I’ve been a little too busy this week to do much blog reading but, alas, here are my picks of the week.
Can you like fashion and, like, be smart? That is the debate circulating around the blogosphere of late, and Jezebel sums up its instigation by Paper editor Kim Hastreiter and The New York Times: T editor Sally Singer. You can contribute to the discussion at fashademic (combining the words “fashion” and “academic” is so, like, smart!).
Mia Freedman imparts more of her wisdom, this time on the Stephanie Rice/Twitter incident. She writes: “I have long had a massive problem with the way we elevate sports stars to be heroes… But surely it’s time to stop raising these individuals to the heights of real heroes. Because surely when they disappoint us and show their ordinariness or, in some cases, their prejudices, it’s a very long way to fall.” Indeed.
In the latest season of Jersey Shore, Sammi and Ronnie seem to break up and get back together at least once every episode (so what’s the difference between season one and season two, then?). In between that, Ronnie goes to the club, “creeps on girls”, gets wasted, and calls Sammi “a c*nt or a bitch directly to her face”. If they were your friends, what would you do?
Especially in commissioning the piece “Fashion Goes Gaga” by Polly Vernon, in which Vernon argues that “pop music has always been sexually charged”, referencing Rihanna’s “Te Amo” and Gaga wannabe (which I don’t agree with) Christina Aguilera, just not in the way that Lady Gaga has revolutionised it. Vernon says, “To dismiss Lady Gaga—and her visual spawn—as salaciously, gratuitously, unnecessarily sexual is… just plain wrong.”
True, because “Gaga’s version of sexuality is extraordinary from an aesthetic perspective. She makes fashion statements out of gimp masks and gaffer tape, and orgies out of vast synchronised dance segments. She turns sex into camp theatre, and the result is challenging, alarming, powerful and exciting”: a far cry from “the cynical, soulless titillation of your average Britney Spears video.”
But with the mention of gaffer tape and gimp masks, it sounds more like a certain Aguilera effort than Britney, doesn’t it? ;)
Last Saturday night, three friends and I braved the rain with broken umbrellas to see the Victorian Roller Derby League present Leader of the Pack, with underdogs Dolls Au-Go-Go taking on my team for the night, the Toxic Avengers.
This wasn’t my first foray into roller derby, but for one friend and her daughter, they were derby virgins.
For those of you who don’t have much experience with roller derby (and from what I’ve heard, that’s most people), let me give you a quick rundown, courtesy of the night’s program.
“Modern women’s flat track roller derby is full contact sport played between two teams in a competition called a ‘bout’. A bout consists of two 30 minute periods in which teams skate as many two minute ‘jams’ as possible. There are five members from each team on the track in each jam. The positions are:
The pivot is a block that wears a striped helmet cover and lines up in the front of the pack. She sets the pace and is the last line of defence against an opposing jammer.
The blocker wears no helmet cover and lines up behind the pivot. She plays offence and defence at the same time to prevent the opposing jammer from scoring points while clearing a path for her jammer. A blocker can legally block any member of the opposing team by using only body parts above mid-thigh, excluding forearms, hands and head.
The jammer wears the star helmet cover and lines up behind the jam line. She is the point scorer and after her first pass through the pack, she earns a point for each opposing team member as she passes. Lead jammer is decided by the first jammer to make it through the pack legally. A lead jammer can call of the jam at any time by making a ‘chopping’ motion at her hips.”
While roller derby is technically a sport “for women, by women”, men also have a role, primarily as commentators, scorekeepers and umpires, all of whom were male for VRDL’s Leader of the Pack event. Far from being “cheerleaders”, “they have to be able to skate as well as the derby women” and they have to know all the rules. “These men have a profound respect for roller derby and the women involved.”
From where I was sitting (right up the front, thankyou very much!), this seemed true of the audience. It was a fairly even mix of everyday people (like moi), rockabillies and died-haired punk-rockers in platform buckle boots, without heckling from the male members of the crowd. I felt that everyone was there for a bit of fun, to support their favourite team and marvel at the athleticism of the skaters. Certainly, there was no expectation of “titillation”.
However, Vicky Vengeance of Because Sometimes Feminists Aren’t Nice, in this 2006 “Rant Against Roller Derby” says that most people believe roller derby is a feminist sport because “it’s ok [sic] for these Roller Derby players to play with their sexuality because sexuality is fun! It’s fun to skate around in a mini skirt kicking people’s asses!… Why should you have to look like a man to be perceived as tough and powerful?”
She goes on to say that:
“A lot of the advocates who I see talking about how badass Roller Derby is, think of the something like cheerleading as the most terrible sexist thing imaginable. And yet, cheerleading requires a tremendous amount of athleticism and involves a huge amount of danger and physical risk. Further, the costumes cheerleaders wear bear an uncanny resemblance to the Roller Derby costumes that I’ve seen. Are you going to tell them what they’re doing is any less empowering than what Roller Derby women do? Ok [sic] so cheerleading is ok [sic]. I sense the third wavers nodding.
Well let’s push it further: what about Mud Wrestling? You know, the game where a couple of women get semi-nude and roll in the mud duking it out at strip clubs to cheers and yells. I would argue that you can make similar types of arguments in favour of women’s Mud Wrestling as you could for Cheerleading of Roller Derby.”
Vicky Vengeance is right in her ethos; I would tend to agree that yes, roller derby is a sport based on what a woman’s body can do, as is cheerleading and mud wrestling. But one of the differences with roller derby is that hardly any of the women competing in the sport share the same body types as those who compete in cheerleading and mud wrestling. On Saturday, I would say that it was an even mixture of thin girls and bigger girls; girls with and without cellulite; conventionally pretty girls, and unconventionally pretty girls; girls with long hair and girls with short hair etc.
So Vicky Vengeance is somewhat correct, but I think that most people who attend roller derby do it for the fun factor, the spirit of competition, and the team atmosphere. Ask yourself this: do the majority of football-goers watch the game for the appearance of its players, or for the sport itself?
Just because it’s an all-female sport, it doesn’t mean it has to be reduced to stereotypical “all-female” issues.
For a taste of what the Leader of the Pack was like, check out this video, set to The Vines’ “Walk Idiot Walk”, by former roller-derby virgin, Christine, originally from her blog, Well?
This week’s The Big Issue also features roller derby (scans below).
It was only a matter of time before regret seeped into her consciousness and , once again, Montag’s expressing it publicly.
Seen on the cover of Who with bandages covering her nose, Michael Jackson-style (whom she references in the accompanying article, saying “I don’t want my face to fall off like Michael Jackson’s), and dark roots (“I’m just done worrying about my looks. I haven’t died my hair for months and I hardly even put on makeup anymore.”), it seems Montag has had a change of heart.
Unfortunately, there’s no going back, and with her plastic surgeon, Dr. Ryan, dying in a car accident last month, it looks like there’ll be no amending the work of her beloved surgeon by the man who created Heidi 2.0 (well, actually, 3.0, as she had a nose and boob job a few years ago after she first started on The Hills and, incidentally, met über-douche estranged husband Spencer Pratt).
“Why are so many women hot for Don Draper? The lying, philandering, self-absorbed, work-obsessed, emotionally-warped, goes-through-mistresses-like-cigarettes, sexist prick of a lead character, Don Draper?” It’s because he “isn’t a standard bad boy… And look at his taste in women. Every woman Don cheats on his wife with is intelligent, independent, unconventional, and in some way defiant of gender roles… (In fact, I’m wondering now if part of the Don Draper fantasy has to do with wanting to be one of the strong, edgy, fascinating women he gets the hots for.)”
She then goes on to defend the bad boy fantasy: “… when women fantasise about bad boy rogues who treat women like dirt, the bad boys almost never treat us badly. They’re fascinated with us. They find us hauntingly compelling: so hauntingly compelling that, even though they usually use women and toss them aside, they somehow can’t tear themselves away from us… I think that’s something people forget about bad boy fantasies. Much of the time, they’re not about bad boys. They’re about bad boys going good because of us.”
“When did men in America go from being masculine steak-eating, plaid shirt wearing, Old Spice smelling, cigar smoking cowboys who like football, hunting and Clint Eastwood movies to skinny jean wearing, satchel carrying, pierced ear heterosexuals who like chick flicks, The View, and Bath & Bodyworks? The American man is an endangered species due in large part to the over-feminisation of society.” That’s right, blame it on the feminists!
Anyone who watched The City or The Hills will remember People’s Revolution boss and mentor to Lauren and Whitney, Kelly Cutrone, and her hilariously truthful insights. Now, you can brush up on all your favourite Kelly quotes here. My favourites? “I don’t need to defend my company against a girl who wears pink!” and “You know where nice people end up? On welfare”, the latter of which I have used as a Facebook status!
Most of us know Marilyn Monroe as the sexy blonde bombshell that all other sexy blonde bombshells who’ve followed look to emulate.
Personally, I prefer the other, oft-unseen side of Monroe; the one who appreciates literature, who yearned to be a serious actress. The one who, to borrow a line from Elton John, was innocently “found… in the nude”.
Well, in the comments to the original article, Lexi wrote that “in the 51 years since Barbie’s creation, Barbie has never had a child or a husband [“P.S. Ken is a boyfriend, not a husband”]. Barbie encourages strength and intelligence, not motherhood and obedience.”
Hmm, husbandless and childless? Sounds like a certain Prime Minister of ours. Go Barbie and Julia Gillard!
Echos of the Supergirl complex can be heard in Clueless: “Like that book I read in 9th grade that said: ”tis a far, far better thing doing stuff for other people’… [but] I realised how much I wanted a boyfriend of my own.”
A pro-hunting friend of mine put me on to this article featured in The Age, entitled “Men Who Kill”. The provocative title certainly reflects what a lot of animal-loving, vegetarian Greenies think about hunters (I, myself, have conflicting feelings about being a meat-eating, leather-wearing, zoo-goer versus being staunchly against animal cruelty, puppy mills/pet shops, fur, whaling etc.), but one quote from the article is particularly thought-provoking: “It’s [the rabbit] out and about and ‘bang’, the next thing it knows is nothing. It’s not tormented by a slaughter yard or fed hormones.”
In other Barbie news, Chloë Browne, guest blogging at Em & Lo, asserts that you can be a feminine feminist… and a Barbie connoisseur. Amen.
To celebrate season two of Jersey Shore,The Atlantic thinks that “We Are All Snooki”, the undisputed breakout star of the show, in terms of “crafting public selves”. Only Snooki’s public self is a whole lot more outrageous and famous than most of ours.
Bret Easton Ellis does The Babysitters Club? WTF? But he does it oh so well. For example, Kristy says, “Like, sorry that you have diabetes Stacey, but do we have to spend half the afternoon discussing it? And yeah, it really bums me out to watch Claudia snort up half those Pixie Stix when she is so blatantly trying to get attention to her sugar problem…” Speaking of Claudia, her chapter is far better; very passive aggressive, in the vein of BEE:
“We were going 30 in a 25 mph Stoneybrook crossing lane, my dad’s hands clenched white against the wheel while I could practically hear him grinding his teeth all the way in the backseat. I was sitting next to my older sister Janine, who had spent the last three days on some sort of cleanse diet because she was, in her words, ‘packing on the pounds like I was the one eating all the junk food.’ Or because someone had switched out her carefully hidden birth control pills with orange Tic Tacs last month. Either one.”
Sometimes it seems my sister and I are the only ones on the face of the earth who have seen/remember/love the ’80s teen movie, Teen Witch. Until Jezebel profiled it! Above, a choice rap clip from the film!
When I first expressed interest in seeing The Expendables, those who don’t know me well wondered why. But those who do know me well, know that I’m not as traditionally feminine as I appear to be.
My dirty little secret is… I love wrestling. I haven’t watched it in about six months, because my body corporate doesn’t allow cable in my apartment building. But I’ve been devoted to World Wrestling Entertainment for almost ten years now, and anyone who is remotely familiar with the product will know the name “Stone Cold Steve Austin”. And anyone remotely familiar with the action-hero line-up for The Expendables, will know that “Austin” is one of the names that appears alongside “Stallone”, “Lundgren” and “Schwarzenegger” on its poster.
While there is a storyline per se (The Expendables, a group of elite mercenaries, are commissioned to overthrow a Latin American dictator, General Garza, on the island Vilena in the Gulf of Mexico. Whilst there, writer and director Sylvester Stallone’s character, Barney Ross, meets their contact Sandra, who turns out to be Garza’s daughter, and makes it his own personal mission to rescue her from the tyranny of her father and her country, and in turn, open his mind and heart. Gag me.), it’s so badly written that I didn’t even know that Jason Statham’s (my new action hero crush, BTW) character’s name was Christmas until a friend mentioned it to me days later!
But the reason movie-goers flock to a film like this (as opposed to Eat, Pray, Love, which opened the same weekend as The Expendables) isn’t for its storyline. My fellow patrons at the cinema were a primarily male audience, obviously into action films, weaponry, fight scenes and professional wrestling. Jet Li, UFC fighter Randy Couture, former NFL player Terry Crews (who is one of my favourite comedy/action actors, and was relegated to cheap one liners and blowing stuff up in favour of more screen time for surgery-damaged, pillow-faced and drawn-on-facial-haired Stallone) and Austin got the best pops from the audience, especially when those actors were utilised for their talents, with Li taking on Dolph Lundgren’s character Gunnar Jensen in an entertaining fight scene, Crews throwing an explosive as if it were a football, and Couture and Austin pulling out their street fighting skills/wrestling mat moves (Figure Four leglock, anyone?) in the final scenes.
I definitely know my wrestling trivia, but as far as action films go, The Longest Yard (another Austin/Crews collaboration—go figure), The Fast & the Furious and The Scorpion King are about as far as my knowledge extends. So I asked my friend and fellow Expendables-watcher, Eddie, to point out his top five throwbacks to the great action films of the ’80s and ’90s, which this film is meant to emulate.
1) At the start of The Expendables, they are taking down The Pirates. Pirates of the Caribbean is one of the past decade’s most successful action film franchises, in which the leads are played by pretty boys Johnny Depp and Orlando Bloom; a far cry from the rough and tumble action heroes of Stallone and Schwarzenegger’s era.
2) “The Stormtrooper Effect”: Garza’s henchmen have their faces painted as they go into battle with The Expendables. This is known as the Stormtrooper effect, where the enemy’s face is obscured so as to help the audience deal with them being killed off by our incomparable heroes.
3) The Expendables all wear different hats (Li’s character Yin Yang in a baseball cap, Couture’s Toll Road in a bucket hat, Ross and Christmas in black military-style berets) so that the members of the audience with a lower IQ can tell them apart during the fight scenes. And let’s face it; with a movie like this, the majority of its audience tend to lean that way.
4) As the team is descending on Vilena for the final showdown, Ross switches their plane’s controls to autopilot, and from there on in, the rest of the film travels on autopilot also. That’s funny; I thought the whole film was travelling on autopilot.
5) In the closest scene to character development, Mickey Rourke’s character Tool divulges to Ross his inner torment about not saving a woman when he had the chance to, and encourages Ross to go back for Sandra. Similarly, when Christmas discovers his ex-girlfriend has been beaten by her new boyfriend, Christmas ambushes said new boyfriend and his friends on the basketball court, bringing the beaten ex along for the ride. The whole movie, disguised by boys club banter and blowing stuff up, is about a man’s desire to save a woman. It’s most guys’ dream to be the knight in shining armour, as Stallone and Statham are here, and come to the rescue. Sure, this is a dated and highly sexist ideal posits that it’s a biological truth ingrained in most men.
Certainly in the man who wrote and directed The Expendables, wouldn’t you think?
The Scarlett Woman 