Student Debt & Sugar Daddies
Many young people today struggle to pay for their educations and the mounting student debt that often comes with them. One increasingly popular solution for young women appears to be sugar daddies:"Many of them use SeekingArrangement, which describes itself as "the world’s largest Sugar Daddy dating site." More than 1.4 million students have signed up as members, including nearly 1 million in the U.S., according to the company. The website claims that 42 percent of its members are students, many of whom are incentivized by SeekingArrangement to join; people who sign up with a .edu email address or show proof of enrollment, for example, receive "premium memberships" for free."While the arrangements may represent attractive alternatives to other forms of employment,"the fact that this path has become increasingly popular among so many young women is a damning indictment of the country's higher-education system."
Full article here.
Feminism & Christianity
Author Dianna E. Anderson has a new book, Damaged Goods, attempting to reconcile feminism and Christianity. This brief review article introduces her perspective, work, and writing environment."Although her book is all about sex and sexuality, Anderson maintains that a single-minded focus is counter-productive. "Sexual purity—rather than a relationship with Jesus, caring for the poor, or loving one's neighbor—has become the marker of a good Christian," she writes. Conversely, at times, "sex becomes the god we worship, and we will go to any length to obtain it." The solution, she writes, is to recognize that "sexuality is not the center of a person's life, faith, or health.""Full article here.
Health Tracking Apps Under-serving Women
Many health and fitness tracking apps are available these days offering a one-stop monitoring app for everything you can think of . . . except menstrual cycles. Period trackers remain popular, but an app apart."Today, there are hundreds of period-tracking apps available in the iTunes store. And yet, in a health app Apple describes as “comprehensive,” there is no way to simply tick on the calendar that your period has started, and when it has stopped."Despite the fact that women are more likely to track their health information, women's issues have typically been lower priority in the tech world. While no app could ever be "comprehensive," there are many opportunities to integrate more equal sexual wellness features into the health-tech universe.
Full article here.
The Fraught History of Navel-Gazing
After all the hubbub when Taylor Swift released a photo showing her belly button, this article offers a short history of the female navel in pop culture."All the jokey chatter around Swift's alleged non-human-ness is amusing enough, but it also inadvertently references decades of earlier American cultural history during which the female navel was seen as indescribably problematic, and a thing that should remain shrouded."
Full article here.
After reading the article regarding student debt and sugar daddies, I was a bit conflicted. Having just made a monthly student loan payment yesterday, I can understand what it's like to want to find alternate ways to pay for school. More than once, I caught myself thinking "Would I do something like this if it meant my loans would disappear?" While I would not make this choice, I can see why others would. The more frustrating/infuriating part is that these "sugar daddies" are taking advantage of the broken education system that the article points out. They take advantage of financially strapped students, instead of using their fortunes to find ways to tackle the rising problem of student debt. Sometimes people are just the worst.
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