Novelist Tupelo Hassman Gives Birth to a Baby Girlchild



Author Tupelo Hassman’s debut novel, Girlchild, was released last week. As a friend and admirer of her many talents, I couldn’t wait to follow the story of Rory Dawn Hendrix, the precocious heroine of Girlchild, but also the story of Ms. Hassman, as her book is received by the world.

In the book, we’re introduced to Rory Dawn Hendrix’s lonesome trailer park existence where overachievement is frowned upon, and abuse and neglect are the norm. At times lyrical, Tupelo breathes life into the poverty-stricken outskirts of Reno, Nevada through sparse, cutting imagery of life in a welfare state of mind. Dryly-written transcripts of the social workers that visit Rory’s home, and excerpts from the Girl Scout’s Handbook—Rory’s own personal bible—make up a childhood scrapbook filled with both helplessness and hope. In what could have been a painfully tragic book, Tupelo manages to craft an engaging, relatable story through the perceptive lens of her young heroine, a character you both want to mother and learn from at the same time. (Video trailer for the book here.)

In the short time since its release, Girlchild has been garnering praise and careful attention from reviewers across the country, at a time when childhood poverty is hitting record levels in the US, and the Girl Scouts of America mark their 100-year anniversary.

Getting a hold of this busy lady was no small feat, but Tupelo’s quirky email missives make the whole ordeal enjoyable anyways. She writes: “finding out time now. soon. now. soon. now. my sister. my daughter. my sister. my daughter.” When I don’t respond right away, she uses the attention-getting title: “Amity, this is not Spamity.” Apparently she also enjoyed typing “Damity.” The woman is playful with words.

When we finally meet, it is at a BART station where Tupelo swoops me up in a utility vehicle and takes me to an industrial coffee shop in Oakland. She has a tiny, gentle voice that is calming and almost squeaky when she perks up. From her hillside Oakland abode, Tupelo teaches creative writing remotely to students in Los Angeles. She also curates Invisible City Audio Tours, and is currently on the road keeping a video journal of her book tour with fiancé Bradford Earle.

Amity: What drove you to keep on with this story, beside, you know, a book deal?

Tupelo: Well I had started it in art school, and that’s what art school is good for I guess—churning out art and working at it. But I was really inspired when I heard about that Buck v. Bell case [a Supreme Court case, influenced by eugenics, that upheld in 1927 that people in the US could be forcibly sterilized if found “unfit” – this included the mentally retarded and sexually promiscuous women], the idea came to me.

The idea was about three generations of women—the grandma who was forced to be sterilized and then about her daughter that survived anyways, and then her daughter…the third generation girl that makes honor roll before she dies, thereby proving the theory wrong, and nobody knows or cares.

Girlchild (the endearing term Rory’s mother used each night when she tucked her into bed) is a devastating commentary on the American class system: the urban poor, at the bottom of our society, who even if they have the intelligence and the ambition find it almost impossible to escape their predetermined fate. They may not have been literally sterilized but socially the result is often the same. Tupelo Hassman’s novel doesn’t seem like fiction at all, but the raw inhumanity of our system. –Charles R. Larson, Emeritus Professor of Literature, American University

You know, they didn’t stop sterilizing people until the ‘70s. I belong to a few generations of alcoholics so the case really hit home for me. And I don’t like how secret it is. And how science is tricky like that. I love science — my brother needs a liver transplant and so science is good in that it helps people like that. But then I hate it because people are so ready to believe what it thinks it knows best…so that was a large part of the motivation for the story.

But also the class struggle, I mean, that’s my baggage.

Were there other stories that were part of your inspiration? Your story really reminds me of Bastard Out of Carolina — perhaps not the narrative tone; it didn’t seem as emotional. Your character’s voice just seems so detached…

Really? That’s interesting. I’ve heard a lot of different interpretations of it. Lately I’ve heard how much she adores her mother, but I didn’t think that at all.

Maybe that’s because it’s very impressionistic, so I guess it is a bit more open-ended in that respect. It’s like you’re going on this child’s journey, but she’s obviously much more adult in so many ways.

I try to remember that a lot. I think back on my childhood and I was so adult in so many ways. It seems like the older you get, the harder it gets to remember that.

I didn’t really read the Bastard book until someone at grad school mentioned it; I don’t think it was an inspiration. But my mom gave me The Handmaid’s Tale when I was 11 and that was something I read a lot. I think a lot of what I write is moralizing, and I don’t know how to not to do that.

I’m curating this reading list for a girl’s survivor story that is due tomorrow, and I was looking at Robert Cormier’s I Am the Cheese, which I’ve always loved; I haven’t looked at it in years, and last night I looked at this girl’s story in it, and she’s totally awesome. I did not realize that the story is made up of transcripts, and when I saw that last night, I thought: “Is this where I got the idea to insert these voices, to do this pedagogical tense?” I don’t know.

Rory is like a miniature Margaret Mead, observing and chronicling the life of the trailer park with an insider’s knowledge and an anthropologist’s detachment. –Maureen Corrigan, Fresh Air with Terry Gross.

This is your first novel. Does it feel like you thought it would feel? Does it feel very satisfying, or is it kinda scary…

It’s terrifying. I am so nervous and I have to write all these essays and I’m so scared to do it. I mean, there’s not a lot of time to feel excited, but my capacity for joy is kinda weird. I don’t have a good receptor for joy — it’s wonky.

What were some moments that almost made you joyful?

I can’t think of her name, but one reviewer, Bonnie Joe Campbell, she wrote this blurb that said, “This story is your worst white nightmare.”

Life is a crazy risk, a foolish venture, a journey hardly worth attempting by poor daughters raised by poor daughters who have no maps or guidebooks (and no teeth, either), who receive no justice that doesn’t hurt about the same as the injustice it means to remedy…This story is your worst white nightmare. –Bonnie Joe Campbell, author of American Salvage

They didn’t want to use that on the jacket, but I wanted them to. It is nice to hear someone say, "I totally get what you’re saying."

What’s it like to publish a novel, and to have your story out in the world?

I feel hopeful. I am really at ease with whatever is going to happen. If I were a person easier with joy than I am, I…I can’t pretend that it’s not complicated though. I mean it’s so awesome, and I’m so lucky, because how many writers do we know that write beautifully and have 10 different pieces of good luck happen to them? It’s not like I haven’t worked hard, but I also had all of these little pieces of good luck happen.

The way artists have to fight for recognition and sustenance in our culture is really in my face right now. I don’t know…I have survivor’s guilt. Not that I’m not happy, or that I’m not lucky, but I’ll be more happy just knowing that these stories about eugenics live on. And Rory was great to create, not that I thought that I created this person while I was doing it, but I do now.

A lot of my friends talk about publishing it like giving birth and I wonder when I will feel like my baby is safe in the world. I mean, how many beautiful books are out of print? One of the books that I’ve been curating has been out of print for 12 years. I want to be able to go back and buy books and put them back in the shop. Does that make sense?

Of course it does, you want the books to live on.

Yes.

Women in America Less Interested in "Women's Interest" Magazines

When reports come out in America that major print magazines are on the decline, it’s no surprise to a country where news and entertainment gatherers increasingly turn to faster, flashier digital options.

Traditionally, "women’s interest magazines" (think fashion, beauty, home and garden, etc.) have held the lion’s share of U.S. print magazine revenues. According to a recent report by the Auditor Bureau of Circulation, mags like Redbook, which has been alive and kicking since 1903, have seen their circulation drop dramatically. Today, with a circulation of a little over 100,000, Redbook has lost 81% of its readers from 2001.

The other top losers in women’s interest mags include Good Housekeeping, which reported a major circulation drop of 67%, and Woman’s Day, with a loss in readership of 77.3%. Top fashion and beauty mags have also seen readers turning a blind eye, with publications like Allure and Glamour both losing roughly half of their audiences.

With women’s print magazines going the way of the dinosaurs for the past decade, it is particularly interesting to see circulation numbers diminishing in the “domestic” category. And when it comes to what publisher’s dub “women’s interest” print mags, it seems that women just aren’t that interested anymore.

Should print advertisers chalk it up to digital media trends, or are women ‘just not into them’ for a larger reason? Is the format of the magazine the driving force for its decline, or is it the content?

As far back as 2000, Salon culture critic Ann Marlowe declared that women’s magazines were dead:

“Today's women's magazines are 19th century in their insistence on the indoors as woman's sphere. The world of the women's magazines is an indoor world, one of trying on clothes, of shopping for makeup and applying it.

…Young readers don't realize that the content is driven not by some definitive vision of what a woman is, but only by outdated visions of what women will buy. The magazines themselves have become institutions, part of our culture's definition of femininity, but we forget that their version of womanhood is but a blip in the great screen of time.”

On the Internet, sites like Jezebel and Feministing seem to generate large readerships, with scores of progenies cropping up every day, suggesting that women haven’t lost interest in content specifically produced to cater to their gender. In fact, the Huffington Post just added a women’s section to its news website. And Jane Pratt, the original publisher of the cult ‘90s teen magazine, Sassy, later to publish the more mainstream, not-so-sassy Jane, has now come out with a web-based magazine , xoJane.

In 2007, AdAge found that women were increasingly turning towards more interactive forms of media; the number of women blogging at least once a week rose to 30% at the time of the study. More likely than not, these women are reading and reposting web-based content, not extracting the latest diet trend from Redbook, or reposting an interior design trend piece from Good Housekeeping.

What do you think? Do you like “women’s interest” magazines? If so, do you prefer online to print?

Reflections on a Mirror-less Life

Eva Gonzales's "Le Petit Lever," 1875.

If you could boost your self-esteem by thinking less about your body image, or beauty standards, simply by cutting down on time spent in front of the mirror, would you?

For UCLA sociology grad student Kjerstin Gruys, the answer is yes. For an entire year, Gruys is refraining from looking at herself in the mirror. She reflects upon her, er, reflection-less new lifestyle on the blog “Mirror, Mirror...OFF The Wall” in the hopes that, in the run up to her wedding day, she can boost her self-confidence rather than obsessing over what is traditionally the most beauty-centric day of a woman’s life.

But is there any validity to the theory that not looking in the mirror will help one’s self-esteem? Renee Engeln-Maddox, a psychology professor and body image expert at Northwestern University, told the website YouBeauty.com:

“When you look in the mirror, you’re increasing your tendency to see yourself as an outsider would. A lot of research has shown that lowers your body satisfaction and depletes your cognitive resources, meaning that your brain — which has limited resources — is less able to think about other things.”

Kjerstin Gruys may not have been thinking about protecting her “cognitive resources,” exactly, when she began the project. She said she had her “lightening” moment while reading a story about a religious practice where nuns banned the use of mirrors for the rest of their lives in order to focus on worship. Gruys says on her blog:

"A lifetime without seeing oneself. It made me pause. What a different life those nuns had lived, compared my appearance-obsessed world of Los Angeles! Could I go even one day without looking at myself in a mirror? Maybe I should. Actually, how about a year??”

Women look at themselves an average of 70 times per day, according to Professor Engeln-Maddox. An online survey commissioned by the group Transformulas International, published in the UK last year, claimed women look at themselves 71 times per day. They also claimed that women reapplied their lipstick and make-up roughly 11 times per day.

To this blogger, the numbers are so high they seem unbelievable. Yet somehow, with beauty standards being what they are, and a billion-dollar beauty industry that will do anything to support those seemingly impossible standards, it appears entirely plausible that we women are spending an unnatural amount of time thinking about our looks in front of the mirror. In fact, there is a clinical diagnosis for it—it’s called dysmorphic disorder. Those with the disorder compulsively look at themselves throughout the day, sometimes for hours at a time.

I wonder, however, if the fact that women spend an inordinate amount of time before the mirror is purely a result of our beauty culture, or something more.

Reading all the hype surrounding one woman’s mirror-less new way of life made me think of the art critic John Berger and his historical analysis of women’s presence in the art world. In his classic BBC documentary, “Ways of Seeing,”Berger claims that the objectification of women is rooted in the oil paintings of the masters, and he explores the ways in which this tradition has both inspired and predicated the objectification of women today. I was particularly fascinated by the following passage, which considers the role that women play in their own objectification:

“To be born a woman has to be born, within an allotted and confined space, into the keeping of men. The social presence of women is developed as a result of their ingenuity in living under such tutelage within such a limited space. But this has been at the cost of a woman's self being split into two. A woman must continually watch herself…She has to survey everything she is and everything she does because how she appears to men, is of crucial importance for what is normally thought of as the success of her life. Her own sense of being in herself is supplanted by a sense of being appreciated as herself by another....One might simplify this by saying: men act and women appear. Men look at women. Women watch themselves being looked at. This determines not only most relations between men and women but also the relation of women to themselves. The surveyor of woman in herself is male: the surveyed female. Thus she turns herself into an object -- and most particularly an object of vision: a sight."

Is our own sense of self-worth really that different from the women of centuries past? Kjerstin Gruys’s mirror experiment may seem like a cheap publicity stunt, but if it’s made more women think about cutting down on beauty and body image-obsession, allowing them to turn inward rather than focusing on outward appearances, I'd say she’s succeeded well beyond her own personal goals.

U.S. Republicans Take Culture War Abroad with Global Gag Rule

A mother and child in a health center in Africa. (via Creative Commons / Flickr user Novartis AG)

Beyond the recent onslaught of attacks on Planned Parenthood by members of America’s conservative party, an even larger threat to the right to reproductive services, one that could impact millions of women in the world’s poorest nations, looms as House Republicans work to reinstate a global gag order on family counseling services.

The Global Gag Rule was rescinded under President Barack Obama in 2009. Last week, however, a far stricter version of the Rule was passed overwhelmingly by Republican congressmen. Under that rule, all U.S. financial assistance to international health organizations counseling women on family planning options—abortion in particular, can be blocked. Such assistance includes funding for HIV/AIDS, water and sanitation, and child education.

Ranking House Member Nita Lowey (D-NY) said the Gag Rule "muzzles doctors and nurses throughout the world." She added, "...that means an expectant mother who has walked six hours while bleeding to reach the only health clinic in the region may not get the life-saving care she needs - or even a referral."

As critical funding for preventative health care hangs in the balance for millions of women, President Obama finds himself in a national cultural war debate that now has international implications thanks to conservative lawmakers.

Originally referred to as the Mexico City Policy, the 1984 Ronald Reagan-issued executive order, was used as a political flashpoint, polarizing Republicans against Democrats in what could be seen as one of the first firing shots of a culture war that would continue to plague U.S. domestic policy for decades.

A question left out of the abortion debate remains: is it really necessary to take domestic cultural disputes global?

According to a recent global survey on abortion, published by the Guttmacher Institute, a large percentage of safe, lawful abortions take place in China and India. If China and India are removed from the analysis, 86% of women of childbearing age in the remaining developing nations face highly restrictive abortion laws. And by “restrictive” they mean to say that abortion is only permitted to save a woman’s life, to protect her physical or mental health, or in cases of rape, incest, or fetal impairment.

In addition, the U.S. push to curtail abortion procedures seems entirely unwarranted when looking at the statistics, which suggest a steady decline in abortion rates in those same developing nations. Guttmacher estimates that the global number of safe abortions fell from 25.6 million in 1995 to 21.9 million in 2003. The organization also found that unsafe procedures have changed very little, from 19.9 million in 1995, to 19.7 million in 2003--a mere 1%. These unsafe abortions were performed either by unskilled practitioners in unhygienic conditions, or they were self-induced. The worldwide data thus concludes that the rate of unsafe abortion is trailing behind the rate of safe abortion procedures.

As the studies clearly show, unsafe, potentially life-threatening abortions will continue and are continuing at a steady rate.

Shouldn’t Americans be asking their legislators why, then, is the Republican majority fighting to silence medical practitioners in these developing nations? Why gag the very people who could save women’s lives?

"Gay Girl in Damascus" Blog: A Work of Great Fiction

A poster that appeared on a "Free Amina" facebook page.

Today, the person behind the popular confessional blog site "Gay Girl in Damascus" revealed their true identity. Blogger Amina Abdallah, known to devout readers from across the globe as a Syrian American lesbian with a talent for capturing everything from the excitement of the Arab Spring to sharing intimate, sensual poetry, was revealed to be...a man. Not only that, "Amina" is in fact a 40 year-old white American man currently studying in the UK by the name of Tom MacMaster.

The contempt felt by those who once followed him, or worse, those who only discovered him today through this new found notoriety (including this blogger, real name Amity Bacon), seems to have reached a fever pitch. And the reasons are fairly plain to see, as any white male blogger can attest.

The idea of a westerner born of white male privilege impersonating a queer Arab woman in order to have his voice heard is surely a painful irony. And I can only imagine that actual, real life members of the LGBT community in Arab nations that have struggled to get their messages out to the international community are more than a bit upset that they haven't been heard over all the media hype MacMaster has been able to drum up through his dalliance in fiction writing.

"Abdallah" wasn't your typical unknown blogging hobbyist. After garnering enough attention in her responses to the uprisings she supposedly witnessed firsthand, she was commissioned to contribute to various news sites. She even had a facebook account, filled with pictures MacMaster had stolen from another facebook user, as well as fan pages on the social networking site (yes, pages plural). And when MacMaster was bored with his little fiction project, he conveniently implied in his posts that Amina Abdallah had gone missing and was abducted by security services, which of course only led to more support, and, one can imagine, more fan pages. The State Department was reportedly opening up an investigation as well.

I understand the anger surrounding this. Especially if you see this video of MacMaster explaining himself and how he was driven by vanity to create this character. At this point he is probably envisioning future book deals, talk show appearances, and a life of glamorous celebrityhood from here on out.

But before we're so quick to dismiss this as a cheap hoax devoid of any lessons to be learned, here's a question to consider: where do you get your news? And what are the sources for that news?

In America, the number of US-based foreign correspondents has only dwindled as our military reach has skyrocketed. Conversely, in countries where first amendment rights are not protected, particularly in the Middle East, informal means of communication such as blogging, twitter, and other social networks have become a major source of information for the global community. In these types of circumstances, is it a complete surprise that myths and lies can be perpetuated like never before?

There are no easy answers to fix this media environment, but if there is a cautionary tale here it's this: however enticing a wide open internet may be, blogs and social media will never replace a functioning media--that is, a media comprised of trained journalists, fact checkers, and editors that are neither beholden to government nor corporate institutions. Is such a thing possible? Probably not, but it is something to strive for.

Pakistani Rape Victim and Women's Rights Leader Mukhtar Mai Denied Justice

Mukhtar Mai

If a decision made last week by the Pakistan Supreme Court is upheld, five men convicted of gang rape in 2002 will be released back to the village where the crime took place, and the life of an international women's rights leader will be in danger.

Nine years ago, Mukhtar Mai was ordered by a tribal council in Pakistan to be gang raped in her home village of Meerwala in retaliation for an adultery accusation. The accusation, made by a rival clan, claimed that Mai's then-12 year-old brother had sex with a woman from the higher-caste Mastoi tribe. Outside investigators would later find that her brother had been molested, and that the Mastoi were trying to cover it up.

Mukhtar Mai's rape case gained international attention when she refused to do what most Pakistani women would do in her position -- commit suicide. Instead, Mai waged a legal battle against the five men who had attacked her. She would then go on to form Mukhtar Mai Women's Welfare Organization, to support and educate Pakistani women and girls; and have her story retold in Nicholas Kristof's Half the Sky, as well as in an upcoming feature film.

According to the Aurat Foundation, nearly 1,000 women were raped in Pakistan last year, while 1,500 were murdered and 2,000 were abducted.

Human Rights Watch called on Pakistan's government to petition the full court to review the case and asked authorities to protect Mai, who now fears for her life. Human Rights called the case "one of the most important tests of women's rights in memory."

Mai, now 40, plans to file a petition against the acquittal in a few days.

Celebrities Join Forces for "Real Men" Campaign Against Sex Trafficking

The latest Hollywood cause, spearheaded by Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore, is, apparently, child sex trafficking. Although you wouldn't know it from the series of lighthearted videos they hope will turn viral (one of the ads was posted on Funny or Die). Various celebrities such as Justin Timberlake, Sean Penn, and Jamie Foxx star, showing how "real men" behave, with the tag line: "Real men don't buy girls."

Now it's not my wish to disparage an obviously well-intentioned political campaign, especially when it aims to take on a serious issue like human trafficking and sexual slavery. It is estimated that two million children are enslaved in the sex industry globally. According to the U.S. Department of Education, human trafficking occurs in all 50 states.

But what seems obvious to me is that the ads are meant to earn a laugh first and question a male viewer's manhood second. Is this really sending a message to end sex slavery? A man who prefers to "buy a girl" is not any less than a man -- he's a pedophile. And what about the young boys who can equally fall victim to sexual slavery?

Just as discomforting to me is how little the celebrity spokespersons from this foundation seem to understand the complexity of human trafficking. According to the website demiandashton.org (DNA):

DNA hopes to help abolish modern day slavery, deter perpetrators and free the many innocent and exploited victims. We are committed to forcing sex slavery out of the shadows and into the spotlight.

Call me pessimistic, but somehow I don't think creating a hit video on "Funny or Die" is going to achieve such lofty goals. And when I read in the news about severe public funding cuts being made to women's shelters and rehabilitation centers for victims, I wonder just how much of those thousands to millions of dollars spent on ads could have gone toward donations to social programs. But then again I guess donations aren't as sexy as producing an ad featuring Justin Timberlake.

Kutcher recently told CNN: "Sex trafficking is an elastic trade. If you can raise the price for sex you can actually reduce the demand. As you reduce the demand that raises the price.
"[That means] you can, ultimately, put it out of business, and the way to do that is by attacking the demand because the supply is endless."

Actually, Kutcher couldn't be more off point. I'm not sure the former "Punk'd" host is familiar with global sex tourism, but it serves as a major boon to communities worldwide, especially in places like Thailand, proving that those seeking underage sex will seek it out, no matter the cost.

Let's hope this new celebrity endeavor actually donates generously to the victims it seeks to fight for...and that we aren't just being "punk'd."

Wal-Mart “Too Big to Sue” in Gender Discrimination Case?

Yesterday the U.S. Supreme Court considered the legitimacy of Dukes v Wal-Mart, a massive class action lawsuit filed on behalf of 1.5 American million women that accuses Wal-Mart LLC of denying equal pay and equal access to career advancement. The prosecutors are seeking a stop to its alleged discriminatory practices, as well as back pay and punitive damages that could cost Wal-Mart over one billion dollars.

At issue was not whether the plaintiffs, with individual cases dating back to 1998, even have a case. Instances of women earning roughly 77% of what their male peers earned are common; women who qualified for raises but were passed over by their male counterparts with less experience seem to have been the norm for more than a decade. Instead, the “highest court in the land” heard the defense question whether or not millions of women could be included in one single class action suit. Lawyers for Wal-Mart claimed that they could not form an effective defense against the millions of individual cases and that there was no common injury.

The question that Wal-Mart posed, eerily reminiscent of the one made by big banks at the height of the economic meltdown, was: “Aren’t we too big to fail sue?”

It makes sense that Wal-Mart would take this tactic. After all, they’re in good company: several corporations and business groups, threatened by the precedent that Dukes could set for large-scale class action suits, have filed friend-of-the-court briefs siding with Wal-Mart. It seems the largest retailer in the world, whose sales hit $405 billion last year, feels that it, too, is “too big to fail.”

But the six plaintiffs who represent the millions of women are making their claim under the 1964 Civil Rights Act. They argue that “the policies and practices underlying this discriminatory treatment are consistent throughout Wal-Mart.” And each incident of discrimination, if taken to court separately, could pit the largest private employer in the world against one single woman at a time.

Let me repeat that again: one woman against the largest employer in the world.

The question that I would ask the Supreme Court justices, then, who reportedly sided with the corporate behemoth, would be: if corporations have the rights of personhood, as they were recently granted, why can’t individual persons have the same rights as corporations to consolidate their legal claims?

If Wal-Mart LLC, which serves 41 regions, 400 districts, and 3,400 stores housing one million workers in the U.S. alone, is allowed to take each woman to court individually, it will set a precedent not just for the rights of women, but for all individuals. Common law will dictate that corporations and their armies of attorneys will have the same access to justice as individuals with a mere fraction of their money and resources. In a world like that, will there ever be a fair fight?

Rich Country, Poor Children

The other night I watched a disturbing report on 60 Minutes about newly homeless children in Florida who were living in vans and cheap motels, studying by candlelight, and getting ready for school in public bathrooms. A large segment of these children were living with parents who made a comfortable living and owned homes just two, three, or even one year ago.

Now I am not a naïve U.S. citizen -- I know that the poverty rates in the wealthiest nation are at record highs, and the middle class is disappearing. Women, once employed at a higher rate than their male counterparts, are now facing the same unemployment rates as men. According to a recent story in the New York Times, the portion of American women at work declined to 53 percent in February, the lowest levels since 1988.

I have accepted that the jobless rate may remain the same, or possibly rise as projected, for a few more years. But I cannot accept the fact that our children are starving as our economy is booming and our bankers are reaching record profits.

According to the 60 Minutes report:

The government considers a family of four to be impoverished if they take in less than $22,000 a year. Based on that standard, and government projections of unemployment, it is estimated the poverty rate for kids in this country will soon hit 25 percent. Those children would be the largest American generation to be raised in hard times since the Great Depression.

I then discovered something greatly disappointing about my country: since its inception in 1989, only two countries have not ratified UNICEF's Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) -- the U.S. and Somalia.

On the presidential campaign trail, candidate Obama expressed a strong interest in ratifying the global initiative; in 2009, his administration then claimed the U.S. would sign on. That was two years ago, and we now have a rising poverty rate that will affect 1 in every 4 children.

Can our policy makers at the very least begin the process of attaining higher standards of living for our children and future generations?

According to UNICEF's site, the CRC:

"...highlights the unalienable rights of children. It establishes that governments will, to the best of their ability, ensure that all children have adequate shelter and a safe living environment, nutritious food, clean water, health care, and education. It grants children the opportunity to voice their opinions and concerns. In essence, the CRC requires governments to protect the humanity and value the potential of all children."

The Obama administration has a lot of policy decisions on the agenda that are surely taking a precedence over the CRC. But without prioritizing the millions of voiceless children suffering right now, the country is not prioritizing its own future. To tell your legislators to ratify the CRC, sign this petition.

The Power of Vulnerability

I recently came across this amazing TED Talk (also below) with Brené Brown, an American social scientist who took to the painstaking task of studying vulnerability in human emotions; specifically, what separates people who are able to love wholeheartedly from those who claim they cannot. Her study was brave in that it became a personal exploration that she was able to then relate to big picture issues facing the world around her.

What Brown discovers is that those who have more confidence and are more open to loving relationships also make themselves very vulnerable in life, as in, they take on more risks. She also observed that people in America numb themselves to vulnerability, and this can be evidenced by the fact that we are "The most in debt, obese, addicted and medicated adult cohort in U.S. history."

What do her findings mean for society at large? I'm not entirely sure, but I think the notion that we as a people need to confront vulnerability and embrace it can be a powerful goal, to start.

Women Make a Huge Impact on Protests in Egypt

A demonstrator kisses a soldier in Cairo. Image courtesy of Lefteris Pitarakis, AP.

"Whoever says women shouldn’t go to protests because they will get beaten, let him have some honor and manhood and come with me on January 25th...If you have honor and dignity as a man, come. Come and protect me and other girls in the protest. If you stay at home, then you deserve all that is being done, and you will be guilty before your nation and your people. And you’ll be responsible for what happens to us on the streets while you sit at home."

Twenty-six year-old Asmaa Mahfouz said these words just one week prior to "The Day of Anger" protests against the Mubarak regime, in an online video, her face shown plainly to the world.

Her video was said to spark a large segment of the demonstrators; and, according to the Egyptian Organization of Human Rights, 20 percent of those demonstrators were women. Some estimates put that number at around 50 percent. But even if those figures were lower, the presence of women activists in the Egyptian public sphere -- whether virtual or seen in Tahrir Square -- is unprecedented.

“Female participation is at an equal standing -- just like male participation -- and female demonstrators are not shying away from marching despite the tear gas,” said Amr Hamzawy, a research director at the Carnegie Middle East Center, to the New York Times. “It’s very impressive,” he said. “It’s not about male and female, it’s about everyone.”

A large female presence in the streets of Cairo--with little to zero sexual harassment reported--should not be seen as insignificant. Though women have protested alongside men in the past, reports of government confrontation targeting women are common. While covering a trial in 2005, journalist Mona Eltahawy noted that she was inappropriately touched by a police officer.

“Many women have experienced much more horrendous attacks,” she said. “It was very saddening, but also gratifying that these young women were prepared. They would say things like wear two layers of clothes so that if they rip off the first, you’re still dressed. No zippers. Carry a can of mace. If you wear a headscarf, make sure you tie it this way and not that way and wear two. … They [women] were determined because the purpose of these assaults and targeting women, obviously, is to shame these women and to terrorize them…These young women will not be scared away. We are standing up for our rights to be active and equal members of Egyptian society, which, again, gives me hope looking forward.”

The gains made for women's rights have yet to materialize in the world of politics, but the outlook is certainly optimistic. While Mubarak was in office this past November, Al Jazeera reported that a new law had been passed by the People's Assembly to allow 64 more seats in the house for women. If changed from its current status of only four seats, the law could mean an increase of 1,500% more women making decisions affecting the lives of all Egyptians. In the 1970s, a quota had been established to create more seats for female legislators, but it was repealed in 1986.

With enough momentum, the presence of women demonstrators in Cairo may be seen as a major turning point for gender equality in Egypt. A time when Egyptians chose a higher standard of living for themselves, with women leading the way.

GLAAD Takes Issue with Transgender "Comedy"

Tony Curtis and Jack Lemmon in Some Like It Hot

You may have missed it over the weekend, but "Saturday Night Live" aired a skit that showed men taking hormone supplements to grow breasts and change genders. The sketch was for a mock prescription drug called "Estro-Maxxx," and the fake commercial attempts to make lighthearted jabs at transgendered people by showing men with breasts. The punchline? Transgendered people are funny to look at -- or so one would think from the video:

In timely fashion, the Gay & Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD), responded:

This segment cannot be defended as "just a joke" because there was no "joke" to speak of. The attempted comedy of the skit hinges solely on degrading the lives and experiences of transgender women. Holding people up for ridicule simply on the basis of their identity fuels a hurtful climate and puts people in danger, especially given how infrequently the media shines a fair and accurate light on the lives of transgender people. "The violence, discrimination and harassment that transgender Americans experience each and every day is no laughing matter," said GLAAD President Jarrett Barrios. "Saturday Night Live is a touchstone of American comedy, but Saturday's unfunny skit sends a destructive and dehumanizing message."

Can Sharia Law Benefit Women in the West?

Photo courtesy of Shirin Neshat

A recent article by Indiana attorney Rafia Zakaria in Guernica magazine begs the question of whether or not Islamic feminism is possible.

Zakaria takes us from her personal account of a childhood spent in Pakistan, to her experiences as a social worker helping battered women in Indianapolis, where the complexities faced by married women in the Muslim world seem without boundaries. Ironically, it was in Indianapolis that the author realized that an Islamic version of a prenuptial agreement could grant women more rights than one filed in America.

Representing a Jordanian woman whose husband divorced her by forging her signature then abandoning her in a motel room, Zakaria worked tirelessly to help the woman gain more rights than American law had allowed. In a harrowing tale fraught with many obstacles, Zakaria eventually managed to grant the woman a fair chance at financial stability in her chosen home country--by convincing the court to honor her Islamic pre-nup.

Zakaria's piece couldn't be more timely, as a handful of state legislatures are contemplating passing policies that would ban Sharia law from being practiced in the U.S. Whether or not Sharia law is in all actuality a threat to state and federal constitutions is also under debate. So far the squeakiest wheel in the "Sharia v U.S. law" debate has been Newt Gingrich, who received a standing ovation at a Values Voter Summit recently by demanding a national call to action regarding the issue.

The author's conclusion from her client's ordeal is that sometimes even traditional, faith-based laws can strengthen the U.S.'s more modern court systems. But is a breach in the separation of church and state even tenable to westerners, even if it does lift the oppression of women?

Zakaria writes, "...if things are to change, the recipe lies not in eliminating faith from the legal sphere but rather redefining it in a way that empowers women using the very tools that were used to enslave them."

I want to agree with this assessment, but is it really possible to take minute aspects of Sharia law and integrate them into the U.S. justice system in a way that is progressive and beneficial to all?

Slaves by Another Name Clear of Charges in NY

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BOOKS: I Am an Emotional Creature

Eve Ensler, acclaimed author of The Vagina Monologues, has a lot to say about women, and now, girls. After promoting her theatrical hit around the globe and in turn creating the "V-Day" movement, Ensler has come back with I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World.

Emotional Creature finds Ensler channeling the voices of adolescent girls and penning confessional first-person narratives inspired by the young women she experienced on her travels. Through poetry and journal entries, she imagines the plight of girls from the U.S., Iran, The Congo, China, Palestine, and more. To older readers and Ensler fans, these works may come across as overly simplistic and less than thought-provoking as she tackles eating disorders, human trafficking, teen sex and child labor through adolescent voices. But overall, the project is commendable, and notable for the author's ability to find a common emotional thread connecting young women around the globe.

Gay Marriage, Women's Suffrage, and the American President

Photo courtesy of Change.org

Today The New Republic came out with a thought provoking Op-ed comparing U.S. President Barack Obama to President Woodrow Wilson, who was in office just a few years prior to the passing of the Nineteenth Amendment granting women the right to vote. Both were liberal American presidents who wanted to be known for their progressive stances. Both were also populists, and therefore wanted to appease citizens across the political spectrum. But both presidents, in doing so, wavered on civil rights issues and compromised liberal causes.

And both presidents, in the view of TNR writer Richard Just, are destined to have tarnished legacies as a result of their failure to clearly and actively support civil rights issues.

In the years leading up to the passage of the Nineteenth Amendment, Wilson became cagey and tried in vain to avoid the question of whether or not he supported a woman's right to vote. Instead of taking a stand, he deemed women's rights a local rather than federal issue. Just writes that this moment in history now seems oddly familiar:

"An evasive stance on a controversial civil rights issue from a liberal president; an insistence that the issue is primarily local, rather than national, in character; a complete failure of sincerity, nerve, and will: If these things sound familiar in 2010, it is because Barack Obama is taking exactly the same approach on gay marriage."

I'd like to think that Obama cannot simply be reduced to an ineffectual, spineless Woodrow Wilson of his day. But his lack of support for gay marriage positions him to the right of republicans Laura Bush, Cindy McCain, and Arnold Schwarzenegger; as well as 52% of the American people, according to a recent CNN poll.

What do you think? Is Obama destined for less-than-greatness on civil rights issues?

The Devil of Female Bosses

"They are hormonal, incapable of leaving their personal lives at home and only too happy to talk about their staff behind their backs."

Pic of Anna Wintour courtesy of the Sydney Morning Herald

So begins an article in the UK’s Daily Mail, which recaps a recent survey about men and women’s perceptions of female bosses by the website UKJobs.net. The job search site claimed to have interviewed 3,000 men and women; with three-fourths of men claiming they prefer male bosses and a whopping two-thirds of women preferring males as well.


The top reasons for this assessment? Those interviewed claimed that women were more competitive, had a sharper tongue, and weren’t as straight-talking as men. Another disturbing conclusion: interviewees viewed women as more prone to mood swings, especially during “that time of the month.”

Intervention in the Streets

A group of Blank Noise activists take over a bus in 2003. Image: flickr

In America, when a man directs unwanted attention towards a woman or initiates sexual advances, it's called sexual harassment. But in Northern India, the term is "eve teasing," and it's getting a strong backlash thanks to a coalition of female artists called Blank Noise. Last month, several women from various cities joined forces to share their experiences and walk the streets together. Calling themselves "Action Heroes," the women became both activists and performance artists.

Blank Noise began in Bangalore, as a student art project, in 2003. Mimicking the "Take Back The Night" movements in the United States, the group unites large groups of women and encourages them to walk the streets at night as a collective, making a statement to the men who could otherwise harass them individually. Participants "Reclaim the Streets" in other ways as well: from spray painting the testimonies of sexual harassment victims in public places, to wearing clothing bearing anti-harassment messages.

GLOBAL GALS: Cheryl Braganza

Today we'd like to spotlight I.M.O.W. community member Cheryl Braganza, whose Economica submission, "The Harvest," portrays women gathering apples through the vivid, striking hues of Cheryl's paint brush.

How did you begin painting?

I never realized I had any drawing talent until I was about 10. A Belgian nun who was teaching me physiology at a convent in Lahore, Pakistan noticed how well I drew body parts! A paint-by-numbers set followed. Eventually, a personal meeting with F.N. Souza, a well-known Indian artist in London in the '60s, gave me that extra push. I have never looked back; I had found my calling.

United Nations Creates a New Women's Rights Coalition

A group of Pokot women in Chemeril Dam, Kenya.

After four tense years of negotiations between global advocates and UN Member states, the United Nations has established UN Women, an organization combining four previous UN women’s rights groups, to fight for gender equality and the empowerment of women.

UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said, “UN Women will significantly boost UN efforts to promote gender equality, expand opportunity, and tackle discrimination around the globe.”

Over the United Nations’s 65-year history, its primary objectives have centered on “gender mainstreaming,” or the promotion of gender equality through legislative initiatives and special programs. The UN’s focus on women began with the establishment of the Division for the Advancement of Women (DAW) in 1946.

While there has been a steady increase of government commitment to women's rights in the developing world, critics argue that many of the UN’s initiatives have been signed into legislation without further monitoring or even implementation. And while women comprise the majority of the population—as well as the world’s most impoverished—they are direly lacking in representation on an international scale.

According to UNIFEM, women provide 70 percent of agricultural labor and produce more than 90 percent of the food in some regions of the globe. Yet women earn 10 percent of the world’s income and own one percent of the world’s property.

With so much on the line for women struggling under global financial collapse, will the new coalition go beyond the UN’s initial aims of “gender mainstreaming” in order to create real change?

While the organization will not get to work until January 2011, Secretary-General Ban is currently inviting suggestions as to who should be appointed Under-Secretary-General to head UN Women. Member states and civil society partners are more likely to choose a leader from the non-Western, developing world, where international legislation is sorely needed. According to Amnesty International, maternal deaths in the US rose from 6.6 per 100,000 pregnancies and births in 1987 to 13.3 percent in 2006. While in South Asia, some 300 to 400 maternal deaths have been reported for every 100,000 pregnancies and births.

Former Chilean president Michelle Bachelet rumored to be a top choice for Under-Secretary-General.