Girl w/ Pen is pleased to announced the addition of a new columnist to its team.  Dara Persis Murray is an expert in the intersections of beauty and feminism as they occur online and in consumer culture.  Her monthly column, “Mediating Beauty,” will delve into this topic. Without further ado, here’s Dara! 

Robin Thicke’s “Blurred Lines” has been heralded as the song of summer 2013. Since its release, media discourse has cited the music video for the song, in which models dance suggestively around Thicke, T.I., and Pharrell (the song’s male contributors and writers), as a blatant objectification of women. This criticism has been especially strong for the Not Safe for Work (NSFW) version of the video, in which the women are topless.

When questioned about the controversy, Thicke positioned “Blurred Lines” as “what great art does. It’s supposed to stir conversation, it’s supposed to make us talk about what’s important and what the relationship between men and women is, but if you listen to the lyrics it says ‘That man is not your maker’ — it’s actually a feminist movement within itself.”

Thicke’s perspective challenges me to ponder how meanings of feminism have become so misconstrued in popular culture that a music video depicting women in the way that “Blurred Lines” does can in any way be described as “feminist.” Which is why, when I heard recently that there was a “feminist parody” of “Blurred Lines,” I was curious to check out what themes would be drawn out from the original.

“Defined Lines,” created by a group of law students at the University of Auckland, was described by The Independent as “featur[ing] three fully dressed women responding to the attentions of scantily clad men as they sing about sexism.” After watching the video, it was evident to me that the women took issue with the lyrics in “Blurred Lines” (as new lyrics were provided) as well as with how the female body was objectified in the original (they substituted nearly naked men to make this point). Interestingly, the video offers conventionally attractive men in its effort to “objectify” them (perhaps to parallel the conventionally attractive women in “Blurred Lines”). Like so many contemporary depictions of female empowerment, though, “Defined Lines” reinforces visual codes of “acceptable” bodies in media messages. In so doing, it does not make an obvious statement about the ways in which the appearance of the women in “Blurred Lines” denotes standards of beauty that are so closely linked with the objectification of women.

Clearly, the parody’s creators wanted to “flip the script” by portraying a gender reversal of the “Blurred Lines” video. However, representations of men in (almost) the buff simply do not convey the same cultural meanings as women without clothing, as each gender’s socially, politically, and economically situated role is different. And, since beauty norms play such an important role in how women feel about their bodies and themselves, taking this issue on could have contributed to a larger conversation about the objectification of women and sexism. Instead, female “empowerment” is presented through lyrics that combat sexism in ways that pit women against men, as well as by showing women walking men on leashes or placing their stilettos on the men’s backs as the men do push-ups.

I applaud the creators of “Defined Lines” for taking “Blurred Lines” to task. Since I am writing this piece, perhaps both of these videos can be considered “art,” in that they have worked to generate conversation about media depictions of gender and messages of popular feminism. But, “objectifying” men does not help to unravel the knot between meanings of female beauty, objectification, and sexism in media messages.

I just finished reading the June issue of Poetry magazine, which features the landay, an oral form of poetry popular among Pashtun women in Afghanistan.

You should really just go read the issue here. But here’s a quick description:

The landay is an anonymous and collective tradition with origins in the Indo-Aryan caravans of thousands of years ago. These couplets were traditionally sung to the beat of a hand drum. “Landay” itself means “short, poisonous snake,” and it can indeed bite like a snake: quick and frequently acerbic, the landay is only twenty-two syllables long, with nine syllables in one line and thirteen in the other.

Here’s an example of one:

You sold me to an old man, father.
May God destroy your home, I was your daughter.

Landays are a form in which women can voice a rage of feelings—love, longing, anger, desire, lust, pride, nationalism, and grief—while remaining anonymous. Because they’re constantly repeated and remixed, they’re not about the speaker personally. At the same time, they are about the speaker, because different landays resonate with different individuals.

Landays are often shared in secret. Men don’t hear women speak or sing them. As a consequence, they can be subversive in multiple ways.

The poet-journalist who translated these landays, Eliza Griswold, worked with photographer Seamus Murphy in Afghanistan to collect as many landays as possible. Their collaboration resulted in the stunningly beautiful issue of Poetry (which also features some fabulous commentary by Griswold) as well as a forthcoming collection, I Am The Beggar Of The World: Landays From Contemporary Afghanistan, pictured above.

(If you’re really interested, Seamus Murphy has made a short film, Snake, with more images and audio that includes recitations of landays in Pashto and English. There’s also an older collection of landays, called Songs of Love and War: Afghan Women’s Poetry, originally collected and translated into French by the poet Sayd Bahodine Majrouh during the civil war in the 1980s, and then translated into English by the distinguished Marjolijn de Jager. Oh, and check out the Facebook page on landays as well.)

Despite all the writing about Afghanistan in the West—the journalism, the policy papers, the political pronouncements—these poems remind us of the voices that are shut out of the halls of power. Their lines suggest deep and often bitter feelings about the U.S., the Taliban, and the years of war and foreign occupation. One landay dating back to the nineteenth century used to be about a British soldier, but today it has changed:

My lover is fair as an American soldier can be.
To him I looked dark as a Talib, so he martyred me.

Many of these poems are political and speak with rage about loss and destruction.

The speakers of these landays aren’t voiceless victims. I’m reminded of Lila Abu-Lughod’s critique of the rhetoric around “saving” Afghan women that was used to justify the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan in 2001. What happens when we construct the Afghan woman as someone as in need of saving, she asks: “What violences are entailed in this transformation, and what presumptions are being made about the superiority of that to which you are saving her?”

By contrast, these poems reveal a complex portrait. They speak of the ongoing oppression of Pashtun women, many of whom are illiterate—but they also suggest women’s agency and depth as human beings.

They also hint at the complex position of Pashtun women in ways that resonate with women’s postcolonial writing from other regions of the world. Feelings of nationalism—fostered in resistance to occupation and imperialism—vie with critiques of patriarchy. Gender matters, but it’s certainly not the only problem.

Most of all, I’m struck by how many of these landays speak openly about desire and lust. More than anything, this theme counters the image of Afghan women as victims. I won’t quote the bawdiest ones (they might make Shakespeare blush!), but here’s one to end on:

Is there not one man here brave enough to see
how my untouched thighs burn the trousers off me?

I’m eager to see more feminist scholarship on Afghan women’s poetry—and to read more landays.

This guest post is brought to you by Kendra Ijeoma, Engagement Coordinator at Women Employed in Chicago, Illinois. A feminist, social media junkie and aspiring social entrepreneur, Kendra mobilizes supporters online and in-person to become activists for women’s economic security, workforce development and access to education. She earned her bachelor’s degree in Sociology from Seattle University with a focus in Women’s Studies.

In a political climate that is so unfavorable for women, our rights eroded and our needs marginalized at seemingly every turn.

On August 5^th, three powerhouse Chicago women participated in a roundtable discussion in honor of Women Employed’s 40^th anniversary about how women can build power and exert influence in civic, professional, and political life. U.S. Representative Robin Kelly, author Rebecca Sive, whose new book, Every Day is Election Day, was recently released, and former Chief of Staff to Michelle Obama Susan Sher offered salient advice to women, as well as important stories about how they have achieved success and attained positions of power both in Chicago and nationally.

The conversation could not have come at a better time.

The takeaway? Women can and do have power and influence, but asserting that power can be tricky. For women, the route to success and to making your voice heard means walking a tightrope of proclaiming your individual qualifications and accomplishments, while also working successfully in collaboration with other women.

Susan Sher, now Executive Vice President for Corporate Strategy and Public Affairs at the University of Chicago Medical Center and Senior Advisor to the University President, advised women not to be afraid of, “shameless self-promotion. When you do a great job and you think you’ll be recognized, it just isn’t true. It’s important to take credit for what you do.”  This was a theme echoed by each of the women on the panel.

However, Sher, Kelly, and Sive also emphasized that many women are naturally self-effacing, which can undermine our interests. For that reason, banding together with other women can be powerful, and is a vital strategy to make people stand up and pay attention to women’s needs. Sive emphasized that for women, “The route to power and influence is not a route you take alone. There is strength in numbers. You can win with women and for women.” Rep. Kelly echoed that sentiment, adding that, “there’s something special about what women can do together.”

So as a regular woman leading a regular life, where do you start? All of the panelists, as well as Women Employed Executive Director Anne Ladky, who moderated the event, stressed that while it’s important to have women in government and in the board room, the most vital agent of change will be everyday women like you and me standing up and exerting their own power. Every woman can have influence over her life and her circumstances. But we must be vocal in our churches, our neighborhoods, our book clubs, our school boards, and our offices.

As women, we need to speak up about issues like paid sick days, family-supporting wages, flexible schedules, access to affordable childcare, healthcare, and education, and countless other issues that impact us – as well as our partners and families. If we don’t take that step, things will never change.

So get out there. Make your voice heard. Shout your accomplishments out loud. Register to vote and go to the polls. Stand up for the issues you care about. Proclaim your message on social media. If you don’t, nobody will. And if you’re in Chicago, get connected with Women Employed, who has been fighting for economic opportunity for women for 40 years. We make it easy for you to make a difference. Visit www.womenemployed.org/act to find out how.

Two critical pieces of U.S. voting rights legislation mark anniversaries this August: the ratification of the 19^th amendment in 1920 guaranteeing women the vote and the 1965 Voting Rights Act ensuring every citizen regardless of race or language equal access to the voting booth. Unfortunately, there is little time to celebrate past victories. Critical new battles are underway in the struggle for equal voting rights.

This past June the Supreme Court dismantled Section 4 of the 1965 Voting Rights Act. Section 4 required states with a history of racial discrimination to receive prior federal approval before making changes in voting regulations. Immediately some states moved to implement laws previously blocked by Section 4. Others proposed radical new legislation restricting access to voting.

Many Americans seem to forget how hard fought the battles for voting rights have been, how many suffered and died.  Maybe they don’t read their history books; maybe they don’t  pay attention to what’s happening around them. Others simply don’t care. They apparently believe in full democracy only when it suits their own purposes.

The history of the 19^th amendment and the decades of effort before its final ratification were not included in my schoolbooks. I learned these lessons from my childhood friend, Miss Georgiana Fulton. She told of the suffragists who picketed President Wilson at the White House in 1917. She urged me to read about the 1848 Seneca Falls Declaration of Sentiments, and how abolitionist Frederick Douglass’s eloquent speech helped convince delegates to include Elizabeth Cady Stanton’s controversial demand for women’s suffrage.

I met Miss Fulton the spring I was eight.  She was in her seventies and lived alone in a ram-shackled cottage without indoor plumbing. Most of the other kids thought she was crazy. But I loved the sweet smelling hyacinths in her overgrown garden and one day she invited me in.

Soon I was stopping every few days on my way home from school.   Miss Fulton told wonderful stories–of leaving Shreveport, LA on her own to study art in Paris in 1900, of the artists she knew in New York, and of places nearby where wild violets grew in abundance. She helped me with my schoolwork and often asked me interesting questions I couldn’t answer. Some of the questions were about issues we now refer to as civil rights.

Miss Fulton was fierce in her determination that I understand that women had fought for the right to vote. She once lectured me when I told her girls could be class president just like boys. Her words are still alive in my mind. “That’s fine, child, but mark my words, there’s no equality yet. And don’t you ever let them say, ‘women were given the right to vote’.  They say that now, I know they say it, but it’s not true, not true!”

I was in seventh grade when the Supreme Court ruled in Brown v the Board of Education. Our teacher told us the decision was one of the most important in decades and that our lives would be better because of it.

Miss Fulton had a different reaction. “Child, listen to me. There will be trouble home in ‘Luziana; they won’t like this at all.”

I tried to argue with her. “It’s only fair, how can someone say people have to be separated because of the color of their skin? That’s not right!”

“Ah, child, you are not listening. You know nothing about this.” Miss Fulton’s voice was sharp, and her words stuck in my head, “I’m not saying the decision was wrong, I’m saying things can be right and still not succeed.”

“Change comes hard, child, very hard,” she continued, “You mark my words, girl, these things are much more complicated than you or your teacher know. You’ll learn.”

Miss Fulton was right; I had a lot to learn. And the foundation for much of my learning started with her stories.

We all have stories to tell when it comes to things we care about—our own, or those we’ve made our own because they’ve touched and impressed us. People need to hear these stories.  They convey more than information, they carry emotion, conviction and care.

Change does come hard, and people do fear it. Stories that lodge in the mind and linger in the heart can make a difference. Such stories inspire commitment and sustain perseverance. An abundance of both is required in the unfinished struggle for equal rights–in the voting booth and beyond.

There are many reasons to check out veteran journalist Alissa Quart’s new book, Republic of Outsiders: The Power of Amateurs, Dreamers and Rebels. And not just because I love the graphic cover or because she is my good friend. Well, maybe those are reasons 2 and 3. But don’t take my word alone.

The book is generating some well-deserved buzz: Approval Matrix of New York Magazine, Flavorwire’s top books of August, excerpts in The Nation and O.

So what’s it about? Outsiders who seek to redefine a wide variety of fields, from film and mental health to diplomacy and music, from how we see gender to what we eat. Professional and amateur filmmakers crowd-sourcing their work, transgender and autistic activists, Occupy Wall Street’s “alternative bankers.”  These people create and package new identities. They are “identity innovators”, pushing the boundaries of who they can be and what they can do–and moving the mainstream as they go.

My favorite chapter, no surprise, is the one titled “Beyond Feminism.” Here, Quart profiles a number of transpeople and reflects on how the thinking about gender-as-spectrum is moving the dial:

They were innovating their own identities but also trying to alter feminism itself. Transcending and remixing sex stereotypes, they believed, was a necessary next stage for the development of both men and women. In order to obtain greater equality for all, they thought, we must look again at how gender biases and clichés limit all of us.

Deeply reported, the book at large explores how, as stated on Amazon, “without a middleman, freed of established media, and highly mobile, unusual ideas and cultures are able to spread more quickly and find audiences and allies.” It’s a close look at those for whom being rebellious, marginal, or amateur is a source of strength.

Writes Publishers Weekly, in a starred review, “Quart’s profiles are thoroughly researched and admirably evenhanded.” Says Booklist, “Lots of good food for thought and solid inspiration for those who feel stifled by traditional choices.”

Ever feel like an outsider? Ever hunger for a sharp cultural analysis of how the margins inform the center? Folks, this book is for you.

As someone immersed in the process of writing a graphic memoir, and a serious newbie, imagine my delight when I came upon the Ladydrawers Comics Collective. Imagine my further delight when I learned that this collective is based in my new hometown, Chicago.  I waited all of three seconds before reaching out to learn more. The result is the interview below, with three of the collective’s members who were gracious enough to answer my (myriad) questions.

Anne Elizabeth Moore is a Fulbright scholar, a UN Press Fellow, the Truthout columnist behind Ladydrawers: Gender and Comics in the US, and the author of several award-winning books including Cambodian Grrrl (Cantankerous Titles 2011),  Unmarketable (The New Press 2007), and New Girl Law. Fran Syass is a filmmaker and artist from Chicago and recently graduated The School of the Art Institute. Lindsey Smith is an undergraduate student at The School of the Art Institute of Chicago and currently pursuing a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree with a focus in Animation and Film.

Here, they talk to me about hybridity, intersectionality, love affairs with comics, gender and racial bias in the comic-book world, their new documentary film, breaking even, and what Jane Addams has to do with it all.

Enjoy! – Deborah

GWP: Anne, you founded the Ladydrawers Comics Collective after a decade in the comics industry and were recently called “one of the sharpest thinkers and cultural critics bouncing around the globe today” by Razorcake. I understand the collective began in 2010 as a class you taught at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, with volunteers from outside of academia and professional cartoonists coming in to talk to the students. Three years later, what’s your vision for the collective now?

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE: Well, the research we use began a decade ago, and I did start teaching a class in 2010, but folks didn’t really cohere as a collective until the summer of 2011.  It’s hard, as a collective member, to really have a vision for what a bunch of people will want to do for even five minutes down the line, much less six months, and our structure is pretty loose. So I’ll ask Francis to weigh in on this too. He was in that class, and is the visionary behind Comics Undressed, the documentary, so pretty heavily involved in decision-making about what we’ll be doing in the coming months. But I can tell you what we’ve committed to, besides the documentary we’re hoping to fund. In February we’ll have an exhibition in an art space in Pilsen that showcases political-themed work. And then for the next year we’ve developed a pretty amazing program for the Truthout comics I do monthly: I’ll be tracking global gendered labor issues through the production line of fast fashion and the sex trade, starting with retail workers in the US and going back through warehouses and factories—particularly in Cambodia, which I’ve written about for years. There the garment trade also raises a lot of questions about the sex industry and the really under-examined anti-human trafficking industry, which is often based on fear of sex and women’s economic power and not on facts at all. Those strips will start to appear in August, and while the first two years of the Truthout series brought in a different artist each month, these will work with an artist over a period of three months, so we can develop a better language and narrative—so it’s more evident how these things all interconnect.

Truthout’s been incredibly supportive of our work in investigative comics journalism and innovative research methodologies. We’re really excited to continue working with them.

GWP: I love Truthout, another Chicago-based gem. Next question. I’ve become intrigued with the way academic theory is increasingly, and literally, informing comics—Winnicott running through Alison Bechdel’s Are You My Mother? seems to be just one example. Women’s eNews described Ladydrawers’ work as “Making an art form out of researching and publishing findings that others might write or talk about.” What kinds of theories and research findings interest you most these days, and what makes comics an apt vehicle for knowledge dissemination?

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE: Comics have always, always, always been a hybrid form as open to influence from the literary or academic worlds as from the pop cultural worlds. Their very hybridity makes them a good way to explore difficult ideas. But this project started as a way to look at and research first gender, and then racial bias in the comic-book world. We were never going to use a standard research paper format to present that work—that just doesn’t make sense. Still, ranking comics on a scale established by literature does the form an injustice. Comics are a visual medium. Literature isn’t. We can’t overlook that.

GWP: Speaking of overlooked, you’ve noted, Anne, that when you were editing Best American Comics (the annual anthology published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt), there was no shortage of submissions by women, but that traditionally barriers to inclusion and visibility carry a gendered tinge. What are the continued barriers, would you say?

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE: Well the first year and a half of the Truthout strips looked at the phenomenon of gender bias—and to a lesser degree, race and class bias—within comics really closely, and proved it, and provided some potential for changing it. Then more recently the last six months of Truthout strips lay out the broader cultural implications pretty clearly: there’s a historic lack of protection for women as a labor force, and a legal structure within cultural production that fails to acknowledge feminine forms or female-identified producers, which isn’t even an issue just for women, we see when we start to look at trans* identities—it’s an issue of gender policing being hidden within otherwise seemingly innocuous bodies of law like intellectual property rights. So what we end up with, which we shorthand to “misogyny” and “transphobia” when we talk about gender, and then “white supremacy” when we see the same system applied to folks with a diversity of racial identifications, isn’t actually a single, identifiable flaw within an overall system. It is endemic to the entirety of the system. The barriers are that capitalism is designed to work best for straight white men, and single-issue organizing to change it—most feminist concerns, for example—merely enfolds a new group of folks into this category of inclusion, although often for only a short time. Only an intersectional approach—that considers race and economics and physical ability and a range of gender identities—will offer possibilities for improvement, but the real, lasting barrier is getting folks who feel hurt by the system from their particular vantage point to see that.

GWP: You describe the collective as “a curiosity-driven, open-ended, exploratory body of friendly amateur researchers, concerned with who gets to say what in our culture and how they may or may not be supported in or compensated for saying it.” Any plans to collectively monetize the important work that you all do?

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE: Interestingly, this is a project largely about, and situated within, capitalism: the “profit” to folks who work with us, while in school, are educational, and then once folks graduate, we try to make sure folks get paid or somehow compensated for their labor. But we’re also open to everyone, and part of the deal in working with us is knowing that we’ll do our best to get you something for your labor. Because comics are labor unlike any others in cultural production: it’s grueling, even compared to film, and no economy has really cohered around it for all participants. We try not to work with folks who are too ego-driven—folks who will take more than a share of the pie, whether the emotional one or the economic one—but it’s all pretty loose. Stuff happens. But the point is: establishing an economic base for underrepresented creators is important, to shift the dynamics of the industry. But to me, getting rich from doing that isn’t.

FRAN SYASS: Monetary success seems somewhat irrelevant to the Ladydrawers ethos, and I can’t find there is much profit for what we do. Though many of us are looking for our big breaks one day, this group isn’t really about that. As long as we get our research across and as long as we’re content with the work we do than, we’re just happy to break even by the end of the day.

GWP: You’re in Chicago. Erin Polgreen launched Symbolia from out here too. My partner and I are currently collaborating on a graphic memoir about the gendering of our b/g twins. Is there something about Chicago that’s conducive to innovative comics initiatives, or did I just move here at a fortuitous time?

ANNE ELIZABETH MOORE: Chicago’s been at the forefront of not just comics creation but of supporting a diversity of creators of comics for a really long time, starting with people like Jackie Ormes in the 1940s, and including folks like Dale Lavarov, Lilli Carré, Dan Clowes, and Laura Park in recent decades. Brain Frame, CAKE (Chicago Alternative Comics Expo), Trubble Club—these are some of the most innovative comics-related projects in the country right now, and what we do fits right in line with the ideas inherent in these projects: that comics can and should be parts of larger cultural movements to foster innovative dialogue. When I started the Best American Comics series, in fact, my editor sort of said, “You can move to New York now!” And I was like, I’ve already read all the Brooklyn cartoonists. This is where the real work’s at. The labor history in Chicago, in combination with the work ethic, make for really really interesting cultural production—from the social practice-based art scene to, I would argue (and will, in an upcoming essay) independent publishing in general but comics in particular. I’ve heard it echoed a lot with Ladydrawers stuff, too: we are very identified with Chicago, and I think it has as much to do with Jane Addams—who did remarkably similar research to what we do—as it does with the great comics being made here.

GWP: A number of your members are professional cartoonists, graphic artists, storytellers, zinesters, or official students of the form, but there’s also an aspiring journalist, a lingerie designer, a cashier, a fiber artist, a PhD student in rhetoric, an art professor, and a band. Many have cats. I have a cat. Can I join the collective?

FRAN SYASS: I really don’t know. I like to say you can, you already are, and you cannot, all at the same time. In my mind, it would be perfectly fine to increase the ranks of the Ladydrawers, and if you already do work similar to us or if we do work that you deeply care about why the heck not? However, there is just no official way to grant such a title to anyone, or everyone. Depending on the projects we undertake directly lead to the amount of people we need to participate in the group.

GWP: Tell us about Comics Undressed, the documentary film you’re funding through Kickstarter.  What do you hope to accomplish through the film?

LINDSEY SMITH: Comics Undressed is a documentary project that came about as an idea to formulate our findings and research into a unified piece that could easily be understood and conveyed to a larger audience outside of our ongoing comics work.  To start, Comics Undressed was sort of an idea, a project of Ladydrawers member and Director Fran Syass. When I met him he was still in the early stages of how exactly he wanted to construct the film and the best ways in which to explore the extensive research the Ladydrawers were collecting. Things really started coming together when we decided that the best way to do this was to go out into the world and hear directly from creators, readers and fans alike. What struck us most were the ways in which everyone had their own story to tell, their own love affair with comics, both good and bad. Interestingly the interviews would always end the same way, with hope for the future of comics and where it could go from here. I feel this is what we hope to accomplish overall with our film. To take a hard, long look at comics and see what is being done right and what is being done wrong and saying, “how can we make this better?”.

FRAN SYASS: I’ve always wanted to contribute more of my talents to the Ladydrawers, and most of my previous works delved less on my social, cultural, and political interests and more on my own aesthetic leanings. It seemed like the right time for the group and myself to tackle something that allowed more people to know what we were discovering about comics and popular culture. The Kickstarter we are currently running will run until the 18th of August and is our way to fund the project and hopefully break even financially in the end. The money we raise will primarily go to our equipment costs, transportation and event fees, and pay for our crew. Moreover, the financial support will help us aim for a completed film by the spring of 2014.

Editor’s note: The 18th of August is fast approaching. Help these amazing artists out by spreading this link, or considering a donation, if moved: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1105013300/comics-undressed. For more info, watch the video below.

You can follow Ladydrawers via:

Twitter @TheLadydrawers

Tumblr  http://ladydrawers.tumblr.com/

Check out the Truthout strip here.

Full-page links to comics reprinted above:

Why Have There Been No Great Women Comics Artists, Part 2

Why Have There Been No Great Women Comics Artists, Part 3

Simone Ispa-Landa, Assistant Professor in the Department of Human Development & Social Policy at Northwestern University, is a new dear friend and fellow mama with a pen.  A sociologist who researches adolescence, race and ethnicity, gender, and (most recently) stigma and the effects of criminal record labeling, she teaches courses on qualitative methods. She is fiercely feminist in her intersectional approach, a passionate scholar grounded in the here and now. Below, she responds to the current conversation about what Black parents can and should tell their kids about how to stay safe. It’s not Black families that are failing in their efforts to protect their children, she reminds us. And she’s got the analysis to back it up.  Here’s Simone.  –Deborah Siegel

Three weeks after George Zimmerman’s acquittal, it’s a good time to reflect on a curious conversation that has been unfolding in its wake – one about what Black parents can and should tell their kids about how to stay safe and survive. Obviously, these are great – and unfortunately necessary – conversation for families, and especially Black families, to have.  But on a national level, I think we need a different conversation. Instead of talking about what parents can do and say to keep “at-risk” kids safe, let’s talk about how race matters for both “at-risk” and privileged kids.

Feminists working in the intersectionality framework have long noted that representations of Black women as bad mothers and Black men as absent fathers are important cogs in an ideological machine.  This is the machine that produces images of Black youth as “bad seeds” – on the way to becoming high-school dropouts, dangerous criminals, irresponsible parents, or just plain poor.

The recent events surrounding the shooting of Trayvon Martin only confirm the idea that Black youth – and especially Black males – face a world of hazard that most White people cannot even imagine.  After all, how many White parents have to worry about their teenage sons being shot and killed when they leave the house to go to the store? Or face a court system that pretends to be “race-blind” and repetitively silences the very issues of race that lie at the heart of its most troubling cases?

That said, the entirely sad and perhaps utterly predictable unfolding of the Trayvon Martin case, from the moment the 17-year old first attracted the attention of an armed neighborhood watch volunteer as “suspicious” to the defense attorneys’ devious attempts to reconfigure our image of Trayvon Martin from victim to “dangerous Black male thug” – should force the nation to rethink the spurious notion that Black families – and especially mothers – are responsible for the tragedies that disproportionately befall their children.

Black families are not failing in their efforts to protect their children.  Rather, it is the broader society – including the lingering effects of centuries of race-based exclusion, segregation, and cultural devaluation – that are making it so difficult for Black families to keep their kids safe.  In fact, it’s possible that the whole notion of “at-risk” Black youth would fade into an old-fashioned anachronism if our public institutions were half as committed to the welfare of the next generations of Black youth as their families were.

Indeed, research by people like Signthia Fordham suggests that many Black parents engage in hyper-vigilant surveillance and monitoring of their children’s whereabouts, all to guard their children against the kinds of danger that more privileged parents don’t even have to consider.  Further, while privileged suburban kids might bristle against their parents’ rules about cars, sex, homework, and drinking in bids to show off their autonomy, many Black kids in this country don’t have that luxury.

In my recent research, I examined how a sample of urban Black youth understood their parents’ rules and monitoring practices.  The participants in my sample legitimized even fairly restrictive parental restrictions as reasonable – as appropriately attuned to the hazards they faced.  The teens in my sample believed that following parents’ rules was critical for staying safe – and achieving future economic security.  In fact, the accounts of the urban Black teenagers whom I interviewed strongly diverged from accounts of more privileged American teens, who researchers like Amy Schalet, author of Not Under My Roof: Parents, Teens, and the Culture of Sex, describe as rebellious and prone to “sneaking around” behind their parents’ backs.  In my research, I theorized that the adolescents in my sample were different from more privileged (White) kids, in part because they could not afford to go off the straight and narrow. They didn’t have that freedom.

As many critical race scholars have argued, everyone in society is a racialized subject.  Part of being White means benefiting from the fact that whiteness in American society still functions as the universal, high-status, and unstated “norm,” and non-whiteness as different, low-status, and visible.   When white kids wander into their own or others’ neighborhoods, they are benefiting from the privileges that come from belonging to this “unmarked group.”  And, as Trayvon Martin’s shooting shows, belonging to a group that is marked as different, low-status, and visible can be incredibly dangerous, regardless of how well (or not) your parents prepare you for this reality.

So, instead of dissecting all the things parents of “at-risk” kids – and the kids themselves – should be doing to stay safe, let’s start a new conversation about all the ways that society can shift to make this a place where it’s easier to be a parent, and where being a kid means having the luxury (even if only occasionally) to rebel – without paying a tragic price.

On October 9, 2012, Malala Yousafzai was shot on a bus in Pakistan. Last month, she addressed the UN about the need for free, compulsory education for all children around the world.

Malala has inspired many people in the global campaign for girls’ education—a campaign that has partly provided inspiration for a new Pakistani female superhero, “Burka Avenger.” Created by entrepreneur and pop star Haroon Rashid, Burka Avenger is a cartoon series centered on the adventures of Jiya, a mild-mannered schoolteacher. Disguised as Burka Avenger, she fights for justice and education with her martial arts skills and her weapons of choice: books and pens. (Think Clark Kent in a sleek burqa.)

Much of the coverage in the West has touched on the feminist critique of Burka Avenger’s costume. The BBC quotes Marvi Sirmed, an Islamabad-based journalist and human rights activist, who observed the following problem with the show’s message: “you can only get power when you don a symbol of oppression.” Karachi-based writer Bina Shaw asked the following on her blog:

Is it right to take the burka and make it look ‘cool’ for children, to brainwash girls into thinking that a burka gives you power instead of taking it away from you?

In defense of his character’s burqa, creator Rashid said the following on NPR:

We chose the burqa because of course we wanted to hide her identity the way superheroes do. She doesn’t wear the burqa during the day—she doesn’t even wear a headscarf, or a hijab or anything like that; she goes about her business as a normal teacher would. And so she chooses to wear the burqa, she’s not oppressed… and on the other end of the spectrum, a lot of female superheroes in the West are objectified, and sort of sexualized in their costumes, like Catwoman and Wonder Woman, and that certainly would not work here.

What remains to be seen is what kids in Pakistan will make of the show—arguably what matters the most. As an English professor, I think about this all the time. As a parent, I think about this every time I talk with my kids about what they read and watch. It’s really quite remarkable, the way we all can create such different meanings out of the stories and images that surround us.

I’m reminded of a review written earlier this year by Lori Rotskoff, one of the editors of When We Were Free to Be: Looking Back at a Children’s Classic and the Difference It Made, about her experience watching “Charlie’s Angels” as a young girl in the 1970s. She observes that

In hindsight, I see that my nine-year-old mindset didn’t jibe with second-wave feminists’, who viewed the Angels as braless bimbos or, worse, as promiscuous pawns in a misogynist enterprise. While the Angels were hardly poster girls for radical feminism, many of us young female spectators regarded them as tough and talented, not titillating.

How will Pakistani children view Burka Avenger, and what messages will they take from her and her superhero costume? Only time will tell.

I enjoy going to Comic-Con. The creative costumes and the variety of people in them, old and young, fat and thin, gender normative and gender queer, as well as the diversity of non-costumed attendees gleefully taking pictures with those in costumes make the event feel like a huge, four-day long Halloween. I also enjoy the coverage of shows and movies I love, the throng of people devoted to their love of “geeky” or “nerdy” stuff, the fact that the crowds are as diverse as the shows, texts, writers, and so on the Con features. In short, I am a fan of Comic-Con. That doesn’t mean I can’t also be critical of it. What am I critical of? Well, two things in particular. One, the fact that women are now at least 40% of the attendees but are not anywhere near 40% represented on panels or in Con content. And two, the misogynistic, prurient atmosphere that sometimes rears its drooling, leering head wherein (usually females) are objectified and/or harassed by others.

Regarding content, the panels themselves are still largely a “male domain.” This has not changed in the past three years I have attended. As in the media world generally, most directors, writers, producers and lead actors featured are male. And, even when there are females on the panels, males often dominate discussion. As a case in point, the Divergent panel.

Neil Burger (the director of the Divergent film) did most of the talking even when the moderator directed questions to the AUTHOR of the series, Veronica Roth. Burger was much like the dominator of the Doctor Who panel, Steven Moffat, who did the majority of the talking. Acting as if he had CREATED Doctor Who, Moffat said at one point, “the only way to write anything is to write for yourself.” An interesting claim while sitting in a hall filled with 6,500 fans who apparently don’t mean a thing as it’s all about YOU Steven. In contrast to the egotistical-sounding Moffat, Matt Smith and Jenna Coleman were very personable and funny and THANKED the fans.

A nice variance to these white male dominators was Alfonso Cuaron, director of the upcoming Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock, who defended his choice of casting a female lead and noted his dismay that such defenses are still necessary (for a post on this, see here).

Though Cuaron displayed an awareness of the gender disparities within entertainment media, neither the Divergent panel nor the Doctor Who panel offered much commentary on gender, something that seemed glaringly absent given the Katniss-esque awesomeness of the main character Triss in Divergent as well as the recent buzz about casting the Doctor as a female (as here).

On a positive note, during the Supernatural panel, Jensen Ackles (Sam) compared the new character Kevin to Katniss (how often are males praised for being like females, let alone male characters praised for being like a female character?!?) and Felicia Day (Charlie) pointed out the nearly all male cast and creators of Supernatural, ribbing others on the panel that “I think the show needs a Teflon vagina.”

Speaking of Teflon vaginas, a show that has multiple of these is Dexter, and during the panel Michael C. Hall insisted a key part of why the show is so good and so successful is that the writing staff is half female. (Other shows, please take note!!!!)

The Vampire Diaries panel, another show with female writers, also deserves a shout-out for the panelists astute handling of the creepy question from a mother in the audience who shared that she is trying to teach her daughter the “values of abstinence” by showing her “edited” episodes of the show and asked if the panelists would support her abstinence endeavor. After friendly joking regarding how she sees viewing Vampire Diaries as “abstinence training,” the panelists vehemently refused to support her abstinence agenda with reference to sex as pleasurable, important, and natural.

And, though Comic-Con tends to be more about loving shows and geeking out over what would happen if Hans Solo met Indiana Jones (a question posed to Harrison Ford during the Ender’s Game panel), political analysis was not entirely absent. Ford, for example, made references to Ender’s Game being very much about militarism and moral complexity while Terry Gilliam mocked NSA spying practices in his spoof about his upcoming film Zero Theorem.

I was unable to attend any of the panels focused on females which tend to have the most pointed discussions of gender – an illustration of a point often made by Women’s Studies professors, that if you don’t have “Women” in the title or description of courses (or, in this case, panels) they are often left out, as if “male” equaled “human.”

Holly Derr, writing on some of these gender-specific Con panels for Bitch noted the takeaway she got was “the female experience is the human experience, people just aren’t trained to think that way.” Indeed. If they were, we would not need gender-specific panels in order to have more gender equitable panels.  Alas, as “male” is still perceived as the human norm, many Comic-Con panels are predominantly, if not all, males.

Sadly, this was the case at the “Zombies in Popular Cutlure” panel, one of the panels I was most looking forward to given I am currently working on a book analyzing the zombie genre from a feminist perspective.

Oh well, despite not one female on the panel, nor any discussion of gender in the zombie oeuvre, I did see a number of fabulous females dressed as zombies or in zombie-related costumes – one of which was a telling commentary on, well, quite a bit. She wore a tank top and shorts. Nothing unique in San Diego. What turned her outfit into a costume with a subtext of political commentary was what she had written on her shirt in blood-colored paint: “Slutty Victim.” Whether she meant this as a feminist statement or not, I do not know. But I took it as one. The cursive claim emblazoned across her chest calls to mind the rape culture in which we reside, in which women “ask for it,” as well as the Comic-Con culture wherein some attendees feel entitled to ogle and, in some cases, sexually harass and/or assault, the females that to them are no more than “slutty victims” for their violating gazes and gropes.

Admittedly, there are many positive interactions surrounding the costume features of the Con. For example, one can hear mutual compliments between those in innovative, creative costumes and witness humans of all varieties anxious to take pictures of costumed attendees, a practice that is usually filled with appreciation and revelry. As my professor friend describes it, this gives the Con a carnivalesque atmosphere that allows for positive expressions of geekdom, sexuality, and gender expression.

On her experience as a first time Con-attendee she writes, “As a feminist, I was a little nervous about what it would be like at the Con…because of the reputation of geek culture as male (or masculinist—with its scantily-clad women with impossible curves) but I really found it to be quite friendly and welcoming. In fact, for me, I felt like it was a relatively safe space for women to express their sexualities publically and positively.  I saw a range of women of different ages, body sizes, ethnicities, and class backgrounds dressed in revealing or sexualized outfits or costumes, and I personally felt safe enough to wear what I considered to be a “sexy” outfit on Saturday.  The ubiquitous presence of cosplayers is one of the (many) things that gives the Con a carnivalesque atmosphere in which certain norms about sexuality (such as who can be considered attractive, who “should” wear revealing clothes, or what it means when someone is wearing a sexy costume) can be tested and perhaps temporarily transcended.  But, among all of the costumes and scantily-clad women, there also seemed to be a profound acceptance for the “non-sexy” woman, or the awkward geek who does not perform the various rituals of femininity as expected, which added to the welcoming, carnivalesque atmosphere.”

Though I agree the Con provides a carnivalesque atmosphere, sometimes the more freeing aspects of carnival transform into behavior that is more in line with domination and assault. On that note, what I don’t love about Comic-Con are is its hyper-pornified aspects (though these are thankfully not its predominant aspects), not only because I take my 14-year-old daughter with me, but because there are LOTS of children in attendance. I could say the same thing of the world in general – it is far too hyper-sexualized in a negative, objectifying way, and there are LOTS of children in the world. Can we shield children from sex? Should we? Of course not! But must we give them the message that when other humans dress in a certain way, particularly female humans, that unwarranted grabs/comments/leering is A-ok? I think not. Admittedly, this hyper-porn feel was much more readily apparent outside the walls of the convention than inside it, especially in the surrounding Gaslamp area and the food truck lot. This inside/outside dichotomy is interesting, and one I hope to explore further next year. Is the Convention Center more “conventional” and “safe” due to the fact only ticket holders can enter, to its formal convention hall feel, to the ubiquity of Comic-Con staff and volunteers, to the fact no alcohol is sold inside? Whatever the reasons, “inside” was less-pornified than “outside” – not because there weren’t sexy, flesh-baring costumes – there were  – in spades! – but because the reactions to such costumes were generally less objectifying. To clarify, I would class “objectifying” reactions as those that treat another human as an OBJECT rather than as a person. It’s when the eyes of another takes on a leering, intrusive, non-consensual gaze that feels predatory. This objectifying gaze, when accompanied by comments or actions, can easily slide into harassment. (For posts of sexual harassment at Con’s see here and here and here. For the Con Anti-Harassment project see here.)

Thankfully, the atmosphere was overall more carnivalesque than prurient this year, a factor I appreciated very much given the first year I attended felt far more pornified and icky, especially in the exhibit hall and surrounding outside areas of the Con.

Now, if only we could have the Con content represent the fact that the female experience is the human experience by including women on the majority of panels. Even in cases where casts and creators and writers and illustrators are all male, there is no reason female moderators can’t be utilized. And, how about some acknowledgement of the fact that male dominated shows/films/comics etc are a PROBELM?

I may be waiting awhile to see gender equitable panels and a Con devoid of females treated as “slutty victims”, but, until then, I will revel in the Con’s more enjoyable aspects while keeping a critical eye on those areas in dire need of improvement.