Girl vs. Girl: "Pitch Perfect" (video)

Amber Dorrian and Ashley Wells, Wisdom Quarterly; IMBD.com; Screen.yahoo.com

In one of the best pop films of the year, it's "Beca" (Anna Kendrick) versus the World. Until college and her professor father nudge her into expanding her horizons beyond beats and DJing, she's the lovable indie alt grrl. How is she converted to befriending females and getting out of her shell?  That is the central conceit of the movie -- acapella renditions of very cool songs. This would be a disaster if the music weren't so good. But behind the shiny songs and unreal (unrehearsed) performances that take place spontaneously throughout the story at Riff Offs and elsewhere is a very real story about what it's like among women, our separation, cattiness, and constant counterproductive competition. 

Drill Sgt. Aubrey (imdb.com)

Thank you Nazi Aubrey (Anna Camp), super-sexy "Stacie" (Alexis Knapp), supermodel "Kimmy Jin" (Jinhee Joung), hilarious comedienne "Fat Amy" (Rebel Wilson), freaky-geek Quiet "Lilly" (Hana Mae Lee), and uber-nemesis "Bumper" (Adam DeVine). There's lesbianism (very jokey), there's misogyny, there's promiscuity, there are jerk adults (color commentators "Gail" and John), there are dance offs, and there is that one eternal truth secretly brewing underneath it all, covert competition in a gynocentric cooperative frame. The movie is not all good news; it is almost ruined by the syrupy "good guy" male lead "Jesse" (Loser). Fortunately other men, like "Bumper" and "Donald" (Utkarsh Ambudkar) and "Benji" (Ben Platt), round out the cast, all straight, all acapella. More

NOTE: This review and focus on a commercial success was written under duress after Wisdom Quarterly staff were forced to watch the movie three times by Features Editor Ashley ("Aubrey") Wells, who seemed to be experiencing some kind of enlightening experience or catharsis from the story. Who knows why the Dharma Editor allowed except that he liked the movie, too. It does grow on a person and is not bad but only compared to Hollywood's ordinary output. It has legs; it came in eighth place in the Top Ten this week.

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"YogaWoman" (film)

YogaWoman.TV; Amber Dorrian, Wisdom Quarterly

(YogawomanTV) Movie now showing in Los Angeles and other major markets

 

The wonders of inner peace (Yogag33k)

Yoga, as spiritual exercises and an ancient Vedic philosophy, was brought to the West from India by a lineage of male teachers (gurus) and their disciples (chelas). But now a generation of women are leading the way. They're strong, they're inspiring, and they're radically changing people's lives. "YogaWoman" is a groundbreaking film, uncovering a global phenomenon that has forever changed the face of yoga.

  
Comments

Shiva-Shakti, the masculine-feminine in everyon

(Notch76) I am a man, and I practice yoga, but my understanding is that a major aspect of the practice is the move toward dissolving the ego along with any attachment to one's identity (including gender) in favor of a realized oneness with all. That being said, I don't take issue with the fact many women find peace, comfort, and strength through yoga practice. I think it's beautiful when anyone makes such a discovery.
  
(Wendyness01 replying to MagicPonyRides) Unless you have "exposure" in the yoga community (the "casting couch" approach works), one's ability to make a living teaching yoga is VERY limiting. I know several yoga teachers who can't make a living teaching yoga so they "mate poach." Most yoga teachers that I know here in the West are female, NOT married, and DON'T have children. Not very empowering.
  
(ChannelStudioPeace) How fantastic! A film about yoga and women! Yoga's a wonderful way of entering sacred space, feeling your power, and experiencing the connection to yourself and the universe around you. It's interesting how the cycle has shifted from yoga being practiced and taught exclusively by men at one time to today it being practiced and taught almost exclusively by women. As a female practitioner and yoga teacher, I can't wait to see the movie!
  
(Wayne Barrow) As a male with only a cursory interest in yoga, I was blown away by this insightful film as it gave me a fascinating insight into this noble art from a female perspective. I wish the filmmakers and people involved in the production all the best for producing a quality and entertaining product. I wish people would actually see the documentary all the way through before passing judgment!

• YogaMan? Too bad men can't do yoga!

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Topless protesters say No to Rape (video)

Femen.org; Seth Auberon, Wisdom Quarterly UPDATED

Catholic nun joins topless protest (femen.org)

Yesterday [Oct. 15, 2012], topless FEMEN ACTIVISTS protested against the impunity of French rapists, who attack with few criminal or social consequences. A nun who happened to pass by soon joined our action. For us, the behavior of Catholic nuns has been a real eye-opener. Educated in cosmopolitan Moscow we would not have thought that there are those nuns who, at least for a while, put the ideals of female solidarity above corporate [church-state] perceptions of "morality." As it turns out, the "Dogs of the [Dominant] Lord" (Domini Canes) are much more human than wild Gundyaev. Cut down the [patriarchal] crosses and save Russia!

• Who? Russia's Eastern Orthodox Patriarch Gundyaev

Protesting Rape by Police
Guardian.co.uk
WARNING: Exposed mammary glands and defiant, attention-grabbing demonstrating!

                   

Activists from the Ukrainian protest group Femen staged a topless demonstration under the partially nude "Venus de Milo" statue inside Paris's Louvre Museum protesting rape. The nonviolent action was prompted by the case of a woman in Tunisia who was allegedly raped by police officers. Not only was she raped, to add insult to outrage she may face charges of indecency with her fiance. Source

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Women are "Half the Sky" (PBS video)

PBS (Independent Lens)

"Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide," premiering October 1-2, 2012

"Half the Sky" is a landmark transmedia project featuring a four-hour PBS primetime national and international broadcast event, a Facebook-hosted social action game, mobile games, two interactive websites, educational video modules with companion text, and an impact assessment plan. All of this was inspired by the eponymous, widely acclaimed book by Nicholas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn.

The series follows Kristof, WuDunn, and six celebrity activists including Diane Lane, America Ferrera, Olivia Wilde, and Nicole Kidman as they travel to nine countries and meet inspiring, courageous individuals. 

   

Across the globe oppression is being confronted, and real meaningful solutions are being fashioned through health care, education, and economic empowerment for women and girls. 

   

Embedded in the linked problems of sex trafficking and forced prostitution, gender-based violence, and maternal mortality -- which still needlessly claims one woman every 90 seconds -- is the single most vital opportunity of our time. And all over the world, women are seizing it.

• PBS WEBSITE: Half the Sky 
• HalfTheSkyMovement.org
• WomenAndGirlsLead.org

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Song of a Former Courtesan

Vimala Theri ("Psalms of the Elder Nuns," Therigatha 9); Mariska Galla; Wisdom Quarterly

Katy Perry (Catty Purry) utilizes courtesan moves for more sales as a singer (popstarplus)

 

Classic Russian posters (nuffy.net)

It is inspiring to remember that from a Buddhist point of view, "Every saint has a past, every sinner a future."
   
Vimala Theri (Thig 5.2), a Buddhist nun at the time of the Buddha, awakened and, attaining full enlightenment, recorded her experience in a hymn. The Therigatha, a collection of such hymns (gatha), reveals her story:
   
Young and overbearing --

drunk with fame, beauty,
with my figure, its flawless appearance --
I despised other women.
   

Heavily made up, I leaned
against the brothel door
and flashed my wares. Like a hunter,
I laid my snares to surprise fools.
   

I even taught them a trick or two
as I slipped my clothes off
and bared my secret places.
O how I despised them!
   

Today, head shaved, wrapped
in a single robe, an almswoman,
I move about, or sit at the foot
of a tree, empty of all thoughts.
  
All ties to heaven and earth
I have cut loose forever.
Uprooting every obsession,
I have put out the fires.

The Buddha and his foster mother established the first nuns order in a world religion.

  

Hymns of Enlightenment

Wisdom Quarterly based on Parthasarathy (weberstudies.weber.edu)

Buddhism and Its Therigatha (Parallax.org)

These songs or spiritual hymns -- paralleling a similar compilation composed by enlightened elder monks from the time of the Buddha -- were chanted. Each stanza (sloka) is comprised of four verses (padas, as in the most famous Buddhist text, the Dhammapada, or "Verses of the Dharma") of eight syllables each.
  
The first two verses, divided by a caesura, form one line; the next two verses, again divided by a caesura, form the second line. Unlike the secular poets of Tamil and Sanskrit, the Pali Buddhist poets attempted to raise the language of their spiritual songs above that of the profane model.
  
They deliberately shifted the emphasis of their songs away from the love poetry of the secular poets to the attainment of liberation (moksha), the true joy which, according to early Buddhist teachings, was assumed to be limited to monastics meditating alone.

• Of course, the earliest Buddhist discourses contain countless examples of male and female householders and ordinary worldlings reaching enlightenment when instructed in the Teachings of the Noble Ones (Arya Dhamma). The Buddha, as the "Master Physician" and "Teacher of Devas and Humans," had the power as a teacher to perceive just what an auditor needed to rapidly advance toward the goal of awakening (bodhi) and liberation (nirvana).

First Buddhist Women, Susan Murcott (W-B)

The first of the Four Noble Truths is dukkha (unsatisfactoriness, disappointment, distress). Its proximal cause is craving (tanha), particularly sensual desire. And its distal cause is ignorance or delusion.
  
One useful description of nirvana is the dying out of the fires of lust (kama tanha, sensual craving), greed (lobha), hatred (dosa), and illusion (moha).

• Falling from Mt. Everest 
• PHOTOS: Mount Everest
• 1000 Buddhas Temple, France
• VIDEO: What's it like to be a girl model?

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Sex and the Single Girl (video)

Claudia Luther (LATimes.com); NPR (SCPR.org); Wisdom Quarterly

What could sell 2.5 million magazines a month mainly off stands? (elephantjournal.com)

   
Helen Gurley Brown, longtime Cosmopolitan editor, dies at 90

OBITUARY: Gurley Brown's bestselling 1962 book, Sex and the Single Girl, broke ground by discussing the sex life of single women and casting them as "the newest glamour girl of our times." 

  

Sex and the Single Girl dared to tell American women that they inherited their "proclivity" for sex, that it "isn't some random piece of mischief you dreamed up because you're a bad, wicked girl."
  
The book led to her longtime role at Cosmopolitan magazine. 

  

Where would singles like DJ Nicole Alvarez be?

When her frank and exuberant mix of advice, exhortation and naughty girl talk became a publishing phenomenon, thousands of women wrote to seek her advice, and she would sit at home at night in Los Angeles, trying to answer them all.
   
One night, her husband, the movie producer David Brown, had an idea while he watched her type. "You know," he said, "if you had your own magazine, you could answer everybody at one time."
   
And, eventually, she did, taking over a money-losing literary publication called Cosmopolitan and turning it into a slyly risque bible for single women. ...

The Colbert Report

"Why do women read this sh*t?" asks The Elephant Journal. Stephen Colbert offers an explanation based on the strange workings of self-esteem.

   

Sex sells, and we have to sell mags!

Brown remained at the helm of Cosmopolitan for 32 years and would not have left in 1997 had she not been forced out. 

By then, Cosmo was selling 2.5 million copies a month -- much of it at the newsstand -- and collecting about $160 million a year in revenues. After leaving the editor's post, Brown oversaw the international editions of Cosmopolitan for many years.

Helen Gurley Brown was born Feb. 18, 1922, the daughter of schoolteachers in Green Forest, Arkansas... and moved with her mother and her sister, Mary, to Los Angeles. ...
  

But Brown always had ambition.

Helen Gurley and David Brown

"I never liked the looks of the life that was programmed for me -- ordinary, hillbilly and poor," Brown wrote of her early life. She described herself as a teenager this way: "Flat-chested, pale, acne-skinned, terrified."
  
She was determined not to stay a "mouseburger," what she called women who are "not prepossessing, not pretty, don't have a particularly high IQ, a decent education, good family background, or other noticeable assets."

Brown attended what is now Texas Woman's University and Woodbury, a business college then located in Los Angeles. Next came a series of 17 secretarial jobs. More

• ARCHIVE: Helen Gurley Brown gives Stanford, Columbia University $30 million 
• PHOTOS: Helen Gurley Brown, 1922-2012

PHOTOS: Notable deaths of 2012

  
Longtime Cosmo magazine editor dies
Jocelyn Noveck (AP/SCPR.org)

Helen Gurley Brown, the longtime editor of Cosmopolitan magazine who invited millions of women to join the sexual revolution, has died. She was 90.

Brown died Monday at a hospital in New York after a brief hospitalization, Hearst CEO Frank A. Bennack, Jr. said in a statement.
  
Sex and the Single Girl, her grab-bag book of advice, opinion, and anecdote on why being single shouldn't mean being sexless, made a celebrity of the 40-year-old advertising copywriter in 1962.
  

Nov. 2, 1964 file photo Helen Gurley Brown (AP)

Three years later, she was hired by Hearst Magazines to turn around the languishing Cosmopolitan and it became her bully pulpit for the next 32 years.
  
She said at the outset that her aim was to tell a reader "how to get everything out of life -- the money, recognition, success, men, prestige, authority, dignity -- whatever she is looking at through the glass her nose is pressed against." More

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Nancy Pelosi saw ghosts in White House

CNS News; Fox News (for Unfair and Unbalanced reporting); Wisdom Quarterly

Ghosts are real on a different (invisible energetic) material frequency (angelsghosts.com)

 

Representative Nancy Pelosi

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (Democrat, CA) told a recent gathering of the Women’s Political Committee that the spirits of suffragists Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Alice Paul spoke to her at the White House.
 

"Look up."

Pelosi said she heard them say: “At last we have a seat at the table.”

  

A video recently posted on YouTube shows Pelosi speaking in May describing her first meeting with President [G.W.] Bush in the White House after becoming part of the Democratic House leadership.

  

In the video Pelosi says, “He’s (Bush) saying something to the effect of we’re so glad to welcome you here, congratulations, and I know you’ll probably have some different things to say about what is going on -- which is correct. But, as he was saying this, he was fading and this other thing was happening to me.”

  

Leader of the Lesser of Two Evils party (AAL)

“My chair was getting crowded in,” claims Pelosi. “I swear this happened! Never happened before, it never happened since.”

  

“My chair was getting crowded in and I couldn’t figure out what it was, it was like this,” she said.

  

“And then I realized Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Lucretia Mott, Alice Paul, Sojourner Truth, you name it. They were all in that chair,” said Pelosi. “They were, more than I named, and I could hear them say: 'At last we have a seat at the table.' And then they were gone.” More
  

Subtitled Asian animated reenactment of the paranormal incident

• Hensel: the two-headed American girl

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Pussy Riot goes to court (video)

Guardian.co.uk (See article)

• VIDEO: Pussy Riot on Putin, "punk prayers" and superheroes
• AUDIO: Punk band's case tests Putin's tolerance for dissent
  

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Human Barbie voted world's most beautiful

Wisdom Quarterly

India's Kaif in pink at the launch of the Barbie doll she inspired (brit-asian.com)

   

FHM has voted Bollywood actress Katrina Kaif, 27, the world's most beautiful woman, an honor that follows her very own sari-clad Barbie doll debut at the 50th anniversary of the iconic doll in 2009. She has been a reader favorite four four years running as the "sexiest woman alive." According to India Journal Kaif defines "sexy" as not being about her clothes. "The sexiest thing is not trying. For me to wear a cotton sari, be without makeup, and still be desirable is sexy." What skillful karma could have led to her beauty, fame, success, and influence? The Buddha on Beauty

  

Devi and Punk Barbie (friendskorner.com; dailymail.co.uk)

• JUDGING MEN: 26 years of People's sexiest man alive
• Playboy's Hugh Hefner 60 years older than girlfriend
• Cyber war on Iran has just begun
• Alcohol unkind to aging brains
• Sen. Rubio questions NPR while on NPR 
• Sheriff Arpaio: Obama birth certificate is FAKE
• 50 tons of trash hauled from the sea
• Was the Buddha born in Orissa, India?
• Camouflaged pot house found in LA woods
• Understanding the God(less) particle

B.S. Obama's birth certificate is fake (AP)

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Creating Female Leaders in Nepal (video)

Claire Naylor and Claire Charamnac, Women-Lead.org (Good Maker)

In 2010, we co-founded Women LEAD, a leadership development organization for young women in Nepal. We were 20 and strongly believed that the lack of female leaders around the world is one of the worst inequalities of the 21st century. 

  

We empower young women to take leadership positions alongside men in Nepal by providing them with the skills to pursue their vision for change. Women in Nepal face overwhelming challenges: 33% of girls aged 15 to 19 are married, and 60% of women are illiterate.

   

   

We build the capacity of female high school students to tackle poverty and discrimination. In 2011, we equipped 200 promising leaders (aged 14 to 19) with academic, career, and leadership skills through our programs.

   

What can be done?

Young women have the passion and vision to solve the problems plaguing their communities. They simply lack the necessary training, guidance, and resources. Our programs empower young women to be leaders by providing them with leadership training, skills building, mentoring, and a peer-support network. Vote for us

• Teaching a Young Nation of Women to Lead
• Women LEAD selected as one of the Top 50 Ideas and Solutions for Women and Children
• It's not about feminism, it's about collaboration
• 25 inspiring citizen activists & their friends quietly making impact in Nepal
• Honoring Women of Power and Peace
• Women LEAD? (viewyourchoice)
• Women L.E.A.D. (Rice University)

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"Topless Warriors" of FEMEN (video)

PripyatPripyat; FEMEN.livejournal.com; Wisdom Quarterly

WARNING: Nudity! FEMEN is a Kiev, Ukraine-based group of activists and topless protesters.

This is a documentary from Finnish TV about the Ukrainian female rights organization FEMEN (WARNING: nudity). English subtitles added: click the CC-button (located on the bottom of the video screen, above the number of video views). The Finnish subtitles are hard coded and could not be removed. The English subtitles are present simply by clicking the CC.

• PHOTOS: Topless protests in Europe (allvoices.com)

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Pussy Riot: Punks Against Putin (video)

TheWorld.org; Guardian.co.uk; Wisdom Quarterly

Russia was never actually atheist. That was just an official position. Siberia is Buddhist as was the USSR in Central Asia (including the only indigenously Buddhist part of Europe: Kalmykia. But "Russians" are Christians who conquered neighboring lands for empire. It is a country of blue-eyed blondes. It tried to do the right thing and live communally. But corruption ruined it. Punks call out its new emperor, Putin, a KGB chief and uber-hypocrite to rival US leaders.

The all-female Russian punk band Pussy Riot ran afoul of the Kremlin with protest performances [in church]. Their impromptu show in one of Moscow’s holiest sanctuaries, the [Eastern Orthodox] Cathedral of Christ the Savior, was pretty wild. They sang their tune, “Holy Mother, Throw Putin Out!” The women were arrested in February and have been in jail since [after their video of the stunt garnered too much attention and they became a scapegoat for Putin’s dilemma].
   
Last week a judge ordered them to remain in custody to await their July trial. And if they’re eventually convicted, they face up to seven years in prison. The Moscow News Deputy Editor Natalia Antonova wrote in The Guardian last week that the women are “scapegoats for Russia’s political crisis.” She tells [TheWorld.org’s] anchor Marco Werman why: More 

• Pussy Riot are scapegoats for Russia's political crisis
• The World: Russia’s Anti-Putin All-Girl Punk Band
• Swedish fans bemused by topless protest (FEMEN)
• VIDEO: "The Invisible War" - U.S. military sexism
• PHOTOS: Topless protest in Ukraine for Swedish fans

VIDEO: FEMEN activists go topless chanting "F**k Euro!"

Italian: Miss Euro 2012 supporters paint their nude bodies

PHOTOS: Topless protest at Warsaw Stadium for Euro 2012

FEMEN, like many Europeans, is against the Euro system.

• Who is FEMEN? (Bikini Drill Team @ Occupy LA)

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