This is a very interesting song and video that is apparently gaining some popularity in Germany (according to my boyfriend). I think Fat Feminism would especially be interested in the ways it deals with body size, desire for food, etc.

        Beyonce Knowles says that women should be proud of their figure and not worry about their weight. I agree that women can be sexy no matter their size and state of dress. Sexiness is not equivalent to how perfect your makeup may be or how revealing your clothes are… it’s all about confidence and appreciation for your own body and for yourself. Beyonce’s music backs this idea of loving what you were naturally born with, but it’s still depressing to see the effect that Hollywood ideals can have on an artist as beautiful as she is. It’s one thing for her to say these things, but then to have to go around and lose 20 pounds for a movie role when she hardly needs to…

I figured I’d post this article as a little follow up to my previous post about comfort women… I’m still waiting to see what will happen in the near-future with this whole situation.

Have any of you been watching 30 Rock? It’s really a funny show, and Tina Fey addresses a lot of the issues we’ve discussed in this class about being a woman in the working world. Fey plays Liz Lemon who’s the boss at a sketch comedy show on NBC, called “The Girl Show,” I assume in a jab at The Man Show (“you drink while the juggies bounce!”). Sometimes the show gives in to stereotypes, portraying her love life as pathetic because she works too much, etc. But even in those moments it’s doing interesting cultural work: in one episode, Fey’s character Liz Lemon freaks out because one of the writers calls her a “cunt” for being so hard on them (making them do their jobs) and she wants people to like her. so she starts baking cookies and letting everyone do exactly what they want–this of course turns out to be disastrous for the show, and, after a hysterical breakdown that includes a Designing Women marathon, she goes back to being a hard-ass.

Anyway, I really recommend the show. (you can watch it online at NBC). It doesn’t always get the message quite right, but at least it’s saying something.

Here’s a clip. I can’t find a good one on Tina Fey, but here’s Alec Baldwin as the ladies’ man. It’s funny in that offensive way.

Hopefully everyone in the class watches The Office because I’m pretty sure it’s one of the funniest shows on television. Last week’s epsiode was titled “Beach Day” and featured a Survivor-style competition to see who would be manager Michael Scott’s successor. But secretary Pam is the only one not allowed to take part in the festitivites because she is forced to take notes on Michael’s incoherent thoughts. My impression of Pam is that she is very fun and lively but often walked over by some of the other workers in the office and her exclusion from the games is an example of that.

After various silly games, Michael decides that whoever is able to walk over hot coals is worthy of being Dunder Mifflin’s regional manager. Pam decides that she wants to walk the coals but Michael says that she can’t because she can’t be manager.

But the scene in this youtube clip is one of Pam’s greatest moments on the show. While the rest of the group is listening to a joke, we see in the background Pam as she successfully crosses the hot coals. It’s a moment where we can be proud of her but it only gets better from there. She runs back to the group and ends up giving a speech that you can’t help but be proud of her for. She addresses the serious issues that have bothered her such as why no one attended her art show and her difficult relationship (or current lack thereof) with Jim. It’s a great girlpower moment where we can relate with Pam and be proud of the courage that she had to have to say everything.

But one of the best this is in tonight’s episode, she neither regrets nor apologizes for her sponteous speech. She could have taken everything back by apologizing and saying that she didn’t truly mean it, but since she did, it’s very empowering that she is willing to stand behind her words.

The article Resisting the Raunch Culture that Objectifies Girls, discusses the effect that risque clothing has on young girls. This clothing, which attracts male attention and leads to increased sexual activity, often results in depression and low self esteem. The writer claims that in dressing more modestly, girls will claim more power and increase self esteem as they will learn to see themselves as more than just sexual objects.

I agree that dressing in skimpy clothing can have no positive effects on young girls, but the problem can not simply be solved by telling them to wear more clothes. I think the focus should be on discussing why girls feel a need to objectify themselves and reclaiming power within themselves first before changing their outward appearance.

All of our talk about music videos made me think of Prodigy’s 1997 video for “Smack my Bitch Up.” The song, which is backed by a very strong techno beat, was criticized for promoting violence against women (get it?…smack my BITCH up). The band defended themselves by stating that the song was about “doing anything intensely.”

What I think is particularly interesting about this song is the video that accompanied it. (watch it after the jump!) Banned by the BBC and played only after midnight on MTV, the video was very controversial but also very popular. Filmed in the first person, the viewer is taken along on a journey as this person gets ready to go out and fuels the evening with obscene amounts of alcohol and lines of cocaine. The rest of the evening becomes a blur of violence, sexual violence against women, drug frenzied dancing, and graphic scenes at a strip club. The next scene involves our protagonist taking home a stripper from the bar and having sex with her.

warning: this video contains drug use, sexual violence, nudity, and a lot of other bad things

But it is in the final scene that as the stripper leaves, we finally see our protagonist. I remember being far too young to be seeing this video when it came out, but being shocked that the eyes we were seeing out of were those of a woman. I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one that was shocked at the end.

Perhaps it was just stereotypes in our minds that prevented us being considering the fact that the protagonist was a woman. The first scene of the video is her getting ready in the bathroom and we see her measuring out some shaving cream and sitting down on the toilet, but those actions seem to be intentionally ambiguous when the viewer looks back on the video

The other thing that may have lead the audience to assume that it was a man is the intense sexual violence against women, the violence against men, and the scenes of sexual attraction towards women. But we know that women can abuse other women, women can fight, and woman can lust and be attracted to other women.

I personally think that it’s great the way that this video ends up. It provides a great shock at the end but I also feel like it’s very clever and eye opening. Although I don’t think many people want women to have a reputation as drug using, violent, and sexual abusive gender, but it’s nice that woman can do that if they want to.

Has anyone here seen the Marilyn Manson music video with his new girlfriend Evan Rachel Wood? I know Marilyn Manson isn’t exactly mainstream, but what does it mean for her? She is much younger than he is, and recently she has started to dress/style herself like his ex-wife (Dita von Teese). I wonder if that is at his instigation, and whether or not it is, what that means about her individuality in the relationship.

We have talked about GirlPower being about owning your sexuality. In the video, we see Evan Rachel Wood hooking up with Marilyn Manson- we see overt sexuality from her. The fact that she has chosen to express her sexuality with him in this video interests me as a potential statement she is making.

Warning: incredibly graphic

Does anyone have thoughts about how to integrate alternative culture into our discussions of Girl Power? Is it relevent at all?

Do you think it is good or bad for Hillary Clinton to try to appeal to women voters, as a woman, or do you think that she should stick to policy, to prove herself the best candidate regardless of her gender? I know this sounds like a pretty harmless question, but I think that how she plays her gender could seriously affect her outcome. I was just talking to my sister about this problem, and she told me that she believes that Condi Rice has done a very good job at down playing as much as possible her gender, and that it is much to her credit and success.

My aunt, someone who was very pro-Bill Clinton and who always votes democrat said that she would not vote for Hillary and instead would vote for Barack. This comment made me a little uneasy, and my mother and I had a conversation later about it later, in which my mother told me that she believed that women who are Hillary’s age will hesitate to vote for her or support her because they actually doubt themselves as people and doubt their own competency and worth. I think this is a very compelling and disconcerting argument. My mother is of the same generation as Hillary, and I trust her insight into this debate. I wonder, will our generation have the same feeling? Do we doubt ourselves as our mothers do? Has girl-power had a lasting affect, or did it end when our girlhood ended?

This may seem a little unrelated, but I was thinking about how girls and boys are pretty even at sports and just about everything physical when they are little, but how boys pass them at around 13 or 14. I personally came to this realization when I did a weight training program with boys my freshmen year in high school and I saw how much more and how much faster boys improved than I did. Needless to say, this was incredibly discouraging considering I had always been equal to if not better than boys at sports up until then. I wonder if this acceleration in physical ability has something to do with a loss of the sense of worth in ourselves. Our bodies take on a different purpose around this time, to make and nurture babies. But does this late onset bondage to a new kind of body alter us irreparably? I think it might.

I’ve never been much of a video-gamer but on occasion I’ll pick up a game and play for an hour or so. Recently, my male roommates have been addicted to Fight Night 3 for Xbox 360. One of the most fun aspects of the game is creating your own boxer so the guys created characters that were reminiscent of themselves by looking at themselves in the mirror and carefully adjusting the game controls. When I picked up the game to create my own character, I was hit with the realization that I couldn’t create a female boxer. How is that fair?! The only females portrayed in Fight Night 3 are the bikini clad women sauntering across the ring holding a card indicating the round number. Shouldn’t women get the chance to create their own boxer and go through a career?

Understandably, video games have been a male dominated arena, but with a growing female contingent of gamers, why isn’t this new market being catered to? It seems that video games are are only for men – videogame men characters are what the gamers want to be and videogame women are what men want to drool over.