Welp things are stressful. Stressful and scary. Literally everything. COVID. Mass unemployment. The frequency with which Black people are murdered by police. How even the most irrefutable evidence doesn’t result in justice–or at least accountability (as Brittany Packnett Cunningham would say). How peaceful demonstration is met with violence. And how, once met with violence, that protest can become violent. That’s when they become riots. The Stonewall Riot. The LA Riot. 6 years ago I wrote about Ferguson after the slaying of Mike Brown and how, when we frame these responses as riots, we reduce them to stressful and scary things without also contextualizing them as deliberate and considered acts of protest, and of resistance to state violence—police violence, lack of judicial accountability, institutionalized racism, systemic income inequality. Just because something is stressful and scary doesn’t make it unjust. In fact, we have terms for actions that are both violent and just: rebellion, revolt, revolution. What’s happening in Minneapolis is a direct response to what happened to George Floyd. And what happened to Breonna Taylor. And Tony McDade. And Mike Brown. And Sandra Bland. And Eric Garner. And Tamir Rice. And Treyvon Martin. And Freddie Gray. And Philando Castile. And Alton Sterling. What’s happening is scary and its also an expression of collective anguish and rage. Its a rebellion. Its a revolt.
I wrote a book! It was terrible. The book is not terrible. Writing a book, holy crap, that’s a lot. It has a kick ass cover:
Yes indeed that’s Dragula season 3 winner Landon Cider, I used to go see him perform in LA.
Its about drag! Theatrical gender-bending! Doing weird stuff onstage! Curse words!
More specifically its about how we talk about and analyze drag and how that just doesn’t cut it because of how diverse and broad the genre is. I get into stuff people don’t automatically think of when they hear the word drag—women performing femme acts, butch acts that aren’t male impersonations, sexless mythical characters created by civil rights groups—and explain why these acts are doing the same work as other drag acts. I also look at more conventional drag like variety and vaudevillian male impersonation to demonstrate how our conventional understanding of drag leads to oversimplifying their methods and impacts.
TL;DR: Drag is complicated! Our words and analysis have to be complicated too! Drag is cooler than we think because its weirder than we think!
You can also check my celebrity endorsements (well, academic endorsements, they’re celebrities to me!) and book synopsis and maybe buy one (or ask your university library to purchase one for their stacks) from Amazon and Indiana University Press!
When a student told me FX was making a soapy drama about 1980s Ballroom culture, I was not here for it. Then I heard Ryan Murphy was overseeing the project. The last White gay person who crafted a commercial Ballroom narrative—Paris is Burning director Jennie Livingston—got dragged for a directorial vision that reduced Ballroom from a complex community ritual to a dazzling neoliberal spectacle for White masses. There’s certainly no consensus about whether Livingston done right or wrong, my point is that making an accurate, holistic representation of Ballroom that is also uplifting and respectful is hard, especially when outsiders are involved.
Good news: Pose fucking nails it. I don’t mean everything is totally accurate. I question the time frame for some of the voguing (vogue is broken up by Old and New Way, and some moves are pretty New Way). I’m also leery of how often “realness” reflects a contemporary usage popularized by RuPaul’s Drag Racerather than the more traditional ballroom meaning of heteronormative passability. But every time I watch Pose, I thank the writers, directors, producers, and actors for delivering nuanced narratives and storylines that avoid hackneyed tropes without looking away from hard realities. I also love how Ballroom is represented with skill, aplomb, and respectful historical accuracy. Here’s how Pose does Ballroom representation well.
1. Paris easter eggs. Released in 1990, the documentary Paris is Burning was the only real ballroom text for decades. And the people in that film—especially their statements, lewks, jokes, and ball work—have become pop culture touchstones. Even if you don’t know the documentary, I promise you’ve heard some of the lines, especially if you’ve ever watched RuPaul’s Drag Race. Pose season 2 has some v satisfying call backs to Paris. For example, the ep. 8 scene of Angel and Blanca dancing down the beach looks very much like Carmen and Brooke Xtravagena doing the same:
Angel’s ep. 2 entry into the modeling world visually and narratively parallels Octavia St. Laurent’s experience at the Eileen Ford model agency cattle-call search. Damon booking a European tour with Malcolm McLaren echoes Willie Ninja’s mention of dancing for Malcolm McLaren. Even the two young homeless teens palling around outside a Ball in ep. 10 evoke the unnamed young teens Livingston interviewed.
2. IN ADDITION to these Paris touchstones, Pose extends its connection by referencing non-filmed aspects of the people in the documentary. This is most poignant in ep. 3 where Electra and Co. “cocoon” a White businessman who accidentally died at Electra’s BDSM establishment. The drastic steps they take to wrap and pack his body in a trunk (which Electra will keep for the rest of her life) is framed as safer than trusting the police or the criminal justice system. Just in case some watchers are not up on their Paris lore, Pose explicitly telegraphs the connection by ending with a quote from Dorian Corey, one of the most iconic figures in Paris Is Burning, and known for offering a complex and empathetic narrative voice that levels out Livingston’s depiction of Ballroom life as triumph and flash. If you research anything about Paris, you will immediately find articles about Corey’s death or, more specifically, what was found in Corey’s closet (you know what’s coming): a partially mummified body in the fetal position wrapped in naugahyde (just like on Pose). The estimate is that this body had been with Corey at least 20 years. While details are hazy, two common beliefs are that Corey shot a home invader or an abusive lover in self-defense. Corey clearly made the decision that it was safer to live with this body forever than go to the police and trust the criminal justice system. The Pose episode ends with Electra ruminating about the emotional and physical responsibility she now carries, but never does the show question the ethics of her final decision. Like Corey, we are asked to remember the unbearably unjust price a person such as Electra would pay for doing what society would consider “the right thing.”
3. Pose also fills in important details that Paris has been critiqued for dropping. The only real reference to Ballroom history in Paris is Corey’s mention of how Balls grew from 1950s and 1960s drag queen pageants. But in Pose ep. 1, when the girls discuss the history of Balls, Electra says “Crystal LaBeija lost one too many titles to White girls.” The founder and first mother of the House of LaBeija, Crystal, developed the House and Ball scene as an alternative to the White-dominated drag queen pageants she participated in and hated. There’s a old documentary called The Queen (1968), which is a rather dull depiction of drag queen contestants in the 1967 Miss All-America Camp Beauty Contest. The jewel of this film comes during the last few minutes: Crystal, who placed fourth, lets us know that she has FUCKING HAD IT with the racist beauty standards and winner selection process.
So what does Crystal do about it? Oh just heads the formation of Ballroom as an alt performance scene for queer Black and Brown people. In the next episode of Pose, when Electra tries to recruit Tess for her House of Wintour, Tess responds “ain’t no White girls in Ballroom.” While there were White people in Ballroom (Corey was one), this statement reinforces the previous allusion to Crystal. In short, Pose communicates how Ballroom is designed as a space for people who are not only marginalized by dominant culture, but by White queer culture as well.
Its also worth noting that in ep. 2 Pray Tell makes sure the children “know your history” by explaining how Paris DuPree invented voguing. You might not realize that Paris is Burning is named after Paris DuPree, and specifically a Ball Paris hosted called Paris is Burning. You might not know this because Livingston fails to name or identify Paris in the film, or make the explicit connection between the name of the film and Paris’s Ball. Don’t be shocked but Livingston’s omissions didn’t sit well with Paris. Its poignant, then, that Pose not only names Paris, but makes Paris visible within the history and lore of Ballroom.
4. Pose deals with real Ballroom people and shit. The ep. 10 storyline touches on how the Ball management structure (Electra, Lulu, and Angel reference the MCs–also called Commentators–and the judging panel) is dominated by men, and how there is a circumscribed amount of “femme queen” categories.
a) Let me first draw your attention to the aforementioned judging panel. Plz note the judge in the center—the one that hands out all the trophies.
That’s just José FUCKING Xtravaganza, a legendary ballroom performer. You might know José from his feature in Icona Pop’s “Up All Night” music video, which recreates a Ball event. Or maybe if you’re deep in like me, you can spot his 3-second cameo in Paris is Burning—he’s one of the teen voguers. Or maybe you know his story because its Damon and Ricky’s dream: José became a backup dancer for Madonna’s Blond Ambition tour.
b) Let me now draw your attention to the issues discussed, because they’re real fucking Ballroom issues. In his excellent ethnography Butch Queens Up in Pumps (2013), Marlon Bailey discusses how Houses might be governed by mothers but fathers often occupy more authoritative positions within the national ballroom structure. Moreover, virtually all MCs/Commentators are men, and, due to the lack of “women, butch, and femme queen” Ball categories, women, butches, and transgender people (WBT) had to create a separate micro Ball scene in the mid 2000s (224).
c) Let me finally draw your attention to how Pray Tell and the other masculine commentators address this gender issue: they all do drag. Maybe this seems like a quick fix, but the plot trajectory actually allows Pose to show one more more layer of Ballroom; while Ballroom scenes this season focus on realness, voguing, and house competitions, there’s a popular category called Butch Queens Up in Drags (Paris DuPree was actually a competitor in this category, as was another legendary House Mother, Pepper LaBeija).
Behold Paris
The Pose Commentators say they want to perform as “butch queen up in drags first time at a Ball.” I don’t know if this subcategory always happens, but its a documented Ball category shown in Paris is Burning. Including this category in the Pose storyline helps us to see how truly multifarious Ballroom is.
I love drag. I wrote a book about it. And I love to watch RuPaul’s Drag Race because it’s fun and queer and dazzling and fun. And queer.
My all time fav Bianca Del Rio front and center
But not all queer and fun things are perfect, and Drag Race—like RuPaul herself—is no exception. There’s been the issue with RuPaul not fully welcoming trans performers or drag kings on the show. There’s been the issue with how more popular queens (the ones that do the best) are predominately White. There’s been the issue with how Drag Race tends to takes ritualistic and creative elements from underground and minority drag culture without credit, often transforming them into products that are both spectacle-like and devoid of their full cultural meaning (thanks bell hooks for the ritual vs spectacle framing!)
So I watched and coded seven seasons of Drag Race and then I wrote an article about how Drag Race uses “realness,” a term taken from ballroom culture. Ballroom is a performance scene designed and maintained mainly by poor queer people of Color. Check Paris is Burning for dets, or better yet the amazing Butch Queens up in Pumpsby Marlon Bailey, or the already legendary FX series Pose). In the ballroom scene, realness names a very specific form of performance (appearing cisgender and heterosexual within the schema of class and race denoted by the category). It’s a term that speaks to the lived experiences of ballroom members within our heteronormative, capitalistic, White-centered world, and it’s also a term that identifies a form of agency ballroom members deploy to blend and thus protect themselves in hostile public areas.
On Drag Race, realness is none of those things. Its a piece of candy, a term that’s fun to say and identifies the fabulousness or success or outlandishness or cleverness of a particular lewk. Queens speak of doing “baby bear realness” (s7, ep6) when their outfit successfully makes them look like they were mauled to death, or “skunk Cinderella realness” (s6, ep7) to note the fierceness of their stripy-hair-and-ballroom-dress ensemble. Oh I got others:
Alien robotic venereal disease realness (s9, ep9)
Dead dog realness (s6, ep7)
X-men weird angel devil realness (s9, ep4)
Punk unicorn realness (s8, ep3)
eskimo style yeti ski fish realness (s10, ep4)
That’s my mama realness (s8, ep8)
Carnival pregnancy realness (s4, ep10)
real lion taming realness (s5, ep2)
Helen Keller drowning realness (no idea) (s5, ep1)
Realness is a bit of fun on Drag Race. But also Drag Race is a mass commercial product and rating powerhouse. And when the show uses realness with the frequency it does (in about 62% the episodes in a given season), its appropriating something from a minority subculture without credit, then commodifying it into a sellable product sans the meaning that’s so significant to the community that created the term.
I love Drag Race, maybe you do too. But if we continue to love it, we’ll have to do so with our eyes wide open. Check my article, “RuPaul Realness: The Neoliberal Resignifcation of Ballroom Discourse” here in Social Semiotics if you or your university has access to Taylor & Francis journal publications, or contact me personally if you don’t.
And remember, if you can’t love [analyzing things that are entertaining to] yourself, how in the hell you gonna [be critical of when people] love anything else.
“Student Ejected for Telling Prof There are only 2 Genders,” says Fox News segment.
Behold a college senior telling Tucker Carlson about being forced to apologize and receive critique from classmates after he insisted there are only two genders. The student seems most upset about the treatment he says he received in class and Carlson appears most upset by the idea that any person would believe there are more than two genders. I wasn’t in the class so I can’t comment on what was taught or what transpired. That’s actually not the most concerning part to me (although appropriate classroom behavior from both students and professors is critical). What bothers me is that neither the student nor Carlson seems to know the basic concepts of gender.
Today Saucies, I’ll elucidate these basic concepts. It’s no problem really, I teach this in the first two weeks of my introductory course. But I also want to talk about my larger concern: not that Carlson and the student expressed a difference from my own evidence-backed position, but rather that they expressed distain for learning about these concepts in the first place. This is different from having distain for the concept itself. It’s having distain for knowledge.
1) Carlson and the student believe there are only two genders and their evidence is biologists, biology, science, and biology! Male and female, as Carlson says. Welp, that’s not gender. That’s sex, which is the term we use to explain how science and biology categorize certain bodily differences. So first let’s talk sex: there are more than two. How do I know? Because biology and science notes the existence of intersex bodies. Intersex bodies do not fully adhere to the genital, gonadal, hormonal, and chromosomal criteria medicine uses to assign either male or female sex to bodies, and estimates range as high as 1 in every 250-500 people are born intersex. So yes, there is clear biological evidence that there are more than just male and female bodies. We have two sex categories and also many people whose biology does not snugly fit either category. Up until very recently, we also had a habit of surgically or hormonally altering those bodies to fit our two-sex criteria and also asking parents to keep their children’s intersex status secret. But intersex people exist (have always existed). Perhaps you might take the position that we should continue medically altering these bodies to fit into our sex categories. But that argument doesn’t negate the biological existence of intersex bodies.
2) Let’s talk about gender. It’s a culturally constructed way we understand and organize difference. This is not my opinion, it’s a fact based on scores of peer-reviewed and evidence-based work from scientists that study human organization. Gender is a product of society, even if we feel the purpose of gender is to organize biological phenomena. We gender intersex bodies when we assign them a male or female sex because we’re fitting them into a cultural standard that’s not biologically determined for them. We also gender male and female bodies when we put one in pink and the other in blue, or say one is a better listener and the other better at sports. These are strange and arbitrary cultural divisions that appear to be attached to a biological imperative but are not. How do I know? Well, we used to put boys in pink before World War I because the color was bold and manly and blue was delicate and dainty. In some cultures it’s masculine to have long hair and in others short hair. In some cultures women wear skirts and in other cultures men wear similar garments called kilts. In contemporary western society, we have two genders (man and woman) that are supposed to reflect the two biological sexes (male and female). But the specific standards that define those gender categories changes as culture changes. Perhaps you might take the position that there is the best way or most normal way to order gender around bodies. But that argument doesn’t negate the fact that gender is produced by society, and that other societies do gender differently.
3) Let’s talk about non-western gender. Carlson lists several other genders beyond the two he knows, and he includes Two Spirit and Hijra. These are non-western gender identities. That is to say, they were produced in a society that is different than the one that Carlson lives in. If gender is constructed and if gender rules vary by culture, then why would we assume that all societies everywhere constructed a two gender system just the way we did? Wouldn’t it be equally plausible that other cultures might construct gender in different ways and with different meanings that lead to more than two? Actually, many did and we have scores of evidence-based anthropology, sociology, and history scholarship that proves the existence of these other genders. Perhaps you might take the position that these were deviant identities or that they are not as good as the western gender system. But that argument doesn’t negate the existence of these other genders; their existence is a reality.
4) Let’s go back to western gender. Carlson says a bit mockingly that some people believe there are “infinite genders.” And why can’t there be? If gender is constructed by culture and other cultures have constructed gender beyond two, why can’t we also do that? The notion that there are two distinct genders that should correspond to the two assigned sexes might always be the dominant model in the west. But why couldn’t we produce something else too? We could, we would just have to bend the dominant cultural rules. And agender, genderfluid, and trans people are doing that. Perhaps you might take the position that we should not do this. But that argument doesn’t negate the fact that we could and are.
The “perhaps” arguments I constructed here are contrary to my own beliefs and I think they’re pretty ethnocentric and cruel too. But these are certainly salient positions one might take if they knew the basics of the topic they were discussing. That is to say, these would be educated arguments.
The worst part of the Fox segment is when Carlson asks the student to explain a term introduced in his class—mansplaining—and the student hedges, finally saying “I’m not sure… I think it’s anytime a man speaks really.” I would understand the student being angry if that was what the term means but it doesn’t. He doesn’t know the defintion because he didn’t learn the definition. Carlson asks if terms like mansplaining are measurable according to a “species of social sciences” and the student responds no. But they are. The student is angry, yes, but at what exactly? Does he know the definitions, information, or evidence around the concepts he is against? I assume that since he was introduced to these concepts as part of a college course, he did have the opportunity to learn them.
Once, a student wrote a very negative evaluation of my course, calling it bullshit and postmodern trash. The student then backed this claim by outlining several theories and readings we had covered and arguing why the ideas could have been useful and transformative but are ultimately not. It was, frankly, one of the most affirming evaluations I ever received. I don’t agree with the student but the student produced a coherent argument by weighing the value of materials they had a full and accurate understanding of. My goal is not to indoctrinate students or push a personal agenda. It’s to teach basic concepts that exist in the world so that students can make their own educated decisions. Do I hope those decisions are ethical and empathetic? Yes. But the bottom line is to build a foundation for them to do that work themselves.
The denouement of the Fox segment is Carlson encouraging the student to drop out of college. Not to learn the concepts more fully so as to better refute them. Not to practice honing counter rhetoric based on knowledge and evidence. The topic of the clip is terrible but there is nothing so terrible as Carlson’s advice to quit learning, to remain ignorant of the basic components of issues.
Stay in school kids. Learn how to tell your professors they teach postmodern trash with irrefutable and informed style.
I’m heading back into the school year and I’m exhausted by all the work I’ve done this summer while not teaching. That’s not a joke, I worked all summer even though I didn’t teach any classes. People can be surprised at this because they see my job as all about teaching. I get that. Most people interact with professors on the front side; as students we see professors do werk by lecturing and leading classes and grading papers. I do that too. I like doing that. That’s a pretty affirming statement from a super introvert like me. In spite of my discomfort with freestyle lecturing, running open discussions, being stared at by forty students for seventy-five minutes, I feel like what I do in the classroom makes a difference. Students will say that what I taught them really changed how they see the world or gave them skills they will use forever. That’s pretty cool. I also get a lot of cat drawings, which is also cool.
I literally had so many to choose from, you have no idea.
I like the front side. But I would argue that the front side—the teaching part—is a corollary of my actual job. The main thing professors do is create knowledge. I do this two ways.
Way #1: hey, do you like seat belts? What about Google? Heard the term intersectionality used to describe social injustice? All that shit was invented by professors. To be specific, professors thought up that shit, and then figured out a way to actualize it through research and experiments, and then explained it by writing it out clearly and supporting it with persuasive evidence. Then they sent it into the world and now we know! People that are not professors can invent things at places that are not universities. But universities are locations where professors are paid to invent technology and ideas that could fundamentally alter cultural knowledges, add to society, change the world. When I got hired as a professor, it was with the understanding that I would teach for the university and also that I would think deeply and complexly about the world and its problems, come up with original and novel ideas, and put them into the world. Lest this sound like an easy deal, my knowledge output is measured and evaluated. In other words, professors have to prove that our thinking has led to original ideas and that original ideas have worth. How is such a thing proven? Through articles published in blind, peer-reviewed academic journals, by writing and publishing peer-reviewed books, presenting conference papers at national and international forums, being awarded grant funding, being invited to speak in various prestigious public forums… We have a fancy nihilist term for all this: publish or perish. I keep my job from year to year (and professors get tenured) by showing the material output of my thinking and also proving that a large body of my peers has deemed this output valuable.
Way #2: ok, so professors have to think up, write up, and publish up original knowledge. But the other way I create knowledge is by developing university curriculum. I don’t just teach classes, I work with my peers to grow fields of knowledge and then design curriculum that imparts key elements of those fields to students. When you take a class from a professor, you see the professor teach the content. But before you even get to this part, the professor has decided on the best texts to convey the content, on the units that best demonstrate the content, on the examples and keywords essential to the content. And they have also chosen the content itself. There are thousands of important ideas that make up my own field of Women’s and Gender Studies. My job is to know as much of that knowledge as I possibly can and then decide what parts are most important for students to learn and when they should learn them. When I get all that figured out, I then find texts and examples, write lessons, and design exercises that best convey my decisions. I trained for eleven years, which is the amount of years I spent getting my higher education degrees, to be able to do this. So I have a good background and good skills, but I could also draw on some pre-made resources like text readers and syllabus examples and activity banks. You know who came up with those readers, syllabi, and activity resources? Professors. And you know how I know they’re accurate? Because of my background and skills. In effect, my job is always to know about and sort through all the knowledge of a given field and then use my training to build a new set or unit of knowledge—a knowledgelet if you will—for students learning this field. I create the knowledge that exists in my field, and I create the units of knowledge that teach this field to others. And I grade papers too.
Lemmee wrap up by running some numbers. If you think that the whole of my job is teaching classes (as some human dumpster fire politicians have argued), then you must think being a professor is pretty easy because I don’t teach eight hours a day, forty hours a week. Actually, I teach four classes, twice a week and, at seventy-five minutes per class, that’s ten hours a week. Cool. If you had a forty-hour/week salaried job and one of the requirements was that you lead a staff meeting eight times a week, would you only be working when you were running those meetings? Or would you also be working when you came up with the topic of the meeting, collected materials, organized and wrote out your talking points, made visuals and handouts, sent out email reminders and agendas, and followed up with coworkers? Unless you’re in a really exploitative job, you probably get to count all this as part of your workweek. In fact, all this prep and these presentations might actually be a corollary of your actual job. That is, you got hired to do something in addition to these presentations, and you’re still responsible for doing and completing that something. If yer lucky, maybe you get to make some of your presentations overlap with this other part of your job. But probably not all eight, and probably not every week.
I teach, therefore I profess! Teaching is part of my job and it’s a great part and it’s the most visible part. But I also profess when I create knowledge and launch it out to the world. I don’t have summers off because that creating knowledge part is not contingent on me being in a classroom. Publish or perish doesn’t stop just because I am teaching more students or less students. I can do it anytime, and I do it all the time. This is a really hard and a really time consuming and a really important and a really crucial part of my job. Luckily, I trained a long time to do this work and, super luckily, I get paid to do it. Not everyone that makes knowledge gets paid for their labor. But professors do. It’s what we do.
I was walking down the right side of a sidewalk (asliterallyeverysidewalketiquettearticleinsistsis correct). A man was walking toward me and, as our game of sidewalk chicken escalated, he frenetically gestured for me to move over to the left. Why? Because, he said, “ladies walk on the inside.” I told him (yelled after him after I sheepishly moved aside) that was incorrect and sexist. He told me (yelled behind him as he walked away) that was absolutely NOT sexist. Perhaps he fancied it was 1850 and he was putting the lady he was escorting on the protected part of the sidewalk. That was a thing, I guess, because gentlemen needed to guard ladies from the ruffian side of the sidewalk where carriages and horses and puddles dared to exist. I think sidewalk guy was attempting to be gentlemanly by enforcing this old-fashioned gesture of female protection. But he was actually telling a woman what to do with her body, making her move around him in spite of contemporary norms, and disrespecting her space and wishes. So it was sexist. But it was benevolent sexism.
Thank god I’m on the inside of the curb or else satan would be able to grab me!
Slight topic detour: Peggy McIntosh describes how she was taught from a young age to only identify racism in conscious individual acts of meanness. Of course, this type of racism does happen. But McIntosh says this image prevented her—a White woman—from noticing how racist practices and policies were also institutionalized, and then how her own unthinking, non-malicious everyday actions reinforced these systems. Even if someone is not being consciously racist and even if the correlation between that person’s actions and the subjugation of people of Color isn’t super clear, they can still be perpetuating racism by participating in and benefiting from racist systems. You see, intent is not the same as effect.
Is your idea of sexism a manager saying he doesn’t promote women because they’re too volatile during their times of the month? Of course, this type of sexism does happen. But we also participate in sexism via subtle everyday practices that cast women as less qualified, less capable, less valuable, less able, less worthy, less whole, or more naturally inclined toward roles like being sex objects or doing unpaid domestic and menial labor. Sometimes gestures that are intended as genteel or flattering ultimately replicate notions that women are lesser and—here’s the kicker—that a woman’s expressed will is less significant than a man’s beliefs or intentions. Enter benevolent sexism.
Classic example: a man holds a door for a woman. Is this sexist? NOT NECESSARILY INTERNET TROLLS. Holding the door for all people, especially people that need aid, can be super nice! In this scenario, the woman says “that’s ok, I can get it” and the door holder insists because he’s a gentleman and he always holds doors for ladies. But why always and only ladies? And why does he insist? Is it because he’s trying to be polite? Yes. It is because he’s trying to treat women in a flattering way? Yes. Is it because he thinks women should be held to a different standard when it comes to labor, even when the labor isn’t really laborious? Yes. Is it because he thinks his idea of chivalry outweighs the woman’s expressed wants? Yes. Ah, now we’ve slipped into sexism. Door guy’s insistence is based on a sexist belief that women are generally less capable and also that what men think is correct for women is more important than what women think is correct for themselves. It wasn’t intended to be sexist, but the effect nevertheless was. Intent is not the same as effect.
Let’s make an effort to read facial expressions here, shall we?
Lets do some more: once, a man on my bus detoured on his way off to tell me I was so pretty. A man in an airport gestured to me and said it was great to be next to one of the most beautiful women here. A man approached me at bar to say I had a “yoga” body. Another told me I was the perfect size but not to lose any more weight. So here’s the benevolent part: these interactions were clearly intended as complimentary and I strongly suspect that no comment would have been made if I did not pass the test. But I did and these men felt I should know. This knowledge was given, I believe, to make me feel good. But here’s the sexism part: the reason these men felt entitled and even obligated to tell me their personal judgments about my body is because our sexist institutions and our sexist media says that women’s value goes up when they are deemed desirable. Looking good—especially in ways that elicit men’s sexual desire—is an achievement and, for women, often a prerequisite to other forms of status and power. Chimamanda Adiche calls this bottom power. Rosalind Gill calls this a postfeminist sensibility. Whatever you name it, the sentiment is built on a foundation of sexism: women are of higher value when they are coveted objects of hetero-male desire.
Caveat: I like physical compliments from my partner and I liked them from people I went on dates with, provided the date was going ok. And of course some women do like physical compliments from strange men. What’s that you say, not all women are the same? Why, that’s true! But I—one woman speaking for herself—I don’t like them so I try not to respond at all, or say something neutral like “ok.” I don’t smile and I don’t say thank you because I’m not happy or thankful. This is generally met with confusion or indignation and sometimes anger. You see, it’s assumed that I will smile and say thank you because of the complimentary intent, even if the effect is that I am uncomfortable, and even if the effect is that I am being forced into a sexist interaction. Smiling and saying thank you is expected from me because I am woman, as is apologizing, acquiescing, not showing aggression, being ever so pleasing, and staying in my lane. Expecting and even requiring women to placate men above their own feelings, to accept the intent of a comment rather than its personal or social effects, well, that’s sexist.
Here’s where I answer my title: why the fuck should I even care about a man on a bus telling me I’m pretty when White male senators are making decisions about my reproductive heath care, when rape is handled egregiously in our law and order system, when transwomen of Color are murdered every fucking day? Make no mistake, we need to work on this shit. Badly. Loudly. All hands to battlestations! But there’s no limit on the sexist items we can work on. Some sexist shit is more urgent but all acts of sexism contribute to a sexist society. And Kristen Hubby argues that when we let benevolent sexism slide because we’re focused on hostile sexism, we allow a less visible but still very real form of sexism to harden into the framework of our society. Benevolent sexism is not necessarily hostile but it just as effectively forestalls social change. Schooling ourselves on benevolent sexism shouldn’t diminish the focus on hostile sexism. We can do both friends.
DO NOT USE CATS TO HIGHLIGHT SEXIST SOCIAL TROPES HISTORICAL ADVERTISEMENT THAT’S MY DEAL
**Oh wait I have another caveat. Terms like men and women or male and female are just grossly inaccurate. Not all men do this, not all males do this, and sometimes people who are not men or males do this. It’s a bit more accurate to say these interactions are tied to categories of masculinity and femininity, but of course not all masculine people do this and not all feminine people do that. However, Kate Bornstein argues that if the binary categories of masculine and feminine and men and women and male and female didn’t carry such social weight, then sexism wouldn’t exist because sexism is a direct and intentional result of how our gender system is built. Ok I’m done now for reals.
A while back, I was in the market for a day hiking backpack. I needed something that could carry more clothing and more food than my current pack. I settled on two packs that had the same water capacity, same size number, basically same pocket, strap, and pole-carry features. One was red-gray and the other was “reflecting pond/Andean toucan” color. Guess which was the “women’s” backpack (clearly denoted by the “women’s symbol” on the description tag)? Now guess which was $15 more?
I went to a local outdoor store that sold both packs for the different prices and asked the manager what the fuck was the difference. I assumed he would tell me the women’s pack had special cushions for my ovaries or extra pockets for my many, many tampons. He said the only notable difference was that the red-gray pack, the “men’s” pack (so called on Amazon), was one inch longer. The men’s pack was made slightly longer in the torso because all men are taller than women. ALL OF THEM. Because I’m tall, the manager recommended I buy the men’s pack as it would actually fit better. I got to save $15 and get one more inch of space, which was the whole fucking reason for getting a new pack. Yay me! But also, fuck cultural assumptions of sex difference that result in bullshit like the pink tax.
Exhibit #1:cultural binarism, or the idea that binary sex difference (male or female) is the most important difference in the universe and that’s why we have to separate bathrooms and locker rooms and toy aisles and backpacks. Sex difference is basically this “men are from Mars, women are from Venus” bullshit. Don’t get me wrong, every single person has a specific and unique body with specific features and unique capacities. And even though human bodies are largely the same and function largely the same, bodies do have biological and genetic differences. Like I’m taller than some and thinner than others. So the deal with sex difference is that it presumes the sex assigned to your unique body (generally based on genital appearance, but also sometimes hormones, gonads, and chromosomes) makes you fundamentally different from some people and fundamentally the same as other people.
I’m pretty sure all ladies basically have this inside them. It’s why we like pink so much. Genetics.
I’m a lot taller than some people and that can be a significant physical difference but we don’t see height as a fundamental difference. That’s why we don’t have bathrooms and locker rooms organized by height. BUT WHAT IF WE DID??? We have this idea that men and women shouldn’t use the same bathroom because they’ll be having sex in there or be sexually stalked or it will be the end of the world or something because ANARCHY. Caveat: some people do weird and fucked up shit in bathrooms. But this cultural binarism argument—that men and women are fundamentally different and thus need separate bathroom spaces—could really be made for any difference. Watch me do it:
We need to divided bathrooms by height: over 5’9 bathrooms and under 5’9 bathrooms. People above a certain height are able to look over stall doors and peep; people under a certain height are able to look under stall doors and creep. We need separate bathroom spaces because this critical physical difference leads to uncomfortable, sexually dangerous situations.
Watch me do it again:
We need to divide bathrooms by age: over 50 bathrooms and under 50 bathrooms. People over 50 take more time and thus need more space. They are are also more susceptible to being sexual victims of the high-sex drive of the under 50 crowd. We need separate bathroom spaces because this critical physical difference leads to uncomfortable, sexually dangerous situations.
Just to be clear, this “fundamental body difference leading to sexually threatening or compromising situations” is the same argument used to keep Black people out of White bathrooms.
Exhibit #2: the pink tax,* or when a product or service for women is arbitrarily more expensive than an equivalent product or service for men. The pink tax might extend to when female-body products like birth control pills or tampons are more luxury-taxed or harder to obtain than men’s similar products. But often the pink tax is way more sexistly overt: it’s when identical products like razors or services like dry cleaning are just different prices for men and women. So that pink razor sitting in the “women’s shave needs” aisle is a dollar more than the gray razor made by the same company but sitting in the “men’s shave needs” aisle. Or a lady is charged more for the blouse she took to the dry cleaners even though it’s the same fabric and ACTUALLY LESS MATERIAL than the men’s shirt. The pink tax is some arbitrary bullshit but it feeds on cultural binarism aka the idea that women and men are fundamentally different and thus cannot use the same products and services even if there’s little difference in the actual product or service.
So back to my pack. According to the store manager, the major difference was length; the men’s pack was designed for a slightly taller body. Yet instead of labeling the packs according to height difference, they were labeled according to sex difference. (We were left to fill in the blanks with stereotypes about all men being naturally taller and thus in need of man pack and women as generally shorter cause vaginas or something.) The ladies pack was then sold at a higher price even though there was literally less pack. And women, who historically earn less than men in the U.S., have to pay more for less, unless a kind store manager tells them the skinny and gives them an awesome local’s discount to boot.
The pink tax is some sex difference bullshit.
*I didn’t even know this term until a student came to my office and talked to me about it. You’re never too old or too educated to find out something new and fucked up about the world, and then process the shit out of it.
The New York Times says we should want a bitch in the White House. Or, a little more specifically (and a little less clickbaity), writing for the New York Times opinion page, Andi Zeisler of Bitch Media proposes embracing the term that’s been so maliciously lobbied against Hillary Clinton. Zeisler’s argument is that Clinton’s called a bitch because she doesn’t put being likable above all else and because she has presidential-level tenacity and ambition. Zeisler evokes Tina Fey and Amy Poehler’s 2008 declaration that “bitches get stuff done” and asks “what if that’s not a bad thing”?
I like where Zeisler’s going but, before jumping on the bitch bandwagon, I want to take a little stroll down language, meaning, and reclamation lane.
Most words are what we in the biz call sign systems or sign chains: they communicate complex and extended meanings. Take the term “public bathroom.” In the U.S., a public bathroom probably won’t have a bath but we all know what’s in there and what it’s for. Here’s another one: “9/11.” It’s just two numbers. But for those in the U.S. of a certain age, these two numbers immediately evoke images of death, destruction, fear, loss, and war. The meaning tied into those numbers is much more than just the sum of the numbers themselves. Here’s one more: “feminist.” It characterizes a person who has particular social and institutional views, politics, and goals. And yet when a person is publicly called a feminist, it might have little to do with her political leanings and everything to do with how she is perceived as shrill, unfeminine, opinionated, and man-hating. In other words, a bitch.
Some words are loaded with histories of abuse and degradation. Some words were created for the explicit purpose of dehumanizing and justifying oppression. You know that old kiddy rhyme “sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never hurts me”? That rhyme is BULLSHIT. Words can absolutely hurt. They can invalidate. They can belittle. And, very significantly, some words are used to incite and justify violence.
Reclamation is the project of taking the shitty part of a particular term and dispersing it, then replacing with more positive stuff. Reclamation has been fairly successful with the term “queer.” Sixty years ago (let’s get real, twenty years ago), queer was not something you could just call people. Or actually you could if you wanted to demean or belittle that person. Today, I teach for a Queer Studies program; in my classroom, the term is not only acceptable, it’s considered more appropriate than some other terms. Queer is now often used to give people respect and humanity, to create inclusion. My 69-year-old mother used to avoid using that term like the fucking plague, and she now proudly tells people her daughter teaches queer theory. Queer shows the power of reclamation.
Now let’s look at the N-word. That’s right, I’m not even gonna write it. That’s because this term has not been successfully reclaimed. Mass inhumanity and violence happened alongside this term and, while some have tried to bend it toward an inclusion and family meaning, it’s not been able to fully shake the filthy legacy. It’s unusable by ethical White people, and still controversial when used by Black people (see Larry Wilmore’s Correspondents Dinner speech).*
I don’t know exactly why some terms have a chance at reclamation and others just don’t. I’m guessing it’s an intricate balance of the histories and legacies poured into the word plus time, distance, and respect. My point is this: reclamation has a ton of potential but isn’t a guaranteed success. Some words never shake free.
Back to the bitch. Zeisler acknowledges that people are never gonna stop calling Clinton a bitch (cause haters, also cause gendered expectations). So Zeisler’s like, cool let’s just fucking reclaim this term then. Let Clinton embrace her bitchness, let the term signal her get-things-done attitude and her ceiling-breaking pathway to the Presidency. Zeisler urges us to frame Clinton as “the bitch America needs.”
I found this by typing “Clinton bitch meme” into Google images. If I can give you one piece of advice today: don’t do this.
Great. Cool. I like it. In theory. But also, bitch is deeply historically and socially situated. It doesn’t just name a tough person who doesn’t fall into gender line, it’s systematically used to invalidate women by dehumanizing them, effectively reducing them to a breeding animal in need of control. Bitch is also frequently used to create an allowable context for violence, rape, and murder against women. That’s why every Law & Order creeper says: “the bitch got what she deserved.”
Not everything is equivalent, but let’s play the equivalent game. If mass publics were systematically calling President Obama a “porch monkey” (yes, I know some did and yes, I know, GROSS), I wonder how many articles would declare that he should embrace and reclaim the term because his Blackness is a strength and a valuable asset to his Presidency. I’m guessing that few people asked President Obama to channel his strength and value through a really disgusting racist term.
There’s power in flipping negatives into positives and simultaneously justifying behavior that doesn’t fall into stratified gender ideals. But I don’t know if we can just flip the script on bitch, or if Clinton should feel obligated to embrace this label as something that empowers her and validates her kick-assness. I’m not sure if bitch can be totally reclaimed, and I’m not totally convinced it should be.
But this is just one bitch’s opinion.
*rather than saying “the N-word,” some of my Black students will replace the term with the word “ninja.” I don’t know exactly why this happens, but it’s clever-as-fuck.
Barack Obama is a feminist. So says Barack Obama in a self-authored article for Glamour. This is big news, not just because he’s a man but because he’s a famous and powerful man: things that are rarely connected to people who identify as feminists. Ok, so he gets his cookie (even though, as a close friend reasoned, “all men should be feminists anyway”). But they don’t because masculinity or whatever. So cookie given.I’m not as interested in President Obama’s self-definition as a feminist as I am in what he thinks a feminist is. You see, those in the public eye have been notoriously bad at explaining feminism. At worst, feminists are characterized as man-hating women. At best, narratives follow that feminism is about the equal right of women to work as, say, sexy lethal assassins. As you know, every time a celebrity misidentifies postfeminism as feminism, a feminist media scholar dies (inside, at least).
Some public figures such as (my forever crush) Chimamanda Adichie accurately explain feminism as the work of people who acknowledge and address complex, interconnected issues including gender boxes, socioeconomics, sexuality, violence, work, parenting, race, culture, and domestic relations. But no matter how much Adichie slayed her “We Should All Be Feminists” TedTalk, it won’t get the attention or audience that a Glamor article about feminism written by a sitting male president will. So my question o’ the day: what exactly did President Obama tell us feminism is?
Here’s his article. Read it. It’s good. Ok, there’s a bit too much American exceptionalism and progress narrative. That’s those statements of, gee ladies, look how far we’ve come, you went from being secretaries and housewives to astronauts! There’s certainly some truth to that, but it’s a narrative that ignores issues and inequalities tied to race, socioeconomic status, and citizenship. Many Women of Color were barred from those secretarial positions, and some women didn’t have the socioeconomic standing to be housewives. A White, upper-class woman may become the next U.S. President, but deep and systemic issues around work and domestic opportunity still exist. You know that “women make 79 cents to the man’s dollar thing?” White women make 79 cents to a White man’s dollar. Women of Color, transwomen, and undocumented women make wayyyyy less.
I was prepared for a sitting U.S. president to give me the exceptionalism and progress narrative thing. What I was not expecting was the clear and thoughtful way he addressed masculinity, intersectionality, non-hegemonic identities, and privilege. These are critical aspects of feminist inquiry and activism. So, according to Barack Obama, who is a feminist?
A feminist is a person who acknowledges masculinity is a construct too. In discussions about the constricting and stratified box that is femininity, we often fail to mention how femininity is constructed as a binary contrast to masculinity. President Obama names that dichotomy:“the attitude that raises our girls to be demure and our boys to be assertive, that criticizes our daughters for speaking out and our sons for shedding a tear. We need to keep changing the attitude that punishes women for their sexuality and rewards men for theirs.” He also articulates how masculinity is constructed via a particular type of “toughness” or “coolness” that forces men to be “assertive” (aka violent) and prevents them from “shedding a tear” or taking on full-time parenting roles. In short, gender boxes fucking suck. We’re getting marginally better at verbalizing those feminine/female boxes, but male/masculine boxes are just as stifling and damaging.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges that gender intersects with other categories of self. Both Barack and Michelle Obama are good at articulating this, but it bears repeating: gender does not exist in a vacuum and not all women are the same. In his article, President Obama notices and acknowledges that Michelle faces unique and specific gender stigmas and obstacles: “we need to keep changing a culture that shines a particularly unforgiving light on women and girls of color. Michelle has often spoken about this. Even after achieving success in her own right, she still held doubts; she had to worry about whether she looked the right way or was acting the right way—whether she was being too assertive or too ‘angry.’” The Combahee River Collectivewould agree.
Hey Girl, I acknowledge your overlapping intersectional inequalities.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges that, while all people are subject to the sex/sexuality binary, not all people fit that binary. Even very good social justice campaigns tend to employ discourses such as “men need to support their wives.” This presumes that people are cisgender and heterosexual (men and women/men marry women). I know, this is an overwhelmingly dominant and unquestioned belief about bodies and desires. But dominant and unquestioned beliefs are not always true. Actually, there’s a lot of variety in terms of bodies and sexualities, but that variety has been stuffed into those same fucking binary and dichotomous gender boxes. Twice in his essay, President Obama notes that “gender stereotypes affect all of us, regardless of our gender, gender identity, or sexual orientation” and “forcing people to adhere to outmoded, rigid notions of identity isn’t good for anybody—men, women, gay, straight, transgender, or otherwise.” As a queer studies scholar and a feminist, I’d like to see a whole lot more of this. But acknowledging this part of feminism is an important part of being a feminist. So it’s a start.
A feminist is a person who acknowledges their own positions of privilege.Audre Lorde says that when People of Color/women have to continually explain racism/sexism to White people/men, it saps their time and energy that they should be using on themselves/their own liberation. Peggy McIntosh says that people with racial or gender privileges have a responsibility to see and name their own privileges. Several times in this essay, President Obama notes his own gender privileges vis-à-vis Michelle. He notes that few people questioned his choice of occupation even though it took him away from his family for long periods of time. He notes his ability to support his family on his own time schedule, even though it meant his female partner had to pick up whatever slack was left. He notes how men such as him are congratulated for changing their child’s diaper because it is framed as an aid rather than a duty. In short, he notes how he was able to succeed in part because of institutionalized gender privileges regarding work and family.
I must admit that I avoided reading this essay for two days because I was fairly certain President Obama would articulate that glossy, surface, faux version of feminism that is so often the pop culture best-case-scenario. And he did that a bit. But he also hit on several key ideas that are not only essential in any compete definition of feminism, but also critical for informing the actions of any feminist. We should all be feminists, and I agree that that President Obama is one too.
Saucy Scholar fans may remember my inaugural post was on the UC Santa Barbara shooting. I was teaching at UCSB, and I had also been a grad student there for five years prior. It was my first campus shooting. It was intense and traumatic to the campus community. It was shocking. It was unexpected. I immediately contacted my students to ask if they were safe and ok.
UCSB held a memorial service at the outdoor soccer stadium. Probably 25,000 people were there. As I was heading to the memorial, I saw a friend sitting at the campus bus stop, waiting to go home. I asked why he wasn’t going to the memorial. He said: “this is not my first campus shooting.” I remembered he was from Virginia Tech.
This morning I have been contacted by many people asking if I am safe and ok. You see, there was a shooting on my campus. The one I currently teach at. Like my friend, I can also now say this is not my first.
Lots of public figures are sending their love and their thoughts and their prayers. I don’t want that. I want outrage. I want shock. I want action. But we don’t do that anymore for campus shootings. They are upsetting but normal. School shootings are no longer aberrations. And they should no longer be unexpected by me.
This is now part of the life of the academic. This must now be part of the pedagogy of professors. In addition to job market advice and tenure advice, can The Chronicle and The Professor Is In start writing advice columns on ways faculty can deal with this?
This is how I ended that first post, the one on the UCSB shooting:
“I honestly don’t know how to end this. So I won’t. Because this is a conversation I’m going to have to have in every fucking class I teach from now on at UCSB. And it’s going to have to constantly evolve.”
I know that you know that enough has been written and said about Caitlyn Jenner. Lots of it good. Some of it sexist. Some definately thought provoking. But I just read this NYT article and, frankly, I’m pissed off. Please add this “woman=vagina=struggle” argument to my Saucy Shit List, which also includes this Feminist Wire argument about how only fucked up people care more about genitals than “chemistry.” These articles are opposite sides of the same coin: both make exclusionary decisions about what is and is not proper behavior, bodies, feelings. Then they use those ideas to explain why people who don’t feel the same are assholes. This is not cool.
Saucy Shit List Exhibit A: this NYT opinion piece called “What Makes a Woman?”* According to Elinor Burkett, Caitlyn Jenner is big fat FAKER because she expresses her womanhood as high femme. Burkett believes Jenner has reduced being a woman to “nonsense” such as wearing thick mascara and a cleavage-boosting corset, and walking around with nail polish until it chips off. What does make a woman? According to Burkett, its a) a vagina and b) the from-birth systemic oppression of vagina-wielders.
Important Point 1: there would be no such thing as trans if our society didn’t divide bodies into two sex categories, and then limit the every move of those bodies to two restrictive genders. If a body’s sex designation didn’t mean shit about that person’s gender identity, then that person would just do whatever the fuck they wanted and identify however the fuck they wanted and that would be that. But its not. One of two genders is thrust onto our bodies when we’re born.
Actually, while still in utero… enter gender reveal cakes!
That gender is so tightly entwined with our original sex designation that men can’t wear nail polish without getting shit for it, and they can’t use female pronouns and still comfortably identify as men. Woman doesn’t mean vagina. It means having your body inextricably mashed into a bi-gender role.
Important Point 2: Obv gender is a social construction because it can be done by any body (drag queens anyone?). But sex (as in male and female) is also social construction. You heard me. Sure, we all have unique, specific, functioning bodies. But the way we take those bodies and jam them into one of two sex categories is all society. Actually, lots of bodies don’t match up. It’s estimated that 1 in 1000 bodies don’t fit neatly into our bi-sex system. These intersexed bodies have non-binary genital structures, or they don’t have the match among hormones, gonads, and chromosomes we use to determine male or female. Don’t believe me that 1 in 1000 people are intersexed? Let me ask you a question: do you know what everyone’s genitals look like? Everyone in the world? What about everyone’s chromosomes, hormones, and gonads? You test those? And when the people who do see a lot of genitals and do test a lot of genetics—namely the medical community— identify an intersexed child, they do immediate genital surgery and/or pump hormones into the kid, often just weeks after birth. So yes, we make sex.
My dear NYT article, to say vagina=woman is to say that bi-sex social categories are the reality of bodies. Actually, we take lots of different types of bodies and overlay bi-sex onto them. And then we say “now you have a sex designation, do your gender dance!” The social gender dance is, in fact, the way we get to the category of female sex. And Jenner is doing it. Doing it like a boss.
Saucy Shit List Exhibit B: this Feminist Wire College Feminisms piece called “Dating Your Genitals.” Quinn Israel *seems* to take the direct opposite position of Burkett by critiquing those who define their sex, love, or relationship desires according to genitals. The gist is: “in the age of strap-ons, why do genitals matter, and why are certain types of body appearances even important? Those who choose their partners based on this shit (rather than CHEMESTRY) are either slaves to the system or transphobe assholes.”
Ok, this article’s not specifically about Jenner, but it’s a good example of some of the queer activist commentary deriding Jenner for using her money and privilege to present herself as a hegemonic femme white woman. Ie, Jenner is cast as either a slave to the system or an asshole that’s choosing to pass in a way that many trans people can’t, don’t, or won’t.
Important Point 3: If someone really likes flesh-and-blood penis and that’s more important than connection or chemistry or whatever, then fine. If someone has lived their whole life in a sex and gender system and their limited idea about sexuality has become embodied (a part of their identities that actually trigger bodily sensations), then cool. If someone has grown up dreaming about wearing corsets and mascara and nail polish until it chips, then let her do her.
Important Point 4: It bears repeating: Jenner should be able to do whatever the fuck she wants in terms of identity expression. Telling Caitlyn Jenner (or anyone else) how she should or should not/can or cannot do her is the same fucked up shit as our bi-gender and sex culture telling Bruce Jenner he couldn’t wear nail polish till it chipped off, or telling gay people they shouldn’t want to have sex with people who have similar genitals.
My dear Feminist Wire article, your problem shouldn’t be with people wanting a certain type of partner genital makeup or sex act or identity. Just like the problem shouldn’t be with Jenner’s gender choices. Its not identities or expressions or gender or sex or sexuality that’s the problem–its the social structures that rank some of these things over others. Women who exclusively date men with penises are more accepted in our society. Women who put on mascara and a corset and nail polish are more valued in our society. So instead of policing people’s choices, let look for ways to make all partner (or non-partner) choices equally legal and socially valid. And lets look for ways to make Jenner’s high femme equal to those individuals who do not have the desire, money, or access to present themselves in a similar way. And here’s a good place to start: #MyVanityFairCover
* The correct answer is: calling yourself a woman makes you one. The end.
A few days ago, this was leaked into the yaw of the interwebs:
People are going ape-shit over this image of Cindy Crawford because it’s not airbrushed or digitally altered (like 99.999% of media images of women are). Without them fancy computers smoothing out her cellulite and body lines, evening out her damaged skin, getting rid of age and wear from children, she looks normal… if your definition of normal is a very thin and very muscular White woman wearing black lingerie and some type of jeweled microphone earpiece.
The Saucy Scholar is not so much interested in exposing the practice of airbrushing or raging against media-built images of women (if I was, I would analyze this shit):
so… much… problematic.
Instead, I’m getting into beauty. Specifically, why ladies gotta’ have it, and why its such a fucking insult to say that Crawford—or any woman—is not beautiful. See, the overwhelming majority of interweb comments refer to Crawford in this picture as “simply stunning,” a “beautiful woman,” “honest and gorgeous,” and “looking amazing.”* So nice of them to say, right? Well, only kind of right. Readers, this is where shit gets complicated.
Beauty is a social construct. Obv, we construct it on, over, and into our bodies every day! Makeup, hair stuff, well-fitting garments, trendy glasses—these beauty products take what we got and help it conform to idealized or prized social standards. While looking our “best” might not be looking identical, it generally falls into looking feminine or masculine, fit, trendy, moneyed, and clean.
Not everyone has to do so much body work, because some people just look ideal. In fact, it’s the “ideal” that’s the construct. 60 years ago, beautiful women were curvy. Now, beautiful women are fit. 100 years ago, having pale white skin was a mark of beauty—that is, a mark of class and the leisure and not having to do manual labor. Today, white skin is still ideal, but its tanned white skin—that is, a mark of class and the leisure of being able to lay out on beaches all fucking day. We could look at other times and places and see that what’s considered beautiful is very different from either curvy or fit or white bodies. But the take away is that standards of beauty are socially constructed. And some bodies naturally rise to the top of these social standards. With enough time and money, some bodies can be constructed into them. Some bodies cannot and never will fit.
So it’s these arbitrarily-made-yet-so-fucking-significant beauty standards that every body is measured against. And I’m not saying that Crawford can’t be beautiful, because beauty can be constructed, especially by thin, white, wealthy women with access to airbrushing technology. It’s that Crawford’s unretouched image falls short of the narrow and circumscribed criteria our society deems beautiful.
So dare I say she’s not beautiful in this image? NO, I DARE NOT! To say a woman is not beautiful does not condemn our narrow and circumscribed beauty standards. Rather, saying a woman is not beautiful robs her of dignity, self-worth, and the essence of her very woman-ness. See, in contemporary western society, women are beautiful if they are feminine. If a woman is not beautiful, she is often called ugly, disgusting, fat, mannish, or any number of things that mean not feminine. Femininity is intimately connected to beauty, which is intimately tied to our idea of what a woman is. Therefore, beauty is one of the prime ways women are taught to feel value and worth as women (sexiness is in there too, but just go ahead and read every other one of my posts for that).
Not all women rank high in beauty standards, but all women should have the opportunity to feel value and worth, right? So how have we decided to fix this? Expand beauty standards…which should allow more women to feel beautiful…which should allow more women to feel value and worth! This is exemplified by the Dove Real Beauty campaign:
We’re not cold at all!
But there are two really big issues here:
Issue #1: oh yes, by all means, lets expand beauty standa….woah, not too fucking much there! When we expand beauty standards, its true that we open a door, but it’s a doggie door. Huzzah for Crawford for showing us a real woman has cellulite and wrinkles and damaged skin! Apparently, these real women are also very thin and very White and very fit and very feminine. And hairless. And sexy. And able-bodied. And have straight white teeth and nice hair. And the money to buy beauty products like Dove. When we expand the parameters of beauty, we allow more women to feel beautiful. But not many more.
Issue #2: why do I have to feel beautiful? Lets transpose beauty for skiing. I can’t ski, but the ability to ski is not tied into my value and self-worth. If I can’t ski, I probably have some other quality or skill which society deems just as good. Yet women must feel beautiful to feel they have value and worth. Other qualities such as intelligence are good to feel too, but they can’t replace beauty. In fact, admitting you are not beautiful is the greatest fucking sin because it shows how little you value yourself.
Check out this commercial for the Dove Real Beauty campaign. I guess it’s intended to show women how they judge themselves too harshly against impossible beauty standards. But it really shows how taboo it is for women to feel they are not beautiful. FYI ladies, not only are you being policed for not physically conforming to beauty standards, but also for feeling bad about yourself for not physically conforming to beauty standards. This. Is. Bullshit.
The Saucy Scholar is about to get real here. When I’m alone in my house, I don’t feel beautiful. Because I’m not. I haven’t constructed beauty onto my body yet. Furthermore, I’m not yet being measured by social beauty standards (unless my cat is silently judging me??). But I’m not ugly either. When I’m alone in my house, I’m not part of that beauty/ugly system. The concept of beauty—and feeling beautiful—comes alive via social interactions: others reading and judging you based on beauty criteria, or you thinking of yourself based on those social interactions and social knowledges.
I don’t want to have to feel like I have to feel beautiful. I don’t want to have to be flattered when a man tells me I’m beautiful. I want to be able to tell people that I don’t think I’m beautiful and not have them feel pity for me. I want to say I’m smart instead of beautiful and have that be a worthy trade off. I want to be able to say that Crawford is not beautiful without it being a huge insult to her identity as a woman.
Saucy unconstructed… Saucy constructed
*The interwebs refers to the Twitterverse, and online entertainment news sites such as Yahoo News, Eonline, and Marie Claire.
I worked four years as an Undergrad, two as a Master’s student, five as a PhD. After those eleven years of hard work, this is exactly what I wanted to look like when I graduated. Sexy.
Loyal readers might think this post will attend to the sexism and racism imbedded in costumes that allow privileged bodies to put on the mask of minority (or other marginalized) people for the night, have a good laugh, and then reinscribe their privileged status by taking it all off the next day.
Nope. If you want that lecture, come to the class I teach every October about how cross-gender and cross-race costumes play on and perpetuate the ways our society ranks women and people of color. Or watch this hilarious Daily Show about “sexy” Halloween costumes.
Today, the Saucy Scholar is talking about the relationship between women and postfeminist models of success. Or, to put it plainly, why the fuck a PhD isn’t sexy on its own.
Lets review postfeminism, shall we? Postfeminism is the idea that we are beyond the need for feminists/feminist actions because we’ve already reached gender equality. Hooray! Rosalind Gill (2007) and Amy Adele Hasinoff (2008) describe how postfeminism perpetuates the belief that every woman has the same opportunity to “make it” and also that every woman defines “making it” the same way. Lets look at an example of making it, shall we?
Its so fun to be us!
Why are these ladies postfeminist icons? Because they have equal opportunities in education and jobs, because they have money from their education and jobs, and because they use their education, jobs, and money to develop an awesome lifestyle. But most importantly, they do all this shit while still being sexy. Damn Sexy. And please note, Carrie and Co. are not sexy because they feel good about themselves or their accomplishments per se, but because they have attained/maintained the socially ideal female body—thin, white, groomed, toned, made up. Sexy.
And here’s the postfeminist catch. Women are not successful just because they’re in the boardroom, but because they’re in there while maintaining their sex appeal, youthful appearance, and hard body. This is whole package of postfeminist success.
If ladies want this package, ok cool. Its certainly a lot of effort and labor, and some women can’t achieve this because of their class, race, ability, etc. It also perpetuates the idea that women’s bodies are sexy when they replicate what Gill calls “the heterosexual male fantasy found in pornography” (152).* But that’s not really my point. My point is that women necessarily have to engage in sexy to be fully successful. For women, success is not just defined by power (like for Donald Trump) or intelligence (like for Stephen Hawking), or position (like for Barack Obama). For the postfeminist woman, full and total success is defined by her power, intelligence, position AND her sexy. The gold high heels type.
Still delicious
So lets unpack this costume. Its not just “sexy co-ed” or even “sexy BA” (which would have sufficiently replicated the “sexy schoolgirl/college girl gone wild” trope I think it was aiming for). This costume takes what should be—and is—a really major accomplishment for any person, the conferral of a Doctorate, and layers over it the other essential markers of female success: legs, boobs, high heels. The sexy.
But Saucy, you say, its just a fucking Halloween costume! True, no one is saying I gotta’ get in this costume. Yet this costume nonetheless represents a pervasive idea and, as I tell my students, Halloween might appear to be but is not a space or time apart from real life. Halloween costumes play on and perpetuate many ideologies we hold as fundamental truths about bodies, behavior, and value. And the sexy PhD costume represents this truth: yes, I’m successful because I’ve got a PhD and a university teaching position. And yes, how I present myself—whether or not that is sexy—shouldn’t factor into if/how I’ve “made it.” But it does. It does. A woman with a PhDs is successful, but a woman with a PhD who is also sexy is the ultimate success story. This is how I know:
*Rosalind Gill, “Postfeminist Media Culture: Elements of a Sensibility.” European Journal of Cultural Studies 10.2 (2007). 147-166.
I’m not as interested in President Obama’s self-definition as a feminist as I am in what he thinks a feminist is. You see, those in the public eye have been notoriously bad at explaining feminism. At worst, 
Meredith Heller 