Miley Cyrus, Naked

I heard about Disney's newest "scandal" involving Miley Cyrus this morning; these are two of the photos taken that are being analyzed (or perhaps more aptly, devoured) on the top morning news programs. They were taken by Vanity Fair and I've heard every label given to them from "raunchy" to "pornographic" to "shameful" to "disturbing." What made me want to write about them, though, was the way people are "handling" them. I watched two so-called family experts on the Today Show deal with how to talk to your children about the uncomfortable combination of Disney wholesomeness and sexuality. To me, they missed the potential of what could have been a really interesting conversation.

You see, everyone is highlighting the shame that Cyrus should feel about "giving into the temptation that Hollywood provides." They're emphasizing her apology and how disappointed mothers of young children are in the new idol. The "experts" I saw this morning said they were going to rush home and talk to their children about how peer pressure can get the worst of anyone, "even celebrities." But I think this is really about 2 other, much more complex (and interesting) topics. First of all, what we're really talking about is adolescent sexuality. Miley Cyrus is 15 years old; she's not 8. And, let's be clear, she's not naked in either of these photographs, nor were they taken at some seedy dive before she became famous. But the sensual look she's throwing over her shoulder and the skin that she's given you permission to look at suggests what anxious young moms are really worried about: she's in charge of her own sexuality. She's given you access to a body she's covered with bright colors and Disney goodness up to this point. And that makes people nervous.

The other thing that's making people upset, really, underneath all of this talk about corrupting young children, stems from an inability (or perhaps a refusal) to see the shots as art. Vanity Fair is and always has been a master at straddling the line between popular news and artistic experimentation. The photographer Annie Leibovitz is known for striking depictions of celebrities; when Cyrus saw the digital photos before they were published, she commented on how "artsy" she thought they looked -- a comment she has now been forced to rescind.

So, really, if we want to talk about the scandal in a productive way, it's perhaps more useful to skip over chiding what so many see as yet another morally depraved celebrity and move instead to a more interesting discussion. When is it OK for a child to embrace her sexuality and, really, can a 15-year-old be discussed as a child? At what point does a daughter begin becoming a woman? Aren't most women playing multiple roles their entire lives -- mother, lover, wife, daughter, sister? Isn't Cyrus, then, just beginning to embrace what so-called "adult" women must balance for the rest of their lives? And what divides art from pornography, if anything? If Cyrus were unknown and the photograph where her back was exposed were a painting, it would probably be hailed the world over; should the nation's idolatry of her be recognized as the nation's problem and not her own?

The Sabbath

Have you ever wondered which Christian felt it was a good idea to put the Sabbath on Sunday? It hasn't always been on a Sunday, of course -- the Christian calendar is largely an arbitrary one, usually arranged to eclipse the pagan holidays it was, at one time, trying to create (you remember learning that Christ wasn't born in December and that the time of Resurrection had nothing to do with the pagan fertility rites that remain in our Easter eggs, right?). No one has ever properly explained to me how we moved away from the Sabbath as a holy day of rest and into the Sabbath as a day to stuff full of activities from dawn until dusk. Even the Puritans, a fairly industrious group of Americans since they believed idleness led to sinfulness, rested on the Sabbath. I say this because it is raining today, a Sunday, and the world outside is heavy with dark clouds and beautiful as a backdrop to a green Mississippi. Oh, I know I can't fight aeons of tradition and I'm not saying I'm giving up attending worship services. It's just that there's something sacred that comes from stillness.

A New Dawn, a New Day

It's a good day to be alive! For the first night in -- I really cannot remember when -- my insomnia could not get the best of me. My new weapon of choice? Nope -- no chemicals or new age music. A gigantic bed and, finally, a mattress I did not pull from the top shelf at Sam's Club. I know, this isn't the most interesting thing I could share with you, but if you've ever been an insomniac, you know that a decent night's sleep makes you feel like you could conquer the world. Bring it on, Thursday.

St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves

I haven't yet recommended books to anyone through my blog because I assume everyone has varying tastes. But this one is different. This one appeals to anyone who loves a story. St Lucy's Home for Girls Raised by Wolves is a collection of short stories by Karen Russell, only 25 years old and already (as one reviewer said) "on fire." Here's an excerpt from one of the stories entitled "the Star-Gazer's Log of Summer-Time Crime":

"Petey's not particularly nimble, but he sure is quick. I'm not surprised. The formula bubbles up unbidden in my brain: Momentum = mass X velocity. And Petey is a sandy dervish of a man, soft-bellied, at least twice my height.
He is also twinkling like a star.
When I get closer, I find out why. Somebody has tied a trash-can lid to Petey's chest with crisscrossed strings of Xmas lights. It's been buffed to an impressive sheen."

The star-gazer story recalls a little boy, a "science nerd" by his own definition, who meets a mentally challenged albino on a beach along with the school bully and his girlfriend, who rope the star-gazer into tricking baby sea turtles to climb into a burlap sack so that they can say they have become criminals (it's against the law to violate a sea turtle's nest). The other stories are equally strange; the one I finished last night was about a 19th century minotaur with a human family who pulls their wagon across the desert to the West in a (vain) search for free land. The first story in the collection recalls two orphaned (or abandoned? I'm not sure) children living on an alligator farm in Louisiana who are separated by the sister's schizophrenia, a disease which convinces her to run away into the marsh with an invisible boyfriend.

And although all of them, as you can probably tell, have a penchant for the "strange," they are surprisingly, equally, human. Each character struggles with something just recognizable enough that, although the main character may have horns or talks to ghosts who aren't there, you could almost swear this exact scenario had once happened to you.

Anniversary

As of 4/20/2008, Andrew and I have been married for 6 years and together for 8. Many thanks to my husband for putting up with idiosyncrasies, graduate school, and, well, all that comes with living with me.

All Hail the Queen of the Bluestockings

Meet Anne Macvicar Grant. Well, technically you can't meet her because she's been dead for about 200 years, but I'll do my best to introduce you to her. (As you're all probably sick of hearing) I write about women's letters, and I'm about to start writing my 3rd chapter, which is about women who wrote letters about the natural world -- that is, plants, stars, comets, animals, and unidentifiable phenomena. Anne Macvicar Grant is the newest addition to my project, and she's a fascinating woman.

She was born in Glasgow, Scotland so technically has no place in an American studies project except that she moved to America (specifically, to Albany, New York) with her father, who was a representative to the British military, in 1758 and she took to the place immediately.
She lived here from age 3 to 13 and received such an education and had such an appetite for reading that she was known as Queen of the Bluestockings. Bluestocking women were the educated elite, often ridiculed for what they knew and how they challenged typical misogynist thought in the 18th century.

During the American Revolution, she and her family had to leave the US despite owning much land in Vermont because they were loyalists to the British throne; her return to the Highlands in Scotland provided fodder for a widely-circulated book that she later wrote called Letters from the Mountains which blends the genres of travel narrative, autobiography, naturalist musings, and epistolarity (letter-writing). Interestingly enough (at least, to me), she also published a memoir that she called Memoirs of an American Lady, indicating that she identified, not with the place of her birth, but the place of her adolescence. Adding her to my project will certainly call into question the confines of what it meant to be a (British-Scottish-Loyalist) American in the late 18th century. Consider yourself, as I do, only nominally introduced.

Eavesdropping on Evangelists

I have a dissertation fellowship, which means I'm privileged to work from anywhere my laptop can take me. This usually means libraries, coffee shops, and, if I'm lucky, city parks. In my time in these places, I've overheard some very strange things -- you wouldn't imagine some of the stuff that goes on outside of your cubicle during the day -- and I thought I'd share my top three favorites.

The first happened in the Tupelo library upstairs in a neglected part of the city library, where the building stores antique furniture and collectible books stored in glass cases. I had wedged myself into a corner in an attempt to hide and get some work done on the dissertation when the peace and furniture dust were interrupted by the approach of two women: one, a young attorney representing a local firm, and the other, an older, perhaps retired woman looking besmirched but reluctantly willing to be there. They sat in a position where they could not see me, but I could hear everything. The attorney began the interview -- I really thought she was dictating her will or something -- but it got strange as it progressed. It went something like this:

"Where were you when you when Mrs. ____ passed away?"
Elderly-looking garden-club lady: "By her bedside. I was her nurse."
"Did you administer any medicines to her that day?"
"Only those prescribed to her."
"Are you aware that her daughters think you poisoned her?"
"I am."
"Did you?"
"I did not."
"Do you believe in euthanasia?"
"I believe people have the right to die or live as they see fit."
"Do you believe you should be the one to determine if they should die or live?"
"No. I am a nurse. I want them to live."
"Did you poison Mrs. _____?"
"I did not."
"Why would her daughters think so?"
"Because I am their stepmother, and I married their dad. They've hated me since the beginning of the marriage. They didn't trust me with their mother."

So that was odd. I do wonder what happened to her. Do you think the garden-lady went to jail? Why would her husband let her take care of his ex-wife? And why would she do it? The whole situation seemed bizarre. And the woman seemed completely, unflappably calm.

The second odd thing I heard was at my typical visit to Starbucks, which I go to once a week to do my work. This story also involves an attorney and her client. The conversation went something like this:

Attorney: "You do know you'll have to translate everything I say into Arabic or whatever language it is you people speak. Everything. Your wife must know everything I say."
Man: "Yes."
Attorney: "I don't think this procedure will be difficult. Is she a terrorist?"
Man: "No."
Attorney: "Is she related to a terrorist? Has she ever been around terrorists? How long did she live in the Middle East before coming here? Has she ever been to jail? Has she ever been in a rally?"
[Man answers questions]
Attorney: "I had a friend who moved here from the Middle East. Everyone automatically thought he was a terrorist."

So I suppose she was a getting a visa -- but it was an odd conversation nonetheless. Incidentally, the woman who needed translating never showed.

And, finally, one of the strangest conversations I've overheard in a while came yesterday on the town square. I'd just finished running the Batesville 5K route and was stretching to let my right leg stop cramping up on me when I saw an evangelist with a sign. On one side, it read : "Let me tell you why you should go to hell." On the other, it said something like "Repent of your sins." And he had a bullhorn. He was shouting to no one in particular, "Women! Cover yourselves! Don't let the sin of the world corrupt you with temptations of the flesh! Cover your arms and your legs and do not tempt men of Christ!" I truly looked around for the ghost of Flannery O'Connor. I think she was certainly there with me. About this time, instead of my favorite cantankerous Catholic writer, I saw a man approach the evangelist and begin an animated conversation. I was afraid to get close -- I, after all, was in a running outfit and feared the lunatic's wrath -- but I heard the man tell the evangelist, "My mother was a Catholic and her mother before her. I am Mexican." And the evangelist responded, "Then you, sir, are a half-breed." I do not know what that meant.

As I began pondering whether or not free speech should, in fact, be limited, a local police officer took the evangelist and his gigantic sign away. Perhaps the saddest part of that overheard conversation was the silent part. Two young boys, I'd say about 11 or 12 years old, accompanied the man with the sign and they sat slumped on the bench, completely silent. They did not look unhappy, or angry -- even exuberant or committed. They looked . . . blank. Minions. In training, perhaps.

Have you ever wondered if people are, even unwillingly, listening to you?