Sasha Pasulka is an accidental media maven.
Four years ago she was blogging from her couch, like many a 20-something chick in Los Angeles. Her blog, The Evil Beet, was a casual chronicle of daily doings (“My Cats Are Totally Bulimic”), peppered with smart-mouthed tidbits about the celebrity industry. When her gossip snagged a cult following, Pasulka shifted the focus of her blog (and her snark) almost exclusively to the world of celebrity.
Later that year, she was offered a full-time position writing for Film.com, a gig that required her to move to Seattle. She took it. The Evil Beet continued to blossom. Two years later, under Seattle’s drizzly sky, Pasulka began her second project. Evil Beet readers were tired, as she puts it, of hearing about her personal life on her gossip blog.
So she launched Sasha is a Monster, a reincarnation of her personal blog, often focusing on her life with bipolar disorder, which Pasulka has struggled with since her early teens. A far cry from tittering about Jessica Simpson’s panties.
“I suppose the way I do it is to not think about it too much,” says Pasulka, about her personal writing. “But I’m fortunate to have a family
who never attempted to hide . . . these issues in me—it was always out in the open, always addressed, and I was taught not to be ashamed of it.”
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Lisa Shannon (top) with Generose. Photo by Francisca Thelin.
When she visited eastern Congo for the first time, Lisa Shannon set out to spark a movement. The former owner of a photo production company wanted to make a documentary on the lives of women in this war zone, hoping it would bring attention to a situation that receives little media coverage.
But near the end of her trip, she changed her mind.
“I think I realized that the most powerful moments weren’t on camera,” she says. So Shannon decided to write a book instead, recounting her experience from beginning to end in a memoir titled A Thousand Sisters: My Journey Into the Worst Place On Earth To Be a Woman.
A UN official recently referred to the Democratic Republic of the Congo as ”the rape capital of the world,” and it is the site of a violent conflict that has taken the lives of more than 5.4 million people since 1998. After watching coverage of the conflict on Oprah in 2005, Shannon began Run for Congo Women in Portland, Oregon, to raise money for women affected by the war, and eventually travelled to the country herself.
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Pop quiz – name five business leaders in five seconds. How’d you do? Did you name leaders like Jim Balsillie, Ted Rogers, Jack Welch, Warren Buffet and Steve Jobs? Funny thing, they’re all men, aren’t they? Let’s try it again. Name five female business leaders. Tick, tock…still waiting. Alas, you weren’t the only one who was stumped. I got as far as Oprah and Sleep Country’s Christine Magee.
Given my dreadful performance, it cheered me considerably to chat with Etobicoke-born and raised Andrea Belvedere, who, in November 2009, was recognized by the Women’s Executive Network as a future leader in their prestigious Canada’s Most Powerful Women: Top 100 award program. Andrea, who is 22 years old, boasts an impressive resume, holding positions like the president of SIFE (Students in Free Enterprise) Ryerson; founder and president of SAGE (Students for the Advancement of Global Entrepreneurship) Canada and the VP of business development at the Ryerson Entrepreneur Institute. Through these organizations, students learn to be socially- responsible business leaders through challenging projects and competitions.
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Some in the film industry don’t think so
Kathryn Bigelow’s win for best director at the Oscars in March may have been a first for a woman, but it did little to promote women’s work in the film industry, some employed behind-the-scenes say.
Bigelow’s The Hurt Locker, which also won best picture, is a man’s film with a male protagonist, and its success isn’t a step forward for women, says Rachael Schaefer, a TV writer in Toronto.
“I don’t think it moved anything forward. A real push for women . . . would be seeing a film about a woman succeeding,” says the 26-year-old.
“I don’t look at her now and think, ‘Oh, she’s made strides and now I can win an award.’ It doesn’t really make a difference for me.
“It didn’t break any barriers for me because I never felt the barrier.”
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