Hollaback

I generally try to stay out of the fray on hot-button topics, but sometimes I just can’t help myself…

Unless you live under a rock, you know that a young woman named Shoshana Roberts spent ten hours walking the streets of New York City while being filmed for a public service announcement for the anti-street harassment group Hollaback!  The resulting video - which pared the experience down to a two-minute glimpse at the catcalls and intimidating behavior - went viral.

And?

Ms. Roberts has been inundated with everything from messages of support to criticism to threats of rape and murder.  On Fox News, Bob Beckel said, “She got one hundred catcalls, let me add one hundred and one. Damn, baby, you’re a piece of woman.”

Way to underscore the point, buddy.

But look, the only thing that surprised me about the video was that people found it surprising.

Well, that, and the way a fair number of my male friends seemed to feel compelled to apologize for the behavior of the men in the video.

Some of the posts from guys on Facebook:

“Well, now I need a shower.  Is that really my species?”

“Wow.  Totally embarrassed by my gender.”

“Shocked and disgusted.”

There are so many ways these well-meaning comments miss the mark.  That the video went viral is telling - there are things we need to talk about, folks - but I’d hate to see it devolve into an exercise in man-shaming (or man-self-shaming, as the case may be).  Let’s discuss some important points, shall we?

I’ll start with the much-discussed race issue.  The Hollaback! video makes it look as though all the men harassing Ms. Roberts are black or Latino.  Whether this was a case of poor editing or something more sinister, I can’t say.  But any woman can tell you catcalling and street harassment know no racial boundaries.  It’s equal-opportunity ugliness, and yes, what you see in the Hollaback! video is actually pretty mild.  If you want to see a better, more well-rounded, and waaaaay funnier treatment of this issue, check out this video by Jessica Williams of the Daily Show.  The very end of it cracks me the hell up - and when you can do that on a serious issue, amen.

Next let’s talk location.  When I walk or jog around my little New England town, I smile and say hello to everyone - even the guys whose remarks may be cringeworthy or make me uncomfortable.  Maybe especially so in those cases.  I make eye contact in a way that could be saying, “I’m friendly and appreciate that you are, too” or “I can identify you in a police lineup.  Have a nice day!”

But when I go to the Big Apple?  Bitchface all the way.  Stone.  Cold.  Bitchface.  Why?  Because I’d prefer not to end up raped and dead in a gutter somewhere.

Which brings me to my next point.  Women have to move differently through the world, and we know it.  We are aware that, in some environments, ending up raped and dead in a gutter is a real possibility.  We have to wear the bitchface and screen out the catcalls while simultaneously calculating whether or not there is any real threat.  We have to be aware of our surroundings in a way men rarely do.  Is that right or fair?

Hell, no, but (here’s where I offer a little dose of tough love) welcome to life.  Suck it up, sisters.  Gender is but one of the lines along which unfairness and injustice occurs.  That deserves attention, yes, but personally, I feel that all the progress that’s already been made practically guarantees we will get to a better place.  The ball is rolling in the right direction.  There’s no stopping it.  I’m aware, I’m proactive, I am proudly feminist - but I hope I am never so busy being outraged at the crap I and my contemporaries endure that I miss the sweetness in life hard-earned by the women who came before me.

And men?  God, I love men, and I hope all the great men in my life know just how awesome they are.  Those men who make catcalls, who harass and intimidate women with their words and their body language - just like those trolls threatening Ms. Roberts in the wake of her video - those are not the men I know.  Those are small, ignorant creatures.  I suspect there’s a lot of pain and hurt going on in the world of any man who enjoys bullying women and making them uncomfortable in the public sphere.  Those are men who don’t know how to be real men.

To my guy-friends who feel compelled to apologize on their behalf, I say: don’t.  I am grateful that you are dismayed when you consider some of what women put up with in this world, but you’re already doing your part by empathizing, engaging in dialogue, raising your sons to be kinder, your daughters to be bolder.  Don’t apologize for lesser men.

Whatever your take on her video, Shoshana Roberts did something she clearly felt was important and hoped would help to make the world a better place.  Too often those are the very sorts of actions that are misunderstood.  I hope she’s not discouraged by the fallout.  I believe life is best lived by taking risks.  She did that.

And if she needs a laugh - or if you do - here’s one I’ve shared before and probably will again: Wanda Sykes’ ‘Detachable Pussy’ standup routine.  Because sometimes this world is so frigging crazy, the best we can do is just laugh at it.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Problem

"If you’re having girl problems, I feel bad for you, son.  I got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one."  - Jay Z, 99 Problems

Beyonce is one of the most powerful, successful women in the world.  She could arguably wear the pants in any household.  Except for one problem.

She hasn’t got any.

Seriously.  Who took Beyonce’s pants?  Her hubby Jay Z, maybe?

A couple of months ago, I saw this video, in which a thoughtful young woman named Madiha Bhatti calls out Jay Z and others in the music industry for their dehumanization of women.

Sure, the objectification of women in the entertainment industry is certainly nothing new, but I couldn’t help but think recently that it seems to be getting worse - and some female artists seem compelled to participate in their own degradation.  Queen Bey and her ever-missing pants is actually a mild example.  And though Miley Cyrus seems to have taken a wrecking ball to her life (you see what I did there?  clever, huh?), I kinda feel grateful for the awesome Steve Kardynal parody that resulted.  But then there was the recent video for the song Booty, featuring Jennifer Lopez and Iggy Azalea.  They abandon all pretense of being serious artists and simply grind, slap, twerk and rub up against each other like porn stars.  (No, I won’t link to it here.  I still want to bleach my eyeballs.)

Look, I’m no prude.  You may recall my recent defense of nude pics.  I think sex is one of the coolest things about life on this planet, and I understand sexual expression invariably gets messy.  But there’s nothing sexy about objectifying or degrading women.

And lest it seem this is a racial, cultural or genre issue, check out this video by country music duo Maddie & Tae.  It seems these country girls grew tired of Daisy Dukes, bare feet and bikini tops.  A little bit of role reversal goes a long way toward making a point, hilariously.

I’m not condemning anyone.  I like Beyonce.  (Really - who doesn't like Beyonce?)  I myself have been known, on occasion, to be foul-mouthed, sexually inappropriate, and lacking pants.  My own son jokes that my novels are porn.  I’m sure I’ve rubbed a person or two the wrong way - if you’ll pardon the pun.  But as women gain more power and prominence in society, I’d like to see more discussion about the backlash.  And that’s exactly what I think is going on in some corners of the music industry.  It’s not about sex.  It’s about taking women down a peg.

That’s not OK.

We all begin forming our opinion about gender and our place in the world from Day One.  I wonder how Jay Z and Beyonce would like their daughter to see the world and understand her place in it.  I wonder if they would like to see Blue Ivy with a man who raps, “I’ve got 99 problems but a bitch ain’t one?”

www.kcwilder50ways.com

What Was She Thinking?

I want to give Jennifer Lawrence a hug.

Not only did someone hack into her private photos, steal them and share them with the world, but then came the sadly-predictable response.

Why on earth would a celebrity take nude photos in the first place?

What was she thinking?

I dunno.  My guess is that she thought she had a basic human right to keep her private life private.  That the very public nature of her job shouldn’t mean the public owned her.

No?

Ricky Gervais rightfully caught flack for Tweeting: “Celebrities, make it harder for hackers to get nude pics of you from your computer by not putting nude pics of yourself on your computer.”

As a social media acquaintance of mine commented: “That’s like saying if you don’t want your TV to get stolen, you shouldn’t have a TV.”

Duh.

This whole JLaw “scandal” makes me feel a few things viscerally.  Specifically:

1. We need to stop devouring celebrities.  Someone who makes movies or music or otherwise gives of themselves for our entertainment should not have to face mobs and flashbulbs and paparazzi while taking their kids to school or the grocery store.  They certainly shouldn’t have to worry that private pics will become public.  And don’t give me the whole bullshit they-make-so-much-fucking-money-that’s-the-price-you-pay argument.  No one should have to sacrifice their entire life to earn a living doing something they love.  The public needs to stop behaving like brainless animals in the face of celebrity.
2. We need to stop slut-shaming women.  Whether we’re talking about nude pics, short skirts, high heels, whatever.  Let’s make sure the next generation never utters the words, “She was asking for it.”    Because no matter who she is or what the context, no woman is ever - ever - asking to be violated.
3. That’s what the hack of Jennifer Lawrence’s private photos was: a violation.  As Lena Dunham Tweeted:  “the person who stole these pictures and leaked them is not a hacker: they’re a sex offender.”  Exactly.  Can we get that through our collectively-thick skulls, please?  If you hack into someone’s personal photos and steal nude pics, you are no different from the Peeping Tom under the window or the flasher in the park.  There is something wrong with you.
4. There is nothing wrong with taking nude pics.  Society needs to knock off the faux-prude baloney.  Women are hyper-sexualized in the media.  But take a couple of racy selfies and we’re all gasping and pointing?  Puh-leeze.  We all know you’ve got dirty shit somewhere on your iPad or smartphone.  It’s just not an issue because you’re not Jennifer Lawrence and no one wants to see you naked.

Look, if someone wants to hack into my pics and find some naughty stuff to make public, I’m thinking a good scandal might actually help with book sales.  So if you think the world wants to see shots of a chick lit writer who spends most of her time in boxer shorts and a David Bowie tee, writing sex scenes with a cat at her feet, chardonnay in her coffee mug, and a little crust of Toblerone and brie at the corners of her mouth, I’m your girl. 

Leave JLaw alone already.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Good Girls, Bad Girls, and the F-Word

If you’ve read my novel Fifty Ways to Leave Your Husband, you know that (1) there’s a fair amount of sex in it (it’s not for nothing that my mother refers to it as “Karen’s sex book”), and (2) the sidekick steals the show.  Tamara is the BFF we all want: fun, vivacious, loyal, nuttier than squirrel shit, and with a MOUTH.  She drops F-bombs like Margaret Cho on speed.

Tamara brings to mind one of my favorite freedoms:

Freedom of the sort of expression that would have earned you a bar of soap in the mouth as a kid.

Confession time: I love to say, “Fuck.”  I think, properly used, it’s one of the very best words in the English language.  And I use it - properly, of course - quite a bit.

To be clear, I’m not tossing the F-word around during work hours or in the presence of small children.  I don’t break it out at cocktail parties or Christmas dinner.  Everything has its place.  I get it.

I also get that I’m maybe not quite the sort of girl you’d expect to be so fond of the F-word.  Take a look at my promo pics.  I look like a Good Girl, don’t I?  

But here and now, I’d like to divest myself of the Good Girl label.  I’d like to do what my protagonist Eve does and ditch the Good Girl suit of armor - and all the heavy fucking baggage that comes with it.

I’d like you to do the same.

Because here’s the thing…

Being a Good Girl has no real value.  In fact, I think the label does a whole lot of harm.  Because if there are Good Girls, there are Bad Girls, too.  And heaven knows, we’ve got a whole slew of words for that kind of girl.

A couple of days ago I was reading a great article by Melissa Gira Grant entitled, There Is No Such Thing as a Slut.  “Sluts take up more space in our imagination than in anyone’s bed,” she writes.  More fully to the point, she illustrates the ways sluttiness is a myth - a “form of sexual privilege” - and perhaps worst of all, the way we women use the term/concept to leverage our power against one another, all the while foolishly undermining our own goals.

Someone like me, for example - white, middle class, able to determine on the basis of a lifetime of social schooling how to dress and when to bite one’s tongue - might come across as a Good Girl, while someone from a lower-class background or an unestablished ethnic minority might lack the social grooming to dress and speak so as to avoid unwanted labels.  Yet there may be absolutely no correlation between our public presentation and our sexual promiscuity.

In fact, statistics indicate otherwise.  Statistically, Good Girls know they can get away with more - and therefore, they do.

(I’ve got you all thinking naughty thoughts about me now, haven’t I?  Oh, go on…)

In the fictional world of my novel, Eve appears to be the Good Girl, while Tamara seems the foul-mouthed hussy.  But when one examines the situation more fully - (spoiler alert!) - Eve is out on the beach fucking a stranger while Tamara is home with her husband and kids - we get a better picture of how irrelevant labels truly are.

In my recent body-issues post, The Size of It, I suggested that we women could literally change the world for our daughters and granddaughters if we just were more careful about how we speak about our self-image.

I think the same is true here.    

My favorite blogs, books, films and Netflix fare celebrate and explore female experience with humor, an unflinching eye, and often a foul, foul tongue.  These writers and artists are not your stereotypical Good Girls.

They’re much better than that.  

That said, join me in bidding farewell to those polarizing, useless myths: the Slut and the Good Girl.  I’ll leave you with a few fun links from ladies who kick ass, talk and write sex, and yes, drop the occasional F-bomb.

I fucking love them.

Aussa Lorens redefines talking dirty in bed.

Shannon Bradley-Colleary talks about hot married sex (no, it’s not an oxymoron…or a misprint).

And Wanda Sykes’ Detachable Pussy routine remains my very favorite, funny-as-hell way to unload all that female baggage.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

The Size of It

It was like one of those nightmares where you wake up naked in public, only worse.

Because it was real.

I was in a department store fitting room.

Trying on swimsuits.

The first thought that came to me was the same one I have every time I enter a fitting room. What the hell is up with the fluorescent lighting?  Don’t they realize women would buy far more if they weren’t looking at themselves in the least-flattering light possible?  Why has no one in marketing figured out that soft lighting - and heck, maybe a drink or two - would make sales of women’s clothing (especially swim suits) positively soar?

Sadly, it was in the absence of such a marketing epiphany or kindness to shoppers that I found myself trying on tiny swaths of Spandex in a brightly-lit cubicle.  There was something called a “Miracle Suit,” which I decided was because it’s a miracle if you can breathe while wearing it.  There was a sports suit that gave me an alarming case of monoboob.  There were a half-dozen tankinis, each of which fit on either the bottom or the top, but never all over.

As I agonized over the way the latest suit failed to conceal my squishy middle, I heard a voice from the other side of the door, a fellow shopper in distress at the communal 3-way mirrors.

"I can’t possibly go out in this!" she cried.  "I’m so fat.  Look at these rolls!”

I admit it.  I left the safety of my fitting room and ventured out, pretending to want a look in the 3-way mirrors.  What I really wanted was to commiserate with this other poor soul, to have a laugh or two about how swimsuits are just not kind to women’s bodies.

What I found at the mirrors stopped me in my tracks.  A pretty girl of about 15 or 16, slim by anyone’s definition, grabbing at her middle and scowling at her reflection.  I was afraid she was going to remove skin, pulling on herself that way.  The “rolls” she spoke of were nonexistent.

I wanted to go over and tell her she’s beautiful just as she is.  I wanted to lift my tankini top and show her what rolls really look like.  Luckily, my brain kicked in and I realized pushing my bare flesh and compliments at a minor in a dressing room would likely end in arrest.  I slunk back to my fitting room.

But the incident stayed with me.  We females are so damn critical of our bodies.  Sure, we’re taught to be that way.  There’s no escaping the messages in society that tell us thin is better, sexy trumps smart.  But the bottom line is that we have to start being better to ourselves.  We have to stop beating ourselves up.

I was bulimic in my late teens and early twenties.  I have too many friends and relatives who have suffered from eating disorders, body dysmorphic disorder, and other body issues.  A very dear young friend of mine nearly lost her battle with anorexia, but has worked tirelessly to get well.

Ladies, we can end this bullshit one thought and one word at a time.

As you may know from earlier posts, I love being outdoors and active.  I “tortoise along” in road races and sprint triathlons.  One thing I’ve noticed at every race I’ve ever participated in is the wide variety of female body types competing.  I’ve seen every shape, size and age imaginable cross the finish line.  And you know what?  You truly cannot judge these books by their covers.  I’ve been left in the dust by women twice my size.

Which got me thinking: what if we measured our bodies not by how they compare to some airbrushed ideal, but by how much they do for us?  What if we thanked our bodies for the children they’ve carried, the miles they’ve run, the work they’ve accomplished?

What if we also made it our mission as women to support each other, no matter what?  At times, I’ve been called, “Skinny Minnie,” told I had no right to complain about body issues.  The intention may have been good, but I still felt the sting of judgment.  And that’s the sting that leads to trouble, no matter what the size tag on your jeans may say.

What if we made sure our daughters and granddaughters never heard us judge ourselves or one another on the basis of something as foolish and variable as our physical body?

Yeah, I’ve got a squishy middle.  I could change that.  More salads, less chardonnay.  More planks and push-ups, less hours at the computer.  More long runs, less time with toes in the sand and a beer in hand.

Or I could just find a swimsuit that gives my squishy middle a little more breathing room.

Which I did.

Via online order.

It looks great in the gentle, natural light at home.

And when I’m at the beach or on my SUP board?

I’m having too much damn fun to care what I look like.

www.kcwilder50ways.com

Want to feel better about your body right now?  Check out the Love Your Body Now Project.

And for a fun little reminder about the most important things you can apply before leaving the house, watch this awesome video.

{And PLEASE - if you are suffering from an eating disorder or body issues that are greatly affecting your life, seek professional help.  It works.  Your happiness is worth it!}