In today’s New York Times (I am lovin’ that NYT today), Adriana Gardella writes about Gail Warrior, who, aside from having a totally bad-ass last name, is founding chief executive and president of the modular construction company Warrior Group. The company has 58 employees and $124 million dollars in revenue–no small feat considering construction is still a male-dominated industry.
Gardella’s interview brings more than a few interesting points to bear. First, there’s the careful balance between benefitting from being a woman in the workplace, and hurting from it. Warrior tells Gardella that when seeking contracts, being a woman and a minority “may give you a couple extra points during consideration, but ultimately, a contract is awarded on merit, experience and expertise.” At the same time, Warrior has faced challenges as a female: “People take me seriously now. But early on, depending on the audience, I’d take one of my guys along with me to meetings.”
Second, Gardella and her now-ex-husband worked together (the divorce doesn’t appear to be business-related), but with a division of labor that is not just modern but forward-thinking. She states: “My ex-husband and I always worked well together because we had different strengths and clearly defined roles. He handled business development — he could sell a pair of glasses to a blind man. I’m better at long-term strategy and keeping costs down. I’m all over that.” Division of tasks isn’t determined by what your gender is good at, but your personal strengths. Cheers to that, Ms. Warrior.
Is a blow job inherently degrading for the blower?
For me, the recent outcry against SPEC’s choice of performers for Fling this year has brought the question to a head. Ha ha.
But in all seriousness, the petition to revise the selection criteria for Fling performers (seen here http://www.petitiononline.com/Fling10/petition.html) may be well intentioned, but what we have here is a case of sloppy activism that for me raises the wider question posed above.
The sloppy activism is the following. On the petition, and also formally the facebook event that has apparently been canceled, the following lyrics are attributed to Kid Cudi.
“I put ‘em in your mouth till you choke and gag, and I Poke Her Face off and now she faceless, I poke her so much I deserve a bracelet.”
These lyrics are arguably offensive. However, these lyrics have never been sung by Kid Cudi. They are in fact the lyrics to a song by Lil’ Wayne in his album No Ceilings, featuring Jae Millz, called “Poke Her Face.”
Kid Cudi’s song is actually called “Make Her Say,” featuring Kanye West, and the only thing arguably offensive about it is that he raps about an apparently amazing blow job, and also the possibility of a threesome, which I see no problem with.
What’s more, the chorus of the song is about how by poking her face, he makes her say (sung seductively by Gaga), “Oh ah oh oh oh ah oh oh.” The assumption here can only be that the owner of the face he is poking is getting mutual pleasure from the pokes.
Which is my main point. I think some people would argue that Cudi’s actual lyrics are also offensive and degrading. But as someone who has been on both the giving and receiving end of blow jobs, I would have to disagree.
Of course there can be pleasure found in giving pleasure to another. But I think there can even be pleasure in the simple act of having the right guy’s dick in your mouth. And I don’t think admitting that is defending degradation.
The only thing degrading about a blowjob is when the blowjob is given because, for some reason, the blower feels obliged to do so. And when it comes to sexual pleasure, obligation makes for problems for at least one of the involved parties, which inevitably makes problems for both.
So here’s my idea. Don’t give head just to get it back. Don’t tick off the seconds you’re down there to make sure he or she pays you back tit for tat. Give oral because you want to. Do it because either you’ll get pleasure from giving pleasure to your partner(s), or because you actually find giving head inherently arousing.
Otherwise, stay away from it. There are plenty of other things to do in the bedroom (or under the button, or in the stacks, or in the bathroom on the third floor of that house party you were at). Stick to only what you want to do, that way you’ll never feel degraded, and you won’t cry out to others that a blow job is a degrading thing.
And also, before you start a petition accusing an artist of being sexist, make sure the accusations are for a song that’s actually his.
Nikki Farquharson’s star is on the rise as her innovative and creative mixed-media artwork continues to gain recognition in the blogosphere and the fashion world. Her illustration-meets-photography-meets-fashion editorial work presents a unique combination of different art forms that together create something refreshing and bold. Her on-going series, “Mixed-media Girls”, and her “Baby Girl” series for MissBehave Magazine are, in my opinion, the most striking and beautiful of what I have seen of her mixed-media work (a few of this series served as my laptop wall paper for a large part of 2009). A couple favorites are featured below and you can check out more in a larger size (so you can see all of the amazing detail!) after the jump!
Nikki Farquharson seems to all at once play with the idea of the “disembodied female form” as much as she seems to shatter, or poke fun at, the unrealistic, yet idealized, female bodies that are prominent in fashion photography and editorials. The abstract, part photograph, part illustrated figures seem to cause the viewer to redefine and question exactly what the limits of reality and beauty are in all of these art/media forms and where the line, literally, can be drawn in making that distinction. While many of the photographs Farquharson chooses for her works are certainly suggestive, she simultaneously allows the viewer to focus on the beauty of each work in a way separate from the physical beauty of each model;the intricacy of her patterns, the seamless intermingling of illustration with photography, and her bold color combination at once redefine what makes each component, and the work as a whole, beautiful.
Check out more favorites here, and the rest of both series at nikkifarquharson.com!
Hey FWord Readers!
Borrowing from the title of the popular book Stuff White People Like, I bring you a weekly post completely dedicated to things that we, as feminists, might find interesting, inspiring, humorous, or thought-provoking.
This week: Women that ROCK their hair.
Hair, in general, is a big part of what both men and women use to express themselves and their identity. You can dye it, gel it, cut it, braid it, add more hair to it, and the list goes on. I think, especially for women, hair contributes to making us feel beautiful, and of course, there is that “long and silky locks” ideal that Disney Princesses and celebrities like Miley Cyrus and Beyonce kind of make us feel like we have to live up to.
The reason I bring this up is because, the other day, one of my best friends posed a question to the Facebook world via her status: Should I cut my hair?
I could understand her dilemma. She’s got gorgeous shiny, voluminous, curly black hair but at the same time, she has always liked to experiment with her personal style. Some people commented with words of encouragement and of course, others objected, but there were two comments in particular (from the same person) that I couldn’t ignore (I have removed this person’s name for privacy reasons):
Aside from the poor grammar and spelling errors, what this person says is completely absurd. While I am sure this person didn’t realize the extent of the ignorance of the comment, the fact is that there are places in the world where there are restrictions on what a woman can and cannot do with her hair. As for hair being what makes women feminine, one can only hope that for this person’s own sake, he/she might discover that there is so much more to what makes a woman.
On that note, I would like to applaud women, and for that matter, all people in general who defy traditional, or archaic, notions of beauty. Hair comes in all textures, lengths, and colors, and we are lucky to have the freedom to style it, manipulate it, and use it to express who we already are!
And hats off to women like Rihanna, the gender-bending supermodel Agyness Deyn, and my best friend who define sex appeal and beauty in a new way: with short hair!
Another post from Penn Asian Review:
If you’re looking for an old Chinese film to watch, I have four to share with you. On October 6, 2008, I attended an interesting CEAS Humanities Colloquium, entitled “Love and Politics in Chinese Film.” In this fascinating cinema studies presentation, Stanford Professor Ban Wang spoke about four films: Nie er, Zhao chun er yue, Fu rong zheng, and Wo do fu qin mu qin.
Professor Wang notes that, during the time periods for several of these films, the public realm is reserved for nationalism, patriotism, and political activity. A cynical construction of love in the early days of the PRC would suggest that a person has a duty to procreate to expand the party. This mechanical construction would repress the individual in favor of the party. Though early films served propagandistic functions and were subject to strict censorship, the expression of private desire becomes a way to poke holes in the system’s limitations. As love becomes subterranean, confined to the private realm, Prof. Wang suggests that the explosion of restricted passion in reaction becomes a way to access the sublime. The degree to which the represented love can sublimate contrasts from film to film, as the turbulent political climates of different decades react against each other. Among these factors, Prof. Wang also examined the different representations of gender.
In the first section of his talk, entitled “Love and Patriotism,” he showed a clip from Nie er, about the composer of China’s national anthem. To celebrate the young nation, the movie was made in 1959, the decade anniversary of the PRC. Interestingly, the woman leads the way in this scene. With the 1930 invasion of the Japanese in this clip’s background, Nie er and his more mature girlfriend’s political passion about the Communist movement legitimizes the expression of their romantic passion (similarly, in the Spanish-language film El crimen del padre Amaro (2002), a priest and his lover couch their physical passion in terms of religious passion). As the camera panning includes the entire surrounding landscape, the Chinese filmmaker invests the scene with a wider scope that embraces patriotism as a form of sublimation. Prof. Wang links the intertwining of personal and political love here with how personal the Beijing Olympics ceremony feels to the Chinese citizenry. In both cases, the expectation that one should love one’s country as one loves himself invests patriotism with personal stakes.
In the second section, entitled “Love and Idealism” he showed a clip from the 1964 film Zhao chun er yue, which refers to ‘early spring in February.’ It takes place after the second revolution’s failure in the 1920s. As the idea of democracy takes hold, the film rejects old society in favor of sublimating movement into the modern world. Here, we see an image of New Youth, the magazine for the new China. The scene closes as a man, shaking his finger in an instructional manner, stands high above a woman.
In the third section, entitled “Love in Bad Times,” he showed a clip from Fu rong zheng, or ‘hibiscus tower.’ This film is from 1986, a time when the Chinese felt as if released from a bad dream. As the figures in the clip sweep in a labor camp, the love contained in this small space is not sublimating. Nonetheless, as relief from this political mayhem, romantic love is presented as a redeeming form of grace.
In the fourth section, entitled “Love and the schoolmaster,” he showed a clip from Zhang Yimou’s 1999 film Wo de fu qin mu qin, or ‘my father and my mother.’ Relying heavily on primary colors, this clip comes from a time when China has been trying to reclaim older cultural values. This is the demonstrated through the sacred Confucian shrine in the scene. Just as Confucius is loved as a teacher, so is the man in the clip. Love is represented in a sublimating way here because the source of the love is his role as a teacher, not for his own personal subjectivity as a man.
I found this presentation interesting as I often look at representations of romantic love in medieval English and French literature, in which tropes of religious love are mapped onto romantic love (also, the female lover idealized as doctor, teacher, etc.). However, where the analogy in medieval writings is between human love and God, the analogy in these 20th-century Chinese films seems to be between human love and the state. In each, love becomes an external projection of a larger ideal onto another person.
If you’re like me, then you were still in elementary school during the age of Lilith Fair, the all-female concert extravaganza. You probably still heard the songs (like this and this) and maybe had the CDs (I even did a lyrical dance to this classic…back in that time I was still a dancer….). But if you were like me, you were probably too young to actually experience the fair in person.
Fortunately, there is good news! No more need to reminisce about days gone by, for the fabulous Lilith Fair is returning on an 18-city tour in Summer 2010!
Where is the tour going?
Atlanta, Boston, Calgary, Chicago, Dallas, Denver, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, Montreal, New York, Philadelphia, Portland, Seattle, San Francisco, Toronto, Vancouver, Washington DC and London.
GET EXCITED!!!
PS- Isn’t it strange that Lilith Fair’s disappearance coincided with the reign of George W.?
Got this via former Fword Editor in Chief Kristin Williams’ google reader, (which she got via Feministing, via Feministe, via Sociological Images.)
Also enjoyed the submission from a Feministing commenter:
Over the summer, I read this awesome book called A People’s History of Sports in the United States by Dave Zirin. Zirin does a marvelous job of contextualizing politically, socially, and economically the emergence of “sports” and “leisure activities” in our country from the late 19th century onward. In each historical period, he discusses contemporaneous women’s thought on sports and how it related to their position in society (that this is sectioned off into a separate segment seems weirdly polite, but that’s another discussion for another time). His painstaking research rewards us with such delightful trivia as a list from a 1878 American Christian Review article detailing what will happen should a women attempt to play croquet; it starts with “1. A social party,” and progresses through “5. Picnic, croquet and dance” and “8. Exclusion from the church,” concluding with “11. Shame and disgrace” and “12. Ruin.”
Zirin’s other commentaries on women’s sports are more substantial and fascinating, particularly his discussion of how women suffragists began to use athletic competition as a symbol of their movement. At the forefront of sporting activities favored by women is one for which I too have much adoration: bicycling. According to Zirin:
“In 1895, twenty-five years before women won the right to vote, suffragette Elizabeth Cady Stanton wrote, “Many a woman is riding to suffrage on a bicycle.
Susan B. Anthony agreed, saying, “Let me tell you what I think of bicycling. I think it has done more to emancipate women than anything else in the world: It gives women a feeling of freedom and self-reliance. I stand and rejoice every time I see a woman ride by on a wheel. The picture of free, untrammeled womanhood.”
Right on, suffragette biddies. It’s interesting to read, considering women have been somewhat slower to hop on bikes – because typically, our clothing is less agreeable to ride in, and who wants helmet hair, anyway? But I must protest that I saw many a woman in high heels and mini-skirts biking through Paris and Amsterdam last summer, and I reveled at seeing women so exceedingly feminine and powerfully independent.
So if you haven’t hopped on a bike yet, may I highly suggest that in the name of feminism, you do so.
Today, in the magnificent micro-universe that is Etsy, I stumbled upon something that is maybe the greatest thing ever for sale, in the history of the world: a vulva portrait pendant.
This glorious piece of jewelry allows you to display around your neck what was previously made available for viewing only to a chosen few: a wonderful 3-D image of your nether regions, modeled after images that you provide to the artist.
Humorous though my tone may be, I think these things rule. Though I would probably never get one, I can think of a great many friends who would. These are great conversation pieces (a primary purpose of jewelry, at least for me), and there is something beautiful about them. Worn with the right je ne sais quoi, this could be pretty bad-ass.
For those who are interested, the artist also makes earrings.
So apparently Glamour magazine is attempting to start a “body image revolution” by doing a photo shoot featuring women three to five sizes larger than the typical model. And all I can say is…why has this revolution taken so long? I mean it seems like you constantly hear about a photo shoot using “real women” but these trends never seem to last; the beauty and fashion industry just goes right back to those itty bitty, skin and bones, air-brushed figures we are all familiar with.
This sort of unrealistic portrayal of the female body has been seen to cause a number of issues for women of all ages and sizes. I mean, most models are so tiny it makes you want to shove a French fry down their throats. That is why I’m so pumped that Glamour is making a commitment to continue featuring fabulous, beautiful women of all shapes and sizes in their magazine.
And what’s up with anybody above a size six being called “plus sized” anyway? These women aren’t obese, and don’t have health issues related to their weight so why don’t we see more of them in the beauty and fashion industry? Glamour editor-in-chief, Cindi Leive, touches on this somewhat in an article about their attempt to revolutionize how women are viewed in the fashion industry. I especially love the fact that they are committing to “featuring a greater range of body types in [their] pages, including in fashion and beauty stories (traditionally the toughest areas for even the top “plus-size” models to crack).”
So let’s hope that Glamour will continue to use women who break free of the stereotypes associated with models, and not ones who have been air-brushed into non-existence. I mean that is the real issue here. Women are made to look flawless, their legs slim, arms toned and tiny, their stomachs flat, etc. When we all know that even models have…gasp…rolls of fat, cellulite and stretch marks, just like the rest of us. I’m just saying that there are all different kinds of women out there and we should love them exactly the way they are, and it seems Glamour is trying to do the same. I think Leive puts it best when she says, “In real life, women of all shapes and sizes have crazy sex appeal and killer confidence. Why should our own pages look any different?”
