I am not my hair - pseudo-review

As I was running around the Internet and youtube, I stumbled upon a song for a certain India.Arie, the song is "I am not my hair" I had never heard of either the song or the singer.

The message is clear, she is not her hair, she is the person behind the appearances.
In theory we all agree that we are not our hair, we are not our appearances we are the humans within. A human being is a human being regardless of the color of the sink, the fair, the shape of the head, the waste and anything else related to appearances.
But what is interesting about this song (and the message behind it) is not the simple statement, it should be common knowledge. I agree that it's sadly not true when it comes to the actual life, but in theory everyone agrees we should be seen according to who we are not to the way we look.
But anyway, put that aside, what is interesting about this song, is the way the message is formulated. The singer is not arguing with the gossipy-gossip girls gossiping about the way she looks and the way her hair is done... No she is saying who she is!
So thumbs-up for Arie, you are not your hair, you are the person behind those appearances and judging from this first encounter, it's an awesome person behind.
Interesting fact #2: in the third paragraph, India mentions women struggling with cancer. And not surprisingly, this song became a symbol for women's struggle against cancer. With this paragraph Adrie certainly hits the right cord. A woman is so used to putting so much importance into appearances that when she loses a fundamental component to that beauty (such as a woman's crown aka her hair) she loses a lot, though she is fighting for her life she finds herself attacked with either disgust or pity, because she "lost her hair" when did hair become more important than life?

If you google the song you might find dedication made by women to women fighting cancer and those who have lost their hair if not their lives in this battle. India wrote this passage as a dedication to Melissa Etheridge (Female rock star, Lesbian activist, Environmentalist, survivor of cancer in 2007, mother of 4, blond... you pick the identity you want to label her with) inspired by the latter's triumphant performance during the Grammy awards where she appeared bald and alive.

Her performance brought tears to my eyes," Arie says. "At that moment in time, her performance was a juxtaposition of pain and beauty. It symbolized the beauty of strength

Interesting fact #3: check out the lyrics of "I am not my hair"... there's an adsense bar at the bottom of the page, I would bet you anything that it is an ad for cosmetics, non? You see, even if the singer is literally attacking shallowness and attachment to appearances, a robot like google ads would assume that the people reading this article would also be interesting in reading about products that help them cheat to improve the appearances.

Just thought like sharing :)

On Women Responding to Sex

It is amazing how Mainstream media never ceases to amaze me! Alot has been said about women, men and how different their reaction to sexual stimulus is. Please take a look at this piece: أي الاعلانات "الجنسية" ترضي النساء؟
Now for one minute forget the fact that this article lacks the very least requirements of professional journalism (or at least passable journalism):

1. I cannot easily find the author of this masterpiece


2. it is impossible or at least, very difficult to trace back the original article in UBE that the author quotes and bases his whole article upon. Because needless to say that when you enter the query "women+sex" then regardless of what you are looking for and regardless of what you add to it, you will most probably find porn sites and porn links. A woman does not have a sex life outside the context of porn.


3. the author did not have a coherent idea of what he is talking about. I mean first of all, he is saying that a woman is more receptive to sex oriented ads or material if it is formulated in a "committed relationship" context (aka women use sex for love). They use sex to lur men into their traps of marriage, children, social burden, forced care... no really, just read this passage:
   

   يبدو الآن أنهن يشعرن باستياء أقل عند رؤيتهن صورا جنسية ضمن سياق عاطفي وطبيعي

   
   Now of course the author formulated it in a slightly different manor where he says that a woman is less disturbed by sexual images if they are formulated in a natural, emotional context. As if women are either disturbed or less disturbed about sex... Women can never be confortable about sexual images.
   But wait don't start arguing or thinking just now, the worst is yet to come. To prove his point, the author gives an example:
   

   وذكر موقع لايف ساينس أن الباحثين عرضوا على مشاركات في الدراسة صورة لساعة يد مثيرة للاهتمام وأخرى للساعة ذاتها يلتف حولها شريط ملون ألصقت عليها عبارة «هذه الساعة هدية من رجل إلى امرأة لها مكانة خاصة في حياته» حيث تبين أن النساء فضلن الصورة الثانية. وبينت الدراسة أن النساء يستجبن بشكل أفضل لصور الإعلانات التي تصور الرجل على أنه شريك يحترم التزاماته حيالهن، في حين أن الرجال يهمهم في المقام الاول أن يكون العنصر الجنسي متوافراً في الاعلان دون أي شيء آخر.
   

   
   The first thing that struck me was the fact that now the author is quoting the another magazine: Life Science. How he jumped from one article to another, and why, is still a mystery for me. But anyway, the idea is that women prefer the image of an interesting watch with a ribbon that says: "this watch is a present from a man to a woman that means a lot to him"...
   
   I am left baffled by this lack of coherence, what was the author trying to say? Why is this watch example relevant? How does it prove that women prefer sex in an emotional context?

Now let us, for a moment forget all these formalities and think about the following question: What does this article say about women and sexual fantasies?

First of all, this article was filed under miscellaneous (whatever that is supposed to say about how the authors, editors and readers of this online magazine view women and their sexuality).

Second observation, all these weirdly connected absurd conclusions emanate from total misconception about and ignorance to women's sexuality, presumptions and prejudice about women that try very hard to prove that women and men live in two different worlds and can only connect through the translation of the female language to the male language through MONEY.

And I insist that the translation is to the male language, the author of this article is a man,
expressing a man's incomprehension of the woman's body and desires, a man's media expressing a male dominated society in which women are odd beings, informations about women are first falsified then filed under miscellaneous news, news that don't belong anywhere else and cannot be classified in any serious section.

Yes I am outraged, I am outraged because I know men, the ones I call real men. Men that are willing to think and reflect, interact and communicate with other beings (some of which happen to be women). And the author of this article is just not one of those communicating men. He is just someone who has assimilated the mainstream culture and regurgitated it blindly.

In the end, I would just like to say that this article, not as an individual publication but as a school of thought, is an insult and a blatant promotion of a dangerous ideology that ignores a woman's pure sexual desire, banning them from exploring what they want or wish for. At the same time it keeps men under pressure to keep on getting more MONEY because, as these great studies show, this is what will get the woman feel less disgusted of sex.

You think not? prove me wrong