Directed and produced by Corinne Manabat, Gangsta Ways shares the powerful story of Davina Wan, a former gang member who charted a different course for her life after losing one of her closest friends. The description is here:

For most of us, wedding cakes and caps and gowns mark our life's milestones. For D. Wan, it is switchblades and dog tags. Excuse My Gangsta Ways, a documentary by Corinne E. Manabat, explores the life of Wan, a Chinese American from New York's Lower East Side, and her transition from a life of gang violence to a "normal" life. Visually poetic and uncompromising in its portrayal of gang culture, Excuse My Gangsta Ways uses interviews with Wan and her family to reach beyond stereotypes of urban gang members and America's "model minority." We will take a look at the person she was and the person she has become, where fate and inspiration endure.

When I saw the short film at this year's DC APA Film Festival, I was blown away at the level of honesty and pain captured in a scant fifteen minutes.

Wan's grandmother and godfather both share tales of Wan's rebellion, beginning after her parent's separation when she was young. Keenly describing the painful home situation she grew up in, it almost makes sense why she abandoned her former life and fell into an all-girl gang. However, through it all, she still dreamed of a different type of future. When one of her best friends dies, the tightly knit gang unraveled and Wan found herself wanting out. The film also explores her life now, and discusses the cost and result of that journey.

Manabat, in an interview about the film, talks about the ways in which Wan's story challenged the predominant (and often stereotypical) narrative about the lives of Asian American women:

In the Q & A session after the film, Manabat mentioned that while her film was geared toward an Asian American/Urban audience in mind, the film was really for everyone - that the theme of transformation was most prominent. I agree - though gang life is a far cry from the relatively safe and stable world I grew up in, I felt myself relating to Wan's tale of being lost and adrift in a hostile world. This articulation of the inner lives of young girls is rare, but explains why some of us flee from our homes early, often into the arms of older men, trying to "raise ourselves the best way [we] knew how" as Davina's godfather put it.

Both Wan and Manabat do community outreach, and workshops targeted around the film - through their work, they are hoping to reach some of the other lost girls in the world, and show them there is a way for them to find something like home.

Excuse My Gangsta Ways [Third World Newsreel]
Official Site [DC APA Film Festival 2009]
My Space Page [Excuse My Gangsta Ways]
Next Screening [San Diego Asian Film Festival]

Anyway, according to these articles, women have some special bond through our giant shared vagina which means everything is automatically peaches and cream between all of us, and if someone is ever mean or nasty, this is to be ascribed to the entire gender. And you should dump all your women friends. Because if they aren't bitchy to you now, it's only a matter of time.

Jessica Wakeman over at the Frisky is specific: it isn't all women that are the problem, just the stuck up pretty ones:

Let me be clear: I do have girlfriends. I'm not incapable of being friends with women. I have some really great female friends who are all regular-looking like me. When we bicker, we get over it. But when a normal-looking woman like me befriends someone who is model-pretty, there's trouble.

Let's face it: Beauty is a privilege. It acts like a honing device for male attention, opens doors to clubs, causes compliments to rain upon the lucky ones. But if the parties aren't careful, a beautiful friend and a regular-looking friend can get locked into a power dynamic.

Of course, not every beautiful woman lords her privilege over her less beautiful friends. Still, some do. Beauty is a universally valued quality for a woman; it offers privileges that can always be relied on. The logic of one's arguments, or articulation of one's emotions, unfortunately, is less reliable. And because plenty of women and men want to be around attractive women just so those privileges can rub off of them, some beautiful women aren't used to hearing "no."

I truly think my friendship difficulties with pretty women stem from my challenging them with words or reasoning, instead of just falling in line with the power dynamic they try to exert.

Jealous? No. I'm resentful.

Damn Jessica, tell us how you really feel. Wakeman continues to launch a tirade against two of her former roommates but the indictment against pretty feels a bit thin - after all, this is just general douchebag behavior, and I've had conventionally attractive and less attractive friends alike behave badly or act stubborn or pig headed. It just kind of happens.

Over at the Daily Fail Mail, Louise Chunn really believes those of us in the possession of lady bits should really act more civilized:

[W]hen you liberate girls - and women - to say what they really think about everyone else without censure or fear of disapproval, then you let the struggle for supremacy among females out of the bag.

It is an ugly and mean way of behaving - and I believe it is stripping away the bonds that hold females together as friends.

There goes that one big happy vagina theory again.

My mother kept on at me so tiresomely when I was a little girl because she knew female rivalry started young. My brothers would be encouraged to compete with each other at games and sports, while I was taught that comparing myself with others was not good for girls.

Yup. And women can't channel this urge through healthy competition, like sports, probably because we will damage the bonds that unite our vaginas into one. We really need to switch to rings or something.

For example, in some circles, women talk about how much their husbands or boyfriends spend on them, whether it's holidays, clothes, jewellery or even cosmetic surgery.

Of course, this makes every other woman in the room feel that little bit less loved and appreciated, at least, materially. It is just the sort of conversation that makes binding, supportive friendships seem like an outmoded concept.

Or maybe it's a reminder to find a new social circle, with people who are a bit less invested in being/keeping up the Joneses?

After much hand wringing about the petty slights young women inflict upon each other daily, Chunn concludes:

[I]t is also true that you can make good friends at the school gates, at work or anywhere at all. But you have to put your mind to it.

If your first thought is to compare every woman with your own level of prettiness, weight or fashionability, you can't expect to have a mutually appreciative relationship, because that is not what you are offering.

It's a two-way street - and if you behave yourself, it's one of the loveliest, safest places to walk. But if you let your inner bitch out of the bag, it's a battlefield.

It's also a battlefield if you drink that patriarchal kool-aid that women behaving like other humans is deviant behavior, but that's a post for another day.

Pretty women can be hard to be friends with [CNN/The Frisky]
Why does rivalry get in the way of so many female friendships, asks this worried mum? [Daily Mail]

For some strange reason, companies spend tens of thousands of dollars on market research, only to ignore the data in favor of their own long held assumptions about a market. No where is this more evident than in products marketed to women, where you often find that marketers tend to look at women and think pink, feminine, and silly. Sarah Haskins has made a career out of lampooning these ideas; the Femme Den, featured in Fast Company's Masters of Design issue, have dedicated their careers to stopping the madness. Consisting of members Whitney Hopkins, Agnete Enga, Erica Eden, and Yvonne Lin, the Den writes white papers, presents data, and points out where stereotypes superseded common sense:

Companies recognize the need, but most are clumsy — if not patronizing — in their attempts to address it. This often leads to what the Femme Den calls the "shrink it and pink it" reflex, the kind of mindless design that produces such works of genius as mini pink tool kits and Dell's pastel-saturated Della Web site, stocked with tips about "finding recipes" and "counting calories." (Dell dumped Della within two weeks of its launch.) What women really want, the Femme Den argues, is intuitive design. In a Yale University study, 68% of men asked to program a VCR using written instructions were successful, compared to just 16% of women. That doesn't mean women are less intelligent than men (please), but that they're less tolerant of complicated interfaces — more willing to skip new tech than to slog through manuals. "Men will walk into an electronics shop and look at the white cards that list the features. Women will pick up the cameras, flip them around, and look at the buttons," Lin says. "They want to know: Is it intuitive?"

In the sidebar, "Design in Action," the Femme Den demonstrates how these assumptions could literally become quite dangerous:

Unisex skis are a major misstep: Wider hips and looser ligaments make novice women skiers nine times more likely than men to tear their ACLs. K2'S LUV WOMEN SKIS are specifically tailored to the female physique, without being hot pink.

The shift in design from stereotypical marketing to informed marketing can make a major difference in the effectiveness of a product. And, often, shifting from the idea of a male default user may actually benefit a companies bottom line:

When Cardinal Health, the $12 billion health-care-supply company, wanted to rethink the design of hospital scrubs in 2007, balancing the needs of both sexes helped set its product apart. "Probably 70% of the health-care population wearing scrubs is female," says Carl Hall, Cardinal's director of marketing. "But scrubs are really designed for men. Smart Design identified the gender thing early on as an opportunity and helped us really evolve that." Endura scrubs, introduced in March, swapped out V-necks for stretch collars, and added straps and snaps to make the hem and rise adjustable, breathable mesh at the back and knees, as well as a kimono sleeve to increase range of motion.

And that unisex cut? "We used the female form for measurements, so the fabric doesn't strain across the bust and hips," Hopkins says. "Men don't even notice the extra room."

(Image: Christopher Sturman for Fast Company)

Separate. And Equal. [Fast Company]
Design In Action [Fast Company]

Earlier: Dell Discovers Ladies Use Computers For More Than Diet Tips

The New York Times' "Generation B" column profiles a newly-divorced 57-year-old woman who, she says, is finding the dating landscape dismal.

She has tried social networking, going to dance clubs, reconnecting with friends at her class reunion (all married), waiting for something magic to happen and online dating. "When you're 18, you just jump in," she said. "Now, I worry. What do I need to know about him and what do I need to share about myself - with a whole lifetime to pick from?

Where her husband quickly found a new girlfriend, Christine Shiber is having a hard time meeting a man her age. And, says the piece, this is consistent with grim statistics.

According to 2001 census data, 41 percent of women 50 and over who've been divorced have remarried, while 58.4 percent of divorced men that age are remarried. "That's the biggest remarriage gap for all age groups," said Dr. Francesca Adler-Baeder of the National Stepfamily Resource Center at Auburn University. "Among the divorced, the least marriageables in our society are older women, highly educated who make a good salary."..."Studies show men tend to marry down - someone slightly younger, less educated, making less money," Dr. Adler-Baeder said. "Women in their 50s literally don't have a visible pool of eligible men around them."

It's funny that this piece should appear just as we're starting a fall in which network TV seems determined to overturn the stereotype - or at least firmly embed a new one. Says media writer Julie Zied, this fall's TV lineup is all about "the epic battle of female seduction between the mature (cougars), and the young (kittens)." First, and most glaringly, there's Cougar Town, whose premise and title are cringe-inducing enough to send us running to the safe confines of Lifetime. Courteney Cox is a divorced single mom who, with a short supply of men to hand, sets her sight on the legions of young bucks eager for her experience and wisdom. It's not just Courtney: Zied identifies a whole pack of femmes fatales who seem to fall into the 2-D trap of "sexxxy predatory older woman," from Melrose Place's Laura Leighton to Jenna Elfman in Accidentally on Purpose to Elle MacPherson's steely agency head on The Beautiful Life. All of them are set against ingenues whom they presumably eat for breakfast. The "cougar" trope is as old as The Graduate, but the modern iteration - whose mother superior might be SATC's Samantha Jones - is, theoretically empowering. Whereas Mrs. Robinson was a male fantasy, the cougar is supposedly a woman's, what the Urban Dictionary defines as " A woman who is 35+, sexually cunning, that prefers to hunt rather than be hunted."

The cougar is all about using and losing hapless men and besting less wily younger women. This isn't the First Wives' Club, nor even someone getting her groove back - it's an every-woman-for-herself band of Real Housewives and powerful vigilantes whose creators confuse objectifying men with empowerment and maturity. With, as the Times reminds us, an ever-growing pool of divorced women over 35, do the TV execs this this is what the demographic wants? A woman who's essentially an asshole man, but who presumably has more sexual secrets under her garter belt? And is is an empowering fantasy - or more male-engineered cat-fighting? And does setting up equally ludicrous and superficial standards for women of all ages really do anyone a service? Cougar Town would probably suggest women throw back a few drinks, put on a tighter skirt, hire a sitter, and stop thinking already.

In Her 50s, Looking For Love [NY Times]
Fall TV Preview: Cougars Versus Kittens [FanCast]

I say this as a person who is very familiar with Bushnell's work. I read Four Blondes. I read Trading Up. I read Lipstick Jungle. I watched Sex and the City and tuned in for both Lipstick Jungle and Cashmere Mafia because I wanted to see who had the better touch, Bushnell or Star.

So I say, with complete confidence, that no one knows how to run an idea into the ground like Candace Bushnell. And as I watched this new venture/product placement/Frito-Lay commercial I felt myself wanting to bash my head against the wall. This? Really? The Broadroom follows five professional women and is supposed to provide insight into their lives by using quick segments and cute conversations that take place in a work setting. There are four total webisodes in all, but is it worth watching?

I don't think so.

Nine Things I Hate About The Broadroom:

• Why is Natasha putting fear of wearing a name tag on par with global warming? Everything else I could understand...but name tags? Seriously?
• How are we going to follow rote stereotypes about women when creating these characters, only to have said characters bitch about being a type?
• The Millennial is an idiot. "I spent all morning making these super cute placecards on my computer." The placecards combine a large font with clip art.
• "In a weird way, I don't know what my actual job is, but I love it." Please tell me this character does not confess to feeling like "Alice in Imposterland" in the October 9th episode. Word of advice: if you don't know what your job is, don't be surprised when you feel like you're faking it.
• Dialogue fail. Product placement fail. The scene below is a case in point:

  

  "When did they start naming lipsticks after food?"
  "Probably when food got more interesting than sex."

  I sent this to Anna, who promptly informed me:

  Re: 'naming lipsticks after food': one of the most popular lipsticks in the 80s was a Revlon shade called "Cherries in the Snow". These people are two decades, if not more, too late.

  Answer fail. But thanks for playing.

  Speaking of that clip...

• ...can we retire the "Where are all the men?" monologue? There's one in every show and every book! Can we at least upgrade it a little? Attack a random man on the street and hit him with a barrage of questions? That would be interesting viewing. For example:
  

  SCENE: ROAN and NATASHA approach a random man on the street as he pauses to grab a newspaper. NATASHA grabs him and slams him against a brick wall while ROAN brandishes her Caramel Kisses lipstick as a weapon.

  ROAN: (yelling) Where the hell are all the men?

  MAN: What? Who? I swear, I don't what you're talking about!

  ROAN: (making wild gestures with the lipstick) Where is my future husband? Where are all of you hiding?

  NATASHA: (hiking the man up by his collar) And why is my husband sending me cat pictures, huh? What is THAT supposed to mean? Did he stop looking for a job? Is he telling me it's time for a divorce because all we can talk about is cats? (grabs man by the face) Answer me, dammit!

  ROAN: Do what she says or else we're lipsticking your collar and calling your wife!

  Okay...maybe that's a bit unrealistic. But it would still be a vast improvement over the current dialogue.

• I hate that fucking jingle! It's prompting some kind of Pavlovian rage response.
• Does anyone really try to butt in airport lines anymore without an immediate "bish plz" from all the rest of us? And who would start a tug of war with the TSA people? They already seem pissed off enough and I can make the call when I get to the lounge area.
• A personal mantra is "When you're having a bad day, lower your standards?" Turn it off, turn it off!

This is grim. If the Boardroom really is reflective of what's on women's minds, I'm starting to wonder if we are all in danger of a lobotomy.

The Broadroom [Maybelline]

Earlier: "Only In a Woman's World" Are There So Many Dieting Stereotypes

Most of Amber Rose's Complex shoot, which was photographed by Matt Doyle, refers to iconic shots of Grace Jones. The image of Amber with jewelry in her mouth, for example, is a recreation of this picture of Grace eating diamonds, as photographed by Gordon Munro for Interview in the '80s:

There's Amber smoking in a tux…

And Grace smoking in a tux, on the cover of her 1981 album, Nightclubbing.

There's Amber in a cropped grey tee, with boxing hand wraps…

And Grace, on the cover of her '82 single "Pull Up To The Bumper," wearing a cropped grey tee and boxing tape.

There's Amber, her naked body covered in oil, posing with a whip…

And Grace, her naked body covered in oil, with a whip.

Perhaps most offensively, there's Amber in a cage.

And Grace in a cage.

The French artist Jean-Paul Goude shot that last image of Jones; the two were involved in a tempestuous and sometimes violent relationship. The objectification and exoticization of black women isn't incidental to Goude's art: it's the whole point. "Blacks are the premise of my work," the artist told People in 1979, "I have jungle fever."

In case anyone thought that was a joke, Jungle Fever was also the title of Goude's 1982 book. The shot of a caged Jones made the cover.

So it's no surprise that Goude shot Jones surrounded by raw meat, under a sign that reads "DO NOT FEED THE ANIMAL." But why would Complex choose to emulate images, some of which come across as not just dated, but riven with deep and troubling statements about black women as animalistic, primitive, and uncivilized creatures? Latoya Peterson has noted of such pictures that the women are always "looking like they are ready to fly off the page and attack." Claire Sulmers of The Fashion Bomb says of the Complex photos the message is that "these women are so wild they must be caged–they're sultry, snarling sex beasts."

Modeling opportunities for women of color in general are slim; as we know, far too many designers consider diversity on the runway and in their advertising to be entirely optional. The industry's slowness in even inviting black models to the metaphorical table is probably why, thirty years on, Grace Jones remains the most easily identifiable short-haired black model, and therefore a ready subject with which for Complex to associate the close-cropped, bi-racial Amber Rose. (Imagine if Jerry Hall were still considered the only and ultimate blonde model, or Paulina Porizkova were still the touchstone brunette, and white models starting their careers were constantly booked on jobs that recreated exclusively those women's old spreads.)

The industry's general unwillingness to embrace models of color as anything besides the exoticized "other" is thwarting the development and popularization of other kinds of black beauty. Even Alek Wek, the Sudanese supermodel, noted that she was often asked to pose in spreads that she felt fitted into a wider and more troubling tradition of black people's representation in the mainstream media, particularly with regard to a Lavazza calendar where she posed inside a coffee cup, her skin intended to represent the espresso. As Wek wrote in her memoir, "I can't help but compare them to all the images of black people that have been used in marketing over the decades. There was the big-lipped jungle-dweller on the blackamoor ceramic mugs sold in the '40s; the golliwog badges given away with jam; Little Black Sambo, who decorated the walls of an American restaurant chain in the 1960s; and Uncle Ben, whose apparently benign image still sells rice."

It's worth noting that in re-creating these pictures, Complex did tone them down; gone are the chains from the whip photo, and so too is the raw meat and the sign explicitly referring to the model as an animal in the cage photo. The choices the Complex art director made are almost certainly intended to mitigate the offense of the original images; we've come at least some way as a society since Jean-Paul Goude's day. But how long will it be before we automatically recognize any picture of a black woman caged up like an animal as offensive?

Amber Rose [Complex]
Caged Black Women: Amber Rose & Grace Jones [The Fashion Bomb]
When Disco Queen Grace Jones Lamented 'I Need a Man,' Artist Jean-Paul Goude Prowled Too Near Her Cage [People]
Darker Skinned Glamour Girls [Racialicious]
Bitter Coffee [NY Post]

Earlier:
How Did New York Fashion Week's 116 Shows Treat Models Of Color?

Yes, "husband doofiness" can put a real strain on a marriage. And, just like we discussed yesterday, can you imagine what would happen if you replaced the man in these ads with a woman? If the wife were portrayed as the bumbling idiot and the husband was constantly rolling his eyes? It would be so very 1950s, and so very offensive. Even stranger is how in beer and deodorant commercials, guys are fun and carefree — because they're single. In diamond commercials, men are romantic and loving. But in household product commercials? Men are ignoramuses who must be saved by savvy wives.

Anyway: Hey! Look who's one of 10 Screenwriters to Watch!

Sarah Haskins in Target Women: Doofy Husbands [Current]
Emily Halpern & Sarah Haskins [Variety]
Earlier: All Sarah Haskins Posts
Condoms, Cleaning Supplies & Crap: A Q&A With Sarah Haskins
Related: Channeling Stereotypes Of Men & Women On TV

It uses role reversal; just swap the wife for Homer Simpson, Al Bundy, or the guy from King Of Queens. The point is: Gender stereotypes persist on TV.

Fox Reality Channel is debuting a new show called Househusbands of Hollywood, which focuses on five stay-at-home men who run the house while their wives head to work. You'd think that sounds like an outside-the-box twist on the Real Housewives. Yes. And no.

One of the Househusbands, Grant Reynolds, husband of Good Day LA anchor Jillian Reynolds, says: "It's not about cattiness, it's about raising a family and doing the best you can with what you have." Get that? Women are catty; men are strong and serious about raising families.

Cosby Show actress Tempestt Bledsoe, who is dating former A Different World star Darryl M. Bell, was hesitant to do the show because they're not married, and says: "Reality usually is a lot of fighting, but it's nice to see a show that's lighthearted and good-spirited and you don't have to sit down and cringe every time you look at the screen." Because you know, those shows with the women? Cringe-worthy.

Of course, it's not all bad for women on TV: as the LA Times' Mary McNamara pointed out earlier this week "women get to do just about anything on TV."

They can chase down aliens ("Fringe"), converse with angels ("Saving Grace"), race through jungles and time continuums ("Lost"), catch serial killers while wearing hats and high heels ("The Closer") and play both sides of the legal field with the likes of William Hurt and Marcia Gay Harden ("Damages).

But it's interesting that popular "reality" shows — Rock Of Love, Real Housewives — rely on a catty, confrontational stereotype, while smart, accomplished ladies (Damages, The Closer) remain fictional.

Satirizing The Sitcom [Sociological Images]
'Real Housewives' Formula Gets A Twist With 'Househusbands Of Hollywood' [NY Daily News]
Shrew Versus Shrewd [LA Times]

Any kind of "type" is inherently creepy when it becomes deliberate and self-determining. I mean, my mom tells me she always "ended up with" Jewish men; and a friend recently mentioned that for some reason she has dated four Scandinavians in a row. But of course, this is quite another matter from a white man seeking out, specifically, Asian women. In a piece in Salon, Laura Miller asks, "What is the deal with Western men's erotic obsession with the East?"

We all know the cliches: the creep looking for a "subservient" woman to cater to his every sexual want without raising a ripple or an opinion. Miller was prompted to look at the issue by a new book called The East, the West, and Sex, which chronicles this stereotype's long and distasteful history, from the 16th century, when the Western "Arabian Nights" myth took hold on, and, as she puts it, all the attendant "uncomfortable thoughts about race, power, sexuality, gender and history."

The book actually doesn't unilaterally condemn the dynamic; as Miller paraphrases, "In spite of the undeniable backdrop of injustice and exploitation, some of these encounters have been a Good Thing, offering to the men a reprieve from the repressive sexual morality of the Christian West and to the women a chance at a less traditionally patriarchal relationship than they might have had with many of their countrymen." Miller takes a dim view of this: as she points out, even if one can find the nuance in the story, the larger context is damning. And the legacy of this exoticized Orientalism speaks too loudly. As she puts it bluntly:

The power and wealth of Westerners — officials of colonial Britain, American GIs stationed in Vietnam, European expats in Thailand — when introduced into poor Asian societies where women have few other options, makes commercial sex pretty much inevitable. For all the rhapsodies about silken hair, "surrounding sensuousness," esoteric erotic arts and the ultrafemininity of Asian women, it is this economic imbalance that makes places like Bangkok so magnetic to Western men. A dollar goes much further there, whether you're buying hours of someone's labor at a sweatshop sewing machine or sexual services.

And we see the trickle-down of a reductive stereotyping every day. While very few men we know would admit to such retrograde "submission" fantasies, it can't be denied that in some ways the "Asian fetish" cliche has evolved in a way that's no less alarming for being less acknowledged. There are scores of young guys - white, hip, sophisticated, theoretically enlightened - who seem to regard having an Asian girlfriend as some kind of a status symbol. And, weirdly, they aren't embarrassed about it. The cliche is just as simplistic: in these cases, even if she's not subject to the old-fashioned "China Doll" image, she's reduced to a set of assumptions. Here's what one of my friends, a Chinese-American woman, says: "These guys who approach me half the time, clearly have "Asian fetish" written all over them. You can always tell...these dudes for whom an Asian girl, any Asian girl, is the ultimate hipster trophy." Adds another, "Maybe it's because they buy into this idea of some kind of inscrutable sphinx, and to them that seems like a good muse, because it's all about them." She also added, "the ironic thing is, it's the guys with the 'Asian woman' thing for whom we seem to be interchangeable. I mean, who just dates one kind of person, period - isn't that kind of a red flag? You'd never hear someone say, 'oh, I only date black women' - but I've heard guys say that about Asian women!"

Oh yeah, that dude I mentioned? He lives in China now. And yes, he's single.

White Male Seeking Sexy Asian Women [Salon]

Related: Did "Hipster Grifter" Play On Loathsome Hipster Asian Fetish?

Rashad Robinson, senior director of media programs for the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation tells the Times: "Some people in our community may like this movie, but many are not going to be O.K. with it. Sacha Baron Cohen's well-meaning attempt at satire is problematic in many places and outright offensive in others."

Aaron Hicklin, the editor of Out magazine, is not as concerned: "The movie does something hugely important, which is showing that people's attitudes can turn on a dime when they realize you're gay. The multiplex crowd wouldn't normally sit down for a two-hour lecture on homophobia, but that's exactly what's going to happen. I'm excited about that."

Except Brüno is not a lecture. Sacha Baron Cohen lies in order to land interviews, disrupts events and infiltrates situations. Cohen is being sued by one California woman who claims she was injured at a bingo tournament he hijacked.

The Telegraph points out that from Zoolander to Absolutely Fabulous to Ugly Betty, the image of the silly, shallow fashion industry as freak show has been done. So Brüno is not breaking ground there. It's the depiction of an aggressively gay character that's the point.

From the Times:

The filmmakers wanted to play [an Elton John] song during a scene in which the title character, participating in a cage-fighting match, pulls down his opponent's pants and kisses him on the mouth, prompting a horrified crowd to throw garbage at him. The answer was no… But then Mr. John reversed himself - kind of. He didn't want to be associated with the provocative scene, but he ultimately agreed to perform part of another song that functions as a coda to the film.

If your movie makes an openly gay man pause, are you treading as carefully as you should? Does kissing a man in a cage-fighting match expose the audience's homophobia? Or tap into the stereotype that gay men are lascivious, libidinous, promiscuous and wild?

While Cohen prances in lederhosen, California and other states are banning gay marriage. In a world where civil rights are at stake, does Brüno — played as a "limp-wristed, sex-crazed queen" wearing hot pants, leopard bikini underwear and riding nude on a unicorn — shatter or reinforce stereotypes?

A Plea for Tolerance in Tight Shorts. Or Not. [NY Times]
Sacha Baron Cohen's Brüno: Why fashionistas Are Beyond Parody [Telegraph]

• You Are Born: Congrats! You've already done this. I haven't talked to your mother yet, but if the movies are to be believed, she spent most of your birth yelling, "Give me the druuuuugs!" while your adorably befuddled father freaked out and cried a bit. Your grandmother said something sassy to your stuffy grandfather in the waiting room, and at least one of your family members passed out in the waiting room, either from excitement, exhaustion, joy, or the icky grossness of the word "placenta." Someone will make a joke about your giant head fitting through your mother's vagina! Congrats! You're a woman in the world now, and everyone around you is embarrassed about female anatomy in general.
• 
  
  
  
• Elementary School: You're walking, talking, and sassy as all get out, baby girl! Believe it or not, this is the time of your life where you'll meet your soul mate or develop a chip on your shoulder that will take about 20-25 years to remove. No, really! In like, 3rd grade! I know! I can't believe it, either, but the movies never, ever lie, sweet child o' someone else's, and I'm just trying to prepare you for the future. Someone will scar you for life with a 3rd grade break-up or by calling you a doo-doo head. And things don't get any better for you in high school, either, I'm afraid.
• 
  
  
  
• High School Oh man, you are going to be such a geek in high school. It's not your fault, really. Everyone knows that you have to be a geek in high school in order to qualify for the life-changing makeover that will secure you a Prince Charming in your mid to late 20's. And if there's one thing we've learned from romantic comedies, it's that your entire life should really revolve around finding the perfect man. Sadly, this thing called "a career" is going to try and stand in your way!
• 
  
  
  
• Your Career: By your 20s, due to your childhood heartbreak and your high school geekdom, you've become a cold hearted bitch with only one thing on her mind: success! Of course, in the Romantic Comedy world, in order to be successful, you also need to be an uptight manhater who buries her "true" feelings under piles of very important paperwork. You might even score a lame boyfriend or fiance, who you don't love at all, but use to fill the hole that your 3rd grade boyfriend left behind. And you might not even know you're capable of love at all (because successful women are like, totally incapable of having romantic feelings, DUH!) until the dude you loved before you "sold out" and became a success falls in love with a perky young gal who just wants babies and walks on the beach, like "real" women do. When this happens, you'll realize your career was totally a sham and was ruining your chances of happiness with a man. And remember: that's what it's all about. See those little blobs with the blue blankets lying next to you? Hitch your wagon to one of those stars, baby friend!
• 
  
  
  
• Your Life After 35 Oh, wait, I'm sorry, this period isn't covered by romantic comedies, unless you plan on being someone's mom, sassy friend who never gets any, sassy slutty friend, shoe addict, or "cougar." Oh, and it helps to be upper class and living in a big city. If you're over 35, not-upper class, and living in a flyover state, you don't exist! Dream big, little one!
• 
  
  
  
• Your Life After 65 If you're one of the lucky few who escapes the plague of invisibility that will inevitably sweep over the women of your generation as well, get ready to be the wacky grandma who drinks too much and enjoys sexual innuendo and "keeping it real" by rapping and using sassy modern lingo. You are so wacky, Grandma! Your sexuality has been watered down to sassy quips and hilarious dance moves, because god forbid a post-menopausal woman actually have a sex life as opposed to a "hot date with Pat Sajak!"

• You're born in wacky circumstances
• Your life sucks for approximately 25 years, mostly because of a man
• You meet another man (maybe even the heartbreaker!) who will help you see that your life sucks because you've spent too much time working and achieving things, and that is like, so boring
• You will fall madly in love before the age of 35
• You will then disappear, only to make sporadic appearances in cameo roles as "Mom" or "Wacky Granny"- a completion of the "women are wacky!" circle of life
• Bonus: You will sing into a hairbrush at least 487 times.

I'm sorry to be such a Debbie Downer on your birthday, kid, but with any luck, everything I've typed here will be false by the time you're old enough to read it, though I highly doubt it, as Forbes recently noted that romantic comedies are, sadly enough, "box office gold." Call me up in 21 years and we'll cry over it together while drinking some dumb cocktail named after the hottest television show of 2030. For as long as these dumb cliches remain, if nothing else, we'll have something to make fun of together. Hilarity, for better or worse, will ensue. And that's pretty much what life is all about.

Something For The Ladies [Forbes]

Unfortunately, I'm going to have call shenanigans on Taylor Swift for her latest song and video, "You Belong To Me," wherein she perpetuates the tiiiiiiiired stereotype that girls who read books, play in the band, and wear glasses are big old losers who spend their nights dreaming about the slightly douchey football star who, of course, is dating the bitchy, pretty cheerleader. After pining over the hunk for most of the video, she finally shows him that he does, in fact, belong with her, by—-wait for it—taking off her glasses and revealing that she's actually a total babe at the school dance. Because everyone knows that the difference between hot and not is a pair of specs, no? See for yourself:





Can we cut the bullshit here, Swift? This shit was lame and tired when I was in high school, 10 years ago, when Rachael Leigh Cook, also beautiful, put on a pair of glasses and was pegged as a total geek in "She's All That." Of course, after a makeover, she was the belle of the ball. Teenage girls constantly have this this dumbass fairy tale down their throats, led to believe that a makeover is all it takes to feel good about oneself and attract the kind of guy worth dating. It also pushes the idea that the cheerleader girl is a stupid shallow bitch who doesn't "deserve" the hot guy. It's always about trashing the other girl instead of focusing on the fact that the dude might just be a shallow jerk. It's wrong and stupid and stereotypical and misleading and frankly I think we're all a bit tired of it.

Here's some advice, teenage girls: if a dude only wants to date you because you've taken off your glasses and dolled yourself up enough to compete with his cheerleader girlfriend, kick him to the curb. It's not worth selling yourself out to someone else's standard of beauty to date some superficial jerk. Yes, high school is rough, and yes, looks play into it a lot, but trust me: beauty does not come from a dress or a pair of contacts or a trip to the salon. It comes from knowing yourself and loving yourself and all of that good stuff. Perhaps instead of wishing a boy would see you in your glamorous glory, you should try to surround yourself with people who see you for who you are, and think you're beautiful no matter what.

Oh, and just wait until you see Hunky McHighschool five years after graduation. You'll be glad that you had your awesome specs on to see right through him.

In his op-ed piece, titled "I married an Ascham bully," Sheehan begins by briefly describing a recent cyberbullying scandal that occurred at a New South Wales school:

Several teenagers at an elite Sydney girls school are coming to terms with the full magnitude of their public betrayal via the internet. Where to begin? One has had her genitalia discussed in anatomical detail. Another has had her face likened to a koala's. A third has learnt that her circle of friends is not friendly at all: "She thinks she's best friends with lots of people but they actually hate her."

As a result of the incident, two girls have left the school in disgrace. School administrators have expressed their distress over the recent trend of spreading rumors via social networking websites like Myspace and Facebook. One mother has come forward, saying that her daughter, a recent graduate, also suffered from bullying while she was at Ascham. "When my daughter was there it was text messaging," she said.

But who is to blame for the cruelty of these students? Certainly not the girls themselves. Sheehan places the blame squarely on the internet, where gossip spreads like "a disease." He writes,

Gossip has become even bigger than porn on the internet. Much bigger. Facebook is largely gossip. So are the other big social networking sites. Millions of eyeballs also go to gossip sites like Go Fug Yourself, devoted to fashion and celebrity putdowns. (The terms "fug" and "fugly" are short for f—-ing ugly, though the authors pretend it stands for fantastically ugly). Or PerezHilton.com, which bills itself as "Hollywood's most hated website", or The Superficial (Because You're Ugly), or Dlisted (Be Very Afraid), or TMZ.com (Careful Who You're Kissing), or Pink is the New Blog (Everybody's Business Is My Business), or Jezebel (Celebrity, Sex, Fashion for Women, Without Airbrushing). All have large followings among young women.

While we don't want to deny that the internet does provide a terrible platform for certain types of cruelty, Sheehan's piece is annoying for several reasons (and not just because he mentions this site). Sheehan seems to assume that this is something only girls do, that this kind of cruel body snarking and malicious gossip is somehow unique to the female gender. He does not mention that several of the websites he include are run or staffed by men (PerezHilton, Dlisted, The Superficial). When he does mention Perez Hilton, it is to mock him for being a "failed actor and a failed journalist." Sheehan ends his argument with a rather exaggeratedly dire view of the future:

Because the internet is so unfiltered and so vast, it has become a far more accurate reflection of the human condition than the traditional mass media. The self-portrait that has emerged is not flattering. The explosion in productivity, transparency, community and knowledge has been accompanied by largely unfettered pettiness, vituperation and schadenfreude. This is the encompassing public medium of the young. This is their stage and their minefield.

This may have been an interesting critique at one point, but I can't help but feel like we've heard this all before. Like people in the workplace, high school kids have always been cruel: the internet has just provided them with a new platform for spewing their hatred. Maybe instead of pointing fingers and trying to identify the culprit — when clearly, there is no one source of the bullying virus, to borrow Sheehan's metaphor — we should all focus our energies on working to provide alternative ways to talk about young women.

I Married An Ascham Bully [Sydney Morning Herald]

Earlier: Female "Bullies" At Work: What Are These Pieces Really Trying To Say?

[Image via Gossip Girl official website]

"You'd say, 'You want an accent?' And they'd say, 'Yes, we prefer for you to have an accent.' And the thicker and more waddly it is, the more they like it," the actress, born in Texas, says. She's been in The Goonies, Charlie's Angels and Who's The Boss?. She says: "I long to play a judge. I long to play a lesbian woman. I long to play a councilman, someone with some chutzpah." [NPR]

The shit will not stop. Much of the recent crap has been handily complied into The New York Times' "The Opinionator" column by Eric Etheridge. Though Michelle Obama was well-received in Europe last week, some designers (Vera Wang, Donna Karan) are bent out of shape that she hasn't worn their clothes. (Most notably, Oscar de la Renta said, "You don't go to Buckingham Palace in a sweater"; Simon Doonan criticized Ms. Obama's Junya Watanabe cardigan as well.) Luckily, Dmitcha, a former model and a diarist at Daily Kos, had the presence of mind to point out that if Michelle Obama is snubbing certain designers — and there is no proof that she is, only that she's (gasp!) wearing what she likes — these same certain designers are the ones who barely use any models of color on their runways. Burn!

But perhaps the most annoying and irritating "problem" some people seem to have with Michelle Obama is that she doesn't (or won't) conform to "any of the predefined stereotypes available to her: she's not a 'mammy' nor a 'good, middle class Negress.'" Writes blogger Zora at We Are Respectable Negroes:

She's statuesque, confident, self-defined, beautiful and black… Folks are still struggling to understand her (and to define her) because she is so unlike any other Black woman on the national and international stage… If Michelle were overweight and outwardly insecure about her Negritude (ala Oprah Winfrey), America would likely embrace her more affectionately as our own… The problem is that she does not confirm the WASP woman as an ideal - neither by fitting into the stereotype of the loud, overweight black woman nor by being the good, middle-class Negress who conforms to the norms of white women.

Come on. Do we still have this problem? Do we still see a successful, confident black woman and say to ourselves, "Does not compute" ? Didn't we solve all this twenty-five years ago when The Cosby Show premiered? Kidding. Sort of. But when it comes to Michelle Obama, is there anything else to talk about besides her fashion and her blackness?

On the upside (?), that Tablots dress from the cover of Essence is now a best-seller.

Michelle Ma Belle [The Opinionator]
Another Michelle Obama Fashion Stimulus Package [E!]
Simon Doonan Laments MObama's Junya Watanabe Cardigan [New York Mag]

Well, maybe. But only if the sexy sex implied is in line with "women's intrinsic values." Confused as to what those are? The study, published in the Journal of Consumer Research, helpfully defines the female attitude toward sex: "Our work builds upon existing perspectives in sexual psychology, which argues for stark differences in men's and women's sexual beliefs and motivations. This literature portrays men as having positive attitudes towards casual and recreational sex, whereas women value the emotional intimacy and commitment that can surround the sexual relationship." Yay, stereotypes!

The study goes on to suggest that women would be happier seeing sex in ads if they knew the people were in a devoted and committed relationship. The researchers used certain cues (like positioning the product as a gift from a man to a woman) to imply that the ad was about couple-sex (or you know, some form of prostitution) and not casual sex. They advise advertisers to continue using sex in ads, but to use appropriate "positioning and relationship context" to make it female-friendly.

Sadly, this may not even mean less bukkake-esque shots, since they apparently work so well on guys. As reported last week, brain scans of men looking at photographs of women (both scantily clad and fully dressed) showed that men were far more likely to remember the headless woman in the bikini than the woman with all her clothes. They also found that when looking at the undressed ladies men were more likely to show signs of activity in the region of the brain associated with tool use. So, to recap, women want sex only with commitment and love, and men see women as tools, not people. Great.

Does sex sell? New study shows how to make women respond to sexy ads [EurekAlert]
Bikinis Make Men See Women As Objects, Scans Confirm [National Geographic]

Related: Advertising Takes Cues From Porn, Because It Would Never Be About Heart Disease, Physical Fitness Or Well-Being, Super Bowl Ads Deliver Old Fashioned Sexism, Sex Sells. Or Does It? Can You Guess The Products Behind The Porny Ads?

Image via Adoholik

Quinn peddles so many offensive stereotypes about Middle Eastern countries, the status of women in those countries and the interplay of national wealth and personal poverty (not like we'd know anything about that in America) that it's hard to know where to begin, really.

But let's start here: Quinn identifies Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Bahrain, the UAE and Oman as "the most oil rich countries in the Middle East." Um, no. While Saudi Arabia does, indeed, have the largest oil reserves in the Middle East, Bahrain is an island nation with no fucking oil. The UAE is at least 5th on the list of most oil rich countries in the region; Qatar is 8th and Oman is 11 on the list of 19. So, her premise starts off false and doesn't get any better.

She then states — without attribution, of course — that in all of those countries, fewer women vote; fewer women are in Parliament; there is a reluctance to grant women the vote; there are fewer women in the work force; and women have fewer rights than elsewhere in the Middle East with less oil. But, for instance, Yemen has less oil than Oman, and yet Oman has a higher literacy rate among women than Yemen by far. I could spend hours researching and debunking the claims she's made, but perhaps it's just easiest to say: not every country in the Middle East is Saudi Arabia. Women's rights, education levels and incomes vary widely throughout the Middle East and within countries, as they do everywhere.

But, we could take the UN's Gender-related Development Index (GDI) and its Gender Empowerment Measure (GEM) as (very) rough guides of where women are at in terms of what Sally Quinn is supposedly talking about. The GDI takes into account life expectancy, literacy rate, educational levels and estimated earned income disparities between men and women to rank countries (the U.S. is 16) and the GEM takes into account the seats held by women in Parliament; the percent of total female legislators, female officials and managers; the percentage of female professionals and technical workers; and the ratio of female to male earned income to determine countries rankings (the U.S. is 15). So, here they are matched up against the rankings of countries "in the Middle East" (yes, I know Sudan and several Central Asian countries are on there, but it's a US government chart and a useful comparison):
Notice anything striking? Like an utter lack of coherence of oil reserves and how the countries rank in terms of the GDI and GEM? In fact, the two best countries in the actual Middle East — Kuwait and the UAE, respectively — are near the top of the list in terms of their oil reserves, and the worst country on both in the Middle East (Yemen) has relatively little oil. The only country that's relatively high on both scales — Bahrain — is the country that doesn't have any oil despite what Sally Quinn says.

She also ignores glaring income disparities in some oil-rich countries in the Middle East, refers to the women in oil-rich countries as "cossetted," suggests that they have no economic need to work and even says, "They can shop, they can gossip, they can go to lunch," as though all the women in oil rich countries in the Middle East are like the Real Housewives of Orange County in abayas. Oh, and she adds,

"I think most of them are bored out of their minds, the rich ones."

Because, naturally, she's conducted intensive sociological research in this area. And then she says:

"I think a lot of women, and this certainly goes for women in this country, too, would probably rather spend more time at home when they have little children and not have to work full-time. But I think that most women would prefer a more fulfilling life than just sitting around eating bon-bons all day."

Gosh, there's no stereotypes there about the role of women in the Middle East, nothing culturally insensitive about calling to mind harems and women of leisure when talking about women in the Middle East, nothing offensive to American women to suggest that we'd all like to stay home and exclusively care for our children when they are little. If she could overgeneralize more about what large swaths of ethnically, religiously, culturally and nationally diverse women all want, she'd probably strain something.

The study she was supposedly on MSNBC to discuss is, of course, months old and something that I critiqued months ago because of the arguments it advances about encouraging women to take up textile work in Middle Eastern countries as a way to expand economic opportunities for women; its willing ignorance of cultural factors at play; the lack of attention to overall unemployment in some oil rich countries as a result of the lack of economic diversification; and the fact that women have poor economic and political opportunities in oil-poor countries in the Middle East as well as oil-rich ones (as I noted above). That doesn't make it a bad study or one not worthy of discussion — it's worth plenty of discussion by people far more informed than Sally Quinn — but it's certainly no road map to resolving the issues of gender inequality in some Middle Eastern countries.

Related: Middle East Oil Reserves By Country and Rank [About.com]
Yemen [CIA World FactBook]
Oman [CIA World Factbook]
Gender-related Development Index [United Nations]
Gender Empowerment Measure [United Nations]

Earlier: Social Scientist Says Oil Makes Women Second-Class Citizens

• Luckily whatever strange form of Crazy infects the women around Drew Peterson isn't catching. His former fiancée-who-wasn't-really-engaged-to-him's dad is now denying that the engagement was a hoax. And you wondered how Jerry Springer could still find people to be on his show. • German pop singer Kim Petras has become the world's youngest post-operative transsexual at 16 and can't wait to wear bikinis and really tight pants. • Because of bikinis, tight pants and the general objectification of women that Christians feel is in opposition to their values [cue snickering] a bunch of church websites are leaving Go Daddy to those that appreciate porny Superbowl commercials. • More sex equals more cancer, you libidinous trollop. • Divorce and depression makes people think you look older. • Please then go cheer up (if you're into dudes, that is) with this video of naked British athletes playing with their balls for science, recommended by Andrew Sullivan. • If you or your partner is ambidextrous, you might be able to switch-hit, but you might also have more difficulty conceiving. • Rich people just don't give a fuck about you. • Sometimes women prefer not to let a man know how interested she is, and not just because she's read The [Fucking] Rules, unless it's been translated into German or because Germans also think that a man should do the wooing. Nope, it's probably totes evolution. • But at least cats don't suck the breath from infants.

While Clinton's oft-proclaimed "bitchiness" was certainly not a positive development, Fortini argues that "It was far more destructive, we would learn, for a woman to be labeled a fool." However, Fortini's premise made me wonder if, as Barack Obama defied the negative stereotypes applied to African Americans, a woman would have to defy all negative stereotypes of powerful females to get elected. Or, to put it another way: if Sarah Palin had been brilliant, we would have been in a lot of trouble.

"Here was a woman who—even if you didn’t agree with her politics—seemed to have achieved what so many of us were struggling for: an enviable balance between career and family," Fortini says. And indeed, Sarah Palin is poised and pretty and appropriately "female" in a way that is not threatening — nothing like Hillary Clinton. She defies the stereotype that women who seek power are ball breakers. However, Palin also defies notions of prissiness and weakness with her searing, borderline-cruel rhetoric and her much-touted moose killing.

Thank goodness for those of us who like our abortions legal, Palin's "blithe ignorance extended from foreign policy to the symbolic value of her candidacy. By stepping into the spotlight unprepared, Palin reinforced some of the most damaging and sexist ideas of all: that women are undisciplined in their thinking; that we are distracted by domestic concerns or frivolous pursuits like shopping; that we are not smart enough, or not serious enough, for the important jobs," Fortini explains.

However, I'm not convinced that Palin's inadequacy has set women back. Fortini quotes a study that said 69% percent of people think men and women are equally able to lead, and then follows up by noting that 60% of people thought Palin wasn't qualified to be President. To think that one woman has dismantled all the progress other women have made gives her too much credit. But, like all non-white, non-Christian males running for office, at first one must transcend stereotypes to become electable. As many have said before, if Barack Obama had been divorced, or Michelle had been a pill-popper like Cindy McCain, or if a teenage Malia Obama had turned up pregnant out of wedlock, you can be sure he would not have made it anywhere near the Oval Office. For a woman to get to break that ol' glass ceiling, she's going to have to do the same.

The 'Bitch' And The 'Ditz' [NYM]