Saturday, January 17, 2009 - Posts
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This is where I draw the line. Yesterday I opened my daughter's Friday folder, usually filled with school news, permission slips, that sort of thing. This time there was an announcement that Shakira—the hottie Colombian pop star—is singing in school on Monday. My daughter does not go to Sidwell Friends or GDS or one of the private schools Sasha and Malia were looking at. She goes to our local public school. But these days in Washington, you never know where you might bump into a star. Hey, maybe we'll get lucky and Britney Spears will do an inauguration concert at the Cleveland Park public library.
There is a convention between Washington and Hollywood, worked out over many years. They come here to be boring, and we pretend they're not famous. Angelina Jolie gives a presentation to some subcommittee about AIDS relief. The congressmen nod soberly, like it's just another Tuesday, and then afterward snap a photo "for the grandkids." Now that dynamic is out of whack, and everyone's fawning all over everyone.
First it was just Bono and Bruce Springsteen coming to sing at the mall. Fine, they always do this kind of thing. But Mary J. Blige? Beyoncé? What could they possibly want with the Lincoln Memorial? The Huffington party list so far includes: Tom Hanks, Steven Spielberg, Jon Bon Jovi, Denzel Washington, Halle Berry, Marisa Tomei, Demi Moore, and Ashton Kutcher. Denzel Washington? Where am I living? Is this a movie about Washington or the real thing?
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I'm just a little late to this conversation—and regret not getting into the thick of it before the fantastic, boisterous, and honest Melinda signed off—but Samantha, you asked, "Why this [Natalie Dylan selling her virginity] is so far from empowering?"
Hmm, well, let me try out a few reasons. One, it perpetuates the idea that the motivations behind sex are fundamentally different for men and women; that is, men have some primal, rationality-busting want for it ($3.7 million?), while for women, it's something to be bartered, rather than something to be sought or enjoyed to the same degree men enjoy it. Would a man be able to sell his virginity for that price, or even try to?
Two, this kind of stunt can really feel all-around degrading. It's not even the sex. Natalie Dylan reminded Melinda of Aliza Shvarts, the Yale art student who said she was self-inducing miscarriages, but it reminded me more of somebody like Damien Hirst, the artist who punks the modern art scene by taking its decadence to the extreme and proving he can foist animal parts preserved in formaldehyde for $8 million on gullible art-world status-seekers. The prices that Hirst and, say, Jeff Koons fetch humiliate those art buyers who take the art seriously and pay bajillions for such pieces, and Natalie Dylan humiliates the guy who values a high-profile deflowering session at $3.7 million. It's kind of funny to watch, but I'm not sure who's empowered by such an expose.
And I liked Audacia Ray's idea that "the notion of empowerment that gets kicked around is solely about the sex act, not about the money." Yeah—what kind of power, exactly, is it that a woman like Natalie derives from putting her virginity on sale? It's the power of cash, or, to be more precise, cash-savviness: the pleasure of knowing you're doing something society frowns upon and raking in the bucks while your prudish peers stand by. Is this feminine empowerment? Do we consider somebody who intrepidly sells her kidney on the black market "empowered"? Maybe you would, but I think I'd call that person "resourceful," at best.
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Good morning, ladies—I'm inaugurating my inaugural week of XX conversation by chasing tourists off my stoop with a shotgun. Actually, I'm conserving my energies for the whirlwind that's about to hit Washington (with enough repetition, inaugural starts to sound dirty) and working on a piece about Barack Obama's soon-to-be-confirmed ambassador to the United Nations, Susan Rice. I showed up for both Rice's nomination announcement in Chicago in December and her confirmation hearing last week. At both events, she was on message about diplomacy and Iran and blah blah blah. More importantly, her adorable nuclear family—two children, a hubby, and both parents—was also present, fairly leaning out of their seats with anticipation. And on both occasions she interrupted the pressing business of telegraphing U.S. foreign policy to acknowledge her kids and husband. At the Chicago presser (during which Hillary Clinton, Eric Holder, Jim Jones, Janet Napolitano, and Robert Gates were also named to their posts), she was the only one to do so.
So what gives? Before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee Thursday, John Kerry (he of the Chelsea Clinton “intern” comment) invited Rice to introduce her family—and she ran with it, gushing through her (invisible) nerves. Further, she opened her prepared statement with a reference to her daughter: “Like so many Americans, I first heard of the United Nations as a child about the age of my daughter, Maris,” she said. (I later saw Maris plopped on the rug outside the hearing room with a nanny and pops Ian Cameron.) Perhaps it was pre-emptive guilt about the grueling job Mommy signed up for; perhaps Rice, known as a brash negotiator, had simply wandered off the tough-girl reservation—Napolitano (single), and Clinton (one child) did not make similar statements at similar junctures. And Rice is younger, with younger kids, than the rest of Obama’s cabinet. But as she prepares to enter the sensitive ecosystem that is the U.N., I wonder what, if anything, such enthusiastic maternity portends. And, aside from Eric "please pick me, I'm human" Holder and Joe "Girl-girls are tougher than girl-boys” Biden—have any of the top male appointees volunteered similar introductions?
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