The Symbolism of the Slutty Neurosurgeon

One of the things I like most about my new job is that my office is not technically on campus, but rather on the far side of a strip mall across the street and a block or so down. At first I was worried about how I would stay connected being so far away from the action, but it turns out that hasn’t been a problem (and I don’t have to fight for parking).

It’s about a 15 minute walk, depending on where on main campus I’m headed. If you count the time there and back, that’s a good chunk of time I have to just let my thoughts wander. Sometimes you come up with the best stuff when the worker-bee portion of your brain is tied up dodging goose droppings (I’m hoping the lovely birds will head south soon – creatures with webbed feet freak me out, especially when they leave green turds all over the sidewalk).

Anyway, today being Halloween, my thoughts turned to costumes. I don’t get to dress up in my job – should a meteor suddenly strike a residence hall or something, the college most likely wouldn’t want a zombie or pirate queen for its spokesperson. And since I don’t trick-or-treat and I didn’t want to splurge last weekend going out on the town, I didn’t even come up with a costume this year.

There’s this phenomenon that’s been gaining steam (if you believe the MSM) in recent years. It’s been dubbed “slut-o-ween,” referring to the tendency of women to use Halloween as an excuse to doll up in outfits that would make a hooker blush. I don’t know if this is true or not … I can remember at least some of my mother’s friends dressing up as flappers, hookers and sexy vampires/witches/nurses when I was a kid, and that would be in the mid-80’s.

There’s some anecdotal evidence, in the form of reader comments in this posting today on Feministing.com, that the “let’s dress like strippers today” concept is creeping into costumes marketed to girls – again, I wouldn’t know, because a) I never had a store-bought costume growing up, b) I wouldn’t have been able to fit into a store-bought costume until recently and c) I haven’t gone costume shopping with any kids lately. Okay, ever. So I can’t say one way or the other whether “slut-o-ween” is in fact more prevalent than in years past, or if lazy columnists are just cribbing from Tina Fey.

What interests me is that, at least to some degree, “slutty” costumes for women have always been with us – and that they’re something women have inflicted on ourselves, as opposed to something with which the Big Bad Man has saddled us. If women collectively decided that nuns and bag ladies were the coolest costumes EVER, even the most chauvinistic costume-manufacturer would flood the market with them. They don’t make ’em if we don’t buy ’em, ladies.

On my walk back to my office today, I debated with myself why this was so. I found myself wishing that Roland Barthes were still around to comment on the symbolism of the slutty neurologist. (Then I got a great idea for next year’s costume – a laundry truck! It would probably go over better if I were a student in a Ph.D. program on literary theory, but no matter.)

Seriously – what do we women get out not only revealing, but suggestive costumes? There’s the argument that pretty much any dress-up occasion, from Halloween to proms to weddings is and has always been treated as an opportunity to show off our goods in a way we don’t get to do every day. Maybe the (alleged) escalation of “slut-o-ween” is nothing more than a mirror to the ever-astronomical weddings, proms, quinceaneras and Sweet Sixteens we keep reading about in the New York Times. (Me, I didn’t get a Sweet Sixteen, so what do I know?)

But I have to wonder why, on the one occasion where there are pretty much no social expectations as far as appearances go, so many of us choose to go “look at me” trampy. Hey, I’m counting myself in this, too. When I was a girl, my costumes included Dorothy from “The Wizard of Oz,” a box turtle (literally…), Cyndi Lauper and the ugliest witch you can imagine (the year that all my sisters dressed as pretty princesses). But I was also, memorably, a French maid. (I still can’t believe my mother let me get away with that one).

Looking back on it, as an adult the times when I deliberately chose “slutty” costumes were times when I was desperate for approval from the opposite sex. Once, I had just dropped out of college and was living back at home with NO prospects, and the other was when I had just (and I mean JUST) gotten out of a relationship with the guy I thought I was going to marry. SO unhealthy.

Some people argue that Halloween costumes are nothing more than an innocent outlet for people to express the sexual identities we have to hold back 99% of the time. But WHY? Why do we have to bottle it all up 364 days out of the year, only to let our sexual power boil over into a carefully assembled slutty president costume? Maybe if American society weren’t so frickin’ puritanical, we wouldn’t feel the need for a “slut-o-ween.”

I’ll close with a recap of my costume last year. I hadn’t really planned anything, and then on Oct. 30 bell hooks gave a lecture at the college where I was working at the time. She mentioned what she saw as the mildly – okay, maybe not “mildly” – pathetic tactic of rolling up into a Halloween party dressed like a stripper who fell off the bang bus.

I felt a little guilty, being only one year removed from my epic Lara Croft costume. So that night after her lecture I went home and pieced together a look that would evoke a strong, sexy-but-not-slutty and, I felt, clever icon of womanhood – Annie Hall. I only wore it to the campus Halloween party, and no one under the age of 50 knew who I was supposed to be. But I felt good. I had fun. And isn’t that the point?

So from here on out I pledge no more slutty costumes for me. I’ll be goofy, scary or downright obscure – but not slutty. I don’t feel the need.

Whaaaaaat?

Yes, I know I'm at work, and I shouldn't be reading SportsIllustrated.com. I stipulate that I'm a horrible slacker.

But you know what I'm not? The kind of unrepentant pond scum that would sell out my team for a few primary votes, that's what.

(Note: I'm being mildly facetious here. But only mildly.)

So, for those of you out there contemplating a vote for Rudy Giuliani...you've gotten past his penchant for trading in wives, and maybe you've managed to gloss over the fact that the FDNY firefighters on whose tragedy he's trading hate his guts. But how on earth in good conscience can you get past this?

This great republic of ours can withstand a lot...But a patented sports bigamist in the White House? Whatever will we tell our children?

Don’t think so frickin’ much, or, How the Post-Modern Voter is Ruining America

I was looking for something else entirely today when I came across this New York Times article from earlier in the month about Bill Richardson’s campaign in Iowa. Since I’ve been pushing for Richardson to run for president since, I think, my junior year in high school (when he was the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations), I perked up when I saw that someone in the MSM was actually covering someone not named Hillary, Barak or John.

For two pages, you get a wonderful picture of how Richardson’s grassroots effort in the first state to have a caucus (don’t call it a primary – the New Hampshire folks will spike your maple syrup in retaliation). For reasons that still mystify me, a handful of farmers in one of the country’s least populous states has an inordinate impact on who ends up representing each party in the presidential elections. That’s a rant for another time – right or wrong, it is what it is.

Anyway, you get all the way through this, and you’re starting to develop some optimism – a renewed faith in the power of ordinary tax-paying rural WASPs to pick a nominee (as opposed to the editors of, say, Time or Newsweek)…and then you get this:

One big concern of Iowa Democrats is backing a candidate who can retake the White House — regardless of their antiwar stance. At nearly every stop, Iowans repeatedly cited Mr. Richardson’s résumé and foreign policy experience as a positive, but said that most of all, they just wanted someone who could beat a Republican.

“I like his foreign policy statements,” Laurie Dahms of Iowa City said at the fairgrounds. “And I love his commercials. I just want someone with good experience who can win.”

Her friend Diane Muchatka, also of Iowa City, said: “I like his résumé. That is important this year. But I’m not sure who will be electable.”

After listening to Mr. Richardson at the Fiesta restaurant, Bob McMahon of Muscatine, Iowa, who is undecided, and his wife, Betty, who is in the Clinton camp, said what they want most is someone who can win in the fall.

Right. Because that worked so very well for Democrats the last time around, when many voted for John Kerry in the primaries because he was “more electable” than the 2004 Obama, John Edwards (whose window has sadly closed, I’m afraid). When are we EVER going to learn?

Interestingly, I’m hearing more and more Republican voters debate the same types of things about their party’s prospective candidates. (This is entirely anecdotal – no links – but believe it or not I do have Republican friends.) They muse not about the candidate’s policy positions, but whether however many times it is-divorced Rudy Giuliani can win the Christian fundamentalist vote, or whether a Mormon like Mitt Romney can win in the Bible Belt. (News to the blogosphere – Mormons are Christians, too, even if you don’t believe what they believe.)

When a paid consultant who hasn’t lived outside of D.C. since grad school asks these questions, it’s condescending, a way to justify one’s salary. When your Mom, your boss and the check-out person at the gas station are asking whether soccer moms will stomach a vote for Hillary, we’ve got a deeper problem.

Chalk it up to too many years of “Hardball” and “West Wing” re-runs – the average American is now an expert not only on policy (that goes back to the days of Thomas Paine), but on political strategy. Except that we’re not.

Rather than voting for the candidates we like and think will best represent our individual interests, we’re turning into mini-Roves (pause for a full-body shiver), throwing our support behind the people we think “they” will support. We’re up in the war room with James Carville, and the air up here is mighty thin.

A vote is the most obvious of self-fulfilling prophesies. If you elect someone – guess what? He or she is by definition “electable.”

So don’t think. Okay, think, but not about what “they” want, because – guess further what – “they” is YOU. Think about what you want for your family, yourself and your community, and vote that way. Spend more time on the news than on the commentary – your great-grandkids will thank you, I promise!

(BTW, it pisses me off that the Times doesn't have Richardson on the main page of its election coverage. Who says the MSM doesn't frame our issues for us? B*stards.)

Can't hate the Pats

Interesting column today on ESPN.com: Patrick Hruby explains why, despite all the "Cameragate" and garbage-time touchdowns brouhaha, he just can't find it himself to hate the New England Patriots.

I keep hearing more and more people this season unloading on the Pats, and I just keep my mouth shut. I'm mystified by the vitriol - where'd it come from, out of nowhere, overnight? I can only conclude that some level of resentment for New England's continued excellence has been simmering for years, and needed only that BS signal "stealing" in Week 1 to boil over.

I'm with Hruby. True brilliance comes along so rarely in any sport, and almost never in the salary-cap NFL. This isn't pro baseball, where wealthy owners can buy up all the best talent, or Division I college athletics, where...yeah, they're still pretty much buying the talent. Now, that, I can resent. Or, on the flip-side, a team or athlete who's patently NOT excellent, yet is shoved down our collective throat because Nike likes his attitude (Exhibit A: Michael Vick).

Neither applies to the current Patriots dynasty. Hey, I'd love to hate them, too - they kept my Panthers from winning the Super Bowl. But...*sigh* I just can't.

Pic of the Week: I should find something productive to do with my life…

...but movies make me happy, so there ya go. I haven't had the time that I would like to devote to my first love here of late, what with work, personal drama and football. But I've managed to squeeze in a few in the last few weeks.

"Blowup" (1966)
This one has been on my "You Call Yourself a Film-Lover and You Haven't Seen (Fill in the Blank)???" list for some time. It came out 40 years ago and it doesn't feature Lindsay Lohan, so of course you won't find it at Blockbuster. Thank Heaven for Netflix! Anyway, it's the first English-language film from director Michelangelo Antonioni (who wins my award for the most fun-to-say name of all time). I was all hopped up to see it…and I'm glad I did, not because I loved it, only so I can check it off my list.
"Blowup" is – I think - about the nature of reality. A cynical London swinger art photographer, out for a morning of exploration in a wooded park, takes some pictures. Later, when he's developing the photos, he sees something suspicious. In a sequence so drawn out it would never appear in a modern Hollywood feature, our unnamed protagonist blows up progressively smaller portions of the image until he sees what may or may not be a dead body. Huh – no wonder that unrecognizably young Vanessa Redgrave was so insistent that he hand over his film…clearly something untoward has happened – or has it?
I think this is the movie Stanley Kubrick was trying to make with "Eyes Wide Shut," except that "Blowup" is a million times better. Still, don't expect a linear, easy-to-digest plot. This movie has none of the standard Hollywood three-act character arcs that all of us, even my eight-year-old nephew, know how to be spoon-fed. It's beautiful visually. But still, one of those movies that you won't "get" until you re-watch with the commentary by some guy with a Ph.D. in Film Studies. [Also – don't see if you have a mime phobia. Consider yourself warned.]

"Bright Leaves" (2003)
"Hi, I'm Ross McElwee, homespun documentarian from North Carolina, now living in Massachusetts. I like to pop up on PBS and NPR to guilt-trip artsy-fartsy intellectuals for dropping $7.50 on Tyler Perry instead of supporting me and my brilliant homespun forays into *real* America. One of cousins who's a big classic film buff told me about this Gary Cooper movie from 1950 that's almost certainly based on my tobacco-growing ancestor's losing fight against the Duke family empire. I decided that this would be a unique entry point into a fascinating exploration of the role of tobacco farming in contemporary North Carolina culture, the effects of smoking and in general my incessant need to fetishize my relationship with my video camera.
"So I spend months, possibly years of my life on what might have been a lovely meditation on my family's complicated relationship with tobacco farming, replete with gads of borderline-erotic shots of voluptuous green leaves swaying in the breeze. Unfortunately, I did this interview with the woman whose husband wrote the book on which the Gary Cooper movie was based, and she assures me that it was entirely original story, not in fact based on my family. Rather than admit that my founding theory was erroneous and a waste of time, I decided to place this tidbit at the end of my film, so that you the viewer would have to sit through two hours of my rambling, gorgeously lit footage before realizing that you, too, had wasted your time investing in said narrative. Aren't I homespun and brilliant? Give me a grant."
Okay, so it's not a waste of time, per se. It's a pleasant little movie that has absolutely no throughline beyond giving privileged urban Yankees the opportunity to feel superior those of us who grew up in towns where they still have beauty pageants for every age group. And I don't think McElwee intended the film to be at all condescending; I think it comes from a place of great affection for his home state. But I wonder what the people who aren't "from here" take away from this movie – and I can't help thinking McElwee could have done better.
[This is probably just me, but the scene shot at the NC School of the Arts is incredibly cool – just 'cause I go there regularly – the "this scene was shot five minutes from my house!" factor. But I'm also the person who listens to that Ben Folds Five song "Brick" solely for the line about going to Charlotte – I'm kind of a geek that way.]

"Stranger Than Fiction" (2006)
Another recent movie, so you can find reviews galore. This is one I didn't see in the theatre for some reason, so again, thank Heaven for Netflix. Another entry in my Maggie Gyllenhaal crush-category. This is one of those scripts that you could see winning a billion awards, but as a movie it really works because of the cast. Will Ferrell, especially, in the lead as an accountant whose comically bland existence is rocked when he discovers a strange psychic connection to a novelist who – oops – plans to kill him off, is brilliant. This is surely the film that signals Ferrell's transition into Tom Hanks/Robin Williams/Jim Carrey territory: Now that I've sneaked into your hearts through years of slapstick comedy, it's that much easier for you to identify with my character in a dramatic role. Since I like Ferrell, I'm hoping his trajectory turns out to be more Forrest Gump than Patch Adams.
My observations: great soundtrack. Ferrell is sweet and sexy, especially in his scenes with Maggie. And while I love Maggie here, I'm calling BS on a baker that scrawny. But I can't imagine anyone else in her role – fiery, yet open-hearted enough to give a stiff like Ferrell's Harold Crick a shot. May we all find a little Maggie in ourselves. (I TOLD you I have a crush on her…) I can be forgiven for momentarily forgetting that Queen Latifah's in this movie – her character is so one dimensional, her dialogue so "just what the other character needs to hear in order to proceed" that I started to wonder if there weren't some "A Beautiful Mind" hallucination sh*t going on with her. But nope.

"Fracture" (2007)
I really was looking forward to this, but I'm glad I waited for video. If I'd dropped $7 to see it in the theatre, rather than a portion of my monthly Netflix fee, I'd have been pissed. But I guess it goes well with pizza.
Am I the only person in America who doesn't get Ryan Gosling's appeal? I liked him in "Murder by Numbers," but I think there might've been a slight McConaughey factor going on there (i.e. your actory tics are intriguing because I'm not sick of them yet). Anthony Hopkins phones it in and still kills Gosling. Embeth Davidtz is in a coma for 90% of the movie and she kills him. The only person Gosling blows off the screen is the obligatory model who plays an allegedly hard-nosed attorney who nonetheless sleeps with her subordinate inside of a minute and a half. (Whatever happened to the Hitchcock Blonde? I refuse to believe that in a country of 200 million people, plus a world of what, six billion, that it's impossible to find people who are A) pretty, and who B) can act.)
It's a plot-driven film. And the plot's not bad, except that I quickly tire of movies whose plots dictate what the characters do, rather than the other way around. I'd prefer to see wholey drawn people deciding with realism upon certain courses of action…you know, like in good movies. "Fracture" frustrated me because it could have been that movie with only a little more effort – I was begging for more exploration of Hopkins's character's profession as an aircraft engineer, whose job it is to find the weak spots in machines, as he's so adept at doing with people (the film tells us, but we seldom get to see. I don't like taking a movie's word for it. SHOW ME.). And the resolution was way too "Law & Order: SVU" for me to really respect it. And what's really sad is that this was one of the better Hollywood offerings of the last year.

"Bull Durham" (1988)
Lots of people my age look at that decaying bag of flesh known as Kevin Costner, and we remember back to the distant days of childhood, when we heard our mothers swoon over him, and we think to ourselves, "WTF?" Let me say, I understand. In response, I present you with the following:

ANNIE

What do you believe in?

Crash at the door. Annie's question is slightly taunting. He stops, and speaks with both aloofness and passion:

CRASH

I believe in the soul, the cock, the pussy, the small of a woman's back, the hanging curve ball, high fiber, good scotch, long foreplay, and that the novels of Susan Sontag are self-indulgent, overrated crap. I believe that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I believe that there oughtta be a constitutional amendment outlawing astro-turf and the designated hitter, I

believe in the "sweet spot", soft core pornography, chocolate chip cookies, opening your presents on Christmas morning rather than Christmas eve, and I believe in long, slow, deep, soft, wet kisses that last for three days. Good night.

ANNIE

(breathless)

Oh my...

And I rest my case. This movie made Costner's career, folks, hands down. He was the Clooney and Pitt and every other heart-throb under the sun combined, circa 1988, and that one little monologue is why. Yes, the movie's slow by modern standards. Yes, it prominently features the guy from "Arli$$". But it's hot…so very, very hot. (Though NOT a classic sports movie – more of a chick-flick with baseball intimately involved. But still, the kind of big-tent, women-and-men-will-both-love-it film that Hollywood doesn't do much nowadays.)
[BTW, Tim Robbins narrowly beat out David Duchovny for the role of Susan Sarandon's "dim pretty boy" love interest. And of course, this is the film where Sarandon and Robbins met. I can't help imagining some alter-universe where Sarandon coupled up with Duchovny instead – maybe the "X-Files" conspiracy theories would have taken on a whole new dimension…]
[Further BTW…Sarandon's character, Annie Savoy, is my personal hero, for her love and knowledge of sports, her unabashed sexual confidence and her fabulous retro-cool house paid for solely with her salary teaching part-time at the fictional Alamance Junior College. The woman clearly has gads to teach us.]

Pic of the Week: Has got to be "Bull Durham." I might have to watch it again right now…

This makes me extremely happy...

From the BBC:

"Rock legends Led Zeppelin are to make their complete back catalogue available for digital download from next month.

The band, one of the last major acts to embrace the digital market, will now offer classic hits like Whole Lotta Love from all online music retailers."

This could be the killer app that finally pushes me over the edge...iTunes, I'm ready when you are.

They're also going to offer ringtones through Verizon, which just happens to be my provider...So, to recap, the Panthers won, the Cowboys lost and Led Zeppelin's catalogue has finally been freed from the vault. Sara's having a very good week so far...

Let them eat SCHIPs

I'm a little late in commenting on President Bush's recent veto of the bill that would have funded the State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP), because I figured the topic just didn't need any more screaming. Quick refresher: the bipartisan bill would have expanded the long-running health insurance program to include children in families earning up to three times the Federal poverty guidelines (see the chart for more detailed info, but for most of the country that's $61,950 for a family of four). This expansion would have been funded by increases in taxes on tobacco products (somebody in Congress has a wicked sense of humor).

The opponents of the bill argued that the threshold was too high, covering families who could actually afford private coverage. Okay, fair point. Reasonable people can differ on where exactly the cutoff should be, and that should absolutely be part of the debate.

Unfortunately, when you're talking about the far-Right blogosphere, "reasonable" isn't the most accurate description.

Rather than pushing the substantive policy argument (the income level of the covered families), the artists formerly known as the "vast right-wing conspiracy" set about attacking the families who have benefitted from SCHIP, even going so far as to Swift Boat a little kid.

Geez. Most of the time I tune out the screaming heads on both ends of the political talk show spectrum - I just don't feel the need for that kind of negativity in my life. I didn't even know who Graeme Frost was until that whole thing was over. Can we all agree that attacking ordinary people with the same zeal we go after elected officials who've voluntarily put themselves in the spotlight is going WAY too far? What if that were your neighbor, or your church's choir director, or your child's teacher, in Michele Malkin's sights?

At the worst part is that they learned nothing from the Frost family; they're at it again. I generally avoid Salon.com editor Joan Walsh's columns (again with the negativity), but her latest, about another family targeted by anti-SCHIP commentators, is a must-read. Among the things she points out is that no one is claiming that the families covered by SCHIP are impoverished - they're what we call the working poor. THAT'S THE POINT.

When you read the "positions" of so many of the people bashing SCHIP, it becomes uncomfortably clear that classism is still alive and well among a certain segment of conservatives. This is why I will never understand in a million years why so many of the people I knew growing up - people who will work, and work hard, every day of their lives, and do so without complaint - think that the Republican Party represents their interests.

Pay attention to the scorn with which Malkin says that Dara Wilkerson, the waitress referenced in Walsh's story, should've known better than to have a child when she didn't have health coverage through her employer. Oh, right, I guess she should've gotten an abortion. WAIT, no! Can't do that.......I guess people making under six figures just shouldn't have sex.

Once again, I flash back to one of the many days in Mrs. Sawyer's little classroom at East Surry High, when yet another of my conservative-leaning classmates attempts to patiently explain to me how the Democrats want to control our personal lives. Remember that the next time someone lectures you on the choices you should have made in order to be able to spend hundreds of dollars each month on insurance provided by one of President Bush's corporate contributers.

You should have known not to have a child with a congenital birth defect! You should have anticipated that you'd get laid off from your white collar job-with-great-benefits! You should have psychically sensed that that drunk driver was going to plow into your car, leaving your three children with life-long disabilities!

(BTW, this is largely coming from people who didn't have the foresight to anticipate that conquering and rebuilding an entire country would take more than six weeks...but that's neither here nor there.)

A further BTW...the SCHIP bill vetoed by President Bush would have cost $35 billion dollars and insured 4 million American children. Congress authorzed spending two-and-a-half times that amount ($89 billion) in the initial authorization to use force in Iraq. So far, America has lost just under 4,000 soldiers in Iraq. Math isn't my strong suit, but that looks like a hell of a lot more lives potentially saved than lost, at less than half the cost.

UPDATE: Here's a better link to the story about the Wilkerson family that does a good job of refuting the attack made on them by one right-wing commentator.

Newness...

This blog started on my MySpace page as nothing more than a place for me to deposit all those random news articles (and rants on the random news articles) that I used to obsessively email to everyone I knew. I'm sure my grandmother, former coworkers, people I haven't talked to since high school and everyone else in my address book are eternally grateful that I found a way to redirect my energies.

The thing is, I like to bring things up. I love reading something and thinking, "So-and-so would be so into this!" And I was surprised to find out that people I never thought would've been into a story were in fact into it...okay, that made no sense, but you know what I mean. One of the greatest things about this li'l Internet of ours is how much easier it is to connect with people - not just to meet people or chat them up, but to discover that the person with whom you never thought you'd have anything in common also thinks Andrew Meyer is a douchebag, or is also madly in love with Russell Crowe, or also loves the Carolina Panthers. When I posted things on my MySpace blog, it wasn't just this masterbatory process by which I could see my own words in print, live online. I legitimately wanted to know what the people reading the blog thought about the things I was posting.

I also firmly believe that the mainstream media has let us down when it comes to reporting the news that affects our daily lives (but Britney and Anna Nicole, they've got down). Right or Left or in the middle, I don't know a single person who wouldn't agree with that. So my blog was also a way to bring up issues that I thought my friends should know about, but that weren't necessarily being addressed by the media accessible to the 90% of Americans who don't spend all day in front of a computer getting alerts from 14 different media outlets. There's a lot of screaming out there; I just want to cut through it a little bit.

So you won't find me doing the typical blogger thing: reposting and rehashing some other writer's material (whether to rip it to shreds or praise it as the greatest work of journalism since Watergate). I try to stick to primary sources, because frankly I think we need the reminder that those sources exist. I don't know about you, but I'm beyond fed up with this post-modern orgy of Trackbacks and spin cycles.

I may repost some things that have recently gone up on my old blog...but please feel free to check it out if you're curious. And by all means leave some comments. I may not agree with you, but I won't delete you unless you're an obvious spammer. So, let's start talking...