Last week, the Bedsider campaign was launched, its a PSA described as the “first-ever advertising campaign to address unplanned pregnancy among young women.” It encourages young people to find a birth control method that works for them and to stick with them. Above is one of the ads that is part of the campaign. Read more about it at RH Reality Check and check out their website. It seems like a great new resource and way to get information out there!
This is a really clever way to get the message across. It’s light hearted and funny, while still having a clear and serious message. What do you think about it?
npr:
Baby Boy: The Sociocultural Effects of Prolonged Male Adolescence
Check on It: The Gendered Dynamics of Male Spectatorship in Urban Public Spaces
Happy Wednesday! Here’s something to get you through the rest of the week. Thoughts?
“Who are the people behind the scenes making these crucial decisions about what we see?”
Miss Representationdid y’all know that its just like these companies that own ALL MEDIA?? All those channels, newspapers, magazines… all report to the same handful of people.
Concentrated power and media hegemony is in control of our pop culture
Hm. Now those are some interesting facts!
(via thenewwomensmovement)
The White House Office of Public Engagement and mtvU have teamed up for their Campus “Champions of Change” Challenge. They “invite college and university students from across the country to demonstrate how their student led project is improving their campus community and helping America win the future.”
2 apps for your iPhone, “Circle of 6” and “On Watch,” will be available next year. Check out the article for full details.
That’s an interesting idea. Thoughts?
Despite hundreds of thousands of people asking Facebook to remove pages that condone and encourage sexual violence and violence against women, the company has refused to take action. They’re defending these pages (which violate their own terms of service) by saying that “what one person finds offensive another can find entertaining – just as telling a rude joke won’t get you thrown out of your local pub, it won’t get you thrown off Facebook.”
Today is Change.org’s Twitter action day. Using the #notfunnyfacebook hashtag on Twitter, join us in sending Zuckerberg & Co. a message: sexual assault is NEVER funny, rape is NOT a joke, and violence against women is a serious problem.
(via shelbyknox)
As this blog has shown, we live in a society where we are constantly bombarded by sexist and racist media. When women hold only 3% of clout positions in the mainstream media (WMC), does it come as a surprise that patriarchal values and rape culture are perpetuated?
I hope this blog serves as a call to action and source for inspiration for why it is so important to fight for images and media that empower women and make our voices heard. I hope it makes people consider where their purchasing power as consumers is going. But more than that, I want to promote the absolute necessity of media literacy in the world we live in today.
In fact, not thinking critically about media messaging can be dangerous. In the US, as many as 10 million women suffer from an eating disorder (NEDA). Eating disorders have the highest mortality rate of any mental illness (ANAD). The connection between eating disorders and the unrealistic and unhealthy body image that appears everywhere, over and over again, is indisputable. And the messaging works: by the age of 17, 78% of girls say they are unhappy with their bodies (MOTM).
While women are being increasingly sexualized and hypersexualized in ads, magazines, film, and TV, there are only 17 women in the US senate, 15 Fortune 500 Companies whose CEOs are women, 11% of prime time TV shows are directed by women, and only 8% of technology start-ups are led by women (Off the Sidelines). In a well-known psychology experiment, women were shown to perform worse than men on a math test when told that men typically did better. This effect is called stereotype threat and is attributed to the anxiety caused by fear of confirming a negative stereotype. Products like Forever 21’s “Allergic to Algebra” and JC Penney’s “Too Pretty For Homework” shirts just spread these stereotypes and certainly don’t help young women feel confident and capable.
By being aware of the power of media and examining the myriad ways media affects us and our decisions on a daily basis, we can fight against these damaging images and, most importantly, the damage they can do to our perceptions of ourselves. Today is Love Your Body Day, an event started in 1998 by The National Organization for Women to fight against unhealthy stereotypes about women and women’s bodies and to encourage women to celebrate their bodies. Today, roll your eyes at that sexist ad you pass on the subway (and snap a picture to send to us!), but also fight against the internalization of the negative body image so many of these ads are aggressively pushing on us. Do something that makes you feel great and refuse to accept how the media is portraying you.
NOW-NYC is holding our annual Love Your Body Day celebration tomorrow at 6pm. Join us if you’re in the New York area! More info here.
This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival.
Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.
-Audre Lorde (thanks Jessamyn)
Want to do something truly radical today? Something that would rock the world and change the way it looked? Something that has the power to impact the lives of your daughters, nieces, cousins, sisters, and friends? Start loving your body!
Today is Love Your Body Day, an event started in 1998 by The National Organization for Women to fight against unhealthy stereotypes about women and women’s bodies and to encourage women to celebrate their bodies.
By teaching women practically from birth that their bodies are objects for public consumption and that those bodies are wrong, our culture is continuously oppressing girls and women. Fear, shame, and self-doubt are distractions we can’t afford. Fight against them and recognize that you are beautiful and that your body is not broken- it is whole and strong and cannot be held back.
NOW-NYC is holding our annual Love Your Body Day celebration tomorrow at 6pm. Join us if you’re in the New York area! More info here.
This post is part of the 2011 Love Your Body Day Blog Carnival.
The Winners:
- The first Arab woman to be win the peace prize, Tawakkul Karman, is awarded for her efforts as a leader of anti-government protests in Yemen.
- Liberian President Ellen Johnson Sirleaf was awarded for her achievement in becoming the first woman to win a free presidential election in Africa.
- Leymah Gbowee of Liberia was awarded for her campaigns against the use of rape as a weapon in Liberia’s civil war.
That’s very exciting! Keep up the great work ladies!
By Becky Mezzanotte
In a world where I continually hear gripes about the political state of the U.S., I can always seem to find a small piece of silver lining somewhere. For the health care law that passed in March of 2010, it’s the fact that I am able to stay on my parent’s health care plan until I am 26. It may not seem like it’s that big of a deal to some people, but to me it means quite a bit.
Why? Well, the main reason this means so much to me is that I’m a college graduate who went straight into graduate school. I don’t have a full time job as I’m still working on my education and even if I wasn’t in graduate school, there is a chance I still wouldn’t have a job with benefits due to the economy. It’s a terrifying thought for someone who barely is able to make rent that if I got sick or injured, the medical expenses would be astronomical.
The idea of being able to stay on my parent’s health care plan until I’m 26 provides me as an individual and several other young adults in the same position as me the ability to search out employment, continue grad school, or do whatever else we may be doing and still be able to afford medical attention, or medication should the need ever arise. Simply put, this means that I’m able to graduate with my Master’s degree and go out and find a job without the fear of “what happens if I get sick or injured”.
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Becky Mezzanotte is a graduate of American University and the current social media specialist at the National Council of Women’s Organizations (NCWO).
