The Olive Fairy Book: U.K. illustrator Kate Baylay’s gorgeous book illustrations. There’s a slideshow of her other work on her Website.
Celebrated as one of the godmothers of the modern women’s liberation movement alongside reconstructionist Betty Friedan, feminist, journalist, political activist, and equality exponent Gloria Steinem (born March 25, 1934) has spent more than half a century campaigning tenaciously against a range of gender discrimination laws, championing equal treatment for men and women, and advocating for women’s reproductive rights.
A co-founder of iconic feminist magazine Ms., the National Women’s Political Caucus, and the Coalition of Labor Union Women, Steinem has been actively involved in a number of organizations promoting social reform that levels opportunities for the sexes, most recently co-founding the Women’s Media Center alongside Jane Fonda and Robin Morgan with the aim of amplifying women’s voices in a severely skewed media landscape.
With her lectures and magazine articles, Steinem has been tirelessly claiming feminism back from the grip of pontifical academic “discourse” — a word she came to particularly detest for its pedantic pretense — consistently reeling the conversation back into the real, living, public dream of a common language (to borrow from Adrienne Rich’s eloquence) where it belongs.
“The meaning of feminism hasn’t changed, but it’s deepened,” Steinem poignantly observed— a remark at once timeless and timelier than ever.
Ghost signs are old hand painted signs that have been faded by time. Dr Stefan Schutt at Victoria University began The Ghost Map Project as an offshoot of his senior thesis at Drexel University. In the course of collecting material, and through his love of typography, he became curious about and enamored by the number of mysterious eroded signs painted on the sides of buildings throughout the city. When the immense Jack Frost sugar refinery on Delaware Avenue was being demolished, he grabbed his camera to document the old signage before it was gone. He began to attempt to save these signs from all the areas of Philadelphia, and decided to put them online and map them for others to discover.
This is my body.
The Violence Against Women Act, which provides funding to help victims of domestic violence, is now up for re-authorization. Photographer Sara Naomi Lewkowicz’s photographs document one such violent incident — the kind that’s often kept private behind closed doors.
What if gun rights were regulated like abortion rights? Here’s a list of just some of the hoops you’d have to jump through before you could own a gun:
- Only one store in the entire state would sell guns. (See: Mississippi, Arkansas, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming for states with only one abortion provider.)
- You’d have to fill out an enormous personal background check including intrusive personal information that has nothing to do with your ability to own or use a gun. Then you’d have to wait at least 72 hours and come back to the store. (Remember, it’s the only one in the state. You better hope you don’t live on the other side of Wyoming.)
- Upon your return, you’d have to sit through intensive mandatory counseling. Your counselor, regardless of his personal beliefs, would have to tell you that gun ownership is actually a bad idea, and that it would negatively effect your mental health to own a gun. (This, despite there being no scientific evidence to support the claim.)
- Next, you’d sit through a gruesome movie showing the actual aftermath of domestic gun crimes. You’d see people with half a head. You’d see dead children in their beds. You’d see the bloody aftermath of a school shooting. You’d be shown statistic after statistic warning you that you’d be contributing to this morally degenerate sanctioning of murder.
- If you lived in Virginia, you’d have to come back (again) for an invasive and uncomfortable fMRI (which costs around $300 out of your pocket) to ensure your honesty in answering all the background check information and your intentions to use your gun responsibly. (This was as close as I could get to the invasive transvaginal procedure included in the recently passed Virginia bill.)
- Oh… and if you were married, your spouse might have to sign off on your gun ownership.
Welp.
What mode of communication should you use? A flowchart by the inimitable Wendy MacNaughton, source of consistent visual delight.
