Holy Snaps, Batman...!

Okay. So in 24 hours (give or take), I will be sharing with you all some really exciting news... but in the meantime! Can we talk about this video and the completed unexpected (to me) talent in these girls, er... youth?! Well, you'll probably have to discuss amongst yourselves, or exclaim in your head with multiple and enthusiastic pseudo-expletives and exclamation points (@#$Q!!!!!!) thusly.

That's all. As you were.

Oh. ps. They have a Twitter... you know what to do!

Lend Me Your Ears...!

Ashley Judd is my new hero.

Seriously. The mind trip that our culture puts us through - that we have been trained to put ourselves through (!!) - is crippling. Crippling in every way, shape and form.

That she would passionately and eloquently challenge cultural norms is, to me, so completely inspirational. You can read more about it here.

...because sharing is caring.

Nobel Peace Ladies...

Via Bitte Ein Kuss

(L-R)

Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, President of Liberia

Leymah Gbowee, Champion of Women's Rights (Liberia)

Tawakkul Karman, Icon of the Arab Spring Protest (Yemen)

[2011 Nobel Peace Prize recipients]

"The woman is indeed of the greater importance to the race. She has the greater burden and the greater work. Look at the vegetable and the animal worlds. The palm which carries the fruit is the tree most prized by the date grower. The Arab knows that for a long journey the mare has the longest wind. For her greater strength and fierceness, the lioness is more feared by the hunter than the lion.

The woman has greater moral courage than the man; she has also special gifts which enable her to govern in moments of danger and crisis…." - 'Abdu'l-Baha, from an address given in London.

I don't mean this to sound like man-bashing... because it is not. But it is nice to see the contributions and achievements of women recognized, particularly in the field of peace building and community development.

Media, Darlings...

Miss Representation 8 min. Trailer 8/23/11 from Miss Representation on Vimeo.

This topic is so incredibly important. I can't wait for the actual movie to come out!

A Thousand Words...

Unlike Scott Schumann (one of my favorite bloggers), I'm not tight with the editor-in-chief of Vogue Italia, Franca Sozzani... so I can only speculate as to her particular motivation in including these three lovely young women on the cover of the June edition. And I actually and sincerely appreciate that a publication as prestigious as Vogue - and in one of the major global hubs of fashion - would openly declare that women with curves are beautiful and fashion forward.

We're on a slippery slope indeed, however, when the standard of success of modern (post-post modern?) feminism is set by the further objectification of women: congratulations! Women of all shapes and sizes can now be viewed as sex objects! I know, I know: sexy people are desirable, desirable people are envied, the happiness of being envied is glamour, and glamour sells magazines.... We've come a long way, baby?

Last summer I read a really amazing book by Nicholas D. Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn called Half the Sky. It is truly "a passionate call to arms against the oppression of women around the globe - "the central moral challenge" of our time" (I totally took that from the book's jacket - but it's completely true). As a woman, I felt the lives of those interviewed - theirexperiences - cut into my heart, grab a hold, and rock me with the power of their story and the strength of their character. As a western woman, I couldn't help but feel slightly detached. This isn't to say that I wasn't still moved, very often to tears, by what I read - but I had no mechanism or concept of how to process my thoughts and feelings into something concrete and conducive to the betterment of the whole of society. Which is exactly what these myriad heroes were doing: working through their experiences and changing the discourse and reality of their society in positive, meaningful ways.

And then I had the opportunity to study a small, humble, yet infinitely profound document prepared by the Institute for Studies in Global Prosperity (ISGP) called "Advancing Toward the Equality of Women and Men". I knew while reading Half the Sky that the inequality of women and men is as much a problem in developed nations as it is in developing nations....

Addressing the importance that a fundamental knowledge of our selves and of the purpose behind our creation can have in overcoming oppression, the ISGP states that "even in societies where women have been granted certain political and economic rights and are legally empowered, both men and women are denied knowledge of their true selves. Women are objectified and sexuality is made the core of their identity. Their aims and aspirations are set in terms of pleasing men. Attraction to beauty [...] is deliberately perverted to the point where women and men are seen as no more than means for the gratification of material desires."

It is true, the human body is a wonderful, beautiful thing. It has been uniquely designed as the receptacle of the human soul - and it is capable of tremendous things. Let us celebrate our appreciation of the 'body beautiful' for its achievements and for the service it renders the soul - and not because a small number of them have been used as a marketing tool in the advertising of culture.

...To Grow On

So you may or may not know that I just celebrated my birthday. As Jay-Z would say, I'm "young enough to know the right car to buy, but grown enough not to be rims on it"....

These women - via Advanced Style (a street style blog courtesy of Ari Seth Cohen) - prove that high fashion is appropriate at any age. I love that their conversations about and commitment to art and personal expression are so in the moment. Their fingers are definitely on the pulse!

All head's up credit (and thanks!) goes to the equally art and fashion conscious ladies at Honestly... WTF. Aptly named. Promise.

Seriously...?

Image fffound.

So we've talked about my nerd-factor before... and I'd like to officially apologize if my sometimes dark humor offends any of you - but dictionary(dot)com's word of the day totally caught me off guard today.

Okay, not the word itself. Yin (commonly referenced as "yin and yang"... always a pair) is used often enough in the English language to not have caused me any great or special alarm when I saw it in my inbox. ...learning the official definition, however, presented something of a shock.

Ahem.

yin: (n) A principle in Chinese philosophy associated with negative, dark, and feminine attributes. [Yin, almost always in association with yang, means "bright" in Chinese.]

For reals, homie? Negative, dark, feminine?! Sigh.

Sometimes a girl just can't catch a break.

This Is Important...

Courtesy Feminist Frequency, via Bitte Ein Kuss.

Dear the music industry... be truly radical and buzz worthy. Treat women like human beings.

*Genius.*

Women Are Heroes...

TRAILER " WOMEN ARE HEROES"
Uploaded by JR. - Independent web videos.

I have seen trailers for this in French, and the message is so powerful that - even though I don't speak French - I was totally captivated and knew that I had to see this.

Thankfully, I've found an English language trailer to share with you all. I recommend that you look this movie up. ...and then spend some time with the heroes in your own life.

Here's The Situation...

If you follow this blog, you know that I think that girls are important. That access to education, proper nutrition, love, respect, opportunity is just as important for girls as it is for boys.

In July 2008, I stumbled across "The Girl Effect". I hope that you enjoy the latest iteration of their project as much as I do. I also hope that, should you find yourself in a position to take a chance on a girl - to make a difference in her life, you take it. I'll go so far as to suggest that you could even consider creating said opportunities.

Head's up credit on this one goes to Kimia Kline. Cheers!

Shout It From the Rooftops...

“I gave a talk last week on International Women’s Day, saying that if you think feminism is done then you are looking at the micro-environment you are in. If you go anywhere in the world like the Democratic Republic of Congo, rape is being used as a principal weapon of war then you would shout from the rooftops that you were a feminist. Of all the assets in the world that can be owned, such as buildings, housings only one percent is owned by women although women do 75 percent of the world’s labour — these are not my statistics, these are the UN’s.”
- Sandi Toksvig

Head's up courtesy Bitte Ein Kuss

Thank You...

Via Bitte Ein Kuss.

...and you're welcome.

Dress Time...

**This post is dedicated to Nazy, Semira, Sholeh and Kadria - but especially to Yasmin.**

Prep for cozy fall nights

...commence countdown in 4, 3, 2...

Elie Saab

*you may be curious to know that I'm totally stoked on chartreuse, lately*

...it's also fair to surmise you're not curious about this information at all.

Tough.

Anna Sui

*I.just.love.this*

All images courtesy {A Glamorous Little Side Project}.

Today at lunch, a friend dropped this little "fact bomb" on the table: eating an apple in the afternoon will give you more energy than drinking a cup of coffee.

Well, I'll see your cup of coffee and your apple - and raise you a quality fashion break.

What Women Want...

It's possible that I mean me - but take note, gentlemen....

Take.Note.

Reunited...

Niloufar, Jean, Aimee, Sanaz

Irvine? Check. Friday night? Indeed. The only thing open until 9:30? Starbucks.

Sigh... I know. 9 freaking thirty. For my international friends: meet the real real OC.

Thankfully I was able to catch up with some super good friends of mine. Cheers!

עבודה רבה מכבי חיפה!

Google translator - hooking it up! For those of you who don't read Hebrew [and maybe even for those who do... they always ask if I'd like to contribute a 'better translation'... this doesn't inspire much confidence in me....] what I mean is 'great job, Maccabi Haifa'!

Today was the last day of the National Israeli Women's Water Polo Tournament - and we took a respectable second place. This is particularly remarkable because we didn't win our first game until about 6 weeks ago. We definitely should get the prize for most improved team!

I hope to get some pictures of the team up soon - we even got some fancy medallions!

...Strikes Again!

Image credit.

This is probably the funniest thing I've seen in [insert superlative time reference here]. As someone who has worked in retail for most of her 'adult' life, brand logos make me extremely uncomfortable. I've always been of the opinion that wearing a brand was like offering to give a particular company free advertising space.

They should pay me.

Anyhow, I digress... the real exciting part is that Layli of 'This Is Samimi-Extremie' fame now contributes to a new project with some friends of hers. They call it 'The Merits of the Scheme'.

Go on... try not to have a blog crush. I triple-dog dare you!

Time... And Past.

**Disclaimer: if you have a delicate constitution or are sensitive... you may want to take a pass. You won't hurt my feelings.**

The article: from Time magazine.

I imagine that by now this article has caused quite a stir in the States (and other areas where people regularly read Time). And I know that I'm wont to be an optimist - but I tell you truly that I will be disappointed if this doesn't cause a stir in the people who read it.

I've been thinking lately, though, about how this kind of ferocious misogyny isn't so uncommon - and neither is it limited to the developing world, to safely be "their problem".
As you will see in the video, the brand of misogyny marketed to westerners is actually worse, because we (as women) have been conditioned to hate, abuse, and disfigure ourselves....

I originally spotted this video on 'This Is Samimi-Extremie' [thanks for the head's up] and I've been sort of obsessed with it since then.

If I'm going to be perfectly honest (here goes nothing...) the stuff that you see here in this video [dude, just watch it already!] is pretty much the root of the anxiety I feel whenever I think about going home to visit the family. My family is cool - Orange County is murder on a woman's self-esteem, though. Suffice it to say that Israel has been very good to me. Not least because I don't have to look at tabloids and billboards any more....

So we'll see how long I last and in the meantime I invite you to start thinking constructively about the reality of women in your society - wherever you are - and to start thinking about the way you consume your culture.

Hai! Mochi Mochi...

Please try not to die... but this little girl is so cute it hurts me. To quote the Australians (and Haley) in my life: sdlkfjeoaierf!

Sorry for the inundation of videos and etc. In my defense... yeah - I've got nothing. Who's not living life to the fullest and tired all of the time?

Head's up credit.

Post Script... her mother is Japanese and her father is American. Further proof that multicultural children are beautiful and amazing.