sexism

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.

Triggering women’s insecurity by selling us unattainable beauty has been the golden rule for the fashion industry, but common sense begs the question: Wouldn’t sales naturally increase if consumers actually had models—both real-life models and mannequins—that looked like their own bodies?

It’s one of the first warm nights of spring, and the venerable queer venue is shaking with laughter at a stand-up comedy show headlined by young women comedians.  Avery Edison strolls onstage, with her small round glasses and short red Sinead O’Connor-style hair, and the mixed-gender, mostly 20-something audience welcomes the young British comic with the same polite applause it gave to the five young women who performed before her. Not long into her set, Edison comes out to the crowd as transgender and, seeking to prove it, starts to unbutton her black jeans.

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.

It was only in 1986 that contemporary rock music began in China. The artist was Cui Jian, and the instruments were a mixture of Western and Eastern styles, featuring screaming electric guitars. He is now seen as the figurehead of the Chinese rock movement.

Since then, the music scene in China has developed at breakneck speed. Now, in what is seen as its fourth generation, there is a burgeoning scene for every musical style. Some compare the Chinese music scene today to the late ’60s of North America.

When Kelly Thornton became the artistic director of Toronto’s Nightwood Theatre in 2002, she was often asked why there was a need for a women’s theatre company.

Tiffany Deer is giggling uncontrollably. Her sister, filmmaker Tracey Deer, is holding the camera and laughing along. The laughter is contagious, the intimacy compelling. This is the opening sequence from Club Native, which, during its 78-minute running time, entertains viewers even as it educates and often challenges them.

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.