IN WHICH The Girl Totes a Book

For those looking to buy me a birthday present (in three months), I have a suggestion: a tote bag with the text of an entire book on it! It will warm my nerdy heart.

As I was wandering about online today, I saw an ad for Litographs with the line "Best Gift for Booklovers" underneath it, and clearly had to click on the link. Look, spam does work. The products are pretty cute, and clearly cater to the teachers and librarians of the world, i.e. me.

Most everything they sell has the text of a classic novel on it arranged into a nice pattern. I particularly like the tote bags. There are my obvious favorites, like Pride and Prejudice and The Great Gatsby, but there are lots of other cool ones as well. How does one even choose? So again... gifts... hint hint.

Etsy always has a plethora of kitschy items like these as well. I can get lost on there for hours. Luckily, I'm usually too poor to buy anything. I do try to control the crazy cat-lady side of myself as often as possibly (plus I hate cats).

IN WHICH The Girl Needs a Man

You mean women can work, drive, and even open tough bottle caps??? Who knew? Apparently, not the 1950s. Not that this is surprising. It is, however, entertaining to see ads from the 50s and 60s.

So I was looking for a new paper topic for my class, one they might find semi-interesting - a treat for getting through my enforced discussion of free speech in response to terrorism. Granted, my idea of interesting is usually very different from a college student's. I was looking for an article about the abundance of phrases like "man up" or "be a man" in commercials. Oddly enough, I couldn't find a good news article about this topic. You'd think there would be tons. Get on that, The New York Times. In the search, I came across this article, "26 Sexist Ads of the 'Mad Men' Era That Companies Wish We'd Forget." I was tickled by all the ads. So we are going to write about whether gender stereotypes have actually evolved or not in the last fifty years. Yay! At least they might laugh at a few ads.

Now, I just need some ads from today that display current gender stereotypes for comparing and contrasting purposes. Don't worry; I have some ideas. I'm always up for suggestions though.

Coincidentally, while writing this post, I was watching the Parks and Recreation "Pie-Mary" episode, which just happened to revolve around gender stereotypes during elections. Hilarious! 

“Where are the Male Men? You’re ridiculous. And men’s rights is nothing.”

"There is no bigger defender of gender equality than Leslie Knope. And my husband Ben is a progressive champion of women’s rights." ---- "Babe, the oven’s ready. Chop, chop. Time to get baking. Daddy want pie!"