The Model Whisperer workout

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/25/t-magazine/25remix-whisperer-t.html?pagewanted=2

This relates back to Arubin's post about the control of the body.  If you read to the end of the article, the workout guru says, 

“It sounds corny,” he adds, “but I’ve always been about woman power. What I tell my girls applies to everyone and not just models: Look at what you are and what you have, and use that to the best of your ability. It’s all a matter of how you exploit what’s there naturally. Take what you’re given and do the best with that.”

Well, great. The whole article is talking about models, and how their workouts have to be structured a certain way because, "they can't afford to bulk up" even with muscle. Certainly not with food. You want a great body? Cut out all animal products and eat only broccoli, spinach, and kale. Don't use weights more than 5 pounds! Don't do lunges or run up stairs! Tone up, but don't look like you weigh an ounce more than before! So, when you "exploit what's there naturally" and "take what you're given and do the best with that," make sure you do so within the norms and boundaries set by dudes who can't bear to see you "big." Empower yourself! To conform to ideals established by (mostly) gay men!

There is another article or feature, I guess, in the NYT Style section, about the chief makeup designer at Chanel, playing with makeup. Less is more! Because "great skin is the ultimate luxury!" Check out his concepts. He loves that you can't see the eyes on the women; indeed, you can't see their eyes. So they're nothing but a blank canvas, a mannequin. So they don't ever engage with their viewer or with their male-designed look.

Fashion can be fun and enjoyable for women, but it sure ain't feminist.

Girlcore

http://girlcorerules.blogspot.com/

I just found out about Girlcore today, via Jezebel.  Apparently, Girlcore is a "collective" of young women who have really elaborate theme parties (sounds fun, if kind of a pain) all over the world and let men into the parties only if they come in drag and according to theme.  They also have a lot of female musicians, artists (photographers, graphic artists), and tips on creating visual pieces on their blog and magazine.  There's a distinct, hipster-y, Threadless-ish visual style to their work.

According to Jezebel, there's some criticism of the Girlcore group for being all glittery and fluffy. They're most definitely not RiotGrrls, Rex and my heroes.  But not all feminists have to be RiotGrrls and/or fall under the "hate men and hairy legs" stereotype, so that's cool.  What I do wonder is if the Girlcore girls are actually feminists?  They do promote female artists and musicians, and they foster a creative party atmosphere that is aimed for female consumers.  But the fact that they're so niche and so bound up with the creation and consumption of art and lifestyle gives me pause.  Is this again, a Butlerian performance of gender subversion, without agitating for societal change?  Should Girlcore promote these female artists AND lobby for record companies to sign more female artists beyond the pop mainstream?  Or to push for more equal education opportunities for women?

All that seems beyond the mission of the Girlcore, and there isn't a problem with that.  You can have whatever mission you want to have.  But when Jezebel says Girlcore "makes feminism fun" (because sometimes fighting for the cause is so "exhausting"), I think it's fair to ask and to debate if Girlcore is feminist. That's our mission.

Sex, Violence, and Humor

My mind started wandering this morning, in my super-boring administrative law class, about how easily female sexuality conjures up an association with violence. This is true even when there is no overt violence - eg, horror movies where the virgins are the ones who survive and the victims are running around half-naked - or, to cite something in the news more recently, this genre of holocaust erotica where Nazi officers are imagined as sexy dominatrix women (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/06/world/middleeast/06stalags.html). I was thinking about the much simpler proposition embedded in the image of a man surrounded by scantily clad dancing girls: that man is "bad," a transgressor of decency, someone who undermines the social fabric of respect and power by objectifying (and thereby controlling) people who are other men's daughters, wives, and sisters.

Perhaps there is something inherently violent in the proposition that any one person can objectify and dehumanize any other person - regardless of whatever puritan, desexualized norm that other person was supposed to conform to. This would probably be true if, instead of controlling a person's sexuality, the image were one of controlling a person's labor, say - that is, images of chain gangs and concentration camps are inherently violent too. But the thing that's troubling about sexualized violence is that it's violent only when applied to women. It just doesn't have the same meaning to sexualize a man transgressively. In a lot of ways men are subjected to the same kinds of puritan norms that make it shocking and out of place to see him in a sexualized light ("It wouldn't look right; like Santa Claus taking a shower" - to cite an extreme example of out-of-place sexuality from last week's 30 Rock). And yet when we see images of sexualized men, we don't think it's transgressive and violent. We think it's transgressive and funny. Santa Claus taking a shower is one example. Patrick Swayze and Chris Farley's Chippendale SNL skit is another example. And Jackass - a show that I love that is often expressly violent - is another example.

I'm not sure where this leaves me in suggesting feminist action points, and I'm not even sure if it's better or worse for sex to be violent or funny. I just wanted to point it out.

Are you a rectangle or a triangle?

The strangest things come up in my English III class. In my unending quest to show my students that I'm a real person who watches TV and has a life outside of our classroom, I used this Schick Quattro commerical to illustrate a point about society's need to control the body.

First, they had never seen this commerical. It took us three screenings, because there's a lot going on here. It's complicated in that it puts out there that women can talk about these things in public (yay you for feeling liberated enough to throw this is your basket at Target), but it basically affirms already prevailing ideas about controlling the body. What worries me is the fact that only a very small number (two, people) understood what the transforming shrubbery was alluding to. Funny that the voiceover promises results "whatever your style"---given the shrubbery, that means that any symmetrical, well-defined shape is cool, just as long as you get that shiz under control. Above all, remember, good girls are clean girls.

Verdict: not feminism, and not feasible. Given the symmetry of those shapes, does the trimmer come with a stencil?

Grow the hell up and deal with medical terminology

http://jezebel.com/5525506/gross-anatomy-disgusting-words-for-lady-products

This poster can't get over the word "speculum".  She thinks it sounds like ooze or something.  It means something doctors use to see inside your vaginal canal and your cervix.  Speculum.  It's not gross.  It's just medical.  Same with the other offending terms, like diaphragm.  Or Pap smear.  Or colposcopy.  

Get over it, please.  Please.  Honestly, if you are acting like a child about medical tools and procedures, or need pleasant sounding names to gloss over the fact that you're dealing with your biological functions, and feel like proper medical terms make you feel icky, is it any wonder that lawmakers feel it's okay to lie to women about their bodies and pregnancies?  Stop acting like an idiot and act like a grown up.  Then maybe people will no longer think it's okay not to treat you like one.

Oklahoma Passes Strictest Abortion Law, Protects Doctors Who Lie To Women

http://jezebel.com/5525617/oklahoma-passes-strictest-abortion-law-protects-doctors-who-lie-to-women

WRONG.

Why can't women just make their decisions on their own?  Why is it okay to be lied to so that they'll be making uninformed decisions?  If they decide to do one thing, and then regret it later, what the hell business is it of yours?  You're dealing with frigging ADULTS here.  Oklahoma, why is it okay for doctors to lie to half their patients?  What can they lie to men about?

Follow up to Rex's "Loose Women Cause Earthquakes": The "Boobquake"

6.9 earthqaue hits Taiwan on Boobquake day - NYPOST.com

Ugh. A "Boobquake". My sympathies are indeed with the "brainquake" folks. I don't want to see your cleavage, and certainly not as an "act of protest". By the way, does anyone still remember Neda Agha Soltan? I had basically forgotten her name too. But I think she was really doing more against the Iranian clerics and for women's rights in Iran than the Boobquakers, don't you?