More Older, Sexy Women Please

I confess to binging on season five of Sons of Anarchy recently.  While I was put off by the orgy of patriarchy, raw vicious sexism, homophobia, white supremacy and fetishization of gang culture, I was captivated and it took a little while (episodes 1-4 to be exact) to pin point what it was.  What compelled me, beckoning my fingers to push the blinking play arrow episode after episode was not the gratuitous fist fights awash in glossy, sexy, hyper-masculinity.  Nor was it the obligatory mid-show motorcycle chase complete with crosscutting camera shots and bass thumping rap music.  And while the Greek Tragedy thematic interplay of love, deceit and betrayal was interesting, what really intrigued me was Gemma Teller Morrow. 

Gemma, played by Katey Sagal, is a wife, a widow and mother of men who have all been president of the outlaw biker club for which the television show is named.  Gemma is the family and club matriarch, she is older, and she is hot.

Sadly, it is still rare to see older women characters in television shows that are not only sexy but also sexual.  Gemma is hot in a white biker mainstream gender normative way to be sure, but she is hot nonetheless.  Gemma has sex and is a sex symbol and it’s not a joke.  She is not nervous or anxious about getting old or being an older woman and she wears her sexuality without apology or embarrassment.  This is not to revel in the presentation of femininity or womanhood in Sons of Anarchy.  The women in Sons, as one might imagine, are relegated to the unfortunately enduring dualistic pure/good or whore/bad roles and are not extraordinarily complex in their characterizations.  These women uphold gender stereotypes and demonstrate internalized sexism in predictable ways.  They manufacture deceit, manipulate and facilitate access to power through their sexuality.     

Women are dominated via a variety of mechanisms including the constant fear of rape and co-occurring mythos about the need to be protected by men (who also assault them).  While violence against women is a staple of mainstream media, it remains uncommon to see older women being victimized or subjugated through sexualized violence.  Gemma’s brutal rape by rival club members occurs because she is viewed as sexual.  Older women are de-sexualized in most media representations and as such, sexual assault or the fear of rape is rarely used as vehicle through which to assert power.   Gemma, as a sexually active and sexual older woman, however, is a body that can be violated and her rape is used to assign her viability as a woman as well as assert power over her and by extension her husband and son.

Despite the machismo, violence and gender provincialism on Sons of I love watching Gemma.  Portrayals of older women characters as sexy, devoid of being a cougar or fraught with aging insecurity remains refreshing.  Gemma is older without a lot of hoopla.  I understand her character is probably too distracted by coke deals gone bad, kidnappings, gun smuggling dramas and the ever constant triage of stoic men-in-danger to worry much about crows feet or lip lines.  I get it.  She has much bigger fish to fry.  I am also well aware that an army of professional make up artists primps her, like every other actress, and that her sexy sans puffy eyes close ups are the result of hours of carefully crafted lighting and an array of cosmetics.  But she rocks her soon-to-be senior status so well and the cinematic poverty of older woman characters is such that I find myself not begrudging her the absence puff, bags or her smoothed over skin.  It remains depressingly novel to see an older woman on the screen that is not either sculpted into seeming perfection that allows her to be “sexy” or relegated to the sexless void of old age.  Gemma is unapologetically older with wrinkles, under arm flab and sun spotted cleavage.

I watched Gemma and found myself reflecting on other bad ass and sexy hot women actors of a certain age.  I want to see more.  That I could recall some women is fantastic but does little to counter the onslaught of youth-beauty focused images flooding media and saturating young (and old) minds with ideals of mis-perfection that encourage anxiety, body dysmorphia and insecurity driven consumerism which make scads of niche diet, exercise and “health and beauty” marketers very rich.  While Gemma and the other female characters in Sons are not offering a radical alternative to normative beauty standards nor providing a counter narrative to the axiom of women—as –objects, it is nevertheless inspiring to see an older woman unashamedly sexual and not digitally altered into an “ageless” perfection. 

There are plenty of people striving to diversify the media landscape for women of all ages.  This includes agitating for more women in leadership positions, the inclusion of women and older women writers and producers in media, more roles for older women as well as creating and supporting alternatives to mainstream media.  There is a great deal of work to be done to this end.  Indeed, the sad reality that forty is considered “older “and older female actresses are mostly celebrated for how youthful they look speaks to the long road ahead.  I want more complicated character representations for all kinds of women and I want a much more diverse array of examples of older (and sexual) women in television and movies.  In the mean time given the absence of older sexually active women characters in movies and TV shows, I will undoubtedly continue my Gemma and Sons of Anarchy binge.

Skirting Sexism

It was one of those music shows where people shushed angrily if you dared to speak quietly to a friend standing next to you. During any of the bands or spoken word performances if you tried to talk at all someone would glare at you, snap a forefinger to their lips and give you an angry SHHHHHHHHHHH, which was inevitably louder than your whispered conversation. My band was playing a very short set in a very long lineup of what was being billed as “revolutionary radical political women performers.”

The three of us were on stage sound checking franticly when one of the women organizers elbows her way past the sound guy. She’s an L.A. suntanned white girl with long blonde dreads spiraled in a lopsided pile on top of her head. She’s sporting an ankle length “wrap” made from a multi-colored tapestry that looks like she bought it at what she might call an “ethnic” store. She has a tank top tied around her neck in the same pattern, different color combination of red, orange, yellow. She has a clipboard, she’s in charge and she’s pissed. Slapping her palm down on the stage, she points a finger at the bass player and barks, “you know, if you’re a guy you have to wear a dress on stage. You need to find a dress. Now.” We look at each other. It was almost nine o’clock. Stores were closed. We were supposed to play in ten minutes. Matt, our bass player who’s round face is always sporting a smile, looks up from his bass, smiles and asks, “Um…know where I could find one?” Eric, our lanky drummer who in addition to drumming does double duty as a father and clothing designer, pulls out a crumpled white prom dress from his bass drum. Tries to yank it over his head. “Is everyone wearing a dress?” It’s to small for him. He tries to pull it up over his knees. Still too small.

Rebuffed and snorting resentful puffs from flaring nostrils, she blurts out something like “Work on finding one—give it some effort guys. You need to support your sisters, yo.”

She pronounces sisters like sistahs and yo like a command. Why do I find it irritating when white people say yo? I don’t think it rolls off our tongues easily. I know a couple of white people, whose working class tongues can wrap around yo gracefully. But for the rest of us, it sputters out from between our lips like two pieces of stringy spittle—yyy-ooo. Makes my teeth itch.

Great, I’m thinking. A tightly wound event organizer with an attitude, who thinks making men wear skirts will help close the gender divide. Don’t get me wrong, I’d gladly wear a skirt for a good cause. The guys in my band love to dress up. If the promoters of the show wanted it that way, none of us would have any problem showing some leg for an evening. I don’t even have a problem with dress codes in general—they have their place. However, no one had mentioned a dress (or skirt) code. Now, we have a embittered stage manager yelling at us to just go find a skirt—like we all had one stashed in a back pocket or backpack and hadn’t put it on yet just to piss her off. I went to the bathroom wondering why they didn’t keep a box of skirts backstage for instances like this?

What got me muttering under my breath was the idea that making men wear skirts equalizes anything. I know misogynist drag queens and homophobic frat boys who wear dresses on stage—neither of which address gender oppression in any particularly revolutionary way. Having men in skirts doesn’t make me believe they know how to back me up any better than they could wearing pants, or shorts, or suits. What about the trans men and women in the show—do any of them have to wear skirts? If so, who has to and how do you decide? How is “feminizing” men via dress code (and being really rude about it) going to build an anti-sexist community? Hemlines have changed along with gender roles, women’s rights, civil liberties for g/l/b/t folks. The skirt it’s self has stitched a new identity threaded with various possibilities. Each skirt is a symbol as variable as the legs it covers. Mini skirts, suit skirts, business skirts, wrap skirts, flowing skirts, ankle length skirts, Betty Page skirts, punk rock skirts. Each one gives definition to a person. What I’m struggling to understand is how putting male performers in skirts creates a safer, or more feminist, or more women centered environment.

Instead of making men wear skirts, can we help them in addressing gender oppression of all kinds? Can we help them learn how to call their friends out in a locker room sexist shake down? Can we help them gain the skills to interrupt homophobia when it happens across bar stools at their local watering hole? Gender oppression puts us all in tight, narrow boxes. Neither feminine nor masculine is inherently bad and personally, I want macho, heterosexual (looking) men of all kinds to know how to call out sexism—in their own language. I can’t expect that a man calling out homophobia at a football game or on a construction site will use the same language I would.
I keep wondering how identifying sisterhood with dresses will liberate us? How are men on stage in skirts backing up a woman any more feminist or revolutionary than two guys in pants backing up said woman? How can we learn to support each other if we have codes about what a feminist man looks like (or a feminist woman)—especially if that “look” involves using rigid codes of gender identity that keep us isolated and separated from each other—like said skirts? Instead of wrapping our white middle class feminist consciousness around serapes bought at “Authentic/Ethnic” stores, let’s drape our brothers and sisters from everywhere in love and respect and dignity.
We can work with the men in our lives, in our bedrooms and in-between our legs to create models of liberated and respectful relationships. We can share and compare these with each other. For those folks who don’t want to be around men, have at it—as much as you can, don’t be. But, please don’t think forcing them to wear skirts when you do have to be around them makes them any less male, or masculine, or threatening, or capable of understanding gender oppression, or even better dressed.

Making men wear dresses does not break down linear definitions of gender and does not help us see gender as the fluid and ever developing phenomena it is. How can we learn to embrace trans people of all kinds of genders and orientations, fems, butchs, girly straight chicks, macho-feminist men, women who like porn, sex workers of all genders and orientations, fat chicks, muscled chicks, skinny dudes, beefy dudes, bisexual folks, asexual folks, pan sexual folks and everyone else on this sexual planet if we treat each other so badly at some “revolutionary” performance show? Getting distracted by a skirt means we often miss opportunities to do the real work; changing how gender oppression connects to and supports other forms of oppression; creating revolutionary gender oriented change in our shows, our relationships, our non-profits, our sex lives, our families, our bedrooms, our friendships, our social interactions and our way of being in the world.

I’m not feeling it in the skirt—yo.