A Brief Comment on Something That Annoys Me…
I was engaging in a bit of starfuckery this morning, looking up stuff about Ani DiFranco and her recently announced pregnancy (ohmigod ohmigod - I am SO excited! I know, I know, this pregnancy has absolutely nothing to do with me. I don’t know Ani personally, I may never see her child, she may not turn out to be a good mother, etc., etc… But, ohmigod - I’m STILL so excited!) and I came across some dude’s rocknroll blog. Basically he mentioned her pregnancy, and then went on to suggest that she’s done nothing really worth earning a Women of Courage award (which she received from the National Organization for Women - she announced her pregnancy during her acceptance speech). He then proceeded to make some snide comment about Tori Amos along the same lines, the core message being, these women have done little that is useful, certainly nothing courageous or laudable, nothing worthy of honorable recognition.
Now, of course I realize that opinions are like assholes - everybody’s got one (my mother always says that), but this kind of thing really does get under my skin a bit. Not just with Ani DiFranco and Tori Amos, but with any left-of-center, female artists who do work that either advocates feminism, or owns its sexuality or generally eschews the idea that women in music can only booty shake or sing sweetly about their desire to stay with their boyfriend forever. There’s this pervasive, kind of eye-rolling, smirking thing that happens that I haven’t really heard many good reasons for, and that I suspect has a lot more to do with the fact that these ladies are selling out shows and getting paid to rock out (or groove out, or melodically flow out) while the brohemians and wimpsters stand around smirking, wallowing in their irony. Of course, women do it too - for different reasons I suspect, perhaps a need to distance themselves from any notions of “feminism,” and the mess that it represents, or also possibly a nagging discomfort about whatever makes these performers seem different from themselves. Male or female, there’s a million reasons people can get unecessarily snarky about certain woman artists. I can’t try to name them all.
Celebrities are always getting attention and accolades they don’t necessarily deserve. At least these two women in particular have done activist work for peace, and farmers’ rights, women’s rights, etc. and founded and/or supported organizations that actually help people in tangible ways… And it is courageous to speak out publicly against the crimes of this country’s government, and to continue to speak out (I’m talking about Ani now). As well as to sing about it. It’s so old and so tired, this notion that things are less important and less valuable when a woman does them. And still so prevalent. It’s really unfortunate, too, ’cause when we devalue the contributions that women make, then we shortchange ourselves by underestimating and underutilizing our community resources. We don’t know what we have, and therefore can’t use it. Wasted potential = less progress for the people.
So that’s that. Today we’re chillin’ out. Ian’s off working on a movie shoot. My friend Andrea has introduced me to the wonder of pouring RSS feeds into a central location, so for the next week, I’m gonna be obsessed with finding new blogs. I’m kind of bummed, though, because a lot of the ones that I really want aren’t being accepted by my Yahoo! homepage. Alas, there’s a billion blogs out there, I can find something else I like.
I should probably engage in some homecare. The kitchen is starting to get a bit wild. Gotta make the most of naptime, right? Indeed…
Have a great weekend, everyone! And if you have an RSS homepage, you should feed me in.
Peace,
Atena
