If one only listened to such early twenty-first century public figures as Carly Fiorina or Sheryl Sandberg, one would believe that the troubles working women face are troubles they alone should solve. The seductive rhetoric of postfeminism rears its head in the language of “lean-in” and in Fiorina’s proclamation that “A feminist is a woman who lives the life she chooses.” Presumably, the work of femininity is unfettered and the woman who struggles in her labors has clearly made poor decisions. However, American neoliberal promises of free choice ring false in the face of such discriminatory practices as unequal pay for equal work and grossly inadequate maternity leave policies.

If the world of politics and big business all too often offers the illusory promises of free choice and the hegemonic fantasy of “having it all,” so too do popular culture depictions of cupcakes, Kim Kardashian, and Pinterest. But, these media texts also reveal the desire for work that does something more for the women who perform it. The authors of the third section, titled “Labors” in Elana Levine’s new anthology Cupcakes, Pinterest and Ladyporn: Feminized Popular Culture in the Early Twenty-First Century, address the pleasures and pitfalls of popular renderings of feminized work. From new media to chick lit, reality television to cupcake culture, the essays in “Labors” explore how diverse popular cultural forms construct feminized labor. Taken together this collection of essays paints a picture of femininity as always laboring, working hard in public and private spheres, while also striving for creativity, community, and sisterhood.

The authors in “Labors” refuse to blame women for having chosen wrongly in the work they perform, but rather highlight how feminized labor is haunted by the threat of failure. As Julie Wilson and Emily Chivers Yochim succinctly put it: “neoliberalism has rendered all of life precarious.” Popular depictions of feminized labor are faced with such conditions as the global financial crisis, rising economic inequalities, and jobs defined by contingency and flexibility. According to Suzanne Ferris, chick-lit heroines embody the anxieties prompted by such conditions of precarity; their dead-end jobs limit their well-educated potential. Furthermore, the conditions of the postfeminist sensibility hold women to unattainable standards, expecting them to seamlessly manage home, self, and work, all while being punished for their own ambition. Reality television celebrities Kim Kardashian and Bethenny Frankel strive to achieve all the markers of the feminine lifecycle while also becoming successful career women; but as authors Alice Leppert, Suzanne Leonard and Diane Negra demonstrate, the joys these celebrities take in their professional successes are routinely mitigated by the pain of failed romances.

The women discussed in “Labors” struggle to do work that is often performed at the messy, blurred line between public and private worlds. Many popular renderings of feminized labor capitalize upon notions of entrepreneurialism in which the private self is monetized and branded in the interests of professional “success.” Kim Kardashian and Bethenny Frankel’s intimate lives are commodified on their reality television programs and in the marketing of their affiliated products. As Leonard and Negra argue: “Frankel both created and was the ‘Skinnygirl,’ a feedback loop that masterfully associated her brand identity with the affective qualities and class positioning that came to be associated with her as a person.” Combinations of self and product reward the ambitious, self-sufficient laborer who satisfies the requisites of neoliberal individuality. Such entrepreneurialism structures many of the depictions of feminized work by highlighting how success depends upon flexibility and creativity, but only when such flexibility and creativity is performed within strict parameters. On programs like Cupcake Wars I explore how contestants are encouraged to bake cupcakes with high degrees of individual ingenuity, thus presenting their cupcakes as an extension of themselves. But, contestants’ culinary artistry is sharply critiqued by a panel of judges who establish the limits of confectionary (and by extension feminine) acceptability.

These authors show how work that conflates the market with the self promises both economic and affective rewards. Sarah Ahmed’s theory of happiness informs a number of the authors’ discussion of the affective power of such feminized labor. As Wilson and Yochim explain, in the “mamasphere” of Pinterest, the act of pinning operates as digital care work that upholds the family as a “happy object.” On 2 Broke Girls, cupcake baking promises to grant heroines Max and Caroline happiness by releasing them from the drudgery of working as waitresses in a Brooklyn diner. As “happy objects,” cupcakes activate affective structures that maintain relations of power. Cupcakes promise to make Max and Caroline happy by offering them liberation from the diner, where the work environment is marked by racial diversity. Their professional aspirations thus ultimately affirm the ideal of the white, upwardly mobile, heteronormative feminized subject.

The entrepreneurialism explored in these chapters appears to be an efficient solution to the inevitable stresses resulting from the demands of the postfeminist “work-life balance.” Family businesses abound: sisters create their own cupcake business on DC Cupcakes and the Kardashians monetize their family across multimedia ventures. And yet, here we find room for optimism. For while many of the authors argue that this work upholds existing inequalities, mediated renderings of feminized work may also offer a critique of the alienation resulting from the demands of neoliberal individuality. Numerous authors argue that the pleasures offered by such depictions of feminized labor speak to the desire for interpersonal connections and community. We see this in the pinning care work of Pinterest, and in the friendship between Girls characters Hannah and Marnie who gossip while eating cupcakes in the bathtub. As Alice Leppert argues, the sister-branding and sister-entrepreneurship exhibited by Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney Kardashian “suggests that young women do value and desire bonds with each other.” Such examples reveal how intimate and sometimes surprising connections between women offer the working heroines of popular culture, and the audiences who take pleasure in them, relief from the relentless labor required to be successful or happy.

UnREAL, Unwatched

Myles McNUTT, Old Dominion University: It seems important to acknowledge in any conversation about an original scripted cable drama in the contemporary moment that, if it’s not The Walking Dead, chances are very few people are watching it. In the case of UnREAL, this is particularly true: the ratings have not been good, despite Lifetime going out of their way to give the first four episodes available to binge for free after the premiere.

That UnREAL lives to see a second season is, itself, not a huge surprise: it’s one of the first Lifetime dramas produced in-house, the critical acclaim gives them a foothold to brand rearticulation, and the show’s strengths give them a chance to woo the Hollywood Foreign Press Association into some valuable Golden Globes attention. A second season is the kind of calculated risk that the primary profit participant in a TV drama tends to take: if the show streams well, and if critical acclaim helps international sales, and if live viewership manages to tick upward, there’s a chance this turns into a hit.

UnREAL says a lot about the reality TV industry as a text, but it also says a lot about cable branding, discourses of quality, and metrics of success as a product of the television industry more broadly. How far is Lifetime willing to hold onto a show like UnREAL for theoretical value to its brand if no one is watching? It’s easy to look at the ways that UnREAL helps Lifetime’s cause, expanding its brand to audiences that may have previously dismissed it. But at what point do they stop touting the “viewership across platforms” statistic—still mostly meaningless to advertisers—and give up if they fail to see tangible improvement?

Phillip Maciak, Louisiana State University: If I say Lena Dunham’s name one more time she’ll appear, right? I’m not invested in any qualitative comparisons between Girls and UnREAL, but it’s hard not to notice that the numbers UnREAL is sporting right now that are causing us so much concern are very similar to the numbers Girls has been pulling for four seasons. There are differences in streaming platforms, OnDemand numbers, etc, but it seems like we’ve got yet another water-cooler favorite of the critterati taking up proportionally more space in arts and culture verticals than its viewership would seem to warrant. As you mentioned before, though, Myles, this show is radically off-brand for Lifetime. Or, at least it’s pushing hard at the edges of the brand. Is it possible, do we think, that UnREAL‘s financial success might mean less than its perceived critical success for the network? In other words, is it more important for UnREAL to lure viewers or for UnREAL‘s critical success to lure writers to produce a different kind of content for Lifetime?

Myles: After I wrote my response, FX’s John Landgraf suggested they follow a “2 out of 3” model for renewing their shows: FX, “Experts,” and viewers (or ratings, if we prefer) all get a vote, and if it gets 2 out of 3, it’s getting renewed. It’s far from an easy calculus, but it gives you an example of how a basic cable channel with experience in programming sees that uneasy mix of needing to compete on a branding level with premium channels but also have to be more aware of the number of people watching (versus simply the type of people watching, which serves HBO well in the case of Girls).

The issue with drawing a comparison between Girls and UnREAL, though, is that I’m pretty sure we—as in academics/critics/journalists—are the only people talking about UnREAL. This isn’t an actual watercooler show: it’s a watercooler show in the corners of the internet we frequent, and a complete non-entity everywhere else even despite Lifetime’s pretty significant efforts to get it out there. While it certainly has a bit more buzz than something like Terriers—which is an historical example of FX overriding their “2 of 3” model—it still strikes me as something that has had very minimal “cultural impact” once we move beyond these circles.

Jason Mittell, Middlebury College: One series that UnREAL reminds me of a lot in a number of ways is The Joe Schmo Show, which is one of my favorite unheralded television programs of the century. Joe Schmo also provides a critical take on reality TV, albeit through the “reality hoax” mode rather than scripted drama, and the amazing second season offered a similarly biting critique of The Bachelor (seriously, if you haven’t watched Joe Schmo Show 2, it’s dirt cheap on Amazon and I promise you won’t regret it!). Joe Schmo aired on Spike TV, Lifetime’s binary counterpart branded as “The First Network for Men” (apparently, besides all the other ones…). Both programs simultaneously fit with and resist their home channel’s brand identity—although Joe Schmo did often include events with bikini models or porn stars to pander to the assumed Spike audience, it was far more critical than celebratory of the bro lifestyle. Likewise, UnREAL seems to be addressing a much different type of viewer (or at least, mode of viewing) than Dance Moms or Bring It! This makes me wonder if UnREAL becoming a hit (if it builds a following once the first season is available on streaming and attracts attention through awards and year-end accolades) might actually be a danger to Lifetime’s brand—after all, the temptation to go upscale and legit might be too tempting for parent company A&E, whose various networks have all struggled to find their equivalent of The Shield or Mad Men that might give them a foothold into the quality brand.

Kristen Warner, University of Alabama: I wonder if a better parallel between series trying to push the edges of their current brand is UnReal and USA’s Mr. Robot? Both shows push their respective networks into darker content while simultaneously targeting different demographics than they’ve been able to capture previously. Is Mr. Robot, despite its premiere at a film festival, its tie to Anonymous Content and ultimately to David Fincher, and its (annoyingly heavy) borrowing of style from high brow auteurs, similarly unwatched?

Myles: It’s drawing close to twice as many viewers as UnREAL, but compared to what USA used to draw in the era of Monk, no one is watching Mr. Robot.

Kristen: Interesting. So do its similarities keep it as a potential comparison?

Myles: I think both offer a case study in how much discursive framing of “success” is becoming a creative exercise in the television industry right now—whether it’s USA picking up Mr. Robot before its premiere or Lifetime releasing all four episodes of UnREAL online, they’re asking us to see a show as successful so as to attain brand value from that. And there’s a point at which the “Emperor’s New Clothes” model of brand development starts to fall apart.

Christine Becker, University of Notre Dame: One of my mom’s must-see shows is Devious Maids, which airs before UnREAL on Lifetime’s schedule. On a recent family vacation, I tried to convince her to watch UnREAL with me, but she showed no interest and seemed to not even know what it was, despite the fact promos for it surely aired during Devious Maids (maybe she’s watching on a DVR and fast-forwarding through the ad breaks—the challenge of marketing a series/channel lineup today). I now regret not digging deeper into her reluctance, especially given that she’s the one who first instilled a love of melodrama and soap opera in me. But this example would seem to affirm that UnREAL is outside of Lifetime’s typical purview. My mom doesn’t like it when her soaps get too “real” or violent (she stopped watching General Hospital because of the mob stuff, as sanitized as it is there compared to, say, The Sopranos). And UnREAL might look too intense to her. She also doesn’t really watch reality TV, so that could be another reason it wouldn’t hook her. Finally, I don’t watch Devious Maids, but I do know that it has “Erica Kane” (perhaps my mom’s favorite character/actress of any medium ever), plus, putting together the title with the cast list, I presume it features Latinas as maids, so it might stay within my mom’s acceptable range of racial representations too. Which leads to another topic I’d like to see discussed:

UnREAL and Race

Christine: And here I gratuitously invite Kristen to chime in, because she has expressed on social media such insightful readings of the show and of reality TV from a racial perspective, and I want to hear more. I’ve found the racial critique UnREAL offers to be among its most revealing aspects, perhaps because the gender critiques are more familiar to me, so the deconstruction of the rigged racial game in reality TV, both on screen and (especially) offscreen, feels even more revelatory.

Kristen: Oh Chris, where to begin? Regarding its take on industry, in many ways UnREAL proves that with mild exception (and the exceptions in the instance of this series fail), the film and television industry really reproduces itself in the image of those who run it: i.e., white men and women. There’s very clearly three generations of white lady producers (and I mostly predicted that all three would be producers prior to the finale so where’s my ribbon) who all are at different phases of the same career. And while these white women face very real and painful oppressions, I am still gobsmacked that no one has noticed how, it is the certainty of whiteness that allows them to push through those constraints (at all kinds of costs) and succeed.

Nevertheless, the exceptions like Shia and Jay don’t. Also at all kinds of costs—and firings. So this little micro model is useful in thinking about the difficulties that folks of color face in breaking into industry work while getting close enough to see the next level—even trying to create opportunities for themselves at the cost of some moral and legal scruples—but still unable to make it because they aren’t in the image of the person in charge. What’s more, thinking more about Shia, in an interview Sarah Gertrude Shapiro talked about how she feels sympathy for Shia because she’s been misunderstood: “she just wants to be loved.” “She’s not as pretty or whatever.” Besides the obvious yet unintentional infantilization of that woman of color that quote implies (who to be honest I was glad to see go as that character was far too on the nose for my liking—her strategies negotiating her precarity didn’t prove to me she realized she was living that precarious life—a pitfall of blindcasting I would argue), Shapiro didn’t seem to realize she played into the very tropes that her show within the show tried so hard to bust up from the very beginning. Simply put there’s no future for Shia. We knew this going in. Just like we know there’s no future for Shamequa or Athena.

Last point: While UnREAL is so astute about explicitly stating what people REALLY say about racialized bodies (the first five minutes of the pilot, the scene between Jay and the two black competitors, the moment where Adam’s grandmother tells him they don’t marry the brown people), there’s still huge blind spots among their own reflexivity at the level of production.

Phil: Yes to all of this. And, just to tie in Kristen’s comments with earlier discussions of labor and competence, it’s interesting (troubling) to me how Shia was presented, from the very first episode, as the kind of inverse of Rachel. So much is made of Rachel’s genius as a producer for this show, but we learn that Rachel’s special by repeatedly seeing how Shia isn’t. Seeing Shia struggle is how we understand the grotesque artistry of what Rachel and Quinn do. Rachel has a natural facility with manipulation; Shia’s attempts are forced and awkward. Rachel operates precisely and responsibly, cutting just enough to hurt but not enough to kill the patient; Shia operates sloppily and irresponsibly, blood spraying everywhere, corpses piling up. In the grand scheme of things, it’s a compliment to say that Shia isn’t quite the virtuosic sociopath that Rachel is, but, within the economy of the show, it means she’s less worthy of everyone’s time. (Literally so, inasmuch as she disappears from the series.) In any case, it’s curious not only that one of the show’s few people of color is marginalized but that we’re supposed to see that marginalization as deserved. Shia isn’t allowed into the structuring female mentorship relationship at the center of this show, and the show is very clear that it’s because Shia’s missing something innate that Quinn and Rachel have.

Jason: One thing I struggle with is how much this portrayal of the perpetuation of white success within the industry is presented as object of critique, the simple reality of how it works, and/or an unquestioned normalization. I want to believe the former is the dominant tone, and that they chose to make the racial critique overt in the production of Everlasting but more subtle in the production of UnREAL. After all, the three producers are explicitly pitted against each other in a contest. The failure of ethnically-unmarked-but-nonwhite Shia leads to her erasure from the cast, just as most of the non-white contestants disappear once suitor Adam has not found anything noteworthy to hold onto; likewise, Jay is sent packing once both shows have no need of the “black bitch.” Madison’s unexpected (to everyone but Kristen!) elevation mirrors the last-minute return of Britney to the cast, both elevated by Chet in reward for their oral services, highlighting that “success” is open to white women willing to leverage their sexuality. UnREAL highlights the role of sex as career advancement (including one of my favorite lines of Chet’s utter sleezeballery—in defending his Madison dalliance to Quinn, his exasperated explanation is “she’s a mouth!”), but leaves the racial dimension unspoken. I noticed the parallels, and took it as a subtle commentary to avoid on-the-nose gesturing, rather than unquestioned normalization, but I grant that when it comes to such matters of calling out white privilege, subtlety is dangerous.

Kristen: It’s very dangerous, Jason. So much so that subtlety to most untrained eyes who never see the precarity of intersectional identity in industry labor called out explicitly—unless it’s by racialized bodies who they can then characterize as being too sensitive or overly cautious—will be able to ignore it or just miss it completely. And, listen, on a show that examines how white women explicitly navigate the labor game through whatever strategies they can maneuver, it’s not a difficult thing to ask that they be explicit about the fact that it’s THEM who keep and maintain power because it’s their “mouths” that are desired. The Latina contestant is probably the closest voice to one who acknowledges how stuck she is between the trope she fulfills and the fact that she knows she has to play that trope in order to get to where she wants to be. That is most certainly a labor issue and it is handled well. But it reveals, similar to the conversation Jay has with Athena and Shamiqua, Shapiro’s comfort discussing race, gender, and talent as labor but not race, gender, gatekeepers, and labor. And that is unfortunate because as Phillip mentioned earlier, if we do not signal for the fact that Shia is a woman of color in an industry where she is always already at the margins, how do we understand her utter failures and Rachel’s inate “know-how” as anything outside of the traditional binaries of racial competencies? This show ain’t subtle about shit so I can’t buy that it’s taking a quiet tack on the race stuff. It’s more likely that its writers just missed it on that front in the service of diversity without considering for the problems that may occur or the reinforcement of the status quo they’ve maintained (which, I mean, it’s true, so…).

Chris: I was going to reply to Jason’s comment with something along the lines that none of the other critiques made by the show are subtle, which makes me question if they’d make the racial labor critique subtle, but Kristen takes care of that just fine with “This show ain’t subtle about shit.”

Jason: Okay, I’ll grant that my reading of the parallels between producers and contestants as a veiled racial critique is overly generous. And “This show ain’t subtle about shit” is as good as a conclusion as we’re going to find!

Thanks to everyone for participating in, and reading, this conversation! Continue on in the comments…

We used two awards’ show moments as bookends. We opened with a clip of Amy Poehler standing in solidarity with her fellow nominees at the 2011 Emmys. We closed on an image of Poehler and Tina Fey, who were selected to host the 2013 Golden Globes. We wondered what it meant for the two actresses – who were part of a television moment that once again illustrated how they’ve made careers out of using comedy to negotiate feminism – to rush the stage in 2011 and (wo)man the podium in 2013. Was it a big deal for two women to host an awards show, a duty often bestowed upon their male contemporaries? Was it important that they follow in the footsteps of the co-creator of The Office who offended celebrities’ delicate sensibilities for three years? What kind of compromises would they make as hosts? Who was absent by virtue of their presence? Did it matter?

I think so. Fey and Poehler made clear in their opener at last night’s 70th Golden Globe Awards that they were going to keep the ceremony moving as they blithely delivered jokes about (and at) Ricky Gervais, Lena Dunham’s nudity, Daniel Day Lewis’ acting, Kathryn Bigelow’s marriage to James Cameron, Quentin Tarantino (eek!), Anne Hathaway (ouch), and their responsibilities as hosts (including having to go without pie for six weeks). If some considered this to be a tame outing for the pair, I was often unclear when Gervais was speaking truth to power and when he was just pleased with himself for being mean. Their routine lacked some of the feminist bite of their best work as Weekend Update anchors, but the women behind Liz Lemon and Leslie Knope make television out of picking your battles. Plus, I get a kick out of friends making each other laugh. For every moment they cracked themselves up, whether they were putting on false teeth and mustaches, holding hands expectantly with Jennifer Lopez, sitting on George Clooney’s lap, getting Glenn Close to play drunk, or chiding Dunham’s youth, I imagined them chuckling through rewrites, rehearsals, and late-night phone calls.

Some might be tempted to claim that the Golden Globes helped raise the banner for women. Not so fast. Jessica Chastain gave an empowered speech that compared her character in Zero Dark Thirty to its director, two women who let their work and not their gender speak for them. I was especially moved by Chastain’s willingness to gently challenge Bigelow by giving her credit for helping allow for a wider range of roles for women in the industry. But I have to pause at the thought that social progress might have anything to do with women enacting torture – a horrifying responsibility Claire Danes seemed to shrug off in her acceptance speech, which also nodded toward (certain) women’s increased visibility on the small screen.

“Funny to whom?” is a key question for Dunham’s rise. Girls is a promising comedy, but I don’t want to overburden the show with unearned societal import and want badly for other comedic voices to benefit from the platform Dunham has been given. The show caught flak for its invocation of a select identity group that isn’t totalizing for the many people who exist outside of it. Like many 26 year olds, Dunham is frustratingly inconsistent, responding to criticism against the show, its staff, and her own appeals to white privilege and hipster racism with apologies and correctives that waver between defensive, tongue-in-cheek, and humbled.

Dunham has always been ambivalent about Girls‘ scope. Her comedic sensibility is keyed into a distinct milieu. But during her first acceptance speech, she dedicated her win to “every woman who’s ever felt like there wasn’t a space for her.” This phrase stuck out, as Don Cheadle was the only person of color to win a Golden Globe this year. During the broadcast, Jamie Foxx presented Django Unchained, a film in which he played the title character, wasn’t nominated, and saw Tarantino and Christopher Waltz collect their awards and Leonardo DiCaprio get a nod. How white is that? Obviously, this isn’t Dunham’s fault. But she’s a recognized, powerful member of the industry now. I hope she works to find room for “every woman” in her own work and uses her influence to give the floor to them.

Jodie Foster answered the call to female empowerment with an ellipsis, a question mark, and the start of another sentence. The actress-director-Yale alumna almost came out, prompting Melissa Harris Perry to compare her Cecil B. DeMille acceptance speech to Hannah Arendt’s political theory. She implied that she came out a lifetime ago when she was a younger, more uncertain person. She made herself visible to people she knew off-camera and not to the millions watching at home. She thanked her former partner and their two sons. She insisted on her privacy, an intangible for a former child star. She may have also suggested that the necessity to come out in public reinforces heteronormativity. And, very tenderly, she said she loved her ailing mother. She also turned Honey Boo Boo into a straw man and expressed tenderness for Mel Gibson, which I cannot fathom. Slippery rhetoric aside, Foster made clear that her life is none of our business. It’s a contradictory statement to make when receiving a lifetime achievement award, yet a bold claim.

But her statement could still be turned into a (light) joke, because words are malleable. During their sign-off, Poehler told the crowd that she and Fey were going home with Foster. To start a Judith Butler reading group over cocktails? If only. To lobby for Mindy Kaling’s nomination next year? I hope so, and not in isolation. Some of us were on stage this year. Congratulations. What’s next?

OK—now let’s move on to why you should really know who she is. Because there will always be an ingénue/apparent prodigy child creating a web magazine or blog that is actually insightful and well-produced. There will always be unusually self-possessed young women who knock your socks off with their insights and their productivity communicating those insights. And, in a nutshell, that’s why you should know Tavi Gevinson and her work, the online magazine for teen girls, Rookie.Mag: She makes the simple (and beautiful in its simplicity) claim that many teen girls, across the world, have something of value to offer with their thoughts and ideas and creativity. Not that teen girls “will someday become” leaders of thought and culture, but that they are already doing this in meaningful ways.

If you spend time watching Tavi’s presence in the world of visual and print media, you will discern quickly a representative voice. Tavi may be unique in her very notable presence in a media-saturated environment, but her voice will be familiar to any parent or teacher of a teen girl. Teen girls “think messy” in a wonderfully delightful way that can both frustrate the adults around them and remind us of the joys of those years before social norms of adulthood work to squash the hell out of our tendencies toward productive rebellions, as we navigate that liminal space between childhood and “common sense” adulthood.

And it’s the “common sense” notion that made me start thinking of Tavi and Rookie in relation to Gramsci. I teach about Gramsci’s concepts of common sense, good sense, and the organic intellectual—often with a healthy heap of cynicism. But Tavi’s “good sense” in her approach to voicing the concerns and hopes of her generation has muted my cynicism (as youth often can, when we give young people the credit they deserve). So common sense a la Gramsci means, in its most base form, following the crowd; good sense means retaining from the crowd what is useful and running with that in whatever direction it might take you. This seems to me to be what Tavi does—she questions what is common, and sometimes finds it works for her and her peers, and sometimes finds that it doesn’t (see her talk on feminism and media culture with TedTalks.

Tavi also offers what I like most about Gramsci’s concept of the organic intellectual, stripping it of its elitist connotations. With RookieMag.com, she uses culture in order to dish on it—and provides permission for others to do the same. While the “permission” tag might sound like that dreaded elitism, we all know we still live in a world where teen girls are discouraged from speaking freely: their ideas must fit a certain mold, their laughter must not be too loud, and they must always be “on” in a social media environment eager to capture their every flaw and misstep. Tavi had the good sense to say “who cares?”—and suspected rightly that many other teen girls yearn to do the same.

I won’t try to say she and her work aren’t unique. (Why else would I be writing about her?). Any pre-teen who attends Fashion Week, or teen who publishes her own book, or high school junior who can show up in press coverage with the words Target, Urban Outfitters, Sassy magazine, Ira Glass, Sofia Coppola, and Jon Hamm…well, it’s gonna’ make you take note. But I think my larger point is that—as much as the mainstream press lovingly tries to describe her as “counter-cultural,” I believe that she is, rather, “pro-cultural.” She embraces the culture around her—for better or worse. A recent blurb from her in a Rookie column proclaimed: CORY AND TOPENGA ARE IN! Topanga is on Tumblr! EVERYTHING IS HAPPENING!” (If that sentence makes no sense to you, look it up—you’re out of touch.) She appeared on Jimmy Fallon’s show to demonstrate the ways in which to make a teen girl “bitch face”—a specialty of the demographic. She’ll give you her 2 cents on Angela Chase and Freaks and Geeks and Lana Del Rey.

And the best thing for me? She talks through all such items within a feminist framework. (Maybe this is the “4^th wave” we’ve been looking for?) What I love about her conceptualization of feminism is that it is so very teen infused. It refuses to abandon passion without neglecting analysis. (Think of every teen girl conversation you’ve been privy to: crazed love for fleeting things, and the ability to present the rationale for that love in a manner suitable for the Supreme Court.) It tags feminism as necessarily in flux and almost schizophrenic. And most simply, it says that the voices of the next (or rather, current) generation of women matter—whether it be a word on Boy Meets World or a word on efforts to assist with autism.

Go try out your best bitch face. Support Rookie. And for the love of god, if you have a teen girl around you somewhere, have them google Tavi and then have a conversation with them about what they read and see. And remind yourself, you feminists out there, about how feminism’s most valuable asset has always been to tell women they deserve to be heard–and to never be told what they want to speak about is “silly.”

Brave caught my attention because it shines a bright light on Pixar’s main failing: the majority of stories the acclaimed studio tells are about and targeted to men and boys. Released on June 22, Brave tells the story of a young, determined Scottish princess named Merida who struggles with her mother for the right to make her own way in life. The film makes a strong break from the fairy tales parent company Disney usually tells about girls’ lives: Merida is not perfectly groomed, she does not put others before herself, and though she has a good relationship with her horse, Angus, animals do not flock to Merida as if she is Mother Nature. More importantly, Merida has no interest in learning to properly present herself as a princess and she is more interested in archery than romantic love. In fact, Brave’s plot is driven by Merida’s attempts to avoid the forced marriage for which her mother has spent years grooming her. Though Brave is by no means perfect, it has won critics’ praise for being “shockingly radical for a mainstream movie” and “a much-welcome corrective to retrograde Disney heroines of the past and the company’s unstoppable pink-princess merchandising.”

Princess stories aside, Brave also has called attention to the influence of the studio’s male-dominated workplace on the stories it tells. Brave is the first Pixar film conceived of and directed by a woman, Brenda Chapman (the film’s story is reportedly based on Chapman’s daughter), but Chapman was removed from the film in October 2011, apparently due to “creative differences.” Chapman’s dismissal raises questions about Pixar’s innovativeness—and the media industry’s attitude toward feminine formats as a whole. Time’s Mary Pols put it best: “I have no doubt there are a lot of good men at Pixar, but if they’d grown up in an environment in which it was totally normal for them to see movies with girls in the lead, maybe it wouldn’t have taken 17 years for the studio to get around to making a girl the star.”

Since its first feature, Toy Story, in 1995, Pixar has built a reputation for being one of the most innovative and successful animation companies in Hollywood. Pixar’s distinctive stories and visual style have been well received by critics and audiences of all ages:  its twelve major releases have earned a total of $7 billion in box office sales and a long list of honors, include Emmy, Academy, and Grammy Awards. Brave’s first weekend draw of $66.7 million keeps intact Pixar’s record of first place openings with every feature since Toy Story—in fact, Brave’s opening was Pixar’s fifth best. Despite this, many critics have suggested that Brave is a sign that parent company Disney has finally consumed Pixar’s innovativeness. For example, The Wall Street Journal warned, “This is less a film in the lustrous Pixar tradition than a Disney fairy tale told with Pixar’s virtuosity.” Salon’s review suggests that Brave is a “departure from Pixar tradition in many ways” and argues, “Brave feels a lot more like a Disney film than a Pixar film.” Indiewire asserts that Brave marks the end of Pixar’s quality entertainment, “A once-complex house of stories has been downgraded to the happy meal alternative: ‘Brave’ is a movie for six-year-olds.” Merida is spunky and adorable, but I hardly think that a female-focused film with a feminine storyline will destroy Pixar’s status. But these reviews raise important questions: if Pixar is truly a cutting-edge animation studio, why did Brave take seventeen years? And are innovation and feminine forms incompatible?

The answers to these questions suggest that the media industry assumes that “quality” means men’s and boys’ stories packaged in normative (read: masculine) narratives. This was made clear in the Huffington Post‘s concern about “Whether young boys will push their parents to see the film once they hear that it’s a quintessential mother-daughter story with only a smattering of action set pieces.” Having endured much of what the industry has offered my son (even excluding the most offensive stuff), I can say that there is a relatively untapped, assuredly lucrative market for smart media that enriches children’s lives instead of dumbing them down—and I think it’s especially important for boys to learn to value stories by and about girls. Brave is a late, but great start, and my son and I thoroughly enjoyed it. With twin daughters growing up right behind him, I’m hoping that Brave‘s success and its positive reviews will send a strong message to studios like Pixar, encouraging them to be brave enough to produce media for girls and boys alike.

Beaten into silence by the unrelenting media buzz surrounding the premiere of HBO’s new series Girls, I’ve had time to think about my response to the series’ first two episodes. The HBO-stoked hype around Girls suggested that showrunner Lena Dunham, with guidance from Judd Apatow, would speak for a new generation in this dark comedy about life after college in New York City. In case you’ve been under a rock since the series premiered on April 15th, let me summarize the response so far: Girls has been critiqued for its lack of racial diversity and for its characters’ focus on the trivial problems of the privileged. It has been applauded for its realistic portrayal of women’s bodies and for its ability to find humor in awkward situations.

It’s a challenge to find traction for a solid review after a single episode, but after two episodes of trying to decide how I feel about the show, I started to wonder: Who does HBO hope will watch Girls? Vulture pointed out that HBO likely released the Girls’ pilot free online to draw a twenty-something audience to the show, but media users like Dunham’s character, Hannah Horvath, who in the pilot was “cut off” by her parents, likely don’t have the income to subscribe to HBO, and likely wouldn’t subscribe for only one series (though they may use their parents’ HBO GO account to watch subsequent episodes).

Though HBO is fairly tight-lipped about their subscribers, The Wall Street Journal reported that Time Warner’s premium cable networks HBO and Cinemax lost 1.6 million subscribers in 2010, while companies offering broadband distribution of movies and TV shows gained subscribers (Netflix, for example, gained almost 8 million subscribers). HBO finished 2010 with 28 million subscribers, its lowest number since 2005; this loss is no doubt due to a range of factors, but has been tied to HBO’s inability in recent years to produce a major hit like The Sopranos or Sex and the City.

Unlike The Sopranos’ 10 million viewers (its pilot drew 3.5 million) and Sex and the City’s 6 million viewers (its pilot drew 3.7 million), the Girls’ pilot drew 1.1 million viewers over two opening night airings. This suggests that HBO’s massive advertising campaign, which created a buzz through both mainstream and alternative sources, unsuccessfully targeted a population they can’t draw to subscription TV—twenty-somethings are more likely to watch the show online illegally or wait for the DVD release (though Jezebel pleaded with readers to save for HBO subscriptions to keep Girls in production).

But Girls’ small initial audience also suggests that its audience “isn’t easily defined.” I suspect that HBO believes Girls can draw a loyal fanbase built from (mostly white, mostly privileged) women older than their twenties—a more typical HBO subscriber. A moment in Girls’ second episode, “Vagina Panic,” gives this older audience a small nod when Hannah’s gynecologist, bewildered and overwhelmed by Hannah’s seemingly endless monologue about her obsession with AIDS, pauses her exam and says, “you couldn’t pay me enough to be twenty-four again.” Girls’ focus on self-indulgent panic attacks and cringeworthy sex scenes allows older viewers a chance to identify with its (admittedly narrow) coming-of-age stories. And while most older viewers might agree that they don’t wish to repeat their twenties, HBO is betting that some will want to look back and laugh through the discomfort and embarrassment of their memories. If, as Dunham suggests, the show’s heart is the relationship between Hannah and her best friend Marnie, it may have a chance at developing a respectable following that enjoys the show for more than its uncomfortable humor and shock value. If Girls can build upon what viewers of all ages share (and Dunham fulfills her promise to add racial diversity to the show), it may truly become a series that is “a voice of a generation.”

Yes, for those of us who fancy that we have more sophisticated taste in music than the great hoi polloi that actually watch American Idol without irony, or because we have to because it’s our job , the obvious reason why Lee DeWyze won the 9^th season over Crystal Bowersox, the far superior singer, is those damned little girls and their cell phones. There can’t be any other reason, can there? After all, ‘tween or early-teenage girls have been ruining “good” music for almost fifty years, ever since they used prehistoric communications media, or small weaponry, to tell Dick Clark to go fabricate some teen idols for them to swoon over. Don’t forget that their behavior made the Beatles stop touring – poor George was black and blue all over from the impact of jelly beans launched at him at high velocity. And let’s not forget that network meeting when a band of rebel 12-year-olds commandeered an NBC conference room and made executives fabricate the Monkees, or that period in the 1970s when they apparently made all programming decisions and brought us The Partridge Family and anything starring Bobby Sherman. At the same time, they were terrorizing executives at record companies, little Lilliputians tying up the Gullivers who normally held those positions. Yes, little girls have been ruining music for fifty years running.

That paragraph is absurd (well, most of it) but I am increasingly disturbed by the number of times I’ve seen ‘tween girls, and their forty-something moms, blamed for the sorry state of American Idol this season.   Salon blogger Steven Axelrod, for example, refers to the “Midwestern tween speed-dial monsters.”  Some block-texting likely occurred, but on this scale? Seriously? Little girls have been blamed for the sorry state of popular music, especially any depicted on network television, since Fabian and Bobby Rydell warbled on American Bandstand. The very first issue of Crawdaddy, arguably the first American journal of rock criticism, took pains to distinguish what would appear in its pages from the “what color socks does your idol wear?” discourse of fan magazines. Blaming little girls and their moms enables their continued marginalization in popular music realms, and supports ideologies that prop up the mythologies that are supposed to make us think that “good” popular music is authentic and non-commercial. I’ve written about this at great length elsewhere so won’t belabor the point, but I do want to suggest, no insist, that it’s time to put the blame for DeWyze and his ilk, many of whom were on American Idol last night, elsewhere.

That elsewhere is your HVAC system. Let me explain. Where do we most often hear American Idol-like music? In offices – business offices, doctor’s offices, dentist’s offices, and waiting rooms of all varieties.  What do we hear? The Doobie Brothers, Chicago, the Bee Gees, Hall and Oates and the like … that is, groups  trotted out last night on American Idol. Put them all together on soft rock radio and you have a nice, hum, one that does not require the least bit of attention but does provide a bit of distraction from the tedium of an office job, or sitting in a waiting room. You can learn to tune it out, like you tune out your appliances. DeWyze’s voice fits into the hum perfectly. It’s pleasant but doesn’t make any demands on the listener. Bowersox’s voice, with its rougher edges, stands out too much. That’s why the Idol judges started to prepare the audience for DeWyze’s win a few weeks ago.

This is not to start blaming another group of (primarily) women: secretaries, receptionists, and so on.  Not in the least. It is to argue that as scholars, we should question why “soft rock” exists, how it came to be the “approved” grease that keeps aspects of capitalism and society moving and distracted, but not too much to interfere with business as usual. We also need to study its naturalized position as appropriate music for grown-up women.  That is, we should investigate the power driving the hum.

It’s time to stop blaming female ‘tweens for “bad” popular music.  They’re about as responsible for it as your HVAC system. After all, twelve is the age where they’re supposed to be losing their self-esteem and starting to grapple with their hormones.  The combination of American Idol and unfettered cellphone access doesn’t suddenly turn them into a crazed horde that can subvert the top-ranked television program. Instead, blame your utilities.

(Addendum:  My 12-year-old daughter, who does not have a cell phone, had me text in a vote for Crystal. So there.)