Recently in activism Category

I love to hear (and see!) how you're using your stickers.

Lauren in Seattle just sent some photos showing off how she used her This Insults Women stickers for some awesome street activism.

She's going to get free stickers and you can too! Send me your stories, pictures and ideas. I'll post them in my street activism gallery and give you 10 free stickers.

So last week I went to my first sticker art show called Peel Here 07. The stickers ranged from fancy stickers printed on shiny origami style paper displayed in frames to sharpie doodles on those priority mail stickers you can get from the post office.

A lot of the stuff wasn't really my style. Maybe it was just me, but I couldn't get into the scary clown and one-eyed bunny illustrations. But it was amazing to see the range of stickers and how much they can mean to their creators and the people who see them.

One of the best features of the show was outside where they had set up a bus bench and newspaper boxes for people to sticker. Not that those kept people contained to only stickering the dedicated areas. For blocks around the show you could see small groups of kids lifting each other up to slap stickers up on street signs and light posts.

It was all very inspiring and made me want to make more stickers. And not that this show is representative of the sticker world, but in any case we need more feminist stickers!

Some pictures from the show...

Hey, some Sticker Sisters stickers might be coming to the big screen in a town near you!

Our This Insults Women, Action Not Glamour, Defend Yourself, Hello My Name Isn't Cutie or Honey, It's..., and A Feminist Was Here stickers decorate the walls in Jamie Babbit's new movie about a group of feminist activists. These photos from the set are like a treasure hunt for Sticker Sisters stickers. See how many you can count!

The Oct/Nov edition of Bust magazine has a review of the Itty Bitty Titty Committee. And they had this to say: "don't be surprised if you find yourself pasting up 'Riots, Not Diets' and 'This Insults Women' stickers all over your cubicle at work the next day."

Stock up on This Insults Women and A Feminist Was Here stickers so you'll be ready when the mood strikes you.

I haven't seen the movie yet, but Feminist Review has a good write-up:

"Jamie Babbitt's directorial follow-up to But I'm a Cheerleader was the dark drama The Quiet, starring Elisha Cuthbert as a popular teen that has a secret sexual relationship with her father. There isn't much happiness or comic relief in the film, making it a stark contrast to her hit indie, quirky comedy about a camp for ex-lesbians (starring Natasha Leonne and Clea Duvall). Lucky for her lesbian following, Babbitt's new film, Itty Bitty Titty Committee is almost as gay and hilarious -- almost.

"From the beginning of the film, viewers are trying to figure out Anna (Melonie Diaz), the protagonist. She's out to her family, who takes no issue with her sexuality, and spends most of their time doting on her older sister, who is getting married. Anna is quiet and dresses for comfort in jeans, long-sleeved T-shirts and hoodies. She works as a receptionist at a plastic surgery office, uninspired, until she catches Sadie (Nicole Vicius) tagging her office with "A Woman is More than Her Parts" late one night. A Joey Lauren Adams look-and-sound-alike, Vicius is certainly a heartbreaker, but her character is emotionally unavailable, as Anna will come to find out the hard way. Sadie (strangely and without much discourse) invites Anna to a meeting of feminist minds, a group called Clits in Action (C.I.A.) and Anna, with nothing to do on her social calendar, accepts.

"The C.I.A. is a tamer version of the Guerilla Girls, an activism-meets-feminist-art gaggle, despite their efforts to make change being distorted or ignored, that is unofficially led by Shuli (Carly Pope), who is a walking encyclopedia of feminist facts and theory to back up any comment or idea in question."

Read the rest of the review.

And watch a preview of the movie:

It's taken me some time to recover and catch up from the NOW conference in Michigan. My mom and grandma came to help me at the booth. We're spread across the country so it was great to make a mini family reunion out of the conference.

I met cool feminists of all ages and had a great time. But I have to say that I was a little disappointed with the workshops I went to this year.

One was on "Sex, stereotypes, and beauty." They pointed out a lot of unbelievable stuff out there for little kids and adult women. Like did you know that Disney is now making princess wedding dresses for brides? They also showed a onesie (pink of course) that has a personal ad on it that says "Adorable future model seeks attractive boy with wealthy father. Call me: 123-CUTE." Jeez the baby's barely born and already she's having beauty expectations placed on her ("future model") and being told to find a man.

So in this workshop they spent pretty much the whole time pointing out examples like these. A few examples were good to get everyone into it and riled up. But that would have been plenty. It didn't seem like they were prepared to speak to a group of feminists who are already pretty aware of the problem. They only started to answer the question "So, what do we do?" in the last five minutes. And that was a very brief, standard "write letters to companies, get involved with things like love your body day, be a mentor" spiel. Where's the mention of the Allegheny County Girls as Grantmakers who organized a girlcott against Abercrombie & Fitch's offensive t-shirts? How about all the ways About-Face suggests taking action? How about some This Insults Women stickers?

I don't mean to rag on this one workshop, because this seemed to be a problem in several sessions--they would leave the making change part until the end and then run out of time. Even in a session called "Vision. Action Justice. Your Campaign for Change," some of the presenters started going off on tangents and they never even got to creating the "concrete plans" that the workshop description promised.

Those workshops are over, but I want to get the discussion going. What concrete actions have you done or thought of doing to make change?