August 29, 2006 @ 7:15 pm | Category: gender/feminism, global issues, politics
The New York Times has published a piece on Islamic women in Syria and their role in the turn from secularism to religion. In the September 4, 2006 issue of Time another article more in line with what we expect reports that Iran is clamping down on women and increasingly limiting their freedom. Islamic facism doesn’t have much promise for women and it appears to be the version of Islam that is winning over the hearts of many Muslims. Maybe, in a rapidly changing world, Islamic facism is the only form of Islam that delivers certainty and relief from dizzying “choice” so many seek.
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August 28, 2006 @ 3:55 pm | Category: family/relationships, gender/feminism, work
Just when we thought we had worked out a liveable arrangement between work and family we get another article about why it’s detrimental to marriages for women to have careers. Forbes‘ article on marriage and career is sure to stir up some old feelings. What always bugs me about these pieces is why it’s not detrimental for men to be obsessed about their careers and why we seem to relegate this to the “private” choice arena. American culture continues to offer a untenable split between home and work. In that offer, women pursuing high-power careers lose with more divorce, fewer children or none at all. Men lose as human beings when male success is defined as careerism and estrangement from domestic life. Men are rewarded for such behavior and they may even manage to gain a trophy wife to boot. Bottom line is we aren’t willing to change the way we work or challenge our notions of acceptable female or male behavior. This area of our lives is in desperate need of new ideas instead recirculating old ideas about women and men.
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August 17, 2006 @ 7:18 pm | Category: Pop Culture, art, theology/church
Religion professor Donna Freitas has a giddy NPR commentary about Madonna’s recent performance of staging her own mock crucifixion. Drawing the attention of the Vatican, Madonna’s latest stunt has been all over the news so it’s hard to miss. Is Madonna’s performance blasphemy or good art helping us identify with Jesus in our own and diverse ways? Which brings up a deeper question. Is the crucifixion of Jesus Christ a unique historical and spiritual event or merely a metaphor or symbol we created, and therefore, whose meaning we can change at will? If Christianity and its metaphors are created by us then Madonna is a superb social critic. If the cross is a unique act of God then Madonna’s act quickly becomes unintelligable and profoundly irrelevant. Maybe the definition of blasphemy is to take something profoundly true and make it irrelevant.
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August 15, 2006 @ 3:03 pm | Category: global issues, theology/church
Over 60 scholars, activists and leaders will speak at a conference in Manhattan October 17-19. If you are interested in what some women are up to in religions as diverse as Islam to Zoroastrian this is the place to hear and see it all.
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August 9, 2006 @ 5:18 pm | Category: Pop Culture, art, body
I finally went to see the The Devil Wears Prada. The chic lit novel on which the movie was based was one of the few I have read. A light read in the tradition of the genre, the movie manages to be more than eye candy delivering a sweet message about integrity, ambition, and envy. Merrill Streep as the evil, yet human, Miranda Priestly is fabulous. A combo of middle age power, finese, and glamour. A rare female image in hollywood movies and an improvement over the book’s two dimensional character. The movie generally improves on the book, except for I wish the screen writers hadn’t done away with the Indian roommates and the inner city teacher for a boyfriend I enjoyed in the book.
Otherwise, the movie contains both what I hate and love about high fashion. Fashion is the most personal form of art, close to the body and communicating a great deal about the wearer. It’s an art form hard for any of us to completely avoid. Who would want to escape the possibility of beautiful adornment? On the other hand, fashion can illicit envy in those of us who are fashion or economically challenged, take itself too seriously and produce the copycatness of mass culture we see at Club Monaco……all points the movie makes.
Among avantguard fashions and cosmopolitan settings, The Devil Wears Prada is able to get beyond the pretences of fashion. If you don’t expect a great epic saga loaded with spiritual meaning the movie delivers its own simple message in a glitzy package.
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