Let’s do this before my list of saved links to share gets any longer.
• Kickstarter: Stop Telling Women to Smile: Around The Country. From the Kickstarter pitch: Stop Telling Women to Smile is a public art series that addresses gender-based street harassment. The work consists of drawn portraits of women who have told their stories of harassment, and wheat pasting those portraits as posters with captions that speak directly to offenders on outdoor walls.
The goal of the campaign has been met and surpassed with still 11 days to go, but the more money they raise, the further their reach, and it doesn’t hurt to spread the word about it, too. Get their message to as many people as possible. So do take a look.
• Continuing on the harassment theme (and trigger warning for that!): Teaching Naked, Part 1 and Part 2. How a teacher turned a student’s written harassment of her into a learning experience, and the obstacles (read: misogyny) along the way.
• The Uncommon Beauty of Diana Nyad, & The Relentless Corporate and Media Censorship of Real Beauty by Karen Walrond. Earlier this month, Diana Nyad, a 64-year-old swimmer, swam the entire distance from Cuba to the United States without the help of a shark cage. Proving Karen’s point: this article is all I heard about it.
• A Question for Us All by Marsha Phillips: “If the concepts we discuss in our circles are universal, why aren’t our audiences more representative of the communities that we live in? Where are the people of color?” Food for thought and suggestions for creating a more inclusive blog/site. Relevant to everyone.
• On the Huff Post: 23 Things Every Woman Should Stop Doing. My kneejerk reaction to this website is ‘ugh’ and my kneejerk reaction to the article title is ‘don’t tell women what to do,’ so really it’s anybody’s guess why I clicked on the link… but this is a good list, actually. It would only be better if it were framed differently. After all, it’s basically a list of things that male-dominated, male-run society has ingrained in women to strip them of their confidence and control their lives. Yes, women internalize those things and dole them out as advice to other women via mediums ranging from word of mouth to magazines, but to blame that behavior on them is wrong and harmful. Here’s a better title for that article: 23 Things People Expect Women To Do But Women Don’t Owe Anyone. Here’s another better title: 23 Things Women Are Taught To Do That They Should Feel Free To Stop Doing. I’m sure I could come up with something more concise if my sister weren’t using my noisy old laptop in my room right now, but you get my drift.
• Your Best Is Enough: How to Take Care of Yourself and Run a Business at the Same Time by Hannah Braime. I could quote the whole thing and talk about how relevant it is to me, but here’s a tidbit: How we show up each day depends on how we’re doing, mentally, emotionally and physically. In order to show up at our best, we might need a morning, an afternoon, a day, 10 days off. Sometimes that means that the super duper important if-I-don’t-get-this-done-today-the-world-will-collapse tasks can wait until tomorrow (because they’ll still be there then). Truly worth a read.
• On Being Multi-Passionate by Kim Lawler. For anyone who, when writing a bio, ends up with a string of words like this: fine art photographer/product photographer/model/fashion designer/seamstress/graphic designer/blogger… and then some. Apparently there’s a new label going around to describe this sort of thing, and it’s “multipassionate solopreneurs.” It… sounds interesting. Douchey, says Kim. And I wonder if it’s more or less so than the term I sometimes apply to myself in the coziness of my own head: Renaissance woman.