78uuu lumière des étoiles

Dusty:Starlight:Culture



a little perturbed, are we?
2003-11-30   9:13 p.m.

Yay, I can see my muscles again! It's amazing how fast a carb-infused eating-fest like Thanksgiving (and I do looove to eat) can make all the good work you've done for the last few months go away...far, far away. We swam and swam this week, and skied, and ran, and lifted weights. I think I'm slowly becoming addicted to the feeling I get after I exhaust myself in the pool - that thoroughly relaxed and buzzy-in-my-center feeling. Someone told me recently that's very tied into the Zen of exercising - it's very meditative to only think about your own rhythmic movements and to picture your body in motion. Seems to work for me. I can't believe I didn't exercise like this for so long. I can't imagine ever stopping.

So lady-brett came over for a bit on Saturday. We ate some dinner that we cooked, watched some Eddie Izzard, and looked at the latest copy of Glamour magazine. Apparently, Britney Spears is their Woman of the Year, beating out Shoshana Johnson, the "other" Jessica Lynch (don't get me started...), Gloria Feldt, president of Planned Parenthood and tireless supporter of and fighter for Reproductive Rights, health, and safety, and Jessica Lange, who had become UNICEF's goodwill ambassador this year and traveled to the DRC (that's in Africa, ahem) to act as a liaison between Women suffering from civil-war related violence and those first world countries (who, us?) who should be at least aware of their situation, if not supporting them financially. So what exactly did Ms. Spears do that elevated her to a level above these other women? Think, think hard. Cause I'm trying to, and I'm not really getting anywhere.

Oh, she did start a "performing arts-dance" camp on CAPE COD for "underprivileged children". Guess they didn't figure putting it in an urban area. Guess Ms. Spears can't be bothered to travel to any yucky places to show her face at her own charitable organization once in a while. That was nice of you, Mariah. OOPS, I mean Britney. We have to reinforce those most important and realistic goals for our children, like looking the right way so that you'll become an actress, and dancing just the right way so that your thong doesn't fall down. Fat children need not apply?

Now I don't know the ins and outs of the camp, and perhaps I'm being a tad judgmental. I suppose I'm just tired of being expected as an on-looker to burst in to tears and get down on my knees to thank the lord for the latest celebrity acting camp foundation. How about getting some GD books for kids in the south bronx? How about adding onto some city schools so that kids don't have to do algebra in trailers anymore? Or perhaps a scholarship program? How about a mega-donation to the Save The Music foundation, which benefits all school music programs in need? Nah, teach a few kids a year to dance, boy-band style. They're not smart enough to figure out that on their own. After all, they are from working class families, where no music exists.

How lame of Glamour, though, to steer away from a more controversial or questionable "Woman of the Year" to put on their cover. Jessica Lange? But ew, she's over 23 and stuff, wouldn't look good on the cover. And women in Africa? Will our readers be able to identify with them the way they can identify with Britney Spears' cute little patootie and love of poor children? Definitely not. Gloria Felt? She's smart and stuff, but if we put her on the cover, people might think we're a feminist magazine or something! Oh no thank you! Shoshana Johnson? Wasn't she kind of chubby? And there's no movie about her, no book! She's the other Jessica Lynch, the one no one talks about! Forget that!

It is a political move, like everything else Mass Media does, putting Ms. Spears and her enormous heart on the front cover of Glamour in a tight little outfit. Which, by the way, wouldn't have looked as good on Shoshana Johnson, natch!

After our strange meandering between laughter and anger, lady-brett left to pick up Andrew from the airport, and Steve and I dragged ourselves to Q's to see a few friends. I'm glad we went, because the night turned into an "I can top that" fest of travel-story mishaps. I think Thomas' story about falling asleep in some Nepalese disco, waking up four hours (or four minutes, he has no idea which) later to a completely empty club, and then hopping into a rickshaw only to discover he really wasn't sure where his hotel was won. However, my West-Africa throwing up in the door-handle-and-window-less cab story came in a close second. Not to be forgotten: Steve's "hallucinations" of giant, red crawling things in some Ghanaian hotel room (Kumasi?) turning out not to be hallucinations, after all!

That was fun. Not fun: The "pimp and ho" contest the club was running. Wha? It's a gothy club. A "new wave" club, if you will. A club with a bunch of geeky-cool kids slinking around to electro music. So, Wha? Pimp and Ho? I suppose it was supposed to be a joke, but was it funny? Um… no.

I saw my friend Dee who I know from another club downstairs, which is where Steve, Thomas and I RAN after the music upstairs stopped so that the "pimp and ho" contest could start. I asked her what was going on upstairs and why, and she made a curt remark about class which we all laughed over. I never got my answer, though, and I'm still confused. Sigh.

I'm not going to logistically break things down right now about sex, sex-workers, and the exploitive pimp/hooker-male/female relationship that our pop culture just loves to replicate and thinks is rather funny. Many feminists, myself included, believe in sex-workers' rights; many don't. What most people agree upon, however, is the fact that no one should be owned or profited off of as if they were enslaved. To joke about it - sure it's funny for a moment, maybe even for two, when we parody things. To see it publicly drawn out, though, in such a vast forum, for TWENTY MINUTES; to see people taking their clothes off, blissfully unaware of any further implications...hmmm. I guess I didn't know what to think - I told myself to ignore it, but it was another screaming example of that "not thinkin much" thing that our culture does, I guess - something that again is representative of my larger concerns; how "funny" female exploitation is, how "funny" absolute male power is, how "funny" a stereotypically violent and degrading relationship is. Eh. Just my take...I have to think some more. I will not, however, tell myself I "think to much" – I used to ‘till I realized how much of an insult that can be sometimes. As I said, I'm not going to deconstruct everything here and now.

I did on Saturday night, though, over speakers blaring the Smiths, and would you believe my husband not only tolerated my ramblings, but seemed to be enthralled and just as interested in dissecting the occurrences as myself? Perhaps more so? Sigh. Me founds the perfect man, me did. Thomas even slapped me on the back a couple of times on Saturday and told me "Ya did good, kid", referring to Steve. I wholeheartedly concur.

I'm going to join him for some tea and a hug.

xoxoxo

T