world breaking from similar boxes given to them by society, many of them fighting harder than I would ever have to for survival, and then rebranding that style in the name of self-love and sister-love. I cut my hair and began the eternal transformation that is a conscious lifestyle, and I took the words and styles of other people and began to internalize them instead of the toxic restrictions that teen magazines and clothing stores and porn sites had been pouring into me all of my life.

Five hours and $450 dollars (plus a tip, of course) later, and my world was wider and more beautiful than it had ever been. My thighs were no longer objects to be shaved and slimmed and tanned, they were beautiful pale canvasses for art, my first love. And my world was no longer a box that I suffered to squeeze into like a dress two sizes too small, but an ever-widening kaleidoscope of love and solidarity. So, as a word to my parents if they ever read this, I hope you guys can forgive me my ink in the knowledge that it was that first choice that I have made as an individual, separate of your guidance, that has affected me in such a profoundly positive way.

Written by Hannah Bodenhamer

Since then, I’ve bumped into this same guy around the office a couple of times and it has seemed like he’s been locking me in these awkwardly prolonged conversations. At first I dismissed it as that sort of uncomfortably extended small talk in which so many people inexplicably feel obliged to engage. Now, however, I’m beginning to think this may be something else… dare I say it, flirting.

I’m a 22-year-old woman, so the concept isn’t exactly foreign to me. What is foreign to me however is the skin color of my partner in these flirtations ­– he’s a white guy. In order to put the peculiarity of that detail in context, I must confess that I am Black.

As a Black woman, not only have I never dated a white guy but, admittedly, I tend to have a rather entrenched policy against dating them. That decision has a lot to do with how I understand my identity as a Black woman. For one, I am not one of those Black people who ever self­identifies as one who just happens to be Black. That’s a thoughtless description tossed around a lot, which implicitly translates to ‘I’m Black by happenstance. I distance myself from what is conventionally (read, negatively) understood as Black. Everything I do, I do not as a Black person, but as an individual. I can and do happily blend in with the norm.’ Now we all know that whiteness predominates what defines the norm in our society. So when people elect to describe themselves as folks who ‘just happen to be black,’ it’s a deliberate signal to society that they are Black only to the extent that the have to be (visibly). They are saying that their Blackness is not the sort that rocks the boat — that in fact, their identity could be readily swiped with any other random (read white) person’s in the world. In so doing, these folks, however unintentionally, are diminishing the value of their Blackness.

To be clear, I am not one of those people.

My Black identity is affirmative and willful, and traces, if not big ass messy footprints of my Black identity can be found in just about everything I say and do.

This pro­-Black lifestyle, as my mother calls it (a gross oversimplification to be sure), is really just my embrace of, and clear reckoning with, the reality that the life I’ve lived has been one colored with experience based on the color of my skin and the kinkiness of my hair. But this rather obvious fact tends to be off­-putting to many white people, and tends not to be particularly alluring to white men interested in stepping outside of the color box when it comes to dating. Rather irrationally I would judge, it’s perceived as a confrontation when most white people I encounter are reminded of racial difference between themselves and others. They get really defensive. I would imagine the defensiveness and resentment to be especially acute in a space as intimate as dating, wherein people ideally expect to be able to strip themselves of all identity tags and simply exist as souls in love. But I believe that no one at any time in their life is ever not who they are. And the choice to ignore a difference as obvious and magnificently unique as one’s racial/ethnic background constitutes an investment in the blindness that privilege conditions in white people.

My policy against dating white men exists in part because I’m not in the business of coddling privilege. Rather, I’m in the business of unsettling privilege ­– of waking it up in the middle of the night by dumping a bucket of water on it, and telling it to run five miles before dawn. That business also entails checking my own privileges. In my mind, that means that the hypothetical relationship I imagine between myself and a white man wouldn’t go very far. I would be compelled to hold this man accountable to recognizing his white male privilege, while he would likely resist the discomfort of learning that his actions and words reinforce pernicious systems of oppression which oppress masses of people everywhere. So I err towards circumventing the tension by writing the possibility of dating white men out of the realm of possibility altogether.

Personally, I have also had trouble imagining intimate relationships with white men. This is because the history of oppression, exploitation, and dehumanization of Black women’s bodies by white men is searingly painful and enraging for me. Too often, vestiges of that uneven historical relationship are present in my mind and invariably color my observations of contemporary black woman/white man interactions. I don’t necessarily feel that Black women in these situations are disempowered to the extent that say, an enslaved woman was, but I do imagine that their white partner’s unconsciously conditioned expectations of privilege compromises their own free exercise of will on some level in their relationship. And that’s not fair. Beyond simply not being fair, curbing someone’s exercise of human agency, whether intentional or not, is in my book is a small form of violence. Challenging that unfairness and that violence is hard as the person affected by it. It is made a thousand times more difficult and unfair when one is burdened with the charge to challenge their partner ­– a partner obliviously exacting that restraint as a result of their privilege. I don’t pretend that on the whole, racialized inequality in relationships goes uncontested by the black women affected, but I know that a thorough understanding of privilege evades more people than it should, so I can assume that inequality in relationships persists more often than it is addressed. Because I’d rather spare myself the complicated confusion of loving someone who oppresses me, (an oppression compounded by race and gender inequality) and the headache induced by hitting fortified walls of privilege when attempting to challenge that oppression, I steer clear of white men as romantic partners.

My outlook may not be particularly fair to individuals. For the subtenant guy from my office, it may suck a little bit that I’m not particularly responsive to his woos. He’s a conventionally attractive white man who seems cool, and I think hanging out with him platonically would be fun. However, I’m more interested in protecting myself, and preserving the integrity of my personal politics than I am in indulging this man in his arbitrarily piqued interest in me. My singular rejection of this guy is just one loss for him in the arsenal of many wins afforded him at birth for no reason other than the fact that he was born a white guy. His expectation of universal access to all colors of women is just another of his privileges that I, in this instance, am disrupting. And it doesn’t bother me that I am the one doling out that one minor upset.

Written by Kristen Maye

No, I will not call myself a “brony” or a “pegasister” or whatever other term fans associate with the show. I dislike labels and don’t believe that one must succumb to the dreaded appellation monster in order to show interest in a form of entertainment, let alone inclusion in a particular fandom.

But now you all know my secret: I like a colorful, “girly” cartoon. Actually, I’m a huge fan of cartoons, comics, and animation.

I digress.

[Spoilers ahead] I was never able to swallow the Pretty Pretty Princess Promenade that was the season 3 finale. I felt that it was a bit contrived, and it left a sour taste in my mouth. See, all this time we’ve been watching a show centered around friendship and learning to respect and tolerate others of all walks of life, the end goal of which was apparently to become royalty. I’m somewhat concerned that it sends mixed messages to little girls. Implying that all girls should want to grow up to become princesses is destructive. It’s bad enough that “girl” and “boy” toys are steadfastly holding onto their old-school ways. I was under the impression that My Little Pony wanted to shake gender barriers, not reinforce them.

Faust’s vision of MLP was completely different from the tea-party-throwing disaster from the 80s. In an interview with the fansite Equestria Daily, Faust says, “I was also so passionate about making quality entertainment for girls, and I didn’t want to be responsible for adding to the pile of entertainment garbage that’s so often targeted toward them.” She goes on to explain that she wanted characters whose personalities developed through trial and error, who went on adventures and had other interests besides standing around and fawning over cute boys.

MLP:FiM was centered around the idea that little girls should not be force-fed outdated female tropes and be wedged into specific gender roles at a young age. Each character represents different sets of personality traits. Some are very femme, while others are boyish or somewhere in between. Sometimes there are conflicts and they don’t get along, but that’s the beauty of real life; we don’t fit into nice, cookie-cutter packages. You might not be the same as someone else, but you can still be their friend despite it.

This is what I think the show sought to personify in the beginning. It wanted to tear down social stigmas and bring people together. (And with the brony subculture, I would say it was successful in this endeavor.) Not popular and kind of shy? That’s okay, you can still be friends with the pretty fashionista. Prefer sports over books? You can still hang out with the nerdy girl who practically lives in a library.

Unfortunately, the Equestria Girls spin-off does not give me high hopes for the future of My Little Pony.

I understand that Hasbro is looking to expand their fanbase further and make more money, but this makes me sad for the future of children’s television. All that made these characters independent and unique is completely shattered. No, it will not be the same show, and I am very much aware of that. And for the record, that’s not why I’m upset.

Just look at that image. All I see is a group of stick-thin girls who all share the same body type (I’d go as far to say body base, even). Their clothes are even similar in style: top, skirt, complete with legwarmer shoes. Their tails and manes have been more or less pasted on from their original models, though I don’t think they will look like that in the actual show. We went from generic pony body base to tweeny, Disney-esque sexual-ness. They’ve been styled to fit the “standard” girly image that seems cohesive with all the new Disney princesses’ images. There’s a lot of added shine and sparkle. (Why does Rainbow Dash look like a cheerleader?!)

I know that the original characters were visually similar to one another (body type), but their image was not that of overtly sexual anima-people. They had unique characteristics, but they were not supposed to be representative of the human norm. It’s media like Equestria Girls that perpetrates body image issues in young girls. It instills this idea that you have to look and act a certain way to be fun, cute, or normal. See: Bratz, Monster High, etc.

The plot will be crossover style where the mane six find themselves transported to the human world and have a dramatized high school experience. Cue eye roll. Here’s the official statement, via Hasbro:

“Learn all about the magical parallel universe with high schools instead of castles, where six pony friends become real girls with a love for fun and fashion.”

Key words:

> real girls

> love for fun and fashion

That dangerously deviates from the message of the original show (which seems to be veering off track by the looks of the previous season). You know what it says to me? Ponies are things for little girls. They can dream and be whatever they want to be and go on adventures, but when they’re ready to be real girls, they’ll have to grow up to be shallow pretty little things that learn to be fashionable and fit in.

Is it because Faust bounced after the first season, leaving her vision to be interpreted by a different staff? Or is is because Hasbro is seeing dollar signs in its greedy, corporate face? Who knows, but all I can hope is that I’m extremely off the mark with my cynicism of Equestria Girls. Young girls need targeted media that breaks away from stereotypical gender roles, not more media that conforms to them.

How do you feel about this spin-off? Am I totally off base? Let’s talk about it in the comments.

Written by Amanda Duncil
Follow her blog, Simple Syrup, or on Twitter!

Unfortunately, it’s not always easy to arise with such vigor and uncanny enthusiasm each morning (we usually require an intravenous coffee drip before we can even think about forming a coherent sentence). Luckily, you can totally fake it with pretty pastels and whimsical whites, regardless of how sleep (or caffeine) deprived you actually feel.

And since the makeup professionals at Sindulge know a little bit about “faking it” (fake it ‘til you make it, baby!), they thought they’d be of assistance and share some of their most fabulous tips, tricks, and DIY solutions on how to achieve such a feat. So let’s get down to business!

Tip #1

Try rocking a white or pastel-colored eyeliner in the inner bottom on your lash line a la the beautiful Blake Lively. Susan Posnick COLOREYE DEFINE Eyeliner – Eyeshadow in Amethyst Opal, which has a gorgeous eyeliner on one end and a sexy shimmer shadow on the other, is perfect for brightening those baby blues (or browns, greens, hazels… you get it). But, if you’re still looking for an added boost of bright, try Susan Posnick’s COLORCORRECT Double Ended Brightening/Correcting Pencil, which is awesome if you’re looking to illuminate (and it doubles as a concealer – major score). Seriously, who doesn’t love a “twofer” (see: Jessica Simpson vocabulary)?

Tip #2

Eat your potatoes. Okay, not really (damn how we wish french fries were the cure-all beauty secret), but a potato, rich in Vitamin K (which does wonders for lightening and brightening skin), is actually a great natural way to DIY yourself to beautiful bright eyes! And it’s simple: Start by boiling a potato and putting half in the fridge to cool. Once your spud is nice and chilly, cut two thin slices – one for each eye. Then, simply place them over your eyes and relax for about 10 minutes. A cheap and easy yet effective, solution, ladies – just how we like it!

Tip #3

Open those eyes (or at least look like you are)! Using an eyeliner brush, apply a creamy, sheer highlighter (Sindulge reccomends Manna Kadar Sheer Glo, Movie Star) around the outside corners and inner eye, near the tear duct, which will leave you look absolutely awake and fabulously fresh-faced.

Tell us, which colors will you rocking this spring? Share with us in the comments below!

Written by the makeup professionals at Sindulge.com

This time, the offenders are female.

Lulu is an app that syncs to a user’s Facebook account to gather information about that person’s male friends. As more and more users sync their accounts, Lulu develops a network—resulting in a ton of public profiles that can be viewed by app users. Users then rank these men on looks, dating qualities, and overall character. They answer different questions that result in a formulaic score of 1-10.

Yes, women are ranking men on a numeric system—you know, the one that is stereotypically used by men toward women.

The ladies have flipped the script, but in no way is it feminist.

It is obviously targeted to female users because there is no room for same-sex answers to questions—the questions and possible responses only apply to male-female relationships. This is another problem within itself, because it implies that heterosexual sex is not only the norm, but also the only option.

However, this is not the issue at hand.

This is objectification of one sex from another. The worst part is that the men featured on the app are not notified or asked for access to their general information or photos.

That’s right, the guys (most of them anyway) have no idea that their image, along with anonymous comments on their looks, personality, and sexual performance, is plastered all over millions of users’ phones.

Now, you know that if this app directed the objectification toward women, there’d be riots.

Women: this is not okay. This app is not allowing women to prove to society that we are all equal human beings and deserve fair treatment. No, it’s only showing that ignorance and backward thinking is among us, too. And it’s just embarrassing.

How can we stand for gender equality and cooperation among both men and women? How can we teach that no one deserves to be sexualized or judged by their looks and sexuality? How can we improve the general relationship between men and women?

Not by downloading Lulu.

News flash: objectifying men only creates the illusion that it’s okay to objectify women.

And guess what? It’s not okay to objectify anyone, ever.

Written by Angela Schifani

What I didn’t realize is that this type of mindset is just as anti-women as the notorious reputations of sororities. I was guilty of fitting women into one-dimensional categories that were either acceptable or unacceptable. In my mind, I had a guidebook of proper behaviors and called them “feminism,” and everything else was considered oppressive conformity. Funnily enough, while I disliked sorority girls because they seemed to behave as if they were better than others because they were pretty and social, I was guilty of the same fault. I deemed myself above all of them.

When I came to college, I found that most students had a similar attitude toward sorority girls, and I saw the fallacy of my logic rear its ugly head as I placed preconceived judgment. I attend a school packed full of students who want to pursue the “life of the mind” and discuss the works of Aristotle and Plato in their free time. However, there is an incredible amount of biased animosity toward Greek life. Sorority girls are still stigmatized as less intelligent than the rest of the student population, despite the fact that it takes an incredible amount of diligence and intelligence to attend this university in the first place.

Greek life constitutes less than 10% of the student population and does not play a dominant role within student culture here, other than providing weekend parties and hosting a few major events annually. For the most part, I did not know of the names of the sororities on campus until I joined one. Yet I had these notions of what sorts of people would join something like that. Party girls who succumb to the pleasures of men. Less intelligent, less dignified. Subservient, weak, fake, and the like.

However, after having an awful time adjusting to college life and finding my niche, I decided to give sororities a try. It wasn’t an easy battle. As I said, no matter how much I wanted to rationalize it, I couldn’t give up these sets of self-proclaimed appropriate behavior. But I was a point where I wanted to try anything and everything to get out of my slump. I attended a meet-and-greet for a sorority recruitment event. It was a whole bunch of girls sitting around and hanging out.

What convinced me was when I went to a more intimate event where there we were divided up into small groups and talked about what we were looking for in college and why we were interested in joining. A lot of the other girls—like me—said they were trying something new, they were looking for their niche, somewhere to belong. We talked about aspirations and shared majors. One girl, our current president, said she wants to become a lawyer and, ultimately, to work for the UN. Another girl was training to run a marathon. I, well, I was trying to find my place.

It was a strange phenomenon, because I would show up to the meetings anticipating a terrible and awkward experience. I thought I wouldn’t get along with the girls because I didn’t fit a certain persona. Yet I would walk out of the meetings invigorated and excited to begin a journey with a group of women who all wanted to succeed and who all wanted a support structure that is unique to sisterhood.

Sisterhood—this is the place where, as females, we can accept all aspects of our femininity, even the parts that may seem weak and contradictory to the headstrong figure characterized by Rosie the Riveter. It creates a space where we can be openly weak and vulnerable as well as aspiring and courageous. We can have fun and party and then study together on Sunday evening. We can cry on each other’s shoulders and paint each other’s nails and support each other when we have to present our B.A. project. We can be kind and friendly to one another and act like sisters, because we are bonded by our gender and shared experiences. The traits that patriarchy condemns — sensitivity, caring, compassion, nurturing — we can take these traits and make it our strength.

This is what happened as I went through the pledging process. We talked about how we could pursue our own personal and intellectual growth; we examined what friendship and integrity meant to all of us. We talked about our best friends, laughing and awww-ing along the way.

I suppose it’s hard to escape the habits enforced by a culture that qualifies how a “proper” woman should act and look like into one or two archetypes. I have learned to acknowledge that the notion of one size fits all does not apply to personalities. Each one has a different shape, and each is beautiful in a unique and incredible way.

When I think about it, an organization for females and about females should be nothing more than feminist. It’s a matter of values and execution of the organization rather than the mere fact that it’s a gathering of women who wish to engage in friendship, which bolsters the infamous reputation of sororities.

Reader submission by Helen Ho

I don’t know if I had social anxiety disorder or was just very shy, but making friends was extremely difficult for me, and when paired with a number of self-esteem issues (issues I still have but do not yet know the origins of) I was constantly searching, from a very young age, for a concrete reason for this self-perceived failure. When another young girl, whom I had thought of as my only real friend at the time, suggested that no one wanted to be friends with a ‘fat’ person, I grabbed onto the idea with both hands.

I was already of a slight build when I started restricting, always had been. While I don’t remember if I had been underweight when I began engaging in eating disorder behaviors, I certainly was after that point, as signified by what I do remember: calls home from school nurses after annual school health exams to report too-low weights, and fights at the family dinner table that seemed driven by anger but were really propelled by fear.

At the age of 24 I was finally able to get on the path to recovery via a 2 week stay at an inpatient eating disorder treatment facility, followed by a 3 week attendance at an intensive outpatient program run by the same facility. In the 4 and a half years since then, I’ve come to be able to maintain a healthy weight, something I had never been able to do before treatment.

But despite the success I have had in my recovery, I still have a good deal of trouble with the one part of my eating disorder that, as was explained to me by my treatment team, can take years to resolve.

I have a negative body image.

While my body image issues are not, at least at this point, dictating my weight maintenance decisions, they do continue to shape my decisions about other parts of my life that do affect my physical and mental health.

There are myriad medications on the market for the treatment of depression. I have tried a slew of them myself in the search for a medication, or combination of medications, that can help facilitate my ability to function. A common side effect of many psychotropic medications is weight gain, and while I’ve managed to keep my weight from falling below what is considered to be a healthy number, my fear of my weight climbing and how that would potentially make me look continues to influence the choices I’ve made about my treatment for my depression.

I am unhappy about my body, so unhappy that I will not even entertain the idea of taking certain medications that are notorious for causing those who take them to gain significant amounts of weight, regardless of their reputations for helping those with Major Depressive Disorder live happier, healthier lives.

I have yet to find a set of medications that have helped me be not only functional but also happy more days than I’m not, at least not in any way that has lasted more than just a couple years, at which point the medications seem to stop working and I have to start the medication roulette process all over again. While I have tried many medicinal options to pair with the talk therapy I also engage in as part of my treatment process, there are many more I have yet to try, and a good deal of those I refuse to try for fear of how they may affect my weight.

I’m so afraid that if I were to take these medications I might gain enough weight that I will panic due to my continued body image struggles and as a result I will awaken latent feelings and end up relapsing. I worry that I may not be as lucky as I have been so far, that relapsing into an eating disorder could bring me to the point at which I become unable to recover from it physically as well as mentally. I’ve known for a long time the dangers of eating disorders, but it wasn’t until I found out that a teenage girl I had known at the inpatient treatment center had passed away from complications of her own eating disorder that it truly hit home for me just how great those dangers can be.

Yet at the same time, I recognize that if I do not also focus on treating my depression properly I risk facing a fatal result from that as well. When I was 17 I was lucky enough to find what I needed to change my mind about taking my life, and I worry that if I were to encounter problems with suicidal ideation again, I may not get so lucky.

I want to be happy. I want to be healthy. I want to live.

Still, I worry that I want to feel good about my body even more.

Written by Kat Star