pop culture

They’re everywhere you look: winking in text messages, slipping into corporate emails, littering Facebook news feeds. They stare up from computer screens, those frozen grins begging for approval.

They are emoticons, and research suggests their use is highly gendered. The first emoticon was the digitized smiley. It gained popularity in the 1980s after computer scientist Scott Fahlman suggested to participants on a message board at Carnegie Mellon University that they should use :( and :)  to distinguish their serious posts from those that were jokes.

Ever since The Graduate (1963) and Harold and Maude (1971), the older woman-younger man paradigm has been a topic of cinematic curiosity. However, it wasn’t until the term “cougar” emerged 25 years ago that the relationship gained a more public profile.

The term was reportedly first coined in the 1980s by members of the Vancouver Canucks hockey team to refer to older female fans who sought to date hockey players.

HOW OUR RALLYING CRY GOT CO-OPTED (AND WHY WE NEED TO TAKE IT BACK)
Have you noticed that a lot of conversations about female empowerment today seem to be stuck in a discourse of choice that makes it difficult to challenge—well, anything at all?

At 6 a.m., Bonnie Marin begins another day cooking over a hot grill. Breakfast orders pour in, but as always her mind is elsewhere. She daydreams of giant storks standing on wet floors.

While working on their latest album, Sainthood, Tegan and Sara spent a month at Sound City Studios in Van Nuys, California, where Tom Petty, Pat Benatar, Fleetwood Mac and Nirvana have recorded. One day, Sara Quin found herself in the midst of a truly memorable moment.

Back in its heyday, I performed in a local production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues. I performed the monologue called “Hair,” in which a woman tells her story of being pressured by her husband to shave her pubic hair. After shaving, she feels “puffy and exposed and like a little girl.” Her husband is turned on. After she refuses to keep shaving, he is unfaithful, they attend couples’ therapy and ultimately, they divorce.

It’s a couple of days after the U.S. election and Serena Ryder is still enraptured by U.S. president Barack Obama’s victory.

Take a look around your bathroom. The average North American woman uses 10 or more personal care products every day.

From toothpaste and soap to antiperspirant and moisturizer, personal care products are made from 10,500 chemical ingredients that are as much a part of our daily routine as sitting down to breakfast.

And like most things that happen before a mug of morning coffee, it’s easy not to think about them too much. But researchers and women’s health activists are sounding the alarm bell about the makeup of makeup.

Ani DiFranco’s commitment to being a free agent is inspiring.

While the indie musician is definitely concerned about the state of her country, she’s not particularly worried about the impact George W. Bush’s administration has had on civil liberties—not on hers, anyway.

“As Utah Phillips would say, ‘The amount you resist is the amount you are free.' And I think I will always resist this basic encroachment on my human rights, so I will always feel free. “