100 Best Sex Tips of the Year. Bigger, Better Pleasure. Shrink Your Inner Thighs! The Smile That Gets You What You Want. The Sexy Confidence Men Can’t Resist.
The above are samples of headlines from just the past five issues of Cosmopolitan magazine, a periodical that touts itself as being “for women”. Reading these headlines however, it seems as though this publication is more interested in catering to men, rather than offering a source of empowerment, sexual or otherwise, to women. The articles tantalize young women who are still recovering from the throes of adolescence, the blows to their self-esteem, and so advertisements about how to look sexy, get the guy, and lose that weight offer remedies to all their mental and emotional ails.
Cosmopolitan is an established media enterprise: the magazine has been in publication since 1886, but only became exclusively a women’s magazine in the 1960s. It is the largest women’s magazine in North America, and thus a perfect target for my following objective: to transform a corporate or mainstream media sample into alternative media.
Public hearings on the controversial tar sands oil transport route — attracting hundreds of participants on the first day and igniting incendiary statements by Conservative politicians — provide evidence that political battles over Northern Gateway will come to shape contemporary debates on environmental justice in Canada.
Stretching from Alberta across northern British Columbia and into the ecologically sensitive coastal port of Kitimat, the pipeline will cross indigenous lands and territories that speak to Canada’s colonial reality.
The above video demonstrates how, waaaaaay back in 2009, most movies didn’t pass the Bechdel Test for women in movies, a simple three-part process to determine whether women are afforded positive representation in any given film or not. Not only does the latest batch of Oscar nominations miserably fail the Bechdel Test en masse, they also fail to represent non-male, non-white makers of cinema.
The list for this year’s best of the best is as dismally bereft of diversity as other years before, and this might not be surprising if it weren’t for all the amazing women and non-white people working in the world of film. What a gigantic middle finger to diversity from the Academy. The folks at Bitch have this to say:
This morning, the nominees for the 84th annual Academy Awards were announced. And this morning, as has happened every Oscar nominee morning for the past 83 years, the roster of hopefuls is filled with white dudes. I’m not saying that Hugo wasn’t a fun movie, or that Moneyball didn’t make me temporarily find baseball mildly interesting, but if we were picking fantasy teams in the White Male Academy Awards Playoffs™, I’d want Brad Pitt, George Clooney, Martin Scorsese, Steven Spielberg, and Woody Allen as my starting five every year for a reason (the reason is that they get nominated ALL THE TIME).
Thanks to the Oscars for yet again reminding audiences and funders why they need to keep supporting independent filmmaking. After all, diversity in cinema is everywhere, except at the world’s biggest cinema awards show, where the perennial focus remains firmly focused on the same bunch of mainstream millionaire white boys.
Critics are seething after Lego announced its new line of toys designed for girls. The super slim, anatomically incorrect Lego Friends figures have been accused of promoting damaging gender stereotypes and body dissatisfaction.
Lego responded to the controversy by saying they were just giving girls what they wanted. They explained in a statement that the new line was the result of “four years worth of comprehensive, global research with 3,500 girls and their moms to understand what would make LEGO play more interesting for more girls.”
The Danish toy manufacturer has yet to release data on the preteen demand for minifigure miniskirts.
“Art only happens when the viewer says it happens.”
- Sue Coe
Sue Coe grew up next door to a slaughter house, where the rattling chains and screaming of animals led to kill went on through the night. As it was ignored by others it slowly became her obsession.
It is a tale of postcolonial politics, cyber-archeology and art. Two Argentinian artists have had their plan to ship a 37 ton meteorite from Argentina to Kassels, Germany suspended by an international campaign to protect aboriginal rights.
The meteorite, known as El Chaco (pictured above in the midst a Moqoit ceremony), is considered sacred by the Moqoit First Nation. El Chaco is the largest fragment from a meteor that exploded 4,000 years ago over north-central Argentina and Moqoit ancestral territory. The remains of the explosion are and have been significant sacred artifacts in local aboriginal cosmology. The Moqoit were not initially consulted by the artists, and they mounted an international campaign in support of their efforts to have the project stopped.
On January 21, Documenta 13 issued a statement suspending their request for El Chaco for the exhibition pending a “full endorsement by the peoples of the land of Chaco, by the local community as a whole, and in careful consideration of the beliefs and principles of the traditional custodians today”.
Continuing with our new initiative of highlighting at least one Indiegogo project each month, one of this week’s Friday Film Pick is Don’t Mine Me – a doc looking at the history of uranium mining on a Navajo Indian Reservation in the US. Since you can only watch the trailer for this film and read about it as it continues production (with generous donations from supporters), I’m including a second film from 1990 that looks at uranium mining in Canada, called Uranium (trailers after jump).
The optimism in David Gauntlett’s Making is Connecting (published by the fantastic UK outlet polity) is difficult to escape. Much like the plethora of networks, groups, clubs and civil society manifestations he describes, the book is largely held together with positive attitudes about culture and communication combined with a philosophy that triumphs creativity over consumption.
In that he forms a very accessible and sound argument centered on creating and sharing as the cornerstones to individual happiness and healthy community in a society saturated with messages imploring and coercing us to do the exact opposite, Gauntlett’s work is deeply political.
Among its worst outcomes, websites will be held legally responsible for copyright infringement of any websites they link to — that’s right: domain names can be shut down for a single link to a website that infringes copyright.
LIFE photographer Henry Groskinsky captures the scene at the Lorraine Hotel after the shooting of MLK (detail).
Today is Martin Luther King, Jr. Day in the United States, and LIFE has marked the occasion by publishing historic photosgraphs that has been lost for 44 years. Taken on that tragic day by photographer Henry Groskinsky, the images invite us into the scene that played out at the Lorraine Motel immediately following the shooting of MLK.
Contributors
Stefan Christoff, Colin Horgan, Julia Pyper
Michelle Siobhan Reid, Valerie Cardinal, Race Capet
Laurence Miall, Terry Fairman, Tyler Morgenstern
100 Best Sex Tips of the Year. Bigger, Better Pleasure. Shrink Your Inner Thighs! The Smile That Gets You What You Want. The Sexy Confidence Men Can’t Resist.
