SPOILED: Backer’s Reading January 14

SPOILED, the theatrical performance I've been working on for over a year, is on the way to the stage.  Read on and please, help us produce this work! Performance and Tax-deductible Donations: See Stage Left Studio (Contributions to Cheryl King, our Producer. Note "Spoiled" in the Artist line.) The issue: We know that rigid gender roles contribute greatly to violence against women. But we’ve found that rigid and distorted gender roles really damage both sexes – so we need to understand and involve men in conversations about the roots of this violence. By looking at events in the world’s two…

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A Mighty Girl

      Does A Mighty Girl (www.amightygirl.com) really have the world's largest collection of books, toys, music, and movies for "smart, confident, and courageous girls"? Well, I can't prove that 'world' claim, but it's the best compilation I've seen in a long, long time. For those of you who go nuts at the still prevalent stereotypical female roles in movies and wonder why entirely pink aisles in toy stores persist or wish there were more books about girls doing interesting things - and not just forced pedantic bios of Marie Curie - this website is a godsend. In addition to all those books, toys,…

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Spoiled: September

  First reading of SPOILED Friday September 26  - 7 PM Theaterlab 357 West 36th Street NYC, 3rd Floor Performed by Elizabeth Hess, Talkback after the performance moderated by Karen Hilbe   A Performance in Pre-Production What Are We Doing to Our Men? An Exploration of Men’s Attitudes and Gender-Based Violence Summary: SPOILED: A theatrical exploration of masculine self-image and its connection to violence against women (VAW) in India and the USA. Project in Development: What’s up with men these days? In India and the US, the world’s largest democracies, recent acts of violence against women have catapulted onto the…

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The Daily Show and Pink October

I received many comments on my Pink October post which took a rather dim view of corporations  sharing our Breast Cancer pain. (If you missed the original post, read it here.) Now the folks at the Daily Show - good ole John Stewart and Samantha Bee - have their own take on this subject, aired December 3rd.  Yes, those pink drill bits really do exist. And Breast Cancer Action is featured too. Check it out here.  And get out those pink ribbons.    

  • Post category:HealthMusingsWomen
  • Reading time:2 mins read
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The Last Taboo? Take the Health Quiz

What's this condition? 10 questions to test your health knowledge Every day approximately 300 million people worldwide are affected by this physical condition. It is estimated that approximately half the global population will be struck at some point in their lives. In much of the world, sufferers experience significant stigma and are often humiliated and shunned. It is not communicable. It is genetic, though there is no routine testing. Unlike leprosy (Hansen’s Disease), another disease leading to cruel social stigma, there is no cure for this condition. With guidance, symptoms can be managed to significantly lessen the pain. Many of those…

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Pink October

Prepare yourselves -  this is an anti-pink post. If you’re just back from your local Breast Cancer Awareness Walk or happily clicked on that ‘donate a mammogram’ button, be prepared. Before you dismiss my forthcoming comments as an angry rant from someone just transitioning back to the USA, note: I am not an unfeeling person, untouched by chemotherapy in the family or blissfully absent the experience of death. My mother is a breast cancer survivor. My mother-in-law died of cancer, in her early 50's, never to see most of her grandchildren. My beloved step-brother died of AIDS in the 1980’s,…

  • Post category:HealthMusingsWomen
  • Reading time:9 mins read
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Ebola and My Dog’s Toenails

There's a connection. I have been interested in Ebola for years - first in 2007 when an outbreak hit the Congo (DRC); shortly thereafter when there were cases in Uganda; then again when it re-appeared in DRC. The stories were undoubtedly fear-inspiring: a virus of unknown origin, with no known treatment or cure, which appeared to almost dissolve the cells leaving those infected bleeding from every orifice, vomiting, overtaken by diarrhea. Virtually everyone was dead within days.  This is not a pretty picture, even by the standards of those used to malaria, schistosomiasis, untreated HIV/AIDS, and chronic civil war. It's…

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SPOILED Reading & Welcome to PM Modi

No, there isn't really a connection between our first very successful reading of SPOILED on Friday and the arrival of Prime Minister Narendra Modi this weekend.  Or is there? Our reading was a benefit and fundraiser for the League of Professional Theater Women's International Award, given this year to Colombia's Patricia Ariza. We were thrilled to receive incisive feedback from our first public audience. SPOILED covers some pretty heavy material - rape, domestic violence, infanticide, abduction: this is not necessarily the stuff of an evening's entertainment. But these stories - all taken from real events - are interwoven with windows…

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First Reading of Spoiled

Friday, September 26 at 7 PM Theaterlab 357 West 36th Street, 3rd Floor Tickets $15 A benefit for the League of Professional Theater Women's Gilder/Coigney International Award. For the past two years, I've been following recent trends in violence against women (VAW) in India and the US: reading about the background, talking to people, researching, writing, arguing. Along the way it became apparent that the focus was NOT really women, it was men. What captured my attention were the social and cultural forces that produced male abusers. Where had these men and boys come from? Teenagers, especially in India, were…

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Bollywood Women Rise Up?

Whew. Thank you Deepika Padukone!  And Parineeti Chopra...and the small group of Indian women who just might be starting a backlash against the intensely sexist Indian culture, right at its core: Bollywood. In case you missed it, Padukone, an extremely popular film star, was featured in a Times of India tweet showing a chest shot with the tag:"OMG: Deepika Padukone's Cleavage Show." Yup, just flashing some cleavage seemed 'newsworthy' for the Times of India, theoretically one of India's more reputable dailies. What really made news, however, was her response: ""YES! I am a Woman. I have breasts AND a cleavage!…

  • Post category:IndiaMusingsWomen
  • Reading time:2 mins read
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