Strange Things that Make Me Happy

So I checked out Yahoo!’s news this morning, and came across this blog post: Assault on Erin Andrews’ Privacy Scay for All Female Journalists.

The long and short of it is that some ass took video of a female sports journalist through her door peephole when she was naked, and then posted it on the internet.

Here was the best part of the article:

That sort of attention wouldn’t keep most women from working in sports. Sexual assault — and, make no mistake, Andrews was assaulted — will. Voyeurism isn’t “boys will be boys,” or realizing that men are ogling your (clothed) picture. Voyeurism is about taking safety and security from a victim in a place they should feel comfortable.

Emphasis mine.  The fact of the matter is, this article about a well-known female sports journalist tells you straight out that voyeurism is serious, it explains why, AND it was featured on the front page of Yahoo!.  That’s encouraging.

The Weather Channel

So I’m minding my own business today, checking the weather for the weekend when I realize that there’s an annoying moving ad near the weather forecast.  And as I look at it, I realize that’s it’s a woman in black gyrating to some unheard music because Obama is urging homeowners to refinance.  Is this necessary?  I don’t think so.  Unless, of course, they’re trying to get women NOT to click on the ad.  Then I would say they’re doing an excellent job.

The Truth About Susan Boyle

Like everyone else on the Internet, I had seen the video of Susan Boyle’s lovely performance of “I dreamed a dream” from Les Miserables on the TV Show “Britain’s Got Talent.”  I enjoy a good performance, and this one was no different.   I moved on.

And then, a few days later in my Twitter feed, one of my friends updated with this:

I spent the next five minutes or so drafting a 140-character response that encapsulated why we’re all infatuated with Ms. Boyle.  I ended up not responding, but Susan stayed with me.

Susan Boyle is a 47-year-old woman with a Voice.  This, in and of itself, is not amazing; everyone has a voice, and some of us have Voices, good ones.  What knocks our socks off is that Susan Boyle exposed us for what we are: cynics who judge others based solely on looks and station in life.  She stood onstage, and the audience laughed at her.  They rolled their eyes at her audacity to not fit in the mold, to be a spunky, funny middle-aged woman who wants to sing like Elaine Paige.  How dare she try to sing with that frizzy hair and country accent?

And then she blew us away.

In the first four measures of song, she shocked us into listening.  We sat, rapt, as her voice climbed and held that delicious five-note crescendo halfway through.  We breathed a collective sigh when she finished, some of us with tears in her eyes, some of us elated by the sheer power of her voice.

You can see in the YouTube video that the judges tell her everyone was against her before she started singing — and she looks confused.  Ms. Boyle never thought of us as opponents.  But for many of us, that was our first instinct.

And therein lies the real power of Susan Boyle.  She is a woman who opeend our collective eyes and showed us that there is another way to beauty.  She exposed that raw nerve inside that wishes we were accepted as the way we are, instead of the way society tells us to be.  Ms. Boyle’s singing elevated us all for a brief, shining moment to another level of community, one that wholly backs every individual.  By simply doing what she loves, Susan Boyle showed us another way.  If only the rest of us were so lucky.

Image courtesy of The Mirror.

Yes Means Yes

Someone found my blog by searching for “female rape pics” yesterday.  And today, it was “mind rape” and “Jessica Alba gagged.”  Wonderful.  Although I imagine I should be pleased that they ended up clicking on my blog and not something else.  Hopefully a message or two got through.

I tried searching for these terms on Google and Yahoo! to see where my blog ended up, and I can tell you that it was nowhere near the first page.  In fact, I had to stop looking because the results were so disturbing.  I recommend that you don’t try it.

I went to the Cambridge reading of Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and World Without Rape last night.  It was amazing.  There was such energy in that room, both from the readers and the audience, and Seth and I got into a great debate last night after the reading.  I love these chats, and I love that we went into Boston(ish) on a weeknight and it got us out of the house and it was something we were both interested in.  The only thing that would have made it better is if I had remembered I had cash in my purse, bought the book, and had the readers autograph their essays.  As it was, we left once the reading ended and skipped the after party.

Do you ever get into that zone when you go to a poetry reading or a concert or a theatre show where you get swept up into the moment?  And then later, when you read the words to yourself or see the performance again it doesn’t have the same powerful quality?  I took down a quote from Jaclyn Friedman last night that said in response to something during the Q & A session:

Unless you have equal freedom to say yes and no, you do not, in fact, have sexual freedom.  Pleasure is a human-given right.

That spoke to me last night, but today I read the words and don’t feel anything.  Maybe it had to be taken in context with everything else that went on at the reading.

An Open Letter to Jessica Alba

Dear Ms. Alba,

You may have heard recently that I have a slight girl crush on you.  What can I say?  I’m a fan.  I’m not a pre-pubescent, creepy teenage boy fan, however.  I just think it’s awesome that you’ve been working on your career since you were five, and you take (mostly) badass female lead roles.  Because you have a tendency to work on movies that cast you as a strong woman, it came as some surprise to see you in this ad:

You portray a bound, gagged woman with scared eyes, and it looks like you’ve been crying.   This type of image is disturbing; it immediately calls to mind rape and violence against women.  It’s not meant to be that way, right?  Unfortunately, because we live in a culture that devalues women and uses our bodies to sell products, it helps reinforce the notion that it’s okay to use pictures of naked and/or subjugated woman to get a message across.  It’s not okay.  Images like this help normalize violence against women and desensitize people to its imagery when we should be up in arms about rape and violence.

Please don’t dismiss me as an angry feminist. I have a valid point.  Let’s say you chose to do this ad because it symbolically represents that not voting takes away a person’s voice.  Except, according to this image, it not only removes their voice, it removes their personal freedom and autonomy over their own body, and makes them fear for their personal safety.  That’s a bit over the mark, don’t you think?

“Old news,” you say, “the ad was released in October 2008.”  Unfortunately, it’s coming to light again because you’re hosting the Declare Yourself Inauguration Party in Washington D.C.  I was thinking I might like to attend, except that by attending, I’d be showing support for this ad.  My ticket money would be paying for people to come up with more ads like this, and that’s not acceptable to me.

It’s one ad — big deal.  It is a big deal.  You are a role model for teens everywhere; if you say that it’s okay for people to use this subject and this type of imagery so candidly, then impressionable young people are going to listen.  And then they’re going to start thinking it’s okay to treat women’s bodies with disrespect because, hey, Jessica Alba does it — and so does everyone else.  It’s a big cycle, and this one ad is a part of it.  Kids who think rape jokes are funny and women’s bodies exist solely for men’s pleasure grow up to write ads like this, or announce over the radio that a group of successful female athletes are “nappy-headed hoes,” or take pictures of themselves posing inappropriately with a Hillary Clinton cutout, while at the same time being head staff writer for the Obama campaign.

Perhaps by now you’re thinking, “hey, I didn’t come up with the idea.  I just went along with it for a good cause.”  Boys will be boys? (like you said in Marie Claire in March 2008).  Boys will be “boys” in a culture that doesn’t correct them for using women’s bodies inappropriately in advertising or social scenarios (or for hitting on a woman just because she’s pretty or wearing something low cut, and then calling her a bitch because she doesn’t reciprocate — though I’m sure this has never happened to you).

This stuff is all so deeply ingrained in our culture that we don’t recognize it and we feel defensive when someone points it out.  I’m asking you to look beyond the defensiveness and realize that maybe it’s not a good thing to continue to add to our country’s misconceptions about women’s bodies.  I hope that someone who is so obviously good at rejecting Hollywoods machinations and expectations of what a woman should be, someone like you, is also going to be good at staying above sexist imagery.

I do hope you find your way to this letter, and I appreciate you taking the time to read it all the way through.

Many thanks,

Christine