Save Our Young, Virginal Girls!!!11!1
April 23, 2009 § 1 Comment
Okay, so I was not happy when I heard that certain cartoon figures were getting makeovers. The two foremost examples of this are Strawberry Shortcake and Dora the Explorer, whose new image was only recently revealed:
They indeed look like they have progressed from being five years old to being 12 years old. Is this really what little girls want, however? I don’t think a six-year-old would really care that much, given the choice, and if these companies think that preteen Dora will attract actual preteens, then they are seriously deluded. In a world where Hannah Montana & Jonas Brothers sit at the top of the heap and Seventeen magazine is actually read by 13-year-olds, these new figures will never make it big.
Clearly, these decisions were probably driven by a desire for profit. In time, though, children will grow out of their old playmates altogether and move on to something else, although I admittedly never grew out of my love for Pokémon, heh. I really hope that they don’t try to age these characters any further, though, otherwise we’ll be seeing “Dora Explores College!” bedsheets at Wal-Mart in a few years.
Perform Like A Man
March 28, 2009 § Leave a comment
This is the best thing I’ve learned all semester in Sociology:
The Pokot people in northwest Kenya expect both husband and wife will reach orgasm and if husband fails to please wife he may be punished. If failure to please the wife is thought to be due to adultery (a common event) the wife will enlist the help of women friends to tie the husband up while he is sleeping, then shout obscenities at him, beat him, and slaughter and eat his favorite ox before releasing him.
HAHA. I don’t generally condone violence, but I appreciate the progressive nature of this custom.
In other international news, clerics in Saudi Arabia apparently want to ban women from appearing on television. Um what?
In a letter to new Information Minister Abdul Aziz al-Khoja that appeared on websites this week, the 35 Islamic clerics also condemned the increase of music and dancing on television, as well as images of women in popular newspapers and magazines that they labelled “obscene.”
It added that the ministry had permitted the import of “obscene newspapers and magazines that are filled with deviant thought and pictures of beautiful women on its covers and inside.”
“There should be no Saudi woman on television, in any case,” they said.
“There is no doubt that this is religiously impermissible.”
Since I’ve started to read Jezebel less, I haven’t been as aware of gender issues in the media, but I had to post this. It’s a little extreme, though I don’t fully understand their culture so I’m obviously biased.
Party Of One: Pt. II
February 15, 2009 § 1 Comment
Anyway, things were pretty hunky-dory until I clicked those links on Feministing. While reading Dr. Ty’s tirade against masturbation, I was rather taken aback. I didn’t expect all Christians to agree with what I had discovered, but I wasn’t prepared for such a strong abhorrence of the act.
Dr. Ty vigorously associates masturbation with shame:
Most people who have engaged in masturbation know that the culmination of this sexual act ends in shame. I don’t have to share with you the thousands of emails of the admittance of this shame because you know all too well since you have experienced it yourself. Curled up in a fetal position, crying, because your bed is even more empty and you’re lonelier than you did [sic] before you violated yourself…
Many things, like shame, can be learned through socialization. Although I am not saying that the shame experienced by others is false, it is important to consider that perhaps some feel shame simply because they’re told to, not because of some concrete, innate knowledge that they sinned.
Party Of One
February 14, 2009 § 2 Comments
I didn’t know when I would actually write this, but Feministing posted on the Passion for Christ Movement and after reading all of the links, I just couldn’t ignore it anymore.
Masturbation: is it a sin?
I always had the impression that it was. As a young teenager growing up in a Christian church, anything remotely sexual was automatically deemed as unacceptable for myself in my mind. This didn’t prevent me from surreptitiously looking at porn [although I was first introduced to it by a male family friend…thanks for corrupting me at such a young age you JERK!], among other things.
auradis 