4.23.2011

"For years, artist Sarah Hughes has been traveling around the world photographing women (and a few men) in the outfit in which they feel safest and the outfit in which they feel sexiest. Broadly speaking, she found that in places like Sweden, which ranked high for gender equality, the difference between the two outfits was small. The photographs and the interviews alongside them are a way to talk about how persona and sexuality get asserted in public space, and how external considerations like safety and judgment affect them."

Image: source.

Interesting review of Tina Fey's new book with some very good points. I'm definitely a Fey fan, but I appreciate this reviewers critiques and observations about the way Fey often uses self-deprecation to make herself less threatening: "In a culture where powerful women are often perceived as calculating harpies or shrews, Fey presents herself as an outlier. Yet somehow the message for girls looking to follow in her footsteps seems to be: if you are disheveled and anxious enough to appear totally unthreatening to the men who run the show, perhaps you’ll be allowed to join them. Fey is certainly eager to please, but bossy she is not."


Oversimplifying Sex Slavery: Demi, Ashton, and Badvocacy: "If you haven’t yet watched the 'Real Men Don’t Buy Girls' campaign from Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s DNA Foundation, do. And be prepared to scratch your head, or maybe weep a little bit. Others have already have already pointed out the confusing and offensive messages of the campaign, which feature hunky celebs delivering messages of what real men do (i.e. laundry, cook, iron, read directions, etc.) to suggest what they shouldn’t (i.e. buy girls). Sadly, what surely began with good intentions has become an even better example of what is wrong with celebrity aid today."

2 comments:

Cherri Porter said...

Two points of interest today.

I think maybe Fey's characters come off as disheveled and anxious, but I don't know that Fey is in her "truest self" (if there is such a thing. We all do it, but comedians and celebs especially do a lot of persona shifting as a part of making their life work, and some of the criticism geared at Fey is due to the fact that her true persona isn't public, thus we can only make assumptions based on the public personas she creates for her art.

Also, the clothing project sounds kind of cool, yet as some folks pointed out over on Jez, I think sexy and safe should be close because I can't feel sexy without safety. Before I had that coherent thought though, I immediately thought my outfit would be the same for both and then I wondered why. Many, many reasons, likely, but my uniform is mostly jeans, tees and shoes you can walk a few miles in.

Shorty said...

Hey Cherri! Thanks for the note. Yeah, I think that's a good point to distinguish between Fey's characters and her actual personality. Although the review is a review of her memoir, so it is (ostensibly) about her, not her characters. I haven't read Bossypants yet, but can't wait. Like I say, I am a big fan of Fey, but I also think it's important/interesting to look at the ways that successful women sometimes work to make themselves non-threatning. That said, long live bitches!: http://www.hulu.com/watch/10236/saturday-night-live-tina-fey-on-update