Women, no matter how successful, powerful, or influential, must display their bodies for public consumption, and direct their gaze toward men.
Mika Brzezinski posing with Morning Joe co-host Joe Scarborough.
There is a bright, shining line between the above, and Miley Cyrus’s routine at the VMAs (a bright, shining line that appears to have eluded Mika Brzezinski).
There’s a reason that the following picture of John Lennon and Yoko Ono remains so odd, and so powerful.
Emily L. Hauser - In My Head 
socioprof
/ August 27, 2013What the hell?!?!?!
emilylhauser
/ August 27, 2013Pretty much.
Tenar Darell
/ August 27, 2013Oh for fakakata’s sake!
Tenar Darell
/ August 27, 2013Oops extra syllable there!!
darththulhu
/ August 28, 2013I really would like the top photo to be replicated with a gender swap. Mika in a pantsuit, seated and smiling and gazed upon by a toned, flesh-baring Scarborough performing athletically for the camera. The dissonance would be striking.
My kingdom for some Photoshop skills!
dave in texas
/ August 28, 2013Great, thanks. Now I’ve got to go wash my brain out with soap.
nefariousnewt
/ August 28, 2013I have, in the past, defended Mika, given that she does not strike me as being an ignorant person. It’s getting harder to. I think she has been so thoroughly inculcated in the “men are this, women are this” line of thought that she simply never sees the forest for the trees. Maybe what really upset her about Miley was that — inappropriate as it was in a societal context — here was a woman doing what she wanted, outside rigidly defined boundaries that Mika has lived by her whole life.
I could be wrong. And often am.
Neocortex
/ August 29, 2013Of the things to complain about in the Cyrus routine, she went with this? Not the racism? Not groping and slapping her employee’s (i.e. a dancer’s) butt? But “Oh no there was sexuality in that performance”?
Jo
/ September 1, 2013I do love that photo of John Lennon and Yoko Ono. Very powerful and beautiful. Thanks for reminding me.