The day I was behind the times in the blogosphere, or why you should only date guys that like your creepy clay figurines. Or guys that are Jared Padalecki.

I knew this was going to happen when I started blogging. I would get excited about it for a few months, and then I'd get distracted and go weeks and weeks without writing anything, and then people would lose interest and no one would read it anymore and I'd get sad and panic about what exciting topic I'd need to write about to get people's attention again and then I'd never be able to think of anything cool enough because there would be too much pressure and oh dear god what should I write about?!?! I feel like I'm always a week or so behind on online trends and pop culture news or political news so I can't write about anything contemporary because everyone's already weighed in on those issues. The most recent movies I've seen that are worth commenting on are The Hunger Games, which everyone and their mother has blogged about, and What's Your Number?, which I watched last night but every other feminist blogger worth her salt has already talked about because it deals so explicitly with the politics of female promiscuity and includes the douche-bag-man-whore-misogynist-is-actually-a-nice-guy-once-you-get-past-his-emotional-baggage trope which I am very tired of because pretty much all of the douche-bag-man-whore-misogynists I've ever met are actually douche-bag-man-whore-misogynists and there is no way in hell I would put in the time and effort to teach them Feminism 101 every single fucking time they said something douche-y or misogynistic because I AM NOT YOUR FUCKING TEACHER (unless I am, in which case I will teach you Feminism 101 over and over again because they pay me to). That being said, What's Your Number? is actually a hilarious movie and is nice in a find-a-man-that-accepts-you-and-your-promiscuity-and-your-creepy-clay-figurines-as-you/they-are kind of way. Which, I think, is a very important message. Particularly the creepy clay figurines part. Because, lord knows, you should never date a guy that doesn't love your creepy clay figurines. That should be a rule in whatever the straight-girl opposite of the Bro Code is.

Anyway, aside from that, I've been watching Gilmore Girls and Buffy, and I feel like pretty much everything that needs to be said about both of those has already been said, especially Buffy. I went to the Popular Culture Association of Canada conference in Niagara Falls this past weekend and THERE WERE NO PANELS ON BUFFY. It's like all the scholars in Canada were just like FUCK IT, WE'VE SAID IT ALL. I don't know if that's true. But I certainly have nothing new to contribute to that discussion. Although I read an article on After Elton this morning about the five gayest episodes of Buffy and they seemed kind of arbitrary to me. Like...Willow is openly gay for the last few seasons. So pretty much all of the episodes about her in the last few seasons are gay, aren't they? Or I am misunderstanding what makes an episode gay? Their reasoning seemed all over the place... "lots of naked boys!" and "gay actor as central character!" and "Willow's gayness is hinted at vaguely long before she comes out!" seemed to all be valid reasons. Anyway, my point is, I feel like that list could have been a lot longer than five. Or it should have had more specific criteria. Do they mean the episode features queer characters? Do they mean there's a lot of eye candy for queer men? I DON'T KNOW. So I guess I had something to contribute to the discussion about the discussion of Buffy. We're into meta-discussions now. My head hurts. I also watch Weeds and Supernatural, but I'm not up-to-date on either of those, so my comments would be behind the times. But watching the first and second seasons of Gilmore Girls at the same time as watching Supernatural is WEIRD. (Not at EXACTLY the same time--I can't multitask like that...obviously...) Jared Padalecki goes from being tall, skinny cute boy to SUPER MEGA HOTTIE MAN. Also, the wrong person is named Dean in Supernatural. Very confusing. I refer to the two main characters in Supernatural as Dean and Sam-Dean. It's weird because I've had friends who have changed their names and I adjusted to that very easily but I can't adjust to a character on a TV show changing his name when he's on another TV show. And neither of those names are actually his name. His name is Jared. Which is a stupid name, if you ask me. It does not fully describe his hotness. Jared is not a hot name.

Well, for someone who has nothing to say, I've certainly managed to say a lot. I think that's why I decided to start blogging in the first place. It's style over substance. It doesn't matter what I say, as long as it's somewhat entertaining. It's an nice shift from academic writing, where I'm trying to write something substantial about the Backstreet Boys which is like an oxymoron or something. Also, I'm finding it super weird to write about how they were marketed. I mean, it's one thing to analyze their songs or their music videos, because that was the "art" that they put out there to be consumed and talked about. But when I'm talking about how their personalities and relationships were marketed, it feels weird. I forget I'm talking about real people. Like Nick Carter exists, in the real world, as a person, and I have no idea how much of what was written about him in the 1990s was actually him, and how much was manipulated and fabricated to create a certain image. I'm having an ethical and existential crisis here.

Maybe staring at a picture of Jared Padalecki will solve my crisis...

You'll always be Dean in my heart.

The day I wrote about boy bands, or why grad school is hard and kittens and celebrities are fun.

As I sit here attempting to write my major research project proposal (it's like a proposal for my master's thesis, but it's called a research project because it's shorter than a thesis...it's just semantics), I keep catching myself devaluing my own research topic, and I feel like that's really detrimental to this process. You see, I'm writing about boy bands. And that's usually how I present my research interests to people: "I write about boy bands!" And then I wonder why people don't take cultural studies seriously, when clearly I don't. I don't bother to tell anyone the context in which I'm researching boy bands, nor do I even explain WHY I'm researching boy bands. I suppose you could call it's self-preservation... If I don't admit that my research is actually grounded in anything serious, then no one expects anything of me. Set the bar low, then you can't fail, right? Plus then I don't have to actually try and "talk smart"--I don't have to talk about critical theory out loud, I can just hide in my apartment with stacks of books around me and write about theory there and never tell anyone. Because if I don't tell anyone, no one can judge me.

But now I have to write this proposal...which has to explain to other people why the hell I'm doing this. And I find myself doing the opposite of what I was doing before. I know, deep down, that I'm not doing this for silly reasons. But I keep making these bizarre qualifications, like that "the queer potential of boy bands is not an excuse to celebrate them" or something along those lines. Which, I mean, is a fair point, I suppose--I'm not arguing that everyone needs to love boy bands immediately because they're the best thing ever. But is that ever anyone's argument in an academic context? People writing about Judith Butler or Derrida or, I don't know, George Orwell are sitting there thinking OMG HOW CAN I MAKE SURE PEOPLE KNOW THAT I'M NOT JUST SOME HUGE FAN AND THAT I ACTUALLY HAVE SOMETHING IMPORTANT TO SAY. Because like seriously? Do people ever write about things they don't enjoy? C'mon, you know y'all are fans of Judith Butler. I am. (Okay, I've never said "y'all" before in my life. I'm from Ontario, not Texas.) And the nature of writing about anything you like in an academic context is, sure, you praise it when it deserves it, but you deconstruct it. You critique it when it deserves it, too. Obviously I am not just writing: "Boy bands are cool because gay boys and straight girls love them and everything gay boys and straight girls do on their own is awesome because they're both marginalized in a sexist, homophobic society. Yay!"

 If you'll allow me to analyze my own behaviour for a moment (not that I'm really asking--I'll write this whether you want me to or not! Muahaha...and they said the Internet would be a democratic space...), I think the reasons behind my attempts to defend (or avoid speaking about) my research are twofold. First of all, despite all of the changes in academia within the past few decades, particularly with the rise of cultural studies, popular culture is still not "serious" enough. For all the talk about not condemning people for having "mainstream" tastes, academics sure like to talk about how obscure and artsy their tastes are and how informed they are about things taking place outside the mainstream. Sure, that's a huge generalization, but as Carl Wilson argues in his book Let's Talk About Love: A Journey to the End of Taste (it's about his allergic reaction to Celine Dion), people's cultural capital nowadays depends on their ability to be a cultural omnivore. You need to be able to discuss Buffy or Dr. Who or Lost or Community as well as independent films and documentaries and local bands and also have a working knowledge of classic literature and classical music and Renaissance painting. And if you can only discuss the first bit...the "pop culture" stuff...well, you might just be "mainstream." Now I feel like I'm critiquing hipsters, not academics. But I feel like in both categories, similar feelings manifest themselves in somewhat different ways.

And here's the big catch, that leads to my second point: Never should you discuss Gossip Girl or Justin Bieber or Friends with Benefits or Confessions of a Shopaholic. (Disclaimer: I love GG, I like Justin Bieber, I saw Friends with Benefits and I read Shopaholic but it made me want to shoot someone. Not that that means you can't like it.) Regardless of what other shows you watch or bands you know, this is cultural suicide. And yeah, boy bands fit into this category. And you wanna know why? I'm sure there's a long, complex answer I could give, but the gist of it is this: Because that stuff's for girls. And by girls, I specifically mean girls, not women (despite the fact that our culture seems to think it's totally appropriate to call any woman, regardless of her age, a girl--that's not infantilizing at all, is it?). As Diane Railton argues in her essay "The gendered carnival of pop," pop music

is temporally bounded, seen only as a fitting taste for very young women. The pleasures of 'pop' are something that we must learn to grow out of.... [And it] is not only the music that must be left behind, but the physical, the sexual, in the music. The feminine in music must be abandoned as women grow up. It is only permissible for girls and young women. (2001: 330)

And this is why, Railton argues, pop music is not a threat to "real" music, and therefore will never be considered "serious," as a pastime or as an academic subject:

The carnivaleque of pop can provide no real challenge to the masculine world of popular music [meaning rock music or rap or anything popular that is marketed to and enjoyed by men] until it becomes acceptable not to grow out of 'pop pap music,' but to carry its pleasures with us into adult life. (2001: 330)

So this is what I'm up against, y'all. (There, I said it again. I DON'T TALK LIKE THIS IN REAL LIFE. The voice in my head is apparently some sort of combination of a Southern girl and a Valley girl.) And then there's the whole feminist argument that the third-wave tendency to praise anything that's girly just to elevate "girly" to the same status as "boy-y" (or, you know, masculine) is kind of useless because it's not critiquing the "girly," it's just putting it on a pedestal. Which is totally a fair point. So, it's a struggle. And I mean, really...I do understand, to a certain degree, why people might balk when they hear I'm researching people who dressed like this:

Like, seriously, Justin? This makes the fedora obsession look normal.

Anyway, if you are having similar struggles to me, know you're not alone! Here are two other posts I've come across from women experiencing some of the same issues: Maria Bustillos on romance fiction and Chloe Angyal on romantic comedies.

Also, I've found that looking at pictures of cats up for adoption in local shelters is very therapeutic. If you're in my area, look! and look! I want one but Jimmifer says I can't have one until we move into a bigger place. Which is probably a good idea because I don't want to have a litter box in my kitchen. And my kitchen is sort of in my office/living room. *Sigh*

Also, another exciting distraction is Suri's Burn Book (a Tumblr dedicated to all of the celebrity children who "disappoint" Suri Cruise) because it's awful and mean and vapid and who does not love a five-year-old that can pull off this much attitude:

this much poise:

and these shoes:

The girl is a force to be reckoned with.

Reading week needs to end. I cannot be left alone in this apartment to do work any longer.