The Lady Garden

Things we liked, or didn’t like, from around the internet this week.

Underwear that admonishes to “ask first”? Picking on Victoria’s Secret? Using sexy knickers to create a conversation about rape culture? SO MUCH GOODNESS.

Balancing Motherhood and Work and Art.

More art: beauty and power and the male/artist’s gaze.

A woman’s beauty is supposed to be her grand project and constant insecurity. We’re meant to shellac our lips with five different glosses, but always think we’re fat. Beauty is Zeno’s paradox. We should endlessly strive for it, but it’s not socially acceptable to admit we’re there. We can’t perceive it in ourselves. It belongs to the guy screaming “nice tits.”

Thanks to Atheist Pinko Sluts for sharing this Dan Savage video. I’m (Emma) ambivalent about Dan Savage: some of what he says is brilliant, some is surprisingly dickish from such a smart guy. I don’t agree with quite everything he says here – I think some people actually are naturally wired for monogamy – but the overall drift is well worth thinking about.

Jill Filipovic in the Guardian takes apartthe argument that a generation of selfish singles is destroying the family.

When the traditional family model isn’t something that everyone is expected to personally sacrifice to create, we can construct and implement policies that benefit actual families, in all of their incarnations. When they are not a crass economic contract where financial support is traded for housekeeping and child-rearing but instead a unit based on love, respect and mutual support, marriages last longer. The conservative and religious promise that there is only one best way to live, one that requires temporal sacrifice and is justified solely by obligation but will be rewarded by happiness in the afterlife, but it doesn’t actually lead to good outcomes here on Earth.

I am the woman in your department who does all the committee work – queue hollow laughter from all my (Deb) female colleagues.

I hope the pre-Christmas frenzy is not too frantic for you, and that you are finding some time to relax, somehow… Feel free to share grumps, grumbles and celebrations in comments.