Happy {admittedly late} Monday Ladies!
I realize that we’ve been MIA for the weekend – all I have to say in our defense is HALLOWEEN. But now that it’s Monday and we’ve all returned to real-life, we’re ready to catch you up on what you missed last week and let you know what you should keep an eye out for this week. If you missed Lauren hosting Bay Buchanan at Virginia Tech last week, definitely check it out. Considering the topic was immigration and the headline on the promotional posters was literally ALIEN INVASION, I can promise you the Q&A portion in itself is worth the watch.
This week Lena Dunham is catching heat for the portion of her new book, Not That Kind of Girl, in which she describes interactions between herself and her younger sister that sound a lot like domestic abuse. I’d hesitate to label Lena Dunham as a child predator, except for that in the book she literally does it for me, writing, “Basically, anything a sexual predator might do to woo a small suburban girl I was trying.” I’m sorry, what? I’m not even going to joke about this, because something here seems very wrong to me. Lena Dunham writes about manipulating her younger sister into kissing her, sneaking peeks of her sister’s vagina, and essentially just using her as a sexual outlet, but we’re expected to chalk it up to Dunham’s infantile quirkiness and flip to the next page? Dunham has tried to brush it off as normal childhood experimentation – I don’t know about you guys but when I was a kid, I experimented with my mom’s high heels and make-up, not my little sister. I want to know, if it were a BOY who was sexually violating his baby sister, would Lena Dunham be so quick to chalk it up to childhood antics, or would she call it out for the perverse form of exploitation that it is?
On a lighter note, Elite Daily has a piece this week on how millennials cling to their dreams despite the cynics we so often face. This hopefulness and tenacity is pretty incredible considering that we’re the first generation thought to be less well-off than our parents, we’re more dependent on our parents than any generation before us, and we’re dragging around more student loan debt than our parents could ever dream of back when they were our age. Call me a romantic if you must, but I think that there’s something inherently brave and uplifting about the millennial’s rejection of the ‘playing-it-safe’ route.
I love Acculturated – the site rivals Drudge Report for my favorite media outlet. This week they wrote an interesting article about skinny-shaming and reducing girls to the shapes of their bodies. Now I will say, I sing along with Meghan Trainor’s “All About that Bass” in the car as loud as anyone – the song is my jam. But the article makes an interesting point – why is it okay to call a woman a ‘skinny bitch,’ but simultaneously a huge NO to call a woman a ‘fat bitch?’ *Quick idea: Maybe when women stop casually calling each other bitches, men will stop thinking that it’s okay to use the word in a derogatory manner towards women. Just a thought.* Anyway, as some supplemental reading, I came across this article a few weeks ago about ‘thin privilege.’ When did that become a thing? I fail to understand why we now must make ‘skinny’ women feel guilty for being what society labels as thin. I personally like being what my doctor labels as ‘healthy’ and I’m definitely not about to apologize for it to those who say that women like me benefit from ‘thin privilege’. I mean the author makes it sound like life in sizes 0-2 is easy, but it sure isn’t easy to wake up at 6 a.m. to hit the gym before class when you went to sleep at 2 a.m. It isn’t easy to eat healthy when you’re living on a college budget and have a cabinet stocked with enough boxes of Kraft mac & cheese to get you through the apocalypse. My roommate just ran a half marathon and since I’m pretty sure that would have actually killed me, I’m going to go out on a limb here and guess that wasn’t easy either. Altogether, both articles serve as an important reminder that it doesn’t matter what society says is right or wrong – a woman’s spirit transcends the size of her jeans. If you can check yourself out in the mirror feeling healthy and happy with what you see, then nothing else really matters.
Speaking of body images, last week I included a video of Vincent Sheheen calling Nikki Haley a whore during a campaign speech and I figured I’d be remiss not to include a blurb about Senator Tom Harkin inappropriately commenting on Joni Ernst’s appearance this week. I believe the exact quote was, “She’s really attractive and she sounds nice,” while mimicking an uninformed voter. Yikes. Even Buzzfeed shared this footage. BUZZFEED. Granted they presented it with a total lack of commentary, but when you’re a liberal and even Buzzfeed thinks your guffaw is worth sharing, maybe it’s time to reevaluate. I think it’s pretty ironic that this guy has just finished his senatorial career representing the party that is allegedly ‘pro-women’ (Pro-women? Seriously what does that even mean? Do people seriously believe that Republicans, many of which are women, are anti-women?). Here’s a big news-flash, just to clear things up for all the Vincent Sheheens and Tom Harkins out there: if you want credit for being pro-women, you have to be pro-ALL women. Not just pro-the liberal women who voted for you.
This morning, workers began their first day of work in the finally finished and open for business Freedom Tower. The tower stands as a beautiful tribute to the lives lost on 9/11, and Lauren and I both pray that it serves as a lasting reminder of the price our nation has paid many times over to sustain freedom. The tower serves as a memorial, ensuring that those who died in the tragedy of 9/11 did not die in vain, but died in the name of freedom, symbolizing the constant truth that we are blessed to enjoy our many liberties in America. As always, we pray for the victims of 9/11 and their families, and we hope that the symbol of national pride will aid in the continued healing of the wounds our nation suffered on 9/11.
Lastly, don’t forget that tomorrow is Election Day! Go vote. Please vote. Why would you not vote? I know its midterms, essentially the political equivalent of purgatory, but take 20 minutes and go vote anyway. I don’t care what party you associate yourself with – exercise your right to vote because people in other countries fight wars to get that opportunity. I’m on the fence regarding what I feel about FDR’s entire presidency, but he got it right when he said, “Nobody will ever deprive the American people of the right to vote except the American people themselves, and the only way they could do this is by not voting.”
That’s all for today – enjoy the week!
Sam and Lauren
