This Week in Lady Reads

So this week might have veered a tiny bit back into “This Week in Misogyny” territory, but it’s not my fault a bunch of people have been sucking. But there’s also a pretty good helping of fun and badassery! And gifs.

We always love feminist gifs!

Feminist Lisa Frank was also a ton of fun while it lasted, but apparently Lisa Frank is displeased so the images will be coming down soon. Womp, womp.

Two from author Maya Rodale:

• 7 Reasons It’s Actually Totally Feminist To Read (And Write) Romance Novels, Thank You Very Much.
• Feminist-Friendly Romance Novels (Seconding the Courtney Milan love!)

There’s a new Princess Diaries book coming out in June and it’s a bit more adult than the earlier YA books. (Wink wink!)

Amazon got rid of the sidebar filter that let users sort toys by whether they were for boys or girls… but that doesn’t mean they don’t still have separate pages to recommend boys vs girls toys.

A California judge ruled that a school district’s abstinence-only sex ed curriculum doesn’t fit the state’s requirement that students actually be taught about sexual health, so they have to ditch the program. Hopefully the ruling will set a precedent that helps other students too some day.

Oh the irony that we’ve got an article about how the office gender politics of 9 to 5 are still relevant today, and we also have the news that Jane Fonda and Lily Tomlin were paid the same amount as Martin Sheen and Sam Waterston for Netflix’s Grace and Frankie, even though it’s obvious from the title which ones are the stars of the show and which are the supporting cast.

Why we shouldn’t call women “trashy” for wearing skimpy outfits, as if female bodies are inherently “bad.”

Jay Smooth and Feminista Jones talk about some of the problems with the campaign to put Harriet Tubman on the $20 bill.

MRAs are pissed that Mad Max: Fury Road is about post-apocalyptic ladies. Ewwwww! (Eyerolls.)

Even bigger eyerolls at the consultants who gave sexist advice to Austin city employees on how they should deal with the fact that the city council is now mostly women.

On middle class guilt and what you can really do to help exploited nail salon workers.

Melissa McCarthy is a BAMF.

Fox News blurred the boobs on a Picasso when running a story about the painting’s record-setting sale price at auction. On the plus side, it did inspire this series of hilarious fake-censored art. (I’m particularly fond of the censored O’Keeffe and Bosch, though the Rothko really takes it to the next level.)

Kristen Schaal on dad bods vs mom bods.

Science!

NASA made us some cool new gifs of a sunset on Mars and of the rotation of Ceres.

Evo psych continues to be wrong, wrong, wrong; looks like cavemen likely had egalitarian societies, not patriarchal ones.

Finally, yes. Yes, I will take Eddie Vedder out to the ballgame.