Strong Is Beautiful

As we know, gender equality for sports has been a tough issue over the years, weather it's male cheerleading, or women's basketball, I think media has taken its toll, and so has the production behind it. 

Everyday, male and female athletes go about their same routines, getting up early, watching what they eat, and committing to their sports and training, they both have the same amounts of dedication to their sports, regardless of their gender. So why is it that we have so much more respect for male dominant sports rather than we have for women's? It seems as if females are seen as non-violent, emotional figures while men are seen as tough and aggressive.

It always seems that women get the shorter end of the stick when it comes to athletics. The Men's Olympic soccer team flies business class to their games, whereas the women fly coach. Apparently we don't play as well, sell enough, or overall look as good as men do in sports. We're 45 years into the title IX bill, and us women are still judged on how we look when we play rather than how we play. I feel like too many sports companies try to make women's sports more appealing. Companies are always looking for a way to feminize gear and make it more appealing to men. I play volleyball, and I want to feel good about how I look when I play, but not judged on how short my spandex is.

Clara Hughes, an olympic speed skater
participating in a mostly male-dominated sport

Even aside from the required wear there's the actual playing. Some sports require less contact and strength between women in the sports whereas the men are encouraged to push and shove and get aggressive. Many of these rules apply to baseball/softball, hockey, and lacrosse. Overall even more people are upset over the money male athletes make over female athletes. It is shown that men make a considerate amount more than their female counterparts when it comes to athletics, and that even male teams are more prone to having a larger budget increase than female teams. We have made great strides in the 21st century on showing more and more women athletes  on TV, yet we still see more male sports coverage on TV   than woman's.

It has also come to be that we have pushed certain sports into the specific men's/women's sports category, like labeling volleyball, tennis, track, gymnastics, and cheer, as being female sports, and basketball, wrestling, football, soccer, and baseball as male sports. Even though it seems that some of these sports appeal to a certain type of gender, it still doesn't mean we have to discourage kids from participating in the sport they love, just because of some silly stereotypes. On TV it bothers me that when portraying female cheerleaders, volleyball players, etc, it shows them as sexy, catty girls who are bullies, and have no faith in their sports. Whereas the males are dedicated, and ready to face whatever comes in their way. When the media focuses on female sports, it is usually on ones that society identifies as feminine. We stereotype the female gender in traditional female sports. Why are us women compared against each other in appearance, and not in performance, skill, and dedication? Masculinity comes in all shapes and sizes, and you can still be a pretty face while being a hard-working athlete.

WTA's "Strong is Beautiful" campaign

This is just my opinion, and I can only hope that in the future, us women won't be cheering on the sidelines, or sewing the team uniforms, but actually playing the game, like we are now.

~ Governess Bob

Hens in Pens and What Humane Should Mean

 Whenever I see something like eggs or meat advertised in the grocery store “humanely treated” it, like most people, makes me happy. But it also makes me mad that so many animals we farm are treated terribly to the point that we think it's an exception when they're not treated badly. Yes, it's a whole lot cheaper to cram as many animals as will physically fit into one space, but it would also be cheaper if people only walked places and never went on vacation. If we spend money to make ourselves comfortable, then can't we afford just a little to make animals healthier and more comfortable? When animals are penned and caged too closely together, they spread diseases more easily, and it's more likely to make the people who eat them sick. Many people say that you can taste the difference between an egg laid by a well treated hen and one from a badly treated hen. If people can taste when animals are unhappy, I think that it's really time to change things.

Hens in a commercial cage free farm

I'm really grateful that some places are actually treating the animals well, but doing the right thing should not be something special. Humans are not the only thing that matters, and everyone needs to realize that. Just because humans are the smartest animals does not mean by far that we are the most important. Everything else can feel to, and if we're breeding animals just to eat them, the least we can do is to make them happy. It's the same thing with products that are advertised as being made by people who were paid well and not mistreated. How can money matter more than health and happiness? It's not like the big commercial farms are going to go out of business if they let the animals out of their barns and cages. They would still have a lot of money. I can't see how someone can go to bed after working on a commercial farm and not feel terrible. Worst of all, usually eggs that are labeled cage free, if they're commercial, come from hens packed so tightly in barns that you can't see the floor, and the eggs cost more. If you do buy from farms that actually treat all of the animals humanely, everyone thinks it's great, but hardly anyone thinks it's bad when you buy from places that don't treat animals well. Packaging should stop trying to say that their animals are treated nicely when they're not. Humane should mean that the animals can go wherever they like, eat the food that they're meant to eat, and be happy. Inhumane should not be the standard. Cruelty should not be what everyone is used to.

--Luna

"We're Such Nerds"- How It's No Longer "In" to Be Smart

Hey guys!
So today I'm going to deviate slightly from my usual theme and write something that is nothing like my other posts. As much as I love ranting about female representation in the media and dissing sexism and that sort of thing, I felt like this was a post that really needed to be written. And, well, here I am.

The idea for this post came a couple months ago when I was texting one of my close friends. We were in deep discussion about one of the things that consumes the majority of our time- homework. It wasn't one big pity party in which we complained about how much homework we had to do (I say that because that has happened plenty of times), but a rather animated conversation about new things we had learned. My friend got particularly excited to tell me about a new concept she had come across in math and I was telling her about an essay I had read in my American History course. After a good half-hour of carrying on in this manner, we agreed that we were total nerds.
That happened again a few weeks later. I spent hours with the same friend trying to identify a tree together via Facebook and we were thrilled a few days after when we finally figured it out. And again- "we're such nerds."
But that kinda got me thinking. Sure, we kind of are nerds, but why do we have to use that term in a self-deriding manner? What's wrong with being excited about new insights into common events in history? Is it a problem to be intrigued by a new concept that should be somewhat helpful in the future? Absolutely not. However, I think the main reason that we felt that we had to "apologize" for our enthusiasm for learning with a derogatory word like "nerd" is because I doubt society would agree with my above statements.

In a world of "can't even" and "lol" and "idk", could it be more obvious that we, as a society, have decided that it's not cool to be smart anymore? We feel the need to bring down our level of intelligence in a very public way with text talk and hashtags, and we pin labels like "nerd" on anyone who shows a genuine interest in being something more than that. I'm not saying you're an uneducated animal if you're into that stuff- I, for one, admit to being guilty to the more-than-occasional abbreviation and intentionally horrid grammar while on the internet -but it seems pretty ridiculous to me that we've adopted this tragically unintelligent way of communication as the norm. It's alright as a way of communication if it feels more convenient, but I see no reason why we feel like we have to paint ourselves as less intelligent to be "cool".

There's a spoken-word poem I really love written by Taylor Mali, a high-school English teacher who also decided to write really awesome poems like this one. It really conveys what I'm trying to say (probably more adequately than I can myself).
It describes the way we've fallen into this awful way of speaking, about how it's no longer the cool thing to sound like you know what you're saying. The whole poem mimics the infamous internet tone, making statements sound like questions and inserting unnecessary fillers such as "like" and "y'know".

The end of the poem challenges its listeners to speak with conviction- to "say what you believe in a manner which bespeaks the determination with which you believe it". We have all this ridiculous little abbreviations and slang words that we use to do the exact opposite of that (however inadvertently). If we happen to be some of those whose sense of wonder and enthusiasm for learning still remains through this universe filled with an overwhelming sense of unintelligence, then why shouldn't we wear that proudly? Why does "nerd" have to be a bad thing? Why do we have to apologize for what we know when our own knowledge only adds to the positive things we can contribute to the world?

I guess what I'm trying to get at is that creating a culture where feel pressure and pressure others to act(and sometimes, consequently become) unintelligent seems counter-productive to creating a more enlightened society. And that starts with being proud of our nerdiness- not apologizing when we're so excited about FINALLY identifying that stupid tree, or getting a difficult math problem right. We shouldn't be embarrassed to be dedicated to our education, and shouldn't be ashamed of a precious love for learning. Why does nerd have to be an insult, anyway?
--Oswin

Always' "Like a Girl" Ad

We've reached over 900 pageviews! Thanks to everyone out there reading us.
     I wanted to share this video with you guys that Always just put out. They use the ad to talk about the  "you __ like a girl" insult. I thought they did a nice job with it. It goes very nicely with what Luna was talking about in her April post: You ____ Like a Girl! I've put the video below.

You know, it is ridiculous that people use the phrase "like a girl" as an insult. If I do something like a girl, it's because I am a girl, and that has nothing to do with how well I do the thing. You never hear "you run like a boy" being used as an insult. Since when did being a girl become an insult?

Hope you enjoyed the video.
-- Captain Sarah Jane