Smile - You're on Candid Camera

Amanda at Pandagon writes about a study about how smiling may indicate social status and women smile more then men and are expected to be smiling all the time.

Specifically, lower status individuals appear to smile more than higher status individuals.

This is an interesting thought that hadn't occurred to me before. I smile alot. I thought I was just being friendly.

I am always smiling at customer service people in an attempt to get better service (some bank tellers can be so uppity), following the old "You get more flies with honey than you do with vinegar". Of course I'm not trying to attract flies but anyhoo. What peeves me is that I have to smile to get pleasant service, or to accomplish what I need to do.

Another example of this is at work. I am in Application Development (IT, programming, whatever you want to call it). In the company I work for, the application developers rely on other technical teams for stuff like test environments, database administration, networking, storage etc etc. My female coworkers have discussed how much easier it is to get services from those teams if you bring cookies, or some other treat, in order to get the work you need done. I have to bring these guys (almost all of them men) presents and make nice for 15 minutes before carefully convincing them my request is valid. I'm wondering if my male collegues need to go to these lengths to get their requests completed. I doubt it. I can't see them bringing treats to other men.

To be fair, I have to consider that technical service teams are notorious for having a 'god-complex' becaue they have the secret passwords to control the hardware, and I have seen that attitude towards male developers as well.

She also writes:

In recent years, I’ve discovered that if I stifle the urge to smile all the time at people, I get more respect. I highly suggest to women experimenting with this themselves.

I am definitely going to try this out. Also consider how you react to people who are smiling vs. with neutral expressions.

Jello Shots!

Via feministe we find an awesome site, which tells us how to make the perfect jello shot. The last time I made jello shots was for our annual Hallowe'en party in 2003 when the theme was Pirates. Excellent costumes and excellent party. Not so excellent jello shots. I think they were a bit too chewy. But hey, we ate them anyway :)

I'll will try to upload a party pic later on...

No means...

From Yahoo we read about a t-shirt at Bluenotes that reads "No means have aNOther drink" that is being pulled from stores after complaints from anti-violence groups.

What's weird about this is I remember seeing that t-shirt at the store and having 2 simultaneous thoughts: "ha-ha, that's a funny play on words" and "hmm, it's not funny to joke about a serious subject like rape. This shirt could encourage someone to take a 'No' less then seriously."

I'm a bit confused about which thought disturbs me more. I normally would recommend free speech regardless of how offensive the speech is. But does this message teach young boys/men that this concept is ok? Then again, we shouldn't rely on t-shirt logos to educate our children on serious subjects.

I'm not sure where to draw the line. I do know that I like this idea:

The retailer is proposing to create a line of T-shirts in collaboration with the Canadian Federation of Students and donate a portion of the proceeds to the federation.

What are your thoughts?

A Little Batty

Well, I forgot to google the name of my blog before creating it, to see what else was out there. But today it led me to the coolest artwork here. The artist is Jasmine Becket-Griffith and you should go check out her fairy, gothic and fantasy artwork. All her fairies look you directly in the eye. I love it!

This is her A Little Batty.

Housework Divided

Check out this post from zuzu at feministe about splitting up the housework.

Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet writes about a BBC report of a study showing that single women who live alone clean less than women who live with a male partner — and that men who live with a female partner clean less than they did when they lived alone.

I believe I have a partner who does more housework then I observe in other relationships and tv,etc. But there are still "discussions" about whether the division of work is equal. It's difficult since I think you also have to take into account the traditionally male tasks such as mowing the lawn, taking the trash out, and painting the deck (of course women are doing these tasks too).

In my case I know for sure the following applies:

I was much neater, at least in common areas, when I had a roommate,

When Ramble is away for weeks at a time I definitely let things pile up, and do a mad cleanup before he comes home.

My first post!

I've been lurking on some very funny and thought-provoking blogs for awhile now and decided to join in the fun with my very own blog!

I'm interested in having some discussions on different topics, so leave some comments if you have an opinion on something I'm writing about.

I have to admit I'm a little nervous about the whole thing. What if I don't have anything interesting to write about? What if I start neglecting the blog, like I have with other endeavors I've started and not finished? I was convinced I could devote myself to learning the guitar, but that only lasted until I worked up the nerve to play in front of my brother and he laughed at me (about 6 months). Talk about a fragile ego! I think I will start working on playing guitar again sometime, now that I have such a gorgeous instrument. Her name is Sabella and she was a gift.

OK, I think I'll have to add a few more posts before I share my blog with my friends!