Courtesy of americansforresponsiblesolutions.org
I recently received this message in an email from a group called Americans for Responsible Solutions, of which I am a member. It was started by Congresswoman Gabby Giffords and her husband to fight for gun control laws:
Photo from http://www.onepageafrica.com
It’s too bad that it has taken tragedy after tragedy for America to start acknowledging and talking as a nation about the consequences of rampant and overlooked misogyny. Just because American women aren’t forced to cover themselves from head to toe in public doesn’t mean that there is no sexism in this country.
Photo courtesy of Flickr.com
The Guardian has the best article on the Elliot Rodger shooting that I’ve read so far. It is a careful examination of the man and his motives, as well as how society’s attitudes towards women no doubt played a role in the injury and murder of his victims. We’re all asking why this happened, and this article draws attention to what I consider the most crucial aspects of the crime and Rodger’s personality (from TheGuardian.com):
Image courtesy of tumblr.safercampus.org
In a cultural climate in which rape is not taken seriously in many settings, such as college campuses and the military, we need to remember this quote. Rape is a crime and must be prosecuted. Let’s have compassion and respect for the victims of rape.
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Jennifer Lawrence- She says she looks like a troll! (Photo from mrwallpaper.com)
If you’re a woman, you are most likely familiar with the dreaded, sinking feeling of self-consciousness. I feel it myself. The voice in your head that says, “I look so fat in this” is something my brain has, many a day, uttered as well. And that voice grows ever louder when we compare ourselves to our counterparts on TV and in the movies. They just look so perfect, don’t they?
Photo courtesy of kens5.com (Photo by Michael Loccisano/Getty Images)
Nina Davuluri won the 2014 Miss America Competition. Some people are pissed.
Why? Because her family is from India, that’s why. People have flocked to Twitter to express their outrage. Hundreds of people tweeted comments ranging from calling her a terrorist to saying that a white contestant should have won instead because a white contestant is “more American.”
It seems to me that those who feel Nina Davuluri should not have won have an antiquated view of America. They think America is still a mostly white, Anglo-Saxon Protestant nation, or that it should be. But the America that’s in their heads is not the real America. The real America is made up of all kinds of people, including people like Nina.
If a white woman had won the pageant, that would have been fine, too. But the Miss America pageant, as silly as it is, still strives to represent the best of America. If only white women won, that would only be representing some of the best.
Nina represents today’s America, an America that finds strength in its diversity. Nina says she’s going on to medical school after the pageant and has started a national educational program that promotes diversity and knowledge of different cultures. It sounds like having her around will be a good thing. If the pageant denied her the title of Miss America because it didn’t see her as “American enough,” it would be catering to an antiquated view of an imaginary America that no longer exists, while missing out on an opportunity to have an educated, bright woman bring an interesting cultural background to the table.
We need more people like her in positions of power, people who will be more likely to speak for a multi-cultural populace. Whether she becomes a leader in society or not is hard to tell so soon, but the Miss America title gives women the chance to become leaders. And the leaders we need now are women like Nina, not more people like those already taking up space in Congress.
Illuminate 