Win at my sails

Looks like I have won Best Blog By a Journalist in the Canadian Blog Awards 2009. I can't believe I bested my awesome girlfriends Kady and Susan, but just by a blonde hair. (Note that Kady now blogs for CBC.)

Props to the ladies for dominating the category. Blogging is still a man's thing, mostly.

I also placed third in, can you believe it, the race for Best Political Blog. I guess that confirms that the personal is truly political -- and that women's issues really matter. Not that I need confirmation on that latter score. I'm just saying.

If you voted for me, thank you!

Sneak attack

My friend Balbulican over at StageLeft scores again, this time with his observations on the Harpies' not-so-hidden agenda.

Back before the first Conservative Party electoral sort-of victory, we lefties were convinced that the Harperite wing of the party was driven by a secret program for Canada, a list of priorities antithetical to what we thought our country was all about. No-one ever set out their “secret Conservative Agenda” fears too specifically, but if they had, I imaging it would have looked something like this.

a) The Conservatives will dismantle or choke off funding to the organizations they perceive as “feminist”.

b) They’ll start quietly trying to reverse the growing trend toward social acceptance of gays and lesbians.

As Balbulican muses, who would have thought that the Conjobs would actually openly do these things -- and more? We all figured that, as a minority government, they'd be sneakier about it.

But why should they when, as my friend and colleague Susan Delacourt tweeted today, opposition leader Michael Ignatieff is ''coming to a milk carton near you.''

Go forth and readeth.

The F-Bomb!

Via April Reign...

The torch is passed:

The FBomb.org is a blog/community created for teenage girls who care about their rights as women and want to be heard. Young feminists who are just a little bit pissed off and very outspoken are more than welcome here.

Name

In this case the “F Bomb” stands for “feminist.” However, the fact that the “F Bomb” usually refers to a certain swear word in popular culture is not coincidental. The FBomb.org is for girls who have enough social awareness to be angry and who want to verbalize that anger. The FBomb.org is loud, proud, aggressive, sarcastic…everything teenage feminists are today.

Author

Julie Zeilinger is one of the proudest teenage feminists of all, who delivers every bitter social commentary with a smile.

This, along with the young women of, to name just three F-word blogging communities, Shameless, Feministing and Jezebel, gives this old feminist hope that the terrorists have not won.

Blast them Julie.

Disclaimer

Stolen from my friend Balbulican at StageLeft, with a slight edit.

I am post-dating it so it sits at the top for a while.

That's because some readers believe that, just because I criticize one thing/country, I have to criticize everythingandeverycountryinthewholewideworldeverinthesameblogpostorelseIameeeeeekbiasedorworse.

And I think we all know what I am talking about, don't we?

By the way, I would have included bananas on the list.

I won!

Thanks to all my relatives and readers for voting Broadsides as the Best Media Blog in the 2009 Canadian F-Word Blog Awards!

A Creative Revolution put together yet another video announcing all the winnahs -- come on down Bastard Logic and Womanist Musings and Anti-Choice is Anti-Awesome -- whom you will find on my blogroll.

Unfortunately, the video contains an F-word I may not use here so I can't post it.

But you can find it here.

Congrats to all the winners and runners-up.

And thanks for your votes, even if they weren't for me.

The Voting Booth is Open

We interrupt this vacation to let you know that the voting booth on the F-Word Blogs Awards is open.

Broadsides is up in two categories, Best Blog Oh Canada and Best Media Blog. Friends up in other categories include Sooeys Says, Dammit Janet, MatttBastard of Bastard Logic, Pogge, Alison @ Creekside and The Unrepentent Hippie. Links in the sidebar at the left.

Everything is here, and it's a little more complicated this year. That's to avoid cheating:

When you click on the graphic it will take you to the first voting page. When you place your vote, you can click next, to the next category, or "next" on any category you do not wish to vote on. After you have gone through all the categories, you will be asked for an email address. Make sure it's real eh? Or into the ozone it goes. You will need to confirm it. (this email will arrive from fwords@acreativerevolution.ca, so please check your junk mail if it doesn't arrive. And the spam filter..)

Thanks!

Voting ends midnight tonight (Sunday night).

 

Round trip

The nominations are in and the first round  of voting begins tomorrow in The Canadian F-Blog Awards.

I am up in two categories, Best Media Blog and Best Feminist Blog (English) against some brilliant competition.

Most of the competing blogs can be found in the sidebar at left.

Please vote. For your favourites, for me or against me. It doesn't matter. I just want to see this thing succeed.

Thanks.

From the fet-o-files

I am occasionally attacked for using the term ''anti-choice'' instead of ''pro-life'' to describe the pro-forced pregnancy types.

But I have never bothered to describe the onslaught from the fetophiles for you, dear readers.

Today the one, the only, the inimitable, the great, JJ has.

You have to go read it.

UPPITY DATE: I edited this post to fix the link which was not working, as commenter mouthyorange so kindly pointed out.

The thing is, back then, it was like that

From my favourite blog right now, the insane Blame It on the Voices, a page from the not-so-distant past:

And some people don't get why we middle-aged feminists worry?

UPPITY WOMEN DATE: Sociological Images did some digging and guess what? This is not a spoof.

it turns out it’s real–the images are from a book called I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!, written by Whitney Darrow. You can buy it used on Amazon for the bargain price of $269, if you want to be sure your kids don’t get confused about their roles.

Except that maybe it is?

From School Libraries, published by the American Association of School Libraries, 1969:  ”This warmly humorous book makes everybody glad they are what they are.”

From The Horn Book Magazine, 1970:  ”He’s glad he’s a boy and she’s glad she’s a girl.  In this warmly humorous book, they tell each other why and conclude that the best reason of all is — because they need each other!”

From the “Books for Children” section in Childhood Education, 1970:  ”Simple drawings with line captions designed to help the young child discover his or her appropriate sex role.”

Makes no difference really because, like I said, back then, it really was like that.

Stick it to them

By way of Sociological Images, this eye-opening quiz called ''When they were curvy'' by the folks at Ayyyy!

It's pretty straight-forward.

Below are 10 celebs, ranging from the super-famous to the lesser-famous. I am no stargazer but I knew of all of them. In these photos, how they used to look. Lush and healthy.

Now they're a lot thinner. A lot thinner.

See if you can guess who they are:

Answers -- plus their current looks -- are here.

OOPSY DATESY: (This part weirdly dropped out of my original post.)

What happened between then and now? Did these women become ill?

True, in a few cases, drug abuse became an issue. As for the rest, is the pressure to wear designer gowns on the red carpet so great that they would, in a couple of instances, get scary thin? Don't tell me most are not more attractive in their ''befores.''

So what happened over this past decade (or so) to account for this?