Some opening thoughts

hey all. =)

as this is my first post, just wanted to kick it off with a couple questions:

first, have any of you heard anything about the book entitled Pinay Power: Peminist Critical Theory ? (or the term "Peminism" in general?

ive been feelin some Filipino love burning in the ol' soul lately, so i did a little search on Amazon, and came up with this gem.

the folks at Amazon describe it as :

a collection of peminist (Filipina American feminist) cultural criticism by and about Filipina/Americans. Featuring essays by scholars and writers in the fields of decolonization, globalization, and transnationalism, this volume brings together for the first time critical work by Pinays of different generations and varying political and personal perspectives to chart the history of the Filipina experience. This groundbreaking collection serves as an antidote to the overly patriarchal and cultural nationalist stance of both Filipino American and Asian American scholarship and is an important corrective to the erasure and invisibility of Filipina American voices. This is an essential collection for scholars and writers concerned with cultural and political activism, particularly in literary, Asian American, and women's studies.

So...I'm extremely intrigued because the use of the letter "P" in place of "F" in Peminist comes across as poking fun at the inability of many Filipino/ newly immigrated Filipino-Americans to pronounce f's, yet it is used in the title of an anthology that is supposed to be putting forth some serious arguments. Huh. Maybe it's not poking fun/derogatory, so much as reclaiming it, a la "Cunt." ?

Anyway, just wondering if by chance one of you have heard the book mentioned in any GWS classes or organizations and could give me insight before I track it down and dive in.

Question two: have you all heard anything about the recent episode of America's Top Model called "Beautiful Corpes" that featured models posing as victims of crime scenes? It really was atrocious, but the good news is, it's under a lot of heat and has even found its way into the national (and world) media. I caught a few minutes of it while one of my roomates was watching, and the sad part is, I didn't quite realize how offended/shocked i should have been until i heard a feature on it on CNN a couple of days later. I guess I just somehow chalked it up to ridiculous shenanigans of American Reality TV when in fact it's much more serious than that. It reveals a lot of scary realities about our society that a project at this level of misogynism made it all the way past the planning stages and was actually implemented and broadcast nationwide.

here are the actual photos from the episode...SERIOUSLY, check out the images and the commentary by Tyra and Co. it is appalling.
http://www.zap2it.com/news/custom/photogallery/zap-photogallery-antm8-crimescenevictims,0,698280.photogallery?coll=zap-photogalleries&index=1

and here's a link to the women's blog that did an impressive job at generating widespread attention to the show: yay for that!
http://www.wimnonline.org/WIMNsVoicesBlog/?p=467

i hope you all are enjoying your weekend.

-- jo