One Day, women won’t be labelled as “slutty” or “frigid” – sex won’t be an obligation, a taboo subject, a source of guilt, or how we measure our worth. We’ll have sex because we want to, pure and simple. We’ll be able to wear whatever we want, and nobody will care – we won’t elicit more attention from men because of our clothing, and everybody will understand that, even if we’re topless, it doesn’t give anybody the right to judge, harass, or rape us. Until that day, we’re going to keep fighting, and nobody can silence us.
I’ve figured out how I feel about playing a (former) porn star.
The other day, I was leaving the home of the almost-two-year-old that I regularly babysit when this exchange happened with her mother:
Her mom: Can you babysit on such-and-such a date?
Me: I can’t, I’m in tech for my play that night.
Her mom: No problem. What is your play about?
Me: It’s called Poisoned, and it’s about a middle-aged man who is engaged to a twenty-two-year-old woman. It’s also about the man’s sister, who flies out from New York to warn him that his fiance has a… troubled past.
Her mom: A troubled past? At twenty-two.
Me: Ah-huh.
Her mom: What’s her trouble past?
Me: … she used to be in porn.
Her mom: (uncomfortable laugh).
Me: Not one for the kids!
Her mom: No, we won’t take [our daughter] to that one.
And then I left, feeling like a dirty-ho slut-bag unfit to tend small children. Let me be clear that though I felt judged, I didn’t feel that that judgement was unwarranted at all. I wouldn’t want the caretaker of my tiny child to be associated with porn stars in any way. I went home puzzling over the amalgam of icky feelings I had. If telling my employer about this play, and by extension being in this play, made me so deeply uncomfortable, why had I accepted the part in the first place? I certainly had reservations about it. There is no actual visible porn in the play. However, a filmed sex act is described briefly, but in graphic detail, and the sound of a porno is the nightmare-cue that closes the show. While I’m not onstage for either of those moments, they are both about the character I play, and therefore about me.
The reasons I gave myself for taking the part are that I would be able to work with a director that I love, and that at this stage in my career, it is unwise to refuse any piece of well-written theater. Both of these are true and completely valid. Conversely, I hesitated before telling my parents about the project, and I knew that the subject matter would make owning my role in the play difficult for me.
Which isn’t to say that most people I talk to seem uncomfortable with the subject matter. On the contrary, the play’s content has been met with enthusiasm by my friends, all of whom are around my age and indirectly or directly involved in the arts. Still, I find myself awkwardly dancing around my own feelings, either crowing about the play’s edginess with convincing but false bravado, or keeping mum entirely, depending on my audience. This is an inconvenient position to be in when my future livelihood is dependent upon my ability to aggressively sell my worth as an actress. So why am I playing this part?
This week, New York magazine ran a cover story on the beginnings of Ms. magazine and its role in shaping modern feminism. Alongside it, New York ran an article about the feminist blogosphere and the current struggles of women. The latter article contrasts the two eras: the former eschewed matrimony, the latter lobbies for gay marriage. Sexism is as alive now as it was then, but the focus has shifted from accepted patriarchal ideology (that a woman’s place is barefoot-and-pregnant-and-in-the-kitchen) to “modern media sexism” (a woman absolutely has a place in modern society, as long as she is thin, sexy, “one of the guys”, and beautiful in a Western way). The article cites another shift: “an acceptance (and sometimes a celebration) of porn.”
The modern conversation about porn is almost as volatile as the conversation about abortion. I have watched and will watch porn again, but my ambivalence about this role is fueled 100% by my ambivalence about porn. I don’t know whether porn is helping or hurting women. In all likelihood, it’s doing both. The only thing I know absolutely, is that I have never enjoyed a piece of pornography without feeling ashamed. I know that I am not the only woman who feels this way, and I know that the feeling has everything to do with the perception of modern female sexuality and all of its attendant contradictions. “Slut” is still a potent epithet.
In Poisoned, my character Dee-Dee talks about doing things because she finds them frightening. She wants to be free of fear, and so she dives headfirst into the things that terrify her. I am a feminist. I am in a monogamous relationship, I love to cook meals for my boyfriend and his friends, I am interested in fashion and make-up and being beautiful, I knit, and I want to get married and have babies when I am older. On paper, I am a nightmare-woman in the eyes of a seventies-era feminist. But I am still a feminist. I’ve had conversations with women who don’t consider themselves feminists because they view feminism as something mannish, unattractive and outdated. I always say the same thing to those women: Do you exercise choice in your daily life? If you do, then you are a feminist. The nature of what our choices are has grown murkier and more complicated, but our right to make those choices is unchanged.
Dee-Dee chose porn because it terrified her. I’m choosing to play a porn star because it scares the shit out of me.
Which brings me to my other point. Poisoned opens Saturday, November 19th, at Theater Three (The Mint Theater). It is written by J. Boyett and tickets are $18 through SmartTix: http://is.gd/cYkuuX. If anything in this admittedly self-righteous ramble has struck a chord, come see it. If you want some theater that’s going to make you laugh, cry and squirm, come see it. Whatever you choose, it’s up to you, y’all.
Things for Franny. #2
Things for Franny. #1
How do I work this thing?
Wait, how does Tumblr work?
Am I not supposed to type detailed entries with complicated syntax? Does that make me a Tool? Am I supposed to be pithy? I’m very bad at pith.
I’ve been poking around the blogs of people I know and the blogs of people I don’t. Nobody seems to write long entries detailing the elaborate purpose of their online presence. It appears that the entire universe is better at the internet than I am.
In unrelated news, I think I’m officially going with the Gwyneth Paltrow angle. Time to get GOOPy.
Also, this.
(Source: lessiarty)
Guess I’m writing a blog, y’all.
I’ve wanted to do this for a little while. From my experience as a participant in the internet, the most successful blogs are those that have some kind of blogging objective. Blogging objectives serve a dual purpose. The parts of this purpose are 1. the objective provides a sort of structure and time line that acts as an incentive for the writer (me) to post things, and 2. the objective helps the writer (me) avoid the pitfalls of publishing content accessible to the general public (the internet). The pitfalls, of course, are excessive narcissistic whining and ALL CAPS tirades against friends and family members. These kinds of things are best kept to paper journals, which you (yes YOU) will never see.
In this blog post, I am going to address three things: 1. Why start a blog right now? 2. Why does your blog have such a stupid name? and 3. What’s the point (of it all)? JK JK JK on that parenthetical. I will never have the answer to that part of the question, ever.
1. Why start a blog right now?
I graduated from college last May. Because my personality is a terrible combination of incredibly ambitious and preternaturally lazy, I am prone to frequent bouts of irrational depression, wherein I feel like My Life Isn’t Going Anywhere and also that The World Owes Me Something. Both of which aren’t true.
I wanted to start a blog to help navigate this perilous time, to remind myself to have a sense of humor about things, and to give myself something to do when the paths before me seem too numerous and too terrifying. And also to talk about how weird it is to be an actor. And ALSO to talk about all of the other things I like that aren’t acting, in an effort to prevent the world from shrinking to the size of pinhead.
2. Why does your blog have such a stupid name?
So the URL for this blog is ladynerdlady.tumblr.com. I’m so sorry. I made it at 3 AM or something, and Kate Eastman and Beastman and all variations thereof were completely taken, and donleavy, my previous universal internet handle is just way too pretentious. So lady nerd lady happened, because I am a nerd and a lady, and because it’s kind of like a Flight of the Conchords lyric. The end.
3. What’s the point?
This one, I think, will evolve. As of right now, I have two potential Objectives. Objective one is to totally steal the idea behind Suzi Sadler’s tumblr, The Daily Make, and make something every day. Suzi Sadler is a photographer who works frequently with Pipeline Theatre Company, a group founded by some of the most enterprising people I know. I’ve never met her, but I think she is very talented.
The other objective is to try being Gwyneth Paltrow for a month or so.
Stay tuned.
