Links roundup

Posted by Lashings of Ginger Beer

Welcome to the weekly Lashings links round up! Feel free to add your own links in the comments, with a brief description and trigger warnings if appropriate.



Bitch magazine discusses American Apparel's search for the next XL top model, and the response of Nancy Upton, who is protesting against the meat-market aspects of the contest by entering pictures of herself posing as a roast pig, and covered in salad dressing (not in the same picture!) She also parodies fat girl stereotypes by eating in almost every picture. Her protest has had mixed responses, with some people thinking she is setting out to mock the other entrants (she's not). As Feministe puts it:

Because the hot big girl who knows she’s hot and decides to lay on a table like a roast pig is sending a message that goes beyond “another naked chick looking dead and like a piece of meat to be consumed by a male viewing audience.” The hot big girl who decides to lay on a table like a roast pig is also saying, “I see your insults and I raise you a very literal image of them that is simultaneously humorous and sexy and uncomfortable, and there are a lot of reactions to be had, but laughing at me is not one of them.” And God bless that girl, because that’s not an easy message to send.

Signal boosting: Wordpress refuses to do anything about a "hitlist" of trans women on a transmisogynist blog.

The Women's Budget Group and Platform 51 have produced a toolkit to support women who want to campaign and lobby locally. It is aimed at individuals and groups who may be campaigning from a marginalised position, or who lack experience of lobbying and developing effective campaign strategies.

Feminist analysis of My Little Pony, as it was and as it is now. It's worth adding to the points made in these articles that the new ponies are definitely skinnier than they used to be, in a way which makes them distinctly less pony-shaped.
Trigger warning: the first episode of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic (which you'll probably want to watch after reading the second piece) features a couple of occasions when big hair is mocked.

Call for papers - Doctor Who and Race: an Anthology.

BadRepUK have a series on women and protest through history, all of which is brilliant, but the biggest how-did-I-not-know-that?! moment for me was reading about the suffragettes who knew Jujutsu.