Undercover Boss: Hooters CEO Coby Brooks

On February 14th’s Undercover Boss Hooters CEO Coby Brooks went undercover to find out how his company functioned from the bottom up. He went into this thinking of Hooters as a family restaurant, a place where he’d have no problem letting his daughters waitress. Unfortunately, he ended his journey the same way. I’m disappointed in this episode and in Coby Brooks. He had an opportunity to break through his preconceived notions and to see through his privilege, and he wasted it. He could have realized that when you market a product based on women’s breasts and legs that you’re going to find many people who take that seriously. You’re selling it Coby, why are you surprised that people are buying it?

Read more at It’s Ridiculous Y’all.

Black.

11,692 people were so bothered by women posting “beige” or “white” or even “zebra” as their Facebook status, so left out of the secret, or so disturbed by the idea that women freely discussed their bras, that they struck back with “jokes” that advocate violence and blame the victims of that violence.

Read more at It’s Ridiculous Y’all.

Possibility of asylum for victims of abuse.

Last week, the Obama administration opened the way for foreign women who are victims of severe domestic violence to receive asylum in the United States. “In addition to meeting other strict conditions for asylum, abused women will need to show that they are treated by their abuser as subordinates and little better than property, according to an immigration court filing by the administration, and that domestic abuse is widely tolerated in their country. They must show that they could not find protection from institutions at home or by moving to another place within their own country.” [Source]

Do you have any idea how hard it’s going to be for a woman to prove any of that? In a culture where domestic violence is widely tolerated it is just that, tolerated. Assumed to exist. Considered to be the norm. Who will speak up for this woman and help her prove she is little better than property? Who will testify that she is subordinate to her husband when in her country that is just how things are? Who will even think they should or could?

Read One small step at It’s Ridiculous Y’all.

A dialogue in response to the Fem2.0 blog carnival on caregiving.

TAMARA: We spend our personal–and often our professional–lives caring for others but when it comes to our own needs, those don’t even make the list! We’re lunch-skippers, lack-of-sleepers, and it seems we’re almost always in need of a little self-care.

SAMANTHA: Taking care of yourself first goes against an extremely powerful cultural impulse, and honestly most of the time it’s just too hard to do that.

Read Lean on Me at It’s Ridiculous Y’all.

Naomi Wolf, Angelina Jolie, and me.

In the July issue of Harper’s Bazaar Naomi Wolf writes about “The Power of Angelina (Jolie),” suggesting that women want her and want to be her because she has and does it all. Jolie, she says, transgresses boundaries, rebrands single-motherhood, and even defies the social stigma of “homewrecking.” All of this is because Jolie has “created a life narrative that is not just personal [but] archetypal… [bringing] together almost every aspect of female empowerment and liberation.” Key to Wolf’s argument is how Jolie has apparently defied one of the main forms of social control instituted by the patriarchy, the Madonna-Whore dichotomy. Women can be good but not sexy, they can be sexy but then obviously they are not good, and Jolie is both good and sexy.

Wolf’s argument falls apart, in my opinion…

Read This is not your empowered female archetype at It’s Ridiculous Y’all.