Lacey Dunham

Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman

admin — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 12:35:00 +0000

Despite the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan no one mistakes the rallying cry of today's Starbucks-toting, Hot Topic sporting protesters with the mobilized and systematic protests of the 1960s and 1970s. With not a small touch of nostalgia, those who were there for Vietnam, Civil Rights and Cambodia lament the laziness of present-day youth to fully posit themselves in the movement (as if that responsibility belongs solely to folks without many responsibilities), while young people today tune-out the nagging and lectures of their middle-class, once hippie parents. In much the same way that intergenerational silences ebb and flow through suburbia, urbania, and rural towns alike, Cathy Wilkerson's [Flying Close to the Sun: My Life and Times as a Weatherman]](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1583227717?ie=UTF8&tag=feminrevie-20&linkCode=as2&camp=1789&creative=9325&creativeASIN=1583227717) details—sometimes in excruciating detail—the rise and fall (and rise) of a former SDS member who, in 1970, survived the accidental bombing of her parents' townhouse, when three others did not. Even Wilkerson, however, fails to carry through the spirit and message of the counterculture of her youth beyond the spectacular flame of '60s and '70s activism.

Wikerson must be credited for her vigilance towards cross-sections of race, socio-economics and gender in her memoir, as well as her attention to the eventual realization that the progression among some activists from peaceful protest to bombings of government and non-government buildings was no different than the operations of Nixon, Kissinger and the like. Wilkerson's meticulous detail of the events of her life, from childhood in New England to her involvement in grassroots activism, gives the prose a meandering style neatly captured by chapter divisions. Wilkerson is a woman trying to find herself in changing era, adrift in relationships, war policy and her white privilege, all of which receive equal weight and importance in the threads of her memoir.

While knowing everything about her early childhood slows down the first portion of the book considerably – not that we don't care but, well, we don't—once Wilkerson hits on personal and political events, the narrative dashes through essential persons, locations, conferences, marches and protests like a "Not For Tourists" guide of the era, losing itself only at the moment when it counts most—connecting the lessons of the past to the present in order to shape the future. Maybe Wilkerson feels she can't speak to activists today because the apparent apathy of youth is so at odds with her own formerly youthful self. Or maybe Wilkerson, who performs her activism through education now, is subtly telling us that of everything accomplished in a turbulent era, those things and people who were lost cannot justify the means. This subtlety doesn't cause the book to flop at the end, but it does sputter and then just stops, standing bewildered among all that remains and how little, after forty years, has really changed.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, October 31st 2007

Sexy Thrills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller

admin — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 12:40:00 +0000

By Nina K. Martin

University of Illinois Press

Growing up, I loved Hitchcock films and film noir, an odd choice for a child who came of age with color television, Rambo and Reagan. Fast forward to post-college years later when I took a job at a video rental store to support a poorly stipend internship, where ninety percent of the store’s revenue was from the sale and rental of adult films. Did Barbara Stanwyck and Tipi Hendren lead to this?

According to Nina K. Martin in Sexy Trills: Undressing the Erotic Thriller, they just might have (thanks for introducing me to the old flicks mom!). The erotic thriller is soft-core, direct to video pornography with elaborate sets and romanticized stories, generally aimed at women - as opposed to hard-core pornography, which, with its emphasis on penetration and myriad other sexual acts and little to no premise to get there, is usually aligned with male pleasure. Using a selection of film texts of the genre, Martin analyzes the effect of the erotic thriller on the construction of heterosexual female sexuality in contemporary American society. According to Martin, erotic thrillers have well-define formulaic patterns - including gothic and film noir borrowings - that define the genre. Within these various narrative texts, sexuality for the heterosexual female is safely explored with in the permitted boundaries and resolves itself around either true love (marriage) or punishment for digressions in personal and professional lives.

Taking an academic look at non-academic texts, Martin shows that the idea of “what women want” is more about what men tell women that women want. Nearly all media companies are owned by men, and almost all film directors are men, so in a mass media and consumer-driven world, contemporary culture is a homogenized template of what individuals are told to desire and need, and dictates come from Hollywood, Hitchcock, Cosmopolitan, Rachel Ray and women’s pornography. And ultimately, as Martin points out, the erotic thriller reinforces women’s subordinate place in society because women—even when in charge of their sexual expression—still have their sexual services purchased and made available for purchase, primarily for men. As a woman is sexually empowered in the films through fulfillment of personal desires, she is disempowered within the public sphere for her actions, thus reemphasizing the public/private split in society where power and authority are mutually exclusive to sexual expression and fulfillment (does anyone view Hillary Clinton as a sexualized woman?). Individual women’s sexuality, Martin states, is inseparable from culture representations of individual women’s sexuality and is not reconcilable with public life and power the way men’s sexuality is. Jenna Jameson is for the bedroom only, Hillary has no sex life (wasn’t that why there was Monica?), and Hitchcock's Tipi is punished for her sexual urges and desires by giant black birds.

Despite the academic prose and evocations of Freud and Foucault, Martin’s critique of the erotic thriller is accessible to interested audiences looking at the text as film criticism, feminist criticism or both (for uninterested audiences there is a smattering of still frames from select films). Martin doesn’t enter the feminist pornography debate because, as she states explicitly in her introduction, the book is primarily film criticism and secondarily feminist criticism. However, she is attuned to feminist concerns and feminisms. Through this numbered lens, the book becomes more interesting for its inability to judge pornography as either pro-woman or anti-woman. Instead, Martin cleanly analyzes how sex is marketed to heterosexual women by well-defined, status-quo affirmations of what is considered normalized (and non-threatening) sexuality and, therefore, doesn’t detach her thesis from the effect of the Second and Third Waves. The empowerment of women, Martin tells us, is through a dictum and language that are not our own.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, July 20th 2007

Silk Touch Egg Vibe

admin — Fri, 29 Jun 2007 18:20:00 +0000

Boudoir Essentials

Sea foam green and shaped like soft serve ice cream, this vibrator has five different settings that hum, pulse and beat little morse code pleasures. The tear drop control fits into the average palm perfectly, so there’s no awkward fumbling while trying to heighten the fun, unless (like me) you roll over the on/off switch while in the throes of pleasure. The smooth plastic feel doesn’t require lubrication until penetration, but, then again, this vibrator’s main buzz is on the clit.

Ideal for solo or partner use, GrrlToyz has created a user-friendly toy that does its duty for a fair price ($19.99). Though the Silk Touch Egg Vibe doesn’t get high marks for aesthetics or battery-type (tracking down AAA’s proved challenging in DC, perhaps only because Laura Bush is rumored to have a sex toy collection that would rival Annie Sprinkle’s), it is easy to clean (vibrator and control detach), provides five choices for those raised on fast food value menus (I like option #2, personally) and is innocuous enough to unassumingly fit into purses and night bags (managers at work are none the wiser). The flex-cord is perfect for couple play, giving control to both partners. The Silk Touch Egg Vibe is now a continuous presence on my nightstand.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, June 29th 2007

The Higher Power of Lucky

admin — Tue, 12 Jun 2007 18:04:00 +0000

By Susan Patron

Atheneum

Censorship advocates have a lot to dislike in Susan Patron’s Newbery Medal children’s book The Higher Power of Lucky. Aside from the “scrotum” controversy (the word appears on the first page and prompted a flurry of “how dare she put this is a children’s book!”), there are Alcoholics Anonymous meetings, a mother in jail for dealing marijuana, a delinquent father and surplus U.S. government cheese.

Fortunately, however, the American Library Association, the organization that awards the Newbery Medal, ignored critics’ complaints. The Higher Power of Lucky is a beautiful coming-of-age story about an orphaned girl, Lucky, living in the remote California desert town of Hard Pan, population 43, where everyone survives on government support and twelve-step meetings. Lucky is a budding scientist constantly on the prowl for specimens while searching for her higher power and is followed by her friend Lincoln, a compulsive knot tyer, a cookie-consuming fiend Miles and HMS Beagle, a dog named after Darwin’s exploration ship. After Lucky’s mother dies, her father’s first wife, a French woman named Brigitte, arrives in Hard Pan to take care of Lucky until she can be placed in a foster home. Like all good orphans, Lucky develops a scheme to run away and the resulting (mis)adventures bring her to terms with her mother’s death and her new life with Brigitte.

Unlike other tales of ragtag orphans who find themselves, Patron’s book is notable for how it infuses socio-economics into Lucky’s story. It’s clear that the townspeople of Hard Pan are not well-off, but Lucky loves her hometown and its oddball collection of interesting folk. She doesn’t pine for a bigger life or wish she owned more material goods. Lucky’s love for her life creates a space for the majority of children who do not grow up with $500 per week allowances and a dad’s credit card in their back pocket, and Patron does a marvelous job of indulging in a sometimes harsh reality through clever and whimsical prose.

The Higher Power of Lucky successfully creates a space for youth who are acting like youth to be who they are without judgment by reminding adults that children are also complex beings with self-doubts, fears and hopes, as Lucky and her friends experience, and that it’s all of these experiences collected that will shape an individual into a human being. Patron’s ability to build on themes that reach both young people and adult readers is what makes Lucky’s story such a treasure.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, June 12th 2007

And Tango Makes Three

admin — Mon, 28 May 2007 23:15:00 +0000

By Justin Richardson, Peter Parnell

Simon & Schuster

And Tango Makes Three is a simply but beautifully told illustrated children’s book about the real-life story of two male penguins at the New York Central Park Zoo, Roy and Silo, who form a partnership and are given a fertile egg to hatch. And Tango is born.

The book doesn’t shy away from using the words “family,” “love,” “daddies” and “couple” to describe Roy and Silo’s pairing and their relationship with their baby chick. While the book isn’t likely to be found on all school shelves because of its frank and unapologetic language of two male penguins forming a family, the beauty of the story is touching and sincere. Henry Cole’s illustrations help make the story accessible to even the youngest readers while visually reinforcing that Roy and Silo are no different from other penguins at the zoo.

For primary and elementary aged children, And Tango Makes Three is the perfect opportunity to introduce all types of families, whether that family has two moms, two dads, a mom and a dad or a single parent—and through cute little animals nonetheless. With childhood the most formative years, And Tango Makes Three provides a wonderful and powerful gateway for parents, educators and others to build acceptance of all individuals.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, May 28th 2007

Femininity in Flight: A History of Flight Attendants

admin — Wed, 02 May 2007 18:57:00 +0000

By Kathleen M. Barry

Duke University Press

Young, white, educated, and pretty: these were the most essential job criteria early flight attendants (then called “stewardesses”) were required to meet. As a selective few catering to the affluent traveler, flight attendants in the early days of aviation held a seemingly glamorous job, one that was coveted in an era when a white women’s work often extended only to the front door of her home. In Femininity in Flight, Kathleen M. Barry examines the rise of flight attendants from their initial inception in aviation in the 1920s through second-wave feminism in the 1970s. Through a feminist lens, Barry discusses the unique position of women whose job entails essential knowledge of flight safety, but whose image has long been constructed, first as a “bride-in-waiting” and, later, as a sexual playmate.

Barry spends considerable time examining the progression of flight attendant unions throughout the decades, and her thoroughness is a challenge for non-historians, not as a matter of accessibility, but as one of length. However, laboring through the pages on the relationship between flight attendants and the labor movement pays-off. Barry successfully relates a sympathetic portrait of flight attendants while tactfully maintaining an objective analysis of their particular position within aviation. Her comprehensive portrait of flight attendants as safety professionals taken for granted by abusive passengers, exploited by air carriers with an eye on the bottom line and subjected to standards of appearance (including weight control, former age caps and marriage bans) makes the reader care about them and their long history for recognition and change within the profession, even when one picks up the book unenthusiastically (as I initially did).

The greatest shortfall is Barry’s decision to subsume the changing job expectations and job description flight attendants face after September 11th when security standards and tighter federal regulations have created new complexities for a work force that still remains predominately female, and was only granted federal safety certification (despite a nearly fifty year struggle) after 9/11. Despite this, Barry aptly exposes the conflicted status of flight attendants as both women of privilege and woman whose exploitation traditionally has been as high as the sky. While not a page-turner, Femininity in Flight is effective in handling the labor and feminist history of an individual group who are rarely given a second thought.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, May 2nd 2007

"Have You Ever" Game

admin — Tue, 13 Mar 2007 00:11:00 +0000

By DaFridge

The deck of card sized naughty or nice Have You Ever game is a ready-to-go version of the infamous drinking game “I’ve Never Ever.” Filled with witty rhymes and euphemisms for sex in all places and positions, Have You Ever is, per the instructions, best played with friends and cocktails, so I got together two friends, made dinner, bought some wine and set to work.

Like a fortune cookie, Have You Ever’s unique phrases are sometimes better than others and, also like a fortune cookie, it’s not unusual to get the same question twice. The tiny scrolls and minute punch-through holes make a one-time use game that’s great for those with nimble fingers and a minimal level of inebriation—if my friends’ were any more drunk or our fingers a little more pudgy, there’s no way we could have made it through the first two rounds.

While the questions did stir some exciting conversation, it was also an unnecessary icebreaker among good friends, as I already know who’s gone down on whose sister, who has grinded where and who’s habitually naked around the house. For those just getting to know friends, Have You Ever is a perfect introduction.

Like Polly Pocket, the tiny game board is easy to take to parties, meet-ups or on public transportation and could be more fun if played at random, unexpected moments rather than in a single sitting. While Have You Ever didn’t leave me horny or drudge up secrets of my past that weren’t already public, it did whittle away a Saturday night with two good friends and a bottle of zinfandel.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, March 12th 2007

The Best American Erotica 2007

admin — Fri, 09 Mar 2007 17:24:00 +0000

Edited by Susie Bright

Simon & Schuster

I was both hot and bothered reading this year’s edition of The Best American Erotica. Hot because a handful of the stories were well-written, sincerely erotic, thought-provoking and sensuous – a delicate balance that’s not always easy to achieve, as demonstrated by the remaining stories that were only mediocre, dirty for the sake of being dirty or simply not enticing (sex with machines, anyone?) Though admittedly, erotica’s not about uniform taste in sexual proclivities, but the expression of various preferences.

I was bothered because an otherwise notable and well-constructed collection of this year’s best tempestuous stories included an excerpt from Jessica Cutler’s The Washingtonienne. For those of you who aren’t trapped inside the beltway like this reviewer, I’ll fill you in: Cutler was a one-time Lieberman intern, one-time DeWine staffer on Capitol Hill whose revolving bedroom door included visits from high-profile Washington men including, reportedly, a married senior Bush administration official. What differentiates Cutler from the other run of the mill sex scandals that seep out of Washington like sewer gas from the Potomac was her salacious blog of her sexual conquests and exploits that ended up published on a popular D.C. gossip site, ousting both her identity and the identities of some of her sexual partners. The escapade took an All-American twist when Cutler was fired, interviewed for a five-page feature in The Washington Post, posed for Playboy, sued by a former-lover for libel and breach of privacy, and offered a book-deal, which became The Washingtonienne.

What does all this have to do with The Best American Erotica 2007? Well for one, Cutler couldn’t write her way out of first-grade “How I Spent My Summer Vacation” essay, and her meager ideas of a good story, combined with shallow, two-dimensional characters and two-bit, forced prose was not only painful but—in light of D.C.’s recent Jessica Cutler obsession—nausea inducing. Secondly, juxtaposed against beautifully written, well-constructed stories like Peggy Munson’s “The Rock Wall,” strangely erotic tales like Trevor Healey’s “The Pancake Circus,” and Daniel Duane’s brief but sexy coming-of-age (pun intended) excerpt from A Mouth Like Yours, Cutler’s oh-so-brashly-shallow tale of a young Hill staffer who sleeps with everyone from her roommate to a bike messengers to foreign ambassadors is exactly the type of flippancy in erotic writing that drags down the rest of the genre—and in this instance, an otherwise excellent selection of clit waxing, cock rocking stories perfect for those alone, paired or polyamorous this year.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, March 9th 2007

The Journal of Short Film: Volume I: Fall 2005

admin — Wed, 28 Feb 2007 12:42:00 +0000

By The Journal of Short Film

The Journal of Short Film: Volume I is comprised of nine films that range from traditional linear narratives to non-narrative explorations to one that calls itself “improvised cinema.” The journal, which was founded to expand the forums available for talented, new filmmakers to showcase their work - much the way writers and poets have literary journals - has grown to include the release of five additional volumes and another in progress.

Many of the films in the premier volume center on interpersonal relationships and intrapersonal struggles. Heidi Mau, the Don Delillo of short film, asks us to examine how we construct our memories in hindsight of events within a visual-media saturated world. Potter-Belmar Labs’ new genre piece reveals the slight of hand tricks used to sell us everything from refrigerators to war. And Jonathan Brough asks us in “No Ordinary Sun,” a film of apocalyptic proportions about a multi-generational father-son relationship, to consider what moments in our lives are lost at great speeds.

While the journal is not specifically feminist many films collect moments of women’s lives into visually stunning narratives, like “Post-Partum,” whose long, still shots and white noise of water sounds lure us into the beautifully told story of the director’s personal history, and “Gravel,” whose mother-daughter tensions play out against the angst of youth and the anxieties of adulthood.

Similar to literary journals, The Journal of Short Film is not for everyone. While viewers may sit well with the brief but haunting “Long Struggle,” a documentary of two Shoshone sisters who fight the government’s claim of eminent domain, movie fans might be challenged by the experimental videos that largely compose the volume’s latter half. Fortunately for film aficionados, anyone likely engrossed discussing Anna Nicole Smith while waiting in line for tickets to James Cameron’s latest won’t be on the list of the journal’s subscribers, a sure sign that this film journal deserves two thumbs up.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, February 28th 2007

The Journal of Short Film: Volume V

admin — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 18:26:00 +0000

The Journal of Short Film

Every film in this volume is so impressive, so full of the detail and thought that makes a film not just good or even great, but f*cking phenomenal _that it’s difficult to say anything more than _just buy a subscription already. But because I have a word requirement to fulfill, I’ll expound a bit.

The growth of maturity in the quality and storytelling of the films featured shows that the trajectory of The Journal of Short Film is an upward path of a serious film journal with serious talent. From the funny tale of a shoplifting child to a Lynchian-style short about self-sustainability on an increasingly unsustainable planet to an adolescent girl secretly glimpsing her sister’s vulnerabilities, Volume V is a range of documentaries, personal narratives, and historical reflections that travel our memories and identities to ask us who we are and what shaped us into the creatures reflected back in the mirror.

In “Grand Luncheonette,” Peter Sillen reveals himself as the Studs Terkel of film in a moving documentary about the effects of gentrification in New York City’s Times Square. The cinematography and rhythmic narrative in “The Legend of Black Tom,” about a black champion boxer, purposefully masks the more chilling subtext that our construction of history from unreliable memories, especially with influences of nationalism and race can cause us to remember things that never even happened, as Phillip Hastings chronicles in “Reveries From Cistae Memoria.” When filmmaker Sara Zia Ebrahimi documents her travels to Iran to find herself, her origins, and a relationship with her father, she says “I found humans who were flawed like any others,” a reminder, especially with our current state of affairs, that the people we arm against us because of our foreign policy are really the people we become. Hope Tucker touches on this theme with her look into the historical context of a popular American holiday standard written as a “prayer for peace” during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Finally, Joel Fendelman’s “Band of Sisters” recounts the April 2004 pro-choice rally March for Women’s Lives in Washington, DC and captures the emotions of women and men on both sides with such immense poignancy and beauty that I have never been more proud to be a feminist.

While I found Jennifer Levonian’s “You, Starbucks” too short to adequately settle into before its abrupt end, the outstanding selection of Volume V, with a big turnout from Temple University folks, outshines any disappointment her oddly placed film carries and seems more like an unfortunate addendum than anything else. With beauty and poignancy, Volume V outdoes itself in a collection where every film is simply astounding.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, February 13th 2007

Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration

admin — Tue, 09 Jan 2007 05:17:00 +0000

By Deepa Fernandes

Seven Stories Press

In Targeted: Homeland Security and the Business of Immigration, Deepa Fernandes dispels the myths that immigration issues are primarily about post-9/11 homeland security by revealing their roots as economic, labor, environmental, and race issues.

Through historical analysis, interviews, and good old muckraking, Fernandes discusses how illegal immigrants do not often view themselves as lawbreakers coming to establish U.S. citizenship—though many falsely hope that hard work will result in the achievement of the American Dream—but are illegal workers crossing to serve as members of a legalized underclass of wage-earners who perform tasks critical to both the U.S. economy and the American way of life. To complicate matters, Fernandes also examines how legal immigrants to the U.S., including valid green card holders, students, contracted workers, asylum seekers, permanent residents, and military personnel are increasingly affected.

The parts of Fernandes’s book that stand out are the personal stories of various people trapped by a system the U.S. government and media claim is “protecting the homeland” and “securing the border” when the reality is quite different. For many immigrants finding work and establishing a life in the U.S. is an imperative only because of the destruction of their home-state economies by U.S. economic policy and legislation, such as NAFTA, which is inflicted upon other countries through globalization and global finance firms like the World Bank and International Monetary Fund (both of which are U.S. based).

Fernandes’s rake does get bogged down in the muck towards the end, especially in her extensive and often repetitious chapter on the effect the white supremacy movement has on immigration reform. However, she does receive kudos for refusing to let the Democrats off the hook. Nor does she let individual Americans escape culpability, as it is the American lifestyle - dependent on cheap goods, foods, and services - that fuels government and corporate exploitation of immigrant wage-labor. For the individuals caught by an unjust and racist system whose tales form the core of the book, the treatment of immigrants is not just a frustrating dance with bureaucracy, but is inhumane, a reality Fernandes targets with solid investigative journalism and sensitivity.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, January 9th 2007

We Walk Alone

admin — Thu, 28 Dec 2006 13:41:00 +0000

By Ann Aldrich

The Feminist Press

The 1950s saw a typhoon of publications and studies about homosexuality with a notable absence of studies on lesbian women. First published in 1955, We Walk Alone examines the state of women outside heterodoxy in the era of McCarthyism and Kinsey. A richly infused book weaving sixteen chapters of socio-psychological and historical analysis with opined commentary and stories from the rough, We Walk Alone is a legacy to the era of lesbian pulp fiction and agitation toward a more developed identity politic.

In the first chapter, titled “Who is She?”, Aldrich introduces lesbian stereotypes (many of which persist today) and returns later to explore how these stereotypes play out within lesbian subculture. Her psychoanalytic attempts to identify the root causes of lesbianism parallel a discussion of the lesbian in antiquity. However, Aldrich is at her best when she uses a combination of empirical research, personal narrative, and ethnography to discuss identity formation in lesbian women and nicely juxtaposes this to her explication of the varied legal statutes prohibiting “crimes against nature.” These crimes, she points out, are rarely inclusive of lesbian sexual acts (many of which remained in effect until 2003). Though Aldrich discusses medical attempts at “curing” homosexuality, she ends with a firm belief that “society ought not to condemn or pity the homosexual, but simply to understand her.”

We Walk Alone moves the reader quickly through its journalistic commentary and social analysis that more than forty years later still has relevancy to the space lesbian women have (not) received in public discourse. Although linguistically dated (Aldrich frequently refers to lesbianism as “inversion” and “abnormality” and references the “so-called bisexual”), the analysis of white, urban lesbian culture is a historical marker for what grew to be the Homophile Movement. Aldrich fails to nod even a little to race, but - while the text isn’t inclusive of lesbians of color - it does speak significantly to the intersections of class and gender. Though Aldrich frequently contradicts her own analysis the narrative voice is consistently solid, and the contradictions serve to enlighten readers of the differing debates around homosexuality at a time when the topic was just beginning to appear with greater frequency in the status-quo. Aldrich not only captures the urban lesbian’s life well but leaves us with an essential piece of socio-cultural history from an era that seems to have many echoes today.

Written by: Lacey Dunham, December 28th 2006