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

This photoshoot definitely makes the Grilled Cheesus cry.

Glee photo by Terry Richardson

So noted model-molester and general skeeze-ball Terry Richardson shot the cast of Glee for GQ. Or at least, the young white members of the cast who don’t play gay teens or teens with disabilities. That’s cool. Very edgy. Very cool.

Richardson, as usual, was highly original in his concept: Mostly-naked chicks. Or, more specifically, have all the men fully clothed, but make sure the girls are in their underwear (and when they aren’t in their underwear, make it clear that they aren’t wearing panties). And make sure everyone in the photos is nice and white and young and thin.

Now, look: I’m not outraged because there are OMGSexyLadies in a magazine (I’m not really outraged at all, actually). This is just some tiresome shit. These actresses are lovely and talented ladies, and if they want some sexy photos of themselves in magazines — photos which will hopefully also boost their ratings and get them new projects — more power to ’em. But there are other actors and actresses on that show, too, who are just as talented (in the case of Amber Riley, I would say significantly more talented), but because they don’t fit the Terry Richardson aesthetic (or the Hollywood aesthetic generally) they’re left out of these kinds of features. (They’re also left out of a lot of the show, and not as fully developed as characters, but that’s another post). Not that I think all would be well in the world if Amber Riley were also sucking on a lollipop on the pages of GQ; the point is that exposure, generally, is good for actors, but the exposure available for female actors skews towards the Sexy. And while there’s nothing wrong with the Sexy, it’s limiting — for the Sexy actresses themselves, who may have other talents (and whose Sexiness is not going to last forever), and for actresses who don’t fit the current model of Sexiness and are therefore ignored in the pages of magazines. Unless it’s a lady-magazine writing a feature about Loving Your Curves.

It’s also the concept behind the photo shoot that’s just exhausting. More thin white girls in underwear! Except we’re edgy, so let’s make it American Apparel underwear and throw in some high socks! And then let’s put a fully clothed dude in the scene with his hand on each girl’s ass, because that sends a clear visual message that (a) he’s powerful, and (b) that, dear GQ gentleman, could be you.

Oh Terry Richardson, you are such a groundbreaking new titty photographer artist. At least no one got a carnation stuck in their vagina this time (and yes, that link goes to a photo of exactly what it sounds like, which is definitely NSFW).

Contribute to Dear Sister

The Dear Sister anthology “is an anthology of letters and other works created for survivors of sexual violence from other survivors and allies. It is a collection of hope and strength through words and art.” It is accepting submissions through November 1st, and it sounds like an excellent project, so I hope some readers will contribute. Details are here.

Banksy on the Simpsons

Does anyone watch the Simpsons anymore? Apparently some people do. I don’t. But thanks to The Whole of the Internet, I did see Banksy’s couch gag intro (via Videogum, among others):

Apologies to non-U.S. readers — the YouTube clip was pulled, and Hulu is the only source I can find for the video. Description:

The video opens with the usual “The Simpsons” cloud animation, but this time featuring a bird flying by carrying one of Banksy’s signature rats in its mouth. The animation overlooks the nuclear facility, and centers on two town hooligans cutting the head off of a statue of Springfield’s founder; the head lands on Ralph Wiggum, who drops his ice cream cone. The animation pans upward, past the “Lard Land Donuts” boy, to Springfield Elementary School where Bart Simpson is writing “I must not write all over the walls” all over the walls. Then it’s to the nuclear facility, where Homer walks out beneath the “Three Days Without an Accident” sign with radioactive material stuck to his uniform, and then arrives home to the Simpson abode. The usual mishaps (Bart skateboarding by, Lisa biking, Marge pulling the car into the garage — except this time she hits Homer) get the Simpson family onto the couch. Then the lights flicker, and the animation zooms out, and you see that the Simpsons are actually on a screen overlooking a sweatshop where dozens of female Asian workers are making Simpsons animation panels. The panels are handed off to a little barefoot boy in shabby clothes, who dips them in toxic chemicals before hanging them up to dry. Near the vat of toxic chemicals are stacks of human bones, being picked at by rats. Downstairs there are more workers pushing Simpson’s t-shirts around on racks, and below that there are even more workers throwing small animals (kittens? birds?) into some sort of shredder that expels stuffing, which is then put inside of Bart Simpson dolls, which are in turn placed into a wheelbarrow being hauled by a tired-looking panda bear. Next to the panda is a man boxing up the Simpsons merchandise in “Simpsons” boxes, sealing them by having the tongue of a dead dolphin lick the tape. The scene then shifts to a unicorn chained to the wall, its horn used to punch holes in Simpsons DVDs. It collapses from exhaustion, and the scene zooms out to the “20th Century Fox” logo rising above the prison-like sweatshop buildings.

What To Read This Fall

I just bought Freedom, and I’m pretty excited to delve into what is supposedly The Greatest Novel of Our Time (that link, by the way, goes to a really really great piece that you should all read). But I’m also happy to see that Gawker’s list of books to read includes a number of female writers, especially since talented women are often passed over in the literary world (although for the record, no, I don’t exactly think Jodi Picoult is a literary genius, or much of an example of this phenomenon, any more than I think Nicholas Sparks is a better writer than Cormac McCarthy. And I don’t even like Cormac McCarthy).

What are you all reading, or planning to read, this fall? If you’re looking for some good short fiction, allow me to recommend The New Yorker’s 20 Under 40. If you click on a writer’s portrait, there’s a Q&A and a link to the piece that the magazine published.

Mark Your Calendars! October 3rd is the day!

It might even be the the greatest day for American women since August 18, 1920. “That will be a national day of celebration for feminists (and, really, for all human beings) everywhere, with dancing in the streets, parades, and fireworks. That is the day that the final Cathy comic strip will be published.”*

For those who are unfamiliar with it, the comic strip, which has been running for 34 years chronicled the life of a woman who spent most of her adulthood freaking out about her weight, embracing a variety of tropes about the planetary origins of men and women, desperately trying to find Prince Charming, and dealing with her mother. Pretty much every strip involved a gag about how Cathy didn’t fit into a bathing suit, a state of complete and total agitation, followed by making a total mess and winding up covered in chocolate. About 30 years into the strip, Cathy married her hapless boyfriend Irving after many, many years of terrible jokes drawn from The Rules and other similarly awful dating advice books. And for the most part, Cathy had the personality of a poorly drawn wet mop. I honestly have no idea how it lasted so long telling the exact same five jokes over and over.

I’ve always gotten the impression that Cathy was meant as something for women to bond over, but for the most part it just reinforced a lot of wretched stereotypes about women: chocoholics who are always desperate to lose weight but can’t part with the carbs, women who ruin their finances by splurging on overpriced handbags and shoes, being mean to Nice Guys™ knowing in the end that they’re the reliable and steady kind you want to marry, mortal panic about being single, etc.

I can remember reading the comics in my local paper at about the age of nine and thinking that Cathy was particularly ridiculous. Wasn’t she ever going to DO something? Didn’t she like herself? What was going on with all the chocolate, shredded wrapping paper, and bemused looking dog? I really wanted her to have a decent relationship with her mother rather than one premised on her mom’s desire for her to find a nice young man and have a respectable life, and wondered why she had the same conversations over and over and over.

Looking back on it, I have (probably vain) hopes that whatever replaces Cathy in most newspapers will feature a strong female lead character who grows up, has adventures, and evolves in her relationships with other people. It’d also be really nice if there weren’t jokes about being single, PMS references, or an attempted genetic explanation for chocolate consumption. (If anyone knows of a good comic strip or webcomic that meets such criteria, please share in comments!)

*The blogger hopes that Cathy will go out as a suicide bomber and take out a handful of other noxious comic strips. I’m not a fan of that idea, but I have to hope that the end doesn’t involve metaphorical muzak with slow motion montages or whatever the comic strip equivalent is.

Hat tip to Melinda for the link.

Totally Cringe-worthy Dance

After many of our performances, the dancers of our company come back on stage for a Q and A or talkback or something. It’s my least favourite part of the job. I like the protection of the stage and the lights. I will do anything on stage because the firm line of the proscenium protects me. Even when what we are doing is risky, physically and or emotionally, even when I am feel most stripped and vulnerable, I take refuge in the knowledge that I am safe behind the light, the curtains, and the edge of the stage. In that limited, bordered place, I will give you my all. When the lights and curtain are taken away and we reappear (usually soaked in sweat, dressed in half in street clothes and half in costume, water bottles, scarves and jackets tightly in hand), we are no longer the wild, fierce beautiful things on stage; we are human.

Revealing our humanity is, of course, part of the point. Too often, despite the sweat and the breath, dancers seem untouchable, ethereal, and surreal. As I sit before the audience, though, I usually just feel vulnerable and clunky. I’m not so worried that someone will say something negative about the performance — but now I think of it, that would be awful — I find that I am afraid of what people will say about disability and art and that I am unwilling to keep explaining my physicality for consumption by a medically fascinated/intrigued/uncertain audience. It’s one thing to be in control of your self-presentation as a dancer; it’s another to have to explain why you are the way you are; and still another to have to welcome commentary that, in other spaces, you would write off without a second thought.

Here’s what I mean. A choreographer recently changed the ending to one of his pieces. The first version slowed carefully. A voice calls to the dancers on stage; we move; it calls again; we move, this time for a shorter duration; and again; we freeze, recognizing our concluding shapes as the end of a thirty minute journey. We’re here; our time has come to an end. The lights come down slowly; we look at each other intensely and acknowledge the power of the experience we have shared. In the new version, the voice calls to us in the same way; we mark out the seconds to the end of our journey together. But on the final call, instead of finding a quiet stillness, the movement takes us out of ourselves. Time cannot stop; this cannot be the end. We move. And we move. And we just keep moving as the lights come down into black forcing us to stop. I love both endings. They resonate deeply within me; I find myself wanting to cry sometimes, so deeply do I feel the end of time.

After that moment, I want people to talk about the journey they’ve shared with us. And they do. It’s just that all too often, we aren’t on the same pathway at all. Two recent comments have got me thinking. In the first, an audience member is pleased and excited that we’ve “earned” our applause: that people aren’t just clapping because some of us are disabled and we’ve managed to lift a finger. The speaker is exaggerating, of course, but we have encountered situations where reviewers have given positive reviews simply because being disabled and being on stage is so “inspirational.” In these situations, people aren’t engaging with the work; they are reaffirming (for their own safety) a set of useless societal stereotypes about disability, artistry, and virtuosity. I don’t know how to react to such comments. I DESPISE any form of the word inspiration that isn’t being used to describe an intake of breath (link is to my site and a post about it). If seeing almost two hours of fierce dance and intense art cannot break people out of this mode, nothing will.

At the same time, however, I think of this comment as having a nasty, nasty edge. We “earned” our applause, (damn right we did), but we earned it by executing a series of movements that are recognizably extraordinary. When we dive, roll, cartwheel, wheelie, lift, run, jump, balance, …., we are doing things that almost anyone can recognize as needing skill. It’s physically, technically hard. But what if, as a disabled dancer, lifting my finger and bowing my head were as technically complicated for me, in my body, as any of the daredevil things a colleague and I currently do. The work and the skill would be the same, but who in the audience would recognize that I had earned my applause as deservedly? If we continue to push for extreme movement as somewhat definitional, the dance world will remain exclusive. And that isn’t right. Dance belongs to the moving body, not the institution.

A second audience member expresses delight at our work; it’s a particularly sweet delight since this person was concerned about cringing. The comment stings me deeply. It comes from a well-meaning place — that, I gather — it bites nonetheless. I’ve seen “cringe-worthy dance.” If you go to a lot of performances, you will sooner or later hit a couple of “bad” ones. But this audience member made an association between the cringe-worthiness of the performance and the presence of disabled performers. Such is the state of disability-awareness that it is still possible to say this, aloud, in front of other people without an apparent sense of shame. There’s a kind of assumption that a fear of cringing is a shared feeling, and I suppose it probably is.

To my mind, cringe-worthy performances by disabled people come from denying disability, from attempting to overcome it (in a saccharine, inspirational way), or from playing it for sympathy or good will. When disabled performers render themselves abject before your very eyes because that’s what our society expects, it is indeed cringe-worthy. But only because we should cringe at a society that so devalues the humanity of some of its people. We should cringe before a culture that insists on building an understanding of its physicality by casting out the physicality of others. It’s not about cringing because there are disabled performers on stage doing what looks like, well, dance.

It’s kind of like going to a freak-show. If we can be sure that the disabled performers control and manipulate the gaze of a non-disabled eye, that’s one thing. But if the performers are unable to maintain a sense of, I dunno, irony, distance, control; if they seem only to play to societal expectations and to lose themselves, that is cringe-worthy. It is cringeworthy because you, the audience member, participate in the unthinking consumption of another human being as they reiterate for your entertainment a set of demeaning social stereotypes. Neither the performers themselves nor the performance are worthy of your cringe.

On the way home, the bitterness burning inside my stomach, I wonder at the history of “cringe” as a word. A quick check of the Online Etymology Dictionary confirms for me a thought that has been gnawing at my gut. Cringe and crinkle share an etymological history: they are both connected to the Old English word, crincan. “Cringing,” as the commenter used it, contains a sense of shrinking away in fear. It’s a very physical word; you can see a cringe in the mind’s eye and experience it in your body. The twisted, bentness of cringe has a softer dimension, though, in the branch of words that is connected to our current crinkle. Crinkle has a sense of “yielding.”

I hit the accelerator as I swing into the curve that takes me up the hill to where I currently live. I feel my body bend and twist with the steering wheel as the car, the steering wheel and my torso join in a driving dance. What if, unbeknownst to the commenter, “cringe” actually was the right word? What if our performance actually was cringe-worthy — in the sense that our power evoked a kind of yielding and softness in the audience’s bodies? What if, as they softened and let go of prejudice, the passion in our movement transported them to a different place? The car parks itself (thank god); I open the door and bend forward experimenting with a cringing, crinkly softness.

On The Cover

Do you remember the picture in National Geographic of the so-called Afghan girl?

The photograph, taken by Steve McCurry, was of Sharbat Gula; her image adorned the cover of a 1985 issue of National Geographic (The link is to National Geographic’s discussion and review of the story almost 20 years later). I was barely aware of the wider world, then, but as I look back through web discussions (weird, that the web doesn’t go back to 1985, eh?), it seems that the Western world was fascinated with her face, her possible life, her unknown story, her “exotic green eyes,”…. You get the picture. She became a symbol; McCurry won Best 100 National Geographic Pictures.

There’s so much to be said about this story, about the confluence of race, gender, and feminism, about the practices of marketing and Western media — it’s an uncomfortable and disturbing mess. Her value as a symbol was and, indeed, is still so compelling that National Geographic went back in 2002 to find her, to see what had happened to her. Among the outcomes of that visit was a second image of her face — discussion this time is about how hard her life has been. The two images are at the root of a kind of Shepard-Fairey-like tradition of making and remakings of the image — some with honourable intent and some not — all over the internet. (The link is to google image search for “Afghan girl.”)

And now, there’s a third. This latest photograph is the focus of my post today. It’s on the cover of TIME magazine. Once more, the face of a beautiful, young Afghan woman stands in for a discussion of war. This time, however, the woman is visibly disabled. As the cover makes clear, the torture that rendered Aisha disabled, is one of the consequences/risks of an American withdrawal from Afghanistan and the consequent return of the Taliban. I have nothing to say about this thesis; my focus is the value of disability in this picture.

Some More Provisos

  • I will not be embedding the image here for copyright reasons, primarily, and because I am not happy with it — even given the argument that it is part of a tradition.
  • In no way, do I think what happened to Aisha is at all acceptable, excusable, or forgivable. Nothing I am about to write is intended to convey that. This post is a reflection on how the disability that resulted from an unjust punishment is being used to further the discussion of war and women’s rights.
  • In no way, do I wish to convey the idea that I do not think women’s rights in Afghanistan are of critical importance; I think women’s rights are a signal human rights issue. I am trying to understand the role of disability in the discussion of women’s rights.
  • You can read an abridged version of article and see the photograph I’m talking about here. Beware the comments.

    The Photographic Tradition

    I don’t know who reads TIME; I don’t. I don’t know how many of TIME’s readers are old enough to remember the National Geographic photograph in the original or how many became acquainted with Sharbat Gula’s story when National Geographic visited a second time. I do think, however, that there is a mainstream audience out there that is able to recognize that the TIME photo refers back to the National Geographic picture. My bet is that when they make the comparison between the two covers, Aisha will be cast negatively. And that disturbs me. How many of TIME’s readers will look at the image and recognize Aisha as beautiful, exactly as she is? How many of those readers will use her disability as the reason that no one could ever find her beautiful. “As is” is important to me here, because I find sentiments such as “despite her disability,…” as deeply patronizing. Disability can be integrated into one’s understanding of a whole and hale human being.

    I’m not saying that I think Aisha’s particular body is a natural part of human variation; it’s not. (Just in case you thought I was making a pollyanna disability rights and culture argument — I am making a disability rights and culture argument, just not a simple one.) Some children are born with bodies that might be comparable; others acquire them through surgery or medical conditions. I believe in the beauty of these bodies; Lucy Grealy’s achingly beautiful Autobiography Of A Face in which she discusses beauty, disability, and faces was one of the texts that helps me arrive at such a statement.

    Aisha withstood several acts of unbelievable violence; she has a before and after that I think might complicate how we understand her photograph. This video discusses the photographer’s approach.

    Transcription

    Aisha for me was one woman that really stood out. She’s staying in a shelter in Kabul. There was a court case against her within the tribe. She said that as punishment men took her and cut off her ears and her nose. For me, it was more about capturing something about her. And that was the really difficult part. You know her headscarf fell slightly back and her hair was exposed. And she had the most beautiful hair. And I said to her, you know, “You really are such a beautiful woman, and I could never understand or know how you feel it, you know, by having your nose and ears cut off, but what I CAN [emphasis hers] do is show you as beautiful in this photograph.” I could have made a photograph with her looking or, or being portrayed more as the victim. And I thought, “No. This woman is beautiful.”

    In the voiceover, Ms. Bieber finds Aisha beautiful, but that recognition comes not from a consideration of her face or her body as it is now; it’s prompted by an admiration for her hair. (How many times has a white woman found beauty in the hair of a woman of colour?) I suppose I should be glad that Ms. Bieber can see Aisha’s beauty, no matter what its source. But I remain frustrated with the cover image. S.E. Smith (who wrote here earlier this summer) reminds me that Ms. Bieber probably didn’t make the decision herself: covers are editorial decisions. But let’s say, for a moment, that a decision was made and that Ms. Bieber consented. The decision (which is not discussed — does Ms. Bieber deny her own agency? She’s not disowning the photograph) is to go for the pose that most resembles the world-famous image of Sharbat Gula.

    The discourse surrounding the photograph of Sharbat Gula is comprised in large part of discussion of her beauty and, in particular, her eyes. In the photograph, Aisha is posed to recall Sharbat Gula’s image — both women are placed in similar light, with similar head and body positions with regard to the camera, both women wear a headscarf that reveals their hair, both women stare intensely into the camera. The signal difference between the two women is that one is visibly disabled.

    This image would not have to be cover of the magazine. In fact, I would argue that it is the cover primarily because of the power of Sharbat Gula’s image and the, by contrast, negative shock value of Aisha’s disability for readers in the mainstream US (but possibly also Western) world. Ms. Bieber, would not have had to use Aisha’s picture at all — there are other women in the article. Ms. Bieber would not have had to pose her in this manner — there’s another picture of her in the article, seated cross-legged and smiling, full face to the front, at the camera. She’s not even in that position in the video in which Ms. Bieber talks about how she took Aisha’s picture. No. Ms. Bieber’s decision (which, incidentally, she doesn’t discuss) is to go for the pose that most resembles the world-famous image of Sharbat Gula. It’s deliberate. It’s the money-shot.

    Regardless of how disability plays out in Aisha’s world, the vast majority of readers of TIME live in a culture that understands disability as tragedy. As shocking. As among the worst things that can happen to you (bar death). Mainstream American culture thinks it knows disability and knows how to read it. Ms. Bieber has a history of photographing disabled bodies (there’s an image of a wheelchair user in this video of her “Real Beauty” pictures). But the work she does in the Real Beauty series does not come through in this photograph — perhaps because of the context and placement of the image. Here she (and or the editor) uses Aisha’s disability to trade upon the readership’s sympathies and their horror: this and other unknown kinds of disability are a direct result of the US departure from Afghanistan. This is not about Aisha; it’s about the message of the article.

    That women’s rights will be at risk, should the US leave Afghanistan is really not a debatable issue. In fact, looking at Aisha’s story, it seems pretty clear that women’s rights are at risk even while the US is in Afghanistan. So why does the story need Aisha’s disability?

    The relationship between feminism and disability rights is, as the blogosphere repeatedly shows, vexed. Mainstream feminisms simply don’t know what to do with disability. And here, it seems to me that the argument is simple: disability is a screen upon which the narrative claims of women’s rights are projected. (As a disability rights activist, I would have to sigh and say, “again.”) There is no understanding that women’s rights and disability rights do not have to be mutual antagonists. Instead, the Bieber image, as contextualized in TIME, attempts to make women’s rights off the back (so-to-speak) of disability rights. Aisha’s body is the quickest route to publicizing a serious message. It’s the easiest, most visceral, most unthinking, sloppiest way to get a point across.

    To those who would protest that Ms. Bieber was just trying, as she said, to make her look beautiful, I would say that the problem of Western mores, beauty, and disability for people who live non-Western worlds is equally vexed. Anyone remember the beauty contest organized by a white Norwegian, presumably able-bodied man for female amputees in Angola? The mainstream blogosphere discussion was about how important it was for these women to regain their self-esteem. How problematic is it that the non-disabled white folk seek to restore and communicate the beauty (in their own terms) of disabled women of colour? (Links are to my site and to feministe’s own slightly horrifying discussion.) Oh, and in case you were wondering how invisible the disability aspect of Aisha’s story might be, check out this NYT piece, classily entitled “Portrait of Pain.”

    We will never be able to approach these and other complex questions about the relationship of disability, feminism, and beauty unless we have a wider understanding of disability itself. I am going to moderate comments. I ask that you consider this conversation as being part of the process of exploring and understanding some of the ways disability, race, and feminism might travel together.

  • Who’s oggling who now?

    This collection of photos is captioned thusly:

    Magnum presents a gallery about girl-watching all over the world—a truly universal activity. Be sure to read Troy Patterson’s “A Dandy’s Guide to Girl-Watching” in Slate.

    Leaving aside everything skeezy about that description (and the far more uncomfortable “Guide” to watching “girls”), the photo collection itself offers an (unintentionally) interesting look at how we gender the act of watching itself — and who we assume does the watching and who is watched. Take, for example, this image:

    A man in a bathing suit stands on an outdoor staircase. A woman dressed in a short and skirt sits at the bottom of the stairs and looks up at him.

    Read More…Read More…

    A Gauntlet Has Been Thrown!

    Every now and then, I take a few precious minutes out of my extremely busy schedule as a Professional Humourless Feminist to listen to what I believe the kids refer to as ‘popular music’ or ‘pop music’ for short. I believe that this is part of what is known as ‘pop culture,’ something which less serious feminists seem to take extremely seriously, wasting their time on ‘critiques’ when there are Serious Things Going on.

    Several months ago, my fellow Professional Humourless Feminist Annaham introduced me to a musical artist named Janelle Monae. I was reluctant at first to eject the compact disc of the World’s Greatest Military Marches that I usually loop on repeat, but I decided to give it a whirl.

    As I listened, I felt a strange, uncomfortable, and distinctly unfamiliar sensation. I looked down to realise that my foot appeared to be making a strange twitching motion. I was powerless to control the peculiar feelings that swept over me, and I suddenly found myself pulled out of my chair as though by magnetism and careening around the living room. Explaining this alarming reaction to Annaham later, she explained that what had happened is known as a ‘Spontaneous Dance Party.’

    I was initially so fearful of this turn of events that I threw the musical disc into the darkest corner of my desk drawers, but I found myself oddly compelled, and played it again one day to see if the Spontaneous Dance Party would recur. This was done in the interests of scientific inquiry, to determine whether or not the Dance Party was correlated with, or perhaps even caused by, this ‘pop music.’

    After several weeks of controlled testing, I can confirm that this appears to be the case. I have submitted a writeup of my findings to the New England Journal of Medicine and am currently eagerly awaiting a response.

    I bring this up, not with the intention of sharing my frivolous side activities that clearly distract me from Very Serious Feminist Things, but because I cannot allow my fellow guest blogger Sarah’s embarrassingly effuse praise of the musical artist Robyn to stand without comment.

    Read More…Read More…