Ranked: Disney Princesses From Least To Most Feminist It's hard to be liberated in a clamshell bikini. I just saw Brave, and it got me thinking about the grand tradition of Disney princesses. Brave is a Pixar movie, and its heroine, Merida, is a fairy-tale feminist. Disney princesses for the most part, are not. Now, I know ranking anything by perceived feminism is problematic, as your professor might put it, but go with me for the sake of discussion. 10. The early Disney films were all strange fables with beautiful scenery and women who made no choices for themselves; Sleeping Beauty is the apex of these. 9. Yeah, about all that sleeping… well, Snow White also conveniently falls asleep for much of this film, and waits to be rescued by a Charming (but otherwise featureless) prince. 8. Cinderella can't catch a break. 7. In my humble opinion, The Little Mermaid is the best Disney movie, but Ariel is shaky as a feminist icon. 6. 5. I've dressed up as Jasmine for Halloween twice, so I'm a little biased. 4. 3. 2. 1.
Infographic of the Day: How the Global Food Market Starves the Poor | Fast... - StumbleUpon To understand the complexities of the international food market--and how traders in Chicago can cause Africans to starve--you could get a ph.D. in economics, or read a 400-page report from the World Bank. Or you watch this superb nine minute video, directed by Denis van Waerebeke. Though ostensibly created for a science show in Paris for 12 year olds, it's actually probably waaaay over a kid's head. The video begins with a basic question: How is it that the first world has an oversupply of food, while 1 in 7 in the world go malnourished? That can have disastrous effects. The solutions will involve everyone, the world over. Still hungry for more infographics videos? [Via Infosthetics]
Northwest: Toppenish teen fakes pregnancy as school project Published: Thursday, April 21, 2011, 3:10 p.m. Gordon King / Yakima Herald-Republic Toppenish High School senior Gaby Rodriguez reveals to the school her pregnancy is a fake. She used padding to simulate the pregnancy during the school year. By Adriana Janovich, Yakima Herald-Republic YAKIMA -- Gaby Rodriguez would worry whenever anyone asked to touch her baby bump. It wasn't because she felt shy or embarrassed. For the past 6½ months -- the bulk of her senior year at Toppenish High School -- the 17-year-old A-student faked her own pregnancy. Only a handful of people -- her mother, boyfriend and principal among them -- knew Gaby was pretending to be pregnant for her senior project, a culminating assignment required for graduation. Her teachers and fellow students, except for her best friend, didn't realize they were part of a social experiment. Neither did six of her seven siblings, including four older brothers, her boyfriend's parents, and his five younger brothers and sisters.
personal liberty? I'm against it I'm Still Not a Libertarianso I guess that means I'm opposed to personal freedom by Paul Kienitz If there is one political movement today that is so up-and-coming that it's downright trendy, it's Libertarianism. It's become very popular in the high-tech industries, where there are a lot of people who have reaped great rewards from the operation of the free market, who are trained to an engineer's habit of reductionist problem-solving, and who tend to have less contact than the average person with the areas of human experience that don't fall within the scope of these things. Libertarianism is tremendously in evidence in places where the high-tech subculture predominates, such as in public discussion on The Net, and in the computer industry in general. But such hypocrisy is not the issue when deciding whether one is going to personally support Libertarianism. The first fallacy is one I call the Fallacy of Revolution. Absolutism creates intolerance, of the sort that leads to violence.
Princesses Disney féministes Depuis l'intéressante série d'Euterpe sur les princesses Disney et suivantes, j'ai trouvé sur le site I blame the kyriarchydes princesses Disney féministes -détournées évidemment ! Le Prince : ...et nous vivrions heureux La Princesse : est-ce que cela signifie que j'aurais ma propre carrière et que je contrôlerai mes finances ? La Princesse : Houah, pardon mais quelle partie de moi, alors que je dors ici seule, implique mon consentement ? Blanche-Neige : Ils n'ont pas arrêté de me dire que je dois haïr les hommes, puisque je suis féministe. La Princesse : J'ai écrit un essai sur la théorie queer pour mon cours de littérature. On peut rêver que les princesses de Disney (et les autres) s'émancipent, et que les princes aient l'esprit large ouvert.
Anonymous The Careless Language Of Sexual Violence There are crimes and then there are crimes and then there are atrocities. These are, I suppose, matters of scale. I read an article in the New York Times about an eleven-year old girl who was gang raped by eighteen men in Cleveland, Texas. The levels of horror to this story are many, from the victim’s age to what is known about what happened to her, to the number of attackers, to the public response in that town, to how it is being reported. There is video of the attack too, because this is the future. The Times article was entitled, “Vicious Assault Shakes Texas Town,” as if the victim in question was the town itself. The overall tone of the article was what a shame it all was, how so many lives were affected by this one terrible event. We live in a culture that is very permissive where rape is concerned. The casual way in which we deal with rape may begin and end with television and movies where we are inundated with images of sexual and domestic violence.
100 Websites You Should Know and Use (updated!) In the spring of 2007, Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH, gave a legendary TED University talk: an ultra-fast-moving ride through the “100 websites you should know and use.” Six years later, it remains one of the most viewed TED blog posts ever. Time for an update? We think so. To see the original list, click here. And now, the original list from 2007, created by Julius Wiedemann, editor in charge at Taschen GmbH.
Who’s Your Disney Spirit Animal? We all grew up with Disney films and have a slew of wonderful female role models to guide us through life’s tough road to our own very own happy ending. Lucky for all of us mostly-white, heteronormative ladies, we can still learn lessons from these fine women of the animated screen. I present you with my favorites – see if you can spot who you identify with most (note: your mother has to be dead if you want to be a princess)! The Princess – You’re not really sure why you got a happy ending, but you’re also not the most stable person since you spend your free time making tiny clothes for tiny animals. Somewhere at some point there was something about you being hard working and virtuous, but as far as Disney goes, you mostly just get rewarded for putting up with abuse. That Other Princess, Who’s Not Really a Princess But Calling You That Is Better For Marketing Products With Your Image On It – You like to read, even though you’re a girl. All images Ⓒ Disney, except Mrs.
The Modern Moloch On the streets of early 20th Century America, nothing moved faster than 10 miles per hour. Responsible parents would tell their children, “Go outside, and play in the streets. All day.” And then the automobile happened. Much of the public viewed the car as a death machine. Pedestrian deaths were considered public tragedies. The main cause for these deaths was that the rules of the street were vastly different than how they are today. Turn-of-the-century footage from San Francisco’s Market Street shows just how casually people strode into the street. If a car hit someone, the car was to blame. The horrors of peace appear to be appalling than the horrors of war. Automotive interests banded together under the name Motordom. And it wasn’t just drivers who could be reckless—pedestrians could be reckless, too. This subtle shift allowed for streets to be re-imagined as a place where cars belonged, and where people didn’t. So they coined a new term: “Jay Walking.”
Pixar’s Female Problem: Please Stop Asking Me, “What About Jessie?” Pixar’s Female Problem: Please Stop Asking Me, “What About Jessie?” Awhile ago I posted some art for Pixar’s upcoming film Brave, its first with a female protagonist. And, naturally, I pointed out that Pixar has seemed almost perversely incapable of creating a female protagonist and how utterly offensive that is since they’ve made films about Anyway, among the comments someone inevitably asked “What about Jessie? What about Sally in Cars?” I started to answer and then realized this deserved its own entire post. Let me begin with this: if a studio as innovative as Pixar made 12–that’s TWELVE– films with female protagonists and a few had perhaps 1 or 2 strong tertiary characters were who were male and maybe 1 in 10 male characters with ANY speaking parts at ALL wouldn’t you think that was a teensy-weensy bit disproportionate, minimally a failure of imagination and maximally openly hostile in its dismissal of boys and men? This is where the blog post becomes out of date. OOOOOH!