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Jul

14

A world, and a press, without women


Have you ever imagined a world without women?  What if there were only men?

A Google search on “a world without women” brings up a lot of results. So here’s my contribution:

What if editors were only allowed to publish stories about men? Since women aren’t at the top now anyway, maybe we should tell them that they can’t write about us.

And think about which topics would get covered and how – war, sports, and rhetoric – maybe a few other things?

But no coming home from war to wives or girlfriends or mothers.  No celebrating after a win in the midst of NASCAR groupies and no stump speeches about reproductive rights or, goodness, equal pay between the genders. Ack – no stories about Christie Brinkley and her fourth divorce, or Miley Cyrus or Anne Hathaway.  Of course you also wouldn’t have Marie Pasteur or Mother Theresa or Melissa Etheridge either.

Who would be on the cover of People magazine 52 weeks of the year?  You can only do Sexiest Bachelor Alive so many times a year.

Why would I suggest such a thing? Which clearly I haven’t thought out (definitely looking for input in the comments)?

Here are some reasons:

Twenty bloggers we want to see in bikinis

Top 10 Female bloggers for Playboy

Vagina Hero

There’s never been a great woman artist

There are no great female nonfiction writers

There are no great female intellectuals

And of course, women aren’t funny

Jessica Wakeman offers this at Salon.com re: why these lists bother some of us:

For those of us trying to earn and hold onto respect, hottie roundups are more of the same-old bullshit where women with impressive lists of accomplishments are treated with that much less than their male counterparts. When women bloggers are afforded less respect than is deserved by their journalism/tech peers who should know better, it’s an ice-water-on-the-face reminder that a factor in a woman’s worth is how she falls in line with conventional beauty standards (called the “the male gaze” in gender studies — although Ariel Levy’s “Female Chauvinist Pigs” aptly explained how it’s not just men perpetuating the problem). In other words, should we pity the fat-fingered, greasy-skinned, stringy-haired coding genius? Or is she lucky enough to be exempt from this hoopla?

Oh – and that thing re: world without women? The men still have the same sexual desires. There are just no women.

It would be unfair for me to not include two positive lists that came out recently: Top 50 Female bloggers (kudos to Anita Campbell, BlogHer and several others for getting noted, but it’s very obviously short on WOC – I noticed immediately) and 100 Awesome Webmast Blogs by and for Women and if you google “top 100 women” you’ll find plenty of lists that have been compiled but sadly, reinforcing my frustration, here are the first returns:

Top 100 Sexiest Women and How Many Have Tattoos — By Vince Hemingson

A quick look at the Top 100 list reveals that one of the things that many of the women picked have in common is body art, i.e. tattoos! …
www.vanishingtattoo.com/top100_women_tattoos.htm – 18k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

The Top 100 most searched for women | MSN Hotlist

Hotlist presents MSN UK’s Top 100 most searched for women featuring Britney Spears, Jessica Alba, Paris Hilton and many, many more| MSN Hotlist.
hotlist.uk.msn.com/2007/top-100-women-2008.aspx – 35k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

THEN followed by:

Top 100 Women July 2008 FIDE Top players archive

FIDE – World Chess Federation, Online ratings, individual calculations.
ratings.fide.com/toparc.phtml?cod=130 – 31k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

GAME INDUSTRY’S 100 MOST INFLUENTIAL WOMEN : Next Generation …

Sep 11, 2006 … I’ve read the top 100 women in the industry on this site which is great .. but I have a question … why is it that the majority of games …
www.next-gen.biz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=3783&Itemid=2 – 67k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

Top 100 Women Artists

A top site list of women artists websites from around the world.
www.root-top.com/topsite/womenartist/in.php?ID=178 – 3k – Cached – Similar pages – Note this

Sigh.  Maybe it was just a harmonic convergence this week.  I saw a lot of tweets indicating that bloggers of major, productive and well-written blogs were feeling a lot like me.  Summer. Vacation.  Need it. Now.

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By Jill Miller Zimon at 7:29 am July 14th, 2008 in Blogging, Business, Civil Rights, Culture, Flip, Gender, Media, Politics, Sexism, Social Issues, Women 

Comments

2 Responses to “A world, and a press, without women”

  1. 1 Tracy on July 14th, 2008 9:39 am

    Lawdy. That’s a fine how do you do for Monday morning! (Sadly?) This did spark my imagination about a few innovative lists about men that could be compiled…

    I wish I could be seeing you at BlogHer. Have a fabulous time!

  2. 2 Jill Miller Zimon on July 14th, 2008 9:44 am

    Hey Tracy, thanks. :) lol

    Well- you know – sometimes the mind just goes like that and there’s that blog thing waiting to be fed, right?

    Thanks re: BlogHer – they will be live-blogging ALL the session and recording all of them too I think. I’ll be posting links later this week for people who would like to engage! I think it will be a lot of fun – but very exhausting.

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