Eminem’s single “Love the Way You Lie” featuring Rihanna has gotten a lot of attention from the feminist community, most of it negative. The song has been criticized for glorifying and romanticizing an abusive relationship, and Rihanna’s decision to feature in it has been questioned and criticized, considering her recent, very public abuse at the hands of ex-partner Chris Brown. There’s a fear that young women, in particular, will see the song and video as evidence that “true love hurts.” There’s also a victim-blaming narrative going on here, suggesting the woman in the relationship is asking for abuse through her own behaviour.

I’ve also seen another perspective on the song, calling the negative critiques one-dimensional. This argument calls the song a story of a two-way flawed relationship in which both partners lash out at and attack one another and are both to blame. From this angle, Eminem isn’t glorifying abusive relationships, he’s portraying the agony of a supercharged love-hate relationship neither partner can fix, no matter how hard they try.

Video and lyrics below the jump. What do you think?
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From our comrades at Girls Action Foundation:

GENERAL CASTING CALL for National Ad Campaign

Girls Action Foundation is looking for REAL girls and young women between 9 and 25 years old, of all ethnicities, backgrounds, body types and personal styles to shoot a series of artistic promotional videos this fall. Come as you are! We want to see your genuine self.

Time: Friday, August 20th from 10am to 3pm

Place: 24 Mount-Royal O., suite 601 (between Clark & St-Laurent) (in Montreal, QC)

If you plan on attending, please send en email to andrea [at] girlsactionfoundation [dot] ca

Click here to see some of our professional photographer’s work.

Girls Action Foundation is a national charitable organization. We lead and seed girls’ programs across Canada. We build girls’ and young women’s skills and confidence to change the world. Through our innovative programs, publications, and network of over 200 partnering organizations and projects, Girls Action reaches over 60,000 girls and young women.

The BITE ME! Toronto International Body Image Film & Arts Festival will take place this weekend, Saturday, July 17 and Sunday, July 18 (details on Shameless here and on the festival’s website here).

Shameless had the opportunity to speak with Jill Andrew, the festival’s director, who explains what this festival is all about.

The festival’s conception:

At the time I was completing my Master’s in Women’s and Gender Studies at the University of Toronto New College, and I had been consumed with readings about body image, media representation, eating “disorders” (which I, inspired by feminist theorist Becky Thomson, refer to as “eating problems”), and the importance of interrogating issues of race, class, gender, sexual orientation, dis/ability, and class when discussing eating problems and body dissatisfaction. I began to read qualitative data surrounding women’s experiences in and outside of their bodies. Women reported feeling “homeless” within their bodies and not being able to talk about body image because they didn’t feel like they had an image at all.

I’d also read about women who were redefining themselves and challenging labels: fat activism, challenging feminist consumerism, and creating zines in order to “talk back,” or, as I call it, “bite back” against those who try to keep us in stifling boxes.

I wondered if there were folks out there talking about their bodies and other people’s bodies, grappling with the way bodies are constructed. Were people taking this up through creative mediums? I came across many fat activism groups that used theatre: for instance, Augusto Boal’s Theatre of the Oppressed challenges heteronormative assumptions about femininity and masculinity and, thus, the female body.

The festival’s aims:

I decided to attempt to share the telling of folks’ stories through film. I wanted to redefine what body “image” meant to my audience. I wanted women and men in attendance to walk away realizing that body politics include discussions around race, class, and sexual orientation. I want them to know that body “image” is also a public health issue. If we do not interrogate the images we see all too often on TV, we are continuing to validate a climate that validates and glorifies violence against women (check out Jean Kilbourne – she is my shero on this issue!). I want people to leave the festival with a newer understanding of how we move through our bodies when they are ill, how we must re-negotiate our identities and our limitations, how others view us, etc. I want this festival to encourage us to challenge how we define “beauty,” “femininity,” and “body image.” I want it to expand our minds into spaces of identity.

Collaborating with filmmakers:

I had followed Jean Kilbourne’s work and knew instantly that once Killing Us Softly 4 came out, it would be hot off the press in my festival!

Colleen Furlotte’s Question of Beauty has a great intergenerational approach to the issue.

Elizabeth St. Philip’s film Colour of Beauty discusses issues of colourism/racism in the fashion industry, which speaks to my goal of expanding our discussion on “body image.” All too often, we discuss the fashion indudstry from the perspective of the size of models, but very rarely have we had critical discussions about colour. Is colour only good when exoticized? For the most part, it’s still an industry with a very Eurocentric standard of beauty.

The majority of the films were programmed by Aisha Fairclough, my partner in both love and war! She was simply amazing. Members of our festival advisory board have also played key roles in pulling this together. Members include Tina Reid, Ai Rei Dooh-Tousignant, and Ashley Demartini, all of whom work or have worked with the National Film Board, where all our films are screening on July 17-18. So while the festival was my vision, and truly sprang from work I’ve been doing for years, you can see that it’s nothing short of a group effort!

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Shameless readers, take note: there is a YouthZone component of the festival that will take plcae on Saturday, July 17, from 10am-4:30pm. Young women aged 12-18 will have the opportunity to see films, participate in workshops, get free feminist, and have a free lunch! For registration, please contact info@bitemefilmfest.com with the subject line: BITE ME! YouthZone.

BITE ME!
Toronto International Body Image Film & Arts Festival

Exploring issues of body image, media (re) presentation, identity and advocacy through creative mediums…

Where: National Film Board, Toronto Mediatheque, 150 John Street, Toronto, ON M5V 3C3
www.nfb.ca/mediatheque, 416.973.3012/ 416.973.0896

Information: http://www.bitemefilmfest.com/index.html

When: Saturday July 16- Sunday July 18, 2010

Shameless readers, take note!

BITE ME! YouthZone @ NFB Mediatheque
Saturday July 17, 10:00a.m.-4:00p.m.

Free Film Screenings, Media Literacy & Self Awareness Workshops, Books and Lunch for Girls 12-18 years of age.

For registration, please contact info@bitemefilmfest.com
Subject Line: BITE ME! YouthZone

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As I started to see the links pop up on the internet about Wonder Woman’s new “makeover,” I began to repeat in my head, “Please let it be good! Please let it be good!”

I am not a comic aficionado and bow to those with greater super-hero knowledge than I, but I’ve loved Wonder Woman ever since my much-adored older sister would slip into her Wonder Woman bathing suit and fight poolside crime.

On Twitter, OutTV described the costume change as “less…impractically attired.”

To be honest, my first reaction was, “WTF?!!” (you can check out a pic of the full “makeover” below as well as some pics of the former Wonder Woman).
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Looking for an opportunity this summer to learn some new skills, meet some great people, and be part of the grassroots media movement?

CKUT, Montreal’s best community radio station (full disclosure: I’ve been a volunteer for a decade) is having its second annual Youth Radio Camp, a week-long primer in how to be a radio superstar. You’ll get to make a radio documentary, write and perform a radio play, learn how to DJ, make sound effects, create a podcast and host an interview, along with fieldtrips and sessions with amazing musicians and radio producers.

This could be you. (www.ckut.ca)

There are two age categories for the camp, 10-13 and 14-17. To find out more and sign up, check out CKUT’s website. Sessions run from June 28 to August 20. Now get out there and be the media!

To be honest, I don’t normally pay attention to the JUNO Awards. Often reflecting what major radio stations are playing as opposed to what Canadians are actually listening to, the Junos have in the past seemed…”out of touch” is a nice what to say it, I think.

This year, things appear to be a little different.
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Canice Leung, fantastic feminist columnist for The Metro, wrote a terrific piece about our exciting new project, the Shameless Wire.

Help us make this project happen. Donate today.

Full text of Canice’s column:

As many women do in university, I took a few women’s studies classes. I remember in one mostly female class of 40, the teacher asked who was feminist; my hand was among a sparse few that went up. But in class discussions, my classmates’ thoughts on gender roles or reproductive rights made clear that’s exactly what they were.

It’s an apt example of how necessary gender studies are; that young adults can dismiss feminism as radical yet recognize the cornerstones of the movement is evidence of this.

Fortunately, two initiatives are underway to change that.

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Wow. I’m a big fan of Terry O’Reilly’s radio show The Age of Persuasion and I watch more Mad Men than I like to admit, but every time I think I’m a savvy mediaphile who’s completely immune to shock tactics in the world of advertising, those zany ad execs prove me wrong. Horribly, horribly wrong.

Hit the Bitch is a Danish anti-violence-against-women campaign that works much like a video game where you’re supposed to, well, beat up a woman. Your mouse or webcam controls a big, hairy, manly arm that slaps and punches a very realistic avatar of a woman, complete with sound effects and bruises that appear on her face. Your “performance” is ranked on a scale that goes from PUSSY to GANGSTA (we’ll get to the racist implications in a second). I was not able to complete the game, because I must be a pussy (& proud to say it!) but according to the AdFreak researchers, who are more dedicated than me, when you’ve successfully reduced the woman to a tearful pulp the game calls you an idiot. Well, on behalf of all abused women worldwide, thanks a mill’.

Yeah, so I didn’t really want to include an image from the Hit the Bitch website, since I figure we see enough images of women being abused and victimized, so here instead are Thelma and Louise, who fought back. Enjoy!

The AdFreak piece already makes several strong points about the absurdity of the site (people who think it’s okay to commit violence against women will enjoy it, while people to whom it’s revolting won’t be able to look at it for more than a second; it makes violence against women into a game, which is not okay no matter what the message), and personally I tend to agree that doing something in the name of a cause I support doesn’t equal carte blanche. Plus and besides are there so few images of victimized and abused women in the world that we need to start making more of them? I’d be curious to know where other people stand on that, but before I open up the floor I want to comment on what to me is maybe the most disturbing aspect of this ad, which is the conflation of violence against women and what the makers seem to suggest is a “gangsta” or hip-hop lifestyle.

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