Is "real" progressive?

How progressive is real?Germany's Brigitte

This week Germany’s biggest women’s magazine Brigitte made a surprising announcement: models are out, and real women are in.

The magazine made the decision to stop using professional models in their editorial content after receiving many complaints from readers saying the models are too skinny. Instead, the glossy will feature prominent women and “real” women in their pages.

I must say that it’s refreshing to finally see a women’s mag take a stand on this longstanding problem in the magazine industry. Despite giving lip service to the “all body types are beautiful” mantra, most women’s rags continue to populate their pages with ultra-thin models, making many women’s magazine reading experience a complicated love/hate relationship.

But while this move seems progressive it begs an important question: Exactly what kind of real women will be featured?

I ask this in response to an experience I had as an intern at Seventeen Magazine. Seventeen often uses “real girls” in their editorial features – usually in a type of story that asks a question and has readers give their response with their accompanying pic. I was often in charge of rounding up these girls and interviewing them. On one occasion my editor called me into her office and asked me to find some real girls that would give the magazine “diversity.” She asked me to find “one attractive Asian-looking girl and one attractive black girl” to feature in the story. The catch was clearly twofold: the magazine wanted to appear progressive, while maintaining a narrow version of who exactly would qualify as “attractive.” In this particular case it was girls who had “hints” of their race, while still fitting into normative versions of white femininity – thin bodies, big smiles, long straight hair, and European-like features.  Evidently, not very progressive.  

Then there’s campaigns like Dove’s Campaign for Real Beauty, which purports to celebrate a diversity female beauty. A recent tv ad in the US featured young girls participating in seminars that supposedly, “give them self esteem.” While it’s hard to argue against such a campaign (although there’s been a lot of great criticism since the campaign launched several years ago), it’s important to remember that ultimately, Dove is trying to sell us something.

Similarly, glossies like Brigitte and Seventeen are also trying to sell us things. Will Brigitte’s advertisers let the magazine use larger real women (and I mean size fourteen, not size eight!)? Or lesbian real women? Or African real women? I hope so, but it will be interesting to find out…  

xo, jessalynn

"You Can Tell it was Made by a Woman" ... Whip It Rocks It!

"You can tell it was made by a woman!"

The Whip It! LadiesThis is what my friend Jacqueline said after we caught the preview screening of Whip It! the other night (we also got a free shirt for attending!). And it was totally true - the flick succeeded in capturing being a teen girl - the teen angst, the disgust with your fellow peers, and the quirky friendships you make along the way. The movie, which will be officially released in theaters on Friday, was based upon a book by Shauna Cross and was directed by Drew Barrymore. Starring Ellen Page, and other super-cool grrrls like Eve and Juliette Lewis, the movie is definitely a must-see for ladies yearning for some real, dynamic female characters.

There's few mainstream movies that portray teen girls with any kind of real agency and interests outside of boys, shopping, and celebrities. So it was refreshing to see Page's character Bliss step outside those narrow stereotypes while trying to make her way through high school in Bodeen,Texas. And the fact that the movie is about girls roller derby in Austin is a welcome change from the cheerleader and dance-happy suburban movies that tend to dominate the young adult market. (Will we see more young derby grrls in the future? Let's hope so!)

Whip It! has been praised for portraying Bliss' friendship with her BFF, Pash (Alia Shawkat) as a real-life "I-tell-her-everything" kind of relationship - the kind of friend that girls cling to in order to survive high school. I love the scene where Bliss and Pash are happily dancing and singing together at their after-school diner job about moving to Austin - the perfect blend of innocent excitement and spontaneity that comes from being a teenager in a place where you just know you need to leave in order to live to your potential. At the same time, the plot stays away from the superficial sentiments, catty competitiveness, and self-centered deceit that plague teen girl characters, showing that - gasp! - girls can be genuine, intelligent, complex characters too.

The "cute boy crush"The story is not completely without the standard "cute boy crush" - in this case, an adorable rocker named Oliver (thankfully, no clean-cut jocks here!). While we're given what appears to be the ultimate "first love" story, turns out it's actually just a typical teen relationship (thankfully!) ending in that disappointment that most girls face at one time or another (rather than the phoney happily-ever-after script). The one scene that disappointed some of us was when Bliss admits to her mother that she "gave Oliver everything." Jacqueline raised the important point as to why we had to find out that Bliss indeed had sex with Oliver, rather than leaving it as an ambiguous question in the audiences' minds. I was more disturbed by the language used to talk about sex - the old narrative of the girl "giving him everything" and the guy presumably gaining from the experience, while the girl still loses (whether or not it was a good experience or not). I would have liked to see a more empowering way to talk about sex, rather than a confirmation of the old virginity double-standard that girls still have to deal with. I'm surprised Drew let that one slide by her...

As a group of PhD students watching the movie we also wondered why the movie ended with Bliss planning to move to Austin to do roller derby while Pash planned to move to New York to study at Columbia. I'm not saying that Bliss needs to get an Ivy-league education (in fact, it's nice to see a movie veer away from the standard of everyone going off to expensive private universities), but the movie doesn't really acknowledge that well, roller derby is not a career choice. The inclusion of some educational goals for Bliss while in Austin doing roller derby would have been a useful addition in terms of making her a bit more real for girl viewers.

Beside being fun to watch, Whip It! is a movie that finally portrays high school as it is -- kind of crappy. There's no glamorous parties (contrary to what we see weekly on Gossip Girl), there's few people confident enough with themselves to be genuinely cool, and people hang out in diners because, for a lot of kids, there's no place else to go. If you were one of those high school girls who was holed up in your best friend's bedroom listening to Bikini Kill albums and talking about feminism, (am I giving away how I spent my teenage years?) you're probably going to thank Drew for this cool take on being a girl with passion in a town that only rewards conformity.

In related news, Ellen Page and Alia Shawkat grace the cover of the October/November issue of Bust Magazine. Can't wait to check out the interview and hear these ladies' stories about making the film!

xo, jessalynn

   

(They) kissed a girl...in Marie Claire

Drew and Ellen's smooch in October's Marie Claire

I've been a Drew Barrymore fan since 1994, when I got the YM with her on the cover and thought she was so edgy and real, something different from the manufactured celebs usually in teen mags. Admittedly, I still had a bit of that sense of excitement when I picked up the October issue of Marie Claire, where Drew graces the cover with Ellen Page (a Canadian!), another actress that has gained a reputation for being genuine, intelligent, and willing to push Hollywood boundaries.

The interview is publicity for Drew's directorial debut, Whip It! (about girls' roller derby) where Ellen stars as a high schooler who goes from prissy pageant girl to tough derby chick. But perhaps what gained most of the attention in relation to the cover story was the accompanying pics, one of which Drew and Ellen share an up-close lip lock for the camera. I was surprised when I saw this photo - despite Marie Claire positioning itself as "the thinking woman's magazine" with the tagline "more than a pretty face" the magazine stays a safe distance away from challenging heteronormativity or discussing LGBT issues. But does publishing a picture of two women kissing constitute a progressive opening up of (corporate) visible space for lesbians or is it merely a publicity stunt that actually serves to undermine and subvert the challenge that queerness poses to the text of the magazine?

While the kiss got attention in the blogosphere, most postings automatically saw the kiss as a performance for a male spectator in hopes of ramping up attention for Whip It! Of course, the performance of pseudo-lesbian scenerios for the male gaze is nothing new in popular culture (I was reminded of this earlier this week when we showed the Intro to Media Studies class the music video for Katy Perry's I Kissed A Girl - yikes!) but I'd like to try and think beyond this idea and, at least hope, that the Drew-Ellen smooch might have more potential for transgressing boundaries. 

First of all, to point out the obvious -- the picture was in a women's magazine and centered around a film specifically marketed to teen girls and young women. I'd say that this context needs to be read differently than say, the Madonna-Britney kiss at the VMAs a few years back. A female audience may read the kiss within the context of female friendship or as something more sexual. The supporting text leaves this interpretation open, which I think is interesting. There is no mention of boyfriends (a common topic in mag profiles of female stars) or male sexual partners in the article and we hear Drew talk about Ellen's "beautiful body" and how "sexy" she looked during filming. We know that Drew has dated both men and women and has described herself as "bisexual", however, most recently has only (officially) dated men. Ellen Page has been more elusive with her relationships (she's also a relative newbie in the Hollywood scene), but a few people I've mentioned this to have said that rumors have been circulating about her being gay. At the same time, there's reference to the women as "crazy new besties" (magazine lingo for best friends I'm assuming) and talk about how real their "friendship" is. I'm going to suggest that this ambiguity has the potential for a progressive reading of this article and positioning of Drew and Ellen as outside of the binary of straight/gay.  

At the same time I wouldn't be surprised if this is a one-time deal in Marie Claire. While the magazine will occasionally include an article that raises LGBT issues, it remains very much rooted in heterosexuality as the norm and does little to progress lesbian issues in the mainstream magazine industry. In fact, I would highly doubt that the magazine higher ups would even recognize the ambiguity this article presents, and would instead probably position it in the patronizing, post-feminist terms of "empowered girls having fun". So, does the position of this article within a corporate context (and perhaps a denial of the various readings of the accompanying pic) rob it of it's potential progressiveness? Or is it indeed an example of the cracks that exist in mainstream media that can be used to put forth new representations?

Some final words from Ellen on intelligence in Hollywood: "I gravitate to genuine, well-rounded characters. It's a drag because then people are like, 'What an unbelievable young woman, she's so intelligent' - and it's like, Why is that a rarity?"

xo, jessalynn 

Tyra, Diversity and "Being on Top"...

Tyra and the ANTM ladies strike a pose...Some of you may know that I'm starting a research project on Tyra Banks and her reality model show, America's Next Top Model so I tuned in to this week's Season 13 premiere. And because Tyra is all about opportunity, this season she gives "short" models (that's girls under 5'7, but - don't worry - still sizes 0-2) the chance to be crowned America's next Top Model. Sure, they won't be able to work the runway (even Tyra can't change that fashion law), but they can now get the opportunity to sell Cover Girl products ad appear on Seventeen Magazine.

In true Tyra fashion the show kicked off with introductions of the potential contestants, revealing details about many of the girls that apparently touched Tyra and Co. One girl revealed she lives in a trailer in New Orleans with no running water, another confessed that she had been physically abused by a boyfriend. Then there was one contestant that had been kidnapped and sexually assaulted, and of course, there was the hot lesbian (making Miss J cheer with glee!). This focus on diversity, coupled with an attention to social issues -- poverty, sexual violence, and even a disability (granted, it was a broken leg) were all given lip service to. And while I appreciate Tyra's interest in longstanding commitment to having diverse contestants on the show, her attempts at constructing meaningful social dialogue within the premise of a show about modeling seems a bit...misguided? Or perhaps it's just a genius strategy to get these issues into prime time television?

But as quickly as the deeply personal stories were revealed, they were neatly packaged back up again and the girls were shuttled off for hair, make-up, and the photo shoot. This practice of revelation has been key to the success of ANTM, as the premise of the show rests on the notion of individual merit and strength -- a girl battling through society to reach the "top" of the modeling world.

For this fairytale to work it's imperative to construct the girls as having survived hardship (other seasons have incorporated issues ranging from female genital mutilation to a transgendered contestant), but still making it all the way to the ANTM studios -- just in time for Tyra to step in and give them the opportunity to shine. We never hear about the social conditions that create the various problematic situation for the girls -- it's almost assumed as though it's a personal misfortune that requires a strong personal ethic to overcome. It's a constructed fairytale that I'm hoping to explore in the coming weeks....   

In related Tyra news: I can't post about her this week without mentioning...her hair. In my Race, Nation, Media class earlier this week the topic of Tyra Banks' hair came up (yes -- I'm totally not joking!) and some of us wondered why Tyra hadn't tackled the topic of African American hair yet, despite covering other appearance-related insecurities, like weight. We all remember 'kiss my fat ass', right? If not, see below.

With the upcoming release of Chris Rocks' documentary Good Hair, about black womens' relationship with their hair, as well as the critique launched at Malia Obama for wearing her hair in twists on a summer visit to Rome, it seems as though the topic of hair is ripe for some Tyra-analysis. 

Coincidently, later that day Tyra kicked off the fifth season of her talk show by revealing her "true hair". Presented as a moment of personal revelation (similar to her younger proteges above), but speaking to the larger issue of black women and their struggle with beauty norms, Tyra finally took the issue up.  

For those of you that don't know, Tyra has been a faithful wearer of wigs and weaves for as long as most people can remember. She also loves putting weaves in ANTM contestant's hair when she deems appropriate, which has led some people to wonder what's up with Tyra and her hair obsession? Well, wonder no more. Because according to Jezebel, Tyra has declared that, "Wigs and weaves are options, not something you need." 

And this is why Tyra is a complicated persona... she takes beauty culture to task, yet runs a modeling show sponsored by Cover Girl, she (sometimes) tackles gendered social problems without addressing root causes and solutions, and at the same time she is a black woman who began her career as a model but has now carved out a cultural space where she is deemed both a successful businesswoman and potential role model. More to follow on these ideas as my research continues throughout the term and Cycle 13 of ANTM....In the meantime: What does everyone else think -- love Tyra or hate her?

xo, jessalynn 

The newest vampires on the block...

So the new TV season kicks off next week for many shows, and I've been paying more attention than I normally do because I'm taking a Feminist TV Criticism course and because I want to expand my work on post-feminism into the realm of tv too. One new show that caught my eye is the CW's The Vampire Diaries, based on the early '90s book series by LJ Smith. I faintly recall these books from my elementary school days (remember the horror novel trend -- RL Stine, Christopher Pike, etc?!) and it seems as though the series was dredged up with the hopes of cashing in on the ongoing pop culture vampire trend. Like Twilight (but unlike its TV counterpart True Blood) The Vampire Diaries is being marketed to teen girls as an explicitly "teen drama" and was produced by a team that counts popular teen shows like Dawson's Creek and Gossip Girl amongst their success stories. And critics are predicting that this could be the season's most popular debut. Here's the trailer for anyone curious:

It looks like the show is going to play on the usual plot line of the "beautiful, popular" high school girl (Elena Gilbert)  who gets involved with the gorgeous, but ultimately dangerous, vampire. In other words, no lead female vampires here! (Sorry to Adventures of a Young Feminist who blogged earlier this summer about the lack of female vampires in the pop culture landscape). And there seems to be the same underlying message of an obsessive ownership cloaked in the language of romance between the male vampire(s) and female love interest, as well as (ironically) the very same sexualized glorification of purity that ran though Twilight. But I'll hold more critiques for the premiere, which is this Thursday at 8pm on the CW.  

Beyond the actual content, the show has gained attention for going on a multimedia advertising blitz, which includes a blood drive in partnership with The American Red Cross (Tag line: Starve a Vampire. Donate Blood"), and mock promotional products like "Fang Floss" and "Sunscream". Definitely an interesting example of the way media products become "branded" through cross promotion utilizing many mediums.... I'm looking forward to seeing if girls will...bite. (Sorry, had to do it!)

xo, jessalynn