wildflowers

GOT HOPE?

2008-11-24T21:27:00.003-06:00

In a few days it will be the 30th anniversary of the assassination of Harvey Milk, the first openly gay man elected to public office in the United States. This video is an excerpt from his 1978 speech "You Cannot Live on Hope Alone", given shortly before he was killed.

His speech and his life remind us of how far we have come in 30 years, but also of how much work there is still to be done. There are still thousands of gay and lesbian teenagers that are thrown out of the house, that suffer verbal and physical abuse each day at school, that take their own lives because they cannot change who they are. In more than half of the United States, a person can lose his or her job for being gay. In almost all states, same-sex couples cannot legally join together in marriage, thus depriving them of nearly 1,100 federal rights, benefits and privileges given to married couples. Some states do not allow gay couples or individuals to adopt children, and some do not allow second-parent adoption; which means that when a lesbian couple has a child together, the non-biological mother cannot be considered a legal parent to that child.

But what Harvey Milk's speech reminds us is that we cannot lose hope and we cannot stop working for what we know in our hearts is right. The message of hope that we have heard in this country over the past year awakened a nation and inspired millions of people who once felt disenfranchised and unempowered. Gay and lesbian Americans must keep Barack Obama and Harvey Milk's message of hope alive. We can have a different world.

In an op-ed piece on Prop. 8, the California amendment that took back the legal right of marriage for same-sex couples, Human Rights Campaign president Joe Solmonese gave a call-to-action alongside his own message of hope:

"In recent years, I've been delivering this positive message: tell your story. Share who you are. And in fact, as our families become more familiar, support for us increases. But make no mistake: I do not think we have to audition for equality. Rather, I believe that each and every one of us who has been hurt by this hateful ballot measure, and each and every one of us who is still fighting to be equal, has to confront the neighbors who hurt us. We have to say to the man with the Yes on 8 sign—you disrespected my humanity, and I am not giving you a pass. I am not giving you a pass for explaining that you tolerate me, while at the same time denying that my family has a right to exist. I do not give you permission to say you have me as a "gay friend" when you cast a vote against my family, and my rights.

"Wherever you are, tell a neighbor what the California Supreme Court so wisely affirmed: that you are equal, you are human, and that being denied equality harms you materially. Although I, like our whole community, am shaken by Prop 8's passage, I am not yet ready to believe that anyone who knows us as human beings and understands what is at stake would consciously vote to harm us.

"This is not over. In California, our legal rights have been lost, but our human rights endure, and we will continue to fight for them."

He reminds us that we must both hope for and work for a better future. One thing that Proposition 8 and Initiative 1 (the amendment that voters in Arkansas passed, which prohibits adoption and foster care by unmarried, co-habitating individuals) taught us is that we cannot expect our rights to simply be handed to us. Throughout American history equal rights for oppressed groups have rarely been popular causes and have virtually never been handed over without the hard work and perseverance of those oppressed populations and their allies. Would integration have happened if it had been put to a vote? Would the voters in Virginia or Mississippi or Alabama have said "Yes" to interracial marriage had it been put to a vote years ago? Would women have earned the right to vote without the picket lines, the hunger strikes and the lobbying of countless suffragists? And had those issues been put to a vote, and had equal rights been denied, should those groups have thrown up their hands and said, "Oh well, the majority doesn't want it"? As Martin Luther King, Jr. stated in his "Letter from a Birmingham Jail", "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor, it must be demanded by the oppressed."

As Joe Solmonese reminds us, our human rights still endure. We are still people of worth; we are not second-class citizens. And we must believe that, no matter what the majority is telling us. We cannot give up, even in the face of defeat. Let us be reminded that in 2000, Californians voted on the marriage issue with a margin of 61.4% to 38.6%. This time the vote was 52% to 48%. It is reassuring, but also reminds us that there is still work to be done, to change the hearts and minds of those who would vote to harm gay and lesbian individuals and families. We can remember these words also written by Martin Luther King, Jr. in his famous letter. He reminds us that time itself is neutral and that, "Human progress never rolls in on wheels of inevitability; it comes through the tireless efforts of men ... We must use time creatively, in the knowledge that the time is always ripe to do right. Now is the time to make real the promise of democracy."

It is important that the LGBT communities consider how this work is to be done. For, as Audre Lorde once said, the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house. There has been much talk about the sexism, racism, transphobia, etc. that has kept the gay rights movement from being truly cohesive. There have also been criticisms of some of the violent tactics used by small groups of individuals protesting Prop. 8, etc. If we act in hate and violence, we cannot win. I believe that this is a cause that will win through love and understanding. But how can we expect the world to understand and love us, if we cannot understand and love one another? The coming together of LGBT individuals, as well as straight allies, following Prop. 8's passing was encouraging to me. But there is much change still needed within the movement if we ever hope to have victory.

And while we continue our struggle for equality, we must always maintain our hope. As Harvey Milk said 30 years ago, "You cannot live on hope alone, but without it, life is not worth living."

UH HUH HER

2008-10-04T00:16:00.006-05:00

Here's a rockin' new music duo with a great sound. Uh Huh Her (not to be confused with the PJ Harvey album of the same name) is made up of lesbian icon Leisha Hailey and Camila Grey, a musician who has contributed her bass and keyboard talents to artists such as Dr. Dre and Busta Rhymes. Hailey, best known for her fabulous acting in the role of Alice Pieszecki on Showtime's hit series The L Word, actually began her musical career years ago in the pop duo The Murmurs, which had somewhat of a cult following in the 90s. She left the music world after joining The L Word, but last year decided to make her comeback. She joined up with Grey and Uh Huh Her was born. They released an EP I See Red in 2007, and their first full-length album, Common Reaction was just released this past August.

Their sound has been described as "electropop" with one review stating, "Listening to the electronic-pop / neo-new wave sound of "Common Reaction" is like the feeling you have when drifting in and out of consciousness; the place in between being awake and dreaming. The ladies’ sweet, and sometimes haunting, vocals arouse your senses and leave your body fully stimulated." Says another reviewer of the album, "Remarkably well-versed in ‘80s sonic textures, the duo have crafted a tight-knit sound based on the interplay of Hailey’s breathy alto and instrumentalist Camila Grey’s angelic harmonies."

But it's not just the music on their album that's notable: apparently the two are something to see in concert. I guess I will find out for myself when I see them perform in Minneapolis on November 5th, after which I will report back with a personalized report on the live experience. Until then, check out their MySpace page or watch this video of them performing an acoustic version of one of my favorites ("Wait Another Day") on the AfterEllen vlog, Liz Feldman's "This Just Out."

NO RIGHTS TO CRITICIZE

2008-09-07T22:29:00.003-05:00

How does John McCain get away with criticizing the Bush Administration and "taking on" the GOP when he voted with them 90% of the time in the past couple of years and with the Republican party in general the majority of the time during his many years in the Senate. The way that he is creating this fake Maverick persona for himself just disgusts me. He has the "Straight Talk" express, yet he is anything but straightforward about who he is and where he really stands on issues. He is a CONSERVATIVE REPUBLICAN! On social issues, on economic issues ... he is NOT a moderate!! He says, "Change is coming", but let's not forget that it was only last year that the Democrats finally took back the House and Senate. For the better part of eight years this country has been completely controlled by individuals with the exact same values as McCain. Electing him would create no type of change in this country.

ROCK ON KATY

2008-07-06T23:45:00.005-05:00

I'm doing something that I rarely do (and I really, really mean that!) -- I am changing my position on something that I actually felt strongly enough to blog about! Back in May I wrote about Katy Perry's hit song "I Kissed a Girl", deriding it as exploitation of lesbian sexuality. Let me say right off that I still think that the song commercializes on the excitement and controversy surrounding same-sex lovin' without effecting any type of positivity about actual lesbian sexual orientation. It's made pretty clear that the song is about a straight girl experimenting, thereby ridding it of any real "gay pride" theme. But I'll say this for the song: it certainly has showcased society's overwhelming homophobia as well as some incredible double standards. In fact, I have experienced such a mixture of disgust, offense and amusement at some of the things that I have heard and read that I felt compelled to write something in support of a song that I only recently heavily critiqued.

Since the song is so popular and chart-topping, it is on the radio constantly. And this means that parents who listen to the radio with their kids have had to make some decisions. Option one is to change the channel, which a lot of people seem to be doing since it is apparently too "scarring" and "confusing" for their eight-year-old to hear another girl singing, "I kissed a girl and I liked it." The popularity of such a song might pressure their darling daughter into feeling like she has to kiss another girl to be cool!! God forbid!

Let's just examine this first concept for a moment. The idea here is that it is not appropriate to discuss "alternative" sexualities with kids at such young ages. If kids are allowed to hear an explicity "lesbian-ish" song, their parents will have to then explain to them about heterosexuality and homosexuality and clearly talking to kids about gay people is just too inappropriate. After all, telling your child that some people love people of the same sex, is basically the equivalent of drawing them a diagram of sexual positions, right? And if they know that this type of lifestyle is an "option" what's to keep them from trying it? A much better idea is to never bring it up so that when they are confronted with it when they are older, they default to fear and intolerance.

I find people's hysteria over their children hearing this song to be extremely humorous. I mean, the song is about kissing for god's sake! It's not about oral sex or anything actually inappropriate, which makes it perfectly easy to explain to a child who has been raised in a tolerant and understanding household. Let's take my little sister for instance. From the time that she was a toddler, she has been raised to understand that there are all types of families and that love comes in many different forms. This song is not so confusing to her. In her eyes it is no more sexual than a song about a girl that enjoys kissing her boyfriend.

Which brings me to my next point. It seems like many people have some type of paranoia that by listening to this song, their daughters will want to experiment with girls as well. Personally I say, big deal! There certainly are worse things to be experimenting with. Now I don't have children yet, but I am absolutely positive that if I had a daughter and she told me that she had experimented with kissing another girl, I would be happy that she was brave enough to explore who she really was. I know of people who after that type of experimentation have found the answers to a lot of questions regarding their sexuality. I know of lasting relationships that have evolved out of what one person thought was just going to be an experiment. We should be encouraging our children to explore their sexuality -- not repressing their curiosities. That's how we wind up with a whole lot of self-loathing closet-case gays and lesbians.

If Katy Perry's song makes every girl in America go out and hook up with another girl that would be awesome. Why? Because here is what I think would happen: about 90% of those girls who be like, "Hmm that was (insert adjective -- fun/interesting/gross). Now I know what that's like." And they will never do it again. But maybe around 10% (or maybe more) will be like, "Huh. I've never felt that way before when I kissed (insert boyfriend/ex-boyfriend/etc.). This explains a lot." And maybe those girls will be set down a path of self-discovery that takes some women years -- if not their entire lives -- to go down.

And that is really scary for a lot of people in America who don't want little gay girls to realize their sexuality before ... well, ever. So they have aneurysms over fun-loving, innocent songs of experimentation such as Katy Perry's while completely ignoring the fact that the lyrics of most other "popular" songs are wildly more inappropriate and have the potential to do a lot more psychological harm than a tune called "I Kissed a Girl."

Therein lies the double standard. The most scandalous thing about the song in question is the gender of the two individuals doing the kissing. Let's look at some of the other songs on the Billboard Hot 100 Chart. Coming in at #2, after "I Kissed a Girl" is Lil Wayne's "Lollipop." Here are some of the genius lyrics of that song: Man she ain't never / Had a love like mine / But man I ain't never / Seen an ass like hers / That pussy in my mouth / Had me loss for words / Told her to back it up / Like berp berp / And I made that ass jump. Here's some of the words from #8 on the charts, "Bust It Baby Part 2": I juss gave her a nick-name it's wet-wet / Cause when we finish she mess up all the bedsets / She got sommin' to relax me when I'm under stress. Then we have the Pussycat Dolls song "When I Grow Up" (#13) which has lyrics such as Now I've got a confession / When I was young I wanted attention / And I promised myself that I'd do anything / Anything at all for them to notice me ... When I grow up / I wanna be famous / I wanna be a star / I wanna be in movies.

And it isn't just lyrics that explicitly objectify women, glorify violence, adovcate materialism and narcissism, drugs, promiscuous sex ... the majority of young female pop stars are singing songs about boys while extremely scantily clad -- sending out the messages that (1) women are defined by their relationships to men and (2) a woman's body is her greatest asset. If parents want something to get upset about -- THAT is something to be upset about. But instead they laugh when their five-year-old shakes her booty to Fergie's "My Lumps" and gasp while changing the station when they hear "Us girls we are so magical / Soft skin, red lips, so kissable / Hard to resist so touchable / Too good to deny it / Ain't no big deal, it's innocent."

Well I'm not changing the radio station and I will happily listen to the "Bicurious girl's anthem", not because it's catchy (although it is) and not because I think Katy Perry has some actual talent (although she does) but because FOX News thinks it's going to make girls kiss each other. I'm hoping. We could use a bit more gaiety in this world.

And Katy Perry, you may be just a straight girl finding fame through sexual ambiguity but bless you for throwing this issue in people's faces. You've made kissing girls cool and pissed off a lot of people while doing it. Keep on rockin!

THE GOVERNMENT'S SPENDING PRIORITIES

2008-06-05T21:49:00.003-05:00

Yesterday there was an envelope in my mailbox from the IRS. I got all excited thinking that it was my stimulus check. Despite my misgivings about the efficacy of the whole stimulus package, I'm still a poor 23-year-old. Anyway, it was not my stimulus check. It was a letter telling me that my stimulus check would be arriving in a couple of days.

WTF?! The government really needed to waste the paper and other resources to send letters out to tell people that their stimulus packages would be arriving in THREE DAYS?? I'm so delighted to see that while we can't shell out the money to pay for things like health care or better education, we can apparently waste money on postage and envelopes for several million people. It's nice to see how wisely money is being spent here in America.

I KISSED A GIRL

2008-05-31T12:59:00.010-05:00

The current #2 song on the iTunes singles chart is the new song "I Kissed a Girl" by up-and-comer Katy Perry (visit her Myspace page here). Now one might think that a song like this is one that the lesbian community can get behind. But, as popular gay blogger Dorothy Snarker comments, "Like everything else it’s all about the context. Are these two drunk girls surrounded by cheering frat boys? Yeah, no thanks. Or are these two women who are genuinely interested in each other." So one really needs to examine the lyrics of Katy Perry's song to determine precisely what kind of song this is. And as it turns out, Katy's song seems to be what AfterEllen writer Malinda Lo christens as a theme song for straight girls who get drunk "and make out with their straight girlfriends while they're out at a club (or in a hot tub) with their boyfriends."

At first the song doesn't seem so bad. It is catchy and upbeat and as Malindo Lo remarks, "The chorus, 'I kissed a girl and I liked it,' repeats often enough that it gives the song a kind of (fake) Gay Pride feel." Lo continues by analyzing the lyrics of the song:

This was never the way I planned
Not my intention
I got so brave, drink in hand
Lost my discretion
It's not what I'm used to
Just wanna try you on
I'm curious for you
Caught my attention

I kissed a girl and I liked it
The taste of her cherry Chapstick
I kissed a girl just to try it
I hope my boyfriend don't mind it
It felt so wrong
It felt so right
Don't mean I'm in love tonight
I kissed a girl and I liked it

No, I don't even know your name
It doesn't matter
You're my experimental game
Just human nature
It's not what good girls do
Not how they should behave
My head gets so confused
Hard to obey

As she says, the song is stereotypically bicurious. In the song Katy alludes to having a boyfriend, as though it isn't cheating to kiss someone else if that someone else is a girl. She furthermore says that "it's not what good girls do" and implies that she's only doing this because she's drunk. Like Lo states, it is implied that "kissing another girl is only something you'd do after you lose control of your decision-making faculties."

Just recently Katy released a music video for the song which pretty much confirms that this song is designed more for male titillation than for supporting the right of girls to kiss girls.

On top of all the girls lounging around in their fishnet stockings and lingerie, having pillow fights, there is also not even any actual kissing going on. As Dorothy Snarker comments, this seems to be a strange omission.

Another popular song of Katy's is "Ur So Gay" which is described as "a bitchy kiss-off to an ex-boyfriend, in which Katy derides him as a Hemingway-reading vegetarian who drives an electrical car, concluding, 'You're so gay and you don't even like boys.'" Some could argue that these songs of Katy's and her video are meant to be campy (play on stereotypes in a fun way). But Malinda Lo asserts, "I don't think 23-year-old Katy Perry has the right, yet, to make gay jokes. She needs to wear a lot more sequins and way higher heels for about a dozen more years. I mean, she's using a homophobic slur repeatedly, going so far as to explain that the word is actually meant as a slur and not as a description of homosexuality." It's not right for a young, straight woman to capitalize on the gay "lifestyle" by essentially poking fun at it.

Dorothy Snarker compared Katy's "I Kissed a Girl" to another song by the same name, the 1995 hit by Jill Sobule. Jill's song, unlike Katy's, actually portrays kissing a girl as somewhat of a sexual awakening. It could be used as a coming-out type song. It starts out with two friends discussing how their relationships with their boyfriends are not satisfying and then segues into the two girls realizing an attraction for one another. Then:

And we laughed at the world
They can have their diamonds
And we'll have our pearls
I kissed a girl

I kissed a girl, her lips were sweet
She was just like kissing me
I kissed a girl, won't change the world
But I'm so glad I kissed a girl

Now that's more along the lines of a song that lesbians can get behind. Unfortunately songs like Jill's are not being promoted at the moment. Instead we get Katy's immensely popular bicurious anthem. And Katy is just the type of artist that is all the rage right now -- pretty (she looks sort of like the lovechild of Zooey Deschanel and Emily Blunt), fashionable (in a very hipster way) and what seems to be an authentically talented musician. I just hope that in the future she steers clear of further exploitation of lesbian sexuality.

WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?

2008-05-18T16:41:00.000-05:00

Back in January I wrote a defense of teen pop-star Miley Cyrus after some so-called "lesbian" pictures of her and a friend began to circulate the internet. This was after another entry from last July where I listed Miley as one of the young stars representing hope for Hollywood's future. Now I find myself eating my words after both her recent Vanity Fair photo shoot and more leaked photos of her posing provocatively.

I have heard the varying arguments on the Vanity Fair thing. I know that some people are saying that it's "beautiful" and "artistic". Okay. If we are speaking in the technical sense then, yes, it is artistic rather than pornographic or whatever. But whether it is an artsy photo or not, the fact still remains that she is a fifteen-year-old girl and the vast majority of her fans are under the age of 10. I know that she is supposedly wearing a nude shirt under the sheet or something like that, but it still gives the illusion that she is naked. In what world is it not erotic to be posing wrapped in what appears to be nothing but a sheet? Whatever the excuses, this is still so obviously intended to be a sensual photograph and I think it is wildly inappropriate.

I think that it is natural for a fifteen-year-old girl to express her sexuality. However, to me, owning one's sexuality means being comfortable with, proud of and aware of one's body. A fifteen-year-old girl expressing her sexuality should not come in the form of her body being sexualized in a way that promotes some type of weird voyeurism in a culture that seems obsessed with the infantilization of beauty. I don't want it to seem like I am trying to say that there is something shameful about the female body. There isn't. The female body should be celebrated -- a belief that I think I have pretty consistently advocated. But as my previous point indicates, I don't think this is an appropriate way of doing that.

I know that Miley has spoken out about this photo and said that she didn't realize, blah blah blah and that she is "so embarrassed." I don't believe that for one second, and Vanity Fair has said that Miley's parents and/or handlers were on set the whole time and saw and approved of the digital version of the photograph. Making Miley's statements even less believable are her newest leaked photos:

The excuse that they were "private photos" and were never intended for the world to see only really works once. By now I think this girl should be smart enough to realize that nothing she does is really ever going to be private. Yeah that sucks, but it's the truth. So why is she continuing to take provocative photos of herself when she has to know that everyone in the world is going to end up seeing them? I don't care what she does in private, but I do care about the image she presents to the world -- an image that millions of little girls are going to emulate. Little girls like my six-year-old sister. I don't think it's really appropriate for a fifteen-year-old to be a sex symbol under any circumstance, but I think it's even less appropriate for a fifteen-year-old girl to be publicly sexualizing herself when she is meant to be an icon for young children.

Furthermore, this all indicates a certain amount of hypocrisy in Miley's and her family's supposed values. In the past she has spoken out against sex before marriage, stating that she believes in "purity." She has also openly spoken about being a "Christian" (read: born-again Christian). Now I have a real problem with Evangelical Christian "values" to begin with, so I don't really care whether she is following them. But it is annoying for me to hear her say on the one hand that she wants to remain "pure" until marriage and then on the other hand to see her displaying her body for every pervert, pedophile and adolescent boy (or girl!). Is she trying to say that the only thing sacred about the female body is the hymen? So much for being wholesome.

The whole thing really bothers me because I wanted to believe that she really was a good role model and might actually make it through her stardom untainted. But I was wrong. But, you know, at least the other young women that I wrote about last summer still seem to remain good role models. Of course, Emma Watson and Raven Symone have never reached the legendary superstar status of "Hannah Montana". So, can a young girl really become so famous, so fast without making these types of mistakes? In our society can a girl really be under such intense scrutiny without eventually engaging in some type of exhibitionism? It seems like the answer is maybe no, but I really couldn't say. Miley seems to be one-of-a-kind in the way that things have happened for her.

But then again, all of this attention and focus on Miley and on "fallen" stars such as Britney and Lindsay really takes a lot of attention away from the fact that there are many young women who grew up on film or on TV and didn't make these types of mistakes. Those girls and women are too often forgotten, and certainly don't get enough credit. They really should be cited more often as evidence that fame is not a guarantee of dysfunction.

Hilary Duff, a young woman who never reached Miley's level of fame, but who has followed a similar career trajectory as the fifteen-year-old, was very diplomatic when speaking about Cyrus' Vanity Fair shoot: "People are pushing you to do something, and if you want to do it, that's your choice, you know? It's not what I would choose to do, but if she did then that's fine. That's her choice." The notable part of her statement being "It's not what I would choose to do." Duff, now 20, is no longer an icon for little girls, but from the ages of fourteen to sixteen she starred in the popular Disney Channel series Lizzie McGuire, making her a household name among girls aged seven to fourteen. During her Disney years she also starred in a Disney Channel Original Film, Cadet Kelly, which at that time became the most watched program in the Channel's history. She went on to star in several films which, thanks to Duff's popularity among young girls, ended up being quite successful at the box office. In 2002 she began a music career, with her albums being popular within the tween and teen audience. In 2007 she was listed as #7 in Forbes "Top 20 Earners Under 25." She has also made it onto Maxim's Hot 100 list. Although I have a big problem with that stupid list, I guess it shows that guys think she's sexy.

Even during Hilary Duff's years of high popularity, she always managed to maintain a pretty wholesome image, even when she was dating Good Charlotte singer Joel Madden at the tender age of 17 (he's nine years her senior). Even now that she's no longer a minor, she has managed to be sexual while still leaving something to the imagination. Just take her Maxim photo shoot from last year. The cover is about as revealing as it gets.

But even if she had wanted to be more revealing, it doesn't matter anymore. She's 20 and no longer a Disney Channel star. The important thing is that when she was, she was never caught up in the type of controversy that Miley has found herself in.

There are plenty of other examples of former child/teen stars who managed to avoid controversy during their younger years (Natalie Portman, Raven, Mandy Moore, Emma Watson, Sarah Michelle Gellar, Anna Paquin, Christina Ricci, Melissa Joan Hart, Soleil Moon Frye, Scarlett Johansson, Jena Malone, Michelle Trachtenberg, Amanda Bynes, Tia and Tamera Mowry, and Reese Witherspoon. Even the Olsen Twins kept it clean during their early years). So let's give them some credit and remember that not everyone is doomed for failure.

Fame is not an excuse for bad behavior and poor judgment. As Mandy Moore says in reference to her own life, "It’s a choice to put yourself out there in such a public way, and I really don’t thrive on that attention." I'd like to end by linking to an awesome article about Natalie Portman, which gives her "formula" for success. The writer of the article makes perhaps one of the most important points in point number one (Be Smart):

"Lots of starlets can say they did a hot photo spread for Maxim. But how many can claim to have co-written a research paper that was published in a scientific journal? Portman did it — twice.

But being smart isn’t just about having a bachelor’s degree in psychology and speaking several languages. Portman is smart about her image. She traversed two minefields early on — she wasn’t just a child actress, she was a child actress playing sexually precocious roles in “The Professional” and “Beautiful Girls” — but came out unscathed.

How? Well, take a look at her behavior. Does she say moronic things to interviewers? No. Does she embarrass herself publicly? Never. Do you see much of her in the press when she’s not out plugging a movie? Are her personal habits and relationships analyzed and deconstructed throughout the tabloids? Nuh-uh. And that’s because you can avoid that stuff if you want to. But you have to want not to be photographed all the time. And that’s smart."

I couldn't have said it any better myself. If only Miley were listening.

CALIFORNIA TAKES A STAND

2008-05-16T13:48:00.011-05:00

Yesterday California's Supreme Court ruled in favor of same-sex marriage. In a 4-3 decision, the Republican-controlled court decided that a law banning marriage between two adults of the same-sex was a violation of the equal protection clause of their state's Constitution.

The news was followed by many statements of support, including that of California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, who said that he would uphold the court's decision. Beloved talk-show host and comedian Ellen DeGeneres announced on her talk show that she and long-time partner Portia de Rossi would he tying the knot now that marriage will be legal for them. With this new ruling, same-sex couples could be getting married as early as next month in California. However, anti-gay activist hope to put a hold on the ruling taking effect until November, when they hope to pass a state constitutional amendment banning gay marriage. Gov. Schwarzenegger has said he will not support such a ban, but California voters are shown to be split on the issue. If a stay of the court's decision is not allowed, California will be only the second state in the country to have legal marriage between same-sex adults (at least until November).

Of course this is an awesome victory for gays and lesbians, but as usual it brings with it an increase in anti-gay rhetoric and hateful remarks. Reading through the comments on various blogs and news sites that have reported on this issue, I've found that I can pretty much ignore and roll my eyes at comments such as these: "If you really understood what crap you fags have brought to this world, you would really cry. What a load of shit! Maybe you will unbreed yourselves out of existance. We can only hope!" (Because we all know that only gay people produce gay children). It's the comments from people who claim that they "aren't homophobic" but they just don't think it's fair to call a union between same-sex couples a marriage. Or that they don't think it's fair to legalize same-sex marriage if the people don't want it. One person said on a website, "I'm all for gay rights [but] what is baffling about this California ruling ... is that it was passed by judges after it was voted down by the people of Cali. Kinda scary that the votes of the people were pushed aside."

These comments bother me the most because they come from people claiming to be "tolerant", but they demonstrate a complete lack of understanding in regards to history, oppression, and America's system of government. It's funny how short our collective memory apparently is because if people will just allow themselves to look back a few decades, they might remember that it was a Supreme Court ruling (Brown v. Board of Education) that overturned interracial segregation in schools, basically paving the way for the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The Civil Rights Act itself wasn't voted for by the people, but was passed through the legislature. In regards to marriage laws, it was another Supreme Court case, Loving v. Virginia, that overturned bans on interracial marriage. The Courts have long been active in making historic decisions related to minority rights. If we had allowed popular opinion to be the decider on integration and interracial marriage, a huge portion of the country would probably still be segregated.

What many folks seem to misunderstand is the exact nature of American democracy. We do not have what is referred to as a "direct democracy", where all decisions are made by whatever citizens choose to participate (vote). We have aspects of direct democracy within our government, in the form of referendums, recalls, etc. but as a whole America does not operate within a system of direct democracy. Rather we have what many refer to as a "constitutional republic." Here is Wikipedia's basic definition of a constitutional republic:

A constitutional republic is a state where the head of state and other officials are elected as representatives of the people, and must govern according to existing constitutional law that limits the government's power over citizens. In a constitutional republic, executive, legislative, and judicial powers are separated into distinct branches, and the will of the majority of the population is tempered by protections for individual rights, so that no individual or group has absolute power. The fact that a constitution exists that limits the government's power makes the state constitutional. That the head(s) of state and other officials are chosen by election, rather than inheriting their positions, and that their decisions are subject to judicial review makes a state republican.

John Adams, one of America's Founding Fathers, and the 2nd President of the United States explained our republic as a "government of laws, not of men." According to James Woodburn, author of The American Republic and Its Government, "In a republic, as distinguished from a democracy, the people are not only checked in choosing officials but also in making laws." The type of government that exists in America was deliberately chosen to protect the rights of the minority and prevent what is referred to as a "tyranny of the majority". This concept has been written about frequently by John Stuart Mill, Alexis de Tocqueville and James Madison.

Basically America's laws should represent the "interests of the majority" while still protecting the "rights of the minority." In America we do not have the type of democracy whereby the majority could decide to execute all left-handed citizens and that would be acceptable so long as the "popular vote" supported it. That is why we have a Constitution and why we have a Supreme Court -- to determine whether laws violate citizens' rights. If denying equal marriage rights to people violates their civil rights, it doesn't matter what the majority of Americans "want." Do we really want the type of democracy that will overturn individual rights and liberties at the will of the majority, a will that could easily be based on racism or xenophobia or homophobia or sexism? Don't people understand how dangerous that is?

I'm guessing that the people who say "let the people decide" on matters of gay rights might not be so eager to "let the people decide" when it comes to their own basic human rights to live and love freely and without fear.

Finally, I come to the issue of the individuals who say that they believe same-sex "unions" are entitled to the same rights and protections as a marriage, but the just don't want it called marriage. Because marriage is sacred and special and meant to be between a man and a woman blah blah blah.

This is what I have to say about that matter: Why is it that so many heterosexuals are so possessive of the term "marriage"? I mean, both sides here could say that it's all just a matter of semantics, but the gays are the ones that are being put in the "separate but equal" category. And I'm pretty sure that verdict has been delivered on that concept. The fact is, it is completely ridiculous to call a legal union between same-sex couples a "civil union" and a legal union between heterosexual couples a "marriage." Some might say that the difference between a "civil union" and a "marriage" is due to religion. Except millions of heterosexual couples are married by Judges outside of the Church. Their "marriage" has nothing to do with religion -- it is an entirely legal affair -- yet, I don't see anyone suggesting that those couples be denied the right to call their union a marriage. And there are many churches who are willing and happy to "marry" same-sex couples. Various Methodist, UCC, Jewish Reform, Episcopal, and American Catholic (not to be confused with Roman Catholic) congregations have willingly blessed same-sex unions. (Please note that the denominations listed will vary greatly by individual congregation in their willingness to support and/or bless same-sex unions). In 1984 the Unitarian Universalist Church became the first large denomination to "approve religious blessings on homosexual unions." So let me get this straight ... if a same-sex couple has all the legal rights of marriage and their union is blessed by a minister before God ... it still shouldn't be called a marriage? But if a man and a woman who are, let's say, atheists, go and marry at a courthouse, they get to have a marriage?

As you can see, the whole thing is sort of ridiculous. It is pretty obvious that the only reason people get up in arms about the word "marriage" is that it makes them uncomfortable. There is no other reason. They can't really believe that one couple's gay marriage is going to make their marriage somehow less sacred. In a great editorial (coupled with an equally not great one) from the May 1st issue of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, the straight male writer says he doesn't "get why gay marriage is such a big deal." He says:________________________________

We are told, "We must protect the tradition of marriage," which Anne Coulter says goes back "10,000 years." Right. ("Do you, Ogg, take this woman . . . ? You may now club the bride.") The tradition that people seem to have in mind goes back only about as far as Ward and June Cleaver.

Defenders of "traditional" marriage seem to argue that it is primarily about sexual attraction. In Roman or medieval times -indeed, in most eras before today - marriages often were not about sexual attraction at all. They were about political alliances, property or continuing the family line. Noblemen kept mistresses for sex. Many cultures arranged marriages between very young people who sometimes had never met, so the idea of a pre-existing sexual attraction didn't enter into it.

How exactly does gay marriage undermine heterosexual marriage? Are straight people out there who are contemplating marriage going, "Honey, it says here that a gay couple is Massachusetts got married. Maybe we should reconsider our wedding plans?"
________________________________

At the end of his editorial, after citing divorce statistics and stories of quickie weddings and reality shows like "Who Wants to Marry a Millionaire" he remarks "If marriage indeed has become devalued, heterosexuals did it by themselves."

So don't tell me that you are "totally okay" with gay people, but you just believe there is something "extra special" about marriage between a man and a woman. And don't tell me that you think gay people should have equal rights only so long as everyone else thinks it's okay. Because when you say that, what you're basically saying is that gay people's rights are less important than straight people's opinions and that gays an lesbians are less deserving of protection and less deserving of happiness. And if you believe that then you are prejudiced. Maybe it's not your fault. Maybe you like being prejudiced. But let's call it what it is rather than mask it as some type of concern for either the well-being of straight couples or the maintenance of democracy.

Because anyone who really has absolutely no problems with gay people should have no problem with a same-sex couple committing themselves to a lifelong, monogamous and loving relationship.

AND THE WINNER IS ...

2008-05-15T11:58:00.006-05:00

I'm admitting it. My guilty pleasure is America's Next Top Model. For the record, I am not a regular viewer or reality TV. But my best friend, who I lived with throughout my college years, got me hooked on Top Model. I don't know what it is about the show ... the unintended hilarity, the fun of making snarky comments throughout, the eye-roll inducing drama ... I can't help loving it. Recently I canceled my cable subscription due to Charter's ridiculously high rates and also due to the fact that I am rarely home to watch TV. But my love affair with ANTM continued when I went to visit my former roommate in the Twin Cities and proceeded to watch nearly all of Cycle 10 (the newest season) on her DVR. And last night she called me to inform me that for the first time in Top Model history, the winner was a plus-sized model! Congratulation to Whitney for making ANTM history!

Whitney wasn't my favorite contestant. I liked awkward, punk-rock contestant Lauren because, well, I always like the unique ones.

But Lauren was cut right after the girls' arrival in Rome, and once it got down to the final two it was between Whitney and Hawaiian surfer-girl Anya (Who I swear to God I thought was originally from another country because of her unusual accent). Anya is gorgeous and had some great photos, even though I thought that the platinum blonde hair that they gave her sucked. (For that reason, posted picture is pre-ANTM)

But according to my friend who actually watched the finale, Whitney rocked the runway show and I was ecstatic to hear that she was the winner. People have long said that ANTM doesn't really produce "top models" and that is definitely true. (How often have you seen former winners actually in magazines or in commercials -- besides those done to promote the show?) But this is still awesome nonetheless. There have been plus-sized contestants on the show in the past, but they have never made it very far. In Cycle 3 Toccara Jones made it to the final seven. Cycle 8 was actually the first and only season to feature two plus-sized models. Diana Zalewski was cut in Episode 6 and Whitney Cunningham lasted only slightly longer, making it to the final seven. In Cycle 9 Sarah Hartshorne was cut in Episode 8 amid criticisms that she had lost weight and was losing her plus-size status (but of course wasn't thin enough to be a "regular" model).

By the time this cycle rolled around, I was starting to think that it was a mean joke to even put plus-size models on the show, since it seemed obvious that they were never going to really win. Amazingly I have been proven wrong! Some conspiracy-theorists have been saying that this cycle was rigged and that it was decided from the beginning that this would be the year for a plus-sized girl to win. Whether or not that is true doesn't really matter, although saying that does seem unfair to Whitney -- who actually did a good job in photoshoots and runway. Other rumors are flying around the internet as well after some alleged pre-ANTM photos of Whitney surfaced.

The circulating rumor is that Whitney was previously a size 2-4 when she was approached by ANTM casting agents. Supposedly she was told that she could be on the show if she gained 20 pounds and modeled as a plus-sized contestant. This rumor undermines comments made by Whitney throughout the season about how hard it was to grow up heavy and be made fun of, etc. In my opinion, this whole rumor seems far-fetched. Why on earth would the show ask someone to gain weight when there are plenty of beautiful, already plus-sized girls out there (as indicated by previous seasons)? The more likely explanation is that, like many women out there, Whitney has struggled with her weight and may have fluctuated in sizes over the years. I personally have gone back and forth between sizes 4 and 10 over the years and I know that just because you are able to shed 15 or 20 pounds doesn't mean that you will definitely keep that weight off.

Whether Whitney has gone from a size 4 to a size 8 or 10 doesn't make her story any less inspiring. In fact, in a way it makes it more inspiring that she "made it" now rather than before, when she was thinner. And here is something else that Whitney's story might make us think about: according to Wikipedia's page on Cycle 10, Whitney is 5'10" and 159 pounds. According to medical recommendations for someone of Whitney's height, age and gender, a healthy weight range is between 132 and 174 pounds. Whitney falls right in the middle, making her a very healthy and average weight. But when you put her next to girls who are 5'10 and 115 pounds, she looks like a big heifer. It is an extremely sad world when women like Whitney, of average weight, are labeled as plus-sized. If you go to this ideal weight body calculator, you can enter in information regarding weight, height, age and gender to find medical recommendations on weight as well as a category called "People's Choice Ideal Weight". This category shows what people think is the ideal weight for someone of a particular height, weight, age and gender. It is interesting to see that this number is typically unrealistically low, which is no big surprise considering our culture's views on body image. Last June I wrote about ad campaigns that targeted body image, and I also wrote about how overall our society has a dysfunctional concept of healthy bodies. On the one hand it is progress to see someone like Whitney win America's Next Top Model, but on the other hand it seems less progressive to see women of healthy weights being called heavy.

Perhaps someday "plus-size" will really mean overweight. Right now, that seems unlikely.

MASON JENNINGS ROCKS MY WORLD

2008-05-09T20:50:00.005-05:00

From time to time I like to give shout outs to some of my favorite music artists, but I noticed that I have written mostly about female musicians, with the exception of Rilo Kiley (which is fronted by a woman, Jenny Lewis, but also has male band members). I'm not sexist, I just happen to listen to female artists more frequently than males. But as it so happens, one of my favorite musicians of all time is a fellow by the name of Mason Jennings ...

Mason is a Minnesota based artist and began his career right in good ole' Minneapolis! He produced his debut album in 1997 and has released five other albums since them, with his seventh album In the Ever releasing this month! While at one time his greatest following was in the Twin Cities (I was first introduced to him nearly five years ago by my roommate who was from Minneapolis), his popularity is slowly growing across the nation. In 2007 he toured with Guster and that same year he sang two of the Bob Dylan songs for the soundtrack of the film I'm Not There. This year he is touring with Australian artist Missy Higgins and later with Jack Johnson.

His music apparently falls into the genre of "pop-folk." His lyrics are often very intimate -- frequently connected very closely with his own life. The song "Which Way Your Heart Will Go" was based on his experiences with fatherhood. He also is known for writing songs with literary and historical themes. For example, one of my favorite songs of his "Adrian" was inspired by the novel Beloved by Toni Morrison. Another beautiful song of his, "The Ballad of Paul and Sheila" was written in memory of Minnesota's beloved Senator Paul Wellstone and his wife Sheila who were killed in a plane crash 2002. A crowd favorite, "Keepin' It Real" was written specifically for the hit movie Shrek but producers ended up using Counting Crows' "Accidentally in Love" instead. More information on his music and the songwriting, recording process can be found in an awesome interview from last year done by a woman in Colorado.

Going to a Mason concert is a truly wonderful experience. He is a warm, intelligent and talented man who completely draws the audience in. I have seen him three times -- once in Madison and twice in Minneapolis. Seeing him perform in the Cities is a great thing because he has such a huge and loyal fan base. When I saw him play last December, right after Christmas, it was his "Hometown show" and he brought his wife up on stage to sing with him, then later his father joined him and his brother. It was really cool!

Here are some clips of him playing in concert (unfortunately live bootleg clips were all I could find online ... guess he's not too commercial yet!). The sound quality is really good, however.

The first is a performance of the song "Jackson Square" from his album Boneclouds (2006).

Next is Mason performing the song "Sorry Signs on Cash Machines" from his 2002 album Century Spring.

Finally a very short clip of him performing the song "Adrian", also from 2002's Century Spring.

So go, check him out if you haven't already! Because he's not just a great musician, he's also one rad person! (I giggle every time I use the word "rad" by the way, but my California friend seems to have made it a permanent part of my lexicon). You can visit his website to get tour information, song lyrics, view videos (including an acoustic version of the aforementioned "The Ballad of Paul and Sheila"), and pre-order his new album!

A WORD ON THE GASOLINE CRISIS

2008-04-30T19:56:00.002-05:00

Yes, the sky-high gasoline prices are getting me down just as much as the next person. I try to be an environmentally conscious individual and erase my "carbon footprint" as much as possible, but I just can't get around that pesky need to have a car. I live in downtown Madison, a calculated move on my part because it puts me close to pretty much everything. I walk to get groceries, to go to the bank, to go to the library, to go to coffee shops, restaurants, bars, etc. But I can't walk to work. I can't even take the damn, complicated bus to work. And even if I could take the bus, I need a car once I get to work. I'm a nanny, so I spend a large portion of the day driving children around. And no matter what I do -- even though I rarely ever use my car outside of work -- I have to fill up once a week. And it sucks. A lot. Not just because it costs me a lot of my hard earned money that I could be putting towards graduate school, but because I know the environmental impact of so much driving.

But yet, even with the ridiculously high gas prices, for me driving is still cheaper than taking mass transit. To that I say, what the hell?! This past weekend I went to the Twin Cities to visit my former roommate/best friend. I took the Greyhound because I was sick of driving. From Madison to St. Paul, a trip on the Greyhound takes about 5 hours and 20 minutes and costs $95 for a round-trip ticket. Driving myself, the trip is pretty much exactly four hours and uses up about a full tank of gas on my Jetta (with current gas prices, that means it costs me a little under $80). And it isn't just the Greyhound that costs more than driving ...

This coming weekend I am planning a trip to my parents' house right outside of Milwaukee. Before I had a car, I always took the Badger Bus between Milwaukee and Madison. Let's compare the cost efficiency of taking the Badger Bus. A ride on the BB takes an hour and a half (not including the extra fifteen minutes required on each side of the journey to get to/from the bus stops) and costs $34 round-trip. Driving from right outside my apartment to right outside my parents' house takes an hour and fifteen minutes and uses a little under a quarter a tank of gas (so round-trip we'll figure about $20). Once more, it is noticeably cheaper and more efficient to just drive myself.

Here is my point: Many of the politicians (ahem, Hillary Clinton and John McCain) are talking about this gas tax vacation as a way of relieving the gas costs. Here's an idea: why don't we actually look at some ways that we can lower gas prices as well as gas usage. I don't know, maybe we could encourage mass transportation? In a country as developed as the U.S., our overall public transportation sucks and is really expensive. Some cities are much better than others. The D.C. area has the Metro System, Chicago has the El, New York has the subways, but there are so many huge cities that have nothing close to good public transportation. And intra-city travel is horrendously expensive, as I have just pointed out. Instead of easing the gas tax, thereby encouraging folks to just go on using as much gas as ever, how about subsidizing public transportation? How about making it so that it is cheaper to take the bus from Madison to St. Paul than it is to drive just yourself?

If it suddenly becomes much less expensive to take the bus or the train or whatnot, more people would want to do it and the bus companies might add more routes and more daily departures. Of course taking the bus or the train still uses gasoline, so we definitely still need to look towards using alternative fuel sources. And granted, a large Greyhound bus is less fuel-efficient than other vehicles. But even so, think how much gas is saved when you load fifty people onto one bus versus those fifty people each driving him or herself.

Naturally, there are many other things that can be done as well. But I find it absurd that in all this talk, the government hasn't tried creating incentives for people to use public transportation more often. No, instead the government talks about how to let people use just as much gas as normal. As Sen. Obama said on the issue, cutting the gas tax would save consumers little, while taking money away from needed things like road improvements. For those who don't know, the gas tax goes into the Highway Trust Fund. As with all tax money, those funds don't just magically disappear. They go towards things that we actually need. I have several friends who live in the Twin Cities and I will never forget that night last summer when the I-35W bridge collapsed during rush hour. We have already diverted enough money away from our basic infrastructure, and I am happy to pay my outrageously high gas tax if that means I will never have to live through a night of worry like that again. Temporarily cutting the gas tax will give short-term gains to consumers in terms of how much money they actually spend on gas, but we need to realize that the $30 we save is going to equal millions of dollars taken away from our infrastructure.

As Sen. Obama also said, a summer gas-tax holiday ignores the long-term issues. We need to move out of the current frame of thinking -- i.e., how to lower gas prices. That line of thinking will not sustain us. We need to start thinking about how we can make fundamental changes in the way that we live our lives. Few people want to do that because it requires energy and sacrifices on the individual level. I know that it just sucks to give up that big SUV in favor of a fuel-efficient car and it is probably a HUGE hassle to walk four blocks to get your morning latte rather than drive and an extra hour tacked onto a long trip is downright annoying, but these are sacrifices that we can live through. These are sacrifices that the government should start asking people to make. If Bush can stand up and say that it is patriotic to support an unjust and horrible war, then government officials can stand up and say that it is patriotic to support the survival of the planet.

So that was a sort of random, stream of consciousness on the issue (dammit, I said I wasn't going to do those!) I apologize and promise that I will try to be more coherent the next time I write. Maybe I'll stay away from political issues for a while, they bring out the "ranter" in me :)

ARE DEMOCRATS TRYING TO SELF-DESTRUCT?

2008-04-24T18:53:00.005-05:00

The other day when I was listening to Air America (or, actually, Madison's local version -- The Mic 92.1) I heard a staggering statistic: apparently more than a quarter of Hillary Clinton supporters say that if Barack Obama is the Democratic nominee, they will not vote for him. The number of Obama supporters that allegedly will not vote for Clinton is a bit smaller. But still, the fact remains that a huge percentage of people are so stubbornly committed to their candidate of choice that they would apparently rather see another four years of Republican rule than concede defeat. What the hell is the matter with these people??

Do Hillary Clinton supporters really think that John McCain would be a better choice for president than Barack Obama (and vice-versa)? If that's true then they are completely deluded. Because McCain is the darling of the media, he has wrongfully been painted as some type of maverick, Independent when the reality is that in the past year his Senate votes supported the Bush Administration nearly 90% of the time. The same is true for his voting record since he took office. On most of the key issues that Democrats care about he is consistently conservative. He supports the repeal of Roe v. Wade (he was given a 0% rating by NARAL -- National Abortion & Reproductive Rights Action League), he has a strong anti-union voting record (he has a score of only 15% by the AFL-CIO), he has voted to continue the Patriot Act, to repeal habeas corpus for Guantanamo Bay detainees, he has no type of universal health care plan, he opposes restrictions on assault weapons, he supports NAFTA and all types of free-trade agreements that essentially support shipping American jobs overseas, he does not support the Kyoto Protocol and thinks we should re-invest oil profits in nuclear power, his solution to public education problems is more charter schools, homeschooling and school vouchers, he thinks that we need more of the death penalty and more prisons and believes in prosecuting youth as adults, he thinks the solution for keeping jobs in America is to further cut corporate income taxes yet he voted against repealing a tax subsidy for corporations that move jobs overseas, he voted against adding sexual orientation to the definition of hate crimes, he was given a rating of 0% by the ACLU (ZERO PERCENT!), 33% by the Human Rights Campaign, and 7% by the NAACP, he voted against outlawing job discrimination based on sexual orientation and finally he believes that the Ten Commandments would bring "virtue to our schools." Not to mention there are many other things generally wrong with him (like that he doesn't seem to really understand that Al-Qaeda is Sunni and not Shiite).

Do I need to say more to convince people that John McCain is not a friend to the Democrats??! Look, I voted for Barack Obama in the Wisconsin primary. It was a really difficult decision, as I have been a huge Hillary Clinton fan for years and years. (In fact, if only I had a scanner available I would post a picture of me gleefully standing outside her Senate office on my senior AP Government trip to D.C.!) However, I found myself feeling disgusted by some of her campaign strategies, such as the 3 AM phone call ad which I felt essentially said, "If you vote for Obama, terrorists will kill you." Some people think that Obama's lack of negativity shows weakness on his part, and maybe he should fight back sometimes and that the "I'm a lover, not a fighter" thing won't do us any good in the general election. But for some reason I am really turned off by negativity, and so in the end it was Obama's positive energy that brought me to his side. That and the years he spent working as a community organizer. As someone with a degree in social work, I got really excited by that. But despite my current support of Obama, if Hillary Clinton is the nominee, I will vote for her. If it ends up that she gets the nomination through some type of back room deal with the super delegates, I may have to hold my breath as I mark her name on my ballot, but I will still do it. Why? Because I am not interested in another four years of the Bush legacy.

So even if you are an Independent that has gone Democrat this year because you like Obama or you like Clinton, let me remind you that these two candidates are much more alike than they are different. If you are willing to support Obama's policies, then remember that Clinton's policies are not so different from his. McCain's on the other hand are a world away. If you are a Democrat and think you would be better off voting Republican than voting for the Democrat that you didn't support: SHAME ON YOU. You will be responsible for the Democrats losing what should have been a guaranteed victory in November. And when you discover that the next four years are just as bad as the past eight, you will have no right to complain.

PROPAGANDA SUCKS!

2008-04-21T21:30:00.007-05:00

When I was reading through my initial entry on this topic, I realized that I desperately need to work on being more concise. So rather than regale you with my description of a lovely spring day at the Dane County Farmers' Market, I will jump right to the point. When I was at the Market on the Capitol Square this past Sunday, I noticed a large rally on the Capitol steps. Using my excellent detective skills, I determined that it was a Human Rights Torch Relay rally . There were hundreds of individuals there, many of them Tibetan refugees and Tibetan-Americans, protesting China's human rights abuses and occupation of Tibet. Speeches were given and statements by people such as Congresswoman Tammy Baldwin and Senator Russ Feingold were read. Some Tibetan children performed a dance.

There were also protests organized by the local Chinese embassy and Chinese student groups. One of these Chinese protesters gave me a pamphlet, which upon reading turned out to be straight-up propaganda about Tibet. A protester standing next to her was holding a board with photos, captioned "Smiles of Tibetans." According to the pamphlet I received, Tibet has flourished under Chinese occupation. Basically, Tibetans should be really grateful to the Chinese for bringing them into the 21st century. The last page shows a photo of a Tibetan protester attacking the torch bearer of the Olympic relay in Paris. Across the page it states, "Violence is NEVER a solution."

I don't even want to get into the laughable hypocrisy involved in that statement, but I can't help from noting a few points. First of all, human rights organizations around the world and the U.S. Department of State have condemned China's human rights record. In a measure by the U.S. House of Representatives, it was cited that China has killed, tortured, imprisoned, raped and savagely beaten thousands of individuals for their spiritual practices. China has no right to claim the moral high ground on issues of non-violence, especially when the Dalai Lama, the spiritual leader of Tibet, strongly opposes all forms of violence and has spoken out publicly against any violence perpetrated by Tibetan protesters.

To claim that China's occupation of Tibet is acceptable because the country has been modernized is ludicrous. Who's to say that the country couldn't have modernized on its own? The propaganda sheet that I received invited foreigners to come and see for themselves the "real truth" about Tibet by visiting the country. Well, unfortunately that is currently impossible since China has banned tourism to Tibet -- including entry by foreign journalists. But as a matter of fact, I happen to know some people who have visited Tibet and they left the country with an intense hatred for what the Chinese have done. According to them (and this has been corroborated by real news sources), the number of ethnic Tibetans will soon be smaller than the numbers of Han Chinese who have infiltrated the country. The Chinese have moved millions of their own citizens into Tibet, and the basic infrastructure of the country has slowly been changed to cater to the Chinese. The woman that I know who visited the country said that she won't be surprised if pretty soon signs written in Tibetan will be removed, leaving up only the ones in Chinese. Tibetans are not allowed to openly practice their religion -- even photographs of the Dalai Lama are banned in Tibet. Most recently, China has ordered Tibetans to undergo "patriotic education" (i.e. brainwashing) in regards to the Dalai Lama an the Tibetan community in exile.

"Genocide" might seem like a heavy word for what China has done in Tibet, but it is accurate. According to the 1948 United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, genocide is, "any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: killing members of the group; causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life, calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; [and] forcibly transferring children of the group to another group." Genocide does not have to involve actual killing (although thousands of Tibetans have lost their lives thanks to the Chinese), it is simply the systematic destruction of a culture. China has without a doubt spent the past fifty years trying to wipe out Tibetan culture and replace it with its own.

And people within China don't see anything wrong with it, because as far as they are concerned nothing bad is going on in Tibet. Thanks to the Chinese government's fabulous propaganda campaign. My best friend's cousin was in China and he did an internet search of the keyword "Tibet" and all that came up were government websites spewing propaganda. Many of us in the U.S. (myself included) complain about the Bush administration and the propaganda on the Iraq war, etc. But we really have no idea what it is like to live in a country where the press is truly censored; where citizens only have access to what the government decides is appropriate; where the types of rallies and open demonstrations and dialogue that we engage in all the time in the United States would land us in jail in China.

I know people who are Chinese. When I was living in Portugal, some of my fellow foreign students were from China and they were some of the nicest people imaginable. I have nothing against the people of China. It's not their fault that they have grown up in a country where the government tells them what to think about things like Tibet. When they come to the United States and to other countries, I can understand why they have a hard time accepting what we have to say about it. They have been told something else for their whole lives.

And that is why propaganda sucks!

And that is also why I will not be watching the Olympics this year.

THE ETHICS OF OUTING

2008-02-05T20:14:00.007-06:00

On a recent episode of The L Word, the character Alice outs a [fictional] NBA star after he appears on TV spouting some homophobic drivel. She posts on her website some secretly taken footage of said star and his boyfriend, and before she knows it the footage has gone viral. Shortly afterwards she is invited to appear on a news show where viewers are essentially posed the question: when, if ever, is it acceptable to "out" someone?

There are some who believe that celebrities or other influential individuals that are lesbian or gay have a responsibility to be open about their sexual orientation in order to set an example and increase acceptance. Gossip bloggers such as Perez Hilton have made a career out of speculating on the private lives of the famous. He is said to be responsible for the rumors that led to the eventual outings of both Grey's Anatomy star T.R. Knight and former Doogie Howser celeb Neil Patrick Harris. Many of these gossip bloggers, especially those that are also gay, seem to feel that stars who choose to remain closeted are living a lie and feeding into the homophobia that exists in both Hollywood and the larger society. Others have rightly pointed out the problems that a no-longer-closeted star faces.

For someone like Ellen Degeneres, for example, being out has ultimately not hindered her career. But for a younger celebrity, whose career has been built on sex appeal, coming out of the closet just might be the kiss of death. Another recent L Word episode explores this, when Alice sort of outs another character: the sexy young actress Niki Stevens. Tina, who is producing Les Girls, the new film Niki is starring in, is furious. She says to Alice, "We want this movie to reach a large, mainstream audience, all right? And if everyone thinks the lead of our movie is gay, then that makes it a small, little niche film." Niki's agents are equally nervous about her being outed, saying that no guys are going to want to watch her on screen if they think that she's only interested in women. Applying it to real life, would all the young girls go crazy over tween sensations like Zac Efron or the Jonas Brothers if they thought that they were gay?

But beyond the issue of potential career damage, there is the matter of personal choice and integrity. Celebrities are human beings, not products owned by the public domain. It's true that being famous means being in the public eye and being scrutinized to a higher degree than the average person. But there comes a point when a line is crossed. Everyone, after all, deserves a degree of privacy, especially when it comes to family and loved ones. Do we really want to force someone out of the closet who is not ready? Doesn't that diminish both the importance of the act and the courage that is required to take that step? Ellen Degeneres is praised both for coming out at a time when not a lot of gay celebrities were openly revealing their sexuality and for the integrity surrounding her decision. Doesn't everyone deserve to have that kind of integrity surrounding what is likely to be the most difficult revelation of their life? Recently out former NBA-player John Amaechi says, "I wanted to [come out] in a way that I could control to make sure that the message was confluent and coherent and that I was mentally, physically and emotionally resilient." Should not every person have that amount of control over something so important?

Then there is the matter of those individuals, such as Jodie Foster, who have already had long and successful careers, and who have been long-rumored to be gay. Many think that they should just come out already because they don't really have anything to lose at this point. This is a tough issue because, on the one hand, it certainly can be infuriating to lesbians and gays who are desperate for increased visibility. For them, it seems that someone who refuses to come out after so many successful years in the industry is only perpetuating the idea that homosexuality is something shameful that should remain a secret. But then again, does a person's age or the length of their career mean that they should have any less right to their privacy? Just because they have "nothing to lose" doesn't mean that they are necessarily ready to admit their sexuality to a still largely homophobic society -- that they are ready to be "out and proud" or be spokespeople for LGBT rights. It's unfortunate, of course it's unfortunate. And at times it might feel like a slap in the face to the many individuals who took tremendous risks and suffered huge losses by being open about their sexuality. But does the lesbian and gay community truly want to be represented by those who are uncomfortable with being out? A better and more honorable goal might be working towards ending the attitudes and the other reasons that are keeping celebrities and others in the closet. Or perhaps supporting and getting into the mainstream performers who have been out from the start, such as actors Leisha Hailey, Jill Bennett, and Michelle Paradise, comedian Bridget McManus, or musicians Tegan and Sara (among many, many others).

Finally, we come back to the initial question, which asked when, if ever, it is okay to out someone. Although I have touched upon some gray areas, I think mostly I have given scenarios where it is probably better to leave the outing up to the person who is coming out. But I still haven't explored Alice's situation -- namely, is it alright -- maybe even imperative -- to out those who are perpetuating homophobic hatred? On The L Word Alice thought so. When she made her appearance on the news show Hardline, the interviewer attacked her for destroying a man's family and career and for violating his privacy. Alice says:

"No, I'm talking. I'm not finished. Listen. Gay people are bashed and harassed and killed every day. And then you've got this guy who's gay himself, and he's saying this garbage? It's disgusting! I totally respect someone's choice to stay in the closet. I do. If that's what they want to do, I get it. But I don't think it's OK to kiss your boyfriend one day and then go out and trash gay people the next. Especially if you're a public figure and you have people looking up to you. No, I don't feel bad. I do not feel bad about what I did."

Hmmm ... now here is where we come to perhaps the most ethically ambiguous area of the "outing" debate. Alice, while a fictional character, holds an opinion that is probably shared by many people. Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank, for example, holds that it is acceptable to "out" gay politicians who act in homophobic ways. He says, "The fact is, yes, the Republicans do think [homosexuality] should be a crime. And I think there’s a right to privacy. But the right to privacy should not be a right to hypocrisy...people who want to demonize other people shouldn’t then be able to go home and close the door, and do it themselves," Still, others believe that even homophobic actions do not justify outing any individual because it implies that there is something wrong with being gay and because it is probably going to be harmful to that person's family. A 2005 article from Tacoma, WA's News Tribune explores this issue in further depth.

So is outing a homophobic individual justified? My opinion? I just don't know the answer. I definitely feel a certain level of satisfaction in seeing a bigoted individual get his or her comeuppance, but at the same time I would like to see less negative press surrounding homosexuality. Perhaps it is much better to focus on getting positive press for the LGBT community than to carry out some kind of vendetta against those who have harmed the community. Again I want to stress that I think the most important thing is to work towards creating a world where people want to live freely and openly, and are able to do it without fear of negative consequences.

TEEN PREGNANCY ON THE RISE

2008-01-22T20:29:00.005-06:00

For a long time now the United States has been one of the highest ranking countries in the West when it comes to teen pregnancies (the only Western, industrialized nation with a higher rate is Russia). But throughout the nineties, the numbers were slowly decreasing. Now, the CDC reports that the teen pregnancy rate has risen for the first time in 14 years. The question on everyone's mind is: Why?

Of course this is a complex issue, but we might want to look towards the moral attitudes and policies that have shaped America over the past eight years. Fourteen, fifteen, sixteen-year-old girls have grown up amid policies that restrict their access to information regarding safe sex; they have grown up in an environment that has become increasingly puritan and silent regarding sexuality. Meanwhile, they have grown up surrounded by pop culture that continues to objectify and oversexualize women.

One of Bush's big initiatives after taking office was encouraging schools to adopt "abstinence-only" sex education programs through nearly $1 billion of federal spending spread out over 5 years. These sex-ed programs not only teach teens that abstinence is the only form of contraception and protection against STDs for teens, they are often misleading and provide false information. A 2004 Washington Post article cites a government report which discovered that these federally funded programs frequently provide kids with medically inaccurate information, such as that condoms fail to prevent HIV transmission as often as 31% of the time for heterosexual couples (in truth, when used correctly condoms will fail less than 3% of the time) and that as many as 10% of women who have abortions become sterile (there is virtually no risk of sterility when an abortion is performed safely by a medical professional). Some programs told kids that HIV can be spread via sweat and tears; other abstinence education courses presented as scientific fact a man's need for "sexual fulfillment" and "admiration" and a woman's need for "financial support."

Many of these programs also perpetuate stereotypes about boys being overly sexual and girls being the ones responsible for saying no. A 2006 AlterNet article says that the abstinence double standard promoted by these programs threatens girls' health. The article cites various examples from abstinence-only program workbooks: "The sexist theme that seems to come up the most often in these classes is that girls just don't like sex, and therefore their main "job" is to keep boys, who do like sex, from getting any. A workbook from Sex Respect notes that "because they generally become aroused less easily, females are in a good position to help young men learn balance in relationships by keeping intimacy in perspective." But beware ladies, the increased sexualization of pop culture could interfere with your natural disdain for intercourse. The same workbook tells students that "a young man's natural desire for sex is already strong due to testosterone … females are becoming culturally conditioned to fantasize about sex as well."

The author, Jessica Valenti, explains: "The only messages put forward about boys' sexuality is the idea that their urges are uncontrollable, and it's up to young women not to "tease" them." She furthermore reveals that the increasing obsession with girls' purity has led to many decisions which undermine girls' abilities to protect their health. For example, the new HPV vaccine which has been proven extremely effective in preventing cervical cancer is still outrageously expensive (close to $400 for the three-part vaccine) and not even covered by many insurance companies. Conservative abstinence educators, such as Leslie Unruh of the National Abstinence Clearinghouse, believe that there is no reason to vaccinate children against a disease that is "100 percent preventable with proper sexual behavior." These same attitudes have led to other actions, such as making it increasingly difficult for women to get affordable access to such things as birth control and emergency contraceptive (also known as "the morning after pill" or "Plan B.")

Once upon a time, pharmaceutical companies provided low-cost pricing to college health services nationwide. As a result, university students were able to get birth control through their university health service at a very low cost or even for free. Last year, new legislation by the federal government forbid these type of contracts between colleges and pharmaceutical companies. As a result, the cost of birth control sky-rocketed to as much as triple or quadruple the original price. For many college students, the new prices became unaffordable. Others found themselves having to apply for aid. In Wisconsin, the Wisconsin's Family Planning Waiver covers the cost of contraceptives for qualified patients. But the result of that is a further strain on taxpayers to cover new participants that previously would not have needed the program, had the federal government not pushed through completely moralistic legislation.

Luckily, Planned Parenthood is still available for young women who want to get low-cost contraception. Unfortunately, Planned Parenthood's presence is scarce in many areas of the country. Mississippi, for example, has only one health center in the entire state. Tennessee has 3, Idaho, Louisiana and Arkansas have 2 each and Kentucky has 4. Wisconsin, on the other hand, has 31. Oregon has 17, Minnesota and Illinois each have 25, New York has 78, Washington has 46 and Michigan has 29. Delaware, a state only a smidgen the size of Mississippi has 5 centers. (Go here to find out how many health centers an individual state has). Needless to say, access to family planning throughout the country is highly unbalanced. At least if a girl in Wisconsin is told to abstain, she has somewhere to go for alternate information if she chooses not to. And if a girl in Illinois just can't "control" her boyfriend's "natural desires" and has unprotected sex, at least there are places she can go to get emergency contraception the next day.

But even for girls and women who do have access to these services, the ability to obtain them is becoming increasingly difficult. The anti-choice segment of the population has made significant strides in reducing a woman's ability to obtain an abortion: the costs are astronomical and not covered by insurance, some states have few, if any, medically-trained abortion providers, and many states require 24-hour wait-periods and mandatory counseling and ultrasound. But, not surprisingly, while the Right has put more and more restrictions on abortion, they have done nothing to prevent the need for it. In fact, they seem to be only interested in actions that have been proven to increase the number of unintended pregnancies. Planned Parenthood and other pro-choice organizations have taken on the responsibility of preventing the need for abortion. An article in Slate, written in January 2008, titled Let's Be Frank About Teen Sex and Abortion, explains that Planned Parenthood president Cecile Richards, "Boasted correctly, that Planned Parenthood did "more to prevent unintended pregnancies, and the need for abortion, than any organization in America."" In a 2006 Huffington Post article, Richards, muses, "Imagine a day when every woman has access to the information and services she needs to stay healthy and, if she chooses, to plan healthy, wanted pregnancies. A day when teens, too, have every chance to prevent unintended pregnancy, get an education and stay on track to fulfill their dreams. Comprehensive access to the full range of birth control options -- including [Emergency Contraception] -- would inevitably reduce the need for abortion. That's a commonsense goal." A commonsense goal that our government has been doing little to reach.

And unfortunately it seems that the message that abstinence is the only effective method of preventing unwanted pregnancies and sexual transmitted infection, coupled with this increasingly restricted access to and information about contraception and family planning has taken its toll. A January 2008 article in the Huffington Post cited statistics that show that since 2003 contraception use among teens has declined, while the level of sexual activity has remained constant. Basically, kids aren't having less sex. They're just having less protected sex. And the result? 750,000 teen pregnancies in the next year, along with 4 million teens contracting STDs.

Telling teens that abstinence is the only answer has dangerous outcomes. First of all, it fosters an environment where teenagers are uncomfortable discussing sex and sexuality with adults. It turns sex into some kind of clandestine, shameful affair so that when a teenager makes the decision to engage in sexual intercourse, he or she will be less likely to turn to an adult for support in protecting him/herself. Secondly, promoting abstinence also means that those same teens are going to be less likely to be able to get information/protection on their own. Many girls are under the impression that if they go on the pill, they are going to be admitting that they are a failure. And didn't they learn in Sex Ed that condoms fail half the time? And since teens aren't getting real sex education from adults, they are left to learn all about sex from the entertainment world. And the media continues to put forward the message that a girl's greatest asset is her body.

The truth is, that what really prevents reckless or premature sexual activity is honest, open dialogue, trusting relationships between teens and adults and high levels of self-esteem and self-respect in girls. As Richards explains: "All our experience shows that the more young people have their questions answered openly about contraception, relationships, and sexual health, the more likely they are to delay sexual activity. And when they do become sexually active, whether in their teen years, or optimally, later on, the more likely they are to have safer sex and use contraceptives correctly."

It's time to stop moralizing and be realistic. Hopefully it is not too late to undo the damage that has been done to the new and upcoming generations of young people.

THE L WORD: FOR BETTER, FOR WORSE

2008-01-17T14:00:00.002-06:00

When The L Word debuted on Showtime in early 2004, no one really expected it to have the lasting success that it has since enjoyed. Now into its fifth season, the "lesbian drama" remains one of Showtime's most popular series, and it has garnered a loyal following of lesbians, bisexual women, straight women, gay men and straight men alike. It reaches audiences across the world, as far away as South Africa, Russia and Brazil. It led to last year's introduction of OurChart, a networking site for queer women with original editorial and multimedia content. And it has attracted such guest stars as varied as Anne Archer, Roseanna Arquette, Anabella Sciorra, Ossie Davis, Arianna Huffington, Camryn Manheim, and Snoop Dogg (among others). Season 4 saw the addition of actors Marlee Matlin and Cybil Shepard to the cast. In other words, The L Word has transcended both initial expectations as well as its target audience, making significant contributions to popular culture. Not to mention what it has done for lesbian visibility in the media.

Of course the show is not without its faults, and sometimes I wonder what keeps bringing me back season after season. Well, it's an addicting guilty pleasure and in a class of its own in terms of representation of queer women on TV. Besides the teen drama South of Nowhere, which I have written about previously, as well as a new series, Exes and Ohs on LOGO (MTV Network's "gay" channel), The L Word remains a forerunner in lesbian visibility. Something which, as GLAAD has pointed out, is seriously lacking on television these days. So I keep watching, despite the show's sometimes painful flaws. But that's not to say there is nothing positive. In fact, there is quite a lot of positive things about it. So, allow me to share my thoughts on the "Best and Worst" of The L Word.

"DANA, MOST GIRLS ARE STRAIGHT ... UNTIL THEY'RE NOT" -- WHY I WATCH

Naturally, I can't speak for every viewer of the show, but here are my opinions on the positive aspects of The L Word.

1. Positive representations of lesbians and their lives
It's a television show, so it can't be expected to reflect reality at all times (or even most times). That's what we have "reality" TV for. But The L Word challenges stereotypes and preconceived notions about lesbians. The women on the show are attractive, successful, independent and interesting. The author of a 2005 article for New York Metro asserts, the women of The L Word, while oft-times criticized for being "too beautiful" (on a recent broadcast of The View, guest Jennifer Beals was asked "Aren't there any ugly lesbians?"), finally help gay women to break free of the long-held stereotypes. The author states, "After years of living down our dumpy reputation, perhaps it behooves us to put our best, most made-up faces forward, for a change. I mean, how many “anomalous” dykes does it take to prove to straights and gay boys that not all lesbians wear bolo ties and Birkenstocks?"

For gay women, there is an affirmation of their lives and sexualities. Producer Ilene Chaiken says about the show, “There’s a unique anthropology to our lives. It makes these stories especially worth telling because most people don’t know these details. The lesbian characters we’ve seen were mostly created by men. We’ve been marginalized from the culture for a very long time, and I think that we’re ready to claim our rightful place.” A 2005 article in Inside Entertainment contends, "The L Word is groundbreaking simply because it’s helping to reshape the lesbian image within the mainstream, and is an archetype for lesbians to own and embrace their sexuality. At a time in North America where homosexuality and gay marriage are politically contentious issues, The L Word may well be a catalyst to change and expand cultural attitudes on the intricacies of women’s sexuality."

In this clip, Bette finds out that Tina and her are going to have a baby

2. Straight viewers can relate!
One of the things that has come as a surprise to many of those involved in the show is its appeal to a wide demographic. It's true, straight women love the show. Why this should come as a surprise, I'm not really sure, since gay women certainly don't seem to have much of a problem watching and relating to shows and movies about straight people. Nevertheless, it can certainly be viewed as a good thing that straight people like the show. Jennifer Beals, who plays the character Bette on the show, said in a 2004 interview with Steppin' Out Magazine, "I think the show makes clear, all of us have the same issues of love, loneliness, work, ambition, and family. We share all of those concerns. The L Word helps normalize these relationships." Straight women can watch the show and see that many of the issues that the women on the show face are no less alien to them than the issues being faced by the ladies of Sex and the City. In a time in history pivotal to the civil rights movement for LGBT individuals, something like a television show that makes the lives of gay people seem less alien is a good thing. When speaking on the controversies surrounding gay marriage and how something like The L Word can make an impact, Beals (who is, by the way, heterosexual), has this to say: "It's based in fear, fear of the other, fear of what is not like you," she says. "But when you are able to see lives on a day-to-day basis, rather than reducing it to politics, then it humanizes a whole community of people that were otherwise invisible. I think pop culture is really helpful in letting people see another side of life
Here is one of my favorite scenes from Season 4, where all the women are talking on the phone with one another. I mean, who can't relate to this?

3. Not afraid to poke some fun -- Camp runs rampant
I'm always up for some fun gay camp, for some hilarious exaggerations of stereotypes. (I loved the movie But I'm a Cheerleader). The L Word sometimes toes the line between camp and actual perpetuation of stereotypes, but overall things tend to turn out fairly well. For someone unfamiliar with "gay culture" and lesbian stereotypes, this stuff might just go over his or her head. Which might be why some straight reviewers have been unable to appreciate the show. On the other hand, some gay viewers might find themselves offended by what they view as outright stereotypes. I say that it should, for the most part, be taken in jest and enjoyed. Season 1 might have had some of the best material, and a writer over at AfterEllen wrote a terrific article back in 2004 called All-Girls' Camp: Playful Exaggeration of Lesbianism in "The L Word". The author, Nora Spencer, explains the characters as following: "The characters on the show aren’t meant to be literal embodiments of all lesbians, but caricatures of lesbian stereotypes, playful exaggerations of lesbian extremes: Bette (Jennifer Beals) is the type-A breadwinner; Tina (Laurel Holloman), the fertile housewife; Shane (Katherine Moennig), the sensitive stud; Dana (Erin Daniels), the dyke tennis player; Alice (Leisha Hailey), the quirky bisexual; Ivan (Kelly Lynch), the gentlemanly gender-bender."

Spencer also refers to the various "campy terms" used in the show, such as: "Lesbian bed death", "The Lesbian Urge to Merge", "Has-bian", "Turkey baster", "U-Haul" and "Dyke Drama." She also refers to the idea of the "Lesbian look" which is brought up a number of times in Season 1. One of the most hilarious exaggerations of the idea that all lesbians can fit into a certain "box" occurs when Dana is trying to determine whether a woman she is interested in "plays for the gay team", as Alice refers to it as. What ensues is a "mission deployment" by the women of the show where they use visual cues to try to determine said woman's sexuality:

BETTE: Well, she's got some good lezzy points for her walk and the way she moves that chopping knife.
SHANE: But she's way femmy on the coiffure tip.
ALICE: Yeah, and her reaction to the two of you kissing was split because she didn't freak out which was a good sign, but she hardly paid any attention.
TINA: But you guys, she's got nine in the lez column and she only has seven in the straight.

Overall, the show's ability to sort of poke-fun at lesbian stereotypes makes for some great comedy.

4. The arrival of ethnic diversity and issues of race
From the beginning the show had at least some diversity. Bette, one of the main characters (played by Jennifer Beals) is biracial and her sister Kit (played by Pam Grier) is black. In Season 1 the issue of race was explored somewhat during a few episodes in which Bette and her partner Tina (played by Laurel Holloman) were in group therapy. In their group was a black woman named Yolanda who harped on Bette for supposedly not identifying as a black woman. Bette criticized Yolanda for placing her sexual identity behind her various other identities. Additionally, when Bette and Tina were trying to decide on a sperm donor for the child they planned to have, race also came into play. Bette wanted to use an African American donor so that their child would be representative of the both of them. Tina wondered whether she was prepared to be the mother of a biracial child and whether it was too much "otherness" to place on a baby (Ultimately, the did use a black donor).

However, the majority of the cast remained lily-white until Season 2 when a "Latina" joined the cast in the form of Carmen de la Pica Morales (played by Sarah Shahi). Now, I put Latina in quotes because the actress playing Carmen was actually a mix of Mediterranean and Persian heritages, although the character was supposed to be Chicana. Now, there is plenty to say on this issue as well as on the issue of how Carmen's Mexican family was portrayed. But I will save any comments for by "Worst of" list. At least the show was trying to be inclusive. And in Season 4, while we lost Carmen, we gained another "Latina" character, Papi (played by Janina Gavankar -- again not a Latina actress). Another lesbian of color arrived in the form of Tasha (played by Rose Rollins), a black woman serving in the military.

While The L Word may not be as diverse as it could be (still hoping for some representation of Asian women), it certainly does better than many other shows -- including hits like Sex and the City. And for that, I have to give it some praise.

5. Transgender issues
Season 3 was hailed for bringing the arrival of The L Word's first "butch" character. One of the criticisms of the show was how femme all the women were. The characters that came closest to being "butch" was Shane (played by Kate Moennig), who was really more of the waifish, androgynous type. Jenny's (Mia Kirshner) new girlfriend Moira (played by Daniela Sea) really did seem to be what we would call a "butch" lesbian. But not too far into the season Moira revealed that she actually had always felt like she was meant to be a man. So she began a transition into Max and we got the first real transgender character on the show. In Season 1 and 2 we saw the character Ivan (played by Kelly Lynch), who was a Drag King and quite possibly transgendered, but that issue was never explored in detail. In Max/Moira, we got the first glimpse at transgender issues.

Unfortunately, many people feel that the issue was not dealt with well and that poor acting skills further detracted from a potentially powerful storyline. I have to agree that the storyline could have and probably should have been a lot better, considering how misunderstood transgender issues are. But at least they tried, which is at least one step forward.

6. Coming out in Mid-life
In Season 4 Cybill Shepherd made her debut as Phyllis, the Vice-Chancellor of the fictional California University, where Bette landed a position as Dean of the Art School. Shortly into the season, Phyllis reveals to Bette that she thinks she is a lesbian. Throughout the rest of the season we see Phyllis experience her first love affair with another woman and come out to her family, thereby ending her marriage of thirty years. In Season 5, Phyllis is in a serious relationship with another woman but is thinking about playing the field, finally seeing all the options that are open to her. Sexuality in older women is something that is rarely seen on TV in the first place, so it is refreshing to see a middle-aged woman experiencing a sexual awakening. And it is also true that there are many women who marry young and take years before they fully realize/accept their real sexual identity. I'm glad that the show is featuring this demographic of women.

7. Leisha Hailey, Comedic gold and Group Dynamics
Probably my absolute favorite thing about The L Word is Leisha Hailey, who plays the role of bisexual journalist/radio host/internet writer Alice Pieszecki. Hailey was not widely known before landing her role on the show, although gay women might have known her from a small role in the 1997 lesbian film All Over Me, or from her position as lead singer in the pop duo The Murmurs, or as former girlfriend to musician k.d. lang. But after landing the role of Alice, women everywhere fell in love with her. Her acting skills are genuinely good, with dead-on comic timing and the ability to generate heartfelt emotion during more dramatic scenes. Her on-screen chemistry with Erin Daniels, who played Dana in Seasons 1-3 also contributed significantly. From Alice tagging along while Dana planned to come out to her parents at their Country Club ("I can act Republican!") in Season 1, to the two of them role-playing in Season 2 ("Captain, my Captain!") to Alice's psycho-obsession in Season 3, whether as best friends or as lovers, those two were comedic gold. And even with Dana now gone, Alice continues to be one of the best parts of the show. And viewers seem to agree. Leisha Hailey was voted as #1 on the AfterEllen Hot 100 list of 2007.

And on the topic of comedy, the group scenes of the show really continue to be some of the best. Season 1 saw a lot more of these, we drifted away from them in later seasons, but have luckily begun to see a return. One of the things that works best about the group scenes are the great dynamics between the characters. They are funny, warm and really embody female friendships. That's what people like to see. Season 1 was filled with parties, poker games, sleepovers, and roadtrips to Dinah Shore weekend. I hope that we see more of that in Season 5 because those group scenes really are some of the best parts of the show.

Here is a clip from Season 1 that highlights some of the group interactions:

8. Beautiful women
Okay, so I'm not completely shallow and I know that one of the criticisms of the show is that all the women are pretty gorgeous, but it also does make it enjoyable! Besides, it isn't fair to expect the show to represent all gay women. Nobody expects a show like Sex and the City to be representative of all straight women after all. So in addition to all the other great things about The L Word, getting to see gorgeous women like Rachel Shelley, Jennifer Beals, Sarah Shahi, etc. is just an extra perk!

"IS THIS A BISEXUAL THING?" -- THE THINGS THAT MAKE ME SQUIRM

1. Big gaping holes where plot should be
Even some of the best shows on TV unfortunately have the occasional plot hole, but some of the ones that turn up on The L Word are incredibly annoying. It makes you wonder if some of the writers just joined in without watching or reviewing previous episodes. One of the biggest annoyances is the case of the disappearing character. In Season 1, we learn that Marina (played by Karina Lombard) was in a long-term, live-in relationship with Francesca. Francesca was the financing behind Marina's business, the cafe The Planet. At the start of Season 2, Marina has attempted suicide and has returned to Italy to stay with her mother. Suddenly, Francesca is never mentioned again and the character Kit is trying to buy The Planet from Marina's family, when in Season 1 Marina had been trying to figure out how to buy The Planet for herself and win her autonomy from Francesca. So that didn't make any sense to someone who had actually been following the details of the show.

In Season 2, Jenny and Shane become roommates and get a third roommate, the token "straight guy" Mark who turns out to be a voyeuristic creep. But at the end of the season, Jenny has decided to let Mark continue living with them. Season 3, Mark is gone and it isn't mentioned at all what happened to him. I didn't really care much what happened to him, but still -- where did he go? Carmen was a main character on the show in Seasons 2 and 3 and at the end of Season 3, her and Shane were supposed to get married until she was left at the altar by Shane. After that she completely disappeared and wasn't mentioned again. I thought that this was completely peculiar, since all of women on the show represented her main group of friends. Why did everyone stop being friends with her? Naturally, they did this because they had dropped the actress Sarah Shahi from the show. But they could have tied that storyline off a little better, like said that she moved away or something to get over her and Shane's break-up or something. In Season 4, the character Papi showed up and suddenly became buddies with everyone. In Season 5, she's disappeared. Most viewers didn't like Papi very much, so maybe that's why they got rid of her. But, again, no explanation? In my opinion, a well-written show should have some sort of explanation for these types of character disappearances, even if it is only one line thrown in.

2. Did you have a personality transplant? -- Character 180's
This is one of the most obnoxious things about the show in my opinion because it really reflects poor writing. Good writers should be able to create believable character development. Obviously, people do change over time, but it shouldn't just happen out of nowhere. Some of the characters on The L Word are seriously all over the place and viewers just can't follow. One great example is Helena. When she appeared in Season 2, she was the perfect example of a "power lesbian." She was successful, determined, and pretty predatory. She knew what she wanted and went after it, not caring who she stamped on along the way. "Giving" would be last word that anyone would think of to describe Helena, and pretty much no one liked her. But in Season 3, Helena has inexplicably become Alice's best friend and was suddenly the nicest person in the world -- helping Alice through her break-up with Dana, using her private jet to fly everyone to a basketball game, paying for Shane and Carmen's wedding in Canada. What the hell happened? I think the writers wanted to keep Rachel Shelley on, which makes sense because she's beautiful and a pretty decent actor. But in Season 2, the Helena storyline seemed to not have anywhere else to go. So I guess they decided to give her a personality transplant rather than create a new character. An AfterEllen writer comments on Helena's transformation: "The (questionable) writing was really on the wall when Alice started acting like Helena was her BFF (Best Friend Forever). Why was Alice practicing yoga with Helena and insisting on her inclusion in The Group? What happened over the summer that made these two so tight? Maybe Alice had something to do with the soul transplant that transformed Helena from the umbilical cord-twisting villain of Season 2 into a three-dimensional human being."

Meanwhile, the viewers were left extremely confused.

Tina is another character that has been all over the place. At the end of Season 2, her and Bette have just gotten back together and had a baby girl, Angelica. At the beginning of Season 3, their relationship is suddenly failing and Tina has gone from being a sweet and caring person to pretty much a bitch who is having a cyber-relationship with a man. Later she decides to leave Bette to pursue relationships with men, yet she still identifies herself as a lesbian. She acts very confrontational and is always yelling at Bette whenever they are together. As AfterEllen writer Karman Kregloe stated in an article on Season 3, "Tina deciding that she's bisexual is one thing, but it's as if she's become repulsed by her former lesbianism. And the notion of Tina's sexuality being in question felt more like a plot device than a complex issue with which the character had been struggling. Representing the only long-term lesbian relationship on the show (on any show, for that matter) as an “8 ½ year aberration” isn't terribly revolutionary. If viewers wanted to see that, they could watch…anything else on network television." Season 4, her relationship with "the man" ends pretty much out of nowhere after she realizes that he is, well, a man and suddenly she appears to be attracted to Bette again. What??! Now, in Season 5, she is totally over the man thing and wants Bette back. Writers, get your act together.

3. Jenny Schecter
Along the line of character 180's, Jenny is one of the few characters that drives me crazy. In Season 1, she went through her sexual awakening. In Season 2, out of nowhere she went through some kind of nervous breakdown and became a cutter and we the viewers had to suffer through her crazy journaling and visions of carnivals and other crazy things. In Season 3, she became somewhat bearable, or as one reviewer put it: "Who would have thought that the self-obsessed little nut job whose dream sequences became the stuff of viewers' nightmares could grow up and win the Season 3 award for Most Unlikely Transformation Into a Sympathetic Character?" But, unfortunately it did not last and in Season 4, Jenny suddenly was a famous writer and did some crazy shit, like adoption a dying dog so that she could pretend to be someone else and seduce the veterinarian girlfriend of a journalist that gave her a bad review (following that?) Then she wrote a book called Les Girls in which she basically wrote about all the other women, hardly changing their names. Now Les Girls is being made into a movie and Jenny has transformed into a complete diva-bitch. It has actually gotten to the point where it is humorous, and thank God Mia Kirshner is a good actor. I might actually have to change Jenny to one of my favorite things about the show after season 5 has ended. But the writers have turned Jenny into like fifteen different characters, and we never know who she's going to be next.

Here is Jenny being crazy in Season 4, in a way that is actually quite hilarious:

4. Dana, Dana, Dana!
In Season 3, Producer Ilene Chaiken decided to explore the issue of breast cancer. In order to really make the storyline have an impact, she decided that it had to affect the character that viewers most identified with. Since Season 1, Dana was a viewer favorite. She was funny and awkward and people loved her. Her and Alice's relationship was fantastic, and their chemistry was so believable. Ilene decided that Dana would be the one to suffer from breast cancer. But not just suffer, Dana would have to DIE. Basically, this was the worst idea ever. The idea was to really have an impact on viewers, and Dana's death really did have an impact. But not in a good way. People (including many of the show's actors) were pissed off, and mostly didn't understand why it was necessary to kill off one of the most beloved characters in order to advance some type of social message. Many pointed out that it would have been far more inspiring to have had Dana go through cancer and survive. Erin Daniels, the actor who played Dana for three years, admitted to being devastated when she discovered the fate of Dana, and revealed: "It wasn't my decision to leave the show, and I was very sad to see Dana go." "I was pissed. I was really pissed off," Said co-star Kate Moennig on her reaction to discovering Dana would be dying in Season 3.

The show has gone on, we've now had 2 seasons sans Dana. But it really was probably one of the worst decisions that the writers made. Fans will tell you that it hasn't been the same without her. While the show has pulled through, the dynamics will never be completely the same.

Here is a short video that was put out by Showtime to try rationalizing this terrible decision (although the interviews with the cast kind of contradict the message they were trying to put out). This video is followed by a hilarious clip of Dana and Alice shopping for sex toys.

5. Adios, Carmen.
This is sort of a personal thing for me, because I just loved Carmen. I thought that she was smoking hot and had a great personality and her and Shane had fantastic chemistry. Most people didn't believe that Shane would really go through with marrying Carmen, and it might have been realistic the way that they had it end. But, really, do you walk out on a girl like Carmen?? As Karman from AfterEllen put it: "The resident heartbreaker pushed the needle too far this season when she cheated on and ultimately abandoned at the altar Carmen de la Pica Morales, aka The Sexiest Woman Alive. This plot development begged the asking of the big questions, like did Shane sustain a head injury while doing those rad skate moves? Did the hair care chemicals go to her head? What happened to Shane's character arc around commitment from last season?" There was something so real about the Carmen/Shane relationship. Carmen was the one person that really seemed to "get" Shane and the two of them were obviously really in love with one another. It would have been a good storyline to have the two of them ultimately come back together, after Shane went off and played the field for awhile again. But I guess leaving someone at the altar is kind of unforgivable. But even though the writers decided to end it, it would have been nice to see Carmen stay. People liked Carmen. They could have found something else to do with her.

Here are two scenes of Shane and Carmen together (the first a fight, the second a happy one)

6. The Disappearing Bisexual
In Season 1, Alice was presented to us as bisexual. And sure enough, she had relationships with both men and women in that season. Season 1 was also full of others, mostly Dana, teasing Alice about her bisexuality. This was probably realistic, since the relationship between bisexuals and lesbians has historically been tenuous. Bisexual women are frequently accused of being "fence-sitters" or of just trying to hold onto their heterosexual privilege. In Season 2, when Alice was falling for Dana, her bisexuality was explored a little bit as well, such as when Dana's fiancee Tonya tries setting Alice up with a man. But then after Dana and Alice get together, any mention of Alice's sexual orientation pretty much seems to disappear. Near the end of Season 3, when Tina is going on a date with a man, Alice says to Dana, "You're right. Bisexuality is gross. I see it now." She was pretty much kidding, just trying to get Dana to laugh. But still, it did send out an interesting message, especially since she has yet to sleep with a man since Season 1.

Jenny also seemed like she was going to be a bisexual character, since she was in a relationship with a man for many years. She even told a friend in Season 1, "I think I'm bisexual." After ending her relationship with Tim, she even dated a man for a while. But then she went on to identify as a full-on lesbian, promoting the stereotype that bisexuals are just in a transitional phase.

Of course, giving a male lover to one of the characters is likely to elicit a negative viewer response, as the relationship between Tina and Henry did. So the writers are in kind of a jam, but honestly? They never should have made Alice bisexual in the first place if they didn't intend on following through with it. The show has really propagated the invisibility of bisexuality and the idea that bisexual women are really just confused or not really serious.

7. "A Very Special Episode"
This goes along with the whole breast cancer thing -- the concept of using the show to explore some sort of "social issue." Unfortunately, when the writers decide that they want to put out a message about something like breast cancer or PTSD, it comes out sounding like a public service announcement or after school special. I have no qualms with a show exploring an important issue like cancer, but the writers have to explore the issue in a way that isn't so cheesy. For example, when Dana was going through cancer her and Alice went to meet with Dr. Susan Love. Scribegrrl, AfterEllen's L Word episode recapper, describes it best: "Yes, it's masquerading as part of the episode, but it's really just a random PSA that can't even get its message across because everyone who sees it will think "what the hell am I watching? I thought this was The L Word?""

The way that they have tried to explore the war in Iraq and the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" policy of the military is at times downright hilarious. Take this scene, as described by Scribegrrl, where they are I think trying to show that there are different opinions on the war:

"Max and Grace arrive at the Planet. Max introduces Grace, who's wearing a T-shirt that says "War is terrorism with a bigger budget." The group welcomes her; Jenny compliments her T-shirt. They all proceed to recite their favorite T-shirt slogans, which include "Kill one, and it's murder; kill thousands, and it's foreign policy" and "God doesn't take sides in war.""

Tasha (who is a soldier, on-leave from Iraq) is looking very uncomfortable. Their recitations of T-shirt slogans sounds unnatural and ridiculous. I'm sorry, but there are other ways to have done that. Something else that really was pointless was how they sort of tried to explore PTSD, by showing some terrible nightmares that Tasha had about serving in Iraq. When a really complex issue like that is just sort of touched on like that, it makes it come out seeming trite. In Season 5, Tasha is going to be investigated for homosexual conduct. Hopefully they will actually be able to deal with this without it just seeming like a political statement.

Other things that the show has tried to make statements about is censorship, funding of the arts and cutting. All of these have seem somewhat contrived in my opinion. The point is, it's a television show and it only reflects reality to a certain extent. I understand the desire of the writers/producers,etc. to want to use their power to make certain political/social statements. But most times, it just doesn't work out well and it reduces complex issues to something else while running the risk of having the show turn into a "A very special episode of The L Word."

8. Transgenderism and butch lesbians
I had to give the show props for including its first transgender character (and I did). But I also have to include the necessary criticism for the way that the storyline ultimately played out. In a something scathing article on this storyline, AfterEllen writer Malinda Lo states, "It's too bad that as soon as that “real butch” sauntered onto the scene, she transitioned from female to male in a clumsy storyline that reduced the complexity of transgender issues to a stereotypical war between the sexes. To make matters worse, Moira's transition into Max was written in a way that not only dismissed the possibility of butch identity, it ridiculed it."

Lo points out that the transgender issue is one that really did need to be explored, as it is an issue that is becoming increasingly prominent within the lesbian community. She gives praise to some of the sentiments raised on the show, such as when Kit says to Max/Moira, "It just saddens me to see so many of our strong butch girls giving up their womanhood to be a man." Lo explains that this is a sentiment probably shared by many lesbians. But ultimately she feels, and I feel this way as well, that the show made gender into a binary, either/or issue rather than exploring its fluidity. The character of Moira is portrayed as very kind and gentle, whereas after she transitions into Max she suddenly is portrayed as aggressive, hypersexual and angry. Among other things, this promotes the stereotype that masculine characteristics can only be seen in men. As soon as Moira arrives in L.A. she is consistently ridiculed by the other women. Bette comments that Moira came from a place where she probably had to define herself a certain way, as "either/or" while Tina finds it interesting that Jenny would want to "role play" like that. As Lo says, the show basically "conflates gender expression with role-playing" and by having Moira make the transition into Max, the show missed the opportunity to positively portray an authentic "butch" identity.

9. The Latina lesbians
This is something that I have mentioned before. I actually had a post back in December 2006 about the way in which The L Word cast South Asian actresses to play Latina characters. You know, maybe it isn't as big a deal as I'm making it out to be. But in my opinion, there is just something really strange about it. It sort of sends the message that people of color are interchangeable, like us white people can't tell the difference between someone from India and someone from Mexico. Don't Latina women deserve to actually see themselves represented, rather than getting someone who can't even speak Spanish well?

In addition to casting not one but two non-Latinas, the show also somewhat poorly represented Latino culture. In another article by Malinda Lo, the author describes the show's "brush with Latino culture" as "a well-intentioned but somewhat clumsy introduction to Latino culture, featuring overgeneralizations and an unfortunate reliance on stereotypes." She additionally notes that in the Carmen storyline viewers unfortunately get nothing "more than a cursory exploration of what it means to be closeted in a traditional Latino household in Los Angeles." Lo explains that "Latino" culture is extremely varied, and a particular family's view on homosexuality will be largely dependent on the particular country they come from, their awareness of LGBT issues, their degree of education, and many other things. The Carmen storyline unfortunately portends to speak for all Latino families, which is no more fair than making the Dana "coming-out" storyline speak for all White families.

But the show got another chance to represent Latina lesbians with the character Papi. But things didn't seem to improve at all. In Season 2, Carmen didn't speak about her ethnic identity very much at all, although we got more of it in Season 3. Papi, on the other hand, seems to identify much more as a Latina, hanging out at Latin clubs, peppering her speech with Spanish phrases, etc. It's too bad, though, that the character ends up being completely over-the-top and exaggerated. She seems like a caricature of a Latina, and that is unfortunate.

In this clip, Carmen comes out to her family:

10. Product Placement
The use of the TV show to promote Showtime's new website OurChart was embarrassing and annoying. OurChart was inspired by "The Chart", originally a web of sexual relationships within the lesbian community created by Alice and later turned into a radio show, hosted by Alice as well. In Season 4, "The Chart" evolves into "Our Chart", a website created by Alice. At the same time, it became a real website, which I mentioned earlier on in this post. The show's promotion of the site, however, was ridiculous:

"Jenny pulls out her MacBook Pro, supposedly in order to read her Publisher's Weekly review. Alice doesn't think that's a good idea, but Jenny says it's purely for informational purposes. It turns out to be purely for infomercional purposes: Jenny launches into a spiel about OurChart.com, otherwise known as LittleChickensBankbook.com. Leisha and Rachel and Mia all try to get excited and interested in the spindles and circles on the computer screen."

11. The THEME SONG
Season 1 didn't have a theme song, or really any much of an introduction at all. And you know what? I didn't mind that so much. What's so bad about diving right into the show? Who really wants to sit through two minutes of the same thing every week anyway? But, alas, in Season 2 we got a theme song and introduction. In a review of Season 2, one writer said, "There are also a few new disappointments, starting with the new title sequence. Perhaps responding to complaints they received last year about the lack of one, the L Word editors have introduced a kitschy, fun collage of the L Word cast in various poses to open the episodes. The sequence is entertaining; unfortunately, the theme song by Betty that goes along with it is, well, cheesy and cringe-inducing (both the lyrics and the music). It actually makes you long for last season's electronic dots."

But, you can decide for yourself.

Well, overall, the show really does have its ups and its downs. But it also has been revolutionary in its content, and hopefully it will pave the way for more representation of the gay and lesbian community on television. And I probably will keep watching for as long as Showtime decides to keep renewing it!

SEXUALIZATION IN ACTION: IN DEFENSE OF MILEY CYRUS

2008-01-02T20:41:00.001-06:00

A part of me feels guilty for dignifying this story by analyzing it in a blog post, but there is something so unsettling to me about the latest Miley Cyrus "scandal" that I ultimately feel compelled to put in my two cents. Okay, so the story is that sometime around the Christmas holidays, some personal photos of the Disney Channel sensation and another girl were leaked online. The pictures, as one can see, are pretty tame and in all likelihood completely innocent. I'm sure that Miley never intended for the public to see them in the first place and she has defended herself saying that they are no big deal: "They're nothing bad! At first, I was really upset. It really sucks. [The girl in the pictures] was a friend of mine that's a normal girl. [Now] she has to go to school and deal with this crap. It's two girls at a sleepover, and if all of a sudden that's bad, then what is the world coming to?

"What I decided before I came out to LA and started working was the minute I didn't have fun was the minute I go home. I don't want to go home, and I don't want to not do what I do, because I love it, but this...it's Satan attacking."

Pretty much I first found the whole thing totally amusing. It's nice to see that the most scandalous thing about this fifteen-year-old is that she is pretty much just like every other fifteen-year-old. I would be worried if the girl weren't able to let loose and have a little innocent fun. Furthermore, this whole thing has resulted in some pretty hilarious headlines, such as "Miley Cyrus Defends Herself Against Shared-Licorice Lesbian Teen Romp Rumors." I mean, come on, it sounds like something out of fake news or maybe the cover of National Enquirer! And Miley's response itself made me chuckle, with the reference to "Satan attacking" -- spoken like a true evangelical! I know that when I think of what an attack from Satan would look like, Hannah Montana being accused of taking lesbian photos is definitely the first thing that comes to mind. But after I got over the amusement of the thing, there was something about it that was giving me a bad feeling and I couldn't really put my finger on what it was. So I've thought about it a lot, trying to tease out precisely what was making me feel bad about it.

First of all, there's the homophobia inherent in this whole thing. I mean, would people think it's scandalous if there were a picture of Miley giving her alleged boyfriend Nick Jonas a peck on the lips? That would be one hundred times more sexual than these pictures, but I doubt anyone would call it "sexual". So what is so provocative about these two girls? In the past I have analyzed the double standard between same-sex affection and male/female affection. What is so wrong about a little girl/girl affection? Everyone can relax because I'm pretty sure that Miley Cyrus is as straight as they come, and she was just goofing around in this photos. But if she weren't, would we really call these pictures provocative? They are no more erotic than a boy and girl holding hands, or as I said, a peck on the lips. Inappropriate behavior for a fifteen-year-old? Only if the gay thing makes you nervous. And this whole episode is showing me that, clearly, it makes a lot of people nervous! I guess no one wants their kid looking up to a lesbian pop star. But, actually, that's not really the biggest issue for me ...

This isn't the first time that Miley has had to deal with undeserved scandal. Just a couple of months ago, thanks to someone's photoshopping skills, she had to spend some time quelling pregnancy rumors. And reading comments following articles about the teen pop star, one gets the feeling that people actually want her to fail. Following a post on Perez Hilton where the celebrity gossip blogger praises one of Miley's songs, comments follow such as: "She's a skank ass hill billy and needs to get her little white ass out if Hollywood. She is a bad example and I am sure give her a year or so.", " Her father should really watch her with the way she dresses, maybe the next Britney or Lohan" , "Why would I want my children looking up to a spoiled little brat who is probably gonna be the next Lindsay Lohan?"

Yet nothing that Miley has done up to this point has indicated that she is heading in the direction of such former teen stars as Britney or Lindsay. Back in August I wrote about the positive images of young girls on TV today, and Miley was one of those I mentioned. I compared the way she dresses to the dressing style of Britney when she first burst onto the scene at age 15 (the same age that Miley is now). Miley's wardrobe looks like that of Laura Ingalls Wilder compared to the get-up that Britney wore back in the day, yet rather than ripping on Britney I seem to remember quite a few people getting titillated over her sexy schoolgirl gear. Miley has come out and discussed how important she feels it is to keep her clothing on the wholesome side: "I say what I'm comfortable in and what I like and nothing that's too out there. I like to look kind of like what girls would want to look up to, and their moms and dads will say, 'Hey, that's cool. That's different.' ... I look way young, and that's the way that's more comfortable for me."

Last month I brought my six-year-old sister to the Hannah Montana concert as her Christmas present (yes, I am the best big sister in the world and yes, I am also a masochist), and I have to say that nothing about this girl screams erotic. She projects the image of a young teenager, which is precisely what she is. While I think she's adorable on her TV show (which thanks to Emily, I have seen more times than I would like to admit), I actually find Miley to be kind of annoying precisely because she is such a young teenager. She's loud and a little bit crazy (just watch her music video that I posted below) with questionable music talent, she tells interviewers about how she put Ramen noodles in the microwave for 11 minutes and her views on purity reflect the development of a girl who clearly still has much more of the world left to see and a whole lot of her own sexuality left to explore. But those very things that make it difficult for me to watch her on Oprah are the things that make me want her to stick around. She acts precisely the way I think a fifteen year old girl should act! I think that, unlike some other child stars before her, her parents do not seem set on exploiting their child for their own personal gain. According to Miley, she gets grounded when she misbehaves or mouths off and she had her monthly allowance lowered and her credit cards cut up when she bought an expensive Prada bag. And her parents have promised her her own private area of the house if she lives under their roof until she is at least 20. While Miley's mom, Tish, is often at her daughter's side, you won't see her jumping in the spotlight like Dina Lohan or even Lynn Spears. I get the genuine feeling that Miley's parents want her to live her dream, but not at the expense of her integrity.

So I think I am coming to understand why this whole alleged "scandal" bothers me so much. It's like we are witnessing this young girl being sexualized before our eyes. It's like people want this wholesome, innocent teenager to be way more sexual than she is, so things are blown completely out of proportion. People try to turn innocent photos of two friends into something erotic. A ridiculous pregnancy story spreads like wildfire only because people actually believe that this fourteen-year-old is having sex! Miley goes shopping at Victoria's Secret and the press questions whether it is appropriate. The fact is, of course it isn't inappropriate! She was probably buying underwear or body lotion, not some lacy corset or pearl thong (Heck, I was shopping at Victoria's Secret when I was Miley's age!). But they want to put the story of a young pop princess shopping at a lingerie store out there because some nasty people are going to find something erotic about that. I find it really, really unfortunate. Here I am writing about how refreshing it is to see some positive images of girls that show the world that a young female can be strong and successful and beautiful without being hypersexual. Yet it would appear that the world doesn't know what to do with a pop star that doesn't want to be a sex symbol. That is what disturbs me.

I think that no matter how much she claims to love her job, Miley will only be able to take so much of this before she cracks and moves back to Tennessee. She has stated on several occasions that her parents have told her that as soon as the job stops being fun, the family can move back home. Either that, or she's going to be won over by the subliminal message that she's only interesting if she's promoting some type of sex appeal. Either way, the young girls looking up to her are going to be losing something. So my message is, people, get off of Miley's back! Unlike some people, I actually want my younger sister imitating Hannah Montana and not the Pussycat Dolls.

TEGAN AND SARA AREN'T "GAY ARTISTS" (AND WHY THAT'S A GOOD THING)

2007-12-31T14:58:00.002-06:00

Okay, if you know me, you know that I am pretty much obsessed with Tegan and Sara. In fact, I have written about them twice before -- back in July and again in August. Just at the end of last month, I finally -- after two long years of waiting -- got to see them in concert again. The first time I saw them perform, it was at a small venue in Madison when they were still really only widely known amongst the queer crowd. That same year, in 2005, they had been touring with The Killers and playing at music festivals such as Lollapalooza, so they were getting to be a bit more well known within the Hipster scene. And now here we are almost three years later and they were playing at a large, sold out auditorium in Minneapolis with a diverse group of fans rocking out to their music.

They were fabulous, as expected. I was glad to see that although the intimacy of a smaller venue has been lost due to their now increasing popularity, they have not abandoned their chatty and adorable way of interacting with the crowd. While my concert buddy Mira and I were chatting about the pros and cons of a favorite artist going "mainstream", we delved into a discussion about the twins' sexuality.

Tegan and Sara, both lesbians, have always been open about their sexual orientations, but they have never made it a defining part of their identity as musicians. As Sara said in an interview “We’re a minority but we’re also a minority that is not necessarily always visible. It’s easy for us to project a heterosexual lifestyle. It’s important as a queer role model to be out, to be vocal about who you are … I think it’s important to break down the homophobic stereotypes … Even when we came into this industry there was a tendency for people to be like, ‘You don’t have to talk about it …’ Why was that such a big deal? I don’t need to talk for an hour about it. I just want to acknowledge that no, I don’t have a boyfriend and yes, I like girls.” Tegan notes, "Sara and I have seen points in our career when it's been extremely relevant for us to talk a lot about being gay, and then there's been other points where it hasn't seemed as relevant."

There was a time when a lot of people didn't even realize that they were gay. I used to watch clips of them on YouTube and there would be comments like, "Tegan and Sara aren't gay!" "Oh snap! I'd never guess they're gay!" and one that still seems to be circulating is that only one of them is gay. The point is, they don't project a stereotypical image of lesbian musicians -- no folk rock, dreadlocks, nose piercings, or even gender-specific lyrics. As Tegan and Sara become more popular, they are accomplishing a number of things. They are some of the first of their kind -- openly gay female artists that are entering into the mainstream of "young people's music". Other queer artists like Ani DiFranco (who is openly bisexual), the Indigo Girls and Melissa Etheridge may be wildly popular among certain subgroups of people, but it has been a challenge for lesbian musicians to find their way into mainstream youth culture. Tegan and Sara might just get there.

And the result would be something that is feared by conservative America and prayed for by us crazy progressives: basically, a normalization of homosexuality into mainstream culture. People hear their music and like it and they see them and think that they seem normal and cool. This isn't, as idiotic conservatives fear, going to make people run off and "become" gay. But it might make them wonder if gay people are really that strange. At any rate, the fact that Tegan and Sara are marketable to more than just a queer crowd means that there is increased visibility of lesbians in entertainment. And in my opinion, that can only be a good thing.

THE INCONSISTENCIES OF O'REILLY

2007-11-10T10:23:00.001-06:00

In this country we're lucky to have folks like Bill O'Reilly, who are able to so well demonstrate the misguided and intolerant voice of the right wing. Now I'm being slightly sarcastic here, but I am also serious in a way because if we ever intend to win in the great debate against those who promote hatred and restriction of civil liberties, we must understand where they are coming from. Unfortunately, it turns out that the far right may be nearly impossible to debate due to their general irrationality, misuse of logic, and overall intolerance of anything that is not what they consider "normal."

Anyone who is familiar with Bill O'Reilly knows that the political commentator of Fox's The O'Reilly Factor promotes "traditional" American values. He also frequently contributes to the culture of fear that serves to maintain intolerance within our country. In July I wrote about The O'Reilly Factor's absurd story on "lesbian gangs" that was highly misleading, containing extreme distortion of facts for what seemed to be the sole purpose of portraying a sexual minority as dangerous and sexually aggressive.

Now, it's interesting to look at the history of O'Reilly's views on gay rights. A 2002 article in The Advocate gives a pretty good overview of his feelings. In the article O'Reilly admits to believing in antidiscrimination laws that include sexual orientation as well as supporting adoption rights for gay couples (although he admits that he's looking out for the kids, not the gays). Some religious extremists, such as the uber-Evangelical American Family Association have gone so far as to accuse him of promoting the "Homosexual Agenda." (As a side note, for more information on the "Homosexual Agenda", you can visit the AFA's special issues page) In a transcript from a 2002 airing of his show, O'Reilly comes up against "ex-gay" spokesperson for the AFA, Stephen Bennett. In the show, O'Reilly directly challenges Bennett's religious fanaticism by quoting areas of the Old Testament (such as Deuteronomy 22:20-21, which states that non-virgins should be stoned) to highlight the immediate contradictions that come with citing Scripture to advocate for certain social norms. O'Reilly said to Bennett, "You don't speak for God" and reminded him that we live in a secular society -- one which allows for religious fanaticism, but which prevents that fanaticism from crossing the line into public policy (at least theoretically -- I wonder if O'Reilly was perhaps feeling a bit delusional when he made this statement since these days it seems that religion -- Christianity specifically -- dictates pretty much every move of the Right).

Despite all that, O'Reilly is far from being an ally to the LGBT community. In fact, O'Reilly thinks that gays should pretty much just shut up about their sexual orientation. He tells The Advocate, "The basic tenet is, I want you to have a good life. It's easier to have a good life if nobody knows what your sexual proclivities are--hetero or homosexual or whatever--so keep it quiet unless you absolutely have to define it." This goes along with an earlier statement: "I've never understood why anyone, why any American, would want to tell the world what their sexual preference is. It's no one's business but yours." So what he ends up promoting is a sort of "don't ask, don't tell" point of view which tells gays that as long as they don't "express" their sexuality, there's no problem with it. Consequently, what you end up seeing is a massive double standard between what is considered sexual expression from a homosexual and what is considered expression of sexuality by a heterosexual. For the homosexual, the mere mention of a "partner" or of one's orientation is sexual. But, you certainly don't see O'Reilly or anyone else telling heterosexuals to not mention that they're straight ("What? You have a wife? Don't tell me that! It's none of my business! That's your private life!" -- Yeah right).

The basic inconsistencies in O'Reilly's (and many Americans') sentiments are exemplified in the November 7th broadcast of The O'Reilly Factor where he spoke to Dr. Laura Berman of Northwestern University about a poll in the yearbook of Waukegan High School in Illinois, which voted a lesbian couple as "Cutest Couple". O'Reilly was outraged over what he considered to be a vastly inappropriate promotion of sexual conduct in a school setting. Dr. Berman, luckily, held her own against the man and did her best at pointing out the error in his argument.

Bill O'Reilly - lesbian cutest couple
Uploaded by worldhappiness

The thing that is most frustrating about O'Reilly's point of view -- one which is shared by many individuals -- is that he makes ridiculous assumptions using faulty logic and false analogies. The two girls in the story were automatically accused of promoting sexuality in a school setting just by being "in love", as Dr. Berman stated. For all O'Reilly knows, these girls might not even be having sexual relations -- not all high school couples do. But there is something inherently sexually inappropriate about them being a couple that is not true for any heterosexual couple. In O'Reilly's view, the simple act of coming out is actually an issue of sexual conduct (or perhaps misconduct). Gays and lesbians mentioning their relationships (whether or not it has anything to do with the erotic aspect of those relationships) is automatically sexual, whereas a straight woman mentioning, "Oh my boyfriend and I went to the movies" would never be accused of acting inappropriately by discussing her private "sexual life." But of course, heterosexuality is normal behavior and homosexuality is deviant behavior (it's "what you do" remember and not "who you are") so therefore any attempt at normalization is automatically political, apparently.

Back to The Advocate interview, O'Reilly explained that gays should stop trying to "force" others to be tolerant of them, since the majority of Americans are never going to accept them. Basically, he implies that discrimination against gays is acceptable and understandable and average Americans should just accept it and get over it rather than be outraged that in a secular, contemporary and democratic society like ours it is still necessary to be "tolerant" of those who hate others based on their sexual orientation. For a long time religion was used as a basis for racial discrimination as well -- for example, the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints would not ordain blacks into the priesthood until 1978. One of the great leaders of Mormonism, Brigham Young, stated that black skin was the mark of Cain -- a punishment for the murder of Abel by Cain in the Old Testament. An article in The Salt Lake City Tribune shows that although official church doctrine no longer teaches these beliefs, many Mormons still hold them and interracial relationships continue to be taboo within the faith. The point is, nearly every type of intolerance throughout history has been justified by religion. Religious opposition is certainly, in my opinion, no reason to give up the fight in insisting upon a fair and just society that values the inherent worth and dignity of all its members.

I was made aware of this current O'Reilly broadcast on AfterEllen.com. As usual, the writers over there had several witty remarks to make about it ("The Waukegan Bulldogs are trying to make an issue of something — trying to start a revolution via yearbook poll. After all, that's tactic No. 43 in the Homosexual Agenda Handbook. Next on the list: stocking the soda machines with virgin mimosas and herbal teas!") But one thing that stood out to me were some comments made by European readers:

"I can't believe ... that this kind of debates are broadcasted on the american TV. Honestly... as a german (or european) I'm quite shocked about this. What's up over there?! This man and his point of view are completely out of question... I can't believe any channel gives him any airtime! Is he popular? He definetly shouldn't be! Wow... it's the 21st century and people are talking about this on national television?! Something is going waaay wrong..."

"I live in the UK and I cannot believe this crap is shown on tv! It's outrageous he can get away for being so homophobic. I am genuinely shocked that something like that could be televised. I feel sorry for any American teens who may have seen this and been in the process of coming out or have just come out etc because [understandably] they won't want to be open about who they are and they are with because of people like this guy."

"I live in Sweden and it's truly shocking to se this kind of blatant homophobia on american television. Our most conservative government party, Kristdemokraterna (basically the christian democrats) are liberals compared to this guy and I can honestly say that if a "journalist" like O'Reilley said anything like this, there would be an uproar. It's a shame..."

"Being European (from a very small yet quite well respected country boasting a semi-direct democracy in between high mountains) this truly is yet another confirmation of the bad picture of "America" we get every now and then. The America which is "running" and judging our Planet. Red States having way too much influence - and a society (i.e. those parts that get represented in the media and thereby kinda seem to form public opinion) who in a way still have to live in a medieval state of repression ... I truly feel for every one of you who has to cope with such an ignorant society who on the whole (for their negative aspects) seem to have much in common with a medieval one where fears were big and belief in nonsense was normal and reasonable thinking was not an option. ... Would love to see him taken to the European court in Strasbourg"

"Another European here shocked to see that something like this can be televised in the USA. If one of the hosts of any of our news programmes ever made a comment as homophobic as the ones this man has made, he or she would be fired immediately. I'm not saying we don't have homophobic people in my country, because we have a few, but luckily for us, they're not given their own TV shows to spread their BS on national television."

"I'm not sure about the entire European continent, but this would certainly never happen in Germany. It simply couldn't. So even though I sometimes hate this country, and I've always wanted to move/life in San Francisco, I'm becoming more and more repulsed by the way the American right wing agenda is not only getting shoved in our faces through the media, but also by how many people still fall for that. After seeing this interview, I am honestly scared of having to live in the US. I know that there are people who don't hate "us", but sadly the right wings fundamentalist seem to get more and more powerful."

Basically, we should never stop believing that we can have a just society. We should never fail to be outraged by acts of intolerance. And we should never accept that "tolerance" of homosexuality as long as it's kept "private" is progress.

MAXIM OUTDOES ITSELF ... AGAIN

2007-10-28T16:16:00.001-05:00

Over the summer I wrote an entry analyzing the annual Maxim Hot 100 list. Just as "women's magazines" are often centered around cooking, raising kids, housekeeping, etc., this "men's magazine" centers on "male culture" -- which basically means articles focus on objectifying women and other manly activities like football. Headlines at Maxim Online include: "Movies that celebrate the greatness of irresponsibility", "These sexy ladies prove that Philadelphia is hot" and "We picked the dudeliest dudes of 2007". As I said in my July entry, the Maxim man's ideal woman is one that is as young as possible, as stereotypically sexy as possible and whether she is strong, independent and intelligent is of completely secondary importance (and in many cases undesirable altogether). A woman over 40 doesn't stand a chance of being considered sexy.

And as if the magazine hadn't done enough to prove its misogyny, it had to take it a step further with its recent poll on "The Unsexiest Woman of the Year." Men chose the top 5 "unsexy" women of 2007. The "unlucky" winners were as follows:

1) Sarah Jessica Parker (Of "Sex and the City" fame). Maxim says, "How the hell did this Barbaro-faced broad manage to be the least sexy woman in a group of very unsexy women and still star on a show with "sex" in the title?"

2) Amy Winehouse (British musician that rose to fame with recent album "Back to Black"). Says Maxim: "When we first heard this chick boast about her reluctance to go to rehab we thought, Now there´s a girl we can party with! But upon beholding her openly hemorrhaging translucent skin, rat´s nest mane and lashes that look more like surgically attached bats, we were the ones screaming, "Nooo, nooo, nooo!""

3) Sandra Oh (most well-known for her role as Dr. Cristina Yang on the popular "Grey's Anatomy") because, "The only thing worse than a show about doctors is a show about sappy chick doctors we´re forced to watch or else our girlfriends won´t have sex with us. We´re holding Dr. McSkinny, with her cold bedside manner and boyish figure, personally responsible."

4) Madonna (do I need to tell you?) because she "traded pioneering sexuality for, like other old Jewish women, self-righteous bellyaching and rapid postnuptial deterioration. Combine a Paris Hilton–like pet accessorizing fetish only for dirt-poor foreign babies with a mug that looks Euro-sealed to her skull, and you´ve got Willem Dafoe with hot flashes."

5) Britney Spears (again, I think you all know...) who "less than five years ago, Britney had a python wrapped around her well-toned torso onstage at the VMAs. Since then, she´s lost the ability to perform, but gained two kids, two useless ex-husbands, and about 23 pounds of Funyun pudge."

As I made my way through reading the "Top 5" I found myself becoming more and more enraged. I'm not sure why, since I've learned to expect things like this. But I suppose it's a good thing that I haven't become desensitized. It is with desensitization that people become apathetic and no longer take a stand against sexist rags like Maxim.

I could go on about how they referred to all the "Sex and the City" women as unsexy, when that show represented a group of four very strong, very independent women. Or how Madonna, a former sex symbol, has apparently lost her appeal now that she is pushing fifty and has become an "old Jewish woman" (really?? I mean, really, Maxim??). Nevermind that she's managed at her age to maintain a killer physique, even after two children and supposed "postnuptial deterioration." Or how about what they say about Sandra Oh and her "cold bedside manner" and "boyish physique" -- could it be that Cristina is the toughest and possibly most intelligent of the Grey's Anatomy doctors? (On an interesting sidenote, the lesbians and bisexual women over at AfterEllen listed Sandra Oh as number 93 on their Hot 100 list).

Once again Maxim promotes the dangerous viewpoint that being sexy is not only about being young and beautiful, it is also about being available and preferably not very strong-minded or independent. And let's not forget, one of those to make their Hot 100 list was a 3-D avatar -- a sexy fake woman is better than a real woman that can think for herself. Granted, some of the women on this list (for example, Britney Spears) are not shining examples of strong, beautiful women by any means. But the point is that the list itself is offensive, as are the descriptors that go with each woman. A woman's value is much more consistently judged against her looks than is a man's. Case in point, how often does one see a woman's magazine come up with lists of "least sexy" men? Or focus itself predominantly on objectifying men? No, the majority of women's magazines focus themselves on aiding women in being as sexy as possible while men's magazine judge them on how well they did. But that is a subject for a completely different entry...

What's scary to me is that Maxim has 2.5 million subscribers and claims to be the leader in its industry -- outselling other "men's magazines" such as GQ and Esquire. Anyone who says that feminism is dead needs to leaf through Maxim and ask herself (or himself) whether women really are valued by the same standards that men are.

MANDY MOORE SURPRISES

2007-09-30T12:24:00.007-05:00

There was a lot happening in the world of pop music back in the late 1990s. In late 1998 seventeen-year-old Britney Spears debuted her first single "...Baby One More Time." The same year another little up and coming was beginning to hit the scene, Britney's former fellow Mickey Mouse Club cast member Christina Aguilera. In 1999 the then eighteen-year-old Aguilera released her first album and her song "Genie in a Bottle" hit the charts. A third blonde teenager, nineteen-year-old Jessica Simpson, released her first single "I Wanna Love You Forever" the same year. But there was another "pop princess" to hit the music scene in 1999, and many considered her to be the least interesting of the bunch. At only fifteen, Mandy Moore was the youngest of the bunch when her debut album released in late 1999. Although her song "Candy" was a widely-listened to success, her music was described as "medicore", "typical" and performed with "suffocating professionalism." Here is her music video for her hit song "Candy", which should be viewed in order to fully appreciate the transformation that you are about to see ...

Mandy followed up her debut album So Real with a reworked version of it, I Wanna Be With You. In 2001 she released a third album, the self-titled Mandy Moore. A fourth album, Coverage, which featured covers of 1970s and 1980s songs, was released in 2003. None of the later songs obtained much success and her albums received mixed reviews. Mandy was more or less considered the "B version" of Britney and Christina. Due to low album sales she was dropped by Sony's Epic Records. But while Britney was heading down a path of self-destruction and Jessica was ruining her image on MTV's Newlyweds, Mandy was maturing and slowly but surely creating a new image for herself that would set her apart.

Perhaps it first began with her acting career. Many musicians that try the leap to acting fail miserably and also receive lots of eye rolls from skeptical listeners. Britney's foray into acting, the 2002 film Crossroads, was less than successful. Jessica Simpson has received consistently poor reviews for her acting skills and her most recent film has been rumored to be going direct to video. When Mandy debuted her acting skills with a small role in 2001's The Princess Diaries, followed up by a lead role in the 2002 film A Walk to Remember, audiences were probably skeptical as well. But over the years Mandy has created a solid acting career for herself. While her films have not always been successful, her acting skills have consistently been praised. Roger Ebert has called her "quietly convincing" with an "unaffected natural charm" and an "undeniable screen presence [that] inspires instant affection." Perhaps one of her best performances to date was in the 2004 positively-reviewed religious satire Saved! in which she played a zealous evangelical Christian, Hilary Faye.

View a humorous clip of Mandy from Saved!:

Moore has appeared in several other films over the years, including American Dreamz, Because I Said So and most recently License to Wed. She has also made guest appearances in the television shows Scrubs and Entourage.

View a trailer for her upcoming indie film Dedication

In the summer of 2007 Mandy returned to her first love, music, with the release of her fifth album Wild Hope. The 23-year-old has expressed disappointment and embarrassment over some of her early works, saying that her first albums were "just awful" and that if she could she would give a refund to everyone that bought her first two albums. In a photoshoot for Jane magazine, stars from the Sundance Film Festival were asked "What's your crime?" Moore posed for the shoot, proclaiming herself as the singer of "Candy." Needless to say, when the time came to make this new album, she was going for something different. Unlike her previous albums, this one was the product of two years' hard work. Mandy joined up with a new record company because rather than following the mainstream she wanted to have "complete control and freedom" over her work. And complete control and freedom meant lending her own songwriting talents and collaborating with artists such as Chantal Kreviazuk, Rachael Yamagata and Lori McKenna. The result? A sound that is more (in Mandy's words) "organic" and "folky", an album that has been receiving positive reviews and a career that is beginning to show more promise than those of her former "A-list" counterparts. The 23-year-old hopes that her music will appeal to folks her age or older.

The Amazon.com reviewer eloquently states, "Wild Hope, co-written with the cred-conferring team of Rachael Yamagata, Lori McKenna, and the Weepies, should earn her a spot on adult-alternative radio alongside format regulars Dar Williams, Sarah McLachlan, and Jonatha Brooke … Talent will be Moore's ticket to the transformation she's going for--no wild hoping necessary." The Portland Mercury humorously describes her transformation from average pop-princess to sophisticated, promising singer/songwriter: "Although Mandy never quite seemed to amass the out-of-control success of some contemporaries, it's impossible to deny that she has matured like vintage vino while some (ahem, Britney, Lindsay) have gone as rancid as buckets of Three Buck Chuck." The general consensus seems to be that, although Wild Hope is not an instant-success or full of memorable hits, it shows that Mandy Moore has amazing potential to be what IGN refers to as a "bona fide singer/songwriter." Who would have guessed?

Now touring the US for the first time in 8 years, Mandy has been playing in many small venues, sharing her new sound with the world. Despite her distaste for her older music, she frequently plays a remixed version of the song "Candy", perhaps to show her audience how much she has in fact changed. Watch the following video to see Mandy's transformation.

But it is not just Mandy's talent that is making people talk about her and that is causing many people to find themselves surprised to declare themselves fans (myself included). Mandy is a young woman that promotes a type of quiet and sophisticated grace in a culture that is often times filled with over the top eccentrics. Mandy declares, "When people in the late 1990s started looking at these crazy poptarts and wondering which one would kind of fade and be crawling back to where she came from, I don't think people were looking at Britney. But I think I've made good choices and been very, very lucky." Some of these good choices include avoiding the party scene and keeping herself out of the public eye. She admits that she doesn't really enjoy partying, has no skeletons in her closet and feels "dreadful" when she stays up late. As she states, "Maybe for some people drink and drugs work for them, but I’m not a tortured artist. I wouldn’t turn to some sort of substance to make me feel better, I’d turn to writing." She also explains that it is "a choice to put yourself out there in such a public way ... I really don't thrive on that kind of attention ... I'm glad that people mostly leave me alone."

Here is an interview of Mandy discussing her life choices as well as her career on CBS News in June 2007:

It is refreshing to have someone like Mandy Moore out there to prove that young teen pop stars are not all doomed to follow the path of Britney or Lindsay. It is unfortunate that all promising young talent is met with skepticism and words such as "just give her a couple of years" or "how long before she's following Britney's footsteps?" Mandy should serve as an example that nothing is a given. I for one am personally looking forward to both seeing and hearing more of Mandy in the future. If this most recent album is any indication of things to come, Mandy Moore is setting herself up to become a very talented musician with a career of true substance. And that is truly a surprise.

NETWORK TELEVISION HAS LITTLE ROOM FOR THE GAYS

2007-09-26T22:18:00.001-05:00

As I was saying in my post about the South of Nowhere girls, there is little representation of queer women on network television. In fact, as it turns out, there is pretty much none. At all.

Just recently, GLAAD (Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) came out with a report "Where We Are on TV." This report tallies the number of LGBT Characters on both network television and cable television for 2007-2008 broadcasting year. Figures were taken at the season launch, and for Broadcast Networks include ABC, CBS, NBC, the CW, and FOX. The counts are broken down into LGBT characters playing lead roles, supporting roles and recurring roles. Out of the 20 total LGBT characters on Broadcast Networks, there are two lead characters -- one a gay, white male and the other a bisexual, white woman. There are five supporting characters (3 gay, one male bisexual and one straight MTF -- that's a male to female transexual who sleeps with men). There are 13 recurring characters -- two white lesbians, eight gay white males, one black gay male, one latino gay male, and one white MTF.

Clearly the representation of LGBT characters in general is dismally poor, but to top it off, the community that is represented is overwhelmingly that of gay, white males. There is little room for lesbians and clearly even less room for queer people of color. Some might say, oh one small step at a time. I might even be tempted to agree with that. After all, society's feelings towards LGBT people are still lukewarm at best. But, wait! What's that you say, GLAAD? These numbers have gone down over the past three years?

In 1996-1997, there were 33 LGBT characters on network television. Jump ahead a few years and in 2005-2006, there were 24 LGBT characters on network television (with 4 lesbians, 19 gays and one bisexual). In 2006-2007 there were 21 (16 gays, 4 lesbians and one transgender). That brings us to 2007-2008 where we see 20 total. What's with the drop? No big deal, one might think. But when there are so few to begin with, a drop of 4 over a two year period is a big deal. That's a 17% decrease. There were 13 MORE characters TEN YEARS AGO! When you stop to think about all the characters on television -- including leads , supportings and recurring roles, 20 is a miniscule amount. And maybe -- just maybe -- if there were more LGBT characters on television, there would be a slow increase in acceptance. Wouldn't it be nice if all the young girls out there questioning their sexuality were actually able to see themselves represented? If the only two lesbians on network TV weren't the recurring role of a middle-aged mayor and an animated character on The Simpsons??

For all the talk of how liberal Hollywood is and how many gays and lesbians are behind the [Photo]scenes in show business, it amazes me that they can't find a little courage and actually provide a fair representation of the American population. They seem to have no problem whatsoever showing two girls kiss when they want a boost in ratings -- so why is it so unbelievably hard for those two girls to just keep on kissing?

But at least there is Cable to take over where network TV fails miserably. Of course, cable television could do better itself, but it certainly exceeds the standards set by network. In 2007-2008 there are 57 LGBT characters on "Mainstream Cable" TV. That breaks down to 16 in leading roles, 24 in supporting roles and 17 in recurring roles. Those numbers break down to 25 gays, 19 lesbians, 11 bisexuals and 2 transgender individuals. In terms of race, cable fares somewhat better than network -- with 39 whites, 8 blacks, 3 latinas, 5 asians, and 1 biracial character.

Unlike network TV, cable's numbers have actually risen from 35 last year (17 gays, 14 lesbians, 4 bisexuals and 1 transgender) to this year's 57.

Thank you to GLAAD for making this report, and here's hoping that next year's a better one. Until then, I'll be happy to keep paying for my cable subscription...

CLASS ACT

2007-09-09T21:32:00.002-05:00

I like to write about music in here. I especially like writing about music that I think is good! I first heard the group Rilo Kiley a couple of years ago, but I just recently began to fully appreciate them, especially lead singer and former-child star Jenny Lewis (she was in two of my favorite movies from when I was a kid -- The Wizard and Troop Beverly Hills). The band was formed in 1998 by Lewis and friends Pierre De Reeder, Blake Sennett and Dave Rock (the latter was later replaced by Jason Boesel). Their first full-length album was Take-Offs and Landings, released in 2001 under an independent label. That album was followed a year later by The Execution of All Things. In 2004 they released More Adventurous, which was distributed by Warner Bros. It was following this album that the band began to see more recognition. Asides from the album receiving favorable reviews, the band toured with both Bright Eyes and Coldplay and had songs played in a number of movies as well as several popular television series including Dawson's Creek, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Grey's Anatomy and Weeds.

So what's so great about them? Well, the music of course! They bring a sound and a quality of music that is both interestingly unique but also accessible. One reviewer describes their third album this way: "Part new-wave keyboards, part folky acoustic guitars, the music on More Adventurous is unexpectedly beautiful." Another states, "Basic but gorgeously textured pop-rock with a country tinge, Rilo Kiley's music is led by vocals that'll stop you in your tracks." Their newest album, Under the Blacklight was released only weeks ago and is earning the same amount of praise. The Onion, gives it an A, saying, "The L.A. quartet has returned with an album that's teeming with creatively executed ideas, to the point where it almost feels like the band was just using its first three albums to warm up." Blender: "Creamy and precise, every coo and arpeggio blows through your ear buds like the ruffle of crisp bills" and Spin: "Lewis' wordplay smartly unspools over the course of a song--with 'Breakin' Up,' she creates a 'Since U Been Gone' for grown-ups, and on '15,' narrates an Internet jailbait vignette without melodrama or moralizing." When you listen and watch them, you can't help but feel that you're experiencing something new.

As I said, Jenny Lewis is in my opinion the best thing about Rilo Kiley. Rather than fading like most child stars, she has completely redefined herself. A far cry from her acting days, 31-year-old Lewis is making her mark on the music scene. In early 2006 she released a solo album Rabbit Fur Coat, which was highly acclaimed and mixed music styles such as country, folk and gospel. She credits influences such as Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn and Laura Nyro and reviewers have compared her to Emmylou Harris, Dusty Springfield and others. One review puts it best, "Jenny's hauntingly soulful voice, sometimes bursting with buoyant spirit and at other times plaintive and world wearied, is deep, sensual and beguiling. Intricate storytelling and evocative lyrics infuse these songs with a captivating vibrancy but may be knocked sideways by the musical alchemy at play as a result of folk, country, and Southern gospel influences."

Here is the quirky video for her song "Rise Up With Fists!!!" followed by a stellar live performance of the song "You Are What You Love."

Whether Jenny Lewis and Rilo Kiley continue on in the mainstream music world, one thing is for sure: this is a musician with pure talent. Go! Listen!

South Girls Break Ground in Teen Programming

2007-08-30T23:08:00.000-05:00

I first wrote about South of Nowhere back in December, after the Season 2 finale. I was a little riled up at that point because the events of the finale upset me and quite a lot of other viewers. I would suggest going back and reading that entry because I don't want to rewrite everything here, but I will try to summarize my points from December.

A speed recap of the first two season of SON: The Carlin family moves to L.A. from small-town Ohio. The family consists of mom Paula (a doctor), dad Arthur (a social worker), sons Glen and Clay and daughter Spencer. While the show follows storylines around various characters, the main protagonist of the show is sort of intended to be Spencer. When the sixteen-year-old starts at King High, she is a sweet, straight-laced, Christian girl from the Midwest. Then she meets Ashley Davies and everything in her life starts to change. A free-spirit and daughter of and 80s rock star, Ashley doesn't care what people think about her, cuts classes to go to the beach, and sleeps around ... with girls. But before Ashley discovered the ladies, she was with Aiden, the high school basketball star, and we see that there is definitely some history there. Anyway, since opposites attract Spencer and Ashley immediately hit it off. Pretty soon, her relationship with Ashley (charged with sexual tension, by the way) starts leading Spencer to question her own sexuality. She confides in Ashley, telling her that she think she might be gay. She then flirts around with Aiden a bit, trying to figure out what she wants. It turns out that kissing Aiden only makes her think about Ashley. But there are other forces at work -- namely Paula, Spencer's conservative and very Christian mother who constantly worries that Ashley is a bad influence, and Glen, Spencer's intolerant older brother. Troubled by her family's worries, Spencer turns to Aiden again to try reaffirming her heterosexuality. Even Aiden is not fooled, reminding her that she can't help who she is and that lying to herself might make things more comfortable for everyone else but not for her. The season ends with Spencer and Ashley (dubbed "Spashley" by fans) finally getting together.

Season 2 could be renamed the "Ashley is Scared and Insecure Show" because those themes seem to taint every episode. In Season 1, Ashley was portrayed as a pretty self-assured and confident person. But it turns out that a lot of that attitude was just a cover and a way for her to keep people at a distance (where they can't hurt her). Unfortunately, Spencer and Ashley's relationship immediately faces some hard times. Ashley's dad dies in a car accident and she puts up a wall between her and Spencer. Things are further complicated by Paula who continues to try diluting Ashley's negative influences by setting Spencer up with boys from church and flying out Spencer's old best friend from Ohio and by Ashley who is pressuring Spence to come out to her family. The much-anticipated "outing" occurs halfway through the season when Paula walks in on the two girls in a compromising situation. Things get worse when Paula tries to put Spencer through sexual reparative therapy to try "changing her back." This blows up in her face when the girls run away together for approximately one episode. After this Paula puts up with Ashley for Spencer's sake. Ashley, however, seems to be getting freaked out by the intensity of her and Spencer's relationship. Perhaps scared that Spencer will realize she is not worth it or will end up leaving her for some other reason, Ashley begins subtly pulling away from her girlfriend. Meanwhile, her and Aiden seem to be getting pretty chummy again. Spencer notices these changes and gets worried that the relationship that completely changed her life (and not in all good ways) is in jeopardy. She tells Aiden to back off. But at the prom (which Aiden is attending with Ashley's half-sister, Kyla) Aiden reveals that he is still in love with Ashley. Ashley, rather than immediately saying Spencer is the one she loves, hesitates just long enough for Spencer to run off in tears. Ashley runs after her, but they are interrupted by erupting gunfire -- a gang from some nearby school has shown up and decided to wreak havoc on King High's prom.

Now the finale was upsetting to me for various reasons, which I enumerated in my December entry. Mostly I was angered that the writers seemed to be toying with the idea of sending Ashley back to boys town, which I thought sent a bad message to viewers. Although when first asked so umm ... eloquently ... by Spencer, "What are you?" Ashley replied that she wasn't into labels. But other times she referred to herself as both "gay" and a "lesbian." She seemed to have been exclusively with women since her break-up with Aiden and frequently made comments such as "guys are so predictable", "boys are way too much trouble" and "I've already played that hand."

The prom incident came right at the end of a season that had been plagued with viewer complaints in regards to the double standard between Spencer and Ashley's relationship and the show's heterosexual relationships. While the various straight couples on the show enjoyed various make-out sessions, sex in the bathroom stalls, etc. the most Spencer and Ashley got was a couple of two-second pecks on the lip. The rest of the season viewers had to suffer through their lame foreplay, which consisted of brushing each other's hair, pats on the knees and lots of hugs. They seemed more like best friends than girlfriends. By the time the prom episode came, many were concerned that this was all leading up to a major "de-gaying" of the show.

That the show might be "de-gayed" was a legitimate concern, as lesbians have suffered a long history of poor representation in the media. Gay men, while still obviously underrepresented and discriminated against, have had Will & Grace, Queer As Folk, Queer Eye for the Straight Guy as well as unswayingly gay male characters in other shows, such as Sex and the City. On the other hand, ask any gay woman to name solidly lesbian characters on TV since, say, 1990 and she could probably name them all on two hands. Finally, in 2003, we were given The L Word, the first show that was actually about lesbians. If we take that away and look strictly at network television, there is virtually nothing. It wasn't until 1997 that network TV showed the first kiss between two lesbian or bisexual-identified characters in the show Relativity. In 2002 Buffy the Vampire Slayer had the first lesbian "sex scene" (in quotes, because it was so tame, it barely passes as a sex scene) on network TV. These little strides have seemed like nothing when compared to both the exploitation of the lesbian identity through a phenomenon known as "lesbian sweeps" and to the concept of the criminal/deviant/dead lesbian.

"Lesbian sweeps" is something that occurs often during "sweeps" time, when shows attempt to boost ratings. The lesbian sweeps moments typically include kisses or perhaps extremely short-lived relationships between normally straight female characters on shows. AfterEllen has a list of Top 10 Moments in Sweeps Lesbianism which include moments such as a kisses between Jennifer Aniston and Winona Ryder on Friends, Roseanne and Mariel Hemingway on Roseanne, and the short-lived relationship between Marissa and Alex on The O.C. One can imagine that it gets rather frustrating for queer women to see their sexual identities exploited for the sake of boosts in ratings and male titillation; to see their lives shown as something that can be briefly "dabbled" in before returning to the safe comfort of heteronormative existence.

The concept of the criminal, deviant, evil or dead lesbian is an extremely familiar and old cliché which basically insinuates that all lesbians cannot find happiness and are doomed to tragic ends. The evil lesbian or the dead lesbian often came up in early 20th century pulp fiction -- in fact, Radclyffe Hall's famous 1920s novel The Well of Loneliness was partially so controversial not because of the lesbian characters but because many did not feel the characters met the tragic demise necessary to show that lesbian sexuality was immoral. The archetype exists well into the 20th and 21st centuries, however. Sharon Stone's character in Basic Instinct (1992) is a murderer and her girlfriend ends up dead, Heavenly Creatures (1994) portrayed an obsessively intimate friendship between two girls that ended in murder, Lost and Delirious (2001) ended in the suicide of one girl after her lover denied their relationship. There are many more examples in both film and television. Many believed that the tragic death of Tara in Buffy the Vampire Slayer contributed to this discourse. Scholars believe that the theory behind this archetype is that gays and lesbians are immoral and deserving of hate or are tragic and pitiable and in need of conversion.

The point of all this is that South of Nowhere's Season 2 finale gave reason for concern. Would the first show aimed for a younger teen demographic to show a positive lesbian relationship be drastically changing its course? The answer turned out to be "no." And what I've seen so far of Season 3 shows that SON only continues in its groundbreaking portrayals of sexual identity among teenagers. The season opens with lots of craziness in a hospital ER. We learn that Aiden has been shot and that Clay, Spencer's brother, has been killed. Jump forward a couple of months and Aiden has made a full recovery. Meanwhile, we discover that Ashley freaked and got out of the country. Spencer understandably feels bitter that Ashley disappeared in her time of need and she is also still angry about the pre-shooting events involving the apparent love triangle. Ashley, however, comes back and tries to apologize, telling Spencer that she "chooses" her and that she loves her and thought about her the whole two months she was in Europe, blah blah blah. What follows is an astonishingly long smooch-session between the two girls. The show cuts to commercial break and when it comes back, they're still kissing! I cracked up during this part -- it was like the powers that be heard all the complaints and decided to try making up for the lack of Spashley action in Season 2 all in this one kiss.

Spencer ends up pushing Ashley away, however, knowing that the girl is confused and will probably only break her heart again. Sure enough, after being given the boot by Spencer, Ashley jumps right into Aiden's bed. But our little Spencer has grown a lot over the past two seasons and is now being portrayed as a strong, self-assured gay woman. This is nice to see. We have witnessed Spencer's full evolution from a somewhat timid girl who does whatever is expected of her into someone not afraid to be who she is. With or without Ashley, she seems to fully accept her identity. As the season has continued, Spencer seems to be starting up a new relationship with a girl named Carmen. This is also great because it shows that Ashley was not just influencing Spencer to adopt the "gay lifestyle." This promo for the show explores past and future parts of Spencer's life:

I feel mostly good about what the writers are doing with the character of Ashley. On the one hand, Ashley's confusion about what she wants could be seen as a negative portrayal of bisexuality, promoting the stereotype that bisexuals are just confused and are "fence-sitters." But knowing Ashley's background, this doesn't seem to be the image they are putting across. Rather Ashley's storyline seems to be an exploration of her own insecurities and fears as well as the struggle to distinguish between platonic and erotic love. Aiden is like Ashley's safe-zone -- they have this past together and she knows that he will always worship her. After she has been rejected by Spencer she goes to him. However, even while she is with him she continues to have long phone conversations with Spencer. On her dresser in her new apartment she prominently displays a photograph of her ex-girlfriend, while Aiden's photo is put in the background. Spencer is clearly the one that she loves while her love for Aiden is more a love for safety and comfort -- something that she didn't have with Spencer (she was always insecure, worried that Spencer would leave her, etc.) While her love for Aiden is of the platonic variety, she gives way to the erotic due to her fears of losing him as well. Here is the Ashley promo, which explores her character a bit as well:

The fact that this show is aimed towards such a young demographic is awesome. It is good for tweens and teens to see the multiple dimensions of sexual identity as well as the struggles that are faced by LGBT youth. And despite the outrage and criticism that the show has gotten from some Christian conservatives as well as the departure of one cast member for "moral reasons" the show's actors, while all heterosexual in reality, continue to embrace their roles as forerunners in this area: Mandy Musgrave (Ashley), Gabrielle Christian (Spencer), Maeve Quinlan (Paula) and others have sat on panels discussing the show and its implications, they have attended events such as the GLAAD (Gay Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation) Awards and have been more than happy to be spokespeople for the gay rights cause. 21-year-old Mandy says, "I think it helps teens learn how to open up and express themselves. That it's okay to experiment if that's what they're feeling inside. A lot of people have been saying we've been turning viewers gay and I'm like, "No. They're just finally fed up and finally trying to be more open." I am proud of that. It's taken a lot to portray a bisexual or a lesbian; whatever you want to call Ashley. Some of my closest friends now are lesbians and I can't believe I am fortunate enough to have them in my life. I do this role for them because I want other people to know that it's okay."

Next step -- get a show like this on network TV!

Living Up to My Expectations

2007-08-04T11:14:00.000-05:00

Recently I wrote about one of my favorite music acts, the Canadian sister duo Tegan and Sara. I said that they were releasing their fifth album at the end of July and I expected them to find continuing success.

Well, in just a short amount of time the twins seem to be everywhere! They were MSN artists of the month, featured musicians on MySpace and their new album has been getting rave reviews. Amazon.com editorial review states, "Tegan and Sara's star-making Juno-nominated album, So Jealous, was their fourth--and their fifth album, The Con, not only avoids any kind of slump but sets a new bar of quality quite high ... The Con reverberates with unabashed creativity, and it's a rare pleasure to hear it done so well. I would be surprised if another band this year made a better record--it's really that good." Says The New York Times, "Somehow The Con is even more obsessive sounding than Tegan and Sara’s earlier work, and it’s probably even better; it could well be one of the year’s best albums."

Congratulations, ladies!

Here they are playing their first single "Back in Your Head" on Conan O'Brien the other night

Tegan and Sara on Conan O'Brien
Uploaded by fallengrommet

Bratz Set Us Back

2007-08-02T19:26:00.000-05:00

I promised in my last post that I wasn't going to write about little kid issues anymore (what generation would they be anyway? I'm considered "Generation Y" so I'm just going to the youngins as "Generation XX"). Anyway, despite this promise I feel compelled to bring up something else after reading this blog entry over on AfterEllen which discusses the upcoming Bratz film along with the Bratz phenomenon. In this entry the writer links to an article on the UK's "Daily Mail" entitled "Over-sexed and over here: The 'tarty' Bratz doll." The article is worth a read, but I will cite some of the information in here.

Little girls loooove the Bratz dolls. At the community center I worked at, we had xeroxed coloring pages of everything from Disney stuff to anime to fantasy to Sponge Bob and Hello Kitty. The Bratz coloring pages would disappear like nobody's business. The Bratz dolls, launched in 2001 by MGA entertainment, bring in about $3billion a year from the dolls and their accessories. Chief executive of the UK Bratz distributor, Nick Austin, says that "their edgy, streetwise style appeals to the post-Spice Girl generation." The author of the Daily Mail article, although despairing about the dolls, admits that they're undeniably appealing to girls, with their "catwalk chic, huge expressive faces and multi-ethnic skin tones." American product designer, Paula Treantafelles says that she designed the dolls to appeal to the 7 to 10 year olds that Mattel -- makers of Barbie -- was failing to reach.

And sure enough, the dolls are outselling Barbie at astonishing rates -- as much as 2 to 1 in the United Kingdom. Whereas Barbie used to be aimed towards girls 6-10, it now appeals to mostly 3-6 year olds while Bratz is taking over the older age group. Why? According to Treantafelles, "[Bratz] are about self-expression, self-identity. When Barbie was in her prime, girls were taught to be career women, to be men’s equals. Today, yes, career and education matter, but it’s also “express yourself, have your own identity, girl power."

And now, thanks to the Bratz dolls' ever-increasing popularity, Barbie has begun to follow-suit, creating a sort of "race to the bottom" in terms of appropriateness. Mattel recently came out with the "My Scene" Barbie dolls which include a "My Bling Bling" and "Street Style" Barbie doll. These dolls come complete with navel piercings and tattoos. And, no, this is not a joke. You can buy them on Amazon or any other online shopping site.

I don't even know where to begin. I spent the past two entries discussing the glimmers of hope for young girls in the media, but it is products like Bratz that are keeping these few positive influences from really making an influence. This past winter the American Psychological Association (APA) released a report stating that advertising and media images that encourage girls to focus on looks and sexuality are harmful to their emotional and physical health. In February 2007 they created the "Task Force on the Sexualization of Girls." USA Today wrote an article ("Media Cited for Showing Girls as Sex Objects") that detailed this report. The author explained that the APA spent 18 months analyzing over 300 studies that "included a variety of media, from television and movies to song lyrics, and looked at advertising showing body-baring doll clothes for pre-schoolers, tweens posing in suggestive ways in magazines and the sexual antics of young celebrity role models." The APA cited the Bratz dolls in particular: "Although these dolls may present no more sexualization of girls or women than is seen in MTV videos, it is worrisome when dolls designed specifically for 4- to 8-year-olds are associated with an objectified adult sexuality."

Apparently the CEO of MGA Entertainment (the manufacturer of Bratz), Isaac Larian, strongly disagreed with the report, stating "These are the clothes that are worn if you go to schools anywhere in the USA. They are not sexy." An associate professor at NYU, Ann Pellegrini, voices concern over what she sees as a "panic" about the sexualization of children. According to her, "I do think girls and women are still profoundly objectified when it comes to sex, but there may well be some things that look like objectification that are being experienced by girls and young women that feel empowering." I think that this relates back to what I was discussing at the end of my last post where there is a fine line between encouraging girls to be proud of their bodies and promoting the sexualization of their bodies. Larian says that the clothes Bratz wear are the same as ones any girl would wear to school. I couldn't disagree more with this. One only needs to look at the Bratz dolls, covered heavily in make-up and wearing skin-tight, revealing clothes such as miniskirts and fishnet stockings to know that very few six-year-olds look like that. And no six-year-old should. There is a strong difference between sexuality -- how one feels/relates to her body -- and sex. Pellegrini is wrong when she suggests that images that sexualize young girls can be empowering. When empowerment is tied to looking thin, sexy and beautiful, this can actually be harmful to the sexuality of girls. Girls have lower self-esteem and self-image, thinking that they must look a certain way to be "powerful" or acceptable in society. This leads to a negative relationship between girls and their bodies: they try to mold themselves to be a certain way rather than celebrating who they are as individuals. Larian explains that young girls do not see Bratz as sexy, just as pretty. However, Larian is unable to critically examine the subliminal impact that dolls such as these have. No wonder the APA Chair, Dr. Eileen Zurbriggen, says that "sexualization has negative effects in a variety of domains, including cognitive functioning, physical and mental health, and healthy sexual development."

Not only that -- the message being sent to the male population is dangerous as well and contributes to the consequences listed above. From these media images, little boys receive their first messages about what girls should look like and how they should behave. Images that focus solely on the appearance of the female body are objectifying. It doesn't matter if it makes the girls feel good or not -- what is important is what these images are saying about women. And what they are saying is that the body continues to be the female's most important asset. As Dr. Zurbriggen states, "As a society, we need to replace all of these sexualized images with ones showing girls in positive settings - ones that show the uniqueness and competence of girls."

Only those looking to commercialize on the sexualization of youth could argue with that. But unfortunately it is those people exactly that control what images are being put out. Once again, parents and other adults are left with the responsibility of trying to promote healthy body-images, high self-esteem and a sense of competence beyond appearance. Good luck with that.

Following up...

2007-07-31T11:37:00.000-05:00

Following up on my last post ... I just spent a weekend watching Disney Channel with my little sister and it really got me thinking about a lot of things.

First of all, there are some really positive images of young girls on TV these days when it comes to children's programming. Ok, so I haven't really been watching a ton of kids' shows besides stuff on Disney since that's what my sister likes, but from what I've heard, those are the shows that are all the rage for that age group right now. And what I have seen has been good. First of all, there is Hannah Montana, which is arguably the most popular show and which I mentioned in my last post. In my opinion, from what I've seen, it is very positive. The main character Miley, who "moonlights" as Hannah Montana, is a really good kid. Each show seems to showcase some type of lesson about being honest, fair, accepting, etc. And when she transforms into Hannah, she seems to be okay as well. Sure the outfits she wears are really sparkly and everything, but she doesn't seem to be sexualized like many of the young pop stars.

I think back to Britney Spears, who was only slightly older than Miley Cyrus when she released her first album. Her first single "Baby One More Time" was accompanied by a music video of her dressed as a sexy schoolgirl, an image that is still well-known today. Although people claim that she went from wholesome to hypersexual, I would argue that she was never wholesome. This picture of her is from a 1998 tour she did with NSync, when she was only 16. Compare it with the photo of Cyrus, who is nearly 15 herself. Christina Aguilera, also close in age to Cyrus when she released her self-titled first album, gave us "Genie in a Bottle" where she proclaimed, "My body's saying let's go" and "you gotta rub me the right way" and where she rolled around sexily on a beach. Currently the singer Rihanna is a big hit with her single "Umbrella." The music video for this song involves her dancing around in some skin-tight, leather number that leaves little to the imagination. She is all of nineteen. Next to cases like this, Cyrus is like a breath of clean air -- even if that air has been purified by commercialized Disney pop. Her lyrics and dancing are clean while her outfits actually cover her body. I know I probably sound like I'm about 80 years old, but there is something extremely unsettling about seeing eight-year-olds imitating hypersexualized teen pop sensations. There is a reason why kids are engaging in sexual activities at younger and younger ages. The "tween" generation is in desperate need of alternative images. And luckily there are a few to go around.

In addition to Hannah Montana, another popular Disney show is The Suite Life of Zack & Cody. This show is about twin boys living in an upscale Boston hotel with their single mother, who works there as the headlining singer. The show also follows the lives of other employees of the Tipton Hotel, such as candy salesgirl Maddie Fitzpatrick (played by Ashley Tisdale) and the owner's daughter London Tipton (Brenda Song). While London is rich and beautiful, she is also not very smart. Maddie, her best friend, is portrayed as very hard-working, intelligent and outspoken. She cares a lot about environmental issues and aspires to attend law school. She is also the sensitive and caring character. Throughout the media's history, strong and intelligent women have often been shown as cold or ruthless or socially awkward. Maddie, rather, is shown as the character that girls should strive to be like.

Here is a clip from an episode where Maddie has to act as London's brains in order to help her impress a National Merit Scholar.

Another Disney phenomenon has been High School Musical, a Disney Channel original movie released in 2006, with 7.7 million viewers tuning in to its U.S. premiere. This movie also does a lot for positive images of girls on television. The leading female character, Gabriella, is sweet and pretty albeit somewhat shy. She is extremely intelligent, having won numerous scholastic competitions in the past. In the movie she is part of the scholastic decathlon. During one scene, other members of the decathlon are trying to convince her to forget about Troy (the male protagonist of the film). Her friend, Taylor, says to her, "Our culture worshipped the aggressor throughout the ages and we end up with spoiled, overpaid, bonehead athletes who contribute little to civilization other than slam dunks and touchdowns" then reminds her, "But the path of the mind, the path we're on, ours is the path that has brought us these people" and proceeds to show her images of Eleanor Roosevelt, Frida Kahlo, Sandra Day O'Connor, Madame Curie, Jane Goodall and Oprah Winfrey. She states that the side of education and accomplishment is the future of civilization. And all of this coming from a cute young girl (who they later show having a romantic interest for one of the other leading male characters) and not some evil, castrating bitch. In fact the entire movie itself is about nonconformity with lots of gender deviations -- the male lead, Troy (Zac Efron) is afraid for his basketball pals to discover his hidden desire to be in the high school musical while Ryan, the guy who is usually the male lead in all the musical productions is caricaturaly stylish and effeminate. In the song "Stick to the Status Quo", various students reveal secrets, such as one basketball player who bakes and dreams of making the perfect creme brulee.

Back to Hannah Montana, one can see all of this reflected there as well. Firstof all, education is put as a top priority in various episodes. In one, Miley's father tells her that her European tour will be canceled if she doesn't get her grades up. In another one, she is not allowed to go out all weekend because she must study for midterms. Her best friend Lilly defies gender norms by being great at sports, a skateboarding champion and hanging out with the guys. In one episode, Miley tries to get Lilly to act more "like a girl" in order to impress a guy. In the end, the guy reveals that he liked the old Lilly much better, showing that there are lots of different ways that one can "be a girl." Their other best friend, Oliver, is often doing girl stuff with them and while he sometimes frets about his masculinity being threatened, he shows that he can be a normal guy and also do "girl stuff" with his friends. Miley's dad, who is raising his kids on his own, cooks, gives his daughter advice, talks about what hair products he uses and after he and his son go work out one day to be more "manly" they quickly cave and go bathe with floral scented bath soap.

Beyond Disney Channel, there are other examples as well, such as the one I mentioned in my last post -- Hermione Granger of the Harry Potter series. As I said, Hermione is depicted as not the smartest girl in the school but the smartest student. She is also able to apply her intelligence and logic in dangerous situations, she stands up for others and what she believes in and she remains extraordinarily courageous throughout the series. If one goes through and reads the seven books, the trio's success would probably never happen without Hermione's cool wit.

But the problem is that while many of these images are available to young girls, their positive influence does not seem to be lasting nor does it seem to be universal. One only needs to step into a store such as Libby Lu which is like Hannah Montana on crack, with little girls doing runway shows with belly-baring outfits and headsets. I nearly passed out the first time I went into that store ... I would be ashamed to bring my little girl to a party at a place like that. It is not children's programming that is teaching young girls how to dress, dance and act provocatively. It is artists and shows that should be aimed towards older teenagers and adults, which for some reason seem to have a greater impression on youth. Furthermore, there is still an incredible drop in self-esteem for girls around the age of 10 or 11, when they begin to perform less well in school and feel less comfortable acting like an individual.

I think there are a few reasons for this. First of all, networks such as Disney channel are on cable. Network television does not have as much positive programming in my opinion. There is PBS, but unfortunately perhaps due to rapidly decreasing funding, the shows on PBS are aimed mostly towards preschool and early primary school children. Secondly, the target age for shows such as these seems to be shrinking. Kids as young as 9 or 10 are watching shows with mature content, which I think is inappropriate. Parents need to take more responsibility in monitoring what it is that their kids are watching. Devices such as Tivo are finally creating this possibility, so I think it is time for adults to really step up. Twelve or thirteen years old is not mature and not anywhere near adulthood. There is no reason why girls that age shouldn't be able to still watch shows such as those on Disney. But for many, these shows seem too juvenile and instead they're watching some crap like The Next Pussycat Doll which touts itself as empowering to young women but which is really females trying to see who can act like the biggest sex symbol.

It also doesn't help that adults don't give much credit to anything that is clean and not laden with sex. Kids and teenagers listen to the radio a lot. I know that I listened to it a whole lot more when I was younger than I do now as an adult. And what is on the radio? Songs with lots of adult content. If the radio is for everyone to listen to, they should include songs that everyone can listen to. I was just reading a Washington Post article recently that discussed how although Miley Cyrus has had two albums debut as #1 in the U.S., her songs have gotten no play on the radio. The article also cites other acts such as The Cheetah Girls and Aly & AJ, whose CDs have been reaching platinum and multi-platinum levels but have been locked out of the Top 40. They also mentioned the High School Musical soundtrack, which was the best-selling album of 2006 (sales hitting the 4-million mark) but got no radio play. One radio consultant said that many stations, which target the 18-34 age group, don't want to alienate their older listeners. However, there are plenty of other young artists finding radio play, such as Rihanna (age 19) and Sean Kingston (age 17) and of course in the past artists such as Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Avril Lavigne, Mandy Moore and Hanson were all teenagers, too. Listening to the songs themselves, the only difference between an early era Britney song and a Miley song is in the lyrics -- Cyrus' being cleaner. One music executive notes that they Disney artists would have found radio play 40 years ago, but that there is no room for them today. This is unfortunate because many young teens will listen to the Top 40 to see what music is "cool" or "in" at the moment. Perhaps this is one reason why they are led astray. I don't really listen to the radio, so I certainly wouldn't mind if some of these artists were thrown into the mix. And adults should be able to deal with it, since there are plenty of crap songs aimed towards adults as it is. If adults interests determine everything that is played, then it is no wonder that kids are striving to become like adults faster and faster.

I think it really says something about society when I start to feel like I'm some type of old-fashioned prude by saying that 10-year-olds shouldn't be imitating the latest sex icon. I don't think that kids should be sheltered; actually, I think that we should be more open with our kids about sexuality. But I think that something went terribly wrong -- kids should understand about their bodies and sexuality and other facts of life, but they are still children and they should not be emulating adults. Sex and sexuality shouldn't be made taboo, but they also should not be "reclaimed" by children. It is one thing for a little girl to be taught to love and understand her body and another thing for her to be taught that it is alright to objectify herself. I do not feel bad saying that.

And now that I think I have beat this topic to death, you can rest assured that I will try not to mention young girls and media influences/portrayals anymore. It's that damn feminist in me!

Hope for Hollywood's Future

2007-07-24T22:30:00.000-05:00

In a celebrity world full of false idols and poor role models for young girls, it is always refreshing to see a rising star that actually reflects positive values and authentic talent. Having a six-year-old sister and working with lots of young girls over the years, I have become especially conscious of the fact that there are few great role models out there. Sure, there are some talented female performers, but talent is not enough. The questions to ask: are there strong female role models in TV and movies for young girls to see? Are the actors playing these characters people that also reflect the values of their roles within their own lives? Well, there certainly aren't enough of the former and rarely can one find both the former and the latter.

Even though it lately seems like there are an exceptionally high number of very young female celebrities getting negative attention for partying, substance abuse, eating disorders and the like, it also seems that there are a rising number of promising young stars. I just recently read a blog entry about Emma Watson, the young star of the Harry Potter films, which inspired me to delve into this topic. There was a brief period of time where Emma was getting some negative press for her supposed "diva" like antics, which included her taking a bit longer than her co-stars to sign on for the last two Harry Potter projects. Reports claimed that she was "tired of being known as that girl from Harry Potter" and that she wanted to move on to different projects. Other reports stated that it took a couple extra million dollars to "lure" her back.

But now Watson seems to be everywhere, and there is no trace of the diva-like image that was painted of her only months ago. Instead, she is being praised as someone appearing "intent on carving a career of substance" and giving the "promise of a brilliant woman primed to emerge from the girl we've watched grow up these last six years." And sure enough, Emma speaks with a maturity and determination that reminds us that not all child-stars are doomed to follow the path of Lindsay Lohan. Discussing her final holdout on the last two HP movies, Watson explains that it was her commitment to her education and not professional maneuvering: "I didn't sign the contracts sort of immediately because I needed some time to just figure out, actually, the logistics of ... making two Harry Potter films and combining that with my school timetable. I really want to go to university. I really wanted to continue what I was doing, and I didn't want to give either one up. And so I was really in this kind of difficult position. And it just took a bit of time just to block out how I was going to make that work."

On her character Hermione, Watson says, "There are too many stupid girls in the media ... Hermione's not scared to be clever. I think sometimes really smart girls dumb themselves down a bit, and that's bad ... I'm a bit of a feminist. I'm very competitive and challenging ... When I was 9 or 10, I would get really upset when they tried to make me look geeky, but now I absolutely love it. I find it's so much pressure to be beautiful. Hermione doesn't care what she looks like. She's a complete tomboy."
Speaking of Hermione, let's give a big thanks to J.K. Rowling (author of Harry Potter) for creating such a fantastic female character. True, she could have made the book Haley Potter or something, but even though the hero is not female, Hermione truly represents the brains behind all the Harry Potter adventure. As I heard one person put it, she represents the "cosmic force." She's not only the smartest kid in the book, she also does not shy away from danger. In the 5th book it was Hermione that took the first steps to organize the illegal student organization Dumbledore's Army. It's awesome to see little girls worldwide looking up to her.

But back to Emma -- as for the benefits of fame and fortune, she proclaims that although she has made enough money to never work again (and all at the ripe old age of 17), she "would never want that." According to Emma, learning keeps her motivated and her education keeps her "in touch with reality." As for her future, the young actress has expressed interest in the theater and now perhaps modeling, as word on the street is proclaiming her as the new face of Chanel. One thing is sure, this is a young woman that I would not mind my baby sister looking up to.

Here is a clip of Emma playing the famous Hermione in 2005's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire followed by a very recent interview on David Letterman

The Disney Channel must thank its lucky stars for the day it decided to sign this young woman to play the lead role in their television series about a normal girl leading a double life as a teen pop sensation. Since Hannah Montana first aired last year, it has quickly become Disney's most popular show. And its leading lady (or should I say girl?) has become a household name among every family with girls over the age of 5. Following in the footsteps of such former child stars as Britney Spears (The Mickey Mouse Club), Lindsay Lohan (The Parent Trap) and Hilary Duff (Lizzie McGuire), Miley Cyrus has become part of the Disney franchise. But the promise of this young actress and singer is unlike anything that has come before. Her show premiered in March 2006 to the highest ratings in the Disney Channel's history (with 5.4 million viewers) and is the No. 1 cable show among the 6-14 ("tween") age group. It is No. 2 among all channels, second only to American Idol. In 2006, the Hannah Montana soundtrack debuted as No. 1 on the Billboard Charts and last month the double-disc Hannah Montana 2/ Meet Miley Cyrus CD also debuted at No. 1, beating out Kelly Clarkson's My December. At only 14 years old, Miley is the youngest performer to ever attain that level of success.

And it is not a lack of talent that has gotten her this far. Her dad, singer Billy Ray Cyrus (who also plays her father on the show), compares her comedic acting to a young Lucille Ball and, just like a father, has nothing but praises for her musical talents: "Musically, she is — this is the only time I'm going to brag — she's the real deal musically. I can't wait for you to hear what she's been writing and the songs that come from inside of her. You know the saying she's got an old soul? Well, she's got an old soul, and her old soul's got a lot of soul." And she gets songwriting credits for every "Miley Cyrus" song: "I write all the time. Miley Cyrus wrote every song on that CD. I write in my sleep." Of course, "songwriting" credit can mean a lot of things (I once heard Ashlee Simpson explaining her songwriting contributions by saying that sometimes a "word" or "emotion" would inspire her and then the 'other' songwriters would turn it into actual lyrics and music), but I'll give her the benefit of the doubt for now.

And many of her songs reflect the values that the show seems to promote. Lyrics such as "Who said, who said, I can't be president / I say, I say, you ain't seen nothing yet" , "Don't let anyone tell you that you're not strong enough / Don't give up / There's nothing wrong with just being yourself" or "I know where I stand / I know who I am / ... I know I can change the world" and "I'm unusual not so typical, / Way too smart to be waitin' around / Tai Chi Practicin' / Snowboard champion / I could fix a flat on your car" may not be complex or highly developed, but they send a very positive message "girl power" message out to youth. I remember cringing when a group of elementary age girls that I was working with started singing from memory the words to Justin Timberlake's "Bringing Sexy Back." These songs are ones that parents can feel okay about their kids singing along to. And the show itself always attaches positive lessons to the episodes, such as one in which Miley attempts to make her best friend act more like a "girl", only to have that plan backfire on her. Those of you who, like me, grew up in the 80s and 90s may be reminded of classic shows such as Punky Brewster.

Of course success does not always a role model make. It is more than her achievements that makes her someone that her target audience can look up to. Like Emma Watson, it is a head set firmly on her shoulders that gives her promise for the future. Jason Earles, 29, who plays her older brother on the show, says that Miley, "could be awful if she wanted to. But she's not. She's about as sweet a person as you could want." And with solid values and strong family relationships, it seems hopeful that the young Cyrus will not follow in the footsteps of other former Disney tweens. As Miley herself says, she thinks about the bad paths she could go down, but doesn't worry that it will happen to her, saying that her music and her family keep her focused -- and hopefully the millions of little girls like my sister that think she's the coolest thing in the world.

Below view a couple clips of Miley as Miley Stewart/Hannah Montana and an interview of Miley Cyrus on ABC News:

Long before Hannah Montana was even a twinkle in the Disney Channel's eye, another young woman was making her mark on this kid's network. Raven Symoné's name has been known in the world of television ever since she was cast as Olivia on The Cosby Show at the age of 3. But it was her leading role on Disney's longest running show That's So Raven that made her a well-known figure amongst young girls everywhere. The show, about a teenager with psychic abilities, first aired in 2003. It was later nominated for an Emmy for "Outstanding Children's Program." Also in 2003, the then 17-year-old performer starred in the Disney Original Movie The Cheetah Girls. That film was followed up in 2006 with The Cheetah Girls 2, the channel's 2nd most-viewed film to date, of which Raven was also an executive producer.

Now 21 years of age, Raven Symoné projects an image of success, maturity and modesty -- no small feat for someone that has been in the business for nearly her entire life. Despite her success as a singer, songwriter and actress, she chooses to maintain a low-profile, managing to avoid the controversy and publicity that so often surrounds former child-stars. Today she owns her own production company That's So Productions and has over the years been awarded with 6 NAACP Image Awards.

In a world overwhelmed with stick-thin, barbie-blonde celebrities, Raven has always stood out to me as a positive image for all young girls, but especially for girls of color. There are too few opportunities for young women of color to see themselves positively reflected in the media. That's So Raven brought a diverse cast of stars to the Disney screen while The Cheetah Girls, with three out of the four main characters being young women of color, has helped to change the face of role models for kids.

Below you can view a clip from That's So Raven and an interview on Regis and Kelly.

If I were to choose an actress to epitomize a role model for young women, I would have to pick Natalie Portman. At 26 years of age, she is several years older than the others mentioned in this post and she represents a future that I would wish upon all of them. Like these other actresses, Natalie has been in the business from a young age, "discovered" at the age of 12 and shortly afterwards cast in the film The Professional. Since then Natalie has acted in many films such as the recent Star Wars trilogy, V for Vendetta, Garden State and Closer (for which she received an Oscar nomination). She has also acted on stage in productions such as The Diary of Anne Frank on Broadway.

But it is what Portman has accomplished in addition to all this that makes her someone that all young women can look up to. Education has always been of utmost importance to her; she has even been reported saying, "I'd rather be smart than be a movie star." In high school she wrote a paper on "The Enzymatic Production of Hydrogen" which was submitted to the Intel Science Talent Search. She attended Harvard beginning in 1999 and graduated in 2003 with a degree in Psychology. During her time at Harvard she was a research assistant, coauthoring two research papers which were published in professional scientific journals. Born in Jerusalem, she also speaks fluent Hebrew and has studied French, Japanese, German and Arabic. In 2005 she worked on her graduated studies at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. She appeared as a guest lecturer in 2006 at Columbia University's course Terrorism and Counter-terrorism.

Natalie has also devoted herself to many different social and political causes. She has been a vegetarian since the age of 8 and has advocated for various environmental causes. In 2004 she publicly campaigned for John Kerry's presidential campaign, traveling the country and speaking to various groups. She has traveled as an Ambassador of Hope for the organization FINCA, an organization that promotes micro-lending to help finance women-owned businesses in poor countries. She has appeared on the PBS program Foreign Exchange with Fareed Zakaria to discuss microfinance. Said Zakaria, "I am generally wary of celebrities with fashionable causes ... she really knew her stuff."

She has also kept herself away from scandal and left little for celebrity bloggers and gossip columnists to say about her, showing that fame and deviant behavior need not go hand in hand. Natalie can give hope to future generations of up-and-coming young women in Hollywood, proving that the life of an actress can in fact be positive, multi-dimensional and inspiring.

Watch a scene of Natalie in the film Garden State opposite Zach Braff and afterwards see an interview of her on David Letterman.

Of course these rising stars are only three among many other very talented young women. I hope that we continue to see even more girls like this emerge in the future. It is my sincere wish that the futures of these young women will be as promising as they seem, and that there will continue to be others that follow in their footsteps and provide a similar hope to those of us who don't want to see our seven-year-olds imitating Beyonce and Shakira.

Sweet Success!

2007-07-15T17:31:00.001-05:00

I always feel slightly ambivalent when artists that I like gain widespread success. On the one hand, I am happy that they have earned the recognition that they deserve (and that I have apparently recognized their talent before the mainstream). On the other hand, I feel somewhat of a sense of loss when that person suddenly belongs to a much larger world than that of the struggling independent artist -- venues are suddenly larger and less intimate, tickets must be purchased well in advance, and for some reason they seem less special when millions of people know them rather than just hundreds.

But luckily I can say that my feelings of happiness win out and I always seem to get somewhat of a thrill hearing the song of one of these artists on TV or radio, knowing that I was listening to them way back when. Such is the case with the dynamic Canadian duo -- twin musicians, Tegan and Sara. I first discovered the sisters back in 2003 when I was still in high school, although by then they had already released three CDs. At that time the two were playing largely to indie queer crowds. It was after the release of their fourth album, So Jealous (2004) (named one of the 50 best albums of that year by Rolling Stone), that Tegan and Sara began to be more well-known. I saw them play at a packed Madison venue in July 2005, they appeared on Showtime's The L Word in 2006 and suddenly their songs began popping up on television shows, most notably Grey's Anatomy, which featured at least 8 different Tegan & Sara songs on various episodes. Their fifth album is now due for release at the end of this month and they are playing sold-out shows across Canada and the U.S. this summer and fall.

I can't even begin to say how happy I am to see these two succeed. At 26 years old, the twins have been rockin' it since high school. They are not only extremely talented musicians and songwriters, they are also spirited individuals. To "know" them is to love them. Their shows are fun and interactive, with the two sharing various anecdotes and humor with the audience. The two are also openly gay, but prefer to keep the focus away from their sexuality and on the whole Tegan & Sara "package." As Tegan explains in an interview, they don't want to treat their sexuality as a mandate or cause it to restrict what audience they seem accessible to. But they also feel and accept the responsibility that comes along with being gay women in the media. In an interview with Spinner on "out" musicians, Tegan explains, "Our fan base is getting really young, and it's important to me to make sure that we're spreading a very honest message. I'm glad there's no part of us that has been reluctant to share who we are. There's still so much homophobia, sexism and racism in younger generations, and yet these kids love us anyway. I think we have a very progressive message."

Now, seven years after the release of their first album, Under Feet Like Ours, they will release their album The Con at the end of July, coupled with a DVD. If you haven't heard them yet, check them out! I'm sure that they will only continue to rise.

Here's a little interview of the two from a couple years ago where they talk about their fans and about being on tour

Here they are doing a live performance of the song "Not Tonight" from their third album If It Was You (2002)

Finally, here is a kind of silly music video for the song "Speak Slow" from So Jealous (2004)

The R-rated My Little Pony

2007-07-12T22:07:00.000-05:00

This is so hilarious. Click the image to see a larger version and read the text.

Courtesy of The Onion. There were other films too -- Furby, Mr. Potato Head and G.I. Joe but this one was by far the most hilarious.

Feminism still too hard a concept for many to grasp...

2007-07-09T17:43:00.000-05:00

I was recently alerted to a witty article written by Gloria Steinem entitled In Defense of the 'Chick Flick'. (I will be including some snippets of the article in here. To read the full piece, head on over here.)

She eloquently notes that many films that are considered "chick flicks" are those that include "more dialogue than special effects, more relationships than violence, and relies for its suspense on how people live instead of how they die." She also brings in literature, noting that much of what is considered "great literature" could have fallen into the genre of "chick lit" had it not been written by men. She suggests, "If Anna Karenina had been written by Leah Tolstoy, or The Scarlet Letter by Nancy Hawthorne, or Madame Bovary by Greta Flaubert, or A Doll's House by Henrietta Ibsen, or The Glass Menagerie by (a female) Tennessee Williams, would they have been hailed as universal? Suppose Shakespeare had really been The Dark Lady some people supposed. I bet most of her plays and all of her sonnets would have been dismissed as some Elizabethan version of ye olde "chick lit," only to be resurrected centuries later by stubborn feminist scholars."

Steinem is cheeky when asking readers to adopt the term "prick flick" for any film that glorifies war and violence and that portrays women as objectified sex objects subject to violence. Of course Steinem is not really suggesting that this term be adopted. Her article is meant to be satirical -- to show that gendering movies is unfair, biased and evidence of a society that still has deeply entrenched dualist values when it comes to sex and gender.

The example of literature only serves to further this point -- Steinem alludes to many classic works of literature which could perhaps appeal to more "feminine values" but which are not labeled (and subsequently) dismissed as "chick lit." Her point is that we use the term "chick flick" to dismiss a movie, to show that it doesn't need to be taken seriously as a great work. And the fact that we use a label which is so inherently tied to the "female" side of the spectrum is indicative of much deeper issues than just semantics.

Of course, most of this was lost on most readers of the article over on AlterNet. I read through many of the comments following the article and was appalled by the cruelty and "knee-jerk" reactions which immediately said such things as " does gloria make this junk up as she's sitting on the toilet?", "There are terms altready -- guy flicks, man movies. You don't see people calling chick flicks cun_ flicks so why choose a deliberately offensive term, Ms. Steinem?", " Gotcha, Gloria- male authors get published because they're male regardless of what slop they produce", "This is the kind of article that says 'embittered feminist baby boomer' in loud, capital letters. The author's take on 'prick flicks' vs. 'chick flicks' reveals a certain level of, ah, hatred for men, perhaps?", "Why is literature male dominated? It's not because men are evil and don't allow women to be published, it's because women write garbage such as this article that nobody wants to read."

One reader even suggested that Mary Shelley (author of Frankenstein) was not even responsible for writing her classic novel: "Oh, and not to mention Mary Shelley, the thinly-educated 17 year old who managed to miraculously write something like Frankenstein after getting married to her famous poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley who'd do anything for her, and who mysteriously failed to produce anything of comparable value after he died." This reader also said that Alice Walker's writing was mediocre and that her successes should be attributed solely to her sex. Nice.

Many other readers went on about how "offensive" it was that she dared to use the word "prick" -- apparently completely missing her point and failing to notice her satire. God forbid anyone ever say anything offensive alluding to males -- even if it's only in a sarcastic manner. Like the words "pussy" and "cunt" haven't been used in much more offensive (and serious) ways. But then of course, males aren't used to having anything related to their sex be used in a derogatory manner. Many suggested that she should have used the term "guy film" instead. She didn't use that term because no one would have felt offended by it, and she was going for the offensive -- she was going for something that would make people rethink those labels in the first place. Nobody even bothered to wonder why we allow the word "chick" to be synonymous with "woman", when really "chick" is a term that demeans and objectifies women.

Here is what I read in Steinem's article, that many others failed to read:

She wasn't really suggesting that we use the term "prick flick", she was making the point of how it is both unnecessary and offensive to tie a certain type of film to a gender. Many made the point that "chick flicks" are essentially bad movies, which only serves to further Steinem's point that we associate feminine values with poorer quality films that can't be taken seriously. I believe that in Steinem's ideal world, there would be NO "chick flicks" or "prick flicks" -- genres would have nothing to do with gender or sex. But this idea was lost on many, instead giving way to "knee-jerk" reactions to truths that make people -- especially the male sex -- feel uncomfortable. Most feminists do not blame individual men for anything. What women such as Steinem try to show is that there are values deeply embedded within our society and our institutions that gives preference to a certain set of ideas that have been (rightly or wrongly) associated with the masculine. Unfortunately, it seems that many people find it easier to react (cruelly) rather than to critically think about whether there is something still seriously wrong with the way we think.