-
sponsorship
Shout out to Broadsheet for noticing this video of Salma Hayek breast-feeding a sick African 1-week-old. I always want to make fun of dear Salma, only because she starred in my least favorite movie ever—Dogma. And the Angelina bitch-fight jokes write themselves. But, in fact, the short clip is quite moving, because it scrambles our fixed proto-Victorian image of who is the mother and who is the wet nurse. Unlike, say, the infamous Alex Kuczynski photo in the story about her adventures in surrogate parenting. Plus, Salma is quite humble and practical about the thing, not aiming for the Madonna pose Angelina likes to strike.
-
sponsorship
At the risk of an overdose of Friday Night Lights fandom here at Slate, I'd like to link up to the great FNL "TV Club." And what could be more fitting here on XX than leaping to a defense of Tami in her dealing with the JumboTron drama. I don't see the humiliation that made Hanna cringe, or real wrong-headedness, either. Yes, as Meghan and Emily have emphasized, it was clear from the start that Tami would lose her fight to put academics above football. It was also clear that Eric knew she would lose, and I agree that her opponents are (alas) on pretty solid ground: Donors should be able to expect to get what they thought they paid for.
What wasn't so clear was 1) whether Eric was setting Tami up for a fall by not telling her what he thought, and 2) how blind she really was about her uphill battle. The answers, which I thought emerged in this latest episode, are that both of them—he more consciously than she—felt that making a very public point about Dillon's pigskin-skewed values was worth Tami blowing her honeymoon as principal. (In fact, she surely won points with her teachers by lobbying on behalf of supplies and staff!) The coach wasn't about to talk her though her position as she agonized and vented to him, because he knew Tami had to proceed in her own inimitably passionate way. Nor did she really need to be told by her husband—teary though she was—that, despite the loss, it had been worth it. On some level, she knew it. And it's what Dillon (and we and Tami herself) expect from her.
It's interesting that Eric did need to talk through his quarterback dilemma with Tami. These aren't quite the gender stereotypes we're used to, especially in the red-state realm: husbands who ask for directions (but hold back from giving them) and wives ready to trust their own guts and plow ahead. Here, too, I think Eric is totally (and rightly) prepared to lose, while knowing that he, like Tami, has the priorities straight. In Dillon, the Taylors are the rare couple with the luxury, and security, not to have to cling quite so hard to the football ethos of winning at any cost.
-
sponsorship
I still don't think M.I.A. was trying to look sexy, Marjorie. I think she was trying to look provocative and faintly goofy. She's wearing puffy white sneakers with that getup, not spiked heels. And M.I.A.'s not the only one to find the polka-dotted dress entertaining: the designer, London-based Henry Holland, tells New York's Fiona Byrne, "We are going through all the blogs and looking at all the comments people put about the dress. It's quite amusing," adding that some bloggers were "saying that she’s a skanky ho who couldn’t wait to get her baby out before getting back in the game!"
-
sponsorship
EJ, one other thing about Ledbetter: Obama’s signing of the act came just days before the announcement that Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg had been diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. While Ginsburg appears to be recovering nicely from her surgery, the announcement last week brought a rash of speculation about who might replace her. I am not prepared to even think along those lines, but I am prepared to speculate that without Ginsburg’s lifelong commitment to women’s equality and her passionate (and very personal) dissent in the Ledbetter case, the issue of pay parity would not have blossomed into the national Ledbetter tsunami that helped sweep Obama into office in November. Ginsburg is not a diva, but when she read the majority opinion in Ledbetter, she went as close as she goes to ballistic; begging the court for just a sliver of reality-based thinking. She gave those of us who know that pay discrimination rarely comes with an embossed card explaining that you’re being screwed, a charge to fix the court’s mistake. I believe that as Ginsburg has gotten older and gone from being one of two women on the court to the only woman on the court, she’s come to understand that sometimes making a little noise is the most ladylike thing to do. The passage of the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act is ultimately a tribute to her as much as anyone.
-
sponsorship
Sorry, Willa, to hijack your post's title for a completely different topic, but this hardly registers in today's episode of: How bad a blogger am I? I'm so bad that even though Obama signed his very first bill, the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, on Jan. 28, I'm not shouting about it until today, nearly two weeks later. You, dear highly informed XX readers and bloggers, probably know all you want to know about it by now. For instance, that for decades Goodyear paid Lilly Ledbetter of Alabama 40 percent less than it paid her fellow workers (read: men) for the same job. Ledbetter sued as soon as she found out about her personal wage gap—but in 2007, the Roberts/Alito Supreme Court decided that wasn't soon enough and that Ledbetter should have sued within six months of when Goodyear started paying her unequally. (As Gail Collins wrote in the NYT, "Let us pause briefly to contemplate the chances of figuring out your co-workers' salaries within the first six months on the job.")
I'm proud as heck that my old boss, former Massachusetts Lt. Gov . Evelyn Murphy, was there at the signing, as she should have been. I helped research and write her book Getting Even, which launched her campaign at the WAGE Project to get women paid fairly. FYI, women working full time (i.e., not part-time workers or work-free octo-moms) still make only about 77 cents to a man's dollar. We can talk about why another time, but for now, how cool is it that the very first thing Obama endorsed with his signing pen is paycheck equality? Very cool, I say. For this we can forgive many venial stimulus sins.
-
sponsorship
Nina, I wasn't calling for a beatific and glowy M.I.A., as you say, or a saintly Mother Earth aesthetic. I was calling for a modicum of modesty and good taste. Many rock stars exhibit fashion taste without sacrificing their individuality. But I agree with you that taste is in the eye of the beholder.
I admit that I was unaware of her "whimsical" style before I saw her onstage. But if M.I.A's performance was really about her music and not about craving attention she could have worn any number of great outfits, including the unique one she wore on the red carpet that night that neither hid her pregnancy nor shouted: Look at me. Look at me. I'm pregnant, I'm cool, and I'm still sexy.
As for the performance harkening back to the Rat Pack days, I don't remember any scenes from the old Rat Pack movies that included anything close to a pregnant woman wearing a silly and revealing bumble-bee outfit. And if M.I.A. was supposed to be part of the pack that night, she could have taken a cue from the suited men on stage and wore something more in keeping with the Rat Pack's formal/cool sensibility.
And Nayeli, my point was not that she committed an ethical lapse, my concern was about the imagery of a fashion lapse. I don't think dressing in clothing—pregnant or not—that leaves little to the imagination is empowering or radically feminist, as you and Jessica imply. It's not M.I.A.'s outfit that is "debunking notions of feminine delicateness," it's her ability to make it to the top of the hip-hop hierarchy. She would have been just as effective performing with those men while wearing a suit—albeit a suit that proudly accommodates the protruding stomach—and even more so a dress.
My larger point is that young, female rock/rap/R&B/country music/whatever stars, much like the female dancers in music videos, are wearing less and less and revealing more and more of their bodies for the entertainment of whom? Other women? Themselves? I don't think so. They've brought into the notion that equates being sexy with revealing all. I would argue that's not a feminist notion but a creation of the male-dominated fashion and music industries. It makes me sad for female artists who bare more than they should, and for the young girl fans who emulate them and put a premium not on being smart, kind, independent-minded, or socially conscious, but on being sexy and famous, even famous for doing nothing like Paris Hilton.
-
sponsorship
Absolutely, yes. Samantha, if your friend is in a bad relationship, speak up. The advice I would give my women friends, daughter, or daughter's women friends, if they were wasting time on a boyfriend not adequately crazy about them, is this: "You can do better." "You deserve better." "This guy might be perfect for somebody else, but you need someone who truly gets you and celebrates your special qualities."
-
sponsorship
Speaking of women who overshare and occasionally commit crimes against fashion, British pixie and MySpace star Lily Allen's got a very charming album, It's Not Me, It's You, out today. Unlike most musicians, funny is one of Allen's priorities, and she's good at it. Listening to the album is like having a chat about the tabloids and relationships with a very clever, saucy friend who speaks only in rhyme: enjoyable and not particularly taxing.
The album's got three types of songs on it, more or less: 1) Make-up and break-up songs. 2) Jingle-based op-eds about various of-the-moment topics, including drug use ("So you've got a prescription/ And that makes it legal/ I find the excuses/ Overwhelmingly feeble") and celebrity culture ("I want to be rich and I want lots of money/ I don't care about clever I don't care about funny/ Now I'm not a saint but I'm not a sinner/ And everything is cool as long as I'm getting thinner") 3) Musical interpretations of various Sex and the City episodes.
This last category is where Allen runs into some trouble. She's fine when sticking to Charlotte-esque sexcapades, as in "Not Fair:"
"There's just one thing
That's getting in the way
When we go up to bed
you're just no good
It's such a shame
I look into your eyes
I want to get to know you
And then you make this noise
and its apparent it's all over."
But she gets tripped up by lame accepted wisdom on "22," a song about an unhappily single 30-year old. Allen sings, "It's sad but it's true how society says/ Her life is already over/ There's nothing to do and there's nothing to say/ Til the man of her dreams comes along picks her up and puts her over his shoulder." Allen, who is only 23, might be trying to sympathize with this unattached woman, but with sympathy like that she might as well have told her to give up on life and start hording the cats. It's one of the album's few tone-deaf moments.
-
sponsorship
Facebook may have started with the kids, but the geezers have been playing with the children's toy (thank you, Mark Zuckerberg, your mother must be so proud!). Grandparents, too. My quite senior mom, currently snowbirding in Palm Springs, Calif., has 21 Facebook phriends consisting of her various children, grandchildren, and cousins. She had a great status update the other day. My Facebook news feed reported my eightysomething mother "is home from exercise and eating a tangelo before I go out to the pool." Bravo, right?
Only next Sunday the New York Times Magazine's the Medium column will be asking "What's the secret to the ideal Facebook update? Virginia Heffernan sets out to find the best updater out there."
I am a big fan of Heffernan's take on the Y Generation's fortunate access and facility with digital networking, but this troubles me. I didn't realize status updates were competitive. I am an inveterate over-updater, but that kind of pressure might make me choke. I still consider having Twitter subscribers too daunting a responsibility. I recently posited with a dear Facebook phriend whether one's status updates have become the new memoir. Do 10 consecutive updates constitute a narrative? Now that S/Us are being ranked—does Facebook have a pageview counter application?—I'm afraid I'll awkwardly overthink the form.
I'd also hate for competition to sour the daily updates of my group of friendly phriends. I enjoy the warm singsong of perspectives and observations from people I am curious about, mingled with peeks and reassuring glimpses into the ordinary days of distant friends and scattered family. I‘ve even enjoyed the chorus of Random comments about relative strangers I've run across recently. (I would not, however, recommend that my children post their own 25.) Speaking of my children, both have accepted my phriendship and to me a perfect status update would be "is happy today" by one of the two. Instead, my son, who is 20, has a privacy filter to keep me from posting on his wall and recently started an open Facebook group, "Oh My God, My Mother Is on Facebook."
-
sponsorship
So, who saw He's Just Not That Into You last weekend? I had all the complaints I thought I would. The 8,000-person cast meant no character or storyline could develop beyond the fairly superficial. Vague jobs requiring scant hours and minimal concentration somehow paid for breathtaking apartments. And no group—women, men, gays, Africans—escaped total stereotype.
None of those gripes kept me from getting sucked in and teary-eyed as I watched the characters fret their way through happy-hour courtships, sultry affairs, lavish home renovations, and general realizations about love. What made it more than your typical rom-com was the use of themes and taglines from the book of the same title on which it's based (which itself was based on a Sex and the City episode)—a gimmick that starts in the surprisingly insightful first scene. In the opening, a mom tells her adorably expressive prepubescent daughter that the boy who pushed her on the playground did it because he has a crush on her. (You can watch it in this preview.) The playground gives way to a montage of various women advising their female friends on love problems, all by making excuses rather than delivering the obvious truth that, cue the title screen, he's just not that into them. In other words, the white lies that start at childhood turn into a parade of convoluted, esteem-boosting reasons that women give one another throughout life about why guys are treating us like crap. ("Maybe he hasn't called because his cell phone died." "He may be avoiding commitment now, but that's what my husband was like, too, until he came around.") Well-intentioned, but detrimental, since those responses delude us into thinking that we will get to waltz away with a storybook ending to a bad romantic start instead of facing the facts and moving on.
But the well-delivered message of the introductory scene wasn't adequately resolved. The only character who ever offers those no-nonsense, hard-to-hear truths about how guys are feeling is a guy. So if the point is supposed to be that women should change the way they talk to one another about love, it doesn't seem that any of the characters got that message. (Or text. Or Facebook wall post. Or any of the other methods of communication that lead to Drew Barrymore's silly little drugstore rant.)
What do you all think? When a guy seems uninterested in your friend, is the best thing for you to do is say so? Or is there a value to offering possible excuses to preserve your friend's ego and keep her hope alive? After all, sometimes his cell phone really DID die.
-
sponsorship
Since Spitzergate broke, I've been pretty ho-hum about the whole thing. Men cheat. Men have sex with prostitutes. Such is the nature of the universe. But when the guy who ran the escort service that Spitzer patronized got 2½ years in prison last Friday, I couldn't help but think: And Spitzer got a Slate column? As the kids say, WTF?
Mark Brener, a 63-year-old former tax specialist, was convicted on prostitution and money laundering counts. In court, Brener asked for leniency, and his lawyer suggested Brener's crime had no victims, although, that's a claim I'd refute. As the judge put it: “It may go on all the time and be the world’s second oldest profession. It’s certainly my view that a number of people are significantly hurt by this.” I suppose I have less of a problem with Brener's conviction—it wasn't like he was sitting around baking chocolate chip cookies—than the vast discrepency between Brener's sentence and Spitzer's never having been charged. With anything.
Obviously, I'm no legal eagle. I'm not even exactly sure exactly why this contrast so bothers me. Any of you legal birds interested in weighing in with your thoughts? I guess I thought all's fair in adultery and prostitution. Apparently not. That the pimp is punished more harshly than the governor who partook doesn't seem like the best policy to me.
-
sponsorship
Allow me to leap to jump to Marjorie's defense on M.I.A.'s outfit from the Grammys. I've got no problem with the "whimsical" polka dots. It's the see-through mesh and the practically nonexistent skirt that have me cringing.
Don't get me wrong; I don't think pregnant women should be shrouded in mumus for nine months. There's nothing wrong with looking gorgeous or sexy while you're pregnant. And heck, there's even nothing wrong with performing while you're about to burst, as long as the doctor says it's OK: I remember how amazing Catherine Zeta-Jones looked and sounded when she performed at the 2003 Oscars while eight months pregnant.
But something that all mothers learn after they have kids (if they haven't learned it before) is that it's not all about you anymore. This is true whether you're a stay-at-home mom or a career woman or a wildly successful performing artist. Sometimes it might not hurt to ask yourself, "What would the kids say if they were old enough to see this?"
-
sponsorship
Marjorie, I've been watching and rewatching the clip of a past-her-due date M.I.A. performing at the Grammys, and like Jessica am unable to muster up the same kind of ethical and fashion objections you express. Like Nina, I couldn’t get enough of M.I.A.’s stage strut or the male performers’ reactions to it. (Whether Kanye West’s frightened expression was made out of squeamishness or spotlight envy, one of the biggest egos in hip-hop was decisively outdone that night.)
And beyond the normal satisfaction I feel whenever female rappers, regardless of their crazy getups, are given the chance to showcase themselves, I actually saw M.I.A.’s performance as a feminist triumph. The ability of famous fetuses from Nadya Shuleman's brood to the latest Brangelina offspring to dominate headlines lends credence to the idea that a new mother’s career must re-center around her image as a mom to be a success. It was refreshing to see an expectant celebrity who didn’t fall victim to the tabloid characterization of pregnant women as either reformed sluts or pious earth mothers.
There’s also been plenty of judgment passed recently on mothers who work versus mothers who choose not to work, sacrificing themselves and their hard-won equal opportunities. Considering this, I guess it was inevitable for M.I.A. to take some heat for her choice of outfit and decision to perform but I was happy to see her making the choice to stay in her game.
-
sponsorship
Marjorie, are you offended by M.I.A.'s Grammy duds because they're fugly or because they're inappropriate? As to the first—well, we could argue ourselves in circles about that outfit's aesthetic value. I happen to think it's a perfect encapsulation of a look we might call le punk rock jolie laide. (Björk being another big proponent of the look, as Jessica pointed out; Karen O of the Yeah Yeah Yeahs is a third.) We could also talk about the fact that Ms. Arulpragasam can only pull the look off because she's totally gorgeous—which makes the look compelling, rather than repellent—but that's another post.
As far as whether it's inappropriate—I can't say I agree. Pop-lets have certainly appeared in less. Modern dancers at Alvin Ailey wear less! You write:
The imagery of a scantily-clad, or should I say scandalously-clad, pregnant young woman dancing onstage with a bunch of male rappers whose rhymes sometimes debase women, was just too much for me.
I read it completely differently. In M.I.A.'s hook (which clips from her hit "Paper Planes"), she brays that "no one on the corner have swagger like us/ swagger like us, swagger swagger like us." I thought the performance seemed defiant, cool, confident. Check out the video: M.I.A. and the boys look like 21st-century Rat Packers, what with the elegant suits and bandstand in the background. Not every pregnant woman has to be beatific and glowy. Sometimes they can be rock stars! Note the awesome way those crazy polka dots echo her big belly and other round, pregnant parts. She looks like a hot, Sri Lankan version of Baby Huey.
-
sponsorship
1. I once knew a man from Nantucket.
2. I am bored.
3. I love you.
4. I can has cheezburger.
5. I kissed a girl.
6. I once shot a man in reno.
7. I am legend.
8. I google.
9. I love money.
10. I once wrestled a bear.
11. I carly.
12. I kissed a girl lyrics.
13. I touch.
14. I only want to be with you.
15. I once believed in perfect love.
16. I am sasha fierce.
17. I am sam.
18. I am the walrus lyrics.
19. I only have eyes for you.
20. I am pregnant.
21. I am the walrus.
22. I am legend 2.
23. I believe I can fly.
24. I once had a life or rather life had me lyrics.
25. I am green today.
.... a slightly disordered but otherwise faithful version of the top results Google offers when you plug in "I..." and "I am..." and "I once..."
(If you haven't followed the "25 Random Things" craze, click here. Of course, I also posted this list on my Facebook page, where it more properly belongs.)
-
sponsorship
I missed out on the Grammys live, so when I read Marjorie's post on M.I.A.'s polka dot outfit, I figured it would be a fashion disaster of Lil' Kim proportions. But looking at the photos of the Sri Lankan star, it seems that her frock was more Bjork than Beyonce, which is to say: whimsical and slightly ridiculous, but certainly not worth any gaspy pearl clutching. Her fashion has always been silly, and this over-the-top outfit is no exception.
M.I.A.'s pregnancy peekaboo actually seems to be very similar in spirit to the "gross-out girls" Meghan blogged about last week. Just as my old colleagues at Jezebel and writers like Miranda Purves are debunking notions of feminine delicateness, M.I.A. is showing the world that a woman who's just shy of the delivery table can rock out on stage in a peekaboo getup. Like everything else, though, it's all about execution. I can say for the Jezebels that when they write their most graphic pieces, the aim is not just to potentially inform, but also to make the reader laugh. Which is why Wetlands is such a failure. I read it last month, and when it wasn't actively turning my stomach from its exponentially disgusting descriptions, it was turning my stomach with its aggressively artless prose.
-
sponsorship
I'm not a fashion connoisseur or a hip-hop etiquette expert, or even a mother, but I don't think this disqualifies me from being able to ask the following question: What the heck was the very-pregnant rap artist M.I.A thinking when she went on stage during the Grammy Awards show on Sunday wearing this utterly ridiculous outfit?
The imagery of a scantily-clad, or should I say scandalously-clad, pregnant young women dancing on stage with a bunch of male rappers whose rhymes sometimes debase women, was just too much for me. And don't even get me started on what this cringe-worthy antic might say to impressionable teenage girl fans.
I know I sound like a scolding, prudish Ms. Crabtree, but I don't care. I grew up with hip-hop and still like a lot of it, and despite the sometimes potty-mouthed and offensive rhymes of Jay-Z, Kanye West, and T.I., there's no denying their talent. But the men were beside the point on Sunday night; M.I.A. was the point. She made Brittany Spears' 2007 MTV Video Awards fashion faux pas seem tame.
I don't care if she's unconventional, uber cool, young and reckless, or supremely confident; someone, anyone, should have pulled her aside before she went on stage and simply said NO! You can't wear that outfit. Please don't wear that outfit. If she has a fashion consultant that person should be promptly fired and run out of town. The British designer who came up with the polka-dotted creation should be fired too. Given the recent discussions on XX Factor about children being exploited by their parents in embarrassing YouTube videos and the discomfort those children might feel watching the videos as adults, I'd still rather see myself on YouTube looking behaving like a funny little dork during a captured moment of youthful indiscretion than see my half-dressed mother dancing onstage before a television audience of millions, while carrying me in her womb no less, acting like she has no sense.
Tell me, Slate women, do I need to lighten up and just let M.I.A. be? Should I accept that maybe she just has a whimsical sense of humor?