America’s Next Top Model – Gigantoid Disappointment

I seriously debated where this post should appear, here or on Veganity. Obviously I ultimately decided it should go here.

I was extremely disappointed when I was watching ANTM last wednesday. Not just in the show, but in myself. Here I am, professing to be all about animal rights, when here I am, watching a skeezy reality show about wanna-be-models.

How is there a disconnect? Well, first I want to explain the content of the episode.

As you may know, ANTM is about a group of young women who compete to win the title of America’s Next Top Model. Tyra Banks is the creator and host, and all the girls are ‘fierce’. They compete through various photo shoots and runway shows.

The photo shoot for last week’s episode was completely and utterly the most disgusting thing I have seen in a long while. The models had to model inside of a meat packing plant freezer with sides of beef. And not only that–they had to model wearing MEAT. They wore meat panties, meat bras, meat.. whatever.

It should be obvious why this photo shoot disturbed me so deeply: dead cows were being treated as art. They were being completely and utterly objectified, and not one model refused to do this shoot. Some of them even enthusiastically wore their meat outfits and posed with the sides of beef as if they were merely props. Not once living, breathing cows.

I’ll give some of the girls a slight amount of credit–a couple of them were all “eew” about wearing/modeling with the dead cows, but not one of them allowed themselves to make the leap that this was the flesh of a dead cow they were so excited about wearing.

Ok, no surprises here, I suppose. Models and the modeling industry frequently involve fur, leather, wool, feathers, etc etc as fashionable items. So there is a history of animal products being used in fashion. It’s easy to dissociate yourself from something like that. (and it’s necessary if you want to be ‘fashionable’).

Like I said, this was not my number one qualm. This episode also served to reveal how horribly contradictory I’ve been. I’m a woman, but yet I never viewed this show and perpetuating the horrible truth of women being objectified. This photo shoot was a double whammy for me, I initially thought, because it’s objectifies cows/animals and it objectifies women (they were wearing meat; they were metaphors for being pieces of meat).

But then I really thought about it–it’s not a double whammy, it’s a freakin gigantoid whammy. One big one. Allow me to explain.

How can I be taken seriously as a proponent of animal rights when I don’t even view my own species’ genders as deserving of equal status?

Well, this isn’t exactly true. I do think that women deserve to be as equal as men in this society. But I wasn’t aware that my actions were belying this belief. I considered ANTM as one of my favorite shows–I didn’t like the whole model scene, but I always said that I watched it for the pictures.

I watched it for the pictures? This would be just like me saying ‘I watched it so I could see, firsthand, how women are used as a sexual object in order to sell something.’

Frankly, this thought repulses me now. I am completely and utterly disappointed in myself as a woman and as an animal rights activist.

Now you might think I’m being hard on myself. But if you think about it, the fact that I didn’t even notice what I was doing speaks volumes about the prevalence of this sort of behavior. Are we so content to be objectified that it seems natural to us, and is even marketed to other women? (as I assume the show is marketed to women). There are so many things wrong with the modeling industry in terms of how people view women (and how the ‘perfect woman’ is defined), that I can’t even get into it now.

Suffice it to say, I think with every ‘cycle’ that airs and the show increases in popularity, ANTM is taking a huge step backwards for women and how they should be viewed. So this isn’t just an animal right’s issue, it’s a women’s rights issue. And deep down, they’re both very similar–we’re all animals and we’re not to be exploited and used as if we were objects/products.

This is why I can’t watch America’s Next Top Model anymore.

Juno, Mystic River and Return of the King (aka, raving about LOTR)

That was my weekend in movies.

Well, that was LAST weekend in movies. I created this post with every intention of writing the post before this weekend snuck up. But I failed miserably! Oh well! Not like there are droves of people waiting to feast on the laurinverse. Or maybe there are and I just lost countless faithful followers! Either way, I will win you all over with this one! (Likely not)

Like the title says, Juno, Mystic River and ROTK.

Saturday I went and hung out with one of my good friends whom I haven’t seen in ages (months, more like it). After a very delicious lunch at Weaver Street Market, we decided that we wanted to see Juno and see what all the hubbub was about.

In my opinion, I think the hubbub was well deserved. It had that cute little wittiness that I like in independent films, but also that little dash of fucked-upedness that I happen to love in all films (and books and tv shows and…). Nice little mix there. Now, I’m not saying this is like ohmygawdsuchagreatmovieit’slikethebestmovieintheworld!ever!–it has its good stuff, but it also wasn’t enough to leave much more of an “aww that was good” impact on me. Don’t get me wrong, I love Michael Cera and the one character that he happens to do so well. And Ellen Page was pretty awesome herself (the awesome script helped that), but this movie will never earn a coveted position on my dvd bookshelf. Sorry! But it is worth seeing. So rent it or whatever it is you kids do nowadays to get movies, and watch  the hell outta that shit. If you like Little Miss Sunshine, you’ll most likely dig Juno.

Mystic River had some nice fucked-upedness to it. Especially towards the end. I have been waiting to see this movie for a long time and I finally got to it. And I could have likely waited significantly longer to see it. Granted, the story was really good. Like some compelling shit here: a little girl is kidnapped from her druggie/alcoholic mom, meanwhile the lives of three childhood friends interconnect years after they lost touch with one another. The story is good (if I couldn’t convey that here then just take my word for it). The script was alright. The movie, however, was just flat. It didn’t pull my heartstrings really at all. But it should have. So that’s what’s frustrating about Mystic River. All these people are like OMG so awesome, go Clint Eastwood! And I’m just like, oh, that’s all? So if you’re bored and you want a good story to watch and you don’t have cable (cause, let’s be honest here, we all watch tv when we’re bored), or you don’t have Lifetime (cause, let’s be honest here, we all watch Lifetime movies when we’re bored as hell.. and we actually like them in some weirdo way), then you should watch this. But if you have better things to do, then you should do them.

Now, if you want to spend your time doing something useful, you could watch any one of the Lord of the Rings movies. You should choose which one based on your mood. If you want to cry your damn eyes out a few times and just be so amazed at how awesome this story/movie is, then you should watch Return of the King. And why wouldn’t you want to spend your time watching something that can wring so much emotion from you?! I tell you, it’s not worth it if you don’t feel something deep down when you’re done watching it. I don’t know how many times I’ve watch ROTK but every single mother effing time I do, I cry my little eyes out. Or I tell Sam and Frodo, ‘look out, Smeagol’s about to pounce on your asses!’ I do this. At least once a month.

Now, if I’m in the mood for some lightheartedness that turns into something pretty sad, then I opt for Fellowship of the Ring. Cause it’s all like, ‘hey, look at the Hobbits and how simply they live! Yay birthday party!’… then at the end it’s like ‘well, Gandalf’s dead, Merry and Pippin done got kidnapped, Boromir’s dead (my favorite character, incidentally), and Frodo and Sam gotta go alone to Mt Doom’. (That’s called the breaking of the fellowship, aka, the breaking of my widdle heart).

And Two Towers is for those of us who want to start in the thick of (fucked-up) things, and come out the other end feeling completely abused and everything being unresolved. Well, except for one battle. My main reasons for loving this one include the battle for Helm’s Deep and the vignette on Boromir, Faramir and Denethor (only in the extended version). I watch this whole movie just for that vignette sometimes.

Now that it is published how completely nutso I am for LOTR, I’ll leave y’all with one recommendation: Go watch LOTR extended versions if you haven’t yet. And if you have already, then watch them again, damnit! Cause they’re awesome!

Awesome, damnit!

Becoming Jane: Almost the epitome of my kind of movie

Ok, maybe it IS the epitome of my kind of movie. I’ve recently realized just how much I like Masterpiece Theatre and Thomas Hardy and such. I mean, I knew I loved them before.. Maybe what I mean to say is that I didn’t realize how much I needed them.

Let me start over.

I really love period pieces. Especially victorian-era stuff, like Jane Austen and Thomas Hardy. And what I really like is how immensely fucked-up their stories can be. Jane Austen always ends her books with weddings and happily-ever-afters, while Thomas Hardy is a little more of a realist (pessimist? ). Their works satisfy that girly need in me to read something trashy and romantic, but then they give it that grit to bring it back to home. Life’s not happiness and sunshine. Life is fucked up. And I love it. I love how raw it is.

This seems to not follow though that I like Jane Austen so much, since she always wrote happy endings. You would be right… I used to actually think less of her novels because I thought it was a cop out that everything went so swimmingly in the end.

That was until I saw Becoming Jane. It gave me this new insight into her life, whether or not it may be true. There is a lot of speculation in the movie and a lot of controversy surrounding her life–most of the information we have is gleaned from letters she wrote to her sister, most of which were destroyed after Jane died.

That being said, here’s the trailer for the movie:

I know, it looks like some dumb romance movie. Sure, it is for the most part. But she doesn’t get him in the end. I won’t give away why not, just suffice it to say, it has to be the most incredibly sad movie I have ever seen. I had to pause the movie so I could get up and blow my nose (more than once).

This movie gets at something that I never connected to Austen’s happy endings: she didn’t have one. She didn’t get married to her true love (she never married at all), and she didn’t live happily ever after. She died young (for our standards), and a spinster. But she wrote about love and happiness being the end result of struggle and sadness. She lived vicariously through her work. And I respect that immensely. And maybe that’s because it makes her otherwise happy endings into something that isn’t happy at all.

That is why I love Jane Austen now. What a woman she was!