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loissehilario · 3 years

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A Glimpse of Nanay Corazon’s Life In A Pandemic

Nanay Corazon listening attentively while her son, Desi Dee, talks about celebrity gossips during the afternoon.

Being a woman in her 80’s does not stop Corazon G. Hilario on living her life to the fullest. She likes to travel, explore and try activities, and just live in the moment. But when the pandemic hit the Philippines, her life turned into a cycle, like there is a schedule that needs to be followed. This is a glimpse of Nanay Corazon’s day in the life.

Nanay Corazon being injected by Apidra, a fast-acting insulin used to control high blood sugar by Cristina, her daughter-in-law at 8 in the morning.

Although her life does not sound interesting to some, I chose her as my subject for this photo essay. Nanay Corazon is my grandmother from my father’s side. My grandmother from my mother’s side died before I had the chance to meet her, so she is my one and only, literally. My siblings and I are very close to her, she is one of those people that really influenced me while growing up. Even though she does not have an interesting profession, an awesome life, or an influential person, I decided to pick her. I wanted to show people the view of being with my grandmother. I wanted to show a glimpse of what happens to an 81-year-old grandmother who has an 86-year-old husband, 5 kids, and 11 grandchildren. I wanted to tell her story.

Nanay Corazon readying to take Ketosteril, a medicine tablet that is commonly used as dietary supplements with kidney problems which is one out of her eleven medicines to take.

Nanay starts her day by getting pricked by a needle. Since she was hospitalized last year, our family took precautions on her health. Her food intake, medicines, blood sugar, and blood pressure are needed to be written down for her doctors to see every check-up. Every morning, Cristina, her daughter-in-law who is taking the role of her nurse, gets her blood sugar and blood pressure before breakfast. Today, her blood sugar was above normal, so she needed to be injected by Apidra, an insulin to control the blood sugar.

Crispy pandesal stuffed with coco jam held by Nanay Corazon for her breakfast.

After her morning check-up, Nanay proceeds on taking her breakfast. Since her food choices are limited, her breakfast is mainly pandesal with either coco jam or anchor as her palaman. Every morning, she needs to take 11 medicines. Most of the time, she eats breakfast in peace, just like today.

Every Tuesday and Friday, Nanay burns laurel, a bay leaf, that has her dreams and wishes written on it. Today, she performs this activity. Her dreams often have topics. Today, it is her dreams about her one and only daughter, Grace. Since the leaf is small, she needs 10-15 leaves. After writing, she burns all the leaves on a candle and compiles all the ashes. She puts all the ashes inside a tissue and lets someone discard it outside. For it to work, she says that it should be discarded while facing the sun. Sometimes, she is the one who throws it during her morning walk, but most of the time, she lets someone do it.

Nanay Corazon burning leaves of laurel, a bay leaf, which were written with her dreams, then compile the ashes inside a tissue, and throw them while facing the sun. She believes that this act will make her dreams come true.

To kill time before tanghalian, Nanay likes to watch Youtube. Her current favorite Youtuber is Mahal, a Filipino actress and entertainer. When I asked her why she likes her content, she said that it brings her joy. “Ayoko kasi ng mga nakakatakot, yung mga nakakagulat na palabas. Gusto ko yung masaya lang.” Her son, Desi Dee, likes to watch movies on Netflix which are mostly vampire and zombie movies. Since they live together, Nanay has no choice but to watch what her son watches even though most of the time, she hates this genre. Fun fact though, Nanay is a huge AlDub fan. When there is no new content from Mahal, she likes to watch clips or gossip about the love team, and everything related to Alden Richards and Maine Mendoza.

Just like her breakfast, her food during tanghalian is also limited. You often see her with the same meal every day. Today, her meal consists of daing na bangus paired with soup. During the afternoon, she needs to take three medicines and get her eye drops because she tends to have a red eye, just like Kaneki Ken from Tokyo Ghoul. She says it does not hurt though. Most of the time, she watches Eat Bulaga, a noontime show, while eating. Watching this show is a daily occurrence for her since she is a fan of Maine Mendoza. Her favorite segment is, “Bawal Judgmental”.

Nanay Corazon eating her meal for the afternoon which consists of: daing na bangus, one and a half cup of rice, soup, and three medicines.

Before going to bed for the afternoon, Nanay makes sure to do her business in the bathroom. Since she has trouble doing everything by herself, her son, Desi Dee, helps her when she goes into the bathroom. Today, she needed to wash her body to freshen up. She only washes her body 2-3 times a week. After that, she goes upstairs and kills time, again watching Mahal on her tablet.

Nanay always says she is not allowed to sleep during the afternoon. Whenever she sleeps, it affects the result of her blood sugar or blood pressure, so she tries not to sleep in the afternoon. Watching Youtube on the television keeps her awake till Cristina comes before the evening. Since Mahal is her favorite content creator now, she is indeed awake the whole afternoon.

After washing her body, Nanay Corazon goes to her room and watches her favorite vlogger, Mahal, in her tablet to kill time in the afternoon.

Cristina often goes every 5:30PM to conduct her “afternoon check-up” in Nanay. Just like what she did every morning, she gets the blood sugar and blood pressure of Nanay. They often talk to each other about everything, really. Their topics revolve on gossip, news, politics, and food.

Killing time again before her evening meal, she watches Youtube. Sometimes, I do encourage her to watch other content. Nanay is also a fan of volleyball. Before discovering Mahal, she watched volleyball matches of different leagues from Premier Volleyball League (PVL) and UAAP. One time, I recommended to her a match between France and Brazil in Volleyball Nation’s League (VNL). She spent her whole afternoon watching matches in VNL and Olympics after that. Her favorite women volleyball player is Alyssa Valdez. She watches her live matches on television during her UAAP era, even when she graduated and played in other leagues.

Nanay Corazon getting her blood pressure and sugar by Cristina, her daughter-in-law, who will determine if she needs Apidra and her meal for the night.

For her evening meal, one food was added to the group. Chicharap, a food from Chowking, together with daing na bangus, and the same soup from the afternoon, was her meal for the night. Every night, she takes three medicines. She eats in her room every night since it takes too much of her strength to go downstairs. I observed that her meal consists of the same food throughout the day. I asked if she was getting tired on eating the same meal every day and she said, “Wala akong choice eh, kailangan ayan ang mga kainin ko. Marami kasi akong bawal kainin.” She spent the rest of the night watching Youtube till she felt sleepy.

Nanay Corazon sitting at her arinola, or chamber pots, while watching the television in the evening.

One of Nanay’s hobbies is gambling. She plays the card game which they call “kuwaho”. Before the pandemic, they gamble most of the time. When they are on a roll, it continues up to 2-3 days, none of them having any sleep. Nanay switches with whoever is available in the family though, since she is too old. Playing “kuwaho” is normal in the family, even us kids know it. They taught us how to play in case no one is available to play now, or someone has an emergency.

Nanay also likes to travel. She often goes to Tagaytay to buy and eat food with the family. Before eating though, we pray in the Pink Sisters Convent. Sometimes, I think the sisters know her already.

Nanay Corazon watching television while eating her meal that consists of: daing na bangus, one cup of rice, soup, chicharap, and 3 medicines for the evening.

These are the two hobbies entertaining her before the pandemic. When the COVID-19 started and she was hospitalized, things drastically changed. Everything is limited for her. She has this schedule that needs to be followed every day. She cannot do the things she loved before anymore.

Nanay Corazon is just one of the millions of lives that suddenly changed because of the pandemic. Although she has no choice but to stick to her daily routine and drink 17 tablets per day, she said that she is still thankful that she is alive and healthy at 81 years old. “Nagpapasalamat ako sa Panginoon dahil wala na akong nararamdaman na sakit. Kahit ang dami kong iniinom na malalaking gamot, maigi na ito dahil para din naman sa akin.”

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citizenscreen · 7 years

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Special guest post by Jeff Lundenberger @jlundenberger

My Feud with Feud

When the ads for Feud: Bette and Joan began to appear I considered watching it, thinking it was a made for TV movie — this despite the fact that the image of Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon posed as Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in a promotional photo for Whatever Happened to Baby Jane?, made me think of two children playing dress up. When I discovered it was a series I decided that I definitely would not tune in. I’m a commitment-phobe when it comes to television series. I try to limit my TV viewing time and the thought of having to set aside one hour each week for the length of a series season makes me terribly anxious. It’s much more comforting for me to turn on TCM. Ninety-nine per cent of the time it will be something I’ll watch. And if it’s not, I have a DVR crowded with TCM movies going back several years. (As for my difficulty making a selection from that group, well, that’s another story.)

I was also put off by the fact that the series was created by Ryan Murphy, of American Horror Story fame, a show that I didn’t find appealing. I tried a few episodes of the first season at the urging of my sister but the violence, something my younger self would have relished, had me averting my eyes and squirming in my seat. I turned on an episode from a different season a few years later to see if anything, including my taste, had changed. The subject was a freak show and I couldn’t even watch the entire hour. The production seemed oddly lackluster, the story pretentious.

My husband started watching Feud from the beginning and he loved it. I read an intriguing interview with Lange in which she talked about the attempt by those concerned with the production to humanize the characters, placing their struggles firmly in the male-dominant, ageist Hollywood of the time. Finally, I received a text from a Joan and Bette-loving friend asking me if I was watching what he described as a weekly Christmas gift. All resistance crushed, I watched episodes 1, 2 and 3 in one sitting.

I’ve been a fan of Jessica Lange and Susan Sarandon since they first appeared on the scene in the 1970s but, lets face it, Joan Crawford and Bette Davis have some pretty big shoes to fill, especially if the viewer was, like myself, a fan of those two actors well before the arrival of King Kong and The Rocky Horror Picture Show. When we met, my first long-term boyfriend told me that I reminded him of Hank Fonda. Hank Fonda, Bill Holden, he threw the names of stars around as if they had been high school classmates. Ridiculous as it seems, we feel like we know them all intimately. How many times have I watched Mildred Pierce and All About Eve, The Women and Now, Voyager? Mildred and Margo and Crystal and Charlotte are only characters in movies, but my familiarity with them and my knowledge of their creators — from books, magazines, talk shows, and, yes, their films — grants me, in my mind, at least, some insight into the personal worlds of Crawford and Davis. Could Lange and Sarandon possibly live up to my perceptions and expectations?

The show’s 8 episodes have finished and I’m still on the fence. I thought the last episode the best and I’ll go into that more, but as for the show in general: Lange and Sarandon are fine as Joan and Bette. Lange’s voice is a bit soft for my idea of Joan but she never wavers from that peculiar, precise diction of Crawford’s, while Sarandon captures Davis’ clipped delivery and abrupt mannerisms. But I also have, to a lesser extent, a viewer’s intimacy with both Lange and Sarandon and I watch and listen carefully — where do those two end, Joan and Bette begin? Do these interpretations at all match up with the interpretations I have in my head? Lange or Sarandon utter a line and I immediately run it through my filter: does this sound like my Bette or Joan?

One scene with Davis and ex-husband Gary Merrill (Mark Valley) struck me as feeling painfully realistic. Merrill angers Davis and they begin braying at each other when, suddenly, both burst out laughing at the battle that has obviously been a constant in their lives together, perhaps the basis of their relationship. Crawford’s dressing room attempt to convince Anne Bancroft (Serinda Swan) to allow Crawford to accept Bancroft’s Oscars were she to win — flattering, cajoling, insinuating — seemed utterly realistic. But there were also moments that left me cold. Nothing specific, just a vague mistrust, as if the creators were more interested in effect than intent.

The performances of Alfred Molina as Robert Aldrich, Stanley Tucci as Jack Warner and Dominic Burgess as Victor Buono are convincing but, of course, I’m not nearly as familiar with those men. I sense a bit of Joan Blondell in the performance of Kathy Bates, but Olivia de Havilland is nowhere to be found under the blonde wig of Catherine Zeta-Jones. Jackie Hoffman’s Mamacita and Judy Davis’ Hedda Hopper are more caricature than character. Grim and stoic, Mamacita has no subtlety. She might have been an escapee from Ilsa, She Wolf of the SS. And while I’m an admirer of Judy Davis, she doesn’t seem to be able to pull a person out of the sartorial flamboyance that defines the gossip columnist. Then again, if Hopper’s actions in the series are at all to be believed, perhaps she wasn’t human at all.

Other “real” characters pass in and out of the story – Gregory Peck, Geraldine Page, Rip Torn, Patty Duke, George Cukor, to name but a few — some more effective than others. John Waters appears as producer/director William Castle, turning that scene into utter camp while humiliating poor Joan in the process. Crawford’s twin daughters show up several times, as the teenage version of the murdered sisters of the Overlook Hotel.

But does it all work? Perhaps it’s my unfamiliarity with modern TV series but I find an hour each week to be too long. Dense with self-conscious detail, I’m worn out by the end of each episode, wanting to know what will happen next while at the same time relieved that I no longer have to notice that it is Aqua Net hairspray and Dickinson’s witch hazel being used by the stars. It’s Joan and Bette, the graphic novel, elaborate and over-blown, the costumes too costume-y, the sets too perfect, the attitude too proud of its own cleverness. But it is also fun. Sarandon as Davis performing a silly Whatever Happened to Baby Jane? song on the Mike Douglas show seemed just too good to be true — until the original video was trending on social media the following day.

And then came that final episode, which came closest to finding a kernel of authenticity and some kind of longed-for, idealized truth. We saw Joan at home, alone, cooking, drinking, cancelling a lunch date because she is unable to zip up her dress. Bette at home with Victor Buono, who questions the reasoning behind her continued attempts at landing a television series. Joan with her dentist who recommends a denture that she refuses. Bette’s doctor urges her to give up smoking, with the same result. Joan endures humiliation after humiliation while shooting her final film, Trog. Bette maintains a game face during the Dean Martin Roast. The subject of Christina’s book comes up in a conversation with Joan and her other daughter, Cathy, who tenderly comforts her. Bette spends time with her brain-damaged daughter Margot after being berated and dismissed by her other daughter B.D. The two have much in common at this stage in their lives, both touched by longing, sadness and the realities of old age.

But there’s more to it than that. In a Lynchian dream sequence Joan wakes up in the middle of the night and hears voices coming from her living room, where she finds Hedda Hopper and Jack Warner drinking, laughing and playing cards. She takes a place at the table with them, now in full makeup and dress. With biting humor they recall the past, struggle, triumph and pain. Bette arrives and takes her place at the table opposite Joan who is, at first, insulted by Bette’s presence. But it is Bette who asks Hopper and Warner to apologize to Joan for the miseries they have caused her. They consent but both, finally, are incapable of saying “I’m sorry.”

Hopper and Warner depart while Bette talks Joan into playing a game of Wishes and Regrets, “The only game I know” says Davis. Joan pulls a pip card and says, with sincerity, “I’m sorry I wasn’t more generous with you.” Bette pulls a face card and responds “I wish I’d been a friend to you.” Mamacita wakes Joan from her trance and returns her to bed. Touching and wistful, Joan’s dream, but could that have been her real attitude towards Bette after all the hostility they had shown one another?

Bette’s real response certainly might have been different. Later in the episode she answers a telephone call and is informed of Crawford’s death. Asked for a comment she replies “My mother always said don’t say anything bad about the dead. Joan Crawford is dead. Good.” But there is ambiguity in her face. Is she saying this because she feels it, or is she saying it because that is what she thinks she would be expected to say? The series ends at the beginning, the two stars in their studio chairs at the start of production of Baby Jane, hoping to become friends. Wishful thinking? Who knows.

Faye Dunaway is mentioned ironically in the final episode, and it’s all but impossible to talk about Joan Crawford, post-Mommie Dearest, without bringing up Dunaway’s portrayal of her. Has there ever been another movie with a more determined and driven star surrounded by such mediocrity? Dunaway’s Crawford is riveting but the other actors are unable to rise above the dull cinematography, the bad editing or the banal script. I watched the film recently and was struck by the overblown grandeur of the performance, but also its touches of subtlety and, dare I say, reality? This is, after all, not the Crawford of Feud but the Crawford of Christina, an angry, troubled, driven women seen through the eyes of her child. For better or worse, Dunaway’s performance, crafted from a rib tugged from Crawford’s own work in Johnny Guitar, defined the woman in a way that has stuck since the film’s release in 1981. It will be interesting to see if Lange’s Crawford, or Sarandon’s Davis for that matter, has the power to maintain such longevity.

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About the author: Jeff Lundenberger is an avid classic film fan, was a TCMFF Social Producer and is active across social media sharing his love of movies. You can follow Jeff on Twitter and Instagram @jlundenberger. I was thrilled when he agreed to share his thoughts on Feud on this blog and cannot wait to share my own thoughts in the comments below. I hope you’ll do the same.

My Feud with FEUD Special guest post by Jeff Lundenberger @jlundenberger My Feud with Feud When the ads for Feud: Bette and Joan…

#Bette Davis #Feud #Jessica Lange #Joan Crawford #Susan Sarandon

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lodelss · 6 years

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Soraya Roberts | Longreads | November 2018 | 10 minutes (2,422 words)

Should I be married to a woman? If today were yesterday, if all this sexual fluidity were in the discourse when I was coming of age in the ‘90s, would I have been with a woman instead of a man? It is a question that “The Bisexual” creator Desiree Akhavan also poses in the second episode of her Hulu series, co-produced with Channel 4 because no U.S. network wanted it. Akhavan directed, co-wrote, and stars in the show in which her character, Leila, splits with her girlfriend of 10 years, Sadie (Maxine Peake), and starts having sex with men for the first time. So, Leila asks, if the opposite had happened to her — as it did to me — and a guy had swept her off her feet instead of a woman, would things have turned out differently? “Maybe I would’ve gone the path of least resistance,” Leila says. Maybe I did.

This is a conundrum that marks a previous generation — one that had to “fight for it,” as Akhavan’s heroine puts it, and is all the more self-conscious for being juxtaposed with the next one, the one populated by the fluid youth of social media idolizing the likes of pansexual Janelle Monáe, polyamorous Ezra Miller, undecided Lucas Hedges. Call it a queer generation gap (what’s one more label?). “I don’t know what it’s like to grow up with the Internet,” 32-year-old Akhavan explains to a younger self-described “queer woman” in her show. “I just get the sense that it’s changing your relationship to gender and to sexuality in a really good way, but in a way I can’t relate to.”

***

This Playboy bunny is chest out, lips open, legs wide. This Playboy bunny is every other Playboy bunny except for the flat hairy chest because this Playboy bunny is Ezra Miller. The star of Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald calls himself “queer” but it’s hard to take him seriously. What was it Susan Sontag said: it’s not camp if it’s trying to be camp? And for the past few months, while promoting the Potterverse prequel no one asked for, this 26-year-old fashionisto has been trying his damndest, styling himself as a sort of latter day Ziggy Stardust — the monastic Moncler puffer cape, the glittering Givenchy feathers — minus the depth. Six months ago, Miller looked like every other guy on the red carpet and now, per his own request, models bunny ears, fishnets, and heels as a gender-fluid rabbit for a randy Playboy interview. Okay, I guess, but it reads disingenuous to someone who grew up surrounded by closets to see them plundered so flagrantly for publicity. Described as “attracted to men and women,” Miller is nevertheless quoted mostly on the subject of guys, the ones he jerked off and fell in love with. He claims his lack of romantic success has lead him to be a polycule: a “polyamorous molecule” involving multiple “queer beings who understand me as a queer being.”

The article hit two weeks after i-D published a feature in which heartthrob Harry Styles interviewed heartthrob Timothée Chalamet with — despite their supposed reframing of masculinity — the upshot, as always, being female genuflection. “I want to say you can be whatever you want to be,” Chalamet explains, styled as a sensitive greaser for the cover. “There isn’t a specific notion, or jean size, or muscle shirt, or affectation, or eyebrow raise, or dissolution, or drug use that you have to take part in to be masculine.” Styles, on brand, pushes it further. “I think there’s so much masculinity in being vulnerable and allowing yourself to be feminine,” the 24-year-old musician says, “and I’m very comfortable with that.” (Of course you are comfortable, white guy…did I say that out loud?) As part of the boy band One Direction, Styles was marketed as a female fantasy and became a kind of latter-day Mick Jagger, the playboy who gets all the girls. His subsequent refusal to label himself, the rumors about his close relationship with band mate Louis Tomlinson, and the elevation of his song “Medicine” to “bisexual anthem”– “The boys and the girls are in/I mess around with them/And I’m OK with it” — all build on a solid foundation of cis white male heterosexuality.

Timothée Chalamet’s sexuality, meanwhile, flows freely between fiction and fact. While the 22-year-old actor is “straight-identifying,” he acquires a queer veneer by virtue of his signature role as Call Me by Your Name’s Elio, a bisexual teen (or, at least, a boy who has had sex with both women and men). Yet off screen, as Timothée, he embodies a robust heterosexuality. On social media, the thirst for him skews overwhelmingly female, while reports about his romantic partners — Madonna’s daughter, Johnny Depp’s daughter — not only paint him straight but enviably so. Lucas Hedges, another straight-identified actor who plays gay in the conversion therapy drama Boy Erased, somewhat disrupts this narrative, returning fluidity to the ambiguous space it came from. The 21-year-old admitted in an interview with Vulture that he found it difficult to pin himself down, having been “infatuated with” close male friends but more often women. “I recognize myself as existing on that spectrum,” he says. “Not totally straight, but also not gay and not necessarily bisexual.” That he felt “ashamed” for not being binary despite having a sixth-grade health teacher who introduced him to the range of sexuality suggests how married our culture is to it.

As a woman familiar with the shame associated with female sexuality, it’s difficult to ignore the difference in tenor of the response to famous young white males like Miller, Styles, and Chalamet and famous black women like Janelle Monáe and Tessa Thompson not only discussing it, but making even more radical statements. Appearing on the cover of Rolling Stone in May, Monáe said straight up (so to speak): “Being a queer black woman in America — someone who has been in relationships with both men and women — I consider myself to be a free-ass motherfucker.” The same age as Desiree Akhavan, 32, Monáe identified as bisexual until she read about pansexuality. She initially came out through her music; her album, Dirty Computer, contains a song called “Q.U.E.E.N.” which was originally titled “Q.U.E.E.R.,” while the music video accompanying “Pynk” has actress Tessa Thompson emerging from Monáe’s Georgia O’Keeffe-esque pants. While neither one of them has discussed their relationship in detail, Thompson, who in Porter magazine’s July issue revealed she is attracted to men and women, said, “If people want to speculate about what we are, that’s okay.”

The mainstream press and what appeared to be a number of non-queer social media acolytes credited Chalamet and Styles with redefining their gender and trouncing toxic masculinity. “[H]arry styles, ezra miller, and timothee chalamet are going to save the world,” tweeted one woman, while The Guardian dubbed Miller the “hero we need right now.” Monáe, meanwhile, was predominantly championed by queer fans (“can we please talk about how our absolute monarch Janelle Monáe has been telegraphing her truth to the queers thru her art and fashion for YEARS and now this Rolling Stone interview is a delicious cherry on top + a ‘told u so’ to all the h*teros”) and eclipsed by questions about what pansexual actually means. While white male fluidity was held up as heroic, female fluidity, particularly black female fluidity, was somehow unremarkable. Why? Part of the answer was recently, eloquently, provided by “Younger” star Nico Tortorella, who identifies as gender-fluid, bisexual, and polyamorous. “I get to share my story,” he told The Daily Beast. “That’s a privilege that I have because of what I look like, the color of my skin, what I have between my legs, my straight passing-ness, everything.”

***

When I was growing up sex was not fun, it was fraught. Sex was AIDS, disease, death. The Supreme Court of Canada protected sexual orientation under the Charter when I was 15 but I went to school in Alberta, Canada’s version of Texas — my gym teacher was the face of Alberta beef. In my high school, no one was gay even if they were. All gender was binary. Sex was a penis in a vagina. Popular culture was as straight, and even Prince and David Bowie seemed to use their glam sparkle to sleep with more women rather than fewer. Bisexual women on film were murderers (Basic Instinct) or sluts (Chasing Amy) and in the end were united by their desire for “some serious deep dicking.” I saw no bisexual women on television (I didn’t watch “Buffy”) and LGBTQ characters were limited (“My So-Called Life”). Alanis Morissette was considered pop music’s feminist icon, but even she was singing about Dave Coulier. And the female celebrities who seemed to swing both ways — Madonna, Drew Barrymore, Bijou Phillips — were the kind who were already acting out, their sexuality a hallmark of their lack of control.

“I think unrealistic depictions of sex and relationships are harmful,” Akhavan told The New York Times. “I was raised on them and the first time I had sex, I had learned everything from film and television and I was like ‘Oh, this isn’t at all like I saw on the screen.’” Bisexuality has historically been passed over on screen for a more accessible binary depiction of relationships. In her 2013 book The B Word: Bisexuality in Contemporary Film and Television, Maria San Filippo describes what has become known as “bisexual erasure” in pop culture: “Outside of the erotically transgressive realms of art cinema and pornography, screen as well as ‘real life’ bisexuality is effaced not only by what I’ve named compulsory monosexuality but also by compulsory monogamy,” she writes, adding, “the assumption remains that the gender of one’s current object choice indicates one’s sexuality.” So even high-profile films that include leads having sex with both genders — Brokeback Mountain, The Kids Are All Right, Blue Is the Warmest Color, Carol, Call Me By Your Name — are coded “gay” rather than “bi.”

Despite the rise in bisexual women on the small screen like Annalise in “How to Get Away with Murder,” Syd in “Transparent,” and Ilana in “Broad City,” GLAAD’s latest report on inclusion cited continued underrepresentation. While 28 percent of LGBTQ characters on television are bisexual, the majority are women (75 versus 18) and they are often associated with harmful tropes — sex is used to move the plot forward and the characters scan amoral and manipulative. This despite an increase in the U.S.’s queer population to 4.5 percent in 2017 from 3.5 percent in 2012 (when Gallup started tracking it). A notable detail is the extreme generational divide in identification: “The percentage of millennials who identify as LGBT expanded from 7.3% to 8.1% from 2016 to 2017, and is up from 5.8% in 2012,” reported Gallup. “By contrast, the LGBT percentage in Generation X (those born from 1965 to 1979) was up only .2% from 2016 to 2017.”

Here’s the embarrassing part. While I am technically a millennial, I align more with Generation X (that’s not the embarrassing bit). I am attracted more to men, but I am attracted to women as well yet don’t identify as LGBTQ. How best to describe this? I remember a relative being relieved when I acquired my first boyfriend (it was late). “Oh good, I thought you were gay,” they said. I was angry at them for suggesting that being gay was a bad thing, but also relieved that I had dodged a bullet. This isn’t exactly the internalized homophobia that Hannah Gadsby talked about, but it isn’t exactly not. My parents and my brother would have been fine with me being gay. So what’s the problem? The problem is that the standard I grew up with — in the culture, in the world around me — was not homosexuality, it was heterosexuality. I don’t judge non-heterosexual relationships, but having one myself somehow falls short of ideal. For the same reason, I can’t shake the false belief that lesbian sex is less legitimate than gay sex between men. The ideal is penetration. “That’s some Chasing Amy shit,” my boyfriend, eight years younger, said. And, yeah, unfortunately, it is. I have company though.

In a survey released in June, billed as “the most comprehensive of its kind,” Whitman Insight Strategies and BuzzFeed News polled 880 LGBTQ Americans, almost half of whom were between the ages of 18 and 29, and found that the majority, 46 percent, identified as bisexual. While women self-described as bi four times as often as men (79 to 19 percent), the report did not offer a single clear reason for the discrepancy. It did, however, suggest “phallocentrism,” the notion that the penis is the organizing principle for the world, the standard. In other words, sex is a penis in a vagina. “While bisexual women are often stereotyped as sleeping with women for male attention, or just going through a phase en route to permanent heterosexuality,” the report reads, “the opposite is presumed of bisexual men: that they are simply confused or semi-closeted gay men.” This explains why women who come out, like Monáe and Thompson, are considered less iconoclastic in the popular culture than men who even just make vague gestures towards fluidity — the stakes are considered higher for the guys. In truth, few feel comfortable being bi. Though the Pew Research Center’s survey of queer Americans in 2013 revealed that 40 percent of respondents identified as bisexual, this population was less likely to come out and more likely to be with a partner of the opposite sex. Famous women like Maria Bello, Cynthia Nixon, and Kristen Stewart have all come out, yet none of them really use the label.

“Not feeling gay enough, that’s something I felt a lot of guilt over,” Akhavan told the Times. It is guilt like this and the aforementioned shame which makes it all the more frustrating to watch the ease with which the younger generation publicly owns their fluidity. It is doubly hard to watch young white men being praised for wearing bunny ears in a magazine that has so long objectified women, simply because the expectations are so much lower for them. “I’m not looking down on the younger experience of being queer,” Akhavan said, “but I do think that there’s a resentment there that we gloss over.” In response, many of us react conservatively, with the feeling that they haven’t worked for it, that it is somehow less earned because of that. This is an acknowledgment of that resentment, of the eye rolling and the snickering with which we respond to the youth (ah, youth!). In the end we are not judging you for being empowered. We are judging ourselves for not being empowered enough.

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Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

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tragicbooks · 7 years

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7 times SAG Award winners slammed Trumpism without mentioning him by name.

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As chaos ensued at airports across the country after President Donald Trump issued an executive order banning travel to the U.S. from seven mostly Muslim countries, the Screen Actors Guild (SAG) Awards rolled out the red carpet in Los Angeles.

If there's one thing we know to be true among Hollywood's A-listers, it's that actors hardly ever shy away from getting political. The awards show didn't go by without the immigration ban getting a mention.

Meryl Streep, Jocelyn Towne — with the words "let them in" on her chest in reference to Trump's immigration ban — and Simon Helberg. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.

While a few actors brought up the 45th president during their acceptance speeches — Bryan Cranston, who plays Lyndon B. Johnson in HBO's "All the Way" said LBJ would have told Trump not to "piss in the soup that all of us got to eat" — most actors actually didn't mention our reality-star-turned-world-leader by name, even as their speeches were powerful rebukes to Trumpism in this dark moment in U.S. history.

Here are seven times SAG Award recipients tore Trump's policies and ideas to shreds without ever having to utter his name:

1. Ashton Kutcher started things out with a bang, blasting the ban during the ceremony's very first opening lines.

"Good evening, fellow SAG-AFTRA members and everyone at home — and everyone in airports that belong in my America," Kutcher said loudly into the microphone. "You are a part of the fabric of who we are. And we love you, and we welcome you."

Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.

"We also welcome you to the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards," he then quipped with a grin as the audience laughed.

2. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series, spelled out why the ban hits so close to home for her.

"I want you all to know that I am the daughter of an immigrant," she said. "My father fled religious persecution in Nazi-occupied France, and I'm an American patriot, and I love this country. And because I love this country, I am horrified by its blemishes. And this immigrant ban is a blemish, and it's un-American."

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for TNT.

3. David Harbour, who spoke on behalf of the cast of "Stranger Things," gave arguably the most blistering takedown of Trumpism of the night.

"As we act in the continuing narrative of 'Stranger Things,' we ... will repel bullies, we will shelter freaks and outcasts, those who have no home," Harbour said boldly on stage, his voice rising and hands shaking. "We will get past the lies, we will hunt monsters, and when we are at a loss amidst the hypocrisy and the casual violence of certain individuals and institutions, we will, as per chief Jim Hopper, punch some people in the face when they seek to destroy the weak, the disenfranchised, and we will do it all with soul, with heart, and with joy."

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TNT.

Harbour's entire speech is worth the watch.

4. Taraji P. Henson, who accepted the SAG award for Outstanding Performance by a Cast in a Motion Picture on behalf of "Hidden Figures," called for an end to divisiveness while honoring the trailblazing women of color who made the film possible.

"This film is about unity," Henson said. "We stand here as proud actors thanking every member of this incredible guild for voting for us, for recognizing our hard work. But the shoulders of the women that we stand on are three American heroes: Katherine Johnson, Dorothy Vaughan, and Mary Jackson. Without them, we would not know how to reach the stars."

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for TNT.

5. Mahershala Ali, who is Muslim, spoke out about why religious tolerance is so vital in his speech accepting the award for Male Actor in a Supporting Role for "Moonlight."

"My mother is an ordained minister," Ali said. "I’m a Muslim. She didn’t do backflips when I called her to tell her I converted 17 years ago. But I tell you now ― you put things to the side, and I’m able to see her and she’s able to see me. We love each other. The love has grown."

Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TNT.

The "Moonlight" star also explained why his character should be a role model for the rest of us:

"I think what I’ve learned from working on 'Moonlight' is we see what happens when you persecute people. They fold into themselves. And what I was so grateful about in having the opportunity to play Juan was playing a gentleman who saw a young man folding into himself as a result of the persecution of his community and taking that opportunity to uplift him and to tell him he mattered, that he was OK, and accept him. I hope that we do a better job of that."

6. Lily Tomlin, who was given a lifetime achievement award in part for her work in civil rights advocacy, couldn't resist a jab at Trumpism either.

She joked that the new administration has inspired her to start thinking about "what sign should [she] make for the next march: global warming, Standing Rock, LGBT issues, immigration — there are so many things."

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TNT.

7. And Sarah Paulson received one of the most cheered lines of the night when she encouraged viewers to donate to the ACLU — the group responsible for challenging (and winning) a temporary stay on Trump's immigration ban.

"I would like to make plea for everyone, if they can, any money they have to spare please donate to the ACLU to protect the rights and liberties of people across this country," said Paulson, who won for Outstanding Performance by a Female Actor in a Television Movie or Limited Series, adding the ACLU is "a vital organization that relies entirely on our support."

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TNT.

We are only on day 11 of Trump's presidency (yep, it will be a grueling four years). But don't expect Hollywood — or the millions of others who'll be affected by this administration — to shut up anytime soon. There's too much on the line.

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socialviralnews · 7 years

Text

7 times SAG Award winners slammed Trumpism without mentioning him by name.

<br>

Meryl Streep, Jocelyn Towne — with the words "let them in" on her chest in reference to Trump's immigration ban — and Simon Helberg. Photo by Kevork Djansezian/Getty Images.

Here are seven times SAG Award recipients tore Trump's policies and ideas to shreds without ever having to utter his name:

1. Ashton Kutcher started things out with a bang, blasting the ban during the ceremony's very first opening lines.

Photo by Robyn Beck/AFP/Getty Images.

"We also welcome you to the 23rd annual Screen Actors Guild Awards," he then quipped with a grin as the audience laughed.

2. Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who won Best Female Actor in a Comedy Series, spelled out why the ban hits so close to home for her.

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for TNT.

3. David Harbour, who spoke on behalf of the cast of "Stranger Things," gave arguably the most blistering takedown of Trumpism of the night.

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TNT.

Harbour's entire speech is worth the watch.

Photo by John Sciulli/Getty Images for TNT.

5. Mahershala Ali, who is Muslim, spoke out about why religious tolerance is so vital in his speech accepting the award for Male Actor in a Supporting Role for "Moonlight."

Photo by Emma McIntyre/Getty Images for TNT.

The "Moonlight" star also explained why his character should be a role model for the rest of us:

6. Lily Tomlin, who was given a lifetime achievement award in part for her work in civil rights advocacy, couldn't resist a jab at Trumpism either.

Photo by Christopher Polk/Getty Images for TNT.

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lodelss · 6 years

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The Queer Generation Gap

Soraya Roberts | Longreads | November 2018 | 10 minutes (2,422 words)

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Soraya Roberts is a culture columnist at Longreads.

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