Not enough pieces; sexist
589120
Not enough plastic stands for the cut out pieces.

The entire product line is void of a female superhero (hello, Black Widow?). This was purchased as a gift for our kids, and our daughter was very disappointed there were no girls in any of the puzzles. Apparently only boys play with super heroes. Talk about a major disappointment: our daughter and sons receive the message that girls can't be awesome super heroes. Lame.
4675730
The general concepts for the Bold & Beautiful garment are good. There are no full size patterns included. One must either draw them out on one inch graph paper or print them out on a home computer. The one pattern I was most interested in required 40 pieces of 8.5"x11" paper! The illustration for this particular pattern (graph) was not even included in the physical book -- it was on the disk...and had to be printed for use. ALSO...the one pattern I was interested in had pieces mis-labeled. Not a particular good buy.
1371592
You can find paint that is the same color and the same texture from Valspar. And it would turn your kitchen or appliances pink. Also.. There's a weird sexist, domestic woman tone to the directions.
4240807
I was very disappointed to complete this puzzle to find that 5 pieces were missing.

I would most certainly hesitate to ever purchase a puzzle again from this company.  In fact I purchased two puzzles the same day & I am reluctant to open the second puzzle as it is 1000 pieces & I don't want to waste my time trying to complete something that is not all there.
3323048
I was looking at some possible gifts for my 2 year old daughter who loves animals and was surprised at how sexist the description of this sticker book is. "Boys will love ..." Very disappointing. Why is this just targeted to boys?!
3607741
This book says that women need three things: to be romanced, to have an irreplaceable role in a grand adventure, and to have their beauty unveiled.  And, according to this book, men need three things: a battle to fight, an adventure to live, and a beauty to rescue.  Let me rephrase those a bit more honestly.  Women "need" to be the passive receiver to a man's initiative, to play a role in a man's adventure, and to be told we are beautiful by a man, whereas men "need" to be the active initiator (the one who makes decisions), to live an adventure of their own direction, and to have a woman to control and objectify.  This is the premise of every so-called "chick-flick."  This is the reason women look to men to give them worth and purpose.

I would offer the three longings of every human being's heart: to feel loved by others, to love oneself, and to love others.  (kinda like Matthew 22:37-39)  You aren't going to get any of those things by playing roles and mimicking the dominant (and secular, I might add) culture.  You're far more likely to get them by treating all human beings the same way -- as equals, without boundaries imposed by stereotypes.

According to this book, women were created to be submissive and if they take care of themselves rather than looking to a male person to make all their major decisions, they are being "emasculating." This is an example of how some people choose to believe that traditions of the dominant culture are somehow natural and approved of by God, rather than checking with the Bible to see how Jesus/God behaved toward women.  "There is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female, for you are all one in Christ Jesus." How then is it appropriate to tell people that they when they marry someone they are supposed to have an unequal relationship where one person makes the decisions and the other obeys without any thought or responsibility?  Being "one" does not mean one person thinks and the other does not. It means both people think and work hard until they come to agreement.

If you choose to read this, I urge you to also read&nbsp;<a data-hook="product-link-linked" class="a-link-normal" href="/What-Paul-Really-Said-About-Women-The-Apostle-s-Liberating-Views-on-Equality-in-Marriage-Leadership-and-Love/dp/0060610638/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_rvw_txt?ie=UTF8">What Paul Really Said About Women: The Apostle's Liberating Views on Equality in Marriage, Leadership, and Love</a>.
3312626
I should have read the review prior to purchase. Over half of the pieces are super tiny and won't "K'Nect" with the larger pieces. I work in an after school program and bought this thinking it was a good deal to add to the meager collection we already had. Not.
1366510
Ok - so I bought this for my wife a christmas present.  I hoped that it would inspire her to get a bit more organize with her pile of jewelry.  Sadly, it didn't even come close.  I know beauty is in the eye of the beholder, but we both thought the samething... ugly.  I think it's the proportions of the piece that just don't work.  It's not feminine or elegant enough for home use.  I could see it in a store, however.
2945042
The premise is fine. The book is sadly sexist and perpetuates gender issues.

The only boar to be critiqued for how they look is the female boar, and she is the one to be labeled bossy.

Not sure parents realize how important it is to not add to the gender expectations of girls being pretty and submissive... but this book made me angry and honestly I will throw it away rather than hand it down and have it exist in the world.
3630262
Very upsetting because, like the previous post, we only received 499 pieces!  We also had such a fun time as a family putting this together... but what good is a puzzle that only has 499/500 pieces?!  We are missing a different piece than the previous poster though.  I will be writing to amazon to hopefully get a replacement piece if possible!
1669795
The color plates are of good reproduction, And rare not seen drawing/watercolors.
But the text by these two woman is awfully prejudiced and subjective with psychological dribble.

Borrow from a library to view the color plates, but forget buying it!
1663204
This book is blatant and undressed in its sexist portrait of men.  As noted in the previous reviews, it is entirely dedicated to women's oppression.  Worse yet is how it almost comically negates men's suffering and oppression.  Pick any page and you will most likely find nothing other than women's issues.  When the authors do approach the suffering of men, without exception the metrics and truth itself will be subverted and the issues either negated or astonishingly twisted back to be presented as women's suffering.  For example, in a book that waxes wildly on classic and obvious issues when the subject is women, hardly a sentence is offered when addressing the fact that 92% of all fatalities at work are men.  Then, shockingly, a few paragraphs are dedicated to actually representing this figure as oppression of women, that they aren't given the opportunity to be exposed to the same toxic, hazardous, dangerous and low paying jobs as the men that make up this startling percentage.  When discussing media, particularly magazines aimed at men compared to those of women they mention two of each that they claim are comparable.  Then, instead of comparing those mentioned, they pick two other men's magazines that they openly admit is aimed at younger men ( in their 20's .)  They take the issue of sex and sexuality and describe it when occurring in the womens magazines as being oppressive to women. Specifically that it is geared to getting and keeping  "your man." In the men's magazines, it's labeled as objectifying women.  As mentioned in a previous review, when addressing homelessness, they portray the information so dishonestly that it is unclear that nearly the entire population of homeless are men.

This book is useful as an example of the twisted, disrespectfully, sexist, hypocritical, and ugly treatment men are treated to by much of the feminist community.
1544463
This set was rather disappointing.  There are 5 sheets each of 4 different pictures. If you can pull  the bicycle shot in close enough to see the detail that pretty much represents shabby chic for all 4 different pictures. Perhaps there are different ideas of what shabby chic is.  For me this bicycle is all shabby and no chic. So if for you the bicycle is your vision of shabby chic , you will probably like  the other 3 pictures on the rest of the stationery.  The second depiction is an old mannequin type torso and hip without arms , the mannequin is white, and old and showing the brownish under layer beneath the cracked and peeling torso. This could have been so much fun to make a very cool shabby chic item from but, a necklace of a partial silk vine of flowers is used, some nice bows made from strips of ripped fabric (thus showing the frayed edges)  applied just above the bosom and extending to the top of the shoulder, and again at one side of the waist line 5 more of these ribbons, the old "jewelry" used to decorate the center of each bow is 6 identical heraldry pieces and 2 of the bows have crown pieces with nice glass sparkles.
The 3rd set of 5 sheets is a weathered board with a hint that it was once painted blue and at another time painted white. On this board is a nicely use cardboard box containing  numbers and letters made of wood, these are rubber stamps . There is an over the hill fraying silk white rose with a touch of pink and a blush of green, a dirty piece of old grosgrain off white ribbon stuck through with look alike pearl head stick bins a partial card of old buttons is the prettiest thing in the whole scene , there are push pins, a curly round paperclip  and a few other ugly baubles that were they in my possession would have hit the trash can.
Fourth and final picture is the prettiest and most wonderful form off shabby chic.  The items on this piece of stationery take one back to memories, or memories of others they may have seen in books or read about.  An old copy of a watercolor plant with lovely pink and blue flowers, faded to the perfect dark manila patina. A picture (old poster print) of a man using a syth to cut hay in a field. A piece of what might be a old water color landscape picture, prairie on the left some trees to the right and perhaps mountains far in the background this prairie scene is mounted on an old stained sheet of paper ,looks great .  In the middle and slightly covering the 3 corners of above pictures is a small nosegay of silk flowers that have seen better days, but are pretty enough to be slightly reminiscent of a small bunch of dried flowers in faded pastel color. Part of the bunch of flowers may be a group of alike button all threaded together to make what looks like a flower ,a very effective touch. On the left side is a bit of lovely old curtain, tablecloth or perhaps even a heavy kitchen towel, the background is white and there are lovely bits of small flowers and feathery strands of grasses printed on the fabric, the colors in the fabric echo and compliment the colors in the rest of this picture. Upper right is a wonderful homemade calendar page with what appears to be drawings of leaving for a trip and drawings of a van, camper or truck traveling over the days with wonderful drawings of Tuscan looking buildings and driving past lovely buildings with palm trees. The pictures are drawn and colored in what looks like color pencil in a doodle style.  Because this is the only sheet of 5 out of 20 sheets that catches the heart of shabby chic I would not order this again. The other 3 pictures at 5 sheets each just look like a bunch of things thrown together that should have been thought out better or thrown out all together. The envelopes are nothing great either, they look like the cheap envelopes you get with 1990's stationery, maybe that was supposed to look shabby chic, for me  this whole set is pretty much sadly cheap.
800166
I'm a 35 year old woman, not at all a feminist, but the women in this book are ALL sexist portrayals. Only Meg and Rachel seem to be real, the rest are bitc*y and/or skanky. He does nothing to shed a positive light onto women, and it has a very good "men good, women bad" light. Even by having one professor, a man, who is quite a feminist displays this obvious sexist attitude.

With that being said, if you are a man or work in the education system, you may get some enjoyment out of it. For me, after 130 pages, I'm calling it a day.
2002034
This should be sold as a children's book.  Very disappointed.  Most the women listed were far from 'Great'.  A little research could have found far more interesting/ heroic women
1363805
I would have given this more stars until he wrote that Laura had female friends who work in offices or stores and that she also had male friends who were doctors and lawyers.  Really sexist.  This was not written 50 years ago.  There is no excuse for this.
3964306
I really wanted to love this anthology, ghost stories with a feminist view - what could be bad? - but I found it very disappointing. The stories are VERY uneven; there is really good stuff and some really crappy stuff as well. I realize that others disagree with me. ALERT: Lots of spoilers ahead.
The subtitle is "An Anthology of Feminist Supernatural Fiction". I consider this to be somewhat misleading as many of the stories aren't really supernatural or especially feminist either. I consider a tale labeled "supernatural" should contain a ghost. Or at the very least some type of (preferably malevolent) spiritual energy.
Stories I liked:
I really enjoyed "Dreaming the Sky Down", but I would consider it a fantasy. Good fantasy, mind you, but no ghosts.
"The Debutante" is a dark comic fantasy, but not what I think of as a supernatural tale either.
"Pandora Pandaemonia" is fantasy. Also very good.
"Clay-Shuttered Doors" is an old favorite of mine. It IS a supernatural story. It also has a feminist slant. Mary, the narrator, uncovers the rotting (in more ways than one) underpinnings of her friend Thalia's "perfect" life.
Luella Miller also qualifies as a supernatural story, but I don't really think of it as a feminist story. It's also not my favorite Wilkins Freeman; I prefer "The Wind in the Rose-Bush".
I also enjoyed the title story which meets (my) qualifications as a supernatural tale. However, I am puzzled as to how it is feminist. Miss Darrington did exactly what a conventional young woman of her class and upbringing would have done at that time. She became a governess/companion and then a teacher. She was competent/intelligent/lucky enough to be able to open her own school, but this was a perfectly respectable enterprise for a woman in her circumstances. What WOULD have been radical would have been for her to fall in love with and marry a man of inferior education, superior social class and of a different ethnicity. She is only able to admit her feelings for Raphael - even to herself - after he is dead. I really see her as upholding the status quo. However, I did like this story as well.
Lisa Tuttle's "A Friend in Need" very good also. It isn't frightening, but it has a nice twist at the end.
The Bad -
While some of the other stories are actual ghost sightings, many of them are just not very engaging.
And frankly, "An Unborn Visitant", "The Teacher" and "The Fall" don't really belong in this anthology. (I didn't care for them either.)
And everything I have ever read by Olive Schreiner just annoys me. Seriously.
I am hanging on to this for now and I will re-read some of it to see if it improves with longer acquaintance, but this was quite a disappointment for me.