Jen Klee

Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution In Music

admin — Sun, 14 Feb 2010 17:01:00 +0000

Having been born in the late '80s, I always felt I missed out on everything cool in music. I wasn’t there to see the birth of punk. I wasn’t there for New Wave. I was too young for grunge, and I was too far away from Olympia, WA for riot grrrl. In the 1990s, I bought Sublime’s self -titled album along with Alice Cooper’s School's Out, and that was the extent of my musical awareness. So I always enjoyed reading about riot grrrl, putting on my Heavens to Betsy CD, and pretending I was more involved in it than I actually was.

Yes, I remember 1991. Sure, I was only five years old, but still, I was there. I expected Marisa Meltzer’s Girl Power: The Nineties Revolution in Music to help me keep up my own personal time capsule, going on the title alone. While the first few chapters do go into depth about riot grrrl’s evolution, the rest of the book moves forward in time from where riot grrrl left off, and this is where Meltzer hypothesizes leaves off as well. Post-riot grrrl, Meltzer traces the evolution of a few obvious late-90s "angry" female artists, such as Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Tori Amos, and Paula Cole, along with all the women from Lilith Fair, but then veers into a weird direction with The Spice Girls.

A lot of this book, in fact, goes into detail about The Spice Girls, and Meltzer keeps attempting to drive home her point that this girl group was actually pretty feminist. Now, this is something I actually was there for (although I try not to think about those dark times). Being a young girl coming of age when The Spice Girls were popular, I never got the impression that they were feminists. Maybe I’m just biased here, but the constant mention of this group kind of rubbed me the wrong way. That being said, Meltzer has some interesting points about them. (The Spice Girls, in effect, got the term girl power out there, and started some little girls thinking about their potential, but calling them feminist still seems like a stretch to me. It was a good, long, head-beating attempt by Meltzer, but by the end of this book, I was not convinced.)

Meltzer also touches upon a few modern day female pop stars, like the young women from High School Musical and Taylor Swift, as she attempts to draw a line from riot grrrl to girl power. This book may be aimed at younger girls in the hopes that it will get them thinking about their own generation of musical trends, and inspire them to look more critically at the media. Girl Power shows a lot of promise for spurring conversations between feminists of different generations, but for anyone born past 1990, Meltzer could leave you feeling bitter and jaded. Then again, maybe it’s just me.

Written by: Jen Klee, February 14th 2010

Women Who Kill

admin — Sun, 08 Nov 2009 01:06:00 +0000

By Ann Jones

The Feminist Press

Let me first just throw the creepiness right out there and admit I am a big fan of all media coverage related to serial killers. I love the horrible shows like Cold Case Files, and I love the even crappier rushed books written about every case. So when I saw Women Who Kill, I immediately zoomed in and claimed it.

I originally expected it to rely heavily on Aileen Wuornos, maybe some of the Manson girls, or even the women involved in couple-assisted murders, like Karla Homolka. I was expecting a similar sensationalized retelling of widely known to fairly well known cases, but what I got instead was an amazing surprise. Author Ann Jones doesn’t bore you with any of these tired old cases; in fact she rarely goes too deep into any individual case at all.

Women Who Kill marries the relationship between why and how women have killed during America’s history with the social problems of each time period behind them. This is a fascinating book for history buffs, sociologists, feminists, crime buffs—essentially, everyone. It’s so easy to write off a murderer as just being “crazy,” so I loved how this book went further to show that many of the female murderers throughout history actually had very rational reasoning behind their crimes brought on by their social position.

The book does not focus on any one criminal, but is divided rather loosely into crimes and time periods. The first type of murder brought up is that of women murdering their own children. Murdering your child is never a justifiable offense, but when Jones examines the American culture of the late 1600s and early 1700s to views on women, sexuality, and rape, the crimes become easier to understand.

The last type of murder covered is that of battered women retaliating against their batterers, from the late 1970s to the present. This was one of the more infuriating chapters, as it was closer to my lifetime. Jones never excuses any woman’s crime, but simply lays out each case on a carefully planned timeline of women’s social progress throughout the ages. All of the accounts are still extremely sad. And while this was a fascinating read that I could not put down, Women Who Kill left me feeling incredibly depressed and frustrated with how little progress it seems society really has made.

Between the language, euphemisms, and attitudes still in use—such as using seduction for the term rape in the 1600s, to the present favorite usage of had sex with, to the overall concept of how women still receive harsher sentencing for similar crimes committed by men—I didn’t feel our culture is much closer to equality, as I did before reading. Jones does a truly terrific job in presenting a morbid subject in an extremely interesting way, but I was left wishing for was some sort of guidance in what I could do personally to change things.

I don’t fault Jones for this though, as I doubt she has any idea herself. While it’s a wonderful book, the subject matter can be a little heavy to take in all at once. Surprisingly, Women Who Kill is not so much light beach fare (no ready-made for E! TV or movie sensationalism here) as it is a fresh insight to a little realized and ongoing problem.

Written by: Jen Klee, November 7th 2009

From Cronkite to Colbert: The Evolution of Broadcast News

admin — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 01:01:00 +0000

By Geoffrey Baym

Paradigm Publishers

I consider myself a bit of a news junkie so a title involving both Walter Cronkite and Stephen Colbert immediately caught my attention. While Cronkite was first able to break heavy concepts down for the masses and Colbert was later on able to do the same using humor, From Cronkite to Colbert is not able to do either. This was an extremely hard book to read, and in truth, I was not able to get past the middle.

Author Geoffrey Baym writes in an extremely dense, over-reaching style, making From Cronkite to Colbert read like an overzealous undergraduate thesis or a none too subtle proposal for the new COM201 textbook. Either way, instead of being entertained while learning, this book had me remembering everything I hated about studying for my communications minor. I read this book not because it was fun, but because I had to, and as a result, I really learned no new neat tidbits about the evolution of broadcast news.

Another pet peeve of mine was Baym’s breaking of the "don’t tell us, show us" cardinal rule of writing. In many of his paragraphs, he tells the reader—in hundred dollar words no less—exactly how this fact correlates to that one or where this next fact will take them. I was never surprised or intrigued, but merely taken by the hand as a reader and escorted to every point. By the time I made it to the book’s middle, after agonizing weeks of attempting to force myself to get through it, I gave up. Tracing the history of television news still seems like it would be an interesting topic to read up on; however, I’d come back to asking Baym to cover it only after he loosened up a little or possibly took up social drinking.

Written by: Jen Klee, November 6th 2009

In Praise of Indecency: The Leading Investigative Satirist Sounds of Hypocrisy, Censorship and Free Expression

admin — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 00:35:00 +0000

By Paul Krassner

Cleis Press

This is the first of two books Paul Krassner put out this year and, in my opinion, the better one. What makes In Praise Of Indecency better than Who's to Say What's Obscene? is that it is better organized and its sections are shorter, which seems to help Krassner focus his attention on the subject matter, allow his jokes to be funnier, and help the reader to not get lost.

My one problem with this book, however, is that while Krassner brings up a lot of what appear to be facts, he never cites anything, which caused me to doubt his credibility. This is especially true in instances where the reader is able to find blatant mistakes, such as Krassner's reference to Ashley Dupré, the sex worker who brought down Eliot Spitzer, as "Karen". This type of slip-up caused me to doubt the rest of the facts Krassner brought up to mock, and put a damper on my enjoyment of the book.

Nonetheless, In Praise Of Indecency is funny—with the exception of a shocking and unintentionally depressing section involving a website called crackwhoreconfessions.com. Here, Krassner discusses the content of the site: confessions and videos from actual "crackheads", who all just happen to be women, detailing all of the degrading things they have done for paltry sums of money simply to survive. I had hoped Krassner was joking or even outright making the site up, but after typing the URL into my web browser, I was able to find it. One needed to actually join the site to view anything, so I had to take Krassner's word for the content.

Krassner seems to find nothing in the book indecent, and by the end, I came out feeling like a prude. This is not a book for those with delicate sensibilities, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Written by: Jen Klee, October 10th 2009

Who's to Say What's Obscene?: Politics, Culture, and Comedy in America Today

admin — Fri, 09 Oct 2009 22:30:00 +0000

By Paul Krassner

City Lights Books

I've long been a fan of Paul Krassner's more illustrious friends like Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman, but until now I'd never gotten around to reading Krassner's own work. Who's to Say What's Obscene? appears to be a collection of random essays. I say "appears to be" because for most of the book, I had no idea what was going on.

The stories were interesting, but would just go from one to the next with seemingly no connection. I'd be reading about Don Imus, Michael Richards, and media censorship, and then the next thing I knew, I'd be reading about Walt Disney's death. Breaking the book down into chapters, as Krassner does here, is useless when each chapter is a random collection of essays that aren't even identified as separate pieces, and it left me scrambling. When I complained to my boyfriend, he replied, "That's what happens when you do a lot of drugs," which makes sense, as a lot of the book involves various scenarios where Krassner is about to go on a big interview, but then decides to do mushrooms beforehand to "enhance the experience."

By the middle of the book, I decided to just take each individual piece as it was and stop trying to make sense of everything. Eventually, I found the writing enjoyable. Krassner has lived a very rich life and raises good questions about what is actually obscene in our culture, based on his own opinions and experiences. As is to be expected, Krassner has a very liberal attitude towards most of the issues he raises in his book, like censorship in all its forms (he's against it) and legalizing drugs (he's for it). I do like reading viewpoints I agree with, but at times even I felt that Krassner took his opinions to the extreme.

Who's to Say What's Obscene? is a good book for people with short attention spans and far left-leaning views. Me personally, I'll keep it—but it'll lead a life doomed to the bathroom for short, mentally uninvolved reads, one to two times a day.

Written by: Jen Klee, October 9th 2009

Rebel Rebel: Anti-Style

admin — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 17:23:00 +0000

By Keanan Duffty, Paul Gorman

Rizzoli

I have always been interested in the fashion of subcultures. I've been stenciling my clothes, painting stuff on them, adding studs and strategic rips, sewing random things together and pillaging thrift stores since I was a freshman in high school—which is why designer Keanan Duffty's book Rebel Rebel: Anti-Style originally caught my eye. A style guide with a chick wearing chucks and fishnets on the cover seemed awesome!

Duffty himself has also been embellishing clothes since he was a child and, like most subculture fashionistas, was inspired by the music, particularly The Sex Pistols and David Bowie. His book reads like part autobiography, part look-book catalog, part intro to modern fashion history, and part helpful style guide.

I'd never heard of Duffty before, so his life was a somewhat interesting read, but I did not find myself impressed with the photos of his work included in the book. I'm not sure if it's just that the collection included is mostly from his later years, but to me his style was less "Rebel Rebel" and more mall punk, easily found at your nearest Kohl's. Duffty does include inspiration and scant ways for the reader to embellish and make their own clothing creations, though, so one could simply use his ideas as a springboard and go from there.

I also wasn't too impressed with the fashion history aspect of the book. While a lot of facts were interesting, such as the entire history of the jean pants, some facts were blatantly untrue: No, the Beats were not called the Beats as short for 'deadbeat,' and no, the hippie scene did not spring from the Carnaby Street Mod scene (it had been going on slightly earlier—and in America). There were just so many errors that even I, a somewhat average reader, picked up on that it made me question some of Duffty's more plausible bits of trivia.

Rebel Rebel: Anti-Style could be a good coffee table book, as it's rather large and, again, some of the illustrations are really nice, but I wouldn't pull it out to impress the FIT grads—or sit down and read it again.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 30th 2009

High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Beauty Pageants

admin — Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:54:00 +0000

By Susan Anderson

powerHouse Books

Style writer Simon Doonan’s foreword starts out High Glitz: The Extravagant World of Child Pageants. Doonan feels that beauty pageants geared for children are no more exploitative or harmful than cheerleading or little league. He writes that children learn endurance, losing gracefully, and social skills. It also gives them exercise and breaks from the tedium of childhood.

However, early on Doonan mentions he has never actually experienced the pageant world. Even if he had, undoubtedly child beauty pageants are a different experience for female children then for adult males. While Doonan paints an envious picture of pageant life from an outsider’s point of view, he still admits he can’t see contestants going on to the fame and glory for which their mothers aspire.

Interestingly enough, in his introduction for High Glitz, Robert Greene, another admitted outsider to the pageant world, chose to mention long suspected pedophile Lewis Carroll. Greene never mentions any outright connections to his, but instead he mentions Carroll because of his "appreciation" of young girls, and his observations of how they liked to dress up and be photographed. Greene’s point appears to be that pageants are healthy for little girls because dressing up gives them a sense of personal power and is an adequate form of play. Personally, I’ve seen too many cranky kids on episodes of Toddlers and Tiaras _and _Little Miss Perfect to believe Greene’s point, but he presents it in such a clear straightforward way, it very well could be believable.

Finally, we get to Susan Anderson’s book. Anderson, unlike Doonan and Greene, is very involved in the pageant world, as she has been photographing contestants for three years. Anderson writes in a journalistic style that gives the reader an inside look at this strange pocket of our culture, but unfortunately we don’t get to see very much. Anderson doesn’t write a lot, and instead, lets her photographs speak for her.

The photos are all of girls between the ages of a few months to thirteen years; all look more glamorous, more grown up, and more downright sexy than I did at my senior prom. Some of these girls still look precious, like elaborate child Madame Alexandra dolls, while some of them look eerie, like ageless collectible figurines symbolizing "true" beauty; all of the girls have a look of no longer being completely human. I also can’t help but notice how few children of color are featured.

The images are frightening: girls as young as three are making attempts at showing cleavage, endlessly exposing midriffs, and squeezing into super short skirts. What skeeves me out the most are the images of young girls holding stuffed animals, as their fancy dresses ride up around their waists. Many of these girls do look happy, but from watching many specials on this subject, I know many of these mothers pay money for coaching. I would have preferred to see quotes from the girls themselves about what they think of their clothes and situations, how they feel being dressed in ways, even as a teenager, I would never have been able to leave the house in. This coffee table book, unfortunately, does not shed much light on the pageant world for the genuinely curious.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 29th 2009

The Green Zone: The Environmental Costs of Militarism

admin — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 23:45:00 +0000

By Barry Sanders

AK Press

The Green Zone takes two very big issues of the moment—global warming and the wars in the Middle East—and seeks to illustrate the correlations between the two. Everyone knows something about the horribleness of both topics individually, but most people, including myself, never really put the two together, so I was excited to learn what this book had to offer.

Right off the bat, one of the weaknesses is that the book spends an awful lot of time on what seems to be exposition: there is a preface, a foreword, and finally, an introduction—all of which spell out the gist of the book—before we get to the actual content. The Green Zone presents heavy questions that (according to Sanders) even the Pentagon has no answers for, such as how many military bases America has all over the world, how many Iraqi and Afghani civilians lost their lives since America’s occupation, and how many people will continue to suffer long after America pulls out of the two countries because of the various ways their environment has been polluted since the first Gulf War.

As compelling Sander's case is, he unfortunately goes off on tangents throughout the book, which detract from the point he is attempting to make. One minute he’ll be discussing the Gulf War, then the modern day ice caps, and then off to some other topic with little to no transition between them all. This gets confusing, especially when so many numbers and new terms are introduced.

The middle of the book is the most coherent, and seems to be where Sanders has the most passion in discussing the different ways the American military pollutes and endangers Iraq, Afghanistan, and even its own people. This was a hard book to read, in terms of both subject matter and delivery; however I still consider it a must read.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 14th 2009

Briarpatch Magazine: The Gender & Sexuality Issue (March/April 2009)

admin — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 00:41:00 +0000

Edited by Dave Mitchell

At first glance, Canada's Briarpatch Magazine reminded me of American feminist magazine Bitch; the content is similar, the overall message is similar, and, hell, even the font in the logo seems similar. What I love about Bitch is that although it’s an American magazine, it covers issues from all over the world, so I can keep up on feminist issues all over just by checking in one place. Briarpatch does not cover such a distance, as it seems to be primarily a Canadian-focused magazine; however, I still learned a lot about some of Canada’s different subcultures.

This issue was billed as “the gender and sexuality issue,” so the topics covered were about polyamory, sex working and transsexual issues. First, I learned about Canada’s health care system in relation to transsexuals undergoing or wanting to undergo gender reassignment surgery. Unlike the United States, Canada has a government-funded health care system. It is apparently extremely difficult to get coverage for something such as this type of surgery. This was an interesting, in depth look at one man’s personal journey through this ordeal. It was inspiring, yet also sad with the hoops he had to jump through in order to become the gender he felt comfortable with.

Briarpatch also educated me about sex workers in Canada through an interview with Kara Gillies, co-founder of both the Canadian Guild for Erotic Labour and the former Toronto Migrant Sex Workers Advocacy Group. Gillies also does work for Maggie’s, an organization run by sex workers. Maggie’s includes all aspects of sex work in their attempts to advocate for these workers’ rights, such as individuals involved in pornography, phone sex workers, and dominatrixes, to name a few. It is Gillies' work with Maggie’s that is the primary focus of the article.

The most interesting thing I learned from this was that in Canada, the act of prostitution itself is actually not illegal and never was. What is illegal is negotiating for services in a public place or even somewhere that’s open to public viewing such as parked or moving cars or bars. So it’s fine to go and do the deed elsewhere but not to discuss anything such as protection, payment, or even specific services beforehand if it’s in a public area. But you also can’t technically go anywhere because your work site, if used for this purpose, could be classified as a ‘bawdy house’ and under the bawdy house law, that’s illegal too. In addition, if you participate in someone else’s activities, it falls under the procurement law. This means that you can’t do such things as advertise someone else’s services or even offer to protect them personally. But, again, the actual act of prostitution is totally legal!

This, too, was an inspiring although frustrating piece because while some of the facts were new to me, unfortunately, the overall story and public perception seems to be the same all over. On the whole, I enjoyed getting an in-depth look on another country’s struggles with the same issues as are faced in the United States, and Briarpatch was a very enjoyable read.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 6th 2009

Will Work for Drugs

admin — Sat, 05 Sep 2009 01:38:00 +0000

By Lydia Lunch

Akashic Books

I have always wanted to like Lydia Lunch. I’ve always admired her assertiveness and her dark attitude, and at times, even her severely sarcastic wit. I couldn’t ever get into her music though, so I thought I would try moving on to reading some of her short stories in Will Work for Drugs, a collection of Lunch’s fiction, personal essays, and interviews.

The beginning part of this book drags on and only slightly picks up towards the end with Lunch’s interviews. My favorite part was the interviews because, strangely enough, this was where Lunch seemed the most sincere, the most candid, and the most herself. The stories and essay sections were jumbled together, and they were not labeled as to which was which, so I never really knew if I was reading about some true event in Lunch’s little known past or peeking into her fantasies.

Regardless of whether they were stories or essays, in each one it was also extremely difficult to understand what was going on, where the action was, or the overall message Lunch wanted the reader to come away with. Lunch relies heavily on overtly flowery metaphors for everything, so much so that each story seemed to be mostly descriptions rather than actual stories. This section read more like prose, much like the style of Patti Smith, which was done well at times; however, overall I found Lunch’s choices similar to excerpts from a teenage goth girl’s diary: trying too hard to impress the reader with her darkness and toughness. Maybe her die-hard fans will appreciate Lunch’s newest work, but this reader remains unconverted.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 4th 2009

Permaculture Magazine (No. 60 Summer 2009)

admin — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 16:52:00 +0000

Edited by Maddy Harland

Permaculture Magazine seemed like an interesting concept that you don’t hear about in too much detail. I hate the ‘Go Green!’ trend and was interested in learning actual tips on sustainable living. On this front, the magazine was definitely able to deliver.

In this issue, I learned (theoretically) how to build an outdoor wood fire oven, how to care for chickens, tips for inexpensive and green day trips out with the family, and DIY recipes for beauty products, among other things. In addition to teaching, Permaculture Magazine also had stories from real people trying to minimize their carbon footprint by moving to sustainable farms, working on allotment gardens, and renovating old houses into more environmentally friendly ones.

This was all very interesting and inspiring. After reading this issue, I wanted to move out of my city, get a farm, build a wood oven so I can try the delicious looking pizza recipe, and live in a cute, renovated house in the countryside. However, after thinking about this for a minute, I realized that while these are all really neat ideas, they aren’t exactly practical for me, nor, I suspect, are they for a good majority of the population.

Permaculture is printed in the United Kingdom, and maybe they have more countryside and resources available there, but even though I’m from a more rural part of the United States originally, I don’t feel I could implement many of the ideas covered here. Many of the ideas require lots of land, resources, time, hard work, and research. Most of them require a hefty dose of capital to start up, even though they should save you money in the long run.

In the end, the only real things I could do after reading this magazine was to make the beauty products and take some advice from the green day trip outings section. The plus side is that all the beauty recipes are vegan. I did enjoy this issue; however, it seems to only cater to a very small, elite group so unfortunately it’s not for everyone.

Written by: Jen Klee, September 3rd 2009

Gender and Class in the Egyptian Women’s Movement, 1925-1939: Changing Perspectives

admin — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 17:54:00 +0000

By Cathlyn Mariscotti

Syracuse University Press

Gender and Class reads like the last reference book in a lengthy series about the Egyptian women’s movement. I came to this review ready to learn something about a time in history that most people probably know very little about. I came away learning only a few ‘vocab’ words from the glossary.

Cathlyn Mariscotti’s book reads more like a thesis essay reflecting on a scholarly course the audience has taken rather than a text written for the general reader. Every fact Mariscotti references relies heavily on other texts to get her point across. The main comparison and crux of the book is that Western feminism is extremely bourgeois and did not entirely help lower class women in Egyptian, such as the peasant fellahin.

This seemed to be an interesting idea at first mention, but after reading on, the reader realizes Mariscotti has laid all of her cards down on the table too early in revealing her argument, and all within the first twenty pages. This made for rather tedious reading of the rest of the book.

The text is a general criticism of the feminist movement as a whole, including Global North countries, such as the United States, Mariscotti does not make learning about the Egyptian women’s plight with this issue easy or entertaining to read. I was so overwhelmed by snippets of facts and parentheses telling me which books I could find and read about these facts; sadly I absorbed next to nothing about this largely overlooked period of history. In the end, all I learned about the Egyptian women’s movement was that I need to seek out other books to do so.

Written by: Jen Klee, March 4th 2009