Yesterday, President Obama held a town hall in Ft. Meyers, Florida, and during the event, a homeless woman named Henrietta Hughes stood up and asked for help, her voice breaking:
Hughes: I have an urgent need on unemployment and homelessness—a very small vehicle for my family and I to live in. We need urgent—and the Housing Authority has two years waiting lists, and [sigh] we need something more than a vehicle and parks to go to. We need our own kitchen and our own bathroom. Please help.
Obama: Well, I, listen, I—what's your name? What's your name?
Hughes: It's Henrietta Hughes.
Obama: Okay, Ms. Hughes, well, we're going to do everything we can to help you. [Walks over to Hughes and shakes her hand, then kisses her on the cheek.] But there are a lot of people like you, and we're going to do everything we can. All right? I'll have my staff talk to you after the town hall. All right.
The look on her face that he took the time to listen to her and care about her; she just looks so hopeful. And her plea "has been answered. Chene Thompson, the wife of State Rep. Nick Thompson (R), has offered her former residence to Hughes. 'Basically, I offered Ms. Hughes and her son the opportunity to stay in my home rent free, for as long as they need to,' said Thompson. 'I'm not a millionaire, I'm not rich, but this is what I can do for someone if they need it'."
What breaks my heart is that there are so many people like Henrietta Hughes in need of help, who won't be so fortunate.
GQ Germany isn't even bothering to try anymore. The naked body that is allegedly Heidi Klum's has been airbrushed into something more closely resembling a plastic woman-shaped mold than a human form made of flesh and bones.
[Click to embiggen.]
The best part is the accompanying text—"So sexy wie nie?"—which means, approximately, "Never sexier?" Well, who the hell knows? If anyone can claim to discern what Heidi Klum actually looks like from that picture, they're lying.
Shaker Stayss just emailed me about a banner advert she saw for Teleflora's Valentine's Day promotion, the tagline for which is "Make Her Thorny."
Ha ha—get it? Get it?! Send your girlfriend/wife flowers and she'll fuck you! Ha ha ha! 'Cuz women are just prostitutes who exchange cooter access for gifties! Wheeeeee!
(So much Valentine's Day advertising is based on this heterocentrist premise of commodified womanhood, they might as well change its name to Turn Your Woman into a Whore Day.)
Anyway, so as I'm looking for an image of the banner, I discover that Teleflora ran a commercial during the Schmooperbowl called Rude Flowers:
Transcript:
Coworker Dude #1: Hey, Diane. Flowers came for you!
Coworker Dude #2: Ooooooh. Flowers for Diane!
Coworker Woman #1: Oh, I never get flowers!
[Diane opens box of flowers.]
Talking Flower: Oh no! Look at the mug on you! Diane, you're a trainwreck! That's why he only sent a box of flowers. Go home to your romance novels and your fat, smelly cat!
[Coworkers look embarrassed for Diane. Coworker Dude #2 mouths "Wow" and turns away. Diane looks mortified.]
Voiceover: This Valentine's Day, don't send flowers in a box. You never know what they'll say.
Voiceover: Teleflora's bouquets are hand-arranged and hand-delivered in a keepsake vase, not in a box. That's the Teleflora difference.
Coworker Dude #1: I'd like to see you—
Diane: Gary!
So, apparently, the idea is to communicate to straight men that their partners will be embarrassed, shamed, stereotyped, and offered a pityfuck by another guy if they send flowers in a box.
Now, hold onto your seats, Shakers, but it turns out that I don't regard threatening women with abject humiliation is an appropriate marketing strategy to appeal to men. And I seriously question the existence of the sort of man to whom this advertising is meant to appeal: A man who feels compassion for the treatment of the woman in the commercial is probably tuned-in enough to reject misogynist advertising and the advertisers who rely on it, while a man who laughs at the treatment of the woman in the commercial, if he even buys flowers for his partner in the first place, doesn't give a hot damn whether they come in a box, a vase, or wrapped in a garbage bag, because she should just be happy with what she gets.
Of course, like many adverts purporting to appeal to men, it's really an admonishment to women to regard flowers in a box as a symbol of disdain, to heighten their expectations so that anything less than hand-delivered flowers in a damn vase communicates something negative about the recipient. Women don't have enough things telling them to feel shitty about themselves already; now flowers in a box from someone who loves you are to be taken as shorthand for "You suck, you're ugly, and you'll probably die alone."
Except for your fat, smelly cat.
It's the Seinfeldification of relationships insinuating itself into marketing, where the style and aesthetic and packaging of everything are of primary importance, and there's always a niggling detail that ruins everything. Sure, he sent me flowers, but they came in a fucking box!!!!11!!eleventy!
I don't think I've ever received flowers in a box in my life, btw, outside of a prom corsage; I had no idea this pressing concern was plaguing America. Probably because, y'know, it isn't. Just another created need and invented insecurity to sell crap we don't need.
This shit should be outlawed on the basis it undermines the pursuit of happiness.
[If you want a serious, non-snarky commentary, the archives are chock full of about six gazillion posts I've written on the subject of diversity and inclusion in politics (and the desperate need thereof), but this one's as good as any and better than most.]
First Lady Michelle Obama appears on the March cover of Vogue, becoming one of two first ladies to be pictured on the famed cover, along with Hillary Clinton.
..."It's the second time a first lady has appeared on cover of Vogue," says Vogue spokesman Patrick O'Connell. The two Obama "portraits were commissioned. They were taken by Annie Leibovitz at the Hay-Adams in January." (Link/Via)
Country singer Kenny Chesney doth protest the rumors that he is gay:
Kenny Chesney tells Playboy magazine that he's definitely not gay and has well over 100 women who could attest to that.
"Man, I was over 100 several years ago," he tells the men's magazine for its March issue out Friday. "There were years when I had a better summer than A-Rod, buddy. You know? I got on the boards quite often."
…"What guy who loves girls wouldn't be angry about [rumors he is gay]? I didn't sign up for that. I think people need to live their lives the way they want to, but I'm pretty confident in the fact that I love girls (laughs). I've got a long line of girls who could testify that I am not gay. … My first five years on the road were intense because I was the guy in college who never got laid until I started playing guitar."
Now, I have no idea whether Kenny Chesney is straight, or gay but fiercely closeted—and I don't care. Either way, he is expressing deeply internalized homophobia, a fear/hatred so profound he cannot even imagine that there are straight men who not only aren't angry, but totally don't give a flying fuck, if someone thinks they're gay. (Naturally, bisexual men, who are among the "guys who love girls," don't even register in his universe.)
And, like many bombastic not-gay dudez before him, Chesney asserts his heterosexuality via misogyny, because the best way to prove you "love girls" is by treating them like shit. He "loves girls" so much that he regards them as entirely disposable, holding them in the same proximate esteem as he might a hotel tissue used as a cum rag. They are not individual people, but one big number—evidence of his unassailably heterosexual manliness and consoling reassurance he's no longer "the guy in college who never got laid."
When we talk about the objectification of women, the most evident instance is male objectification and use of women sexually, but the less obvious—and possibly more pernicious—manifestation is a man's objectification and use of a woman/women to tell a story about himself, turning them into props in his own little play. I sleep with lots of women, so I am a stud. I dated a model, so I am hot shit. My wife is thin, so I am a success. My mistress is way younger than I am, so I am the envy of Every Man.
I've worked or been otherwise acquainted with married men who told me their wives were gorgeous, thin, good in bed, big-breasted, etc., long before they told me their wives' occupations, or any other bit of information that wasn't designed to convey how awesome the men were because they'd scored hot wives—just another accessory like a car or a great flat in a trendy neighborhood.
It's sad when things are used to patch over a deep insecurity; when women, spouses, human beings unsuspecting their lot, are used this way it's unconscionable.*
But it is also the inevitable result of a culture in which women and their bodies are treated as commodities to be consumed by men. What good are a portfolio full of blue chip stocks, a garage full of vintage sports cars, and box seats at every stadium in town if you don't have an equally impressive assortment of women? About as good as a lucrative, exciting, successful music career if everyone thinks you're gay. Women are thus the ultimate collectors' item for any successful chicks-digging gentleman.
And by chicks-digging gentleman, of course I mean a man who loves women so much that he hates them rotten, in vast numbers.
* I recognize this is not a behavior exclusive to men; there are women who use men in the same way, but, like most issues of gender, there is a different cultural context and divergent motivations to the behavior "in the reverse." This post isn't about that scenario, and I kindly request that you bear that in mind should you be considering a comment demanding to know "what about the menz who get used by the womminz?!"
Newt Gingrich, who, about this time last year, was moaning long-sufferingly about (liberal) citizens who have the temerity to get involved in their political process, has now taken to the pages of the Washington Times to encourage (conservative) citizens to get involved in their political process—and he's got a handy-dandy three-step guide on what they should do:
1. Advocate first principles with courage, clarity, persistence and cheerfulness.
2. Insist on developing solutions based on those principles and insist on measuring other proposals against those principles.
3. Be prepared to oppose Republicans when they are wrong and side with Democrats when they are right, but always make the decision to support or oppose a matter of first principles and the application of those principles.
That conservatives aren't laughing themselves sick over being hectored about principles by the cavernous integrity-void that is Newt Gingrich is all the evidence one needs about the existence of those principles to which he's admonishing them to adhere.
There's a lot of blah blah blah and then Gingrich then offers this gem:
Finally, the conservative movement has to learn to reach out to every American who wants a better future through freedom, hard work and opportunity.
Offer void if you are colored, queer, or in possession of both ladybits and aspirations beyond being Gingrich's fourth wife (or an equivalent Old Republican White Guy with Upstanding Moral ValuesTM).
This fuckneck and Limbaugh are the best they've got. Wow.
Sex and love: Seniors learn ins and outs of safe sex.
Knowing the demographics of South Florida, I know they're not talking about kids in high school. I did not read on further.
[PS: Just to be clear, I'm not denigrating the need for everyone to know all they can about sex. I just think the headline writer could have avoided the bad pun.]
And the natural follow-up to yesterday's QotD is: What is your least favorite film that tries to pass itself off as a charming romance?
This, you'll note, is not just a question about a film you didn't like, but a question about a film with plot points so objectionable (e.g. anti-feminist, pro-patriarchal retrofuckery, racist, etc.) you were left less romanced than spittin' mad.
Without hesitation, my answer to this question is the repulsive and overtly pro-rapeSuperbad, which I was stunned to find is frequently called a romantic comedy by people who like it—and has inexplicably been filed or described as a romantic comedy by some reviewers.
If I stick to a more classic exemplar of the genre, my vote would be cast for the 1955 Ernest Borgnine vehicle Marty, which for years I'd heard was this lovely romance about two quirky people falling in love. I finally watched it a few months ago and loathed it with a red hot fiery passion. It's like Nice GuyTM: The Movie. The character of Marty is not a charming loner but an emotionally manipulative asshole who bullies the awkward girl he meets by shouting at her "All I wanted was a kiss!" after she refuses (the 1955 onscreen equivalent of) pityfucking him. It's horrible. I have no idea why anyone would find it romantic.
From the rape-is-sexay files comes a new ad campaign from Italian clothing designer Relish. In the first billboard, below, a man dressed up as a Rio de Janeiro cop chokes one woman while his friend, also dressed as a cop, shoves another woman against a car and puts his hand up her dress. In the second, the two officers are twisting a screaming woman's arms behind her back while the other woman looks on, helplessly, in distress.
I don't know about you, but neither of these ads exactly scream, "Buy gold lame espadrilles!" to me. More like, "Italian designers think sexual assault is hiLARious!"
To his credit, Rio mayor Eduardo Paes has strongly condemned the ads (another in the series shows the officers shoving a woman on the ground and pushing her face into the cobblestones), calling them "in bad taste." Less to his credit, Paes reason for condemnnig the ads was because they "compromise the image" of Rio police. Glorifying sexual assault: No problem! Making cops look bad: Unacceptable!
Gladys in Austin, Texas is exactly the kind of person for whom I would miss my bus, because I just want to keep talking to her. She makes me wistful for public transportation so bad, because I miss my random conversations with wonderful strangers.
"I love Jesus but I drink a little" is, for sure, one of the Top 10 Best Sentences Ever Uttered in the English Language.
And I'm not ashamed to admit I got the blubverge at the end of that video.
[H/T to Kendall. If you can find a transcript, please leave a link in comments.]
That is, truly, one of the most inexcusably odious editorial cartoons on which I have ever laid eyes.
I love the acquiescence to the faux civility of the Right, by the way—the esses in "ass" kindly asterisked out, so as not to offend the delicate sensibilities of people who chuckle in appreciation of virulent racism presented in cartoon form.
So, I'm reading Pharyngula of all blogs and lo and behold, PZ has embedded an Amanda Palmer (of Rebellyon fame) video, "Oasis".* Why "Oasis"? Well, it's fun, natch, but also because it can't get shown on a bunch of outlets in the UK.** The reason why? Here's the email Amanda received:
I just thought I'd let you know that we have been met by fierce opposition on the Oasis track.
Which is disheartening, as combined with the video, we all felt it was a great promotional tool and track.
All our TV outlets have refused to play the video due to it "making light of rape, religion and abortion". This is the audio as well as visual.
Many of the stations like the track, and even the video but are bound by strict broadcasting rules. I personally find this quite ridiculous.
He's not the only one. Anyone who has seen "Oasis"—or heard it—should know that underneath that happy, poppy surface is a portrait of a young woman dealing with a hard time the best way that she can.
Let Amanda tell it:
i sat down one day in or around 2002 and wrote a tongue-in-cheek, ironic up-tempo pop song.
a song about a girl who got drunk, was date raped, and had an abortion.
she sings about these things lightly and joyfully and says that she doesn't care that these things have happened to her because oasis, (her favorite band) has sent her an autographed photo in the mail. and to make things even better (!!), her bitchy friend melissa, who told the whole school about the abortion, is really jealous.
(Read the whole post on her blog. Go on, read it right now.)
So this can't get shown in the UK because it's not a lesson ("Papa, Don't Preach") or just not sorry enough about that whole abortion thing.*** Among the stations that refused it are NME and MTV.
NME TV online is mainly a bunch of light pop, though there's a weird vibe to the Vampire Weekend's "Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa" and Mystery Jets' "He's Half in Love with Elizabeth." The only thing offensive about "Oasis" in that lineup is that it's much better than the rest.
But MTV? MTV has among its top videos:
• Fall Out Boy's "America's Suiteheart" starts off brightly with a cutout cartoon of a female TV reporter getting punched out by cutout ringmaster figure. Has sweet fuckall to do with the lyrics as far as I can tell. There's some other casual misogyny throughout.
• Busta Rhyme's "Arab Money" (yes, that Busta Rhyme). This video is never going to win any cultural sensitivity awards. Women are the usual markers of money and sex. And as an extra special treat, the refrain is "We getting Arab money!" with the bridge chanted Arabic.
• Bow Wow's "Roc Da Mic" which ends with: "JD used to have all the hottest whips and shit. I used to be like you know when I sell my first million. Im'a buy all these shits man all the girls you talking to man Im'a smash all them girls when I get older you know what Im saying. JD I know you remember that and I did it!…(laughs)" [Emphasis added]
Because "Oasis" will make you think if you listen to it. Because "Oasis" doesn't simplify anything for you. Because "Oasis" doesn't expect you to be passive even in your pop listening. Because "Oasis" doesn't treat women like objects. And because "Oasis" makes a joke about the Christianists, which is never ok.
And the jokes like "Oasis" makes are lights in this world, lighting up the dark places and chasing out the cockroaches***** of ignorance and intolerance. It makes the world brighter, unlike the Australian pastor from the story earlier today, who would cast us all into darkness.
The animal rights group who will not be named, last seen treating women like meat to try to convince you not to eat any, showed up outside the Westminster Kennel Club Show yesterday to protest the American Kennel Club's breeding guidelines. Naturally, their message had to come wrapped inside a grossly offensive stunt, so they were dressed like the KKK.
"Welcome AKC Members," read a banner hanging from the table — with AKC crossed out and KKK written above it. Two [of the group's] protesters dressed as Ku Klux Klan members, while other volunteers handed out brochures that read: "The KKK and the AKC: BFF?"
"Obviously it's an uncomfortable comparison," [the group's] spokesman Michael McGraw said. But the AKC is trying to create a "master race," he added. "It's a very apt comparison."
Except for how it's totally not. I can, however, think of a group who routinely dehumanizes marginalized people to advance a political cause, for whom the comparison might be more viable, but their name escapes me at the moment…
Renee has more, including an excellent point about the group's utter lack of concern for how playing KKK in a public square might be triggering for people of color. Maybe the group is under the mistaken impression that the KKK is ancient history, that no one who's ever been targeted or harassed or hurt by its contemptible members would walk by their table, but just in the last couple of years, Mama Shakes was out for a walk and saw KKK recruitment posters attached to telephone polls. (Which, naturally, she tore down.)
Not that it wouldn't matter even if it were ancient history. But the fact that it isn't makes the group's callous disregard for triggering victims of hate crime even more reprehensible.
"The dust is settling on the 'bipartisan' stimulus bill and one thing is clear: It is anti-religious. ... You would think the ACLU drafted this bill. For all of the talk about bipartisanship, this Congress is blatantly liberal."—GOP presidential reject Mike Huckabee, giving me another "If Only!" moment.
Steve explains the raison d'être for Hucks' latest bit of brazen mendacity:
[T]his myth has been making the rounds in right-wing circles for about a week. Originally, the American Center for Law and Justice, a right-wing legal group formed by TV preacher Pat Robertson, said the stimulus bill includes a provision that would prohibit "religious groups and organizations from using" buildings on college campuses. Soon after, religious right groups and right-wing blogs were up in arms, demanding that lawmakers fix the "anti-Christian" language of the bill. Fox News and the Christian Broadcasting Network helped get the word out to the far-right base about the nefarious measure. Sen. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) actually tried to have the provision removed from the bill.
There was, however, one small problem: there was no such measure. The ACLJ doesn't know how to read legislation, and didn't realize that the standard language in the bill simply blocks spending for on-campus buildings that are used primarily for religion (like a chapel, for example). This same language has been part of education spending bills for 46 years. It's just the law, and it's never been controversial.
The stimulus bill has passed the Senate; now the House and Senate must reconcile the differences in their respective versions to finalize a comprehensive bill.
Maybe it's because if I hear the word "stimulus" once more time, I fear I will gouge out my own ears with a rusty spanner, or maybe it's the sinking feeling I have that the stimulus bill wasn't that great to begin with and now has been bipartisanized into complete uselessness, or maybe it's that I've pretty much resigned myself to expecting nothing better than a long, ugly couple of years, irrespective of what happens with this bill, and quite likely all three, but I just can't muster the energy to get excited, irate, or anything in between about this hot mess of a legislative clusterfucktastrophe.
I am at the whims of our Congress. That is never a good place to be. May my faux apathy buoy me, and insulate me from my authentic terror!
Meanwhile, here's some fun financial news about how close we came to total financial collapse last fall. Sleep well tonight!
[This was originally posted on August 15, 2005. I stumbled across it in the archives when I was looking for something else entirely; I'd completely forgotten about it and enjoyed rediscovering it, so I thought I'd repost it, as it's rather timely, given yesterday's QotD.]
Mr. Shakes and I just had the most interesting conversation over dinner, winding around the paths of our respective histories and the things that became important to us as we traveled toward one another. How strange I married a Brit who'd never listened to Morrissey, and he married an American who'd never watched The Man With No Name trilogy. It turns out that he likes Moz, but I can take a pass on spaghetti westerns.
One's passion for certain books, or films, or music is so personal, and the ardor for long-loved favorites becomes such an intrinsic part of one's nature, that we each develop, over time and not necessarily consciously, a list of things that we imagine must be loved equally by those with whom we fall in love. Finding the place where a love of, say, Harold and Maude ends and the part of oneself that appreciates such a film begins can be difficult, so much so that one almost can't imagine being in a relationship with someone who doesn't like the film.
Mr. Shakes never could have imagined falling in love with a woman who didn't swoon desperately over the brilliance of Anna Karenina. I have yet to read book two of the beautifully bound set he gave me the day we met at Kings Cross. I never could have imagined falling in love with a man who didn't feel compelled to watch Magnolia on a loop. He considers it nice background noise for a three-hour nap.
But the thing is, I understand wholly why he loves Anna Karenina, and he knows exactly what it is in me that informs my fondness for Magnolia. And, curiously, these are parts of one another which we quite particularly adore—and yet it doesn't translate into a shared passion for the same things. Not always, anyway.
Such a funny thing, that. I can remember being younger and thinking it impossible to even consider dating someone who didn't like certain things in the same way I did, too inexperienced and immature to have realized that the appreciation of why I liked what I did, being understood, was infinitely more important. I never could have imagined having this hopeless, endless crush on a man who owned Big Willie Style.
Welcome to Shakesville, a progressive feminist blog about politics, culture, social justice, cute things, and all that is in between. Please note that the commenting policy and the Feminism 101 section, conveniently linked at the top of the page, are required reading before commenting.
Henrietta Hughes Gets a Kiss and a Home
Gladys in Austin, Texas
