feminist blogs

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!

I need a new show.

The final DVD of Season 4 of The Wire is scheduled to arrive at my apartment on Thursday. After that, I’ll be waiting around for Season 5 to come out before I can NetFlix it. In the meantime, I need something else to keep me occupied. My other TV addiction is LOST, and I still re-watch the first two seasons of The West Wing with some regularity. So anything in that vein is great. I decidedly do not like anything Science Fiction or Fantasy-like — I know this is going to make you all hate me, but I can’t stand Buffy or Battlestar Gallactica. I’m leaning towards The Office or 30 Rock, as those seem to be good, light summer watching. Comedies are good — Curb Your Enthusiasm is an old favorite — but I really can’t stand shows like Everybody Loves Raymond or Monk.

But I am wide open to suggestions. What do you all watch and love?

I recently got a free issue of Men’s Journal. Dwayne Johnson was on the cover. It’s a profile by Allison Glock. I don’t know much about him. He was a football player then a WWE wrestler, he’s biracial, he gives kids of Samoan heritage someone to cheer for, folks say he works hard at being an action star and comedic actor. All good reasons to read the piece.

So the reporter writes that he’s “a modern breed of film star”, “an amalgam of magnetism and marketing savvy.” (So far, so good):

George Clooney minus the smugness. Arnold minus the skeeve. Tom Cruise minus the crazy. Ryan Seacrest, if Seacrest were a man.”

And … we’re done here.

The point isn’t whether a man or woman polices the arbitrary policy that manhood is a privileged status revoked at the slightest infraction. The point is that this conception of manhood is part of the problem, and reaffirming it doesn’t do anybody any good.

Not finishing the article.

The title has an obvious double-meaning. My two-week guest bit is over. See all you folks in comments.

Posting on this at the request of my spouse. At 20 seconds, is that the most transparent metaphor for breasts to sell orange juice? (It might not be so clear if it were not for the voice-over, which contextualizes the images.)

We’re surrounded by the commodification of the female body. The drumbeat is so steady that it’s hard not to tune it out, but it needs calling out every once in a while.

I can see the thinking. Orange juice is a kids’ beverage. Charging a premium requires rebranding. Rebranding requires that they make a sharp break with what people think about orange juice. It can’t be simple and yummy, it has to be sophisticated, sensual … erotic … and, cut to the thinly veiled metaphors for women’s body parts. Not women, not women’s bodies, but women’s body parts.

Some het guy in creative is probably geeking out about how slick this is. But it’s not. It’s annoying.

(While I’m on the subject of ubiquitous women’s bodies as superfluous ornaments: Stop with the “ring card girls.” I don’t need some woman I’ve never met holding a sign with a round number on it; I know what round it is. I’m keeping a scorecard.)

The amazing Julia Serano has contributed a post to Feministing about this Philips ad for an epilator:

All of her points are great, and you should go over to Feministing and read them, and then follow the link from her fourth point to her essay on media depictions of trans women. Personally, I shave my legs about twice a year, and mostly so I don’t have to be aware of disgusted stares from random assholes. So I’m especially glad that Serano pointed out how myopic this portrayal of trans-feminine spectrum folks as hyper-feminine propagators of sexist stereotypes and beauty rituals is. (If you really want more examples of that, just click on the Youtube link and look at all the sex-objectastic “related videos.”)
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It’s about time. It’s been two decades since “Pretty Woman” made prostitution seem cool — a path to self-esteem and self-empowerment — and I have rarely seen, outside of academic journals and hard-hitting documentaries, such an effective puncturing of that cultural myth as I read today in an opinion piece by Anne K. Ream and R. [...]

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Just read it.

Alessandra Stanley in the New York Times wonders at — rather than analyzes — the sea change that has made “Pop TV” the new favorite venue for politicians. With all the recent appearances by the President, candidates and their spouses on everything from “Deal or No Deal” to the “Colbert Report,” Stanley notes, “It’s hard [...]

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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.

Looks like an interesting piece, airing at 9pm tonight:

I finally have a TV, although I almost never watch is so I have no idea whether or not I get MSNBC. I’ll try to tune in tonight, though. And after the show airs, Brian Williams will be hosting a 90-minute live discussion about race in America.