I never realised Doug Ford didn’t think women drove. No, seriously. I laboured under the delusion Doug and his brother Mayor Rob were mayors of all citizens of the sprawling mess we lovingly call the GTA, not just the men in their little enclave in the suburbs. It’s difficult to separate the muddled meanderings of the two, and it’s painfully obvious Doug is Mayor part two. I knew from the start neither of them didn’t believe the vast majority of Torontonians were worth a lick of salt, we being dangerous, lefty, elite pinkos and all, but never in my wildest ponderings did I think the Fords were so sexist as to think only men drove cars in this city.

Why else would Doug Ford suggest Hooter’s Tow Truck service? Yes, I know (or hope) he was attempting to be funny, but suggesting a Hooters sponsored tow truck to help with a flat tire, smacks of a juvenile wet dream. Let’s have a woman dressed in short shorts and tank tops pop around with the tow truck driver to serve up an order of wings – nothing like a stereo type to boost the male ego! Or is Mayor Doug expecting the Hooters woman to change the man’s flat tire too? Don’t hand me any crap about “It’ll just be the wings, not the girl” either. If he meant fast food, then why did he specify Hooters – the symbol of corporate objectification of women, rather than an order of wings and fries.

Better yet Doug, will we get Hooters Boys? Can we specify which type of sexism we would like to patronize? Bad enough he and his brother are acting as shills for the corporate world and attempting to gut any program they personally don’t use, now we have to endure inane musings like Hooters service for a flat tire. Nothing like city hall sanctioned sexism to enhance Toronto’s reputation.

Here’s a news flash Mayor Tweedledee, women drive. We also vote.

Today, Nov 1, 2010 Mr McCance formally resigned from his position on the school board. Rightfully so. He’s entitled to his opinions, he’s not entitled to promote an agenda of hate and advocate gays kill themselves.

To all those who threatened McCance over this – get a fucking grip. Threatening his family makes you no better than McCance. Hate is hate, regardless of your motivations. His wife and children were not responsible for his tirade and if you can’t see what’s wrong with threatening McCance and his family with violence, then you need to do some serious soul searching, get a clue. Smucks.

Is it any wonder we see a Teabag candidate wandering the woods wearing a Waffen SS uniform and calling it a “father, son bonding” experience? Or the Teabag party defending this type of role playing as exploring history and in the same breath saying anyone who shared airspace with someone on the on the left should be hounded from society? Or a Facebook page advocating killing the President? Websites titled LIBERALS and NAZIS (Send this to your left wing acquaintance), Wake up and Kill all Liberals? Or noxious trolls like Anne Coulter saying history was all wrong, Hitler was a lefty? Or so called political pundits like Rush Limbaugh saying “I tell people don’t kill all the liberals. Leave enough so we can have two on every campus — living fossils — so we will never forget what these people stood for”?

It goes on and on. Slander is their byword, don’t let facts get in the way, bury history in bullshit, yell louder and tell anyone who objects they are a threat and should be exterminated.

Oh yes Teabaggers – the party of democracy.

What is one school that Mary 1 Queen of England attended?
She didn’t attend schools. She was taught by monks. Most of her early life was spent in exile away from court because she was considered the illegitimate daughter of Ann Boleyn. Even if she had been at court she wouldn’t have gone to a school as we know it. Women and girls were not allowed in schools and often it was only noble boys who gained education.

Yup… trolling for trouble at my favourite playground. This was posted by a supervisor who was a teacher, PhD and a brain that is “a data bank of facts and they just seem to stick in my brain especially in history and arts.” I think some of it came unstuck on this one. Can we spot the errors? Other than the obvious one about Ann Boleyn? Mary was an educated woman who’s first tutor was Thomas Linacre, humanist, scholar and well certainly not a monk.

Ohh a double header for you:
What were the symptoms of the plague in 1665?
There was no plague in 1665
In the Middle Ages universities formed to do what?
The educational system in the middle ages didn’t exist and there weren’t universities. 90% of the population couldn’t read or write and the nobility that could read were tutored by monks as children
Seriously, what history did this person study? Mars? Pluto? Certainly not earth history.

What was Christianity in the Middle Ages like?
Everyone was Catholic.
That takes care of those pesky Orthodox Churches and heretics. Just pretend they never existed.

The life of a bottler in medieval times?
There wasn’t a person who was a “bottler” in the middle ages. The ability to bottle, store and keep items in bottles will come much later in history.
38 seconds worth of searching popped up 3 excellent descriptions of a bottler.

Why did towns begin to grow around ad1000?
People began to learn how to plant crops and when that happens the following of animals is no longer needed so they build a house of some sort and stay. Pretty soon another groups come along and they stay too. Soon there are several houses and crops. When this happens people make rules for living together and begin to create a soceity.
Thousands of years of human growth struck off with a wave of the keyboard. Good answer, wrong question.

What floor did servants live on in a castle? (listed under Henry VIII and Middle Ages)
There wasn’t servants in a castle. The needs of the Queen or King were met by the use of young nobles who took care of them and their wardrobes. This was considered to be an honor and they wanted to be there. The young people were looking for a husband and wife among the nobles that were there so they could gain power or land for their family.
Somehow I can’t quite picture a young noble working in the kitchen washing up and turning the spit. Are you getting a delightful image of shenanigans in the pantry.

What was a Porter’s job in medieval times?
There were no porters in the middle ages.
What an baffling vision of life in the Middle Ages. I can’t quite figure this out. Once again, 38 seconds found a list of Medieval jobs, including “The janitor, or porter, was responsible for the main castle entrance and for the guardrooms. The porter also insured that no one entered or left the castle without permission”.

What were the main themes in literature during the middle ages?
Any thing written was religious…
I don’t think the Wife of Bath is an homage to God.

Was there missionaries in the middle ages?
No. Everyone was Catholic in Europe and people didn’t travel outside Europe until the late 1400′s so there were no missionaries needed.
Wtf? Everyone was Catholic? Moors in Spain, Jews, Cathars, Orthodox, Marco Polo, Silk Road …

I go on about this because I get stressed over the blatant disregard for the facts. It is so easy to look up reliable sources. If in doubt, look it up. But therein lies the problem – you have to have the confidence to say “let’s take it moment to double check”. This doesn’t happen. Don’t muddle my mind with facts, I have a mission to spread my personal view of history to the world. A completely wrong and slightly bizarre view, but hey… it’s a free country.

History, it’s dangerous. Don’t cruise the Internet alone.

In an ode to bankrupt ideals, South Korean fashion label Lewitt commissioned a short film (now yanked from every site I checked) that featured model Abbey Lee Kershaw fleeing from an unidentified danger and throwing herself off a roof. She is then shown falling over and over, in slow motion, wearing a different outfit with each fall. It’s done in a dreamy, romanticized way that is supposed to evoke a sense of “Ohh I want that”.

The problems with this are many fold. First, it is another attempt by the fashion industry to glamorize violence against women… again. Somehow this poor waif-like creature who commits suicide to escape whatever peril she is in, is supposed to be envied because she’s wearing must-have outfits. Hmm yes I want to wear what a dead woman is wearing – tres chic! We’ve seen this over and over in the past. The most egregious was the “murder as fashion” segment of an America’s Top Model episode.

Second, in doing a bit of research before hitting the keyboard, I discovered South Korea has the 8th highest suicide rate in the world, the second highest (just a hair under Mainland China) in female suicides. You would think, or hope, a company from a country rocked by numerous high profile suicides – including one of the country’s top models, Daul Kim – would show just a bit more common sense. Compassion is never going to happen, common sense is all we can hope for.

Daul Kim’s sad death at the age of 20 seems to have no effect on the people who treat women like nothing more than cattle ready for the slaughter. The fashion industry is not solely responsible for Kim’s death in Nov 2009; she was haunted by many demons that were aggravated by her career. Nor are they solely responsible for the high rate of suicide within South Korea. HOWEVER, they do bear responsibility for exploiting women and creating monumentally unrealistic visions of beauty that push girls and women to extremes to meet this phantom of beauty. The unending stream of warped images from the advertising and fashion industry must have an effect. We can’t simply say don’t watch them or worse don’t pay attention to them because this is hopelessly naive.

Blog after blog exposes the over photo-shopped models who have had limbs moved into positions that are anatomically impossible, breasts air brushed away (or in one case moved so low they were sitting just above the poor woman’s navel), thinned so badly the women look like sick bobble heads, belly buttons removed (just what is the industry’s obsession with belly buttons?), elongating arms and legs to the point the women resemble something out of a sci-fi movie, fingers elongated to such an extreme I wonder if the people doing the work even know what a female body looks like. If they want clothes hangers, stop the hypocrisy and put the damned clothes on hangers. Stop redesigning the human body to suit these warped views, and start showing women that come in all shapes, all sizes.

The industry bears a great responsibility for exploiting the notion that violence and fear is glamorous. That somehow brutalizing the vulnerable and weak is acceptable, even envied. I’ve used the term bankrupt ideals before, but it is the only phrase that can fully explain an industry that celebrates self-abuse and violence. No other industry would get away with promoting this type of agenda. Why do they get away with it? Because the world idolizes everything the industry does. They are the neo-gods of the modern world. Legions of magazines drool over every design, and quote even the most inane blatherings from designers who live in a world where they can abuse the female image and be rewarded for their efforts. They seemed to have forgotten Hubert de Givenchy’s statement on fashion, “The dress must follow the body of a woman, not the body following the shape of the dress.”

We’ve endured “heroin chic”, size zero or go home, designers who show open contempt for the female body in their battle against “plus size” models, murder as a fashion statement and now this. When is enough, enough?

There is nothing wrong with wanting tall, willowy models to showcase your work. There is something wrong with photo-shopping the models until they look like they are about to die from malnutrition or redo their bodies to suit a perverse image of what they think the female body should be. There is something wrong with using violence and emotional desperation to sell a warped image of beauty. There is something wrong with an industry that hectors it’s employees (and yes models are employees) to such an extent that anorexia and bulimia are the bywords for employment.

A remedial course in anatomy should be mandatory before anyone is allowed to work in either the fashion industry or advertising (kissing cousins in maintaining high standards of stupidity). This won’t happen until the world stops treating everything the fashion industry does with such reverence. They are employers who exploit their workers and their audience.

Suicide in South Korea
Frockwriter’s blog on the subject
Photoshop Disasters blog they spotlight the entire advertising industry’s misuse of over-touching photos.