A guest post by Kate. Kate is a freelance writer and full-time law student. Follow her @itscompliKATEd on Twitter.

Superbowl ads are sexist. This is well trod ground: Marketers objectify women and play up stereotypes in order to sell things to (heterosexual) men. But we knew this year was going to be special. This year there was going to be some extra anti-feminist flavor. This year, there was going to be Tim Tebow.

We’ll come back to Tim and his anti-choice ad in a second. But for now, let’s take a look at the companies that decided that it would be a great idea to isolate half the population from their consumer base.
There were fewer half-naked women and dick jokes this year. Instead, the 2010 Superbowl Ad Mantra seemed to have one common theme: “Feeling castrated? . . . by women? Man up.”

Dodge Charger: Man’s Last Stand

A male voice-over starts with a first person monologue of the mundane life of the American male (“I will walk the dog, I will have fruit for breakfast”), as the ad cuts to shots of men staring blankly, blinking at the camera.

“Yeah, life is boring,” you think, “a car could fix that.” But then there’s an eerie crescendo, and it becomes clear that this voice isn’t just listing his gripes with the world, he’s listing his gripes with a person — and not just any person, a woman: “I will say yes, when you want me to say yes . . .I will take your call, I will listen to your opinion of my friends. . . I will be civil to your mother.” Simultaneously the voice-over seems to be getting angrier as the shots get tighter, finally focusing on the twitching eyes of a man in a suit. “Because I do these things, I will drive the car I want to drive.”

The ad is actually frightening. Not only because the voice-over gets more incensed as the tasks get more mundane (putting your underwear in a hamper? you mean being an adult? you think you deserve a car for that?), but because it’s maybe the most explicit misogyny I’ve ever seen in a Superbowl ad. “Feeling emasculated by your wife?” the ad seems to be saying. “Reaching your boiling point? We know you probably want to hit her, but buy a car instead.”

Oh, and did I mention that a television serial-killer (Michael Hall who plays Dexter) does the voice-over? That’s not creepy or violence promoting at all.

Dockers: Men Without Pants

The first-wave feminist symbolism is almost too much. Literally pants-less men parade across a field singing, “I wear no pants,” seemingly happy until a baritone voice-over interrupts: “Calling all men. It’s time to wear the pants.” Man-up moment #2.

Flo-TV: Spine Removal

A man stands in a lingerie store draped in bras (explain to me why that’s so bad for a presumably heterosexual male?) while the voice-over begins with an “injury report” on Jason whose “girlfriend has removed his spine.” Nice.

Oddly, Jason seems perfectly happy to be shopping with his girlfriend. But he shouldn’t be, the pitch man suggests and closes with the admonishment : “Change out of that skirt, Jason.” Apparently, if you’re not actively feeling emasculated by women, you should be.

Man-up moment #3.

Dove: Men’s Lotion

Of all the man-up ads, this one is perhaps the least offensive, but it still carries the theme. A male voice lists the life of a man from birth to adulthood all to the tune of the William Tell overture — in what seems to be a gentler version of the Dodge Charger ad. It starts with climbing ropes in gym class and ends with changing flat tires in the rain while your family waits in the car.

As one Tweeter put it: “Have you seen this Dove for men ad? It’s pretty horrible. Basically life for man = work, meet woman, have kids, DOVE FOR MEN!”

Focus on the Family : Tim Tebow

I’m going to be honest: it didn’t seem that bad and maybe that’s what was so terrifying about it. I mean if I didn’t know the story behind the ad in the first place, or what Focus on the Family was, I’d be a little confused: “What the hell is she talking about? What’s she talking about ‘I can remember so many times when I almost lost it’ and ‘I still worry about his health’ on a Superbowl ad for?”

And maybe that’s the idea — because then a web address for “the full Tebow story” pops up at the end.

Oh, and “Timmy” tackles his mom in the middle. Funny, that’s just what *I* wanted to do.

But there’s a silver lining to this year’s ads: Watching these spots you’d think women never buy pants, cars or beer. You’d also think having ads with men complaining about being under the thumb of women made men want to buy your stuff. But you’d be wrong — at least according to the live voting at Hulu’s Adzone.

Throughout today’s game, Hulu has been posting the ads to its page. There, viewers can watch the ads and vote whether they like or dislike the ads. But here’s what makes this awesome: Hulu lets you see how other people voted, and break down the voting by demographic (gender, age, location).

And here’s what men and women are saying: they don’t like the sexist ads. Among men of all age groups and locations, the Tim Tebow mom-tackle; the Dockers’ men-should-wear-the-pants ad and the Dodge Charger misogyny rant were in the top five least liked ads. That’s right, apparently men don’t like being told how to be men.

The ads men did like? Google’s romantic “Search-On” ad was at the top, followed by Doritos “House Rules” spot, where a little boy tells his mom’s gentleman caller to respect his Doritos and his mom.

Maybe, just maybe, we’re making some progress after all.

CNN contributor Erick Erickson is right — watching Tim Tebow tackle his mom during a Super Bowl commercial last night really inspired me to give up the whole thinking-thoughts thing and get back in the kitchen. It’s a shame I’m too ugly to get a date, because now I have all of this food and no one to give it to. How many brownies do you think 14 cats can eat?

A guest post by Renee at Womanist Musings; read the original over there as well.

This weekend Focus on the Family Plans plans on running a Pro-Life advertisement during the super bowl. From the moment that this was discovered, it received national attention. Groups like NOW and the feminist blogosphere waged a real effort to challenge this threat to women’s reproductive rights. The Center for Reproductive Rights wrote a letter to CBS pointing out that Ms. Tebow lived in the Philippines at the time of her supposed choice and therefore her only real option was to have the baby because abortion was and still is illegal there.

At the same time that this battle is being waged, another is going quite unnoticed. An anti-abortion group in Atlanta is targeting Black women by putting up billboards stating that Black children are an endangered species.

As proof of this claim they offer the fact that Blacks account for 30% of the general population and 56% of the abortions. When we consider the fact that Black children are universally devalued, this campaign has the possibility of being really effective. Over the last two years campaigns specifically targeting the ability of Black women to choose have been on the rise and yet there has been little to no commentary from White feminists regarding this issue and so I ask, whose reproductive rights matter?

These organizations repeatedly point to the fact that Margaret Sanger was a eugenicist and it seems that rather than countering this claim with the fact that Faye Wattleton, an African American woman was president of Planned Parenthood from 1978–1992, there has been a resounding silence. Is Planned Parenthood suddenly not worth defending when it is about Black women having abortions? It seems to me that highlighting a former Black president would go a long way to fighting the claims of racism.

How about the fact that Black women are impoverished due to racism and sexism? We already know that a woman living alone with a child is more likely to be poor and therefore when we factor in racism, it is quite obvious that poverty would increase. Would it really be so hard to suggest that part of the reason that the rate of abortion is so high is because Black women are already aware of the herculean task and are simply opting out due to a lack of community support and government funding?

Another factor to consider is education. The way to stop abortion is not by outlawing it but by ensuring that sex education is offered from an early age. We already know that schools which are located in impoverished neighbourhoods fall short in terms of education. Is it not possible to suggest a co-relation between this fact and a lack of good sex education?

I do understand that some White women may be reticent to enter this debate because it is framed as saving a Black child, who we know to be universally undereducated and invisible. Even when Black women place their children for adoption, they are less likely to be adopted and so it would appear that Black women are really reduced to two choices, abort or raise the child themselves. Even if we validate that point, there is still the issue of placing a priority on women’s agency when it comes to reproductive rights. We do not have the right to question these women on their decisions. No one chooses to abort without putting great thought into the matter and if we truly respect the right to choose, it must apply to ALL women.

Finally, as scared as White women may be to interact because of the racial undertones of this argument, I must ask don’t Black women matter? All of these campaigns revolve around saving the Black child and this is predicated on the idea that the child is infinitely more valuable than the mother. If abortion were to be outlawed tomorrow, more children may indeed be born, however you would also see a rise in the deaths of Black women due to back alley abortions. The Black woman has a right to life and this must be forcefully asserted.

I will continue to blog about this issue because I believe that choice applies to all women but I must ask where are the voices of my white sisters in arms? If you truly believe in choice, it is irresponsible to ignore the ways in which Black women’s reproductive rights are increasingly being challenged. The issue is that you either do not care enough to sound the battle alarm or that race is once again a sphere in which you are unwilling to engage because of a desire to center the concerns of White women. Here’s an idea for you to chew on, if abortion was ever revoked it wouldn’t apply solely to Black women, it would restrict your rights as well. I suppose that some of you may have the capitol to travel to Canada or Mexico to assert your choice, but invariably some of you would find yourselves in the same alley as a Black woman.

Written something good this week? Leave a link and a short description in the comments. Link to a specific post, not your entire blog.

In January, a storm blew up over cover art for new young adult novel Magic Under Glass by Jaclyn Dolamore. I haven’t read the book, so I’ll not summarise it, but you can read about it if you click through to the author’s website. The book’s main character, Nimira, is explicitly described in non-white terms – ‘dark,’ ‘brown skin’ – as you can read over at Charlotte’s Library. Here’s what was released as the US/Canada cover.

As you can imagine, lots of people are incensed that a person we’re clearly meant to read as white is featured on the cover of that uncommon thing, a YA book about a person of colour. There’s now a statement from Bloomsbury on the book’s page on Bloomsbury’s website (via Shelf Life). ‘Bloomsbury is ceasing to supply copies of the US edition of Magic Under Glass. The jacket design has caused offense and we apologize for our mistake. Copies of the book with a new jacket design will be available shortly.’ As is proper. There’s no word yet on what the new cover will look like. By way of comparison, I’ve included a copy of the UK cover to the right.

What makes this worse is that it follows on from Bloomsbury doing the same thing last year. The main character in Justine Larbalestier’s Liar, Micah, is a young black woman. The original US cover featured a young woman who – well, I won’t make assumptions as to the model’s racial identity, so again I’ll just say that she certainly has features we’re meant to associate with white people, and we’re meant to read her as white. This would be bad enough in general, but it’s particularly horrible when you consider the plot of the book. Micah is, well, a liar, particularly with regards to herself and life. You’re supposed to spend the book trying to figure out what’s really going on, separating out Micah’s truths from her lies. But, as Larbalestier says on her blog post on the subject:

I worked very hard to make sure that the fundamentals of who Micah is were believable: that she’s a girl, that she’s a teenager, that she’s black, that she’s USian. One of the most upsetting impacts of the cover is that it’s led readers to question everything about Micah: If she doesn’t look anything like the girl on the cover maybe nothing she says is true. At which point the entire book, and all my hard work, crumbles.

Here’s what Bloomsbury said in a statement to Publisher’s Weekly: ‘We regret that our original creative direction for Liar—which was intended to symbolically reflect the narrator’s complex psychological makeup—has been interpreted by some as a calculated decision to mask the character’s ethnicity’. Firstly, their “creative decision” hugely undermined the decisions of the person whose creative work they’re responsible for. Secondly, they’re not apologising for their blatantly racist actions, only for people’s interpretations. It’s the classic deflective non-apology; “we’re sorry we hurt your feelings, please go away now”. Thirdly, it does not matter whether the masking of Micah’s ethnicity was intended or not. What matters is that it happened, it affected people, because it’s part of a crushing system of racism. What matters is that it told a whole lot of young women of colour that people like them are not good enough to be worthy of representation. Now, I don’t know if Bloomsbury are telling the truth about the cover being a conscious creative decision – I wouldn’t put it past them to have not thought it through properly – but if it is, it is hugely inappropriate, especially in the context of the heavily white publishing industry, and hurtful to non-white readers. Happily, they replaced it with the cover to your right.

The thing about Justine Larbalestier, who is white, is that she is pretty hardcore about decentring whiteness in her work, and she has long had my respect for that. (In fact, she has yet to publish a single book with a white protagonist; check out Why My Protags Aren’t White.) It must have been devastating to have had her hard and valuable work undermined in this way. Before I go on, I must make my recommendation for Liar, it’s excellent. I of course bought a copy with the Australian cover, which I think looks rather good.

But this isn’t just about book covers, not just about who is represented in a visual sense. There is a wider context of the (lack of) space allowed non-whiteness, of permitting only some of us in and on problematic terms. Western writing is being translated and dominating other markets even as writers in those regions are struggling to get a foot in the door. In white Western countries, non-white writers have a hard time getting published – unless their background/culture/history is the publishing industry’s trendy flavour of the month. Moving wider, even where our stories aren’t being twisted and appropriated for white consumption, we’re not allowed stories of our own. Having to learn and fit ourselves along white ways of thinking, doing and being means that we’ve less of our own. When you have to know white thought, myths, story blocks – because that’s what you were allowed access to, because you’ve been taught white cultures are superior – they take over your imagination. (If you haven’t read deepad’s I Didn’t Dream of Dragons, you must, you must.) I myself was fortunate enough to have access to stories from many cultures as a child, but I still gravitated to white stories as superior.

But let’s pull back to YA, because these book covers point to a specific problem with the genre. I’ve looked around many a bookshop YA section to see… whiteness. In the authorship, on the covers, in the stories. A good portion of young adult fiction is about addressing the issues involved in growing up in accessible and on teenage terms. I’ve read a lot of YA, but I rarely read anything in which non-white characters constitute anything more than one-dimensional and secondary presence. It’s not really about centring young adult experience. It’s about centring white adults’ perceptions of white young adult experience. It’s not only alienating, it’s denying non-white youth the same means of working life out as our white counterparts.

Books are precious, they’ve been heavensent for me. Books can change your life, change your worldview, change something of your very self. These constant little jabs of alienation tell non-white youth that the sort of thought provocation and lazy silly Sundays and transcendental change books can provide are not for us. These things are for the white kids, the kids important enough to get in the books. Not for us the dreams books foster.

The problems with the Magic Under Glass and Liar covers in particular may be over, but there’s a whole industry left to go. Let’s keep up the pressure so young people of colour can be that much more free in their imaginations and inner lives.

Lots and lots of people have said this, so I’m just repeating here: I don’t think it’s a good idea to boycott Bloomsbury and other publishing houses that pull this crap. Because in doing so, you’re harming the writers who are trying to represent POC in their novels, and you’re reinforcing the idea that people won’t buy books that feature non-white people – or the trope that non-white people don’t buy books. Instead, support books with non-white authorship, non-white covers, non-white stories: borrow them from libraries and ask for more, buy them if you can or recommend favourites to other people. It’s these writers who are trying to fold whiteness back from our imaginations, so let’s help them out and show them what we’ve got.

If you would like to contact Bloomsbury USA, here are the details you need thanks to Tami:

Bloomsbury Publishing

Distributed by Macmillan
175 Fifth Avenue

New York, NY, USA, 10010
marketing: marketing@bloomsburyusa.com

publicity: publicity.adult@bloomsburyusa.com

F: (212) 780-0115 or (212) 982-2837

Related reading:
Publisher whitens another heroine of color by Kate Harding at Broadsheet.
Kids of Color and the New American Whitewashing by Colleen Mondor at Bookslut.
An Open Letter to Bloomsbury Kids USA. Other Publishing Houses Take Note by Ari at Reading in Color (Ari’s a teenager reviewing POC-centred YA, so go check it out!)

You all have seen this, right?

Enjoy. Not exactly a music video, but I think better.

Now you know the deal — set your MP3 player to shuffle, and post the first ten songs that come up.

1. Spoon – Mystery Zone
2. Timbaland and Magoo – Up Jumps Da Boogie
3. Rhett Miller – Hover
4. Carmen Rizzo feat. Deer Tracks - Shadows Ramin Sakurai (SBL) Remix
5. Maxwell – Get to Know Ya
6. Feist – Mushaboom
7. Lyle Lovett – My Baby Don’t Tolerate
8. Des Ark – Jesus Loves You (But Yr Still Coming Home With Me Tonight)
9. Santogold vs. Switch and FreQ Nasty – Creator
10. Lykke Li – Time Flies

A recent study says it does. I deconstruct it over at the Guardian.

Scott Fujita. I mean, damn — an outspoken, feminist, gay-rights supporting dude who loves his grandma? Chose to play in New Orleans after Katrina, and gives a lot back to his adopted city? And he sounds pretty humble?

Here’s what he told the New York Times about the anti-choice Tebow ad:

Fujita has spoken out before in favor of abortion rights and gay rights.

“It’s just me standing up for equal rights,” Fujita said. “It’s not that courageous to have an opinion if you think it’s the right thing and you believe it wholeheartedly.”

The Tebow ad suggests that Tebow’s mother was advised about having an abortion when she was pregnant with him, but chose instead to give birth.

The issue resonates with Fujita because he was adopted, and Fujita said he respected Tebow for standing up for what he believed in.

“The idea of focusing on the family — who wouldn’t agree with that?” Fujita said. “But the means of doing so, he and I might not see eye to eye all the way.”

When Fujita was born in 1979, his biological mother, he said, was in her teens and she gave him up for adoption because she did not have the means to raise a child.

“I’m just so thankful she had the courage and the support system to be able to carry out the pregnancy,” Fujita said. “I wouldn’t expect that of everybody.”

He and his wife have twin daughters. Those girls sound like they’re going to be raised by a great dad.

Read the whole Reasons to Love Scott list over at Jezebel.

This made me laugh, via my sister’s g-chat status:

From Married to the Sea.