November is not the cruelest month, but it certainly is the busiest if you’re in school (or writing a novel). Followers may wonder where I’m producing new content. Truth told, it’s basically all in three Word docs. I’m currently drafting three ~25-page term papers, which are all due the same day that I proctor and grade the final for the class I’m teaching. In case you’re wondering, I’m writing on Zooey Deschanel and feminist and womanist anti-fandom, music and male anxiety in relation to Saturday Night Live‘s brand identity, and the function of score and sound in Kelly Reichardt’s “quiet” filmography. By no means am I complaining. I’m just busy.
However, you can read some of my recent work elsewhere. Bitch Magazine’s Underground issue includes my feature on female music supervisors, along with some reviews I wrote. And just this morning, Racialicious posted my essay on the Lizzies, the girl gang in The Warriors. Check it out, and make sure you read Julia Caron’s great piece on Florence + the Machine and white supremacy.
Had a lovely weekend tooling around Fredericksburg, visiting my grandparents’ old house in Ingram, climbing Enchanted Rock, and swimming in Krause Springs. Gettin’ in my Hill Country fare before I move to Wisconsin.
Replenished from my outdoors time with two of my favorite people, I thought I’d post a few new(ish) videos I like. Given the excellent commentary on Beyoncé and Rihanna’s new videos from Racialicious, the Crunk Feminist Collective, and Womanist Musings, I thought I’d just provide the links and say “preach!” However, here are some other new(ish) clips to get you talking.
Christeene (click on artist’s name to view the clip, as I can’t figure out how to embed Funny or Die videos)
“Workin’ on Grandma”
Directed by PJ Raval
The Juliettes
“Hooray You’re Gay”
Grouper
“Alien Observer” A I A
Directed by Hamish Parkinson
Nikko Gray
“Rollercoaster” Love Seen
Directed by Holly Port
Les Nubians
“Afrodance” Nü Revolution
Directed by Andrew Donsumnu
Thanks to Clutch Magazine for the last two. Like ‘em almost as much Bene Viera’s piece on Kreayshawn, which you should read alongside this Crunk Feminists post if you haven’t already.
I don’t usually write about politics. If I do, it’s folded into a post about something else. Make no mistake. As a feminist, political consciousness and activism are very important to me. I just don’t think writing on policy and legislation is something I do well. I tend to forget representatives’ names and feel I lack the rhetorical nuance to report on issues the way I write about, say, Odd Future’s problematic cultural ascendancy. I provide commentary. I follow and contend in-depth analysis from folks like LaToya Peterson, s.e. smith, Everett Maroon, Amanda Marcotte, Melissa McEwan, Katherine Haenschen, and Rachel Maddow, and check in with Slate, Salon, NPR, the Guardian, Racialicious, Tiger Beatdown, and ColorLines like a good liberal. I also have friends who commit their lives to politics. I try to absorb as much of what they have to say as possible while parsing out what party ideology jibes with my own beliefs.
Where possible, I do like to take political action. I believe my work with Girls Rock Camp Austin is political in nature. If I lived in Wisconsin, I’d be picketing with the students and police officers. Matter of fact, there’s a distinct chance I’ll be marching with them soon enough if Scott Walker continues to sell out his constituents. Once I know where I’ll be next fall, I’d like to get back to volunteering. I don’t make a lot of money at my job, but I donate some of my earnings to organizations like OutYouth. I recently attended Austin’s Walk for Choice and proudly hoisted a sign I got from the March for Women’s Lives, which I participated in during college. I believe civic action is important. That is why I’m bowling with Lilith Fund in the National Abortion Access Bowl-a-Thon. It’s also why I’m taking time out to ask that you sponsor my team.
I don’t ask for money very often. I took a telemarketer job for six months in college and it was pretty degrading. I’ve never set up a PayPal or a Kickstarter account for this blog. Instead, I rely on downloading, review copies, and promo CDs to keep overhead low. As I’d love to revamp this blog and start recording podcasts for it, I may solicit at a later date. I also don’t want to perpetuate the idea that feminists of my generation come down from the mountain only when our reproductive rights are in jeopardy. There are a lot of issues that affect women and girls that we should be fighting for. Prison and education reform, equal pay, trans rights, eradicating human trafficking and child abuse, comprehensive sex education, dismantling rape culture and institutional racism, same-sex adoption and partner benefits, universal health care, and closing the technology gap most immediately come to mind.
But preserving reproductive choice is also of integral importance to me. I have always believed that giving women and girls the right to choose to enter into motherhood rather than foist it upon them improves the quality of life for all involved parties. I believe allowing abortion as an option following conception from traumatic experiences like rape and incest is a necessity we have to protect. I believe providing women and girls with autonomy by providing them education about sexual health and contraception will make the world a better place.
However, I’m not just bowling so that more girls and women have access to abortion. Anti-choice folks tend to think all we’re concerned about is making sure women and girls can get abortions. They also believe we come to our decision to have them in a cavalier manner. The former assumption simplifies a complex, interrelated set of issues into one watch word. The latter myth is just stupid and insulting. Organizations like Lilith Fund work toward providing information, counseling, and resources to their community. Facilities like Planned Parenthood provide folks with birth control and information on family planning, as well as administer pap smears and other standard procedures to guarantee women’s health. This is especially important at a time when proposed legislation is getting scary on a medieval level. Georgia state rep Bobby Franklin wants expectant mothers to prove their miscarriages occured naturally (read this great Crunk Feminist Collective enumerating recent attacks on reproductive justice). My own governor Rick Perry (who I’ve never voted for) wants me to look at a sonogram before going through with a termination. This is at a time when abortion providers are becoming an endangered species and access to contraception continues to be compromised.
It’s not a game. It’s about livelihood. I’m willing to do many things, including bowl for it. I hope you’ll support me and my team (seriously, just click on the link and provide us with whatever you can spare), as well as take personal action.
I recently linked an essay Jennifer Fuller wrote for Flow about Flavor of Love wherein she discussed twin contestants who she believed represented a rare mediated image of black girlishness.
I feel like we should be thinking about black girlishness (note: I’m not talking about black girlhood here, though I believe we should be thinking about that too. Rather, I’m referring to the idea that adult black female femininity can encompass admittedly normative girlish qualities). I think it’s necessary to consider black femininity beyond the racist presuppositions that perpetuate ideas of black hypersexuality (or if we turn to Judith Halberstam’s chapter on drag kings in Female Masculinity, the racial and performative dimensions of African American masculinity). Furthermore, both girlishness and girlhood often get associated with white femininity.
That said, I’m not sure if I’m the one who should be doing this. I want to engage out of my comfort zone (in this case, priviledging issues of gender), but I’m white. After Kristen at Act Your Age forwarded a piece from Racialicious on Lady Gaga and whiteness and a repost of AlienatiOn‘s essay “What If Black Women Were White Women?” I’m feeling oogier than usual about my racial identity and how it informs my feminist beliefs. Who am I to suggest that we should think about black girlishness? And might black girlishness be infantilizing to black women, perhaps taking away their agency out of a cultural fear around the sexual prowess racist people assume they have? You see where this gets complicated. Let’s get uncomfortable.
I don’t think black girlishness has to ignore sexuality. Instead, sexuality can be but one aspect of a particular black woman’s performative girlishness. So I’ll offer up Ella Fitzgerald, an iconic jazz singer I love whose music I was listening to in my car last Sunday.
Ella always brought it; image courtesy of vervemusicgroup.com
Her voice makes me happy, but I started listening closely to her song “Chewing Gum” again and it gave me pause. Then I listened to “A-Tisket A-Tasket” and started to sense a pattern. What’s up with a grown black woman singing as if she were a child?
The above clip is a scene from 1942′s Ride ‘Em Cowboy, an Abbott and Costello vehicle. “A-Tisket A-Tasket” is a nursery rhyme that became one of Fitzgerald’s standards in the late 1930s. Please note that the original song is told from a man about a woman he loves. Fitzgerald’s version comes from a young girl’s perspective, and she’s singing about her mother and a mean girl who stole her basket. Not sure how I feel about this song anymore.
Now, I haven’t seen the movie beyond this clip so I don’t know it depicts race relations, if it addresses them at all. I do think it’s interesting that Fitzgerald’s character Ruby, an entertainer who works on a ranch, appears to be integrated. But perhaps “integrated” is the wrong word, as she seems to be the only black person in this scene and maybe even in the entire cast.
Also, she’s clearly performing for white people. I feel real weird about this too. There’s something about their demeanor around Fitzgerald that’s a bit too “we don’t mind black people when they are amusing us.”
Yet, I wonder how Fitzgerald, who was perhaps best-known for scatting, might open up girlishness to include pre-verbal or automatic language. While I know the dimensions are different between her and, say, Ponytail’s Molly Siegel, I do think there’s a connection. Also, Fitzgerald’s singing here, wherein she basically turns herself into an instrument, is pretty virtuosic.
But then Fitzgerald conjures up girlishness in her marvelous version of “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” from the Rodgers and Hart musical Pal Joey and I have to retrace my steps.
Of course, girlishness is brought up in the lyrics. At the same time, the lyrics suggest a more mature understanding and ownership of sexuality. Fitzgerald’s rendition supports this reading. This isn’t to say that girls don’t possess a complex sexual maturity. But so do black women, regardless of what age to which they’re relating.
