Friday Femme Fatale

by Jen Nedeau

category: Friday Femme Fatale

Published November 28, 2008 @ 12:02PM PT

There has been a lot of news in the past week spanning a wide variety of issues in the women's rights movement. Advice from abroad to first lady, Michelle Obama, to an up tick egg donors and surrogate moms during an economic downturn to Saudi Arabia's first all girl rock band making cultural waves in an often muted society - there doesn't seem to be a dull moment when it comes to how women are finding success, finding prosperity or finding a new way to push the envelope.

An article by CBS titled, Surge In Egg Donors, Surrogate Moms Amid Downturn, reports that in a tough economy some women are looking to make a business out of baby making with the number of surrogate mothers or egg donors up 30 percent. According to the article, a qualified egg donor is compensated $7,000; gestational surrogates receive $25,000.

Cherie Blair shares a harsh reality with Michelle Obama, 44, who will become the second first lady in history to have had an active career until shortly before entering the White House. In the New York Time article titled, From Home and Away, Advice for a First Lady, Blair remarked: "My advice to Michelle Obama: Learn to Like the Back Seat."

An inspiring story comes out of Saudia Arabia this week, where Saudi Arabia's first all-girl rock band, the Accolade, get some time in the spot light with the NY Times article: As Taboos Ease, Saudi Girl Group Dares to Rock:

"The band's first single, "Pinocchio," has become an underground hit here, with hundreds of young Saudis downloading the song from the group's MySpace page. Now, the pioneering foursome, all of them college students, want to start playing regular gigs - inside private compounds, of course - and recording an album.

In a country where women are not allowed to drive and rarely appear in public without their faces covered, the band is very different. The prospect of female rockers clutching guitars and belting out angry lyrics about a failed relationship - the theme of "Pinocchio" - would once have been unimaginable here."

Another group of women abroad rebel from cultural restraints not with music, but instead with fashion. The BBC article titled, India's 'pink' vigilante women, reports on a "gang" of women who wear pink and thrash men who have abandoned or beaten their wives, as well as unearthing corruption in the distribution of grain to the poor in the Banda region of India's northern Uttar Pradesh state. The article reports on the leader of the group, Sampat Pal Devi, a former government health worker who says: "Mind you we are not a gang in the usual sense of the term. We are a gang for justice."

A more disturbing piece of news was released this week by the Chicago Tribune about a woman who won a date is suing Waukegan radio station for promoting the man, who had a criminal history and allegedly sexually assaulted her on the date she won.

Amie Newman from RH Reality Check raises eyebrows - but not the botox way with her critical piece: Plastic Surgery = Female Genital Mutilation?

Finally, two follow ups from last week's Friday Femme Fatale. Digg founder Kevin Rose issued an apology for sexist statements he made on his video podcast Diggnation. His response makes me wonder, however, if this is a genuine attempt at defeating the sexist nature of the highly trafficked bookmarking site or just a temporary mea culpa.

Additionally, the Wall Street Journal delves into the hot topic of sexism in a post-Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin political world with the article titled, 'Sexism's Coming Out Party'. The article shares the views of Carol Jenkins of the Women's Media Center, among others who remarks "We have widened the concept of what women are about...Hillary and Sarah were the first soldiers to go over the wall. Now no one could ever say that a women could never run."