Hunky dory billboards

Yeah I'm a humourless feminist and think that the Hunky Dory ads are pathetic, exploitative and sexist. The ads dress women in bikinins so brief that their underwear is shown and adds to the sexualisation. They mock women's participation in sport and posit women as sexualised objects to be used for body parts, primarily breasts and buttocks. Having half naked women on billboards, HD only care about their cis straight male audience.

They reinforce the culturally imposed role for women to perform femininity - No matter where or in what context women must always be beautiful, thin and be available for sex. Such advertising has proved to traumatise girls and provoke extreme dieting. In addition, how can boys learn to have healthy relationships with actual girls when all they see are airbrushed images of perfection.

Obviously Hunky Dorys don't want women, girls or gay men to buy their products and I for one am delighted to never purchase any of their products again.

The standard defence is that it's only a bit of a laugh and that anyone who objects has no sense of humour. It's not fucking funny. The company has also decided that its ok cos the photographer has done Sports Illustration's photoshoots in the past and therefore is an artiste!

Women's sports teams are undervalued in this country. They are rarely lauded on the national sportscasts or given widespread public recognition. Since HD was promoting men's rugby why didn't HD put men in revealing bikinis? If you think that idea is ridiculous, why is it ridiculous? Why are women put in this position and not men. There seems to be a prevailing attitude that people don't want to look at barely clad men. Well, bring it on. Someone should do the exact shoot with male models and plaster it all over the country with suggestive slogans. Would you still laugh and tell men who feel objectified that they are overreacting?

The French rugby team pose for a mostly nude calendar every year. There is nudity, it is very popular and it is a world away from the exploitative ads that Hunky Dory produced.

The usual non apology apology was trotted out by Raymond Coyle, chief executive of Largo Foods:

I’m sorry if some people are offended.... we don’t think the ads are sexist or too provocative. Walter Iooss, the photographer for Sports Illustrated, took the photographs and we think they are very good.”

Classic!

Well portraying women as sex objects contributes to Ireland's rape culture, which has become so evident in recent months.

The difference between these ads and the nudish photographs of the French rugby team could not be more different... engagement with the camera, the gaze and the fact that these are actual players who have chosen to wear few clothes. These two things are not the same. Compare and contrast the following (NSFW)






See the difference?

I beg your pardon?

Bertie Ahern just compared office gossip as taoiseach to being in a concentration camp on TV3's shit interview.

These things are not the same.

Old news is new news

While this is all very shocking in our current economic crisis, the people of Kerry South were well aware of "The Bull"'s antics with the garda driver and the flights.

It was whispered in the pubs of Killarney, Dingle and Kilgarven. I wanted to blog on it last March ago but there was no proof.

Kerry people knew but nobody said a word. I'd wager that Jackie Healy-Rae was well aware of his colleague's flights but he did not out O'Donoghue. Nothing goes on in Killorglin or Castlemaine that the community doesn't know about. It's probably the same with all the smaller towns in Ireland. I bet there is enough information out there to bring down a government.

We must blow the whistle and call time. Enough. No more cosy cartels, political parties or senior public servants. Cut off corruption at the top.

How about this: every TD gets a credit card for expenses and each charge is immediately posted up on the government websites. No more profits off miles and meals. No more disguising the trivialities under miscellaneous subheadings. TDs need to be accountable to their constituents.

Hell if the British Foreign Minister can fly Aer Lingus, and the Dutch Crown Prince and Princess ride bikes then why can't Irish Ministers fly steerage with the rest of us plebs?

*image from the Tribune

"Mothers are selfish bitches" according to Jane Kirby of the Sindo

Isn't it amazing in this modern 21st century world that mothers still bear total responsibility for raising children. Those working hussies should feel guilty for abandoning their children, according to Irish Independent reporter Jane Kirby:

Mothers who work raise unhealthier children than those who stay at home, researchers said yesterday

Mothers not parents. What about the other parent? Fathers caring for children is not taken into account. Despite the increasing number of fathers who take the primary caregiving role, and the equal caregiving by both parents, the Sindo decides to take a blast from the past and attempt to shame working mothers. It is an old tactic but pulls nicely on the Catholic guilt that most schools succeed in infusing in their charges.

Do men have no influence or responsibility for their offspring? How about children of a gay couple or a poly couple or any other non traditional family unit? Should single mothers give up work, draw social welfare, require social housing and basically become the stimatised straw dole-queen that middle class conservatives have railed against for decades?

Won't somebody please think of the children?



And the British Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health considers this a mother's responsibility, not a parent's responsibility. As usual, total heteronormative bullshit.

Mothers who worked full-time had the unhealthiest children, followed by those who worked part-time. They typically worked 21 hours per week (with a range of 16 to 30 hours) and for 45 months (with a range of 25 to 55 months). Overall, many children had habits that could lead to them becoming overweight. For example, 37pc of children mostly ate crisps or sweets between meals and 41pc mostly drank sweetened drinks.A total of 61pc watched television or used the computer for at least two hours a day.

Ah everything becomes clearer, some children have habits that could led to the dreaded obesity. Apart from the conditionals, the invocation of the sin of fat, and the lack of any sort of empirical research, correlation is not causation.

I have a couple of questions for the Sindo, as they dive into the goldmine that is the "obesity crisis". It sure does sell papers but is devoid of fact.

• Do you know that children need fat and sugar to grow?
• Do you know that the person who invented BMI (standard medical measurement) totally rejected its use to determine health of adults and never for children?
• Do you know that medical insurance companies arbitrarily changed BMI in the 80s and millions became overweight overnight?
• Do you know that BMI has been proved to be bullshit?
  
• Do you know what "overweight" looks like?
• Do you know that being "overweight" makes you more likely to survive a heart attack?
  

You cannot tell the health of a person by looking at them or what they eat. The current obsession with fat as unhealthy is dangerous.

Children know when they are being discussed and the shame gets a hold. I am fat now but I wasn't when I was a kid. Adults told me I was fat and I saw my body as hideous. That is a learned behaviour. I grew up to be fat and healthy. The emotional damage took a lot longer. I visited anorexia and bulimia until I accepted myself as I am through plenty of fat acceptance reading. Publicly worrying about children's weight is dangerous. I was not the only child that was deeply affected by adults' comments to me or about me.

In the second last paragraph of this sexist, heteronormative, homophobic piece of tripe, there is the standard classism. The Sindo says:

But when the researchers took away factors that might influence the results, such as socio-economic background, they found a definite link between a mother working and the child's health.

Yes, those mothers are so selfish as to work when we live in the Irish socialist paradise. Mothers who are the sole earners who consider the "health" of their children and give up their aul jobs.

Forget about the mortgage or rent, food on the table and luxuries like school uniforms or heat. Forget the notion of an equal partnership. Forget about equal responsibility. Forget that the definition of what constitutes a family has changed. Forget the undervaluation of mothers' work. Forget all the progress that women have made to achieve equal rights.

Because the article basically boils down to nuclear two hetero parents, in which Daddy earns and Mummy gets belittled for doing likewise. Stupid bitch, get back in the kitchen and think of the children because you cannot have a life or work outside the home without being accused of selfishness and neglect. It's all your fault for not slaving over a hot stove and feeding your children three home-cooked meals a day.

Jane Kirby is sexist, misogynistic, homophobic, heteronormative, conservative and has written a piece full of hyperbolic sensationalist lies. It's hard to believe that this piece was cleared by three Sindo editors. But then again, what can be expected from a paper that pays and gives an platform to a racist, misogynistic asshole.

Batt O'Keeffe proves his cruelty

You know if Batt O'Keeffe, Minister for Education, thinks that hard manual labour without pay or chance to leave is employment, I suggest he be encouraged to consider his position. From the Irish Times

He referred to the women as “former employees of the Magdalen laundries”.

Just when I think that this government cannot fall any lower, the Minister comes out and trivialises the suffering and exclusion of women in the Magdalen laundries. The Minister has no compassion or understanding of the responsibility of the government.

Minister O'Keeffe adds

the Magdalen laundries were privately-owned and operated establishments which did not come within the responsibility of the State. The State did not refer individuals to the Magdalen laundries nor was it complicit in referring individuals to them.

Right, so if a child was kidnapped, the gardaí won't attempt to rescue that child because ze is held in a private building. That makes sense.

Does not the State have a responsibility to protect the freedom of its citizens?
Does not the State have a responsibility to treat its citizens equally?
Does not the State have a responsibility to the women and girls, who had committed no crime, who were illegally imprisoned for years?
Does not the State have a responsibility to assure that pay and working conditions are equitable?

The State failed in its duty. An acknowledgment of this failure might have begun to heal wounds but instead they issue denials and disavow any responsibility. This is exactly what happened to the children in the industrial schools when they tried to bring their abuse and torture to government notice.

The Minister should consider his position.

Those Cóir posters were so irritating that I made a vid

Another epic fail

John Waters fails epically in theIrish Times again today.

RETURNING FROM Italy last Saturday, I took the bus into Dublin and had an opportunity to study the city from a more elevated position than usual. I was shocked by the decrepitude and dilapidation of the inner city: littered, shabby, unpainted, unloved, more like a shantytown of a third world dependency than the capital of a modern democracy after 15 years of prosperity.

No. It. Does. Not.

These are shantytowns.

Kibera

Phnom Penh

Manila

This is Dublin.

Hyperbole like that is counter productive. It's appropriating other people's lived experiences, poverty and oppression to make a point.

The rest of the article is tripe too.

Please remove your head from your ass now.