on the inappropriateness of easter. and boobz.

This morning I saw a Yahoo! headline which read "Thousands of Children Expected at White House Easter Egg Roll."  I, of course, read it as "Thousands of Children Expected to Eat White House Eggrolls."  I was confused.  But then I read the actual article and I was even more confused...Why would Fergie perform at an Easter event for children?  She doesn't exactly ooze wholesomeness (which is generally the way one expels one's wholesomeness, I'm told).  

Which reminds me of two things:

1) Holidays that I don't celebrate¹ are annoying.  Yesterday The Mister and I wanted to go out for lunch and had to settle on our third or fourth choice because everything else was closed.  "Oh, look at me!  I want to be with my family on a special day!  Wah wah wah!"  Suck it up and cook me some quiche, asshole.

2) Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels makes my soul bleed.  The women on this season are somehow even more hideous than the ones they managed to scrape up last time (Daisy, anyone?).  I only saw part of one episode and I was severely disturbed.  The women competed in the "First Annual Truck Stop Games" or some such cleverly named contest, which involved performing various tasks (belly flopping into a pool of beer, stripper pole dancing, etc.) whilst clad in basically nothing.  They were judged by  a panel of leering, overweight rednecks.  The most disturbing part by far, however, was the fact that the audience was mostly comprised of families: lots of young girls and mothers who enthusiastically clapped and cheered.  I kept searching the mothers' faces, sure that I would see a cringe, a frown, even a clearly faked smile--some indication that they realized their eight-year-old daughters shouldn't be exposed to such over the top misogyny...But, of course, no.  

It freaks me out that adolescents grow up with such twisted examples of desirability and sexuality these days.  I mean, clearly idealized images of women have always been just that--idealized and therefore not real to some degree.  But it seems like things have reached some sort of stripper aesthetic extreme in the past decade or so, with this weird sense that women are empowered by being hyper-sexual, even while they're helping to exploit themselves.  It's all too bizarre.  

It seems pretty clear to me that shit like this is part of a long-building backlash against feminism--or at least a backlash against strains of feminism that existed several decades ago, or maybe even just what people  wrongly perceive feminism to be--even if they don't consciously realize it.  There's a book that addresses all this stuff, called Female Chauvinist Pigs: Women and Rise of Raunch Culture.  Maybe I should actually get around to reading it someday?

And that, children, is the story of how the Obamas, Fergie, and Bret Michaels ate eggrolls with the Easter Bunny and a cadre of strippers on the White House lawn.  

The End.

¹When/if we have les bebes, we will definitely be doing the secular Easter Bunny thing--you know, jellybeans not Jesus?

Comments

[Ian]

Best. Blog. Ever.

[kristina]

this morning i read a billboard on the side of a truck. i thought it said "you have a right to abort." hmm...i thought, well, true. then when i got closer, i realized it said "you do not have to abort." then the truck drove away, probably full of fetuses? ready to attend the easter egg hunt.

[Sister Time]

Well, *I* thought your footnote read: "When/if we have les babies," as in lesbian babies. And I thought you were going to talk about celebrating gay pride with your lesbian baby. But then you said something about jelly beans.
Lesbabies.