This photograph of Miley Cyrus is about the most depressing thing I’ve ever seen.
It comes from a post on PerezHilton.com about Miley’s imminent (?) breakup with boyfriend Justin Long. I can’t quite put my finger on why it disturbs me so much. Something about the extensions, glasses, knee-high boots, small dog, designer bag, and designer jeans, but it probably has the most to do with her face. It looks like she’s trapped in there!
That The Root seems like less of a blog and more of an afterthought?
Looks like someone agrees with me: http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=the_trouble_with_double_x
In his New York Times op-ed about the newly-minted vocal sensation, Dancing With the Stars Host Tom Bergeron credits a “‘Yes We Can! communal euphoria” with Susan Boyle’s overnight success.
This may be true in more ways than one. What was the “Yes We Can!” slogan about, after all? Ostensibly, it was about voting out of power a party that had done nothing but lie to the public about entangling us in a series of costly wars. But what the slogan really meant was: yes, we can elect a nonwhite president. Yes, we can convince ourselves that we’re in a “post-racial” (whatever the heck that means) society. Compare the novelty of electing a president of color to the novelty of giving the highest score in a televised talent show to an older, heavier, profoundly unglamorous contestant. CNN describes the phenomenon as such:
But there’s something else Susan Boyle awakens in us as we watch her come out of her shell: our own selves. Who among us does not move through life with the hidden sense, maybe even quiet desperation, that we are destined for more? That underneath our ordinary exterior lies an extraordinary soul? That given the right opportunity, the right stage, the right audience, we would shine as the stars we truly are?
You’ll see this kind of analysis everywhere: it claims that viewers and interwebbers like Susan Boyle because we believe that so-called ordinary people can be extraordinary. But this is the party line, but I don’t buy it. We are not interested in the “caterpillar-to-butterfly transformation,” as CNN put it, because, in actual fact, we are not interested in Susan Boyle. We are interested only in ourselves, and we are interested in people like Susan Boyle only to the extent that they can demonstrate how unprejudiced we are.
Consider this, what if Susan Boyle had been black?* Would we have been at all surprised by her voice? The answer is a definitive no. Think back to Ruben Studdard, the winner on the second season of American idol, who won the competition itself but couldn’t boost his record sales above thin, white, blonde Clay Aiken, the runner-up. In other words, once records hit the shelves and America stops self-consciously examining its race/size/class/sexuality prejudices on weekly primetime, the Idols who do the best are still glamorous, thin, and white (think Carrie Underwood and Kelly Clarkson).
One might also ask just how far we are willing to entertain our notions of a prejudice-free universe. Remember America’s Next Top Model and competitor Toccara Jones? Ms. Jones was very curvy, and while it was generous of the show’s producers not to conspire to kick her off in the very first round of cuts, no one thought for a second that she would make it to the finals. Why? Because she was curvy, and America’s Next Top Model isn’t curvy. But we can all pat ourselves on the back for having given her a fair shot.
So what does this all mean for Susan Boyle? While the 5-year projections for rehab and coke addiction are amusing, the likely outcome is that Ms. Boyle will wind up producing a few records that don’t sell very well and end up on Cut Chemist’s grandkids’ turntables as an ironic throwback to the heady days of turn-of-the-millennium internet meme-ing. Maybe she’ll make a few appearances in the Macy’s Day Parade. Harmless? For her, probably, but Britain’s Got Talent will attract twice the number of viewers and find a growing market under the premise that it cares about people like Susan Boyle: people with talent.
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* The “What if X were a person of color?” question is a time-honored test for determining white privilege in a given situation, although I am using to prove a slightly different point. For its canonical use, see Cenk Uygur’s article about Bristol Palin in the Huffington Post.
Believe me, I love Slate.com as much as the next person, but being a fringe reader has its repercussions sometimes. Of course, being neither a person of color nor a Republican, I would perhaps not be immediately considered an outlier in Slate’s readership, but I do not 1) have a toddler I dress in OshKosh and Petit Bateau, 2) own a Prius, or 3) work for a non-profit organization that does solidly noncontroversial work. (See #78, #18, and #60 at Stuff White People Like.) And I have begun to sense, as of late, that these would enable me to enjoy Slate on a profoundly different level. Take a look:
Ah, white, liberal guilt at its finest! I anticipate the article that chides the anonymous submitter for the amount of carbon emissions that he/she caused by submitting this query in the first place. Speaking of which:
Shit! While our feeble brains are occupied with recycling and wind power, this anonymous reader just served us all. Beyond the obvious one-up-manship, this article is great for it’s underlying message. What’s more hip than being environmentally conscious? Being secular, of course! The editors of most major newspapers would probably give this particular edition of The Green Lantern the axe because they’d offend the majority of their readers. But when you’ve got Christopher Hitchens as a leading columnist, there’s no room for religious types.
And let’s not forget the topic that takes up most of Slate’s “Life” section: mini-yuppies. Kids, kids, kids. What should they eat? When do they start talking? Should they sleep on cruelty-free goose-down or hypoallergenic synthetic bedding? When you introduce them to their first multicultural playmate and they make an inevitably racist comment, do you make the exception to your absolutely-no-exceptions ban on corporal punishment? Does this beating ensure that they will give to the NAACP when they are old enough to file tax returns? The above article is dedicated to overprotective parents, cautioning them that they should leave their kids alone once in a while, a strategy that most parents don’t really have the luxury of choosing to do. Which brings me to the next article:
I’m not really sure I need words for this one, since the subtitle speaks for itself. I maintain that the only purpose of this article is to line the pockets of more Slate columnists, who can then take up the fallout from forcing your toddler to engage in needle exchange, Free Palestine, and community mural painting:
Consider the author’s complaint: “Although she’s only 6, she’s tired of the preachy drumbeat of the save-the-planet anxiety. … Her brain is rebelling, but it’s also captive.” Quite A Clockwork Orange, if you ask me, but since all of these parents took Film Studies in college, you’d be hard-pressed to find an audience that’s less receptive to such criticism.
Slate.com, how do you live with yourself? You disguise yourself as the concerned, educated intelligentsia, but you use the majority of your website to discuss how to green your life and make your kids more hip. Like the New York Times, you unfailingly omit issues that affect people of color and lower-middle class people disproportionately (and, no, your tokenist sidebar link to The Root, which seems more like an afterthought than a real publication, doesn’t count. If you really wanted to discuss race, you’d link to Racialicious, Angry Black Woman, Ask a Mexican, or any of the other brilliant race-centered blogs out there.) But all right, let’s say that you, like I, are fed up with reading about yuppie spawn. Well, there’s always pure dross:
“A court audience has the important function of reducing arrogance.”
I love that “Racist’s” is right in there with “Bahi’s” [Bahais?] and “Buddhist’s”. Mmm! Irony!
Year 2029: A middle school girl reads an article about how they used to make women pay $0.25 for tampons. She thinks, “How barbaric! Thankfully they don’t do that anymore.”
If there’s anything that companies like Gillette, Edge, and Axe hate more than ingrown hairs, it’s the gays.
Let’s pretend the writers of Jeopardy saw the commercial I just did:
Alex: This prevents new Edge Eclipse Shave Gel from being totally gay.
Eager contestant: What is . . . blowing your load in a woman’s face?
Alex: Correct.
Eager: I’ll take “Stab me in the carotid with the nearest sharp object” for 400.
Still not with me? Watch this:
I suppose the folks at Edge are in a bit of a bind. Cause putting aloe and moisturizers into your shave gel, well, it goes against all of that manly stuff you’ve been feeding to your target market since the 1950s. Mitchum (and Judd Apatow) have already been able to capitalize on the glorification of male slovenliness, so where does a creative director go from there? Black packaging and neon writing are a start, but men, God bless them, can see right through it! You’ve got to work harder to convince every XY who shaves that your gel won’t turn them into a metrosexual (just like vitamins, energy bars, and scented shampoo). So, how to make men pick up a product that says “Now with Aloe and Moisturizers!” across it?
Easy: add some half naked chicks. Make them spray white stuff all over long, dark, thick shafts (which, um, blatantly homosexual, or is it just me?) and each other. It makes men think that no matter what goes into their product, they will still be, unquestionably, dudely. Take the razor I shave with: the Mach 3 Turbo. What makes such a product “Turbo”? you might ask. The answer? A thin aloe strip on the edge of the cartridges. Can you imagine the conversation in the board room?
Exec: Johnson, what do we call this?
Johnson: How about “Mach 3 with Aloe”?
Exec: For Christ’s sake, Johnson, what kind of pansy-ass name is that? Who are we selling this to? a friggin’ buncha girl scouts?
For all you gender studies folks out there, do you find it as interesting as I do that women are the only thing ad agencies can use to corner the market on male shaving products? Not that it hasn’t been going on for years, but how interesting that the loving cheek caress doesn’t cut it any longer! Men now have to imagine women on their face and up their nose in order to be convinced that their phalluses won’t fall off.
I can always rely on Caltrain to get my blood pressure up, but this was freaking ridiculous.
After sprinting out of the BART at Millbrae, running up some stairs next to a BLOCKED-OFF ESCALATOR, flying down the stairs on the other side of the platform just in time to make the Caltrain that LEAVES TWO MINUTES AFTER THE BART DOES, the fun times start.
A bunch of lovely people have managed to make the train with me at Millbrae: two middle-aged white women, a young, black man, and a white high-schooler with his hockey bag.
Okay, a bit of background for those of you who aren’t privileged enough to have ever taken the Caltrain: they never collect tickets. Ever. I imagine the Caltrain executives sitting in conference rooms, wringing their hands and crying into the air, “For the love of all that is holy, would someone please tell us why are we losing so much money?!” And then I imagine Jesus or Buddha or whoever looking down on them and eating Fiery Cheetos and laughing his ass off. But back to my point: they never collect tickets, except for on those trains that do the awful BART/Caltrain connection. If are lying in your seat gasping for air, you can be positive that a Caltrain conductor will come waltzing by imminently, asking for tickets. One more thing: unlike the glorious, cosmopolitan Metro North commuter trains in New York, the Caltrain does not let you buy your tickets on the train. Because they are cavemen.
Back to the story. Middle-aged white lady #2 doesn’t have a ticket, so the conductor gives her a hard time. Why dontyouhaveaticket youhavetohaveaticket blah blah blah. Eventually, though, he lets her be and moves on to the black guy.
Conductor: “Do you have a ticket?”
Black guy: “No. I got on at Millbrae and didn’t have time to get one. I’m getting off at the next stop.”
Conductor: “Well, I’m going to have to write you a citation. Let’s see some I.D.”
Black guy: “Absolutely not.”
So this back-and-forth is going on, and eventually the conductor moves on to the white high schooler, who also got on at Millbrae and doesn’t have a ticket. “You’ll have to get off at the next stop,” the conductor says, “and buy a ticket.” The white high schooler protests, saying that it was impossible to buy a ticket, considering the ridiculously short transfer time (truth), but the conductor still tells him to get off at the next stop. The white high schooler calls the Caltrain “sh*tty public transportation” and tells the conductor to “f**** himself.” The conductor shrugs, then goes back to the black guy and continues to press him to show I.D.
The best part? No one, including me, decides to say anything. Colorblind, post-racial society? Certainly not here or now.
Thanks to Todd at FarFromGruvin for the photo.
**Just a footnote to that: I did end up calling the Caltrain corporate office afterwards, but it’s just so darn unlikely that the customer service desk is going to doing anything about it, you know?
1946: Admiral and Mrs. Blandy celebrate Operation Crossroads.
Yep. That’s a Hiroshima cake.
Thanks to Cake Wrecks for the photo.
