Creepshots and revenge porn

Paparazzi, the Duchess of Cambridge, and how all young women now seem to be under surveillance. Courtesy Kira Cochrane, in The Guardian.

"there is the evidence that young women are being coerced into taking suggestive pictures by their male peers, badgered in a way that is distinctly paparazzi-like. Teenagers today have grown up in an environment filled with both paparazzi pictures and images of ordinary women with their tops off. We live in the land built by gossip and lads' magazines over the past decade."

'Real' women vs. 'skinny' models

Sali Hughes reports for the The Guardian on the decision of German women's magazine Brigitte to shelve its policy of using amateur models.

'the publishing industry consistently sees reader focus groups choose thin models over larger women in both editorial and advertising. Attempts at using larger women have been as unsuccessful here as in Germany. And yet criticising thin women has become an easy, crowd-pleasing option in recent years (politicians cynically wheel out the anti-model stance on quiet days, often using the term "real women", an expression so offensive it undermines its intended meaning).'

More on hijras in Pakistan, courtesy NPR

"This year, hijras won a key legal battle to have a third gender option on national ID cards. About 50,000 Pakistanis are classified as hijras like Mehvish. The category includes self-reported transgender men and women, as well as transvestites, hermaphrodites and eunuchs." Check out the rest of the report here.

RIP Shulamith Firestone, author of 'The Dialectic of Sex'

Published in 1970, Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex is an extremely provocative and well-argued "radical feminist" text. Emily Chertoff offers this eulogy for Firestone in The Atlantic.