U.S. ad agencies, known for using sexism and racism to a fault, may soon change their ways. And yes, it’s all because of money.

Ad agencies began to take hiring diversity seriously when General Mills, HP Inc., and most recently, Verizon, began to put the screws to them two months ago.

The three mega-companies told their marketing clients that if hiring habits weren’t changed, the businesses would take work elsewhere.

Kind of gross, but at least General Mills, HP Inc., and Verizon recognize that diverse groups of people come up with more diverse messages.

“Diego Scotti, chief marketing officer for Verizon, sent letters to 11 of the agencies the company works with on Sept. 16, describing diversity as ‘an explicit business objective,’” The New York Times reports.

“He gave the firms a month to submit details on how many women and minorities they employed across different roles and in senior leadership and asked for action plans describing how they would increase those numbers in the future.”

“Marketers are expected to have a deep understanding and insight about their markets, about decision makers and about customers,” Scotti adds.

“We are more likely to create solutions that amaze our customers if our work force and suppliers represent the communities we serve.”

The demands

General Mills made news in early August when the company publicly declared it wanted its creative departments to staff 50 percent female and 20 percent minority staff.

Yeah, those demands don’t seem all that great, but they do shine a spotlight on how white and male most ad agencies are.

Agencies are already in trouble

“In the last year, the chief executive of the J. Walter Thompson agency resigned after a lawsuit accused him of racist and sexist behavior, and dismissive remarks about gender equality were made by other top industry executives,” The Times reports.

To help mitigate those accusations, Ad Week planned a series of presentations during its annual industry event to help ad agencies “get it.”

For example, conference attendees could attend the following talks:

“Our Challenge to Erase Gender Stereotypes In Ads”

“Sexism in Advertising and What Brands Should Do”

Quaint.

Well, at this point, we’ll take change where ever we can get it—even if that change seems dated.

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The post American Ad Agencies Need to Embrace Diversity appeared first on EcoSalon.

Column If we want to talk about more cooking at home, we also have to talk about sexism.

I have always been an advocate of cooking. If there is one thing you can do to better your diet and better your food choices, I really do believe it’s opting to make your own food at home.

There’s a current trend in food media that echoes this sentiment: Michael Pollan’s most recent book “Cooked”, food television shows devoted to quick and easy food preparation, and every single blog devoted to making your own yogurt/butter/kombucha/almond butter/kale infused anything.

Of course, that doesn’t mean that the entire population is making a mad dash for the kitchen. All this talk of going back to the kitchen can be a big pressure on working families. As a friend of mine, a mother of two, put it recently, “I do my best but never feel good enough.” And this is coming from a woman who knows how to cook, is devoted to shopping locally whenever possible and whose favorite cookbook is from the 1970s and all about putting more sustainable meals on the table. But the pressure is there, because the reality is that cooking and making our own food takes time.

But why is it that women feel this pressure more than men? Why is it that most food media is devoted to headlines like “10 Easy Meals For the Busy Mom” or, even worse, “Easy Outfits to Transition from the Kitchen to Hostess”. No really, I have read several of those.

The answer is that the world of food is dealing with some serious issues of sexism.

In the food world, chefs gain celebrity status, and those chefs tend to be male. Take a look at any chef roundup recently and take note of how many women are mentioned. But if men reign in the flashy world of food, women reign in everything else. We are after all the ones usually putting food on the table at home. We are the ones that make sure that our families eat three times a day, every day of the week. When you cook in this way, you don’t have time to make it artistry.

Recently, I came across an image of the cover of “Quick Dinners for Women in a Hurry,” a book published in 1942. Ah, the 1940s and 1950s, when advertising was overtly sexist and the only role for a woman was in the kitchen. Yet in our modern, presumedly more progressive era, have we really moved so far away from this? Sure, such a title would never fly with today’s cookbook publishing houses, but the reality is that it’s still mostly women that are bearing the brunt of putting food on the table everyday. And they get zero credit for it.

A New York Times article, titled “When Their Workday Ends, More Fathers Are Heading Into the Kitchen,” took a look at exactly this question. As the New York Times reported, “Michael M. Rooke-Ley, a retired law professor in Eugene, Ore., echoed those concerns, noting that “a 1950s ethic still prevails” at times, even when both parents work. ‘In these outposts of gender-based tradition,’ Mr. Rooke-Ley said, ‘Dad needs to get off the couch!'”

While the number of men in household kitchens is up – 29 percent of men spent time in the kitchen in 1965, in 2008 it was 42 percent – women still devote double the amount of time to food and drink preparation than their male counterparts.

I am not saying men don’t cook. I am in a 50/50 relationship when it comes to making food with my partner; and he’s not just putting frozen pizza in the oven. But there’s no denying that this issue of sexism is deeply seated. On some level, we still have the image of a woman in an apron and the man with a martini.

Let me put it another way: if it’s still revolutionary enough for men to be cooking, so much so that it necessitates a New York Times article, you can be sure that the problem hasn’t gone away. There’s plenty of sexism in kitchens, and in the world of food in general.

If we are going to talk about getting more people back in the kitchen, the conversation needs to be inclusive. It shouldn’t be just women feeling this pressure to buy better products and cook more meals at home. Both genders need to be empowered to take part in the everyday, boring cooking. Not just the sexier, dinner party throwing, look-at-the-12-course-meal-I-made-for-Saturday night type of cooking.

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This is the latest installment of Anna Brones’ weekly column at EcoSalon: Foodie Underground, an exploration of what’s new and different in the underground movement, and how we make the topic of good food more accessible to everyone. More musings on the topic can be found at www.foodieunderground.com.

Image: Seattle Municipal Archives

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Laci Green is best known as the spunky, witty and smart YouTube sex activist who makes videos about sexuality. Her Tumblr is filled with feminist-friendly content and news. Green is bright and tackles all those ooky (also known as hard to digest) issues with ease and enthusiasm.

Recently, Green announced that she would be working with MTV to make a new web series. Well, her series, “Braless,” premiered Tuesday, November 4, and it was every bit as fun as I’d hoped. Upon viewing of the first episode, I can tell that Laci Green and I would be fast friends. Fast, nerdy, feminist friends.

The first episode, “Taylor Swift Slays Sexism,” is all about Swift’s new album, “1989.” Green gives dish on while she’s always been a fan of T. Swift, she’s even more smitten with the pop star now because of Swift’s recent release. Green goes on to detail how Swift has evolved over the years and now declares herself as a feminist. (Yay!) Swift has always had an opinion about everything and a penchant for writing about personal stuff. Green expresses a lot of enthusiasm for Swift for that reason. I mean, really, what’s so wrong about a young, Millennial woman having an opinion and writing about her life? Nothing, Green says (and I second, too).

My main complaint about the show? It’s too short! But that’s the whole point of having a YouTube channel TV show and why it’s so smart that MTV is partnering with Green. Much of MTV’s content is a bit, uh, questionable — I’m looking at you, “Jersey Shore.” However, Green’s show and channel are smart, informative and geared toward the generation that likes their news in snippets. (I can say that because I, too, am a Millennial and know all to well about short attention spans).

I’m looking forward to seeing what Green tackles next week. I’m sure it’ll be great!

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You’re an intentional, conscientious person, but that same song that gets your booty shakin’ contains elements of sexism, violence, racism, or other flavor of bigotry. How do you deal with this cognitive dissonance? Can you listen to sexist music and still be conscientious?

Admit it: before you gave a good hard listen to the lyrics of Earth’s favorite creeper Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines,” it kiiind of made you want to shake your rump. Or, in my case, more than kind of.

While the rapey-ness of “Blurred Lines” has been well documented, its infectiously catchy nature causes a difficult tug-of-war between your brain and booty. What do we even call this special kind of conscious confusion? Musicognitive Dissonance? Cognitive Disso-dance? I’ll get back to you when I finalize some new buzzword for this phenomenon.

Even if there are more questions than answers, try on these three perspectives when handling the cognitive dissonance of enjoying sexist music you know you shouldn’t like, but just “know you want it.”

Cultural Context

Human behavior is often merely a symptom of a deeper psychological or societal undercurrent dictating the thought processes behind our actions.

Let’s step away from Mr. Thicke for a moment and look at hip hop as an example. How much of hip hop’s misogyny can be traced back to decades of institutionalized racism, hatred, and poverty? And regardless of context, why would we ever make excuses to be anti-women? And as a U.S.-born white man, what in the world would I personally know about any of this?

Ultimately, where does cultural context end and personal accountability begin? If I had that answer, I’d be the world’s greatest judge, psychologist, or relationship columnist.

Saving vs. Savoring the World

A female entrepreneur friend of mine whom I deeply admire lives her life based on a sage piece of advice: “Balance how much you try to save the world with how much you savor it.”

This perspective on music boils down to how willing you are to compartmentalize your life. You donate money and volunteer time championing worthy social causes; you support local business by shopping in your community; you try to buy organic and local whenever possible. Can’t you have the social consciousness equivalent of a diet “cheat day?” None of us are perfect — we’re all figuring things out and trying our best.

If you’re adamant about liking certain music for the beat but not the message it promotes, you’ve simply got to own it as your guilty pleasure while remaining true to your conscience through your actions and energy in other aspects of life. This perspective, however, can turn into a slippery slope toward one of the must fundamentally flawed arguments commonly used against homosexuality: “Love the sinner, hate the sin.”

So, is it “Love the music, hate the message”? Now my brain’s really doing the cognitive dissonance two-step.

Conversation Fuel

Even though the message behind “Blurred Lines” is decidedly awful, at least it has gotten a worthwhile conversation going. The song provides context and platform for a global conversation, and pushback against it has increased universal awareness about the ills of misogyny and served as a rallying point for thought leaders and supporters.

Some lessons are difficult to teach without real world examples, and though it’s unfortunate the conversation even needed to happen, at least the world is participating.

Follow Garth on Twitter @garthinkingcap

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Photo by Simon Ingram

The post Can I Listen to Sexist Music as a Conscientious Person? The Cognitive Dissonance Two-Step appeared first on EcoSalon.

Guys get a taste of their own (collective) medicine when Leah Green behaves like an outrageously sexist woman. If you haven’t seen this Guardian video yet, it’s worth the few minutes of your day. Especially, you know, if you’ve ever objectified a woman.

Find Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

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Sexism and the effects on women scientists.

We’ve come a long way, baby, but science remains a biased industry. Deep rooted sexism has existed in the scientific world for ages, and has been very hard to shake off. Throughout the decades, women at the forefront of science have felt the effects of sexism at work, from being forced out of certain universities because of laws that restricted husband and wife teams or simply have the credit for their work stolen by a male colleague.

Below are the stories of five women scientists who made significant scientific discoveries, but didn’t get the initial credit that they deserved because of the idea that women are fair game for professional bullying.

1. Jocelyn Bell Burnell

In 1967, Jocelyn Bell Burnell discovered the first pulsar, a rapidly rotating neutron star, that emits regular pulses of radio waves, while a graduate student at Cambridge University. Unfortunately, her supervisor Anthony Hewish, along with Martin Ryle were the ones to get the 1974 Nobel Prize in physics for it. “The picture people had at the time of the way that science was done was that there was a senior man—and it was always a man—who had under him a whole load of minions, junior staff, who weren’t expected to think, who were only expected to do as he said,” Burnell Bell told National Geographic. Nowadays, Burnell Bell is a visiting astronomy professor at the University of Oxford.

2. Rosalind Franklin

In 1962 Francis Crick, along with James Watson and Maurice Wilkins, were awarded the Nobel Prize for discovering the structure of DNA. The name that wasn’t on the list? Rosalind Franklin. Her work using x-rays to take photographs of DNA paved the way for understanding DNA as a whole, and was critical to Watson and Crick’s own work.

3. Lise Meitner

Born in Vienna, Austria 1878, Lise Meitner was one of the most accomplished women scientists. Meitner is responsible for co-discovering nuclear fission, the science that essentially was the blueprint for the atomic bomb. In the early 1900s she worked in Berlin, working with chemist Otto Hahn, a collaboration that would last over 30 years. Meitner happened to be Jewish and when the Nazis took over Austria in 1938 she fled to Stockholm. She continued to secretly with Hahn, and when he performed the experiments to prove nuclear fission, she came up with the theory to back it up, but when the findings were published, her name was left off of the paper.

4. Nettie Stevens

Another of the women scientists born in the late 1800s, Nettie Stevens didn’t enroll in a University until the age of 35, and at 39 began working as a research scientist. Working in the field of sex determination, she ultimately discovered that sex was in fact determined by chromosomes (ie the X and Y chromosomes), as opposed to the common belief at the time which was that it was determined by the mother or environmental factors. Sadly, her superior Thomas Morgan gets all the credit for this discovery, while it was in fact Stevens’ work that got him there.

5. Celia Payne

The first woman scientist to become a professor of science at Harvard, Celia Payne discovered what stars are made of (helium and hydrogen). The work, which was in her thesis, was described as “the most brilliant . . . ever written in astronomy” but astronomers at the time dismissed her findings. Until four years later that is, when they were confirmed by a man, Henry Norris Russell, and he got the credit.

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Image: Seattle Municipal Archives

The post 5 Women Scientists Whose Amazing Discoveries Were Stolen By A Man appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnIn the fight against sexism at work, a surprising ally emerges in Megyn Kelly.

As part of a recent panel discussion about childhood literacy, Mississippi Gov. Republican Phil Bryant showed his true colors with this response to the loaded question: How did Americans get so mediocre? Bryant responded, “Want me to tell the truth? Both parents started working.”

The back-pedaling was immediate. He started with a “Ha, ha I’m in trouble” (possibly referring to his wife who worked outside of the home for 38 years) and went on to say, “A mom in the workplace is not a bad thing … it’s a great American story that women are in the workplace.”

Bryant’s truth, or as Stephen Colbert would say, truthiness, is based on nothing.

It’s amazing according to billionaire Paul Tudor Jones, that there are any working mothers at all, given the fierce—but still undocumented—connection between our nipples and our ability to use our lady brains outside of the nursery.

In a speech at his alma matar UVA, he said, “As soon as that baby’s lips touched that girl’s bosom, forget it. Every single investment idea, every desire to understand what’s going to make this [the market] go up or go down is going to be overwhelmed by the most beautiful experience which a man will never share about a connection between that mother and that baby.”

Girls? Really? The statements speak for themselves—and yet these guys didn’t just shut up after making their stupid comments. Sadly, both “the great American story” and “the women are superior to men because they can have babies” arguments pretend to respect women by putting them on pedestals made of bullshit.

Bryant is really saying: When we needed you to fill in for the men overseas, you were there—and we thank you. But as you can see, even Rosie the Riveter has picked up a Swiffer and gotten back to the serious business of cleaning her kitchen.

And Jones? His statement is clear: Boobs trump brains.

However, the fact is that today, 40 percent of American moms are now primary breadwinners in their families.

I wonder (though I can guess) how Bryant feels about a new Australian study of child health in same-sex families. This is the world’s largest attempt to study how children raised by same-sex couples compare to children raised by heterosexual couples. Researchers studied 500 children and found that they are not only thriving, but have higher rates of family cohesion (how well a family gets along) than heterosexually led families.

Wait… but some of these kids have TWO working moms! Maybe it’s that one doesn’t breastfeed? How else could Paul Tudor Jones explain this? And what of the gay men?

Shockingly, it’s Fox News anchor Megyn Kelly who kills it in the debate about women at work. She even defends gay parents when she takes on Redstate editor Erick Erickson and Fox host Lou Dobbs. Throughout this amazing interview—and including a moment of true disgust after being called, “oh dominant one” by Dobbs—she undoes their “evidence” and leaves these guys looking as throwbacky and out of touch as they truly are.

My favorite moment might have been when Kelly says to Erickson, “Just because you have people that agree with you doesn’t mean it’s not offensive… I didn’t like what you wrote one bit… Your facts are wrong and your science is wrong.”

In an attempt to undermine her confidence to paint her as an angry feminist, Erickson chuckles and says, “Be careful, Lou!” Yes Lou, she might have PMS! She continues to dominate, if I dare use the word, and control the conversation.

Kelly does pause to point out that she’s not a feminist—and such comments might explain why these same old battles repeat generation after generation. If women keep falling for smarmy divide and conquer tactics, we cannot advance our common goals of choosing how we lead our lives and make choices for our families.

Strong women like Kelly should stop feeling they need to state that they aren’t feminists when debating men who are obvious chauvinists. The battle that’s going on about women in the workplace isn’t about male and female roles in society, no matter how hard the Lou Dobbs of the world try to make it seem that way. It is simply a battle about equality. While Kelly may not embrace the feminist label, she sure embraces equality and I’ll take her on my team.

Image: Fox News

The post That Happened: Megyn Kelly Fights Back appeared first on EcoSalon.

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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While all the hubbub around Seth McFarlane’s Oscar homage to sexism was bouncing around the country, I experienced another side of men here in Los Angeles—one I’m willing to call the return of the Sacred Masculine.

I’ve been calling it the best men-are-awesome ten days ever: Overlapping the Oscars, I attended events featuring four of the most compelling, artistic men of modernity: First was an epic performance by Tomahawk fronted by former Faith No More lead singer Mike Patton. He’s known for his ability to switch from operatic, ballady vocals to insane sounding shouts, raps, and indescribably strange noises. He’s both extremely playful and deadly serious, and 100 percent wow-worthy. Second, was the album release concert for the new Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds record, Push the Sky Away. Like Patton, Cave is a master at showcasing his vulnerability. He also rears a slightly terrifying side, screaming, wailing, arms waving. It’s fantastic, thrilling and some of the most life-changing music I’ve ever experienced. The third event was the sixth time I’ve seen composer/DJ Amon Tobin perform. His shy persona (we met in the lobby) seems to perfectly balance his output of the boldest and most creative electronic music being made today. Tobin seems to be writing a new language—one that reaches beyond Earth’s boundaries. And, speaking of aliens, the last event in those ten-days of men-are-awesome was my first viewing of Stanley Kubrick’s 2001 on the big screen at LACMA (I’ve seen it a dozen times on TVs, and it’s a totally different experience). Kubrick may have been a jerk to work with, but he was a most serious artist, with sensitivities and aesthetics unrivaled to this day.

We hear a lot about women’s rights, the goddess movement and the return of the Sacred Feminine. While bra-burning Steinem days may be long gone, we ladies still have our battles to fight as we struggle to make as much money as our testicled counterparts, or thwart unnecessary objectification and violence while still honoring what it means to be a woman responsible for bringing human life to this planet and nurturing it into self-sufficiency. Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg is picking up quite a bit of slack for her Lean In campaign and new book urging women to claim our rightful place in the mix. Women who speak up are often called bossy and bitchy, she said in her recent 60 Minutes interview, while men who demonstrate the same behaviors are hailed as leaders. Modern women are expected to earn our keep but still be submissive and sexy, virtually all the time. Yes, clearly, there is much to work out; and whether the return of the Sacred Feminine is underway or not, doesn’t it seem just as important, if not more so, that we look to encourage the return of Sacred Masculine as well if anything’s really going to change?

I’ll admit it: I laughed at McFarlane’s “We Saw Your Boobs” song. I liked that it was racy, and thought it was challenging the uptightness of the Oscars more than it was offensive. Besides, eventually, most everything is going to offend somebody. And McFarlane was simply illustrating the sad truth of where we’re at as a nation, a culture, a species. Of course we saw boobs…we always see boobs. Every so often (please, God, how about more of the “often” part?), we see Daniel Craig’s ass, too. During Django Unchained, when Jamie Foxx’s character is captured and hanging naked upside down, I seriously, embarrassingly, turned to my partner (who works in Hollywood art departments) and asked him if that was, in fact, Jamie Foxx’s actual penis. It seemed impossible to me that a man would show himself in that way.

And that really got me thinking.

Not only do women regularly take it all off on the screen, but we most often do it alone, especially if there’s a man in the scene. That sounds less like sexism on the part of men and more like an expression of their sheer terror and fear, perhaps even a little bit of jealousy. Not necessarily from the actors or filmmakers, but from the male audience in general who eschew seeing other naked men, mostly because that’s what they’ve been taught. I’m not saying we don’t objectify and mistreat women (we certainly do) as a result of the frequent nakedness (or in spite of it), but there is another problem we don’t talk about nearly as often, and that’s just how traumatized our collective image of men is.

Whether or not a man has been circumcised, millions and millions are and have been throughout history, and that has greatly shaped how our society–and men–view the world and their place in it. Circumcision is a traumatic, unnecessary genital mutilation that if we did it when they were just a few months older, would be considered a horrific, punishable crime. It scars, desensitizes and sometimes even severely damages the penis. But we do it anyway. We don’t talk much about it. We certainly don’t apologize for it. The effects of sexual trauma, as we know from the countless childhood molestation and rape cases, can last a lifetime. It can distort relationships with the opposite sex. It can cause resentment, fear and dozens of other emotional issues not uncommon in our world today. Men need to talk about this, heal from this and hopefully help stop it for future generations.

Of course, circumcision is not the only cause for modern man’s awkwardness and lack of sensitivity, but it’s a damn good place to start looking at how to heal these issues our men face. Like Patton, Cave, Tobin and Kubrick, some men channel the male awkwardness into art. They confront what masculinity means directly, looking at it through the lens of creativity rather than the muddled goggles of society’s acceptable definitions. Men coming to grips with their fears and vulnerabilities become stronger, not weaker. Surrender is acknowledging what you can and cannot change. And art is one of the best ways to explore and even transcend that.

Who is the Sacred Masculine? I’m not exactly sure. We can stereotype him as a New-Agey pony-tailed man who’s not afraid to cry or eat tofu. But, come on. Men don’t have to give up being men (but giving up meat’s not a bad choice) any more than a woman has to give up her bra. We don’t need to revert to archaic definitions of genders; we are evolving and creating a new tribe, new ways of honoring and expressing ourselves. It requires rethinking, redefining and re-experiencing who we are as both men and women and everyone else in between. Like Nick Cave sings on the title track of the new record:

And if you feel you got everything you came for
If you got everything and you don’t want no more
You’ve got it, just keep on pushing and, keep on pushing and
Push the sky away

Sexism is, and always has been, a two-way street. The definitions our society puts on our gender roles can only be rewritten if we look at the masculine as well as the feminine–and just how similar they really are, both in their most magnificent glory and constricting oppression.

Keep in touch with Jill on Twitter @jillettinger

Image: MiiiSH

The post The Other Side of Sexism and the Return of The Sacred Masculine appeared first on EcoSalon.

ColumnWas this year’s Oscars an exercise in sexism? Or is that just how Hollywood is?

There was a great moment on E!’s Fashion Police Oscars edition when Sarah Silverman made a rape joke. Joan Rivers followed with: “My first sexual experience was a rape…” As she trailed off looking forlorn, then the two women caught eyes and said nearly simultaneously, “But did he press charges?” and then tumbled over in hysterical laughter—and so did I.

One could argue that Sarah and Joan’s joke was no worse than what happened at the actual Oscars, that it was, in fact, a direct extension of the mean-spirited nature of the show and proof that the cool girls are in on the joke.

Yes, we live in a culture where mean is the new cool. Example: The existence of Tosh.O. And, even the always eager-to-please Anne Hathaway mentioned to a red carpet interviewer that she loves Cards Against Humanity, which is easily the meanest, funniest game I’ve ever played. I play viciously and to win because, in many ways, I am a fan of the culture of mean. I revel in a snide remark. Dorothy Parker is one of my personal heroes, and I actually use the word cunt on a comparatively (to almost anyone) regular basis.

The trouble with what happened at the Oscars, and after, is that the mean wasn’t funny; it was sexist. The cool girls weren’t making the jokes; they were the butts.

We all know the basics by now, but here’s the quick recap: Seth MacFarlane opened the show with a campy song and dance about whose boobs he’d seen in what movie—the level of joy he expressed at glimpsing Jodie Foster’s breasts during the rape scene in The Accused was especially disturbing. Amy Davidson broke down the real message of the song best in her extremely dead-on New Yorker piece: “You girls think you’re making art, the Academy, through MacFarlane, seemed to say, but all we—and the “we” was resolutely male—really see is that we got you to undress. The joke’s on you.”

He then went on to insult gay people, Jewish people, Quvenzhane Wallis, George Clooney, Rihanna, Latinos (the men got a shout-out here as well), and our intelligence.

Later in the show, he sang a song, omitting the second half of a rhyming couplet, the first half of which ended with “Helen Hunt.” In that moment, he opened the door for the tweet. This one. The one in which The Onion called a fist-pumping, genuinely just happy to be nominated, nine-year-old girl a cunt.

In what I think was a direct response to that last song of the night—and actually a jab at MacFarlane’s stupid joke rather than a comment about Wallis herself—The Onion referred to a little girl who brought a puppy purse to the Oscars a cunt. It happened, and regardless of why, it was a terrible mistake, one the paper apologized for in the best way possible.

What bothers me most about all of this—which is saying quite a bit, considering—is that as a “cool” girl who tosses words like cunt around on the regular, I am supposed to see that I am in on the joke and laugh along or risk being labeled as an uptight prude.

A blogger on Low Boredom Threshold took the opportunity to shame us into being okay with sexism cloaked in humor by writing: “I honestly believe there were two completely different Academy Awards programs telecast … To be blunt, I think one show was streamed to people who are intelligent, knowledgeable, self-confident and culturally tuned in and a second one that was streamed to people who are as dull as a stump [sic] with a poor sense of self, a minimal sense of humor and absolutely no sense of irony.”

You know who’s super into irony? Nine-year-olds.

If you’ll allow, here’s my “stump” speech: Ohhhh… irony—yeah, I get it. Sideboob is one of this year’s biggest fashion trends and we’re all suddenly incensed by a song about boobs? Women show up to the party with slits up to their, uh Hunts, and we’re not supposed to sexualize them? A man takes the opportunity to put down women for close to four hours on TV and we’re all supposed to think it’s funny so we don’t seem like militants. That’s not irony; it’s bullying.

In a country where elected officials think a baby is a woman’s biggest organ and that some rape might be legitimate, and in a world where girls (and boys) from New York to Thailand are subjected to sex trafficking, I admit it’s a little lame to be spending this much time debating an awards show. However, when you have the chance to talk to hundreds of millions of people, even as a comedian, you might want to do better than make boob jokes.

Image: Dave_B_

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