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Welcome to Feminist Friday, where I round up some of the week’s best thought-provoking links, and we can discuss what’s going on in the zeitgeist. Our motto here: Feminism is for everyone.
This Week’s Feminist Focus
Are you a Gossip Girl fan?
I didn’t watch the show back in the day, but thanks to Netflix I’ve been able to binge-watch one episode after the other, and now I’m on season 5.
Generally I do not believe in guilty pleasures — just pleasures, friends — but this show straddles the line with guilty a lot of the time. Why? Because on one hand, there are (sometimes) empowered female characters. On the other hand, there are some appalling consent issues throughout. On both hands, there are terrible people doing terrible things to one another.
But, most egregiously, there are characters who often jump out of character and do something stupid just for shock value. This is probably most obvious to me because I’m watching the episodes back to back without the luxury of a week in between. But still. Sloppy writing.
Blair, in particular, is the worst. Often, she is the most likeable, most empowered. She even sets out to be a “powerful woman.” And yet she is constantly enamored with a would-be rapist and thinks nothing of backstabbing other women who get in her way. Not your best feminist role model.
This retrospective sums up my feelings quite nicely.
I’m curious whether you watched the series, and what you think in hindsight.
Feminist News Link Roundup
All the links that are worth clicking on this week. Some are serious, some are satire. All are food for thought.
- Things boys could learn at Girl Scouts
- Woman Assaulted By Celebrity Just Needs To Sit Tight For 40 Years Until Dozens More Women Corroborate Story
- Rediscovering history’s first female video game designer
- Tracee Ellis Ross: Michelle Obama Helped Me Be Myself
- Women artists who influenced the Renaissance and Baroque
- Jane Fonda: People Are Listening Now Because Weinstein Victims Are ‘Famous And White’
- 3,755 Rosie the Riveters in the same room!
- I coined the term “sexual harassment.” Corporations stole it.
- This woman started “me, too” — a decade ago.
- How to speak the truth to BS
- It’s Time to Admit That Allowing Men Into the Workplace Was a Mistake
- Does the current administration want to control our bodies?
- Books written by women that I’ve added to my TBR list this week: The Last Mrs. Parrish, Manhattan Beach
