A group of students at Ohio University has banded together to fight against offensive Halloween costumes that promote racial stereotypes.

The group, Students Teaching About Racism in Society (STARS), has created a campaign called “We’re A Culture, Not A Costume” that depicts students of various ethnicities holding photos of costumes that are supposed to represent them but are instead insulting to their culture.  The poster’s key message? “This is not who I am and this is not OK.”  The creative and intriguing campaign has caught the attention of the press, and has now been featured everywhere from CNN to Time magazine to ABC News.

As CNN reports, ethnic stereotype costumes still exist in abundance:  ”… even after widely publicized controversies such as the “Ghetto Fab” wig at Kohl’s and Target’s illegal alien jumpsuit, costumes of stereotypes abound. On Google’s shopping section, several pages of Mexican costume ideas are available, from gauchos and ‘Mexican donkey costumes’ to sexy serapes and tequila shooter girls.”

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Does Tide hate tomboys?

At first watch, I was supremely annoyed by a new Tide commercial that seems to imply that it sucks to be the mom of a tomboy.

However, on the second viewing I wondered if the commercial isn’t making fun of the prim and proper mother and her ridiculous ideal of “feminine”. We’re supposed to chuckle at her and sympathize with the daughter, right?

Either way, the stupid commercial is waking waves all over the Internet. Continue reading »

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When someone has the audacity to suggest that science is for boys or that girls can’t do math, I’ll simply ask them if they own or have ever used a computer.  When they say yes, I tell them to thank a woman — specifically, Admiral Grace Hopper who is, in large part, responsible for the proliferation of computers we see today.  Sadly, that sort of discussion happens all too often and, according to a new study of existing research, contributes to the lower numbers of women in the STEM fields — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics.

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A new summer horror movie is getting a deluge of negative publicity from adoptive parents and other members of the adoption world for portraying an older adopted child as a deranged would-be murderer of her adoptive parents and their (of course) biological children.

On the one hand Continue reading »

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