Where to even start about what's wrong with this set of pictures?
I know it's supposed to be cute and adorable - mini brides! - but all I see is a symptom of the larger disease of a mindset that views women as men's property. It tells me that women are to be kept in boxes, taken out to "play" with, and then put away again. I see women as toys. I see women as small enough to not have a choice in the matter. And I see clear and definite power imbalances.
Probably the worst thing about being a very musically-inclined person is that most music sucks. Not only that, the people who are into music, maybe even the same music as you, are probably assholes.
There is some law of the universe that the intellectualism or popularity of an activity increases the assholes attracted to doing that activity. Music is both something that is very popular and something that requires a bit of technical knowledge and practice to perform (or interpret, if you're a dancer). Thus, the amount of assholes interested in music, performing music, and dancing to music is truly astronomical. I reference radio DJs and the Body Police dancers for all the evidence I need.
Regardless, I just used to skip from station to station when the commercials were over and the DJs started talking to avoid hearing the stupid racist, classist, homophobic, sexist shit they'd inevitably spew.
Now I have to switch stations because of the actual music lyrics, and I don't even listen to rap or hip-hop. These are the song that I encountered just in my commute this week:
Girls are gold-diggers:
The girls with the bodies like boys with Ferrari's Girls don't like boys, Girls like cars and money -Good Charlotte, "Boys & Girls"
Women with their deviant sexuality are dangerous:
'High-maintenance' means You're a gluttonous queen: narcissistic and mean. Kill me romantically, fill my soul with vomit Then ask me for a piece of gum. Bitter and dumb, you're my sugarplum. You're awful, I love you! -Ludo's "Love Me Dead"
Women are exchangeable blobs of flesh with a mouth to stick your penis in, which you like, which is their fault, because you like it enough to be "addicted":
I'm so addicted to all the things you do when you're going down on me, in between the sheets. All the sounds you make, with every breath you take. It's unlike anything, when you're loving me. Oooh, girl, let's take it slow. So as for you - well, you know where to go. I want to take my love and hate you 'til the end. -Saving Abel's "Addicted"
In the pursuit of happiness, women are commodities too:
Let's make some music, make some money, find some models for wives. I'll move to Paris, shoot some heroin, and fuck with the stars. -MGMT's "Time to Pretend"
Shut up while I sexually assault you in the club:
I'm so bored, oh please, don't talk anymore, Shut your mouth and get down on the floor, So cynical, poor baby, I can dish it, cos I know how to take it. -Cobra Starship's "Guilty Pleasure"
I'm a good woman, and you're a whore:
Second chances they don't ever matter, people never change. Once a whore you're nothing more, I'm sorry, that'll never change. And about forgiveness, we're both supposed to have exchanged. I'm sorry honey, but I'm passing up, now look this way. Well there's a million other girls who do it just like you. Looking as innocent as possible to get to who -Paramore's "Misery Business"
Thanks for making my dick feel good. P.S - I don't give a shit about you as a person:
I wake up with blood-shot eyes Struggled to memorize, the way it felt between your thighs Pleasure that made you cry: feels so good to be bad Not worth the aftermath, after that Try to get you back I still don't have the reason and you don't have the time And it really makes me wonder, if I ever gave a fuck about you -Maroon 5's "Makes Me Wonder"
Oh, and vintage hip 80s sexualizing violence:
You let me violate you You let me desecrate you You let me penetrate you... It's your sex I can smell Help me, you make me perfect Help me think of somebody else I want to fuck you like an animal I want to feel you from the inside -NIN's "Closer"
And don't forget, we also get a boner from dominating and killing you:
I want to hold you close, skin pressed against me tight Lie still, and close your eyes girl. So lovely, it feels so right I want to hold you close; soft breath, beating heart As I whisper in your ear, I want to fucking tear you apart -She Wants Revenge's "Tear You Apart"
These are our idols. These are the people that are paid millions of dollars so that us common people can have the priviledge of watching them perform.
Yuck.
I didn't even bother to include the two thousand or so songs that portrayed women as sex objects. When it just comes down to singing about love or the opposite sex, it seems that rock stars fail astronomically. These are the people we are trusting to form our cultural identity.
Well, that explains a lot.
I wonder why I even bother to hope, anymore, that anything good comes out of popular culture. Hell, I wonder why I even listen to music at all, considering that I can't even tune into a female singer without a "whore" quip (see Paramore).
Sounds like the above all took music lessons from this guy:
Well, I just got back from watching the Sex and the City movie, and while there are lots of things I could blog about (Samantha = totally feminist ending), I had a major problem with one aspect of the movie.
Being one of only two characters of color in the film (the other being Charlotte's adopted Chinese child), Hudson was the movie's attempt to be politically correct. However, it was far, far off.
Hudson played Carrie's assistant, Louise. After Carrie has a major life crisis (no spoilers here, I promise), Louise helps her get organized, along with a variety of other tasks, essentially, as Carrie puts it, "saving her life."
Now, when its written out, it sounds okay, but seeing it all on the screen made me very uncomfortable.
In order for one to fit the mammy caricature, she must be:
"nurturing and protective of her white family, but less caring towards her own children." She is..."self-sacrificing, white-identified, fat, asexual, good-humored, a loyal cook, housekeeper and quasi-family member."
Let's test that definition.
1. In the movie, Louise cares for Carrie for several months. When applying for the job, she claims she is qualified for it because she is the oldest of six. When Carrie asked what that was life, she responds, "crowded." Her family is never mentioned again.
2. She is self-sacrificing; the movie implies that she stays with Carrie at work far past normal hours.
3. She is the only person of color (over the age of five) in the movie. I'd say that is fairly white-identified (but, this could be argued against. She is shown at a party where the majority of guests were black, and her significant other is black.)
4. In normal, human terms Hudson is by no means fat. However, her weight has been debated in Hollywood, and she is the most shapely woman who appears in the movie.
5. Louise is not portrayed as asexual, so yay (I guess) there.
6. Humor is one of Louise's defining characteristics.
7. While she is not technically the housekeeper or cook, she is Carrie's assistant, which may be the modern day equivalent of the positions.
8. She is a "quasi-family member" in several ways. She exchanges gifts with Carrie for Christmas, invites Carrie to her wedding, and discusses her heartbreak with her.
So ultimately, Louise fulfills 7 (maybe 6) of the 8 "qualifications" of a mammy caricature. This is unacceptable in our "post-racial" world. What do you think? Is this too much analysis? Or does it have merit? How can Hollywood change these things. I know Sarah Jessica Parker co-produced the movie; would this have happened if a women of color had had more decision making power?
This weekend my mother ripped out an article from an issue of Marie Claire and gave it to me. I do not read magazines, as my personal form of protest against the exclusive and unrealistic beauty standards they tend to promote, so I had no idea what to expect from this article.
The article was about the “long neck women of Thailand.”
Some of the members of the Kayan ethnic group's women wear coils made of brass rings around their necks that weigh up to 25 pounds to depress their collar bones so their necks appear longer. The problem is that these women are actually Burmese refugees, and the Thai authorities will not allow them to take asylum overseas because the novelty of these women’s neck coils is good for tourism. They are being forced, as the Marie Claire article states, “to live in a virtual human zoo.”
Zember, a 23-year-old woman Kayan woman, removed her coil to protest her captivity.
The 500 or so Kayans (also known as Padaung) who live in Thailand fled the brutal military regime in neighboring Burma (also known as Myanmar) two decades ago, and they have been confined in three guarded villages on the northern Thai border ever since. An estimated 40,000 tourists per year, many of them Americans, pay about $8 each to gawk at the women’s giraffe-like appearance. In return, the long-neck women earn a paltry salary of 1500 baht ($45) a month selling souvenirs and postcards. Few tourists are aware of the scandalous situation, Zember explains, because the women’s wages are docked if they discuss their plight. So they “smile and say nothing.”
Zember and her family were accepted for resettlement by New Zealand in 2006 as part of a wide-scale program organized by the U.N.’s refugee agency, UNHCR. Five other long-neck families are also due to relocate to New Zealand and Finland but lack the exit permits.
Because the Thai authorities will not issue exit permits, these families are trapped.
“As official refugees, the Kayans have a right either to resettlement abroad or to full Thai citizenship. They are being given neither,” says Kitty McKinsey, the (United Nations High Commission for Refugees’s) regional spokeswoman in Bangkok. She points out that over the past two years, Thailand has issued exit permits for more than 20,000 other Burmese refugees who lack the Kayans’ commercial value. “The Kayans should be treated the same as other refugees,” McKinsey says. (bolded words, added)
The women are punished (with docked wages) for doing anything modern because it interferes with their image that is being sold to tourists. Zember and her friend Ma Lo, both of whom removed their neck coils, no longer receive pay and cannot find other work because of their refugee status. The local government refuses to move on this issue because the province these villages are located in are poor and depend heavily on tourism for their livelihood. The three villages of the long-neck women do not have basic sanitation and medical care.
Women as commodities, stripped of their human rights and their rights as refugees, because of their commercial value. Apparently the UNHCR has tried a tourist boycott, but it did not work out. So, please, beware when you become a tourist. Who could it be hurting?
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