“Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir” in stores tomorrow

Beauty, Disrupted: A Memoir hits the shelves tomorrow, October 11. The autobiography of supermodel Carré Otis, it tells the story of her meteoric rise in the 1980s, her explosive relationship with Mickey Rourke, and her struggles to overcome a life-threatening eating disorder and a heroin addiction. I co-authored the HarperCollins release.

Beauty, Disrupted also offers a behind-the-scenes look at the dark side of the modeling industry, where the sexual and emotional abuse of minors was (and still in some cases is) rampant. Carré names names, not out of vindictiveness but out of a commitment to the healing power of truth. Most models who have written their memoirs have taken care to protect key industry figures, even those who were — and are — notoriously abusive. This book goes where that book doesn’t.

And of course, it’s also a memoir of transformation. Carré recovered from her multiple, intersecting addictions. After years of hard spiritual and emotional work, she’s reached a place of remarkable peace; she and her second husband have two wonderful daughters and a stable life in Colorado. How she got to the place where she could get out of herself and give back to the world, how she healed from sexual trauma and violence, and how she became the happy and loving activist she is — that’s also the story of this book.

It’s a fascinating thing to be a collaborator on a memoir. For the year we were writing this book, my task was to be a partner but not a director, making sure that her story and her voice came through. As I learned as a professor assigning autobiographies, it’s easy to tell another person’s tale — but much more challenging, and much more important, to help them tell their own. A collaborator has to know what questions to ask, and how to form the answers into a readable narrative. My own insights were useful in helping form the right queries — but not in constructing the replies. As someone used to my own voice, the challenge was to make myself disappear, letting the power of my partner’s memories form the story. I needed to know when to “step up” as a collaborator — and when to “step back” and let the memoir take shape organically. It was an exciting process.

I’m proud of this book, and look forward to a variety of such collaborations in the future. For anyone interested in celebrity, in an unprecedented degree of insight into the modeling or fashion industries, in the anatomy of a toxic yet strangely tender marriage, or in a classic narrative of recovery and transformation, Beauty, Disrupted won’t disappoint.

Carré will be on the Today Show tomorrow, October 11 — and also that same day will appear for the entire hour with Anderson Cooper on his new program. Check your local listings. For more, visit the Beauty, Disrupted site.

Radio and more photos

I was on WBAI radio yesterday, doing Rise Up Radio’s Father’s Day show. Here’s an audio file of that appearance, and I’m on for about 7 minutes, from 14:00 to 21:00 or so. Talking about fathers, daughters, and the Good Men Project…

On my Facebook, I’ve got two new public albums of photos from SlutWalk LA. Here’s album one, and here’s album two. All these photos are from the amazing Shari B. Ellis, who documented the event from morning set up to evening afterparty.

Here’s my original SlutWalk LA album. Here’s a photo of me with some of the student volunteers from Pasadena City College (click to enlarge):

And here’s a link to the larger version of the photo I had up before from the front of the march.

Gripping the sword, embracing the lover: SNL spoofs the masculine double bind and the myth of male inflexibility

Chloe sends me a link to this Saturday Night Live skit that ran last weekend. With Helen Mirren as special guest star, the cast cleverly spoofs our cultural confusion about masculinity. Two comedians take on the roles of Hugh Jackman and Gerard Butler — actors who have shown a penchant to oscillate between playing romantic, sensitive leading men and hyper-macho heroes. They pound their chests and sing Broadway numbers before welcoming Mirren, who plays Jule Andrews — and promptly becomes genuinely homicidal.

I don’t watch Saturday Night Live often, but this was one of the funnier and more pointed skits I’ve seen in a long time.

The SNL short points at two key problems in our contemporary representations of masculinity. Popular culture is deeply ambivalent about men who break free of traditional gender roles: romantic comedies celebrate men who can be sensitive and insightful, witty and artistic while action films feature cartoonish exaggerations of swaggering manliness. In the case of actors like Jackman and Butler, the two genres in which they are most famous for working grow ever further apart: the action movies feature greater savagery (and less depth) than ever; the romantic comedies show us heterosexual male protagonists who are increasingly comfortable with their “feminine” side. The SNL skit riffs on the absurdity of that ever-widening gap, lampooning our own confusion about what it is that we expect men to be.

At the same time, the skit plays on a darker myth, the one that says that men can’t emotionally multi-task. Men can either be violent, protective, macho brutes — or they can be intuitive, kind, and charming. But to expect them to integrate aspects of both traditional masculinity and traditional femininity is a massive overask, or so the myth of male inflexibility has us believe. Of course, in real life, not many people expect a man to be both a Spartan general and a tender aficionado of musical theater. All that most of us would like to see is men who are capable of both compassion and decisiveness. What we’re missing are images of men whose emotional dexterity and flexibility is as great as women’s. Those men do exist, of course. We just see them so rarely.

Chloe asked me for my thoughts on the skit at almost exactly the same moment that I got an email from a student of mine who wanted to share a line from a Japanese anime comic (or film, I’m not sure; one of my readers can fill me in.). One character says to another:

“Unless I grip the sword, I can not protect you. While gripping the sword I can not embrace you.” Isn’t that another perfect encapsulation of the double bind of masculinity, my student wondered. Continue reading

Audio archive of my Michelle Phillips interview

The audio file of my appearance on Hay House Radio is up, and will be free for the next week. My chat with Michelle begins around 31:00 in and continues for nearly twenty minutes. Nice to do radio where I’m not being cut off and can make extended remarks. Michelle was a great host. We talk about boys, girls, perfectionism, eating disorders, and relationships.

This link will expire on Sunday, March 13. Listen here.

Talking beauty on Hay House Radio

I’ll be on Hay House Radio today between 9:30-9:55AM PST talking with Michelle Phillips about beauty, perfectionism (and the Perfectly Unperfected Project) and ways we can begin to offer counter-stories about what is desirable to teens of both sexes. Click here and then look for the “listen now” link in the upper right hand corner. If you miss it, the archived show will be up next week.

“Anorexia rewired my brain”: on the Maura Kelly debacle

On Monday, Marie Claire posted this short piece from Maura Kelly: Should “Fatties” Get a Room? (Even on TV?) Superficially a review of the new CBS sitcom Mike and Molly (which features two overweight actors in the title roles), the article was a festival of fat-loathing and body-shaming. Because it may well be triggering for someone to read, the rest of this post is all below the fold. Continue reading

Radio show up

More on this tomorrow, but my appearance on KPFK’s Feminist Magazine show is over, and the program is available for download. Lots of pitching for a pledge drive, but you get some snippets of me and of Jackson Katz. Click here.

Radio appearance: KPFK’s “Feminist Magazine”

I’ll be on the air with KPFK radio tomorrow night, participating in their fall fundraising drive and appearing on Feminist Magazine, which airs from 7-8PM Pacific every Wednesday. They’ve even got a little CD of some of my talks (versions of my most popular posts) that’s part of their “premium package.”

Here’s the blurb from the show’s Myspace page:

This rare edition of “Feminist Magazine” is NOT FOR MEN ONLY: it’s for ALL of us who want to work together for gender justice and a transformed world. We’re talking with Hugo Schwyzer and Jackson Katz who are committed to eradicating sexism –and all other social and political inequalities. And we’re calling on YOU –the men and boys in our audience and all the people who love you — to open your minds and hearts –and wallets!

Pioneering History and Gender Studies Professor Hugo Schwyzer, a “stand-up” instead of a “stand-by guy”, takes on men’s roles within feminist movements as they “Step Up, Step Back” and address “Men, Women and Anger”. Jackson Katz, internationally recognized for his ground breaking work in gender violence prevention with men and boys, describes his seminal book “The Macho Paradox: Why Some Men Hurt Women and How All Men Can Help”, and his award winning educational video “Tough Guise: Violence, Media and the Crisis in Masculinity.” And, we’ll feature ‘Guyland: The Perilous World Where Boys Become Men,’ by Dr. Michael Kimmel one of our leading researchers and writers on men and masculinity.

The books, video, and Schwyzer’s CD are available as thank you gifts in exchange for your pledge to support KPFK.

Sooooo —–Tune in to Pacifica Radio-KPFK’s “Feminist Magazine” with your hosts Ariana Manov and Melissa Chiprin- this Wednesday, October 13, at 7 PM (PDT). Heard in Los Angeles 90.7 FM, 98.7 FM in Santa Barbara and streaming live and archived at kpfk.org

Gather ye rosebuds: the Onion spoofs the good man crisis

A couple of people sent me the link last week to this hilarious Onion News Network video: Obama Releases 500,000 men from the National Strategic Bachelor Reserve. (You’ll need to watch a very short ad first before the two-minute spoof starts. There is mild profanity within the video as well.) The report speaks of an “Eligible Male Task Force” designed to combat the critical shortage of “Men who are Looking for Something Serious,” and the graphics are splendid. (There’s even a subtle jab at Henry Waxman, my splendid congressman). Watch it all twice.

It’s been nearly a quarter-century since the “man shortage” became a topic of national media hype. The genesis of the scare was a single Newsweek article from June 1986: Too Late for Prince Charming?

The traumatic news came buried in an arid demographic study titled, innocently enough, “Marriage Patterns in the United States.” But the dire statistics confirmed what everybody suspected all along: that many women who seem to have it all—good looks and good jobs, advanced degrees and high salaries—will never have mates. According to the report, white, college-educated women born in the mid-’50s who are still single at 30 have only a 20 percent chance of marrying. By the age of 35 the odds drop to 5 percent. Forty-year-olds are more likely to be killed by a terrorist: they have a minuscule 2.6 percent probability of tying the knot.

That whopping bit of hyperbole in bold (as if there’s ever been a 2.6% chance of being killed by a terrorist) became the “killer quote” that drove the whole discussion. Even when the report (as well as the rhetorical overkill about it) was debunked, the fears that the Elaine Salholz article aroused remained. Nearly 25 years later, I still occasionally hear people use that “greater chance of being killed by a terrorist than meeting a good guy” trope.

The most savvy exploiters of the fears the Salholz piece aroused were social conservatives, who saw the chance to blame feminism for the “problem.” Women, right-wingers argued, needed to honor immutable biological truths, starting with the fact that both their fertility and their desirability peak in their late teens and early twenties. Rather than being misled by feminists into focusing on education and career, young women should leverage their sexual and reproductive power when it is at its maximum, while they can still “land a good man.” (Robert Herrick, call your office.) The conservative message was simple: focusing on career and personal fulfillment when you’re young in the expectation of easily finding a man when you’re ready to settle down was a recipe for heartache and loneliness. The feminists are lying to you, the far right said; we’re telling you the truth. Look at the facts.

Except the facts didn’t turn out to be true, as countless follow-up reports on the “marriage crunch” demonstrated. The marriage crunch, if it exists as a problem at all, is found among those least likely to go to college. Those who have most successfully made use of feminism’s promise are more likely to wed (and have children after marriage rather than before) than their poorer sisters. Even the social conservatives have changed their tune, pointing out that the marriage culture is thriving among urban liberal “elites” while it falls apart among the white and non-white urban and rural working classes. (This time, it’s feminism’s fault for making working-class men without college educations feel useless and unappreciated. The villain always remains the same.) Continue reading