Erykah Badu Strips to Make a Statement Which is Largely Unheard

In her recent video Window Seat, Erykah Badu shed her clothes on a busy street in Texas, and sparked debate across the blogosphere. The dominant reaction has been outward criticism of her public nudity and her mock assassination near the location John F. Kennedy was killed.

I first watched the video to try to figure out why she had chosen to strip naked for this song. I watched Badu’s discussion of the video posted at the WSJ, and felt at the end that a major problem was that Badu had a great message about conformity, but I wasn’t sure that nudity served a real purpose or that the exact topic was of sufficient gravity to justify the imagery of JFK’s assassination. However, I also noticed that not many people seemed willing to listen to her explanation because they decided they were offended after their initial viewing of the video.

My impression is that people were mostly upset with the nudity because they did not believe it was essential to communicate her artistic message. However, I think this controversy creates a great opportunity to open the discussion of the way women are portrayed in music videos. Women are often filmed semi-nude and portrayed in ways that are truly exploitative. I wonder why this video, which did not (in my opinion) overly sexualize her naked body, has sparked such outrage while there are numerous music videos, advertisements, and shows that portray women in a demeaning way and are only a blip in the public consciousness. Why is nudity/semi-nudity in these cases not met with equal outrage?

Basically, I found the nudity inoffensive but sadly did not feel it successfully strengthened her message. If this video discussed the implications of the way women are represented in pop culture, I would have felt the assassination imagery was more warranted. But either way, Badu is an interesting artist, and I'm glad she's willing to take risks and express herself in different, sometimes controversial, ways.

Health Care Reform Passed the House of Representatives (again)… Now what?

Image Credit: ThomasThomas

Last night, the House Democrats voted to pass the Senate’s comprehensive health care reform bill. In the end the vote was 219-212. The vote, as expected, was pretty much along party lines. The Republicans all voted Nay and all Yea votes were from Democrats. However, 34 Democrats went against their party and voted Nay. Eric Kleefeld of Talking Points Memo put together a spreadsheet looking at how their districts and political ambitions may have affected their vote. The chart showed that 26 of the Representatives came from districts that voted for McCain in 2008.

The House then voted by a similar margin, 220-211, to pass a companion bill making several changes to Senate bill that were needed to gain enough support from the Democrats.

What Is Next?

15 Years Since Beijing: Is It Still the Same Men's Club?

Fifteen years ago, the U.N. held the United Nations Fourth World Conference on Women in Beijing. Representatives from 189 countries adopted the Beijing Declaration and Platform for Action unanimously which identified what they viewed as major obstacles to gender equality.

This year the U.N. Commission on the Status of Women held a two-week meeting to review what countries had done to implement this landmark declaration. At the end of the meeting, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton delivered remarks reminding us that, while we have made real progress over the last 15 years, our work is not yet finished.

Sarah Palin's visit to the Tonight Show was laugh-tracked, attendee reports in sexist language

A sound engineer who attended Sarah Palin's Tonight Show taping is reporting that those big laughs television viewers heard were added after the show.  The studio audience was dead silent, or laughing in all the wrong places, he says.  TV critic Ken Tucker had wondered why Jay's audience was so much friendlier to Palin than Dave's (when Mitt Romney called her "terrific," he got jeered on Letterman).  The writer describes in great detail moments of complete silence or uncomfortable groans following Palin's jokes, which were filled with gracious laughter during the TV broadcast.  He also points to moments where he hooted loudly during serious parts, which were apparently cut out.  It's quite a get, and it's important that people understand how much of the audience's response on TV shows is faked and how much isn't.  Unfortunately, said writer, Micheal Stinson, also described Palin in the following appallingly sexist way:

And while NBC Sold Palin, she sold her body, jiggling, teasing, pushing the cutesy-pie, what we used to call in the military, a "prick tease". She short circuits brains, deflects the fact that most of what she says is nonsense or hateful, as lizard layers of right wing men's brains hum a sexual fantasy tune, and women who have thrown all sense of propriety to the wind, watching her strip, want to be just like her. Rich. Stupid. The sweet "Bite Me" bitch attitude she's honed to an art form. No, she doesn't just "wink" - she uses her whole body to sell the package. Turn off the sound, just watch her body language. I find it whorish, repulsive, and I'm no prude.

Personally, what I find repulsive is his choice of words.  I don't think Palin's public persona is particularly appealing, and I don't enjoy her faux-folksiness.  But I also think calling her whorish, a prick tease, and a bitch because she, an attractive woman, dares to get on TV and make jokes while smiling is outrageous.  Handsome male politicians like Scott Brown, Mitt Romney, and John Edwards all flirt for all they're worth when on television.  Palin is being described this way because she's a woman.  And whatever her sins, she doesn't deserve it.

I would love to be 100% cheering the discovery of NBC's fraud, but instead I'm left with a strange and uncomfortable defensiveness on behalf of Sarah Palin.  Check out the video below and see for yourself, both whether you think she crosses the line in using sex to sell her message, and whether the laughter sounds canned.

the gender politics of dining out

I'd like to propose a scenario:

A woman is out on a date with a man. A host takes their drink orders, and it includes a Coke and a Diet Coke. Their waiter, coming over to introduce himself and deliver the drinks, brings them by. Where do you think he sets which drink? Would any waiter place the regular Coke in front of the woman and the Diet Coke in front of the man? Chances are, the answer's no.

I've grown up drinking regular Coke, and have never, ever, even in my super healthy-eating stages, drank Diet. In fact, I'd rather cut out soda entirely than have to "suffer" through drinking a Diet Coke sweetened with aspartame (I don't like Splenda either, for the record). But undoubtedly, on the (many) occasions when I've been out with a man and he's ordered a Diet Coke or Coke Zero, the diet drink is placed in front of me and the regular drink is placed in front of him without the waiter even asking whose drink is whose.

Now let's be fair--I'd say that in my little scenario, it probably is more likely that a woman would've ordered the diet drink (although I don't have research to back it up, at least among my friends it seems to be colloquially true).

But still. The first time? It was funny. The second, third, hell, even twentieth time? It was still funny, but by then it had also started to make me think. What does mean that a great majority of waitstaff think it's such a given that a woman will be ordering the diet drink that they don't even bother to ask and I end up swapping drinks with the guy sitting across from me at the table? To extrapolate further, why is the woman always considered to be the one "on a diet" or the one being "calorie conscious" and what does that mean for us both as women and as a culture?

EW's Up in the Air cover

The latest cover for Entertainment Weekly is out, and I don't know, something about this image just... bothers me.  I haven't seen Up in the Air, but from what I understand, part of its appeal (in addition to the Clooney character) is that Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick are presented as real, interesting women with lives, issues, and story arcs of their own.  And yet here they're used as props to the ultimate object of interest, Clooney.  Moreover, in the film Kendrick's relationship with Clooney is not romantic, but here it looks like some kind of love triangle!  Seeing these two fiery women draped over Clooney adoringly (and Vera's lipstick/hair color washing her out so much!) just bugs me.  I don't know, am I being too sensitive?  What do you think about the cover?
(Image via EW.com)