substitute

stupid_free points me to lword, where a brainwreck of a conversation about mtf people is occurring. Wow.

The reliably informative Exploding Aardvark has a roundup of 581% inappropriate toys for girls. If I had a 9 year old she would not get any of this shit.

Major points for the phrase "girl power index" and the sentence "Next year, Disney Fairies will be rolled out in earnest."

Yet another example of the Women Now Empowered By Everything Women Does phenomenon. I support giving 9 year old girls zip guns and dropping them off at Disney headquarters.

...not a few of whom are both, I present today's Spam Bounce Nonexistent Email address:

butchdissertation@rossford.k12.oh.us

LONG STORY SHORT I THOUGHT I WAS GETTING A PARTY BALL FROM THE ABSINTHE CLEARINGHOUSE BUT IT WAS TOTALLY NOT WHAT I THOUGHT

springheel_jack linked to digby's post on the "Purity Ball" phenomenon. This is put on by the Abstinence Clearinghouse people, and is a ritual in which formally-dressed daughters make a pledge of abstinence to their formally-dressed fathers. It's basically them marrying their fathers until they find husbands.

The abstinoids sell a purity ball planner, and you can browse a photo gallery of the 2005 and 2006 balls.

This is the best Rural Pakistan ever! By the way I hear the abstinence chicks are totally easy for oral and anal, dude.

This is interesting. Michael Chabon was a student of my father's in the UCI MFA program more than 20 years ago. He's been a family friend since, and I also admire his writing.

In his website column this week he writes about the value of the program. He's given props to my dad before by name, many times, which was gratifying. This is more interesting. He talks about the phenomenon of being "a little shit" as he says he was, or more particularly a talented by self-absorbed young privileged man, and then being dumped into a group of peers who were talented and also different: older, more experienced, more mature, and more than half of them female.

Food for thought, especially on the topic of male literary misogyny. Oh, and I see it was published in Details, the magazine of little shits everywhere.

The best part of my occasional medication-checkup visits to the psychiatrist's office is the brochures. No, really. The drug companies produce these things, which don't mention any specific drug but urge you to deal with your problem. I've posted some pictures of swag and brochures before. Today's offering is "Balanced", a look at one housewife's indoctrination in to the proper way to handle her problems. It seriously looks like that comic strip "Baby Blues". Also, note older male psychologist authority figure and emphasis on Women Problems.

Waiting for my mother at the doctor's office just now I picked up a magazine called "Organic Style", thinking "this should be good!"

It does not disappoint. A more descriptive name would be "The magazine for women who need to be so healthy and virtuous and beautiful that they are all hot yoga adepts and Jane Goodall and Susan Sarandon at once".

Ads for Shell Oil face editorials decrying Arctic drilling. A product sidebar touts a $249 "earth/peace scapulare" that makes a statement in 14k "recycled gold". There are many, many skin moisturizers and breakfast cereals. One is commanded to indulge everything, always.

The best part was a Dove ad. It was actually an ad for an advertising campaign (!). Dove wishes to celebrate "real beauty" of "women with curves" who are not size 2 models. They laud their own ad campaign, in which they stand firm for real women and unretouched photographs and celebrating... Anyway the women in the ad for the ad are impossibly hot twenty year olds with perfect everything laughing in their underwear. I guess it's okay to be a size 4 catalog model now, gals! Size 0 is no longer mandatory!