We recently discovered ReelGirl, a blog by writer and commentator Margot Magowan. She also co-founded the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, which provides professional training for young women. We decided to pick her brain about raising three daughters, her favorite blogs, and why dieting bored her to tears.
How do you instill a healthy body image in your daughters?
I tell my daughters they’re beautiful “on the inside and the outside,” all the time. It’s kind of cheesy but I think it works, and it’s true! I also tell them how smart and strong they are. When I hear them ask each other what pet, animal or creature in a book illustration is the “cutest” or “prettiest” I interrupt and say, “But what does she do? Is she smart? Is she strong? Does she have fun? Is she happy?” Whenever possible, I try to take the emphasis off of appearances. I try not to say disparaging things about how I look or the way other women look, even positive stuff, actually, like comment on the hair or make up or outfits of women on TV or in magazines. I hide my Us Weekly!
You wear a lot of hats–writer, speaker, mom, wife–what do you do when you need to recharge?
My kids go to bed at 7 p.m. I get dates confused, I’m often late for appointments, but those kids are on a schedule and that schedule hardly changes! That way, I know when it’s my time. I love spending that time with my husband, reading, hanging out with friends, or seeing a movie. I love to walk the labyrinth at Grace Cathedral in San Francisco. I’d love to say I wake up at five a.m. and meditate, but I don’t. It’s on my list.
What do you see as some of the greatest internal or self imposed barriers that keep women from succeeding professionally?
I think a lot of women for one reason or another have bought into a split (that men aren’t subject to at all) that they have to choose between being a “good mom” or being successful professionally. I don’t feel that division emotionally. Having kids has made me more ambitious and much more financially responsible. I’m a better mother and more present for my kids when I spend time away from them in other ways that fulfill me.
Too often, sexism is invisible to us, whether it’s too geographically distant or we’ve just become immune to witnessing women treated like objects instead of like humans. In 2010, naming the enemy is half the battle.
In her new book Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert used a Rumpelstiltskin simile applicable here. The story of Rumpelstiltskin is about a girl forced into slavery; she must spin straw into gold. She will only be freed when she can name one of her captors. When she discovers his name and calls it out, he loses all his power and must set her free. Gilbert wrote, “Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstiltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names.”
I’ve launched The Rumpelstiltskin Campaign: sEXISTs EXIST. Post news about sexism, when and where you see it, on ReelGirl. Photos welcome. The campaign won’t end sexism, but it’s a crucial step towards setting us free.
Email me your info if you want stickers or T-shirts. T-shirts come in all sizes and baby dolls $25 each. A percentage of proceeds goes to The Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, an organization I cofounded to train young women to be leaders and change agents.
Pulitzer Prize winning author of Half the Sky: Turning Oppression into Opportunity for Women Worldwide, Sheryl WuDunn, gave a free talk at the Palace of Fine Arts Monday night, telling the audience the best way to stop poverty and end terrorism worldwide is to achieve gender equality. WuDunn argued that gender equality is the most important struggle of this century, and that the key to world economic progress is unlocking women’s potential.
www.plannedparenthood.org
Sheryl WuDunn, Pulitzer Prize winning author of Half The Sky
WuDunn said that the paramount moral challenge of the 19th Century was slavery, in the 20th, totalitarianism, and in the 21st century, it’s gender quality.
WuDunn told the audience we are wasting half our resources by failing to educate and honor women. After her talk, she told me that she was inspired to write her book, because of all the missing women worldwide; they’d just vanished. No one had written about a book about them.
At the beginning of her talk, WuDunn asked the audience: Are there more women or men in the world?
About 98% of the audience (including me) believed there were more women in the world. We knew women generally lived longer than men. But this statistic only holds true in the developed world. In the developing world, women are vastly outnumbered.
Approximately 60 – 100 million women have gone missing.
Women die due to poor health care; they die in childbirth; they die from violence by men; girls are kidnapped into sex trafficking, never surfacing again, and female fetuses are aborted.
I’ve been a fan of WuDunn and her husband/ co-author/ New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof ever since Half the Sky came out. About a year ago, the book was featured as the cover story of the New York Times Magazine. With the publication of this one book, national attention began to shift back to feminism and gender equality, bringing a renewed awareness in the media and in the public about the oppression of women worldwide and how that oppression affects and limits us all.
The very basis of the Taliban, of course, is oppression against women. While there was worldwide outrage about Apartheid in South Afriica years ago, no one seemed to care much about the gender crimes of the Taliban until 9-11. Even since 9-11, it’s been a challenge to keep the focus on educating women, in Afghanistan and all over the world.
WuDunn laid out a simple path to creating a better, safer, stronger world, as logical as a tenth grade geometry proof:
Overpopulation is the biggest indicator of poverty. When women are educated, they marry later and have fewer children, and they are more likely to make sure these children are educated.
WuDunn said governments must make it their highest priority to educate women.
WuDunn was asked by an audience member: Why is now women’s time?
She referred again to the missing women, then adding “Brawn used to matter.” In agricultural and farming societies, physical strength was seen as crucial to success. Now we’ve entered a period of technology and brain power, and its the opportunity for women to get ahead.
WuDunn argues again and again that the best way to bring about change is by investing in women. We’re losing our most valuable resource. When people in the audience asked what they could do to help women worldwide, WuDunn said give money to support women’s organizations. She said she loves Doctors Without Borders but we need to create Bankers without Borders, Lawyers Without Borders. We must rally our governments to commit to educating women.
Kavita Ramdas, CEO and President of the Global Fund for Women, was also speaking. The Global Fund is the world’s largest grantmaking foundation focused exclusively on international womens’s human rights. Ramdas told the audience. “If you can’t help women in the Sahara, help women in East Palo Alto. Here in the United States, 70% of those in poverty are women.”
www.abcdlady.com
Kavita Ramdas, President and CEO of Global Fund for Women
Listening to the talk, I couldn’t stop thinking about what a horrible example my home state of California, in my home country of the United States, sets with its bankrupt public educational system. How can we insist countries of the world educate women when we are are so substandard at home?
When a male high school student in the audience asked Ramdas what he could do to help women worldwide, she said, “I have a sixteen year old daughter. I worry about her. Set an example in how you treat your peers. Don’t use the words bitch and whore.”
The talk was fascinating, listening to WuDunn and Ramdas circle the globe and came back home to the Bay Area. They highlighted again and again, that until conditions improve for women, humans will not reach anything close to our potential.
Margot Magowan
I blogged about this a couple days ago. Here are some sad stats about the lack of women in America’s leadership positions. More women are going to law school but they’re not becoming law partners; they’re in medical school but they’re not chief surgeons. Women in America get paid less for doing the same work as men, and the Equal Rights Amendment was never passed in this country. It’s worldwide problem, our worst problem. We need to recognize it exists, identify it and then eradicate it everywhere. Order sEXISTs stickers and T-shirts here, one dollar from every item sold goes to the Woodull Institute for Ethical Leadership.
Sheryl WuDunn’s talk was free to the public because it was sponsored by Facing History and the Allstate Foundation.
Facing History is an international educational and professional development nonprofit organization whose mission is to engage students of diverse backgrounds in an examination of racism, prejudice, and antisemitism in order to promote the development of a more humane and informed citizenry. By studying the historical development of the Holocaust and other examples of genocide, students make the essential connection between history and the moral choices they confront in their own lives.
The Allstate Foundation partners with non-profit organziations and community initiatives that promote safe and vital communties, tolerance, diversity, and economic empowerment.
At first, it sounds empowering, it’s a woman to woman CEO winning relay. How often does that happen? Well, Never! Fortune.com reports:
Anne Mulcahy, who last decade turned Xerox around and last year turned over the CEO reins, today gave up the chairman title to Ursula Burns, her CEO successor. It’s all quite historic since Burns is the Fortune 500’s first black female CEO. Theirs was the first-ever woman-to-woman CEO hand-off in the ranks of America’s largest corporations.
www.rttnews.com
The bummer is, of course, the female CEO switcheroo keeps the gender CEO stats of Fortune 500 companies in their exact same pathetic state at 3% female. Robin Marty reports on www.Care2.com:
Women CEOs lead in only 15 of the 500 companies, or 3 percent. Even worse, there was no gain in female leadership since last year; for every woman who entered the list, another was lost.
Here are some facts about American women, who make up 52% of citizens in the country of the free and the brave and 46.5% of our labor force.
Women hold 15.2% of seats on the boards of Fortune 500 companies.
Women are 19% of partners in law firms.
Women represent 17% of the United States Congress.
Throughout our history only three women have held the office of Supreme Court Justice.
There are only seven female governors.
Women make up 14% of all guest appearances on the influential Sunday television talk shows; among repeat guests, only 7% are women.
Only 15% of the authors on the The New York Times best seller list for nonfiction are women.
Only about 20% of op-eds in America’s newspapers are by women.
In Hollywood, women make up:
8% of all writers
17% of all executive producers
23% of all producers
18% of all editors
2% of all cinematographers
I’m so tired of people acting as if we live in some postfeminist era, as if we’ve achieved equality, and everything is groovy now.
Sadly, people take sexism even less seriously than racism, often attributing gender crimes to cultural beliefs instead of the political practices they are. When I was in college and everyone was protesting aparthied in South Africa in the quad, in my sociology class next door I was learning that female gender mutilation was just fine because that’s “their culture.” Not only that but “women do it to each other” so it can’t really be sexist. It took me years to undo the relative ethics dogma I learned in my college education in early the nineties.
When I was producing talk radio programs later in that same decade, I wanted the liberal talk show host I worked with to discuss the Taliban. I’d tell him: “It’s gender aparthieid. The laws are completely different for women and men and nobody seems to care at all.”
At that time, one of the only vocal, public figures in America even speaking about the Taliban was Mavis Leno, Jay Leno’s wife. I’m serious. Mavis Leno. That’s how I found out about about the slavery of women across the world, not through my president, other politicians, the New York Times, campus protests or liberal talk show hosts like the one I worked for. When I insisted to the host the Taliban mattered, that you can’t isolate those kinds of sick beliefs, he said, “Come on, how does the Taliban affect people in the Bay Area?”
Too often, sexism today is invisible to us, whether it’s too geographically distant or we’ve just become immune to witnessing women treated like objects instead of like humans. In 2010, just naming the enemy, calling it out, seems to be half the battle.
Margot Magowan
Rumplestiltskin Campaign
In her new book Committed, Elizabeth Gilbert’s used a Rumpelstiltskin simile which is totally applicable here. Rumpelstiltskin is, of course, the story about a girl forced into slavery, spinning straw into gold. She will only be freed when she can name one of her captors. When she discovers his name and calls it out, he loses his power and sets her free. Gilbert wrote, “Some fears can be vanquished, Rumpelstiltskin-like, only by uncovering their hidden, secret names.”
So today, I’m launching The Rumpelstiltskin campaign: sEXISTs EXIST. Post it where you see it on ReelGirl. Photos welcome. Stickers and signs are here. Logo needed. It won’t end sexism but at least it’s a step towards setting us free.
When I blogged a couple weeks ago about Sarah Silverman’s hilarious new memoir, I wrote that as the mother of three little kids, I now enjoy activities I used to dread for the private time they provide. Flying solo to New York and back to San Francisco a a couple times this month, I read a lot, including a beautifully written memoir: Some Girls: My Life in a Harem by Jillian Lauren.
Lauren, a nice Jewish girl from Jersey, drops out of NYU to pursue her dreams of stardom. To pay her New York rent, she supplements her income with stripping and then gets involved in prostitution via an expensive escort service. Eventually, at eighteen years old, she’s invited to travel to Brunei, as a guest of the Sultan, to spice up his parties. No one tells her exactly how much she’ll get paid for her services: “Don’t worry, you won’t be disappointed.”
For those who don’t know (as I didn’t) where or what Brunei is, Lauren writes it’s
a Malay Muslim monarchy located North of Borneo. Independent from England since 1984, Brunei still retains strong cultural and diplomatic ties with the Queen. At that time, the Sultan of Brunei was, thanks to oil and investments, the richest man on the planet.
www.jillianlauren.com
Jillian Lauren
There’s more than a few memoirs and polemics about sex work out there, but Lauren’s book is unique. In part, just the location makes it fascinating, traveling to a palace in Southeast Asia and meeting the exotic men and women who inhabit it– it’s like The Other Boleyn Girl meets “The Hills” but much better writing than either. (Yes, the “The Hills” is scripted.)
There’s an on-going debate in Third and Fourth wave feminism about sex work, whether it’s empowering or degrading for women. Lauren’s book doesn’t preach or pick a side, just describing her experience in a brutally honest and insightful way. A woman telling the truth about her sexual life like this is rare and revolutionary.
Lauren writes:
“To those who haven’t profited financially from their sexuality, those of us who have often inspired an extreme range of emotions: Why would we take off our clothes for money? What makes us take the initial plunge? What makes one financially strapped girl into a hooker and another into a Denny’s waitress and another into a med student? You want to connect the dots. You all want reassurance that it won’t be your daughter up there on the pole. Shitty relationship with my father, low self esteem, astrologically inevitable craving for adventure, dreams of stardom, history of depression and anxiety, tendency towards substance abuse- put it all in a cauldron and cook and the ideal sex worked emerges, dripping and gleaming and whole.
Lauren’s writing about her family is also eloquent and excruciating. Before her decision to leave home, she’s rude to her mother, ignoring her when she enters the house. Her mom asks if she’s on drugs and her father flies into a rage, calling her an ungrateful little bitch.
With every punctuation mark, my father pulled me forward by my throat and them slammed my head back again. When he let go, I crumpled to the floor and pulled my knees to my chest. I called it my civil disobedience trick. I closed my eyes and made myself the tiniest ball. I showed no soft bits.
I worried about Jillian reading the book, her crazy parents and her recklessness. But I knew she’d come out of her story okay because she’s so smart.
Here’s my interview with Some Girls author, Jillian Lauren. Her book just hit the New York Times best-seller list.
You flew by private plane with another “party girl” from Brunei to Kauala Lampur to shop. You were driven to malls accompanied by men who carried suitcases of cash so you could clean out Chanel and Armani. As one of the prince’s favorite girls, there was no limit on what you could spend. But you were never allowed to leave your hotel room except with that entourage for that purpose. It seems claustrophobic and suffocating– just being in Stonestown mall in San Francisco can feel oppressive, and you shopped for over twelve hours. Was it fun? Were you thinking I’ll be able to write about his someday?
I was an avid journaller, but I was definitely never thinking of writing anything beyond that. The shopping was a whirlwind. It wasn’t exactly fun, but it was an adrenaline rush. I was excited and yet sort of disgusted with myself at the same time.
You were a guest of the Sultan’s brother, Prince Jefri, though one day, “Robin,” as he was called, shared you with his sibling, sending you to the royal yacht where female kitchen workers, wives, and girlfriends were cruel to you before you met the Sultan.
You write:
My survival instinct kicked in. I didn’t have any reason to believe that if I was unwanted, was deemed uninteresting and undesirable, I would be thrown off a cliff or stoned to death in public or shoved in the trunk if a car never to be seen again. Yet I was ready to fight with all I had to stay on the tightrope of royal favor. Maybe there didn’t need to be a threat of corporeal danger; maybe the threat of being unlovable was enough.
In your book you call yourself a “feminist sex activist” but your beliefs and feelings seem more complicated than “sex positive” feminism. Can you elaborate?
I really came into the feminist movement with a very particular viewpoint. And in the early nineties, when I was coming of age, there was this sex-positive explosion in the feminist movement. There was Susie Bright and Carol Queen and a bunch of bright, incredible women who were very vocal about being sex positive. Now I’m friends with a lot of these women. I do absolutely consider myself part of that camp. However, Its not simply about, “Sex work is so empowering, hooray.” Because that’s not how I feel anymore, now that I’m out of it and have lived with the consequences for 20 years. Sex work affected my relationship with my body, with my sexuality.It still has a ripple effect in my life. Taking your clothes off for money is a valid choice. For some women, maybe it’s the only choice. Certainly decriminalizing prostitution and having health care available for sex workers would help. But I don’t think it’s the greatest thing women can do for our souls, for the most part.
Did you make any lasting friendships in Brunei? Do you know what happened to those girls? What did they seem to want out of their experience there?
I’m absolutely still friends with some of the girls and they’ve been very supportive of me telling my story. But I can’t speak for them; I can only speak for myself. It’s up to them to assign meaning to their own experiences.
When you went back to Brunei a second time, you describe having sex with Robin again and this time, the intimacy startles you because you’ve been away and you’ve forgotten to click your “off” switch. For a moment, he’s human you’re shocked by the feel of skin and his hair. Were you able to recover from turning yourself off? Is it something you have control over?
It took me many, many years to come back to my body. The end of the book is really only the beginning of the journey. I still struggle with dissociation but I have tools with which to address it now.
You write a lot in your book about your childhood dreams of stardom, wanting to become a performer, a singer, a dancer. You never mention wanting to grow up and be writer yet that’s what you are now. Was becoming a writer something you ever wanted? The second time you went to Brunei, you brought a computer and exchanged short stories with a friend in New York, though you made fun of those writings. Was this the beginning of your writing career?
I never wanted to be a writer, but ironically writing was the thing I was generally doing the most of. I’ve kept journals since I was probably around eight or nine. Brunei was the place where I unknowingly started to develop a daily writing practice and that practice has been the most important thing to my writing career. So in a way, I guess my career did start in Brunei.
What happened in the years after Brunei, before you got married? Did you stay involved in sex work?
I was still involved in sex work for a while on and off until a terrible substance abuse problem pretty much made it impossible for me to do anything else. It wasn’t until I got sober that I met my husband and my life started to resemble the life I have now.
How did you make the transition into married life and motherhood?
I made the transition into marriage and motherhood not by any one big choice but with a series of small daily decisions through which I learned to take better care of myself and the people I love.
Did you know you wanted to marry your husband? What made him different than the other men? Was it the right time?
My husband is that rarest of things…he’s a truly good man. Besides being cute and funny and a great musician and all that other stuff. I knew almost immediately that I was going to marry him.
Your parents do not come off well in the book– your father is abusive and your mother neglectful. What is your relationship like with your parents now?
I don’t think my parents come off badly. I think they come off as complicated. I tried to the best of my ability to treat their portrayal with compassion and love. They’re still very upset about the book but I have faith that we’ll work it out. We’ve been through worse.
What is your new book, Pretty, about?
Pretty is a girl who survived a horrific car accident that killed her boyfriend and is serving out a self-imposed sentence at a halfway house, while attempting to complete her last two weeks of vocational-rehab cosmetology school. It’s about trying to find faith in a world of rampant diagnoses, over-medication, compulsive eating, and acrylic nails.
Spoiler alert to ReelGirl subscribers: don’t read this post until you search for penises on your own in the post “Rape or menage a trois with your vodka.”
The three erect penises in the Belvedere vodka ad:
(1) the Belvedere Vodka bottle
(2) the garnish of two olives and swizzle stick
(3) the shadow on the woman’s arm and blue balls (ha ha)
She’s blind folded, her fingers curled in fear, teeth bared, she’s screaming. Just behind her lurks a man’s face, smiling demonically, a deadringer for Jack Nicholson’s grinning psycho-killer in “The Shining.”
The latest horror movie? No, a new ad for Belvedere vodka in Gourmet Magazine’s May pasta issue. There within the pages of recipes for orecchiette with cauliflower or pappardelle with lamb ragu, a rape scene. I count three penises in this ad. Can you find them?
Belvedere Vodka ad from Gourmet Magazine
Tonight, after the kids finally went to bed, I headed for the couch with two very different publications, or so I thought, Us Weekly and Gourmet. Except, I guess, when it comes to reaching out to vodka drinkers, highbrow and lowbrow find common ground. Tossing away the rape scene, I opened Us, and there was a menage a trois, a campaign that might win the tea baggers, sorry, I mean the tea parties, some new followers.
I count three penises in the Skyy ad too, including the bottle itself, and the two cherry stems, one ejaculating, but my husband disagrees, saying no guy wants identify with the cherry stems. For the key to hidden penises in the Belvedere ad click here. (Hint: sexually frustrated.)
I worship Sarah Silverman. I’m bummed I missed her local performance this week at Palace of the Fine Arts where she was promoting her hilarious new book The Bedwetter: Stories of Courage, Redemption, and Pee.
www.harpercollins.com
I had jury duty the same day as Silverman’s show and brought her book with me down to McAllister Street. Little did I know having three small kids would excuse me after 2 1/2 hours. I was worried because every time I have jury duty, they pick me which always shocks me because I’m kind of opinionated and judgmental, but nevertheless, that’s the California justice system at work. I was pretty psyched, actually, to get almost three hours of quiet reading time, something that almost never happens with 3 kids, causing me to now add jury duty to a list of events I used to dread, but now enjoy including long plane rides (more quiet reading time) and dentists visits (drugs and DVDs.)
While I was doing my civic duty, I was unable to put Silverman’s book down or stop cracking up, even during the (impossibly long) jury duty orientation video. Thinking I was rude or crazy, maybe contributed to why they excused me so fast this time. But I couldn’t help it, the book is so funny.
I’ve been following Silverman’s career for about 10 years. The first time I saw her, I was struck both by how funny and how pretty she was. Ten years ago, before Tina Fey and Chelsea Handler became household names, with Phyllis Diller and Joan Rivers as comedienne icons, it was rare to see a woman be allowed to be funny and attractive all at once. Even when it comes to boys, a sense of humor is usually high on a girl’s wish list for what makes him appealing, but for girls, being funny has been more like a subtraction factor in the sexuality equation. I seriously look at the progress female comedians have made in the last decade, with their own TV shows, books, and a little tiny bit in movies, and being able to go beyond jokes about how ugly or fat they are or how much plastic surgery they’ve had, as one the biggest advances for women in media in my lifetime. Silverman jokes frequently about how cute she is and thinks she is, and just that too, a woman joking about her attractiveness instead of unattractiveness (so sick of the ubiquitous supermodel quote about how ugly she always felt) is a radical change.
Unfortunately, a lot of people don’t get Silverman and are offended by her “rape” jokes and “racist” jokes. I don’t understand this at all. Silverman usually plays a character that is incredibly ignorant and incredibly arrogant– the all too common human characteristics that create racism. When Silverman says silly, stupid things (her jokes) her character “misses the point” completely, an obvious point, thereby illuminating, as many comics do, all kinds of biases in our society we too often take for granted. Silverman’s jokes are not perpetuating racism or sexism but calling it out. Get the difference? It’s like the show “Mad Men” is about sexism, but it’s not sexist.
In Bedwetter, Silverman elaborates on some controversies of her career, for example the infamous joke she told on Conan O’Brien:
Here’s the joke (which, remember, I was reading while at jury duty):
I got a jury duty form in the mail, and I don’t wanna do jury duty. So my friend said, “Write something really racist on the form so they won’t pick you, like ‘I hate niggers.’ I was like Jeez- I don’t want people to think I’m a racist, I just want to get out of jury duty. So I filled out the form and wrote, ‘I love niggers.”
Silverman writes in The Bedwetter:
Conan O’Brien’s segment producer says I can’t say ‘nigger’ on the show even though it’s obviously not a racist joke. It’s a joke about an idiot–me– but no way would that word be uttered on NBC.
Silverman asked to say “chink.”
Frank said no, she could say “spic.”
Silverman said it didn’t make any sense that she could say spic but not chink. Chink was a funnier word than spic. She would say chink. The producer says OK.
Vanity Fair
Vanity Fair cover 2008
Silverman tells the joke and thus begins her war with NBC and Guy Aoki of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. Aoki complained about her joke the next day, Silverman saw the complaint on the internet, and immediately wrote Aoki an apology. She apologized for any hurt she caused and wrote she wanted to address it. “The joke is satirical and the intended point of view is to underline the ignorance people demonstrate when they employ racial epithets.”
Silverman then meets with her agent who tells her NBC issued a formal apology to Aoki stating that the joke should’ve been edited out by their standards and practices department. NBC wrote it would cut the joke from all re-runs of the show. Silverman’s agent told her she was no longer wanted on any current NBC shows including the low-level, all comedian “Fear Factor.”
Silverman writes:
Guy would have thrived in the 1930s, ’40s and ’50s. A man like him, with moderate intelligence and maybe a good helping of courage and tenacity, could have made a name for himself attacking the networks and studios who delivered Stephen Fetchit, Amos and Andy, and Al Johnson to American audiences. But in recent decades, an effective cultural crusader requires a more nuanced perception of irony and context.
I grew up watching Archie Bunker, the ignorant racist character created by Norman Lear, who was, himself, famously devoted to advancing racial tolerance and progressive cultural values. Archie Bunker’s racism was Lear’s vessel for delivering comedy with a social message. Had Guy Aoki been operating in the 70s, he might have attacked Lear as a racist. The bad news for guys like Aoki is that not only are the progressive messages out there today more refined and sense-of-irony dependent, but racist messages are more oblique, too. Right-wing Americans who appear in mainstream media are not calling black people niggers or saying “the Klan has good ideas.” Instead, they’re questioning the legitimacy of Obama’s presidency, by accusing him of being born in Africa, or of being a Muslim. They’re having “tea parties” and calling Obama a communist and a Nazi. The entire Fox News Channel is a 24 hour racism engine, but its all coded, all implied. Lou Dobbs used to scream about immigration not the “filthy Mexicans.” I suspect the racist messages about Asians that permeate the media are even subtler and harder to combat.
I relate to Silverman’s struggle and frustration. I feel like I spend much of my time trying to show people where sexism exists, how sometimes it’s become so “normal” we’re blind to it and accepting of it.
Here’s another subversive thing Silverman did. When Sarah’s character on the “Sarah Silverman Program” is told on the show by her sister that she was born with a penis and a vagina, Sarah’s line is:
“Were the penis and vagina in separate peices, or was it like the penis itself was the vagina, but split down the middle with labia?”
http://stopthecap.com/
Archie Bunker
According to the censor, “labia” in this instance was too graphic and we were asked to remove it. We can say “penis” and “balls” until the cows come home, but labia?” I asked our censor if this is what she wanted to teach young girls– that penis is fine and balls is fine but labia– your own body part– is dirty. I expressed these views to the censor and prepared to dig in for a long battle. But to my surprise, she saw my point and acknowledged that she had grown up in catholic school where female sexual organs are viewed as taboo. I was s impressed by her willingness to admit that her upbringing was clouding her judgment. So congratulations, womankind: Nancy Pelosi is Speaker of the House and by the time this book is published, ‘labia will have been in prime time.”
So Silverman’s being kind of sarcastic there, but also she isn’t. She’s taking on the catholic church, no small foe, and also the human id. She’s insisting on speaking up and staying in control of what she says. It drives me crazy when people want to censor the wrong things. This misguided intention is why I started my blog ReelGirl, to rate kids media, because G-rated kids movies are some of the most offensive things out there, often perpetuating the worst kinds of stereotypes for kids. I mean, has anyone seen Disney’s “Peter Pan?” Where the lost boys hunt the redskins? And Wendy, a kid, just wants to be a perfect “good mom” to all those boys, and she and Tinkerbell hate each other over Peter? And, no, I don’t think Disney is that much better today, just more subtle and ingrained sexism, as Silverman says.
The same kind of misguided censorship that happened to Silverman also happens when white guys get all upset about the sexism in hip-hop. White guys who normally don’t seem to care much about the status of women or do anything to improve things suddenly get all riled up about rap music. I’ve never seen anything like it. I wish these guys would show the same kind of furor about getting women and men equal pay for equal work. Here’s something I wrote about censoring hip-hop music for the Chronicle, back when Eminem was offending people.
MARGOT MAGOWAN
Wednesday, July 12, 2000
I LIKE hip-hop music. I know I’m not supposed to because so many of the songs have horrifyingly violent, sexist or homophobic lyrics.
Hip-hop is also the most innovative thing to happen to music in a long time.
When you compare hip-hop to its biggest rival for domination of the music charts – the corporate-created Backstreet Boys and N’sync, and pop-pincess clones Britney Spears and Christina Aguilera – rappers/ producers like Dr. Dre and Method Man are infinitely more talented. Hip-hop is captivating precisely because it tells a story, overlaying lyrics on top of familiar backbeats, creating songs that are at once new and familiar.
The story hip-hop tells may be disturbing or degrading, but that’s no reason to shun it. As art has always done, hip-hop describes our times, exposing a sometimes ugly world- of drugs, sexism, poverty and violence- that middle-class America may prefer to hide away.
In the ’60s, Bob Dylan enraged those who upheld the status quo. Today, we have a whole new slew of musical poets.
Just like they did with Dylan, the older generation asks, “How can you listen to this awful music? There’s no melody! And those lyrics!”
Baby boomers protest that THEIR songs were about peace and love, while hip-hop celebrates killing and humiliates women.
But surely rock ‘n’ roll stars have never been known for their kindness to women. The Rolling Stones cranked out hits like “Under My Thumb,” “Brown Sugar” and “Little T & A,” sneered through lyrics like “You make a dead man come” and glorified violence in songs like “Midnight Rambler.”
Sexual violence in lyrics wasn’t limited to bad boy bands either. Old peaceniks Jerry Garcia and Neil Young sang songs like “Down by the River” about murdering a lover. Ever since Elvis shook his pelvis, music has shocked, and the older generation just didn’t get it.
Critics charge that hip-hop crosses a line, most recently fingering rap sensation Eminem, who sings about raping his mother and slicing up his wife in front of their daughter.
Freud (looking like Archie)
But Freudians would tell you Eminem’s mother rage and sexual fantasies are pure id, the uncensored subconscious struggling for self expression. The views of Sigmund Freud, of course, are infamous for his distorted views on women, though that doesn’t stop us from studying him in our best educational institutions. Nor should it.
Hip-hop may be more shocking and graphic than your run-of-the-mill shapers of Western thought, but I prefer my misogyny straight up. Movies like “Pretty Woman,” in which Julia Roberts plays a prostitute with a heart of gold, may be prettier packaging, but if you think women are “hos,” just tell me so.
Tales of sex and violence aren’t limited to male artists. “Goodbye Earl” by the Dixie Chicks and Macy Gray’s “I Committed Murder,” two recent hits by women artists, both detail violent killings with unrestrained glee. Angry young women muttering obscenities include Alanis Morissette, Courtney Love and Ani DiFranco.
Nor is disdain for men by women artists a new fad. Sylvia Plath, the late poet and darling of English lit majors, famously compared male genitalia to turkey necks and gizzards. Never one to shy away from sex or violence, she once said she “eats men like air.”
The difference, of course, is when women say these things, it really is just art. Because men are the guys with power, their expressions of domination, violence and sexual exploitation contribute to a culture where women really are forced into limited categories of queens or hos, where masculinity is defined by how many babes you score, and where women often are left powerless and exploited.
But sanitizing music is just shooting the messenger; it can’t transform a sexist culture. Warning stickers on CD covers are no protection from the deeply entrenched social realities that hip-hop pushes right in your face.
Women won’t feel threatened by lyrics when they overcome real inequities and get real power. Women will then be too busy making art and making deals to waste time wondering if they should side with the radical right, clamoring to keep obscenities out of Wal-Mart.
This is the first time I really get what it means to “go viral.”
I know this is my third blog in a row about breasts, so I’ll try to be brief.
Most of you know the story: A muslim cleric, Kazem Sedighi, was quoted in the Chicago Tribune: “Many women who do not dress modestly, lead young men astray, corrupt their chastity and spread adultery in society, which (consequently) increases earthquakes.”
www.thesexist.com
Purdue student, Jen McCreight, challenged the cleric on her blog and a Facebook page encouraging women to show some cleavage Monday, April 26 and see if they could incite an earthquake. The idea obviously is to challenge a culture that oppresses female sexuality.
CBS news reports 80,000 women have signed up for Boobquake. Though The Sexist reports so far there’s more media coverage than actual participants at Boobquake events.
McCreight writes she never expected her joke to get so much attention and that if she’d known, she would’ve been more careful about wording and execution.
So the question is obviously whether or not it’s empowering for women to bare breasts to humiliate the cleric, not only offending him with immodesty but also proving how ridiculous his claims are. Do these acts in fact challenge a sexist culture or is Boobquake instead capitulating to it, exploiting women’s bodies with a voluntary sex show? It’s the same endlessly debated question of third and fourth wave feminism: is it empowering to express your sexuality when it involves ‘traditionally’ feminine accouterments such as high heels and clinging clothing?
It can go either way.
Certainly expressing sexuality shouldn’t be at odds with attaining other kinds of power, as second wave feminism was interpreted by many. If you were serious about the movement, supposedly you couldn’t shave your legs or wear lipstick. (I imagine that’s all exaggerated; I know bras were never burned, but certainly just the reputation of stodgy feminists was enough to scare many women away from joining “women’s libbers”.) The challenge remains today that it can be difficult for women to express sexuality and simultaneously keep control of it, still living in a culture where men as a group are the ones in power.
Years ago, I started a “Team Pussy” movement, or tried to, before Facebook and Twitter, with an article I wrote for Salon, and then a site I started, and some T-shirts. I hoped to transform the word “pussy” from an insult into a compliment, meaning the person referred to as a “pussy” was not wimpy, but brave or cool. Ten years earlier, with many less resources than it has today, the male dominated internet managed to co-opt my attempt to some degree, linking my Salon piece to hundreds of porn sites.
And I’ve got to wonder: what would it mean if the breast baring does actually bring on an earthquake? I guess the cleric would be proved right, but it would be kind of a cool testament to female power. Not a big, long earthquake, nothing that hurt anyone, just a quickie.
I guess no one knows what will come of Boobquake yet. The only thing evident so far is that women are smarter than men. If men were more intelligent, they would’ve thought this up years ago. Or maybe they did. If we see the cleric at the Make Out Room tonight, we’ll know for sure. Here’s some info on the festivities taking place there tonight, one of, apparently many, local Boobquake events in SF:
Monday 4/26: Ladies, participate in a global experiment you’ll surely tell your grandchildren about some day: Boobquake! The brainchild of blogger, Jen McCreight, Boobquake aims to disprove an Iranian prayer leader’s recent assertion that immodesty causes earthquakes. Then, get your decolletage down to The Makeout Room for a mod edition of Cat’s Pajamas, an evening of music and dance hosted by Ginger of Whore Magazine. 21+, $5, 8pm @ 3225 22nd Street.
In small but significant numbers, filmmakers and casting executives are beginning to re-examine Hollywood’s attitude toward breast implants, Botox, collagen-injected lips and all manner of plastic surgery.
Television executives at Fox Broadcasting, for example, say they have begun recruiting more natural looking actors from Australia and Britain because the amply endowed, freakishly young-looking crowd that shows up for auditions in Los Angeles suffers from too much sameness.”I think everyone either looks like a drag queen or a stripper,” said Marcia Shulman, who oversees casting for Fox’s scripted shows…
…Moviemakers prefer actresses with natural breasts for costume dramas and period films. So much so that when the Walt Disney Company recently advertised for extras for the new “Pirates” film, the casting call specified that only women with real breasts need apply. “
Without a doubt, it’s better for women if Hollywood is truly trending natural as opposed to favoring and rewarding rewarding pastic surgery victims like 23 year old Frankenwoman Heidi Montag (who was widely reported to have had 10 procedures in one day.)
But still, there’s something smug and disturbing about this NY Times article and the Hollywood casting agents quoted in it. Actresses are being advertised for and then cast based on their breasts. No one mentions that the underlying, unfortunate issue here isn’t really what kind of breasts happen to be stylish, fake or natural (and I’m not sure “costume” dramas and period pieces qualify as “in”), but Hollywood’s unrelenting focus on female body parts. Movies are a visual form, of course looks matter. But the literal dissection, “trendiness,” and evaluation of women’s bodies is unsettling. Whatever happened to talent?
We recently discovered ReelGirl, a blog by writer and commentator Margot Magowan. She also co-founded the Woodhull Institute for Ethical Leadership, which provides professional training for young women. We decided to pick her brain about raising three daughters, her favorite blogs, and why dieting bored her to tears.
www.plannedparenthood.org
www.abcdlady.com
Margot Magowan
www.rttnews.com
www.jillianlauren.com
Skyy vodka ad from Us Weekly
www.harpercollins.com
Vanity Fair
http://stopthecap.com/
Freud (looking like Archie)
www.thesexist.com
