Jilling Off

Have you seen the new ALAC ad about ‘It’s not what we’re drinking, it’s how we’re drinking’? You know, the one in which a woman gets drunk, and then gets taken into a dark alley by a dodgy-looking guy? I know that it may be true that more women end up in dangerous situations when there’s a lot of alcohol, but I can’t help but take away the message “if you’re drinking too much, you deserve what you get” from the ad, and that makes me as mad as hell.

And don’t even get me started on how FHM did a survey of their readers and discovered that they prefer size 12 women to size 8 women, and so an editor of Cleo was all “oh but it’s other women that women diet for”. Other women huh? Like, oh, I don’t know, the editors of magazines who make frequently use size 8 models in their editorial spreads?

One of the sites that I have been loving lately is Jezebel, with its tagline of “Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for women. Without airbrushing”. There’s gossip, but there’s feminism. There’s an editor nicknamed ‘Slut Machine’, but there’s also flashbacks to books that we read growing up. Jezebel has the traditional snark of sites owned by Gawker Media, but it felt really personal – read this one post as an introduction to all that is different about it if you need a primer.

So when I read the other day that it had been bought by CondeNet, I died a lot inside. Changes were apparent straight away when a letter from the new editor proclaimed that staff would now have a dress code: “I’ve always felt that sloppy dressing equals sloppy thinking.” She said she would concentrate more on the fashion and less on the political and I shook my fist at the ceiling and wailed. Then I read the comments and realised that it was April Fool’s Day. Just as well I wasn’t the only one who got fooled. But that brings me to my next point: I need to write about all my links, all the fantastic women who make the internet a better place for me.