feminist blogs

You make me so sad with this:

The 39-year-old actor also weighed in on the brand of sexism depicted on ‘Mad Men’ versus the plight in modern times: “There’s a cordialness that men had when dealing with the opposite sex [in the 1960s], even when they were being blatantly sexist. It’s a weird conundrum. But that’s been replaced with men treating women like absolute garbage and not even being polite about it, which is too bad.”

Yeah… too bad…

Diego Costa recently pointed out to us the sexualization of Jayden Smith. In that post, I wondered if race played much of a part in this process; while non-White boys are often adultified, it wasn’t clear to me that it was a major factor in this case. Diego followed up by sending along some photos of White teen heartthrob/pop star Justin Bieber, who you may know better as that kid on the cover of magazines whose hair you desperately want to brush out of his eyes. He’s a bit older than Jayden, so the idea of him dating or talking about girls isn’t surprising, but the specific example Diego sent in is.

Apparently Justin Bieber, who is 16, met Kim Kardashian, the 29-year-old reality-TV personality and model, earlier this year at the White House Correspondents’ Dinner (and no, I didn’t know teen pop stars go to the Correspondents’ Dinner, either). Apparently after she Tweeted that she had “Bieber fever” and he joked about her being his “girlfriend,” Bieber fans flipped out and sent her death threats and such.

Following this, the two recently posed together for a fashion shoot for Elle, presumably making fun of and capitalizing on the earlier frenzy and publicity regarding their friendship. The photo shoot had them walking on the beach, in the water, holding hands, and in other ways hinting at romance; in some cases, Bieber’s light-colored shirt is wet and you can see his entire chest through it:

Diego asks how this would go over if the roles were reversed: if Elle had images of a 16-year-old female teen star in a see-through shirt walking on the beach with, or getting a flower from, a 29-year-old male celebrity “mostly known for…posing nude several times and making money off of his condom-free sex tape…” (after a sex tape of Kardashian with her ex-boyfriend appeared, she sued and settled with the company distributing it for $5 million).

I’m not trying to stigmatize Kardashian; I’m not interested in her, or why she’s famous, here. But I think Diego has a very good point: it’s unlikely many people will think this is an inappropriate sexualization of Bieber (though perhaps Kardashian will need some extra security guards when Bieber’s fans see these). As the reaction to Jayden Smith indicates, we accept the idea of boys being sexual, or sexually interested, at younger ages than girls, and any interest they show in older girls or women is a sign of their sexual precocity — and, of course, heterosexuality — not a sign that they are either in danger of being preyed upon or that they are tempting Lolitas (and thus dangerous to men). We simply don’t worry as much about a 16-year-old teen boy shown in a photo like this because we don’t think of sexuality being dangerous for them in the way we think it is for girls.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

So Mel Gibson ranting about The Jews and calling a cop “sugar tits” was pretty high on the “wow what an asshole” scale. But he definitely just topped himself here by calling his estranged partner, Oksana Grigorieva, [trigger warning!] a series of misogynist names (the usual – whore, cunt, etc etc) and then screaming “You look like a fucking pig in heat and if you get raped by a pack of niggers it will be your fault.”

Very nice, Mel Gibson. You are definitely not a bigot or a misogynist of any kind.

He also tells her that he’s going to “burn the fucking house down … but you will blow me first.” Which is maybe kind of a rape threat?

Oksana says she recorded the conversations because she was afraid for her safety. She previously accused Mel of punching her in the face twice, giving her a concussion and breaking her teeth; he said that they simply had a loud argument. Which is fair. I mean, who among us doesn’t define “loud argument” as “punching someone in the face”?

I’m going to go ahead and say that Mel Gibson is both an asshole and a very scary human being. Not that this is surprising, at this point. But he probably should not be left with Oksana or his children unsupervised, and I hope all of Hollywood has the sense not to cast him or work with him on any more projects. But of course, if his career finally implodes after this, it will surely be the fault of the Jews.

Diego Costa sent in an image of Jayden Smith, star of the remake of The Karate Kid, at a recent promotional event in China. In it, 11-year-old Jayden has lifted his shirt to show off his abs, while co-star Jackie Chan and a man I presume is the event host marvel at them:

What struck Diego is how this image was received differently than a similar image of an 11-year-old girl pulling up her shirt to show off her abs might be seen. For instance, The Huffington Post showed the image without any comment about its content. We might compare that to the public outcry over the images of Miley Cyrus wrapped in a sheet that came out two years ago. I also suspect The Huffington Post article might say something about the adult men in the above photo if it were a girl rather than a boy they were touching/ogling.

Apparently when he went on The View, Jayden said he’s “already a great kisser” and the audience cheered, though I can’t find a video of it.

Diego says,

Why is the exposure of boy bodies deemed appropriate whilst the revealing of girls’ bodies must always accompany relentless probing, judging and outrage? If we agree that we shouldn’t sexualize children, then let’s not do it to any child. And, while we are at it, let’s also not assume infantile heterosexuality by asking if boys already have “a girlfriend.”

Excellent points. I suspect if an 11-year-old girl went on The View and said she was a good kisser already, she and her parents would be attacked in the press, people would express horror, and rumors would circulate about whether she’s been sexually abused, is already sexually active, etc. etc. But when an 11-year-old boy does it? That’s cute! He’s on his way to being a smooth-talking ladies’ man!

I can’t decide if, or to what degree, race might be at play here. There is certainly a tendency to adultify non-White children — that is, to treat them as mini-adults rather than children at much earlier ages than White kids are. This includes sexuality (for instance, teachers often assume Black girls are sexually active at younger ages than White girls). My recent post on the hypersexualization of a 13-year-old Latino boy discussed this topic.

But I’m not sure if that’s playing a major role here, or if gender assumptions and him being the son of a much-beloved celebrity couple are the more important factors. Thoughts?

For another example, see our post on the Rolling Stone cover with Taylor Lautner.

(View original at http://contexts.org/socimages)

You’ve got your mother in a whirl/Cause she’s not sure if you’re a boy or a girl -Rebel Rebel, David Bowie

And for my last trick…

I’ve written about pop and dancing and falling in love and even a few political posts. So where to go from here? Bowie, of course.

David Bowie made me a feminist, you see. Well, not entirely. Lots of other things did, too. And certainly Bowie had little to do with that ever-present subject of argument, “when I decided to call myself a feminist.”

No, Bowie was just there when I needed him, whispering in my ear about the secret powers of glitter makeup and transgressive clothing. He wasn’t political and by not being so he was more political than anything else I was listening to. While Jello Biafra and the Clash made explicit arguments, Bowie was just there, convincing millions of straight boys to buy his records while he gleefully paraded in high heels and dresses and skintight leotards.

Never drag, really. Just the accoutrements that we associated with femininity but that he wielded as tools for transformation, again and again and again. Makeup to draw symbols on your face, exaggerate one feature beyond any reality.

In an unpublished piece on my hard drive looking for a home, I wrote:

I loved the polymorphous sexuality of David Bowie, those songs of beauties male and female, strong and alien and more than a little scary, and I learned how much power there was in confusing people’s ideas of what you should be.

Bowie was monstrous in his day, not least because he simply cast off one identity and pulled on the next—he wore dresses, makeup, then alien skintight rockstar wear, then found soul and suits and a pompadour, then ghostly pallor—he was married to an American, then gay, then alone, then married to a Somali woman.

Bowie was skidding and sliding from one cultural reference to the next, assembling an identity from the bits of what had just started to be pop culture. He taught me to assemble my own, to shed skins when I needed to and move on to the next. He taught me that we’re all beautiful.

He taught me that we’re all monsters.

I see as much Bowie in Lady Gaga as I do Madonna; Gaga and her obsession with the term “monsters.” The use of fame to redefine oneself is a freedom still largely kept for the privileged, but making a choice to align yourself with the monsters is still a step. But I digress, this isn’t about Gaga.

Except that it is, I suppose, in the way that it’s about taking whichever bits of whichever pop idol we’re presented with and learning what you can, using what you can. Bowie’s no saint and he’s still a rich straight white guy. But as I wrote last week,

David Bowie put “Heroes” in quotes on the title of his album and his song for a reason. He was a pop star on his third or fourth or fifth persona (depending on when you start counting) by the time he made that record and he knew better than anyone that your public face is one you create and put on. (Oh, there will be more on Bowie.) For me, part of being a hippie lefty feminist type is not looking to people to be heroes.

Not heroes, then. But always looking for stories. Because telling stories is how we connect with others, how we learn, how we make change. And sometimes you find the story you were looking for in a pop song and other times you remember your stories when you listen to those songs. Sometimes the stories are sad and sometimes they’re scary and sometimes, sometimes they’re beautiful beyond all recognition. Sometimes they’re all of the above.

Like this one:

[Photo montage of David Bowie and Marc Bolan set to Bowie's Lady Stardust; Bowie in typical skinny-glam gear and Bolan with his black curls around his face and lots of eyeliner, obviously]

People stared at the makeup on his face
Laughed at his long black hair, his animal grace
The boy in the bright blue jeans
Jumped up on the stage
And lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and disgrace

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
Yes he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight
And he sang all night long

Femme fatales emerged from shadows
To watch this creature fair
Boys stood upon their chairs
To make their point of view
I smiled sadly for a love I could not obey
Lady stardust sang his songs
Of darkness and dismay

And he was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, the song went on forever
And he was awful nice
Really quite out of sight
And he sang all night long

Oh how I sighed when they asked if I knew his name

Ooh they was alright, the band was all together
Yes he was alright, and the song went on forever
He was awful nice
Really quite paradise
He sang all night long

It’s about loneliness and love and loss and playing with gender and that fear that comes from attraction. And so I played with them too and grew less afraid, even though the boy who introduced me to Bowie was a poor substitute and supremely uncomfortable with his own desires. Moved on from there and each successive piece made me stronger.

And so I turn to Bowie whenever my life is changing, because he knew all about changes and knows them still. I turn to Bowie when I need to remember that the categories people want to stick you in never fit right and it’s OK to break them down and break out and break away. I turn to Bowie when I need to remember that it’s all just a performance and it’s OK to have a you that is still there when you step off the stage, and I still turn to Bowie when I think about love.

And what does any of that have to do with feminism? Sometimes it feels like just another category that people want to define rules for. Sometimes I need to remember which side I’m on. There are rarely only two.

more on the not-so-secret feminism of Robyn!

Once upon a time, one of my favorite feminist blogs was called Pop Feminist. Its author has since moved on to bigger things, but I refuse to call them better because I LOVED Pop Feminist. (I also love the lady behind it, who has become a friend because of blogging-mutual-love. The powers of the Internet, people!) Pop Feminist is gone, but her archives are here and you should peruse them for sheer awesomeness.

Anyway, she would regularly post Pop Feminist Dance Parties, putting up a song or a short playlist and inviting readers to have a solo dance party, on her. This post is definitely dedicated to her.

So, by possibly-not-popular demand, MORE ROBYN.

(lyrics below)

In the grand scheme of my recently-discovered-but-no-less-intense-for-that Robyn love, there are a few themes. One is that the music is ridiculously catchy. Another is that she’s adorable in her own Robyn way–you will absolutely never catch me criticizing Gaga or Christina Aguilera or Britney for being too naked, too sexual, but they’re all treading territory that Madonna charted out for us years ago, and while it’s true that those are lessons our culture obviously hasn’t quite learned yet, it’s refreshing to have a pop star who doesn’t immediately call up the Madonna comparisons.

As I said in a comment on the last post, if anything I place Robyn more in the Cyndi Lauper family of pop stars, the “girls just wanna have fun” bliss combined with a swagger stolen from hip-hop and Robyn’d up for our pleasure in songs like “Konichiwa, Bitches”. Even when she has a track with the same NAME as a Madonna song, there’s nothing Madonna about it (“Who’s That Girl”).

Yes, that swagger. A tiny Swedish girl who’s done a healthy number of songs about how awesome she is.

Even in feminist communities, there’s always a tendency to tear one another down. Women are supposed to be humble! Self-effacing! We are not supposed to seek attention or have big mouths or point out that we are good at what we do.

Hell, my prior post has a comment on it that says “I don’t mean to be rude, but I don’t understand what the point of this post is.” Which is a nice way of saying, shut up, lady, because I do not approve of your subject matter. And, well, Sady *Fucking* Doyle already wrote the blog post on that.

Robyn is able to get away with writing songs about how badass she is because she is tiny, and blonde, and white, and cute, and makes catchy-as-hell pop music, it’s true. It sneaks up on you, that in this song she’s calling some guy a “selfish narcissistic psycho freaking bootlicking nazi creep” and telling him that he can’t handle her. Nope. Cause he can’t.

Cause any bigmouthed lady out there has probably come face to face with some guy who thinks that by namedropping and swaggering and just being a DUDE he will A. impress you! to the point of you wanting to shag him! and B. get to tell you what to say and do. And, well, A. No. and B. Also No.

See, the Point Of This Post, in case someone doesn’t get it, is that Robyn is awesome. That writing about Robyn is also awesome. That I was asked by some pretty rad ladies to guestblog at their place and they agreed knowing that I might give myself a much-needed mental break from thinking and writing about the BP oil spill or the Freedom Flotilla or the significance of women in the Tea Party movement and instead write about some things that make me happy.

And if you don’t like it, you are welcome to make YOURSELF happy and move on to the next post! But I hope you like Robyn, because Robyn is love. Even when she’s cutely telling you to fuck off.

Because as much as she gets to tell you to fuck off because she is tiny and cute, it’s also subversive as hell because she is tiny and cute. Tiny cute girls are not supposed to get up in your face and tell you that they are awesome and that you just can’t handle it. But this tiny cute girl (Robyn, not me, I am not tiny) just does not care. And part of carving out some space for ourselves in the world–as women, yes, but as humans who need to find some way of making it through life–is finally learning to say “fuck ‘em if they don’t like me.”

Yeah, I heard about some guy that you beat pretty bad and got in the papers
Sure, you own a cool bar and I hear you get far with every waitress
Yeah, I saw you on the poster your song is the bomb and you’re outrageous
Sure, I see you’re livin’ large with your crib and your cars
and that’s just great but..

Let me tell you how it be
You won’t get with this you see
Cause you can’t handle me
It’s a simple fact
that you can’t seem to handle me
No matter how you act with them
you can’t handle me
You gotta make me feel you got my back
but you’re a selfish narcissistic psycho freaking bootlicking nazi creep
and you can’t handle me

Or, How I Learned To Stop Caring and Admit I Love Pop.

A guy I met recently was sort of surprised that he met me at a Hold Steady Show. “They’re such a guy band,” he said, and I sort of agreed. The show that I attended (with two very feminist girlfriends, I might add) was certainly packed with guys–and a certain type of guy, too, that wears a baseball cap and jeans somewhere between fitted and baggy, not Williamsburg-skinny.

Of course it’s sort of sexist to say that but it’s also TRUE. I also have always been into what the uber-rock-star (even if she has given up the mantle!) Silvana called Dude Music.

I was a punk. Well, first I was a goth, which is a little more femme a genre (the boys wear makeup! while they sing lyrics about girls dying! WAIT COME BACK). But I started listening to angry punk rock in high school. And not riot grrl, either. I didn’t really discover Sleater-Kinney and thus ladies who rocked harder than any guy until college. Nope, I was old school and loved the Dead Kennedys, plus I was from Boston and even though I moved South I kept up my Boston pride with those Boston street punk standards: Dropkick Murphys, etc.

I had an ironic Spice Girls sticker on my car in college. But my senior year in high school my best girlfriend and I bought a Spice Girls tape between us and used to drive around singing along. So I guess you could say that my pop love was always sort of there. But, you see, it was IRONIC! It was FUNNY that I had a Spice Girls sticker on my car! Because I was going to Serious Punk Rock Shows and wearing big boots (with short skirts) and getting stomped in the pit and getting angry when my male friends tried to “rescue” me.

The same with the ubiquitous 80s nights in college. Sure, we danced to Madonna. We loved Madonna. Because she was past her moment!

Now, I always listened to what GarlandGrey, also at Tiger Beatdown, called ladymusic. Tori Amos got me through high school alive and relatively with-it, and when I got to interview her a year or so ago, let me tell you that at age 29 I still gushed and told her that she got me through my misspent youth and was thrilled that she gave me a hug when I left and told me that she had a good feeling about me. TORI! But I digress. My college boyfriend, when he mocked Tori, found himself handcuffed to a chair and listening to the Spice Girls. No, really. I have pictures.

That ladymusic got mocked by dudes other than just that exboyfriend, it’s true. But I was willing to fight for it in ways that I was not for pop. I was an English major, so I could break down the cultural significance of Madonna for you. But argue for her music? Beyond “well, I like it at dance nights?”

Feministe-ers, I was a secret rockist.

If you have never been a Music Writer (a phrase I’ve used more often than Rock Critic even when I was taking it Very Seriously and reading lots of Lester Bangs and Ellen Willis) you may not be familiar with the term, or with this article that breaks it all down. But check it:

Rockism isn’t unrelated to older, more familiar prejudices – that’s part of why it’s so powerful, and so worth arguing about. The pop star, the disco diva, the lip-syncher, the “awesomely bad” hit maker: could it really be a coincidence that rockist complaints often pit straight white men against the rest of the world? Like the anti-disco backlash of 25 years ago, the current rockist consensus seems to reflect not just an idea of how music should be made but also an idea about who should be making it.

Let’s make that clear: Pop is feminine. Rock is for dudes. Right? That’s why when we talk about Sleater-Kinney (and oh, please, I could write you a book about Sleater-Kinney) we have to mention that they’re Girls! Who! Rock! and not just one of the best rock bands of my lifetime, period. That’s also why those boy-groups that always seem to have a resurgence every 10, 15 years are roundly mocked.

So! Fast-forward a few years. I learn to talk about feminism in academic terms as well as in personal terms, and I learn to talk about pleasure and desire as political concepts (the real personal-is-political, thanks) and I grew to hate, to deeply loathe the term “guilty pleasure.” Why the fuck should I feel guilty about pleasure, right? Kathleen Hanna said “I believe in the radical possibilities of pleasure, babe.” And she was right! But she was also never a guilty pleasure. Not in Bikini Kill, anyway. No, you had to take her seriously cause she barnstormed punk rock.

So I am learning gradually to stop talking about songs as guilty pleasures or to feel silly buying certain music that is not “serious.” But I honestly think I didn’t let myself fully realize that I could take pop music as seriously as any single by the National and moreso than I take the latest bearded incarnation of sad twee boys to hit the indie rock stacks (Fleet Foxes, I’m lookin’ at you) until last summer.

What happened last summer? Michael Jackson died.

Michael Jackson died and I was having coffee with someone I’d never met at the time but who has since become one of my closest friends and favorite co-conspirators, Matt Sheret. Matt and I talked about Michael Jackson as ubiquitous cultural icon in the States (he’s British; don’t hold it against him), and then when I went home I noticed that once again Jackson was everywhere. Every car that went by, every bar with open windows, every front-steps party in my Brooklyn ‘hood was playing Michael’s greatest. Remember that video from in front of the Apollo?

So. Did it take the death of the King of Pop–in other words, a man–for me to take pop music seriously? I hit iTunes for the best of Michael and emailed Matt and Kieron, the mutual friend who introduced us, and we had a multi-day-multi-person email conversation where we discussed lots of aspects of Jackson. To me, Jackson’s gender was always interesting. He was a safe pop star, one who squeaked “I’m a gentleman” when asked if he was a virgin, right up until those allegations. You know. He was desexualized, I’ll argue, in part because he was a POP singer.

I started a “pop” tag on my Tumblr and started thinking about what this meant. Started using “pop idol” like the baby Oscar Wilde in Velvet Goldmine when I talked about David Bowie, instead of rock star.

Fast forward to now, where I’ve been on a two-week Robyn binge, which basically started when I returned from England, visiting Matt and Kieron and several other friends. Where I’ve bought tickets to see Robyn in August in NY on the same night as Metric, who also have a lady singer but are Much! More! Serious! But I’m gonna go see Robyn. Because she makes me happy and makes me dance and girl can SING. And those are accomplishments as worthy as any indie rock record.

And what brought me here? Years of thought about pleasure and lots of dancing to Madonna. A few years as a Music Writer and lots of Ellen Willis and yes, Lester Bangs. A comic book called Phonogram and a friendship with the guy who writes it, who is one of the best advocates for pop–and women in pop–that I know. And those emails with him and with Matt. Yes, dear readers, I’m 30 years old and a committed feminist and it took a couple of straight guys who are not only willing to admit they love pop in all its feminized glory but to argue for it to get me to realize that they’re right.

See? I’m still guilty of the same shit. Oh, my internalized sexism. I’m doing my best to fight it, though. Here, have some Robyn. I have officially claimed this song on behalf of all ladybloggers ever called “funfeminists,” “fakefeminists,” or, of course, “fembots.”

Lyrics: I’ve got some news for you/Fembots (fembots) have feelings too/You split my heart in two/Now what ya gonna do

Once you gone tech/You’re never ever going back/You gotta enter access code/Up on the back of my neck/Initiating slut mode/All space cadets on deck/There’s a calculator in my pocket/Got you all in check

“I never met a hero I didn’t like. But then, I never met a hero. But then, maybe I wasn’t looking for one.”

That’s a line from a Lester Bangs piece, I believe, actually, his epic interview with Lou Reed. Anyone who’s read Bangs knows that he loved Reed passionately, obsessively–and so his willingness to confront Reed, to basically fuck with him over the course of the interview, was pretty impressive, even if it was just a rock profile.

Lester Bangs met a lot of my heroes, but one of the things that made him great was that ongoing willingness to question people, even people he’d allowed care of all the hopes and dreams that we pin on the best rock songs.

Helen Thomas did that. Only she did it with people who make policy and decide who lives and dies.

I’m Jewish. Polish and Russian Jew, actually, on my father’s side, which in some people’s minds makes me not actually Jewish, but I went to Hebrew school and temple as a kid and recently fasted again on Yom Kippur just to see if I could do it. I eat bacon and have tattoos and don’t really believe in God per se, but being Jewish is an important part of my life–as important as being a woman, being American, and other things I can’t change.

My family was chased out of Europe. I’m sure that someone related to me died in Poland’s camps, though I don’t know of them–my family was tight-lipped about that part of their history. I went to the kind of slacker Hebrew school that the parents (and in my case, grandparents) of well-off Jewish kids sent their kids to to learn some of their history and enough Hebrew to stammer through a Bar or Bat Mitzvah so they could be showered with gifts, and maybe some religion along the way. I dropped out (for lack of funds for a Bat Mitzvah) and have since joked about being and made a T-shirt proclaiming me a “Hebrew School Dropout.”

Part of Hebrew school was always being taught to identify with Israel. I guess they mostly failed at that, since I’m a pissed-off lefty who wants to cry at this point every time someone in the press or someone I know conflates “Israel/Israeli Government” with “Jews” (sample: New York Times headline “Is the Embargo Good for the Jews?” when it’s about Israeli national interests. Also, the answer is simple. No.)

I don’t identify with Israel anymore at all. It’s not a place I ever want to go and certainly not a place I want to live. Like many nations in our sort-of-post-colonial world, it’s got a problematic history that will never completely go away–and I have steered mostly clear of those questions in my career. When I write about Israel, it tends to get personal. As you can see.

My reaction to the Israeli raid on the Freedom Flotilla was mostly blind rage. I wanted to cry, to scream. I couldn’t write anything about it and still can’t really. It hurt. So maybe I’m more understanding this week of Thomas than I would have otherwise.

I usually have a knee-jerk reaction to anti-Semitism. It slaps me across the face, reminds me that though I live every day with white privilege, there is a special kind of racism directed at me too, one that at one point wiped out millions.

Yet I’m having a hard time being outraged at Helen Thomas. (Link has the full transcript.)

Let me be clear: Poland and Germany are about the LAST places she should tell Israelis to “go back to.” Wow, was that ever a bad choice. And the kind of “just get out” anti-Zionism always strikes me as, well, as problematic (Adam Serwer was great on this) as telling me and all the rest of us white Americans to go back to whence we came. But I don’t get that visceral feeling from Thomas that I do from many, that she blames all Jews for Israel. And it annoys me just as much when Zionists tend to elide Jews into Israel, like whatever they deem “good for Israel” is automatically what I should support. No. Criticizing Israel is not anti-Semitic. Maybe I’m making excuses. It’s not for me to say. She resigned and she was probably right to do so.

Anyway. The title of this post. It references a song, just like my last one (and probably like all of them; I am forever stealing great lines from my pop idols). David Bowie put “Heroes” in quotes on the title of his album and his song for a reason. He was a pop star on his third or fourth or fifth persona (depending on when you start counting) by the time he made that record and he knew better than anyone that your public face is one you create and put on. (Oh, there will be more on Bowie.) For me, part of being a hippie lefty feminist type is not looking to people to be heroes.

Oh, I look up to people. I look for life assistance in pop stars all the time. In fact, I’m more comfortable doing that than I am with political figures. I’m a journalist; I figure they deserve my unending skepticism. So do members of the press corps, even ones with a stellar history of fighting for things that I believe in like the right of women to be in the press corps, and most importantly being the lone voice in that White House corps that actually pushed back against whichever administration was in office.

Maybe it’s a combination of years in journalism (many in pop culture journalism especially) meeting people I looked up to and realizing that they’re just people. But I don’t think having heroes is especially helpful. It’s an essentially conservative notion, really–the idea that it’s been done before and better than we can and we just have to try to get back to some period when people were Great. It’s an Ayn Randian notion of Super-people that we can never hope to be. It’s great to have inspiration from those who came before, to acknowledge and learn and know our history. But we can’t expect our heroes to be perfect. We have to acknowledge also that they are people.

Sady wrote about this in the context of that awful M.I.A. interview, and I think made an excellent point:

Speaking out about politics is tricky; as anyone with even marginal self-awareness knows, it requires you to be more or less constantly opining on morals and an ideal future world, while also being a person with moral failings (I have them, God knows) who has made plenty of compromises or choices about how to live in the world as it presently exists. Hence, my flip-the-fuck-outery over being interviewed; being regarded as an authority is a little hard to take, given how familiar I am with my own imperfections. But lots of people on this here planet are privileged in one way or another, including people who speak out against privilege. Lots of people are inconsistent, incapable of being hardcore moral vegans at all times; pretty much everyone has unpleasant aspects to her personality. If we make personal perfection a prerequisite for speaking out, the result will be silence. It simply will be. There will be one woman, living alone and off-the-grid in a yurt, eating nothing but pickles, interacting with no-one but the squirrels, who walks out to her favorite pooping tree every morning and delivers a brief monologue to it about social justice. She will be the Perfect One, the Chosen One; she will be allowed to speak. And it won’t be a problem. Largely because no-one will actually hear her.

Helen Thomas was/is not my hero. Helen Thomas is someone I look up to and is still. She said something stupid. Hell, maybe deep down she does hate me and the rest of the world’s Jews. I can still take away the things she did that have made my personal journey, career, and life better and easier. I don’t require Gloria Steinem to not have written that atrocious op-ed about gender being a bigger handicap than race to be grateful to her as well for the things she did.

It’s hard to look forward if you keep lookin’ back. We need not to look at the last generation and venerate; we need to do things for this generation. We don’t need heroes. We need, maybe, “heroes.” “Heroes” that we are conscious are two-dimensional things we’ve created that stand in for real flesh-and-blood people who fuck up, who have opinions we loathe, who say stupid things to the wrong people. We need to understand this, and it is good for us, because it allows us to realize that our own fuckups don’t keep us from being “heroes” too. Even if it’s just for one day.

(By the way, if you wanna call me a self-hating Jew, etc. etc. in comments, feel free. It won’t be anything I haven’t heard before. Don’t expect me to come here and argue with you, though.)

Oh Blanche. My first impression of you was that you wore too much make-up and were a slut. But I was wrong. You don’t wear too much make-up.

Rest in peace, Rue. Thank you for being a friend. I hope that in heaven, your life is still an open blouse.

Mazel tov, Jane and Lara.