Sunshine Cleaning.
Quote of the Day
"This is embarrassing and personal, but once a month, since I was twelve years old, I go to my favorite jewelry store and try on my dream ring."—Jennifer Love Hewitt, in her new book The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello, My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt, and I'm A Love-aholic by Jennifer Love Hewitt.
Linda Holmes, from whom I got the quote, points out that this means Jennifer Love Hewitt, age 31, has made "roughly 225 trips to the jewelry store" to try on an engagement ring.
Oh dear.
I suspect she's got a busy schedule producing her upcoming film, The Day I Shot Cupid: Hello My Name Is Jennifer Love Hewitt, and I'm A Love-aholic, based on the book by Jennifer Love Hewitt starring Jennifer Love Hewitt, but I really want to give Jennifer Love Hewitt a hug and talk some Feminism 101 with her. And maybe more hugs. And tea.
Oh Dear Maude
If you can't view the video, it's footage (unnarrated; the audio is just ambient noise) of former presidents Clinton and Dubs Bush visiting Haiti. Bush reaches out to shake someone's hand, then makes a little "eww grody" hand gesture, then wipes his hand on Clinton's shirt. (Screencaps below.)
[Click to embiggen.]
Stay classy, Dubs. [Via Chris.]
Haiti Relief: Donate to CARE.org. Donate to Water.org. Donate to Doctors Without Borders.
Wednesday Blogaround
This blogaround brought to you by Shaxco, insurers of Deeky's Star Wars Action Figure Collection. And Liss' legs.
Recommended Reading:
Marcella: KBR Drops Supreme Court Appeal Against Jamie Leigh Jones
Shark-fu: Back Up Your Birth Control!
Andy: Gay Georgia Teen's Parents Kick Him Out After Prom Story Breaks
Renee: Weight Loss Guru Susan Powter Attacks Gabourey Sidibe
Fannie: A Christian Message on the Importance of Fathers
Pilgrim Soul: Let's Call a Moratorium on Articles on the State of Feminism for a While, OK?
Leave your links in comments...
Neither Is This
Nope, totally not terrorism:
Reps. Louise Slaughter and Bart Stupak have received death threats.
Vandals broke windows at Slaughter’s office in New York and Rep. Gabrielle Giffords’s office in Arizona.
Slaughter, a Democrat who chairs the House Rules Committee, said a caller to her office last week vowed to send snipers to “kill the children of the members who voted yes.”
Stupak, the Michigan Democrat whose last-minute compromise on abortion guaranteed passage of the bill Sunday, said callers have left messages for him saying, “You’re dead; we know where you live; we’ll get you.”
Totally Not Terrorism
Fuck:
Federal and local authorities are investigating a severed gas line at the home of U.S. Rep. Tom Perriello's brother, discovered the day after Tea Party activists posted the address online so opponents could "drop by" and "express their thanks" for Perriello's vote in favor of health care reform.The address was posted because the "activists" mistakenly believed it belonged to the congressman, not his older brother, Bo Perriello.
[H/T to Shaker Museclio.]
Today's Edition of "Conniving and Sinister"
[Background.]
See Deeky's archive of all previous Conniving & Sinister strips here.
[In which Liss reimagines the long-running comic "Frank & Ernest," about two old straight white guys "telling it like it is," as a fat feminist white woman and a biracial queerbait telling it like it actually is from their perspectives. Hilarity ensues.]
Random YouTubery
Sometimes, I see something on youtube that leaves me utterly speechless.
And as Liss will attest, it's really hard to de-speechify me.
h/t Crooks and Liars
Lost Open Thread
Wow. Just...wow.
Last night's episode will be discussed in infinitesimal detail, so if you haven't seen it, and don't want any spoilers, move along...
Fatty Boom Balattys and Their BIG STUPID FOOD!
So. Second only to "headless fatty" imagery, one of my most loathed characteristics of OHNOES Obesity CrisisTM reporting is stock footage of oversized food. I don't mean just a big serving of food, but food challenge-sized food, the sort of food that would be featured on Man v. Food or served up at an eating competition. Food-that's-going-for-a-world-record kind of food.
As if fat people eat that kind of food all the time. Which is why they're fat.
(The truth is, even fat people who are fat as a result of disordered eating aren't eating five-pound cheeseburgers and three-foot diameter pizzas, for chrissakes. It's just wrong, apart from anything else.)
Last night, Rachel Maddow ran a segment that was breathtaking in its use of clichéd oversized food stock footage, and truly shameless in its implication that people are fat because they eat this kind of food in mass quantities. Their "big, stupid food."
[Transcript below.]
Sometimes people ask me why I don't watch Rachel Maddow. Well, one reason is because the few times I have watched her show, I've gotten the distinct impression that she has nothing but contempt for the disgustingly fat losers who populate small towns in middle America. You know, people like me.
[H/T to Shaker Kate217.]
Maddow: One lesser-known part of the health reform bill that President Obama signed into law this morning requires restaurants with twenty or more locations nationwide to display nutritional information on their menus. That means you'll be able to see the exact number of calories in that burger or pizza or extra super-ginormous really quite large bubbly drink before you order it and put it in your mouth. New York City restaurants have already been displaying this type of info for a couple of years in an attempt to make people—to help people make healthier choices when they order. Expect conservatives to start seeing Maoist numerological plots in the calorie counts on menus at any moment. But while legislation might now be helping us become a slightly less obese nation, it turns out that art has been no help at all in this fight against the fat. Kent Jones has the story. Hi, Kent.
Kent Jones, MSNBC Correspondent: Good evening, senator. [Maddow laughs.] You know, art looks at life and then says back to us, "Eat more carbs." [Maddow laughs.] Here's the scientific proof right here. [Maddow laughs.]
[Begin videotape, showing stock footage of gigantic burgers, pizzas, and sundaes, segueing into stock footage of headless fatties, segueing into images of "Last Supper" paintings, all set to zany music and cut in a sort of terrible 1980's music video style.]
Jones, in voiceover: We live in the golden age of big, stupid food. Portion sizes have ballooned and ballooned until…voila! We are absolutely flab-ulous. Professor Brian Wansink of the Cornell Food and Brand Lab wanted to know if this craving for more and more food was a new phenomenon or something that's been expanding over time, like we have. So, he analyzed the food shown in 52 of the best-known paintings of "The Last Supper" from 1,000 AD until today.
Wansink: We measured the size of the food, and measured the size of the plates, and measured the size of the bread. We indexed them based on the size of people's heads.
Jones, in voiceover: And he found that the main courses shown in the paintings grew by 69 percent, the plate size by 66 percent, and the bread size by 23 percent. As it was written in the Gospel, according to Olive Garden. Said Wansink, "I think people assume that increased serving sizes, or portion distortion, is a recent phenomenon. But this research indicates that it's a general trend for at least the last millennium." So basically, more food in the real world means more food in the paintings. And that means more food for Jesus and the apostles. It's a miracle!
Clip from Life of Brian: I think it was blessed are the cheese-makers.
Jones, in voiceoever: Amen.
[End videotape.]
Maddow: I love that they based it on head size.
Jones: Yeah.
Maddow: That was the index.
Jones: Yeah. Don't—don't eat anything bigger than your head, right?
Maddow: —bigger than your head. That's the rule, right? I broke that rule in Arkansas. [Maddow laughs.]
Jones: We heard about that. But anyway— [Jones laughs.]
Maddow: I'm sorry. Burp! [Jones laughs.] All right. That does it for us tonight. Thank you very much, Kent. We will see you again tomorrow night. Until then, our new blog at maddowblog.msnbc.com is awesome. We hope you check it out.
Happy Ada Lovelace Day: Telling Our Stories
Happy Ada Lovelace Day, everybody! Yesterday, Historiann wrote about the new report issued by the American Association of University Women called “Why So Few? Women in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics” (STEM). (Here is a pdf of the entire report.) The post is great and you should read the whole thing. Historiann ends with an invitation to women in STEM fields who have likely experienced some level of gender bias: “Tell us your stories.” Seriously, don’t miss this thread! My entry is long, so I’m posting it here instead of clogging up her comments:
My 71-year-old mother wanted to be a petroleum geologist when she was a kid. But her fancy private prep school did not allow her to take math beyond algebra I. None of the girls could, because they would "distract the boys". Instead, she took two extra years of sewing. I think it was all of the spatial reasoning involved in dressmaking that made Mama's IQ score so high that the school re-tested her. At 16, my mother could look at a woman’s dress on the street, mentally reverse-engineer the pattern, draw it out, and construct the dress in time for the school dance. Meanwhile, my dad has to think twice to tell left from right, and was a very successful research physicist for 40 years. (Hint: you don't need brilliant mental-rotation scores to be a good scientist). In 2007, Feng et al. demonstrated that the famous gender gap in spatial skills disappears if female subjects play just 10 hours of Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault (pdf; see also Spence et al. 2009). But my mother insists, “Boys are better at spatial relations.”
I took all of the math and science my high school offered and then some (I ran out of AP calculus and took a course at Berkeley my senior year). Still, when I got to college my assigned advisor said at our first meeting, "What are you going to do with a degree in neuroscience—teach high school biology?" At the end of the meeting he asked me if I was a ballet dancer, adding that I "looked like one". My next advisor was better. I questioned one of my male classmates who stayed with that first guy: "What did he ask at your first meeting?" "Oh, you know: 'where do you see yourself in five years? Ten?'" Ah. No, I don’t know.
Even for women without such stories, the subtler, unconscious expression of attitudes like my ex-advisor's provide a real drag on women in the lab. Both male and female supervisors expect and accept different behaviors from men and women. Hence the female supervisor who chided me for being "aggressive" when I took initiative and succeeded, while she praised my male colleague for "being a go-getter" when he took initiative and screwed up. Over time, who will the manager promote—the gung-ho, learn-on-the-job guy who everyone likes, or the competent woman who is "aggressive", and therefore makes people wary?
Women can't walk a fine line between "doormat" and “bitch” because one doesn't exist. People (male and female) feel more comfortable imposing on women's time to ask for favors or additional work. If a woman complies, she's swamped with extra work for which others take the credit, and can rightly be criticized for not drawing boundaries. If she does not comply, she becomes a poor team player, or worse.
I’ve tried to walk the non-existent line. During my first full-time job out of college, a scientist who was chatting with our post-doc told me that I was “naughty” and "needed a spanking" when I asked him to please stop interrupting my work with personal questions. I looked straight at the post-doc and said, “why don’t you take your friend out for a drink?” and they left. I had work to do, and I did not want to set a bad precedent. Guess who got told she was "no fun" and "had a bad attitude"? At this same job, I dealt with men from other labs—principal investigators (PIs), no less—dropping in to "chat" (and ask more personal questions), and one professor who found my number in the directory and kept calling the lab to ask me out. When I complained to my PI, he said that I “obviously was way too nice to the guy” the first time and that was it—I was on my own.
The campus pub was a crucial networking spot, but if I went there to shoot the breeze and some pool, there were always jokes—in front of men I respected—about “bending me over the pool table”, or exclamations of, “you play pool?!” (That pub was also the scene for this hilarious anecdote.) I still loved working there, but I am not surprised that it’s the same institution where Barbara Ehrenreich got her PhD in cell biology.
These extra burdens on women’s time and our marginalization in networking are no mere annoyance. Is the PI going to promote someone to lab manager, or recommend her strongly for a grad program or fellowship when there's a vague feeling floating around that she's "difficult" or spends too much time “socializing” (read: fending off advances)? If she takes the “jokes” in stride, is she really serious enough for the job? After all, she’s the girl everyone wants to bend over the pool table!
Disablism at work also hits women harder. Gender discrimination can slow down a career, but it is my chronic illness that derailed mine completely. Anyone who faces health issues with self or family is up against barriers at work. But these barriers are even higher for women. First, women are still expected to be the primary caregivers of children and elders. If a man does these things, he is going beyond the call and may be lauded for the effort these days (though it would have killed my father's career). Women must do the work and hide the effort. Second, women are thought to be weak and to lack passion for the work anyway, so any appearance of weakness or request for legal accommodation reinforces those low expectations, both for the woman who asks and for other women too.
Many of us go into the workplace thinking that it’s a meritocracy, that the quality of our work will carry us to success. Because we are different. Better. It’s “exceptional woman” syndrome, and I’ve been there too. About ten years ago I attended a dinner party in Chicago at the home of a friend who worked for cognitive neuropsychologist Jerre Levy. As Levy and I talked, she told me the story of how a certain famous scientist with power over her career threatened to blacklist her if she didn’t sleep with him. Ashamed as I am to admit it now, I expressed disbelief: surely he couldn’t do that! Her work would speak for itself! Well, she fixed me with a look worthy of the great Bea Arthur and said, “One disparaging letter is all it takes. Do you think a man like that couldn’t end my career—or yours—with a stroke of the pen if he decided to?" I haven’t doubted women’s experience since.
So, on this Ada Lovelace Day, I say: thank you, Dr. Levy. I’m glad you made it to the top anyway, and I recognize your struggle to get there. And thanks to all the women who are brave enough to tell their stories.
Eating Vegetables Will Turn You Into a Limp-Wristed Nancy Boy
Unless you give it a MANLY new name, of course.
Thus, "Heganism." That's right, they're not vegans, they're HEGANS. Seriously, how insecure do you have to be? I love how the existence of male vegans is somehow this weird new phenomenon, too.
Coincidentally, I was just thinking earlier today about how fucking stupid the word "Manscaping" is. Like, if you just said "I shaved my balls," you'd somehow forget that you're a dude.
As Melissa said to me earlier when I sent her this article, calling yourself a vegan won't give you a "vegina," doodz.
Make Some Noise Against Trans Exploitation at the Tribeca Film Festival
[Trigger warning.]
Yesterday, Shaker Eastsidekate sent me the link to (emphatic trigger warning re: transphobia, violence, and exploitation) this piece by Gina at Skip the Makeup about a film set to run at the Tribeca Film Festival titled Ticked Off Trannies With Knives.
This work of film discusses the sensitive issue of violence against trans women and the plot involves 'Trannies' extremely violent revenge against men who abused them, but you'll be happy to know it's all been done with a lot of humor. As the director stated, "I don't consider myself an advocate. I'm not really a protester or anything like that. All of my films feature comedy."There are many more details about the specific tone and content of this film at the link, where Gina provides a comprehensive deconstruction of the many, many things that are wrong with this piece of
Over at her eponymous blog, gudbuytjane provides another swell quote from the director, a cis gay man who wanted to do a revenge film but thought films about "male gay bashing victims" were overdone, thus his appropriation of trans lives:
[My film's] like Grand Theft Auto. If you have a bad day at work, you can shoot some people, kill some hookers, trash your car and feel better. It's the same with my movie.Classy. Did I mention that this Tarantino-wannabe asshole uses the names of real victims of real murders not only in the movie, but right in the trailer? "Denver, CO. Angie Zapata, a transgender teen
is bludgeoned to death by a man she met online," reads the trailer. Yeah. Even Grand Theft Auto doesn't have the gall to use the names of real life murder victims to justify its gleeful violence. Fury.
Register your polite but firm disappointment that Tribeca would not only be screening this film, but promoting it as their first film to feature transgender people in transgender roles, by contacting Tammie Rosen at (212) 941-2003, or trosen@tribecaenterprises.com. There is also a Facebook group.
Well, Well, Well
Researchers find that high-fructose corn syrup prompts considerably more weight gain:
A Princeton University research team has demonstrated that all sweeteners are not equal when it comes to weight gain: Rats with access to high-fructose corn syrup gained significantly more weight than those with access to table sugar, even when their overall caloric intake was the same.Insert a caveat about expanding categories to include ever more people as "obese" during that same time period. Nonetheless, leaving aside the labels in favor of nutritional health, the average American's consumption of HFCS over the same time period has increased by "an alarming 12,250%." !!!
…"Some people have claimed that high-fructose corn syrup is no different than other sweeteners when it comes to weight gain and obesity, but our results make it clear that this just isn't true, at least under the conditions of our tests," said psychology professor Bart Hoebel, who specializes in the neuroscience of appetite, weight and sugar addiction. "When rats are drinking high-fructose corn syrup at levels well below those in soda pop, they're becoming obese -- every single one, across the board. Even when rats are fed a high-fat diet, you don't see this; they don't all gain extra weight."
…In the 40 years since the introduction of high-fructose corn syrup as a cost-effective sweetener in the American diet, rates of obesity in the U.S. have skyrocketed, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. In 1970, around 15 percent of the U.S. population met the definition for obesity; today, roughly one-third of the American adults are considered obese, the CDC reported. High-fructose corn syrup is found in a wide range of foods and beverages, including fruit juice, soda, cereal, bread, yogurt, ketchup and mayonnaise. On average, Americans consume 60 pounds of the sweetener per person every year.
As I've mentioned in several previous threads, having a diabetic in the household has made me keenly aware of the ubiquity of HFCS. It's in everything. And it's in everything because corn is subsidized to the tune of billions of dollars in the US every year.
The OHNOES Obesity CrisisTM, sponsored by the US Government.
Which now, hilariously, demonizes fat people as lazy layabouts, after ensuring that virtually every processed food produced in America is rich with a government-subsidized product that promotes weight gain. Awesome.
[H/T to Shaker Carol.]
Constance McMillen Wins... Sort Of
Late last night, via a friend's twitter post, I heard that a federal judge had decided that the Mississippi school district that canceled prom rather than allow Constance McMillen and her girlfriend to attend as a couple had violated McMillen's First Amendment rights.
The school district does not have to reinstate the prom, however. Parents have planned a private prom, instead.
The Clarion-Ledger article linked above noted that "all junior and senior students would be allowed to attend, although it was not clear whether same-sex couples would be allowed to attend together." On other sites, I read that McMillen was not invited to the private prom.
If that is the case, the school board wins, too. They relied on an old southern tactic I described in a piece I did for The Guardian's Comment Is Free:
The prom cancellation is reminiscent of tactics from at least a half-century ago: rather than integrate public pools, parks, and schools, southern municipalities often closed them. Sometimes, in lieu of closure, they turned over such accommodations to private enterprises. In defiance of school integration orders, they opened private schools and segregation academies. Such acts allowed them to continue de facto segregation long after de jure segregation was outlawed.If you're so inclined, please go check out the whole piece!
Disney's New Pirates Movie Will Have Women Jumping Up and Down
by Shaker TheLadyEve
A March 21st article in the New York Post recently described part of the casting process for Rob Marshall's upcoming Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. Apparently, the casting call for female extras was very specific in one department (emphasis original):
The filmmakers sent out a casting call last week seeking "beautiful female fit models. Must be 5ft7in-5ft8in, size 4 or 6, no bigger or smaller. Age 18-25. Must have a lean dancer body. Must have real breasts. Do not submit if you have implants."Okay, where to begin? I'm not certain why the casting director is so preoccupied by casting women without implants; if anecdotal evidence provided by previous Pirates installments teaches us anything, it's that the women in the film are just going to be crammed into costumes that make their breasts look preternaturally high, firm and big anyway. But the casting agents involved make it clear that they are concerned with authenticity, the hallmark of any effective period piece. And those fight scenes need to look authentic all the way down to the breasts, apparently.
And they warn that there'll be a "show and tell" day.
To make sure LA talent scouts don't get caught in a "booby trap," potential lassies will have to undergo a Hollywood-style jiggle-your-jugs test and jog for judges. If there's nothing moving from the waist up, they're saying, it's a dead giveaway that you're not all flesh and bones -- and you're out.
Apparently, the bouncier the better, especially for sword-fighting action sequences, according to the Sunday Times of London.
"In the last movie, there were enhanced breasts to give that 18th-century whorish look and men were pretty well padded too, and no one worried," a former casting agent said. "But times are changing, and the audience can spot false breasts."
Notice that they do not strive for authenticity by casting women of all sizes, or by casting women with disabilities, or by casting women with the imperfect teeth and skin that one would expect to see in an era that came before modern medicine and plastic surgery and that was rampant with malnutrition and disease. There will be no women with scurvy or pellagra in Pirates of the Caribbean: On Stranger Tides. No, they must all be tall, beautiful models with "dancer bodies" but their breasts must look authentic, because women are defined solely by their breasts.
And fake breasts mean you're a "whore," according to the casting agents. After all, fake breasts in an 18th century pirate fantasy film would be the equivalent to the Roman soldiers wearing wrist watches in Spartacus—unthinkable for an true auteur churning out pablum for the nefarious Disney octopus.
I'm more than a little irked by the wink-nudge style of this article. It comes complete with a pun using the term "booby!" It is positively creepy how the author lightheartedly recounts the painful extremes to which Keira Knightley was forced to go in order to look "well-endowed," joking about how she was spared a "breast exam." It all boils down to women, yet again, being held to an unattainable standard of beauty. While this standard is to be expected in the U.S. film industry, it is particularly despicable when it is shrouded in the guise of supposed "authenticity."
Question of the Day
I’m doing research for a paper on the unlikely friendship between two seemingly opposite characters in a play, and I’m finding a lot of common bonds between them that both enhances the drama and makes the characters more real. So naturally I’m translating that into real life to ask: How opposite are you to your best friend/partner?
