Feminist Fight Club: An Office Survival Manual for a Sexist Workplace

Jessica Bennett’s Feminist Fight Club is engaging, hilarious and practical - full of simple tools for battling workplace sexism that every woman should have at her disposal. Jessica is a unique voice-and I will proudly proclaim myself a card-carrying member of the FFC. - Sheryl Sandberg, COO of Facebook and author of New York Times bestseller Lean In

Part manual, part manifesto, Feminist Fight Club is a hilarious yet incisive guide to navigating subtle sexism at work, providing real-life career advice and humorous reinforcement for a new generation of professional women.

It was a fight club—but without the fighting and without the men. Every month, the women would huddle in a friend’s apartment to share sexist job frustrations and trade tips for how best to tackle them. Once upon a time, you might have called them a consciousness-raising group. But the problems of today’s working world are more subtle, less pronounced, harder to identify—and harder to prove—than those of their foremothers. These women weren’t just there to vent. They needed battle tactics. And so the fight club was born.

Hard-hitting and entertaining, Feminist Fight Club blends personal stories with research, statistics, and no-bullsh*t expert advice. Bennett offers a new vocabulary for the sexist workplace archetypes women encounter everyday—such as the Manterrupter who talks over female colleagues in meetings or the Himitator who appropriates their ideas—and provides practical hacks for navigating other gender landmines in today’s working world. With original illustrations, Feminist Mad Libs, a Negotiation Cheat Sheet, and fascinating historical research, Feminist Fight Club tackles both the external (sexist) and internal (self-sabotaging) behaviors that plague women in the workplace—as well as the system that perpetuates them.

Patti Friday, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'

You Little Horah

The Horah is an Israeli circle dance typically danced to the music of Hava Nagila. It is traditionally danced at Jewish weddings and other joyous occasions in the Jewish community. The hora was introduced in Israel by the Romanian Jewish dancer Baruch Agadati.

"When an item on a celebrity website about your new fashion line has more shares than one about Kim Kardashian’s baby bump, it’s a sign you might be on to something big. 

At least that’s the hope of the creators of Unkosher Market, a Los Angeles-based online T-shirt venture. It seems customers worldwide are hungry for the company’s simple, sleeveless, white tops with black lettering. To be precise, it’s the shirts’ edgy, humorous sayings putting a hipster spin on Hebrew and Yiddish words that they crave. Who says it’s not in good taste to walk around with “Matzah Ballin,’” “Kiss My Tuchis,” or “You Little Horah” emblazoned across your chest?"

- Times of Israel

Matzah balls are an Ashkenazi Jewish soup dumpling made from a mixture of matzah meal, eggs, water, and a fat, such as oil, margarine, or chicken fat. Matzah balls are traditionally served in chicken soup. For some they are a staple food on Passover.

Kosher foods are those that conform to the regulations of kashrut (Jewish dietary law). 

Food that may be consumed according to halakha (Jewish law)

From the Unkosher Market website.....

The Shpiel:

It was an accident really. We were throwing a “Jewchella” party for a friend who happened to be joining the tribe. The schmeer was good, but the shirts? A hit. The next thing we knew, Unkosher Market was born. Imagine the look on our parents' faces when we told them we were getting into the schmatta business. But then again, we were used to Jewish guilt. Our fabric is sourced and sewn in Los Angeles with 100% cotton and 100% chutzpah. Deal with it.

Love you a latke,

Alice + Shiran

Shvitz = To sweat

Tuchis is a yiddish term for bottom or buttocks.

An example of a tuchis is what a Jewish grandmother might call a baby's bottom.

Latkes are traditionally eaten by Ashkenazi Jews during the Hanukkah festival. The oil for cooking the latkes is symbolic of the oil from the Hanukkah story that kept the Second Temple of ancient Israel lit with a long-lasting flame that is celebrated as a miracle.  Prior to the introduction of the potato to the Old World, latkes were, and in some places still are, made from a variety of other vegetables, cheeses, legumes, or starches, depending on the available local ingredients and foods of the various places where Jews lived. Despite the popularity of latkes and tradition of eating them during Hanukkah, they are hard to come by in stores or restaurants in Israel, having been largely replaced by the Hanukkah doughnut due to local economic factors, convenience and the influence of trade unions.

BUY a shirt

Patti Friday, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'

Video: Inside the Pheromone Hotbox

Five female photographers investigate portraiture, narrative, and the nude with ARTINFO's Scott Indrisek at Steven Kasher Gallery.

No More

NO MORE is a movement to raise public awareness and engage bystanders around ending domestic violence and sexual assault launched in 2013 by a coalition of leading corporations, advocacy and service organizations. NO MORE is supported by hundreds of domestic violence and sexual assault organizations at the local, state and national levels that are using its signature blue symbol to increase visibility and funding to address these critical issues. Any individual, organization, or corporation that wants to end domestic violence and sexual assault can use the NO MORE symbol to show their commitment to this cause.

12 Commandments for Women

In 1954 Elsa Schiaparelli published her autobiography "Shocking Life", which contains a list of 12 commandments (or guidelines) for women.

1. Since most women do not know themselves, they should try to do so.
2. A woman who buys an expensive dress and changes it, often with disastrous result, is extravagant and foolish.
3. Most women (and men) are colour-blind. They should ask for suggestions.
4. Remember, 20 percent of women have inferiority complexes, 70 percent have illusions.
5. Ninety percent are afraid of being conspicuous, and of what people will say. So they buy a gray suit. They should dare to be different.
6. Women should listen and ask for competent criticism and advice.
7. They should choose their clothes alone or in the company of a man.
8. They should never shop with another woman, who sometimes consciously, and often unconsciously, is apt to be jealous.
9. She should buy little and only of the best or the cheapest.
10. Never fit a dress to the body, but train the body to fit the dress.
11. A woman should buy mostly in one place where she is known and respected, and not rush around trying every new fad.
12. And she should pay her bills.

PFXO
P.S.- Did you know that Schiaparelli was famous for her pink, similar to the pink in this 'Fireworks Girl' fine art print! 

(I also run a cozy online bookshop here. Please feel free to browse around, sit and sip coffee…it’s my Amazon store!)

Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'. Reading. Listening. Learning. Improving. Hanging out with successful people. Photographer. Pirate. Bubby. CANADA @pattifriday

Embassy of Ideas

Slow Journalism is like peeling the layers of a fresh, local, organic onion. It might be so damn good that it makes you cry. 
- Patti Friday,  Embassy of Ideas 

Only one trip. - Iris Apfel

"Be ready so you don't have to get ready." - Embassy of Ideas

Respectfully inform your fear that it doesn't get to make decisions anymore. - Elizabeth Gilbert 

Bake cake once a week and you'll never get depressed. - Bubbyland

Making money is art and working is art and good business is the best art. - Andy Warhol

Photography is a verb. - Patti Friday

“I’ve never been in a synagogue. I don’t believe in a higher power, but that doesn’t make me any less Jewish, I don’t think.” - Anthony Bourdain 

Dogs fulfill us in so many ways. They fill in for human companions when we’re lonely. They keep us company on our morning walks. They give us something living, soft, and warm to cuddle with. They serve as alarm clocks, burglar alarms, and sentries… We don’t ask them to do these things, but they do. They can’t speak and ask us for what they need. So giving them simple things like exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order — will go a long way toward thanking our dogs for everything they bring to our lives.
- Cesar Millan

“Sharpness is a bourgeois concept.” Henri Cartier Bresson

'A picture is a secret about a secret; the more it tells you, the less you know.' -Diane Arbus 

I am my Beloved's and my Beloved is mine. 

Ship often. Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly.- Seth Godin 

A camera is my oxygen. - Patti Friday

Chance favours those in motion. - James H. Austin

Keep on going and the chances are you will stumble on something, perhaps when you are least expecting it. I have never heard of anyone stumbling on something sitting down. 

- Charles F. Kettering

If we meet, I will probably shoot you. - Patti Friday

"Eat food, not too much, mostly plants." - Michael Pollan

It's all about your ability cord. Don't let it dry up and fall off. (It's the lifeline to your success.) - Patti Friday

If you want to succeed, you have to work 40 to 60 hours a week with a fire in your belly! - Barbara Corcoran

Entreat me not to leave you, or to turn back from following you; For wherever you go, I will go; And wherever you lodge, I will lodge; Your people shall be my people, and your God, my God. Where you die, I will die, and there will I be buried. - Book of Ruth

Move quick for humanity shifted from 'books' to 'grams' while I blinked. - Patti Friday


It's hard to be a Canadian Princess. The tiara usually, must share the spotlight with a hat. - Patti Friday

Ironically she began to hate the very words that made her a Writer. For they were barren empty collections of letters with no promises or truth behind them. - 47 Tangier Boulevard (Patti Friday)

You take all the wind out of my sails; leaving the hull stuck in the muck. Why don't you go find another ocean to play in? - The Pirate Code (Patti Friday)

Hebrews 6:19

A woman in my place has two faces; one for the world, and one which she wears in private. - Kingdom of Heaven

In the criminal justice system, the people are represented by two separate yet equally important groups: the police, who investigate crime; and the district attorneys, who prosecute the offenders. These are their stories. - Law & Order

'Hockey is ballet performed on knives by passionate beasts.' - Patti Friday

Yom Sheini 13 Sivan 5719

Om anandamayi chaitanyamayi satyamayi parame
(O Thou full of bliss, full of consciousness, full of truth, supreme)
-Kelly Cutrone via The Mother via Sri Aurobindo via India

It's not just a keel and a hull and a deck and sails, that's what a ship needs but what a ship is... what the Black Pearl really is... is freedom.

JOLLITUDE - Patti Friday

"When I sit before you, stranger, 
I know how much time you'll need 
to bury the distance between us. 
You are at the peak of your intelligence 
and I am at the peak of my banquet. 
...You are deliberating how to begin flirting with me, 
and I, under the curtain of my seriousness, 
am already done devouring you."
- Joumana Haddad

I love photographing food. It suits my taste. - Patti Friday

"Beware of artists-they mix with all classes of society and are therefore most dangerous" - Queen Victoria

“There’s a certain freedom to do whatever I want to do, which I guess is the definition of being an artist.” - Maira Kalman


"Beware of Evil Tongue! Assassinating a person's character is a form of MURDER!" - Madonna

I said I was amazing, not that I'm a Mason. - Jay Z

Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'. Reading. Listening. Learning. Improving. Hanging out with successful people. Photographer. Pirate. Bubby. CANADA @pattifriday

Hannah Kristina Metz

Hannah is a clothing designer, shop owner and photographer living and working in New York and Los Angeles.  Shae Detar Model. Sexpot. Sex Kitten. Roar.  

Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'. Reading. Listening. Learning. Improving. Hanging out with successful people. Photographer. Pirate. Bubby. CANADA @pattifriday

Suzanne Lacy “Between the Door and the Street” Creative Time

Last fall, thousands of onlookers 

flocked to Park Place in Brooklyn 

to hear 400 women (and a few men) 

engage in unscripted conversations 

about gender politics, 

as part of 

Suzanne Lacy’s 

“Between the Door and the Street.” 

Suzanne Lacy is a visual artist whose prolific career includes performances, video and photographic installation, critical writing and public practices in communities. She is best known as one of the Los Angeles performance artists who began active in the Seventies and shaped and emergent art of social engagement. Her work ranges from intimate, graphic body explorations to large-scale public performances involving literally hundreds of performers and thousands of audience members. Her work has been reviewed in The Village Voice, Artforum,L.A. Times, the New York Times, Art in America, and in numerous books and periodicals. She lectures widely, has published over 70 texts of critical commentary, and has exhibited in The Museum of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles, The New Museum and P.S. 1 in New York, and The Bilbao Museum in Spain. Her scores of fellowships include the Guggenheim Foundation, The Henry Moore Foundation, and The National Endowment for the Arts. Her book, Mapping the Terrain: New Genre Public Art (1995), now in its third printing and available in both English and Chinese languages, was responsible for coining the term and articulating the practice. Leaving Art: Performances, Politics and Publics, the collected essays of Suzanne Lacy, was published in 2010 by Duke University Press; a monograph “Suzanne Lacy: Space Between”, by Sharon Irish, was published in 2010 by University of Minnesota Press. Lacy is founding chair of the MFA in Public Practice at the Otis College of Art and Design.

Watch the video below.

PFXO

Patti Friday, Photojourno, reporting from inside 'The Art Dept.' at the international 'Embassy of Ideas'. Reading. Listening. Learning. Improving. Hanging out with successful people. Photographer. Pirate. Bubby. CANADA @pattifriday

You can order Suzanne's book here or by clicking on the cover.