"If She Can See It, She Can Be It"

Geena Davis, the Oscar-winning actress, has positioned herself on the front-lines in the battle for equal portrayal of girls and women in the media. Her research-based organization, the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media, is working within the entertainment industry to educate and inspire change in the way gender is shown, especially in media that is targeted to children. It's time to end the limiting portrayals of girls and replace them with positive messages and role models instead. [Read more at Jezebel.]

Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor Visits Sesame Street

Earlier this year, Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor appeared on Sesame Street. Watch the video above to see how she rules in the precedent-setting case of Goldilocks v. Baby Bear.

Disney's New Doctor: Dottie "Doc" McStuffins

Melissa Harris-Perry, a professor at Tulane University and a weekend host on MSNBC, honored Disney Channel character Dottie "Doc" McStuffins today as the first ever animated Foot Soldier at the suggestion of her 10 year-old daughter. The series follows young Dottie, who aspires to be a doctor one day like her mother. She pretends her toys come to life and treats their various ailments while donning a pink stethoscope. Harris-Perry said her daughter pointed out that the show inspires her because you don't usually see black women doctors. This claim is backed up with statistics. Black women comprise less than 2% of all doctors in America. Part of the blame for the disparity lies in the media messages that young black girls receive, which may limit their choices later in life. We commend the Disney Channel for providing a positive representation for young girls and hope to see similarly inspiring programming in the future.

Nike Celebrates Women's Contribution to Sports

A new film from Nike highlights women's voices as they candidly discuss their experiences in sports, featuring the personal stories of four amazing women athletes. On the 40th anniversary of Title IX, we join Nike in celebrating women's many contributions to the world of athletics.

Tell Beauty Magazines to Keep It Real

Earlier this year, a young girl named Julia Bluhm started an online petition demanding that Seventeen magazine include at least one un-retouched image per issue.

Here’s what lots of girls don’t know. Those “pretty women” that we see in magazines are fake. They’re often photoshopped, air-brushed, edited to look thinner, and to appear like they have perfect skin. A girl you see in a magazine probably looks a lot different in real life. As part of SPARK Movement, a girl-fueled, national activist movement, I’ve been fighting to stop magazines, toy companies, and other big businesses from creating products, photo spreads and ads that hurt girls’ and break our self-esteem. With SPARK, I’ve learned that we have the power to fight back.


In the spirit of her protest, SPARK and other groups have launched The Keep It Real Challenge urging all beauty magazines to adopt this approach toward showcasing real beauty in their glossy pages. The online challenge includes three days of action. On the first day, participants will tweet the editors of their favorite beauty magazines to show their support for dumping Photoshop.

Next, they'll write blogs from their own perspectives about why these unrealistic standards of beauty need to go. On the third and last day, supporters are encouraged to upload photos to Instagram displaying what real beauty means to them. This activity bridges young girls and activists around the country who are tired of the false representation of beauty in the media and advertising and what it has done to us. If you think that magazines should make a better effort to "keep it real," we hope you'll participate as well. We certainly will be! It's time to tell the fashion industry and advertisers that there is something much better than Photoshop "perfection"... real beauty and real women. Download the #KeepItReal Toolkit to get started.

Adam Carolla Doesn't Think Women Are Funny

The headline of comedian Adam Carolla's recent interview with The New York Post, "The Man's Man," raises some red flags. But the title of the article isn't nearly as troublesome as the content within. When asked if he hates working with women, here was Carolla's reply:

No. But they make you hire a certain number of chicks, and they’re always the least funny on the writing staff. The reason why you know more funny dudes than funny chicks is that dudes are funnier than chicks. If my daughter has a mediocre sense of humor, I’m just gonna tell her, “Be a staff writer for a sitcom. Because they’ll have to hire you, they can’t really fire you, and you don’t have to produce that much. It’ll be awesome.

According to Carolla, women just aren't funny. He thinks the bar is set lower for women, and that if Roseanne Barr were a man, she wouldn't even be famous. He goes on to say that popular female comics, including Kathy Griffin and Tina Fey, are simply exceptions to the rule.

Carolla, who is currently promoting his new book Not Taco Bell Material, is no stranger to controversy. He has a history of telling anti-woman and anti-gay jokes. His most recent comments created a stir on Twitter, with several female comics and groups speaking out against or just plain mocking him.

Wait, Adam Carolla, is he the one who did the voice of the parrot in Aladdin??? He makes me giggle.
— Lena Dunham (@lenadunham) June 19, 2012

actually, a shout out to all funny male comics whom I love:every other guy comic except Adam Carolla
— Roseanne Barr (@TheRealRoseanne) June 19, 2012

Breaking: Adam Carolla being vetted as Romney's Number 2.
— Lizz Winstead (@lizzwinstead) June 19, 2012

Hey @adamcarolla, 95% of film and 88% of TV in 2011 was directed by men. Maybe that's why you don't know more funny women?
— Miss Representation (@RepresentPledge) June 20, 2012

Women are funny. Just ask the sold-out audiences gathered to see hilarious comics like Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho. So why aren't there more females in comedy? Come to think of it, why aren't there more women in the entertainment industry as a whole? Men not only dominate the boardrooms of all major media outlets, they also constitute the vast majority of writers and directors. When the media in our culture is created, directed and produced by a single group, namely white men, they will ultimately create a product that is reflective of themselves. When representations of people outside of the group are offered, they're limiting and stereotypical. This is a fair assessment of the current media landscape. With a little unpacking, it isn't hard to discover that when Adam Carolla looks around and sees a dearth of women in comedy, it isn't because they aren't funny.

Is comedy different from the rest of the media, though? Some would have you think so. Many comics say that it's all about the work you put into it, and that if a woman were as funny as a man, she would be treated that way. On a recent episode of her Bravo talkshow, Kathy Griffin asked her comedienne guests Chelsea Handler and Whitney Cummings what they thought about the state of women in comedy. Handler, the host of the daily E! late-night roundtable Chelsea Lately which consistently features women comics, argued that the disparity was due, at least in part, to women's unwillingness to live the life of a stand-up comic. Griffin smartly replied that her female friends saw The Hangover but her straight, male friends refused to see Bridesmaids. With this, she hits the nail on the head. Much of the blame for women having less opportunity in the entertainment industry rests on the shoulders of a culture that has taught its men that its women aren't interesting or funny.

Yes, Adam Carolla is a sexist, but this isn't an individual problem. He didn't come up with these ideas on his own. We have a lot of work to do as a society before we'll see real and equal representation of women in comedy and the media as a whole. Calling out the pigs is only the first step. We also have to teach our kids something different.

Battling Sexism in Video Games

Anita Sarkeesian, the blogger behind Feminist Frequency, has had quite a week. After launching a Kickstarter campaign to fund a new web series called Tropes vs. Women in Video Games, Sarkeesian was the target of a hateful onslaught of online misogyny. Luckily, despite the ignorant protests of angry male gamers far and wide, the campaign has raised over $120,000 so far and the project will be funded this weekend. We can't wait to see the finished product.