The Rage Diaries

Spare me all that baby mama drama

Oh, Fox News, you crazy little vixen. You've just been at sixes and sevens since your number-one lady target eased out of the race. First there was E.D. Hill working herself into a tizzy over the Obamas' secret signal to Hizbollah, and now there's producer Jessica Herzberg's decision to refer to Michelle Obama as a "baby mama."

Below are the issues I have with this little lapse in judgment:

1. "Baby mama" is pretty much understood to be a term that men use to refer to the women they impregnate, but do not maintain a sustained partnership with. Michelle Obama bore her first child after six years of marriage to Barack Obama. In other words, she does not fall within the colloquially understood definition of "baby mama."

2. It is not okay to call Michelle Obama a "baby mama" just because she once referred to her husband as "my baby's daddy." Not to get all "it depends on what the definition of 'is' is," but that apostrophe matters; it's Michelle basically calling him "the father of my children" in a more colloquial manner. Again: not the moral equivalent of calling someone a "baby mama."

2a. And even if Michelle Obama did call her husband a "baby daddy" (which she did not), that doesn't make it okay for any news organization to do so. If you think that any cable news channel calling Michelle Obama  a "baby mama" is okay because you heard once (and incorrectly) that she called her husband a baby daddy, then I'm sure you're fine with any cable channel calling John McCain a cocksucker because you read that he once called his wife a cunt. What? It's not? Then neither is your specious "reasoning" about why it's okay for national news organizations to hang loaded labels on people.

3. And let's not kid ourselves: the phrase "baby mama" is loaded. Just because Tina Fey feels free to use it at the box office doesn't make it okay for every woman to slap it on to other women*. "Baby mama" is another way of saying "welfare queen," and deliberately applying it to the well-educated and accomplished Michelle Obama is a way to make people think, "Oh, Christ, another one of them no-count [fill in the blanks]." It's a race card.

So, yeah. I have a problem with referring to Michelle Obama as anyone's baby mama. I have a problem with Jessica Herzberg's judgment. And I have a problem with anyone who tries to defend what Fox did here. Anyone got a problem with that?

Enter the Ellen Jamesians

This primary season was bound to create a national dialogue about any one of a number of deep divides in the U.S. -- class, ideology, race or gender. What I am finding interesting is that in declaring Obama the winner, we haven't really opened up a dialogue on racism, but on feminism.

Witness the cluster of blog posts and articles that have emerged since Tuesday:

Hose down

Do y'all have to wear pantyhose to work?

I don't -- never have, and I hope I never will. I am apparently quite typical for my generation, according to today's WSJ:

For women who entered the work force before the 1990s, hose were considered as necessary as underwear. But many twentysomethings have never worn panty hose at all.

The fashion shift has left some baby boomer managers feeling that their hose make them look frumpy. Kathy Garland, the 54-year-old chairwoman of the Northern Dallas area for the National Association of Women Business Owners, says she finally threw out a bag full of hose last week. An executive coach herself, she noticed a few years ago that she was the only woman wearing hose at a formal business fund-raiser. "Younger women don't even think about panty hose," she says.

-- "Bare-Legged Ladies: Hosiery Reveals Office Divide."

Although the column ponders whether ties are the male sartorial equivalent of pantyhose, I call shenanigans on that. Comfort is not the primary issue; cost is. Last time I checked, men weren't rolling their eyes because their repp tie had just gotten a run in it. Pantyhose are a ripoff and I'm glad to see them falling out of style.

One movie I don't think I'll be seeing

The Women holds a permanent spot on my Top Ten Movies Of All Time list. I watch that sucker a few times a year and am always struck anew by something in it. I can recite entire chunks of dialogue or, more often, just confuse people by randomly holding up my hands and exclaiming, "I've had two years to grow claws, Mother! In Jungle Red!"

The casting is perfect, the direction is perfect, the attention to detail is perfect.

Well, I have just seen the trailer for the remake and ... oh, it is a crime. You know what? I don't care that this movie apparently functioned as the Employment Act for actresses over 20 in Hollywood. I care that the trailer suggests that this is a chick-flick caper instead of the coolly intelligent and elegantly incisive social comedy of the original. You do not get points for casting lots of the ladyfolks when you cast them in something that is dumber than the original. It insults both the actresses and the audience.

The Women is such a fantastic movie. Seeing this trailer makes me wonder what's next -- Goodfellas reimagined with Jonah Hill as Henry Hill?

A semester's worth of semiotic interpretation

Last night, this picture topped the NYT front page, courtesy of Joshua Roberts at Getty Images.

The caption reads, "A supporter of Hillary Rodham Clinton expressed disappointment after Democratic officials chose to give delegates from Florida and Michigan half-votes." It illustrates this article.

My own thoughts on the picture are mixed. On the one hand, it shows the media-generated confusion that broke with the verdict. See the glare of the camera lights behind the woman's left shoulder, the microphones stuck in her face. Her expression appears evaluative, firm, but somehow on guard; this woman knows she's being recorded for posterity and is thinking beyond what she says in the moment. I think it does a good job of capturing this whole primary schmazz from the perspective of the people who are merely interested bystanders.

On the other hand: could a major media organ find a more stereotypical picture to represent the Clinton campaign and its supporters? I feel that showing a tired, harried and not-terribly-glamorous woman  -- one who appears to be vigorously making an argument -- is a way of evoking every shallow slam levied against the candidate and her most ardent base. Were I a women's studies teacher, I'd be bringing it in this week to talk about what the photo was supposed to be illustrating.

I freely admit that my reading of the photo is influenced by my own perceptions of the candidates, of the media coverage of the election, and of what I'd like the narrative to be. So how about you? What do you think when you see this photo?

Not identifying with identity politics

I have always called myself a feminist. However, after reading all of the below, I'm beginning to think someone's going to knock on my door and revoke my feminist cred.

I no longer see the allure of the glossies

I was caught without reading material one night last week, so I picked up a copy of Allure and read it on the ferry and later into the night. It was the first time since Blueprint went under that I've picked up a magazine specifically aimed at the ladies, so I think my system was kind of unprepared for the shock*.

After a few minutes of leafing through, all I could think was, I just paid four bucks for a publication that does nothing but tell me how ugly I am. Good lord, I used to subscribe to these things! And I did. I used to justify it with arguments like, "It's mind candy." Swear to God -- every semester at finals time, I'd load up on Cosmo, Glamour, Mademoiselle, Vogue and Self and binge on the glossies between study sessions. All summer, the other lifeguards and I would bring in fresh issues and flip through them on breaks.

Have these things gotten more negative? Have the standards for women's appearances been stealthily climbing up for the last ten years? Or has my tolerance for this crap dropped because I'm no longer exposing myself to it on a regular basis? I don't know. Evidently, the spring issue of Ms. tackles this question, determines that chick media can lead to women's low political efficacy, and according to Jezebel, concludes:

"My research with college age women indicates that the less women consume media, the less they self-objectify, particularly if they avoid fashion magazines. [Emphasis ours.] By shutting out media, girls and women can create mental and emotional space for true self-exploration."

I haven't had a chance to read the article yet, but I'd like to explore this thesis more in-depth. It seems sort of weird that any article blaming the media for making women less engaged in the world around them would also advocate dropping media consumption. How are women supposed to get involved in the world when they don't know anything about it? Something's missing -- either in the article summary or the article itself.

My most consistent media exposures at this point are NPR, Comedy Central and the WSJ. Given my recent reaction to Allure, I'm clearly out of touch with whatever pervasive media is sending negative messages about women's appearance. But I am wondering: anyone else notice their reactions to ads changing after upping or lowering their chick-media consumption?

Our daughters' daughters will adore us

Today's reading brings not one, but two articles examining how Hillary Clinton's presidential candidacy has forced younger women to confront the strains of sexism still evident in American society. Rebecca Traister wrote "Hey, Obama Boys, Back Off Already!" for Salon, and Amanda Fortini wrote "The Fourth Wave" for New York.

The starting premise for both pieces: Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign is the needle that's lanced the suppurating boil of sexism in America. And now women are shocked -- shocked! -- to discover that plenty of people think that the ladyfolk aren't really capable of doing anything more than thinking about childcare and checking their horoscopes online.

Then you can ladle on a few more arguments. Did you know that apparently women in their 20s, 30s and 40s are feeling intense "peer pressure" to vote for Barack Obama?  That's there's an oppressive atmosphere of Obama-fascism? According to Fortini's "anecdotal research" (her words, not mine), it's true. Whatever will these poor beleaguered women do when they get to the voting booth? (Except, you know, go vote in complete confidentiality as is the right of all Americans, then tell everyone that their vote is their own private business. Or is that crazy talk?)

But wait -- there's more.

Shine on, crazy website

Do you gravitate toward online portals targeted to the ladyfolks?

Yahoo launched a portal for women aged 25-55 called Shine (no, it's not an April Fool's joke) with above-the-fold content like "Fancy Lingerie You Can Afford" and a "cheat sheet" of the day's news including

1. Al Gore launches a $300 million climate change campaign
2. Rich men behaving badly: how the super-rich just don't care
3. She's baa-aaaack: Kathie Lee Gifford to join the Today Show as host
4. Reports of March Madness affecting worker productivity are bogus
5. "The View" tackles racism, Whoopi declares " this is a racist country"

Can you spot a theme in these headlines? Other than "Hey, there's nothing there about the Treasury secretary's proposed overhaul of the Fed"?

Brandon Holley -- whom media types will recognize as a longtime ladymag editor -- writes of Shine:

[W]e wanted to avoid all of the buckets that advertisers or marketers tend to put us in. We didn’t want to be a site just for moms or just for single or working women, or any specific demo- or psychographic. We wanted to create a smart, dynamic place for women to gather, get info, and connect with each other and the world around them.

I guess "women" isn't really a bucket then?

This new entry into the women's-portal business is interesting if only because current ladysites like Oxygen and iVillage are still casting about for cultural relevance or dominance:

NBC is hoping that [Bravo head Lauren Zalaznick] will devise some kind of Bravo-style leap for the Oxygen channel, where ratings have grown in the last year but still has a negligible profile among most viewers.

“Oxygen viewers have not settled into adult growth patterns,” Ms. Zalaznick said.

[...]

The iVillage franchise remains a trouble spot. Since NBC Universal paid — most analysts say overpaid — $600 million for the site in 2006, it has struggled to forge an identity within the company, even though iVillage’s online revenue has improved.

-- "Bravo's Chief Reaches Out to the Prosperous Urban Woman," NYT, Mar 31, 08

(This, by the way, swings from a lede that talks about how Bravo has become a magnet for the ladyviewers. I will admit, I do dig some of Bravo's programming, but I was unaware that my enjoyment of Shear Genius was in any way tied to my ovaries. I had thought it was tied to my enjoyment of watching skilled professionals compete in their chosen field. And also, I kept hoping Tabitha would ritualistically kill Tyson and eat his heart. What? Is that reason not gendered enough?)

Anyway -- do you find value in sites that are visibly and aggressively branded for one gender over another? Are men from Deadspin and women from Jezebel? And are you too tired to be outraged that once again, a "work and money" channel for women prominently features an idea to make a note holder from a pretty fork and tips on reducing your grocery bill, instead of a primer on recession-proofing your investing and and "everyday economics" tutorial on what hit your 401(k) will take if you drop out of an employer-matching program for a few years?

I could get behind a speech like this

If we in this country are ever going to move beyond Hooters, beyond date rape, beyond the wage gap and the glass ceiling, beyond Girls Gone Wild, and bulimic 12-year-olds, we need to start working together. We need to work with men on the gender signals called out by the media and with business about the value of women workers. We need to talk to one another respectfully and listen to one another's complaints.

-- "What if Hillary Clinton Gave a Speech about Gender? (And Why She Won't)," Slate, Mar 21, 08

Putting aside the premise of the piece for a moment -- that HRC won't ever give a speech on gender because she's not about transcending old insults so much as she is about profiting from them -- putting that aside, I urge you all to look at the outline of this never-to-be-given speech. I excerpted part of it above. Many of the other ten points had me nodding along, including:

3) But I would ask the women of this country to stop engaging in petty warfare over who has suffered more—women or blacks, women or men—as it is corrosive and fruitless. This country was founded on the promise that you can become the best thing you can dream for yourself; you are not trapped by the worst thing that's ever happened to you.

4) Things have improved for women in America in the last decades. They are not perfect; there is still much to be done. But women have made enormous strides in a few short decades, and to suggest otherwise is to devalue the life's work of too many heroes of the women's movement.

5) It is possible, indeed it is probable, that just as women have faced barriers and obstacles and derision, so have Hispanics, so have blacks, and so have men. No one in America can corner the market on suffering. Who the hell wants to spend their life in a corner, anyhow?

Like I said -- take or leave the analysis of why HRC isn't going to give this speech. But I think some of the points can be discussed anyway.