Friday Femme Fatale: Motherhood, Feminism & Fashion

Ahh, it's Friday. Finally. You know what that means - time for another Friday Femme Fatale. Enjoy.

Big debate this week over this article in The Nation, Raising the Baby Question, which seems to suggest that feminists aren't paying enough attention to topics of motherhood or parenting:

Something occurred to me last week as I sifted through a series of Mother's Day specials on the feminist blogs I peruse regularly. During the rest of the year, women like me, a 24-year-old childless feminist, are surprisingly disengaged from the debates surrounding mothering and caregiving. Blogs targeting young feminists run the gamut from equal pay to women in politics, but their posts more often hash out topics like reproductive rights, sex, domestic violence, body image and women in the media. Books by young feminists in the past few years, like Jessica Valenti's The Purity Myth, Courtney Martin's Perfect Girls, Starving Daughters and Ariel Levy's Female Chauvinist Pigs, barely scratch the surface of issues like paid maternity leave, affordable childcare and balanced parenting.

Additionally, President Obama is raising the abortion debate with his appearance at Notre Dame University where pro-life students are protesting his upcoming Commencement Address. All this has brought the abortion debate front and center with sites like Jezebel asking, Has A Pro-Choice President Made More Americans Pro-Life?

The latest Gallup poll shows that significantly more Americans self-identify as pro-life this year than did last year. Might it have something to do with the increasing prominence of the debate? The Gallup poll shows a surprising reversal in people's self-identification - and shows that largest percentage of Americans ever identify as pro-life.

The slowdown of the economy is not only leading to a slowdown of cash flow into the bank, but also the slowdown of minority growth in the United States as reported in the Washington Post in the article, Growth of Hispanic, Asian Population Slows Unexpectedly, Census Reports:

Deterred by immigration laws and the lackluster economy, the population growth of Hispanics and Asians in the United States has slowed unexpectedly, causing the government to push back estimates on when minorities will become the majority by as much as a decade.

Census data being released today also showed that fewer Hispanics are migrating to suburbs and newly emerging immigrant areas in the Southeast, including Arkansas, Tennessee and Georgia. Instead, Hispanics are staying in traditional gateway locations such as California.

The nation's overall minority population continues to rise steadily, increasing 2.3 percent in 2008 to 104.6 million, or 34 percent of the total population. But the slowdown among Hispanics and Asians continues to shift conventional notions on when the tipping point in U.S. diversity will come -- estimated to occur more than three decades from now.

Meanwhile, the Awareness Blog writes about Craigslist finally addressing it's "Erotic Services" section for what it really is - a site rampant with illegal sex trafficking - and reports how it will now monitor the site with increased scrutiny:

Illinois Attorney General Lisa Madigan announced this morning that Craigslist, the popular classified ad site, will be ending its "erotic services" listings on May 15 and will create a new adult category that will be monitored by humans. (Currently posts go mostly unmonitored unless there's an abuse complaint.)

In other news, NARAL is hosting a hashtag contest on Twitter for the Supreme Court vacancy; the Global Healing Center provides a correlation between alcohol and breast cancer; Ben Smith reports on how Obama clears field for Senator Kristen Gillibrand in New York (which will hopefully ensure that we keep another female in the Senate) and Bust reports on this tragic event in Afghanistan where young girls were poisoned while at school.

In the world of fashion, Vogue's Stephanie La Cava shares the newest Dior - in film that is. Dior is releasing four short vignettes directed by Olivier Dahan that feature Marion Cotillard, who La Cava says "is divine in any disguise."

Finally, don't forget to join Fem 2.0 this Sunday for a Tweetchat that will reveal more thoughts on the feminist vs. motherhood debate:

Fem2.0 Twittercast: Mommies and Feminists - The Great Divide
Sunday, May 18, 2009, 10 PM EST
To join the Twittercast, see here

Moderators: Veronica Arreola and Tifanei Moyer

There is an apparent disconnect betweet mom bloggers & feminist bloggers. What lives at the intersection of feminism & motherhood? Why isn't adoption more of a feminist issue on both sides - the adoptive mom & the birth mom? How can we get non-mom feminists to speak out more on mom issues or connect to mom issues? Why aren't mom issues a top issue when anyone thinks of feminist issues?