How Alex Pettyfer's makeup artists expected me to react to his makeover in Beastly.
My actual reaction: "HOLY COW THAT'S SO AWESOME! I'm SO going to style myself after that FOREVER."
Next time you make a movie about shallow people, try not to make them shallower than actual people.
Problem, makeup doodz?
Wednesday, March 30, 2011
Friday, March 25, 2011
TV Overmind: We Need To Stop Paying Attention To Charlie Sheen
This article pretty much says everything I've been thinking about the whole debacle.
http://tvovermind.zap2it.com/tv-news/stop-paying-attention-charlie-sheen/50154
There's really nothing I can add to this.
http://tvovermind.zap2it.com/tv-news/stop-paying-attention-charlie-sheen/50154
There's really nothing I can add to this.
Thursday, March 24, 2011
What Exactly Is Wrong With Mr. Popper's Penguins?
Okay, so it's half an hour until bedtime, my eyelids are about to shut on their own, the indicator lights on my computer aren't working (I'm starting to suspect imminent system failure - time to back up everything and call the Geek Squad) and then, via this post on Shakesville (in a strictly roundabout fashion), I get THIS.
THIS is the trailer for the upcoming Jim Carrey movie, Mr. Popper's Penguins. Oh, Jim Carrey, how I love/hate you. You, sir, are the male Lady Gaga of comedy. I adore you for your aggressive deconstruction of masculinity and yet you can be such a douche.
Okay, time to quit railing on Jim Carrey. I'm not sure this upcoming mess of a movie is entirely his fault.
It would be far too easy for me just to say the trailer is bad. I mean, we all KNOW that. No, I'm going to go beyond the traditional. I'm going to take a 1:25 movie trailer and deconstruct it like a really real critic, because the failure of this trailer is too deep to be appreciated at first glance.
Here we go.
Firstly, a little background information. This movie is based on a 1938 children's book, also titled "Mr. Popper's Penguins," the summary of which runs thus (according to a website I read):
Then I watched the trailer.
OH SWEET CREAMERY BUTTER. I'm just going to make a point-by-point list of everything that they've screwed up.
THIS is the trailer for the upcoming Jim Carrey movie, Mr. Popper's Penguins. Oh, Jim Carrey, how I love/hate you. You, sir, are the male Lady Gaga of comedy. I adore you for your aggressive deconstruction of masculinity and yet you can be such a douche.
Okay, time to quit railing on Jim Carrey. I'm not sure this upcoming mess of a movie is entirely his fault.
It would be far too easy for me just to say the trailer is bad. I mean, we all KNOW that. No, I'm going to go beyond the traditional. I'm going to take a 1:25 movie trailer and deconstruct it like a really real critic, because the failure of this trailer is too deep to be appreciated at first glance.
Here we go.
Firstly, a little background information. This movie is based on a 1938 children's book, also titled "Mr. Popper's Penguins," the summary of which runs thus (according to a website I read):
Mr. Popper is a house painter whose dreams of Arctic exploration prompt him to write letters to real explorers. One of them sends him a penguin, which he keeps in the icebox. Before he knows it, the painter has a litter of 12 beaked birds. They eat voraciously, leading him to form Popper's Performing Penguins, a stage act that goes on tour and creates mayhem at every stop.I like it. It sounds fun. I especially like the sounds of the hero, Mr. Popper. He is a white male adult, but he's also a working-class hero - and as someone whose job prospects so far have involved working for a dairy or cleaning someone's house, I can get behind that. Plus, penguins! I love penguins. And so do kids. This sounds like the kind of book that would probably induce a lot of giggles in small children, and I'm always for that.
Then I watched the trailer.
OH SWEET CREAMERY BUTTER. I'm just going to make a point-by-point list of everything that they've screwed up.
- Bye-bye, working-class hero! The protagonist of THIS movie is now a Businessman. Not just any Businessman, but THE Businessman. You know, the one whose nice, orderly life is wackily messed up by wacky kids or wacky penguins, forcing him to slide down the slippery slope from his nice, orderly, kyriarchy-approved Businessman lifestyle into total wackiness. Yes, you know the plot. To explain exactly why this bothers me, well, go back to the summary of the book. It's about a guy who doesn't have much, craves something more, and then ends up getting it, if not exactly in the way he expects. It's an empowerment tale. This is the polar opposite of that plot, and one that's been done to DEATH. Classist, please.
- WHY DID HE NOT RUB HIS CHOPSTICKS BEFORE EATING? Those are the disposable snap-apart chopsticks, you have to rub them to get rid of the splinters! Actually, that's not the question at all. The question is why he is eating with chopsticks in the first place. He's eating what appears to be a pile of raw (possibly frozen) fish chunks. I could be wrong, but my racist-dar is detecting the good ol' "sushi = raw fish" misconception, straight from the minds of People Who Didn't Give A Shit Enough To Stop Perpetuating This Stereotype. Yeah, you know the guys. Because sushi is raw fish and also Japanese food and you eat Japanese food with chopsticks and yeh.
- "PENGUINS! YES!" This is not a complaint. This was the highlight of the whole trailer. That kid captures everything that this movie SHOULD be, and probably isn't.
- "Word." Just "Word." Also the song played at that point in the trailer. Once again, black culture (outdated black culture at that) is treated with this cavalier "isn't this what kids are into these days?" attitude. You throw it in there for cool points, "street cred," if you will. Never mind the fact that while WHITE kids who are into black culture are harmless and easily dismissible (even profitable!), BLACK kids who are into black culture are ghetto and 'hood and OH MY CORNPUFFS THEY ARE SO FUTURE CRIMINALS. Punish them for inventing the culture, then co-opt it for profit. Oh, Whiteness, I've missed the sweet sound of your asshole emissions.
- Speaking of that dance, Dick van Dyke did that decades ago and it was... well, I was never crazy about it but it was STILL more charming than this, mainly owing to the omission of Jim Carrey's increasingly creepy-ass face. DUDES. Stop putting him in children's movies PLEASE.
- Oh, and out of three (nine if you count the penguins) characters, there are absolutely no women in the trailer with a speaking role. WHY IS THAT.
Monday, March 21, 2011
Bed-Wetting!
Trigger warning: physical and verbal abuse
"You're a pig," she said. "No, you're worse than a pig. A pig wouldn't wallow in its own filth."
The year, I believe, was 2001. At any rate I was around the age of eleven. I had just had a great summer - the first summer that I had not had to wear a diaper to bed because I FINALLY was not peeing in my sleep. Then winter came, and it started again. And because I was young and ashamed, I didn't tell my mother, I just went on wetting in my bed until the pee soaked through the mattress and the moisture caused the bottom board to separate from the bedframe in the corner where I slept.
(I've always been a corner sleeper. Maybe it stems from the early years where I slept on a couch, but I've never been very good at taking up a lot of bed space. Usually I just pick one corner and stick to it. I've only recently gotten past laying as close to the sideboard as possible.)
I won't say it wasn't gross or unhealthy - it was. But it's important to understand my position.
Some of the earliest words I can remember from my mother are "You wet your pants." I remember her tone almost exactly. The disappointment. The disapproval. The now-I-have-to-spank-you-you-filthy-child. She spanked me for years for wetting my pants (though not for wetting the bed). She was somehow convinced that if she kept it up I would eventually stop.
I did, finally, at the age of or nine. It wasn't because I finally realized it was wrong, or because the arrival of my baby brother meant that now I had to be grown-uppish. It just happened that that was the age that I gained the ability not to pee myself (and ever since I've had weak bladder muscles, which can be awkward when I get sick).
That was great, because wetting my pants was wrong and unsanitary and wrong and shameful and WRONG and only little kids who were like two years old were supposed to do it. So I was happy.
But I kept wetting the bed. And it's true that it hadn't been stigmatized like pants-wetting was, but there was still that sense that there was something messed up with me. For one thing, pee made the bed stinky and it had to be washed. For another thing, it was widely touted as "normal" for people to stop peeing in their sleep at about the age of four. (Not that those were the only people I was exposed to, but the others that I knew of were just exceptions that I was supposed to relate to. Like my jerkwad uncle who wet until he was... dunno how old.)
I think the worst part was when I transitioned from Goodnites to adult diapers. MY WORD. Not only did I wet the bed, but I was so fat that I couldn't fit into the nightwear for bed-wetters of my age (I had a similar experience with pants, but that was not quite as embarrassing). No, I had to wear diapers that were made for people much, much older than myself. I was doubly messed up.
Anyway, so when I stopped wetting the bed that summer, to call myself "relieved" would be an understatement. I was SO happy. Finally I was normal! Finally I could wear underwear to bed instead of a diaper! (Turned out I didn't like wearing underwear to bed, actually.) And when it started again, I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone, to ask for my mom to start buying me diapers again, because what eleven-year-old wants to ask their parents for diapers? Besides, I was hoping it would stop. I was still hanging onto the naïve hope that if I ignored the problem long enough it would go away.
She told me that, then. "You're an ANIMAL, because PEOPLE don't do things like this. You're a pig. No, you're worse than a pig. Even a pig won't lay in its own filth." Like I was deliberately lounging around in my own germ-ridden urine because I LIKED it. But more to the point, I now knew what my behavior meant. It meant that I was foul, horrible. I wasn't just less than human - I was used to feeling like that because of my fatness. I was less than an animal. I was probably somewhere between "slime mold" and "dog turd" because of this, because of my mistake.
And then she beat me.
She beat me for being scared. For being ashamed. For hating myself. Every blow drove my pain and shame and horror deeper into me. I must have cried. In fact, I expect that I reacted exactly as I did now, reliving the moment in my head - loud, gasping sobs, the unmistakable noise of a child in agony. It happened roughly ten years ago but as I write it out the emotions are still as raw as if it was yesterday.
What actually happened yesterday was that I remembered this incident. At the time, it felt so faint that I could hardly remember it had happened. Much less that it had happened to ME. Like a bad dream, I had pushed it out of my memory so that I could go on living like a normal human being. That's the power of the mind, isn't it? To sequester away those horrible memories so that, the next morning, you can look your mother right in the face and convince yourself that she's a good, loving parent. I had to, because my mother told me she was, and I knew she had to be right because she took her cues from the Bible and the Bible was the ultimate authority on goodness and holiness.
(She didn't learn this one from the Bible; she learned it from her mother. But that wasn't something that I was willing to question at eleven. Not when she still had physical power over me and regularly beat me for disobeying her. It wasn't worth it.)
So I went back to wearing adult diapers. I didn't stop needing them until I was fourteen, months after I'd had my first period. And then they finally ended, and I learned that I didn't even WANT to sleep in my underwear, and I shut away the fear, shame, and anguish from my childhood.
And I wonder why I don't know who I am.
"You're a pig," she said. "No, you're worse than a pig. A pig wouldn't wallow in its own filth."
The year, I believe, was 2001. At any rate I was around the age of eleven. I had just had a great summer - the first summer that I had not had to wear a diaper to bed because I FINALLY was not peeing in my sleep. Then winter came, and it started again. And because I was young and ashamed, I didn't tell my mother, I just went on wetting in my bed until the pee soaked through the mattress and the moisture caused the bottom board to separate from the bedframe in the corner where I slept.
(I've always been a corner sleeper. Maybe it stems from the early years where I slept on a couch, but I've never been very good at taking up a lot of bed space. Usually I just pick one corner and stick to it. I've only recently gotten past laying as close to the sideboard as possible.)
I won't say it wasn't gross or unhealthy - it was. But it's important to understand my position.
Some of the earliest words I can remember from my mother are "You wet your pants." I remember her tone almost exactly. The disappointment. The disapproval. The now-I-have-to-spank-you-you-filthy-child. She spanked me for years for wetting my pants (though not for wetting the bed). She was somehow convinced that if she kept it up I would eventually stop.
I did, finally, at the age of or nine. It wasn't because I finally realized it was wrong, or because the arrival of my baby brother meant that now I had to be grown-uppish. It just happened that that was the age that I gained the ability not to pee myself (and ever since I've had weak bladder muscles, which can be awkward when I get sick).
That was great, because wetting my pants was wrong and unsanitary and wrong and shameful and WRONG and only little kids who were like two years old were supposed to do it. So I was happy.
But I kept wetting the bed. And it's true that it hadn't been stigmatized like pants-wetting was, but there was still that sense that there was something messed up with me. For one thing, pee made the bed stinky and it had to be washed. For another thing, it was widely touted as "normal" for people to stop peeing in their sleep at about the age of four. (Not that those were the only people I was exposed to, but the others that I knew of were just exceptions that I was supposed to relate to. Like my jerkwad uncle who wet until he was... dunno how old.)
I think the worst part was when I transitioned from Goodnites to adult diapers. MY WORD. Not only did I wet the bed, but I was so fat that I couldn't fit into the nightwear for bed-wetters of my age (I had a similar experience with pants, but that was not quite as embarrassing). No, I had to wear diapers that were made for people much, much older than myself. I was doubly messed up.
Anyway, so when I stopped wetting the bed that summer, to call myself "relieved" would be an understatement. I was SO happy. Finally I was normal! Finally I could wear underwear to bed instead of a diaper! (Turned out I didn't like wearing underwear to bed, actually.) And when it started again, I couldn't bring myself to tell anyone, to ask for my mom to start buying me diapers again, because what eleven-year-old wants to ask their parents for diapers? Besides, I was hoping it would stop. I was still hanging onto the naïve hope that if I ignored the problem long enough it would go away.
She told me that, then. "You're an ANIMAL, because PEOPLE don't do things like this. You're a pig. No, you're worse than a pig. Even a pig won't lay in its own filth." Like I was deliberately lounging around in my own germ-ridden urine because I LIKED it. But more to the point, I now knew what my behavior meant. It meant that I was foul, horrible. I wasn't just less than human - I was used to feeling like that because of my fatness. I was less than an animal. I was probably somewhere between "slime mold" and "dog turd" because of this, because of my mistake.
And then she beat me.
She beat me for being scared. For being ashamed. For hating myself. Every blow drove my pain and shame and horror deeper into me. I must have cried. In fact, I expect that I reacted exactly as I did now, reliving the moment in my head - loud, gasping sobs, the unmistakable noise of a child in agony. It happened roughly ten years ago but as I write it out the emotions are still as raw as if it was yesterday.
What actually happened yesterday was that I remembered this incident. At the time, it felt so faint that I could hardly remember it had happened. Much less that it had happened to ME. Like a bad dream, I had pushed it out of my memory so that I could go on living like a normal human being. That's the power of the mind, isn't it? To sequester away those horrible memories so that, the next morning, you can look your mother right in the face and convince yourself that she's a good, loving parent. I had to, because my mother told me she was, and I knew she had to be right because she took her cues from the Bible and the Bible was the ultimate authority on goodness and holiness.
(She didn't learn this one from the Bible; she learned it from her mother. But that wasn't something that I was willing to question at eleven. Not when she still had physical power over me and regularly beat me for disobeying her. It wasn't worth it.)
So I went back to wearing adult diapers. I didn't stop needing them until I was fourteen, months after I'd had my first period. And then they finally ended, and I learned that I didn't even WANT to sleep in my underwear, and I shut away the fear, shame, and anguish from my childhood.
And I wonder why I don't know who I am.
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Threats to Western Femininity: as a matter of fact, they are.
A lot of things went through my head when I watched the "Women Are Heroes" trailer (source: Womanist Musings.) One of them was that, without a doubt, African women are a threat to the monolithic worldview that is white Western femininity.
The women in the video are not delicate. Many of them have prominent noses, pronounced brows, thick hands - features that, in the Western world, are not so much reserved for men as they are considered to be an intrinsic part of the "man package." They're not soft, like our women who often spend hundreds of dollars on moisturizers to maintain what men see as a natural trait. Many of them have crooked or brooken teeth and short hair - again, traits that the white man reserves only for the male of the species. Perhaps most shockingly to Western assumptions is their voices. The "soft lilt" that our men would have us believe is an inborn trait for woman is simply not there.
And yet they are real women. Their bodies (trans women aside; they were not featured in this video) and lives are a testament to that. Every day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, they are real women. When they eat, they are real women. When they get dressed, they are real women. When they make faces for the cameras, they are real women. Contrary to local rumor, they do not stop being actual women just because they don't perform the elaborate act that Western femininity requires.
In other words, their very existence is a threat to our concept of femininity.
I think it was around this point in my thought process that I connected it to what I had been hearing from black women all along - every female of their race is a threat to white Western femininity. Not to the women, who would actually be better off if their genuineness of the member of the female sex didn't hinge so delicately on their ability to fit the construct, but to the empire. The female side of the kyriarchy. Just by being there, by being a real woman who naturally has some trait that white men have deemed "not natural," they are a threat.
With that in mind, I've poked around the Internet and found some photos of such women - beautiful women, real women, who challenge our ideas of what womanhood is just by existing every day. They are wonderful and deserve to be celebrated.
http://www.wtsp.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/090926101407_Helen-Hodges.jpg
(Helen Hodges, everyday Californian woman and victim of size discrimination. Via Dvorak Uncensored: "Big Fat Black Lady" On Receipt, Woman Upset)
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/9943850/2/istockphoto_9943850-pregnant-african-woman-smiling-in-traditional-attire.jpg
(Stock photo. A very happy, pregnant African woman.)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQD8rCVsW9jTb5YZSqW2_876DJGvGHs-meSsZglH6bJZagDaXkjJB3EQjnSSbaL8ORUs577W696VlJAZq8JImltY0eZtpb_MWKC8dCJCLwhIZFG87DOzIOjzTRmtWiXy-5UOClaPZ2BQVD/s1600-h/BlackWoman
(Naked, fat black woman with the writing "Too Old To Be In An Anti-Aging Ad." Via Telling Secrets: Fat is Still a Feminist Issue)
http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1436/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1436R-252672.jpg
(Stock photo. Young, fat, black woman posing.)
http://www.costume8.com/images/Funny/A1141-Fat-Boy-Disco-Hat-in-Black-Sequins-large.jpg
(Hat model, via costume8 - no link because I'm not pleased with some of their products.)
http://www.fashionfame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gabourey-Sidibe.jpeg
(Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her role in "Precious," rocking a dress so gorgeous that even I'd be tempted to wear it.) Via Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as Mammy)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzuRg9OaDnOOKEYuTy8uTthpOAeQSdGSk6Nwnk3B8g5eiRiuM7qd8az4BlFV0r9BhwNGa3KnI_DqMTo9E9yXdLejQx0Y-RmInu-A3LhBJ4CG__VNPURXCBxrkQDWIu3UWEhZmEQn47ZKP/s1600/obeseblackwoman.jpg
(Obese black woman. Via Acting White: Black Women Series - Weight, Body Fat and Attractiveness)
http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sisman-zenci-kadin-resmi-fat-black-woman-picture-234x300.jpg
(Unsure origins. Fat black woman in a black velvet dress.)
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2011/03/laquitablockson.jpg
(Dr. Laquita Blockson, the "Business Renaissance Guru." Via Your Black Woman: Professor Laquita Blockson Studies the Black Female Entrepreneur.)
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/11/donnabrazile2.jpg
(Donna Brazile, CNN commentator. Via Donna Brazile: Young Voters, Black and Latina Women Can Shape the Future)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes5/beautifulandfat.png
(Black woman with her back to the camera, being fat and beautiful. Via Shakesville: Happy-go-Lucky.)
Africa Page: Beautiful Black Women On Parade
(A collection of various black women. Some of the photos seem on the exploitative side; I'm not sure about this one.)
Be they fabulous, scholarly, happy, disgruntled, famous or completely unheard of, every one of these women is just as real, just as female, as Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe or Natalie Portman.
The women in the video are not delicate. Many of them have prominent noses, pronounced brows, thick hands - features that, in the Western world, are not so much reserved for men as they are considered to be an intrinsic part of the "man package." They're not soft, like our women who often spend hundreds of dollars on moisturizers to maintain what men see as a natural trait. Many of them have crooked or brooken teeth and short hair - again, traits that the white man reserves only for the male of the species. Perhaps most shockingly to Western assumptions is their voices. The "soft lilt" that our men would have us believe is an inborn trait for woman is simply not there.
And yet they are real women. Their bodies (trans women aside; they were not featured in this video) and lives are a testament to that. Every day, from the time they wake up until the time they go to bed, they are real women. When they eat, they are real women. When they get dressed, they are real women. When they make faces for the cameras, they are real women. Contrary to local rumor, they do not stop being actual women just because they don't perform the elaborate act that Western femininity requires.
In other words, their very existence is a threat to our concept of femininity.
I think it was around this point in my thought process that I connected it to what I had been hearing from black women all along - every female of their race is a threat to white Western femininity. Not to the women, who would actually be better off if their genuineness of the member of the female sex didn't hinge so delicately on their ability to fit the construct, but to the empire. The female side of the kyriarchy. Just by being there, by being a real woman who naturally has some trait that white men have deemed "not natural," they are a threat.
With that in mind, I've poked around the Internet and found some photos of such women - beautiful women, real women, who challenge our ideas of what womanhood is just by existing every day. They are wonderful and deserve to be celebrated.
http://www.wtsp.com/genthumb/genthumb.ashx?e=3&h=240&w=320&i=/assetpool/images/090926101407_Helen-Hodges.jpg
(Helen Hodges, everyday Californian woman and victim of size discrimination. Via Dvorak Uncensored: "Big Fat Black Lady" On Receipt, Woman Upset)
http://www.istockphoto.com/file_thumbview_approve/9943850/2/istockphoto_9943850-pregnant-african-woman-smiling-in-traditional-attire.jpg
(Stock photo. A very happy, pregnant African woman.)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhQD8rCVsW9jTb5YZSqW2_876DJGvGHs-meSsZglH6bJZagDaXkjJB3EQjnSSbaL8ORUs577W696VlJAZq8JImltY0eZtpb_MWKC8dCJCLwhIZFG87DOzIOjzTRmtWiXy-5UOClaPZ2BQVD/s1600-h/BlackWoman
(Naked, fat black woman with the writing "Too Old To Be In An Anti-Aging Ad." Via Telling Secrets: Fat is Still a Feminist Issue)
http://wwwdelivery.superstock.com/WI/223/1436/PreviewComp/SuperStock_1436R-252672.jpg
(Stock photo. Young, fat, black woman posing.)
http://www.costume8.com/images/Funny/A1141-Fat-Boy-Disco-Hat-in-Black-Sequins-large.jpg
(Hat model, via costume8 - no link because I'm not pleased with some of their products.)
http://www.fashionfame.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/02/Gabourey-Sidibe.jpeg
(Gabourey Sidibe, best known for her role in "Precious," rocking a dress so gorgeous that even I'd be tempted to wear it.) Via Womanist Musings: Gabourey Sidibe as Mammy)
https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjfzuRg9OaDnOOKEYuTy8uTthpOAeQSdGSk6Nwnk3B8g5eiRiuM7qd8az4BlFV0r9BhwNGa3KnI_DqMTo9E9yXdLejQx0Y-RmInu-A3LhBJ4CG__VNPURXCBxrkQDWIu3UWEhZmEQn47ZKP/s1600/obeseblackwoman.jpg
(Obese black woman. Via Acting White: Black Women Series - Weight, Body Fat and Attractiveness)
http://www.fantastikresimler.net/wp-content/uploads/2010/04/sisman-zenci-kadin-resmi-fat-black-woman-picture-234x300.jpg
(Unsure origins. Fat black woman in a black velvet dress.)
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2011/03/laquitablockson.jpg
(Dr. Laquita Blockson, the "Business Renaissance Guru." Via Your Black Woman: Professor Laquita Blockson Studies the Black Female Entrepreneur.)
http://www.blogcdn.com/www.bvblackspin.com/media/2010/11/donnabrazile2.jpg
(Donna Brazile, CNN commentator. Via Donna Brazile: Young Voters, Black and Latina Women Can Shape the Future)
http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v642/shakespeares_sister/shakes5/beautifulandfat.png
(Black woman with her back to the camera, being fat and beautiful. Via Shakesville: Happy-go-Lucky.)
Africa Page: Beautiful Black Women On Parade
(A collection of various black women. Some of the photos seem on the exploitative side; I'm not sure about this one.)
Be they fabulous, scholarly, happy, disgruntled, famous or completely unheard of, every one of these women is just as real, just as female, as Angelina Jolie or Marilyn Monroe or Natalie Portman.
Friday, March 18, 2011
My easily ignored, mildly inconvenient disability
I do have one, indeed I do. Now, it's not a mild disability, by any stretch. In fact, because of this disability I cannot naturally read this text from a foot away. Naturally, I cannot easily make out individual faces, distinguish more than simple shapes, distinguish any shapes that are complex or close in color, make out the difference between salt and white flour just by looking, judge distance efficiently, or tell the difference between a spider and a small piece of fluff unless it moves. (And I also suffer from arachnophobia.)
However, I don't spend much of my life thinking about this disability. It doesn't change my life very much at all, in fact. Because fortunately for me, my disability is not only easy to remedy, it is easily recognized as existing and needing remedied, to the degree where an entire subsection of medicine has been created devoted to diagnosing and treating my disability with minimal waiting time, for an affordable cost.
How lucky for me that I'm only nearsighted.
We have it scarily good, us nearsighted people. As do our close cousins, the farsighted. We are recognized. We are easy to accommodate. We are frequently represented in TV shows, movies, and books. Our disability is easily remedied just by putting on a small, attractive piece of accessory every morning. We can even get custom pieces picked to complement our faces, turning the correction of our vision into a combination fix and fashion statement, without judgment. Imagine, if you will, what the world would think if paraplegics, chronic pain sufferers, and other such folks tried to get about in designer motorized wheelchairs/scooters. My God! they would cry. The waste of money! And how could you glamorize your suffering like that! But nearsighted folk get a free pass. And strangely, you don't hear anyone complaining that people who need corrective lenses are getting in their way, wasting space or resources or whatnot because we can't perform every task a fully-sighted person could perform (even though sometimes we can't).
And it's true that we don't have it perfect. The media is deluged with imagery that shows the visually impaired as either old (eyes degraded due to aging) or intellectual or just plain worthless. Women with glasses are frequently either sexy because of their glasses - "naughty librarian/secretary"/Tina Fey - or waiting for the right moment to conveniently lose them so that their true beauty can shine. (Mia Thermopolis, The Princess Diaries. Toula Portokalos, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.) Men are often either Super Intellectual, in which case they are supportive to the main characters of the story but not allowed to take the post themselves, or they are Geeks - gawky, socially awkward, obsessed with video games or Star Trek or whatever pastime the Blob doesn't happen to understand, and they certainly will never get laid.
Folks with glasses usually don't get to be action heroes - even though plenty of us are physically qualified. Peter Parker, the mild-mannered, nearsighted photographer who became Spider-Man, had his vision magically cured before he took to web-swinging. Dr. Daniel Jackson phased his glasses out of his wardrobe as his role in Stargate SG-1 called for more and more action. And of course we all remember Velma in Scooby-Doo, piteously crawling about on her hands and knees for her precious eyepieces while the other characters were busy running from a monster that she couldn't even see. Yes, we know she got her share of running and we all had a great laugh when she caught Shaggy and Scooby-Doo at the same time - WHOA, she must work out. But there was still that omnipresent threat, that storytellers always consider when they introduce a character with glasses, that they're going to lose their precious eyepiece and be completely incapacitated. Never mind that people with glasses KNOW how to keep our frames on our faces, thank you very much, or that we might have a pair of contact lenses on hand for the occasion, or that even if we do lose our frames we might still be able to make out shapes well enough to figure out who might be an enemy, who might be a friend, and what might be about to fall over on us. Certainly we can't be superheroes, unless we're sitting in the pilot seat of a giant mecha.
What's the end point of all of this? Visibility. Despite being discriminated against in a bajillion little ways and granted several useful privileges in a variety of others, I don't hear a lot of people talking about what it means to need corrective lenses. Usually when someone says they're disabled they mean something else, be they autistic, an amputee, whathaveyou. Meanwhile, us corrective lenses folks have been handily fooled, through the ease with which our problems are solved, into thinking that we are members of the able elite - evolutionarily superior, if you will - and it's not making it any easier for us or for people with disabilities that aren't so easily corrected.
Users of corrective lenses need to pay attention to this part of themselves, bring it out, make it visible. We are disabled. We are not different or special. The only difference is the ways we are treated. Maybe if we start to point out the difference between the way we are treated and the way others with far more marginalized disabilities are treated, people will start to realize how ridiculous the disparity is.
And maybe, if we come out in big enough numbers, we can do more about those stereotypes, too.
However, I don't spend much of my life thinking about this disability. It doesn't change my life very much at all, in fact. Because fortunately for me, my disability is not only easy to remedy, it is easily recognized as existing and needing remedied, to the degree where an entire subsection of medicine has been created devoted to diagnosing and treating my disability with minimal waiting time, for an affordable cost.
How lucky for me that I'm only nearsighted.
We have it scarily good, us nearsighted people. As do our close cousins, the farsighted. We are recognized. We are easy to accommodate. We are frequently represented in TV shows, movies, and books. Our disability is easily remedied just by putting on a small, attractive piece of accessory every morning. We can even get custom pieces picked to complement our faces, turning the correction of our vision into a combination fix and fashion statement, without judgment. Imagine, if you will, what the world would think if paraplegics, chronic pain sufferers, and other such folks tried to get about in designer motorized wheelchairs/scooters. My God! they would cry. The waste of money! And how could you glamorize your suffering like that! But nearsighted folk get a free pass. And strangely, you don't hear anyone complaining that people who need corrective lenses are getting in their way, wasting space or resources or whatnot because we can't perform every task a fully-sighted person could perform (even though sometimes we can't).
And it's true that we don't have it perfect. The media is deluged with imagery that shows the visually impaired as either old (eyes degraded due to aging) or intellectual or just plain worthless. Women with glasses are frequently either sexy because of their glasses - "naughty librarian/secretary"/Tina Fey - or waiting for the right moment to conveniently lose them so that their true beauty can shine. (Mia Thermopolis, The Princess Diaries. Toula Portokalos, My Big Fat Greek Wedding.) Men are often either Super Intellectual, in which case they are supportive to the main characters of the story but not allowed to take the post themselves, or they are Geeks - gawky, socially awkward, obsessed with video games or Star Trek or whatever pastime the Blob doesn't happen to understand, and they certainly will never get laid.
Folks with glasses usually don't get to be action heroes - even though plenty of us are physically qualified. Peter Parker, the mild-mannered, nearsighted photographer who became Spider-Man, had his vision magically cured before he took to web-swinging. Dr. Daniel Jackson phased his glasses out of his wardrobe as his role in Stargate SG-1 called for more and more action. And of course we all remember Velma in Scooby-Doo, piteously crawling about on her hands and knees for her precious eyepieces while the other characters were busy running from a monster that she couldn't even see. Yes, we know she got her share of running and we all had a great laugh when she caught Shaggy and Scooby-Doo at the same time - WHOA, she must work out. But there was still that omnipresent threat, that storytellers always consider when they introduce a character with glasses, that they're going to lose their precious eyepiece and be completely incapacitated. Never mind that people with glasses KNOW how to keep our frames on our faces, thank you very much, or that we might have a pair of contact lenses on hand for the occasion, or that even if we do lose our frames we might still be able to make out shapes well enough to figure out who might be an enemy, who might be a friend, and what might be about to fall over on us. Certainly we can't be superheroes, unless we're sitting in the pilot seat of a giant mecha.
What's the end point of all of this? Visibility. Despite being discriminated against in a bajillion little ways and granted several useful privileges in a variety of others, I don't hear a lot of people talking about what it means to need corrective lenses. Usually when someone says they're disabled they mean something else, be they autistic, an amputee, whathaveyou. Meanwhile, us corrective lenses folks have been handily fooled, through the ease with which our problems are solved, into thinking that we are members of the able elite - evolutionarily superior, if you will - and it's not making it any easier for us or for people with disabilities that aren't so easily corrected.
Users of corrective lenses need to pay attention to this part of themselves, bring it out, make it visible. We are disabled. We are not different or special. The only difference is the ways we are treated. Maybe if we start to point out the difference between the way we are treated and the way others with far more marginalized disabilities are treated, people will start to realize how ridiculous the disparity is.
And maybe, if we come out in big enough numbers, we can do more about those stereotypes, too.
Tuesday, March 15, 2011
The Two Paths, Retort Edition
'Cause you KNOW you wanted to see this. For your reading pleasure and GNARGNARGNARG, here's the original.
I realize I'm treading on dangerous territory here. There's a lot of sentiment in some circles that staying home and raising a family = oppression, while staying single and joining the "official" workforce = liberation. After making this, I realize that it's further problematic by contrasting motherhood with employment, because motherhood IS employment. And it's a damn tough job.
HOWEVER.
Forcing women to get married and bear children is not okay.
Pretending that you're NOT forcing them, by telling them that getting married and having children is "virtuous" as in the original image, is not okay.
Young women and trans men, that stuff that your parents are calling "bad literature" is probably the key to your liberation. Read it.
And sexual promiscuity is not the big, bad beast that the fundies say it is. It's risky, like driving a car, but it probably won't cause premature aging and it CERTAINLY won't stop you from having a happy and fulfilled life.
That's all, folks.
I realize I'm treading on dangerous territory here. There's a lot of sentiment in some circles that staying home and raising a family = oppression, while staying single and joining the "official" workforce = liberation. After making this, I realize that it's further problematic by contrasting motherhood with employment, because motherhood IS employment. And it's a damn tough job.
HOWEVER.
Forcing women to get married and bear children is not okay.
Pretending that you're NOT forcing them, by telling them that getting married and having children is "virtuous" as in the original image, is not okay.
Young women and trans men, that stuff that your parents are calling "bad literature" is probably the key to your liberation. Read it.
And sexual promiscuity is not the big, bad beast that the fundies say it is. It's risky, like driving a car, but it probably won't cause premature aging and it CERTAINLY won't stop you from having a happy and fulfilled life.
That's all, folks.
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