It seems that many people have been searching for my reactions to several women related top stories this a.m. So, I thought I should let you know:
- No there will be no picture of Venus Williams outfit at the French Open on the blog – news flash, I am a black woman, so no another black woman’s muscular bum in “nude” shorts does not give me the same Saartje Baartman thrill the rest of you seem to be having. The Williams sisters have always chosen tennis outfits that challenged the once unquestioned white genteel uniform of tennis. While those choices have not always been tasteful, they have transformed what people can and do wear on the court. By daring to question the unquestioned, ie the hegemonic nature of a tradition designed to mark out both race and class in its codification, they opened the door for tennis to step out of certain visual narratives of the past into the present. While I would never wear what Venus Williams chose to wear at the French Open, I cannot help but wonder how intentional her choice really was in the face of the ongoing French exoticism of the black female body and the very clear line back to Saartje that you can draw from it. I don’t think finding irony in the attention this outfit has raised in this context out of step with what is going on nor do I think we should miss the opportunity to think a little deeper.
- Sex and the City 2 holds no interest here – while I was deeply amused by the rundown of posts across the internet and print media trashing SATC2 exotification, pseudo-feminism, and cliche homophobia over at Feminist Texican’s blog, the bottom line is: I never watched the show on tv (I didn’t have HBO), I only saw clips of the first movie in the wee hours of the night a few months ago which involved not only diarrhea “jokes” but also the policing of one’s hair tied directly to victim-blaming around infidelity, and so while I might be lured in by the idea of a more bronzed version of the guy from Northern Exposure on my screen, there is nothing about this movie that even slightly interests me. So just like last year kiddies, as far as we at like a whisper are concerned unless Martha Jones shows up to rescue the fab 4 from themselves, with a twinkle eyed David Tennant in tow, you can forget about it ever showing up on the blog.
Truthfully, I am swamped with prepping for this great psych seminar the gf and I are taking together in lands faraway and trying to weather the epic shakeup in one or more of the departments in which I teach regularly at the uni, so the sound of crickets prevails here at the blog even in the face of even more snarky things I could say about both of the pop culture things above and a bevy of others I have yet to mention. Instead, I leave it to you to generate your own conversations about them here or elsewhere.
Like a Whisper 