A Thousand Points of Lite

Okay, this is amazing. Newsweek has released an inside the beltway spoof of the (scripted) reality shows “The Hills” and “The City” which takes us inside the world of Barack Obama, or as his screen caption identifies him, “Barack, President”. Entitled “The District,” this parody mimics the montage-heavy, sound-byte laden editing style of the shows after which it is modeled, and also features a similar soundtrack of clubby pop, interspersed with narration by an Obama impersonator (on a side note, who is that guy and why couldn’t SNL get someone that good to play Obama? Fred Armisen, take note) who sets the stage and introduces a cast of characters, including Obama’s BFFs, Joe and Hillary, who, we are told, used to be Obama’s “frenemies” until they joined his team. In one great part, footage of an Obama press conference is spliced together with footage of the Tim Geithner confirmation hearings to look like they’re having a really awkward conversation. Here’s a bit of the opening narration, spoken by pseudo-Barack over a pulsating electronic dance beat:

“Previously on The District: I’m Barack. I was a senator from Illinois, living the Chicago dream with my wife, Michelle and my girls, Sasha and Malia. Then I heard about the opportunity of a lifetime. So I decided to risk it all, give up everything I know, and run for President. And then…I actually won. I moved into this amazing house in the one city where you can make a difference. In this city, you have to learn pretty quickly where you fit in. There are the Democrats, like my best friends, Joe and Hillary…we used to be frenemies when we were all running for the Democratic nomination. Now, they’re totally on Team Barack. Then there’s the Republican crowd–we don’t really see eye to eye on most issues. I think they’re just nervous because their old friend in the White House just moved back to Texas. Now, I’m going to have to figure out what I can change and who I can trust. And it all begins here…in the District.

Not only is this clip extremely entertaining, but it’s a great lead-in to a lot of issues I’m starting to think about in relation to a class I’m taking this semester, entitled “Cultural Industries, Mass Media & Celebrity”. In the class, we’re going to look at a lot of aspects of the history and social construction of celebrity and fame, a topic I find incredibly fascinating, and one I think ties in nicely with the kind of work I am potentially interested in doing in the future, with media reform and/or media literacy and education. It also ties in nicely with my interest in issues of women in the media–sexism, negative body image, etc. Each person in the class is in charge of presenting one week’s material and leading the class discussion for that week, and my week will deal with celebrity and politics, and the interesting overlaps and intersections thereof. I’m really excited about this topic and I think it’s a very timely one–to take the most obvious example, there’s no doubt that President Obama (nope, still no less thrilling to type) has become a huge celebrity, a “rock star” of epic proportions, and I look forward to looking at the phenomenon of politicians-as-celebrities (not to mention celebrities-as-politicians like Ronald Reagan, Arnold Schwarzenneger, and, if Blagojovich had had his way, Oprah) as well as other related phenomena, such as the success of Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert.

Of course, at this point, my presentation is weeks away and we’re only a week or so into class so I haven’t delved much into the theoretical work, but even before the class, I’d been fascinated by the way that the modern media machine entertainment-izes everything, even, or perhaps especially, politics. Not that I think the politician-as-hero or politician-as-celebrity is by any means a new phenomenon. But with each election cycle, the level of media saturation and, thus, media consumption increases and media thus plays an ever greater role in guiding and dictating the discourse. Many even go so far as to argue that the media decides the race, and I’m not sure that is such a stretch. Indeed, as I touched on previously, I do believe that Obama’s understanding of the intersections between politics and media and, therefore, the importance of a multi-media platform and he and his campaign staff’s skillful use of a variety of forms of media, from web video to text message updates, to Facebook outreach to his prime-time TV special days before the election, was a huge contributing factor in his success. And he and his family truly have become celebrities, they have appeared on the cover of US Weekly, been interviewed by  Ellen Degeneres and the ladies of The View, and Beanie Baby recently released Sasha and Malia dolls, much to the consternation of Michelle Obama.

Being an avid reader and watcher of  both political coverage from a variety of sources, from MSNBC to Media Matters, Wonkette to the Washington Post and, I must admit, entertainment and celebrity coverage from a similarly wide range of  print publications, online sources and television, it’s extremely interesting how similar the conventions, stylistic choices, and even the content of the two kinds of coverage can sometimes be. The truth is,  it seems pretty clearly that it’s not just the media–politicians and their ties with the rich and famous make it all too easy to see them as celebrities of sorts, themselves. After all, part of the reason “The District” works so well as parody is that it hits just close enough to the truth that it is really funny. 

I’m sure I’ll have lots more to add as I get deeper into this class and start reading more things that relate directly to this topic, particularly as I prepare for my in-class presentation. Until then, watch “The District“. Will Barack’s stimulus package be his one-way ticket to Loserville? Will Joe’s big mouth cause tensions to run high? Who will Hillary catch Michelle with in the Lincoln bedroom? Tune in next Monday for an all new episode of “The District”!

Vote of Confidence

The Feminist Majority Foundation website drew my attention to a new study conducted by the Girl Scout Research Institute showing an increase in political awareness, confidence, and engagement among girls ages 13-17 since the last time similar data was gathered, before the 2008 election cycle heated up. Fifty nine percent of the study’s 3, 284 female respondents stated that the election increased their confidence in being able to achieve their goals in the future and 55 percent said it increased their confidence levels in speaking and expressing their opinions on issues that matter to them. Also, according to the survey, both boys and girls showed substantially higher awareness of the difficulties and inequities faced by women in our society, with 43 percent agreeing with the statement that “girls have to work harder than boys in order to gain positions of leadership” compared with similar data gathered a year ago in which only 25 percent agreed with the same statement. Instead of being deterred by this heightened awareness of gender inequalities, however, four in ten young women surveyed stated that this election has had a positive impact on their desire to become a leader. 

I realize that data gathered through small-scale surveys of this type needs to be approached with healthy skepticism, particularly when the data-gathering organization is an affiliate of the Girl Scouts, an organization with a history of explicitly religious affiliations and ambiguous stances on homosexuality and other issues. That said, these findings make sense to me intuitively.

It’s long been with a sense of sadness, frustration, and sometimes embarrassment that I’ve witnessed the political and social apathy of women around me, in the media and in my circle of friends and acquaintances. This video, put out by  MobLogic.TV last year made a real impact on me because those types of reactions have grown so familiar to me. Of course, every person is not naturally interested in or engaged with politics, and that’s fine. But my experiences have shown a real disparity along gender lines. When I stop to really think about it, though, it’s totally understandable. It’s is pretty difficult to feel a sense of investment, engagement, or interest in a system that ignores and frequently disrespects your interests, a society in which the prevailing, respected voices in the media are still overwhelmingly male, in which many of the issues that most deeply effect women are trivialized, ignored, or dictated by legislative bodies which still consist predominantly of old, white men. After all, even today when there are more women in politics than ever before, only 17 out of 100 US Senators are women, as well as 74 out of 535 members of Congress and one out of nine Supreme Court justices. Shockingly, the proposed Equal Rights Amendment to the Constitution, which would provide comprehensive protection against gender discrimination, has still not been ratified, despite numerous attempts since it was first proposed in 1923 (as in, 86 years ago). In light of all of this and in the face of overwhelming daily reminders of our second-class status within our society, it is not hard to understand why it would be easy for women to feel disenfranchised and altogether disengaged from political and social issues and processes. 

The past year or two have provided much reason to be hopeful for the future and I think this survey provides concrete evidence of what many of us, whether we are women, African American, or neither, have been feeling. This election cycle represented many firsts and above all proved that, after the initial uncertainty and ad infinitum rehashing of whether America was “ready” for a black or woman President died down, a non-white or non-male candidate could be a legitimate candidate who, though not entirely escaping prejudices and double standards, would be judged above all on substance, on the issues. Furthermore, I believe that Obama’s victory is a victory for women in ways that extend beyond his feminist stances on issues like abortion, birth control, and poverty. Indeed, I believe that simply by breaking the mold, expanding the vision of what a President looks like, Obama’s presidency will help move us toward the election of a woman president, something I hope can be accomplished in the near future. 

Much has been made of the significance of Obama’s win. It has been written about and discussed as a historic milestone, and indeed it is. Yet, we must not allow smug self-congratulation to make us complacent. Yes, we have a black president, yes we had a viable woman candidate, but there is still only one black person in the United States Senate, and only 17 women. And writing about the House of Representatives’ 39 African American members recently, FiveThirtyEight.com’s Nate Silver pointed out that most of these representatives were elected in districts in which African Americans represented more than 50 percent of voters.

None of this is meant to diminish the kind of deserved increase in political and civic interest and engagement by women, African Americans or other historically disenfranchised groups represented by these new statistics. Indeed, this is exactly what is necessary in order to continue to push toward a more equal future. My only reason for returning to these sobering statistics is to urge continued vigilance and to suggest that, though an important foundation, enthusiasm and engagement on their own are not enough to enact change. Just as many have cautioned in the months since election day that we should not take Obama’s election as proof of the achievement of a “colorblind” society and be lulled into a false sense that our work in this department is over, I believe that it is important to recognize that greater optimism is only significant if it is justified, followed through in concrete ways. We are far from a gender-neutral or gender-equal society and if this newly energized, excited, and engaged generation of young girls is to find justification for these feelings, we must all work, starting today, to create a society which fosters not only optimism but the opportunities for these young women to channel this increased enthusiasm into concrete action and change.

Cease and Desist

The mainstream media’s seemingly endless barrage of banality with regard to First Lady fashion continues in the latest of a long string of articles devoted to dissecting the style choices of First Ladies past and present (in this case, Hillary Clinton, Laura Bush, and Michelle Obama). To read this article, one would think that Michelle Obama’s choice of gown for the upcoming Inaugural Ball was actually a key policy issue worthy of the review of an emergency lame duck session of Congress (or at least an audience vote on Dancing With the Stars). The thing is, if Michelle Obama loves clothes, that’s great. There’s nothing wrong with that and I’m not saying she shouldn’t. I just don’t understand why it was newsworthy in the first place, let alone after dozens if not hundreds of articles have meticulously dissected every fashion choice this woman makes, drawing sweeping sociological, psychological, and political conclusions from the color of a dress or the shape of a neckline.

This particular article quotes Mandi Norwood, former editor in chief of Shop Etc., who is now writing a style guide directed at Michelle Obama. Ms. Norwood says, “Most previous first ladies have appeared to believe that displaying an interest in fashion and style undermines the importance of their role. They’ve subscribed to the old-fashioned view that a woman should de-sexualize herself or dress like a man if she wants to be regarded as intelligent and of good conscience.” While I know looks and fashion can be a double-edged sword for women in the way Norwood is describing, she seems to discount another obvious possibility–maybe some of them just don’t care that much about it. Sure, Hillary Clinton definitely toned down her femininity while running for President, but as First Lady, it seems to me that her style choices were mostly not very premeditated–she just had other priorities. And the thing is, there should be nothing wrong with either Hillary Clinton’s lack of interest in fashion or Michelle Obama’s apparent love of it. Norwood’s comments almost seem to hint that any woman who doesn’t embrace fashion must be purposefully denying her womanhood and sexuality out of some old fashioned sensibility about roles for women. It’s pretty ludicrous to suggest that Hillary Clinton of all people, a woman who came pretty close to being President and is about to be named Secretary of State, is mired in antiquated ideas about gender roles.

As much as I believe that it’s perfectly fine for a strong, modern woman to be interested in fashion like Michelle Obama, I also think it’s equally fine for a strong, modern woman not to be, without people suggesting that she’s trying to deny her womanhood or desexualize herself. That’s what real empowerment is about–choices, and embracing the reality that womanhood and femininity are not monolithic concepts.

Ummm…

Hey, wait a minute! I didn't know Dana Carvey did a Hillary Clinton impression...

CNN is currently illustrating their front page top headline about Hillary Clinton’s possible- looking- more- likely- all- the- time- just- go- ahead- and- announce- it- already- why- don’t- you appointment as Obama’s Secretary of State with this picture. Seriously, people, in the past 6 months there have probably been literally millions of pictures taken of this woman–are you honestly going to tell me this was the best one you could find? Looks like someone on the night desk is getting payoff checks from Bill O’Reilly…

Note: I’m changing the title of this post–the words “Do Not Want!” above Hillary Clinton’s picture gave an impression I wasn’t going for!

The Tipping Point?

Apropos of nothing: Why is mainstream media so obsessed with giving every issue and topic its own special catch phrase and graphic?

Tina Brown’s newest project, the news blog The Daily Beast, today published the findings of a poll they conducted post-election looking at a broad array of issues pertaining to attitudes and opinions about women, politics, and the media. The poll, conducted with a group of 1000 men and women voters from across the political spectrum, reflects a lot of interesting disparities between the attitudes and beliefs of women and men as well as between younger and older women about whether and to what extent women face unequal treatment, particularly in the media. It also explored attitudes about women in power and their abilities to provide effective leadership, compared to men.

The official report of the findings, entitled  The Barrier That Didn’t Fall , does not break down the results along gender or other demographic lines, which is unfortunate because many of the most interesting findings have to do with the gaps that appear to exist between men’s and women’s perceptions of these issues. Fortunately, The Daily Beast included some of these results in their write-up of the poll results.

The study found that the women polled overwhelmingly felt that women receive unfair treatment by the media as well as in politics, in the workplace and in the armed forces. In fact, 61% of women agreed with the idea that there is a gender bias in the media, compared to only 19% who did not and fully 72% agreed that women were being treated unfairly in politics. Hillary Clinton, Sarah Palin, and Michelle Obama were all considered role models by the women in the survey and a whopping 85% agreed that a female President would bring valuable qualities to the office that most male candidates lack, rejecting the notion of women as too weak to effectively govern. Finally, 70% of women contended that candidates’ physical appearances and attributes are not a legitimate topic of discussion.

Several interesting facts complicate these numbers. First of all, older women seemed to feel more strongly about gender disparities and media treatment of women, including women in politics, than did younger women. This is not a huge surprise to me, though I continue to find it frustrating and at least somewhat counterintuitive. While I was at NOW last year, I had many discussions with people about the generational divisions within the feminist movement, and even witnessed the phenomenon firsthand, to a limited extent. I think  a lot of second-wave feminists still tend to understand women’s activism through the lens of the movement as it was in the ’60’s and ’70’s, and feel in some sense that the younger generation of feminists, my generation, take for granted many of the things for which they worked so hard. Meanwhile, younger feminists sometimes look at these older guard of feminists as out of touch with the current realities and issues emerging and reshaping the movement and the new avenues through which activism in the 21st century often occurs. I think part of the issue has to do with this changing face of activism– what it means to be an activist, how one asserts their views and opinions in a constructive way and how a social movement enacts change most effectively. So, while I think there is some element of apathy in many young people today (as there is, I think, with every generation), which is reflected in this survey and should certainly be actively worked on and counteracted, it seems to me that it’s often greatly over-emphasized or misunderstood. I think there is some amount of mutual generational misunderstanding that manifests itself in feminist activism and ends up being a divisional and counterproductive force within the movement.

Speaking of feminist activism, perhaps the most shocking (to me) statistic the poll results presented, though it probably shouldn’t have been, was the fact that only 20% of women surveyed would describe themselves as feminists. Even more shocking, only 17% would want a daughter to consider herself a feminist. Wow. I don’t really understand what it is about that little word that scares people in this country so intensely, but it does. Pat Robertson said at the 1992 Republican Convention, “The feminist agenda is not about equal rights for women. It is a socialist, anti-family political movement that encourages women to leave their husbands, kill their children, practice witchcraft, destroy capitalism, and become lesbians” and this archetype seems to be so deeply ingrained that even women whose lives exemplify the ideals of feminism often resist the label. I can’t count the number of times I’ve heard a woman say “I believe in women’s equality, but I’m not a feminist.”

Another disturbing set of findings of the poll were the disparities between men’s and women’s attitudes toward these issues. The men in the survey rejected the notion that a media bias against women existed, though they agreed that gender biases do exist in the realms of politics and the workplace. 40% of the men surveyed openly admitted to feeling sexist attitudes toward the idea of a woman President with about the same percentage contending that a male is “naturally more suited” to carrying out the duties of the highest office. There was also some disparity between women’s and men’s perceptions of equality in the home. While there was a more or less even split among women on whether they thought women in the US were treated equally in the home, the men surveyed contended by a 2/1 margin that no gender inequality existed in the home.

This poll presents so much raw data, it’s a little difficult to draw a single cohesive conclusion from it. But I agree with The Daily Beast’s analysis that the overwhelmingly negative and frustrated attitudes of the women in the survey towards the treatment of women in the media and politics as well as in the workplace, the military, and to some extent even in the home, suggests the potential for a revitalization of the women’s equality movement. I felt that kind of energy building tremendously during Hillary Clinton’s candidacy in a way I’ve never before felt so manifestly in my lifetime and while there were some that felt disillusioned by her loss of the nomination, I don’t think that energy I felt just vanished with Clinton’s capitulation. I don’t think it will by any means be a quick or straightforward process to give widespread, cohesive form to the broad frustrations expressed by the women in this survey, or to channel these feelings into constructive action, but I do believe that now is a crucial moment to try to do so. To put it in the most trite way possible, organizations and movements of reform and change need to strike while the iron is hot, while the treatment of Hillary Clinton, Michelle Obama and Sarah Palin is still fresh in people’s minds and while these issues still have people fired up and ready for change.

Nattering Nabobs of Negativism

 

 

I know, Hillary...it's hard to suffer fools

 

 

I thought I’d post a brief personal response I wrote for a class in which we were discussing Laura Mulvey’s “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema” and Richard Dyer’s “Stereotyping“. Mulvey discusses the construction of gender and the “male gaze” and the reification of patriarchal values through film. Dyer looks at stereotypical constructions of homosexuality through film, looking specifically at the context of films with gay protagonists or in which gay relationships are represented.

 

While both Mulvey and Dyer were using the specific context of cinema to discuss gender portrayals and relationships in the media, it kept occurring to me while reading that many of the points they were making were very much applicable and transferable to issues of gender in other forms of media. While reading Laura Mulvey’s discussion of women as embodying “castration anxiety” in her article “Visual Pleasure and Narrative Cinema”, for example, I immediately thought of the Hillary Clinton nutcracker that was marketed and sold during her run for the presidency. Last year, while working as an intern for the National Organization for Women, I wrote an article about sexist news coverage of Hillary Clinton and other female politicians and I found many of Mulvey’s points about women in cinema to be applicable to the portrayals of women politicians by the news media. 

 

My observation has been that many women politicians, particularly ones as powerful, intelligent, and vocal as Hillary Clinton or Nancy Pelosi, represent a real threat to patriarchal structures in as much as they are transgressive of the exact same kind of proscribed expectations and power structures used to construct and control female characters in cinema, as Mulvey describes. Women figures in the media, both fictional characters and real people, who command notoriety for their accomplishments, their intellects, and their power and who do not allow themselves to be one-dimensionalized into merely objects of visual pleasure, molded into safe, controllable caricatures of womanhood to be gazed upon by men, present a real threat to many of the fundamental power structures underlying our society. Therefore, the media frequently tries to apply what Mulvey defines as the “male gaze” to women politicians, shoving them into traditional, patriarchal, unthreatening models of womanhood to avoid acknowledging the more complicated, transgressive implications of having such powerful, intelligent women in the public sphere.

 

 My article discusses the way in which much mainstream media clearly feels threatened and unsure of what to do with women like Hillary Clinton and I present some specific examples of the way that women politicians are diminished by the media through the focus put on their appearances, clothes choices, and home decorating skills as well as mocked and criticized for displaying behaviors and attributes considered normatively masculine.

The Metamorphosis of Michelle Obama

"No way, I get my hosiery at Target, too! Fist bumps and Cosmos all around, ladies."

In an excellent article published on Salon.com on November 12, 2008, Rebecca Traister looks at Michelle Obama, a Harvard educated lawyer whose career and ambitions have largely taken a backburner to her husband’s as his political career has blossomed. She discusses the way that the media has been all too happy to embrace the uncontroversial, soccer mom, J. Crew shopping, White House decorating incarnation of Michelle Obama that has emerged over the course of the campaign and continues to be forwarded, not only by the media, but by the Obama campaign and Michelle Obama herself. Traister deals with many of the same tensions I explored in an article I wrote last year for the National Organization for Women in which I explored the coverage of women politicians like Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi by the mainstream media (it can be found here). Although Michelle Obama is not a politician, she is a political wife, and, as the future First Lady, a political figure who has the potential to be a very influencial female figure in American society.

Traister writes that:

It’s as though the American media — exhausted after the progressive exertions of having to be respectful and not misogynist about two women running for political office — has loosened its belt and is relaxing back into a world in which all you have to do is write about what they wear and how they mother

I think this analysis is spot-on. I’ve had this same thought at many, many moments over the past months and, even in the midst of the incredible euphoria and sense of hope that I have felt in the days since Obama’s election, these impressions lingered, nagging in the periphery of my mind. Just as some small part of me still mourns the fact that Hillary Clinton, perhaps the only woman in the country at this point so well situated to take her run for President all the way, was unable to achieve the highest office in the land, the trajectory of the media portrayals of Michelle Obama, as well as the unquestioned expectation that she play second fiddle to her husband and conform to an image of femininity at its most unthreatening, have somewhat tempered the victory for me. Don’t get me wrong–I am absolutely thrilled that Barack Obama will be our next President. I volunteered and donated money to his campaign and felt greater joy on the night of November 4th than I can remember experiencing in a very long time. I simply hope that in all the hullabaloo over the historic nature of Obama’s election, we don’t take a pass on women–their portrayals by the media and the incredible double standards still imposed on them, as exemplified by Michelle Obama.

Anyway, enough from me–check out Traister’s article here.