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Breathless
Friday’s Zits returns to some old themes for the strip: The theme is that women — especially, teenaged girls — talk talk talk, in a rapid, never-ending stream, one sentence flowing into the next, one...
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Sylvia
More adventures on the comics pages, this time in Nicole Hollander’s Sylvia, from the 2010 retrospective on 30 years of the strip, The Sylvia Chronicles: 30 Years of Graphic Misbehavior from Reagan to...
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Fixing things
This morning’s Zits, in which Jeremy responds to his mother’s call for help: Note the facial gestures, and the subversion of the mother’s request, in which Jeremy does not in fact take out the garbage,...
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Chattiness again
A recurrent theme in the cartoon Zits is the replication of gender stereotypes saying that girls are chatty, boys are laconic. Postings on the subject (using Zits in particular) go back at least as far...
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Men’s and women’s brains in Dingburg
Today’s Zippy takes on differences between the sexes (at least in Dingburg): Women affiliative, men competitive. (On telling the men from the women: the women wear earrings, the men do not.) An...
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Gossip
Today’s Zits: The stereotype is that women (especially girls) gossip about other people and their lives, but men (and boys) talk about weightier and more objective things, like politics and sports....
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Finger talk
Today’s Zits, with Jeremy communicating with his fingers but not with his voice, to his mother’s dismay: This could be about teenagers and their parents, or about the fabled laconic nature of boys (and...
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Listening
Today’s Zits, once again on male/female differences: The teenage predecessor to cartoon and sitcom husbands who don’t listen at all to what their wives are saying.
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Sex/gender symbols
From Kim Darnell on Facebook, a story from a year ago (4/17/12) about the adoption of a gender-neutral pronoun in Swedish, with this handsome accompanying graphic: (#1) The graphic has three...
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Brief mention: men and women in Maryland
On a postcard (with a pile of images of and information about the state of Maryland) from Chris Ambidge on Saturday, the news that the state motto is Manly Deeds, Womanly Words Sigh: men act, women...
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On the sex / gender watch
On the heels of my little note on “Manly Deeds, Womanly Words” (a comment from John Baker notes that this is “the motto of the Calvert family “Fatti maschii parole femine” loosely translated [from...
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More girlish chattiness
… in today’s Zits: This is a topic that Scott and Borgman (somewhat wearisomely) just can’t leave alone. I do like the economical communication of Jeremy’s nonplussed state of mind, though.
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How ’bout them Cubbies?
Today’s Zippy: So the strip is “about” hair(s), but it’s also “about” How ’bout them Cubbies? (On a personal hair and holiday note: I’m watching Hairspray for Mothers Day.) 1. Speech acts. Let’s start...
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Define “collaborate”
Today’s Dilbert: Alice gives a witheringly sarcastic response to the pointy-headed boss, supplying a definition of collaborate that unpacks some of the connotations of the word for her. The boss then...
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Name notes
Item 1, royal names. On NPR’s Morning Edition this morning, people discussing names for the forthcoming British royal baby. Item 2, unisex names, in particular Taylor. Item 3, fashions in naming,...
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Like, uptalk, and Miami
I’ll start with a three-strip series from One Big Happy: (#1) (#2) (#3) The two features at issue here — the discourse particle like and “uptalk” (a high rising intonation at the end of declaratives) —...
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New words for new times
In the NYT yesterday, “Rutgers Updates Its Anthem to Include Women” by Ariel Kaminer: No one song could ever capture all the motivations that bring students to a college campus, all the experiences...
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Brief notice: spinsters
In the NYT Magazine on the 6th, a “Who Made This?” piece by Pagan Kennedy on movie popcorn, with this accompanying note on a metaphor: The industry term for unpopped kernels: spinsters One commenter...
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girls, women, gals
On Facebook, Ann Burlingham has passed on this posting (from February 1st), “Why Are We Referring to Women as Girls?” by Yashar Ali, about men referring to women in the workplace as girls. (Note:...
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Pronouns
I’ve posted this on Elizabeth Zwicky’s Facebook timeline, where it’s been appreciated. Now to give it a somewhat more permanent home, on this blog. From the website One Last Blog on Nothing of...
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