Feministing's So You Think You Can Blog? Contest

I've already been yammering about this over at Dating While Feminist, but since I think Layla is the only one who stays up-to-date on the happenings there, let's just repeat it here!

So. Feministing is running a contest to pick their next contributor. I want that person to be ME. Here are some details:

Feministing is looking for a new Contributor. We’re looking for someone to join the Feministing team and blog for us once a week — someone who’s smart, funny, insightful, reliable, and raring to go. To that end, we’re holding a little contest.

Here’s how it’s going to work.

Next week, contestants who want to be considered must write two blog posts on the Community blog between Monday the 20th and Friday the 25th. Each of them should say “A SYTYCB entry” at the top and include the SYTYCB logo. Then, the Feministing team will pick several finalists, and those finalists will have another chance to show us their stuff before we pick a winner. It’s just like So You Think You Can Dance, except we don’t care how many fouettées you can do.

I’m relieved they don’t care how many fouettées I can do, as I don’t know what the fuck that is.

So! I’ve submitted my two posts. They're both on the site now, waiting for someone to decide that they're brilliant. Ha, ha. Wanna read them? Of course you do!

One is about Todd Akin (barf, groan, etc.)

The second is about vulnerability, and Fiona Apple, and some other badass women who make my little feminist heart roar.

If anything happens with all this bizness, like, say, I'm a finalist, of course I'll keep blabbering about it here, and there, and everywhere else on the Interwebs. If not, we'll just pretend this all never happened! Or something. 

Wish me luck!

But Erica Jong, We're Raunchy, Too! The Young Feminists Cry

Yesterday I was thrilled to see an op-ed in the NY Times by Erica Jong, one of my favorite authors, poets, and sex-pots.

My thrill lasted for about 15 seconds.

In "Is Sex Passé?" Ms. Jong begins:

What could be more eternal than sexuality? The fog of longing, the obsession with the loved one’s voice, smell, touch. Sex is discombobulating and distracting, it makes you immune to money, politics and family. And sometimes I think the younger generation wants to give it up.

People always ask me what happened to sex since “Fear of Flying.” While editing an anthology of women’s sexual writing called “Sugar in My Bowl” last year, I was fascinated to see, among younger women, a nostalgia for ’50s-era attitudes toward sexuality. The older writers in my anthology are raunchier than the younger writers. The younger writers are obsessed with motherhood and monogamy.

Umm, what? What younger women are you hanging out with, Erica? (Can I call you Erica?) Even trying to imagine having a "nostalgia for '50s-era attitudes toward sexuality" makes me feel a little nauseated. I think I can say, with complete certainty, that not one woman in my circle of friends would share that sentiment.

But, I told myself, this is Erica Jong, visionary behind the "zipless fuck"—read Fear of Flying if you don't know what I'm referring to, for chrissakes!—so I'll give her the benefit of the doubt. Undoubtedly plenty of younger writers (along with a large group of older writers, I'll wager) are "obsessed with motherhood and monogamy." Sure. Wait, though: since when are motherhood and monogamy mutually exclusive? Jong herself is an obvious example that they're not. Yet even if these young writers are "obsessed" with motherhood and monogamy, how does that equate a disinterest in sexual passion, or let's get real, even a raunchy attitude toward sex? Aren't monogamous mothers capable of "discombobulating and distracting" sex?

C'mon now! Where is this all going?

While I do have to agree that “Daughters always want to be different from their mothers,” holds an element of truth, when Jong goes on to say, “If their mothers discovered free sex, then they want to rediscover monogamy,” she’s overlooking a huge factor. Not all of our mothers “discovered free sex”! And honestly, even if they did, that might not be an aspect that any of us witnessed about our mothers. Sure, I know my mother had some single years, but during my lifetime, she was a happily married woman. She was also open to talking to me about sex. I guess my point is, it’s not always so black and white. Not always one extreme or the other. Just because Jong was part of the “free sex” movement, I don’t think we can claim that all young women have mothers who were. Plenty of the young women today who yearn for married with children bliss have happily married mothers as role models.

Jong continues to make claims throughout the piece that I find disappointing and even confusing, such as when she discusses how the Internet offers “simulated sex without intimacy, without identity and without fear of infection”—okay, so what? Does she think that in between our daydreams of wearing a “man-distancing sling” and breast-feeding “at all hours so your mate knows your breasts don’t belong to him” we are all getting off to Internet porn? It's not entirely clear, as she uses vague language about "Internet sex" that makes me nervous that she's never, in fact, used the Internet. “Clearly the lure of Internet sex is the lack of involvement. We want to keep the chaos of sex trapped in a device we think we can control,” she writes.

I would argue that the “lure of Internet sex” (if that's what we're calling it) is indeed about control, but not necessarily as a means to avoid the “chaos” of actual sex. Without getting into the dreaded Feminism and Pornography argument (pleasegoddon’tbringmeintothat), I think it’s worth noting that, perhaps young women (and men) are going to the Internet to find sexual pleasure when they don’t have a partner. I mean, DUH. Of course it’s about control! Controlling your orgasms. Does that mean our generation doesn’t care about sex?

No. It just means we have more options.

The new BK Blow Job! I mean, sandwich!

I know I'm supposed to be pissed off at Burger King’s ridiculously sexist advertising, but it’s just too hilariously stupid to get upset over. (Read Feministing’s post about it anyway.)

I mean, come on:
IT'LL BLOW YOUR MIND AWAY. Fill your desire for something long, juicy and flame-grilled with the NEW BK SUPER SEVEN INCHER. Yearn for more after you taste the mind-blowing burger that comes with a single beef patty, topped with American cheese, crispy onions and the A1 Thick and Hearty Steak Sauce.


AHHH! Nobody warned this poor woman that a gross looking, magically floating beef sandwich slathered with, errr, mayonnaise, was coming toward her open mouth! No wonder she’s terrified. Oh no, it's a SUPER SEVEN INCHER! Mind-BLOWING!

The blatant misogyny of this ad isn't even what offends me. I mean, how is it possible that the copywriter/s responsible for this MIND-BLOWING ad have a job and I don't?

Another writer’s take on the ad, via Slate:

“They got two ‘blows’ in there. Nice. The sandwich (by itself an obscenity), slathered in unnaturally ultra-white mayonnaise, is floating in the air directly across from the disturbingly pale profile of a young, gape-mouthed woman who looks frightened to death of the manly meat. Sexy!

But, now, wait a minute. Let's look at that copy again. The ad is aimed at young men, right? Of course it is. So why does it tell them to ‘fill your desire for something long,’ etc.? Is that a purposeful bit of sublimation (know your audience!) or is our cargo-pantsed copy jockey himself like one of those guys from my high school's wrestling team—that is, even more of a stereotypical frat boy than I had at first imagined?”

I’d like to say that BK’s offensive, but more importantly, STUPID, advertising is the reason why I’ve only gone to the one directly out my back door three times in the last year, but really, their food just blows.

Ha, ha. It BLOWS. Maybe I can get a job in their advertising department!

Seriously, Newsweek?

Really, Newsweek? REALLY?

I can't even believe I read this entire article. "Like a virgin no more?" Is this a joke? Did Newsweek actually publish this silliness?

The breaking news:

"Two decades ago, when young girls wondered how brides were supposed to look and behave, they'd most likely conclude—with some prompting from Cinderella—that on their big day they'd be a princess. They'd be blushing, virginal and wrapped from head to toe in tulle and lace.

So why is it that these days, some brides seem to be taking their cues more from Jessica Rabbit than Cinderella? More vamp than virgin, they're having bachelorette parties that are as raunchy as their fiancés' sendoffs. They're selecting cleavage- or lower-back-baring bridal gowns that might get a gasp from conservative relatives."

Like, OMG! Bachelorette parties as raunchy as their fiancés'? And are women, like, working outside of the home these days, too? I didn't know we were allowed to do that!

But aside from the silly "revelations" that television characters like Murphy Brown liberated women to have "racy bachelorette parties" and that the white gown no longer symbolizes virginity—what? you mean people are having sex before marriage?!—I just DON'T CARE.

Could you please write about something a little more NEWS worthy, NEWSweek? Quit wasting my time.

Here's what my girlfriend had to say about it:

"Are we seriously supposed to be scandalized by back-bearing dresses and cheesy bachelorette parties with penis straws? Come on now. But apparently this article is less about how immodest brides are, and more about moral panic over women in general."

Newsweek has now shattered my dreams of being a princess, "blushing, virginal and wrapped from head to toe in tulle and lace" on my wedding day. Dammit. I guess I have to be a whore now.

Those are my two options, right?