A kung fu fighter in a disco

Like Tom says, misogyny is heavily in action on #2 - the version of events where it's her sleazy ex selling off a video, which is the one you and I subscribe to, isn't necessarily what people think of: instead it's "she took part in a sex video (slut) and then took advantage of the notoriety she got off the back of it rather than being too ashamed to ever show her face in public again (like a nice girl would)".

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awesomewells.livejournal.com

The thing I am concerned about before weighing more heavily into this debate is how many blowjob clips I am going to have to negotiate whilst attempting to download this album.

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freakytigger.livejournal.com

I would recommend judicious use of track titles in yr search string, certainly.

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Like 'Screwed'

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But that's really horrible though.

(have been reading many articles about how feminism has regressed over the past decade, and many things are acceptable now which weren't in the 90s; i agree, and blame lads' mags)

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it's horrible but it's a very common reaction among both women and men!

My personal most saddenning thing about feminism these days is that so many young women say "i'm not a feminist or anything" when they so clearly have feminist values, because to them "feminist" means "horrible strident man-hater", and it seems like nothing can be done to turn them around on this.

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yes, i find i want to smack them around the head with a copy of the second sex. which is not altogether removed from what lads' mags readers wants to do but with a different instrument. UGH.

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juror8.livejournal.com

Isn't that a slightly loose retelling of the story? Two people have sex on camera (whilst the male partner is still married to someone else). The video is then sold to Red Light, in an amazingly well-timed PR coup for a "celebrity" nobody had actually heard of before, two weeks before her prime time TV show starts. Said celebrity then claims to have been drug raped during a lawsuit, until Red Light agree to pay her a percentage of the profits.

So the upshoot of this is either a) it's OK to lie about being raped if you think it will win you lots of money or b) it doesn't matter if a woman says "No" as long as you pay her afterwards.

Yay feminism.

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or c) if there's been a sex tape sold of you there is no way you will be able to claw back any kind of dignity from the situation so you might as well go all-out and try and get something; no matter what you do you will be branded a whore, what's the point in trying to be otherwise.

I've never heard your version of the events before: I have no idea what's 'true'.

I'm not sure what place 'yay feminism' has here? I suppose if there is ugly dishonesty here she'd be taking unfair advantage of the benefits feminism has brough for women but that's just what happens: the existence of benefit cheats doesn't morally invalidate the welfare state.

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But it doesn't make her particularly feminist, does it?

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Where am I supposed to have said that she's feminist?

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I think it's super-questionable to ascribe being repulsed by Paris Hilton to an anti-feminist stance, though. I think the repulsion specifically directed at her sexual behavior was more confirmed by the sex tape than actually generated by it, and Paris herself seems to be consciously marketing herself by embodying every negative stereotype possible--she's presenting herself as shallow, greedy, lazy, bitchy, and stupid, whether or not she actually is any of these things, and it seems actually fairly anti-feminist to cheer these things. (Plus the whole "apparently she's racist" thing.) I mean you can say "if a man was doing it people would cheer" but probably the same people who are cheering for her as it is.

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(I'm not saying any of this should change one's perception of the album of course since I'm a Good Poptimist, but I think it's wholly understandable why people of good character might not particularly like Paris Hilton.)

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juror8.livejournal.com

Well, it's not even "apparently". The video footage is out there.

Lex, what do you think of Paris referring to two black guys as "dumb niggers"?

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I don't, because I don't actually believe internet-spread rumours as a matter of course! Anyway dude I listen to homophobic dancehall with 0 qualms*, I am entirely botherd about popstars' morality.

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Dude, seriously, have either Lex or I ascribed being repulsed by PH to an anti-feminist stance? I know quite a few feminists who I can confidently predict would be repulsed by PH if they think about her at all. Also, ffs, misogyny is not anti-feminism, nor is anti-feminism necessarily misogyny.

My point is not that disliking PH cos of her behaviour post-sex video is inherently misogynistic, but that it can involve misogyny - does Dom's claim that she orchestrated the whole thing for exposure, then lied in order to get even more money from it, which attributes her with the lion's share of the power in this situation, mean that he's expressing his fear of potential female use of her sexuality for her own ends, or that he's celebrating her cunning at playing the gender-roles system? Or does it mean neither? That he heard it somewhere and thinks it plausible? That it's nothing to do with his attitudes to women, just to do with his attitudes to Paris Hilton? I'm not sitting here going "if you hate Paris you hate all women" because it's patently bollocks. But it's just as untrue to pretend that there isn't any misogyny involved in the reaction to Paris Hilton which boils down to "the correct reaction to the sex tape being sold would have been to never be seen in public again (never mind that she would still be known forever as 'that girl from the sex tape' no matter what she did), since she hasn't done that she is clearly shameless and A Bad Person who is probably to blame for it in the first place".

I'm confused, I'm afraid - Dom's version of events tells me that no-one knew about Paris before the sex tape which was two weeks before The Simple Life started airing; your version says that people were repulsed about her sexual behaviour before the sex tape appeared to confirm their repulsion, which implies either that she was known for her promiscuity or sexual adventuring (although i've heard the tape is very vanilla and she's mostly bored during?) or that only extreme prudes find the tape distasteful. Do we have a timeline anywhere that we can refer to?

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But none of those stereotypes are new! Plenty of popstars, AND their material, have been shown to be any to all of those things ever since the form began. And it's not limited to pop music either.

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But Paris wasn't a popstar before this--she was doing all these things as an actual human being without any legitimating entertainment-industry activities to justify all this. This is what people have such a hard time with, and it's a stance riddled with contradictions, but at the same time I think that's why you can't pretend this is Just Another Pop Album. If you're making music, there's something separate from the persona to enjoy, however flimsy, whereas with Paris prior to this, there was only the persona. And that's why I think it's pretty understandable for people to take the album as an extension of the persona and judge it based on that.

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