If there was a Mount Rushmore for women country musicians, Tammy Wynette would have to be on it. Along with Dolly Parton and Loretta Lynn, Wynette practically defined the role of the female country singer in the 1960s and 1970s, sporting an enormous blond bouffant while belting out jukebox staples like "D-I-V-O-R-C-E" and "I Don't Wanna Play House." By the time she died, caught in the grips of a bad marriage and a painkiller addiction, Wynette had racked up 17 No. 1 hits and became the first country musician to go platinum. Today, most remember Wynette for her signature ballad, "Stand By Your Man."

Of course, as Jimmy McDonough writes in the new biography "Tammy Wynette: Tragic Country Queen," Wynette didn't exactly follow her own song's advice, at least with the same man. In his book, McDonough tracks the tumults of Wynette's rocky love life -- five marriages and an affair with Burt Reynolds -- that made her the queen of tabloids in the 1970s, especially during her divorce with husband No. 3, Wynette's idol and duet partner, George Jones. But most of all, McDonough's book is about "a singer who lived her songs," a musician whose melancholy breakup ballads were inseparable from the heartbreak, addiction and pain in her own life. "I want you to feel this woman's presence as deeply as I feel her songs," McDonough implores. "I want you to stand by Tammy Wynette."

Salon wrote to McDonough to ask about Wynette's life -- everything from her bizarre kidnapping to her predilection for lime-green pantsuits -- feminism in country music, and why George Jones ended up the hero of this story.

You say that in the country pantheon, Tammy Wynette "gets taken for granted." Why do you think that is?

Shall we generalize, just for fun? I think Patsy, Loretta, Dolly -- all of whom are, of course, quite obviously great -- are easier to digest than Tammy. She's a throw-yourself-off-the-cliff romantic. There's a severity to Tammy and her point of view that gets your lumpy, cat-hair-covered NPR types to grinding their teeth. Now, your retro characters -- who tend to be the most rigid of all -- are put off by the baroque '70s production and the gloominess of it all. No standup bass, no Owen Bradley, no rockabilly '50s garb. Tammy falls into her own slot and you have to take her on her own terms.

The other thing is, you don't hear music like Tammy's anymore. Human feeling's been AutoTuned out of everything, nobody plays live, the tracks are overdubbed to death. I'm afraid Tammy might not have a place in our chilly times.

Wynette has a reputation -- based mostly on "Stand by Your Man" -- for being an anti-feminist mouthpiece, but she obviously paved the way for a lot of women in country. Do you think it's fair to call her anti-feminist?

I think that's horribly reductive. Tammy wore lime-green pantsuits! Proudly! Hmmm, feminist or anti-feminist? She's a little too complex for such simplistic labels. When I hear such talk I immediately tune out. I see chickens dancing on hot plates, dwarves shooting muskets in the air. I notice that people who think in such terms often have terrible taste in music. Some folks just can't take country straight, no chaser, there has to be those greasy rock additives.

You mention that "if there's a hero in this book, it is George Jones," but his relationship with Wynette was pretty fraught. Could you explain that a little more?

First of all, Jones is alive. That alone deserves an entry from Ripley's. And George remains true to the music. Jones figured out a way to survive without sacrificing who he was. Not an easy trick. When Tammy died, it was Jones -- a man who hates hospitals, funerals or anything of the sort -- who accompanied her daughters to the funeral home. No doubt Tammy is smiling down from somewhere above when it comes to Jones.

What's the most bizarre incident you looked into while writing this book?

I'd love to get to the bottom of her bizarre "kidnapping." No ransom, no suspects, no arrests, a story full of unreliable narrators. After she "escaped," Tammy stumbled onto the property of a George and Tammy fan -- one Junette Young. I love the fact that Junette decided "it wasn't the time or place" to inform Tammy she was a fan as she cut off the stocking knotted around Wynette's neck.

What one thing would you ask Tammy if she were alive?

"Can we go get a hot dog, Tammy? I'll buy."

Two women have become China's first female astronauts thanks to a critical qualification: They are wives and mothers. Yeah, they know how to fly a spacecraft and stuff, but they also meet the country's requirement that its women reproduce before traveling in space, according to The Guardian.

The reasoning here is that hurtling through outer space could damage women's fertility, according to Xu Xianrong, an expert at the country's Air Force General Hospital. "It's out of the consideration of being responsible for the female pilots," he told the official government news agency Xinhua. "Though there is little evidence on how the space experience will affect the female constitution, we have to be extra cautious." Evidence, shmevidence. Of course, he doesn't mention any fears about men's fertility. I wonder whether the requirement has to do with China's shortage of girls and women, or whether this is just your run-of-the-mill case of paternalism.

On a different note Xianrong said that, as the Guardian paraphrases, women generally have "advantages as astronauts over men because they were more mentally stable, better able to bear loneliness and had better communication skills." Sex stereotypes: Sometimes they work for you, sometimes they work against you -- whaddayagondo.

When I wrote about the MTV reality show 16 and Pregnant and its spinoff Teen Mom earlier this year, I wondered whether the young women on that show had really considered what it meant to put their personal lives out there for consumption. These new moms are being treated as public figures during a vulnerable period of their lives, and nothing proves this more than this headline from TMZ today:"' Teen Mom' 911 Call - My Mom Hit Me in the Face ." 16 and Pregnant and Teen Mom star Farrah Abraham was...(read more)

There are a few things people even start to say that are guaranteed to get under my skin within milliseconds. "You know, Avatar was pretty entertaining," "Say what you will, but Rush has a great drummer, " or "I've been studying tantric sex." But my shoulders really start to tense up when I hear, "I'm pro-choice, but ... ." What follows that "but" is 99 percent guaranteed to be egregiously sexist, a suggestion that huge numbers of women wait eight months and abort for the hell of it or that women...(read more)

In the New York Times , Iraq and Afghanistan veteran Roman Skaskiw explains why he won’t be watching The Hurt Locker , The Messenger , or any other celebrated take on our current quagmires: He fears for the integrity of his wartime memories. After a while, Skaskiw says, “you struggle to distinguish how you felt from how you are expected to feel. Often it feels easier to surrender to expectation.” It’s a lovely essay, too subtle to be summarized here, and deserving of the few moments it takes to read...(read more)

Let me get this out there right upfront: I do not want to take your porn away. I am against the exploitation and objectification of women, but I am also against censorship and Puritanical bullshit, and porn tangles all of those issues up in such a way as to make me feel uncharacteristically dispassionate about the whole mess. My official position on porn: Whatever.

So if I saw a compelling argument that porn is good for society, I would probably not go out of my way to nitpick it. But Milton Diamond's article at the Scientist, in which he discusses data that shows more porn is correlated with lower sexual assault rates, is not that argument. "[I]n every region investigated," he writes, "researchers have found that as pornography has increased in availability, sex crimes have either decreased or not increased ... Surprisingly few studies have linked the availability of porn in any society with antisocial behaviors or sex crimes. Among those studies none have found a causal relationship and very few have even found one positive correlation."

Interesting. And if you've been going around saying that increased availability of porn causes an increase in sex crimes (or at least, that it did through the 1990s; Diamond doesn't cite more recent findings on this subject), maybe you should stop. But speaking of the difference between correlation and causation, isn't it kind of a big leap from that to "More porn equals less rape"?

I mean, I haven't read all of the studies and reports Diamond mentions with regard to this particular matter -- mostly the work of "Berl Kutchinsky, who studied Denmark, Sweden, West Germany, and the United States in the 1970s and 1980s," plus FBI Department of Justice statistics from 1975-1995 -- but I'm guessing it would be awfully hard to control for every other thing that changed in a society over a decade or two. Off the top of my head, for instance, might it not be that increased feminism had something to do with it? Increased rape awareness? Or, I don't know, increased numbers of hourlong crime dramas on TV? Increased use of the word "awesome"? Increased appreciation for Prince's musical genius? A lot was happening back then.

But wait, Diamond also says the rates of pornography use among convicts supports this theory.

Michael Goldstein and Harold Kant found that rapists were more likely than nonrapists in the prison population to have been punished for looking at pornography while a youngster, while other research has shown that incarcerated nonrapists had seen more pornography, and seen it at an earlier age, than rapists. What does correlate highly with sex offense is a strict, repressive religious upbringing. Richard Green too has reported that both rapists and child molesters use less pornography than a control group of "normal" males.

Also interesting, especially in light of my distaste for Puritanical bullshit. But while the greater use of porn among nonrapists might theoretically support the argument that more porn equals less rape, doesn't the flipside undermine it? If rapists aren't big porn users anyway, why would we assume that making more X-rated media available would reduce the number of sex crimes? To get from point A to point B, one would have to assume that rapists rape because they don't avail themselves of enough smut -- and that the nonrapists stick to other crimes because they do. And to get there, one would have to assume that rape is about sexual gratification, not control and violence; that men convicted of something other than rape have never committed a sex crime; and that having been raised in a repressive religious household is mostly relevant here because of how it affects one's adult porn consumption -- as opposed to, say, one's attitudes toward women. That's a lot of assuming.

Speaking of attitudes toward women, Diamond writes that "Studies of men who had seen X-rated movies found that they were significantly more tolerant and accepting of women than those men who didn't see those movies." Interesting! Except, in the previous paragraph, he just said "most men have at some time used pornography." So maybe there's something different about men who don't? Like, I don't know, a strict religious upbringing that taught them desire is dangerous and women are evil temptresses? So it's possible those attitudes didn't come directly from the lack of porn?

Ah, but Diamond also assures us that "No researcher or critic has found ... that exposure to pornography -- by any definition -- has had a cause-and-effect relationship towards ill feelings or actions against women. No correlation has even been found between exposure to porn and calloused attitudes toward women." Good news! But really not the point, where anti-porn feminists are concerned. No one's saying that watching skin flicks will make someone consciously think, "Gee, I really dislike women now. I think they should be beaten and raped. And if a researcher asks me, I'll say so proudly." But like any media, porn can have all sorts of more subtle but profound effects on our ideas about how certain groups of people should behave, what they should look like, what makes them worthy of respect or personal freedom, how much power they have and deserve. And although not all porn is necessarily damaging to women in those respects, a whole lot of it really doesn't help. You don't have to be anti-porn or pro-censorship to acknowledge that and give some thought to what it might mean.

So, let me reiterate: I do not want to take your porn away. But not every discussion of hardcore material has to be about that. Diamond wraps his article up with a stirring rant against making porn illegal that I basically agree with -- I just think it has very little to do with the rest of his argument. He hasn't come anywhere near convincing me that porn is good for society because it reduces the number of sex crimes or improves attitudes toward women -- but he didn't need to, if his ultimate point was only that it shouldn't be outlawed. I was already there, dude. It's just, I would be much more into considering the positive effects of porn on society if you showed me some data that indicates actual positive effects of porn on society. As it is, my position remains unchanged. Whatever. 

Today, the New York City subway system was hit with a series of ads from the organization Abortion Changes You. According to Metro International, they "depict either a woman saying, 'I thought life would be the way it was before,' or a man saying, 'I often wonder if there was something I could have done to help her.'" Presumably, the ads look a lot like the image above, which is featured on the group's Web site/memorial for terminated fetuses.

Here's the thing: I think we should acknowledge that abortion can change you, that it isn't necessarily an "eh, whatevs" event. For some women, it may be akin to getting a tooth pulled; for others, though, it results in a profound and haunting loss. None of this goes against the dominant pro-choice message, which is that women should be allowed to make their own reproductive choices based on what they feel is right for them. Women have different experiences of abortion and they should be allowed to make different decisions, too.

That isn't to say I'm super pumped about the ads, though. They present one side of the story, which is that abortion changes you, period. Not that abortion can change a woman, but that it always does, and that is quite simply a lie. It isn't the sort of message born of concern for women, but rather a concern for converting women. Also, you know what is guaranteed to change you and your life in a profound way? Motherhood. But I don't recall seeing any subways ads featuring a woman knee-deep in dirty diapers with the text, "I thought life would be the way it was before."

The Super Bowl E-Trade commercial went as follows: Two babies are video-chatting on their computers and the baby girl accusingly asks the baby boy: "That milkaholic Lindsay wasn't over last night?" A few seconds later another female baby pops into the boy's online window and garbles, " Milk-a-what?" Some more words are spoken and somehow this episode becomes an advertisement for a stock brokerage. But even more nonsensical than the ad: Lindsay Lohan is now insisting that the boyfriend-nabbing, milkaholic...(read more)

Of the all the wonderful reasons to drink -- the antioxidant benefits of red wine, the way tequila makes other people more attractive -- here's one more: Women who drink gain less weight.

"But how can this be?" you ask as you lean in closer. Those daiquiris have, like, 500 calories each! And don't even get started on how beautifully beer and queso go together.

Yet a study released this week from the Archives of Internal Medicine that followed over 19,000 American "normal weight" women over age 39 and tracked their drinking habits for 13 years found that women who were "light to moderate" drinkers gained about 30 percent less weight over time than the teetotalers. Now if there could just be a study linking bacon consumption to smooth skin, this would be my best day ever.

How'd we get so lucky? First, as the New York Times noted today, alcohol gives the female metabolism a minor boost (sorry, guys, it doesn't do the same for men). Furthermore, there's some evidence that the resveratrol found in grapes and red wine might inhibit obesity.

Yet before you dump your weight-loss shakes down the drain and break out the Jagermeister tap, there is one glaring caveat -- that inhibited weight gain seems to be linked less to what women drink as how they drink. Women, much more than men, are likelier to use alcohol as a substitute for food rather than an accompaniment. Think of all the whoooo-hoooo girls you've ever seen at the bar, forgoing dinner for one more sex on the beach. It'd be interesting to see further research on women and their attitudes toward weight, drinking and aging. One hopes maybe some of those moderate drinking, obesity-deflecting women are also just normal, balanced human beings who don't view their health or their bodies in terms of all or nothing. As for the ones who think a glass of sangria makes a meal? They may be thinner than their plusher counterparts at the dinner table, but there's no study in the world that would call them wiser.

— Rep. Bart Stupak (D-Mich.) says the wording of the House health care reform bill can be changed to keep taxpayer dollars from funding abortions without placing new restrictions on abortion rights. Stupak, who sponsored the proposed amendment to the House bill barring federal subsidies for abortions, accuses pro-choice advocates of making abortion part of the health care debate [ AP ] ... (Read the rest of this post in DoubleX .)...(read more)

Via Feministe comes this disturbing story of a UMass student who was "found responsible for sexual assault " by the university last fall. His accuser, an alumna, did not press criminal charges outside the university's disciplinary system. According to the Boston Globe , the alleged rapist was given a "deferred suspension ," which means he was allowed to continue living on campus and will graduate on time ... (Read the rest of this post in DoubleX .)...(read more)

My brain is female -- very female, according to the BBC's Sex I.D. test. I'm empathetic and able to accurately read people's emotions. I'm attuned to changes in my environment, but suck at spatial judgment. I use words, lots of them. Therefore, the complex bundle of neurons and synapses in my skull can be essentialized as female -- a pink brain, a cranial stereotype.

Mind-body social conformity, woo-hoo!

No, but seriously, the test is based on actual scientific findings regarding differences between the sexes. (So is Match.com's personality test.) They aren't making this stuff up in an attempt to, say, make me feel bad about my inability to visualize complex rotating 3D images. But, it's also true that the premise of finding out the sex of your brain is a bit misleading. The implication is that the test reveals the most innate, defining characteristic of your mind, the thing that makes you you. And as we've argued countless times before, it just isn't that simple or straightforward. But, hey, if you're looking for a Cosmo-style personality quiz injected with a bit of science, look no further.

Between the Internet and reality television, it can seem like there's no such thing as a private -- or even family- and friends-only -- moment anymore. Wedding ceremonies, adorable baby behavior and sibling squabbles go viral, women tweet what's going on with their uteruses, amateur porn abounds and minor celebrity sex tapes are so ubiquitous they're barely news anymore. But at least one category of common human experiences still goes on largely behind closed doors: Dying and grief.

As I wrote when "Farrah's Story," the documentary about Farrah Fawcett's final days, was attracting an enormous amount of attention, "A video of anyone on her deathbed is rare here, where dying and grieving are constructed as anomalous events best kept private, rather than natural parts of every human life." People were similarly eager to witness young British reality star Jade Goody's life coming to a close; her suffering and death from cervical cancer changed her public image from tacky, offensive gadfly to, as Meredith Blake wrote for Broadsheet, "the new 'People's Princess.'" And public grief -- or more accurately, a public version of private grief -- is just as rare and compelling as public dying. We claim that entire nations mourn after celebrity deaths, terrorist attacks and natural disasters, and we collect platitudinous soundbites from the actively grieving -- yet we rarely dwell for long on how it really feels to lose a loved one.

So when, for some reason, the cameras can't turn away, neither can we. Canadian figure skater Joannie Rochette became a household name during the Olympics last month not for performing beautifully -- although she did, taking bronze -- but for performing at all just days after her mother died suddenly of a heart attack. As Joshua David Stein wrote then, the maudlin television coverage of her loss was barfy, but "Rochette's obvious emotional vulnerability couldn't help but stir. Rochette had become Perseverance incarnate ... She was no longer an athlete but a mascot for the human condition." Twenty-two years ago, speed skater Dan Jansen received the same sort of attention for competing immediately after his sister's death. To perform at that level without breaking down while in the first throes of grief is, we all agree, heroic. And perhaps part of the reason that stirs us so deeply is that we rarely acknowledge a more uncomfortable truth: That for a lot of us, simply showing up for school or work immediately after such a loss is nearly as monumental a show of determination and grace. Once the funeral is over, we're expected to carry on as usual -- even when our minds are still so saturated with grief that our daily routines feel as daunting and exhausting as an Olympic event. At least when it happens to a world-class athlete or beloved celebrity, we're allowed to be openly sad for a moment.

Now, that's also true even when it happens to a 16-year-old girl no one's ever heard of before. A video made by London high schooler Sarah Phillips to honor her mother, Debbie, who recently passed away from cancer, has gone viral since she posted it on March 2. Part of its appeal, to be sure, is Phillips' voice singing Paulo Nutini's "Autumn"; when you just hear that it's a kid singing a song for her late mother, you expect it to be heartfelt but clunky, so the clarity of her gorgeous, trained voice produces a bit of a Susan Boyle effect. But it's also just a perfectly simple and heartbreaking distillation of grief, the kind of thing we don't often share with others beyond our immediate circles and might not be able to describe to anyone if we tried. This is what we do after a loss, but before we can really carry on; we sort through old photos and memories, we find deep meaning in pop lyrics, we wish the entire world could know how amazing and important this person was and how much it hurts that she's gone. But usually, we do it in private, so as not to make anyone else uncomfortable. Sarah Phillips put it out there so the world really would know -- and so far, nearly 130,000 people have watched. Well done, Sarah. We are all so sorry for your loss.

 

Even as a new and vulnerable mother, I suspected that the Baby Einstein videos were only good if you needed to stick the baby somewhere to take a shower, that they would not actually make my baby 30 or 50 or whatever percent smarter. Still, those videos were dispiriting for me, the first clue that the experience of mothering would be something like being trapped on an island resort with people always trying to sell me things and making me feel virtuous for buying them,or leaving me with a twinge...(read more)

Can you smell the aroma of manufactured manliness? Because there is an epic, and pungent, battle underway in the men's personal care aisle. Today, Advertising Age declares that we are seeing "the biggest array of product launches for men in nearly a decade and maybe ever." The major competitors in this pissing contest: Procter & Gamble, which is responsible for Old Spice and Gillette, and Unilever's new line, Dove Men+Care (apparently a plus sign equals masculinity).

Chances are you're already familiar with Old Spice's latest offering --namely Isaiah Mustafa, the charming star of its viral "I'm on a horse" ad, which bashes "lady-scented body wash" and orders dudes to "smell like a man, man." The spot is full of satire and swagger -- a winning combo, especially for men whose choice of personal armor is ironic cockiness. And as AdAge notes, "An ad for Gillette's body wash, with a fairly obvious proxy for the new Dove product in the shower, pointedly says, 'Just because it says it's for men doesn't mean it is.'" Nyah-nyah, Gillette just said you smell like a woman! Whatchu gonna do about that, Dove?

Nothing, judging from the Dove "Manthem," which you'll find below. Above all else, a Dove man is comfortable. Really, really comfortable. He doesn't need to thump his chest to prove his manliness -- that's what his wife, three kids and home are for, it seems. He's succeeded as a man (read: a pro-creator and provider) and so he can calmly retreat to his bathroom sanctuary and lather himself with an unpretentious body wash that doesn't scream "FOR REAL MEN ONLY." He is settled in his domesticated bliss and doesn't need a damn horse, OK?

I don't know about you, but I am fascinated by these dueling masculine identities. Bring on the advertainment.

Today the BBC is wondering if Kathryn Bigelow's Oscar win for The Hurt Locker will mean more female movie directors overall . The article cites this depressing statistic: "Out of the top 250 grossing films of 2009 in the US, women only directed about 7 percent of them," which is down from 9 percent in 2008. The reason for the absence of women directing major motion pictures seems to be a complex combination of deeply entrenched institutional sexism and women self-selecting away from the profession....(read more)

Unlike Salon TV critic Heather Havrilesky, I cheered when Mo'Nique began her acceptance speech for the best supporting actress Oscar with, "I would like to thank the Academy for showing that it can be about the performance and not the politics." I don't think she meant to slight her fellow nominees, nor do I think they took it that way -- Vera Farmiga and Maggie Gyllenhaal were two of the first on their feet, looking delighted, as Mo'Nique took the stage. I think that for the most part, Mo'Nique only meant to acknowledge a couple of plain facts: 1) Just about everyone known for making accurate Oscar predictions figured she was a lock, and 2) The only reason anyone thought she might not be was that she refused to campaign for it. Few thought she had any real competition in the category -- which has much more to do with the lack of strong roles for women than with Gyllenhaal, Farmiga, Anna Kendrick or Penelope Cruz being seen as inferior talents -- but many faulted Mo'Nique for not playing the game better and wondered if Academy voters would punish her for her lack of schmoozing and self-promotion.

Never mind that her lack of visibility was less a conscious rejection of the expected niceties than a function of her demanding schedule; as she told the New York Times, "[I]t's like, guys, I also have this show called 'The Mo'Nique Show' where I tape six shows a week. I have twins who are 4, so I have babies, I have an amazing husband and a son who's 19. What I can participate in I'm more than happy to." Mo'Nique's decision to prioritize her ongoing work and family life over lobbying for an Oscar, choosing to let her performance in "Precious" speak for itself, was widely cast as a deliberate and vaguely hostile political statement, in ways that seemed meant to remind us that for all her talent and success, Mo'Nique is still a Hollywood outsider.

But there is another element of politics versus performance where Mo'Nique is concerned, which can be found in the next line of her speech: "I want to thank Miss Hattie McDaniel for enduring all that she had to, so that I would not have to. " It's worth considering that if McDaniel had wanted to launch a schmooze campaign for the Oscar she won in 1940, it would have been virtually impossible. She was barred from attending the "Gone With the Wind" premiere in Atlanta, because it would have been against Georgia law for her to sit in a theater with white people. She was not only the first African-American to win an Academy Award but the first to be allowed into the ceremony in anything but a serving capacity -- they stuck her at a table in the back. Although she was a talented singer and comedian, she won Hollywood's grudging respect by playing a maid named Mammy. And during her tearful acceptance speech (below), she said bluntly, "I sincerely hope I shall always be a credit to my race."

It's the kind of statement that makes a 21st-century white liberal like myself cringe; that she felt the need to say that underscores just how entrenched and accepted overt racism was at the time. But even though the laws and culture have changed substantially, and you'd be unlikely to hear an African-American actor prostrate herself before white peers and viewers quite so nakedly today, it's certainly not as though black people in Hollywood are no longer burdened with representing their entire race or working overtime to prove themselves.

In the 70 years between McDaniel's and Mo'Nique's wins, only three other black actresses -- Whoopi Goldberg, Halle Berry and Jennifer Hudson -- have taken home Oscars. Just one of those was for a leading role, and if you guessed that went to the only thin, light-skinned, button-nosed, biracial one of the bunch, you get a gold star. Four black men have won best actor -- three of those in the last 10 years -- and four have won best supporting. So that's 13 acting awards out of 328. In 82 years. This year also saw the second African-American to be nominated for best director and the first ever African-American screenwriter to win. In 82 years. Welcome to post-racial America.

But at least Mo'Nique won for a role in a film by and about black people, not for playing a sassy maid, right? Well, yes and no. It's fantastic to see black filmmakers recognized -- just as it's fantastic to see a woman win best director, even if it's for a distinctly testosteroney film -- but that hardly means we've transcended demeaning stereotypes. Don't get me wrong -- Mo'Nique did a marvelous job with the material. But that material was, in one critic's description, "an over-the-top political fantasy that works only because it demeans blacks, women and poor people" -- and Hollywood doesn't seem to have wrestled too hard with the question of why such movies are frequently crowd pleasers.

Consider the shocked reaction of umpteen reporters upon learning that the movie's star, Gabourey Sidibe, is nothing like Precious -- that she was, in fact, acting. Consider the clip they chose to show last night that featured Sidibe stealing a bucket of fried chicken, for crying out loud. Consider that four of the best picture nominees were widely criticized for their treatment of race -- "Precious" for all of the above; "District 9" for its arguably sketchy handling of an apartheid allegory and undeniably degrading depiction of human black Africans; "The Blind Side" and "Avatar" for being yet more iterations of a tired and condescending "white savior" narrative. That's not to say those films were wholly without merit or even necessarily undeserving of the praise, but when four of the year's most beloved movies contain problematic racial tropes, it's a bit premature to congratulate the Academy or ourselves for having come so far in the last 82 years. I mean, please, don't make me bring up "Crash."

So I was thrilled to hear Mo'Nique acknowledge the crap she took leading up to last night -- and the fact that her performance transcended it anyway -- right off the bat. I cheered again when she said to her husband and manager, "Thank you for showing me that sometimes you have to forgo doing what's popular in order to do what's right. Baby, you were so right." It wasn't about disrespecting her fellow nominees; it was about respecting herself and her work. It was about being there as a credit to her profession, not her race or her gender or her size or the sisterhood of hairy-legged comics in open marriages, or whatever else people want her to represent. It was about unapologetically standing up for herself and her performance in a way Hattie McDaniel never could have. It worked, and she earned it.

 

A post from sports writer Caitlin Moscatello: Eri Yoshida, 18 and the first woman to play professional baseball in Japan, took her impressive knuckleball to the United States this winter, playing in the Arizona Winter League. Her goal: to snag a contract with an independent league on this side of the Pacific for the summer and become the first woman to play pro in the United States. Sure, the league’s a far cry from the majors, but considering that Yoshida is 5’1” and 114 lbs., has never had formal...(read more)

A post from DoubleX contributor KJ Dell'Antonia: I spent $3.58 on that mocha. If I'd only joined Blippy — a social-media app that posts the purchases of its members both on the site itself and to their Facebook and Twitter accounts —yesterday, I could have updated my Facebook with a $65 ski lift ticket, an obscene amount for top-of-the mountain snacks and, unmentioned but casually obvious, the fact that I spent the day at Killington. My first thought is that no one would care, but we all know Facebook,...(read more)

"The time has come," said Barbra Streisand late Sunday night. And with that, Kathryn Bigelow, whose low-budget "The Hurt Locker" edged out the most successful movie of all time, became the first female in Academy history to win an Oscar for best director. (Moments later, she'd make a twofer by winning best picture as well.)

But like every historic first, Bigelow's dual victory was both a stunning personal achievement and resonant metaphor. And not everybody's been thrilled.

Just a few weeks ago critic Martha P. Nochimson wrote an essay here that lambasted Bigelow as "the Transvestite of Directors … masquerading as the baddest boy on the block." And after last night's ceremony, journalist Farai Chideya promptly tweeted, "Among Bigelow's best-known films are three male ensemble casts: 'Hurt Locker,' 'Point Break,' 'K-19 the Widowmaker'. … kudos to cast and to filmmaker and to topic. Gender matrix not so much." So before we bust the pink champagne, perhaps we should ask: Does Bigelow's victory still count for the ladies?

I have a diploma with the word "film" on it, so let me take a crack here.

Of course it does. Are you freaking kidding me?

It's funny, I don't remember anybody trotting out drag queen metaphors when John Madden's "Shakespeare in Love" or Anthony Minghella's "The English Patient" won Oscars, despite their weepy, girly plots. For that matter, in all the conversation about the big battle of the exes between Bigelow and James Cameron, did anybody stop to chide Cameron for an entire career built on decidedly female-centric fare? "Aliens," "The Abyss," "Titanic" and "Avatar" might not be "You've Got Mail," but they're all lousy with strong leading ladies and maternal subtext. (If Cameron were a woman, many large, serious books would be written about the feminist iconography of his otherworldly oeuvre.) Why then are Bigelow's critics so quick to bag on her for doing what good filmmakers do -- making movies with a unique perspective, and an appeal outside of the director's own demographic? Do we really still think the length and breadth of female filmmaking is "Julie and Julia"? Dear God, please, no.

When I was in film school in the '80s, a time when professors still thought it was acceptable to comment on the weight and dating habits of girl students, there barely was any concept of women's cinema. In four years, I studied exactly one female director -- Leni Riefenstahl.

Fortunately, it was also a golden moment for young independent filmmakers, some of whom, miraculously, were not males. (Not all of them were white either -- go figure.) Patricia Rozema, Martha Coolidge and Mira Nair were just breaking out, but the women who electrified my little group of black-clad clove cigarette smokers were Penelope Spheeris and Kathryn Bigelow. Spheeris made rock 'n' roll documentaries and the cult hit "Suburbia"; Bigelow made a weird little vampire movie called "Near Dark." No hankies. No hugging. Kickass!

As the years went by and Bigelow went on to make tough little dramas like "Blue Steel" and "Point Break" -- as well as directing plenty of television cop shows. Her action-oriented style matured, but her style remained distinctive, consistent and always adrenalized. Does that make her a gender betrayer? I don't know, is "Precious" director Lee Daniels a chick for making a movie about a pregnant teenage girl and her mom? 

Yet Bigelow's win seems to raise a nagging question in certain heads: Why is it that when women finally get a big award winner, it's for a war picture instead of the kind of fare we so often wind up directing -- those warm Nancy Meyers/Nora Ephron relationship stories? Well, maybe the reason movies like "Mamma Mia!" don't snag the big prizes is as simple as the fact that they're just not that great. Does anybody complain that men are being artistically shut out from serious competition when they go ahead and make "X-Men"?

That's the thing that's both scary and fantastic about Bigelow's win; it says that maybe if we women are stuck making rom-coms and weepies, it's not the fault of the system but ourselves. Want more golden statues on the lady shelf? Then fight like hell to make better movies, whatever the subject matter. The last time a woman was nominated for a best director Oscar, it was Sofia Coppola for "Lost in Translation," a film that was piffling at best. (The only other two female nominees -- the indisputably great Jane Campion for "The Piano" and Lina Wertmüller for "Seven Beauties" -- had their work cut out for them against "Schindler's List" and "Rocky," respectively.) The problem with devaluing Bigelow's win as being merely a clever bit of cinematic cross-dressing is that it takes away from the fact that "The Hurt Locker" is a great film, full stop.

So it's no wonder that a groan went up from my couch when Bigelow's walkout music last night swelled to the strains of Helen Reddy's cheeseball anthem "I Am Woman." (What was the Academy's plan if Lee Daniels had won? Run DMC's "Proud to Be Black"?) See, everybody? Hollywood can recognize a woman! Let's give a hand for the little lady! 

Of course masculinity and femininity inform the stories we tell. "An Education" was the story of a girl. "The Hurt Locker" was the story of a man. "Avatar" was the story of a bunch of blue people in a tree. Filmmakers bring their own brand of life experience to the table; there isn't nor should there be an utterly gender-neutral perspective. But anyone who's seen "The Hurt Locker" and thinks that it's just some dude flick is selling its director far short. As a filmgoer who's been following her career for the last 23 years could tell you, it's a Kathryn Bigelow movie. It has her gritty style, her unmistakably dark humor, her gut-punching humanity.

Perhaps, then, it's a good thing the Oscars chose to remind the world last night that Bigelow is both a filmmaker and a female. I hope every film school chick in the world is cheering her triumph, because it represents a victory over sexist college professors and dumbass studio executives and every producer who thinks ladies should stick to baby comedies. It represents the door opening just a little wider for talented, accomplished women to tell the stories they want to tell, whether they're about sweeping romance or kooky comedy or blowing stuff up. There is no need to take away one iota of her accomplishment by suggesting Bigelow earned it by being a dude in a dude's genre. She got it by being Kathryn Bigelow -- a fierce, independent and utterly deserving filmmaker. She's not the king of the world. She is woman. Hear her roar.