Those Family Stickers on Cars August 20, 2013
Posted by Onely in Everyday Happenings, Food for Thought, STFU.Tags: blended family, familystickers, nuclear family, sexism, singles blog
6 comments
They are really disturbing, and if you live in North America, you know them. You see them all over. You may even have some yourself! Those stick-figure-esque stickers showing the white outlines of people in the simplest breakdown possible: Man, woman, boy, girl. People put them on the back windows of their cars to show who is in their family. Oh, you also get dogs and cats and the occasional little baby. Some of the people carry things that represent their fun hobbies: Lacrosse stick! Guitar! Staple Gun! (Well, maybe not that last one.) You may be thinking, SO WHAT’S THE PROBLEM, GRUMPY ONELY?
The man is always bigger than the woman who is bigger than the children. That last part makes sense. But the first part has the potential for trouble. And trouble there is! 99.9 percent of the sticker families are ordered left to right–as is our written language in this part of the world–and so people (I hope without thinking) in an attempt at aesthetics smack on those stickers on biggest to smallest. So the father is always, always on the left, and hence, first. And the woman second.
Ignoring for the moment that these sticker collections are almost always nuclear-focused, let’s look at that father on the left. First. Taller. ALWAYS. I don’t think I have ever seen them ordered Mother, Father, Children. Ever. And I have seen a looooot of them. These stickers give me the chills because of their father-as-head-of-household mentality. Maybe not on purpose, and maybe that wasn’t the intention of the company who makes them, but customers are still slave to the big-to-small aesthetic and hence stick father-then-mother, perpetuating a dynamic that I thought was supposed to be dying out in the 1960s!
But don’t worry! A few lone independent thinkers are fighting back!
Somewhere in Colorado between Denver and Boulder, I saw a black car in front of me with the family stickers. They were on the bumper instead of the window. And they had been, shall we say, rearranged. As this is a family blog (Hey, singles blogs can be family blogs too! Right?), I won’t go in to details, just to say that one scene had a girl (you could tell by the feathered hair and triangle skirt) throwing a baby’s head to her brother (you could tell by the boxy shorts).
If familystickers.com isn’t careful, more people might start manipulating their product into even more controversial displays, such as. . . Two Men and a girl with the girl on the left! (I’ve never seen this one; I’ve never even seen two men), or One Woman and Seven Cats (this would be mine) (hey, I’m counting my feral colony, ok!?).
Copious Readers, do any of you have FamilyStickers on your car? In what configuration?
—Christina
Photo Credit: Theo Junior
Single Women: So What If They’re Over Fifty? January 5, 2013
Posted by Onely in As If!, Your Responses Requested!, STFU.Tags: ageism, cougar, demeaning terms for singles, demeaning terms for women, lookism, looksism, sexism, singles blog, singles sexism, singlism, SMOFTY, spinster stereotype, SWOFTY
19 comments
So apparently now there is yet another term to describe women who behave in a certain way: Before it was Cougar, meaning an older woman who dates younger men (implication: these women must be preying on younger men, because why would the guys be attracted them of their own accord?) . Now according to this article flagged by our reader Iolanda, as well as other articles, we have SWOFTY. This means a single woman over fifty.
Copious readers, is this offensive or empowering to women, and particularly to single women? I say offensive, and here’s why:
Where is the term for single men over fifty? A Google search for SMOFTY returned the result: Did you mean SWOFTY? . . . Um, no, sigh.
And there’s more: The term SWOFTY markets itself as a badge of honor for single women, but really it objectifies and classifies women in a three-for-one deal: according to their relationship status, gender, and age. It’s the same old sexism, singlism, and ageism that has been going on in most cultures since forever, just re-labelled. Even the fact that we get surprised by the idea that single women over fifty can be vibrant and happy — so surprised that we have to give them a name — shows just how ingrained the stereotype of the drab spinster is. It’s a stereotype we need to talk in full adult words about, not cutesy acronyms that keep reminding people how the existence of happy single older women is surprising.
And no, SWOFTY does not do anything to increase the dialogue about or dismantle the spinster stereotype (more…)
Singlism or Sexism? You Decide April 2, 2010
Posted by Onely in Uncategorized.Tags: astronauts, change.org, China, family planning, myths about marrieds, sexism, single women
add a comment
Hi everyone —
Check out Christina’s latest post at Change.org, which is about singlism, family planning, and women’s ability to become astronauts.
— Lisa
Onely and Overweight August 19, 2008
Posted by Onely in Food for Thought.Tags: cocktail party, leptin, obese, overweight, racism, sexism, single, singlism, weightism
2 comments
Although I am not overweight right now, I take some medicine that can make me overweight, given the right circumstances.
So I got to thinking about the similarities between singlism and weightism. They are the last “isms” that won’t get you shunned in a cocktail party. Racism and sexism are looked on with disgust. (more…)
Onely.Org 