Saying that your goal was to write about mainstream culture isn’t actually code for “its perfectly fine to ignore race, class and non-heterosexuality and non cis-gendered people”
So Ariel Levy, writer of Female Chauvinist Pigs came to my campus the other day - as you may (or may not) know i’m not the biggest fan of her book. We’re talking about her in class, and our disappointment in her talk and lack of fleshing out the ideas in her book. Now, we’re not arguing that her book is utterly useless, over-sexualization does in fact happen in America. But when she opened up for Q&A and we tried to ask how her work applies to people who fall outside of the “once pure, middle class, blond hair blue eyed” tropes she referenced throughout her book - she completely shut down any attempt to explore a lens other than her own.
When I got the chance to ask how her work applies to WOC she just told the room “well you see objectification in hip hop” and changed the subject to how everyone Jay-Z being a bad father [I don’t understand how a question asking about all women of color gets reduced to “hip hop is bad.” - maybe because I’m black and she didn’t realized that I wanted her to apply her work to ALL the WOC she erased??] Its hard getting people to realize that while her book makes sense, WOC have been hyper-sexualized, medicalized and objectified for centuries - but it only becomes a problem in our culture when we see it happening to the “pure, middle class, once innocent white woman” trope. (You don’t care until it happens to you and ONLY when it happens to you??)
Someone asked about how western ideas of “objectification” doesn’t translate in the same way in 3rd world countries - her response? “well that’s the upside of living in a third world country, downside is that you get Malaria”
both responses (throwing hip hop under the bus & making fun of 3rd world countres) got cheers and laughs from the crowd. She didn’t even mention her chapter on trans men.
But hey, all the girls who had the privilege of not worndering about all the erased and misrepresented voices in her book LOVED the talk. -_-’ I brought up her response to my question in class - student response “But she was talking about the mainstream, there wasn’t enough time to theorize black woman’s sexuality in America.” OH OK. Cool, that is fantastic…
did anyone read the book and NOT notice these things?
