But celebrating International Women’s Day is always such a bittersweet experience for me – a reminder, year after year, that after accomplishing so much during the first three quarters of the 20th century, progress seems to have stalled during the past 30 years.

Maybe it’s because we’re now fighting for subtler rights – not for the right to vote or for the right to own property but for rights such as the right to be free of gender-based violence, for the right to be treated equally in the workplace, and for the right to be treated with respect.

We’re not there yet, and while some of my readers argue that my focus on media portrayal of women is wrong – that we have the choice to simply not consume those images, that the media doesn’t really have that much influence over us, I beg to differ.

I beg to differ because women like Lindsay copeland have taught me that media images did in fact influence their decision to undergo plastic surgery or liposuction; because many women still die every year trying to “improve” themselves with plastic surgery; because until I started educating myself, I never realized how heavily manipulated those media images really are; and because if we don’t know they are heavily manipulated, and young girls and women will not know unless we tell them, women will continue to be influenced by these images and feel inadequate, even depressed.

So what does it mean to be a woman in the 21st century in the developed world? First of all, it means you’re very lucky – by law, you have the exact same rights and freedoms as a man. You’re free to vote, to own property, to drive, to learn, to work. The law protects you from gender-based crime. You are doing so much better than your sisters in the developing world who are still being abused, harassed, raped, kidnapped, maimed, burned, stoned, trafficked, molested, exploited, and abducted on a daily basis – and in most cases, the criminals are never prosecuted, let alone spend jail time or otherwise pay for their crime.

But even for you, being a woman still means paying a heavy social, cultural and financial price. You waste thousands of dollars and precious time every year on looking “feminine.” You wear painful, damaging high heels and restrictive clothes, cover your “imperfections” with makeup, dye your hair to look “better” or “younger,” spend a fortune on anti-aging creams that don’t work, undergo dangerous plastic surgery, deadly liposuction and painful hair removal. You work hard but earn less than men do, work harder and get reprimanded for being a “bad mom.” You play like the guys and are labeled as a bitch, play nice and stay behind.

As the mother of two bright, talented young girls it pains me to say this, but in the 21st century, in the developed world, being a woman is still a major liability.

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International Women’s Day 2010

“For years, I was the primary candidate to fall slave to what society thinks beauty is or what a woman should be. Before I knew it I was 26 years old, 85 lbs with a fake tan, bleached blond hair, and a botched boob job.

No matter what I did, I was still not good enough. I was dating a plastic surgeon who wanted to botox, collagen, inflate, and lypo any inch of me he could put his injected, manicured hands on. I just couldn’t keep up anymore.

That’s when I found the blog world and a new venture towards learning to nurture myself and my soul. Dr. Dickhead was gone and I found a new knight in shining armor… myself.

I also found your blog. You helped me understand so much about how ludicrous our culture can be towards women, ideas of beauty and standards at which we must live by to feel successful or accomplished. All of a sudden, a new light was shed on the slights and tricks the media plays on us. Suddenly, I felt significantly more “normal” because I was seeing that the ideals and standards were never real. Before, I wasn’t aware of simple things like photo shopping and the sexism so many publications partake in.

I deeply appreciate your attention to these and so many more issues. You’ve personally helped me overcome a significant lack of confidence and pride in who I am. I still have a little ways to go, however, I draw inspiration from women like you daily and have come so far!”

Lindsay Copeland
The Appetite for Life

Letter and identifying information published with permission from Lindsay.

Photo by Beyrouth

Loved This Comment: “I think that instead of enumerating all of the things which could potentially be wrong with our bodies, we should enumerate all of the things that are right about them.” Marelisa, Abundance Blog.

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THIS Is Why I Persist With (Occasional) Feminist Blogging

1. Many bloggers have an ‘ulterior motive,’ so to speak. While there are definitely lots of bloggers who blog as a pure hobby or to simply journal their thoughts, many others are hoping to make money from their blog – enough money to quit their day job. Some are hoping to become famous, to land a book deal, or to become experts in their field and land speaking engagements or their dream job.

I loved Brabara Swafford’s honesty in her post Our Blogs, Our Babies – Criticism Hurts, “I know many bloggers (including myself) would like to make a passive income from their blogs.”


2. Making money blogging – real money that would enable you to quit your job – is nearly impossible. It can happen, and it does happen, but in terms of how likely it is to happen to YOU, the odds are overwhelmingly against it.


3. Making money blogging is slightly more likely if you can start a large number of highly optimized niche blogs. This requires a lot of hard work and results are not guaranteed. You need to find niches that have a lot of Google searches, yet are not too competitive. They should also be about things that people would want to buy – otherwise monetizing would be hard.

Next step: start niche blogs covering those topics, fill them with unique, high-quality content that would be useful to readers, highly optimize your blogs for search engines, obtain legitimate backlinks to those blogs (this is the hardest part – easier if you create high quality content that people actually WANT to link to), and – once they’re indexed and appear high enough on the SERPs (search engine results pages) to send you decent traffic – monetize them with ads.

It’s a painfully slow process but if you do it right, and are willing to work hard for many months without seeing immediate results, it can work. You probably won’t make millions, but you can make decent passive income from niche blogs.

4. Starting a non-niche, unoptimized blog, where you share your thoughts with the world and allow your personality to shine through, CAN eventually get you to blogging super-stardom, in which case you will get millions of monthly page views and make good money from ads, from affiliate links or from speaking engagements. But you need to have an extremely unique voice sprinkled with a dash of luck and perfect timing, in order for that to happen.

We are all very special, each of us in her own unique way, but the vast majority of us will never become celebrity bloggers. That’s OK: there are other ways to make money blogging. But to avoid wasting time, it’s important to be realistic right from the start.

5. Your non-niche blog can be very successful and have a large following and you still won’t make enough money from it to quit your day job. You need serious traffic for that – at least 250,000 monthly page views. For the vast majority of bloggers, this is an unattainable number.

6. Correct linking is important. When I started out blogging, I used to link to other bloggers using their first names. It took me a while to learn that these links have little value. When you read something you like by another blogger, and decide to link to them, try to see if you can figure out what keyword they are trying to rank for in search engines, and link using that keyword as your link’s anchor text.

For example, if I link to my friend Davina using her first name, search engines will know to rank her high in the SERPs for “Davina” which is not very helpful. But if I link to her as a life coach, this tells search engines to rank her higher for that phrase. Since Davina is an excellent, down-to-earth, affordable life coach, I am happy to help her rank better in search engines for this term, because people who search for a life coach SHOULD be able to find her.

If you’re not sure about a blogger’s keyword, you can often find it in their blog’s Title Tag. It’s usually OK to link to a post’s title, by the way. Seasoned bloggers always optimize their titles.

7. The companies that want you to review their product or want to place their ad on your sidebar? If you have less than a quarter million monthly page views, they’re buying page rank from you, not ad space. Try telling them that you want to include a “no-follow” tag when you link to them, and you’ll see how quickly they evaporate. Google seriously frowns upon selling page rank, so you should think long and hard if what they offer to pay you is worth the Google wrath.

8. If you’re fairly good at writing, and can optimize posts for search engines and shamelessly promote yourself, a relatively easy way to make money blogging is to blog for others. I’ve been doing it since November 2008, and in 2009 I was able to earn a decent income from my freelance work despite the recession – still not enough to fully support my family, but enough to make a difference in our family’s finances.

9. Unimportant numbers: the number of comments you get on your posts; your number of subscribers. Important numbers: How much money you make each year from your blogging activities; how many hours you put into your blog. And of course there’s your level of enjoyment and satisfaction – blogging does provide a wonderful creative outlet and many bloggers enjoy it regardless of income.

10. Possibly the most important lesson I’ve learned over the past two years: when you publish a blog, criticism WILL follow. Unless you write the most mundane, boring, politically correct blog (but then why write it and why would anyone want to read it?) a blog is about voicing your opinions and providing commentary. Not everyone is going to like what you have to say and that’s OK. You do need to prepare yourself for the fact that criticism on the Internet is often extremely harsh – people allow themselves to attack others in ways they would never do in person. That’s because they are hypocrites and cowards, so you can just ignore them – especially if they attack you anonymously. When faced with such criticism, keep your cool, stay polite, and remember that the more vicious the attack, the more miserable the person behind it likely is. Personally, I’ve learned to just feel sorry for them.

Also, when you receive hate email, DON’T OPEN IT. Delete it permanently right away, and mark it as spam, so that future correspondence from that person will not even reach your inbox. You can usually tell that an email is hateful from the title – definitely from the first line. It’s tempting to keep reading, for sure, but it’s a waste of time and it’s toxic. So just delete it. This is my only criticism of Heather Armstrong’s “monetizing the hate” web page which is otherwise brilliant – it means she’s reading those blog posts and comments and emails, and I think she shouldn’t.

Before I wrap this up, I wanted to say something about the apparent disdain that some bloggers have towards bloggers who “blog for money.”

I blog for money. I love blogging for money. I love the challenge of getting my clients’ websites to rank better in the SERPs. I love the challenge of getting my own posts to rank high for my chosen keywords. I love building and strengthening my clients’ brands with high quality blogs and with vibrant social media accounts. I love the fact that I made enough money from the ads on this blog and from freelance blogging last year to make a real difference in my family’s finances. But I also love writing, and I love my readers, and I enjoy interacting with them (with you!)

I may not be a “pure” blogger, but I am a damn good blogger and I am very proud of my career changes, which I’ve accomplished all by myself, from a miserable lawyer, to a happy-yet-somewhat-bored stay at home mom, to an extremely busy and fulfilled professional blogger.

Can you offer any more blog tips?

Photo by John Loo

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Ten Things I’ve Learned After Two Years of Blogging

When I was a child, my favorite season was winter. I was a quiet child, a classic introvert, and used to love standing at the window, looking at the rain falling down and making up stories in my head. When it snowed (which was rare in Jerusalem of my childhood but sometimes happened), I was even happier: looking at the snowflakes falling down from the sky was the most amazing thing. I loved the way they appeared dark against the sky, but light against the ground. How I prayed that they would stick and that we would get a snow day!

Now that I’m older, I dislike winter. I find the cold, wet weather limiting and depressing. I much prefer warmth, and I especially love spring – it’s my favorite season now and it never fails to bring with it excitement and hope. I mean, how can anyone not love spring? It’s the most wondrous season, filled with so much promise. An annual proof that life goes on, that whatever shriveled and died during the dry summer and the cold winter will always be replaced by something new and young and beautiful.

To me, spring, more than any other season, symbolizes the circle of life – or at least the good part of it. The birth part.

I can’t wait for my roses to start blooming again.

PS. Happy anniversary, Mom and Dad.

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Spring

My oldest daughter is ten years old and I can already feel her slipping through my fingers. She’s still “mine,” thank god – she’s devoted and loving and seeks my guidance and my approval – but here and there I get these tiny, unsettling glimpses into what it would be like in 3-4 years, and I am filled with sadness.

They don’t call them pre-teens anymore. It is now “tweens,” which I hate, but I have to admit that – looking at my daughter – there’s good reason to give a name to those years right before the teen years, right before you lose them forever.

Because you do lose them forever, don’t you? Sure, not all teens have the same need to rebel and to separate themselves from their parents. And many young people eventually find their way back, relearning to respect and to admire their parents. But once the process starts, once the hormones surge and change her, it will never go back to the way it is now.

We love each other so much. We also have a lot of respect for each other. She is smart and beautiful and gentle and caring. In fact, she is one of the kindest people I know. I worry about her: is she too kind? Will people take advantage of her? But most of all, I worry about losing this special connection that we have. I know that the first time she will look at me, and I will see disapproval in those dark eyes, my heart will break.

These days, I am enjoying every single moment with my daughter, and the anticipation of her drifting away only enahnces the joy she brings me now. It’s like savoring the last few bites of a great dish or the last pages of an amazing book… you know it’s almost over, which makes you enjoy the experience even more.

There’s a lot of joy in raising children but there’s also a lot of pain. I guess you open yourself to the possibility of pain and loss whenever you love someone.

I am bracing myself for the inevitable pain of my daughters’ teenage years.

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Slipping Through My Fingers

A miracle of nature, or yet another overzealous photoshopping job?

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Another Perfect Post Baby Body! (Kendra Wilkinson)

As we were standing in line, contemplating our order of a kid-size, single ice cream scoop in a small waffle cone, I glanced at her.

She was young – a teenager – eating fast, holding her extra large cone in one hand, feverishly texting with the other. She looked almost drugged – drugged with sugar I guess. It was obvious that the eating and texting were giving her intense pleasure, soothing her. She was oblivious to her surroundings. When I caught myself staring, I was grateful that she hadn’t noticed.

That afternoon, I was thinking about the girl at the ice cream store, and it got me thinking about Fat Acceptance and about how, after what I saw, I’m not so sure anymore that it’s such a great idea.

How do I accept that girl’s behavior when it’s wrong on so many levels? How do I tell that kid it’s OK to be fat without giving her permission to continue on this destructive path? Instead of talking about how we should accept fat, shouldn’t we do everything in our power, as a society and as a government, to educate the obese, and to tax, or otherwise punish, the food industry whenever it knowingly shoves calories, trans fats and other unhealthy ingredients down our throats?

Perhaps our goal should be to accept overweight and obese people in the sense of never, ever discriminating against them. So, we need to accept fat, but we need not accept the underlying reasons for it – partly our culture, partly the food industry’s carelessness, and partly people’s choices and actions.

How do you feel about “fat acceptance?”

Photo by goodrob13

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Torn About Fat Acceptance

Post baby body. Where did this stupid phrase come from? Implying that women should care about what their body looks like when they just went through a huge transformation and are coping with some of the biggest challenges of their lives, emotionally, mentally and physically.

Just stop it already. After I had my first daughter, even though I didn’t gain a lot of weight, it took me about a year to go back to how I looked before. After giving birth, everything was soft and loose and yes, I had wobbly bits too.

I couldn’t have possibly cared less. I had a newborn, I was nursing her, and my body was very different, but I expected it to be very different. Toned and lean and muscular? That was very nice pre babies, and it’s very nice now that the kids are 8 and 10 and I have more time for myself and can work out every day.

But during that first year, I wore stretch pants and loose tops and I was beautiful and glowing because I was not starving myself in a ridiculous attempt to lose weight fast. I was eating right and taking walks and not stressing over unimportant things such as losing 40 pounds in 7 days, which is apparently what OK! magazine thinks is normal since they photoshopped Kourtney Kardashian to make it appear as if she had done just that:

Kardashian disclosed the fact that she was airbrushed which was quite admirable. How important for all those new moms looking at such a cover and admonishing themselves for still being overweight a few months after giving birth, when it is absolutely, perfectly, normal.

In my dream world, the phrase “post baby body” would cease to exist.

–
Links of interest:

Supermodel Mom Gisele Didn’t Have to Wear Maternity Clothes – where the pressure moves from “post-baby body” to “during-baby body.” Awesome.

Please Don’t Retouch Me – where portrait photographer Timothy Greenfield-Sanders explains that “I’m not unsympathetic. There’s a lot of pressure out there. We all want to be attractive and admired. What I object to is the excess, the shameless retouching, the body sculpting performed by so many magazines, and the dangerous message it sends.”

Loved this comment:

“Why is it they turn something beautiful and meaningful into sick crap?” By Life Coach Tess of “The Bold Life.”

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Post Baby Body: Stop it Already!

This is a short post. It’s not really a blog post I guess, but a photo essay followed by a multiple choice test.

The topic of showing cleavage came up when I was watching the Golden Globes, where many of the actresses were showing serious cleavage, and Mariah Carey especially showed so much cleavage that it was difficult to concentrate on anything other than her big, shiny boobs.

Over dinner with friends the following night, the discussion heated up when a few of us felt that showing cleavage was unnecessary and tacky, others felt that it was completely legit (the “if you’ve got it flaunt it” school of thought) and yet others were fairly neutral, saying that showing cleavage can be either tasteful and elegant (if you’re not showing too much and if you’re not too old and wrinkly), or it could be disastrous (if half your boobs are out there and/ or if you’re decolletage has known better days).

A few photos to give you a general idea of how regular, non-celebrity women are choosing to show cleavage:

Photo by Michael Lehet

Photo by brianschulman

Photo by streetguy

And now to the test. It has a single question and six possible answers.

Question:
How do you feel about showing cleavage?

Answers:
a. It’s a fashion Don’t, of course. Showing cleavage is always slutty, tacky and totally unnecessary.
b. It depends. If you’re fairly young and you don’t show too much, it can look great.
c. Hey, if you’ve got it, flaunt it! And anyone that says otherwise is simply jealous.
d. You call yourself a feminist? Breasts are perfectly natural. There’s no reason to hide them or to fuss about them.
e. Definitely a faux pas. Showing boobs is not a feminist act but rather a cheap attempt at using one’s body for getting male attention.
f. It’s fine, except for the office. I don’t want to see anyone’s cleavage/ chest, regardless of their gender and of how fabulous they look, when I’m trying to get work done.

How do YOU feel about showing cleavage?

Loved this Comment: “What does it say about our society that in order to be taken seriously (particularly at work), women have to pretend they don’t have breasts and keep them covered (but not TOO covered because then they’d be prudes and look unfashionable) according to arbitrary dress rules that were set in place by people without breasts at all (men)?” Noble Savage

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Thoughts On The Very Important Subject Of Showing Cleavage

“High heels are sexy,” explains my friend D. “They elongate my legs. They make my ankles appear thinner. They give me confidence!”

I look at her incredulously. It’s not that I’m not familiar with the idea that high heels are sexy. Of course I am. We all are. It’s not even that I’ve never worn a pair of high heels, or that I don’t own several pairs of them. In fact, I have this pair of gorgeous 4-inch heels that I often insist on wearing when I go out at night. But the older I get, the more I rebel against the very idea that women’s shoes designers and manufacturers think it’s OK to design and sell shoes that cause serious damage to women’s bodies.

Shoes are supposed to make walking an easier, safer experience than walking barefoot, correct? That’s the entire idea behind wearing shoes. And yet, millions of women are buying into the ridiculous idea that shoes that make walking very difficult, shoes that can – and often do – cause a range of ailments and injuries – are sexy and desirable.

I guess the reasoning behind wearing high heels is, “if it makes me look good, I don’t care how limiting, unsafe and unhealthy it is.”

Regularly wearing high heels can cause a long list of not-so-sexy side effects, including blisters, corns, calluses, bunions (Victoria Beckham reportedly now needs surgery to remove those), lower back pain, knee damage, chronic sharp pains in the ball of the foot, ankle sprains, a painful inflammation of the Achilles tendon at the back of the heel, hammertoes, and the list goes on.

None of these sound very sexy to me.

Of course, just because something is bad for women doesn’t mean women will stop wearing it. There’s a huge pressure on professional women in formal work environments to wear heels to work (ever heard of the concept “power heels?”) which is even worse than wearing heels when you go out at night, since wearing them to work day after day, for several hours each day, really adds up in terms of the damage caused to the wearer.

A survey conducted by the American Podiatric Medical Association showed that 42% of women admitted they’d wear a shoe they liked even if it caused them discomfort. 73% admitted to already having a shoe-related foot issue. It looks like very few women are brave enough, and smart enough, to choose a pain-free existence.

I find it incredibly sad that instead of voting with our wallets and refusing to buy 8-inch (EIGHT inch!) high heels, we are opting for crazy treatments such as collagen feet fillers to pad our feet and make wearing crazy high heels less painful.

High Heels Sexy? I don’t get it. To me, you just look stupid when you can’t walk.

Loved this comment: “In the morning on the way to work I’m accompanied by a whole herd of clop-clopping young women on stilty heels. The older I get, the more style just seems to be another word for herd instinct.” Dot, Deeper Issues.

The High heels in the photo are featured at Zappos.com. They are by Dolce & Gabbana and will set you back $1248 should you decide to buy them.

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High Heels Sexy?