Model Minority: How Women's Magazine's Whitewash Different Ethnicities

Hat tip to one of my faves: Racialicious




Here's the article.

What do you think? Have you found any women's magazines that are moderately mainstream but also celebrate genuine ethnic diversity?

Here's an excerpt. I like this sassy writer's style:

My name is Alex Alvarez. And I hate women’s magazines.

Don’t get me wrong: I like fashion and I’ve worked at several magazines over the past couple of years. I can talk about Courrèges and Two Girls, One Cup in the same breath. But so many women’s magazines, both “fashion” mags like Glamour and Vogue and “sexy” mags like Cosmo and Horse & Hound do women so much more harm than good.

Women’s magazines have long been accused of creating a standard of beauty that will forever be just out of the grasp of most women - prompting them, of course, to wait until next month’s issue for more advice on how to be perfect. (Hint! Transplant your face with this other face.) Selling women this promise not only keeps magazines on newsstands and subscriptions in the mail, it also helps appease the real driving force behind all magazines — advertisers and Satan. And what women end up purchasing is cosmetic “whiteness.” You know you’ve made it, baby, when you wake up looking like you faceplanted on Plymouth Rock.

Advertisers and Satan! HA!

And don't forget to join PWCL and CARA tomorrow at Noon at PSU. Learn the real deal about Healthy Sexuality, not what the magazines tell you!

Women in Islam

A few nights ago, I started reading book I was sent when I forgot to turn turn in the reply card for my book-of-the-month club. The book is Infidel by Ayaan Hirsi Ali, and it is a memoir of Ayaan's life growing up as a Somolian refugee in various countries in the Middle East and Africa.

Be forewarned there are powerful and disturbing description of her clitoris and labia being "excised," and the author describes being caught up in the wave of Islamic fundamentalism that washes over Africa in the seventies and eighties. She talkes about her struggles to live a pure life according to the religion she was born into while questioning a faith that tells her she must submit absolutely to the will of her father and her husband - even if they beat and rape her.

I thought Ali's descriptions of women's roles in Islam were especially interesting in light of training I attended recently as part of the Diversity Leaders Network at TACS. The training was titled: Muslim Culture: Get Accurate Information. One of the faciliatators was a fairly young woman who talked about the importance of gender equality in Islam, and this is something Ali talks about as well. But gender equality is something that seems to be more readily accessible to facilitator of my training than to the author of this book.

What struck me in comparing the two woman was how much culture affects religious beliefs. As Ali travels from one African county to the next, Islam is practiced in very different ways, and of course, our culture, plays into the way it's practiced here.

This book is a fascinating reading if anyone is looking for a recommendation.