Springtime weather has distracted me from keeping up with this dear blog, but the novelty’s worn off (at least until swimming season!) so expect new posts soon!

Carolee Schneeman, Meat Joy, First performed in 1964 at the First Festival of Free Expression at the American Center in Paris

In Schneeman’s words:

“Meat Joy has the character of an erotic rite: excessive, indulgent, a celebration of flesh as material: raw fish, chickens, sausages, wet paint, transparent plastic, rope brushes, paper scrap. It’s propulsion is toward the ecstatic– shifting and turning between tenderness, wilderness, precision, abandon: qualities which could at any moment be sensual, comic, joyous, repellent.”

CNN Photo of airport customs

On the increased airport security screening measures announced today by the federal government:

A senior administration official said racial or religious characteristics could be used to identify passengers requiring a more thorough review, though the official insisted the system would not constitute racial profiling.

U.S. Announces New Airport Security Measures [CNN]

Success!

Lilith fair is back this year for the first time since 1999 but not without controversy. The touring festival will donate $1 for every ticket sold to a charity involved in women’s issues. By becoming a Facebook fan of the Lilith Fair, you can vote for the charity in your area. In some cities, among possible charities you could vote for are a pro-life group home for young mothers in Seattle and crisis pregnancy centers in Indianapolis and Minneapolis. But, luckily, a facebook campaign opposing the festival funding anti-choice groups got some these charities removed from the voting processs! But why were these charities even on the ballot in the first place?

The Lilith Fair has, after all, historically supported pro-choice groups. As The Chicago Reader reminds us, the 1997 incarnation of the festival threatened a boycott against a concert pavilion near Houston, Texas if they didn’t allow Planned Parenthood to set up a booth.

The inclusion of these anti-choice organizations, according to the CEO of the company putting on the tour and its co-founder, is really a matter of a lazy google search process for women’s charities in each city, and not some anti-feminist conspiracy. Whoops!

The festival seems to have dug itself a hole by inadvertently included anti-choice organizations, and now they have to appease, at least to an extent, the anti-choicers as well:

The festival announced today that the Crisis Pregnancy centers have been dropped from the ballot! But, NARAL Pro-Choice North Carolina was dropped as well. What’s staying on the ballot, however, are a number of maternity homes, some of whom are grounded in very anti-choice philosophies.

Next time, Lilith Fair, spend more than 5 seconds on google!

Well, it looks like Venus Zine has decided to distance itself from that whole feminism thing. According to a profile of the magazine in the most recent issue of the Chicago Reader, new owner Sarah Beardsley is intent on increasing the number of issues and its circulation by backing away from its “indie lady roots”. I can’t help but wonder, though, what this actually means for the direction of the magazine. Considering that Beardsley hired former Body & Soul (a Martha Stewart-branded magazine!!!!) associate editor Jill Russell as Venus Zine editor in chief, changes are certainly in the air.

So, to find out what this new Venus Zine is like, I thought I’d take a look at the new issue.

In the interest of full disclosure, I haven’t read an issue of Venus Zine in a year or so, but I read every issue for about five years before that.

- Melissa Auf Der Mar on the cover?! I thought Venus Zine was trying to distance itself from the nineties!

+ Sarah Beardsley writes in her note from the publish, “you prove that smart, creative women are a force to be reckoned with- in music, fashion, the arts, and increasingly, the economy… I have always been a passionate advocate for other women.” Well that sounds okay…

- … But her pictgure makes her look like the ultimate corporate executive narc

+ Highlights Chicago-based duo My Gold Mask and I gotta say, they’re pretty good

- Blurb about new BARBIE DOLLS?!?!?!?! I don’t care if they’re Joan Jett or Debbie Harry, I don’t want to read about new Barbie dolls in Venus Zine!

- Article about how to become a filmmaker that doesn’t offer much of anything

+ In an interview with  Those Darlins the Tennessee band says their armpit hair is their way of saying, “‘we’re feminists, and we’re normal just like you.’ You don’t have to be a freak of nature to be a feminist. Dolly Parton, Loretta Lynn, they were feminists.” SCORE ONE FOR TEAM FEMINISM!

+ Inspired by the new film about The Runaways, there’s a little blurb about other women punk bands like X-Ray Spex, The Slits, The Gits, and Hole that deserve to have films made about them

+/- A short little essay about how beauty pageants and how they mirror everyday life, but then really can’t decide if that’s actually true.

+ Blurb about French art museum Pompidou Centre’s new permanent collection devoted to women-created art, Elles@Centrepompidou.

+ Interview with The Babysitters Club author Ann M. Martin on the series’ new prequel. The books also being re-issued for the first time in ten years.

+/- Interview with Melissa Auf Der Mar notes that she is a strong female raised by a single mother who was “at the epicenter of the feminist movement” but I stopped reading after it became all about Billy Corgan and Courtney Love.

- Boring fashion spread with boring clothes on skinny models, one white and one east Asian,

THE VERDICT:

As far as I can remember, new Venus Zine isn’t all that different in its philosophy from old Venus Zine. The new owner might be afraid of the “f word” but this doesn’t necessarily translate into the magazine. I can imagine some of the things I actually like about the magazine are going to slowly disappear as it makes its transition into the mainstream, but I can’t imagine they’ll disappear all together. Really, though, my problem with this issue, and Venus Zine as of late, is that it doesn’t have much in the way of substance. The magazine reads like a catalog more more than it used to, and I can’t see myself reading it unless there is some interesting writing that isn’t promoting a band, film, book, or fashion line. If I wanted to read a magazine like that, I would read Nylon!

Bikini Kill

Jezebel via Reason:

Tim Cavanaugh makes the case that “girl groups correlate with economic expansion”.

How, exactly? According to Cavanaugh, interpretation of Marissa Meltzer’s new book, Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music, girl groups empower young women, to which I say, Duh! But, I want to get my hands on this book because I’ve never heard of any other writing that ties this empowerment directly to its economic benefit. Feminist book club, anyone?!

Rep. Stupak at the signing of the exective order on abortion funding limits

Last week when President Obama signed an executive order that continued the existing limits on federal abortion funding under the new healthcare law, advocates of reproductive justice like myself were both disheartened and confused. What does this actually mean for abortion access? After all, President Obama earned endorsements in his primary campaign from both NARAL Pro-Choice America and Planned Parenthood. During his first week in office, he permanently repealed the Global Gag Rule, a policy enacted by President Reagan that prohibited international aid for groups that provided abortions. Yet, in the wake of pressure to pass healthcare reform, pro-choice Obama said at the signing of the executive order, “”I have said from the start that my goal was to see health care pass while maintaining the principle of the sanctity of life.” What’s going on here?!

Technically speaking, of course, women have had the right to an abortion since the passage of Roe v. Wade in 1973. But the fact that it is legal for a woman to get an abortion says little about how easy it is for a woman to access an abortion. Only 13% of counties have at least one abortion provider. What’s more, since the passage of Roe, legislation intended to chip away at reproductive rights has been enacted on both a federal and state level across the country. Prohibitions like gestational limits, gag rules on the ability of counselors and doctors to provide information on abortion, and limiting access to abortions for young women to access abortion all narrow the window of abortion access. What’s incredibly crucial to the issue of access, however, is cost.

In 1977, the anti-choice movement had its first victory in the passage of the Hyde Amendment, which prohibited the use of federal Medicaid funding for abortion services and was followed by similar prohibitions at the state level. With the average abortion costing upwards of $523 out of pocket, the cost can prove to be a prohibitive for many low-income women.

But how does this change with the new healthcare bill?

Tracy Clark-Flory at Broadsheet has an excellent roundup of commentary on what the new healthcare bill will mean for abortion access. She quotes the Bronx Family Doctor on Daily Kos on the difference between the Hyde Amendment and the executive order:

“Although the Hyde Amendment is repeatedly renewed, it is not a law on the books per se. It must be renewed each year as part of the budget. This means that every year we have the opportunity to get rid of it (although we have as yet been unsuccessful). An executive order, in contrast, would put these provisions on the books until it is rescinded. It is much harder to rescind an executive order than to change language that must be inserted in the budget yearly. Really, what president would stick his neck out for the 1/3 of women who will need abortions? If we are to be guided by history, nobody.”

NARAL Pro-Choice America president Nancy Keenan released a statement on the bill’s passage, noting that,

“The legislation includes an onerous provision that requires Americans to write two separate checks if the insurance plan they choose includes abortion coverage. This unacceptable bureaucratic stigmatization could cause insurance carriers to drop abortion coverage, even though more than 85 percent of private plans currently cover this care for women.”

But the statement also notes the positive changes for reproductive health services under the new bill:

“”At the same time, we recognize that the bill will bring more than 30 million Americans into a system that includes affordable family-planning services, better access to contraception, and maternity care. It also outlaws some discriminatory insurance-industry practices that make health care more expensive for women.”

I hope, then, that increased access to birth control reduces the rate of unintended pregnancies and thus reduces the rates of abortion. Yet, realistically, this decrease does not mean we should back down from fighting against the anti-choice culture we live in.

DEEP IN THE VAULTS OF FEMINISM:

Jenna Elfman as a riot grrrl hitchhiker on Roseanne. EPIC!

Of all the celebrity gossip in all the land, nothing is more compelling than the truth, and In Touch hit the jackpot with its scoop on an affair between Sandra Bullock’s mechanic husband, Jesse James, and tattoo model Michelle “Bombshell” McGee.

In an industry where one comment or photograph is taken out of context and spun into an eight-page story, the  tale of America’s Sweetheart pitted against a sex worker with a purported fondness for white power is the ultimate in a bankable tabloid narrative. In this particular case, the narrative at issue is a bit of a departure from typical tabloid fodder; after all, the story is based on a trail of clearly reliable evidence, rather than just glorified fan fiction.

This is a battle of good versus evil. McGee is supposedly a neo-nazi and (almost) everybody hates those people. McGee is the kind of woman that sleeps with married men. McGee is shameless enough to sell her story to a tabloid. McGee is slutty enough to be a sex worker.

But let’s not forget about Jesse James, because, he, after all, he is the married man who cheated on his wife. According to his wikipedia page, before opening his own custom motorcycle shop, James worked as a bodyguard for Danzig and other metal bands. A documentary about the shop that aired on the Discovery Channel led James to a number of reality television shows and the expansion of his shop into a lifestyle brand. James was married twice before Bullock, the latter marriage to adult film actress Janine Lindemulder, who lost custody of their daughter after she was arrested for abusing James and spent six months in prison for tax evasion.

Bullock, on the other hand, has led a relatively scandal-free life. Many of her films have grossed hundreds of millions of dollars. She’s donated millions of dollars to charity. She just won an Oscar for her work in The Blind Side.

This is a battle of good versus evil, yes, but more than that it’s a battle of class versus trash. Jezebel rightly asked the hypothetical question that if this scandal would be any different if the “other woman” was a kindergarten teacher or a soccer mom. And of course, it would be different. The narrative at work in this scandal is based on underlying notions of class. Sandra Bullock is the woman scorned and the innocent victim. Her reputation is kept intact, and Hollywood will spin her into being even more likable and relatable.  Jesse James will still be a working-class brute that got lucky. He may have found in Bullock the ultimate meal ticket, but he couldn’t control his animalistic urges. He’ll never be “one of them”. And, as for Michelle McGee? She’ll go back to a life of relative obscurity, forever being known as the neo-Nazi tattooed sex worker/fame whore.