Have you ever lain in bed, looked around your bedroom and thought, “You know what this room needs? A shadowy male stalker lurking in the corner.” Well, look no further! It appears that last year’s Twilight movie has sparked the creation of a life-sized decal portraying Edward Cullen’s silhouette and the accompanying phrase “Be safe.” The figure, which retails at $60 US, stands 6′2″ tall and can be applied to any wall in your home. The decal is intended to help you recreate the relationship between vampire Edward Cullen and teenage protagonist Bella Swan.
Okay, so am I the only one who finds this just a little bit creepy? In all honesty, if I awoke in the middle of the night and saw a male shadow lurking in my room, I’d be terrified. I also can’t help but be put off by the phrase “Be safe.” Like, ewww! It not only insinuates that women need male protection but also plays into the twisted notion that stalkers and overly-protective boyfriends/husbands/partners are really only trying to take care of their women.
I wonder if Vinyl Fruit, creators of the Edward Cullen decal, also make a restraining order decal. That’s really what I’d want in a situation like this.
Tagged as:
creepy,
film,
sexism,
stalkers
Every Thursday, Confabulous’ resident lawyer Tannis A. Waugh discusses the most interesting legal issues emerging in popular culture and addresses your burning law-related queries. Want to contest a parking ticket? Can’t help you. Got a legal question for our in-house LLB? Drop her a line at tannis [at] confabulous [dot] ca. Note: Nothing in this column constitutes legal advice in any jurisdiction and is for information and discussion purposes only. If you have a legal problem, consult a lawyer in your jurisdiction immediately.
Well, I know I’m relieved. Focus on the Family has finally updated their dress code to bring them in line with social norms in 1965 and will now allow women to wear pants. No kidding. You can read about it more here.
I’m a little sad that with the changes to the men’s dress code at Focus on the Family that spandex is still against the policy. I don’t think I can really take a Focus on the Family male employee seriously unless they’re decked up head to toe in spandex. Or is it that head to toe spandex drives home the seriousness of the message more? Meh.
Anyway, reading about this ridiculous policy change that made me immediately think of Mad Men and I thought, “I bet our readers would be interested in the legal issues associated with dress codes.”
Q: So what’s the big deal with dress codes?
A: In the workplace in a province like Ontario, true employees (not independent contractors) are subject to either the Employment Standards Act (Ontario) or their collective agreement, if they’re unionized, with few exceptions.
There are some basic rules regardless of whether one is unionized or not: dress codes can’t violate the Ontario Human Rights Code nor can they violate the Occupational Health and Safety Act.
This means that a policy for Acme Co. like, “all women must wear short skirts” is going to be a problem, whereas a rule like, “all people must wear steel toed boots and hardhats while on the factory floor” will not be a problem (unless, of course, there are more stringent requirements under the Occupational Health and Safety Act, in which case it would be a problem).
Q: Those are the easy examples. But what about the hard ones?
A: It seems that Muslim dress is a good example of a “hard example.” Similar to the issue of the niqab in Canadian Courts that I discussed a while ago, there is an interplay between competing issues in some working environments between the right to express one’s religion by dressing a certain way (i.e. fully covered skirts) and health and safety concerns.
Back in the fall, a group of women working for UPS brought an action against their previous employer under the Canadian Human Rights Code because their employment was terminated for their refusal to raise their ankle-length skirts up to their knees while using ladders.
The women had been able to do so for two years without complaint from the management at UPS but after a safety audit, it was found that this kind of clothing was a hazard. The women refused to raise their skirts because, even though they were wearing pants under the skirts, they felt that the pants showed off too much of their body which was against the strict interpretation of Sharia law at the Mosque that they worshiped at.
At the end of the day, the matter was settled confidentially between the employer and the employees, likely with a cash settlement to the terminated employees or a reinstatement to their jobs. However, both the Canadian and Ontario Human Rights Codes are interesting because the power of both tribunals to make orders is much more far reaching than a court and as such, the flexibility of the remedies available to them can make the tribunals more attractive as a vehicle for effective change regarding human rights in the workplace.
Q: Is there some sort of moral I can take from all of this talk about dress codes in the work place?
A: Yes. The basic rule is that the dress code should apply to everyone. As such, I wholeheartedly recommend instituting a policy whereby all employees are required to burlap bags on Fridays as a statement against dress codes (or solidarity with our sisters over at Focus on the Family and their newfound freedom to wear pants).
Tagged as:
dress code,
Focus on the Family,
law,
sexism
As you are no doubt aware, Mother’s Day was on Sunday. I’m a mother, and so our little family did what you’re supposed to do on Mother’s Day–eat brunch. How are those two things related? I’m not sure, and yet doesn’t Mother’s Day brunch seem to have cemented in popular culture like Polygrip on dentures?
I’m also completely unsure as to why KFC continues to run those goddamn “Moms Night Off” ads, which seemed to be on TV all the time in the run-up to Mother’s Day. First of all, the whole concept is totally sexist. It’s a given in these ads that it’s mom who does all the cooking. Somebody alert Ward Cleaver, but that simply isn’t the reality in untold numbers of households. Secondly, it’s kind of insulting to suggest that if mom was going to take the night off once a week/month/year that her replacement would be KFC. If it’s going to be a treat for mom not to cook, why not actually have something nice for dinner? Thanks for making all those healthy meals, mom–now let’s chug back some Coke n’ trans fats. Finally, I’m vegetarian, so if my husband and kid ever said to me, “You know, you deserve a night off. Let’s get dead birds for dinner!” I’d probably swat them with my purse (in as loving a way as possible, natch).
Plus, is it just me or is there something about this meal that makes you want to barf?
Like, seriously. I see this picture and I start laughing in order to stop myself from hurling. There’s something about the grease content on display here that makes my stomach lurch. Deep-fried chicken with deep-fried potatoes with deep-fried cheese sticks with–what is that?–macaroni salad, some greasy icing-laden cake and, deep in the background, a gesture at a vegetable with some cole slaw. And don’t forget about the bowl of thick, sticky brown grease masquerading as gravy. Fuckin’ UGH, man. Mom’s Night Out? Count me out.
Tagged as:
mothering,
sexism,
television
At one point in the distant past, I was a graduate student struggling to understand the concept of postmodernism. Apparently, one of the features of postmodernism is a repudiation of nostalgia. When I was in school, I totally didn’t get this. What was wrong with nostalgia? I thought. I feel nostalgic on a fairly frequent basis.
Then I understood nostalgia on a political scale–a longing for a past (which probably never existed) that got to exclude, well, anyone that you can comfortably imagine.
Folks, if you, too, ever sat in a class and thought, “Nostalgia? What’s the big deal?” let me share with you a little piece of excrement that was sent in by one of our eagle-eyed readers (h/t to Female Talk for the link). It’s a piece by one Peter Thiel, a man who is wholly unremarkable to me except for the fact that he is the founder of PayPal. In his article, he bemoans the current state of the world, and says that things really started to go to hell in a handbasket in the 1920s, ’cause that’s when women started to get the vote, and there was a “vast increase in welfare beneficiaries.” Ugh.
But probably the most interesting part of the post is where he starts fantasizing about cyberspace, outer space and something called “seasteading” (yeah, we’re talking oceans instead of prairies) as zones where libertarians (read: people who look and think like Peter Thiel) can roam around, lasso some virtual cattle and experience real freedom. Or democracy. Or whatever. He intones:
A better metaphor is that we are in a deadly race between politics and technology. The future will be much better or much worse, but the question of the future remains very open indeed. We do not know exactly how close this race is, but I suspect that it may be very close, even down to the wire. Unlike the world of politics, in the world of technology the choices of individuals may still be paramount. The fate of our world may depend on the effort of a single person who builds or propagates the machinery of freedom that makes the world safe for capitalism.
Did I just wake up inside a copy of Atlas Shrugged?
This is precisely the kind of nostalgia that is so very dangerous. It’s a colonialist longing for spaces and zones where the concerns of pioneers and money come first (rather than, say, the original, first inhabitants, like fish or moonscapes). It’s inherently anti-democratic. And it’s really repulsive.
Tagged as:
colonialism,
sexism
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