There are many people talking loudly about how over-sexualized, inappropriate, highly suggestive the media is at all times and in all places. This outreach tends to focus specifically on women and female representations. There is currently a video making the rounds on Facebook and in other places stressing just these things, along with a discussion […]
Archives for pop culture
Dynamite by Taio Cruz
This song took much of my classroom attention last week. In each of my three college classes we watched the music video. Dynamite is a relatively well-known, currently popular song. Most of my college students had heard it, many of them had danced to it in the clubs. But only one or two had seen […]
Bodies and age and modeling
There has been much to-do, over the past several months, about “plus-sized models.” All of this conversation is, of course, moving media images in the right direction. But it is using language that is damaging. First, some history: The bulk of this conversation started back in September when Glamour magazine put a photo of a […]
On the Glamour parade
I wrote a reaction over on The Belly Project about Glamour magazine’s article and accompanying photo spread with “plus-sized” models. Glamour’s rather self-righteous tone and the plethora of too-excited, supposed-society-exploding headlines were all getting to me. The one really good thing to come out of Glamour’s photo shoot? This really beautiful picture: (Please ignore the […]
The seductive allure of the music…
Tonight I am preparing for a class tomorrow morning on gender. I start all my college classes with a song that is relevant to the topic, and my dear partner and I were playing around with music for tomorrow, including The Kink’s Lola, Vitamin C’s Girls Against Boys, Beyonce’s If I Were a Boy, and […]
My purple hair
I don’t think I’ve mentioned in this space that I dyed my hair purple about six months ago. I hadn’t ever dyed my hair before, and I thought it would be fun. So away I went! Bleach first, then a luscious dark purple. The purple is in a crown around my hairline – the majority […]
Sexting: What now?
So here’s my overview from last Thursday and Friday‘s conversation on sexting: Yes, it can be problematic, as can almost any form of communication. Texting is (currently) a ubiquitous communication method, and it doesn’t appear to be going anywhere anytime soon, so as parents, teachers, and caring adults, we have to make our peace with […]
Sexting, oh sexting.
I’ve been asked a number of times in recent months what I think about sexting. So finally: my long-awaited response! There’s two different kinds of “sexting” that need to be addressed, and the issues are so substantially different that they need two separate conversations. So today I’m going to address text-only texts, e-mails, and other […]
Dancing through body image
I was contacted today by an amazing group: PURE: Public Urban Ritual Experiment. They have an upcoming show, where the dancers reflect on their body image as it developed over their life spans. It sounds completely amazing, and if anyone wants to fly me to New York next weekend, I am totally there. If you […]
More on hugs and teen culture
A couple of weeks ago I interviewed John Styn about his project Hug Nation. One of the points we talked about was how critical physical contact is to us humans – in particular how important hugging is. Then yesterday, the New York Times published an article on teenage hug culture: For Teenagers, Hello Means “How […]
