Growing up in the Spotlight

Here’s an interesting view on what it’s like to be a Disney kid. Joe Jonas published his account of growing up in the spotlight. I think it’s pretty interesting seeing how the patriarchal views of sex and censoring sex acts also affect young men. Let me know what you all think!

Lily Allen: New Video Makes some waves

I love this new video by Lily Allen. If you’ve seen my previous post on Miley Cyrus and Robin Thicke, you’ll enjoy this. It’s a parody on Robin Thicke’s Blurred Lines Video and Miley’s VMA performance. Hope you enjoy it as much as I did!

Sam

“She’s Famous, she’s asking for it”

I had a bit of a heated discussion with one of my followers dealing with my critique of the discourse used to refer to Miley’s VMA performance. I think the biggest problem I had with this discussion was that my follower said “She’s famous, when she acts like that she’s asking to get criticized.”  I think this is a flawed idea. The reason she’s getting criticized in the status quo is because of the patriarchal views of how a woman should act toward her sexuality. The traditional view is a women should not be sexual in anyway; she should be virginal and pure. When young people grow up in Hollywood, you get a double standard of men acting more sexual with little to no criticism and women who are ostracized for showing their sexuality.

So let’s look at few examples of how this double standard affect the young men and women who group up in the public eye:

Justin Timberlake was in NSYNC for most of his teenage years. When he went solo, many of his songs were about sex, and his music videos and performances were provocative. Take one of his new songs Suit and Tie. Verse one starts off: “I can’t wait ’til I get you on the floor, good-looking/ Going hot, so hot, just like an oven/ And I’ll burn myself, but just had to touch it/ But it’s so fine and it’s all mine”. Just wait! Verse 2 gets even better: “Stop, let me get a good look at it/ Oh, so thick, now I know why they call it a fatty/ And aww, shit’s so sick, got a hit and picked up a habit/ But that’s alright, cause you’re all mine/ Awww, go on and show ’em who you call “Daddy”/ I guess they’re just mad cause girl, they wish they had it”. If people want to criticize Miley about being a poor role model, why don’t we call JT out on his musical lyrics, that were played all over the top 20 stations all summer. I was at a family summer festival this summer with young children and this song was played. Why don’t we make a commotion over having the young men in our society exposed to music objectifying women? Why do we consider it completely normal that man can talk about wanting to have sex with a women? Oh that’s right, Justin Timberlake is a man, so he can be a sexual being in our society. I have looked everywhere on the internet. No one has criticized JT for his sexual lyrics or provocative performances. Just another double standard that skates by the public eye, something the most people realize exists and/or don’t question.

I’ve already talked about Miley’s situation. If you didn’t catch my blog post on it, check it out here. There’s also the example of how Robin Thicke’s sexually degrading song, that he wrote explicitly to be degrading to women, didn’t get massive media attention. People are making him to be a victim of Miley’s harlot ways, subjecting a married man to provocative dance, as if he has no say in what happened during the performance. Another double standard.

I could name countless other women affected by this: Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Amanda Bynes, the list goes on and one about female child stars who grow up in the public eye and are criticized for doing what most young women end up doing as well, just out of the public eye. Young women go to college and they act on their new found freedom and sexuality. Ladies, how many of you have gone to a party and done one of the following: make out with someone, twerk to your heart’s content, grind with someone on the dance floor, or go home with someone you met. I’ve done it and I know other girls have done it to. ALL of those things are ok- you’re expressing your natural sexuality and don’t let someone tell you otherwise. Miley is doing the same thing, just in a public setting. Only by confronting this patriarchal view of a woman’s sexuality can we actually make a societal change to ignore the double standards.

Do you agree or disagree?

Sam

Miley at the VMA’s– racial implications

So my friend showed me a really cool article on the racial implications of Miley’s performance. I think it gives a unique perspective on the event. Let me know what you think about it.

Sam

All this talk about Miley is sickening

I have a huge problem with how this whole Miley Cyrus at the VMAs situation went down. I’m going to be honest, I didn’t care for the performance and I would never act like that. However, I’m really bothered by all the slut shaming that Miley has received. I’m am not a Miley fan. I don’t care for her music or her acting but I have a problem with how people responded to her risque performance. Sure it was jaw dropping, something many people didn’t expect. I didn’t watch the performance until a few days after it happened and I saw a large amount of Will Smith memes (which are actually a reaction to Lady Gaga, not Miley) as well as chicken butt memes. I heard lots about how Miley was raunchy and a bad role model for teenage girls.I watched this video and sure, it wasn’t the most kosher thing I have seen on the internet but It definitely wasn’t the worst. I wouldn’t let my boyfriend’s 7 year old sister watch it but that’s part of the reason its on at 9 or 10 at night on MTV (not a prime time channel).

The first thing i’m going to address is this whole “chicken butt” comment. So maybe her shorts were a little too tight. Cool story. The problem with criticizing Miley’s body, is that she doesn’t have an ounce of fat on her. She is so skinny and nit picking at people like that promotes poor body image, that no matter what you do its never enough. I personally have fought with the issue of body image and trying to conform to our idea of a “perfect body”, which is unattainable. Look at Miley, she’s got some curves and is really thin yet people can still say “she needs to do squats before she can wear those shorts”. People wonder why there are an increase in eating disorders in adolescents– it’s because our society, for whatever reason, idolizes the supermodel body that is unattainable by most of the population and then criticize those who don’t have anything wrong with their body. We make comments to question what girls want to eat and wear.

Second, slut shaming, especially in Miley’s case, I find to be done more by women than by men. We are our own worst critics. I’m sure we’ve all heard it. A group of girls gossiping about another girl wearing a skirt that was “too short” or heels that were “too high” or dancing “inappropriately” or making out in public. Let’s be honest ladies, we’ve all talked about another girl doing these things. Most likely, you have done at least one yourself. The problem with slut shaming is we tell women “you’re bad” if you act out of the stereotypical idea of women. People like to think of girls as virtuous and virginal and if we break out of that mold, we’re asking for it. Slut shaming promotes rape culture. It says, if you act provocatively you can’t say no to someone who wants to have sex.

The last thing is that everyone blamed Miley for her provocative acts but I haven’t heard one thing wrong with Robin Thicke’s song Blurred Lines, a song that promotes rape culture.This is another part of slut shaming. Women get criticized, and men get a high five. Men can be sexual and degrading but women have to cross their legs and look pretty.  In an interview with GQ, Robin Thicke said that he and his colleagues were the perfect people to “make fun of” be derogatory towards women because they’re all happily married with children and that it was fun to be derogatory to women for once. I may be going out on a limb here, but if my husband made this song/video I would be rather offended. Just because you’re married doesn’t give you a free pass to be sexist. Many feminists have criticized this song, some even made a feminist parody of the song (I like the lyrics to the parody but I think the video is degrading to men which is counter productive to their point). My biggest problem is that it’s second nature to the public to be critical of a woman who is provocative in any sense but for a man it’s accepted and ok. I hope that someday our concept of gender roles and norms will be constructed in such a way where everyone is held to the same standard– either its inappropriate for anyone to act in a sexual manner (which most likely wont happen) or we all just get over the fact that women are sexual beings too and let it go.

Sam