Loving your bits

I recently watched a BBC America documentary (part of the BBC Reveals series) called Perfect Private Parts. The hour long documentary is about labiaplasty and other genital plastic surgery. Labiaplasty, for those who don’t know, involves cutting and reshaping one or both sets of the labia, to make them smaller.  The documentary is adamantly opposed to any surgery and the director, Lisa Rogers, states on camera that she is making the film in hopes of not only understanding why women undergo labiaplasty, but  also dissuading viewers from considering these surgeries.

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Wedding Crashing

Confession time.  My current guilty pleasure is the TLC show Say Yes to the Dress. Yes, Friday night Professor Bean and I are curled up watching brides try on gown after gown, break down in tears when they find “their dress,” and spend thousands of dollars. So what do I, a rabid feminist, get out of this show?

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More to Love finale gets it (sort of) right

The finale of More to Love was this week and I’m glad I stuck with the show because in the end, it turned out to be about something other than women obsessing about their weight and falling in love way too fast with a guy who actually admires curves. Don’t get me wrong–there was plenty of that as well. The final two women, as they walked up the driveway to find out who Luke would pick, both lamented (in voiceover) their weight and the tribulations it has caused. But aside from these pro forma comments, the last show was not about weight, but about other forms of discrimination–class and religion–and a small victory for feminism.

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Little Miss Feminine

Since it was Labor Day, every channel was running marathons of the show they most want to hook people into, and TLC decided the show to pimp was Toddlers and Tiaras. The show is about as horrifying as the title suggests and as the promo demonstrates, TLC is selling it as a guilty pleasure that makes the audience feel titillated and superior:

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A kiss is just a kiss…as time goes by

I’m a couple of days late on this (the beginning of the semester hit like a ton of bricks), but I wanted to mark the arrival of legalized marriage in Vermont on Sept. 1st. Oddly, the mainstream media was fairly quiet about the event (although they covered the vote back in April in detail); if you google “Vermont gay marriage” most of the hits are articles from April and reports that Ben and Jerry’s Ice Cream has renamed their Chubby Hubby flavor “Hubby Hubby” for the month. They’ve even created new packaging, which I think is pretty cool (even if it is only available in Vermont and, well, very not vegan):

the one-month only Hubby Hubby packaging

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Ambush!

Like all good liberals, I get most of my news from MSNBC.  Every Thursday, the MSNBC web site features the Today Show‘s newest “Ambush Makeover” participant.  There are a few things about this “news” feature that I find problematic.

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Age is a feminist issue

I wasn’t going to write about More to Love. I don’t want this blog to turn into the “ranting about reality dating shows blog” and Professor Bean has already written about it. But he’s away for a week, which means I have to come up with all the ideas (how do other bloggers do this?). And honestly, the show is crack for a ranty feminist. However, like Professor Bean, I will avoid the obvious topic of weight. Instead, I want to talk about their age.

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Less to Love

I could write about how refreshing it is to see plus-sized women on Fox’s reality dating show More to Love.  Of course, it would be refreshing if plus-sized women (and men, for that matter) were regularly included on dating shows of all stripes.  One problem with More to Love is that it does not actually say that larger people can find love.  It says that larger people can find love with other larger people.  The show claims to democratize love while really offering “separate but equal” status to those who are overweight.  Anyway, I could write about that aspect of More to Love, but that’s not what I’m going to write about.

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Speaking in Code

Last night ABC gave us the “Men Tell All” episode of The Bachelorette. While the teasers promised myriad secrets would be revealed, no one could have predicted the biggest revelation of all. There, on national t.v., America was introduced to the secret, illuminati-like world of the “man code.”

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Weekly Recap July 11-17

We love(d)…

Obama’s choice for Surgeon General–Dr. Regina Benjamin is a doctor who makes housecalls and ran a nonprofit clinic in New Orleans before and after Katrina. But she’s also the first black woman to head a state medical society and the first doctor under 40 to be elected to the AMA’s board of trustees.

The inability of the confirmation hearings to find anything of substance to question Sotomayor about. After whining that they needed more time to prepare it’s fun to watch the Republicans continually circling back to the “wise Latina woman” comment because they have nothing better to say.  It’s also heartening that Sotomayor’s gender has not been a topic for discussion in any meaningful way.

We hate(d)…

The fact that even with all of Dr. Benjamin’s credentials and passion, some people felt the need to comment on her weight. Because she can’t fight for better health care if she isn’t a size 2?

Republicans’ suggestions that Judge Sotomayor can’t be objective because she is a woman, Latina, or both.  When Justice Breyer compared the plight of a 13-year old girl who had been strip searched by school administrators to his own “hazing” experiences in middle school, the press made a joke of his comments but never accused him of bias.  No one asked any of the “Wise Causacian” men on the Court to recuse themselves, nor should they have, because it’s ridiculous to expect that a judge can only be objective when ruling on a case involving people just like him/her.   Unless she’s a woman, apparently.

The intensely irritating article Time “Is There Hope for the American Marriage?” Why are people suddenly so obsessed with the collapse of marriage (as if this time last year everything was peachy-keen), and why does everyone assume that marriage is about sacrifice, duty, and obligation, and then act surprised when people want something more fun?

We’re looking forward to…

500 Days of Summer claims it’s not a love story.  We’ll see, but the trailer shows some promise.  Could we finally have something positive to say about a new movie?

ABC’s “Dating in the Dark” looks bad, but we haven’t decided yet if it’s “good” bad or “bad” bad.  We’ll probably tell you Tuesday.

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