Sunni B./WOST/Fall07

Blog 12

2007-11-19T10:42:00.000-08:00

Because I am incredibly selfish and only care about how events affect ME, I have been ranting and raving about the writer's strike in Hollywood for about a week now. Being a frustrated writer myself, I understand the Writer's Guild's desire to make more money from online sales of their shows, especially since "the suits" are certainly making the big money from new media. Still, striking writers means no new TV and I love TV, so I am taking the whole thing as a personal affront. But, a story I read at http://www.womensenews.org/ has made me think about all of the little people who are being affected by the writer's strike, and of course a majority of these little people are women.

Sandra Kobrin writes about all of the writing assistants, secretaries, and crew members who work for a salary to support the writers who are striking and the shows that are going dark. These workers, lower paid than the writers and not getting residual payments to keep them afloat like the writers, are being pink slipped as the strike drags on. And who are these cogs in the machine? Not all are women, but the majority seems to be. And who are the striking writers? Not all are men, but only about 28% of paid TV writers and 19% of movie writers are women, so let's just say the majority of the picket line walkers are male.

I'm not sure what it is going to take to bring the two sides of this mess to some sort of amiable agreement, but here's hoping that something gives soon. That way, I can go back to watching brand new episodes of my favorite mind rotting television shows, and the young women who work, largely unnoticed and unappreciated, to support the Hollywood system can go back to work. Rents and student loans don't pay themselves, as I well know.

For Sandra Kobrin's complete story, please go to http://www.womensenews.org/article.cfm/dyn/aid/3385/context/archive

Blog 11

2007-11-13T08:23:00.000-08:00

So, another Election Day has come and gone, and a very interesting thing happened in my little ole' home town. I would say that my little corner of the world (and it is literally the corner of the state) is fairly provincial, staid, right wing, and a Republican bastion of supposed family values. Except for the rampant meth labs and arrests for possession and intent to distribute. But that is a topic for another day. Today, we are talking about the re-election of our female mayor, and voting in of her party as the majority party on the City Council.Now, granted this particular mayor is a Republican, which I don't personally get because a female Republican to me is like a water phobic mermaid. The two just seem to be at odds. But, she is a woman, and her election 4 years ago did cause some consternation amongst the masses, especially the old guard on the City Council. The Council was made up primarily of old men who had been in their positions for years, and the thought of taking orders from a woman was simply too much. This is where the problems started.

For four years, the mayor had to do battle with these male chauvinist yahoos. They would not back her on anything. The town needed a new library, which she backed and they didn't. The town needed a new entrance to a strip mall that was in desperate need of new tenants. The council portrayed the mayor as a spend thrift who was tossing our money around willy-nilly. So when this years election came about, I was less than surprised when one of the Council members decided to run against her. One of the council members even decided to chance party affiliation, presumably to avoid any comparisons with the mayor. These ill advised decision would come back to bite both of these gentleman in the ass.

The mayor won her reelection bid, with 60% of the votes. The Council member who changed his party lost his seat , and Republicans were elected pretty much across the board to fill city offices. Both mayoral candidates had run on the platform of bridging the divide that existed in city government. The gentleman thought that the way to do this was to preserve the old guard Council and get a new mayor who would go back to the way things had always been. Instead, the city spoke up and kept the mayor, and elected a Council that would work with her, and not the other way around. I am actually a little proud, for the first time in my life, to say that I live where I do. And I am proud of the mayor, even though we are on complete opposite ends of the political spectrum, for not backing down and for not calling the council out for their blatant sexism even though she had every right. She ran a clean, honest campaign and won based on her merits and achievements to date. All political races should end so well.

Blog 10

2007-11-05T11:07:00.000-08:00

I haven't decided yet who I am backing for 2008. I was leaning toward Obama, but than the whole thing with Donnie McClurkin came up, so I'm not sure where I am at with him. I do think that this is shaping up to be the most interesting, and no doubt ugliest primary and election that we have seen. But what I really want to focus on this week is Hilary Clinton and her reaction to the drumming she got from her Democratic rivals in a debate last week.

Hil has decided to haul out the sex card, for the first, and I hope last time. Her camp implied, in not so many words, that the reason Clinton was subjected to the "piling on" (their words) at the debate was because of what is between her legs, and not because of what was coming out of her mouth. This, to me, is a non issue. If the other candidates, and the event's moderators, had questioned any of the other (male) candidates in this manner, we would not be discussing the matter. It's called, for better or worse, the political process. Hil wasn't singled out because of her sex; she was repeatedly questioned because she is so adept at not answering a question, no matter how many times you ask it. So, apparently, her fellow Dems and the questioners believed that if they kept at her, maybe they could get a definitive out of her.

I hope that the Clinton camp does not expect that Hil should be treated with kid gloves simply due to her sex. If we are going to start placing parameters on how to treat a candidate during a debate because of their "minority status" than that means Obama gets similar courtesies. And less we forget; Mitt Romney is a Mormon, Fred Thompson is elderly, I could go on. So, come on Hilary, man up (Ha! "Man up"). The next time you are the subject of what appears to be overly aggressive and repeated questioning about your stance on something, answer the damn question and stop hiding behind your own petticoats.

For a better, more well thought out opinion on this issue, check out this from The New York Times online: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/05/us/politics/05memo.html?em&ex=1194411600&en=fbb7e7688aa7f198&ei=5087%0A

Blog 9

2007-10-29T13:08:00.000-07:00

I don't know how "Women's Studies" related this week's post is going to be, but I am in the situation because I am a woman, so close enough I guess. My best friend since 6th grade is having a baby in December, and I am throwing a baby shower in 2 weeks. I've been working on it for 2 months now, and I think that I am pretty close to having everything ready. Now, though, I am having all of these dreams about things going hellishly wrong. Last night I dreamed that everybody ignored the gift registry and only brought onesies and receiving blankets. That's it, packages and packages of onesies and blankets. I have also dreamed that I run out of food, or don't have enough plates, stupid stuff like that. Now, I'm analyzing why I've been having all these dreams (nightmares really) and I think that I have come up with a plausible reason.

Women are always trying to impress each other. I have always thought that women don't wear nice clothes, ridiculously uncomfortable shoes, faces full of makeup, and shellacked hairdos to trap a man but to show off for other women. We know how catty we can be to each other, sometimes in the guise of a compliment. "Oh Ethel, that outfit is so 'interesting'. I couldn't pull off that color, but you..." Which basically means "That is the ugliest thing that I have ever seen and poop green is not flattering on anyone." So, my real fear lays in the possibility that one of the 50 or so ladies that are coming to this shindig will find my decorations tacky, or the venues wrong, or some other picky ass thing that only a woman would notice. Cuz, I have worked hard, and shelled out A LOT of money, and if one of those ingrates doesn't like it I will just snap.

Luckily, the party is in a short 2 weeks, and then I never have to worry about this sort of woman induced angst ever again. Until my step sister wants me to have one for her, or my little brother finally manages to knock up one of his many "girlfriends". And then, I will be right back to having nightmares about the punch fountain not working.

Blog 8

2007-10-24T11:59:00.000-07:00

Because it is almost Halloween, and because something that I read in my textbook got in my craw, I want to talk about slasher flicks this week. You know what a slasher flick is don't you? Crazed, usually masked, clearly sexually repressed, psycho stalks and then slashes every teenager in sight except for one girl who had the good sense to not have premarital relations with her nitwit boyfriend who was probably a victim of masked guy? Yeah, like Halloween, Friday the 13th and Nightmare on Elm Street. Well, my Women's Study textbook calls these out for their depictions of violence against women. I say, watch again with an open mind. These movies are not victimizing women, no they are celebrating them. Slasher flicks should be required watching for any Women's Studies student.

Let us use young Nancy from the original Nightmare on Elm Street as our archetype. Nancy is a parent's wet dream. She is a good girl, doesn't cause trouble for her dad the cop and doesn't call her mother out for her excessive drinking and whoring about town. She has a hunky boyfriend and a slutty best friend, both of whom are dispatched by Freddy the friendly neighborhood killer in short order. But not our Nancy. Nancy figures out, on her own, who Freddy is, what he is doing in the local teenagers' dreams, and comes up with the plan to defeat him, again on her own. Nancy realizes that she alone has the power to defeat the evil that is Freddy; and through brute strength, well thought out and placed booby traps, and shear deductive reasoning she does just that. She does it so well that Wes Craven brings her back 2 more times to do the same thing. Now, maybe I am biased because I love these movies, but I think that this makes Nancy, and all of the other "Final Girls" (a term coined by Nancy Clover) feminist icons and not the subject of derision that the authors of my text want us to see them as.

So, it is almost Halloween. Go rent a handful of slasher flicks and see for yourself. Nancy, Laurie, Sidney, Ellen, and Sally are just waiting to prove me right. And as long as directors and writers keep coming up with new psycho killers to scare the crap out of us, we will be treated to more feminist icons just like them, who use their wits and strength to defeat evil.

Blog 7

2007-10-12T21:26:00.000-07:00

I read an article in last Sunday's Journal-Gazzette about the dearth of young men in area colleges and universities. It appears that there were almost 50 percent more females than males enrolled in Allen County (IN) colleges in 2006 ( http://www.journalgazette.net/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071007/LOCAL/710070352/-1/LOCAL07 ). It's a phenomenon that I have noticed in my own classes. Early on in my college career, some 6 long years ago, my classes seemed pretty evenly divided between men and women. But lately, I have noticed that the young men in classes are dropping off. Just this semester I have one class with 3 men and another with just one lonely young man (it IS Women's Studies, but still, 1 guy?) While I can't help but rejoice that young women are entering college at such a high rate, I can't help but be concerned about what is happening to our area's young men. And, it turns out that this is a national problem.

In this little corner of the world, many of the jobs available are in industrial settings, as they have been for years. Unfortunately, many of these jobs are going the way of the dinosaur. We are seeing more outsourcing, automation, and companies just picking up and moving elsewhere, places like Mexico where the labor is cheaper. While in the past you could get a great paying job right out of high school in these industrial jobs, now it is becoming increasingly more difficult to find a factory job that pays more than $8.00 an hour to start. So, it goes to follow that in order to make a better living, you are going to need more than the high school diploma that use to get you a foundry job. College is becoming more important, but less men seem to be making that decision.

So, why aren't our young men entering higher education? And, what can we do to turn the tide? I wonder if some of the efforts that have been made in the past to encourage girls to attend college have had an adverse effect on boys. Have they gotten the impression that society deems it more important for girls to attend college? I hypothesize that we need just as many programs to encourage boys to seek higher education as we have for girls. And, boys should be steered towards what are traditionally thought of as "female" majors, like nursing and education; in the same way that for the past decade girls have been encouraged to enter male dominated fields like engineering. And most importantly, those of us who are raising boys now, the women who have benefitted from the programs that encouraged girls to attend college, should be sure that we are instilling in our sons the desire to obtain a higher education.

Blog 6

2007-10-02T15:36:00.000-07:00

It's October, so that could only mean one thing. No matter where you go, no matter where you look, there will be a proliferation of pink products, ostensibly to raise money to fight breast cancer. Of course we all know that breast cancer is a very real threat to the health of many women in the United States. According to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure website (http://cms.komen.org/komen/index.htm) 10 million people around the world could die in the next 25 years from breast cancer if a cure is not found. Breast cancer will affect 1 in 8 women in their life time, so if you personally are never diagnosed, the odds are someone you know will be. So it is absolutely a disease that needs financial support in order to find a cure.

So, why does the mass of pink products every year bother me so much? Shouldn't I be supportive of companies that want to donate proceeds from the sale of their products, no matter how tenuous their connection to women, breasts, cancer, or health (Candy? Waffle irons? Hammers?) My concern is that these companies are not as altruistic as they are simply clever marketers (and I am not pointing out any company specifically, so no one sue me). As consumers, we get a warm fuzzy feeling when we believe that we are donating to a good cause, ie breast cancer research. That warm fuzzy is bound to rub off on the company that we feel was responsible for making us feel this way, thus the company has cultivated a life long customer.

And, again I'm not pointing fingers, but how much of the purchase price of these products really goes towards breast cancer research? The companies have to specially make the pink packaging, or the pink product, upping the price of production. Then, they advertise the special pink products, adding still more cost to their bottom line. So, after all of this added expensive, how much of your purchase price ends up in the hands of an organization that can do some good? Even if it does go to a cancer organization, then how much goes toward actual research, or to help an individual patient. These organizations have costs that they pay in order to stay solvent as well. Leases, advertising, staffs, all of these have to be paid somehow. So, let's go back to the original $14.99 that you paid for a pink toaster that brands a ribbon on your toast. After the company that made the toaster gets their cut to pay production and advertising costs, they donate, let's say $5.00 to a cancer organization. Now, the cancer organization takes that $5.00 and takes out their operating costs. Hypothetically, we are left with, what say $1.50 that will actually go to research or support. Now, wouldn't you have been better off just writing a check directly to the cancer organization and skipping the toaster you probably will never use? I thought so.

I'm done being glib. Breast cancer is bad. There are no amount of my fancy words or sarcastic repartee that can make that sentence mean anything other than it does. And I am all for supporting an organization that legitimately wants to help science find a cure, not only for breast cancer but cancer, period. And AIDS, diabetes, heart disease, you get the picture. So please, at some point this month, or anytime you feel particularly generous, donate to a cause, any cause. But by all means don't feel pressured by all that pink. If you need a new snow blower, and don't care if the neighbors point and laugh, then knock yourself out and buy the pink one. Otherwise, just give when and where you can. Besides, we shouldn't just have a breast cancer month anyway, we should be doing something about it all year

Blog 5

2007-09-24T12:48:00.000-07:00

OK, I just want to start this with a disclaimer. I don't usually agree with anything that Kathleen Parker has to say. She annoys me, but it annoys me even more when I agree with her. She's like Ann Coulter light. So having said all of this, I found myself nodding vigorously at her article last week. Unfortunately. Anyway, take a look and we will discuss:

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2007/09/larry_summers_the_thought_poli.html

OK, so do I think what Lawrence Summers said is the worst kind of sexism? Of course I do. Blaming what one perceives as an inadequacy in women on genetics, as though men are somehow superior to women as a God-given truth, is just SO wrong. It's the easy way out of what is a more complex problem of educational differences between boys and girls. We should be more focused on how to get young girls more interested in Science and Mathematics, and not dismiss the lack of women in these fields of study as gender differences. For the president of an Ivy League school to say this in public was probably a huge mistake on his part. This is where my opinion differs from Ms. Parker. Now, much to my consternation comes the part where I agree with her.

Summers should never have been forced from his job for expressing his opinion, and he should not have been "uninvited" to speak at the University of California Board of Regents bimonthly board meeting. The last time I checked, both Harvard and UofC were in the United States of America. Therefore, expressing an opinion, even an unpopular one, should not be grounds for banishment. If we allow the left to censor speech in this way, then they shouldn't be surprised or affronted if the right wants to do the same. And then, where does it stop? No one, on either side, will be able to say anything without fear of reprisal.

Only the most purposely hateful speech should be called into question, and I don't think Summers was being overtly sexist in his remarks. So now, I find myself in the infelicitous position of being of the same mind as Kathleen Parker. And that makes me mad at my own "side", if you will. I think that when the left is so outspoken and defensive about something so inconsequential, it makes it hard to take them serious when they are trying to make a point about something serious.

So, I guess I can't wrap my thought up in a neat little bow this week. I'm irritated at the left, because they made me agree with Parker. I'm irritated at the right, for many reasons too numerous to mention. I'm irritated with the "thought police". So, I guess as a conclusion, I am just irritated.

Blog 4

2007-09-17T11:48:00.000-07:00

Because I can't help myself, I watched the Emmy Awards last night. They were awful, but it would take me the rest of the day to say why, so I'll move on to my point. For two hours before the show, I had the Pre-award shows on while I cooked dinner and did some homework. You know these shows, where we find out "Who are you wearing?" and get the opinion of some random "style maven" about how much the dress that so and so is wearing sucks. I really watch the Pre-show to see how everybody looks in those skin tight, unforgiving, uber-expensive haute couture dresses. And then my mom and I verbal eviscerate anyone who doesn't measure up.

Now, I am not exactly a supermodel, in fact I am fat. I know that people cringe when they hear the word, but the truth is I'm not "plus sized", or "zaftig", or any of the other cutesy euphemisms for it. No, I am fat. Deal with it, I am. So, why do I feel OK with talking about how some actress I don't even know looks puffy or lumpy in her Emmy dress? Maybe, it's because when you see a not quite perfect looking body on the red carpet, it stands out like a sore thumb. Last night, I kept seeing Aida Turturro, not because I was looking for her, but because I couldn't miss her. In a sea of size zeros, she was like a visual reminder of what normal people look like. It was almost jarring, like somehow she was ruining the fairy tale for me. And shame on me for thinking such a thing!

So, maybe my mental evaluation of actresses' figures is an indictment about how I really feel about my own body. Or maybe I have been brain washed by all those trashy tabloids I read into thinking that the only socially acceptable way to look is like a skeleton. Whatever it is, I am going to try and be a little more aware of it in the future. This does not mean I will stop making nasty little asides to my mother about so and so's saggy butt, but I will try to do it more out of my natural innate meanness and not because I have been taught by society to think that size zero is the only form of beauty.

Blog 3

2007-09-10T12:10:00.001-07:00

I have 6 nieces and nephews (3 of each) so far. By the grace of God, they are all healthy and happy, and I consider myself lucky to have the opportunity to watch them develop into little individuals. Right now their biggest problems in life are who’s going to feed them and when the next diaper change is coming. But, someday life is going to get more complicated. The oldest of the 6 is 10 and ½ (because that half is SO important at that age). He is just starting to see that the world outside of your home is not always as hospitable as the world inside of your home. Compound this reality with the fact that he is biracial, (which is not actually an accurate term. His mother is biracial and his father is Caucasian, and I don’t think that the English language has caught up with these realities yet. A topic for another day, perhaps?)and you can image that his world is becoming a lot more complicated. But, is parents are doing a pretty good job of helping him through. I wonder, though, how would we all react if he, or one of the other children, announced that they were gay.

There isn’t any member of my immediate family who doesn’t know and love someone who is gay. One of my best friends, a former coworker and friend of my mother, etc, all gay and all accepted by us all. But, what if it was a member of the family; would we be as seemingly liberal and open minded then? Do your views change when it’s someone this close to you? I would like to think that we wouldn’t even care, that a member of our family is just a member of our family, sexuality be damned! I can’t be sure that this is true, though. Unless they are deep in the closet, I can’t think of anyone even in our extended family who is gay, so we have no construct on which to base our reactions.

We try and protect the children from the cold, cruel outside world by loving them and accepting them for who they are. So, since a many people in the outside world would not accept them if they were gay, could we put aside any unconscious prejudices that we have to love them just the same as we did before they came out. I certainly hope so. There is enough hate in the world to go around, without having to deal with it from your own family.

Blog 2

2007-09-05T11:55:00.000-07:00

Every year I buy the really big fall issue of Vogue. You know the one; it's like 900 pages and looks more like a dictionary than a magazine. Now, I can't afford one single thing in Vogue, even the stuff in the occasional ad for Gap are out of my unemployed, single, full time student budget. So, why do I torture myself every year with this ginormous, completely out of my reach wish book on steroids? Because some day I want to have money, and when I do I want to know what to buy! I drool over the Blahniks, whine about the Prada, and covet the Armani, telling myself that "Someday, I can have these". But, what if I can't? Will my life be less complete without the trappings of femininity and privilege as presented to me in the glossy pages of Vogue? As much as I want to say that I am beyond such consumerism, I actually do think that I will die unhappy if I don't ever own a Louis Vuitton purse or Christian Louboutin pumps.

So, call me shallow, call me materialistic, whatever. But, when you grow up "government cheese poor" (as my family likes to call it), you learn to suppress your desires for anything other than the absolute necessities of life, like food, and a roof over your head. Everything else is extraneous. I remember in high school, all I wanted in the whole world was a pair of Doc Marten boots. Even though they were only $100, I knew that I could never have them. So, I stopped wanting anything. But then, I grew up and realized that if you stop desiring anything, then you are going to lose your ambition to accomplish anything. So, I buy my Vogue and circle the stuff I really like. It keeps me working toward a goal. I will finish college, I will go to Grad School, I will get tenure, if for no other reason than I really want over priced couture.

Welcome

2007-08-27T11:40:00.000-07:00

I had always considered blogging something that either self important or boring people did, but since this is for a class, I'll give it a shot. I am suppose to post things here that pertain to my Women's Studies class, and today my addiction to tabloids is what is weighing on my mind. I am a supposedly intelligent woman, I do have a 3.6 GPA, I'm in an academic honors society, I'm even considering grad school. I also consider myself a feminist. So, why is it that I spend like $15 a week on Star, The National Enquirer, and Globe ? Should I be ashamed of the sense of schadenfreude I get when I read about Lindsay's latest arrest or Britney shaving her head? Shouldn't I be brushing up on my Tolstoy or something instead of rotting my brain with this trifle? Maybe I can argue for an academic reason I read them. After all, tabloids are sort of an anthropological study of the behavior of a subset of human society, right?

Having said that, I still think that reading them should still go against my feminist leanings. I should not be rejoicing in the down fall of fellow women, down falls that may well be caused by their prior objectification by a patriarchal society. Most of these young women who are the constant target of tabloids began careers when they were too young to make their own decisions about their public image and how they were marketed to the masses. So, consequentially they were seen as teen sex goddesses, and I'm not sure that they know how to separate themselves from these images now that they can make their own decisions. So, they marry inappropriate people, flash body parts that only their gyno should see, and generally have nervous breakdowns right before our eyes. And because they are surrounded by "yes" people who are only interested in what they can get, no one stops them until it is too late.

So, I am back to my original problem. Why do I but tabloids? As you noticed, I have plenty of opinions about why other people behave the way they do, but no real insight into my own behavior. I can see that the content of tabloids is inherently sexist, yet I can't stop myself. Maybe someone else who shares my addiction can offer some insight? While I wait I'm gonna surf on over to tmz.com and read about Owen Wilson's suicide attempt....................