The Lobster Dance

In this reader: Bond gets hit on by a man, BBC Sherlock‘s Irene Adler is naked and that’s okay, a man does laundry, and women are not cattle. Don’t forget the “You’re Doing It Right” section at the end for some good news.

Jenna #1, detail. Copyright Alice Ross.

Sex Segregation

Gwen Sharp. “Women in Hollywood: Underrepresented on the Screen and Behind the Scenes.” Sociological Images. 21 March 2013.

New statistics from the Geena Davis Institute on Gender in Meda about female representation in Hollywood.

Philip Cohen. “The Problem With Mostly Male (and Mostly Female) Workplaces.” The Atlantic. 20 March 2013.

That silent assumption is very different—and harder to change—than looking a real person in the eye and saying, “I don’t like you because you’re a woman, so I’m going to hire someone else.” The power of segregation is people usually don’t have to do that. This partly explains why sexual harassment is so common in male-dominated workplaces: The women there are perceived as outsiders who threaten the normal routine.

More Than the Sum of Our Parts

Gwen Sharp. “1950s Beauty Pageant Judging Guidelines.” Sociological Images. 19 March 2013 [2009].

“Anyway, what the beauty pageant image brought to mind was the handouts we’d look at to learn how to judge livestock.”

Alice Ross. Ishihara Test Stills, 2004-06. August 2011.

Sort of NSFW. Unless you’re colorblind.

My latest artwork plays on the tension of having fetishistic images of the male gaze filtered through an ocular disability [colorblindness] predominantly specific to males. By appropriating images of pornography icon Jenna Jameson and placing her image within the Ishihara Test, her image becomes less about the immediacy to sexual satisfaction and more about the biology of the gaze itself.

Popular Media

Sophia McDougall. “The Rape of James Bond.” Sophia McDougall. 13 Mar. 2013. (via Geek Feminism)

McDougall discusses Skyfall’s villain’s treatment of 007. This is long, but it’s worth reading the whole thing.

When you’re tied to a chair and there’s a gun at your head, unless you have very specific tastes and agreed to all this beforehand, that is not a seduction! It is something else, something quite specific. That scene is, to coin a phrase, not about sex, it’s about power. And it is the most literal way I have ever seen a male hero (and the ultra-masculine Bond at that) treated like a female character.

And it only took fifty years.

Also, can I just say how much I liked Bond’s “What makes you think this is my first time?” response? Even if it were remembering his “training,” making this Bond or the next one bi or heteroflexible would make my life.

Comment by DianeChambers regarding Ester Inglis-Arkell’s “Why can’t any recent Sherlock Holmes adaptation get Irene Adler right? ” i09. 4 Jan. 2013.

Spoilers for various Sherlock Holmeses. Inglis-Arkell’s piece critiques the depiction of Irene Adler in the recent Guy Ritchie Sherlock Holmes films (accurately) but misses the mark on the BBC Sherlock version. Like DianeChambers, I didn’t dislike the original Irene Adler, but she’s not exactly a feminist hero in the Arthur Conan Doyle story. I really liked her depiction in the BBC version, especially after some commentary on tumblr about how the ending of “A Scandal in Belgravia” is payback for the phone call/rescue at the end of “The Great Game.” The comment (spoilers!) is here. This snippet is spoiler-free in so much as it all happens in the first 15 minutes of the episode.

Instead of being hired by the King of Bohemia, Holmes is hired by Buckingham Palace. Instead of a courtesan, Irene is a professional dominatrix, and instead of the king she has incriminating photos of an affair with a female member of the Royal family. But her motivations were still the same: she intended to do nothing with the photos that proved her royal affair except to keep them as a form of protection.

You’re Doing It Right

Emily Matchar. “This IS a first.” New Domesticity. 13 March 2013.

An ad with a man doing the laundry. And not in a stupid, hee-larious “Mr. Mom” way either (“I just poured dish detergent in the washing machine. Doh!”). The is a real first.

And not only that, but his princess-dress-loving daughter is active, curious, and gets dirty. You can be a “tomboy” in a dress, after all, and liking “girly” things doesn’t make you any less of a badass. Bravo.

Jenn Wright. “Lost (and Found) in Translation.” The Man in the Movie Hat. 8 March 2013.

This pieces has the distinction of being the only review of Lost in Translation that I have ever really liked: the author (my kohai!) addresses the film’s successes and failures as someone with an academic background in Japanese studies, film, and gender, but also as someone who has lived in Japan–and understands that Tokyo is a different experience than the “rest of” Japan.

That is the Tokyo I saw in Lost In Translation and that is the Tokyo I moved to. And like millions before and after me, the “fucks given” count from the city of my choice rose to a cozy zero.