Pop Culture Commentary Archives
On Watoto From The Nile- Letter to Lil WayneMarch 03, 2011This musical open letter to Lil’ Wayne is getting lots of love! I want to join the chorus and give a big ol’ YAY to black girls creating media and saying what’s on their minds! Speaking back to Wayne’s misogyny is super important! That said, I wonder about the limits of such a message. |
SF Talking Points: Why Did Nothing Happen When Charlie Sheen Declared His Own War On Women?, Crisis Pregnancy Centers — Celebrated Here, Regulated ThereMarch 03, 2011It’s Charlie Sheen’s World, Women Just Barely Live In It: Sheen was able to terrorize women (though terrorize isn’t nearly a strong enough word) and continue his career unscathed, making heaps of money on Two and a Half Men. But when he punctured the ego of his big TV exec boss? Now that was the |
Fatal CharmersMarch 01, 2011Kevin Nance investigates the disappearance of the femme fatale from our screens. “For all her lying,” he says, “the femme fatale was a truth-teller, a bad woman whose real crime was to introduce a man to his own innate badness. And then she was gone. By the early 1950s, the femme fatale all but disappeared from the big screen, displaced by the politely swooning housewives of Douglas Sirk and, later, empowered ass-kickers like Faye Dunaway in Bonnie and Clyde.” Read more of his essay “Cherchez la femme fatale” here at the blog Obit. |
Vision Without Execution is Hallucination: A Response to Pepsi’s Anti-Black Woman PropagandaFebruary 28, 2011Well lots of folks were ticked off. And lots of folks had plenty to say, but only two took up the challenge ( that I am aware of) of responding to Pepsi's Anti-Black woman Superbowl commercial "Love Hurts." Several folks wandered around in the comments section attempting come up with a YouTube response to the Pepsi commercial, but without comment or any hand holding from me, Majali West produced a response. It's adorably cute. |
England cricketer Steven Davies comes out as gayFebruary 28, 2011Just a quick post, but after the sexism in sport shenanigans and various discussions about homophobia in sport recently, I wanted to congratulate England wicketkeeper Steven Davies on coming out today. So few sportsmen at the top of their game admit to being gay (Gareth Thomas, the rugby player, is out, coming out in the twilight years of his career - edited to note that this was an incredibly brave step on his part and Davies has given him credit for acting as a role model for him), although as I said in my previous article, several sportswomen have done. I am really pleased for Davies and hope that his colleagues are all as supportive as his England coach Andy Flower, who's given him his full backing while stating that he is first and foremost a top player. |
Charlie Sheen is a drug addict and the equivalent of two and a half men who are male supremacist scumbags. And Charlie Sheen HAS BEEN FIRED, finally! Details here.February 26, 2011This is a man CBS has been paying over one million dollars to every week he "works" at playing a shallow misogynist on TV. With a fraction of that money he has been scoring more drugs and exploiting and/or abusing more women in systems of prostitution. Prince Charming, he's not. As was astutely noted on SNL's Weekend Update, on May 14, 2005: |
My Apology to Halle BerryFebruary 23, 2011Last week I was asked to write a column about Halle Berry, her career and recent statements she made in an interview with Ebony magazine for their March 2011 issue. During that interview she made several statements about race. The first was a comment about Halle Berry considering her daughter to be Black because Berry says she follows the "one drop rule." The second statement was one where Berry declared that she had not abandoned Black people because she dated non-Black men. |
Esparanza Spalding, Bassist and “Babe”February 22, 2011Jazz basist Esperanza Spalding surprised the world on February 13th by beating out Justin Bieber to win the Grammy for Best New Artist. Online riots ensued. Among the voices in the cacophony of outrage on Bieber’s behalf was an article at the Atlantic, claiming Bieber didn’t win because he wasn’t a “cute young woman.” Yup. You got that right: Spalding beat Bieber because she’s a babe. |
DEFAMED! The Real Housewives of Civil RightsFebruary 21, 2011I don't know what's worse, portraying Rosa Parks as an incoherent drunkard, depicting Betty Shabazz, a woman whose husband was assassinated as a gun wielding loon, calling Coreta Scott King a "b*tch" and portraying her as an adulteress or comparing iconic Black women to those disgraceful, buffoonish posers on the Real housewives of Atlanta. |
Michael Winner embarrasses himself on TwitterFebruary 20, 2011Michael Winner has had a bit of an embarrassing incident on Twitter, according to a column in the Observer today. Writer and poker player Victoria Coren at first assumed the tweets talking about her breasts couldn't possibly be from the genuine Twitter account of Michael Winner, but apparently they were: |
I’m a bigger asian slut than you.February 17, 2011I didn’t become a feminist blogger to spread my message, folks, I became a feminist blogger so I could change google forever. A friend of mine found out over the weekend (really, none of us want to know how or why) that if you do a google image search for “asian sluts” guess who’s face pops up in the second row of search results? Yours truly. And better yet, I’m wearing a t-shirt that says, “I am not your fetish.” The best part? Google is indexing this picture under “asian sluts” because the image is related to a presentation I did at SXSW on the objectification of asian women on the internet. At least that’s the best and most acceptable (to myself) answer I can come up with. |
Will ‘Beliebers’ Care What Justin Thinks About Abortion?February 17, 2011Someone in Justin Bieber’s camp is totally going to get fired. Exactly who left the teen heartthrob unattended long enough for him to unveil his thoughts on politics, sex and abortion? The result of Biebs sans babysitter has the Internet somewhat freaking out over comments he made to Rolling Stone: |