Baby Talk, Baby Talk, It’s a Wonder You Can Walk
I have just returned from a trip and have caught up on most of what was on my TiVo. One of the last shows I watched were the back episodes of How I Met Your Mother. I enjoy this show though I prioritize it low–it’s on at the same time as 90210, which I feel necessary to watch for my continuing studies in teen television (though it’s not nearly as fun as Gossip Girl), and Chuck, which I just like (and catch up with On Demand) so I end up watching How I Met Your Mother on my laptop a few weeks late, usually. On October 25, the episode was entitled “Baby Talk.” If you read this within about a week of my writing this, you can watch the episode here. Otherwise you may have to go to Itunes or wait for a rerun, or you can read a recap at televisionwithoutpity.com.
From cbs.com
In any case, part of the episode featured Robin’s new co-anchor on her morning news show Becky (the blonde), who talks like a little girl. Although Robin, who has a deeper voice and is all around a confident and independent woman (in fact she and Ted broke up in the early seasons because he wanted marriage and kids and she didn’t) finds her infuriating, Ted finds it charming and dates her.
I have often thought about the sort of woman with a little girl voice, and how she got that way. Obviously as a young girl, that sort of woman found that if she talked like that people rushed to her rescue, bought her things, protected her and forgave her faults and if you believe the media it gets her out of tickets. She doesn’t come off as “too smart” or “too independent”–a label that Robin gets in this episode and many of us career women have gotten in the past. It’s supposed to be funny, but I think it’s an important issue.
For those of you reading in my class, you are having a very different college experience than I did. When I took a class my second year called Feminist Theory, Feminist Practice, in a classroom where 15 or so of us (mostly women) sat around a table, the professor made us notice early on how many of us started our statements with qualifiers like “I don’t know if this is right, but” or “I’m not really educated about this but” or made a declarative statement a question by having our voices sound tentative and go up at the end. I learned then at age 19 not to do that, and I think it served me well in my career. It’s interesting that meetings with my fellow faculty are the first place I’ve raised my hand to talk in years, since my instructors in my undergraduate program did not expect that, and in my graduate programs did not object when I didn’t. I am not saying I never qualify my statements, but when I do I’m aware of it.
In any case, I interact with you primarily through written discussion forums and these blogs and in neither case can I hear how you speak (though if you would like to speak on the phone I’d be glad to). I honestly do not know if some of you are these type of women, and wouldn’t try to predict it based on your writing but would be interesting to hear about your experiences if you are like that or if you frequently interact with a friend, relative, co-worker or acquaintance like that.
I enjoy teaching online in part because I can craft what I want to say before I hit “send” in a way I can’t in person where I sometimes can’t spit out what I want to say perfectly, or say the wrong thing. However, I think it’s important to consider your “voices.” To me a classroom is a place where it is OK to respectfully disagree, with your instructor and other students, and I see that some of you are doing that, which I love. I’d like to think your education in general is teaching you to be critical thinkers and good communicators, and that when you make a statement in person, whether in another classroom, at work, or with your friends or family, you’ll consider how to make it with confidence. Hopefully a women’s studies course will help the women in the class see what they are doing as well as the men (OK man) see why they might.
Many of our top movie, television, and music stars, of course, use the little girl voice. Marilyn Monroe is famous for it, as is Melanie Griffith. That was Jessica Simpson’s thing for a while there. When I was trying to find an article I kept running into forums that mention Kim Kardashian about whom I know, blissfully, very little. I’m surprised that I don’t hate Emma Pillsbury on Glee, because she uses it (although I covet her clothes).
Why do you think women use this? Do you admire any celebrities who do? What about if a politician used it?
These articles may get you thinking:
Daum, Meghan. “Little voices of distraction: Why do some many grown-up women sound like Valley Girls?” LA Times. July 7, 2007. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-daum7jul07,0,7903770.column
Holmes, Anna. “Who’s To Blame For Little-Girl Voices?” Jezebel. June 18, 2007. http://jezebel.com/gossip/top/whos-to-blame-for-little+girl-voices-269879.php
It’s Complicated: The Movie the Social Network and Gender
An article a colleague and I wrote has been published in an online academic journal. http://flowtv.org/2010/10/black-guy-corner/ If you like, you can make your comments there instead of here.
It’s the first part of a three part series–we have about 20 pages left that we’ve written, but have to decide how to make that into 2 other 1300 word sections, while considering this season’s photos as well.
I saw the movie The Social Network about the founding of Facebook two weekends ago and really enjoyed it. Many reviewers are saying it’s likely to be nominated for Oscars, as is star Jesse Eisenberg. It’s definitely a fascinating look at how ideas are turned into actual business, and gives a lot to think about in terms of how trends are set, what is “cool” and what can make something formerly cool uncool, and the reinvention of identity by the characters that echoes this possibility on social networks like Facebook.
However, as much as I enjoyed it, it’s probably the most sexist movie I’ve seen in a long time. I have a policy of not really wanting to spend money to see any movie without an important woman in it (I’m not a big fan of Western or Action movies for this reason), but I’d heard so much about how Rooney Mara was in it and she’s going to be playing The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, and had read that one the people who claimed to be involved with Facebook is named Divvya, which as far as I know is a female name, so it didn’t occur to me to be worried about this movie.
Well, turns out Divvya is male, and Kate Mara’s part is really tiny (she barely gets to stand up in her two scenes), and even the lawyers, one of whom is played by Rashida Jones, don’t really do much except bolster the main male character’s ego. Other women in the movie provide oral sex, do drugs, go insane, and rip off their clothes. To see it, you’d think no plain, heavy, or ugly women attend Harvard, much less any except maybe Mara’s character, with any self-esteem or brains at all.
Evidently, unlike in the last few years, there are going to be a large number of movies with really juicy women’s roles coming out in the last two months of this year, so the Oscar field should be very competitive. I keep reading that Natalie Portman is a shoo-in for her performance in The Black Swan, about a ballerina, and it all sounds much more interesting than all the war movies that came out the last few years.
I’m hoping to see a lot of great movies between December and the Oscar show in February or March. I try to see all the Best Picture nominations, and the ones with best actor or actress nods, (but usually draw the line at anything really scary or disturbing, especially involving the Holocaust or other genocide. ) Living in Saratoga Springs makes this somewhat harder than it was when I lived in bigger cities too, since it’s 45 minutes to the theater in Albany that’s most likely to have a lot of these, and in the winter I don’t like to drive it.
However, The Social Network will probably not provide any nominations for women in the Best Actress, or even the Best Supporting Actress. Here’s an article on Slate that addresses sexism in the movie http://www.slate.com/id/2270304/ and another that includes interviews with screenwriter Aaron Sorkin, defending his choices http://www.smh.com.au/entertainment/movies/aaron-sorkin-defends-sexism-in-facebook-movie-20101013-16jkp.html.
Did any of you see it? What do you think?
Hambly, Natalie. “Aaron Sorkin defends sexism in Facebook movie” Sydney Morning Herald. October 14, 2010.
Stevens, Is the Facebook Movie Sexist?: It definitely has a problem with women. Slate. October 8, 2010.
Photos from imdb.com
Adventures in Academia
First, a little business. I was right, and sadly, Huge was canceled. Was it because it was about fat girls? I can’t say. There are a lot of reasons why shows get canceled. Lone Star was reportedly a very good-looking and well written show, full of pretty people (I never saw it but used to watch Adrianne Palicki on Friday Night Lights and she’s thin and pretty), and it was the first cancellation of the season simply because no one watched it. That may be the case with Huge, but one has to wonder why.
I read this http://www.huffingtonpost.com/the-frenemy/womens-magazines_b_746996.html?ref=fb&src=sp and thought it was funny, because it is so true. Warning, it’s satirical and has some naughty words. I used to read women’s magazines, like Seventeen, when I was a teenager, then Glamour or Cosmopolitan or occasionally Vogue as a young woman, but realized that once I was done I felt terrible about myself, and wanted to spend money on makeup, clothing or other things so I could look and have a lifestyle like those in the magazines. I’ve come to like myself a lot better since I stopped and came up with my own style, even if I do have cat fur on my clothes much of the time.
Photo from Glamour Magazine
Next I’d like to talk about the conference I was at last week. Academics have a varied job. We teach and mentor students, and those of us at CDL are often Area Coordinators–I’m in charge of all the media studies and communications courses, which means I create new courses, update old ones, supervise adjunct instructors and work on schedules. We also serve on various college committees (I am on the Governance Oversight and Review Committee and the Center Personnel Committee, and have previously served on the Academic Quality Committee and on the committee planning the CDL Conference, plus there are meetings of the entire center, just the Area Coordinators, and of faculty in the humanities as well as various ad hoc committees such as those to hire new faculty or staff).
A lot of our time, however, is spent writing papers (or book chapters or books), and then either presenting these at conferences, working on getting them published in academic journals, (or as books) or both. I will have a piece published in an academic journal later this month and will link it here, and you see that I have had a book chapter published in Geek Chic. Getting a book and journal articles published is often crucial for getting promotion and tenure. I attend several of Empire State College’s conferences each year and present at those, but also fly to conferences such as the Popular Culture Association (last year in St. Louis, this year in San Antonio), and the Flow conference I attended last week in Austin, Texas. Both the Flow conference and journal are administered by the Radio, Television and Film at the University of Texas at Austin. This is the third time I’ve been to this conference, which is held every other year, and I’ve been to all three they have had. You can see the journal, and some info about the conference at http://www.flowtv.org.
My panel was about feminism and new media. We discussed ways that women and girls are baring their souls, and in some cases their bodies, in the new media, and what this might mean. At a lot of conferences, everyone comes in with a paper and reads it or does a presentation (where the technology invariably does not work), but at this one, everyone wrote a 2 page position paper a few weeks before we attended, read the papers of others on the panel, and then just talked. A lot of the women on my panel were a lot younger than I am, and read blogs that simply aren’t aimed at me (like jezebel), or don’t interest me (like various pornographic blogs) so it was sometimes hard to have a meeting of the minds.
Photo from Fox TV
Other panels I attended were about serialized television, “Quality” TV, race on television and the show Glee. I wish I could have attended the one about sexuality on TV, self-aware sitcoms, and a few others, but one can’t be two places at once, unfortunately. There was also supposed to be a screening of the third episode of Lone Star, but since it was canceled, the network did not finish editing and they could not show it. They showed the pilot and the producer was there to tell his sad story about how they had good marketing, a good time slot and what I hear is a well-written and acted show, but no one watched so it was canceled. I could not attend that either, but was able to read about it on twitter (which I don’t really like, but most others are addicted to) and some attendees’ blogs.
Why wasn’t “Huge” a huge ratings success?
This summer I watched a show called Huge on ABC Family. It was about teenagers at “Camp Victory,” a weight loss camp. Leads were played by Nikki Blonsky, who was previously Tracy Turnblad in the movie musical Hairspray, and Haley Hasselhoff, David’s daughter, who plays “the prettiest girl at fat camp.” The show was created by Winnie Holzman, the mind behind my favorite show of all time, My So-Called Life, and her daughter, Savannah Dooley. While the dialogue isn’t quite as memorable as that of MSCL, it’s still an amazingly interesting show with intriguing characters with fascinating inner lives.
Photo of My So-Called Life from Ew.com
Unfortunately, MSLC ended in its 19th episode of a planned 22, on a cliffhanger, and it looks like Huge may also end unresolved, since the final episode of the “summer season” took them only through parents’ weekend at the camp (which one might assume would happen halfway through a given summer), and introduced a new couple and some heartbreak for the lead.
Ratings were not terrible. ABC Family is not on all cable systems and I don’t believe that a large portion of the audience either knows they have it or would watch shows on it if they did. Secret Life of the American Teenager is by far the most popular show on that network.
You can watch at least one online episode here: http://abcfamily.go.com/shows/huge?cid=afm_psg_comsearch_Huge&kmed=ppc
Photo Credit: ABC Family. Huge
While some fictional shows have the occasional heavy character, and reality shows like The Biggest Loser (which I have never watched) have a large number of heavier people, it is really quite startling to see a show full of nothing but heavy teenagers. It simply doesn’t match the vision normally shown in teen shows or family dramas, in which nearly everyone is spectacularly beautiful, quite thin, and perfectly dressed and coiffed.
The director of the camp is played by the slender Gina Torres, and all the counselors are “normal” sized people who could appear on any television show, except for the camp cook, played by Paul Dooley, who as an older man can be heavier, and who has appeared on many TV shows including My So-Called Life, Ellen, Grace Under Fire, ER, and Desperate Housewives. He is married to Ms. Holzman and father to Ms. Dooley.
Photo Credit: ABC Family. Huge
Most ABC Family shows are run in mini-seasons, so that, for example, The Secret Life of the American Teenager (a show I loathe but watch for research purposes and because it is amusing to watch such a train wreck), runs around eight episodes in the summer, takes several month break, and then picks up again in the winter or spring. Huge ran for 10 episodes, and, although I’ve been monitoring web sites such as www.thefutoncritic.com and www.deadlinehollywooddaily.com, both places that would announce such a thing, no subsequent season has been announced, nor has the show been announced as on hiatus or canceled.
Most of the other shows on that network seem to at least make it through a 16 episode season, so I have to wonder if Huge is not getting renewed because people don’t want to watch fat characters. Despite the “obesity epidemic” we read so much about, is there really acceptance of different body types in our “escapist media”?
There might be other reasons it didn’t get a large enough audience for renewal. Way too much time was spent on the camp director and her eating disorder and issues with her father, Nikki Blonsky’s character was too angry, the show dealt with homosexuality and potentially transgender issues that might turn off some viewers or their parents. A lot of people found My So-Called Life too “talky” and the lead character too whiny, and this may have some of the same issues for audiences.
Blair Waldorf of "Gossip Girl". Photo Credit The CW.
However, it does seem as if we are probably used to watching pretty people on our TVs, particularly pretty young women. The cast simply does not look like the cast of Gossip Girl. Having the most desirable boy on the show be heavier than average, and the most desirable girl be at least a size 14 might just be too difficult for viewers to accept. I think getting audiences, especially young audiences to watch Huge could do a lot for the self-esteem of teenage girls of all sizes.
Losin’ It using Social Media
Two weeks ago I went to a conference called South by Southwest Interactive in Austin, Texas. Some of you may have heard of the South by Southwest (or SxSW) music festival–well this grew out of that and it’s now 3 weeks of Film, Interactive, and Music. I only had a pass for the Interactive, but that meant 5-6 sessions per day, of which I generally had 10-12 choices, plus a great many evening networking parties ranging from Karaoke to Storytelling (I attended both of these), to a manicure party, to just hanging out and drinking–it was warm enough to be outside all but the last day, which made it better than Saratoga anyhow.
Most of the people who attended work somehow in online media and most of the speakers had written popular books about new media or technology. Unlike Empire’s own All College conference I went to last week in Saratoga, or the Popular Culture Association Conference I’m speaking at this week in St. Louis (yes, my life is so glamorous), most people who attended were not academics. They worked for companies that develop things like Google or Twitter, or for companies that use social networking for marketing, advertising or public relations. There were also a lot of journalists, along with some film, television, and music people who attended other parts of the conference.
The importance of social media is nothing to sneeze at. Watch this video, by Erik Qualman, one of the speakers I saw, and the author of Socialnomics to see why: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIFYPQjYhv8
I don’t know how many of you use tools like Facebook, LinkedIn, or Twitter, or how many of you have a TiVo, but marketers are trying to find ways to get you to use applications like those more, and to harness the power and expertise of “your friends” to market to you, to help you do searches, even to recommend television shows to you through your DVR. Personally, I’d be freaked out if my friends could see what I was watching on TV (mostly because I have the sort of friend who say they never watch, even if they do, and some I really believe do not–they don’t even own one), but these speakers all seemed to think it would be a good idea. What do you all think?
One of the best speakers I saw, and the most relevant to this course, was 
the first keynote address (there was one each day), Danah Boyd. She has a chapter in this book: Hanging Out, Messing Around, and Geeking Out: Kids Living and Learning with New Media . She writes about “digital kids”–kids who have grown up using social media, and simply take it at a matter of course that their lives will be lived somewhat online. Her talk was called “Privacy vs. Publicity” and she talked a lot about how kids use the Internet to promote themselves, even if it means things like providing sexy photos of themselves or describing themselves doing provocative things. Privacy, she said, is all about control and feeling safe. Social media, however, requires vulnerability–we have to share something about ourselves or it isn’t interesting to be anyone’s friend. The question is where to draw the line.
She said something I thought was profound “Adults worry about what they have to lose when using social networking, young people what they have to gain.” Girls and young women think they’re going to be discovered like Tila Tequila was, and end up with a modelling contract or TV show, so will put up the sexy photo. Those of us who have been around a bit longer worry more about what a potential employer or admissions counselor at graduate school or a date or new friend might see. What are those of you with daughters (or nieces or young friends) telling them? How are you monitoring what they are doing and how are you teaching them to monitor themselves?
Because I tend to get assigned mentees who want to be communications professionals, I also attended a few sessions for journalists. Most of the social networking types were very self-confident, good looking, people in their late 20s and early 30s. The journalists looked a lot more beaten down by life, as well they should be given the state of that profession. For any of you considering that path, I asked what they wish they knew how to do now that actual journalistic writing has become such a low-paying profession (thanks to all the magazines and newspapers than have tanked or gone completely online). Lots of people these days write for free or for very low wages, hoping to get “discovered” and given a book contract or paid online column.
I was told 1. Be a great editor-lots of the articles are being written now in India, and they will pay for people who can turn that into readable American prose, 2. Technical writing–if you can translate “tech-ese” into readable prose, you’ll always be in demand, and 3. Languages–if you can translate an article from a foreign language into English (not Spanish, there are too many of those already), there will be demand for you.
Photos:
Socialnomics book from www.socialnomics.net
Danah Boyd on Global Nerdy
http://www.soozmedia.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/sxsw-interactive-2010.jpg
It’s the Most Wonderful (and longest and most boring) Night of the Year
Sunday was Oscar night. This was a pretty big night for me, because I make it a point to see as many of the Oscar nominated movies that I can. It’s harder to do this these days than it once was for several reasons, including the fact that Saratoga Springs is relatively far from the type of theater that shows the types of movies most often nominated (The Spectrum, for those that are local, is nearly an hour away, as is Crossgates–this was a much easier task when I lived in Chicago and San Francisco or even Miami where I lived far, but there was no snow or ice to slow me down), the fact that being a professor/area coordinator/mentor is tons more work than most jobs I’ve had, or even than graduate school often was, and that my friends all have exhausting jobs and most have kids, and this year the fact that there were 10 films nominated for Best Picture instead of the normal 5 and I just couldn’t get to all 10, plus two of the animated ones, plus a few that had best actor or actress nominees in them.
I also really do not like watching anything extremely disturbing, including war movies, particularly towards the end of a long cold winter which lets some out, and I also do not watch movies with no important women in them–no matter who directs them. I saw have seen 6/10–Avatar, A Serious Man, Up, Up in the Air, Inglourious Basterds, and An Education.
I could have seen The Hurt Locker or District 9 on Demand, but they both look like I would dislike them–Kathryn Bigelow, who directed The Hurt Locker also directed Point Break, which had as the only woman a sex symbol/damsel in distress and not really necessary–it was obvious the real love story was between Johnny Utah and Bhodie. I was glad she won, if only because I thought Avatar was terrible (the script and the acting–the technology was great). However, the fact that the orchestra played “I Am Woman” when Bigelow became the first woman to win Best Director and for Best Picture was pretty offensive. As my friend asked–what would they have played if the director of Precious, a black man, had won? Here is a blog post that considers some of these issues blog post on The Oscars.
Movie critics and others have been increasingly disturbed by the lack of good roles for women in important films. The old adage that girls will play with boy’s toys, but boys will never play with girl’s toys extends to the movies and to adulthood as far as the movie business is concerned. Most films are aimed at teenaged boys. There’s a reason that most of the nominated women were in movies that were not nominated for Best Picture or Best Director or writer.
I won’t be able to reflect on Precious, because I didn’t see it. it’s too bad because it is one of the few nominated that has a woman as the main character and as the important supporting characters as well–Mo’Nique won Best Supporting Actress and Gabourey Sidibe was nominated for Best Actress. However, the whole idea of the movie just makes me very uncomfortable. There are a lot of opinions out there about Mo’Nique’s speech, which I managed to fast forward through when the phone rang, so I didn’t actually see it comment on Salon.com. (You will have to watch an ad, but it’s free and requires no registration). Nearly every time anyone African American spoke or won anything, the camera panned to the group from Precious or the group of African people from one of the short films (about a music group from Africa), or to Morgan Freeman. it’s always like that.
For the Best Actor nominees, each had an actor who was there to give a 
testimonial about them. For some reason or other Oprah was there to talk about Sidibe. In all the other cases people had appeared in at least one film with the nominee, but in that case, presumably because Sidibe was in her first job, they couldn’t do that, but why Oprah? Why not Mo’Nique or Mariah Carey, her co-stars? Does Oprah just automatically stand for all black women? (Doing research, apparently Oprah was the executive producer for the film, but since that wasn’t clear it was just odd.)
The Blind Side stars a woman (I assume Sandra Bullock’s character is the main character and not the football player but I’m not sure) and she won. I didn’t see that one–it just looks too drippy and I’m not so crazy about Sandra Bullock. An Education also stars a woman–and I enjoyed that one a lot, but I certainly don’t think it was the Best Picture of the Year, and there’s no way Carey Mulligan was better than Meryl Streep in Julie and Julia–which was not nominated for Best Picture, but they both were nominated for best actress but lost to Sandra Bullock. Inglourious Basterds has a very important female character, and according to the rules of drama I would call her the protagonist, but arguably Brad Pitt is the “star” if only because he is much more famous. In any case, the only one nominated for an acting award for that one was a man, Christophe Waltz, for Best Supporting Actor–it’s easy for me to say he should have won, which he did, but he’s the only one I saw.
The other films I saw–Crazy Heart had a very good Jeff Bridges (he won for Best Actor), but I didn’t think a lot of Maggie Gyllenhaal’s (Best Supporting Actress nominated) performance. Both Anna Kendricks and Vera Farmiga were very good in Up in the Air, a film I really liked, but I don’t think either role required a lot of heavy lifting–I’m sure Mo’Nique’s role was much more challenging. I loved Up, but the only female character in it disappears quickly. Coraline was a good female heroine.
Of course, the Oscars is a good time to see lots of stars, both the real actors and the hot young things, trying to look their best. Mostly men look either polished or scruffy (there was very little scruffy last night, thank goodness), but women are measured much more harshly. I knew it wouldn’t take more than 2 minutes to find “grades” for how the women looked and here they are. I really disliked what Charlize Theron wore, and thought Penelope Cruz, who I generally dislike, looked great, so I’m not sure how I feel about these scores. What do you all think of how the women are judged?
Photos taken from EntertainmentWeekly.com
Should we all just be good sports?
I am not a sports fan at all, but lately I’ve been spending time with one, and so I’m exposed to a lot more of sports media, and the attitudes demonstrated towards manhood and womanhood. In the last two weeks I’ve both watched portions of the Superbowl (OK, actually I fast-forwarded through the actual game and commentary, and watched the commercials, and The Who’s performance), and looked carefully at the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue.
The first thing that struck me was that a number of the commercials I saw were sending the message that you have to fend against women’s attempts to “feminize” you in order to be a man, and that the way to keep some sense of manhood is to buy something “manly.” This ad for the Dodge Charger was particularly blatant in that regard. Even the etrade ad with the babies was sending a similar message that all women (or in this case baby girls) want is to limit men’s (or baby boys’) freedom and even adds in some competition between females for good measure. Lying is funny!
The SI issue was interesting. The model on the cover, Brooklyn Decker, is wearing the bottom of her yellow bikini, but the top is just draped over her shoulder. Her breasts are covered, but with so many of the models inside similarly topless, or on several pages totally naked but with a bathing suit painted on, it certainly doesn’t seem all that different from what you’d find in a magazine like Playboy. What it has to do with sports I really can’t say, although I’m told that Decker and others are dating or married to famous athletes, and there are a few winter Olympians featured in swimsuits. This article from 2005 (and reprinted on Slate last week), describes the history and some of the controversies.
What I see is that gorgeous, young, slim women with large breasts (sometimes obviously fake, other times not) and seemingly perfect skin–clearly the models with paint on them are airbrushed to death since you can’t see anything, and there’s a very poorly art directed foldout poster with a cover from from Reebok suggesting that one “unzip” before looking at it, with all the models who clearly were not anywhere near each other when each was photographed, seemingly in the same space and sometimes leaning on each other–that is being sent to homes where there are young boy subscribers as well as adult men, and girls and women that would otherwise not allow pornographic magazines in their home. The friend who loaned me the magazine, who has subscribed since he was about 7, (he’s 49 now) was amazed when the first one arrived in his home. His parents had even paid for the subscription!
On the other hand, although I couldn’t easily find the “lineup” to insert it here, there are dozens of photos on the SI website that I can look at, for free, without having to pay or to sign in or anything and so can all the 7 year old boys out there. It’s easier to see such images than to avoid them. A lot of today’s media seems to be designed for men to masturbate to. Is it giving very young boys an idea of the “perfect woman” that us mere, non-airbrushed real women cannot measure up to? Or is it just fun and we should be good sports? I’d like to hear your thoughts.
Curtis, Brian. “The Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue: An intellectual history”. Slate.com. February 9, 2010 (reprint from 2005). http://www.slate.com/id/2244177/
Cover of Sports Illustrated February 12, 2010, taken by Walter Iooss Jr.
This Year’s Dolls
This is the cover of this month’s Vanity Fair. It has the latest “it” young actresses on it. It’s something they tend to do every year, but this year I’m particularly struck by how very very similar all these actresses are. Usually they at least have at least one or two actresses of color to balance out the others. This year they are all seemingly white. With all the mixed-race actresses out there, given that one of the top Oscar nominees is Gabourey Sidibe, it seems as if in the “post-racial” American some say we are living in, thanks to an African American President, it seems inexcusable.
The actresses are: Abbie Cornish, Rebecca Hall, Anna Kendrick, Carey Mulligan, Amanda Seyfried, Kristen Stewart, Emma Stone, Mia Wasikowska, and Evan Rachel Wood. Only a few of these are in what I think of as popular movies, though I tend to see the artier sorts of films some of them are in. I wonder how many of you are familiar with them? Because I go out of my way to see movies I think will be Oscar nominated, I have seen Kendrick in Up in the Air and Mulligan in An Education (both well worth seeing). I can’t quite bring myself to see Precious–I have issues with disturbing movies that make a lot of the Oscar nominated films hard to stomach, and usually get around 4/5. This year since there are 10 nominations, and since the theater that shows most of that type of movie is an hour away I’m not trying to see then all. I’ve seen 3, and will see Avatar on Thursday.
Of course they’re also all slender and dewy and young. They mostly have what I think of as fresh faces, though there’s something about Kristen Stewart that doesn’t seem quite so innocent, and knowing that Evan Rachel Wood is engaged to Marilyn Manson makes that pretty suspect. Those that are showing a lot of skin are showing coltish legs. It’s all very classy, or is it? They’re all challenging the camera and the viewer, but is it sexual? Why does the subtitle of the article describe them as dolls? Some of them are sitting like “broken dolls” but others aren’t.
Honestly the only thing I know about Abbie Cornish is that she’s famous. I haven’t seen her in anything though I’d like to see Bright Star. I’m had to look up who Rebecca Hall and Emma Stone are, though I’d seen then in some movies apparently. Hall was in Vicki Christina Barcelona, which made me want my two hours back, and in Frost/Nixon, which was good but her part was tiny. Evidently I saw Stone in Superbad, but don’t remember her in it.
The others I know better, but I don’t know if they’re the best. Are they the prettiest? Maybe. The smartest or most talented young actresses? I’m really not sure. They don’t have the bad reputations of people like Lindsay Lohan. Maybe they just match the Vanity Fair brand the best?
Peretz, Evgenia. It’s Showtime!: Annie Leibovitz photographs the nine dolls on V.F.’s cover, as Evgenia Peretz explains why Anna Kendrick, Kristen Stewart, Carey Mulligan, et al. are nobody’s playthings. Vanity Fair. March 2010. http://www.vanityfair.com/hollywood/features/2010/03/cover-girls-201003
Photo: Annie Leibovitz for Vanity Fair.
Pregnancy Pacts and Secret Lives
Welcome to my blog for the term. I am looking forward to reading yours. I would recommend that you at least look at my first post from last term, and follow the link to the Dove campaign for Real Beauty ad, because I think that’s an important thing for members of my class to see.
I don’t usually watche Lifetime movies, but I saw the ads for the movie The Pregnancy Pact, and thought it would be a good one to discuss for class. It’s about a high school in which a group of girls made a pact to all get pregnant after the first one did. The acting was not good at all, the writing was clumsy, and it really bothered me that the entire school seemed to be good-looking, popular, white sexually active girls and their boyfriends. There wasn’t a single student even standing around that looked like they might be in the chess club, or the drama club, or a loner, or a goth, or anything other than an athletic boy, or a cheerleader or their friends. The message seemed to be that some girls will have a bad life if they have babies young, as did the girl who ended up smoking pot with her mother and brother with baby by her side, but that others will be just fine, as the story of the main character, who is shown happily playing with her baby at the end will (though we do see her boyfriend off with another girl). This seems like an odd message to be giving out, especially when Camryn Manheim, who played the school nurse, did a Public Service Announcement at the end about what pregnant girls could do.
Because my dissertation was about teen shows, I tend to watch a lot of them still. I also watch The Secret Life of the American Teenager, though I haven’t seen this week’s episode yet. I find it to have the most laughable dialogue of any show on television, a lot of the acting is terrible, and mostly I watch because I want to see how unrealistic and silly it can get. However, I understand that there are a lot of teenage girls who watch the show who really identify with the lead girl, Amy, and her friends. Amy had sex at band camp with a boy who tends to have sex with anyone who will let him, and became pregnant. However, although she has so far not ended up with the father, he is highly involved in the child’s life, gives Amy money, she has a rich boyfriend of her own (or did until last week), and became extremely popular by getting pregnant and became friends with students she would not ever have been friends with before. Although her parents and sister complained about the pregnancy, there appears to be plenty of money, she ended up with a cushy job at a day care center, and there’s always someone to babysit if she actually needs it. All in all, it looks like a pretty good deal for her, even if she doesn’t have as much time to play the French Horn as she did before.
Nearly all the other teen characters have had sex (including the very Christian girl who vowed not to in the first season), are obsessed with sex, and talk about it constantly. They seem to have a lot more fun than they do homework, and there is always an excuse for the entire cast to skip school and go do something. Once again, despite the PSA’s at the end of each episode, I’m not convinced that this show is at all a cautionary tale, but instead makes having sex in high school look normal, and those who choose not to abnormal, and at risk for losing their boyfriends to girls who give oral sex.
Of course shows like Gossip Girl (which I think is a lot of fun, though if had a pre-teen daughter or teen daughter I would hope she didn’t watch it and if she did I’d have to have a lot of discussions about it) and 90210 (less succesful and fun, but better than it was last season) are completely sex-obsessed. In none of these shows or movies is abortion ever seriously considered (though a sympathetic character in The Pregnancy Pact turns out to have had one when younger), and the question is always to keep the baby or give it up for adoption.
Given that most of the audience for these shows is under 18, and I suspect skews mostly toward pre-teenagers rather than actual teenagers, who don’t watch all that much television, I just wonder how it is that these messages are being perceived by the audience. On MSNBC this morning the crawl said that teen pregnancies are up for the first time in a decade. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/35071837/ns/health-more_health_news/
My initial speculation for this was that with the financial meltdown, teenagers have smaller allowances/fewer of them have cars, and there is less for them to do for fun, so they’re having more sex, but the article makes it seem like it’s a longer term issue and mentions things like whether abstinence-only education is to blame, or whether cuts to that sort of program is to blame. In light of movies like Juno, and movies and shows like the ones I mentioned, it seems like there are a lot of mixed messages being sent by the media about pregnancy.
Sources:
Stein, Rob. ”Rise in Teen Pregnancies Spurs Debate: Rate jumps for first time in decade, raising alarm among experts”. The Washington Post. Health. January 26, 2010.
Photo of Pregnancy Pact from mylifetime.com
Incest is Upper West (Upper East doesn’t rhyme)
This post may be a little bit different in that it revisits an old topic but in a new way. It’s more about how scholarship works than another exploration of traditional women’s studies in the media topics. I have not done the thorough research I will eventually do on it either, but I wanted to show you how a blog post can be the genesis for a short article, which might become book chapter, book topic or something else (the one I did several weeks ago on race in the photos used to promote TV shows is an article I started as a blog post before I was teaching this class, and that my writing partner on the longer article and I are now mostly done with and proposing as a conference paper and online article to various outlets.) Most of the online journals I tend to look at one article of about 800-12oo words, so not counting this paragraph and the next, I’m going to aim for around that (I haven’t finished though–I know the conclusion especially is not done but I’m out of time). To publish in a paper journal, generally you need more like 3200 words.
I was talking to a friend who teaches Classical Studies at another college. A student of hers is writing a paper about young people in Ancient Greek and their sex lives. She’s trying to compare it to Gossip Girl, and my friend, who doesn’t watch much television, wanted a little background on the show. While talking we came up with an idea that deserves some scholarship and, that if I write about it well enough, might be something that someone will want to publish in a scholarly (peer reviewed/academic) journal like the ones I’ve asked you all to use as foundation for your research, or in an edited book like Geek Chic, or more likely an online journal that serves both an academic and a more popular audience. Any of you with aspirations of academic graduate school or teaching at the college level should know that scholarship is part of what academics do. Some colleges are more research-oriented and by the time one gets tenure it would be expected to have written at least one book and multiple articles. Since Empire is a more of a teaching school, the expectations are not as high, but in order to get tenure (I’ve been teaching here for nearly two and a half years, will be reviewed for tenure four more years from now) I will need to have at least a few more articles published, or else actually succeed in turning my dissertation into a book.
Anyhow, the idea is this. Those of you who watch Gossip Girl know that the mean characters are fabulously wealthy Upper East siders. They include reformed bad girl Serena, her best friend Blair, who was the Queen of their high school, Blair’s ex-boyfriend Nate, who Serena slept with prior to the show ever starting, Blair’s current boyfriend Chuck, and Serena’s mother Lily.
Meeting them in the first episode, and starting off some of the series’ conflicts are the “poor” Brooklynites Dan Humphrey who starts at the boys’ part of the private school the others’ attend, and falls for Serena, his younger sister Jenny, who starts at the girls’ school and is desperate to impress Blair, their father Rufus, who it turns out was Lily’s boyfriend when they were teenagers, and, after a few episodes, Vanessa, a friend of the Humphrey family who also lives in Brooklyn and home schools herself, who has a crush on Dan and often disapproves of the way the rich kids live their lives.
In any teen show with three main similarly-aged and attractive male characters and four main female 
characters, one might assume that the producers want to have as many potential dating combinations as possible, so that if the show goes on for multiple years, they have endless sources of conflict and romance without having to resort to guest stars for that all the time. For this reason, on the original Beverly Hills, 90210, Kelly dated Steve, Brandon, Dylan, Colin, and was originally David’s crush. By the same token, in two and a half seasons of Gossip Girl, Nate has been involved with (could be just sex, love, or someplace in between) Blair, Serena, Vanessa, and Jenny (in other words, all the girl characters), Chuck has been involved with Blair and Vanessa and Dan has been involved with Serena and Vanessa.
Serena, apart from Dan and Nate has dated Blair’s step brother, Vanessa has dated Nate, and slept with both Dan and Chuck, and also dated Rufus and Lily’s love child given up for adoption when they were teenagers–in other words, half sibling to Dan, Jenny, Serena and Eric (they kissed, but if they had sex this was neither mentioned or seen). Early on, before Serena’s bother Eric came out as gay, Jenny had a crush on him, was nearly raped by Chuck, and had a relationship with Nate. Blair has seriously dated both Nate and Chuck. The idea of Blair and Dan ever getting together is somewhat laughable, given how much they dislike each other, but Vanessa sleeping with Chuck is a similar dynamic and that has actually happened (just once so far, but you never know). Each of these characters have also dated a few guest stars, but as a general rule, most of these relationships have been boring and short, and served to allow the major characters to realize they are really interested in each other.
In other words, nearly every possible coupling has been explored in a short time. However, there is one thing keeping all these pairings from occurring, and that is the incest taboo. While Kelly and David were unlikely to ever get together, given that he was a much younger geek (though he dated and ultimately married Kelly’s best friend), once her mother and his father got married, they were effectively brother and sister. This relationship persisted although their parents broke up later in the series.
On Gossip Girl, it is doubly or triply complicated. In the first season, Lily married Chuck’s father, effectively making him brother to Serena and Serena’s brother Eric (a recurring character who is gay, and therefore is ineligible for any of the pairings). After Bart Bass died, Lily and Rufus wanted to get back together, but held back briefly because Serena and Dan were in love. Once Serena and Dan decided that they had too many problems (he is judgmental of her rich girl lifestyle, she doesn’t like how judgmental he is), Rufus and Lily were then free to get together and they are now married, with Rufus and Jenny living with Lily, and sometimes Serena, in their Upper East Side two story hotel suite while Dan, now an NYU student, lives alone in the Brooklyn loft. Lily made it clear to the now entirely orphaned, but fabulously wealthy Chuck that she still considers him a son, but he lives in the hotel his father owned, sometimes with Nate, and only visits sometimes, mostly in deference to Jenny, still wary of him after several seasons. Chuck and Serena still seem to have sibling rivalry, and sometimes support each other, and simply do not seem sexually attracted to each other at all. Whether Chuck and Jenny (that’s them in the photo) see themselves as quasi siblings or have an attraction is a question hotly debated on discussion boards such as Television Without Pity.
The incest taboo is based, of course, scientifically, on the notion that babies born to brother and sister will be deformed in some way. Leviticus gives specific rules as to which family members can have sex with whom and step parents and children are specifically prohibited, as are half brothers and sisters, but step siblings are not specifically made out of bounds.
Anthropologists and other social scientists have argued over whether the incest taboo is based on “incest aversion.” Edvard Westermark, a Finnish anthropologist discussed how most children raised together will be too familiar with each other, and have too much experience with each others’ habits of things like hygiene to be sexually attracted to each other (Leavitt). However, the Gossip Girl kids were not brought up together. In fact, other than Serena and Chuck, who, along with Blair and Nate have known each other since young childhood, none of the quasi-siblings knew each other until they were at least fourteen. While the “age of consent” or when someone is considered an adult is open to debate and is different in many countries and religious traditions, given how much like adults these young people live–everyone routinely drinks cocktails in swanky bars and are never carded, seem to have curfews, or any kind of fetters on their sexual behavior beyond vague parental disapproval when, say, Serena sleeps with a married congressman (and, by the way, Nate’s cousin), it seems fair to consider them adults (if terribly immature ones) for this purpose.
Therefore the incest taboo in this case is an entirely cultural construct. They aren’t not together for scientific reasons–since other than Dan and Jenny, or Eric and Serena, no pairing would result in babies with genetic abnormalities, nor for reasons of “incest aversion” since most of them have been strangers, or at least people who never lived together, until early adulthood. It is also not because of the potentially predatory nature of much incest, as one can assume that any coupling among these characters will be between two consenting characters (or possibly more–Dan and Vanessa and a guest character recently had a threesome). It is simply because in most areas of Western culture, and particularly in the United States we simply use the incest taboo in a general blanket way–as a general rule it’s frowned upon to sleep with, date or marry ones’ siblings, half siblings, step siblings, cousins up to several levels of “remove” and so forth. It means that Chuck and Jenny might eventually couple, and after Rufus and Lily invariably break up, that Dan and Serena might revisit their relationship (in real life, given the number of times they’ve gotten together and broken up, any decent friend would advise them to stay far away from each other, but the rules of TV, particularly teen drama, ensure they will eventually find each other again), but that for now, these things will not happen. It gives a little subtle spice or danger to the potential pairings, but one that the CW network has wisely steered away from so far.
On the other hand, the revival of Melrose Place recently made the incest taboo quite explicit. The character of Violet has already been identified as probably not as high class as some of the wealthier characters, and definitely as psychotic. While it is unclear as of this writing whether she was responsible for killing Sidney (a character from the original show) who she believes to be her mother, she is clearly “psycho” (as a viewer, I’m torn between feelings that Ashlee Simpson-Wentz is the worst actress on television, or a genius, but the fact that she’s been fired by the show suggests the first reading). When her brother–they are both adopted but were brought up together–with whom she has clearly had an actual sexual relationship shows up with threats and pleas to come back to him, it is clearly a way of marking her out as unclean and unworthy of the other residents of the apartment complex, whether she is the killer or not. It may be a class issue, that the shiny clean denizens of Gossip Girl may transgress where more lower class characters may not.
Sources:
Bigger, Stephen F. “The Family Laws of Leviticus 18 in their Setting.” Journal of Biblical Literature Jun79, Vol. 98 Issue 2, p187, 17p; (AN 7142440)
Leavitt, Gregory C. “The incest taboo?: A reconsideration of Westermarck” Anthropological Theory, Dec 2007; vol. 7: pp. 393 – 419.
