"Belly casting is a growing trend among mothers-to-be — a chance to make a permanent memento of a momentous experience...."

"Khloé and Kourtney Kardashian turned the belly casts they commissioned into plot points for their family’s reality show, while Cardi B posed for a shoot in her custom breast and belly cast... to announce the impending arrival of her second child.... Japanwala used her entire body for her first collection: One piece, which included her breasts and vulva, left her parents speechless.... Such defiant sculpting is anchored in shamelessness, a rebuttal of the Urdu insult beghairat — roughly meaning 'without shame or honor' — often hurled at women. She’ll hold open casting calls at her studio in Karachi, Pakistan, and finds many women will come to have their breasts and nipples cast, anonymously, without telling another soul. 'That’s a radical act of quiet shamelessness, a secret between the artist and her,' she says...."

From "Why women are making nude casts of their bodies/From Cardi B to the Kardashians, women are stripping down for hyper-realist molds — especially while pregnant — and displaying the results in ways both private and public" (WaPo).

I thought Meade was playing "For What It's Worth" because I'd written a post this morning with the title "What's that sound?"

My post was about that goofball sound Cardi B made when she was interviewing Joe Biden. I was thinking about the song as I wrote the post...

I think it's time we stop
Children, what's that sound?
Everybody look what's going down

... because the question "what's that sound?" is so familiar from that old song.

But that's not at all why Meade was playing the song. Unbeknownst to me, that song was played at the Democratic Convention last night! They brought out old Steven Stills and paired him with trendy Billy Porter:

Thanks @theebillyporter + Steven Stills for helping us close night one of the #DemConvention! 🎵

So much more to come! Come back tomorrow ⬇️https://t.co/NEJtNqxFPV pic.twitter.com/vqXfLCUVfk

— 2020 #DemConvention 🇺🇸 (@DemConvention) August 18, 2020

Were people listening to the lyrics?

A thousand people in the street
Singing songs and a-carryin’ signs
Mostly say, "Hooray for our side"

Well, that's a convention, isn't it? Hooray for our side.

Perhaps the most striking line in the song is: "Paranoia strikes deep/Into your life it will creep." That's why you need to stop and pay attention — Everybody look what's going down.

What's that sound?

the absolute highlight of Cardi B talking to Joe Biden pic.twitter.com/80mA0kD990

— keyvan (کیوان) (@shafieikeyvan) August 17, 2020

Here's the transcript of the entire interview (and isn't it great that Biden is doing interviews?!):

Cardi B: (00:05)
Oh, snap. Is [inaudible 00:00:07] real?
Joe Biden: (00:08)
How are you doing?
Cardi B: (00:09)
Hi Biden, how are you?
Joe Biden: (00:10)
How are you? The name’s Joe.
Cardi B: (00:14)
Well hello there Joe.
Joe Biden: (00:16)
Hi, [crosstalk 00:00:16] as a matter of fact, watch me and my daughter. The love of my life, the life of my love. She’s a fan of yours.
Ashley Biden: (00:22)
Hi, how are you?
Cardi B: (00:23)
Hi, how are you?

"Singer/songwriter Cardi B has confessed that she used to drug and rob men who were interested in her sexually after bringing them to hotels."

"She's responded to criticism for this by saying the men were 'willing' and 'aware.'... If a male pop star confessed to these kinds of crimes against women, then defended himself by vaguely making it sound like the women really wanted it or were asking for it, his career would be over.... The way society has this muted response to the worst kinds of abuse of men by women is doubly sexist: (1) obviously sexist against men by not caring about them being wronged, but also (2) insidiously sexist against women because of the implication, 'She’s just a girl — surely she couldn’t have done that much harm . . .'"

Writes my son John (on his blog).

The Washington Post Super Bowl ad is a great ad for the product — journalism — but where can I get it — at The Washington Post?

There are ads that make you want to drink soda but don't make you want to drink the soda the ad is for. It may even drive you toward a competing brand....



Okay? So when The Washington Post offers this lofty paean to journalism at its most courageous and noble, I am touched...



... but it's with sadness and longing for something I don't believe I can ever have. And indeed, the ad itself exemplifies the problem because it puffs and deceives and lures and titillates. It deals in sentimentality and sensationalism. It's biased... in favor of itself — of course, like any ad. It has something to sell and it wants to bind us to the brand at an irrational level.

"There's someone to gather the facts, to bring you the story, no matter the costs. Because knowing empowers us. Knowing helps us decide, Knowing keeps us free."  I love the ideal of journalism, and you don't have to help me deeply value it. You need to convince me that what you present in your paper is "the facts" and that reading it will help me "know."

It makes me think of that old quote from Mark Twain...

What gets us into trouble
is not what we don’t know
It’s what we know for sure
that just ain’t so

You may remember seeing that on screen in that Al Gore movie, "An Inconvenient Truth," which gathered the facts and empowered us with knowledge about climate change.

And the great irony is that there is no substantive evidence that Mark Twain ever said that.

ADDED: About that Pepsi ad. I only vaguely saw it last night, but I'm watching it now on my computer screen. My vision is so poor that I had no idea that pudgy man in a beard was Steve Carell. But that ad has a race problem. Are people talking about that this morning?

A white woman orders a Coke and the white male waiter asks "Is Pepsi okay?" and Carell jumps up to berate him because he said "Is Pepsi okay?" in a bland, dull way. According to Carell, the waiter needs to  say "okay" differently. We are then shown 2 black pop stars — Lil Jon and Cardi B — and they say "okay" with intense enthusiasm. Carell then yells at the 2 white people, insisting that they express themselves in the style of Lil Jon and Cardi B.

I'm thinking, blackface.

The Pepsi ad also has a sexual harassment problem, and I guess we're not supposed to notice or care because the victim is a white male. Carell snaps his fingers, says "Let's role play," and instantly the young man is wearing nothing but his underpants. Even in the bad old days, was there ever an ad that sold a major product by showing a woman stripped down to her underwear at the snap of the fingers? That was sexual humiliation.

"The familiar public narratives about black women don’t fit Kamala Harris. She’s not a jezebel, a mammy or an Omarosa."

"She’s also the first viable woman running for president who has had an entire adult dating life. Elizabeth Warren got married (the first time) at 19, Michele Bachmann at 22, Carly Fiorina 23, Hillary 28 and even 2020 candidate Kristen Gillibrand got married at 35. Harris, who married her husband at the age of 49 was living her best life into her 30s and 40s. So yes, we were bound to hear about Willie Brown and yes, at some point, it will come out that she dated talk show host Montel Williams too. She was an attractive high profile single black woman in California, what else was she supposed to be doing when she wasn’t prosecuting people?"

From "Sen. Kamala Harris Is a 54-Year-Old Black Woman, and Yes, She Dated Willie Brown. So What?" by Jason Johnson at The Root. With this video:



I like that phrase "living her best life." Here are "10 Tips on How to Live Your Best Life" from the editors at the Deepak Chopra website. ("Set Intentions... Visualize... Meditate... Journal... Travel... Invest in Your Health... Practice Daily Self-Love...") And here's the Cardi B song, "Best Life," which begins "I'm livin' my best life, yeah, yeah."

Anyway, Johnson seems annoyed to have to address the sex life of Kamala Harris: "I have to write about her dating past because her ex-bae, 84-year-old former San Francisco Mayor Willie Brown decided to have a Quincy Jones moment and spill tea on their relationship."

"When I got pregnant, I was f**king freaking out. Everybody around me was like, ‘No, this never happened before.'"

"'Every artist that had a baby, they already put in years in the game. This is your first year. You’re going to mess it up. How are you going to make it?’ While I was pregnant, I kept telling myself, I can’t wait till I’m back out there. I’m going to look hot, and I’m going to be that bitch. Four weeks after giving birth, I was supposed to start rehearsals for a fall tour with Bruno Mars and I couldn’t even squat down. People don’t really talk about what you go through after pregnancy... When Kulture was born, I felt like I was a kid again; everything was making me cry, and I needed a lot of love. I feel ­better now, but sometimes I just feel so vulnerable, like I’m not ready for the world yet."

Said Cardi B in a W interview quoted at Tom & Lorenzo. She didn't go on that tour, she "sacrificed that to stay with my daughter," and that explains, she says, why she physically attacked Nicki Minaj:

[S]he saw that Minaj had liked, and then unliked, a tweet disparaging Cardi’s mothering skills, something Minaj has denied. “I was going to make millions off my Bruno Mars tour, and I sacrificed that to stay with my daughter,” Cardi went on. “I love my daughter. I’m a good-ass fucking mom. So for somebody that don’t have a child to like that comment? So many people want to say that party wasn’t the time or the place, but I’m not going to catch another artist in the grocery store or down the block.”

"I’m from the hood. I speak how I speak I am how I am. I did not choose to be famous people choose me!"

"People followed me on Instagram and the people gave me a platform to introduce my talent. I never asked to be a example or a role model I don’t want to change my ways because I’m famous that’s why I just mind my business. This is coming from a woman that bleached her skin but want to advocate. GOODBYE. I’m not apologizing or kill myself because of who I am."

Said Cardi B, deleting her Instagram account, after Azealia Banks said "Two years ago, the conversation surrounding black women’s culture was really reaching an all-time high. There was just this really, really, really intelligent conversation going on nationally and then everything just kind of changed and then it was like Cardi B."

I don't know how really, really, really intelligent the conversation was before Cardi B became a voice people were hearing or how she could have changed the whole conversation, so I'll just leave you with those quotes for what they're worth.

As for the "bleached her skin" business, here's "'Nobody was upset when I wore weaves': Azealia Banks admits to bleaching her skin and compares it to hair extensions and nose jobs in bizarre video rant" (from the Daily Mail in July 2016).

The Cardi-B anti-tax rant.

Language warning (she keeps asking what "y'all are doing with my fucking money"):



I'm not sure if this is stupid — like she just noticed that when you make a fair amount of money the government takes a 40% cut — or hilarious — "When you donate, like, to a kid from a foreign country, they give you updates of what they're doing with your donation, I want updates on my tax money!"

Via The Daily Mail.

ADDED: Also in The Daily Mail: "'Nobody gives a f***:' Cardi B says the #MeToo movement doesn't care about women in hip hop":

'A lot of video vixens have spoke about this and nobody gives a f***,' the brash rapper began. 'When I was trying to be a vixen, people were like, "You want to be on the cover of this magazine?" Then they pull their d***s out. 'I bet if one of these women stands up and talks about it, people are going to say, 'So what? You’re a ho. It don’t matter.'"

And the starlet wasn't giving the men supporting #MeToo much credit, telling Cosmo: 'These producers and directors, they’re not woke, they’re scared.'

AND: I had not seen the term "video vixen" before. Obviously, I could understand the meaning from the context, but I wanted to know more about whether it's something like a standard job title. Wikipedia has an article on the subject:

A video vixen (also hip hop honey or video girl[2]) is a female model who appears in hip-hop-oriented music videos. The video vixen image has become a staple and a nuanced form of sex work within popular music; especially within the genre of hip-hop. Many video vixens are aspiring actors, singers, dancers, or professional models. Women from various cultures have been portrayed either as fragile, manipulative, fetishistic, or submissive within contemporary music lyrics, videos, concert and movie soundtracks, although this is not universal, as demonstrated by the archetypal ride-or-die chick.

"Ride-or-die chick" has its own article:

A "ride-or-die chick", in the hip hop culture, is a woman willing to support her partner and his illicit lifestyle despite how this might endanger or harm her. Sometimes this is portrayed as a more passive "support and love regardless of their transgressions" role, but oftentimes it requires women to take an active role in these transgressions and manifests in a "willingness to help men in dangerous situations," and "a sense of shared risk." It is often referred to as a hip hop manifestation of the Bonnie and Clyde dynamic.

Photographs I can't understand.

I'm trying to read — well, scan — "25 Songs That Tell Us Where Music Is Going" in the NYT Magazine.

This is one of these tarted-up pages at the NYT website that made me blog (on March 9th): "I'd like a browser that can be set so nothing moves on my screen unless I click something to make it play/Can I get that anywhere? I loathe movement near something I'm trying to read...." If you want to see what I'm saying I loathe, you'll see it if you click through. The moving image behind the words at the top of that page physically nauseates me. Intellectually, I deplore the clutter, which waves in our face the NYT's desperate need for us to believe that it's a trendy website and not just an old newspaper displayed on screen.

Now, I do appreciate the play button at the entry for each of the 25 songs. You can instantly play (and pause) as you read (or instead of reading). But I am appalled at the hand-drawn squiggles around the various words and images. The Times says it's going to "tell us where music is going," but I've seen squiggles like that before, so the message to me is, we're going back to the 1980s.

But what I really want to talk about, as the post title indicates, is a photograph — this one, accompanying the first song, "Bodak Yellow," by Cardi B, next to the all-caps text, "AN UNAPOLOGETIC ANTHEM FOR WOMEN IN A YEAR OTHERWISE DEFINED BY PANDERING AND SETBACKS":



The photograph doesn't seem to be "for women" or in opposition to the "pandering and setbacks." It seems to embody the retrograde attitude toward women. That heavy makeup and that dopey, sleepy expression might be aimed at other women, but if it is, it's not in a way that fits with the idea of an "unapologetic anthem for women," which sounds like marching in the streets and denouncing oppression, not weakly melting into a selfie.

But the NYT has, for whatever reason, decided to promote Cardi B as an icon of feminism. On my own, I would not read any further. I'd just be disgusted, but since you're here, I'm going to read the entry (which is by Jamie Lauren Keiles).

Women in this world are taught to believe that every problem must have a buyable solution. Not sleeping well? Get a lavender-vanilla pillow spray. Overrun with stress? Buy a skin-care routine. The market is rife with solace for sale — a product on offer for anything that ails. 

Popular music is another one of these products. Isn't an "anthem for women" a proffered cure for a presumed woman-specific ailment?

This past year, our own systemic subjugation was no exception. With a former beauty-pageant owner in the White House, Clinton in Chappaqua and high-profile men being exposed for their crimes, feminism reached its most shoppable form....

Keiles references pussy hats and other paraphernalia that — I'll use the headline's word — pandered to women after the election. And what does the song do?

Cardi B’s “Bodak Yellow” ... begins with an outright provocation: “Lil [expletive], you can’t [expletive] with me if you wanted to.” 

Let's be clear. The first expletive is "bitch" and the second is "fuck." Cardi B is addressing women with contempt.

Her tone is confident in a way that feels easy. To paraphrase one commenter on YouTube: It’s a song that will make you want to fire your own boss.

Let's check NYT's characterization of the lyrics, which you can read here. I really don't have the patience to read and think about all these lyrics, but I cannot see how they are in any way an "anthem for women." They might be an anthem for a woman. The singer seems to want to brutally dominate everyone else. She brags about material goods, claims to be "the hottest in the street" and taunts other women — "Think these hoes be mad at me, their baby father run a bill... If I see you and I don't speak, that means I don't fuck with you/I'm a boss, you a worker, bitch, I make bloody moves." That sounds like one woman hating other women.

The NYT writer brings up pussy hats and "pussy" is a big word in the hating-Trump enterprise, so let me show you the occurrences of "pussy" in this song. The first is a literal reference to the singer's genitalia:

I might just feel on your babe, my pussy feel like a lake
He wanna swim with his face, I'm like, "Okay"...

The second appearance of "pussy" is the insult to another person (whom she's threatening with gun violence): "If you a pussy, you get popped, you a goofy, you a opp." The lyrics site (linked above) helpfully explains a joke: "Getting 'popped' is slang for getting shot, which Cardi B connects to the sexual image of 'pussy popping' in which a woman exposes her genitals by bending over in a provocative way." "Opp," we're told, means "opposition... members of a rival gang."

The third appearance of "pussy" is, "My pussy glitter as gold, tell that lil bitch play her role." Again, I'm seeing the complete absence of sisterhood. I can see how an individual woman might feel strong by imagining herself in the place of the singer, insulting and hating and threatening and demeaning all the other women, but that is not a strength that has anything to do with women banding together in a political movement.

I think the NYT is obtuse, perhaps deliberately, but at least I do now understand the photograph.