California Feminist Blogs

There is probably something that you don't know about me, and that secret is that I am an addict of women's pajamas! I love pajamas of all types, and I really look forward to coming home after a long day of work in order to slip into a comfortable, relaxing, or sexy pair of pajamas. So logically I was pretty pleased when I came upon a website where you can buy women's pajamas of various styles!! It was like being in womens pajamas heaven!

At www.womenspajamas.com, you can find over 1, 000 different types of pajamas for women ranging from flannel pajamas to sexy pajamas. The site is easily organized, which makes for an easy navigation in order to find the best pajamas that suit your particular personality. There is also a wide range of prices available, from lower priced to top of the line lines of pajamas for women.

I honestly feel like I am a kid in a candy shop because I am dazzled with all the cute colors and variations! I just can't figure out which pajamas I want first! I want all of them!

Although I don't watch Sex and the City I know enough about it to appreciate its portrayals of intelligent heterosexual women, who are femme to boot. Initially the overload of bourgeois consumer culture turned me off to the show but upon further examination I see it as a kind of stepping stone to feminism. What I mean is the majority of people stick to their gender roles. A lot of women embrace traditional femininity, which oftentimes includes loyalty to fashion (a connection that I personally believe is a means of keeping women financially subordinate, but that's for a different post). The bottom line is a lot of American women can relate to the Sex and the City characters, which makes it really important that these characters be more than just static brainless fashionistas. The women on Sex and the City are financially and sexually independent AND intelligent; Carrie holds a job as a writer, Samantha is an independent businesswoman and Miranda graduated from Harvard Law school. The most conventional in her relationships, Charlotte, graduated from Smith College, one of the most prestigious of the Seven Sisters women's colleges.

What's even more is that these actresses are just as intelligent as the women they embody on television. Bitch Magazine recently posted the following video on their site, where Kim Cattrall defends her character, Samantha, and herself from "cougar" allegations. Kim actually refused the cover of a "significant magazine for women over 40" when they asked her to pose with an actual cougar. Listening to her intelligently articulate ideas about fashion, sexual empowerment and "people who are uncomfortable with strong women" has me inspired in spite of my own issues with gluttonous consumerism. Check it out below and let me know what you think.

So I don't normally follow the Miss USA pageant but this year's self-identified Arab-American winner has attracted a controversy (plus I like to keep tabs on my Lebanese-American sistas in the public eye). Rima Fakih is believed to be the first Arab-American to win the Miss USA pageant. So far late night dickwad Jay Leno as well as David "Sexual Harassment" Letterman have integrated Fakih jokes into their routines:

"That goes to show you, in America we don't care what your faith is, we don't care what your politics are," Leno joked Monday night. "If you look smoking hot in a bikini, we will embrace you."

Okay, Jay (*rolls eyes*). Arabs are scary...unless they're hot, then they're free game for harassment. The way he implies that Americans are overlooking her ethnicity andor politics in order to "allow" her into the Miss USA club is also nauseating. And by the way, Leno, most Lebanese-Americans are Christian; although Rima comes from a powerful Shiite family she went to two Catholic schools.

As for the "controversy," photos of Rima dancing fully-clothed around a stripper pole surfaced almost immediately after she was crowned. When asked about it on the Today show she made it clear that she was participating in a promotional event for her friend's radio station and that she just wanted women to feel sexy and good about themselves. Regardless of whether or not approval from men is a positive source of confidence, people have been using the non-issue as an excuse to say pretty racist/misogynist things.

Fakih has been accused of everything from being a bad Muslim girl to a Hezbollah informant. Debbie Shlussel has written that "Donald Trump, Muslims (who mostly support Islamic terrorist groups, like Hezbollah, which features many of Fakih’s close relatives as top officials), and even Barack Obama will exploit this as propaganda for Islam." Part of the evidence against her was the site of her victory party, "where falafel, and hummus, and hate were all on the menu, as they usually are there and throughout Fakih’s community." Daniel Pipes has suggested that affirmative action is responsible for Arab-Americans winning beauty pageants. Mofo politics unintentionally highlights one of the most frightening ways Ms. Fikah has been racially sexualized in a post about her "stripper photos:"

OMG I want to sex her and cut her head off at the same time Fascinating.

Disturbing. As a Lebanese-American who surrounds herself with radical leftists and dykey feminists, rarely do I actually hear comments blatantly targeted at Arab-American women. I've always known that even appearing Lebanese is enough to incite mixed feelings of murderous hatred and sexual excitement but I haven't had someone give me such a clear example. So thanks Mofo politics, you bunch of idiots, for adding fuel to my terrorist fire. And be careful, Internet, cause who knows? Behind this exotic internet persona could be a well-connected Hezbollah spy!

So for this post I want to focus on this kick-ass interview with Joanna Newsom on The Guardian. In it she talks about fashion, her often-criticized relationship with Andy Samberg, her newest album Have One On Me (which I posted about here) and...Lady Gaga!?

"I'm mystified by the laziness of people looking at how she presents herself, and somehow assuming that implies there's a high level of intelligence in the songwriting."

Beautifully put! Joanna doesn't just discount or affirm Gaga on account of her appearance, she challenges consumers to try to find evidence of intelligence in her work. Newsom also wrote to The Guardian in an email after the interview was conducted to clarify her views on Gaga, saying:

"She's fully marketing her body/sexuality; she's just doing it while wearing, like, a 'fierce' telephone hair-hat. Her sexuality has no scuzziness, no frank raunchiness, in the way that, say, Peaches, or even Grace Jones, have – she's Arty Spice! And, meanwhile, she seems to take herself so oddly seriously, the way she talks about her music in the third person, like she's Brecht or something. She just makes me miss Cyndi Lauper."

You go grrrl! At the same time as she is affirming her own feminine and otherwise devalued indulgences (fashion, "too much crappy TV", Andy Samberg LOL) she offers astute critiques on marketable women in the music industry. She draws attention to the fact that image has become more rewardable than musical talent or artistic ability. Newsom also talks about her identification with Lola Montez, a 19th century courtesan who was the inspiration for the title track of Have One On Me:

"I've always been fascinated by her...And in recent years, I found there was a parallel between what I do as a profession and what it meant to be a female artist at that time. I was noting the intersections between being a courtesan or a whore, and these professions that were socially looked down upon, the sort of professions that were basically creative."

Hearing Newsom comment on her depreciated status as a female artist gives me hope for the future of feminist music. Don't get me wrong, Lilith Fair musicians and participators are creating an encouraging community for female artists and grrrls & womyn in general. But I was so delighted that my speculations about her critiques on the double-binds women find themselves in in capitalist patriarchies were affirmed. This kind of borderline Marxist feminist consciousness is evocative of post-porn modernists' and writers like Burroughs' and Kathy Acker's views on sex work.

Time and time again Newsom impresses me with her wit and ability to resist simple stereotypes projected onto her (ie. she is otherwordly and must be held to impossible standards, or that she is a sell-out, a phony, etc.). In other words she exudes a sense of confidence in the complexities of female identity that not many women have come to terms with. I'll leave you with a video of her performing "Have One On Me" and "Monkey & Bear" live. Both explore the exploitation of female performers and the tendency of oppressors to claim to know what's best for the oppressed.

I was studying Allan Johnson's The Gender Knot (link to Ch. 1 here) for a final and somehow came across a kickass blog dealing with the relationship between women and Science. So I dropped everything to pore over Thus Spake Zuska and after a few minutes decided that I needed to share this Internet gem. Zuska is fluent in l33+ (aka "leet," "leet speak" or "elite speak") and publishes posts with titles like If The Force Actually Existed... and "The Myth of Black Disingenuity": Exploring the Intersection of African American History and the History of Technology. There are also links to kick-ass books like She's Such a Geek: Women Write About Science, Technology, and Other Nerdy Stuff and Telling Stories About Engineering: Group Dynamics and Resistance to Diversity.

I'm really excited that women are carving a space for themselves in a male-dominated field like Science (especially when the primary wage market happens to be comprised of careers based on Math and Science skills). I've heard feminists claim that technology is innately patriarchal because of its focus on rationality and objectivity but! they may be forgetting that technology is also about innovation and creativity - skills that are encouraged in women since grade school. Science is also an ever-changing field so tradition isn't stressed as much as in the humanities, meaning it could be very receptive to more female participants and feminine input!

Current Internet technology also allows for easy self-publishing. Because of this, a lot of information is available to the public that isn't available in other forms of media, like a fucking WOMAN'S PERSPECTIVE for instance. The Internet can also bring people together that would otherwise feel isolated or alone in their thinking, like intersex people or male feminists (who getting a little less alone in their thinking, finally!). And blogging can reverse and challenge hierarchies, since girls and boys of all ages can (and DO) publish intelligent and respected blogs (like fbomb, featuring teenage girl bloggers). Here is a great reader online comprised of essays on cybercultures including cyborg feminism and cyber-punk movements.

G33k grrrlz, you make me proud! And may the force be with YOU!