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An Open Letter to the AGO About Frida Kahlo’s Unibrow

November 6, 2012 • Guest Blogger

by Sarah Mortimer

Dear AGO,

The week of October 20, while walking past the Drake Hotel, one of your employees handed me a card that said I should wear this unibrow in order to get 50% off the price of admission to your exhibit “Frida and Diego: Passion, Politics and Painting.” I am glad that Frida Kahlo’s work is here in Toronto and that you are eager to have people come see it, but I can’t help but think this unibrow stunt isn’t how Kahlo would have wished to be remembered.

An outspoken woman who was a devoted communist, Kahlo was much more than just a black stripe above the eyes. She was, in every sense, a radical. Her paintings, which place strong emphasis on Indigenous Mexican imagery, represent a highly imaginative style and portray women’s experiences in a manner more explicit than any of her contemporaries. Kahlo’s iconic self-portraits include depictions of everything from her imagining of her of her own birth and nursing experiences, to her painful miscarriage and tumultuous relationship with painter Diego Rivera. With no lack of spilled blood or ripe guts on display, they are some of the most powerful images in feminist art.

Yet, when I wear this unibrow, and when I see others wearing it, it doesn’t feel like much more than a silly act of publicity. On Saturday, October 20, the Toronto Star showcased photos of people wearing these unibrows in front of photobooths you’ve installed for the show, and where patrons are encouraged to take Frida-like snapshots in exchange for a discount on the exhibit. In most of these pictures, people are laughing or making funny faces, communicating to the camera that the black fuzz above their eyes is part of a costume and nothing that should be taken too seriously. In one photo, a little girl wags her fingers by her ears and sticks her tongue out at the camera. In another, a man laughs discreetly from behind a hardhat. In each of these photos, the subject tells us that they are wearing the unibrow not in an earnest tribute to the artist and her work, but with a cool and distant irony.

I hate to be a joykill, here, AGO, but since when did celebrating an artist who challenged our ideas of feminine beauty by refusing to change the way she looked involve breaking her down through the implicit public ridicule of her appearance? Over the course of her lifetime and afterwards, Frida Kahlo’s unibrow was viewed as many things–striking, daring, odd, challenging, coy, studied, bold, memorable, and the reason why so many men fell love with her–but never as a city-wide joke. Why start now? (more inside…)
Misogyny in Geek Culture

October 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Seventh grade was the year I realized that I definitely Wasn’t Cool. Until that point, my relative coolness had been up for debate – sure, I was a brainiac know-it-all who spent most of her spare time with her nose stuck in a book, but I’d always done well socially and had a fairly sizeable group of friends.

Something happened, though, during that summer before seventh grade. Some kind of paradigm shift went down among the other girls in my class, and for whatever reason I totally didn’t get the memo. This memo outlined the fact that we would now wear tight jeans, listen to popular music, and, above all, we would Like Boys (because, hey, everyone is straight, right?). Meanwhile, I was still wearing pink sweatsuits printed with kittens, listening to my dad’s old alt-country LPs, and reading Babysitters Club books.

Oh, and I suddenly had bad skin. Like, really, really bad skin.

Seventh grade was like culture shock; more than anything, I felt as if I’d woken up in a new country, one where I didn’t understand the language or local customs, and had zero hope of ever leaving. I was stuck in teenager-land forever (or at least for the next eight years) and would just have to learn to adapt.
The skin problems I had no control over, a new wardrobe was out of the question, popular music I was working on, but liking boys – now that was something I could do. And how.

Boys in my class were out of the question, so it would have to be someone famous. I somehow knew that I wasn’t cool enough to like one of those Tiger Beat boys the rest of the girls in my class swooned over; it would have to be someone more nerdier, more obscure.

One weekend my friend and her dad introduced me to Star Trek. Here was a world I could get behind: acne was a thing of the past, no one seemed to have any racial or socio-economic factors affecting their relationships, and you could order whatever food you wanted from a magic box on the wall and then have it immediately appear right in front of you. Oh, and there was a cute teenage boy.

I was hooked.

That Monday I went to school and proudly wrote a note to another girl in my class.

I have a crush on someone, it said.

Her reply was quickly handed back to me: Who?

Wil Wheaton, I wrote, drawing little hearts around his name.

Total dreamboat.

(more inside…)
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Guest Post: Language can be so Crazy-Making!

October 1, 2012 • Guest Blogger

by Jenna MacKay with special thanks to Kate-Christine Miller

Crazy. Bonkers. Bananas. Disturbed. Maniac. Psycho. Psychopath. Mental. Nutter.

Throughout history, people labelled with mental health issues have been stigmatized. This continues today and is inseparable from the language we use. Take for example the shooting of men with mental health issues by the Toronto police. The actions of the police are informed by labelling certain men’s behaviour as “crazy.” This label is accompanied by assumptions such as, “that person is dangerous.” The stereotypes of people labelled with mental health issues are countless and generally remain embedded in our language without question.

Many words we use as descriptors (e.g., “She is so crazy,” “That is crazy!”) are linguistic means of maintaining the oppression of people labelled with mental health issues. Just as we have challenged other problematic words, it is important to reflect upon terms like “crazy” or “nuts,” by asking ourselves what they mean and whether we need to keep using them. Of course this is not easy, these words are so deeply ingrained that just when you think you made progress you call something “crazy.”

We will briefly describe a few terms to illustrate how terms are historically rooted: (more inside…)
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Guest Post: Chick/Lit: Kate Chopin’s The Awakening and E.L. James’s Fifty Shades of Grey

September 21, 2012 • Guest Blogger

I am not a reader of “chick lit.” I am, however, a reader of women writers who grapple with the same issues as today’s chick lit – relationships, motherhood, sexuality. Among my favourites are Toni Morrison, the Brontës, Margaret Atwood, Zadie Smith – Jane Austen is my chick lit. But is this really fair? Is there really such a big difference between lit for chicks and literature for women?

Recently, I read Fifty Shades of Grey by E.L. James, which has generated such hype it’s created its own chick lit subgenre: “mommy porn.” As I read I thought about how Fifty Shades compares to other narratives of female sexual awakening – particularly Kate Chopin’s 1899 novel, The Awakening, about Edna, a young wife and mother finding sexual and spiritual freedom outside her loveless marriage. At its publication, the Chicago Times Herald commented that “it was not necessary for a writer of so great refinement and poetic grace to enter the overworked field of sex fiction,” accusing her of selling out to lascivious tastes. James would sympathize. Fifty Shades is often similarly ridiculed by critics, while The Awakening is now considered a milestone in feminist literature. Is this fair? (more inside…)
Guest Post: The Myth of the Woman-Child

September 20, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Originally posted at The Belle Jar.

My good friend Audra Williams challenged me to blog about this piece on Tavi Gevinson. Then she posted this ridiculous article from Jezebel on Facebook, and I thought I would address both of them at once. I am killing two birds with one stone! Two ugly, judgmental, anti-feminist birds!

Both articles are concerned with the girlification of today’s women. Katrina Onstad, author of the Tavi Gevinson piece, bemoans the rise of “girl culture,” complaining that the word “girl” is “wispy and feminine, destined for head-patting and glass ceilings.“ Jezebel’s Deborah Schoeneman, on the other hand, uses the term “woman-child” to describe those of us she feels aren’t acting our age. The hallmarks of a woman-child are, according to Schoeneman, many and varied. She writes that, “from sporting sparkly nail polish to religiously reading every bestselling young adult novel, these women seem to be reliving their teenage years with real gusto.”

First of all, I didn’t realize that there were rules on how to be an adult female. Maybe there is a handbook I am missing? The handbook that, according to Schoeneman, would tell me to watch What To Expect When You’re Expecting instead of The Hunger Games, and advise me against using nail art. Because as a lady I should want to watch movies about other lady-types having babies instead of movies about smart, strong teenage girls kicking ass and taking names, I guess. Also I should have really boring nails.

The funny thing is that Schoeneman is totally selling me on the idea of becoming a woman-child. The way that she describes the beliefs and behaviours that she dislikes actually make them sound more appealing than appalling. (more inside…)
Guest Post: Stand up for Pussy Riot, stand up for yourself

August 20, 2012 • Guest Blogger

By Kasia Mychajlowycz

Last Friday, more than 100 people got together in Toronto to protest the guilty verdict and two-year sentence handed down to Russian punk rock performance artists Pussy Riot. There was punk music, chalk drawings, drumming, chanting, costumes—everything that makes a good, peaceful protest. And, of course, the media.

In a way, I am “the media.” I’ve recently finished my master’s degree in journalism, and I’m wrapping up an internship at a great magazine. But I was raised in activism, mostly of the “save the trees/support the arts” kind. Many journalists have said that you can’t be a journalist and an activist at the same time; it used to be convention that journalists didn’t even vote, so they could say they were “neutral.” Nowadays, journalism still clings to that idea even as we realize how impossible it is to be both human and neutral, especially if the job of journalism is to “comfort the afflicted and afflict the uncomfortable,” i.e. challenge the status quo, the way things are, and ask “but why?”

(Kasia Mychajlowycz)

But when I found out three members of Pussy Riot were jailed for months for SINGING A SONG in a Moscow church that spoke out against Russian President Vladimir Putin, I couldn’t stay silent. (more inside…)
2-qtpocmontréal: a look ahead

August 17, 2012 • Guest Blogger

I have heard it so many times in the past few months: we love Montréal.

We love the community, the endless cultures of resistance, and the freedom and joy the city gives us. But over and over again, I hear, it feels so hard to stay here. For all it gives them, Montréal also exposes its 2-qtpoc folks (two-spirited, queer, and trans people of colour) to surprisingly overt, harsh, and exhausting racism. People talk about 2-qtpoc skin and bodies as though they are food or fabric, not part of a human being. There are limited services that 2-qtpoc folks can access without fear of discrimination. In (generally white-dominated) queer spaces, 2-qtpoc commonly hear derision and disbelief about their sexuality, gender identity, and expression. But Montréal’s 2-qtpocs are working hard to change this.

Elisha Lim is presently the proud curator of 2-qtpocmontréal, a showcase of 2-qtpoc artwork and part of pervers/cite, Montréal’s radical queer pride festival. Lim has spent some time reflecting on what it means for 2-qtpoc folks to take up and take back space in the cities and communities where they live, citing that internalized marginalization leaves many 2-qtpoc feeling as though they do not have the same entitlement to space as their white peers. Lim wants 2-qtpocmontréal to be a space for 2-qtpoc folks to unapologetically demand space in Pride, in Montreal, and in Québec – where 2-qtpoc always have been, but that have not always been kind or accepting toward them.

2-qtpocmontréal’s 10-day schedule (August 10-19) includes lectures, performances, workshops, visual arts, and, of course, celebration. (more inside…)
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Guest post: The psychological is political: Mental health as a feminist issue

August 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Currently, mental health is a hot topic in Ontario. Countless media stories along with governmental and professional groups have highlighted the importance of reducing stigma, identifying folks who need support and connecting folks in need of support to clinical services. There are aspects of this that are awesome. Many of us do suffer from some form of mental distress at one point or another and/or love someone who has/does. It is important that we do not feel embarrassment or shame about the behaviours, thoughts and feelings we are told are not “normal.” It is also important that we challenge all the stigma and oppression associated with being labeled with a mental illness (e.g., loss of employment, loss of housing).

But if Shameless (and feminism in general) has taught us anything, it is that language is important and we need to critically examine understandings and norms, including those around mental health.(more inside…)
The Greatest Band You’ve Never Heard Of: Fifth Column

June 15, 2012 • Guest Blogger

Before Bikini Kill, before MEN, hell – before the Indigo Girls – there was Fifth Column. Fifth Column was a queer-as-hell punk band comprised of young art students from Toronto in the early 1980s, now immortalized in the recent documentary film, She Said Boom: The Story of Fifth Column directed by Kevin Hegge.

Fifth Column was an all-girl band, which was just about the most political thing that could happen to the misogynist music industry of the 1980s. A rock musician from the 1980s is usually imagined as a metalhead dude with long, puffy hair, and tight jeans. Bands like Mötley Crüe and Poison even forming their own subgenre of “cock rock,” characterized by callous displays of male aggression and heterosexuality. Even hardcore music, which was rock music for misfits, wasn’t particularly friendly towards women. In this climate, Fifth Column stands out not just for being comprised of women, but women who were outspokenly feminist and queer.

(http://thetfs.ca/2012/04/27/he-said-boom-talking-fifth-column-fe)

In true punk rock fashion, Fifth Column began without the band members knowing how to play their instruments. (more inside…)
CROSS-POST: Youth violence in Toronto and our hierarchy of victimhood

June 11, 2012 • Guest Blogger

This piece originally appeared in the Toronto Star on Wednesday, June 6, 2012. It is cross-posted here with the permission of its author, Simon Black. You can find Simon on Twitter @_simonblack or at his website.

Last year in the city of Chicago, nearly 700 young people were hit by gunfire; 66 of them died. The vast majority of victims were African-American and Latino youth living in the city’s racialized low-income neighbourhoods. A recent analysis found that 8.5 per cent of Chicago (in terms of geography) contained almost all of the city’s shootings and homicides.

The mayor of Chicago insists that his city is safe. After all, around 90 per cent of neighbourhoods are not affected by youth gang and gun violence. This year, programs designed to reduce violence are being cut along with Chicago’s education budget.

While not as extreme in its geographic concentration, youth violence in Toronto is more likely to occur in our low-income postwar suburbs and pockets of racialized poverty in the downtown core than in white, middle-class neighbourhoods or shared spaces such as Yonge St.

As the 2008 report “The Roots of Youth Violence” found, while crime rates are stable “severe violence is apparently becoming more and more concentrated among socially disadvantaged minority youth.” The report concluded that the roots of youth violence are often found in poor, socially deprived neighbourhoods: the immediate risk factors of impulsivity, low self-esteem, alienation, hopelessness and lack of voice are compounded by longer-term issues of racism, poverty, community design, barriers to education and a lack of economic opportunity. The social exclusion of racialized youth and the alienation and denial of full citizenship they experience must be addressed.

When violence migrates from Toronto’s racialized low-income neighbourhoods into the spaces of commerce and tourism central to our city’s sense of collective safety, identity and international reputation, our public discourse shifts, government officials react and respond, and we reveal a hierarchy of victimhood and trauma that contravenes principles of equality.

(more inside…)