Weekly Round Up: Interwebs Reading List

This week I read some spectacular articles on the interwebs and so I’m summing up my favs for you. If you have free time, read these. If you have no free time, make some– this business is important!

1. The Walter White Sliding Scale of Sympathetic Villainy and the Tony Soprano Litmus Test for Morally Dubious Main Characters

What: A no-frills, two question test to discover whether or not you need to examine your gender bullshit.

Why: Affirmation that what I’ve been saying about Cersei Lannister has been right all along (refresher: public reception to her character is colored by her gender).

Best Quote: “If you find yourself unable to sympathize with or relate to the humanity of a female character despite her wrongdoing and she’s not making crystal meth, you need to examine your gender bullshit.”

2. All LinkedIn With Nowhere to Go

What: Self-marketing truisms articulated (and then deconstructed) by the high-minded folks at the Baffler.

Why: Do you really need an excuse to read The Baffler? Fine. Because sometimes it feels nice to read an article written above an 8th grade reading level. Also because Anne Friedman invented the word preachments.

Best Quote: “To understand the appeal of the site, it’s necessary to reach back to the beginnings of the modern American gospel of success. The roots of the LinkedIn vision of prosperity-through-connectivity lie in the circular preachments of the positive-thinking industry, a singularly American gloss on the sunny doctrine of achieving personal success through inoffensive sociability.”

3. The Intern Ceiling

What: A straight up take down of Lean In and start up/non profit vagueries.

Why: Because Facebook feminism is a thing, and theorizing feminists need to start paying attention to it. Also, please note the hopefully-intentional-play-on-the-company-name in the quote below.

Best Quote: “The Lean In foundation, a nonprofit, is leaning on and exploiting these potential interns, ignoring the fact that, historically, “women’s work” has rarely been paid. . . . But errand running is better than ironing, right?”

4. “Star Trek Into Darkness”: Too Many D*cks on the Dance Floor

What: A neat analysis of gender representation in Star Trek: Into Darkness.

Why: The Star Trek writer’s recent screw up led me on a breadcrumb trail to this articulate article written in May about why sexism is so. darn. irritating. Plus, comes complete with an exciting techno video. What’s not to love?

Best Quote: “I actually understand a lack of interest in adding women to the core crew of the Enterprise. Those roles are already filled: by Kirk, Spock, Bones, and the rest. But when it comes to side characters and antagonists, almost every single one is male, for no discernible reason. At one point, we see one of the main villains in the captain’s chair of a ship that seems to be crewed entirely by men. Earlier, Kirk, Spock and Uhura are confronted by a platoon of Klingons—all apparently male as well. Are we expected to believe that a mysterious plague has wiped out 75% of the women in the galaxy? Throw me a bone, here.”

BONUS: Extra Googling after the article leads you to this PR gem of a slip up: Jon Stewart Interviews J.J Abrams

Hemingway, Plath, and Fear

Today, the Sociological Cinema published a quote from Sylvia Plath.

 “Being born a woman is an awful tragedy… Yes, my consuming desire to mingle with road crews, sailors and soldiers, bar room regulars – to be a part of a scene, anonymous, listening, recording – all is spoiled by the fact that I am a girl, a female always in danger of assault and battery. My consuming interest in men and their lives is often misconstrued as a desire to seduce them, or as an invitation to intimacy. Yet, God, I want to talk to everybody I can as deeply as I can. I want to be able to sleep in an open field, to travel west, to walk freely at night…”

Although I’ve never read anything by Plath aside from the odd assortment of poems (The Bell Jar is on my to-read shelf, okay?), her sentiment struck a chord for me, a burgeoning writer who once longed for the safety of masculinity.

In high school and part of college, Hemingway was my favorite novelist (I would be ashamed, but I’m pretty sure 1 in 3 English majors can say this). His concentrated masculinity, his stark refusal to acknowledge any kind of emotion, his cool drinks consumed in warm climates in the face of elephants, lions, and bulls…. all of this, to me, spoke of life. I wanted to live life like Hemingway, not Ernesta Hemingway.

You’re Missing the Point: Hannah’s Journey to Sexual Empowerment in HBO’s Girls

Perhaps the least newsworthy news is that Lena Dunham is uncompromising in her refusal to cover up her body on the HBO show Girls, despite the cries, and the cries, and the cries of critics. While she has been called “sloppy,” a “hot mess,” and even a “blobby,” no one has yet succeeded in getting Dunham to be demure. She responds to critics with on-point cultural criticism and defiance, arguing that all the noise amounts to just one question:

‘Why did you all make us look at your thighs?’ My response is, get used to it because I am going to live to be 100, and I am going to show my thighs every day till I die.”

Dunham’s consistent message has been that there is nothing wrong with her body, and that she reflects the majority of Americans with less than Photoshop-perfect physiques.