Fashion's Ethnic Problem

I’ve been thinking about how fashion---which, side note, is one of my favorite things---tends to represent the worst in our superficial, looks-obsessed culture. For one thing, there’s the whole skinny, stick-thin, pound-obsessed, weight-watching, calorie-counting, only-one-body-type-is-acceptable thing, which marginalizes the beauty potential of all body-type-deviations.

For another, there’s the whole woman-as-canvas thing, where models seem to forgo personhood to become agency-less, blank-faced, silent background scenery.

And then there’s that whole ethnic representation thing. The continued premium on Eurocentric notions of beauty, and the exoticization of those outside of it.

Aaaand now we get to the subject of this post: racist fashion. Yes, there's such a thing, and it's such a thing.

It’s been almost two months since New York Fashion Week and its European counterparts, but there was more than enough fuel for some racist fashion ranting. There was Dolce & Gabbana’s “mammy” motif including some very Aunt Jemima-ish earrings. There was Jeremy Scott’s neo-Orientalist take on Arab punk. And there were the romantic adaptations of traditional Indian garb by Marchesa and Vera Wang, with Wang telling E! reporters she didn’t want to go too far with any of that “belly dancer” stuff. So much problematic-ness, so little time.

I’m not sure what made me think of this now---maybe it’s the way every major clothing store from Urban Outfitters to Target has suddenly been all over the Native American print trend. Navajo-panty-gate caused an uproar a while back, and yet the trend has continued to diffuse through all retail chains. You can buy bags, hoodies, or what have you emblazoned with traditional native-style prints, and UO even has T-shirts with skulls wearing native headdresses.

The prints are often beautiful, but they’re also an uncomfortable example of cultural appropriation. Meaning, the hegemonic culture, for all intents and purposes "white" though of course participated in by a range of backgrounds, appropriates the cultural heritage and imagery of a minority group without their consent or direct participation. Just this past week, No Doubt pulled its new video after a wave of complaints about its representation of Native Americans. For more on the issue, I recommend you check out the Native Appropriations blog, which does a great job of breaking down indigenous images in pop culture and even succeeded in getting an apology from Paul Frank for their “powwow” party a few months ago.

None of this is surprising, I suppose. Racism and sexism are embedded in our culture, and fashion is just another art-slash-entertainment form from which they can poke their ugly heads. (Favorite racist Project Runway: All-Stars judge quote last week: when host Carolyn Murphy asked derisively upon seeing one contestant’s design, “Where are we, Spanish Harlem?”) My only consolation is that noticing it and not simply accepting it, we recognize that those ugly heads are still a problem. And this is where my somewhat jumbled assortment of thoughts that is this week's post comes to a head.

I love you Fashion, but you can be a real jerk sometimes.

Frida Kahlo: Survivor. Communist. Mexican Icon.

Everyone’s familiar with Frida Kahlo’s face, at least as she painted it. The dark, somber eyes. The brightly-colored dresses. That inescapable unibrow.

But Frida Kahlo is much more than that famous face, with its ugly beauty and its unconventional emphasis on female facial hair. She’s also a fascinating figure who lived through some of the early twentieth century’s most interesting events, who was attached to some of the early twentieth century’s most interesting people. And on top of that, she really put the “pain” in “awesome painter.” (Sorry. A stretch, I know.)

Frida was born in 1907 in Mexico City, just before the Mexican Revolution, to an immigrant Hungarian-Jewish father and a Spanish-Amerinidian mother. She suffered from polio at a young age, resulting in a permanently withered leg. But the seminal painful moment in Frida’s life was in 1925, when she was in a horrific bus accident that left her with spinal fractures, multiple broken bones, a crushed foot, and, the one that gives me the biggest heebie-jeebies, an impaling by a metal handrail. She wasn’t expected to survive.

But survive she did—albeit with an enormous amount of pain that never really left her. She went on to have over 30 surgeries in her lifetime, the last of which may have left her with the pneumonia that killed her at age 47 (though it’s also speculated she killed herself).

Despite the immense pain that was to haunt her and characterize her relationship with her body—or maybe, in part, because of it—Kahlo went on to do great things. She began painting while in bed, recovering from the bus accident, starting with her most famous subject: herself. “I paint myself because I am so often alone,” she said, “because I am the subject I know best.”

At age 22 she married famed muralist Diego Rivera, who was two decades older and two hundred pounds heavier than her (!). Their relationship helped her to develop her own work, while also being one of those Hollywood-style tumultuous marriages with tons of affairs on both sides and even a divorce thrown in the middle (after which they remarried, each other). Frida, for her part, had affairs with many famous figures, both men and women, including Georgia O’Keeffe and Leon Trotsky, whom she and Rivera put up in their home after his flight from Russia. (Ironically, after he was assassinated she became a Stalinist.)

Meanwhile, Kahlo’s work was feted in New York City and Paris, and she was the first 20^th-century Mexican artist to be featured in the Louvre. I can just imagine her mingling in that most romantic of settings, 1920s Paris (think Midnight in Paris), at an art showing, being toasted by Picasso and Miró and Andre Breton, a Parisian anomaly in her long, bright, traditional Mexican dress.

But as it were, Frida rejected what she called those “artistic bitches of Paris.” Her heart remained in Mexico City, where she lived most of her life in La Casa Azul, the house she was born in (which today houses Museo Frida Kahlo-- a must on my world tour list!). She and Rivera were also involved in a movement called Mexicanidad, aimed at preserving an essential, traditional Mexican culture in opposition to the encroaching cultural dominance of “the West.”

Kahlo attempted to live this Mexican ideal in her dress, in the symbols and colors of her art, and, also, in her rejection of conventional beauty norms. In fact, it’s reported she even darkened her unibrow and mustache to emphasize a kind of pre-Columbian femininity— where in this case, pre-Columbian means “before tweezers.”

Because of this, Frida Kahlo remains to this day a shining symbol of feminism and Mexican culture, and her art and celebrity have been completely embraced by the mainstream. But it’s easy to overlook the ways in which Kahlo’s art, and life, were less about empowerment and more about suffering, about the visceral experience of bodily pain and the social and political difficulties of being a woman. One of her most affecting works, My Birth, was painted after her miscarriage, depicting a bloodied Kahlo-like head emerging from a woman’s body.

Additionally, it should be recognized that "authenticity" movements seek an essentialized, pre-modern, sometimes imaginary past; in this case, a pre-Europe Mexico. Kahlo's embracing of "authentic" Mexican culture must be understood as a kind of political statement, rather than a representation of the Mexico that actually surrounded her.

In my opinion, the complexity of her personal and political life and the tragedy of her experiences, as well as the diverse vitality of her influences—which range from street artists to Catholic votive paintings to images of disasters to pre-Columbian folk art—makes her work all the more fascinating. There's so much beauty in what she created. Beauty in the attempts at authenticity; beauty in the expressions of human suffering; and, perhaps most surprisingly, beauty in the ugliness. I'm not going to grow a unibrow out in solidarity, but doesn't mean I don't appreciate what that unibrow represented.

Raziyya al-Din: Sultan of Delhi. Leader of Armies.

I’m never more inspired than when I’m spending my Saturday afternoons researching the most illustrious, the most extraordinary, the most awe-inducing women of world history, and of course I haven’t even scratched the surface in terms of subjects to write about. If I could, I would plaster my walls with pictures of these women: Eleanor of Aquitaine atop her horse en route to the Second Crusade. Emma Goldman slamming her fist on a pulpit as she addresses a hall full of factory workers. Sojourner Truth standing up in front of a crowd of hostile white men and skeptical white feminists to speak about her struggles as a slave and demand: “Ain’t I a woman?” It’d be like one giant wall of daily affirmations.

Raziyya al-Din (c.1200-1240) is another historical woman who was both excoriated (because she was a woman) and exulted (because she did stuff anyway). Born into Mughal nobility, Raziyya would go on to become the only female sultan in medieval India. Histories alternately refer to her as either Sultana or Sultan—let’s be clear that she preferred the latter, because a “sultana” technically referred to the wife of the sultan, and she wasn’t no sultan’s wife.

Raziyya’s father was Iltumish, a ruler in the Delhi Sultanate. The Delhi Sultans were a series of Muslim Turkish rulers based in Delhi who, through the medieval period, controlled much of north India. Iltumish and Raziyya, specifically, came from the first Delhi dynasty: the Mameluks, or slaves.

Iltumish recognized early on that his daughter was particularly well-suited for sultan-ing. She had accompanied him on many military campaigns and was ambitious, smart, and full of leadership skills. Thus he formally nominated Raziyya as his successor in preference to his many sons. (This makes me very well-disposed towards ol’ Iltumish. What a progressive guy!)

The problem: Despite the ostensible power of the Sultan’s throne, the elite Turkish nobles (always, always those unruly nobles!) wielded a disproportionate say in court matters, and they were not happy with Iltumish’s choice. When he died in 1236, they overrode his nomination and put one of his sons on the throne instead.

Fortunately for Raziyya, they soon saw the error of their ways. Her brother was incompetent and his conniving, ambitious mother made his rule even more unappealing. They removed him from the throne and gave Raziyya her due as the new Sultana Sultan that same year.

Raziyya, for her short term, proved to be a terrific Sultan. She was wise, benevolent, tolerant to Hindus, and adept at crushing rebellions when they arose. Like past YHWOTD Hatshepsut, she adapted men’s clothing, discarding the veil and dressing as a Sultan, I suppose, ought. Contemporary historians sang her praises, and eminent Indian historian Farishta remarked, “The men of discernment could find no defect in her except that she was created in the form of a woman.”

Her reign went well for the first couple years, but her appointment of an Abyssinian slave named Yaqut to a high office and her close relationship with him (speculation abounds that they may have been lovers, but sometimes I wonder, would the same speculation abound if she had been a man?) caused disgruntlement amongst those same unruly Turkish nobles. They eventually killed Yaqut and imprisoned Raziyya in a fort in Bhatinda, outside Delhi.

Raziyya was able to escape her imprisonment by marrying one of her captors (!) and the two of them marched on Delhi to recapture the throne. They were defeated by a dude named Balban, who would later become Sultan, and were unfortunately killed fleeing from battle in 1240.

Thus ended the short life and even shorter reign of Raziyya al-Din. But she was remembered fondly. Contemporary historian Minaj-us-Siraj called Raziyya “a great monarch, wise, just, generous, benefactor to her realm, a dispenser of equity, the protector of her people, and leader of her armies.”

What I’m reminded of when I read the singing of Raziyya’s praises, the apparent faultlessness of her Sultancy, is that—as Ta-nehisi Coates noted in an excellent, excellent essay on Barack Obama—minorities, including women, who rise to positions of power often have to be “twice as good and half as [insert minority identity here].” I’m not deeply cognizant of the social context of medieval India, but it’s noteworthy that the one of the only woman to emerge, victorious, from the margins of history in this period was, if the historians' language is to be believed, a perfect ruler and practically a man.

Obviously, that’s how they rolled back then---male sultans and all---and I get that. But even today, I think it’s a good reminder to not get complacent about the advances of women. There will be exceptions to every patriarchy, as Raziyya proves—but even with her boundary-breaking, the system remained intact, as it often does, even when briefly and occasionally challenged by extraordinary women. But at the very least exceptions like Raziyya can serve as inspiration and/or fodder for daily wall poster affirmation.

Bridget Jones Syndrome: The Female Disaster in Romantic Comedies

Recently, a piece in the Atlantic Wire criticized the pilot of Mindy Kaling’s new sitcom “The Mindy Project” with concern that it ends up reproducing “the most hoary of romantic comedy clichés, that in order for a high-powered female character to be relatable she has to be clumsy or bumbling.” There is a definite trend in the romantic comedy genre that finds our female protagonists overwhelmed, unable to juggle their professional, personal, and romantic lives. In Bridesmaids, widely hailed as a landmark in women-centered comedy, Kristen Wiig's Annie has a spectacular meltdown as her life falls apart around her. The story is sharp and smartly-written, and Wiig plays it well, but there is something a little alarming in her downward spiral over the course of the movie. We see her failing professionally (the closure of her bakery), personally (her jealousy of fellow bridesmaid Rose Byrne), and, of course, romantically (her hookups with self-absorbed jerk Jon Hamm despite the interest of totally decent good guy Chris O'Dowd).

Of course, that doesn’t change the fact that Bridesmaids is a major step forward for women in pop culture in that it boasts an almost all-female cast with a female protagonist, female writers, and a potentially chick-flick theme that still transcends gender enjoyment. As to whether that needed to include a protracted and extremely unladylike bout of group diarrhea---I leave up to you. Toilet humor is a matter of taste.

When it comes to female disaster protagonists, my mind always goes to Bridget Jones, the queen of messy, disaster-prone, perpetually imperfect heroines. Bridget’s whole shtick—played with admirable wholeheartedness in the film versions by Renée Zellweger—is that she’s full of insecurities and unfulfilled goals, and that everything bad follows her around like her own personal Murphy’s Law.

Compared to the often flawless actresses who play even the most accident-prone characters in major film and TV roles, Bridget Jones is a bit of a breath of fresh air. She’s slightly overweight, her hair is never perfect (properly inverting the far less realistic always perfect paradigm), and she falls on her ass on what seems like a regular basis. Most of all, she’s obsessed to Austenian proportions with finding the perfect husband, while sabotaging herself with meaningless relations with men like Daniel (Hugh Grant).

Bridget Jones is like a fairy tale where, instead of being presented as the ideal, everything in her life is seen through her eyes as never measuring up to an ideal-- that ideal perhaps arguably being informed by other representations of women in pop culture. Despite her often pathetic self-presentation, we find that Bridget is actually a fairly successful career woman with plenty of friends and no shortage of men (and, in the sequel, women) who find her irresistibly attractive.

So when Bridget waddles as she walks—when she unknowingly covers her face in red blush—when she, during a live news report skydiving, inexplicably beats the odds and lands in the one pig sty for miles around—there’s an over-the-top, every-worst-fear-and-insecurity-come-true effect. It’s almost as if we’re seeing Bridget through Bridget’s eyes, with her constant attempts and failures to become the woman she believes she should be. That’s relatable, even if it’s often executed in an incredibly over-the-top manner. (And my disclaimer is that I don’t know that this was the intent of the creators at all; in fact, I think interpreting it this way gets us into some weird mimetic representations of reality territory as we unpack the layers of interpretation through which the "actual" story is filtered, including the narrator and the audience---but let's not go there.)

I’m not saying there aren’t problems with these roles. In particular, when Bridget declares that nothing is more unattractive than “strident feminism,” she represents a definite rejection of feminism that buys into the worst kinds of assumptions about what “feminism” actually means. Moreover, if the Bridgets and the Annies are the only types of lead female roles we see in major films and TV shows, we risk depicting all women as love-obsessed, marriage-prioritizing, perpetually-insecure-and-occasionally-inept 20- and 30-somethings whose role as wife and mother can’t help but take precedence over all other roles in life. And that's problematic, if only because such ideas tend to get recycled, reinforced, and potentially relived by real women.

Back to “The Mindy Project.” I admit that I’ve wanted to like this show since first hearing about it, though I wasn’t sure it would live up to its potential. Mindy Kaling is hilarious, talented, and simultaneously strong and (hyper)feminine. Even better, she’s a non-white, non-twig-thin heroine in a TV landscape that is, well, white and thin. The premise is promising: a successful OB-GYN obsessed with romantic comedies who believes, over-optimistically, that she could have her own rom com ending one day.

Particularly with the second episode, I think we’re seeing the potential for delightful subversion in this premise. While echoing romantic comedies, and realizing that many women do, indeed, enjoy them and emotionally engage with them, it nevertheless acknowledges the illusory quality of those same tropes that most TV and film for women are based on. I enjoyed a moment in the second episode when Mindy meets a guy (Seth Meyers) who turns out to be an architect (see this dead-on Cracked article on stereotypical movie occupations). “An architect? No one is an architect in real life!” scoffs her ornery male coworker (and likely eventual love interest---yes, I still expect a lot of tropes to play out in the expected way).

Along similar lines, when we see Mindy meeting her now-ex-boyfriend (played by Bill Hader) in an elevator, she is thrilled to find their interaction playing out like a rom-com movie scene, down to her hair falling out of her ponytail as she bends over to help him pick up papers. Fast forward to their breakup several months later and one of those "hoary clichés"---Mindy giving a drunken speech at her ex's wedding. It's a playful mix of acknowledging and unsettling these clichés that, I think, gives "The Mindy Project" its potential and simultaneously gives it a chance at commercial success on a major network.

Let's not forget that every protagonist requires weaknesses—otherwise, they’re completely uninteresting and unrelatable. We should of course acknowledge that women, like men, have insecurities, and that, yes, we occasionally against our better judgment geek out and feel awkward and feel ugly and make bad relationship decisions. What’s important is that we realize that these insecurities might be, at least in part, due to fairy tales fed us by Julia Roberts and Meg Ryan and other romance-centric ideals of modern womanhood. And that the post-rom-com female characters---your Annies, your Mindys---should be more than an amalgamation of weaknesses and failures. As fun as she is, one Bridget Jones is enough.

A Traditional Marriage

This weekend I will be traveling to New England to attend the wedding of two dear friends.  Naturally, I love weddings---the pageantry, the ritual, the attention to detail---and I know this one will be memorable.  Part of the fun with weddings is evaluating each of the selections the couple has made.  One of my favorite activities is getting into bed after an event such as this and breaking it all down piece-by-piece with my husband.  We like to do the full debrief, including, but not limited to: fashion, ceremony elements, weird family dynamics, food and decor.  Clearly, I will be inspecting the floral design with a critical eye---it is a brave soul that invites a wedding professional to the Big Day. This wedding will be much the same in that I know how deliberate and painstaking this whole process has been and I can't wait to see how the couple will be reflected in their choices.  Additionally, I have been made aware that the guest list is rich with characters and we are to be seated at a table with some of the more dynamic friends of the couple.  As usual, my husband and I will immerse ourselves in all the action and take mental notes along the way for fruitful discussion later.  Although we are always delighted to participate in bearing witness to a public commitment to love, something that distinguishes this wedding from the many others we have attended is that the people getting married are two men.

The grooms-to-be in question, are, in actual fact, already married.  They ran right out and got married here in New York on the very first day it was legal.  It was that significant a step in their relationship---they didn't want to wait a single day more than they had to before making it "official."  Anyone who has ever doubted how critically important, how equalizing and normalizing a right it is to be able to get married, should really watch any footage or read any story from the day it became legal for gay people to wed in the few states where that dream has been realized.  New York was no exception when this happened in July 2011.  Appropriately, there was a collective sigh of relief in our community followed by raucous festivities---much like a wedding.

Certainly there is so much to celebrate here.  The idea that we have progressed to the place where there is majority (sometimes overwhelming) support for gay marriage in various corners of the nation is, in itself, staggering.  Although it is easy to wring hands over many social policy and civil rights issues these days, states legalizing gay marriage and our nation's president endorsing gay marriage are heartening signs.

When I think about the relationship that I am traveling to exult and sanction, I am struck by the fact that theirs is a marriage quite similar to and also much more “traditional” than my own.  Both men are working professionals with advanced degrees.  One of them is self-employed and owns a business.  They are both public servants in some capacity.  They value social justice and give to charity.  They share the aspiration of having children and are expecting a baby in the coming months.  They sit down to dinner together each night to a meal they have often actually cooked (!!), candles lit, and discuss the long day behind them.  Their home is warm, comfortable and impeccably decorated.  Most important, they are demonstrably in love and I have only ever seen them speak to one another with kindness.  I already look up to them as parents and their baby has yet to come.

When I consider the controversy around gay marriage, I absolutely cannot understand it from an entirely practical standpoint.  No question, I recoil at the notion that two men or two women couldn’t or shouldn’t love each other as much as a heterosexual couple or that they wouldn’t have the same legal rights and social empowerment.  But this couple bears out my experience that gay people who want to marry thrive in such a way as often puts most straight couples to shame.  They are doing “us” better.  Perhaps it is all the years of being “other” and observing relationships from the outside that has honed their skills within the partnership?  Maybe it is that being with somebody of the same sex has distinct advantages and allows for smoother communication?    The bottom line is that who is anybody to say that they shouldn’t have the right to kick our ass at marriage and/or bomb miserably at it?  I say, WELCOME.  Come on in, the water is fine.

So the next few days will be a whirlwind tour and I am so honored that we made the short list for this one.  These are selective people and not just any person scored an invite.  We are gearing up for a life event that will look a lot like so many that have come before it in terms of the customs.  But, the magnitude of the occasion might just mean slightly more.  I say this both because of what these two men marrying represents and who they inarguably are as individuals and as a couple.

Sojourner Truth: Ex-Slave. Activist. Hardcore Feminist.

A few months ago, sci-fi writer John Scalzi published a blog piece that went viral entitled “Straight White Male: The Lowest Difficulty Setting There Is”. In this article, he attempted to make “privilege” understood to an audience of gamer geeks by translating it into their own language—basically, that SWMs go through life on the “easy” (or “very easy”, depending on your game) button, while various minority identities increase your life’s difficulty setting. “The player who plays on the ‘Gay Minority Female’ setting?” he writes. “Hardcore.”

Our Historical Woman of the day was not, to my knowledge, gay, nor from an era that would necessarily self-identify as such, but I’m pretty sure she was still living life on one of the highest difficulty settings possible. Sojourner Truth was black, she was a woman, and she was born a slave. She lived a life that spanned from a childhood on the plantation to the difficult Reconstruction years following the Civil War. And today, due to her lifelong campaign for both African-American and women’s rights, she has become a symbol for the intersectionality of race and gender—how minority identities can overlap and how struggles can be experienced both separately and in tandem.

She was originally called Isabella “Belle” Baumfree; she changed her name to the (beautiful and rather inspiring) Sojourner Truth decades later. Belle was born into slavery on a Dutch New York plantation around 1797, and spent a childhood being shuffled from owner to owner, separated from family, mistreated by the masters and mistresses of the estates, and marrying a much older slave to whom she would bear five children, though there’s speculation that some were fathered by her white master. All part of the common experience of being a slave woman in America; but that doesn’t diminish its tragedy.

In 1826, an emancipation law was pending in New York—within a year, Isabella would likely be freed. However, she took it upon herself to exit the evil institution a little early. She took one of her children and literally walked off the plantation, finding refuge with a Quaker family and escaping the slave life forever. Later, she fought in court for the recovery of her other children, one of whom was illegally sold to a Southern plantation, and won. This was only the beginning of what was to be a long and fruitful activist career.

What Truth may have been most famous for, not unlike the firebrand anarchist Emma Goldman, was her public speaking. Illiterate throughout her life, she nevertheless had a remarkable gift for language and, from the 1840s onward, went on several speaking tours with both women’s rights groups and abolitionists.

Her most famous speech was apparently entirely improvised. At a women’s rights convention, at which Truth had agreed not to speak in order to avoid making harmful associations between the “Negro” cause and the cause of women, it happened that several men were shouting down the beleaguered women speakers. “Women expect rights? They ask us to help them down from carriages and over puddles!” cried Manly Man #1. “Women can’t even do manual labor!” exclaimed Manly Man #2. (I’m guessing at their names.)

Sojourner Truth couldn’t hold it in anymore. She marched up onto the platform and launched into an impassioned counterattack.

“Nobody ever helped me into carriages, or over mud puddles, or gave me any best place—and ain’t I a woman? Look at me! Look at my arm! I have plowed, and planted and gathered into barns, and no man could head me—and ain’t I a woman? I could work as much and eat as much as a man (when I could get it) and bear the lash as well—and ain’t I a woman? I have borne thirteen children and seen ‘em most all sold off into slavery, and when I cried out with a mother’s grief, none but Jesus heard—and ain’t I a woman?”

Truth then pointed a bony finger (according to her histories, something she was fond of doing) at a nearby preacher, and demanded, “Where did your Christ come from? . . . From God and a woman! Man had nothing to do with him.”

The crowd erupted in cheers. The manly men were publicly shamed. The white feminists who had objected to her speaking felt guilty. (Or so I like to imagine.)

If this all sounds a bit too good to be true—if it sounds like the ending of a '90s family movie—it may be because, it’s not entirely true. Sojourner Truth holds the transcendent rank of symbol in our histories, particularly feminist histories, and symbols often diverge from reality. Much of this speech was recorded by a white working-class woman named Frances Gage, who even wrote it in “plantation dialect” (see above quote, replace every “the” with “de” and “children” with “chillern,” etc). Historians have noted the potential motives of contemporary white feminists for uplifting Truth to the status of symbol: her rootsy plantation background was an ideal metaphor for the need for women’s own emancipation, and her illiteracy meant she could do little to contest the narratives of her white recorders.

Yet I like to think there was at least some truth in this landmark piece of feminist expository, even if it wasn’t quite as movie-scene-y as all that. There are many recorded instances of Truth’s resounding voice echoing through convention halls and touching the hearts and minds of all who attended. She spoke alongside Frederick Douglass—famously asking him “Is God dead?” as he enumerated the injustices being committed daily against the American Negro—and diffused tense situations with unruly, antagonistic crowds—another potentially apocryphal story arises in which she bared her breasts to an Indiana audience who questioned whether she was really a woman. (Probably because she was six feet tall and deep-voiced. And she also had the balls to challenge men.)

She even staged some proto-public transit sit-ins in Washington, DC, storming onto the “white” segregated horse-drawn carriages and challenging the conductor to throw her off. The by-this-time somewhat elderly woman ended up in a scuffle with one driver, whose company she later successfully sued. Hardcore.

Sojourner Truth settled in Battle Creek, Michigan after the Civil War, where she advocated for a Reconstruction that would address the injustices done to black America by slavery—which, by her estimation, could never be fully forgiven, but at the very least the government could begin to make amends. She died in 1883, roughly eighty-five years old, fighting for this elusive justice to the very end.

Despite the nearly insurmountable challenges set out before her, and whether or not some of the accounts about her are apocryphal or idealized, the former Ms. Baumfree built a life that became an inspiration to every seeker of social justice of the last 150 years. It's hard to imagine the difficulties she faced in her life; her status as both black American and female American, not to mention former slave, informed her experience and drove her impassioned demand for equality and justice in an often ugly American century. And so Sojourner Truth, like her name, embodies a struggle that continues to inspire, that continues to matter, that we are still fighting today.

An Ode to the Female Cop: Benson and Prentiss

Of the weighty Law & Order franchise, Detective Olivia Benson (Mariska Hargitay) of Law & Order: Special Victims Unit is the only female protagonist who really takes the lead. Other detective pairs which include females—Gorem & Eames, Logan & Wheeler, both of L&O: Criminal Intent—have a decided focus on the quirks, quips, and leadership skills of the male half. Female D.A.’s are frequent, but less protagonist-y. Olivia is by far the most prominent female hero to emerge out of Dick Wolf’s vast TV empire.

This is likely because SVU is like the “special episode” spinoff of Law & Order---it deals with, as the intro states, the “particularly heinous” crimes of sexual and physical violence against women and children. Accordingly, SVU has become the only one in the franchise to give equal, if not more, weight to a female investigator.

What’s interesting to observe is the ways in which, as a woman occupying the often masculine-associated role of NYPD detective, Olivia Benson both transcends and, conversely, highlights her gender at strategic moments. Like many female cops on TV, Benson isn’t, well, girly. She often wears her hair in short cuts. She dresses plainly. She even has kind of a low voice (not a huge thing, but we’d definitely be noticing if her voice was high-pitched and/or squeaky).

Yet very much of her character remains defined by her gender. As noted, it would seem that it was a deliberate choice to place a woman at the forefront of SVU because of the fact that it deals with crimes against women and children. Olivia is extremely sympathetic, touched deeply by each case she comes across and concerned deeply for each victim. She’s the one who sits and talks to them in a soft voice, coaxes out difficult-to-speak-about details, and gently advises that they take the stand to testify and put this or that bastard away for good. These all fall into line with "traditional" ideas about women's strengths.

And of course, the two lead detectives—Benson and Elliott Stabler (Christopher Meloni)—occasionally regress into tired gender role clichés. Olivia is sensitive! Nurturing! Gets emotionally involved in her cases! While on the other hand, Stabler is hot-headed! A tough guy! Gets physically involved in his cases—as in, he almost beats up dirtbag suspects in the interrogation room! The show tends to make up for this by having Benson and Stabler be both well-written and well-acted, but there is the occasional moment when you pull yourself out of the show long enough to go: “Really?”

Beyond relating to victims, Olivia has a more explicit connection to their ordeals---she herself is the product of a rape. And in one episode, Olivia goes undercover as an inmate at a woman’s prison where a guard is suspected of sexual assault, and she herself is attacked by the guard before she's saved by her team. In this case, she becomes a “special” victim herself, a situation that only she, and not Stabler, could place herself in (by the way, I'm not sure if that would ever happen in real life---a cop going undercover as an inmate? I don't know, I get all my skewed criminal investigation knowledge from these shows.)

In this last phenomenon, I’m also reminded of Emily Prentiss (Paget Brewster) from the crazy addictive serial killer show, Criminal Minds, which follows the work of an FBI behavioral analysis unit as they profile horrible, twisted rapists and murderers before they strike again (usually just in the nick of time to save the latest victim!). The subject matter is equally dark and grotesque, if not more so, than SVU, and the victims are, again, often women.

(There’s a whole subconversation to be had about the depiction of violent and sexual crimes against women as entertainment, and whether it is or isn't made more acceptable by the fact that the shows so clearly depict right and wrong and underscore the significance of such crimes—but that's for another day.)

There are three regular women on Criminal Minds, who tellingly remain at about fourth and fifth position in the cast photo phalanx (see picture)—yet they are important characters with a lot of screen time and subjectivity. Prentiss, like Benson, is a strong woman with minimal “gendered” qualities, a downplayed wardrobe, and a tough exterior. Yet she and J.J. (A.J. Cook) are often the ones who must “coax” a victim or bereaved family member, using their special lady powers to put people at ease.

In an episode where there is an outbreak of a deadly strain of anthrax, it is Prentiss and J.J. who we see struggling with the ethical quandaries of maintaining public silence about the disease in order to protect the greater good (which the men don’t seem to have a problem with). Prentiss fights the urge to notify a woman who lives across the street from their diabolical scientist suspect that she and her children may be in danger. And J.J. has a small emotional crisis about her own young son and the fact that, ethically, she can’t do anything to protect him in advance, because she has “inside knowledge” that the public doesn’t. The "mother" role often, overtly or subtly, plays into the female cop experience on these shows.

Prentiss, like Benson, has also used her gender to her advantage when dealing with suspects. In the interrogation room, she has flattered and flirted with sociopaths who tend to open up when faced with worshipful female attention. (These scenes are always a little sickening.) Meanwhile, Benson and Stabler have played on gender dynamics by playing roles when interrogating misogynists: Benson plays the bad cop who comes down hard on the guy, while Stabler winks and nudges—“women, right?”—and makes the guy think Stabler sympathizes with his woman-hating ways.

All in all, both shows produce interesting perspectives on the quandaries and ambiguities of gender in a fictional workplace that privileges traditionally “masculine” qualities; yet they often still reproduce traditional ideas about women's skills and perspectives. Benson and Prentiss are tougher than your average female character, but we don’t lose sight of the challenges they face and the separate circumstances they sometimes find themselves in as women, which is good. While there are clichés—the Benson-Stabler dichotomy, for example, or the repetitive "mother" theme—overall I think the net result of having heroines like these can only be positive in terms of female representation on TV. I mean, that is, if you can stand horrifically violent and disturbing plots.

Ladies Night

It feels funny to write about “women’s issues.”  I’m not even convinced I know exactly what that phrase means.  It calls up images of tampon commercials and bra-trashing protests at beauty pageants.  But I just finished watching the first night of the Democratic National Convention and it seems clear to me that women are a critically important demographic to the Democratic party and essential to winning the country.  As ambivalent as I am to acknowledge this fact, I think we do have special interests and issues that concern us, specifically.  And as such, I am not ashamed to say that I ardently support our President and would like to see him re-elected, come November. Both sides in the political sphere have sought to appeal pointedly to women during these conventions and I both appreciate and resent this.  A prime example is that the parties scheduled dueling speeches by Ann Romney and Michelle Obama in an attempt to increase the draw of their husbands.  On one hand, I think it is quite a statement about the important function of a political wife, that every great man has a woman behind (?) him.  But you can also see how this is somehow insulting – Why does she need to be behind him?  Why must she be relegated to addressing more domestic issues and talking about feelings?  Why do we need a “woman’s touch” to “soften” a man?  Why aren’t men allowed to look powerful AND empathic on their own?  I have so many of these questions, as I know you do.

I have struggled over the past months to understand how any woman would feel included and respected in the Republican vision for America.  I also watched the Republican National Convention and found myself trying to look into the eyes of the women in the audience — as the camera periodically panned to them — to see what I was missing.  What allows these women to ignore the way their leaders are working to suppress their very humanity?

Positions on broader issues like healthcare, general economic disparities and the social safety net are certainly applicable to women, but there are ways in which the Republican party is working to drag just us decidedly backward.  Here is just one example from this past spring  involving a new law in Virginia requiring women seeking abortions to undergo intrusive ultrasounds.  The particular cognitive dissonance of supporting a party platform that includes eroding your own reproductive rights seems incredible to me.  Not to mention the way that Republican state and national leaders have stood in the way of remedying the 23 cent per dollar gap in pay that women continue to experience.

It’s more than a little surreal that in 2012 we are still and again concerned about an assault on our freedom to make basic health decisions.  At the DNC, NARAL Pro-Choice President Nancy Keenan described the stark policy differences between Democrats and Republicans on this issue.  In elections past, the Republican platform has been officially against reproductive rights for women, while some less socially conservative members of the party would still quietly note that they were pro-choice.  These party members were essentially left to their own devices, especially if it was politically expedient.  This year, Republicans have upped the ante and changed the philosophical stance and the actual language of the platform — they are now zealously anti-abortion and make absolutely no exceptions to this, even for rape or the health of the mother.  I know a few political pundits who find this development astounding in its signaling of how far right the party has traveled.  Quite obviously for us, it is deplorable because it assails the basic rights of women in a way our generation has never seen.

In the world of behavioral assessment, it is widely held that the best predictor of future behavior is past behavior.  For example, in evaluating an individual’s level of imminent dangerousness (either to themselves or others), a heavily weighted factor is always whether that person has engaged in dangerous behavior previously.   If the answer is yes, the level of risk is increased and you climb down another branch on the decision tree.  Looking back on the past few years of Republican leaders introducing and enacting legislation that chips away at women’s rights, it is imperative that when they simply describe their party as being for and about women, it cannot distract us from the facts on the ground.  You can learn more about reproductive rights in each state here.

There are legitimate conversations to be had about how effectively this president has served our country, ways in which Democratic leaders could clean up their act and in what ways many people in many positions of power have let us down.  One might disagree with the assessment of history, the economic theories or policy prescriptions of one party or another.  But there can be no question which party supports women’s rights.  This is not a personal or professional analysis, this is something about which Republicans make no bones — they do not endorse a woman’s right to make her own health decisions and it is right there in their platform.

This is a call to action.  This election is going to be close.  Make sure you are registered, tell your friends and loved ones and get out there and vote.

Emma Goldman: Anarchist. Lover. Public Speaker.

It’s my second conference presentation. Ever. I’m seated between two other women—one, a PhD candidate at a tony East Coast institution; the other, a full professor and virtual expert on my topic. We were placed in the largest of the four conference rooms, and it’s mostly full. Curses. I thank the conference gods we’re allowed to sit during our speech. And that I brought a PowerPoint. ("If you'll all just take a look at this shiny picture instead of at me . . .")

Public speaking has, throughout my life, been the bane of my academic existence. As the hour of reckoning approaches, my stomach inevitably begins to dance and my palms get sweaty. I totter between the conviction that everything, as it always has been, will be fine, and the terror that this, yes this, is the time when I will finally, completely go to pieces in front of a large group of people. Maybe I’ll forget the words and do a dance, or worse, run from the room. (Fight or flight.)

I’ve always admired women and men who are gifted public speakers. There’s such an element of performance to it: a combination of confidence, conviction, and drama. Remembering my own shortcomings in these areas, of which I am painfully aware, I love to look up to this particular historical woman of the day for inspiration.

The incomparable Emma Goldman was born and raised in the Russian Empire, in present-day Lithuania, to an Orthodox Jewish family. In 1885, at the age of sixteen, she emigrated to the United States—already a veteran of a radical student circle in St. Petersburg, her political career would take root in the midst of the labor and anarchy movements of urban America.

It’s difficult to enumerate all the causes Goldman fought for: anarchism, socialism, workers’ rights, immigrants’ rights, free love, birth control. She sought to address the social evils that resulted from a rapidly industrializing, urbanizing America, as around her the rich got richer, the poor got poorer, and the robber barons got like super crazy insane stupid rich. Today this struggle, while tiresome, seems timeless; in the late 1800s and early 1900s, I imagine that it was also terrifying. The America we know---messy, diverse, capitalist, benevolent, unjust---was being born, and these struggles were its birthing pains.

Goldman typically sided with the underdog, railing against the inequalities of American society and the injustice of those in power. Her fights met with various degrees of success. But whatever her cause, one thing you could say about Goldman: she could speak.

Her speeches were famous, or infamous, depending what side of turn-of-the-century politics you were on. She toured the country giving her special brand of fiery talks that indicted the industrialists, the politicians, and the very structures of capitalism, and incited the working class, the women, the underprivileged to action. As writer Vivian Gornick puts it in "Love and Anarchy" (Chronicle of Higher Education 58:10):

“[Goldman’s intensity] was midwife to a remarkable gift she had for making those who heard her feel intimately connected to the pain inherent in whatever social condition she was denouncing. As the women and men in her audience listened to her, a scenario of almost mythic proportions seemed to unfold before their eyes. The homeliness of their own small lives became invested with a sense of drama that acted as a catalyst for the wild, vagrant hope--especially vulnerable to mean-spirited times--that things need not be as they are.”

We are in an election year. If you’re like me, you’re probably a little tired of hearing political speeches. (But how about that Clint Eastwood, right? Heh.) Without pointing any fingers, we’re seeing candidates who purposely downplay their past achievements if they don’t align with the party platform. Candidates whose views are “evolving” instead of just straight up existing, who must avoid certain subjects so as not to stir up segments of their voting base.

Emma Goldman wasn’t a politician. She was, perhaps, more of a rabble-rouser. But her career is incredibly inspiring because for everything she spoke about, she believed. Her passion was singular, unparalleled. Indeed, one of Goldman’s major complaints about fellow anarchists and revolutionaries was their diminishing of the individual within the mob and their privileging of the intellect over feeling. For Goldman, the individual was everything-- her anarchist utopia involved the liberation of the individual, not just the collective. It wasn’t all about politics. In fact, she had an active sex life and threw herself wholeheartedly into her romances, most notably with fellow anarchists Alexander “Sasha” Berkman and Ben Reitman. She didn’t just speak, she lived. (If you don’t believe me, read a few of her love letters. Wow! She’d put modern romance novelists to shame.)

Goldman built a decades-long career out of her activism, so of course, she had her fair share of trouble with the police. She was suspected of being involved in at least two assassination plots, including President McKinley’s, though it’s unlikely she played a role. It wasn’t until 1917, however, that her “treasonous” positions on World War I and the military draft finally made her United States residency untenable. She was deported to Russia, where she witnessed and quickly became disillusioned with the Revolution. She spent only two years there before moving on. After spending time campaigning against the fascists in Spain, she finally settled in Toronto, where she died in 1940 at the age of 70, a long, rewarding, and, in my opinion, incredibly well-spent life behind her.

My speech is over. I hand the microphone off. I’m pretty satisfied with how I did—I enunciated, I made eye contact with audience members, I didn’t stumble or stutter. I got my message across. Most of all, I didn’t run from the room in a panic. The full professor to my right congratulates me; she tells me I had some great material, but I could work a bit on my dynamics and volume. I’m no Emma Goldman, but I'm getting there.

No, it's not a compliment

I think about street harassment nearly every day, because I am harassed nearly every day. This is the reality for women who spend a decent amount of time walking around outside---even more so for women in densely populated urban centers. And I live in Manhattan, so . . . yeah. Nearly every day. Most days, the harassment is mild. A smacking of the lips as I pass, a low whistle, an obvious up-and-down with a creepy, slow nod at the end. These are the days when I think that hey, maybe it's all in my head. But then there are the times I'm followed, or told to smile, or surrounded, and I know that the milder stuff is just in a different place on the spectrum.

And before you go telling me that this is all a compliment and I should be grateful for the attention, a few things: anything that makes you feel threatened is not a compliment. Any time someone reacts to you ignoring them by calling you a bitch or a slut or a whore---all of which have happened to me---that's not a compliment. And trust me when I tell you that this happens to nearly all women, no matter what we look like. (I have lost nearly 100 pounds in the last year or so, and the only change is that instead of being called a fat bitch when I ignore men who harass me on the street, I get called a slut. So creative!)

No, it's not a compliment. It's a power play. It's a way of reminding women of what we already know: our bodies are public property, and are vulnerable to violation at any moment. (And before I hear the cries of misandry and, "Well, then, how am I supposed to approach the ladies at all?", let me cut those off at the knees with this handy, dandy guide.)

The good news is that I finally feel like this is something people are talking about. The fabulous Hollaback blogs started the conversation. You can submit your street harassment stories to them---along with photos, if you've got 'em---and trust me when I tell you that the support you get from your fellow commenters will be tremendous.

And in the if-you-don't-laugh-you-have-to-cry-because-it's-so-apt department, we have The Onion's recent post, entitled "Weird, Area Woman Wasn't Harassed Today." Let's just say they get it, proving once again that satire is this era's truest form of news. I don't want to spoil the punchline, or anything.

Chiming in from abroad is a new documentary from Belgian filmmaker Sofie Peeters. Peeters interviewed harassers for the film, which explores not only the impact of the behavior on women, but also the particular class and social issues at play. She found that confronting the men and listening to their stories led them to show her a greater deal of respect; that said, women shouldn't have to confront the men who threaten them in order to be able to walk down the street without feeling victimized. But, you know, progress is progress, however small.

It's pretty awesome knowing that all of this is out there. But it hasn't really changed my experience a whole lot. Just the other night, at about 10:30, walking from 84th to 86th Street on Broadway (a "good," if quiet, neighborhood), I was harassed three times. Once by a man who walked up behind me and whispered, "Sexy baby," once by a man telling me, "It doesn't hurt to smile," and once by a man who simply looked me up and down and licked his lips. I suppose I could have confronted them, but in the moment, it always seems safer to keep walking.

I hope my friends' daughters are never able to say the same.

Photo: Henry Tonks, Woman Walking on Sand, ca 1910

Liliuokalani, Hawaii's Last Monarch

I’ve been to Hawaii a few times, and growing up it always seemed like the happiest place on earth---South Pacific edition---but one chance overheard statement in 2003 stays with me and can probably be credited with changing (or at least complicating) my view of the islands forever. (I also wrote about it here, where I reviewed Sarah Vowell’s excellent Unfamiliar Fishes for my book blog. Just openly acknowledging that I’m repeating myself on the internets.)

So what was the statement? My parents and I were poking around a tiny inlet on the Big Island one evening, and nearby a Hawaiian family was having a BBQ picnic. One of the men laughingly reprimanded a few tykes who were getting too rambunctious with this: “You want to be like the white man? Killing everything you see?”

That was my first indication that Hawaii was, shall we say, acquired by the United States by means less than savory (though really, we could say that about all the states . . . but I digress!). The man wasn’t speaking with resentment, but this acquisition, it would seem, dramatically affected the worldview of his fathers and grandfathers and continued to color his own. (No pun intended.)

As far as anti-imperial icons goes, Liliuokalani is pretty tops. She’s not the only figure in the islands’ anti-imperial movement, but she fought back in the last days of Hawaiian sovereignty against an encroaching American authority, sought to prevent annexation, and was even placed under house arrest for her alleged role in inspiring a coup (echoes of Eleanor of Aquitaine!).

The first and last queen of Hawaii was born Lydia Kamakaeha to a noble family, into a culture already experiencing the drastic effects of white missionary activity and Western economic and strategic interest. She was educated by missionaries at the prestigious school for high-ranking Hawaiian children and married a white sea captain’s son named John Dominis. He’s the bearded stud seen here:

The line of Kamehameha the Great was broken after the death of Kamehameha V in 1872, and two years later Lydia’s brother, David Kalakaua, became king. Lydia was now a member of the royal contingent and heir to the Hawaiian throne. In 1887, she accompanied her brother and his wife on a great journey to Queen Victoria’s Golden jubilee (the 50^th anniversary of Vic’s reign; long enough for anyone, but she’d go ahead and add another 14 years of rule to that anyway).

This probably doesn’t need to be said, but going on a trip in 1898 was no joke. Fifty years later, you could hop on Pan-Am and be in London in less than a day. Liliuokalani and her family spent months on the road. They took a boat to San Francisco, took a train across the United States, and then took another boat to England. Along the way, they visited all the classic road trip pit stops: Sacramento, Salt Lake, Denver (which she describes as “an infant city… [with] but a few scattered houses”), the oil fields of Pennsylvania, Boston, New York, and, of course, Washington, D.C. They were received by President Grover Cleveland and dined at the White House, as they were later received by Queen Victoria in London.

Personally, I find the Hawaiian royal family’s trip fascinating. I honestly think it should be immortalized in a movie. It would be part biopic, part historical drama, part road trip buddy comedy (I’m thinking John Dominis could be the whiny guy who keeps screwing things up for everyone else; Liliuokalani describes how, in San Francisco, he had to be taken into the wharf on a stretcher because of a sudden attack of rheumatism).

On David Kalakaua’s death in 1891, Lydia took the throne as Liliuokalani. She was, notably, to be the first reigning queen of Hawaii, as well as the last Hawaiian monarch. For decades, white missionary descendants and businessmen had been playing an increasingly active role in local government. When Liliuokalani, in an effort to restore more authority to the Hawaiian monarch, abrogated an 1887 treaty that gave special privileges to the United States (including ceding them Pearl Harbor), the businessmen had had enough.

The Missionary Party deposed Liliuokalani in 1893 in a bloodless coup and announced their rule as provisional government. Sanford Dole (cousin of the pineapple guy) became president and pushed for Hawaii to be annexed by the United States. Grover Cleveland was opposed to this---he actually felt that the coup was unlawful and that the Hawaiian monarchy should be restored, so the matter temporarily remained in limbo.

In 1895, a failed coup in the name of the queen took place, and Liliuokalani was placed under house arrest. She agreed to formally abdicate, in part so that her supporters would be released from jail. However, she continued to fight tooth and nail against the annexation of the islands, which, of course, happened anyway in mid-1898 as the U.S. was in the throes of the Spanish-American War---hey, here’s some islands exactly halfway across the Pacific where we can stop our ships on the way to the Philippines! Annexed.

The rest is history. And so is the part I just told you about.

I feel a lot of sympathy for Liliuokalani, maybe more than I feel for other historical women. She was born into a changing world, a Hawaii in transition. The ending---American annexation---was not inevitable, but forces in that direction were powerful, beyond the control of a single person. This was the dawn of the American century. Liliuokalani was only queen for two short years in the 1890s before being deposed by Dole and his ilk, but her intentions for Hawaii, framed as they were in the language of her conquerors, remain clear to us today. For however brief a period, for however little she could do, she stood against the relentless tide of American imperialism and became a lasting symbol of resistance.

Oh, and she also wrote songs (see “Aloha Oe”). Another reason I like her.

Community, Women Writers, and Attractive Comediennes

With regards to “Community” fandom (and fashion, if you're Heidi Klum), you’re either in or you’re out. If you’re not a fan of the show, or haven’t watched it, you don’t understand what all the fuss is about. But if you are a fan, like me, then you won’t shut up about it. For those of you on the outside, “Community” is a manic, endearing, and ultimately brilliant half-hour comedy on NBC, soon to enter its fourth season. The plot centers on a group of misfit friends whose only commonality is that they attend Greendale Community College, where they regularly meet in a study group that doesn’t seem to consist of actual studying. Instead, crazy hijinks ensue! It’s produced some of the most ambitious episodes to hit prime time in years, including an entirely stop-motion Christmas episode (reminiscent of the old “Rudolph” style TV specials) and a 30-minute homage to the obscure 1980s film My Dinner with Andre.

It’s hard to describe exactly what it is “Community” does—genre send-ups, surrealist humor, endless pop culture references for the 20- to 40-year-old set—but whatever it is, it’s groundbreaking. And a large part of the credit is owed to the women who work on the show.

Creator Dan Harmon, at the recommendation of a female NBC studio head, made sure that his writing staff was comprised of half women. In an interview with the AV Club, he notes the difficulty he had in finding talented women writers—not because women aren’t talented, but because there just aren’t as many women writers to choose from—but that now he wouldn’t trade the gender makeup for the world.

Harmon: “The energy is different. It doesn’t keep anybody polite. We’re not doffing our caps or standing up when they enter the room. They do more dick jokes than anybody, because they’ve had to survive, they have to prove, coming in the door, that they’re not dainty. That’s not fair, but women writers, they acquire the muscle of going blue fast because they have to counter the stigma. I don’t have enough control groups to compare it to, but there’s just something nice about feeling like your writers’ room represents your ensemble a little more accurately, represents the way the world turns.”

Credit is also owed to the amazing cast, which notably includes three incredibly talented and hilarious women: Alison Brie (Annie), Yvette Nicole Brown (Shirley), and Gillian Jacobs (Britta).

Through the combined efforts of the writers and the actresses, the three female leads on the show are fleshed-out, complex, entirely human characters. Their personas are not entirely defined in relation to a more prominent male character. They aren’t wives, or love interests, or sidekicks. Despite the ostensible central lead of the show existing in Joel McHale’s egocentric ex-lawyer Jeff Winger, there’s a near-equal weight of importance given to each of the show’s seven main characters, and the women are just as interesting and well-explored as the men, if not more so.

In a totally engaging and lovely round-table interview with the Daily Beast, the “women of Community”—the three actresses plus writer Megan Ganz—dished on what made their show’s treatment of women special. This includes the, ahem, liberated sexuality of Gillian Jacobs’ character Britta. “The thing that is unique about [Britta] is that she is never the subject of slut shaming,” says Jacobs. “Like, she’s one of the only female characters that doesn’t ever get punished for having an active sex life.”

The sexuality of the women—most notably Brie and Jacobs, who are young and, by most people’s standards, hot—is an especially interesting point, when considering the use of sexuality as the defining spectrum for so many less-developed female characters on TV. It’s the age-old Mary Magdalene vs. Eve, slut vs. prude binary, which “Community” so successfully subverts. Jacobs goes on to note that when auditioning for high school characters in the past, she was dismayed at the way their representation was filtered and distorted through the male perspective—high school girls as seductresses, confident sex mavens; Ganz adds that these male writers often “remove all awkwardness from the teen experience.” The more complex and realistic sexuality of a character like Britta, and even the more subtle sexual evolution of a character like Annie, is refreshing in a landscape of women-as-seen-by-men.

There’s no real black-and-white, right-and-wrong guide to how a woman should portray her own sexuality. As with most things, the more agency she has in the process, the better, whether she chooses to show a lot or a little (so to speak). However, I have to admit I was taken aback to see this 2011 GQ feature of Brie and Jacobs, including a crazy suggestive photograph of the actresses in barely-there lingerie portraying a porn-worthy lesbian sex scene. As beautiful as they are, and as much agency as they may have had in creating this photograph, there’s still a real “ew” factor when imagining the relationship of this piece to the audience it’s intended for. You know—men’s magazine readers.

Not that overt sexuality is bad. To illustrate my point: take this scene in “Community” where Annie sings a sexy, wide-eyed, Betty-Boop-meets-Eartha-Kitt Christmas song, in what Ganz calls a send-up of the infantilization of female sexuality. It’s hilarious, and it showcases Annie’s sexiness without being exploitative—instead, with the song’s gradual devolution into nonsense words and floor-crawling, it becomes a self-aware critique of exploitation.

I suppose part of my discomfort with the photo shoot stems from the very different tone of the two scenes, and maybe specifically from the audience each one is intended for. Art isn’t created in a vacuum—there tends to be a dialectic between the creator and the audience out of which emerges the dominant interpretation of the work. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on “Community” to an audience of viewers (mostly) in on the joke—and (mostly) appreciative of the very real comedic and performing talents of the two—feels legitimate, like there’s an end to the venture. Brie and Jacobs playing sexy on the pages of Gentlemen’s Quarterly, within whose audience the aforementioned criteria don’t exist, within whose pages instead women are regularly set on display as object of desire and/or decoration, feels exploitative. It’s sex for sex’s sake—women as fantasy creatures. Brie and Jacobs cease to be.

I’m in no way condemning Brie and Jacobs for this editorial choice-- nor for any other "sexy" photo shoots they choose to be a part of. They’re both absolutely fantastic and, in many ways, trailblazers. It's simply instructive that in our media, even wonderfully intelligent, forward-thinking, self-aware actresses such as these are inevitably represented in the visual language of a culture obsessed with sex and, particularly, women as sex objects-- and that there's a fine, often indistinguishable line between satirical and actual objectification.

Eleanor of Aquitaine, The Queen Who Went on Crusade

Last January, I traveled to Lebanon by myself. Even though I tried to hide it, I was terrified. The farthest I’d ever traveled solo before was Victoria, British Columbia, where I was pretty sure I could walk around at midnight with a sign on my back saying “Mug Me” and be alright. Of course, I had a purpose in going there—an academic conference at the American University of Beirut—so it wasn’t an unstructured, completely unaccompanied venture. But still, I wondered if it was wise. Especially being a girl and all.

I was reminded of this when I was reading about the life of Eleanor of Aquitaine, who basically kicked ass and took names through most of the 12^th century and never really let her gender get in the way. This was a woman of vision and ambition who ignored whatever traditions should have constrained her, and who consequently had more power than most of her male countrymen. It didn’t hurt, of course, that she started out as the daughter of a noble of vast territorial holdings; and then, that she was strategically betrothed to the inheritor to the French throne. I mean, she started out strong from birth. But what she did with what she had was still abnormally ambitious.

Eleanor married the soon-to-be Louis VII at a young age, becoming the queen-consort of France. A highly-educated woman with a forceful personality, she contrasted sharply with her soft-spoken, religiously devout husband. Their marriage wasn’t meant to last. The catalyst to their breakup was her inability to produce a male heir (typical), which she attributed to the rarity of his trips to her bed (also typical). The excuse and the means was their consanguinity (read: they were related; for royals, ALSO typical, but invoked or not invoked as desired). This allowed them to get an annulment from the Church.

But her 15-year marriage to Louis wasn’t totally uneventful. Eleanor accompanied him on the ill-fated Second Crusade, traveling to Constantinople, Jerusalem, and various Crusader states in the Near East. Picturing Eleanor atop her steed, French crown stylishly perched on her head, gallivanting across central and southern Europe to arrive at the Crusader castle of Antioch, aside her husband, who unlike her would rather take a pilgrimage than go to battle—well then, traveling to Lebanon on Middle East Airlines for a five day stay at a comfortable hotel doesn’t seem so brave, after all.

(One thing that my trip and Eleanor's trip had in common: We both went to a Crusader castle. However, hers was probably a lot more intact and functional than the one I went to.)

Eleanor’s ambitious career didn’t end with her French queenship. Shortly after her annulment, she married the heir to the throne of England, the soon-to-be Henry II, who was at least a decade younger than her. (I want to make a joke, but I’ve sworn to never use the word “cougar” to mean anything other than the animal.) With Henry, she had seven children, including future kings Richard the Lionhearted and John Lackland. If you’ve seen Robin Hood: Men in Tights, that’s Patrick Stewart and Richard Lewis, respectively.

Years later, Eleanor was accused of plotting with her sons to overthrow her husband, and so Henry, fearful, locked her up in jail, where she remained for 16 years. When he finally died, favorite son and new king Richard released her; then he trotted off on the Third Crusade for a few years, leaving Eleanor as his regent.

Eleanor remained active in governing and politicking and strategic marriage-arranging until her death at the age of roughly 82—ancient by 12^th-century standards. I imagine she was like one of those really cool old ladies who still runs marathons and knows how to use Facebook. “With it” to the very end.

Her longevity is only another facet of her overall impressiveness, though. Queen of France, queen of England, Crusader, coup conspirator, jailbird, king’s regent—by any standards, what a life!

I think that, every time I’m feeling a little constrained by expectations—whether those be gender-based, or age-based, or anything-else-based—I can look at Eleanor for solid proof that expectations can be defied. True, structures exist in society which circumscribe choices and limit options, but the limits are not unbreakable. For Eleanor, the sheer force of her personality, paired with her own limitless ambition, allowed her to not only become, but redefine what it meant to be a queen in the Middle Ages. Twice. If she can do that—I can certainly go on a trip by myself.

Sister Pat's Revolution

Long ago, back in my halcyon days of undergraduate bliss, I was a religious studies major. I suppose, looking back on it, that my fascination started at an early age. I'm the product of a mixed marriage---a classic northeastern WASP/Jew mashup---and while my father didn't practice Judaism at all during my childhood, my mother dutifully toted us to the local Episcopal church each weekend for Sunday school and services. Though I never developed a religious zeal, I did develop a zeal for religion. I was fascinated by it, and by what studying it could reveal about the history---and present state---of humanity. I started strong in high school (six classes, including Zen Buddhism, The Holocaust, and The Hebrew Bible), then followed up with a full-on major in college.

My senior thesis was about a late medieval English mystic. You might have heard of her. Her name was Margery Kempe, and she was famous/infamous for (supposedly) crying all the time. My (unsurprisingly feminist) take on her, though, was that she pretty freaking brave. See, Margery's account of her life's story was, to my mind, a pretty provocative piece of writing. (It was also the first autobiography written in English---though she was illiterate, and so dictated it to one of her confessors.) Margery lived in England just as the Reformation began rumbling across the land, taking an awful lot of bodies with it.  And so her depiction of herself---not only a woman, but a lay woman---as having a close, personal, unmonitored relationship with God was downright dangerous, in addition to being subversive and incredibly vital.

Margery's been on my mind a lot these days, thanks to the Catholic Church's latest internal drama. The Leadership Conference of Women Religious, a membership group representing approximately 80% of the nuns in the United States, has found itself directly at odds with the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith, the group tasked by the Vatican with the oversight of all Catholic doctrine. The nuns, you see, do not take an official stance on things like contraception, abortion or gay marriage, preferring instead to focus their energy and public sway on what they view as the more important Christian duties of caring for the poor, sick and those in need. Sister Pat Farrell, the president of the Leadership Conference, gave some pretty illustrative quotes during her recent Fresh Air interview:

Our works are very much pro-life. We would question, however, any policy that is more pro-fetus than actually pro-life. If the rights of the unborn trump all of the rights of all of those who are already born, that is a distortion, too — if there's such an emphasis on that. However, we have sisters who work in right-to-life issues. We also have many, many ministries that support life. We dedicate to our lives to those on the margins of society, many of whom are considered throwaway people: the impaired, the chronically mentally ill, the elderly, the incarcerated, to the people on death row. We have strongly spoken out against the death penalty, against war, hunger. All of those are right-to-life issues. There's so much being said about abortion that is often phrased in such extreme and such polarizing terms that to choose not to enter into a debate that is so widely covered by other sectors of the Catholic Church---and we have been giving voice to other issues that are less covered but are equally as important...

Like Margery, Pat Farrell is one seriously brave lady. As someone who was raised in a church that ordains women, elevates gay bishops and  is pro-choice, I sometimes look at women like Pat Farrell---and the thousands of female theologians in the Catholic Church---and wonder, "Why don't they just leave?" It's easy, looking from the outside, to think that. It's especially easy for someone whose relationship to religion has always been---even when experiential---quite academic and detached. (I really do go to church for the music, and to observe rituals.)

But while I am puzzled by the determination of female worshipers to change their less-than-feminist religions from the inside out when they could simply leave for a faith that values them, I am even more impressed by the courage and determination it takes to do so. After all, the church will never change if women like Pat Farrell don't lead the charge. And while I don't have a personal stake in her battle, I have to admit I'm cheering for her from the sidelines. It's not easy to leave the church you've spent your life serving, but I think it's probably even harder to stay and fight to make it the place you think it should be.

Good luck, Sister Pat. May you succeed where Margery did not.

Image: CNS photo/Giancarlo Giuliani

Hatshepsut, the Female King of Egypt

Flipping through the glossary of my student’s high school world history textbook (I tutor history on the weekends, one of the sole professional manifestations of my recently-completed master’s degree) I was amazed to find that of the hundreds of key terms the book highlights, of which at least a hundred or so are people, there remain only two key terms that are historical women. Think about that. Two, out of five thousand years of history, deemed worthy of emphasis.

More surprisingly, perhaps, are the two who carry this high honor: Hatshepsut, a 15^th-century BCE queen of Egypt’s 18^th dynasty, and Eva Perón, the wife of 1940s Argentinean president Juan Perón (also a key term).

It’s a given that women are underrepresented in history books, and in history in general. Most of the chapters in our textbook, be it on ancient Egypt or Renaissance Italy or the Mongol Empire, have a subsection which should effectively be titled “So, what were women doing while all this other stuff was going on?”, just to, you know, remind us they existed. Answers variously include “being/not being allowed to own property” and “being/not being allowed to get a divorce.”

It’s not the problem of this particular textbook by any means, and neither is the scholarly field of history and its practices entirely to blame. Sources from the point of view of women, or concerning women, are scarce in many historical eras and in many countries, and that’s something historians just have to deal with. Those who focus on women’s history make do with limited sources, piecing together as full a picture as is humanly possible of women’s lived experiences.

Still, it was a little dismaying to realize just how limited female representation in the history books is. So I aim to expand that representation just a bit—a great big thank-you to those ladies who made us look good, or at least, made us look powerful (and let’s face it, power is the paradigm that never goes out of style).

Today’s historical woman: Hatshepsut, the first of those two lucky ones who made it into the third edition of The Earth and Its Peoples.

Hatshepsut was born the daughter of the Egyptian pharaoh around 1500 BCE. She married her half-brother, Thutmose II (don’t judge—it’s a different culture), who became pharaoh at their father’s death. The two had no sons, though Thutmose II did produce a male heir with another wife. However, when Thutmose II died, his son, Thutmose III, was still just a boy, so Hatshepsut took the throne as the king’s regent.

This in and of itself wasn’t so unusual: a woman taking on the kingship as a kind of “interim” ruler while the real heir grew out of childhood had happened before. But Hatshepsut’s reign was different. After a few years, she proclaimed herself pharaoh and began to take her kingly duties more seriously, participating in kingly rites and building monuments. And everyone knows that building a monument is basically just a giant “hey, look how great I am” to the world.

One of the most interesting things about Hatshepsut was that, in assuming the unlikely role of female pharaoh, she adopted a masculine role with all the trappings associated with that gender. Early on, visual evidence shows a synthesis of male and female imagery: in some temple reliefs, Hatshepsut is wearing a woman’s gown, but stands with her feet wide apart in a decidedly masculine and kingly stance.

Later, however, her female gender is effectively obscured, with depictions losing their female traits altogether and instead portraying the traditional male traits of the pharaoh, down to the false beard. Hatshepsut was not trying to change her gender, however; her depiction as a male king was more an avenue towards kingly legitimacy, in a society where female pharaohs were unheard-of and females thought unfit to rule kingdoms by religious law.

What Hatshepsut attempted in becoming a male king of Egypt, while different in style and convention, seems to me to continue to exist in the 20^th and 21^st centuries. Female politicians have often had to prove themselves in a male-dominated milieu, adopting what are considered “tough” and “masculine” traits because that’s what is expected of a world leader (or, looked at another way, those women who do adopt these traits are the ones likely to be considered successful leaders). Some of the most aggressive foreign and domestic policy of the latter half of the 20^th century has been undertaken by women, from Golda Meir in Israel to Margaret Thatcher in the UK. This “necessity” for masculine legitimacy can also, probably, be seen in more innocuous ways: the prevalence of pantsuits, the stone-faced expression. (Remember when everyone freaked out because Hillary kind-of-sort-of cried during an election stop in 2008?)

Hatshepsut’s stepson Thutmose III took over following her death, and during his reign he made what appeared to be a systematic effort to erase his stepmother from the record books. He removed her name from the king’s record, took down monuments, defaced images: all a clear attack on her personal legitimacy as well as a major blow to the whole female pharaoh phenomenon. I guess the last laugh is on ol’ Thutmose, though, because today, Hatshepsut is remembered as one of Egypt’s most successful pharaohs.

And she’s an AP World History key term. If that’s not success, I don’t know what is.

He'd have me at Atwood.

Tell me, if you would, what each of these lists has in common.

1984, The Odyssey, Infinite Jest, Super Sad True Love Story. Lots of non-fiction, typically covering: history, science, or art/art theory. Neil deGrasse Tyson/Brian Greene/Richard Feynman. And biographies/autobiographies.

Just finished Nick Flynn's Another Bullshit Night in Suck City, which is incredible. I am sappily fond of David Foster Wallace for many many reasons.

Confederacy of Dunces, Girl Curious Hair (surprised, wanted to really hate him), everything Salinger or Kundera.

Currently reading Life by Keith Richards and miscellaneous repair manuals. Some favorites: White Noise, Libra, Assassination Vacation, Shop Class as Soulcraft, Outliers.

All the Kings Men, The Man in the High Castle, 100 Years of Solitude, The Odyssey, Who Censored Roger Rabbit, The 1,001 Nights, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead, Catullus.

They are lists of books, it's true. And they're charmingly eclectic, up to a point. I mean, you have to admit that there's something adorable about a list that includes works by both Homer and Neil deGrasse Tyson. But look a little closer, and you might notice something missing: not one of these lists of favorite books includes a single novel written by a woman.

The common thread uniting these? They all herald from the OKCupid profiles of men who've either emailed me or caught my attention in the last few weeks. I haven't met any of these gentlemen in person yet, but they all seem perfectly nice, bright and open-minded. They are men who claim, either in their profiles or in the answers to their questions, a certain level of liberalism---even feminism. But nary a one lists a single book by a woman---not even a freaking short story---as among their favorites.

Whenever I get an email from a promising guy, I dread scrolling down to this part of his profile, knowing that pretty much every time I'm going to feel a twinge of disappointment in a man I otherwise find interesting. Why is it, I ask myself, that none of these men can be bothered to include a woman among their favorite authors? The likely answer, of course, is that they probably haven't read anything by a woman---with the possible exception of Doris Kearns Goodwin---since college. (Habits developed in childhood---which we've discussed before---follow people for life, kids.)

By contrast, here are the favorite books of some awesome, single, straight ladies in the same age range and geography:

A Visit From the Goon Squad (Jennifer Egan), Super Sad True Love Story (Gary Shteyngart), The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay (Michael Chabon), The Unnamed (Joshua Ferris).

I have favourites ranging from the Hitchhiker's Guide books to Jane Austen (cliche I know) to Stephen Fry's books.

Beckett, Plath, Hughes, Jack London, Brontës, Poe, Camus, Anthony Minghella's radio plays, Donne, Dostoevsky, Gogol, Strindberg, Thoreau, Marx, artists' journals (especially Munch), T.S. Eliot, Braudel, Benjamin.

Nabokov. Wells Tower. Lorrie Moore. Jennifer Egan. (Writing a list of books could take me forever and would only look boring on screen.)

The Handmaid's Tale, Middlesex, House of Mirth, I Capture The Castle, Persuasion, Grimm's Fairy Tales

This is hardly a scientific survey. But I can't help but think that when men---especially supposedly progressive, liberal, worth-dating men---can't be bothered to read women's writing (or, if nothing else, to cop to it online), we have yet another symptom of our still-yawning gender gap. (On the flip side of things, note the woman who feels the need to temper her love of Austen, one of the Western canon's greatest social satirists, with an aside noting how cliche her admiration is.)

I truly believe that "small" things like this are just the bubbles popping on the surface of a roiling body of sexist water, seemingly benign indicators of the ongoing wage gap (even more notable for women of color), the constant, unending street harassment women face on a daily basis, the one in four women who will be raped in their lifetimes---and on, and on, and on.

Plus, these dudes are missing out on some seriously awesome writing. Margaret Atwood is for real, bros. And would guarantee a reply email, to boot.

On Inequality

The night before my son was born, my wife and I were in the hospital at the beginning of a very long process. It was June 24, 2011, and the New York state legislature was preparing for a vote on a bill that would legalize same-sex marriage in our adopted home state. The timing was pretty remarkable. My wife and I have been married since 2008, when our immediate families joined us at City Hall in Toronto, Ontario for our wedding. It was a funny limbo to live in, to be married in Canada, but not at home in New York. When we drove into Massachusetts, and said “married!” it often caused us to chuckle darkly. It’s weird enough to be able to buy beer in grocery stores in one state and not another, but to have your own family status legally change based on state boundaries is beyond weird.

The vote in the legislature was going to be close, and both of us had contacted our state senator, Steven Saland, a Republican, to state our hopes that he would vote for equality. In fact, I had called that very day while my wife packed up the last of her things for the hospital. I felt as though he might not even believe me, leaving a voice mail saying, “I’d like my son to be born to two married parents and you could make this happen.”

Of course, the ending of this story is well known.  The bill did in fact pass, and Senator Saland was one of the swing votes. His wife of forty-six years, according to him, “certainly lobbied him,” reported the New York Daily News. How fitting that my marriage was legally recognized partially because of the bond and influence within another marriage?

The moment when the bill passed, as we were up late in the hospital room felt almost ethereal.  Our son was about to enter the world at a remarkable moment in history, and not just History-with-a-capital-H but in our personal history. It felt fated, and I don’t feel that way very often, but even my cynicism couldn’t deny a certain sense of destiny.

Now that a year has passed, however, I no longer feel the blissful surprise of the legislature’s decision. I’m not satisfied with feeling as though I only have a handful of states in this country I can ever live in, with so many others officially off limits (I’m not taking that particular step backward). I realize how quickly this year passed and I know that the years will keep flying by and soon my son will have questions.

There’s no easy way to explain inequality. Why do some people have so much and others so little? Why do women still not make as much money as men for the same jobs? I teach Elie Wiesel’s Night to tenth graders every year and there’s always at least one who asks, “but why?” as the concept of a Jewish ghetto is introduced.  I have honed an answer to that question over time, but it never feels convincing. How will I explain to my son that our state sees us as a family, but our country does not?

I suppose I could show him all of the various tax returns that we had to have prepared: separate federal returns (which mean that my wife, in the eyes of the federal government, is a single mother), a joint “dummy” federal return to inform state returns, and a joint New York return.  I could explain that many people have had to endure a lack of family equality for as long as the United States has existed. We could talk about the Loving v. Virginia decision that will likely inform any decision the Supreme Court makes on the issue.

Fortunately for me, our little boy is not yet concerned with such things, not when there is water to splash and trucks to make go “vroom-vroom.” Someday, though, he will be. I am grateful to Governor Cuomo and New York’s lawmakers for validating our family and setting an example for the rest of the country, but I hope that this inequality, one that is anathema to what I believe to be “American,” is rectified before today’s children are adults who are appalled by the generations before.

Apple Pie, etc.

At this time of year, compelled by a latent patriotic streak, I often find myself pulling up a copy of the Declaration of Independence.  I find the first passage stirring each and every time.  The prose is so beautiful, the sentiments so impassioned.   Even though when they wrote, “all men are created equal,” they were, in fact, only really talking about men and not actually all men, I would say it was a pretty propitious beginning for a nation.  It is obviously important to note that the men who drafted this document were functioning in a particular social and historical context and so I forgive them, to a great extent, for not including language about women, people of color, the LGBT community, etc.  The concepts of feminism and civil rights were barely a glimmer in the eye of our founders.  I do think, in their minds, they were creating a country in which citizens could be fundamentally free and that over time, they would leave it to the people to decide to whom this freedom applied and what exactly it meant.  In 2012, however, I would like to hold us to a higher standard.  After all, we have had a few years in the interim to work out the kinks. Although I am a bit of a cynic and feel like “Holidays” can be really arbitrary markers in the passage of time, I do appreciate a solid and socially sanctioned opportunity for contemplation.  Also, I am a sucker for fireworks.  Still, in moments, I absolutely struggle with my identity as a U.S. citizen.  I worry that our domestic discourse has been reduced to a profoundly childish political game with no heed of the real consequences for our people.  As recently as 2008, our First Lady was publicly eviscerated for simply acknowledging that we are a country with a history of discrimination and lack of opportunity.  There is real dissonance with all the talk about what the founders intended and the reality that some of our citizens still don’t have equal rights or access to decent basic services.  Meanwhile, the very groups that like to tout liberty and the original “values” of this great nation tend to support limiting the prospects for everyone but those in traditional positions of power.

Living with this kind of ambivalence---despairing over the state of our union while believing that progress will prevail---is my daily bread.  As I wade through the morass of feelings and obsessively check in with Nate Silver in an effort to predict the future, I thought I would try real hope on for size.  This year, there are a few things that make me truly proud to be an American.

1. Barack Hussein Obama is our president.  That’s right, a black man is the president of the United States of America.  That is still fairly mind-blowing, am I right?  Oh, and a black man of mixed race, with an African father and a middle name that was the same exact surname of one of our country’s sworn enemies.  This guy is so “other,” that fringe people (I am looking at you, Donald Trump) still insist he is a Muslim, Socialist, Communist who was not born in this country.  And yet, WE DID IT.  We elected him fair and square and might just do it again.  This is fantastically American and is us at our best.  By the way, the person who gave him a real run for his money?  A woman.  It’s getting better all the time.

2. Same-Sex Marriage is recognized by nine states and licenses are issued in six states (plus Washington, D.C. and on a couple of Indian Reservations).  And several other states have legal avenues for recognizing same-sex unions.  And the President just publicly endorsed same-sex marriage---unalienable rights!  And people functioning in high-profile, mainstream positions, like the anchor Anderson Cooper can come out with fewer professional and personal consequences.  And when Dan Savage decided to create the It Gets Better Project---a movement to develop awareness and a call to action regarding the bullying and the suffering of gay youth---practically an entire nation took to YouTube to lift people up.  There we are again.

3. 30 million uninsured Americans just got healthcare.  I will spare you my rhetoric about how this is a moral issue.  And we can talk until the cows come home about whether or not you support various aspects of the new healthcare law.  But make no mistake, this is one of the most powerful legislative achievements on behalf of under-served people in the last 40 years.  I am so proud of the people who have fought for this bill and who believe, as I do, that a country has a responsibility to its citizens to help them when they are ill.  NO WAY, the founders had in mind to leave people to get sick and die because they couldn’t afford care.  NO WAY.

There are plenty of other, more modest reasons to hang bunting on the front porch this week.  But I think even just the above will do for the time being.  The march toward access and opportunity continues, despite a great many obstacles, both social and political.  So, go ahead, accuse me of being a hippie, but I will say this . . . you’d better start swimming or you’ll sink like a stone (Bob Dylan, The Times They Are A-Changin’).  Happy 4^th, one and all.

(Fireworks photo: Ian Kluft from Wikimedia Commons.)

The F Words: Holly Ivey

Those of you who know me even a little know that I am, shall we say, interested in my hair. Invested in it, even. (Obsessed with it? Perhaps.) Today, folks, you will get to know the amazing woman who's been nurturing that investment for me for the past seven years, my incredible stylist Holly Ivey. Holly is pretty much the coolest chick I know, and she's a spectacular businesswoman, to boot. After working for years as a stylist as other people's salons, Holly broke out on her own a few years ago, and is now the owner of her very own business, Holly Ivey Hair Design.

In addition to being a wizard with the scissors, Holly is an artist, and, more to the point for our purposes here today, a talented home cook. She's been making me drool with pictures of her food on Facebook for ages now, and so I've asked her to share her thoughts about cooking, gender and life in general with us today. Enjoy!

Tell us a bit about your day job. I make people feel better about themselves with aesthetic maintenance of the length and color of the hair. (I'm a hairstylist!)

How did you learn to cook? I learned out of sheer necessity. The "great recession" entirely changed our "situation"and it became mandatory to start eating at home 95% of the time. Problem was, we were spoiled by all the great food we ate at all the fabulous NYC eateries we frequented. I'm almost completely self taught, and learned from a combination of my personal bible A New Way To Cook (by Sally Schneider) and the bits and pieces I picked up in my 10 years of working in food service. Religious devotion to recipes eventually led to improvisation. And now, I wing it a lot for quick weeknight dinners.

Do you prefer to cook alone, or with friends or family? ALONE! I don't mind a sous chef helping me chop and cleaning up behind me as I go. But I'm a basket case if I'm distracted.

What’s your favorite thing to make? Hen of the woods (or maitake) mushrooms. Alone with some arugula, tomatoes, and Parmesan for a quick, satisfying meal, on a burger, in a pasta with a touch of cream, thyme and sherry, tossed with Brussels sprouts and Dijon then roasted . . . they're easy luxury with tons of flavor.

If you had to choose one cuisine to eat for the rest of your life, which would it be? Italian. Very simply, without hesitation. Italian.

What recipe, cuisine or technique scares the crap out of you? Deep frying is intimidating. It makes such a mess and I don't know what to do with all that oil. I do not bake. Baking is on par with brain surgery to me. Anything that requires standing over a pot and stirring endlessly is not appealing either.

How do you think your relationships with your family have affected your relationship to food and cooking? Cooking is not something my mother had time for when we were younger, so when I entered the real world my abilities and taste buds were limited to plain and bland. Because I didn't spend time in the kitchen, I didn't appreciate how much work and care went into a good meal and how fleeting the moment of payoff is. A few years ago, toward the end of my grandfather's life, he was subsisting on Meals on Wheels and quick deli meat sandwiches he could make for himself. The one gift I could give an elderly man who had everything he needed was fresh, homemade, flavorful meals. Filet mignon au poivre. A homemade bolognese with fresh ravioli. In-season asparagus right off the grill. Then we sat down together and ate and talked . . . being able to cook gave me those moments.

Even today, home cooking is strongly associated with women’s traditional place in the family and society. How do you reconcile your own love of the kitchen with your outlook on gender roles? It is, in many ways, considered women's work by a lot of people. But I NEVER think about it that way. My years in the restaurant business showed me almost exclusively men in the kitchen. A few of my friends' husbands do the majority of the family cooking. When I watch the Food Network men and women are completely equal. I do the cooking because I'm the one who's home. But when I have a day that I just CAN'T do it, my husband does without hesitation.

Tell us a bit about the recipe you’re sharing. When did you first make it, and why? What do you love about it? I first had the inspiration for this recipe at a bar/music venue on the Lower East Side called Pianos. It's a flavor sensation.

Red Wine Burgers with Bacon & Mushrooms You can make your own hamburger patties, but for convenience, Holly uses Pat LaFrieda's pre-made patties. They're available via FreshDirect, and are often on sale!

2 hamburger patties 2 tsp. garlic powder 2 tsp. onion powder 1/2 bottle (good) dry red wine Kosher salt and cracked black pepper, to taste 2 bundles maitake mushrooms, roughly chopped 1 tbs. thyme, minced 4 slices bacon 2 hamburger bun bottoms (or English muffin halves, or slices of bread) Dijon mustard, to taste (Meg likes Maille)

Prep work Before you leave for work in the morning, remove the patties from the freezer. Place in a shallow, rimmed dish. Sprinkle with the garlic and onion powder, then submerge in the red wine. Cover with plastic wrap and leave to thaw and marinate.

When you are ready to cook dinner Remove the patties from the marinade; they should have a purple, marbled look to them. Pat dry with a paper towel, then season with salt and lots of black pepper.

Heat a cast-iron skillet over medium high heat. Add the bacon and cook, turning occasionally, until most of the fat has rendered out, and the bacon is crisp. Remove the bacon to a plate covered in paper towels, and set aside. Discard all but 1 to 2 tablespoons of fat from the skillet and return to medium heat. Add the mushrooms, thyme and a bit more salt, and let cook down for about 7-10 minutes. Set aside.

Return the skillet to medium-high heat and cook the burgers for 2-3 minutes per side. Allow to rest on a plate for 2 minutes before serving.

While the mushrooms and burgers cook, go ahead and toast the bottom slice of bun, bread or muffin for your burgers. Apply mustard to the toasted bread, then add two bacon slices to each, then the burger, followed by half the mushrooms. (A slice of tomato doesn't hurt, either. You can also add avocado, Gruyere, caramelized onions...)

Serve open-faced, alongside a spinach salad or freshly roasted corn on the cob.

Serves two.

The Ultimate Lesson

When people hear that I went to Bryn Mawr College, the first thing they ask (If they've heard of the school, that is, and, yes - I judge a little if they haven't.) is why on earth I chose to attend a school full of women and only women. (Well, actually, they usually call it a "girls' school," but that's a whole other post right there.) The truth is that when I decided on Bryn Mawr, I did it because it was the best fit out of all the schools that had accepted me. It was a gorgeous campus full of wonderful professors, it was academically competitive, it was close to a city, but wasn't right downtown, and I loved the size of the place - small. I don't know if I would have chosen Bryn Mawr if it had been isolated and not integrated with a whole bunch of co-ed institutions, but I was in no way deterred by the idea of a women's college - nor was it my motivating factor.

Looking back on it, though, I think that choosing a women's college was one of the best things I've ever done. And I think they're some of the most important institutions we have.

It really hit home for me last spring, when I went back to campus for my 10-year reunion. Reunion weekend is traditionally held a couple of weeks after graduation, so the alumnae have the place to themselves. We stay in the dorms, eat in the dining halls and generally take over like we never left. And - unlike the high school reunion I went to a couple of weeks ago - people mostly don't bring their spouses or kids, unless the spouse is there to handle a kid or two and/or the kids are still breastfeeding. (That, right there? That desire to connect with the women you spent four years with instead of show off who you've married since? Perfect example of why Bryn Mawr is awesome. Let's call it Exhibit A.)

The result is a sort of heady freedom, the likes of which I hadn't felt since graduation. Aside from a quick trip off-campus for a fan (it was ridiculously hot) and provisions (read: booze), I barely left all weekend - but I hardly felt trapped. Quite the opposite. After dinner the first night, my class headed back to our assigned dorm, where we congregated in the living room and on the front steps, drinking, talking and reminiscing. At some point, someone spilled some red wine on my white jeans. I went upstairs to throw on my pajamas instead, and when I came down, everyone had disappeared.

I was barefoot, wearing only a nightgown, and had only my dorm key (actually a fancy electronic fob) and phone with me, but I set off in search of my classmates anyway. I strolled across the green, savoring the feeling of the grass beneath my feet and the view of actual stars overhead. I had one ear tuned to the night's sounds, listening for the raucous laughter that would eventually lead me to my friends. But - for the first time in years - I felt completely safe. Yes, I was tipsy, and yes, it was dark out, and yes, I was alone - but, unlike every time I walk home late at night in New York, I didn't feel the need to be on guard at all. I felt completely and utterly protected.

Protected not just from physical harm, but also from the need to be dressed up, or to present myself with any kind of artifice, or to censor my thoughts or feelings. Because, you see, an institution devoted to women gives you a little taste of what it might be like to actually be on equal footing in the real world. Suddenly, you're the center of attention, and not for the usual, creepy, physical reasons. Yes, you have the freedom to not wear makeup and so on, but you have more than that: an entire institution devoted entirely to you. This, kids, is what it must feel like to be the privileged gender, to be the default. And, let me tell you: it doesn't suck. (Also, they give us lanterns. I know!)

It was a feeling I didn't notice until after I left. I know, I know: between this whole "you don't know how good you have it" thing and my wonder at the newfangled keys, you must be thinking, "Curmudgeon!" But I think that's actually part of what makes it so powerful: you can learn to take that feeling for granted. It can be had, and it can become your normal. That's...amazing.

Until I can have that feeling of safety - both physical and intellectual - in the real world, places like Bryn Mawr will not stop being incredibly important. Until I feel in every arena the way I felt at Bryn Mawr, women need the option of that experience. Because now that I've had it, I won't settle until it's universal.