Maya Rudolph & Away We Go

Women are funny and Maya Rudolph is underrated. There I said it.
After reading this short but sweet interview with her, ostensibly about her new movie Away We Go, but actually about anything and everything in between, I am even more excited to see her in this movie when it comes out June 25! If you haven’t seen the preview, watch it here. The basic idea is that Maya and Jon Krasinski are expecting a child and decide to travel the country to try to decide where to establish their home; heartwarming hilarity will undoubtedly ensue.
It also stars a few of my other favorite people: Allison Janey, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Catherine O’Hara, Jim Halpert Jon Krasinski, and why not Jeff Daniels. [xxPleaseBeGoodxx]

In the above interview, she touches on women and comedy, something I’ve clearly been thinking about the last few days:

The Ladies of Television

Television may rot your brain, and hulu may be hastening our cultural demise, but I’m going to make a confession: I still watch it.  I love me a good evening sitting on the couch, laptop on lap, watching a good marathon of something (I think marathons are the downfall of civilization).  Recently the blogosphere has been jumping with discussions of women in television (Little Junkies here, and Jezebel here)– and while these lists are filled with kickin’ leadin’ ladies, I think there were a few glaring omissions. My 2 cents:

Dana Scully: X-files, FBI Special Agent and M.D. She doesn’t shy away from guts, blood, and the risk of death. She is fearless, a skeptic, and will only believe what can be proven through science; she can hold her own against Fox[y] Mulder. Not only that, she does it without slutting it up. I think we all can remember those shoulder pads, tapered pants, and pumps circa season 1-3… She is smart, grounded, motivated, believable, and an excellent example of what good writing and talented actresses can do on TV.

 

The Language of Naming: Conundrums Abound

As I’ve been reading Hell Hath No Fury: True Stories of Women at War from Antiquity to Iraq (information overload!  pick it up and get ready to LEARN!), the question of language has arisen time and time again; specifically why we call things what they are.  Prior to reading this book, I was under the impression that words like “aviator” and “ambassador” were gender-neutral.  In fact, according to the dictionary an aviator is a pilot and an ambassador is a diplomat.  So why, oh why, did the authors keep referring to women within these pages as an “aviatrix” or an “ambassadress” (they are real words and mean a female pilot and a female ambassadress respectively)?  Why, when -man isn’t a part of the word, is it necessary to create a separate title for women doing the exact same job?  On a related note, why are “serious” actresses now demanding to be called “actors” instead of “actresses”?

The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women

The Purity Myth: How America’s Obsession with Virginity is Hurting Young Women by Jessica Valenti

As an avid Feministing reader, I’ve been familiar with Valenti’s work for quite a while but had never picked up one of her books until now. Her first two books, Full Frontal Feminism and He’s a Stud, She’s a Slut, seemed a bit too Women’s Studies 101 for where I’m at, so I passed on reading them. But when I heard about The Purity Myth I knew I just had to read it; as a staunch anti abstinence-only advocate, I hoped I would find more substance in Valenti’s book than I found in the somewhat disappointing Virgin: An Untouched History by Hanne Blank. (I freely admit to my own research-ery snobbery–if your book doesn’t have a plethora of footnotes, I’m not going to believe your arguments.) Despite a few issues I had with the book, me and my highlighter were quite pleased.

Next Book: Hell Hath No Fury

 The next book we will be reading is Hell Hath No Fury: True Stories of Women at War from Antiquity to Iraq, by Rosalind Miles and Robin Cross. This book is a compilation of biographical essays covering all aspects of women at war: queens, commanders, doctors, spies, you name it– as the title says, from antiquity to the modern day.

About the authors:

ROSALIND MILES, Ph.D., author of Who Cooked the Last Supper?, is a critically acclaimed and internationally bestselling writer, a lecturer and a BBC broadcaster. Military historian ROBIN CROSS is the #1 bestselling author of more than thirty books, a Gulf War reporter, and a former advisor to the UK Ministry of Defence.

Read on!

Wife up!

Yep. I’m still thinking about Wifedom. (For someone who isn’t even sure wifehood is the way to go, I sure am a bit bride-, wife-, and marriage-obsessed. In a cerebral way. Really.) I can’t help it– this book was fantastic; it’s given me a lot to mentally chew on, and this is the partially digested cud I’ve come up with:

This just in…

…Pope dumps load of Catholic shaming on Cameroon.

Seriously? Still? It’s 09, Pope. Make like a modern human being and wake the frak up. Because I’m just dying to hear his explanation for how the promotion of condom use “can even increase the problem” of the spread of HIV/AIDS and other STDs. And how exactly a “spiritual and human awakening” and “friendship for those who suffer” will help stop the spread or find a cure?

While this rebuttal isn’t fantastic, it does make an interesting faith-based analogy: [T]here is nothing in the Bible about wearing a seat belt. But it would be foolish of any pastor not to tell his or her members to use the safety device when driving. Churches all across the country trust and love their fellow members, but you can bet that an accountant is employed by many churches to ensure that no one is stealing the tithes and offerings.

Pope Benedict surely loves God and sees him as his protector and provider, but he goes nowhere without armed bodyguards. The pope has to know that murder is against God’s will. He has to believe that every person has the choice to be a moral and upstanding person. Yet not everyone abides by those religious views, and his security is there to prevent him from being harmed.

So how are condoms any different?

As I said, Pope, I’m all ears.

If you like pictures…

I’m currently researching for a project on social tagging in museums so I’ve been spending a lot of time on museum websites and I’ve come across some really cool stuff I didn’t know was out there. So naturally I wanted to share with you.

The Library of Congress is on Flickr! To celebrate International Women’s Day on March 8th they went back and tagged all their pictures with “iwd”–check out the complete array of photos that cover everything from suffragettes to women working during the war (here’s a few of my favorites).

The Smithsonian has done the same, here’s their collection of photos of women on Flickr (a few of my favorites).

The Smithsonian also has an online portrait exhibit Women of Our Time that showcases portraits of everyone from Susan Faludi to Sylvia Plath to Ella Fitzgerald to Martha Graham.

Happy gazing!

TMZ can go to hell

Standing in line yesterday waiting for my morning bagel with cream cheese, I looked over to see the cover of the New York Post and was horrified. Literally horrified. And right now I’m alternating between seething anger and regretful appreciation. So let’s divide and conquer.

We’ve all heard about the, to use his words, “incident” between Chris Brown and Rihanna, two very high profile pop stars who have been dating for a while. Although the gossip mill spouts different details, the matter is that Chris Brown, age 19, beat the shit out of Rihanna a few weeks ago. Both of them have been MIA in the public realm since this occurred, although Brown issued the most bullshit public “apology” I have ever seen, never mentioning Rihanna by name, saying, “Words cannot begin to express how sorry and saddened I am over what transpired.” Transpired?! You beat her face in, you asshole! So all of this has been swirling around the tabloids with rumors over what exactly happened and how bad it really was.

Then on Thursday TMZ, the LA-based paparazzi-stalking media-whore site without a soul, somehow obtained the LAPD picture of Rihanna’s injuries. [eta: apparently they paid for the picture to the tune of $62,500.) The picture shows Rihanna’s swollen and bruised face, with contusions on her forehead, her lips puffed beyond recognition. As the LAPD vowed to investigate how the picture was leaked, it quickly made the rounds on multiple gossip blogs before showing up on the cover of the New York Post yesterday morning, which happened to be Rihanna’s 21^st birthday. Celebrations indeed.

So here I am, alternating between seething anger and regretful appreciation.

What’s it mean to be a wifey?

Before we delve into the depths of Anne Kingston’s delicious, decadent delight (The Meaning of Wife–I hope you’ve had time to pick up a copy!)— let’s talk about “wife.”

When I hear the word, I’m immediately hit with a wave of connotations: wedding dresses, Father of the Bride, housework, husbands, love?, divorce, yoga class, soccer mom, supermom, second, _____’s wife, loss of identity, work, swap, wedding rings, diamonds, trophys, gold diggers, happily ever after, proposals, the second shift, First Lady, the 1950s, partnership, ownership, equality?, and many, many, more things. I was having trouble sorting through all my wife-baggage, so I enlisted the help of my greatest resources: my friends, family, and Google — This is what I found:

Wikipedia tells me that the term has Middle English, Old English, and Germanic roots meaning “woman,” and Indo-European roots meaning “veiled or clothed,” allegedly referring to wedding veils. “Wife” simply meant “woman” at one point in time, and had nothing to do with marriage, as evidenced in words that remain today like “midwife.”

Who remembers Fairie Tale Theater? Having partially defined my childhood, I can’t talk about “wife” and not mention their version of the Princess and the Pea. (This was also the first thing a relative thought of when I asked about “wife”.) Their Prince is bored and “needs something more, something to make his relatively perfect life complete.” He thinks he might need a pet, like a little dog or a hamster– the Fool informs him that no, in fact, he needs a wife. “A wife?” “Yeah.” “Would that be better than a hamster?” “Much.” Watch a clip (~5:10 is where this clip takes place).