Drunk Girls

Given my penchant for seventies television references, it might not surprise you that I am often a bit out of touch with contemporary popular culture. Still, because my gym pumps in the current top 20 on an endless cycle, I am able to at least identify songs that are circulating widely. Over the past few months, I have come to two conclusions. One, Fox is making a fortune off those Glee kids. Two, this country seems to prefer our young women to be drunk and reckless.

Numerous songs en vogue right now celebrate women consuming alcohol to the point of blacking out, hooking up, or hurling (not always in that order). Hadn’t thought about it? Take just a few examples off the top of my head. Ke$ha’s “Tik Tok” opens with lines that would make even the most seasoned AA sponsor grimace: “Before I leave, brush my teeth with a bottle of Jack/’Cause when I leave for the night, I ain’t coming back.” Drinking beer, Ke$ha later sings, gets the “dudes...lining up.” Only police intervention ends that girl’s good times.



One of Lady GaGa’s earliest hits similarly recounts being so bombed that she has little idea of where she even is. In “Just Dance,” GaGa has had so much to drink that she “can’t see straight anymore” and has little idea how her “shirt got turned inside out.” If one of my friends reached this state, my advice would be to return home and sleep it off. GaGa, however, suggests that it might be the perfect time to hook up with somebody dancing in the club “And now there’s no reason at all,” she warbles, “ why you can’t leave here with me.” Well, no reason except that the previous stanzas suggest that she is entirely likely to puke on whatever guy she is taking home. Some people are into that, I suppose.

Not surprisingly, Katy Perry most happily jumps onto this bacchanal bandwagon. After all, her first major hit “I Kissed a Girl” more than foreshadowed this trend. In that song, Perry implied that sexual desire between women need not be taken more seriously than bar flirtations and pillow fights. It was fun, the melody told us, for women to kiss each other as an “experimental game” as long as there was a boyfriend waiting in the wings. Of course, a stiff cocktail got things rolling as the first stanza informs us, “This was never the way I planned/Not my intention/I got so brave, drink in hand/Lost my discretion.”



One of her most recent hits, “Last Friday Night,” ditches the homoerotic themes. In their place are the allegedly fun times that girls can have by drinking to point of serious memory loss. Perry sings about a list of events that would make most people fear for their personal safety. She awakes, hung over, with a stranger in her bed and lewd photos posted on-line. She is uncertain whether she has a hickey or a bruise. If you think that this is going to lead her to the door of Betty Ford, think again. She promises that she will do it all again next Friday.



With all that drinking and amnesia going on, it’s not surprising that P!nk would have a song entitled “Sober” where she contemplates the problems of being a party girl. Now, of all the artists mentioned, I actually like P!nk. To my mind she is one of very few who attempts to put out feminist messages in the mainstream. It’s true that many of P!nk’s other songs celebrate drinking as much as Ke$ha or Perry. At least P!nk most often talks about men as getting in the way of her good times (e.g. “U + Ur Hand”) rather than as being the objective for getting sloshed. “Sober” offers much needed caution to being a party girl. The song opens with the statement that she doesn’t “wanna be the girl who laughs the loudest/Or the girl who never wants to be alone/I don’t wanna be that call at four o’clock in the morning/’Cause I’m the only one you know in the world that won’t be home.” Unlike Perry, P!nk acknowledges that drinking to the point of blacking out will lead to serious regret instead of giggles with your girlfriends.



As far as I can tell, no such genre exists for men on the radio. Of course songs produced by male artists occasionally mention liquor or other drugs, but they are rarely presented as the opening shot to a night of forgotten sex. So what are we to make of all these "drunk girls" on the radio? Songs about women drinking to abandon are part of a larger pattern, it seems to me, in which women’s sexuality/sexualities and agency have been constrained in mainstream popular culture. One need only think of the classless Girls Gone Wild series to see that the media has been conflating drunkenness with sexual availability. If young women must continue to navigate the age-old virgin/whore (“ho” in modern parlance) dichotomy, then the music they listen to today isn’t offering many healthy solutions. These songs suggest that women can have a good time and explore a variety of sexual opportunities, but only if they are not really in control of their faculties. Drinking to the point of being without inhibition isn’t about putting yourself into situations where you might be exploited (or even be in serious danger). Rather, these songs suggest that it is a path to being cool and finding sexual fulfillment. Not only is that absurdly false, I think, but it also undermines women’s real ability to make decisions about sex. Instead it upholds the horrible notion that women are the most desirable when they are almost totally passive (if not passed out entirely).

The World is Ready for You

Many of you have asked what I thought about the failed effort to bring Wonder Woman back to television. Well, some of you asked. Okay, one person mentioned it in passing. Still, given that I shamelessly stole this beloved character to be my on-line avatar, I have some thoughts.

For those of you who don’t slavishly follow the Amazon Princess, NBC recently rejected a pilot for a new Wonder Woman t.v. series. Produced and written by David E. Kelley, many people (including Lynda Carter) fully expected that it would be a slam dunk. Certainly the actor chosen for the role was plausible. The few details that have emerged about the script, though, suggest that it was a bit of a trainwreck. Making a new Wonder Woman show should not have been that hard, really. This country is currently obsessed with the superhero genre. It’s true that Diana isn’t the only one who has been screwed over (Poor Green Lantern! I can smell the suck from here.), but she sure doesn’t get much respect. Shortly following NBC’s rejection, DC comics announced that it planned to reboot the Wonder Woman comic yet again. Ol’ Superheroine-Number-One can’t catch a break these days. For reasons that remain a total mystery to me, neither DC comics nor Warner Brothers ever solicits my opinion about how to promote and protect their most important female hero. I have some ideas:

1. Wonder Woman is a Feminist:

For either comic book writers or television executives, the “f” word continues to make their brows sweat. This probably explains why Warner Brothers tapped the creator of Ally “Feminism is Dead” McBeal as producer for their most recent t.v. venture. Gee, who would have guessed that would fail?

It’s fundamentally dishonest to develop a Wonder Woman project without feminism being a driving point of the story. Doing so would be like creating a t.v. show about the Tea Party without the crazy. When William Moulton Marston created the character in the 1940s, he included the radical notion that women were more than the intellectual equals of men. He feared that young girls were unfairly kept from realizing their true potentials and lacked the types of role models that abounded for boys in comics. True, he also had a bad habit of essentializing gender roles and some fairly bizarre notions that bondage could be a path to liberation (Paging Dr. Foucault, stat!). Still, for the middle of the twentieth century, any pop culture venue that showed women as both physically powerful and scientifically minded was a breakthrough.



Since that time, most of Wonder Woman’s (male) writers have had a hard time trying to figure out what to do with the feminist bits. Either they forced her into traditionally subservient roles (e.g. they made her secretary for the Justice Society despite her being the most powerful member) or they made her into a psycho man-hater who played into the media’s favorite image of feminists as unreasonable and bitter. Needless to say that neither of these is acceptable.





I can’t help but think that the fight for women’s equality has taken some huge steps backward over the past decade and a half. Personally, I put at least partial blame on the drivel created by David E. Kelley. The time is right for Wonder Woman to speak candidly about actual feminist goals.

2. Everybody Wants Wonder Woman to Wear Her Original Costume

Okay, I know the Playboy-bunny costume is sexist, absurd, and as practical as a wooden fire escape (See Number One Above). One doesn’t know if you should salute her or give her your drink order.

The efforts at changing her costume, however, have not really solved the biggest complaints about the original. Slapping on some skin-tight trousers while keeping her in a cleavage popping bustier is a lame attempt to appease critics. It should have been a forgone conclusion, too, that her costume would not be made out of plastic. The costume designer from the failed pilot was an idiot:



If Wonder Woman is going to inevitably be about T&A, then I say just own it and try to at least give her some dignity.

Also, keep the eagle and ditch the stupid WW. If you have doubts that the eagle is cool, consider that DC comics could sue the Washington Capitals for copyright infringement. If a WW eagle is tough enough for a hockey team, then it certainly can do the job for Wonder Woman.




3. Wonder Woman should never say the following lines of dialogue:


“If you liked it, you shoulda put a ring on it.”

“Capitalism sure seems like a fair and equitable economic system.”

“I want a baby so badly that I see one dancing in my room at night.”

"I just need to lose five more pounds."

“Why are all the best men married or gay?”

"I'm not a feminist, but . . ." (See Number One Above)
“I can haz cheeseburger.”

"The unrestrained mergers of banks, airlines, media, and telecommunications corporations has served consumers well."



“When the going gets tough, the tough go shopping.”

"The heterosexual nuclear family sure seems like a fair and equitable building block for society."

“Follow me on Twitter.”

“Cheesecake makes everything better.”

"What do you think of my costume?"

“The meek shall inherit the earth.”

“Math is hard!”

“Christianity sure seems like a fair and equitable religious system.”



4. Wonder Woman Does Not Believe in Capital Punishment

Wonder Woman might have some flaws in that she often solves violence with violence. Still, when push comes to shove (literally!), she will never kill anybody (except maybe Max Lord, but, hey, she had no choice). Given that the United States currently imagines its prison system as massive holding tanks and has no problem sending people to death, how radical would it seem for Wonder Woman to advocate that every person can be redeemed? Diana would likely imagine the current prison system as a symptom of a deeply flawed patriarchal society (See Number One Above). Instead, let's see a return of Reform Island!



5. Wonder Woman is a Scientist First, a Warrior Second

Diana first saved Steve Trevor’s life through her immense knowledge of science and medicine. Then she kinda got stuck saving his life all the time. Whatever the case, Wonder Woman is a thinker. Among the many quirky ideas held by Marston was the one that the Amazons attained their physical power through successfully tapping into their hidden intellectual gifts.

Young women in this country are still not encouraged to pursue science related careers. Playing up this aspect of her character would go a long way to inspiring women to change this (See Number One Above).

6. Wonder Woman Would Not Participate in, Much Less Profit from, the Subjugation of Other Women

One of the most puzzling details about the failed Kelley pilot was that Wonder Woman was supposed to have run a cosmetic company. Maybe this came from a desire to do a product placement with the recent MAC line featuring the iconic hero? Other than that, I can’t think why anybody who knows anything about Wonder Woman would think that would make sense (See Number One Above). I mean, okay, she did once run a dress shop, but that was from a comic storyline that is best forgotten. We can debate on whether makeup is about liberation or repression for women (Heck, I am undecided), but it seems unlikely that somebody devoted to gender equality (See Number One Above) would be interested in taking money from women so that they could attract a man.

Wonder Woman would be devoted to public service. First, she didn’t leave the comforts of her island, where she was a goddamn princess, just so that she could work for some faceless corporation. She left the island so that she could help patriarch’s world become better. Second, she would want a job that kept her informed about dangerous villains or international plots. It seems unlikely that such things would emerge during boardroom discussions about whether a new brand of lip gloss should be called "Cherry High."

7. Bring Back the Greek Gods

It might be sacrilege to some, but I was never a fan of George Pérez’s stint on Wonder Woman. No Diana Prince alter-ego just seems sad to me. Still, I will give him credit for drawing the Greek gods back into the mix. If Diana is almost indestructible in patriarch’s world, then she has to have somebody who can keep her on her toes. A god or two could do the trick. In the 1940s, it was a wager between Aries and Aphrodite that sent Wonder Woman into man’s world after all. Aphrodite argued that love could triumph over war (See Number One Above).



8. Doctor Psycho is a Plausible Villain

Some people argue that Wonder Woman lacks a decent rogues gallery. This just isn’t so. Why is Cheetah somehow lame, but Catwoman cool? They are basically the same character.

Regardless, the most interesting villain (aside from maybe Orana or Artemis) has to be Doctor Psycho. In lots of ways, he is the total opposite of Diana: insecure, cruel, and misogynistic (See Number One Above). His telepathic abilities make him a dangerous foe for somebody as powerful as Wonder Woman (I’m told one of the hardest parts of writing in the superhero genre is figuring out how to keep the threat real). The ideological divide between the two characters would make their battles all the more compelling. Who will win in the final throw down between the feminist (See Number One Above) or the misogynist?



9. Wonder Woman is a Fish Out of Water

Wonder Woman first achieved popularity, I think, because she offered an inverted mirror through which the U.S. could view itself. A smart writer would play up those aspects. That same writer would point out the foibles of our society as seen through a foreigner’s eyes.



The most immediate difference is that Diana never interacted with a patriarchal society (See Number One Above). Actually, she literally never interacted with a patriarch at all given that she had no father (She was formed out of clay by her mother, for those whose comic history is a little rusty). Her responses to the pervasive problems of our society could range from bemusement to impatience. Then, of course, there is the story line of her grappling with her feelings for Steve Trevor. This would be difficult for her because. . .

10. Wonder Woman was Raised by Lesbians!

Alright, there has never been anything to make this canonical. Still, wouldn’t that be a great story line that makes some sense? She is part of a society of women who had little use for the company of men. They lived quite happily for two thousand years until some guy showed up. How confused would the rest of the island be by the princess’s sexual interest in a man? Indeed, wouldn’t a few of them think of it as a bit perverted? Think of the immortal words of Queen Hippolyta, “I named this island ‘Paradise’ for an excellent reason. There are no men on it.” Suffering Sappho! I’m not sayin’, I’m just sayin’.

What to Wear, What to Wear, четыре

Truly loyal readers, who have been with CoG from the start four years ago, know that there is a tradition here. Yes, those loyal readers remember that each year I contemplate my inability to prefect a Halloween costume. Those same loyal readers would also be able to name four supporting characters who have appeared regularly on this blog. They would dutiful remember every move that I have made and the tribulations that accompanied them. A truly loyal reader would know the make and model of my first car ever or where I attended high school. They would have small altars in their house dedicated to my image. Genuinely loyal readers would be willing to take a bullet for me. **Sigh** I wonder if such a reader exists. . .

What were we talking about? Oh, right, Halloween is just around the corner. As the official gay holiday, the expectations are always so high for choosing the right outfit. Yet, no matter how I have tried these past four years, my costumes have never quite worked out. Let me take you through what I aim for and the disappointing results:

What I Aim for: Yoda

We all remember the unexpected way that Yoda made his way into our imagination and became a pop-culture icon. Sure, he started out as an annoying muppett who terrorized R2-D2. Eventually, though, he became the voice of reason who delivered sage advice in the form of inverted sentences. Yoda is so much part of our social consciousness, that his name is even identified by the spell checker in my wordprocessor. A great costume he is.

What I End Up With: Gollum

Gollum, like Yoda, has his own creative rules for grammar. Less cute and endearing, though, Gollum would be a disappointing result when aiming for Yoda. Who ever turned to Gollum for advice? As far as I know, he never evidence any strange mental powers that gave him the ability to levitate rocks.

***

What I Aim for: Mr. Belvedere, 1948

Of all the fussy, crypto-gay film characters to appear in the postwar era, Mr. Belvedere ranks the highest in my estimation. He was a man after my own heart. Belvedere disdained Americans’ unhealthy obsession with children, scorned the prison of heterosexual marriage, and tore apart environmentally and socially disastrous suburbs. This costume would scare the snot out of Focus on the Family.

What I End Up With: Mr. Belvedere, 1985

After skulking around Fantasy Island, this pale imitation of the original Belvedere ended up enslaved to a middle-class hetero home in Pennsylvania. Sure, he was just as fussy as his forties counterpart, but the Reagan-era Belvedere did less to critique the banality of suburbia than to become its queer booster. Okay, there was the "very special episode" that dealt with HIV. Mostly, though, this Belvedere hid from real controversy. He even disavowed his queernees by locking himself into an unexpected and largely unexplained hetero marriage. Who needs to go disguised as that closeted mess?

***

What I Aim for: Phyllis Schlafly

Going as the original Queen of Mean, Phyllis Schlafly, could quite possibly be the scariest costume ever conceived. Shlafly burst onto the national scene in 1964 with a screed that proclaimed that the Republican Party was not radically conservative enough. Never one to shy away from blatantly irresponsible statements, Shlafly frequently spoke out against any attempt to curb the proliferation of nuclear arms during the Cold War. Heck, she declared the atomic bomb “a marvelous gift that was given to our country by a wise god.”

More recently, she has called for a purge of the Supreme Court of “activist judges” (Read: Anybody who disagrees with Phyllis Schlafly). Apparently, according to her altered Republican reality, justices who undermine the Constitution by supporting a coup that installs a half-wit into the presidency aren’t “activists.” They are “literalists.” She has also demanded “abstinence only”education, opposed the distribution of contraceptives for the unmarried, and has dismissed the use of condoms as a means to check the spread of HIV.

Those other “accomplishments” aside, Schlafly will probably best be remembered as the demagogue who killed the Equal Rights Amendment in the U.S. through her "Stop ERA" campaign. Schlafly confidently declared that the ERA was not what feminists claimed (ensuring equal access to services, equal pay for equal work, fairness). According to Schlafly, it was really about making women susceptible to military drafts, unisex toilets, and (horrors!) lesbian marriage. The adoring media side-stepped the fact that Schlafly was a driven, highly-educated, career activist who rarely spent her days baking cookies or mending shirts. Instead, they accepted her self-created image as representing “normal moms” who opposed their own liberation. This could be a costume scarier than Freddie Krueger.

What I End Up With: Sarah Palin

Oh, sure, Sarah Palin is just as cynical as Schlafly. As much as Schlafly downplayed her own career success, Palin’s constant refrains of being “just a hockey mom” mask her steely determination to become a mayor, governor of Alaska, and now vice president. Like Schlafly, she also pretends to speak for the majority of women (even though polls suggest that only a tiny minority agree with her).

And, of course, she has mastered the Orwellian double speak of “hate is love” on gay issues. In her nationally televised debate with Joe Biden, she implied that she had “gay friends,” or at least she has friends who have gay friends. Palin tends to ramble incoherently, making it hard to pin down what she really meant when she said, “I am tolerant and I have a very diverse family and group of friends and even within that group you would see some who may not agree with me on this issue, some very dear friends who don't agree with me on this issue.”

If we were in doubt about how she defines being “tolerant,” she clarified herself in an interview with the Christian Broadcasting Network. "I am, in my own, state, I have voted along with the vast majority of Alaskans who had the opportunity to vote to amend our Constitution defining marriage as between one man and one woman," Palin stated, “I wish on a federal level that's where we would go because I don't support gay marriage.”

What a nice, tolerant friend she is! I don’t know about you, but I always like to have friends around who, based on their theology, think of me as a lesser person who deserves fewer rights than the majority of Americans.

While Palin has some frightful elements, I can’t help thinking she is a pale (Palin?) imitation of things we have seen many times before in this nation. If Schlafly was unique and masterful in her evil, Palin looks like a tired retread. She is just another arch-conservative woman who benefited from feminism, but seeks to dismantle those gains for others.

***

What I Aim For: Warren G. Harding

For decades, Warren G. Harding was most often selected as the worst president the nation had ever known (in competition with Andrew Johnson and James Buchanan). When Harding was elected in 1920, he already had a reputation of being a bit slow and woefully unprepared for the job before him. Though he died before he even finished his first time, his administration became renowned for its corruption, unchecked greed, and incompetence. He also initiated economic policies, via Herbert Hoover, that culminated in the U.S.’s Great Depression. By all accounts, a major loser. Even Harding admitted, “I am not fit for this office and should never have been here." It would be a costume that only historians would appreciate.

What I End Up With: George W. Bush

Harding used to be considered the worst president, but I think that we can safely say that Bushie transformed himself into the most hated executive that this nation has ever known. Unlike Harding, he didn’t have the personal self-awareness to acknowledge his own ineptitude. Instead, he has unapologetically driven this country into moral and literal bankruptcy. If I appeared as Bush, even as a Halloween costume, I doubt that I could keep from vomiting.

***

What I Aim For: Gollum

Cold, soulless, greedy, erratic, self-interested, and mean: These are a few of the words that come to mind when thinking of Gollum. Okay, so he isn’t Yoda, but he has the potential to frighten. His internal dialogues and erratic behavior made Gollum unpredictable and dangerous to those who surrounded him.

What I End Up With: John McCain

Cold, soulless, greedy, erratic, self-interested, and mean: These are a few of the words that come to mind when thinking of John McCain. While I never (ever) agreed with McCain’s politics, he long ago lost whatever courtesy I might have given him when he so clearly cuddled up to Bushie to fuel his own ambition. Seriously misreading the direction of history, McCain banked on the idea that the nation would embrace the Bush administration’s mishandling of everything from the economy to wars. He was mistaken.

During this campaign, even he has appeared frightened by the bile and hatred that has bubbled up from some of his supporters. Nonetheless, he clearly will do anything to take power. McCain has veered from one direction to another in increasingly desperate attempts to appear legitimate. He went from arguing that there was nothing wrong with the economy to suspending his campaign because the economy was in serious crisis. Most recently he “guaranteed” that he would win the White House, despite being behind in most of the nation’s major polls. To make that guarantee, he is either completely out of touch with reality or he already knows that the Republicans are planing yet another coup that will undermine the will of the people. When he starts mumbling "my precious" on November 4, I think that we will all know the score.

Unlike Gollum, McCain has no magical ring or bastard Hobbitts to explain his personality disorders. Sadly, a McCain costume would be a more mundane form of anxious selfishness.

***

What I Aim For: GayProf

Few other bloggers have the cool and glamorous personality of GayProf. He is good looking, witty, and can deflect bullets with his magic bracelets! Who doesn't want to be GayProf? Surely his own comic book or television series is just around the corner.

What I End Up With: Kevin French

From the extremely short-lived cartoon Mission Hill, Kevin French would probably be the best I could do for a rendition of GayProf. Nerdy, self-conscious, and maybe a bit of a smug know-it-all, French would be a downer as a costume. Ask yourself this, though, is GayProf any less likely to know the details of dilithium mining in the Star Trek universe than Kevin French?