wow

I am completely floored by this song for some reason.

I imagine it's the imagery it creates of a woman as a robot, made only to please whoever needs/uses her. Could be that the beat is just kickass. All of the above.

Clicky --> Wow-e-wow-wow.

female comedians

It's interesting to me that female comedians never seem to be as good as male comedians. I don't think it's a matter of inherence but of how we've been trained to think about what should be appreciated. Female comedians say the same hilarious things that men do, and yet so many of them are criticized or hated for no tangible reason.
I've tried to figure out why so many people hate Kathy Griffin, Margaret Cho, Lisa Lampanelli, etc. Men are just as vulgar if not more so and yet women are the ones who take the heat. I myself am a victim of my upbringing as I don't typically find a lot of female comedians to be funny. Hard to believe how strong some influences can be over you without even realizing it.
I'm sure eventually femininity will no longer be such a factor and we can all just laugh at one another.

women

I was going over the 3 waves of the Women's Movement in class the other night and became pretty frustrated. These are the types of situations which really test my ability as an anthropologist. It's hard to step back and understand that everyone has a different point of view and we all grow up in different situations even if we share a culture.
The students in class come from all over, Cameroon, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, the middle east... So it tries my patience when I go over these subjects with a checkered audience like this.
I tend to lean to the left when I'm teaching, (politically, not physically), so I slip in facts like how women still make 3/4 of what men do who perform the same job.
This is still not good enough, it's still not viable proof. I then bring up the NBA & WNBA comparison.
"How many of you watch the WNBA?"
One student answers, "I watched it by accident the other day."
Of course the class explodes with laughter, even I feel the urge to chuckle a little.
This, to me, is proof enough of just how ingrained sex discrimination is in this culture.

We say things like "he cried like a little bitch" "quit being a pussy" and most people don't think twice about what this means. We grow up learning exactly where we belong and we are expected to stay within this parameter. As women we need to step over these boundaries, that's why I can appreciate "controversial" figures like Madonna. Because despite being a "bitch" and being "ugly" and "old" now, she has never apologized for being who she is, a woman who doesn't listen when people tell her to be quiet.

This jumped to a lot of random subjects, but you get the picture. Women have come a long way and have a long way to go.

witnesses to hunger

This project really amazes me.
40 impoverished women in inner-city Philadelphia are given cameras to document their lives. They put a face to hunger and struggle. They personify neglect and despair and cast a light on a piece of society that many people have been too fortunate to see (including myself).
I hope this project finds itself in cities across the country in the next decade.

www.witnessestohunger.org