Help Support Locks of Love with Social Media

August 21, 2008, category

Heavy As Hell, a social media site for music of the rock, metal, punk, industrial and goth variety was relaunched at the beginning of this month. Not only is this good news for all music lovers, bloggers and followers everywhere, but it is also good news for Locks of Love.

Locks of Love helps financially disadvantaged children in the United States and Canada suffering from long-term medical hair loss from any diagnosis. Most of the children helped by Locks of Love suffer from a medical condition called alopecia areata, which has no known cause or cure. Locks of Love provides hairpieces to children to help to restore their self-esteem and confidence, which can of course be hard because children their own age are most of the time a child’s worst critics. By receiving a prostheses from Locks of Love these children are rejuvenated, feeling like just another normal child free to live their lives free of ridicule and feelings of insecurity.

Mark Carras, founder of Heavy As Hell has designed a challenge for the members of the Heavy As Hell community and also for people who may have never heard of the social media site in hopes of inspiring other music lovers to jump on board and help out a great cause. Because this challenge launched in the very beginning of August and has yet to take off as much as we would like to see, Mark has extended the challenge. First of all, here is the original challenge video:

Changes in the challenge since then include getting 250 on topic stories on the front page of Heavy As Hell by the end of this month, which gives us 9 more days! If 250 on topic music stories get on the front page of Heavy As Hell by August 31, we will then have until September 30 to reach 1000 stories gracing the front page of the site. As soon as 250 stories are made popular, the wife of Mark Carras, The Queen of Cheese will be donating one foot of her hair to Locks of Love and the popularity ticker will keep on ticking until 1000 stories are reached, where Mark Carras will shave his head and donate $1000 to Locks of Love to sponsor a child. We’re talking cumulative here, so reaching 1000 stories is made even easier by the counter on popular stories not being restarted to reach 1000.

I have personally donated hair to Locks of Love–Over 11 inches of it and love what Locks of Love are doing for children who frankly would benefit from your hair more than you. It’s a worthwhile cause and I know I will be donating to them again, I’m already in the process of growing my hair out again. But if you don’t have the means (or patience) to donate to them yourself, the least you could do is support someone else who wants to do a good deed and Mark Carras is presenting a fun opportunity to get everyone on board.

So if you’re a music lover or even if you’re not particularly interested in the type of music Heavy As Hell covers, but have some interesting music industry news, go over to Heavy As Hell, sign up, submit your story and also vote up some others and help support Locks of Love. Mark Carras really wants to shave his head so let’s help him do it.

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Suck It In or Lose It?

August 20, 2008, category

body image, media

Update: Laurie, co-founder of kirtsy has left a comment on this post explaining that kirtsy’s ad space was hijacked and that they did not approve this ad. kirtsy is currently in the process of refunding the buyer’s money for this ad and getting it removed as soon as possible. Thank you for clearing this up, Laurie.

kirtsy I was perusing the stories submitted to kirtsy, a social media site for women, yesterday and while I was reading stories deemed popular by women, an ad caught my eye. Yes an ad, something that my mind usually doesn’t even register due to all ads looking the same and my mind possessing a talent to simply ignore entire halves of websites trying to sell me stuff. Upon seeing this particular ad I literally had to do a double take and find out why, exactly, my stomach was featured in an ad.

Of course it wasn’t my stomach, but it surely looked like it; so much in fact that upon first glance, the boyfriend even thought kirtsy had somehow obtained a clear picture of my stomach. Are they stalking me? Hiding outside my bedroom window with their cameras poised waiting for me to put on a pair of jeans? Nope, it’s just another ad made to make women feel bad about their bodies to the point where if they see an ad such as the one pictured to the left here, look down and notice that their stomach looks eerily familiar to the picture, they will surely opt to buy into whatever weight loss product this site “for women” is pushing on women who have low self confidence.

The reason women have low self confidence when they look in the mirror (or avoid mirrors completely) is because sites that claim to be for women are pushing products that are part of a multi-billion dollar industry profiting off of self-loathing.

This ad simply states that there are two options when your jeans don’t fit–Suck it in and be uncomfortable or lose the weight. I don’t know about you, but when my pants don’t fit, I opt to get a bigger pair of pants! I know there are still stores out there who sell pants, right? Why isn’t that an option?

Women out there who find that their stomachs look like the one in the ad or women whose stomachs don’t look like that but feel bad about themselves anyway, go get yourself a bigger pair of pants because you are beautiful and perfect just the way you are. Stop letting a multi-billion dollar industry tell you that you don’t look good. Keep the money you would spend on a weight loss product and go buy yourself something nice–Like some kick ass lingerie!

So kirtsy, you suck and you can lose that ad!

Upon closer inspection of kirtsy’s ad space while writing an email to them about their bullshit ad (sharethelove at kirtsy.com for anyone else who is interested), I noticed an ad for Carson Kressley’s TV show How to Look Good Naked with the following text placed below it:

“The refreshing thing about this show (How to Look Good Naked) is that we’re saying, ‘You know what? You look great just the way you are. We want you to be happy being who you are, and you don’t have to be perfect, and you don’t have to be a zero.’”

Yes kirtsy, we look great just the way we are and we most definitely should be happy being who we are–Even if our stomachs look like the one placed in another one of your ads. I know money for advertising space is swell, but shouldn’t you be a little less hypocritical when accepting ads?

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The New Feminism at its Finest

December 30, 2007, category

Feminism at its Finest

feminism at its finest blog carnival Due to the holidays, work, and everything revolving around holidays and work (but mostly work,) Menstrual Poetry has been stagnant for a few weeks. Because of this, Feminism at its Finest has suffered quite a bit.

I have decided to change the day that the carnival will be up, from this point forward, it will be up every Sunday and I am also going to make dedicated Menstrual Poetry time a few days a week.

Madeleine Begun Kane wrote a hilarious piece entitled Chafing At “Chick”. Definitely a must read!

Carol presents a fantastic post on the marketing tactics used by companies called Is Makeup Harmless?

Erich Engelbrecht presents a post called Why Women Make All The Difference, where he states:

Marketing technical sciences to young women may be one measure to increase female output in this area. I think a lot less money is needed for the same results if girls are brought up more naturally in an ever more technical society.

therapydoc presents a post on internet addiction and pornography called Internet Pornography- Part One. Don’t worry, it’s actually quite a good post.

Pearl has a very informative post on social media called Would You Want to Exchange Social Media Information? Definitely a must read for anyone looking for simple ways to get more viewers to your website.

And that is all for the blog carnival this week. It will be back next week so submit your posts now!

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