This post goes out to a special someone out there who suggests that I find better things to do than whine about the misogynistic plot devices in Bret Easton Ellis’s 1991 book, American Psycho, and the “toned down” violence against women in it’s 2000 film companion.  Clearly Bret doesn’t hate women or use objectification and violence towards them for attention.  Feminists just don’t get it.

Woman Taunted in Promotion for Bret Easton Ellis’ New Book [adrants]

Bret Easton Ellis fans are now directed to The Devil in You where they can step into the shoes of Clay, a Hollywood producer, as he runs a seedy casting session somewhere in LA. You direct the actress; you tell her what to do. You can encourage her, fill her with booze and drugs, make her dance for you or take things to a whole new level. Although the levels are quite tame. There’s no nudity, no sex, no elicit behavior. Which is too bad because, well, we thought there’d be more from a dude like Ellis.

Bret Easton Ellis Markets Book With Painful Subservient-Woman Game [jezebel]

At the bottom of each screen is the choice to “Let her go.” It’s kind of like “Choose Your Own Adventure” but less entertaining since no actual story emerges — as soon as each segment is done you’re back to the choice screen. When you realize how boring the “game” is and click “Let her go,” you’re taken to a screen that gives you a percentage meant to show how much you have “the devil in you.” You can then send the special meaningful score of exactly how bored you are at work to Twitter or Facebook and promote Ellis’s book to your friends.

Oh how I hate football.  I hate that athletics are more highly valued than academics from the time that kids start little league.  I hate that the football team gets more attention and funding than the art club, science club, and literary guild combined in high school.  I hate that football players are held to different academic and social standards in college.  And I hate the bullshit that professional football players get away with (check out my new favorite blog, nflcrimes.blogspot.com).  And I hate how much they’re paid.

And then there’s this:

Which, according to the Orlando Sentinel “has a chance to be the most successful professional women’s “sport” from a business perspective.”

Let’s all take a minute to think about what that says about the way that our country views women, women’s athletics, and men’s interests.  Because the LFL is an insult to all three. Women are more than their bodies, women’s athletics is more than women’s bodies, and dear God men must have interests beyond women’s bodies.

Also, the comments over at the OS are enough to make you puke.

Fess up. You’re not really indignant about this, but jealous. I know that you know that if you looked as hot as these girls and were just as fit, you’d be out there proudly flaunting it like they do.

My guess would be the writer of this piece is a frusterated former athlete or simply an unattractive or mis-informed women [sic] who never received 1/2 the attention the LFL is garnering.

Now I feel stabby.

Splice is a sci-fi horrorish film that is in many ways a modern retelling of the story of Frankenstein.  What Splice does differently from most sci-fi horrorish films is to incorporate complex, intelligent female characters and examine (both directly and indirectly) female emotional and sexual development in an extreme situation.  Until it blows it at the end.

Also, I have never seen so many people stand up and exit the theater so quickly when the credits started rolling, but that might be a Utah thing (more on that later).  If anything, the strong reactions of my fellow theater-goers only made me more thoughtful about this unusual movie.

Here’s what you need to know: Clive and Elsa are a couple (literally) of scientists who have been working on splicing together DNA from different animals to create new species in the hopes of developing cures for livestock diseases.  They think it would be a good idea to take this to the next level – the human level – in order to find cures for human diseases, and pretty much just to test their theory about how awesome they are.  They’re told no, but they do it anyway.  What they end up creating is first a creepy slimy thing, which evolves into a cute rabbitish thing, and finally into a human chimera thing.  Although Clive was recently trying to talk Elsa into kids, she wasn’t interested.  Now she has become very attached to their creature, Dren, and he’s the one with serious second thoughts.  Spoilers ahead. Read the rest of this entry »

Today our links go out to all the self proclaimed geeks, nerds, and dorks among us.  Be it sci-fi, comics, science, or some combination, peruse the following links and embrace your inner geek.

Representations of Women in (Mostly Superhero) Comics [Threat Quality] via [jezebel]

This is a thing that comes up periodically: what happens is, someone says, “Jesus $&^#, could there be one comic in which all the women don’t have their tits sticking out all the #$^@#%* time?” Inevitably, at least one person responds to these criticisms with the following argument (and occasionally a few supplemental ones):

“Comics have always been an exaggerated ideal, just like in movies and other forms of media, and besides, they exaggerate men and women equally, so it’s not sexist.”

For example:
Disney’s Princesses Reimagined As Comic Book Heroines [io9]

To celebrate this news, check out another take on the Disney princesses, drawn up comic-book style by J. Scott Campbell. In keeping with the “comic book art” style [Note the quotes], they can barely keep their seashells on — oh no wait she’s not wearing any seashells. At least Maleficent looks bad-ass, as usual.

Thinkgeek’s nerdlady tees: Ada Lovelace and Marie Curie [wonderland] via [io9]

Thinkgeek have a new Heroine series, in which they’ve made up two teeshirts celebrating two wonderful ladies: Marie Curie (discovered radioactivity) and Ada Lovelace (invented computer programming).  They’re not only very lovely teeshirts, but the sale of each also donates a dollar to The Girl Effect, an organisation dedicated to helping girls out of the cycle of abuse, poverty and second-class citizenship.

The Planned Parenthood feed on facebook brought this chart to my attention today.  The chart is pretty big, so it’s hidden behind the jump.  The diagrams are pretty clear (and shocking, and saddening) on their own, but what I’d like to talk about are the ways that some of the findings were illustrated.  Let’s start with basic STD rates.

One in five people in the US has an STD.  One in four high school girls has an STD.

Question: What is a little off about these images?

Answer: The first, generic finding is represented with the universal male.  “People,” we can assume, refers to human beings: male, female, or any other label one chooses to apply.  But all of these people are represented by the male silhouette.  We know this is the male silhouette because the female silhouette, as displayed in the high school girls illustration, is pink rather than gray, wears a cute little triangle dress, and holds hands with her neighbors rather than keeping her arms to her sides.

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One in two sexually active youth will contract an STD by age 25

Then there are the youth of the US.  Like “people,” we’ll assume that “youth” is intended to refer to individuals of any gender, likely under the age of 18.  We have returned to the universal male figure, but now the non-infected figure is pink rather than gray.  Who knows what to make of this.

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Fifteen new STD cases are reported every week from porn actors and actresses

Ah, then we bring porn into this and our gendered but sexless little figures bust out the hip-out, blowing hair, stiletto-heeled pose.  Suddenly the generic leaps from male imagery to female imagery, and a very sexualized female at that.  Because this is the image that porn brings to mind.

What else did you notice in these illustrations?  Any other hidden stereotypes or assumptions that I didn’t pull out?  (Hint: One statistic on race?  Really?)  Full chart down here

Happy Easter all!  Enjoy some of these goodies from the blogosphere along with your marshmallow chicks and chocolate bunnies.

Hip(pity) Hop(pity) Chocolate Bunnies for Kids [sociological images]

“Nibbles”: Sexualizing Easter Candy [sociological images]

I Can Haz Feminizm Fun Easter Links [bitch]

Cylon Easter Bunny Will Kill By Your Command [i09]

I’m struggling with what to think of Lipstick Jungle, NBC’s failed primetime soap chronicling the lives of three of New York’s wealthiest women.

The show was based on a book by Candace Bushnell, the same author behind the book that inspired Sex and the City. The show is different from SATC, however, if only in the fact that it was produced for network television, limiting some of the content and requiring constant breaks for commercials.

The three women in the show are Wendy Healy, President of Parador Pictures; Nico Reilly, editor-in-chief of Bonfire magazine; and Victory Ford, fashion designer. Each of the women struggle with running their own companies, maintaining their friendships, and dealing with the men in their lives.

Where Sex and the City had a more revolving cast of love interests, each of the women of Lipstick Jungle has more-or-less one man. Shane is Wendy’s musician husband who was essentially a house-husband until Wendy’s professional situation changed. Joe Bennett is an incredibly wealthy businessman that pursues and financially invests in Victory Ford. And Kirby Atwood is Nico’s younger, poorer, flame who, despite being featured prominently in every episode, only joins the main cast in season 2 (methinks they weren’t expecting him to stick around so long).

Only 20 episodes were produced, so it didn’t take me too long to make it through the entire series, but I don’t know that I ever fell in love with it. I never outright hated it either. Read the rest of this entry »

So it’s a day late and a little bit blurry, but I think you still get the picture (badum-cha!).  No one is safe from the sexualization of holiday costumes (not just for Halloween anymore!), not even the Irish Leprechaun folk.  Here’s hoping you had an excellent St. Patrick’s day, and weren’t reduced to wearing your nightie to the bar.  Or wearing sexy stockings if you’re not yet old enough to go to the bar.

And remember: Friends don’t let friends turn childhood icons into sexual objects.

Lady Gaga’s new video for Telephone has set of quite the firestorm online.  Gaga appeared (pantsless) on my radar about a year ago as I noticed her being ripped apart by women-targeted fashion and gossip blogs, and the occasional feminist blog.  Over time, things seemed to improve: she developed a reputation for being subversive, outspoken, gay-friendly, and arguably feminist.  Her latest video has put a lot of us back at square one, wondering if we were kidding ourselves, if she’s messing with our heads, if this was just a fluke, if she jumped the shark, or (!!!) if it’s just a (NSFW) music video.

It appears as though this is Gaga’s (first) attempt at a Michael Jackson-esque mini-movie music video.  Other videos of hers (Paparazzi, Bad Romance) have had semblances of story lines, occasional dialogue, and extended cuts, but this one is clearly a step beyond anything that she’s done before (or yet).  My attempts to make sense of these ten minutes after the jump. Read the rest of this entry »

SciFi originals are one of my weaknesses, and although they’re a little embarrassing from time to time, they are so fun that I am not ashamed to share with you another of my newest (Netflix Instant)  obsessions: Primeval.  The show is essentially about a merry band of scientists who are investigating anomalies in the space-time continuum which have allowed dinosaurs to slip through into the modern world (along with the occasional future monster).  I know what you’re thinking – AWESOME!  Even better is the rock score that accompanies the action scenes.

Fantastic, right?  But what is it doing on a feminist review site?  SciFi’s attention to female characters is often a double edged sword: female characters are intelligent, competent, and typically hold their own with the manfolk – just in less clothing.  Primeval is no exception to this rule.  There are three primary female characters in the series: Abby, Claudia Brown/Jenny Lewis, and Helen Cutter.  Let’s break them down across the seasons: Read the rest of this entry »