Candy Bags! (So You Think You’re Crafty?)

Recently my partner and I relocated to Vancouver Island from the wintery north to take a new-ish life: long growing seasons for gardening, future island hopping, and new jobs! Little did I know that by relocating from an amazing job where I felt I was actually making a difference in my community to a smaller island community meant that jobs are actually few and far between. In desperation to ensure I could pay my bills I’ve taken a job working in a call centre for an American cell phone company.

While I do refer to this time in my life as “just another chapter in a forthcoming memoir” or “all great Canadian authors have worked a rather strange job once upon a time!” I still can’t get over the fact I’m not allowed to have food at my desk: except for hard candy. Then along came this tutorial! I have purchased pouches for dry snacks at craft fairs and have a pile of pouches I made before the holidays and use them often to house York Bites, Yoghurt Raisins, and Nibs (or even almonds if I didn’t work in a nut-free environment). This Candy Bag Tutorial by “So You Think You’re Crafty” is great and easy to follow (so many pictures, step by step instructions). It includes how-tos for both fabric lined pouches (for pre-wrapped candies) and vinyl-lined pouches for every other candy or dry snack you’d want to put in there. The fabric lined ones can usually be thrown in the washer and the vinyl just wiped out with a damp cloth.

So if you do find yourself “working for the man” and really want to get your hands on some wildberry twizzlers at your desk, or even while studying Death of a Salesman in High School English, these pouches can hide your goodies and reduce plastic consumption!

Photo from post on I Am Friends With Sluts (iamfriendswithsluts.tumblr.com)

iamfriendswithsluts.tumblr.com thinks you are! This new-ish Tumblr roll is a compilation site of photos of girls that are posted on social networking sites like Facebook or Myspace. Readers submit photos they find on their friends or strangers sites to I Am Friends With Sluts and they are posted with ridiculously disappointing commentary:

“It only takes two wine coolers to make me a lesbian”

“I’m training to fight my eating disorder next month on Pay-Per-View.”

“Bound together by tramp stamps, father issues and low self esteem.”

Aside from the obvious problems of ye ol’ patriarchy rearing its ugly head on the internets, the site reads like bad bad news, even despite the “satirical blog” disclaimer which ensures any response to the site creators won’t be taken seriously because they’re “just joking”.

A more serious issue, and one that drives me crazy, is that the patriarch has made it crystal clear that they’re winning, and despite my constant proclamation of “we’re sexy by choice!!”, these pictures and their content confirm that these are oppressed choices. Slowly people are starting to talk about the personal sexualization of self on the ‘net but these discussions are often left to sites like Suicide Girls and other more porno’d sites and shows. These pictures read more like Girls Gone Wild, and the blocking out of eyes and randomizing of the photographs removes the reality of these girls’ lives and personalities (unlike Girls Gone Wild). But because these photos are pilfered from social networking sites, they are REAL girls and these are their REAL experiences; and they’re no longer theirs because they’re out there on the internet for anyone to see. And this is site is a perfect example of what someone might do to the party fun time content.

So, is the answer then that women stop putting pictures like this up on social networking sites? I’m not sure. Is it easier then dismantling the patriarch? Discuss!

Criticism of a recent article by Katie Roiphe on new motherhood is making the rounds in feminist blog-land. Basic premise is that Roiphe looks at her first six weeks of motherhood with a post-feminist lens that conflates motherhood with addiction: new mothers are addicted to both their babies and motherhood. So much so that they’re (she’s) reduced to tears about being separated from her new child.

While nurses, mothers, ECE providers, and academics could go on-and-on about attachment theory and practice, what strikes me most about Roiphe’s article is how flippant she is about feminism and the possible realities for other new moms. Also, she pitches herself against feminists, rather than discuss complexities within feminism and her privilege and access to the feminism she enjoys.

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Girls from the PG Roller Derby Brat Camp 2009 show off their shirts. (ohsweetie)

This past weekend I got to participate in a teen girl roller derby camp that my place of employment, the YMCA, threw with a handful of other local agencies and businesses. One of the girls’ main projects was DIY-ing their camp t-shirts into derby dresses/shirts of wonder. They used lace, glitter, markers, and general deconstruction techniques to turn their men’s cut tees into the sassy piece they desired.

The fun part was that even though a lot of the girls were crafty, a number of them had never hand sewn before. Even basic techniques like how much thread you need, threading a needle, and tying a knot. It was exciting to be able to teach these girls basic sewing skills and it even erupted into a bit of feministy conversation:

Me: “Can you believe that once upon a time people argued that women were naturally inclined to do this [sew]?”

Pink Ink: *groan*

Zero: “Nuh, uh! They were forced to!”

Basic sewing tutorials:

Three techniques for basic hand sewing
Securing a knot and tying off thread
How to hem jeans in three easy steps.

When we started the Roller Derby League here in Prince George we were pretty excited about the onslaught of Roller Derby culture about to hit our communities: the Hell On Wheels documentary, Knockdown Knits, and the forthcoming Whip It. With Whip It about to come out it’s like we, the roller derby’ers, have fully arrived in hegemonic pop culture. The trailer brings on debate about the showiness of the sport, the brutal beatings so often left out on television (and not usually on the track), and the weird continuity issues of a teenager being able to play in an adult league. Regardless, the soundtrack is phenomenal and the stacked cast including Zoe Bell, Juliette Lewis, Eve, and Ellen Page will make this movie a gem. And, it must turn out right because Page’s character’s dad gives her a shiny new pair of Riedells: such a well earned and classic new gift for any roller girl who tries to make a name for herself on the track.

A page from Amy’s Diary (The Amy Diary)

Amy Barbara of Vancouver recently posted her junior high diaries on her new blog the amy diary. A testament to the power of a grade-school diaries, the amy diary is a sweet little snapshot into the language and life of a young woman.

Hey ladies! Didn’t you know that you didn’t need a rugged, “manly” man? And that Feminism with a capital “F” has trained your brain to not only think for itself (!!) but to long for not-too-rugged jaw lines? Well, don’t fret because the New Male Beauty is here!

Ed Westwick’s GQ photoshoot remixed (Jezebel)

Straight from Jezebel, it seems that Irina Aleksander at the New York Observer has scoured the television for images of this new man. Her argument? They all look the same: girlie, non-threatening, and their faces are completely symmetrical.

Now, if you’re on the hunt trying to distinguish one of these beautiful boys from our popular culture here’s a list of traits to look for: “heavy upper eyelash and eyebrows, not super-strong cheekbones and very soft jaw lines”. According to a prominent scholar, nowadays women are interested in men who look like babies not those handsome, rugged manly men of the yesteryear like George Clooney and Brad Pitt!
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I am procrastinating from the home stretch of my thesis and singing along to this karaoke version of Sister Suffragette from Mary Poppins! What a great way to send a thesis about feminism into the future!

I am in the thick of submitting the second draft of my thesis. Over the past few weeks I’ve updated essays I wrote over a year ago, saying “yes” to every edit my thesis-supervisor has suggested, and incorporating newer material because my research just kind of stopped at 2007. One of the articles I’ve come across in my search for newish material, “What is Third Wave Feminism? A New Directions Essay,” by R. Claire Snyder, sums up the major arguments/actions of the third wave.

She also stakes a claim:

“third-wavers do not feel the need to spend a lot of time constructing ambitious theoretical analyses or justifying on what grounds they are acting; they just do it.”

And I wanted to pose a question to the greater Shameless community (if you identify as third-wave or not):

When you act politically or feministy do you know the theoretical argument behind what you’re doing? Or do you just do it?

For me, it’s a mix of both. I like engaging with feminism and being an activist/feminist in my community without thinking about the theories and reasons behind it. Feminism is inside me, this is who I am, what action I take is a direct reflection of this gut-feminism. But, I also love to wrestle with theories about why I participate the way I do and contribute the way I do (hence this crazy thesis about the third wave). I’m always surprised by is how easy it is to put the third wave (and younger feminists) into that non-theory category: as if we’re unable to talk our way out of the box we’re in.