The Good, the Bad, and the Curious (Links!)

Since my last links round-up, I've gotten my broken computer back from Geek Squad (without losing any data-yay!) and had my wisdom teeth removed. The wisdom tooth recovery left me on pain meds that made me too foggy to do academic work or work work, but not too groggy to read blogs! All that to say that I have a lot of links for this week! Here's what I've read lately that's made me smile (The Good), cry (The Bad), and think (The Curious). Feel free to share anything you've been reading/writing in the comments!

The Good

This Salon post discusses an American Journal of Public Health study that shows how doula presence can reduce maternal complications and save taxpayers lots of money . . . if Medicaid will cover them. 

Tori over at Anytime Yoga has a cute, short post about her students and her love of crayons. 

Lauren at Hobo Mama has some great tips on how to have a successful road trip when you have little ones in tow. 

This one's a little old because it was hidden in my broken computer's bookmarks, but Dave Chappelle and Chris Rock did a show together. And they discussed going on tour! That should happen. Now. Right now. Here's Chappelle's ad for Samuel Jackson beer (lots of f-bombs):

Ellie over at Musing Mama has an excellent post on how to lay the foundation for a healthy racial identity for toddlers:

Young children don’t need to hear about racism yet. Preschoolers don’t need to hear about slavery or to overhear a dinner conversation about the racist comment a coworker made. Hearing about racism this early can be confusing, because young children simply don’t have the cognitive or coping skills yet to make sense of it. These early years are a time to make sure our kids feel really great about themselves and introducing doubts (“Some people don’t like my brown skin") can undermine that.

Everyday Feminism has a post on how to exercise for your body instead of against it:

Just yesterday, a man told me that over the past few weeks he has been watching me run on the treadmill, and that if I’m wondering why I haven’t lost any weight, it’s because pure cardio doesn’t burn enough fat. 

This interaction really embodies all of the struggles that I face as a kind-of-curvy lady who also loves to exercise. 

He not only assumed that I was looking for unsolicited feedback concerning my exercise preferences and routine, but he made the unilateral assumption that as a kind-of-curvy lady, I was only on the treadmill to lose weight.

Pink stopped a show in the middle of a performance because she noticed a little girl in the crowd crying. Watch the video. It's sweet.

This Disney princess parody is amazing:

The Bad

A Connecticut Fox affiliate reports on International Women's Day by showing footage zoomed in on women's breasts. 

That student suing because she says being white kept her from getting into college? Well, turns out it has more to do with her not meeting the minimum standards than being white. 

The picture of student debt is not getting any rosier. 

I saw someone talking about James Marion Sims and the murder of slave children in an online comment. I went to look him up because I'd never heard of this before. It's seriously one of the worst things I've ever read. There's a statue of this man in Central Park. Here's an overview of some of his practices:

Sims also argued that the movement of the skull bones during a protracted birth contributed to trismus. Clearly designating patients by class and race, Sims began to exercise his freedom to experiment on the enslaved infants. He took custody of them and with a shoemaker's awl, a pointed tool used for making holes in leather, tried to pry the bones of their skulls into proper alignment. According to his published articles, this procedure was only practiced on enslaved African babies. Because he "owned" these poor, innocent children, he had free access to their bodies for autopsies, which he usually performed immediately after death. Sims routinely blamed "slave mothers and nurses for infant suffering, especially through their ignorance."

The Curious 

This post asks if good grammar can get you further in the workplace even as it recognizes that grammar is a contextual, shifting concept. 

Alison Gopnik has a TED Talk on what the world looks like to babies:

Here's an excellent post on the important conversation we're ignoring in those "guns prevent rape" arguments:

Even if we begin with the massive assumption that all women are okay with carrying firearms and with shooting or threatening to shoot potential rapists, arming women in order to prevent rape carries some major legal pitfalls.

Here's another great post from Tori at Anytime Yoga questioning the use of the phrase "all bodies are beautiful":

Sometimes I think of my body as beautiful; a lot of times I do not. And I am okay with both of those. Moreover, whether or not people perceive me as beautiful does not matter in terms of how I fundamentally expect they should treat me.

A friend of mine who follows MMA has been keeping me up-to-date on the controversy surrounding a transgender fighter. Some other fighters have refused matches with her, citing an "unfair advantage." This article examines that potential advantage medically, but I have to wonder why some advantages are perceived as unfair (especially when they can be tied to our cultural constructs of gender) while other are just considered part of individual variation.

Feministing has an interesting post on feminism and the radical housewife.

Fit and Feminist has a thought-provoking post on what we risk when we encourage women to tear each other down:

The whole notion of jealousy arises from this idea of scarcity, that there’s only so many crumbs of attention and power and sex to go around, and so we should do what we can to get as much of it as possible lest we get screwed out of getting any at all. In the process, we end up screwed anyway, because we get so wrapped up in trying to get one over each other that we fail to notice that we are in fact fighting over crumbs.

Writing Opportunities 

I know this isn't technically Good, Bad, or Curious, but I ran across a couple of writing opportunities I wanted to share. 

There's a collection of visions of a feminist utopia in the works. 

The Feminist Wire is asking for submissions on feminisms, anti-racism, racism, and race. 

What have you been reading?