Yum. Can I get some butter to go with my heternormative spaghetti please? (This image was pointed out to me by STA.)

Seen at a local JcPenney, in the kids’ department. Oh bother.

Is this a brussel sprout or are you just happy to see me? Here’s an advertisement for Subzero refrigerators on the first page of this month’s Bon Appetit:

Hello primary signifier and hello food porn! Does anybody write about this (as in, food porn/exploitation of food) from feminist materialist or queer ecologist perspectives?

Note: I also posted this image (with a slightly different discussion) here on another blog.

As seen in Super Target:

In case you can’t tell, this sponge is pink…the only pink sponge on the shelf. Wait, why is this pink? Oh bother.

“Ladies, raise your spoons”…is this the legacy of feminism? The freedom to eat granola that won’t make us fat? The invoking of freedom in the (implied) context of feminism, makes me think of this earlier oh bother post. I also posted this commercial here on my course blog for feminist debates.

As seen at the Portland Airport (thanks KCF for pointing it out!). It reminds me of this oh bother post. Which is worse–major cutie or major flirt?

So, I have been working on a blog entry about Cynthia Enloe and curiosity over the past few days (yes, it usually takes me a few days to finish an entry). I happened to be in Rochester, MN today and thought that I would finish it up at a local Pantera (or, what many of you might call Panera) since they have free wifi. Anyway, I clicked on the bookmark for Trouble and got a message indicating that my blog was blocked. Here is the explanation they gave me:

Really? According to what definition is this blog pornography? Who determined it to be such–(or what keyword/topic triggered the block)? Why are any sites being blocked? There are many, many reasons being blocked bothers me (not the least of which is the fact that I wasn’t able to finish my blog entry and have to work on it tomorrow). Sigh….so, what do you think? What bothers you about certain blogs/websites being blocked at restaurants? Or coffee shops–Caribou, I am talking to you.

As seen in the Kmart Blue Friday door buster ad: The Huffy Major Flirt Bike for GIRLS and the Huffy Major Trouble Bike for BOYS. The bikes are in the bottom right corner of the flyer.

There are many ways that I could discuss why the names of the bikes bother me. But, because this is an “oh bother” post, I won’t get into any lengthy dissertation on the bothersome reduction of boys to Trouble and girls to Flirt or the problematic way these labels, and the ideologies about “proper” boy and girl behavior that undergird them, hail us into existence as real boys who use our bikes to get into trouble or as real girls who use our bikes to flirt (yes, I did just reference Althusser and his account of interpellation!).

There is one point I would like to make. I was initially thinking of posing the question: Just who does Huffy (the maker of these bikes) imagine a 3-6 year old girl to be flirting with? But instead of focusing on that question and the problematic ways naming a bike “Major Flirt,” could contribute to the over-sexualizing of very little girls, I want to offer another way in which to bother/be bothered by the label. According to dictionary.com, flirt is described as: merely playing with, not taking seriously, and showing only superficial interest without commitment. What stereotypes of little girls do these definitions of flirt (as superficial, etc) reinforce? Oh bother!