Gendered Legos? Can I Vomit Now?

Somehow I thought things would be looking up for reducing the number of gendered toys after the video of a little girl ranting in a Target went viral around Christmas. Then just today I found out, to my horror but not shock, that Lego is making a new collection for girls called “Lego Friends.” GAH! It appears to be some kind of Bratz-Lego hybrid complete with a site that has horrible animation reminiscent of a Barbie movie.

Of course, these new female Legos have curves and busts and love to hang out at the hair salon and cafe in their horrible little town of Heart Lake City.

HEART LAKE CITY?!?!?!?!?!?! It’s like Salt Lake City except with more ponies. Read more »

Fox News “Expert” Critiques Controversial J. Crew Ad

Sometimes I wonder how human beings can be smart enough to, let’s say, graduate from Brown University and the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine but be so stupid as to write the following paragraph:

Well, how about the fact that encouraging the choosing of gender identity, rather than suggesting our children become comfortable with the ones that they got at birth, can throw our species into real psychological turmoil—not to mention crowding operating rooms with procedures to grotesquely amputate body parts? Why not make race the next frontier? What would be so wrong with people deciding to tattoo themselves dark brown and claim African-American heritage? Why not bleach the skin of others so they can playact as Caucasians?

This frightening and absurd statement came from Dr. Keith Ablow’s Fox News article “J. Crew Plants the Seeds for Gender Identity.” The J. Crew ad in question pictures company president Jenna Lyons painting her son’s toenails pink because (gasp) it is his favorite color. Read more »

Cartoon Yourself… Crappily

So here I am looking for martial arts news and what not,  and I’m trying not to pay attention to any stupid ads on the pages. Nevertheless, this one stuck out. At first I thought:  “that cartoon is really lame because it doesn’t seem like a person could actually look that jacked up.” Then I looked again.

Wow.

They found a model whose face does look that jacked up. Not that she is ugly, it’s just that she has a look on her face like she has a concussion.

I don’t understand why concussion girl here, or anyone else for that matter, would want to use this crap. There are other options out there to “cartoon yourself” including a decent South Park character creator as well as plenty of other themed or chibi avatar creators out there. Or, I mean, you could just use a picture of yourself…