.the problem with palin. April 17, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

.the wink heard 'round the world.

Now that the election dust has settled and the campaign smoke has cleared, I feel I can finally fully-address my level of sheer repugnance for Sarah Palin. I’m only doing this because she refuses to pack it in and give it up. I had figured that if she won, I was stuck listening to her whenever she came out of Cheney’s old undisclosed bunker location and that if she lost, she would head back up to Alaska and return her focus to her state’s senatorial blunders and her family’s looming expectation. Instead, I have been treated to more Sarah Palin stories, interviews, news shows, and quotes than the guy I voted for. Less than two weeks after the most historic show of American solidarity since 9/11, we have abandoned our desire for hope and change and other positive symbols long since lost to our constant elitist money-hunger and back-stabbing bitchiness as a nation. Rather than give President-elect Barack Obama* the respect the position of popular vote winner or President used to command, we keep encouraging Sarah Palin and her 15-minutes of famous blunders.

During the entire election, no question bothered me more than: “I don’t understand why you don’t like Sarah Palin! As a woman, isn’t she everything you aspire to be?” The short answer to that question is NO (typically with some expletive or another in front of it and a look of revulsion so immediate it would make small children cry). The long answer, I believe, takes some explanation. When I would critique and criticize Sarah Palin in the past, I attempted to do so by looking only at her politics or of the way her politics and, therefore, image was being marketed. Some of the media did the same by

There are things, surprisingly enough, that I admire about Governor Palin. She is remarkably fierce. No, I don’t mean “fierce” in the Tyra-Banks-finger-snapping –“Work it, girl!” sort-of way. But, she is unrelentingly ferocious in a business that has long ago lost any sense of civility. To be admired and praised as female and not have any aspect of her gendered person hood demarcated by the sheer aggressiveness of her political (and personal) attacks is something Hillary Clinton could, sadly, not achieve.

Another thing Hillary couldn’t achieve that Palin had no problem conveying was her sex appeal.  Why anyone aspiring to the highest and most distinguished job in the nation also needs to be the object of  masturbatory fantasies is beyond me, but there you have it.  And, while the majority of Americans said they agreed with me in polls, the merchandising of Sarah Palin told a different story.   From poorly tarted-up dolls to porn videos done by Palin look-a-likes to companies using her name and likeness to sell the goods that looked similar to the ones she sported.  Of course, all this marketing doesn’t mean that Sarah Palin or her camp authorized nor enabled it.  Yet, it was out there and we bought it (and bought into it).  Looking like Sarah (or looking at her lasciviously) became our new national obsession and her persona, unchanging, played into it.  Knowing our nation collectively thought she was “cute”, she threw us that patented wink and a smile  to keep us wanting more.

.wl.: the cult of babies April 15, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

.virtually life-like.

And, in yet another fit of retro-inspired, socially-conservative feminist backlash, you can now reproduce online! No kidding. The past decade has already been detrimental to the equality progress of women. The third-wave sexual revolution has been used as an excuse by women to objectify themselves. Shows like “Desperate Housewives”, “He’s Just Not That Into You” and even “Sex and the City” all highlight dating and mating as the universe in which women’s lives orbit. Jokes abound in popular culture about women’s shrill-ticking biological clocks. Whole franchises are built around “catching and trapping” potential husbands with online support groups and associated materials included! Heterosexual women don’t even have a chance at glimpsing a life outside the home.

The site MakeMeBabies is designed to be used by any gender in seemingly any combination. However, the site features a young, ecstatic-looking girl and mildly repulsed guy waiting to see their future offspring. Underneath their photos is this exclamatory headline:

“MakeMeBabies‘ unique technology will show you exactly (well… almost exactly…) what your future child with another person will look like!
We take both your photos, do some magic calculations, and congratulations! You have a new baby!”

Apparently, over ten million fake children have been created and I’m sure guys aren’t lining up to know if they and the Jonas Brothers will make beautifully-blended, DNA-replicated music together.

.full of denial. April 14, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

.the picture of (mental) health?.

When we see pictures of people in other countries looking as skeletal as Tori Spelling does in the one at left, we are usually asked to send money to help them build a well and buy rice.  But we aren’t in another country; we are in America.  And, here in America, when we see the protruding bones of others, we spend millions attempting to re-create how they did it.

When we publicly confront people with our supposition of their eating being abnormal, there is no doubt they will deny it. A key component of eating disorders are the cognitive distortions that keep you from seeing any problem with what you’re doing to correct your perceived problem with your body. Therefore, simply speculating (whether publicly or privately) that some star or another starves his or herself happy, does no good. If anything, it reinforces their mindset by demonstrating a need to acknowledge their obsession- their weight- for any reason. If there’s no choice someone will come right out and freely admit, “yes. I starve myself and purge on occasion when I actually eat”, why splash their Eating Disorder Denial (EDD) over the daily pages of gossip rags?

The latest to engage in EDD (whose past participants have included Lindsay Lohan and Mary-Kate Olsen) is Tori Spelling who recently blamed her skeletal figure on us just “not having seen her pregnant in the past few years”.   In past interviews, she blamed “tension with her mother”.  This is what happens when people start asking questions you cannot answer:  you blame.

No one would believe these excuses in a vacuum. Even though we are constantly inundated with visuals of rail-thin, ghastly gaunt women, we can still recognize someone who has all visible bones as unhealthy. Yet, we accept these excuses and they even help keep our society enmeshed in a body image crisis. When celebrities constantly deny their distortions and refer to their looks as “healthy” or the result of “losing baby weight” or “simply working out once a week”, they aide in enabling disordered eating for everyone (themselves included). Ours is a culture obsessed with celebrity. Part of our obsession  is driven with the seeming perfection of those we idolize and kill ourselves attempting to emulate. Even though we know, as graduates of high school health classes, that no person (especially over the age of 30) has a metabolism strong enough to waste them away, we accept their excuses and alter our perceptions to include what used to be disturbingly unhealthy as the new reference point for “normal”.  We engage in as much EDD as the people who do so to keep their disorder alive.

.conscious people do it better. April 11, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

.if she's breathing, she's obviously into it.

Why do Seth Rogan’s characters seem to always have to get their dates black out drunk to have sex with them? In “Knocked Up”, Rogan and an (initial) one-night stand Katherine Heigl were both so drunk they couldn’t communicate the condom issue which landed them in the title mess. In “The 40 year old Virgin”, Rogan scored only with the fall-over drunk bar flies. Even Rogan, in an interview with Starpulse, acknowledges that he prefers his women unwilling to engage in any action: “I gotta say, they should make a support group together, Blonde Girls Forced to Have Sex With Seth Rogen in Film,” Rogen joked. “You’re in there, Anna [Faris]. Sorry.” Drunken “conquests” aside, the forced sex he has with co-star Anna Faris in their new movie “Observe and Report” sounds like nothing short of rape.

What’s at issue here is that pesky concept of “informed consent”. Without having seen the movie, I am approaching the questionable scene at-hand from the stand-point of film reviews, press interviews and public commentary. During the scene depicted by the above screen shot, Farris’ character is beyond intoxicated on a combination of alcohol and anti-depressants.  Escorted home by mall cop Rogan, she vomits before he goes in to kiss her and eventually ends up in bed where he has sex with unconscious, puking torso.  What makes the scene “OK”, according to Rogan, is that she wakes up mid-fuck to ask him: “Why’d you stop, motherfucker??”.  This, everyone involved is telling us, is her consent…and our reason to laugh.  I, personally, don’t understand what’s supposed to be funny.

A poll of readers on The Huffington Post suggests others are not so humorless as I when it comes to the comedy of consent.  In an article commentary of the same scene described here, 36.46% of respondents voted that this sort of sex is “…a JOKE people. Get upset about more important things” while only 29.06% of those polled sided with the other end of the spectrum tha “[T]otally unacceptable. It’s sick and wrong”.  To put those stats into words, over one-third of readers find rape funny always with nearly three-quarters of people finding it funny at least sometimes.

.WL.: the new hit teen trend April 7, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

(originally published 2/22/09 on WL  + addendum added  3/8/09)

The horror of intimate partner violence, as demonstrated by celebrity music couple Rihanna and Chris Brown, is in no way glamorous.  Or, so you’d think. Yet, teenagers interviewed by the Chicago Tribune not only supported Brown’s actions but started coming out as members of intimate partner violence themselves.  Here’s the twist:  they’re showing off the wounds they’re proud to have incurred in the name of “love”.

Not every teen interviewed by the paper condoned violence.  Some called it “bogus” and others said violence is never allowed.  These teens appear to be in the minority.  As written in the February 20th article for the Tribune:

“…other teens insist violence is sometimes justified in relationships.

While young fans have plastered Rihanna’s MySpace page with notes of support, many comments on Brown’s page express delight at the possibility that he battered a woman.

Kriana Jackson, a sophomore at Sullivan, said it’s a sign of a broader culture of acceptance of abuse.

“There was a girl at school this week with a scratch on her eye,” Jackson said. “She was talking openly about her boyfriend hitting her, but she was smiling and saying it was funny.”

Young people carry these attitudes into adulthood, experts say, and young targets of dating violence are more likely to succumb to aggression in later relationships. …”

Google searches for “Rhianna and Chris Brown in  love” are up.  YouTube videos like “Chris Brown & Rihanna KISSING” have seen their views jump into the multi-millions in the past week.  Comments are also rising accordingly.   Surprisingly (or maybe not), public opinion is split two ways.  Either intimate partner violence is seen as a “mistake”-

“god, EVERYONE makes mistakes. we’re not perfect. stop hating on chris and just imagine for a second, you’re in his position”

or indefensible-

“All men who hit women for any reason need to be eliminated period. Chris Brown you look like a woman beater.. I can see it in your eyes.. It’s sickening to see all these unreal affectionate pictures of these 2.. Don’t ever let a cute or pretty picture of a couple fool you. The handsome, talented man can hypnotize you with his fame and popularity, but is only good at putting on his act. In reality he mostly likely only has 3 brain cells..”.

.WL.: blame the bikini April 6, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

(originally posted 2/12/09 on WL)

.don't look now....

A Princeton University psychologist has just announced the results of a study concluding that men view women in bikinis as objects.

In other news, nudity makes men think of sex.

Feminists have long pointed out instances where women are objectified.  After enough time, society became a believer to the point where, today, women objectify themselves in the hopes of catching the eye of some guy.

Although the this truism has pervaded society long-enough for it to be conventional wisdom, Dr. Susan Fiske contends that men “can’t control” their objectification of scantily-clad females.

The study of 21 heterosexual men determined their level of “hostile” sexism- the belief that women have it in for men- or “benevolent” sexism- the belief that women have to fulfill certain gendered roles- through both questionnaire and brain scan.   This study showed that men who were the “hostile” sexist-type did not view bikini-clad women as having thoughts or feelings.

Additional questionnaires provided the additional information that all of the men see fully-clothed women as being in charge of their own actions while undressed and under-dressed women were viewed as needing to be “acted upon”.

Somewhere in here I’m sensing a new rape defense: “I really couldn’t help myself!  She needed me to attack her!”.

.if you can’t beat them, BFF them. April 5, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

And, in case you weren’t sure that feminism was all but dead, Facebook is bringing back Party Barbie with a technological vengeance.

As I logged into my Facebook.com home page today, one of the perpetually pervasive ads in the right-hand column caught my eye. Forget that the “ads” are placed there based upon key words they find anywhere in your profile or that this Big Brother approach to marketing creeps me out and let’s focus on the ad itself for a moment:

Be Barbie’s BFF

Hey, remember me? I haven’t seen you in ages! Life has been crazy lately: Fashion Week, huge parties, boy drama. Fan me and let’s chat!

Become a Fan of Barbie: All Doll’d Up

Not only does this advertisement presuppose that I have warm and fuzzy feelings of nostalgia for Barbie but that, because I’m female, I’m seriously and into fashion, parties, boys, or any combination thereof. Barbie always did have tunnel vision.

.WL.: the clothes don’t make the (wo)man April 4, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

(originally posted on WL 9/21/08)

This year’s Primetime Emmy Awards had five hosts, all reality television hosts and all nominated for their hosting skills. Talk about having to sing for your supper. Among the hosting hosts were Heidi Klum, former Supermodel and current face of “Project Runway”, and Tom Bergeron, the new Bob Saget of “America’s Funniest Home Videos” (a show I had no idea was still running!). The opening shot featured all five reality narrators appearing on stage together, in a row and sporting the same black suit, white button-down shirt and skinny black tie. Even Heidi Klum had a fitted version of this classic male staple.

.everyone, still clothed.

After running through a terribly unfunny dialogue, all five turned their attention to William Shatner and Heidi’s suit. Confused? I was. I’m not certain why William Shatner was worked into the opening skit, but he was called out, walked up on stage and began bickering with Tom Bergeron, the only male host remaining center stage with Heidi, about Heidi’s suit. Below is a rough paraphrase of the conversation:

William and Tom: “We thought you’d be wearing less clothes!”

Heidi: “I wanted to be one of the guys and I wanted to wear what everyone else was wearing!”

William and Tom: “But, we want you in less clothes!”

End of discussion.

Commence with William Shatner pulling on Heidi’s clothes from one side and Tom Bergeron pulling on them from the other. Amid Heidi’s prostrations, they literally ripped the suit off her body to reveal a low-cut, tight, sparkly black hot pants / sleeveless top number underneath. Just what the Emmy Awards needed: every man’s proverbially fantasy and every woman’s proverbial nightmare.

.WL.: fuck “fake” April 4, 2009

.all natural.

.authored by something.of.substance.

(originally posted on WL 11/11/08)

I’d like to make an announcement: it’s time to retire the term “fake”.

No, I don’t mean you have to give up fake to describe things such as the chicken in Kentucky Fried, Pamela Anderson’s boobs or the orgasm you had last night. Fake as a retrospective of personality, however, needs to go.

Before I go any further, I would like to present “fake” as defined in the Urban Dictionary:

“if your bitch moans and looks you in the eye its fake”

“Sometimes applied to people who are accused of being something they are not. See poser.”

“A person, the vast majority of the time a female, who acts too nice to be real in order to lure in pathetic dopes and use/betray them, frequently crushing the victim’s soul in the process. Symptoms of fakeness include wearing a huge, phony, Botox-looking smile the entire time, saying “Hiiiiii! How are you!” a lot, using an overly sweet tone of voice that’s so dripping with sap it makes you want to vomit, and just generally being overly perky all the time. A fake chooses her victims very carefully, usually very naive individuals, waits until the victim has divulged their deepest, darkest secrets, then spreads them all over the school and makes sure the victim is absolutely miserable. AVOID AT ALL COSTS.”

It certainly goes without saying that all of these definitions represent a slang use of the word and not the legitimate dictionary definition any of which usually reference fraud or counterfeit items or practices. If that’s true and we can apply “fake” to refer to people’s fraudulent or counterfeit personalities, how would we really, genuinely prove such a thing?

.who’s to blame?. February 15, 2009

.authored by something.of.substance.

.pass the buck.

This just in: an airplane crashed; something went wrong. In the latest example of this all too familiar scenario, Continental Connection Flight 3407 crashed into a Buffalo, NY house killing fifty people. Almost as soon as the iced over plane went down, the news began relentlessly reporting every tragically inane detail. The de-icing system was activated. No birds were involved. The plan nose-dived- wait- flat-bellied into a house. And, the latest announcement, the plane was flying on autopilot which was, in such weather conditions, against some airline policies. Depending on the situation. What started out as an un-biased accounting of a tragedy soon turned into a blame game. Someone needed to be responsible. Someone needed to be at fault. This person, speculatively, is the pilot. I think he learned his lesson.