Yes Means Yes!

Jessica Valenti and Jaclyn Friedman's collection of essays in Yes Means Yes!: Visions of Female Sexual Power & A World Without Rape is an engaging, fast-paced exploration of sexual assault in contemporary North America.  The work contains twenty-seven essays written by various authors which seek to understand issues central to sexual assault such as consent, virginity, the media, stereotypes, race, and sexual orientation.  Yes Means Yes! echoes the personal tales of many different lifestyles.

Secret Daughter

Nature or nurture?
What truly makes you 'you'?

Shilpi Somaya Gowda's Secret Daughter examines notions of family and self-identity while confronting cultural differences between America and India during the 1990s and 2000s.

Wedding Bells & Princesses

My stay in England just so happens to coincide with Kate and Wills wedding. The timing happened completely by chance, but I am ever-so-glad the wedding and my holiday fell into the same time period.

Viewing the hype leading up to today has been very interesting. I have taken many pictures of store displays, and yes, I have fallen into the tourist trap of buying products depicted with images of the couple. Limited 'Royal' Editions of Cinderella, Little Miss Princess Books, cookies, flags... you name it, and it's probably featuring tomorrow's Royal wedding somehow.

But, how are the English responding to the wedding? Are they eagerly awaiting tomorrow's tv coverage? To put it bluntly - not so much.

However, I'm looking forward to seeing Kate walk down the isle. I can't wait to see what her dress looks like. I guess I'm a girly girl. I can see a wedding, history in the making, and a girl becoming a princess... how could I say not join in on the hype?

I'll let you know how tomorrow goes on this side of the pond!

A Secret Kept

Tatiana de Rosnay's newest work, A Secret Kept, vividly depicts a Parisian son's search to discover the truth behind his mother's sudden death which occurred over 30 years ago. De Rosnay examines a family's deepest secrets of love and betrayal. Themes of death and attraction are intricately connected to each other and abound within de Rosnay's work.

A Secret Kept is very emotional. It is not so much an emotional experience for the reader. Instead, the content and descriptions within de Rosnay's work are laced with deep emotional overtones and significance for the characters within her story. Illustrations of desire, passion, raw sexuality, guilt, grief, and hatred bounce off of the many pages of this novel. It is a dark tale and one not to be taken lightly.

BBC's Book List

Apparently, the BBC thinks most people have only read 6 out of the 100 books listed below.

After reading this list, I realllly want to get brushed up on my 19th century British literature. I've read 26 out of the list.

How many have you read?

How Fantasy Becomes Reality

Has a book every shaped how you feel about or behave in society?

In How Fantasy Becomes Reality: Seeing Through Media Influence social psychologist Karen E. Dill argues just this. She claims that people chose to believe, instead of critically examining, what they read. She suggests that people often get lost in a storyline and acquire the beliefs of its main characters.

As an avid reader, I too have been caught up in a storyline and have invented my own similarities with a main character. For example, when I was young I used to read The X-Files books non-stop... and then I decided I wanted to be a pathologist just like Scully. Well, that didn't turn out.

There are larger implications with reading, too. Past psychological studies purport that a positive correlation exists between reading romance novels and not using condoms - thus increasing your chances of STDs and a whole host of other problems (Dill, 13).

Reading a book on a new-to-you culture can leave you with either negative or positive opinions on a group of people... which can lead to the formation of stereotypes and impact how you behave towards others. It is imperative to read multiple viewpoints and to always think critically.

Dill argues that we have a tendency to believe what we read, even when it is near impossible for what we read to be true. Remember the hype for the release of the last Harry Potter book? I'm sure it is near impossible for any of us to forget. Dill claims that the massive turnouts the for release of Harry Potter books occurred because Harry is real to readers. I'll let Dill explain:

[Readers] know he's not sitting in a castle somewhere in England. Yes, they know people can't really shoot lightening bolts out of a magic wand... But J.K. Rowling is one of the richest women in the world because she's made characters and situations that are so human and meaningful to us that we choose to hold them in our mind's eye as real, even though part of us knows they are not real in the mundane sense. I guarantee you, for many people in the world, Harry Potter is more real than their own next-door neighbor (Dill 84).

The sad thing is that Harry Potter, and other literary figures at that, are a lot more real than some of the people I bump into on a regular basis. Perhaps I read too much?


Dill's work is very broad. Here are just a few more interesting points:
- On average, Americans spend 2/3 of their waking lives consuming mass media (I think this would apply to Canadians as well).
- Media capitalizes on how our minds function - people are unaware of the effects of exposure to media as the mind is largely unconscious.
- The results from eating food high in fat are not immediate - eat a piece of cheesecake and you don't automatically gain 10 pounds. How people consume and are affected by media works in a similar fashion. After playing a violent video game you don't immediately go outside and punch that annoying neighbor of yours square on the nose... but add up a decent amount of exposure to media that portrays violence and you'll be more prone to act aggressively.
- Exposure to degrading music (ie - violent, racist, or sexist lyrics) is correlated to individuals engaging in sexual activity at a younger age.
- Video games are highly stereotypical. Currently the overwhelming majority of victims in games, or the bad guys the gamer is sent out to kill, are Muslim.
- Female bodies are disproportionately presented in both video games and films for children. For example, if "Lara Croft were real, she couldn't do the athletic tricks she does in the game - she'd be lucky to be able to stand up with those huge breasts! And if Disney's Princess Jasmine were real, we'd probably find her alarming because her eyes are bigger than her waist." (Dill, 134-135).
- Media can be helpful - journalists have brought attention to domestic violence which has led to increasing amounts of attendance at shelters.


Overall, Dill argues that we need to be critical of what we view in the media. Media is created by big businesses who wish to sell products, not to entertain people. We need to be aware of the impact of exposure to the media. We can still watch our films and television, play video games, and surf the Internet... just be sure to incorporate real-life activities into your life like sports, arts and crafts, or even picking up a book.

The bottom line?
Awareness of what you consume is key.

Say What?

Amid my jog this morning and preparing for Sunday's Yummy Lit Review I found time to browse the local paper.

I was, to say the least, a bit disturbed by the headline:

"Three young white men, fuelled by alcohol and testosterone and their own immaturity, crossed paths with a black man and LIVES CHANGED FOREVER."

It sounds like a bad summary on the back of a book... or an advertisement for a much-too-hyped-up blockbuster.

But what really got to me?

The front page screams of racism and sensationalism. I realize the media sets out to do this, to grab the reader's attention, to try to get people to read the newspaper while the print media is still kicking... but it irks me.

Anyways, that's my two cents. Rant over.