Mindy Kaling

Good morning; whatcha reading? Here's our list:

• Prosecutors in the Cleveland kidnapping case are weighing whether to charge Ariel Castro with feticide for intentionally causing  Michelle Knight, one of his captives, to miscarry several pregnancies. From a reproductive-justice standpoint, this could set a dangerous precedent. [The Daily Beast]

• Kiera Wilmot, the Florida teen who made national news a few weeks back when she was arrested for causing a small explosion at her school while conducting a science experiment, will not be charged with a crime. And Homer Hickom, the former NASA engineer whose memoir became the movie October Sky, has awarded Kiera a scholarship to attend the United States Advanced Space Academy. [The Root, Black Youth Project]

• Eesha Pandit knows she may be expecting too much from The Mindy Project, but her heartfelt piece about how she gave up on the show is still worth a read. [Crunk Feminist Collective]

• How college campuses are taking steps to acknowledge and combat rape culture. [ThinkProgress]

• At the Nation, Farai Chideya considers "the resegregation of American media" and makes a case for why race and class in journalism matter. [The Nation]

• In GQ, The Office's Ellie Kemper asks "Can Men Be Funny?" For extra laughs, check the comments for some angry, satire-deficient responses from actual men. [GQ]

• A great piece from Kma Sullivan on being bored with the quotidian, mindless, and largely unintentonial sexism of ostensibly "good" guys. [The Rumpus]

Here's to your weekend! As always, share your fave current reads in the comments!

Mindy Kaling believes in the power of the rom-com. The world of The Mindy Project, Kaling’s great sitcom that FOX just picked for a second season, isn’t a romantic comedy world. But the humor of the show comes from Mindy’s expectation that those same rom-com rules will apply. Unlike in the movies, when Mindy uses the unrealistic traditions of romantic comedies to take her own romantic risks, the results are hilarious, ridiculous, painful, and embarrassing.

Onscreen, young women of color with immigrant parents are often far from traditional. Consider All-American Girl's Margaret Kim (Margaret Cho), Grey's Anatomy's Callie Torres (Sara Ramirez), The Office's Kelly Kapoor (Mindy Kaling), and Elementary's Joan Watson (Lucy Liu). Though these characters' parents are from various socioeconomic backgrounds and countries of origin, these young women all strive to balance their parents' expectations with their own expectations against the backdrop of society's often sexist and racist assumptions. And though these are some of my favorite characters on television, their experiences often veer from those of real-life second-generation immigrant women.

On the New Girl episode "Table 34," Cece (Hannah Simone) attends an Indian marriage convention hoping to meet an Indian guy for a long-term relationship. She had been with lovable douchebag Schmidt (Max Greenfield) but wants to date someone whom her Indian-born parents will approve of. When her friends hear about the convention, they decide that they want to check it out, too—though only Schmidt dresses like, in Winston's words, "the fortune teller in Big." At the convention, she has to fill out an application including her resume. The event hostess seats her at Table 34, which is clearly the losers' table. Has there been some mistake? The event organizer says, "Over 30 [years old], no advanced degrees, part-time employment. Table 34." Cece replies that she's a professional model, "I was in Lil Wayne's last video. I was the girl he was throwing strawberries at in slow motion?" The woman says, "Definitely Table 34."

Fashion model Cece is downwardly mobile compared to her parents, but she hopes that landing an Indian man will help her gain their approval.

I'm a feminist and a high school English teacher in the south suburbs of Chicago. Last year, one of the students in my class was inspired to start a group for girls at our school and approached me about sponsoring it. Of course I agreed! A few weeks ago, we tackled the topic of positive female role models in pop culture. The high school students came up with a list of eight current, mainstream "feminist idols" they and their friends look up to.

The list is a good insight into what interests teen girls these days, as well as hopefully a helpful resource. We talk a lot about degrading and regrettable portrayals of women in media, here are eight actresses and comedians my high schoolers are excited about supporting.

 

1. Emma Stone: My students loved the movie Easy A, a modern film inspired by Nathaniel Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. In it, Emma Stone plays a high school student who tries to bring the book into her real life. The movie definitely has feminist undertones, but Stone herself is a major feminist. In a recent interview she did with her boyfriend Andrew Garfield, she was asked who her style icon was. After Garfield said he never got asked questions like that, Stone piped up, "You get asked interesting, poignant questions because you're a boy... It is sexism." Way to call out sexist media, Emma Stone!

As a 30-year-old, pop culture-loving, unmarried, short, dark-haired, bookish woman who loves to drink champagne and wear sequins, I'd have to change my name to Mindy if I wanted to fit any more squarely into The Mindy Project's target demographic. The show, which premieres September 25th but whose pilot is currently streaming on Hulu, stars creator Mindy Kaling as Mindy Lahiri, an OB/GYN who loves rom coms and fancies herself in the self-improvement montage part of life. Like its charming-yet-flawed protagonist, there are many things to love about this show (and a few things to just tolerate because, hey, it's generally likable and it's trying hard and everyone deserves a little slack now and then, right?).

Sure, it's summer and that means you're more likely to find me streaming old episodes of Pretty Little Liars on my laptop than watching a season premiere (no, YOU stayed up until 2:00 last night to find out what happened at the dance-a-thon!), but the fall shows are only two short months away, with them comes the Mindy Project.

Check out this new promo for the show, where Mindy talks work/life balance while walking through the hospital where she is a doctor:

Welcome back to another episode of Bitch Popaganda! Tune in as Julie, Kjerstin, and Kelsey discuss fall TV's "season of the vagina," Mindy Kaling's "Flick Chicks," and the retro sexism of Pan Am and the Playboy Club.



Links and more after the jump!

• Anita Sarkeesian and Feminist Frequency were featured on a French blog this week (translated version sans video ici)! 
• Miss "Grey's Rounds"? Everett Maroon is recapping Grey's Anatomy at his site, Trans/plant/portation. 
• I'm planning on taking the weekend off reading stories from Mindy Kaling's new book into the mirror and pretending they're mine. 
• Hey, Gene Lyons, thanks to your racist, sexist rebuttal to Dr. Melissa Harris Perry this week, someone's made a handy flowchart for whether or not you should compare someone you disagree with to the KKK. 
• FNX: First Nations Experience, a "new multimedia platform featuring authentic voices and stories reflecting the reality of the Native American experience and that of indigenous peoples worldwide," launched in Southern California this week on KVCR, with plans to expand within a year. 
• RIP Sylvia Robinson, rap record producer and R&B singer. Robinson produced the groundbreaking "Rapper's Delight" by the Sugar Hill Gang and "The Message" by Grandmaster Flesh and the Furious Five. 
• You're Welcome says thanks, but no thanks to comparing being trans to being fat, or being gay to being black, or other identity comparisons.

Tell us what you think or share your favorite posts of the week in the comments!

According to their fan site, Subtle Sexuality is "a girl group that features two divalicious divas: the beautiful and mysterious KELLY KAPOOR and the pretty ERIN HANNON." Of course, for those of us who watch NBC's The Office, Subtle Sexuality is a hilarious web project featuring the talented Mindy Kaling and Ellie Kemper (along with BJ Novak and Ed Helms). Behold:



The videos and the ever-necessary feminist critique, after the jump!

If you've been hearing strains of Ray Parker, Jr. coming from your entertainment news lately, it's not just Slimer playing tricks on you. Ghostbusters 3 is going to begin filming this winter!

Now, you're probably thinking either, "I ain't afraid of no ghosts" or, "WTF does this have to do with a feminist response to pop culture?". Well, first of all you probably should be afraid of ghosts because they are dangerous, and second, here is a quote from the Entertainment Weekly piece on the new film:

Aykroyd told the Times that he envisions a new five-person team of ghost hunters that could even include several women.

Women busting ghosts? Certainly there is a feminist response to be had here. Let's talk about which women we'd like to see wearing those new proton packs, after the jump!