The Good, the Bad and the Ugly

I can't say I'm thrilled with the direction we're heading in as a country (understatement of the century), but I do find it heartening that, perhaps because of the absurd way women have and continue to be treated by the socio-political matrix and media institutions, more and more women and men are crying "foul."

The Good: Ashley Judd's incredible missive indicting gender inequality and unrealistic media scrutiny. It's amazing; you should go read it. Here's a quote to convince you:

Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it. This abnormal obsession with women’s faces and bodies has become so normal that we (I include myself at times—I absolutely fall for it still) have internalized patriarchy almost seamlessly. We are unable at times to identify ourselves as our own denigrating abusers, or as abusing other girls and women.

[On a side note, this article reminded me that I've been meaning to watch Judd's new show Missing, particularly because I'm very interested in (and working toward writing an article about) the framing of the mother as the ideal woman warrior in contemporary culture--i.e. Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, the Kill Bill films, etc.]

The Bad: It seems to be Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker's deepest desire to see the status of women regress back to the 1950s, if his sneaky, Friday afternoon, pre-Easter passing of several anti-woman bills is anything to go by. From the Ms. blog:

For nearly a year, half of Wisconsin has been up in arms over Walker’s repeal of union rights, which the state Supreme Court upheld last June. Gov. Walker may have sealed his claim to infamy, however, when he sneakily passed 51 laws last Thursday, four of which target women. He waited until Friday, hours before the Easter weekend began, to make his public announcement—a way to sidestep the inevitable outcry.

Three of the bills curbed women’s reproductive rights: two heavy-handed abortion restrictions and a law mandating abstinence-only-until-marriage programs in lieu of comprehensive sex education.

The law causing the real uproar, however, might just be the most surprising blow to women dealt by any state government in 2012. Gov. Walker turned back the clock on gender equality in the workforce by repealing Wisconsin’s 2009 Equal Pay Enforcement Act (EPEA), which permitted victims of wage discrimination to take their cases to state circuit courts. The law not only protected women from pay discrimination, but also from sexual harassment in the workplace.

The Ugly: As if all that's not bad enough, both Arizona and Georgia recently passed 20-week abortion bans, the Georgia one specifically insisting abortions after 20 weeks be made illegal in all cases except "medically futile" pregnancies (where there is no chance that the fetus will survive the pregnancy or be able to live once born); no exceptions are to be made that relate to the mother's mental or emotional state and abortions performed because of medical futility must be performed in such a way as to avoid "fetal pain"--so the fetus is removed alive and dies "naturally." Yes, really. However, the real kicker is that in the original bill there was no such medical futility exemption; state representative Terry England went so far as to compare women to livestock, suggesting that mothers, like cows and pigs, should have to carry their offspring to term, dead or alive.

Yeah. I don't even know.

Let's focus on the good today, shall we?

How did I miss this???

Considering my love of Mad Men and the fact that I just recently wrote an article myself about the role nostalgia plays in the show's construction (not yet published, but I'll link to it when it is), it's absolutely shameful that I missed Melissa Harris-Perry's discussion of the show (especially since the discussion also included Tim Wise and I just wrote about Harris-Perry for Ms.!). This is what happens when you cancel your cable. (Although I can honestly say that this might be the only downside. Watching New Girl and 30 Rock (among other things) on Hulu when I want to watch them is so much more fulfilling than wasting away hours staring, glazed-eyed and slack-jawed, at the Food Network.)

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Click through to Harris-Perry's website here.

[Also, I just discovered by accident that my Ms. essay on Mad Men is discussed and linked in the show's Wikipedia article under the "Sexism" section. Cool.]

Future of Feminism, Day Twelve: Rachel Maddow and Melissa Harris-Perry

Today's post was really fun to write because I got to re-watch a lot of great segments from The Rachel Maddow Show, The Daily Show and the new and exciting Melissa Harris-Perry Show...an excellent way to spend yesterday afternoon!

Local reporting from regions around the globe is absolutely essential. And, with the rise of blogs and social media, increasing power resides in the voices of independent writers who have the courage to speak their minds.

However, mainstream media still has incredible reach and influence; and the sad truth is that women and people of color are underrepresented in almost all forms of mainstream journalism, be it print, broadcast or web. This is especially true in one of the most influential mediums of opinion journalism, TV punditry, making feminist and intersectional perspectives the exception there rather than the rule.

But today, instead of dwelling on the negative, I want to take a little time to celebrate the fact that there are a few tremendously popular TV personalities–each with loyal viewerships in the millions–who consistently report on topics that affect the lives of women and girls.

Read the rest (and watch the videos) here.

The Personal and The Political: Feminism on The Good Wife

The online forum In Media Res holds weekly themed discussions between academics, independent scholars and other interested parties on a wide range of topics dealing with popular culture, film, television, and the media. This week, IMR's topic is CBS's television show The Good Wife and yours truly contributed a post about feminism and gender politics on the show ("Between the Political and the Personal: The Lawyer, Her Boss and Their Investigator"), which I conclude with the following questions:

From the beginning of the show, Alicia’s role as Peter Florrick’s wife has been a salable and essential part of her identity as a lawyer, whether she liked it or not. If Alicia is no longer the “good wife,” does that preclude her ability to be a good lawyer? At what point does the political become personal? And, on a deeper level, does the recent scheming and disquietude between Alicia, Kalinda and Diane necessarily evince a “bad” gender politics on the part of the show or can we chalk it all up to episodic television’s compulsive need to disrupt and/or destabilize relationships regardless of gender?

You can read my entire post, as well as access the excellent and insightful posts by other contributors, here.

And here's the Youtube video I made to accompany my post:

Person of (Dis)Interest

Check out my review of the pilot for the new CBS series Person of Interest at the Ms. Magazine blog:

I’m not one to turn down a new crime show. Give me a detective, a forensic team or a vigilante out for the truth and I’m pretty much a happy camper. So I was expecting to enjoy the new CBS procedural “Person of Interest” (premiering tonight at 9/8 central), particularly since it’s the brainchild of “Lost” producer J.J. Abrams and Dark Knight/Memento screenwriter Jonathan Nolan. Unfortunately, after watching the pilot I’m feeling robbed–and not in the good way that’s followed by philosophical one-liners from street-hardened detectives.

First off, what could have been an interesting meditation on surveillance culture suffers from heavy-handedness and an out-there premise. The show hits viewers over the head with dozens of clips of gritty security camera footage, allusions to September 11, and images of cameras peering menacingly with their glowing viewfinders, like 2001‘s Hal, from every lamppost and stoplight. Instead of a subtle questioning of our Big Brother society, which might be interesting, the show goes with a convoluted sci-fi premise: A computer program gathers information from all this surveillance and predicts which members of the public will be involved in a crime. Yet this sophisticated program cannot tell whether they will be victims or perpetrators, or where, what, when and how the crime will occur, giving our team of human protagonists their mission–to figure it all out and stop the crimes before they are committed. As a premise this makes about as much sense as that 2008 Angelina Jolie film Wanted, in which a band of weaver-assassins receive instructions about who to kill from a mysterious loom.

You can read the rest here.

Jane Lynch and the Emmys

I didn't have a chance to watch the Emmys last night because I'm trying to finish a stack of grading, but I thoroughly enjoyed Jane Lynch's opening number when I saw it floating around the internets this morning:



I especially love the Big Band Theory skit and Lynch flirting with Peggy in the Mad Men office.

Why Julianna Margulies is Awesome:

...and it's not only because she's the star of one of my favorite television shows, CBS's The Good Wife. Margulies also recently spoke out against networks pitting women against each other (or, more specifically, pitting her womam-centered show against ABC's crime procedural Body of Proof, starring Dana Delaney).

She's quoted in The Huffington Post this week:

"If you look this year at the pilots that they picked up, I would say more than not, women are the leads in network television, and I think we were the catalysts for that," she said. "And that makes me so happy."

Still, she understands that there's a lot of work to be done to change the perception and treatment of women stars, even when their shows are so successful. Citing the perceived women-led ratings battle between her show and "Body of Proof,' Margulies made no secret of her disdain for current scheduling practices.

"I don't understand executives that pit women against each other, the fact that they brought in 'Body of Proof,' Dana Delaney is a friend of mine, and the two of us were just rolling our eyes, it's like, of course, you finally have two great female leads and you're going to put us on against each other," Margulies said. "You're assholes. You should have put them on against a different show to see where they go, and then in the end, it was split down the middle. It's the feeling that you want to celebrate not de-calibrate."

Just one more reason to love her.

Tough Women on Contemporary Television

While I'm not, personally, a huge fan of NCIS (I like my crime procedurals bloody and dramatic, not goofy), this NY Times article about it's tough, female character, Ziva, caught my eye (and was referred to me by a friend): "Sugar and Spice and Vicious Beatings."

What was of more interest to me, though, was the "TV's Female Enforcers" slide show that accompanied it. The slide show features women like Elizabeth Mitchell's character Erica from V, Buffy, and Archie Panjabi's character Kalinda from The Good Wife.

I think their list could be much longer, but it's still a fun diversion on a Sunday afternoon (and it will perhaps give you a new list of television shows to check out).

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Twenty-Six

See the full calendar here.

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Twenty-Five

See the full calendar here.

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Sixteen

See the full calendar here.

A Feminist Countdown to 2011 ~ Day Three

See the full calendar here.

Rizzoli and Isles

So I've been trying to work up the energy and find the time (classes just started and there's always a week or two adjustment period when a new semester begins where you seemingly have no time to do anything but read and prep your lectures/discussions/in-class exercises...things'll settle down, right?) to compose a post about TNT's new original series Rizzoli & Isles, which is just winding up its first short (10 episode) season. If you're interested in checking it out, I'm pretty sure TNT has all but a few of the episodes available for viewing online.

In any case, Rizzoli & Isles is a little bit like Cagney and Lacey met a G-rated version of Sex and the City and had a love child that watched a lot of Charlie's Angels growing up. A crime show boasting two female protagonists, a detective (Rizzoli, played by Angie Harmon) and a medical examiner (Isles, played by Sasha Alexander), who are close friends (so far so good) and incessantly talk about men (ay, there's the rub), Rizzoli & Isles definitely breaks The Bechdel Rule. Not to mention that the actual solving of crimes seems to take second shrift to the show's desire to create as many touching, personal moments between its two eponymous heroes as possible (suffice it to say, that while I consider many of my female friends to be near and dear to my heart, I do not go everywhere with them or find myself having sleepovers with them every other night). And yet, despite it's near absurdity, I am absolutely in love with this show.



In lieu of a post where I actually try to parse my rationally-suspect love affair with Rizzoli & Isles, I'll leave you with a list of links about the show. In the interest of selfishness, this will also be a convenient placeholder for me to come back to when I find the time to craft a real analysis, one that, I hope, will get to the heart of why recent crime shows with more than one female lead continually seem to falter (Women's Murder Club, Law and Order: Trial by Jury, and the UK's Murder in Suburbia, to name a few) and what TNT might be trying to do differently with Rizzoli & Isles.

And now, the links:

NY Times: An Unlikely Pair Bond on the Homicide Beat
LA Times: Television review: 'Rizzoli & Isles'
USA Today: 'Rizzoli & Isles' commits the ultimate crime of tedium
Minneapolis-St. Paul Star Tribune: TNT, USA launch women against crime
AfterEllen: "Rizzoli & Isles" is TV's first lesbian buddy cop show (it just doesn't know it yet)

It's a Mad, Mad World.

Just bringing you a wee bit of Mad Men-related self-promotion while I prepare several other posts for the blog. That said, stay tuned in the next week for my thoughts on the films Inception, The Kids Are All Right and (possibly) Salt.

First off, my article, "Feminism in a Mad World," is out in the current issue of Ms. set to hit newsstands August 10th (subscribers should receive or have already received the issue this week). I'll post a brief excerpt here, but you'll have to check out the print version to read the rest:

Set in the tumultuous 1960s and exploring the lives of philandering ad men, discontented housewives and sexualized secretaries, Mad Men may not immediately leap to mind as a great exemplar of feminist television. And yet, since the show emerged as the sleeper hit of 2007, going on to win the Emmy for Outstanding Television Drama two years running, it’s been a hot topic on the feminist blogosphere and around water coolers everywhere, alternately lauded for its strong female characters and criticized for its nostalgic rendering of the halcyon days of sanctioned workplace misogyny.

It’s true that Mad Men doesn’t shy away from the fast-paced, chauvinistic world of 1960s advertising and all that comes with it: the unchecked sexual harassment of pretty secretaries by male executives; housewives with little to do other than raise the children and serve as eye-candy at business dinners; uncensored racism, homophobia and anti-Semitism; and an old-boys-club atmosphere, complete with office drinking, smoking and philandering. But amidst all this homosocial revelry, Mad Men gives us a cadre of women characters who, like Peggy, are multifaceted and prodigiously fleshed-out—a rare treat for a television drama, a genre in which women are often given short-shrift in favor of the male protagonist.

If you just can't wait to think and talk about the intersection of Mad Men and feminism until the Summer 2010 Ms. hits the newsstands, feel free to pop on by the Ms. Blog and comment (please do comment, even if you want to argue with me!) on my review of the season four premiere (it's funny, so much has changed on the show, and yet my opinion of the show and its relationship to feminism hasn't changed that much in the past few years).

And...if you don't feel like reading at all, you can listen to my recent radio interview with Steve Jaxon on KSRO The Drive--again, discussing Mad Men--or catch me on Mary Glenney's Women's Show on Saturday between 10am and noon.

ETA: You can find a recording of my second interview about Mad Men here.

Mad Men in Ms. Magazine

I'm very pleased to announce that the summer issue of Ms. Magazine, including an article I wrote about feminism in the television show Mad Men, will be hitting newsstands August 10th. My angle? Well, here's the title of my piece: "Feminism in a Mad World: Mad Men’s women remind us how far we’ve come, and how far we have to go."

Check it out!

I'll also be reviewing the first episode of Mad Men's fourth season, which airs this Sunday on A&E, for the Ms. blog. The review should be up early next week, so stay tuned.

Strong and Invincible?

Check out my review of Sex and the City 2 over at the Ms. Blog. A teaser:

About halfway through Sex and the City 2, which opens today nationwide, the fabulous foursome of HBO’s hit-television-show-turned-feature-film-franchise perform a rousing karaoke rendition of the 1970s feminist anthem “I Am Woman” in a nightclub in the heart of Abu Dhabi. As Carrie, Miranda, Samantha and Charlotte croon–“I am strong. I am invincible. I am woman”—belly dancers strut, pose and sway their hips on an elevated catwalk above them. An exercise in astounding campy discordance, this scene epitomizes both the unanticipated pleasures and the substantial foibles of director and writer Michael Patrick King’s sequel to the critically unacclaimed (yet commercially successful) first Sex and the City film in 2008.

You can read the rest here.

Coming Soon to a Theater Near You...

I just returned from a Sex and the City 2 preview screening and, boy, do I have a lot of think about while I write my official review of the film.

For now, I can't say much except that I was surprised by my reaction to Carrie, Miranda, Samantha, and Charlotte's second cinematic turn and that the film should prove a fertile ground for commentary and discussion.

Stay tuned...

Prepping for SATC2

Tomorrow night I'm going to a preview screening of Sex and the City 2 in Denver in order to write a review for Ms. Magazine's blog (which I will of course link to on this blog!). In order to prepare for being "Carried Away" (indeed), here are a few things of interest I came across on the interwebs this week that, for one reason or another, reminded me of the show.

First, I'm enjoying Alexandra Tweten's blog series on online dating as an "out" feminist over at the Ms. blog. Check out her most recent post as well as her previous posts.

Second, I just discovered Feminist Frequency's YouTube channel (via Sociological Images). Check out, for example, this great little video explaining the Bechdel Test for women in movies:



Lastly, I found Angela Bonavoglia's book review of Leora Tannenbaum’s new book, Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them compelling and incredibly apropos for a SATC-themed post. Bonaboglia writes,

At once fanciful (with illustrations by Vanessa Davis), disturbing, informative, understanding and preachy, [the book] is a captivating attempt to address the reality that many women—including feminists– insist on wearing “sexy” shoes but need some ground rules for how not to wreck their feet in the process.

What’s really interesting about Tannenbaum’s approach is the artful way that she pulls you in, empathizes, withholds judgment, then stuns you with her analysis.

She does this at the end of the book, after romps through chapters on what you should know about your feet, on “toetox” (cosmetic surgery of the foot), on the history of high heels and on the sex life of women’s shoes. Then, after gaining a reader’s trust, she asks, ever so gently, that the reader consider the “many parallels we can draw between Chinese footbinding and Western women wearing high heels.”

You can check out the rest of the article here.

Wish me luck at the preview tomorrow. I'm afraid it might be a mob scene!

Stand By Your Man?

My media column "Stand By Your Man?" on CBS's hit series The Good Wife is in this month's issue of Ms. Magazine, which will hit newsstands on May 25th! In this article, I discuss the show's eminent feminism and expound on its three strong female characters: Alicia, Diane and Kalinda.

And my article's not the only thing to get excited about in this issue of Ms (although, obviously, for me, it's what I'm most excited about):

In the cover story of the new issue, Ms. publisher Ellie Smeal reveals 25 key benefits for women in the new health-insurance reform legislation—some you’ve heard of and some you haven’t. Smeal also heralds the far-reaching gender-equity language in the bill.

A groundbreaking Ms. investigation into the anti-abortion extremist network surrounding Scott Roeder, who killed abortion provider Dr. George Tiller, raises doubt that Roeder was the "lone wolf" mainstream media has made him out to be. Investigative reporter Amanda Robb interviewed Roeder more than a dozen times to probe his longstanding involvement with the Army of God and justifiable-homicide advocates who promote the murder of abortion providers.

Also of note in the issue: A report on an upcoming class-action lawsuit that might force the military to face up to its sexual-assault problem once and for all; a story revealing the shockingly high rates of maternal deaths and illness in the developing world and what the U.S. can do to address the problem now; an on-the-ground look at life for women in Haiti’s refugee camps; and remembrances of Wilma Mankiller by Gloria Steinem and of Dorothy Height by Donna Brazile.

Want to join the Ms. community? Well, you can do that here!

Sarah Palin Back on TV -- What's the Harm?

I have a new post up at Ms. Magazine's blog (my first!). Here's an excerpt:

Discovery Networks’ announcement of its newest acquisition, Sarah Palin’s Alaska, a documentary series hosted by the state’s former governor, left me feeling conflicted. On the one hand, any mention of John McCain’s running mate provokes involuntary full-body shudders. I spent the presidential election campaign in a state of anxious high alert, wondering what Gov. Palin would say or do next. Wondering, in other words, what further platforms she’d find to display her homophobia (I’m sorry, tolerance for gay and lesbian lifestyles) or to pontificate about being staunchly anti-choice.

On the other hand, should her appearance on something as innocuous as an 8-hour Alaskan travelogue “told by one of the state’s proudest daughters” (according to Peter Liguori, chief operating officer of Discovery Communications) really inspire angst? What’s the harm if Palin coasts on her fifteen minutes of fame a little longer? She certainly wouldn’t be the first politician to delay her inevitable (hopefully) ride into the sunset.

But here’s the root of my unease: Despite the fact that the series will likely have nothing to do with politics, the idea of Sarah Palin’s Alaska isn’t innocuous.

Read the complete post (with links and photos and videos!) over at Ms.!

By the way, Ms. only just launched its blog a few weeks ago, and they have an excellent group of bloggers posting every day on a wide variety of topics. Take an hour to peruse the entire blog and/or add it to your feeds!