Decadent and Healthy Raw Chocolate Pie!

Ok ok, so I know that food is a little off topic considering what else I write about, but some things are just too good to keep to yourself.  This pie is raw, chock full of healthy fats and proteins, very high in omega 3s, and plus you get an awesome endorphin rush from the raw chocolate.  After an hour or two in the freezer, it gets about the same consistency as cheese cake.  Above all that, its super fast to make too!

All ingredients should be raw and organic if you can find/afford it.

Pie Crust

1 cup walnuts

1 cup shredded coconut (I used sweetened, but unsweetened is fine)

9-10 dates, soaked for 10 minutes or so and drained

1/4 tsp sea salt

Blend all ingredients, spread out into a pie dish and then press it into the dish with your knuckles, so that it congeals.  Place in the freezer while you prepare the filling.

Chocolate Mouse Pie Filling

4 ripe avocados, pitted and peeled

1/2 – 3/4 cup agave nectar (or maple syrup, but it is not raw; could also use honey but the flavor would probably be too strong)

1 full bar raw chocolate, softened on the stove using minimum heat (or use another 1/2 cup cocoa powder)

1/4 cup cocoa powder

3 Tbsp almond butter

1/2 tsp cinnamon

2 pinches sea salt

3-4 T of maple syrup (to drizzle on top)

Blend all, and make sure to scrape the sides intermittently as this is very thick.  Spread out into pie crust.  Drizzle with maple syrup and freeze for an hour or two.

 

 

 

Racism, Sexism and Violence – The Disrespect of Aboriginal Women in Canada

      In this essay I will examine how the combination of racism and sexism creates a spectrum of privilege and disenfranchisement between women in our society, my focus being White women and Aboriginal women in Canada. Canadians tend to be ignorant to our own racism and that of our government because it has historically been so much more visible in the United States (Reece, 2010).  Women of all backgrounds are still subject to patriarchy’s vices, but racialized women face more overt repression than do White women (Reece, 2010). Aboriginal have recently faced barriers like racist legislation (Bourassa, 2010), forced removal of their children, (Reece, 2010) and are still experiencing police and institutional indifference and abuse (Amnesty International, 2006., Reece, 2010., Bourassa, 2010), have profoundly negative health outcomes and high rates of trauma (Bourassa et al, 2010).  These issues stem from being the “other” (Reece, 2010), not living up to standards of womanhood that were perceived as expressed in White women, and because it is more convenient for the dominant order to not fix these problems (Reece, 2010).

When colonists first invaded Canada, Aboriginal women were labeled inferior, savage, promiscuous, and dirty (Reece, 2010).  Victorian ideals of womanhood were seen as the only appropriate behavior for women, and provided justification of the subjugation of Aboriginal women.  Residential schools were established to remove Native children from their mothers, attempting to free them of their “immorality” (Stevenson in Reece, 2010:91)  Racist legislation like the Indian Act officially ended the keeping matriarchic lineage, removed the right of a Native woman to own property, dictated that if she left the reserve she could not legally return, and declared that if she married a white man she would no longer be considered Native by the government, among with many other provisions designed to disenfranchise Native women(Bourassa et al, 2010).  The main goal to achieve the highest level of cultural assimilation possible (Bourassa et al, 2010).  In 1985 the Indian Act was amended, but vast damage had already been done; over 25 000 women lost their status and were forced from their bands, and have left countless families broken (Bourassa et al, 2010). 

“Racism plays a critical factor in societal responses to violence against women of colour.  Often, in racialized communities, domestic violence is attributed to culture, and is used to explain away male violence and affirm white supremacy (Razack in Reece, 2010). While racial characteristics are used to make violence by Native men seem normal, white men’s violence against Native women is often ignored.  Because of the lack of respect and dignity Native women have in Canada, white men feel that they can inflict violence on them with impunity (Amnesty International, 2006), and because Native families were splintered through The Indian Act , many of these women and girls do have only fragile support networks, making them more assailable (Amnesty International, 2006). These factors contribute to Aboriginal women being  “five times more likely than other women of the same age to die as the result of violence” (Amensty International, 2006).

Rice (2010) states that in the 19^th century, “… superiority of white over dark was scientifically proclaimed… Scientists constructed a hierarchy of races based on physical traits such as skin color and bone structure to rationalize the continued disenfranchisement of racialized peoples” (134).  The aftermath of the “scientific” and culturally constructed justifications for extreme racism is stark. As a white woman, I can see that we are now left in a confusing place, “experiencing gender oppression and race privilege at the same time” (Reece, 2010:103) Because of this position of power, White women have been able to challenge traditional gender norms and to build the women’s movement in their own image (Reece, 2010). They have thus been able to be perceived as having advantageous qualities they fought for themselves, like cognitive ability and rationality, as well as having those qualities that are bestowed upon them by white men, like physical beauty, normality, moral righteousness, chastity, and domesticity (Reece, 2010).   Without those race and class privileges, White women would likely not have many of the rights they do today.  Racialized women, because of institutional and financial barriers have not been able to be able to organize or emancipate themselves the same way (this is changing) and are still stigmatized for this illusionary inequity (Reece, 2010).  White women are not as overtly responsible for racist policies as men, but early feminism ignored Aboriginal women and other women of color (Reece, 2010) and thus contributed to their ongoing marginalization.  Contemporary feminism has increasingly focused on what differentiates the experiences of oppression between different women based on race, dis/ability, sexual orientation and the like (Karaian and Mitchell 2010) and thus has become more inclusive and intricate in its analysis. However, analysis and sympathy do not change the bitter realities, extreme poverty and alienation that these women must live with on a daily basis.   What these women need is respect from police and institutions, clean water, air, and food to sustain them, and acknowledgement from a society that uses their land and ignores their struggles.

Bibliography

Amnesty International (2006) Stolen Sisters – Discrimination and Violence Against Aboriginal Women In Canada.  Retrieved from: http://www.amnesty.ca/campaigns/sisters_overview.php

Bourassa, C., Mckay-McNabb, K., Hampton, M. (2006) Racism, Sexism, and Colonialism – The Impact on the Health of Aboriginal Women in Canada. In Medovarski, A., Cranney, B. (Eds) Canadian Woman Studies – An Introductory Reader (2^nd Edition) (pp 540-551) Toronto, Ontario:  Inanna Publications and Education Inc.

Karaian L., Mitchell A. (2010) Third-Wave Feminisms.  N. Mandell (Eds.), Feminist Issues – Race Class and Sexuality (5^th Edition)(pp. 63-86). Toronto, Ontario: Pearson  Canada Inc.

Reece, R. (2010) Feminist Theorizing on Race and Racism.  In Mandell. N (Ed) Feminist Issues – Race, Class and Sexuality (5^th Edition) (pp 87-109) Toronto, Ontario: Pearson  Canada Inc.

Rice, C. (2010). Exacting Beauty: Exploring Women’s Body Projects and Problems in the 21^st Century. In N. Mandell (Eds.),  Feminist Issues – Race Class and Sexuality (5^th Edition) (pp. 131-160).  Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Canada Inc.

Feminism’s Greatest Challenge

“In addition to the National Post, CanWest now owns 14 large city dailies, 120 smaller dailies and weeklies, and the Global TV network… The telephone company Bell Canada owns the Globe and Mail as well as CTV… it also controls Sympatico… Quebecor owns the Sun newspaper chain, magazines, cable TV, the Canoe Internet portal, music and video stores and the private TVA network in Quebec. Torstar Corporation, publisher of Harlequin romance novels, also owns the Toronto Star… as well as four other dailies and 69 weeklies. Rogers Communications has interests in cable, radio, television, magazines, video stores and wireless telephone… “You can fit everyone who controls significant Canadian media in my office,” Vince Carlin, chair of the School of Journalism at Ryerson University in Toronto, told the Washington Post (1/27/02). “This is not a healthy situation.”

-Canada’s Media Monopoly, James Winter 2002

While there are many issues that hold feminism back, the biggest problem for the movement is a hostile media environment that is able to widely dictate culture and meaning, with little room for small or independent organizations to be heard. The monopoly on the production of mainstream media and thus the ability to pick what issues are presented to the general public (Daws, 2009) is the tallest of the barriers that any social movement requiring systemic change faces, as there will be a lack of public knowledge or familiarity with the marginalized viewpoints they represent. This benefits the current patriarchic socioeconomic power structure by leading the public into seeing the dominant worldview as the only view, and that any resistance, feminist or otherwise, is minimal, pathetic and unfounded (because it does not exist in the mainstream eye).

According to Laura Beth Daws, (2009) The Telecommunications Act of 1996 “paved the way for media corporations to obtain multiple holdings in both large and small markets, largely deregulating the media Marketplace”. The resulting media power structure is what is referred to as a “media monopoly” (Bagdikian in Daws, 2009) Which issues are discussed and the framework and angle from which they are discussed are thus in the hands of a small number of people, who need advertisers and politicians to be friendly towards their organizations to make money or obtain information, and thus will refuse to print articles with a critical political or anti-corporate stance (Winter, 2002). This results in both explicit, top-down censorship and self-censorship of journalists attempting point out social injustice (Winter, 2002). Because of the monopoly on production and distribution to large, major audiences, and because critical social material will have difficult time finding sponsorship, there are major barriers for smaller media organizations (Daws, 2009).

The mainstream media environment is also directly hostile to women. Women are treated as sex objects and stereotypes (Hammer, 2009) and issues concerning their wellbeing are rarely discussed (Flanders, 2009). There are very few women working in positions of creative power in the media industry (Flanders, 2009., Hammer 2009). Because of the relative impenetrability of this power structure, third wave feminism’s attitude has been to create, publish, post and culture jam on a smaller scale (Karaian and Mitchel, 2010).

There are over 700 female owned and oriented periodicals, blogs, websites, radio stations and the like listed in the directory of the Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (WIFP, 2010). Organizations like About-Face (www.about-face.org) and Adbusters (www.adbusters.org) are encouraging the public to “liberate” billboards from sexist and consumerist messages; to alter and mock dominant images. Individuals like Carly Stasko “imagitate” (Stasko, 2010) the masses by putting up informative posters or stickers. In “Action Grrrls in the Dream Machine” (in Karaian & Mitchel, 2010:71) Stasko discusses play as “a necessary componenet of feminist cultural production”. “Play” is expressed through such avant-garde actions as guerilla-theater or flash-mobs, which have been added to the third-wave feminist itinerary (Karaian and Mitchel, 2010). She “stresses the importance of engaging with one’s surroundings through cultural production rather than simply consuming it or reacting to it” (Karaian and Mitchel, 2010:71) Making a website or zine is easy, fun and powerful for third-wave feminists to spread their messages and to feel less isolated. The effectiveness of small-scale methods is limited in its scope, but has gained some popularity due to the decentralized, cheap, and relatively easy and anonymous nature of these expressions (Karaian and Mitchel, 2010) .

The Internet has been a very valuable tool to facilitate this process by empowering marginalized and isolated groups and individuals with the ability to communicate, relate, create, learn and distribute at levels previously only available to large organizations. This encourages a more cohesive community for feminists based on common motives and solidarity, rather than those based on geography or relation. (Ollivier et al, 2006). Hopefully, this will be a continuing and growing feature of Internet-based culture and communication.

Democratization of high quality media production is, however, occurring on the Internet and hopefully that trend will continue. Coupled with the continuation of traditional forms of small scale media production, women and other marginalized groups can have hope of reaching a wider audience than they have in the past (Ollivier et al, 2006., Karaian L., Mitchell A. 2010). These changes do not guarantee the spreading feminist messages to a wide audience, however. There are literally billions of people who watch corporate media channels throughout the world, so one must be realistic about the potential for dissemination of alternative view-points. Dominant paradigms are able to instill ideology (Hammer, 2009), more viewers per distributer, than ever before (Daws, 2009), and in a world saturated with constant media messages owned by the most powerful in our society, the voices of the less powerful are often drowned out.

References

Daws, L. (2009) Media monopoly: understanding vertical and horizontal integration. Communication Teacher. Vol. 23, No. 4, October 2009, pp. 148-152

Flanders, L. (1995) The Pundit Spectrum: How Many Women–and Which Ones? Retrieved from: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=10&author_id=73

Karaian L., Mitchell A. (2010) Third-Wave Feminisms. N. Mandell (Eds.), Feminist Issues – Race Class and Sexuality (5th Edition)(pp. 63-86). Toronto, Ontario: Pearson Canada Inc.

Ollivier, M., Bobbins, W., Beauregard, D., Brayton, J., & SauvÉ, G. (2006). Feminist Activists On-line: A Study of the PAR-L Research Network. Canadian Review of Sociology & Anthropology, 43(4), 445-463. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.

Stasko, C., (2010) Imagitate the state. Retrieved from : http://www.imagitatethestate.wordpress.com

Women’s Institute for Freedom of the Press (2011) Women’s media. Retrieved from :http://www.wifp.org/womensmedia.html

Winter, J. (2002) Canada’s media monopoly – one perspective is enough, says CanWest. Retrieved from: http://www.fair.org/index.php?page=1106

I have fallen in love with Anonymous…

Anonymous is a loosely connected hacktivist collective, famous for cyber attacks on Visa, Mastercard and Paypal after these organizations stopped serving Wikileaks following their release of over 200 000 American diplomatic cables last year.  They claim to be against oppression and injustice of all forms, and use their computer knowledge and expertise to antagonize those who propagate that oppression.  The horizontal and anonymous nature of the “group” makes them particularly hard to track and trace.  Not all “members” help with every action: actions are pitched by a member, if enough people help, they make it a reality.

They have a plan.  What is the plan, you ask?  www.whatis-theplan.org     What is truly amazing about this site is that people can get together to discuss theory and action in a very democratic way, and that they have gained over 50 000 members (!) in just a few short months.

“We are Anonymous. We do not approve of illegal acts unless absolutely necessary. WE ARE NOT TERRORISTS! We are activists! We are your neighbors who fight for freedom and justice throughout the world. Recently, there have been trolls and blackhats (hackers meaning only harm) claiming to be Anonymous that have been attacking us and our people. We will not stand for this! We are Anonymous, we are legion, we do not forgive, we do not forget.  Expect us!”

I like the fact that they are not dictatorial; they do not say what to believe or what to do.  They only ask that you inform yourself and others about the injustices around you, and begin work to stop it.  I find that so inspirational and refreshing.  Do anything you can! Post on youtube, fuckbook, blogs, everything.  Write or find a pamphlet on an issue and drop it in mail boxes.  Put up posters with tape around your neighborhood. Distribute information! Help the poor! Be anonymous!!

We all need to laugh more…

An Open Letter to the Edmonton Cannabis Community

Marijauana (and Hemp, the industrial, low THC breed) has literally thousands of uses.

As a newcomer to the Edmonton activist scene, I am finding that it is fairly hard to get in the loop about what is coming up, where, and finding people to do smaller and more frequent activisms in the city (not just marijuana…. WHERE IS THE PEACE MOVEMENT IN EDMONTON? THE ANTI-CAPITALIST MOVEMENT?).

The last update on Edmonton420.ca is from January 2010.  Where does the cannabis community in Edmonton get together online to plan (besides Facebook, who sells information to the American government)?   We need to get away from Facebook and get independent; seeing as how we are trying NOT to be sheep by participating in this movement in the first place.   I am also a big fan of face-to-face planning, but there doesn’t seem to be too much of that going on.

We have so much support in the community. According to some estimates, 53% of Canadians support legalization (and 69% support less stringent penalties for possession) .  So why isn’t it legal or at least less harshly punishable?  It isn’t legal because we aren’t trying hard enough, and if we don’t start trying now, things are going to get much worse in Canada for pot smokers and growers. We now are set with 4 years of ultra-conservative Harper policies.  The NDP is, however, the official opposition now in Canada, and they support decriminalization.   Lets convince that other 47% and get this done so that we can get enough tax money together to support our elderly and fix our healthcare system.  The activist community needs to show that we can change public opinion and we can get policies implemented.  Seismic shifts are happening in the world now; the whole world is crying for attention – a new paradigm, a new backdrop of freedom and action must be formed, and I think that the ending of marijuana prohibition is the first step to creating this new paradigm and ending the prison industrial complex and the fear we have of our own neighbors, who probably blaze anyways!

Throw me a bone here people!  I am here to help get this done but I need help!  We all need to get much more serious about this, because the Conservatives definitely are.

Canadian Journalistic Integrity Under Attack Again

From Internet-based activist group Avaaz:

Mr. Kory Teneycke, the Conservative hawk and lobbyist that we can thank for the coming plunge in journalistic standards.

“In 48 hours, public protections against false news coverage could be destroyed. The CRTC may pass a huge loophole to the “fair and balanced” rule that currently prevents media from outright lying to the public.

Canada’s broadcast journalism standards are an impediment to the new “Fox News North” (Sun TV) network being set up by Prime Minister Harper’s cronies, which promises to mimic Fox News — the poisonous US propaganda network. The CRTC rule change, which allows false news to be blasted across Canadian airwaves, comes just as SunTV is about to launch.

We can stop this — last year, we stopped Harper cronies from pressing the CRTC to fund “Fox News North” with public money. Now, we have just two days to raise another national outcry to save the standards of Canadian journalism, and our democracy. Sign the petition below, and tell everyone:

http://www.avaaz.org/en/canada_fair_and_balanced97.php?cl_tta_sign=07f557d672c327d3921d96653f22b7bf

“ Currently, the rule states: “No licensee shall distribute programming that contains … any false or misleading news.”The Commission has proposed to modify this to “… news that the licensee knows is false or misleading and that endangers or is likely to endanger the lives, health or safety of the public.” 9.

The Notice provides little background as to why this change has been proposed.  It simply states that the Commission has proposed amendments to “address concerns raised by Parliament’s Standing Joint Committee for the Scrutiny of Amendments.”  It does notstate what those concerns are. “

See the full Document Here!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/48882523/Avaaz-Re-BNC-2011-14

Killing Us Softly 3 – Advertising’s Image of Women – A Personal Response

Jean Killbourne – Killing Us Softly 3 – Advertising’s Image of Women – A Personal Response

See Below for Video

After trying to find statistics on how many models are anorexic, the only answer I could come by is "too many to count" and "almost all of them". Why is our culture so accepting of this behaviour?

“Killing Us Softly” is a powerful and eloquent vivisection of the contemporary and (currently) acceptable ways of devaluing women – through consumption-driven exploitation of female beauty, degradation, and by making sure that little girls learn they must buy, buy, buy and try, try, try to be beautiful – that society will render them invisible if they do not conform.  This is a documentary of tremendous value as it puts all these problems with the portrayal of women that we take for granted as normal and shows and articulates that this is wrong and sick.  It shows that the beauty industry wants and profits from the insecurity in women and girls that it tries so hard to create.  I am certain that stopping this is the current female imperative, because there is so much violence in this: we are destroying our bodies and our minds to become, basically, reliable consumers.[1]

Are women’s bodies inherently less perfect then men’s are? According to Naomi Wolf, the myth of the inadequacy of female flesh stands in for the old myth of inadequacy of the female mind(Wolf 1990 271).  Watching image after image of women portrayed as less than the sum of their parts in Killbourne’s movie makes me imagine the pain of breast implants, “most or all” of which will need follow-up surgeries (Rice 151)[2], alien objects forced into a body and turning a flesh and blood woman into some kind of sex-toy cyborg, numb and scarred for the illusion of perfection. 1 in 4 college-age women compulsively restrict their food intake[3], even more through dieting (which is considered normal and desirable), disintegrating their most precious gifts of life and body into nothingness – their flesh something to be fought off with vigilance and determination.  We as a group are suffering weakness and dependence when we should be building to the peak of strength.  We should be able to feel confident.  But that peak that men enjoy, middle age, is distress, disgrace and decline to us.  The worst calamity occurs – aging – and we will be rendered useless and invisible in this grand fantasy of shallow female perfection, which is by its nature so paralyzed and so un-accepting of age or change.

The hedonistic collage of images entangled with the sobering realities of their prevalence and consequences bring me to reflect on precious some-things stolen from me – my original personality twisted into insecurity, suppressed and nearly neutralized by the constraints of the mirror, my time and emotional energy sold pieces by piece to the hope of becoming this, my body devalued and my sense of self rooted as both inferior and dominant to others based on this.  Worst of all, it makes me remember the lost and fragmented reflections in the eyes and minds of all the girls I’ve called friends, all the girls I’ve seen staring into the mirror with determined eyes reflecting this same psychosis.

I feel cheated out of a natural transition into womanhood.  I didn’t think I was beautiful at all until I was 17.   By then, I had been so used by men, and I used so much of myself trying so hard to feel a sense of belonging.  I just wanted someone to love me, think I was beautiful and smart, to think I was “worthy” (whatever that means).  I based my self-worth on what men thought of me, (although that realization is a fairly new one).   I can remember seeing some of the ads Kilbourne criticizes in magazines when I was young and it hurts to remember that I didn’t realize any of it was wrong. I thought that buying the products and staying fit and being worried about attracting boys was the normal, correct thing for a young girl to do.  The thing with the media is that it gets to you before you are smart enough to think critically about it.  I stopped reading and studying all the time and I chased the carrot they dangled.  I joined dance and gymnastics, I bought all the right magazines, I dressed nice, did my make-up, but it never felt right, and I never quite got it.  It was awkward.  All the other girls did it with such ease and joy; I wanted to be like them.  I wanted to be powerful in my beauty.   I wanted to be all the attention, but was too young to get why.  I wanted to be like the women on television and in my magazines.  All three of my best friends between Grade 5 and 8 wanted to be strippers when they grew up.  Is this a coincidence? A mistake? Or is it an inevitable product of the over-sexualization of women and girls?  This is not an acceptable state for women to be in.

I wish I could have seen “Killing Us Softly” when it first came out.  It would have helped me see that those images were wrong, and not I.  It would have helped me see that the beauty and diet industry wanted me to feel that way so I would keep buying their products.  I loathe thinking of myself at those times; I keep trying to grow up, but it seems impossible.  The thrill of this competition is difficult to shake.  I still want to be the most beautiful girl in the room, and while I am disgusted by men looking me up and down, in a strange subliminal way I feel less when it does not happen, even though I get plenty of love and attention at home.  It is a powerful drug to know that they are just as tricked, just as lost in this vanity as I.

Is it too much to dream of the world we could have had after the sexual revolution, where women could be free from guilt about what we do with our own bodies? Where women could consistently be valued for things other than what they are in the eyes of a consumer who greedily wants her for himself, or wants to be her for him; a world where superficiality comes second to substance? No matter what I do or where I go I am constantly inhibited by the question, “Do I look okay?” The thought that no matter what I accomplish in life, once I lose my looks I won’t be worthy of attention horrifies me.   Will my lover still want me? Will I be worthy of love?

The saddest thing about the pressure to be constantly beautiful is that it takes away so much of the fun of make-up and dancing and modeling and being beautiful.  In the words of Naomi Wolf, “They take the best of female culture and attach it to the most repressive of demands”(271) . It cheapens beauty, demands it.  Imposes it on the unwilling.  I think about all the time we spend.  I added it up: if someone spends two hours per day dressing, fixing hair, putting on make-up, and doing touch ups during the day, that is 730 hours per year.  That is over 18 weeks of full-time (40 hours/week) labor!   Not to mention shopping, shaving, showering, painting nails, tanning, working out… Being “beautiful” is a full time job – but what choice do we have when this is seen as what is normal and respectable?

The “Beauty Myth” (Wolf) makes women act cruel, feel threatened or be contemptuous to other women, when we are really all victims of the same cultural narrative.  I don’t want every thing that I do to be sexual.  I want to be able to wear a belly shirt or a bikini without opening myself to harassment.  I want to be free to not be judged by how I look, and I want to be free from the impulse to judge other women on that basis too.  I want to own myself.  At the end of “The Beauty Myth”, Wolf defines a woman-loving definition of beauty as one that:

“supplants desperation with play, narcissism with self-love, dismemberment with wholeness, absence with presence, stillness with animation.  It admits radiance: light coming out of the face and the body, rather than a spotlight on the body, dimming the self.  It is sexual, various and surprising.  We will be able to see it in others and not be frightened, and able at last to see it in ourselves.”(291)

     Rejecting an oppressive standard of beauty will not mean that everyone will fall into one category of attractiveness, but that there will be more plurality in the spectrum.  It won’t have to be the most important thing in our lives anymore, but it can if we choose it to be.  We could be free for our other full time jobs – like being the best writer, scientist, mother, model, musician, cook, or whatever we want to be. But we’re all so busy with our regular jobs, school, children, and our full-time beauty job to get together and form a new movement for women, and there is so much opposition from the beauty and diet industries (Media Awareness), which make so much money off our desperation[4].  Regardless, women like Jean Killbourne and Naomi Wolf will continue to help wake women up to this subtle form of slavery. In time this will change, if only because the prize is irresistible – imagine all women being free to just be who they are. Imagine women being able to enjoy that same paradox that men do – to be ugly or old and attractive at the same time.  What other prize is as great?

[1]      Not to mention the harmful chemicals present in many beauty products.  Most contain one or more of the various forms of parabens, (used as preservatives) which have been linked to breast cancer.  To read more see http://www.breastcancerfund.org/clear-science/chemicals-glossary/parabens.html

[2]      According to The American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 347 524 breast augmentations were performed in 2007.  Also of interest, According to Sandy Ferman Ryan of Girl’s Life Magazine (Feb-March 2005), there were 74000 cosmetic surgeries performed on girls under 18 in the United States during 2003. Breast implants have also been linked to autoimmune diseases such as fibromyalgia.

[3]      For more information, see www.media-awareness.ca   There are many articles on various media issues, like race, age and portrayal of masculinity.

[4]      According to FinancialCrises.com, the American beauty industry made about $50 billion in 2009.  The American diet industry made $40 billion according to Businessweek.org, and $59.7 billion according to CNBC.

• Between 1979 and 1999 advertising went from being a 20 billion dollar/year industry, to 180 billion in 1999.  I was unable to find current numbers.
• The average American, as of 1999 viewing averages, watches television ads for a total of 3 years (!)

Works Cited

Media Awareness Network. “Beauty and Body Image in the Media.” 2010. <http://www.media-awareness.ca/english/issues/stereotyping/women_and_girls/women_beauty.cfm>

Rice, Carla. “Exacting Beauty.” Feminist Issues – Race Class and Sexuality (5^th Edition) Ed. Nancy Mandell. Toronto, Ontario: Pearson  Canada Inc, 2010. 63-86.

Wolf, Naomi. The beauty myth: How images of beauty are used against women. (pp. 271) New York: Morrow, 1990

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