The conference here in Ireland is just over and I am doing a short 2am recap. It has been a great half-week, I have been a bit star-struck meeting some more of the people whose work I read. No job offers but got some lovely feedback from my presentation and chatted to some of the right people. Tonight at the gala dinner I felt like being at a conference full of PE teachers and teacher-educators is not the best place to be if you have body issues as many of the women are tiny, fit and toned. But I should get used to that, or not have body issues, or get more toned...
Also the lighting in my hotel room is dark/moody/dim so no clothing photos would come out properly - no
DYB pics for me yet - but I'll try to recreate what I wore when I get home. I got complimented on my new dress that has been sat in the wardrobe for two months waiting for the right opportunity. Also on my big black and white earrings, which was nice I guess.
Two more conferences next week! And a paper to submit to journal! When I am going to write my thesis which I told everyone I would have done by October??
Sunday, 26 June 2011
Tuesday, 21 June 2011
I'm taking part in Dress Your Best
Academichic is running a Dress Your Best fortnight. Meaning dress to show off your best parts (rather than focusing on the bad parts). So I'm turning this neglected blog into a fashion blog for a short while. Especially as I am at conferences this week and next and hoping to impress potential employers, so I want to look professional and put together but not boring.
Letting people get away with sexism
In the last few months I have stewed over a few occasions where I have not called someone out on their sexism/racism/classism. Usually I am very quick to point out to people that what they've said is not okay. I imagine that I have a bit of a rep for being mean and a spoilsport and anal about things that are supposedly meant as jokes. But my justification (do I need one?) is that this is my activism because I don't get to do marching and letter writing and all that.
Most of the time I can't believe someone of my acquaintance would say what they have. I am all over Facebook people calling hacking "raping". Wrong.
But sometimes I don't tell someone they've said something bad. One was my future father in law (yeah, D and I got engaged! More on that later) so I felt rude pointing it out.
Another was a professor in my dept who had been asked to speak at a social for PhD students. He spoke about his life history in academia. His speech was peppered with outdated wisecracks about sexy female students - I can't bring myself to talk about it. I don't think he knew his audience. It was like he was still in the 1970s. And if he felt it acceptable to speak in such a way in a mixed, young audience, what does he talk like among his peers? Shudder. What was worst was that, as a professor, I felt unable to boo, hiss, whatever. I've never met him before. Everyone else clapped. Then the women I was sat with all turned to each other and we said, did he really just say that? We were stunned into silence. The social organisers had let him get away with. The other (also male) professors had let him get away with it - although they came over to us afterwards and apologised on his behalf! It has got round the department now, among people who weren't at the social. Two weeks later I am still annoyed that I let him get away with it - but I wasn't sure what I could have done. Certainly it explained a few things about my department if that is the culture that is allowed.
So, should I feel bad for calling people out, or for not calling people out? With whom is it acceptable to turn a blind eye? Those we respect? Older people who we *should* respect? If I stand my ground how do I come across to people?
Most of the time I can't believe someone of my acquaintance would say what they have. I am all over Facebook people calling hacking "raping". Wrong.
But sometimes I don't tell someone they've said something bad. One was my future father in law (yeah, D and I got engaged! More on that later) so I felt rude pointing it out.
Another was a professor in my dept who had been asked to speak at a social for PhD students. He spoke about his life history in academia. His speech was peppered with outdated wisecracks about sexy female students - I can't bring myself to talk about it. I don't think he knew his audience. It was like he was still in the 1970s. And if he felt it acceptable to speak in such a way in a mixed, young audience, what does he talk like among his peers? Shudder. What was worst was that, as a professor, I felt unable to boo, hiss, whatever. I've never met him before. Everyone else clapped. Then the women I was sat with all turned to each other and we said, did he really just say that? We were stunned into silence. The social organisers had let him get away with. The other (also male) professors had let him get away with it - although they came over to us afterwards and apologised on his behalf! It has got round the department now, among people who weren't at the social. Two weeks later I am still annoyed that I let him get away with it - but I wasn't sure what I could have done. Certainly it explained a few things about my department if that is the culture that is allowed.
So, should I feel bad for calling people out, or for not calling people out? With whom is it acceptable to turn a blind eye? Those we respect? Older people who we *should* respect? If I stand my ground how do I come across to people?
Wednesday, 12 January 2011
You speak like a misogynist
Well hasn't it been a long time since I've posted. I don't like new year resolutions but it should be a sort of one to write more. Who knows, it might help with the real writing. I finished my data coding a couple of days ago (I took about a month away from it to do some more reading) and ... now what?! I'm revising my codes and creating categories to try to link things together into themes but it's daunting - I mean, what do themes look like? Does each Research Question have a theme? It's been easy when I've done it before, but this is my baby and has to be right! Small bits of writing, I think.
Anyway I blog today because it seems Iris Marion Young's famous phrase from 1980 "throwing like a girl" is still being used today, unbelievably. Actually, sadly believable, because there's nothing worse than being called a girl/girly! Especially if it's the president of the USA. Apparently he throws like a little girl, according to an American TV presenter Jow Scarborough. See WVON on the case here.
Obama certainly gets a lot of body policing but this one really gets to me.
Little girls throw just fine; and a "weak" or incorrect throw, if there is such a thing, should cast no aspersions on gender, race or any other stereotypical way of using and inhabiting the body. Obama throws like a girl? You, Joe Scarborough, you present TV like a misogynist!
Anyway I blog today because it seems Iris Marion Young's famous phrase from 1980 "throwing like a girl" is still being used today, unbelievably. Actually, sadly believable, because there's nothing worse than being called a girl/girly! Especially if it's the president of the USA. Apparently he throws like a little girl, according to an American TV presenter Jow Scarborough. See WVON on the case here.
Obama certainly gets a lot of body policing but this one really gets to me.
Little girls throw just fine; and a "weak" or incorrect throw, if there is such a thing, should cast no aspersions on gender, race or any other stereotypical way of using and inhabiting the body. Obama throws like a girl? You, Joe Scarborough, you present TV like a misogynist!
Monday, 30 August 2010
Me and PE
Between the ages of 17 and 22 I didn't even own a pair of trainers. When I visited a friend and she had Kung Fu class, she invited me to join in, but I put a mental block on it and refused to see myself doing it. Aged about 22, I don't remember why but I bought a pair of trainers and some jogging bottoms and joined the gym at the local leisure centre. That lasted about three years, on and off, maybe once every two months on average over the whole period. Then I broke my finger and didn't get back into it once I recovered. I still have that same pair of trainers and they look pretty new. Since I stopped going to the gym I reckon I've worn them about ten times (for football or squash). I went jogging on Hove seafront once, for about 300 metres.
I'm not inactive - I've played tenpin bowling weekly since I was 11, with only about four years off in that time. I also went out dancing a lot during uni. And I never once got a car or bus to school, ever.
But that's not very active for someone in a Sports Science department. Most other people here either are or were competitive in the Athletics Union, trained to be a PE teacher, or they jog, swim, play football, etc. regularly. Not me, despite studying young people's constructions of status in physical activity. I think I keep guiding my research towards answering a few of my own questions about my own relationship with activity - why was/is it irrelevant to me?
I'm not inactive - I've played tenpin bowling weekly since I was 11, with only about four years off in that time. I also went out dancing a lot during uni. And I never once got a car or bus to school, ever.
But that's not very active for someone in a Sports Science department. Most other people here either are or were competitive in the Athletics Union, trained to be a PE teacher, or they jog, swim, play football, etc. regularly. Not me, despite studying young people's constructions of status in physical activity. I think I keep guiding my research towards answering a few of my own questions about my own relationship with activity - why was/is it irrelevant to me?
Sunday, 29 August 2010
Thinking about "new femininities"
Supervisor and I are going to a conference next week to present work from the Geographies of the Body project for the first time. Something that has gone in the paper is a mention of "new femininities" which at first I didn't understand but I'm getting that it means sexy but girly, go getting but male-centred, heterosexed and still in high heels. The Cosmopolitan womanhood I suppose. Recently there was a post at The F Word responding to a piece in a rag by Agent Provocateur about female sexuality where basically they are still prescribing to women a male centred notion of sexual "freedom" but packaging it up as pro-woman. Now women are prudish if they don't wear AP's uncomfy bits of lace. Forgetting that feminism brought the ability for women to say yes to sex. And it reminded me of the new femininities that suggest empowerment but really offer male pleasure still.
New femininities are being discussed in our paper with regard to movie Bend It Like Beckham. I'm unsure whether I find BILB as bad as some people think; it is stereotypical but might offer some girls role models who experience similar tensions between family and football. And the Sikh Indian stereotypes are not the only ones; it is not only the Indian girl who is not considered normal. So I guess the film does attempt to offer a new femininity that is fixed and ideal - western, attractive, not too sexy, still in love with the guy, sporty but in a way that doesn't make your body look "wrong". I've ordered another couple of DVDs of women football films so I'll see what they turn out like.
New femininities are being discussed in our paper with regard to movie Bend It Like Beckham. I'm unsure whether I find BILB as bad as some people think; it is stereotypical but might offer some girls role models who experience similar tensions between family and football. And the Sikh Indian stereotypes are not the only ones; it is not only the Indian girl who is not considered normal. So I guess the film does attempt to offer a new femininity that is fixed and ideal - western, attractive, not too sexy, still in love with the guy, sporty but in a way that doesn't make your body look "wrong". I've ordered another couple of DVDs of women football films so I'll see what they turn out like.
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