March 18, 2013
Work-life balance is a hot topic these days. Famously non-feminist Marissa Mayer caused a recent stir by eliminating telecommuting at Yahoo!, a move that many mothers decried as family unfriendly and economically counterproductive. Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In is sparking heated conversations about women, workplace, leadership, and motherhood. Each time a powerful working woman joins the conversation about family and work, the media reacts as though this conversation is new when it is anything but. It’s been circulating around the kitchen table and the office water cooler for quite a while. And it’s time we moved it to the courtroom.
Continue reading »
February 4, 2013
I wrote two posts analyzing last year’s Superbowl commercials: Who’s Buying It? and Girl, Look at That Body. This year, I figured there would be plenty of material to work with: lots of examples of men being masculine by hurting each other and turning women into trophies, whatnot like cars or, just to change things up a bit, cheeseburgers. And I was right: examples abound. So many, in fact, that it’s nearly impossible to choose which ones to discuss. Should I spend my words on Audi, who encouraged teenage boys to take the car, take the girl, take the punch, and smirk all the way home? Or GoDaddy, which presented a close-up, geeked-out fantasy in all its stereotyped glory? I could examine, in excruciating detail, what it’s like to imagine being a woman lying on the beach while a scorpion cuts the tie on your bikini top (hint: it doesn’t make you want to cavort topless in the ocean, as Fiat seems to think it does). And then there’s Calvin Klein, not to be outdone by last year’s H &M commercial, jumping on the bandwagon of male objectification so joyfully you can almost hear the gleeful cackling of the ad execs, prying open the door to a whole new world of possibilities.
Continue reading »
