Saturday Show & Tell – International Women’s Day

Welcome to Saturday Show & Tell

This week’s blog carnival has International Womens Day for a theme, since March 8th, 2011 marks the 100th anniversary of that celebration.

Today’s roundup features 9 different bloggers, and offers a variety of perspectives on the female experience, with topics ranging from guilt-ridden Spring cleaning to guilt-free masturbation.

Cherrye Moore kicks off this edition with a post entitled Happy International Womens Day. Cherrye is an American expat living in Italy, and her post explains how this holiday is celebrated in Italy.

Katie Greenaway also muses about International Womens Day, Italian style, in a post called, Reflections on Festa della Donna in which she shares, “The unique and special moments I have experienced being a woman on the streets of Florence.”

Michelle Fabio points out an interesting irony in her post Love Thursday: Celebrating Women, since:

“International Women’s Day on March 8 has its roots in the United States and yet it’s not celebrated there — ladies, let’s get on this!”

I agree, Michelle!

Madeleine Begun Kane takes a humorous jab at the media’s influence on women with her post Does Your Guilt Spring Eternal?, which opens with the following paragraph:

“Spring has arrived. Do you feel guilty yet? If not, you apparently don’t read women’s magazines. Every March and April they’re packed with “clean up and organize your life” articles. Stories with catchy titles like Spring Into Action — Tidy Up Your House. Or Wash Away Winter Blues. Or Banish Clutter Now; Otherwise We’ll Keep Torturing You With Articles Meant to Make you Feel Like A Slothful Bum. Personally, I’d rather read Why Clean? It Will Only Get Dirty Again Tomorrow.”

Speaking of the media, Paula Puffer sends us a post called Are We Smart to Allow Ourselves to be Seen as Objects? describing her frustration with a recent ad campaign for GoDaddy.com:

“Four weeks ago, I watch the ads on the Super Bowl and I was astounded by the blatantly sexist nature of some of the ads. The ads by Godaddy – particularly the second one “The Contract” – left me beyond angry at Godaddy and very disappointed in both Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels. ”

What do you folks think of Paula’s opinion? (I’m especially curious about those of you who currently live in Italy!) Are these ads all in good fun, or are they sexist? Should we, too, think less of Danica Patrick and Jillian Michaels?

Speaking of inequality, C. in Oz points out a statistic that will interest all writers in her post Let’s Talk about Gender Equality in Theatre As she explains:

“Here in Australia, only 12% of plays produced in professional theatres are by female writers. In the U.S., it’s not much better at 17%. I get pretty worked up whenever I think about how underrepresented women’s voices are in my field, so I wrote this post.”

In her article, she states:

“A well-known study by a Princeton student showed that a woman’s name on a play makes Artistic Directors and Literary Managers less interested.”

She provides a link to that “well-known study,” in cast you want to see it for yourself.

Elizabeth McLung contributes a post called, Disabled Female Equality Means Orgasms, which is chock full of interesting statistics, such as the many health benefits of female masturbation. In case you are wondering who Elizabeth is, here is an abbreviated version of her bio:

“I am an academic, a lesbian who IS married, 17 years, and a full time wheelchair user, now power chair user. I write about disability issues on the blog Screw Bronze. Yeah, I’m terminal, I’m end stage, I have days without hope – so similar to all those years of retail jobs during Xmas. Hee.”

Katie Sorene brings us Two Travel Books for Girls. (I have no idea where Katie hails from, but she means “girls” in the Texan sense. It doesn’t matter what your age. You could be 80, and Texans will call you girl. It’s an endearment.) These are not kiddie books; as Katie wrote:

“This female-friendly post might be good for this week’s carnival – two snappy book reviews for adventurous women with complicated lives!”

I am always on the lookout for a good travel read, Katie. Thanks!

As for me, Tui Cameron, I’d like to mention that the image at the top of this post is a detail from a painting that my fiance did of me. He doesn’t consider himself an artist, but I think that’s merely because he doesn’t get enough time to paint. I see his artsy side in many things he does, too, besides painting. Also, here’s a blog post, entitled Falling Back into Touch with my Wife-in-Law which describes the unique relationship I have with my ex-husband’s ex-wife.

That wraps up this week’s edition of the Saturday Show & Tell blog carnival. Thanks to all who participated this week, either by submitting a post, or by leaving comments below. See you next time!

Speaking of…

Would you like to highlight one of your past blog posts on an upcoming Saturday Show & Tell? Saturday Show & Tell is here to call attention to blog posts you wrote a while ago, but are still interesting to read. C’mon and share those golden oldies with us!

If you want to join in, here are 2 ways to submit your post. Send the link directly to me via tui [at] mentalmosaic.com, or submit it through the Blog Carnival site via this link. I don’t have a theme for next week’s Saturday Show & Tell, so it will be interesting to see what kinds of submissions we get. If you have any questions, shoot me an email, or ask them in a comment below.