Salon.com > Karrin Anderson

Mika Brzezinski’s erotic dance

Mon, 17 Sep 2012 20:54:00 +0000

Vanity Fair’s short profile of MSNBC’s Morning Joe hosts Mika Brzezinski and Joe Scarborough ostensibly depicts them as a dynamic duo reminiscent of the great screwball comedies of the 1940s (the article references The Thin Man’s Nick and Nora). But the sassy journalist heroines popularized by Rosalind Russell and Katharine Hepburn would have balked at a photo shoot like this one—which is both reflective of current attitudes toward professional and political women and jarringly anachronistic. The notion that women exist primarily for men’s amusement (both on and off the job) seems oh so Mad Men, yet the trend toward depicting public women (especially those whose jobs place them in the realm of politics) primarily as sex objects is alive and well in the 21^st century. The pornification of political culture (a process in which some women participate willingly and others have foisted upon them after their image is conscripted) has depicted political candidates (e.g., Sarah Palin and Janice Hahn) and women voters (in viral videos like this one and this one from the 2008 campaign) as strippers.

Cover of Time features women athletes as … athletes

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 20:34:00 +0000

This week, Time magazine rolled out the covers for the U.S. and international editions of its summer Olympic preview. Four out of five of the portraits featured women. That is, perhaps, not a surprise since the Olympic audience skews female. Nonetheless, with only one male athlete in the group, Olympian hurdler Lolo Jones’s powerful stride seems an apt metaphor for the leaps made by women athletes in the 40 years since the passage of Title IX in the U.S. (The pair of covers above represent Time’s Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia editions.)

Time Olympics covers feature women athletes as … athletes

Wed, 25 Jul 2012 16:55:00 +0000

This week, Time magazine rolled out the covers for the U.S. and international editions of its summer Olympic preview. Four out of five of the portraits featured women. That is, perhaps, not a surprise since the Olympic audience skews female. Nonetheless, with only one male athlete in the group, Olympian hurdler Lolo Jones’s powerful stride seems an apt metaphor for the leaps made by women athletes in the 40 years since the passage of Title IX in the U.S. (The pair of covers below represent Time’s Europe/Middle East/Africa and Asia editions.)