Women and comedy

(Spotted near the place where I returned the emptied-into-the-sink green juice bottle for the $2 refund. Photo includes a finger-selfie for good measure.)

-I've (finally) seen "Broad City" - the web series and a couple episodes. I feel as if I'm supposed to say it's better than "Girls," but I think it's more that the protagonists are more likable. If at times a little too likable - not "cool girls" exactly, but maybe a bit? 

As with other sketch comedy, it's hit or miss, but more hit than is typical. But those first few episodes of "Girls"... I mean, there's a reason they use a photo of Lena-as-Hannah to illustrate every article about millennials. Capturing a zeitgeist isn't the same as accurately representing the experiences of people your age. While "Broad City" does better at the latter (esp. the depiction of the extent to which first jobs, however advertised, tend to involve cleaning bathrooms), "Girls" has the former figured out. 

-A different sort of humor can be found in the comments to a recent profile of Lululemon's founder. In an odd way, the thread amounts to an ad for the brand, if only because the counterarguments to the commenters' objections come so easily. Objections being things like, you can work out in cheaper clothes as well (yes, but you can also go to work in thrifted business attire, to parties in H&M sale rack outfits, yet we don't find it baffling when people spend a bit more in those areas, even though there, too, there's a mix of marketing and the more expensive things actually being nicer). Or that it's offensive that the pants are designed to make women look good to men (yes, how dreadful... and how likely to inspire readers who'd never heard of the make before to go to its website). 

My favorite, though, are the comments from women who'll have you know that their butts look good in cheap leggings. (OK, those, and the one from a woman who on principle won't buy clothes from a store that doesn't make larger sizes, but she - let the record state! - is a six.) A professor of mine in grad school would always talk about "the terms of the debate" and, well, these commenters aren't exactly changing those. A shapely rear remains the goal. And if it's a choice between working out twelve times a week or paying up for leggings that give the illusion you do (or that you've convinced yourself do this), I wouldn't be so quick to assume the fools are the ones in luxury stretch pants.

Do the rich not sweat?

I get that Maggie Lange's "In Defense of Disgusting Gym Clothes" is meant to be contrarian. But is it, really? Isn't the idea that if you're truly hardcore, you skip the 'performance' fabrics in favor of comfortable old clothes, pretty standard? While yes, people do dress up for the gym (or so I've heard - I'm usually the only person in the one I go to, and use the disintegrating regular-shirt approach), who's announcing that they do so, loud and proud? At best, you might get a defensive answer, about how whichever pants were on sale, or, conversely, that spending $90 on leggings guilts you into going to the gym. And sure, there's some shaming of those who work out without the proper sports bra or sneakers, because they are, according to onlookers, injuring themselves. But no one wants to announce that they put on ass-lifting pants so people will check them out. OK, not no one, but few, few. (And even that woman says she doesn't want attention!)

Lange does make a good point, though, about sweat and more accumulating on workout clothes in a way it doesn't on regular ones. It's not so much that sweat would ruin these clothes, though, as Lange suggests (shirts, maybe, but black leggings?), and more that they'd render them unwearable until the next laundry cycle. Which is something I'd long wondered about 'investing' in clothes for the gym. If you've spent $90 on your leggings, do you wear them more than once before washing them? (I may be finicky about this sort of thing, but unless it's really cold at the gym, I'd advise against.) Or is this part of the status-symbol aspect of these clothes? As in, not only do you put a lot of $$$ towards your workout-wear, but you have enough $90 leggings to make it through a laundry cycle.

Retail woes and feminist infighting

-An inside account of what it's like to work at Lululemon. Mary Mann does more with this topic than one might imagine possible. But what's never really addressed head-on, yet seems crucial, is the way that the women selling these pants tend to look the part. Not exactly like Lululemon shoppers - more like younger, fitter versions thereof. Like the women one's husband will run off with should one not do enough yoga. So while it's the same deal, unsurprisingly, as other retail jobs in the U.S., in terms of paying badly and not offering benefits, you won't be helped by the same person who'd be doing so at Old Navy. You'll be getting a chipper, college-educated positivity-embracing sort, or, as in Mann's case at the time, an aspiring writer-editor, one darker/more cynical than the Lululemon brand would prefer, yes, but still someone whose apparent class (as vs. actual bank account) is consistent with the pants.

And I could ramble on (and on) about what this tells us about class being complicated. Is someone who looks posh but is scrambling to get by actually as posh as all that? Is it so different to work at Lululemon than at Old Navy? With endless time for this post, I'd find a way to connect it to Rebecca Schuman on the MLA, but I'll have to let you, my three holiday-season readers, draw your own conclusions.

-For reasons I myself don't entirely understand, but that I think relate to needing enough podcasts to walk the world's most energetic poodle, I'm very much up to date on the BBC Woman's Hour, perhaps more so than the hosts themselves. There was a year-end special on feminism in 2013, which... Was feminism big in 2013, or are the feminism controversies of that year the ones still fresh in our minds? The ones having to do with Miley Cyrus, or anti-airbrushing campaigns, or work-life balance. Or was having-it-all the concern of 2012?

In any case, 2013 seems to have been when BBC Woman's Hour discovered (or for all I know rediscovered) intersectionality. Scandal ensued. Reni Eddo-Lodge sums up the conflict, and links to the apology she received from fellow panelist Caroline Criado-Perez. While my U.S. vantage point - and this being audio-only would have assumed intersectionality might have applied to both women, I take it Criado-Perez is, at least by British definitions, white and nothing else. Eddo-Lodge is black.

The scandal was privilege-checking. Eddo-Lodge said yes, privilege should be checked, because intersectionality. Criado-Perez said no, because abuse. "Abuse" in this context meant something, although I'm not sure what. Online harassment, I suspect. I think she meant YPIS-hurling, in which case fair enough. YPIS has gotten out of hand.

However! YPIS-hurling isn't what's going on when someone who is actually a member of a marginalized group/in a marginalized position spells out that which out-group members don't understand. YPIS is when (to oversimplify) one rich white person tells another that their privilege is showing, and initiates a contest over which of the rich white people assembled is the true authority on being poor and black. That's where YPIS nastiness occurs.

Because the same terms are used by the YPIS brigade as by the legitimate-complaint-havers, I can well see how Criado-Perez reacted as she did once these terms came up. And there's a case to be made (if one that's just about impossible to make in sound-byte length) that the misuse of "privilege" has been so great that we need to scrap the term. But it's about context. "Privilege" as Eddo-Lodge was discussing it was a very different thing than the sorts of accusations Criado-Perez has apparently dealt with. Her grievance, while legit, isn't with what was being discussed, so Eddo-Lodge's interpretation of this as a derail seems about right. Not, that is, that it much matters what this white-by-U.S.-if-not-necessarily-British-standards American feminist thinks.