Buy Tickets Now For KINKY BOOTS -
Wild Shoes, Fun, and Helping Women
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Forget the long, hot summer -- step into the cool and crazy world of the hit musical Kinky Boots at the Women’s Council theater party on Aug. 23 at Playhouse on the Square.
Tickets are just $50 and include your seat for the Tony Award-winning musical, luscious food and wacky contests including Kinkiest Boots, Prettiest Pumps and Dizziest Stilettos. A special award for Best Bling will be awarded if merited.
Season ticket holders -- come to this party for Kinky Boots and hold your subscription seats for other great POTS performances.
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Speaking of Shoes - Walk a Mile 2019 Set For Sept. 25
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The ninth Memphis Walk a Mile in Her Shoes is set for Wednesday, Sept. 25, stepping off again from the Ramesses Statue on Central Avenue at the University of Memphis. The event begins at 5:30, rally at 6 p.m. and the Walk steps off at 6:15 p.m.
Once again, the route will be west on Central to Highland, north to Poplar, east to DeLoach and back to the statue plaza. Women’s shoes and signs are provided, or men can bring their own shoes. Last year 250 attended the rally and Walk which encourages men and boys to walk in support of ending rape and domestic violence.
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Women's Business Council Fostered By Memphis Chamber
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Under leadership of Greater Memphis Chamber president Beverly Robertson and business leader Dotty Summerfield Giusti, the Chamber has launched a Women’s Business Council.
In six listening sessions and in surveys, more than 550 local businesswomen were asked what challenges they face right now in the Memphis market as a businessperson and as a woman. Their answers: Taken Seriously. Recruiting & Retaining Good Employees. Work/Life Balance. Strategic Business Development.
Without duplicating efforts by any other groups, leaders said, the new council will seek to provide information and support on those topics, host quarterly meetings at lunchtime and work on networking, increasing equity, documenting economic impact and assuring a “place at the table” for local women in business.
“We are so excited about the plans for the rest of the year," Dotty told attendees at the launch event. “With your help and continued enthusiasm – our Council is sure to succeed.”
Next sessions are:
8/13: Collaborative Business
9/10: Strategic Business Development
11/19: Navigating the System
The first Quarterly Lunch will be Tuesday, Oct. 15. The topic will be Work-Life Balance. For more information contact
adaniels@memphischamber.com.
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Feminist, Activist Amber Tamblyn Speaks Sept. 12
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Film director, actor, author, and activist Amber Tamblyn will speak in Memphis Sept. 12 at the Standing Strong: Memphis dinner, the annual fundraising event for Planned Parenthood of Tennessee and North Mississippi.
Amber's newest book,
Era of Ignition
, a passionate and deeply personal exploration of feminism during divisive times, was released this year. Amber is a strong supporter of Planned Parenthood and passionate in her fight for women's health and rights as an unrelenting voice in the Time's Up and #MeToo movements.
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Senior Health Fair
July 26
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The Friends of the Library host their first Senior Health Fair Friday, July 26, from 11 am to 3 pm at Benjamin Hooks Central Library, 3030 Poplar. More than 50 hospitals, healthcare businesses and agencies will have exhibits, health screenings and seminars. It is free to participating seniors and vendors.
(901) 415-2749.
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Recently, the City Council in Berkley, California, voted unanimously to ban gender specific words in the city code, replacing them with gender-neutral options.
“Manhole” and “manpower” become “maintenance hole” and “workforce.” “Policeman” becomes “police officer,” “craftsmen” are “artisans” and gendered pronouns such as “he” and “she” are replaced with “the attorney” or “the candidate.”
Rigel Robinson, the council member who proposed the measure, said, “There is power in language. This is a small move, but it matters.” We couldn't agree more.
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When she was 5 years old, the little boy Chavisa Woods was playing with pinched her butt. His mother, upon hearing the story, told her she probably liked it. When she was 36, a cab driver locked the doors and wouldn’t let her out until she gave him her phone number.
In
100 Times: A Memoir of Sexism (Seven Stories Press; June 25, 2019), Woods lays out 100 personal vignettes of the sexism, harassment, discrimination, and sexual assault she’s experienced in her life. The incidents, which range from lewd comments to attempted rape, take place when she was growing up in poor rural Southern Illinois, when she was working in St. Louis as a young adult, when she was living with her girlfriend in Brooklyn, and when she was a Shirley Jackson Award-winning author and three-time Lambda Finalist writing this book.
While Woods chronicles these 100 stories to show how sexism and misogyny have impacted her life, something else happens simultaneously: she lays bare how these dynamics shape all women’s lives, and how relentlessly common they are. She underscores how thoroughly men feel entitled to women’s spaces and to their bodies, and how conditioned women are to endure it. It’s impossible to read
100 Times as a woman without cataloging one’s own “Number of Times.” As Woods writes in the book’s introduction, “It’s not that my life has been exceptionally plagued with sexism. It’s that it hasn’t.”
Excerpt #11:
When I was twelve years old, a friend of my mother’s, a fifty-year-old man, began talking to me while I was standing away from the crowd at a family barbecue held by my mother’s side of the family. This older man told me I was beautiful and that I had my mother’s hips and asked me if I wanted to go on a boat ride with him. I said I would love to, and that I didn’t even know he owned a boat. He said he had a big boat and that the motor purrs, then he pursed his lips and “blew raspberries,” making a fake motor sound with his lips. I was confused. He laughed and asked again if I wanted a boat ride from him. I didn’t answer. He explained to me that a “boat ride” is when a man puts his lips “down there” on a girl (he pointed to my crotch), and “blows raspberries,” and it feels good.
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