In light of the (not so shocking, sadly) news that author Junot Diaz is a total douche canoe, I feel like we need to have a talk about women's rights. Sit down, children.
Feminism is not the evil F-word it once was. Sure, plenty of people out there still claim to be "not feminist" even though they believe women deserve to be treated like people, which, okay, if that's the case, you're a feminist. Learn things. But for the most part, the world is starting to wise up and realize that women are people... people who have to deal with a lot of crap in their every day lives.
My response to this is duh. I've known this since I was ten years old and the boys at my middle school got to play flag football in PE class while the girls were forced to do Buns of Steel videos. What the actual fuck. This is a true story.
SNL also responded to this realization back in December when Saoirse Ronan and friends came out with the "Welcome to Hell" sketch (image featured above). Here's a sampling of some of the lyrics: "Cat's out of the bag, women get harassed all the time! And it's, like, dang, is this the world now? But here's a little secret that every girl knows. Oh, this been the damn world."
So yeah. We still need feminism, boys and girls. And every time we take two steps forward for women's rights, it seems like we take another two (thousand) steps backward. But here are some monumental steps forward and steps back for feminism that have happened recently in pop culture (because pop culture is what this blog is about, y'all).
Read more