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Web Features
Modelling Workers’ Rights: Modelling Workers’ Rights
Working as a model has always seemed to promise a lifestyle of fame, fortune, and luxury. Remember supermodel Linda Evangelista’s famous quip, “We don’t wake up for less than $10,000 a day”? This is not what most of us think of when we think about work. The Model Alliance aims to disrupt these superficial assumptions and expose the decidedly less glamorous aspects of modelling, which are deeply tied to issues of workers’ rights. The Model … READ MORE
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Web Features
Media Savvy: Don’t Insult Me!: A Glossary of terms
Note: This is a glossary of terms used in the Media Savvy column “Don’t Insult Me!”, published in our Spring 2012 issue. You can read the full column in the print version of our Spring 2012 issue—purchase an individual copy or subscribe to receive future issues in the mail! For people who might find these terms to be confusing, here is a quick summary: Sex is about a person’s physical body (genitalia, hormones, etc.), e.g. male, female, … READ MORE
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Web Features
Kickstarting your career: The art of negotiation
The first murmurings of the women’s movement may seem like eons ago, and many think that it quelled the issue of gender inequality in the workforce. In actual fact, there remains a deplorable amount of inequality in North America’s workforce. Statistics Canada’s Publication Women in Canada: A Gender-based Statistical Report indicates that a woman still earns approximately 71 cents for every dollar a man earns. READ MORE
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Web Features
Body Politics: In Praise of the Vulnerable Femme: Loving your breasts
Note: This is the full version of the Body Politics piece we published in the Spring 2012 issue. “My political obligations? I am a Black woman … in world that defines human as white and male for starters. Everything I do including survival is political.” —Audre Lorde A few months ago I wrote a poem called ‘In Praise Of The Vulnerable Femme’. I composed it as an ode to Femme Of Centre folks and particularly Of Colour … READ MORE
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Web Features
Pump Up the Jams
Walking onto the track, the first thing you notice is the women are taller and faster on skates. Much faster. They bump and pass each other, and in the last jam the crowd is screaming, cheering, and pumping their fists. Margaret Smackwood blocks an opponent; her teammate Viktory Lapp overtakes the pack. It looks like they’ve done the impossible, that they’ve got this in the bag with only a breathless 25 seconds left in the … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Labour of Labour
Updated In February of this year, 2012, the Teaching Assistants’ union for the University of Toronto, CUPE 3902, found itself on the brink of a strike. A few female PHD students who work as TAs, and organizers at CUPE 3902, were interested in sharing their experiences working in labour, for the purpose of contextualizing the operating structure of unions like theirs. A central element that emerged in our conversation was the role of gender and equity dynamics, … READ MORE
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Web Features
Sharing Skills at School
Somewhere along the way, I missed out on some pretty useful life lessons, from sewing buttons, to fixing bike chains, to DIY hair care and styling, to properly stretching after sitting in front of the computer all day. When I thought about all the things I wanted to learn, I realized I already knew my potential teachers: my friends. Everyone is an expert in something, or wants to be, and since most of us can’t afford … READ MORE
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Web Features
Unpaid Labour
Several articles released by North American newspapers and internet publications over the past year have voiced a backlash to the standardization of unpaid internships as replacements for entry level jobs. Pieces in The Globe and Mail, Macleans, and most recently Reuters tell the stories of young workers who are speaking out against this fad. In the current issue of Shameless, which centers around the theme of “labour,” Carley Centen of anti-unpaid-internship site internsheep.wordpress.com looks at how this … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Labour of Love: The Labour of Love
What is love? Is romance its most vital form? ‘The labour of love’ is a documentary about how four women in their twenties, from a variety of cultural and economic backgrounds and sexual orientations, living in St. John’s, Newfoundland, define what love is, and the struggles that come along with it. ‘The Labour of Love’ was originally broadcast on radio show WOW! or Women on Women: A Show About What Women are Doing, Saying, and … READ MORE
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Web Features
Shameless Book Club: Shameless Book Club: ‘Feminism For Real’!
Our first episode of the Shameless Book Club podcast features anthology ‘Feminism for Real.’ This text asks big questions about the relationship between feminist theory and practice, and discusses the frustrations of trying to relate to ideas about feminism that don’t fit no matter how much we sometimes squeeze and unbutton to make them. In this podcast you’ll hear Shameless contributors and staff rolling around questions the book has posed, and talking about where they look to … READ MORE
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Web Features
Editor’s letter: Labour of Love
On November 2, 2011, Oakland went on strike. In a formidable display of solidarity and support, workers across the city united in opposition to oppressive government policies, industry exploitation and state violence. At home in Toronto, I watched while an estimated three thousand protesters successfully forced an operational halt to the Oakland Port. I was moved when I saw local businesses shut down in solidarity and I cried when I saw hundreds of school-aged children carrying … READ MORE
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Web Features
Sex Work: A Feminist Legal Perspective
Selling sex is controversial. And exchanging sexual services for money is a difficult issue to discuss amongst feminists: some say sex work is always violent and a form of exploitation; others consider it a viable job choice. Right now, this debate is once again front and centre in Canadian courts. As a feminist lawyer, I take direction from my clients and I respect their experiences and their knowledge. This past year I’ve been part of a … READ MORE
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Web Features
The New Face of Farming
Looking for a job? Check your local classifieds and you’ll find that many types of ads abound. But have you ever seen a “Farmers Wanted” ad? I haven’t. Nevertheless, the agricultural sector in Canada is in desperate need of help. In the next ten years 75% of existing farmers are going to reach retirement age with few prospects of replacement. Pause to ponder the gravity of this situation. Who will grow our food? Will we … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Arab Spring
“Where were you when Mubarak resigned? #Jan25 #Egypt” This was a tweet I sent out the day after the despotic and now disgraced Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak was finally forced to resign due to massive public protests, which focused on legal, political and economic issues. Mubarak, who managed to stay in power for almost 30 years, resigned after weeks of determined protests and pressure. He faced allegations of corruption and abuse of power as well as … READ MORE
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Web Features
The Barter Babes Project
Scrilla, bones, dough, moola, scratch, clams, buckaroos: call it what you will, but money is money. From all the economy talk in the news to applying for school loans to standing in line at the grocery store, we spend a lot of time with money on our minds and our minds on money. It makes the world go round, yet finance is not an easy to navigate subject, with cryptic acronyms and confusing questions. What … READ MORE
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Web Features
Feminist Art Gallery
“Our interest in feminism binds us together and our supporters join us in the belief that art can be a powerful tool for social change.” - Feminist Art Gallery The first rumblings I heard about the Feminist Art Gallery (FAG) were from filmmaker Elle Flanders as we sat passing time in an empty room at Hart House on the University of Toronto campus waiting for an audience at a feminist film and video night. A smirk … READ MORE
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Web Features
D.I.Y. Planter
Many of us are concerned about food security and where our food is coming from. Much of the world’s food is imported and exported, and big factory farms consistently use only a few different varieties of seeds, which leads to far less biodiversity overall. This means that we are risking losing important heritage varieties of fruits and veggies. Some of the best ways to combat these huge issues is to ease our reliance on the imported … READ MORE
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Web Features
Every Girl is a Riot Grrrl
Before there was Toronto-based bossa-funk-disco vixen Maylee Todd, before Emily Haines became the fearless leader of Metric and before “girl bands” became an embarrassing buzz phrase, there was Riot Grrrl, a feminist movement ignited by women in punk rock bands during the early ’90s across the west coast of America. While Maylee, Emily and musicians like them don’t necessarily play punk music, they do embody the spirit of Riot Grrrl – they have no patience … READ MORE
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Web Features
Listen Up!
Welcome to Listen Up!, a Shameless audio section featuring podcasts on a wide variety of topics. Our first series is Tweeting Feminists, a podcast about feminism and social media by Shameless Arts Editor and Ryerson grad student, Ronak Ghorbani. In this third episode, Ronak chats with feminist blogger and mom, Gina Crosley-Corcoran about her blog, The Feminist Breeder and motherhood. Tweeting Feminists Episode Three - Featuring The Feminist Breeder by ronak_gee … READ MORE
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Web Features
?Batman, Pass Me My Man Repellent Spray?
I don’t remember exactly the first time I saw the Man Repeller. It was most likely during one of my whirlwind click-fests where I open about 30 “new tabs” on fashion-related things that seem entertaining, pretty or at least worth a mere five seconds of my time. But I do remember being struck with a sense of uneasiness, like something was off. The concept is pretty typical for a fashion blog. Cute, young, skinny white girl … READ MORE