While Mary Martinez was shopping in a Target store in Harper Woods, Mich., recently, her 4-week-old baby got hungry. And because some people still haven't gotten it through their heads that women often use their own breasts to feed hungry babies, a security guard who saw her doing just that told her she had to leave because she was breaking the law. Which she was not. Target mistake number one.
When Martinez and her husband, Jose -- a police officer who knew full well his wife wasn't doing anything illegal -- refused to leave, the security guard called the cops. Target mistake number two. Although the local officers who arrived confirmed that it is not against the law to breastfeed in public in Harper Woods, Mary Martinez says she felt humiliated and forced out of the store anyway. "Two security guards, the manager or team leader, two officers, they just made a spectacle and a scene. I feel like I can't go to that specific Target anymore."
Now, Target mistakes one and two can be written off as the poor judgment of individual employees, but three is the real eye-popper: When contacted by Detroit's Fox affiliate, Target's corporate headquarters said that breastfeeding is allowed in their stores, but "This specific situation escalated to a point where we were concerned for the safety of our guests, so law enforcement was called." Are you kidding me? How on earth does feeding a baby "escalate" to a safety issue for other customers? Target's corporate spokesperson does understand that when you give a quote to a media outlet, other people will end up hearing it, right? And also that words mean things?
Perhaps not, because the rest of the statement was: "We regret the incident in our store and will continue to provide a shopping environment that respects the needs of all guests, including nursing mothers." Yeah, see, the verb "continue" implies that you have already been doing a thing you plan to keep doing, yet calling police on a breastfeeding woman is not providing a shopping environment that respects the needs of nursing mothers. See how that works? So at this point, you could maybe start respecting nursing mothers, or change things so that all Target security guards are aware that breastfeeding is neither illegal nor against store policy, or create a new rule like, "Hey, don't call the cops on moms feeding their babies," but you can't really "continue" doing something you weren't doing before.
I mean sure, maybe every other Target in America is wonderfully welcoming to nursing mothers, but even if that were the case, this one screwed up. Badly. And the savvy PR move in response to such a screw-up is not, "we were concerned for the safety of our guests" -- I'm sorry, did Mary Martinez whip out a gun and demand that everyone back off while she finished feeding her kid? Take hostages? Tell someone she'd planted a bomb? -- but, "Our security guard overreacted and misrepresented both store policy and local law, and we are ashamed that a Target employee caused the Martinez family so much trouble and embarrassment. We want to reassure our guests that nursing mothers are always welcome in our stores." Because you know what? Even if you alienate the kind of customers who might find an accidental boob sighting offensive, I'm guessing that's better for business than alienating parents of young children; women who are, have been or might someday be nursing mothers; and any other human beings who understand that babies need to eat.
The manager of the Harper Woods store told the TV station that (despite evidence to the contrary) "breast-feeding is certainly not discouraged inside of her store." Good thing, since I'm betting that store now has a nurse-in to look forward to.
These are tough times for manly men. Everywhere they turn, there are Adam Lambert album covers and new episodes of "Glee" and Katherine Heigl movies threatening to harsh on their boners. Fortunately, with a small outlay of cash and two dude-enhancing products, masculinity can saved from the evil snares of all things supergay and girly.
First, you'll need a phone. Forget that pussy iPhone and get yourself the Motorola Droid. Droid! Nothing chick-like there! That's a name that says, "I tinker with stuff and edit Dr. Who Wikipedia entries."
In the Droid's new ad, Motorola gives us an array of candy-colored, bling-encrusted mobile devices and smiling fashion dolls and asks, "Should a phone be pretty? Should it be a tiara wearing, digitally clueless beauty queen?" Hell to the no!
Instead, it should be "racehorse duct taped to a scud missile fast" so it "rips through the web like a circular saw through a ripe banana!" Beware the rampaging Droid! It has GPS but it doesn't even need it, because directions are for the weak! If the ghost of Steve McQueen had a baby with Captain Kirk, it would be this phone. It would have back hair and chew with its mouth open. This phone may have killed Tupac. As the ad explains, "It's not a princess. It's a robot." It's not a phone. It's a dick with rollover minutes.
Feeling somewhat more butch? Ready to get out there and engage in some high-speed chases and cut down some trees and shit? Sounds like you need to "wear the pants." And what could be more gangsta, more badass, than a pair of Dockers? As the brand that made everybody's asses look fat in the 90s lurches along the comeback trail, Docker's would like to propose a man-ifesto. (Get it? Hey, you want subtlety, watch Lifetime.) You see, once there was a time "men took charge because that's what they did." But then, "the world decided it no longer need men" and left them "stripped of their khakis … by the side of the road between boyhood and androgyny." It goes on in this tragic vein for some time. Stuff about crumbling cities and genderless society, until you find yourself you pouring two fingers of bourbon, neat, and watching "Field of Dreams" again on Spike TV. I think we all remember the great pants-jacking of American masculinity, which, based on the manifesto's references to disco and salad bars, occurred sometime in the Carter administration. For the love of God, can we put some khakis back on our men folk at long last?
When the Incredible Hulk goes on the rampage, he is busting out of a pair of Dockers. The only reason to unzip a pair of Dockers is to pee standing up or impregnate a supermodel. If there were a seventh masculine icon of the Village People, it would be these pants! OK, scratch that last one. They're available at Kohl's and JC Penny's! Can you handle that?
Perhaps the best part of the Docker's imperative to "answer the call of manhood" is the links at the bottom to "shop men" or "shop women's." I feel gender confusion and androgyny kicking in. ROARR! WHY AM I SHOUTING? IT MUST BE THE TESTOSTERONE IN THESE PANTS!
It's vaguely consoling to be reminded that advertising doesn't merely prey upon female insecurities. But maybe someday they'll be enough roaming data and trouser wearing in the world for all of us -- male and female, princesses and Droids.
For every action in the universe, there is a YouTube tribute waiting to happen. Whether you're an actor on an obscenity-riddled tirade on the set of a Terminator movie or a politician with a heretofore undiscovered penchant for Rick rolling, be assured that someone out there is waiting to make hay of your choice words.
So it was inevitable that Tiger Woods message-heard-round-the-world would get some creative treatment. We just never imagined it would so convincingly lend itself to a down and dirty, R. Kelly style late night groove. From the fine folks at Half Day Today, Tiger's voicemail is the slow jam that will have you crooning "Take your name off your phone" to all the cocktail waitresses on your speed dial.
Sarah Palin is the new anti-abortion icon, Ben Smith argues today in Politico: "Her decision to carry to term her Down syndrome child established a special relationship with anti-abortion activists, and now Palin has transformed herself from a politician who was anti-abortion into the leading figure of the anti-abortion movement." The truth, though, is that she has been upstaged by the movement's real star: Trig.
The 19-month-old has accompanied Palin on her book tour and is rarely out of the spotlight. He can be seen resting on her hip as she addresses a crowd or carried by an aide while Palin signs books. Adoring fans have showed up with handmade signs that trumpet things like, "We Love Trig." Jason Recher, a campaign aide who came along for the book tour, told Politico: "There’s a lot of people who come through the line to see Trig instead of to see her." It makes me think of the way believers the world over flock to see children who are deemed to be the reincarnation of a particular deity. Trig is being treated as the movement's blessed icon, a martyr because of what could have happened to him: abortion.
He's also being used as a straw man baby against pro-choice activists. "Palin's allies [suggest] that antipathy to her is based on the belief that she should have had an abortion rather than bearing her son," Smith explains. He quotes two conservatives bloggers who argue that this is part of a "broader societal bias against disability." This is just another iteration of the "pro-choicers hate babies" argument. Thankfully, Smith injects some reportorial balance: "Those people are, in fact, rather hard to find."
That doesn't stop Marjorie Dannenfelser, president of the anti-choice Susan B. Anthony List, from offering a sneering representation of the liberal point-of-view: "She had the audacity in the eyes of the abortion rights world to actually have this child and then has the audacity to bring him along with her and feature him as a centrally valued person in their family." Who, exactly, in the mainstream reproductive rights camp is offended by her choice? Dannenfelser dishonestly recasts disagreements with the way Trig is being used to further the anti-choice agenda with an objection to his actual existence and the fact that his family adores him. It isn't Palin's choice that we care about -- it's her disregard for other women's right to make their own choice, whatever that may be.
Remarkably, the article ends with a relatively inoffensive sentiment from Dannenfelser: She celebrates Palin for providing an example that will influence some women confronted with a similar situation. I think it's wonderful for there to be a public example of a family happily raising a baby with Down syndrome; women should be exposed to a whole range of role models for the various paths that are possible in life. But, again, it comes down to the issue of, hello, choice. Even Palin writes in her book that she considered abortion "for a split second" when she found out about Trig's condition. She considered it because she had a choice.
"Women in nontraditional jobs earn 20% to 40% more than women in what are considered 'traditional' women's jobs," Lynn Shaw, president of the board of Women in Non Traditional Employment Roles, told the L.A. Times in an interview. "That's $1 million over a lifetime." And that's why she and her colleagues worked to found Rosie the Riveter High School in Long Beach, California, with the goal of educating girls to participate in typically male-dominated trades.
Usually, when I write about teenaged girls or women in non-traditional occupations here, let alone both, I'm despairing for the future -- but this is a pure feel-good story. Shaw, who worked as a miner, steelworker and longshoreman before earning a doctorate in electrical engineering, "got tired of being the only woman on the job" and set about fixing that. Now, the two-year-old charter school she helped create trains about 50 students -- boys and girls -- "for careers as welders, plumbers, carpenters, electricians," as well as for college and other professions. One student interviewed says he wants to be a writer and another says she's planning to become a pediatrician, but senior Alaina Servin, who's given up on being a teacher in favor of working at an oil refinery, demonstrates that Rosie the Riveter High is fulfilling its purpose: helping girls see vocational opportunities they might not have considered and think, "We can do it!"
The so-called "Bo-Tax" -- a provision in the Senate Health Care bill that would impose a 5 percent tax on elective cosmetic surgery -- "sounded like a refreshingly good idea to me," writes Judith Warner at the New York Times' Opinionator blog, "until I read that Terry O'Neill, the president of the National Organization for Women, is against it." With all due respect to both O'Neill and Warner, I've read the feminist arguments against the tax, and I'm still really not moved to fight for my sisters' right to go under the knife.
I can understand the logic, to a point. ABC News reports that "86 percent of cosmetic surgery patients are working women between the ages of 35 and 50, with an average income of $55,000 a year." There's no question that this is essentially a tax on women, some of whom feel that plastic surgery is necessary to keep them competitive in the job market -- not just on rich, superficial stereotypes. Writes Warner, "The economy is terrible. Middle-aged women, many of whom reduced their working hours, limiting their earning power and ambition, when they had kids or, later, found themselves having to care for their parents, are in a particularly vulnerable spot these days, as they're increasingly called upon to supplement or take over the lion's share of family money-making. And any number of studies have shown that people with better (read: younger) looks have a better chance of getting a good job. Particularly women." Thus, both O'Neill and Gloria Steinem told Warner that this would amount to an unfair tax on women who are only doing what they need to do to survive in a sexist, ageist workforce.
A few things about that. First, having cosmetic surgery does not necessarily make you look younger; often enough, it just makes you look like you've had cosmetic surgery. So, not only are studies showing younger-looking people have an advantage on the job market a red herring here -- unless there are studies showing that eyelifts, facelifts, Botox, etc., improve women's ability to get hired, we still have no idea which procedures, if any, could cynically be considered a smart investment and which would only be a further financial drain on an unemployed woman -- but given society's general disdain for cosmetic procedures, they might actually sabotage a woman's chances. If she shows up to an interview with half her face frozen from Botox or a permanently surprised expression, for instance, a (sexist, ageist) interviewer might be dazzled by the glow of youth, or might just write her off as vain and ridiculous. There's no way of knowing in advance which way it will go.
Second, let's be clear: We're not talking about women as a class here, we're talking about white women. In 2007, "Hispanics had 9 percent of the procedures, followed by African-Americans (6 percent), Asians (5 percent) and other non-Caucasians (2 percent)." White people, then? Seventy-eight percent. Women who aren't white don't have the option of paying a doctor to minimize their chances of employment discrimination; racism will still exist no matter how young-looking and symmetrical they are, just as sexism and ageism still exist even if 55-year-old women manage to pass for 40. And while capitulation to bigoted standards (where possible) might be a useful short-term survival strategy for some -- as a bottle-blond who rarely leaves the house without mascara, I am certainly not judging individuals who choose that route -- there is a big difference between acknowledging that reality and promoting such capitulation as a feminist cause. Rallying behind women who feel forced into cosmetic surgery only reinforces the standards that drive them to that point; Botox and eyelifts may help some of our struggling sisters get jobs, but what of those who can't afford such interventions, those who will still be discriminated against because of their skin color or disabilities or sexual orientation? Helping white women maybe improve their economic circumstances by becoming a bit more conventionally attractive is really not the kind of goal I want to see feminist leaders fighting for.
Besides which, once again, we have no idea if it actually will improve the economic circumstances even of a select group of privileged women. As Laurie Essig recently wrote in True/Slant, "cosmetic surgery is now primarily consumed not by the rich, but by the working and lower-middle classes, sometimes even by the poor. According to the American Society for Aesthetic Plastic Surgery (ASAPS), about 1/3 of cosmetic surgery is consumed by people who make less than $30,000 a year. About 70% of it is consumed by people who make less than $60,000 a year." So the tax would indeed add an even greater burden to struggling women who choose plastic surgery as an investment in their careers, but I'm still not convinced that means I should be bothered by it. Essig goes on to say, "What these women don't understand -- what few of us understand -- is debt. You sign on the dotted line for your boob job at $8000 but you don't realize you'll end up paying almost twice that much if you can't put any money down. Easy for Hollywood starlets to plunk their cash down for new boobs, but for the rest of us, taking on debt for a better body is risky business." How long will it take a woman to work off all that debt at the new job she got with her new face? And will a tax on cosmetic procedures necessarily mean that the same people are saddled with more of a financial burden, or might it mean that fewer women decide it's in their economic best interest to take on a pile of credit card debt in the hope of finding a job that will lead to greater long-term security? Because if it's the latter, I'm really not sure this tax is a bad thing.
That doesn't necessarily mean it's a good thing, either, mind you. Essig offers a number of solutions I like better: "If the government wants to control cosmetic surgery, then the answer is to re-regulate the banking industry so these medical credit loans don't exist. And the other answer is to tax the obscene amounts of wealth being made by the likes of GE, who is selling medical credit to people who cannot afford it. Or the cosmetic surgeons income as part of an overall progressive income tax on the top earners." But I think it's safe to say we shouldn't hold our breath for any of those plans -- which is related to yet another reason why I can't see access to affordable plastic surgery as a feminist issue.
If you can be judged by the company you keep, then it's worth noting that Terry O'Neill and Gloria Steinem have thrown their lot in with the likes of Allergan Inc. and Medicis Pharmaceutical Corp., whom the Wall Street Journal reports "are mounting lobbying and public-relations campaigns against the proposed levy." Allergan owns Botox, among other things, and Medicis produces competing products like Restalayne. Representatives from The American Academy of Cosmetic Surgery and The American Society of Plastic Surgeons are also all over the news, trying to spin this as an assault on women's rights rather than their own wallets. "You're taxing a disorganized group that has no one of its own representing it," one doctor told The New York Times. "There's no American Society of Plastic Surgery Patients... You're not going to have a million-man Botox march." But fortunately for the poor, unheard masses, you really don't need on-the-ground activism when you've already got Big Pharma in your corner. Women who hope to maintain access to plastic surgery will do just fine without any organized leadership or the support of prominent feminists, as long as the people who profit most from sexist beauty standards are leading the charge against this tax. Heaven knows they have more political power than middle-aged women do. In fact, it's almost like that's the core fucking problem here or something!
And then there's this: Women die from the pursuit of youth and beauty through surgery. This week, an Argentine model. In 2007, Donda West. In 2004, Olivia Goldsmith. In 1996, Adrienne Brown. Two months ago in Miami, and who knows how many other times, a woman who had no public profile. Statistically, the risk of death may be minimal, but it can't be ignored in a conversation about feminism and cosmetic surgery. Is the ability to potentially maim and kill ourselves to look younger and prettier really something we want to fight for?
Look, I have no beef with any woman, up to and including Gloria Steinem, choosing to have work done for her own reasons; as a feminist, I believe in bodily autonomy without exception. And I can absolutely understand choosing to maximize whatever privilege you have in an effort to secure your own future; it's not pretty, so to speak, but I'm neither naive nor noble enough to demand that people quit doing that. And I don't have high hopes that this tax will make a dent in the cost of more urgent healthcare concerns, so I really don't care if it stays in or not. But it's still galling to see feminist leaders spewing the exact same lines as far more powerful people and organizations who depend on sexist, ageist, racist beauty standards for their very livelihoods, essentially to defend the right of white women who can afford it (even if they really can't) to make themselves appear more acceptable to sexist, ageist, racist employers. I like a good contrarian argument as much as the next overanalytical feminist, but no. Just no. Access to affordable cosmetic surgery is not a feminist issue. What drives women to risk not only their financial stability but their lives, because being seen as plain or old or ugly in this society can be just that devastating to their self-esteem and career prospects, is the feminist issue here.
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