Don't Try So Hard, Zoe Saldana

There are a lot of things I like about Zoe Saldana. Her acting, first and foremost. Granted, neither Pirates of the Caribbean nor Star Trek are exactly Oscar-worthy dramas, but they are two of my favorite films, and I enjoy her performance in both. (I didn't see Avatar. Yes, I know I'm the only one in the Western Hemisphere. But I heard she was good.)

She has fantastic fashion sense too, the muppet she wore to The Oscars notwithstanding. She looked super-cute on The Daily Show and here she is at The Losers premiere looking characteristically sharp.

But as you may have noticed, this post is not titled Rock On, Zoe Saldana. That's because I feel like whenever I read a quote from her, it either starts out okay and then tips over into Wait, what? or it just makes no sense to begin with. I suspect that in her desire to supply provocative quotes to go along with her current status as Hollywood's It Girl, she's just going a little too far. Or maybe, like my mother-in-law, she simply doesn't listen to the words coming out of her mouth.

A sampling:

“I’ve never really been that feminine. Look in my closet and you’ll see things that are elegant, sexy, tomboyish, sophisticated, beautiful, aggressive. It’s harsh. It’s a lot of black. Pretty is the last word you would think of. Sometimes, I have to give myself permission to be pretty.” (Source)

So...clothes that are elegant, sexy, tomboyish, sophisticated, beautiful, aggressive, or black aren't pretty? And I can't even mock the "permission to be pretty" bit, because I honestly have no idea what she's talking about. Let's move on to another quote on the same theme:

"I have a very strong character and I like to be challenged. Men's clothing makes me feel empowered so I often wear a man's suit. Sometimes I think I should have been born a guy! I wear black a lot and I like solid colors. Like me, they're independent, bold and decisive." (Source)

I guess if she'd been born a guy she could wear men's suits more often? Maybe? I have no idea. Also, I have an independent couch, bold tea pot, and decisive bed skirt. I like assigning random adjectives to things. It's fun.

So what have we learned? That Zoe Saldana is not feminine. Just to hammer home the point:

“I love acting with men. I tend to gravitate toward roles in movies where I get to be the only girl.” (Source)

She is all about men. Men, men, men! Her treehouse has a "No Girlz Allowed" sign. Vaginas = icky. Now let's move on to her feelings on social issues:

On sex: “Love it, love it, love it-can’t live without it! I love sex. I love skin. I don’t believe the body is something to hide. I think in American society we’re messing up our kids by taking away the education on and awareness of our sexuality and replacing it with violence, guns and video games-and we’re breeding little criminals.” (Source)

I also enjoy sex. I would gladly trade the gratuitous violence in movies for gratuitous sex. But I'm not entirely sure lack of sex ed is a leading cause of gang violence. Plus, this quote comes from a woman starring in a movie where she blows shit up with a rocket launcher. I don't know that she's in any position to be condemning violence in American society.

Here she is talking about the furor over Vanity Fair's all-white "Young Hollywood" cover:

“I feel like we can spend a lot of time bashing our beautiful country, but we don’t give it enough credit." ... The actress explained that though the magazine might not be the best representation of Hollywood, she’s hopeful the media will catch up with the reality of what constitutes the fabric of the country. “Our pace might be a little slow and it might not be on par to how we, as American civilians, would like it to be, but it is still an amazing country,” Zoe continued. “So, when I look at magazines like Vanity Fair and Vogue, I know that it’s just a matter of time, the same way Obama took his time and he got to office and became President… it’s just a matter of time until magazines, the media, our art, our culture, our colloquial lifestyle, tags along to our today reality.” (Source)

Yeah, your guess is as good as mine. Here are her ideas about roles for women:

Zoe also credits Angelina [Jolie], Salma Hayek and Halle Berry for opening up more options to female actresses. "Before them, women were just sex pots or mothers. They were never the heroes who saved the day. They've enabled a generation of actresses to have a bigger variety of roles. If I wanted to be part of a story that is amazing and had a lot of sexual openness, that's fine. But I am so grateful to know that, like them, I can open different doors for women." (Source)

I guess she never saw Alien? Or, if we're talking about movies where women aren't "just sex pots or mothers," Heathers, The Manchurian Candidate, Arsenic and Old Lace, Notorious, and The Philadelphia Story? And that's just the ones in my DVD collection! I bet there are at least, like, ten more.

Let's close things out with the only Zoe quote that actually annoys me:

You're playing a black ops soldier in the adaptation of the graphic novel The Losers, out in April. Do you enjoy roles that require you to run around and shoot a gun?
"Like you wouldn't believe. It turns me on in a way that I shouldn't be saying. It's not the guns that turn me on, though--it's seeing women in a commanding position. It's boring to always play the victim. [In sobbing victim's voice] "Rape me! I'll have your child!" Eff that! Why don't you have my baby and wait at home while I go kill some motherfuckers? It's just very empowering. [Laughs.]" (Source)

I have a baby. Until I had a baby, I would have told you that I had no desire to "go kill some motherfuckers." Now, pedestrians who so much as look at me and my kid wrong are in danger of getting their heads ripped off. The idea that men = asskickers and women = victims and weaklings makes me want to punch someone. Possibly Zoe Saldana.

Don't blame the wife

When the news about the Jesse James philandering started to break, I found out about it (as with many other things in life these days) from a link that one of my friends posted on Facebook. One of the first comments in response was "Well, you know, Sandy hasn't always been good at holding on to her man." Ooh, REALLY? Then came this article on Jezebel, which declared that we should think less of Sandra Bullock for being married to someone who would strike a “Heil Hitler” pose for a camera (since she obviously knew every detail about his life). And then there was this lovely Twitter post by Jim Carrey, who said with regard to the Tiger Woods situation:

No wife is blind enough to miss that much infidelity. Elin had 2 b a willing participant on the ride 4 whatever reason. kids/lifestyle ;^)

Not ready to end there, he followed it up by saying:

RT I want 2 make it CLEAR that I do not condone infidelity at all, but 2 some degree the responsibilty 4 it is shared by both people! ;^)

Let me say this in words of one syllable, so that hopefully people will understand: Don't blame the wife.

Think back, why don't you, to that last asshole that you dated. Did you know everything that there was to know about him? Did you, maybe even after you broke up, find out something about him (or her) that shocked you? For instance, that he slept with someone else the weekend before your wedding? Or maybe that he stole money out of your bank account while the two of you were on a romantic trip through Europe? Or, possibly, that though he'd been married to you for twenty five years, he'd been having an affair for the past nine, and had two children with his mistress? Because if so, you are not alone: those stories all true, and all about people that I know well, are just the first three that popped into my head, and I'm sure that I could come up with more if I thought about it harder. And let me tell you, none of the three of them had any idea what was going on. I knew (and very much liked!) two of the three above assholes, and I was stunned. So let's stop it with the "She must have known! She was stupid if she didn't know! The fact that he was doing this must mean that she agreed with him!" bullshit.

Sure, there are some wives who are guilty as charged. The wife of Phillip Garrido? Yeah, I'd say knowingly standing by while your husband kidnapped a girl and then held her hostage makes you pretty worth the blame. But those wives are few and far between, and mostly it's just a lot of women who have their lives thrown upside down when they realize that their husband has had a secret second life and in fact, is a totally different person than the husband that they knew. I'm not sure why the picture of Jesse James striking a "Heil Hitler" pose is enough to convince people that Sandra Bullock must have known that her husband was a racist; he was obviously pretty good at hiding key things about his life from her and everyone else, as we see more and more details come out by the day. No, infidelity is not the "responsibilty" of both people, unless you're counting Tiger and his little Tiger as two people.

The problem is that people love to blame the victim in order to convince themselves that they could never be a victim in that same way, and that therefore it must have been something that she did wrong, or that she already knew about. Why can't they just blame the husband? It's about what he did wrong. It's about Tiger sleeping with some girl that he's known since she was nine, and about him sleeping with someone right after Elin had their first baby. It's about Jesse James being a racist sleazeball that cheats on his wife with other racist sleazeballs. Why can't everyone just concentrate on their horrible behavior, and not try to throw some of the blame on their wives, who are the ones who are the biggest victims?

Notice, by the way, that this post is titled "Don't blame the wife" and not "Don't blame the spouse." This is not because I think that husbands are any more to blame for the criminal, abusive, or just jerky behavior of their wives. It's because I have no reason to make that post, because no one ever blames the husband. Women are supposed to be all knowing when it comes to their husbands, and to do everything that they can to keep them on the straight and narrow, but no one expects a husband to know much about his wife. It's so interesting that no one cares to blame the victim when the victim is a man.

So please, do me a favor. The next time you hear a story about some guy who goes around kicking puppies, or sleeping with all of the librarians in the Tri-State area, or wasting really good champagne, and you're about to say, with regard to his wife, "Girl, that says more about her than it does about him!" just stop, think about how it's really the fault of the puppy kicking, librarian heartbreaking, no good dirty bubbly waster, and don't do it. Instead, maybe you could bring his wife a bottle of champagne when she gets rid of him.

Don't Shit on Erin Andrews

Erin Andrews, sideline reporter for ESPN for Major League Baseball, college football and basketball, and a variety of other sports, has had a tough year, to put it mildly. And now someone is suggesting that she's brought it all on herself and looks like a bimbo? Just STOP. Don't shit on Erin Andrews, and don't blame her for wanting to move on with her life.

In a scenario that would make just about any woman terrified, a creepy stalker was following her around the country, getting hotel rooms next to hers (apparently just by asking the hotel for a room near hers, which is so frightening), and then filming her changing in her hotel room through a peephole. And she found out about all of this because he put those videos on the internet. Thankfully, a while after the videos and the knowledge that it was her on the tapes became public, they caught the guy, and he is now in prison. But countless numbers of people saw that video, and now feel free to make nasty comments to her as she tries to do her job. And she won't be able to go into a hotel room for a really long time and feel at ease, and has nightmares about someone attacking her (and, of course, just him being sentenced caused people to start searching online for the video all over again).

In an attempt to move on, she joined the cast of Dancing with the Stars this season (as many journalists and athletes have done in the past). It seemed like a good fit for her to do something different, especially since she was on the dance team in college. And, quite frankly, she is rocking it this season, being smart and funny and getting good scores from the judges. Then, she just recently found out that she's been getting death threats from someone who has apparently been sending harassing emails since September. Despite that, she is still on the show, still smiling, and still saying entertaining things about the show, dancing, and OchoCinco on her Twitter feed. And yet, apparently, she's "made a fool out of herself and a sham of her profession."

How, exactly, did she do that? The reporter is sure to mention that she's a "comely blonde" and she was "flashing cleavage and thigh." And also that because she's a woman, she has to work twice as hard as men. Ah, so women journalists aren't allowed to relax and have fun, and definitely not allowed to wear pretty dresses. When Kenny Mayne -- also a reporter on ESPN, just like Andrews -- was on Dancing with the Stars a few seasons ago, did he make a sham of his profession? Oh, right, because he wasn't flashing cleavage! And he wasn't consorting with the likes of Pamela Anderson. The misogyny in that whole article is just insane, and it's coming from a woman. I'm not even going to link to some of the crazy comments on male dominated sports blogs about Andrews, but trust me, they're dripping with pure hatred of this attractive woman who dared to make a career out of sports journalism and then dares to enjoy it and enjoy herself. They loved her comeuppance, and are now angry that she's on national TV and isn't hiding out somewhere covering up every inch of skin and crying herself to sleep every night.

I hope that Erin Andrews stays on Dancing with the Stars as long as possible, as a big FUCK YOU to that guy in prison, all of those blog commenters, the people at those hotels who gave that guy in prison rooms next to hers, the woman who wrote that article, and everyone else who doubted her. Next time you want to shit on Erin Andrews for trying to move on with her life, just stop, think about everything that she's had to go through, and whether if you were her, you would be, as Daisy put it "in a cabin in Montana and with an extensive automatic weapon collection," and don't do it.

Update: Erin Andrews responds in an interview:
I'm just confused because I guess it's OK for an NFL player and a gold medalist to do the show and be taken seriously, but nobody else is allowed. People say, "How do you expect to be taken seriously?" Well, Evan Lysacek is taking this so seriously. The guy just won a gold medal, has tons of endorsements, celebrities around the world want to meet him. Chad Ochocinco takes this so serious. He and Cheryl Burke are in the studio seven to eight hours a day. So that's my biggest confusion with the few people who judge me and say this is the wrong thing to do. I don't know what damage I'm doing. I'm basically killing myself to not embarrass myself. I've been in the top three in scoring each week, behind an athlete and a professional dancer and singer. I'm not sure what damage I created for myself. What am I doing to be a bimbo? I don't understand what I'm doing wrong.

You're not doing anything wrong at all!

Don't Be "Edgy"

I was originally going to call this post "Don't Be Amanda Palmer," because her recent actions are a primer in How Not To Be, but then I remembered that I actually used to like Amanda Palmer. I enjoyed her old band, the Dresden Dolls. They put on a phenomenal live show, and they're from Boston, which counts for bonus points with me since I'm a big supporter of local music. And I thought she was right on telling her record company to suck it when they objected to the sight of her perfectly normal belly in a video.

But she started to lose me at this year's Golden Globes, where she decided it would be all sorts of daring to show up mostly naked (see above). I don't know. If red carpet nudity is really that punk rock, I guess JLo and Rose McGowen (NSFW) are countercultural icons, right? But whatever, I'm all for people wearing whatever makes them feel good, even though I do think the phrase "showing your ass" should only ever apply in a metaphorical sense.

Unfortunately, a few weeks later she decided to do just that when controversy erupted over her current project, a band called Evelyn Evelyn. Palmer and fellow musician Jason Webley created a fictional duo with a totally "edgy" background: circus-performing, child-porn-surviving conjoined twins who go by the same first name, finish each other's sentences, and are too shy/awkward to promote their music. Palmer and Webley perform as Evelyn Evelyn in a special outfit that makes them look conjoined. So, to summarize: they're portraying disabled characters as unable to speak for themselves and using the characters' disability as an excuse to dress up in a wacky outfits. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, caused a bit of an uproar.

The project itself isn't what made me unfollow Palmer's Twitter though. It was her response to the criticism that was really ugly. You can read it here, but it can be summarized as: a) All my friends thought it was a good idea and b) It's ART. Art should be offensive!

Well, yes, art can be offensive. That doesn't make it any good though. There's plenty of bad, offensive art out there. You can't just say, hey, people are offended, it must be good art! You need to give your audience--and your detractors--reasons for the offense. Otherwise the project is going to look poorly thought out and lazy at best and discriminatory at worst.

Okay, I could write about a thousand more words about that, but sadly, that's not the most bothersome thing Amanda Palmer has done recently. In the middle of a Twitter conversation taking Lady Gaga to task for too much product placement in the Telephone video, Palmer tweeted this:



[@joanarkham ironic product placement is only okay if you take no money & beyond that give all the income to something ironic. like the Klan.]

Holy fuckballs! On what planet is that comment even in the same timezone as okay? The KLAN? As IRONIC? Definitions of irony:

i·ro·ny

1. the use of words to convey a meaning that is the opposite of its literal meaning: the irony of her reply, “How nice!” when I said I had to work all weekend.
2. Literature.
a. a technique of indicating, as through character or plot development, an intention or attitude opposite to that which is actually or ostensibly stated.
b. (esp. in contemporary writing) a manner of organizing a work so as to give full expression to contradictory or complementary impulses, attitudes, etc., esp. as a means of indicating detachment from a subject, theme, or emotion.
...
5. an outcome of events contrary to what was, or might have been, expected.
6. the incongruity of this.
7. an objectively sardonic style of speech or writing.
8. an objectively or humorously sardonic utterance, disposition, quality, etc.

Yeah, I don't see how "financially supporting a group that supports terrorism, brutality, and murder as an appropriate response to using a song to sell Diet Coke" falls under any of those definitions. And I'm not the only one who isn't quite sure how the KKK counts as ironic. (Warning: graphic images of Klan evil that Amanda Palmer should have fucking considered before she hit "Tweet.")

Let's be blunt here: Palmer's comment was both stunningly ignorant and a perfect example of hipster racism. I cannot imagine why else Plamer would think it was okay to joke about supporting the fucking Klan. Is this because Obama is president? Newsflash, people: being able to point to an African-American president does not allow you to say racist shit! "I voted for the black guy" does not equal "now I can joke about the Klan!" That is not what "post-racial" means, assholes.

Look, sorry I'm speaking so crudely, but I can't believe I have to explain this. And you know the worst part? Amanda Palmer has 400,000 Twitter followers who apparently think using a bunch of murderous bastards as the punchline to a shitty, cynical joke is totally okay. To those people I say: I don't care how awesome her music is, or how liberated and independent you think she is. Amanda Palmer is not speaking truth to power. She's stomping on the already downtrodden and calling it humor. No justification for art or honesty is ever going to make that okay.