Category Archives: Everything Else

by | March 9, 2015 · 9:00 am

My Dreams of Being a Feminist Housewife

We don’t talk about money enough and I’ll start: I’m broke. Currently I have 22 voicemails about student loans and I have no plans to return the calls. Recently I learned that the olive oil I use to sauté on-sale vegetables is probably not real olive oil, and I am not going to do anything about it because real olive oil is expensive. My “savings” account is overdrawn. Negative savings! I get checks and spend them. Because I have anxiety about being broke and not doing anything about it, I am medium-to-low good at taking care of myself. I don’t want to be one of those women who’s bad with money. I don’t want to be one of those women artists who doesn’t have time to make art. I don’t want to be one of those Black women who works and works and works and dies. Like my mother. Like my grandmother. Continue reading →

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by | March 5, 2015 · 9:00 am

Fifty Shades of Grey & Why I Keep Defending Women’s Trash

Fifty-Shades-DIY-640x480In this fantasy he shows up at my boring job and we have an awkward but meaningful conversation. In this fantasy he just happens to walk by my house when I’m outside reading a Victorian novel and wearing a really flattering top. In this fantasy he shows up at the bar and I don’t accidentally have my first kiss ever with the wrong guy. In this fantasy he wants me so much that it drives him insane. In this fantasy he can barely control himself.

I went to see Fifty Shades of Grey in NYC’s Union Square at noon on a Tuesday. It had been out for ten days. The Internet had said the stars had no chemistry and obviously hated sex. A lot of my Facebook friends had said I should boycott it because it romanticized an abusive relationship. Rory and Alison had told me the sex scenes were incredibly boring, but the paperwork scenes were delightful. Marisa had posted a photo on Instagram of her and Matt looking sad after they watched it. So I basically knew what to expect. Continue reading →

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by | March 4, 2015 · 3:11 pm

The Feminist Bachelor Recap, Episode 11: The Womyn Tell All

These womyn are about to tell us so much.

Oh man, oh WOMAN, the women certainly told all this week, and oh how amazing their stories were. The Women Tell All episode started with Chris Harrison babbling about how every Bachelor season they have the Women Tell All Episode, and sometimes, ya know, there’s just not that much to talk about, but this season is SO special and dramatic. Oh please Chris Harrison, we’re not idiots. The Women Tell All consists necessarily each season of a stage full of women, and we all know that The Bachelor‘s very most favorite thing to do is pitting women against each other.

It’s kind of darkly funny—jealousy between women is a thing that we learn from a sexist culture that tells us women have to fight each other for a man or a job or a book deal; it’s a biproduct of a culture that makes us feel invisible and starved for attention through making it harder for women to get the material stuff that many men get easily. As feminists we have to work to unlearn that internalized misogyny. But the thing is: The Bachelor takes that social message and makes it real in order to further perpetuate it. There is actually one boring dude that these lovely womyn have to fight over. They’re perpetuating competition amongst women because they are literally competing. And so the social norm of female jealousy and competition is so, and so on forever. And we get to watch it in its fullest force on The Women Tell All. Continue reading →

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by | February 27, 2015 · 9:00 am

She Was an American Girl: What American Girl Dolls (Mis)taught Me About Race and Class

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I grew up in rural New Mexico, north of Santa Fe, an area sharply striated along race and class divisions. My quasi-hippie mom banned Barbie because she feared bad body image. American Girl dolls seemed like a healthy alternative to her—and to many other families in the 90s. They were multicultural, historical, and aligned nicely with a “progressive” education. They were the PBS of doll-dom.

When I first paged my stubby baby-fingers through the Pleasant Company catalog in the back of our Volvo, the cast was composed of Felicity Merriman, a Revolutionary War-era firecracker; Kirsten Larson, a pioneer from Sweden to Minnesota; Samantha Parkington, an Edwardian orphan raised by her mega-rich, stuffy grandmary; and Molly McIntyre, whose father is a soldier in World War II. Addy Walker, who escapes slavery and was the first non-white character, had just been launched like a token ship.

While I was still old enough to vaguely care, Josephina Montoya, from a rancho in 1820’s New Mexico, was released. All of Santa Fe was super-stoked. Not much happens there.

The classism and status anxiety embedded in American Girl dolls were integral parts of ownership, often trumping any historical or cultural knowledge gleaned. $95 (now $110) a pop was flat-out unaffordable to most of the kids in elementary school, where I was one of the only white students. I could tell precisely how rich my white friends at my after-school acting class in Santa Fe were by how many dolls and accessories they owned.

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by | February 26, 2015 · 9:00 am

FUNNY FEMINISM #3: Laughing All the Way to the Museum – An Interview with Jill Dawsey

A monthly column, Funny Feminism features conversations with and about feminist-identifying artists who use humor in their creative work.

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“Laugh-in: Art, Comedy, Performance explores the recent turn toward comedic performance in contemporary art. The exhibition features twenty artists who engage the strategies and themes of stand-up comedy as a means to rethink questions of artistic performativity, audience participation, and public speech.“

—Jill Dawsey, Associate Curator, Museum of Contemporary Art San Diego

Recently, I had the opportunity to speak with Laugh-in’s curator, Jill Dawsey about the group exhibit and its feminist inclinations. The show opened at MCASD on January 23rd and runs through April 19th.

Cathy de la Cruz: Can you tell me about Laugh-in, and how the show relates to feminism and comedy?

Jill Dawsey: I’m pleased that you picked up on the feminist aspect of the show. The broader theme is artists who are thinking about stand-up comedy, borrowing from the strategies and aesthetics of stand-up. It has to do with a lot of things: questions of public speech and communication and finding audiences, and what can and can’t be said at this moment in time.

One of the larger threads that runs throughout the show is the way that comedy can create a space in which hierarchies can be inverted and power relations can be challenged. There are many women artists in the show and there’s a lot of explicitly feminist work.

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by | February 25, 2015 · 1:15 pm

The Feminist Bachelor Recap, Episode 10: Sex & the Single Girl

Just wearin’ some clothes that we totally understand the cultural significance of!

Ugh Bachelor Nation, we are getting to that point in the show where we should all be glued to our TVs, but instead I am bored. Jade is gone, and I am sad. Britt is gone, and I miss her inspiring makeup and red Chucks. Farmer Chris is boring, and Whitney is boring, and Becca is boring, and Kaitlyn is refreshingly not that boring which makes it all the more depressing that she’s vying for a chance to live with a boring guy in a desolate town in Iowa. I don’t even know who to root for anymore—the one I like best? That she be banished to Arlington, Iowa?!

We’re in Bali, and it’s rully pretty. The first date is with Kaitlyn, at a local temple where they basically go because they’re not allowed to kiss and I guess The Bachelor thought that sacred aspect of this place would be a fun kitchy restraint. Chris has maje pit stains and a monkey jumps on his head and Kaitlyn makes a weird metaphor about going after what you want and wishing she was a monkey. Kaitlyn tells Chris she’s falling in love, and I thought Farmer Chris was only allowed to say things like “thank you” and “it means so much to hear you say that” and *silent tongue kiss* in response, but in an unprecedented Bach move, he says “I’m falling in love with you as well.” Wow, Farmer Chris, “as well,” aren’t you a fancy genius. They go to the fantasy suite together. I am so bored you guys, someone please give me a lobotomy. Continue reading →

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by | February 24, 2015 · 9:00 am

Winter Blues Feminist Mixtape

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Mixtapes got me through high school. Now, they’re getting me through this brutally cold Brooklyn winter. The cassette’s been making a comeback. I even just overhead some teenagers talking about how they wanted cassette players so they could make mixtapes. Because they heard that’s cool. If I see those kids again, I’ll tell them to grab that thrift shop cassette player and push record on these feminist tracks to help get them through the cold winter days and long winter nights.

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by | February 23, 2015 · 9:00 am

Three Pieces of Feminist Advice From Jackie “Moms” Mabley

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Before there was a Paul Mooney, a Red Foxx, or a Richard Pryor, there was a hilarious woman on the comedy scene who could probably get a shoe to giggle. If you haven’t heard of Moms Mabley or listened to some of her stand-up, you have been missing out on a beautiful piece of American cultural history and downright comedic genius. To put it simply, Moms was fly. Her artistic prowess traversed the lines of singing, acting, and comedy. Mabley’s career spanned nearly forty years and included performance on film, television, and in clubs throughout the nation and abroad. In the 1930s she performed regularly at the Apollo alongside artists such as Cab Calloway, Lena Horne, and Billie Holiday. By the 1960s she had crossed over into the mainstream, making multiple appearances on shows such as The Merv Griffin Show and The Ed Sullivan Show. Moms not only used her voice to garner laughs but also to engage in political activism. She became famous for her rendition of “Abraham, Martin, and John,” a song about social change, which hit the top forty in 1969. Moms was also one of the boldest pre-sexual revolution celebrity voices of the 50s and 60s. Through her comedy she perfected the art of sexual innuendo. Moms was feminist. She was funny. And she said what was on her mind for the good of us all.

Check out a few of my favorite pieces of Moms Mabley feminist advice below.

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by | February 20, 2015 · 9:00 am

To Being Unreasonable in 2015

from Kameelah Janan Rasheed’s “How to Suffer Politely (And Other Etiquette for the Lumpenproletariat)”

in spring of 2014 you hear Alice Notley read for the first time in your life. because it’s spring, you wear the wrong things and end up with a pile of cardigans and scarves piled at your feet and tucked into your armpits. you drink champagne because you were, at the time, in a depression. hours earlier, the day of the reading, you had seen Alice in front of a Popeye’s in Bed-Stuy. you couldn’t be sure but you were sure; it was her. you felt it, and it was a strange thing to feel. the day after the Notley reading, you find a brick wall near your apartment and write out in capital mint-colored letters the only thing you remember from her reading: “I DON’T HAVE A PLAN/ I HAVE A VOICE.” you don’t know why you do it but you do it. this feels important.

a few weeks before the Alice Notley sighting, you go to a colleague’s poetry reading at Unnameable Books. afterward they are going to the Copula reading at Wendy’s Subway—they ask if you want to join. you want to and don’t want to—something feels off—and ultimately walk home sulking. you don’t know how to make friends and this has become a problem. you feel shy. or are you distrustful? people make you nervous and exhausted. especially poetry people—the possibility for false intimacy is high. to ease your anxiety, you tell yourself you would have just gotten drunk at Copula and would be hungover the next day. you know what that space is like. later in the night, you get a few texts telling you to come to Copula but you don’t. the moon is full inside you like a knowing thing. Continue reading →

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by | February 18, 2015 · 10:22 am

The Feminist Bachelor Recap, Episodes 7, 8 AND 9: The Playboy Triptych

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Hi! My name is Lizzy Acker and I am not Marisa Crawford. However, I am a feminist who watches The Bachelor. In fact, I started on this journey because of Marisa, years ago in a romantic land called San Francisco, where we used to watch the show together and drink drinks. Please note that I am absolutely here for the Right Reasons—those reasons being: I am going to tell you what happened on this season’s most commitment-heavy week while Marisa was out of town. I’m going to try to make sense of the madness and magic for you, as Marisa might, were she able.

This week was a two-day, four-hour extravaganza that began with a lot of dimly lit, confessional interviews with Chris Harrison. Especially on Sunday, there was a lot of time to fill, okay? And a lot of summarizing the season for anyone who, you know, decided to just start watching now, halfway through the season (who are you and why why why?).

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