Daily Life: May contain male nudity

Posted on May 23, 2012 by

I have a piece at the Australian site Daily Life today, about the increasing amount of substantial male nudity in romantic comedies:

It comes as news to absolutely no one that the straight women viewers at whom rom coms are aimed enjoy looking at men in a state of undress. That’s not a headline, and hasn’t been since the good Dr. Kinsey wrote it decades ago. What the recent uptick in male nudity suggests, however, is that now, we’re allowed to enjoy looking at men in a state of undress. We’re allowed to enjoy it in public, at the movies. There’s a big difference between acknowledging that of course, women have these desires – and actually catering to them. It signals a shift from acknowledging to allowing, and even encouraging, those desires, that I think demands further discussion.

What’s fascinating is that there doesn’t seem to be an accompanying uptick in female nudity in the genre. With the exception of The Proposal, in which Reynolds’s co-star Sandra Bullock also appears nearly nude, there is a nudity imbalance in all of these movies. So it’s not simply hat the genre is becoming more raunchy across the board: this is just about men.

You can read the rest here.

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The Age: Abortion politics for export

Posted on May 17, 2012 by

I have a piece today in The Age, an Australian major daily, about why American abortion politics are one American trend Australia can’t afford to follow:

Personhood amendments. Mandatory ultrasounds. Calls to make it illegal for rape and incest victims to have abortions (Governor McDonnell again). Funding cuts to Planned Parenthood, the organisation that provides low-cost cancer screenings, birth control, STI testing and, yes, abortion in a country where 40 million people don’t have health insurance.

Legislation that allows employers to decide whether their workers get birth control cover. This is the new political landscape around women’s health in America.

Before you start shaking your head and rolling your eyes at those puritanical Americans and their wish to control women’s bodies, you should know that personhood is for export.

You can read the rest here.

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The Sydney Morning Herald: Fairytales are forever

Posted on April 18, 2012 by

I have a piece in my hometown paper today, about the connections between fairytales and romantic comedies:

As adults, viewers relate to and understand romantic comedies because of the foundations laid by fairytales. When it comes to shaping our ideas about love and romance, rom-coms simply pick up where fairytales left off. These early lessons shape us, and stick with us: if you’ve heard Cinderella as a child, you’re far more likely to ”get” Pretty Woman as an adult.

As for Snow White, the trope of the jealous older woman who makes life hell for the beautiful young heroine shows up again and again. Think about the beloved modern classic Working Girl: Sigourney Weaver is the evil Queen with a corner office instead of a castle, and Melanie Griffith is Snow White in a suit jacket. Or what about Monster-in-Law, the 2005 Jennifer Lopez vehicle that casts feminist icon Jane Fonda as the passive-aggressive, meddling modern-day monarch?

At the end of Snow White, the Queen gets her comeuppance, and Snow White lands the man (well, ”lands” is a generous interpretation: she lies there comatose until he comes along and kisses her back to consciousness). Despite this happy heterosexual ending, though, the core lesson of the Snow White narrative is actually one about relationships between women.

You can read the whole thing here.
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Jezebel: Don’t Despair, There Are Plenty of Men Out There Who Trust Women

Posted on March 20, 2012 by

I have a post up at Jezebel today about Men Who Trust Women, which I’ve been working on for a few weeks now:

If you were entirely unfamiliar with the American political conversation around women’s reproductive health, if February and March 2012 were your first exposure to that conversation, you could be forgiven for thinking that no such men exist. You could be forgiven for concluding, after watching CSPAN and the news, that all men are in favor of restrictions on birth control and abortion access. After surveying the political landscape and taking note of who was saying what about women’s reproductive rights in America, it would not be unreasonable to conclude that “pro-choice man” is a contradiction in terms. Because with the exception of a very few men — bless you, Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart, and Garry Trudeau — there are barely any men speaking out in favor of a woman’s right to choose.

But it’s not a contradiction in terms. Those men do exist. And last month, I decided to create a space where they could make themselves heard.

Men Who Trust Women is a tumblr where men who believe that bodily autonomy is every woman’s right can share their stories. It’s not about speaking instead of women, or on behalf of women, but alongside them and in support of them.

You can read the whole thing here, and don’t forget to submit to Men Who Trust Women!

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New tumblr: Men Who Trust Women

Posted on February 27, 2012 by

I’ve started a new tumblr called Men Who Trust Women.

The current national conversation about birth control, abortion, sexual assault and other issues of bodily autonomy is dominated by men, and more specifically, by men who don’t appear to believe that women should have control over their own bodies. There aren’t enough women’s voices in this conversation, and that needs to change. But there also aren’t a lot of pro-choice men speaking out. We aren’t hearing from enough men who trust women. That needs to change, too.

Luckily, there are a lot of pro-choice men in America. These men believe that women are capable of making their own choices about what happens to their own bodies. These men believe that no man, whether he’s a politician, a priest, or a partner, knows what’s best for a woman better than she does. These men are appalled at the way that the national conversation about women’s healthcare has been dominated by anti-choice men.

Men who trust women are a group that is ever-growing, but largely invisible. It’s time to end that invisibility. This tumblr is a place where they can be seen and heard.

Men Who Trust Women is not about men speaking for women. It’s not about “saving” women. It’s not about one set of men defending women from another set of men.

It’s about recognizing that women are human beings, and that the right to control your own body is a human right. It’s about speaking up about attempts to deny women that right, so that your silence is not mistaken for tacit assent. It’s about being an ally.

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The American Prospect: an interview with Tammy Duckworth

Posted on February 23, 2012 by

I have a post up at The American Prospect today, an interview with Tammy Duckworth. Duckworth is a double-amputee Iraq War vet and a former Assistant Secretary for Veteran’s Affairs who is now running for Congress in Illinois. I spoke to her about the high rates of sexual assault in the US Military, and about Rick Santorum’s recent comments about women in combat.

CA: Rick Santorum made some controversial comments recently about women in the military. He said that women should be restricted from certain front-line combat positions because men will feel the biological urge to protect them, thereby threatening unit cohesion and endangering the mission. What’s your response?

TD: He’s wrong. He’s absolutely, 100 percent wrong. I think he’s playing to the basest, most inflammatory argument because he’s playing a political game. He’s trying to appeal to prejudice and basing it on false statements. If anything, women have shown in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan that they are not only fully capable; they have excelled. They have saved many men’s lives. And it did not damage unit cohesion. And if Rick Santorum doesn’t believe that, then he can volunteer, enlist, put on a uniform, and put his butt on the line and try it himself.

You can read the whole thing here.

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Jezebel: I Spent a Year Watching Rom-Coms and This Is the Crap I Learned

Posted on February 14, 2012 by

I have a piece up at Jezebel, just in time for Valentine’s Day, about the brutal irony of being a scholar of romantic comedies who got dumped on the night of February 13th:

“I hope the irony isn’t lost on you,” my sister said to me one day last February, “that this would make for an excellent start to a romantic comedy.” I threw a pillow at her and went back to sobbing.

It was not lost on me. On the morning of January 3rd, I had started my doctoral research, a feminist analysis of romantic comedies, skipping off to the New York Library for the Performing Arts at Lincoln Center brimming with excitement and pride. And barely six weeks later, on the night of February 13th, the man I was madly in love with, a great guy with –- it must be said –- a less than perfect sense of timing, broke up with me.

I was a wreck. More than that, I was a wreck whose job it was to watch a minimum of half a dozen rom coms a week. I spent my days at the library, reading about the genre and taking regular weeping breaks that attracted pitying glances from the circulation desk clerks. I spent my nights in bed with my laptop, watching as Kate and Katherine and Meg and Julia and Drew all found true love, taking notes and nursing my very broken heart.

You can read the whole thing here.

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