Today is full of fail, I suppose.
I find cute animal pics to be highly therapeutic, given the topics I read / blog about. So you can imagine my disappointment / disgust / disbelief etc. when I visited Cute Overload and found this lovely comparison:
(Each dog pic is followed by a picture of Eleanor Roosevelt).
Are you fucking kidding me? Yeah, the jowly puppy is cute, and it's wrinkles do resemble those of a crumpled towel. What's not okay? Comparing a jowly puppy to a famous woman. Why? Because women who don't meet society's shitty standards of beauty are often referred to as dogs, so making such a callous comparison is insulting and sexist. One commenter asked "When someone says a bulldog looks like Winston Churchill, do people get all upset?"
My guess, probably not; but then again there isn't a long sexist history of comparing men to dogs. So no, it's not the same at all, and yes, we have a legitimate right to be angry.
At least this is one instance I won't have to tell you all to stay out of that post's comments, because the majority are actually denouncing this comparison.
Fuck. I'm angry
13 comments:
wtf...? what does that even have to do with "cute"? why did anyone think this was necessary in order to post cute pics of animals? blows my mind, too...
i know, right? i really can't understand the necessity of comparing a great woman to a dog. i'm even more disappointed since the site is run primarily by a woman. stay classy, Cute Overload...
Yeah no kidding. It worked great with the dog and the towels and could have been left there.
Also, a bulldog is used to embody certain traits that are considered desirable in men, i.e. aggressiveness, tenacity, strength, etc. whereas the sharpei is being used to embody traits that are eminently not desirable in women, i.e. flab and wrinkles.
I also find CO therapeutic, but this isn't their first "People not like me - hahahah" failure. It hasn't been too long since one of their posters - not the "prongs" who apparently posted this, nor meg; I think it was "not that Michael" but I'm not sure - made one of those "people who ride on the short bus" jokes. A relatively few number of the commenters objected at all, from what I saw, but many of those who did said they'd had a family member with a developmental disability and did not appreciate that at all and, while I did not see any acknowledgment of those complaints by the poster or anyone else representing the site, I kind of thought the fact that multiple people had said, essentially, "You are sneering at a member of my family; please do not do that," would be enough to prevent a repeat of that. I kind of doubt protests about this will be taken seriously, though. It's all too easy to hide behind that "but we say this stuff about Churchill too" position, without acknowledging that men and boys are not surrounded by the societal message that any guy who looks like Churchill has no business taking up space on the planet, regardless of what contributions he might make or have made.
I had a high school history teacher once say Eleanor Roosevelt looked like a horse. He also said Ronald Reagan was the best president.
I wanted to say, "I'm sorry. I didn't know one of the qualifications a president must have is to have some pretty lil' thang on his arm that fits what American men find attractive."
CuteOverload is surprisingly fratboyish, considering its subject matter. Its bloggers have been posting stuff like this for a long, long time and they really don't care how many people are upset by it. It's a disappointing attitude, especially coming from one of my favorite websites.
Check out the title on the kangaroo post from this morning. The comment option was closed from the number of offended comments, and yet the post remains up...
@Anonymous--
wow. thanks for that heads up. that is truly horrific...
I've been really disappointed by this Prongs person. No one has the CO voice down like Meg does. I'd rather see less posts, all Meg, than more posts by other people who don't seem to get it. Some of the recent non-Meg posts are lousy... I think Meg should get approval before each post. My favorite site is now something I visit only maybe once a week. Sorry to see it become less appealing...
i guess i'm getting to this a little late, but i'm glad to see multiple people who seem to share the same opinion as me, and i'd like to put in my two cents.
i'm also highly disappointed with the addition of prongs. i find her humor overly pretentious and formulaic. she tries way too hard to squeeze multiple pop culture references into one post. it's a goddamn picture of a cute animal, let it be! that's why i enjoy meg's posts so much; she presents the image for what it is, squee-worthy and adorable.
anyways, i decided to comment on one of prong's entries, simply stating that i was disappointed in her entries, and i got attacked.
I used to be such a fan of CO but it has gone downhill in the past six months. I started to notice the different authors posting, and realized that only Meg's posts truly embody the CO brand of humor. The worst posts are always PRONGS. Ugh!
I wrote to voice my opinion and one of the Mikes wrote back, not very nicely, to say they disagree with my opinion.
Seriously? Of all the dozens of emails I've written to them over the years, the only one that has EVER been answered was to tell me I'm WRONG? WTF?
So sad to see that site go downhill, but I guess Meg is tired of it. We also noticed the calendar this year isn't as good, either.
I guess nothing lasts forever.
I agree that Prongs is the worst thing that ever happened to CuteOverload, and glad that I'm not the only one who feels that way.
Her posts are awful. Meg and NTMTOM focus on the cute with some humor to augment the cute, but her posts are just... ugh. She squeezes so many inappropriate pop culture references into them they don't even make sense, and frankly they are so unfunny and detract from the cute picture. I usually skim over a post if I see that she wrote it to only look at the animal picture, because I know if I bother reading it I'll just have a bad taste in my mouth.
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