You know who is $*&^ing amazing? Sarah Silverman. I have always loved her. I may actually have a crush on her. But I read an interview with her this morning that restored my faith in humankind, which, incidentally, had taken a real beating after the Chinese gymnast scandal and the whole Wesley Snipes tax evasion situation. If you have never seen Sarah Silverman in action, log on, go to your Netflix queue and order Sarah Silverman: Jesus is Magic. If it doesn't offend you at least once, then you have no heart and you don't deserve a Netflix account. It's really, really something. Think jokes about 9/11. I love it because it's brash and just about over the top in some places and it's brutal. It's really brutal. It makes me uncomfortable. I feel afraid to laugh and unsure whether some of her "observations" are really funny or just plain cruel and sociopathic. I had a real viseral reaction to some of her material. I am still thinking about it three years later. It woke something up inside of me-- perhaps it was just shock and revulsion. But I liked it. Her material is undoubtedly offensive, and ribald, and totally cruel. Reminds me of group therapy.
Anyway, in her interview Silverman is asked about her act and how she skewers just about every ethnicity and race and leaves no cultural bias unexamined. She mentioned that there is one group of people of whom she will never make fun: Fat women. I thought it was windup for a new joke. There was no joke. She basically said that fat women in society have it hard enough without being the butt of a joke. This woman is totally fearless, and I mean fearless, when it comes to poking at racist or religious ideology. She has more than one joke about child molestation. She's got a limit, though, and that limit is fat women. Thank god she has romantic limits too because Jimmy Kimmel is no match for her, and she's better off without him.
Without thinking about it too much or consulting the portable Nancy Chodorow, I like it. I like the Silverman has a limit. It makes me like her even more. At a professional conference recently I heard a panelist exhort females in the work place to support and champion one another. It was framed as a way to become successful in your own right by uplifting other women and building up the network. I have been trying it out at work. I have actually been working on being more positive overall (that's why this isn't a post about who &^*king sucks, which comes WAY more naturally to me) but I am especially being more conscious of how I talk about female colleagues and engage in any evaluation/conversation/interpretation of women and their work/behavior/appearance. Here's why that is especially crucial: I stepped into a colleague's office today and mentioned that I had seen Justice Ginsburg yesterday at a conference. His comment, his first and only comment, delivered with a ice cold dose of sarcasm: "She's a real attractive lady."
Hmmmm.
Wow.
You mean "attractive" like Scalia? I don't mean to play dirty, but have you seen his hairline? His waist line? His unibrow? Justice Ginsberg is at the apex of the legal world. There is no court higher than the Supreme Court. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to dispense justice on the moon. Of all the gender neutral accomplishments (top in her law school class, served on law review at both Harvard and Columbia, argued in front of the Supreme Court, appointed to the Supreme Court), as well as all of the gendered accomplishments (named one of the 20 most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine, most powerful female lawyer), the sole comment my articulate and well-educated male colleague can make about this woman is that she's not "hot."
If Justice Ginsburg, whose power is unmistakable and whose brilliance is uncontestable, can be reduced to her appearance, what about the rest of the teeming female masses trying to make our way in the corporate, or legal, or publishing, or IT, or business, or I-banking world today? If she's going to be denigrated for her failure to live up to cultural norms of "hot," what is going to happen to me? God, what if she was, according to my colleague's estimation, also overweight? The most unforgiveable sin a woman can commit in our culture is to be overweight, right? We'd forgive Medea before we'd forgive Jennifer Love Hewitt for having cellulite on her thighs.
It's probably a good spiritual practice for me to work on being more positive and affirming about everyone's appearance, not just my female colleagues. The difference is that the subject of appearance comes up so much more around female colleagues. Women still fall on the body side of the mind/body equation, so until the pendulum swings and the cultural reflex is to attack a woman's mind-- her logic, her politics, her writing, her analytic skills-- then I will remain vigilant about how I participate in conversations about women and their appearance.
Wow.
You mean "attractive" like Scalia? I don't mean to play dirty, but have you seen his hairline? His waist line? His unibrow? Justice Ginsberg is at the apex of the legal world. There is no court higher than the Supreme Court. There is nowhere else to go unless you want to dispense justice on the moon. Of all the gender neutral accomplishments (top in her law school class, served on law review at both Harvard and Columbia, argued in front of the Supreme Court, appointed to the Supreme Court), as well as all of the gendered accomplishments (named one of the 20 most powerful women in the world by Forbes magazine, most powerful female lawyer), the sole comment my articulate and well-educated male colleague can make about this woman is that she's not "hot."
If Justice Ginsburg, whose power is unmistakable and whose brilliance is uncontestable, can be reduced to her appearance, what about the rest of the teeming female masses trying to make our way in the corporate, or legal, or publishing, or IT, or business, or I-banking world today? If she's going to be denigrated for her failure to live up to cultural norms of "hot," what is going to happen to me? God, what if she was, according to my colleague's estimation, also overweight? The most unforgiveable sin a woman can commit in our culture is to be overweight, right? We'd forgive Medea before we'd forgive Jennifer Love Hewitt for having cellulite on her thighs.
It's probably a good spiritual practice for me to work on being more positive and affirming about everyone's appearance, not just my female colleagues. The difference is that the subject of appearance comes up so much more around female colleagues. Women still fall on the body side of the mind/body equation, so until the pendulum swings and the cultural reflex is to attack a woman's mind-- her logic, her politics, her writing, her analytic skills-- then I will remain vigilant about how I participate in conversations about women and their appearance.
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