Tag archives for What is this shit?

All for one, and one for proper sword fighting attire

By Grace Published October 6, 2011

When I first saw the teaser trailer for the soon-to-be released The Three Mus­ke­teers, I thought they had added a lady to the bunch.

Milla Jovovich plays Milady de Win­ter, and she is one of Three Mus­ke­teers. And she also is not.

Turns out, de Win­ter is a dou­ble agent who only joined the Three Mus­ke­teers to destroy them. Accord­ing to her descrip­tion on the offi­cial movie site, she is quite successful:

Embody­ing beauty and grace, Milady shines with a heav­enly glow, win­ning the hearts of every man, includ­ing Athos [one of the Three Mus­ke­teers]. Yet Milady’s inno­cent demeanor masks an evil truth, and through decep­tion and irre­sistible sex­u­al­ity, the fate of Athos’ heart and that of France lies in the cold hands of a deadly assas­sin, a fal­lacy of love, the orig­i­nal femme fatale.

That’s a bunch of tired old  baloney.  It’s a bum­mer that de Win­ter is not a real Musketeer—and it’s garbage that Hol­ly­wood won’t quit recy­cling the overly sim­plis­tic femme fatale trope or let go of the whole virgin/whore thing.

But what really bunches my britches is de Winter’s duds.

Source: MTV.com

That’s a damn silly out­fit for a sword fight. Is she wear­ing a gown, or a Per­sian rug? And what kind of prod­uct keeps your curls par­a­lyzed even dur­ing a mid-air sword fight?

Can’t a girl get some pantaloons?

Her­Links:

“Why Cleav­age is Bad for Crime Fight­ing”

 

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It’s the little things

By Grace Published August 30, 2011

You know what really grinds my gears? Seem­ingly minor acts of sex­ism per­pe­trated by an insti­tu­tion that I, in the­ory, respect.

I was brows­ing the online edi­tion of the Louisville Courier-Journal, read­ing about ‘new ele­men­tary school prin­ci­pal’ this, ‘art show open­ing that,’ when I glanced at the “Fea­tured Gal­leries” section.

Louisville Courier-Journal, Summer's Hottest Women

Catch that? The Courier-Journal’s got the scoop on the “Summer’s hottest women,” cour­tesy of Metromix.

A few are just some ladies out and about in their cute sum­mer duds…and also in their cute sum­mer G-strings. Which is fine, what­ever, but does wear­ing lin­gerie in pub­lic mean you have to give a dude a lap dance, as shown in the gallery? Also, I imag­ine this is the way I’d look if I were forced to French kiss a barn animal:

Louisville Courier Journal, Summer's hottest women

To be fair, there is a “Hottest Men of Sum­mer” gallery on Metro­mix. But after view­ing all 141 pho­tos from the hottest women gallery, I feel cheated. First off, is it really so hard to find hot men doing hot things that they could only come up with 51 measly pho­tos for the men’s gallery? Sec­ond off, the vast major­ity of the men are fully clothed. Worst off, not one dude is get­ting or receiv­ing a lap dance OR mack­ing out with a per­son of the same sex.  In the words of Liz Lemon, this is gen­der inequity out the yang.

I don’t know why it was nec­es­sary or accept­able for the Courier-Journal, the largest news pub­li­ca­tion for Kentucky’s largest city, to fea­ture this sex­ist garbage on their vir­tual front page all day. Maybe I’m naïve, but I was caught off guard by it. I was dis­armed by it. I wanted to call Joe Fran­cis and tell him some­one is infring­ing on his intel­lec­tual property.

Maybe I am naïve. Maybe I’m being petty. After all, the fem­i­nist PC police just loves to make moun­tains of mole hills, don’t they?

Truth be told, I have never under­stood that dichoto­mous think­ing. Sex­ism reveals itself in many and var­i­ous ways, on the cover of a mag­a­zine and on the floor of the House. What seem like minor exam­ples of sex­ism, racism, homo­pho­bia, etc. demon­strate how deeply engrained these prob­lems are in our soci­ety. The ‘minor’ offenses per­haps best reveal the larger pat­tern, which is con­structed by acts of sex­ism of all shapes and sizes.

We need to keep talk­ing about the lit­tle things because that’s what makes the big things happen.

Her­Link:

Summer’s Hottest Women

 

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An open letter to Jennifer Hudson

By Grace Published August 21, 2011

Dear Ms. Hudson,

In a recent inter­view with “Self Mag­a­zine,” you said, “I’m prouder of my weight loss than my Oscar.”

Jen­nifer, you don’t mean that. I know you don’t.

What you meant to say is los­ing weight is harder for you than being a super­star per­former, which is your job –which you are obvi­ously very good at– whereas being a health nut is not.  There­fore, it seemed like it was an infi­nitely more dif­fi­cult psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal strug­gle to get skinny than to do the work that won you an Oscar.

I’m not say­ing you shouldn’t be proud of your weight loss–assuming that you did lose the weight in a healthy man­ner, and that you did it for the right rea­sons (you said you lost it to set a good exam­ple for your child, which I think counts).

But JHud, you should be prouder of your Oscar than your weight loss because win­ning the top act­ing honor is an actual accom­plish­ment, while reach­ing and main­tain­ing a healthy weight is just some­thing you should do, you know, because it’s healthy.

And so I beg you to be more care­ful when you talk about your weight loss. Because it sounds like you’re on the Noth­ing Tastes Bet­ter Than Skinny Diet when you say things like that.

Again, I don’t think that’s what you meant when you said that. I have heard you talk lov­ingly about your (for­mer) curvier build, so I’ll spare you the ‘You’re a role model, so act like it’ speech this time.

But seri­ously, you are. So act like it.

 

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Women’s soccer team trades t.n.a for tickets

By Grace Published July 12, 2011

Because noth­ing says take me seri­ously at sports like a string bikini!

Russian women's soccer team

“Cash-strapped Russ­ian team to play in biki­nis to bring back fans,” Online Metro

FC Rossiyanka is a Russ­ian women’s soc­cer team. They’re good. Since their found­ing in 1990, they’ve won the Russ­ian Women’s Pre­mier League three times and qual­i­fied for the Women’s Cham­pi­ons League twice.

But they have a rev­enue prob­lem. No fans = no ticket sales = des­per­ate times = des­per­ate mea­sures = the team will play their next match in bikinis.

They will play soc­cer in biki­nis in Rus­sia!

From what I know about the coun­try (prac­ti­cally vir­tu­ally noth­ing), it never gets above neg­a­tive 90 degrees. Think of the ter­ri­ble tushbite.

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Not Casey Anthony news

By Grace Published July 5, 2011

Hey Amer­ica! Have I got a news flash for you: in this coun­try, we don’t con­vict peo­ple of any crime, no mat­ter how heinous, unless they are proven guilty beyond a rea­son­able doubt. It’s kinda like one of the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of our legal sys­tem. And by ‘kinda like’ I mean it really, really is and we were all taught this in our mid­dle school civics’ class—is your mem­ory / school atten­dance that poor?

How brave you Twit­tiots are! What courage you demon­strate in your Tweets and Face­book sta­tus updates com­pared to those cow­ardly jurors who bore the bur­den of judg­ing this woman, of lis­ten­ing to every argu­ment and every piece of evi­dence made avail­able to them and still were not will­ing to con­vict a woman of mur­der when the evi­dence didn’t prove her con­clu­sively guilty. You bore none of the bur­den, yet express all of the outrage!

This is a prime exam­ple of our idi­otic obses­sion with things that don’t really mat­ter; it takes a whole lot of priv­i­lege to be this friv­o­lous.  After all, if we pre­tend to care about some­thing that we have absolutely zero con­trol over, then we don’t feel so bad for ignor­ing the myr­iad injus­tices that we do have con­trol over—that we could change, if we weren’t such suck­ers for the cir­cus. If you need a few solid exam­ples, I’d say 99% of the stuff on this blog would suffice.

Thank you to those who appre­ci­ate the true mean­ing of jus­tice. That it is “bet­ter that ten guilty per­sons escape than that one inno­cent suf­fer.” You keep us safe from the mob.

Here are a few sto­ries that are vastly more impor­tant than the Casey Anthony trial:

  • Trust Law com­pares women’s rights in Europe and Sub-Saharan Africa.
  • Con­gress­woman Louise Slaugh­ter and U.S. Sen­a­tor Kirsten Gilli­brand intro­duce leg­is­la­tion that would grant women in the mil­i­tary the same repro­duc­tive rights as civilians.
  • Sen­a­tor Gilli­brand (I sense a pat­tern…) forms the “Off the Side­lines” cam­paign to increase the par­tic­i­pa­tion of women in politics.
  • Katha Pol­litt talks Slut­Walks for The Nation.

 

 

 

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25-year-old Louisvillian accused of raping child

By Grace Published June 29, 2011

A 25-year-old Louisvil­lian named Tony Craw­ford was arrested  at 3:30 am today after police found him in a vehi­cle with a fourteen-year-old. Craw­ford was charged with third-degree sodomy and first-degree unlaw­ful trans­ac­tion with a minor.

The head­line for the Louisville Courier-Journal story reads, “Man charged with hav­ing oral sex with teen.”

Fuck that. That’s sugar coat­ing it. It should read, “25-year-old accused of rap­ing child.” That’s what hap­pened. I don’t care what kind of sex it was or whether it is not tech­ni­cally incor­rect to call the vic­tim a teen because she is four-teen. A child is a child.

When an adult becomes sex­ual with a child (or any­one who can­not /will not give con­sent), it is rape. Rape is rape. This is the lan­guage we must use when we talk about it with our friends and fam­ily, in the court­room and in the media, everywhere.

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Violent, sexist billboard ad tells woman to “take it all in.”

By Grace Published June 27, 2011
Disgusting sexist billboard

Bill­board adver­tise­ment for Stu­dio 54 at the MGM Grand Hotel & Casino– Las Vegas, from Unlock Las Vegas

A friend of mine noticed this sex­ist, vio­lent piece of garbage while dri­ving out­side of Las Vegas, Nevada, and shared it on Facebook.

This is the kind of shit up which we shall not put. This goes beyond the nor­mal, “You’ll score a hot chick if you buy our prod­uct / patron­ize our estab­lish­ment, as illus­trated by this hot chick in our ad.”  It oozes vio­lence: a man dressed in black is in the process of gag­ging a woman, telling her to “take it all in.” The woman is in a vul­ner­a­ble posi­tion, lying down with her eyes closed.

We sure have become mas­ters of under­stand­ing just how much we can get away with before it’s unac­cept­able, even in Las Vegas. The sug­ges­tion of vio­lence is no bet­ter than the explicit state­ment of vio­lence, which is why this ad wouldn’t be any dif­fer­ent if “Take it all in” was replaced with “Suck my entire dick, bitch” or “Take this shiny roofie so I can date rape you later.”

After all, if you’re going to pro­mote vio­lence against women, you may as well not be such a pussy about it, MGM.

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“Show runners: The women of pop”

By Grace Published June 27, 2011

When I first read “Show run­ners: The women of pop,” I thought to myself, “Self, this is an inter­est­ing arti­cle. You should share it with the world.”

Before I began writ­ing, I reread the arti­cle. I let it soak in. I started to notice a few things that, well, pissed me off, partly because the author, pop-music critic Sasha Frere-Jones, writes for the New Yorker, of all rags, and he should know better.

Thor­oughly soaked, I real­ized that I dis­like how slop­pily and con­de­scend­ingly Frere-Jones ana­lyzes these women. The Guardian’s Kitty Empire sums up his approach nicely:

You could – and Frere-Jones does, to some extent – assign roles to these three singers. He’s got Adele – clas­sic, mature (in sound if not in age) – reserved for the soc­cer moms who buy CDs in Star­bucks. Bey­oncé is America’s sweet­heart, while Gaga is, broadly, for the freaks. This is a reduc­tivist take, but let’s exam­ine it all the same.

Yes, let’s. Here’s how I exam­ined things:

Let’s get Adele out of the way ASAP, just as the author does. Frere-Jones begins the piece by list­ing the three women “who run the world of pop right now” (in terms of album sales): Bey­oncé, Lady Gaga and Adele. He then says this about Adele:

Her career is likely to be long, because she is sell­ing to the demo­graphic that decides Amer­i­can elec­tions: middle-aged moms who don’t know how to pirate music and will drive to Star­bucks when they need to buy it.

So ends the first para­graph, and Frere-Jones sets us up to expect fur­ther analy­sis of this trin­ity of pow­er­ful female pop stars. He doesn’t deliver. He only men­tions Adele once more, and it’s to com­pare her record sales to Beyoncé’s.  I won­der why.

Con­tinue read­ing »

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