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This poster for The Women is not ok with me:

Not only is the movie poster in the shape of a woman’s torso, it has outlines of (perfectly even) breasts in bright red lipstick. Oh, wait! Don’t forget the belly button, and the perfect Barbie waist and hips! I suppose it wouldn’t be so awful if the poster didn’t make a massive generalization about women and shove them into a stereotyped box. I’ve taken the time to type out the text for those who are curious and do not feel like squinting:

The girlfriends. The joy. The boding. The betrayals. The breakups. The makeups. The sex. The fun. The jealousy. The gossip. The success. The struggles. The marriage. The divorce. The beauty. The warmth. The work. The family. The dreams. The career. The husbands. The kids. The laughter. The tears. The secrets. The support. The lovers. The fighters. The balance. The intuition. The thighs. The shoes. The diets. The trust. The loyalty. The lies. The intellect. The elegance. The confidence. The doubt. The mothers. The daughters. The compassion. The courage. The humor. The passion. The love. The friendship. The women.

So not only do you have to be an intellectual mother who cares about her thighs, her shoes, and diets, but you have to have a career, elegance, and confidence - and be successful. I think the designers of this poster took the phrase “having it all” a little too seriously: they’ve suggested that a woman must experience all of this (with the perfect figure and red lipstick) in order to be a true woman and belong to the “women” collective. A woman is not a woman if she does have breasts, a belly button, a husband, some doubt, a few tears, and success.

Image from Wild About Movies.

I knew today was going to be a good day this morning when I came to work and checked my feeds and discovered three “news” items that made me grin from ear to ear. They are the following:

1. The Gallup poll that shows 71% of Americans don’t like Bush’s job performance. His rating is actually worse than Nixon’s 66% disapproval rating during the Watergate scandal. I think this warrants the purchasing of one of those “01.20.09″ bumper stickers.
2. Not that I’m bragging, but a poll done by CNN shows that Obama is losing support. In my completely unprofessional (and100% personal) opinion, his loss of support might be attributed to his losing Pennsylvania. Clinton lost support when she went through her losing streak during the February primaries, and she came back out alright, so there is a chance that Obama could easily regain that support. Either way, this election feels like it will never end. I guess I’ll just have to keep waiting for the convention in August.
3. A huge “lol of the day,” and probably the best thing I’ve seen in the past month (thanks, Anna):

From Popaganda artist Ron English, via Juxtapoz.

All in all, it’s looking like it’s going to be a great Friday.

Facebook crossed a line with its new advertising program, and, apparently, I’m not the only person who thinks so. Other people are getting pretty angry and are starting to write about the frustration they are feeling because Facebook is owned by money grubbing whores.

Even with the changes they made as a result to the outcry, there is still no clear and easy way to opt out.

Facebook just unveiled their latest advertising program. This plan utilizes information from user’s profiles to display ads appropriate to their interests when they browse through their friend’s pages:

Additionally, Facebook has unveiled targeted advertisements that will allow marketers to target by any information inside Facebook profiles, from relationship status to favorite television shows.

This makes sense. Gmail utilizes a tool that skims through your inbox and displays appropriate in-line advertisements. Users are accustomed to this type of privacy invasion.

One thing about the new advertising program that irritates me is Facebook is essentially encouraging advertising companies to provide users with the tools to sell their product for them. Without paying any additional advertising fees:

Called Facebook Ads, the new program is threefold: advertisers can create branded pages, run targeted advertisements, and have access to intelligence and analytics pertaining to the site’s more than 50 million users. […] Through the branded pages program, advertisers can design custom pages with information, content, and custom applications–”any application that was written for users on the Facebook Platform,” Zuckerberg explained. Facebook users can sign up as “fans” of that brand, install branded applications, and other activities that will all show up in their profiles’ “mini feeds” and on the “news feeds” that are broadcast to their friends lists.

So as soon as this program rolls out, I’ll be seeing “Jessica loves Hershey’s! She added the ‘Give me Kisses!’ application to her profile.” and the like scattered throughout my News Feed. Which, by the way, you cannot customize. While you can adjust your News Feed settings to show you “more” or “less” of your friends pictures, relationships status changes, and other options, you cannot opt out of forced announcements such as advertisements and applications. There’s motivation behind this: corporate-branded applications are one of the new components of Facebook’s advertising scheme.
It is one thing to provide companies with access to user information in order to reach a more applicable audience, but it’s another to open the Facebook coding to companies with a desire to create applications in which their only motivation is to make a profit. Facebook is basically allowing advertisers to recruit mindless college students to advertise their products for them. Who needs employees, commercials, and expensive marketing schemes when you have Facebook? The idea of Facebook applications alone irritates me, but applications whose only purpose is advertising and profiting from that exposure? Irritated doesn’t even begin to cover it.

I wonder what social networking site researcher danah boyd has to say about this one…