Wait, what? It’s not everyone’s favorite show?!

A bit of Internet research revealed that people LOVE to hate Lena Dunham, the show’s creator and star. People call her fat and ugly, and either use this as a reason to attack the show or to love it, as if being average looking was some new political statement.

Being average and famous is nothing new, check out the entire cast of Jersey Shore or any other reality TV show. What makes Dunham so polarizing is that she dared to rise up from the ranks of averageness powered only by her own chutzpah (and Judd Apatow), and now that she is in the limelight, she continues to remain a slob-story.

Other women rise from the ranks of averageness, but when they “arrive” most make sure to adhere to a typical brand of femininty. As a reward, these women, instead of (or at least in addition to) being called fat and ugly, get referred to as the “girl next door“– think of the rise of the perfectly average and extremely manufactured Britney Spears.

This may all be old news, but what isn’t old news is how much Lena Dunham actually looks like Britney Spears

Exhibit A:

Lena Dunham

Britney Spears

Twinsies?

Lena Dunham

Britney Spears making sexy face.

You want more proof:

Lena Dunham-Spears and Britney Spears-Dunham.

They both like leather jackets:

Britney Spears makes Lena Dunham Faces:

Lena Dunham makes Britney Faces (and check out her Britney neck!):

Whether or not the media has been “nicer” to Britney Spears or to Lena Dunham is up for debate. I would argue that Britney Spears had a gradual fall from grace, while people had strong feelings about Lena Dunham the second she appeared on HBO. Though both women seem to deal differently with issues of appearance–Dunham preferring to appear on camera with little makeup and Spears often caking it on–they both are attacked for their appearance, and it hurts. It might actually hurt us more than it hurts either of these women specifically, because it sends a message to society that it is ok to denigrate women. I am reminded of the tearful Chris Crocker video in which he asked people to lay off Spears, who was going through a tough time:

In light of the recent Oscars show, where host Seth McFarlane made it clear that the only thing women in entertainment are good for is entertaining men, it becomes clear that this culture of trashing women is pervasive and poisonous and needs to end. Whether you choose to adhere to typical expressions of femininty or not,  if you are a woman, someone will always be there to attack you or remind you that you are there to be judged, even if you are only 9 years old, as Oscar nominee Quvenzhane Wallis was when McFarlane suggested her body would no longer be of sexual use to George Clooney when she was over 18. How disgusting. Perhaps it is heartening that the Oscars have been panned, and maybe it signals some sort of sea-change, wherein female public figures are not judged first for their looks and then for their docility, however more likely it means absolutely nothing. The show will go on. BTW, South Park has always been way better than Family Guy anyway.

Just weeks after the suicide of Canadian teen Amanda Todd, Garcia’s death exemplifies a disturbing trend not only in suicide of young girls, but in subsequent media coverage. Both the New York Post and the Daily News claim Garcia had sex with four members of the football team, but do not cite their sources. For such a claim, a bit more than “police sources” is warranted. The New York Post claims Garcia had sex with “four men at once,” they too neglected to include specific sources. They are now reporting Garcia engaged in “an orgy” that was videotaped, according to unnamed sources. Not only is Garcia dead, she is the only one whose identity has been revealed, making the reported sex act all about her participation in it, rather than the subsequent actions of those who may have bullied her to death.

FYI high school boys, if you find a girl who is down with sleeping with even ONE of you, she should be worshiped, not ridiculed. The New York Post described Garcia’s death thusly:

A Tottenville High School student jumped in front of a train after she was bullied for having sex with four football players at the same time during a party after a game this weekend, sources said. [NY Post Lede]

Using the phrase: “bullied for” implies that there was a reason Garcia was bullied, as if she did something wrong. While sleeping with four football players might not be everyone’s cup of tea, there is nothing inherrently “wrong” with it. Surely the football players didn’t think anything was wrong with it at the time. The only newspaper that has done anything close to decent coverage of Garcia’s tragic demise is Staten Island Live, reporting that police are investigating the possibility of a sex tape.

As with the Amanda Todd case, Garcia is being mocked and shamed in death in a manner that is both cruel and indicative of what she may have endured while she was alive:

A screen shot from http://truenewsusa.blogspot.com/2012/10/junior-nympho-15-year-old-felicia.html

While Garcia’s suicide is tragic, and while teens bullying other teens should not be tolerated, what is more upsetting is that adult members of the media are covering this story in a way that perpetuates the idea that female promiscuity is something warranting shame, attack or humiliation. The “she was asking for it” mentality that condones mistreatment of certain women for their perceived lack of values or morals is alive and well in American culture and it needs to be stopped.

Felicia Garcia above, photos from Radar Online.

Never before have I seen child suicides pitted against each other. What could be so polarizing about Todd? The answer came in the form of a video the young Vancouver girl made, shortly before her suicide.

In the over eight-minute-long video, Todd tells viewers that her troubles started when she went on a webcam chat and flashed a guy at his request. The man later found her and made her life hell, causing her to switch schools (the hacker group anonymous released a video today claiming they had discovered who Todd’s initial tormentor was).

Todd then had a fling with a guy who had a girlfriend. The boy she liked came after her, along with his girlfriend and others. She was physically attacked. She publicly claimed the affair was all her fault to protect him. She was so tormented after this misdeed that she drank bleach and started cutting herself. She switched schools, but no one at her old school would forget about her, and they kept posting pictures on Facebook to humiliate her.

Today, less than a week after the 15-year-old’s death by hanging, memes making fun of her for drinking bleach continue to be circulated. The Twitter peanut gallery has turned her death into a lesson for young girls everywhere: if you make a mistake involving your body, even when you die, we won’t care. People are claiming Todd did more than just flash the initial guy, as if that somehow condemns her, they also call her a drug addict, as if that means we should care less.

Frankly it’s disgusting.

Todd is not just a victim of cyberbullying, she is a victim of vicious and violent sexism entrenched in our culture. It’s a force so pervasive, that sometimes the only way out for a young girl is death.

It’s possible Todd thought her death might make people think twice about humiliating girls for their sexual mistakes. Maybe she thought the people who bullied her might feel bad or think twice before treating another young girl this way. However, cultural attitudes towards women are so set in stone that nothing–not even the suicide of a young girl like Todd– can reverse them. In fact, misogynists are taking Todd’s suicide as validation for their misbegotten practice of slut shaming.  Though it is painful to see the world to react to Todd’s suicide in a less than compassionate way, I hope it makes young girls everywhere think twice about taking their own lives. The justice you deserve will only be attained if you live on to fight for it. RIP Amanda Todd. It doesn’t “get better,” we just get better at dealing with it.

*Editors note: Images are screen shots taken from various websites today, Tuesday October 16, 2012.

Images have been modified to prevent their proliferation in an unintended manner.

I have no interest in sports and perhaps, even more specifically, no interest in hurdling. However, after reading New York Times writer Jere Longman’s scathing indictment of US Olympic hurdler Lolo Jones, I became Jones’ fan—nay, dare I say, champion.

Few things bother me more than seeing a woman of achievement maligned by a man who doesn’t like her outfit. However, it is possible that Longman thought his attack on Jones was in someway feminist—as if what he was really saying was that women should be respected for their achievements, not their appearance. If this was what he meant to say, his words surely failed him.

Not to worry, because a few days later, another man, this time from Fox News, came to Jones’ rescue. Dr. Keith Ablow, a psychiatrist and member of the Fox News Medical A-Team, wrote:

Longman’s column, however, may say more about him—and those hostile to all trappings of true gender identity…”

The good doctor would know about things like hostility to “true gender identity,” will we next read his case study on hysteria?

Ablow didn’t stop his ill-conceived defense of Jones there, he continued:

Mr. Longman objecting to a beautiful athlete posing in sensual photographs, while remaining silent about female boxers who look androgenous, beating up one another in a boxing ring, until they fall down, is worth noting.”

Someone thought the above section was particularly good, as it was used for a pull quote. Ablow seems to be saying that the real problem (as usual) is women who do not conform to gender roles, not pretty girls like Jones who show a bit of well-toned flesh.

Ablow ends his article with a particularly astute observation, his emphasis, not mine:

Mr. Longman has gone long on trying to turn Lolo Jones into a man.  I’m not his psychiatrist, but to me, that sounds like it merits a few sessions.”

I will now give you a few moments to digest this ridiculousness.

Done?

I will now ascend to my soapbox.

It’s been said once, and I will say it again. If you are an older white man, nine times out of 10, you aren’t helping a woman when you come to her defense.

I am not trying to racial profile here, but if it works for New York City cops in high-crime areas, maybe we should try it on journalists?*

Not only do these public debates about the place of a woman and the role of a woman’s identity smack of sexism, but to hear this kind of trash from fellow writers drives the smite of these malformed arguments even deeper.

I am reminded that women must be as good (if not better) than men, while remaining “feminine,” but not too feminine so as to seem weak, but not too strong so as to avoid being seen as bitchy or “androgynous.” We must do all this for a fraction of the salary and sometimes twice the work. We are not allowed in the NFL, we do not play Major League Baseball and we have never been President or Vice President of the country.

If we are young, we are inexperienced and if we are old, we are used up. We are the ones with the delightful task of childbirth and the associated costs of femininity–just think of all the toilet paper we use in a lifetime.

Women’s haircuts cost more and so does health insurance, dry cleaning– you name it. On top of all this, men are apparently still paid to opine on our status and behavior in widely read publications that even the most talented among us (ahem, me) can’t get a job at.

This would all be too much to bear if we didn’t run the world, like Beyonce says.

Jere Longman, of NYT and Dr. Keith Ablow of Fox News; Lolo Jones Courtesy KD Sanders

*we do not support racial profiling.

… was based not on achievement but on her exotic beauty and on a sad and cynical marketing campaign. Essentially, Jones has decided she will be whatever anyone wants her to be — vixen, virgin, victim — to draw attention to herself and the many products she endorses.

Funny, because in most of the coverage of Jones that we have seen, commentators aren’t focusing on her virginity or vixen-ness, but rather remarking upon the fact that Jones was in the lead in the 2008 Bejing Olympics, but tripped, causing her to finish in seventh place. I don’t follow hurdling regularly, but even I know this.

Longman goes on to write that he personally disapproved of a bathing suit Jones wore on the cover of “Outside Magazine, ” calling it ”nothing but strategically placed ribbon.” Jones’ red bathing suit seems to tell Longman that her claims to be a “virgin” and a “Christian” were obviously false. Again, why do we care who she sleeps with or worships? Is Longman secretly Jones’ father? Now THAT could be a story.

How dare this man attack a US Olympian for her bathing suit– which by the way, is about as much as many competing Olympians wear these days.

Has Mr. Longman watched beach volleyball? He might have a stroke from the exposed flesh of Misty May-Treanor and Kerri Walsh Jennings, who just won a gold medal for the USA.

Part of the reason we watch the Olympics is to marvel at the bodies of superhuman sportsmen and women, and as a sportswriter, surely Longman knows that Olympic contests were initially held in the buff. But apparently none of this matters, since he is determined to hate a US Olympian for being sexy.

Longman goes on to admit that male athletes, like swimmer Ryan Lochte, have often been praised for good looks. But in Lochte’s case, Longman seems to argue that it’s totally cool, because he’s a medalist. So if Jones won a medal, would it be ok for her to be sexy?

In his infinite journalistic wisdom, the sportswriter decides he needs to have quotes from other people (rather than just his own opinions) to substantiate his attacks on Jones. He taps Janice Forsyth, director of the International Centre for Olympic Studies at the University of Western Ontario who laments female athletes who feel they must sell themselves as sex objects, but then goes on to say:

“I don’t know if this is Lolo being Lolo or part of a marketing scheme to remain relevant in an Olympic industry where if you are not the Olympic champion, you are nothing.”

Hmm…very interesting. So a) this could just be the way Lolo is and b) she is in an industry where if you are not a champion you are nothing. It’s so awesome that Longman decided to challenge that notion in his article and encourage women to try sports by affording female athletes fair and unbiased news coverage. Oh wait, HE DIDN’T. Longman writes that Jones struggles with doubts, but rather than try to assuage them, he gives Jones something to really be worried about: not the race, but her image.

As if he hadn’t maligned Jones enough, Longman gets her teammate Dawn Harper for her take, pitting one female athlete against another in the court of public opinion, not the track.

Harper conceded that like Jones, she only became a hurdler so that she could pose scantily clad on the covers of niche magazines and get free shoes and earn money from endorsements. Nope. She didn’t say that, because no one becomes a hurdler for that reason!

Since Jones is such a lame athlete, we challenge Longman to a race against her. We challenge Longman to jump as high and run as fast as this woman who has been jumping and running as the bar is raised not just by fellow athletes, but by people like Longman: a person who clearly does a terrible job at what he is allegedly good at, yet continues to be read in the preeminent English-language paper of our time. Does he only have his job because of his sex appeal?

Jere Longman, Image Source: St. Vincent’s College;

Lolo Jones by KD Sanders

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On The Today Show, Jones cried about her treatment in the New York Times.

The Times’ Ombudsman also criticized the viciousness of  Longman’s article, writing that he had received many letters from readers who were upset by it. Longman’s editor apparently defended the article. Many other writers have since weighed in, and we will be continuing to cover new developments as they occur.