As Newsrooms Downsize, Is Diversity Doomed?

By Susan McHenry Amy Alexander has amassed the credentials to be called, in the parlance of 21st century digital media, “an award-winning content producer,” as she’s described on the cover of this slim, somewhat elegiac and not quite triumphant book. But she is more invested in her roots in traditional media and in her role as [...]

If He Could Get a “Hot” Girl, Why Would He Want a Fat Girl?

In honor of Love Your Body Day (Wednesday, October 16), sex-and-relationships columnist Heather Corinna takes on standards of desirability around weight. Q: I’m very pretty, but overweight. Close to 200 lbs. A guy has expressed serious romantic interest in me. I know he’s usually attracted to much smaller girls. I find it very difficult to believe [...]

The Cost of a Non-Diverse Media

“I had journalists say to me: ‘I saw the women on the field. But they were so pitiful-looking that I didn’t film them,’” recalls Gini Reticker, director of the 2008 documentary Pray the Devil Back to Hell, which documents women’s peace efforts in Liberia. While she had trouble finding footage of Liberian women’s peace actions, [...]

Pioneering Trans Kids, Slave-Inspired Earrings and Gaddafi’s Guards: Editors’ Picks, 8/28-9/3

The Washington Post reports that five of Col. Moammar Gaddafi’s female bodyguards have come forward to say that they were systematically raped and abused by the now fugitive Libyan leader, his sons and other members of the regime. Since the 1970s, Gaddafi has maintained an elite team of about 30 women, known as his Amazonian guard. [...]

Still Using the Old Model for Sexist Car Advertisements

Take a glance at the recent BMW ad (left) and you’ll know that the road to car sales is still paved, just as it has been since its construction, with sexist, heteronormative, racist and outright offensive advertisements. When AOL.com recently ran this vintage Goodyear tire ad, which it deemed one of the most sexist ads [...]

Fail to the V

“Hail to the V,” the new Summer’s Eve ad campaign, is trying to sell us their line of feminine washes by telling us just how great the vagina is. As Christie Thompson explains, whether or not the ads are actually empowering is up for debate. But even if Summer’s Eve had managed to put together the most incredible, [...]

Some Bittersweet Truths About Ashley Judd

Ashley Judd told her truth. Last week, two paragraphs from her new memoir All That is Bitter and Sweet caused a firestorm on the Internet. The most incendiary read, As far as I’m concerned, most rap and hip-hop music–with its rape culture and insanely abusive lyrics and depictions of girls and women as ‘ho’s’–is the [...]

If You’re a Woman, Success Is a Syndrome

If you happened to be watching the Today Show earlier this week, you might have caught a segment on how women bosses are more likely to promote men, and how this relates to “Queen Bee Syndrome.” According to the story, a Queen Bee is a woman in a supervisory position within a company and “once she [...]

A Look Back at “The Feminine Mystique”

If you were to pick up The Feminine Mystique today, I suspect you’d wonder what all the fuss was about. Written in 1963, it was directed at college-educated, married white women who felt strangely unsatisfied with their lives for no good reason. They had achieved the American Dream–a husband, children, a comfortable home, enough money. [...]

Empowered and Sexy

Erotic Revolutionaries: Black Women, Sexuality and Popular Culture by Tulane University professor Shayne Lee (Hamilton  Books, 2010) revolutionizes the politics of black female respectability. Instead of writing about how hypersexualized representations hurt black women, Lee celebrates black female pop culture icons who purposefully hype uninhibited sexual agency. He defends Karinne Steffans, Tyra Banks, Alexyss Tylor [...]

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