Yearly Archives: 2011

Did Reality TV save Taylor Armstrong?

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After Russell Armstrong, estranged husband of “Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Taylor Armstrong, committed suicide this week, the internet was ablaze, pointing the finger at Reality TV, wanting to know: Did it kill Russell Armstrong?

Today on Salon.com TV critic Matt Zoller Seitz writes:

It’s time to get real about reality TV. As your parents may have warned you, it’s all fun and games until someone gets hurt. People are getting hurt.

Armstrong, the estranged husband of “The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills” star Taylor Armstrong, commited suicide on Monday. Friends have said the show changed him, that the pressure of having his marital strains examined on national TV and the financial stress of keeping up with much wealthier cast members all contributed to his emotional collapse.

Seitz calls Reality TV a blood sport and likens it to a modern day gladiator’s arena. His analogy is brilliant, and I’m no fan of the trainwreck that is reality TV. But I also find it disturbing that so much media commentary focuses on the aberration of Armstrong’s behavior becoming so public. What about his behavior? Is the tragedy here that Russell’s violent past, his “marital strains,” became known? Or is it that Russell couldn’t or wouldn’t get the help he needed to treat his sickness?

Violence against women is epidemic but far too invisible. Most survivors are so mired in shame, they don’t talk about the abuse to their friends, family, or the media. Until more survivors choose to speak up, as I wrote about for Salon in 2002, the public, including our legislators, will remain apathetic about taking any real steps to stop the violence. And of course, as long as survivors stay hidden, so do the perpetrators.

Here are some scary statistics about how common and how secret violence against women is (from the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence):

One in four women (25%) has experienced domestic violence in her lifetime.

85% of domestic violence victims are women.

Women ages 20-24 are at the greatest risk of nonfatal intimate partner violence.

Nearly three out of four (74%) of Americans personally know someone who is or has been a victim of domestic violence.

On average, more than three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.

Domestic violence is one of the most chronically under reported crimes.

Only approximately one-quarter of all physical assaults, one-fifth of all rapes, and one-half of all stalkings perpetuated against females by intimate partners are reported to the police.

Taylor Armstrong bucked the statistics. She said she was abused, she said so publicly, and she left her husband. Two weeks after she left Radar online reported Russell had two restraining orders against him and had pleaded guilt to battery in 1997.

Historically, the time when women are most vulnerable to more violence is when they leave their abusive partners. Did being on Reality TV– the exposure, money, fame, and power, that came with it– help to make Taylor one of the rare women to speak out? Because she was not invisible but exposed, was she, on some level, more protected against further violence than the millions of other women? As the stats above cite, three women are murdered by their intimate partners in this country every day.

Obviously, I have no idea what was going on in Russell Armstrong’s head or in Taylor’s. Obviously this is all sad on many levels, but Reality TV’s role in bringing public awareness to the ‘private’ issue of domestic violence is not the tragedy in this story.

What’s your Smurf name?

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On The Society Pages, Phillip Cohen writes about his McDonald’s experience and being asked, before receiving the Happy Meal, if the child who is eating it is a boy or girl.

“I’m told by the Happy Meal box that ‘Smurfs are named after their individual talents: there’s Farmer, Painter and Baker… Know your talent and find your Smurf name!’…I wondered what Smurfette’s individual talent’ was that got her – the only female Smurf- named ‘Smurfette.'”

(You should visit Cohen’s site, he includes a great table about the lack of women in power positions in the film industry.)

Both of Cohen’s girls chose boy Smurfs. So maybe there’s a positive side to a blatantly sexist Hollywood blockbuster colliding with a blatantly sexist food chain policy: the male privilege becomes so exposed its laughable. What if McDonald’s, after the Smurf experience, decides to change its sexist policy? Forevermore, instead of the servers asking if the customer is a boy or a girl, now they want to know: what talent would you most like to have? What skill would you most like to master? What character would you like to write a story about?

In five minutes, my 5 year old daughter came up with six girl Smurfs: Flyer (she has wings); Magician (she holds a wand); Sky or Weather (she makes rainbows & rain, the sun and moon rise and set, and sunset and sunrise); Singer (she holds a microphone) and Motorcycle (rides a motorcycle.) My eight year old daughter adds: Zombie (covered in mummy bands and blood); Living Dead (skeleton); Fairytale (she jumps into books) and Superhero (wears a cape); X-Ray (can look through walls) Library (holds a library card, shares her library with all the Smurfs, most popular Smurf); Guilty (always lies, holds pen and paper to write down lies so she can remember them) Sporty (holds soccer ball).

My Smurf name, according to my husband: Mouthy.

(Read my earlier Smurf/ McDonald’s post here: Free order of sexism with that happy Meal?

Critics have sweet tooth for Sugar In My Bowl

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Critics love the new book Sugar In My Bowl. The anthology came out this summer, is edited by Erica Jong, and includes my short story “Light Me Up.” If you haven’t gotten your copy yet, you can order it here.

Here are some blurbs:

“[A] fierce, fearless collection.”
— More Magazine

“The women of this collection make the case that good sex is never exclusively about the act, but also about how you approach it.”
— NPR

“Abundant with affairs, marriages, motherhood and our sexual sense of mortality it is a thoughtful read, a perfect aperitif on a summer evening. The stories penetrate a secret space in our brains we so often neglect: our sense of sexuality.”
— Forbes

“Jong has crafted candid accounts of love and passion from renowned female writers into a sensual and sensitive read.”
— Interview“[Sugar in My Bowl] runs the gamut from pornographic and hilarious to ironic and poignant. The result is a fun, quick, beach read, requiring as much or as little intellectual energy as the reader chooses to invest.”
— Chicago Sun-Times“You can take these women seriously, laugh, squirm, and put hand over mouth at their weird, exciting, uncomfortable, joyous tales of ardor, while still admiring the agility of their prose.”
— The Daily“Jong partners with 28 collaborators to create this fierce and refreshingly frank collection of personal essays, short fiction and cartoons celebrating female desire…A smart, scrumptiously sexy romp of a read.”
— Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“In this no-holds-barred collection of essays by ‘real women’ about ‘real sex,’ Jong has assembled an eclectic group of authors. [Sugar in My Bowl] is at its most profound when truth illuminates sex as a force in which these women found empowerment.”
— Publishers Weekly

“Jong cast a broad net to bring together women writing about sex. The resulting anthology attests the wide range of female sexual experience.”
— Booklist

“Sugar in My Bowl is proof positive that women can write seriously about sex and live to tell. It represents a remarkable smorgasbord of experience and perspective, and there’s a dish here for everyone.”
— Shelf Awareness

“These pieces honestly and thoughtfully explore sex and its role in our society from a woman’s perspective, from its place in youth to the golden years….with Sugar in My Bowl Jong has curated a consistently eye-opening and thoroughly readable volume.”
— LargeHearted Boy Blog

“The enticing, thoughtful Sugar in My Bowl proves to be a powerful exploration of women’s relationship to sex.”
— Entertainment Realm

“This book is a Thanksgiving dinner in which each story is a dish more scrumptious, more touchingly homemade than the last. All are so very different, but together they comprise a joyous feast: [an] examination-cum-celebration of female sex and sexuality. A must-read.”
— Gender Across Borders

“The passion, tragedy, and hope—offered by courageous women who express raw feelings that society tends to silence—will resonate.”
— Library Journal

“A refreshing and new contribution to literature about women’s sex lives.”
— HerCircleEzine.com

More reviews here.

Free order of sexism with that Happy Meal?

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When you ask for a Happy Meal, as every non-vegan parent knows, your McDonald’s server always asks: “Is this Happy Meal for a boy or girl?”

“Why?” I asked, my first time, a new parent, totally confused.

“So we know which toy to give the child.”

The whole toy with your Happy Meal is, in itself, gross and disturbing. And in spite being a carnivore, I’ve only subjected my family to the experience a couple times usually because my kids got a glimpse of McDonald’s plastic playground from the freeway by our house. As depicted and deconstructed in the film “Supersize Me” Happy Meal toys are relentlessly marketed to kids during any cartoon they happen to be watching not on  PBS. That’s right– you’re up against Hollywood, the fast food industry, and TV.

But nutrition aside, if you go to McDonald’s right now and you are lucky enough to be a boy, your server will offer you 15 choices from which you can pick your toy. If you are a girl– one. You don’t get a choice.

If a brother and sister– or God forbid, a boy and a girl who actually hang out together in spite of being told by the universe they are radically different species– go to McDonald’s together, what are these little kids learning about who is important, who has options as far as her identity and who doesn’t?

This image via Hoyden About Town/ thesocietypages.org

The artist behind “What if male superheroes dressed like Wonder Woman?”

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A couple days ago, I posted about the brilliant art if male superheroes posed like Wonder Woman that I saw on Jezebel and Bleeding Cool.

I’ve discovered a little more about the artist. Her name is Kelly Turnbull. The internet knows her as coelasquid. She’s a professional animator. This fascinates me because as far as I know, there are few women in animation.

Her hilarious and brilliant site/ comic is called Manly Guys Doing Manly Things.

On Turnbull’s site she writes:

I like drawing comics about unapologetically macho things because I’m not on board with this modern trend of telling men that they should act less like men. I dream of a world where the beer is cheap and plentiful, violence can still be an acceptable solution to life’s problems, and no one ever has to talk about their feelings.

Sometime this is a comic about macho action heroes. Sometimes this is a slice of life comic about a time traveling Navy SEAL single dad from the nonspecific spacefuture. Really, it just depends on how things were going that day.

Apparently, a frequently asked question is whether or not she’s really female. Her coy reply is: Does it matter?

I suppose her rendition of males posing like Wonder Woman could be interpreted as affirming culturally accepted masculinity rather than making fun of enforced femininity. Can you exaggerate one end of the polarized gender spectrum without revealing the ridiculousness of the other? Whether Turnbull is male or female, for real or tongue in cheek with her words and images, however your choose to interpret her art, its undeniably creative and provocative. She makes you think about gender and culture in a new way, whomever you are and whatever your beliefs may be about men and women. That’s just what great art should do.

Though Turnbull’s subject is men, ReelGirl is curious what her creative mind would come up with as far as alternative images of Wonder Woman. There have got to be more choices than either WW showing her legs or not showing legs. I sent her an email asking her about this. I’ll let you know what she says.
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Update! Here is my email back from Kelly Turnbull. She writes she is not picking on ‘sexy’ women; she is saying women (and men) superheroes bodies should reflect much more diversity. I totally agree. I wouldn’t even have a problem the anorexic supermodel image if it was just ONE of many possible representations of women out there in the media. It’s the dominance and limitations of the same old recycled icons that limit creativity (and reality.) Hollywood, are you listening???????
Also, Turnbull makes a great point below: it’s not the clothes, it’s the pose! Even titling this post, I mixed the two up. If you look at how imaginary females are posed from the Smurfette to Ariel to Wonder Woman, they look weak or submissive or sexualized, no matter what they’re wearing.
Here’s Turnbull’s email:

Hello!

Hey, checked out your site, thanks for the article! It makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside!

If you’vee got any specific questions I’d be glad to answer them, as far as the Wonder Woman thing, though… well, pants or no pants first, I really don’t think pants necessarily matter, I wish she looked more Mediterranean first and foremost (artists who draw every character like they came from a base stock of White Anglo Saxon Protestants are a big pet peeve of mine) I think one of my favourite reimaginings of her is from Jill Thompson (Granted, when people say lady heroes in pants don’t make sense because pants limit movement, all I can think is “Wow, imagine how much better the military and police-force would be able to do their jobs if we just had an all-out pants ban!”)

I think the pose is the big thing that needs to be examined on the DC cover. Diana is royalty and she’s a warrior. She’s a feminist of the “don’t hold the door for me” variety judging by the solo animated movie she got. It seems out of character for someone like Diana to hear “POSE AS A TEAM!” and default to a Victoria Secret kind of stance. Now if we were talking about Poison Ivy, Catwoman, someone like that whose who schtick is being seductive, it would make perfect sense. Hey, they’d probably even take it further! But Diana is not Catwoman and Diana is not Poison Ivy and Diana is not any number of other DC ladies.

Any time any person brings up “hey, maybe every single woman in this piece shouldn’t look and act like an underwear model” so many people listening automatically assume that person wants NO MORE SEXY WOMEN. No, folks, I don’t want to take away your sexy things. Saying it’s out of character for Diana to pose like she’s selling underwear doesn’t mean I want Selina Kyle to show up next time in full military body armour or that I want artists to start drawing Powergirl with a b-cup or Black Canary with stretch marks or anything like that. It just means I don’t want every woman in the comic to be there for the sole purpose of being sexy and I want the artists to draw characters in a way that reflects their personality. If it makes people feel any better, I also wish they would give Flash a sprinter’s build, Aquaman a swimmer’s build, Batman an MMA build, and Superman a weightlifter figure compared to that unilateral “this is that one body every superhero artist knows how to draw” look they all have now.

Another common point of contention that comes with debates like this is people who assume women who speak out against this kind of thing are jealous or shaming other women for showing off their bodies or what have you. Again, I just don’t think “being sexy” is something anyone should feel bad about, I just think it’s kind of a time-and-a-place matter. Imagine a board of military leaders gathered around to discuss a new strategy. One person out of ten wanders into the room in their underwear. Then that person, say, sits on the table and strikes a provocative pose. Now imagine they want you to take this character exactly as seriously as the other nine. That’s how I feel every time they show Emma Frost in her corset and panties trying to be passed off as some sort of authority figure. That is not the sort of outfit a cool-headed serious person wears while they negotiate important business transactions.

I suppose what it comes down to is, I would appreciate if more mainstream comics presented alternative ways of looking at female characters. I’m not saying they need to be unattractive, just that if they aren’t a cheesecake-pinup kinda character don’t present them as one unless it’s in the context of something silly like those old marvel swimsuit pinups.

Think of it like this, Lobo’s the kind of guy who hams it up enough that you could picture him in goofy beefcake pinups. Lobo got a two-page spread in one issue where he’s sprawled out poolside in a spikey chainlink codpiece. Imagine they did the same with Superman or Batman. Like, out of the blue All-Star Batman #3 has a two-page playgirl-esque spread of Bruce in a speedo, grinning at the camera. That would seem weird. I’m sure a number of fans would love it, but others would hate it for being out of character so they probably wouldn’t do it. I’m just saying either give the girls the same kind of consideration or draw more Playgirl Batman.

Thanks!

Kelly

What if male superheroes posed like Wonder Woman?

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“Why is Wonder Woman only wearing her underwear?” asked my five year old daughter when I introduced her to the superhero in the form of the DVD of the 70s series starring Lynda Carter. I was so bummed, yet another foiled attempt to expose my kids to strong females in the media and ending up with only exposed female bodies.

This amazing art from Jezebel and Bleeding Cool:

www.jezebel.com

Here’s the latest Justice League comic cover– Wonder Woman the lone female character surrounded five males. She is the only one “in her underwear” looking not so much like an invulnerable superhero and more like some male comic book artist’s dominatrix sex fantasy– torpedo breasts, long legs tapering into shiny boots, and even a whip– sorry, golden lasso. Makes me think about the time I went to see Lara Croft ten years ago and couldn’t get past the D breasts and short shorts. Clearly, we need more women comic book artists, animators, video game creators, studio heads, and media moguls.

Rare sighting! “The Ballad of Nessie”

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Finding a girl lead in an animated kids’ movie may be as rare as a sighting of the Loch Ness monster. Literally. Have you ever heard of “The Ballad of Nessie”? Here’s the poster:

On Friday, I took my four year old daughter to see “Winnie the Pooh.” Before the feature began, there was a super cool short called “The Ballad of Nessie.”

Here’s the official synopsis:

Set in the bonny blue highlands of Scotland, The Ballad of Nessie is a whimsical and colorful tall tale about the friendly Loch Ness Monster, Nessie, and how she and her best friend MacQuack the rubber duck came to live in the moor they now call home. Setting the adventure into motion is a greedy land developer named MacFroogle, who decided to build a mini-golf empire on top of Nessie’s home.

This movie clearly showcases a female character. The narrative is her quest. But did you get that part about “short”? Blink and you’ll miss it (as we almost did because we were late for “Pooh.”) It’s five minutes long.

If you’ve spotted the Nessie poster in your town or city or on TV, please report the sighting to ReelGirl. Even better, take a photo and send it in. And Keep letting ReelGirl know about any other sightings of female leads in kids’ animated movies.

ReelGirl changes its tagline

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I started Reel Girl because I wanted to create a resource for parents on the internet where they could go to find great stories, movies, and toys that support girl empowerment. I’m the mom of three young daughters, and I wasn’t able to find the kind of information I was looking for in one place.

I also wanted to recognize how messed up our movie rating system is– and the values associated with that rating system. So many G movies perpetuate the absolute worst kinds of gender stereotypes, yet they are supposedly “for kids.” In my opinion, this kind of repetitive imagery is way more dangerous for children than hearing the word “shit.”

So ReelGirl’s rating system is S for stereotype and G for girlpower, 1- 3 possible.

Here’s the problem: I’m a ranter, not a rater. I’m not organized enough to pull this off. I need logos, to go through all the movies, books, and toys out there, and I don’t have the time. Any free time I get, I have something new to write about. So while I will continue to rate media and products, I’m going to recognize that mostly, I haven’t been.

I’m changing ReelGirl’s tagline from “Rating kids media and products for girl empowerment” to “Imagining gender equality in the fantasy world.” That’s mostly what ReelGirl is about. My hope is that ReelGirl supports and encourages real imagination (ha ha) instead of the same old recycled stories.

Since having these three kids, I really get how fantasy creates reality and reality creates fantasy in an endless loop. That’s pretty much what this blog is about. So the new new tag line is supposed to reflect that. Still, not perfect, because it leaves out politics, sports and other issues. More accurate might be:  “Imagining gender equality” but too vague? I could go more specific, something like: “Imagining gender equality in media, merchandise, and politics.” If you’re good at titles, let me know your ideas.