Dancing with the Stars

Happy Labor Day, folks! If you have Monday off, take some extra time to read these great links from all over the web.

• Racialicious, close to winding down their series on interracial dating, kicked off a South Asian panel this week. 
• Colorlines responds to Katt Williams’ hateful remarks by showing us five comedians of color we ought to watch instead. 
• We peeked over Racialicous’ shoulder and saw them reading Indiewire’s proposal of a not-so-radical solution to the lack of funding for black indie filmmakers. 
• Former guest blogger Everett Maroon navigates the treacherous relationship between Dancing With the Stars and transfolk. 
• Transgriot reports on a shameful case of transphobia hiding behind a badge. (Trigger warning for transphobic violence.) 
• Slate reports on PETA’s quest to break the record for jaws-dropped-per-minute by launching a porn site. 
• Love is Not Enough declares no, my hair is not a petting zoo.
• FBomb goes back to school and has a high school sophomore call out her classmates for slut shaming.

Tell us your thoughts in the comments section below!

I wonder if there truly is any fate more depressing than ending up as a contestant on Dancing With the Stars. I’ve only watched the show intermittently over the years—usually under duress, because someone else had laid claim to the remote control—mostly because I get embarrassed for the participants. I hide my eyes when they misstep, and when their smiles falter while the judges offer them harsh criticism, or when I can see the feigned indifference of their shrugs when the scores come up. I’m not claiming to be nicer than anyone who enjoys this show, mind you, but there’s a quality to watching it that bothers me, namely the gleeful schadenfreude of watching people cling to fame with expensively manicured hands. After all, I’m not much convinced anyone watches the show for the dancing; it is built on the conceit that the talent can be taught, and well, maybe it can, but I think it isn’t likely, for most of us, as late in life as these people are. And in any event, were these "stars" more successful at it, the learning to dance I mean, I suspect the show would be less popular.

The "stars," after all, of the title, are has-beens, and that’s no surprise to anyone, it’s explicitly part of the show’s allure. The show basically winks it at you. And although there’s usually, from what I can tell, gender parity among the contestants, it’s curious that the people on the show who seem to garner the most derisive commentary, the ones people resent the most as "talentless," are women.

If you tuned into Dancing With The Stars last night, you got a real (feminist?) treat – and I'm not talking about Donny Osmond's Viennese Waltz. I'm talking about the cheesy cover of "Standing in the Way of Control" by feminist fave The Gossip!

What to do about Joanna Krupa? Just when it seemed safe to support her on Dancing With the Stars (she and Derek totally ruled Team Tango, after all) she goes and does an interview with Fox News and starts trash-talking feminism.

You see, Krupa (a swimsuit model by trade) will be featured on the cover of next month's Playboy and she doesn't want feminists to say a word about it.

I think they [women who don't support the magazine] suffer from lack of knowledge and tunnel vision. How many of those self-important, so-called ‘feminists’ have been on the set when a celebrity shot a Playboy spread? There you go. What is feminist about discriminating a photo shoot just because it involves female (partial) nudity that happens to give men pleasure? Pathetic.

Aha. So we're pathetic now, because we don't want to praise her decision to pose for a magazine that trades in objectifying women. And, you know, we "so-called feminists" should just go to the set and see the gender equality for ourselves, because it's not like just a privileged few young, conventionally beautiful, able-bodied, mostly white women are invited to participate. All women could be in Playboy if they weren't so darned uptight, right?

Yay, my favorite dancer wins Dancing with the Stars! Click read for the convoluted reasoning.