Skip to main content

Home/ History Readings/ Group items tagged lookism

Rss Feed Group items tagged

Javier E

Sarah Palin's Mustache - The New York Times - 1 views

  • “In effect, we had typically ‘man lighting’ and ‘female lighting’ — and they weren’t the same. Also, because our editorial policy was not to alter news photos, we generally did not use close-up images of women on the cover because of the potential for an unflattering image.”
  • Newsweek was accused of sexism because we did not airbrush the photo. The truth was, we’d portrayed Ms. Palin just the way we did male candidates
  • Why, then, does the lens through which we view and judge prominent people still remain more magnified, harsh and unforgiving for women than for men?
  • ...1 more annotation...
  • The incident reveals fascinating fault lines in the way we view public figures: Why do women need to be perfect? What do we expect from our political leaders? Why can we portray men in close-up and not women? Why are male blemishes signs of authority while women’s are signs of shame?
Javier E

These Maryland teens rated their female classmates based on looks. The girls fought bac... - 0 views

  • a screenshot of the list, typed out on the iPhone Notes app.
  • It included the names of 18 girls in the Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School’s International Baccalaureate Diploma Programme, ranked and rated on the basis of their looks, from 5.5 to 9.4, with decimal points to the hundredth place. There, with a number beside it, was Behbehani’s name.
  • They felt violated, objectified by classmates they considered their friends. They felt uncomfortable getting up to go to the bathroom, worried that the boys might be scanning them and “editing their decimal points,” said Lee Schwartz, one of the other senior girls on the list.
  • ...10 more annotations...
  • “Knowing that my closest friends were talking to me and hanging out with me but under that, silently numbering me, it definitely felt like a betrayal,” Schwartz said. “I was their friend, but I guess also a number.”
  • Dozens of senior girls decided to speak up to the school administration and to their male classmates, demanding not only disciplinary action in response to the list but a schoolwide reckoning about the toxic culture that allowed it to happen
  • a group of girls reported the list to an administrator, who encouraged the students not to talk about it around school, Schmidt said. The next day, the girls learned that after an investigation, school officials decided to discipline one male student with in-school detention for one day, which would not show up on his record.
  • He recalled coming up with the list — which began in the 5 range for girls perceived to be average-looking — during a brief conversation with a friend during a fifth-period English class last year. He said he never distributed the list to anyone else in the grade, and he didn’t know how it began circulating earlier this month. But he took responsibility for what he said was a haphazard, “stupid decision.”
  • “When you have a culture where it’s just normal to talk about that, I guess making a list about it doesn’t seem like such a terrible thing to do, because you’re just used to discussing it,” he said in an interview. “I recognize that I’m in a position in this world generally where I have privilege. I’m a white guy at a very rich high school. It’s easy for me to lose sight of the consequences of my actions and kind of feel like I’m above something.”
  • While he regrets making the list, he said he was grateful that the girls spoke up. “It’s just a different time and things really do need to change,” he said. “This memory is not going to leave me anytime soon.”
  • Since that confrontational meeting, a co-ed group of senior students — including the boy who created the list — has been gathering on an almost weekly basis at lunch time to discuss how to prevent this sort of incident from happening again.
  • The Bethesda-Chevy Chase students are planning a day next month in which pairs of students — one senior girl and one senior guy — will go to the younger students’ classes to talk about toxic masculinity, said Gabriella Capizzi, one of the senior girls taking the lead on the campaign
  • Some students are also organizing a pop-up museum focused on the theme of cultural toxicity
  • “I wasn’t surprised by the list,” Capizzi said. “The kids like the kid who made the list aren’t the outliers. It’s the people who speak up about it that are. And that culture needs to change.
1 - 2 of 2
Showing 20 items per page