Public Gender Policing of Shiloh Jolie Pitt's Sartorial Selections and Kidswear Gen(d)erally

Promoting her summer-action flick Salt, Princess of the Global Poor and aspiring Cleopatra impersonator, Angelina Jolie, has a cover shot and feature article centered around her in the increasingly irrelevant Vanity Fair magazine, where she addresses her lifelong career as an actress, her high profile life partner Brad Pitt, and her famous brood of Jolie-Pitts as collected from each of the continents featured in Disney's theme park attraction It's a Small World. In the article one perhaps actually productive thing she seemed to do was address the scrutiny that she and her FOUR-YEAR-OLD daughter were receiving from tabloids and the public as resultant from her choice of clothing and short haircut.



Personally I think she looks insatiably adorable, but come on it's Brad Pitt plus Angelina Jolie, without some sort of mutated gene chances are you're gonna turn out alright. Photos of her rocking this style and haircut in several different situations were printed back in March with headlines hypothesizing about the potential doom that this implied and the confusion she must be having thrown upon her by her obviously oppressive and liberally-minded mother insisting on her to push parameters (see here).

In the VF piece, Jolie addresses the look by saying:

"Shiloh, we feel, has Montenegro style… It's how people dress there. She likes tracksuits, she likes [regular] suits. She likes to dress like a boy. She wants to be a boy. So we had to cut her hair. She likes to wear boys' everything. She thinks she's one of the brothers." More on the piece here.

Back when all of this was being printed I was really annoyed with the attitudes that were being spewed all about newsstands policing gender normative behavior and styles for this toddler. I'm glad that Jolie addresses it without perpetuating the alarm and gender panic that was unwarranted from the start.

I work at a community center where we have youth programs and over the summer we house a summer camp program. We have one class of three and four-year-olds who have a morning session where they do different arts and crafts, athletic games, songs etc. Everybody that enrolls in camp gets a tee-shirt that they have to wear when they go on trips and to the pool. This year, the preschool program's tee-shirts were hot pink. Nearly everyone's reactions upon hearing this went something along the lines of, "Oh my! What about the boys?"

What about the boys. Yes. Because when they're three and four there are so many biological differences that have already manifested themselves that vastly differentiate the boys from the girls. They can't possibly have their three and four-year-olds masculinity threatened by wearing pink tee-shirts! It will confuse them and deeply offend their parents. Well, only if their parents are as close-minded as one who a couple months ago thought his son needed to go to a preschool that catered towards children of special needs because his son only played with the girls (TRUE STORY!).

I know I'm making the grave assumption here that the attitude that gender is a socially constructed and reinforced system of control and status-quo is the dominant attitude (which evidently it certainly isn't), but even if you have something vested in the idea of a scientific and infallible connection between your genitalia and your greater social role, doesn't it seem like an obviously arbitrary correlation to make between femininity and pink? Between masculinity and short-hair and track suits? Why do we insist on policing one another and children into prescribed normative behaviors with no real backing behind those behaviors and assumptions?

I think that progress comes when more parents are able to accept without judgment the choices of style and appearance that their children are inclined towards despite the standard set by traditional notions of a masculine/feminine binary. Only through allowing them to challenge these representations can we escape the binds that they put upon us for no real reason. There is as much variation within the categories as there is between the standardized idea of each of the categories, especially when dealing with toddlers! They're basically all gender-queer at that point, not yet inescapably poisoned by the oppressive ideas of the gender binary and the necessity to conform to it.

For further reading and suggestions towards parenting children without genderalizations, click here.

Project Mayhem

This Thursday the finale of the initially controversial Season 6 of Project Runway will be on my TV on the Lifetime Network, but I will be watching it not with eager anticipation as I have runway shows in the past, but merely out of devotion to the concept of the show and the inspiration and art that I've seen it is capable of harnessing. This season though, has indisputably disappointed me and all runway viewers with whom I've discussed it, and I hope that, as promised by Nina Garcia, Season 7 will have rectified the errors that have made this season so dull and uninspiring.

To start, the most commonly noted shortcomings of this season have been the inconsistency of the judging panels and the lackluster results from challenges coming from the lackluster nature of the challenges themselves. Sensible explanations have been given for the issue of the judges but mostly the problem was the show's relocation to Los Angeles made it difficult for Michael Kors and Nina Garcia to regularly attend judging panels, as their primary businesses are located in New York. Frankly, I'm not sure why they moved the show in the first place. If we learned anything from the snooze-fest that was the 2008 VMA's, it's that things are always better in NY than in LA, and that goes for reality television both competition based and otherwise. Season 7's in NY, so check on that problem.

In terms of the challenges, to me, the only ones that demanded the exceptional creativity demonstrated in seasons past were the newspaper challenge and (MAYBE) the divorcee wedding dress challenge. Literally every other challenge could have been shortened to be, "Make a pretty dress," and then you through the Bob Mackie at them and tell them it has to be sequined and fabulously tacky, and you get that slick feathered black number that Carrol Hannah made, like, come on, to use the lexicon of the show, it felt a little safe for the challenge.

But that seemed to be what the producers and the judges were going for throughout the season. The designers who seemed to have a particularly innovative or experimental aesthetic were very quickly auf'ed and we were left with a bunch of vanilla collections you could most successfully market at Target.

Irina, Althea and Carol Hannah, what do they have in common? They're all designers who are going to Bryant Park who if cast in a different season never would have stood a chance. Irina at least gave the editors a storyline to work with by positioning her as the bitch. But that really got tired when you realized her bitchiness was generally harmless and reserved for the interview room. This feels a good place to transition from the mass market stylings of this season to the personalities and the judges' and editors' reactions to them.

Did anyone for a minute believe that there was any potential romance between Carol Hannah and "man's man" Logan? No. Didn't think so. Go out and change the tires on your pick-up man's man and stop making monstrously tasteless or inexpressibly bland looks that you somehow get away with even over more talented designers. Plus the fact that they played that up so much while having ignored homo-relationships in past seasons demonstrates the show's latent and perhaps unexpected heteronormativity.

Next thing, WHAT THE FUCK IS HEIDI'S BEEF WITH GORDANA?! Yeah, okay, what she made for the Christina Aguilera/Bob Mackie challenge was a bit of an embarrassment construction wise, but it was hardly the most mortifying of the season and did not warrant the berating she received from Frau Klum, plus the undercutting Gordana got when she was announced the winner of the divorcee challenge. Is it an ageism that makes Heidi harbor such resentment for Gordana? I don't know. But I enjoyed her perspective and appreciated her not beating us over the head with her humble upbringings a la Cry-stopher. Tom and Lorenzo at Project Rungay did a great interview with her you can read here. The episode where the judges' vendetta against Gordana was most apparent was in the final episode where they didn't even name a winner of the Getty Museum challenge, pretty clearly, because it would have been her but they couldn't justify awarding her with that and not sending her to Bryant Park. Whatever.

Their auf'ing of Gordana was one of several auf'ings that I was more than a little perturbed about. My fury has actually grown incrementally since their dismissal of Malvin, the soft-spoken, admittedly pretentious, but into conceptual andorogony New Yorker whose chicken egg was, truthfully, bizarre ad unflattering. But it only annoyed me so much because it was very evident at that point that Mitchell lacked the technical skill to succeed in the PR setting and was not watchable enough of a personality to justify their keeping him. I was also angered and saddened by their auf'ing of Epperson over pretty-boy man's man Logan, which was a poor decision I feel like, and perhaps again resultant from an ageist attitude, and I was really annoyed by their auf'ing of Ra'mon over Louise.

A lot of these annoyed me so much because of the aforementioned issue of the inconsistency on the judging panel. It puts the players at a clear disadvantage because it doesn't give them sufficient time to tailor their individual aesthetics to the judges' tastes, since those tastes are constantly changing, and it doesn't give them the benefit of the judges seeing week by week what the contestants are cumulatively capable of. Many of the blogs I read on the show are saying that these problems swayed the results towards a Real World demograph amongst the three finalists and I'd say that's an accurate assessment. You have three attractive, young girls who don't seem to push the envelope in their designs or their personalities but are generally likable but probably forgettable.

Lastly, and, maybe this should have been sooner because, this element was so endlessly irritating, was the overstatement of the models' significance throughout this season. The models' role in Project Runway was always an important one, but it's importance was anecdotal, circumstantial and tended to be arbitrary, just like the function of models in high fashion on a runway. To say that viewers and contestants did not take the models into consideration is certainly a fallacy but this season it was as if they were nearly as important as the designers themselves, having a challenge catered entirely towards their taste and a companion series following every episode. Maybe it was Lifetime trying to squeeze every second of lucrative ad time from the highly watched series, but I have yet to meet someone who is actually attached to any of the models or their personalities.

I do hope that Season 7 is less dissapointing because Project Runway does have an extremely entertaining formula that makes viewers feel like a part of an industrial sphere that has historically been regarded as distant and elite, but I think that if the show continues to cater towards the aesthetic tastes of the average American it'll lose a core of its viewership. Then again I'm no entertainment shaman. So I'll just say that if nothing else, I'd quit watching it!

If You Liked It Then You Shoulda Put The Ring on It

I have a tendency around benchmark holidays (Christmas, 4th of July, in this case Halloween) to refer to roughly the three weeks prior to the actual calendar date of the holiday as "[Insert Holiday Name Here] Season." To honor the commencement of said season I love to engage in activities that are associated with said holiday. I don't think that this is such an unusual practice but after my 14-year-old sister responded dismissively about the cultural existence of "Halloween Season" I found it necessary to give a thorough explanation of how I conceptualize this three weeks. Because Halloween Season is upon us, I know have the insatiable urge to watch as many horror movies from my past as possible.

Furiously digging through the depths of my parents' VHS cabinet for relics from my former cinematic tastes which included leading ladies the likes of Neve Campbell and Jennifer Love Hewitt, I was disappointed to discover that most of my slasher collection hadn't survived the move south. But one lone soldier remained, 2002 classic The Ring. Generally I was (and still kind of am) too freaked out by movies whose scare center lies in demonic possessions or paranormal elements. I tended to prefer murders or things that were within human control when I would watch a horror movie. But last night I was feeling bold and wanted to share the primary viewing experience of this freaky flick with my 14-year-old sister, still perturbed by her dubious response to the existence of Halloween Season.

After a brief cajoling which included my selling this proposition to her by telling her that The Ring was actually a romantic comedy about a surprise engagement between two Midwestern Waffle House employees named Peggy and Bill, and that it was titled The Ring because of Peggy's surprise at the proposal and the beautiful engagement ring offered to her by Bill, (she obviously didn't buy it), my older sister insisted that the familial revisiting of The Ring was essential to our evening. Thanks Lauren!

I have to admit, moments before the movie began I was revisiting the same feelings that I had when I had first called my friend my sophomore year of high school and said, "Do you want to see The Ring tonight in Huntington at 7:30?" It was an immediate, "Oh shit" reaction, an, "I can't believe those words just came out of my mouth" kind of thing. I immediately regretted the suggestion and wanted more than anything to take it back. But my friends had been sold, as had my sisters. Again, thanks Lauren.

But this time rather than being terrified by the seemingly senseless inclusion of various neurosis and random assortment of freaky ass shit, I was just kind of annoyed by it. The construction of the narrative that's intended to weave together the fear factor elements is sloppy, inconsistent and at times borders on absurdity. Nothing in the movie tends to make sense. Nothing in the movie means anything. It's sole intention is to freak you out and it does, the first time, in theatres. After that it feels as though the movie itself is just a broader reflection of the video that the girl makes, a nonsensical threading together of hauntingly bizarre images and occurrences that maybe later lurk in your consciousness but don't directly infiltrate your way of thinking.

What I mean to say is that The Ring is a movie that once I knew what was coming, viewing it made it not mind blowingly frightening but more frustrating in its incongruencies and seeming lack of subversive message. What's also frustrating and could potentially be attributed to the lack of symbolism in the movie, is the lack of explanation given for a huge chunk of the plot. How did this girl get these images onto film? Why did she spare the life of Naomi Watts but not her husband Deadbeat Dad Noah? What's with the nose bleeds? Though metaphor is admittedly frustrating when heavy handed, to a thinking viewer it's more frustrating when it's understated or completely absent, and even more annoying when its absence causes a sloppily constructed storyline.

There were glimmers of messages about overstimulation from television as media when our female protagonist is out on her apartment porch, peering into the large windows of her neighbors and internally counting how many of them are watching television which seems like a subtle ode to Hitchcock but, again, that message is quickly dropped if intended at all. And there's also the stretch at saying the film deals with absentee fathers as the two characters whose deaths are most graphically included match that archetype. But, again, it's a stretch.

I'm not even sure what I'm trying to say on a greater level aside from the fact that The Ring, as an admittedly iconic horror movie, is one that is worthy of canonical status only because of its success gauged by box office revenue and ability to be so haunting, even if only the first time, while still maintaining a PG-13 rating. There are certainly films that I could revisit that I'm sure would still scare me as much as when I had seen them the first time, The Exorcist terrifies me every time I've seen it since the 7th grade. But I need more congruence and subversiveness in the film's metaphor for it to have a lasting fear factor for me as a viewer.

Maybe it's my own fault for not having taken the time to see The Ring 2. Maybe everything comes together in the unsuccessful sequel and my criticism is resultant from ignorance of the greater narrative at work here. Well at least my parents didn't get rid of the epic I Still Know What You Did Last Summer, Brandy and a dred-locked Jack Black really were the glue that held those flicks together.

Remember When the VMA's Didn't Suck?

There are certain evolutions in popular culture that I've totally gotten myself onto the band wagon for, many, in fact. I'm not the type to bitch about reality t.v. or the media's changing of landscape increasing subjectivity over hard facts or celebrity over talent (celebrity is a talent in by its own merit, media manipulation is a lucrative and challenging skill to develop). But the VMA's is a tradition in entertainment that I feel has shifted its appeal to be one that is, well, really unappealing.

The VMA's were always to me pop culture's shameless mockery of itself. It was like the night where everyone that had been feature in an issue of US Weekly throughout the curse of that calendar year could show up and act as complete caricatures of themselves and the identities that the had guided the media in having constructed for them. It was like a costume party where every celebrity in attendance went as themselves. For example:



Do you think that Geri Halliwell would ever wear that nauseatingly patriotic, leather bathing suit thing with a faux-fur coat unless she wanted to be self referential in that she, and her group, has become a commodity for the American public? Absolutely not. But the VMA's provided celebrities and viewers with circus style exaggerations of entertainers' personal brands.

Last year, when I watched the VMA's with a room full of friends who were, like me, expecting the typical freak show of celebrity that we look forward to each year, we were at the very least disappointed in what we saw. It was as if everyone had pre-partied for the award show by having a group bible study and moving furniture around for the post-party hoe down they were planning. I mean, when the most highly antcipated appearance at an event is the Jonas Brothers, you hafta just expect cold oatmeal. When was the VMA's anything more than a mildly pathetic obligation on your social calendar and guarantee that something excusably inappropriate and outlandish might occur? Why do these nit-wit baby tween idols take al this so seriously?

Wwhen watching the low brow cultural enthusiast's event of the year, I don't want Jordin Sparks lecturing me about sexual habits weaing an unflattering strapless dress. I want something harmlessly riskier. I want Vanessa Hudgeons out there in a nude suit making jokes about how the only way she can get press is if she keeps "accidentally" showing up naked all over the internet. I want celebrities spitting back in the faces of the American public trying to police their behavior, not trying to further their appeal and make themselves accessible to the straight laced, midwestern twelve-year-old girl.

Bring back the absurdity MTV! It's just not a sufficient amount of absurdity that you're hosting an award show based on music videos when you don't even show them anymore. I want shameless self-mockery! I want you to show me just how self aware you are of the product that you and the media and their interactons with the public have helped to shape! Just do eaxctly what you used to do, have britney and Christina present an award together, have Mariah and Whitney do it wearing the same dress! Have a mob of Eminem look alikes swarm Radio City. Something that will regain my faith in your programming.

You could start with bringing back a hell of a lot more performances like this:











And a lot less of anything involving Katy Perry or anyone who got their start on the Disney Channel post Mickey Mouse Club. Thanks, good luck tonight, I'll be watching.

Little Boxes Made of Ticky Tacky

Of recent my pursuit of higher education has come to an unfortunate and unexpected halt temporarily, damn you recession, and I've been forced to relocate back home until further plans make themselves available to me. Catch is, home is new for me, as my family now lives in good 'ole Cary, North Carolina, a growing city that matches every suburban stereotype from gas-guzzling SUV's to gaudy homes with no yards, this means a whole new, not so pleasant adventure.

Cary is known to many North Carolinians as the Concentrated Area of Relocated Yankees. This is not an exaggeration. A typical response to this acronym is, "Well great James, your Drescherian style speech patterns must be no big thing to these people, right?" Wrong. What's unusual about Cary is although it is geographically located in the south and inhabited mostly by outsiders, they all seem to have adopted the stereo-typical southern attitude of shunning difference and encouraging conformity and old fashioned values. Low taxes. Focus on the Family. That kind of shit. This makes being a comfortably queer person with no pretense a little inhibiting to live in this setting.

On top of this, the city planners of this montrosity ought to be embarassed of themselves because the overwhelming absence of small businesses and the car-centric culture encouraged by the town's and surrounding towns' infrastructures is at the very least inefficient and sooo not green.

What I tell people to liken it to are the establishing shots of America Beauty and Weeds.

It's also worth noting Cary's proximity to an area of North Carolina known as Research Triangle Park. This attracts many people who work in the ITech industry, an industry that doesn't necessarily pride itself on social skills and sparkling personalities, moreso encourages efficiency, practicality and is generally attracts less than personable and interesting individuals. (All of this is SO not J-Wo). As a side note, this proximity also accounts for the very prevelant Indian presence in the area, because for one reason or another many Indian people get into this industry. That's really neither here nor there though.

Due to some sort of combination of the aforementioned attributes, Cary as a community becomes a community that is bound together not by common histories (as everyone comes from somewhere else) and not by common interests (because how many stimulating bar conversations have you had around the issues in ITech?) but primarily by the overwhelming consumer culture that has developed (strip malls and housing developments for as far as the eye can see) and by conversations revolving around heteronormative familial structures, i.e. WHOSE HAVING A BABY NOW?!* And as Cary was reported to be the 3rd fastest growing city in America in 2008, it shows little sign of slowing down.

The absence of a culturally rich environment is really the least of the detrimental affects of this rapid development in this area. Although, I'll admit, it's one that bothers me the most. In addition there are obvious environmental affects manifested on a large scale, and on a local scale with the overwhelming runoff expediting the destruction of Jordan Lake just west of Raleigh, not to mention, state legislation has gotten unjustifiably lenient on restrictions protecting the lake.

There's plenty more I could bitch about this personality-less wasteland of a city but really this was just intended to be an introduction explaining why I'm starting this blog. In sum, Cary's just not gonna cut it as a conversational lotus for my fabulosity so I'm doing what every good disgruntled twenty-something year old student aggrivated with the job market is doing, bringing it all to the internet.

And believe me you ain't seen nothing yet.

*said reasons for Cary's lack of charm are admittedly speculative, but believe me when I say it lacks charm!