More on the Dove Ads Controversy

Whoda thunk it'd be a controversy to show a couple of size 10-16 women in their underwear?

Apparently, most men don't like them.

Well, luckily, men aren't buying Dove products:

Here's what some people (most of them men) think of the Dove ads: "THEY'RE DISGUSTING," reads a post on a popular online bulletin board. The author's opinion expressed entirely in uppercase, is that the Dove women are FAT COWS. The sentiment seems to be shared by the unknown parties who've scrawled graffiti on the women's pictures in New York and slapped stickers with crude slogans over the ads in the United Kingdom.

But a number of the derogatory comments haven't been anonymous at all -- they're coming from the popular media, and not just from the "morning zoo" radio shows or lad mags from which we tend to expect (and laugh off) this kind of frat-boy shtick. No, this stuff is coming from places as mainstream as the Sun-Times and Channel 2 News.

Wake up, boys. I have no interest in whether or not you think I'm beautiful.

I can kick your ass.

I want a giant picture of me with a boot up some fat media guy's ass plastered all around New York.

That'd be some controversy for you.

UPDATE: Well, twisty's got some goods:

This Dove-is-so-great crap must cease! Dove is not so great! Dove’s “real” women are, like, 22, and they’re conventionally pretty, and they’re in their fucking underwear. They are given insipid slogans, like “I felt absolutely beautiful on my wedding day!” Mouse over’em and they morph into bent-kneed playboy sexbots. They’re selling beauty crack. On the website there’s even a section where you can vote on the hotness of more “real” models, à la amihot.com. The message: Dove products will give you the only thing that patriarchy actually values in a woman: a tight ass.

IUD Update

I finally got around to getting my 3-month-post-IUD-insertion checkup at PP (Dear PP, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways...).

There's some pre-menstrual discharge for about four days before my period, I still bleed for 7 days, but only two of those are freaky. The cramps aren't fun, particularly for somebody who never really had any menstrual cramps before and used to laugh and point at other women who ran for a heating pad once a month and popped Motrin like candy.

Oh, karma's a bitch.

But I don't have to worry about taking a pill. My appetite and hence, my waistline, have not gone wild. I don't have to worry about picking up or paying for pills (and I don't have to worry about a pharmacist not giving them to me).

Best of all, there's non of that agonizing depression that draped a gray guaze between the part of my brain that wanted to do things and the part of my brain that actually did them. Just getting out of bed, basic functioning, grocery shopping, was really, really tough.

And did I mention that my sex drive's back? Oh, sex drive, how I have missed you, let me count the ways...

I'm not going to recommend the IUD, because it's got its own set of problems. Since I haven't had a kid, my IUD is a tight fit, which means I mostly sleep on my right side now because when I do get a dull aching pain, it's usually on the left side (my gyno says this is pretty normal. Any pain that's manageable with Motrin is pretty normal). And when I'm on my period, it's a pinching pain, usually but not always on the left side. Not happy, but manageable.

And, of course, there's the blood issue. I've successfully managed to get up, go to work, hit the gym, and get home no problem while bleeding like a sacrificial lamb, so it's not crippling or anything, but it's not a "Yay! Fun!" sort of thing, and the first time you have those heavy days, it's pretty freaky.

So if you're not good with blood and pain, you'll need to find another option.

But if you're good with blood and pain and looking for something besides the pill, something you can put in and not worry about or pay for month-to-month, and you're looking to keep your waistline and your sex drive (after the first month. The first month is a bitch. You really don't want anyone to even touch you for, like, the first week), then it's certainly an option.

I'm told that it should further settle down over the next year, and hopefully the periods will get a little lighter and/or last fewer days. Pretty much every month that goes by, there's less pain during the period and a longer window where I don't feel anything at all, really, except an occasional fluttering.

So I'm back to functioning, but it wasn't a pleasant trip.

It's pretty much what all the literature says it is: hell for the first month, and settling in for the next two, so that after your third period, you're pretty well situated.

If you're going to do it, make it a month where you don't have a lot of shit to do.

That was a crappy month.

Women Aren't Adults, They're Minors: But Don't Worry! The Government Knows What's Best

Even if it were true that birth control leads to promiscuity, what business is that of the state of Wisconsin? College students are adults.

Nope. You can go fight and die and kill other people for your country, but go off and have sex and or get raped and you're screwed! Literally! No b/c for you, slut!

Welcome to Iran.

On Being Strong

So, I've been getting back to the gym now, after four or five months off. I was never an athletic person, and I always thought of myself as the resident Fat Girl at school (this wasn't so true once I hit high school, but my self-image was already set by then), so when I go to the gym, I'm still pretty self conscious. I try not to look at the women around me and compare myself, but shit like that happens. I mean, when everybody's (OK, when all of the *women*) are skinnier and hence more "socially acceptable" than you are, you tend to get a little ancy.

I do about forty minutes of cardio, and I don't kill myself doing it. There are Super Women who run full tilt for an hour on the treadmill or beat themselves up on the elliptical machine like it's a torture device, but I like to pace myself. I don't want to fall off the elliptical when I'm done.

So if you were to see me and one of these thin racer-women side-by-side on the elliptical, I'd look like I was behind, not as tough, not as healthy, not as strong. I mean, after all, look at her go!

That is, until you get us both to the weights.

It's something I noticed at the martial arts school as well when we'd do free weight and punching bag rounds. I took dumbbells in equal or greater weight to the ones the women who'd been there for years took. I thought it was interesting.

Then I started here on these weight machines, and you can use the pin to select what weight you want, so you can track what the person ahead of you was lifting, and I started to clock what everybody else was lifting. There were women who left the pin at 5 or 15 pounds for the upper body exercises. The heaviest weight I saw a woman clock in was 35 lbs.

I was doing a minimum of 45, and that was when I was doing the lift-over-your-head stuff. For the rest, it was 55-65. And for the legs? 90 lbs minimum, up to 115/120. the only other woman I saw do over 100 lbs for the leg weights was bigger than me set everything on a really high weight and only did 5-10 reps, one set.

And I'm thinking, what the hell is up with the lifting weights thing?

I don't think women in general can only lift 15-35 lbs. I just don't buy it. So what gives? Is it just a matter of doing it for years without increasing the weight? Why?

I know there are a lot of women who fear "bulking up" like a guy. The thing is, unless you've got a big dose of above-average testoserone, you likely won't do this unless you're expressly training for it and taking supplements. Instead, you'll likely condense. Muscles get denser, not bigger, if you don't have a ton of testoserone. That's what happened to me after six months or so of martial arts classes. My biceps got to a certain size, and then just stared getting denser and harder.

So, lifting more than 15 lbs isn't going to turn you into Arnold Swartzenegger.

What gives? Are women afraid of being strong? Or are the weights really not the priority, since we're all *really* just at the gym to get *thin*? And is there really such a push to be thin that we'll give up being strong to get it?

Because let me tell you, being strong is really fucking useful when your roommate and her SO are out of town and you have to move your entire household (including the goddamn fucking air conditioner) up two flights of stairs. It's also really useful when you're getting harrassed on the train or on the street. It gives you a confidence you didn't have before, and in fact, you'll likely get harrassed *less* because of that newfound confidence (yes, I've been harrassed far, far, less since I took up the MA classes and learned the boxer's walk).

So why keep lifting 15 pounds? Cause you think you can't lift any more? Cause you're thinking, "What's the point?"

At work, I sit in a cubicle immediately behind the receptionist. It took her almost a year to realize that she didn't need to call one of the guys from the back to haul around boxes for her. The sad part was when she brought me over to haul a box that weighed less than 20 lbs.

Fucking Phone

Our phone's still out. And I collapsed yesterday after grocery shopping and putting the last bed together, so the liquor cabinet contents are still downstairs.

Sad. Lord knows I need the liquor upstairs...

Also, I tried to go grocery shopping yesterday, and realized I'd overspent myself for yet another month, and my bank card gave me a "not authorized" message. I'm not sure how this happened. I was doing grandly this month.

Shit, what am I saying? This is me. If I actually had money in the bank on payday, I'd be somebody else entirely.

Tired, Tired, Tired, Tired

Was up until midnight last night moving shit upstairs. Do you have any idea how heavy a goddamn air conditioner is? That thing was a fucking bitch.

Still, we're at about 98% moved. What we have left:

1 bookshelf
1 floor rug
100 lbs worth of free weights (ah, yes, me and my free weights)
A handful of unwashed dishes
The contents of the liquor cabinet
My roommate's clothes
2 of my roommate's small shelves
Everything sitting on the back porch

Then I need to put together my roomates' bed, replace some lightbulbs, and clean the entirety of the old apartment at some point.

Damn, I'm tired.

But hey, we've got air conditioning.

Take care of the luxeries and the details will take care of themselves...

The Problem with Flickr

The problem with trying to host images with Flickr is that they only give you two or three sizes of the appropriate sort, one too big, one too small.

Crappy. Need to host elsewhere.

This Logo is a Work In Progress

Teaching myself Photoshop here at work. The logo's a work in progress. I'm having oodles of fun over here, so watch for changes and logo clean-up.

Santorum On the Daily Show

Whu-pah.

I'm so confused at how guys like Santorum can say this stuff with a straight (ha ha) face. It's a step away from saying people who have sex with people of the same sex aren't actual people, they're fake people. I find it incredibly surreal.

I don't know how long people can just nod along with the crap before they start realizing what's actually being said. I'm waiting for the Great Masses (the 52%) to wake up and go, "Hey, wait a minute! That makes no sense!" Read the rest:

Santorum: No, no. Again, what's society's purpose in marriage? Society's purpose - the reasons civilizations have held up marriage is because they want to establish and support and secure the relationship that is in the best interest of the future of the society, which is, a man and a woman having children and providing the stability for those children to be raised in the future.

Stewart: Wouldn't you say though and with that same thing and I completely agree, although I always thought the purpose of marriage was a bachelor party but that's beside the point. (laughter) But wouldn't you say that society has an interest in understanding that the homosexual community also wants to form those same bonds and raise children and wouldn't a monogamous, good-hearted, virtuous homosexual couple be in society's best interest raising a child rather than a heterosexual couple with adultery, with alcohol issues, with other things, and by the way, I don't even need to make that sound as though a gay couple can only raise a child given failures in other couples.

Proving It's All Just the Same Shit

Oh, the shock, oh the horror.

I bet that without the manly label, it would have cost 50 cents more.

I'm Not Sure Why I Find This So Cool. But It's Cool.

Condensation clouds:



















The clouds appear for the same reason that clouds always form, namely, that the air has cooled to the point that the ambient water vapor condenses. Flows around bodies and wings always change the temperature and pressure of the fluid. It is well known that lift is caused by pressure differences on top or bottom of a wing or body so that it ought to be obvious that the pressure varies from point to point in a flow around an object. The fact that the temperature changes can be seen by noting that most fluid flows and nearly every aerodynamic flow are frictionless. In the language of thermodynamics, the flow is said to be reversible or loss-free. Read More

Gallery.

(via boingboing)

Looking for a Toilet?

You know those annoying communting days when you're stuck on a train platform and wishing to hell you knew of a public toilet that was open that early in the morning? Or, have you ever been a tourist stuck in the middle of a tourist trap, wondering how the hell to navigate through the hawkers to find a public toilet?

Well, if you live or travel through Australia, no worries (mate - oh, god, I had to say it!). Much like a useful transit map, Australia's got a Public Toilet Map.

No shit (I'm in a mood this morning, gee).

(via justine)

Signs You've Stayed Too Long At Your Job

Should I feel bad that I pretty much have experienced all of these? Put a star by the one about getting angrier...

You have a lot on your mind, just not work. The work doesn't challenge you and time hangs. "Boredom is a big factor," Hollander said. "When it's just a job, it's time to leave."

Things change, not to your advantage. The boss you got along with so well leaves, or worse, takes on a new favorite employee. Eventually that person gets layered in above you on the corporate ladder, intercepting your access to the boss, taking over plum projects and moving you out of the decision-making loop.

Hollander describes this as "death by a thousand cuts." The change is subtle at first, but your loss of status compounds over time.

Your boss takes you for granted. You do something well and you get pigeonholed as the company expert in that area. Or you're no longer seen as having potential for new projects. Or, just as bad, you're known as the good corporate citizen who'll do whatever you're asked – including relocating multiple times.

You pigeonhole yourself. Hollander knows top performers who stay at their jobs because they don't believe they could succeed elsewhere. "The longer you're at a place, the more you think your success depends on your environment," she said. Or you lose confidence that you can do anything else.

Your mood ranges from angry to angrier. No matter how well-regarded your work is or once was, if you develop a reputation as a depressing crank, colleagues will distance themselves. And that isolation can make you more vulnerable in a layoff.

You feel like hell. Unhappiness can undermine your health, said Paul Spector, professor of industrial and organizational psychology at the University of South Florida. Early signs of excess stress: stomachaches, headaches and insomnia.

(thanks, B)

Ah, Yes. I Remember This Feeling

With regular gym workouts comes, once again, regular aches and pains. When I first started taking martial arts classes, I was sore for three months.

No kidding.

Let's hope the recovery's quicker this time.

In any case, hot damn, it's nice to be moving again. I really like being strong. I've missed this.

Rape Spam Rant

As a woman who travels a lot and has well meaning parents, I get these "you should be scared shitless!" e-mails all the time, you know:

I allude to those rape-avoidance-tips emails, the kind written by “the police department” and sent by your well-meaning friend, warning you to always look under your car for attackers (or up in the trees for ninja attackers!), and to stroll around town with your keys sticking out of your white-knuckled fist.

You remember these ones, eh?

Luckily, Twisty ranted about it, so I don't have to:

The subtext [of rape spam], of course, is:

“You should be scared shitless! You were born female, and rotten luck that is, because that means you are pretty much there for the taking whenever the fancy strikes, and nothing you can do will actually prevent some psycho shitbag from sexually assaulting you, and we really can’t help you by doing anything that will actually make a difference--like giving stiffer sentences to sex offenders or castrating known rapists with jagged bits of metal or suggesting to boys that a woman is not obligated to screw them just because she smiled at'em--so, just to make sure you feel like the entirely powerless speck of dirt you are, here are a few half-assed tricks we all know don’t work--like, 'practice screaming into your pillow,' or 'never go out alone'--but probably you ought to just be too scared to ever leave the house again, even though rape is most likely to occur in your own home by some fucktard you already know. Oh well! That’s the good old patriarchy, the social system of misogynist barbarians! Sucks to be you!“

Yeah.

And I must say, I'm very happy to see the increasing use of the word "fucktard" around the net.... It's just such a useful word for so many, well, fucktards.

Why Are There So Many Tampons in Our House?

Why are there so many tampons in our house? I was digging around for more pads in our bathroom cabinet this morning, trying to clear space around the boxes and boxes of tampons tumbling out of the cabinet and spilling onto the floor. Why are there so many tampons in our house? I don't use them. My roommate hardly ever uses them. Yet we have amassed 4-5 boxes of tampons and have no pads left but the diaper-like overnights.

Alas, terrorist bombings have not yet reached Chicago (knock on wood), so it's not like we've got any local wounds to staunch, either. But I suppose we'll be prepared, in any case.

Why are there so many tampons in our house?

I need some more coffee.

An Open Letter to Viagra Guy

Do you really need to listen to sports scores and track the minute by minute countdown (from 60 minutes) of the shuttle launch on the speakers of your computer without using headphones and then narrate your experiece for the rest of us at 8 o'clock in the morning when some of us, who require 8-10 hours of sleep, only got 6 last night because their landlady was showing the apartment until 9 o'clock at night and me and my roommate went out to see a movie?

Do you need to comment on every drawing that comes back from Jonas and tell us how hard and tough it is cause he's such a stickler for actually making sure you get the drawing right? Do you have to sit in this shared space (there are four of us in here) and call you pharmacist for more Viagra prescriptions and haggle with your credit card company about late charges and tell us all about how tough it's going to be for you to get to the bank after work, like the rest of us don't have lives, too? Can you do this on your lunch break, or outside from your cell phone? Are you just a closet exhibitionist who gets off on that sort of thing, intruding on the personal spacing-out of others that gets them through their work days?

I despise sitting back here. I can't fucking wait until these goddamn uploads are done and I can disconnect from this T-1 connection.

I Hate My Job, Monday Edition

The coffeemaker at work is broken.

You'd think this would be enough tragedy for one day. I'm stuck here in the back of the office with a bunch of architect temps, including Viagra Guy, who felt it neccessary to call his pharmacist from work and request that they give him more Viagra pills because, "I have more activity than other people." He also just talks a lot in general about things like the weather, droughts, and local sporting events. He bores the crap out of me. I keep my headphones on and the music loud and ignore him as best as possible.

I've been stuck here in the back because we have a lot of uploading to do, and we have a cable connection back here, so I'm uploading from two computers a laptop and a desktop. I hate this job. I hate the repetition. This isn't even my goddamn project, it's someone else's, and yet, *I'm* the one stuck on two computers? What the fuck is up with that? The laptop is now giving me shit this morning, and I have to keep restarting it. I'm irritated at work, I hate this job.

I spent all weekend packing and moving stuff up to the 3rd floor apartment. Me and Jenn had a short window on Friday, and were hauling stuff up two flights of stairs in 90+ degree heat until nine at night. All in all, I'm happy about the move and love the upstairs space, but I'm ready to just get all that shit done. Hopefully the current tenant will move out a littl early and I can haul more stuff up during the week. B will be in town this weekend to help.

And let me tell you, 1642 books is all well and good until you have to pack them up and haul them box by bloody fucking box up two flights of stairs. We hauled about 1500 books on Friday.

To help alleviate some of this stress, I've finally joined a gym again, a much more local one, that's got kickboxing and pilates classes as well. That's a big load off my mind. I've been missing gym work, and I know that's been seriously wearing on me these last few months.

I'm also bleeding like a fucking lamb at the block, but hey, I'm bleeding. Got my follow-up PP appointment on Friday, which'll be nice. Still happy with the IUD; when I look at my other options (weight gain, depression, mood swings) compared to these ones (blood and pain), the blood and pain really isn't so bad. Motrin works wonders.

I'm behind on a lot of other stuff (writing, reading, Arabic), but I've been so stressed out this last week I just really don't care. This week, of course, I'll need to start caring, and particularly once the move is finished, things need to get back on track.

Ce la vie.

It's the Weekend

::collapse::

Beer... beeeeerr... must... have.... beeeeeerrrrr....

Am I Fat Or Sexy? (Implying One Can't Be Both?)

Interesting experiment by Marie Claire magazine:

We photographed a gorgeous, size-14 model in a neutral pose and made the unretouched photos into two mobile billboards. Then we gave each billboard a vastly different message: one confident ("I think I'm sexy. Do you?"), one unsure ("I think I'm fat. Do you?"). We asked everyone who saw these billboards to visit MarieClaire.com and tell us what they thought. Here's how 4,000 people reacted.