“Dear Abby”–A Space for Political Protest?

Pauline Philips, the original “Dear Abby” columnist, recently died.  She wrote under the pen name Abigail Van Buren and captivated her readership.  Her column has been a mainstay in newspapers ever since it first appeared in The San Francisco Chronicle in 1956.  Today, “Dear Abby” is written by Phillips’ daughter and remains the most widely syndicated column on the face of the earth.

“Dear Abby” offers a space to complain, to seek advice or counsel, and to discuss something you might not voice in the company of someone other than Abby.  “Dear Abby” offered an anonymous space for people to share their fears, dreads, ideas, dilemmas, and more, ostensibly testing them out on Abby before committing to a solution.

While “Dear Abby” is likely read by many with a similar level of interest to reading the comics, the column was and is a political platform of sorts.  “Dear Abby” often supported gender equality, challenged men for writing in with patriarchal demands of their wives or daughters, and subtly (and sometimes not-so-subtly) teased those whose dilemmas she thought had less to do with the dilemma and more to do with an understanding of the world rooted in systems of power and inequality.

Binders Full of Women?–Amazon Product Reviews as Political Protest

The Presidential debates this election year were—to put it mildly—theatrical.  This was the first year I followed the debates on social media platforms (Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook), and much of what people seem to be searching for is something funny to latch onto to create the next great internet meme.  Early in the third debate, it was clear that Barack Obama’s comments about “horses and bayonets” was going to be an early winner (see here, here, here and here).  And in the first debate, Romney’s comments regarding equal pay for women included the poorly worded phrase, “I went to a number of women’s groups and said, ‘Can you help us find folks?’ and they brought us whole binders full of women.”  While his story about the event he was mentioning has been challenged, others rightly asked what saying “binders full of women” might have done to Romney’s chances of winning the election.  On social media, people were almost instantaneously outraged, and responses to Romney’s comment illustrate some of the new ways and spaces in which political protest takes place.

“Binders Full of Women” became an instant internet sensation, spawning its own Facebook community (now, with over 350,000 “likes”) in minutes.  Research is only beginning to discuss what this might mean and whether things like this actually matter.  For instance, a small but fast growing area of consumer research tracks Facebook fan counts against daily share stock prices.  There’s an enormous correlation, even on a day-by-day basis (see here for the research, and here for some commentary).  If Facebook can help us track changes in stock prices, what else can it tell us?

Political protest and civic engagement have always taken on new forms to respond to inequalities and injustice in new ways.  A recent form of protest utilizes the “customer review” function at Amazon.com.  If you look up the Avery Durable View Binder with 2 Inch EZ-Turn Ring on Amazon, you might notice something a bit odd.  The binder has been reviewed by over 1,000 Amazon shoppers.  This is a high number when you consider that the same binder with the 1.5-inch spine only has 17 reviews.

Glitter-Bombing: Tactical Frivolity or a Frivolous Tactic?

— Cross-posted at Social (In)Queery

The first time I remember glitter being used as an educational tool, I was in elementary school.  All of the first through third graders were gathered in the auditorium.  At the front of the room, an adult shouted for everyone to be quiet.  She reached into a paper bag and pulled out a handful of gold glitter and asked for a volunteer.  My hand shot up immediately.  But she chose someone else.  Asked if we liked glitter, we all screamed “YES!” in unison, and then she said, “Well not today!”  I like to think that there was a dramatic pause here as we all gasped, but that may be how I like to remember the story.  She let the glitter sprinkle back into the bag, but her hand was still covered.  She asked the boy who volunteered to shake her hand and so he did.  Then she got all of us up and asked us to walk around the room shaking hands with people.  As you might expect, this got rowdy (as random handshaking parties are wont to do) and she stopped us all after five minutes or so.  “Raise your hand if it has glitter on it,” she said.  Almost all of us raised our hands.  Then we all sat down and she talked at length about germs and diseases and the importance of basic hygiene.  I think it was a lesson about health and hygiene generally, but I now like to think that it was sex education in disguise, and that the “handshake” was a metaphor.  Either way, I will say this: I sometimes think about the exercise when I wash my hands (and when I don’t).  If you’ve never had glitter all over you, take it from me, it doesn’t come off after the first wash.

The educational properties of glitter have been put to other uses more recently as well.  Glitter-bombing has become a phenomenon across the nation as a way of peacefully and playfully protesting political pundits and candidates that support a particular constellation of anti-gay agendas.  Glitter-bombing is  a new form of protest that’s been directed at virtually all of the GOP candidates for this presidential race.  The sentiment dates back to when the former-Miss-Oklahoma-turned-anti-gay-rights-activist, Anita Bryant, had a pie thrown in her face at a press conference.