Katie Couric, Hillary Clinton - WIMN in Chicago!

Why do journalists consider Hillary Clinton's "fat thighs" newsworthy in
coverage of her presidential bid, while Dick Cheney's beer belly is never
noticed by political reporters? Are women all really vapid, pathetic, gold-digging whores, as so-called "reality" TV producers would like us to believe? Feminist media activism and independent media production can interrupt this misogynistic media landscape - but how can either survive in a fractured funding climate? These are just some of the meaty issues that will be tackled by Women in Media and News (WIMN) in Chicago while I'm at Kimmi's reading tonight.

WHEN: Thurs., Aug. 2, 7pm
Click here to view Evite, and RSVP

WHAT: Wine, cheese and strategic conversation
Meet Women in Media and News' Executive Director, Board members, bloggers and special guests, including Veronica Arreola (Chicago Parent blogger), Paula Kamen (WIMN's Voices blogger, author and playwright), Gwynn Cassidy (co-founder, The Real Hot 100), and others at: "Don't Pin Your Hopes on Katie Couric: How Women Can Confront, Challenge and Change Contemporary Media - a discussion with Jennifer L. Pozner and Anne Elizabeth Moore."

If you go, tell me all about it! (And if any of the Chicago gals would like to guest blog about it here, please let me know.)

Reminder - Sisterrupted on Cable (34) Today!

Last Thursday's forum on my book hosted by Demos, NCRW, Woodhull, and Ms. Foundation airs today from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM ET on Truth For A Change, Time Warner Channel 34, and streaming simultaneously 9:30 AM ET here: http://www.mnn.org (select channel 34).

Tarot in the City

The other week, my writers' group got together with Courtney Martin's writers' group (Crucial Minutiae) for some professional and intergenerational exchange, and for fun. I met this fabulously vivacious woman there, Kimmi Auerbach. Kimmi's reading from her new book, The Devil, The Lovers & Me: My Life in Tarot, tonight at Borders at Columbus Circle, at 7PM. Come one, come all!

2 Great Resources for Sex...Research

Around the same time that GGM arrived in my mailbox the other week, I also received notice about these cool new resources:

1. The Barnard Center for Research on Women has assembled ephemera dating from 1970-1999 related to women's sexual health--resource guides, newsletters, and pamphlets written for (and by) diverse groups of women. Addressing issues like safe sex, teenage pregnancy, lesbians, and AIDS, advancements in reproductive technologies, contraceptives, reproductive health, and forced sterilization, these are documents that have empowered women to make well-informed decisions about their own bodies since the dawning of feminism's second-wave. The collection is online, here.

2. In May 2007, the American Psychological Association released the Report of the APA Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls, linking the phenomenon to some of the most common mental health problems in girls and women. You can read the executive summary here. (To request a copy, contact Leslie Cameron at lcameron@apa.org)

Pass it on :)

The Myth about Boys

A nice summary of the article of the same title by David von Drehle appearing in the July 26 issue Time Magazine, sent via Steve Mintz, with my favorite line in bold:

“The Dangerous Book” – a best-selling celebration of boyhood past – has tapped into a larger anxiety about raising young men. Observers of the boy “crisis” contend that families, schools and popular culture are failing boys, leaving them restless bundles of anxiety – misfits in the classroom and video-game junkies at home. They suffer from an epidemic of “anomie,” one psychologist says, adrift in a world of change without the help they need to navigate. There are statistics to back up every point in the sad litany, but also people eager to flay nearly every statistic. For instance: Is it bad that more boys are in special education, or it is better that they are getting extra help from specially trained teachers? And haven’t boys always tended to be more restless than girls under the discipline of high school and more likely to wind up in jail? Ultimately, the subject of boys is a bog of sociology in which a clever researcher can unearth evidence to support almost any point of view. This field, like so many others, has been infiltrated by the left-right political noise machine: Our boys have become cannon fodder in the unresolved culture wars waged by their parents and grandparents. But with fresh eyes on fresh facts, more upbeat conclusions are apparent. Worrying about boys – reading and writing books about them, fretting over dire trends and especially taking more time to parent them – is paying off. The next step is to let boys really blossom.

I Heart Bookslut!

Just found a review of Sisterhood, Interrupted by Eryn Loeb on my number one favorite book site, Bookslut! As Daphne, who is sitting across from me with her computer, Battleship-style, can attest, I am literally jumping out of my seat.

Demos Forum on Sisterhd Interruptd to Air on Cable this Thursday

I just learned that the forum that Demos, NCRW, Woodhull, and Ms. Foundation sponsored last week on my book will air this Thursday (Aug. 2) from 9:30AM to 10:30 AM ET on Truth For A Change, Time Warner Channel 34, and streaming simultaneously 9:30 AM ET here: http://www.mnn.org (select channel 34).

Men as Models for Parenting and Work

New York Times film reviewer Matt Zoller Seitz has an intriguing review of No Reservations (July 27). Seitz notes how while the Catherine Zeta-Jones' character can't quite figure out how to combine parenthood and work as a chef, the Aaron Eckhart character literally and metaphorically brings the little girl (Little Miss Sunshine's Abigail Breslin)into the kitchen. I smell a trend -- and it's one I like. In the August 6 issue of US Weekly--which, yes, I proudly on the plane last night, while my neighbor, a lovely intern who works at The Nation, poured through her glossy -- there's a feature on "Sexy Dads" that similarly posits Hollywood men as models for combining parenting and work. Now put that in your oven and bake it.

Marco, Me, and Sisterhood Interrupted in Big Sur

On a break from seriousness, here's a pic Marco just sent me from our trip out west (aka "book tour")...

The Mommy Gap at Work

Taking a moment away from BlogHer to note that tomorrow's New York Times Magazine article, “Family-Leave Values” by Eyal Press, features the work of two stellar scholars, Joan Williams and Shelley Correll. Here's a sneak-preview, courtesy of Steve Mintz of the Council on Contemporary Families:

The results, as reported in the May 2007 issue of The American Journal of Sociology, are striking. Among the volunteers, mothers were consistently viewed as less competent and less committed and were held to higher performance and punctuality standards. They were 79 percent less likely to be hired and, if hired, would be offered a starting salary $11,000 lower than nonmothers. Fathers, by contrast, were offered the highest salaries of all. Meanwhile, in the test run with real-world employers, the hypothetical female applicants without children were more than twice as likely as equally qualified mothers to be called back for interviews.

Sigh. The mommy gap is alive and well.

LiveBlogging BlogHer: Earn Our Votes

My mother and my 98-year-old grandmother drove me down to Navy Pier this morning (guess who drove), and I'm jumping in, in medias res, to one of the session I've most been looking forward to: "Earn Our Votes: What Questions Do Women Bloggers Want Candidates to Answer in Election 2008?"

The panel begins with a series of presentations by pollsters. Anita Sharma of Lake Research Partners is talking. So here we go:

In 2006, women decided the country needed a new direction. Women's votes were key in VA, MO, and MT, where the races were close. Unmarried women, the fastest growing demographic in the US, were more likely to vote for the Dems in 2006. They are 47% of American women. Turnout among this group shot up in 2006.

Women's agenda is broader than men's: women are concerned about Iraq, but also child care, early education, equality for women, and the environment.

Independent and Dem women put health care at the top of their concerns, while Rep women put the war on top. Number 2 on Dem women's agenda is Social Security, and number 3 is economy and jobs.

When asked about the importance of having a woman Speaker, over 1/2 of the women surveyed said it was important.

Will 2008 be the year of the woman president? Recent data published in the NY Times/CBS News poll, 70% of Dem women view Hillary favorably, while only 15% of Rep women do.

Hillary is most popular among single women (54% view her favorably. 39% of married women do.)

Totally interesting. But here's where I really wake up: One of the panelists comments that married swing voters have trouble with Hillary because she, as a professionally successful married woman and mother, has been able to have it all. Say WHAT? Way to fuel the overblown mommy wars with false ammo.

But thank goodness. Jenn Pozner of Women in Media and News to the rescue. Jenn notes that media coverage may portray women as making decisions out of emotions like jealousy, but isn't it important to also emphasize how women, more often, actually care about more than that and vote based on policy issues?

Panelist Sarah Simmons counters, "But the reality is that women are challenged by other women's success." Sigh. Meow. (Sarah served in the Office of Strategic Initiatives in the Bush White House, not that that's relevant, just throwing it out there.) Lisa Stone poses the general question to the panel of pollsters, do women vote based on policy, or personality? The panelists answer: both.

Lisa Stone--a fabulous moderator and provocateur--asks if anyone in the audience would vote for a candidate based on her gender. Jenn Pozner notes aloud that NOW President Kim Gandy, who is here in the house, didn't raise her hand. So Lisa invites Kim to speak. Among other smart responses, Kim speaks about the power of the mirror. She also says it's important for our sons to see that women can be leaders. Hells yeah.

Time for breakout group, then off to lunch...I'm afraid this will be my last "live" post for now, as after the business sessions this afternoon, my parents are picking me up for some much-needed family time while I'm here. For old times sake, we're heading to the Lincoln Park Zoo. But watch for more coverage of this and other sessions over at the BlogHer site.

LiveBlogging BlogHer: Resource list (in progress)

Here are some hot resources I'm hearing about, to check out:

On marketing:
Seth Godin's blog
Made to Stick
www.successful-blog.com

On writing good headlines for posts:
copyblogger.com
problogger.net

On finding speaking venues:
Confabb
Speakernetnews.com newsletter
BlogHer has a speakers wiki

Technical tools:
(The entire presentation for the tech tools session today, complete with links, is here)
Google custom search engine (see here for example of how this works)
alexa.com (to check for broken links)
websiteoptimization.com (to check and improve the speed of your site)
searchengineland.com (to research your keywords and phrases for search engine optimization)

On streamlining blogging workflow:
(The enitre presentation for the workflow session today is here)

Live Blogging from BlogHer 2007

This one's for Laura and Elizabeth, who can't be here:

My favorite quote from the welcome session: "Blogging is the gateway drug to technology." - Lisa Stone

And my second favorite quote: "Everyone here is press."

Gratitude Friday

I'm writing from a Starbucks around the corner from my dad's office here in downtown Chicago, waiting for the opening bell of BlogHer to ring. Yesterday's Demos Women's Leadership Forum about my book was truly a high. Thank you to all you who came out -- especially those who had to stand in the doorways! Respondents Mary Hartman of the Institute for Women's Leadership at Rutgers and Desiree Flores from the Ms. Foundation were fabulous (and said such nice things!). Ever since my kindergarten teacher, Mrs. Furstenburg, taught us to say "Thank you, Grandma, thank you", I've been a firm believer in gratitude. So I thought I'd share the public thanks part of my talk:

I begin with a story about an intergenerational exchange.

When the folks at Demos and I had our first conversation about putting together this forum, I was working on Q&A document for my publisher to send around with the book, and I sent an early draft to Linda Tarr-Whelan. There was a question about what are the stereotypes that different generations of women, and in particular, feminists, have of each other. I wrote in response that feminists have fallen into the worst kind of generational stereotyping. “Veteran feminists, Boomers, tend to think younger women are self-hating, apolitical bimbos who aspire to be Bettie Page instead of Betty Friedan.” I then wrote, “Younger feminists think veterans are man-hating power-mongerers who won’t pass the torch and never go online.”

And Linda rightly stopped me there and said “Which Boomer women are you talking about? And what kind of feminism? Academic feminism?”

And in doing so she reminded me, of course, to be wary of falling into the broad stereotyping that I rail against in my book.

So I preface my talk by saying that there are indeed shining examples of cross-generational collaboration among women and within the feminist movement. And as I’ve toured the country these past two months, I’ve been struck by the connections that I’ve witnessed during and after some of my readings.

And I’d be remiss if I didn’t note that Demos itself has partnered with the Building Movement Project, and together they’ve done stellar work on the topic of generational change and nonprofit leadership.

The Ms. Foundation has been a stalwart supporter of younger women’s organizing.

The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership is built around the premise that older women leaders need to mentor younger ones.

And various women at the National Council for Research on Women have personally mentored me since I was in college – I’ve been working on and off with women’s research centers within this network pretty much since my senior year.

So I want to give kudos where kudos are due. And I want to send forth a note of profound gratitude for the hard work that these organizations do. I feel honored and humbled to be here in a room with such change-makers. I thank you all for coming together to cosponsor this event. You are the avant-garde. I look forward to the day that you are the norm....

If at BlogHer this weekend, come say hi!

This is my first participation in a meme (thanks, PunditMom!), so bear with me. My 10-second introduction to folks at the BlogHer conference in Chicago, where I'm headed after today's Demos event here in NYC:

I AM...
->the author of two books this year -- Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild (just came out) and Only Child
->a former-academic-turned-pop-writer
->left-handed
->according to Courtney Martin, a "writer, feminist, and entrepreneur"
->living in NYC (but was born in Chicago!)
->co-founder of the webjournal, The Scholar & Feminist Online
->a consultant specializing in women's issues
->according to Lisa Johnson, a hot dancer
->very excited about attending my first BlogHer conference!

blogme2007

Wow! Technology!

For homepage improvement, see here.

On My Shelf: While Girls Go Mild, Women in their Prime Go Wild

So I'm in the middle of Wendy Shalit's Girls Gone Mild: Young Women Reclaim Self-Respect and Find It's Not Bad to Be Good. Watch for a review from me soon over on The American Prospect. I promise to do the kind of reading diary here on Girl with Pen that I did while reading Leslie Bennetts earlier this summer.

Once again, we cycle. I'm intrigued by Shalit's argument that there's now a "fourth wave" of feminists who feel alienated from the "third-wave" feminist "establishment". How cool that we're now an establishment, huh? Gee, that was fast. Eager to hear others' thoughts on the book and the issues she raises. So stay tuned....

And in the meantime, check out this book on the other end of the age:lust continuum -- Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years, by the sizzling Pepper Schwartz!

Love Letter to Elle

I just wrote my first love letter to Elle. As folks may know, their current issue features a spread called The Incredible Shrinking Woman with an essay by Gloria Feldt that I think is fantastic. If you agree, feel free to send Elle your love - cuz we know they're going to get hate mail for it too.

The Rise of the Feminist Bad-Ass - Now on YouTube!

A bit of the reading I did at Cody's in Berkeley is now up on YouTube, thanks to FORA.tv. I love the title they gave it, hehe.

Shameless Self-Promotion

I'm so excited -- I just learned they're expecting a more-than-full house for the Demos forum on my book this Thursday. Come one, come all! But come early, or you might not get a seat....

Sisterhood, Interrupted: From Radical Women to Grrls Gone Wild
July 26, 2007
12:15-1:45
NYRAG, 79 Fifth Ave, 4th Floor (between 15th and 16th St)
New York City

For more info and to register (the event is free), click here.

Refreshments will be served.