Lelaina, we tried to warn you

It’s Year 30 after Lelaina has chosen Troy, the LOSER who was mean to Lelaina and who was so smart that he couldn’t be bothered to get a job but instead slept on his friends’ couch and didn’t contribute to the rent or buy food but he did read Being and Nothingness so we knew how very smart he was.

Now Lelaina is a successful documentarian. She makes money making movies and she has won awards. She’s really good.

(Although every time she goes to an awards show, they ask her about her clothes and how she balances motherhood and career instead of asking about her work, which pisses her off.)

Troy is still unemployed, although he has had brief stints at the 7-11.

But he usually does not have a paying job because he is Too Smart and he will not Bow To The Man and also because of his Art, which Lelaina supports by talking about on Instagram, showing videos of his band in rehearsal. Through her connections, she has gotten the band a gig or two at the local Ramada.

They have two kids.

(Maybe he’s good in bed? They did have that “I want a Bad Boy to be good for me/I want a Good Girl to be bad for me” vibe.)

(They don’t have sex much anymore. Troy doesn’t do anything to seduce Lelaina, plus he has a nasty cough and gross breath from all that smoking. Lelaina quit years ago.)

Troy doesn’t even get off the couch to feed the kids, waiting for Lelaina to get home from work and make supper after her long day of making sure she can pay the mortgage and that her kids have health insurance.

When she travels for work, she leaves casseroles in the freezer, but he finds it easier to order DoorDash. He is a bad tipper because he thinks the gig economy exploits people. He’s right that it exploits people, but he should be tipping if he’s going to participate.

He also does not clean the house or do laundry or go to the grocery store.

He doesn’t do shit.

Lelaina keeps up a brave front, posting on Instagram any one of the rare times that Troy does something nice for her. Like he bought her flowers once last year. They were on the discount rack at the gas station, but flowers are flowers, he thinks.

On her birthday, he made her coffee and brought it to her in bed.

He took the dog out for a walk once before she got home.

“HASHTAG FEELING LOVED!” she writes next to a stock photo of a cappuccino.

She ignores his nasty comments to her friends on Facebook, where he takes brave stands against The Man and corrects everyone’s grammar.

Her friends say nothing to her, but wonder in the privacy of their own homes why Lelaina doesn’t leave his sorry ass.

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Mr T had never seen Reality Bites (it came out shortly after he married his first wife and started helping raise her two daughters), so I got it from the library and we watched it.

He was most shocked by the smoking – it’s not something we’re used to seeing anymore.

And then we saw in the credits that Renee Zellweger was in the movie, so we had to go back to find her.

He agreed that Troy was a jerk, but did not join me in screaming at Lelaina DO NOT CHOOSE HIM! HE’S NOT EVEN APOLOGIZING AND SAYING HE DOESN’T DESERVE A SECOND CHANCE BUT WOULD SHE PLEASE GIVE HIM ONE!

In her defense, I would have been equally stupid at 21, picking the hot brooding intellectual (although I have never found Ethan Hawke attractive – sorry Ethan – I think it’s because you play such unappealing characters) over the safe guy in the suit. Sex trumps sense at that age.

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Helen Childress was only 20 years old when she wrote the script.

YAY HELEN! How awesome are you that you sold a movie script when you were 20!!! You are amazing!

But – would you write the same ending today?

Not even that Lelaina should have chosen Michael, who was a nice guy with a job and who made no secret of how much he adored Lelaina.

But that Lelaina should have told both of them that she wanted to do her own thing and to leave her alone.

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I want Childress to write an update.

I want Childress to show the kids graduating from college and Lelaina telling Troy to get out she is tired of his lazy ass.

Yes, she will have to pay alimony but she will have her freedom.

Does she meet up with Michael again? Does she find someone else?

Or do she and Vickie, who has risen through the ranks of The Gap and is now SVP of Merchandising but really only does it as a hobby because she made a lot of money from her stock options, start to hang out again?

(Vickie hated how Troy treated Lelaina.)

Yes. That’s what happens. Vickie retires early and helps Lelaina make a “Where are they now the voice of my generation?” film. After that one is done and premieres at Sundance, winning the Gold Prize, they make another one about how women’s rights are being stolen from us, which inspires thousands of young women to register to vote, ensuring that Trump is defeated.

I don’t want to say Troy gets lung cancer and dies because that’s mean, but he is ignored, even on the Andrew Tate sites, because nobody cares what he thinks. He had his chance and he blew it.

When do you let yourself be parted from your money?

Where do you all stand on lending money?

Let me expand on that.

Where do you stand on lending money to relatives?

Especially where do you stand on lending money to relatives with whom you are not very close, as in they have never sent you a Christmas card or wished you happy birthday and you have never gathered intentionally except for mandatory family events that include funerals? (Asking for a friend. Really!)

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I borrowed money from a relative – my mom – twice.

Once was to buy a car. The bank loan would have cost 18%. My mom said she would lend me the money at the current T-Bill rate, which was about 7% at the time. She had me draw up an amortization and payment schedule and every month for a couple of years, I sent her a check.

The other time was when I was in a cash-flow crunch. I had just moved to Miami to start a new job. I had to pay the first month, last month, and deposit on my duplex and I wouldn’t be paid either my salary or my signing bonus until the end of the month.

My mom lent me $3,000 for a month, no interest. I repaid her as soon as I got my first paycheck.

I thought both deals were very generous of my mom. I have since learned that some parents do not charge interest to their adult kids when they lend them money and I think that’s just weird. Maybe these are rich parents?

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When a close relative asked to borrow money – about $2,000, I think – from me, I thought I should pay it forward. I asked the borrower to prepare an amortization schedule and to pay me every month. I think I was charging whatever interest my money would have gotten in my savings account.

That borrower – didn’t pay. Well, didn’t pay regularly.

She finally paid it all a while after the loan was supposed to have ended, but I seethed that entire time.

And I learned my lesson.

Do not lend money you are not prepared to lose.

The borrower and I are cool now. But I would not lend money to her again.

Or to anyone.

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A friend’s sister asked to borrow money from him.

The friend and his sister are not close. The sister is 11 years older, so they didn’t really grow up together.

They don’t live near each other and they don’t exchange birthday or Christmas cards.

Friend doesn’t even have his sister’s mailing address. He likes Sister well enough, but shrugs and says that he doesn’t even really know her. Their parents died when Friend was in college and the siblings do not make an effort to get together.

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Have you read Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty?

It’s been a few years since I read it, but some of it has stuck with me.

In particular, I remember her talking about how hard it is for someone in the working class to save money because the money is seen as a communal resource. If your cousin gets thrown in jail Friday night, you have to give him the bail money because if he doesn’t get to work on Monday, he will lose his job. And if he loses his job, he won’t be able to pay his rent. And if he can’t pay his rent, his kid don’t have a place to live. And so on and so on.

You don’t get to say that you’re saving that money to go to college in two years when your cousin needs it right now.

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I don’t come from that kind of background. I suppose within my immediate family, I would give money to my siblings to get them out of jail or help with something urgent or help my mom if she needed it, but that’s where my circle of lending ends.

My friend’s sister told him that she needed to borrow a few thousand dollars because she needed to lend money to her adult son, who is 28 years old and underemployed. Sister was running out of her own money to lend her son. (Sister has a good job. Sister’s ex’s dad just died and Ex will inherit some money as soon as the estate closes.)

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Do you do it?

Do you lend money to Sister for her to lend to Son?

If you do it, do you get a say in how Son spends the money?

(Do you even want a say in how Son spends the money or would you rather just not have that level of involvement in someone else’s life?)

What do you do if Sister does not pay you back?

What do you do if Sister asks you for more money?

This is just what the forced birthers want – a trapped underclass

I didn’t know she was pregnant when the young woman – let’s call her Ruby – who was cutting my hair asked me if I regretted not having children and I told her that nope, I had never wanted them – that my mother, who had me when she was 20 and just seemed – stuck, her many many talents unused or underused.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when I told Ruby that I have so many friends whose moms also seemed very unhappy with motherhood – that the women in the generation before me were trapped and stuck and wanted so much more but didn’t have options.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when Ruby told me that she was still in high school in the International Baccalaureate program and she wanted to be a crime-scene tech but had switched to beauty school because it was easier for now.

I didn’t know she was pregnant when I told Ruby it was pretty impressive to be both completing high school and studying in tech school at the same time.

I did know Ruby had just turned 18 because I asked her, as I ask all young people when I meet them, if she was registered to vote and she told me no, she had just turned 18 a few weeks ago.

I didn’t know Ruby was pregnant until she explained that she had missed school the week before because she had been in the hospital for some pregnancy complications.

I did know she was pregnant when she told me she wished she had appreciated the free rent and food she got when she still lived with her parents – when she told me that she was now living with the father of her baby, who is older and has a job with health insurance.

I did know she was pregnant as I counted back silently when she told me she was due in May, just after graduation.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about when Roe was overturned.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about how the Republicans in the Wisconsin legislature don’t want to expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days postpartum to a year.

Democratic lawmakers and advocates are urging Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) to schedule a vote on a bill that would expand Medicaid coverage for new mothers from 60 days to a year after giving birth.

The bill — SB 110 — would instruct the state Department of Health Services to seek approval from the federal government to expand Medicaid coverage for postpartum women to 12 months. It passed the Senate on a 32-1 vote in September but hasn’t moved any further in the Assembly in part because of Vos’ opposition. 

“We are here calling on Speaker Vos to bring this bill to the floor and help address disparities and maternal outcomes in our state,” Minority Leader Greta Neubauer (D-Racine) said during a press conference organized by Protect Our Care on Wednesday. “Wisconsin must act so families in my district and across the state have the opportunity to access a crucial support system that will address the racial disparities brought to light by the Black maternal health crisis.”

Wisconsin Examiner

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about Wisconsin’s infant mortality rate, which is not the worst but is also not the best.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about maternal mortality rates, which are worse for Black and Hispanic mothers.

U.S. maternal mortality worsened during the pandemic, especially for Latinas. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, the U.S. saw 23.8 maternal deaths per 100,000 live births in 2020, up 18.4% from 2019. For Black women, the maternal mortality rate jumped 25%, while for Hispanic women it surged 44%.

While researchers are not clear on why Latinas saw such disproportionately higher mortality rates in 2020, the overall trend in the U.S. has been that women of color have had poorer outcomes in childbirth.

Latinas with private insurance plans have a 22% higher rate of severe pregnancy complications than non-Hispanic white women, according to a Blue Cross Blue Shield Association study. Low-income Hispanic women on Medicaid have a 28% higher rate of complications.  

CNBC.com

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about the public schools here and access to childcare.

I did know she was pregnant when I thought about how the Wisconsin Republicans want to relax child labor laws. This in a state where we already have companies breaking existing laws in ways that are very harmful to children.

Wisconsin-based meat packing contractor Packers Sanitation more than $1.5 million for employing at least 100 children, some as young as 13, to clean dangerous equipment such as bone saws and skull splitters in plants across the U.S. The company claimed it wasn’t aware that those workers were minors but said it has since taken steps to improve the way it verifies employees’ ages.

AP

And I knew she was pregnant and had not had a chance to not be pregnant when I thought about how her dreams were now dead.

The Bros who treat elections as a game will be just fine even if their opponents are elected so they don’t care. The interests of a$$hole white men are almost always represented no matter who is in office.

First. I will give her campaign team their due – Janet Protasiewicz did win the election and because of that win, we now have a decent shot at getting fair election maps in Wisconsin and also restoring legal abortion.

I don’t know if she won because of their management of her campaign, but she did win.

But.

What was her campaign team thinking when they decided to make their puerile idiotic insider jokes about Dan Kelly, Protasiewicz’s opponent, being someone who has carnal knowledge of horses part of the campaign?

WHO DOES THAT?

Here’s what happened.

The players

• Dan Kelly, whom ultra-conservative MAGA-adjacent Scott Walker, then governor of Wisconsin, appointed to the Wisconsin Supreme Court in 2016 to replace a justice who had retired. That term finished in 2023 and Kelly was running for the seat in the 2023 Wisconsin spring election
• Janet Protasiewicz, candidate for Wisconsin Supreme Court in the same spring election.
• Protasiewicz’s campaign team, led by campaign manager Alejandro Verdin.

Two huge issues would be going to the Wisconsin Supreme Court, which is why this race was so important

• Abortion. With the overturn of Roe v Wade, Wisconsin’s 1849 (you know – before women could even vote) law criminalizing abortion kicked back in. Kelly was adamantly anti-choice. Protasiewicz is not.
• Gerrymandering. Wisconsin has among the most gerrymandered voting maps in the country, leading to an unfair imbalance between Democratic and Republican legislators in Madison.

Protasiewicz’s campaign team discovered in a focus group that some – how many? more than one? – voters thought Kelly looked like someone who – I don’t even understand how anyone says this or even comes to this conclusion – has sex with horses.

Is that even a thing? Yes, I know it’s a thing that happens, but is that an insult in common usage? I have never heard that before but then I do not hang out with bros.

So they learned that at least one person in all of Wisconsin, which has a population of 5.9 million people, snickered and thought Kelly looks like someone who commits bestiality.

And they decided to make that part of the campaign.

They included images of horses in ads for Protasiewicz.

Oh aren’t they so clever! Aren’t they so funny!

But that’s not even the worst part.

They bragged about it.

Yes.

Verdin went on the record and talked about what they had done.

Earlier this week, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reported on an interview Protasiewicz campaign manager Alejandro Verdin gave on “The Downballot,” a podcast produced by the liberal Daily Kos. During his appearance, he admitted that the internal joke was taken “to another level” when the campaign hid images of horses in negative campaign ads.

Kristen Brey, Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Dude.

WTAF?

This is the bullshit that makes candidates look bad and affects elections.

Yes, Protasiewicz did win.

But what about this fall? Wisconsin is a battleground state and there are persuadable Republicans who might vote against the Orange Monster.

But not if they think the Dems are assholes.

This is a state where people voted against the recall of Scott Walker a decade ago not because they didn’t think he was a jerk but because they disagreed, on principle, with the idea of a recall.

The persuadable voters could be looking for a defendable reason to vote for Trump. To justify voting against the Democrat. They don’t want to vote for a Democrat. The persuadables hate Trump but they also hate Dems so what are they to do?

These jerks put everything at risk for a stupid insider joke.

And it wasn’t even funny.

In a movie made in 1986 about 1960, it was apparently unthinkable for a woman not to get married

I watched Peggy Sue Got Married for the first time since it was released in 1986 and what a big fat lie the “change her destiny” part is.

Did the writers hate women?

Are they Republicans from now sent back in time to write a movie about how to keep women trapped?

Because she does not change her destiny.

She tries and tries and tries but the only options the writers give her are to marry one of two other male characters – both of whom she tells she does not want to marry anyone – or to stay married to Charlie, her high-school sweetheart whom she marries after getting pregnant at 18 and is then the husband of 25 years she is divorcing when the movie starts.

Even a current (2022)(need I say male?) reviewer thinks Peggy Sue did the right thing by staying in her marriage with Charlie at the end.

By allowing Peggy Sue a second chance to rediscover why she fell for her husband and reconnect with family members that had passed away between the past and the present, Peggy Sue Got Married boldly alters the textures of time travel tropes to reinvent the genre as a gentle fantasy of small shifts rather than a genre exercise of epic proportions….

Even more importantly, the titular character also discovers a newfound agency over her decisions and personal expression through addressing regrets from her past directly, setting Peggy Sue Got Married apart as a timeless treatise on self-confidence and self-discovery. 

Collider.com

In her first go round, she got married to Charlie at 18 because she got pregnant. She did not have agency in that decision in 1960 for sure.

And in when she is in the past, just about to return to the future having broken up with Charlie (and not pregnant), he literally kidnaps her and physically restrains her from returning to the future on her terms.

She is not addressing her regrets.

She does not get newfound agency.

The last scene before she returns to the present, she is sobbing. She tries so, so hard to change her path. And she fails.

This is not a Happy Ever After story.

This is a story about a woman being trapped.

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Compare Peggy Sue to the delightful 13 Going on 30, made in 2004.

In this case, the protagonist, Jenna, travels forward in time from her 13th birthday to when she is 30, where she discovers that she turned into a mean girl when she was 13 and her life is now kind of crummy.

She does address her regrets. She does get newfound agency. And when she has the chance to change her 13-year-old actions so she can have a different future, she does so.

(And the movie has a way better soundtrack.)

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In Shakespeare, the comedies tend to end in weddings and the tragedies end with everyone dead, or at least the protagonist dead.

Here, we have two stories that end in marriage.

But only one of them is a happy ending.

Jenna’s marriage is a happy ending: she is reunited with her childhood best friend, the adorably nerdy Matty who grows up into Mark Ruffalo.

But Peggy Sue’s marriage is not. It’s everything she didn’t want and everything she tried so hard to escape.

Maybe the writers didn’t hate women.

Maybe this was a commentary on women’s lack of power and agency in 1960 and maybe every single person who reads it as a happy ending is getting it wrong.

Also – stop hating on women

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WTF is up with the Taylor Swift hate?

I get the incel hate – they’re a bunch of envious losers, but from regular people?

I see things like the quotations below and all I can think is “really?” What did Taylor (and Britney) ever do to you?

I think it would be fair to have a conversation about Black female artists vs white female artists, but that’s not what’s happening here.

Honest question. I’m not a Taylor swift fan but accept that she’s widely lived and probably even a good person. I even sort if like a song or two. As Time magazine said in announcing her as person of the year, she brings joy. I won’t argue any of that. But I don’t think she’s a good singer. A good vocalist. I admire many singers whose music I don’t care for. Am I missing something with Tay?

Same with Britney Spears. America loves its mediocre pretty white women.

(From a blog I read)

Why are female accomplishments questioned in a way that male accomplishments are not?

This comparison of Swift vs Bob Dylan on reddit probably would not stand up to a P value analysis, but it’s good enough for our purposes. That is, I think most people would agree that Bob Dylan’s voice is not all that, yet way more people hate Swift than hate Dylan.

Dylan haters: 100+

Swift haters: 390+

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Although to be fair, this isn’t necessarily misogyny (although I think misogyny is at the root).

Mr T’s father, Sly, was just a small, envious man. He remarked once about Paul McCartney, “If only he could sing.”

He couldn’t stand it that Mr T’s mom, Doris, was a better singer than he was. (They met, of all places, singing in a church choir. That’s where Sly decided his first wife was awful and he had to leave her for Doris.)

He couldn’t stand it that Mr T inherited his musical talent. The week of our wedding, when Sly and Doris stayed in our house for a week (again if you take away nothing else from my story, take this: DO NOT LET YOUR IN-LAWS STAY IN YOUR HOUSE THE WEEK OF YOUR WEDDING THEY CAN PAY FOR A DAMN HOTEL), we took them to the American Legion for karaoke night so they could hear Mr T sing.

They had never heard Mr T sing before.

They were both singers.

Mr T and I thought that they might like to hear their son sing.

Ha.

Mr T starts to sing as Sly is returning from the men’s room.

Sly gets to the table, then scowls and says that it’s too loud and he’s leaving.

I slam my fist on the table and tell Sly he *will* listen to Mr T sing.

(I had been taking vicodin all day because of the D&C I had had that morning so my boundaries were blurred.)

Doris pleads with Sly to listen to Mr T – THEIR CHILD – sing.

Sly storms out, refusing to listen.

Y’all, that is some deep petty shit.

Sly was an equal-opportunity hater I will give him that.

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But the Swift hate – the women hate – is its own thing. Yes, there is the petty envy, but there is this thread of misogyny that men do not face. It’s like women are not allowed to accomplish things on their own. That the only way they succeed is through some sort of trickery – their looks – “mediocre pretty white women – or by sleeping their way to the top. (Which, honestly? If that’s the only route to power available, then I say use it.)

Except the women (Kamala) they accuse of sleeping their way to the top also happen to be super talented and qualified and in the end, it’s just petty envy and Patriarchy and a desire to keep women in their place.

Maybe that’s it. Maybe that’s why some men hate accomplished women so much.

Because women who can take care of themselves don’t have to stay in bad relationships just so they have a place to sleep.

Which means unaccomplished men have fewer options. And they don’t have anyone to look down on anymore (Although – cue racism!)

It’s always The Patriarchy, isn’t it?

(Speaking of The Patriarchy – are you registered to vote? Think about voting in the Republican primary to keep that man out of the race.)

What did your parents teach you?

Remember when you were a kid and your parents repeatedly told you DO NOT GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGER?

And then Lyft came out in 2012 and their entire business model was GET INTO A CAR WITH A STRANGER?

Do you think there were any women on that product development team? Or anywhere – ANYWHERE – in the design and approval process?

Oh wait.

No.

They were all on the Apple Watch development team, which is why the Apple Watch, which came out in 2015, has had a period tracker on it from the very beginning.

HAHAHAHAHA!

I joke.

The Apple Watch didn’t get a period tracker until 2019.

Maybe the women were at FitBit, which was released in 2009 and added their period tracker in 2018?

You could track your potassium levels before that.

Because it’s way more important to know what your potassium levels are than to track your periods.

How did that meeting go, I wonder?

Male developer 1: I know I know I know! Let’s track POTASSIUM LEVELS!

Male developer 2: That’s a great idea! Yes let’s do it!

MD 3: Thirded!

MD 1: Is there anything important we are leaving out? Anything that would attract a huge market? Like half the world? A way for us to offer something that would be more useful than potassium tracking?

Female developer: What about a period tracker? You know – menstruation, which affects women, who are half the world’s population?

MD1: Did you hear something?

MD2: No.

MD3: Nope.

Narrator: And indeed the male developers were correct. They had heard nothing. Because actually, there were no women on the development team.

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Back to Lyft. Which has been running for over a decade on a business model that continues to baffle me – convince women to get into cars with total strangers, which goes against everything we were taught as children.

And I am baffled not only that there are women who do this but also that it seemingly had never occurred to Lyft that this might be a problem.

In 2021, Lyft revealed it had received over 4,000 reports of sexual assault from its users between 2017 and 2019. That report also showed that instances of sexual assault increased year after year, and included 360 total reports of non-consensual sexual penetration and 2,300 reports of “non-consensual touching of a sexual body part.”

NPR

Except they were told it was a problem.

They knew.

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In 2007, Pink Taxi, a taxi company with only female drivers that accepts only female passengers, was launched in Dubai.

In 2009, a company in Mexico did the same thing.

The new fleet of 35 cabs in Mexico’s colonial city of Puebla are driven exclusively by women and don’t stop for men. The cabs cater especially to those tired of leering male drivers.

“Some of the woman who have been on board tell us how male taxi drivers cross the line and try to flirt with them and make inappropriate propositions,” said taxi driver Aida Santos….

NBC News

It’s almost like women have been saying they don’t want to get into a car with a strange man for years. Years before Lyft was a twinkle in someone’s eye.

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So Lyft finally – in September 2023 – introduced a feature where passengers can request a female driver.

And they’re positioning it as a way for women to make money.

“Women+ Connect is all about providing more women and nonbinary people the opportunity to earn money on their terms and giving riders more choice,” said Lyft CEO David Risher. “We hope this gives millions of drivers and riders another reason to choose Lyft.”

….more women can access flexible earning opportunities — whether they’re driving to build a business, support their family, or simply to enjoy earning good money while meeting great people….

Lyft

In the press release quoted above, the words “rape,” “assault,” “danger,” “safe,” and “fear” do not appear.

Now, if I were their comms person, I would have sent anything I wrote to Legal first. As much as I would have wanted to use the words rape, assault, danger, safe, and fear in a press release, I would not have, because I would have known that Legal wouldn’t have allowed it.

But I still would have figured out a way to get the message out. And that message is not “Women can make more money!”

The devil does not need more advocates and the Art Institute of Chicago does not need to buy art from sexist jerk men especially when there are female artists asking the same Big Questions

These images are from pieces on display at the Art Institute of Chicago (AIC).

Both are from men who basically say they are *just asking questions.*

Both are from men who have detached themselves morally from the issue, held their hands in the air, backed away, and said they are just asking questions. They’re not creating or perpetuating the problem! They’re just ASKING QUESTIONS!

About the faceless woman in the tub, the artist says, “There’s a snorkel and somebody is doing something to her under the water because she’s grabbing her breasts for protection. But the viewer also wants to victimize her.”

Dude.

Who is victimizing whom? You don’t think you have victimized her by creating this? And not only by creating this sculpture but also by refusing to give her a face or a name?

And the topless woman by the motorcycle. Guess what it’s called?

“Untitled (Girlfriend), 1993″

She at least gets a face but she also does not get a name. Instead, she is defined only by her relationship to a man.

Oh. And to make it even better?

The man didn’t even take the photo.

He stole it from a magazine where men used to send in photos of their girlfriends topless.

(We’re not even going to talk about that, although I am supposing that at least these women consented to have their topless photos taken. And no, I have no problem with nudity. My problem is when it is nudity specifically for men’s purposes – in this case, to enhance the prestige of the man with the motorcycle and the topless girlfriend. )

There are several of these images at the AIC. Images that this man didn’t even take.

I don’t know if he got consent from the women in the images. I don’t know if he shared any of the money he has gotten selling their images. (At least one print is listed for about $13,000.)

He is known for his use of “appropriated imagery,” which is another way of saying he has stolen someone else’s work, at least for the pieces he creates that are nothing more than photos of photos, like the one below. Yes, I think there is an argument to be made for repurposing an image in an artistic context, but when all you are doing is taking a photo someone else shot and putting it on the wall? That is a little more problematic.

His deceptively simple act in 1977 of rephotographing advertising images and presenting them as his own ushered in an entirely new, critical approach to art making—one that questioned notions of originality and the privileged status of the unique aesthetic object. Prince’s technique involves appropriation; he pilfers freely from the vast image bank of popular culture to create works that simultaneously embrace and critique a quintessentially American sensibility: the Marlboro Man, muscle cars, biker chicks, off-color jokes, gag cartoons, and pulp fiction. 

Guggenheim.org

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Appropriation AKA theft aside, let’s talk about the bigger issue here.

That no woman has ever asked questions about art and consent and fear and appropriation.

That no female artist could possibly explore these issues in a valid way.

That those are questions for white male artists to ask.

(I had to google to be sure they were both white men and to nobody’s surprise – do I even need to Ask Questions about it? – they are.)

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According to a study published in 2019, only 12% of the artists at the AIC are female.

This does not make AIC unusual – that’s about the level of other major US museums.

Who decides who asks the questions?

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If you search on “female artists who explore consent nudity appropriation,” you get several names in just seconds. Here are three of them:

• Joan Semmel
• Nikki S. Lee
• Sophie Calle

Here’s some of their work.

Tell me what sort of questions these pieces are asking.

Oh don’t bother.

We know.

We know what our nude bodies look like and don’t look like.

We know what consent and fear are and how we manage the lack of and the presence of all the time.

We know how the world perceives us.

We know.

We don’t even need to ask.

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To its credit, all three of these women are on display at the AIC.

But.

Does the AIC need to show the work of those men to ask those questions?

Are there not other artists – female artists – who could ask the same questions that the men do?

And maybe do it better?

I’m just Asking Questions.

And AIC, you are complicit.

Some people are cool with women dying from abortion or pregnancy

I met a woman – Jane – who had had an abortion in the late 60s, before Roe vs Wade.

She had never told anyone until last year, after Roe was overturned.

She was in college. Her boyfriend, Joe, was also in college, preparing for medical school. She had an IUD, something she thought essential after her very Catholic mother had told her not to come home with an illegitimate child.

Despite the IUD, Jane got pregnant.

Joe didn’t want to get married.

Jane remembered what her mother had said and thought, I guess I won’t come home unmarried and pregnant.

Note that the parents never said, “We hope you don’t get pregnant out of wedlock, but if that happens, we will support you.”

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I guess I should note that back then, girls and women and their families were horribly shamed for out of wedlock pregnancies. Read the book The Girls Who Went Away.

It’s heartbreaking. Shrouded in secrecy, girls were sent to maternity homes to complete their pregnancies and then were forced to give their babies up for adoption. Many of these women later became suicidal or suffered deep depression.

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However. Jane’s mother had told her not to come home with a baby unless she was married.

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“I considered suicide,” Jane told me. “Except my religion taught me if I committed suicide, I would go straight to hell.”

“But if you had the abortion,” I said, “you could go to confession after.”

“Exactly,” Jane answered. “Exactly.”

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Jane knew what she had to do.

Joe sold his car to pay for the plane ticket and abortion and Jane flew – alone – to Mexico with nothing but a phone number written on a piece of paper.

She called that number when she arrived and was picked up and taken to a place where they did the procedure. She passed out and experienced heavy bleeding and needed medical help when she got home.

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A few months after the abortion, Joe changed his mind and suggested that they get married.

Jane said fuck you.

Also may this be the year that idiot is vanquished forever

I’m goofing off and I am lazy, but we’re still talking on my facebook page (Texan.In.Exile), so come on over.