Pop Culture, Race and Feminisms

"To all the little girls who are watching, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams." —Hillary Clinton

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An issue I brought up in class, and one which I truly believe, is that we’re often too quick to demonize those who represent the more “problematic” aspects of our culture. It’s true that Tina Fey can be anti-SJW at times, Taylor Swift remains blissfully ignorant of her privilege 24/7, Lena Dunham constantly puts her foot in her mouth and even Beyonce perpetuates some backwards views of femininity through her lyrics and image (as explained in Beyonce as an Intersectional Icon? by Marla H. Kohlman.) Just because you accept that someone has or continues to do something wrong doesn’t mean you have to stop liking them. Every human being makes mistakes and discovering the “right” way to navigate privilege takes time and work. That’s not to say a “right” way can ever truly be found. If there is such a thing, it’s simply a commitment to advancement and an open-mind. Just look at Beyonce, after years of criticism on her “respectability politics,” she came out with Formation, which Vanessa Willoughby praises in Beyonce’s Formation is a Celebration of Unapologetic Blackness as “an homage to Blackness and a merciless indictment of systemic racism and its codependent partner, white supremacy.” People improve. There’s no reason to “disown” your fave for a misstep here and there, just respectfully relabel them your new “problematic fave” and move on. 

Basically, I reserve the right to hopelessly identify with Liz Lemon. 

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To add another dash of .mp4 to the mix, you can’t discuss satire’s inherit issues without bringing up the King. Stephen Colbert acted for years as his Bill O’Reilly wanna-be character named Stephen Colbert. Often times, while viciously mocking the right’s most infamous talking head, his true message would get confused. As stated in the article: When Political Satire - Whoops! - Reinforces What it Intends to Skewer by Nina Metz, “Conservatives were more likely to report that Colbert only pretends to be joking and genuinely meant what he said, while liberals were more likely to report that Colbert used satire and was not serious when offering political statements.” 

No incident more clearly exemplifies this issue than the 2014 “Cancel Colbert” hashtag. While satirizing Washington’s “Redskins,” Colbert made the following tweet: 

Without the context the broadcast piece on the same topic provided, people quickly lost. their. minds. 

To be honest, even had context been provided in the tweet, the joke probably wouldn’t have gone over well. Anyway, #CancelColbert went viral (Fox loved it, of course) and Colbert even had to try and distance himself from, well, Colbert. 

The whole thing ended when Colbert got back on tv the following Monday (above) and clarified that he was, in fact, making fun of the Washington Redskin’s insensitivity.

This is a classic issue with satire: it is so easily misinterpreted. Even the best satire can be taken in any direction you want it to go - even with context. Tina Fey’s Let Us Eat Cake is another great example of this. Megan Garber of the Chicago Tribune points this out in her article ‘Let Us Eat Cake’ the Tina Fey Effect in 2017.”[Fey’s piece is] about a kind of political introversion—an introversion that is, as astute critics have pointed out, its own kind of privilege.” But was such privilege sincerely meant, or was it self-deprecating satire? To be honest, to some degree there’s no point in debating. What Fey truly meant by the piece as she wrote it will never be known. I think we just have to accept that satire is a flawed means of commentary. That’s not to damn it, all means of commentary are flawed in some way. I for one am a voracious satire-consumer. In class, when the presenter’s pointed out how some millennials only get their news from satirical sources, they may as well have @ me. We shouldn’t give up on satire or the writers/ performers behind it every time an interpretation goes haywire. Just encourage them to learn from their mistakes and move on. Maybe make certain sketches a little more clear. If you’re really upset, go watch some Samantha Bee, there’s no way to misinterpret her. 

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Get Out is a fantastic movie that attacks race relations head-on. In it (**spoiler alert**) Allison William’s character forms relationships with Black men in order to lure them back to her parent’s house. There, wealthy white men pay huge sums of money to “take-over” these Black men’s bodies. William’s character is pathological: all smiles, liberalism, and a hidden closet filled with framed pictures of people she’s murdered. Yet, according to Williams, white people are begging not to see the character that way. 

“She was hypnotized, right?” We love to ask her. 

“No, she’s just evil. How hard is that to accept?”

[She eats fruit loops in two bites!! How can you not see the evil!!]

To me, this harkens back to just how hard it is for us to accept white women as the progenitor of evil. We must be victims, at least indirectly, of someone else’s actions. 

It’s a fact that’s pretty clear in our discussions of Taylor Swift. Despite how Taylor constantly proves herself a master manipulator of the press, it’s still much easier for many to accept that Kanye West pulled one over on her. As Ellie Woodward of Buzzfeed puts it in her article How Taylor Swift Played the Victim For a Decade and Made Her Entire Career: “The dominant reaction [to the 2009 MTV awards stunt], however, was a reflection of what the world has been conditioned to see: the “threat” of an “angry" black man terrorising the “innocent" white woman. Even their clothes reflected the racially fuelled victim/villain framework that would define the incident: The image of West, wearing dark shades and an entirely black outfit, accosting sweet Swift in her white and silver party dress, remains an iconic one.” Flash forward half a decade and even when Swift is caught in her lie by Kardashian’s snap story, we have to believe we’re missing part of the story. Kanye must have lied to her, Kardashian must be after her, etc. 

I think that the issue people have in accepting Taylor and Allison William’s character as the villain has a lot to do with intersectionality. Crenshaw points to the fact that people do not exist in any one category. This is, of course, true for white women as well as WoC. We have one foot in a position of privilege and one in the rut of oppression. We are both the subject of institutionalized oppression and great institutionalized privilege. Yes, as women Taylor and Williams would be paid less than a white man. Yes, they wouldn’t be able to access appropriate healthcare if they didn’t have money. And yes, they would/ do experience sexual harassment to a degree men don’t realize. That being said, being a white woman has it’s “perks.” It was not long ago that a white woman could get any Black man murdered just by uttering a few lies. As white women, we do not have to fear police in quiet the same manner, nor do we face the same institutional cycles of poverty. That’s why Swift’s attempts to monopolize Kanye’s “cruelty,” turn Minaj’s narrative from “racism in the music industry” to “girl-on-girl personal attack” and even Lena Dunham’s attempt to sexualize Odell Beckham Jr (as explored in Kimberely Springer’s: Celebrity Feminists Have Problems, Too! Or, #FirstWorldCelebrityFeministProblems) are especially upsetting. To put it simply, we have a great amount of privilege and that’s complicated, but not negated, by a skirt or two. More than that, as human beings, we have agency. We can  - and often are - the villains. It seems like it’s time we learn how to accept that.  

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Michael Che’s above sketch is a little bit of everything. It pokes fun at Che’s critics, Che himself, and goes after liberal white women with gusto. “Gretchen,” Che’s undercover persona, seems quite shallow. And although they appear well intentioned, so do the white women around him. In some ways this critique of liberal white feminism reminds me of the “post-feminist” label described in Dr. Jess Butler’s For White Girls Only?: Postfeminism and the Politics of Inclusion. Several hallmarks of the multiple definitions of post-feminism Butler discusses are visible in this skit. For instance the importance of sex positivity is clear when Che defends Cardi B. Additionally Butler lists several characteristics inherent in post-feminist culture. Not all of them apply to this skit, however two ( “5. emphasis on individualism, choice, and empowerment as the primary routes to women’s independence and freedom; and 6. promotes consumerism and the commodification of difference.”) work well with Che’s depiction of liberal white women.  

It’s easy to accept Che’s critique as pointing only to “the bad kind” of feminists, however in many ways he’s talking about the most “enlightened” among us. Che as “Gretchen” isn’t wrong for pointing out the things he does, however the well-intentioned obliviousness of the girls around him is the problem behind much of white liberalism today. This ignorance is clear in the more problematic statements of your faves, like Tina Fey’s remark that a “drag queen is still a 6′ 4″ black man” in Let Us Eat Cake or how Taylor Swift thought colonial Africa would make a dreamy romantic backdrop for her 2015 video Wildest Dreams. The intentions here weren’t bad - but it’s the ignorance of “because I don’t have a problem with it, I’m not going to think about if anyone else does” that’s prime white liberalism. Sometimes it’s not the individual’s fault, as Viviane Rutabingwa and James Kassaga Arinaitwet point out in their article Taylor Swift is Dreaming of a Very White Africa, many Americans have never had a single history lesson on Africa. More generally, we aren’t always taught to think about what we don’t see/ experience and this self-centric perspective is what Che is getting at here*. Well, that, or he just wanted a chance to say “word to Lulu lemon” in a blonde wig. 

**(Che specifically may be tackling the “if I’m offended I’m right” mindset because he’s Che and he loves not fitting the status quo). 

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Ruby Rose has had a significant amount of influence in bringing topics of gender identity and androgyny into the spotlight. Her video “Break Free,” in which she goes from a stunning woman to a ravishing man in the blink of an eye, is shocking to many. No doubt it has opened some people up to the idea of gender fluidity. Still in “WHY WE SHOULD THINK TWICE BEFORE IDEALIZING RUBY ROSE,” author Sam Dylan Finch argues that Ruby Rose is simply displaying the same white, twiggy, passing androgyny that was accepted decades before her birth. She does little for PoC who are genderfluid or transwomen like those using the #Girlslikeus movement started by Janet Mock. 

This got me thinking about who is doing a better job at blurring the line between genders and illuminating the gradient in between. I’ve settled on one specific artform, and it might be a bit controversial: Drag Queens.

Recently Drag has taken center stage thanks to RuPaul’s Drag Race. While Drag is very different from genderfluidity and trans-ness, it is a form of in-your-face “non-passing.” Drag Queens defiantly don’t pass, instead they embrace the “cooties” many CIS and hetero people feel at the idea of a man performing as a woman. In addition (at least in RuPaul) Drag is remarkably more accepting of PoC than fashion magazines and big-time tv shows. It’s a stretch, but there does seem to be something to the idea that Drag Queens are performing their way through society’s strict binary and thus opening up new roads for a much more diverse group of gender-fluid and trans people.  

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Janell Hobson brings up Carole Boyce Davie’s comments on the “blondeing” of Black pop stars in Feminists Debate Beyonce. The progressive lightening of many pop star’s hair as well as the use of “whitening” products is argued to be a form of self colonization. 

The pressure for Black media icons - and even everyday Black women - to fit white beauty standards is enormous. Historically this has often resulted in famous Black women (and men) participating in various hair modification, skin bleaching and plastic surgery techniques to make their brand closer to what society’s ideal. 

The example most people vividly remember is Michael Jackson. The international pop star had vitiligo and at the time the “treatment” for the skin disorder was skin bleaching cream. However Jackson also received several nose jobs, which shrunk his “Jackson 5 nostrils” to a button nose, and frequently wore straight black wigs. 

Other celebs who participated in serious plastic surgery that gave them more European features include Lil Kim and Janet Jackson. Even Nicki Minaj has developed progressively more straight, blonde hair.

Beyonce gets a whole lot of flack for not being “Black enough” (a criticism laden in colorism). What’s interesting to note however is that Beyonce’s image really hasn’t progressed in a similar manner to the Jacksons or Minaj or Lil Kim. Since the 90′s Beyonce has been rocking some form of highlights or a dirty blonde wig, but that’s it. Moreover, Beyonce’s image has recently taken an unexpected turn - the pop star has been loudly and proudly flaunting her Blackness. It started with Lemonade, her visual album in which natural hair is a motif throughout. Now it’s strange to see Beyonce on stage without natural-textured hair and an outfit dedicated to either African roots or the civil rights movement. In all it’s a very interesting and empowering trajectory and one her critics never saw coming. Beyonce may be blonde, but she is not one of the “blondeing.”

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This issue takes on new light after having watched “A Girl Like Me.” Celebrities and pop stars, especially who weren’t also child stars, spend a good part of their lives exposed to the same pressures as everyday people. Thus Minaj, Lil Kim and even Beyonce must have been exposed to the same ideology critiqued in “A Girl Like Me.” Had we asked them as children which doll they preferred, they probably would have picked the same doll the majority of participants in the video did (read: the white one). And the internal dialogue expressed by some of the interviewees wouldn’t have sounded strange to them as teenagers. This is proven in Lupita N’yongo’s Black Women in Hollywood Awards speech in which she discusses her own issues with colorism growing up. It can also be seen in Alicia Key’s “Time to Uncover” when she talks about how pressured she felt to be “prettier,” more “feminine”, and have neater (read: whiter) hair. 

Considering all these pressures acting on WoC from their day one, we can view celebrities like those above not with judgement but compassion and understanding. They aren’t simply trying to chase the latest trend or even “pass for white.” Instead, we see that they have been exposed to the same system that Wolf described as “reducing the meaning of women to those formulaic and endlessly reproduced “beautiful” images.” And 99% of the time, these “beautiful” images where white images.

Thus just like most of the US, celebrities have had the “whiter is prettier” ideology drilled into them from childhood. It takes a lot to overcome that narrative, especially when you have producers and agents knocking on your door telling you you might have a better chance at a role if you tried on a blonde wig. 

So, in light of this week’s reading, it’s super important to stress that the “blondeing” isn’t an issue of personal failures, it’s a symptom of society’s treatment of women - particularly WoC. 

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Naomi Wolf’s A wrinkle in time: Twenty years after ‘The Beauty Myth,’ reminded me of what I consider to be Amy Schumer’s best sketch: Last F**kable day. In this sketch, Schumer happens across Julia Louie Dreyfus, Tina Fey and Patricia Arquette having a celebration for Dreyfus’ “last f**kable day.” This day, determined by the media, is the arbitrary date when you start getting offered “mrs. claus” type roles and basically just lose your entire worth as an actor.

Wolf’s description of aging is certainly very different, but as we went over in class, her experience is certainly not representative of how the entirety of women feel. While it’s great that some out there feel no external pressure to stay “f**ckable” for as long as possible, it’s clear that many do.

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Pop star the image vs Pop star the person

An interesting theme I’ve found throughout this section is our perceptions of people in entertainment. We either completely disregard the fact that they’re human so as to rip their brands apart, or we forget their huge media impact and give them sway when we really shouldn’t.

In the case of Beyonce, we often seem to forget she is an individual and an artist. Can we expect her to be perfect?  

This particularly stood out to me in I’m not myself lately. Lieb critiques the Beyonce brand’s plague of contrasting images. “Is she music royalty (the Queen) or is she bootylicious? Is she the perfect wife and mother or is she the smoking hot sex machine? It’s as if her narratives are fighting one another to establish dominance in her brand. / Clearly, Beyonce is trying to have her cake and eat it too.” Here Lieb treats Beyonce as a caricature brand and her comment feels like it would do better in a Yelp review than an academic essay. Of course Beyonce can be seen as a “smoking hot sex machine” and the “perfect mother.” She can be “music royalty” while also creating fun, sexy bops like bootylicious. These “contrasting” themes are not fighting for dominance in her brand because Beyonce is more than just a brand - she’s a person. Yes, the line between genuine personality traits and market-approved likability ratings is blurry in any pop star. And yes, as pointed out in Whose body is it anyway, Beyonce takes immaculate and intense care of her own image. Additionally, as Jouelzy says in her vlog, Beyonce’s severely private life often makes certain aspects of her public feel hollow and fake. Still, Beyonce Knowles does exist outside Yonce and Lieb’s criticism is asking her to remain constricted in a prism of cartoonish-simplicity. 

Beyonce: a feminist or a capitalist also critiques the pop star in a manner which seems to demean her humanity. One of the many things the author L Ashley takes issue with is Beyonce’s aggressive persona in Hold Up. According to her, Beyonce swinging a bat around in response to Jay-Z’s cheating showcases the Angry Black Woman stereotype. But Lemonade isn’t a movie or a sitcom, it’s meant to serve as a manner of individual self expression. The line between Beyonce the brand and Beyonce the person is, for all we know, almost transparent here. If she hadn’t shown anger in response to her husband cheating on her, she would be criticized as fake and lose much of her connection to her fans. 

Ashley points out that two wrongs don’t make a right and maybe this would hold credence in a discussion about an after-school program in the 60′s, but we’re not. Beyonce isn’t talking about right or wrong on this platform, she’s talking about human experience.

(PS: even if this was a question of how a brand was projecting its image rather than a human expressing herself, how would the display of anger be a bad thing? Do we want children to think it’s wrong to ever feel angry and violent? No, it’s natural and to be expected and in the end, Beyonce learns to cope with these feelings and develop them into something more wholesome. That’s like, the best and most meaningful a message there can be? But I’ve digressed.) 

It seems that social critics want Beyonce to simply be a brand: perfect, ethereal and astoundingly woke. Furthermore, they want her to be an anti-capitalist brand (see criticisms in The strange contradiction in Beyoncé’s new song ‘Formation’). But Beyonce, and every pop-star for that matter, sits on a weird Romney-esq dichotomy of a brand-person. As such, it’s true that pop stars should be trying to live up to a certain ideal (there is power in how they project themselves) but we can’t restrict them to that a brand. No one would call out a woman on the street or even in the political sphere for fitting one stereotype or another. No one would tell them that their “image” needs to fit more simply into a preferred schema. Popstars, like all humans, will always live a nuanced existence and critiquing them on that is laughably useless. 

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Janell Hobson brings up Carole Boyce Davie’s comments on the “blondeing” of Black pop stars in Feminists Debate Beyonce. The progressive lightening of many pop star’s hair as well as the use of “whitening” products is argued to be a form of self colonization. 

The pressure for Black media icons - and even everyday Black women - to fit white beauty standards is enormous. Historically this has often resulted in famous Black women (and men) participating in various hair modification, skin bleaching and plastic surgery techniques to make their brand closer to what society’s ideal. 

The example most people vividly remember is Michael Jackson. The international pop star had vitiligo and at the time the “treatment” for the skin disorder was skin bleaching cream. However Jackson also received several nose jobs, which shrunk his “Jackson 5 nostrils” to a button nose, and frequently wore straight black wigs. 

Other celebs who participated in serious plastic surgery that gave them more European features include Lil Kim and Janet Jackson. Even Nicki Minaj has developed progressively more straight, blonde hair.

Beyonce gets a whole lot of flack for not being “Black enough” (a criticism laden in colorism). What’s interesting to note however is that Beyonce’s image really hasn’t progressed in a similar manner to the Jacksons or Minaj or Lil Kim. Since the 90′s Beyonce has been rocking some form of highlights or a dirty blonde wig, but that’s it. Moreover, Beyonce’s image has recently taken an unexpected turn - the pop star has been loudly and proudly flaunting her Blackness. It started with Lemonade, her visual album in which natural hair is a motif throughout. Now it’s strange to see Beyonce on stage without natural-textured hair and an outfit dedicated to either African roots or the civil rights movement. In all it’s a very interesting and empowering trajectory and one her critics never saw coming. Beyonce may be blonde, but she is not one of the “blondeing.”

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Bell Hook’s statements regarding Beyonce as a “terrorist” are, at first glance, ridiculous and eye-roll worthy. However Hillary Crosley Coker explains some justifications behind the comments in her article What bell hooks Really Means When She Calls Beyoncé a 'Terrorist.' I found one of the most interesting reasons for Hook’s statements to be the generational difference between second and third wave feminists. “Where you and I might see Beyoncé controlling her sexualized image and turning it on its ear in videos like “Pretty Hurts” or claiming ownership of her body, hooks and my own mother would probably just think she fell victim to The Man’s idea of “being sexy” and she’s degrading her body to slang records,” writes Coker. 

To me this seems like an issue about objectification vs sexual empowerment. Often, the two can look similar and in the past, it seems like there was no defining line at all. Retro ads popular during Hook’s day are indicative of  Hollywood in the 60′s-70′s. Women in these ads are displayed as the objects of men, imprisoned in one way or another by a man’s sexual desire. In the pictures displayed on the left, a woman’s sexuality is like a worm on a hook - it’s only purpose is to lure in excitable male customers. While ads like these continue to exist today, there is also a new breed of commercialized female body - a surprisingly empowered one. Today many pop icons display their bodies in sexual manners to sell product and they do it in a manner where it’s clear they are in control. Rather than the man’s gaze holding all the power, these women are using their body to control the male gaze - and profit off it by selling a product, magazine or even a personal brand. 

It’s understandable that Hooks may disregard this type of sexual empowerment. At its heart it is profoundly capitalistic and the line between Madonna’s ad above and the shoe ad to the left are not immediately clear. Still there is a difference and if Hooks doesn’t see it, it simply might be because of a lack of sexual empowerment in her time. 

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“Your Black friend would like to forget all his fears and frustrations about race, but it’s always impossible.” 

The Combahee River Collective is a defining document in feminism and tackles the issues surrounding what we now “white feminism” as well as those present in organizing a new “Black feminism.” 

A section that stood out to me is the following. “As children we realized that we were different from boys and that we were treated differently. For example, we were told in the same breath to be quiet both for the sake of being "ladylike" and to make us less objectionable in the eyes of white people.” This reminded me of the above video.

Though the above cartoon does not tackle feminism, it does a great job of pointing out the pressures surrounding minority groups. Pressures that those in positions of power are inherently oblivious too. 

“Your Black friend wonders if you know that unlike you he has to constantly monitor his speech, affect, and dress relative to his environment. A misreading could mean the difference between being the Black friend and that Black guy.” It’s this constant pressure, enforced first in childhood and later internalized, that requires statements like the Combahee River Collective. The average white woman cannot fully understand the structures of oppression the average Black woman faces everyday because she does not live that experience. Thus a self-governed form of feminism addressing and targeting intersectional issues is extremely important.   

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The most powerful line of the Master's Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master's House by Audre Lorde is right there in the title. In this letter, Lorde attacks the lack of intersectionality in academia and the feminist movement. Throughout history, she argues, difference has been viewed as something to fear and avoid rather than embrace. “For the master's tools will never dismantle the master's house,” she writes in reference to women who don’t fit the traditional feminist archetype. “They may allow us temporarily to beat him at his own game, but they will never enable us to bring about genuine change.” 

While this statement is very specifically addressing intersectionality, I found it to be quiet relevant to my professional life in other ways. Last year I saved the above comic to my phone because it really felt like something addressing myself. In some ways I often feel as though I am entering a field in order to change it and the ethicality / likelihood of this endeavor is something I am very mindful of. Lorde’s comment is compelling, and although I know it was not written to apply outside of it’s field, it still gives me pause to think. When one choice is entering through a pre-made ladder and the other is trying to trampoline 15 feet up, you have to wonder if there really is only one valid option?

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Spice Girls Polaroid SpiceCam out-takes with 10sec Commercials

More Out-Takes from my 1997 shoot at Harrow School

The article Wannabe Feminist by Amy Richards starts by describing 90′s all-female pop band the Spice Girls. During the Spice Girls’ hay day, the group  dressed in revealing outfits, danced provocatively and acted like flirtatious caricatures. All together this drew the band harsh criticism from feminist activists. Richards points out that the Spice Girls have achieved a feminist redemption arc through their new music video for “Wanna Be.” In the short clip released a few years ago, the band attempts to raise awareness for important feminist causes. Silly, irrelevant, and cliched the Spice Girls may have been, but through this new video, Richards points out their true feminist nature. 

I would argue, however, that the Spice Girls were feminist long before the new Wanna Be music video. I mean, just the act of putting together an all girl pop group is radically feminist. Besides, the Spice Girls were empowered, happy-go-lucky, and free - and if they chose to express that freedom in cotton candy songs, so be it. 

And it’s not as though the band was quiet in-between takes. Their brand of neon-lit feminism was prevalent in their attitudes even back in the day. Richard’s article reminded me of the above clip which went viral a couple years ago. At 8:14 one of the directors of a Spice Girls’ Polaroid commercial makes a joke about how the girls dress. Ginger Spice responds by confronting the director head-on. She calls him a “chauvinist pig” and condescendingly informs him that private schools (where the commercial takes place) aren’t known for their revealing attire. This confrontation clearly shows that even back in the 90′s when the Spice Girls were all bubble gum, they were still feminists. 

In this way, the Spice Girls remind me of a fairly similar present day icon: Nicki Minaj. Nicki is also blasted by many feminists for being overly sexual and pandering to the mainstream. However just like the Spice Girls, in many ways Nicki is both powerful and empowering. Moreover, in Nicki Minaj and the Changing Politics of Hip-Hop: Real Blackness, Real Bodies, Real Feminism? It was proposed that Minaj’s commercial image is carefully constructed to take advantage of both those who think she is fitting regressive gender/racial motifs and those who think she is fighting against them. That’s smart, and in either case, Minaj is making her own choices, succeeding in an industry of men, and empowering others along with her. 

In all, Richard’s point that there is no one type of feminist is exceedingly clear. You can bouncy and wear pigtails, call yourself baby, or shake your ass on screen and still be a feminist so long as you uphold the movement’s ideals. 

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The Oral History of Ms Magazine really enlightened me to how intense it was being women working in male dominated fields before the 21st century. 

I’m not proud of this fact, but all I really knew about Gloria Steinem before this article was from the truly academic comedy central show “Drunk History.” 

Even though a comedy show based on getting people drunk and then asking them to read historical stories can no doubt cover the breadth and urgency highlighted in the New York Times article, I think it still did a good job stressing the importance of Steinem’s work. Here a young a comedian tells her story in a way that not only underlies her important contributions to working women everywhere, but also the profound misogynistic empire she was up against. Plus it has Abbi Jacobson, so it’s a must watch. 

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The above is one of my favorite Ellen clips ever and naturally when we discussed her role in LGBTQ+ representation, my mind automatically went to this fantastic moment of television history. 

Honestly, this clip makes a strong case for an opposite version of the Bechdel test. It could be called the “Degeneres-McKinnon test” and participants only pass it when a lesbian has a scene with another lesbian in which they only discuss...other lesbians. Perhaps because LGBTQ+ representation is so poor, all three elements of this new test’s foundational clip are fulfilled by ... Ellen Degeneres - but the point remains. 

On a more serious note, the above clip reminds me of the closing remarks of Ellen Making Queer Television History. In this article, the author states that “Many in the industry would hold up the example of Will and Grace’s 2000 Emmy sweep to argue that even though Ellen “failed,” it won a place for everyday, serialized leading gay characters at the sitcom table.” For a more current reference, Netflix’s OitNB might not have been able to tackle the controversial matters brought up in “3 Reasons Why Orange Is The New Black Is The Most Queer Feminist Thing Ever,” if not for Ellen breaking that original taboo’d glass ceiling. And while the author may not agree with putting Ellen’s show into the binary of succeeding or failing, it does feel like Ellen succeeded in the above clip. Without the trailblazing work of a figure like Ellen, it is uncertain whether there would be a spot for an openly gay comedian on a large, mainstream institution like Saturday Night Live. Ellen’s  legacy lives in the next generation of LGBTQ+ performers, some of whom have become so successful they can make fun of her to her face. 

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A Photo Series Celebrates Modern-Day Rosie the Riveters

...

In Rosie the Riveter it’s clear that the image of young women, such as Mary Doyle Keefe, can have profound impacts on societal movements even decades in the future. Rosie has been utilized not only in her original campaign to get women working, but also in second / third wave feminism and women’s liberation. 

There are certainly several contenders for modern day Rosie’s. Beyonce, of course, comes to mind quickly. If you have the influence to make Michelle Obama dress up as you on your birthday (Birthday Formation), saying you’ve made a significant impact on modern day feminism is an understatement. 

[Influence is having the first lady of the United States wish you happy birthday by throwing a shout out to your style]. 

Still it’s cool to see that Rosie need not be famous and wealthy to make the transition into model iconography. In the above picture series, modern day Rosie’s stick with her original spirit. In some ways, their relation to the original Rosie is somewhat more valid. They as working class women. Women with difficult, manual, male-dominated jobs to do. They are diverse, proud, empowered, and bring Rosie’s spirit to new heights in a way celebrities aren’t quiet able to. 

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In Is She or Isn’t She; Madonna and the Erotics of Appropriation, author Amy Robinson claims that Madonna purposely separates her private and public selves. This allows her to mold her public half towards whatever is commercially valuable at the time, often appropriating other cultures in the process. In particular, the author focuses on Madonna’s “flirtations with lesbianism.” 

It’s an understandable aspect of Madonna’s public self to focus on. While the real Madonna has stated that she does not date women, the performer still makes headlines for kissing other female celebrities, posing for pornographic pictures with women and claiming to attend gay bars. 

Perhaps a more modern term for Madonna’s “flirtation” with true queerness is queerbaiting. According to urban dictionary, queerbaiting is when “people in the media (usually television/movies) add homoerotic tension between two characters to attract more liberal and queer viewers with the indication of them not ever getting together for real in the show/book/movie.” In this case, the characters are Madonna’s onstage persona and any useful celebrities/ dancers she’s around. By acting undeniably gay with these other public figures, she attracts attention, shock, and adoration from LGBTQ+ fans hoping for representation. In other words, despite not actually identifying as queer, her queer behavior has earned her millions of dollars and the status of a gay icon. 

And it is not as though Madonna’s gay public persona adheres to progressive LGBTQ+ standards. As argued in Fractured Femmes: Madonna and Nicki Minaj Man Up, Madonna’s more recent work often paints a picture of gender as bipolar and static. It’s an ancient way to look the concept, one that is feeling more and more irrelevant. Contrary to lyrics on her newest album, you can embrace both male and female sides of your persona. You can be unapologetically feminine and successful. 

Altogether, her gender/ sexual “fluidity” feels not only fake but disingenuous - and worse than that, you know this deceit exists purely for capitalistic purposes.