Minnesota Nice

“Basically, I just want people to see what it would be like if plus-size models were represented similarly to slim models." -- Kristin Lou Herout. 

Passing on the news of a recently-launched website dedicated to honoring and mobilizing girls' media production called Girls Make Media. Creator Mary Celeste Kearney is hoping the site will become a resource for girls, as well as media educators, researchers, and others dedicated to amplifying the voices of girls.

Looks like it's off to a good start -- please check it out, spread the word, contribute... 

Back to the most recent Bitch fundraising trip...

I'd never been to Salt Lake City before, so I was excited to check it out.  After a long drive in from Denver, I was even more excited to be greeted by a plate of vegan cookies, freshly-baked by our host, Courtney Maguire (thanks, Courtney!). Courtney is one of the folks involved with the Female Empwerment Movement (FEM), a new(ish) feminist group created in response to the high rates of sexual violence in Salt Lake. FEM also helped organize and get the word out of the evening's events, and I'm grateful. 

I'm also grateful to Angela Brown, Meghann Griggs, and the rest of the folks at SLUG magazine, who responded almost immediately to our call for assistance in helping put together the discussion and fundraiser in Salt Lake. SLUG was founded in 1989 and remains Utah's oldest alternative paper. 

 

In my shock at seeing a Wal-Mart ad on the Mother Jones website, I neglected to include a link to the article I was searching for in the first place, which is the story of the California Secretary of State's office rejecting the name Bitch Publications on the grounds that it was obscene. 

I've been debating whether I should post this for a few days, but I've decided I must.  

Earlier this week, I went to the Mother Jones website to find an old article I wanted to post here. But my search was interrupted when I saw an ad for Wal-Mart pop up.

An ad for Wal-Mart on the website of a magazine that calls itself:   

An independent nonprofit whose roots lie in a commitment to social justice implemented through first rate investigative reporting.

 

Since I know lots of people who like this, I thought they might also like this...

Last night I took home the galley (galleys are uncorrected proofs of books sent out by publishers) of one of Jeanette Winterson's latest novels, The Stone Gods. I love Winterson's writing, in part because of the precision with which she writes about concepts like language, gender, sexuality, power... 

So it was awfully strange to read the opening sentence of the book's description... 

Mankind has rendered its planet unlivable and is beginning to colonize a new blue planet.