By Stephanie Cole This Friday, April 20th, fellow SPARKteam Blogger Bailey Shoemaker Richards, SPARK Executive Director Dana Edell, Jamia Wilson, Vice President of Programs at the Women’s Media Center and Co-Founder of SPARK, and I will be meeting with the LEGO Corporation about the concerns raised by SPARK over the LEGO Friends product line. Since…
By Stephanie Cole I’ve been a devoted reader of The New Yorker since middle school, and I’ve been happy to note that the magazine has been riding a fantastic trend of articles focusing on women in the media. But I’ve never been a fan of their film critics, who have a tendency to veer off…
By Stephanie Cole The 84th annual Academy Awards are this Sunday, and if I had been asked a month ago what I would be doing this weekend, I would have happily said I’ll be enjoying my 10th annual day of vegging out in front of red carpet schmoozing and Best Original Song performances. But when…
By Stephanie Cole Sometimes when I’m watching a movie or television show or reading a book and I really dig the narrative, I come to a moment where I can suddenly, vividly picture the story going in a direction that would ruin the whole darn thing. As someone who tends to have feminism on the…
By Stephanie Cole I speak from personal experience when I say that to be “media aware” is to open oneself up to the possibility of being infuriated every day. It’s actually a pretty invigorating experience, but I find that since I’m a pretty positive person, I cannot allow every sexist or sexualizing thing to seriously…
By Stephanie Cole Here at SPARK, actually anywhere in the feminist movement, we get used to fielding questions. Many of them are, for lack of a better word, stupid. I have often had my self-identification as feminist immediately followed by, “So, do you, like, hate men?” I hope I don’t actually have to answer that…
By Stephanie Cole If you want to commit to sparking change, the first step is to choose media awareness every day. Media awareness is surprisingly easy to achieve; no dramatic enlightenment required. Simple steps include: Don’t be a mindless consumer. Think critically about the messages that advertising, films and television are promoting. This takes surprisingly…
By Stephanie Cole Facebook has had a misogyny problem for a long time now. Let’s be honest, it started as Facemash, a blatantly misogynist, and illegal, website. So why I am not surprised with the events of the past week? For months, nay, years now, women have been lobbying the social networking site to remove its…