Why I Am a Black Male Feminist.

It's been a while since I've posted some sort of crazy liberal rant, so here it is.

I'm on a button hunt.

I actually finished the sweater I've been making for the last year. WOO HOO! And it totally fits. But it needs eight good-sized buttons (maybe 1.5") and I need advice. I don't want to post a picture because I need totally organic suggestions.

So imagine a long winter-white sweater vest with large cables and a ribbed collar/hem/front opening. What color are the buttons? What sort of texture? What shape? Pretend that there are no limitations, just imagine the ideal buttons. And then tell me where I might be able to get them.

Super random post about broken needles and prodding the mind. Not in reference to a singular occurance, because that would hurt A LOT.

*cue taps*
This was one of my first sets of needles. But size six is no match for knitting front/back several times in a row. I'm a tight knitter, and this sequence of stitches just makes the yarn tighter and tighter and harder to stretch and then almost impossible to manipulate and then SNAP! For some reason I only had four to begin with, so I guess it's time to make a trip to the store.


So there's some trivial news. Also, I wanted to share this post I read today on Feministing about makeup. I wear it sometimes (ok, rarely - mostly because I'm lazy) and make no judgments on whatever people like to do (except clowns - they're frickin weird); I just find the concept fascinating. I do hate cosmetic advertising, though. Hate it. I swear, in no other industry is it so accepted to market products that promise ideals and results they can't possibly deliver. Whatever. Calm down. Ok, seriously the post is good. It got my brain working.

Wise Words: Men (and women) lose in superbowl spots

Travel news soon; but first, this from the Ad Broad:

men lose in superbowl spots

Odd that a televised extravaganza targetting men would be rife with advertisers belittling them. "Hey, guys, you're henpecked, emasculated and illiterate," many spots said, in essence, "but buying our stuff will make you feel virile!" Really? What guy falls for this? Don't brand shepherds realize we've come a long way since Walter Mitty. And why haven't they noticed that 39 million viewers are actually women?

In case you missed it, here's a sampling of commercials I'm talking about, and the hypothetical creative briefs they were based on:

It's not easy being a man. You have to recycle the garbage, put the seat down, listen to your wife and be nice to her mother. Whew! But a big car can make it all feel better. (Dodge)...


Read the full post here.

Wise Words: on women in the workplace

Whew! Way more words with "w" than a wary writer would wittingly write...

Right. Unrelated to crafting, but fascinating and *possibly* more important is this post from a few days ago by the very admirable ad broad, who calls herself "the oldest working writer in advertising."

I wonder what it means to juxtapose such comments about women's work on a blog that largely discusses things so traditionally connected to female folk culture. I can only say that I craft because I'm creative and I garden because I'm hungry. And, let's face it, I do both because I've had 28 years of training to be a nurturer and only two to be a journalist.

Tuesday, July 14, 2009

Jack Welch on women's work

Former GE CEO Jack Welch is in the hospital today, reportedly for a minor infection. But I wonder if his sudden internment has anything to do with the backlash coming at him after his speech to an HR conference recently.

Bad news for young women working their way up the ladder.

"There's no such thing as a work-life balance," Welch announced. "We'd love to have more women moving up faster, but they've got to make the tough choices and know the consequences of each one."

He explained that taking time off for family can offer a nice life, but the chances of rising to the top on that path are...nil.

He tried to cushion the blow.

"That doesn't mean you can't have a nice career," he smiled.

A similarly provocative statement was made a few years ago by former WPP creative chief Neil French who contended that women can't head ad agencies because their roles as caregivers and childbearers prevent them from putting in the long hours.

It's not that I necessarily disagree. A work-life balance IS an impossible feat, an inconvenient fact that came as a rude surprise to lots of boomer women who'd been led to believe otherwise. The "have it all" promise, unfortunately, is a crock. Sometimes, lots of times, you have to choose between your kids and your job, the playdate or the client, the school play or the important pitch.

But the balance is impossible for anyone to achieve, whether or not you've got a vagina.

In Welch and French's generation, men had the choice of outsourcing the job of tending kids and home to a wife conditioned not to make him feel guilty for it. In fact, to feel grateful that she herself "didn't have to work."



But sons raised by those dads have a different outlook. Many want to be around for their kids as they'd wished their dads had been around for them. (Some may want to be around a little too much--see alpha dads.) Childraising, with all its joys and vicissitudes, is no longer a topic verboten in conference rooms as it seemed to be when I got into the business. The other day, I rode an elevator with two guys who spent 34 floors debating the merits of cloth versus disposable. Men are taking parental leaves. Going on school trips. Coming in late after drop-off. These men don't consider work-life balance a problem their wives must grapple with alone if they want to go out and pursue a career. Unfortunately, most of these men don't run companies yet.

The real disservice Welch and French did was to use their stature to reinforce longheld convictions many men in senior management still harbor privately. And by doing so, helping ensure that women remain less likely to make it to the top.

If a male [boss]...is convinced that [a female worker] s extremely limited in her ability and value...would you expect him to offer the same support and guidance and consideration he gives the men? Might that woman keep herself down on the farm when her leader conveys in countless ways she's not as good as the boys? Might she respond with less than her best effort when the leader expects little of her? Might she want to leave, not to have babies but because the conditions for her to succeed don't exist and the message she can't succeed is too discouraging?

--Nancy Vonk, CCO, Ogilvy, Toronto responding to French

in a blog post that ostensibly got him fired

Twenty years ago, Business Week coined "The Mommy Track" to describe the "nice career" Welch says is the only one available to women with kids. If things are to change finally, more men have to speak up about their own need for work-life balance.

Ironically, the recession may help. Apparently, it's hitting men harder than women, creating a greater number of stay-at-home dads. Men who are coming to value the work done by women "who don't work." So that once they return to the 9 to 5, they'll be apt to shoulder more of it, understanding the necessity of doing so if their wives are to compete meaningfully for that promotion.

Monday's Wise Words: Selling your virginity

Natalie Dylan, who is selling her virginity and has received a whole lot of attention because of it, wrote an explanation of sorts for The Daily Beast recently. In the article, she describes her traditional childhood belief in purity and sanctity and so on, but that her whole moral code changed in college as she was educated on the historical and current status of "woman" and "virgin." It's interesting to see where she's coming from, and my favorite part is when she points out that "for what it's worth, the winning bid won't necessarily be the highest -- I get to choose."

My favorite comment on her story is this one:

"Okay, but seriously, the objection from the more traditional feminist viewpoint (I know, "Mom, get out of here!") is that establishing a price for sex with a virgin reinforces the patriarchy's viewpoint that the value of a woman is set by her body and that for women sex is always a means to an end and not an end unto itself (that is reserved for men, you see). Does the fact that this woman is in a privileged enough condition that she can afford not to care what men think help women who are in less fortunate conditions? You don't have to be trafficked to feel forced into Sex Work and I've talked to many dancers who feel (and are made to feel) terrible about what they do. One woman in particular stands out in my mind. She was poor, had few friends and apparently little in the way of family and had made enough mistakes that she was undereducated in a community that didn't have many opportunities. For her, dancing wasn't a shocking and empowering way of embracing her femininity, it was survival. And after she took that job, getting any other job proved almost impossible -- inevitably someone would recognize her and then the harassment would begin. But she fought back, thank goodness, found a way to get an education and eventually a job away from that community where hopefully no one would recognize her. I will always remember how happy she was when she told me the news. So, I can sympathize with the idea of embracing that scarlet letter as a way to fight against oppression and society's norms. But just remember that not everyone is as privileged as you are, and be careful not to romanticize sex work as the ultimate expression of a woman's sexual power."

An excellent point. I think someone else mentioned the perplexing fact that there really should be more talk in general of how virginity relates to men - because as it stands, virginity seems to only be important, sacred, righteous, revered - or in a noir sense, damning - when it can label a woman. I actually would thank the Jonas Brothers for recently bringing male virginity into the spotlight, even though the media has already forgotten about it but will continue to harp on Miley Cyrus's and Taylor Swift's status for years to come. Remember when Britney was claiming to be a virgin? We cared about that for way too long. Anyways, this really is an interesting social experiment.

Perhaps on Wednesday I'll talk about some of the horrible comments made toward Miss Dylan.

Monday's Wise Words: Women in sports broadcasting

SNM posting on the blog Awesome & Fabulous wrote a great personal story about her childhood dream of becoming the next John Madden being stifled by the glass ceiling over the industry.

"Something had sparked a flame of feminist indignation in the pit of my stomach about watching women relegated to sideline reporting while men got to do play-by-play and color commentary in the booth."

She goes on to explain that her eventual decision to go into sports writing instead of broadcasting had something to do with the obvious conundrum of having her appearance constantly judged. She also calls out both men and women for perpetuating the systemic sexism...

"It burns me up that sexism is still such an accepted part of working in sports that women are privately--as opposed to publicly-- seething about the fact that there is a glass ceiling in sports journalism, for fear of angering the boss over a perfectly legitimate grievance."

In other words, speak up for yourself! The fact that we don't is another issue - explained quite well in the book "Women Don't Ask: Negotiation and the Gender Divide," by Linda Babcock and Sara Laschever.

Anyways, in response to the men in charge at ESPN who assert that the lack of female representation is just a product of what fans want, SNM says:

"That's the best excuse TV executives can come up with? Don't blame us, it's our pig-headed fans? The fact that this is coming from a network that posits itself as the 'Worldwide Leader in Sports' is even more ridiculous. You won't do it because you're afraid of losing a few idiot gut-scratching viewers and some ad money?...You're the Worldwide Leader, ESPN. You own so much of the frickin' sports television market you make everyone else look like a joke. Stop cow-towing to sexism and put a woman, no, two, in the booth already. On football. On a regular basis."

Read the full post.

Monday's Wise Words on a Tuesday

Use it Up, Wear it Out, Make it Do, or Do Without.

This short but sweet mantra is the title of a post on Danger Kitty Designs' blog. She may have got it somewhere else or it may be her own words. I don't know, but I like it.

The husband and I were talking about commercialism the other day - a convo brought on by the ever-intriguing Super Bowl commercials. We were just commenting that all the stuff we want is the result of marketing and watching the lives of people we know. Nobody wants to believe that advertising affects them, but it totally does. Specifically, we were frustrated by the new Pepsi Max commercials - which are genius as far as marketing goes...Rule 1: be funny by showing stuff that has nothing to do with the product so that people will relate the product to laughter and fun. Rule 2: use every gender stereotype you can fit into 15 seconds to make your audience feel like they need that product to be a man/woman. Men would never drink diet (after all, dieting is a woman's issue) soda...so we've made Pepsi Max! We have no idea what's in it or how it's different from Diet Pepsi other than the color of the can - but we've laughed and been shown that it is, in fact, a man's drink. There you go.

I can make fun of it, but the fact remains that when I see, I don't know, 800 commercials a day (I don't really know, but a lot) plus bus ads, billboards, radio ads, magazine ads, and so on and so on - how can it all not affect me? I don't mean to pick on Pepsi. It is my preferred cola.

I digress! Sometimes it just helps to have a reminder that we have so much more than we need and that it's ok to not always get what you want. Like most people, I didn't truly have an appreciation of this until I was grown and feel sort of a sense of irony that here we are in a recession and my mom and grandma are SO depression-era mindful. Will my kids think I'm nuts for saving everything, too?

Monday's Wise Words

Well, there wasn't much fun stuff out there....so here's a funny, if slightly stupid, video. I always go for things about the ridiculousness of commercials, because I know they get to me! Blurg!

Learn how to be a better woman in 2009 - click here.

Regular features

I've been thinking about making this whole thing a little more structured by posting regular features a few days a week. So here's what's in the works:

Monday's Wise Words: Comments on and links to articles that are of interest to all you intelligent beings out there - focusing mostly on feminist issues.

Wednesday's Comment Call-out: Reviews of the best and worst reader comments out there - focusing on those that either make me so, so mad or laugh out loud.

Friday's Sweet Stuff: Comments on and links to products/services/people that are awesome - focusing on other local crafters.

Sunday's Mischief Managed: Comments on the life of Penny, my Jack Russell - focusing on her stinker moments.

Look out for more...coming soon!