Pictures in the press of Kate Moss being all matey with Cooper Hefner following her first shoot for Playboy, signals the end of cool. Lending your name, and body parts, to Playboy is lending them to corporate misogyny.
Category: Sexualisation
Evening Standard sits back as model condones domestic violence
This week the Evening Standard gave Russian model Katia Elizarova the power to say something extremely damaging – to normalise male violence against women.
Simon Cowell’s thumbs up to the sex industry as kids’ entertainment
ITV brought the sex industry to the kids again last night, with Simon Cowell giving a massive approval to the stripper who performed on Britain's Got Talent at 8pm, sending the message that stripping is fun for all the family and will get you places.
CBeebies celebrates 10 years and a new show, Tree Fu Tom. Why not Tree Fu Tina?
In CBeebies, the females appear to be locked indoors. Is the controller on a quest to wipe out the female species from public view? OK, I’m exaggerating, but they’re not there much at all and if they do make an appearance, they are all too often pink and giddy.
While Object take on Girls Gone Wild, Madonna usefully poses in bra
The Daily Mail reports that a man called Joe Francis has been in a dispute with Madonna over her choice of track title, which originally had the same name as his company Girls Gone Wild.
Are women human yet? Afraid not ladies, the Playboy bunny is back.
While Hooters have brought their tacky ‘family friendly’ sexism to Bristol, this May sees undead misogynist Hugh Hefner opening his ‘exclusive’ Playboy club in London’s Mayfair once again
Equality begins at home: bringing feminism and parenting together
With the Pink Stinks campaign calling for positive role models for girls and Mumsnet’s Let Girls Be Girls campaign demanding an end to products that sexualize children, awareness of damaging and limiting stereotypes is reaching parents way beyond feminist circles. Group Blogs such as mothersforwomenslib.com are bringing feminism and parenting together while this year’s Feminism in London conference saw a Feminist Parenting workshop, How To Break The Stereotypes at Home for the first time, as well as a workshop for teenagers, Dealing with Pressure, inviting 12-18 year olds to voice their feelings around media imagery. So why the need now? And what do these parents want to do differently?
Beauty is not a contest
The resurgence of beauty pageants is not harmless fun argues Rachel Bell, nevermind ‘empowering’, but part of the wider culture of objectification that underpins women’s lesser status.
The pornification of pop
It's the way in which pop and rap music embrace the porn and sex industries, elevate the pimp and sexualise male violence that makes it pornographic says Rachel Bell. And it’s not girls we need to be worried about, it’s boys.
What models never talk about
While the media focuses on the size zero debate, Rachel Bell talks to a former model and finds that rape and sexual harassment are as real a threat to models as death by eating disorder
Betty Bandit 