The Box

Wow, Burger King did it. I was sure Carl's Junior had this in the bag, but no. Burger King has actually succeeded in airing the most sexist fast food commercial of all time. I’m talking, of course, about the ad for BK Burger Shots.

Where do I even begin? Let’s start with the idea that women are so baby-obsessed that they think everything small is a baby. Which leads us to the even weirder idea that when women think they are in the presence of a baby, they make orgasm sounds and want to do whoever is holding said baby/small thing/BK burger shot. But what offends me most is the assumption that hamburgers are so alien to women that they don’t even know you’re supposed to eat them.

 

[Also posted at Love in the Living Room]

The Girls of Hedsor Hall isn’t that different from other behavioral competitions in reality TV land. It features good-looking people with impulse control issues trying to behave, but mostly acting crazy. And yes, they are competing for a cash prize. We’ve seen it before: 12 so-called bad girls enter, one reformed good girl leaves (with $100,000). The difference lies in the setting.The difference lies in the setting. Rather than being instructed by celebrity psychologists or plain-old celebrities, these girls are attending one of the most famous finishing schools in England.

The girls are supposed to learn to be “ladies,” a role that’s very clearly defined in traditional English etiquette. It’s weirdly fascinating to see a feminine ideal so unabashedly embraced as something for young women to aspire to. And at the same time, Hedsor Hall’s definition of “lady-like” behavior is much more inclusive than one might expect.

[Also posted at Love in the Living Room]

Maybe I over-post about Saturday Night Live, but I just can't help myself. This season is one of the best ever! Plus, I’m thrilled with the screen time that female cast members are getting. The newest lady cast members, Michaela Watkins and Abby Elliott, are especially crushable. They were presumably brought on at the end of last year to fill the feminine gap left by Amy Poehler’s departure, and they haven’t disappointed. Both have held their own in ensemble sketches and come up with some hilarious recurring roles too.

[Note: Videos in this post may contain ads.]

Joss Whedon’s Dollhouse premiered last week, and The Box breathed a sigh of relief. I’ve been waiting so long to see Eliza Dushku kick ass and smart off in the style of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer, Angel, and Firefly. Unfortunately, there is not a lot of ass-kicking in the first episode. Or smarting off, for that matter. Maybe that’s because Dushku’s character, Echo, is without a personality for most of the time...except when she's imprinted with perfect abilities and sent on missions without her knowledge.

A series about a woman with no autonomy doesn’t sound like it’s going to win Joss Whedon another honor from Equality Now, right? But then again, all of his shows feature leading ladies who are good at things against their will…

My Daniel Dae Kim crush began when I first saw him on Angel as Gavin Park, a rising star at an evil law firm. (Those cheekbones! That comic timing!) But of course, he’s best known as Jin-Soo Kwon on Lost. After only one season on network primetime, Kim already had enough people crushing to earn a spot on People Magazine’s “Sexiest Man Alive” list 2005. Since Asian men normally get an asexual treatment on TV, it’s refreshing to see that Daniel Dae Kim has maintained official heartthrob status, and proved his acting chops too.

Jin’s character arc over the first four seasons of Lost also subverts expectations. He started out as an overbearing husband in the stereotypical Asian tradition (with an exceedingly timid Asian wife to match). But over the course of the series, Jim and Sun’s relationship has been revealed to be a lot more complicated, and has grown to be more loving and equitable, too.
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As Valentine’s Day approaches, The Box addresses the question that’s on everyone’s mind: How feminist is the sex on my favorite teen dramas? I graded the biggest shows of the last twenty years on their sex positivity. Click to see who came out on top.

This week the box has a good old fashioned feminist crush on Kirsten Gum, the Travel Channel’s Treasure Hunter. There’s no stretch of the imagination required to understand her appeal: She travels the world searching for treasure, often braving intense elements and physical challenges to get to it. Watching her accomplish her goals is inspiring, but Gum’s sense of humor and winning attitude makes it fun, too.

“Terrible boyfriend? We can fix him. Complete tools transformed into knights in shining armor.” These are the promises of the opening credits of Tool Academy, VH1’s latest trash-tastic series in which women drag their truly terrible boyfriends through a relationship boot camp in hopes of turning them into nice guys. The tools agreed to come on the show thinking it was called Mr. Awesome, a competition to determine “the biggest Alpha male in America.” After they learned the show’s real premise, they all stayed on in hopes of proving themselves to their girlfriends...and winning $100,000 for being the best boyfriend.

If you’re wondering what makes a tool a tool, it appears to be a combination of made-up names (Celebrity, M.E.G.A., Matsuflex, etc.), excessive hair gel, and behavior that’s just…well, look if you dare.

(Note: The videos in this post contain ads. Blame it on VH1.)

Extensions off to Jaime Pressly, one of the funniest women on TV. Her Emmy award-winning portrayal of Joy Turner on My Name Is Earl is so solid that it’s easy to forget she’s a bonafide sexpot (with credits like Playboy spreads, countless “sexiest women” list mentions, and the lead in Poison Ivy: The New Seduction on her resume). Of course, Pressly’s hotness isn’t anything out of the ordinary: she has blonde hair, blue eyes, big boobs and a button nose. Yawn, right? But it’s Pressly’s self-awareness that allows her to take her conventional looks to cartoonish heights as Joy. And therein lies the comic genius.

I’ve been avoiding Grey’s Anatomy for 5 seasons now, but with critics bemoaning the show’s rapid demise (as in sex scenes with a g-g-ghost!) I decided to check it out while I still could. Best case scenario: It’s so bad it’s good. Worse case scenario: It’s offensive enough to warrant a scathing blog post.

But, to my surprise, neither was true...