Monthly Archives: March 2012

Winterguard: Sport or Hobby?

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Photo of Winter Guard Member
The “is it a sport or not?” debate vis a vis everything from women’s skiing to cheerleading has been ongoing for some time now … and there’s pretty much universal support for the fact that it is, at least when you’re considering teams that compete, not just shake pom poms around at a football game or something.

Which leads me to winterguard, a primarily female activity that’s become increasingly popular both in American high schools and at a competitive level.

When my daughter announced to me last year that, as a high school junior, she wanted to join her school’s winterguard team, I was pretty flummoxed.  For one thing, I had only the haziest idea of what winterguard was … namely, girls dressed in odd-looking costumes waving flags around.

I soon learned that it was more than that.  Much more.

For one thing, it entailed three hour practices two nights a week, daylong practices on weekends, and eventually competitions every weekend.  Oh, and countless hours spent in the backyard practicing flag tosses.

The end result of all that practice, the concussions and chipped teeth and bumps and bruises collected by this team, looked something like this.

I was blown away every time I watched that show, and on a personal level, watching my daughter, who has a tendency not to try something if she’s not going to quickly and easily excel at it, blossom into a confident performer through an activity that was incredibly challenging both physically and emotionally was powerful beyond words.

She also dropped something like twenty pounds over the course of last year’s season, and she wasn’t a big girl to start with. The physical demands of winterguard left her not just bruised and battered, but buff as well.

But does that make it a sport?

Well, what exactly constitutes the word “sport”?  According to an English teacher I know who specializes in …

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Should Feminists Push The FCC To Remove Limbaugh?

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In the wake of Rush Limbaugh’s hate speech regarding Danica Patrick, and probably the whole “you’re a slut if you use birth control” thing, a lot of people have been wondering if feminists should join together and push the FCC to remove him from the air. Disclaimer: this is going to be an opinion piece. I’m not saying I’m right and I’m not saying you’re wrong – I’m saying what I, as a writer and someone who has broadcasting experience, think.

What Rush Limbaugh said was loathsome and ignorant, but so is most of what he says. Here’s a recap:

“This is about expanding the reach and power of government into your womb, if you’re a woman. This is about the Democrat Party wanting more and more control over you. What was early feminism all about? Emancipation, individuality, freedom, liberation, all of these things. Now here comes Danica Patrick out and she says, ‘I’m perfectly comfortable letting the government make my health decisions for me.’ Well, folks, I’m gonna tell you: Right there, that’s the death and the end of feminism.”

Also, he said that you’re a slut if you use birth control. Plain and simple.

The great thing about the radio, or the internet, or the TV, is that you can change the channel. If you don’t like it, you don’t have to listen to it. And with regard to censorship, I don’t think any organization, especially feminists, should force anyone to do anything. The feminist movement comes under heat for everything as it is, and there’s just no need to fan those flames.

I’m a writer, I’ve worked in radio, and I’ve been inundated with people who don’t like my opinions. In fact, the first time I got hate mail, I called my dad, who also works at a newspaper, and excitedly screamed, “Some guy hates me! He said I don’t know what I’m talking about and my opinion is wrong!” My dad promptly congratulated me and said, “That’s when you know you’ve made it, when people take the time to say you suck.” He then told me about how they had to shut down the forums on one (very famous) particular writer’s column because of all the horrible things that people posted there. I guess he made it, too.

Haters are motivators. It’s just the way it is. The best way to get rid of a bully (that you can’t hit with a brick) is to ignore them. I was always told to ignore bullies no matter what, and as I got older I realized that this was only half of the advice. You never start a fight but you always finish it – that’s the advice I give my nephew. If someone hits you and they’re bigger than you and you know you can’t win with your own strength, then supplement your strength with whatever you need.

Rush Limbaugh is a bully, plain and simple. How should you treat a bully, at least according to me? You treat him the way you treat any other jerk on the playground. We’ve tried for years to shut him up, but hating him only makes people more interested in him. And fuels his fire. The more people talk about him, the richer he becomes and the more advertising he gets.  This time advertisers pulled out (that was the brick we used) but he’s still on air, still pandering to his faithful followers. Now? We go to my Mom’s advice. If you can’t beat him, ignore him.

And guys, moms know. Another good piece of advice my mother always gave me was “Just because someone else is trash it doesn’t mean you have to become trash, too.” We shouldn’t name-call or sabotage someone just because they’re doing it to us. We stand tall and ignore him, why? Because he’s a pest. He’s an ignorant, angry man who’s frankly not worth our time. We have bigger issues to handle. There will always be hate and there will always be people who will listen to someone spew it. It’s the nature of the beast. What we need to focus on is bettering ourselves. Let the pig roll in the mud to stay cool while we build ourselves a delicious shade. He’ll be the one that comes out looking dirty, not us.



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Feminism In The Mafia

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There’s been a rise in feminism in an unusual place – the mafia. Pier Luigi Vigna, the head of Italy’s national anti-mafia office, says that women, “are mainly found in areas that require a certain finesse, like money laundering rather than murder.” The women are the brains, the men are the muscle. Last week, Catherine Greig, girlfriend of notorious gangster James “Whitey” Bulger, admitted to helping her him elude capture for almost sixteen years.

That’s a common theme in the mob, apparently. The men may run the family, but the women protect the men. Take a look at The Sopranos, Goodfellas, Public Enemies … it’s always the dames.

These women take pride in being loyal to their men, even when they’re behind bars. They also look the other way when these men are not so faithful to them. In mob culture, it’s all about the loyalty: loyalty to the family, to the way of life. But the men believe taking on a mistress can be seen as a sign of a strength and independence. Some mobsters see it as a sign of respect to their wives, the mothers of their children. They’d never disrespect them by asking them to perform deviant acts, they’d just go elsewhere to girls that ‘mean nothing’. They don’t ask the mistresses to protect them, and they certainly don’t protect the mistresses. It’s always about the head woman at home. They make sure the women they marry are tough, because in Italian culture it’s all about the mothers. The matriarchs teach you and you never disrespect or disappoint your mother.

In 1983, a Palermo court ruled that women did not have the mental capacity to get involved with the business aspect of the mob; this let the girls off the hook, but 12 years later the government indicted 89 women for mafia-related crimes. So who knows. Maybe the government wised up to the wise guys. Women know what they’re doing, and that’s why …

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Sarah Maple’s “It’s A Girl!” Art Exhibit Review

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Sarah Maple is an up-and-coming artist, and in her second show, It’s a Girl! she pokes fun at gender roles. From a white dress stained with menstrual blood, to a picture of a vajazzled woman, Sarah points to the absurdity of our culture.

Maple uses herself as an example in her work, and this time she’s less sarcastic than in her first exhibit.  Some say the female self-portrait has become a cornerstone of feminist art, as it shows us how we really see ourselves. Maple revisits this concept with the two portraits An Artist/A Female Artist, where artist Stuart Semple is juxtaposed with Maple – the Female Artist – in a nude body suit of overblown prosthetic femininity. Maple’s piece says that she’s positioned as A Female Artist, a freakish footnote to the neutral Male.

Maple has been compared to several other feminist artists – a comparsion she rejects and one she tries to distance herself from. However, her work and success does echo others, and like Emin’s, her success has been attributed in large part to having caught the eye of Saatchi during her final year as a Fine Art student. She is also keen to critique the ‘cliqueiness’ of the art world while participating in its games and simultaneously – and deftly –  promoting herself, placing herself centre-stage.

Maple’s discovery and rise to fame also raises questions. Is it sexiest to think that she’s made it this far because she was discovered by a male? And if not, who out there can deny the impact that it’s had on her career? The next question would be “How does Maple navigate this self-proclaimed feminist artist, ‘critiquing’ the art world’s pretentiousness while backed by Saatchi, the very person who perpetuates the cycle?” Pot … meet kettle.

Maple is only in her 20s and some would argue that what we do in our 20s is all hypocrisy anyway.  But these questions need to be asked because of the subject matter of the work: feminism. In ‘It’s A Girl!’, Maple’s reference points are obvious, Disney, Playboy, and, in ‘This Artist Blows’ (her first exhibit), the burqa, which is so often so lazily-referenced in our media as the only ‘symbol’ for the lives of millions of women. Is it art if it’s screaming that it’s art? Is it art when it’s all been done before?

But that’s the point, it seems. It all has been done before, and there is a new generation that won’t know. For instance, now we have “The Slut Walk” and people that it was an original idea, because they didn’t know that “Riot Grrl” came a decade before.

But the bottom line is that Maple is having fun, and having a laugh, too. Some have called her “toilet-humour funny, clever-funny, cultural-reference funny, and sad-drooping-Playboy-bunny-ears-funny.” And if there’s any remedy for hypocrisy or tiresome art, it’s laughter, and that’s good enough for me.



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