misogyny

Ugh. As a rule we usually we try to avoid over-the-top misogynist websites, but there is a blog post today on Manolith.com that is emblematic of so many things that are problematic in lad mag culture that it could not be ignored. The post, titled "15 Annoying Things Most Girlfriends Do (That You Have to Put Up With)" covers just about every "socially acceptable" woman-hating base out there. You've been warned.

In some ways, the news is anti-climactic: Michael David Barrett, an insurance executive of Illinois, pled guilty yesterday to the interstate stalking of ESPN sportscaster Erin Andrews.

More specifically, Barrett admitted to buying information about Andrews over the internet; traveling to follow Andrews; staying in three hotel rooms next to hers (the hotels told him which room was hers); twice filming videos of Andrews while she was naked through the door's peephole; posting those videos online; and trying to sell the videos to TMZ.

It's just another chapter in the long, long story of the objectification of Erin Andrews.

But what stands out about yesterday's hearing is that for once, it gave the 31-year-old sportscaster the chance to speak for herself -- and what it is like for her to pursue a job she loves while navigating fierce misogyny and harassment.

What happens when a popular columnist and writer pens a "refreshingly honest--and brilliantly witty--celebration of the joys of getting wrinkly?" Nothing good. Don't let the advance billing fool you--Virginia Ironside's new memoir is a misogynist, anti-sex turd wrapped up in fancy gift box of faux-empowerment.

I can't say that this first episode of the third season of Mad Men wowed me, but I suppose it was inevitable, amidst all the hype, that the episode would disappoint at least one person in its audience.  And indeed, it was something of a shaky start.  Don's reminisicing - or, really, more accurately, reimagining, since he can't possibly remember - the circumstances of his own birth made for a rather confusing opener.  Not only did there seem to be, literally, a dick joke in it (not a particularly clever one IMHO), it was an oddly sentimental moment for a character whose trademark is emotional opacity.  Don has never been the kind of man who much interests himself with the inner lives of women, or more particularly someone attached to the notion of mothers and origin.  He is, as the old saying goes, the epitome of a self-made man, constructed entirely of the things he thinks he wants to be, however disappointed he may be when he gets them.  

These scenes seemed designed to tell us that Don is newly recommitted to his life at home with Betty and the kids (who are soon to number three).  But we swiftly learn that he is still a womanizer.  But there's something new about his taste.  One of the things that has always rescued Don from the "complete tool on the subject of women" column has always been his interest in what used to be called "difficult" women - sexually-free, bohemian Midge; reluctant adulterer Rachel; ambitious Bobbie; mysterious Joy.  Whatever might be said of Don's philandering, in short, at least the man had taste.  But this time, Don is after an airline stewardess (played broadly by Sunny Mabrey with an irritating accent) for whom mystery and subtlety are foreign concepts.  And, for the love of God, she's a blonde - very much what Betty might have been had her modelling career tapered off (the
stewardess coyly offers that she is asked all the time whether she, herself, is a model) and she had never gotten married.

I admit that when I heard Mad Men was going to premiere just as I was starting this TV guestblogging gig in the otherwise rather deserted month of August, I breathed a sigh of relief.  If there is one television show that not a one of my communist, death-panel-supporting, child-killing liberal feminist friends is ashamed to admit to loving, it is Mad Men.  Mad Men, in short, has an acceptable television pedigree.  In my particular case, and I am not kidding about this, I started watching it because it was recommended to me by none other than Joyce Carol Goddamn Oates at a talk I attended a long time ago at the NYPL.  Talk about your "I-don't-even-have-a-tv" bookworm street cred.  And Feminist bloggers love Mad Men too.  In fact, it's just about the only television show that gets universal coverage in the feminist blogosphere, and all week, everybody's been gearing up for the Big Event.  DoubleX is live-tweeting it.  Some other prominent feminist bloggers, including Pandagon's Amanda Marcotte, are having a salon about it at RHRealityCheck.  And pretty much everyone I know who loves Mad Men loves to talk about how very, very feminist it feels to have so many nuanced portrayals of women on a single television show.

I, too, think that there is a lot of feminist merit in Mad Men - more on that in a second post this weekend, and I'll have thoughts on the premiere next week, it's gonna be a Mad Men heavy guestblogging experience - but I find it really problematic as a show to recommend to people who aren't feminists, or who aren't, at the very least, what I would call ready for a serious discussion of gender roles.