The Katniss Doll…great, let’s glorify this.

Jezebel.com just posted an article about the new Katniss Everdeen doll. Of course, I think this is a much better option than little girls playing with Barbies. However, I don’t think the message about media is coming across from the book to its mass audience.

While reading “The Hunger Games,” the theme the struck me the most was our take on celebrity culture. We manufacture these ‘perfect’ humans and push them out to the masses for public shaming, critique, and disposal. Our culture is always looking for the next and best, and we have destroyed people in the public eye because we don’t have something new and shiny to play with. In the book/movie, each year a boy and a girl from the ages of 12-18 are offered up in tribute in a death match with one winner. It’s a television show. It’s a way to keep people occupied so no one starts to question their living conditions. I understand that the purpose of a doll is not to absorb our attention away from the critical corporeality of our lives. I do think that it’s lionizing this character — and with that aggrandizing the idea of expendable celebridom. It’s a doll. We play with it. We throw it away.

Politics and women’s health

There is a lot going on in the political sphere that may directly affect my health and my body, and with those tenants come along certain misconceptions surrounding women. I’m going to post more comments that have been said to me recently — and my responses.

You are ignoring your role as a woman if you don’t want to produce a child:
Alright. So what you’re saying is that because I want to do more with my life than raise a child, I am ignoring my roles as a woman. First let’s for one moment remember that no where does it definitively state the roles of women, and since that is a grey area you cannot push me into a set of responsibilities that have not been outlined. I’m assuming that the fore mentioned roles you speak of pertain to being a nurturer or the caregiver — and as a woman my job is to give up my life in order to take care of a baby I should want to have inside of me. What about people like myself who cannot bear children? Am I ignoring my role as a woman because I don’t have that ability?

My tax money shouldn’t go towards birth control:
Well, my tax money went to two wars that I don’t agree with so maybe you should suck it up.