Jean Kilbourne and Diane Levin Thong panties, padded bras, and risque Halloween costumes for young girls. T-shirts that boast “Chick Magnet” for toddler boys. Sexy content on almost every television channel, as well as in books, movies, video games, and even cartoons. Hot young female pop stars wearing provocative clothing and dancing suggestively while singing songs with sexual and sometimes violent lyrics. These products are marketed aggressively to our children; these stars are held up for our young daughters to emulate-and for our sons to see as objects of desire. Popular culture and technology inundate our children with an onslaught of mixed messages at earlier ages than ever before. Corporations capitalize on this disturbing trend, and without the emotional sophistication to understand what they are doing and seeing, kids are getting into increasing trouble emotionally and socially; some may even to engage in precocious sexual behavior. Parents are left shaking their heads, wondering: How did this happen? What can we do? So Sexy So Soon is an invaluable and practical guide for parents who are fed up, confused, and even scared by what their kids-or their kids’ friends-do and say. Understanding that saying no to commercial culture-TV, movies, toys, Internet access, and video games-isn’t a realistic or viable option for most families, So Sexy So Soon is filled with savvy suggestions, helpful sample dialogues, and poignant true stories from families dealing with these issues. So Sexy So Soon provides parents with the information, skills, and confidence they need to discuss sensitive topics openly and effectively so their kids can just be kids. |
Danya Ruttenberg At thirteen, Danya Ruttenberg (editor of Yentl’s Revenge: The Next Wave of Jewish Feminism), decided that she was an atheist. As a young adult, Danya immersed herself in the rhinestone-bedazzled wonderland of late-1990s San Francisco: attending Halloweens on the Castro, drinking smuggled absinthe with wealthy geeks, and plotting the revolution with feminist zinemakers. But she found herself yearning for something she would eventually call God. Surprised by God is a religious coming of age story, from the mosh pit to the Mission District and beyond. It is the memoir of a young woman who found, lost, and found again communities of like-minded seekers, all the while taking a winding, semi-reluctant path through traditional Jewish practice that eventually took her to the rabbinate. It is a post-dotcom, third-wave, punk-rock story of the political implications of integrating life on the edge of the twenty-first century into the discipline of traditional Judaism without sacrificing either. |
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The Touchstone Girls Touchstone, part of the North American Family Institute, is a residential treatment facility for female adolescent offenders in Litchfield, CT. In the Fall of 1999, award-winning poet Sharon Charde began a creative writing program at Touchstone for young women to tell their stories and express themselves in positive ways. The result, almost ten years later, is a wealth of poetry, some published, that provides sometimes painful insight into the world of too many youth today. |
Sarah Sentilles Women have been among the most dynamic and successful ministers; but in divinity school, Sarah Sentilles discovered that some of the best and brightest of them were having trouble and even leaving the church altogether. To find out why, she entered the lives of female ministers. Talking with women of various ages and races in a range of churches, she emerged with the first real portrait of what it’s like to lead as a woman of faith today. What Sentilles found was that despite many churches’ resistance to re-imagining ministry for anyone but a man, many of these women are achieving remarkable transformations in their congregations. |
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Maegan “Mamita Mala” Ortiz Join Amy Richards and Maegan “Mamita Mala” Ortiz for a frank conversation on radical mommyhood. The two examine how making the decision to have a child impacts who we are and who we want to be (as women, feminists, anti-racists, and artists); the intersections of feminism and motherhood; and how race and class in particular, play an important role in how motherhood is encountered, seen, and experienced. Amy Richards is the author of Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself, and the co-author of Manifesta: Young Women, Feminism, and The Future and Grassroots: A Field Guide for Feminist Activism (both with Jennifer Baumgardner). She is co-founder of the Third Wave Foundation and the feminist speakers bureau Soapbox. She lives in New York City with her family. Maegan “Mamita Mala” Ortiz is a radical Nuyorican mami, blogger, poeta, and freelance writer. La Mala is currently co-editor of one of the top US Latino blogs, VivirLatino. She is also a contributor on Anti-Racist Parent. Her words , blogging, and opinions have been featured at The Washington Post, The Huffington Post, NPR, and Latina Magazine. |
Helen Thomas WAM!2008 kicked off with an unmissable talk by Helen Thomas, noted news service reporter, Hearst Newspapers columnist, member of the White House Press Corps and White House bureau chief for United Press International. Thomas was the first woman officer of the National Press Club, the first woman member and president of the White House Correspondents Association, and the first woman member of the Gridiron Club. |
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Janice Erlbaum And every week, there was the unspoken question, the one I didn’t know enough to ask myself : Have you found her yet? The one who reminds you of you? Twenty years after she lived at a homeless shelter for teens, Janice Erlbaum went back to volunteer. Now thirty-four years old and a successful writer, she’d changed her life for the better; now she wanted to help someone else-someone like the girl she’d once been. Written with startling candor and immediacy, Have You Found Her is the story of one woman’s quest to save a girl’s life-and the hard truths she learns about herself along the way. |
Marina Wolf Ahmad, Founder and Director of Big Moves Could there be a better way to spend Valentine’s Day than with women you love? Watch CNW celebrate Valentine’s Day with fabulous local sheroes as they share their favorite poems, stories, essays, selections of prose, or anything that they love! |
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Carol Gilligan Kyra is an architect, involved in a project to design a new city. Andreas, a theater director, is staging an innovative production of the opera Tosca. Both have come through political upheaval and personal loss. Neither wants to fall in love. Yet when she asks him, “What is the opposite of losing?” and he says, “Finding,” it galvanizes a powerful attraction, and they risk opening themselves to love once again. |
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