Choice

Today is the 20th anniversary of the Morgentaler decision -- the Supreme Court Case that legalized abortion across Canada.

We Canadian pro-choicers are proud that abortion is and continues to be legal in this country, and that there's no really credible political movement to ban it. But it isn't enough.

The availability of abortion continues to be a problem. If you're a woman living anywhere other than Canada's major cities, you're not going to be able to find someone in your hometown who will perform abortions. It doesn't matter if abortion is legal if you can't get one when you need one.

I don't think I need to review all the pro-choice arguments here. It's been done, better, by other bloggers. Let me just say that a woman's right to control her own body is fundamental. And that includes (or should include) women living further north than 150km from the U.S. border.

Canadians for Choice has lots of information about the real state of abortion services in this country. Check them out.

Hide your primary colours! The girls are coming!

I'm sure I've ranted about this before, but you'll have to indulge me. There is nothing that sets me off quite so much as the proliferation of pinkification.

Pinkification is when toy companies take something that was perfectly good and gender-neutral, and create a pink version "just for girls".

We've seen it with Lego (you'll note this is the "girls" category. There is no "boys" category -- the other categories are things like "action figures" and "robotics"). We've seen it with games, like Monopoly and Jenga.

And now, Fisher-Price is making pink versions of... well, see for yourself.

What's most appalling is not that toy companies are making these pink atrocities. It's that parents must be buying them, enthusiastically. It's that a young girl's room can be (and probably is) entirely gender-specific and pink from the moment she's born. Which means these girls never get the chance to think of playing with or doing anything that's not specifically coded "girl". So rather than imagining themselves as real-estate moguls when they play Monopoly, they can only imagine themselves in a "boutique" "shopping" environment.

And now they can only imagine themselves stacking pink things. Before they're two.

What's next? A "lady professor"?

CBC Ottawa's headline writer is apparently astonished by the idea that women can, you know, run things. Like universities.

Carleton U names woman as president

Because the story isn't that Carleton has a new president... it's that she's a girl!

New Year's Resolutions

It's that time of year again. New Year's Resolution time. And what's the most common resolution in North America? I don't have any scientific evidence to back me up, but I'd lay money on "losing weight" being resolution #1.

You can't open a newspaper or magazine these days without coming across a story about how to lose weight "sustainably", or a profile of someone embarking on a resolution to lose a dramatic number of pounds in order to "feel better" about herself (it's usually a woman, of course), and "be healthier".

This isn't to say that the media isn't obsessed with weight loss the rest of the time -- they certainly are. But there's an intensification of the obsession at this time of the year, as well as (I'm guessing again, entirely non-scientifically) an increased likelihood on the part of "ordinary people" to act on the obsession. You can't step into a gym in the first few weeks of a new year without tripping over enthusiastic new resolutionists (much to the annoyance of the regulars, I'm sure).

What there isn't in the media is any follow-up coverage: we don't see stories about the people who, after losing huge amounts of weight, gain it all back (and more), damaging their health in a neverending yo-yo cycle. We don't hear about the people who suffer horrifying side effects as the result of weight-loss surgeries and diet pills. We don't hear about the people who live shorter, less happy lives than they would have if they'd just been satisfied with their natural weight.

Nor do we hear about the people who resolve NOT to lose weight. But that's my challenge for this year, both for myself and for you. Eat well, because it's better for you, and it's more enjoyable. Exercise, for the joy of moving your body and reach a goal (completing a race, hiking a trail, lifting a certain weight, whatever), but not to lose weight. Don't look at a scale. Don't obsess. Feel good about yourself and what you can do. Resolve not to feel guilty for eating a cookie. Celebrate being alive.

That's my resolution for '08.

Oh yeah -- and I resolve to blog more regularly. No, really. I mean it.