New Business Model: More Tits!

I'm a feminist and I read comic books.

(Up next, Sherlock Holmes and the Case of No Shit.)

I read comic books and I enjoy images of perfect physical specimens running around in tight clothing as much as the next nerd. But as a feminist, I recognize that this art form has a long history of objectifying and marginalizing their female characters. When Wonder Woman first joined the Justice League, she wasn't allowed to go on missions with the male heroes. She was the Justice League's secretary. Seriously.

Female characters eventually rose to prominence in the comic book universe (though they still have a nasty tendency to get raped, de-powered, or dismembered and stuffed into refrigerators). My two favorite titles right now, Birds of Prey and Gotham City Sirens, star all-female superhero teams, and the new Batwoman comic, debuting in September, is the one of the most hotly anticipated titles coming out of DC's new mega-relaunch of their entire line.

Which brings us to my current feminist rant. DC Comics is relaunching all of their superhero comics (or rebooting, or renumbering, or whatever you want to call it when management says, Screw it, we're starting over). When the new comics hit the stands in September, there are going to be a few changes to my favorite super-women. Gotham City Sirens will be discontinued, with Poison Ivy moving to the Birds of Prey, Harley Quinn joining the Suicide Squad, and Catwoman getting her own solo title.

This is all fine. Catwoman is my favorite character and her last solo title was pretty good, and anything is better for Harley Quinn than just being the Joker's abused girlfriend.

And then I saw the artwork for the new comics. Please keep in mind that this is not fan-art--these are the actual, official DC Comics covers for two of their most prominent female characters.

Here is Catwoman.
Here is Harley Quinn.
Again, official artwork.

Harley Quinn's corset is held up by nothing except the collective horror of female comic book fans. Catwoman looks like she just fucked that condom full of diamonds. The jewels are spilling out onto her cleavage, for chrissake!

THIS is why it's so embarrassing to be a comic book reader. This confirms every negative stereotype of the socially maladjusted mouthbreather drooling over anatomically impossible bimbos in a dark basement that smells of hopelessness and corn chips. It's a corporate slap in the face to every woman who has ever had to endure the leers and condescension of said mouthbreathers at comic shops and conventions. And it's a chilling reminder of what people in power really think about women.

I feel like my 20 years of loyal patronage of the DC brand has just been repaid with a big, steaming pile of "fuck you and your opinions, you useless bitch, go put on something slutty for the fellas and maybe jiggle around a little." I couldn't even go to the comic book shop this week. I was so pissed off at the company that I didn't want to give them any more of my money or support. Instead, I sat down and wrote DC an angry letter, the contents of which are similar to this post, but with a lot less swearing.

So first time I write a letter to the editor, it's about pretend people who dress up like cats and homicidal clowns. I don't know what that says about my priorities. At least I can rest easy knowing that my priorities are still better-placed than whoever approved that artwork up there.

Delicious cake, om nom nom.

Hey, there! Still not feeling my best, but I got some happyvibes from my friends about the Literati Scouts idea, so it's all cool.

There was cake at work today. When you work in a large office, or, as I do, in a small office that's nestled in a larger office ecosystem like the seven-legged cane spider that used to live in my bathroom and eat gnats and mosquitoes... hang on, that metaphor got away from me. I was too busy shuddering in terror at the thought of that damn spider. I didn't pee alone from ages 5 to 8. My Big Sister will never forgive me.

Cake! When you work in a large office, cake just sometimes appears. Maybe it's somebody's birthday. Maybe there's a new baby, or a graduation, or we laid siege to another department in the building and are now feasting on the spoils of war. I've learned not to question delicious noms that come my way. My overlords assure me that I am being amply rewarded for my efforts, whatever larger purpose they may serve.

Seriously, after nearly a year in this job, I'm still not entirely sure what I do. The orders come down from the tower, some short guy with two heads distributes the armor, and we ride forth into the haze. I've never gotten a proper look at the enemy--no one has--but the scarred veterans who ply their trade along the walls of the keep whisper that the beasts have command of shadows and shades. Rumors from the hut of the one-eyed witches say that the haze in which we fight isn't a haze at all, but the bodies of the enemy, spread thin and wide like a poisonous gas that hangs over the killing fields. Though if this is true, what then prevents the haze from smothering us all while we sleep?

I don't question. I follow my orders. Answer the phones. Service the customers and polish my blade. The haze is always worse in the summer. Tempers run short. I hope the overlords have lots of cake.

Delicious cake.

She stoops to conquer

Jeez, that is such a nerdy reference, I think I just earned another literati merit badge. (My troop meets once a month to get drunk in libraries and laugh at the plural form of words like 'apparatus.' Apparati. Priceless!) "She Stoops to Conquer" is an play by George Bernard Shaw, and I got sick and collapsed on a stoop this afternoon. A stretch, I'll admit, but I'm this close to becoming a Murasaki Scout and I really need my "Needlessly Pretentious Referencing of English Playwrights" credit.

You know, I WAS going to write a post about how embarrassing it is to disappear from one's blog for a month and have to come back with a story about nearly passing out on a Brooklyn street corner, but frankly my fake intelligensia survival troupe idea is way more interesting than my failing health. Would anybody be interested in joining the Literati Scouts? I don't know if we can bring alcohol into libraries, but we can discuss our favorite books, writers and poets and drink outside on the steps. New York libraries have very fine stoops.

We could have different levels of Literati Scouts, starting with Seuss and going up to Shakespeare. Both levels require you to speak in rhyme at meetings, so you'll probably want to advance through the ranks quickly, but also not get cocky and overreach yourself. We gotta keep the members humble. Murasaki and Wharton Scouts are responsible for upper-class angst. Bukowski Scouts handle working-class angst. Burroughs Scouts can head the discourse on queer theory, but only if they're sober (ditto for Ginsberg Scouts). Hemingway Scouts bring the drinks and organize the annual camping trip, but must defer to the more-senior Angelou Scouts in discussions of race and gender. Vonnegut Scouts head the Satire Glee Club and the annual Post-Apocalyptic Bake Sale, assisted by their Canadian counterparts, the Atwood Guides. (Scouts are called 'guides' in England and the colonies.) What level Scout would you like to be?

And we could give out merit badges: "Dated like a Jane Austen Heroine," "Maxed out your Library Account" both in library fines and book holds, "Lost Hope in Humanity," "Participation in Slam Poetry," "Pilgrimage to an Author's Home," "Used Bookstore Hygiene," "Accessed a Library's Closed Stacks," "Drunk Relatives," "Eviction from Bowery Poetry Club for Openly Mocking Performers," "Beating Off to Beat Poets," the more advanced "Beating Off Beat Poets," the more popular "Beating Beat Poets," and "Raged Against the Dying of the Light."

These are the badges I have. Feel free to list yours below.

It is happiness to you

When we moved into the new office building, my second big concern was the length of the walk between my desk and a place where I could make hot tea. (My first concern was the floor-to-ceiling windows, total lack of window shades, and our department's location on the south side of the building. And our school offers Masters degrees in architecture AND interior design.) I solved the problem by getting a big insulated cup for hot water and a lovely blue glass sake bottle for drinking water.

It was such a beautiful bottle. After the first month had passed, everyone on the floor had gotten their "Rachel's guzzling alcohol at 9 in the morning!" jokes out of their systems, but I still regularly got compliments on it. The label held up well despite repeated washings, and featured a full-color reproduction of a Japanese woodcut of a geisha. The label was delightfully mistranslated and spoke of "rice pure 80% harvesting." It ended with the vaguely threatening "It is happiness to you."

Unfortunately, I never took the time to write down the rest of the label. And now, I'll never get the chance.

Yesterday, after I'd made my morning trip to the kitchen to fill up my vessels and wash my tea strainer, I put the full sake bottle on the edge of my desk and knocked it onto the concrete floor where it shattered into a half-gallon puddle of water and lovely blue glass.

The keening of my office mates was like the cooing of pigeons under the BQE. I almost cried. My bottle. My blue sake bottle.

Sometimes I used it to give me an extra foot of reach when I was taping manila folders to my windows to block out the relentless sun. Tall Boss said it looked like I was a drunken Spider-Man splayed out against the window, especially when I did it on St. Patrick's Day. Other times I read the label to the ladies from Financial Aid when we were sharing front desk duties, or compare it to my coworker's glass Mason jar he used for his water vessel. Rachel's guzzling sake and he's pounding moonshine.

Rest in shiny blue pieces, pretty sake bottle.

Today I brought in my replacement. It's not the same--but it'll do.

Excuse me--I have a bottle of sake to drink.

Bikepocalypse Now!

I'm going to cliche hell for that post title. But I worked six days this week and I'm having terrible allergies from breathing in tree sperm, so I've run out of damns to give, not that I had that many to begin with.

Today I saw what Mad Max would look like if the apocalypse happened and left behind only jocks and hippies. One whole side of the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway was blocked off for the Five Borough Bike Tour, a 30,000-strong mass of bicycles that goes up Manhattan, u-turns in the Bronx, goes down through Queens, Brooklyn and Staten, and then--if I'm reading the route map correctly--cycles over the very waters of the harbor itself to its starting point in Battery City. Apparently riding a bike does give you the god-like powers professed by cycling enthusiasts.

I had no idea this was going on until I crossed the pedestrian bridge over the BQE on my way to the laundrymat and beheld a freeway full of bicycles. At first I was certain that it was a protest of some kind, like Critical Mass, because it was such a radical and subversive sight, like art or political cartoons come to life--mesmerizing, uplifting, and thought-provoking all at once. There could be nothing but bikes on the freeway! Why do we need cars? Why do we need gas and insurance and tolls? Why do we need authority, man?!

Dangerous stuff, New York. You're giving people ideas.

About Time

Spring took its damn time.

It's finally nice enough to hang around outside, but it looks like we're going to go straight from frigid winter to sweltering summer without much spring in between. Shame. I like the low- to mid-60 degree weather: silk scarves, little leather jackets, French novels in translation.

Does weather affect what you want to read? I like English novels in the winter, French in the spring, Japanese or Latin American in the summer, and local New York literature in the fall. Comic books I just read year round, cuz there's no seasonal limits on asskicking.

I just finished reading Patti Smith's memoir "Just Kids," which isn't French, but she spent time in France and was heavily inspired by French poets, so it sort of counts. I've reviewed it on the other blog. But don't read it. Instead, go outside and view the dogwood blossoms if you have any.

http://bigislandrachelsbooks.blogspot.com/2011/04/just-kids-patti-smith.html

Fair Utica and other oddbits

It's been quite a while since I posted. A lot of the interesting things that happen to me these days are kinda-sorta confidential, because I spend most of my time in a Real Job and I have to protect my customers. Which is a shame, because I work at an art school, and you would not believe some of the--well, I won't brag about it. I don't want you to feel bad about what you're missing.

I can say that I went on a business trip up to Utica, NY a couple of weeks ago. Utica is a strange place, very Bruce Springsteen in its down-at-heel working-man vibe. They get 270 days of precipitation a year. It rained the whole time we were there and no one seemed to notice.

I've decided that business trips are pretty awesome. You get to stay in nice hotels with Sleepnumber beds and gossip with your coworkers around the breakfast table about what number you put your mattress on. (First night was an even 50; second night I cranked that sucker down to 15. It was like sleeping on pudding.) And you get to eat out for every meal, though that's a bit of a mixed blessing. Utica is heavily Italian and loves to cram meat and pasta down your neckhole, which is a big change from my usual diet of brown rice and steamed vegetables. Not bragging, it's just what's cheapest on my New York City working-girl budget. After ribs and steak and sausage and fries spaghetti with three kinds of cheese and spinach with breaded cheese topping, it was restful to get back to my Brooklyn apartment and raw peanut stash.

I love raw peanuts, by the way. I used to eat them out of birdseed trays when I was a little girl. Now I'm a big girl so I eat human peanuts.

Actually, Utica did have a lot of veggies to offer, but most of them were at breakfast. It's not my normal way of doing things, but it was pretty nice to have a big steaming heap of spinach, zucchini and carrots first thing in the morning. I'm going to see if I can work that into my normal routine.