is Kathryn Bigelow female enough?…

Can’t we just appreciate for being what she is? Which is a great filmmaker.

re guys at the Oscars – who really cares what they’re wearing – they all look alike (altho I liked the white suit Kevin Spacey wore when he won)

Won’t it be strange if Bigelow wins for director and say, Avatar, wins best picture? It will look weird if the first woman to win Best Director, doesn’t actually get the gold for best film.

But I think there is some…sort of issue with her being a director of a male coded genre.

I thought I was clear that the coding is the problem. Perhaps if we weren’t so rigid in how we define “female” and “male” as something other than biological, we could get away from the many problems we have with sexism.

Certainly, as long as any coded “male” is also coded as “the norm” and anything coded “female” is also coded as “other,” we will not make any progress.

Certainly, as long as any coded “male” is also coded as “the norm” and anything coded “female” is also coded as “other,” we will not make any progress.

…which makes me just think about coding in general.

Our (and others as well) society insists on coding stuff with masculine attributes and feminine attributes. The coding changes over time, but it still happens. Is this bad? Good? Neutral? Relevant?

For some reason, I’m remembering something my father told me: He worked with a labor union, pretty high up and in the administration side of it. He spent a fair amount of time at rank-and-file meetings in evenings. There was one member who drove a backhoe who brought her child with her to the meetings that often went on until quite late. This child was a little boy of 8 at the time of this tale and my father one evening found himself next to the boy and talked with him as the boy played with his mini tonka toys, one of which was a backhoe. My father eventually asked him if he’d like to run a backhoe. The reply was “Nooooo! Backhoes are for girls! I want to run a crane!”

Bwahaha!

MaSch, I’m a man. And I’m telling other men not to look like sloppy sad sacks at a formal event. I never said the outfit had to be uniform. There is a wide variety of things a man can do within the realm of formal wear.

Wearing business wear to a formal event, however, is considered uncouth. Wearing clothing that is ill-tailored and ill-fitting makes you look bad.

That women are expected to spend hours (and lots of money) getting ready to look nice (i.e. to be nice to look at as the objects of the gaze) but men can get away with showing up at the Oscars in an ill-fitted rental does smack of Privilege. But I’d say that smacks of male privilege, not the other way around.

I’ve not seen Eddie Izzard in any fabulous dresses on the red carpet, sadly.

Men’s outfits don’t have to look the same. As I said earlier, there are many options for variety in men’s formal wear, even if many men don’t take advantage of them. Kilt? What sort of jacket cut–Bolero, swallow tails, tuxedo, cutaway tails, long tails? Double breasted? Single-breasted? How many buttons? What sort of lapel? Notched, peaked, shawl, that sort of Bavarian collar/label? If you are wearing pants, what sort of waist? How are the pants tailored? Are you going a full Zoot style? Regular? Slim? Are you going with a cumberbun? Or are you going with a vest? If you are going with a vest there are an infinite number of combinations for the cut and style you could go with. For your shirt…are you going with French Cuffs? If so, what sort of cufflinks? Will you wear shirt studs? If so, what kind? What sort of collar? Wing-Tip Collar? Something more exotic? More standard business collar? If so, what sort of spread on that collar? Then there is neckware. Are you going with a bow tie? If so, what shape? Wide butterfly, butterfly, slimline? Are you going for a bolo tie? Western String Tie? Ascot? Scarf? One of the more exotic choices? Maybe you go for a more standard tie…but what sort of knot? Full Windsor? Half Windsor? Four in Hand? One of the rarer used knots?

On top of all that there are questions of color and fabric? White Tux? Okay…What color Shirt and Tie. All white looks different that White Tux, Black shirt, white tie. Or White suite, blue shirt, blue tie. Leather tux is different than linen tux, different than velvet. Pattern? Stripes, Houndstooth? Check? Polka Dots? Paisleys?

What kind of overall silhouette? Mad Men-esque slim look? A 40s Zoot full look? The 70s?

How are you going to accessorize? Pocket Square? Tie bar? Collar Bar? Tie Tack? Lapel Button? Buttoneer? Spats?

There are so many wonderful possibilities!

There are a few male celebrities who dress well and/or interestingly. George Clooney and Brad Pitt work their formal wear very well…usually in a classic way (i.e. usually black suit/white shirt/black bow tie). Though I was pleased to see Brad Pitt wear a really nice double-breasted tux at the 2008 Venice film festival…and you can always tell that Clooney and Pitt tie their own bow ties. Jamie Foxx has great use of color. Mickey Rourke really goes out there and it is clear that he pays attention…even if his look is more unorthodox…he gets a thumbs up from me. Ne-Yo, Adam Lambert…they all take the time to do something as well. P.Diddy often looks great, and saw Taylor Lautner in a really sharp sharkskin suit recently.

Anyway, my point is there is inequity in the fact that women are held up to a much higher appearance standard than men are and that male celebrities…not even celebrities, take advantage of this laxity to dress way too casual at formal events–especially American men.

Our (and others as well) society insists on coding stuff with masculine attributes and feminine attributes. The coding changes over time, but it still happens. Is this bad? Good? Neutral? Relevant?

I think it is relevant to point out that the coding changes, because many people simply do not realize this, and assume that the way things are now is the way things have always been and — more insidious — the way things *must* be.

I mean, the wearing of wigs, makeup, and high heels was once, not long ago — in 18th-century Europe — code for “wealthy, powerful male.” Clearly that is no longer the case. So there’s no reason AT ALL to assume that the things we code today as “male” and “female” are inherently genuinely “male” and “female” and not subject to change.

The obvious evidence of the world at large surely is proof that the ONLY thing we can truly code as “male” is the ability to fertilize a human egg, and the ONLY things we can truly code as “female” are the capabilities of gestating and nursing a child. And even those things may change as science advances.

I don’t think i understand the issue here.

Katherine Bigalow is a woman.
She’s the director of a great film.
If she wins she will be the first woman to win that category. These are all facts. Where’s the conflict here?

That’s what some of us are trying to point out. There shouldn’t be any conflict here. But there is. It springs from a loooong tradition of women’s achievements being denigrated, via a variety of sexist reasoning that are concerned with “pointing out” why these achivements “don’t count” because of how they don’t conform with perceived notions about what women “should” do, “should” like, and “should” respond to.

Many of these arguments are contradictory, not that this stops anyone from indulging in them. For instance, some may say that Bigelow’s achievement “doesn’t count” because she was “merely aping what a man does” (by directing an action movie featuring exclusively male characters), and that she “sold out” her womanhood by doing so. But if she’d been garnering such acclaim for a “soft,” “romantic” movie, she’d have been denigrated for making a “woman’s” movie, and that’s not worth celebrating because, as everyone “knows,” “women’s movies” aren’t as important or as worth celebrating as just plain old “movies” (ie, the movies that are supposedly of interest to men).

A woman can’t win.

The overarching point is this: If we focus on Bigelow as a “woman director” instead of just a “director,” we denigrated her work. Or else we need to start talking about, say, James Cameron as a “man director.” Which, of course, no one does and no one will ever do. Perhaps we should be wringing our hands over how a man could possibly have made a movie with such a touchy-feely “feminine” concept as Eywa, and whether *Avatar* “counts.”