I don't usually say nice things about the WaPo, so here's a link to an article about the new TLC show "DC Cupcakes", based on the Georgetown Cupcake store. I can't help but love this article. Here, from the lead:
"D.C. Cupcakes," which premieres Friday night on TLC, joins a growing number of manic-bakery shows (some with dwarves, some without) and follows the day-to-day operations of Georgetown Cupcake.
Who can quibble with the intoxicating allure of the $2.75 Georgetown Cupcake? Who can articulate a discomfort with the subliminally retro Betty Crocker ideals about femininity (the gyno/Easy-Bake Oven connection!) or ponder the limited entrepreneurial choices for women, even in 2010, when your mouth is full of chocolate ganache?
How great is the tone in this article already? It goes on to snark at some aspects of the show and about our desire for cupcakes, doing a rah-rah from a gender and cultural studies perspective. Despite the lack of real conclusions, it's a tantalizing set of questions and a fun sarcastic read. And hey, maybe some Gender Studies major will actually write a thesis on this stuff and I'll have something fun to read next spring.
Google stalks me because I dare to shed light on them! Why else would a random person in the middle of Kansas have read my site? Less than a week after I posted my most recent Google-related fear-mongering essay? Especially someone running the most recent version of Chrome? From a Google ISP?? And then return the next day by googling (literally) the blog name instead of typing it as the URL???
Yuh huh.
And with that bit paranoia clearly stated for Google to notice, I now link you to my favorite letter of the week. It is addressed to The Honorable Jane Harman and admits Googlishess spying... on her.
Oh, wow. The Disney Channel has a "public service announcement" on internet safety, targeting 6-14 year olds. I am shocked at how different these "internet rules of the road" are from the ones I was taught at that age. Mine were limited to "don't give out your name" (presumably with the never-uttered underlying fear: or sexual predators will get you). No one would ever have thought to say "Be careful what you put online; it never goes away, ever" back then, much less make it the first rule of the internet.
This PSA, more than anything else I've ever seen, really brings home to me how far the internet has come. And I'm really, really proud of the people who put it together. They get it, and that's a wondrous and admirable thing.
Unfortunately I can't find a transcription. :( I do recommend watching it for teh nostalgia, though.
I know you try. Or at least, I know that you think you try. I really do. But goddamn, you can make me so nonplussed and frustrated and angry sometimes, and I'm sure you have neither a clue nor ill intentions. So what am I supposed to do? Try to educate you and risk offending you? Or risk having you come back with a snappy comeback designed to break the tension through another laugh -- again at my expense? Should I leave the room? Should I smolder silently, oppressed into silence by friends and could-be-friends?
I see you nonchalantly bringing up your gay friends and family members to play a role in your "I'm not a bigot!" play whenever you know a gay person is in the room. I know exactly what you're doing, too, even if you don't. And it's awkward, and I feel embarrassed for you whenever you do it, even if you don't have the sense to be embarrassed about it yourself. Here's a bit of shocking news: having gay friends or gay family members doesn't magically make you aware, inoffensive, or somehow unable to oppress me.
Instead of protestations that "we're not like that", what would actually help would be for you to show that you aren't like that. Stop following up your diligent assertions that "I'm not homophobic" by laughing at jokes about how anal sex is inherently dirty, gross, or inappropriate. Stop asking pre-school-aged boys whether they have girlfriends. Stop talking about marriages as if they are a good thing or a universal experience. Stop attributing gender-normative or sexual traits to children too young to know what gender or sex is. Stop being shocked when those children are able to accept gay families and you aren't. Stop being surprised at what counts as anti-gay language. Just, stop.
Just because we don't say anything doesn't mean it's okay. It probably just means we aren't comfortable calling you on it. (It's quite insidious, really, the way that straight ignorance of causing LGBTQ people offense enables them sin repeatedly, but LGBTQ awareness of causing straight people offense will stop us from saying anything -- simply because we're more aware than you are about what's going to offend our hosts, friends, and peers. Straight privilege is such an ingenious system. I'd applaud its creator, if I wasn't busy being strangled by the creation.) If you want to count yourself as an ally and not just another gay-oppressing asshole straight person who wants a PC reputation, then just fucking educate yourself and think a little. It's just a question of deciding that it matters to stop creating environments in which gay people are left out, made to feel guilty or abnormal, and/or positioned as utterly alone against a tide of chorusing problematic straight opinion. You can do it. You just have to care enough to try.
love, the un-master, very baited
* * *
And god, but I know it's only going to get worse. The straights in my circle are marrying and having babies, which means an ever-increasing numbers of social engagements featuring the scintillating conversational topics of weddings, marriages, and children from a painfully terrible, heterosexist, anti-feminist vantage point. Someday, someday, I will have a utopia of feminist, actually gay-friendly social engagements. I kinda hope some of them can involve straights, but today? It's looking pretty bleak.
I don't usually say nice things about the WaPo, so here's a link to an article about the new TLC show "DC Cupcakes", based on the Georgetown Cupcake store. I can't help but love this article. Here, from the lead: