NEWSBYSARAH MENKEDICK

In 2007, Sue Thomason started an email magazine for plus-size British women. Now, she's transitioning the magazine to print, and vowing not to include any diet tips or do any photoshopping. The magazine, titled "Just As Beautiful," [ed note: now just "Beautiful"] will feature only women from British size 14 to 20 (US sizes 10 to 16).

The magazine is meant to act in part as an antidote to so many other women's magazines that lay on the pressure to get down to a size 0 and encourage constant self-critique. Content will include interviews with "plus-size celebrities," but supposedly won't focus on their bodies. The first issue's cover advertises: "Smokin' hot big girls," "Bitch fight! We battle with the diet pushers," and "How to win an argument: learn his tactics."

Not exactly groundbreaking material. I want to be enthusiastic about the no-photoshopping and no-diet-tips rules, but here the language of empowerment feels like a front for what is essentially another flighty women's magazine with a slightly different tack.

In a bittersweet ruling, the Costa Rica-based Inter-American Human Rights Court determined that the government of Mexico is responsible for the violation of the rights of Valentina Rosendo and Ines Fernandez, two indigenous women raped by Mexican soldiers in the state of Guerrero.

Rosendo was 17 when she was gang-raped by soldiers in 2002. She was washing her clothes in a river when eight soldiers approached her and demanded information about a suspect they were looking for. When she said she did not know anything, the soldiers went after her.

A month later, 11 soldiers came to Fernandez's house asking for her husband. When she didn't understand them because she doesn't speak Spanish, the soldiers gang-raped her.

The case was tried in a military court, since in Mexico all military crimes and accusations against members of the military are dealt with by none other than the military itself. The soldiers were declared not guilty and freed. There have been at least 4,000 complaints about the military's violation of human rights in the past several years, as thousands of troops have occupied Mexican cities under the guise of fighting the "drug war." These troops are funded by the $1.6 billion the U.S has proposed to fund the Merida Initiative.

"We are very judgmental, we forgot the crime, and we remember how she dresses."

This is the analysis of Rima Sabban, a sociologist from the United Arab Emirates working at Zayed University in Dubai, of the recent murder of Lebanese pop star Suzanne Tamim. Tamim had been having an affair with Egyptian businessman and politician Hisham Talaat Moustafa (who owns the Four Seasons in Cairo, among other properties).

When Moustafa told her he could not marry her because he did not have his mother's permission (and -- although this doesn't prevent him from taking another wife in Egypt -- he also already has a wife and three children) Tamim left him and fled to Dubai. Moustafa then hired Mohsen al-Sukari, a former Egyptian state security officer, to kill her for two million dollars. Sukari went to Dubai, knocked on Tamim's door and, when she answered, slit her throat and stabbed her.

The photos of Tamim's body hit the pages of Arab newspapers and a high-profile investigation ensued that ultimately led to Sukari and Moustafa, and revealed taped conversations in which Moustafa suggested that Tamim should be run over or thrown off of a building. Sukari later confessed that Moustafa had wanted her severed head before paying up for the killing.

It's no surprise that being skinny is an advantage for women in our society. Just how much of an advantage? About $15,000 worth.

A recent study by Timothy A. Judge of the University of Florida has revealed that very skinny women — those weighing an average of 25 pounds less than the "normal" or "average" weight for women of their group — earn $15,572 more per year than women of average weight.

Women whose weight is around 25 pounds higher than the "norm" for their group make $13,847 less than the women of average weight. The study proposed that women are most harshly punished for an initial deviation from the ideal —  a jump from being 25 lbs underweight to "normal" or just below normal weight — and they suffer the biggest drop in salary when they make this initial transgression. From then on out, they'll take smaller pay cuts for each increase in weight.

Men, meanwhile, get a financial pat on the back for gaining weight. They're penalized for being "too thin." Gaining 25 lbs per year brings a man a yearly salary boost of $8,437. This boost drops slightly to $7,775 per year once the men have reached above average weights.

So let's get this straight: women earn in the ballpark of $15,000 extra for being too skinny, whereas men earn in the ballpark of $7,000 extra for being over their recommended weight. Any sort of argument about how our society's obsession with weight is merely tied to health concerns flies out the window in the face of a study like this.

Jacob, a Quebec-based clothing company, has decided to stop retouching both its lingerie and its clothing models. Spokeswoman Cristelle Basmaji explains, "As a socially responsible company, JACOB has always made an effort to promote a healthy image of the female body. By adopting an official policy and broadcasting it publicly, we hope to reverse the trend in digital photo manipulation that has become excessive in our industry."

The company offered an example of one particular photo in both its original and retouched form. The difference in this case is hardly noticeable — a slimmer thigh, a softened collarbone, a slightly tinier belly and bigger bust. It's definitely not a retouching job on the scale of other Photoshop disasters. But Jacob's decision is hopefully more impacting in encouraging a more widespread trend of moving away from excessive retouching.

The company clarifies that it's not abandoning the practice altogether: scars and tattoos will still be removed from photos. But at least this initial statement is addressing the havoc that Photoshop can wreck on already thin bodies and the way in which it plays such a critical role in creating literally impossible and unattainable beauty standards.

Having retailers speak up about retouching — a practice that only recently has begun crossing women's minds when they look at images of impractically skinny models — is a step in the right direction, away from twisted lollipop heads and hipless ghosts towards healthier bodies. Please consider adding your voice to the petition asking the New York State legislature to require disclaimers on Photoshopped images.

Photo credit: Simon_Music

In June, I wrote about the increasing practice in Chechnya of firing paintballs at women who hadn't fully covered their hair with headscarves. Police officers were responsible for at least several of the attacks; they would drive by on motorcycles, shoot the "offending" woman, and film the incident on cell phones to increase her public humiliation.

Recently, the pressure on Chechen women has increased. During the first days of Ramadan, groups of men in traditional Islamic dress claiming to represent the Islamic High Council of Chechnya accosted women in the capital of Grozny. They would approach women deemed to be dressed inappropriately (a relative term which could refer to anything from a bare forearm to a skirt not far enough below the knees to revealed hair), shove fliers describing appropriate Islamic dress in their hands, and publicly humiliate them by shouting, touching their bare skin, and yanking on their clothes.

All of this behavior is condoned by Chechnya's president, Ramzan Kadyrov, a Chechen rebel turned Kremlin loyalist who has made a neat little bargain with Moscow to keep rebel activity in line in exchange for complacency in Chechnya's increasing shift towards extreme Islamist policy. In 2007, Kadryov stated that all women employed by the government must cover their heads at work. The measure was not made into a law -- a step perhaps too controversial for Mr. Kadyrov to risk at that point -- but might as well have been. When Natalya Estemirova, a a Chechen human rights activist, announced on a Russian TV station that Chechen women were being forced to wear scarves she was summoned by Mr. Kadyrov and violently cursed at; later, she was murdered.

Only flawed women in our culture get old. Only those who haven't learned the tricks of the stars; who've refused the battle to prove that they're still our culture's version of "perfect" (22, thin as a wisp of grass, blond, and doe-eyed); who don't accept the aggressively promoted notion that age is unsexy, undesirable, and to be avoided at all costs and for as long as possible; who've turned their backs on all of society's insistence that they deny, repress, frantically hold off their age.

It is better to hide these women, forget about them, or gloss them over. Such is the message we're sent each time another Photoshopped photo is revealed shaving off decades, eliminating veins and wrinkles, and smoothing over any evidence of age. Each of these photos is a reminder that if you age, and worse, if you accept it, you're the pitiable exception to the rule; you'd better rush to pick up another bottle of wrinkle cream.

The latest such photos are of Madonna in a spread for Dolce & Gabanna. In the Photoshopped photos, she looks somewhere between 22 and 30, splayed across a chair holding a broom seductively; with a pursed "O" of surprise on her lips as she washes dishes in a black lace dress; a temptress with glowing cleavage peeling fruit in a country kitchen. She looks great, sure (especially if you deny the somewhat creepy realization that she's actually at least twenty years older than she appears). But she doesn't look anything like she does in the un-Photoshopped photos, where she is also stunningly beautiful, with muscular veins in her hands, a faded texture to the skin on her arms, age in her face and the shape of her eyes.

Change.org writer Roxann MtJoy wrote an article last week about the benefit gala Meryl Streep gave to help fund construction of the National Women's History Museum and pointed out the frustrating fact that after clearing the House of Representatives, the National Women's History Museum Act of 2009 has been gathering dust in the Senate, preventing further progress on the project.

This week, Republican senators Tom Coburn of Oklahoma and Jim DeMint of South Carolina spoke out about a hold they have placed on the bill, preventing it from passing with unanimous consent and implying a potential filibuster in the future. Their reasoning for blocking the National Women's History Museum, which would showcase the original, signed 19th amendment along tens of thousands of other artifacts central to women's history in the U.S., is that taxpayers might be asked to subsidize the museum in the future and that the museum would focus on abortion rights without "without featuring any of the many contributions of the pro-life movement in America."

The latter concern comes from the "Concerned Women for America," a concerned women's group who wrote to Senator DeMint about the museum's supposed emphasis on abortion rights, encouraging him to place the hold on the bill.

Courtney Howard, a student at San Jose State University, recently filed a lawsuit against the Sigma Gamma Rho sorority after they subjected her and other recent recruits to brutal hazing. The new pledges had objects thrown at them; were beaten with pots, spoons, and paddles; and kicked, punched, slapped, and thrown against walls. This process lasted sixteen nights. The pledges were warned that "snitches get stitches" and told not to mention the hazing.

Howard, however, did mention it to university officials, at which point the Sigma Gamma Rho girls threatened to collectively beat her up. Soon after, she filed a lawsuit. The suit names as defendants four girls who, as it turns out, were already charged with misdemeanors for hazing earlier this year. Meanwhile, Sigma Gamma Rho has been temporarily suspended, and Howard has left San Jose State for the University of Southern California.

What happens in our society to encourage women to brutalize other women? And in this case, what happens to encourage women of color to brutalize other women of color? Does anyone really believe that this is a heartwarming rite of passage everyone in the sorority will remember fondly, that it creates bonding or respect, or is there something else going on: impotence on the part of these women before greater issues holding them down and keeping them powerless, which they act out against by beating other women with kitchen pots, or perhaps the "sorority sisters" adoption of a culture of violence in which power is gained by subduing women?

The knee-jerk response to this story is to scoff at Greek Life, or to defend it from a few bad apples. But I think there are deeper and more disturbing issues going on here, most notably young women taking up strategies of violence, humiliation, and oppression to establish their status and power over other women.

Photo credit: English 106

Mother Jones reporter Mac McClelland reported live from Haiti:

"On my way to the hospital with a girl whose tongue was bitten off when she was raped."

And later: "So, they're gonna have to do tongue reshaping, rather than reattachment, because the guy who bit it off swallowed it."

And then later: "Holy f....ing s...t this dr just told [K.] it's her fault she got raped bc she's a slut and smokes pot."

Notice that all of these terrifying mini-narratives are told in 140 characters or less. That's because McClelland was live-tweeting her meeting with a rape victim. McClelland told, in vivid and horrific 140 word snippets, of the victim's journey to the hospital, the physical details of the gang rape, the doctor's chastising and victim-blaming, and ultimately the victim's return to "rape central": a camp "flanked by police station, national palace, ministry for women."

Her story definitely received attention, stirring up debate from bloggers, tweeters, journalists, and human rights defenders about the ethics of tweeting something as serious, traumatic, and complicated as a rape. Journalists wondered about whether McClelland had gotten the victim's consent before sending her name and details out over the internet. Irate tweeters labeled the updates sensationalistic and exploitative. Bloggers called out McClelland for a lack of context, historical detail, and in-depth information, saying that summing up rape in 140 characters is misleading and does not do justice to the problem.