Strollerderby : female

Save Your Baby Girl From Humiliating Baldness!

Kate Tuttle — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 15:00:00 GMT

Do you have a bald baby girl? Do you cringe when anyone asks your baby's sex, or assumes she's a boy? No? Well, honestly, neither did I, when my daughter was small and (briefly) bald. But apparently some parents really worry about this stuff, or at least the makers of Baby Bangs! are hoping they do.

Baby Bangs! (the exclamation mark appears to be a necessary part of the name) are little wigs attached to stretchy headbands, so that parents of infant girls can pretend they have more hair than they do. According to the product's web site:

Our patent pending HAIR+band accessory combination allows baby girl's (with little or no hair at all) the opportunity to have a beautifully realistic HAIR style in a SNAP!! It's quick, easy and baby barely knows it's there. Each Baby Bangs! HAIR+band has been made using only the finest ribbons and fabrics, PLUS our Baby Bangs! come to you pre-customized & size appropriate, cut, styled and ready for immediate wear. The wispy hair strands have been arranged in the cutest most adorable elfish coiffure!

Created by a "hair replacement artist" and her daughter -- and using her infant granddaughter as guinea pi -- I mean, model -- Baby Bangs! are made of synthetic fibers attached to elastic headbands. Instructions on the site detail the procedure for properly pulling them onto your baby's head and arranging the little hairs for "the cutest most adorable elfish coiffure!" One hardly knows where to begin.

My kids had a hard time coping with being forced to wear hats -- you know, to protect them from the cold and the damaging UV rays, not to make them look more gender-stereotypical -- so it's hard for me to believe it would be all that easy to get your baby to go along with your need to control their hair quantity. Beyond that, is it really such a huge problem if someone mistakes your girl baby for a boy? Or is the real problem that our society is so strange about gender that anyone would think it's an insult? And who really thinks "long hair = girl, short hair = boy" anymore, anyway? That kind of thinking is not much in evidence where I live. It's hard to escape the feeling that Baby Bangs! come just at a time when their very raison d'etre is starting to feel a bit laughable. That said, as Saturday Night Live has shown, laughing at wacky baby products is always in style.

Photo courtesy of Baby Bangs (and yes, the little girl is adorable -- but she's even cuter without her wig!)

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Post-Election, Women Hate Sexism Almost as Much as Feminism

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 21:34:00 GMT

A recent survey on post-election attitudes to sexism reveals that a majority of Americans live in La La Land. For starters: While most men don’t believe there is gender bias in the media or at home, almost half (4 in 10) “freely admit to having sexist attitudes towards a female president.”

Espousing similarly mind-boggling contradictions, the vast majority of women believe that Sarah Palin and Hillary Clinton were treated unfairly by the media—but would be mortified to call themselves “feminists.” Only 20 percent of women identify as feminist, and even fewer (17 percent) would be supportive of their daughters’ using the label.

Merriam Webster defines feminism as “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes.” In other words, most women are embarrassed to label themselves as people who believe in gender equality, but are outraged over the media’s coverage of Palin’s hair. Only 48 percent of women believe that the media treated Clinton fairly, and far fewer female respondents (29 percent) believe that Palin got fair treatment. (Perhaps Palin seemed to get harsher gender-based media coverage because Clinton wasn’t, say, buying $150,000 worth of clothes on the GOP’s dime?)

Sure, some high-profile activists may have given the term “feminist” a more extremist connotation than many women would like it to have, but that doesn’t necessitate rejecting the whole theory. I don’t agree with many of PETA’s over-the-top tactics, but that doesn’t mean I stop calling myself a vegetarian.

Ready for more oblivious sexism? 39 percent of men feel that the role of president is more “naturally suited” to a man than to a woman. I guess that explains why so many more men than women (two-thirds to less than half) believe there is gender equality in the home—the wife just does all the housework because she is more “naturally suited” to it.

On the upside, the poll was relatively small, with 1,000 respondents.

Photo: Jezebel

Dudes for Palin: Vote for the Hot Chick!

Two Years, Six Months, and 25 Days Before the Romance Dies

Kelly Mills — Wed, 29 Oct 2008 20:31:00 GMT

You were wondering when your marriage would all go to hell? There's this study saying the average lifespan of the "honeymoon" phase is two years, six months, and 25 days. Oooh, everyone set your calendar with a reminder. "I know there's something happening this weekend, what was it? Oh yeah, that's the day our marriage will become drudgery and crap."

But what exactly marks the end of the sweet love? It sounds like the researchers define this as effort. They say on average, this is the time when most guys start leaving socks on the floor and the toilet seat lid up, and the women stop wearing make-up and climb into sweats instead. Romantic dinners are a thing of the past, and the third anniversary isn't even celebrated. Oh, and you hardly (sniff) cuddle any more.

You know, the whole thing sounds a kinda stereotyical and lame to me. Marking marital closeness by female appearance effort and male hygiene effort... Eesh. Not surprisingly, this study was detailed in the Daily Mail. But anyway, I have a solution: Don't get married. Just live together, and you can completely avoid the whoooole thing.

The Plus Side to McCain's Scorn for Women's "Health"

Kelly Mills — Thu, 23 Oct 2008 21:26:00 GMT

Flowers grow out of, uh, manure, don't they? Over at Jezebel, they point out that since McCain used his finger quotes about women's health (you know, our concern for our "lives" and "future reproductive health" which are apparently, quite silly) there have been a slew of women sharing stories about subjects you don't hear much about. Things like late-term abortions and miscarriages. You know, a couple aspects of our health stuff. The stories are often wrenching to read.

Brett already told you about A Little Pregnant's feelings on the subject. If you missed this very personal story of late-term abortion from the Boston Globe, I highly recommend you read it, with kleenex handy. And Dooce also pointed to Flotsam's story on pregnancy loss at 22 weeks. Oh yes, lots of "health" concerns. We women are just full of those.

I suppose if nothing else, it is a strange blessing women are sharing all their most profound and gut-wrenching experiences. If politicians feel comfortable dismissing very real matters of life and death and health, while at the same time legislating them in ways that do not protect our most basic rights, then it's only right they should have to look in the faces of the women who have suffered immeasurably and maybe someday answer to them. Though I won't hold my breath.

They Say: No One with a Uterus Should Vote McCain

Bipartisan Group Says McCain Would Be Bad For Kids' Health

In Hard Economic Times, Bonnie Fuller Knows What Women Want

Kelly Mills — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 22:36:00 GMT

Lots of people have been saying that in this election, women finally matter. At last our concerns and issues are being heard and addressed as though we, you know, made up half the population or something. And clearly one of the issues that matters to women is the economy, what with how it affects all our lives and all. So it makes sense that Bonnie Fuller, in her NY Times blog post, would want to examine what matters to women in these troubled and uncertain financial times. Is it health care costs? Job security? The high price of food and gas? Planning for our retirements (ha!) or trying to save in case the kids want to go to college?

Uh, no. According to Fuller, what matters to us is... our looks.

Yes, while we may feel the wolf at the door, we apparently still shell out money for our pricey hair stylists and our Botox. Oh, but let's clarify: By "women" she means women who live in New York. And she knows what they all want, because she "canvassed" some stylists, plastic surgeons, cosmetic companies, and "even" body waxers. (What's up with that, Bonnie? Don't minimize the importance of the waxers.) Do my frequent quotation marks indicate that I think her ideas are about as helpful as an untreatable rash? Here's her closer: "Time will tell, I guess, but the anecdotal evidence suggests that New York women may end up living in a box on the West Side Highway, but we’ll still have fabulous highlights and perfectly shaped eyebrows!"

Cough.

So we could debate the ideas that spring to mind here, whether women are vain or held to a higher aesthetic standard that relates to their employment prospects, but this piece proves the trend of women clinging to Botox as much as it proves fairies exist, so it ain't worth it. Maybe I'll canvas some women and ask if during a time when people are worried about being able to provide for their children, if Fuller actually makes women look bad or if she's just more like a really annoying gnat, and we'd be better off ignoring her and hoping she finds an open window somewhere.

A third of parents no longer saving for college

Explaining financial troubles to the kids

Female Med Students Underestimate Themselves

Hannah Tennant-Moore — Mon, 06 Oct 2008 19:30:00 GMT

It’s clear that women have shattered the glass ceiling of achievement within the medical profession. They just don’t feel that way.

According to a new study, female medical students feel more anxious and less confident about their knowledge and abilities. Males, on the other hand, tend to overestimate their competence, even though women consistently do as well or better than their male counterparts in medical school. And, at the end of medical school, males tended to unhesitatingly report that they felt like doctors, while women tended to weigh their medical knowledge before answering the question.

According to the study’s authors, more than half of medical students are female, but educators may not be taking into account different learning needs between the genders, overlooking, for instance, the issue of self-confidence.

Although I'm glad that this question is being raised, what bothers me about this and similar gender studies is the implication that women’s natural tendencies are wrong. Personally, I would rather have a female doctor who was just as competent but a bit less cocksure than a male doctor who believed himself more competent than he actually was. Then again, if women are less confident and more anxious because they have been conditioned to feel that way, parents and educators have a whole lot of work to do well before youth even get to medical school.

Photo: Student BMJ

Man dresses up as a woman to marry a man

Brett Singer — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 13:00:00 GMT

So two people get married. A man and a woman. Or so the clerk thought.

Turns out "Justine" was really "Justin." Specifically Justin L. McCain, an 18-year-old who wanted to marry Antonio E. Blount, his 31-year-old boyfriend. One reason they were able to pull it off was because of a "design quirk" in the Virginia driver's licenses – the "M" or "F" in the "gender" area is obscured by the state seal. One wonders why no one seemed to notice that the name on the license was "Justin" rather than "Justine". Newport News Court clerk Rex Davis said that, "When things are rolling along and you don't have any reason to suspect that somebody is not being completely forthright with you, you might not take the time to check." Gee, and I thought New York City was a busy place. Davis issued the happy couple a marriage license, and then they went to Richmond to get hitched. Which they did.

The story makes it sound like the ruse might not have been discovered at all if McCain hadn't come back to Newport News to apply for a name change. Our busy clerk Rex Davis became suspicious when he saw the name, which was – get this -- Penelopsky Aaryonna Goldberry, which blogger Christian Hall points out is "pretty much the best name ever." I mean, where the hell do you come up with that one?

The marriage is illegal in the state of Virginia because, well, they're both dudes. Or rather, they're both "legally" dudes. The article quotes attorney Cole Thaler from the group Lambda Legal as saying that, "it's not deceptive for a transgender person who lives their life as a gender different from the gender they were assigned." In fact, "You could have a driver's license in New York state that says you're a male and have a birth certificate from New York City that says you're female," says Paisley Currah of the Transgender Law and Policy Institute.

According to the article, most states (the exceptions being Tennessee, Ohio and Idaho) "typically change one's gender on their birth certificate following gender reassignment surgery." What's not clear is whether or not Justin/Justine/Penelopsky has had surgery or not.

Now prosecutors have to decide whether or not to bring charges against the two lovebirds. Of course, if we would just LET GAY PEOPLE GET MARRIED THIS WOULD NOT BE AN ISSUE. Ahem.

And just for yucks, here's the video for Aerosmith's Dude (Looks Like A Lady).

image: worth1000.com

Related posts:

Strollerderby : female

Save Your Baby Girl From Humiliating Baldness!

Post-Election, Women Hate Sexism Almost as Much as Feminism

Two Years, Six Months, and 25 Days Before the Romance Dies

The Plus Side to McCain's Scorn for Women's "Health"

In Hard Economic Times, Bonnie Fuller Knows What Women Want

Female Med Students Underestimate Themselves

Man dresses up as a woman to marry a man

Pro-Life Pharmacy won't sell birth control

And Now - The Gay Brain

Chris Martin Might Have Been Gay, Had It Not Been for Boobs!

Transgender Man's Baby is Coming Soon, But What About the Birth Certificate?

Rudest Question to Ask a Pregnant Woman: Lesbian Edition

New York Governor's Decision to Recognize Gay Marriages Brings Unexpected Praise (and Hugs)