National Post

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Special Guest Post: Why it’s important to talk about Anita Sarkeesian and Tropes vs. Women In Video Games

“Just like any other kind of media analysis — film, television, advertising, media — video game criticism can tell us a lot about ourselves.”

By Emma Woolley 

http://natpo.st/YSElc6

nationalpostsports:

For the first time in its 80-year history, Augusta National Golf Club has female members.

The home of the Masters, under increasing criticism the last decade because of its all-male membership, invited former Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and South Carolina financier Darla Moore to become the first women in green jackets when the club opens for a new season in October.

Both women accepted.

“This is a joyous occasion,” Augusta National chairman Billy Payne said Monday. (Photo: Mark Ralston/AFP/Getty Images)

Stephen Hawking: Women the biggest mystery in the Universe
The biggest mystery in the universe perplexing one of the world’s best known scientists is — women.

When New Scientist magazine asked “Brief History of Time” author Stephen Hawking what he thinks about most, the Cambridge University professor renowned for unravelling some of the most complex questions in modern physics answered: “Women. They are a complete mystery.” (Photo: Sarah Lee/The Science Museum/Reuters)

Young girls make vicious bullies
I don’t remember being bullied by other girls when I was young. But I do remember with shame having failed to do the right thing as a teenager at summer camp, when a cabinmate — we weren’t close, and she wasn’t socially attractive, but still — was cruelly humiliated.

“Shira” kept a diary, as many of us did at the time. A mischief-maker found it, and some intimate details of Shira’s sexual fantasies about a male counsellor were read aloud to shrieks of pitiless laughter. To this day I can vividly recall the moment’s exact setting, and Shira’s horrified face. I also recall my own visceral empathy with her pain, in spite of which I didn’t step up to the plate and denounce my cabinmates’ barbarism.

The rumours spread around the camp, and Shira’s summer was ruined. Looking back, I have to wonder how that vignette affected her life and her relationships with women as an adult. Such a betrayal isn’t something any girl would forget.

The good retrospective news for Shira is that she grew up before the era of social media; her mortification was socially contained and unarchived. Shira’s fate today might have been that of 15-year-old Phoebe Prince of South Hadley, Mass., an Irish newcomer who, relentlessly hounded on Facebook and in text messages by girl peers (“slut” was the leitmotif), hanged herself in her closet in 2010. In the aftermath, the question remains: “Are girls really meaner?” (Illustration: Kelsey Heinrichs/National Post)

Paint colours given masculine makeover
Real men don’t paint their basements in Butterscotch Tempest. They colour the walls with Beer Time.

The original names were geared toward women, just as nail polishes are marketed with witty shade names (Essie’s “Ballet Slippers,” “Not Just a Pretty Face,” and “Sole Mate,” for example).

“When it comes to paint names, it’s all about the emotional connection and our research shows that men and women tend to relate to paint names differently,” Alison Goldman, a spokeswoman for CIL Paints, says.

‘‘Studies show that while a larger percentage of women tend to choose paint colours for their home, it’s often men who give the colours a final nod.”

Saudi women given right to vote, run for office. Is driving next?
Saudi King Abdullah on Sunday granted women the right to vote and run in municipal elections, in a historic first for the ultra-conservative country where women are subjected to many restrictions.

“Starting with the next term, women will have the right to run in municipal elections and to choose candidates, according to Islamic principles,” he said in speech to the Shura Council carried live on state television.

“Muslim women in our Islamic history have demonstrated positions that expressed correct opinions and advice,” he told advisors.

Women’s rights activists have long fought to gain the right to vote in the Gulf kingdom, which applies a strict version of Sunni Islam and bans women from driving or travelling without the consent of a male guardian. (Fahad Shadeed/Reuters)

Trending: Ladies in red
A friend of mine, for whom having a heart-stopping face was not enough, used to dye her hair a red verging on carmine. She was at her most potent then: She wore black velvet, smoked thin cigarettes and laughed generously. When her hair began to fade back to a regularly lovely sort of amber, she seemed also to retreat a little from life. I couldn’t say which change came first: the hair or the temperament.

For no woman are the two so inextricably tangled than the Titian kind. “Gentlemen prefer blonds, marry a brunette and have always had a thing for a redhead,” goes the Playboy-ism. But while blonds and brunettes are plentiful enough to dilute their stereotypes, natural redheads spring from a genetic mutation occurring in less than 4% of the (Caucasian) population. We simply don’t know enough of them to know them. In ancient Egypt, the fire-haired were offered sacrificially to Egyptian gods; in the Middle Ages, they were presumed to be vampires. And while the Celts considered them sacred, the Irish-loathing Brits consequently persecuted them (even today, “gingers” are bullied in savage England). And in the rest of the Western world, true redheads remain as wanted and elusive as that vermilion villain, Carmen Sandiego.

“There is a certain kind of woman who wants to have red hair,” says L’Oreal Professional’s director of education, Colin Ford. He points to Julianne Moore as the natural, nu-Titian ideal; her, or a Moulin Rouge!-era Nicole Kidman. “If someone dyes her hair red, she wants the attention, and she is not afraid.” Although “flash reds” — the highly unnatural, sour-cherry hues seen most often on hairdressers themselves, or Rihanna — are increasingly popular, Ford says most fake redheads don’t want to look it. “There is something special about being a redhead,” he tells me — then concedes he’s rather ginger himself.

Japan defeats Sweden to move onto the Women’s World Cup finals. The Japanese team will play the U.S. on Sunday for the Championship. Read more here

Photos of the day
Afghan girls walk past a female Canadian soldier from 6th Platoon, Bulldog Company, 1st Battalion, 22nd Royal Regiment as she rests  during a patrol in the Panjwai district of Kandahar province southern Afghanistan, June 13, 2011. Canada will end its combat role in Afghanistan by the end of July, after nearly ten years fighting in Afghanistan. (Baz Ratner/Reuters)

Canada left Taliban ‘on its knees’: Afghan commander
Canada’s efforts have left the insurgency in southern Afghanistan “on its knees,” says the commander of the Afghan troops who have been fighting alongside Canadian soldiers.

“It is a matter of fact that the Canadians sacrificed a lot here,” said Brig.-Gen. Ahmed Habibi. “I remember there were 400 or 500 Taliban in the area when the Canadians came to Kandahar in 2006. They are the ones who stood with us and fought not only in Panjwaii but across the province. The enemy is on its knees here now. The truth of it is that it is because of the hard work of the Canadians.”

‘Virginity tests’ done, general says
An Egyptian general said the military conducted forced “virginity tests” on female protesters in March, actions that have outraged Egyptian activists who called for demonstrations to condemn the incident.

“The girls who were detained were not like your daughter or mine,” the general, who did not want to be named, told CNN.

“We didn’t want them to say we had sexually assaulted or raped them, so we wanted to prove that they weren’t virgins in the first place.

“These were girls who had camped out in tents with male protesters in Tahrir Square, and we found in the tents Molotov cocktails and [drugs],” he said.

Amnesty International had previously called on the government to investigate accusations that the army tortured and abused women arrested in the protests. (Miguel Medina/AFP/Getty Images)

Smiling men are the least attractive: study
The axiom that nice guys finish last has received new validation in the form of a Canadian study that suggests women are less sexually attracted to men who smile.

The University of British Columbia study found that women were least attracted to smiling, happy men, preferring those who looked proud and powerful or moody and ashamed.

On the other hand, men were most sexually attracted to women who looked happy, and least attracted to women who appeared proud and confident.

The study, published Tuesday in the journal Emotion, is the first to show that women are sexually attracted to a brooding hulk, while men are sexually attracted to a smiling beauty.

“We know that women like the bad boy. The James Dean, Edward the vampire — all these guys who are very broody, we know that women find them attractive,” said Jessica Tracy, the study’s lead researcher. (Photo: Reuters)

Arsenic, lead and mercury discovered in Canadian cosmetics
You won’t find lead or arsenic on the ingredients list of your favourite lip gloss or eyeliner, but a Toronto-based environmental group has tested dozens of cosmetics products commonly used by Canadians and found virtually all of them were contaminated with heavy metals.

Environmental Defence released a study Monday that shows Canadian consumers can’t assume their cosmetics products are safe, even if they read lists of ingredients carefully.

“Canadians deserve to know what is in their cosmetics,” said Rick Smith, executive director of Environmental Defence. “Given the choice, we think most consumers would not put arsenic or lead on their lips and faces.”

Researchers asked six women from various parts of Canada to name five products they use daily. The researchers then purchased these products in Toronto, along with five other commonly used products, and sent them to an accredited laboratory to have them tested for the presence of arsenic, cadmium, lead, mercury, beryllium, selenium, thallium and nickel.

All these heavy metals, except for nickel, are banned from being intentionally added to cosmetics in Canada because of negative health effects. But contaminants can show up in makeup for various reasons: they may have been present in raw ingredients, they can be by-products of the manufacturing process, or they can be formed by the breakdown of ingredients. In the case of heavy metals, they may be present in rocks, soil and water used in the manufacturing of pigments, for example.

To be (and not have) kids: How aunthood makes putting it off that much easier
It’s not a question of “if” kids are for me, but “when,” except that “when” is never “now,” and is always a distant, Elysian “later” that realistically is not in the next, say, three years. Having kids has never been on my immediate radar, since I am among the twenty- and thirtysomething women who went after careers and independence (as we were once told to do by our teachers and bosses and parents) instead of the right kind of men and the subsequent house and kids (as we’re now being told to do by our magazines and doctors and parents). (Illustration by Kagan McLeod)