Girl, You So Well Spoken!

... seldom make history." -Laurel Thatcher Ulrich

(inspired by what the hellz via the purse snatcher)

If you haven't seen Ciara's new video for her single, "Love, Sex, & Magic" featuring Justin Timberlake, click away and brace yourself for a complete eyegasm! It's sexy, it's provocative, and apparently, it's... controversial?

Some folks aren't too happy with the former boy-bander, JT, claiming that it seems as though he is engaging in (and getting away with) the repeat sexploitation of black women because he appears often in the video and always playing a role in which he is dominating Ciara's person--with chains and such. And also there's that whole Nipplegate thing where Janet Jackson's career was ruined because everyone was all like, "boo, you whore," and he escaped unscathed, even though he was the one that ripped the PVC from her boob, exposing her to millions of members of the PTA and their husbands.

I'm only going to say this: I find it to be ironic and hypocritical that there should only be an outcry about the objectification of the black woman in music and entertainment because the sight of a white man doing it makes us all the more uncomfortable. Let's talk about the hypersexualization of the black woman in popular culture as a whole. Let's talk about turning on the radio and hearing our black men refer to us as b!tches and hoes. I don't deny that it is an issue, but it is an issue for anyone to do it--the men that are black/white/otherwise, and the women that allow themselves to be treated in such a manner. We are, all of us, lying together in the same filthy, muddled up bed.

But you know what else? Yes, I get it, the imagery of S&M type activity occurring between a man and a woman in which the man plays the dominant role plucks the nerves of the raging feminist fist-jabber, but sometimes it gets to be too much. You want to be all pious and self-righteous, and not shave your armpits or wear high heels because you believe that doing so means conforming to the unjust standards of a patriarchal society. Congratulations. I'm not hating. Call me backwards and brainwashed, but when I see this video I don't see a woman who is helpless in her shameful proliferation of damaging gender stereotypes. I see a woman who owns her sexuality. There is a difference between what I call "tasteless hoe-isms" and artful sexual expression. Hell, sometimes we all want to put on an afro wig, a sequined leotard, 4.5inch over-the-knee Aldo stiletto boots, and some glitter and get tied the f*ck up. Not that I am speaking from experience or anything, I'm just sayin'...

It's been quite the lazy Sunday, and in pursuit of entertainment other than college basketball, I watched that Quentin Tarantino Grindhouse movie, "Death Proof"... you know, the one about the psychotic stunt man (Kurt Russell) who stalks beautiful young women and then murders them with his car? It was completely ridiculous, gory, and outlandish--as is to be expected from Tarantino. But the last scene of the movie is by far the best final scene in a slasher-esque movie that I've ever seen. Observe:

I absolutely love how the film's final three "scream-queens", Rosario Dawson, Zoë Bell, and Kim Mathis aren't the usual helpless, objectified victims--they transform into revenge-driven bad-@sses that completely turn the tables on the sadistic Stuntman Mike (Russell). It's inspirational!

I'm watching it every time the frustrations of the Corporate American Boy's Club overcome me, and I plan on living vicariously through their experiences "stickin' it" to "The Man."

This just in y'all:

Hillary Clinton will be President Barack Obama's Secretary of State!!!

Source

Reason #305 why I absolutely love Perez Hilton. I was transfixed for 4 minutes and 20 seconds. lolz....

Anyway, let's talk for a moment about feminism. Earlier this week I wrote about the blatant lack of sexual equality between the sexes and my inner feminist raged. But what does that mean? Feminism is a multifaceted concept. It has had many faces throughout history and differs from woman to woman, from group to group.

While I was in Barcelona this summer I got into a minor argument with a girlfriend of mine about the respectability of becoming a housewife--I had made a statement in passing about eventually devoting my life to being a homemaker, much to her great chagrin. A housewife, said she, was not someone she would want her unborn daughter(s) looking to as a role model. A housewife, asserted she, was no role model at all!

That point-of-view follows one of the facets of feminism that I believe is typified most often. The type that one has in mind when the word "Feminist" is being used in a pejorative manner. The type that bastardizes the woman who chooses to assume any roles that are, at face value, suggested to be roles of the patriarchal influence.

But feminism is more than rejecting any and all "traditional" roles of the woman. It's more than becoming androgynous and refusing to stand out sexually. To live your life devoted to destroying the objectification of women by making yourself less appealing seems to me to be an indirect concession that it is the woman's fault that she's being objectified. A feminist woman should not have to make a choice between intelligence and beauty, mind and body, substance and surface.

Feminism should be outside the box. It is reclaiming choice. I can choose to be a lover or a fighter, a professor or a pageant queen. I wear my short skirt because I like the way it makes my legs look, not for the cat calls and "ey bay-bay!"s.

Feminism is choosing who you want to be and living it. Unapologetically.

Feminism by my definition is