V-Day 2010 Empowers Girls With Release of Eve Ensler's "I Am an Emotional Creature"
Monday February 8, 2010
It's the world's most empowering holiday for women and girls, and it isn't even on the standard household calendar.
It's V-Day, a global movement to end violence against women and girls celebrated on or around Valentine's Day. It relies on creativity to increase awareness, raise money, and revitalize existing anti-violence organizations, and it began with one woman -- playwright Eve Ensler -- whose groundbreaking work, The Vagina Monologues, gave voice to women around the globe.
Celebrating its 12th anniversary in 2010, V-Day is the catalyst for a series of events throughout February and March that generate broader interest in stopping violence against females of all ages. To see what what V-Day events are happening in your area, search by city, zip code, or country on the V-Day events website.
This year, in conjunction with V-Day, Eve Ensler is releasing a new book. I Am an Emotional Creature: The Secret Life of Girls Around the World is a collection of monologues inspired by the challenges and pressures faced by girls across a variety of countries and cultures.
According to publisher Random House:
Among the girls Ensler creates are an American who struggles with peer pressure in a suburban high school; an anorexic blogging as she eats less and less; a Masai girl from Kenya unwilling to endure female genital mutilation; a Bulgarian sex slave, no more than fifteen, a Chinese factory worker making Barbies; an Iranian student who is tricked into a nose job; a pregnant girl trying to decide if she should keep her baby.
Through rants, poetry, questions, and facts, we come to understand the universality of girls everywhere: their resiliency, their wildness, their pain, their fears, their secrets, and their triumphs.
To engage girls and young women in what they call "empowerment philanthropy," V-Day has developed V-girls.org to provide an outlet to speak out and inspire activism. At the v-girls.org website is a powerful short video that every teen, tween, and young woman should see, along with forums for girls, the V-girls blog, and the stories of featured activists.
Compare prices and buy a copy of I Am an Emotional Creature by Eve Ensler
Related articles:
Friday February 5, 2010
Planned Parenthood has come out with its own advocacy ad about the importance of choice and trusting women to make their own decisions about their health and their future.
Since they don't have the budget that Focus on the Family has to spend over $2 million on a Super Bowl ad, they've released theirs on YouTube. In it, former NFL player Sean James and Olympic gold medalist Al Joyner address the Tim Tebow Super Bowl ad and why celebrating families includes supporting our mothers, daughters, and trusting women.
Below is a partial transcript of the YouTube video, "Sean James and Al Joyner respond to the Tebow Super Bowl ad":
Sean James: "I respect and honor Mrs. Tebow's decision.
"Al Joyner: "I want my daughter to live in a world where everyone's decisions are respected."
Sean James: "My mom showed me that women are strong and wise. She taught me that only women can make the best decisions about their health and their future."
Al Joyner: "My daughter will always be my little girl. But I'm proud every day as I watch her grow up to be her own person -- a smart, confident young woman. I trust her to take care of herself.
Sean James: "We're working toward the day where every woman will be valued, where every woman's decision about her health and her family will be respected."
Al Joyner: "We celebrate families by supporting our mothers, by supporting our daughters, by trusting women."
Though the ad came out Wednesday, media outlets were quick to pick it up, disseminate it (with an embedded link on their websites), and address whether or not Planned Parenthood's approach was effective, or "too little too late" in the words of sportswriter Dave Zirin.
A sampling of media reactions:
- Rachel Maddow looks at both the Tim Tebow ad and the Planned Parenthood response and notes that Focus on the Family has "worked on the ad with CBS for months." Maddow calls this the "don't listen to your doctor ad," and says CBS and the Tebows are encouraging women to take risks with their health.
- Slate discusses "Planned Parenthood's Super Bowl Strategy."
- SportingNews.com says, "Planned Parenthood just gave a lesson in Preemptive Strikes 101."
- NBC Sports also examines the controversy and the parody ads that are surfacing.
- USA Today reveals whether or not those polled think CBS should pull the ad, and the decision by Planned Parenthood not to spend millions to air their rebuttal; "We feel the money is better spent with our affiliates at their health centers," says a Planned Parenthood spokesperson.
Related articles:
Tuesday February 2, 2010
When Beyonce shattered records at this year's Grammy Awards on Sunday by winning more honors in one night than any other female recording artist, half of her six Grammys were for the song Single Ladies (Put a Ring On It).
That tune, about a woman who's out clubbing and having a good time despite a recent breakup, earned her Song of the Year, Best Female R&B Vocal Performance, and Best R&B Song. It not only impressed Grammy voters but also Rolling Stone magazine, which gave it the top spot in its 100 Best Singles of 2008. Judging from the number of downloads, it also resonated with the public as well by passing the 3 million mark back in September 2009.
How many times have you heard snatches of the song as a cellphone went off in a crowd, the ringtone playing Single Ladies?
Single Ladies' popularity got me thinking about how women look for -- and are eager to embrace -- songs about powerful, strong, decisive females.
These female anthems are either few and far between in mainstream music, or buried in the discography of female artists better known for their hits songs, or well-known but decades old. (Think Aretha Franklin and RESPECT, Gloria Gaynor and I Will Survive, and that old standard, Helen Reddy's I Am Woman.)
I know when I find one, I add it to my current playlist. But most of the discovery process happens on an individual level. We may crave female anthems, but there's no definitive list of the Top 100 Female Anthems, Top 50, or even Top 10. Why is this?
Where are the great female anthems? Why isn't there a universal consensus about what songs might qualify? I have some ideas about why this is the case and I also look at some of the women whose music might qualify, including Beyonce, Queen Latifah, Liz Phair and others.
But like many of the best efforts of women, collaboration is the key. I'd like your input. What are your thoughts?
Photo © Kevin Winter/Getty Images
Related articles:
Monday February 1, 2010
The Super Bowl's most anticipated ad this year is also its most controversial. And when we watch it this Sunday, we should know the back story to understand what's at stake.
I've already written about why the Tim Tebow "Celebrate Life" ad, funded by the conservative Christian group Focus on the Family, has no place in the Super Bowl. And I've discussed why tackling a highly-charged topic in 30 seconds can only offer a simplistic view of the issues.
But Slate takes it several steps further. In an exceptionally well-researched piece, "The Invisible Dead: The grisly truth about the Super Bowl abortion ad," William Saletan examines the circumstances surrounding Pam Tebow's pregnancy, why abortion was recommended, and why women facing the same grim diagnosis rarely come out with a happy ending.
He makes three key points that place the ad in a necessary context:
1) Pam Tebow wasn't simply facing complications from a difficult pregnancy. As Saletan explains:
According to Pam's account in the Gainesville Sun, she contracted amoebic dysentery and went in a coma shortly before the pregnancy. To facilitate her recovery, she was given heavy-duty drugs. Afterward, doctors told her the fetus was damaged. They diagnosed her with placental abruption, a premature separation of the placenta from the uterine wall. They predicted a stillbirth and recommended abortion.
2) Saletan notes that although placental abruption is rare -- occurring in less than 1% of pregnancies -- it is an extremely dangerous condition for both fetus and mother. In the U.S. , for those women who give birth after an abrupted pregnancy, nearly half the infants are of such low birth weight that low they experience long-term health problems. The perinatal mortality (death in the womb or within 4 weeks of birth) is 12%; outside the U.S., that rate can rise to 38%. Women who continue with an abrupted pregnancy are at risk of internal bleeding, hemorrhagic shock, kidney damage, embolisms, and heart failure. Some estimate that 6% of maternal deaths can be attributed to placental abruption.
3) Saletan points out that the happy ending we're presented with in the Pam Tebow TV commercial is an example of survivor bias:
On Sunday, we won't see all the women who chose life and found death. We'll just see the Tebows, because they're alive and happy to talk about it. In the business world, this is known as survivor bias: Failed mutual funds disappear, leaving behind the successful ones, which creates the illusion that mutual funds tend to beat market averages. In the Tebows' case, the survivor bias is literal. If you're diagnosed with placental abruption, you have the right to choose life. But don't be so sure that life is what you'll get....
If Pam Tebow's abruption had taken a different turn, her son would be just another perinatal mortality statistic, and she might be just another maternal mortality statistic. And you would know nothing of her story, just as you know nothing of the women who have died carrying pregnancies like hers.
Tackling complex issues like abortion in 30 seconds cannot do justice to the intense and passionate viewpoints on either side. Instead, the Tebow abortion ad offers us a Hallmark card version of life and death choices -- a few carefully crafted lines that gloss over a heartrending situation and an impossible choice.What the commercial avoids showing is just as significant as what it promotes.
The commercial doesn't show Pam Tebow looking into the eyes of the four other children she had before Tim and saying, "Mommy wants this special baby, but she might die carrying him. Yet Mommy is willing to risk that and possibly leave you to bring him into the world." In her shoes, would you make that same choice?
Don't believe Focus on the Family's claim that it's not out to sell you something. This isn't as simple as choosing a lite beer or finding a faster way to ship packages worldwide. And the impulse to place it in this context is wrong.
The message shouldn't be shoved in among other attempts to sell consumer goods and services. The Super Bowl isn't the place for life and death decision-making, especially with so many people watching, particularly children.
Related Article: Separation of Turf and State - There's No Room for Abortion Politics in a Super Bowl Ad
