And speaking of Courtney Love’s butchered stomach… Hello, Don Imus! This ravaged, revolting, freaky little man is all over the news for describing the members of the Rutger women’s college basketball team on his radio show as “nappy-headed hos.” I don’t listen to Don Imus—never have, never will. In fact, I thought he went off the air years ago. But today, everybody’s talking about him because of that comment and the fact that Al Sharpton raised a rallying cry, organizing a protest outside Imus’s MSNBC studio and demanding his resignation. “He has mainstreamed the most vile, sexist, racist words in America,” Sharpton thundered. “I'm going to be on this until something is done.”
What Imus said was vile, no question about it. And what most pundits picked up on was, of course, the remark's flagrant racism. But I couldn’t help but wonder which aspect was worse—the racism or the misogyny? The Rutger team is made up of predominantly black, but not all black, women. He was calling all these women hos, nappy-headed or not. It’s doubly insulting.
But the issue of
misogyny was completely eclipsed by the issue of racism as commenters
speculated whether Imus should be fired or whether MSNBC and/or parent company
NBC should be held accountable. Interesting that Sharpton
called him on sexism, too. Nobody else did.
I pondered on this
for a while. Misogyny seems simply to have become an acceptable part of the cultural
landscape in this golden age of Slut Culture, in which young women clamor to
get boob jobs as high-school graduation presents and think that flashing their
waxed vadges just like Paris, Britney and Lindsay is all super-cool and
empowering. Most young women consider shopping and pole-dancing a legitimate form of exercise. They'll lap-dance a guy at a bar for a drink. Why waste your time,
right?
Then, completely by
accident, I switched on The Tyra Banks Show this afternoon and, lo, her subject
was “Kids Growing Up Too Quickly.” She interviewed a 13-year-old
girl whose goal is to dress like a slut “like all the celebrities do”; a young
boy who likes playing a video game in which he can slap prostitutes; and an
8-year-old girl whose mother was quite worried because her mature young daughter’s puberty commenced at the age of 5. I thought to myself, Go
Tyra!
Except, no. For every question Tyra asked her young guests, she had to bring it all back to—who else? —Tyra. The 8-year-old’s mother mentioned how her daughter already had to wear deodorant. “I had to wear deodorant when I was 9, but I wasn’t going through precocious puberty!” announced Tyra. (Eew! I wish I didn’t know that!) Oh, well, continued the mother, the 8-year-old was already five foot tall. “I was tall when I was 8, but I wasn’t going through precocious puberty!” Tyra persisted. Well, uh, girls stop growing four years after reaching puberty. “I didn’t stop growing until I was about 22!” Tyra goaded. What the fuck was she trying to tell us? That she’s still in puberty? So competitive, that Tyra Banks! If she's the only one speaking out on these issues then, hell, I’ll take Reverend Al any day. At least he got Don Imus’s ugly ass suspended.
UPDATE: The Rutgers coach Vivian Stringer just held a press conference, redirecting the focus to the damage comments like these do to young women everywhere, regardless of race. Team captain Essence Carson points out that this incient proves that women —regardless of race — have not attained equality yet. Thank you, ladies! The revival of this discussion is long overdue.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Whee! The women are speaking up at last. Two excellent articles, one by Gwen Ifil, a White House correspondent who was the target of a truly revolting slur by Imus nine years ago; and Gwen Knapp, who makes a brilliant point about how women in power — that’s you, Hillary, Condi and Nancy —avoid women’s issues like the plague, lest they jeopardize their standing in the Boys Club. When’s the rally, girls? Count me in!
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