The Girl Scouts of America introduced a bill to Congress today that would establish a national task force to develop guidelines to promote positive images of girls and women in the media. The bill, called the Healthy Media for Youth Act (H.R. 4925), is part of the Girl Scouts efforts to engage the government around health and well-being issues that affect young girls.  The legislation encompasses media literacy programs, research on the effect of media on young people, and an all-around promotion of healthier media images...

Feminism is “an old-fashioned concept” and “doesn’t seem relevant," according to Sarah Beardsley, the 47-year-old publisher of Venus magazine, which she recently purchased from the two real estate agents who had themselves purchased the magazine only a few years earlier from its founder, Amy Schroeder. As reported by the Chicago Reader, Beardsley’s solution for saving the  zine seems to leave any association with the dreaded F-word behind. “She told me she's not a feminist and feminism is what hindered the magazine in the past,” one...

There's been a bit of good news for Constance McMillen amongst all the bad. A few weeks ago, we blogged about Constance's plight: she asked her school if she could wear a tux to prom and bring her girlfriend along. The school said no, and, after the media got a hold of the story, cancelled prom together. Constance got in touch with the ACLU and sued the school, saying her First Amendment rights were violated. A judge ruled this week that Constance's rights were indeed...

On Tuesday, President Obama signed the health care bill (passed by the House of Representatives late Sunday night) into law. There have been a slew of comments about the bill left and right, and hopefully we here at the BUST blog can clarify some of the more woman-specific issues in the bill. Namely, abortion. There’s been a lot of misinformation floating around, but here’s what I could decipher from the executive order President Obama issued in order to sway some pro-life Democrats into signing the bill....

Constance McMillen had a simple question for her high school principal: she wanted to make sure it was okay for her to wear a tux and bring her girlfriend to prom. What ensued became much bigger than anyone would have anticipated: the school told her no, and when she told them that their ruling was discrimination and that her lawyer would be contacting them, the Itawamba County School District (located in Fulton, Mississippi) decided to cancel prom altogether.  You can hear Constance tell her story in...

Cotton candy–colored taxis have been turning heads lately on the streets of Puebla, Mexico’s fourth-largest city. In response to growing complaints of sexual harassment by male taxi drivers, the city began offering licensing and training in October to the privately owned Pink Taxi company, whose fleet of women-driven Chevys picks up female passengers only. Each Pink Taxi comes equipped with a GPS, a satellite tracking system, a panic button that alerts police in an emergency, and even a beauty kit. The company’s aim is to...

India's upper house of parliament voted 186-1 (whoa) to pass the women's reservation bill which would mandate that women occupy one-third of all seats in the national and state legislatures.  It was passed the day after International Women's Day and excited cries of "we made it!" could be heard outside of parliament last night from female lawmakers.  It's pretty cool because activists say that the bill will increase women's participation in politics and help contribute to the United Nations Millennium Development goals.   But, obviously, there are...

2010: First Woman to Win an Oscar for Best Director-Kathryn Bigelow- Best Director 'The Hurt Locker'Only three other females have been nominated for Best Director in the Oscar's 82-year history. Lina Wurtmuller for 1976's Seven Beauties, Jane Campion for 1993's The Piano and Sofia Coppola for 2003's Lost in Translation.Art + Women + History = March 2010Direction from the Oscar control room:------------And, please show James Cameron's face, again, please. Close-up on James. Cue> camera 3...And, James's face one more time again, please...and back to you> camera 1. And, James one...

In her brilliant response to Glenn Beck's attacks on progressive politics, Newsweek's Raina Kelly makes it clear why language matters and what is at stake. The slow degradation of the word "feminist" continues to be one of the most powerful weapons in the backlash against the women's rights movement. How better to diminish the cause than to create an atmosphere where young girls believe that to be a feminist is to be a loser, where women feared that speaking their minds made them a bitch? It...

  Maybe in this photo, Miuccia Prada is somewhat embarrassed at denigrating feminism after her recent collection was shown.  Or not.  After stating to journalists that she was a "former" feminist,  it seems the coat designing turn-coat offered the following bon mot.  “Feminism?” she sighed, “it doesn’t really exist anymore, does it?” Feminism: The new rubella? In all seriousness, what a bunch of baloney.  Feminism isn't a fad, like so many annoying black micro-fiber pochette bags made in child-labor sweatshops.    Dismissive blanket statements like Prada's disrespect the...