Salon.com > Maya

ESPN announcers pathetically drool over quarterback’s girlfriend

Tue, 08 Jan 2013 20:13:00 +0000

So there was a big football game yesterday. And while I boycotted it, apparently ESPN announcers Kirk Herbstreit and Brent Musburger had some time between plays to devote to ogling the Alabama quarterback’s girlfriend. Some real classy stuff:

“When you’re a quarterback at Alabama, you see that lovely lady there? She does go to Auburn, I’ll admit that, but she’s also Miss Alabama, and that’s A.J. McCarron’s girlfriend. Wow, I’m telling ya, you quarterbacks, you get all the good looking women. What a beautiful woman! Whoa! So if you’re a youngster in Alabama, start getting the football out and throw it around the backyard with pops.”

Sotomayor gives Sesame Street some career advice

Mon, 12 Nov 2012 18:58:00 +0000

Crushing the dreams of countless little girls (and boys) around America, Justice Sonia Sotomayor broke the news to the viewers of Sesame Street that being a princess is not a career. Sorry, kids, the truth hurts sometimes. She suggests Abby become a teacher, lawyer, doctor, engineer, or scientist instead. “A career is something that you train for and prepare for and plan on doing for a long time.”

Study: Outnumbered by men, women don’t speak up

Thu, 20 Sep 2012 20:05:00 +0000

A new study confirms what most of us probably already know:

Scholars at Brigham Young University and Princeton examined whether women speak less than men when a group collaborates to solve a problem. In most groups that they studied, the time that women spoke was significantly less than their proportional representation – amounting to less than 75 percent of the time that men spoke.

This is maybe the most frustrating thing about being a feminist lady in the world every day, in my opinion. Because, as Lindy West points out, even loud-mouthed feminists often fall into this dynamic. “You forfeit, because their lungs are bigger, they’re groomed for assertiveness since birth, and you’re groomed to assume that nobody will take you seriously anyway. You wait for a pause in a room of interrupters.” I do this all the time. And the fact that I can feel myself doing it doesn’t really help usually–it just means I hate myself for it.