My neighborhood is filled with Gen Xers, and my fellow generational cohort Jenny has authored the guest blog post below about….wait for it….her review of the recent Poison (yes, the 80s hair band) concert:
Jenny says………………
It was a beautiful evening in Denver Colorado, the sun was setting and the smell of illegal substances wafted through the air. Love songs like, “I Hate Every Bone in Your Body. . . Except Mine” played from the speakers while couples swayed back and forth to the sweet melody. It’s been 21 years since Poison first set foot on the Denver soil, but it seems like just yesterday. Those black leather pants and bandanas never looked so good. Guitar solos, drum solos, headbanging–it doesn’t get any better. The evening ended with a personal invitation (for me and several thousand others) to the X Saloon for some good “clean” fun.
I was very tempted to go to the saloon w/ Bret– and thousands of others and party like a rockstar but my husband reminded me that we have two small children snuggled in their beds at home and jobs to report to in the morning. Reality hits hard sometimes. So, here I am, sitting at my desk, with a venti Starbucks and my ears ringing–a welcome reminder of my night with POISON!
Last night my husband and I were watching a new series on ABC called “Masters of Science Fiction”. It’s hard loving science fiction so much, because the people who write it need to be as smart (preferably smarter) than you are–and Hollywood is not very obliging in that respect.
The show starts with the discovery of an unidentifiable life form at the crash site of a helicopter in Iraq–potentially interesting right? There’s all sorts of interesting things that could happen here. None of them did. Move to a government facility where they are examining the life form, bunch of stern looking dudes with lots of chest ribbons say they need to call back Captain so-and-so from retirement to deal with this, screen fades. My husband says, “he’ll be fishing on a lake”. Sure enough, cue completely hack scene of gruff military man weary of the world but with a good heart…..fishing at the side of a lake. Hello…people?…screenwriters? Yeah, have you ever seen Stargate SG-1? Please.
We should have turned it off right there, but unfortunately we wasted another 40 minutes on a show about angel looking humanoids (presumably aliens although they DNA typed as humans sans gender of course, none of which was explained) basically telling us we better all just get along or else.
There needs to be a specialist in Hollywood-a Science Fiction Cliche Master–who reads all these scripts and removes the cheesy crap (unless it works, but it’s a fine, fine line). The brilliant series “Firefly” and “Farscape” get cancelled and this is what we get instead? It’s a sad, sad time to be a television sci-fi fan.
I’ve started looking for Halloween costumes for my 5 year old daughter already, because last year we ended up with a piece of crap I had to sew back together twice (and my husband had to do once). Every year, I notice how many costumes being sold to little girls are really, well, slutty. What is the deal with this? I assume it’s the same phenomena as the loathsome Bratz dolls. What is with the sexualization of little girls? It’s revolting. Now, what really bothers me is this: it’s a capitaltist system (that itself doesn’t, I’m no commie LOL hang on..) meaning, retailers usually respond to what sells from year to year. This means to me that a large number of Americans think it’s “cute” or at least acceptable to dress their little girls like prostitutes on the one day of the year they are supposed to imagine themselves as someone else.
I was looking specifically for a cat costume when I came across this one. The little girl in the photo, who couldn’t be more than 10 (note this costume’s smallest size comes in 4/6) is posing provocativley with hand on hip and slightly tilted sunglasses. Gross. Many little girls’ costumes feature tight corsets or bodices, very short skirts and/or cropped tops for “Diva” outfits. Oh yeah, and this one–a can can dancer–look how cute, my little girl is dressed for a burlesque show! Or oh shit, just saw this one–a Geisha! You can encourage your daughter to go into the sex industry, how adorable.
Looking over a costume catalog, you see little boy costumes: Astronaut, firefighter, superheroes. Little girls get: slutty divas, princesses, sex workers (the aformentioned geisha etc..), slutty vampires, slutty devils, and slutty fairies. In all fairness, some of the witch costumes are cute and not sexualized.
Look, I’m not a prude. I’m all for women getting slutty on Halloween if they so wish. What I’m NOT for is the sexualization of little girls who are too young to understand the connotations of their costumes.