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Geek Moms Offers Heroines for Boys

Nancy Gruver, a past EWIP board member, posted a link from Geek Moms on Facebook. It’s a listing of comics with strong female protagonists. Geek Mom’s intended audience for these comics? Their sons.

Geek Mom’s point is that boys don’t read books with girl heroines (usually), although girls do read books with boy heroes. Her advice? Catch ’em while they’re young and introduce them to strong, can-do girls.

Does anyone have any ideas why boys don’t cross over as much in fiction? Is it because girls have a broader empathic ability? Or is there a “cootie” factor going on?

Interesting to me that all the comics recommended are action/fighting/superhero type stuff. Which of course girls do read and like. Do other topics that interest girls (human relations, growing up) not interest boys so much? Is that another reason they don’t read girls in fiction?

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Time Takes on the Mommy Wars (Again)

Joe Berger took on Time Magazine in an interesting blog post called “Dear Time Magazine: Seriously?” He questions that appropriateness of using an edgy photo (the almost-four-year-old boy standing on a chair breastfeeding, with the cover line “Are you Mom Enough?”). Joe’s points were first, it isn’t news; second, it attempts to re-ignite the Mommy Wars to no one’s benefit; and third, this is the business of the mother, not the business of Time Magazine or its readers.

He makes a great point about the responsibility of the media, not just to jump on every bandwagon for every sale they can get but also to give some thought to what they are saying and selling.

Now its up to the newsstand readers to let us know what they think.

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A Ban on Dangerously Thin Models: Is the Issue Workplace Safety or Is It Free Speech?

Thanks to Bo Sacks for sending around an update to the Vogue Publishing breakthrough, wherein Vogue editors worldwide have agreed not to work with models who are dangerously thin.

From the Atlantic we learn that Israel has mandated that its publishers cannot legally work with dangerously thin models, or models who have eating disorders; now they also cannot airbrush models thinner.

Similar legislation could not easily be passed here, according to some first amendment experts, because it is an issue of free speech.

But is it? Or is this an issue of workplace safety? And has modeling become a high-risk, even a deadly, profession?

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A Step in the Right Direction from Vogue Magazine

Props are due to Vogue magazine, if not to parent company Conde Nast. According to the Associated Press, Vogue will no longer work with children younger than 16, or women with eating disorders.

So too young and too thin is out.

This applies to all the editions of Vogue published in the U.S. and worldwide. It’s an important step–although only a step. Sixteen is still very young; and for a mother of girls it is shocking to hear of children as young as fourteen modeling adult clothes.

Also, Conde Nast has no plans to adopt these guidelines across the company–which means that its other fashion magazines will continue to hire children and dangerously thin women.