Recently in Television Category

Okay, I think It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is super funny. This video promoting it, however, is not.

Thanks to Daniel for the link.

Attention women over 35! Did you think that your days of desperately trying to fit in with unrealistic beauty standards were over? Guess again! The new TV show "She's Got the Look" gives women of all ages the chance to feel insecure and unworthy!

When will the madness stop?

Ellen rocks my world. Jill makes a good point that there are biggie reporters who wouldn't be this direct with him. Big ups!

In the wake of the California Supreme Court's decision to overturn the state's same sex marriage ban, Ellen DeGeneres announced her plans to wed girlfriend and actress Portia de Rossi on her television show yesterday.

She received a standing ovation from her audience.

Thanks to Think Progress for the vid!

Contributed by Julia Serano

I had about seven different conflicting thoughts/emotions upon viewing this video:

1) Oh my god, I *cannot* believe that companies are actually using personal endorsements from transgender-spectrum people to help sell their products to non-trans women. How groundbreaking!

2) And at the same time, how disturbing! I think I am experiencing the same queasy feeling right now that old-school gay/queer rights activists most certainly felt when beer companies first began offering to sponsor pride parades and queer events.

3) Great, just what we need: more fodder for feminists who insist that those of us on the trans feminine spectrum are all merely “parodies� and “caricatures� of women and that we propagate sexist stereotypes.

4) Haven’t I written about depictions like this one before?

5) As a transsexual woman, I can’t help but notice how dependent this ad is on the concept of “drag�—that is, the fact that the subject in the video identifies as a boy and that their feminine gender expression is depicted as a “performance� or an “impersonation.� The commercial would have an entirely different meaning (and would evoke a very different emotional reaction) if it featured a trans woman who fully and unapologetically identified as female. For this reason, this video will likely annoy a lot of transsexuals because it forwards the “trans = fake� trope that is too often used to marginalize us.

6) Memo to Phillips: The “Like all men he’s not great with pain� line isn’t funny. Making fun of men is just as sexist as making fun of women. And besides, when your commercial consists of nothing but stereotypically hyper-feminine imagery, you can’t make up for it all at the end with one, apparently ironic, pseudo-feminist dis on men.

7) And one more thing: I hope the makers of Secret deodorant sue you for essentially stealing their “Strong enough for a man, but made for a woman� campaign.

Thanks to Jessica for the link.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, and biologist.

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.

So I don't know about you, but I am a HUGE fan of the HBO series the Wire. I haven't written about it much because I was watching it mostly in the month that I was not present here due to personal issues. Ironically, the Wire ended up being the reason I had to move out of my apartment because the not-so-well man living below me thought that the Wire was my actual life which was how he justified that I was trying to have him killed. Yes, he thought I was running a drug cartel out of my house and he knew about it and I was therefore trying to have him killed. But I digress.

I have so many favorite Wire characters that it is hard to rank them. But I have to say for those of you who have seen season 4, Felicia Pearson, who plays Snoop is awesome. She is one of the most terrifying characters ever written into television. Interestingly, she is not a trained actor but was discovered by Omar at a bar (you can here about it on fresh air) and was one of the local Baltimorians included in the HBO hit. Somehow my homies at Wiretap were able to get an interview with her which is apparently very hard to do. Check it out here.

Depictions of sexuality and gender are very complicated in this HBO series. From gay gang bangers to lesbian cops you get the full gamut of gender and sexual identities. I think the honesty of Felicia's character and the subtle ways she resembles other women's lives is notable to say the least. Her character is not a common one and therefore I think makes it groundbreaking.

Who is your favorite Wire character? (You can have more than one, hehe).

But I find this really disturbing.

It's not the first hyper-masculine, sexist ad the show has run (see after the jump), but this over the top. While it does seem like Henry VIII's character is also sexualized in other ads and the show (the series itself seems to exude sex), spousal strangulation is just not screaming "hot" to me.

(The picture actually makes me wonder if it's a precursor to Anne Boleyn's beheading, which would make it even more unsettling; although I tend to doubt SHO is trying to incorporate historical cues into their marketing.)

I'm really curious to know how fans of the show feel about this image.

Sexism, racist stereotypes, general assholery - it's all here folks.

Thanks to nursing student Sara for passing this along, who was just as appalled as we were. Regarding the actual story, it looks like the nurses are rightfully pressing charges against the clinic. The Chair of the Nurses Working Committee said, "We feel like ornaments in the skirts. We don't have freedom of movement and can't bend over to tend to patients. We are made to expose our bodies to do our work." Let's hope they get justice.

Over at Shakesville they’re collecting photos flipping off Jay Leno for being, as usual, a sexist, homophobic ass. Actor Ryan Phillppe was on Leno’s show, and mentioned that his first acting job was playing a gay teenager on a soap opera. Leno kept bugging him to look into the camera and give his “gayest look.� Phillppe declined. But Shakesville readers are happy to share. Go check it out.

More at My Gayest Look for Leno.

Margaret Cho is getting her own reality show on VH1.

THE CHO SHOW (7 Episodes - 30 Minutes)

Thirteen years after her catastrophic foray into television, Margaret Cho is triumphantly returning to television in a new reality-sitcom on VH1 in "The Cho Show." This time it's on her own terms.

Margaret burst onto the scene in 1994 with her sitcom "All American Girl" and her struggles with the network over that show are legendary. After the show was canceled, Margaret channeled all of that negative energy from her network experience into a wealth of comedy material that fueled her rise as one of the hottest comics in the business.

This VH1 series will follow the irrepressible Margaret Cho and her eccentric entourage as she fights to be herself in an industry that in the past wanted her to be something other than herself. The series will touch upon all aspects of Margaret's "anything goes" lifestyle, from the strained and awkward moments provided by her somewhat traditional Korean parents to the more irreverent and outrageous moments shared with her colorful cast of friends and colleagues.

Related: Margaret Cho's blog!

Thanks to Matt for the link.

If you don't have time to watch the video or read the transcript of Bill Maher's bit about Clinton, the point seems to be "bitches are crazy with all their moods."

Please note my complete lack of surprise that Bill Maher is being a jerk. Apparently having different tones over the course of a few weeks is the same as having different personalities. Now, I can understand his confusion, since Maher can only manage to be a smug asshole.

It would be really helpful to me if misogynists could all get on the same page about why they hate Hillary Clinton. Is she cold or a hysterical woman? Can we get some consistency here?

Love it.

Thanks to Amie for the link!

While just a couple of months ago, we were thrilled to find that Wonder Woman comic books are going to have a female "ongoing writer" for the first time, Playboy has some other plans in mind for the heroine. Playmate of 2005, Tiffany Fallon, is featured on the cover naked with a Wonder Woman suit painted on her. The article begins:

You know the painted lady on the cover as Playmate of the Year 2005 Tiffany Fallon, but to usher you into the story, Sex in America, we recast her as that champion of truth, justice, and American sensuality, Wonder Woman. Tiffany, a modern-day Lynda Carter, has been honing her TV skills. She appeared on The Simple Life with Paris Hilton, became a weekly co-host for the international Fight League's Battleground and accompanied her country music star husband, Jon Doe Rooney of Rascal Flats, to numerous award shows. What's next? 'I've been filming The Celebrity Apprentice,' says Tiffany. (Emphasis mine)

Is this really the face of today's Wonder Woman? A reality TV show "bombshell"? And to compare Fallon to Lynda Carter, who was not only a kick-ass Wonder Woman but also a kick-ass, outspoken feminist?? While I'm aware that this is Playboy, it just seems too representative of how American television has such a dire need for strong female characters like Lynda Carter's Wonder Woman. And ironically, the only "real women" that we have are the Tiffany Fallons and Paris Hiltons of America.

The oh-so-enlightened show Wife Swap is featuring a "fanatical feminist" (cue scary music) in their season premiere.

Dude, Sherri Shepherd just pisses me off.

THIS is your "ew" for the day.

Contributed by Julia Serano

Tomorrow, Tuesday, November 20th will be the 9th Annual Transgender Day of Remembrance, which memorializes those who are killed due to anti-transgender hatred or prejudice. Trans people are often targeted for violence because their gender presentation, appearance and/or anatomy falls outside the norms of what is considered acceptable for a woman or man. A large percentage of trans people who are killed are prostitutes, and their murders often go unreported or underreported due to the public presumption that those engaged in sex work are not deserving of attention or somehow had it coming to them.

Some trans people are killed as the result of being denied medical services specifically because of their trans status, for example, Tyra Hunter, a transsexual woman who died in 1995 after being in a car accident. EMTs who arrived on the scene stopped providing her with medical care—and instead laughed and made slurs at her—upon discovering that she had male genitals.

Much of the violence that is directed at trans people is predicated on the myth of deception. For example, straight men who become attracted to trans women sometimes erupt into homophobic/transphobic rage and violence upon discovering that the woman in question was born male. Perhaps the most well known of such cases is that of Gwen Araujo, who was bludgeoned to death by a four men, two of whom she had been sexually intimate with. Despite the fact that the men plotted her murder a week in advance, defense lawyers insisted that the murder was merely manslaughter because the defendants were victims of Gwen’s “sexual deceit.�

In the spirit of “deception,� Fox as been airing the British reality series "There's Something About Miriam" all this past weekend (and one of these airings actually falls on Transgender Day of Remembrance). For those who unfamiliar with the show, it follows a group of bachelors who try to court a young attractive woman. The catch is that in the very last episode, she comes out to them as transsexual. The original 2004 UK broadcast of the show was delayed for several months because the bachelors threatened to sue the show’s producers, alleging that they had been victims of defamation, personal injury, and conspiracy to commit “sexual assault�—this last charge apparently stems from the fact that several of them had kissed and hugged Miriam. The affair was eventually settled out of court, with each man coming away with a reported $100,000.

Few attempts to blame the victim are more blatant than when trans people are accused of “sexual deceit� or “sexual assault� simply because other people have chosen to express their attraction toward us. In reality, it is they who are guilty of cissexual/cisgender assumption (when one presumes that every person they meet is nontrans by default). Trans people simply exist, we are everywhere, and the rest of the world has to start recognizing and accepting that. Programs like "There's Something About Miriam" not only reinforce the stereotype that trans people’s birth sex is “real� and our identified/lived sex is “fake,� but they perpetuate the myth of deception and thus enable violence against us.

Julia Serano is an Oakland, California-based writer, spoken word performer, trans activist, biologist, and author of Whipping Girl: A Transsexual Woman on Sexism and the Scapegoating of Femininity.

Via Jezebel, we find out about perhaps the world's biggest asshole, Michael Karolchyk.

Karolchyk owns a gym in Denver that he calls an "anti-gym.

It has numerous slogans, from "Too chubby; Never find a hubby," to "Have Sex With The Lights On" to "Save The Chubbitos" to "No Chubbies." It also has numerous amenities, including "live DJs, cage dancers, and our elite co-ed Ravish Room." The Ravish Room turns out to be a sauna that admits only members who have reached a sufficiently low body mass index, but you also have to be screened to so much as join his gym, where motivational techniques include having cupcakes hurled at you on the treadmill...

Charming. But nothing, nothing, beats this horrific commercial, "Hottie" in which Karolchyk physically assaults a "chubby" crying woman by pushing her onto a couch (so that her cake smashes up against her full humiliation style) while yelling "Moo!" at her. And that's just the tip of the asshole iceberg. If you can't watch the full commercial, a breakdown is after the jump.

It's stuff like this that makes me just fucking hate people.

Oh, and by the way, if you have the audacity to contact the "Anti-Gym" about their disgusting ads and vile owner, you are a "bearded lady."

I can't decide if I should be horrified or reassured by this video. Probably both. But tell me what you think.

It's from the Tyra Banks show, and features "Dr. Debbie" and a vulva puppet. I'm right with them so far. Unfortunately, since it's her show, Tyra talks too, which is where everything always goes wrong. Watch until the end and you can hear a story About Tyra's mom making her examine herself with a hand mirror before going off to college. And Dr. Debbie telling the audience that women don't pee out of their clits or vaginas.

Obviously I'm not the target demographic for this, but, really? Do women actually think we pee out of the vagina? How would that work? Is urine stored in the uterus? I don't get it. If they exist, then wow, I hope they watched this show. And considering how uh... interesting Tyra's history with talking to women about sex on her show, I guess this is better than nothing. Right?

African reality show Big Brother recently aired the sexual assault of a woman by one of her roommates.

However, viewers of the incident, which took place on Saturday afternoon after an extended drinking bout which ended in copious vomiting and apparent blackout for [29 year-old Ofunneka] Molokwu, remain adamant about what they saw: [24 year-ld Richard] Bezuidenhout lay down next to the comatose young woman and penetrated her vagina with his fingers. He carried on despite the pleas of another female housemate for him stop. Under the law in South Africa - where, on average, a woman is sexually assaulted every 40 seconds - such an act constitutes rape.

Executives at MNet, which airs the show claim that a crime wasn't necessarily committed: "There is no indication that she was unconscious at the time," said Joseph Hundah, an executive at the company. Um, fuck you.

The only thing worse than MNet's response was that of Bezuidenhout, who after the assault "went off to sit by himself while drunkenly sniffing his fingers." When called out for his behavior, Bezuidenhout merely said, "Well, this is Africa." Ahh, male entitlement; it's everywhere.

WE tv is launching a campaign that seeks to register over 1 million women to vote in the 2008 election. Nice. Now if they would just stop running all of those terrible bride shows...

Nice. After discovering The View co-host Elzabeth Hasselbeck's belief that emergency contraception is abortion, it was great to see her idiocy get shut down by Whoopi. (Note: It happens about two minutes in, but is totally worth the wait)

Hat tip (and happy birthday!) to Michael.

I know I'm late to this one, but i figured it was worth posting anyway. A new co-host of The View, Sherri Shepherd, doesn't know whether the earth is round or flat. Because she's too busy being a mom. Or something.

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 #1. Black people get darker in the sun. It's tanning, just like anyone else does. Black skin may, if dark enough, resemble teflon, but it is not. This realization came up when Janjay, the black girl in question, said she didn't want to lay out so she wouldn't get darker. Not that laying out in the sun is such an important pursuit, but it's a shame she feels that way. I'm darker-skinned than anyone in my immediate family, and it's something that sadly comes up a lot. In fact, my grandmother apparently decided to marry my grandfather partially because he was a lot lighter than her, and she wanted light-skinned children.

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?

Big ups to the funny, real, and powerful Tina Fey for her big win at the Emmy Awards last night. Not only is her TV show (she writes, stars, and produces) 30 Rock fresh and original, but she manages to use humor to highlight feminist issues on a pretty consistent basis.

It's nice to see that rewarded in a field that is otherwise dominated by funny men who, yes, we love (did you see that group hug between Carell, Colbert, and Stewart?), but there's nothing like a funny-ass woman to make my day. Oh, expect when that funny-ass woman gets her long overdue props. (P.S. How much do I love Tracy Morgan?)

Congrats also to America Ferrera, the lifeblood of the otherwise so-so Ugly Betty. She looked ridiculous hot in that bright blue dress.

Oh, and another up to Sally Field, who fearlessly addressed the war in the context of motherhood. She was censored by Fox. Big surprise.

Rebecca Traister takes on strong female characters on TV that end up being portrayed as money-grubbing, selfish and more-or-less evil while emasculating the male characters. In short, although showing women as strong and self-sufficient should be anticipated as being progressive, the end result is offensive to women, men, and their relationship with one another. Sigh.

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."

During a discussion of financial news on MSNBC's Hardball, host Chris Matthews told CNBC's Erin Burnett: "You're beautiful," "you're a knockout," and "It's all right getting bad news from you." Uber-professional, I know.

Via Media Matters.

UPDATE: The Carpetbagger Report and Shakes have more.