Invisible Adjunct

No mercy, even for a sister from north of the border? Let me try in vain to preempt the Pamela bashing that will soon consume this thread. You may come across some old interview with Ms. Anderson and you'll be surprised that she's quite sharp, and even as a young lady, without illusions about the demand for her talents. If you want to blame her for speaking in the vernacular of the medium and audience she's addressing, that's fine: you're speaking to your audience in your medium, after all.

But in mocking the easily caricatured Ms. Anderson, you're also mocking her audience. And insofar as you wouldn't be so quick to snark at, for example, a toll collector who worried about working, raising kids, and feeling sexy, then I'd guess it's a pretty cheap shot that you don't even mean to be taking.

"You hear that, Laura? Never mind reading up on second-wave feminism, the politics of housework, the motherhood mystique and what have you. It's kids, lingerie, career. Though not necessarily in that order."

Duhhh ... like, who didn't realize this?

I'm sure it secretly irks most academics to realize that any little expose' ghostwritten on behalf of Pamela, Madonna, Britney, or Cristina will sell more copies, earn more money, garner more media attention, have more lasting cultural impact, and generate more respect from the general public (particularly in the student demographic) than the sum total of everything even the most successful academic can publishing in a long, productive career.

Pamela's fake boobs have more power than all of our brains put together. Britney and Madonna's lesbian kiss is a bigger cultural event than ten years worth of MLA conventions.

"But in mocking the easily caricatured Ms. Anderson, you're also mocking her audience."

In order to accept your equation, I would have to agree that whatever one says about a public figure one is saying about those who admire or support said public figure. And if this were the case, then it would have to apply across the board, inoculating all celebrities against satire and criticism. It would also have to apply to politicians (if you mock/satirize/criticize Politician A, you're mocking/satirizing/criticizing the people who voted for him).

But I can't agree that whatever one says about a celebrity one is saying about that celebrity's fans and supporters. And while I won't go so far as to call your invocation of the hard-working toll collector a "cheap shot," I will say that this move strikes me as rhetorically manipulative.

Let me put this another way. You wrote a post ostensibly mocking Pamela Anderson. But you didn't mock Anderson, you mocked what she said. And what she says is indistinguishable from what you'll hear women say on the daytime talk shows and in women's magazines.

Huge laugh!! Can you see me teetering into class in stilettos and a boob job? Maybe that's what we need. More boobs in the classroom. With a black teddy peaking out from under my jacket. I bet that would improve student evaluations.

that is why ogged rules. But the problem of the PA(L) snippet is that (a) she's not everywoman, really, (b) that's part of why she can have it all, and (c) she doesn't seem to understand this.

"And what she says is indistinguishable from what you'll hear women say on the daytime talk shows and in women's magazines."

I think you need to listen more carefully. Leaving aside the obvious fact that they're not talking about million dollar book deals (and just for the record, I don't begrudge Anderson the 2 million, but I do find something ludicrous in the celebrity culture that makes such a deal possible, and I reserve the right to say so, which also apparently means assuming the risk of being charged with mocking the readers of the novels, which risk I will assume), I don't hear these women suggesting that "free-spiritedness" allows them "to do everything." To the contrary, I hear a lot of anger and disillusionment over the "you can have it all" message, and a sense that feminism has betrayed them (which mainstream feminism ignores at its peril).

To cut to the chase: while I don't know much about the toll collector, I do know a little something about the women on the daytime talk shows and the in the women's magazines. And no way am I going to take the rap for mocking these women because I made fun of a female celebrity whose public pronouncements would, if taken seriously, make a mockery of what these women have to say about the enormous difficulties of combining motherhood and work.

I know you don't want to mock them. I did write "I'd guess it's a pretty cheap shot that you don't even mean to be taking." But the distinctions between Anderson/audience and message/how the message is felt are absent from your initial post. You wrote "You hear that, Laura? Never mind reading up on second-wave feminism, the politics of housework, the motherhood mystique and what have you. It's kids, lingerie, career."

That's just snooty.

It's not snooty -- it's spot-on. Pamela says "you can have it all." An increasing number of working mothers debate whether, in fact, we can. But it turns out we're being silly. All we really need is a bit of, what was it?, oh yes, free spirit. Not a word about the economics that underwrite that blessed state -- the fortune she's accrued from, essentially, *looking* very unlike most of the women she's now giving her pep talk to.

Ogged, Pamela Anderson's audience is primarily guys with a Kleenex in their hand.

My sister tried to be Pam Anderson before Pam Anderson was even born. She was good-looking, blonde, and busty enough, but the results were hellish (no exaggeration -- physical abuse and threats). I don't think that the way to support women reading Pam Anderson's book is to refrain from ridiculing the book.

Ogged, there's a fine line between being a contrarian and being a jerk. There's no need to quasi-insult our hostess for making a perfectly justified snark.

I agree, Language Hat. Ogged, please lighten up. IA didn't intend to slam the working class women around the world who look up to Pamela Anderson as a role model. She was making a light hearted joke. Let's not get so PC that we can't make jokes about lingerie, please.

Hey, I meant to stop the Pamela bashing, not divert it my own way! I'm not even trying to be a contrarian. I read the post as snooty (is that the quasi-insult?). I still think, absent the subsequent explanations offered by fontana and IA, that it is snooty.

I don't think that Pammy is two boobs waslking around who doesn't know what she's doing. I think she's two boobs walking around who knows *exactly* what she's doing.

Is there any reason that any of us should/would/could think that Pamela Anderson is a role model? Have any of us ever heard someone say, "I want to be like that Pam Anderson chick when I grow up!" ?

C'mon -- people (working class or no -- and are we not working class even if we live in academia-land, at lest some of us ...) read people, and books by celebrities out of curiousity and, more often than not, out of Schadenfreude -- one of the least pleasant of the human emotions. Even if Feminism is under threat (which I agree it is), someone so obviously a victim is seldom a role model. Anna Kournikova, however ...

Ahem. All hail the telephone. I've consulted offline about whether I am in fact being a jerk in this thread. Answer: maybe. I'm informed by my reasonable and sympathetic interlocutor that

1) My initial comment, though it may have been intended as a friendly corrective, sure as hell doesn't read like one. The reaction here leads me to believe my interlocutor is correct.

2) IA assumed, with more justification than I have admitted, that Anderson's self-reference as Everywoman is self-refuting and a self-evident component of IA's snark. I have a feeling that adducing myself as a counter-example to its self-evidence will not be a successful argumentative strategy.

I make, in my defense, two(ish) minor points:

1) Laura, the insinuation that I object to lingerie or discussions thereof is a calumny and I demand a retraction

1a) I don't think I have ever, in all my years, been told to "lighten up."

2) I maintain that the original post is written so as to lend itself to (mis)reading as academic snobbishness by someone unfamiliar with IA's other writings.

In other words, Uncle! (but my toes are crossed).

THB: Would you really compare the cultural worth (limited, I should say) of ten years of MLA conventions with the Britney/Madonna moment? You're stacking the deck. How can the MLA even hope to compete?

Since Ogged has cried "Uncle!" it's my turn to cry "Aunt!" (or, uh, something like that). So this I will concede:

"2) I maintain that the original post is written so as to lend itself to (mis)reading as academic snobbishness by someone unfamiliar with IA's other writings."

I will also note that I do see a kind of poignancy to Anderson's worrying that "'that a lot of people seem to think I'm just two boobs walking around who doesn't know what the hell she's doing.'" I agree with Zizka's assessment of her audience -- though I wouldn't put it quite that way, 'cause I'm a nice Irish Catholic girl :). Not saying she doesn't have female fans, but I suspect her fan base is primarily male. I also suspect that her star is fading, and that she knows it. She's not 25 any more, and there's only so much that botox and surgery can do. So it looks like she's trying to cross over to gain a female audience by launching into aromatherapy and novels (outside academe and related fields, it's mostly women who buy novels, not men). I could be wrong about this, but I'm sceptical that she can achieve a mass appeal with a female audience on the basis of these new endeavours.

Very gracious, ogged. Kudos.

For the record, my sister was not a nude model. She was just a hot, sexy blonde who married an ambitious jerk.