What's "real", anyway?

I'm somewhat amused at this little kerfluffle over photo retouching in Dove's famous "real beauty" campaign, which, after all, is used to sell smoothing lotions among other things.

Photo retouching is part of our everyday life in a way it hasn't been in years past. Yes, everything you see on a billboard or in a magazine has been heavily retouched -- but so have lots of family photos. Removing red-eye, fixing colour balance -- that kind of thing is easier than it's ever been, thanks to Photoshop and the like. We're getting to a point where there's no such thing as an un-retouched picture.

My outrage is probably lessened, too, because I never thought the Dove campaign was a messianic emanation come to save us from unrealistic body image issues. It is -- it has always been -- an ad campaign, first and foremost. It's a good one, because it gets people talking, and it's certainly nice to see a wider range of female bodies than we're used to -- but it's still just an ad campaign. I mean, for all the claims that it's expanding the definition of beauty, there have never been Dove models who weren't conventionally attractive (even if slightly larger, or older, or of different skin colours than we usually see).

And I think on some level, I always assumed that there was a little bit of retouching going on. It didn't change my feelings about the campaign (which were, and continue to be, mildly positive).

So, do I believe this denial that "oh no, actually, there was no retouching going on"? Not really. But I don't think it matters. We're still asked to judge the picture that's out there, and whether it succeeds or fails as a picture, as an ad. How it got there is a little beside the point.

Why thank you for liberating me from my repression

I'm late to the party on this one, which has already exploded all over the fannish 'net, but I can't let it go by without adding my own (albeit fairly redundant) $0.02.

The Open Source Boob Project, they called it.

Ostensibly, it was an experiment in sexual liberation.

The problem with sexual liberation is that, oddly enough, it so often seems to become men's liberation to objectify women. Theoretically, we're all supposed to be free to express our sexual desires without shame, without feeling dirty. But all too often it starts to feel like an excuse for men to tell women who don't want to take off their shirts or have their breasts groped or have sex with person x y or z that they're "repressed" and that their inhibitions are unreasonable. Women are the objects for the sexually liberated subjects (men) to admire and to use. And that's just unacceptable.

Look, I'm just as much in favour of a utopian orgy world as the next person. But I happen to live in this world. And in this world, we're not all starting from the same place when it comes to control of our bodies. Women live in an entirely justifiable state of fear that they're going to be attacked simply because they have women's bodies. And when we're not worrying about rape, we're worrying about how to make our bodies fit the desireable ideal. We struggle to be attractive without "asking for it". Every decision we make about our appearance and our bodies is made in this context.

If this all sounds rather fraught, well, it is. So you can see why someone asking to grope a woman's breasts isn't just a harmless question. Whether it's respectfully asked or not, whether it's all in good clean fun or not, it's going to make some women uncomfortable. Because they live in the real world where questions about a woman's body's availability are not, by default, good clean fun.

If you're with a group of friends, and you all want to feel each other up, have at it. But for crying out loud, don't do it in public, don't involve strangers, and don't make it a "project" to be expanded to the world at large. Because the world at large already has plenty of unpleasant ideas about what to do with women's bodies and their breasts.

There's been a lot written about this, much of substantially more eloquent than my own semi-incoherent sputtering:

• A link roundup at journalfen
• Kate Nepevu's very eloquent response
• Tamora Pierce's also very eloquent response
• Your cousin Vito proposes some actual action: the Open Source Women Back Each Other Up Program
• Karen Healy at Girl Wonder weighs in

How to be a feminist boyfriend

M. LeBlanc at Bitch, Ph.D. has some great advice.

Hostile Environment

It's an ongoing struggle to get more young women to enter traditionally male fields. Engineering is certainly one of those fields that is heavily male-dominated. Sometimes people argue that it's just that women aren't as interested in these areas of study. But when stories like this hit the news, I find it more remarkable that any women are brave enough to puruse an engineering degree in the first place.

It's kind of a textbook example of a hostile environment. The engineering students' society's newspaper, the Oral Otis, published a mock sex-advice column* which included some pretty nasty language. (Full disclosure: I haven't actually read the column in question, and it seems to have been pulled from their web site.) People complain. The vice-president of social affairs for the Engineering Students Society, Rob Arntfield, admits that it's sexual harrassment, but says that's okay, because sometimes people say engineers can't get dates.

No, seriously. That's what he said. To the media:

"For myself, personally, I think some of the content in the paper is meant to be humorous," he said. He added that engineers "have taken a lot of flak for being engineers," and are often the subject of jokes about engineers rarely touching women or getting laid.

"I believe that when we take this sort of thing in stride and that sexual harassment, if we dish out a little bit of our own, who's to say who's more right?"

That little quote was on the news yesterday morning.

I have to give some (mild) props to the paper's editor, Zacharie Brunet, who did give a radio interview this morning accepting responsibility and acknowledging that the column was inappropriate. His excuse was that he was really busy so he only edited the article enough to take out the really bad bits (so what was left in was presumably only moderately bad). But at least he took some responsiblity. And indicated that steps were being taken to prevent it from happening again.

The VP-Social hasn't corrected himself, as far as I know. It would appear his position is still that sexual harrassment is okay, and that it's just like getting teased for datelesness.

When young men think sexual harrassment is perfectly okay as long as you claim you were trying to be funny, is it any wonder that women would rather study something else?

This is what we're up against.

It's also why we need to encourage women to get into these fields. Not just because women should be able to do whatever they want (although, obviously, they should), but because we need a critical mass of women to prevent the boys'-club mentality that allows this kind of behaviour to flourish.


* incidentally, why do student newspapers insist on publishing these? They're pretty much never funny or clever; and yet they're forever getting written and published.

International Women's Day

Today is International Women's Day. Here are some suggestions for how to celebrate:

• support a female politician. Equal Voice can help you find out who they are.
• write a letter to support women around the world. Amnesty Canada has a list of current actions relating to human rights abuses against women.
• support a local charity that helps women in need, whether by giving them money, or giving them your time.
• write a letter to Stephen Harper and your MP, telling them exactly what you think of the Unborn Victims of Crime Act (aka the Sneak an Abortion Ban in Through the Back Door act, aka the Women's Deaths are Only Important if they're Breeding Act)

What else will you be doing for International Women's Day?

Election Speculation

Okay, I know that as long as Stephen Harper seems to be saying "come on, bring us down, let's have an election now", Stéphane Dion is going to be reluctant to do anything to bring the government down.

Still.

It's making him look bad. They're both playing political games, trying to make the election happen when it will most benefit their party, but it's Dion who looks like he's basing everything on the polls. We all know that Harper's trying to force the Liberals to bring him down when he wants to be brought down, but he's also getting to implement his agenda, so he at least looks like he has principles. The Liberals, with their constant abstentions and Dion's weak explanation of what he would need to support the budget ("acceptable or at least not too harmful for the Canadian economy"), look like they're playing the worst kind of politics.

Maybe it's unrealistically idealist of me (probably), but I can't help but wish the Liberals (and, you know, everyone elected to public office) would just make a stand on the issues, and elections be damned.

Because I gotta say, the political games are not making anybody look like a future Prime Minister.

Some people deserve to die

"And some that die deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. For even the very wise cannot see all ends."

(Thanks, Prof. Tolkein)

I hardly know where to start in my response to Lynne Cohen's article in the Citizen today, aptly titled "Some people deserve to die". I have rarely read an article I disagree with so thoroughly. So let me work my way through some of the highlights (or lowlights, if you prefer)

For 13 years, I have been a true crime buff, reading some 35 books a year -- most of them American -- on a variety of terrifying factual situations, from serial murder and child rape to greedy black widow killers and gang slayings. As a lawyer and journalist, I am fascinated by detective work and how the culprits end up paying for their misdeeds. There is nothing more satisfying after a gruesome murder and fair trial than to see the killer get the death penalty.

Let's start with this. Ms. Cohen is basing her argument in no small part on her desire for narrative closure in her true-crime novels. I would submit that ending a real live human life requires a little more justification than that it's narratively "satisfying".

Liberal Leader Stéphane Dion has come out so strongly in support of clemency for Smith, you'd think he was the guy's wife.

That's a nice little jibe, isn't it? Dion (and, by extension, anyone who thinks we shouldn't be endorsing the killing of Canadian citizens) is effeminate; real manly men (thump chest here) are in favour of killing people at every opportunity.

The only worthwhile argument against capital punishment is that irreversible mistakes can happen. This only means we have to be ultra careful applying it.

Uh-huh. Because that worked really well in the case of, say, Stephen Truscott -- didn't it?

To date, and to my knowledge, there has never been a proven case of mistaken death by execution in the U.S.

Forgive me if I'm skeptical.

Remember Clifford Olson? Remember what he did to those 11 children? Why go into the details when the ending is soul destroying?

It's possible that Ms. Cohen's view is skewed because she spends too much time reading true-crime novels, but cases like Olson's are very much the exception, not the rule. Someone like Olson or Pickton gets lots of media attention simply because their crimes are so unusual. We can't make policy based on these very exceptional cases.

Do you appreciate that Willy Pickton is only going to get the harshest sentence available in Canada? That would be 25 years in prison before he has the chance for parole. OK, there is a good chance he will be found to be a "dangerous offender" and have to spend the rest of life in prison. Is that justice?

Um, yes. It is. He's never going to be free again. He's never going to have the opportunity to hurt anyone else. What more do you want? What does capital punishment accomplish that life in prison and a dangerous offender designation doesn't? Other than Ms. Cohen's satisfaction, of course.

it makes us weak, offering a safe haven to murderers.

I'm not sure what Ms. Cohen is implying here. That murderers move to Canada to commit their crimes because they think they'll get off easier? That more Canadians commit murders than Americans? That's patently untrue. The deterrent effect of the death penalty has been repeatedly debunked, and Canada is one of the safest countries in the world, with a murder rate considerably lower than the United States whose penalties Ms. Cohen so admires. It seems to me we ought to be more concerned with results than with a perception of "weakness" on the part of a rather bloodthirsty columnist.

I've no doubt that Ms. Cohen would dismiss everything I'm saying here as the ramblings of a soft-hearted opponent of capital punishment who just doesn't understand the real world. The words "hug-a-thug" would probably be worked in there somehow. And by her standards, I supposed I am all of those things. I don't think we should be killing people to demonstrate the sanctity of human life. I don't think revenge is the proper purpose of the justice system. I don't think it's effective, and I don't think it's justified. If that makes me a wimp, so be it.

I couldn't have done it without her

In this article about the new movie Honeydipper, director John Sayles is quoted talking about one of the characters' motivations:

It's not the club Tyrone is afraid of losing, because his wife makes more money mopping floors. It's the fear of losing the idea that he's his own boss, he's not asking to shine your shoes and he's somebody in the community.

(Let me preface the following rant by saying that my problem here isn't really with Honeydipper or with Sayles -- I haven't seen the movie, or even heard all that much about it, and I don't have anything specific to hold against Sayles. But there's something in that quote that I see far too often in our culture, so it's set me off.)

Did you see what was completely skimmed over there?

his wife makes more money mopping floors

So here's the thing. This character can only be "somebody in the community," can only do something that makes him feel complete as a human being because his wife is doing menial labout to put food on the table. Tyrone, like so many men in culture both popular and highbrow, gets to go on a quest for self-actualization because there's a woman in the background worrying about base material reality.

What's really frustrating is that the work of the woman in question (whether wife, mother, or girlfriend-who-might-as-well-be-mother) is usually not appreciated. In fact, it's often used as an example of what a drag the woman is.

Think of High Fidelity, for example. The central conflict of the movie version is that our hero's lawyer girlfriend has become an adult, earning a living, making much more money that our record-store-owning hero. She's essentially accused of selling out. And even though the resolution is supposedly about our hero learning to grow up ... what does he do? He starts a creative endeavour and gets to DJ again. This is growing up? Is he going to be able to do that kind of thing for long if lawyer-girlfriend doesn't keep lending him money?

Practicality, concern for the future, realism -- these are all terrible things that cramp the style of men seeking their true, authentic selves. Just once, I'd like to see a man find his authentic self, and then turn around and say to the woman who's been keeping the bills paid, "okay, now I'm going to work at a soul-deadening job for a while so you can figure out who you really are".

Anyone know of any such examples?

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.