Sluts!

Hate: Hating, I'm going to have to start putting 'like' first
Like: Softmints and going on dates and having a free house so that you can clean loads without people getting in your way
Complaint of the day: None today

I was going to blog about a SHIT piece of journalism that I unfortunately picked up in the SINdo's magazine Life, so I went looking for it on the net to attach clunks of its crapdom. I couldn't find it but I did find this:

http://www.independent.ie/opinion/analysis/lets-face-it-monogamy-is-getting-a-tad-monotonous-135747.html

which scared me. Then in today's Examiner (and radio ad, which they are running to promote it) I found this:

http://www.examiner.ie/irishexaminer/pages/story.aspx-qqqg=ireland-qqqm=ireland-qqqa=ireland-qqqid=36923-qqqx=1.asp

Why do we cheat, a special two part series on affairs of the heart, tells us that a third of people over 50 have sex with someone other than their partner. A third! Jeez. And both men and women (in Ireland anyway) are as likely to cheat as each other. The figures for other bold stuff are amazing too.

I find stuff like this saddening and frightening, but also fascinating. Were we made to be monogamous or do Mormons have the right idea? Or is that Muslims? Are both allowed to be polygamous?

Anyway, it seems and is portrayed that nature intended man to spread-it-around happy while us mere fe(eble)males are too busy having his babies to care that he has another woman on the go. I mean a Muslim man is entitled to four wives, but she, not only must not be shared, but can't ask for divorce . It's entirely up to the man! Now maybe that's only in Taliban countries etc, but still, the sentiment is the same.

The article I was orginally looking for was called... Sluts! Despite the exciting name, it was the biggest loada drivel I ever read in my whole life. Carol Tobin (I don't know who she is, but when I google her, it seems she may in fact be a well known comedian) writes on the opinions of opinions of somebody she was talking to and he said that she said that I think that we will. It made no sense, had no context, and went nowhere. I think it was supposed to be about women having one night stands but I couldn't really find any content to do with the headline. Will bring in the mag tomorrow to back up my opinion. Then you'll see.

In other relationship news, the breakup of Chanelle and Ziggy was utterly amusing last night. (Big Brother, loving it this year) Chanella sat with a faaaayse on her as Ziggy explained in no uncertain terms how they weren't working out. They both tried to blame each other for stuff, but with him being more articulate than her, all she could do was interrupt. Meanwhile one of the dumb twins (I'm blonde, I'm sweet, I don't have a lot of meat.... what was the question again?) kept entering the room where they were arguing asking: "Would you like beans or mashed potatoes or chilli. Would you prefer beef? If you like beef, I can ask Carol to make it, what would you prefer? I'm having a salad. With potatoes. I love pototoes."

If I had of been arguing and some food monster insisted on breaking my argumentative flow I woulda told her where to go.

Off to see Die Hard tonight. Yeah!

Not really, but the boy will love it and anything to keep him happy.

(Feminised) Ladysinger

Sexy Mama

Opened up a girl's magazine recently (i think it was aimed at the age 8 and up) and it had the lyrics of Pussy Cat Girls written out on the back page for little girls to sing along with. The song? Loosen up my buttons.

Chorus: I'm tellin ya ta loosen up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (uh) Im telling ya ta loosin up my buttons babe (uh huh) But you keep frontin (uh) Say what you gon' do to me (uh huh) But i see nothin' (nothin')

Verse: I like when the physical, dont leave me askin for more Im a sexy mama, Who knows just how to get what I wanna

What i wanna do is bring this on ya. Baby can't you see How these clothes are fittin on me And the heat comin from this beat Im about to blow

You say you're a big boy, but I cant agree 'cause the love you said you had ain't been put on me I wonder if im just too much for you Wonder, if my kiss dont make you just... Wonder, what i got next for you What you wanna do

Open up my buttons? I'm a sexy mama. You're a big boy, i'm about to blow? What were the magazine's editors thinking?! Anyway just thought of that after I read the article below, taken from today's times. I had Debbie as a lecturer in first year and she got me really interested in feminist studies. I think this piece hits the nail on the head. I am so uneased by sexual dolls being given to kids.... what was wrong with Sindy???!

Society is complicit in turning girls into sex objects

We are outraged by child pornography, but the sexualisation of children is all around us, from bra tops to Bratz dolls, and we say nothing, writes Debbie Ging.

This week's news about the break-up of an international paedophile ring revealed some facts which are literally too horrific to contemplate: men videoing themselves raping their own children, some as young as five. Naturally enough, most people want to see these individuals put behind bars for life; others advocate more severe punishments, from chemical castration to public hanging.

The sense of anger and outrage people feel is justified, and there is no doubt that tracking down and imprisoning the perpetrators will save many children from a fate arguably worse than death. It is not, however, going to solve the problem - because sexualised images of children are not just the stuff of covert internet porn rings. They are all around us, and we have failed to be shocked by them.

High-heeled shoes and boots are available in Irish shoe shops for children aged five and upwards. T-shirts with "porn star" written across the chest are widely available for the same age group. Major chain-stores sell g-string and bra sets for girls ranging from five to 10 years of age. Bratz dolls, now far exceeding sales of Barbie, combine pre-pubescent, wide-eyed innocence with the clothing and make-up of the prostitute or dominatrix. Bratz Babies, which wear make-up and earrings but carry babies' milk bottles, represent an even more perturbing mix of adult sexuality and infancy.

Irish parents seem to have put up little resistance against the tide of gender-stereotyped and sexualised products and images which have recently flooded the children's media, toy and clothing industries.

The spectre of little girls wearing bra tops, shaking their bootie and singing suggestive lyrics does not appal us, at least not sufficiently to make us call for a ban on advertising during children's programming or to reject the alleged inevitability of these developments.
Increasingly we hear reports of eight-year-old girls about to make their Holy Communion availing of highlights, tanning and leg-waxing. Parents roll their eyes and say "girls will be girls".

It is time to get real. Girls, if they continue to be treated like this, will be sexual objects: in their own eyes and those of others. For all its rhetoric about a society of free choice that engenders liberal, open debate, post-Celtic Tiger Ireland has not yet had an honest public discussion on this topic.

The Irish media has routinely constructed paedophiles as anti-social "outsiders" or strangers, (homo)sexually-repressed priests or disturbed celebrities, while playing down or ignoring the fact that most child abuse takes place within the family. Statistics from the Rape Crisis Centre in Dublin show that, in 2005, 19.6 per cent of reported child sexual abuse cases were perpetrated by fathers, 16.2 per cent by brothers, 26.8 per cent by another male relative and 30.2 per cent by another known person. Only 3.4 per cent of cases were perpetrated by strangers.

It is time to face up to the realities of child abuse - to acknowledge that raunch culture for the under-12s has become acceptable in the current mediascape; to face the fact that paedophilia is not restricted to small circles of anti-social sex monsters but is more commonplace than most people would like to think; and to take responsibility for the messages we are sending out to children by condoning and conspiring, albeit inadvertently, in their sexualisation.

Many of these realities are hard to stomach, but there is a real need, now more than ever, to think about them and to talk about them honestly and openly if the problem is ever to be successfully tackled.

Dr Debbie Ging is a lecturer and researcher on gender in the media at the School of Communications, Dublin City University.