August 2007 – Page 2

Fashion Police

If showing asscrack is outlawed, only outlaws will show asscrack.

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out the racial motivations behind these anti-sagging ordinances — it’s a style that’s associated with so-called “hip-hop culture,” and that in itself is offensive to white people. Of course, sagging pants doesn’t actually harm anyone, but that’s beside the point. It’s offensive.

I agree, and I think we should go a step further and really ban all offensive clothing. Saggy pants are a good start, and other legislators have banned or attempted to ban visible thong underwear. Good for them — black people and women are always good groups to begin with. Next, we should focus on anything sex-related, and absolutely ban men from wearing fanny packs in the front, especially if they’re wearing the fanny pack while they’re wearing a shirt, a speedo and no pants.* The fanny-pack-in-front not only goes against the entire purpose of the fanny pack, but the obvious resemblance to a giant man-package leads to some seriously impure thoughts. I understand that men need something to carry their stuff in, so I’ll suggest investing in a man-purse. The frontal fanny-pack is just obscene.

Next: The Mom Jean. The public presence of Mom Jeans only highlights how liberal feminism has destroyed our society. What are these women doing in public? Why aren’t they at home with their children? The Mom Jean — worn sans-children — is a walking billboard of sexual depravity and child neglect. Ban it.

Also: Revealing or otherwise sexualized clothing. Bikinis and any other sort of fitted bathing suit. Thong underwear. Miniskirts. Short-shorts. Push-up bras. Belly shirts. Tight jeans. Low-cut tops. Muscle shirts. Definitely those men’s tank-tops with the really long armpit holes. This one should be obvious.

Finally: Burquas, veils, niqabs, or any other Islamofascist clothing. Clearly, women covering themselves is anti-American, at least when it’s done for Allah instead of for Jerry Falwell (God bless him). We must free these oppressed ladies from the evils of the hijab, and introduce them to the beauty of the denim and floral-print cotton dress.

Who’s with me? And what else should we add to the list?

*…and I’ve officially been in Europe for too long. We should also ban the American version: The handgun-fanny-pack.

Media for women: what will we support?

It’s not just indie magazines that are at risk for folding these days (as discussed in a previous entry here). It seems that any non-mainstream mass-male-produced media is destined to either dissolve or not be profitable and have to work at a not-for-profit level. Why can’t women make a go of it and be a financial success?

On August 17, Greenstone Media aired its last radio program. For those who don’t know: Greenstone was a radio network founded by Gloria Steinem and Jane Fonda et al and lasted all of 18 months. Stations wouldn’t pick up their programming. They have wondered publicly if it was seen as too feminist. The funny thing is, among feminists, there was nothing particularly feminist about it. It was talk radio “the way women want it”, or so they thought. They produced about 63-hours of programming each week and only a dozens radio stations carried it. They had call-in shows with few callers. The shows were fairly average. I listened online, not because I loved it but because I wanted to support them while they grew and found their true niche. They say it takes two years to find your market in radio, but their financial backers were impatient. They couldn’t see how talk radio for women could ever fly. Apparently, we’re satisfied with the morning drive-time program format that includes two frat boys and a woman paid to laugh at their penis jokes.

Were the backers right? Is there no room for women’s media or are we just not willing to support it in its infancy. It truly is in its infancy at this point – we need to get women out there and then help grow media to empower women.

The question has been asked many times in feminist circles – is it enough to get behind women and support them just because they are women and then hold them to higher standards, or do we set the bar so high now that we’re not getting anywhere, and then complain when we’re not represented?

To Do or Not To Do

Yeah, that’s pretty much how I make all of my decisions.

Can We Talk About Porn Without Having the Same Fight Over and Over?

Here’s hoping we can.

Like the other stuff I’ve been posting about, I bring this up because I’ve been thinking a lot about it lately and because my opinions are shifting and I’m not exactly sure where they’re headed.

I don’t want this to be about anyone’s personal habits and what they mean and whether they’re defensible from a feminist POV. ‘Cause that’s been done to death and frankly, it’s boring. But obviously it doesn’t make sense to start this kind of discussion without laying out where I’m coming from, so I’ll dispense with it quickly: I am a fairly regular user of porn (upcoming links probably NSFW). Not generally the kinder, gentler material that’s made “for women” and called “erotica.” And not always the feminist, binary-questioning, politically aware stuff or the let’s-objectify-nekkid-hipster-boys thang either. Sometimes I like some mainstream smut (/NSFW links).

However, I’m not interested in pretending that there’s no conflict between this and my fervent belief that media images matter. If I think it’s necessary to consistently interrogate what pop culture in general says about women and femininity (and I do, duh), I can’t ignore that porn is—to put it mildly—problematic. As is true regarding a lot of things I love but have (mostly) given up for health and many other reasons, I’m willing to trade pleasure for living more closely aligned with my values. Nor am I interested, though, in arguments that porn as a category is inherently evil, or destructive, or antifeminist, simply because it involves women’s bodies in a sexual context.

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What it was like…

I thought I’d talk to you today of some of the social history of the women here. This is always my favorite part of learning about a culture. It’s the day-to-day living aspect that always seem to interest me the most. How do women deal with medical care, child birth and care, hygiene and their activities of daily living? That has always been the most enlightening part of a society to me.

I have always been very interested in the folk cures and how medical and veterinary treatments were handled here. When I began collecting folk cures and remedies and learning which plants were used for what ailments, I was surprised when the stories would mention Dr. This or Dr. That. I’d always thought formal healthcare scarce. For a while, I didn’t think about it, but then I asked.

“So, I thought there weren’t many doctors before the clinic was built?”

“Oh…he weren’t a real doctor. He were a veterinarian.”

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Everything that’s wrong with America

Is right here.

Sweet Jesus.

UPDATE: I agree with Hecateluna. I thought about putting up a disclaimer at the beginning of this post, but I figured people would get what I meant. I just got back from traveling a few hours ago and hadn’t read any of the other posts or responses on other feminist blogs, and so I hadn’t seen how this young woman had been derided as a dumb blond and a moron. So, to clarify, I’m not saying that she is what’s wrong with America. But I think that beauty pageant culture is. That is, we’re much more concerned with appearances and with the illusion of scholarship than with education or scholarship itself. This issue obviously transcends pageants, and when I use the term “beauty pageant culture” I include all the aspects of American life that embrace those values — including media and politics. The current presidency and the media coverage of the war in Iraq are the most blatant examples of our emphasis on appearance over substance, and our treatment of women further illustrates our obsession with the decorative, our failure to support the substantive, and then our collective surprise when shit goes wrong. Anyway, this could turn into its own post, but I was never trying to suggest that she is the one worthy of mockery. And if you want my opinion on beauty contests, I wrote about it here.

Whither Independent Print Media?

I’ve always loved everything about words put on paper with ink. Not just the way I could carry them on public transit and hand them to my friends, but the way they look and feel and, yes, smell. (I realize I’m exposing myself as a bit of a weirdo here. But, well, work as a magazine publisher for almost your whole adult life and you’ll develop some strange habits. I gotta tell ya, there’s nothing like opening up the first box of the new issue and taking a whiff.) When people started making noises about the death of print back in the late ’90s, it was easy to scoff. Sure, the interwebs were overflowing with all sorts of content and community, but the print world was also thriving, from zines on up.

That was a decade ago.

What with the recent rash of magazine foldings, distro troubles in the book and magazine worlds, and more trouble on the way, it seems the coming death of print might not have been so greatly exaggerated after all. (More interesting items here, not that this is by any means an exhaustive list.)

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An American Brigadoon…

The women are part of the mountains, as are all the people. They carry their culture with them when they leave. It is why the eastern seaboard is littered with little mill villages with names like Cabbage Town or Olympia or Hagood. They have always been the keepers of the flame, the home fires. They have always had all of the skills, and then some, of the men. They have always worked just as hard and just as diligently doing the same work as the men. Make no mistake, these women may stay silent in church, but this is most definitely a matriarchal society.

Women control much of the business interactions here. If I, for instance, wish to hire a man to come help me with some task on the farm, I must call his wife and arrange it. She will make the decision whether he may accept my job.

Appalachian women have held positions throughout history as coal miners, textile mill workers, farmers, actresses, nurses, midwives, activists and union organizers. They can string up 10 miles of barbed wire then go home and nurse a sick child back to health using a concoction made from wild herbs.

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Worker’s right to not starve to death for the job

I received a note reminding me to introduce myself. So here it goes. I’m Trudi Evans. I hail from Nova Scotia, Canada. I volunteer with an organization that works on body image, self-esteem, and eating disorders issues. I publish an online magazine (shameless plug). I’m fumbling through the whole publishing arena and making it a viable business with great plans to grow from that one publication into a feminist publishing house with an aggressive marketing department and a woman-focused workplace. Right now, I work in various rooms of my home, share my keyboard with my cat, raise a child, smooch on my partner, and chase the squirrels out of my teeny tiny garden. And feel a lot of pressure to blog interesting things here at Feministe.

On with the show…

The modeling industry has been under scrutiny for pushing models to attain unnatural thinness by any means, and in the end, seeing them die for their profession. So what’s a government to do to protect its workers? Investigate the models instead of the industry, of course.

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Racism and Greece

My blogging began because of a racist attack that had happened here in Greece six years earlier. It shocked the country then, not just because it was so horrific but also because the country had to wake up and see that racism exists here, contrary to popular opinion.

It is a commonly held belief that Greeks are not racist. It is also common to hear people say, “We don’t mind Black people, it’s the Albanians, Turks or Gypsies, we have a problem with. In more recent times, the Chinese have joined the list of baddies because of the small shops selling cheap clothing that have sprung up all over the big cities. This is a country where it is still acceptable to put your house up to rent and to specify that foreigners need not apply. This is a place where the media will accuse any crime on Albanians before any facts are known. There is no shortage of stories here about racism and xenophobia. There is more material than I could possibly cover myself.

I understand that It is often difficult for people to face up to racism. It is not an enjoyable experience to be accused of racism. And here I was accusing a whole country of the racism they didn’t want to see or acknowledge. There has been a collective temper tantrum and an avalanche of denial. How dare a foreigner call us racist? And worse still, a black one!

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