Let’s Talk Images: “Single By Choice”

Web version of Boston Magazine's cover (Jan 2012)

Image Caption: The image is a full-color photograph of a young woman on a cheerful yellow background. The woman, on the left, is visible from mid-torso up, and is dressed in a black, form-fitting top. She’s slim, olive-skinned, brunette, with stylish glasses, long wavy hair, and large hoop earrings. She’s smiling broadly. The bold, black text to her left reads, “This is Terri. She’s successful, happy, and at 38, just fine with never getting married. Ever.”

To ring in the New Year, Boston Magazine ran a thoughtful piece about being an adult whose main purpose in life isn’t to get hitched. I know, right? When I saw the cover of the magazine while waiting in line at the grocery store a couple of weeks ago, my first thought was, “We’ve only just discovered this?” I mean, people have not been getting married since, well, forever. More or less.  But apparently, we need to keep re-discovering the fact that, as Samhita at Feministing puts it, “single women are not tragic, lonely were-witches.”

Regardless of article content, I’d like offer the image above (a web variation of the magazine cover) for analysis as part of the Let’s Talk Images series. Because after thinking to myself, “We’ve only just discovered this?” my second thought was, “Apparently we’re still waiting for the day when an article about not marrying isn’t illustrated by a woman.” Because of course, when we — as a culture — think “single people” we’re really thinking “single women.” Men, like women, often live into adulthood without marrying, or without a primary sexual relationship. Yet they are rarely the cause for concern single women are.

Booknotes: The Lives of Transgender People

I was super excited to get my hands on an advance review copy of The Lives of Transgender People by Genny Beemyn and Susan Rankin (Columbia Univ. Press, 2011) a couple of months ago. Lives is being touted as a unique and much-needed large-scale study of the identities and experiences of trans* individuals as described in their own words through an online questionnaire and qualitative email, phone, and in-person interviews. Beemyn and Rankin gathered data from 3,474 individuals via the questionnaire, and followed up with over four hundred of those respondents for more lengthy interviews. By encouraging interviewees to articulate their own identities outside of pre-determined research categories, the authors allowed their subjects to provide a rich and nuanced picture of the lived experience of being someone who experiences life outside the sex and gender binaries mainstream culture assumes are innate and largely inflexible. Most studies examining the lives of trans* people to-date, as the authors point out, have focused on the life experiences of people who identify as transsexual; an overwhelming majority of those studies focus on the experience of trans women (women assigned male sex/gender at birth). As the authors point out, this renders invisible those people who do not fall into neat, polarized gender categories (trans* or otherwise). Often, as documented in books such as Brainstorm and Sexing the Body, this stems from the research community seeking discrete identity-groups they can control and measure for difference. It also comes from researchers’ own unexamined assumptions concerning sex and gender difference, assumptions which are then reinforced by the results of studies that have been designed (in part) by jettisoning the data from individuals who don’t fit into the pre-determined sex and gender categories.

The Lives of Transgender People can be read, in part, as providing a model for a much different way of exploring trans* experiences — one which honors the myriad expressions of sex and gender which the human organism manifests.

The Iron Lady: A Guest Post by Not Mr. Big

There’s a novel called The New Centurions by Joseph Wambaugh that came out in 1971. It was the first cop novel to portray cops as more than guys in trenchcoats who walked around saying, “Just the facts, ma’am.” These cops were humans. They had lives. They drank, swore, fornicated, cried. In one scene, a young cop is nearly blown in half by a point-blank shotgun blast to the stomach. Somehow, he survives. After months and months of surgeries and painful rehabilitation, he is able to rejoin the LAPD. Thinner, weaker, but still headstrong. He is barely back on the job when, after interrupting a break-in, he takes another bullet to the stomach. As lays there, slipping away, the cop knows that his body was strong enough to survive one near-death experience, but not two.

It was this scene that played through my mind yesterday when I learned that my mother had been diagnosed with breast cancer. Again.

My grandmother died of breast cancer before I ever met her, when my mother was just 13 years old. With a family history of breast cancer, my mother has been undergoing mammograms for years. Four years ago, a routine mammogram revealed cancer. My mother underwent surgery, reconstruction, then chemotherapy and radiation. She lost every strand of hair, but never an ounce of strength. Making things harder on her were father’s medical issues. My father has never taken care of himself physically, and has been more than 100 pounds overweight for the last 20 years. Finally his strained joints gave out, necessitating a double hip replacement around the same time my mother was starting chemo. Ironically, though my mother’s ailment was the only one that was life-threatening, she was the one administering care when my father couldn’t walk.

First, We’d Have to Find a Pro-Choice Politician …

For my previous Blog for Choice posts see 2011, 2010 and 2008. 

Thanks to all the Harpies who contributed to the discussion that led to this post.

The theme for the 2012 Blog for Choice action day is “what will you do to help elect pro-choice candidates in 2012?” Which frankly is something I don’t have a whole lot of energy to blog around. 

Bad feminist activist me.

I’ve voted Democrat in every election since I could vote, so it’s not like I can make the radical decision to start voting “pro-choice.” And I’m not a big political organizer, so door-to-door canvassing is pretty much out. And to be be perfectly honest, most of the politicians out there aren’t speaking my language anyway. I talked with my mother on the telephone last Sunday and she asked when my partner and I were going to make plans to move to Canada. It was a joke, but only quasi in jest, since my mother and I — though not identical in our political thinking — share a politics that’s to the radical left of the Obama administration, and certainly shares little in common with any of the Republican candidates.

So how do you go about taking action to “help elect pro-choice candidates” when, essentially, you don’t feel there are any pro-choice candidates?

via

You work to change the culture. Which sometimes has the feeling of being that dung beetle from Microcosmos. It’s a long, slow slog and you’re probably never going to get the majority of folks to agree with you.

I Had To Share This. You’re Welcome.

Real live TV footage of Lord Voldemort—disguised as his human pajama-wearing avatar, Ralph Fiennes—reading erotic Harry Potter fanfic.

Poetry Saturdays: Li Po

Li Po, also known as Li Bai, was an 8th century Chinese poet, considered one of the greatest poets of the Tang Dynasty, China’s “golden age of poetry.” This poem was translated by one of his devotees, the 20th century American poet Ezra Pound.

The River-Merchant’s Wife

While my hair was still cut straight across my forehead
I played about the front gate, pulling flowers.
You came by on bamboo stilts, playing horse,
You walked about my seat, playing with blue plums.
And we went on living in the village of Chokan:
Two small people, without dislike or suspicion.
At fourteen I married you, sir,
So bashful I could only hide,
My frowning face turned to the wall.
Called after – never looking back.

Fifteen before I learnt to smile.
Yearned to be one with you forever.
You to be the Ever-Faithful.
I to not sit lonely, waiting.

Live-Blogging: Caitlin Flanagan on WBUR

via

I got home from one of those days in which I was dashing hither and yon doing work-related stuff and found what I really wanted to do was listen to Caitlin Flanagan fulminate in front of Tim Ashbrook and the ever-articulate Irin Carmon on On Point (WBUR). Basically, I listened to the episode so you don’t have to. Here’s are my “live blog” responses to the conversation.

For more considered reviews of Flanagan’s Girl Land and see here and here, and while you’re at it read Amanda Marcotte’s reflections on this same interview over at Pandagon.

Update: Irin’s own reflections on the interview, and Caitlin Flanagan’s concern trolling of Irin’s girlhood, can be found here.

1:57 – Caitlin Flanagan (CF): “Across time and culture there are certain things about [female adolescence] that are constant.” Wait, what? People making claims about anything being “constant” across time and culture is a huge red flag in my book. Especially when it’s something as historically situated as “adolescence” which, as historians of the family will tell you, is an invention of modernity.

2:48 – CF: “[Adolescence is an] emotionally exquisite experience.” For all girls? Fess up to the fact that you’re talking about yourself, not everyone. At least, I think she was talking about herself? It was confusing. The rose colored glasses were coming out big time here. And I speak as someone who was pretty happy with my life between the ages of twelve and twenty.

Snake Oil and Badvertising: FatGirl by Bliss

Somehow I got on the mailing list for Bliss Spa & Beauty, I suspect because I cashed in a gift certificate for a facial there a few years ago and now they own all my information. The products they sell are way too pricey for me, so normally I just recycle the catalogue. But today when I glanced at the cover, this caught my eye.

Yes, sisters, it’s Bliss’s FatGirl line of products. The sell copy reads:

This body-toning trio features all of our famous ‘Fatgirl’ favorites for 24/7 DIY dimple dashing. Massage each formula on daily for an easy-to-perform spa-quality slimming routine that’ll keep orange peel skin on the outs.
Includes full sizes of:
• bliss fatgirlslim, for caffeine-powered daytime firming
• bliss fatgirlscrub, for circulation-stimulating skin smoothing
• bliss fatgirlsleep, for soothing overnight blub-busting

Okay, for the record, if you have cellulite or subcutaneous fat, IT DOES NOT MATTER WHAT YOU RUB ON YOUR SKIN. Pricey lotions and scrubs, aromatherapy oils, the blood of virgins, it will not change a thing.

Let’s Talk Images: Health = Success?

I’ve decided to inaugurate a new occasional feature, “Let’s Talk Images,” in which I post an image seen somewhere in the world, make a few observations about why it struck me as a good candidate for analysis, and then open the floor to y’all as an opportunity to use your media literacy toolbox.

A few weeks ago, I started seeing this advertisement for health insurance on the public transit system here in Boston:

Quick Hit: TED talk on SOPA/PIPA

Via my sister Maggie.

Tuesday Teasers: Stuff I’ve Been Reading [#3]

brought to you by the Pond family

Hanna found this awesome fanvid celebrating the upcoming 50th anniversary of Doctor Who. There were tears in our household, so consider yourself warned.

Sarah Seltzer @ AlterNet | The Bloody, Twisted, Inverted World of Twilight. The subtitle of this piece is “Violent Vampire Sex, Demon-Babies and Overwhelming Female Desire.” I just finished an advance review copy of a forthcoming anthology on the Twilight phenomenon (review coming soon), and I was surprised Seltzer didn’t have a piece in it. Her analysis is as incisive as always.

Jessica Valenti @ A feminist work in progress | Why the Washington Post’s new lady blog is wrong for women. ”I’m all for WaPo featuring more women covering politics, but why oh why can’t they just – I don’t know - feature more women covering politics on the main site or pages?”

Danika @ The Lesbrary | Danika reviews Persistence: All Ways Butch and Femme edited by Ivan Coyote and Zena Sharman.   ”If I could guarantee one thing, it’s that at least one entry in this collection will piss you off.”

On the Media @ NPR | Movie Riffing in the Age of the Internet. With Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy of Mystery Science Theatre 3000.

katyah @ The F-Wod | Can’t You Take a Joke? Ever been told you’ve taken something “too seriously” but couldn’t quite formulate what was wrong with the comment? Katyah breaks it down.

Retiring Your Old Bras…For a Good Cause

After my post about Brallelujah bras—in which I confessed I’d be ditching my tired old bras—I got an e-mail from a reader, Jennifer, telling me that if I hadn’t tossed the bras already, she’d be happy to have them for Quilts for the Homeless, which recycles old bras. I pledged to send a bunch of my cast-off titslings and asked for the details, just in case y’all might like to donate some of your own. Jennifer says:

We use old bras (amongst other things) in the making of the quilts. We cut the bras into pieces that we use to fashion handles for the quilts and also keep them rolled up when not being used. We are always in need of old bras for our project and since they are cut up into pieces we can use the condition of them does not matter. We feel it is a great way to reuse/recycle something that would otherwise end up in a landfill into a worthwhile cause.

We would be very gratefull to have any old bras that you no longer want. Since we cut them up into pieces we can use the condition of the bras does not matter. We even prefer that you take a pair of scissors or a knife and make a cut between the cups of any bras that you send to us. We have had a woman in the past express concern that we would take donated bras and sell them, this eliminates any concern of this nature as the bras are no longer in a condition to wear again. It can also be a great stress reliever after a day of being poked in the ribs by an underwire with a mind of its own! The colder months are upon us and we are so short on old bras to use for the quilts that we have had to omit the handles on some of the quilts that we have made.

I didn’t want to post Jennifer’s address, but if you’re interested in donating too, contact her at Quilts4Homeless@yahoo.com and she’ll give you the address where you can send them. Mine get shipped out this week!