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Breast meat Valley of Teh Breastessies Memorial
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For what itâs worth, I donât like Bitch Lab, I donât read her, I donât think sheâs very bright, and I think the main thing she piggybacked on recently was a comment thread to a post she didnât author. Nice appropriation, that.
So: Donât like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and donât read her. Read the women she rips off instead. Theyâre better.
So: Donât like Bitch Lab? Join the club, and donât read her. Read the women she rips off instead. Theyâre better.
08-10-2006
Just go ahead and bitch
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I think you’re right.
Bark/Bites was talking about that at some length a while back, I believe. the homosocial male bonding with as you put it the “pivot babe for the circle jerk.”
had a great bit, something like, the “train” being the only instance where a straight man is putting his dick in the same place another one has just put it. e.g.
“Hey, Joe, I forgot my jockstrap. Can I borrow yours?”
“Sure!” (peels it off and throws it over)
“Thanks. Hey! It’s still warm! Sweet.”
–something like that.
Yeah — Gayle Rubin’s “The Traffic in Women”. I’ll have to yank that out and put up the relevant passage. here’s one I posted here before:
ââŹâGayle Rubin, ââŹĹThe Traffic in Women; Notes on the ââŹËPolitical Economy of Sex,ââŹÂ in Toward an Ahthropology of Women, edited by Rayna R Reiter, 1975.
Did I ask this one elsewhere, at your blog maybe? I don’t recall, but all this talk of GGW and especially after reading the article about Joe Francis and the call center, I had soooo wanted to do a little ethnographic research by working at the call center.
I’d love to know the pitch or pitches used to sell that video. I’ve never even seen one, and I’ve never even seen the watered down version on MTV. I’m assuming from the snippet I watched at the GGW site and from the occasional description, they leave the hoot’n ‘n’ hollerin’ in and don’t cut it out of the soundtrack. Seems like that would be too much work.
But just in general, of course, since Francis has made this thing a brand, it’s become a signifier. Like buying Ikea.
Whenever I read about it, I’m always reminded of in-depth accounts of the rituals around gang rapes in fraternities.
But I think what this is also selling is the opportunity to watch other people engaged in the hootin’ ‘n’ hollerin’.
I’ve always said that this is the pull of reality TV: the opporutnity to observe others in intimate moments so the watcher can measure themselves against those in the show. Sometimes, you identify. Sometimes, you loathe. “I would *never* do that.” or, “hmmm. I don’t think I’d do that, but maybe…” Or, “Oh, wow, she’s doing exactly what I’d do.” or “Man, I wish I had the cahones to do that.”
Obviously, from what little I’ve seen, not that much thought goes into the production of GGW videos. But as Sugarbank seems to be saying there doesn’t have to be a lot of effort in the video itself. They just have to work the brand. That way, you can sell nothing, really. YOu’re just selling the idea.”
Somehow, I’m guessing that such a video sustains less attention than the average video game. Someone buys it, watches it once and it collects dust. I’m reminded of how, when I had my very own apartment, I subscribed to Playgirl, which was then about the only thing I knew of or was probably available. Had I known about On Our Backs, that woulda been it. But at the time, I didn’t really care what was in Playgirl. It was a brand. It signaled a kind of sexual independence. I got the mag in the brown paper wrapper, looked at it and thought, “Ho Hum.” The magazines then simply collected dust and were good for a laugh when friends came over. Or, when I had men over, it was (in my mind): “I objectify men. Wanna make something of it?”
I didn’t actually treat men that way at all, but in that era, it seemed like the thing to do. Just as it was the thing to do (for me) to have a poster which, although I can’t remember what it said, when my mother visited the apartment I shared with other women, she didn’t like it much! And, as I recall, all three of us in that apartment enjoyed certain social rituals displaying our sexual independence and, thus, adulthood. They were small things, but they meant something to us because the wider culture also sent the message that it mattered, too.
e.g., With booze, it might be having real glasses to serve wine in or tumblers for scotch, which you didn’t necessarily like much, but ti seemed grown up.
Great observations, B|L. Sonshine is right. I watched about ten minutes of a GGW video and was saying to myself, “WTF? This is the most boring, stupid shit ever.”
Two things caught my attention that I would like to write more about: one is the failure of the Guys Gone Wild vids (I didn’t even know they existed!). It got me thinking about the strikingly different reactions I get from dudes when I mention that I’m hanging out with a woman that is not my girfriend versus the reactions I get from dudes when I mention that my girlfriend is hanging out with a man that is not me (”What? You let your girlfriend hang out with another dude?”). Ahh…assumptions. We men are too obvious about what we assume are the proper gender roles and rituals.
The other is about the call center:
I find this intriquing. Remember when Snoop Dogg left GGW because, as he put it, “Black Girls get wild too”? While I have no proof of this, I bet the majority of GGW buyers are 20 - 45 year old white males. And why do I get the feeling that a lot of them were sad to see Snoop go? There’s something else odd going on here. What is it I don’t know yet, but definitely a lot of strange and fucked up dynamics playing themselves out here.
Kevin,
About the call centers. Yep. I confess, that the first time I read it, I skimmed. I didn’t see the word “African American” — so I wrote in my frist response to this brouhaha, “men and women of all races are exploited” in call centers.
Upon second reading, that is precisely when I started wondering about WTF is up with that re: the call centers. Now, a lot of it has to do with the facts of how call centers are built in the first place: they typically look for low rent building and situated in places where there is plenty of cheap labor.
But still — there are call centers in the deep whiteness of of, say, upstate New York, too.
I also know that people who are selling books on the internet and tv carefully choose who the call center staff is going to be. will be writing a proposal for a client next week. When I interviewed him about the gig, this came up. You pick a voice demographic to pitch the product to your consumers.
Sometimes it does not matter. But it definitely will matter in certain respects. e.g., if you’re selling a product with a certain brand vibe, like very serious stuff about real estate investment, you are going to stick with a call center worker demographic that is conservative. you will weed out people with heavy accents for instance. If you are selling vibrators to women, you will probably want a call center staffed by mostly women. Depends on your research. So, I’m wondering and I’m not really sure what to think.
that is so totally why I want to do some ethnographic research. Pie in the sky dreaming, that.
But man, would I like to know how they pitch these videos. If they do at all. They may not do much to actually push sales, but she did say it was based on commissions. So, obviously, it’s the case that they are doing what is called “upselling” if not also cold call sales.
What I mean is, they get someone on the phone who wants the vidoe, then they upsell to something else. Like a year’s subscription or something. What’s the pitch?
My first reaction? Well, first,let me back up.
My biggest interest in this comes from working with a woman on a community research study. This was back in 1996 or so. She was studying how black women rec’d the messages coming from the rap videos that were first emerging on BET, the Box, and what was the other one?
At the time, no one gave a crap about pimps and hos and raunch culture, because it was confined to MTV. There was some handwringing among blacks, but very little worry among whites. No one was up in arms saying
“Oh My god!!!!1One
Society is going to hell in a hand basket. our girls are showing of their breasts and dressing like hookers.”
It was seemingly confined to “them” over there and big deal. That’s what “them” did. As long as “them” kept it on their video staions, no big deal.
And guess who was in college then? Joe Francis.
So, yeah, I’m wondering first how much of this Joe imported out of the scenes popular in rap videos at the time. The army of gyrating women. The ritual of male bonding.
but not so much that he ripped it off — though that too.
but that he early on played on black masculinity and the desire for the what was promised in the stereotype of black masculinity.
I have no idea. But when I re-read the piece the other day, the race of the call center workers jumped out at me and I wasn’t sure what to make of it. How much did he play a part in that decision. Was it siimply busines: as in finding the cheapest workers.
Which is odd. My son did call center worker for less money. So, I’m thinking it’s not the cheapness but the race of the call center workers.
And of course, you can say, but how would anyone know. Well, of course, in the hiring process they’re going to weed out anyone that doesn’t “sound black.”
I don’t mean that to sound racist, of course. I’m just really — maybe I’m jumping to huge conclusions. Occam’s Razor requires caution here.
But that you mention Snoop — which I did not know about at all….
And also, back to the friend I worked with. This was 1996, but the phenom had been going on all through the early to mid-90s. There was the much heralded opening up of black oriented cable channels to places like Syracuse NY. This was much celebrated, but was much discussed because of the actual content.
And my friend, who was a very class conscious, race conscious feminist utterly loved to watch these videos. She was quite aware of the sexism and violence. but she loved them anyway.
so, her study was about herself in a way. But there was also a growing body of literature on how people receive cultural products. That is, a growing body of literature that showed that people simply do not suck in, uncritically, the messages in the rap video, the romance novel, the rock music, etc.
So, she set out to talk to other black women who enjoyed the videos, to see how the message was received.
At the time, like I said, white people were not worried about women who were barely clothes and dressing like hookers. They worried about violence, but they worried most about what the violence would do to them. And they worried about the unrestrained sexuality because, well, we know why: oh no! this will just normalize teen sex and pregnancy and boy we don’t need any more of that! it’s already out of control.
but, of course, the concerns in the black community were quite different: the struggle over self-representation. Is this what we should do with this resource? Is this good for our chidlren” is this raising us up?
Etc.
Are you familliar with the book, To Be Real: Telling the Truth and Changing the Face of Feminism, edited by Rebecca Walker (Alice Walker’s daughter)? There’s an essay in the book by Eisa Davis, “Sexism and the Art of Feminist Hip-Hop Maintenance” that details her relationship with sexist Hip Hop. She too admits to loving a lot of sexist Hip Hop. I’m wondering if your friend and Davis don’t share similar views regarding Hip Hop.
I love Walker’s work, but hadn’t read that one. I read Fire with Fire her latest a couple of months ago, but never got a chance to blog about it.
as an aside, one thing that so annoys me is the occ. dissing of third wave feminism. Walker is a major figure in third wave feminism. But you wouldn’t know TW feminsm had anything to do with race and class issues if you read the critiques of it. It’s like all it is is riot grrrrrrl if the author has a positive view and if the author doen’t, all it is is pushup bra feminism.
Right in the last 15 years, we get to watch the way the work of women of colr and other marginalized from mainstream discourse are written right out of the discussion her in bloglandia and the media.
But, oh hey, there’s no bias toward the concerns of white, middle- and upper-middle class women in feminsm. Nosiree.
I had to take Fire with Fire back to the library, but the first essays I read in the book dealt with hip hop. I was planning on getting it out again.
My friends views on the issue are that, sure, there are sexist messages. But people don’t receive cultural products in a uniform way. As I recall, she drew on the work in Cultural Studies, to show that people creatively appropriate and reappropriate theose messages in ways that sometimes resist the hegemonic meanings.
And, of course, you have to put things in perspective. E.g., when I was the moderator and discussant for the conference presentation on her research, we talked a lot about how, in contrast to the images on MTV, one of the more positive things for black women to see were women like themselves. Even though this was in the context of a sexist message that still delimited the way women’s bodies are to look, it at least wasn’t delimited to extraordinarily thin white women with …… no ass!
So, while sexism is there in the imagery, what is also there is something that frees up spaces — creates a wedge. Yes, this is sexist, but for the women in her research, what they were seeing — finally — were images that didn’t *completely* alienate them.