Christina Hoff Sommers has just published a long, hard-hitting essay in the American revealing many startling details about the initial MIT case, which was evidently not nearly as solid as press reports had implied, as well as about increasing pressure on the federal government for an expansion of Title IX to enforce gender outcomes in science in the same way as was done for campus sports (which led to men's wrestling teams being scrapped by universities meeting gender quotas).
Sommers will be a panelist discussing women and religion at a conference, "The Legacy and the Future of Feminism," to be held next month at Harvard University. I will be giving the conference's keynote address, currently scheduled for 8 p.m. on Thursday, April 10, in the Science Center. The title of my speech: "Feminism Past and Present: Ideology, Action, and Reform." All events are free and open to the public.
Sex, of course, remains a hotly contested issue within feminism itself. I have defended pornography and supported the decriminalization of prostitution, positions that I still maintain. (I hope that the valiant women staffers of the Emperors' Club, Eliot Spitzer's hypnotic Xanadu, don't suffer in any way.) However, I am very concerned by a degeneration of erotic images in American media. It isn't their mammoth proliferation that disturbs me (as it does many other feminists); it's their antiseptic quality in this era of Botox and plasticized Barbie boobs. American sex is all flash and no sizzle.
One could see it in the banal pack of glamazon young actresses on the red carpet at the Oscars -- with their parched, stylist-honed outfits, their bony Pilates arms, their immobilized faces and simpering smirks, and their vapid, perky voices. All of them were upstaged in an instant by Marion Cotillard, the best actress winner whose French sensuality and sparkling vitality simply leapt off the TV screen. In France, there's still a mystique about female sexuality, a quiet magnetism that has been completely lost in the U.S., where at least our major movie stars once had it.
But even the annual Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, which used to be a luscious winter extravaganza of sinuous tigresses or golden California gals lolling in sultry, exotic locales, has now become utterly boring and flat. The artistry, charm and provocation are gone; all that's left is empty, mechanical attitudinizing. Yet another cultural landmark down the tubes. If you want to see what a collapse has occurred in America's imagery of sex, check out this 1961 Life magazine cover starring my pagan goddess of that era, Elizabeth Taylor. She is regally presiding with her gleaming Oscar for "Butterfield 8," where she played a glossy Manhattan call girl. Now that's a woman!
By the time we got to college in the 1960s, my baby-boom generation had access to a huge range of exciting female personae -- from the splendiferous Diana Rigg doing karate chops in leather jumpsuits in "The Avengers" to the mercurial Edie Sedgwick setting off her elfin youthquake as an Andy Warhol superstar. Speaking of Edie, I found this "diaporama" tribute to her on YouTube, set to a song composed and sung by Étienne Daho. That led in turn to another video, where Daho does a deliciously relaxed duet on French TV with Charlotte Gainsbourg (daughter of the legendary Serge Gainsbourg and that British crumpet, Jane Birkin).
Here's natural, invigorating French womanliness on display again in the supply expressive Gainsbourg. And despite the intermittent corniness of French pop, what an affectingly simple and evocative performance -- a mature man and a sophisticated young woman exchanging meaningful glances and exploring a palette of authentic emotions. With the death of the vaudeville-derived variety format, we never get that on American TV anymore, except from aging country singers, who have become increasingly pat and formulaic in their stagecraft over the past 20 years.
European women of every nationality were part of the great glory of art films at their height from the late 1940s to the early '70s. I feel so lucky to have been able to see foreign films nonstop in real theaters when I was a college and grad student forming my ideas about sex and gender. Those fabulous women: Jeanne Moreau, Anouk Aimée, Anna Karina, Melina Mercouri, Bibi Andersson, Liv Ullman, Ingrid Thulin, Delphine Seyrig, Geneviève Page, Catherine Deneuve, Julie Christie, Billie Whitelaw, Susannah York. The list goes on and on.
I've been renting films from Netflix starring one of my all-time favorite stars, Monica Vitti, who has had a major career in Italy as a movie and stage actress as well as an acting teacher. She has a brilliant facility for comedy, both vocal and physical -- something not normally associated with the star of Antonioni's brooding, angst-filled films like "L'Avventura," "Red Desert" and "L'Eclisse." Here's Vitti in a publicity still. And here's the inimitably ultra-chic Jeanne Moreau standing bleakly with Vitti in Antonioni's "La Notte." (Though they're love rivals over Marcello Mastroianni, Vitti has been charitably drying Moreau's rain-soaked tresses.)
I recently viewed a Vitti film that I had never seen, "The Scarlet Lady," an absurd 1968 color romp about a vengeful perfume heiress on a Parisian shopping spree. Its entire raison d'être is evidently to put Vitti through her paces in a wealth of postures, moods and trendy costumes. What a formidable presence she is -- tall and kinetic, with a drawling, raspy contralto, kohl-rimmed cat eyes, and a strong, sharp nose that turns her face into a work of sculpture. Monica Vitti makes today's Hollywood actresses look like callow fruit flies.
Camille Paglia's column appears on the second Wednesday of each month. Every third column is devoted to reader letters. Please send questions for her next letters column to this mailbox. Your name and town will be published unless you request anonymity.
About the writer
Camille Paglia is the University Professor of Humanities and Media Studies at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia. Her most recent book is "Break, Blow, Burn: Camille Paglia Reads Forty-Three of the World's Best Poems."
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