I purchased three books tonight. I am eager to read them. You may expect reviews when I get around to it. They are:

American Eve: Evelyn Nesbit, Stanford White, The Birth of the “It” Girl, and the Crime of the Century by Paula Uruburu
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach (maybe one of the best book titles ever)
Rapture Ready: Adventures in the Parallel Universe of Christian Pop Culture by Daniel Radosh

I mean, come on. You can’t deny that “In the Air Tonight” is a great song.

+ A friend of mine is working at Starbucks part time, so stories about Starbucks are much more amusing than they might otherwise be to my non-coffee-drinking self. Thus I knew about the new (old) Starbucks logo even though I am not a frequent Starbucks customer by any stretch. And the logo (which always makes me think about Leviathan) has boobies. So, of course, some crazy Christian group is boycotting.

+ fshk blog idol Toni Morrison sets the record straight about calling Bill Clinton “the first black president.”

+ Interesting story on NPR about raising boys who want to be girls in different ways. One kid got hurt on the playground for playing with a Barbie, so the mom and the psychologist worked hard to socialize the boy as a boy. The other boy’s parents are letting him be a her, and she seems to be all the happier for it. Makes you think about trying to stick kids in specific gender boxes.

+ Presidential candidates as represented by groups of New Yorkers. My favorite comparison? “John McCain Supporters and Tourists Who Stop in the Middle of the Goddamn Sidewalk”

+ Some history for ya: Evelyn Nesbit as forerunner of Lindsay Lohan: here’s a woman whose whole career happened from age 14 to age 21, attracting public scandal and being indirectly responsible for the murder of one of New York’s great architects. Well, so, I guess Paris, Lindsay, or Miley haven’t gotten anyone killed. Yet.

+ Polygamy Watch: Creepy story about teen cult led by a scraggly old guy. The clips will make your skin crawl. — Tim Gunn on polygamist fashion — Of the teen girls taken from the Eldorado ranch, nearly half have babies or are pregnant.

+ I just thought this was interesting: Ashley White was featured in the movie Spellbound, but her dream was deferred more or less by the birth of her daughter. Now she’s finished college and plans to do more. There’s a lesson in here about race and opportunity, but I’ll let you ponder it out.

+ Speaking of race, Mildred Loving died recently. (See Jezebel) When I was in high school, all seniors were required to take this basic civics class, and we watched the cinematic classic Mr. and Mrs. Loving starring Timothy Hutton and Lela Rochon. I kid, but it was actually pretty good for a made-for-TV movie. I remember it being one of those, “How could that have ever happened?” moments for me, as I hadn’t realized at age 17 that there had been a time so recently that people could not marry who they loved. Hey, wait, we still live in that time. *sigh* Anyway, Mildred Loving was a trailblazer and deserves to be recognized as such.

I mean, come on. Is “Against All Odds” not one of the greatest breakup songs ever? You know you sing it in the shower.

Tumperkin has written a tribute to Regency romance, and I was struck by the fact that she seems to be fascinated by the era for many the same reasons that I’m fascinated by the jazz age, namely for how women of the era behaved.

Strikingly:

the fashions were interesting and extreme: there are accounts of women of the Ton going out without corsets and wearing almost transparent gowns, like prostitutes. Many clothes and hairstyles were inspired by classical antiquity (I also adore Greek and Roman myths and legends so that is soooooo speaking to me). And clothes were taken terribly terribly seriously. They were a religion to the Dandys.

Hmm, scandalous dresses, no corsets, clothing as political statement, what does that remind you of? Flappers, maybe. (Bonus! Check out this awesome video on YouTube.) Now, during the Regency period in England, women were still property of their husbands so it wasn’t as progressive as the Jazz Age, but it was transgressive enough for the Victorian era to be a reaction to it, if you follow what I think is a two-steps-forward-one-step-back progress (or devolution) of women’s rights and morality. Think of it this way:

Regency –> Victorian Era
Jazz Age — > buttoned-up 1950s
Counterculture 1960s –> our current reactionary period

Speaking of loose morals, I finished reading Phyllida and the Brotherhood of Philander. This is the bisexual romance sex comedy I mentioned last week. Here, I’ll take the book description from the author’s website:

Andrew Carrington is the ideal Regency gentleman: heir to an earldom, wealthy, handsome, athletic—and gay. When he decides to do his duty to his family, he wants marriage on his terms: an honest arrangement, with no disruption to his way of life. But in the penniless, spirited—and curvaceous—Phyllida Lewis, a self-educated author of romances, Andrew gets more than he bargained for, perhaps even love. And when he meets honorable, shrewd—and hunky—Matthew Thornby, son of a self-made baronet, Andrew seems to have everything a man could desire, until a spy and blackmailer tries to ruin him and his friends.

I really enjoyed the book, despite some flaws (the subplot with the spies is confusing, scenes without the protagonists drag a little, there are a whole lot of tertiary characters that don’t get developed enough to be distinguishable, and some other things) but the main thing I want to talk about here is that I think the heroine, our titular Phyllida, gets the short end of the stick in the end. [SPOILER ALERT!] Andrew marries her and Matthew, but it’s not a mutual arrangement, it’s more that Andrew gets the best of both, plus it’s implied that Matthew can, uh, see to his needs while Andrew and Phyllida get to work with the heir breeding, but Phyllida, it is understood, will not have relations with anyone but Andrew, both by agreement and because she’s not interested. I was kind of hoping Matthew would get a thing going with Phyllida, but it never comes to that. And I find it all kind of problematic after thinking about it. Poor Phyllida, victim to the old double standard.[END SPOILERS]

Meh, at least there are steamy sex scenes, right?

Actually, you can still argue that the author did a brave thing, both in putting gay sex scenes in a novel and for putting them in a novel ostensibly marketed towards women. It’s one of those female fantasies no one talks about, although slash fanfic writers (and female Queer as Folk fans) the world over may have a few things to say about that. The novel is fantasy and reads as such and it’s a compelling read as much as it is transgressive.

I’d argue further that romance novels have kind of a bad rap. Sure, a lot of them are fluffy, but — and I can say this with authority because I’ve read a whole hell of a lot of them over the last year or so — but some of them are subversive, too, putting men and women into interesting situations and exploring how they react to each other. A lot of romance writers are probably doing more for feminism, particularly by writing in a medium that is devoured primarily by women, than I do on any given day. See the above example, but I will also mention my favorite romance novel of late, Laura Kinsale’s Flowers from the Storm, in which the heroine is a Regency-era Quaker who likes math and never compromises who she is even for the love of the rakish Duke with whom she falls in love. That’s a heroine I can get behind.

+ Chocolate may help prevent heart disease in women and preeclampsia in pregnant women. Awesome!

+ Someone’s been altering ads on the subway and turning them into art. Awesome!

+ Fox News gets the wrong Douglas. Dumb!

+ Galleycat asks why JK Rowling isn’t suing everyone who does anything related to Harry Potter, like the wizard rock bands. My guess is that JKR is suing the Harry Potter Lexicon people because they intend to publish a book similar to the encyclopedia she intends to write specifically, but still. Voldemort can’t stop the rock! Awesome!

+ Want to feel sad about how little you’ve accomplished? Here’s a list of things some people accomplished by age 29. I’m turning 28 soon, so I feel pathetic. Sad!

+ “Women’s Fiction” book covers and disembodied female body parts. Maybe not what you think. I may have more to say on this topic later. Sexist!

+ More on the Fundamentalist Church of Latter Day Saints: Newborn baby of a teenage mom taken into custody; Boys may be getting abused, too. Scary!

Random cool things I learned from teh internets today:

+ My new favorite blog/podcast, the Bowery Boys, have a post up today about Hair, the musical. I can’t remember if I blogged about it or not, but my mom and I went to see the 40th Anniversary Concert at the Delacorte Theater in Central Park last fall, with a few original cast members in the audience. It was a good time. I love the musical anyway — what’s not to love about a rock musical about the counterculture full incomprehensible lyrics — and my mom’s review was that the concert made her feel 18 again. Anyway, the Bowery Boys post has lots of trivia.

I’ve spent the last week or so listening to their old podcasts. It’s good stuff, especially if you are a New York City history nerd such as myself. So check it out; it’s available on iTunes.

+ More on that Texas cult of the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints: Sara Robinson has a fascinating and disturbing post up on Alternet. The most disturbing part may be the way the FLDS has manipulated their own health services to keep women trapped in a cycle of abuse, particularly by labeling women dissatisfied with the lifestyle crazy. Also The Watcher reviews a new documentary on the FLDS.

+ I just bought this book, which is being billed as a bisexual regency romance comedy. Looks like fun! Actually, the reason I bother to post here is that it’s an interesting success story, a self-published novel that got picked up by a major house (HarperCollins) plus it has kind of a weird set up, being an m/m/f love story.

+ Suddenly I’m cool! Glasses are so hot right now!

+ Jezebel has a round-up of the recent feminist blogosphere controversy.

+ A gay kiss on in Birmingham, orchestrated by 20/20, results in a 911 call.

It seemed appropriate.

+ Rebecca Traister interviews Amy Poehler about Baby Mama ad the fact that feminists are funny! Poehler says, “You can get a point across better by making people laugh than by stridently telling them anything.”

+ Equal-opportunity nudity or, “look, nekkid men!” The message seems to be: yes, women’s bodies are objectified, but objectifying men also makes it okay. Right.

+ Speaking of racism, Holly at Feministe writes about feminism and the Sean Bell trial verdict.

+ The media’s bizarre obsession with the virginity of teen celebrities.

+ I wrote what I had to say about Take Our Daughters to Work Day here. (Scroll down.)

+ Okay, not feminist related as such, but the NYPD is sending cops with MP5 machine guns down to the subways to prevent terrorism and that? Scares the crap out of me.

+ And, uh, while we’re objectifying people, half-naked men with cats.

I wasn’t going to say anything. I don’t have that many readers, what does my opinion matter? But a few people asked what I thought on this matter, so here it goes:

Confession: I am a total political theory nerd. I’m fascinated by politics in the abstract but I’m kind of bored with the pragmatic and the real-world wonky political minutiae. I think, though, that the latter has its place and that, when espousing any political ideology, one has to ask, “What’s the point?” I label myself as a feminist, I probably fall mostly in the liberal feminist camp. This is fun in the abstract because you can have debates about what gender really means and you have those college-era dialogues about Judith Butler and Andrea Dworkin and identity.

Because here’s the thing about me. I was probably always a feminist but was reluctant to label myself as such. I spent my formative years on the national high school policy debate circuit, which is most definitely a boy’s club (I was the only girl who made it to the varsity team the whole time I was in high school). We debated theory a lot, and feminism in particular was openly mocked. One of our rival teams when I was a senior often used a nearly unbeatable feminist argument, and the argument and its writer (another rare female varsity debater) were dismissively labeled feminazi and subject to ridicule. As a teenager, I didn’t want to be associated with that. It wasn’t until I started taking women’s studies classes in college (and the first one I took mostly because the professor was universally liked and the class conveniently met in my dorm building) that I Got It. And the women’s studies department at my university was made up of nearly all minority professors, which meant the emphasis was about feminism for everyone and in particular how race, gender, and class intersect. So that’s my feminist background. I like to think that I Get It.

But what’s the point?

Well, the point is that being a feminist carries a certain amount of obligation with it. What good is the high-falutin’ discourse if there’s no practical application?

What is it that we want? Political ideology has to be selfish to a point because we adhere to it because of something we need or something we’re lacking. We try to convince others to espouse our ideology also by appealing to their needs and what’s lacking in their lives.

I personally have moved away from the theory in recent years and thought more about what feminism can do for me. On the theory level, I’ve argued here before that abortion isn’t just a feminist issue, it’s THE feminist issue, because a state-mandated lack of access to it is an affront to women’s basic autonomy over our own bodies. I still believe that, and that informs what I fight for politically. What do I want for myself and how can feminism help me? If feminism is ultimately about equality, I want equal access. I want to be taken seriously. I want to be paid as much as my male counterparts at work. After that it gets trickier. I want self-autonomy. I want to be able to make decisions about what’s right for my body and my lifestyle, which means deciding when I get married, when I have children, when I work, and when I have sex. It means having freedom of movement, being free of fear. It means I want to be judged for my ideas not the size of my breasts.

Well, so, okay. That’s where I’m coming from. I wasn’t following it, but there was some animosity on the feminist blogosphere earlier this week. My understanding is that Amanda Marcotte wrote an article about immigration that sounded awfully similar to something a woman of color blogger, Brownfemipower, wrote. There were accusations of plagiarism lobbed. Brownfemipower quit blogging. The bigger issue was not so much the plagiarism but the fact that Amanda, a white woman, brought attention to an issue in a way that a woman of color couldn’t and thus rendered that woman of color invisible. (Or this was my interpretation. Y’all can correct me.) This is an old issue: since the 70s (or since the 1870s even, Sojourner Truth notwithstanding) white feminists — who have benefited the most from progressive politics, I would argue — have largely been oblivious to their own privilege and left women of color out of the equation, made them feel they weren’t part of the larger movement.

It’s an important issue to talk about, although I didn’t because I don’t know that I, as a white woman, have much I can add. It sucks that there’s still some racism inherent in the movement. A lot of the apologies I’ve read have rubbed me the wrong way because they sound kind of patronizing, and I never wanted to do that, didn’t want to add to any hurt feelings. What can I do but try to be aware of my own privilege and try to do better by these women who feel they’ve been silenced?

And, besides, ideology is selfish, right? That’s the sad truth.

The success of feminism depends, of course, on the success of all women, including those who are not like me. And women’s experiences are far from universal. So if I have learned anything from reading blog posts on the topic over the last few days, it’s that there’s value in helping all women achieve feminism’s goals, that I can’t succeed unless I help others succeed.

It’s important to keep the discourse going to an extent. I think dwelling on this particular incident is not that useful. We need to take a step back and look at the more systemic problem of racism and privilege in the feminist community, because apologies don’t make the problem go away, although acknowledgment of the problem is a step in the right direction, I think.

Anyway, I didn’t know about any of the controversy when I made plans with some friends to go see Amanda Marcotte read from her new book It’s a Jungle Out There last night. I went to the reading (and here’s proof: that mass of brown hair on the far right of the picture is the back of my head).

And no sooner did I get my book signed than someone noticed that some of the retro jungle images used in the book are pretty darned racist.

Amanda has since apologized, and so has the publisher. Probably I could say something here about how Seal Press not realizing the images were racist to begin with just speaks to their own white privilege, this coming on the heels of a brouhaha in the feminist blog community about how they don’t publish many (or any?) writers of color. But do I even have the agency to speak here? Am I just as full of shit as all the other white apologists?

It sucks. It sucks that this happened. It sucks that women of color feel invisible, that our own willful ignorance renders them invisible. It sucks that white privilege is still not acknowledged by many white feminists. It sucks.

And that’s what I have to say about that.

I’m getting the the advice blog back together. Update your RSS readers accordingly.

+ Check out the Brooklyn Literary 100.

+ 65% of women aged 25-45 have disordered eating. Not surprising, but still alarming.

+ A man in Italy was arrested for staring at a woman. Sure, it seems extreme punishment, but I’m conflicted because I’ve also been the woman stared at. Women should be able to feel safe when traveling, and if it takes threatening to arrest men who make women feel unsafe in obvious ways (staring unrelentingly at a woman for an hour, say) then maybe it’s something to consider? I don’t know.

+ Mandy Kaling, who is awesome, tells you 10 things you don’t know about women.

+ The Times has a profile of the American Worker. The gist: Americans are overworked and underpaid. Gee whiz, I never could have guessed that!

+ On the other hand, Jezebel says it’s called work for a reason.

+ The Official Village Voice Election-Season Guide to the Right-Wing Blogosphere

+ I’m still annoyed about that Tyra-hosted show about people competing for an editorial job at Elle. It’s apparently not just me.

+ Why is it we work hard to cover up something that is natural and happens to almost every woman. *sigh*

+ How expensive is the beer at Yankee Stadium? I feel like saying, “I paid $9.50 for flat Miller Lite” kind of says it all, though.

+ In case you missed it, a few weeks ago, Peter Sagal of NPR had an awesome feminist rant about Horton Hears a Who.

+ Speech and Debate have a lot in common with sports. Damn right they do! Our debate team in high school brought home more trophies than our sports teams in fact. Does this mean I can say I was a jock in high school?

Also, I bought Certain Girls by Jennifer Weiner. Perhaps I’ll review it for the blog after I read.

Today is my roommate Molly’s fourth birthday. Here’s how she feels about getting older: