Salon.com > Jessica Roy

Five most sexist iPhone apps

Fri, 18 Dec 2009 22:52:00 +0000

An iPhone app released by Pepsi attracted harsh criticism a few months ago for a premise so blatantly sexist that it was eventually yanked from the store. But "Amp Up Before You Score," which doled out pickup lines pegged to 24 female stereotypes, is but a twinkling star in the galaxy of offensive apps that have snuck past Apple's notoriously stringent store guidelines. Without further ado, I present to you the five most sexist apps of the year.

PMSTracker: Unlike apps designed to help women keep track of their own menstrual cycle, this one is meant specifically for men. It "allows you to quickly track the approximate time each woman in your life has PMS" using a color-coded method that functions much like the U.S. government's terror alert system -- only it's red alert, severe chance of PMS attack!

Jonathan Safran Foer’s beef with factory farms

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:07:00 +0000

Jonathan Safran Foer is a strict vegetarian, but his most recent book, "Eating Animals," is not a screed against meat. It is, rather, an indictment of the corrupt, large-scale factory farming that dominates the American meat market. A journalistic work with a novelistic feel, the book is the result of three years investigating the U.S. meat industry, and it weaves together animal activist and farmer interviews with statistical research and even memoir to provide a sweeping account of Big Beef and its social, economical and environmental impact. Descriptions of animals suffering on the "kill floor" are enough to incite squirms from even non-animal lovers, but cruelty is not Foer's only grievance: There are health concerns and devastating environmental damage at issue as well.

Slipped through the cracks

Fri, 06 Nov 2009 23:01:00 +0000

Two rather contradictory topics -- abortion and parenthood -- seemed to dominate the news this week. At Broadsheet, we investigated an ex-Planned Parenthood employee's decision to defect to the anti-choice movement, and talked about women who have done the exact opposite by switching to the pro-choice side. We also explored the struggles of parenthood -- from the tragedy experienced by the mother of Neda Agha-Soltan, the young women who in death became symbolic of the Iranian protests, to the trouble of handling a child's poor behavior in public. While these topics, and others, commanded our attention this week, some stories inevitably slipped through the cracks.

Slipped through the cracks

Fri, 23 Oct 2009 23:01:00 +0000

This week, the themes of gender-bending, motherhood and race reigned supreme. We examined the decision of Moorehouse College to forbid cross-dressing, and debated the implications of a Mississippi school’s refusal to run a senior portrait of a female student in a tuxedo in their yearbook. We took a look at society's impact on parenting methods, and wrote about Republican moms campaigning to legalize marijuana. And we lauded Mattel for creating a new black Barbie while also arguing that the doll is far from perfect; and covered the uproar that occurred at a historically black college when a half-white, half-Southeast Asian woman won the school’s homecoming crown. Given this supply of weighty topics, it’s no surprise several stories slipped through the cracks. Here's your guide to what we missed.

Slipped through the cracks

Sat, 17 Oct 2009 00:30:00 +0000

It was damn near impossible to miss the bizarre balloon-boy saga that unfolded yesterday afternoon, and the story just keeps getting weirder. At Broadsheet, we took a closer look at storm-chaser dad Richard Heene's misogynistic TV and YouTube clips. We also caused a kerfuffle with a post that claimed GQ had Photoshopped its voluptuous January Jones cover, but -- oops! -- the mag's photo editor, Dora Somosi, e-mailed to assure us it was all tricks of the light. We weren't the only folks tripping into controversy: Over at DoubleX, "Friend or Foe" columnist Lucinda Rosenfeld caused a ruckus with some pretty bad advice to a letter writer. Meanwhile, Meghan McCain fought back against the haters who deemed her a "slut" after she posted a picture to Twitter displaying her cleavage, going on to write a Daily Beast column about positive body image. (But was the backlash real?) The fashion industry could take a tip from McCain, after Karl Lagerfeld dished that "no one wants to see curvy women" on the runway. Considering this week's maelstrom of absurd news, it's understandable that a few stories slipped through the cracks.

Slipped through the cracks

Fri, 09 Oct 2009 10:02:00 +0000

In a strange twist to this week's David Letterman extortionist plot, feminists were accused of not being humorless enough (!) due to the minimal outrage the scandal provoked among women. Of course, we were also accused of being too humorless, when we expressed disgust at a high school in Texas that printed T-shirts depicting a woman having sex with two horses. But it wasn't all bad: Here at Broadsheet, we also noted that an ad run by a Las Vegas restaurant was taken to task by the University of Nevada, Las Vegas campus newspaper, demonstrating that young feminists are indeed out there. Meanwhile, in Oklahoma, a shocking new law mandates that women must disclose a host of personal information about their abortions for display on a public website. And in Egypt, officials banned a kit that would allow women to fake their virginity.

Slipped through the cracks

Fri, 02 Oct 2009 23:30:00 +0000

This week, you might have heard a few things about Roman Polanski. But that certainly wasn't all that happened. It was, perhaps not coincidentally, also a big week for debates about what constitutes child pornography: A poster for the upcoming "Battlestar Galactica" prequel, "Caprica," featured cherubic 22-year-old actress Alessandra Torresani looking eerily adolescent, and the Tate Modern in London removed a controversial photo of a naked 10-year-old Brooke Shields from an upcoming exhibit. Meanwhile, the health care debates took another unfortunate turn when the Senate Finance Committee voted to appropriate $50 million of federal funds for abstinence-only sex education, and we feared many women could lose insurance coverage for women's health needs unless reform laws are rewritten. With so much scandal and outrage, it was all too easy for some stories to slip through the cracks:

WTF of the day: “The essence of you at your best”

Fri, 14 Aug 2009 20:15:00 +0000

Self magazine editor Lucy Danziger has been the target of much feminist scorn recently for the magazine's decision to dramatically retouch a photo of Kelly Clarkson for their September issue, slimming down the curvy singer. This morning, Danziger went on "The Today Show" alongside plus-size model and "More to Love" host Emme to discuss the scandal. She was unapologetic about the Photoshop debacle, claiming that "a cover is a poster, and the thing about a poster is that you want it to capture the essence of you at your best. So we're saying to women: 'Look, everyone can love who they are from the inside and out and want to achieve their goals.'" I winced when Danziger proclaimed that "no one can make you feel bad, only you can feel bad inside yourself." That kind of self-help jargon may sound good in theory. But when Self magazine's goal is to help you feel better about your self -- should they really be sending the message that "looking your best" can only be achieved using computer intervention?