Monthly Archive for October, 2011

Spinster aunt was once adored by Dude Nation

Published by Jill on October 23, 2011. 399 Comments

A blamer mentioned yesterday that there’s a new post somewhere arguing that I’m a “bimbo-hating radical who undermines feminism by trying to take women’s sexiness away.”

Just one? I was shocked.

The author as mannequin, c. 1985

I have not read this post, and, with regret, I must deny myself the pleasure of doing so. When I tell you that my reading list currently measures about 6.79 times as long as one of those articles in The New Yorker that nobody has ever finished, and that at the bottom of it is Genji, and that at the middle is Dorothy Parker’s Sunset Gun, and that at the top is this weeks’ People magazine, you will understand. Legion are the Internet feminists who misconstrue my worldview because it is inconsistent with what they wish to believe about their status re: life’s rich pageant, and every one of them has written a gripping blog post about it. Fascinating reading, without a doubt, but there are not enough hours in the day.

Fortunately, I have already read so many of these posts that I can, in my mind’s jaundiced eye, reproduce the one in question verbatim. They appear frequently, as spores after a soft rain — that is, whenever I publish an essay condemning as antifeminist one or another of the beloved rites of femininity. Blow jobs. Beauty. Pencil skirts. Burlesque. “Sex work” as a “choice.” Recently I jotted down a couple of lines on a study commissioned by a cosmetics company. This study purported to show that cosmetics benefit women. My response to this study was, in sum, a Bronx cheer (may I mention that on the planet Obstreperon, we don’t use our mouths for this? No, I didn’t think so.).

No doubt my dim view of makeup, and by extension, of the quest for pure sexiness, ruffled a few marabou bustiers. Long, long ago, argue the bustiers, when Andrea Dworkin roamed the earth, femininity may well have been a tool of the man. But, they claim, no more. Today’s feminist, empowered by all those articles on vibrators in Bust magazine, chooses choices of her own free will. These choices mirror her own unique sartorial, sexual, and philosophical personality. That these unique choices happen to align precisely with standard male porn fantasies, and that they are therefore rewarded with positive attention, is purely coincidental.

Such a viewpoint is a luxury of youth. It is the great tragedy of the women’s liberation movement that fully-realized feminist consciousness is too rarely achieved by women who are still young and fit enough to take on Dude Nation in a knife fight. Too often, it’s only when a woman ages out of pornosity, and is too old to do anything but take pictures of cows, that she discovers what the world really thinks of her.

Lest I be misconstrued as a prudey old sourpuss: nobody understands the reluctance to grok the fullness of patriarchal oppression better than I. I will illustrate this point with, not just an autobiographical anecdote, but with photographs.

The author as Spitzie West, tough slut in bondage-wear, in the early 90s

Born a mousey intellectual, in my twenties I discovered all the perks of Porn2K-Compliance. I amassed drawers full of Chanel makeup. I had boxes of wigs. I combed the thrift stores incessantly. I had so many clothes I had to turn a spare bedroom into a closet. I spent hours every day assembling outfits, dying my hair, and styling my edgy hipster look. I never wore the same thing twice.

It was expensive and time-consuming, but my resulting reputation as a glamorous wisecracking ballbuster sexpot dominatrix made me famous and adored. Everybody wanted to know me, photograph me, take me to dinner, put me in their fashion show. I had fans. I had protégées. I told men to fuck off and I wrote songs about vibrators, so I thought I was a feminist. I was too dumb, when I was young and adored, to grasp that all I had done was to succeed at femininity, and that femininity is no pinnacle of human achievement.

It would be many years before I would understand that femininity, the practice of femininity, and the fetishization of femininity degrades all women. That femininity is not a “choice” when the alternative is derision, ridicule, workplace sanctions, or ostracization. That femininity is a set of degrading behaviors that communicates one’s level of commitment to male authority and women’s oppression. That femininity is coerced appeasement, regardless of how successfully it is now marketed to young women as feminism.

I turned out OK, so I’m not too worried about these sex-poz young ladies who think I want to deprive them of sexiness. They really can’t be blamed, either for thinking I’m a buzzkill, or for being deceived by Dude Nation and mistaking sex-attention for love; Dude Nation puts considerable effort into selling its message. Certainly by the time women age out of the system, although one hopes well before then, it will have dawned on them that femininity isn’t just a matter of personal choice, but is in fact a major element on the continuum of global misogyny that begins with “choosing” to wear lipstick for fun and ends with violence and murder.

In the meantime, at least they’re having a fucking good time.

Posted in Strawfeminism and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt has a cow

Published by Jill on October 20, 2011. 116 Comments

1/7Franny, Spinster HQ’s yella lab, started barking her face off the way she usually does whenever there is a 2500 pound mammal on the porch, and sure enough. When I sidled over to the front door, there was no denying it: there was definitely a black Angus cow studying the doorknob.

Let it be known that Spinster HQ, a wholly meat-free enterprise, does not keep beef cattle on purpose. Hence my momentary surprise at seeing one on the stoop. The black Angus cow to whom I allude, along with what I would eventually discover were 7 of her cohorts, had broken through a fence, having found inhospitable the conditions on the other side, and had naturally gravitated to the food-filled, furry woodland creature-infested vegetarian oasis of fun that is the barnyard at El Rancho Deluxe.

I poked my head out the door, determined that this porch-sitting cow was but e pluribus unum, and forced myself to accept that, although I’d had big plans to biff around photographing Bewick’s wrens all afternoon, the day was shot. No two ways about it, I would have to devote the rest of my waking hours, until the cows came home, to getting those cows to go home.

Sure, cows are cute with their floppy ears and their placid cud-chewing, but they are the size of Volkswagens, and they destroy. Already I could detect a massive dumpage of cow shit, which smells frakkin awful, around and about the bunkhouse. My horses were flipping the fuck out because they are the sort of delicate Arabians who think cattle are venomous saber-toothed T. rexes. What little grass I had left after this insane drought was rapidly disappearing into the cows’ four stomachs (multiplied by 8 cows, and that’s 32 flippin’ stomachs!). And omigod, you wouldn’t believe the flies with which these miserable creatures were plagued, or the alacrity with which the flies saw fit to transfer themselves to my equine population. And to top it off one of the cows was displaying a disconcerting interest in the cee-ment pond. I thought, shit, I have no crane. How the fuck do you get a cow out of a pool without a crane?

Fortunately for spinster aunts who don’t keep cowboys and cutting horses on staff, cattle who haven’t seen green grass in six months will trot to the ends of the earth for a bag of cattle cubes. I sent my ranch hand Chuck to the feed store for a bag of same. Then I jumped in the back of the pickup with the cubes, exhorted Chuck to aim at the front gate at a slow but steady pace, and rattled the feed bag like mad. The cows heeded the siren call and followed the truck. In this manner we lured’em a mile up the road and turned’em loose on the range whence they came.

I mention all this because cattle are amiable, forbearing creatures with pleasant demeanors, trusting and easily fooled. It is unfair and mean to butcher them.

Don’t eat beef.

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Although they will trample you if you get between them and a bag of cow cubes. Which are made from assorted chemicals. Franny ate a couple of’em and puked.

Posted in Heartwarming Nature Crap and Varmint Center. Bite me, Chad.

Storytime Korner

Published by Jill on October 15, 2011. 135 Comments

Hotel San JoseWell, a couple weeks ago Stingray and I were prancing up S. Congress Ave after having anointed ourselves with hipster fumes at Jo’s, when this wacked out hipster kid comes careening toward us, chanting nonsense. His bearing was somewhat aggressive, so we said “nyah!” back at him. He gave us the once-over with a stinkeye that seemed to suggest that he wouldn’t be at all surprised if we turned out to be the cause of the economic downturn. Then he actually jeered.

“You’re just too stupid,” went the jeer, “to know what I’m talking about!”

Stingray and I exhanged a chuckle as we passed, going, “yeah right, we’re too stupid, that’ll be the day.” We were confident in our lack of stupidity because we have never in our lives been the intellectual inferiors of some rude stoner gibberish-babbling kid who by this time had alighted on the stoop of the Hotel San Jose and assumed a recumbent, yet somehow hostile, pose. The mysterious words were oozing out of him like blood.

“What did that shit even mean?” I said, dodging a pair of American Apparel models.

“Yeah,” said Stingray, “what a load.”

What was the stoner kid chanting?

“Occupy Wall Street!”

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Photo: Scene of the burst of solo stoner activism. Hotel San Jose, Austin TX, February 2006.

Posted in The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today. Bite me, Chad.

New study shows makeup is not optional

Published by Jill on October 14, 2011. 108 Comments

Well I hope you’re sitting down, because a cosmetics conglomerate has commissioned a study demonstrating that makeup makes people respect women who wear it.

Ha, I was joking about sitting down, because as you know there is nothing more predictable than a cosmetics conglomerate trying to prove with number 1 science information that their useless, demeaning products aren’t useless and demeaning. But before you die of ennui, digest for a moment that in this study, “snap judgements” were used to rate the trustworthiness, warmth, approachability, and competence of women wearing varying amounts of spackle. The spackle levels were “barefaced,” “natural,” “professional,” and “glamorous.”

Dude Nation translation: “lesbian,” “lazy,” “Patty Hewes,” and “slut.”

Apparently the more makeup you wear (and of course buy), the more awesome people think you are when making snap judgements about you. Snap judgements, as you know, are the main kind of judgment people make about women.

The New York Times article reporting on the study contains the following assertions made by an assortment of certified beauty experts:

Ev-psych:

“The pursuit of beauty is a biological as well as a cultural imperative.”

On my home planet, the planet Obstreperon, this statement translates as “Women are hardwired to align their appearance with pornographic fads as a reflection of their one true purpose as cosmetics consumers and sex toilets.”

Choice feminism:

“Women and feminists today see [wearing makeup] is their own choice, and it may be an effective tool.”

I don’t wax my eyebrows to appease people making snap judgements about me, I do it because I choose porn-compliant eyebrows. Choosing makes me a feminist. If porn-compliance happens appease to people making snap judgements, well, that’s entirely accidental.

The empowerfulized consumerist:

“There are times when you want to give a powerful ‘I’m in charge here’ kind of impression, and women shouldn’t be afraid to do that,” by, say, using a deeper lip color that could look shiny, increasing luminosity.

Ah, luminosity, luminosity. Who among us has not been afraid to go for just a little more luminosity, that most elusive of all the cosmetics industry’s mythic feminine attributes, the luminosity that will transform us from cold, unapproachable, incompetent slatterns to “I’m in charge here”?

Well, dudes, for one. When a dude wants to give an “I’m in charge here” kind of impression, he’s not reaching for a deeper lip color. How many straight dudes do you know who give a flip for luminosity? Dudes don’t yearn for beauty. Their yearnings are more realistic: they wish to be rock stars, astronauts, international playboys. Theirs is a world of action. Ours is a world of passive shininess.

Posted in Junk Studies and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Food channel

Published by Jill on October 7, 2011. 61 Comments

Alien pod

I offer you a love pod from my home world.

Foto by Stingray.

Posted in Announcements and Art is my LIFE. Bite me, Chad.

Steve Jobs? Damn.

Published by Jill on October 6, 2011. 56 Comments

Self-portrait in truck stop can
Fig. 7. The author snaps iPhone self-portrait in a truck stop can. Italy, Texas, 2008.

I don’t think it’s a stretch to say that without Steve Jobs I would not have achieved my brilliant success as either a spinster aunt, an Internet feminist, a text messagist, or a public restroom documentarist. I am curiously maudlin over the news of his death. It feels like there’s a weird new void in pop culture now.

Then again I’m typing this on an Apple keyboard made in China, so there’s that.

Posted in Art is my LIFE. Bite me, Chad.

Kanteensploitation

Published by Jill on October 4, 2011. 54 Comments

Central Texan spinster aunts on the go are apt to become desiccated if they don’t tote around cold, life-giving liquids at all times. For this reason I once possessed a thing called Klean Kanteen, an insulated steel vacuum bottle in which I stashed my iced coffee and filtered organic free range rainwater. Wheresoever I went, so too wenteth the Klean Kanteen. Horribly, one day a dust storm snatched it out of my tentacle and blew it up to Kansas (or maybe a dingo ite it, who can remember?). Anyway, I never really got over the loss, because that Klean Kanteen was the bomb. They’re not joking around with that insulation. I’ve come back the next day and found ice cubes and half a marg still rattling around in that thing. Par-tay.

So the other day I ordered a couple of new Klean Kanteens off the internet, but when the box arrived I could but curl the spinster lip. I was obliged to create the mess pictured below that I might liberate my bottles from the packaging and proceed with my beverage-centric life.

Waste products generated by purchase of 2 insulated bottles

A. Tissue paper
B. Packing material
C. Shipping carton
D. Display cards containing the “Café” (i.e. sippy cup) lids
E. Instruction cards advising the consumer that hot liquids are apt to be hot
F. Guitar case sticker, so you can advertise Klean Kanteen at Burning Man
G. Brochure for Recharge, a sort of designer Gatorade powder
H. Two samples of Recharge
I. Paper tags attached to superfluous plastic lids
J. Superfluous plastic lids
K. Ball chain attaching the superfluous tags to the superfluous lids

Who wraps a steel cylinder in tissue? It’s steel. If I’d wanted to unwrap an object encased in miles of packaging, I’d have ordered a Ming vase with a unicorn egg in it.

Crabby at the prospect of having to responsibly dispose of all this crap (can you even recycle ball chain?), I looked up Klean Kanteen’s website so I could waggle a bitter claw at their No-BPA!/pro-environment/garbage generating hypocrisy. That’s when I discovered that they make the damn things in China.

But chillax, O thou Klean Kanteen kustomer! Klean Kanteen shares “some of” your concerns about buying crap of Chinese manufacture. They devote a whole section of the site to warming your cockles with stories of exquisitely content factory workers. Take, for example, this heartwarming tableau: a Klean Kanteen “representative” visits the factory’s undisclosed location 4 times a year, not just to check quality control, but also to share tea and crumpets with a lucky menial.

Meet Yao Sheng Fu, one of the workers at our manufacturing site in China. During one of our regular visits, he sat down with Klean Kanteen® and shared a little about his life and what it’s like to work at the factory.

Yao had just finished his shift and was happy* to join Klean Kanteen co-owner Jeff Cresswell on the patio that overlooks the open quad at the factory grounds.** Over tea and some tasty Chinese pastries,*** he told us he moved from the province of Gui Zhon, known for steel production, to work at the Klean Kanteen® factory four years ago.

“Many people want to work at this factory because it has a reputation for being a good place,” he said, explaining that the factory’s reputation is part of the reason he moved here. He hopes it will continue to grow.

He travels home to see his family about twice a year and always goes during Chinese New Year.

When Jeff asked him where he’d go if he could travel anywhere in the world, Yao said he’d love to visit New York City.

Yeah, and when Jeff asked him what he’d do if he could have any job in the world, Yao said that after he gets back from his fabulous New York vacation (he’s staying at the Waldorf), he’d love to remain here at the unnamed factory, churning out metal bottles for sanctimonious American yuppies for all time.

Zhang family in jeans factory: not too chipper. From Last Train Home by Lixin Fan.

I don’t know if you saw the 2009 documentary “Last Train Home”? It aired on “POV” the other night, and it’s been haunting me ever since. It’s an awesome and wrenching film about a Chinese factory worker family and how totally fucking screwed they are. Motivated by a desire to fund the education that they believe will improve the lives of the children they left behind, the Zhangs move from the farm to a distant factory town to sew overpriced jeans for American export. For 16 years they endure fingers worked to the bone, makeshift dormitory living, cooking on the floor, slave wages, domestic violence, broken dreams, road to hell paved with good intentions, and the annual trip home for Chinese New Year.

I mention this film because that’s the backdrop: the annual migration of hundreds of millions of Chinese factory workers (“the single largest migrant work force in the world”) as they all throng their way home to rural villages for Chinese New Year. It takes the Zhangs days, in mobbed trains and buses, to traverse 1300 miles. When they finally arrive, they discover that the kid for whom they’ve sacrificed a decade and a half of their lives in meaningless drudgery has gone rogue. At 17 she blows off school, moves to a big city and gets a job in a nightclub, and well, you know where that’s going. Before she scrams, her father beats the crap out of her. Which beating, incidentally, the filmmaker records with a cool, unflinching detachment, making the violence seem like a sane and logical outcome of Zhang’s pact with the devil.

Klean Kanteens make pretty girls smile, despite prune-hands from latex gloves. From Klean Kanteen website.

Anyway, I imagine that Yao Sheng Fu, maker of my Klean Kanteen, is one of the New Year’s throng who has made a similar devil-pact. Maybe Mr Pastry-Eating Kanteen Honcho’s quarterly factory visits do ensure that Yao isn’t cooking on the floor in a warehouse dorm hellhole while he supports a distant family that he beats up at New Year’s, but then again, maybe they don’t.

You may flatter yerself that you’re doing no harm — such as when you buy a reusable steel canteen so you can stop littering the world with those endless plastic Ozarka bottles — but no matter what, you’re always reaming someone. That’s the main sucky thing about the whole patriarchy set-up, it turns everybody into a fucking asshole. Me, Mr Zhang, Mr Kanteen: what a bunch of schmucks.

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* Yeah, I’ll bet old Yao Sheng Fu was happy as a clam to hang around the sweatshop with some rich gringo suit after slaving over the steel bottle machine for 12 or 16 hours.

** No doubt the pampered Klean Kanteen workers lounge around on this picturesque patio sipping cosmos during their numerous breaks.

*** Quaint indigenous local foods are awesome.

Posted in Movies and TV and Oppression Culture. Bite me, Chad.

“Law and Order: Mutilated Women Unit” ep cleverly appeals to multiple niche fetishes at once

Published by Jill on October 1, 2011. 22 Comments

Law and Order Mutilated Women Unit

A murdered teen isn’t lurid enough; better make her a prostitute with HIV.

Posted in Sexploitation and The Entertainment Industrial Complex. Bite me, Chad.

Whoops

Published by Jill on October 1, 2011. 30 Comments

Any moron knows not to kick someone in the head while wearing open-toed shoes.

Forgot I had a blog. Sorry about that.

But here’s a sweet little movie you won’t want to miss. Girl Fight airs on Lifetime this Monday. “Inspired” by a “true story” about mean girls who beat up one of their own and post it on YouTube for internet fame and revenge, it’s super on-trend. Although Lifetime says “Girl Fight” is about “peer pressure, media scrutiny and forgiveness” its actual purpose would appear be 1) to deliver titillating footage of a teenage girl kicking the shit out of a teenage girl, and 2) to intone another cautionary tale about the dire consequences that can go down whenever a teenage girl steps out of line (or, in an unguarded moment, posts something juvenile on Twitter).

The Lifetime Channel, as has been noted by larger brains than mine, is the TV authority of record when it comes to documenting the People magazine experience of Vagina-Americans. Violence, betrayal, insanity, torment, and murder. The Entertainment Industrial Complex has a vested interest in the defeat of feminist revolt, since a victory would rob them of all their most lurid plot devices.

Posted in Femininity, Mass Media, The Entertainment Industrial Complex and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today. Bite me, Chad.