Canadian girl out and aboot

Last night I was watching some Saturday Night Live, because I couldn't fall asleep. I was really disgusted to see TWO skits with domestic violence in them. One was about Tiger Woods and his mistresses. The running gag was that Elin, his wife, was beating him. The other skit was about "Gossip Girl- Staten Island". It also involved two characters hitting each other.

I was not amused by any of this, especially since Rihanna was the musical guest, and today is the anniversary of the Montreal massacre.

Fortunately, two of my friends also noticed this and mentioned it on their twitter feeds.

Every time I get a glimpse of SNL, I wonder why it's still on. Half of the shit that they do isn't funny.

I was in the Safeway parking lot when I spotted the most horrific decal I have ever seen. The decal was on a Suburban and it featured a cartoon of a woman wearing a bikini. The woman was on her back and her feet and hands were tied up, as if she was a calf that had been captured at a rodeo. The sign underneath the tied up woman read "Alberta Bound."

I was extremely horrified by the sheer sexism of this decal. A loud "Ew" escaped my mouth and I frantically looked around so I could point this horror out to someone. The guy stopped his car and got out. He was a big dude, and I even thought about commenting on his horrific decal, but then I decided it wasn't worth my time or effort.

Still, I had to mention it here because the sheer sexism and violence of that particular decal was jarring and disgusting for me. I wonder about the kind of person who could put this on his car. I suspect it's a person that I wouldn't like very much.

I have problems with the word "douchebag." I know that it's pejorative and that it is an acceptable insult, but to me, it's a bit out there. Why should I want to call someone something that has to do with cleaning a vagina? I'm not really in favour of the process of douching, since it seems pretty pointless, but the term "douche" or "douchebag" has always irritated me.

Does anyone else think that this insult is fairly sexist? Am I the only one who feels this way?

I am still quite sick, so I am taking it somewhat easy today, as I had very busy workdays on Thursday and Friday.

Yesterday I went to a session on computers at the Farm Women's Conference. Yvonne Tollens, the woman who gave the speech was really cool. I found out later that she was named one of Alberta's 50 most influential business people and won a national award for women entrepreneurs.

She had a background in agriculture, and her husband came from an IT background. They put their heads together and came up with an internationally recognized software which is used by farmers all over the world to track their cattle operations.

She told a lot of the women, some of whom had never been online, some of the ways to navigate around the web and some of the things they could learn to do.

Her motto is "If they can do it, I can do it", which makes sense to me.

Then she spoke about how these women should be campaigning for wireless Internet, and how rural communities need to be connected so they can access necessary information. She even said, "Being able to be connected to the Internet is as important for rural Canadians as power was when it first came out."

I totally agree. Shutting rural Canadians out of good Internet service decreases so many of their options and opportunities, especially with the continued growth of online learning, and the ability to access almost anything you want via the web. It's denying people access to information, and you can imagine how I feel about that.

I actually died a little bit inside when I found out how many of these women were still on dial-up Internet.


She also talked about how the women could create or engage in online business opportunities to earn extra money for their farms.

I was inspired by how eager the women in the audience were to learn about some of these things.

Last night, I couldn't fall asleep, so I flipped on the tv. It was about 1:00. and I was flipping through some channels. I flipped by late night "Showcase". "Showcase" is a Canadian channel that shows some artsy HBO programming. They show a lot of reruns during the day, and advertise their "Fridays without Borders" which basically means that they show softcore.

Now, I've never really seen a porn. I've seen movies, and have read many books and seen random clips on the Intenet, but have never rented or been around a rented porn movie.

So last night, I was surprised to catch a glimpse of a show called "Porno Valley." It's some kind of reality porn show, featuring porn actresses competing to be "Last Girl Standing." I guess it's also meant to show people more about porn production companies, since they had a few scenes with weirdos coming in off the street wondering how they could star in porn, talking to some of the production people etc.

In some of the "reality" segments, the porn star girls were naked and getting it on with each other. There was a scene in which the girls were supposed to stimulate an all girl orgy with each other. To get past censors, their vaginas were "blotted out" during certain scenes. I found this funny, because, yeah, that blotch really hides EVERYTHING. It's not like I couldn't see that another girl was putting her hand, tongue or other objects inside the blotch.

What really got me were the women's bodies. I'm a straight woman, but I tend to think the naked female body is quite beautiful. I love nudes, both male and female and tasteful nudity in art or film is a plus. (ANd I'm not just talking about Ewan McGregor's bits)

But these women weren't attractive at all to me; they had pneumatic fake breasts which seemed ridiculously out of proportion, no waists or curves and plastic looking faces and skin. I didn't really like their personalities during the "talking" segments, and so that made them even less attractive. Some of them didn't even have butts, just flat asses.

I found these nude bodies really disturbing. Is this what is supposed to be hot? Who is creating and marketing this fantasy?

I think about the Playboy books that came out a few years ago that featured models from the 60s and 70s. We had some at Chapters- There was a blondes, brunettes and a redheads book. I thumbed through them a couple of times. The women had real curves and looked interesting. How have we gone from those women to the women I saw on tv last night?

I know I don't see a lot of naked women, but this porn concept scares me.

The high cost of manliness

Interesting article about masculinity.

I recently read "No place for a lady" by Barbara Hodgson. This is the second book that I've read by Hodgson. She's a novelist, non-fiction writer and book designer. I first got interested in her books because I read an article about a new exhibit at the Vancouver Museum . The exhibit, which will be on until October 2006, is called "No place for a lady; tales of adventurous women travellers."

As it was a typical rainy Sunday in Vancouver, B* and I went to the museum to check out the exhibit. I've been to the Vancouver museum before for a lecture, but hadn't actually seen the exhibits. In the first room, there are some timelines about Vancouver's history, which were rather interesting. B* and I acknowledged that as we get older, we both find ourselves more interested in learning more about history, especially about the history of the places we happen to be or live in. Personally, I also find myself more interested in Canadian history, because I am constantly realizing how little I know about the history of my own country. History first came alive for me and really became interesting in university, when I took my first course in Asian history and fell in love with learning about China.

The exhibit "No place for a lady" is incredibly well done. There are old maps and historical documents, and old items such as bloomers, suitcases, jewellery etc. It's historically interesting, and very well documented. The exhibit is quite fun and has a lot of humour in it. I was personally amused by one party of two women, who crossed the desert using 102 camels to carry their supplies. I also learned a lot of interesting things- Bloomers were used because underwear was considered improper. There were guns designed especially for women. Women were some of the first travellers allowed to visit harems. The exhibit is worth a look, especially if you're a person with wanderlust or a passion for history.

My article on women and tattoos is the cover story!!!!

(I might use some of the money from the article to get another tattoo. It just seems appropriate.)

This is something that I've wanted to post about for a while. I'm curious to know what people do when they see domestic disputes in public. For example, when I see a man and woman having a fight, I tend to stop walking by and watch, especially if I think that it's going to erupt into violence. I want to let the people know that I'm watching. But I'm curious to know what others do. If you see a man hit a woman in public, should you call 9-11? Should you yell something to let them know that you saw and that it's wrong? I usually just stop and stare, but is there something else that I could do or that should be done.

*I realize that sometimes the woman hits the man, or that it's two men or two women having an argument. In this case, I'm more interested in how people combat violence against women, even though I am interested in how people work against violence in general.