Contributed by Annamarya

Early this month, Cherie reported on Allstate’s TV AD: Mayhem is Coming Teen Driver, which does a terrifically offensive job of portraying teenage girls as “reckless careless bimbos.” In that ad (based on an Allstate survey that found that 48 percent of girls admitted to likely driving 10 miles over the speed limit, 16 percent described their driving as aggressive and half admitted to likely driving while texting or talking on the phone), the “typical” teenage female driver recklessly pulls a hit and run—in a massive medicinal pink SUV, with huge pink glasses on her head, while reading a text on a blinged out cell phone about her BFF Becky kissing a boy she likes. Her “emotional distress” and subsequent “mayhem” is summed up with this little ditty: “Whoopsies. I’m all ‘OMG, Becky’s not even hot.’” I’m pretty sure you can understand why we here at The Daily Femme we were offended by that.

And, not necessarily to our surprise, Allstate did it again—and this time, in the form of a female jogger. Let me set this up for you: This woman (or “hot babe,” as Allstate describes her in the commercial) is wearing (surprise!) a pink head band, carrying pink weights, and jogging down her street to make sure that “this” (re: her body) “stays a ten.” A guy drives by checking her out and, because he isn’t looking at where he’s going, hits a pole. On the surface, that’s fine. It happens. When people don’t pay attention on the road, an accident can happen. But the problem with this latest commercial isn’t just the “hot babe” or the reckless driver—it’s the dialogue at the end: “So get Allstate. Save cash and be better protected from mayhem, like me.” (“Me,” of course, being the jogger).

I won’t lie. When I saw the first commercial in the Allstate’s “Mayhem is Coming” campaign, which involves a puppy ripping up the backseat of a car, I thought it was funny. I have cats that can be destructive to my possessions, so I understood in my own way. I even found the tree branch falling on a car commercial relatable. Admittedly, those two things fall under the “mayhem” category because they are unpredictable and can destroy your property when you least expect it. But to blame a female jogger for a driver’s stupidity? That’s just offensive. It’s the driver’s fault the car accident happened in the first place, he took his eyes off the road. He is mayhem, not the female jogger. And why the hell is she in pink anyways? Is it some play on the asinine color associations, where blue equals boy and pink equals girl, that have been engrained in our psyche? And what are you going to tell us next, Allstate? That we shouldn’t leave the house dressed in miniskirts if we don’t want to be sexually assaulted?

I don’t own a car or even have a license but once I acquire both, you best be sure I am not giving my money to Allstate.

Contributed by Cherie

Ever wonder what it is like for working female musicians these days? Sure we can see snippets of musicians’ experiences on “Behind the Music” or watch the wannabe stars of “American Idol,” but behind all the staging, editing, dramatization and uber fakeness, the question of how are women navigating the ever evolving music business still stands? Well NPR’s music blog ‘The Record” offers an interesting answer by surveying 700 women musicians spanning different genres and including klezmer drummers, metal songwriters, opera divas and yes even the occasional AI contestant, free from Ryan Seacrest forced cheesiness.

Asking the same eighteen questions which address issues such as starting a family, dealing with the audience, and whether or not looks matter, NPR’s  unedited collection offers a broad range of often surprising (occasionally frustrating) responses. While issues like money, appearance, families, talent and sexism were recurring themes, it was rather disheartening that many women increasingly find their careers boxed in by limits set mostly by men especially as they climb the professional ladder. Whether looking at the labels, writers, critics, producers or touring crews, the industry on a whole is still heavily male dominated and men’s decisions affect women artists whether they are the headliner, back up singer or stand in guitarist. Furthermore, as we as a society are increasingly interested in free downloaded music, musicians feel ever more pressure to earn their money from touring which puts women at a disadvantage because it makes it difficult for them to meet the needs of their families or start one of their own down the line. Musician and mother of four Sora from Calgary sums it when she says that “the ability to tour is severely limited by the needs of children and because women still do the majority of both child care and house care even when they are working, it can be difficult to have the time to “pay one’s dues” musically.”

Often when considering gender (ine)quality in the workplace, issues like adequate maternity/paternity leave, breast pumping stations, and an early childcare facility are brought up, but how relevant are these issues to a woman who spends her time on a bus traveling several days at a time across the country? This clearly shows that when we think about advancements in the workplace for women, we should broaden our understanding of “the workplace.” Along with this survey, NPR plans to present  a series of related radio and online pieces that address the ideas and issues raised by these women–I can only hope that this includes a discussion on how to keep women touring and performing without having to chose between their music and their families.

NPR: Hey Ladies: Being a Woman Musician Today

Contributed by Cherie

Well, with the recommended interview featuring Helen Mirren, today is officially but unintentionally UK day at The Daily Femme!

This said and before going any further, let me make clear that I think that Helen Mirren is all around awesome. Seriously, does it get any better than her when it comes to strong mature sexy and talented actresses?  In fact, in her sixties, the woman combines sexy with strong in the most exquisitely natural way, something beyond rare in Hollywood. Yes, yes I know that at this point many want to remind me of the one and only Meryl Streep but while I am a fan, it is nice to see an older woman in command of her craft and her sexuality who doesn’t need to kiss Sandra Bullock in front of millions to prove it.

Mirren, who recently had a nude photo spread in New York Magazine, seems to be effortlessly comfortable with and in charge of her sexuality. No airs, no gimmicks. Discussing the subject, she describes herself as “a trailblazer because I demanded to do it my own way. I’d say, ‘I’m not having it put on me by someone else.’” The actress who is known for playing several royal characters including Cleopatra, Queen Charlotte, Queen Elizabeth I and II, has also played a few saucier roles such as Morgana in “Excalibur,” the lusty wife of a crime boss in “The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover,” and now Grace Bontempo, the ruthless biting madam, in a new movie, “Love Ranch,” directed by her husband Taylor Hackford.

In this interview with Collider.com, Mirren talks about the research she did to play Grace Bontempo and what it was like being directed by her husband. However the highlight is when she speaks about her decision to be photographed nude for the New York Magazine photo shoot and explains why she believes nudity is sometimes best when it isn’t sexy but instead ’simple’ and ‘real.’ Amen to that.

Check out the Collider.com: Helen Mirren Interview LOVE RANCH

New York Magazine: Madam Helen

Interviewed by Cherie

Erin Gibson knew she had some huge shoes to fill when she replaced Sarah Haskins on Current’s InfoMania (check out her latest segment below). Good thing she comes for the Upright Citizen’s Brigade (UCB) where the only rule is “no shitting on stage,” so she’s up for any challenge. Going from watching Law and Order SVU and Wife Swap to being a total media junkie, Erin is never at a loss finding crap on TV that offends women. In this interview she tells us what it’s like to replace Sarah and discusses her own style of comedy.  She also talks about how she broke into comedy and shares her views on a variety of topics, including women’s magazines, women in the media and how the Internet can be “a hotbed of irrational, unchecked rage and naked people pooping on each other.”

How did you land a gig as the only woman on the InfoMania team? Was it a grueling audition process?

I heard Sarah was leaving and thought that they’d probably want to hire a lady to replace her. I was right! The audition process was super fun!  I love auditioning, especially when I feel really good about the work I’ve put into something. And by “work” I mean sweet jokes.

Where do you come up with your ideas and how do you decide what is good to include in your segments? Any topic you just won’t touch?

It’s really simple. I watch TV and when something stupid happens in the “world of ladies,” we start pulling the media, and then I write the piece around the best media clips. If there’s nothing stupid going on, then I look at the calendar and see what kind of lady holiday is coming up. If I still don’t have anything, I cry on the phone to my husband and then he reminds me he’s not my therapist so, I pull myself together and then magic happens.

Any topics I won’t touch? No. I perform at UCB, a theater that has a “no shitting on stage” rule because someone did that.

Do you get a lot of hate mail or cease and desist letters from the companies whose products, or shows you critique? Although it’s still early in the game, do you any funny example to share?

Not yet, but I hope I can get some of those! If I were to make a “Cease and Desist Wish List,” I’d put Miller, Tampax and the E! show “Pretty Wild” on it.

A lot of people in the blog world have been talking about the big shoes you have to fill as the replacement of Sarah Haskins. How has the transition into the role been for you and how are your styles different in your view?

I’ll leave the side-by-side comparison to outsiders. What I try to do is maintain a facade of fearlessness in the face of adversity because I was raised in the South where people who had feelings were often called “pussies” or “fags.” That being said, it’s daunting to replace someone like Sarah who’s smart and funny and gets it.  I just have to do what I think is funny and make the segment my own.

As the Modern Lady, what do you hope to introduce on the show that will be different from what we have already seen?

Well the format is already in place: green screen + media + jokes. All I can do right now is to give it my spin, which I would label “confident weirdo”.  I am also very confessional. I will be sprinkling in awful pictures of me, stories about crimes I’ve gotten away with, and my sad, weird sexual history.

As you have only done two segments and already the “experts”  are commenting away online, what do you say to haters?

If there were more women writing and performing comedy on TV, I don’t think there would be such a weirdly overwhelming number of people who are upset. Or maybe there would be. The Internet is a hotbed of irrational, unchecked rage. Unchecked rage and naked people pooping on each other.

How much of a media junkie are you?

To be honest, before this job I watched two shows – Law and Order SVU and Wife Swap. Now, I watch so much TV and read so many magazines. I feel like a genius! I know who Lebron James is and why the Knicks want him. I have no use for that information!  All this exposure has lead me to a fairly rational hatred of women’s magazines. They could save a lot of money by printing “touch yourself” instead of all the horribly phrased vague sexual advice they dish out. I forgot how awful they are, and now I read them every week. And every week, they make little deposits into my frustration bank.

What is a “never fail” place to go to find ridiculous junk that targets women?

If you want to feel angry about women in the media watch Spike or Lifetime. My friend pitched a show to Spike and the executive summed up the network as  “guys doing cool stuff and hot girls saying nothing.” So, at least they admit it. But, on the other end of the spectrum, Lifetime makes women into cartoons. Cartoon victims that cry and scream a lot. Bottom line – both networks make me throw up in my mouth a little bit.

It never ceases to amazing me how practically any product can end up objectifying women sexually in its advertising, even if it takes a more subtle approach (even toilet paper is somehow so sexy!). Do you think this will ever change or it will stay that way because sex sells?

Sex will always sell. I like to be sexy, guys like to fuck and those two things can sell Axe body spray. It makes sense for products, especially those targeted to men. Guys drooling over a hot model eating a hamburger? Eh, doesn’t bother me. It’s how the women are portrayed, that’s more important. Humiliation and misogyny should not be tolerated.

You also do live comedy in LA, how does that differ from TV and which do you find more challenging?

Live comedy is amazing! You get an immediate response from an audience and if you bomb, no one can go back and watch it on YouTube again to wallow in your failure. Green screen is just you, a monitor, a prompter, a producer and a sound dude who is checking his email. But, after all is said and done, if I don’t like the way I say something, there’s a take to replace it.  If we could (more…)

Interviewed by Cherie

“Feminist Art at it’s Bad Ass Best” was the first description I ever heard about the Guerrilla Girls and after twenty-five years of anonymity, wearing gorilla masks, fighting sexism, and promoting women artists, these women have certainly lived up to their legacy. While the Guerrilla Girls today have divided into what they refer to as a “Banana Split” of three groups, they continue their work and have expanded to new genres including theatre. The Daily Femme had the pleasure of interview Aphra Behn, the artistic director of Guerrilla Girls On Tour! which tours across the world performing activist plays, performance art and street theatre. Aphra talks about how GGOT addresses gender inequity and female character stereotypes in theatre and why incorporating performance has help the group make a larger impact.

Can you explain the way that the Guerilla Girls split and the mission of Guerrilla Girls on Tour? What makes you different from the original group?

In 2001 Guerrilla Girls split into three new and independent groups – the “banana split”.  Those new groups are Guerrilla Girls On Tour!, GuerrillaGirlsBroadBand and Guerrilla Girls, Inc.  There were/are so many different kinds of discrimination in the arts that we split to follow new frontiers in feminist activism. All three groups include members who were part of the original group – some for 25 years. With Hallie Flanagan and Lorraine Hansberry, I formed Guerrilla Girls On Tour!  We are theatre artists and as members of Guerrilla Girls, we initiated actions against sexism in the theatre with sticker campaigns, fax blitzes, street protests and posters like “Oh! The Joys of Being a Woman Playwright.” Guerrilla Girls On Tour’s mission is to tour the world with new performances and performance art that takes a hilarious look at the current state of women in the arts and beyond.  Using skits, sketch, song and improvisation we turn pay equity, reproductive rights, hunger, violence against women, body image, and even the dreaded “F” word (feminism) into theatre that is fearless and funny. Because of the barrier our masks create Guerrilla Girls On Tour developed our own feminist theatre style that is interactive.  We talk to and with audience members on their take on the issues, involving them with writing assignments, sing-a-longs and audience participation.  We hope the result is feminist art that is accessible, hilarious and informative.

Some may think that because there are a lot of female performers, theatre does not marginalize women; can you speak about gender inequity in theatre?

Last year an amazingly brilliant economist, Emily Glassberg Sands, did a study to try to prove that there is discrimination in theatre.  She did several studies, one of which involved submitting plays written by women with both male and female names attached as authors.  When women artistic directors and literary managers read the scripts they rated those written by women as less likely to “fit with their theatre’s mission statement” than the identical play when it had a male pen name attached.  The results indicated that while women would like to produce the work of men and women equally, they felt their hands were tied.  This kind of prophetic discrimination was a shocking conclusion of the study. Emily Glassberg Sands also found that on Broadway women wrote only 11% of the shows but that those shows earned 18% more revenue than their male counterparts and sold 16% more tickets. We know that 65% of all Broadway show tickets are purchased by women and that women make up the majority of the audience. Plays by women make more money so why are producers afraid to take a chance on them? It has been acceptable for theatres to reserve one slot per season for a play by a woman or writer of color.  As evidenced by the study theatres should produce more plays by women if they want to earn more revenue.

Do you know of cities or countries where women playwrights’ works are more produced?

Wherever we tour to we count the number of plays by women and the number of plays by men that are produced in that area.  The only place where women outnumbered men was in Hawaii (Mahalo). Internationally we have never found more women plays presented.  We are doing a big tour this October of our new performance, “If You Can Stand the Heat: The History of Woman and Food” at the City of Women Festival in Slovenia.  We have tour stops in Germany, Hungary, Belgium and Turkey and we’ll keep you posted.

Recently I interviewed Susan Douglas a professor of media studies and communications at Michigan University and author of a recent book entitled, “Enlightened Sexism,” who argues that today’s media, in particular TV and film, send women mixed messages.  On the one hand they celebrate women’s achievements by featuring strong independent female characters, but at the same time, they resurrect sexist images of women as shallow, materialistic, obsessed with men, etc. Do you believe the same is true in theatre?

Yes I do.  Last year Tracy Letts’ play “August: Osage County” won the Pulitzer for drama.  (Tracy is a man, by the way).  I saw the play on Broadway.  The audience laughed, cheered and gave a standing ovation to over 3 hours of women screaming, fighting, swearing, scratching and even trying to kill each other.  The stereotype of women as powerful bitches who ruin their children’s lives was embraced by both critics and audience and was the hit of the season.  So we’ve gone from sexist images of women in the media to sexist images of women in theater and all because women are now deemed to be “equal”. I think audiences might like to see great work by women that doesn’t pander to this notion.  But as playwright Theresa Rebeck says producers would feel like they were giving in to political correctness if they produced works by women.  And so art continues to celebrate the lives and struggles of men.

You created the poster “YOU ARE GREATER THAN ZERO,” (above) that spoke to the low numbers of women directors. What are your thoughts on Katherine Bigelow winning an Oscar for directing, in particular in light of the fact that she won for a movie in a so-called “masculine” genre?

We take full credit for Katherine Bigelow’s win.  Seriously, it’s great she won doing work she is passionate about.

Do you think that you have the same impact you had over two decades ago?

When I became a Guerrilla Girl in 1997, we postered the Times Square area during the Tony Awards.  24 hours later all the posters had been removed by the zealous cleaning crew of the area, no doubt.  I quickly realized that our tactics had to change and that’s when (more…)

Contributed by Cherie

“There are inequities in our society between men and women, but they have never kept me from saying or doing what I want.”

I always enjoyed seeing photographs of Louise Bourgeois with her artwork. The idea that this petite older woman was able to construct such massive, eerie and often erotic sculptures certainly helped change certain negative stereotypes around women artists and their abilities. Bourgeois certainly knew how to hold her own in the art world and despite the fact that she only received recognition in her later years, in 2006 she became the best-paid woman artist. She was known as one of the greatest living artists and now the renown sculpture passed at the age of 98 from a heart attack. While many of her pieces reflect pain, memory and the relationship between an entity and it’s surroundings, she explains that her most famous sculpture, a 30 foot spider sculpture titled Maman or “Mother” represents her close relationship with her mother whom she referred to as having nerves of steel. Considered by many feminist art, Bourgeois had a certain ambivalence about the movement and expressed that feminism was one aspect but not the basis of her work. However her own success as a female artist among male-dominated art earned her a title of a feminist icon even though her goal was to be represented as a great artist irrelevant of her sex. In honor of her work, this recommended interview with the Guardian was when she was exhibiting at the Tate Modern in London back in 2008. She talks about the large disparity remaining for female artists despite certain advances and how her own work was ignored until her later years. She continued to work and create art until the very end and will be remembered for her outspoken manner but also the hidden mystery that made her work so intriguing.

Click Here for the Interview

Although it did not receive an awards, French Director Julie Bertuccelli’s film “The Tree” starring the fantastic Charlotte Gainsbourg closed the Cannes film festival. In fact there were no female filmmakers in the competition, however Bertruccelli says that she is not worried and claims “In a hundred years, women will be as present in cinema as men are…The field is so new that women have not yet taken their place.” In this interview with the Huffington Post, the director discusses family responsibilities that set women directors back. It is also sad to note that during the pre-production of the film, Julie’s own husband died, which eerily parallels her film’s underlying theme of a child mourning a father. With a background in documentaries, Bertuccelli won the Grand Jury Prize of the Critic’s week at Cannes in 2003 for her first feature film, “Since Otar Left,” a story about lying and the consequences of lying told through three generations of women, discussed in the second interview. With so few female directors being recognized for their work, we can only hope that Bertuccelli’s prediction turns out to be true, but in the meantime let us recognize the few present for their achievements while constantly asking why aren’t there more?

Click here for the interview on “The Tree”

Click here for the interview on “Since Otar Left”