wash new underwear before wearing!

I wasn't going to write this post, but I'm bored and haven't posted for 10 days, so why not?

Last week I went to the SPE National conference in Chicago. I've never been to Chicago and could probably still say that. Conferences have a way of sucking up your every spare moment so much so that you only really see the conference hotel. Were it not for the fact that we stayed elsewhere we'd have seen nothing else at all. But that's not so interesting.

The best presentation was the keynote speaker, Henry Jenkins. He's one of those unassuming brilliant people who gets up there and speaks without notes and just dazzles the crowd with his knowledge and perception and clarity. He spoke about new media, the Internet, fandom, Bert is Evil (hilarious), and lots of other very interesting stuff I should have taken notes on so I could link to it now. Comparative Media Studies is his thing. He's got a book, Convergence Culture, coming out in August that they'd have sold out of had it been in the exhibitor's fair. Total high point, made you feel engaged and cutting-edge and nearly made you forget that there was no diversity amongst the speakers at the conference this year. This is the group whose journal I edit, so I feel free to say they ought to address that. I suppose I'd feel free in any event.

The low point? And they were so low they were both the inspiration for and reason I almost didn't write this post, for I was loathe to promote their work in any way, though for the sake of wretchedness (and because I like pictures on blogs) I'm going to show their work, anyway. We went to a panel featuring (and perhaps organized by) the lovely and talented Adrienne Pao, whose work (at left) is featured in the new exposure (I'm doing all this plugging for the journal because I want to get it on newstands and beyond the membership so I have to make folks clamor for it).

Also on this panel were Morgan Konn and Melanie Pullen, the latter whose "High Fashion Crime Photos" have been all over the place of late, including, most interesting to me because they're critical, Bitch magazine. In a nutshell, these are two women artists whose work features skinny white women in their underwear and skinny white women in designer clothing posed to look like crime victims. Konn's work, some of which is featured on the blog she invited us all to participate in if we were into the "subversive" act of buying underwear, photographing ourselves in it, and returning it, like she is, was problematic in and of itself but it was they way she spoke about it that had me fuming from my perch on the floor (the room was packed). It didn't help that she was one of those women who ends every statement on a high note, so that everything she says sounds like a question, but when she suggested that a subject's friends were jealous of her (Konn went into the woman's home and photographed herself in the woman's clothes, another project) because she was "thin, young, and beautiful," it was all I could do not to run up there and slap her to stop the insanity from spewing forth. Yes, she knows feminists object to women's heads being cut off in photos, but she really liked that effect! Her photographs actually made Victoria's Secret ads look subversive (she showed them side by side, of her and the models wearing the same underwear). She defended her project by saying that any of us who thought what she was doing was wrong (uh, yeah, that's just stank!) should realize that she's not the only one who does it, as though that's a reason, excuse, or motivation to do anything. Does she really believe such crap?

Melanie Pullen's photos of murdered women were equally, perhaps more, problematic. Inspired by Luc Sante's book Evidence of real crime scene photos, Pullen evidently meticulously researched early twentieth century crime scene photographs and then set about recreating them, in color, using models dressed in expensive designer clothing which she also used to purchase, photograph, and return. (Although Pullen obviously had a lot of resources for her self-funded project; she pointed out one image that took a crew of 40 to shoot.) The only reason I could glean from her talk for the high fashion angle was that the murdered women in the original photos were "so beautiful and so well dressed!" (as she continuously exclaimed), though she also claimed that her initial attraction to the original photos was to all of the details other than the body. What, then, would be the point of putting your models in $80,000 jackets or millions of dollars in diamonds (values she pointed out, giggling) if you're trying to deflect attention away from the body? I hated her, I hate the images, but mostly I hate this generation of women who replicate the worst of popular culture without questioning the insidiousness of selling bodies, very particular bodies, mind you, figuratively or otherwise. But then, Pullen is now being given the clothes by designers clamoring to have their wares displayed on her hot-right-now murder victims, while she giggles and claims not to "get" why they'd want to do that! She may be that stupid, but I'm not. If this is third-wave feminism, as was claimed by the discussant, brand me a hairy old dyke who thinks women, their bodies, and their sexuality are far more complex and interesting than this. And if you really believe this kind of imagery is power, check this story (and also the links below) and tell me how powerful victimization is.

http://justice4twosisters.blogspot.com/