Let's talk about me... no, seriously

Right now I am at home (my parents' house) stuck in the tortuous academic limbo between high school graduation and freshman year of college. Because University of Chicago is on the quarter system, I don't even need to be at school for orientation until the absurdly late date of September 19. My friends, who go to normal schools with normal academic calendars, have been gone for over two weeks. For the past fortnight, I've been a lone wolf, scavenging in the suburban wilderness for half-finished Starbucks' lattes, salvageable Bugaboo strollers, and any shred of activity that could be used as a means of staving off boredom. Okay, the first two are lies... but the third is true. I am bored out of my mind.

Here are some things you might be interested in regarding my life and the life of this blog:

• In 11 days I will be relocating from Philadelphia to Chicago, a city I've visited exactly once. If you live in/near Chicago and know of any cool events or places I should check out, please let me know in the comments or via Facebook. Building a social life from the ground up in a new city is really intimidating....
• Lately I've been off the blogging wagon a little, in favor of a non-internet-based writing project about which I am not at liberty to say much more. What I can say, however, is that, as a literate human, you may want to allocate an approximately 5.5 x 8.5 x 1.5 inch space on your nightstand within the next twelve or so months for storing this project. Unless you have a Kindle.
• I'm planning on "live-blogging" my Orientation Week (along with it's corresponding alcohol safety lectures/parental goodbyes/PARTIES!!!1!) on here beginning on September 19. With pictures and stuff. Interest?
• Going to try to get some fun, experiment-type stuff up before I leave.

I also have plenty of time to chat with people, in the event that you are bored and looking for a young mind to mold/corrupt. Feel free to talk to me on Twitter, or shoot questions and unsolicited advice at me via my Tumblr Ask page. Oh, and Facebook still exists, so you can still like me, even if you don't. I am bored and willing to engage verbal sparring from any/all social media outlets.

-Jamie

(comic via toothpaste for dinner)

Taylor Swift: Mommies, Daddies, and "Mine"

Edit: Comments on this post are now closed. Things got sort of heated.... I need to establish some boundaries for commenting!

Where does Taylor Swift live? I'm not asking you to clarify which state in the American south--or perhaps more accurately which sub-section of Los Angeles-- what I'm asking is, what reality does Taylor Swift inhabit where her life is perpetually in orbit of a saccharine-sweet, romcom love affair?

Swift's new song, and the accompanying video, does not ask of her fans even the slightest shift or growth in taste. In "Mine," as per usual, Taylor sings about a perfect romance inhibited by some irritating, but conquerable, roadblock. This time it's her relationship issues stemming from her parents' bad marriage. In previous songs it's been high school cliques, totally lame-o other women, and Montague/Capulet-esque parental objections to her unstoppable love(s).

The video that pairs with "Mine" is equally formulaic. Besides an inexplicable bit where she wanders in a forrest that is decorated with the tangible iteration of Facebook's "View More Photos" page, the video itself is really just a montage of romantic comedy clichés. There is walking along natural bodies of water. There are fields of unspecified Plants. There is gazing. There are 2am arguments. There is a passionate reconciliation. What there is not is groundbreaking, nor envelope pushing.

Still, there is a ton of media out there that deals with "artistic" representations of love in said mundane/expected fashion. There are two things that I thought were especially worth noting about this song and the accompanying video. The first is the possessive language, which you might have noticed as something from my previous posts as something that frequently gets my feminist goat.

This song is rife with freaky-deaky, weirdo language that frames Swift as someone perpetually under the ownership, or at least care, of a male authority. The lyrics describe her as not a woman, but as a "careless man's careful daughter" that her new boyfriend has "made a rebel of." This is problematic to me, in the sense that it implies a transfer of her ownership from one man to another. I think it's weird in this song that she doesn't seem to have any sense of her own identity away from the love interest, or her father. I do, however, give her props for the use of the line "we got bills to pay." Though grammatically incorrect, it implies that Taylor will be helping to pay the bills though some means of gainful employment. Let's go back in time 50 years so that I can congratulate her on being progressive!

The other thing I found noteworthy was how Taylor was dealing with the transition from teen star to general entertainer. As much as she infantilizes herself, Swift is distinctly more adult here as compared to her previous videos. She's got bills to pay! She has children! Usually when you see "teen" stars (she's 20) make the transition from adolescence, they do it via the sexy route, à la Britney, LiLo, and Miley. This video is unique in the sense that Taylor Swift appears to be trying to age herself into a more matronly, albeit still conventionally attractive, role. It's not often that we are encouraged to make an association between young pop starlets and motherhood....

Edit: Comments on this post are now closed. Things got sort of heated.... I need to establish some boundaries for commenting!

Distract Ben with Women: Alcohol.edu

Like more than 500 colleges and universities across the United States, the University of Chicago requires that incoming freshmen complete an online alcohol awareness program called Alcohol.edu. I always get a kick out of activities like this because they give me the opportunity to see how adults think that teenagers want to be addressed. This program is a full-on multimedia blitz, complete with corny, collage-y graphics. I learned about alcohol through watching videos, reading fake instant message conversations, and reading informational graphic novels. The whole program took me around two hours to complete, thirty minutes of which I spent screenshotting things and laughing at the "hip" down-with-the-kids style lingo.

I thought this was especially weird. In offering tips about how to take a drunk friend's keys so that he doesn't drive, Alcohol.edu offered this tip:

I think it's bizarre that it's still acceptable to use women as objects of distraction, especially coupled with "food" and "video games." I also think it's weirdly limiting how they automatically assume that these are the three most effective things for distracting a drunk boy. I think "distract Ben" would have been sufficient. People taking this test are college students, and can probably manage to think of distracting things on their own.

In actuality, I believe that you should do whatever works to prevent someone from driving drunk. It just seems wrong to me to formally codify sexism and stereotypes in this manner.

Allstate: Teenage Girls Are, Like, Sooo Reckless

In the advertising world, teenagers are simultaneously courted for their high ratio of disposable income, and discriminated against as a means of making older consumers feel comfortable buying a product. This is something that I find truly bizarre. I'm not insinuating that we live in any sort of post-discriminatory culture, but I am still surprised how accepted it is to just openly bash on teenagers. Take, for instance, this Allstate commercial posted by Lisa over at Sociological Images.

This commercial openly affirms a number of stereotypes about teenagers. It opens with a shot of a pink SUV cruising in a movie theater parking lot. Obviously it's pink, because pink is the color of idealized femininity, something all teen girls strive for. Also, it's a custom color, implying that this is not a hand-me down car or a used car. This giant gas guzzler was bought for our protagonist, who clearly doesn't care about the environment, or people other than herself. Like all teens, she's, like, soooo spoiled.

In the car, the "teen girl" speaks in internet lingo, saying things like, "my BFF Becky." Gasp in horror, onlooking adults, as she denigrates the English language! When she finds out her best friend has kissed her crush, a problem all-consuming in her tiny teenage world, she throws her bedazzled phone into the backseat. Look how little respect she has for her possessions! Gosh, teenagers are so unappreciative!

The video culminates with the teen crashing her behemoth of a stereotype-wagon into a modest, gray parked car. Adult Woman is pissed. She was just trying to do some shopping in her humble vehicle, but teenagers and their hit-and-runs are always messing up her day. The teenager in the car advises, "Get Allstate, you can save money and be better protected from mayhem like me."

Mayhem is defined as "needless or willful damage or violence." Watch out adults, teens are out to get you! We care about ourselves, don't care about our stuff, and certainly don't have any sense of responsibility when it comes to minding how we conduct ourselves in your world.

Seriously, though, all of these things are ridiculous. I think that you'd be hard pressed to find other television advertisements that so conspicuously mock a group of people through stereotypes. This commercial would never make it past production if it were meant to mock men older than 85, a demographic that causes more than twice as many car-related deaths as the teen girl demo.

This video is just one more indicator of how teenagers are one of the last true frontiers of discrimination. We have no significant income or power, so feel free to wreck on us as much as you want! Or don't... after all, media like this sets an expectation for people of all ages as to how is acceptable/expected for an adolescent girl to act. That is, if you don't want us behaving like this, stop telling us that we do.

And it's not just an isolated incident.

Katy Perry's Teenage Dream: Not Mine

I'm not a fan of Katy Perry as an artist. A month or so ago, I found myself turning to Facebook for help making sense of her video for "California Gurls," a degrading confection of lollipop licking, naked cloud laying, and low production value. Her songs are Frankensteins of lyrical clichés, grafted together with infectious pop beats. Along with her conventionally adorable appearance, these catchy beats are probably what make her songs a perpetual fixture in every retail store I've been in in the past month, and I'm shopping for freshman year at college, so that's a lot of stores.

Issues aside, I can't get enough of Perry's music, and I resent myself for it. In my defense, her songs are what can only be described as, "so fucking catchy." I find myself listening to them in my bedroom at least daily. I don't, however, listen to them in the car, in fear of a passersby hearing her voice through my open window and catching Perry fever. Honestly, I wish her music didn't exist. I imagine that the bulk of her listeners are teenage girls, an audience that really doesn't need more media enforcing the idea that women are merely sex objects and appearance reigns king. I'm not saying we can't take it, I'm just saying that we probably don't need it. Her music, however, does exist, and I am still listening to it. Lucky for me, her new video for "Teenage Dream" is a cesspool of misrepresentations of adolescence, so I finally have the chance to redeem myself somewhat in pointing how it goes wrong in capturing the true "teenage dream"....

Katy Perry - New Music - More Music Videos

The song begins with the lines, "You think I'm pretty/without any makeup on." At this point, I'm bobbing my head and telling Katy, "Yeah girl! Reject those societal conceptions of beauty!" But then she's all, "You think I'm funny/when I tell the punchline wrong," and suddenly I'm like, "Nooo Katy you don't have to be dumb to be funny." Then this guy is introduced, who is clearly not a teenager. He is the only thing in the video that is likely to ever make a cameo in any actual teenage dreams. Probably in this state of dress too.

Next they drive around and wave to their ultra-hip, also non-teen friends. One of these friends wears a Native American headdress for no apparent reason. Nobody wears their seatbelt. Chiseled Perry boyfriend speeds. Katy sings some generic lyrics about love and being ready to totally do It with him.

They go to a motel and have sex. It is appropriately PG-13 to ensure that people will blog about it.

At the end of the video, Perry says, "Let you put your hands on me/in my skin tight jeans/be your teenage dream tonight." I don't know how much thought was actually put into the meaning of these lyrics when they were being written, or if it was just a matter of a convenient rhyme, but I am somewhat bothered by the use of let. Ultimately, I don't think sex should just be one personal finally relenting and letting the other person do them, but a matter of mutual desire and consent between both parties. This sort of, "fine...we can fuck" attitude isn't the best to promote as a component of the teenage dream in my opinion.

In fact, the entire video seems more like a teenage reality than a teenage dream. Teens drink. They party. They drive around in cars. Hopefully not in that order. Teenagers have sex with each other. Dreams are supposed to be aspirational. Teens I know dream of careers, college, and great loves that do not reach their pinnacle with motel sex. Perry's teenage dream seems like something more nostalgic, thought up by a team of people way past their teenage years, dreaming of what it was like in their youth. Part of me is sad, though, that these are the conventions of adolescence they come up with, especially when the people listening to the song are only likely to have just begun their teenage experience.

Get outta town

Hey everyone! I'm leaving tomorrow to do three weeks of travel/soul searching/general world exploration. I'll be back in early August with plenty of insight/snark/thoughts to share. In the mean time, feel free to join my email list so you can stay updated with what's going on when I get back. You can also follow me on Twitter, which I'll update while I'm away. Most importantly, though, enjoy your summer!

AXE: Huffing ruins your brain, your game

I was poking around the AXE body spray website (Hey, let's not ask questions! I'm entitled to browse as I please....) and I noticed a small link on the front page entitled responsible use. Upon clicking the link, I was directed to a section of the website that warned against the dangers of huffing and igniting cans of AXE. I've never heard of anybody huffing AXE, but it is a well known fact in my area that spraying a can of AXE into a lit flame can result in a sort of poor man's flamethrower. This obviously isn't the safest of practices, so I commend AXE for establishing some accountability in warning their consumers of the dangers of this activity.

What I thought was noteworthy about the responsible use page was the strategy that AXE took in dissuading their consumers, primarily teen and young adult males, from abusing their product. Instead of focusing out on how these abuses can kill or injure you, AXE's public service announcement-style videos paid more attention to how huffing or igniting AXE can ruin your chances with women. Here are the two videos from the site:

I have negative feelings about these videos. First, do they actually dissuade people from abusing AXE? And secondly, need we promote one evil (sexism) in order to prevent boys from partaking in another?