A Very BadRep Christmas: Sarah J
I’ve been asking the team what, if they had to build a sort of Feminist Christmas Grotto, would be under the Christmas tree, in the stocking, or just piled up in a flurry of glitter. Here’s our Sarah J’s stocking!
She sez:
- “‘Twas a few days before Christmas, and all through the house, not a creature was stirring… except some fabulous feminist finger puppets. What are they up to now, the little scallywags? (Left to right: Good Queen Bess, Sojourner Truth, Virginia Woolf and Frida Kahlo) I got them as a gift, but they’re available from The Unemployed Philosopher’s Guild!
- On the floor beside my stocking (which was made for me by one of my mum’s friends I believe, when I was a tiny one) is the second volume of Linda Medley‘s Castle Waiting, a graphic novel series I urgently commend to any feminist fairytale enthusiasts. It’s explicitly feminist, gentle and genuinely original, with some affectionate jokes at the expense of the fantasy genre, and cracking female characters. Don’t come expecting Angela Carter style sex ‘n’ death fairytale reclamation though. While there is danger lurking, the eponymous castle is a safe haven for the misfit characters.
- In the stocking itself is another extremely well-judged gift, a copy of Love of Worker Bees by Alexandra Kollontai, published in Russia in 1923. One of the Party faithful, Kollontai explores the tensions between her protagonist’s dedication to the cause of Socialism and her need for personal autonomy, love and sexual fulfilment. One of the most interesting (and moving) aspects of it is her struggle to reconcile the vision of freedom she passionately believes in with the realities of being a woman after the October Revolution. You’ll be unsurprised to hear that some are more equal than others.
- Next is my trusty copy of Misogynies by Joan Smith, a collection of superb essays on cultural texts which expose the thread of misogyny which runs through the fabric of western culture. A kind of response to Roland Barthes’ famed Mythologies, Smith’s book still has the power to shock, and serves as an excellent eye-opener for those who think it probably isn’t that bad really. The texts in question may be getting on a bit, but sadly things haven’t changed all that much.”
Not long now ’til Christmas! Feel free to share what would be in your own feminist Christmas stocking, and have a very BadRep Christmas…
A Very BadRep Christmas: Hannah
I’ve been asking the team what, if they had to build a sort of Feminist Christmas Grotto, would be under the Christmas tree, in the stocking, or just piled up in a flurry of glitter. Here’s Hannah’s tinsel-decked array of feminist Christmas stocking picks!
She sez:
- “Christina Rossetti for In the Bleak Midwinter, one of the only Christmas carols I can stand ’cause the lyrics rhyme and scan and crazy shit like that.
- Patti Smith ’cause she’s the village wise-woman of my head and I love her.
- Cordelia Fine’s Delusions of Gender is one of the best books I’ve read and should be required reading for, y’know, everyone.
- I love Margaret Atwood. That is all.
- Angela Carter invokes lots of pastoral snowscapes in The Bloody Chamber. That’s kind of Christmassy, right?
- The Second Sex is on my good intentions list. I absolutely will read it next year.
- Introducing Post-Feminism is, I think, pretty flawed in its definitions, but it does do a good run-through of a lot of history.
- And Herland by Charlotte Perkins Gilman is a book I initially loved, which gets creepier on every re-read, but hey – it’s a 1915 SF pacifist gynotopia.”
Hopefully we’ll have some more Team Christmas Trees up before we close for the holiday season, but either way have a great week!
Christmas Songnerd: Fairytale of New York
Here we are again, with another round! If you’ve not been keeping up, Christmas Songnerd is my attempt at some little case studies on some of the ‘Christmas classics’ currently assaulting your ears as you forge a path through the hordes of your local shopping centre. You may hate all Christmas music, or you may love it – personally I’ve never minded it much – but pop singles are like miniature time capsules, so examining their gender politics and the culture they were produced in is… you know. Interesting.
Anyway, today I’ve hauled our Rhian in to talk about Fairytale of New York, the Pogues’ and Kirsty MacColl’s Christmas anthem. The following is our email discussion about the song, the 1980s, folk music, and class politics.
Grab a whiskey.
Happy Christmas Your Arse
Rhian: I think one reason the song is so popular is because it seems like an oddity – it’s highly secular, the only mention of anything to do with Christmas is the setting, and it dissects romantic sentimentalism rather than replicating it – the lyric is of a part with the rest of the Pogues’ tragicomic gutter-poetry dealing with addiction, nihilism, prostitution, police corruption and brutality. Besides making it stand out among other seasonal songs, this also makes it the choice of the Christmas refusenik. In another way, of course, its depiction of dysfunctional relationships, exhaustion, frustration, frayed tempers and failed dreams make it the perfect song for Christmas as emotional pressure-valve.
Miranda: Yeah, it manages a keen balancing act of romantic and antiromantic, if you will – it sways between “I’ve built my dreams around you” and “you’re an old slut on junk” so deftly that I can never decide whether its final notes leave me depressed or hopeful. It’s got that whole “we’re ruined, irrevocably, and yet I love you” vibe, without ever straying into ‘stand by your man’ territory.
Queen of New York City
Rhian: Kirsty’s character makes a good subversive girl-next-door, overcoming taboos around female profanity, the place of women in a relationship, and the female as uncritically supportive of and subservient to the male. (After punk, and apart from Madonna maybe, which other mainstream late-80s female singers – especially folk/pop – compare with her vocal here for casual, combative profanity that matches, if not outdoes, her partner?)
I remember watching a ‘Making of…’ documentary on this song in which one of the Pogues was describing Kirsty’s efforts to overcome her stagefright when doing the song on tour with them, and recalled that on the first night they performed it, the crowd joined in with her, rather than Shane, on the ‘I could’ve been someone’ / ‘Well, so could anyone’ rejoinder. Which made me think about her part as the one with which listeners identify, the long-suffering steadfast partner/friend who finally talks back, providing much-needed perspective, however depressing that is, and the relief and catharsis that doing so brings. It’s like she speaks for all the women slaving over Xmas dinner for ungrateful kids and husbands.
Miranda: Although Shane’s character asserts a kind of ownership of Kirsty’s dreams (he’s the one who takes, builds, attempts to reassure her that she sits at the centre of the dream it sounds like he screwed up), he starts the song imprisoned in the “drunk tank” – implying she’s a dream, this woman, a figure from times past. So maybe where she is now – free, perhaps, who knows? – is left open. And I think that’s another thing that underpins the bittersweet, shady-grey spirit of this song. It’s never clear whose story this is, and there’s a real tension between her narrations and his, which draw the song back to a romantic, but broken, conclusion even as her “I pray god it’s our last” is still sort of echoing. Maybe it was, or maybe it wasn’t.
Rhian: That’s one of my favourite aspects of the song – what did happen to this couple, in the end? Does she come and pick him up from the drunk tank and bail him out after the song’s close, or has she OD’d years previously, or is she happily settled in her own life now? And yes, it nicely dodges the expected stand-by-your-man stuff. Actually it’s very even-handed in the way they both berate each other, sounding equally foul-mouthed and irritable, presumably he’s got his drinking and she’s got her junk so they’re both in the grip of addiction – again it subverts the idea of the meek and submissive female innocent under the grubby domineering male thumb.
Miranda: I also like the way it takes the folk figure of the lonely drunkard singing about his old flame and brings her directly into the song to talk back.
Rhian: Yes, totally – she’s one of the old ballads’ idealised nebulous foils, who suddenly clears her throat and interrupts the narrative with her side of the story – making both of them more well-rounded characters by doing so.
Cheap, Lousy and… Haggard?
For the Top of the Pops appearance, the BBC insisted that MacColl’s singing of “arse” be replaced with the less offensive “ass”, although as she mimed the word MacColl slapped the relevant part of her body to make it clear what was meant… On December 18, 2007, BBC Radio 1 put a ban on the words “faggot” and “slut” from “Fairytale of New York” to “avoid offence”.
Rhian: Re: ‘faggot’, which admittedly I always found slightly incongruous in context, Wikipedia also sez: In his Christmas podcast, musical comedian Mitch Benn commented that “faggot” was Irish and Liverpudlian slang for a lazy person, and was unrelated to the derogatory term for homosexuals.) Also, the one word that never seems to get dubbed out is ‘punk’, despite its historical application to female prostitutes, rent-boys and prison ‘bitches’…
Miranda:And I think it’s not impossible they weren’t aware of that given that the folk canon – which the MacColl family were well into – does contain dances several hundred years old with titles like “the punk’s delight”.
Rhian: The use of ‘punk’ and ‘faggot’ – while the latter may not be used in its modern, derogatory sense, I think it undeniably carries those connotations – makes for, in terms of stereotyping, an odd kind of feminisation (that may be the wrong word, it’s been a long week) of the male protagonist. Shane Macgowan has referenced male prostitution as part of a generally chaotic/hustling lifestyle in songs like ‘The Old Main Drag’; I wonder if a similar thing is being implied here.
Miranda: I’d never considered that – but it’s Kirsty who says “punk”, isn’t it. I think it has a more general usage which is a bit like “bum”, but I like the choice of word because it doesn’t immediately imply that the only one who might have engaged in that lifestyle is automatically the woman, which a first listening of “old slut on junk” connotates.
Cars Big As Bars
Rhian: And, to be wanky, in terms of socio-political context: both MacColl and the Pogues were outspokenly left-wing. In 1987 Thatcher had just been reelected, the mass civil unrest, strikes and riots of the early 1980s had simmered down despite increasing wealth disparity and ostentatious display by those at the top of the pile, both here and in the US under Reagan. In the UK this is the era of Enfield as Loadsamoney, in New York of American Psycho and Wall Street (the latter film released the same year as this song). MacColl’s opening lines (‘They got cars big as bars, they got rivers of gold / But the wind blows right through you…’) concisely and incisively sums up the period’s glaring inconsistencies, setting the scene without allowing it to colour the rest of the song – except inasmuch as the protagonists seem likely to be nearer the bottom of the heap than the top, relying on each other with little material resources to fall back on.
You Promised Me Broadway
Miranda: So what about all these covers? Do any of them cut the mustard, or do anything that makes them worth a listen? The Ronan Keating/Maire Brennan one, I just … WHYYYY. Bowdlerised out of all hell.
Rhian: It’s been covered into cliche, and yet I can’t think of any that did anything memorable with it, or did anything other than diminish the power and energy of the original, especially with the bowing to bowdlerisation in a version like the Ronan one. It’s hard to see how it could be covered in a way that did anything other than replicate it.
Miranda: That whole Ronan recording is like some terrible Irish tourist board pantomime. The only thing worse would be Michael Flatley doing an interpretive dance version. She leaves “arse” in, and I thought it’d be like hearing the queen fart or something, but somehow it’s disappointing. She sounds like she’s still singing about the wild green mystical castle of Ireland and wee-diddly-dee in that totally Clannady way all the same.
Rhian:The number and variety of covers (including Florence Welch and Billy Bragg, wtf?) says something for the original’s quality and ‘classic’ status, but yeah, little else I can get out of it other than varying degrees of squeamishness over the language. It’s become a very safe standard though repeated covering, I think, especially with the lyrical sting drawn. I’ve just run across Dustin Kensrue’s version, which is entirely sung from the perspective of Macgowan’s character, with rewritten second and third verses, and in my opinion loses a lot for it:
Miranda:Gosh, it does, doesn’t it? Actually, this IS, this BECOMES the archetypal Lonely Drunk Folk Song I was talking about, doesn’t it? If you write Kirsty out like that, and reduce her lines to quotes (“You said so could anyone”) … she goes back in her box, really, doesn’t she. Turns back into a ghost woman, a memory of Archetypal Irish Drunk Regretful Bloke’s past. She becomes the stereotype again.That’s really interesting, because it highlights how important she is in terms of the song’s power, though. So Dustin is to be thanked for that, at least.
So, next time you hear this in the shopping centre, I don’t know, think about some of that stuff, instead of “oh God, this is overplayed”. And don’t overdo it. No BadRep reader needs to end up in the drunk tank this week, okay? Be good.
If you’ve been wondering where I’ve been for the last few months, well, I have been cunningly hidden in Africa. Before that, I was busy doing Secret Projects that had little, if anything, to do with creative and positive things like rebuilding an engine or learning how to drive. Instead, they were altogether more likely to fall over, slice my head off, or explode. Potentially all at once.
Yes, that’s right. On a bright March day, full of steak and ale pie, I signed up to learn the noble art of marshalling.
The noble art of marshalling. Not pictured: fire.
If you don’t know what a race marshal does, think back to any Formula 1 or MotoGP race you may have seen. When the inevitable fireball appeared, little figures in bright orange ran straight into it to drag out the driver and put out the fire. Yup. Those are race marshals.
On a rainy day in February, I wrote an email to the Motor Sports Association, saying I’d quite like to get involved in marshalling. Fast forward a few days, and Bob from the MSA emailed me to invite me to a training day a couple of weeks later. Someone from a local club, he said, Will Be In Touch. I was instantly filled with bone-crushing terror.
Oh, God. I was going to be contacted by an Eddie or a Chas or a Kev, and they were going to ask whether I wanted to hand out brochures or something.
Instead, I received a very nice email from Mildred, giving me the details of the training day, and asking if I would be needing lunch, and would I make sure to email Anne my contact details. In my head, I was suddenly headed to a wayward chapter of the WI, complete with jam sandwiches.
Marshalling: like the WI, but with extra explosions.
The actual training day was bloody terrifying, and more than a little bewildering. I mean, MARSHALLING, seriously. It’s like those strange people that take up a new hobby and devote an entire room in the house to it. You know it’s not gonna end well. The pre-reading was also not encouraging: marshalling introduction, incident response theory, fire theory, fire practical, flags theory… Hey, did anyone spot the fire practical in there? Me too.
Before that, though, there was mostly a whole lot of PowerPoint (mostly of explosions), lists of kit (mostly of the flame-retardant variety), and Golden Rules (when there is carbon fibre flying at your head, duck or be decapitated). About halfway through the day, having been fed a proper meal of pie and chips, I found myself bent double and touching my toes while a large man peered critically at my bum. “Well?” I asked him anxiously.
He hissed and tipped his head to the right. “No,” he said finally. “You definitely want the other one.”
In the manner of personal shoppers everywhere, he was helping me pick my perfect outfit: a hi-vis, flame-retardant overall. They come in one colour (bright orange) and two styles (cheap-without-pockets and expensive-with-pockets). The main thing to get right is the size. Too big is not good, because you can catch it on stray bits of car, ripping the fabric. Too small is disastrous, as it impedes movement when staying nimble is important for maintaining a normal life expectancy. You wear the overalls over at least one, and possibly up to four, layers of clothing. You work in them, eat in them, and occasionally fall asleep on the way home in them.
Very occasionally, you will have to evade flying bits of car in them.
My outfit properly selected, I tied up my hair, kitted up in fireproof hi-vis, donned my giant welder’s gauntlets, and joined my fellow trainees in the woods around Brands Hatch, where a car had been set alight for our benefit.
Can I just say, THIS. THIS IS HOW FIRE TRAINING IS SUPPOSED TO BE DONE. No longer will I accept ridiculous PowerPoint presentations of the correct way to remove the safety thingie from a fire extinguisher. Set something on fire and shove me at it to get some damn practice in! It was ruddy marvellous.
So, marshalling: surprisingly awesome. And it turned out that I wasn’t the only woman there, which was a major relief. Of the sixty or so new trainees present, just over a tenth were women. (Interesting demographic titbit: while the men spanned all socioeconomic ranges and ages from 14 to 64, the women were primarily professionals in their late twenties and early thirties.) The practical teams were pretty mixed, and our own team was 50/50 male/female. So it was an odd thing that, when the day wound down and we all gathered around several big tables to be fed some caffeine before the drive home, all the women trainees had somehow congregated around one table. Without even asking or discussing, we had all got out our phones and exchanged contact details. Afterwards, my personal shopper came up to me.
“Is everything okay?” he asked anxiously. “Only, I noticed that you all went…away.” He gestured vaguely at the Women Only table.
Truthfully, I hadn’t even noticed until he’d pointed it out. The funny thing was, everything was okay. The day had been brilliant, full of new things to do, plus bonus cars-on-fire, and I hadn’t felt awkward or out of place even once. But, in the end, the ratio had won out, and we’d all gravitated towards each other.
The orange jumpsuit of marshalling glory: stylish AND flame-retardant. Matching umbrella optional.
Since then, personal shopper and I have become pretty good friends. We’ve been to several race meets together, and coordinate travelling to the track. There have been many adventures, and when I stop being on fire and/or decapitated I shall finish writing them all up. But somehow, strangely, I still recognise those women I met for just a few hours those months ago. Partly it’s because we shared a profound experience of alienation in a testosterone-driven, male-dominated field, despite everyone’s best intentions.
But mostly it’s because we all have to get changed into our kit in the ladies’ loos at the main paddock, and there’s only three bloody cubicles in there.
Box-Set Bonanza
There are approximately 84,000 new shows debuting on television each week, or maybe it just feels like that. The vast majority are complete rubbish. That makes wading through the back catalogues of shows throughout the decades, looking for an awesome show with a strong female lead, a tedious and depressing exercise. Here’s a cheat-sheet with a few recs in no particular order to help with present-buying for the feminist in your life.
1. Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Such a cheat to have this on the list, but like or hate Joss Whedon, BtVS was paradigm-busting. Buffy set a standard for female heroes that has been
Buffy: not optional viewing.
endlessly copied since. Yes, her love life crowds into her slaying, but Buffy has always been a slayer first and foremost. The supporting characters are also pretty awesome, with strong female characters abounding. Buffy may have its weaknesses, but you can’t afford NOT to have watched it.
2. Xena: Warrior Princess
Speaking of paradigm-busting, Xena is a warrior, backed up by a bard/fighter/peacenik/yogi. Plus, the show featured one of the first canonical lesbian relationships on TV. Xena kicks arse, and Gabrielle writes about it. I love this show for many, many reasons. It runs the gamut from silly and hilarious to quite simply heart-breaking. It’s fun, and sexy, and strangely heart-warming at times, and whether you like the LARP swords or not, you can’t afford to ignore this one either.
3. Grey’s Anatomy
Caveat: I’ve only watched up to Season 5 of this show, as I understand that it looses its way quite badly later on. But the first three seasons, especially, are exemplars of career women trying to make it in a very masculine profession. The friendship between Cristina and Meredith is for me one of the highlights of the show.
Cristina Yang is better than you in every way.
4. Alias
Sydney! I love Sydney. And Irina, and Nadia, and Rachel, and Francie, and Emily. You may have gathered that this show is all about women. Sure, Jack and Arvin and Michael all get their turn in the limelight, but the most dangerous characters on this show are the women. They are what make the world turn and tremble.
5. Veronica Mars
This is noir in high school. Veronica Mars is one of my favourite ‘cop’ shows, and Veronica isn’t even a cop. She’s a pretty normal 17 year old girl… if by ‘normal’ we mean someone who in the last year has had her best friend murdered, her mother walk out, her father lose his job, her boyfriend leave her, oh and wake up after a party not remembering anything with her underwear missing. Yeah, Veronica is having a swell year. She joins her dad in his P.I. firm, and investigates cases in and around her school, all the while trying to find out who murdered her best friend. The second season story arc is a bit ropey, and the third season is pretty bad, but the first season (with a self-contained story arc) is some of the best TV out there. Don’t miss this.
6. Prime Suspect
Speaking of detective shows… hands down the best one out there. Is it any wonder, with Helen Mirren acting her socks off? DCI Jane Tennison is abrasive, smart, and an alcoholic. She’s investigating a series of serial killers, while dealing with sexism and hostility from her colleagues. I love this, but I can’t watch it too often; it’s too upsetting.
7. Damages
So the UK has Helen Mirren, and the US has Glenn Close. Why hasn’t this little show received more attention? A law student ends up the protégé of a successful female attorney, and it’s all fantastic until someone turns up dead…
8. Fringe
Another FBI agent-investigates-the-unusual. Olivia Dunham is, however, not your average FBI agent, and a strong supporting cast
There may have been other people in this show. I don't know, I was too distracted by Angela to notice.
make this pretty interesting. The bits that I like are how Olivia rescues herself in the manner of awesome heroes everywhere, and how the Evil Overlady is just. So. Damn. Awesome. Nina FTW!!
9. Bones
Temperance Brennan is a forensic anthropologist. Yes, I know that’s not actually a real job, but for the purposes of TV, bear with me. She works for a museum, and in her capacity as a consultant she fightssolves crime! Her partner is Seeley Booth (yes, I know, not actually a real name), and he’s a … cop? FBI agent? CIA person? I wasn’t paying attention. Anyway, there’s gross things happening all over the country, and Brennan goes around being brilliant at crime scenes and saving the day. She has a lovely team of wacky sidekicks, who are all pretty awesome actually. Angela – who is in no way shape or form any scientist I can recognise – is the best friend, and the friendship between them is real and thoughtfully handled.
10. Star Trek: Voyager
Yes, yes. Not Star Trek’s finest hour. If you want thoughtful politics, get DSN instead. But, hey, Voyager isn’t all bad. It has Star Trek’s first female captain, for starters. Janeway is pretty awesome for managing to be an older woman (40! Why, she’s practically drawing a pension) and a sexual being at the same time. When Seven of Nine came on board and Janeway started explaining This Human Thing We Call Kissing Dating, my happiness was complete. You don’t need to get all seven seasons of this, but do check out Janeway being all Die Hard in Macrocosm, and the whole of the 7/J flirting saga.
More Christmas recommendations to follow…
Looking for Mrs Santa Claus
It’s that (second) most wonderful time of the year for another slew of “sexy lady” costumes. Around the country, women are being flogged some fairly ghastly red (or perhaps even pink) and white ensembles in the name of festive fun.
Spot the difference with this classy 'couple's costume' from onlinejokeshop.co.uk
Right, now I’ve shared my pain I feel ready to move on. Also, we’ve already covered this topic in some depth with our Halloween posts, so I won’t go over it again, but if you really want to experience some more truly awful costume fails, then by all means, do type “mrs santa costume” into Google.
Just don’t blame me for the results.
But looking at all those dresses (and bikinis, and crop tops – seriously, crop tops – you come from the NORTH POLE!), once I’d finished washing my eyeballs, made me think about the female version of that jolly Christmas avatar…
Mrs Santa Claus, step on down in all your glory.
The origin of Santa Claus himself is a (turkey) bone of contention, with some camps claiming antecendents from folklore around 4th century saint St Nicholas via Sinterklaas.
Some (including the brand itself) claim parts of the modern incarnation are entirely the creation of the Coca-Cola company, especially the red and white costume.
What we can see is that as the Christmas holidays start to move from a solemn religious event to being increasingly secular and perhaps commercial, we lose the holy charitable man and get a fat jolly gift-giving man.
Mr and Mrs Santa Claus on a greetings card, image source wikipedia
Possibly because it is not a good idea for single chaps to be portrayed as climbing into houses where small children lie sleeping, Santa gets a wife along with heteronormativity and a slew of other “traditional” family values that put the whole breaking and entering thing into a context of good, clean fun.
As a side note, I’d like to add that my father (also a fan of BadRep – hi Dad!) is currently being Santa for a local charity, so I’m not knocking the concepts of chaps who have families, fun or even enjoy climbing down chimneys. Though Dad, if you are reading, please don’t.
The closest thing I could find to a bio for our Mrs Claus online is here on Wikipedia. She arrives in what passes for the social media sphere of the mid to late 1800s, roughly the same time that we get The Night Before Christmas and the drawings of Thomas Nast, premiering as the unamed wife in Katherine Lee Bates’s poem Goody Santa Claus on a Sleigh Ride.
Wiki’s entry on Santa himself says:
The 1956 popular song by George Melachrino, Mrs. Santa Claus, and the 1963 children’s book How Mrs. Santa Claus Saved Christmas, by Phyllis McGinley, helped standardize and establish the character and role of Mrs Claus in the popular imagination.
Modern Santa is almost always presented in one way: as an old, fat white bearded man, although Billy Bob Thornton in Bad Santa certainly gave us at least a refreshingly dishonest take on things. Mrs Santa comes in two, perhaps three distinct forms. The two key ones are old, fat white haired woman and the attractive, buxom younger model.
Mrs Santa Claus fights repression and wraps up warm for winter. No exposed flesh for Angela Lansbury!
There’s also a rarer type. This one is neither young nor old, glamour model nor well-rounded jolly lady. You have to do a bit of digging, but she could almost be a normal woman (gasp!), albeit a bit mumsy. I am chosing to term this The Angela Lansbury Option for reasons that will become apparent (and awesome) later.
Hmmm. Three different depictions across some rather familiar age ranges – maiden, mother, crone anyone? Although looking (if we must) at those cheeky1 Mrs Santa costumes, I’m less sure about whether advertisers had “maidens” in mind as opposed to “ho ho ho”.
So, who are these Mrs Clauses and what are they doing?
The original version is simply a female counterpart to Santa. She’s a “goodwife” and the grandmother to his grandfather role, where all the children of the world are their beloved grandkids – once a year, at least.
This is the Mrs Santa Claus you would choose to fight crime? Really? In those shoes?
It’s good to see positive depictions of old women in circulation amidst all the other negative presentations of “wicked witches”. So far, so good, but how is she used in the media? Like her husband, she seems to be a vehicle for “sell, sell, sell” especially in marketing for women. She is, however, pretty much welded to the kitchen.
Over at northpole.com and claus.com you can find her making cakes in the kitchen. Not that I’m against women in kitchens (obviously not), and those gingerbread men look tasty, but are there alternatives for festive octogenarian females?
Well, in her first appearance in Bates’s poem – which is an interesting read in and of itself with its portrayal of the feminine sphere – we find her blagging her way onto hubby’s sleigh to mend the stockings of poor children so that they too can share the presents.
But I’ll mend that sock so nearly it shall hold your gifts completely.
Take the reins and let me show you what a woman’s wit can do.
If we skip a few generations along, she gets even more awesome, and we find “Mrs North”, in the film Mrs. Santa Claus, crash landing in New York in 1910 and getting involved in the women’s suffrage movement.
Don’t knock the Angela Lansbury option, bitches.
“Sexy” Mrs Santas, meanwhile (and note how that automotically means young and beautiful), are sadly confined to selling a lot of ill-advised and probably itchy costumes, including some truly dreadful underwear.
My most strange discovery is that they are also allegedly comic book heroes – this one is especially odd, given that the main image on this webpage should be of the older version. (However, I’m not that surprised at the choice of image given much of the comic industry’s ongoing campaign these days to replace all women with fembot boobtastic sexed up versions of themselves.)
But to end on two positive notes, first up are five woman who I want to see as Mrs Santa Claus:
- Helen Mirren. Let’s try and get over this idea that older can’t be sexy, please?
- Dawn French. She’d get the “jolly” vote, but she’s also pretty damn cool.
- Dame Judi Dench. Bonus points if this occurs during the next Bond film. Extra bonus points if Daniel Craig takes his top off and a Christmas related joke is uttered. We deserve this following the Bond girl whose name was Christmas.
- Tilda Swinton. I do not believe this needs any reason.
- Margaret Thatcher. Oh come on. It would be hilarious, and the MOST IRONIC THING EVER.
And finally, here’s a video of our newest, and perhaps most interestingly political heroine: Mrs Claus. Here she gives her opinion on the world and spreads a message of peace, tolerance, environmental activism and joy. Certainly an improvement on the Queen’s Speech in my opinion: Mrs Claus Speaks Up.
- As an aside, I hate this use of word “cheeky”. It’s a ghastly conflation of “cute” and “sexy” which manages to objectify, infantilise AND sexualise women to within an inch of their lives whilst wrapping it all up into a joke that we’re all meant to laugh along to. For the record, fuck off.
Anyway… [↩]
Awesomewatch 2: Seriously Mystique
Remember the first Awesomewatch? Here’s the follow up dose.
Comics: Gingerhaze
If you’re on tumblr and involved in fandom at all, you might have seen her art around, but if not, Gingerhaze (aka Noelle Stevenson) is a talented young artist based in Maryland, working on her illustration degree and spending her spare time drawing some pretty neat comics on her Wacom tablet.
Covering franchises such as the Avengers, X-Men, Sherlock, Lord of the Rings, Supernatural and The Hunger Games, Noelle’s simply drawn yet instantly recognisable characters, together with her sense of humour, have won her a lot of fans. She says: “I mercilessly make fun of everything I love. It’s my particular way of disguising the sheer magnitude of the feelings that I have.” And the running jokes in her art – the hipster hobbits of the broship of the ring, Marvel Comics’ Loki characterised as Thor’s annoying little brother – could be what keep people coming back.
Here at BadRep Towers, we love her take on the Scooby Doo characters Daphne and Velma: “You hurt my nerd, you’re going down!” There should be a word for bromance between two women, because that is CLEARLY what tattooed, chain-smoking Daphne and hipster glasses-wearing Velma have going on. A ladybromance? We also love how Noelle highlights the marginalisation of Mystique, or at least the limitations of the way the character was written, in the X-Men: First Class movie and fandom in her ongoing GO AWAY MYSTIQUE series (Jesus, Mystique, stop ruining everything, seriously).
Novel: Gaie Sebold’s Babylon Steel
You may or may not know (depending on whether you’ve ever read the Team BadRep bios) that I’m an editor at a science fiction and fantasy publishing imprint. I left Solaris in October to go to another SFF publisher, so I hope you’ll take that as proof I have no commercial motive when I recommend a badass little fantasy that Solaris publish – Babylon Steel by Gaie Sebold. It’s coming out in January 2012. 
Babylon Steel, ex-sword-for-hire, ex… other things, runs the best brothel in Scalentine; city of many portals, two moons, and a wide variety of races, were-creatures, and religions, not to mention the occasional insane warlock. She’s not having a good week. The Vessels of Purity are protesting against brothels, women in the trade are being attacked, it’s tax time, and there’s not enough money to pay the bill. So when the mysterious Darask Fain offers her a job finding a missing girl, Babylon decides to take it…
Babylon Steel is not for the kind of feminist who thinks all sex workers are evil or need to be saved from themselves, but I really hope we don’t have any of those here – it’s more for the kind of fantasy fan who’s read Terry Pratchett’s Discworld books and wishes he’d write one about the, er, Seamstress’s Guild (hem hem!). It acknowledges the bad and the good side of the job, featuring a wicked sense of humour, S&M in the basement, a big green troll cooking breakfast in the kitchen, and a great epic fantasy story with a fun cast of characters, too.
The Hunger Games Trailer
The trailer finally came out! And it looks just as good as we hoped…
A YA dystopian story with a kickass female protagonist, a great cast of characters and set in a gritty, well-realised post apocalyptic world? Sign us up!
In Memoriam: Sonic Youth
This week, seminal 80s alt-rock noise band Sonic Youth announced their ‘indefinite hiatus’.
Not much of a surprise, following the announcement that Kim Gordon and Thurston Moore, the couple at the heart of the group, were splitting up after a 20-year marriage. And, given the quality of the last two albums, perhaps not all that regrettable, really.1 But still, the end of an era. So, as a SY fan since I first chewed my way through Goo at the age of 16, I thought I might take a look back at some seminal right-on classics.
Into the Groove(y) – Ciccone Youth
One of my favourite things about SY (and side project Ciccone Youth) is their steadfast refusal to change the pronouns, ever. ‘Boy, you gotta prove your love to me’. Yeah you do, Thurston. Cf. also Bubblegum, the cover on the end of 1986’s EVOL.
Swimsuit Issue
Kim Gordon don’t take no shit.
Amazing video, too.
Protect Me You
Protect me from starving
I am eighteen
Protect me you
I don’t know what you do
Protect me demons
That come at night
You just know something horrible is about to happen. Not sure what, but you know. She’s asking for help, but she’s not the one that’s gonna need it. One of the many ‘WOAH Kim Gordon is kinda scary’ hot moments (cf. Shadow of a Doubt, Hallowe’en).
Tunic (Song For Karen)
An ode to Karen Carpenter, who famously died following years of anorexia (and one of many instances of the name ‘Karen’ in a SY song – a weird shadowy character who keeps popping up). This is the flipside of that cover of Superstar that every Juno fan knows all about.
Sugar Kane
Not the official video, but it’s kind of amazing.
Mildred Pierce / Blowjob?
The moment when SY sold out and went to major label Geffen! Although the conditions of their contract allowed them to sign bands they discovered (hi, Nirvana), for about five minutes they were being all ANTI-ESTABLISHMENT and going to name the new album ‘Blowjob’. That didn’t happen, so it’s the alt-title of this track instead, so named because apparently Joan Crawford pouts her way through Mildred Pierce looking like… yeah, you get it. Also, gotta love Joan. And Mildred.
- Let’s not, shall we? [↩]