1. Michelle, my belle.
2. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
3. Feral women, both ways
4. I didn’t forget…
5. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?
6. SYTYCD Goes to War!
7. Megan Williams torture suspects get court date
8. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry
9. doubled deaths: bias crimes in black communities
10. Yep, apply liberal mud for good blackface

• University Television Ads Depict White Dominance, Study Finds – "The researchers found that the overwhelmingly majority of the students and alumni depicted in the advertisements were white, with minority members generally being depicted only as token members of larger groups. The common image of a group of students st
• What Created This Monster? – "The Federal Reserve not only taken has action unprecedented since the Great Depression ? by lending money directly to major investment banks ? but also has put taxpayers on the hook for billions of dollars in questionable trades these same bankers ma
• Gays fear an influx of hate – "The tragedy has exacerbated tensions between Sacramento's gay community and the region's booming population of Slavic evangelical Christians, whose most vocal congregants in recent years have mobilized on the streets and statehouse steps to protest homos
• The Mind of a One-Woman Multitude – Erykah Badu – "As she floated in the tub (?I always go all the way underneath the water and try to hold my breath a long time,? she said), she had a revelation: ?Different thoughts kept coming into my head. The first thought was, ooh, I wonder if my hair gonna be
• Boy?s Killing, Labeled a Hate Crime, Stuns a Town – "Hundreds of mourners gathered at a church here on Friday to remember an eighth-grade boy who was shot to death inside a junior high school computer lab by a fellow student in what prosecutors are calling a hate crime."
• Many blacks worry about Obama's safety – "They watch with wonder as Barack Obama moves ever closer to becoming America's first black president. And they ask themselves, their family, their friends: Is he at risk? Will he be safe?"
• Postpartum Depression More Likely In African-American And Low-Income Women – ""Women who are poor already have a lot of stress, ranging from poor living conditions to concerns about paying the bills. The birth of an infant can represent additional financial and emotional stress, and depression negatively impacts the woman's abilit
• The Republican Democrat – "But now the candidate who should be as familiar as anyone with "the Chicago way" — given that he's actually from Chicago — is on the receiving end of some less than polite politics, and more than a few progressives don't like what they're seeing. Barac
• The Triumph of Narrative – "Though we may or may not have reached the end of the unexpected upsets and dramatic reversals of the primaries, much less the general election to come, there is no doubt that of all the people who ran for president this year, Obama has run the smartest a
• Biracial, but not like me – ""Dreams From My Father" is the story of Obama's personal evolution from parochialism to a universal humanism. It's also the story of how a man blessed with a powerful analytical mind developed emotional intelligence along the way. Obama's tortured interi
• A Suburb Looks Nervously at Its Urban Neighbor – "For many outsiders, the attack on Mr. McDermott is seen as comeuppance for a community that seemed smug about its wealth, security and racial diversity. ?I wonder how much ?tolerance? the ?progressive,? snooty, pseudo-intellectual limousine lib
• An Unjust Conclusion – "During nearly a month of testimony Manso had seen the defense chip away at the state?s case?the contaminated crime scene, the spotty crime lab testing?and when the verdict was read he heard gasps from hard-bitten reporters in the balcony. How could
• Jurors testify about claims of racism – The Boston Globe – "The three jurors contacted McCowen's lawyer, Robert A. George, who is not related to the juror, days after the verdict to say that an atmosphere of racism permeated deliberations. The three jurors filed affidavits and largely hewed to them yesterday, wit
• Outsourced Wombs – "We, however, can hear the imperious tone, so much more audible in radio than in the troubling print reports that have surfaced lately on Indian surrogate mothers? ?wombs for rent.? And we should care about how things sound."
• Men shoot themselves in tattoo attempt – "Two men trying to trace a loaded .357-caliber Magnum as a pattern for a tattoo accidentally shot themselves, the Otero County Sheriff's Department said Monday."
• None of the Above: Books: What I.Q. doesn?t tell you about race – "The lesson to be drawn from black and white differences was the same as the lesson from the Netherlands years ago: I.Q. measures not just the quality of a person?s mind but the quality of the world that person lives in."
• In Marseille, Rap Helps Keep the Peace – "The Marseillais have plenty of explanations for this disparity, aside from the obvious one that the poor areas here aren?t segregated on the city outskirts, as they are in Paris ? but it is hip-hop, as much a source of local pride as the town?s soc
• A Midnight Service Helps African Immigrants Combat Demons – "Those other churches might argue that such a focus on witchcraft is a relic of Africans? old beliefs, a dangerously pagan preoccupation. But scholars say this is Christianity made profoundly African. Spiritual Warfare considers itself Pentecostal, and
• The Web Users? Campaign – "In the new and evolving online world, the greatest momentum goes not to the candidate with the most detailed plan for conquering the Web but to the candidate who surrenders his own image to the clicking masses, the same way a rock guitarist might fall ba
• The New New Philosophy – "But now a restive contingent of our tribe is convinced that it can shed light on traditional philosophical problems by going out and gathering information about what people actually think and say about our thought experiments. The newborn movement (?x-
• On campuses, students struggle with racism, ethnic tensions – "The tensions, says Daren Graves, an assistant professor of general education at Simmons College, mirror a nationwide movement opposed to political correctness that's occurring in response to the advances of the civil-rights movement."
• White May Be Might, But It's Not Always Right – "Unfortunately, this line of questioning reinforces one of the most persistent myths in America, that white is always right. The myth reflects an enduring double standard based on "white" and "black" explanations for social problems. And it assumes that "
• 33 ways to say 'black' and 'box' – "The concentration of works that deliberated, deconstructed or dabbled in notions of identity gave Moniz pause. "I was shocked if not dismayed," she admits. "I wasn't thinking about blackness at all. Except that the artists were black.""
• A Separate Union, of Athletes, for Athletes – "The news media response to Taylor?s murder was disturbing, and should have been sobering to all professional athletes. Several commentaries rehashed Taylor?s past transgressions, expressing no surprise that Taylor died a violent death."
• The Geography of Hate – "And the number of hate groups, according to the annual count by the Southern Poverty Law Center, has shot up 40 percent in recent years, from 602 groups in 2000 to 844 in 2006."
• In Gaps at School, Weighing Family Life – "But whether it is a parent?s fault or the societal pressures on the parent, the results are hard on the child: The average scores for black and Hispanic children on reading and math assessments at the start of kindergarten are 20 percent lower than for
• Europe dream turns sour for African migrant youth –
• Is Hello Kitty Turning Feral? – "?I think Sanrio has become somewhat more liberal in its licensing strategy,? he said. ?You won?t find Hello Kitty pitching hunting rifles or malt liquor, of course, but the brand has moved into more daring areas such as ladies? evening and nigh
• Mothers Scrimp as States Take Child Support – "The collection of child support from absent fathers is failing to help many of the poorest families, in part because the government uses fathers? payments largely to recoup welfare costs rather than passing on the money to mothers and children."
• Effort to Limit Junk Food in Schools Faces Hurdles – "But that intense corporate involvement, along with exemptions that would allow sales of chocolate milk, sports drinks and diet soda, has caused a rift among food activists who usually find themselves on the same side of school food battles."
• Penny Foolish – "Yet the company has adopted a far more activist approach when the issue is the well-being of livestock. In March, Burger King announced strict new rules on how its meatpacking suppliers should treat chickens and hogs. As for human rights abuses, Burger K

Celebrating 100 posts puts a lot of pressure on the post. I keep feeling like I should write about something VERY important. Obama and Huckabee are ahead in the polls; Iran is getting harder to invade; Chavez lost his vote; fucking Don Imus is back on the air. And so it goes.

But then, suddenly, I came across a link to this story over at Sex Like Men: “Is Hello Kitty Turning Feral?”

I’m saved!

After all, why go important when you can go VERY important? Umm, in an inverse sort of way. And though I surely bear a stronger resemblance to my beloved Chococat, this article about about the unexpectedly risque Hello Kitty “shoulder” massager combines two favorites: Hello Kitty and feral women, both of which I’m prone to writing about.

You know, between the close readings of moments critical to transforming ideas about race, class, and gender and the occasional sputtering of rage against random machines. And the occasional statement on world-making. And shilling for Obamas.

(Okay, actually, that list of favorites should probably include three items, but that’s probably too much information.)

Yay! All done.

And anyway, there are gazillions of old, retiring posts on $3.60, in favorite categories like world-making, feral women, and the global uncanny. Who needs me?

In other news, this week has also seen, sadly, lots of back to school shopping. Oh, who am I fooling? Back to school shopping makes school so much better! I am a professor. I know these things, things confirmed by Forever 21. Admittedly, it would be great if they would change their name, but I guess I’m finally old enough to hold my head high, for I know there is nothing about my twenties (except the body, of course) that I would want to return to! And, I found better fitting “versions” of items I had bought and returned to Anthropologie, thus saving a stunning amount of money–to then be spent on a ridiculous and happy-making Juicy hoodie. And yep; let’s make this year three without any real H&M happiness. Alas.

Oh, and this year’s teaching theme? “Disco demure.” Last year was “shiny comfort,” but I got bored because I couldn’t find the right infusion of gym shoes.

(If you are or have been my student, you are probably thinking that I look the same every year and all of the time, but it’s all about our illusions, no?)

(I guess Gwen Stefani is suing Forever 21 for ripping off L.A.M.B.? I totally get it, but can’t help but twinge at the idea that the mash-up reference queen could sue anyone for versioning anything. Shouldn’t she be sued by a Harajuku girl, or Jamaica?)

Okay, back to business:

The topic docket is long: Cypher & Syllable needs some formatting and some editors; the NAACP is fully on my nerves; I’m incensed that I was the last person to see The Last King of Scotland, and now it seems too late to rant; why so many of the Utah miner stories, like many such reports, so actively skirt questions of miner safety; I’m fascinated with the out of control rhetoric of CNN’s God’s Warrior’s series; find Obama and the black thing irresistible, and on and on and on and on. Oh, and the new M.I.A. album?

Top Posts :: last 30 days

1. Michelle, my belle.*
2. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*
3. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
4. Megan Williams torture suspects get court date
5. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez’s death*
6. Ian Johnson, racism, and “social baggage”
7. Pabst Beer at the Gyna Colleges
8. A Genarlow Wilson primer
9. The executioner’s face; or, “Me and you” in Jena*
10. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark Lesbians case

(okay, technically, posts on Miss Universe, “I didn’t forget,” and feral women should be the top posts. But since my stats show so many image hits for “Adriana Lima,” “shaved head women” (Miss Tanzania), and “Kirsten Dunst’s teeth,” I’m taking them off the list!)

* = personal faves

09.26.07

Top Posts :: last 30 days

1. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
2. SYTYCD Goes to War!
3. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
4. Michelle, my belle.*
5. Obama on Scooter Libby and Genarlow Wilson
6. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry*
7. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*
8. Megan Williams torture suspects get court date
9. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark lesbians case
10. Feral women, both ways*

07.24.07

Top Posts :: last 7 days

1. Yep, apply liberal mud for good blackface
2. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
3. A Genarlow Wilson primer
4. ummm, uh-oh
5. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry*
6. Genarlow Wilson Appeal :: updates
7. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
8. Feral women, both ways*
9. Will wait: A Mighty Heart
10. some thoughts before the Wilson trial,
11. Miss Mexico’s…Harvest Gown?*

Top Posts :: last 30 days

1. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
2. Jordin Sparks’ Weight Statement + Dreamgirls *
3. A Genarlow Wilson primer
4. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
5. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry *
6. Yep, apply liberal mud for good blackface
7. Feral women, both ways*
8. Hot ghetto masses
9. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez’s death *
10. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
11. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark

* = personal faves

07.17.07

Top Posts : last 30 days

1. Jordin Sparks’ Weight Statement + Dreamgirls *
2. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
3. A Genarlow Wilson primer (updated daily)
4. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry *
5. Not an emergency, ma’am: witnessing Edith Rodriguez *
6. Maya Angelou endorses Clinton
7. Hot ghetto masses
8. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark
9. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
10. Feral women, both ways *

Top Posts : last 7 days

1. A Genarlow Wilson primer (updated daily)
2. Video of Obama on Wilson, making connections
3. Obama on Scooter Libby and Genarlow Wilson
4. x like a girl; Or, don’t ever be sorry
5. Tintin, nostalgia, and the question of harm
6. Pearl? Jolie? It’s all Mighty confusing
7. Can’t wait: “Hey…Shorty”
8. Hot ghetto masses
9. without grace: Sakia Gunn and the Newark lesbians case
10. Can’t Wait: “When Women Rule the World”
11. Yay! Kiri Davis + more “Hey Shorty”

* = personal faves

Dan DeLuca has a great article in the Philadephia Inquirer, on the dominance of the revenge narrative in pop music by women.

The cultural predominance of the female revenge narrative came up continually in my class on women and pop last semester, and it seems to be a trend that emerges every few years or so– enough that it might be time to think about when the theme makes it big comebacks, over and beyond its status as a trend.

Also, I can’t help but wonder if this fits as a different take on “x like a girl“? And if it relates to the question of feral women, particularly à la girls gone wilding and the men without hair.

Actually, I guess that is not what I would say. I would more likely be wondering if I want a pussy pocket reminiscent of a pine grove ER, and worried that, if I didn’t use it, that my children’s friends would daily steel themselves against my big, stinky fangorn forest. Hot or not? Well, not, I guess, since carbolic acid was also found a good remedy against female masturbation. Yikes!

But really, it’s an interesting contrast, and my take is totally old-skool, ’cause this is all it is: The feminine pocket is so unruly that it must be subdued with antiseptic, but, once cleansed, it can become a woman’s source of lily-tone and Springtime-vigor. Now that’s feral. And fertile!

This effective antiseptic is three times stronger than powerful carbolic acid, yet it so carefully blended that in proper proportion it cannot irritate or harm the most sensitive tissues. Absolutely sure, it provides a perfect protection against infection, and its gentle deodorant qualities are a safeguard of feminine daintiness.

I came across this old Lysol ad at Charred Rosin, where you can also view larger version of the image below.

The second thing I was thinking about is why I am obsessed with chicness as feral. To be ‘feral,’ as you probably already know, is be wild. But not quite wild like “girls gone wild,” (although…) but more like raised in the wild, like raised by wolves.

According to feralchildren.com, feral children “are children who’ve grown up with minimal human contact, or even none at all. They may have been raised by animals (often wolves) or somehow survived on their own. In some cases, children are confined and denied normal social interaction with other people.”

Hmm. Today’s celebrities: survivors? — check (Kate Moss has been in the news for almost 20 years!) Denied normal interaction? — check. Raised by animals? — well at least there’s a good metaphor there.

Anyway. Maybe we like our girls feral because we like them at best beyond human–and all equivalent notions of sustenance. Or at worst, we simply like them desperate.

At the heart of this chic thing, the gamine thing, the hungry, I’m-gonna-eat-you-look thing, there is something interesting about femininity as sexual yet not reproductive. The unnaturally childlike body reinforces this, its hungering look promising consumption and consummation without reproduction.

I am not hard on this idea of consummation and consumption because I believe that it is wrong to distinguish between female sex and female reproduction. Frankly, I’m in favor of such distinctions– because I am in favor of female sexual pleasure independent from makin’ babies.

But I have to be suspicious about our growing cultural desire to have all things both ways, and how, if we aren’t careful, the negative energy generated between desire and its material limits will always take someone victim, often a woman. Women should work, but there has been little integration between childcare and labor structures. We want to reduce teen pregnancy, but don’t want sex education. We want peace without the hard work of making justice. We want sexual pleasure without reproduction. In each of these examples, there is some kind of financial “out,” but they are loopholes, not solutions.

To use an over-simplified example: I always want new clothes. If the producers of clothes all made living wages, I could not always have new clothes, unless I were wealthy. I want the people who make clothes to earn living wages, because I want workers in general to earn living wage. Business owners know, however, that even though I want others to earn such wages, I will not stop going to the store. They know that I, perhaps innocently, want to have it both ways. I will never ask the question: what I am willing to give up? To make the example less trivial, substitute “food” for “clothes.”

Earlier in this post, I wondered if we like feral girls because we like our girls without suggestion of sustenance. Not only might their bodies not suggest reproduction, they don’t even need to be fed! They are outside of social relation. There is no marrying them (they’re celebrities), no feeding them (they don’t eat), no making a living with or for them (they’re rich). Apparently, we only need to wait for them to become legal.

They are perfect embodiments of desire. They’re girls gone wild!

And I am pretty sure that there is something I am supposed to like about this. I am not being sarcastic: I like wild. So why this feeling of dis-ease? For what will this mean for regular girls? Everyday girls? Girls who must navigate the wilderness we grow in their images?

There is actually a post to go with the awesome image above, but it might have to wait ’til morning. I have decided that, in all fairness to feral female celebrities, with their very thin bodies and tiny sharp teeth, that I should also do a post on mommy cannibals (i.e. on more problems of representing interplays of nature and culture). Soon!

Anyway, on my way out, I just happened to catch sight of a Natalie Angier article from 1993–”Fashion’s Waif Look Makes Strong Women Weep” (If you don’t get TimesSelect, you can click here to read it). It shot me back to college, to when waifs–and their attendant “poverty chic” and “heroin chic“–were new and news.

Angier, a New York Times science writer, sets it up like this:

After a long spell of the lusty, towering glamour queens, of the women with physiques hammered out at the health club and often perfected at the surgeon’s office, of the Cindy Crawfords and the Claudia Schiffers, the fashion industry has pulled another of its tectonic shifts and declared this the year of the gamine. Now it is time to celebrate the saucy little street urchins, the winsome starvelings. The mature, big-haired and big-breasted look is out, and the short, waiflike and wafer-like look is in….

Huh. It’s a good point. It didn’t seem so at the time, but looking back to the eighties, Crawford and her ilk look positively BBW next to the constantly youngering and smallerifying models who would come to define the next fifteen years. I mean, Dakota Fanning for Marc Jacobs? Cute or Creepy indeed! (thanks tweenscene and eccw.) Faced with the newest trend, Angier asked some good questions back in 1993:

Fashion is supposed to be part fantasy, of course, and its every attempt at novelty probably should not be taken to heart. But the latest paradigm switch in body type is so extreme that it cannot help but raise the question: What does the gamine girl mean for real women? What does she say about the culture’s judgment of women, of how comfortable it feels with the power they have seized? Are women once again being portrayed as skinny and childlike because the larger and more sophisticated images became too threatening?

Some good questions, no? Intrigued by this article, I went back through her NYT archive. I love her stuff! In fact, I might do a whole post on how she has already written with authority on everything I have ever thought of thinking about. (She was well into her career while I was still working to disavow Kriss-Kross!)

Back on track: What I found most interesting about the article was my own response to how Angier’s questions still stand fourteen years later. Historicization is always a relevant concern for cultural studies: what are the questions we should be asking? And how are those questions addressed, suppressed, or expanded over time?

In that vein, it is interesting to map other pop culture shifts, which really over time index historical shifts, alongside this one that Angier has named. In the article, for instance, we are reminded that the waif-look was supposed to be seen as anti-establishment, as

in keeping with [the day's] more liberal tone, a rejection of conspicuous wealth and an embracing of the organic, the gritty, the ethnic — poverty chic, as many call it.

In observing the many ways celebrity-watching has become a mainstream obsession– and how uber-thinness, if anything, signifies wealth and whiteness– how might we talk about the ways in which the waif look quickly moved from being countercultural to being an absolute signification of capital, in every sense, but particularly as social capital?