Girls as Objects

Sexism: Adaptable to the 21st Century

By Shira Small My sophomore year of high school, a dozen freshman boys created a March Madness style bracket evaluating each girl in the school to determine who was the prettiest. The domain they used required individual input, meaning they couldn’t just copy and paste names from the directory—they had to type in all 140 girls’ names…

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Abbatoir Floor

A poem by Kaylen Forsyth Content note: Violent and sexist language, gender based violence and harassment my name changes from BABY to HONEY, NEARLY DRUNK ENOUGH, DARLING to BITCH. i always thought i’d love the first boy to talk in poetry, but i craved metaphors of moonlight, not war-talk and violence: BANG, SCREW, NAIL, DESTROY.…

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Reimagining School Dress Codes

By Ejin Jeong, SPARK Action Squad Clothes have always been an important part of our lives.  They allow us to characterize our era, culture, and personal tastes.  In many ways, clothing helps us express ourselves as individuals through various different styles. However, whenever it comes to expressing ourselves and being an individual, society has morphed…

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Hot Girls Wanted: A SPARK Roundtable

by Montgomery Jones, Aviv Rau, Mariah Hall, Courtney Fulcher, and Jazmin Martinez Hot Girls Wanted is a documentary that gives its audience a glimpse into the world of amateur porn, looking into the day to day lives of young women in the industry. It’s been on the media’s radar, thanks in part to producer Rashida…

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Research blog: sexual objectification as everyday trauma

by Jennifer Chmielewski Like many women, I have put up with my share of sexual harassment, subway groping, and just dealing with plain old creepy dudes. This issue is so commonplace (women have been speaking up about it for ages) that the NYC MTA actually announces now that “a crowded subway is no excuse for…

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On James Franco, Humbert Humbert, and the men who leer at me in the street

by Aviv Rau Being an introverted teenaged girl with tons of free time and a newly acquired driver’s license, I spent a lot of time alone this past summer. Except that I was not really alone. Everywhere I went—bookstores, cafes, stores, restaurants, even on the street—significantly older men making inappropriate comments approached me. Thankfully, things…

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Sexual harassment online is everywhere–but it doesn't need to be

by Anya Josephs There is nowhere you can go on the internet as a woman without being sexually harassed. Okay, that’s probably an exaggeration. More accurately: I, personally, have never existed online in any space where I am identifiably female without receiving unsolicited dick pics, demands for nude pictures of myself, or extremely personal questions…

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"Adam, try these apples!"

by Elisabed Gedevanishvili I often find myself a subject of random, almost creepy glares. As I speak, or watch TV, sing in shower, or twerk in my room, I feel as if someone’s watching me and critiquing my behavior according to a prewritten, unkown criteria. Like all boundaries, these criteria must have been created by someone…

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