Where the Girls Are...

Happy Spring Nor'Easter, readership! If you're anything like moi and everyone else I know, you're cuddled up in some cozy room listening to the pitter-patter (err, make that pelting-pummeling) of the rain and wondering if these April showers will kill all the May flowers.

Fellowette's been a bit of a mess this week. I got back from a wonderful ski trip in Utah with a pesky cold and a nasty case of jet-lag/altitude-induced fatigue. I've been having a hard time dragging my sorry ass to work and play, so this weather gives me a nice respite and a chance to finally dump my thoughts on this'n'that here, where it belongs.

A wonderful family friend who lives in Salt Lake gave me and my mom a copy of Susan J. Douglas' great book of media commentary, Where the Girls Are, and perusing it has gotten the gears up in my mental attic a-churning. The essential thread of the book was this: on TV and in music, the power-brokers follow the zeitgeist by creating powerful female characters, but they always take something away from them too. In other words, put a feminist on TV--Maude--but make her old and un-feminine. Put a band of strongly-bonded sisters on TV--Charlie's Angels--but make them wear skimpy clothing and report to a beneficient patriarchy. Give women a message of empowerment but use it to sell things like face creams and female-centered cigarettes. You get the point.

A lot of the stuff about 60s and 70s pop culture was a wee bit dated for even me, but it still resonated (I watched Nick at Nite after all), and Douglas' chapter on the 1980s fitness/personal care product boom hit extremely hard , particularly the "buns of steel" craze and how it took feminism's message: "be strong, be in control" and fed it to the patriarchy--"you must work harder to be perfect," "return to a pre-pubescent ideal" etc. etc. And her chapter about how the media pitted Gloria Steinem against Phyllis Schlafly during the strife-ridden women's lib era was extremely provocative--and true, natch.

The book was thoughtful and even moving, and it justified my endless scrutiny of how tv shows and pop singers represent women as a whole--like my bitching about how the Holiday forwent Kate for Cameron, f'rinstance.

And then, on Weds night, I saw Lily Allen at the newly-christened Fillmore east, and I listened to the shrieks of approval from the mostly-female audience at Allen's profanities, cigarette breaks, and alternately up-yours and reflective lyrics...

(sample:

I wanna be able to eat spaghetti bolognaise,
and not feel bad about it for days and days and days.
In the magazines they talk about weight loss,
If I buy those jeans I can look like Kate Moss,
Oh no it's not the life I chose,
But I guess that's the way that things go)

...and the message of how much pop culture matters was reaffirmed. Go Lily Allen and Susan Douglas. Three friggin' cheers.