The Real Lessons We Can Learn From Mad Men

Sure, there’s been a lot of chat about everything that’s wrong with Mad Men and why women in general and feminists in particular should hate its unrepentant misogynystic guts.  And let’s face it:  this is a show that glorifies gin, Lucky Strikes and getting laid (by anyone but one’s spouse). What’s not to hate, right? [...]

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Playboy Bunnies: Hollywood’s Vision of Female Empowerment?

Fast in the wake of the success of “Mad Men”, TV’s retro series on the advertising industry circa 1965, come two new period series for the fall season:  “The Playboy Club” on NBC and “Pan Am” on ABC. What these two new series have in common is the insistence by their producers that when you [...]

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The next new reality show? Mail-order sexism

So according to Bloomberg News, the newest brides on the block (I use that metaphor intentionally) are Eastern European.  Really.  As we read in the story that appeared all over the interwebs this week: Fourteen years ago, Weiner, 73, founded Hand-In-Hand, a London-based matchmaking agency that charges male customers up to $2,000 for a “supervised [...]

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A Whore By Any Other Name

Doncha just love campaign season? Phones aren’t hung up promptly; scandals ensue! As a Californian, I’m naturally thinking of Whore-Gate, or the instance of gubernatorial candidate Jerry Brown calling the police union for an endorsement, and neglecting to hang up before an aide helpfully suggested “What about saying she’s a whore?” (The background is this: [...]

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Of Sexism and Censorship

Last week was Banned Books Week, and in its honor, I’m bringing up the case of Laurie Halse Anderson’s young-adult book Speak, in which the female protagonist is raped–which a Missouri college professor apparently believes amounts to “soft pornography.” In an Op-Ed piece that ran in Springfield, Missouri’s News-Leader entitled “Filthy books demeaning to Republic [...]

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Woman, Thou Art Screwed (if You Do, Screwed if You Don’t).

It’s depressingly familiar territory, dear reader: the ugly double-binds that have women screwed no matter what they do (or don’t do). And a new book, Damned if She Does, Damned if She Doesn’t: Rethinking the Rules of the Game That Keep Women from Succeeding in Business, written by the gender balanced husband-and-wife team of management consultants [...]

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Feminism 2010: We’ve Only Just Begun

Are We There Yet? asks a recent Newsweek headline, with the kind of slug that leaves you with a distinctive sense of dread: In 1976, 46 women filed a landmark gender-discrimination case. Their employer was NEWSWEEK. Forty years later, their contemporary counterparts question how much has actually changed. It’s a great piece, as it shows [...]

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Sleeping Our Way to the Top? Dream On.

Here’s another one for the Well, Duh file. Women need more sleep. I bring this up not because I like to make Well, Duh-style proclamations. On the contrary; I tend to prefer proclamations of the Wowee! variety. I bring it up because this week, Arianna Huffington and Glamour magazine EIC Cindi Leive have issued a [...]

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On Food, Feminism — and dreams of a Fourth Wave.

I say we leave it up to the kids. More below. Writing in The Nation last week, Katha Pollitt threw some love at Julie and Julia, the feel-good foodie movie about Julia Child and Julie Powell, the 20-something blogger who tried to channel Child by cooking her way through “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” [...]

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