Volume XI Issue I - Horace Mann School

FOLIO 51
Volume XI Issue I
Letter from the Editors
Issue Number I
Editors-in-Chief
Alara Ocal
Maia Salholz-Hillel
Layout Editor
Victoria Marlin
Managing Editor
Sarah Swong
Copy Editors
Jessica Chi
Sinclaire Marber
Art Editors
Alice Taranto
Jennifer Lim
Assistant: Jessica Bernheim
Contributing Writers
Alexandra Brachfeld, Ambika
Acharya, Andrew Demas,
Antonia Antonova, Ariel
Hernandez, Billie Kanfer, Emily
Feldstein, Erica Chiang, Erika
Whitestone, Frances Ikwuazom,
Halle Liebman, Jessica Chi,
Justin Katerai, Leah Byland,
Megan Lu, Olivia Spector,
Rebecca Segall, Suman Gidwani,
Tom Emmons, Vivien Ikwuazom,
Zoe Rubin
Contributing Artists
Alice Taranto, Cindy Chen,
Danielle Marcana, Emily
Deadman, Greg Swong, Jasmine
Mariano, Jean Mariano, Jenny
Lim, Samantha Michel, Suman
Gidwani, Tessa Bellone
Contributing Copy Editiors
Alexandra Falk, Kayla
Tanenbaum, Rebecca Segall,
Rumur Dowling
Faculty Advisors
Gerri Woods
Jennifer McFeely
FOLIO 51
Letter from the Editors
Dear Readers,
Welcome to the first issue of Volume XI of Folio 51!
As Horace Mann’s literary-art magazine focusing on
gender issues, we are committed to the dissemination
and discussion of the ideas and values of the fight for
gender equality.
As we approach the winter holidays, we hope that
you take time to read and reflect on pertinent gender
issues within our community and our society today.
The articles featured are cross-cultural and highlight
political, social, and economic issues. Topics explored
range from the disparity in prostate and breast cancer
funding to husband-hunting classes in Russia.
We would like to thank our insightful contributing writers and talented artists, our faculty advisors
Ms. Woods and Ms. McFeely, and our board, without
whom this issue could never have come to fruition.
We look forward to printing more issues this year and
encourage all of you, no matter your gender, age, race,
ethnicity, or sexual orientation to submit to Folio 51.
Happy Holidays and Enjoy,
Alara Ocal and Maia Salholz-Hillel
Editors-in-Chief
Front Cover Art: Jean Mariano
Back Cover Art: Greg Swong
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
News In Brief
NBC Women’s Week
Women In India
Sudanese Women Flogged
for Wearing Pants
Women Win In Kuwait
Banning the Burqa in France
Women’s Involvement in WWII
4
4
6
6
7
8
Opinions
Features
Female Sensitivity to Male
Pheromones
Don’t Stop Believing
Up Close and Personal
with Zillah Eisenstein
Mythbuster!
The Driving Force: Putting Women
Behind the Wheel
Cost of Cleaning Men’s vs. Women’s
Shirts
Ralph Lauren Photoshop Disaster
Gender Identity Disorder:
Transgenderism
Dating a Banker Anonymous
Marriage and Seduction in Russia
Does Sexism Exist Today?
9
10
12
14
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
The Accessories Make the Outfit
Sexist Spending in Cancer Research
Women’s Beautification:
For Ourselves or Others?
Women in the Vintage Workplace
24
26
Untitled Poem by Suman Gitwani
30
Creative
28
29
News in Brief
NBC Women’s Week
ALEXANDRA BRACHFELD
images.google.com
Women In India
A weeklong series of reports on the
role of women in modern day U.S.
society was aired on NBC, starting
on October 18th. Maria Shriver,
a former reporter for NBC news
and the wife of Governor Arnold
Schwarzenegger, will be one of the
editors of the project. The information for this project is based upon
the “Shriver Report: A woman’s
nation changed everything” and
a study from the center of American Progress. These reports were
shown on NBC’s universal television channels and the internet
and made available to the Spanish
speaking audience on the television station Telemundo. One of the
main events of the Women’s Week
is The 5th Annual Women’s Conference. Hosted by Maria Shriver,
the conference is one of the largest
gatherings of women in the entire
country. It allows for over 14,000
women to interact with each other
and powerful and inspirational
women both on the Internet and
in person. While the conference
last year included the wives of the
presidential candidates, this year’s
conference includes Hollywood
celebrities. Speakers include
Ashton Kutcher, Alicia Keys, Kate
Gosselin and Elizabeth Smart,
who will be giving information
about women in all parts of society. Women’s Week is a significant
event because it publicizes topics
concerning women and educates
a large number of people on these
issues.
Sources:query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res
=9903E6D61439F937A25754C0A96E9C8B63;w
ww.msnbc.msn.com/id/33076674/;www.californiawomen.org/the-womens-conference/
AMBIKA ACHARYA
After World War I prompted women’s suffrage in
many countries, the roles of women in society slowly
changed until they were equal to that of men. In India,
the world’s largest democracy, women and men both
gained the right to vote in public elections three years
after the nation received independence from the British in 1947. However, the transition to equal treatment
did not come quickly. While women were allowed to
be a part of the Indian workforce, for most women the
priority was still to the home. Yet India has recently
faced a turn of events as women have become a huge
part of the workforce. This came not only through the
desire of individual women for equality, but also with
the media’s promotion. Advertisements encouraging
women to take the road with their own line of scooter
bikes have helped to ease the way into an equal workforce. Hero Honda, a huge scooter bike producer in
India, has created their own line of women’s bikes
called Just4her advertising with catch lines like, “Why
should guys have all the fun?” and “Take control of
the road.” These have helped to spread the word of
the change in the workforce, along with supporting
the increase of women by providing a gender-specific
transportation. With the media’s help and the change
in mentality, women in India have been making up
much of workers.
Nevertheless, with the increase of women outside
of the home and their newfound pride in non-domestic
work, many women find themselves taking care of the
house as well. “Women used to do many of the household jobs such as cooking, cleaning and taking care
of the children,” said Aruna Kamath, who has lived in
India her whole life. She notices that even as women
enter the workforce they still have to take care of their
old responsibilities. “Even though they have gained
independence in their jobs, they now have two jobs
of taking care of the house and earning money for the
house,” she added.
As women keep joining the workforce, its diversity
will keep on evolving. Yet in India the priorities a
woman has to the home still seem to be important resulting in not only one but two jobs for Indian woman.
News In Brief
Artist: Tessa Bellone
News in Brief
Sudanese Women Flogged for Wearing Pants
Artist: Jasmine Mariano
EMILY FELDSTEIN
On July 3, 2009, in
a café in Khartoum,
the capital city of
Sudan, thirteen
women were arrested for wearing
pants. They were
arrested by the Sudanese religious order
police, enforcers of
the strict Muslim
law that is enforced
in Khartoum and
northern Sudan.
However, critics of
the arrest believe
that the women
ought to have been
exempt from the law
because they were
from the predominantly Christian and
animist southern
Sudan.
Of the thirteen
women, ten women
chose to have a
summary trial and
pled guilty. Two
days later, they were
called to the police station. Each woman was publicly
flogged ten times and received a fine of 250 Sudanese
pounds, or 120 U.S. dollars.
Among the women who chose to have a full trial
was Lubna al-Ahmed Hussein, a well-known Sudanese
journalist who also works in the media department at
the United Nations peacekeeping mission. The original
hearing for the three women was on July 29, 2009, but
Judge Mudathir Rashid adjourned the hearing to give
Ms. Hussein time to resign from her post at the mission.
Her employment at the U.N. offered her some protection
from the Sudanese government. However, Ms. Hussein
does not wish to have that immunity because she wants
to bring the issue to light. “This is not a case about me
wearing pants,” she said¬. “This is a case about annulling the article that addresses women’s dress code, under
the title of indecent acts. This is my battle. This article
is against the constitution and even against Islamic law
itself.”
A subsequent hearing was adjourned because the
U.N. had not officially terminated Ms. Hussein’s job.
Finally, on September 7, 2009, the Sudanese court found
Ms. Hussein guilty but decided to only fine her $200
instead of demanding a flogging. Ms. Hussein, who
consistently appears in court in the pants she was arrested in, is ready to appeal her case and refuses to pay a
single dinar, a defiance that puts her at risk for imprisonment. She has the support of many Sudanese women; as
demonstrator Sawsan Hassan el-Showaya told Reuters,
“Thousands of girls have been beaten since the 1990s,
but Lubna is the first one not to keep silent.”
Sources: features.csmonitor.com/globalnews/2009/09/07/sudan-pants-woman-refuses-to-be-silenced-even-escaping-the-lash/; www.google.com/hostednews/ap/
article/ALeqM5hRD66e7D6mHUZJECYSQeJLNFhanAD99DPCN80; news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/8147329.stm; www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/28/AR2009072801584.html?hpid=moreheadlines; www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,535361,00.html?test=latestnews; news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20090907/
lf_nm_life/us_sudan_trousers
Women Win in Kuwait
VIVIEN IKWUAZOM
“Kuwaiti women, to be precise, four of whom made
history on May 17, 2009 by winning seats in the country’s parliamentary elections. Their victory was made
all the more delicious because the fundamentalists who
had long opposed women’s suffrage lost several seats in
the Kuwait parliament,” journalist Mona Eltahawy said
in a New York Times editorial. This was a major accomplishment not only for the four women, Rola Dashti,
Massouma al-Mubarak, Salwa al-Jassar and Aseel al-
Awadhi, but also
for all women in
Kuwait and Saudi
Arabia who were
not allowed to
vote. These women
“and their supporters have continued to hope that
Artist: Emily Deadman
king Abdullah-who is regarded an ally-would open up
the 2009 poll slated for October to women. So you can
imagine how nervous the Saudis got at the sight of four
newly minted Kuwait women parliaments,”
Eltahway said.
Historically, Kuwait has opposed female suffrage. On May 16,
1999 the Emir of Kuwait, Shekin
Jaber al-Ahmad Al-Jaber, proposed a decree that granted women “full political rights,” which
included voting and a position
in office. On November 23,
1999, the National Assembly
rejected the decree by “a two
thirds vote.” Members of the national assembly said their rejection towards the decree
was based on social reasons. In an interview by
BBC Radio World Services, national assembly
worker Ahmad Baquer said the reason why they
opposed the bills was that men held the responsibilities of covering all the political occupations and
political issues and that the women were responsible
for the domestic sphere. However, the denial of political rights to women violates the Kuwait Constitution;
Article 29 states “all people are equal in human dignity
News In Brief
and public rights and duties.” Islamic women in Kuwait
saw their rights to vote “as a way to empower themselves to create a moral and orderly society in which
women and men have different, but not equal responsibilities,” journalist Haya Abdul Rahman Al-Mughni
said. Liberal women in Kuwait saw their voting
rights as “a tool for achieving gender
equality.” Kuwaiti women said
that they will win social and
civil rights that they have
been
denied when their
right to vote is
granted. Female
suffrage and
other political
rights lie in
the hands
of four
newlyelected,
strong
women,
who never
gave up hope or
faith.
Banning the Burqa in France
im
m
le.co
oog
.g
ages
ZOE RUBIN
In recent months, the French government’s
decision to explore the possibility of banning the burqa
from public wear has incited furious protest. The burqa
is a common form of dress for devout Muslim women–a
garment that fully covers the body except for the eyes,
which are obscured by a patch of mesh. By raising the
issue during his address to Parliament last June, French
President Nicholas Sarkozy has set off huge protests
over the degree to which secularism should govern public life. France prides itself on the saturation of secularism and the strict separation of church and state within
its society. Based upon Enlightenment thought and
values of the French Revolution, France’s constitution
states that the nation, “does not recognize, subsidize or
remunerate any religious body.” Five years ago, France’s
secular actions first drew attention when the nation
banned children from wearing eye-catching religious
garments, such as Muslim headscarves, to school. Now,
Sarkozy has instituted a parliamentary committee to
investigate whether
French Islamic
women wear the
burqa of their own
free will. He stated
that “the problem of the burqa
is not a
religious
problem.
It is a
problem
of liberty
and the
dignity
Artist: Samantha Michel
News in Brief
of women. It is a sign of servitude and degradation.” If
the committee finds that women wearing the burqa are
forced to do so, then a law to ban it publicly will allow
these women to no longer be caged from society. However, many burqa-wearers have stated that for them, it is
a sign of their liberty as Muslims. Faizma Silma, a Muslim woman denied French citizenship in part for wearing
the burqa, emphasized to reporters that she herself chose
to wear the veil, saying, “I don’t believe for a moment
that I am submissive to my husband.” In keeping with
the French Enlightenment values of liberty, French politicians may ban women from wearing the burqa publicly
not to limit their freedom, but, the government feels, to
ensure that these women can freely choose the public
face they present to society.
Women’s Involvement in World War II
ERICA CHIANG
American women changed gender roles and greatly
Despite initial criticism, they quickly won respect and
influenced the Allies’ victory during World War II
praise in writings from men such as President Dwight
because of their dedication, hard work, and patriotism D. Eisenhower.
through voluntary participation. American women vol- Women sacrificed many things in their lives
unteered to replace men
to help the war effort,
in many jobs to make
no matter how small an
the men available to go
effect their efforts had.
to the front and fight.
The American women’s
Women founded many
sacrifice and contribution
volunteer groups such
to WWII not only led to
as Women Accepted for
the Allies’ victory but also
Voluntary Emergency
empowered women and
Service (WAVES),
sparked hope that gender
Women in the Air
equality would come to
Force (WAF), Women’s
fruition in the future. ElArmy Auxiliary Corps
eanor McLearnon Brown,
(WAAC), and other
a former volunteer for
supporting military
the Women’s Air Force
units. These women
Service Pilots recounts
performed various tasks
her time in the military:
such as providing up
The time I had as a pilot
to 150,000 auxiliaries
in the WASP is one of my
with food, uniforms,
most treasured memories.
living quarters, pay and
Imagine the thrill of being
medical care. Some
chosen for training from
women also particiamong the thousands of
pated by fighting in the
other young women who
wars. People such as Lt.
applied. I wanted to serve
Hattie Brantley, Oveta
my country and I wanted
Culp Hobby, Lt. Eunice
to be a pilot. When deArtist: Alice Taranto
Young, Pauline Krause,
activation became a fact,
and Eleanor Roosevelt were a few of the exemplary
it was a dismal experience, being told we were not
women working for the Allies who eventually were
needed any longer. But my pride in being a WASP will
recognized as heroines because of their war efforts.
never diminish. Ms. McLearnon Brown and women
Features
Female Sensitivity to Male Pheromones
ANTONIA ANTONOVA
t: Gre
g Sw
ong
Men, too, are often attracted and aware of
women’s smells. Research suggests that the scent of a
woman is more attractive during certain times of the
month, depending on the woman’s menstrual cycle.
During the experiment, men reported that
the most attractive smell of
women’s sweat was
from the
time
between
the first
day of
menstruation to
ovulation, when
women are
most likely
to become
pregnant, while
the least attractive and strongest
smell matched
up with the
women’s period of
menstrual bleeding.
While both men and women are physiologically
affected by different odors of the opposite sex, women
have been found to be better at actually sensing the body
odor scent than men. A new study, published in the Flavour and Fragrance Journal, has shown that it is much
more difficult to block a woman’s awareness of body
odor, than a man’s. In the study, scientists asked men
and women to sniff a variety of different sweat samples
from each gender. According to all of the participants,
the different sweats were equally smelly. However,
when various other fragrances were added to the mix,
nineteen of the fragrances managed to successfully
block the smell of sweat form the men’s noses, while
only two were able to block the smell from the women’s
noses. Researchers hypothesize that women are more
attuned to the smell of body odor because it contains
biological info that helps them choose their partner.
Between women, who find men’s sweat more
attractive when they’re interested, and men, who find
women’s sweat more appealing at different times of the
month, finding a mate is one stinky business.
Artis
What physical features do men and women
find appealing? Large muscles? Shiny hair? Spotless
teeth? A good smell? Recent scientific studies reveal
that among these attributes, subtle body odor has a
significant effect on men and women’s attraction
to one another. While scientists have long debated over the existence of human pheromones,
chemical signals that many animals use to signal one another, several research experiments
have confirmed humans’ attraction to certain
scents of the opposite sex.
A recent study published in the Journal of Neuroscience reports that women
can subconsciously detect whether a man
is sexually aroused through the smell of
his sweat. The researchers show that
women find the sweat of a man more
appealing when he is sexually excited,
providing the first ever direct evidence
that people secrete scents that affect
hormones in the opposite sex.
During one study, scientists had
20 heterosexual men place absorbent pads under
their armpits while watching erotic videos, and later
again while watching neutral videos. The researchers
then had 19 heterosexual women smell the sexual and
neutral sweat pads from the men who experienced the
highest levels of sexual arousal.
While none of the women stated sensing any
differences between the sexual and neutral sweat, fMRI
images revealed significantly different responses in the
women’s brains. The two regions of the brain that help
perceive and recognize emotions, the right orbitofrontal
cortex and the right fusiform region, responded drastically more to the sexual sweat than the neutral sweat.
The test confirmed to researches that humans do, in fact,
communicate through smell.
In another recent study, scientists at the University of California in Berkeley found that women who
sniffed androstadienone, a musky smelling testosterone
derivative found in male sweat, saliva, and semen, experienced improved mood, higher sexual arousal, faster
heart rate, breathing, and blood pressure, as well as
increased levels of the hormone cortisol in their saliva.
The amount of cortisol, often secreted by the body in
times of stress, rose in the women’s saliva within 15
minutes of smelling the androstadienone.
Sources: www.newyorktimes.com; www.smh.com.au; berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/02/06_sweat.shtml; www.livescience.com; www.scientificamerican.com
Features
Don’t Stop Believing
Khadijah Williams’ and Taylor Swift’s Climbs to
Success
ANDREW DEMAS
For years, Khadijah Williams traveled from homeless shelter to homeless shelter along the west coast
of California. When no shelters were available, Williams slept in bus stations or on the streets. She began
her journey when she was six, attending 12 schools in
12 years. Despite the severity of her circumstances of
destitution and penury, Williams never lost sight of her
dreams to seek higher education. She knew it was her
ticket out of indigence and towards happiness.
“No matter where we lived, no matter how
bad our circumstances may have been, my mom was
always positive,” said Williams of her mother’s expectations for her daughters. She was fastidious about her
learning, diligently studying at the Los Angeles Pub-
m
e.co
oogl
im
.g
ages
m
e.co
oogl
es.g
She was determined to escape
destitution and learned to ignore
the pimps, prostitutes, and drug
dealers who told her she would
never amount to anything.
lic Library
every day
after school.
“It changed my
life,” she said.
“The library gave
me some control
over some aspect
of my life … I
could always
control how
much I wanted to learn.”
During the
final three
years of
high
school,
Williams
woke up every morning at 4:30 am to catch a bus
from
L.A.’s Skid Row to Jefferson High, in
order
to maintain a somewhat stable school environment.
She was determined to escape destitution and learned
to ignore the pimps, prostitutes, and drug dealers who
told her she would never amount to anything.
Having to adapt to such tumultuous conditions,
Williams learned how to thrive despite it all and is
now a member of the Class of 2013 at Harvard University. Not only was Williams accepted at Harvard,
but she received a full scholarship due to her pristine
academic record. Her story received national attention
by Oprah Winfrey. Ms. Winfrey interviewed Williams
and was inspired by her story and her relentless pursuit of self-improvement. Winfrey was so moved by
Williams that she invited her to her girls’ school in
Africa as a compelling role model for young African
women. President Obama also spoke of Williams’ triumph saying, “Your destiny is in your hand, and don’t
you forget that.” Williams emulates this exact belief,
imag
How did two teenage girls from such divergent
backgrounds pursue and achieve their dreams, while
exceeding the expectations of society? One of them
reached out of the despair and darkness of homelessness, landing in the premier educational institution
in the United States. The other, an aspiring singersongwriter found her way to Nashville via MySpace
and launched a musical career that has reached stratospheric proportions. All of this was achieved while
both girls were at the tender age of 16. The common
denominator in their storylines is their tenaciousness,
which pushed the boundaries of their young years,
breaking through the preconceived notions that there
were limitations in their pursuit of greatness. Here are
their stories.
and she is a symbol of what people can become when
they chase their dreams.
It is Williams’ ambition to spread to word of
her success, offering inspiration to people all around
the country that anyone can defy the odds and can
achieve his or her wildest dreams. “To any person,
homeless, or otherwise, who feels like they don’t like
the situation they’re
in and feels
like they
can’t do
anything
about it,
they can,”
she said. “
For a while,
that’s all I
had - the
belief that I
could do it.
All you need
is that belief
because you
can. I did
it.”
On the other side of the country, Taylor Swift
has emerged as this decade’s most successful musical
sensation, taking the music world by storm from her
start with MySpace to sell-out concerts at Madison
Square Garden. The quirky nineteen year old from
Wyomissing, Pennsylvania had been paving her way
images.google.com
“Every challenge can make you
stronger if you allow it.”
to stardom since she was a little girl, developing a
MySpace page that created a huge fan base and drew
the attention of several record labels. She surfaced
onto the country music scene at the age of sixteen,
releasing her first self-titled C.D., which produced 5
hit singles on the Billboard Hot Country songs, including the renowned song “Teardrops on My Guitar.” Her
exceptional writing abilities and her catchy tunes garnered the album a certification of Triple Platinum. In
2008, Swift was the biggest selling artist in all genres
with an accumulated 4 million in album sales during
that year. She was the first artist in the history of Niel-
Features
son SoundScan to have two different albums in the top
ten on the year-end album chart, with Fearless - her
second album - and Taylor Swift finishing number 3
(2.1 million) and number 6 (1.5 million) respectively.
By the time of her release of Fearless, Taylor
Swift was an icon and a role model for all people who
aspire to fulfill their dreams. The album went quintuple platinum,
has been in the
top 20 of the
Billboard 200
for the past
47 weeks and
has topped the
chart for 11
non-consecutive weeks.
Her success is
unparalleled,
officially selling over 10
million albums
world-wide, 20
million single
downloads,
and receiving over 26 awards in just four years. She has sold
out her 50 city Fearless Tour and was the first country
artist to ever win an MTV Video Music Award. Swift
won entertainer of the year at the 2009 Country Music Awards, and she even conquered the King of Pop,
Michael Jackson, winning artist of the year at the
American Music Awards (one of five of her awards
that night). This small town girl followed her biggest dreams, and through her avid determination she
has become one of the most successful artists ever in
country music history.
Williams and Swift exemplify the benefits of
sheer determination and the rewards of always believing in yourself. They have raised the bar and shown
that there are no limitations in attaining your dreams.
No matter what your age, the possibilities are endless.
Ms. Winfrey’s words perfectly correlate to the parallel
successes of Williams and Swift. “When your life is
on course with its purpose you are your most powerful. I know for sure that in every challenging experience there’s an opportunity to grow, enhance your life,
or learn something invaluable about yourself. Every
challenge can make you stronger if you allow it.”
Khadijah and Taylor have certainly done so
Features
Up Close and Personal
with Zillah Eisenstein
JESSICA CHI
Zillah Eisenstein is an anti-racist feminist activist and author. She is
also a professor in the politics department at Ithaca College in Ithaca,
New York with a PhD in political theory. Eisenstein’s classes center
on issues concerning gender, race and economic class. Since 1979,
she has published over ten different books on feminism and sexual
equality, racism and capitalism both globally and nationally. Her
political work has taken her all over the world to such countries as
Bosnia, Cuba, Egypt, Ghana, India, South Africa, and Turkey. Find
out more about her at http://www.ithaca.edu/zillah/.
When and how did you first get interested and
involved in feminism?
It was a historical accident. I was in graduate school
at the time that the organized radical pieces of the
women’s movement really were getting formulated,
particularly in terms of the Vietnam War. There were
many pieces of feminism; there was the mainstream
women’s movement like Betty Friedan, [who started
the “Second Wave” of the Women’s Movement and
founded National Organization for Women in 1996],
but that really didn’t interest me. Those weren’t my
politics. I was involved in questions about the Vietnam War and I had been brought up in a very political
household – my parents were communists.
How has your perspective on either of these issues
changed with your research and teachings?
It’s changed a lot. What I teach and write about is that
nothing stands still. I believe that the issues of race,
gender, [and sex] are not biological categories alone.
I actually think that new genders and new races are
being defined all the time – just look at Barack Obama
being elected or the fact that there were women who
did the torturing at Abu Ghraib. As sex and gender
and race become more fluid, I think that they are less
stagnant in the way that during black slavery in this
country, all blacks were poor and enslaved – it was
a much more homogenous category. Today there’s
all this economic differentiation, so it’s a much more
complex system; I wouldn’t argue that racism doesn’t
Sources: www.ithaca.edu/zillah/.
exist, but it
exists newly. It’s the
same way
for gender.
I think
that it’s an
incredibly
complicatimages.google.com
ed system,
and actually the book I’ve just finished is really asking
the question, “In what way does gender really have
its newest meaning when you can have a Sarah Palin
and a Hillary Clinton and yet have just the disproportionate number of Chinese young girls be the newest
working class of the global economy?”
2008 was referred to by some as the Year of the Woman because of the prominence of women in politics.
What did you think of the main candidates that we
saw, Hilary Clinton and Sarah Palin?
For me, Sarah Palin’s politics are such that I’m sorry
she’s female. I mean, I’m definitely not happy. Now,
with Hilary Clinton, it’s more complicated, but I’ve
actually written on her for many, many years very
critically because I think that she really doesn’t represent a real struggle for recognition for the majority
of women and girls. I think that what I really was
politically critical of her for was that when she started,
she said, “I am not running as a woman. I am running because I have the experience.” Then, she kind
of disclaimed a lot of issues that she could have put
forth not to just reduce herself to being female, but
to at least recognize what the issues are before us. If
she had done that at the start and had just said, “I am
not running as the wife of Bill Clinton, I am running
as Hilary Rodham,” I would have supported her. But
when she ran as his wife, I just said no way.
How do boys react to your classes? Do you have a
lot of male students?
Well, I actually do. They’re just very surprised – I
mean, some of them take them because women that
they know say they really should do this kind of work;
some of the courses that I teach are not the one course
for the politics department in political theory, although
I always teach them with a lens on gender and race.
Some of the men will be very reserved and even
hostile right at the start, kind of in a defensive posture,
and then they become enormously interested. It’s really quite amazing. Now, are there young men at the
college who just would never take a course with me?
Of course.
I think that most of the time when people don’t want
to explore something new – and that’s what this is – it
is inner fears about the new. I think that exists a lot…
not just about feminism. I do think that the trick as a
professor is to make the unknown so interesting that
people are willing to risk themselves a bit to find out
what it’s about, but also part of that process is that I
have to be open as a person to finding the new, so it is
a dialogue that goes both ways.
Is there a person or group of people you can identify who has influenced your teachings?
The most important people to me in my personal
development were the black feminists that I worked
with early on because they were the ones that I felt the
most comfortable with since they were working with
an anti-racist feminism. The first political work I ever
did as a young child was with the civil rights movement during the war. As a white person, I was never
comfortable with white people who were racists, so I
was most comfortable with the anti-racism feminists at
the start.
Features
Do you think that the news media and entertainment industry are helping progress the feminist
movement?
No. In terms of the kinds of feminisms that I work
with – the news media doesn’t even talk about it. It’s
a total silencing - the only things that they talk about,
again, are the kind of feminisms they feel comfortable with, which is a feminism that usually is not very
radical or multi-layered racially. In my book Hatreds I
write about the issue that there is feminism for export,
for sale. It’s feminism that is marketed in such a way
as to mainstream the most non-radical ideas of what
feminism stands for. When I was doing all my work
years ago the during Vietnam War, it was really the
Vietnam feminists and the Chinese feminists who were
central to huge parts of the women’s movement here,
but the media never represents that.
What do you suppose is the best way for high
school or college-age students to get involved with
feminism movements?
Well, I think that what is different now is that movements really are much more coalition-formed and that
with the isolated movements of the women’s movements - black women’s movements and worker’s
movements, for example - what you see are the interrelationships between them because nobody has a
singular identity. Historically, people had to first articulate themselves, I think, in more singular fashion.
In terms of more locally in the United States, I think
it’s really important that with issues of sexual freedom
and reproductive rights and even access to abortion…
there’s been an enormous erosion in what is possible for women here in this country. So many people
across the board are doing work with AIDS and issues
of medical care and availability of health services. I
would say to any young woman - depending on what
her passions are and what it is that she is that she is
committed to…to do that with a lens on the specific
impact on women.
Features
Mythbuster!
Pregnancy Gender Predictions
OLIVIA SPECTOR
“Are we having a boy or girl?” This is the
quintessential question parents ask when they find
out they are expecting a baby. With the technology
available in today’s world, it is very easy for expecting
parents to find out the gender of their child. Before the
first ultrasound was practiced on a pregnant woman
in 1958, it was impossible to accurately determine the
gender of a baby. However, this did not stop people
from trying. There is no limit to the amount of creative methods people trust to tell them the sex of their
baby.
Many gender myths are based on weight gain.
Rumor has it that if a woman is carrying low- gaining
most of her weight in her lower stomach- it’s a boy,
and if she is carrying high, it’s a girl. In reality, the
shape of her belly and where she gains weight is due
to muscle tone, uterine tone, and the baby’s positions.
It has nothing to do with the child’s gender.
The attractive power of these fables is unexplainably strong in our scientifically advanced society,
as can be seen by predictions completely unrelated to
the mother’s body. For example, one misconception
states that if the husband gains weight during the pregnancy, it’s a girl, and if he doesn’t, it’s a boy. However, the father’s weight patterns during his spouse’s
pregnancy are unrelated to the baby’s gender.
Similarly, there are many other baby gender
myths that have nothing to do with the body of the
mother. Some expecting mothers are advised to pick
up a key. If they pick it up by the thinner end, it’s a
girl. If they pick it up by the round end, it’s a boy. If
they pick it up in the middle they’re having twins!
This is one the few myths that include the prediction
of twins.
One of the best known gender myths involves
the mother taking either a pendant or her wedding ring
and tying it to a piece of the father’s hair. The mother
places the object over her stomach while moving
slightly. If it swings back and forth, the baby is going
to be a boy. The baby will be a girl if it swings in a
more circular motion. As fun as it may be to perform
this test, it is yet another myth with no scientific evidence.
However, some baby gender myths may have
more accuracy to them than others. The Chinese lunar
calendar (seen in the chart to the right) is one of the
oldest ways of determining the baby’s sex. Legend
has it that the original calendar was buried in a royal
tomb near Beijing around 700 years ago! The calendar
is set up in two columns; month of conception and the
age of the mother. An expecting woman would draw a
straight line down from her age to the month of conception to predict the child’s gender. Numerous tests
have been done to show the accuracy of this calendar.
Even though it may seem questionable, many studies
have shown that it this method is accurate over 90% of
the time!
In addition, according to CBS news, it is actually true that women who have unusually large appetites carry boys. A Harvard study showed that women
carrying boys eat more protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
One scientific explanation for this is that the woman
is circulating a higher level of testosterone. A study
cited on the Pregnancy- Info.net website asked pregnant women who did not know the sex of their baby
to guess what they thought it would be. They were
told to base their guess on intuition alone. Amazingly,
A Harvard study showed that
women carrying boys eat more
protein, carbohydrates, and fat.
these pregnant women accurately guessed the sex of
their babies 71% of the time!
In the modern world of scientific fact and conjecture, some approaches to learning the sex of one’s
baby are more precise than others. Technology provides an accurate answer to the question on many expectant mothers’ minds. However, some may choose
more traditional methods to satisfy their curiosity.
Whatever techniques one may implement to learn
their child’s gender, it seems that an intuitive maternal
instinct is most useful tool to an expectant mother.
Features
www.immihelp.com/nri/chinese-lunar-calendar-gender-prediction.html
Features
The Driving Force: Putting Women Behind the Wheel
Sources:www.breitbart.com/article.php?id=D92MR4R80&show_article=1;www.digiactive.org/2008/04/13/tactic-saudi-activist-uses-youtube-to-advocate-for womensright-to-drive;www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/2212/context/ourdailylives;thelede.blogsnytimes.com/2009/05/07/saudis-debate-ban-on-women-drivers/?hp;
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women%27s_rights_in_Saudi_Arabia.
r.com
download. Each
sticker consists
of a blank
speech bubble
issuing from
a woman’s
veiled head.
“Feel free
to fill it
out
with your opinion
on
the issue,” Kahn’s website
instructs, “and stick it wherever you feel it
needs
to be.”
The stickers have spread to Facebook, Google
News, and YouTube, carrying their handwritten messages in a medley of English and Arabic: “It’s not only
for men,” and “God did not say I can’t drive,” and “I
want to drive because my mom need[s] milk for coffee.”
Another relentless activist, Wajeha Al-Huwaider, uses YouTube to spread her message. On
International Women’s Rights Day 2008, she defied
Saudi law by posting a daring video of herself driving a car. From behind the wheel, she appealed to the
Saudi government to expand women’s rights. Her
video convinced one hundred and twenty-five others
to sign an accompanying petition that same day, which
was then delivered to the Saudi Ministry of Interior.
Al-Huwaider also belongs to Committee of Demanders of Women’s Right to Drive Cars, which has collected more than three thousand signatures towards the
cause.
In the past, efforts to liberalize in Saudi backfired badly. Within the past two decades, dozens of the
Saudi women who dared to drive were arrested. Their
passports and jobs were taken away and they were
banned from communicating amongst themselves or
with foreigners. More recently, the religious police
in the city Qatif detained a woman in her forties after
observing hert driving, and another was arrested in
Buraida for driving to pick up her husband.
In contrast, the Saudi government did not punish Wajeha Al-Huwaider for the bold driving video she
filmed, or for her lobbying and petitioning alongside
www
.flick
MEGAN LU
The term “apartheid” means “separateness” and traditionally refers to the systematic discrimination against
non-whites in South Africa from the 1940’s to the
1990’s.
Today the apartheid era is over—or is it?
Now, placed in a new and modern context,
the word “apartheid” has taken on a different meaning. The recently coined phrase “gender apartheid”
compares the legal racial segregation of South Africa’s apartheid era to the current legal discrimination
against women in Saudi Arabia.
On Saudi Arabia’s streets, the gender apartheid
is constantly visible, from the full-length black abaya
gowns women must wear in public to the male relatives who must escort them wherever they go. Workplaces and schools are segregated based on gender.
And on an international scale, the gender apartheid
was evident at the 2008 Olympics; Saudi Arabia did
not send a female delegation because women are
prohibited from playing sports. In 2005, during Saudi
Arabia’s first and only municipal elections to date,
women were not allowed to vote or seek office. The
nation’s radical state of gender inequity leaves considerable room for the reform demanded by both foreign
and local human rights and feminism groups.
The latest cause championed by these reformers concerns women’s right to drive. Saudi Arabia is
currently the only country in the world to ban female
drivers. Over the past few years, the efforts of activists have gained momentum, fueled by petitioners and
grassroots groups. Remaining consistent with their
message of progress and modernization, many of them
have been channeling their efforts through unexpectedly modern forums.
The work of Areej Kahn, one of the most visible advocates of female driving rights, has recently
sparked hot debate on the Yahoo!-based, imagesharing website Flickr. Kahn, a twenty-four-year-old
student on a design scholarship in New York, runs a
thesis project called “N7nu—We the Women.” According to Kahn, her campaign is “to raise the issue
of women driving in Saudi Arabia and to start a real,
public conversation.” She puts special stickers of
her own design online and makes them available for
Features
the Committee of Demanders of Women’s Right to
Drive Cars. Areej Khan was afraid to publicize her last
name when she gave early newspaper interviews, but
the New York Times article about her was updated in
May, saying that she was comfortable revealing her
full name, “given the kind of feedback I’ve been get-
ting.”
At the bottom of each of the stickers she
makes, she prints “To drive, or not to drive, that is the
question.” Perhaps the time is ripe for her question—
and the question of thousands of her fellow Saudi
women—to be asked aloud once again.
Cost of Cleaning Men’s vs. Women’s Shirts
ARIEL HERNADEZ
in promoting gender
discrimination, how can
we stand for
such bigotry? Cleaners should
charge based
on the material garments
are made not
the gender of
their wearers. Highmaintenance materials such as silk are already priced
separately. Can this system not replace gender-based
pricing? Moreover, cleaners should invest in unisex
presses. Not only would they relieve of labor-intensive
hand-pressing but they cost nearly half as much as
standard male-sized machines. According to Tampa
based Unipress Co., which specializes in commercial laundry equipment, men’s press machines cost
$50,000 while unisex machines cost $21,500. Women
should not be punished for their dry cleaners’ equipment limitations. After all, it’s not their faults that they
aren’t men’s sizes. Furthermore, cleaners who
make sexist generalizations about women’s likes and
dislikes should make them clear to their costumers; a
woman should be informed that her shirts will be hand
pressed before she is billed.
Uniform pricing should be an industry standard. In the interest of customer satisfaction and gender equality, dry cleaners should be required to practice gender-blind pricing. Though it may seem like a
trivial issue, this is one of the many anachronisms that
exist, and abolishing gender-based price discrimination is integral to the fight for gender equality. For
now, women who have their shirts laundered can’t
help but feel that they are being taken to the cleaners.
Artist: Cindy Chen
The old adage “less is more” is now a costly reality for
many woman who have their shirts laundered. Although gender-based pricing was banned in New York
City in 1998, it still persists. In many cases, a trip to
the cleaners presents a glaring discrepancy in pricing
between the sexes. Even when having identical shirts
laundered, women – because of their smaller sizes and
narrower shapes– pay an average of $2.09 more than
men for the same services.
Justifications for the discrepancies in pricing
are as varied as the prices themselves. Many cleaners
cite the inability of their machines to handle women’s
small sizes. They claim that pressing a woman’s
shirt on their big, manly machines would damage the
garment. “They won’t fit the machine; they would
rip,” said a an employee at Alpian’s Garment Care in
Midtown East, where it costs $9 to launder a woman’s
shirt, $2.75 a man’s. Other cleaners claim that because
women’s shirts tend to be made of more delicate materials, they require special attention. While this may
be the case for some shirts, it certainly is not the case
for all. Women “are finickier about fashion,” claims
Richard Geller, owner of Paradise Cleaners, one of
Colorado’s largest dry-cleaning businesses. Other
cleaners share this view, hand-pressing women’s shirts
because they believe a woman wouldn’t want her shirt
pressed like a man’s.
Last May, The Denver Post set out to investigate these claims. A reporter asked three separate
cleaners to prove that women’s shirts would not fit on
the buck. However, the shirts fit the pressing machine
every time. Nevertheless, women often aren’t asked
if they’d prefer hand pressing to machine pressing. In the reporter’s experience, four out of the six
cleaners visited charged more to launder women’s
shirts. Though they didn’t tell the reporters about the
increased charging until they returned to collect the
shirts.
Gender-based pricing is antithetical to everything our culture values. As society that prides itself
Features
Ralph Lauren Photoshop Disaster
HALLE LIEBMAN
In October, two
advertisements
released by Ralph
Lauren onto the
internetfeatured
highly photoshopped versions of
models Filippa Hamilton and Valentina
Zelyaeva . Because
they were adjusted to
appear thinner, the
models’ body proportions do not match.
Their heads are
much larger than
their pelvises, and
their waists are
impossibly small.
The models look deathly ill,
and apparently this is the body type that Ralph
Lauren is supporting. Women, not even thin or skinny
ones, do not actually look like thisIt is an insulting
illustration of a woman and her bodythat sends a horrendous message to young girls that, “this is what you
have to look like to be attractive.”
Twenty-three year old Filippa Hamilton has
spoken out against this advertisement saying, “I was
shocked to see that super skinny girl with my face.
It’s very sad, I think, that Ralph Lauren could do
something like that.” She also mentioned that she was
fired from the company because “they said I was overweight and I couldn’t fit into their clothes anymore.”
Hamilton, already very thin weighing 120 pounds at
5-foot-10, is now outraged with Ralph Lauren but
hopes to get a positive message about body type out
to women. “I think they owe American women an
apology, a big apology. I’m very proud of what I look
like, and I think a role model should look healthy,”
she said. Many people around the world have become
furious with the two ads and have spoken out against
them. Jo Swinson, a liberal democrat member of Parliament, said:
Today’s unrealistic idea of what is beautiful means that
young girls are under more pressure now than they were
even five years ago. Airbrushing means that adverts contain completely unattainable images that no one can live up
to in real life. We need to help protect children from
these pressures and we need to make a start by banning aibrushing in adverts aimed at them. The focus on women’s appearance has got out of hand - no
one really has perfect skin, perfect hair and a perfect
figure, but women and young girls increasingly
feel that nothing less than thin and perfect will do.
Throughout recent years, there have been many other
incidents of photoshopping advertisements to alter the
appearance of models. In December of 2008, an ad
for Campari was released with actress Jessica Alba as
the model. In the before and after pictures of the ad, it
is obvious that her thighs and waist have been reduced
down and her breasts have been made more “perky”.
In August of 2008, actress, singer, and dancer Beyonce
was featured as the model for a new L‘Oréal advertisement. In the ad, her skin tone has been lightened
greatly to make her appear paler. Overall, it is all too
easy nowadays for brands to modify the body type of
models and to modify our society’s idea of beauty
Sources:http://shine.yahoo.com/event/fallbeauty/image-of-ultra-thin-ralph-lauren-model-sparks-outrage-521480/;http://www.nydailynews.com/lifestyle/fashion/2009/10/14/2009-10-14_model_fired_for_being_too_fat.html;http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/fashion-that-makes-us-sad-jessica-albas-perfect-bodyairbrushed-to-something-skinnier-325704; http://shine.yahoo.com/channel/beauty/was-beyonces-skin-white-washed-227931/; http://photoshopdisasters.blogspot.
com/2009_10_01_archive.html
Features
Gender Identity Disorder: Transgenderism
JESSICA BERNHEIM
Our society makes transgender people out to
between the external genitals and the internal genibe a rarity; but in truth, the Diagnostic and Statistical
tals (the testes and ovaries).” This is a chromosomal
Manual of Mental Disorders approximates there to
abnormality where one or more extra copies of the
be over 140,000 trans-people in the world. A number
female X chromosome in a male’s cells causes Klinof this degree should increase the amount of attenfelter’s syndrome to occur, hindering male sexual detion shed on this serious condition. Merriam Webster
velopment. However, an intersex person, or the more
defines transgender as “a person (as a transsexual or
commonly used term hermaphrodite, can be considtransvestite) who identifies with or expresses a gender ered transgender as well.
identity that differs from the one
Trans-people face many mediwhich corresponds to the person’s
cal issues that do not plague others.
sex at birth.” A transsexual perFirstly, the majority of practicing docson is a transgender who chooses
tors do not have the knowledge necesto live as the sex he or she most
sary to treat trans-people. Secondly,
strongly identifies with, usually by
many health care providers do not
getting surgery. A transvestite is a
cover treatments related to transgenperson who dresses and typically
der issues, and therefore trans-people
conducts himself in the manner
have to pay for costly procedures out
of the sex he or she most strongly
of their own pocket. They face masidentifies with “for purposes of
sive discrimination medically, legally,
emotional or sexual gratification,”
and socially. For example, studies
as defined by Merriam Webster.
done by the National Center for Les
Transgender individuals can
bian Rights and the Transgender Law
be given a single gender through
Center indicate that over 30 percent
surgery. Consequently, after the
of transgender San Franciscans have
surgery the person is simply called
faced discriminated while attempting
a man or a woman. Sex reassignto buy health care. Depression, alcoment surgery is an umbrella term
hol and tobacco use are all abundant
for a wide variety of operations
in trans-people who become dejected
including reconstruction of the genand turn to these vices after experiital areas, complete hysterectomy,
encing social rejection.
bilateral mastectomy, chest recon
Transgender people who understruction (concerning the addition
go sex reassignment surgery have to
Artist: Danielle Marcano
or removal of breasts), and facial reconstruction
change their name, Social Security card,
surgery. Reconstruction of the genital areas is done on driver ID, birth certificate and passport among other
a case-by-case basis and usually is the construction of documents. During the period of transition, while they
a penis for a trans-man or a vagina for a trans-woman. are neither classified as men nor women, they can face
Complete hysterectomy is the removal of the body,
legal problems as technically the justice system only
fundus, and cervix of the uterus. Bilateral mastectomy recognizes male and females.
is the amputation of the breasts. Facial reconstruction
Our current society is not very accepting of
is done in order to give a more feminine or masculine
trans-people; many believing transgenderism is unnatappearance to the face.
ural and impossible. For example, the feminist author
As for physical gender disorders, the U.S.
Janice Raymond does not want to open up the female
National Library of Medicine defines “intersex [a]
gender to include trans-women, stating that only after
s a group of conditions where there is a discrepancy
experiencing things like childbirth, can a person truly
Sources: wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_people_in_this_world_are_transgender; www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/transgender;en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hysterectomyvsearch.nlm.nih.gov/vivisimo/cgibin/querymeta?v%3Aproject=medlineplus&query=intersex&x=0&y=0; www.nctequality.org/Resources/NCTE_UnderstandingTrans.pdf
know what it is like to be a woman. However, we must
acknowledge changing times where “the pregnant man
exists” and many women cannot have children as a
result of cancer or sterility. A woman can not only be
defined as what she can or cannot do, and frankly as
a feminist author, Janice Raymond should be the first
to admit that. As time progresses, we have to be more
inclusive.
One of this country’s core principles is the
belief that everyone is equal. This country prides itself
on lack of prejudice concerning gender, race, religion
and sexually orientation, but then why are trans-people
so discriminated against?
This is a flagrant violation
of our Constitution. After
all, no one has
power over
his or her own
genetics.
Artist: Jasmine Mariano
Features
Dating a Banker Anonymous
FRANCES IKWUAZOM
Only several months ago, the American economy took
downward turn. The resulting recession has touched everyone from the least fortunate to the most fortunate. Living
conditions have worsened, and communities are forced
to live under poorer conditions than they are comfortable
with. People have had to learn to recognize the difference
between a “want” and a “need”, and consequently have
had to cut their luxury spending. They have found ways to
express their distress and economic anxiety through various
outlets, such as songwriting, magazine articles and editorials. Megan and Laney, two women suffering under our
current economic condition, have found a way to pour their
hearts out to the public by means of a blog site called Dating a Banker Anonymous.
Dating a Banker Anonymous (DABA) is a website
created for women dating bankers who find their relationships deteriorating during the current recession. The website is defined by the creators as “a safe place where women
can come together—free from the scrutiny of feminists—
and share their tearful tales of how the mortgage meltdown
has affected their relationships.” DABA is presented as safe
because of its anonymous factor. Members of the blog, also
known as DABA Girls, can leave comments on the website
or email stories to [email protected]. The creators then
incorporate the daily emails into blog entries for their fellow DABA girls to read and connect with.
The idea for the website came from Laney’s
unhappy relationship with her banker boyfriend, resulting
from his treating her unfairly. Laney’s friend Megan, who
is also dating a banker, realized that her boyfriend was constantly mistreating her as well. After sharing stories with
one another, both women blamed their failing relationships
on the economy. They concluded that their boyfriends’ bad
behavior resulted from the recession and had nothing to do
with themselves. Knowing that there could be hundreds of
other women whose relationships were also being victimized by the economic condition, Megan and Laney began a
blog to foster a support base for other DABA girls during
these hard times.
Beyond blog entries, the website contains other
sections, such as DABA Bites, a DABA dictionary, and a
DABA List. The DABA Bites section lists restaurants that
are affordably priced and serve good quality food. The
restaurants range from best sushi at Tomoe Sushi to best
Mexican takeout at La Esquina to a place for DABA girls
on a diet called Souen. The DABA List page includes a list
of seven things that a DABA girl cannot live without, including hair salons, organic food, and eyebrow parlors. The
DABA dictionary defines the terms frequently used in the
blog entries through length and well-detailed paragraphs.
It identifies “AR” as the conditions after the recession and
“BR” as the time before it. A DABA Girl is mean to be a
charming woman with a successful job, who is looking for
a man who can keep up with her needs and engage in a successful relationship. The term “FBF”—acronym for finance
guy boyfriend—is defined as a “DABA girl’s significant
other,” specifically a banker in her age range who is ambitious and well-dressed as well as demonstrates the many
other FBF characteristics discussed in the website’s extensive description.
While there is nothing wrong with two girls’ creating a blog to voice their annoyance, it seems a bit unreasonable that the source of their anxieties lies in the fact that
their boyfriends—who may have even been chosen because
of their profession—are no longer pampering them as much
as they would like. The DABA Girls also blame their boyfriends’ behavior solely on the recession. This seems unfair,
because it seems that if one person were treating another
poorly, they would be in the wrong regardless of the cause.
Tough economic times are not a banker’s excuse to be rude
to their girlfriends. The DABA Girls demonstrate ignorance
by excusing their boyfriends’ mistreatment or humiliation
of them as a result of these economic circumstances.
Features
Marriage and Seduction in
Russia
REBECCA SEGALL
comes in the
form of classes
taught by “love
instructor” Yulia Varra. Varra,
who teaches
courses out of
her basement
in Moscow,
is a trained
psychologist
and a threetime divorcée.
Women, she
says, “want
a husband
who owns a private plane, a yacht, and an oil well. It’s not
impossible, but they need super-fantastic skills to succeed.” Some women wait up to a year and a half to get into
Varra’s many courses on seduction, including “Oral Sex for
Experts,” “How to Be Your Man’s Number-One Lover,”
and “How to Marry in Three Months.” Students, who range
from ages 21 through 60, learn tips such as erotic dancing,
sensual massages, and other techniques for pleasing a man
sexually. Classes teach women everything from the proper
posture for catching a man’s eye to sex tips for revitalizing
a rocky marriage. “Russian men relate to women mainly
through sex,” advises Varra, “so if a man is happy in bed,
you’re halfway there.”
For women who cannot take courses offered by
Varra or other women, a popular alternative is a class in
Vaginally-Used Muscle building. Schools in Moscow, set
up much like gyms, offer courses in toning and strengthening vaginal muscles for an enhanced sexual experience.
“I’m sure my husband would have left me if I hadn’t done
VUM-building,” remarks Russian wife Eliso Torgvaidze.
“Sex is 90 percent of a relationship for a man.”
Is this view on relationships skewed? Perhaps.
It seems almost archaic, when viewed in an empowered,
Western light. But it is one shared by many Russian
women, and it provides women with a way to get ahead
in the marriage market and in society. If finding a wealthy
husband is seen as the key to happiness in Russian culture,
the competition will remain fierce. And if successfully
seducing and pleasing a man is the only way to beat the
competition, it appears that classes like Varra’s will remain
popular until a major change in attitudes towards relationships comes about.
Artist: Cindy Chen
In our Western world, many progressive women who strive
for gender equality tend to dismiss the old-fashioned belief
that a woman’s top priority should be to find a wealthy
husband. Why should a woman spend her efforts trying
to secure a man with money, when she can gain her own
economic and social independence in today’s world? This
feminist view is not the norm everywhere. In Russia, where
wealth and status are among the most valued traits in a
partner, landing a successful man is an ambition shared by
many women of all ages. In fact, some women go so far as
to take classes that teach how to successfully find and keep
a husband. These schools of seduction and man-hunting in
Moscow, Russia, reflect the importance of having a wealthy
husband and the popular conception that sexually satisfying
a man leads to a happy marriage.
Social structure in Russia is a key contributor to
the pressure placed on attracting and marrying a well-off
man. Since the end of the Soviet era and the rise of modern
capitalism in 1991, social status and wealth have become
increasingly important. A ruling oligarchy of affluent businessmen and entrepreneurs dominate, creating a fixation
with power and the upper class. While class divide makes
some men elite, it also means many men are poor or unemployed. Russia has one of the highest percentages of alcoholism among men, and the average male life expectancy is
about 59 years. This creates a limited pool of husbands who
are desirable by conventional standards, fueling a fierce
competition among women who would like to catch a successful, wealthy man. It doesn’t help that women outnumber men by 10 million. According to one Russian woman
interviewed by Marie Claire Magazine, “Relationships are
like roulette for modern Russian women. They have a lot to
win and everything to lose, so they can never afford to get
complacent.”
As if the anxiety attached to seeking a suitable
husband weren’t enough, being able to keep a man in the
long-term is equally stressful for some Russian wives. Russian divorce law is outdated and unbalanced. It is considerably easier for a man to legally divorce his wife than vice
versa. Also, men usually get child custody after a divorce,
and men are not required to give any financial support to
their ex-wives, who are often economically dependent on
them. This makes the skills of maintaining a man’s interest
equally important for some Russian women as the skills
required to attract it. Many women feel they need to be
taught such skills in order to survive in Russian society and
maintain their own statuses.
The answer to these problems, for some women,
Features
Does Sexism Exist Today?
MAYA CHUNG
I interviewed students and teachers, both male and female, about their opinions on the existence and relevance
of gender discrimination today. I found that the majority of my interviewees felt that gender discrimination exists against both genders and a large number felt that women were discriminated against, while only one student
out of the fifty-five students and teachers polled felt that discrimination exists against men. Very few interviewees said that they believed gender discrimination does not exist at all. While many students and teachers asserted that society has made a great deal of progress in fighting prejudice, some of the most common examples
of discrimination with which interviewees provided me pertained to the workplace. Students and teachers cited
the fact that although laws preventing discrimination do exist, in actuality, women receive less pay than men
do for similar jobs. In addition, interviewees noted that women are often not accepted in male dominated fields,
while men in female dominated fields are questioned as well.
Charley Kargman:
We as a nation, and a world, have come
a long way in our pursuit of gender
equality. In our discrimination against
women there’s sometimes an empty gap
for men. Because men were so dominant, it wasn’t an issue. But because
we’ve come so far, the opposite exists:
could there be a different double standard?
Anonymous:
I think that gender discrimination definitely exists against both genders. But
it happens in different ways. I think
women have more trouble inside the
workplace. I think men have more difficulty outside the workplace
Features
Rachel Buissereth:
There are certain things that men can’t
do although they should be able to, for
example; male nurses are rare because
it’s thought of as strange.
Mr. Bauld:
There is no gender discrimination against men. Men run and have run almost everything, with the occasional
woman as an exception that proves the rule. What happens is that, if women are allowed fairly to compete,
there will be fewer places for men. That is statistics. That is making the playing field actually fair. What happens is that in an individual case someone who loses out on a job or admission or whatever feels that he himself, as a person, has been the “victim” of affirmative action or some such thing. Discrimination, like racism, is
not about individual cases in that way; discrimination and racism are systemic and statistical, and therefore can
be corrected most quickly and fairly--so that the individual cases actually are more fairly decided—by systematic and statistical corrections. Those in power never want to relinquish it, and will fight to maintain it. That is
the backlash against feminism and advances by women.
Mr. Meredith:
As a society, we’ve come a long
way towards equal opportunities
for all, but their are still plenty
of times when people are judged
unfairly and given unequal opportunities because of their gender.
Features
The Accessories Make
the Outfit
ERIKA WHITESTONE
Is there sexism in advertisements? Wouldn’t you
notice it? You see commercials everywhere from
your television and magazines at your dentist to
the subway at 242nd Street. Women are regularly
portrayed as objects, or even accessories, in fashion
advertisements. They are also depicted as stupid and
helpless if without a man to guide them. The women
rendered in ads embody social stereotypes that make
normal girls who do not fit the inhuman criterion
feel insecure.
In this advertisement by Dolce & Gabbana, a
woman lies helplessly l on the ground overpowered by the man on top of her. This implies that
men are always physically and mentally superior to
women. In addition, there are multiple men in this
photograph who are just standing around. Why?
Maybe they want to watch the show. Do they
get to use her once the current man is through?
What is this trying to imply? The message is
clear: a woman is equivalent to a toy. You
can just pass her around and everyone gets
a go at her. Furthermore, all the men seem
to be looking down on her. Are men and
women not thought of as equal? Do
we want girls to take on roles as weak
women who cannot stand on their own
two feet? Clearly, we do not and these commercial
project inappropriate images to consumers
In this next advertisement by
Adolfo, a fur-garbed woman
stands parallel to “man’s
best friend”. This image
implies that women have
equal status to that of dogs
meaning they need to be
taken care as pets. They must
be watched twenty-four hours a day,
seven
days a week.
This commercial by Alessandro Dell’Acqua suggests that
women are unable to perform
undeniably simple tasks such
as putting gas into a car.
Helplessly reclined on the
sidewalk, she doesn’t
even seem to try fueling the car. Her long seems to suggest
ing
that without a man
there is simply no way to
succeed. So why bother
trying?
This advertisement from Paris
Hilton shows an exotic, surreal
woman as a fairy. When companies
produce dreamlike ads consumers
are drawn to the product because it
appears so foreign from regular per ceptions of products. Why are women
created as surreal objects, as well? Does this reflect
the ability change of the female body? Are women
products that can be shifted and changed to sell?
Features
made the students say their answers aloud, but only
one person in each group was an actual subject. All
others purposely gave a wrong answer. As a result,
thirty-seven of the fifty subjects conformed to an
obviously incorrect response.
Following this pattern, many young girls, and boys
as well, are willing to do anything to conform to
culture, including bulimia and anorexia. However,
we want every woman to learn how to live healthful
life and be confident in her own skin.
Girls should love themselves for who they are rather
than hating themselves for who they are not. Women
need good role models to show them how to be selfsufficient and independent. Luckily, some advertisements portray women in a healthy light and hopefully the number of these will grow. In the commercial
below created by Dove, women are told to accept
themselves as they are because real women have
“real curves.” The accessory is confidence.
The Versace advertisement above shows a clichéd,
idealistic woman, in other words, a stick skinny female. It enforces the belief that if you are not emaciated you are abnormal and in utter need of repair.
People interpret her figure as the norm and many try
to conform to fit society as projected by these unrealistic images.
A study from late world-renowned psychologist
Solomon Asch reveals a key case of conformity.
Telling them he was studying visual perception,
Asch presented different length bars to students in
groups of about ten and asked each student to tell
him which bar was the same height as exhibit 1. He
Opinions
Sexist Spending
Breast vs. Prostate Cancer Research Funding
JUSTIN KATIRAEI
October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month. Millions
of people have wristbands and bumper stickers and
t-shirts and hats and checkbooks devoted to breast
cancer research. The United States government spends
billions per year on breast cancer research. And while
of course, breast cancer is a problem and must be dealt
with, is the amount of resources spent on breast cancer
justifiable? Economically speaking, every dollar spent
on breast cancer is a dollar not spent on something else.
So, what about other issues, such as prostate cancer or
humanitarian aid?
Breast cancer funding is 400% of prostate
cancer funding. According to the New York Times
Health Section, “Among the big cancers, breast cancer
receives the most funding per new case, $2,596 — and
by far the most money relative to each death, $13,452.
Notably, prostate cancer, the most common cancer,
receives the least funding per new case at just $1,318.”
Prostate cancer is the most common cancer in the
United States, dwarfing breast cancer. And yet breast
cancer funding dwarfs prostate cancer funding. This is
not fair, and this must change.
In economics, there is something called the
equimarginal principle. Briefly, it states that when a
fixed amount of money (in this case, cancer research
funding) must be distributed among competing demands (in this case, breast cancer and prostate cancer
research), the money should be spent so that the last
(marginal) dollar spent on each demand will purchase
an equal amount of utility as the last dollar spent on
every other demand. In other words, if you have a
spare dollar that you want to donate to cancer research,
donating to breast cancer is not donating to prostate
cancer. The question is would donating to breast cancer
be a much less intelligent thing to do than donating to
prostate cancer? Currently, the answer is yes.
Every time you fight for breast cancer research, you are
fighting against prostate cancer research. The money
we spend on cancer research should go to saving as
many lives as possible, and not be dependent on powerful special interest groups, or the fact that women get
breast cancer and men get prostate cancer. So the next
time you all rally for breast cancer research, think of
the many more people afflicted with prostate cancer
that you are ignoring.
However, there are more issues to consider
here. This is a women’s issues club and publication,
and the money you raise is intended for women, I understand that. Also, there is much evidence that an increase in prostate cancer funding would also not make
much of an impact. The main question is what you will
spend your money on. The WIC has raised thousands
of dollars over the years, donating such money to help
solve some women’s issues. If you want to help the
most women as possible, then may I suggest donating
to humanitarian aid causes? In the past two years, the
WIC has donated to breast cancer, but before that, used
to donate to microcredit humanitarian aid. Donating to
humanitarian aid is a much better use of money, probably even the best use of money. 120,000 people die
everyday because of poverty; unsurprisingly, 60,000
are women. Each of those people could live off of one
dollar a day. The thousands of dollars WIC has raised
over the past two years could have gone to saving thousands of women’s lives. It is your choice where you
want to spend the money. By donating to breast cancer
research, hopefully, you will have prolonged the life of
one woman over the years. Hopefully. However, if you
had donated to humanitarian aid, you would have certainly saved the lives of hundreds of women. Certainly.
I implore the WIC to reconsider where they spend their
money, and put it where it can help the most people and
by extension, the most women. Return to humanitarian aid. There is no better way in the world to spend
money.
I am not writing to you to halt your funding of
breast cancer research. Due to the nature of the disease, I am not even advocating that prostate cancer
and breast cancer funding should necessarily be equal,
or that they should both be increased, or that they
should both be reduced, or that one of them should be
reduced. I am only arguing that you give all people
and all women the equal opportunity to live. I implore
you to realize what else you could be doing with that
check you were about to write to the local breast cancer
foundation, and how that money could be best spent in
another area.
Sources: well.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/03/06/cancer-funding-does-it-add-up/; www.bcrfcure.org/
Opinions
Artist: Suman Gidwani
Opinions
Women’s Beautification:
For Ourselves or Others?
LEAH BYLAND
Sources: www.newsweek.com/id/187758
Artist: Jenny Lim
According to Newsweek’s The Beauty Breakdown, over
a lifetime, an “average, looks-conscious” American
woman will spend $449,127 on beauty care. $449,127
can buy you a small apartment (in most of the rest of the
country: a large house), your schoolbooks for a year at
Horace Mann at least five hundred times over, 898,254
cups of tea from the cafeteria, or 179,651 regular slices
at Broadway Joe’s.
Why, exactly, are women spending so much their
appearances? “To look professional” is the answer I most
often encounter, both from my peers and myself. As a
woman in academic or work settings, appearances can
be make-or-break. Last spring, near the end of school,
this year’s seniors were called together for a grade-wide
college counseling meeting. On the topic of interviews,
besides encouraging students to schedule interviews
whenever possible, administrators reminded us to not
wear our “very short skirts,” our “ripped-up jeans,” or
our “uncombed hair.” The message to be brought home
is familiar enough: look presentable; presentation matters.
My experience with the importance of appearance has been a particular and consistent type: because
I’m tall and short-haired, I look older, more respectable,
and overall more adult-like. The oldest I’ve been mistaken for, thus far, is 29. I was sixteen at the time. On
the train, I’m often asked where I go to college. After
hearing that I’m not currently in college, my impromptu
questioner tends to ask what my major was, or where
I’m currently in graduate school. People are consistently
surprised when I explain that I am seventeen and in high
school, and they back up their initial guesses with the
argument that I “look mature.”
“Looking mature” carries a lot of weight with
women, particularly young women. I have always been
on the tall side, and I developed mature breasts and hips
earlier than the majority of my middle school peers. I
also began being on the business end of catcalls earlier
than the majority of my peers. Appearance, there, is the
one and only factor. Men whistling at me on the street
do not know me. They don’t know what I do for fun,
what I talk about with my friends, what color my walls
are painted. They do, however, know how I look, and
it’s easy for them to judge whether or not I am desirable- whether my appearance is good enough- from that
standpoint. Makeup, clothing, and haircut, in my experience, have great currency in the world of catcalling. I
cut my hair from past my shoulders to the “guy hair” I
have now, and though my appearance has not otherwise
changed, the catcalls have grown considerably more direct. I look more like a woman and less like a little girl,
so apparently it’s more appropriate to catcall me. It’s an
interesting backfire: in the constant effort to look professional and presentable, women seem to make themselves
easier targets for on-the-street harassment.
I believe, though, that appearance does matter.
As much as I try not to, I do, as most every person does,
judge people initially based on their appearances. I did,
last month, for the first time, get an $80 haircut instead
of the less than $30 crop I tend to get in town. Because
I get my hair cut short, I find I need to cut it every 45
days or so to keep it looking “presentable.” Looking at
the cost of maintain my hair, I find the amount of money
typically spent on women’s looking what we have decided is professional, presentable, and pretty to be entirely
understandable. Between the foundation, the lipstick,
the mascara, the haircuts, the chemical straightening, the
relaxers, the perms, the tooth whitening, the razors and
their enormously expensive cartridge blades, the lotions,
potions, and creams, the perfumes and deodorants, the
mousses and gels, it all adds up.
What I take offense to is the idea that the perfect hair, smooth legs, and fully made-up face should be
a woman’s baseline. I find it unfair that women are in
many spheres expected to put a remarkable effort into altering their appearance daily in order to look presentable,
while men are expected to only bathe, brush their teeth,
comb their hair, and shave their faces. Somehow it’s happened, over time, that women are expected to look perfect incessantly, and this behavior trickles down the ages
(I can’t be the only one seeing eighth graders fixing their
makeup between classes in the Pforzheimer bathrooms).
Don’t get me wrong: I am not at all anti-makeup. To the
contrary, I tend to go out with at least a little powder on,
generally more. However, it’s the mentality that bothers
me. I wear makeup because I like how it makes me feel.
That’s all well and good – people should do
things that make them feel beautiful and confident, after
all – but there is a difference between feeling good for
Opinions
your own sake and feeling good because you think that,
for once, you won’t be judged for your “flaws.” And
so many things are seen as flaws: freckles in the wrong
place, scars, acne (allow me to say this once and for all:
we all get it, no one really loves having it, but it happens
to everyone; can we please get over it?), frizzy hair (even
in the rain), leg hair (even in winter), and, heaven forbid, substantial body weight. In my opinion, these really
aren’t flaws. If your acne hurts when you roll over on
it in the night, then by all means, try to get rid of it, but
having fluffy hair or a birthmark or a few spare pounds
does not make you any less beautiful or any less a lady.
I’m just disheartened by the idea that we maintain our appearances so scrupulously because we’re
scared to let people see what we look like unaltered, lest
we be judged and disrespected for not “being willing to
put in the effort.” Honestly, if makeup and styling makes
you feel more awesome about yourself, then go for it – I
do – but we definitely need to revamp our views of why
it makes us happy.
Women in the Vintage Workplace
TOM EMMONS
The role of women in the workplace and the overall
economic climate of the United States have undergone
a sharp transformation since 1943, when the concept of
total equality between genders had not been fully put
into effect in American society. During that time period,
women suffered heavy economic discrimination at the
hands of the male-dominated work force, and as a result
it became extremely difficult for women to be able to
maintain a successful career.
In its July 1943 issue, Transportation Magazine
published an article for male employers with “helpful
tips” about which women were worth hiring for a job; it
essentially attempted to classify women as good employees or bad employees based solely on age, marital status,
body type, and whether or not they are afflicted with
“female weaknesses.” One of the tips in the article goes
so far as to say that, “[g]eneral experience indicates that
‘husky’ girls - those who are just a little on the heavy
side - are even more tempered and efficient that their
underweight sisters.” Needless to say, it not only goes
beyond a lack of perception, but borders on raw unintelligence, to assume that one can gauge how effective
somebody will be as an employee simply by noticing
whether or not they are slightly overweight.
To hear this almost comically Neanderthal
perspective is actually an enlightening experience in
some ways. Although it is troubling to realize how long
inequality and intolerance has been a blight on our society, it is also refreshing in a way. While the article serves
as a reminder of how recently it was that overt sexism
was commonplace in society, it also successfully points
out how much our society has progressed since that
time. Although it is true that gender imbalance is still an
issue in the workplace environment nowadays, it is also
undeniable that huge steps have been made in order to
heavily mitigate this imbalance. Since 1943, the United
States government has recognized the obvious discrimination against women in the work force that existed, and
attempted to remedy this discrimination through various methods, including the passing of Title XII in 1964,
which mandated that employers nationwide were not to
discriminate against employees and potential employees
due to their gender.
Despite the obvious embarrassment that this type
of sexism was once commonplace in our country, and
the bewilderment that I felt after reading this blatantly
sexist article, it was not until I looked at an example of
how sexist our country once was that I was able to fully
appreciate how far we have come as a society in terms of
gender equality from a time not too long ago when economic discrimination was something women in America
had to deal with on a daily basis.
Creative
Untitled Poem
SUMAN GIDWANI
In the house of God
Hope and sight
Worship and light
Dedication prevails
Through the struggles of life
We are united
Yet in the purest home, holiest place
We are divided
We are all togetherFrom now to eternity
No divide in spirit
Except on earth-in our passing phase
Sitting on the same floor
But on opposite sides
Separated only by a lineNot to be crossed any time
Following tradition
We enter “home”
Women on one side
Men on the other
Artist: Alice Taranto
Creative