The magazine’s cover story devotes significant column inches to talking about how historic OITNB is. It’s a show about women and, more importantly, women doing something other than being the token girlfriend or token best friend to some lame leading man. Not only are the show’s female characters great, but they’re played by traditionally marginalized and underrepresented actresses—the cast includes plenty of women of colour, Latina women and queer women, as well as transgender actress Laverne Cox playing a transgender woman.

Rolling Stone was so blown away by how ground breaking OITNB is that they decided to celebrate with this revolutionary cover treatment.

Seriously, Rolling Stone? While the article features interviews with several of the show’s diverse cast members, it’s the hot white lesbian characters that get the cover. Not only that, but the show’s hot white lesbian characters—played by Schilling and Prepon—received the predictable no bra, super sexualized, male fantasy Rolling Stone cover treatment. A white tank top, preferably with no bra, is the magazine’s go to look for women. I hope the company that manufactures women’s white tank tops has sent Rolling Stone an edible arrangement for keeping them in business all these years.

At least Schilling got to keep her nipples (maybe it’s a prison thing). Cover star Nicki Minaj was not so lucky. Minaj appeared on a January 2015 cover where she was given the Barbie boob treatment: her breasts smoothed out and not a nip in sight. “Mad Genius. Manic Diva,” reads the cover copy. Is she manic ’cause Rolling Stone stole her nipples? She should be.

Rolling Stone’s horrible treatment of women is certainly nothing new and, sadly, it only seems to be getting worse. A look at Rolling Stone covers for the five year period from 2013–2009 (the magazine’s online cover archive ends at 2013—maybe because someone became too depressed by the covers to update it), shows that men graced 94 covers while women were featured solo on just 20 covers and were part of six group covers (the cast of 30 Rock, the stars of Mad Men, The Black Eyed Peas).

Rolling Stone is more comfortable putting the Boston Marathon bomber on the cover than it is a woman. In 2013, only three of the magazine’s 24 issues featured women cover subjects; including Lena Dunham, Rihanna, and Miley Cyrus. Tina Fey also got a cover, but was featured alongside two male members of the 30 Rock cast. The magazine also tends to recycle their women cover subjects, suggesting that Lady Gaga and Katy Perry are the only women out there making music—or, at least, the only women making music with enough cover-friendly appeal.

It’s as if we’ve given up altogether on music magazines doing better when it comes to female representation. Well, maybe not all of us. The Stranger, a Seattle alternative weekly, recently published its second annual “Men Who Rock” parody issue designed to highlight the sexism and double standard female musicians face. The “Men Who Rock” issue mocks plenty of the tropes in music coverage, including: the idea that women making music is a trend; the ridiculous way women are posed on covers; interview questions for women musicians, and especially those that tend to focus on tabloid over talent.

So if you’re looking to follow The Stranger’s lead and do your own “Men Who Rock” parody issue (please do and send it to me) or simply want to publish a magazine that treats women as badly as Rolling Stone does, here are the top 10 tips for dealing with female cover subjects.

1. Putting an actual dick on the cover would be in poor taste (the closest Rolling Stone has come to a dick on the cover is Sean Penn). Instead you should use a series of dick stand-ins. These can include: a rocket, the neck of a guitar, Tasti D-Lite or a ball park frank (bonus points for squirting condiments).

2. If the female cover subject is over a certain age (25) or over a certain size (two), face only please. The tighter the photo crop the better. You don’t want viewers to have to imagine Adele as a sexual being with an actual body. Floating head is best.

3. Use woman of colour on as few covers as possible. In the five year period from 2013-2009 only three covers featured women of colour. Rihanna graced two of these covers. If a woman of colour wants to be on the cover she should be prepared to die for it. Whitney Houston got the third cover spot when she died in 2012.

4. The less clothing the better. If your subject does have to wear “lots” of clothing it should look like the clothing is just about to come off, or could easily be ripped off in under a minute. I am not sure why they’ve even bothered putting a skirt on Christina Aguilera. Maybe she’s layering up for a post photo shoot game of strip poker? Sadly, there’s not enough word count left for me to get into the “What Christina Wants” cover line. And then there’s Rihanna in a pair of shorts that look like they’re made of partially eaten Fruit Roll-Ups that are ready to dissolve at any moment.

5. No clothing is really the best option. If you are worried about that poor taste thing (see rule #1) just throw on a string of bullets. You’re welcome, NRA.

6. Ban the bra? Keep only the bra? Rolling Stone has a very conflicted relationship with the bra and watching them work out their feelings about this undergarment has become extremely tiresome. So very tiresome.

7. Jailbait is A-okay. I’m all for women appearing on the cover of music magazines on their own terms to announce they’re an adult and no longer a tween slave to the cult of Disney, but that’s rarely the Rolling Stone way. Britney Spears was only 17 (Teletubbie age: unknown) when she shot this famous cover—one with which she was reportedly uncomfortable. Rolling Stone didn’t super sexualize Lindsay Lohan or the Olsen twins with their cover image; they let the display copy do that job for them. “Hot, ready and legal!” reads Lohan’s cover while “America’s Favourite Fantasy” accompanies the Olsen twins. Let’s take a moment to remember this is supposed to be a respected music magazine.

8. Make sure you sex up those cover lines! The Go-Go’s put out! Shania Twain knows what you want! Nicole Kidman uncensored! SEX SELLS! SUBTLETY DOESN’T!

9. Make sure to pose women in ways you would never pose a man. Rolling Stone tends to pose male cover subjects in the exact same way. There’s the familiar head-on face shot. Dave Grohl, Dave Letterman, Dave Matthews—they all blur into one white male face on the cover. Not so for women. Poses should suggest sex and look as uncomfortable as possible. Megan Fox looks like the only thing missing is a sign between her legs that says “insert penis here” Bonus points if the pose is just “hot woman as prop.”

10. Keep the cover conversation light with women. Highlight male cover subjects’ accomplishments, success or stick to “the Rolling Stone interview,”—a standard cover line for men from Barack Obama to Bruce Springsteen. For the ladies focus on their love life, their sex life or their looks. What’s Angelina accomplished? She’s “hot & single.” Jennifer Aniston’s latest project? Her “love life.” What’s Brad Pitt got going for him? He’s got the serious, professional and intelligent sounding “Rolling Stone interview.”

Media is a big message transmitter and dictates feelings, philosophies, morals, values—pretty much everything that makes up society rules. No matter how critical the viewer, we are still subjected to ads in subway stations and on buses, on billboards and in newspapers, radio, TV, Internet—it’s everywhere. And when these messages are being sold as truth, when things are altered, it gets scary. There is no problem criticizing the industry and challenging what makes this the norm.

However, going detective on something like a Beyonce picture (Headline: Beyoncé Caught Possibly Photoshopping Her Pictures Again )is vilifying the individual and ignoring the big problem. Beyonce is altering her pictures, which is sharing the impossible body ideal. This presentation is dangerous because many will see these photos and assume that this altered body is the norm, and then expect all women to have a perfect body, and that it is attainable, concluding if a woman doesn’t have this body it is a failure on her part. This is, of course, problematic. But isn’t Beyonce a victim of the same messaging?

It is hard to shed tears for the rich in general, especially those who profit from appearing to be perfect while the rest of us feeling enormous pressure to look the same. But why isn’t the real issue being fought against? It’s hard to see celebrity women as people when they are sold to us as objects. But why is Beyonce expected to look this way? Rather than shaming her, let’s look at marketing and public relations. Let’s continue discussing how what we are being sold isn’t real life. Let’s look at the industries that profit from our insecurities. Let’s think critically and do it without body shaming another woman.

Beyonce is just one example. Another could be Kim Kardashian. It is important to acknowledge that these pictures have been altered. But let’s do it without making personal attacks regarding these women’s physical appearance.

It is difficult battling against a superficial message that we have shoved in our faces everyday without resorting to superficial tactics ourselves. We see this with messaging about how “real” women have curves. It is instinctive to fight the more socially dominant group this way. And yet, it’s also very much an attempt to empower to one group by disempowering another. We’re fighting society’s expectations, but we’re also encouraging one group of women to fight another group of women. Dividing ourselves into superficial groups isn’t going to solve anything. What will help solve body shame issues is stopping the use of women in any objectifying way—even when we think we are doing so for good.

A former This intern, Hillary Di Menna is in her first year of the gender and women’s studies program at York University. She also maintains an online feminist resource directory, FIRE- Feminist Internet Resource Exchange.

Some civil-society leaders today call for a boycott of Israel… Most disgracefully of all, some openly call Israel an apartheid state. Think about that. Think about the twisted logic and outright malice behind that… A state, based on freedom, democracy and the rule of law, that was founded so Jews can flourish as Jews, and seek shelter from the shadow of the worst racist experiment in history.

Now perhaps credit to Harper for trying, but this sort of statement seems to indicate misunderstanding of a few things, as well as outright ignoring others. By calling any critical statement towards the Israeli government anti-Semitic, Harper appears to be claiming that the state of Israel is in fact the entire Jewish population. Not only is this mistaken, but it serves to highlight Harper’s questionable approach to issues in the Middle-East.

As Tyler Levitan, spokesperson for the Ottawa Independent Jewish Voice, said in a recent press release on the issue: “This is a continuation of Harper’s outrageous efforts to disparage the Palestinian people, as well as the growing international solidarity movement that supports the non-violent Palestinian campaign to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel until Israel is willing to accept Palestinian rights.”

During his speech Harper repeatedly compared recent calls to boycott Israel to that of the treatment of Jews in Nazi Germany, during which Jewish shops were boycotted. He then went on to describe that Israel was being singled out for criticism on a global scale, and that such an approach was unbalanced, weak, and wrong.

However, as Levitan notes, ‘“Palestinian human rights activists support universal human rights for all people, so we are not singling out Israel. It is Harper, who refuses to challenge Israel’s systematic human rights abuses, who is making an exception of Israel by exempting it from criticism.”

Harper’s biased approach to the Middle-East was commented on by some of the Knesset—two of their members openly heckled Harper, and then stormed out in protest. Ahmad Tibi, one of the hecklers, said that he walked out on Harper’s speech as the approach Harper was taking was “biased, non-balanced,” and added “that’s why Canada has a very marginal role in the Middle East.”

Not only this, but Harper seems to have completely ignored how the Canadian government is against the Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. In fact Harper was deafening in his total exclusion of the subject, refusing to be dragged into commenting on it at all.  Tibi’s view on the situation was: “When you are controlling, discriminating, confiscating, occupying lands from one side and putting them in the corner without any basic rights, you are by this way ruling and committing apartheid in the occupied Palestinian Territories.”

While Harper is on his tour, there is a planned protest outside the Israeli consulate happening today, January 22, at 4pm in Toronto, as well as twelve other cities across Europe and North America. The protest is in support of nearly 50,000 African asylum seekers on strike since the  January 5. The strike is in response to a recent amendment to the Prevention of Infiltration Law, which previous amendments were condemned by the High Court of Justice as “a grave and disproportionate abuse of the right to personal freedom.”

More information on the protest can be found here.

When the mammoth pharmaceutical company Bayer announced in 2009 that it would be making NorLevo, a morning-after pill, available over the counter to women in Toronto, it failed to mention one small detail: it doesn’t work for every woman.

The drug, which is identical to Plan B One-step, (the more popular emergency contraception pill), may not be effective for women who weigh over 176lbs, according to HRA Pharma, the French manufacturer of NorLevo. The decision to investigate the pill’s efficacy was made on the heels of research done in 2011 by Anna Glasier, a professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the University of Edinburgh. Her research showed that levonorgestrel, the progestogen used in most emergency contraceptives, including Plan B and NorLevo, was ineffective for women with higher body mass index

One might infer that, with such strong evidence, health advisors here in Canada would be hastening to revise the packaging, in the interest of not misleading certain women. Especially when the particular drug has such momentous implications on a woman’s life. But it’s been all crickets and tumbleweeds at Health Canada, who hasn’t yet attempted to update its literature on the drug.

Scarier still is to think that, had HRA Pharma not released the information in Europe, Glasier’s research could have gone blissfully ignored altogether. Women deserve better transparency than this—when it comes to their bodies, when it comes to the choices they make. Information is power, and in this case, it’s sad to say, power has been eschewed for profits. We can only speculate how many women, over 176lbs, took the pill misguidedly and wondered why it didn’t work.

The story, over the past few days, has been swimming around other sites and blogs. If you know anyone whom this might affect, don’t wait for the big pharmaceutical companies to break the news—share the info. With a matter this consequential, it’s best to be as informed as possible.

You’ve got nothing to hide. You’re an upstanding, shoes-wearing citizen who smells like soap and carries good conversations. You haven’t a single thing to hide. What does it matter if Bell Canada, this past week, announced that it will track their customers’ location, media habits, search activity, website interests, and application usage? You’re a modern individual, certainly far progressed from that puritanical tradition of privacy being a matter of decorum and shame. So what if you’re a public entity, if you’re visible?

Bell, (being, it assures us, fully compliant with Canadian law), simply wants to know your search terms, your phone calls, your applications, your websites, your age, your gender, where you live and how you pay your bills. Nothing pernicious. Just everything you seem to be.

Come on, killjoy. It’s only going to be used to create a detailed, comprehensive profile for you so that it knows what to advertise to you. You know, cut through all the richness of your character, round down your idiosyncrasies a bit—really get to the bottom of this whole Coke or Pepsi question that keeps you awake some nights.

And if you’re worried that this whole cycle of gathering trends and selling trends might evolve to produce lowest common denominator identity types, don’t worry about it. You will stay inside Bell. Bell won’t give your personal information away to other companies. Besides, there are all sorts of other ways to express that adorable individuality of yours.

And if the worst happened? God forbid, if for some reason, eventually, governmental organizations decided self-preservation was a higher priority than freedoms, (far-fetched, to be sure), and if, hypothetically, they could access this information on you to find out if you might act against your better judgment and piece together some kind of dissenting opinion or, worse, some kind of public demonstration, they probably (probably!) wouldn’t use your information to ensure subservience. Probably.

It’s high time you learn to stop worrying and love the Bell.

Fine print: Or, I guess if you have to, you can opt out of it here

"“We can do it! Because cleaning kitchens is a woman’s work. #swiffer #sexist” Heather Beschizza @hbeschizza

Cleaning commercials have always been crystal clear on whose job it is to keep the family home sparkling. It is a pretty standard formula to show women on the brink of orgasm, dancing over their whites getting their whitest, high on the fumes of the chemicals responsible for their Martha Stewart castles. It’s been a blatantly sexist depiction that consumers have accepted (a problem in and of it’s own.) Swiffer, ever the revolutionaries, took it one step further: Rosie the Riveter is getting back in the kitchen.

The Rosie image became popular during World War II. After the widespread enlistment of men, the American workforce was lacking bodies. Thankfully, someone high up in the American government remembered that lady-people also existed! To get women out of the home and into the factory, a government campaign was released, showing off a hard-working, but still glamorous, woman encouraging us that, “We can do it!” And we did. One in four married women worked outside of the home by 1945.

The symbol lived on in becoming a feminist icon. But alas, it wasn’t good enough to dehumanize the “every day” woman to an obsessive cleaning maniac, Swiffer needed to spit right in the face of this powerful image.

The print advertisements feature a modern day Rosie the Riveter wearing a blue worker’s shirt and red bandana. Her powerful arms are crossed, there is no arm muscle flexing here, because she needs to hold tight to the real power—a Swiffer! The marketing geniuses behind this ad are lucky Rosie hasn’t jumped out and popped ‘em one.

On Monday Swiffer e-mailed Huffington Post:

We are aware of the concerns regarding an image in a Swiffer ad. Our core purpose is to make cleaning easier for all consumers, regardless of who is behind the handle of our products. It was not our intention to offend any group with the image, and we are working to make changes to where it is used as quickly as possible.

How did no one, not one person, not think about the blatant offensiveness in this ad? Not one. Who at that marketing meeting was too shy to speak up?

It isn’t wrong to say women clean, it is wrong to say women exclusively do so, or that laundry is what little girls’ dreams are made of. This tells men they are either too stupid to tidy up, or too important. Women are told this is not only their number one job but the most important role of their lives. Few actually enjoy cleaning to that extent. Women, like other people, are tired from the  million other things they have to do and clean more begrudgingly and less like they and their cleaning product are co-stars in a Broadway show.

Shouldn’t women, the demographic behind the purchasing of 80 percent of household products be treated with an ounce of respect, if only so they will be persuaded to put money in your corporate pockets? It makes sense that, according to She-conomy, only three percent of advertising agency creative directors are women. Perhaps we need more ladies applying to Swiffer manufacturer Proctor and Gamble.

Until then, call me a witch, I’m sticking to a broomstick.

Hannah Robertson's family runs Today I Ate a Rainbow

When I was nine years old I was reading The Baby-sitters Club and eating, what some would say to be, way too much lasagna. This nine-year-old girl, however, left her home in Kelowna, B.C. to attend the 2013 Annual Shareholders’ Meeting for McDonald’s Corporation in Chicago on May 23—and it wasn’t for a sneak peek at the new Epic toys offered with a Happy Meal. In fact, Hannah Robertson told McCEO Don Thompson that such ties with kids’ toys in their advertising wasn’t cool, “Something that I don’t think is fair is when big companies try to trick kids into eating food that isn’t good for them by using toys and cartoon characters,” says Robertson. “If parents haven’t taught their kids about healthy eating then the kids probably believe that junk food is good for them because it might taste good.” Thompson gave Robertson a patrionizing props for liking her veggies but not before starting with, “First off, we don’t sell junk food, Hannah.”

The definition of junk food is food that is high in calories with little nutritional value. Like a 570 calorie McDonald’s hamburger happy meal, almost half of a child’s needed daily calorie intake, full of obesity causing refined carbohydrates. Maybe Thompson wasn’t paying attention in his own third grade class.

The dramatic increase in overweight children, reported by the Childhood Obesity Foundation, leads to obesity in adulthood. Makes sense that Toronto’s top public health official is urging the city, if not the entire province, to make restaurants list their nutritional information. Dr. David McKeown would like to see a Toronto bylaw that makes chains with 10 or more restaurants, or have $10 million in gross revenue, list the calorie and sodium counts on their menus. This kind of transparency will help Canadians dining out, in a time where it is even risky to eat at the family table.

Image from March-Against-Monsanto.com

An April 11, 2013 CBC article reads, “Thousands of products in Canada’s food chain contain some form of a genetically modified item—and because there are no mandatory labeling requirements, it’s difficult for consumers to know which ones do.” Monsanto is a $58 billion multinational corporation known for producing Agent Orange, creating pesticides to kill living things, and for engineering seeds that are genetically modified to survive the lethal chemicals. The company controls much of the world’s food supply and is under deserved scrutiny for using genetically modified organisms (GMOs) to create super foods, such as tomatoes that stay ripe longer and corn that causes tumours in lab rats. Last weekend the world staged a protest against the corporate giant: March Against Monsanto happened May 25, 2013. Fifty-two countries and 436 cities took part. “These aren’t natural products, they’re Franken-food,” Rose Stevens, a protest organizer, tells Winnipeg Free Press. Some protesters want GMOs abolished while others simply wish to have foods containing GMOs labeled.

Canada may not be like Hungary, where 1,000 acres of GMO corn was burned in protest of Monsanto, but the march was a start. And, after our Canadian heroine spoke at the McDonald’s shareholders meeting, advocacy group Corporate Accountability International (CAI) is telling McDonald’s to stop marketing to kids and hiding their food’s health risk  with “slick nutri-washing campaigns.”

Here’s a play-by-play of the ad in all its absurdity: A woman sits alone, destined to be an old maid. She spots the man of her dreams. Her pearly 3D White smile is not held back, knowing this may be her only chance and the stakes are high. She envisions herself and this stranger in Paris, then on the beach in wedding attire. Finally, she dreams of rubbing that coveted baby bump, made possible by “the loving father to [her] children.” He sits with her by the end,  and she is one step closer to acquiring a ring on her finger and a bun in the oven.

Because that is what every woman wants: to be a white, heterosexual lady who meets a white, heterosexual prince to marry and have babies with. All in under half a minute.

Media Smart’s section titled How to Catch (and Keep) Your Man looks at Women and Weight: Gendered Messages on Magazine Covers by Amy Malin, Kimberlie Wornian and Joan Chrisler. As it turns out, having white teeth is only one way to catch your man. Another, of course, is to be skinny: “messages about weight loss are often placed next to messages about men and relationships … ‘Get the Body You Really Want’ beside ‘How to Get Your Husband to Really Listen,’ and ‘Stay Skinny’ paired with ‘What Men Really Want.'” The section also includes research findings from The Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Media: “A 2008 study of female leads in G-rated films found that nearly all were valued primarily for their appearance and were focused primarily on winning the love of a male character.”

Crest 3D White’s official YouTube channel has this awesome commercial for those of us who need to relive the magic when we’re surfing the net instead of channels. The comments worry me. Some people got the offensiveness right away. Their comments range from the simple, “Why can’t she say hello to him?” to the blunt, “That’s sexist.” There were a few too many comments hinting that the female character’s thought process is typical of all women. The largest demographic for US YouTube subscribers is the 18 to 34 years old crowd at 67 per cent, male and female viewers are nearly equal.

One comment reads, “I am SO fucking glad I’m not the only one who finds this commercial weird and creepy.”

Right?

“Bitches be trippin’ hardcore if you just see a dude and automatically think about spending the rest of your life with him.”

And that’s where they lose me.

I won’t get into the obvious about not being keen on my gender being referred to as “bitches” but this is Internet land and I’m not so naïve to think it is void of such language. The issue is that people weren’t voicing that the commercial itself was crazy, but the woman’s character. People think is an accurate portrayal of a woman’s thought process and goals. How are we having this discussion in 2013?

I didn’t think I’d have to say this, but women aren’t twiddling their thumbs waiting for some man to grace them with love, a home and babies. And men aren’t around merely to give ovaries that special child-making ingredient. Some think marketers have grown wise, if not ethically conscientious, to the fact that commercials like these are offensive and passé. This Crest ad was, “just the frosting on the cake I’ll be baking in my kitchen where I belong,” says Katie Speak in a blog post on this topic.

The commercial asks, “What will a 3D white smile do for you?” Nothing. The thought of buying this garbage makes my teeth grind.

In a recent rebranding effort, the Canadian Tire-owned retailer Mark’s Work Warehouse has changed its name to just “Mark’s”—oh, and they’ve also written one of the worst ad slogans we’ve seen in a while.

Posters showing sophisticated, smiling women with the tagline, “Now Welcoming Women,” have sprouted up all over the Greater Toronto Area, which is where the campaign is focused on right now. The first location to drop “Work Wearhouse” from its name was the Edmonton flagship store in 2008, and the company has slowly been trying out the revamp in select locations since then, according to a Strategy article. The retailer has also changed the look of stores and the merchandise inside to focus more on women and casual menswear, the article reports.

“The sign above the door has changed from Mark’s Work Wearhouse to just Mark’s,” said Wendy Bennison, VP operations at Mark’s Work Wearhouse, in an interview with Strategy. “The other two words, although important to our heritage, were causing a lot of consumers to not choose us because they thought we were a different store.”

This is all fine and good. Rebranding is a major part of a clothing store; a natural progression and realization that vendors must change along with the societies they inhabit. However, the tagline that Mark’s chose to use is taking about 10 steps backwards.

First of all, Mark’s has been offering clothing for women since its establishment in 1977. This new slogan suggests women weren’t allowed in Mark’s for its first 35 years of business; as if now that it’s been announced, women should be jubilant that they are finally welcome inside its doors.

The campaign has set social media sites like Twitter and Facebook aflame, with one woman posting on Mark’s Facebook page on Oct. 5:

“You can’t be serious! “Now welcoming women.” This certainly wasn’t a well thought out ad campaign. So the money I’ve spent on uniforms in the past, was not welcome? … I for one, will not shop your stores again. This woman is not feeling welcomed at all!”

The issue is not that Mark’s wants to release a campaign that focuses on women and aims to bring a greater female presence to their stores; it’s how they chose to word it. As Colleen Westendorf (organizer of SlutWalk Toronto) wrote for the Huffington Post Canada blog, if Mark’s slogan said something as simple as, “’New women’s lines,’ or, ‘More women’s clothing than ever!’ nobody would have a problem. Whatever made the company choose to go with this campaign (by MacLaren McCann), is extremely puzzling.

“Women are well-aware that in many spheres of our lives, we still have designated spaces, roles, harmful tropes and stereotypes that are often not defined by us, and that still are tied to very real consequences if and when these are transgressed,” writes Westendorf for the Huffington Post Canada. “So the Mark’s slogan reads to many that they are deigning to welcome women, and should so be commended and rewarded with patronage for giving up what is implied to formerly have been a gender-exclusive sphere.”

This whole thing is reminiscent of when Bic released special pink and purple lady-specific pens. The difference there, though, was that at least “Bic for Her” made for some hilarious Amazon reviews. As for Mark’s, it seems as though most women are just plain angry—and feeling anything but welcome.

Budweiser is just one brand sold by Anheuser-Busch, the American arm of Brazilian-Belgian multinational beer conglomerate Anheuser-Busch InBev. Just this May, Anheuser-Busch was targeted by Pulitzer Prize-winner Nicholas Kristof for allegedly encouraging alcoholism on an American Indian reserve.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation, in South Dakota, has struggled with alcohol for generations. The Oglala Sioux Nation made it a dry reserve, so alcohol has been prohibited since 1832. Possession, resale, use and any sign of intoxication is illegal.

But it’s a hard policy to enforce. Just 250 feet away from the reservation border, you’ll find a village of less than 15 people called Whiteclay. Whiteclay sells about four million cans of beer and malt liquor annually, according to the New York Times. And Anheuser-Busch’s Hurricane High Gravity Lager—with an alcohol content of 8.1 percent—is the local favourite.

“So Anheuser-Busch and other brewers pour hundreds of thousands of gallons of alcohol into the liquor stores of Whiteclay, knowing that it ends up consumed illicitly by Pine Ridge residents and fuels alcoholism, crime and misery there. In short, a giant corporation’s business model here is based on violating tribal rules and destroying the Indians’ way of living,” Kristof writes. “It’s as if Mexico legally sold methamphetamine and crack cocaine to Americans in Tijuana and Ciudad Juárez.”

Anheuser-Busch representatives couldn’t get back to me today. But Luiz F. Edmond—president of the company—wrote to the Times that the reality is more complicated than Kristof’s view. “Beer producers are prohibited from selling beer directly to retailers or consumers in Nebraska, and we obey all laws wherever we operate or sell beer,” he said, in a letter.  Edmond adds, “We cannot control the actions on the tribe’s reservation, yet that in no way diminishes our desire to end these problems.”

And also: “This problem involves deeply complex, societal, cultural and sometimes physiological issues that are often heightened during difficult economic conditions.

I called Tom White, lead counsel for the Ogala tribe’s case against the town’s liquor stores, as well as Molson-Coors, Miller, Pabst, and of course, Anheuser-Busch.

White says that by creating a situation where the reservation’s rules will be violated, companies and stores that sell alcohol to its inhabitants are breaking the law.

“There could be no Whiteclay without the beer brewed by the defendants,” he says, pointing out that there is no public place in Whiteclay where it is legal to consume alcohol. White says that according to Nebraska statutes, people involved in “maintaining a common nuisance” are breaking the law, even if they’re not participating directly.

White, who’s also a former Nebraska senator, claims (but is still fighting to prove) that the major breweries are also violating the federal law: they’re profiting off of alcohol that enters the reserve, without bringing it to police attention. “What happens when a law-abiding citizen believes they’re caught up in an illegal scheme, they are told to contact law enforcement—in this case it would be the United States attorney, and Nebraska liquor control commission, and the Oglala Sioux tribal police,” White explains. “Tell them what’s going on and then ask for them to intervene so that they can be extricated without violating the law. They’ve never alleged they’ve done that.”

The tribe has “been asking and begging the State of Nebraska to enforce these laws for years and finally they recognized that that wasn’t going to happen,” White says. “I started to tell them, ‘I think the laws are there, and we can enforce this.’” They want $500 million in damages for health care, social services, and child rehabilitation, according to the Washington Post.

White says this violation is about the Oglala Sioux’s right to sovereignty, integrity of its laws, and protection of its borders—not to mention the devastating effects of alcohol in the region.

One in four babies born in Pine Ridge has fetal alcohol syndrome or fetal alcohol spectrum disorder. Life expectancy for people on the reserve is about 50 years. In contrast, life expectancy in Haiti is about 62.

So thanks for the Toronto Pride South Stage, Bud. But until this gets cleared up, I think I’ll be sticking to a bottle of my wine rack’s finest.