This is officially my 400th published post on this site! Last night I was racking my brain trying to think of something EPIC and truly profound to write about and well, Scandal was on, so... Do not fear though! In light of International Women's Day last weekend, I have found a treasure trove of things for you to read and watch this weekend to get your feminism ON! 

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1. The folks at Glamour asked TED put together a list of the Top 10 TED talks by women that all women people really should watch. I was quite pleased that I had already seen 5 of the 10 and was blown away by the rest of them. Especially this one by Dr. Jill Bolte Taylor, a neuroscientist who observed her own stroke as it was happening.

[youtube]http://youtu.be/UyyjU8fzEYU[/youtube]

Bookmark this page and please watch these talks at your leisure. I promise, you won't be disappointed.

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2. If you haven't heard already, there is a new campaign by the Sheryl Sandberg "Lean-in" crowd going around called #BanBossy. Many feminists have written varying opinions about it this week, myself included. bell hooks even got in on this one and started tweeting her own version of reclaiming the word with the Twitter hashtag #bossyandproud. Jessica Bennet at Time.com wrote a handy guide for how not to sound like a sexist or use sexist language and I thought it highlighted very nicely all the ways that we use a lot of different words in sexist ways every day and points out how we can change this.

"Words tell us something about the way our culture perceives women in power, and whether we believe they’re supposed to be there."

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3. Ever wanted to be a real life super hero? Well now you can by simply joining the growing force at GenderAvenger.com. Gender Avenger was founded by Gina Glantz and has a mission of "building a community that ensures women are represented in the public dialog." I performed my first mission as a Gender Avenger this past week and nominated CBC's Hockey Night in Canada to the Gender Avenger Hall of Shame for their use of the word DIVERSE to describe their new line up of hosts and commentators (Hint: the line up is all male and all white).  You too can become a #genderavenger!  Sign up for the newsletters, get yourself one of these fancy-schmancy badges, and speak up when you see women being left out of the public dialog.

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4. I came across this lovely, colourful infographic the other day called "The Science of Raising Happy Kids". It is from an app and website called Happify.com that from what I can gather is a kind of Lumosity for getting happier. There are some really good points to consider here and I particularly liked point #2. Be happy mamas, it matters not only to you, but to your kids too!

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5. The other day one of my lovely Instagram followers sent me the following message:

"I haven't been following you long, but I had the opportunity to meet Gloria Steinem this weekend and thought of you!"

Umm, WOW! First, that she got to meet Ms. Steinem and second, she thought of ME! I read an excerpt from an essay that Gloria Steinem wrote for MS. Magazine last week about the myths of feminism and why our revolution has just begun and it has made my resolve even stronger to continue in this thing called Feminism and to keep lighting the torches of others. We still have a long, long way to go....

"...(the myth) that women of the ’70s did all that could or should be done, and young women can now relax; feminism was their mothers’ movement. Even the abolitionist and suffragist era shows how ridiculous this is. If it took more than a century for black men and all women to gain a legal identity as citizens instead of chattel, it’s likely to take at least a century to gain a legal and social equality as everything from workers to candidates to parents."

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Have a great weekend Avengers, Revolutionaries and Happiness creators!

love and light,

n~