Category: media

tv shows, magazine articles, movies

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Maddow Style

Did anyone else notice that Rachel Maddow seemed “poofier” tonight? Maybe it was just her hair. Maybe it was an accident. It’s not so different than how she usually looks, but different enough that I noticed. And was distracted by it.

Please, MSNBC, don’t make her over into a fembot, not when she can look like this. Which jeez louise, even I find hot hot hot. Personally, I love that she makes all the women on TV look kind of overdone with the big hair and big jewelry and pounds of makeup. It’s like she’s introduced a new gender to television, and it’s about time someone did!

& Here’s an article from New York magazine about her, if you can’t get enough!

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Danish Girl’s Wife

It turns out that Nicole Kidman will be playing Lili Elbe in the upcoming movie The Danish Girl. Her wife will be played by Charlize Theron.

Thoughts:

  • The movie is based on the book The Danish Girl.
  • With Theron & Kidman playing them, this just seems like another excuse for “hot lesbian innuendo.”
  • I’m also a little perturbed by the “play a transsexual / get an oscar” trend.
  • Still, i’ve always expected the wife of a trans woman to be played by someone like Kathy Bates, & at her worst, too, so Charlize Theron isn’t so bad. Except that the book seems to imply her husband’s transsexuality was her own fault, and in the reviews of the book, it seems she comes off as a cheerleadery sort.
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change.org

I was poking around recently, trying to find out about a PSA that we’d been discussing in the mHB forums lately which is about trying to discourage kids to say “that’s so gay” when they mean “that’s not cool” when I found that the PSA is part of a larger campaign by The Ad Council & GLSEN to “think b4 you speak.” I love the idea, and not just because “that’s so gay” is unnecessarily homophobic, but because I so wish people didn’t use language so carelessly.

As a result I found change.org, which is a huge social issues/activist-oriented collection of blogs on various issues. There’s a blog on women’s rights, animal rights, global warming, immigration, and of course gay rights, which – lo & behold! – has me on its recommended reading list. How cool is that?

Great resource for us social justice types, so do go check it out.

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Genderqueer Vid

Has anyone watched this genderqueer video called Gender Rebel that was on Logo? You can watch the whole thing online (which is good, since we don’t get Logo).

The middle part, where Lauren and her partner try to explain genderqueer to Lauren’s aunt, and how they don’t think of themselves as a lesbian couple, is really interesting. The aunt is a lesbian in Howard Beach – notoriously macho, Italian, racist Howard Beach – who doesn’t get it, but I love that she says “I’ll fight to the death for you.” Which to me is mostly what counts.

There are more episodes planned, but I suspect every person who identifies as genderqueer will define it – and present it – differently than the next.

At 19, had this term existed then, I probably would have identified as genderqueer, though I’m still waiting to find a natal female who is genderqueer that dates boys. That is, it still seems a term used by those in the lesbian community, which is why I understand Lauren’s aunt’s confusion. To an “old school lesbian” genderqueer just looks like butch by another name. Even if it isn’t.

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Wingnut Alert

Michelle Bachman is on Larry King Live tonight. What a weird lady. Aside from the fact that she is just spitting out GOP talking points, with no rebuttals or even referrals to what others are saying, she has this weird “I just took E” grin on the whole time, too.

She’s the kind of lady who gives my gender a bad name.

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Another Betty

Betty White just gave out an Emmy along with Mary Tyler Moore, and she looks fantastic. I’m pretty sure she hasn’t had any work done, and honestly, she made Mary Tyler Moore – who’s had too much work done – look even weirder than she did already.

My opinion, only, but I really do feel that when women try to preserve their youth with too much plastic surgery, they kind of end up underlining that they’re old.

My guilty confession is that I’m a late-night Golden Girls addict, which is a genius show. Imagine, a comedy about four women over 50 who all have active sex lives! It seems like such a radical idea, even now. Bea Arthur, Rue McClanahan, Betty White and the late Estelle Getty were all exactly right for their parts, and the writing was corny in an 80s kind of way, but still funny.

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All Those Other Places

There are so many other places online, and I’ve been using a few of them. For starters, there’s my Facebook page, where I’ll keep whatever events I’m doing updated, and will send out invites so that you don’t have to find out for yourself.

Then there’s Twitter, which I mostly read & respond to, but don’t post as much myself.

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Now on DVD

GenderVision, who are Nancy Nangeroni and Gordene MacKenzie formerly of GenderTalk, did an interview with us in November 2007. Two parts of it you can watch online, but then there’s other conversations we had, with both of them, that you can only get by buying the DVD. I got mine today, and it’s nice to see professional packaging. We don’t make any money from it, but they do good work up there, so do support them. It’d make a good DVD to pass around within a support group, or to watch bits of at a meeting, even.

Tell them Helen sent you!