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What a sad state of affairs. Well, I disagree Kate! But then again, I don't make millions off of being thin, so I guess starving does feel good for her, since she is paid to do it. Seriously, sad! Food is good and we need it to survive.

This makes me feel sad for Kate Moss, I mean, even though I know she is rich and famous and got to make out with Johnny Depp, but she is the product of a system that values thinness over her other attributes. And a pretty high value at that, since she is one of the top paid super models. It would be nice to think that maybe privately her self worth is not also based on what she looks like, but if her motto is, "nothing tastes as good as skinny feels," one would think the opposite. I also can't believe she is so detached from reality that she doesn't realize that young women that are already plagued with eating disorders look up to her and has no sense of public responsibility. Young women don't need to hear that eating less will make them skinny and therefore a super model. Bad. Bad!

As community blogger minerva put it,

Moss may or may not be intelligent, I neither know nor care. But at some level, she must realize that young women aspire to be like her. It saddens me that she truly believes that her motto is something to be emulated.

Food is good. These types of comments do have implications for young women since we are already inundated with the self hating culture of starvation to attain absurd levels of thinness instead of being taught to love ourselves. And then, often women are rewarded for their self hating behavior. It is an endless cycle that must stop and we need role models to help us.

The Women's Media Center (WMC) and Girls Learn International are collaborating to launch Girls Investigate: Our Views on Media, a four-part multimedia series that explores girls' ideas about popular culture, social media and the intersections between the two.

Check out the first one:

A transcript wasn't provided, but you can read more about the 17-year-old producers' perspective here.

Ann linked this piece from Davey D's blog of an interview with KRS-1 where he discusses the lack of women in hip-hop:

CP: What do you think is missing in hip-hop today?

KRS ONE: "I am not just saying this because you [a woman] are asking the question, this is my real answer: More women. More women. Not just emcees or b-girls, but women taking control of hip-hop. Let me be culturally-specific- hip-hop's women should teach hip-hop's men how to speak to them. Because when we learn how to speak to you, we can learn how to speak to the whole business world. It's not just about respecting you...it is...but it's deeper than just respecting another human being. Everytime you degrade a person, you degrade yourself, because you are standing next to that person. You can't diss a person, and not diss yourself...I should say 'she's a queen.' And what does that make me? A king. So now at the end of the day, what's missing in hip-hop? Knowledge of self, that should only come from women. I know that sounds feminist, but that's real talk.

Earlier this year, Rihanna became the center for a media spectacle after being attacked by then boyfriend Chris Brown and having pictures of her released. Brown has made several public appearances, "apologizing," and defending himself. But Rihanna hadn't made a peep, it was just continual speculation about whether it was her fault (!) or if they had gotten back together.

Well, Rihanna is speaking out now. She will be on the Today Show this Thursday, along with 20/20 this Friday and is featured in the December issue of Glamour. Some bits of her interviews have been released and she is putting forth the words of a confident, young woman that got the support she needed to deal with this painful and humiliating situation.

Speaking to "Good Morning America," the singer will send the message, "This happened to me. ... It can happen to anyone," according to excerpts of the interview released on Tuesday (November 3).

Rihanna, 21, also reportedly tells Diane Sawyer that the attack by Brown was especially difficult because of how she felt about him before the incident occurred. "He was definitely my first big love," she said in an interview that will continue on Friday night's "20/20."

The singer also opened up for the December issue of Glamour magazine, describing how she coped with the aftermath of the assault. "I went to sleep as Rihanna and woke up as Britney Spears," she said in the Women of the Year issue, out on November 10. "That was the level of media chaos that happened the next day. It was like, 'What, there are helicopters circling my house? There are 100 people in my cul-de-sac? What do you mean, I can't go back home?' "

Last month, the announcement that Marge Simpson, everyone's favorite overworked and underappreciated cartoon mom, would grace the cover of the November issue of Playboy, caught some observers by surprise. I was not one of them. After all, Playboy has always depicted women as cartoonish and two-dimensional: the only thing that really sets this particular cover girl apart is that she has blue hair and eight fingers.

Women with cartoonish proportions and features are and have long been Playboy's bread and butter. When you open up a copy of Playboy, or of any other mainstream soft core porn magazine, the images of women you're likely to find there are a far cry from reality. Surgically augmented breasts, topiaried pubic hair, uncomfortable-looking poses and often-overzealous airbrushing are porn industry standards and the result is that flipping through a copy of Playboy can leave you with a sneaking suspicion that the women staring seductively back at you aren't quite real. Given its long-standing tradition of printing photos of women whose bodies look like cartoonish exaggerations of the female form, it was only a matter of time before Playboy gave up on human women altogether, and started putting actual cartoons in the centerfold.

Via Feministe, via Sociological Images. As this commenter notes, where are Mulan, Pocahantas, Giselle and Lauren notes the absence of Tiana, first African American princess who were all also constructed as racist and sexist stereotypes. Disney doesn't discriminate who they create sexist caricatures out of, that is for sure.

When I had originally posted on Facebook this shockingly well summarized study from OKCupid about race and reply rates on the popular dating website, I had just written the word, "duh." Race has always been a part of dating for me, whether it be what race my parents find acceptable, finding that my white boyfriend that I thought wasn't racist really was, or figuring out on first glance when a man likes you for you, or because he has a thing for Indian chicks. But my friend Dave took me to task and noted that they actually analyzed an enormous set of data that they then published, so that gets more than a, "duh." I will upgrade to a, "that is fucked up," and "duh."

But enough with my Facebook shenanigans. This study is interesting to no end and not just because I am writing a book on dating. The study found that even though OKCupid has a unique matchmaking system where race shouldn't matter...

First of all, how do we know that race shouldn't matter? Are we just making some after-school-special assumption that "true love is colorblind?" No, we're not: we know race shouldn't matter to replies because the races all match each other more or less evenly, and reply rate correlates to matching.

...it does:

* Black women are sweethearts. Or just talkative. But either way, they are by far the most likely to reply to your first message. In many cases, their response rate is one and a half times the average, and overall black women reply about a quarter more often.

* White men get more responses. Whatever it is, white males just get more replies from almost every group. We were careful to preselect our data pool so that physical attractiveness (as measured by our site picture-rating utility) was roughly even across all the race/gender slices. For guys, we did likewise with height.

* White women prefer white men to the exclusion of everyone else--and Asian and Hispanic women prefer them even more exclusively. These three types of women only respond well to white men. More significantly, these groups' reply rates to non-whites is terrible. Asian women write back non-white males at 21.9%, Hispanic women at 22.9%, and white women at 23.0%. It's here where things get interesting, for white women in particular. If you look at the match-by-race table before this one, the "should-look-like" one, you see that white women have an above-average compatibility with almost every group. Yet they only reply well to guys who look like them. There's more data on this towards the end of the post.

If you have some time today, check out this short film called Obvious Child from Gillian Robespierre about a one night stand that results in pregnancy and abortion, featuring Jenny Slate, of SNL (and f-bomb dropping ) fame.

The film presents a subversive alternative to the Juno model, in which abortion is a quickly glossed over road-sign on the highway from CasualSexville to Babyland.

My latest Current crush Bryan Safi on why coming out is super gay.

This ad for Coopers Premium Light beer, created by a Singapore agency, is one of three. Get it? Because of the low alcohol content dudes won't have beer goggles and end up hooking with an "ugly" woman! Charming, no?

Congrats to American Idol! They've just upped the ante on their already-hugely successful show by bringing on Ellen DeGeneres: comedian extraordinaire, media mogul, talk show host, inspirational speaker, prolific dancer, same sex marriage advocate, and all around bad ass woman.

I'm a huge fan of this decision because I think Ellen is hilarious and lovable and her presence will most likely make me enjoy the show a lot more on those (rare I swear!) occasions that I tune in. But it seems like the move has also spurred something of a different reaction in the blogosphere and beyond: namely, that of questioning:

Will Ellen DeGeneres make American Idol "gayer"?

One problem with this question that I'm going to have to point out right away is that- and I'm truly sorry to break this to you America- American Idol is already pretty, really, very gay.

Another thing is that the presence of someone queer does not always a "gayer" show make, just as the presence of a person of color doesn't always make the show more geared towards people of color, or even necessarily more tolerant of them.

This is especially true if that person is tokenized, toned down, glossed over, marginalized, or heavily censured, all of which I hope Ellen is not subjected to on American Idol.

That being said, she's already given interviews in which she alluded to being "the people's judge," and for this reason and more I am hopeful and optimistic that Ellen's presence will make the show more queer friendly and just generally more tolerant and inclusive.

So I'd like to devote a huge Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah to the intelligent and- dare I say- progressive decision of American Idol to choose such a down to earth, inspirational, and compassionate queer feminist as the newest addition to their show.

I am loving Glee. As a kid I thought life was a musical (and I never grew up). This show feels like it was made for me. It's so gay. It's got Jane Lynch as a delicious villain who loves social hierarchies and is constantly claiming gender discrimination. There might be more musical talent on display than in the High School Musical movies. And unlike those films, which push a conservative Mormon "family values" agenda, Glee has already shown itself to share some of my politics. Bullying is depicted in a way rarely seen in pop culture: Quinn Fabray constantly aims transphobic insults at Rachel Berry. Bulimia and body image issues are covered. And in the second episode the show takes on abstinence only programs and comprehensive sex education.

Glee takes place at William McKinley High School in Lima, Ohio, the kind of public school where the principal's pastor gives him a list of acceptable songs for the Glee Club to sing. The school has a Celibacy Club, led by Quinn, that demonstrates abstinence is about a lot more than not having sex: programs in U.S. schools push a religious ideology, teach conformity to the compulsory gender binary, and censor information about contraception. Celibacy Club meetings start out divided by gender before the students "come together to share [their] faith." We're shown just how little these young people actually know about sex. While talking about cheerleader's skirts (all the female members of the Celibacy Club are cheerleaders) Puck, one of the guys, says, "Santana Lopez spun open her [skirt] the other day and I swear I could see her ovaries." Funny? Yes. Also, scary. There probably actually are high school guys who don't know what ovaries are or where they are located. I feel really bad for any woman who sleeps with a guy so clueless about her anatomy. The cheerleader motto about the skirts is: "It's all about the teasing and not about the pleasing." Talk about teaching conservative gender roles. Women are supposed to attract men using their sexuality, but not give men what they want: sex. Abstaining is women's responsibility because desire for sex is supposedly a male trait.

Rachel attends a Celibacy Club meeting and during a ridiculous activity with a balloon this exchange happens:

Rachel: Did you know that most studies have demonstrated that celibacy doesn't work in high schools? Our hormones are driving us too crazy to abstain. The second we start telling ourselves that there's no room for compromise we act out. The only way to deal with teen sexuality is to be prepared. That's what contraception is for.

Quinn: Don't you dare mention the "C" word.

Rachel: You want to know a dirty little secret that none of them want you to know? Girls want sex just as much as guys do.

Male student: Is that accurate?

Like I said, I love this show. Not only do they show some of the ideology taught in abstinence only programs, they offer a passionate and compelling argument for education about contraception.

Glee really might be the anti-High School Musical. While that series of movies models abstinence and heterosexual gender norms, Glee is actually engaging with issues in an intelligent way. And the show is hilarious, moving, and full of fabulous musical numbers at the same time.

You can watch both episodes of Glee online here.

Charming. Dirty Tats is a promotional flash app for the racing game Dirt 2, that lets you tattoo words and designs on women's breasts. Enter at your own risk.

File this under creepy, sexist and misogynist. via Boingboing.

For the Buffy fans in the house, and I know there are a lot of you, a remix. The creator explains it this way:

In this re-imagined narrative, Edward Cullen from the Twilight Series meets Buffy the Vampire Slayer. It's an example of transformative storytelling serving as a pro-feminist visual critique of Edward's character and generally creepy behavior. Seen through Buffy's eyes, some of the more sexist gender roles and patriarchal Hollywood themes embedded in the Twilight saga are exposed - in hilarious ways. Ultimately this remix is about more than a decisive showdown between the slayer and the sparkly vampire. It also doubles as a metaphor for the ongoing battle between two opposing visions of gender roles in the 21ist century.

Thanks to reader Jerelyn for the heads up.

I wrote recently about Vogue Evolution and gave America's Best Dance Crew props for including them on the show, so I feel like I have to call out Lil Mama and the show's producers for something problematic and hurtful that occurred in this week's episode.

The video package before Vogue Evolution's performance focused on conflict within the group related to Leiomy Maldonado's personal struggles and difficulty participating in rehearsals. During judge's critique Lil Mama chided Leiomy for her behavior saying, "You were born a man and you are becoming a woman. If you're going to become a woman, act like a lady." Check out this video of the whole segment:

I don't know why Leiomy is struggling or if it has anything to do with the pressure of representation that's on her shoulders right now. But difficulty working in a group is not a specifically gendered behavior and is certainly not a behavior exclusive to trans women. By bringing up Leiomy's transition status Lil Mama perpetuated the notion that anything transgender folks do is about our gender process. Seeing a trans person as only that, someone who is actively and consciously in a state of gender transition, is dehumanizing as it makes all our actions about that thing that makes us other, not about being a person going through human challenges. Lil Mama is creating a barrier for Leiomy's entry into the group "woman," saying there are requirements of behavior she must meet in order to qualify. This essentializes certain actions as female and then suggests trans women must perfectly conform in order to be accepted.

And can we please get over this whole "lady" thing... ladies?

I agree with JC Chasez: everyone struggles working in a group, especially under the kind of pressure that exists when you are in a televised competition. And I agree with Shane Sparks: "I think at the end of the day it only matters what you all do on the stage." The show's producers deserve a lot of the blame for this segment. I understand that it's their job to exploit drama for entertainment, but that clip package felt unnecessary and downright cruel. I thought the routine was great, I thought Leiomy killed it, and on a dance competition show that's what matters.

Update: Lil Mama issued a (weak - no one "misunderstood" the comment. The comment itself was completely not OK, period.) apology and GLAAD responded.

Transcript of Lil Mama's comments taken from the GLAAD Blog after the jump.

I am a few weeks late to this, but that doesn't take away the gag factor one bit. It is amazing to me as I have done research for my book, which is a feminist intervention on dating, how many of the terrible books that support antiquated ideas of how women should behave in pursuit of their romantic lives, are supported BY women. The newest in line by another woman that clearly hates women, Jordan Christy, is a book about how women can find love. How to Be a Hepburn in a Hilton World, is a nice dive into history when women were slut shamed for being sexual and chastised for their wanton lust for men. There is an excerpt from her book on MSNBC and I have picked two paragraphs here that give a little context to the "type" of woman she is talking about.

It's no secret that we girls start fantasizing about a fairy-tale wedding and happily-ever-after love story around the same time we start teething (I still have a wedding book that I compiled at age six!). Relationships are a big deal to us. We want to hear all about our roommate's new boyfriend, have to get every detail of our coworker's upcoming nuptials, and lament right along with Jennifer Aniston over Brad Pitt as if he cheated on us. We love to watch TLC's A Wedding Story, feverishly scan Us Weekly for the latest blossoming celebrity romance, and sob every time we see Sleepless in Seattle. We spend hours prepping ourselves for a date and even more time obsessing about what our potential children will look like and whether or not our initials mesh nicely. Conclusion: girls love love.

So why would you subconsciously sabotage all those efforts through your modern-day attempts at ?nding true love? This question baffles me daily. I'd like to think that it's out of sheer naiveté -- most girls don't appear to be in a lucid mental state when they're throwing themselves at some circus clown off the street and clearly aren't aware that they are actually driving that poor boy further away. But luckily, you will no longer have to be the victim of such careless ways in love, because we're going to start doing things the right way -- the old-fashioned way! And it starts by not messing with nature.

That is right ladies, not only is dreaming about perfect weddings natural, so is patriarchy and male dominance over your feelings, love life and dating choices. And if you act on how you feel, you are ruining your own chances at finding love (idiot!!!). It makes you wonder who is really being naive.

As I have talked to people about my project, I have come across the shame that women feel for wanting to ask men out, but feel like they can't because of myths such as those portrayed in the book above that make them feel stifled. And men, time and time again say, they like it when women ask them out. Now, I suppose any empirical evidence Christy or myself have collected is subjective since clearly she hangs around girls (not women incidentally as she continually refers to women as "girls,") that dream about weddings when they are "teething" (huh?) and I hang around people that have highly politicized and/or queer weddings, even if they may still be somewhat traditional. So naturally our evidence will be skewed by this subjectivity. That is the thing with love and dating, everyone has a different idea of what works for them, whether it is along or against the grain or somewhere in-between.

I guess what baffles me is not so much that many women feel pressured to follow these restrictive rules that ultimately make them unhappy. It is that we live in a culture that rewards this type of behavior. On some level they are right, there are some men that may prefer to ask women out because they want all the control--but is that the type of men we want to be with? Cultural norms around dating change with us and if we want egalitarian partnerships, our only hope is to do as we please with little regard to what we "should" do.

Similar to sentiments voiced in He's Just Not that Into You, and Why Men Love Bitches, many of these dating books only make sense if you believe that women are inferior to men. I am sure the authors of all of these books would say I am kidding myself, after all, I am 31 and unmarried, but I would much rather hold out for someone that recognizes me as a fully realized human being, rather than a possession that must play inferior and passive to get someone to like me and be with me. Just saying.

From the early 80s...

And now.

I'm really excited about Vogue Evolution, a group competing in the current season of America's Best Dance Crew. The crew members are black and Latino. Four are out gay men and one is an out trans woman. From the beginning they've been very upfront about their identities (a relief after seeing so many euphemistic referrals to queer people on TV including the insulting "Choice Fab-u-lous" category at this year's Teen Choice Awards). Check out this video from the first episode of the season where they introduce themselves and talk a little bit about being gay and trans:

Voguing has been around since the Harlem Renaissance and has been dominated by queer people of color. Pony Webster, one of the crew's directors, described the style in an interview with After Elton:

Voguing came from poses in Vogue Magazine, that turned into movement that then became self-expression. Voguing is like flamboyant movement with abstract art with self-expression. There are some elements to keep you in the box. There's hands, which is moving your hands. There's catwalk, which is a stance with your knees, then there's duckwalk, so there's a skeleton, but it's really self-expression.

Voguing has received public recognition as a result of the film Paris is Burning and Madonna's appropriation of the style. However, Vogue Evolution's participation in ABDC is the first time members of the house and ballroom community are representing their own style to such a wide pop culture audience.

If you have consumed any amount of pop culture directed at straight women over the past decade, you know of the "gay boyfriend" phenomenon: the superfabulous, showtunes and shopping-loving queer friend who shows up whenever a female lead character needs entertainment, romantic advice, or a plus-one.

Think Stanford in Sex and the City. The eavesdropping assistant in Obsessed. The gaggle of gays who advise Drew Barrymore in He's Just Not That Into You. I could go on and on... Much like the black best friend, the gay boyfriend is the perfect match for a neurotic and insecure (but still skinny, white, beautiful) leading lady because he is depicted as sexually nonthreatening and non-spotlight-hogging. I think Sady summed it up well:

Sadly, not everybody can be a White Heterosexual. However, if you are not, I have good news: you, lucky person, get to aid the White Heterosexuals in their quest for love! Gay folks and/or people of color make fabulous accessories to the single White Heterosexual girl's lifestyle.

Which brings us to Thomas Rogers, who describes his plight in Salon today: He's a gay man who has repeatedly been targeted by straight women looking for a gay boyfriend, despite the fact that he has little in common with these women:

As I moved away from home, to bigger and bigger cities, I discovered that there were lots of scruffy and poorly dressed drone-rock-loving gay men in the world -- especially of my age group -- who had nothing in common with the Sanfords and Wills I'd seen on TV. Just because I was into dudes didn't mean I had to suddenly love dance music or fine furnishings. And yet, despite my continued shortcomings as a stereotypical gay man, I remained a strangely alluring target for a large number of straight women.

Rogers grants that self-identified "fag hags" were once extremely important: "I'm here, I'm with that queer, get used to it." (He doesn't make this distinction, but in many parts of the country where gay rights are less entrenched, I think this can still hold true.) And he largely credits Will and Grace with mainstreaming the phenomenon. Granted, I have not seen too many episodes of the show, but to me it's very different than the Carrie/Stanford example. Will and Grace's friendship always seemed like a two-way street. After all, the show isn't called Grace, and Will is much more than a background character who pops up for comic relief. Rogers continues,

It was no coincidence that the first wave of gay male TV characters shared most of their screen time with straight women -- it made us palatable to mainstream America. "It was celebrating the feminine side of gay men, not about going into the bar scene," says Pimlott. "It disarmed their potential threat." And this, in turn, made us into every straight girl's best friend. "It made it seem like every straight girl should have these accessories: Manohlo Blahnik shoes, and a fag."

Larry King Live will be doing an interview with Chris Brown this Wednesday, after he was denied by Oprah,

After being turned down by Oprah, Chris Brown is planning to give his first interview since the assault this coming Wednesday on CNN's Larry King show.

According to radaronline.com, he will be formally sentenced on that day and his team is hoping to snag an interview with Larry King immediately afterwards. During the interview, he plans to apologize again and finally talk about the night he assaulted Rihanna. His handlers believe that King will allow Chris the opportunity to get his apology across without facing "brutal questioning".

(h/t Jaclyn Friedman)

Interesting choice of words there, "brutal questioning.." It is clear that Oprah has no love for Chris and I think this show that she dedicated to domestic violence explores that,

I am glad she took a stance and denied him access to her audience with his bullshit plea for us to accept his apology.

I feel I have to continue writing about this story because it continues to boil my blood, so apologies for all the airtime. Last week, I got in an argument with a well known male writer about the way that people were dealing with Chris Brown's apology. The argument revolved around comments left on his facebook page by young men calling Chris Brown "a bitch" for apologizing and a series of comments by young women about how they bought the apology and felt sorry for Chris. I was not shocked by these reactions, but was struggling to find a way to talk across this difference. With the men, I had zero patience and frankly, if you ever think it is OK to hit a woman, under any circumstance, you and I share a world view so vastly different, that I don't know where to begin.

Furthermore, I can't say if these women are drawing from personal experience or they just believe Chris Brown, but I know what it doesn't mean. I don't know what is it like to be in a (physically) abusive relationship, but I know what it means to be around violence or to have it be normalized in the world around you. I know what it is like to live in a world where violence against women is so normalized, that you end up defending the person that hurt you. It is interesting that a facebook comment would create this much turmoil for me, but it did, I was deeply saddened by the comments.

A violent world hurts us all. But I still struggle with the lapse in dialogue that seems harshest along racial and class lines. How do we talk across the difference in experiences with violence to build a broad based anti-violence movement and effectively centralize the needs and voices of those most affected by violence in their lives and their communities? And how do we even begin to tackle the kind of sexism embedded in the statement that Chris Brown was a "bitch" for apologizing. Saying, "they don't mean it like that," or "he would never hurt a woman," is really not good enough.

Related:
On Chris Brown's Public Apology
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.
Rihanna and Chris Brown might be getting back together, allegedly.

Stand up comics say rape "is the new black."

I'm a big fan of stand up comedy. (Wanda Sykes and Margaret Cho, swoon!) I like dirty jokes, controversial comics and dark humor. What I don't think is funny, however, is this:

[Comedy festival] Fringe 2009 also welcomes back Aussie standup Jim Jeffries, whose jokes include: "Women to me are like public toilets. They're all dirty except for the disabled ones." Jeffries tells me: "You can't do a joke these days about black or Asian people - and rightly so - [but] you can do rape jokes on stage and that's not a problem." Why does he think rape is now less of a taboo than racism? "I don't write the rules," he says. Nor, it seems, does he seek to challenge them. [San Francisco comedian Scott] Capurro told me, with some distaste: "For a lot of comics, it's OK to talk about raping women now. That's the new black on the comedy circuit."

I guess I shouldn't be surprised. From Family Guy to Seth Rogen, folks joking about rape and violence against women seems to be the oh-so-hilarious thing to do. (Though of course, it's hardly a new trend.)

What I truly don't understand is how anyone could possibly think that joking about rape is being edgy or somehow fighting against the mainstream - which seems to be what the comics in this Guardian article are arguing. They say they're taking taboos head-on. But the thing is, rape jokes and mocking violence against women are mainstream. They're not a taboo at all - they're the norm, sadly. So all of these comedians giving themselves a pat on the back for being sooo controversial - when all they're doing is upholding the status quo - really fucking irk me.

Because if their rape jokes were actually challenging the mainstream, they'd be subversive, not holding up what American culture already perpetuates - that rape is a-okay. I think what is particularly telling is that so many of the people arguing that jokes about sexual assault are fine are dudes - the demographic that tends to be ones who, well...rape. (And who get assaulted at much lower rates than women.)

Similarly, some of the comedians arguing that racist jokes are okay are white - and appear to believe that we're in some sort of Utopian world where racism and sexism don't exist anymore.

A younger generation see things differently: challenging taboos is less a betrayal of their recent forebears, more a concession to a changing world. "In the 1970s, black and Asian people were getting shit put through their letterboxes," says [comic Richard] Herring. "But the world has moved on. Now we accept the [anti-racist, anti-sexist] tenets of alternative comedy as true, and don't need to patronise audiences any more."

Perhaps the world "has moved on" for Herring - but it sure hasn't for a lot of other folks. So long as racism, sexism, rape, and violence are accepted norms, telling these kind of faux-controversial jokes will do nothing but prop up a culture that thinks rape is not just not a big deal, but hilarious.

Related: Sense and Humor
Melissa's "Rape is Hilarious" post series
I'm Going to Rape You Later

Window displays at Barneys in New York City - featuring blood spattered mannequins who appeared to be fighting off attackers - were taken down after customers were horrified. (Inquiries from The Daily News didn't hurt either, I'm sure.)

Simon Doonan, creative director at the department store, said the windows were done while he was away. "We encourage our display people to be creative. We give them a lot of latitude, but this clearly crossed the line." Uh, yeah. I'd say so.

Related Posts: America's Next Top (Dead) Model
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Dead women, furries and rehab: The pinnacle of fashion

Via BUST.

This one is just cause I can...I came across the Reading Rainbow theme song last week when news hit that LamarLeVar Burton was in a car accident. He's fine, thankfully.

I remember this theme so distinctly from my elementary school years. It gives me warm fuzzy memories of sitting in my public school library watching the show.

h/t to Veronica

Chris Brown is sorry. Or at least he is sorry enough to almost say what he did (without quite saying it), furrow his brows and remind you that he is still a good boy and you should definitely continue to buy his records.

I don't buy it. I am sure on some level he is sorry, but that is not really the point. This is about what he is saying, accountability for what he did and the quickness with which the American public is willing to take an apology from someone that brutalized his girlfriend to the point of putting her in the hospital. What is most frustrating about this video is that his fans are probably swooning. And the message is clear; beat, bite, punch and strangle your girlfriend, and as long as you apologize, you are a-OK. You might think I am being too harsh, but let's be clear, dominant narratives indicate that when women are victims of violence, the first question people ask is "what did she do wrong?" That was true when the story first broke, message boards everywhere were asking "what she did wrong?" and "it wasn't that bad..." Or let's not forget the headlines that were out and surveys that found young men felt it was Rihanna's fault.

Furthermore, generally when people apologize they mention what they are sorry about. He doesn't mention what he did, while calling it the "situation." Ann just mentioned to me over IM, maybe if we spliced in the picture of what actually happened to Rihanna after the assault, "the situation" wouldn't be so vague and we could remember the extent of her injuries. I am obviously not actually endorsing this and we have written and talked about how TMZ shouldn't have published her picture. The public was fascinated by the picture, but apparently TMZ's claim about "raising awareness" really was bullshit, since so many have quickly forgotten. Anna at Jezebel has a really good analysis of the video. She writes,

By going the vague route, Brown allows fans to forget the visceral reality of what he did -- assaulting Rihanna until her face was swollen and bruised -- and instead focus on all the nice things he says about his mother, his "spiritual advisors," and his commitment to change. By saying he's sorry he didn't "handle the situation better," he casts the beating as a response to a bad "situation" -- and instance of poor conflict resolution, not of flying off the handle. And by implying there was something that needed to be "handled" in some way, this statement subtly implicates Rihanna too.

I concur. But ultimately we are not the ones that this video is for. We know this is bullshit, but the target of this video are other young men and women that might be in this very same situation. They might have to navigate a tense situation, violence might be used and if this is what our role models do, we don't have much to look up to. And while I appreciate him actually discussing that he experienced domestic violence so as to gesture towards cycles of violence, the moral of the story is, "it wasn't really my fault." It was a "bad situation" that he "didn't deal with well," and he himself is a "victim" which is true, but shouldn't be used as an excuse to not have to take direct accountability for his actions.

Yeah, I'm mad. What could he have said to make this an effective apology? Thoughts?

PS: If you really want to feel horrified read what people are saying on twitter about his apology.

Related:
Black women's bodies, voyeurism and Rihanna
Beyond Chris Brown and Rihanna: An interview with Elizabeth Mendez Berry
The media reminds us, famous women have no right to privacy.
Rihanna and Chris Brown might be getting back together, allegedly.

I haven't been able to write a post on the loss of Michael Jackson. Not quite sure why, but I have read so many amazing posts looking into how complicated a figure he is and all the different thoughtful positions folks have taken in understanding his story.

I am sure you are sick of reading about MJ at this point (I am not and continue to listen to his music and read more about him), but please check out Jay's newest video on the tragedy of fame that played out in Michael's life.

I think this is essentially a feminist reading of the way fame played out in his life, looking at the production of fame. Also, I have been looking for some queer readings of Michael and his play with masculinity. My friend Cole passed this link along.

Even if you don't watch reality television, or television at all for that matter, you'd be hard-pressed to avoid the recent controversy over Kate and Jon Gosselin, and their eight children. The stars of the beloved reality spectacle, Jon and Kate, Plus Eight, are divorcing. Despite salacious rumors about infidelity, they claim that it is just a gradual growing apart and, they add, the media spotlight certainly did help matters. It's hard to feel much empathy for a couple complaining of overexposure when they signed the contract that would expose their entire family, eight little children included, to 24 hour cameras.

But perhaps it's not just the media, or Jon and Kate, that are to blame. Kiri Blakeley, of Forbes.com, argues that female consumers are also culprits in this family dissolution. We're the ones hungrily scavenging for every last juicy morsel about the couple's demise, particularly the stories about what Kate did wrong, Blakeley argues. We're feeding the sexist media beast. She writes:

It's obvious who is devouring the Monster Mom headlines: Women. Research firm Mediamark estimates 73% of US Weekly's, 83% of In Touch's, and 77% of Star magazine's audience are female.

It's complicated. One of the most powerful ways in which we can practice our feminism is in our consumption choices. This can mean everything from where we buy our food to what kind of tampons we use to, yes, what magazines we read. The editors of feministing aren't afraid to admit that we've got some of our own guilty pleasures (All My Children, horror movies, reggaeton etc.), but they induce guilt for a reason--we know that our consumption of these things contradicts our values on some level.

No one's perfect. At the same time, I get incredibly sick of hearing everyone complain about the quality (or lack thereof) in the magazines marketed at women, and then turn around and support these same magazines by buying them at the airport kiosk. If we really want television programming or print media that speaks to our issues, then we need to tune into shows that reflect our desires, write letters to the magazines that don't.

It takes some self-discipline to avoid some of the more salacious crap on television and in print, that's for sure. But if we really want the media world to change, then we're going to have to start taking responsibility for our consumption choices. A guilty pleasure here or there makes us human. Blindly consuming "monster mom" stories about Kate Gosselin, celebrity weight loss exposes, or the latest Real Housewives series threatens to keep the sexist status quo very much in place.

I'm wondering how the feministing community draws the lines when it comes to television and media consumption. Do you allow yourself People magazine at the airport? Do you watch reality television that degrades women? Have you ever written a letter to the editor when a magazine did something you either loved or hated? Why or why not?

See community blogger crazyface8d on the topic.

You could say he was just another celebrity, another pop star, the King of Pop, but Michael Jackson did have an impact on our society. For his time, he made it ok for white girls to scream at a black man, to say that they wanted him. He made it ok for white boys to do the moonwalk. But you know, it wasn't ok for Michael Jackson to be Michael Jackson. It was written all over his face -- or the face that he changed into. And that's a shame.

Adrienne Maree Brown on the responsibility of his fans:

When it became clear that the boy's face we had loved had become the face of a man who didn't love himself; we judged him. We tore at him and he fell apart. He was living proof of the impact of our rabid pop culture, an early sacrifice to the new mechanisms of fame which allow no privacy, no time to learn, no mistakes.

Still, he kept producing for us.

When the rumors and the truth were all too prevalent (the children, both his and others), and he wasn't getting the psychological support and accountability he needed, we turned from him and derided him. We made the distinction of loving the child, but ridiculing the man.

Toure at the Daily Beast on how Jackson broke the color barrier with his music:

I like Off the Wall and Dangerous better, but I can't help but think about Thriller's massive socio-cultural impact. Rev. Al Sharpton referred to Michael as a pre-Obama Obama-esque figure in that he's a black man who knows how to make millions of blacks and whites fall in love with him. He's an integrationist, a racial unifier. He made two pop songs as overtly about race as anyone's ever made: Ebony and Ivory with Paul McCartney and Black or White. He was a Motown guy, after all. But he left Berry Gordy's house and went to CBS/Epic, a big-time label, to forge an adult solo career. CBS pushed his record as hard as they did their huge white stars and Off the Wall was a huge crossover success: young Michael was established as not an artist for black fans but an artist for everyone at a time when that was rare. Four years later, when Thriller came out it broke the radio color barrier: black and white stations played its singles until MTV, which had not previously played videos by black artists, had to play Michael. For a while they played Thriller every hour at the top of the hour. Back then he was MTV's Jackie Robinson.

Remember the Chris Brown/Rihanna drama? Well, Brown reached a plea deal admitting that he assaulted girlfriend Rihanna with the intent to do "great bodily harm."

via CNN.

Under terms of the agreement, Brown will serve five years of probation and must serve 180 days in jail or the equivalent -- about 1,400 hours -- in "labor-oriented service," said Sandi Gibbons, spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County District Attorney's office. He must also undergo a year-long domestic-violence counseling class, she said.

Brown's sentence is comparable to other felony sentences when the defendant has no previous record, she said.

I think it is good that he at least plead guilty to one charge of assault but I am still conflicted on the long-term effectiveness of the sentence.

Thoughts?

Latoya Peterson (pictured right), our girl from Racialicious.com, is up first.

Pop culture conversations are vital because it reaches so many people across the world. "The U.S.'s biggest export is pop culture; it's about all we export."

Dr. Laura Plybon, a self-identified Apache Indian and Girls Inc., speaks VERY briefly about her desire to see people from her culture represented in the media accurately and complexly.

Glennda Testone, from the Women's Media Center, is up next. I heart her so much. She talks about the Women's Media Center's work:

The Women's Media Center makes women visible and powerful in the media. Led by our president, the Emmy-winning journalist, writer, and producer Carol Jenkins, the WMC works with the media to ensure that women's stories are told and women's voices are heard. We do this in three ways: through our media advocacy campaigns; by creating our own media; and by training women to participate directly in media. We are directly engaged with the media at all levels to ensure that a diverse group of women is present in newsrooms, on air, in print and online, as sources and subjects.

She also mentions Rhianna and the most recent Disney princess as potential flash points to look at during the conversation.

This is amazing. Each panelist is basically passing the mic. How refreshing.

Anne Zill of the Women's Center for Ethics in Action says she's probably going to be a "little heretical" on this panel today because she wants to talk about ways in which pop culture right now is actually positive in certain ways.

She advocates for throwing away the superwoman archetype and embracing a more communitarian approach to raising families and finding fulfilling work. She also talks about the critical need to foster empathy while raising all children.

Glennda (pictured left) talks about how women are the majority of the population and the majority of consumers are women. Women only hold 3% of clout positions in the media. She talks about an initial meeting with all the bookers and producers from mainstream media that the WMC initially had. They were so excited that there were tons of women with decision making power in the room, but when they went around the room, it turned out that every single one of them reported to a male boss. Management positions in media are 15-24% women.

She proposes the idea of a hiring quota of some kind of people of color and women in leadership positions in the media.

Latoya shows a really interesting graph of Huffington Post's traffic vs. Feministing's traffic and reminds us that, though it's great that we're "making our own media," we still don't have nearly the same bandwith as the mainstream media outlets.

Latoya: "what permeates the social consciousness is at the CNN level."

She refers to Women & Hollywood's recent commentary on the ways in which Hollywood just refuses to believe that women go to the movies and want to see more than chick flicks. Melissa Silverstein advocates, from the audience, that women really need to go to women-oriented films on opening weekend. Buying a ticket, she explains, is like voting. You can sign up for her e-newsletter if you want to get weekly information about what films are opening.

I suppose I shouldn't be surprised to see this headline: "Sex, drink and fashion. Is this the new face of American feminism?"*

After all, if there's anything the mainstream media loves, it's painting feminists - specifically young feminists - as vapid and sex-crazed. (See here, here, here, here and here.)

While I'm tempted to weigh in on this particular article and the many ways in which it got things wrong - especially since it touches on something I blogged about recently - I think there's a larger issue that's more important to get at. (Though damn it's hard not to say anything about the piece - especially the 6 bullet points at the end. Wow.)

There's a reason that the mainstream media continually covers young feminists in this way. Backlash is part of it, of course: framing feminism as a perpetual catfight or a watered down movement based on drinking and fucking is a great way to dismiss it. But it's also indicative of a media that has no interest in nuance or truthfulness when it comes to covering women.

When I read this latest article, I was reminded of something I wrote in The Purity Myth about the moral panic wackiness surrounding young women's sexuality:

The fact is, focusing on hyped-up problems that sell newspapers and titillate the imagination make it that much easier to ignore actual problems young women are facing, issues that take a lot more than a moral scolding to fix. For a young woman living in poverty, spring break isn't even an option, let alone a concern. For a young woman who has no health insurance, the "moral" debate over STIs won't do anything for her the next time she needs to see a doctor. And for a young single mother, hearing about herself as an unfortunate statistic isn't going to make her life any better or easier.

The same could be said about the media's feminism problem. Salacious headlines about feminists-gone-wild not only sell newspapers - they also make it that much easier for people to ignore actual feminist work that's being done. When was the last time you saw an article about youth organizations like the Pro-Choice Education Project, or feminist media like Shameless? Have you ever seen a mainstream media profile on any of the women here? Of course not. Because focusing on the truth of what feminists activists and media makers are up to would mean portraying women as thoughtful, socially engaged citizens. (Wouldn't that be ridiculous!) It just doesn't jibe with how America wants to see women, especially young women; they'd prefer to think we're all nekkid, drunk and stupid.

Now, I don't fool myself into thinking that this media narrative about feminists (or women) is going anywhere anytime soon. But that doesn't mean we can't do anything about it. When you see an article that relies on bullshit stereotypes about feminism, inundate the reporter with links to profiles of young feminists and youth-led organizations. Show them what feminism really is.

*Full disclosure: The reporter who wrote this piece contacted me via email for an interview, I didn't have the time to respond. (And now I'm really glad that I didn't!)

I do not like Miss California Carrie Prejean. I think she's a bigot, and I don't particularly dig the way she's making the understandable negative reaction to her comments about same sex marriage about people "persecuting" her.

But no matter how I, or anyone else, feels about Prejean - this shit is simply wrong. It wasn't enough that folks were mocking the woman for getting breast implants, now they have to slut shame her into oblivion for some "nude" pictures. (And seriously, the pics are hardly scandalous considering the bathing suit competition and all.)

From the Associated Press:

The directors of the Miss California USA pageant are looking into whether title holder Carrie Prejean violated her contract by working with a national group opposed to gay marriage and by posing semi-clad when she was a teenage model.

Pageant spokesman Roger Neal said Tuesday it appears the 21-year-old Prejean has run afoul of several sections of the 12-page contract that prospective contestants were required to sign before competing in the state contest.

The contract contains a clause asking participants whether they have conducted themselves "in accordance with the highest ethical and moral standards" and if they've ever been photographed nude or partially nude.

Apparently it's only okay for women to be objectified when it's the pageant that's doing it.

It also irks me to no end that sites like the one that released these "scandalous" pictures (and no, I won't link to them) justify themselves by claiming that they've caught Prejean being a hypocrite.

From Jezebel:

The text posted along with the photo on [redacted] does describe Prejean as a "self-proclaimed bible thumper," and concludes: "So much for being a good role model for the state of California Carrie. Looks like your Dirty photo shoot makes you a sinner too."

You know, there are plenty of ways to fight back against discrimination and hypocrisy - sexually shaming women isn't one of them. Not only is it intellectually lazy (really, there's no other way to show that Prejean's comments were terrible?), but fighting homophobia with misogyny pretty much reeks of hypocrisy itself, no?

Kim Kardashian posted a pre-photoshopped picture of herself from her Complex Magazine photoshoot to her blog saying she is aware she has cellulite and "which curvy girl doesn't?" Complex had "mistakenly" run the pre-photoshopped picture showing her *gasp* cellulite. Soon after they took the picture down replacing it with one that trims down her thighs and lightens her skin.

Kim's response,

"I'm proud of my body and my curves and this picture coming out is probably helpful for everyone to see that just because I am on the cover of a magazine doesn't mean I'm perfect."

Kudos to her for saying that. Frankly, I see very little actual difference between the two pictures, but the subtle changes make a huge difference and I think it speaks to the extent popular culture will go to produce unnatural and unattainable images of women.

The latest Rolling Stone cover seems like a ridiculously apt illustration of what I was reading in Jessica's new book, The Purity Myth, just last night:

Touting girls and girlhood as ideal forms of sexuality is simply another way of advancing the notion that to be desirable, women need to be un-adults--young, naive, and impressionable. Being independent, assured, and grown up has no place in this disconcerting model.

...the 'perfect virgin' is at the center of the movement's rhetoric, and its goals revolve largely around convincing girls that the only way to be pure is to abstain from sex. This means there's an awful lot of talk about young girls' sexuality in the movement, from T-shirts to abstinence classes to purity balls. By focusing on the virginity of young women and girls, the movement is doing exactly what it purports to abhor--objectifying women and reducing them to their sexuality.

Oh, and the totally unsubtle ploy to titillate dudes with girl-on-girl fantasies is duly noted. Really original Rolling Stone.

Thanks to platoformboots for the heads up.

In honor of their 70th Anniversary, Glamour has an American Icons photo shoot with current female entertainers posing as important female icons.

I'm not usually a fan of magazines like Glamour but I thought this spread was pretty cool.

In the spread they've got Lindsay Lohan as Madonna, America Ferrera as Dolores Huerta, Hayden Panettiere as Amelia Earhart and Alicia Keys as First Lady Michelle Obama plus 9 more. I thought it was an interesting way to honor these icons and they did a good job of picking women from different types of fame--athletes, activists, political figures, etc. I particularly liked the picture above of America Ferrera.

Jay Smooth of Ill Doctrine has a great interview up with Elizabeth Mendez Berry, who wrote a 2005 Vibe magazine article about domestic violence and the hip hop community, Love Hurts. Watch it. Seriously.

So I was really late on the Sex in the City Movie bandwagon. I watched the film many months after it was released, so I didn't bother blogging on my thoughts.

I have to admit that I have a soft spot for cheesy romantic comedies. I think it's an escapist thing for me--the movies have NOTHING to do with my life, so I can detach and just enjoy the simple plot lines and general silliness of the movie. Maybe I'll write an (Un)feminist Guilty Pleasures post about this soon.

Via Bitch Magazine Blog, a sequel to the Sex in the City Movie is in the works. Although I can often shut off my critical feminist voice during these kinds of movies (as I did when watching the entire series), the movie was just too much. Or maybe I've changed. Either way, the fact that the only two people of color in the entire movie were Charlotte's adopted Chinese daughter and Carrie's African-American assistant rubbed me wrong way. In some ways, the complete absence of people of color in the series (with a few small exceptions) didn't highlight it as much as a movie with two people of color playing really minimal rolls.

And that doesn't even begin to cover all the other complaints we could have about Sex in the City. But now that there is a sequel in the making, it presents a new opportunity.

Tammy at the Bitch Magazine blog asks:

What are your hopes for the sequel?

I hope they can address some of the issues around Charlotte's adoption. The series did a good job of showing her struggles with infertility in a relatively realistic manner, but totally dropped the ball on the adoption piece. I also hope they can incorporate some characters of color who are not so marginal or tokenized.

What about you?

For Samhita's take on SATC, go here.

I generally can't take these shows. But I couldn't help but watch this episode of Wife Swap that reader Angela emailed us. First of all, one of the women featured was a bad ass doctor/roller derby player. Add in all of the mouth-dropping moments from the husband of a beauty-obsessed pageant mom - like when he says he hopes his daughter will be a man's "accessory" one day - and I was pretty much hooked.

Maybe this can be my unfeminist guilty pleasure...

This last year was an amazing year in art, music, literature and politics, not to mention some serious personal transitions including a 3000 mile coast to coast move back to my hometown in NY. Here are some of the things I loved this last year.

Favorite movie: Milk. You can read what I wrote about it here. I haven't felt so inspired by a motion picture since Ghandi. Honestly, Slumdog Millionare was a close second, but Milk was my favorite because it combined both great film and a brave and beautiful story.

Favorite Album: Benga, Diary of an African Warrior. For those of you who don't know me personally, you don't know that my other personality is that of an electronic music nerd that goes all over the place to dance to new and interesting forms of electronic music. My most recent favorite being a form of music called dubstep. This album got me up and out of my chair consistently and does what we would call, "bring the noise." Check it out if you dare and remember to keep an open mind.

Favorite art exhibit: Josue Rojas, Deporting the American Dream. Yeah, I know Josue personally, that might be part of it, but his short lived art exhibit in San Francsisco was hands down the best art I saw this year which mixed media, images and one of the most powerful stories, not being told in mainstream media.

Favorite book: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, Junot Diaz. Diaz won the Pultizer for this this. I can't speak highly enough of this book, I have sat to write reviews about it time and again and I feel I have to read it again to do it any justice. If you are a fiction fan, it is a must read. You can also listen to an interview with him here. The man is an inspiration to the aspirations of immigrant writers and artists.

Favorite live show: Erykah Badu with the Roots. Do I really need to say more?

Favorite city: New York. After 7 years on the West Coast I made the move back to NY and fell in love with this city all over again. San Francisco will always be in my heart, but right now, New York is who I am dating.

Favorite moment of 2008: When it was announced that Barack Obama is to be the 44th president of the United States of America. Yeah, that is cheesy and everyone else's moment, but damn, it was pretty great.

What were your favorite things of 2008?

I hesitated to write about Bettie Page's death because, frankly, I don't know much about her. I saw The Notorious Bettie Page, and I know she is recognized as an icon by everyone from Reason magazine (which called her "one of America's most enduring brands") to Bust (which refers to her as its matron saint). Like anyone who has achieved icon status, her image is bigger than her biography, and how people (feminists in particular) interpret Bettie Page often is more about their personal view of the world than about Page herself.

So I was deeply curious to read other feminist bloggers' reactions to the news of her death. And unsurprisingly, the reactions reflected the spectrum of feminist views on sex and sexwork.

Feminist sex blogger Carlin Ross, on the blog she shares with Betty Dodson, wrote:

She was just a pin up model but she broke barriers. Not many women had the nerve to be a fetish model in her era. Dita Von Teese never had to testify before Congress.

I remember finding one of my grandfather's Playboy magazines and finding the image of Bettie wearing nothing but a santa hat pinning an ornament on a xmas tree. I sat there for hours looking at her. It was her joy and sexual confidence. She looked so different than the other women in the magazine. She was happy. She was sexually expressive. And she was powerful.

Kate Harding at Broadsheet wrote:

Page said she got into pinup posing because "I could make more money in a few hours modeling than I could earn in a week as a secretary." In light of her status as a darling of third-wave feminists -- between the sexual liberation and the cute bangs, what's not to love? -- it's worth remembering that her fame came, at least in part, from a lack of options.

And Suzie at Echidne of the Snakes wrote:

In interviews, she said she wasn't personally into bondage, but she enjoyed the photo shoots. She said she never thought of her poses as sexual. ... When commenting about her, a lot of men confuse women's sexuality with what women do to please men, to make a living or to get ahead. People talk about how she celebrated her sexuality, blah-de-blah, without noting that photographers paid her to pose in various ways. I wonder how people look at her photos and see only what they want to see.

Is it possible to be both an icon of sexual liberation and an icon of sexwork-as-a-last-resort? The answer, of course, depends on which feminist you ask. Of everything I read about Bettie Page, I think Amanda's post comes closest to my own feelings on Page as an icon. Your thoughts?

Courtney and I have both discussed before our love/hate relationship with Oprah. The woman is complex and frequently, I disagree with her but I do respect her greatly and the work that she has done. And as a feminist, the way the media treats Oprah in talking about her weight, well, I think it is sexist.

Yesterday, I watched an entire segment on CNN devoted to Oprah's weight. Two female news anchors concluded that it was a hyperthyroid that has led to her fluctuation in weight. yet other news outlets weren't so forgiving or "scientific" in there assumptions. One google news search brings up how much she gained, her denial in it and calling her chubby and "heffer."

I am so disgusted by this, I almost don't know where to begin. First of all, why is weight gain newsworthy? Oprah is one of the most accomplished business women of our generation who has shown to not only be smart, but interesting, complex, well-read. Why does her weight make major headlines? Secondly, between having a health problem and being really busy, yeah she might gain weight and the fact that this is looked down upon shows us loud and clear the unfair standards put on women to not only be uber-successful but to also be svelte.

I know what you are thinking. But Oprah put this out as news herself! Probably to sell her brand even more! Yes, I think there is some validity to this argument, Oprah herself has pushed the, "I gained weight and this is why" story. But I guess it is important to ask, is Oprah creating this narrative herself or is she merely buying into a narrative that centralizes the way a woman looks before what she does? She is after all a savvy business woman. I don't agree with her using her weight as a selling point but really the joke is on the US consumer for buying into it.

As I have written about before, I struggle with this myself. I am really busy and don't have time to watch after my weight non-stop. Frankly, I don't care enough to since I think I look great anyway, but the constant barrage of comments I get about my weight is infuriating. I am successful in my personal endeavors, not to mention managing multiple relationships, projects, familial obligations and so much more, yet there are some people that only notice that I gained weight.

Bottom line, it is sexist to focus on Oprah's weight in the media. Men don't have this same pressure. You would never see a special on Lou Dobb's weight gain, nor would it be lucrative for him to have a special on his weight gain (although this sentiment is changing). As long as popular culture and mainstream media outlets stay fixed on women's physical characteristics we are bound by these constraints, holding our bodies as representations of who we are. It is not fair and we shouldn't stand for it.

Related:
Kate Harding: Dear Oprah
Rachel Setzer:Oprah done with fat shaming

(How can one track be so wrong and so right at the same time?)

In a culture where what a woman looks like counts more than what is between her ears, it does make a difference that the first lady is not white, but is black and therefore disrupts normative standards of white femininity. Last week controversy stirred due to a Salon article titled, "First lady got back," a tongue-in-cheek response to the Obama victory as not only for Obama, but for black women with an overemphasis on her "back" a subject of mass introspection academically and in popular culture as a culture signifier of black women's beauty and oft sexualization.

It emerged right before our eyes, in the midst of our growing uncertainty about everything, and we were too bogged down in the daily campaign madness to notice. The one clear predictor of success that the pundits, despite all their fancy maps, charts and holograms, missed completely? Michelle's butt.

Lord knows, it's time the butt got some respect. Ever since slavery, it's been both vilified and fetishized as the most singular of all black female features, more unsettling than dark skin and full lips, the thing that marked black women as uncouth and not quite ready for civilization (of course, it also made them mighty attractive to white men, which further stoked fears of miscegenation that lay at the heart of legal and social segregation). In modern times, the butt has demarcated class and stature among black society itself. Emphasizing it or not separates dignified black women from ho's, party girls from professionals, hip-hop from serious. (Black women are not the only ones with protruding behinds, by the way, but they're certainly considered its source. How many gluteally endowed nonblack women have been derided for having a black ass? Well, Hillary, for one.)

Yes, it is imperative to push the boundaries of our racist structures that determine what is beautiful. But something about the unapologetic "booty" gazing of this piece rubs me the wrong way. Latoya hits it saying,

Reader Virigina sent in the tip, writing:

Although Erin Kaplan does make a few decent points about how black women are viewed in this culture, most of the article just reinforces stereotypes. She is defining Michelle Obama and black women in general by their butts and hair. There are so many other traits that she could have discussed.

After reading the full piece, I'm inclined to agree. I get the semi-tongue in cheek tone of the piece, but this article just feels a bit wrong for the audience. Perhaps if it was written for a magazine like Essence or Clutch, which routinely explore the issues of black women and how a lot of our politics are wrapped up in our appearance, I would feel differently about the end result.

And goes on to say, "my problem is that articles about Michelle Obama's wardrobe, booty, and mom duties are what is fit to publish, what is seen as relevant to a mass audience." I agree with what Latoya is saying here, at no point in the Salon piece is there some reflection on the fact that an overemphasis on what first ladies look like as opposed to what they think, feel and say is problematic.

My take on the Gossip Girl OMG ad campaign, for purposes of this blog post.

Time for a little break in the onslaught of election news and voting tales... This recent article in the Washington Post is basically fundie-bait:

Teenagers who watch a lot of television featuring flirting, necking, discussion of sex and sex scenes are much more likely than their peers to get pregnant or get a partner pregnant, according to the first study to directly link steamy programming to teen pregnancy.

Ok, try to stop laughing over the fact that the Post uses the term "necking." Moving on...

The study, which tracked more than 700 12-to-17-year-olds for three years, found that those who viewed the most sexual content on TV were about twice as likely to be involved in a pregnancy as those who saw the least.

When a study finds two things are "linked," that doesn't necessarily mean one causes the other. Maybe kids who watch more sexy TV have less parental supervision, as Matt at Pushback suggests, and therefore get it on more. But regardless of the study's merits, the abstinence-only-until-hetero-marriage crowd is up in arms, and ready to push their agenda.

Not that I expect progressive discourse from E!, but I still thought this poll from Ted Casablanca's blog was worth calling out. Casablanca says of Lindsey Lohan's same-sex relationship, "It's only a matter of time before L.L. retreats back and finds comfort in her fave male body part." Classy! Looks like folks are already giving him hell in comments, but it might be worth adding your two cents as well.

Thanks to Laura for the link.

First I have to admit, I am not all caught up so take my commentary here with a grain of salt. My honey and I just started blazing through this amazing show, first season, on DVD last weekend. But I just had to shout them out because I've been so affected by the gender dynamics that play out on the little screen on this wildly accurate historical drama.

For those who haven't seen it, Mad Men looks at the inner and outer lives of ad executives circa 1960. Sounds like a potential sleeper right? Except the creators and writers do a masterful job of looking at the time as this sociological flash point. Not only does it portray the rise of advertising culture in a way that makes me understand Naomi Klein, Adbusters, and every other brilliant critique of consumer culture more deeply, but it presents the gender dynamics and family lives of folks at that time in a way that is piercing.

I can honestly say that, even with all of my women's studies classes and feminist reading, I've never really understood how fucking limiting and objectifying being both a working girl and/or a housewife were at that time until I watched this show. I was even more stunned when I talked to feminist historian Elaine Tyler May about it, and she said that Mad Men is shockingly accurate in every way.

The secretaries are seen as pretty little slaves, always available for the vanquishing in a hotel room and never valued for their own ideas or identities. The housewives are completely trapped, sexually and intellectually starved, scared as all hell to counter their husbands' whims and ways, really frickin' joyless. I recognize that these are fairly one-sided portrayals. Certainly some women at that time found ways to feel powerful, work their ideas into the board room (even if under a male name), find joy in care taking and housekeeping, but I also believe that we would be fooling ourselves if we thought that these were majority experiences.

So this week, I thank the creators of Mad Men for really making me understand just how incredibly far we've come in so many realms. Speaking my mind has more meaning than ever.

Elle, PhD noticed a little something (ok, a big something) about how some science kits are marketed to kids:

(Image via Elle, PhD)

She notes:

And while the "boy's" kit promises to boost your brain... the "girl's" kit promise to relax you and let you experiment with different fragrances. The boy's box is also covered with words like "go wild" and "erupt" and "blow your mind,"while the only thing that promises to be exciting about the girl's is the foaming and frothing of bubbles.

Then reader Maggie sent along a link to One-A-Day vitamins for teens:

It says, under the picture:

- Healthy muscle function with Magnesium (for Him)
- Healthy skin with Vitamins A and C, Copper, and Iron (for Her)

Clay Aiken, of American Idol, has finally come out. It can't say it was much of a surprise.

Following the Aug. 8 birth of his son Parker, singer Clay Aiken is following through on a promise he made to himself as a new dad: to publicly acknowledge that he's gay.

"It was the first decision I made as a father," Aiken, 29, tells the upcoming issue of PEOPLE, on newsstands Friday. "I cannot raise a child to lie or to hide things. I wasn't raised that way, and I'm not going to raise a child to do that."

He's also not the first male singer lately to have a child with a non-romantic partner, although unlike Ricky Martin, Clay says he will be co-parenting with the birth mother.

You might have missed this news, what with the political conventions, natural disasters and Beijing Olympics, but Ricky Martin just became the father of twins via surrogacy.

Just another one to file away under celebrity alternatives to traditional childbearing, along with Angelina Jolie's African adoption streak.

All of these alternatives to traditional childbearing have serious implications that unfortunately (and not surprisingly) the media is not covering when it talks about these celebrities.

Surrogacy is the process where another couples sperm and egg are implanted into the surrogate mother's womb and she carries and delivers the child. It could also be the surrogate's own eggs, depending on the situation. In most cases the surrogate is compensated for her participation, in addition to the medical expenses.

Surrogacy, particularly the rise in popularity of use of surrogates from India, raises a lot of questions about class, economics and choice. It also raises questions about the use of women's bodies to aid other couples own family creation. None of the articles I read about Ricky Martin even mentioned the surrogate mother, her situation, how she was compensated. It's almost as if she doesn't exist.

Samhita wrote recently about the rising trend in gay male couples using surrogates to make their families, but the practice raises a lot of questions for me and doesn't leave me with a warm fuzzy feeling.

I respect that the desire to parent is a huge one, and especially for queer or infertile couples many of these options (surrogacy, sperm donation, adoption) maybe their only way of creating a family. But there are still a lot of ethical questions that need to be answered around these processes and how we can make sure women aren't being exploited.

via Matt, apparently the National Review's Kathryn Jean Lopez thinks Madonna represents "the slut vote." (Madonna is speaking out against John McCain on her world tour, which kicked off this weekend.)

Where has K-Lo been for the past decade and a half? Calling Madonna a whore is sooo 1993. (Circa her Sex book, Body of Evidence, and "Human Nature.") If you want to go negative on Madonna, these days it's more appropriate to say she represents the African-baby-snatching constituency.

In light of this ridiculousness, let's enjoy a "slutty"-era Madonna flashback:

"Ooops-- I didn't know I couldn't talk about McCain. Musta been crazy."

Also, I think we should appropriate the term "slut vote." You know -- voters who are in favor of access to contraception and abortion, comprehensive sex education, gay rights etc. etc.

There are certain headlines that I really never want to see. This is one of them:

Dora to explore older, racier market

For those who don't know the fabulous Dora the Explorer, she's the character of a top-rated Nickelodeon television show about a little girl who goes, well, exploring while also teaching children Spanish. It's a great show. But apparently, it's not sexy enough.

Dora the Explorer, the wide-eyed cartoon character adored by young children around the world, is facing a makeover amid competition from older, racier rivals.

Nickelodeon, the children's television network owned by Viacom, has been discussing a redesign of some Dora-themed toys and other merchandise that would make the character appear more feminine, say people familiar with the talks. (Emphasis mine)

Oh dear. Dora wouldn't be the first beloved cartoon character to get a sexy new look, but for some reason I find this more depressing than past "makeovers."

You can contact Viacom, who owns Nickelodeon, here.

Thanks to Morgan for the link!

This ad is apparently airing in California right now:

(There's no spoken commentary -- just images.)

On one level, I really like this approach because it uses the wedding-industrial complex against itself. It takes as a given the fact that many straight people (women in particular) desire and idealize this sort of mega white wedding, and uses that to tug their emotions. I can see how this would be a very compelling. In that, it feels subversive. Taking the ultimate heteronormative, capitalist celebration and turning it into an argument for equality. I like that.

On the other hand, you could argue that this ad is just propping up the same old ideals about extravagant weddings and proper marriages. That it's not subversive at all -- it's more of the same.

What do you all think?

For more food for thought on the subject, check out Miriam on why marriage isn't her golden ticket, Courtney on how gay marriage has her rethinking her personal views on getting hitched, and Samhita on how marriage laws erase transgendered people.

(Thanks to Crystal for the link.)

Apparently 8/8/08 (today's date) is a popular day to get married. People seem to love special wedding dates (or at least the media loves reporting about them).

Today has particular meaning for Chinese culture, which explains the start of the Olympics today at 8:08:08pm.

The lucky number eight means wealth and prosperity to Asians who observe Chinese numerology.

According to NPR, some couples getting married today will also have eight bridesmaids and eight course meals at their ceremonies.

So I was walking out of the New York Public Library this evening after a couple of hours of non-internet enabled writing (it saves me), when I noticed this long line of teenage and tween girls sitting on the sidewalk. Their line snaked all the way around the library, around Bryant Park, and to the subway station. Finally I leaned over and asked one what was going on. She replied:

We're here waiting for the Jonas Brothers. They're performing tomorrow on Good Morning America.
Me: Tomorrow? So you're going to sit here all night?
Her: Yep. We're all sitting here all night. We're obsessed with the Jonas Brothers.

Let me admit, first off, that I had no idea who the Jonas Brothers were. Let me admit, secondly, that Vanessa got me on to So You Think You Can Dance? and so I'm about to find out (apparently these little guys are playing live in LA on the show and then flying overnight to NYC to play GMA in the a.m....insane.)

But then let me go on to say, this really freaks me out. What is it about those teen years that creates such a capacity for obsessive, religious-like worship of mediocre bands? I mean, even if they were the best musicians/dancers ever and total heartthrobs, would it really constitute sitting out on the NYC sidewalk for fifteen hours on the hottest night ever?

I know what everyone's thinking...the Beatles. But did anyone ever study that shit? What are the sort of psychological, political factors that bring that kind of hysteria on? It can't all be the floppy hair and androgyny. Or can it...

At Salon, Rebecca Traister has a love letter to her favorite sci-fi protagonist, Dana Scully:

In this summer of Dark Knights and Hellboys and Iron Men, it's refreshing to be reminded -- as we will be this weekend, with the opening of "The-X-Files: I Want to Believe" -- that not so long ago, there was a science fiction series with a woman at its core, a heroine whose major goals were more about disproving the existence of extraterrestrial life than marrying Big, a chick who spent more time chasing fluke worms down toilets than trying on shoes.

Awhile ago, Starziki6 posted some very similar sentiments on our community blog:

Mostly, my love for the show (and I loved this show for eight seasons) had to do with Scully and how unique her character was. She was introduced to the show as its rational, scientific, and spiritual voice. When Mulder got himself into trouble by following his gut, Scully would reel him into reality by using her head. (It also happened that Scully got into trouble from using her head and Mulder could save her by following his gut, but the roles remained largely consistent.)

I cannot love the show more for the way it depicted a strong, smart, beautiful, and ultimately feminist woman.

Deeky at Shakesville has a post on a humor website hawking a faux video game modeled on Guitar Hero... called Vagina Hero.

Let me say that before I followed the link, I had some hopes here. I thought, "Maybe it's a teaching tool for women and their partners, informing them of little-known facts about the female anatomy." Jessica commented, "Vagina Hero could be an amazing feminist superhero." Alas, we were way too optimistic.

No surprise! It's really just some sexist bullshit dressed up as humor. Deeky writes,

Here's the premise of the joke: What if the makers of Guitar Hero introduced a new game called Vagina Hero wherein the player had to tap all the right buttons in the right sequence at the right time, just like in the original game, but on a vagina shaped controller to "win"? (If you're not holding your sides now from laughing so hard, well, you won't ever be. The joke doesn't get any better than that. A stupid premise has nowhere to go but downhill, my friends.) Oh, and "winning" here is defined as bringing an on-screen woman to orgasm. In case you hadn't guessed.

Now, I'm all for establishing the idea that a woman's pleasure should be a priority for her sexual partner. But this "game" is less about women's sexual pleasure than it is about establishing the idea that ladyparts are icky and confusing and "other." (Below the jump, because it could be NSFW, have a gander at the "controller.")

Classy 70's-style bow-chika-wow-wow starts playing, and you find your screen assaulted with colored button-press indicators called "E-Zones". The E-Zones (or "EZ's") correspond to the same colored buttons on your Vagina Hero controller, dubbed "HodgePodge". Why HodgePodge? "Just look at it. What the fuck is that? We designed it and we don't even really know. We tried to stay true to real thing, but that's the best we could do."

Translation: Aren't ladyparts weird, icky, and incomprehensible?

As the EZ's approach the middle of the screen, you need to tap the corresponding EZ button on your controller. Sounds easy enough, but this bitch has 6 buttons! Apparently, if you want to be a serious player, you need to get creative.

"Most people just use their thumb and pointer finger on their off-hand, but we've had a few people use other body parts. Personally, if you want to really see what you're doing, the two hand approach is best. You could also just mash all the buttons at the same time with your fist and hope to get lucky."

You could also just mash all the buttons at the same time with your fist and hope to get lucky?!?! I'm sorry, this is hardly "teaching boys something useful." To the contrary. In comments at Shakesville, Astraea points out,

It's not only not original misogyny, it's not even an original video game concept since the Japanese have had cheap versions of that kind of game for ages, and all nicely drawn to make those weird girlyparts nicely hair-free and less complicated for the poor menz who just want to get off.

Even as a Humorless Feminist (TM), I think it certainly would be possible to craft a parody that mocks the fact that some men think of the vagina as icky and foreign. This "game" ain't that. It's not funny because it's got a wink-nudge tone -- the creators are essentially agreeing with every dude who's ever expressed disgust or disdain for the vadge -- and who has wanted a gold star for even attempting to please his female sexual partner. (Plus? It's not even that clever. They should have called this shit Clitar Hero.) Sorry. I'm not laughing.

I frigging love this Sarah Haskins gal

So this video is NSFW (not safe for work) and it is very disturbing. Trigger warning! But it is one of the trailers to the new Grand Theft Auto coming out today, and it is reprehensible. All around the country posters for the new GTA have been removed due to their offensive nature. Most of the complaints have been about the violence in the video game. Not one article has been about the blatant violence and misogyny displayed towards women.

If you get through the trailer you will notice that not only are the sex scenes very real looking, most of the women are killed shortly after forcibly performing sex acts. So, many young men are going to have their first (or already have, as this is not new content for GTA) sexual experiences via GTA and then they are going to kill the women they are sleeping with. The implications of that are mind-blowing. It is no question that GTA is merely reflective of the bigger misogyny embedded in capitalist patriarchy, but the question is why is a game that depicts such violence towards women so popular? How is that acceptable?

I think this has two consequences in the land of no child left behind where standardized educational systems have led to a cutback in the teaching of metacognition in elementary schools. What does that mean? Youth don't get taught to think about why they make the choices they do, they are instead force fed information that they must memorize. So it can be argued that they are being force fed heavily marketed violent images (that often reflect the violence in the media, movies, government policy and in their own communities) that become normalized. And not only normalized, but given the popular nature of GTA, it is cool to be violent and kill prostitutes.

The second implication is where does this put young women gamers? How do they feel when playing video games with such violent representations of women?

I can tell you that watching that video was humiliating and I don't play video games, so I never have to see it again if I don't want to.

A lot of issues here. Other thoughts?

Apparently there's a show on WE (the network that brought you Bridezillas) called Bulging Brides, in which women buy wedding dresses two sizes too small, and rely on a drill-sergeant-like trainer to get them to lose the weight by their wedding day. It's size-shaming meets the bridal-industrial complex. Or, as Big Fat Blog asks, "There aren't enough reality shows that combine unrealistic feminine body ideals with unrealistic and heavily-marketed ideals towards heterosexual weddings?"

Here's a sample of what it's like:

Ah, a tasteful montage of close-ups of everything the bride-to-be eats during her bachelorette party, followed by an early-morning pole-dancing lesson to shed the pounds she supposedly gained the night before from all those quesadillas and mojitos. My feminist head is exploding.

Yes, there's a lot of sexist, sizist, crappy "reality" TV out there. But something about this show seems to have it all. Which is why it's worth mentioning and decrying here.

Thanks to Tomi for the tip.

Yahoo just launched a new web portal called Shine, “for women between ages 25 and 54, calling it a key demographic underserved by current Yahoo properties.� Topics of the site include “fashion + beauty, healthy living, entertainment, parenting, love +sex, work + money, food, at home, and astrology.� And the site's signature color is, of course, pink.

Would it be possible, maybe, please, for a website “for women� to not be pink? I mean, honestly, I couldn’t even get past that to see what the content is. It’s not breast cancer pink (light pink), so I think that means it must be Sex and the City pink. Hot pink, some sparkes. Yup.

Sigh.

Props of the Day go to Sweden's Trade Ethical Council against Sexism in Advertising for reporting a Jagermeister advertisement for its...well, just check out the ad:

I received this as a forward yesterday with the message, "This is how a real man uses post-its." It reminds me of oldie-but-goody Lakshmi Chaudry's "Men Growing Up To Be Boys," where she talks about consumer culture literally consuming more traditional concepts of manhood and spitting out a man-child.

So move over, beer commercials and manly meat ads; we've now entered the realm of sexist stationary. Sigh.

NOTE: We have found out that this is, in fact, a joke and not an actual post-it ad. At the same time, the fact that this is being disseminated very widely still perpetuates the same confused notions of American masculinity/man-boyhood we find in our everyday commercials and magazine ads. But we are glad to find that that Post-It has not taken part in it.

As a fifth anniversary gift to her husband, Freddie Prince, Jr., Sarah Michelle Gellar has changed her name to Sarah Michelle Prinze.

"On their anniversary, she showed [Freddie] her new driver's license," the source tells Us. "It was so sweet."

Despite the fact that Gellar Prinze has said she isn't a feminist, I was still pretty surprised by this. Does the concept of giving away your own name as a birthday gift seem a little fucked up to anyone else? It doesn't strike me as weird to change your name of your own accord, even several years into the marriage. But framing it as a "gift" makes it seem like a sacrifice rather than something she wanted to do for herself. Kind of like the difference between "I got a boob job because I wanted one" and "I got a boob job for my husband's birthday." Like taking your husband's name, I'm not into the idea of boob jobs generally, but I suppose it seems better to do it to please yourself rather than to please your partner.

Also, I'm always shocked when a famous woman changes her name to that of her less-famous husband. I mean, isn't name recognition incredibly important? If I saw "Sarah Michelle Prinze" on a movie poster, I would just assume it was a newbie actress I'd never heard of.

Or, as my friend Phoebe exclaimed, "Did she learn nothing from Rebecca Romijn-Stamos?!"

For those who think that only rap videos contain sexist content.

While this is more or less a rock video version of Vogue Italia's spread, we can use this as a reminder of how sickly obsessed (no pun intended) pop culture has become with glorifying (and in this case, sexualizing) mental illness, addiction and general life failure among the young women of Hollywood.

Thanks to reader Michele.

Left, Judy Nails in a previous version of the game. Right, in the latest version.

When I picture guitar heroines, they're usually sporting jeans and a tank top. Or menswear. Not the case in the Guitar Hero video game, apparently, where all of the ladies wear midriffs or bikini tops. Cara laments the sexing-up of her favorite Guitar Hero character, Judy Nails, in the latest version of the game:

Basically, I’m not sure why they bothered to put a shirt on her. There are copious amounts of cleavage, her entire stomach, and at least half of her bra hanging out. The shirt is really more of an accessory than an actual article of clothing. Even on stage with all of those bright lights, she still might get a little cold. And every outfit change I could give her doesn’t make it any better.

Even worse, I don’t have any other female options. There’s Cassie, who has always worn a bikini top in lieu of a shirt (which I was originally fine with, because there were other options and there is a male character with no shirt). And there’s a new Asian female character who, though she is covered, is dressed like she works for Gwen Stefani. And since I see it as pretty racist, I can’t go with her, either.

So. Apparently Guitar Hero now thinks that it either A. does not have any female fans or B. their female fans will, for some reason, not mind being objectified and forced to play with a character who is half naked, if they want to play with a woman.

Add to that Axe sponsorship (including the eau de asshole promotional jingle actually placed within the game), a guitar shaped like a woman's disembodied leg in a fishnet stocking, and a guitar called "Lady Shapes" with an airbrushed blonde in a bikini on it. More from Cara:

Do you think Joel Stein stands outside throwing Halloween candy at women screaming, "Whores, all of you, whores!!!" while secretly cursing them for not sleeping with him?

On a more productive note, who has a great costume idea? (C'mon, I know someone's going as sexy mustard.) I'm considering going as Joan Collins, but am on the lookout for a better idea...

This is one of those things that I almost didn't blog about, because it's clearly a publicity stunt and me writing this only adds to the "buzz." The awful Radar cover is photoshopped spoof of a Vanity Fair cover from March 2006 -- which Rebecca Traister ably took to task at the time. (Using naked women as accessories to powerful dudes is a real VF cover theme.)

I know this stupid Radar cover is designed to make me go, "ugh." And it succeeded. Of course the white man is the only one who's fully clothed. As Rachel Sklar points out, "Rudy's head just looks so natural on Tom Ford's skin-crawlingly skeevy body."

Thoughts?

A Reuters article titled, "Sexy rap videos suspected to be damaging to young girls" says:

Watching rap music videos that are overly sexy and violent can lead to alcohol abuse and promiscuity among young black girls, according to a study into sexual stereotypes in rap music footage.

Firstly, putting "sexy" and "violent" within the same category is a bit disconcerting. (Not to mention "promiscuity" and "alcohol abuse.") The actual study was even more so:

The research was based on a survey of 522 African-American girls aged 14 to 18 who were asked how often they watched rap videos, questioned about their sex lives and asked to provide a urine sample for a marijuana screening.

While obviously the media and pop culture (which does include the misogyny that exists in many rap videos) has a huge impact on girls' lives, why not focus more on their self esteem and confidence rather than their sexual activity and pot smoking? (The research method itself is pretty problematic to me as well, but that's a whole other discussion.)

Thoughts?

I fell for Ms. July even harder when I read her interview in the latest issue of Bust, especially this part:

Do you consider yourself a feminist?
Yes.
That's so nice to hear. There are a lot of women who don't want to associate with the word anymore. Why do you think that is?
Whenever I see people have a long answer to that question, I'm just like, "What's confusing about that?" It's just being pro your ability to do what you need to do [laughs]. I doesn't mean you don't love your boyfriend or whatever." And I wouldn't go out with any guy who wasn't a feminist. But I guess for people, especially once you kind of get more well-known, labels get really scary because it's a reduction of who you are. When I say "feminist," I mean that in the most complex, interesting, exciting way!

Word.

Today, the New York Times takes on a trend for new (and rich) mothers: postpartum plastic surgery. (With a really horrendous title, I might add: "Is the 'Mom Job' Really Necessary?")

"Mommy makeovers" are being marketed by plastic surgeons across the country in an attempt to reach out to women post-childbirth, so that they can get their, you know, "normal" bodies back:

In 1970, “Our Bodies, Ourselves,� the seminal guide to women’s health, described the cosmetic changes that can happen during and after pregnancy simply as phenomena. But now narrowing beauty norms are recasting the transformations of motherhood as stigma.

These unforgiving standards are the offspring of pop culture and technology, a union that treats biological changes as if they were as optional as hair color. Gossip magazines excoriate celebrity moms who don’t immediately lose their “baby weight.� Even Cookie, a luxury parenting magazine, recently ran an article that described postpregnancy breasts as “the ultimate indignity� and promoted implant surgery; a photo of droopy water-filled balloons accompanied the article.

Many women struggle with the impact of aging and pregnancy on their bodies. But the marketing of the “mommy makeover� seeks to pathologize the postpartum body, characterizing pregnancy and childbirth as maladies with disfiguring aftereffects that can be repaired with the help of scalpels and cannulae.

The Mommy Makeover website is nothing less than atrocious, with a slideshow introduction of "beautiful" mothers and their children with the text: "Embrace the feeling of being a woman." Which apparently means going under the knife.

So these surgeons are not only pitching this idea that women's bodies are "used up" after they give birth, but even physically deformed. In other words, while it's more than natural for a woman to bear a child, her post-baby body isn't natural and needs to be "fixed." (For a minimum of $10,000, I might add.)

There are way too many double standards and oxymorons to list here; all I know is that it never ceases to amaze me how obvious the war over our bodies is.

P.S. I second Feministe's request that the NY Times start to "focus more often on issues affecting more than the top 1% of the income distribution." Amen.

The Fashionista Diaries couldn't be more vapid. That's part of the fun of the show. I mean, I spent 30 minutes playing Facebook TV trivia this morning, who am I to judge?

However, this one little clip from Jezebel really got my brain going.

In it, the "naïve" white girl, Tina (who's apparently hanging out with the first black person she's ever met) discovers two earth-shattering things about black people. In case you're reading this while standing, please sit down so you don't pass out from the shock of what I'm about to share.

Exhibit A. Actual tan line on black skin.

Fact #2. Black people don't automatically want to date all other black people.
Again, poor Janjay. Tina saw a cute black guy and ran over to fetch him for her friend. Janjay, not interested, notes that Tina tries to set her up with every black guy they see. What a great friend.

I have to say, I feel Janjay's pain here. I grew up as one of two or three black kids in my grade at school, and it can be exhausting. Having to "teach" your friends about race is so isolating. For the longest time I actually felt like a freak, because how could someone you like be so ignorant about such simple things. I thought there must really have been something weird about me for it to be so confusing. It was a lot worse in feminist circles. Not that the comments were worse, but the feeling like an outsider. I became to loathe going to certain group meetings in college. Being expected to speak for all black women, or sometimes, all non-white women. Can't. Won't. The sad thing is, it still happens. And it still sucks. It sucks to have to steel yourself against the seemingly inevitable ignorance, disrespect and bigotry of your allies. And that's why it sucks extra hard when you hear that it's not a big deal. Because this shit is usually the latest in a long list of painful moments.

See, reality TV is fucking deep.

Update: To go back to the tanning thing, the reason it bugs me so much is I don't understand how anyone could think that. I mean, skin gets darker in the sun. Even if you never thought about black people tanning before, when you do, doesn't it just make sense?

Never thought I'd say this... but I'm starting to love Barry Manilow. That's right. He declined to appear on The View when producers denied his request that the interview be conducted by anyone but the anti-choice Elizabeth Hasselbeck. (You remember her, right? She was the one screeching that emergency contraception is abortion.)

As Manilow writes on his website,

Hey guys,

I wanted to let you know that I will no longer be on The View tomorrow as scheduled. I had made a request that I be interviewed by Joy, Barbara or Whoopi, but not Elisabeth Hasselback. Unfortunately, the show was not willing to accommodate this simple request so I bowed out.

It’s really too bad because I've always been a big supporter of the show, but I cannot compromise my beliefs. The good news is that I will be on a whole slew of other shows promoting the new album so I hope you can catch me on those.

Love,
Barry

Love you, too, buddy.

It is interesting all the speculation around the increase access in technology and new media to people in rural places and how it is or is not emancipating them. Specifically, this article in Slate delves into the commonly discussed question of TV series (Indian equivalent of soaps) and their effects on women in India. According to Slate, these women are being "helped" or rather, brought into the modern times (if you will) by the cable television.

A new study by Robert Jensen of Brown University and Emily Oster of the University of Chicago shows that television is having a distinctly helpful effect on women, at least in rural India, which admittedly doesn't have America's half-century of experience with the medium, or 300 channels to surf through.

So I checked out the abstract from the study and it said this:

This paper explores the effect of the introduction of cable television on gender attitudes in rural India. Using a three-year individual-level panel dataset, we find that the introduction of cable television is associated with improvements in women's status. We find significant increases in reported autonomy, decreases in the reported acceptability of beating and decreases in reported son preference. We also find increases in female school enrollment and decreases in fertility (primarily via increased birth spacing). The effects are large, equivalent in some cases to about five years of education in the cross section, and move gender attitudes of individuals in rural areas much closer to those in urban areas. We argue that the results are not driven by pre-existing differential trends. These results have important policy implications, as India and other countries attempt to decrease bias against women.

I think it can be argued that there is some truth to this. I don't really prefer Waldfogel's presumptive nature of the way that things are for women in rural India, as backwards and traditional and the television is helping them come into the light. However, I think some of the trends that are happening, as a result of a change in economy and the women's movement in India, are probably reflected in television and they mutually reinforce each other.

I am weary of studies that say new technologies emancipate people in "old, narrow and backward" places. There has been similar work done on internet access and rural women in India. Women in rural India have roles and responsibilities, extensive kinship networks, methods of healing, irrigation techniques that "modernization" sometimes wipes out. I am not saying one is better than the other, it is just important to see things for what they are. Series television is very much like soap operas, they are not based in reality, the women reflect idealized and unattainable standards of beauty, and the plot lines are unrealistic and fantastical. So although they women in series may represent a more modern woman, she is also a production of capitalist desire, latching on to upper-middle class notions of success.

It is hard to judge one culture while sitting in another, wondering what exactly emancipation is for rural women in India, having some intense desire for them to be free. While ignoring how many of us are enslaved by the images we watch on television and I would hardly call that freedom.

Ultimately the study found that it was a change in attitude that is most notable, as opposed to a change in actual behavior. I think it is safe to say that TV has the potential to change attitudes everywhere, but it is a matter of the direction that we want it to change in. Mainstream media and its reach has had truly dangerous consequences for the American imagination, so, I maybe a little skeptical of calling the TV in India an "Empowerment box."

It is amazing to me how advertisers in the male body care products industry, beer industry and most recently found example, the fast food industry, continue to rely on sexist and racist stereotypes to sell their products. This ad, sent in by a reader, is another example of the consumption of women's bodies or buns to the consumption of hamburgers and their respective buns. And as this narrative illustrates, men have preferences for how they like women's buns, so naturally, they have preferences for their hamburger buns. This is so tired, I fell asleep.

Carl's Jr strikes out bad, not only for supplying a bad product that is a public health threat (IMHO) but for producing such corny and trashy commercials that a 2 year old could deconstruct as highly problematic.

Hot for teacher anyone?

Seriously, what the hell? And I don't appreciate the race implications of casting a bunch of white boys dressed up like "rappers" rapping about how the like flat buns, to sarcastically mimic black rappers in how they like round ones. It is just tacky.

The Los Angeles Times had a piece yesterday about the television and movie trend of the BBF--the Black Best Friend:

Julia Louis-Dreyfus has one. Sandra Bullock had one. So did Jennifer Garner and Katie Holmes. Jennifer Love Hewitt has had two. Calista Flockhart took hers dancing. Kate Walsh had one, lost her, and got another one with a different face but the same name. And Scarlett Johansson got her first one last weekend.

They're stars who have all played lead characters who experience adventure with the help of their BFF (Best Friend Forever). But in many cases, these BFFs might more accurately be characterized as BBFs -- Black Best Friend -- played by an African American actress whose character's principal function is to support the heroine, often with sass, attitude and a keen insight into relationships and life.

Rose Catherine Pinkney, executive vice president of programming and production for TV One and a former Paramount Studios executive, says "...[I]t's a shame that studios also don't have the courage to put these actresses in leads...Historically, people of color have had to play nurturing, rational caretakers of the white lead characters. And studios are just not willing to reverse that role."

Sounds like the "magical black man" syndrome. Charming.

But the article is quick to point out that unlike movies or shows where black and white men are shown to be buddies, the relationship between women on screen follows a rather predictable formula:

BBFs vary in personality and looks, but many share the same qualities: They are gorgeous, independent, loyal and successful. They live or work with their friend but are not really around all that much except for well-timed moments when the heroine needs an eating companion or is in crisis. BBFs basically have very little going on, so they are largely available for such moments. And even though they are single or lack consistent solid relationships, BBFs are experts in the ways of the world, using that knowledge to comfort, warn or scold their BFF.

Oh yeah, and they're usually the only person of color around. Way to go, Hollywood.

Tatiana

Tatiana Suarez Pico, Tara Lopez and Aurin Squire together make a bilingual comic strip titled, "Bodega Ave." Tatiana translates and writes, Aurin writes and Tara draws.

Their website describes "Bodega Ave." as a pop fantasy and ridiculous satire based on a bunch of pre-teens in Brooklyn."

Here's Tatiana, Tara and Aurin...

The New York Times reports today that the New York City Council is considering a proposal to ban the word bitch. This proposal follows a similar ruling which banned the use of the n-word last February.

The term is hateful and deeply sexist, said Councilwoman Darlene Mealy of Brooklyn, who has introduced a measure against the word, saying it creates “a paradigm of shame and indignity� for all women.

While the article mentions no details about how a ban like this would be enforced (NYPD giving tickets for profanity?) they do talk to quite a few random people on the street to gauge their reactions to such a proposal. Most people interviewed are against the idea, arguing that is a too crucial part of their daily speech--they use it to refer to their friends, spouses, in their stand-up comedy or in their every day.

While I agree with the Councilwoman's sentiment above, that in many of its uses, the word bitch is derogatory toward women--eradicating its usage isn't going to solve the larger problem of the word's sentiment, or the fact that women who are assertive or opinionated are considered bitches. The idea of fighting sexism by regulating our language seems to me like putting a politically correct band-aid over the larger problem we face--mistreatment and disrespect of women.

What do you all think?

I noticed an item on Glossed Over last week about an article in Marie Claire called "Fembots: The New Breed of Women." The whole thing is posted on MSN now, and it's a doozy. Writes Theresa O'Rourke,

I came of age in the gut-spilling '90s, a time of Ally McBeal, "female bonding," Lilith Fair, and the explosion of the self-help section at Barnes & Noble. A decade has passed, but women still seem bent on suffocating themselves with an endless supply of self-indulgent hot air. We're due for a backlash, and I think it has arrived in the form of what I like to call the fembot: the cool, together, emotionally unavailable girl one cube over.

Um, didn't that stereotype "arrive" nearly a decade ago, in the form of Samantha, when Sex and the City first aired on HBO in 1998? She continues,

In 2007, fembotism is the next frontier in the great big gender divide. We can narrow the pay gap, outpace men earning degrees, helm a company, run the House of Representatives, choose to raise a child on our own, and match a man’s sexual appetite thrust for thrust. But there’s an unspoken disclaimer: We’d better not forsake our nurturing instinct while doing all of the above. Yeah, well, some of us are saying screw you to the fine print.

Hmmm... what sort woman might want to narrow the pay gap, advance women's educational opportunities, break through the glass ceiling, succeed in politics, raise her own children, and have lots of satisfying sex? I don't think "fembot" is the word we're looking for, here. Theresa, honey, it's "feminist." Say it with me now: "FEMINIST."

Problem is, she has to lump all the stupid "manhating bitch" stereotypes along with it, extending that "cold, disconnected" caricature of the young, modern woman well into strawman territory. I'm surprised she doesn't already have a book deal, because this sort of material makes people like Bill O'Reilly feel vindicated, and allows people like Laura Sessions Stepp to do more hand-wringing.

I know it doesn't make for clear-cut, black-and-white article, but most young women I know who possess a lot of these so-called "fembot" characteristics are in fact not afraid of intimacy, not disgusted by men, not self-absorbed. They fall in love and like to cuddle and sometimes cry at the movies. They just don't like flowers, Norah Jones, or traditional gender roles. And they don't feel a pressing need to get married.

The Observer had a piece yesterday on the media's obsession with the "Bad Girls of Hollywood," and questions why everyone seems to get off on watching these irritating rich, white women get in trouble.

While an obvious answer to this is that it's entertaining to see these overly privileged bad gals like Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who think they can get away with anything not only be treated as criminals just as any one of us would, but also have overwhelming flaws and personal problems. (In other words, rich life ain't all that grand.)

But is there more to it? And what is so appealing about famous women's demise rather than the lads? 'We have had years of young male stars running amok. It is now so much more fun for the public to see beautiful young women being hauled off to jail,' said Robert Thompson, professor of popular culture at Syracuse University, New York state.

Is this saying something bigger about our culture? Why is it so much fun to watch "beautiful women" be imprisoned--or drug-addicted or clearly sick with eating disorders? And the comparison of these women's behavior with "Girls Gone Wild" is irksome as well; it's almost being posed as some kind of fetish. And who are we blaming?

To put it simply: is this a feminist issue?

Singer and songwriter Nicole Nelson recently returned to New York City after a long run in Boston, MA where I first saw her perform. Her voice and music are often compared to the artistry of Eva Cassidy, Donny Hathaway, Gladys Knight and Erykah Badu; and her style and poise are often compared to those of female greats well beyond her years.

I thankfully caught up with Nicole over email amidst her hectic schedule. Here's Nicole...

I read last week about Mattel marketing a new Barbie website and other types of "virtual play" for girls. Even though it's still in beta, in its first 60 days, the Barbie Girls site signed up three million members, and is adding another 50,000 every day. (I tried to log in and poke around the site, but it's been so jammed with visitors that I couldn't get it to load.)

One of the reasons Barbie has historically had such a hold on young girls (and what I loved about Barbie as a kid) is that she's a grown-up. I know this is one of the critiques of Barbie -- that she presents a very screwed up image of what an adult woman is supposed to physically look like. As a kid, I loved Barbie because she wasn't a baby doll -- I had no interest in playing mommy. I used Barbie to act out how I wanted to be as an adult. My Barbie was a journalist. She wore men's sweaters sometimes. She always drove the red convertible. In her spare time, she was the frontwoman of a rock band.

What didn't she do? Go shopping. Sure, she had lots of fun outfits, but having her "purchase" more was never part of my play routine. When I searched for descriptions of what Barbie is actually set up to do in her popular new virtual world, every article I found only mentioned her ability to shop for stuff like "miniskirts, tiaras or home accessories." In other words, training girls to grow up to be women who are first and foremost consumers.

A Barbie virtual world seems so much more pernicious than Barbie the 10-inch doll. It's still got all the body- and beauty-standard issues that the old-school version has. But at least girls can more easily impose their own personalities and interests onto a doll. It requires imaginative play. I'm sure that Barbie Girls has been focus-grouped like crazy, and that TONS of young girls want their Barbies to do nothing but go shopping and get makeovers. But it's really terrible (not to mention a wasted opportunity) to not include other activities. Why couldn't they join a virtual rock band, or run for virtual office, or play virtual sports? (I can think of several great organizations that would have made perfect partners for a website like this.)

As the site stands now, though, where would a kid like I was fit into the Barbie Girls world? From what I've read, the site features no fast cars, no rock band, no newsdesk. Just credit cards and cosmetics.

Hillary Duff recently had an interview with the Guardian titled, "What I know about men..." in which she talks about not being a "tramp" or "whore," her desire to have a family and bake pies, and comes out with this gem:

I'm not, like, a crazy feminist. I think women definitely need men. Like, I couldn't imagine having a girlfriend!

Icky lesbian feminists! Check out the rest of the interview, it's pretty, um, interesting.

Via DollyMix.

Originally posted at Racewire.

These pictures are too much for me.

Talk about the wedding industrial complex has been all over the place and I like it. But the conversation of race and culture has been left out of the larger discussion. How does capitalism intersect with wedding rituals in cultures other than mainstream white culture? Looking through the wedding section of Nirali has me perplexed (and cracking up) thinking about South Asian weddings in the US and how they typify this notion of the "wedding industrial complex". I have been to many and at this point I have just stopped going. I am 29 and don't plan on getting married. In fact I vehemently oppose getting married, and really can't afford to fly all over the country for a ritual I have deep problems with.

The weddings that I have seen and many of the weddings characterized in Nirali, don't really seem like weddings that are about love and romance. They seem more like business mergers and marketing ploys. Some weddings even get straight to the point and ask that you don't bring boxed gifts, just a check. Nothing says love like having all your friends give you a few thousand dollars. And clearly love can only *really* happen if you spend 70K and have 500 of your closest friends present.

Weddings in India are huge as well, but in the US they are huge, elaborate, cheesy and cost a small fortune. It has become the norm in the middle class South Asian community to have a huge wedding and spend a ton of money whether you have it or not. It is a new way to become American in an Indian way. For example, "something old, something new, " is not a South Asian tradition! That is the placement of US romantic fetish marketing within South Asian chic. Romantic heterosexuality, having money and raising a normal family have become encoded in the "becoming" process for second generation South Asian Indians. And since being American seems to be all about capitalist consumption they may almost succeed, except for that post 9/11 'you look like a terrorist snag.' (Which may be the fear that exaggerates it in the first place, but let me not get ahead of myself.).

It is so lame. Neela at Hyphen delves deeper.

Thoughts?

In a bikini. On YouTube. The breathless coverage of presidential campaign "hot chick" videos continues. I really really tried to ignore the whole Obama Girl craziness, hoping it would just go away. But no, now videos of scantily clad women have somehow become emblematic of new media in this presidential election cycle. Letting anyone submit debate questions via YouTube? Oh, interesting. But damn, hot girls dancing and singing? This is groundbreaking political discourse. Oh, wait. They're just supposed to be "funny." Oh, I get it. Just had to take my humorless feminist hat off.

The latest in this string of videos really takes it to the next level. That's right, folks. What you've all been waiting for, a cat fight. Obama Girl and Giuliani girl get it on. And what a surprise, there's a pillow fight.

The woman from the Obama video says this isn't all frivolous, though:

But the song, says Kauffman, "is less a love song than a debate song. We go into some serious issues, like the war in Iraq and Giuliani comparing himself to Ronald Reagan."

Yup. Thought-provoking. I assume next month we'll get a 5-woman mud wrestling match. CNN will provide live coverage of the video shoot. Showtime will play the unrated version. You'll probably be able to buy it bundled with a Girls gone Wild DVD.

So let's get a (clothed) debate going. What do people think about these ads?

Photo by Niesha Studio, copyright 2006.

Audacia Ray is an executive editor of $pread, a magazine by and for sex workers, and is a contributor to the porn blog Fleshbot. She is also the director/producer of a bisexual feature adult film, The Bi Apple and head of her blog, WakingVixen.com. Audacia describes herself as "a sex nerd in both bookish and salacious ways."

Here's Audacia...

Ann linked to this story yesterday in WFR, but I just had to delve a little deeper and point out just how depressing this is.

Partnerships of Mattel and the cosmetics industry is no new thing; their “Barbie Loves MAC� collection this past Spring was MAC’s largest and most successful collection they’d ever had. (After all, who could resist looking like the "Barbie Loves MAC" scary doll-woman to the left.)

Now they’re collaborating with Bonne Bell to market a new line of makeup aimed at 6 to 9-year old girls. Mattel included in their announcement of the partnership:

"The Barbie and Bonne Bell partnership will bring girls a fun, feminine and unique beauty experience, leveraging the unparalleled popularity of two globally loved brands."

Because what’s the most unique and useful growing experience a girl could have? Placing beauty standards on her at an early age, of course! What's more rewarding than learning about the wonders of femininity?!?

We all know this is much more important than, say, the “I Can� campaign that came out of Mattel’s partnership with Girls Inc. This project was aimed to tell girls to believe in themselves, in their strengths and that they could make a difference in the world. But of course, that relationship wasn’t so “successful� because of the sexist, anti-choice and homophobic American Family Association’s disapproval of the organization; Mattel cut ties from Girls Inc. shortly after the AFA launched their attack.

So we've gone from “I can be myself, follow my dreams and always do my best,� to “I can apply make-up.� When will young girls be given the positive messages they need which tells them they can be more than...well, a doll?

Given my undying love for Freaks and Geeks (and, by extension, Judd Apatow), I'm totally seeing Knocked Up this weekend. In her review for Slate, Dana Stevens answers a question that occurred to me after watching the preview: Do they discuss abortion?

Allow me to briefly divagate here on the nonexistence of abortion as an option in Knocked Up. This omission smells of the focus group, and it's a disappointment in a movie that otherwise prides itself on its unsentimental honesty about the realities of unplanned parenthood. It's just not believable that, in Alison and Ben's upper-middle-class, secular L.A. milieu, abortion would not be matter-of-factly discussed as a possibility in the case of a pregnancy this accidental. If she doesn't want one, great -- obviously, there'd be no movie if she did -- but let's hear about why not. Otherwise, her character becomes a cipher, a foil for Ben's epiphanies about growing up, without being allowed any epiphanies of her own. The biggest unanswered question about Heigl's character is one the movie never tiptoes near -- why does she decide to keep the baby?

Seems like a glaring omission to me. This is the key point in Stevens' excellent critique of Apatow's failure to write female characters who are quite as real as their male counterparts. I'll reserve judgment until I see the movie. But Knocked Up, however touching and entertaining it may be, certainly seems to fit with Hollywood's long history of professing pro-choice beliefs and then writing scripts in which women with minimum-wage jobs and no support system make last-minute decisions to not have an abortion, unplanned pregnancies end with deus ex machina miscarriages, and characters who do choose abortion are killed off in subsequent episodes. Most often, though, the A-word isn't even mentioned.

This is often an unwelcome surprise, but none of these fictional characters, unlike their real-world counterparts who might agonize over the choice to have a baby, will choose to end their pregnancies. In fact, we might as well be living in an era before Roe v. Wade as far as TV is concerned. Characters these days rarely even say the word abortion when confronted with an unplanned pregnancy -- let alone have one.

Premium-cable shows like Six Feet Under have done a slightly better job of portraying women struggling with and making a variety of choices about pregnancy. And it's worth noting that this year's Palme d'Or prize-winner at the Cannes Film Festival was a movie about illegal abortion in Romania. But I have a hard time thinking of many films or TV shows that have realistically portrayed women making choices about unplanned pregnancies -- and living with those choices. Nominations for best/worst portrayals of choice on-screen?

This post by Wendy Muse on Racialicious just about sums up (really well) what I have been feeling about the hipsters all up in "our hoodz stealin all our fashionz." I also feel old as I wore door knockers the first time around (NY in the 80's) eeek.

Muse is discussing all her personal negotiations and some of the political stakes involved with "ghetto chic." She says,

For one, it’s a matter of nomenclature. The term “ghetto� is evocative of “negative� images (poverty, housing projects, crime, drug use, lack of education), and remains racialized by the media. Ghettoes and poverty are typically associated with blacks and Latinos, even though as a result of the racial demographics of the United States, there are technically more poor whites. According to a U.S. Census Bureau Press Release from 2003, though “non-Hispanic whites had a lower poverty rate than other racial groups, [they] accounted for 44 percent of the people in poverty,� which makes me wonder why whites are virtually ignored in discussions of class and blacks and Latinos are always assumed to make up the majority of the poor population in this country. . . but that’s another article.

A few months ago I was sitting in a coffee shop in my neighborhood, a coffee shop I can no longer go to as I may fight somebody, and this white "hipster" boy sat down across from me wearing a red bandana tied on the front of his head, Tupac style. That's right, he was "GANGSTA." I am not laughing. I shot him the nastiest look and freaked him out so he didn't want to share the table with me, but I was raging inside.

I worked in the schools in and around San Francisco's Mission District for about 5 years and am very familiar with the problems that are tearing our schools apart and our communities. Our kids didn't wear red. And I thought about how this kid, moved into the Mission and was just walking around wearing a flag, like he is on some shit. I thought that god forbid if he got shot (which is highly unlikely, I don't want to further sensationalize gang violence the way the media does) how the media would cover it. They wouldn't say anything about his ignorance of any of the local politics or any of the racist ways that these people just move on in and visually violate these communities. To move into a community, uninformed, taking from it, not giving back and flaunting your expensive Ipod and "ghetto chic" accessories, is a form of violence.

I may be sounding like a hater, and maybe I am just too old to get it, but I AM FED UP WITH THESE KIDS. I hate Vice Magazine and I hate this attitude that pretty much says, "I am so passed racist, I can act like this." Wake up asshole, look around you, you are part of the problem.

This is much less articulate than Wendy's post, lol. I wrote about this a few years ago, when I had heard about the "Kill Whitey," parties in Brooklyn. I had hoped that the trend was dying out, but I was oh so wrong. I am so moving back to Oakland (although I hear they are invading there as well).

via BoingBoing.

You gotta love BoingBoing for taking it to the next level.

I have seen this in so many places at this point, but Zuzu has some proper analysis.

Gadzooks! I saw Spiderman on opening night, I love comic book movies. But I have to say, you may as well put all your analysis on gender, nationalism and race to the side. I guess that is what you have to do to enjoy the movies most of the time anyway.

OK, back to work. *sigh*

UPDATE: This picture was not from BoingBoing but originally published on Livejournal and was drawn by Nancy Lorenz. This has made people VERY VERY mad, I am very sorry I was bogged down with finals.

Again sorry for the mix-up.

You gotta love how the media just loves to throw the word feminist around just because someone said something that is slightly pro-woman. In the post-Imus fall-out Snoop Dogg did manage to emerge as a spokeperson for women in hip-hop videos (which is both frightening and endearing). I mean Doggystyle is one of my favorite positions albums, but I don't exactly look to Snoop for political commentary, what with his own connection to GGW and a clearly misogynistic attitude throughout his music and public personality.

So I was surprised to read that he has been defending "video ho's," a term that has gained fluency, but is nonetheless degrading and inappropriate.

The rapper is insisting the semi-naked girls in his videos are simply 'following their dreams'.

Snoop waxed philosophical as he told MTV.com: "Who's to say that these women in videos are hos? They are classy women. Not every girl in the videos has sex with the rappers. A lot of these women do this as a means of modelling or being appreciated for their looks."

"The women allow themselves to be in these videos. We don't force them to be in these videos. They want to be seen, and they have calendars, portfolios, headshots, cards."

I do agree with him on one level. I don't like the way "video vixens" are talked about, as opposed to talked too. And I think it is good to counter the belief that these women will do anything to get to the top, sleep with the rappers, appear naked for free, etc. It feeds into inaccurate stereotypes about women of color's sexuality and self-esteem. I do bet that a lot of these women are savvy and recognize what they are doing and why.

But I don't think this gets to the heart of the issue. The misogyny for me in "video ho" culture is not that the women are choosing to do this, but the question of a) what other choices do they have for careers and b) ultimately where does dancing take them? It is not some utopia where you will dance in one video and then you will make it in a career in modeling, acting or dancing. It is really competitive and when you are already seen as a "video ho" I am thinking it is much harder to break out.

Everyone wants to make dancing in videos a morality issue. Should these women be "allowed" to dance this way, should our children be "allowed" to consume these images? Ultimately, for me it is a labor issue. Are they getting paid what they should, especially in comparison to the rappers that make the videos and are they getting any kind of longterm benefits?

I feel like I could write a much longer post on this, but some initial thoughts?

And Snoop is NOT a feminist.

Check this out.

Total Chaos and Hip Hop Theatre Festival Bay Area May 8-20 present:

IS THERE FREEDOM AFTER HIP HOP?
A DISCUSSION ON HIP HOP POLITICS

Can Hip Hop create a national agenda for political change? Do we really have the power to change our cities and the country?

FREE Forum Discussion

Jeff Chang, Total Chaos editor
Jerry Quickley, performance poet
Malkia Cyril, director of Youth Media Council
Troy Nkrumah, chair of the National Hip-Hop Political Convention
Rosa Clemente, hip-hop activist
Moderated by: Davey D of Hard Knock Radio (94.1 FM KPFA)

Tuesday, May 8, 7 p.m.
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts
701 Mission Street at 3rd Street
San Francisco

Check out this review of Tori Amos’ new album, “American Doll Posse,� which is said to be a critique of the Pussycat Dolls’ ridiculousness.

Has anyone heard the album? Thoughts?

(Warning: This video is very explicit and may be upsetting)
Obviously, we haven't.

Excuse me while I got delete all Akon from my playlist.

Apparently Nintendo DS has a game out called Doki Doki Majo Saiban. And what is the object of the game? Touch the scantily-clad prepubescent looking girl to see if she is a witch! And the description from a gamer blog:

It's the most infamous DS game we've never played. And we know surprisingly little about Doki Doki Majo Saiban. Intertube reaction has run the gamut of amused (us) to critical (others) and in denial (others). Some are claiming the title is flat out porn, while some state that there's no way Nintendo would let that happen. We doubt that the game is at either end of the pole and still giggle at the newly minted touch-a-girl-to-see-if-she's-a-witch sub-genre.

Yes, because there is nothing cuter than young gamers who already have fucked up ideas about women because of the weird ways they are depicted in most video games to connect the dots from young and *slutty* to witch-ly.

I am laughing OUT LOUD.

Not.

I just needed to smile a little. Keep watching it just gets better.

Why can't I dance like that? Clearly, Beyonce is NOT just a role model for little girls. OK?!

Martha Diaz is the president of The Hip-Hop Association, and producer of the H2O International Film Festival and Hip-Hop Education Summit, amongst many other projects. An educator, organizer and filmmaker, her impact in hip hop can be traced to her early days as a young and aspiring production assistant for the late Ted Demme, the groundbreaking producer and director behind "Yo! MTV Raps. "

The H2O International Film Festival is taking place May 31-June 15, 2007 in New York City and its theme is "The World Is Yours?" It “highlights the Hip-Hop community of the early/mid 90’s; a time when youth in the community began demanding money, power, and respect.�

I caught up with Martha over email. Here's Martha...

Photo by Patrick Bishop

When I think of Etta James, I think of her sultry and indescribably amazing voice singing the words to “At Last.� Then I think of Melissa Acosta. I saw Melissa sing “At Last� at a bar in Boston. I think Etta would have been proud.

Melissa has been climbing the music scene since as far back as she can remember. She’s now singing with the progressive hip hop/R&B/reggae/funk New York City-based band, Emergency Service. Melissa is currently on tour with them, so catch her if you can.

She took time to email me her answers to my questions. Here’s Melissa…

Photo by Audrey Cho as it appeared in The Chicago Reporter.

Salome Chasnoff is executive director of the alternative media nonprofit, Beyondmedia. Salome is a video and installation artist, media activist and educator, whose work is dedicated to expanding media access for marginalized communities. She has been an arts educator for the past 20 years in university and community settings, and an artist-activist in the prison moratorium movement for 8 years.

Beyondmedia, for the most part, works with young women between the ages of 13 and 25. They also partner with many women’s and queer youth groups.

Here’s Salome…

The American Psychological Association released a crazy huge report yesterday showing evidence that the sexualization and objectification of girls and young women in the media is mentally damaging for girls.

While you’d think most people would think this is, well, "duh", the APA’s report at least gives it some extra validation. While I was originally wary of the report and language used when talking about “sexualization,� (especially when others are saying the “hook-up� culture is stripping our daughters of self-worth at the same time), I think APA did a fine job in getting the message across without pushing some sort of case for chastity.

Here’s the full report.

Check out Single State of the Union: Single Women Speak Out on Life, Love, and the Pursuit of Happiness, and not just because I have an essay in it. (As do Margaret Cho, Rachel Kramer Bussel and a ton of other cool ladies.)

I was really happy that Diane Mapes, the editor, wanted to put together something on single women and how they're portrayed in the media and elsewhere--and to let single gals speak for themselves. Word.

The Guardian has an interesting piece up about how beauty pageants "are being crushed by their own internal contradiction, that the women involved should look sexually available at all times, but never actually be sexually active." (Vanessa has already written a great post on the subject.)

Bonus: The article quotes one of our favorite "prominent young US feminists," Jess.

I'm speechless.

Check out Condi after the jump.

Newsweek has a piece out, "Girls Gone Bad," on young female celebrities who may be turning our young girls into "prosti-tots." No, I'm not kidding. "Prosti-tots."

Specifically, the article uses teen idols like Lindsay Lohan and Paris Hilton as examples of these immoral lifestyles of debauchery that will lead girls to having sex at an early age and "partying" (excessive drugs and alcohol) like their admirees.

Honestly, I found the entire piece to come off as very confusing. For example, while it notes that the average age for (heterosexual) sex among women is still 17 (showing that sex trends have stayed pretty much the same) they begin the stat with, "Sex surveys are notoriously unreliable, but..."

I stopped taking the article seriously when the discussion seemed to shift towards Dan Kindlon's Alpha Girls which contends that, "Girls born after 1990 live in a world where they have ready access to organized sports, safe contraception and Ivy League colleges." HA!

The history of scrutiny that famous women have been subjected to due to their "immoral behavior" such as dating/marrying multiple men (or any other behavior which male stars do as well but are barely acknowledged) was discussed, but there was no analysis of these findings or merely a "WTF?"

Now does this mean I think Paris Hilton is an adequate role model for girls? Helllll no. The thought sort of disturbs me, particularly the class issues involved with so many girls' obsession with Paris and Prada. (Which the article does touch on.) But I still have a wee problem with an article that denies gender issues exist but can discuss the moral issues involved with teen girls having a sexual identity.

In short, any piece that seriously uses the terms "the Brit Pack," "Alpha Girls" and "Prosti-tots" is a bad sign.

I never really looked to Miss World 1996 and well-known actress Aishwarya Rai for feminist leadership. I mean, she was "the one" South Asian woman to break into the US mainstream and although, I can't relate to her as much as say Harold and Kumar or Parminder Nagra, I took her success for what it was. Clearly, recognizing that for an actress from India to (begin to) make it in Hollywood (and Bollywood), she would naturally have light skin, light eyes and flowing hair.

But now she has Indian feminists upset along with women's activist in the states by supposedly marrying a tree to overcome a curse, after being proposed to by another Bollywood actor.

Via New American Media.

Abhishek, also a film star, proposed to her last month in New York, following the release of their film, “Guru,� there. The wedding is expected to take place later this year.

But Ash is reportedly blighted with what in astrological terms is described as “manglik dosh,� which means that the planet Mars (mangla) and possibly even the planet Saturn are in the seventh house. People with manglik dosh are prone to multiple marriages, according to San Francisco Bay Area Vedic astrologer Pandit Parashar. That means Ash’s marriage to Abhishek could either end in divorce or his death.

Multiple marriages? Imagine the blasphemy! No but really, we all read a little astrology no? (I read a lot.)

In Hindu tradition, in order to offset the evil influence of manglik dosh, a woman should marry a peepal or banana tree before she ties the knot with her fiancé. Or she could even marry a clay urn, which should be broken soon after the nuptial ceremonies, signifying that the bride has become a widow, and the manglik dosh problem has been solved.

Er. Yes it is an old tradition. So the question is, do we expect that Rai, since she has had all this Western success, will no longer follow what she believes is her Hindu traditions? Or that she is somehow absolved from familial pressure?

Probably not. Some Indian feminists however believe that she is setting women back.

Meanwhile, Ash’s actions have invoked the wrath of feminists and women’s rights activists in India. Shruti Singh, a Patna lawyer, filed suit against the two families, saying such ceremonies are in violation of the Indian Constitution and offensive to women.

“I agree with her,� says India-born Berkeley resident Shobha Hiatt, a women’s rights advocate. “It is shocking that people as forward thinking as the Bachchans should engage in such archaic practices. It is like moving back in time.�

Thoughts?

Tab: Because no one remembers a fatass.

Linda Nieves-Powell is the president and CEO of the multimedia entertainment company, Latino Flavored Productions, Inc. based in New York, which she founded in 1995. As well as a playwright, author, mother, wife, and entrepreneur.

I spoke with Linda over the phone in November. Here’s Linda…

Girlistic Magazine debuted December 1 on Girlistic.com, “Your Ultimate Feminist Resource.� Based in the Central Coast of California, Jaymi Heimbuch and her partner April Weiland launched Girlistic.com in mid-July.

Described as being the end result of a threesome with Ms., Bitch, and Bust, Girlistic Magazine is available online and in a PDF format for free in-hand access. Features include: interviews, editorials, profiles, essays, and reviews.

Here’s Jaymi…

If you have the time, check out my interview with Rha Goddess and JLove Calderon, editors of We Got Issues! A Young Woman's Guide to a Bold, Courageous and Empowered Life. They have lots of powerful things to say. Happy Thursday!

UPDATE (Jessica): Hey, just wanted to say that I just started reading this book and it's fucking awesome. I'm planning on doing a full review, but just wanted to sing it's praises here as well.

Photo by Rosalia Rivera

Caridad De La Luz, whose name translated in English from Spanish means “Charity of Light,� is a slam poet, screenplay writer, actor, hip hop artist and reggaeton artist, and social justice activist. I saw Caridad perform as La Bruja this fall at a human rights forum provided by Breakthrough, an international human rights organization. She’s also married, and the mother of an 8-year-old boy and a 6-year-old girl.

Caridad has appeared on HBO’s Russell Simmons’ “Def Poetry Jam.� Is the author of the highly successful one-woman comedy show, “Boogie Rican Blvd.� Was Cuca in Spike Lee’s “Bamboozled� in 2000. And played Lucky in the Sundance-winning 2004 film “Down to the Bone.� She just released her latest CD, “Brujalicious.� It’s all about hip hop, reggaeton, social justice, and good beats.

For non-Spanish speakers, “La Bruja� means “The Witch.� I’ll let her explain. Here’s Caridad…

The New York Times is once again on the cutting edge in identifying trends. This time they've noticed that a lot of women use Halloween as an excuse to get tarted up. It prompted me to look at some Halloween costumes online, and I noticed this one Target is selling:

I wonder if they also sell a Virgin/Whore costume -- Purity Ball gown on one side, and thigh-high vinyl boots on the other?

But getting back to the NYT article, this comment was interesting:

Perhaps, say some scholars, it could even be good. Donning one of the many girlish costumes that sexualize classic characters from books, including “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,� “Cinderella� and “The Wizard of Oz,� can be campy, female sartorial humor, said Professor Gill. It can be a way to embrace the fictional characters women loved as children while simultaneously taking a swipe at them, she said. “The humor gives you a sense of power and confidence that just being sexy doesn’t,� she said.

But how many women actually choose these costumes as a way to subvert the feminine fictional characters of their childhood? I'm guessing next to none. That's why the "Post-post-post feminism?" caption on one of the photos is pretty unfair. Sure, I can see an argument for how "exploring the construction of female sexuality" with your Halloween costume might be a feminist (or post-feminist) act. But the caption is on a photo of a woman dressed as a sexy witch. Not much subversion going on there.

The firing of Melanie Martinez, 34, marks the second PBS moral values scandal. The first was the censorship of the “Postcards from Buster� episode last year where Buster the Bunny, who regularly visits families in every episode, went to visit a family with two mommies. Previous families featured in “Postcards� episodes have included Mormons, Hmong and Pentecostal Christians.

Melanie Martinez was fired from her position as host of PBS KIDS Sprout's "The Good Night Show" because she appeared in two 30-second online films when she was 27, “Technical Virgin� and “Boys Can Wait,� that spoofed abstinence-only education. The PBS ombudsman dedicated two of his columns to voice his opposition to the firing of Melanie, but her job wasn’t saved. Melanie says there is no lawsuit in sight.

I spoke with Melanie one Tuesday afternoon in September, until her 4-year-old son said, “Mommy, I’ve been waiting a long time.� Here’s Melanie…

Because only a woman with three boobs is worth more than a brewsky.

Via Liberal Debutante.

“Fighting discrimination with facts, humor and fake fur!�—that’s the motto of the internationally acclaimed anonymous activist artist group, The Guerrilla Girls. The Guerrilla Girls celebrated their 20th anniversary last year, and have no plans of stopping.

I spoke with Frida Kahlo, one of the founding members of the Guerrilla Girls, one early morning this summer. We also caught up a bit over email. The Guerrilla Girls are extremely busy with a lot of projects. Their next sighting will be at the Istanbul Modern Museum in Turkey, October 17 and 18.

Here’s Frida…

Before I even begin an entry on popular hip hop culture I have to shout out that I went to see Lupe Fiasco and Talib Kweli last night and it was fantastic. It reminded me of the amazing work some rappers are doing in the face of 'pimp' and 'ho' culture, to keep hip hop tied in to what it has always been about, liberation through beats and rhymes.

So while bopping my head to some educated lyrics, including critiques of the Iraq war to that crazy notion of respecting women, I was forced to ask, what the hell is up with this 'pimp chic' business and what impact is it having on young women and men today. Is there anything empowering about young men calling themselves 'pimp' or trying to be a pimp and young women acting like 'hoes'?

Kira Cochrane from the Guardian says. . .

When did the verb "to pimp" become a positive thing? What it means is "to exploit and degrade women" - to sell them for sex and take the profits.

It's this attitude that, in recent years, has allowed the term pimp to become a hugely successful marketing hook, with the rapper Nelly hawking the drink Pimp Juice, The Pimp Watch becoming a timepiece of choice; It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp winning last year's Oscar for best song, and pimp Halloween costumes (big hats, bling and exotically-lapelled suits) being marketed to pre-teens.

I think we can agree glamorizing sex trafficking is just not okay. But I am also cautious to evaluate the racialized underpinnings of the movement. We see pimp chic culture playing out in young communities of color and naturally the blame goes on their shoulders. But are young *urban* youth to blame? And are they the only consumers? Hell no.

'Pimp chic' is a capitalist commodity that is carefully assembled and distributed as a product to be consumed. What makes it dangerous is that it is a cultural commodity, so it is not just about buying pimp juice, but actually acting out the parts and believing that it is cool to do so. In a culture that values consumerism as a basic tenet, it is no wonder that something so clearly not empowering to communities of color, can be distributed and consumed with such success.

Cochrane continues. . .

The mainstreaming of the word pimp obviously does damage with its disregard towards women and its degradation of male and female relationships. It also does damage to young black men. Every mainstream stereotype we have of young black men is negative, and the pimp stereotype - pimps are usually portrayed as being black - is perhaps the most prominent and the most negative of all.

In popular culture, powerful black men aren't generally lawyers or doctors or politicians - as they are in real life - but men who beat and control and steal from women. As film director Spike Lee has said: "We are bombarded by these gangsta images again and again and again ... [and] they do make a difference to human behaviour. No one gets upset any more that pimpdom gets elevated on a pedestal." Perhaps it's about time that we did.

And to just add to that, who is responsible for the circulation of these images? And how does white America benefit from youth of color internalizing these images?

Austin Young

Standup comic diva Margaret Cho has been working the burlesque scene since April in her show “The Sensuous Woman.� It plays the third Wednesday of every month in Los Angeles at El Cid, and monthly in San Francisco at The Plush Room. She hopes to take it monthly to New York City starting in October, and is working on booking a Minnesota show with local burlesque troupe Foxy Tann and the Wham Bam Thank You Ma'ams for December 8th.

Margaret is also still doing standup, and incorporates comedy in all of her burlesque shows. She spoke to me from her home in Glendale, California. Here’s Margaret…

The latest issue of Clamor Magazine hits newsstands September 1, and features extensive coverage of American Apparel's "co-opting of progressive values to hype an otherwise less-than progressive workplace." It features parody ads like the one above, which reads:

Kristina, born to an Iranian mom and Belgian pop, is a native Ohioan. She’s seen here sporting an emerald 100% cotton racerback tank. Unfortunately, her brand devotion to AA could never land her a spot in their ads: Dov Charney thinks short hair on girls is “unnatural.�

Indeed, Kristina would never make the cut at AA. Female employees/models must be fully waxed and stripped down to their tube socks. Sure, the company's sexed-up ads feature half-naked and provocatively posed men, too. But the female ads are far more condescending. Compare these two ads, both selling AA's "Summer Shirt":

Meet Melissa. She won an unofficial wet T-shirt contest held at the American Apparel apartment in Montreal. Her prize for winning was a travel mug from McGill University, and the satisfaction of a job well done. Melissa is wearing our new ultralight Sheer Jersey T-Shirt, AKA "The Summer Shirt," available at our stores and online.

And the male version?

Meet Memo. He's a 31-year-old creative director living in Mexico City (where this polaroid was taken). Memo is wearing our Summer Shirt with bootleg Playboy Bunny briefs from a street market down there.

Yeah. As John Straub writes in Clamor, "The company possesses a downtown textile factory straight out of the ’40s, a sexploitation ad campaign from the ’70s, and a marketing strategy so sophisticated it almost seems to come from the future. Old-world manufacturing paternalism meets sexy transnational marketing: has American Apparel vertically integrated different eras of capitalism?"

Charney & Co. are less than pleased with Clamor's coverage, and are threatening the tiny indie magazine with legal action. I think this means the folks at Clamor have struck a nerve and are doing something right. Props to the editors/writers for pointing out that AA's non-sweatshop stance doesn't make up for its proto-porn advertising campaigns or the fact that Charney reportedly thinks sexual harassment is OK as long as you're a hipster.

A little frivolity, but YAY! I don't really know how popular N-Sync is anymore, but more gay role models in the media and the happier we all are.

Lance Bass, band member of 'N Sync, says he's gay and in a "very stable" relationship with a reality show star. Bass, who formed 'N Sync with Justin Timberlake, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone and Chris Kirkpatrick, tells People magazine that he didn't earlier disclose his sexuality because he didn't want to affect the group's popularity.

"I knew that I was in this popular band and I had four other guys' careers in my hand, and I knew that if I ever acted on it or even said (that I was gay), it would overpower everything," he tells the magazine.

Silly boy, they have a HUGE gay male fan base. It would have been a PR gold mine. He does look happy though, don't he.

via Newsday.

Because I have a weakness for both sewing and trashy TV, I'm a total Project Runway addict.

For this week's challenge, designers were paired off to make pageant gowns for Miss America. One team, composed of the truly crazy Vincent and always-annoying Angela, bickered the entire time. Angela at one point refused to help at all, and Vincent later demanded she stay 3 feet away from the dress form. In short, they were both acting like children.

At the end of the day, Vincent was complaining to other male contestants about having to work with Angela. And Jeffrey Sebelia (he of the nasty neck tattoo and even nastier attitude) poked his head around the corner to say, "I got one word for ya: FEMINAZI!"

I'm not defending Angela's design skills or behavior (or taste, for that matter), but that seems totally ridiculous. And this isn't the first time "feminazi" has been used as an insult on the show to describe a woman who disagrees with a self-righteous male designer.

Project Runway (season 1) winner Jay McCarroll mentioned the term Feminazi to describe eBay Style Director Constance White during the show's "Making A Splash" challenge, where White was a guest judge. It was said to fellow contestant Robert Plotkin, who earlier was criticized by White for his oft-quoted comparison of women to sports cars.

I missed Season 1 due to lack of access to premium cable, but it makes me wonder how a proudly, openly feminist contestant would fare on the show. It's no secret that feminists and fashion haven't always gotten along. But I think the two can definitely coexist, and would even venture to say that learning to make clothes, DIY-style, is definitely a feminist act. (And can be feminist activism, too!)

Regina Spektor
Begin to Hope
Sire Records (2006)

Some likened Regina Spektor’s previous work and success as an anomaly—cutesy music from a cutesy girl, a shiny new thing that would lose its appeal all too quickly once the “Next Big Thing� luster went bust. And ya know, who could blame them? Her last album IS titled Soviet Kitsch, after all. Well, tell them haters to shove it because Begin to Hope is auditory divinity.

The kookiness is still there, but Spektor has made it much more endearing, her lilting vocals sailing over punchy piano pieces, simple drumbeats and the occasional cameo from a backing band. “Better,� a series of coquettish conditionals, gets the album started proper, and “On the Radio� is curious and uplifting, a welcome change to the many pop songstresses out there who think they have to sing “sad� (and typically lyrically empty) songs to be taken seriously.

This isn’t to say she’s pitch perfect here. “That Time� does a superb job of making you sentimental over your own set of funny memories until Spektor asks “Remember that time you OD’ed?,� which left me feeling panicky, then cheated from some silly and overtly “bizarre� wordplay. Still, Spektor shows some range on her first major label effort, and that’s something to believe in. As she sings in “Hotel Song,� “Come into my world.� Begin to Hope is reason enough to do just that.

You must check out this Alternet article (via The Huffington Post) about this weird new pop culture trend of describing masculinity that involves straight men’s apathy of the mating game.

A number of commercials are coming out that are pushing this idea, such a guy choosing a taco over a hot woman or prefers a beer over his girlfriend. It's this regression back to a boy’s mentality where �girls are a pain, a disappointment, and rather dangerous to the soul.�

Susie Bright argues that this seemingly innocuous trend points to a larger problem with masculinity, sexuality, and overmedication.

What do you think?

Related: Also check out Lakshmi Chaudhry’s article, “Growing Up to Be Boys.�

Ludacris has narrated a new women's basketball documentary, which he says will empower women:

One of my main reasons in doing it is because of how powerful I think it is for ladies to watch it. We have a lot of problems and troubles with the youth, period, but it's the young women who need to be especially strong at this point. [...] I want to empower the young ladies out there. It's about women's battles on and off the court.

Like women's battle not to be seen as meat? The cover of his album Chicken-n-Beer features Ludacris salting a woman's leg and getting ready to bite into it. (Sexual Politics of Meat, anyone?)

He's also said:

"People give hip hop a bad rap. It's the easy cop out. Everybody wants to blame us for everything... By me doing this documentary about empowering women, I can lead by example."

His example? "Bitch your pussy smell like Pepe Le Peu. / You filthy, nasty, sick in the head, / Sittin' in my dressin' room with dick on your breath." Off the court, women are surely empowered by such Ludacris hits as "Hoes in My Room," "Ho" and "Move Bitch."

Ludacris is first and foremost a multi-platinum hip-hop artist, not a professional narrator. His lyrics reach a much wider audience than the documentary ever will, and his involvement in one project that positively portrays women doesn't counteract the overwhelmingly negative messages in his music.

The documentary, "The Heart of the Game," is getting great reviews. Right now it's only showing in New York and LA, but will open in wider release on Friday.

The New York Times reports the ghastly news that petites sections are disappearing from high-end department stores, and some short, older, mostly wealthy (these stores are expensive) women are upset.

While stores may appear to be "long obsessed with that Seventh Avenue archetype, the tall, thin, leggy lady," I can say definitively, as a slender woman who's 6'2", they don't actually make clothes to fit us, either. My inseam is 36 inches. which means the average pair of pants is between six and four inches too short for me. Sleeve length is an even bigger issue-- I've gotten used to bare wrists.

I certainly have nothing against shorter women, but I can't help but get pissed off when I read articles like this. Women who are shorter than 5'3" have more clothing options than many of us on other ends of the spectrum. You can always have clothes taken in and shortened, but you can't magically extend sleeves and pant legs (or expand waistlines or bustlines, for that matter). So some while short women are whining about not being able to find whole sections of clothing tailored to fit them, I have NEVER seen a section of a store devoted to attire for the long-limbed.

But I'll also say that I've never met any woman who doesn't complain about finding clothes to fit her body. The traditional sizing system is seriously flawed. It doesn't work for women of a variety of shapes. Stores that have switched to more specific sizing-- a variety of cuts, lengths, widths, etc.-- have been met with rave reviews.

This is why I learned to sew. I'm much happier for it.

Sonic Youth
Rather Ripped
Geffen Records (2006)

Indie rock legends Sonic Youth burst out of the summer music pack with their latest album, Rather Ripped, to be released June 13 on Geffen Records. Though predictably unpredictable in terms of musical experimentation, the group delivers its characteristic guitar renderings and thoughtful lyricism, appealing to devoted fans and new initiates alike.

The former five-piece has been trimmed to four, as producer and multi-instrumentalist Jim O’Rourke left the band to pursue his film studies. Over the final days of 2005 and into early this year, the band recorded and mixed twelve new songs, each with a touch of sonic splendor and liberation that SY is known for.

Rather Ripped begins with driving tracks “Reena� and “Incinerate� and quickly transitions to curious and midbeat “Do You Believe in Rapture?� The trademark guitar sound is present on “Sleeping Around� and “Turquoise Boy.� Quirky, art-punk verse is found throughout. On “Rats,� a song that speaks of closeness and separation with lyrics such as “You could be my open road/You could be the reason why/You could ease my heavy load/But I’m gonna freeze you out.�

For those familiar with Sonic Youth, the new album doesn’t map much new territory, but for newbies, the only thing you can expect about the noise rock troubadours is their inventiveness. The band’s appearance on the season finale of Gilmore Girls further confirms the group’s status in the mainstream. In sleepy album closer “Or,� co-vocalist Thurston Moore asks, “What comes first, the music or the words?� Thankfully for us, both aspects are present, strong and carry through to the end.

SY+YYYs in an empty Williamsburg pool this August = Y can't I be a New York girl? Presale tix start in mere hours, so get on with it here.

Peep the song titles and lyrics and stream the album here.

I'll admit to indulging in the occasional game of Dance Dance Revolution or its spinoff, Karaoke Revolution. But the latest in the video game series, Maiden Love Revolution, is truly disgusting.

Players assume the role of 220-pound Hitomi Sakurakawa as she struggles to slim down - mostly by restricting her diet. To advance, Hitomi must count calories and increase her exercise. The game keeps stats on her progress and ultimately rewards her conformity with a boyfriend.

Because thin is synonymous with self-improvement, and a boyfriend is the ultimate reward. Ugh. Why didn't they call it Eating Disorder Revolution?

Who knew it was Female Stereotype Awards Week? Swiffer just announced the winners of its "Amazing Woman of the Year" contest, and Maxim released its annual Hot 100 list.

Most of the Swiffer honorees actually appear to be doing something in addition to cleaning the house, from running camps for foster kids to writing rape shield legislation. "These five women have been chosen for their amazing contributions to their family, career and local community," as the press release puts it. But it's clear that "family" is the one hard and fast requirement. Childless women apparently fail to amaze the Swiffer judges. All winners are identified in the first sentence as mothers, which makes sense because of course mommy does all the housework.

And Maxim once again names 100 celebrity women who have "a tremendous amount of buzz surrounding them, undeniable beauty and a promise of greater things to come." Translation: Famous women willing to be slathered with Vaseline and photographed in porny poses. There are some smart, funny, outspoken women on their list (Sarah Silverman, for example), but they're predictably recognized for their bodies and not their accomplishments.

If you want to see some women recognized for more than their tight asses and spotless kitchen floors, just wait a few months. The REAL hot 100 will be announced soon. And women don't have to be wearing either a wet negligee or Mom Jeans to make the list.

I know I’m posting this three months too early, but I just had to do it.

You must check out this new book that’s being released in August about the marketing schemes that are being used to make girls into boy-crazy, pink-obsessed shopoholics.

Packaging Girlhood: Rescuing Our Daughters From Marketers’ Schemes is a parent guide on how to teach girls to subvert the market and the media that essentially “packages� their girlhood. Here’s a snippet of their mission statement:

“We show parents the image of girls (sexy, diva, boy-crazy, shoppers) that's being packaged and sold, pretty in pink. We write about how ‘girl power’ has been co-opted by marketers of music, fashion, books, cartoons, TV shows, movies, toys, and more to mean the power to shop and attract boys, and how girls are encouraged to use their ‘voice’ to choose accessorizing over academics, sex appeal over sports, and boyfriends over friends. We expose these stereotypes and the very limited choices presented of who girls are and what they can be.�

Hell yes. I love this catchphrase the most:

“You can’t turn off the world; so teach your daughter to READ it and read it well.�

Do you think it would be okay to buy the book even if I don’t have daughter?

I happened to see a billboard a few blocks away from house the other day and almost barfed. While I’ve listened to New York’s 92.3 KROCK’s music here and there, I was a bit shocked to see a huge picture of the woman above, The RadioChick, and the two sentences that threw me for a loop.

“Built like a woman. Thinks like a man.�

Ew.

I checked out her site and it doesn’t get much better. The first program description I read was about The Chick on Chicks, where she assures men that she’ll help them with their “women� issues, including:

“Want to cheat on your girl and not get caught? She’ll tell you how. Maybe your girlfriend is pressuring you to get married, and you’re not ready...the chick will tell you how to string her along successfully.�

Other shows include Gay for a Grand, The Wheel of Wife Beaters, and The Flaming Stripper BBQ. While I haven't been able to find specifics of the programs, I’m anticipating that they aren’t too tasteful.

Has anyone heard this chick (ha, that was totally accidental) on the air?

Should we be surprised?

Simpson actually turned down the invitation to attend a GOP fundraiser. She was on Capitol Hill yesterday to lobby for Operation Smile (which provides reconstructive surgery to children with deformities). When she discovered that the GOP was more of a fundraiser for the Republican party than anything, she declined the invite.

In reponse to her decline, House Majority Leader John Boehner said, "You know, I really feel like I got bagged."

Geez. I was waiting for him to add, “No one rejects our invitation! NO ONE!!!”

Rachel Kramer Bussel at the Village Voice takes on the question of hetero dating and who pays--is it sad that I really didn’t know this was still a dating issue? I thought at least with younger folks this wouldn't really even be a question. (My boyfriend insists that I must live in an alternate universe.)

Apparently--and I really do feel kind of foolish admitting that I thought otherwise--it’s still considered pretty standard for the guy to pay for dates.

Most women claim the guy should pay, regardless of who asked whom out or who makes more money. Like it or not, the tradition's a stubborn holdover from past eras when women couldn't afford to go halfsies. Lauren Henderson, author of Jane Austen's Guide to Dating (Hyperion, 2005), believes paying is a sign of respect. "Symbols are important, and a man who can't buy a woman dinner on their first date is a man who will be emotionally deficient at making a woman feel cared about," she elaborates. "Men need caretaking, but their need doesn't express itself in having dinner bought for them. Men want their ego bolstered by feeling strong, capable, and necessary."

(Puke.) I just don’t get it. Do guys agree with this? How does spending cash make someone feel necessary?

The only situations where someone has paid for my dates on a semi-regular basis has been when I was seeing someone who made significantly more money than I did and wanted to go places that I just couldn’t afford. But otherwise, I can’t really imagine not paying. It seems so weird. I also find it kind of insulting--I’m not a child, I can manage to feed and entertain myself.

I suppose it’s easier--as Bussel points out--when you’re actively dating someone and can just go by the I’ll-get-this-one, you-get-the-next-one way of paying.

Seems to me that even having to think about something like this kind of ruins the fun of dating.

Any thoughts?

The mainstream media's sexual imaginary is a growing capitalist venture and increased visibility of women's overt sexuality continues to grab attention. The ongoing battle about the commodification of terms such as "pimp" and "ho" in music, video, advertising and film is a complicated one that plays off different stereotypes about women's sexuality and men's masculinity. What is up with the popularization of "pimp chic" and how do racial stereotypes interplay with the construction of these sexualized identities?

Anita Roddick President of The Body Shop speaks out against the use of the terms and the marketing of these images. She says,

"A lot of people seem to think that it's cool to be a pimp or whore. It's not cool. The reality is dark, evil and appalling and unregulated. The reality is sex trafficking, which is about young women being forced into rooms to have sex however many times a day so that the pimp can take all the money."

Now I have to say I agree with this. But I think there is more then just a lack of education as to the dangers and reality of sex trafficking in this equation. Pimp/ho culture or as the article calls it "pimp chic" is a manifestation of capitalist desire playing out in exaggerated sexual (and racial) stereotypes. It is the American dream.

Dame Anita criticised stars such as Beyoncé and Britney Spears for simulating sex in their music videos, and highlighted the trend among some hip hop artists to make porn films to be marketed alongside the graphic lyrics of their songs. "What we have now is what I call "pimp and ho chic" with all aspects of the sex industry presented as hip and cool," she said."Pole dancing as exercise, lap-dancing clubs as places to see celebrities, fancy-dress balls and the everyday use of the words "bitch" and "ho" to refer to women are just some of the examples I have come across."

Glamorizing pimps and hoes is problematic, I think that point is obvious. But I think there is a fine line between being portrayed/objectified as a "ho" and being empowered about your own sexuality (or profession as the case may be). I think a lot of women in media ARE empowered and visible in their sexuality and not just within the constraints of a male vision of sexy, but one that they own. Or is that empowerment just more marketing and feeding into dominant ideas of sexy (which are usually determined by male/capitalist desire)?

Spike Lee has also come out against "pimp culture."

He said: "We are bombarded by these gangsta images again and again and again and again ... they do make a difference to human behaviour. No one gets upset any more that pimpdom gets elevated on a pedestal."

So we have the age-old is this empowerment/visibility for women and men (often of color who historically are left out of the mainstream) or objectification and fetishizing of women as "hoes" and men as "pimps"?

via The Independent.

Oh and I made the mistake of looking up the word "hoes" on urban dictionary. Read and weep.