Sarah Seltzer's blog http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/1279/atom/feed 2009-07-20T23:00:56-04:00 Precious, Stupak, and the Erasure of Women's Lives http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/11/20/precious-stupak-and-erasure-womens-lives 2009-11-20T07:00:00-05:00 2009-11-20T01:46:24-05:00 Sarah Seltzer  

This isn't to say that "Precious" should be read only as a piece of political commentary--it's a work of art first and foremost. But it's hard not to see the parallels. Congress continues down the path of separating women into two groups--women of means who have reproductive rights and women without economic, social or geographic privileges who lack them. Meanwhile women are flocking to theaters to see Precious Jones dream of being someone who, in her mind, matters: a white married woman who lives in Westchester. Her innermost thoughts echo the divide that Stupak-Pitts would put on the books.

Social critics and film critics alike are divided on whether "Precious," the story of an obese, illiterate, victimized young African-American woman's self-actualization through literacy, constitutes "poverty porn," an unrealistic "fairy tale" or something with a "spirit that soars." This polarizing effect arises from the film's methodology: like many politically-conscious artists before them, filmmaker Lee Daniels and author Sapphire have stacked circumstances against a protagonist until it's almost unbearable, then given her a shot of hope. Precious is raped by her father, beat up by her mother, scorned by everyone else. While the story itself hearkens back to The Bluest Eye and The Color Purple, Clarisse "Precious" Jones also recalls a character in a Victorian "social problem" novel.  A child herself and pregnant with her second baby by her father, she is both an Oliver Twist and a Tess Durbeyfield, shunned and dismissed as less than human by everyone around her (and perhaps the audience initially), but with an inner light that throws her corrupt, decaying society into relief.

Subtle it isn't, but the story has a mass appeal and an absolute urgency in making viewers interrogate their own assumptions. The question of bodies hangs over the whole film. Everyone around Precious violates her bodily autonomy, from her father to her mother who physically, verbally and sexually torments her, to the school officials repulsed by her pregnancy to boys on the street who ignore, mock or push her. Her very presence is treated as an affront: too large, too dark, too sexual, too hungry.

Precious herself believes this. She longs to be thin and "light-skinned" or white--she suffers deeply from internalized racism and sexism. During her most harrowing moments she has fantasies about being on the red carpet or in music videos, showing the power of pop cultural images to create teenagers' aesthetic values and perhaps cause self-worth to plummet. Precious's dad is almost entirely off-screen, but his shadow looms: Precious's mother Mary, is in thrall to his presence, deeply jealous of her daughter because she has unwillingly captured this monstrous man's attention (and because her daughter's swelling belly symbolizes her own inability to parent). This is her excuse for throwing fists, kicks, taunts and household objects at Precious.

The film's two female-only spaces, the stifling, horror-filled home with Mary, and the limitless school room, are study in contrasts. Precious's mentor, an alternative-education teacher named Blu Rain, is in a loving lesbian relationship. Precious finds her voice among this group of young women like herself, all learning to read together. In Precious's life, the sole male hero is a gentle nurse who doesn't mind being teased about his job. In this way "Precious" doesn't indict men as much as reject the patriarchal values of dominance and competition, in favor of cooperation, communication and nurturing.

"Precious" puts its greatest faith in the transformational ability to express ourselves. Precious, formerly illiterate, recites the ABCs in her darkest moments; her burgeoning ability to put pen to paper is her salvation. In the "real world" this message rings true: literacy in the broader sense is absolutely essential to the formation of a self, the ability to establish boundaries and envision a future. Precious doesn't fully grasp what has been taken away from her until she begins to understand and accept who she is: not only through building her vocabulary but through learning to "read" personal, social, and emotional situations.

The film asks that we never see Precious herself as a symbol. She's a real person with a sharp sense of humor and desires that are hers alone. Still, that personalized story makes a statement. Beneath the scenes of depravity and misery which make the audience gasp or shield its eyes, "Precious" is an affirmation, a reminder that the people we may ignore on the street (or when we pass bills in congress) have unique souls. It's also reminder that government programs, when actually staffed by decent people, can truly help: an alternative school, a halfway house, a counselor end up helping Precious save herself.

"Precious" is a complex, sometimes difficult work of art whose underlying politics matter mostly in service to its heroine's story. I recommend the pieces below for some nuanced analysis of the film's content. For some viewers, the film's broader critiques are overshadowed by the horrifying (and perhaps stereotypical) spectacle of Mary's persona. For others, the casting of lighter-skinned actors in the heroic roles reinforces the colorism the story aims to combat.

But flaws aside, the film's messages are worth pondering at this difficult moment for American women. Restrictions like the Hyde Amendment and Stupak-Pitts don't just divide women into have and have-nots, but also into "good" and "bad." The fact that until this week, the RNC provided abortion coverage to its own members proves again that bills like this are less about saving fetuses and more about punishing certain women and refusing the social safety net to those deemed "undeserving." But "Precious" asks us, all of us, to see deserving and undeserving in a new light.

The film's release in tandem with the Stupak-Pitts disaster strikes back against the amendment's underlying assumption: the belief that some people are worth more than others, that some bodies deserve less protection than others, and that some stories don't need to be told.

Other great commentary on "Precious":

Nina Sankovitch: Why Precious Matters HuffPo

Why Hasn't Precious Received "The Color Purple" Treatment? The Root

Slowly but Surely, "Precious" Finds Success, Criticism, Jezebel

Of "Precious," Percival and My Pafology,at Racialicious

Long Day's Journey Into Night: Watching Precious, Reading Push Racialicious

]]> The Media on Stupak-Pitts: Theatrical, Not Factual http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/11/11/the-media-narrative-stupakpitts-theatrical-not-factual 2009-11-11T07:00:00-05:00 2009-11-10T21:23:02-05:00 Sarah Seltzer

Or was it also a period during which legislators hammered out actual laws potentially altering millions of Americans' lives--and women's in particular?

Judging from the presentation by much of the mainstream media, one would guess only the former. In the midst of foaming at the mouth at the political give-and-take involved in health care reform, many of our nation's prominent pundits neglected to properly inform the public that Stupak's language allowed for a major incursion into women's rights. They may have even relished the loss represented by Stupak-Pitts, because it made for a tense and gripping narrative that tempered the progressive victory of the legislation's passage.

The success of the vile Stupak-Pitts amendment can be attributed to several causes, many of which are documented on this site.  But one important factor in the problem is the stalwart refusal of our corporate-funded political media to spend much energy analyzing the ramifications of policy on real Americans, instead focusing on personalities, juicy ideological battles, and so-called "political capital." Overarching all of those topics, the media's primary obsession is on certain repeated narratives of victory and defeat, based on preconceived notions about liberals (weak, overly empathetic, willing to compromise), conservatives (moral, pragmatic, staunch) and the way politics works. To actually learn the details of the bill and various proposed amendments last week, the public would have had to do some digging. But to find out whether Nancy Pelosi seemed powerful and how Obama's statement has affected congress's mood, just flip on any channel (except, of course, for MSNBC when Rachel Maddow is on--she's part of the exception, one of a few sane voices.)

Today's reporting creed equates objectivity with a bizarre "balance": giving two sides of a contentious issue equal space and not fact-checking either. It's a particularly noxious M.O. for coverage of abortion. Based on media coverage alone, one could easily forget that abortion is a legal, protected medical procedure undergone by a large percentage of American woman. Instead, reporters treat it as the "political football" with which Congressman Jerrod Nadler angrily accused conservatives of playing. Pundits apply the same "football" mentality to issues like gay rights, poverty and immigration, ignoring the human crises beneath the rhetoric.

When I switched from C-SPAN to CNN on Saturday night, the network's weekend anchors looked somewhat bewildered and baffled as they narrated the vote that was occurring. Not to pick on CNN's Saturday-night team, but I immediately thought they were confused because they're not used to actually talking about the details of policy. Instead, pundits are accustomed to parroting ridiculous notions about which way the wind is blowing,creating a powerful, self-satisfied echo chamber. Just last week, political journalists were absolutely entranced by two gubernatorial elections as somehow representing the tenor of the entire country. Much of the time spent on these races could have been spent telling Americans what exactly was at stake in the health care vote.

For this reason, many liberal-leaning and pro-choice TV watchers and newspaper readers woke up on Sunday morning thinking that Stupak was no worse than Hyde. They had been focused on the drama of the bill playing out in the media, and therefore saw the anti-abortion amendment as a tough concession that didn't much alter the status quo. Only as more information, much of it coming from feminists, began to circulate did media outlets begin to pick apart the actual language of the bill, realizing too late that Stupak potentially goes much, much further than Hyde. Oops.

Blogger Digby writes about how the blow of the Stupak-Pitts amendment is part of a dominant narrative among the Washington elite--a "village" of politicians, lobbyists, and media:

Any legislation such as health care reform must therefore be tempered by a liberal sacrifice, something real, a principle that will make them hate themselves and loathe each other for having done it. It cannot be a clean victory, lest they come to believe they can do more. In the end, the "moral" must always be that you cannot go too far left.

In another post, Digby also calls Stupak-Pitts "an object lesson to liberals, particularly women, for getting too uppity." She's right: another reason the still largely white, establishment and male Washington press corps wasn't appalled by Stupak-Pitts? They see women as a special-interest group.

This weekend's narrative of gain and loss by liberals makes for good, theatrical storytelling. But more importantly, it placates a media which is conservative with a small "c"--interested in keeping things just as they are, interested in a Washington whose power balance they  understand. And what they understand, as Digby said, is that liberals can't just win and "compromise" always comes in the form of a "bargaining-chip" loss for a disenfranchised demographic who reliably votes Democratic.

If more people had known in advance about the dangers of Stupak Pitts, at the very least, we might have had a less stunned public on Sunday morning. And if the political media treated abortion as a medical procedure as well as a political issue, we might not have gone down this road in the first place. Once again, much of our media fell down on the job.

]]> The "Law and Order" Abortion Disaster and The Wasteland of TV http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/10/28/the-law-and-order-abortion-disaster-and-the-wasteland-tv 2009-10-28T07:00:00-04:00 2009-10-27T20:17:17-04:00 Sarah Seltzer Law & Order must have thought they'd garner headlines and praise for their  "balanced, thought-provoking " take on abortion last Friday, an episode called "Dignity" based on the murder of an abortion provider.

 

But balanced it was not: an episode that was meant to focus on the prosecution of a cold-blooded murder ended up putting women's rights on trial--and viewers picked up on its slant right away.

Immediate twitter and blog responses showed the praise coming from one direction only. While anti-choicers were quick to heap good reviews on the episode for so-called even-handedness, pro-choicers and medical professionals were universally appalled. They condemned an episode rife with bias and medical inaccuracy. They were hurt by the way the show's writers turned the murdered abortion provider character into a literal baby-killer, profaning the death of Dr. George Tiller which they "ripped from the headlines" to form the premise for the episode.

The charge was led by Kate Harding at Salon's Broadsheet, who summed up the tone of the episode:

But in an episode titled "Dignity," Tiller's memory, remaining late-term abortion providers, and women who choose to terminate pregnancies are afforded none. The writers made a weak pretense of "balance" by having two of the series regulars -- Detective Lupo and Assistant D.A. Rubirosa -- espouse pro-choice views, but both are ultimately shamed into thinking they just might be wrong. See how even-handed?

Similarly enraged posts followed from abortion providers who disputed the episode's accuracy and expressed offense at the tone of the show:  our own Charlotte Taft and Jennifer Boulanger, a guest-postng at Women and Hollywood. The cry was picked up by Ms. Magazine, and noticed by Feminist Law Professors and even mediabistro. (Many of these posts all delve into the details of the episode's plot and explain each offensive moment, so I recommend reading them.)

The angry responses, and their source, prove that the show's writers may have had a strategy. After all, they got the controversy and headlines they wanted, without facing the ire of the organized anti-choice movement and their buddies, the legions of "keep smut off my TV screen" reactionaries. Instead, they just pissed off some feminists. And we know how deeply seriously our anger is taken by the media.

The fact that Law & Order, a once-beloved franchise that has now slipped down to somewhere between a punchline and obscurity, failed to accurately portray the experiences of women and abortion providers may not seem in and of itself to be a cause for undue alarm. The episode was buried in TV wasteland, on a Friday night, after all. And Law & Order has always traded in stock stereotypes among its legions of thugs, con-men, vixens and victims as well as a parade of lawmen with hearts of gold and deep consciences.

But unfortunately, this episode is symptomatic of --and contributes to--a much larger disease, one we've talked about frequently at RH Reality Check: the absolute erasure of women's real life experiences with abortion from the pop-cultural landscape. Feminist critics have often discussed the fact that every single unplanned pregnancy on TV magically ends up becoming a little miracle for the mother who decides to keep the baby; or if having a child doesnt' fit the character or plotline, it somehow ends up as a miscarriage. Often, there's cursory to zero explanation as to why abortion is not on the table.

In this case, though, not only was women's experience glossed over, but it was falsified. After Dr. Tiller's death, dozens upon dozens of credible, heart-wrenching stories of women who underwent late-term abortions came to light. These stories, along with the cold-blooded execution of Tiller, even softened some critics of the procedure. But during the course of "Dignity" the truth of those stories was perverted, and the women in question were portrayed as weak-willed, selfish, and childlike. As Boulanger, Executive Director of the Allentown Women’s Center, an independent abortion and reproductive health care center in Pennsylvania, wrote:

There were so many opportunities for the writers to present the humane side of women faced with complicated pregnancies.  But instead we see respected characters on a beloved TV series cast aspersions on women.  This is deeply stigmatizing, even worse than how anti-abortion protesters shame women in front of clinics every day in this country.  This show did nothing to enhance the complexity of depth of women’s true experiences and only added to the sensationalism and stigma that already exists for women facing these decisions.

To me, this movement from pretending abortion doesn't exist to denigrating women shows why we need to fight this battle on the cultural front as well as the political one. TV was already operating far from reality, so it was easy to twist it further. And Americans, sadly, haven't always had the best track record of separating what they see on TV from what actually happens in their lives, particularly when it comes to shows like Law & Order that offer the lite version of moral dilemmas.  The secrecy and stigma surrounding abortion contributes to a society where many people don't realize that they know someone who has chosen to end a pregnancy--but everyone knows about that slut on TV and the manipulative, baby-killing abortion doctor they saw on one show or another.

The wasteland on TV is often caused by advertisers, who are extremely squeamish about the subject. As the NY Times reported:

Carrie Drinkwater, a senior vice president for broadcast television at MPG, a media planning company, said that most advertisers have clear guidelines about when they will not advertise on an episode of a show that deals with a topic like abortion. It is likely that some scheduled advertisers dropped out of Friday’s broadcast, she said.

The reason corporations fear the subject is because the wrath of the organized anti-choicers is particularly potent when it comes to pop culture--after all this is a closely- linked movement to those who protest "indecency" for other reasons. They are allied with the forces that brought us Nipplegate, ridiculous bans on on-air cursing, and bans on adult (read: sexual) content. They are the modern day thought police.

It's hard for us non-censorious, free-speech loving feminists to jump on that kind of bandwagon, but in this case, a complaint to NBC is warranted. The coverage of abortion on TV is already heading down a slippery slope, and we need to stand up now or the next Prime-Time travesty will be even worse.

Several ideas for how to contact NBC are circulating.

Michele Kort at Ms. Magazines suggests:
If you want to express your displeasure over this episode, write to the executive producer of Law and Order, Rene Balcer, at 100 University City Plaza, University City, CA 91608.

The Young Feminist Task Force of NY NOW has a sample letter and a link to contact NBC.

]]> "No Fat Talk" Week: Cutting Fat Talk from Our Verbal Diets http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/10/26/no-fat-talk-week-women-cut-fat-talk-their-verbal-diets 2009-10-26T07:00:00-04:00 2009-10-26T09:41:01-04:00 Sarah Seltzer I shouldn't"s, "I'm terrible"s, and "I'm never going to fit into that dress"es? If you live in America, chances are the answer is yes. "Fat talk," light but loaded chatter about bodies and food, has become a constant presence in our diet-obsessed culture.

The pervasiveness of this collective verbal tic gave rise to last week's "Fat Talk Free Week" a tradition started by the Delta Delta Delta sorority as an outgrowth of their national eating disorder awareness program. The group has produced a widely-circulating video as well as a promise form which participants can sign, beginning with the words: "Today I promise to eliminate Fat Talk from conversations with my friends, my family and myself." It's a pleasant contrast to the kind of endless, impossible pledges that dieters make: "this week, I'll eliminate all unnecessary calories, or desserts, or bread, or eating after 5pm." Indeed, instead of axing certain foods, we should all take a cue from Triple Delta's pledge and go on psychological diets in which we get rid of critiquing our own and others' bodies, buying and reading diet-oriented magazines, and paying attention to diet ads.

But to do this, we'd have to switch both not only our entire mentality but also our everyday habits. Because the examples of "fat talk" on the endfattalk.org site include the kinds of phrases most people, even die-hard feminists, hear, or say, everyday without thinking:

  • "I'm so fat,"
  • "Do I look fat in this?",
  • "I need to lose 10 pounds,"
  • "She's too fat to be wearing that swimsuit"
  •  Even "You look great! Have you lost weight?"


To these phrases I'd add anything that associates food and dieting with morality or obligation:

  • "I shouldn't eat this"
  • "This cake is evil"
  • "Oatmeal is good, and an omelette is bad."

 

Or...saying "I have to skip lunch today after dinner last night." And fat talk is spreading by the same means as the movement against it: Commenters on the internet have complained about fat talk proliferating in cyberspace, on Facebook and Twitter in the form of constant status messages from friends reporting on their weight-loss regimens.

It's hard to ignore the fact that the ritual has a special prominence between women, in groups or pairs. It's often a way of bonding at first glance --"You hate your thighs?" "So do I!" But under the surface, it often serves the purpose of reinforcing divisions and sometimes even a pecking order among women. Oftentimes a woman complaining about her size around her peers will only unleash their insecurities, and some women may even enjoy that sense of control. When women announce that they hate their body types in front of other women with the same body types, or shower others with praise for being "thin," telling them they're lucky or good solely based on their genetic structure, it creates a dynamic of inclusion and exclusion that can trigger eating disorders, or at the least, misery.

And in a culture obsessed with food indulgence and restriction as a sort of constant sin and redemption parable, fat talk makes it more difficult to have a rational, emotion-free relationship with diet and exercise--and that's the kind of relationship we need to be healthy. The irony is that by ridding ourselves of the fat-talk mentality we'd actually find it easier to make choices, to borrow a phrase from Courtney Martin, that are based on our authentic needs and cravings, rather than what we feel we should be doing. And if we listened to and valued our bodies' needs, rather than our society's demands, we'd likely treat our physical selves more gently--less mindless eating and skipping meals, less obsessiveness and guilt, and more normalcy.

But stopping fat talk is easier said than done, even for women enlightened to its negative consequences. It's hard to quit because it's such a common, knee-jerk instinct and because, as studies have shown, it feels mandatory and expected in social situations. As Jill Filipovic wrote at feministe:

I hate “fat talk.” It makes me uncomfortable when other women do it...And yet I’m the absolute worst when it comes to fat talk.

The external pressure and the unthinking habit of fat talk create a ubiquitous and poisonous atmosphere for women who would like to stop being in a constant state of angst about their bodies. So the conscious group mentality of "End Fat Talk Week" is an excellent way to start changing attitudes.

But even after the week is over, it's not impossible to keep the momentum going. Feminist critique of beauty and body-image norms, as Amanda Marcotte does here, and the language and logic of the Fat Acceptance movement are a great avenue with which to continue excising unhealthy ideas from one's life. Feminists and FA advocates describe making "peace" with their bodies, which is an incredibly attractive phrase, and advocate cutting off sources of unhealthy anxiety like women's magazines and commercial diets.  Another, less ideological way to move beyond the fat-talk mentality is to look around you and target someone in your life who appears to be comfortable with his or her body, who enjoys food without agonizing over calories, who never comments about weight as a reflection of character, and who participates in physical activity for its own sake, and pattern yourself after him or her.

At the amazing FA blog shapely prose, there's a 200+ comment thread about the best ways to cope with fat talk, both your own and more particularly in social situations. Some of the suggestions included responding to those who label food "bad" with "it's pizza, not genocide"; saying "I hope not!" when someone says "you've lost weight"; or asking bragging dieters "how are you feeling otherwise?" to change the topic of conversation. Regardless of whether its done with a snappy comeback, silent reflection, or a theory-laden lecture, stopping fat talk in its tracks is one of the best ways to fight back against our culture's unhealthy norms for women's bodies.

]]> Desperate Non-Housewives: Dueling Fantasies On TV http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/10/08/desperate-nonhousewives-dueling-fantasies-on-tv 2009-10-09T07:00:00-04:00 2009-10-08T23:40:27-04:00 Sarah Seltzer  

For years now, women at the top of the thespian game who have reached a certain age--maybe 40--have been landing plum roles on TV dramas as cops, judges, crime-solvers and matriarchs of troubled families, or as guest stars providing dramatic edge or comic relief. It's fascinating to see the way TV as a medium has embraced some of the women that Hollywood has abandoned to the "mom role" track.

This season, instead of "Desperate Housewives," TV has brought us a slew of desperate single or career women having mid-life crises. Last week, Elisabeth Garber-Paul addressed the problems with "Accidentally on Purpose," the new show about the single woman who decides to have a baby with her younger one-night-stand, afraid that it's her last chance.

But that show's rather desperate heroine is in good company. First, and most reprehensible of her cohorts is Jules of "Cougar Town," played by "Friends" alumna Courtney Cox. Jules is a middle-aged mom post-divorce trying to relive the 20s she never had because she was too busy raising her son and being married to his slacker dad. The show puts Jules in a variety of frenetic, humiliating situations as she tries to reclaim her youth. Each episode, Jules is torn between her best friend who, presumably, is "normal" for her age, and wants to do things like stay home and eat, and her 20-something colleague who enjoys doing multiple shots and picking up guys. Clearly, the stereotypes extend far beyond the show's irritating title. But what's most upsetting about "Cougar Town" is that it appears to posit itself as empowering and/or sympathetic to its character's plight. This is demonstrated by the writers giving Cox, so far, exactly one speechy moment per episode where she rails about the double standard: "older" men on the prowl are attractive, their female counterparts are desperate, older men are catches, while women over 40 are punchlines.

The problem, of course, is that Cox's character herself is a punchline--she pulls a muscle demonstrating a sex position! She can't handle her liquor! She causes her poor son endless humiliation. We are meant to both feel sorry for Jules for being treated like a desperate wacko, and then laugh at her acting like one.

And unfortunately the best comedic moments on the show (although they're far from brilliant) come from her slacker ex-husband who drives a golf cart around town and drops in to see his ex-wife because he's too lazy to make his own coffee. It goes back to the slacker-striver dynamic that marks so many romantic comedies today. She makes us laugh at her because she's so tightly wound, we laugh with him because he's hanging so incredibly loose.

Watching "Cougar Town" made me think about how much more comedic potential there would be in a middle-aged female protagonist who entered a slacker phase, rather than trying to run around trying, and failing, to exert sexual power. As Judith Warner put it in her excellent column for the New York Times, the cougar myth is not a female fantasy, but a male one. The reason mostly-male execs are falling for the Cougar archetype: 

Maybe that’s because she’s such a twit: so narcissistic, so superficial, so stunted emotionally, so dependent upon deriving her value from her desirability — her currency — in men’s eyes. Maybe it’s because, despite her ostensible sexual power (derived, you’ll recall, uniquely from a young man’s acceptance of her), she’s really so very unthreatening. So very pitiful.

In other words, this "empowered" woman on the prowl with teeth bared is, in fact, another stereotype wrapped in a very thin film of pseudo-feminist garb, a Pussycat Doll for the post-40 set.

On the less depressing end of the spectrum is '"The Good Wife," another show with a woman trying to make a new start, mid-mom years. This show, a vehicle for talented vet Julianna Marguiles, isn't even close to explicitly feminist, nor does it reflect women's everyday lives, but by spinning a different sort of comeback tale--that of a woman coming back into the workforce-- it's less egregiously offensive, and it may even end up being fun.

"The Good Wife" has an unbeatable and intriguing premise: what happens to the philandering politician's "stand by your man" wife after the scandal has died down? In this case the husband, a former Attorney General is in prison awaiting corruption charges, and his wife Alicia has to get herself together, support the family and jump-start a career she stalled in order to support that scumbag of a hubby. She's Silda Spitzer in the Midwest.

Other than the fact that the law firm dynamics, the court cases, the political realities, and almost every other detail on the show are laughably unrealistic and even silly--read Dana Goldstein's review here-- the show takes an interesting psychological angle on women and work. The lurid headlines aside, Alicia is good at what she does, a smart, capable lawyer and person, who clearly gets satisfaction from being in the office. She never advanced far previously because of the pressure to support her husband and raise her kids, but now she has the chance to work for herself, and she appears to have a nose for solving cases and at the same time, a sense of empathy and her own moral values (at the same time, the show is honest about the difficulties she faces with kids at home and the way the burden of the family rests on her).

It's clear why her slimy but clearly charismatic husband (played by Chris Noth, of course!) picked her. It's the Hillary Clinton/ Silda Spitzer/Elizabeth Edwards and Jenny Sanford paradigm to a tee--a strong woman, a capable partner at home who is publicly humiliated by her cheating husband after suborning her own professional advancement for his. This dynamic, at least, the show nails. Eventually, the plot seems to suggest that Alicia is going to have to make a choice between continuing to stand by her man and striking out on her own, and one can hope, having her own romantic adventures. But this "I'm back!" declaration has a much more satisfying feel to it than the laughable "I'm back!" of "Cougar Town." As Dana writes:

The Good Wife is really a sort of revenge fantasy: Alicia Florrick not only slaps her husband across the face and proves to him that she can hack it as the family breadwinner, she also one-ups those other women at work, the ones who look down on her for opting-out in the first place. In the real world, though, women like Alicia's judgmental boss might be onto something: Women rarely win, in their personal or professional lives, by giving up everything to focus on hubby.

Yes, Alicia's story could never happen in the real world--this is a prime-time network drama, after all, rarely a fertile place for groundbreaking art. But still, I'd argue that this fantasy described by Dana is a woman's fantasy--as opposed to the shallow male fantasy of "Cougar Town." It's about a woman beaten down by a man's world who gets hers, a woman who can compete in patriarchy and win, while helping her fellow Wronged Women on the way up the ladder. That's a fantasy I can get behind.  (Of course, it's important to notice that both of these shows exist in extremely tony, privileged, and largely white enclaves of society, making their heroine's experiences even further out of the real mainstream. Both shows lack the diversity that has become a hallmark of ensemble shows these days--one step forward, one step back?).

But entertainment is a funny thing. When looking for a heroine to entertain them, will American women want to triumph with Alicia, or will her story pale in comparison to laughing as Jules falls on her butt? Or will they embrace both? Either way, it's doubtful that an escape-loving TV audience will reject either show for its lack of honesty about women's lives.  

]]> "Twilight Sleep:" Is The Past Prologue for Today's Debates Over Birthing Choices? http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/29/twilight-sleep-is-the-past-prologue-todays-debates-over-birthing-choices 2009-09-29T07:00:00-04:00 2009-09-29T00:10:43-04:00 Sarah Seltzer Mad Men fans were shocked recently as Betty gave birth in a "twilight sleep" while hallucinating and tied to the bed. This once common practice was ended through the kind of advocacy we need to expand birthing choices today. ]]> Two weekends ago, "Mad Men" fans were shocked by the way in which Betty Draper gave birth to her third child, Gene. While viewers perhaps perceived the process to be a long shot from a natural or hospital birth today, they were taken aback by the trippy hallucinations Betty had in the delivery room involving her parents and a dying Medgar Evers, and by her writhing and shouting while tied down to her hospital bed without either her doctor (who was out drinking) or her husband Don (who was hanging out in the waiting room) there to advocate for her. When Betty regained full consciousness, her baby was in her arms and the hallucinations forgotten. Needless to say, it was a harrowing viewing experience, but perhaps even more horrifying than watching Betty was realizing how common her situation was for women of her time.

Lauren at Feministe has a really excellent post breaking it down for readers:

Let’s break out the Childbirth 101: As Betty is depicted, fifty years ago it was common for women to be given a drug that would induce “twilight sleep” during a hospital birthing procedure. The amnesic drug did not behave like a true analgesic pain killer, but instead induced a state of disorient that managed pain by making the mother forget the entire process of childbirth.

"Twilight sleep" (induced by a mixture of morphine and scopolamine) was introduced in the early part of this century to replace chloroform as an anesthetic during childbirth, and was advocated by medical professionals and women who thought it managed labor pain well and oddly enough, believed it produced healthy, intelligent babies. But when it became standard protocol in hospitals throughout the country in the 1930s, the kind of birth Betty went through became de rigeur. Aunt B wrote a graphic description of it here. Essentially, women like Betty were shackled or tied down and sometimes padded because during their hallucinations, they would thrash wildly or bang their heads, driven into a frenzy by the pain--which they were very much experiencing--and the effect of the narcotics in their system.

Incidentally, as several feminist bloggers have pointed out, the fact that Don and the other expectant fathers were always relegated to the waiting room was ostensibly because of gender roles or social customs. But this practice conveniently meant that women had no one to witness the awful side effects of procedure, or demand that it stop. So "Twilight Sleep" remained "the thing to do."

Maureen Corry, Executive Director of Childbirth Connection--a 91-year old nonprofit which in its current incarnation seeks to inform and educate women about their childbearing options--describes a friend giving birth in the 50s who refused Twilight Sleep and asked to breastfeed (Betty, like most women of her time, doesn't do this either) and was treated as if she was crazy. Lauren writes that her mother gave birth under the procedure. My own grandmother, who gave birth twice in the late 40s recalls a dismissive nurse, somewhat like the sadistic nurse in the "Mad Men" episode, arriving with a needle and injecting it over her protests, telling her it was what the doctors insisted upon. Neither my grandfather or her own mom were allowed in the room with her.

Another effect of  "Twilight Sleep," besides the physical cruelty and pain, was a psychological sense of detachment for the new mom, a bizarre blank where the birth should have been, which was one of the triggers that led women to question the procedure. The backlash against procedure was already in effect by the time Betty gave birth, ten years after my grandmother. In the late 1940s, Childbirth Connection brought Grantly Dick-Read, British author of "Childbirth Without Fear" to speak to American women. "His premise was that women could have babies without going through the horrors of twilight sleep,  screaming and writhing in pain," says Corry. "He felt women need to be educated and they could deal and cope with childbirth if trained to do so."

As Tina Cassidy reported in a piece about the history of pain relief in childbirth, five years before Betty gave birth to Gene, Ladies Home Journal ran an expose:

In 1958, an article headlined "Cruelty in Maternity Wards" ran in Ladies' Home Journal, and described in detail the "tortures that go on in modern delivery rooms." A flood of women sent the magazine their own horror stories. "I've seen patients with no skin on their wrists from fighting the straps," a nurse from Canada wrote.

"Just let a few husbands in the delivery rooms and let them watch what goes on there," said one reader from Detroit. "That's all it will take — they'll change it!" An Indiana mom claimed, "The whole thing is a horrible nightmare."

Despite this rising awareness, "Twilight Sleep" didn't go out of vogue until the late 60s or early 70s--so Betty's experience is far from outside the realm of possibility. But by the mid-seventies, things had certainly changed. As Corry points out, Lamaze, started by a natural birth advocate who had studied Dick-Read's work, was "pretty widespread" at that point and epidurals, the current anesthetic, arrived midway through the decade. Like chloroform before it, "Twilight Sleep" went into the dustbin of history.

But more than being ushered out by medical advances, the practice ended because "Women were empowered to make the change," says Corry. "They wanted to birth in a way that gave them a sense of control, so they spoke out."

And the social upheaval of the 60s, which "Mad Men "is gingerly approaching, helped enable them to do so. "So many things were happening: women were being educated in math and science, they were coming out of school and working." says Corry. "It was the "our bodies, ourselves," era. Women's rights were coming into play. Birth control was available, which meant self-determination for women and the ability to control our reproductive health."

Indeed, it's telling that Roe was legalized around the same time as Lamaze was making major inroads-- as Rh Reality Check and its writers have long been documenting, the rights of expectant mothers and other reproductive rights come from the same place: acknowledging women as people and their right to control their reproduction as a a human right.

While today's birth have far less similarity to a torture chamber as they did in Betty Draper's day, today a similar lack of agency can affect women giving birth, particularly at hospitals, says Corry. Because of the insurance and medical system, doctors make more money by performing more procedures, which leads to what many feel is an over-medicalization and intervention-heavy birthing process from heavy epidurals to forced cesareans to women simply not being informed of their options.  For some women in many areas of the country, laws or the lack of options in their region severely limit their ability to control the process.

Whether it's trying to have a vaginal birth after a cesarean (VBAC) or choosing to forgo drugs or have a natural birth, it can be difficult for women to figure out and speak up, particularly in an institutional setting. "It's challenging for a woman to get her hand on trustworthy information," says Corry. "How do you decide what's good for you, based on the best evidence rather than someone's opinion? Even the most motivated woman still has to deal with hospital protocols and staff who are used to intervening in birth."

Just as "Twilight Sleep" ended as a result of women's raised voices, so must the issues women still face in childbirth today. Even if it's not as melodramatic as morphine-induced hallucinations, feminist are fighting a medical system that reduces women's agency over their bodies by presenting alternatives and by arguing for systematic reform.

In this video, Mad Men creator Matt Weiner and January Jones, who plays Betty, talk about portraying "Twilight Sleep" on TV and about Don's experience in the waiting room. ]]> How to Approach the Mega-Misogynists Among Us? http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/23/how-approach-megamisogynists-among-us 2009-09-23T07:00:00-04:00 2009-09-23T11:41:14-04:00 Sarah Seltzer  

On the political side, we're battling the anti-choice, anti-women rhetoric coming from extremist politicians which blasts from our cable TV screens, touting laws that would strip of our rights as individuals with agency and morality.

So it's  disappointing, but not shocking, when the two elements come together and we get misogyny of the worst kind seeping right into our mainstream pop culture--lowest-common-denominator frat boy sexism that makes no attempt to hide its super-disrespectful, dehumanizing view of women. It's a kind of stereotypical high school football-team locker room (no offense to the feminist football players out there) attitude, except it's being exhibited by grown men with huge public forums. In this case, it's doubtful that anyone who espouses such misogyny will grow out of it.

The first recent perpetrator is one of the most loathsome personas to enter the American pop-cultural scene, Tucker Max, who has a new movie based on his blog coming out this week. "Amurph11" a blogger on feministing's community blog succinctly sums up Max's M.O:

The Boston premiere of I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell happened in Cambridge last night. For those of you that haven't been following, (and I hope this applies to most of you), it is the film adaptation of a book, which was a based on a blog. The blog, in turn, is largely based around the exploits of Tucker Max (and here "exploits" is exactly the right word): getting women drunk, performing sex acts on them, and then writing about it. Many of the encounters detailed in the blog, book, and now the film, meet the legal definition of rape (this should come as no surprise). It is almost unbelievably predatory, so it should also come as no surprise that it was, for a time, very popular.

To make it worse, Max has recently lashed out viciously at scattered protesters who have claimed that his brand promotes rape culture (uh, you think?). Sady Doyle at Broadsheet says we should really ignore Max, because protesting him will give him the attention and notoriety he craves more than anything. At pandagon, Amanda Marcotte counters that the aim of protesting shouldn't be to change the minds of Max's women-hating acolytes, but rather to give support and encouragement to young women who are offended by his nasty shtick. She suggests some funny ways to strike back. She's 100% right--as anyone who had nascent feminist leanings as a young woman can recall, it's a lonely world out there and organizing is an effective way to build lifelong feminist resistors.

And there's a further reason to keep combating this stuff: Max isn't the last vestige of mega-misogynists who haven't gotten the message that they should at least pretend like they respect women. Nope, he and his coterie of rape apologists are far from alone out there calling women skanks and whores with impunity.

In fact, this week has been a particularly bad one for that. Among male commentators reaction to the Tila Tequila/Shawn Merriman allegations (she said he hit her, he said he was trying to restrain her from driving drunk, both sides are sticking to their story) has been one of immediate slut-shaming, as though Tequila's raunchy TV personality automatically disqualifies her from all credibility or ability to be hurt. Bachelor creator Mike Fleiss--who arguably kicked off the entirely reprehensible dating show reality TV genre-- wrote the following, which was actually published in a major San Diego forum:

Of course, I deplore violence against women. But this particular girl is typical of the random skanks who populate most reality TV shows (not mine, of course).

Ms. Tequila has no discernable talent, no Juliard schooling, and, ultimately, no legitimate reason to be a star. What she does have is an ability to chase down the spotlight like Merriman hunts down a quarterback. 

Trust me. A girl like Tila Tequila will do just about anything for publicity. 

HBO talk show host Bill Maher added his two cents on the subject with a vile joke: “Stop acting surprised that someone choked Tila Tequila. The surprise is that someone hasn’t choked this bitch sooner.”

Sigh. This kind of talk from Fleiss and Maher comes right out of the old-school sexist playbook that says women who act a certain way should not have rights--and yes, it sounds suspiciously like anti-choice talk: "If you choose a lifestyle we disapprove of, you should lose the right to agency over your body. " That playbook also feeds into a very real, very dire problem:the campus rape epidemic, which Jaclyn Friedman discusses here.

And this is why it's important to pay attention to hatefully, "out-there" rhetoric: it's not all that out there, but permeates our culture. Max may be a fringe figure, but Maher and Fleiss are not, nor are their audiences. In fact, Fleiss's franchise has a major influence on the entertainment world and Maher has one of the most important and edgy forums around--one which even feminists like this one watch regularly.

Instead, we should use extremely hateful sexism as references--when we see less blatantly obscene examples of sexism around us, we can note the way it echoes Max's brand of uber sexism as a way to hammer home the point. Promote entertainment that is fun and humorous or and sexy without being offensive (everyone should be going to see female-directed Bright Star and Jennifer's Body this weekend, for instance) as an alternative. Point out the way comments like Maher's feed into public policies that he himself hates and are bad for the kind of open, sexual society many sexists would like to see. After all, misogynists like Maher and Fleiss must recognize that birth control and abortion rights are good for the kind of Hugh Hefner lifestyle they envision for American men--realizing that their careless rhetoric undermines those rights might be sobering.  Or do like Gawker has done, and just relentlessly mock Max as unfunny.

It's still tempting to ignore this crap. Indeed, as Amanda said, vigorously and self-righteously attempting to get hard-core misogynists to change their minds is indeed a losing battle, and it's exhausting to repeat the same feminism 101 analysis over and over again (nope, even if she enjoys having sex she can still get raped, isn't it shocking?). But pretending they don't exist isn't an option either.

More around the web:

Tucker Max Fans: The Lowest Form Of Life [Douche Du Jour] from Jezebel
Douchebag Decree: Marketing Tucker Max from Bitch Magazine Blogs
Tucker Max hates fun from pandagon.net -
Tucker Max must die! (Or not.) from Salon: Broadsheet
If They Do Serve Beer in Hell, I Hope it's Warm from Feministing Community

]]> Trying to Reverse Time, At Any Cost http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/10/reverse-time-at-any-cost 2009-09-10T09:00:00-04:00 2009-09-10T09:58:21-04:00 Sarah Seltzer "Youth Knows No Pain" is a somber, but fairly agenda-free HBO documentary that follows several Americans into the spa, the botox seat, and mostly to the plastic surgeon's office in an effort to turn back time on their faces and bodies. ]]> Last week I wrote about the way women's magazines hawk a dangerous beauty culture in between valuable articles. This week I watched a documentary about the extreme edges of that beauty culture, which, in our country, is not that edgy at all.

" Youth Knows No Pain " is a somber, but fairly agenda-free documentary--now airing on HBO and on demand--that follows several Americans into the spa, the botox seat, and mostly to the plastic surgeon's office, in pursuit of the ability to turn back time on their faces and bodies.

The American anti-aging industry is a 60 billion a year business that tells women they can keep them looking younger with ointments, injections, lasers and surgery. A new HBO documentary, "Youth Knows No Pain", takes a critical look at this industry.

Mitch McCabe, the director and narrator, and to a certain extent the star of the film is obsessed with the legacy of her late father. Her dad came back from Vietnam and became a plastic surgeon; as a kid, she used to play with his spare silicone implants. McCabe believes, after looking at her dad's grisly wartime photographs, that after such an experience her father did not want to spent his life among the dying, but preferred to make people happy in their lifetimes. Still, his sudden death in a car accident stunned her: "It's always struck me; here is someone who could take years off a person's face but died in seconds," she says. Her fixation on mortality, and its telltale signs on human bodies, began early, grew stronger after she lost her father, and led her to make this film.

Trying to understand her dad's profession--and her own early obsession with faces and wrinkles-- on film takes McCabe on a journey where she encounters some true plastic surgery enthusiasts, both on the giving and receiving end. She visits a doctor early on who looks at her and immediately guesses her age, judging by various fat deposits and wrinkles which he immediately suggests "solutions" for. And it's that interaction, and McCabe's own deeply mixed, but ultimately fascinated feelings towards anti-aging culture, that inadvertently shows said culture's more noxious effects. Because most everyone McCabe speaks to isn't merely interested in his or her own quest for the fountain of youth: they all turn their gaze to her and start critiquing every sag, every line on her face. And soon enough McCabe's resistance begins to waver. It's not just about personal fulfillment, but about enforcing a dangerous norm.

The documentary starts and ends with Sherry, a Texas woman whose personality is so large that she almost overwhelms the rest of the film. Sherry describes her popularity with men as a young woman and then says, "One day you look up... and you're not getting the catcalls when you're walking down the street. Hello? That's no fun. You always want your man to be looking at you." For this reason, she's gotten a number of facial surgeries, a breast augmentation, a tummy tuck and more. She describes the process as a rebirth, saying that her new navel means new life--while her husband declares the surgeon who made over his wife to be an "artist." Sherry is fixated on giving her old clothes to McCabe and goes through her closet repeatedly, handing things to the filmmaker and insisting that they'd look "cute" on her.

From Sherry's house McCabe goes on her wild journey (Latoya Peterson analyzes video clips from throughout the film here ) to a "medspa" where patients can be wrapped in hemorrhoid cream and cellulite to slim down or have their faces injected with semen. She consults with a plastic surgeon whose daughter, a centerfold model, recounts the way her dad used to critique her appearance as a teen. She visits parties where attendees can test electronic facials or go together to get botox. She meets with internet celebrity Julia Allison and her coterie, who state un-ironically that women have an "expiration date" and are getting botox in their 20s. McCabe spends time a man getting a hair implant--which is the most gruesome and painful-looking procedure in the film. At each interval, the film's subjects ask McCabe if she wants to try their methods, surgeries, or products, often hinting that she should. McCabe later talks to all the skin gurus one regularly sees on TV, all hawking their injections, peptides and serums. She juxtaposes those interviews with the editor in chief of Allure who admits that many of the magic creams may not work as well as advertised, but says "If it makes you feel good and you feel like you've got some tiny bit of control over this process, what's the negative?" ( Jezebel's Margaret has a more thorough post about this particular interview in the film). One of McCabe's final, and most amusing subjects is Norman, a man who modeled his plastic surgery to give him a Jack Nicholson-esque look. Adding a signature pair of glasses, button-down shirts and cigar gets him attention from autograph seekers and scantily-clad babes. He tells McCabe, with a shake of his head that she's really "let herself go." Again and again, it becomes clear to the viewer that the plastic surgery obsession isn't just about getting rid of personal demons, but spreading a new aesthetic creed.

Towards the end of the hour and a half film, McCabe returns to Sherry who has gained weight over the last year and is down on herself as a result. She's still thrusting her discarded clothes at the filmmaker, though. To perk herself up, Sherry returns to the doctor and gets nipped, tucked and collagen-ed up and McCabe remarks that Sherry seems happier now. But she says this without noticing that her last round of surgeries led to a short-lived, externally-motivated happiness that collapsed when she gained weight. Finally, McCabe decides to see what its all about and gets botox herself, joining the ranks of the "injected." Although at first she's horrified with the procedure, she admits that she likes her results, and ends up going back for more." "Once you start, it's hard to stop," she says.

The film's major flaw is that it takes some of its subject's assumptions--such as the idea that women need to look younger, for instance, or that the momentary happiness granted by a new look is "real" happiness, and as Jessica Grose points out at Double X refuses to critique them deeply . Yes, McCabe offers counter-arguments to a life of creams, nips and tucks: she includes the idea that it's an expensive habit, (she herself would prefer to stay in debt than miss a salon appointment) and that "aging gracefully" by accepting wrinkles is a nice ideal. Some of her interview subjects also point out that our shoddy health care system, the market's cruelty to older job seekers, and the fear of being abandoned by that system when we age may contribute to the American obsession with youth.

But none of these interesting takes address the pervasive problems of a shallow, sexist appearance-driven culture that feeds this obsession--a culture that creates an inability for people to connect authentically, a culture that stigmatizes and leaves behind hose who don't want to or can't keep up with the trend, and an ongoing mis-perception of what natural aging looks like. She mentions time and money, but doesn't' focus on how much time and money spent getting liposuction could have gone to what keeps people emotionally and psychologically and young--vacations, more family time, healthy food, time to exercise, and perhaps most importantly time to relax and do nothing. Furthermore, she skims over the health risks associated with the cosmetics industry, something we've documented here at RH Reality Check.

Despite the film's shortcomings, the anecdotal evidence it provides is powerful. And for the critical-minded viewer, perhaps that lack of an incisively analytical lens is even more effective--it simply shows how far the anti-aging myth has permeated, particularly among women. By showing so many different women who take plastic surgery seriously, it's made clear that the problem is universal. Women are not to blame, but a culture that rewards them for spending money on implants instead of IRAs requires serious feminist combat.

]]> "Lady-Mags"--Love Them, Flaws and All, or Leave Them? http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/09/04/womens-magazineslove-them-flaws-and-all-or-leave-them 2009-09-04T08:00:00-04:00 2009-09-04T06:24:50-04:00 Sarah Seltzer  

This month has seen a flurry of action around the women's glossies.  "The September Issue" documentary is in theaters, providing the public a chance to ogle behind the scenes at Anna Wintour's high-fashion Vogue empire. SELF magazine, the weight-loss glossy/self-improvement bible with occasionally meaty features got slammed by a massive chorus of bloggers last month for its overly-photoshopped cover of Kelly Clarkson.  SELF's editor later said the slimmed-down image showed Clarkson at her "best"--even if that was visibly different from reality. Racialicious has documented an endless stream of problematic images of women of color in magazine spreads, photo shoots and advertisements. And just last week, in response to riotous, widespread applause for a single photo of a plus-size model, belly included, Glamour, the least elitist of the mainstream mags, is going to feature a boatload of plus-size models in their next issue (Kate Harding points out that plus-size models are "still tall, well-proportioned, clear-skinned, shiny-haired, able-bodied and usually white, on top of only being "fat" relative to size 0s.")

The typical formula for these magazines is this: two or three interesting features, a ton of beauty and fashion advice, a decent but conventional and heretonormative sex and relationships section, and some health stories, all bookended by ads galore: ads for jeans, ads for diets, ads for birth control, ads for makeup and shoes. The relationship beween these magazines' content and their ads is an ill-kept secret--it's widely discussed that the mags' more typically-reproduced content is a result of trying to please their advertisers.

Still, we remain fascinated by the ladymags. The never-ending brouhaha that these magazines are capable of eliciting, to borrow Glamour's signature section, for their own "Dos" and "Don'ts" reminds us that they still have a powerful relationship to the female collective psyche. Naomi Wolf talks about this phenomenon in The Beauty Myth--how women's magazines despite being hawking grounds for patriarchal products like cellulite creams and diet drugs--also afford women a kind of powerful group experience. They're the magazines we all read at the gym, at the air airport, under the blowdryers or on the subway.

This need to keep up with the lady-mags leads to a sort of devils' bargains made by many of their avid readers. Women allow "their" magazines the usual litany of transgressions: tons of skinny models, "articles" about beauty trends that conveniently tout products by the magazine's advertisers, celebrity puff-pieces, and so on. They are happy to accept these sometimes fun, sometimes pernicious features inherent to the medium in order to read health news aimed at them, take quizzes, check out new styles and read in-depth features about remarkable women or political and social trends that affect their lives. But when the magazines break this bargain mold by photoshopping too aggressively, not photoshopping a woman's flaws away, or publishing something out of the ordinary the emails start flowing in en masse --and it becomes clear that a lot of these readers have keener sensibilities than we give them credit for. They want something more genuine out of their magazines.

At a panel at last year's Women, Action and the Media conference, journalists Ada Calhoun, Lynn Harris, Rebecca Traister and Kara Jessella talked about writing for women's magazines. All feminists, they felt that the good stories about reproductive rights, women's health, violence against women and women's stuggles worldwide produced by magazines like Elle, Marie Claire, Self and Glamour (Cosmo and Vogue are both slightly different and less redeemable creatures) balanced out the diet, makeup and fashion spreads that can range from shallow to pernicious. The panelists encouraged young feminists to write for and read the good stories in women's magazines, saying that in a small field of publications, these publications were a key vehicle for getting progressive-minded stories out and getting paid for them. Jesellla, a former beauty editor and co-author of How Sassy Changed My Life, talked about sneaking such articles into her regular beauty coverage. Glancing at Glamour's guide to the election last fall reminded me that the consistent pro-reproductive rights coverage these magazines engage in is bold and important.

If we accept their advice, feminists should view the lesser content in these magazines as a necessary evil and train our focus on bending the popular newsstand publications towards a better result, leveraging our voices getting the women's glossies to publish more good articles, more realistic and normalized photos of women of different shapes, sizes, backgrounds and physical types. But how much success will we have? As Erika Kawalek writes at Double X, "is it wise to seek redress from a mainstream publication?" Perhaps we should leave them to their inevitable decline and replacement by lady-websites.

It's a hard question for me to judge personally, because I quit reading ladymags years ago, and I never regret that choice. I found that although I enjoyed reading them, and stacked neat piles of them in my travel bag, they always made me feel dissatisfied when I was done. Even post consciousness-raising when the endless dieting and weight loss stories had less effect on me, those magazines always made me feel as though there was something I lacked--whether it was the right pair of shoes or proper salon-going routine, or on a deeper level the resilience and inner light that one of the many heroic women profiled in the dramatic features always seem to have. I'd argue that the magazines are designed to make readers feel a sense of need or incompleteness, a need which will lead them to buy the magazine again the following month as well as pay heed to advertisers.

As for our ability to influence them, I don't know how many times I've opened a women's magazine to the editors letter and read a sentence along the lines of "we've heard you and we're going to change X." But of course little actually changes in the formula described above: more features mixed with beauty and diet is what we'll get. Furthermore, the internet, and sites like Jezebel and The Frisky and the expansion of the Bitch website all have allowed writers to take on some of the magazines' traditionally more fun topics like sex, TV, celebrities and fashion without really losing their feminist/critical voice--a really important development.

The paradox of women's glossies sums up a lot of where American women have come in the mainstream. The magazines, like TV shows and movies, largely acknowledge our progress and rights in terms of our workplace, sexual freedom and reproductive rights without delving deeply into the sexist dynamics and expectations that inform those issues, partiularly the critical issues of body image and mainstream beauty norms and gendered power dynamics in personal relationships. How to approach the magazines, then, depends on our relationship to them now--if we are active readers, we should fully engage them and push their coverage towards a more progressive end, accepting that they'll never be truly progressive. But if we prefer to get our mix of fun and features elsewhere, there's no need to turn back to the ladymags, until the next time they do something scandalous, that is.

]]> Kourtney's Choice http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/25/kourtneys-choice 2009-08-28T08:00:00-04:00 2009-08-28T00:03:38-04:00 Sarah Seltzer Kudos to reality TV star Kourtney Kardashian for honestly sharing the process she went through deciding whether to keep or terminate her unexpected pregnancy, a revelation that resulted in headlines on all the gossip blogs. She could have played the happy "always wanted this" mom card, and lovingly patted her bump. Instead, she admitted that she had skipped birth control pills and considered abortion. She gave the world a peek into the messiness of women's reproductive lives and decisions. Her openness may go with the reality TV territory, of course, but even in our exposed celebrity-laden world, a glance into that particular aspect of women's existence is a rarity. 

However, it's also almost needless to say that the end result of Kardashian's decision is that she'll be keeping the pregnancy. If she had decided on abortion, we would never have heard about it, because no stories about celebrity abortions--even though they're allegedly having them left and right--make it to the surface. People would not have written a long piece about her choice, and the story wouldn't have been picked up by CNN. So while women ostensibly have freedom of choice, one choice brings attention and a fawning spread in dozens of magazines, while the other choice means silence. (To be clear, it appears that Kardashian has certainly made a decision she's happy with. Analyzing her story and the coverage of it isn't meant to criticize her decision in any way, but to talk about the way the "choice" process is framed in women's lives and reflected the media.)

Here's what Kardashian told People in her own words: 

"I definitely thought about it long and hard, about if I wanted to keep the baby or not, and I wasn't thinking about adoption. I do think every woman should have the right to do what they want, but I don't think it's talked through enough. I can't even tell you how many people just say, 'Oh, get an abortion.' Like it's not a big deal." 

Funny, but if there are tons of people out there saying "Oh, get an abortion," in a flip or casual way, I've never seen or heard of them. Instead of hearing about abortion being a casual choice, lately, I've seen more and more stories like hers.

And that's because Kardashian's story fits in to the mainstream narrative about abortion, popularized in movies like "Knocked up" and "Juno" and even on TV shows like "90210" and "The Secret Life of the American Teenager." Stories like these and celebrity stories like Kardashian's (and even, to some extent, Bristol Palin's and Jamie Lynn Spears's stories, too) all pay lip service to the notion of another option besides carrying the pregnancy to term. The "Knocked Up" narrative acknowledges the importance of the ultimate choice belonging to the woman--this, at least, is a victory of the pro-choice movement. But the flipside of this narrative is that there's a right choice and a wrong choice, particularly if you're a white, middle-class or otherwise privileged woman. In that case there appears to be no legitimate reason not to want kids, and if you want kids, no legitimate choice other than to carry a pregnancy to term.

In this new paradigm a woman becomes pregnant, agonizes over her options, gets dismissively told to "get rid of it" by a callous pro-choicer (the mom in "Knocked Up," the lollipop-sucking clinic worker in "Juno" and Kardashian's "oh get an abortion" masses) and ultimately decides to go forward with the pregnancy, earning smiles and attention. In America, abortion is always a choice that "someone else" makes--except in this case someone else is a huge percentage of the population. Kardashian's story advances an anti-choice agenda while being ostensibly pro-choice. No wonder Americans are so confused about where they stand. The acceptable position is to frown on the practice but begrudgingly insist on its legality in case "someone else" desperately needs it.

The problem with this popular narrative is that if "the other option" always gets presented as the bad one, how do we view the women who are picking it? The answer is that they're either desperate or selfish. Here's what Kardashian said.

For me, all the reasons why I wouldn't keep the baby were so selfish: It wasn't like I was raped, it's not like I'm 16. I'm 30 years old, I make my own money, I support myself, I can afford to have a baby. And I am with someone who I love, and have been with for a long time. 

If Kardashian, with all her financial advantage and a supportive relationship, had nonetheless genuinely felt that she was not ready to have a child, why would it have been selfish for her to have an abortion? Having children is a risky, life-changing high-commitment. It's not selfish to defer it or decide not to do it. Compounding the aspersion cast at those who may choose "the other option," it appears that Kardashian may have come across some suspect information: 
"I looked online, and I was sitting on the bed hysterically crying, reading these stories of people who felt so guilty from having an abortion," she recalls. "I was reading these things of how many people are traumatized by it afterwards." 

According to Kardashian, her doctor encouraged this point of view, saying that she would not regret having a child, but might regret having an abortion. He was incorrect. Both decisions are liable for regret. Furthermore, post-abortion syndrome has been debunked but postpartum depression is very real. Pregnancy brings health risks, both physical and mental, and a lifetime of commitment and concern about another human being. Asks Anna N at Jezebel,  

But is it really her doctor's place to tell her what she will and won't regret? Many moms have some occasional regrets about having children, even if they love these children very much, and to promise Kardashian that motherhood will be a totally uncomplicated decision seems unrealistic and irresponsible.

Kardashian's "on again off again" boyfriend also urged her to keep the pregnancy--and it's effected a reconciliation between them. So it seems like even Kardashian's doctor and partner are buying in to the "Knocked Up" narrative wholesale. And that's a problem.

While Kardashian's forthrightness should be praised, we need to start facing the reality. The women who choose "the other option" aren't selfish, desperate, or someone else. As Lynn Paltrow reminded us, "Sixty-one percent of women having abortions are already mothers. By the age of 45, 84% of all women in U.S. will have become pregnant and given birth and 43% will have had an abortion."  They are our friends, our neighbors, and often, us. 

The "Knocked Up" narrative isn't true, but it dominates the way we talk about abortion. And in order to win more legal rights, we have to get rid of the stigma that spreads so quickly it's even reached reality TV royalty. We have to not only paint abortion rights as a necessity, but the right to make a choice as a moral good. 

]]> Pour A Stoli While the World Burns: A Mad Men Salon http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/17/pour-a-stoli-while-world-burns-a-mad-men-salon 2009-08-18T08:00:00-04:00 2009-08-17T22:41:00-04:00 Sarah Seltzer

Last week, Sarah Seltzer, Amanda Marcotte and Pamela Merritt held a spirited salon in anticipation of Mad Men's season premiere on Sunday. This week, join us for the debrief.

Hold on to your hats: the 60s are coming to Sterling Cooper! The Purple Heart medal Don Draper fingered thoughtfully early on in the first season, his under a false name, will cause poor Sally and Bobby Draper shame in a mere matter of years as their dad goes from the epitome of cool to a loser holding back the tide of progress.

The irony of the Mad Men premiere coinciding with the Woodstock anniversary has not been lost on many--it was even the subject of Frank Rich's column this week.  I've been deeply immersed in both worlds for days, and as I watched footage of barely-clothed women frolicking in the mud at that seminal concert I couldn't not think of of the restrictive lingerie that Amanda wrote about last week. Those freedom-loving hippie chicks throwing off their uncomfortable clothes really did sound the advance call for organized feminism, even if they thought they were merely having a groovy time. And they weren't the only ones rebelling.

One interview with a concert attendee from the 1970 Woodstock film revealed the exact opposite of Don Draper's philosophy taking root among the younger generation. The young man told the cameras that he wasn't interested in "playing the game" and climbing the corporate ladder that his dad, an immigrant, cared so much about. "Everything I need is right here, man," he said (or something to that effect). This "drop out" philosophy was foreshadowed by Don Draper's sojourn with the beautiful people he met in California last season. They weren't exactly hippies, but they were rich drifter-philosophers, and their lack of ambition stunned him.

By Woodstock, awareness of racism and a commitment to racial justice was no longer an anomaly. Many of the white kids worshipping Sly Stone and Jimi Hendrix had become like Paul Kinsey, the hipster who chides his colleagues about their lack of engagement with civil rights and proudly shows off his interracial relationship with Sheila, but who ends up out of his philosophizing, pipe-smoking depth when he joins the freedom rides. As Pamela wrote, it's part "liberal affectation."  As it is today, seminal moments of progress are followed by a nasty backlash.

Until now, the marches, sit-ins and legal battles of the Civil Rights era have blithely passed the Sterling Cooper folks by. It's an intentional move, I believe on the part of the show's creators, a commentary on the bubble of indifference surrounding the characters. But the bubble will be burst before long. As the fight for equality reaches its fevered pitch, the gang won't be able to ignore it by going into Don's room and pouring a glass of Stoli, as they did in last night's episode. 

Spoilers ahead!

That glass of Stoli while the world burns epitomizes Mad Men, a show obsessed with dissecting the ugliness at the top of the race-class-and-gender heap. As Roger Sterling snarkily prevents Pete Campbell from drinking his precious Stoli, we see two contrasting types of white male privilege. Pete and Roger are both recipients of gobs of the stuff, thanks to their family names; but while Pete is entitled and nasty, constantly convinced he's gotten short shrift, Roger is an amoral pursuer of humor, pleasure, and his own interests. The amusingly at-odds dynamic between the cynical elder and ambitious younger ad-men reveals two equally troubling ways of handling white male privilege. Roger doesn't care about anything but the next indulgence, and Pete only cares about himself. Roger may have an easier time than Pete letting go of his power as the social climate changes--retiring to a yacht somewhere and drinking until the onset of oblivion, while Pete rails against the women, Jews, and African-Americans usurping his position.

But Roger's easygoing sarcasm is a function of his privilege. "Oh, it's a sad meeting," he says when he drifts in late to a layoff session. "It wasn't easy. I'm sure we'll regret it," he recites with flat disinterest.

Roger is a Sterling at Sterling Cooper. He can be flip, he can be witty, he can mock everyone around him and get away with it. The further the characters climb into positions of power, the more luxury they have to be like Roger. Even Peggy got a crack in at the expense of her secretary last night.

Although little high drama occurred in the season premiere, I'm hoping that the direction of Salvatore Romano's plot will foreshadow what's going to happen with the rest of the season--bringing the issues that have been previously gestured at closer to the surface. Sal, the art department star, has long been deeply in the closet in his own mind, not so deeply in ours. We've watched him turn down gentle advances from other men and remain silent when a younger employee casually announced his homosexuality--we've seen the misery his wife Kitty experienced when Sal neglected her at dinner to chat animatedly with a male colleague. But finally, in a sultry hotel room in Baltimore, Sal gets seduced--almost--by a very savvy bellboy. It's hard to watch Sal's shocked, pleased, horrified face as he realizes that all his years of repression might be ending, and the writers definitely get that this is a moment of epic significance in his life. Alas, then, his tryst is cut short by a fire alarm. As Don skips down the fire escape with his own half-clothed stewardess "friend," he sees Sal in a compromised position and a series of anguished stares ensue.

But Don, himself a man of secrets, never looks better than when he's keeping someone else's. As appallling as Don's return to manipulative, womanizing form was halfway through the episode (really, Don? An ambivalent stewardess?), when it comes to guarding others' hidden lives he's as silent as the grave, showing that he has his own, rather bizarre moral code. He hasn't said a word to anyone about Peggy's baby, and I imagine he follows suit with Sal. But at the same time he undoubtedly relishes having juicy knowledge about those around him--he knows it will keep them loyal.

I appreciate the subtle and slow way the show develops, adding to its mysterious tone, but I do hope Sal's plot-line is the standard for the season. I want more frank but rich engagement with race, more gender, more sexuality--and more smouldering, forbidden romance while we're at it. 

Amanda and Pamela, and readers, were you satisfied with the first episode or did it seem too slow and enigmatic? Has Don lost any remainder of his appeal thanks to his cheesy "It's my birthday" line with the flight attendant? What do we hope will happen to our heroines as they enter the turbulent 60s? Will Betty break solidly out of the feminine mystique? What will Peggy have to sacrifice in order to make it into the boardroom? And will Joan's dream of a perfect life be shattered by her awful doctor fiancée? Who will be the first in the office to follow Paul Kinsey's tepid lead and get involved with the radicalizing forces of the day? 

]]> Nostalgia for Those Louts: A "Mad Men" Salon http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/11/nostalgia-those-louts-rh-reality-checks-mad-men-salon 2009-08-12T08:00:00-04:00 2009-08-12T08:38:36-04:00 Sarah Seltzer

Welcome to our RH Reality Check roundtable on Mad Men, featuring staff writers Pamela Merritt, Amanda Marcotte, and Sarah Seltzer. Sarah kicks off our salon with the post below, and Pam and Amanda will respond later in the week with their thoughts. After the premiere (August 16), we'll start a second round of conversation!

The feminist nature of “Mad Men” arrives as a surprise partway through the first season, a counter-narrative of female angst and assertion in the midst of the alpha-dog world of Sterling Cooper advertising. By the time that feminist thread becomes apparent, more than one viewer has given up on the show, unwilling to endure the fairly constant stream of racist,  sexist office banter that pours out of the mouths of the ad-men as regularly as the alcohol goes in.

But by establishing such thorny environment, the show turns its female characters into objects of fascination. Plus, hearkening back to the uber-patriarchy has allowed creator Matthew Weiner and his mostly-female staff of writers the freedom to examine sexist culture with unflinching honesty.

Astute examination of gender politics has proved to be the secret of the show’s rise to the top of the zeitgeist: in an entertainment world where good roles for women are scarce and serious discussion of gender issues is scarcer, watching Peggy, Betty, and Joan struggle doggedly to find their places among the suits and lewd jokes has become compellingly mandatory television.

Which moments stand out the most? Well, this is a show whose first two seasons are book-ended by trips to the gynecologist, beginning with Peggy being put on the birth control pill and warned not to be a slut, and ending with Betty’s desperation as she realizes, after she’s kicked her husband out, that she’s pregnant. Those fraught visits both symbolize the larger conundrum of women in Mad Men's world: they are in a position of relative powerlessness, with a male authority figure literally leaning over them, but they are still struggling to make the right choices for themselves and their future with whatever agency they can muster.

In some ways, each of the main female characters represents a different way of dealing with patriarchy. Betty relies on her beauty to create the perfect family set-up but ends up trapped in a lonely suburban hell. Joan tries to get ahead by being the “other woman” -- attentive, sexy, professional but not too smart -- but is left with an unfulfilled intellectual longing and later, a socially-condoned relationship that looks pretty abusive. Meanwhile, Peggy tries to go the “man’s route” and assiduously climb the corporate ladder, but she is distrusted by the women beneath her and left out by the men at her level.

Through these three women, we’ve witnessed everything from rape to the specter of illegal abortion to what may be a nascent eating disorder (the Drapers' poor daughter!) to the bored housewife’s plight. We’ve gotten peaks at to the taboos around interracial relationships, Catholic sexual guilt in full swing, and rampant homophobia. And of course there’s the constant dance of women in the workplace, where the secretaries are treated like prostitutes and more senior women are so threatening they nearly cause meetings to implode.

And outside their orbits, there’s plenty going on as well, whether it’s the servant class, mostly women of color, who noticeably flit in and out of the frames, the frowning or absent mothers who come in and out, or the little girls who appear to be absorbing the sexism of their society.

Two of my favorite characters were Don’s first two mistresses. There's bohemian Midge, who leaves Don for a beatnik; it’s hinted that her new paramour may may be as sexist and controlling in his countercultural duds as Don is in his suit. And then there’s Rachel Menken, the savvy daughter of an immigrant Jewish family made good but still excluded by the mainstream. Rachel’s double-bind as a Jew and a woman in a male-dominated business world, and Don’s initial revulsion and later obsession with her, still has echoes in the way we treat powerful women from Hillary Clinton and Sonia Sotomayor on down.

And that’s just the gender politics for the women. The show continues the tradition of The Sopranos by taking a brutal look at the toll of performed masculinity. It may be dangerous business to have a misogynist like Don Draper be a sex symbol, but on the other hand, his bad behavior constitutes a critique of the very concept of the uber-suave American male. Like The Sopranos did, Mad Men smacks us in the face with a horribly biased remark or cruel action whenever we get lulled into nostalgia for, or identification with, these louts. The message seems to be: “Think it’s such a great life smoking cigars and drinking all day? Look what these guys do when they think no one’s watching.”

As we gear up for the third season this week, Amanda, Pamela and I will be talking about the show from every angle we can think of.  Pour yourself an old-fashioned and join us as we, like the copywriters and Sterling Cooper, indulge in some high-powered brainstorming.

]]> Men Are From Apatow-Land, Women Are From Venus http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/08/06/men-are-from-apatowland-women-are-from-venus 2009-08-07T08:00:00-04:00 2009-08-07T00:17:49-04:00 Sarah Seltzer In "Funny People," men are always from Mars and women from Venus--and the central question is how Mars should gently approach Venus despite his libidinous need to fornicate with her. ]]>

Gender relations served as the primary obsession of Judd Apatow's first two films, and the subject returns to center stage in the last hour of Funny People. The film centers around George (Adam Sandler), a famous comic suffering from a fatal, then non-fatal disease, and his relationships with first a younger comedian, Ira (Seth Rogen), and then in the second half with a married ex-girlfriend named Laura (Apatow's wife Leslie Mann).

As before, Apatow's treatment of gender has sparked intense debate. In Apatow's movies, men bond, fight, smoke pot and get drunk, laugh, fight, cry, make up and eventually grow up. Women exist mostly as the objects of lasting affection or the punchlines of dirty jokes.

A look back at Apatow's oeuvre reveals that his male characters' attitudes towards women fall into one of the two categories: punchline or pedestal. 40-Year Old Virgin's Andy was a pedestal-guy--hence his virginity--with his randy workmates as foils. In Knocked Up, both Ben and Peter begin as punchline guys, kvetching about women and declining to fulfill their stereotypical male obligations. But after a meandering trajectory, they end up seeing the light, giving their partners the "proper" respect, and sacrificing their fun times for the sake of the Family and the Little Woman at home. And now in Funny People, Ira's disgust with George's casual attitude towards women ends up causing a rift between them that George only begins to mend as the film closes.

Judd Apatow has the most insidious Madonna-whore complex in Hollywood, but he is obsessed with the tension between the two extremes in men: the Georges who treat women as sex-object punchlines, and the Iras who see them as creatures to be worshipped and obeyed.  Ultimately, Apatow's plan for the Georges is to have them evolve and become more like Iras--while he milks their misogyny to provide entertaining yuks and gasps along the way. Apatow fails to understand that both attitudes towards women are equally problematic--two sides of the same coin. In Apatow-land men are always from Mars and Women very much from Venus--and the central question is how Mars should gently, reverentially, approach Venus despite his libidinous need to fornicate with her. The idea that men and women may be from the same planet is never really considered.

The most obvious way this attitude is manifested is in the "fun gap" between Apatow's male and female characters. While humor is the vehicle that brings men together, in Knocked Up in particular, the women have no such rollicking times. They do one of two things: talk about men, or act catty towards each other in the workplace. In Apatow's other films, women are responsible loners. Writes Jessica Grose at Double X:

In the opening scene of Knocked Up, Seth Rogen's character is going on roller coasters, playing American Gladiator-style games, and smoking pot with his five best friends in a sprawling if decrepit house. To this girl [i.e. Grose], that sounds truly awesome.

By contrast, look at the life of Alison (Katherine Heigl) in Knocked Up. She's apparently friendless, living in her sister's guest house, and working incredibly hard at her job at E!. And what about Leslie Mann in Funny People? She's trapped in a difficult marriage, where her husband is away most of the time. She is wistful about her former career as an actress. Both these women are in a no-fun zone.

 

In Knocked Up, that "fun gap" spreads out in a creepy anti-choice way to the characters' parents. There's Alison's shrill mom who tells her daughter to abort the pregnancy -- "get rid of it!" -- and Ben's laid-back dad who urges his son to view the unintended pregnancy as a gift. It's this dynamic that led its star Katherine Heigl to call the film "a little sexist." "[I]t paints the women as shrews, as humorless and uptight, and it paints the men as goofy, fun-loving guys," she told Vanity Fair's Leslie Bennetts.  For daring to say this, she immediately got slammed so hard by the blogosphere it was shocking--and Apatow and Rogen mocked her recently on the set of Howard Stern, a truly tasteless frat-boy moment that showed how little introspection they engaged in after her comment. (Here's Apatow denying that he's sexist.)

In Funny People there is one noticeable change in the "fun gap" dynamic: Daisy, Ira's love interest, is a comedian herself and is, to a certain extent, a part of the dudely universe, as said dudes jostle for her affections. But the set-up has its own share of problems that undermine this improvement.

First of all, in Funny People there are absolutely zero female-female interactions--the women are literally interlopers in a (heteronormative) male world. Secondly, both female characters' motivations towards the men are muddled; their positive feelings seems to arise from being treated like dirt. Laura carries a torch for George, who cheated on her, and also for her husband, who cheated on her. Daisy likes Ira even after he screams at her for betraying him. The betrayal? Sleeping with his more famous roommate after he (Ira) has asked her out on a single date--he's lambasting her even before they've had a real conversation, as she points out to him. Later, she explains why she slept with his roommate--if a famous girl propositioned him, wouldn't he acquiesce? "No!" he shouts. "I'd ask her out to a Wilco concert." Suddenly his borderline-abusive behavior is forgotten. She looks at him wide-eyed and tells him he's the only man she's met who would have that chaste reaction--and is won over. By putting her on a pedestal, he's proven himself purer than she is, purer than the other men around him, and he gets rewarded for it. In contrast, George, who reacts to women's desire for him by "desiring" them back--frequently--is punished.

Judd Apatow's power to irk and compel comes from the way he combines a genuine talent for raunchy comedy with a maudlin sentimentality that veers into conservative preachiness. His movies aren't just taken as laugh-fests, but as Humorous but Important Statements on Modern Life--particularly about The War Between the Sexes. And that's why it's important that he get his gender issues straightened out.

What Apatow may not realize is that the women in his universe are punished along with the lustful slackers--punished by being the gauntlet men must run to prove their virtue. Misogyny does not come from men who see women as sexual beings or men who sleep with lots of women, which seems to be how he sees it. Misogyny is seeing women as less than full equals. Apatow needs to turn his female characters into actual characters, rather than rewards given to men who have proven able to resist their libidos and outgrow their immaturity. Even if those women exist on the periphery of a male-centric comedy, they should be engaged with as people, not grappled with as a concept.

]]> More Vampires, This Time With a Twist http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/07/27/more-vampires-this-time-with-a-twist 2009-07-27T08:00:00-04:00 2009-07-26T23:37:28-04:00 Sarah Seltzer Vampires. Every time we think they're dead as a trend, they pop back up out of their coffin, and no amount of garlic or silver can get rid of them.  The fact that HBO's campy new southern vampire drama, True Blood, has definitively become the network's most popular show since The Sopranos, (a third season was just announced) means that even in between Twilight installments we've still got the alluring undead on our collective brains.

But what to make of True Blood, which aims to be the anti-Twilight, a progressive, sexually explicit, provocative mishmash of vampire motifs? In its world, vampires have "come out of the coffin" and begin to debate assimilation, while human-vampire couplings are frequent, hot and viciously targeted by religious conservatives. On the surface we appear to be a long way from Forks, Washington, the setting of the breathlessly un-feminist  Twilight.

But is True Blood the same thing sans abstinence? Vampires after all, are often reactionary messengers masked in seductive cloaks, symbols used to express fears of changing sexual dynamics. Some observers think True Blood fits the trend. But to read True Blood as just another retrograde vampire tale would be to simplify the message of this admittedly absurdist series, which centers around the residents of Bon Temps, Louisiana, both human and supernatural, as they adjust to each other and track down the murderers and evil creatures in their mix.
Rather than making an explicit political point, True Blood is a series of thought experiments and playful takeoffs on our sexual mores, fears and paranoia.

It may not escape some of the underlying conservative currents that inform vampire stories, but it does a good job of scrambling and subverting them. The show follows the same impetus with racial, regional and even supernatural-identity stereotypes: when it started the characters all seemed to fit into predetermined niches based on external characteristics, but their personalities, motivations, and destinies get confused over the course of the wild soap-opera ride. Maybe that's creator Alan Ball's parodic intent: we are and aren't what society labels us.

In the past month, as True Blood's ratings climb higher, progressive critics have identified what they see as troubling implications . Latoya Peterson at Double X makes the point that the primary relationship between heroine Sookie Stackhouse, a human, and her Southern gentleman vampire lover Bill Compton does have some echoes of the icky Bella-Edward pairing from Twilight--positing an overprotective, dangerous,"old-school " male partner as the ultimate sex symbol. Sookie also has a whiff of wholesomeness about her: she started out the show as the town's only virgin (although it wasn't out of choice, it was because she could read the thoughts of her partners and therefore never go through with it). Peterson writes:

But, from a feminist perspective, [True Blood creator Alan Ball] is still transmitting the same idea: To be desired, a woman should be beautiful, virginal, and submissive.

In both series, sex is spiked with danger. A man’s protection and a woman’s desire are intimately connected to violence. Sookie frequently finds herself the subject of Bill’s wrath while he is trying to protect her.


She's right. Particularly in recent episodes, Bill's neuroses about Sookie's well being indeed results in him being a little Edward-ish, as does his catchphrase growl: "Sookie is Mine!"

But Sookie is far from naive, self-hating Bella, Edward's love object. Sookie openly grapples with the fact that her lover has a superpower and its implications for her life as an independent women. She is an unmarried woman who is quite content with her healthy sexual appetite--which she realizes after understanding she can't read Bills' thoughts in bed--and she doesn't get punished for it by the show's creators. She is smart in a "Southern-cute" way (which can be quite irritating). But she's perhaps better able to manipulate the vampire hierarchy than the quick-to take offense Bill with his male pride. And instead of swooning over her handsome partner and talking marriage, she accepts that it's an imperfect pairing that may not last. In a recent episode, she tells her best friend Tara that Bill is not Prince Charming, but rather the most compatible partner she can find--and as we know from the books, theirs might not be a monogamy-until-undeath pairing.

Finally, Sookie may be naive and silly at times, but she gets a lot of things accomplished that the men around her can't, most notably offing a vampire-hating serial killer with a well-timed shovel blow to the neck, as two of her shape-shifting and vampire beaux try and fail to protect her. She rescues fan favorite character Lafayette from a vampire dungeon by commandeering a gun and driving a shrewd bargain with his captors. In short, just as Bill's desire to live among humans subverts his image as a cold vampire, Sookie subverts her image as a simple southern belle. The other characters who begin as stereotypes have begun to branch beyond them as well, from Tara who started off as a bit of an "angry black best friend" stock character but has shown sweetness, insecurity and understandable hurt, to Eric who began as an icy, authoritarian Nordic vampire king but has recently shown some sentimentality and even humor. The fact that we basically have no clue what direction any of the characters are headed in right now is evidence that our initial stock impressions of them have been largely swept away.

The other concern levelled about the show is that the allegory of vampires as a persecuted group fighting for acceptance is a dangerous one for gays and minorities because a lot of vampires really are bad and do want to eat people--in other words they're an oppressed minority who may deserve it. Michelle Goldberg at the Daily Beast writes:

This conceit is cheeky and clever, but it has troubling implications, because the vampires, political rhetoric aside, aren’t really interested in joining human society...most of the vampires we meet are arrogant, perverse, and cruel—everything the far right believes gays to be...the local vampire headquarters is tawdry, decadent nightclub called Fangtasia, where human tourists come for the kink and some are ensnared and corrupted. The vampire leaders are voracious and vain; in one of this season’s most darkly funny scenes, one of them dismembers a man while getting foil highlights, then frets about the blood in his hair.

It's a huge mistake to believe that Alan Ball doesn't know that his vampires, with their sexual magnetism and perverse power, are directly playing into fears about gays as hypnotic sexual deviants. His world isn't in any way a direct allegory for ours, but rather a purposefully boundary-pushing imaginary world in which a minority group actually does have ungodly power and ability to pull others into their "lifestyle." In this world, there are vampires who want to use their powers to dominate humans and those who want to befriend humans, and on the other side humans who want to accept vampires while their fundamentalist and bigoted neighbors (by far the creepiest characters in the show) want to kill them all. And in the middle, the inter-species couple of Sookie and Bill try to bridge the gap while sometimes showing the price of trying to do so in a polarized world. She can be too trusting of supernatural beings while he, in the midst of self-loathing, can't imagine his fellows vamps doing anything good.

Ultimately the show looks at sex, gender, race, religion and oppression based on those categories through the lens of outlandish parody. It uses a big bubbling cauldron of different ideas and images as its aesthetic vehicle. So instead of making a explicit "point" or containing a core message, it aims to exaggerate, subvert and muddle the motifs that are already out there. The show is pure provocation--but it's intentional provocation, and the debates that it's now engendering are part of its raison d'etre. So don't worry-- even good liberals can enjoy this "guilty pleasure" with clear conscience.

]]> Our Little Wizards Are All Grown Up http://www.rhrealitycheck.org/blog/2009/07/21/our-little-wizards-are-all-grown-up 2009-07-21T08:00:00-04:00 2009-07-20T23:00:56-04:00 Sarah Seltzer Critics reviewing the latest installment in the wildly popular Harry Potter franchise have been distracted to no end by the spell of attraction that has been added into the magic mix.  They can't get over the fact that the films' three young stars, once gawky misfits, are now good-looking young adults worthy of cover shots.  And it's true: in the sixth book and film, Harry, Hermione, Ron and sundry others are caught up in a tangled web of hormones and confusion.  They have to figure out where making out (or "snogging") can fit into their schedule of conquering evil, saving the world and puzzling out the cryptic, possibly universe-altering, intentions of the adults around them.

What's fascinating about the rather gentle sexification of the characters--and it would certainly be weird if it they remained chaste, let's be honest--is mostly how it brings out the anxieties in their muggle (human) observers.  A number of reviewers have been particularly put off by the lovely and lithe Emma Watson, who plays brainiac Hermione, complaining that her good looks make it impossible to accept her character's nerdy persona.  It's as though we live in a society where women aren't supposed to be sexy and sharply intelligent at the same time--oh wait, we do live in that society.  Indeed, those who aren't complaining about Watson's sexuality are exploiting it, as the stories from her 18th birthday, when the paparazzi decided she was "fair game," demonstrate.

But both the folks crying foul and salivating over Hermione's good looks ought to go back to the source material and feel thoroughly ashamed of themselves.  JK Rowling may not be perfect in terms of writing gender roles, but she does a great job illustrating how Hermione's intellectual assertiveness blinds the men around her to her growing attractiveness. In the fourth book, when Hermione dresses up in a gown, the boys who are her best friends literally don't recognize her because they've de-sexualized her.  That's why Hermione's blossoming, and the other characters' eventual acceptance of her as both brilliant and womanly, has made her into a patron saint for girl geeks around the world who want to be proud of who they are without being pigeonholed as asexual.

On the other end of the spectrum from the hand-wringing, we have those who lament the lack of "real" sexuality and depth in Rowling's depiction of romantic love.  Alyssa Rosenberg wrote last week:

First, in Rowling's universe, everyone ends up with their first real love, and I mean everyone...There is not a single example in the entire series of a serious relationship that does not end in marriage or life-long devotion.

Second, Rowling never gives readers a single detailed description of an adult sexual relationship.

The problem with her interpretation is that Rowling is writing within a specific genre--young-reader fantasy--that always uses kissing as shorthand for sex and features characters forming deep, life-long attachments at early ages (well, except for pious C.S. Lewis who locked his one sexual female character out of heaven as punishment. But that's another story.)  Go back and think about books like A Wrinkle in Time or His Dark Materials to see those conventions at work; even Twilight uses biting as an allegory for sex, never showing its characters doing more than lie together kissing until they're legally wed. In this kind of fantasy novel, sexual maturation is often expressed under the surface, as characters accompany each other on perilous but necessary journeys involving unbearable tension and an uncertain fate, a metaphor for both coming-of-age and falling in love.

Given that Rowling is trying to keep the very young age of some of her readers in mind while also enticing adults, I'd say she and film-maker Richard Yates in turn manage that balancing act incredibly well.  They focus on the feelings produced by budding sexuality: the shock felt by teenagers who suddenly discover their romantic inclinations, and the self-consciousness of teens weighing those desires with social expectations.   In this latest installment Ron is torn between his surface attraction to the very amorous Lavender--and the social status having a girlfriend conveys--and his deeper, more confusing feelings towards Hermione. Hermione is smart enough to recognize her own feelings for Ron, but also angry at herself for caring so much about a boy who seems so clueless.  She resorts to flirting with an arrogant jock to make him jealous.  And Harry has woken up to his affection for Ron's sister Ginny after years of being amused by her unrequited crush on him--but now she's moved on.  And he knows that even if he did win her back, he'd alienate his best friend.

The truth is, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince contains a few basic, poignant truths about teenage psychological development: the conflict of individual desires with group rules, the heightened electricity of previously platonic friendships, the exploration of relationships that are more sexual than emotional to see what they're like, and the sheer ridiculous awkwardness of it all.  Sure, if necking couples in the enchanted halls of Hogwarts were real teenagers they might be experimenting more explicitly and risking pregnancy and disease--but on the other hand real teenagers don't face hexes and deadly potions.  Real teenagers aren't doomed to face down the Dark Lord in a final confrontation that will leave one of them dead, either. So perhaps the real and fictional perils pretty much even out. Rowling leaves in enough joking hints about the juicy stuff to satisfy her grown-up fans and provide fodder for erotic fanfic, but she does it subtly enough not to confuse the kids, which is quite a feat.

But all that juggling on her part is in the service of something bigger. Another prevalent theme of YA novels besides budding romance is the inevitability of death, and the two themes are often quite intentionally paired by authors as a way of teaching characters and readers alike about the bittersweet nature of the human life cycle.  Rowling, as many have said, is very much part of this tradition.  Throughout the Harry Potter books but most pointedly in the last few, Rowling is preparing her young characters to understand both love and death.  She has them learn that love can't conquer death but it can transcend death, a piece of wisdom that will help them face their entrance into the wider world with courage.  This may not involve sex education, but it's the ultimate lesson about growing up, a lesson even jaded adult readers have been all-too-happy to absorb from Harry's tale.

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