Responding to #WeWantLeia campaign, Disney will stock stores with Leia toys

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Breaking news!

After the public complained far and loud about the annihilation and degradation of Princess Leia in kidworld, Disney announced its rectifying the omission of this warrior-freedom-fighter princess, telling Time Magazine:

The current assortment of Star Wars products at the Disney Store launched earlier this year, and is just the beginning of what is to come,” Disney spokeswoman Margita Thompson told TIME. “We’re excited to be rolling out new products in the coming months, including several items that will feature Princess Leia, one of the most iconic characters in the Star Wars galaxy.

 

I am so excited, both about the product and that we are making a difference! Good job everybody.

Note to Disney, we do not want to see Leia in her slave girl-S & M-metal bikini chained to Jabba the Hut, as she is in this LEGO set that I regretted purchasing for my 7 year old daughter.

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Nor do we want to see narratives where Leia is again in said bikini arguing with her father that she actually wants to wear it– when it was Jabba that forced her into the outfit in the first place– as in Vader’s Little Princess which I regretted reading to my 5 year old daughter.

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We’re over the metal bikini. Leia has been hard enough to find in toy sets, on T-shirts or sippy cups. We want to see a strong and powerful action figure saving the galaxy.

 

Memo to the world: objectifying fat women is objectifying women

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Just saw this from Buzzfeed on Miss Representation’s Facebook page:

Plus-size swimwear company Swimsuits for All set out to prove that “sexy curves go beyond a size four” by shooting its own swimwear calendar, including a picture reenacting this year’s Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.

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Are you kidding me? Do you think I’d be any happier if my 3 daughters saw that picture in the Safeway checkout line instead of this one?

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All right, maybe I’d be a smidgen happier that my kids wouldn’t have to see more starving women defined as beautiful, but my goals and expectations are so much higher than what this image from Swimsuits for All represents. I want to see images of women where they are not defined by their sexuality, by whether whomever is looking at them finds them sexy or not, where what they look like in bathing suits is not the be-all end-all, where who thinks they are attractive only matters in a very particular context, like when they are with someone who they love or want to have sex with.

Swimsuits for All is in the business of selling swimsuits. The company has got to sell its product, so posing women in the merchandise that it’s marketing makes sense. I’m not indicting the company, but pretending as if seeing this image all over the internet is liberating is ridiculous. Also, it might be nice to see the women swimming in their suits. What about playing volleyball on the beach? Building awesome sandcastles? Doing something? There could be a shot of a woman or two sunbathing, as long as the “aren’t I sexy” poses were not the dominant, ubiquitous ones.

I’ve written this for a long time, but “fat” women beauty contests don’t represent progress. Women no longer paraded as meat is progress.

 

Still confused or want to see more images to make this point? Please take a look at Reel Girl’s recent post: Why do men in America feel entitled to women? A gallery of reasons. You’ll see this famous painting by Manet along with contemporary images of dressed men paired with naked women.

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What if ‘Maleficent’s’ Stefan had been Stefanie?

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I’m seeing so many posts comparing the cutting of Maleficent’s wings to rape or genital mutilation, along with commentary that the movie is anti-men, that I’m wondering: How might the movie change if Stefan had been Stefanie?

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When violence in a narrative happens to a woman, must we think of her genitals? In the story of Samson and Delilah, she “puts him to sleep in her lap” and then cuts off the source of his strength– his hair. Is that a rape metaphor?

For me, Maleficent’s character is primarily a Fairy, a magical creature who happens to be female. Stefan is primarily a human who happens to be male.

Either way– if the violence is or is not a rape metaphor– clearly, the movie is about Maleficent’s recovery, so that’s the important thing. It’s just irritating to me because I’m so sick of watching women get raped on screen. To watch a movie and not have that experience, but then to see so many others have it, is frustrating.

So bear with me: consider the plot switch, from Stefan to Stefanie. For me, the structure of the narrative wouldn’t change much at all. I realize Maleficent falls in love with Stefan and receives her first kiss from him, but that aside, assuming she’s not gay, here’s how the plot would go– pretty much the same: The first thing Maleficent asks Stefan is if he’s a human or not. Maleficent’s attraction to Stefan had to do with his human-ness, not his man-ness.Humans live in a separate world than the magical world. That’s how the narrator introduces the whole story, and the difference between Maleficent and Stefan primarily as Fairy/ Human rather than woman/ man. Their relationship is primarily a dramatic friendship forged between two species who are supposed to fear and hate each other.

I’ve written about this before, but after his human-ness, Stefan is defined by his ambition: he steals in the first scene, and he says he wants to love in the castle. Easily, an ambitious human “Stefanie” could’ve played this part. “Stefanie” is then tasked by the king to kill “the winged creature.”  Yet, when it comes to the moment of killing, she can’t quite do it, so she takes Maleficent’s power– her wings– from her. The betrayal is still deep, committed by a childhood friend, destroying a bond formed two species, Humans and Fairies, who were supposed to hate and fear each other. We’d also get another starring female part and no more tangential talk all over the internet about “man-hating.” Obviously, the movie is not about “man-hating” anyway. Aurora ends up with a loving, cute, brave guy, as well as remaining a friend to Maleficent. In Angelina Jolie’s own words:

We wanted to tell a story about the strength of women and the things they feel between one another,” Jolie said. “Our movie has all this strength and all this feminism, but, what I think is so nice is that, sometimes, in order to do that you have to make the man an idiot. Instead, we have this very elegant, wonderfully handsome, prince who, in the end, is great. He doesn’t need to be less than to make us more than. We don’t have to simplify or cheapen the men, or to detract from one to make the other better. I think that’s a mistake that’s often made in movies.

So, if Stefan had been Stefanie, this whole “man-hating” interpretation would be nicely cleared up. Do you think Hollywood would make a movie with three female leads? Two female villains? Wouldn’t that be great? Tell me what you think.

‘Maleficent’ beats MacFarlane at the box office (and she didn’t even show her boobs)

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This weekend, ‘Maleficent’ surpassed industry expectations becoming the top money-maker at the box office taking in 70 million, making it the biggest opening of Angelina Jolie’s career.

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Meanwhile, Seth MacFarlane’s “A Million Ways to Die in the West” disappoints, bringing in just 17 million.

(Pause here for victory dance celebrating girls and women everywhere.)

“Maleficent” is the latest female driven film, after “Frozen” and “Catching Fire,” to make tons of money and debunk the ridiculously sexist myth that only movies with male protagonists are super profitable. This powerful lie influences the movies that get made for children as well. For example, in 2014, 18 kids’ movies star males while only 6 star females.

It’s especially great to see MacFarlane stumble because the guy is such a sexist pig. He’s the Oscar host who sung the horrible, offensive, and not funny “We Saw Your Boobs” song. MacFarlane called out great actresses like Meryl Streep, Nicole Kidman, and Helen Hunt, telling them that he “saw their boobs,” acting like this on screen nudity was a show just for him– and all males– and had nothing to do with the narratives or the parts these women played. He sung that he saw Jodie Foster’s boobs when she played a rape survivor in “The Accused.” The guy makes me sick. That night, he sung that he saw Angelina Jolie’s boobs as well. Now, who’s the boob? It looks like it’s time for MacFarlane to start thinking about what he can show to get people to buy tickets for his boring, loser movies.

‘Maleficent’ is not ‘a woman scorned’ so stop calling her that

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There is so much talk in the feminist internet about ‘Maeficent’ being portrayed as ‘a woman scorned’ that I feel I must right the misconception here. As far as I can tell, the false rumor was fueled by this review in the LA Times:

Alas, though Maleficent’s magical forest is equipped with stomping tree beasts and squat, mud-slinging gnomes, she has no Top 40 station to teach her that her lifelong boyfriend should have put a ring on it. So she does what any wounded woman would do: Curse his baby daughter to an inescapable coma.

 

Like Oz the Great and Powerful, Maleficent considers itself a revisionist fairy tale that spins a demonized witch into a feminist icon. Hardly. Both movies hinge on a man, as though the sheer power of being rejected by one dude is enough to make any girl nuts. Maleficent and the Wicked Witch of the West can terrify armies, but they cede their emotional strength to a mortal twerp.

I really don’t get how the reviewer could twist and reduce this movie to come up with such a simplistic and ridiculous analysis. Maleficent is pissed because her wings were cut off. A perfect metaphor that should be obvious to anyone who watches this movie. If you need more proof, here’s a lovely quote from the writer, Linda Woolverton, about what was going through her head as she re-imagined this fairytale:

“I had to figure out what possibly could have happened to her to make her want to hurt an innocent baby. Something that would equal that act. In the animated movie, she had no wings. She just threw her robes open like wings. I thought, ‘Is that it? Did someone take her wings?’

Maleficent curses the baby because she’s lost her wings, she’s lost her power. Clearly, Maleficent enjoyed those wings. They were taken from her. Wouldn’t that make you angry?

Also, the guy who cut off Maleficent’s wings, she befriended when she was a kid. Stefan was always been greedy and lustful for power. When Maleficent first meets him, he’s just stolen something. One of the first things Stefan tells Maleficent is that he wants to live in the castle. But Stefan is not all bad. He’s charming, the two of them have fun together, he tosses his iron ring when he sees that the metal hurts her. And once again, they are children. Haven’t you stuck around with a friend because you’ve been friends for so long? Stefan’s character is contrasted with Maleificent’s in that her heart grows cold as well, but she changes, she acts while Stefan sits around and mopes.

Jezebel also has complaints about the movie. Regarding Maleficent:

And the whole place is governed by this whimsical child-mayor named Maleficent (seriously, HOW DID YOU GET ELECTED YOU ARE EIGHT)

 

Because she is the most powerful Fairy! That is how she is introduced by the (female) narrator at the beginning of the movie.

Jezebels’ next complaint is obviously kind of tongue in cheek, but again, it implies the interaction between Maleficent and Stefan in anti-feminist:

When she wakes up in the morning, her huge beautiful majestic wings have been sawed off and stolen.

Let me repeat. In Maleficent, a PG-rated Disney movie, a man ROOFIES A FAIRY AND VIOLENTLY TAKES HER “WINGS” WHILE SHE’S UNCONSCIOUS.

Wait, maybe it’s not tongue and cheek:

I was surprised. I think of myself as having a pretty consistently perceptive and sensitive Good Feminist™ barometer, and—the groaningly cheap and clumsy rape allegory aside (as far as you can set such a thing aside)—I’d enjoyed Maleficent mostly without pause.

Seriously? Protagonists have been drugged in narratives from time immemorial. I didn’t get any kind of predatory sex vibe from this scene. Is the reviewer saying females cannot be drugged in a narrative because that must be understood as date rape? That was the last thing from my mind watching this part of the movie, and this is my mind that we’re talking about. Once again, please refer back to the writer’s quote.

Jezebel has more problems with the feminist cred of the movie:

The more my friend and I talked about it, the more problems came to the surface. Did the final battle have to be so brutal and soooooooo long?

Yes, it did. We had to see Maleficent revel in her power. And it wasn’t even that long. Violence is a part of narratives because art is metaphorical and depicts emotional realities. Here’s what Peggy Orenstein wrote about it in Cinderella Ate My Daughter:

“Violent play is not by definition bad or harmful for kids. Any child shrink worth her sand table will tell you it can help them learn about impulse control, work out the difference between fantasy and reality, and cope with fear….Children of both sexes crave larger than life heroes. They need fantasy. They also, it seems, need a certain amount of violent play…something that allows them to triumph in their own way over this thing we call death, to work out their day-to-day frustrations; to feel large, powerful, and safe.”

 

Next problem:

Did the meet-cute have to be so shallow?

I don’t know what that means.

Did Maleficent have to be punished so profoundly for succumbing to her completely justified rage?

Huh? She’s triumphant in the end and redeemed. I loved that about the movie.

Did the supporting female characters have to be so useless?

Yes, they were contrasting to Maleficent who protected and watched out for Aurora (and that’s why they were not the “mayors” of the moors even though they were older, Maleficent was always the smartest and most powerful and born to rule.)

Read my review of “Maleficent’ here.

‘An open letter to privileged people who play devil’s advocate’

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There is an amazing post on feministing.com titled: An open letter to privileged people who play devil’s advocate. I am so thankful that Juliana Britto wrote these words. I am so fucking sick of people arguing with me just to argue, just because it’s fun for them. It drives me crazy that people act like I haven’t heard all of their arguments “proving” me wrong about one million times before. I mean, seriously, Western civilization is based on your arguments, and you really think I haven’t heard them before???? When people persist with me, frustrated that I’m not “into it” they often claim that I’m the one “censoring” them or “closing my mind.”  Britto writes about this issue much more eloquently than I:

Some might challenge that I am shutting myself off to new ideas and censoring important opportunities for growth.

But these ideas you are forcing me to consider are not new. They stem from centuries of inequality and your desperate desire to keep them relevant is based in the fact that you benefit from their existence. Let it go. You did NOT come up with these racist, misogynistic theories. We’ve heard them before and we are f*cking tired of being asked to consider them, just one. more. time.

 

Got that? Don’t want to hear it. I’ve already heard it, read it, seen it for my entire life. Britto makes another important point people who argue with me for fun don’t seem to get:

It is physically and emotionally draining to be called upon to prove that these systems of power exist.

 

Right on, sister. Please, don’t use me for your fun and entertainment. I’m interested in changing the world, not keeping you from boredom. Again, Britto is more eloquent than me:

 

Imagine having weights tied to your feet and a gag around your mouth, and then being asked to explain why you think you are at an unfair disadvantage. Imagine watching a video where a young man promises to kill women who chose not to sleep with him and then being forced to engage with the idea that maybe you are just a hysterical feminist seeing misogyny where there is none. It is incredibly painful to feel that in order for you to care about my safety, I have to win this verbal contest you have constructed “for fun.”

 

When I was 28 years old, I was a producer for a talk radio show. The host of that show gave me a gift that changed my life. He consistently– even if he disagreed with me– helped me figure out my thought process. When I was at Point A and I wanted to get to Point Z, he helped me get there. I would make a point and he would say, “Yeah, I get it,” and then give several reasons why what I said made sense or was true. It was a remarkable skill that helped me to develop and grow as a thinker and as a person. Most people, when you say something new, will argue with you at Point A, tell you all the reasons why what you’re saying doesn’t make sense or can’t be true, so you never, ever get to Point Z. That, or silence. Those responses can be soul killing, especially if you are young, a young woman not used to being listened to or taken seriously, with baby ideas that you’re trying to develop.

Read the whole Britto’s whole post here.

Magnificent ‘Maleficent’ is for all the girls who always wanted to fly

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WOW I loved loved LOVED Maleficent. From the opening to the ending, I was mesmerized and so was my husband (“she kicked ass!”) as well as my three daughters. I cannot recommend this movie more to you and your entire family.

The movie begins with the young Maleficent.

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My kids always love seeing the part of the movie that features a younger version of the female protagonist, the one who is closer their age. I remember that being one of my favorite things to watch when I was a kid too. The movie starts with the young Maleficent soaring across the screen, and it is so magical to see her fly and fly and fly. These scenes are especially wonderful because we’ve all been subjected to movies from “ET” to “How to Train Your Dragon” where its the males who fly, while the girls, if they’re lucky, get to cling on to some dude’s back while stuck in the passenger seats.

Maleficent is so powerful and magical. She is not a Minority Feisty. Not only is Aurora AKA Sleeping Beauty also a starring part, and wonderfully played by Elle Fanning, but there are the three Fairies (formerly known as Flora, Fauna, they have different names in this movie) with big supporting roles

When Maleficent is stripped of her power, her wings are clipped. Can you imagine a more perfect metaphor for women and cinema? Her wings are incredibly done too, huge and magnificent and beautiful. She relishes flying and she relishes her power. You see that in Angelina Jolie’s face throughout the film. I was worried that Jolie would be too made up, the way Johnny Depp sometimes is, so that you couldn’t experience her great acting. But that was not the case.She doesn’t get lost in the special effects. They are done perfectly to enhance her character.

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Maleficent and Aurora have a complicated, evolving relationship like nothing I’ve ever seen before in a Disney movie where, so often, women are pitted against each other, especially older and younger ones. Not only is that not the case here, but the whole dichotomy of hero/ villain is also turned on its head. One of my favorite parts of the movie is when Aurora is crowned a queen, not a princess.

I’ve always been more interested in Disney’s female villains than its one dimensional princess/ heroines. And of these villains, Maleficent was always my favorite. You can’t beat that horned, caped silouette. (Here’s a picture of my 10 year old daughter in my Disney female villain nightshirt, which is several years older than she is.)

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Thank you to Angelina Jolie for getting this movie made so my children– and all children– can witness a powerful, magical female in all of her spectacular glory.

Reel Girl rates ‘Maleficent’ ***HHH***

Read more Reel Girl posts on this movie:

 

‘Maleficent’ is not ‘a woman scorned’ so stop calling her that

‘Maleficent’ beats MacFarlane at the box office (and she didn’t even show her boobs)

What if ‘Maleficent’s’ Stefan had been Stefanie?

 

Facebook, why so slow to call ‘we hate against the subhuman species called women’ hate speech?

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All day Reel Girl Fans contacted Facebook to ask them to remove hate speech from a page memorializing killer Elliot Rodger.

Here is what the page posted:

Shoutout to my boy elliot rodger. He did the best thing us men could do. And paid the ultimate price. Let his death be a memorial day in which we hate against the subhuman species called women.

 

Facebook replied to me and others:

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Reel Girl fans then contacted Facebook about the specific post, not reporting the whole page. They received the same message, that the post did not qualify as hate speech. Then, one hour ago, people who reported that specific post got a response from Facebook saying they revised their decision and removed the post.

We reviewed the photo you reported for containing hate speech or symbols. Since it violated our Community Standards, we removed it. Thanks for your report. We let Powerlifters Against Feminism know that their photo has been removed, but not who reported it. Facebook never discloses who submits a report.

So, I’ve got to ask:

#1 Why did Facebook only respond that they revised their decision to people who reported the specific post and not the page? There was just a mass murder by a misogynistic killer who was overlooked by police because misogyny was not a big deal to him? What if he’d been ranting about hating Jews or Muslims or blacks, would police have taken him seriously? Would the public? You’d think we would learn something but the day after, Facebook drags its feet, refusing to respond to people reporting hate speech, and then finally only responding when the report was done in a very specific way.

#2 Why did Facebook need to revise its decision? What is confusing, obtuse, ambiguous about “we hate against the subhuman species called women”?

If the first message, that the page and the post do not qualify as hate speech is computer generated, as some claim, a Reel Girl fan rightly points out:

If that is just an automated message that goes out, it should read, “Thank you for reporting this post. We will review it before a decision is made.”

Precisely. But that is not what Facebook replied. Facebook wrote:

We reviewed the page you reported and found that it didn’t violate community standards.

I can only conclude that in the USA it’s far too clear that we don’t take violence against women seriously. It’s just normal here. When will this cultural belief shift? What will it take?

From Half the Sky by Nicolas Kristof and Sheryl WuDunn:

More girls were killed in the last 50 years, precisely because they were girls, than men killed in all the wars in the 20th century. More girls are killed in this routine gendercide in any one decade than people were slaughtered in all the genocides of the 20th century.

The equivalent of 5 jumbo jets worth of women die in labor each day… life time risk of maternal death is 1,000x higher in a poor country than in the west. That should be an international scandal.

Why isn’t the violence against women and girls an international scandal? And why doesn’t America care about protecting the human rights of half of its citizens?

This Tweet from Charles Clymer put it succinctly:

Black guy shoot folks = thug. Brown guy shoots folks = terrorist. White guy guns down women = “nice guy who’s mentally ill”.

The Daily Beast reports:

If the Santa Barbara shooter had been Muslim, and left the same sorts of video screeds and more, our government and media would undoubtedly be labeling this incident as terrorism. Just as an Islamic fundamentalist terrorist sets out to kill American infidels simply because they are “American infidels,” the Santa Barbara shooter set out to kill women simply because they were women. You tell me the difference. To fail to label the latter terrorism suggests a politicized use of the term, one interested in defending Judeo-Christian Americans and values, but not women.

The fact of misogyny America is not an accident. It is as deliberate as the shooting in Santa Barbara Friday night.  Those who seek to perpetuate misogyny, to actively further the subjugation and suffering of women, are not just nut-balls but adherents of a very specific and very ugly social and political ideology.  And those who take up weapons and kill large numbers of people in furtherance of that ideology? They’re terrorists.

Read the first part of this story of my attempts to contact Facebook to take down hate speech here: Facebook refuses to take down hate speech page memorializing killer Elliot Rodger

Facebook refuses to take down hate speech page memorializing killer Elliot Rodger

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Powerlifters Against Feminism has a Facebook page up right now with hate speech on it that promotes and glorifes violence against women, yet Facebook refuses to take down the page, claiming there is no hate speech.

Here’s a post from the page’s host:

 

Shoutout to my boy elliot rodger. He did the best thing us men could do. And paid the ultimate price. Let his death be a memorial day in which we hate against the subhuman species called women.

 

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RIP in piece brother

 

Yet, after a fan of Reel Girl alerted me to the page and complained to Facebook about it, she messaged me:

By the way, they refused to remove it stating there is no hate speech. I just got a notification.

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Let me ask you this, Facebook: How is there no hate speech in the line “Let his death be a memorial day in which we hate against the subhuman species called women.” (Italics mine)

It is the acceptance of misogynistic communities like this one that helps to create and foster mass murderers like Rodger and violence against women in general. Just like the police who investigated Elliot, Facebook has a history of not taking hate speech against women seriously. We all contribute to it this culture of violence if we take no action stop the hate.  I just reported this page to Facebook. Please do so as well. Do not accept that this page does not promote hate speech. You can go to this link to report it. Here’s the form I got. Check “hate speech or personal attack.”

All reports are strictly confidential. What best describes this?

Update: I received this message from facebook:

Support Dashboard

Here’s the latest status of your reports and inquiries. If we need more information, we’ll let you know here.
History
  • You reported Powerlifters Against Feminism for containing hate speech or symbols.

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    Status This page wasn’t removed
    Details
    • Thank you for taking the time to report something that you feel may violate our Community Standards. Reports like yours are an important part of making Facebook a safe and welcoming environment. We reviewed the page you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.
      Note: If you have an issue with something on the page, be sure to report the content (ex: a photo), not the entire page. That way, your report will be more accurately reviewed.
    Report Date Today
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    Powerlifters Against Feminism
    Reason Hate Speech or Symbol

Update:  Many Reel Girl fans reported this hate speech to Facebook and received the same message:

We reviewed the page you reported for containing hate speech or symbols and found it doesn’t violate our Community Standards.

Some people started reporting the specific speech/ post, not the page. The first responses from Facebook were reported as follows:

I reported both the horrible hateful page and the (criminal) violence promoting post. Got two answers from fb, telling “the page does not violate our community standards”…

 

Another Reel Girl fan writes:

I reported the page and the individual post and got the same reply. Ridiculous.

 

And then, finally, one hour ago, a fan writes:

Just got notification that they revised their decision on the post I reported and removed it!

 

And another one received the same revised response:

Me too! I’m glad they wised up and reconsidered.

 

And a third did as well:

Yep! Just got notification it was removed. Woohoo! No luck on taking down the whole page, though

 

I posted all of those because I never got the revised Facebook response, but maybe that’s because I reported the page, not that one post? Still, what is Facebook’s excuse for telling people that first reported the exact post that it did not contain hate speech and then needing to “revise” their decision? It’s insanity. I suppose I’m grateful that Facebook took a tiny step towards coming to its senses and realize “hate against the subhuman species called women” qualifies as hate speech.

Why do men in America feel entitled to women? A gallery of reasons

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On the Santa Barbara massacre, the Atlantic reports:

Suffice it to say that the killer was a misogynist, and that lots of women have reacted to his rampage by reflecting on how women are denied full personhood.

 

PolyMic reports:

Rather than seeing Elliot Rodger as a product of society, the media has depicted him as a bloodthirsty madman, a mere glitch in the system.

 

New Statesman reports:

The ideology behind these attacks – and there is ideology – is simple. Women owe men. Women, as a class, as a sex, owe men sex, love, attention, “adoration”

I’m reposting a blog I wrote after seeing Jimmy Fallon’s Vanity Fair cover. Look at these images. When will women in America be recognized as human beings equal to men?

Vanity Fair’s sexist Jimmy Fallon profile erases his wife, highlights Victoria Secret models

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I’m a huge Jimmy Fallon fan. This is why I bought the new Vanity Fair where he’s on the cover even though it annoyed me that Fallon is shown in a suit while he’s flanked by two nameless women in bathing suits.

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There are more pics of Fallon and naked women inside the magazine. Reading the caption, I learned that the women are Victoria’s Secret models.

There is a third picture of Fallon and the women at what looks like New York’s Natural History museum. Once again, the women are in skimpy bikinis and we get a full view of ass. Fallon is once again pictured in a suit.

Showing important, powerful men fully clothed while women appear as naked accessories underscores the idea that men valued for what they do and think while women are valued for how they appear. Vanity Fair repetitively resorts to this sexism. There’s a famous photo featuring naked Scarlett Johanssen, Keira Knightly, and Tom Ford. When Rachel McAdams refused to undress, she was asked to leave.

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Of course, Vanity Fair is hardly alone in promoting this sexist imagery. Here are five GQ covers that came out simultaneously: four men are shown in suits, one woman is shown naked.

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What about Rolling Stone?

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There’s Justin Timberlake’s “Tunnel Vision” video where he is clothed and the women are naked.

Many claimed Timberlake was copying Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” video where he is clothed and the women are naked, a pairing repeated in the infamous Miley Cyrus performance (where Miley was blamed for being a slut.)

“Alternative” musicians resort to the same cliche. Did you see Nick Cave’s latest album cover?

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The truth is, we’ve been dealing with the clothed man-naked woman pairing for a long time. Here’s a famous painting by Edouard Manet in the Musee D’Orsay in Paris that would make a perfect Vanity Fair cover.

manet

But here’s what really pissed me off about the Jimmy Fallon article. As I wrote, I’m a fan of the comedian, but part of the reason I bought the magazine is because I wanted to know more about his wife, Nancy Juvonen. She’s a film producer and a business partner of Drew Barrymore. Both Barrymore and Juvonen are interested in making movies where cool women get to have adventures. I wanted to hear the whole story about how Juvonen and Fallon met and fell in love, just the kind of thing you’d expect to find in a Vanity Fair profile right? They recently had a daughter, Winnie, so I assumed Fallon would be asked about being a new father. I’m an avid reader of Us Weekly and People and I often see pictures of their family. Fallon is always cuddling his baby, playing with her, smiling at her, and I was curious about his thoughts on raising a girl in the world. Another thing I wanted to hear about: Fallon is 39 while Juvonen is 46, a rare gap in Hollywood where a woman’s age is measured closer to dog years than man years. Do you see my point here? Fallon married a successful career woman who is 7 years older than him, and this, besides his talent, is part of the reason I admire the guy. But here’s the weird thing: Nancy Juvonen is missing from Fallon’s profile.

Juvonen isn’t mentioned at all until 5 pages into the piece. After writing that Fallon always watched “SNL” alone, the text reads:

His one concession to adulthood is that he now watches the program with his wife, the film producer Nancy Juvonen, and if she is awake his baby daughter, Winnie, born last July.

Can you imagine Vanity Fair doing a profile on a famous woman and not mentioning her big time producer husband or her new baby until page 5? The piece goes on for two more pages and there are just two more brief references to Juvonen. Here’s all the magazine has to say on how they met and why they married.

Though the Fever Pitch experience had a saving grace–it was through the film that he met Juvonen, one of its producers who he would marry in 2007– he considers his LA years kind of a lost period.

Here’s the final reference to Juvonen, about persuading Fallon to become the “Tonight Show” host.

It was Fallon’s wife who persuaded him to go with Michael’s instinct. “Nancy was like, ‘You’ve got to try it. You’ll be one of three human beings who have done it– Letterman, Conan, and you. You have to do it. If it doesn’t work, it doesn’t work,’” Fallon said.

That’s it. WTF? All Fallon’s wife gets in a profile is a few sentences in passing coupled with a cover and three photos where he’s shown with naked women? That’s not the Jimmy Fallon I love or wanted to read about.