Gleek

My name is Dr. Plog and I am a Gleek.

There, I said it.

I tried to resist it, I really did. For starters, I am already over-committed, televisually, especially since I am trying to reduce my overall couch potato-mashedness in a new year's false promise to a new-me. Also: I am instinctively programmed to resist trends du jour on the very basis of their seemingly sudden mass-desirability. I call it the Dan Brown effect - though now my Da Vinci Code aversion (it's so freaky to suddenly see everyone across the world toting the same badly-written book) has now found new life in The Girl with the Dragon Earringmania. Ipods can pod off; I haven't even graduated to tampons, letalone Ipads.

But I'm hooked on this silly show!

Cheeky covers? Check. Subversion of seemingly same-same stereotypes? Check (That shameless display of artificial affected alliteration? Check, check, check!). Maybe I'm just impressed that a single show that is, on the surface, as samesamey as your subpar nineohtwooneohmelroseplaceremake staple, would have not just one token Jew but, like, four - rendering them somewhat less token - and one breaking the mould, majorly. Noah Puckerman, I'm talking to you! Mr P said I'd have had a field day with you if I was still writing my thesis.

Ok, it's not as groundbreaking as some would have you believe. A recent facebook status of a local wit (whose critical eye I trust implicitly) declared she was "whelmed"* - neither overwhelmed nor underwhelmed. I love that category. And I totally get that response.

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*Slightly off-topic but there are so many words that have no counterpart. Mr P sometimes shakes his British head at me and labels me "incorrigible", to which I reply, "No, I'm actually quite corrigible". Also are you always "appropos of nothing" or can you be appropos of something? I know you can be but I think nothing is more common, usagewise Why are there so many songs about rainbows and what's on the other side?

Answers welcome in comment section below. Join in! Don't be shy!

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But I think, even in shitty times, a lot of our escapism is occupied by/ mired in the ugly. I gave up 24 on those grounds. And the Ruth Rendell habit I inherited from Mama Plog. And reading the paper from cover to cover. But Glee makes me happy - filled with joy, utterly content, gleeful, if you will (and I know you will).

Nothing deep there. But try living with hepatitis. That's hard!**


**I LOVE Jane Lynch. And though I never got into Nip/Tuck (creepy-as-fuck more like!), I adored Ryan Murphy's early career masterpiece Popular (which appropos of nothing (see!) I used to watch with my dad over a bunch of weekday afternoons in the early 00s. Good times.)

I Don't Like Cricket, Oh No ...

Mr Plog's Facebook Status Report (as of an hour ago):

"Mr P ... is very happy to be leaving Lords early. First defeat of the Aussies there in over 70 years. Come on!"

I commented "Seventy years? Bless!"

It was meant to sound patronising but my buddy from home, J, quickly wrote:
"Don't buy into this, Doc!"

So not!, J, my brother from another mother, no need to worry. But I am schlepping naches from the fact that Mr P is facebook friends with friends of mine from home. How effing sad is that, People? I am thirty-five-long-drawn-out-mostly-mentalist-years-old and I sound like a tweenager. Still, friends have always excited me more than sports. Like Mr P says, I'm not a real Australian. I don't like sport, I don't like beer. That's about all our national identity is based on, right?

You'd think it if you lived over here. Representations of Australianness in Britain are unbelievably outmoded, simplistic, and monolithic. I've been making notes in the five years I've lived here and thinking about a larger project, tentatively titled From Cocking Fosters to Sheila's Wheels. It's mad that in a supposedly postmodern, postracial, postfeminist (???) world we continue to obscure the fact that beyond every bullshit construct, we are all human. Surely that fact is more relevant than the place we were born or the accents we affect?

Strewth!

Sisterhood Of Shoes?!? I Mean, Really?!?

This can't be real?

You have to check out the Trojan Tickler ad on the comments page. Old ladies need self-love too? Gross!
/sarcasm

Thanks to Sarah Haskins for ALWAYS keeping it real and to all my Lady Friends, old and new, for offering something a little more special than sales pitches when we hang out. And especial big hugs to Y, who was mentioned in the clip ...

Required Reading For All Ages And Genders

Who in their right mind could ever argue with that?!?

Thanks to Nancy R. Smith, JT Bunnell & Irit Reinheimer for the words and Laura Newburn for the art.

Let's Talk About Sex, Baby

"The very notion that humans can be distinguished and categorized -- as if they belong to separate sexual species on the basis of whom and how they characteristically desire -- is a fundamentally novel and culture-bound historical development ... by and large a product of the nineteenth century ... Modern categories of sexual distinction, most prominently the homo/hetero distinction, are just that: modern inventions, social artifacts, not natural givens."

I came across this wonderful passage in a book I am reading called Queer Theory and the Jewish Question (Boyarin, Itzkovitz, Pellegrini, eds.)and decided it should be required fucking reading everywhere, if only to highlight the insane injustice whereby some people in our oh-so-modern enlightened times aren't entitled to the same human rights as others. Why should so-called "religion" be privileged over "liberty"? Don't we have laws protecting us from that?

Also, have you ever heard of "female sexual inverts"?
They are the nineteenth century version of a twentieth century invention we like to call "lesbians".

You know all these things we know to be true? (And I'm looking at you narrow-minded shmegegges out there) They aren't actually! Freaky, I know!

To progress! And true freedom for all.

Keeping Up With The Stereotypes

I watched this today, for research purposes only, expecting to hate it. Not only did I find it oddly moving (and cry) but it was also one of the only "Jewish" movies that comes to mind where someone is asked "What do you like about being Jewish?". "Jewish" in this context is not just a punchline, shorthand for signifying "wealthy" or "greedy" or whatever ("Choose Your Own Assumption!") but an actual, lived identity explored as deeply as possible within the limitations of a little comedy, which is very sweet, if not a bit too obviously chasing the Little Miss Sunshine mantle.

And although the stereotypes are there and women are paid scant attention, there is a warmth in large part due to its phenomenal cast: Cheryl Hines, Larry Miller, Jami Gertz (yay! childhood girlcrush! so pretty!), Garry Marshall and Doris Roberts (who both play very convincing Jews), Jeremy Piven. I do like the Pivs onscreen, in spite of the anti-himness on the interwebz -- but who ever knows anything really, right? It's so childish, this hegemonic consensus on who it's cool to like and who it's cool to bag. It sometimes shocks me how much hostility and anger people direct at strangers, especially in the case of one blog I read where a bunch of otherwise savvy, intelligent commentators who seem to GET the role of the media in creating these false contrived personae, weigh in so vehemently on people and relationships we know nothing really about.

So, yeah. For defying expectations:

Keeping Up With The Steins (2006) *** (3 Plogs)

Smurfing While Female

When I was a kid the two best things in the world were (in no particular order): Paddle Pop sticks with the cricketers' names on them, and the Smurf collection available at all fine BP servos (gas/ petrol stations for you non-Australians).

There was one problem though.

It always infuriated me that each Smurf was defined by a personal characteristic/ career (Brainy, Grouchy, Chef), representing multiple identities, while Smurfette was just "the girl" as though that alone was her claim to individualism.

That said, I was a weirdly precocious/ militant six-year-old.

Later , however, I learned that my righteous indignation was indeed on the side of the righteous, and in fact, the misogynist origins of Smurflady Lumps were far worse than I could have ever imagined. Turns out she was designed specifically to sow discord among the male Smurfs, only failing because she was too ugly and (gasp!) brunette ... until the Happily Ever After moment when Papa Smurf used his magic to make her all pretty and blonde!

Papa Smurf as Hugh Hefner? That kindly zaida as the devil? The universe no longer makes sense! Does that make Gargamel the goodie? Na, na, na, na, na, na, sing a happy song, my tuches!

And Now A Word From Our Sponsors ...

This blog is sponsored by the the letters 'A' for 'Anti' and 'S' for 'Stereotype'.

This blog is predicated on the belief that we - all of us, everywhere, across genders, ages, classes, levels of ability, personal nuances and personality quirks - essentially exist within worlds that deem to categorise us in one way or another. The process whereby we absorb these external, constructed ‘truths’ about ourselves can ultimately cripple the realisation of a healthy, integrated sense of self in that our identities develop in relation to a monolithic set of assumptions about what we are and what we are not. In a world where identity politics reign, the blind acceptance of stupid stereotype-archetypes distracts, distorts and dilutes. We are smarter than that! Why, oh why won’t the mainstream media reflect this?

This is an attempted corrective. I am a female who was born in Australia in the mid-seventies. I am Jewish. I am not spoilt, manipulative, brattish, frigid or whiny. I hate shopping and have never owned anything with a designer label. But even if I was some of those things and into the other things, my gender and cultural identity are in no way responsible.

That is my starting point. This is a blog for people who hate stereotypes and want to help identify and dismantle them.

Why Am I Here?

Not in a philosophical sense! Not even I, your glorious Doctor P, can cope with that question this early in the ayem. No, I mean why add one more voice to the cacophony of blogs all struggling against each other to be heard in the echo-chamber some like to call "the blogosphere"?

I just figure that the more "clean spaces" there are out there, the easier it is for all of us web-wanderers to breathe. (And I clearly mean 'clean' in an ethical, menschlich sense as I have just noticed that three of my tags consecutively read as "pornography", "pregnant", "sex"!) I often feel so dirty when I'm feeding the Beast (that mad inner-childish type that absolutely, positively needs to know who MaryKateHudsonJenLoveAniston is dating this week) and I end up reading the most revolting sexist, racist, heterosexist, homophobic, anti-semitic, pro-evil shit spewing forth across forums and in comments sections. All it takes for that evil to thrive is for good people to blog nothing.

When I get mired in Internet-Ugly I quickly pop into my favourite sites, like Land of Meg and The Pursuit of Harpyness, and it's like I've just taken a quick shower! So even though I can't wait to get a teensy bit incendiary and I'm not promising soft-focused, rose-coloured, cotton-candy prettiness, I do hope that a visit to the Doctor keeps the bads at bay.

Take care out there, won't you?