Gender Charts, Why “Strong Women Characters” Are a Canard, Heart-Rending Poetry, Uncle Bush, and Should Toys Be Gender-Free?

Discovery of the Week

Double discovery, actually: The blog itself – Rooted in Being

“What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? The world would split open”

And the poem in this post that has been open on my desktop for a couple of weeks now:

by Robin Morgan

From the Queer Blogosphere

I love charts and maps!

Gender map:

Click to view full size

And a chart: 

Media & Culture

More takes on “strong women characters”:

• Sally Kettle explains why strong women characters are bad for women
  .
• Carina Chocano, in the NYTimes, says people usually mean women who are ‘Tough, Cold, Terse, Taciturn and Prone to Not Saying Goodbye When They Hang Up the Phone’ when they use the term “strong women characters”.
  .
• And here is the trope represented brilliantly as a webcomic

Gender & Socialization

Body Image: Victoria’s Secret does not love my body

Girls’ Socialization: Peggy Orenstein wonders if stripping gender from toys really makes sense.

Characterizations of women & minorities: Ads that would never be allowed today
My personal take is that we haven’t actually come that far… What do you think?

Random

The Uncle Bush story

This has absolutely nothing to do with anything. Just a little sliver of history.

I recently saw a movie called Get Low about a hermit in the 1930s who has his funeral party before his death and everyone comes… It was a pretty good movie. I like true-story stuff like that when it really is unusual. And while not exactly true to life, there was a real Uncle Bush at its root, who got people from at least 14 states to come to his live funeral party… Here’s his page. And another good site.