SHE-mail!

 

A tip from Jezebel, lead me to an article about John Kelly, a Joni Mitchell female-impersonator who has been performing one-woman shows singing (not lip-syncing) Joni Mitchell songs.  Here's a great article in the LA Times with both Joni Mitchell and John Kelly talking about his most recent show ' Paved Paradise: The Art of Joni Mitchell.'  I am a huge Joni Mitchell fan and I find it an enormous accomplishment Kelly is able to pull off her songs and on-stage demeanor.  I'm also intrigued because I have been watching a lot of RuPaul's Drag Race and Eddie Izzard lately, both make-up heavy and shaving enthusiasts, which is at contrast with  Kelly who stays true to Mitchell with very limited make-up and nothing shaved but the face.   I must confess after watching RuPaul's Drag Race and seeing men look WAY more attractive and made-up than I ever will be makes me feel well...homely.  So it's nice to know that there are female impersonators out there that can appreciate and impersonate the femininity of no-make-up low frills women.  The picture on the post shows Kelly as Joni Mitchell and musician Zecca Esquibel in drag as Georgia O'Keefe (Mitchell and O'Keefe were apparently friends in real life).  It makes me happy to know that you don't have to be glitzy or glamorous to be a drag icon, being awesomely talented is enough!

Book Review: Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society

This book was given to me by mom and it was quite a nice read. Authors Shaffer and Barrows create an charming community in Guernsey that I, along with the protagonist Juliet, long to join. I think I was most enchanted by the fact that the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society follows the same meeting decorum of the FBC: they all read a book that appeals to them, come and pitch their book to the group,  exchange the ones they like, and eat as much food (even during war time) as they can. This book was a bit of a history lesson for me, in that I never knew that the Channel Islands, part of English Commonwealth, were occupied by Germany during WWII. At the center of the novel is the brace Elizabeth McKenna who is quick to stand up to German soliders, stands on principle and as a result becomes a lifeboat for others on the island during the Occumpation of Guernsey. The book is written as a series of letters from an author in London to her editor, her best friend, and the people of Guernsey. While the storyline is quite predictable and superficial, the character development is well done entertaining and overall this book is a delightful read. Once again, I may be biased because I would like to think the Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie society and FBC are sister groups :)

Love Your Body: The K-12 are the winners in my opinion...

Now Foundation held a poster contest called "Love your Body". The 2010 winners were from four categories: Open (yellow background), College (Curves), High School (cookie-cutter), and Elementary/Middle School (yoga poses).  My personal favorites are the high school and middle/elementary school posters.  It actually gives me hope that the youth "love their bodies" but also know how to express it with wit and whimsy.

Apology for getting up on a soapbox last night.

Last night at book club we talked a bit about a woman in a book we all read (Zeitoun) who is Muslim and wears a headscarf. I'm afraid I may have kind of ranted at people while they were just trying to express their thoughts, so I wanted to share some resources/less heated thoughts:

1. Leila Ahmed is a respected scholar of Islam and Feminism. Here is a link to the chapter on veiling in her seminal work, "Women and Gender in Islam: Historical Roots of a Modern Debate", which is both essential and accessible reading on the topic.

2. Lawmakers in Belgium and Canada have been discussing limiting/banning the wearing of the veil. Here is an editorial critical of the Canadian law, and here is an editorial that supports a measure in Britain to ban the niqab.

3. Islam is a complex and diverse religion. Islamic law is based on the Koran (individual chapters of which are called sura) and the hadith, which are traditions about what the Prophet said or did during his lifetime. The hadith were passed down chains of oral transmission and traditionally, jurists (qadi) memorized hadith and their interpretations. To complicate matters, there is one major doctrinal split in Islam (Sunni or Shia; the debate is about how the authority to be the Caliph, or the Prophet's regent, is passed on) and some minor doctrinal splits (Twelver versus Seven Shiites, etc.) and different schools of law (4 major ones in Sunni Islam and lots of minor ones, which would affect how any qadi had learned to interpret specific sura and hadith) and different sects (Sufis, Kharijites, etc.) and syncretism with local traditions all over the world - so really, it is impossible to make any kind of blanket statement about what 'Islam' prescribes for women w/r/t clothing. There are almost as many versions of Islam as there are Muslims.

4. The sura that is most often cited as the basis for veiling charges believers (women and men) to behave modestly. Modesty is obviously a subjective matter. Ideally it would be up to any given believer to decide for him or herself (and only for him or herself) how to behave modestly.

5. There appears to be a relationship between being a majority Muslim place where women are not empowered (Afghanistan, Saudi Arabia) and being a place where women do not have a choice about veiling. I think mandatory veiling is a dependent variable and the important thing is advocating for women's right to education, to hold property, to vote, to run for office, to consent to marriage, etc. I think it is a distraction to talk about mandatory veiling (a symptom) rather than the rights that, fully exercised, will enable women to have meaningful choice about what modesty means for them as individuals.

Book Review: The Help

 I just finished reading The Help by Kathryn Stockett last night.  Overall it’s well written, easy to read, and kept me interested.  It did not revolutionize any ideas I had about race relations in 1960’s South or women’s roles in society at the time, but it was a nice story about some interesting women.  Apparently, Stockett’s inspiration for the book was the relationship she had with her housekeeper growing up in Jackson, MS and her desire to become a writer in New York.  The book is written from the narratives of a young white society woman and two black housekeepers.  

Talk About Mixed Messages

Speaking of Netflix...

Last night I watched 'Broken English'. I had high hopes for it - Parker Posey + directed by Zoe Cassavetes (daughter of John 'What's your take on' Cassavetes - so I figured there was a reasonable chance some of the talent was passed on, right?)

(Spoiler alert.)

No! The premise is that Parker Posey's character is young woman in New York who feels desperately single. So basically it's 2 hours of her being mopey and unpleasant to a variety of men, some of whom are also mopey and/or unpleasant (or unaccountably persist in being interested despite her total lack of a personality - most of her lines are some variation on 'I'm so anxious/tired/lame/doomed to be single forever!') Even the way she walks - a kind of knock-kneed, tripping shuffle - is irritating. In the end, of course, a handsome old Frenchman in a bar tells her that she has to love herself before she can find love w/ anyone else, and then she lights a candle meaningfully in a cathedral, and finds true love on the Metro.

I guess... I just wasn't expecting an earth-tones Sex and the City. A black comedy would have been nice. Or an ending that didn't imply that the point and inevitable reward of being at peace w/ yourself is finding someone to love you. Or some kind of indication that there are bigger questions in the world than any one person's marital status. I'm not unsympathetic to the plight of women who worry about finding someone - but I am totally unsympathetic to movies that use PARKER POSEY - a NATIONAL TREASURE - to drably illustrate something that Sarah Jessica Parker, fer Chrissake, has already demonstrated with a lot more pizazz and some actual humour.

Netflix thought I'd like this...

So I recently joined Netflix and I LOVE IT!!!  There are so many "Watch Instantly" options, that the advantage of Blockbuster goes right out the window.  Another great thing that Netflix does for you is recommend movies it thinks you will like, based on movies you already rated.  As a result I came upon:

Låt den rätte komma in (2008) (Let the Right One In)

 

WHERE ARE THE BOOKS?

"So Jessica...why did you start a blog about a book club if you don't post any books on it?"

Well I'm glad you asked that question.  Honestly that's the question/criticism I get about FBC in general from new members coming to FBC for the first time.  People think of a book club and what comes to mind is a group of people reading a book and then coming to discuss said book.  Perhaps it's because we're busy or not motivated or reading too many school books or all of the above, but an underlining principal of FBC is: READ IF YOU WANT.  When forming the group we all felt too busy and too poor to commit ourselves to a book a month, so this was the alternative we came up with: trade books and talk about feminist issues.  As a result our book club is much more heavy on the feminist issues and lighter on the books.  However, my new pledge for the summer is to try and read two books a month and report back on them.  I will be encouraging other FBC members to do the same (not the two book thing, but the reporting back thing).  This way the blog can start to reflect it's namesake as well as the fabulously intelligent women who belong to FBC. 

Stay tuned for our group consensus on Zeitoun...rumor is we will be meeting THIS Sunday to discuss!

April...a bad month for Posting

Hey All,

Sorry about the lags in posting...I'm going to get back on my one a day habit I promise.  So please, keep coming by to read and start posting too!

Legislating Clothing...

In more rape apology news, politicians in India are calling for a ban on bikini's as a response to the rape of foreign women and girls.  The article is at the WIP(The Women's International Perspective).  It brings up some very valid points.  The most obvious being that just because a woman wears a bikini does not legitimize a man raping her, regardless of his cultural upbringing.  I don't care if he's never seen a naked woman and one appears in front of him...it doesn't make the heterosexual male a hormonally charged monster who cannot help himself to the buffet of naked skin.  The way men are described in countries that cover women is insulting, basically equating them to thoughtless sex zombies who at the tiniest glance of female skin will be ready to pounce.