In defense of the sanctimonious women's studies set || First feminist blog on the internet

Big & Beautiful

Intro: I’m Trish and I’m normally at Fanfare for the Uncommon Woman. Thanks Lauren for giving us all the chance to guest-blog! I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a link.

Leonard Nimoy has taken a series of beautiful photographs of large nude women. Note that this link will lead you to photographs of naked women. They’re artistic, but use your best judgement as to whether or not that’s work-safe.

Nimoy’s second book of photography will focus on the women of the Fat Bottom Revue. He says: “They are interested in fat liberation. Their self-esteem is strong. They will tell you that too many people suffer because the body they live in is not the body you find in the fashion magazines.”

via Big Fat Blog

Rock To Rock To

Right click, save as, and hear what I’m listening to as I avoid studying.

Peaches – Operate
I can’t believe that Peaches, queen of the crotch, is featured on the Mean Girls soundtrack. Imagine all the parents of teenage girls freaking out when their daughters bring home a Peaches CD. Here’s to being subversive and controversial.

Lady Sovereign – Random
J-Lo’s got a body/but you can’t see mine ’cause I wear my trousers baggy.
I believe I found this song on a music blog, probably FluxBlog. Lady Sovereign has an interesting voice and pulls off the British hip hop, pseudo-reggae thing well. Making fun of the differences between British and Dirty South pronunciations is my favorite bit of this song.

American Analog Set – Know By Heart
This band is new to me. I like them because they are so chill and melodic. They remind me of Belle and Sebastian wedded to Sean Lennon.

Belle and Sebastian – The Stars of Track and Field
Featured in one of the most un-PC ways in the movie “Pumpkin.” This group perfectly rounds out my collection of quiet music appropriate for my study session. That I have abandoned. In lieu of blogging.

Mid-Terms, Schools, and Illnesses

Mid-Terms
It’s time for mid-terms, which means it is also time for the obligatory scholastic disillusionment post. Tonight I practice my ASL handshape story, a five minute story told through the use of body language and next to no actual signs, and study for the Shakespeare mid-term for which I am wholly unexcited. I can’t wait to have one full guilt-free week off.

I don’t care much at all anymore, and know I’m half-heartedly jumping through the required hoops. This does not a good student make.

Illnesses
After almost one full week with a fever Ethan went to the doctor and we found that he has, of all things, scarlet fever. It sounds so Old World Victorian (“My baby has the plague!”) but turns out to be a strain of strep throat with a body rash. All week long I asked Does your throat hurt? Nope. Do your ears hurt? Nope. Okay then. The fever must be the pink eye or Fifth Disease, certainly not the Black freakin’ Plague.

Schools
In other news I have begun to get phone calls for student teaching interviews.

Going to the high school and observing the classrooms has begun to move my internal view of myself from student to teacher. Today I passed out an initital survey to the students and found that everyone is both classes has a computer, only three don’t have internet access at home, and at least six have both a website and a blog. I hope to do my semester research on the connections, if any, between technological literacy and scholastic success, primarily based on case studies, interviews, and student work. The school I observe in is unusually outfitted with the latest ed tech and the teacher I observe with uses it to its maximum degree. This is quite rare in secondary Lit classrooms, so I want to explore what kinds of effects it has on the classroom environment as well.

One of my greatest difficulties this semester has been establishing a teacherly persona. I am in the schools for two class periods. The first is overall well-behaved and engaged in the lessons at hand, while the second period is essentially run by a group of rowdy boys who insist on having the last word and making the class into a comedy venue. Truthfully they’re quite funny. This is a problem. Once I start laughing I can’t stop.

Further, they are obsessed with my presence in the classroom where the first period observed doesn’t care one way or another. Every day I get a barrage of questions ranging from What did you do this weekend? to Where do you live?, What is your first name?, What’s your screen name? Can we chat? and I’ll bet you go to frat parties, don’t you? I switch between giving smartass answers and none at all.

When I finally picked a lesson plan to teach (after abandoning the idea of Sandra Cisneros, we settled on Eliot’s Prufrock, thanks for asking), the teacher informed me that she isn’t even going to ask me to teach the second period. She said she felt like it would be throwing meat to the wolves, and frankly, I feel like fresh meat. Relief.

Perhaps the most telling experience indicating my need to better develop a teacherly persona happened last Friday. After listening to a long conversation between students on the finer points of punk rock, including the aural importance of Kurt Cobain and Nirvana, how the size of piercing gauges correspond to numbers, what constitutes a cool tattoo, and other fine examples of high school inexperience, I found myself tempted to join in on a more-punk-than-you game that I thought I had long abandoned. In the interest of prudence, I shouldn’t divulge the stories I wanted to tell, but I guarantee that anything I could put on a list like this would be scandalous enough to blacklist me from any future teaching job and require an instant revocation of my laminated feminist card.

The overwhelming urge to bring in my CD collection and school these kids in the fineries of pre-1990’s pop culture has yet to pass.

Nirvana. Jesus. When did the 90’s become old school?

[For more on my observational experiences at this school, you can see my class blog: Miss Education.]

Friday Random Ten – The “Who the Hell Started This Meme?” Edition

This edition is named in honor of The Republic of T, with author Terence being the originator of this meme. Hi Terence! Terence informs me that he did not start this meme. Who did?

Tired ol’ directions: Upload all your mp3s into your music player of choice, set to random, hit play. List the first ten songs. No cheating.

  1. Aretha Franklin – Do Right Woman, Do Right Man
  2. Millie Jackson – Lick It Before You Stick It
    (Jackson is featured on the Worst Cover Albums list repeatedly. This song is a suggestion for men in a heterosexually active relationship.)
  3. Red Elvises – Rocket Man
    (Saw them in a local venue last year, a Russian rockabilly band that did the soundtrack for “Six String Samurai.” Wow.)
  4. Cee-Lo Green – The Art of Noise
  5. Teddy Pendergrass – Me and Mrs. Jones
  6. Melt Banana – Surfin’ USA
    (Really bad cover.)
  7. 7L and Esoteric ft. Inspectah Deck – Speaking Real Words
  8. The Cramps – Surfin’ Bird
    (Another really bad cover.)
  9. Har Mar Superstar – Girl, Let Me Use Your Ride
  10. Pharcyde – Runnin’

Also, see this week’s downloads.

Listen In My Absence

I still have a pile of envelopes addressed and ready to send to a few Life Mix participants. Unfortunately the CD burner is busted and I’m afraid to part with my tower long enough to get it fixed. One of these days.

My mental playlist has been all over the place lately, in part because I upload my actual full playlist FRT style to Winamp and let it run. Whenever I want music, I usually burn myself a more cohesive CD, but since the burner is broken and I’m too weird to let someone actually repair it, I’m stuck with my aural weirdness.

Listen to what I’m listening to in my absence.

Donovan – Wear Your Love Like Heaven
The logical step after a long Too Short bender is obviously a Donovan bender. Duh.

Madvillain – Figaro (Stones Throw 101 Remix)
Move away from hip-pop and find yourself an innovative rapper like Madvillain. This short song is an example of the smart rap that should be on the radio.

Grizzly Bear – Fix It
I adore the opening to this song – the alternative approach to a traditional drumbeat, the recorder, and the spare, distant sound of the vocals. Lovely.

Gilbert O’Sullivan – Alone Again (Naturally)
Lordisa, this one is depressing. But poppy. An offshoot of the Donovan thing.

Sean Lennon – Into the Sun
This song makes me wish it were summertime. Luckily I have 50 degree February weather to console me.

Right click, Save as. And you Mac users do whatever it is that you do. And no, I’m not back from my break.

Friday Random Ten – Now Completely Devoid of Irony!

Roxanne abandoned ship after the big boys picked up this meme1 and notably, coveniently forgot to credit where they got it from. Very naughty.

And so, the FRT ship has been pirated!2

If it’s midnight somewhere, let the games begin: Fire up your IPOD, MP3 or other digital media player, set to random play, list the first ten songs.

• Melt Banana – Wedge 3
• David Bowie – Space Oddity 4
• Cecile – Hot Like We 5
• Wanda Jackson – Funnel of Love 6
• Elliott Smith – Ballad of Big Nothing 7
• Jurassic 5 – Sum of Us 8
• Richard Cheese – Enter Sandman 9
• The Isley Brothers – It’s Your Thing 10
• Wesley Willis – Rock n’ Roll McDonald’s 11
• 7 Seconds – 99 Red Balloons 12

_________
1 Thus, the Friday Random Ten is no longer cool.
2 To prove how uncool we are, I just made a pirate reference. Pirates are so 2004.

A Quick Guide to Coolness, recommended for Egosystem Top 100 readers:
3 Prove how discriminating your taste is by being completely indiscriminatory!
4 Include some roots rock to show how much of a music lover you are!
5 Get international so your readers can see how inclusive you are. Excellent.
6 List something campy and obscure!
7 You’re sensitive. Let them know.
8 Let them know you like hip hop because you’re so urban and hip.
9 Be sure to display your sense of humor,
10 and how good you are with the ladies.
11 All the cool kids listen to Wesley Willis, so you do too!
12 And finally, a cover song, because you can never go wrong with punk bands covering new wave.

Coverville

Coverville might be my heaven. I’m listening to Aretha Franklin’s cover of “Eleanor Rigby” until my ears implode, and thus, it’s good to know that Coverville has me, um, covered with Joe Jackson’s version of the song once I’m done with Aretha.

Blame it on the lack of sleep.

via JC

Friday Random Ten – The “Holiday in Cambodia” Edition

This is the last week Roxanne will host the Friday Random Ten. From now on, my pretties, you can find it here.

Do it like you know you should: Fire up your IPOD, MP3 or other digital media player, set to random play, list the first ten songs.

1. Bratmobile – Make Me Miss America
2. Slick Rick – Teenage Love
3. Reverend Horton Heat – It Hurts Your Daddy Bad
4. Jimi Hendrix – All Along the Watchtower
5. Nina Simone – Central Park Blues
6. The Kinks – Til the End of the Day
7. Johnny Cash – Sixteen Tons
8. Motorhead – Ace of Spades
9. L7 – Slide
10. B-52s – Roam

And now it’s your turn, on your own blog, at Roxanne’s, or in the comments below.

Explicito Lingo: Downloads

This week’s downloads are some of my favorite rap songs, the guilty pleasures that I address in the post below on gender and hip hop. I won’t even defend their quality, as I know that my taste in hip hop is questionable.

Adina Howard – Freak Like Me
Remember her? She was one of the booty girls in the mid-nineties, pictured on the front of her albums bent over the hood of a car. Howard styled herself as a thug on the hunt for a thug, and contrary to the typical dichotomy of “dogs and bitches,” Howard addresses herself as a “dog” in this song, an interesting choice of language.

Trina ft. Trick Daddy- I Don’t Need You
Trina is, as usual, over-the-top nasty in this song. However there is one vaguely refreshing thing in this song, Trina’s nastiness is far more insulting than Trick Daddy’s rhymes, and after years of hearing insults of women’s sexual abilities lampooned in song after song, an aggressive answer dozens-style feels good. A comparable song is Too Short and Rappin’ 4-Tay’s “Don’t Fight the Feeling,” in which a woman shoots the both of them down in the most insulting of ways.

One thing I find incredibly interesting about the men who put out the nearly unforgivable misogynist songs is that they can then turn around and have their persona smashed to pieces by a woman in the next song. It’s too bad no one took up Ursula Rucker for a male/female rap battle on equal footing.

Akinyele ft. Crystal Johnson – Put It In My Mouth
I suppose you could call this a backward ode to oral sex, as it directly addresses both arts of cunnilingus and fellatio in the grossest of ways. Someone actually spent money for the studio, artists, and producers on this song. Johnson has a clear, lovely voice, and the tongue-in-cheek approach they take to this song is revealed when they can’t keep it together any longer and break into laughter at the end of the song.

Bone Thugs N Harmony ft. Notorious B.I.G. – Notorious Thugs
This is an example of one of the most irritating examples of female invisibility in music. I often find that if a mainstream rap song is not misogynist in nature, it is because women don’t exist at all in the world the song illustrates, or that women are tertiary objects meant to boost the image of the singer, similar to bling and rims. The only real references to femininity in this song is when Biggie says that his fame has allowed him to “fuck a few female stars or two,” and gives the thuggish version of the fish-in-the-sea thing: “All them hoes, I gotsta like one.” The way he says it almost sounds optimistic.

504 Boys ft. Mercedes – I Can Tell You Wanna Fuck
This slow jam could potentially be considered a love song of sorts, or perhaps the “realest” of hook-up songs, one in which it is understood that there will be sex with no strings attached. Mercedes, the female singer, exists purely as an answer to the male voice, affirming and encouraging the male singer’s fantasies.

N2Deep – Back to the Hotel
I told you I have no shame; this is where I prove it. This Latino group broke in the early nineties with this one-hit wonder. Apparently they remained underground producing CDs for a loyal fan base, but I can’t really understand why. This song is my ultimate in guilty pleasures. It is indefensible.

These songs in particular appeal to me either for the nostalgia or the beats, and all of them require a certain suspension of political and social knowledge in order to enjoy them for the short time they play (sort of like listening to AC/DC, Rick James, or Gary Glitter).

If you download or already know these songs I’m curious to know how you feel about them, not musically but lyrically. Other examples are welcome.