September 2011 – Feministe

Leave your Britney alone?

Just a little bit of fun for a Friday afternoon: Every year, the Ig Nobel Prizes are awarded to “honor achievements that first make people laugh, and then make them think.” There are costumes and paper airplanes, a good time is had by all, and by the end of them, you realize suddenly that you learned something.

The 24/7 Lectures are the part of the awards ceremony when the audience is addressed, very briefly, by several of “the world’s top thinkers.” This year’s final 24/7 speaker was Dr. Kate Clancy, an assistant professor of anthropology at the University of Illinois who spoke on the subject of vaginal pH, first comprehensively in 24 seconds and then simply in seven words.

Leave your acidic vagina alone–don’t douche.

Dr. Clancy does explore the subject in more depth on her blog. And you can watch all of the 24/7 lectures or even the whole damn ceremony online. Totally worth it, if you have a couple of hours.

Update: Shoot darn. Forgot the transcript. It’s below the jump. Also updated the time stamp on the video. Yay, freshly functional post!

Things I Am Against:

Public marriage proposals. Sure, your flashmob is adorable (I guess), but public humiliation is not the greatest way to say “Let’s spend our lives together.” Also, there’s no way someone can say no in front of 200 people, so it seems kind of unfair.

And ok FINE I might have teared up a little tiny bit during that video, and I really enjoyed that her response to “Will you marry me?” was “Well DUH!,” but I’m standing firm on this one: Public marriage proposals are NO. I am officially opposed.

Business at Sofitel

Feministe friend Josh Glasstetter sends along this image from the Sofitel homepage — it’s the first thing that comes up when you visit their site. Sofitel, it’s worth mentioning, is the place where DSK was renting out a $3,000-a-night suite when he allegedly sexually assaulted a hotel employee. The image advertises “Business@Sofitel,” and features two white men and three white women. The two white men are in suits, and are standing up, and both appear to be talking to the women and moving around. The three women are sitting down, looking up at the men. The women are not wearing suits. Two of the women appear to be taking notes on whatever it is that the men are saying; the third is just gazing up at the talking, suit-wearing man.

Business@Sofitel: Men TALKING! And GESTURING! And LEADING! And women… sitting and listening! And writing down the important things that the talking, gesturing men say! And making the “I am so interested in all of the interesting things you are saying because you are just so interesting” face! And looking really pretty while they do it!

Sounds just lovely. Do pretty women who gaze adoringly at you come standard, or is there an extra cost for that? Is there a discount for uglier ones? Because I’ll totally take uglier ones as long as they can do the “interested” face.

Larger version of the image below the fold.

Short skirts will get you raped. Also shorts. Also just leaving your house, so stop doing that. I’m just trying to help.

Three photos of men in shorts — Look at these sluts, just asking for it.

Your ~~skirt~~ shorts are going to get you raped. That’s the message NYPD officers are sending to women in Park Slope, Brooklyn:

Earlier this evening, at around 7:30 p.m., I was on my way home from the gym, keys in hand, not talking on my cell phone, very aware of my surroundings. I passed a cop and he asked if I would stop and talk to him. He then asked two women who were wearing dresses to stop and talk to him. Here is our conversation:

Cop: “Do you know what’s been going on in this neighborhood?”

Me: “Yes, a man has attacked several women.”

Cop: “Do you know what he’s looking for?”

Lady: “…Young women walking alone?”

Cop: “And how do you know that? Someone told you that?”

Lady: “No, I’ve been reading about this in the news.”

Cop: (points to my gym clothes) “Your shorts are pretty short.” (points at women’s dresses) “Kind of showing some skin. Do you think that might make this guy angry, think he can get easy access?”

Me: “I really appreciate that cops are out in the neighborhood, but I’m coming home from the gym, and it’s hot outside. Women should be able to wear shorts and dresses without it being seen as an excuse to be attacked.”

Cop: “I’m just making sure you’re aware of what’s going on. Girls like you are targets.”

Me: “Thank you for being out here, but I would really prefer if you caught the criminal.”

But maybe it’s just one officer, right? Nope!

Asked whether officers were warning women against wearing shorts or skirts, the New York City Police Department responded in no time.

“Officers are not telling women what not to wear—there’s a TV series that does that,” quipped Deputy Commissioner Paul Browne in an email. “They are simply pointing out that as part of the pattern involving one or more men that the assailant(s) have targeted women wearing skirts.”

The rapist is targeting women who are wearing skirts, so NYPD officers are warning women who are wearing… shorts. Sure. Also the rapist is targeting people who appear to have vaginas, so maybe people who appear to have vaginas should just leave their bodies at home. What’s wrong with that advice? I’m just looking out for you.

I don’t live in Park Slope, but I’m in an adjacent neighborhood, and for a while there were a string of muggings nearby. The mugger targeted men — most of whom were wearing pants with pockets, in which they kept their wallets and cell phones for easy access. And yet I didn’t hear of one police officer stopping a bepantsed man and “simply pointing out that as part of the pattern.” Weird. I’m sure that was just a departmental oversight.

“We have to be as fearless about our bellies as we are with our hearts.”

I’ve written often about how it is we have to reach hard in the direction of the lives we want, even if it’s difficult to do so. I’ve advised people to set healthy boundaries and communicate mindfully and take risks and work hard on what actually matters and confront contradictory truths and trust the inner voice that speaks with love and shut out the inner voice that speaks with hate. But the thing is—the thing so many of us forget—is that those values and principles don’t only apply to our emotional lives. We’ve got to live them out in our bodies too.

Yours. Mine. Droopy and ugly and fat and thin and marred and wretched as they are. We have to be as fearless about our bellies as we are with our hearts.

There isn’t a short cut around this, sweet pea. The answer to your conundrum isn’t finding a way to make your future lover believe you look like Angelina Jolie. It’s coming to terms with the fact that you don’t and never will (a fact, I’d like to note, that Angelina Jolie herself will also have to come to terms with someday).

Real change happens on the level of the gesture. It’s one person doing one thing differently than he or she did before. It’s the man who opts not to invite his abusive mother to his wedding; the woman who decides to spend her Saturday mornings in a drawing class instead of scrubbing the toilets at home; the writer who won’t allow himself to be devoured by his envy; the parent who takes a deep breath instead of throwing a plate. It’s you and me standing naked before our lovers, even if it makes us feel kind of squirmy in a bad way when we do. The work is there. It’s our task. Doing it will give us strength and clarity. It will bring us closer to who we hope to be.

You don’t have to be young. You don’t have to be thin. You don’t have to be “hot” in a way that some dumbfuckedly narrow mindset has construed that word. You don’t have to have taut flesh or a tight ass or an eternally upright set of tits.

You have to find a way to inhabit your body while enacting your deepest desires. You have to be brave enough to build the intimacy you deserve. You have to take off all of your clothes and say, I’m right here.

There are so many tiny revolutions in a life, a million ways we have to circle around ourselves to grow and change and be okay. And perhaps the body is our final frontier. It’s the one place we can’t leave. We’re there till it goes. Most women and some men spend their lives trying to alter it, hide it, prettify it, make it what it isn’t, or conceal it for what it is. But what if we didn’t do that?

That’s the question you need to answer, Wanting. That’s what will bring your deepest desires into your life. Not: will my old, droopy male contemporaries accept and love the old, droopy me? But rather: what’s on the other side of the tiny gigantic revolution in which I move from loathing to loving my own skin? What fruits would that particular liberation bear?

This is why Sugar is a national treasure, and the best advice columnist on all of the interwebs.

TOMORROW: SlutWalk NYC

I will be there, and so will thousands of other folks. Sign-making starts at 11am in Union Square, and the march starts from the same place at noon. Come in your sluttiest. I will be wearing my usual weekend slut uniform of a t-shirt and jeans or maybe a strapless romper, because I don’t care what Salamishah Tillet says THEY ARE NOT DATED (her entirely incorrect position on rompers aside, the rest of that article is quite excellent and you should read it).

Also check out Lori’s very powerful post on why she’s marching, and Nancy Schwartzman.

From the mouths of babes (on the subject of babes)

Watching your youth and childhood fictional favorites make the transition into adulthood can be jarring sometimes. I don’t think I made it all the way to the seventh season of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, because yaaawn… so bored. I didn’t like the Harry Potter epilogue. Or when Shawn-Douglas Brady got ugly in the fall of 2006. Or when the Saddle Club girls took that trip to Thailand.

It’s even worse, though, when you’re dealing with an industry that is hard enough on its characters anyway–particularly the female ones. DC Comics has stepped in it again with its relaunch of its “New 52,” now with, among other sins, all new degrading super-sexy nekkid action.

Fantasy author Michele Lee has written an open letter to DC Comics regarding the new, nakeder, booblier, no-longer-Teen Titan Starfire. But for the real commentary, she let her (super adorable) seven-year-old daughter take the reins. Mini Lee is a fan of the early-2000s Teen Titans cartoon Starfire, and this new one leaves her… underwhelmed.

On why she loves the Starfire of the original Teen Titans cartoon and comic book:

“She’s like me. She’s an alien new to the planet and maybe she doesn’t always say the right thing, or know the right thing to do. But she’s a good friend, and she helps people. She’s strong enough to fight the bad guys, even when they hurt her. Even her sister tried to kill her, but Starfire still fights for the good side. And she helps the other heroes, like Superboy and Robin and Raven.

“She’s smart too. And sometimes she gets mad, but that’s okay because it’s okay to get mad when people are being mean. And she’s pretty.”

Roman Polanski apologies to the girl he raped. Kind of.

So Roman Polanski said that the woman he drugged and raped when she was 13 was “a double victim: My victim, and a victim of the press.” And good effort, I guess? But no. Let Gabe help you:

Uh, hey Roman, let’s try that again buddy, cool? No, no, that was great, you’re doing great, we just want to get one more take on the apology for safety so that we have something to work with in the editing room. First of all, let’s lose the part about the press. Roman. Roman, please. You know that I understand what you’re saying, I hear you, dude. But it kind of seems like you’re trying to split the guilt here 50/50 between you and “the press,” and I think, you know, it’s your first public apology in 34 years so I think you should keep it simple and leave the media out of it. Me? What would I have you say? Hmm, OK, right, OK, yeah, how about: DEAR SAMANTHA GREIMER, I AM VERY SORRY THAT I DRUGGED AND SODOMIZED YOU WHEN YOU WERE 13 YEARS OLD. And that’s it. Action!

Jon Hamm is not real.

I refuse to believe it’s possible for a man to be this perfect (see also: Ryan Gosling).

Not only was he a high school teacher before he rocketed to fame as an actor, but you won’t believe the job he had during college…

He worked at a daycare center!

Working with children and teens meant much more than a paycheck.

“I was a child of a single parent,” Hamm said at yesterday’s annual Rape Treatment Center benefit brunch in Beverly Hills. “I spent the majority of my life in daycare, after school programs, summer school programs.”

Hamm said, “Having gone through what I had gone through as a child…there were no real male role models in any of these places. There were never any dudes.

“It was a bummer as a young man to, not only not have a father figure in my life, but no real male figures as teachers or as educators or as afterschool program leaders or anything,” he said.

Hamm made the point to emphasize the importance of the Rape Treatment Center’s educational outreach, especially for boys and young men. “It is an important thing to instill in a younger generation about the impact of rape, the lasting impact of rape,” he said, adding, “Children from grade school to high school to college are incredibly susceptible and incredibly malleable, as we all know. To get them early, to teach them about the facts and figures and other realities of rape is key. It is an important issue to me as not only a man, but as an educator, as a human being and as a person on this planet.”

I don’t read this as Hamm lamenting the fact that he was in daycare and after-school programs, or complaining about having a single mother; I read it as, “This was my reality, and it could have been better in some ways, so I did my part to try to make it better for other kids.” It is a problem that women are the vast majority of care workers; it is a problem that kids are brought up rarely seeing male care-takers. Whatever, I can’t even finish this paragraph because all I’m doing is going on offense against the inevitable But There’s A Problem Here! in the comments and that’s boring, let’s all just calm down and look at his face. Look at his FACE!

Also, the first few comments on the E! posting are a hoot. They involve the terms “virile,” “girly-men” and “broads.” Enjoy.

Don’t Do This

Surgically altering your labia: DO NOT DO, unless there is some actual medical reason. Also ohmygod forget anyone who tells you your labia are too large or that virginal vulvas look one way and whore’s vulvas look another. They all look really different, I think! But also kind of the same! Also if someone is face-to-face with your labia, everyone involved should be having fun, so focus on that. If someone says something bad about your labia, not only are they terrible, but they really need a new hobby because what? You’re evaluating and insulting labia now? I’m kind of mad, actually, that this is now making all of us think about the relative sizes of our labia, which is not something I had ever seriously considered before, but which I’ve just wasted five minutes of my life considering. (Conclusion: This is a fucking stupid thing to be thinking about).

Also isn’t “labia” such a gross word? We need a new one. I hate that word. I think we should call them “vips” (rhymes with “tips”). The outer ones can be “vipos” (rhymes with “tip-toes,” kind of) and the inner ones can be “vipis” (rhymes with Skippy’s).