Ever since Rush Limbaugh so shamelessly attacked Sandra Fluke on his talk show last Friday, nearly everybody has sprung into that shiny suit of armor and mounted that (very very high) white horse  to protect the poor, downtrodden damsel in distress. Even President Obama, the big boss himself, personally called Fluke with words of support. Amidst all of this good-willed hubbub and kerfluffle to hold Ms. Fluke’s hand after a run-in with the national troll under the bridge, Rush Limbaugh, it seems like everybody has forgotten one thing: Limbaugh didn’t just call Fluke a “slut” and a “prostitute” for supporting the inclusion of contraceptives in healthcare coverage. Limbaugh’s big, slobbering, cesspool of a mouth insulted every single woman in America who uses contraceptives. And it’s about time we got up-in-arms about it.

“Don’t worry ladies, us men will testify for you”

Why Sophie, what an awfully exaggerated claim to make, you’re probably thinking to yourself right about now (especially the few republicans I have on Facebook). No, no, please- let me explain:

This whole Sandra Fluke thing started when she was barred by House Oversight Committee Chairman Darrell Issa (R-California) from testifying as the Democrats’ witness at a hearing on the presidents contraceptive policy. Apparently the 30-year old, graduate Georgetown student who uses contraceptives on a daily basis, and has been lobbying her school for three years over their contraceptive policy was not a “credible” witness.

The republican’s panel of “credible” witnesses? Five men from conservative religious organizations.

Wait, what?

Oh yes, indeed we have been transported back in time to caveman-era where hulking, hairy, he-men beat their chests and grunt about their domination over women. “ME. SO. SMART. This woman MINE. Her uterus MINE. Her ovulation regulation MINE.”

No, but seriously. In what sort of strange, parallel, fourth dimension does it logically make sense for five men to witness and testify on behalf of the 150+ million women in America? I can understand pregnancy and abortion being an issue men can stick their noses in, what with half of that genetic flubber that pro-lifers like to call a fetus being from the man-parts. But contraceptives are completely different, ahem, completely a female issue. And yet, our lone witness, Sandra Fluke, was barred from testifying (and then two women Democrat representatives walked out in protest, wahoo).

Fast forward to a week or so later, where our rejected-but-not-defeated witness steps up to bat with Rush Limbaugh. This woman is pretty much the only ‘average-Jane’ that has been given the chance to publically speak out in support of healthcare covering birth control. She is the epitome of the average contraceptive user; she is relatable, normal, and the sole, unofficial representative for pro-contraceptive women all over this fine nation.

And what does Limbaugh do? He sneers into that spit-flecked microphone of his that “She’s having so much sex, she can’t afford the contraception!”

Excuse me? Contraception costs the same amount every month, regardless of how much sex one has. A sex worker pays the same amount as a married woman for contraceptives. Thank you, Rush Limbaugh, for calling every single woman on birth control “sluts”, that was really educated and accurate of you. Please read: Amount of sex does not equal un-affordable contraception. Expensive pills equal un-affordable contraception.

“She wants you and me and the taxpayers to pay her to have sex” he continued, “if Fluke wants to get her pills paid for, she should videotape herself having sex. We want you to post the videos online so we can all watch”. Ick. The lewdness and idiocy I can ignore, since what else can we expect from the likes of Limbaugh? What bothers me is that in his sick, twisted mind he considers healthcare coverage of contraceptives the same as “paying her to have sex”, most commonly known as prostitution.

A spotlight on hypocrisy: Viagra is covered by public healthcare policies. Since it came out in 1998, more than half of the prescriptions were paid for by my money, your money, Sandra Fluke’s money, and even Rush Limbaugh’s money. Because if there’s one double-standard that doesn’t exist, it’s taxes. Men pay taxes. Women pay taxes. However, men get sexual health coverage, while women are slut-shamed. Go figure. It should also be noted that Sandra Fluke and the debate on contraception in this instance was in regards to private insurance. Which just makes it so much more infuriating that I could get audited or jailed for tax evasion if I started refusing to pay taxes that will go towards Viagra, but private employers can refuse their female employees reproductive health coverage with no repercussions at all.

In fact, McCain fumbled rather badly over a question as to why Viagra is covered by healthcare during his run in 2008. Well, if this isn’t our hard-earned taxpayer dollars paying for men to have sex, I don’t know what is. But of course, the notoriously misogynistic Limbaugh would never ask for videos of what those happy men are doing with their cheap, healthcare-covered Viagra boners.

“Affordable birth control? None of this godforsaken blasphemy!” -Panel of 5 male witnesses

Of course, protection is mainly the woman’s responsibility (for obvious reasons), but it just plain sucks that our responsibility also has to be a financial burden. Men get to have sex for free, goddammit! Well, $5 here or there for condoms, but it’s a largely cost-free activity. Women are not so lucky. Birth control costs about $360 a year for the prescription alone. This is not counting the cost of gynecologist appointments, pap smears, and other required procedures to obtain a prescription in the first place. This is also not counting the costs incurred when women cannot afford birth control: $50 for Plan B, $700+ for an abortion, or hundreds of thousands of dollars (and pain) for carrying, conceiving, and raising a child as a single mother.

Maybe women should start campaigning for a “Sex isn’t Free” policy, and make men pay a $30 a month Sex Tax to aid single mothers in poverty. Seems fair to me, seeing as men don’t have to suck up a lifetime of medical expenses in order to be sexually active. Or maybe women should just stop having sex because it’s too expensive, and it seems like this is what Rush wants the slutty women of America to be doing. Don’t worry boys, masturbation is still free for everyone.

Ok I’ll try and stop being so hard on men now. I’m not a feminist (ok, well maybe sometimes [like right now]), in fact I enjoy the company of men very much and all that jazz. But there are certain aspects of a traditionally patriarchal society that just seem to linger like a stale fart. One of them being this tendency for males to assert dominance over a women’s body. When women lose the power to choose if, when, or how many times they become pregnant, we lose power over our bodies and lives.  This really needs to stop. Anyways, onward then. Its midnight and I’m running out of angry feminist steam so don’t worry, the end is near.

My closing remark will be a lament about how much of a pansy Fluke was during the debate and in the aftermath of this whole birth-controlversy (haha, get it? No, this is a bad pun, but like I said, it’s past my bedtime). When I initially read that she was a Georgetown graduate law student, I imagined a shark-like, snappy, cut-throat campaigner. Instead she was soft-spoken, passive, and practically rolled over to let Limbaugh shit all over her for three days. Meanwhile, Limbaugh is having the time of his life influencing one-third of conservatives all over the country (most of them white, fat Republican men- and illiterate, hence the listening to Limbaugh’s show) and their opinions on birth control policy. Then in 2012 these conservative Limbaugh drones are going to squeeze their rolls of fat into their big tough trucks and drive to the voting booths (oh wait, American does voting by mail now), and reject Obamacare’s coverage for women.

This leaves us with a couple of things to ponder:

1)      I thought men wanted to screw around without knocking up women and paying child support.

2)      I thought conservatives wanted their woman-folk to not have children out of wedlock, and were against abortions.

3)      Who the hell does Rush Limbaugh and other social conservatives think the SluttyMcSluts of America are having all of this wild, crazy sex with ? Blow up dolls? It takes two to tango, good sirs, you’re just as guilty as the rest of us.

See original post with all 115 comments here. I was genuinely surprised during my first week of university when I became friends with people outside of the Bellevue School District, and found out they “enjoyed high school.” You see, up until my graduation from Newport High School, I was not aware of the fact that it was possible to enjoy your high school experience, because high school blows. I was convinced that all those movies and TV series that depicted high school as “the best years of your life” were simply outdated, romanticized ideas contrived by long-graduated movie producers and writers in the biz, who had no idea that high school was no longer synonymous with senior pranks and the homecoming dance, but with hours of misery and rules. This was until I finally escaped the clutches of Newport, and realized it was not the media, but my school’s vastly incompetent administration, that had gotten the main theology of high school so inexcusably wrong.You know that something is wrong with your school when the students regularly compare it to George Orwell’s 1984. Or when the attendance at school “spirit” assemblies is so low that we can’t even fill the bleachers, because the moment that bell rings signifying our freedom from our mandatory presence in that depressing building, everyone bolts without a single look back. Or when our student representatives had to contrive elaborate, and largely ineffective, plans in hopes of restoring the student body’s crushed school spirit, while the administration puzzled and scratched their heads in confusion because they couldn’t figure out why, for the life of them, their students created a Facebook group called, “A big ‘Fuck You’ to the Administration of Newport High School”.

I was in the Newport class of 2009, which was, for the most part, unmemorable and unmentionable except for one key factor: This was the class that got to witness the entirety of Newport’s evolution from a high school that its students loved and cherished, to one that they couldn’t wait to leave. I don’t know if this drastic change in attitude was due to the poignant switch in 2007 from the old school building, with its carpeted walls, student art, and main hallway that seemed to ooze out cheers and memories from students past, to the newly constructed, sterile, dim, 3-story building that now houses some of the most resentful kids I have ever met. Or if maybe it was the administration changes in 2006-7 from much-loved Patty Siegwarth and co. to Bethany Spindler and co. It’s not my job to point fingers or make assumptions as to why Newport experienced such a drastic shift in student attitudes, but somewhere along the way, Newport’s heart stopped beating, and the class of 2009 had front row seats to it.

Maybe it was because there are only 3 doors that allow access to the school building so that they can be monitored on camera by Big Brother at all times. Maybe it was because all the students had Seasonal Affective Disorder, as the school day started at 7:30am (before the sun rose) and ended at 2:30pm (while the sun was currently setting behind the thick, ever-present NW cloud cover), there was no chance to go outside during the school day, and there were barely any windows, nor sunlight, to be found inside the Newport’s newly renovated building. Maybe it was because this state-of-the art, pride and joy building was widely rumored and believed by the students to have been designed by an architectural company that mainly designed correctional facilities (this rumor has since been disproven, but it still is kind of concerning that the vast majority of students found it so believable). Maybe it was because this wonderful new building was constructed for a 1400-student high school, but by the time it was finished, Newport had grown to be 1600 students, creating a claustrophobic atmosphere, as if we were fish in a too-crowded dentist office aquarium. Maybe it was because at lunchtime, there was not enough space in the cafeteria for everybody, and students had to sit and eat on the floor and under stairwells every day. The lack of an adequate common area for the students and the labyrinth-esque nature of the school’s bland, windowless hallways that funneled us from classroom to classroom were not only depressing, but also (this is a direct quote from my AP Environmental Science teacher) “breaks the spirits of students”.

As my years at Newport progressed, there seemed to be an exponential increase in “zero-tolerance” policies. Senior pranks, a nation-wide accepted high school tradition, were strictly banned under the threat of not walking at graduation. School officials policed the internet for signs of students’ drinking and drug use, and used even the slightest bit of incriminating evidence to suspend or expel students. The school newspaper was heavily censored. To attend a school dance, it was required for students to sign an amusing contract specifying behavior standards and one’s consent to the outlined punishments in accordance to violations, such as dancing horizontally (I’m still not quite sure how this is possible). The zero-tolerance policy towards guns was, in my opinion, heavily abused when a student’s unmistakably neon supersoaker was spotted in his car in the parking lot, and the student faced an “emergency expulsion” for bringing a ‘potential threat’ onto campus. Even more amusing was the black-market trade of Tylenol and Advil between students on campus who had headaches (probably from the fluorescent lighting), but feared punishment under the zero-tolerance drug policy. It became a standard practice for our very own, ex-SWAT, on-campus cop to breathalyze students at the entrance to school dances. And yet, it never occurred to the school admin that the reason why students drank for dances was not for kicks, but because we couldn’t stand them sober; yet didn’t want to miss out on these sad excuses of irreplaceable high school experiences we’d been looking forward to for years. (Please see ‘Mosey’s comment below for a more complete list of curiously ‘necessary’ rules the administration enforced)

It was not just the seemingly tyrannical rule over Newport that caused me to come to hate it, but the quality of education as well.

The ‘integrated learning’ method that was used in the math department not only epically failed at teaching anybody math, but led us to believe that it was our fault. Throughout high school I struggled through the ridiculously confusing math curriculum that aimed to teach us by an “innovative” figure-it-out-yourself method. As if long-winded questions about the rate at which a CD spins, or the rotation of a Ferris wheel could possibly teach students how sine and cosine work. It took hundreds of years before 9^th century Islamic mathematicians developed and understood triganomic functions, so I am at a loss as to how my 10^th grade precalculus teacher expected us to “figure it out” in a 50-minute class period by doing “contemporary, investigation-based” problems out of a textbook. The math curriculum was, in fact, such a failure that it led me to honestly believe for four years that I was ‘bad’ at math. It was not until this year, when I nervously entered my required 300-level statistics class at McGill University and then proceeded to earn a 98%, before I realized that it was not I that had failed miserably at math, but the Bellevue school district.

Newport prided itself on being equipped with the most technologically advanced learning equipment; outfitting every single classroom with projectors and Smartboards, and putting flat-screen TVs in the common areas. This, in my opinion, was an inexcusable waste of money, as not many teachers even knew how to use these expensive, revamped whiteboards, and the large majority ended up being (quite ugly) decorative wall fixtures. All the meanwhile, school bigwigs were tearing out their hair and lamenting over the “budget crisis” we were in, eventually deciding that this crisis could be ameliorated by cutting funds to the fine arts and sports. The installment of Smartboards was as if Newport was trying to compensate for the extremely poor quality of the strictly standardized curriculum that was enforced district-wide. For some reason, our teachers (many of whom were brilliant) were not trusted nor allowed to decide what was taught, and how to teach it. They were no longer our educators, but rather, our babysitters that were required to dole out useless activities from the standardized course packs. It was an insult to their hard-earned teaching degrees, experience, and knowledge. Class assignments from these course packs consisted of inane practices such as, “underline all the descriptive words from this passage and determine the attitude of the author,” or, “count how many short and long sentences there are. What kind of syntax is being used?” It was as if I had been transported back to elementary school, and there was no escape.

Contrary to popular belief, the goal of Newport is not to educate its students, or provide a meaningful, supportive high school atmosphere, but to rank in Newsweek’s Top 100 list of public high schools. This was done by applying intense amounts of pressure on the students to enroll in as many AP classes as possible, and not providing any academic support, nor alternatives, for the non-honors/non-AP students. The reason that Newport housed the crème de la crème of students was not because of an exceptional academic system, but rather because (despite the fact that Newport was a public high school) students whose grades fell below a 2.0 GPA, had “discipline issues”, were pregnant, or were in any other way a ‘problem,’ were quickly shipped away to Robinswood; the district’s alternative high school. It was if these “bad eggs” had to be eradicated before they infected the rest of the student body (it should be noted that Robinswood was recently closed, meaning that these ‘problem’ students must now be integrated back into Newport). Then, to further up their rankings of Newsweek’s coveted list, Newport made it mandatory for ALL students (including, quite horrifically, the Sp.Ed students) to take at least 1 AP class, reduced the classes offered in the fine arts, electives, and completely axed some of the non-honor level courses so there is no alternative other than AP.

I can make no guarantees about current state of affairs at Newport high school. Thankfully, I haven’t had to step foot on campus for the past two years, so I have no knowledge of any improvements or changes in Newport’s academic or social realm. However, I highly doubt that Newport will ever return as the great place that I attended freshman year, but rather, will remain as a sad excuse of a school that I had the disappointment of attending while it crashed and burned. All I can say now is this:

If someone could give a monetary value to the American high school experience, I would sue the shit out of Bellevue School district for it, because I feel robbed.

Keeping Newport “safe”

Recently it seems like society has backpedaled a bit (ok, a lot) when it comes to rape. Have we regressed to the middle ages when it was socially acceptable for drunken, violent soldiers to rape, pillage, and kill other rival kingdoms? No, not exactly. This, at least, I can safely say has not happened yet. But is our culture regressing back to having a cavalier attitude about rape, similar to how men in the 1500s viewed women?

Well, the other day two men walked past me on the sidewalk where I was minding my own business, drinking Starbucks, and trying to enjoy the sunshine. As they passed, I of unfortunately sharp hearing, heard one of them quite distastefully referred to me as a “slampiece” . Did i whirl around, slap him in the face, and tell him off for being a despicable cretin that deserves to spend his life giving rimjobs to elephants? No. Did I want to? Absolutely. But what I lacked was personal safety. I had been walking alone, during the daytime, in a rather respectable part of Seattle’s Greater Eastside when this happened. Yet I did not speak up because I was afraid that if I did, I would be putting myself in danger, maybe even of being raped.

I’m sure than many of my male readers would find this logic of mine to be an overreaction. To you, men, that was just another rude, but “harmless” bro-word-comment-thing. But to me, and the majority of other women in the world, this is how we operate on a day to day basis. When we hear random men make comments about women with violent or demeaning vocabulary (such as slampiece, bitch, ho), we do not hear the message “damn that girl is hot”, we hear the message “I have the power to say, treat, and fuck her however I want, even in a violent, humiliating, or unwanted way”. Maybe men don’t realise that what they say about women, and how they say it, is a precursor to how they treat women.  So when I try to explain that we live in a “rape culture”, I’m trying to explain that we live in a society where violence, especially sexual violence, against women is still, for the most part, accepted. Even glamorized.

Accepted?! Yes, this, I know, many people have trouble understanding as well. But let’s look at some of the recent events (in order from least recent to most) that have caused me to write this post:

1) Daniel Tosh’s rape joke blunder: During a stand-up show in June, Tosh began his show with some generalizations about how rape jokes are always funny. A female audience member ”heckled” Tosh by saying, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” His response: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”

The problem with this: Yes, comedians use shock value and cross lines. Yes, comedians single out hecklers. But no, comedians should not actively encourage male audience members to rape a female in the audience. This would be like doing a comedy show in Germany, and encouraging 5 German audience members to kill a Jewish one. Except for while the Holocaust was a horrifying period of about twenty years, the rape of women has been occurring for thousands with no end in sight. And while Jews may now walk around and feel relatively safe from Ze Germans, women cannot walk around and feel relatively safe from rapists.

While Tosh’s insensitivity to the traumatizing topic of rape did not surprise many people, my biggest beef with his comment is this:  Instead of finding humor within a dark, scary topic, he found the dark, scary topic humorous by nature. This, my male friends, is an example of perpetuating rape culture. Sure, fine, you can make jokes about rape (I mean, I will never date you and most girls will think you are scum, but freedom of speech, go ahead), but please at least recognize that rape itself is not a joke.

2) Paul Ryan calls rape a “method of conception”: Last week, Paul Ryan gave an interview in which, defending his position that there should be no excuses for abortion, he referred to rape as a “method of conception.” OH REALLY?

The problem with this: Rape is to conception in the same way that being chopped up into bits and pieces by a mad ax murderer is to dying of old age. Is the outcome the same? Yes. Is the process? No. That’s the whole point. It’s the way in which something occurs, not the outcome. Sure, life is life. On the flip side, death is death. If Ryan can differentiate between murder and a natural death, he should be about to differentiate between rape and making love. I’m pretty sure that if I violently attacked and killed Paul Ryan’s grandparents (who are old, and going to die anyway), he would definitely have a problem with it.

3)  Todd Akin tries to introduce the idea of “legitimate” rape: “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s [pregnancy from rape] really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

The problem with this: I don’t really think I need to go into the obvious medical inaccuracy of this statement, as ignorant as it is, I think Akin did an adequate job of making himself sound like a neanderthal and my commentary is unneeded on this point. It should also be noted that rapists, in fact, go unpunished more often than not. The victim, the woman, is the one that bears the brunt of the punishment, both in a demeaning legal battle where she must prove that she is not a Slutty McSlutSlut who was “asking for it”, but also in literally being unable to separate from her attacker and the trauma for at least nine months, if not, the rest of her life.

But, the thing that infuriates me the most about this “legitimate rape” comment is the idea that there is such a thing as “illegitimate rape”. That to Akin, if a man forcibly penetrates a woman and her reproductive system functions in a normal way, then it must not have been rape. Or as The Onion put it: “Being violently coerced into having sex was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, so I take comfort in knowing it wasn’t actually rape,” Byars said…”It was absolutely horrific—I felt violated in the worst way imaginable—but thanks to Congressman Akin, I now realize it must, at some level, have been consensual after all.”

Now, do you not find it concerning that prominent public figures, including politicians, are disseminating the idea that rape is anything other than a serious, violent sexual assault?  I do. Do you not find it reflective of American society when individuals in positions of power and influence openly find rape to be humorous, a form of conception, and within their power to judge as “legitimate” or “illegitimate”? As a woman trying to live a rape-free life in America, this is terrifying to me. 

I can see how it can be difficult for you to conceptualize, because, you, nice male friend whom I have on Facebook, are obviously not a rapist, and you obviously think there is nothing ok with rape. I know this. This is why i’m your friend/acquaintance. I’m glad you also think that mainstream culture agrees with you in finding rape abhorrent. However, this is where you are wrong. Just because it is so obviously wrong to you, does not mean its obviously wrong to the random guy sitting on the subway next to me. Cause chances are, the random guy on the subway listened to Tosh, Akin, and Ryan’s opinions on rape and thinks that for the most part American society seems to think rape is a particularly funny way of impregnating a drunk sorority girl. If it’s socially accepted, then people are more likely to do it. Living in a country where some of the most influential people openly believe rape to be equivalent to sex chips away at it’s taboo status.

For instance, matricide, infanticide, patricide, incest- you do not see comedians and politicians and other public figures debating the act, legitimacy, or appropriate consequences of these crimes. That is because, in society, we have equivocally made it clear to absolutely everyone that this is a no-no. There is nothing ambiguous about the social acceptableness of incest. There is no such thing as “incest porn”. There is, however “gang-bang” porn, “teen-girl” porn, the ability to rape in Grand Theft Auto video games, and millions of snuff videos available for entertainment. Judging by all the messages we have been getting through the media via social conservatives’ mouths and idiot mysoginistic comedians, there still seems to be some ambiguity about the seriousness of the crime of rape. This, my male friends, is rape culture.

At the age of 21, I realize that when I walk anywhere alone, day or night, busy or desolate streets, I am walking around with a gigantic target on my back. I am not safe. Ever. I tried long and hard to think up a good metaphor to give you a comparison of how it is to walk around feeling constantly in danger, but alas, privilaged middle class men of North America, I could not. The closest I could get is this: A meta-analysis published in 2004, by Gerald G. Gaes & Andrew L. Goldberg: Prison Rape: A Critical Review of the Literature, found a prevalence rate of 1.91% with a 95% confidence interval between 1.37–2.46% of rape in prisons. Or approximately, 1/50 men in prison will be raped. Contrast this to the commonly believed 1/6 women, or 16.66% of women who will be raped and/or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. So, my men friends, that fear you feel when you hear the words “prison rape”, that assumption of sexual violence and danger during incarceration, is nowhere near the fear every single women in the world feels when  we walk out our front doors every morning.

My last point about how America still has a prominent rape culture:

Society has been teaching me since a very young age, maybe 9 or 10 years old, how to not get raped. This, obviously is a good thing. Of course all women should learn from social norms, rules, etc. how to behave in public in a safe manner. This is from another female blogger who illustrated it quite plainly:

“Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police.”

BUT

Has society been teaching you, men, how to not be rapists? Have you learned how to  double and triple check how old a girl is before you begin your sexual advances? Are you sensitive to the fact that she may just want companionship,  not a lay? Have you learned how to not pressure a woman in to sex, how to recognize that if she’s wasted then you shouldn’t take advantage? Have you learned that if your best mate rapes a girl at a frat party, you should not take his side? No? Well, that is the problem here. Because in my experience, when I go out on dates, there is one umbrella theme: He is looking to get laid. In fact, I have had men respond with disbelief, pressure, rudeness, and downright anger when I refuse their sexual advances, as if it is somehow my duty to spread my legs since he paid $12.99 for my dinner at Applebees.

This, my male friends, is rape culture. The time has come for America to realize that it is no longer 100% a woman’s responsibility to prevent rape. We obviously are very careful. We obviously try to be safe. We obviously are not “asking” for it when we wear certain articles of clothing. These precautions are not enough. Men need to get involved in rape prevention as well. Men need to start taking responsibility for rape prevention since, OH HEY, men are the rapists. Maybe if Tosh, Ryan, and Akin took the time to understand the ramifications of their comments, they would realize that it is people like them that directly put women like me in danger on a daily basis.

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Gen Y- this is for you. We are a criminal generation. Throughout our childhoods we were plagued by an epidemic of mass murderers and homegrown terrorists. Not that mass murderers and terrorists are necessarily a new thing, exclusive to Gen-Y. The older generations have lived through much worse. Hitler. Stalin. Chairman Mao. But what makes our generation so different from the others is that for the first time, we are the suspects. All of us. For the most part, our lives have not been overshadowed by evil dictators, invading armies, or atomic bombs. The threats that we have dealt with, the ones that have impacted our lives the most were not from foreign places, foreign people, or foreign cultures. The threats that have directly impacted our lives on a day to day basis come from each other.

In the 1940s, the everyday lives of American children were disrupted by an overseas war. We coped by constructing bomb shelters, running emergency evacuation drills, and stockpiling food and water. In the 1990s and 2000s, the everyday lives of American children are disrupted by a different sort of war. One that required emergency lockdown drills in school, routine drug and gun busts, and a crackdown of zero-tolerance policies. We are a generation that has grown up under constant surveillance, and experienced the dissolution of our basic human rights at a very young age.

In The First Year Out: Understanding American Teens after High School by Tim Clydesdale, he accurately observed that he was wrong in hypothesizing that 9/11 had the biggest impact on our generations’ lives.  Instead, an incident perpetrated by criminals much closer to home was what caused the greatest shift in both the physical and mental world of American teens.  The Columbine Massacre. Because while 9/11 cast a shadow over us through the news, in airports, and in foreign policy, the shadow of the Columbine shootings crept into our schools. Dark mutterings and cruel stereotyping followed students that dressed a certain way or played certain video games after this. Metal detectors and high chain-link fences and cameras in the hallways and on-campus police officers became prominent in our public schools after Columbine. The rules and regulations changed. The whole game changed. And in turn, it changed us.

Lets start by looking at some facts: Since the 1900s, Canada has had eleven (11) school shootings. Europe has had twenty-two (22). South America, Asia, and Austrilia combined have only had thirteen (13). And, (drumroll please) God’s favorite country, the United States of America, has had one-hundred and eighteen (118). Or, for all you visual people out there who like clean charts and percentages:

Concerning, no?

Now, I’m sure that my numbers and data are in no way, shape, or form completely accurate. I spent a couple of weeks researching online to write this thing, and it is in no way a complete sociological investigation into mass shootings. Maybe if someone finds this post particularly poignant or interesting, they can encourage me to apply for a grant to conduct a social research project on this topic. But for now, we’re going to have to deal with whatever information I managed to find online.

I collected as much information as I could on shooting rampages; meaning any incident I found where an individual planned to shoot and kill as many people as possible in a public setting. I did not count any rampages that did not involve a gun, as my focus is on gun violence in the United States. Furthermore, I focused especially on school shootings, as I find them to be especially important in gun violence from a sociological point of view. There is something much more intensely sick about a mass shooting at a school than, say, a post office or mall. And when I say sick, I really do mean sick. America, land of the free and home of the brave, is rotting slowly from the inside out.

As we can see from the charts below, there seems to be zero correlation between guns per capita and homicides per country. United States, topping the chart at a whopping 88.8 guns per 100 residents, has nowhere near the gun violence of, say, Columbia, with its relatively minute <10 guns per 100 residents. However, Switzerland, 4th in the world for guns per capita at 45.7 firearms per 100 residents, had a grand total of 40 gun-related homicides in 2010.

So in short, what does this mean? First of all, for all of those conservatives out there maintaining that if we made guns as readily available as Switzerland, we would have less gun violence…well… you have already been proven wrong. The United States has roughly twice the number of guns per capita than Switzerland. And our gun-related homicide rate in 2010 was (wait for it…) 9,369. Or 234.25 times more gun-related homicides than Switzerland. So I think it should be pretty apparent by now that more guns does not equal less gun violence.

So why the United States of America? Why the most educated, wealthiest, powerful nation in the modern world? Well, as it was so well put by in the documentary The War on Kids, “destructive behavior is often a reaction to an abhorrent environment”. So if it is not the number of guns per captia within a country that has a positive or negative correlation with gun violence, there must be some other environmental reason why Americans can’t stop shooting each other.

The next question that I wanted to answer was: Is it just my imagination, or has the frequency of mass shooting rampages  occuring in the United  States increased over my lifetime?

In a word, no. No it is not just my imagination, it is a very depressing reality. Through collecting data of the worst shooting rampages in the past 50 years (which, I must emphasize again, is by no means 100% accurate) eleven out of the thirty nine, or 28% of the mass shootings occured between 1965 and 1990. Beginning from my birth year, 1991, onwards, we see a sharp increase in shootings. Twenty-eight out of thirty nine, or 72% of the worst shootings in America occured within the past 22 years. Or, to put it another way, mass shootings increased 270% in the past 22 years. Eek.

Visual people may reference the chart below. The x-axis is the year in which the shooting occured, the y-axis is the number of fatalities that resulted from each shooting, with Virgina Tech’s shooting in 2007 producing our all-time high of 32 fatalities in one go.

However, as I mentioned before, I did attempt to focus more on school shootings, as I find these to be more sociologically indicative of the health of a society. The young generation is the Future, and thus, if we want to know what kind of future we are getting in to, we should be looking at what is going on in our schools.

Before 1998 there were a grand total of five school shootings occuring over a period of 26 years. After 1998 the number of school shootings doubled to ten,  in a period of 14 years. To put it another way, before 1998 the United States experienced an average of 0.2 school shootings per year. After 1998 this number shot up to 0.7 shootings per year. Uh oh.

Now, why the sudden focus on the year 1998, if before I was talking about the reverberating effects of the Columbine Massacre upon our generation? Well, because exactly one year before Eric Harris & Dylan Klebold went on their killing spree at their public high school in 1999, another shooting rampage by two young boys had shocked the nation (and maybe even inspired Harris and Klebold more than their death-metal music and first person shooter video games).

In 1998, Mitchell Jonson & Andrew Golden, aged ten and eight years old, respectively, pulled the fire alarm at their elementary school in Jonesboro, Arkansas, and then proceeded to open fire at their classmates and teachers as they exited the school. They killed five and wounded nine before attempting to flee in a relatives’ van that had been stocked with weapons, ammunition, and camping gear.

In 1998, I was only seven years old and had thus, not heard about nor could comprehend the magnitude of this occurance. In fact, this shooting was widely downplayed by the media due to the culprits status as minors. But like pieces of a puzzle slowly coming together, now, fourteen years later I am able to look back at this Jonesboro massacre, orchestrated by two extremely young boys a mere year before the Columbine massacre was orchestrated by two teenage boys of 17 and 18 years, and see a connection.

Is it a coincidence that in the years directly after Jonson and Golden, the two youngest school shooters in the history of America, shot up their school the number of school shootings per year in America nearly tripled?

I can’t answer this, I can only hypothesize. My hypothesis is yes. Yes, the 1998 Jonesboro school shooting did profoundly impact our public school systems to the core. It did inspire Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold of Columbine. It did suddenly turn the tables on schoolchildren and teachers. It did radically change the power dynamics between students and authority figures. It did reconfigur each child as a worthy suspect of violence. And, as Howard Becker’s labeling theory suggests, American schoolkids accepted this new-fangled label of ‘potential criminal’ that had been slapped on them by school officials, and adapted to fit the profile.

For anyone who read my previous blog on Newport High School, it should be pretty apparent that my opinion of public high schools is overwhelmingly negative, and has been for some time. I was actually surprised to find that, years after I originally wrote this post exposing the toxic effect zero-tolerance policies, unnessicarily harsh rules and regulations, and a jail-like  school building had on our student body, The War on Kids validated almost every single one of my observations. “Destructive behavior is often a reaction to an abhorrent environment.”

So in implementing vast reforms in public high schools to make them resemble almost prison-like conditions, and in treating students pretty darn similarly to prison inmates, is it any surprise that this generation has grown up to express increasingly violent tendencies? Is it really any surprise that we are now seeing school shootings with increased frequency by shooters of increasingly younger ages? No. Nobody should be surprised at all.

And when I say increasingly younger ages, I really do mean our mass murderers are really  getting younger. A young and angry generation. First I present to you a general breakdown of the shooters in my sample, done in percentages, to the left.

As we can see, about one-third of our shooters are under the age of 25 at the time of their gun rampage.

But the next chart, plotting our shooters ages against the year in which the rampage occurs, the effect of the Jonesboro elementary school shooting slowly becomes more telltale.

Before Jonson and Goldin shot up their elementary school, the United States had never seen a mass murderer under the age of twenty. Afterwards, however, eight of our shooters (counting Jonson and Goldin themselves), fall under the age of twenty. Or to put it simply, after the Jonesboro school shooting in 1998, eight out of the twenty-one, or 38% of our shooters were under the age of twenty. So are they getting younger and angrier? It seems like it. And why are they just so damn angry at such a young, nubile age? This, folks, is the million-dollar question. I can only repeat, “destructive behavior is often a reaction to an abhorrent environment.” This abhorrent environment being the United States of America.

The above chart graphing age against year of the crime indicates one last important point I’d like to make about the average mass shooter and how America should be adapting it’s gun laws to fit a new type of criminal. One of the pro-gun, de-regulation arguments follows the strange logic that if everybody was armed then shooters would think twice about going on a public rampage. That having lots of citizens with lots of guns will deter possible murderers. I cry false.

Look at the color-coded points above. Twenty of our thirty-nine shooters, or 51% of them, committed suicide on-location. Four of them (10%) were shot by police or civilians on-location, so their suicidal intentions remain unknown. The point of this is that over half of our shooters don’t give a damn about dying. They wanted to die. They were planning on dying. They just wanted to kill a whole bunch of people first. So to argue that having a gun-soaked environment would act as a deterrent to our shooters would in actuality deter less than half of them.

The recent Empire State Building shooting demonstrated this “more guns less gun victims” fallacy quite clearly. There was one shooter, and one victim in a public place. In come two NYPD officers, extensively trained and experienced in firearms, to save the day. The result was one fatality (the shooter, Jeffery Johnson) and nine bystanders wounded by these police officers. Now, imagine if it had not been just two trained police officers touting guns that day on the sidewalk outside of the Empire State Building, but a whole slew of civilians, less trained than law enforcement in marksmanship, who pulled out their guns and began firing at the Johnson. How many more wounded and fatalities would there have been? Most definitely more than nine. So do more guns really insure a safer environment? No, not at all. They will not deter over half of our suicidal mass shooters, and they will not ensure a safer public space in the event of a public shooting.

So what is to be done about gun regulation in America? It is quite obvious we cannot change a whole country’s cultural environment at the flick of a switch. But a good place to start would be with how our public schools treat the students they house.

Another good place to start would be to take the old NRA maxim, “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” and wholeheartedly support that idea. Because regulating the types of guns or ammunition sold is not enough. But regulating the people who buy the guns and ammunition is exactly what we should be doing. So sue me if I’m speaking blasphemy, but I don’t think it should be a constitutional right for everyone to bear arms. Mentally ill people should not have the right to bear arms. People with certain criminal records should not have the right to bear arms. People who have been Google-ing how to effectively murder a large number of people in a short amount of time should not have the right to bear arms.

Much like how the TSA pisses off the American population with its racial profiling, invasive and random searches, and vast databank of personal information in the name of homeland security, gun retailers should be doing the same. Because if Americans can agree that it is ethically ok to treat every single person who boards an airplane like a potential hijacking terrorist, then we should be able to agree that it is ethically ok to treat every single person who buys a gun like a potential mass murderer.

We all agree that the purpose of an airplane is to transport people in the same way that we agree that the purpose of a gun is to kill for protection or hunting. But we all must recognize that these objects hold dual-natures. So far, we have only acknowledged that every traveler may be a potential hijacker, while we can’t seem to connect the dots and acknowledge that every gun-owner is a potential killer. This, to me, is a bit ridiculous.

At the cusp of a pivotal presidential election, I understand why both Democrats and Republicans alike have shied away from the prickly situation of gun regulation. But I hope than in the months after the election, no matter who wins, the White House will seriously begin to consider what kind of reforms they should be enacting to keep this country safe from itself. We are not a country that decides when we don’t know how to deal with something, we will just ignore the problem until it goes away. The realm of gun regulation may be a black abyss that no politician wants to commit political suicide by delving into, but at this point, I am frankly fed up with politician’s putting their own re-election before the good of the country. Because (correct me if I’m wrong) I was under the impression that politicians go into politics to make a difference in the world, change the country for the better, and serve the American people in a fair, democratic fashion. If not a single politician can stand up and say “I’d rather lose votes than continue to lose innocent lives” then America as a democratic society has failed.

As most of you already know, I have pretty horrible taste in men. Case in point: All of my favorite fictional male characters are also bona-fide psychopaths (or sociopaths. The two often come hand in hand). Damn you, Hollywood, for casting some of the most attractive men on the planet as absolute whackjobs.

Then again, you know what they say about being attracted to people similar to you… just kidding. I think.

Anyway, in preparation for Halloween, I compiled a list of my favorite psychos that I may or may not-so-secretly be in love with.

1) Donnie Darko

“Why do you wear that stupid bunny suit?”…. “Why do you wear that stupid man suit?”

Ok so he might have been heavily medicated, hallucinated Frank, vandalized his high school, burned down an arrogant jerk’s house, shot Frank, and time traveled… but dude. That’s so badass.

Actor: Jake Gyllenhaal

Movie: Donnie Darko

2) Patrick Bateman

“I don’t want to get you drunk, but, ah, that’s a very fine Chardonnay you’re not drinking.”

Wealthy, suave, impeccably dressed, cokehead, sociopath, what’s not to love? Great hygiene too. And those business cards.

Actor: Christian Bale

Movie: American Psycho

3) Alexander DeLarge

“What you got back home, little sister, to play your fuzzy warbles on?”

Great taste in classical music, well-spoken, drinks his milk (plus) like a good boy. Nevermind the raping and pillaging, he got reformed in the end anyway… sort of.

Actor: Malcolm McDowell

Movie: A Clockwork Orange

4) Leland P. Fitzgerald

“And that’s when I figured out that tears couldn’t make somebody who was dead alive again. There’s another thing to learn about tears, they can’t make somebody who doesn’t love you any more love you again.”

I’m a sucker for the quiet and mysterious man. He looks great in orange too.

Actor: Ryan Gostling

Movie: United States of Leland

5) Tyler Durden

“All the ways you wish you could be, that’s me. I look like you wanna look, I fuck like you wanna fuck, I am smart, capable, and most importantly, I am free in all the ways that you are not.”

Ok, I KNOW I’m not alone on this one. Nevermind the fact that Tyler is a hallucination of our unreliable narrator, he is the hunkiest, manliest figment of imagination I have ever seen.

Actor: Brad Pitt

Movie: Fight Club

6) Mike Waters

“I’m a connoisseur of roads. I’ve been tasting roads my whole life. This road will never end. It probably goes all around the world.”

It’s hard to have a crush on a homosexual 90′s hustler with a severe narcolepsy problem, but at least he never killed anyone.

Actor: River Phoenix

Movie: My Own Private Idaho

So I don’t know about all you other ex-dancers out there, but I would rather die than run a mile.

Plus, I hate using the phrase, “Well, I used to be able to do split leaps/ attitude turns/ kick myself in the face, but now I’m out of practice.” Ugh. Pathetic. Time to get back in to dancer shape.

Plus, there’s nothing more satisfying than being able to randomly bust out a double/ triple/ fouette when dancing around the kitchen, waiting for the microwave timer to beep.

Anyways, as you can see, my work is creeping into my play time (which is not necessarily a bad thing), the result being this Ex-Dancer Workout Plan aka. what I’m working on this month.

Originally I had tried to do technique things like leaps & turns & jumps & balance after each workout. But then I quickly realized there was no way I could improve on, say, pirouettes, after already kicking my own ass in the weight room.  So I placed dance technique before each workout.

Also, “AMAP”= As Many As Possible, and “Exercise- Sets x Reps”, and “jumps” =/= “leaps”.

Time to dig out those leg warmers. I fucking love leg warmers.

Monday

Warm Up:

• 5 minute bike
• Stretch

Technique:

• Balance & jumps

Work0ut:

• Push ups- AMAP
• Calf raises – 3×20
• Good mornings- 3×10
• Pull ups- 3×6
• Dips-3×6
• Burpees- 3×10
• Deadlifts- 3×10, max weight
• Squats- 3×12, max weight
• Decline sit ups- AMAP

Tuesday

Warm Up:

• 5 minutes stairs
• Stretch

Technique:

• Kicks

Work0ut:

• Bicep curl lunges- 3×12, max weight
• Calf raises- 3×20
• Hundreds
• Push ups- 3×10
• Air squat- AMAP
• Rolling planks- 2×1 minute (C+R+C+L)
• Pulls ups- 3×6
• Dips 3×6
• Bicycle crunches- 3×15

Wednesday

(rest day)

Warm Up:

• Stretch

Technique:

• Leaps & turns

Work0ut:

• Push ups- 3×10
• Wall sit- 1 minute
• Calf raise- 3×10
• Rolling planks- 1 minute (C+R+C+L)

Thursday

Warm Up:

• 5 minute bike
• Stretch

Technique:

• Leaps & turns

Work0ut:

• Shoulder press- 3×12, max weight
• Squats- 3×12, max weight
• Deadlift- 3×12, max weight
• Burpees- 3×10
• Pull ups- 3×6
• Dips- 3×6
• Calf raises- 3×20
• Good mornings- 3×10
• Decline sit ups- 2×10

Friday

Warm Up:

• 5 minute row
• Stretch

Technique:

• Kicks

Work0ut:

• Push ups- 3×10
• Wall sit- 2×1 minute
• Hundreds
• Pull ups-3×6
• Dips- 3×6
• Lunges- 3×12, max weight
• Decline sit ups- AMAP

Saturday

Warm Up:

• 5 minute stairs
• Stretch

Technique:

• Balance & jumps

Work0ut:

• Shoulder press- 3×10, max weight
• Burpees- 3×10
• Leg raises- 3×15
• Bicep curl lunges- 3×12, max weight
• Calf raises- 3×20
• Rolling planks- 2×1 minute (C+R+C+L)
• Push ups- AMAP

Sunday

(Rest day)

Warm Up:

• Stretch

Technique:

• Turns & flexibility

Work0ut:

• Squat hold + arm circles- 2×1 minute
• Calf raises- 3×15
• Hundreds

END.

This girl is 17 and a CrossFitter. She’s obviously a genius and a badass.

 
*UPDATE: Here’s a PG-Version of this blog post, for those of you who wish to Spread the Strength among those of innocent ears*

First of all, hi everyone. It feels like I haven’t blogged about anything sociologically substantial in a while, and I might be a bit rusty so please pardon the potentially poor prose.

Anyhoozle.

Now that I’ve graduated from McGill and no longer have to whittle away the hours of cushy student life by blogging nonsensically about sociological things, what have I been doing with myself?

WELL. That brings me to today’s topic.

My strange, wonderful, and illuminating journey working in the fitness industry.

My job more or less involves establishing a new product’s brand personality within the health and fitness industry/society. It has made me realize a lot of things about the messages we send to girls about what’s healthy (most of it is really horrible and fucked up, duh), but it’s also given me a lot of hope for the future of women in America (which, if you’ve read my other angry feminist stuff, is usually pretty pessimistic).

This is how it came about:

First I got a job in sales at LA Fitness. Which was a horrible fit, obviously. A writer should never attempt a job in sales; I’d much rather sit around in my pajamas and eat Nutella with a spoon and type on my computer for a living (which is exactly what is going on at the time of this post being written, thankyouverymuch).

HOWEVER.

Failing miserably at a crappy corporate job selling gym memberships actually turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

The reason I first ventured into an LA Fitness (gyms not being my usual haunting grounds) was an interesting one. Being of a naturally petite body type, I had never felt the urgent need to frequent the gym. Of course, like any normal girl, I had flirted with all sorts of diets, fads, and eating disorders pretty consistently throughout my adolescence.  Being an un-athletic girl means that you have to figure out some other method for attaining skinny nirvana.

Why Pressuring Teenage Girls to be Skinny Should be Illegal:

Good job, Special K. You convinced a 15 year old girl it was healthy to function on 2 cups of cereal a day.

For the record: Teenage girls are so goddamn moody because they are always fucking hungry.I guarantee you that every teenage girl’s angst is amplified ~300% because  she is 1) miserable because she’s on a diet and hungry 2) miserable because she’s “on a diet” but just ate a cake and feels really guilty and is considering regurgitating it 3) miserable because she’s given up on dieting and resigned herself to being “fat”. And  why do we do this to ourselves?

Because we want to be thin and beautiful.

This desire to be thin and beautiful goes much, much deeper than the desire to be sexually attractive (Dear men: We don’t actually care about you that much). Eventually all girls internalize (whether we realize it or not) certain realizations about how the world works, and our dual status of being both human beings and sexual objects. Girls learn things like employment, leadership opportunities, and social acceptance come easier when you’re good looking.  We see in the media that a woman’s viability as a sexual object is often emphasized more than her intellectual accomplishments. In fact,the success of a powerful woman is often accompanied, or even overshadowed, by the attention directed at her appearance.

This was made painfully apparent in my teenage years during the 2008 election, during which I observed for almost 6 months the media’s treatment of Obama & McCain versus the coverage of Clinton & Palin. I listened to a ceaseless, unyielding stream of media nattering over Clinton & Palin’s wardrobe choices, hair, boobs, age, “screechy” voices, calling them “bitches” and “ditzes” and next to nothing about their political views. And these are two of the most accomplished, educated women in America.

Meanwhile, Obama & McCain were offered enough respect by the media to actually run campaigns that revolved around their political views, instead of news blasts about lookalike pornos (Nailin’ Pailin’… enough said). So yes, girls do learn that our appearance is often more important than our intellect, accomplishments, or success. Because that is how we are treated.

(And I DON’T CARE if Sarah Palin is a stupid twit. George Bush is a stupid twit, and as far as I know, the media doesn’t give a rats ass about his pant size or hairstyles. This is a gender thing, not an intellect thing)

But as important as that is, I digress from my original point.

Size zero and REALLY struggling to hold the gun. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but I thought it was really heavy

During my last semester at McGill University I mysteriously lost my appetite. And no, “mysteriously lost my appetite”  is not code for anorexia or bulimia. I just had no desire to eat, plain and simple. I wasted away for four months over the summer. When I returned to Seattle in September, I had gone from 120 un-athletic pounds to 104 pounds of (basically) skin and bone. Not that I was really complaining about being super skinny. I mean, hey, a size zero is a size zero, amiright?

Which just goes to show you how fucked up the average girls’ thought process on beauty, health, and self-worth really is.

So there I was, 104 lbs and I finally felt “sexy” with my spindly, heroin addict body. I was ecstatic that delicate, trendy, Urban Outfitters clothing finally draped just right over my waifish  frame (just like the prepubescent models in their catalogs!).   I had lost the ability to perform a basic human function- eating-  and done nothing about it. I relished not feeling hungry and having to eat, because like, c’mon, that’s every woman’s dream (like I said, fucked up.)

Why Fitting into Size Zero Pants is not Actually that Awesome:

Then the classic “the grass is always greener on the other side” dilemma snuck in. I began to miss food. Then the compliments (“You look really good! Have you lost weight?”) turned into concern (“Do you have a coke problem? You can tell me, I just want to help!”).   I began to hate my body, even though it was one society had taught me was “ideal” ever since, um, puberty.

SO. Obviously the logical thing for me to get off my stagnant ass go to the gym, in hopes that exercising would stimulate my appetite. Since I was a recent graduate with no job, the next logical thing to do was apply for a job at a gym so I could exercise for free and, you know, be employed.

As I previously mentioned, I failed miserably at selling gym memberships. I also failed miserably at exercising more (Surprise!!!! Not.). In fact, the only good thing about working at LA Fitness is that it forced me to memorize a lot of information about fitness in a very short amount of time, and it made me miserable enough to start seriously looking for a “career”. Which, for a wanna-be writer, is kind of like searching for a unicorn in a Where’s Waldo? book.

BUT THEN I FOUND A MOTHERFUCKING UNICORN.

Because one of the jobs I applied for online asked for a creative writing  sample (which I do #likeaboss) on the topic of health & fitness. What a wonderful, wonderful coincidence (or fate? who knows).

I got hired to write for Cody, a small startup that was developing a health & fitness iPhone app. My role was to create content for their blog. Specifically- write workouts and health tips that would eventually be offered within the app for users to browse (BTW, everybody should go download Cody, I like to think I made him really funny )

And so, the heavy door into the world of fitness had been heaved open to me.

Becoming familiar with exercises, workouts, and fitness-lingo was a requirement of my new job. And, as one would expect; it is pretty much impossible to write instructions on how to do an exercise unless you can actually do the exercise yourself. So I found myself frequenting the gym more and more often out of necessity.

I’m sure I made a complete ass of myself the first few times I went, but eventually, with a lot of practice and a few (ok, a lot) embarrassing moments, I figured out the basics of the weight room and then (this is the miraculous part) began to really look forward to working out. This is coming from the girl that has always been notoriously un-athletic. Like, worst dancer on the dance team, slowest person on the Cross Country team (I joined because it was a no-cut sport, and I needed a P.E. credit), always picked last in P.E., ran a 11-minute mile bad. 

Like, allergic to exercise bad.

Ok, ok- Enough Rambling. What’s your point, Sophia?

5’5″ and 104 lbs. My waist was pretty much as wide as Eitan’s hand. And Eitan’s not a big dude (…sorry Eitan).

The time when I was my skinniest and most photographically beautiful (i.e. I looked magazine-cover-skinny) was also the time when I was at my weakest, in all senses of the word. I was constantly asking the guys downstairs to opens jars for me, and if they weren’t home, well then I was shit out of luck (and pasta sauce). Trying to carry my own suitcases while traveling between Seattle and Montreal was (pathetically) a nightmare. Even carrying pitchers of beer at the bar I was working at was a struggle for my skeletal arms. I was sleeping 12 hours a day and constantly tired. I’m sure that my brain wasn’t functioning all too well either.

Now I wonder how my life would have been different if people had encouraged girls (me) to be strong instead of skinny.

I think back to high school, when I put myself on a 1200 daily calorie limit, even though I was running 3-5 miles daily.  I attended a reputably rigorous high school with a 5 AP course load, woke up at 6:30 am, went to school, did extracurriculars, worked part-time, and often went to bed at 2-3am. I was counting calories, denying myself food, guilt-ing myself when I did eat, and even though I was never more that 120 lbs., I never stopped pinching my “fat” every time I looked in a mirror. I was hungry, angry, tired, and depressed all the time. And I was a teenager. Let’s not forget that part.  Teenagers are hellions.

But when I look back at my experiences, decisions, and accomplishments, I still wonder how different would my life have been if I had been encouraged to be strong instead of skinny. Would my grades have been better if I hadn’t been literally starving myself since the age of 13? Could I have gotten into Harvard instead of McGill? Would I have been a better runner if I had been encouraged to fucking eat instead of diet. Would I have had better relationships with my parents, sister, and friends?

Let me repeat: Strong > Skinny

It’s sad that only I came to this realization with clarity after seeing both extreme sides of the coin. I still can’t do a lot of basic things (chest to ground push ups still evade me), but the progress I have made so far has made me fully realize what I was missing when I was younger. It’s funny how the skinnier I desired to be, the weaker I got, and when I finally realized I had to gain weight, the stronger I got.

Actually, that’s not funny at all. It makes a lot of sense.

Since I started writing for Cody, and out of professional necessity, started working out, everything has changed.  Now when I look in the mirror (this is embarrassing  by the way, I can’t believe I’m admitting this online) I flex instead of sucking in. Now when I pinch my stomach, it’s to feel my abs, not to feel shitty about how much “flab” (real or imaginary) is sitting there. I no longer stare at the “calories burned” display on the elliptical, but how many plates I have on each end of the barbell. I can open my own pasta sauce jars now. I am moving soon and do not need the help of any hulking strong lad to transport my furniture. My goal has changed from “be a size zero” to do a motherfucking pull up.  I have gained far more self-esteem from being able to pick up heavy shit that I ever have from being able to zip up a skin-tight designer dress.  I became a more capable, energetic, independent, and mentally focused person once my focus shifted from what my body  looks like to what my body can do

But it’s just tragic - no sarcasm here- really really tragic how a large majority of young girls in America spend their time obsessing over their weight, devoting time, energy, emotions, and effort into being skinny.

It’s tragic because you have to the think of all of the potential that is lost when a whole generation of girls care more about fitting into minuscule pants instead of… oh I don’t know… running for student council, pursing a passion, studying, volunteering, playing sports, working, furthering woman’s rights… the list could go on and on. My main point is, girls waste so much time on being skinny – because we are taught that is is important if we want to be successful- when we could be devoting their efforts to becoming so much more powerful than simply skinny.

What’s even worse is the following scientific truth I’m about to acknowledge, that NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL ME when I was an insecure teenage girl, that really would have helped me out: Muscle is approximately twice as dense at fat. 

Or, for all of you visual people:

Left: Me at 104 lbs.
Right: Me at 126 lbs.
Notice a difference?…. yeah, that’s what I thought.

ARGGHHHH!!! WHAT THE FUCK. WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THIS BEFORE?!

Anyway, I think it’s time I brought this blog post to a conclusion and made my point:

Dear Society: Please assist me in convincing young girls that “strong is the new skinny”.

Encourage them to eat. Don’t let them diet. Discourage the idolization of anorexic and bulimic celebrities. Make them exercise instead. Teach them that “exercise” means running, jumping, sweating, grunting, working hard, and kicking ass- it doesn’t mean flapping their arms around in some trendy, overpriced Trogalaties course, or running on the elliptical until they pass out. Help them realize their own strength. All of these things will help girls realize their full potential, both physically and mentally. It will help girls become self-confident, capable, and literally and figuratively strong. A girl who is encouraged to be strong instead of skinny will have higher self-esteem, respect, ambitions, and worth. She will never be a victim. She will be healthy. She will be a leader. She will be confident. She will be kick-ass.

Spread the strength.

This girl is 17 and a CrossFitter. I can pretty much guarantee you she is never going to be mugged.

First of all, hi everyone. It feels like I haven’t blogged about anything sociologically substantial in a while, and I might be a bit rusty so please pardon the potentially poor prose.

Anyhoozle.

Now that I’ve graduated from McGill and no longer have to whittle away the hours of cushy student life by blogging nonsensically about sociological things, what have I been doing with myself?

WELL. That brings me to today’s topic.

My strange, wonderful, and illuminating journey working in the fitness industry.

My job more or less involves establishing a new product’s brand personality within the health and fitness industry/society. It has made me realize a lot of things about the messages we send to girls about what’s healthy (most of it is really horrible and messed up, duh), but it has also given me a lot of hope for the future of women in America (which, if you’ve read my other angry feminist stuff, is usually pretty pessimistic).

This is how it came about:

First I got a job in sales at LA Fitness. Which was a horrible fit, obviously. A writer should never attempt a job in sales; I’d much rather sit around in my pajamas and eat Nutella with a spoon and type on my computer for a living (which is exactly what is going on at the time of this post being written, thankyouverymuch).

HOWEVER.

Failing miserably at a soul-sucking corporate job selling gym memberships actually turned out to be the best thing that’s ever happened to me.

The reason I first ventured into an LA Fitness (gyms not being my usual haunting grounds) was an interesting one. Being of a naturally petite body type, I had never felt the urgent need to frequent the gym. Of course, like any normal girl, I had flirted with all sorts of diets, fads, and eating disorders pretty consistently throughout my adolescence.  Being an un-athletic girl means that you have to figure out some other method for attaining skinny nirvana.

Why Pressuring Teenage Girls to be Skinny Should be Illegal:

Good job, Special K. You convinced a 15 year old girl it was healthy to function on 2 cups of cereal a day.

For the record: Teenage girls are so horrifically moody because they are always hungry. I guarantee you that every teenage girl’s angst is amplified ~300% because  she is 1) miserable because she’s on a diet and hungry 2) miserable because she’s “on a diet” but just ate a cake and feels really guilty and is considering regurgitating it 3) miserable because she’s given up on dieting and resigned herself to being “fat”.

And  why do we do this to ourselves?

Because we want to be thin and beautiful.

This desire to be thin and beautiful goes much, much deeper than the desire to be sexually attractive (Dear men: We don’t actually care about you that much). Eventually all girls internalize (whether we realize it or not) certain realizations about how the world works, and our dual status of being both human beings and sexual objects. Girls learn things like employment, leadership opportunities, and social acceptance come easier when you’re good looking.  We see in the media that a woman’s viability as a sexual object is often emphasized more than her intellectual accomplishments. In fact,the success of a powerful woman is often accompanied, or even overshadowed, by the attention directed at her appearance.

This was made painfully apparent in my teenage years during the 2008 election, during which I observed for almost 6 months the media’s treatment of Obama & McCain versus the coverage of Clinton & Palin. I listened to a ceaseless, unyielding stream of media nattering over Clinton & Palin’s wardrobe choices, weight, hair, cup size, age, “screechy” voices, calling them “bitches” and “ditzes” and next to nothing about their political views. And these are two of the most accomplished, educated women in America.

Here’s a short clip to give you an idea:

(When you have time, here’s  Miss Representation in it’s brilliant entirety: This is a very powerful, insightful documentary which examines how women are portrayed in the media, and the reverberating effects of this upon the everyday lives of women. I highly recommend all young ladies watch this. For me, it was life-changing.)

As I was saying, the 2008 elections sent me a very clear message on what it means to be a powerful woman in the public eye. Obama & McCain were offered enough respect by the media to actually run campaigns that revolved around their political views, instead of news blasts about lookalike pornos (Nailin’ Pailin’… enough said). So yes, girls do learn that our appearance is often more important than our intellect, accomplishments, or success. Because that is how we are treated.

(And I DON’T CARE if Sarah Palin is a stupid twit. George Bush is a stupid twit, and as far as I know, the media couldn’t care less about his pant size or hairstyles. This is a gender thing, not an intellect thing)

But as important as that is, I digress from my original point.

During my last semester at McGill University I mysteriously lost my appetite. And no, “mysteriously lost my appetite”  is not code for anorexia or bulimia. I just had no desire to eat, plain and simple. I wasted away for four months over the summer. When I returned to Seattle in September, I had gone from 120 un-athletic pounds to 104 pounds of (basically) skin and bone. Not that I was really complaining about being super skinny. I mean, hey, a size zero is a size zero, amiright?

Which just goes to show you how dangerously warped the average girls’ thought process on beauty, health, and self-worth really is.

So there I was, 104 lbs and I finally felt “sexy” with my spindly, heroin addict body. I was ecstatic that delicate, trendy, Urban Outfitters clothing finally draped just right over my waifish  frame (just like the prepubescent models in their catalogs!).   I had lost the ability to perform a basic human function- eating-  and done nothing about it. I relished not feeling hungry and having to eat, because like, c’mon, that’s every woman’s dream.

Why Fitting into Size Zero Pants is not Actually that Awesome:

Then the classic “the grass is always greener on the other side” dilemma snuck in. I began to miss food. Then the compliments (“You look really good! Have you lost weight?”) turned into concern (“Do you have a coke problem? You can tell me, I just want to help!”).   I began to hate my body, even though it was one society had taught me was “ideal” ever since, um, puberty.

SO. I decided to get off my bum and go to the gym, in hopes that exercising would stimulate my appetite. Since I was a recent graduate with no job, the next logical thing to do was apply for a job at a gym so I could exercise fo’ free and, you know, be employed.

As I previously mentioned, I failed miserably at selling gym memberships. I also failed miserably at exercising more (Surprise!!!! Not.). In fact, the only good thing about working at LA Fitness is that it forced me to memorize a lot of information about fitness in a very short amount of time, and it made me miserable enough to start seriously looking for a “career”. Which, for a wanna-be writer, is kind of like searching for a unicorn in a Where’s Waldo? book.

BUT THEN I FOUND A UNICORN.

Because one of the jobs I applied for online asked for a creative writing  sample (which I do #likeaboss) on the topic of health & fitness. What a wonderful, wonderful coincidence (or fate? who knows).

I got hired to write for Cody, a small startup that was developing a health & fitness iPhone app. My role was to create content for their blog. Specifically- write workouts and health tips that would eventually be offered within the app for users to browse (BTW, everybody should go download Cody, I like to think I made him really funny )

And so, the heavy door into the world of fitness had been heaved open to me.

Becoming familiar with exercises, workouts, and fitness-lingo was a requirement of my new job. And, as one would expect; it is pretty much impossible to write instructions on how to do an exercise unless you can actually do the exercise yourself. So I found myself frequenting the gym more and more often out of necessity.

I’m sure I made a complete idiot of myself the first few times I went (literally the first time I walked into the weight room I tried to pick up a barbell [no extra plates-just the bar] and dropped it). Eventually, with a lot of practice and a few (ok, a lot) embarrassing moments, I figured out the basics of the weight room and then (this is the miraculous part) began to really look forward to working out.

This is coming from the girl that has always been notoriously un-athletic. Like, worst dancer on the dance team, slowest person on the Cross Country team (I joined because it was a no-cut sport, and I needed a P.E. credit), always picked last in P.E., ran a 11-minute mile bad. 

Like, allergic to exercise bad.

Ok, ok- Enough Rambling. What’s your point, Sophia?

Size zero and REALLY struggling to hold the gun. I didn’t want to admit it at the time, but I thought it was really heavy

The time when I was my skinniest and most photographically beautiful (i.e. I looked magazine-cover-skinny) was also the time when I was at my weakest, in all senses of the word. I was constantly asking the guys downstairs to opens jars for me, and if they weren’t home, well then I was shit out of luck (and pasta sauce). Trying to carry my own suitcases while traveling between Seattle and Montreal was (pathetically) a nightmare. Even carrying pitchers of beer at the bar I was working at was a struggle for my skeletal arms. I was sleeping 12 hours a day and constantly tired. I’m sure that my brain wasn’t functioning all too well either.

Now I wonder how my life would have been different if people had encouraged girls (me) to be strong instead of skinny.

I think back to high school, when I put myself on a 1200 daily calorie limit, even though I was running 3-5 miles daily.  I attended a reputably rigorous high school with a 5 AP course load, woke up at 6:30 am, went to school, did extracurriculars, worked part-time, and often went to bed at 2-3am. I was counting calories, denying myself food, guilt-ing myself when I did eat, and even though I was never more that 120 lbs., I never stopped pinching my “fat” every time I looked in a mirror. I was hungry, angry, tired, and depressed all the time. And I was a teenager. Let’s not forget that part.  Teenagers are hellions.

But when I look back at my experiences, decisions, and accomplishments, I still wonder how different would my life have been if I had been encouraged to be strong instead of skinny. Would my grades have been better if I hadn’t been literally starving myself since the age of 13? Could I have gotten into Harvard instead of McGill? Would I have been a better dancer and runner if I had been encouraged to eat a full meal instead of diet. Would I have had better relationships with my parents, sister, and friends?

Let me repeat: Strong > Skinny

It’s sad that only I came to this realization with clarity after seeing both extreme sides of the coin. I still can’t do a lot of basic things (chest to ground push ups still evade me), but the progress I have made so far has made me fully realize what I was missing when I was younger. It’s funny how the skinnier I desired to be, the weaker I got, and when I finally realized I had to gain weight, the stronger I got.

Actually, that’s not funny at all. It makes a lot of sense.

Since I started writing for Cody, and out of professional necessity, started working out, everything has changed.  Now when I look in the mirror (this is embarrassing  by the way, I can’t believe I’m admitting this online) I flex instead of sucking in. Now when I pinch my stomach, it’s to feel my abs, not to feel shitty about how much “flab” (real or imaginary) is sitting there. I no longer stare at the “calories burned” display on the elliptical, but how many plates I have on each end of the barbell. I can open my own pasta sauce jars now. I am moving soon and do not need the help of any hulking strong lad to transport my furniture. My goal has changed from “be a size zero” to do a freaking pull up.  I have gained far more self-esteem from being able to pick up heavy things that I ever have from being able to zip up a skin-tight designer dress.  I became a more capable, energetic, independent, and mentally focused person once my focus shifted from what my body  looks like to what my body can do

But it’s just tragic - no sarcasm here- really really tragic how a large majority of young girls in America spend their time obsessing over their weight, devoting time, energy, emotions, and effort into being skinny.

It’s tragic because you have to the think of all of the potential that is lost when a whole generation of girls care more about fitting into minuscule pants instead of… oh I don’t know… running for student council, pursing a passion, studying, volunteering, playing sports, working, furthering woman’s rights… the list could go on and on. My main point is, girls waste so much time on being skinny – because we are taught that is is important if we want to be successful- when we could be devoting their efforts to becoming so much more powerful than simply skinny.

What’s even worse is the following scientific truth I’m about to acknowledge, that NOBODY BOTHERED TO TELL ME when I was an insecure teenage girl, that really would have helped me out: Muscle is approximately twice as dense as fat. 

Or, for all of you visual people:

Left: Me at 104 lbs.
Right: Me at 126 lbs.
Notice a difference? No? That’s because even with a 22 lb muscle gain, I only changed from a size zero to a size two.

ARGGHHHH! WHY DIDN’T ANYONE TELL ME THIS BEFORE?! Almost every single food, diet, and gym commercial marked towards women stresses the importance of reducing calories and dropping pounds. Not a single one will ever mention the fact all women will look & feel healthier by gaining muscle mass & reducing body fat- an accomplishment that the hallowed bathroom scale will never reflect.

Anyway, I think it’s time I brought this blog post to a conclusion and made my point:

Dear Society: Please assist me in convincing young girls that “strong is the new skinny”.

Encourage them to eat. Don’t let them diet. Discourage the idolization of anorexic and bulimic celebrities. Make them exercise instead. Teach them that “exercise” means running, jumping, sweating, grunting, working hard, and kicking butt- it doesn’t mean flapping their arms around in some trendy, overpriced Trogalaties course, or running on the elliptical until they pass out. Help them realize their own strength. All of these things will help girls realize their full potential, both physically and mentally. It will help girls become self-confident, capable, and literally and figuratively strong. A girl who is encouraged to be strong instead of skinny will have higher self-esteem, respect, ambitions, and worth. She will never be a victim. She will be healthy. She will be a leader. She will be confident. She will be an incredible, exceptional, powerful woman.

Spread the strength.

A Brief End Note, If I May…

WOW. Uhm. My dashboard tells me that it has been 12 days, ~400k views, and ~375 comments  since I first published my “Strong >Skinny” post.  In the wake of all this blog ballyhooing, I thought I would take the time to respond the three of the most important and/or aggravating of the comments.

1.  ”Stop bashing skinny women! You’re just replacing one type of body ideal with another! Wa waaah wah waaa wahh….”

Oh dear. Strong is not a body type. It is an ability. Unlike skinny, fat, tall, or short, anybody and everybody has the ability to be strong. “Strong” transcends all body shapes and sizes. You can be skinny and strong. You can also be fat and strong. While the glamorization of skinny by the media is harmful to a large number of women because it creates an unattainable ideal, the glamorization of strong by the media would be beneficial to a large number of women because it creates an attainable, healthy ideal.

2. Sarah Palin this, Sarah Palin that…

Look, ok I get that everybody’s got an opinion on Sarah Palin and her (lack of) intelligence. But really? It’s kind of like if I had posted a picture of these adorable pandas, and 40 people commented “OMG, there’s SNOW in CHINA!!?!?!” Like, really, it’s kind of beside the point.

3.  ”I HATE YOUR EFFING PROFANITY!” / “I would like to share this with other young girls, can you please clean it up?”

Ok, fair enough. I will be the first to admit that I have issues censoring myself. I’m one of those jerks that accidentally drops the F-Bomb when I’m in an elevator with small children because I’m absentminded and swearing is just a (bad) habit. I don’t usually edit my writing to popular demand, but  in retrospect it seemed so hypocritical of me to tout the phrase “Spread the strength”, but then have an un-shareable blog post. Hence, this PG-version. Copy and paste as you please.

(And then for some reason, this morning it became of the utmost importance that I create a lazy Sunday playlist, which I am now sharing with all of you.)

Truth.

Let’s start with a poll (males only, please)

Men have been complaining about condoms for quite some time now. They’re an awkward hassel. I don’t have one on me right now. They’re too breakable. They don’t fit (hahahahahahahahaha).  But condoms for men are a necessary evil. Unless you want to end up a baby daddy at age 19, you are probably going to wear them.

You have no fucking idea how often people ask me the question, “What are you?”

First of all, asking me “What are you?” implies that I’m part of a strange, alien species, never before encountered on the planet Earth.

This is me. I am a giraffe, obviously. What are YOU?

I know what they are asking is:

“Of what ethnic descent are you?”

But I’m a spiteful bitch, so when someone makes the mistake of asking me “What are you?” I usually respond with something snarky like “Human” or “Female” or (my personal favorite)-

“Vulcan, sir. I am Vulcan.”

Nobody is ever satisfied with my answer, “American”. Even though I was born & raised in Seattle, don’t speak any other languages, and am as American as fucking apple pie, “American” is not an acceptable answer coming from somebody who is not 100% white.

For the purpose of this post, at this point I will only reveal that I am of “mixed” ethnic descent (dear God, I almost wrote “mixed breed” like I’m a fucking Labradoodle).

The meat of the question “What are you?” and why I have so much beef with it:

1) It is none of your business what my ethnicity is. It is a question about my appearance and family heritage. Do you see me going up to strangers and asking, “Hey, does obesity run in your family?” or “Wow, nice tits, are those real or implants?” No. No, I do not ask these sorts of questions, because it is none of my goddamn business.

2) It does not fucking matter what my ethnicity is. It does not matter when I am working, shopping, eating, exercising, blogging, suntanning, shitting, or anything else I could ever possibly do in the United States of America. In countries where there is civil war & genocide going on between groups of different religions or heritage, then yes, it does matter. But we are not in Rwanda, and I am not at risk of being violently dismembered due to my ethnicity, so why the fuck does it matter to you, what I am?

3) No, I don’t think you are a racist, or intended to be racist when you asked that stupid-ass question. But are you going around asking white people, “What are you? What is your ethnicity? Where did your family immigrate from?” No, this never happens.

I’m pretty sure my European friends would be pretty weirded out too, if some stranger came up and was like, “What are you? Where are you from?” I am also pretty sure most of my European friends would respond, “The fucking planet Mars”, because it is a fucking ridiculous question.

Chocolate lab is not amused.

4) Asking “What are you?” immediately ostracizes me. You are telling me, “You are different & strange and I am having a hard time categorizing you under my usual bank of labels. Please help clear the air, so I can file you under the correct sub-type of human in my brain”.

This question also tells me that despite all the progress America has made since the 1950s, it still matters to people who is of what race. Many people still define each other based on race. I think this is fucked up.

5) “What are you?” is a fucking horrible conversation starter. I know that when people ask “what are you?” or “what is your ethnicity?”, they are often simply trying to be nice and start a conversation. Yes, it is certainly heartwarming that humans are naturally curious about each other, want to get to know somebody new and interesting, and are looking for common ground or something to talk about and all that jazz.

In fact, I have noticed something rather interesting, which is that in response to my rather ambiguous ethnicity, people often think I am what they are. Filipinos think I’m Filipino. Mexicans think I’m Mexican. Native Americans think I’m Native American. Spaniards think I’m Spanish… the list could go on. It’s a bit ridiculous. But, as I said, this is not what bothers me. People trying to connect over shared cultures is sweet. I also find it very intriguing from a psychological point of view as well.

No, I don’t feel “discriminated” against, being asked “what are you?” It’s the reactions I get after I reveal my ethnicity that cements whether or not you are being (intentionally or unintentionally) racist.

Psst. This is the part where I reveal “what I am”, aren’t you excited?!

I am exactly one half European, and one half Asian.

Let me repeat that: Exactly half and half.

However, upon revealing this information to the nosy parkers that approach me and crassly ask me about my heritage, the follow-up question without fail is,

“Oh really, what kind of Asian?”

Never- not one single time in my entire life- has anyone asked, “Oh really, what kind of European?”

But they say, “what kind of Asian”, as if Asians are different flavors of Ben & Jerry’s.

The other day I ran across this absolute gem of a YouTube video called “What Kind of Asian Are You?” which illustrates really well (and really hilariously) what I’m getting at here:

And… with that I think everything that needs to be said has been said.

|Leave a reply, no jerks allowed|

I actually adapted this post from a term paper I wrote for my Sociology of Mental Disorder course at  McGill. Which means all of the information I provide in this is actually super accurate- not just ripped off of any ol’ site in InternetLand.  Yay for accurate information!

Now let’s get into today’s topic: ADHD. First is a brief introduction to how ADHD originated, and then I get into the meat of the matter, which is our education system.

ADHD is a fucking scam:

To me, ADHD is the modern day “hysteria”.

“Hysteria” was, in a nutshell, an exclusively female (curiously enough) “mental disorder” that was  sanctioned by medical professionals and included in the DSM (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorder) up until 1980. “Hysteria” was a witch hunt cleverly dressed up as a medical problem.

It is an easy way for society to exert control over a certain group of behaviors that we find problematic.

Similarly, labeling certain people with ADHD is nothing more than a clever way of designating a group of behaviors that our society finds to be problematic, and turning it into a medical issue that can then be treated with a medical solution. 

But why would we do something like that?

1) Money. The Pharmaceutical companies convinced us it was a good idea

2) It is a convenient solution to an underfunded educational system.

Exhibit A: The treatment was developed way before the “mental illness” of ADD or ADHD even existed.

In 1937 Dr. Charles Bradley’s  discovered “that amphetamine drugs had a spectacular effect in altering the behavior of school children who exhibited behavior disorders”.

Please note that this is the 1940s, and brain scans and MRIs and all those fancy things don’t exist. There was  no such thing as ADD or ADHD. There was no agreed upon definition of a child inattention mental illness. A “behavior disorder” back then were just kids who were really weird. When you think about it, weirdness is totally normal. There’s weird people everywhere. We’re all weird in our own special, beautiful, snowflakey way.

In the 1940s the stimulant methylphenidate was synthesized and marketed as Ritalin by the 1960s. From that point onward, as the number of children diagnosed with behavior disorders have skyrocketed, and so are CIBA’s [Ritalin's] gross profits.

After Ritalin was developed, the number of children diagnosed with “ADD/ADHD” each year rose astronomically.

They rose at epidemic rates.

Like, all of the sudden, tons of children magically had ADD.

When Ritalin was first being marketed, the market for tired adults was much larger than the market for children with behavior disorders. After “ADD/ADHD” was officially included in the DSMIII, and efforts to “raise awareness” (funded by the Pharmaceutical companies) about the disorder spread, the number of children diagnosed went through the roof.

• In 1970 about 150,000 children were taking stimulant medication in the US, resulting in $13 million profit from Ritalin alone in 1971.
• In 1980, the disorder was modified once again, this time in the DSM III. Coinciding with this redefinition of the disorder, numbers of its “sufferers” escalated rapidly. By this time, about  270,000 to 541,000 elementary school children were receiving stimulants.
• The publication of the DSM-IIIR and DSM-IV once again adjusted the diagnostic criteria, and once again the number of ADHD children rose until by 1987 it was estimated that 750,000 children were taking psychotropic medication.
• Modern day numbers have now soared, and undoubtedly so has pharmaceutical industry gross profits. By 1995, it is estimated that 2.6 million people currently are taking Ritalin.
• In 2003, roughly one in 25 children in the United States were being administered psychotropic drugs, amounting to a $2.4 billion market annually.

This brings me to issue #3:

While ADHD’s definition and symptoms have changed greatly over a mere 30 years, the pharmaceutical solution has remained exactly the same.

Suspicious, methinks. Definitely some imaginary beard-stroking going on over here.

This brings me to the social component of this blog post.

Because this widespread drugging of American children cannot be credited solely to the pharmaceutical industry.

It’s a HUGE SOCIAL PROBLEM.

Let me repeat: Putting one in 25 children in the United States on stimulant drugs is a

HUGE. FUCKING. SOCIAL. PROBLEM.

We diagnose children as young as 4 years old these brain-altering, psychotropic, stimulant drugs. THEIR BRAINS ARE STILL DEVELOPING WHAT ARE YOU DOING.

The root of this social problem, in my opinion, is our modern day education system.

Due to changing standards of expected conduct in children in Western societies, it has become increasingly convenient to medicalize problematic behaviors and treat the individual, rather than make hugely expensive adjustments in our educational system.

We aren’t letting kids act like fucking kids anymore. We are labeling completely normal child behavior as deviant.

And We Took Away Their Recess.

Has anyone noticed that the sharp increase in ADHD “diagnoses” coincides almost perfectly with a decrease in recess time at school? The decline in unstructured play time began 30 years ago, around the same time as the explosion in ADHD diagnoses and Ritalin drug sales. 

In the United States today, the proportion of schools that don’t have recess ranges from 7% for first and second grades to 13 % by sixth grade. This is due to academic pressure.  Under federal law, starting in third grade, schools must test and show progress in learning.  As a result, up to 40% of U.S. school districts have reduced or eliminated recess in order to free up more time for core academics, and one in four elementary schools no longer provides recess to all grades.

And we’re all so fucking surprised that children are being hyperactive and don’t pay attention. Little kids are not supposed to sit in a chair for an entire school day. That is not how children work. Have you ever met a child? Holy fuck.

This is what happens when you take away recess.

In 2009 a “groundbreaking” study of 11,000 third-graders was held, comparing those who had little or no daily recess with those that had more than 15 minutes of recess per day. Children who have more recess time behave better in the classroom and are likelier to learn more. Captain Obvious, to the rescue!

However, due to overcrowding, underfunding, and academic pressure at school, recess continues to be substituted with pills.

While I do not doubt that there are some children with very serious learning and development disorders, most children who are extremely hyper are not mentally ill. Teachers are usually the first to ‘identify’ ADHD in a child. In a survey of teacher’s ratings of their students based on the DSM’s ADHD diagnostic checklist,

“23% of elementary school boys and 20% of secondary school boys were diagnosed as having ADHD…nearly one fourth of all elementary school boys and one fifth of all secondary school boys has the mental disorder ADHD” (Psychology Today).

The size and scale of ADHD’s prevalence among children begs the question, what is abnormal? If certain behaviors are so common and prevalent among such a large number of children, then aren’t those behaviors in actuality normal by definition?

The ADHD diagnostic checklist in the DSM IV seems like a fucking joke:

1. Often fails to give close attention to details or makes careless mistakes in schoolwork, at work, or with other activities.
2. Often has trouble holding attention on tasks or play activities.
3. Often does not seem to listen when spoken to directly.
4. Often does not follow through on instructions and fails to finish schoolwork, chores, or duties
5. Often has trouble organizing tasks and activities.
6. Often avoids, dislikes, or is reluctant to do tasks that require mental effort over a long period of time (such as schoolwork or homework).
7. Often loses things necessary for tasks and activities (e.g. school materials, pencils, books, tools, wallets, keys, paperwork, eyeglasses, mobile telephones).
8. Is often easily distracted
9. Is often forgetful in daily activities.
10. Often fidgets with or taps hands or feet, or squirms in seat.
11. Often runs about or climbs in situations where it is not appropriate (adolescents or adults may be limited to feeling restless).
12. Often unable to play or take part in leisure activities quietly.
13. Often talks excessively.
14. Often blurts out an answer before a question has been completed.
15. Often has trouble waiting his/her turn.
16. Often interrupts or intrudes on others (e.g., butts into conversations or games)

You need six or more of these symptoms to be ADHD.

…

…I haz all of dem.

These are not abnormal behaviors for children, on the contrary, they seem quite normal for the energetic, curious child.

Furthermore, the lack of long-term studies on amphetamine use in children puts us in the same place as our witch-burning, lobotomizing ancestors, who rushed to treat a problem before it was fully understood. Did anyone stop to think of what potentally huge consequences there are to telling a young, impressionable child that he/she has a “mental disorder”, is “different”, receives drugs every single day of their childhood?

Here’s a quick anecdote:

When I was about ten years old, I saw my mom using one of those body-hair bleaching kits, the at-home kind that lets you lighten unsightly body hair. I had no idea what it was, obviously, so I asked and my mom explained it was for lightening dark hair to be prettier. Then she offered to use some of it on my arm hair. I have thick, long , dark arm hair (i’m not a gorilla or anything, that’s just how it is). Before this moment in my life, I had no fucking idea that my arm hair was unattractive. It was not a problem to me until someone told me it was something that needed to be “fixed”. After this incident, my arm hair became a huge  insecurity for me, and for years I would do all sorts of crazy stuff like shaving my arms, only wearing long sleeves, bleaching, waxing, and even plucking my hairs out, one by one.

And this is just fucking arm hair. The least serious problem in the world.

Now imagine telling a ten-year old child that he or she has a mental disorder called ADHD, and needed to be “fixed” with medication. You are telling these kids that there is something wrong with who they are. You are telling these young, impressionable kids that there is a problem with their brains, their very personalities.

Telling a kid s/he has a mental illnes is fucking devastating.

This will alter the child’s view of him or her self for probably the rest of his or her life. This kid will now walk around thinking there is something wrong with him or her self. They are told that they are different from the other kids, and will never learn as well or achieve as much. And guess what? If you tell a kid stuff like this, he or she is going to fucking believe it, and in most cases, it will become a self-fulfilling prophesy.

Albert Einstein was a disruptive kid in school. He was inattentive, hyperactive, and jumped from subject to subject. This was because Albert Einstein was too fucking smart for the pace of school. He learned faster, he was curious about everything, and school went too slowly for him.

If Albert Einstein was a child in our school systems today, he would be labeled with ADHD, put on Ritalin, dumbed down to a pace that is more convenient for teachers and parents, and had his brilliance snuffed out.  Consider Nancy Wolff’s words, “The burden of the illness represents what society might gain if the illness symptoms were eradicated”.  Imagine the possibility of instead of 2.6 million mentally disordered children, we could have 2.6 million bright, especially creative kids.

To end on a happy note, here is a list of 10 Most Successful People with ADHD:

• Walt Disney, creator of magic
• Michael Phelps, most decorated Olympian of all time
• Justin Timberlake, ’nuff said
• Michael Jordan, the man, the legend
• Jim Carrey, funniest person ever
• David Neeleman, JetBlue aviation boss
• Will Smith, the freshest prince ever
• John F. Kennedy, 35th US President
• Richard Branson, official business tycoon
• Albert Einstein, name is synonymous with “genius”

Stop the widespread over prescription of ADHD medications. Take your kid to the park instead of playing stupid iPad apps on the couch.

Works Cited

Anwar, Yasmine. “Use of ADHD medication soars worldwide.” UC Berkeley News. (2007): n. page. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. <http://berkeley.edu/news/media/releases/2007/03/06_adhd.shtml&gt;.

Associated Press. “Rescue recess, parents and teachers plead.” msnbc.com 16 May 2006, n. pag. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. <http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/12822280/ns/us_news-education/t/rescue-recess-parents-teachers-plead/

Diller, Lawrence. Running on Ritalin: A Physician Reflects on Children, Society, and Performance in a Pill. n. pag. 1-4. Bantum Books, 1999. Print.

Grey, Peter. “ADHD and School: The Problem of Assessing Normalcy in an Abnormal Environment.”Psychology Today. (2010): 1-2. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. <http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/freedom-learn/201007/adhd-and-school-the-problem-assessing-normalcy-in-abnormal-environment&gt;.

McLeod, Jane and Eric R. Wright. 2010. The Sociology of Mental Illness: A Comprehensive Reader. The Discovery of Hyperkenesis. Pages 37-40.New York, N.Y. Oxford University press.

Slife, Brent. Taking Sides: Clashing Views on Psychological Issues. 14. McGraw Hill, 2007. Print.

Sommer, Mark. “Decline in School Recess Continues.”Buffalo News 27 Jun 2008, n. pag. Web. 29 Nov. 2011. <http://www.childrenandnature.org/news/detail/decline_in_school_recess_continues&gt;.

“The State of Play: Gallup Survey of Principals on School Recess.” Fenton Communications (2010): 1-14.Gallup Surveys. Web. 29 Nov 2011. <http://www.rwjf.org/files/research/stateofplayrecessreportgallup.pdf&gt;.

Wolff, Nancy. The social construction of the cost of mental illness. 3. The Policy Press, 2007. Print.

Recently it seems like society has backpedaled a bit (ok, a lot) when it comes to rape. Have we regressed to the middle ages when it was socially acceptable for drunken, violent soldiers to rape, pillage, and kill other rival kingdoms? No, not exactly. This, at least, I can safely say has not happened yet. But is our culture regressing back to having a cavalier attitude about rape, similar to how men in the 1500s viewed women?

Many people don’t realize that what they say about women, and how they say it, contributes to the general social attitude towards women.  So when I try to explain that we live in a “rape culture”, I’m trying to explain that we live in a society where violence, especially sexual violence, against women is still, for the most part, accepted. Even glamorized.

Accepted?! Yes, this, I know, many people have trouble understanding as well. But let’s look at some of the recent events (in order from least recent to most) that have caused me to write this post:

1) Daniel Tosh’s rape joke blunder: During a stand-up show in June, Tosh began his show with some generalizations about how rape jokes are always funny. A female audience member ”heckled” Tosh by saying, “Actually, rape jokes are never funny!” His response: “Wouldn’t it be funny if that girl got raped by like, 5 guys right now? Like right now? What if a bunch of guys just raped her…”

The problem with this: Yes, comedians use shock value and cross lines. Yes, comedians single out hecklers. But no, comedians should not actively encourage male audience members to rape a female in the audience. This would be like doing a comedy show in Germany, and encouraging 5 German audience members to kill a Jewish one. Except for while the Holocaust was a horrifying period of about twenty years, the rape of women has been occurring for thousands with no end in sight. And while Jews may now walk around and feel relatively safe from Ze Germans, women cannot walk around and feel relatively safe from rapists.

While Tosh’s insensitivity to the traumatizing topic of rape did not surprise many people, my biggest beef with his comment is this:  Instead of finding humor within a dark, scary topic, he found the dark, scary topic humorous by nature. This, my male friends, is an example of perpetuating rape culture. Sure, fine, you can make jokes about rape (I mean, I will never date you and most girls will think you are scum, but freedom of speech, go ahead), but please at least recognize that rape itself is not a joke.

2) Paul Ryan calls rape a “method of conception”: Last week, Paul Ryan gave an interview in which, defending his position that there should be no excuses for abortion, he referred to rape as a “method of conception.” OH REALLY?

The problem with this: Rape is to conception in the same way that being chopped up into bits and pieces by a mad ax murderer is to dying of old age. Is the outcome the same? Yes. Is the process? No. That’s the whole point. It’s the way in which something occurs, not the outcome. Sure, life is life. On the flip side, death is death. If Ryan can differentiate between murder and a natural death, he should be about to differentiate between rape and making love. I’m pretty sure that if I violently attacked and killed Paul Ryan’s grandparents (who are old, and going to die anyway), he would definitely have a problem with it.

3)  Todd Akin tries to introduce the idea of “legitimate” rape: “It seems to me, from what I understand from doctors, that’s [pregnancy from rape] really rare,” Akin told KTVI-TV. “If it’s a legitimate rape, the female body has ways to try to shut that whole thing down. But let’s assume that maybe that didn’t work or something: I think there should be some punishment, but the punishment ought to be of the rapist, and not attacking the child.”

The problem with this: I don’t really think I need to go into the obvious medical inaccuracy of this statement, as ignorant as it is, I think Akin did an adequate job of making himself sound like a neanderthal and my commentary is unneeded on this point. It should also be noted that rapists, in fact, go unpunished more often than not. The victim, the woman, is the one that bears the brunt of the punishment, both in a demeaning legal battle where she must prove that she is not a Slutty McSlutSlut who was “asking for it”, but also in literally being unable to separate from her attacker and the trauma for at least nine months, if not, the rest of her life.

But, the thing that infuriates me the most about this “legitimate rape” comment is the idea that there is such a thing as “illegitimate rape”. That to Akin, if a man forcibly penetrates a woman and her reproductive system functions in a normal way, then it must not have been rape. Or as The Onion put it: “Being violently coerced into having sex was the worst thing that’s ever happened to me, so I take comfort in knowing it wasn’t actually rape,” Byars said…”It was absolutely horrific—I felt violated in the worst way imaginable—but thanks to Congressman Akin, I now realize it must, at some level, have been consensual after all.”

Now, do you not find it concerning that prominent public figures, including politicians, are disseminating the idea that rape is anything other than a serious, violent sexual assault?  I do. Do you not find it reflective of American society when individuals in positions of power and influence openly find rape to be humorous, a form of conception, and within their power to judge as “legitimate” or “illegitimate”? 

I can see how it can be difficult for you to conceptualize, because, you, nice male friend whom I have on Facebook, are obviously not a rapist, and you obviously think there is nothing ok with rape. I know this. This is why i’m your friend/acquaintance. I’m glad you also think that mainstream culture agrees with you in finding rape abhorrent. However, this is where you are wrong. Just because it is so obviously wrong to you, does not mean its obviously wrong to the random guy sitting on the subway next to me. Cause chances are, the random guy on the subway listened to Tosh, Akin, and Ryan’s opinions on rape and thinks that for the most part American society seems to think rape is a particularly funny way of impregnating a drunk sorority girl. If it’s socially accepted, then people are more likely to do it. Living in a country where some of the most influential people openly believe rape to be equivalent to sex chips away at it’s taboo status.

For instance, cannibalizm, infanticide, , incest- you do not see comedians and politicians and other public figures debating the act, legitimacy, or appropriate consequences of these crimes. That is because, in society, we have equivocally made it clear to absolutely everyone that this is a no-no. There is nothing ambiguous about the social acceptableness of incest. There is no such thing as “incest porn”. There is, however “gang-bang” porn, “teen-girl” porn, the ability to rape in Grand Theft Auto video games, and millions of snuff videos available for entertainment. Judging by all the messages we have been getting through the media via social conservatives’ mouths and misogynistic comedians, there still seems to be some ambiguity about the seriousness of the crime of rape. This, my male friends, is rape culture.

At the age of 21, I realize that when I walk anywhere alone, day or night, busy or desolate streets, I am walking around with a gigantic target on my back. I am not safe. Ever. I tried long and hard to think up a good metaphor to give you a comparison of how it is to walk around feeling constantly in danger. The closest I could get is this: A meta-analysis published in 2004, by Gerald G. Gaes & Andrew L. Goldberg: Prison Rape: A Critical Review of the Literature, found a prevalence rate of 1.91% with a 95% confidence interval between 1.37–2.46% of rape in prisons. Or approximately, 1/50 men in prison will be raped. Contrast this to the commonly believed 1/6 women, or 16.66% of women who will be raped and/or sexually assaulted in their lifetime. So, my men friends, that fear you feel when you hear the words “prison rape”, that assumption of sexual violence and danger during incarceration, is nowhere near the fear every single women in the world feels when  we walk out our front doors every morning.

My last point about how America still has a prominent rape culture:

Society has been teaching me since a very young age, maybe 9 or 10 years old, how to not get raped. This, obviously is a good thing. Of course all women should learn from social norms, rules, etc. how to behave in public in a safe manner. This is from another female blogger who illustrated it quite plainly:

“Is preventing violent assault or murder part of your daily routine, rather than merely something you do when you venture into war zones? Because, for women, it is. When I go on a date, I always leave the man’s full name and contact information written next to my computer monitor. This is so the cops can find my body if I go missing. My best friend will call or e-mail me the next morning, and I must answer that call or e-mail before noon-ish, or she begins to worry. If she doesn’t hear from me by three or so, she’ll call the police.”

BUT

Has society been teaching you, men, how to not be rapists? Have you learned how to  double and triple check how old a girl is before you begin your sexual advances? Are you sensitive to the fact that she may just want companionship,  not a lay? Have you learned how to not pressure a woman in to sex, how to recognize that if she’s wasted then you shouldn’t take advantage? Have you learned that if your best mate rapes a girl at a frat party, you should not take his side? No? Well, that is the problem here. I have had men respond with disbelief, pressure, rudeness, and downright anger when I refuse their sexual advances, as if it is somehow my duty to spread my legs since he paid $7 for my whiskey sour.

This, my male friends, is rape culture. The time has come for America to realize that it is no longer 100% a woman’s responsibility to prevent rape. We obviously are very careful. We obviously try to be safe. We obviously are not “asking” for it when we wear certain articles of clothing. These precautions are not enough. Men need to get involved in rape prevention as well. Men need to start taking responsibility for rape prevention since, OH HEY, men are the rapists. Maybe if Tosh, Ryan, and Akin took the time to understand the ramifications of their comments, they would realize that it is people like them that directly put women like me in danger on a daily basis.

It’s closely associated with sexual assault, and yet, we’re reluctant to tell women to stop doing it.*

*This is me attempting to “flex my satire muscles” even though I am not a very funny person.

Today Emily Yoffe of Slate had some advice for preventing rape. “College women: Stop getting drunk” was the title of her post.

She makes the very logical argument about the association between sexual assault and alcohol. As many of us know, excessive consumption of alcohol leads to loss of coordination, impaired judgement, erratic behavior, and reduced inhibitions.

Therefore, it is much safer for young women to be sober at a party full of intoxicated men.

This is because a sober woman will be able to say “NO” in a loud, clear voice, and the drunk man will listen to her and respect her wishes.

Additionally, a sober woman has a much better chance than a drunk woman of fighting off a drunk dude with impaired judgement, erratic behavior, and reduced inhibitions. This is because sobriety makes up for the fact that women are on average 8% shorter, 12% lighter, and have 40-60% less upper body strength than men.

In the relationship between sexual assault and alcohol, female sobriety is the obvious solution. Why didn’t we think of this before?!

However, I felt that Yoffe, while well-meaning, really fell short. You see, it is not being drunk that puts women at risk of rape, it is being in the presence of men. Statistics show that the most common type of rape is acquaintance rape.

Here are some things that women can do to prevent acquaintance rape:

• Attend an all-girls school, then graduate and work in female-only workplaces. Like Curves.
• Do not go out on dates with men. Going on dates puts you at high risk for date rape.
• Sleeping makes women very vulnerable, and is a very risky behavior. If you must sleep, keep a knife or firearm nearby.
• Use the buddy system. Do not go anywhere alone, including the bathroom, the library, the cafe, the sidewalk, your campus, the cafeteria, shopping malls, and the like.
• Do not make male friends. Female friends only.
• Do not go to a male friend’s home, or invite them to yours.
• If you must be around men, and you are alone, wear a chastity belt.

I am immediately adding all of these things to my own (rather large) list of things women should be doing to prevent rape. Rape is a widespread female problem, and it is our responsibility to prevent it.

Understanding Who’s Responsible for Rape:

I had the delight of speaking with Craig Dylans, the director of Women Preventing Rape about rape prevention, and he broke the issue down for me in this really understandable metaphor:

“Suppose a truck and a mini-cooper are driving next to each other on the freeway. The truck would like to be in the next lane over, so it veers to the side, crushing the mini-cooper in the process of the lane change. Now, we should be asking ourselves “What could the mini-cooper have done to prevent this accident?”

“There are, in fact, many things the mini-cooper could have done. The cooper could have been driving slightly in front of, or behind the truck, instead of right next to it. The mini-cooper could have slammed on the brakes when it realized the truck was merging. The mini cooper could have picked a more visible, safe color, like yellow instead of black paint. I mean, what was the mini-cooper even doing on the freeway? It was placing itself in direct danger by taking the freeway instead of local roads. The mini cooper could have taken the freeway in the daytime, when there was better visibility, instead of at night.”

“Maybe the mini-cooper had someplace to be,” I suggested.

“The mini cooper had many opportunities to reduce the risk of the accident,” Dylans reassured me. “The mini cooper placed itself in a vulnerable situation by driving next to the truck on the freeway. The mini cooper was basically asking for it.”

“Well, what about the responsibility of the truck?” I asked. “Couldn’t the truck have been taught to use it’s side mirrors, or a turn signal?”

“Ah well,” Dylans said with a shrug, “Trucks will be trucks.”

So I’ve been hearing all sorts of mixed responses – or even more maddening, no responses – to the current fast food workers strike. I am genuinely shocked how few people are passionate about this issue, considering how riled up we were about inequality during the Occupy movement less than a year ago.

I mean, not trying to insult you guys or anything, but you’d have to be either 1) incredibly ignorant or 2) incredibly stupid to not be mad at the unequal wealth distribution of America.

Currently our economic “recovery” looks something like this:

“Top 1% incomes grew by 31.4% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 0.4% from 2009 to 2012. Hence, the top 1% captured 95% of the income gains in the first three years of the recovery. From 2009 to 2010, top 1% grew fast and then stagnated from 2010 to 2011. Bottom 99% stagnated both from 2009 to 2010 and from 2010 to 2011. In 2012, top 1% incomes increased sharply by 19.6% while bottom 99% incomes grew only by 1.0%. In sum, top 1% incomes are close to full recovery while bottom 99% incomes have hardly started to recover.” – Emmanuel Saez

Or, to summarize, the have’s are continuing to have more than the have-nots.

It should also be mentioned that the bulk of my argument lies on the fundamental belief that most full-time jobs (certainly fast food jobs, which are jobs from hell) should pay enough that a full-time employee should at least meet poverty line. If a 40-50 hour a week job does not pay enough to live off of, then I consider it immoral business practice – something that deserves to be regulated by the government (and don’t give me that “less regulation” crap, because if the government can regulate vaginas then they can regulate ethical business practices). And now, without further ado…

Five Reasons You Should Support the Food Workers Strike:

1) Inflation: As the manufacturing and factory jobs continue to disappear, replaced by automation and outsourcing , the face of blue collar work has changed from the factory to the burger joint. If wages had kept pace with inflation throughout the years, we would be paying our “blue collar” workers, or the working class (I hate using the term “class”, but in a blog post about social inequality, it’s a bit inevitable) around 9$. Below is a chart that shows what the minimum wage should be if i kept pace with various economic indexes:

2) Our tax money: It goes towards welfare programs such as SNAP (food stamps), Medicare, Medicaid, Unemployment, etc. Currently we spend around 668 billion on around 126 different welfare programs. SNAP- our foods stamps program, has nearly doubled its spending since 2009, coming to a grand total of 74,619.34 million dollars for 2012 (check out this chart for more details).

People who make under $2,069 per month for a family of three – or 130% of the poverty line – qualify for these government aid programs. With the minimum wage set at $7.25 an hour, that’s about $15,000 annually, the full-time service industry worker is still “in poverty”, and does not have health insurance, or job security, or sick days, or really any basic benefits at all. If a full time job with a company does not pay above the poverty line , then eventually the taxpayers (US. That’s YOU and ME) step in to make up for the employers unlivable wages, via expensive social welfare programs. We are directly subsidizing the business costs of these companies that make billions of dollars in profit each year.

Which brings me to…

3) The Employers: The multi-billion dollar companies such as McDonalds, which bagged 5.5$ billion last year, and Yum Corporations, which made 3.78$ billion. If we compare company profits to employee wage increases throughout the years, it looks something like this:

Yes, indeed. So you see why I’m so annoyed with these companies. Because they choose to maintain a greater profit margin at the price of under-paying their employees into literal poverty. What is most frustrating is that these companies, with their multibillion annual profits, and CEOs paid 819 times their average workers wages, have the gall to claim this:

4) “Higher wages would cause layoffs” or “businesses will close because of high operating cost” or some variation of that. This, we should all know, is total bullshit. Just look at Costco, or Microsoft, or any other massively successful company that has managed to succeed- even dominate- during times of economic depression (ok, maybe not Microsoft, but that’s a different story), all the while paying their employees a living wage, health insurance, and other benefits such as a 401k.

Don’t tell me you can’t fucking afford it – Mr. Fortune 500 Company – we all know you can.

And for those who are complaining that 15$ an hour is “too much” for people who have some of the most demeaning, demanding work on the job market, I leave you with this thought:

5) Advice from a 4 year old: “If you want a dog, start by asking your parents for a horse”

It’s a common bargaining technique: start by asking for way more than you actually want, then make “concessions” until you all end up relatively close to what you wanted. I’ve heard many comments like “15$ is absurd. 12$ or 10$ would be ok.” Um, yeah, that’s probably what they realistically are aiming for, but if they’d started out asking for 12$, you know they would ended up with a number closer to 9$. Hell, they’ve demanded 15$ and President Obama responded with some wishy-washy remarks on raising the federal minimum wage to 9$.

The fast food workers deserve our support, we’re all on the same “side”. We all want big companies to pay their employees fair wages, we all want economic recovery, we all want a more equal society. A highly unequal society is also highly unstable. For the good of everyone, the minimum wage should be raised.

I don’t know why “1200″ managed to be the magic number of calories women should consume if they want to lose weight.

I don’t even know how I know of this number. Only that I know it, and my friends know it, and my mom knows it. Somehow, somewhere along the road, I was taught that if I want to have a flat stomach and tight tushy, I need to limit my calories to 1200 a day and do cardio. I don’t know how it got in to all of our collective brains, but somehow it did (if any ladies remember how or when they first heard the 1200-calorie rule-of-thumb for losing weight, please let me know via comment box).

What I do know is that 1200 is the general number of calories health professionals say women cannot drop below without suffering negative health consequences.

Interesting, isn’t it? 1200 calories. The line between health and what they call “starvation mode”. 1200 calories. The dangerous tightrope that many women are trying to walk, because they think this is how thinness is achieved.

“Starvation mode”

means your body realizes it is not getting enough food – calories-, thinks that you are starving, and slows down your metabolism to a crawl to conserve energy. Because it thinks you are starving, when you do feed yourself, your body will try to store more of your calories as fat, because those are your long-term energy deposits.

A long term calorie deficit can mess with your blood sugar levels, reduce bone mass,  cause  weakness, fatigue, cold intolerance, irregular menstrual periods, dizziness, constipation and swelling of the hands and feet (source). If a woman decides to get thin by maintaining a steep calorie deficit (1200 calories is very steep) and pairs it with long sessions of steady-state cardio, it results it thyroid issues. “Too little T3 (hypothyroidism), and the body accumulates body fat with ease, almost regardless of physical activity level. Women inadvertently put themselves into a hypothyroid condition when they perform so much steady-state cardio” (source).

Women: If you are trying to go about your business during the day, on only 1200 calories, and perform cardio to burn those dreaded calories, you really are not going to succeed. You will most likely pass out.

It is unfortunate, then, that there is one – and only one – message the majority of weight loss campaigns use to when targeting women:

Calories, calories, calories.

More specifically, less calories.

Calories are the enemy. You must either reduce your consumption of them, or obliterate them via exercise. Calories are the devil. Calories must be avoided at all costs. Calories must be burned away pronto, quick, before that one cookie turns into a lump of fat  on your thighs.

For example, this check out this Yoplait yogurt commercial (which was actually pulled off the air due to complaints that it promotes disordered eating):

or this Trop50 commercial that I found not only to be a completely demeaning portrayal of women as complete airheads, but perpetuates the message that women should strive to look like they “had work done”:

One of my main issues is how health & nutrition is marketed to women versus men. Do a quick Google search on women’s health magazines versus men’s health magazines and you’ll immediately see the difference in keywords. Women’s magazine covers frequently use terms like “drop X pounds fast!” and “calorie-torching workout!” and “low-calorie foods”. Men’s magazines use keywords like “build“, “power“, and “strength“. In my bit of searching, I never once found a men’s magazine that talked about burning or cutting calories, or losing pounds.

For anybody who knows anything about weight loss and nutrition, you will immediately recognize how shallow, and ultimately harmful, only focusing on calories can be.  That is because 1) a healthy body cannot be measured simply by poundage and 2) less calories do not equal good nutrition.

It is especially saddening because of the blatant misinformation fed to women by the media about how to be fit, or even, what fitness is. 

“Toned” is MUSCLE, goddammit, just call it by it’s effing name! Muscle.

When women want to get “toned” they are saying the female word for “muscle”. They often don’t know that “toned” actually means “muscle”, and they would never actually say “My health goal is to build muscle”. But what is a round, shapely butt made out of? Muscle. How does an abdomen stop being jiggly? Muscle. How do you get a back that doesn’t produce bra-bulge? Muscle.

Women want a body that looks “toned”, unaware that this “toned” look is achieved by building muscle.

I have never seen any weight loss campaign targeting women that informs their audience that muscle is more dense than fat.

I have never seen a women’s magazine talk about fitness other than pounds on a scale – as if body fat, muscle mass, and skeletal composition are completely negligible to a body looks like.  The end result is all these women trying to lose weight the wrong way – by cutting calories in their diet and trying to burn as many as possible aka. cardio.

Women are, for the most part, unaware that if they are exercising right they will be building muscle and their weight might not change very much.  In fact, if they are doing everything right, their weight might even go up! And that’s totally ok.

Even more infuriatingly, I have never seen any women-oriented campaign that says the word “muscle”. “Muscle” in woman-land, is like a dirty word.

You know Vanessa Hudgens? Wanna know how she got that bod? Deadlifting heavy and building muscle

Last year’s Miss America got this bod by… yep, lifting heavy and building muscle

Now, I’m not trying to say that the only way to get a great physique is by lifting heavy. What I’m saying is that

great bods look great because they have muscle.

Adriana Lima, Victoria’s Secret Angel and one of the most successful supermodels in the world, works her perfect butt off by boxing. She’s not a twig, and I would bet good money that she could literally beat the crap out of you! See all that supa’ fine definition on her midsection? That’s muscle.

I should also note that the aforementioned women/AngelsWalkingOnEarth also make looking bangable their full time job. They have the time and the money to hire professional trainers, exercise every day, and eat the best of the best foods. The is such a thing as an unfair advantage and this is it. Sorry, but you are probably never going to look like Adriana Lima. And yes, this depresses me too. All the time.

Back to my point: If you want a rounder, firmer, tighter, shmexier anything, it requires building muscle. Simply burning fat and cutting calories is only one part of the equation of sexiness. (For ladies that have been wanting to venture into the weight room, but find it intimidating, I wrote this guide to the weightlifting room for Cody, the health & fitness app I work for.)

Sophia’s Equation of Sexiness:

Sexiness = Nourish your body with fresh, whole foods + strength train to build shapely physique + choose your amount of cardio depending on how much body fat you want to lose or keep.

What look do you want to achieve? Below is an image that shows what the male and female bodies look like depending on body fat percentage:

(Let’s all take a moment to appreciate that the female body naturally carries about twice as much body fat as men. That is because testosterone increases one’s ability to gain lean muscle mass, while estrogen increases the storage of body fat. It is much more difficult - *many more cheezeburgers must be nommed* – for a man to reach 40% body fat than a woman. Knowing this, it becomes increasingly aggravating when society continues to judge fat women far more harshly than fat men. Oh, the irony.)

I’ve mentioned my disdain for Special K, before, but I’m really going to lay into them now. The messages Special K spreads to women about how to be healthy are so freaking misleading.  I want to poke my own eyes out whenever I see one of their commercials. That is because they market their products as healthy meal options.

What makes them so healthy? Oh, only that they are low in calories.

Nothing about the quality of the ingredients, or even, what the ingredients are. Are they synthetic, are they made from whole foods, are they full of fillers?

 I mean, what is even in Special K? 

RICE. WHEAT GLUTEN. SUGAR. DEFATTED WHEAT GERM.

Those are the ingredients in Special cereal. The only healthy thing about this cereal is that it is pumped full of additive vitamins and minerals (you could just take a multivitamin) from unknown sources.

Then they promote eating like this:

Breakfast: One serving of Special K cereal with 2/3 cup skim milk and fruit.

Lunch: Repeat breakfast meal or substitute a Special K Protein Meal bar.

Dinner: Eat your normal meal.

Snacks: Eat two snacks each day of Special K products (bars, cereal, snack bites) or fruits or vegetables.

Absolutely nothing about quality of calories, only quantity. Nothing about proper nutrition, only less. Everything is about reducing. Reduce your calories by reducing the amount of food you eat.

Even more infuriating is how women are advised to exercise by popular magazines. The image below is from Shape Magazine:

I mean, the moves are ok… I guess.

…If you want to waste a lot of fucking time at the gym flapping your arms around and wondering why you don’t look “toned” yet.

If you’re trying to strength train… why don’t you use your strength? Why isn’t this fitness model, who obviously got her fitness model body by lifting heavy, showing heavy lifts?

There is no reason women should strength train differently from men. Man muscles are not alien tissue. Man muscles and woman muscles are the same. They are human muscles. They respond to the same fuel and the same stimulus.

This is why women’s workouts bother me.

Women should be shown the same fitness routines as men. We should be exposed to the same messages of eating nutritious food, with lots ‘o protein, and enough calories to build our bodies into Goddess-like proportions. We should not fear muscle. We should not shy away from the weight room because it is perceived as “odd” and out of place when a woman approaches the squat rack.

This is why I had to write a whole goddamn blog post complaining about the misinformation that is spread to women. I am so tired of watching my girlfriends get mislead by the media on how to be healthy. I am so annoyed by this skinny obsession – which literally robs women of their power.

“I think anorexia is a metaphor. It is a young woman’s statement that she will become what the culture asks of its women, which is that they be thin and nonthreatening. Anorexia signifies that a young woman is so delicate that, like the women of China with their tiny broken feet, she needs a man to shelter and protect her from a world she cannot handle. Anorexic women signal with their bodies “I will take up only a small amount of space. I won’t get in the way.” They signal “I won’t be intimidating or threatening.” (Who is afraid of a seventy-pound adult?)”

― Mary Pipher

And hungry people are – let’s be honest – complete assholes. I don’t know about you, but when I’m hungry it means I’m unfocused, cranky, distracted, grumpy, irritable, and generally miserable. Snickers did get something right: You are not your best self when you are hungry.

I’ve lamented about this before, and I will again: Think of all the potential that is thrown out the window when women deprive themselves of food on their quest to be thin. What great things could women accomplish if we weren’t fucking dieting all the time?! It’s saddening.

It is time for the misinformation to stop.

Please do not skip meals. Especially if you are under the age of 18. Part of the reason I wrote this whole thing is because I see a lot of really young girls on Tumblr asking advice like “I’ve already reached my calorie limit today – should I skip dinner?” NO!!!  Your body and mind are still developing, and they need fuel!  Please do not limit your calories under 2000. Eat unprocessed foods like fruits and vegetables. Eat eggs, lean meat, even dairy in moderation. Eat a variety of foods with nutritional value. Stop with the empty calories! And the soda pop. Seriously, the soda pop is the devils piss.

My main point is this:

Please do not throw your own physical – and mental – potential out the window by starving yourself into skinny bliss. It’s not worth it. And trust me, it’s not bliss.

The other day I came across this really hilarious video on BuzzFeed called “What it’s like to be a woman at the gym”:

It immediately reminded me not only of how I felt when I first started working out, but also of my friends’ reactions when I bring them into the weight room.

I went to the gym with my girl Melanie. Everything was fine in the downstairs section of cardio machines & floor space. The second I took her upstairs to the free weights room, she looked around and, with a nervous giggle, whispered to me, “…we’re the only girls in here…” 

I knew it made her feel uncomfortable.

When I took my friend Christine to the gym, we hadn’t even changed yet. We looking for the locker room in this new facility, when some guys standing by the ellipticals started up. “Hey girls, how’s it goin’? Where you goin’? We don’t bite!” 

“If they keep on hollering at us like that, I’m gonna freak”, she muttered.

Gendered Spaces: The Victoria’s Secret Metaphor

The fact is, whether or not dudes try to talk/shamelessly hit on us at the gym, the gym is a male-dominated space that most women feel uncomfortable in. It’s kind of like trying to shop for lingerie for your girlfriend.

You know, in theory, what you’re supposed to do. You enter the store with determination. I have a goal. I have a good reason for being in here, you tell yourself. But simply being in the store  is an uncomfortable experience. You are out of your element. This is a female-dominated space, and even though you have every right to be there, you still get the feeling that this is a space you are generally not welcome in. And being in the lingerie store is one thing. Actually shopping is a whole other hurdle.

You know that a bra is a bra, but what is the difference between a push up bra and a convertible bra? Padding or no padding? Underwire?! Then there’s panties. You know she likes the ones that covers the top half of her butt-cheeks, but then you get to the panty section and it’s like… low-rise this, boyfriend-short that, thongs, bikini cuts, see-through, bows, strings… Oh my god.

Not only are you completely out of your element in the lingerie store, have no idea the difference between bikini-cut and low-rise panties, you’re also surrounded by women giving you weird looks. As you wander around the store, you feel their eyes watching you. You know that your girlfriend wants a push-up bra, and you found the push-up bra section, but now you actually have to stand there and ruffle through the racks and it is just too damn uncomfortable. Eventually you give up and leave.

It’s the same when a girl tries to start working out in the free weights section. From the moment she enters the free weights section, she gets the feeling that – even though she has every right to be in this space – it is “weird” for a girl to be there, and it makes her uncomfortable.

She knows she should be doing squats with a barbell, but she has no idea what a squat rack looks like, or where to find it. She knows all sorts of dumbbell exercises that she can do, but doesn’t know where the proper place to do bicep curls are. On a bench? Am I taking up someone else’s bench space? Should I stand in this space between the leg presses? That feels weird too.

The free weights section would be confusing and intimidating enough if it were totally and completely empty. But then it’s full of big dudes leering at her. After a few minutes of failing to figure out how to adjust the incline on a bench she’d like to use for dumbbell flys, eventually she gives up and leaves.

Reducing the Intimidation Factor

Now that we all understand the gym is a male-dominated space, and we are all nice people who don’t like making other people feel uncomfortable, I present to you:

1) Coping strategies for females who want to start weight training

2) Guidelines for dudes who want to be nice not creepy at the gym

Coping Strategies for females who want to start weight training:

1. Bring a workout buddy. Having a friend with you will help you feel more comfortable in the weight room. If you notice some dudes staring at your tits, just stare back at their crotches and squint like you’re looking at something really small.
2. Ask the gym staff for help. It’s their job to help you! So don’t be shy. Nothing is a “silly” question at the gym.
3. Wear a hat with a bill that lets you avoid eye contact & visible earphones, even if you’re not listening to anything. These are big “don’t bother me” signals that even the most socially-inept dude can understand.
4. Know your shit. Read up on how to use gym equipment and plan your workout beforehand (then record your workouts with Cody, the app I write for!
5. Go H.A.M on your workout. Stay focused and ignore everything else.

Guidelines for dudes who want to be helpful and not creepy at the gym:

1. Is she gazing around with a bewildered look? Does she look like she’s searching for a piece of equipment? Is she struggling to adjust something? Approach her and politely ask “do you need help with something?” OR, send a personal trainer her way! Be like, “hey Mr. Personal Trainer, I noticed this girl looked like she was struggling in the weight room, maybe you could go assist her.”
2. Does she look like she knows what she’s doing? Leave her the fuck alone.
3. Maybe the girl approached you because she needs a spotter. Treat her like you would any other guy you spot for. If she knows she needs a spotter, it means she’s familiar with lifting heavy and going for max weight. She knows what she’s doing, now is not the time to try and give her “pointers”.
4. Are you there with a group of friends? There are many places in the gym you can hang around, so don’t park yourselves right by the only girl in the weight room. If there’s anything more intimidating than being in a roomful of dudes, it’s having a bunch of said dudes congregate right next to a girl trying to do her glute bridges in peace.
5. Is a girl doing really heavy weight, with really bad form? Approach her when she is done with her reps and say, “Excuse me miss, i’m not trying to be a dick but I’m honestly afraid you’re going to injure yourself.” If she tells you to fuck off, then fuck off. If she is receptive, share your lifting wisdom, not your number.

On Feeling “Judged” and Intimidated at the Gym:

From what I’ve encountered, most gym dudes have mad respect for women who are giving their 100% in the weight room. As long as you are working your ass off I guarantee they are not thinking “Haha, WTF is this chick doing in here, GTFO”.

The fact of the matter is that if you want to be a weight-lifting badass, you’re going to have to get over being intimidated by the weight room. Whether or not gym dudes are doing things that actively make you uncomfortable, feeling awkward is still a state of mind.

Put your big-girl pants on and deal with it.

So, this (belated) blog post was prompted by Russell Brands quite eloquent angry tirade that’s going around like the flu-

Gawker titled it “Russell Brand May Have Started A Revolution Last Night” (officially the most leading title I’ve ever read, btw) But first…

ZOMBIES!

And aliens. literally my biggest. fear. ever. no joke.

And nuclear meltdowns that soak the world in radiation. This is actually real and I don’t know why nobody believes me. And stop going through the X-ray thingys at the airport. Seriously.

(this is a one-hour lecture so don’t speak to me about radiation until you watch the whole thing)

I think one or all of these things are going to kill humankind… possibly while i’m still alive, which i am not looking forward to.

Ok, so… all my friends and family think that I’m a bit of a conspiracy theorist. and to that I say, “It’s not a conspiracy if i turn out to be right.”

AND NOW I AM RIGHT. BOO-YAH!

With my keen soci-senses I have been predicting for a while (aka ranting after a few glasses of wine) that the income inequality in America & many other developed countries in the world (for the sake of my word count, we shall not be addressing third-world countries) will reach a breaking point. And I think the breaking point is drawing nearer.

Here are my sociological conspiracy theories on what is going to happen in the next few years.

1) There will be massive US governmental reform in structure. Personally, I’d like to see stuff like gerrymandering and redistricting completely abolished, but that might be too much to hope for. I honestly do think that an overhaul of the electoral system is going to happen (pleaseohpleaseohplease), and the popular vote will reign supreme. My one suggestion on how to make the government better is this:

We need to reserve a certain quota of seats in congress & the senate for practicing academics including economists, philosophers, sociologists, psychologists (maybe), medical experts, scientists, and the like. I personally think that a country run by politicians (who are mainly political scientists & lawyers) is downright dangerous. We need to put people in leadership positions that are motivated not by money, power, & their political parties, but rather, by the desire to advance the world (not just the US, the world) through knowledge in their many fields.

2) There will be a third world war over oil, and it might kill us all (once again, nuclear weapons). And I CAN’T FRIGGIN BELIEVE that no-one else has noticed that the USA keeps on finding convenient excuses (or lies) to set up military bases in Middle Eastern countries right next to their oil reserves. A whopping 57% of the USA budget goes towards military spending. Military strategists know that oil is running out, and they’re setting us up for it. The only reason we’re not doing this with water (yes, the whole world is running out of water too) is because oil will run out first.

3) This is depressing but I honestly don’t see any significant improvement in women’s rights, equality, representation in politics, or control of our reproductive systems in the foreseeable future.

4) Finally, what Gawker & Russel Brand hinted at: The will be a huge uprising of the lower & middle (what’s left of it) classes. This is because for the first time ever, young people are predominantly the lower & middle classes. And as all y’all old greedy folks get older & older, and all of the sudden realize that your underemployed, underpaid, overeducated children do not have the resources to take care of you, and social security buckles under the weight of huge budget cuts & the burden that is the largest old-people population the world has ever seen… well… then and only then will the powerful begin to bolster the disenfranchised. Because the future has (and always will) rely on the young folk. And when the upcoming generation is the most educated – but most in debt & most unemployed & most underpaid - things are going to change.

5) In about 30 years or so, all the radiation released from the Fukishima meltdowns will have effectively poisoned every living being on the planet, we will all turn into zombies, and we will all die.

Sweet dreams,

-S

Oh lawdy lawd. Ok, many of my blog posts are often prompted by people being assholes, and me explaining exactly what about their behavior makes them crappy human beings. Osmel Sousa, the president of the popular Miss Venezuela beauty pageant, pretty much takes the trophy for crappy human being of the day (because there’s always a new one tomorrow).

The following video, produced by the NY Times, is only about 5 minutes long, but if you don’t feel like watching it, Sousa’s opening statement pretty much sums it up:

“Inner beauty doesn’t exist,” he claims, “it is something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.” (He says this with a really creepy smile on his face, then laughs.)

The first issue with this statement was summed up really well by Erika Nicole Kendall, another blogger whom I admire very much:

“I think it’s pretty f—ing jarring to hear someone say “I say that inner beauty does not exist; it’s something that unpretty women invented to justify themselves.“ They need to justify themselves? As in, their raison d’etre? Their existence? Women who are not “beautiful” are subject to justifying their existence, lest there be no reason for them to exist?”
-Excerpted from “I Say That Inner Beauty Does Not Exist” | A Black Girl’s Guide To Weight Loss 

Props to Kendall for calling this guy out on what he’s really trying to say: If a woman is not physically beautiful, then she doesn’t have any value.

What is especially concerning (to me at least) is that this dude is gay, and he does not talk about women this way because he wants to bone them. This is not a sexual power play. No, as a gay man, he thinks “ugly” women have “made up” the concept of inner beauty because to him, women are objects for looking at, period.

To Sousa (and many other people), women serve no other purpose than being ornamental, like a painting, or a vase. And what is the point of an ugly vase? None. An ornament must be beautiful to serve it’s purpose, otherwise it is no longer an ornament – it is an eyesore & will be taken out with the trash.

The rest of the video explores the new trend of Venezuelan mannequins being modified to be super busty, reflecting the increasingly extreme beauty ideals of the country. This trend of mannequins with impossible body proportions is nothing new. But mannequins are also particularly interesting because they literally are woman-ornaments. A mannequin with a less-than perfect body shape is worthless and will be modified and/or thrown out.

And herein lies the scary connection to be made: To Sousa (and people who agree with him) If “inner beauty does not exist”, if traits such as intelligence, compassion, and strength do not matter, and women are merely ornaments to please the eye, there is no difference between a woman and a mannequin. If this does not outrage you right now, leave my blog.

Why do mannequins even matter that much? Much like photoshopped women in magazines, they contribute to social norms of what women should & shouldn’t look like.

Venezuelan mannequins:

American Mannequins:

(by the way, if you walk around to the back of mannequins in America, you can see the clothes are often clamped or pinned to be form-fitting, because the mannequins are thinner than size 0/XS).

Swedish mannequins:

(because Sweden does everything right)

Ok, obviously the notion that “inner beauty doesn’t exist” is complete and utter bullsh*t. This brings me to the second part of this blog post:

Yarrrg Musclezzzz (& Booty)

Our standards of female beauty are changing from heroin-chic to Wonder Woman. Don’t believe me? Google Trends knows – thin is on it’s way out, fit is just getting started.

Part of this trend is due to a strong resurgence in the feminist movement worldwide, ever since several notable gang rape incidents (selfcontrolselfcontrol don’t fly off the handle about rape right now). Check out any “fitblr’s” Tumblr account, and chances are you’ll see some feminist stuff on it. That’s because fitness & feminism actually go together like salt & pepper. Fit gals and fit dudes understand the mental, physical, and social empowerment that comes with control over one’s body.

Because I have a sociological background, when I started writing for Cody I realized I was in a position of influence, and I could use this influence for the better. That’s why you will never see sexualized fitness content on the Cody blog. I’ve made a point to only use body-positive language on Cody’s social media accounts. Our graphic designer Tasheon also does a really great job of  only using non-sexual, body-positive images & illustrations:

Another reason this trend is catching on so quick is CrossFit! This is because as CrossFit spreads, more people are exposed to images of strong women, and the more you are exposed to these images, the more you grow to accept it, like it, even want to look like it.

Here’s a short CrossFit video called “Letting Beauty Speak”:

Unlike Sousa & his beauty pageants, CrossFitters understand that beauty is not skin-deep. That being said, imagine what would happen if our mannequins looked like CrossFitters!

I’ve been waiting for the ever-vapid Seventeen or Cosmo magazines to start featuring some of the more conventionally “hot” CrossFit women, like Andrea Ager

or Christmas Abbot

or Camille Leblanc-Bazinet

But then I realized, if Seventeen & Cosmo won’t put athletes like Mckayla Maroney or Venus Williams on their covers, they’re probably not going to put a CrossFitter on their cover. Which is a damn shame. But that’s ok, because Seventeen & Cosmo are insulting pieces of shit that portray women as idiots who are only interested in makeup, clothes, and men, and they can go suck a fat one.

I’ve received some criticisms in the past – “this blog reads like a CrossFit advertisement” or “you’re still focusing on physical standards of beauty” or “stop hating on skinny bodies“… blah blah blah.

These are all people that don’t understand the deep connection between physical fitness & female empowerment. When  I started working out, yes, I was doing it to “look better naked”.  I had no idea that the following would happen:

1) I’ve stopped wearing makeup on a regular basis. Makeup is now reserved for big nights out, or job interviews.

2) I’ve stopped wearing form-fitting clothes, and pretty much my wardrobe consists of baggy jeans & a sweatshirt. Even though my body is now the most smokin’ I’ve ever achieved, I have no desire to show it off.

3) I’ve stopped weighing myself.

4) In short, I’ve stopped seeking outside approval for how I look, because to be honest how I look doesn’t really matter to me anymore.

Y’know what matters? Inner beauty. Intelligence, resilience, strength, creativity, compassion, resourcefulness, spunk, attitude, confidence, dedication… this is what inner beauty is. This is what matters. Not what you look like, but what you can do.

So for every single person out there, man or woman, don’t let any jerk try to tell you that inner beauty doesn’t matter or doesn’t exist. Even if your face got shot off like Chuck Palahniuck’s Invisible Monsters.