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Four Pieces Of Good News For/About Women

By Emily Cutler | Lists | June 22, 2016 |

By Emily Cutler | Lists | June 22, 2016 |


1) Michelle Obama Will Be On “Carpool Karaoke”
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Michelle has always been the Obama who seemed to give fewer fucks about breaking unneeded traditions (remember Visible-Upper-Arm-gate from 2009?). But I’m really looking forward to Zero Fucks To Give Obama. You know, like, during the regular chitchat with James Corden she just happens to mention that not only has Trump always creeped her out, but Paul Ryan isn’t actually as ripped in person as he looks in his pictures. Just let it fly, FLOTUS. We’ll love you more for it.

2) We Will Have At Least One Thoroughly Kick-Ass Woman President Of The U.S.
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If it doesn’t happen in the U.S., we’ll all have to move out of the country, because no one wants a repugnant man as president. But assuming the Earth will not fold in on itself, we can get ready for the real thing by watching Lynda Carter as Pres on Supergirl. She’ll start serving on her multiple episode arc when the second season premiers October 10th.

3) You Can Play As A Girl On South Park’s New Video Game And It Actually Means Something
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I can in no way describe myself as an avid gamer. But I did play Stick of Truth, and I enjoyed the shit out of it. Meaning, I would have been psyched for South Park: The Fractured But Whole even before finding out that Parker and Stone had put a good deal of thought into how gender roles would and should affect their constructed reality. From their Entertainment Weekly interview:

In Stick of Truth we got halfway through the game, and we had narratively come up with the big Girls’ Quest halfway through it. [The Girls] were a faction in the fantasy world. And then someone’s like, “What if you want to be a girl?” Narratively, it didn’t work. We’d have to sh- can the whole game. So we just left it the way it was. This time, we obviously wanted to add that.

But the boys are little boys, because it’s really a story about little boys running around. So they don’t care about [your character being a girl]? That seems weird. They always seemed to care about it in the show. Are they dumb about it, and they don’t know? So you’re in hiding? Or do they totally care about that, and totally treat you differently? So we ended up doing those things differently for different characters.

So they considered the lack of female viewpoint, decided it wouldn’t work for this particular story (a totally valid viewpoint by the way. Not every story has to be about women), and then went to considerable lengths to make sure that not only did they include the female viewpoint, but that it was realistic? Hey, Hollywood? That’s how you get shit done. And it’s not just that you can pick to be a girl, and that’s the end of it. Gender does inform your reality. Being a woman in the real world affects how people view you. Being a girl in South Park affects how an asshole like Cartman will treat you. Like you can’t expect Cartman to notice that you’ve gotten your period and not be an asshole about it, right? Oh, and by the way . . .

4) Prisons And Schools Aren’t Charging Women For Tampons Anymore
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Some articles phrase that headline as “New York City Gives Away Tampons To School Kids And Prisoners.” But I think that’s a pretty fucked up way to view this. If you found out that schools and prisons had just now stopped charging people for toilet paper, your response wouldn’t be, “Hey, that’s nice of them” or “WELFARE STATE. What else are we going to start supplying to parasites.” It would probably be “What the fuck do you mean you were charging them?” Because that’s a fucked up thing to charge for. You know that perfectly normal, involuntary action that your body takes every once in a while that also creates perfectly normal amounts of waste that need to be effectively dealt with? Well, we should probably treat all those things the same regardless if it’s related to butts, peeholes, or vaginas. But maybe I’m only saying that because it’s my time of the month.