“My favorite explosions always involve some kind of fuel. I love when you add gasoline, I love when you add propane, I love when you add coffee creamer!” -Kari Byron

The Mythbusters aren’t your stereotypical nerdy scientists with over-sized horn-rimed glasses, pocket protectors, high squeaky voices and awkward social skills–they are a special kind of nerdy. Passionate about science, incredibly intelligent, personable, absolute nerds/dorks/geeks (insert your favorite implied smarty pants insult here) and totally nutty–they endear themselves to your heart and make science interesting and cool in one short hour.

All of the Mythbusters are awesome and inspiring in their own right, but I find it especially awesome to have gun-loving, blow torch wielding, passionate, and all around bad ass Kari Byron on the team, inspiring girls everywhere, destroying the stereotype that science and enjoying things that go boom are relegated to the world of boys.

Kari isn’t the token girl on the team who needs to be watched or pacified or taken care of, she is a full fledged team member bringing her own expertise, work ethic and passion for science to the team, adding to the great chemistry that makes the Mythbusters so endearing. And more than that she is treated as such by her colleagues. I fee like I shouldn’t be so incredulous or perhaps envious, this is how all competent colleagues should be treated and yet it seems so rare, especially on TV!

When Kari was pregnant, the show didn’t make a big deal of it, and she continued working close to her due date and then took some time off, in a very natural and appropriate way.  She wasn’t treated like a fragile doll unable to do anything but sit and watch, she participated and worked right along side the rest of the team, taking a few extra precautions and not attempting any of the crazy stunts herself, in a very appropriate and balanced way.  My favorite vision of Kari pregnant is in attempting to bend bullets while testing physics from the movie Wanted. Picture it: Kari standing in a open field at a shooting range with her giant belly, sporting a bullet proof vest, and swinging her arm around as fast as she can attempting to shoot the target 100 yards away–how awesome is that!  The picture is such a jutxtaposition of everything that woman traditionally told not to be and yet the joy on Kari’s face is priceless! (I searched Google for about an hour looking to find the shot, alas to no avail! You’ll have to rely on your imagination and my descriptive skills.)

If you want to be cynical, you could argue that there is only one girl of the team of five, she is cute and white and doesn’t do all of the stunts the boys do, but to you I say nay! Instead of being disappointed for what Kari is not because no one is perfect and there are many different types of women and men, lets demand more strong female Kari-type role models on TV!

I love TLC‘s show Say Yes To The Dress–there is something so alluring about getting to see all of those beautiful couture dresses, even if half the time I’m yelling at the TV, disgusted by the patriarchal fairy tale nonsense many of the brides are cooing over. Even with all of the patriarchal ideals the show plays on to get viewers and to get women to buy ridiculously expensive dresses to wear only once, I think the show actually does some positive things, especially in terms of body image.

The commercial for the new series Say Yes to The Dress: Big Bliss is AWESOME. It depicts several women who do not fit the traditional skinny beauty construct, being absolutely thrilled about finding a wedding dress and feeling good about the way they look. The episode that I saw was also really positive in terms of body image. Kleinfeld, the bridal salon the show features, carries the largest selection of plus size samples dresses for brides to try on and the consultants are really very positive and helpful with every bride, no matter what they look like. Overall, the clients depicted on the show range in age, body shape/size, ethnic background and wealth. It is only occasionally that the show features a bride with an unlimited budged. Often the budget for the brides in only $2,000–this might sound like a lot of money for a one-time-use dress, but in terms of wedding dresses at Kleinfeld, its at the very low end.

You could argue that singling out plus size women in a special episode/series has derogatory connotations, but I think it is so positive to see a commercial that shows larger women being celebrated and feeling good about their bodies. We need that on TV–we need those images to counteract the constant barrage of skinny culture. It it perfect–no, absolutely not. By singling out larger women it can imply that skinny is the norm and the desired and therefore the ‘plus size’ woman is abnormal. But where else on television have you seen not only women with larger figures featured, but celebrating the way their body looks?

Ablow makes a slipperly slope argument that is just not logical, but is making the rounds in the news media outlets:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

I suggest that our children become comfortable with the biological sex they got at birth, and then choose to act, dress and express their sexuality however they so choose. And if that biological sex is something that is an affront to them, to then explore all of the available medical options. Race is biological. Sex is biological. Gender is not. The acts of wearing a sun dress or painting one’s toenails pink only carry the meaning that society places on them. They do not determine sexual orientation, nor are they permanent the way tattoos and skin bleaching are. They do represent socially constructed ideas of gender that have been perceived to be normal, and yes those constructs are being destroyed, to the joy and relief of hundreds of thousands of people who cannot squish themselves into a pink or blue box.

One of my absolute favorite anticdoes that highlights so acutely the arbitrariness of gender constructs is Walt Disney. When Walt Disney was crafting the famous fairy tales in the 1950s blue was considered the appropriate color for girls for its passive and calm qualities. Pink, closely related to red, was considered more appropriate for boys as it is associated with passion and agency. Cinderella (1950), Alice (1951), Wendy from Peter Pan (1953) are all clad in blue, not pink.  It is Sleeping Beauty in 1959 that literally shows the transitioning social perception as her fairy godmothers argue over the color of her dress throughout the entire movie–an argument that is visually displayed in the last scene of the movie.

Hats off to Jenna Lyons for boldly and publicly rebuffing arbitrary constructs of gender!

Brianne mentioned that the thinkThin bars are carried at Trader Joe’s (which I confirmed at my local store), and being a huge supporter of TJs, I decided to write a letter and ask them to stop carrying the bars, in the name of positive body images.  Before sending the letter however, I did some research on the thinkThin company, and thus encountered a huge conflict.  While I do not like the name of the thinkThin bars, and completely understand that the name is contributing to a collective obsession with thinness, upon review of the website, I actually like a lot of the messages that the company puts forward.

So what do you do with a company that puts forth both damaging ideas about weight and body image and also really positive ones? On the front page of the thinkThin website is a short video clip of Lizanne Falsetto, CEO and founder, promoting not only her products, but positive ideas about food and nutrition.  She uses the term weight wellness, which has completely different connotations than thinness, she promotes a positive interaction with food and she really emphasizes awareness of the kind of food we put in our bodies.  The emphasis is on nutrition, not thinness, despite the ever looming notion of thinness that the name itself promotes. Thorough review of the rest of the site provides the same positive ideas of weight wellness and nutrition. thinkThin defines weight wellness as such:

This is the optimal weight range at which our bodies feel happy and healthy. This is not defined or dictated by aesthetic, shape, weight or tape measure — it is the emotional outcome of feeling good, energized, funny, confident, sexy and living a life filled with joy and laughter. Once we focus on being healthy and happy, our bodies will follow and align.

I posted this question on the Revolution of Real Women facebook page and tweeted some thoughts, wanting to engage in constructive dialogue on the intricacies of the negative body image that consumerism obsesses over, and what to do with companies that are both damaging and supportive. Unfortunately I didn’t receive any response at all. I’m not trying to be controversial or adversarial, I’m only trying to engage in a constructive conversation.

As a community of feminists, we cannot just ignore comments that we disagree with or ideas that might challenge our arguments. The way to effect change is to recognize different perspectives that we may not have seen before and have an open dialogue. Since I cannot engage the people at Revolution of Real Women, I ask you–What do we do with thinkThin and similar companies that are not strictly binary, but have both positive and negative messages?

Bronte Sisters

From Belle

From the Little Mermaid

Katie Makkai

There is an entire generation of women and men who were raised under the notion that feminism is a nasty, vile term. This being so, the new generation of would-be feminists existed for many years in the world of the unlabeled, floating in an abstract space of pro-women, anti-patriarchy sentiment.  In this collective history each unlabeled feminist experiences a similar situation that revolutionizes their feminist life. In a women’s studies class or in discussion with a mentor or some sort of learning environment, a definition of feminism is produced that triggers an epiphany in the unlabeled feminist–’I am feminist.’   The derogatory haze that surrounded the term in our minds is suddenly whipped away and we can see clearly for the first time in our lives–the definition of the word feminist. There is nothing derogatory about it. Our mothers were feminists. There are women and men around us that we respect and admire that classify themselves as feminists.

The age of the newly revealed feminist varies, each discovering her or his status as feminist at the appropriate time on life’s journey. Yet the story is always somehow the same, the derogatory connotations that surround the word feminist permeated society to such a degree, that now matter how strong of feminists our parents were we still shied away from the term. Reclaiming the “F” Word has become a common theme in contemporary feminism–reclaiming, redefining and truly embracing the term as our own.

Feminist Lab is happy to present our first guest post by blogger Jessica Broughton. Jessica is a writer and editor and runs GrrlWriter.com.

I have always been a staunch supporter of women’s rights, but somewhere, somehow the idea nestled into my brain that being a feminist was a bad thing.  During my freshman year of college an English professor redefined feminism in such a way that I was able to reclaim and reaffirm myself as a feminist.  Her simple question: “Do you support women’s rights?” defined everyone in the room as a feminist.  Being a feminist means you support the rights of a woman to live and be how she chooses.  I liked that idea – I am a woman, I support my rights to be and live how I choose – and from then on I counted myself amongst the feminist number in the best sense of the word.  I never thought that being a feminist meant that I was better than a man or somehow superior – but that I knew I wanted to be seen as an equal in all areas of my life and it became a guiding principle of who I am.

I would be remiss if I told the tale of my own experience without telling the story of my mother.  My mother grew up in the sixties, attended Woodstock (ssh – my grandparents still don’t know she was there!), burned her bra and protested with other women and men against segregation, racism and sexism.  It wasn’t until I was a teenager and specifically had to interview her about the sixties that I began to understand her reasons for not wanting to talk about that time in her life. I will never forget the sadness on her face when she said that “I don’t like to talk about that time because we thought we could change the world – that by protesting, by doing something, that we could honestly change the world.  And we didn’t.”

Her post ’60s burnout was understandable – the world seemed to become infinitely more complicated after the season of love.  But I think they did change the world.  Because of their involvement in social issues like feminism I was able to go to a school that offered just as many sports teams for girls as for boys, an option that didn’t exist when my mother was a child. Mom reminded me on a regular basis that I was lucky to grow up in a world where there were more professions open to me than either being a secretary or being a nurse, and encouraged me to reach for my dreams.  I didn’t know it but she laid the groundwork for me to be a feminist in my own right.  As a child she made sure that my brother and I were brought up with one major value: to judge someone based on who they are as a person and nothing else – not gender, race, color, or sexuality.  My mom was the first person I ever knew who had a gay friend and it wasn’t a big deal.  Even today I am proud to count my mom as my number one supporter when it comes to anything that I want to do – she just says “Go for it.”

My mother didn’t set out to raise a feminist – she just wanted to raise her children with the values and ideals that she fought for.  In writing this post I talked with my mom a lot about what it meant to have to fight for civil rights as a woman, what her struggle was about, and was ultimately able to tell her that I have reached an age where I can say I really appreciate the values she instilled in me.  My mom helped me become a strong, independent feminist and I feel I owe it to her and to my gender to make sure that the rights that my predecessors fought for are preserved.  I owe it to her to help our society build on the principles that began with classical feminism and to make a better tomorrow for subsequent generations.

Breast Cancer Awareness Month is in full swing and the town is sufficiently painted pink. The exuberance expressed in support of Breast Cancer Awareness Month far out weighs that of any other cancer supporting campaign. Sex sells, and breasts being the quintessential embodiment of male desire for the female body, must be saved (!).

When Breast Cancer Awareness Campaigns entered into the mechanism that is consumerism in the US, their simple mission to raise money and awareness for breast cancer became entangled in the conglomerate need to feed the consumerism beast.  Consumerism is predicated on fundamental gender stereotypes. By labeling breast cancer with pink it was immediately proclaimed to be a women’s issue (however untrue) which presented a simple way to subversively commodify women by placing a woman’s worth in her bosom. Breast cancer campaigns are fueled by catchy slogans that emphasize saving the breasts, not the women attached to them.  The “Save the ta-tas” and “I love bobbies” campaigns and sexy Facebook campaigns are just a few examples of the thousands of different ways breast cancer is being marketed.  Breast cancer awareness campaigns have effectively repositioned women back in the space of damsel in distress, providing patriarchy a valid reason swoop in and save the day, all in the name of ‘a worthy cause’.

An argument can be made that the ends justify the means, and as long as there is support for breast cancer, the specifics of how or why breast cancer gets so much support is inconsequential.  However, when does the cost exceed the benefit?  Is the continued subversion of women for the benefit for a singular cause is too high a cost?

Breast cancer awareness is just one cog in the consumeristic machine. What we must recognize is that by allowing consumerism to use sex as the singular most effective way to sell products the necessity for products to be sexy will carry over into all spaces–from products and services to politics to charity causes and beyond.  A recent Esquire blog article explores how DC politics is being transformed into Hollywood glamor by political campaigns that use the ‘sexy’ appeal of its candidates.  Its seems that the sexiness of a candidate is becoming more important than where a candidate stands on the issues.

Its not to say that all Breast Cancer Awareness campaigns are fraught with subversive commodifications of women or that all breast cancer campaigns must cease.  But with our awareness of breast cancer, we must also be aware of how sexualizing breast cancer reinforces patriarchal stereotypes of gender and works to subvert women.