Do you ever have those days where you think you might just explode if you have to endure one more wolf whistle, cat call, or “hey baby?” Do you feel your face fuming but instead just walk on by, head phones in ears, pretending you don’t hear?

While that is certainly the most common and least confrontational response, it doesn’t do anything to reverse the culture of impunity that allows street harassers to do what they do without even a hint of shame. The truth is, all forms of sexual harassment and disrespect towards women—whether it’s a simple inane comment or an act of violence—come from the same place: the idea that the female body is a publicly owned entity, there for all men to comment on and use as they please.

In honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month and Anti Street Harassment Week (April 7-13), EcoSalon gives you a list of “Talk Back” ammunition. The truth is that we still live in a world where talking back can also be taking a risk. However, there are certainly instances when speaking up directly and confidently is a powerful tool to challenge the wide acceptance of this tired form of oppression. Riding a bus or walking through a public place or a busy street are good examples; a late night walk home perhaps isn’t.

Organizations like Stop Street Harassment and Hollaback provide resources and encourage both women and bystanders to confront, report, and record this kind of intimidation. Tips include speaking in a neutral, yet assertive voice; not losing your temper or swearing; and to decide when you’re done making your point to avoid a back and forth battle (for more very useful tips see here).

Despite what some men—and even some women—will tell you, street harassment is not a compliment. If it makes you feel uncomfortable or objectified or just plain irritated, it’s not okay. Remember that you have a right to talk back, whereas many other women in the world may not.

Go on and give some of these replies a try:

1.”You look like someone whose opinion is irrelevant.”

2.“I’m sorry, you must have me confused with someone whom you think you can speak to that way.”

3.”It’s funny you should say that, because I don’t recall asking for your opinion on my appearance.”

4.”Can you please think of a more imaginative way to assert your threatened masculinity.”

5.”You should save that for your girlfriend—oh wait, you probably don’t have one because you clearly don’t know how to respect women.”

6.”God, you are just so clever and original. I bet your friends just love you.”

7.”Do you disrespect all the women in your life, or just ones you’ve never met?”

8.”Sweetheart, please stop perpetuating the patriarchal dividend. It’s so over.”

9.”Honestly, it’s too early in the morning for misogyny and patriarchy.”

10.”Please evolve before you speak to me any further.”

12.”Has that ever really worked for you?”

13.”You must have a solid track record of saying stupid shit to women.”

14.”Have you really not evolved past the cat call/wolf whistle/hey baby?? Get with the times, bro.”

15.”Would you like your wife/sister/daughter to be treated the same way you are treating me right now?”

16.”You need a new line, man—and also a lesson on how to respect women.”

17.”Wow, you’re the first man to ever say that to me!”

18.”Look at me any harder and your pants might split.”

19.”If I was trying to track down a good time, I would have been a little more creative.”

20. And for the guys who want to speak up: “You’re making women hate men. Stop it.”

Image credit: TED Conference

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An outsider can learn a great deal about British culture by examining the readership of its leading newspapers. Unlike the US, which has few national papers, the UK has a bevy: there’s The Guardian’s progressive coverage, The Times which sits right of centre, and the traditional and conservative Telegraph, to name just a few.

However, when it comes to the UK’s most widely read paper, Rupert Murdoch’s The Sun, the most distinguishing feature has less to do with politics and more to do with objectifying women.

It seems almost incomprehensible that for more than forty years, a publication that brands itself as a mainstream, family newspaper has gotten away with content that is more suited to Playboy than a Pulitzer. However, with their recurring feature of Page 3—which features a topless “glamour model” photographed in every issue—The Sun has managed to do just that.

Since it was created, Page 3 has been a cultural mainstay, not a seedy pleasure that’s viewed only in private. Nearly every Brit—whether they read The Sun or not—knows what a “Page 3” girl is and it’s not uncommon to sit next to man on the Tube who is openly ogling the page.

When writer and campaigner Lucy Anne Holmes picked up a copy of The Sun during London 2012 to catch up on the achievements of Team GB superstars Jessica Ennis and Victoria Pendelton, she was relieved when she saw no image of a topless woman on Page 3. However, when she reached page 13, she was greeted by “a huge picture of a woman in her knickers—an image bigger than any of the other sports stars.”

Holmes’ outrage, coupled with a lifetime of feeling bad about her body and disempowered as a woman, drove her to start the No More Page 3 campaign via a simple petition on Change.org—the first one she’d ever started. She now has 8 volunteers, over 88,000 petition signatures, nearly 14,000 Twitter followers, a bevy of support from women’s organizations and a letter to editor Dominic Mohan signed by dozens of members of parliament.

EcoSalon spoke with Holmes about why the campaign is important and where she got the courage to take on media and publishing’s most ruthless mogul.

Rosie Spinks: ‘No More Page 3’ is your first campaigning effort. Before you took on this activist role, did you consider yourself a feminist?

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London Fashion Week’s Estethica Exhibition, now in its 14th consecutive season, is the British Fashion Council’s showcase of the industry’s leading sustainable style-makers.

At the launch of the Fall/Winter 2013 exhibition at London’s Somerset house over the weekend, a number of sustainable designers who have previously graced the posts of EcoSalon were present, including Mich Dulce and Pachacuti. But it was the newcomer Rudá Rings–the work of Brazilian designer Janice Perez–that caught our attention with creations that are equal parts organic and outrageous.

Perez’s designs have indigenous roots, both in their name— Rudá means ‘the god of love’ in the indigenous Tupi Guarani language—and in the materials that she sources. The base of her rings are made of Brazilian hardwood that she reclaims from discarded furniture and demolished houses. She tops them off with raw stones—mainly working with hematite, pyrite, vanadinite, uvite and lapis lazuli—from 35 countries including Brazil, Mexico, Chile, and Kazakhstan. Lastly, Perez polishes the wood with carnauba wax, sourced from a palm tree commonly found in the northeast of Brazil.

Perez never alters the stone, as she says that she likes to use them “the way nature provides it” and then craft the wood around it. Formerly a shoe designer like her father, Perez decided to start her own label in 2007 and considered creating a sustainable and eco-friendly product as her core criteria.

In order to work with the reclaimed hardwood she uses, Perez had to develop her own techniques by adapting her knowledge of several handicrafts. The ring’s shape is partially left to chance once she whittles down a block of wood to a suitable size and then drills a hole for the wearer’s finger.

The result is that each of her creations is unique and utterly show-stopping. With some of her rings taking up a whole hand, her creations could more accurately be described as sculpture than as jewelery.

The British Fashion Council’s Estethica’s criteria includes elements such as sourcing of materials, life cycle of the product, and supply chain knowledge, among others. While Perez is certainly taking heed of these factors in her designs, most impressive is her demonstrable passion for her creations, which not even a language barrier was able to mask at London Fashion Week.

“The ring needs to fascinate,” says Perez, “At the same time it needs to be sustainable. The designer will achieve that enhancing his creativity.”

Images courtesy of Rudá Rings.

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As EcoSalon has reminded readers time and time again since our beginnings five years ago, the days when sustainable fashion was considered a fringe endeavor are long since over.

The UK-based industry body Ethical Fashion Forum (EFF) is perfect example of sustainable fashion, representing 6,000 members in more than 100 countries who are committed to creating beautiful and sustainable designs as a rule, not an exception.

Last week EFF hosted the third installment of the SOURCE Brand Preview, an online social enterprise which aims to be the “world’s leading source of sustainable fashion business intelligence.” By bringing together designers, buyers, press, and stylists in the form of an online (and carbon-free) webinar, SOURCE aims to educate fashion’s key players in order to transform the livelihoods of those working in the textile industry and reduce the environmental impact of the industry altogether.

EcoSalon previewed the collections presented in last week’s online forum and chose four standout designs from the most impressive category: womenswear young brands. We love these collections for their fresh aesthetics and the fact that each has a sustainable ethos underpinning their work.

Treches

The geometric designs of the Berlin-based brand Treches exude the hip vibe of what is currently considered Europe’s coolest city. A big fan of cut-outs, contrasting colors, and clean lines, the brand’s Norwegian born creator says she designs for an urban consumer. The brand uses organic and ethically sourced fabrics exclusively and, in an effort to cut down on waste as their production expands, they save their scraps and discarded fabric to donate to smaller projects.

Atelier Laure Paschoud

Swiss-born designer Laure Paschoud sees fashion not as clothing, but as “a useful and universal art.” Her designs are demarcated by beautiful draping and solid fabrics which help create an overall look that’s feminine with a touch of boyishness. She uses fabrics that are certified organic, fair trade, or recycled and manufactures her pieces in a Bosnian production workshop—run by a Swiss-Bosnian family—as part of an effort to rehabilitate the Eastern European nation and ensure the sustainability of local knowledge.

MuMu Organic

Greek designer Athena Bentila’s MuMu Organic label is inspired by the landscape of the Cyclades islands where she initially created it. The ethereal and colorful pieces are made with certified organic cotton from Fair Trade producers in India and her other fabrics are imported from a Global Organic Textile Standard (GOTS) certified factory in Turkey. The water-based prints are based on the environmentally-inspired paintings of Dutch artist Roland Wakker. Perhaps most pertinent though, is that all of MuMu Organic’s clothes are produced locally, providing much needed employment to the struggling Greek economy.

Kampala Fair

As the name might suggest, the clothing, accessories and housewares of Kampala Fair are produced in a workshop in Uganda’s capital city. The modest and flattering cuts of their dresses coupled with vibrant colors and African prints are an effortless standout. Taking the stance that jobs are more important than charity, the aim of the brand is to create sustainable livelihoods for women and provide them with skills to provide for their future.

All images courtesy of designer.

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In the mid 1400s Johannes Gutenberg invented the first printing press, a technology which allowed information to spread far more rapidly thanks to what is now a simple concept: movable type.

Nearly 550 years later, the advent of the internet had much the same effect, but you’ll have a hard time getting people to agree over which invention had a greater impact.

Graphic designers James Cuddy and Roma Levin along with digital maker Danilo Di Cuia comprise a London-based design collective that is tackling that question head-on. Their ongoing project, Out of Print, is an interactive exploration of the interplay between technology and the tangible.

With an installation that featured as part of autumn’s London Design Festival, an app, and a website in development, Out of Print is a multimedia endeavor that stemmed in part from the collective’s desire to reconcile two very different parts of their lives.

“We’ve all done printing and things that take a while—they’re quite tactile and they’re quite considered. But we also work in advertising where it’s very disposable and ‘now,’” Levin said. “We wanted to use letterpress not as a way to paint quaint, cute posters but as a way to show the contrast between the two technologies and the fact that they can work together at the same time.”

Step one was creating software that would generate headlines at random by aggregating words from trending headlines across selected news sources. The app uses the simple headline structure of subject, action, object—modeled after the loathed and loved British tabloid the Daily Mail—as the base of a simple algorithm.

When attendees of the exhibition entered the space, they chose what should be printed from a stream of fabricated headlines on a computer. The trio then used the most basic printing technology possible to create posters which filled the wall space. Think of it as a physical manifestation of Twitter, just much slower.

“There’s the idea that when you send a Tweet you forget about it after a couple of hours,” Levin said. “Whereas we wanted to play with what would happen if the Tweet turns into what looks like a work of art.”

Even though the assembly of the headlines was generated randomly by the created app, Cuddy said something resembling the hashtag phenomenon was evident as the exhibition progressed.

“You’d roughly see the things in the news change over the days. One day it’d be all about Kate Middleton and the next day something else,” Cuddy said. “So we want to take that idea and build the website around building up an archive of 2013 news.”

While the project did create aesthetically pleasing posters and generate some sales, the trio says that for them, using a printing press is not just a simple exercise in nostalgia destined to end up on Pinterest. Levin, who works in advertising, says he is increasingly put off by the fact that digital media is predominately used in a commercial capacity.

“For me, the project came about as a kind of reaction against the fact that digital is used heavily to just sell more things,” Levin said “So that was one of reasons why we wanted to reverse it and look at it from more of a perspective of how tech can serve other purposes.”

Cuddy added that despite the heavy use of technology throughout their design work, the collective’s ethos is all about putting a focus on the intrinsic value of a tangible object, and how that can coexist with technology.

“I do still value physical objects and I think things have almost come full circle in that the internet is now increasingly controlling physical objects,” Cuddy said “A lot of these new technologies are so young and are constantly being shaped, so I think it’s useful to step sideways a little and just sort of let them—they are changing the way we communicate, but they also have the potential to enhance it.”

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Step away from the screen—at least for a while

When British author and artist Gemini Adams was living in Los Angeles several years ago, she was at an uncertain transitioning point in her life. Feeling unsettled, she found herself turning more and more to social media outlets such as Facebook to quell her pangs of loneliness.

“I had a scenario where four of my close friends in LA had moved away and I was feeling vulnerable and bereft,” Adams said. “There was a gap between the life I had and the life I was to going to have and for me, it was so easy to fill that with Facebook.

Recognizing the beginnings of this quasi-addiction prompted Adams to create her new book, The Facebook Diet, a collection of humorous depictions of social media addiction. With 28 percent of Facebook users admitting to checking their profile before they even get out of bed, many are probably more familiar with Adams’ drawings than they’d like to admit.

While the content is intended to be amusing, the book tackles one of the more pressing issues of modern times: technology addiction and the inability of many users to unplug. Adams, an avid yoga practitioner, talks often about being ‘present’ in any given task or moment—something which the constant stream of information available on the internet runs in direct opposition to.

“I think that as a society it’s so necessary for us to be living in the digital world: news magazines are going digital, kids are using tablets in school etc,” Adams said. “But when you’re on a digital device you’ve got so many things out there that are distractions and if you don’t have any self control or you haven’t been taught how to practice being present then I think that creates a serious problem.”

A Neilson report on social media last year found that Americans spend 23 percent of their online lives on Facebook and other social networks. Despite this huge time investment, Adams’ point isn’t that social media is an evil, all-consuming force that healthy people should eschew altogether. On the contrary, it’s a useful tool and, for a growing number of people, an integral part of professional lives. Instead, she advocates practicing restraint in various ways.

“Building an awareness of why you’re using social media is the most important thing,” Adams said. “Creating set spaces where you are completely disconnected and sticking to them is important. Having a schedule—swimming, running, or even watching a movie—makes us conscious of the amount of time we’re being forced to interact with computers.”

With increasing rates of ADHD, shortened attention spans in children, and physical side effects from sitting hunched over all day, Adams is part of a growing group that are urging people to go on a ‘digital detox.’ The non-profit Reboot has promoted National Day of Unplugging—inspired by the Jewish Sabbath—since 2010. Many prominent writers are pointing out the value of taking one day per week away from technology. Not responding to email of any kind when you’re on vacation or a weekend away—once a risky move—is now more accepted.

To help with the transition, Apps and software such as Mac Freedom, which dis-enables your internet for set intervals of time so you can focus on creating, and Self Control, which blocks particularly distracting sites, are good tools. And of course, says Adams, there is always the option of leaving your smart phone at home from time to time.

For Adams, creating a book about technology turned out to be a way to get away from the technology that she felt was lessening her quality of life. She encourages others to pick up old fashioned habits—writing long-hand, reading a print book—in order to do the same.

“I was so sick of sitting at the computer,” Adams said. “I wanted that tangible experience of creating. So doing this book allowed me to go out and do research, talk to people, go experience the world, go and draw and have a really tangible rather than digital addiction.”

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The ever elusive fashion industry gets an ethical checkpoint.

Information about what goes into our food is becoming increasingly transparent—with nutrition labels can find out what’s in it, how much, where it was made, and in some cases, under what conditions. When it comes to fashion though, the commodity chain still largely remains in a state of elusiveness.

Twenty years ago, when designer Carry Somers founded Pachacuti—a hat brand that specializes in panama and felt hats made in Ecuador—there was no question that she would base her brand on a framework of transparency and equitable practices, even though it was far from en vogue at the time.

“When I first went to Ecuador in 1991, I saw at first hand how balance scales were skewed by the vendors of the raw materials so that independent purchasers paid an unfairly high price,” says Somers. ‘The supply chain [of genuine panama hats—which have always come from Ecuador, despite the misnomer] is generally steeped in exploitation, involving around seven middlemen or perros (dogs) between the weaver and the exporter.”

By contrast, hats from Pachacuti—which means “world upside down” in the Andean Quechua language—are produced by an association of women, who do all the work including weaving, finishing, blocking, sewing, allowing them to retain more of the profits.

A regular at fashion weeks around the globe and one of the the first apparel brands to be certified as Fair Trade, Pachacuti was recently invited to participate in a an EU pilot program known as the GEO Fair Trade Project.

The project can easily be described as nutrition facts for clothing, as it attaches a uniquely scannable QR code to items, allowing the consumer to gain access to 100 social, economic, geo-localization and environmental indicators tracking change over several years and tracing production to the GPS co-ordinates of each weaver’s house.’ The social indicators include things such as producer literacy rate, access to primary healthcare, investment for healthcare, and hours of work per week.

Somers, who has developed a deep connection with the women and the region in which Pachacuti works, says that that often the external conditions of the region influence her design. For example, when other brands’ requests for machine embroidery sent a lot of local embroiderers looking for work, Somers included embroidered accents in her SS13 collection and is now developing a specific clothing line to keep the artisan technique going.

“Someone commented recently that Pachacuti performs the role that local government should play within the community and that is probably quite an accurate description as there is no social security safety net for these marginalized women.”

As the only non-commodity company asked to participate in the EU pilot, Pachacuti is again leading the way in the growing field of sustainable and conscious fashion, but Somers said the industry as a whole still has far to go.

‘The globalization we have seen during the 21st Century, coupled with the growth of the internet and the boom of cheap, fast fashion, has brought exploitation within fashion supply chains to the forefront,” Somers says. “Ethics and sustainability are no longer marginal issues in the fashion industry, but we are still too far from making them truly mainstream.’

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers. 

Manners are important—in life, in the bedroom, and in the boardroom. This week’s Sex By Numbers highlights some lapses in etiquette, including one we never thought we’d have to correct: answering the phone during sex.

A few weeks: Now that the much talked about pregnancy of Yahoo CEO Marissa Mayer is over, everyone can commence criticizing the length of her relatively short maternity leave before she returns to work. We say: it may not work for everyone, but let mom make her own decision.

50 Years: Rachel Carson’s seminal environmental work Silent Spring was published 50 years ago. At the time, no one could quite believe a woman wrote the piece, leaving some readers to “assume from the author’s knowledge that he must be a man.” Decades later, the representation of women in science is still low.

1 million: One more reason to be jealous of the super cool and witty “it girl” Lena Dunham: an advice book based on anecdotes from her life is being shopped around to publishers with a price tag of $1,000,000.

33%: Percentage of 2000 polled Brits who think it’s socially acceptable to pick up a phone call during sex. Um, no.

50%: A study widely criticized for being an oversimplification (and a “slap in the face for gender equality”) found that the divorce rate for couples that shared housework was 50% higher than couples where the woman does the majority of the work.

Double take: It’s never a good thing for a celebrity when an old sex tape gets released. For Kanye West, it’s proved particularly bad, considering his on camera co-star is a dead ringer for his current real-life girlfriend, Kim Kardashian. One can only hope she won’t notice.

20 Weeks: UK Women’s Minister has said that it’s “common sense” for the legal abortion limit to be lowered to 20 weeks.

50: Think single ladies over 50 have lost their spark. Don’t be so rude. An Australian study found that these women “are more likely to have a one night stand than their Gen X or Gen Y daughters.”

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

There are certain things we will always want: eternal youth, the upper hand with our ex, and—if you happen to be Lady Gaga this week—everyone to stop obsessing over bodily perfection. Even though we may never get these things, this week’s Sex By Numbers is about our quest to put things right, or at the very least, prove ourselves right.

15: Age that Lady Gaga revealed she was when she began struggling with an eating disorder. Gaga made the confession on her website after the media’s harsh comments about her weight compelled her to start a positive “body revolution.”

642: Contrary to the conventional wisdom that sexual prudence is what leads to relationships, a study examining the habits of 642 adults found no indication that “hookups” aren’t just as likely to turn into relationships as more conservative affairs. But we already knew that.

12 Million: Reported price tag of Monica Lewinsky’s memoir, which was recently picked up by an unnamed publisher. Looks like the world’s most notorious intern is still trying to settle the score.

3 Euros: That age-old moment of female irritation— where you have to remind a male companion that “Actually, my face is up here”—apparently has some evolutionary underpinning. After watching video reels of breasts, men in a European study opted to be given 3 euros immediately—rather than a larger sum of money later —due to a decreased ability to delay gratification.

38%: A study found that 38% of surveyed women admitted that the best sex of their lives was with their previous partner. Not that they’d ever let him know that.

$185,000: In the midst of the sordid female escort scandal involving Backpage.com and the Village Voice, Microsoft has been given a $185,000 grant to help improve intelligence and prevent the “advertising and selling of human trafficking victims.”

682%: A legion of scientists claim that the coveted fountain of youth is finally available in the form of a compound called SeroVital, which has been shown in trials to increase endogenous Human Growth Hormone levels by a mean of 682%.

Image: Zombie Lawyer

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A weekly look at sex and culture, by the numbers.

If anyone has the right to be irritated this week, it’s Kate Middleton. Can’t a Duchess get a little uninterrupted tanning time in? In her royal honor, we’ve dedicated this week’s Sex By Numbers to every woman that just wants to be left alone (there’s an app for that, by the way).

24 Hours: Length of time that a French court gave the gossip magazine Closer to hand over topless photos of The Duchess of Cambridge. Will and Kate won an injunction against the tabloid shortly after the pictures were published on Monday.

1 in 10: Only 10% of sexual harrassment incidences are reported. The Metropolitan Action Committee on Violence Against Women and Children, based in Toronto, has created a helpful app which provides snarky responses to cat calls and ways to dispel unsolicited and inappropriate attention.

60s: When it comes to the sex lives of people over the age of 40, Hollywood has historically left the subject alone, until now. A new film starring Meryl Streep (63) and Tommy Lee Jones (66) is boldly and funnily “acknowledging that sexuality in older age exists.”

90: Thinking about the act of sex outside the context of, well, sex can make the actual mechanics seem kind of off-putting. A new study in the journal PLoS ONE that surveyed 90 women found that sexual arousal lessens gave the “disgust factor” that might otherwise be associated with the exchange of all those bodily fluids.

3rd highest: The state of Texas has the 3rd highest teen pregnancy rate in the nation. Despite this, some parents would still rather opt out of the new sex-ed curriculum that is being adopted by many Texas schools, which aims to take a more realistic approach to the sexual lives of teenagers.

54%: When it comes to sexting, teenagers are doing anything but leaving each other alone. A Los Angeles based study found that 54% of teens know someone that engages in sexting and that the act is usually an indicator of further sexually risky behavior.

64: Women who regularly read magazines such as Cosmopolitan (which has a total of 64 international editions) or others that include scripts about female sexual desire are more likely to “prioritise their sexual desire for their own sake, but not for the male partner.”

80%: Number of Egyptian women who report having experienced some form of sexual harassment. The study, carried out by the Egyptian Centre for Women’s Rights, found most of the victims were wearing headscarves.

Image: Tom Soper Photography

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