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Since Jess gives you the full Monty, I thought I'd bless (bore?) you with a couple little pics of one Ms. Kima Greggs. (Yes, she's named after the badass police officer on The Wire). She likes to use my cellphone as a pillow while she reads feministing.
And sometimes she helps me with secretarial duties. I pay her in by graciously scooping her shit. Look, all roommates have agreements. This just happens to be ours.
Feministing friend and vicious intellect Alyssa Quart has a piece online for Mother Jones about the new trend of “fertility films”—Hollywood heartstringers about super independent women finally coming to terms with their maternal urges (Smart People, Baby Mama, Then She Found Me, Juno, Knocked Up, and Happy Endings). In part, Quart is asking: “Are the new fertility film stars actually feminists?”
The answer is complicated. On the one hand, it’s feminist to see women going after what they want. Despite a lot of frustration with Juno on the part of feminists (especially older, in my experience) regarding the abortion scene, I have to admit that I thought it was, big picture, a wildly feminist film. Since when has a teen girl protagonist done anything in Hollywood other than coo-ing? I know my standards are low, but Juno got it right in a lot of ways. And, what’s more, Ellen Page calls herself a feminist in public.
Tina Fey (public disclosure: I have a major thang for Tina) plays an uptight, but certainly self-actualized gal in Baby Mama (where, let’s face it, the real story is about class). To see two female comedians getting top billing and raking in the box office bucks made me happy as a clam (ah vagina puns).
BUT…as we all know, choice doesn’t equal empowerment. Quart writes: “…these films recast the "pro-choice" narrative of feminists' personal and political past as a different, less politically dangerous sort of pro-choice story—a woman's right to choose from a smorgasbord of late fertility options.”
The films also play into oppressive tropes about successful women who don’t prioritize their fertility and then get punished with shitty partners, expensive interventions, and/or a whole lot of heartache. “Silly women,” the screenwriters seem to be saying, “let’s make fun of their plight.” But as Quart reminds us, these scenarios are real—in the beginning. Then the film plots reduce them to ridiculousness: “these films are rather conservative at heart; their entanglements all end far more neatly than their real life counterparts.”
And finally, why all the frickin’ babies? I was reminded of Bella DePaulo’s great work that I reviewed awhile ago. Quart writes: “…these films' endings can't help but make me wonder: Where are the images of exceptional thirty- and fortysomething women without bassinets?”
Good question Ms. Alyssa. Thanks for the analysis.
This might strike y'all as painfully obvious, but I just wanted to make sure that we officially devoted a little gratitude (or, make that a whole lotta) to the suffragettes. We wouldn't even be getting in all these Clinton/Obama shananagins if we didn't have the power to influence who was elected.
Sabrina Chapadjiev’s anthology, Live Through This: On Creativity and Self Destruction, strikes me in all ways as a carefully crafted object—which so few books are these days.
It is small and pleasing, covered in gorgeous art, and filled with important, diverse, beautiful, heartbreaking, original essays/poems/comics/drawings by some of the most fascinating writers I know of: Eileen Myles, Patricia Smith, Kate Bornstein, Toni Blackman, bell hooks etc. But even more, the message about women and madness—something that has been mined to death in some ways—is carefully crafted.
In the preface, Chapadjiev writes: “The glamorization of this issue, combined with the fear and shame built around it, has made understanding self-destructive behaviors almost impossible.” And this is what I’m grateful—immediately—that she understands. As the curator of a book like this, you are charged with the seemingly impossible task of talking about women’s creative impulses, as coupled with their self-destructive ones, without making the pairing look pretty. Or so ugly its romantic. It just is, or as she puts it:
We’ve been taught that self-destruction is an awful thing. “It is bad,” we’ve been told my therapists, psychologists, and those who do not understand its seduction. I would like to edit that. Instead of “It is bad,” I would like for it to read, “It is.”
Speaking of (Un)Feminist Guilty Pleasures, last night Nik and I are watching The Real World, yes, it's a habit I don't seem to break, and one of the girls on the show admits to her alcoholic friend that she struggled with an eating disorder. Didn't think much of it.
Then this morning my friend Kate sends me an email:
I'm watching the Real World, and one of the girls in it (Sarah) is lying on her bed in front of a bookshelf. And I see an acid green and book spine and think, "Hey, I know that book." I slowed it down frame by frame and guess what it is? I took a picture because I was so tickled.
Yeah, that's my book people. Mind is blown. Now if we can just get Jess' books on that blonde girl's shelf...she needs a serious dose of feminism 101.
Check out this comprehensive new report by the Women & Girls Collective Action Network, comprised of 16 organizations in Chicago, about ending violence against women "with a focus on women of color, youth, queer and trans youth, women with disabilities, young women in the sex trade, among others." The report includes info on...
how groups have broadened their definitions of violence, rethought the roles of survivors and perpetrators, and identified systems of oppression as root causes of violence. Rather than copy the structures of the mainstream nonprofit system, many of these groups are creating new structures and negotiating older ones.examples of how groups are building safe communities within the movement, responding to acts of violence within social justice communities, and grappling with the non-profit industrial complex.
strategies to end violence, including how to create community conversations, organize communities, use arts and performance, develop popular education, incorporate harm reduction, and partner with men.
Thanks to Ann Russo of DePaul U. for the heads up.
We don't normally link to Fox in a favorable light, but their's a first time for everything. Reader Amanda told us about this incredibly touching story that, we agree, deserves some serious play (ah, sports puns).
When Sara Tucholsky of Western Oregon University scored her first home run ever (whoooo-hoooo!) it looked like life was golden, but as she rounded first base, she cranked her knee and ended up on the ground, writhing in pain. Her opponents, who you think might have rejoiced, actually did the exact opposite:
Members of the Central Washington University softball team stunned spectators by carrying Tucholsky around the bases Saturday so the three-run homer would count - an act that contributed to their own elimination from the playoffs...As the trio reached home plate, Tucholsky said, the entire Western Oregon team was in tears.
Every awesome sports movie song of triumph and sports(wo)manship is playing in my head right now. So awesome.
I am so deeply disturbed by this footage of what looks a whole hell of a lot like police brutality in Philly. It deserves some serious analysis, particularly in a city that has such a history of racist corruption in the police force.
To my mind, one of the major unfinished revolutions within feminism is the whole field of equal parenting, work/life balance, feminist mothering etc. Just taking a look at some of the recent books on the topic (Perfect Madness by Judith Warner, Get to Work by Linda Hirshman, The Feminine Mistake by Leslie Bennetts, Opting Out by Pamela Stone) gives one a sense that there is a whole lot of unresolved angst when it comes to women's relationship to the mothering role.
That's why I'm so excited that one of our third wave icons, Amy Richards, has taken a stab at dealing with some of the lingering dilemmas in her new book Opting In: Having a Child Without Losing Yourself. (Thanks for writing this before I got there, Amy!)
Some of the most salient parts of the book, for me, were Amy's discussion of the ways in which feminist mothering is about tiny, everyday choices. She is a bit cynical about the notion of a full scale motherhood revolution (unlike the gals at MomsRising and some other great organizations), but she certainly believes Gandhi's old adage that each of us must "be the change you wish to see in the world." That applies to feminists in lots of interesting ways...if you have one, do you pay your nanny a living wage? Do you send your child to a school that has a diversity of students and mirrors your feminist values? Do you model self care and compassionate communication for your kids on a daily basis?
One of the things I've noticed, while traveling the country and speaking about body image issues, is that mothers--in particular--love to blame the epidemic of food and fitness obsession on external institutions ("media", plastic surgery industry, celebrities), but are rarely willing to look at their own modeling in an honest way. I feel like Amy is trying to counter that inclination, trying to get mothers to own up to their own choices and inspire them to really strain to close the gap between their lives and their values.
John McCain was on The Daily Show last night and wouldn't you know he took time out to ackwnoledge one of his "very attractive young woman" detractors at a recent town hall meeting who was wearing a shirt that said "John McCain Doesn't Represent Me." (If you're a reader, said "attractive young woman," come forth, come forth; you're awesome).
According to John boy, "I called on her and asked her what it was that she'd like to say. That's the essence..." But Stewart interrupted his moment of town hall poetics and asked the key question: "And what did she say?" So McCain was forced to answer, chuckling the whole time, "She said, 'Why did I want to discriminate against women?' I tried to defend my belief in equal opportunity for all in this country."
Except of course, when it comes to a little thing called bodily integrity. And good thing this little minx was attractive so that McCain deigned to call on her. And good thing he chuckled through retelling her very apt question. And good thing he understands the breadth and depth of "equal opportunity."
Don't sleep people. This guy doesn't have what's best for "attractive young women" in mind.