Grab the champagne glasses and pop open the bubbly: Dolly Parton now has a Ph.D.! On May 8, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, awarded Parton an honorary doctorate of humane and musical letters. And, the lucky graduates got to hear Parton perform two songs at the ceremony, “Rocky Top” and “Try” (which is more than I can say for any of the speakers who I had to sit through at my two graduations).
Over the past few years, I’ve become rather smitten with Dolly Parton. Whenever I felt overworked and under-appreciated during the years I spent working office jobs, I would come home, pop “9 to 5″ into the CD player, and dance my terrible mood away. And after watching The Best Little Whorehouse in Texas (which, by the way, is one of the most entertaining musicals you’ll ever see), I was officially hooked on Dolly. Then, about a month ago, I watched a 60 Minutes interview with Parton, and I was head over heels. This lady’s got a sassy sense of humour and incomparable charm.
There are many reasons to love and admire Tennessee’s sweetheart, including her numerous Grammy and Academy Awards, but Dolly gets top marks in my books for the following two.
First, I respect her openly discussing the various “nips and tucks” she’s had along the years. With so many celebrities often lying about or hiding their visits to the plastic surgeon, Parton is straight with her fans: her DD breasts, tiniest of tiny waists, and overall Barbie doll appearance have been crafted with the help of science. Personally, I find her disclosure very comforting because it reminds women that celebrities’ “perfect” bodies are fabricated.
Second, I am a huge fan of Dolly’s Imagination Library, which offers children registered in the program a book a month from birth to five years of age, in an attempt to foster literacy skills and a love of reading. The project began by serving children in Sevier County, Tennessee, and has now expanded to include much of the United States as well as Canada and the UK. How can you not love that?
So let’s all raise a glass to Dolly Parton for being an all-around awesome lady! Hooray, Dr. Dolly!
You’ve probably heard by now that Bea Arthur passed away on the weekend. Like so many other people, I was really sad to hear this news. I was actually once graced by breathing air in the vicinity of Bea Arthur. My friend Dan and I heard that she was going to be making an appearance at the 519 community centre in Toronto’s gay village, so we raced down to see her. I can’t remember what exactly the circumstances were–this must have been about five years ago–but I remember Bea Arthur sweeping past me, and I felt like I was in the presence of royalty. Sure, she was aging, but her height and that steely look in her eye were even more formidable in person than television conveys.
I’ve been thinking about what I want to say about her on Confabulous, but other people’s tributes are so much better than what I could say. Muriel Sims, who blogs over at In Other Words, wrote a lovely reflection:
I was a 12-year-old Black preadolescent growing up on the Southside of
Chicago when Bea Arthur first entered my life – 5-feet-9 and deep-throated when I was being socialized to squeaky-speak. I don’t recall making the racial distinction, after all, this was during the era when positive Black television characters, female or male remained rarities. I recall now that Maude Finlay had a maid, Florida Evans, a take-no-shit Black woman with challenges and troubles of her own that were later portrayed in the sitcom Good Times (which left me with an entirely different perception of Blacks, women and men).
Nonetheless, much of whom I am – an independent minded Black woman free to say and do as she pleases unrestricted most of the time by cultural and family dictates – is rooted in what I observed, and did not see on television. Maude – outspoken, politically liberal, three times divorced, an advocate of civil rights, and a woman’s right to choose – was my hero. By the time the show left the air in 1978, I had been married two years and was expecting my second child, but not before submitting to two abortions; mirroring in my own life Maude’s revolutionary decision to have an abortion in her late ’40s.
Seven years later, Bea Arthur re-entered my life as Dorothy Zbornak, the
middle-aged, divorced retiree sharing a home in Florida with her mother and two women of similar age in the television sitcom The Golden Girls. Rue McClanahan’s character Blanche was the epitome of middle-age sexual freedom and femininity, while Betty White’s character Rose Nylund was just plain funny to laugh with. Now 50 years old, I still dream of spending my last days in the intimate company of close platonic “girlfriends” comfortable enough with one another to candidly discuss politics, feminist theories, civil rights, sex and ex-lovers over cheesecake and coffee.
I also really liked Jezebel’s treatment with their “Bea Arthur’s Top 5 Contributions to Pop Culture.” It had some stuff in there that I didn’t know before (like her ambivalent relationship with feminism), and it included that incredible (and incredibly hilarious) song with Rock Hudson about drugs. Never seen it before? Let me indulge you:
Move over G.I. Joe: there’s a new kid in town, and her name is Michelle Obama. According to The Guardian, two Michelle Obama action figures are now on the market. (And, yes, of course, there’s a Barack one, too.) Michelle comes in two styles: in the first, she dons a yellow dress similar to the one she wore during her visit to Europe during the G20 London Summit; in the second, she wears a black dress that mirrors the one she wore in her official portrait.
Okay, so let’s be realistic here. The creation of a Michelle Obama action figure is not some sort of revolutionary move by the manufacturers, HeroBuilders.com. Undoubtedly, they’re in it for the profit. And, given that the same company also makes a Sarah Palin School Girl action figure, which I find strangely disturbing and sexist, we’re not talking about a company that’s trying to advance the feminist cause.
However, I do think the Michelle Obama action figures provide an interesting perspective on how America’s First Lady is being represented. As their name suggests, action figures are about action. They’re figures who do things; they possess a heroic capacity. In my mind, Michelle Obama has presented herself as a woman who acts. In particular, I was impressed by her recent development of a vegetable garden on the White House grounds, which proves how Obama is not only talking the sustainable living talk but is also setting an example for her daughters, American citizens, and the rest of the world.
It is quite heartening to see that a Michelle Obama action figure has been created, rather than a Michelle Obama Barbie doll (although I’m sure there’s one of those on the way, too). I mean, what does Barbie do, anyway, other than ride around in her pink Corvette? Go shopping? Change into cute outfits?
Also contrary to Barbie, the Michelle Obama action figure’s form is not a stereotypical, unreasonable representation of women’s bodies. She’s got the robust figure associated with action figures of either gender. And the lady’s got pipes, which, as we’ve previously noted here on Confabulous, makes the figure a somewhat accurate representation of Obama’s flesh-and-blood body.
So, while I don’t necessarily think we need to celebrate the commodification of Michelle Obama’s image, I do think that if she’s going to be packaged up and sold to the public, the action figure route is the way to go. Barbie, eat your heart out.
I had never heard of Norma Scarborough until last week, when I learned of her death. Even though I’ve identified as a feminist for a couple of decades now, I never knew of Norma’s dedication to the Canadian pro-choice movement. The following tribute to Norma was written by Louise Dulude (appearing here by permission).
This is my tribute to Norma Scarborough, who was the heart and soul of the Canadian pro-choice movement in its most important years. She was a founding member of CARAL (Canadian Abortion Rights Action League) and was its president from 1984 to 1992. It was in 1988 that the Supreme Court of Canada, thanks to Dr. Henry Morgentaler and Norma Scarborough, declared Canada’s abortion law unconstitutional because it violated women’s guarantees to “life, liberty, and security of the person” under the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
I had the honour and the pleasure to serve on the board of directors of NAC (National Action Committee on the Status of Women) with Norma for several years in the early 1980s. Since we were still in the heyday of the second wave of the women’s movement, all of us at NAC were extremely busy agitating for every women’s issue under the sun, which led to interminable near-monthly two-day weekend board meetings in Toronto where ALL policy papers had to be scrutinized and approved, funds had to be divided between our various events and causes, and questions and disputes arising from our staff or our member-groups had to be settled. By that time, NAC membership included between 400 and 500 women`s organizations with an impossible range of interests, ranging from the women’s wing of the communist party on the left to the Imperial Order of the Daughters of the Empire on the right.
Inevitably, many of these meetings were far from serene, but unless abortion was involved (there she was uncompromising), Norma was one of the few among us who always remained above the fray. She was almost always very calm and her remarkable common sense settled many of our disputes. It helped that Norma was big — tall and broad, with a deep voice. She had a way of looking you in the eye and asking slowly, “What do you mean by that exactly?” that had a calming effect on everyone. Norma could have been very intimidating if she had wanted but personal power didn`t interest her. What interested her was people and as a result, she was a very good listener. She also had a very good sense of humour and a booming laugh. I remember her in the living-room of my father-in-law, with whom I stayed in Toronto during those meetings, laughing uproriously at somebody’s wit. My father-in-law, who was in his 90s, was so taken with Norma that he asked me news of her for years thereafter.
Once, I asked Norma why she cared so much about women’s right to an abortion. She told me that in the 1940s, when she was in the Canadian Women’s Army Corps, one day she came back to the barracks and found a colleague moaning in bed. There was blood everywhere but the woman hadn’t summoned help because she was afraid to be punished because she had had an illegal abortion. Norma told me that the woman bled to death. She never forgot it. Asked later to help start a movement to legalize abortion, she didn’t hesitate for a minute before saying “yes.”
Sharon McIvor, a member of the Lower Nicola Band of British Columbia and a practicing lawyer, lost her Indian status when she married a non-Aboriginal man. She fought for 20 years so that her son could pass on Indian status to his children, something he would have been able to do had his father–instead of his mother–been Aboriginal.
This week, the Court unanimously decided that the Indian Act violates equality provisions of the Charter of Rights, discriminating against some women and their children when it comes to conferring Indian status. The Court gave the federal government a year to amend the offending sections of the Act. The 1985 amendments to the Indian Act, that were supposed to make the Act conform to the Canadian Charter, actually discriminate against some Aboriginals on the basis of sex. It is not yet known if this recent decision will be appealed by the governments.
Wow. This is a really important victory for both Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal Canadian women, because it gets at a core nugget of paternalism that lay at the heart of the original 1985 amendments to the Indian Act. Yahoo for progress!
Congratulations to these women on their achievements.
An aside: it’s sad that women are still having “firsts” (and have barely moved to–or remain stalled at–”seconds” or “thirds”) in so many fields. What a strong argument that the need for conscious, engaged feminist activism remains ongoing.
Shannon the Movie Moxie has alerted me to Entertainment Weekly’s list of the “20 All-Time Coolest Heroes in Pop Culture.” Five female characters make the list, and five out of the 20 ain’t bad–but it ain’t great, either. On the chart are Sidney Bristow (Jennifer Garner’s character on Alias), Foxy Brown (Pam Grier of the eponymous film), Nancy Drew, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Ellen Ripley (Sigourney Weaver, of course, of the Alien films). These are all superlative choices, and it’s great to see these women up there with Superman, Batman, Spiderman, Jack Bauer and Dirty Harry.
Is there a shortage of cool women in popular culture (and by “popular culture,” the editors seem to mean “fictional characters primarily from film and television, plus Atticus Finch and Nancy Drew”), so much so that they only represent 25% of the people on EW’s list? Or did the list fail to acknowledge some of the coolest women?
I would have liked to have seen Marge Gunderson, Frances McDormand’s character from Fargo on the list. I never tire of watching the visibly pregnant Marge solve crimes while keeping her cool. Marge Gunderson is arguably one of the great cinematic heroes of all time. And it goes without saying that Grace Park, Katee Sackhoff and Mary McDonnell’s Boomer, Starbuck and Laura Roslyn from BSG deserve serious consideration (I am blind with bias here, I am sure).
Who do you think deserves to be on the list of coolest heroes in pop culture?
Whenever I’m feeling down about the state of women and girls in North America, I go on over to Amy Poehler’s project, Smart Girls at the Party. The only thing I don’t like about the site is the fact that I didn’t come up with it myself. Smart Girls features conversations with Amy and her friends with girls who are outstanding just because they are themselves. I don’t know where they get these girls from, but they are pretty rad. I finally got around to watching Amy’s conversation with Ruby, and I feel like this is a clip I could just watch again and again and again.
Grab the champagne glasses and pop open the bubbly: Dolly Parton now has a Ph.D.! On May 8, the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, awarded Parton an honorary doctorate of humane and musical letters. And, the lucky graduates got to hear Parton perform two songs at the ceremony, “Rocky Top” and “Try” (which is more than I can say for any of the speakers who I had to sit through at my two graduations).
Move over G.I. Joe: there’s a new kid in town, and her name is Michelle Obama. According to 
Team Canada 
Confabulous badges!
