nivloe

Actually, I nearly died in a knitting accident last week when a 3.75mm needle nearly went through my ocular cavity.  Why would someone tickle you while knitting anyway?  It could only end in tears, torrents of cursing and blood.

I really hope I don't die in a blogging accident -I suppose if you owned a gorgeous, huge Mac it could topple onto you as you compose your 58th post analyzing Hillary's 'crying' -fatally crushing your innards and likely resulting in some chuckling on the part of the person who finds you.  No one wants that.

One of the things that always bothers me about women trying to work their way through politics and business is that they’re often forced to show they have the ‘balls’ for the job, that they can play with the big boys and yet if they manage to do that they are then criticized for being inhuman by denying their femininity.  I’m not following the American elections slavishly but I’ve noticed so many articles focusing on how Hillary Clinton leaves the public cold because she doesn’t seem like someone you’d want to go have a beer with.  She’s too cold and distant because she’s trying to be all business. 

This blog entry at Slate’s XX Factor is an excellent discussion about why women are so reluctant to enter politics and get hurt in the mudslinging and why we should be grateful that there are women like Hilary to tough it even if you're not a fan of her policies:

...It was John Edwards' night from where I was sitting—even Barack Obama was no Barack Obama—but the most intriguing moment came when Hillary Clinton convincingly mocked the notion that if some people found her unlikable, then she guessed she'd just go home and cry her poor little eyes out. As someone who would rather hide in her basement than go out and risk getting her tender baby feelings hurt, this got my attention: Clinton really seemed beyond caring, and though I've never been sure she was my brand of vodka, that is an accomplishment worth toasting.

Of all the reasons there aren't more women running for political office, fear of being disliked and rejected has got to be high on the list. Supposedly, the desire to please—and the dread of failing to do so—is drummed into us by the culture, but I have seen it more in my daughter than in her twin brother from the get-go. This year, in their first or second week at their vast new middle school, my son announced that he wanted to run for student government, an idea that his panicked sister tried to talk him out of: "But, you don't know anyone! You'll lose!'' (His response: And?)

On Election Day, I was a nervous wreck, and had chocolate-chip cookies at the ready in case he fell short and came home hurting. But when 3 o'clock rolled around at last, he ran in laughing and proud that he'd ... only narrowly lost? Wahoo, he said: He'd met a lot of kids, gotten a lot of good feedback on his Go Green platform, and figured he was well positioned for the next campaign. His sister and I were agog—as I was last night, watching one strong woman laugh at the news that she had not been named Miss Congeniality. And if that's what Hillary's time in the old boys' club taught her, then sister, I am finally all ears.

 

UPDATE:  I did post yesterday on the New Hampshire victory for Hillary Clinton and all the discussion surrounding it: http://fourthwavers.wordpress.com/2008/01/09/watching-the-race/

So to follow up on my post about There Will Be Blood coming to theatres, I have a link to some of the reviews posted at rotten tomatoes.

When I saw the movie at an advance screening last week there were a few things going against me heading in to it, after a week of almost no sleep the screening began at 10:30pm and runs over 2 hours... I was almost passing out from exhaustion and at one point felt myself thinking "Is it possible that those movie stars who get hospitalized for exhaustion aren't faking it?"  So the quiet slowness of the film was not helping me focus. 

Secondly, I'd been at a dinner party before hand eating lots of turkey and consuming moderate amounts of wine however, for some weird reason when I drink red and white wine in the same sitting I get very ill.  So ill that near the middle of the film I had to run out and beg for water from the concession stand teenager who was trying to close up -and of course the part of the film I missed turned out to be one of the most important scenes. 

And finally, being in a crowd of movie buffs at an advance screening can be really annoying, I pictured watching this movie hunkered down by myself in the dark with few people around, drinking it in like I was the only one watching it.  Instead I was squished in between people who laughed at every little quirky move DDL made, practically everytime he opened his mouth they were guffawing themselves to death and I was looking around all "hey, this isn't slapstick people you're RUINING the mood for me!"  It is a funny movie in many respects but it's not LOL funny -go watch the Dewey Cox story if you want to make that kind of noise. 

The film is beautifully done, it sounds amazing -the opening sequence to me was just incredible and not a word is spoken for something like 20, 30 minutes.  It's amazing.  I need to watch it again the way I'd originally envisioned it and I recommend it highly to anyone else looking to kill almost 3 hours in the dark.

My boyfriend is back!  Ok, so he doesn't yet know we're destined to be together but I'm sure it'll all work out one day.  Today, he received a nomination for a Golden Globe for his new film There Will Be Blood

It's possible that I just haven't had enough coffee this morning, but this column in the Globe really irks me.  Giving older women a version of 'The Rules' is not just offensive to older women but manages to slam all younger women as heartless, marriage-hungry skanks:

Act your age. Younger women have their youth. You have your humanity. "If you're not most human at 40, 45, 50, you will never be human," observes a male acquaintance in his 50s. "Younger women are sperm foraging. With older women, you hope for a heart. You hope that they have been disillusioned by power, as you have been, if you are self-aware. To meet an older woman with those attributes is like sitting in a broken-in seat in a car. New leather is slippery. But a broken-in seat, well, there's nothing more comfortable and nothing more personal."

Ah, there's nothing as charming as being compared to a broken-in car seat!  Ladies, men love it when you've been disillusioned and beaten down by life.  There are even tips on what hair colours are acceptable to men... unfreakin' believable!  Also, remember your place:

Just because you're accomplished, do not take control of the dating ritual. You may be used to making things happen in your family life and your professional life, but this is one area where you must remain passive.

"The stalker," shudders a man, remembering the experience of one.

"A lot of women who are over 40 are so desperate, they become too pro-active," says Ms. Schneider, weighing in on the subject. "They have money, and they want to be powerful in a relationship. But it's about letting the men pursue you. That's your power."

You know what...I better go get some coffee before I have an apoplectic fit. 

I remember with complete clarity where I was when this news broke, I was coming home from my first real concert event -I Mother Earth and Moist playing at the Warehouse- crammed in the back of a minivan (literally, my legs were up against a window) and they announced how Michael Hutchence had been found in his hotel room.  They then played never tear us apart and I started to ball my eyes out.  Why?  He was one of my first musician crushes, when I watched him in music videos my little girl heart would beat extra fast and I didn't know why but I knew I wanted him.

I can't believe it's been ten years already.  RIP Michael.

There's a profile in WIRED on Randall Munroe the creative genius behind XKCD.com -yes, I said creative genius and I didn't want to kick myself at all for it.  In this case I actually think it's an apt description because while part of his comics' appeal is that it embodies the silliness that many of us experience and think about he doesn't just write it down and draw stick figures.  There is often a real poignancy to his work that takes it beyond just ha-ha funny.  Plus, how many people can make graphs and mathematical equations funny and romantic?  I can't even pick a favorite to display so I just hit random:

CAT PROXIMITY

Rear window

I'm terrible, I've kept my loathing of facebook to a quiet minimum and honestly I've been pretty zen about it even when every conversation I have somehow devolves into who posted what on someone's wall.  But finally its creepiness has reached its full potential:

"Users who were afraid that Facebook was one big scam to collect people's information to sell to advertisers have had their suspicions confirmed. Facebook has also responded by saying there is no way to opt out of this system, although the site will introduce controls that allow you to block the sharing of data with specific individual websites."

*shudder*

I haven't been posting much recently because I have been working to set up a community blog for the Toronto Feminist Group (organized through meetup.com).  I do love my VOX blog but we decided to use Wordpress so any member could be added as a contributor and anyone can comment.

Anyhow, check it out in the next month or so, we're still in the construction phase but it will be shaping up visually:

http://fourthwavers.wordpress.com

Ah, a joyful article from Macleans on why men are happier than ever and women are miserable.  A study that came out in September found that surprisingly as women have benefited from the women’s movement and are now part of the workforce in record numbers –women were much happier before.  And now, it’s men who are benefiting from the perfect woman because they have a breadwinner and more time to do what they please while women take care of it all.  From the article:

Far from suffering a crisis of confidence amid all those high-powered females, men are actually getting happier as the women around them find their place in the workforce, recent U.S. studies suggest. Blessed with salaried spouses and an economy that increasingly values their brains over their brawn, males now enjoy more of what one Princeton University scholar calls "neutral downtime" — a fancy term for hours spent watching football, playing computer games or drinking with their pals. For guys, things have never been better…

 

All of which raises questions that hardline feminists will undoubtedly find perverse, if not outright heretical. Are career pressures sucking the joy from day-to-day life for many women? Were they wrong to think professional success would ultimately yield happiness? And if the rise of financially successful, multi-tasking women over the past few decades is doing little more than allowing men to load up on couch time, who are the real beneficiaries of the women's movement?

The authors of the study are less concerned with why women are more unhappy than men, and more interested in why women were so happy in the 1970s.  One plausible theory is that the women surveyed in the 1970s were likely comparing themselves to the housewife next door and measuring their happiness in those terms (ie: “Well, I’m happier than most wives…at least John only goes out one night a week”.)  Whereas women today, are probably comparing themselves to their husbands or male colleagues and often find they’re treated as “second-class citizens” –they’re very aware that they make less money and get less respect and surely that affects their measurement of ‘happiness’.

As for the fact that men are much happier than women, one can certainly see how that would be true.  In a male world dominated by Maxim, FHM and Stuff magazine where the focus is on half-naked women, cool gadgets and new computer games –life has never been better! 

Some of this is due to technology, notes Krueger; a lot of former men's work is now performed by machines, both at work and around the home. But it's hard not to see the growth in their spare time with the concomitant reduction in women's. Unlike men, women are spending more time at paid work than they did in, say, the early 1970s, while their downtime has been steadily declining. To some experts, this points to males gaining R & R at females' expense.

That seems to make sense to me: if women are filling every spare moment of their day outside of work making meals, taking care of children and going to yoga classes then of course they’re going to burn out and feel unhappy!

Suffice to say, this is not the sort of analysis that sits well with modern feminists. As the data on female unhappiness piles up, they increasingly question the connection to careerism, or the entire premise of happiness surveys. "The women's movement was never about happiness," says the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and feminist Susan Faludi, in an assertion that will surely surprise many a woman who marched for equal rights. "It was about claiming one's full place in the world. What is described as women's unhappiness isn't about them being unable to handle all of these great new opportunities. It's unhappiness over the fact that things haven't changed: that they are still burdened with a second shift."

Women fight for equality and instead are told they can have it all, and should be it all: mother, breadwinner and of course, a total hottie.  The pressure to be perfect is intense yet the beneficiaries of women who kill themselves to be everything –are the men?  But feminism is hardly to blame for this as the article suggests, saying that feminism promised the moon and stars, which gave us false expectations.  Should women have put down their placards in the 70s if they’d known their men would benefit most?  I would answer that with a hearty “hell no!” but then that’s just me.  I’ve felt the pressure to be everything and it does push me to try to succeed but I’ve also got feminism to show me that I can choose –choose to work, choose to have or not have children, choose to stay at home, choose to speak up and choose to do whatever it is that keeps me happy and healthy.  So those hardline feminists the article refers to, have made my life much happier and continue to influence the lives of many women.

P.S.

There is a link to the original study on this site, it's titled "The Paradox of Declining Female Happiness" by Betsey Stevenson and Justin Wolfers.  I found it really interesting because of the methodology used, examining happiness surveys raises a lot of questions about how you can possibly measure happiness anyway.  For example, the surveys used asked questions like this: “Taken all together, how would you say things are these days, would you say you are very happy, pretty happy, or not too happy?” 

Um...has anyone else ever filled out a survey like this?  I know I have and I know that I usually never find an answer to circle that actually captures how I feel and I usually race through as quickly as possible thinking that it’ll never be used for anything useful.  So, measuring the happiness of all women with surveys like this?  Not really hard science but interesting nonetheless particularly because there are distinct differences among different races, so if this topic interests you I recommend reading through it.