While New York City has apparently been hosting a historical reenactment of the Ice Age, my line-of-sight has been basically limited to whatever I can make out through that moist hole my zipped up jacket hood makes (is it spit? snot? sweat? snow? one of life’s great mysteries). So it’s saying something that from the inside that little tunnel, I haven’t failed to get an eye-load of Barack Obama on the cover of every single magazine on every single news stand since what might be forever. The guy sells magazines. I get it.
Still, I’m amazed that Ms. Magazine decided to hop on the relevance train clutching a one-way ticket to Utopiobamalandia, all jittery and empty-eyed like its other mildly insane residents. Population: everyone I know.
Elenor Smeal unveils the (not at all cheaply rendered) cover claiming Obama’s femini-cred by relating,
When the chair of the Feminist Majority Foundation board, Peg Yorkin, and I met Barack Obama, he immediately offered “I am a feminist.”
Granted, his little airbrushed representative already has pathological delusions of grandeur, it might as well help those piddling rascals at Ms. cast the term “feminist” into the infinity of oblivion.
And hey, I’m all for exposing the vacuous black hole at the bottom of American politics, which is why I have to agree with Sarah Breslin that the ensuing feminist-backlash is an overreaction to the point of embarrassment. Breslin takes it up a notch, writing:
This is what gets feminist knickers in a twist these days? The cover of Ms.? Oh, how the mighty have fallen. Feminism lies like a beached octopus, tentacles thrashing in all directions, looking for anything upon which it may find purchase, desperately seeking to be relevant again.
It’s funny cuz it’s true.
I’m looking forward to not having to endure everyone looking forward to the inauguration. I just hope once he takes office our country can hold it together. If special-edition Alternate Reality President is what Ms. and the rest of us need to survive, then I’ll gladly take an eyeful of his austere portraits on our withering news magazines for as long as they inspire us. Let’s hope he can fulfill a fraction of our expectations.
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January 21, 2009 at 8:15 pm
wiggles
One would think that, as a feminist blogger, you’d link, cite, or quote some feminist arguments against the Ms. cover, rather than solely link and site arguments against the relevance of feminism.
January 21, 2009 at 8:33 pm
Pop Feminist
I did. It was the feminist law site, linked twice actually.
Also, it seems you’re suggesting that the critiques of Ms. are somehow more feminist than the discourse concerning the terminological reaches of the word.
As a feminist blogger, I’m much more inclined to engage the latter of the two topics, and dismiss what I consider to be weak-minded bitching whether or not it’s done under the (arbitrary?) banner of “feminism”.
January 22, 2009 at 6:36 pm
Sarah J
Can I quote you on the last part?
Being one of those people who was looking forward to the inauguration, and who now feels vindicated by the headlines (close Guantanamo! Grant FOIA requests!) I still have a clear enough view to be completely annoyed by the glut of magazine covers desperate to profit on the Obama moment.
And also the freakout over it. Relevance, you don’t quite get it.