The Old School Lunch

[Yes, i’m essentially linking to a tabloid page.]

When Lynne Spears (mom of Jamie Lynn and Britney Spears) says that everyone is hypocritical in praising the Palins while throwing her family under the bus for teen pregnancies, she’s right. But of course they’re not exactly the same situation here. If Britney hadn’t become a media debacle for the past 3-5 years, then her point would be even more clear. I think with Jamie Lynn, it’s more of like the “your daughters are out of control” mother blaming. With Sarah Palin it’s “aw shit, your one daughter kinda messed up but you’re all being supportive about it in some bullshit pro-life message so good for you” mother blaming/praising.

[Almost 3:00am on a Sunday and still awake..]

I like the new Microsoft ads, especially the “I’m PC” one. I know they’re hopping on the old “we are the world” leftovers from Beijing ‘08 but it’s still smart, genuine and comes off as the perfect response to Apple’s own simplistic, funny but increasingly annoying “Mac vs. PC” ads. The commercial I think reminded everyone that Microsoft and the PC are still, how do you say, King Shit, in everything besides digital audio players and that Apple’s snobby “maverick” attitude is wearing thin.

The other day, I was at my parents’ house. My mom (like a lot of parents) takes great satisfaction in cooking healthy meals so I know I don’t leave until i’ve eaten something. We were both sitting at the table and only I was eating and somehow the conversation drifted to medicine, doctors and abortion. I talked about how i’d read books, heard speakers and seen movies on the latter topic and about how I thought it was important to provide the service and legalize it. Then my mom revealed to me that when I was a few years old and my brother was 6 or so, she had an abortion two months into the pregnancy. She wasn’t anxious saying it, she wasn’t sad or nervous. I remember noticing how normal she was in telling me this. If anything, I think she told me because we were alone and she could tell I felt pretty strongly about the subject. She talked about how back then, she had to take care of myself, my brother and was responsible for also cooking and cleaning for my dad and his entire ungrateful and selfish family who lived with us. I don’t like to stereotype ethnic groups and cultures but if you ask anyone in my family (at least my dad’s side) they would tell you that this was part of their culture, like a lot of cultures. My mom said, in a massive understatement considering what I saw years later as I grew up, “Everything was really hard.”

September means that yes, once again i’m trying to get back into that academic world of Women Studies and seeing if this time (third time a charm?) I can actually get it all together and actually apply. I’m not even thinking about whether I have a chance of getting in because before that can happen, I need to actually mail that shit out.

Anyways, I remember when I was first researching this back in the day, I got a lot of useful advice mainly centering on how I have to find the right school and really be specific on how their program and their faculty could help with what I want to spend 5+ years of my life doing. Which is pretty damn hard. First off, hell, i’m not even 100% sure if I know what I want to write my dissertation on and second of all, after digging around all the staff bios of the places with Ph.D programs in the U.S., mine doesn’t really match. I’m interested in media, notions of masculinity and femininity and consequently due to my recent job, the role of female-female mentors in young people, specifically young girls in relation to their ideas of beauty, self-esteem, that sort of stuff. I’m writing this as we go folks.

So anyways, yea I probably wont get my act together in time but it is fun to at least pretend to give it a shot right?

I caught a small part of the ALMA awards and they were honoring a famous fashion designer, Narciso Rodriguez (forgive me if the name isn’t right). Before he was presented with his award, the audience got a small sample of his work with a mini-fashion show. I saw what everyone sees at fashion shows. Mostly tall, skinny white women who look irritated. Now of course I wasn’t expecting him to have some all Latina cast of models of all shapes and sizes but it was funny to notice that while he was up there talking about how proud he was of his heritage, his achievements and how the “beauty of Cuban women” inspired him in his designs, you didn’t really see any Latina women (or any women of color minus one black woman) modeling all those clothes.

I understand he’s playing the game and negotiating best her can with a really damaging and shameless industry like the fashion industry but how about saying a little bit about how you want to change the beauty ideal?