Beyoncé and the Impersonal Pronoun

No one can self-objectify quite like Beyoncé. (And when I use her name, please hear the Stephen Colbert pronunciation, fully engaging that accent aigu on the terminal "e": Bay-on-SAY.)

Let's begin, shall we, by attempting to unpack the nut graf of "Single Ladies":

Don't be mad when you see that he want it
If you liked it then you shoulda put a ring on it
Wuh-ho-ho, &tc

Begin at the beginning. What is "it"? In its latter use, we might might expect the referent to be "finger." As, That poor girl. He should have put a ring on her finger. But this theory crumbles the moment we consider the pronoun's other roles, standing for the thing wanted (by another), and conditionally liked (by the narrator's former flame).
Is the finger metonymous, then, for the body? In such case, the full meaning becomes, If you liked this body, you should have put a ring on this finger, which stands for this body. The logic holds, but the implications are troubling. Is appreciation of a woman's physical assets adequate basis for marriage? Surely not. And yet, how much more dismaying if we suppose the word "it" in fact stands for the woman in her entirety--body, soul, mind, spirit.

For, what woman thinks of herself as "it"? Aha! you say, glimpsing the path down which I appear to intend to lead you, Perhaps a man could think of a woman as "it"!
The "it" in question.

And indeed, "Single Ladies" was created not by some jilted woman, but by R&B mastermind The Dream. (Perhaps tellingly, he co-wrote Mariah's "Touch My Body" as well). Like most Beyoncé lyrics, these were written by a stable of male songwriters, Beyoncé credited among them.

Men writing objectification tracks for women leads to strange distortions. For example, in Beyoncé's "Check On It," written, per usual, by a stable, the word "it," used as described above, appears 49 times. Here is the construction I find most bizarre:

You can look at it
Long as you don't grab it
If you don't go braggin
I'ma let you have it

Does any woman think of her body as a removed Other like that? Wares to consciously ply? Here the direct referent appears to be the badonkadonk, metonymous again for the body whole.

While the lyrics evoke the body as a removed Other, they simultaneously conflate the body with the total woman. In one instance in the earwormish "Check On It," the word "me" is substituted for "it" (i.e. having said "check on it" eighteen thousand times, she throws in a "check on me"). Confirmation then, if any were needed, that Beyoncé herself--one supposes, body and soul--is "it".

When a man writes a song and a woman sings it, there is a certain synergistic fucked-up-edness. He can slip in offensive notions (woman="it") without voicing them himself. She voices these notions without giving the implied ownership thereof much thought. (See the related "ho cosigner" phenomenon.)

Beyoncé always strikes me as a childlike star, a sexpot never quite in possession of her sexuality. Hence she vixens it up throughout the "Single Ladies" video, but gigglingly disowns the whole bit at the end.

Feminist carping to the contrary, there is one way I don't mind: at least her work promotes the stubby-legged, long-waisted, back-stacked body type in which I share a stake. And hell yeah I can do the "Single Ladies" dance.

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Ho Cosigners

I recently learned an important lesson (from an anonymous hip hop expert): white people who make black music need black cosigners. Eminem had Dr. Dre, Timberlake has Timbaland. Elvis surely had somebody. The black cosigner essentially says, He's alright; I declare that we will tolerate him. Cultivating black cosigners is very important. Otherwise, it's portrait of the artist as a pale fool.

So, in my Clebbie way, I've developed a spinoff concept: the ho cosigner. The function of a ho cosigner is to sing choruses cosigning the sexism in the verses. She essentially says, I like this ho role; I thrive on objectification. Think Hey Dirty, baby I got your money--or--Biggie Biggie gimme one more chance. Dr. Dre employed this technique often. It was a favorite trick in the nineties.

In fact, some would say the ho cosigner has fallen out of favor these days. And some, probably the same ones, would say that perhaps that hints at a gentle-slope decline in sexism in rap since the days when "something to poke on" was shorthand for "woman." Others, however, would call this a fantasy. And those others might also want to embark on a relationship-threatening argument about the whole matter, and that argument might make the first party insecure in their opinions and might keep them from revising the post they had written on the subject because of said insecurity.

What was I talking about?

Ah yes, ho cosigners.

Hip hop may not be any less sexist, but I'll submit this: That was Kelis--Kelis--cosigning ODB, saying she had his money and he need not worry. I can't imagine her stooping so low now. She's all about the liberated sexiness, a la My milkshake brings all the boys to the yard and, (ahem, pardon me) Wait til you taste my clit.

Uh, I can't end on that note...Anybody have anything else to say? No? Okay. Laters.

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Why I Keep Up

I KNOW it's counterintuitive: Keeping Up With the Kardashians is good for my self-esteem.

The Kardashians bump is remarkably reliable. I watch the show, wondering how anyone could be so flagrantly incestuous, wondering what draws me to such trash, wondering when it will end already, and walk away thinking half an hour is squandered.

Not so! After a certain incubation period, generally between one and three hours, I feel better about myself. This is partly due to what I call the Girls Next Door Effect, the comforting realization that people living ostensibly glamorous lives are bigger losers than oneself.

But the other part has to do with a circuitous logic that seeps into my subconscious during the one- to three-hour incubation period. To wit: this is a show on television, actually a quite popular one, and there are various hazy reasons one could proffer for the show's existence--the family is vaguely famous, hot, rich, glamorous--but these are merely derivative. The kernel is the Kard.ass.ian badonkadonk. And, of course, specifically, that of Kim. This has to be the grandest celebration of the tuchus the world has yet seen.









Thank you, Kim's butt.
(Kim's butt: "You're welcome, Kleb Kardassian.")
Once this realization seeps in, I can expect to see myself in the mirror differently for up to a week. Why, I'm no chubalub, I'm Kim without the tatas and the nose job! Serious booty is always served with a side of cellulite, as Khloe helpfully explained to the camera in the calendar-for-Reggie ep.

It wasn't always this way. When I was wee, my mother warned that I stood to inherit the dread Miller butt. (Which only became farcical when I grew up to pack far more back than any Miller.) Mum came of age under the reign of Big Tits, Tiny Ass and has never had a Mixalot awakening.


THE RECENT Kardashians highlights special "Junk in the Trunk" really encapsulated the concept. The featured highlight? A how-is-this-on-tv shot of Kim trying to stuff her big back cheeks into little jeans, a muffin top of nekkid butt meat attesting to her failure. I have since been informed that this is a common porn trope.

Imagine my shock. Because, how many times have I faced just such a vision (albeit, with skivvies) in a dressing room mirror and fled the store drowning in a pool of shame?

Never again.

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Kardashi-hens

ON tomorrow's episode of Keeping Up with the Kardashians, the notoriously callipygian family adopts laying hens. I did not expect this confluence of my more outlier interests and I'm not sure how to feel about it. My disgust is arguing with my delight.

The Kardashians kinda remind me of a flock of chickens anyway, with the high female to male ratio and the pecking and the discomfiting intrasexual vibe.

My chickens also live in a Calabasas manse.

Teasers of the ep show five or six hens huddled in the bathtub--presumably the result of Krazy highjinx on the part of Kim, Kourtney, Khloe, Kendall, Kylie or perhaps mom Kris--and a hapless Barred Rock crapping on the very well-polished floor of the Kardashian Kompound. (Cut to close-up of the crap; looks a bit less than solid and healthy to me.)


I WANTED to get Hennessy and Camilla's take, so I went out to the coop and explained to them that humans have this thing called reality shows and someone named Kim Kardashian, who is, to quote Joel McHale, "famous for having a big ass and a sex tape," stars in one, along with her large, wealthy family, which includes stepdad Bruce Jenner, a de-balled former Olympian. And that they had introduced chickens, high jinx, and so on.

Camilla squatted for a dump and took off in the direction of the compost bin. But Hennessy just stood there staring at me. Her head tilted jerkily to one side, then the other, then back.

As if to say, I can't believe I even have to explain to you how deeply this offends me.

It might just be jealousy; rappers are more into Kim these days.

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Superhead, Meet Supercleb

BOOK REVIEW
Confessions of a Video Vixen



Got a chick named Super-head
She give super-head
Just moved in the buildin, even gave the super head
Jadakiss, "Blood Pressure"

So begins the story of the most hated woman in hip hop. Well, not with the super getting head, but with Ja Rule and his Murder Inc. compatriots re-gifting the nickname Jadakiss had originally bestowed on the generous lady friend in the song.

Karrine Steffans, hip hop groupie, "video vixen" was the recipient.

I was finally able to get my grubby little hands on her 2005 memoir sans the shame of having to admit I was buying it (great Hannukkah present, Bri, thanks!) and devoured it within seventeen hours of arrival. That the book discussed the respective endowments of Shaq and Vin Diesel had nothing to do with my reading pace.

Want the rest of the list? Kool G Rap, Ice T, Ja Rule, Irv Gotti, "Papa" (=Method Man, according to Crim & Assoc.), Puffy, Ray J, Fred Durst (random!), Xzibit, DMX, Bobby Brown, Jay-Z, Dr. Dre, Usher, probably hundreds of unnamed athletes and music industry execs.

Sup, you could do with some editing. Of those, only Method Man, Vin Diesel and maybe Xzibit actually seem sexy when you think about it. And when you read about it.

Don't read this book unless you're prepared to have a big shit taken on your sexual fantasies about rappers. Kool G Rap beats her, Irv Gotti pimps her. Most of the rest take their fellatio apportionment with bizarre matter-of-factness, buy her some shit and move on.

And she doles out the apportionments in kind, with skillful efficiency. There are actual torrid affairs with a few of the aforementioned, but what takes place with most is a weird, sterile transaction in which both parties seem to know they have to do this, so they get on with it, already. The more famous the man, the less pleasant the sex: witness her mediocre fifteen minutes with Puffy (p. 149), gross baths in Shaq's copious sweat (p. 144) and grimy, late-night hotel encounter with Dr. Dre before he started working out (p. 115).

But the book never really tries to explain why. Readers get to see her being cruelly abused as a child and raped at age thirteen; we generally gather that she has a great gaping void which must be filled with famous cock. She does explain that, through all of it, she is miserable, addicted to fame, money and drugs.

But with her standing right there at the crossroads of so many fascinating social forces--race, fame, sex, gender, hip hop--I couldn't help wanting her to apply more of that fellatistic ambition to her writing, to give me not just the wheres and the hows and what they ordered from room service, but the WHY DID YOU DO THIS?

Maybe it's unfair of me to expect so much in the way of analytical skills from Sup. Although she does reclaim her by-then-shameful nickname at the end of the book's journey, explaining that in England "superhead" means something like "brainiac."

Gripes aside, I like Sup. She certainly does keep it real. It's no fun having the great army of hip hop ready to kill you with its bare hands. She broke the unspoken code and infuriated rappers and their followings, which says a lot about who the code hurt and helped in the first place.

They didn't see it coming, which is kind of delicious. You just get the feeling that all those guys thought they were in the warm mouth of a pleasure robot, not a living woman who just might fuck and tell.

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Harvest Porn

You know you want it.



In each and every one of my first five seasons of gardening, I tried to grow tomatoes and--to greater and lesser extents--failed.

The first year I planted my pots of sorry-ass Sweet 100s on a balcony in Brooklyn with only morning sun. Needless to say, the maters sucked. The next year, I grew glorious heirloom beefsteaks in a sunny community garden plot--and found the two-pounders smashed on the ground by no-good kids just before they ripened.


In my real garden in Oakland, my first year's tomatoes succumbed to verticillium wilt. The beautiful vines turned yellow and then brown and I watched, hapless, helpless, hopeless. The next year, to avoid the dread disease, I planted in ginormo pots. But in my greed and haste, I put two plants to a pot, and by mid-summer they were starving.







Last year, one plant succeeded: a hybrid of acclaimed Italian sauce variety San Marzano called (SO appropriately) Super Marzano. But I didn't want just a bunch of damn paste tomatoes. I wanted big, pornographic heirlooms to slice into a caprese.

So perhaps you'll pardon a bit of horn tootage; I have journeyed from the edge of despair back to faith.

This year I grew EIGHT MILLION* tomatoes:





*Statement should not be taken literally.



Post Script

This has nothing to do with garden porn (well, not much anyway), but I didn't want to give these pictures their own post. I took them at a car show we somehow ended up at in SanJo. I shouldn't pretend not to know: we ended up there because DJ Big Man 808, of the Bay Area Record Rockers, Brian's crew, got us free passes. His brother is the king of car shows and judged the Car-Hopping Contest, a hydraulic olympics.




But I really want to talk to you about the skanks. These of course are the charming young ladies (the youngest looked fifteen) who pose in hoochie outfits with the cars. I did not photograph them posing, as many guys did, because I wanted to capture their humanity. They are seen here walking, standing around and all too human.







What bothers me so much about the skanks--well, many things--but what bothers me most about them is that cars and skanks have nothing to do with each other other than the fact that men want to ogle both. I find this infuriating.

Why should anyone get to have such absurd fantasies fulfilled? And at the cost of another person's dignity, no less. I would love to have a gardening video narrated by The Game wearing a wifebeater and pulling the red Bloods bandanna out of his back jeans pocket to wipe the sweat off his brow as he transplants seedlings--but I don't expect to have this fantasy provided. It just wouldn't be right.

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