Prepping for SATC2

Tomorrow night I'm going to a preview screening of Sex and the City 2 in Denver in order to write a review for Ms. Magazine's blog (which I will of course link to on this blog!). In order to prepare for being "Carried Away" (indeed), here are a few things of interest I came across on the interwebs this week that, for one reason or another, reminded me of the show.

First, I'm enjoying Alexandra Tweten's blog series on online dating as an "out" feminist over at the Ms. blog. Check out her most recent post as well as her previous posts.

Second, I just discovered Feminist Frequency's YouTube channel (via Sociological Images). Check out, for example, this great little video explaining the Bechdel Test for women in movies:



Lastly, I found Angela Bonavoglia's book review of Leora Tannenbaum’s new book, Bad Shoes and the Women Who Love Them compelling and incredibly apropos for a SATC-themed post. Bonaboglia writes,

At once fanciful (with illustrations by Vanessa Davis), disturbing, informative, understanding and preachy, [the book] is a captivating attempt to address the reality that many women—including feminists– insist on wearing “sexy” shoes but need some ground rules for how not to wreck their feet in the process.

What’s really interesting about Tannenbaum’s approach is the artful way that she pulls you in, empathizes, withholds judgment, then stuns you with her analysis.

She does this at the end of the book, after romps through chapters on what you should know about your feet, on “toetox” (cosmetic surgery of the foot), on the history of high heels and on the sex life of women’s shoes. Then, after gaining a reader’s trust, she asks, ever so gently, that the reader consider the “many parallels we can draw between Chinese footbinding and Western women wearing high heels.”

You can check out the rest of the article here.

Wish me luck at the preview tomorrow. I'm afraid it might be a mob scene!

All glamed up and nowhere to go?: Tina Fey in Vanity Fair

People who know me probably know that I have a bit of a crush on Tina Fey. ("Only a bit?" I can hear my partner ask incredulously upon reading this.) It's mostly an intellectual crush (that's what I'm telling myself), with a dash of wanting to be her and a sprinkling of finding her incredibly charming. Never mind. The point is, to say I'm biased would be an understatement, and I just want to admit that upfront, though I am going to try to be as objective as I can here.

There's been a little buzz recently because Fey is all sexed-up on the cover, and in the pages, of the January 2009 Vanity Fair. The article/interview, by Maureen Dowd, and its accompanying photos, taken by Annie Leibovitz, provide a more in-depth portrait of Fey than I feel we've heretofore seen, at least in a big-name publication. Fey is depicted as down-to-earth, a little proper, incredibly smart, snarky and self-possessed. However, she's also portrayed as someone who transformed in a matter of a few years from a slightly dowdy, chubby and "not fit for the spotlight" writer to a "sexy librarian," glamourpuss, superlative star. It's like Wonder Woman: one minute she's Diana Prince, supposedly awkward, unassuming secretary, and the next minute she's Wonder Woman, beautiful and superior in every way--a woman everyone wants to be (and have). Herein lies the problem, for some.

In the lengthy Vanity Fair interview, Dowd makes certain to signpost Fey's transformation. For example, she recalls a conversation with Fey's co-star Alec Baldwin:

Ah, I say, so you’re the one who encouraged Fey to wear so many low-cut tops, even though Lemon [Fey's character on her TV show 30 Rock] seems like the crewneck-sweater type. “There is Liz Lemon and there is Liz Lemon as portrayed by a leading actress in a TV show,” Baldwin responds with amused and amusing disdain. “It’s not a documentary. Tina’s a beautiful girl. We needed to get the pillows fluffed on the sofa and we needed to get the drapes steamed, and we needed to get everything all nice and get the presentation just right. Tina always played the cute, nerdy girl. Tina on the news, the glasses. There was not a big glamour quotient for her. Now there is.

On the one hand, Baldwin's unmitigated assertions that Fey needed to glam-up, no questions asked, are certainly problematic, though not surprising (remember folks, this is national television we're talking about). It's frustrating that television ratings depend in part on pretty actors--although, this does not just apply to women--and characters that are attractive on a surface level as well as being likable on a personality level (or, if not likable, at least someone with whom you can identify, love to hate, etc.). On the other hand, the idea that a smart, self-described nerd has become an (inter)national celebrity is kind of great. And, admit it, would you really say no to professional stylists and a Vanity Fair photo shoot? Probably not. If so, you're more principled than I am.

I kind of like the way Salon Broadsheet writer, Sarah Hepola, puts in it her short piece, The sexing up of Tina Fey:

Maybe you find this depressing (a brilliant comic mind inevitably reduced to shaking her cleavage). Maybe you find this empowering (a brilliant comic mind finally shaking her cleavage!). Either way, it only confirms what many of us have known for a long time: Tina Fey is one of the most fascinating celebrities out there right now.

Moreover, Fey's level of glamour on 30 Rock isn't anything to get too worked up about. In Vanity Fair, yes, she is definitely rendered sultry and hot (in an appealing, slightly geeky way that's Fey's trademark). But in 30 Rock? Sure, she's a beautiful woman, but her character isn't glamed up in any way that I can tell (despite Baldwin's insistence). At most she shows a little cleavage, but otherwise Liz Lemon wears casual clothes, appears to wear little or no makeup (thought obviously Fey has to be wearing makeup for the cameras), rarely wears heels or revealing clothing, and doesn't really style her hair (someone even went through the trouble of cataloging the style choices of Lemon as a character). The most dressed up I've seen Lemon is in the first few minutes of this season's premiere, an episode in which it was made clear over and over again that trying to be someone you're not is not going to end well.

Most importantly--and way more importantly than the fashion/glamour question, which I personally think is over-hyped in most considerations of whether people are suited for feminist role-model-dom--Fey's character Liz Lemon is feminist, and has clearly stated herself as such (and presumably so has Fey, though I've not seen any explicit mention--someone find one for me, please?). And while Lemon faces all those conventional/stereotypical third-wave feminist, career-woman problems (difficulty finding a decent boyfriend, desire to have children before she gets too old, fighting the old boy's network at every turn), she never contemplates giving up her career or settling for an asshole guy just so she won't be alone. Liz Lemon is definitely not portrayed as someone to pity, but someone with whom we can identify, even as we're laughing at and with her. And even in those moments when we're given license to laugh at her "feminism" (i.e. unwillingness to submit herself to patriarchal standards of beauty or society's expectations of female behavior), we're always provided with an equally amusing contrast (indicating that the way women are expected to act is pretty ridiculous, too):



All that said, it's one thing to talk about how Liz Lemon the character and 30 Rock the show embody egalitarian principles and espouse, under the guise of goofiness and through the veil of humor, a feminist ideology. It's another thing entirely to consider how Fey comes across in her Vanity Fair interview. On the one hand, Fey makes some astute observations about interpretations of her encounter with Governor Palin:

Around the same time, Fey saw an entertainment reporter on TV say that Palin had been gracious toward Fey, but Fey hadn’t been gracious toward Palin. “What made me super-mad about it,” Fey says later, “was that it seemed very sexist toward me and her. The implication was that she’s so fragile, which she is not. She’s a strong woman. And then, also, it was sexist because, like, who would ever go on the news and say, ‘Well, I thought it was sort of mean to Richard Nixon when Dan Aykroyd played him,’ and ‘That seemed awful mean to George Bush when Will Ferrell did it.’ And it’s like, No, that’s not the thing. This is a comedy sketch on a comedy show.” “Mean,” we agreed, was a word that tends to get used on women who do satirical humor and, as she says, “gay guys.”

She's totally right, and it's great that she has no qualms (not that she should) expressing her thoughts on the topic. Funny woman making fun of another woman = bitchy and mean. Funny man making fun of another man = hilarious. What's that all about?

On the other hand, in the interview, Fey talks about her horror at discovering her husband had gone to a strip club:

‘“I love to play strippers and to imitate them,’” says Fey. ‘I love using that idea for comedy, but the idea of actually going there? I feel like we all need to be better than that. That industry needs to die, by all of us being a little bit better than that.’”

I'm a little conflicted about this. Octogalore (in an excellent picking-apart of all the inconsistencies in the interview) interprets this to mean that Fey would never consider being a stripper, whereas I (and a few other commentors) read Fey's comment as not wanting to go to strip clubs (as she mentions in the previous paragraph her husband had done). Octogalore writes

Also, Tina prefers the idea of strippers “for comedy,” “to imitate them.” When someone’s a little more in need, maybe has fewer options for making the big bucks like Tina makes, and does things – maybe sometimes voluntarily and sometimes not – that make her appear to be a caricature of something other than the Republican VP nominee, that’s apparently good comic fun for Tina.

But Tina’s proof that the industry, for better or worse, isn’t going to die. Whether we are “better,” like Tina, or worse, like I used to be, or in Tina’s lexicon, much worse – there is still going to be a market for women using our sexuality. As long as that market offers better pay than other accessible markets for our skills, then economic equilibrium will dictate supply. Not Tina’s ideas about virtue.

While I agree with Octogalore for the most part, I think she might be a little harsh (not to mention that I'm still not convinced Fey didn't just mean that she's against going to strip clubs). I see a difference between believing, as Fey suggests she does, that stripping is degrading to women (which I, for the record, don't actually think is necessarily the case, though it can be) and being willing/wanting to play up your own sexuality a little bit for the camera (be it photographic or televisual). Not that these two things aren't at all related, but the parallel can't be seamlessly drawn.

In the end, this is probably something I have to give more thought. How accountable can we hold our celebrity idols/role models for the contradictions in their own beliefs? I'm eager to hear your thoughts. Do you think 30 Rock is a feminist show? Do you think Fey playing up her sexuality negates her standing as a feminist role-model? Do you think Fey is being judgmental and hypocritical about women using their sexuality and is, hence, a "bad" feminist? And how do we decide what makes a good or bad feminist?

Fashion on the Campaign Trail

I just wanted to post a link to a great article in the Washington Post by Robin Givhan, who won a Pulitzer Prize for her fashion criticism last year (no you didn't read that wrong, fashion IS Pulitzer worthy). The article is an analysis of fashion at the conventions including the men-folk. Givhan note a definite 60s influence on the women's fashion, which she attributes to Mad Men. I've been seeing this 60's flavor all over stores and magazines this season, and I think it may also have something to do with a kind of Camelot-Obama kind of nostalgia. More on that and the fate of the pants-suits later....

Tyra Banks for President!

In my journey’s through this months phone book size fall fashion magazines, I ran across a curious photo spread. Harper’s Bazaar cover girl Tyra Banks is featured in the role of Michelle Obama along with a male model playing Barack Obama, and two girls as the Obama daughters. Now fashion photos are often a bit odd, especially the ones on Ms. Banks’ Top Model, but this one seemed particularly strange. See the photos here.

Why is Tyra Banks playing the role of first lady and not Madame President herself. Fashion photography is all about fantasy anyway, not to mention Hillary Clinton who let us remember was pretty close to being the Democratic nominee for the Presidency. The spread seems especially odd now that Sarah Palin is the Republican candidate for Vice President, which of course Bazaar could not have predicted. It seems odd to have Tyra type cast as Michelle Obama, when the accompanying article focuses on her as a smart business woman: "what's cool about Banks, who now earns an estimated $23 million a year, is that she was never too cool to be commercial. By doing so, she hasn't just broken borders — of ethnicity, of cynicism, of fashion cliché — she has broken ground." The article goes on to note that "Banks has traded in her pretty for something far more compelling: a voice in the culture." Banks talks in the article about her own career, and her efforts to build a career after the runway. The interviewer, Laura Brown, also asked Bank's about the role of the first lady:
"If Banks ever reached the highest office in the land, she would dress the part. 'I'd wear a V-neck shift and a two-inch heel. Even if the president were taller, I would keep them low. Otherwise it gets a little too sexy.'"

Maybe I'm mistaken, but last time I checked first lady wasn't the highest office in the land, I can only hope that this wasn't a Freudian slip on the part of Bazaar, is First Lady the highest office to which women can aspire to in this country? It seems, at least for the next 4 years, first lady, and maybe vice president is all we will get. I also like Tyra's sartorial proscription to show deference to the faux-President. Pantsuits are notably absent from this shift-dress heavy collection of looks (more on this in upcoming posts).

How should our new first lady interpret her role?:
"A modern first lady, if she followed the Tyra prescription, would first smile. (Banks reportedly has a professional arsenal of 275.) 'Oh, I want her to not take herself too seriously,' she says. 'She'd need to know how to take a fierce picture but at the same time be able to eat fried chicken, have grease on her fingers, and be okay with getting photographed like that, too. I'd want her to feel like every child in America is hers — to have a true connection.' Her expression turns serious, then she winks. 'I would also want her to know how to beat her own face. That means do her own makeup. In the end, the first lady should be her man's rock and his boulder and his mountain. And she should be calling about 50 percent of the shots!'"
Only time will tell if the new first lady will follow Tyra's lead, but in the mean time it might have been nice to see Tyra playing the President. How would she dress then? This would certainly have been an instructive spread to women in politics as well as the workplace. Oh well, Harper's missed the boat, but I do appreciate more and more Tyra's style of presentation, while she often sounds like she has more than a few screws loose, she is honest and smart and at least tries to stand for something (even if it is a simple as the fierceness of women of all sizes, shapes, and colors) in this season of political pandering and vague promises. -V.P.