Over Thanksgiving weekend I found myself in a Walmart, specifically the Miley Cyrus Max Azria display.
There I found outfits for our new career as feminist performance artists whose work revolves around Pre-Internet Teen Bedroom Culture.
I got the purple in my size and the red in yours. And yes, duh, leggings to go with them.
Photo by Sara Krulwich/The New York Times
Kara, last night I saw the best of all possible shows. A fairy godfather took me to see the sold-out Streetcar Named Desire with Cate Blanchett at BAM (I’m the “friend” quoted in his totally perfect review).
Anyway, I’ve always liked the show but it always felt like it had nothing to do with my life. But with this production, suddenly it was about everything we’ve been talking about regarding how men and women relate to each other. Keep reading →
Kara, you sent me this quiz, which I agree we should discuss. You’re super busy with grad school applications right now, so I will post it here and you can tell me what you think about it later.
I’m kind of stumped by this. On one hand, it makes me kind of crazy, this reductive guys-who-want-to-have-sex-with-women-are-always-tools-of-the-patriarchy attitude, especially coming from a gay male feminist who doesn’t have any investment in the (admittedly sometimes gross) heterosexual dynamic.
Boys kissing! Booga-Booga! Image from L.A. Times blog.
My friend Brendan who works at MTV says the kids these days are all bisexual and have none of the angst around it that the 90s crowd did. He says they’re all, “I’m going to make out with a girl! And then a guy! And then that rock! And don’t you tell me I can’t!”
This seems to me to be a legacy of 90s feminism, which was all about being able to act on your feelings outside of labels (and yet, and how does this add up, we also totally rocked identity politics?).
Anyway, this is a very hot topic this week because as I know you know ABC kicked Adam Lambert off the morning show because he kissed a guy in his AMA performance. CBS gallantly picked him up for The Early Show, but thent totally lost all cred because they BLURRED OUT THE KISS when they showed it. They did not blur out the Madonna-Britney kiss, of course. Meanwhile, the kids are all buying his album.
So I think the moral is that kids today are totally fine with all kinds of sexuality and the Man is still freaked out by guys having sex, although they still A-OK with pretty lesbians.
miriam didnt have access to her own 90s photos, but her image choice works!
The early nineties– I was walking to the magazine shop where I bought my NME when I saw “revolution girl style now” grafittied on the five-story parking lot. In the shop, near Ray Gun, two older girls were singing “Goo likes to wear green underwear” to each other. I was intrigued.
So I learned to write in all lower case.
Jessica Simpson gets all Gender Trouble for Esquire
90s bisexuality! I wrote my undergraduate Women’s Studies thesis on it. And I actually think that sexual fluidity is a not-unimportant thing to bring up in this conversation.
But first: I was thinking about how Gaga/Beyonce is a feminist statement for 2009 (more than 1999 or 1969–though that’s when these conversations started) in part because technology has changed. One way for women to deal with a world of internet porn, HDTV, and video phones is to decide that instead of bitching about the male gaze (and I love bitching about the male gaze–Kathleen’s answer to it is a good one!) is to strategically use it (which I am into, too).
However: I’m not sure it’s just an ever increasingly visual mainstream culture that has made pop feminism embrace phallic symbols and bikinis that work like Medusa. I think it could also have to do with the emphasis on the visual aspect of identity and desire within queer culture, including trans culture. Keep reading →
First off, I just watched the “Bad Romance” video and you are right about the lingerie. Which of the fifty ensembles is the best, do you think? I’m leaning toward this red number, but the black and silver one is up there. I like her more and more.
Asked if she’s boy-crazy, she says, “”Yeah. Well, I’m girl-crazy too. I really depends on where I am. I love men, I love women and I love sex, but I’m actually pretty introverted right now because I’m so enveloped in my work, and it’s hard to let anybody near that. People f— with your energy, and it’s very hard to find people that are supportive of your art and don’t want to take time away from it. A lot of times, boyfriends and girlfriends get jealous and want all your attention, and I really don’t have time for that.” Keep reading →
Lynn Harris and Patricia Ireland. Note the EEEEVIL RED EYES of a FEMINIST.
Here is my slice of ’90s feminism. Background: I had gone to an all girls’ school in Boston, an old-fashioned place but with feminist values, values that were almost never questioned. I mean, why couldn’t girls do anything? We had no competition. (Especially not from our brother school, Bonehead Academy.)
The only overt disturbance in the feminist force I recall is when, through a long story involving dramatic lifesaving surgery by a classmate’s doctor on a friend of Gloria Steinem’s, well, guess who spoke at our graduation in 1986? When we’d discussed it, one more conservative classmate asked, lip curled, “Isn’t she a feminist?” Most of the rest of us were pretty much like, “Yeah!”
But then college was co-ed. And boys there were —who knew? — smart. They even raised their hands and talked in class. Can you imagine? They had thoughts, certain kinds of deep thoughts, that I wouldn’t have had in a hundred years. This I found intimidating. Especially when my own damn boyfriend turned out to be extra-super-smart. This I found very intimidating.
I still love Laura Mulvey
Ada, I’m not sure I’m going to get into a PhD program, because I have spent my morning watching Beyonce and Lady Gaga on repeat instead of working on my applications.
(But if I have to go back to my old job as a beauty editor, I have a lot to say about Beyonce’s hotness. Also, we might need to have a private conversation about Lady Gaga’s lingerie in the Bad Romance video.)
Anyway, yes, I am totally with you on the many layers of ‘90s feminism in this video and here’s why: As anyone who has read Our Bodies, Ourselves or “The Myth of the Vaginal Orgasm” knows, ‘60s feminism has always had a totally undeserved reputation for being anti-sex. What ’60s feminism was, I think, was anti-visual–at least in bed. Kinky sex? Yes. Garter belts and bustiers and video phones? No.
Do you already have a dissertation subject, Kara? Because this video basically distills everything about 90s feminism, from the male gaze to symbols of aggression to whether or not Bettie Page was in fact an icon of oppression or of liberation. Also, wow do the two of them look hot.
