The Damage of Child Beauty Pageants

Riot.Jane

This is the first time I've seen a non-hysterical critique of the phenomenon of child beauty pageants.  Most of the time it seems like it's moon-bat crazy people throwing tantrums either for or against the concept. 

In this blog post Mary Jo Rapini, LPC discusses whether it's the contestant or the parent that is actually benefiting from the pageant experience.  She also suggests better ways to help children learn the lessons they need to be successful people than crawling the beauty pageant circuit.

Beauty Pageants For Toddlers; Who Are They For?

In Honor of our Veterans (NSFW video)

Full Metal Jacket meets Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer:

~Riot.Jane

QOTD: The Internet Breeds Entitlement

Riot.Jane

Today's quotation:

The Web is truly customizable: You can listen to radios that play only your preferred tunes and read newspapers that cover only your favorite subjects. "We're used to having our tastes perfectly matched, whcih leads to entitlement," [Elias] Aboujaoude [author of Virtually You] says. If we don't experience novel things or sit through experiences we don't enjoy, we'll become a nation of spoiled, sheletered brats.

Bartz, Andrea. "The E-Ego." Psychology Today. Jun 2011: 25. Print

Today in 1945: Arthur C. Clarke Invents the Communications Satellite

Riot.Jane

If one particular man in history had died of polio as a child, you might not be reading this.  In fact, I daresay that modern Western life would indeed be very different.

On this day in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke began privately circulating his academic paper The Space-Station: Its Radio Applications.  (.pdf-page 34)

This privately-circulated paper and another published in Wireless World in October of the same year, Extra-Terrestrial Relays: Can Rocket Stations GiveWorld-Wide Radio Coverage? (.pdf-page 38), oth "discussed the special characteristics of geosynchronous orbit that would enable three satellites in that orbit to provide global communications." (.pdf-page 23.)

Sexy Sundays | "The Morning After" the "First Time"

Riot.Jane

A blog post by Mary Jo Rapini, LPC, caught my attention.  How you feel about losing your virginity depends...are you a guy or girl? begins with a discussion about the gender differences in the after-effects of the first sexual encounter as determined by a recent academic study (Body image and first sexual intercourse in late adolescence) and winds up with with the author's own views on the same.

[From How you feel] The morning after can be difficult no matter if you are a guy or a girl, but it seems to be more difficult for girls than guys. A study from researchers at Pennsylvania State University reports male university students' body images improved after having sexual intercourse for the first time, while the opposite pattern was found with females. The study which was published in the Journal of Adolescents and reported on 100 students from the university between the ages of 17 and 19 years of age who had sex for the first time during their time at the university.

Another Bill to Restrict Reproductive Freedom: HR 3 (UPDATED)

Riot.Jane

I just received the following e-mail, and the topic is news to me.  This is surprising because I'm usually pretty current on matters of reproductive freedom . . . More on this topic to come.

This is not an advocation that anyone should contribute, it's just the method by which I learned of the existence of HR 3.

The link in the e-mail: http://www.dccc.org/page/m/1d63cab1/1b83fc72/4a3c2f65/4e0ce84b/2346893725/VEsE/ .

Good Riddance to Bad Rubbish: Osama bin Laden

Riot.Jane

Everywhere I turned today, people were jubilant that Osama bin Laden is dead.  Watching news footage of the spontaneous crowds that gathered at the White House and in Times Square last night made me queasy.  It made me the same kind of queasy that the videos of Arabs chanting "Death to America" did when we saw that footage years ago.

I'm just not very good at processing that level of hatred.

Very Old and Very Sexy…An Oxymoron?

Hattie RetroAge

There was a time when I would have judged that combination to be not only absurd… but totally repulsive. That’s no longer the case.

What happened to turn that around?

Here goes…

When I was about five years old, my immigrant mother took me to the Steam Baths in Brighton Beach, Brooklyn. Just a mere pre-schooler, choking in the heat, I peered up with disgust at what I perceived to be “fat, old ladies”. Then and there I decided if that’s what being a lady looks like, I’ll never grow up.

Sexy Sundays | The Ins & Outs of Anal Sex (Part 2) (NSFW)

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Ad Vocabulary Re-Enforcing Gender Stereotypes

Riot.Jane

Crystal Smith, author of The Achilles Effect, blogs about the the impact of kids’ popular culture on young boys becuase she has been regularly disappointed by the film and television offerings available to her two young sons.

She has analyzed the incidences of words used in advertising toys for boys and girls during after-school cartoon blocks.  She discussed this a bit in her book, but now she has tranfsormed the collated data into wordclouds. 

While admitting that this is not an exhaustive study, she finds the graphical representation quite interesting and a place to begin a discussion.  I agree.

Who Can Become an Addict?

Riot.Jane

In Compass of Pleasure: How Our Brains Make Fatty Foods, Orgasm, Exercise, Marijuana, Generosity, Vodka, Learning, and Gambling Feel So Good, brain scientist and neuroscience professor at Johns Hopkins University David J. Linden, PhD, describes the physiological processes of how the human brain reacts to different types of pleasure.  He's found that the effects of both our vices and our virtues are virtually indistinguishable within the brain.

In an interview with Salon, he briefly discusses the biological causes vs. societal reactions to addiction.  A particularly striking paragraph (emphasis mine):

Understanding Human Warfare

Riot.Jane

I am currently reading American Gods, by Neil Gaiman.  Twice already I've laughed out loud, and twice I've been made to really think about the nature of Man.  This was one of the latter:

There's never been a true war that wasn't fought between two sets of people who were certain they were in the right. The really dangerous people believe that they are doing whatever they are doing solely and only because it is without question the right thing to do. And that is what makes them dangerous.

-- Neil Gaiman, American Gods

"The Breast Milk Baby" Controversy

Admin.Jane

If you haven't heard, a new doll (i.e. toy for girls) will be introduced to the US market this spring.  Called "The Breast Milk Baby," it was introduced in Europe in 2009 by Spanish toy company Berjuan Toys under the name "Bebe Gloton" (transliterates to Baby Glutton). The Bebe Gloton version already available at Amazon.

Americans are, to say the least, conflicted about the existence of this doll, much less its marketing to little girls and parents.  Quite a bit of vitriol has been spouted about it, and I really couldn't understand the the spazz-fest that seemed to surround any mention of it.  There doesn't seem to be much middle ground in opinion regarding this doll . . . People seem to either love it ecstatically or hate it violently.

Unintentionally Insulting? "Guide to Dating Fat Women"

Riot.Jane

I stumbled across Guide to Dating Fat Women, a piece at MadeMan.  MadeMan is a website that bills itself as a service "giving guys the info they need to live life well . . . smart advice on everything from beating a speeding ticket to scoring a hot model."

I think the fact that it was written by a woman might have given me some hope for the quality of its content. Regardless of why, upon first glance I expected something weighty and insightful, maybe even a bit witty.  What I found was anything but . . .

PC Air Adds Kathoey to Cabin Crews

Riot.Jane

I've been fascinated for years by the societal phenomenon of the kathoey (or ladyboy) of Thailand.  The kathoey are men who live as women within their own society.

The kathoey generally pass very well (as snapshots show) partially due to the diminutive size of many Thai males, partially due to inexpensive sexual-reassignment surgery, and partially because of sheer determination.

An Atheist at Prayer

Karin L. Burke

I am not mature enough to be a Christian. I don’t have the moral flexibility necessary to embrace a thing so dangerous. Nor do I have the capacity to align myself to some other creed; there is attraction to other myths, and other stories, but ultimately similar difficulties come up. All this difficulty between language and practice, love and violence, power and corruption. No matter how attracted I am, I remain with a sense of being inauthentic, a kind of cultural predator. Someone suggested – since it does seem to be a monastic, embodied and mindful life I’m trying to find – that I become a Buddhist. “Acknowledge the fact that you are” a Buddhist said. But I am too aware of culture to think I could do such a thing without coming dangerously close to racism.

The Wrong Lessons to Teach Your Child 101

Some Michiganders and Ohioans are on the front lines of living lessons we shouldn’t be teaching our children, namely that physical violence is the proper response to not getting your own way.

Within the last month, a mother-daughter team attacked a discount department store greeter in Ohio, and a mother-father team attacked a school crossing guard in Michigan. Both attacks occurred with children of the attackers present, and both attacks occurred in public places with witnesses present.

Victim-Blaming Part 2: The Reasons We Do It

In Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang Rape of a Child, we discussed the facts around the case of a gang-raped 11-year-old girl in Cleveland, TX.  We touched upon the victim-blaming of the 11-year-old victim that is occurring in the press and among the local populace, and we reminded readers of the case of Samantha Kelly, who died by suicide Nov. 8, 2010 after being terrorized by her town and schoolmates.  The Kelly case is pertinent to this discussion of victim-blame because that assault, victim-blame, and suicide occurred between the Cleveland girl's first and final assaults.

Victim-Blaming Part 1: Texas Gang-Rape of a Child

In Cleveland, Texas, 19 suspects have been charged in the sexual assault of an 11-year-old child. While heartbreaking, this is not earth-shattering news. All too often, we hear of things like this and shake our heads, and maybe some of us say a prayer for the victim.

The details of this particular case are particularly noteworthy.

This child was assaulted repeatedly over the course of six weeks in late 2010 by different individuals/groups at different times in different locations. The perpetrators ranged in age from 14 to 27. Cell-phone-recorded video and photographs were widely disseminated to non-participants.

Ode to Rubenesque Women



Het Pelsken
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Thin is in? I disagree. I've always been an admirer of full-figured women. Thanks to the baroque artist Sir Peter Paul Rubens (example works), we now have the term "Rubenesque" to describe the type of amply-endowed women he painted. Over time, “Rubenesque” has evolved into modern terms such as full-figured or BBW (Big Beautiful Women). History or terminology lessons aside, my admiration (which borders on adoration) of Rubenesque women makes me feel like I am squarely in the minority, thanks to modern advertising. And what stuns me is how people are swayed by models (who look they actually only eat one full meal a week) because of that simple phrase "Thin is in". 


Sine Cerere 1
Sir Peter Paul Rubens

Though I am a male who will be age 50 in 2011, my admiration of full-figured women goes back as long as I can remember. An ample bosom or a full-figured curvaceous body has always set my heart racing far more than any beautiful, thin woman could. Deep down, a Rubenesque woman exudes a warmth and comfort that a firm, athletic (or fit) woman could never offer. Soft, supple hips versus sharp angular ones. A body that is full and inviting compared to a body that is hard and unyielding. Even the term "Rubenesque" sounds softer than the term "Anorexia".