MY NEW HERO
Jen McCreight
It all started with hard-line cleric, Kazem Sedighi, who said promiscuous women cause earthquakes. The Associated Press reports: “Many women who do not dress modestly … lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes,” Sedighi was quoted as saying by Iranian media. Sedighi, like Jannati, serves as one of Tehran’s acting Friday prayer leaders. The quote caused college student Jen McCreight, a self-described liberal, scientific, perverted atheist feminist, to put the notion to the test. She declared today national Boobquake day and encouraged women to dress immodestly in the name of science….
It’s been said that any meaningful change in this world begins with a single person, a person with an idea who’s just pissed off enough to want to do something to change things up. In the age of the Internet, I never cease to marvel at how quickly one person with a keyboard can broadcast their idea to the four corners of the globe. In the case of Jen McCreight, she decided that her statement would be to stand up to those who build careers on bullying women in the name of religion. While I’ll avoid that all-too-obvious jokes at the expense of the Catholic Church, McCreight’s target was a Muslim misogynist, not a pedophile posing as a priest.
One person with an idea and a keyboard…and before you know it….. The idea of “Boobquake 2010” was picked up on Twitter in about a half-second…and you know what happens when a meme picks up steam on Twitter, right?
So women all over the world (though nowhere in my vicinity, sadly) were showing more cleavage yesterday…and, as it turns out, there was an earthquake off the coast of Taiwan that measured 6.9 on the Richter scale. Coincidence? Or is Kazem Sedighi crazy like a fox?
It’s nice to realize that in this day and age a tool exists which can be used to unite people to expose silliness and ignorance- and do so with a refreshing degree of humor. I look at that, and I can’t help but think that maybe, just maybe, there might be hope for us after all.