Blog 9

I don't know how "Women's Studies" related this week's post is going to be, but I am in the situation because I am a woman, so close enough I guess. My best friend since 6th grade is having a baby in December, and I am throwing a baby shower in 2 weeks. I've been working on it for 2 months now, and I think that I am pretty close to having everything ready. Now, though, I am having all of these dreams about things going hellishly wrong. Last night I dreamed that everybody ignored the gift registry and only brought onesies and receiving blankets. That's it, packages and packages of onesies and blankets. I have also dreamed that I run out of food, or don't have enough plates, stupid stuff like that. Now, I'm analyzing why I've been having all these dreams (nightmares really) and I think that I have come up with a plausible reason.

Women are always trying to impress each other. I have always thought that women don't wear nice clothes, ridiculously uncomfortable shoes, faces full of makeup, and shellacked hairdos to trap a man but to show off for other women. We know how catty we can be to each other, sometimes in the guise of a compliment. "Oh Ethel, that outfit is so 'interesting'. I couldn't pull off that color, but you..." Which basically means "That is the ugliest thing that I have ever seen and poop green is not flattering on anyone." So, my real fear lays in the possibility that one of the 50 or so ladies that are coming to this shindig will find my decorations tacky, or the venues wrong, or some other picky ass thing that only a woman would notice. Cuz, I have worked hard, and shelled out A LOT of money, and if one of those ingrates doesn't like it I will just snap.

Luckily, the party is in a short 2 weeks, and then I never have to worry about this sort of woman induced angst ever again. Until my step sister wants me to have one for her, or my little brother finally manages to knock up one of his many "girlfriends". And then, I will be right back to having nightmares about the punch fountain not working.

Blog 8

Because it is almost Halloween, and because something that I read in my textbook got in my craw, I want to talk about slasher flicks this week. You know what a slasher flick is don't you? Crazed, usually masked, clearly sexually repressed, psycho stalks and then slashes every teenager in sight except for one girl who had the good sense to not have premarital relations with her nitwit boyfriend who was probably a victim of masked guy? Yeah, like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Well, my Women's Study textbook calls these out for their depictions of violence against women. I say, watch again with an open mind. These movies are not victimizing women, no they are celebrating them. Slasher flicks should be required watching for any Women's Studies student.

Let us use young Nancy from the original Nightmare on Elm Street as our archetype. Nancy is a parent's wet dream. She is a good girl, doesn't cause trouble for her dad the cop and doesn't call her mother out for her excessive drinking and whoring about town. She has a hunky boyfriend and a slutty best friend, both of whom are dispatched by Freddy the friendly neighborhood killer in short order. But not our Nancy. Nancy figures out, on her own, who Freddy is, what he is doing in the local teenagers' dreams, and comes up with the plan to defeat him, again on her own. Nancy realizes that she alone has the power to defeat the evil that is Freddy; and through brute strength, well thought out and placed booby traps, and shear deductive reasoning she does just that. She does it so well that Wes Craven brings her back 2 more times to do the same thing. Now, maybe I am biased because I love these movies, but I think that this makes Nancy, and all of the other "Final Girls" (a term coined by Nancy Clover) feminist icons and not the subject of derision that the authors of my text want us to see them as.


So, it is almost Halloween. Go rent a handful of slasher flicks and see for yourself. Nancy, Laurie, Sidney, Ellen, and Sally are just waiting to prove me right. And as long as directors and writers keep coming up with new psycho killers to scare the crap out of us, we will be treated to more feminist icons just like them, who use their wits and strength to defeat evil.

Blog 7

I read an article in last Sunday's Journal-Gazzette about the dearth of young men in area colleges and universities. It appears that there were almost 50 percent more females than males enrolled in Allen County (IN) colleges in 2006 ( http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/LOCAL/710070352/-1/LOCAL07 ). It's a phenomenon that I have noticed in my own classes. Early on in my college career, some 6 long years ago, my classes seemed pretty evenly divided between men and women. But lately, I have noticed that the young men in classes are dropping off. Just this semester I have one class with 3 men and another with just one lonely young man (it IS Women's Studies, but still, 1 guy?) While I can't help but rejoice that young women are entering college at such a high rate, I can't help but be concerned about what is happening to our area's young men. And, it turns out that this is a national problem.

In this little corner of the world, many of the jobs available are in industrial settings, as they have been for years. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are going the way of the dinosaur. We are seeing more outsourcing, automation, and companies just picking up and moving elsewhere, places like Mexico where the labor is cheaper. While in the past you could get a great paying job right out of high school in these industrial jobs, now it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a factory job that pays more than $8.00 an hour to start. So, it goes to follow that in order to make a better living, you are going to need more than the high school diploma that use to get you a foundry job. College is becoming more important, but less men seem to be making that decision.

So, why aren't our young men entering higher education? And, what can we do to turn the tide? I wonder if some of the efforts that have been made in the past to encourage girls to attend college have had an adverse effect on boys. Have they gotten the impression that society deems it more important for girls to attend college? I hypothesize that we need just as many programs to encourage boys to seek higher education as we have for girls. And, boys should be steered towards what are traditionally thought of as "female" majors, like nursing and education; in the same way that for the past decade girls have been encouraged to enter male dominated fields like engineering. And most importantly, those of us who are raising boys now, the women who have benefitted from the programs that encouraged girls to attend college, should be sure that we are instilling in our sons the desire to obtain a higher education.

Blog 6

It's October, so that could only mean one thing. No matter where you go, no matter where you look, there will be a proliferation of pink products, ostensibly to raise money to fight breast cancer. Of course we all know that breast cancer is a very real threat to the health of many women in the United States. According to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure website (http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm) 10 million people around the world could die in the next 25 years from breast cancer if a cure is not found. Breast cancer will affect 1 in 8 women in their life time, so if you personally are never diagnosed, the odds are someone you know will be. So it is absolutely a disease that needs financial support in order to find a cure.

So, why does the mass of pink products every year bother me so much? Shouldn't I be supportive of companies that want to donate proceeds from the sale of their products, no matter how tenuous their connection to women, breasts, cancer, or health (Candy? Waffle irons? Hammers?) My concern is that these companies are not as altruistic as they are simply clever marketers (and I am not pointing out any company specifically, so no one sue me). As consumers, we get a warm fuzzy feeling when we believe that we are donating to a good cause, ie breast cancer research. That warm fuzzy is bound to rub off on the company that we feel was responsible for making us feel this way, thus the company has cultivated a life long customer.

And, again I'm not pointing fingers, but how much of the purchase price of these products really goes towards breast cancer research? The companies have to specially make the pink packaging, or the pink product, upping the price of production. Then, they advertise the special pink products, adding still more cost to their bottom line. So, after all of this added expensive, how much of your purchase price ends up in the hands of an organization that can do some good? Even if it does go to a cancer organization, then how much goes toward actual research, or to help an individual patient. These organizations have costs that they pay in order to stay solvent as well. Leases, advertising, staffs, all of these have to be paid somehow. So, let's go back to the original $14.99 that you paid for a pink toaster that brands a ribbon on your toast. After the company that made the toaster gets their cut to pay production and advertising costs, they donate, let's say $5.00 to a cancer organization. Now, the cancer organization takes that $5.00 and takes out their operating costs. Hypothetically, we are left with, what say $1.50 that will actually go to research or support. Now, wouldn't you have been better off just writing a check directly to the cancer organization and skipping the toaster you probably will never use? I thought so.

I'm done being glib. Breast cancer is bad. There are no amount of my fancy words or sarcastic repartee that can make that sentence mean anything other than it does. And I am all for supporting an organization that legitimately wants to help science find a cure, not only for breast cancer but cancer, period. And AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, you get the picture. So please, at some point this month, or anytime you feel particularly generous, donate to a cause, any cause. But by all means don't feel pressured by all that pink. If you need a new snow blower, and don't care if the neighbors point and laugh, then knock yourself out and buy the pink one. Otherwise, just give when and where you can. Besides, we shouldn't just have a breast cancer month anyway, we should be doing something about it all year