Archive for the 'Mass media' Category

Agency, ambivalence, and desire: some preliminary thoughts on the Miley Cyrus kerfuffle

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 12, 2008
in Mass media, Music, Sexual ethics and transformation, Youth and Youth ministry
. 19 Comments

I met Ruthie Kelly at WAM 2008; she’s the opinion editor of the San Diego State Daily Aztec and a rising feminist voice. I haven’t had much to say about the whole Miley Cyrus photo controversy, and I’m glad I haven’t, as Ruthie has gone ahead and said much of it for me, and said it better. Ruthie writes:

…like the other pop teen queens who came before her, Cyrus was sexualized long ago. That isn’t the real problem. The upsetting part is that her sexuality used to be innocent because she was sending signals with miniskirts and makeup but didn’t really understand what those signs meant. The symbols are meant to be understood by adults who aren’t part of her actual fan base. Her appeal lay in her inexperience - her powerlessness. Her appearance has always been suggestive, but she wouldn’t really know what to do in a sexual situation, so it was a type of make-believe.

But Cyrus is 15 years old now and is starting to grow up. She’s beginning to take control and embrace her sexuality, and use it the way she wants to, as opposed to the way she was directed. Being sexual on any level seems so monumental, new and powerful at age 15. But just when she matures to the point of wanting to embrace and explore that side of herself is when she becomes the most dangerous because then she is the one who takes control.

It’s an interesting point. Though I worry that Ruthie may be overselling Cyrus’ own sexual agency just a tad, I think she’s making a powerful and important point. Part of the discomfort we have with the Miley Cyrus images lies in our recognition that we’re dealing with a young woman who is very publicly asserting her sexuality. Whatever the designs of the photographers in Vanity Fair (or of those who leaked Cyrus’ private pics onto the ‘net), it’s clear from her meteoric rise that Miley (also known as “Hannah Montana”) is a remarkably driven, poised, and thoughtful young woman. And yes, she’s still fifteen. Continue reading ‘Agency, ambivalence, and desire: some preliminary thoughts on the Miley Cyrus kerfuffle’

Nouns, not adjectives: Caroline Heldman and young women’s self-objectification

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on April 28, 2008
in Body, Clothing and Fashion, Eating disorders, Mass media and Sexuality
. 8 Comments

The new issue of Ms. Magazine hits the stands tomorrow. Of particular interest is an article by Caroline Heldman, assistant professor at nearby Occidental College: Out-of-Body Image: Self-objectification—seeing ourselves through others’ eyes—impairs women’s body image,mental health, motor skills and even sex lives. (It’s not available online; you will need to splurge for the magazine, which is well worth doing. A subscription is better. Ms., Bitch, and MakeShift are the three indispensables of feminist publishing.)

Heldman:

A steady diet of exploitative, sexually provocative depictions
of women feeds a poisonous trend in women’s and
girls’ perceptions of their bodies, one that has recently been
recognized by social scientists as self-objectification—
viewing one’s body as a sex object to be consumed by the
male gaze. Like W.e.b. DuBois’ famous description of the
experience of black Americans, self-objectification is a
state of “double consciousness…a sense of always looking
at one’s self through the eyes of others.”

In my work as a youth minister and as a women’s studies professor, I’ve seen this phenomenon grow seemingly worse in recent years. Paris Hilton’s remarks about sexualiy and her own self-objectification resonate; in 2005, she remarked that her titillating image is a product of her sexy sense of style, and in reality her boyfriends have commented on her less than rampant libido. She says, “I’m sexual in pictures and the way I dress and my whole image. But at home I’m really not like that. In other words, her sexuality is largely performative, almost entirely a response to an outsider’s gaze and not an expression of her own inner longing for anything other than validation. I’ve brought up this insight of Hilton’s with some of my students, and seen a variety of reactions, ranging from surpise to vigorous nods of recognition. Continue reading ‘Nouns, not adjectives: Caroline Heldman and young women’s self-objectification’

Blowback in the L.A. Times

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on March 19, 2008
in Mass media
. 2 Comments

I’m happy to say that yesterday’s post has been revised and is published as today’s Los Angeles Times “blowback” opinion: It’s Not All About Wurtzel. I worked in a nod to Jessica Valenti and Amanda Marcotte (both of whom have Wikipedia entries); the new book by the latter is on my desk and will be reviewed here by this time next week.

Almanzo Wilder

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on February 18, 2008
in Family and Mass media
. 0 Comments

My cousin, Dean Butler, who played Almanzo Wilder on Little House on the Prairie, has a preview of his documentary about the husband of Laura Ingalls.

Dean’s Youtube site is here, and his blog is here.

And the Almanzo-Laura romance is nicely edited together here.

Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on January 3, 2008
in Blogging, Books, Christianity, Feminism and Mass media
. 55 Comments

On the ongoing “Yes Means Yes!” front, Theriomorph has a thoughtful response to my post last week. In the comments section below my December 27 post, I wrote:

…feminist missiology has to operate on multiple levels. We need our radicals and our moderates, our popularizers and our theorists. We need to package our most important ideas for the mass market in a way that the mass market will find palatable.

I’d rather 97% of the people get 3% of feminism than have 3% get 97%, if that makes sense.

Theriomorph responds:

We do, however, live in a world in which a woman political activist who is white, young, economically privileged, and saying something essentially upbeat and dumbed down that is guaranteed not to rock the institutional privilege boat but instead work only on the concerns of the most privileged among us and do so in an extremely circumscribed way can sell mad books.

We live in a world in which the merit of our ideas or talents or ethical constructs is far less important than the marketing behind them, and the same people get marketed saying the same things.

First of all, let me again reject the notion that Jessica Valenti’s writing is “upbeat and dumbed down.” But we’ve been down this road before; what Theriomorph calls “dumbed down” I see as “radically accessible”; what she calls “upbeat” I see as “inspiring.” Evel Knievel on his rocket-powered motorcycle couldn’t leap the gulf in perspective that has opened up over Full Frontal Feminism. That’s disappointing.

But I’d like to expand on my short remarks about “marketing”, and the comparison between Christian evangelism and the feminist mission. In many ways, the feminist community bears a resemblance to the evangelical Christian one. Both are committed to transforming the world. Both are committed to reaching people globally with a message that is life-changing. And both communities have intense, often bitter debates about exactly how to “package the message.” Continue reading ‘Feminism, marketing, evangelism, inclusion: UPDATED’

Against “end of the year” retrospectives coming too early

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 27, 2007
in Mass media and Politics
. 0 Comments

Every morning, after my all-too-brief prayer time, I turn on CNN. This morning, when I saw the coverage of the Benazir Bhutto assassination, I watched for only a few minutes before going online. The American television news agencies have cut back so much on their coverage of world events that they no longer have the power they once did to bring multiple reporters on to a story instantly. I’ll still check in on the television throughout the day, but will stream BBC news on the radio and spend more time online, visiting my “usual sources”.

This is a tragedy, of course, but it’s another reminder as well that news-gathering organizations really ought to refrain from doing their “top stories of the year” in mid-December. When you look back over the past few years (the tsunami, the Hussein execution, this assassination), it’s evident lots of newsworthy events can happen after Christmas and before New Year’s Day.

A call for “Little House on the Prairie” fans

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on November 26, 2007
in Family and Mass media
. 10 Comments

I spent much of the Thanksgiving holiday with my cousin, Dean Butler. Dean is my mother’s sister’s eldest son, and for much of my childhood, he was my great hero. In the 1970s, whenever Dean (eleven years my senior) and I were at our family Ranch together, I followed him. My childhood enthusiasm for swimming and riding horses came largely from the fact that these were things that Dean did.

Dean’s an actor turned documentarian. In the late ’70s and early ’80s, he played Almanzo Wilder on the enormously successful “Little House on the Prairie” television series. LHOTP episodes have, for some time, been available on DVD — and a new generation is discovering this remarkable program. “Little House” was one of my favorite shows as a child and as a teen even before cousin Dean joined the cast, and I still find the old episodes surprisingly watchable and engaging.

Dean has a blog, and he’s interested — perhaps for a future project — in soliciting stories from people who watched and enjoyed “Little House” in its heyday. The show was unlike any on television, and had a near-cult following. If you watched the show then (or have discovered it more recently), Dean would love to hear your story. Visit his blog, and leave a comment about where you were in your life when the show was on, and how the program may have impacted you. Though “fan mail” is always nice, my cousin’s real hope is to gather stories about how LHOTP affected the people who watched it. During the years that the show aired (approximately 1974-1983), America was in a period of significant social, cultural, and political change. Those of us on the high side of forty can remember the era well, how we felt, what we thought. If LHOTP connected to your life, please visit Dean’s blog and drop him a line. And if you have friends or family who loved the show, please let them know about this project.

Here’s a pic of me with Dean taken last Friday atop Mission Peak, just above our ranch. Dean (a graduate of the University of the Pacific) is wearing Cal kit; I (a Cal alum) am wearing UVA gear. Buddy, our ranch lab, is in the background.

Cosmetic surgery and the co-opting of feminist language: an excellent new Ms. article

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 2, 2007
in Body, Feminism, Mass media and Vanity
. 20 Comments

The summer issue of Ms Magazine is on the shelves this week. I was raised on Ms. Magazine in the 1970s, and though it has gone through many transformations in the years since, it remains one of the indispensable serious reads for feminists and their allies.

One particularly noteworthy article is Extreme Makeover, Feminist Edition: How the pitch for cosmetic surgery co-opts feminism. Written by Jennifer Cognard-Black, it’s a superb and timely response to the increasingly common strategy of marketing plastic surgery to women under the guise of “empowerment”.

… the cosmetic surgery industry is doing exactly what the beauty
industry has done for years: It’s co-opting, repackaging and reselling the feminist call to empower women into what may be dubbed “consumer feminism.”
Under the dual slogans of possibility and choice, producers, promoters and providers are
selling elective surgery as self-determination.

Those who are eager to make a fortune out of women’s fear of growing older use the language of the pro-choice movement over and over again: “it’s your body, shouldn’t you be in charge of how it looks?” The precious right to be sovereign over one’s flesh becomes, in the hands of the beauty industry, the duty to battle against the onset of ageing. Feminists who critique cosmetic surgery are accused of inconsistency, of refusing to allow women the full range of “choices” to which they are entitled. Cognard-Black:

The word “choice” obviously plays on reproductive-rights
connotations, so that consumers will trust that they are
maintaining autonomy over their bodies. Yet one choice
goes completely unmentioned: The choice not to consider
cosmetic surgery at all.

One of my first posts to attract a lot of attention appeared in April 2004: Surgery, Sex, and Shame. I compared liposuction to nineteenth-century clitoridectomies (which were done far more often in the USA than many realize). Excerpt from my post (not Cognard-Black’s article):

…clitoridectomies were regularly performed on young girls in America and England to cure them of what one doctor called “the moral leprosy” of female masturbation. My students are always stunned to hear that; they falsely assume that female genital mutilation was never a Western practice. Young women were shamed for the inevitable (menarche) and the normal (masturbation) to a far greater degree than they are today.

But what occurs in the 20th century is a shift from morality to aesthetics, with shame being the constant. Though public discussions of menstruation and masturbation (even in an academic setting) are still sometimes awkward, most of my students seem to consider themselves far more educated and enlightened on those subjects than their Victorian sisters. But all too frequently, my students loathe their bodies with the same puritanical intensity as their forebears. They may not be as ashamed of their sexuality as their great-grandmothers were (though some are still understandably shy), but they are still ruthlessly critical of their own flesh. The negative judgments however, are now rooted in aesthetics. Fat has replaced desire as the primary enemy to be contained and controlled. If self-control and exercise fail, there is always the surgical removal of the offender (fat) through liposuction and body sculpting.

I try — with limited success — to make the case that Victorian clitoridectomies and contemporary plastic surgery are remarkably similar procedures from a feminist analysis. Yes, the former were performed on the young and the vulnerable, often against their will. But I’m not sure that the young students of mine who save and scrimp and go into debt for liposuction and breast enlargements (and I can think of quite a few who have done just that) really have much more agency and autonomy than their forebears. Slicing up the body to conform to a societal ideal is inherently a woman-hating act, whether the offending body part is the clitoris or thigh fat. There is no progress in moving from a culture that shames sexuality to a culture that shames any divergence from an unrealistic aesthetic ideal.

Yes, I have heard from my students who say they feel better about themselves after their surgeries. But the number of women in Somalia or Mali who support female infibulation are high as well. The fact that some women feel personally empowered by cutting up their bodies (or allowing their bodies to be cut) does not vitiate the essential horror of the practice. Some feminists are so in love with the notion of “choice” that they will defend any action a woman takes to alter her body. But choices are only exercised within a cultural context that decrees that certain choices are better than others. In this culture where even slight physical imperfections are seen as barriers to happiness, most young women who choose plastic surgery are not making a genuinely free choice…

Feminists must be careful to walk a thin line — judging and condemning those women who do “choose” cosmetic surgery isn’t helpful, even if (as my use of quotation marks suggests) we are doubtful about the feminist authenticity of their “choice.” Our anger and our energy, rather, ought to be directed at those who repackage feminist language to market their wares. Feminism critiques the very standards of beauty that the cosmetic industry seeks to uphold; the surgeons offer women (at least the ones with money) the freedom to choose to alter their bodies to chase an ideal; feminists want women to have freedom from that very ideal.

Cognard-Black:

…it’s feminists who have emphatically and
persistently shown that cosmetic medicine exists because
sexism is powerfully linked with capitalism—
keeping a woman worried about her looks in order to
stay attractive, keep a job or retain self-worth. To say
that a preoccupation with looks is “feminist” is a cynical
misreading; feminists must instead insist that a furrowed,
“wise” brow—minus the fillers—is the empowered
feminist face, both old and new.

Pick up the new issue of Ms. at your local newsstand, or better yet, subscribe. And visit these sites:

Love Your Body
About Face
Real Women Project

Katrina, TV, and voyeurism

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 31, 2005
in Mass media
. 16 Comments

Like millions of others, I am transfixed and deeply moved by the appalling images coming out of New Orleans and the Gulf Coast in the aftermath of Katrina.  I’ve made my donation to the Red Cross online, and may make another one soon.

I’m also grieving my own sinfulness.   Sunday night, as I was resting up for the first day of school, I watched several hours of CNN coverage as the storm approached land.  I found myself growing excited by the dire predictions I heard and saw on the news.  Some particularly unpleasant quality within me had me (at least on Sunday) happily anticipating the images of destruction that the newscasters were more or less promising.  Even worse, I do confess that when I woke up Monday morning to find that the hurricane had shifted east and New Orleans had been (apparently) spared the worst of the impact, I was briefly — but clearly — disappointed.  I felt cheated.  If that ain’t sin, I don’t know what is.

By Tuesday, that disappointment had quickly shifted to deep shame and deeper concern.  Making a financial donation made me feel better, as it always does.  But I am reminded once again how vulnerable I am to the excitement of the news cycle.  From the time I was small, I’ve been a "news junkie".  I will sacrifice sleep to read the newspaper every morning; I watch CNN and MSNBC at home, and visit countless news sites throughout the day online.  When in the car, I am usually tuned to NPR on the FM dial or to an AM news station.  Sometimes in my office, I listen to the stream of BBC World Service.  (I can’t find the music I like on the radio anyway.)  Of course, I still prefer the newspaper.  As Shelby Coffey III ( once a dear friend of mine and the former editor of the LA Times) said, no news stories are as carefully vetted as those that make it into major newspapers. I still trust what I read in the Times more than what I read on CNN.com or any other internet site.

I tell myself that my interest in the news is laudable, even virtuous.  I was raised to believe that a good person is a well-informed person; and I rejoice that the number of sources from which I can gather information has increased exponentially in recent years.    But sometimes, there’s a thin line between the desire to be well-informed and voyeurism.  While watching the news can sometimes stir me to compassion (I cried yesterday watching that now-famous interview with the Mobile man whose wife had been swept away), it can also leave me with that same ugly thrill that one experiences when one rubbernecks at an accident.  At times, it seems as if the wisest thing to do is simply turn off the television and look away.

Bethany Torode had two great pieces on this a few years ago: Avert Thine Eyes: Life Without TV, and Beth vs. TV, round Two.  In the latter, she wrote about the news and September 11:

Current events interest me, but only to a certain extent — there is nothing new under the sun. What should concern each of us most is that which affects us on a local level, in our own lives. Some national events do this; others do not. But even those that do — such as Sept. 11 — are not generally best processed through TV. The “news” there happened over the course of an hour at most, but the cameras continued to roll and the CNN talking heads babbled on for days. One of my friends who doesn’t own a TV commented that everyone she talked to on Sept. 11 who had watched the events on television was frightened, depressed, shaken and irrational. Those who hadn’t — who had simply heard about it from others — were much more calm, thoughtful, and sober. (I don’t regret having missed the sight of people jumping to their deaths from skyscrapers, and I don’t think any American is the more enlightened and virtuous for having watched it.)

Bold emphasis is mine.  I suspect Bethany’s more right than not.  Did I need to see the awful images of the hurricane’s destruction?  I’m not sure.  Would I still have given the same amount to the Red Cross if I had only read of the horrors left behind by Katrina?  I’d like to think so.  But I’m not sure.

White faces, brown faces, faces of grief

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 29, 2004
in Mass media and Race
. 26 Comments

Well, six days was as long as I could stay away from blogging. I am on my brother’s old Mac in his little Exeter flat. We’re having a happy family visit here in Devon; I am enjoying my little niece and nephew and filling up on Cadbury Cream Eggs. But as much as I love Britain, the weather this time of year is a bit much for this Californian! It’s just after four in the afternoon, and already getting dark. This morning, I went running just before seven — and by the time I finished my jog along the river Exe, the sun had still not yet come up, though it was almost eight.

I love visiting the UK in late Spring and early Summer. I am one who loves light — nothing makes me happier than sunrises at 5:00AM and sunsets after 10:00PM. But the price of so much wonderful daytime in summer is the dreary winters and the near-endless darkness that balance things out. It’s a bit daunting — I can bear the cold of an English winter, but not the absence of light. (Parenthetically, I note that I’ve always been a morning person, as I don’t like to be in bed when the sun is out. Somehow, it seems wrong to waste good daylight. As you can imagine, this belief wreaked havoc with my social life in my youth, and still makes me a bit of a bore at parties — I start to yawn uncontrollably around 9:00 in the evening.)

I have nothing useful to add to the coverage of the appalling tsunami tragedy. I grew up near an ocean, and my most consistent childhood nightmares were always of massive tidal waves. They were always the same — I would be standing on a beach, unable to move, as a colossal wall of water drew nearer and nearer. Thus this awful Boxing Day event has shaken me more than other natural catastrophes. I have donated online with the Red Cross, though I suppose virtually any charity might have worked as well.

I have been struck by the photos the various English papers have chosen to put on their covers. This morning, all the major dailies had the tsunami aftermath as their top story. The two left-leaning major papers, the Independent and the Guardian, chose images of non-whites. (The former paper had a single injured Sri Lankan boy; the latter had a grisly photo of dozens of dead bodies from Indonesia.) But the major right-leaning papers all chose to print photos of grief-stricken or missing Europeans: the Times of London showing an orphaned Swedish boy on Phuket island, the Telegraph offering a huge picture of of Richard Attenborough, the acclaimed director whose daughter and granddaughter were killed when the wave hit their Thai beach resort. The conservative dailies put the suffering of brown folks on their inside pages, while the more left-leaning papers put similar photos of missing Britons and suffering Swedes on their own insides.

Listed from left to right, the Independent, the Guardian, the Times and the Telegraph are Britain’s four biggest non-tabloid dailies. I cannot help but think that the images they chose to convey the immense tragedy of the tsunami in some way reflect the sympathies of their target audiences. I don’t mean to imply that the left has a monopoly on compassion. But not all humans are stirred to sympathy and compassion by the same visual images. Some of us are able to identify with the suffering of those who don’t look like ourselves; others of us seem to respond only when those whose loss and grief we see on television or in print look like ourselves. To be more moved by the plight of those whose outer appearance resembles that of our relatives is an all-too-human failure of the imagination. And standing at the newsagent today, looking at all of the papers at once, it was hard not to have the impression that some folks have deeper and richer imaginations than others.

Assorted reflections on magazines and vacuity

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 13, 2004
in Feminism and Mass media
. 47 Comments

Thomas Reeves has his own blog at the History News Network.  Saturday, my fellow Cliopatriarch Jonathan Dresner drew my attention to this Reeves post entitled "The Joys of Jane".  It’s about Jane the magazine in particular, and contemporary women’s magazines in general:

Articles display such titles as “My Boyfriend Used to Be My Girlfriend,” “When I Smoke Pot, I Turn Into Ms. Satan,” “How to Date Eight Guys at Once,” “’I Want Her Babies.’ What’s With Guys All Of a Sudden?” and “Yet another great reason to keep on smoking!” In the November issue, an article gives eight tips guaranteed to help the reader pick up guys. (If you try all eight tips and the you fail to pick up at least eight guys, Jane Pratt will refund the $3.50 price of the magazine.) In a monthly column called “It Happened To Me,” there is a horror story by a woman who dated a Libertarian who did not believe in premarital sex. The author also reveals having had a brief affair “with someone who has flown in Air Force One with Dubya. And when we talked politics, it always degenerated into a pretty amazing sexual romp.” Information abounds in Jane, including how to train your brain to have dreams of sex with celebrities, and which SUVs are the most comfortable for having sex.

Reeves decries the intellectual vacuity that such magazines feed and inspire, wondering:

Where are the women crying out for higher moral and intellectual standards in the popular literature designed for their consumption? We hear enough about the right to abort, glass ceilings, and sexual harassment. Why not speak out about the literary pollution that damages and destroys the mind and soul? The voices of informed and concerned women might do much to reverse the cultural slide that degrades our civilization.

I have not read the particular issue to which Reeves refers.  Knowing, however, that Jane tends to have its tongue planted firmly in its cheek, I am not as certain as Mr. Reeves that its contents are truly damaging and destroying mind and soul.  Fewer young women use these magazines as instruction manuals than conservatives fear or advertisers might like!  Rather, I suspect most young women who are flipping through Jane and its competitors are looking for momentary distraction and amusement.  Yes, the content of these magazines is vacuous — but after a hard day at the office, or in the lab, or the classroom, or the board room, sometimes folks like to unwind with a little vacuity!

Of course, there’s a bit more to these magazines’ popularity than escapism!

I know I’m posting with quotations, something I don’t normally do, but reading Reeves’ piece, I immediately remembered the following passage from Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which I assign each semester in my women’s studies classes.  Offred, the title character, is given an old copy of Vogue, a magazine now banned in her dystopic world of Gilead:

Staring at the magazine, as he dangled it before me like fish bait, I wanted it.  I wanted it with a force that made the ends of my fingers ache.  At the same time I saw this longing of mine as trivial and absurd, because I’d taken such magazines lightly enough once…  After I’d leafed through them I would throw them away, for they were infinitely discardable and a day or two later I wouldn’t be able to remember what had been in them.

Though I remembered now.  What was in them was promise.  They dealt in transformations; they suggested an endless series of possibilities, extending like the reflections in two mirrors set facing one another, stretching on, replica after replica, to the vanishing point.  They suggested one wardrobe after another, one improvement after another, one man after another.  They suggested rejuvenation, pain overcome, and transcended, endless love.  The real promise in them was immortality.

The more I read these magazines and work with those who consume them, the more Atwood’s words seem apt.  I’m not defending their content, but I am defending their readers.  A woman can read with amusement about dating eight men at once, or about embarrassing sexual episodes in the lives of others, without compromising her right to be taken seriously in "real" life.  Indeed, the more responsibility we carry, the greater the longing to escape!

I like to unwind reading about college football.  Now, there’s an intellectually vacant activity!  After a day of teaching and grading, I come home and curl up with any number of sports magazines.  I lose myself in average yard-per-carry statistics for running backs in the SEC, or speculation about where the hottest high school players in Texas will sign.  (And national letter-of-intent day is less than two months away!  Oh, the excitement!)  It’s trivial, empty stuff — and it amuses and relaxes me.  I don’t blog about it because most folks don’t care, but gosh, I enjoy it.  I know that big-time college football is corrupt.  I know that its players are immersed in a culture of violence that encourages and condones sexual assault.  And though these realities are never far from my mind, I continue to find great and simple pleasure in reading the magazines that cover the game I love in glorious and numbing detail!  Am I "dumber" as a consequence?  I would like to think not.  Rather, I’m indulging in remarkably harmless escapism, allowing my brain to rest.

I suspect that with different magazines, millions of my brilliant and interesting and ambitious sisters are doing exactly the same thing.

The Gilligan update

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on December 1, 2004
in Fun, Mass media and Teaching
. 8 Comments

Back in May, I posted about getting a phone call from a casting agent about trying out for a spot on the new Gilligan’s Island reality TV series.  They were looking for a "real professor", and the agent was eager to get me to try out.  Though flattered, I declined to go in and audition.  I have dreams of being famous, of course… but not via reality TV.   I confess I was tempted, but not for long.

The show debuted last night, apparently, though I didn’t watch it.  I did a little hunting on the internet, and found the show’s website.  Here are the two professors who are on the show, competing against each other: Eric Anderson, a sociology prof at SUNY Stony Brook (who describes himself as very handsome), and Pat Abbot, a 64 year-old geology teacher at San Diego State who describes himself as being a historian of the earth and humanity.  (Is that all?  What does he do in his afternoons?)

Has anyone watched the show?  Should I regret not trying out?  Should I bite the bullet and find out when it airs again?

“Yes, no, hmmm” and Scarlet Magazine

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on August 26, 2004
in Feminism and Mass media
. 12 Comments

One of my favorite feminist blogs is Trish Wilson’s eponymous site. I don’t always agree with her, but I’m often forced to reflect as a result of visiting her corner of the blogosphere. She has a fine post today on white men and feminist consciousness, and I recommend it highly.

It is through Trish’s blog that I learned about a new British women’s magazine called Scarlet. It advertises itself as “Sex, shopping and style — a new concept in women’s magazines”. (The link is to a page that is safe for visitors, though I imagine that when the magazine actually appears on-line, it will be too racy for me to link to.) The magazine’s press release is here.

Here’s how the magazine’s holding page advertises itself:

Have you ever looked at a bloke in bed next to you and thought ‘Can’t you just go home now?’ Or maybe you’ve moved in with your bloke and are wondering where your sex life has gone? Or you could be quite happily single and in a committed relationship with your Jessica Rabbit.

If any of these sound like you, then you’re a Scarlet woman; you know what you want and you’re determined to get it. You like shopping, hanging out with your mates and (good) sex, and you know that real sexual confidence is as much about saying no as saying yes.

Scarlet is a magazine that celebrates women. We know that all women are gorgeous if they feel gorgeous, and that any woman can pull if she knows the right tricks. And if she wants to…

Being a Scarlet Woman is about attitude, not looks. It’s about being fun, fearless and feisty. And Scarlet magazine aims to satisfy every part of you. You’ll find intelligent sex advice, features with a real women’s sense of humour and horny stories to help you get your rocks off.

I hope that merely quoting that wasn’t offensive.

My former pastor and dear friend Scott Richardson always said that when presented with something new, he would respond with a “Yes”, a “No”, and a “Hmmm.” That’s exactly my reaction upon reading the promotional materials for Scarlet.

Here’s my “yes”:

I can give an enthusiastic “amen” to anything that says real sexual confidence is as much about saying no as saying yes. That’s a point that young women (and sometimes not so young women) need to hear, over and over and over again. It’s a point that even Christian conservatives need to think more deeply about. I’ve known more than a few Christian men (and women) who thought that while a woman should only say “no” before marriage, after marriage she gave up her right to that short monosyllable! The “right to say no” is not abrogated by marriage or past history.

Our sexualized consumer culture often tells young women that “no” is a word of timidity and conventionality, while “yes” is a word of courage and empowerment. That’s one of the more insidious lies out there. Especially when we are discussing young women eager for attention, validation, recognition and love, “no” is frequently a word that requires far more guts to utter. I’m quite pleased that Scarlet magazine gets that much.

I’ve got another “yes”. Scarlet magazine seems likely to fall into a tradition of journalism aimed at reminding young single women that it is okay to be single, that having a committed relationship with a man is not the only way to enjoy life fully. Feminism is committed to the idea that women can be complete, just as they are, even without a partner. Where Scarlet and I differ is over which behaviors in the single state are truly liberating, and which are simply acts of immaturity and selfishness.

Here’s my “no”. Scarlet asks:

Have you ever looked at a bloke in bed next to you and thought ‘Can’t you just go home now?’ Or maybe you’ve moved in with your bloke and are wondering where your sex life has gone? Or you could be quite happily single and in a committed relationship with your Jessica Rabbit.

I’m not saying “no”, women don’t feel this way. I don’t deny that some women can enjoy a promiscuous lifestyle to the degree that men do, though I do think that those women will be in a permanent minority. More basically, I am saying “no” to the idea that for either men or women, this is a healthy way to live. I am also convinced that these feelings are generally red flags. It is a cliche that after a one-night stand, men don’t want to cuddle, they want to go home (or have their partner go home). It is certainly likely that a fair number of women feel the same way. But the fact that women not only behave as men do but feel the way that men do about that behavior is not cause for celebration! Wanting someone with whom you have just been intimate to “go home” is almost invariably a sign that your own soul is deeply uncomfortable with what just happened. Inthe aftermath of sex, what we really want most (and this is both chemical and theological) is to remain close to the person with whom we just shared the experience. Of course, if we don’t know the person (or don’t like them), we will find it far more difficult to snuggle and cuddle and fall asleep with them; we are more likely to want them gone so that we can soothe ourselves.

I note that in its promotional material, Scarlet puts two powerful “s” words together: sex and shopping. The latter presumably does not refer going to the market to buy butter and beans. “Shopping” here almost certainly refers to clothing, jewelry, and accessories designed to please and flatter the self. “Shopping” is about the hunt for inanimate objects whose only purpose is to delight the buyer; folks obviously don’t care about how their new dress “feels” about being purchased. The publishers of Scarlet, borrowing a tactic from men’s magazines, seem intent on presenting sex (and thus other human beings) in the same commodified light: sex is about receiving for the self alone. Hugh Hefner tied sex together with the consumer lifestyle for men decades ago; it is not progress of any sort when women celebrate the fact that they do the same.

My final “no” is to the notion that Scarlet is proposing anything new. Take a read through Helen Gurley Brown’s 1962 Sex and the Single Girl, and the connections among crass consumerism, ambition, and sexuality are just as blatant as in Scarlet magazine.

My “hmmm” lies with the genesis of the magazine, and with my credibility to make comments as well. Here’s an excerpt from the press release:

Publisher Gavin Griffiths is no stranger to sex magazines. Previously running the Erotic Review, he saw a gap in the market for a young and funky sex title for women:

“I realised that there was no mainstream publication catering for sexually adventurous women. I started chatting to Emily Dubberley, veteran of the female sex market, and it rapidly became clear that we could put together a magazine unlike any others currently out there, and offer women what they really want.”

Love it. I guess Gavin and I are both in the same boat. Both men with a professional interest in women’s issues, both reasonably certain that we can “offer women what they really want.” I think Gavin is offering women what they often choose to settle for, while I imagine he thinks he’s offering them genuine fulfillment. But in the end, neither of us is a woman. Hmmm.

Random Saturday notes on fraternal books, sex scandals, Amish TV, Colombian soccer, cosmic American blues, and one very hot shirt.

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on July 10, 2004
in Books, Christianity, Clothing and Fashion, Mass media, Music, Older Men & Younger Women, Politics and Sports
. 9 Comments

Since I wrote two lengthy entries yesterday (both of which took a bit of time), I’m going to keep Saturday’s post brief.

My brilliant younger brother’s first book is out, available for pre-order on Amazon. All those interested in reading about Literature, Nationalism and Memory in Early Modern England and Wales should order at once. It won’t be shipped until October, but I can hardly wait! I am immensely proud.

Thanks to a link from Brian, I’ve been reading up on Willamette Week’s interesting coverage of the Neil Goldschmidt scandal (the former Oregon governor who had a sexual relationship with a 14 year-old girl in the 1970s.) It’s disturbing but compelling reporting; scroll to the bottom of the first story for additional reports.

Despite many protests from the pan-Anabaptist community, the UPN network will debut their ridiculous “Amish in the City” show on July 28. The Center for Rural Strategies is leading the fight to get the show cancelled; their site is here. The show is widely expected to ridicule our Amish brothers and sisters, and cast traditional religious faith in a negative light.

The Copa America soccer tournament is underway. I’ve gotten over the disappointing exit of England from Euro 2004; my gal is over Croatia’s failure to advance. But though my girlfriend is half-Croatian, the other half is Afro-Colombian; thus we are madly rooting for Colombia in the quadrennial South American soccer championship. (And my two favorite teams are Colombia and whoever is playing those blasted Brazilians.) We are off to Colombia on August 6 — our second visit in just over a year.

And tonight, we’re going to see the Gram Parsons tribute concert at the Universal Amphitheatre; Keith Richards, Norah Jones, Lucinda Williams, and my beloved Steve Earle will all play. This kind of music is now called “Americana” or “alt country”, but Parsons called it “Cosmic American Blues”… I can dig that.

When it comes to the whole country-rock thing, I like the clothes too — the lowcut, tight jeans; the boots; and the really cool shirts. I bought this one yesterday just for the occasion. It’s not very Mennonite, but it looked too damn good not to buy.

“Gilligan’s Island” and the seductive call of reality TV

Published
by
Hugo Schwyzer
on May 20, 2004
in Mass media, Teaching and Vanity
. 10 Comments

Yesterday afternoon, I got a phone call in my office from a very cheerful man named Craig, representing an outfit called “Next Entertainment”. Craig is in charge of casting the latest reality show — a new version of Gilligan’s Island. Yes, there is a website for prospective competitors. The idea is to find authentic versions of the characters from the original 1960s TV show; they want a “real-life skipper, first mate, millionaire couple, movie star, professor and Kansas farm girl” for what will be a “Survivor-style” show set on a small island in the Pacific. Well, Craig has apparently been put in charge of hunting down “real” Los Angeles-area college professors, and he found me through Rate my Professors and this blog. He urged me to come in to his company’s Sherman Oaks offices for a video interview.

I’ll confess it: I was flattered and tempted. The mere fact that he called to ask me to come in made me happy, though I have absolutely no intention of following up. Craig schmoozed me so well, said such nice and complimentary things, and seemed convinced to the depths of his soul that I might well be the one professor they were looking for; by the end of our chat, I felt as if I were personally letting him down by declining to come in. I have neither the time nor the desire to go through what would no doubt be a truly humbling and unpleasant audition process, and even if I were chosen (I can’t imagine that really happening), I don’t want to be on an island for a month away from my girlfriend, my mountain trails, and my chinchilla! (The superficiality factor was high: Craig asked if the pictures he found on my blog were accurate, how tall I was, and so forth. More sleazily, he asked if I was married, and was pleased when I said no. When I said I had a girlfriend, he said “Well, that’s okay.” One wonders.)

Yet I’d be lying through my teeth if I wrote that I didn’t spend a few delicious moments fantasizing about temporary fame and modest fortune! I don’t watch reality TV (except for two horrific episodes of I Want a Famous Face), but like so many folks in greater L.A., I’ve spent years alternately repelled and fascinated by what is generally called “the industry.” Part of me is curious about what it would be like at my age to go through the process of trying to get on a television show, but the better part of me knows that I ought to keep my distance. Still, for fifteen minutes yesterday afternoon, I mused idly about things I had never fantasized about before.

By all means, if any readers here meet the requirements, do apply and let me know what happens.