You ugly

It seems people everywhere have been talking lately about what it is to be ugly.
Hack on TripleJ this week has been doing shows about Body and Beauty - this afternoon I got to listen to a guy talk about how much it sucks being an ugly person. Which, it seems, wasn't much of a deal for him. At one point he said "yeah, in high school I was the ugly guy and it was just accepted and we got on with it". I'm looking forward to the rest of the week's episodes. Here's a linky to the Hack page, they usually post the shows after a couple of days.
I stumbled upon this great documentary called Too Ugly For Love, which is about Body dysmorphic disorder, which I had only heard of briefly before. It must be an absolutely terrible way to live, and I'm sure it's hard on partners and friends of people with BDD as well. Check out the doco - it's frustrating to watch, as these are people who just plain believe above all that they are ugly, but fret and worry and obsess over it.
A friend of mine wrote a fantastic post called The Definition of Ugly, where she talks about how she is not conventionally pretty, and then follows it up with a totally awesome, inspiring post called The Definition of Beautiful about how she is fucking gorgeous. Cause she is.
Then there was the finale of Australia's Biggest Loser sometime recently (I don't know, I don't watch TV, I don't have an antenna, it's great) and I was compelled to look at all the before and after photos of these people.
And ugh, if that wasn't enough to make me barf, the most-viewed galleries on my regular news sites were galleries of the Miss Universe Australia and Cleo Bachelor of the Year competitions, cause we all sure do love rewarding people for being pretty.
With all this beauty-talk floating around I turned where I always turn in these times when I want to think about something: to Wikipedia. And boy does the article have some truthful and funny quotes. Let's see what we've got here shall we?

"Despite the existence of universally agreed upon signs of beauty in both genders, both heterosexual and homosexual men tend to place significantly higher value on physical appearance in a partner than women do."
This reminded me of a conversation with my coworker the other day. He asked me how many 'categories' girls make up for men - you know, hot, cute, etc. I was up for some heady generalising and I came up with about 5 - Ugly, Average, Cute, Hot, Handsome. I added that although a guy may be ugly, that's no indicator that he won't pick up if he's nice or funny or interesting or intelligent. I then asked how many categories girls have.
The answer? I'd-Fuck-You or I-Wouldn't. There's also a small in-between section called Come-Back-In-A-Few-Drinks.
How many 'ugly' guys do you see with hot chicks? Plenty.
Now think about how many 'ugly' chicks you see with hot guys.

Back to wiki - on Build being a determinant of male attractiveness:
"...Western men have a tendency to overestimate the amount of muscle considered ideal by women..."
Hehe. This just reminds me of those guys I see walking to the gym with their stupid Fitness First bags and they can't put their arms straight by their sides, and they're wearing singlets. Singlets should never be worn by men. I hope they know that.

Oh this one is lovely - Breast size as an indicator of female attractiveness. Note that the section for female attractiveness is so much larger than the one for males. Because that's how you're being judged dear.
"Large breasts have also been shown to be attractive to men in Western societies, with the explanation that larger breasts will more explicitly show the aging process, hence an "honest" indicator of fertility."
So when your boobs start to sag, it's time to trade her in for a shiny new one. I love how pretty much every single guy I've ever known, when it's come to the "breast size" conversation has said with a straight face, "I only like as much as my hand can hold", yet you never yell and whoop and loudly point out the small-chested girl walking down the street, SmallHands Joe. But I guess it's okay to make a big deal out of someone's boobs when they're huge. It's not like they would be there unless she wanted you to see them right! Huh, am I right?! Cause they're on the front of her like that, she just WANTS you to look at them! Hey, she's not looking, cop a feel!
I'm really glad I don't have big boobs. I have heard some pretty fucking depressing stories from my big-breasted sisteren. At least I can hide mine with a jumper.

Body mass & body structure: "...it should be noted that, in the United States, women overestimate men's preferences for thinness in a mate"
Wouldn't you say this is because it is constantly being shoved down our throats that we HAVE to be thin to be beautiful? What the fuck else are you supposed to think when that's what you are told your entire life? I'd like to let it be known that it only occurred to me about two months ago that my stomach was not fat because it sticks out a little in line with my hips. Because that's where my organs are! I'd just never ever seen a photo of a celebrity with the same stomach as me. I'd also like to let it be known that my legs are short and round and super muscular. So are a lot of other girls' I know. One time, someone I considered a friend pointed to one of my girl-friends with the same legs as me and said "Man every time I see her all I can hear in my head is "THUNDER". Yeah I get it. Thunder thighs. Thank you. I'm super confident now. I'm just glad she didn't hear.

Ooh...the article also brings youthfulness and fecundity into it, confirming everyone's fears that you get ugly and useless as you get older. Since you're constantly getting older, wouldn't you just be getting uglier minute by minute?
"...a preference of neotenic and youthful-appearing features. Full lips, clear, smooth skin, clear eyes, lustrous hair, and good muscle tone are all viewed as attractive in women."
Then it also goes into some stuff about female attractiveness based on hair, including body hair, and reaffirms all that crap we've been through before in here about dudes not liking your body hair you filthy gorilla-she-wolf. So we're bringing it all back to the "paedomorphic characteristics" desired in women by males, which unless you need me to spell that out for you, is disturbing. I know a lot of guys who really do prefer girls who look very young. Wikipedia says here: "As men age, they also desire a larger age gap from their mates".

Veering off a little on the whole body hair thing, considering it seems to be a huge trend in the past couple of years, if it hasn't been happening since time immemorial, that dudes don't like your pubes, can I just say this... I hate when the discussion of "to shave or not to shave" comes up and women pull out the defense "I'm a full grown woman, I don't want to look like a pre-pubescent girl down there". I'm going to posit that shaving is not a matter of me wanting to look like a pre-pubescent girl. I'm also really hoping that the people I have slept with who prefer shaved pubes are also not into the "pre-pubescent" look for the sole reason that, "hey dude, heh, it looks like I'm sleeping with a 12 year old. Hawt."
It's for comfort. I don't count the existence of hair on my snatch as the miraculous proof that I Am A Lady. You can continue to not shave. But don't call me any less of a woman cause I do.

Anyway, all this thinking about vagina has led me on the obvious path to thinking about James Franco, so I'll leave you all with some happy thoughts.

Dear James Franco:
I had a dream about you this morning and it was very sexual, and I'm hoping that you think that's okay and if you do, do you maybe feel the same way, and if you do, would you like to get together for coffee sometime?
Love Tash

Ada Lovelace Day

Ada Lovelace Day is...

an international day of blogging to draw attention to women excelling in technology. Women's contributions often go unacknowledged, their innovations seldom mentioned, their faces rarely recognised. We want you to tell the world about these unsung heroines. Whatever she does, whether she is a sysadmin or a tech entrepreneur, a programmer or a designer, developing software or hardware, a tech journalist or a tech consultant, we want to celebrate her achievements.

I am the LEAST prepared blogger in the entire world. I had planned on emailing a woman I saw at a panel about women in gaming a while ago, and I'd even written up the draft email but for some reason I just never sent it. So instead, I'm going to be extremely lazy and have put together a mashup of my favourite blogs and a couple of articles about women in tech. If you don't click through to links, then your best bet is to just leave now. Get ready for GRATUITOUS LINKAGE!!!

I shall begin with my favourite blog of all time, Jezebel. It deals up daily news, celebrity, sex, fashion, etc all with a bit of a feminist twist. It's also got a brilliant community of hilarious wimmen.
Now some love for my favourite blogger, Violet Blue. As it says on her front page, she is an "author, sex educator, blogger, podcaster, GETV reporter, The San Francisco Chronicle's sex columnist, robotic artist, and a Forbes Web Celeb." I head over to her blog Tiny Nibbles for all the erotica I could ever want.
ShinyShiny.tv is the pinkest website I've ever seen - it's updated daily with all the newest gadgets coming out on the market - phones, cameras, notebooks, game consoles and even vibrators.
Here's two new ones that I've just found recently - Emily Chang and GameGirl.com. Emily is an award-winning web designer and my favourite part of her site is the eHub which is a constantly updated list of web applications. GameGirl is like it sounds, a blog focused on all things gaming, written by girls, definitely worth a look.
Girl Geek Dinners plans meetups of girl bloggers in pubs and restaurants to share their love of all things geeky and tech.
Here's a cool article on wikipedia about women in computing with a timeline of women who made advances in technology.
I've posted it before but I'm posting again this post by a blogger named Kate Harding about cyberbullying and stalking.

These are a little off topic but I've been lurking around sci-fi blog i09.com all day and I looked up all the best posts regarding women.
What Chicks Don't Like About Science Fiction
Could You Live In A World Without Women?
Why All Female Superheroes Look The Same
and New Doctor Who Should Be Female, Say Female Scientists

And finally, one of my favourite songs, kind of a one-hit wonder from a band called White Town.
This is from their album "Women in Technology" and the song is called Your Woman. I'm sure you've heard it on Rage before at 2am. Enjoy!

Wired Women

Tonight I attended the Game On talk titled Wired Women, held at the State Library of Queensland. It was being held as part of the Game On exhibition currently showing at the library.
It was facilitated by Jane Turner and the speakers were awesome, although their introductions were so long and I was just so excited to be there that I may be wrong in their job descriptions.
Associate Professor Ruth Christie is from QUT and from what I gather she works in a function to encourage people into the IT, science and engineering industries, and I know that she has a much more important job, but I really suck at taking notes (my pen was outta ink). Hannah Crosby works as an artist and designer for THQ Australia. She offered a lot of views of the artistic side of game creation, and she was very well versed in how games and gaming affect society - very well spoken. I was really interested in Penny Sweetser though, who works for 2K Australia and again I hate this phrase but - from what I gather, she majors in AI, and works in that side of game production.

Throughout the talk they discussed the topics of the lack of women with careers in the gaming industry and why this might be, and women who play games and the effect that a broadening appeal of games has to people (not just women).

Regarding the lack of women with careers in gaming, it became clear that the industry is not exactly well publicised as a career choice - both Penny and Hannah said they both had no idea you could even HAVE a job like that, until they basically fell into it. Ruth talked about how the jobs are readily available, but there is such a low percentage of girls who are taking the university courses that would make those jobs available to them. She said that the gaming industry simply cannot attract women into it. On the way home, the friend who I went with spoke with me about this - we both work in offices on the same street as game studios and yet would never have even realised that they exist in such abundance. Perhaps different could be said of America, but for us we always thought it was just an American thing, that kind of job wouldn't exist in Australia - but there's the proof right down the road from us. This definitely speaks about the publicising (or lack thereof) of the gaming industry. Ruth suggested more "Open Days" for school children so that they can realise this kind of career DOES exist - she believes that is the age that you need to capture someone's imagination for it.

My favourite speaker was Penny Sweetser. For every discussion of what games appeal to "normal women" or how some games are not marketed to "normal women", she was always quick to say, well, I'm a normal woman, and I play these games. She made one excellent point by saying "as long as a game doesn't actively alienate women, there are going to be women who want to play it".
When somebody remarked about the ol' glass ceiling in a gaming career for women, she countered that there was none, the gaming industry is extremely receptive of women, it's not just a boy's club, they want that diversity because many different viewpoints and backgrounds will help to create a great game.
I loved that for Penny, nothing was really about being a "woman in gaming" like it was some kind of badge or label. The final question, when asked how do they all keep passionate in their professions, she simply answered "I just love games."

There was great discussion about how women are portrayed in video games, and Lara Croft was mentioned. Hannah said that she only minded "when a character's bra size is bigger than their IQ" and stated that she thinks that gaming is about escapism and women players want to have that element that they could be or wish they were this person - just like men do. If you think about it, when are the characters in "guy's games" ever effeminate little boys?
My friend and I talked later about how when playing a game that allows you to choose what gender you are, we often pick women - don't know what this says about us, although in general I prefer to play games where your character is pre-determined. As an aside, that reminds me of an excellent post I read today over at Shakesville written by Melissa McEwan where it's mentioned how kick-ass the female characters have become in fighter-arcade style games. Ling Xiaoyu FTW King of Iron Fist Tournament!

All in all, I enjoyed the talk immensely. I liked that it was more focused on the career side of the gaming industry and how it is open to women - I was pretty inspired to run out of the room and go finish my IT course.

The talk was recorded and should be available shortly on the State Library website. I'll come back and update when it does get put up. In the meantime, some generous soul should head to Steam and gift me Left 4 Dead. Love you.

Here she comes

Today I was obsessed with two articles on Jezebel (I live there).
The first topic was pageantry - the article is called Miss America: Empowering or Embarassing? I've always struggled to figure out why exactly it was that pageants made me feel so uncomfortable. What I love most about Jezebel is that I can go there with an unformed opinion yet a vague leaning, read the discussions and come away with a more informed view. The commenters have many different viewpoints, experiences and histories, which makes for awesome debates.
On the pageantry topic, I do find it demeaning. Pageants these days are often rewarded with scholarships and contestants not only have to look pretty, but also be involved in community work and choose a charity to volunteer for. That's lovely.
The fact is, in the end, this isn't a Nice Person contest. The modern portrayal of pageants as a platform of volunteering, intelligence, and further education does seem like a total lie. Because the judging criteria is not based on that.
Two comments that particularly stuck with me:
"If this were a high status, desirable thing to do, men would be doing it and trying to prevent women from doing it. They aren't."
"There's nothing feminist about taking part in a contest that privileges conventionally attractive women over those who are not."

Next, the What Do Women Want? article! Man, were all my favourite blogs totally ripping this apart today. Instead of trying to say anything new, which I would fail at anyway, I'm just going to link to a whole bunch of great pieces regarding it.
Jezebel's post
Feministing
Feministe (very awesome)
Violet Blue (I love Violet Blue)

So go at it, read them all, from professional awesome-bloggers, instead of little old me.

In other news, tomorrow night I'm going to a talk called Wired Women, at the State Library. It's about where the diversification of the gaming industry might take future game play. I'm pretty excited about that. Thursday I will be having my first singing lesson and I have no idea what to expect and I'm kind of nervous because, let's face it, it's been a while and my voice sucks. But I guess that's the point of taking lessons.

Anyway...good afternoon, good evening and goodnight.

Horror Babes

I'm enamoured with babes in horror movies. I'm not talking about the ones whose clothes seem to come off so easily, who trip over constantly (are you drunk?), who scream and squeal and do things that make you yell at the screen in frustration. By the way, is there any other genre that produces as many ouraged cries of "HE'S RIGHT BEHIND YOU, DUMBASS!" as the world of horror? No, today I'm talking about the heroines of horror. While they also may not wear much clothing at times, they still kick ass, still get scared, but ultimately keep their wits and save the day. Alternatively, I've included a few here who are the incarnation of evil! Enjoy:

Ana (played by Sarah Polley) in Dawn of the Dead The main female protagonist of this DotD remake, Ana's a nurse who is consistently the voice of reason throughout the movie. She gets the honour of killing Steve-the-douchebag-turned-zombie (yay!) and is never pushed out of the action.


Sarah (played by Lori Cardille) in Day of the Dead Day of the Dead is the third in Romero's five Living Dead movies, this one set in a military bunker with characters who may be the last people left alive on earth - one of which being a scientist named Sarah, the only woman in the movie, aside from the dead ones. Being the only woman in the bunker, she has to be tough. Tougher than her boyfriend anyway, who has a breakdown after his arm is amputated and totally ruins everyone's shit, while Sarah leaves him and escapes with the other non-deranged people.


Selena (played by Naomie Harris) in 28 Days Later She's lasted 28 days since the rage virus spread and she has no qualms with immediately killing anyone she believes to be infected.


Carrie (played by Sissy Spacek) The quiet outcast who snaps on prom night after being humiliated and massacres everyone with her telekinetic powers. The book was written by Stephen King, who is my god for always writing not only the best books ever, but the best and strongest female characters - but that's another post.


Mrs Voorhees (played by Betsy Palmer) in Friday the 13th The entire movie the identity of the killer is so ambiguous until finally it's revealed - the middle-aged mother of a boy who drowned at the camp years before, bent on revenge. Nevermind that the kids she's killing aren't responsible for Jason's death, let's kill em all anyway!


The Monster's Mate (played by Elsa Lanchester) in Bride of Frankenstein My personal favourite - the Bride, created solely for the purpose of being Frankenstein's mate, is brought to life. Upon seeing her betrothed, she screams and rejects him.


Cherry Darling (played by Rose McGowan) in Planet Terror She has a gun...for a leg. Do I need to say much more? Go-go dancer leads a ragtag group to infiltrate an army barracks, does all the work for them, then proceeds to restart civilisation on her own after the dude she was fucking goes and dies. ALL WITH ONLY ONE LEG.


Leeloo (played by Milla Jovovich) in the The Fifth Element Milla kicks ass in every movie she's ever in, and although there should be a heads up to Alice from Resident Evil, my favourite character of hers is Leeloo, who is the Fifth Element that along with the four stones will create the ultimate weapon to destroy the Great Evil. So...there you go.

Amanda (played by Shawnee Smith) in the Saw series Amanda is John Kramer's first surviving victim who becomes his apprentice before going on to become a fully-fledged graduate of the school of Jigsaw.


Kate Fuller (played by Juliette Lewis) in From Dusk Till Dawn Juliette Lewis kicks monumental amounts of ass, but for this post I decided to pass up Mallory Knox and go with Kate Fuller. Watching her go from sweet little girl to vampire killer is pretty awesome, not to mention being one of the last two left alive. Even if Seth does dump her at the end. It wouldn't have worked out.


Dawn O'Keefe (played by Jess Weixler) in Teeth This movie straight-up ruled harder than anything ever, and everyone should see it. Dawn is a high-school girl who has pledged abstinence until marriage, that is until her "nice boyfriend" rapes her and dies in the process because Dawn has vagina dentata!! Teeth is an excellent black comedy although there is one scene that made me completely uneasy, and it had nothing to do with people's weeners being chomped off.


Honourable mentions, though they fall under a sci-fi banner more than horror I think, no list would be complete without the awesome:

Special Agent Dana Scully (played by Gillian Anderson) in The X-Files Ohh how I love you Scully, you voice of reason you. She is the skeptic to Mulder's believer. I love it more than anything when she gets her gun out, or lays the smack-down on someone, and those case reports she types out at the end of the episodes?! Let's just say that my love for Scully runs deep.


Ripley (played by Sigourney Weaver) in the Alien series All hail Ripley! If you can't figure out why Ripley was the last on this list and why I really don't have to say anything here, then you need to get off your computer and go watch Alien, then consider how much you wish you were that awesome. "Get away from her YOU BITCH"