Tag: Body Image

Quote of the Day: Scarlett Johansson Tired of Sexist Diet Questions

Robert Downey, Jr. and Scarlett Johansson at The Avengers press conference in London

Cross-posted at Women and Hollywood.

Wow, who knew I could love Scarlett Johansson so much?? I posted this on Bitch Flicks‘ Facebook page but thought it was too great not to post here too.
At The Avengers press conference in London, a reporter proceeded to ask Robert Downey Jr. an in-depth, thought-provoking question about his character (Tony Stark/Iron Man) and then asked Johansson about her diet. I shit you not.
Reporter: “I have a question to Robert and to Scarlett. Firstly to Robert, throughout Iron Man 1 and 2, Tony Stark started off as a very egotistical character but learns how to fight as a team. And so how did you approach this role, bearing in mind that kind of maturity as a human being when it comes to the Tony Stark character, and did you learn anything throughout the three movies that you made?
“And to Scarlett, to get into shape for Black Widow did you have anything special to do in terms of the diet, like did you have to eat any specific food, or that sort of thing?”
Scarlett: “How come you get the really interesting existential question, and I get the like, “rabbit food” question?“
Amen, sister! If you watch the video, you’ll see just how perturbed Johansson is to be asked. As she should be. Why the hell did the reporter save the diet question for one of the two women on the panel??

Johansson has spoken in favor of feminism (yet doesn’t necessarily call herself a feminist) and female friendship, supports Planned Parenthood and condemns Hollywood’s ageism against women calling it “a very vain, vain industry.”  So it’s no surprise she calls out this bullshit. I only wish more actors and members of the media would follow her lead.

The reporter’s question particularly rubs me the wrong way because lots of women have such a contentious relationship with food. Eating should be a fun, sensual, pleasurable experience. But too many women fear food, afraid of what it will do to their bodies. The media monitors and polices women’s consumption. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women.

In response to the asinine question, Sarah at Pop Cultured astutely asserts:

“The respect given to you if you’re a man in the entertainment business, and the respect given to you if you’re a woman in the entertainment business: all perfectly summed up in one idiotically thought out line of questioning.”
It’s ridiculous — not to mention offensive and sexist — Hollywood, the entertainment industry, and the media lavish praise on men for their minds and their talents while objectifying women and reducing female actors to their appearances. As we recently witnessed with Ashley Judd fighting back against toxic bodysnarking and the heinous criticism of Jennifer Lawrence’s body, the media constantly scrutinizes, visually dismembers, critiques and polices women’s bodies. The media wreaks havoc on women’s body images, telling us we’re too fat or too skinny. Never just right.

This constant bombardment of objectification of women leads to normalizing sexism and violence against women. It reinforces the notion that women are nothing more than sex objects for the male gaze.

So reporters, think twice before you ask a woman yet another stupid diet question. Ugh.

Guest Writer Wednesday: Disney: The Little Mermaid

This piece by Ana Mardoll is cross-posted with permission from her site Ana Mardoll’s Ramblings.

Disney. The word is so synonymous in my mind with “animated feature films” that it’s like using “Kleenex” for “tissue.” When children come to my house, as they sometimes do, they’re invariably drawn to my huge selection of “Disney movies,” only about 70% of which are actually affiliated with Disney in any way shape or form. I enjoy most of them, or I wouldn’t own them. They each have their own problems, but a good many of them have something truly positive that I treasure. And what better way to start a deconstruction of animated feature films with the one I knew first and loved best: The Little Mermaid?


The Little Mermaid is possibly one of the most contentious movies I’ve ever loved. It was created in 1989, and has been specially beloved by many children in general and by myself in particular since then. I must have watched the movie eighty squintillion times as a child; it was one of the few videos I loved enough to manage to convince my parents to buy, and I watched it until the video literally broke from use. By that point, Disney had locked the reel in their “appreciate for value” vault and when they relaunched the movie in theaters in 1997, I was there to see it on the big screen. I have never been able to watch the movie without sobbing straight through from opening titles to end credits.

I sometimes feel like everyone I meet online has seen this movie at least once. Almost all of them have an opinion on the movie. Most of the opinions are strongly polarized: either Ariel is a free-thinking young woman who bravely rejects racism to forge her own destiny and create a lasting peace between two cultures or she’s an idealized anti-feminist icon, complete with Barbie-doll figure and shell bikini, completely willing to throw away her family, her culture, and her own voice for the sake of a man she’s never even met.

Those who fall between these two views tend to stay out of the flame wars. I don’t blame them.

I like The Little Mermaid. I like a lot of things that are problematic, and I don’t think there’s anything necessarily wrong with liking problematic things as long as a certain awareness is maintained that Problems Abound Therein. Art is complicated like that. But I like The Little Mermaid and I think it’s compatible with valuable feminist messages. Certainly, it was my first introduction into a feminist narrative and I have always considered the problematic romance storyline to be camouflage for the real story. But we’ll see whether or not you agree.

Please note that everything I say from here on in is just my opinion.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of an Otherkin girl living in a world that is hostile to Otherkin. Ariel is a human born into a merperson’s body, and in a culture that routinely lambasts humans for the very same things that the underwater world does: eat fish. (Seriously. That shark at the beginning who chases Ariel and Flounder is clearly trying to eat them. These are not Happy Vegetarian Fishes.)

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a feminist girl living in a world that is hostile to feminist ideals. Ariel is a headstrong young woman who wants knowledge and growth and her own voice, but these things are being systematically denied to her. The only form of learning her father permits is that of patriarchy-approved women’s pursuits: she may study music, but not other cultures.

For me, The Little Mermaid is the story of a culture-conscious girl living in a world that mandates insularity. Ariel wants to learn about cultures and peoples and practices and histories different from her own, but she lives in a world that holds even third-hand study of such things to be utterly forbidden because the power structure believes that the populace is safer if they are steeped in fear and ignorance. (Fearful merpeople won’t try to make contact with the humans, and thus fear maintains their secrecy.)

And now I’ll walk through the film and explain why I feel these things.

The opening titles air over singing humans as they work on the local prince’s pleasure ship / wedding ship / fishing ship. Well, there are three ships in the movie, and they all look pretty much the same to me, so I’m going to assume that Prince Eric has a fleet of all-purpose boats and this is one of them. But the sailors are singing while they collect fish in their nets and Eric (and the audience!) is learning, and here are a couple of problematic things up-front. 

One, everyone in this universe is white. (We’re going to be seeing this one a lot in the Disney deconstructions.) Two, this is not a working class universe. Oh, the fishermen are fishing, but this is really the only work you’re going to see in this movie outside of a quick shot of laundry-washing and some cooking. I think Eric’s kingdom is supposed to be one of those picturesque smaller ones where the royalty aren’t far removed from the common folk and don’t mind getting their hands dirty, but it’s kind of a muddled message and it only gets worse when we get to Triton’s kingdom. Let’s just place a big sign over the deconstruction that these are Privileged White People with the inherent issues that inevitably follow. 

We pan down under the sea to the King Triton’s Schmancy Music Hall and Combination Throne Room just in time to see Ariel completely fail to show up for a music gig that was intended largely to glorify her father while his daughters display themselves to the populace and use their vocal talents to praise his name. I can’t imagine why a young woman might think she had better uses of her time than to be a public ornament to her father, nor why she might refuse to come to rehearsals (as Sebastian tells us). And when her father realizes that Ariel has failed to show up for the concert, his eyes literally turn red with rage. Yowza. 

And here is an important point: Ariel’s dad is abusive. Oh, I think he doesn’t try to be, and I even think he doesn’t want to be, but he is. And I really do think it’s a function of The Patriarchy Hurts Men, Too. You see this clearly in the scenes with Triton and Sebastian: both men shore up each other’s will to be harsher than they otherwise individually would be inclined to be, and they do this because they think it’s expected of them. When Triton is alone and when no one is looking, his face softens, his expression is sad, and he sighs and weeps for the decaying relationship he has with his daughter. It’s when others are looking — notably, Sebastian, the only other adult male in Triton’s scenes — that Triton is at his most abusively fierce. 

I don’t think this is a coincidence. Triton isn’t monstrous and Sebastian doesn’t callously bring out the worst in him; they both reinforce each other’s commitment to harmful patriarchy ideals, because they’ve been raised to believe the patriarchy expects them to. Neither is it a coincidence that Triton’s final act of redemption comes after he and Sebastian have revisited a previous conversation and they’ve admitted that they were both wrong and that their actions were harmful. But now I’m jumping ahead. 

By giving Triton this characterization, Ariel is immediately given a rich and sympathetic background before she even swims onto the stage. She’s living in a deeply patriarchal and oppressive community where her status as “princess” is largely ornamental and wholly subject to the whims and wishes of her father. While she probably had moments of tenderness between her and her father, particularly when she was younger and could be indulged as a child instead of punished for being a woman, their relationship is strained by his insistence on publicly conforming to aggressive and abusive parenting models whenever anyone is looking. These shifts in emotional tone probably confuse and frustrate Ariel: why is her father so kind at times and yet so harsh at other times? She’s coped with the on-and-off abuse by literally withdrawing. By forgetting rehearsals and the concert and pulling back into her cavern of collections, she’s not passively asserting herself or deliberately catering to the patriarchy; she’s trying to carve out a safe space, mentally and physically. 

We are introduced to Ariel who, at great personal risk to her safety — both from the sharks who seek to eat her and from her father who could severely punish her — she is scavenging human items from old shipwrecks. And this… is amazing! Our protagonist is an explorer. What’s more, she’s a scientist, going to a direct source (albeit a bad source, since the seagull is actually ignorant of human affairs, but Ariel has no way of knowing that) to be educated on the items she finds. She wants to understand the humans, and to study the things they do and the items they create. She has a whole secret museum dedicated to all the things she’s collected over the years. 

Words fail me in describing how incredible I find this. In another movie, or in a book, there would be more time spent on just how incredibly subversive Ariel is being and has been, for literally years and years. This isn’t a trivial hobby or a girlish obsession; she’s the only person in her culture who is both willing and privileged enough (due to the fact that Triton might not blast his own daughter into tiny bits for breaking his laws) to almost single-handedly set up an entire cultural museum of study on a race of people right outside the kingdom’s doorstep. The sheer bravery and gumption and intellectual devotion necessary for Ariel to have done what she’s done is amazing: she’s essentially created her very own Human Studies department right under the king’s nose because studying other cultures is important, dammit. 

I dare you to bring me a Disney heroine who has demonstrated similar levels of bravery, intellect, scientific pursuit, and proactive awesomeness within the first 15 minutes of her own movie. 

Then we cut over to Ursula, and… I have mixed feelings about Ursula. On the one hand, she’s a fat woman and a villain in a movie that has problematic body portrayals. Ariel’s sisters are almost uniform in body type, expect for Adella who kind of sort of maybe looks a little bit bigger than her sisters, in the Lane Bryant model sort of way (i.e., same breast and hip proportions, just slightly bigger all over) and who was promptly slimmed down for the sequel because Disney got the memo that fat people are not sexeh because DEATHFATS. The only other fat women in this movie are the castle servants, who are fat in the non-threatening happy-servant kind of way, and the fat woman in the Ursula song who “this one [is] longing to be thinner.” And — rage! — the fat merwoman’s tail extends up and over her breasts like Ursula’s does, but the thin incarnation of the fat woman has the bare-stomach shell-bra combo that Ariel sports. Because nude fat stomachs are obscene and ugly, but thin fat stomachs are normalized and pretty! Grr, Disney. 

But! Ursula is sexy. Her breasts! Her butt! The way she moves! Her voice! I don’t honestly remember really… noticing this as a child, but it’s there and it’s largely treated as… normal. Ursula isn’t evil because she’s sexy, nor does she seem really to be evil because she’s fat. She’s just evil and fat and sexy, all in the same package, and I guess that’s kind of cool? I’m not sure. But then when I noticed that in this viewing, I realized that this movie is actually VERY filled with women’s bodies. Can we say that about any other Disney movie? 

I don’t just mean the bikinis and the tummies; the women’s bodies here move. Ursula struts realistically around her cave and gods but those breasts and butt are there and they move. And — skipping forward a bit to Ariel’s “I Want” song — Ariel shakes her hips when she sings about “strolling along” the street; she undulates her whole body sensually when she imagines being “warm on the sand.” There are bodies in this movie! And… while they are sexy bodies, I don’t feel like I’m being clubbed with Male Gaze. I like it. I like how it seems to normalize women’s bodies as real, as things that come in different sizes, as things that can be uncovered and sexy and yet not objectified into T&A without a head or a personality needed. I’m just sorry that we have to leave the 1980s in this regard. 

Coming back to the movie, Triton yells at Ariel for missing rehearsal. He cuts her off multiple times in this scene, and calls humans “barbarians” which is a nice bit of othering to throw onto the pile of objections to Triton’s character. He then tosses a tone argument at Ariel, which effectively cuts off not only what she was going to say but also punishes her for reacting realistically and legitimately to his bullying. Then Triton tells her that as long as she lives under “my ocean,” she’ll obey “my rules,” which is totally not controlling or an abusive conflation of kingly privilege and parental privilege. And then Triton and Sebastian decide that Ariel, who is a young woman budding into her sexual awakening, needs “constant supervision.” Patriarchy for the win. 

And then we have Ariel’s “I Want” song and it still gives me shivers. The opening lines — “If only I could make him understand. I just don’t see things the way he does. I don’t see how a world that makes such wonderful things could be bad.” — reinforce that Ariel is not only longing to be human already, but she’s also inherently more open-minded than her close-minded and prejudice liege-father. Her fantasies of being human conflate with her fantasies of living in a feminist-friendly society where she can speak her mind freely and grow intellectually: “Betcha on land, they understand; bet they don’t reprimand their daughters. Bright young women, sick of swimmin’, ready to stand. And ready to know what the people know; asking my questions and get some answers.” 

MORE WOMEN! The picture of fire and the wind up toy that shows dancing both have women in them. The parallel is obvious in that Ariel wants to be these women, but I’m still blown away looking at how many women are in this film in places where I frankly think nowadays they’d be edited out. Maybe it helps that this movie wasn’t made or marketed with the All Important Male Demographic in mind, I don’t know. 

Sebastian tumbles out and informs Ariel of what she already knows: her father would be furious if he found out about the museum. Which makes so much sense, really, that his racial hatred of humans extends so far that he would deny his subjects the ability to even study them, if only to come up with more effective ways of avoiding the humans, because studying leads to understanding and understanding leads to compassion and compassion doesn’t mesh well with racial hatred. And, yes, I know they’ve woobied him up with two decades’ worth of backstories and personal tragedy, but I think that waters down the message that sometimes even people we love can be racist assholes. 

We zip up to the surface for Ariel to see Prince Eric and for some character establishing shots. And I have to say that Eric is probably my favorite Disney prince. He’s hanging out with his working class and while that could be seen as slumming, he doesn’t seem to mind getting rope burn on his hands and he knows how to steer the boat, so he’s at least not adverse to learning. And he goes back to a fiery burning ship to save his dog. 

Ariel saves his life. 

They didn’t have to do it this way. They could have had Ariel and Eric catch a glimpse of one another and fall in love that way. Ariel could have been singing in a quiet grotto and Eric could have been drawn to the sound and seen her for a split moment before she disappeared. It would have been pretty and feminine and sweet. But they didn’t do that. They had her proactively search the burning wreckage of a ship, and drag an unconscious man to safety on the shore. And that tells me two things. One, in 1989, being saved from death by a woman didn’t emasculate you forever in the eyes of the (probably) male screenwriters. Two, in 1989, saving a handsome man from drowning was considered an acceptable female fantasy with all the strength, verve, and determination that accompanies that.

Haha, no, there’s totally not a backlash against feminism today in 2012. IT’S ALL YOUR IMAGINATION. 

Sebastian tries to convince Ariel that life under the sea is better than life as a human. He has a jazzy musical number and Ariel gives him quirky yeah-I’m-not-buying-it looks before it becomes clear that she’s not really needed for this song routine and goes off with Flounder. And here is a big ol’ world-building mess because apparently the fish neither work nor eat, and they all live off of plankton delivered to their doorstep every morning by magic. Or so Sebastian seems to think from his position of Privilege? I dunno. This is why deconstructing movies with talking animals is hard. 

Triton calls Sebastian into his throne room and interrogates Sebastian while cheerily pointing his weaponized triton at the little crab. Haha, that is not scary at all! Sebastian breaks down and tells Triton about Ariel’s museum, and Triton shows up and brutally destroys it all while she weeps and begs him to stop. And this scene? Wrecks me every time. The bit with Triton building himself into a rage — “One less human to worry about! … I don’t have to know them — they’re all the same. Spineless, savage, harpooning fish-eaters, incapable of any feeling…” — is both horrifying and priceless because it really gets through how xenophobic and racist Triton truly is. He doesn’t care that he’s frightening his daughter; the rage has built in him to a point where terrorizing her makes more sense to him than actually talking to her or doing anything other than abusing his position as both king and father. 

And this scene is so utterly valuable. Because now Ariel will go to the sea witch and trade her entire life away (and her voice) to go chase after a man she’s never met. Remember that anti-feminist message referenced way back up there at the beginning? But that’s not what she’s doing, not really. As much as Ariel laments in a moment that “If I become human, I’ll never be with my father or sisters again,” her father has driven her away. Ariel isn’t safe under the sea, not emotionally or psychologically. Her life’s obsession with studying and understanding and educating herself on human culture will never be accepted — and if she persists in trying to do so clandestinely, it will only be a matter of time before someone discovers her secret, betrays her to the king, and all her work is destroyed. She knows that fate is inevitable, because it’s just happened not ten minutes ago. 

Ariel can either go home and be a good mermaid and play with her hair and go to voice rehearsal and marry a merman who will never share her interests or understand her and she can live and die frustrated and unfulfilled. Or she can take a chance and become everything she’s ever wanted: a human. And she can become that human by finding true love — “Not just any kiss,” Ursula cautions. “The kiss of True Love.” — with the first human she’s ever met, a man who attracts her with his courage and bravery and adventurous spirit. It’s a gamble, and possibly not a good one, but it must seem like the one hope for happiness left available to her. 

Human! Ariel washes up on Prince Eric’s beach and is taken for a traumatized survivor of a shipwreck, which seems plausible enough. And while I’m not 100% sure I like Grim pressing Eric to woo the traumatized survivor of a shipwreck rather than, say, provide for her education and psychological care and place her in the best possible position to choose how she wants to live the rest of her life, I do love that Eric is shown as being highly reluctant to treat Ariel with anything less than courtesy and respect. A privileged man who doesn’t react to a pretty half-naked woman washing up on his beach like Christmas has come early? Yes, please. 

There’s a scene with a French chef that is so heavy on the cultural stereotypes that I don’t even know what to say. I was going to say that this was one of the only animated feature film songs that features a foreign language, but then I remembered the Charo song in Thumbelina, which is also heavy on cultural stereotypes. *sigh* 

Then Eric and Ariel go on a tour of “his kingdom,” which seems to basically be this one decent-sized town, and Ariel is in complete Manic Pixie Dream Girl mode, but for once this makes sense because everything she sees is literally new and exciting and amazing and a dream come true. And then he lets her drive the carriage and she loves it and clears an oddly-placed death-defying jump and once the panic passes, Eric settles back like this is the good life and Ariel is clearly having a ball. I think that’s sweet, frankly. 

And then there’s a lot of singing and near-kissing and Ursula showing up to ruin things and Ariel being towed out to the ship which is not nearly as awesome as her swimming out there under her own power, and I get that it makes sense that swimming-with-legs would be something she’s not mastered, but still it feels like the Feminism Power has run out, and then Ariel and Eric reunite just in time for it to be TOO LATE and Ariel is a merperson and Eric does not care even a little bit because Eric is not a racist asshole like Triton. And then Eric saves Ariel’s life with a harpoon while Triton watches, and this is hilarious given Triton’s earlier rant about humans-who-wield-harpoons. 

After the exciting showdown scene, Eric recovers slowly on the shore while Ariel watches from her rock. Triton and Sebastian watch from further out, with Triton realizing that she really does love him and that this hasn’t all been About Him and her special butterfly rebellion. Gee, ya think? Sebastian tells him “children got to be free to lead their own lives” and Triton references as earlier conversation where Sebastian said the opposite. And this is the moment where everything is unspoken, but for me it seems like they’re saying yeah, this whole Patriarchy thing is garbage and we were wrong. And then Triton gives Ariel her legs back, she marries Eric, and there’s a new era of peace for both kingdoms, and it is awesome. 

And… yeah. It ends in a 16 year old marrying a guy she’s known all of three days. (Assuming we don’t go with the standard handwave that between cuts there could have been years and years of dating that we didn’t see. Because movies don’t work like that.) And, devoid of context, that is Very Problematic. Hell, even with context, it’s not something that gives me warm fuzzies. I do not like the Mandatory Marriage at the ends of these movies, or the implication that it’s not a Happy Ending without one. And I like the Mandatory Marriage even less when it happens to two teenagers (or one teenager and one guy in his early twenties) who’ve known each other only over the course of a few adrenaline-packed and hormone-driven days. I don’t feel like this is a healthy formula. So there’s that.

But it’s also one of the few movies I can think of where an Otherkin protagonist gets the form she’s always felt was really hers. And it’s a movie where a brave young woman defied the racist and xenophobic laws of her homeland in order to create a greater understanding between two cultures and almost single-handedly engineer a peace between both kingdoms. And she did all this while she was sixteen, as a young woman in an abusive family where she was only valued for her ornamental status. She held on to her inner essential self and managed to forge her own path without ever once beating herself up for the abusive things that others did to her. Throughout the movie, the entire narrative seems to scream that being strong-while-female is not a bad thing: it’s okay to defy your racist asshole dad, it’s okay to save the life of the handsome guy who won’t then turn around and act all emasculated and shun you, it’s okay to own your “acceptably feminine” talents in ways that make you happy, social expectations be damned. And for a movie that is now over twenty years old, that seems kind of awesome. 

Ana’s Happy Feminism Fuzzies Scorecard 
– Otherkin narrative where protagonist proactively gains the form she wants 
– Feminist narrative where protagonist longs to be taken seriously as a cultural researcher 
– Intellectual narrative where protagonist values museums and cultural study 
– Racial/Cultural narrative where protagonist demonstrates that Racism Is Bad 
– Body Positive (with caveats) narrative where women characters abound of different body sizes 
– Patriarchy Hurts Men narrative where good men are abusive because of patriarchal expectations 

Ana’s Sad Epic Fail Scorecard 
– Narrative that is entirely cast with white people and has a Angry French Chef stereotype 
– Narrative that contains muddled class portrayal and is largely about privileged people 
– Narrative that contains no openly QUILTBAG characters 
– Narrative that ends with a teen marriage between two almost-strangers  

Final Thoughts: The Little Mermaid is — like most Disney movies — rife with issues of class, race, hetereonormity, and body portrayal. But in my opinion it’s ironically one of the least problematic movies in the set (“ironic” because the current cultural narrative is that we’re now BETTER at those things than we were in the 1980s), and if you’re a white heterosexual class-privileged girl living in an oppressive patriarchy — as I was when I came to the movie — it may just resonate with you. Maybe.

As a final link, here is a picture of Disney Princesses dressed as the villains in their movies. I like the Ariel/Ursula swap so very much.



———-

Ana Mardoll is an avid reader and writer. She loves cats, fairy tales, and intense navel gazing. She blogs on a near daily basis from an undisclosed location in the wild, untamed, and astonishingly dusty Texas wilderness. Her photo-realistic avatars are a gift from best friend and invaluable writing buddy, J.D. Montague.

To read more of Ana’s writings, including her snarktastic literary deconstructions, visit her website at www.AnaMardoll.com.

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Jon Avnet, Rodrigo Garcia Launch Web Series and Shorts to Explore ‘Female Characters’ from Thompson on Hollywood

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The Status of Women’s Film Festivals from Women and Hollywood

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How to Lose Your Virginity Documentary Project by Therese Shechter via Kickstarter

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What have you been reading this week? Leave your links in the comments!

Up with Chris Hayes: News Program Has a Conversation about Women and Media That Lasts Longer Than 90 Seconds

Last week Megan wrote an excellent post in response to Ashley Judd’s op-ed piece in The Daily Beast and the national conversation started by the actor speaking out about the treatment of women’s bodies, in particular, in the media. 
Of the many conversations sparked by Judd, this roundtable discussion on MSNBC’s Up with Chris Hayes strikes me as particularly good. As alluded to in the title, the program focused on the issue of women and media longer than the usual sound bite allows. While the entire show wasn’t dedicated to the topic, the group did discuss cultural expectations for women and the treatment of women in the media for more than 15 minutes. Included in the discussion are writer, director, and producer of Miss Representation, Jennifer Siebel Newsom; director of Washington public policy center Demos, Heather McGhee; and Princeton University professor Betsey Stevenson.
Watch the clip here, and please share it widely!

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“Ashley Judd, Kate Winslet and Jennifer Lawrence vs. Our Toxic Misogynist Culture” by Sophia Savage for Thompson on Hollywood

“The Hunger Games, Hollywood and Fighting Fuck Toys” by Caroline Heldman for Ms. Magazine

“Talking to Lena Dunham About Being A ‘Girl'” by Kase Wickman for The Awl

“Film Corner” (On The Lucky One) by Melissa McEwan for Shakesville

“The Hunger Games’ Feral Feminism” by Katha Pollitt for The Nation

“The Five Most Pathetic Female Film Characters of All Time” by Lindy West for The Guardian

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Betty Draper Francis Needs Your … Ice Cream? A Few Notes on the Evil TV Ex-Wife by Sady Doyle for Tiger Beatdown

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The Hunger Games Movie vs. The Book from Feminist Frequency

Future of Feminism: The Complete Works from Fourth Wave

We need to talk about women filmmakers: or, two cheers for the BFI’s Made in Britain season by Sophie Mayer for The F Word

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Why You Should Get Excited About Next Big-Screen Heroine — Sabrina The Teenage Witch by Alyssa Rosenberg for Think Progress

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“I’m Not Very Good at Making People Like Me”: Why ‘The Hunger Games’ Katniss Everdeen Is One of the Most Important Heroes in Modern Culture

Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games

Guest post written by Molly McCaffrey. Originally published at I Will Not Diet. Cross-posted with permission.

***SPOILER ALERT: Though there are no real spoilers here, one scene and the basic premise of the film are discussed in detail. If you’ve seen the preview for The Hunger Games, reading this review won’t reveal anything new, but if you haven’t seen the preview, I’d suggest you skip the part I’ve marked below.***

Possibly the most important moment in the film adaptation of The Hunger Games occurs when protagonist Katniss Everdeen (played with a perfect cross of vulnerability and strength by Kentucky native Jennifer Lawrence) confesses to her stylist Cinna (the circumspect Lenny Kravitz who aptly conveys the enormity of Katniss’ situation with his searing eyes) that she’s not very good at making people like her.

Katniss has just arrived in the capital to participate in the 74th Annual Hunger Games and is about to be interviewed on television by Caeser Flickerman (a blue-haired, ponytailed Stanley Tucci doing a slightly more likeable version of reality show host Ryan Seacrest). Her interview will be seen by absolutely everyone in Panem, the futuristic version of North America where this story takes place, so the stakes are high.
For this reason, Katniss is more than a little anxious.
SPOILER ALERT: SKIP THIS PARAGRAPH IF YOU HAVEN’T SEEN THE HUNGER GAMES PREVIEW . . . Adding to her anxiety is the fact that, just days before the interview takes place, Katniss volunteered to take her sister’s place when she was chosen by lot—calling to mind Shirley Jackson’s classic short story “The Lottery” — to represent their district in the Hunger Games that year.
The “Hunger Games” is a twisted, fight-to-the-death, televised competition — think William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Richard Connell’s “The Most Dangerous Game” crossed with a reality show like Survivor — designed by Panem’s capital city to punish and intimidate the outlying districts of Panem for the uprising they orchestrated unsuccessfully against the capital 74 years before.
That risky political move ultimately led to the obliteration of one of the thirteen districts and the virtual enslavement of the other twelve districts (creating a world not totally unlike George Orwell’s 1984 or Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale). As a result, the people who live in the districts are now forced to live in such extreme poverty that dying of hunger is one of their greatest fears.

Katniss isn’t just nervous because she’s about to appear on national television or enter an arena in which only one person will come out alive; she’s also apprehensive because she knows that one of the ways a “tribute” — meaning a player in the Games — can get ahead is by making the people of the capital fall in love with her since they are allowed to sponsor tributes in the Games and send them gifts—medicine, water, weapons, anything — to help them win. So if she doesn’t make them like her, she could be sacrificing her own life in the process.

Stanley Tucci as Caesar Flickerman and Jennifer Lawrence as Katniss Everdeen in The Hunger Games
But Katniss feels that she isn’t the kind of person people like—she’s not warm or engaging, positive or open, nor is she particularly feminine (at least until her prep team in the capital puts her through a Twilight Zone-esque makeover process), yet these are the qualities that television audiences usually respond to. So when she is faced with the task of entertaining an entire country of viewers, she is terrified not just that they won’t like her, but that they’ll go so far as to root against her.
This is a common fear for women in our society, especially young women who are expected to be have cheerful personalities and sunny dispositions, who are supposed to be both people pleasers and objects of the male gaze. They are not supposed to be contemplative or cynical, as Katniss certainly is after having grown up in a society that forces her to kill squirrels on a daily basis to feed her fatherless family. So her fears about not being able to woo her television audience are not only valid, but also relatable.
If Katniss’ apprehensions about not being able to put on the right face for society are driven by her very real fear of dying in the arena, the fears of young women today are usually motivated by less sober concerns, but ones that surely feel just as profound when you’re sixteen years old.
Like Katniss, young women today worry about not being pretty enough or likeable enough, but they also worry about how their ability to do those things will ultimately affect their ability to find both happiness and success in life, a fate that may seem as serious as losing your life when you’re a teenager. So it’s no wonder this story appeals to young people — girls and boys alike. It speaks to their most overwhelming concerns: Will I be good enough? Will I be strong enough? Will people like me?
Ultimately Katniss is able to perform for the audience during her televised interview and win them over: not by being sunny or charismatic or entertaining—though she is forced to do the latter when she twirls in her designer ball gown, alighting the flames inside its skirt (an allusion to Katniss’ inner strength) — but by being herself, by being a real person with genuine thoughts and emotions, making her more honest and vulnerable than anyone else in the giant theatre full of costumed adults who congratulate and cheer for the tributes in a way that reveals their inability to understand the gravity of what they are doing to them.
It’s a message repeated throughout the rest of her story and, more importantly, one we need to send more often to young people: Be yourself — not who other people expect you to be — and we will like you for who you are.
I cannot explain how much I appreciate Suzanne Collins for putting such an important message out in the world and for giving us the great gift of Katniss Everdeen, one of the most admirable and honest young heroes ever committed to the page or screen. And I hope you will appreciate her as much as I do.
Molly McCaffrey is the author of the short story collection How to Survive Graduate School & Other Disasters, the co-editor of Commutability: Stories about the Journey from Here to There, and the founder of I Will Not Diet, a blog devoted to healthy living and body acceptance. She teaches English and creative writing classes and advises writing majors at Western Kentucky University in Bowling Green, Kentucky.

Quote of the Day: Actor Ashley Judd Takes on Bodysnarking Media

ashley-judd

Written by Megan Kearns.

After media speculation over her allegedly “puffy face” caused a “viral media frenzy,” actor Ashley Judd decided to speak out against the media’s misogynistic accusations. Beyond her career as an actor, Judd is a humanitarian and philanthropist, a global ambassador for YouthAIDS and a Harvard graduate. The feminist activist — who dialogues about rape culture and proudly supports reproductive justice — confronted sexism, patriarchy and the media’s incessant scrutiny of women’s faces and bodies. In Judd’s must-read post for The Daily Beast, she writes:

“The Conversation about women’s bodies exists largely outside of us, while it is also directed at (and marketed to) us, and used to define and control us. The Conversation about women happens everywhere, publicly and privately. We are described and detailed, our faces and bodies analyzed and picked apart, our worth ascertained and ascribed based on the reduction of personhood to simple physical objectification. Our voices, our personhood, our potential, and our accomplishments are regularly minimized and muted.”

Love, love, LOVE this! I mean, who the hell cares if an actor has gained weight? Judd shouldn’t have to justify or defend her appearance. The media needs to cease the destructive commentaries and obsessive deconstruction of women’s bodies, debating whether or not a celeb has gained weight or had plastic surgery. And don’t even get me started on those god awful “baby bump patrols” in the tabloids. Bleh.

Controlling women’s bodies consumes our sexist and ageist society. Women obsess over their appearance because they see unhealthy and unrealistic depictions of female actors and models in film, TV, magazines and on billboards. Photoshopped faces and bodies saturate the media, creating unattainable images of beauty. We’re supposed to wax and tweeze body hair, slather on age-defying creams, diet and exercise curves into submission. Between diet books, exercise DVDs, weight loss shakes, low-fat foods – the dieting industry is a money-making juggernaut. And it’s geared towards women. On the flip side, the media chastises women for being too bony or thin. The media constantly dissects, critiques and polices women’s bodies.

In her Daily Beast article, Judd also succinctly defines patriarchy, reminding us that men aren’t the sole perpetrators of sexism. Women are too:

“That women are joining in the ongoing disassembling of my appearance is salient. Patriarchy is not men. Patriarchy is a system in which both women and men participate. It privileges, inter alia, the interests of boys and men over the bodily integrity, autonomy, and dignity of girls and women. It is subtle, insidious, and never more dangerous than when women passionately deny that they themselves are engaging in it.”

Judd couldn’t be more spot on. Patriarchy puts the needs of white men and boys first. Patriarchy silences and constrains women and girls yet makes them culprits in policing other women’s bodies and behavior. Women need to stop tearing down other women.

It’s interesting Judd’s patriarchy media manifesto comes out right after some asshole critics deemed Jennifer Lawrence’s body too fat, too curvy and not emaciated enough to play Hunger Games’ Katniss from the starving and impoverished District 12.

The New York Times’ Mahnola Dargis claimed “her seductive, womanly figure makes a bad fit for a dystopian fantasy about a people starved into submission,” The Hollywood Reporter’s Todd McCarthy commented on her “lingering baby fat,” Hollywood Elsewhere’s Jeffrey Wells accuses Lawrence of being “big-boned” and “seems too big for Hutcherson” as male romantic partners should at least be as tall as their female counterparts (I shit you not).

Thankfully, others like Melissa Silverstein at Women and Hollywood, Slate’s L.V. Anderson, LA Times’ Alexandra Le Tellier, LA Times’ Patrick Goldstein, as well as many others have called out this bullshit bodysnarking. Jennifer Lawrence, who chose not to diet for the role (good for her), has also apparently laughed off the media’s criticism of her body.

And of course there’s been an onslaught of racist commentary surrounding Rue. Her character’s innocence and purity and the audience’s ability to empathize with her apparently went out the window the minute racist filmgoers saw a Black girl.

Sophia Savage for Thompson on Hollywood points out that audiences called Kate Winslet “too fat” for the 3-D rerelease of Titanic. Winslet “responded that she’s now thinner than co-star Leonardo DiCaprio.” Winslet has spoken out about her weight and body image before, particularly her disdain for magazines’ overzealous photoshopping to make her look unrealistically thin. And I remember when Titanic originally premiered in 1997, audiences and film critics taunted Winslet’s weight. Clearly some things don’t change. Sigh.

But cruel commentary on women’s appearances isn’t just reserved for those in Hollywood. And not everyone can just shrug off the media’s mockery. Conservative pundits Glenn Beck and Laura Ingraham as well as others in the media have skewered columnist and blogger Meghan McCain for her weight and appearance. McCain said that it’s as if “all women in the media should lose a bunch of weight if they want to go on television to talk about anything.” She admitted she’s seen a therapist because of the media’s “really weird reaction” to her body. Omg I don’t blame her — I freak out when someone doesn’t like one of my blog posts! And of course I’ll never forget the horrific misogynistic dissection of both Hillary Clinton and Sarah Palin (their clothes, hair, bodies, faces, sexiness) during the 2008 presidential election.

We don’t see this level of relentless scrutiny and bodysnarking of male bodies. Women and girls are continually held up to unattainable toxic beauty standards, punished and criticized if they transgress these warped norms. A positive body image eludes many of us as a result. We can be anything we dream of, so long as we’re thin and sexy — and of course “sexy” means white women with long-flowing hair. Society continually places importance on womens’ and girls’ appearances over their merit and intellect, reducing us to sex objects. The media tells us our value and self-worth reside in our beauty.

We’re teaching future generations to wage war with their bodies. Nearly half of all 3- to 6-year-old girls worry about being fat and “eating disorders having risen steadily in children and teens over the last few decades.” According to the documentary Miss Representation, the average age of plastic surgery is 17 years old. Girls internalize self-hatred. They grow up thinking they must alter and transform their appearance in order to achieve acceptance and happiness.

Having met Ashley Judd on a few occasions, I can say she is every bit as impassioned in person as she appears in-print or on-screen. We need more celebs — like Judd, Geena Davis, Kerry Washington, Martha Plimpton, Margaret Cho, Jennifer Siebel Newsom, Roseanne Barr — who are outspoken staunch feminists, unafraid to call out sexist bullshit. We all need to challenge the media’s misogynistic attacks on women’s bodies.

Image by the U.S. federal government via the public domain in the U.S.

 

Arresting Ana: A Short Film about Pro-Anorexia Websites

Arresting Ana (2009)
In February of this year, Tumblr made news when it announced it would no longer host “self harm” sites–which promote anorexia or bulimia as a lifestyle choice, among other subjects–and would pop up a public service announcement (PSA) whenever someone searches for a keyword associated with self harm.
Recently I participated in a feminist film festival in which Arresting Ana, a short documentary by Lucie Schwartz, was shown. Here’s a synopsis of the film:

Arresting Ana tells the story of the potential criminalization of the pro-anorexia movement in France. The film follows two women: Sarah, an 18-year-old college student with a ‘pro-Ana’ blog, an online forum on which she shares tips and tricks with other young women on how to become anorexic, and Valerie Boyer, a passionate legislator who is proposing a ground-breaking bill that aims to ban pro-Ana websites by issuing $30,000 fines and 2-year prison sentences to members of this online underground movement.

The film was made in 2009, and at the time of its completion the proposed bill had stalled in France’s legislature. The issue of censoring pro-ana sites is interesting and controversial for numerous reasons, I think. While Boyer’s intention with the bill seems good and particularly in the interests of young women, there are some major flaws to this kind of legal activism–which essentially criminalizes people who are suffering from a serious illness and expressing themselves in various ways online. 
While I would stop short of defending someone who is instructing an audience on how to be a “better anorexic,” the free speech aspect–and the idea of criminalizing certain speech online–has serious ramifications. Though I agree with the idea that one person’s freedom ends when it impinges on another person’s freedom, I question whether pro-ana sites are actually harming or violating their readers’ freedom or personal liberty. Let me be clear: I am not in any way celebrating or defending self-harm sites; rather, they strike me as a cry for help, and maybe a manifestation of an illness, rather than criminal behavior. In the case of Tumblr, the free speech issue is largely avoided, since it is a private company, free to set its own terms of service. To me, this seems a more reasonable response in the battle against promoting self harm and eating disorders.
The question also arises as to why websites written and maintained by people suffering from eating disorders are being targeted at all. There are certainly sites on the web that are just as, if not more, harmful to people–sites that use hate speech, or promote hate or violence. Although I’m no expert, I haven’t heard about legislation–or even private companies’ terms of service–against anti-woman websites. Remember Facebook’s Occupy a Vagina event page? In this context, it seems that young women’s freedom of expression is specifically being targeted–even if the subject is a harmful and even dangerous one. (Note: Men suffer from eating disorders too, and I’m not trying to minimize that; the film focuses entirely on young women.)
Fighting eating disorders is important work, and the fact that the subject is being discussed at all in France’s legislature is a good thing. However, criminalizing illness isn’t. Better reforms seem to be the ones directed at body image: banning excessive photoshop use in magazines and advertisements, requiring models to be at a healthy weight, and speaking out against body policing and shaming–whether it happens in media or in our private conversations.
Watch the trailer for Arresting Ana:

Bitch Flicks’ Weekly Picks

Stephanie’s Picks:

Keira Knightley, Charlize Theron, Others Play Women on the Edge from the LA Times

Iron Lady Falls to the Anna Quindlen Doctrine from Bloomberg

Reel Grrls Rural Transportation Fund from IndieGogo

Why Restyle Great Women of History as Cockamamie Feminist Role Models? from The Guardian

Amber’s Picks:

Letterman Comedian Booker Dropped After Comments About Women in Comedy from The Wrap

Why the Oscars should cast out The Help and Welcome in Pariah from The Guardian

Body-Shaming a Common Theme at the Golden Globes from About-Face

Feminist icons from classic musicals from The F Word

Genie Awards nominations announced from Her Film

Leave your links in the comments!

From the Archive: Tiny Furniture

I’m still in the process of getting my shit together in 2012, so here’s a review I wrote in January 2011. Basically, I loved Tiny Furniture. Check it out if you can — it’s streaming on Netflix.
The film follows Aura (played by writer/director Lena Dunham), a 20-something self-described misanthrope who, after graduating from a film program at a small liberal arts school in Ohio, moves back to New York City to live with her famous-artist mother, Siri (played by Dunham’s real-life mother Laurie Simmons) and her budding-genius sister, highschooler Nadine (played by Dunham’s real-life sister Grace Dunham). The film wants to show that Aura is, in fact, Having a Very, Very Hard Time, as the tagline reveals, and it puts her through the typical hell that’s common in the heterosexual coming-of-age stories of early twenties womanhood: the struggle to find a reasonably paying job, a desire to make that college degree mean something, and, of course, a few random hookups with emotionally unavailable men. 
But more than anything, Tiny Furniture is a film about the relationships among women.
When Aura arrives home from college, she’s immediately confronted with her mother photographing her younger sister among a setup of, literally, tiny furniture. And, while the first indication of sibling rivalry appears, it already seems more refreshing and complicated than the traditional cliched portrayal of sister-hate and woman-on-woman divisiveness. The women converse with one another as if Aura hadn’t been in Ohio for four years; in fact, the casualness of their interaction–her mother barely looking up from her photography, her sister making sarcastic comparisons about her slender legs versus Aura’s heavier frame–suggests a comfort with one another that transcends their almost performed familial coldness. 
Perhaps most intriguingly, the on-screen relationships feel so authentic that the unmentioned absent father is hardly noticeable. Who cares, after all?  Women rock the screen, and, unlike a couple of recent woman-centric films (The Kids Are All Right, Winter’s Bone–both arguably feminist) it has nothing to do with a need to compensate for the failings of the men in their lives. 
Almost immediately when Aura moves back to New York, she meets up with her childhood friend Charlotte (played by Jemima Kirke) at a party. Charlotte is portrayed as a spoiled, drama-craving brat, but Aura clings to her, at one point even referring to Charlotte as her best friend. (Her mother later says sarcastically in response, “After two weeks?”) They hang out in Charlotte’s apartment, getting high together and talking about art, men, joblessness, addiction, their parents–and they flatter each other; the audience is never encouraged to view these women as rivals. The point of their friendship is to illustrate the absolute aloneness of being an aimless twenty-something and not knowing what the hell to do in life. In several hilarious scenes, Charlotte begs Aura not to leave, once going as far as to roll around on her bed saying, “Please stay,” which the audience is meant to find both endearing and pathetic.
And while the relationship between Charlotte and Aura works mainly because of their shared loneliness and need to connect, the onscreen relationship between the two sisters thoughtfully investigates the obstacles inherent in familial relationships. In fact, it didn’t surprise me at all when I discovered that they’re actually real-life sisters because their sibling rapport feels incredibly authentic. While Aura drinks bottle after bottle of her mother’s wine with her friends, Nadine runs on the treadmill, does crunches while reading a book, writes award-winning poetry, and teases Aura about her directionless existence. But the back-and-forth nitpicking between them is perfectly juxtaposed against scenes exhibiting such tenderness as can only occur in close relationships.
One of my favorite scenes in the movie involves Nadine throwing a party while her mother is out, leaving Aura to supervise things. Of course, the party gets out of hand–we’re dealing with a slew of highschoolers railing against Aura-as-Authority-Figure (because, let’s face it, if Aura is anything, Authority Figure isn’t on the list)–and Aura starts to have a panic attack. She does the only thing she can think to do, call Charlotte to come over and help her get the party under control. Which is hilarious. Because Charlotte is more of a disaster than Aura is. So, it isn’t surprising at all when Charlotte starts giving lap dances and Aura starts walking around the party in her underwear.
The screaming match that ensues between Aura and Nadine could’ve been taken from a direct transcript of a real-life sibling fight. I cringed at the truthfulness of Nadine’s accusations as she criticized Aura for craving the attention of high school boys. (Those boys, however, reciprocated by making fun of Aura and dissing her body.) And when Nadine starts smacking Aura with a spatula and storms off, the audience feels sympathy for both sisters; neither is the villain in this film, and Dunham’s navigation of that terrain seems effortless from beginning to end. I won’t spoil the brief make-up scene between Aura and Nadine because the film is worth watching for that moment alone.
Aura spends much of the film, when she isn’t fighting with her sister, thinking of herself as somewhat of an artist/filmmaker, as evidenced by her YouTube videos (where she usually wears only her underwear or a bathing suit). Since Aura isn’t traditionally beautiful, and isn’t a size two like most of the half-naked women we’re used to seeing onscreen, at first it’s almost shocking to watch her walk around barely clothed throughout the film (which further illustrates the level of comfort and intimacy she feels with her mother and sister). But Dunham doesn’t include those scenes merely for shock value. The comments left on her YouTube videos consistently make fun of her weight and her looks. She reads the insulting feedback aloud to Charlotte, and they both try to blow it off, but not without Aura remarking on how difficult it is to put that negativity out of her mind.
For anyone who’s ever browsed the comments on YouTube videos, it’s impossible not to notice the disgusting misogyny and homophobia that plague them. Not only does Dunham subtly comment on that, but she also manages to reinforce the importance of supportive women friendships as a way to help combat the barrage of bullshit women deal with daily, especially when it concerns unattainable beauty ideals. It’s interesting to note, too, that Charlotte is traditionally attractive, and yet their friendship never digresses into any sort of competition, least of all one that involves some stereotypical competition over men.
The film doesn’t completely shy away from the subject of men, though, and the two men Aura meets both basically suck. One spends the first half of the movie mooching off Aura–and she lets him–staying in her house, eating her food, drinking her mother’s wine, but when she tries to take their “friendship” to the next level, he refuses. For Aura to attempt to hook up with such a caricature of a loser further drives home her loneliness and desire for connection. With anyone. So it isn’t surprising either when she goes after the chef she works with, who likes “Asian tentacle rape” pornography–whatever the hell that is–and exploits Aura’s obvious crush on him to get her to give him pills (even though he has a girlfriend).
Watching the film, one can’t avoid thinking, “C’mon, Aura, you know better than this.” But the material is so impossible not to relate to–who hasn’t lusted after the entirely wrong person, and known it?–that one can’t fault her for putting herself through it.
Those interactions with men accompanied by Aura’s reading aloud of her mother’s diary (written during her twenties) give further insight into the relationship Aura has with her mother. In many ways, regardless of how often the two women clash, Aura admires her. She’s a successful artist who’s clearly independent. She’s rich. She has no apparent need for a man in her life. Yet her diary reveals many of her obsessions in her twenties: with body image–she constantly journaled her food choices, with men and their inadequacies, and particularly with feeling like she wasn’t living up to her potential as an artist.
The final scene of the film, with Aura curled up with her mother in her mother’s bed, discussing the diary, openly discussing Aura’s horrid sexual encounter from earlier in the evening (completely absent of judgment from her mother–her only concern is that Aura practices safe sex), discussing Aura’s own fears of failure, which her mother squashes with, “Oh, you’ll be much more successful than I am,” feels so heart-wrenchingly honest it’s almost difficult to watch. And the ending, which features a literal ticking clock that could’ve felt contrived and artificial, totally works. It isn’t that the two women desire to stop time; they just don’t want the obvious reminder of its passing. 
As Aura struggles with all these issues, reading her mother’s diary (and sharing it with the audience) serves to remind us that even though coming-of-age ain’t fun, particularly for young women navigating the patriarchy, it’s still possible to come out on the other end fairly unscathed. 

Quote of the Day: Catherine Bray

In The British film industry’s hopes for 2012, various filmmakers and critics talk about what they hope the new year brings. We have a few favorites, but perhaps the best comes from Catherine Bray, Editor of Film4.com:

Equality now! Over the last few years, we’ve seen Kevin James paired with Rosario Dawson, Seth Rogen paired with Anna Faris, Jack Black paired with Amanda Peet, Vince Vaughn paired with Malin Akerman… and so the list goes on. In the interests of balance, I’d like to see a lithe, stunningly attractive man paired with an averagely schlubby, heavy-set funny woman in a mainstream comedy. I think what I’m saying is that my wish for 2012 is to see Melissa McCarthy from “Bridesmaids” get it on with Ryan Gosling in a knockabout romcom.

Back in 2010, guest writer Molly McCaffrey wrote about this double standard in her piece Holy Hypocrisy: Couples Retreat, but it’s a phenomenon that started a long time ago and that shows no sign of letting up. We, too, would love to see McCarthy paired with Gosling–or any reversal of the knockout-with-the-schlub trope. 
However, would it be a neat reversal, or would the pairing itself be played for laughs? One could argue that the film couples Bray and McCaffrey mention are already being played for laughs, but this is never a central joke in the movie/TV show. And, when a joke is so familiar it certainly loses its punch…so that argument isn’t very convincing.
What two actors would you like to see paired in a comedy this year?
P.S. Thanks to reader Em for pointing this out to us! Be sure to read the whole article…

On Entertainment Weekly’s "42 Unforgettable Nude Scenes"

This morning I found myself reading old NYT news-alert emails, surfing Facebook, and, finally, browsing a slideshow from Entertainment Weekly called “Bodies of Work: 42 Unforgettable Nude Scenes” which was published earlier this month. (It was a productive morning, see?)
We talk a lot at Bitch Flicks about female bodies in films (and especially in film marketing, as evidenced in our posters series), and how bodies are offered up for viewers’ consumption. There are a few things that strike me about the scenes that EW highlights. I haven’t seen every film mentioned, so there may be more complexities in some of the examples, but there are certainly identifiable trends.
I recommend looking through the slideshow before you continue reading, but you can always go back and look through it afterwards. There is very little nudity in the screen shots from the scenes, so I’d label the slideshow safe for work.
Uma Thurman in The Adventures of Baron Munchenhausen
1. Male bodies are comedic, female bodies are sexy.

There are, of course, a few exceptions, but this is overwhelmingly the case in these scenes. Photo after photo reveals male actors in comedic situations. Whether it’s the odd object hiding genitals (Ryan Gosling with Steve Carell’s head in Crazy, Stupid, Love; John Cleese with a picture frame in A Fish Called Wanda; Peter Sellers with a guitar in A Shot in the Dark) or the uncomfortable display of homophobia (Sacha Baron Cohen in Borat; Ed Helms in Cedar Rapids; Tyler Nilson in Walk Hard: The Dewey Cox Story), the naked male body is often played for laughs. At the same time, a majority of the female actors are shown as beautiful objects to look at, including women showering (Jessica Alba in Machete; Beverly D’Angelo in National Lampoon’s Vacation; Phoebe Cates in In Paradise) and women revealing themselves for a man (Kate Winslet in Titanic, or, as the article states “in almost anything”; Uma Thurman in The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Halle Berry in Monster).
This tells us something we likely already know: the female body is most often presented for male viewers’ consumption, yet the male body is also being presented for male viewers–most often in a comedic way that reinforces heterosexuality. This emphasizes the notion that Hollywood employs the male gaze, and that films are being made for a (white, heterosexual) male audience. Which leads me to my next point…
2. “Unforgettable” bodies are white bodies.

There is a lot of tokenism going on in EW‘s piece. There is one Asian man (Ken Jeong in The Hangover II), one Black woman (Halle Berry), one Hispanic woman (Jessica Alba)–and every other person on the list is white. Let me say that again. Out of 42 scenes, there are 3 people of color. Three. Uno, dos, tres. Oh, there’s also Bart Simpson, who is yellow, but also a cartoon. (Update: I left Jaye Davidson of The Crying Game off the list, so there is also one Black man–who is, incidentally, not the person prominently shown in the image for that film/scene. Thanks to reader Soirore for pointing this out to me.)
This speaks to the cultural desirability (and also the perceived comedic potential*) of bodies belonging to people of color. Although people of color are often objectified and exoticized for consumption, none–or very few–of these incidents have been deemed “unforgettable” by the fine folks at EW. On one level, it’s good that we don’t see the vulgar objectification of people of color here, in a piece that is essentially based on objectification (or, EW might argue, celebrating memorable nude scenes), but it also peculiar and disturbing that the list is so damn white.
*I also want to note that for nude bodies to have comedic potential, those bodies have to have a certain amount of cultural privilege. We can laugh at the white male body because laughing at the white male body poses no threat to men, precisely because white men have the privilege and power to laugh and be laughed at.
David Kelly in Waking Ned Devine
3. Male bodies are active, female bodies are passive. Thus, men are active and women are passive.

This is very close to the first conclusion highlighted above, but it’s worth separating because it’s so prevalent in our culture and in this piece. Two comedies–The Full Monty and Calendar Girls–exhibit the divide perfectly. Both films play the nude body as comedic, but also subvert the comedy and allow for some moments in which bodies generally not considered desirable by mainstream standards are both sensual and wanted. However, Calendar Girls features a group of older women who are photographed for a (nude) calendar (read: the female body as a static, passive object), while The Full Monty shows a group of men performing a stage show (read: the male body in motion, in action). 
It’s not just these two examples in the list, either. You have a man riding a motorcycle nude (David Kelly in Waking Ned Devine), a man running down the street nude (Will Ferrell in Old School), a man riding a horse nude (Russel Crowe in Hammers over the Anvil), a man fighting (Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises), etc. 
4. EW has an interesting definition of the word “scene.” They actually mean “person.”

It seems that the piece is mistitled, and that the word “person,” or even “performance” more accurately describes their interest. Nearly every picture features a single person, even if that person isn’t the only nude one in the scene, with only a few exceptions: Sandra Bullock & Ryan Reynolds in The Proposal; Mike Meyers & Elizabeth Hurley in Austin Powers; “The Old Gals” in Calendar Girl; “The Men” in The Full Monty; and Julian Sands, Rupert Graves & Simon Callow in A Room with a View (probably the most subversive example in the piece, as the scene features the three men frolicking together, comfortably nude, in a lake).
Thus, “unforgettable” images of nude bodies are ones that are generally individual people, for the viewers’ consumption, and there is very little interest in portraying (or viewing) sensuality or healthy sexuality.
There are a lot of other things I could say about this collection of nude scenes. There’s certainly something interesting about violence and the male body, and it can’t go unmentioned that there is only one example (from The Crying Game) or maybe two (if you include the scene from A Room with a View) that is not explicitly heteronormative.
What else do you notice about the scenes and/or bodies offered up in EW’s slide show? 

Also, we can play the same game as EW: What unforgettable scenes are missing from the original list?