The Feminist Drinking Game: Name 10 famous women over 30 (who aren't about men).
Where this came from:
The anger of the many female Hillary voters (of which I am not one) and the press following Hillary’s loss led me to a thought. Hillary is almost the only public representation we have of a woman with power in the public sphere. Not sexual power. Not power based upon making men comfortable. Even with her marriage to Bill Clinton much of her power now is her own and it is not presented as trophy wife power.
I issued a challenge on twitter yesterday and I repeat and will track it here:
Name me 10 other women over 30 you see who aren’t about sexually or emotionally supporting men in popular media.
Here’s what I’ve got so far:
Brad King condi rice, albright, 70 current representatives and 14 current senators.
Ok Brad, quick name 8 of those reps by name. And we’re talking *famous* here.
Nick Douglas: B’bra Walters, Anna Wintour, Arianna Huff’ton, Oprah, Tyra, Condi Rice, Nancy Pelosi, Marissa Mayer, Anne Coulter, Ruth Ginsberg?
Nick agreed to remove Tyra (fame by sexual appeal) and I am disqualifying (though he disputes my call) Ann Coulter for the same reasons. She used that strongly to start her national visibility.
Nick also notes “Of course the time it took me to think up that list speaks to the still terrible dearth of well-known powerful female figures.”
MulegirlPut up Arianna too. (While haters say Hillary only has power because of Bill, I don’t hear them saying Arianna only has power cause she was willing to be a beard for a green card. Personally I can’t wait to meet Arianna to find out when she knew Michael is gay and when and how her political change of heart happened and if it was done so she could grow her audience).
Here’s the challenge. See if you can do it off the top of your head in under a minute. Double points if you can do it while drinking. Challenge your friends. Send me the videos.
This list probably only goes to show how much I had to dip slightly under the bar of utterly mainstream “popular” media to get to them, but here’s where I got in a minute:
Naomi Klein, Camille Paglia, Margaret Cho (I’d argue she’s about sexxxing it up for all comers),
The question it left me with was, how do we honestly know when women in popular media are playing an active role appealing to men? How much of it is marketing, marketing that happens to you even when women don’t do it themselves?