Of Rice and Men

Multi-millionaire, Kenny Kunene, celebrated his 40th birthday party in style when he hired five models to wear lingerie, cover themselves in body paint, and one model, to lay half-naked with sushi strategically placed over her markedly unpainted body.

What might have only been just another “gig” for these models marked a bourgeois show of wealth and abandon for Kunene. And the media have eaten it up.

Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) General Secretary Zwelinzima Vavi has criticised Kunene for “spitting in the face of the poor” by spending R700,000 on this lavish spread. But aside from “spitting in the face of the poor,” what about spitting in the face of women? Or, in this case, possibly drooling on their thighs and stomach?

Vavi stated: “It’s the sight of these parties where the elite display their wealth, often secured by questionable methods, that turns my stomach.” Vavi never once cited women’s rights or gender equality in this outpouring of disgust.

Kunene responded to Vavi, stating apartheid and race as arguments for his actions: “You say that my so-called R700,000 party is a “corruption of morality” and that I’m “spitting in the face of the poor”…You remind me of what it felt like to live under apartheid: you are telling me, a black man, what I can and cannot do with my life,” he said. “You are narrow-minded and still think that it’s a sin for black people to drive sports cars or be millionaires at a young age. You make my stomach turn.”

In all of this, it seems that socio-economic and racial issues are more important that the ever-consistent oppression of women. I would even argue that the “struggle” that Vavi nobly fights excludes women. While Kunene might feel he is staking a claim on his rights, these women are merely decorations and serving platters in the world he has created to prove his arrival to the international elite.

To read the full article, click here.

2010 and Informal Traders

Johannesburg, May 12th, 2010

Informal traders speak out Photo: Jennifer Elle Lewis

In the shadow of the Coca-Cola tower, over 100 informal traders gathered to present a memorandum to FIFA executives on May 12^th, 2010 at Soccer City in Soweto. Since FIFA passed by-laws preventing informal traders from selling near stadiums during the World Cup, reserving these sites for FIFA affiliates and corporate sponsors, this marginalised group has had to hit the streets, literally.

The streets are where many of these individuals host their businesses and earn their livelihoods. However, on this day they transformed this space to a place of protest. These ‘hawkers’, as they are commonly known, are trying to reclaim their basic human rights in their own way and on their own stomping ground. At the foothills of the massive state of the art soccer stadium, it left one to wonder if these Davids could trump the FIFA Goliath that they say has hijacked what was once their South Africa.

Article on 2010 and Informal Traders

Gender in Media Diversity Journal: Gender, Media and Sport

Caster Semenya:

A Girl of Two Parts

by Jennifer Elle Lewis

Semenya

So this was pretty appalling. Curious as to how they will test her “gender?” Will they make her walk in high heels while touching one finger and then the other to her nose? Or will they see if she can apply lipstick without a mirror? With her toes? Upside down?

Ah, the possibilities.

Semenya told to take gender test

Long After

© Jennifer Elle Lewis

Gumtree Racism

So here I am in Johannesburg. Much to my surprise, it’s freezing cold. So cold that I have taken to carrying around a portable electric heater, which I use to warm myself like a lizard.

I felt guilty for being so ignorant of Africa’s potential coldness. I felt like just another dumb white person who couldn’t possibly imagine an Africa with leafless sycamore trees and below zero nights. I mean, chilly, sure, but not frozen tundra. Ok. And since I am confessing my ignorance, I had also thought/hoped that there would be monkeys here. You know, any kind of monkey. Even mean monkeys. Baboons would also be fine. I pictured a garden where Jasmine could survive, maybe even Mango Trees, and rabid monkeys that would flay themselves onto my balcony to steal from me. Occasionally they might get electrocuted on the 10 ft tall electric fence, and yeah that would be awful, and smell like a backyard braai, but still, it was my fantasy. Don’t knock it.

So there are no monkeys and it’s cold. There aren’t any zebras either. Bummer.

A few moments ago, I was on Gumtree, trying to find a flatshare when I saw this posting:

Looking for WHITE house mate Price: R 3,000

Ad ID: 146145590 Visits: 8

Share Basis: Flat or House Share Bathrooms (#): 3 bathrooms Location: Johannesburg Northern Suburbs Date Listed: 04/08/2009 Nice big secure house to share, w&l, maid and DSTV incl. Near the CocaCola Dome, Northgate. Regret only white people please. Please contact me. Thanks Jane E-mail:  mailto:janedt@ssi.co.za Tel:       084 777 8049

Ok, Jane. I mean. SERIOUSLY? And you know what is so messed up? There were about 15 others just like it.

I’m not going to go into my whole schpeel about how the white peoples’ imprisonment and then fear of the blacks is fueling so much of the violence here. After all, I can’t say I understand enough to adequately come to any conclusions. Certainly both sides are wrong. Violence in no way is acceptable. But this? Why can’t Jane see that her hatred is only fueling more hate. A Gumtree now used for lynchings? But enough…

In some ways, could we applaud Jane for her honesty? Is an out of the closet and in Go-Go boots racist better than a closeted one? I guess she could have screened her email, or phone interviews, or simply chosen a white candidate over a black one. No one would know her heart of darkness. But no. No. What am I even suggesting…NO. We cannot applaud Jane. Because its NOT ok to broadcast racism… We can call her though. Yes, lets.

15 Hours to Winter

Ugly Barbie

She’s drab, she’s dumpy, she’s nothing to write home about, and she’s going to make the girls of America feel like beauty queens.

On the cover of today’s The Onion was the story: “New Homely Doll to Improve Young Girls Self-Image.” This mock-article suggests that Mattel, the long-time manufacturer of Barbie, is trying to compensate for decades of setting unhealthy beauty standards for young girls. According to research by the University Central Hospital in Helsinki, Finland, if scaled into real life proportions, Barbie would stand at 5-foot-9 inches, with the measurements of 36-18-33, and would lack the requisite 17 to 22 percent of body fat required to menstruate. The Onion proposes that Mattel’s new model, Plain Pamela, would be a “pale, unsightly plaything, which has a plastic torso scaled to the proportions of a 5-foot-4, 179-pound woman in her mid-30s” and that this will improve the self esteem of girls nationwide.

The “article” also suggests that beyond inculcating more “realistic” beauty standards in young girls, the doll would serve as something for them to feel superior to.  Each doll comes prepackaged with various “unflattering and ill-fitting blouses to drape over her shapeless torso” as well as “stick on psoriasis spots.” Would-be buyers could also purchase various Mattel playsets and accessories including “the Plain Pamela Cramped Studio Apartment, complete with special Dinner-for-One Kitchenette and Depressing Stack of Old People Magazines.” The article suggests that girls might benefit from cultivating a delightful sense of Schedenfreude at an early age.

When I was young, I loved Barbie. I loved Barbie so much that I even made my male cousins love Barbie. We all played with her. It was THE THING to do. I thought she was *beautiful*. In speaking with my friends about the lass years later, I have found that what we loved the most about Barbie was giving her hideous hair-cuts, delimbing her plastic torso and making her have unsanctified sex with just about anyone. Most of the delimbing was somewhat accidental: Barbie kicked her leg too high when she was auditioning for the cheerleading squad; Barbie, while adept at flying, failed miserably when landing; Barbie just couldn’t handle the orgy at the beach, (aka. bathtub); Barbie wasn’t very resilient when poked into the spinning fan blades.

Yes, poor Barbie often wound up back in the bag with the others, naked, delimbed and disgraced. And probably when reassembled for another play date, she acquired the legs and arms of her comrades, never to be truly whole again. However, we NEVER sullied her with magic markers like other kids did, or gave her Mohawks, or made her bald. That was just wrong. Those kids were messed up. However, in the aforementioned acts, Barbie would, from time to time, become decapitated.

I salute Plain Pamela, in fact, I think it would be amazing if Mattel actually came out with a doll like this. But, for the meanwhile, girls across America can continue to deface the company’s prettier models.

Brian Andreas

He kept her skin in the closet & brought it out only for holidays

so not to get crumbs on it.

Do you still love me? she would ask at the end of each day

& he would hum her a song as he smoothed away the creases.

Catalina de Erauso

Thanks to my friend Soraya Field Fiorio, I came to be acquainted with Catalina de Erauso, or the Lieutenant Nun, the swashbuckling, cross-dressing pirate. Ms. Erauso was born in 1585. At the age of 15 she escaped from the nunnery to which she had been sent, revamped her habit into men’s clothing, and boarded a ship bound for Peru disguised as a manservant. And that was just the beginning. The following synopsis is provided by Soraya:

Catalina de Erauso

Catalina de Erauso was a Basquero, born into a family of minor nobility in San Sebastian.  She was tithed to the Church because her family had too many daughters (hence too many dowries to pay), and well, Catalina was not a great beauty, and it was surmised that she would not attract a wealthy, politically advantageous suitor.  Right before she took her vows, she escaped the convent and ran off, wreaking havoc wherever she went until her death in Mexico City circa 1650.

She held various posts, including: page to aristocrats, pupil to religious scholars, assistant to merchants, soldier for the Spanish army in Peru and Chile, but more interestingly, pirate, thief, gambler, murderer, and of course, cross-dresser.  Modern scholarship focuses on her identity as either lesbian or transgender/queer, but any sexual motivation to her cross-dressing seems unlikely.  It was not unheard of for women with no other options to feign a male identity — it was the only way to get decently paid work.

Interestingly, after her sex was revealed when she was captured, she was sent back to Spain to see what the Pope had to say about her.  According to Church laws, he could have excommunicated her, and possibly have had her put to death.  Instead, he granted her dispensation to continue dressing like a man! And blessed her! This was the same pope — Urban VIII — who, a mere few years later, excommunicated Galileo.

She wrote an autobiography titled,  Lieutenant Nun: Memoir of a Basque Transvestite in the New World. It is next on my reading list, for sure. She makes those Somali pirates look like child’s play, oh wait, they are children. Anyway, you get my drift.

As of now, I would like to make Catalina my patron saint, ARGH!