I’ve noticed that a lot of kids have their ring tones set to the Eminem/Rihanna song “Love the Way You Lie.” Shouldn’t be a big surprise, really, since the song is burning up all sorts of charts.  Ring tones are funny things in that they’re a way for people to kind of personalize themselves publicly via their cell phone.  However, it got me wondering if these kids have any idea of the deeper meaning here.

Okay, gotta tell you, love this song.  I bought Eminem’s CD (the first CD I’ve bought in eons … damn, when did they get so expensive?) because my iTunes account is all frigged up, and “Love the Way You Lie” was a major reason.  Not the only reason (I love Marshall Mathers Slim Shady Eminem), but a big one.

Domestic abuse is a serious problem, and one that both Eminem and Rihanna unfortunately have experience with.  They are not posers spouting off on a topic to make themselves sound tough.  It’s really kind of heartbreaking, if you think about it.

Anyway, I see this song (check out the lyrics here) as an opportunity to have a conversation about the violence that occurs in relationships … and especially the potential tragic consequences.

Rihanna recently …

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Plenty has been said here at Zelda Lily about the evils of Megan Fox. We’ve written her open letters, discussed why she’s an ungrateful bitch and considered Diablo Cody’s defense of her.

But no matter what you think of Fox, she does seem to be — for the moment, at least — on her way out of the limelight. Michael Bay replaced her in the next Transformers, and all of her non-shapeshifting robot movies have pretty much been flops.

I like Megan Fox. I don’t like her “bitches be jealous” mantra, but I like her because she admits she’s playing the stupid bombshell role half of the time because it’s what she needs to do to get jobs.

With that said, the person you ought to be worried about is Olivia Munn.

Olivia Munn refuses to let go of the smoke and mirrors and continues to market herself as the geeky hot chick with a mouth like a sailor all the while attacking angry “fat chicks” who be hatin’. In fact, Olivia is sick of people making such a fuss about successful ladies.

“When I go into this situation, I don’t think, ‘Oh, great. I’m a woman. This is awesome. I think, ‘F**k yeah, I worked my a** off and somebody recognized it. This is great! We’re all human beings in this world,” she continued. “We’re all trying to make it from point A to point B, and just trying to f***ing make it. So I think it’s really a disservice to all women when there are women out there who try to compartmentalize us as human beings, saying ‘women’ and ‘men,’ because I’m just out there.”

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I’ve said it before: I have a love/urgh relationship with Diablo Cody.

On one hand, I dug Juno so much I worked it into my master’s thesis. On the other hand, whenever a character on her Showtime series United States of Tara said something Juno might have – something too cute/trendy/clever – urgh.

Not that anyone could actually call her out on something like that around me without fearing for her/his life. I’m defensive of Cody because I believe she’s genuinely talented, because I see her as the patron saint of girl-bloggers with big dreams, and because she comes off so well in interviews. (That is, when she’s not being interrogated about her former career: stripper.)

I admit, though, I was taken aback as the details of her sophomore film, Jennifer’s Body, were released. It was like, Wait a second! Diablo Cody wrote a movie about a sexy, evil, (conveniently) momentarily lesbian killer?! Isn’t that just more of the old give-dudes-a-pre-slaughter-boner formula? And Megan Fox as the lead? Couldn’t they at least cast against type??!! Urgh!

Well, Ms. Cody quelled my nerves — at least in terms of her intentions when writing the film’s girl-girl scene — in an interview over at The Frisky:

All right, if the two protagonists of the film were a guy and a girl and in a particularly tense moment, they shared a kiss, no one would say it was gratuitous. But the fact that they’re women means it’s some kind of stunt. It was intended to be something profound and meaningful to me and to Karyn [Kusama, the director]. Obviously we knew people were going to totally sensationalize it. They’re beautiful girls, the scene is hot—I’m not afraid to say that. There is a sexual energy between the girls which is kind of authentic, because I know when I was a teenaged girl, the friendships that I had with other girls were almost romantic, they were so intense. I wanted to sleep at my friend’s house every night, I wanted to wear her clothes, we would talk on the phone until our ears ached. I wanted to capture that heightened feeling you get as an adolescent that you don’t really feel as a grownup. (laughs) You like you’re friends when you’re a grownup but you don’t need to sleep in the same bed with them and talk to them on the phone until 5 a.m. every night.

Naturally, she had to go and repeat that “girls hate Megan Fox” line. Urgh. She herself was very gracious to the young actress:

I think people think she’s trying to create some kind of image for herself that she’s not, but she’s a really, truly eccentric person.

Gracious, I think, is generally the way to go — especially when promoting a film. But I’m fairly certain that’s just how she is: In the same interview, she criticized ladybloggers for something I can be terribly guilty of — not being gracious enough to other women. It’s for this reason she no longer reads blogs:

OK, here’s a problem that is holding back feminism and you see it on the blogs. We all hold each other up to an incredibly high standard in a way that men do not. Let’s say a woman directs a movie that’s not very good—everybody piles up on her. It’s, like, “No! You’re representing us! It has to be perfect!” And that’s not how it works! Women should be allowed to make bad movies. Good movies. Porno movies. Terrible made-for-TV movies. Women just need to be out there directing as many movies as men do. We don’t all have to be the model woman—what we need is to be more visible. We really, really are tough on each other.

She makes a good point, but it can be difficult to balance that attitude with the perfectly reasonable fear that some female filmmakers/actors very simply perpetuate the dominant  male gaze. So many films by women feel as though they weren’t made by women at all.

As for Cody, she says her “feminist hat is permanently welded to [her] head”:

It’s so important for me to write things from the female perspective and in service of women and in the right roles for women. That’s usually what I’m thinking going into it. Obviously, the story goes first. But then my next priority is how am I going to sneak my subversive feminist message into this?

You see? Love. Statements like that keep me hopeful — even about Jennifer’s Body.

Megan Fox is at it again, running her mouth and saying absurd, annoying and ungrateful things. A few weeks ago, she was telling reporters that women hated her because they were insanely jealous of her confidence. A few weeks before that, she was saying that had to be “careful” as to how she runs her life now that she’s a sex symbol. As if that wasn’t enough to make you want to gouge out her eyes with her clubbed thumbs, now she’s being rude and thankless to THE DIRECTOR WHO MADE HER FAMOUS, Michael Bay.

In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, Megan said:

“I mean, I can’t s— on this movie [Transformers] because it did give me a career and open all these doors for me. But I don’t want to blow smoke up people’s a–. People are well aware that this is not a movie about acting.”

And yet, shit on this movie you did, you arrogant asswipe. I’m no Transformers fan but if someone deigned to select ME from hundreds of other gorgeous actresses to play a love interest role that catapulted me to fame, I would be praising the movie up and down and printing Transformers tshirts on Café Press like it was going out of style. Seriously, how ungrateful can you be?

It’s nice to see that Michael Bay is not rolling over and taking Megan’s asinine comments. He told The Wall Street Journal:

“Well, that’s Megan Fox for you…She says some very ridiculous things because she’s 23 years old and she still has a lot of growing to do.

“You roll your eyes when you see statements like that and think, ‘Okay Megan, you can do whatever you want. I got it.’”

I couldn’t have said it better myself. Megan does say very ridiculous things all the time. It’s charitable of Bay to attribute her ignorance to her age, but I suspect she’s just genetic jerk. She’s probably always relied on her looks to get her through life – and now that she has the slight nosejob and implants, she is the hottest thing EVER and so she can do or say anything that she wants because people are rendered powerless in the face of such beauty. Megan is just another incarnation of Lindsay Lohan: bratty, entitled, disrespectful. Lindsay was also publicly scolded (remember Jane Fonda’s note to her regarding her Georgie Rule behavior?) and I have a feeling that the fate of Megan’s career will be similar to that of Lindsay’s. If Megan keeps up her shitty attitude and her loose cannon interviews, nobody will work with her, and in 15 years she’ll make an appearance on a VH1 “Where Are They Now?” show looked bloated, ill and defeated by life. I, for one, look forward to that blessed day.

Naturally, the woman who claims all women despise her tops these charts, thus inflating her already overblown head even more.  Megan Fox is this year’s number one nominee for the oh-so-prestigious Most Sensual Women awards compiled by FHM and its illustrious readers.

FHM, a men’s magazine, has annually created these lists to make “regular” women feel lesser than average by placing uncommonly good-looking women on its covers and celebrating their “common” beauty.

Other women who sat atop the top ten were Jessica Alba, Scarlett Johansson, Jessica Biel, Madeline Zima, Adriana Lima, Elisha Cuthbert, Heidi Montag (wtfreally?), Anne Hathaway and Katy Perry.

Despite the fact that I feel these polls to be feminist-ly backwards and could also potentially create bad blood between the lovely ladies of the world (at least with regard to the sometimes competitive nature of their own self-images), I think, for the most part, FHM might have this top ten right for once, with the obvious exception of a couple.  Adriana Lima and Heidi Montag are those “couple.”

Why, you might ask?  Could it possibly be because I, myself, have a debilitating lack of self-esteem that encourages me to lash out at other, better looking women in my age group?  I’m going to have to go ahead and cry a big ‘no’ on that one.  I personally feel that a healthy dose of self-confidence can do wonders for even the most average looking woman.  I am fully aware that there are far more beautiful women than myself out there; I will not delude myself into thinking otherwise.  Regardless, the reason that I feel these two particular women should be eradicated from FHM’s list are due to one primary reason:  probable prosthetic “appendages” and possible plastic surgery.  Okay, well, that’s two, but they’re inter-related in my eyes, anyway.  I’m not one to judge, and to quote a proverb that I once heard and always had stick with me: “Remove the plank from your own eye before attempting to remove the speck from your neighbor’s (or something similar)” — but these two women positively paled in comparison with the other relatively-natural beauties that topped their Big Ten List of Unfairly Hot Ladies.

I think (hope?) men are coming to their senses (or at least our senses) and realizing that natural beauty is where it’s at.  I’ve always thought Anne Hathaway and Scarlett Johansson both to be obscenely gorgeous in a frankly old-fashioned way, and I’m glad that men of the world are starting to see beyond the fads of spray tans and silicone implants, of bleached-blonde hair and two-inch acrylic fingernails.

I will, however, completely negate everything that I previously stated by criticizing these same men by perpetuating the old, played out Ladder of Sexual Appeal and Comparison.  I think these lists are utterly degrading to women and allow women to be idolized for their physical appeal rather than their mental capacity or humanitarian efforts.

Men of FHM?  On a sheerly PR aspect of the selection of women that you chose for your little black book of hotties?  Two thumbs generally up.  On your continuation of the age-old “rank the hotness of the chicks” that we played in high school — epic fail and fail again.

Dear Megan Fox,

Please stop telling entertainment reporters that I hate you. I don’t hate you. I try not to hate anyone. But you presuming — it’s making me kind of nutzo.

I can’t speak for each and every last one of my sisters, but I doubt that they hate you, too. I mean, it’s a strong word, no? Maybe they have “an issue with you,” as suggested by the Entertainment Weekly writer who conducted the interview I’m now responding to.  Maybe they roll their eyes, maybe they grind their teeth when reading EW quotes from you like this one:

“I come across as confident and [women] assume that means that I think I’m hot s—. And that makes them feel bad about themselves and so they hate me.”

or this one:

“I think all women in Hollywood are known as sex symbols. That’s what our purpose is in this business. You’re merchandised, you’re a product. You’re sold and it’s based on sex. But that’s okay. I think women should be empowered by that, not degraded.”

… but hate? You’d have to do something more hate-able.

Let’s get this straight: that you seem to only talk about yourself as a sex object is annoying, sure. You probably have other things to offer, they’re just other things reporters don’t ask you about, because that would probably mean selling fewer magazines.

Not that you discourage said reporters. It seems you enjoy titillating them. Maybe you understand — like a friend of mine in undergrad certainly did — that if you use the word “sex” enough, you automatically become associated with the idea. It’s a powerful idea. It becomes the next word to spring to mind after we hear your name. Maybe it even jangles in mentally as we read your last name. Same number of letters; both end in “x.”

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