Tiger Beatdown

You know, ladies: We talk about a lot of stuff, here on the Tiger Beatdown. We talk about rape culture! We talk about reproductive rights! We talk about who is The Best Feminist on TV! But there’s one serious issue we haven’t talked about: How are you ever going to get a MAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNN????

No, for real. We want to talk about how you are ever going to get a man, today. It’s a more serious feminist issue than you might think! Or: I pretend it is, and then Amanda Hess of The Sexist plays along with me! For we were inspired — INSPIRED, I say — by Jaclyn Friedman’s excellent interview at The Sexist (hi!) on Fucking While Feminist, and Jill Filipovic’s equally excellent follow-up at, uh, Feministe (HI) on Dating While Feminist, to discuss the pressing matter of the Feminist Dating Litmus Test. And then we talked about hamburgers, and our boyfriends! FACTS: If two straight women convene together for serious and professional reasons of feminist analysis long enough, sooner or later they are just going to end up talking about boyfriends. It’s some hormonal thing. I don’t get it. Women, you know?

So, join us! For the most obnoxiously heterosexual Sexist Beatdown yet!

ILLUSTRATION: I think Amanda is “a Miranda.” Mostly because their “names” “rhyme.” I am expecting to receive an “e-mail” from her any “minute” now about how I am “fired” from “chatting.”

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Hey! You know what people care a lot about, apparently? It is the television!

Yes, television. It makes us laugh! It brings us joy! It distracts us from the fact that we are OMG totally alone in this apartment and have been for like SO MANY HOURS IN A ROW we just need to hear A HUMAN VOICE at this point, my goodness. But do you know what else television does, my friends? It gives us material for our various blog posts! And quite surprisingly heated and complex comment threads thereon.

Because, like, that Liz Lemon. She takes up a lot of space in the cultural imagination, that one! It is a complicated space! Because like ladies love her and dudes love her and then occasionally ladies (read: Me) HAAAATE her, but for so many complicated reasons that tend to vary between the genders. I think that’s worthy of one more sophisticated Socratic dialogue/blog post narcissistically and frivolously tossed up on the Internet on the very week healthcare is all over the news and such a big deal. Don’t you?

Well, TOO BAD. Because the lovely Amanda Hess of The Sexist and I, we agree on this thing! Behold, as we current-eventsily discuss the matter at hand, covering topics such as: Why is 30 Rock so great at funny feminist rape jokes, except for when it is terrible? We all know there are measurable differences between “funny joke about racism” and “racist joke,” but does 30 Rock do both of them? Maybe! And: What the fuck happened to Jenna? And: Why do people “love” Tracy Morgan’s acting but keep imagining that he is not actually an actor? And: Does anyone like Dot Com more than I do? NO! I will fight you for it! And: Which of the only two actresses to whom we are allowed to compare white female bloggers are YOU? You will find an easy visual guide below!

ILLUSTRATION: The Two Faces of Amanda Hess. The lobster, of course, symbolizes Patriarchal Norms and Values.

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1.

The popular television sitcom 30 Rock premiered in the year 2006. Since that time, each man that I have dated has made a point of saying how much I remind him of the main character on that show, Liz Lemon.

They said this, in each case, while we were breaking up.

2.

The ways in which I have reminded men of Liz Lemon vary from highly specific point-by-point comparisons to more general observations. One man was particularly moved by a Christmas episode, in which Liz’s absurdly friendly, supportive, and upbeat Midwestern parents come to visit, along with her brother, who is slightly off. (HE WAS IN A SKIING ACCIDENT!) They convert Jack to the side of joy by giving him three different flavors of popcorn in a single giant tin. This was, the man said, making him sad about our break-up, because my family had extended similar kindness and support and popcorn in his direction, and he loved them for it. “It’s weird that the character is so like you that you even have the same family,” he said.

The other is a little more infuriating. I was going through an absurdly painful break-up, and was supposed to meet a co-blogger at Feministe (hi, Jill!) for the first time. The break had occurred only a few days ago; I was still living with the man; I was not eating or sleeping, and I was so distraught that I had apparently forgotten how to put on shirts. I kept realizing, after wearing them for several hours, that they were on backward. I told the man about this, as a way to demonstrate how upset I was: “I was waiting for Jill at the bar, and I had to pull my arms inside my sweater and turn it around before she got there so that she didn’t think I was an idiot.” He laughed, and said, “see? You’re so Liz Lemon.”

The experience of having what I thought was a fairly serious indicator of my pain mirrored back to me as a wacky sitcom moment made it abundantly clear why this man and I had to break up. I bit my tongue and avoided, for that moment anyway, saying anything regrettable about Dennis, the Rat King. (He would not, I can tell you, have deserved it. But it was RIGHT THERE!)

Other than that, well: I’m a shortish, thinnish, smartish brunette woman who writes, has fairly stylish glasses, and is a bit high-strung. These things are inevitable, really.

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So, I recently watched this movie. This movie: It was entitled (500) Days of Summer. You guys, it was FOR A PROJECT! I would not watch this movie just for the hell of it! I am doing something on like romantic myths and like love stories and junk! So clearly, I HAD TO DO IT. It was not even really a choice.

Anyway, one of my theses is that the romance has traditionally been the province of the “women’s picture,” but in the last few years (from High Fidelity on, let us say — or, if we wanted to stretch ourselves, we could say since Before Sunrise) there have been an increasing number of romances centered almost entirely on the inner lives of dudes. Often within, like, the VERY MINDS of the dudes: Eternal Sunshine takes place literally within a guy’s brain for the most part, High Fidelity has a dude talking extensively into the camera, and I suppose we would regard Annie Hall as the pervy, monologue-and-dream-sequence-prone grandfather of this entire genre. And (500) Days of Summer fits squarely within this genre, as well.

FINDING OF NOTE: All of the dudes in these movies have similar haircuts?

OTHER FINDING: These dude-traps-a-girlfriend-IN-HIS-BRAIN movies tend to be my favorites of the genre. Like: I seriously hate a lot of “womens’ pictures,” especially the recent variety. I could watch Eternal Sunshine on a loop in some sort of Clockwork Orange device without getting bored, as could I similarly do with certain (though not all) scenes of Annie Hall. The one where Woody Alvy follows Diane Keaton Annie into her brain and passes harsh judgment on dudes she has dated in the past — “oh, yeah, real heavy, eaten to death by squirrels” — I could watch a lot. I would I am not sure how to feel about this. Kind of sexist, perhaps?

Let me assure you, however, that these feelings do not appertain to (500) Days of Summer.

(500) Days of Summer is, to be brief, the story of Joseph Gordon-Levitt meeting, kissing, fucking, and continuing to fuck Zooey Deschanel, whilst Zooey Deschanel tells Joseph Gordon-Levitt continuously that he is Not Her Boyfriend. Then she says the fucking has to cease, and she seems not to feel too bad about that, and he is like, “BUT I AM YOUR BOYFRIEND!!!???” And she is like, no you’re not. And then he is sad.

We are encouraged to infer, from this series of events, that Zooey Deschanel is LITERALLY A MONSTER.

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People: It has been a trying week, and particularly evening, over at the Tiger Beatdown Headquarters. Tiger Beatdown loves you, and Tiger Beatdown cares. But also? SHIT HAS BEEN HAPPENING, over at the Tiger Beatdown. This shit pertains to, though is not exclusive to, the matters of (a) Tiger Beatdown opening a Tumblr account, (b) Tiger Beatdown’s Tumblr account making Tiger Beatdown happy for a number of The Personal Reasons, like New Friends and Such, and (c) Tiger Beatdown SOMEHOW BEING INSULTED LIKE THREE TIMES BY DAVID KARP THE VERY FOUNDER OF TUMBLR TODAY, IN A REALLY UNACCEPTABLE MANNER, WHAT THE FUCK.

Like, here is the Tiger Beatdown Feelings Journal, in handy Emoticon format, for you today:

🙂

🙁

:0

😀

>:-(

I hope that clarifies everything! Anyway. It’s a Friday night, kittens! And you know what that means: it’s time to stew over the shitty behavior of an Internet social networking wunderkind and watch Battlestar enjoy your totally sexy lifestyle! Which includes, of course, your vagina. Hey: how sparkly is your vagina? Is it TOO sparkly, do you think? Probably not! Probably what your vagina needs is to look MORE LIKE THE RUMP OF A SPECIAL-EDITION MY LITTLE PONY THAN USUAL. Which is to say: more sparkly! And with various cute designs on it! Look: This lady has put sparkles on her vagina. Also on or near her vagina, she has put “Jason,” who is very into her vaginal sparkles! Jason is totally creepy PS! But probably you should have sparkles on your vagina. For Jason!

Yes, it is time to talk about Vajazzling. With Amanda Hess of Washington City Paper’s The Sexist! Look. What ELSE are you doing tonight, right?

ILLUSTRATION: This was, for real, the most informative thing about Vajazzling that I could find on the Internet. Although I don’t think that is her vagina, actually? I COULD BE WRONG.

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